Curiosity and experimentation vs. the tyranny of goals
Our era worships straight lines. It loves clean résumés, clear-cut passions, neatly packaged projects with KPIs. In this world, curiosity is a useless luxury, wandering is a red flag, and doubt is seen as a design flaw. Anne-Laure Le Cunff shatters that obsession with linearity.
Tiny Experiments offers an alternative: a life lived as a lab—full of micro-attempts, fruitful detours, and bold turns. It’s a manifesto for the undisciplined, a celebration of joyful experimentation, and an intellectual middle finger to success dashboards. What follows is a dive into the book’s most refreshingly subversive ideas.
Based on Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff (Avery, 2025)
1. Breaking free from a linear life
A straight line is a straitjacket.
It’s the default route—the one nobody questions and everyone applauds: diploma, internship, full-time job, promotion, mortgage, family, retirement. Life as a straight, well-marked, meritocratic line. An existential GPS that leaves no room for off-roading. That line feels safe. It delivers the illusion of control, predictability, security—and a flattering story: each step up proves your worth.
But beneath the promise of achievement lurks quiet rot: exhaustion. Impostor syndrome, sluggish mornings, to-do lists that read like factory pipelines. You keep moving because you’re supposed to, not because the path speaks to you. And the higher you climb, the blurrier the view becomes. That’s what happened to Anne-Laure Le Cunff in her top position at Google—what looked like the pinnacle of success. Inside? Emptiness. No joy, no meaning—just a void.
A linear life is a sophisticated trap: it teaches us to follow the script—but never to listen to ourselves.
A 90-degree turn is a power move
Here’s the book’s core disruption: linearity isn’t natural—it’s constructed. And we can break free from it. Human life is inherently non-linear, chaotic, and full of contradictions. It’s not a staircase we climb—it’s a constellation we connect as we go. Linearity is an administrative fantasy imposed on existence. But turning? That’s organic.
Le Cunff invites us to shift our perspective: stop treating life as a race to a fixed destination, and start seeing it as space to explore. This isn’t escapism—it’s an invitation to dwell in uncertainty. To stop viewing detours as mistakes, and start seeing them as experiences. To stop fearing deviations, and start celebrating them.
In this view, the meaning of life isn’t found at the end of a goal—it’s discovered in the side paths you dare to take.
Breaking free from a linear life doesn’t mean giving up on building something. It means refusing to lead a life that reads like an instruction manual. It’s about becoming an explorer again, not just an operator. It’s putting playfulness back into your destiny. It’s not regressing—it’s reclaming.
Possible actions: hack the linear logic
Do you want to gently sabotage the obsession with the straight line? Here are a few tactics you can start using right now :
- De-rank your choices: Not all steps have to be upward. Learn to value exploration—even when it doesn’t appear “useful.” Trying a pottery class, shifting your work rhythm, learning without a clear goal—these are political acts.
- Stop asking, “What’s next?”: That’s linearity’s favorite trap. What’s next? Then what? Where is this going? Instead of projecting forward, stay in the depth of the present. Ask yourself, “What now?” Not “What’s next?”
- Revisit your past successes: Don’t stack them like trophies—see them as experiments. It’s not a résumé, it’s a journal of experiences. There’s no storyline to preserve—just curiosity to keep alive.
- Make yourself available—spontaneously: Say “yes” to things that don’t fit into your plan. Take a break with no strategic reason. Give yourself permission to professionally wander. Rethink boredom as an opening. It’s not about letting everything go. It’s about letting go of control.
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