Tiny Experiment: A Zettel A Day
TLDR: Little Note Summary
This is what I plan to do.
Read on to understand why I am picking this specific tiny experiment, the benefits of doing so, why, how, what and the protocol.
This article is for readers who are considering whether they should do a similar tiny experiment.
Lil Book Club: What is a Tiny Experiment?
The concept of “Tiny Experiments” here came from the Book 📚 Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by
.
It is a really easy read, and I love the change of mindset that it presents.
🔬 Tiny Experiments: The TLDR
Instead of setting huge, intimidating goals and plans to reach those, we should use small manageable low-risk "tiny experiments" to learn and make meaningful progress. It's about exploration and gathering data instead of achievement.
This really fits with my own realization that I shouldn't just try to work towards a goal. That I shouldn’t set my niche early on because I don't really know what I want until I set out on the journey of trying things. Since practice in the real world is how you build skills and discover if you want to keep doing this thing & where you want to take it. You can't just find your niche at the beginning, it comes as you discover, and you do that by writing.
💡 5 Key Mindset Shifts
🌱 Grow through a cycle of experiments, not as an arrow shooting towards a linear goal. It's okay to adjust your path as you learn. Benefits: Flexibility to respond to life’s uncertainty. + You can affirm that the goal you are working towards, is the goal you actually want. I think of this as “make small steps towards progress with regular checkpoints instead of a life-or-death parkour leap that may or may not succeed”.
🤔 Choose curiosity over certainty. Focus on "what can I learn?" instead of "will I succeed?". This is huge for me because I struggle with fear of failure and because of this fear, not daring to go out and try things. (E.g. not being willing to comment on posts because I could be saying something wrong and get cancelled. It's like the childhood advice of if you have “nothing nice to say, don't say.”)
📊 Treat failure as data. Every outcome gives you useful information for the next experiment. The belief that you will be succeeding as long as you get data takes away the burden of stressing about how you are doing. I do have a problem of tying performance metrics to my self-worth. I try not to lean on external validation but it is human to feel motivated when others in your tribe signal approval and that is a strong motivating force.
🏃♀️ Focus on the process, not the outcome. Commit to the small daily action, not just the final result. Instead of a goal to "reach 1000 followers," you would focus on a process like "write for 7 minutes every day." I love this because it takes the control and puts it in your hands. You can do The action, and you don't have the uncertainty about whether or not you're succeeding that you would have if you were depending on external validation, for others to tell you that you are good enough.
⛓️💥 Breaking Free from Invisible Scripts. We all have ingrained beliefs and "cognitive scripts" that can limit our potential. By running tiny experiments, you can challenge these assumptions and discover new possibilities for yourself. This one is huge. I really recommend going to watch the video she has with Big Think. I didn’t realize how much of my goals were led by a need to live an Epic Life as if I was the protagonist of a webnovel. This also makes so much sense if you have done the Odyssey Exercise where the last question asks “What would you do if money & societal expectations were not a problem?”.
🧪 How to Run a Tiny Experiments & Why It Works
Here's a simple, three-step process for getting started.
Make a Pact with Yourself
A Pact is a simple, repeatable action you commit to for a specific duration. This is an acronym: Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable (PACT)
PACT format: "I will do [small, specific action] for [short time period]."
Example: "I will stretch for 5 minutes every morning for one week."
The difference between a PACT and a SMART goal is that you're setting what you want to do instead of where you want to be after you finish doing this thing. We don't have outcome expectations. We have curiosity towards what will be the outcome of this data collection process.
Gather Data
Just do the experiment. Don't worry about doing well. Do log down your thoughts, feelings, and ideas as you do this.
Pay attention to how it feels and what happens. This is an absolutely crucial part of the experiment. You're not just doing it to build a habit. You are doing this because you want to know: How does doing this action make you feel? Is this what you want to do with your life?
Review & Decide
After the time is up, ask: What did I learn? Did I enjoy it? Ask yourself what worked, what didn't, and what you learned.
Based on that data, you can decide to continue, adjust, or stop the experiment.
🎉 Why it works: This method removes the fear of failure. It's easy to start, helps you build momentum, and lets you discover what actually works for you without the pressure of a big commitment. The mindset shift from success or failure to data collection is key here.
My Pact
Step 1: Discovery from your daily life
The process begins with gathering data from your current life (instead of jumping into experimenting). She calls this field notes, but it is essentially doing some interstitial journaling, with a focus on how your energy levels change depending on the time of day and what activities you are doing. The goal is to find what energizes you and inspires you.
I have been doing this for the last five years consistently, so I have a lot of data, and from this I gathered that the activities which get me out of a rut are:
Visiting the library. Reading physical books + movement + randomness of browsing books + the environment that makes it easy to lose yourself in reading.
Exercise: Movement is really key to unlocking motivation for me. I love swimming with underwater (bone conduction) headphones or just floating in the water. I live my best life when I go out for walks, sometimes with a neck fan. But this is also really hard to do when Singapore is in hot season. Yoga is also the awesomeness but I am a lazy potato who struggles to motivate myself to get up. I did get an exercise bike in my room for this. We will see.
Consumption: Watching video essays on Youtube, following along with courses (Harvard’s Justice Lectures / Dr.K’s Healthy Gamer GG Guide) and listening to podcasts. These really help inspire me.
Thinking: This is one of the more debatable activities because I do feel tired after spending a long time in my Zettelkasten, but I also feel more settled. It is a good type of exhaustion.
Since the last one (Thinking in my Zettelkasten) is one of the most low effort experiments that doesn't require me to leave my room and also the one I am most uncertain about. This is the experiment that I am going to start with.
Step 2: Experiment Design
We will be following the PACT protocol.
P - Purpose (Why do this experiment?)
Initial Reason: I have fallen off the bandwagon of properly making zettelkasten notes for some time. My inbox has 152 fleeting notes but I rarely take time out to properly process them.
🤔 But what is my deeper “Why”? Let's use the 5 Whys framework to dig in.
Why do you want to commit to one Zettel note per day?
Because you've fallen off and have 152 fleeting notes to process.
Why is processing those notes important to you?
Because it helps you rediscover curiosity and engage in deeper thinking.
Why is deeper thinking important to you right now?
Because you want to think in a bottom-up way and externalize your thoughts, which helps you think more clearly, the way you did in university.
Why is that university style of thinking meaningful to you?
Because it feels like proper deep thinking. You're inspired by the "Dark academia + library research mood."
Why is achieving that specific feeling—that mood of a deep-thinking scholar—the real goal?
My hypothesis, based on what you wrote, is that the true driver here isn't just about output or productivity. It's about embodying an identity you value: the curious, intellectual, deep thinker. The Zettelkasten is the tool, but the feeling of being that person is the actual reward.
I actually went for a second round of doing this:
Why #1: Why do you want to rediscover your curiosity and engage in deeper thinking?
You said it's because that's when you feel like you're thinking properly, like you did in university.
Why #2: Why is it important for you to think properly like you did in university?
Let's guess here. Maybe because that's when you felt most intellectually alive and confident? Perhaps it gave you a sense of clarity and forward momentum in your learning.
Why #3: Why do you want to feel intellectually alive and confident right now?
Is it because you feel a bit stagnant? Maybe you feel like your great ideas (those 152 fleeting notes!) are slipping away, and you're not living up to your intellectual potential.
Why #4: Why is it important for you not to feel stagnant?
This is where we get deep. Feeling stagnant can lead to feeling unfulfilled. It might be tied to your identity as a smart, capable person who creates and connects ideas.
Why #5: Why is expressing your identity as a smart, creative person so crucial?
Because it's not just about making notes. It's about building a body of work that reflects who you are and what you think. It's about contributing your unique perspective, maybe through your Substack, and following your own "pathless path" instead of a prescribed one.
So, the true purpose isn't just "making notes." It's about feeling intellectually fulfilled and validating your identity as a creator of original thoughts. That's a much more powerful motivator.
Here is the prompt if you want to use AI to explore:
Take the persona of Anne-Laure Le Cunff, the author of Tiny Experiments, and help advise on what I should improve here. I want to refine my PACT with principles from her book.
Also take the persona of a driven best friend who has the approach of a Google Software engineer, data scientist, in how they focus on doing experiments in order to work out what is good and what is not. Reason about what kind of experiments you want to conduct. Make it clear and easy to do. We believe in tiny little experiments (Anne Laure le Cunff style) and the alternative path (Pathless Path Book). Discuss with me to figure out what we want (reason deeply with the 5 whys framework, and get to the true reason) and when we have that settled, what we should do (how you can help me, and what I should do in clear steps). Take initiative, be sweet, encouraging and as helpful as possible. You can suggest new directions, and provide smart analysis by bringing in concepts from books that you have read deeply. You read all the books that Shortform makes dense book summaries about. The purpose of this experiment is to test if a daily Zettelkasten practice helps me cultivate the feeling of being an active, engaged thinker. I want to feel intellectually fulfilled by turning my fleeting ideas into more concrete concepts and build my own mental model of the world. I want to discover if this process reconnects me with the "dark academia" joy of intellectual exploration. This is an act of developing own thinking in a world that is inundated by “AI + Google Search thinks for you”.
A - Action (What am I doing?)
Every morning, after making coffee, I will open my dedicated Zettelkasten Obsidian vault.
I will select one source of inspiration to work from. This can be one of my 152 fleeting notes, or a new idea from a podcast, course, or book.
I will work on creating one permanent Zettel note for a minimum of seven minutes, forming it into a full Zettel permanent (main) note as defined by it meeting the criteria I set in my Zettelkasten Sidekick plugin.
If I feel motivated after seven minutes, I can continue.
The process of doing this usually takes around 30 minutes (process documented in video here) but I am setting a lower passing line, to make this achievable even on low-energy days.
Specifics: I will be following this Zettelkasten protocol (Based off A System For Writing by Bob Doto) & I will be documenting my journey here on Substack as part of my learning in public goals.
Practically this means I will post a note about what Zettel I made, likely a screenshot or a permanent statement.
C - Controlled (How am I doing this experiment?)
This experiment runs for one week. (from today 16 July until the same day next week, 23rd July.)
The primary time slot is in the morning after coffee. The habit is stacked directly after "making coffee" to links the new habit to an existing one, which help integrate into my routine.
I am also designing it this way, because by doing this first thing in the morning, right after I make some coffee, also lets me test whether this morning routine helps to motivate me.
Other things being ‘tested’ as part of the experiment
I find that movement tends to help inspire me.
I usually listen to a podcast as I make coffee, Because having something to do with my hands makes me more likely to properly listen to the podcast instead of clicking away to something I can actively work on (fiction writing).
I start my day best when I do something 'productive' in the mornings instead of diving straight into fiction writing.
Novelty is a huge motivating force for me. So consumption of new material to inspire my zettels, should also be helpful in improving my energy levels + living an exciting life.
T - Trackable (Proof)
I will be linking all of these Zettels to a note in my vault so I can keep track of this experiment.
Everyday, I want to write at least one sentence about the process. Specifically,
How do I feel after making this zettel?
Do I feel like there is progress made intellectually?
Do I enjoy this process?
How are my energy levels (right after)?
How are my energy levels (at the end of the day)? Because I hypothesize that Zettelkasten work is tiring but rewarding, a bit like how yoga helps with calm for the rest of my day, even if it tires me out.
How did encountering ‘novel ideas’ make me feel?
Here is an example. My log for Day 1:
The goal isn't to answer all the questions, but to reflect more on the experiment instead of focussing on the output / success of the posts.
The Experiment Begins!
The goal for this week isn't to produce seven Zettel notes. The goal is to write for seven minutes each day and observe what happens internally.
My hypothesis is that this small daily act of deep thinking will act as an anchor habit to provide novelty in my daily routine, and help settle me. I expect to be more calm after this week, and begin developing intellectually, following my curiousity and developing substantiated opinions.
I will report back here in a week with the full set of data and my final review.
Will you try this out?
Think of a tiny experiment as being a Google Researcher focusing on the most important research question of your own life, collecting data from a single question: "What happens if I do this?"
You don't need a Zettelkasten or to find your passion. Just look at your own life.
What’s a small, nagging curiosity you've ignored?
What's an activity you tell yourself you "should" do but never start (stretching, meditating, drawing, pottery-making)?
What’s something you used to love but have lost touch with?
Your PACT could be as simple as:
"I will stretch for 3 minutes in bed every night for one week."
"I will read one page of a book in the morning for one week."
"I will interstitial journal everyday (even if it is one sentence) for 3 days."
I strongly recommend the last one. Interstitial journalling has really changed my life, more than any other habit. Bullet Journalling is also a good idea, if you are more visual / the pen & paper type.