#123 | How Tiny Experiments Can Lead to a Happier Life 🚀
A collection of the best hidden gems, mental models, and frameworks from the world’s top thinkers; to help you become 1% better and live a happier life ❤️
Hello curious minds 🧠
Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Tiny Experiments just came out this week.
Probably the best book I read this year.
It builds on something I deeply believe in: having an experimental mindset.
But this book isn’t just about running life experiments. There’s so much more to it, and honestly, I can’t do it justice in this short newsletter. So just go check it out.
For now, I want to share one tool from the book that I love and plan to use moving forward. Hope you find it just as exciting as I do 🚀
🚀 If you are new here…
Hi, I’m Ryan 👋🏼 I am passionate about lifestyle gamification 🎮, which it’s just a fancy way saying I approach life like a video game, designing my character intentionally, and strive to level up every day. I am obsesssssssss with learning things that can help me live a happy and fulfilling life.Every Sunday, through The Limitless Playbook newsletter, I share 1 actionable idea from the world's top thinkers 🎯
Oh, and fun fact: I am a PhD candidate in AI 👻 I am deeply interested in how AI can help us 10x the way we live, learn, and thrive; so expect me to share some cool AI tools, insights, and research 🤖
⛰ Observation → Question → Hypothesis → PACT → Reflect (And Repeat)
So, how can we create infinite growth loops towards living a happy life?
Two words: Do and Learn.
But with endless things to do, where do we even start?
You start with Observation.
Take a step back to observe what’s going on. This could be a macro reflection of life; how you feel about different areas of life like relationships, finances, health, etc… or it could be project-specific, or it can simply be whatever you are curious to explore.
Whatever it is, before jumping into doing, you need to pause and really see where you are, what you want, and how you feel.
Once you have that awareness, the next step is to turn it into a Question. What exactly are you curious about? What do you want to explore or improve from the observation?
From the research question, you can create a Hypothesis, which it’s simply an idea you want to test.
With the hypothesis, you can now come up with what Anne-Laure Le Cunff called a PACT, which stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable. Sounds fancy but basically it boils down to:
I will [action] for [duration]
This gives you a clear way to test your hypothesis by taking action over a set period of time.
Once you have completed the PACT, it’s time to Reflect. Without reflection, you are just doing things without learning, which means no growth. But when you take the time to process what happened, you gain new Observations, and with that, the next growth cycle starts all over again.
What experiments are you running in your life right now? What’s helping you move toward a happier, more fulfilling life?
Here’s an example of how I am using this approach in my own life:
Observation
My health has always been a mix story. There are four components to health in my book: exercise, diet, sleep, and mental. Out of the four, I excel in exercising, getting better at sleeping, doing therapy for mental health, and trying to eat better by learning how to cook and avoiding bad food. Out of the four, I would say my diet is the weakest link.
Question
How can I be healthier?
Hypothesis
Learning how to cook more healthy meals might be a good way for me to eat healthier because a) I love learning, b) I know exactly what goes into my food, building stronger awareness of my diet, and c) it’s a good stepping stone to meal prepping.
PACT
I will learn to cook 1 dish each week for 3 months.
Reflect
[Placeholder for when the PACT has been completed]
I am always curious about what others are passionate about and what they are currently working on. Hit reply and share what’s been keeping you busy these days. I would love to learn!
With love,
Ryan O. 🎮
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