Tiny Experiments: A Practical System to Discover What You’re Really Good At
Feeling stuck about your “thing”? Start a lab, not a ten-year plan.
- Most of us overestimate how well we know our strengths. Thinking harder rarely fixes that — running tiny experiments does.
- The PACT framework (from Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s tiny experiments work) lets you test new directions in 1–2 weeks with very low stakes.
- Combine PACT with Peter Drucker’s feedback analysis and you get a “Search & Verify” system: explore widely, then double down only on what proves energising and effective.
- You don’t need to quit your job. You just need 10–20 minutes of protected “lab time” and a simple way to log what gives you energy.
- There’s a free 5-page Tiny Experiments Lab Kit (US Letter & A4) you can download below to run your first 14-day experiment.
A few months ago, I opened a blank Google Doc to write the first script for my youtube channel… and just sat there.
My brain went straight into panic mode:
- “If I pick the wrong niche, I’ll waste six months.”
- “If I start and it flops, that’s proof I’m not good at anything.”
So I did nothing. Closed the laptop, picked up my phone, scrolled, then quietly blamed myself for “wasting time”.
If you’re in a job or major that feels “fine, but not exactly me”, this probably sounds familiar. You have a vague sense you could do something that fits you better, but the fear of choosing wrong and wasting years keeps you frozen.
Why do we feel so stuck when choosing a direction?
We live in an extremely goal-obsessed era. Interviews ask, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Self-help books demand ten-year roadmaps. Social feeds are packed with people who seem to have a crisp personal brand and a clearly labelled “zone of genius”.
That creates a strange pressure: you’re expected to draw a perfect decade-long blueprint while you still aren’t even sure what you’re truly good at.
Management thinker Peter Drucker once wrote that most people think they know their strengths, and they are usually wrong. His proposed antidote was a method called feedback analysis: every time you make a key decision, you write down what you expect will happen, then revisit it 9–12 months later to compare prediction and reality.
It’s smart — but in today’s world it has two practical problems:
- It’s too slow. In many fields the landscape shifts every year. Waiting twelve months just to learn “I’m not actually suited for this” is an expensive lesson.
- It has a cold-start problem. If you’re currently an accountant, all your major decisions happen inside accounting. Feedback analysis will tell you if you’re a good accountant. It won’t easily reveal whether you’d secretly thrive in teaching, product, or content, because those areas don’t get any experiments.
That’s why thinking harder, doing personality tests, or nostalgically recalling what you liked as a kid rarely gives a satisfying answer. Your brain rewrites memories to protect your ego, and you simply don’t have enough real-world samples of yourself in different roles.
How does thinking like a scientist change the game?
For a long time I treated myself like an architect of my life. I believed I needed a precise blueprint before laying a single brick: choose the right path, define the right niche, lock in the right goal, then act. In that frame, every move feels like a high-stakes, irreversible decision.
At some point I tried on a different identity: not an architect, but a scientist.
A scientist expects most experiments to fail or come back inconclusive. Failure isn’t a verdict on your worth; it’s raw data.
This tiny identity shift does something very concrete in your brain:
- When you treat every step as a “huge life exam”, your amygdala lights up. You freeze, avoid, procrastinate.
- When you frame something as a “two-week experiment”, the threat level drops. The risk feels contained, and your prefrontal cortex is more willing to engage.
So the question becomes: if you are the scientist of your own life, how do you design your experiments?
What is the PACT tiny experiment framework?
The tiny experiments idea and the PACT model come from Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s work on small, low-stakes experiments. I’m standing on her shoulders here. What I’ve done is combine her “tiny experiments” with Drucker’s feedback analysis to create a two-engine system: one for searching widely, one for verifying what really fits you.
PACT is not a huge corporate goal, but a chain of very small, specific agreements you make with yourself:
What does “P” – Pact – look like in real life?
Instead of “I’m going to become a writer”, a pact sounds like:
- “For the next seven days, I’ll write 200 words every morning, no matter how bad they are.”
To your brain, this is a completely different ask. “Become a writer” is a vague identity demand. “Write 200 words for seven days” is a clear action it knows how to complete.
How do you “Act” without overwhelming yourself?
The A in PACT is Act. Here the job is simple: do the thing and track one question — “Did I do it today?”
You are not judging how good the writing is or how many likes it gets. You’re tracking behaviour, not quality. That protects your fragile intrinsic motivation from being crushed by early performance reviews.
What do you “Check” at the end of the week?
The C stands for Check, but not in the “Did I succeed?” sense. It’s a weekly energy review:
- After you do the pact, do you feel a little more clear or a little more drained?
- Did time pass quickly, or did you watch the clock?
If you log this, patterns emerge: some activities quietly recharge you; others leave you mentally flat.
How do you turn Check into a concrete Takeaway?
The T is Takeaway. Based on your energy audit, you decide what happens next:
- Maybe you like the activity, but not the topic — you keep the habit, change the theme.
- Maybe you dislike the whole thing — that’s still a win; you stop investing energy there.
- Maybe you notice that even when you’re tired, you don’t resist starting and feel oddly clearer after — that’s a strong signal to continue.
This entire PACT cycle can live in the margins of your week. You don’t have to quit your job or take a gap year. You’re just claiming 10–20 minutes of “lab time” at the edge of your day.
How do tiny experiments become real career data?
I like to imagine this as two engines:
- Search — where you run PACT-style experiments in different directions with very low stakes.
- Verify — where you upgrade promising experiments into short projects and use feedback analysis to confirm your strengths.
In the Search engine, you might run small pacts across multiple lines:
- On Monday/Wednesday/Friday: “After work, spend 20 minutes reverse-engineering an app I like and write down three things I’d change.”
- On Tuesday/Thursday: “Record a 3-minute voice memo telling a story from my day.”
- On the weekend: “Help one friend with their CV or a mock interview and take notes on what felt natural or difficult.”
After a few weeks, you’ll start to see patterns:
- Which activities you always procrastinate on until the last possible minute.
- Which ones you start more easily and finish with a subtle sense of clarity instead of being completely wiped out.
Those “quietly energising” directions become your candidate strengths.
Then they move to the Verify engine. Here, Drucker’s feedback analysis comes back in — but in 2–3 month projects instead of 12-month waits.
You choose one candidate direction and design a small project around it. On day one, you open a simple decision log and write:
- Why am I doing this?
- What do I think I’ll be good at in this project?
- Three months from now, what do I expect will be true?
Then you close the note and go live your life. Three months later, you reopen it and compare expectations with reality. That gap — positive or negative — is your real career data.
How can you run your first 14-day tiny experiment?
- List three curiosities. On a piece of paper, jot down three things you’re vaguely drawn to — for example “helping people plan careers”, “data storytelling”, or “designing workflows”. No pressure, just guesses.
- Pick one and design a small Pact. Turn that curiosity into a 1–2 week pact. For example: “For the next 10 workdays, I’ll spend 15 minutes after dinner writing one short career story thread,” or “I’ll spend 20 minutes a day cleaning and visualising one small dataset.”
- Track only “Did I show up?” Create a simple 14-day grid. Each day, mark ✅ if you did the pact and ❌ if you didn’t. No judgement about quality.
- Log your energy after each session. Next to each checkmark, add a quick code: D = drained, N = neutral, C = a little clearer. One letter is enough.
- Review at the end of the two weeks. Look for patterns: Did this experiment mostly drain you, or did it give you small pockets of focus and satisfaction?
- Decide your takeaway. If it drained you, you can safely drop it. If it was mixed, try adjusting the topic or format and run another short round. If it consistently left you clearer, promote it to a 2–3 month project in your decision log.
- Repeat with the next curiosity. Over a few cycles, you’ll build a growing map of what genuinely fits you, instead of a theory built in your head.
The free Tiny Experiments Lab Kit linked below includes ready-to-use pages for your curiosity list, PACT design, daily energy log and decision log.
Where can I download the Tiny Experiments Lab Kit?
I put everything from this article into a printable 5-page Tiny Experiments Lab Kit. It’s ink-friendly, one step per page, and comes in both US Letter and A4 sizes.
If you’d like more free tools like this in the future, you can sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of this page. That’s where I share new experiments, templates, and behind-the-scenes notes before they make it into videos.
Key facts & references
- Most people misjudge their strengths. Peter Drucker popularised feedback analysis as a way to discover strengths by comparing expectations and outcomes over time (Managing Oneself).
- Tiny experiments lower psychological threat. Framing actions as short, low-stakes experiments reduces perceived risk and makes it easier for the brain to engage with change.
- PACT comes from tiny experiments research. The PACT model (Pact–Act–Check–Takeaway) was originally articulated by Anne-Laure Le Cunff as a way to design small, sustainable experiments.
- Energy is a better early signal than performance. In the first weeks of trying something new, how energised or drained you feel is often more diagnostic than external success metrics.
- Decision logs turn experience into data. Writing down why you make a decision and what you expect to happen makes it possible to review and learn from results months later instead of relying on fuzzy memory.
FAQ: Common questions about tiny experiments
What if I don’t know what to run experiments on?
Start with envy and curiosity. Ask, “Who am I secretly jealous of, and what are they doing?” and “If results didn’t matter, what small thing would I love to try?” Turn one of those into a 1–2 week pact. You don’t need the perfect idea — you need a first test.
How much time do I need each day?
Most people can get useful data from 10–20 minutes a day. The key is consistency, not intensity. It’s better to run a tiny experiment you actually complete than a heroic plan you abandon after three days.
What if I keep breaking my pacts?
Treat that as data, not a moral failure. Maybe the pact is too big, the timing is wrong, or the activity isn’t actually meaningful to you. Shrink the pact until it’s almost impossible to fail, or switch to a different curiosity for the next round.
Does this replace therapy or coaching?
No. Tiny experiments are a self-discovery and career-design tool, not mental health treatment. If you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, or burnout, please talk to a qualified professional and use experiments as a gentle complement, not a replacement.
Should I quit my job once I find something energising?
Not immediately. The point of this system is to de-risk your choices. First, use tiny experiments to find energising directions. Then use 2–3 month projects and decision logs to build evidence that your strengths and the market both support that path. Big career moves can still be bold — they just don’t have to be blind.
Risks, limitations & when to seek help
Tiny experiments are designed to be low-risk, but there are still limits:
- If you’re currently in severe burnout or experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety, treat your first experiments as gentle observations, not performance tests. Professional support comes first.
- Don’t use this method to justify constantly overworking or stacking experiments on top of an already unsustainable schedule. Your lab needs rest to function.
- Financial or immigration constraints are real. Use tiny experiments to explore options inside your current reality, not to ignore critical obligations.
If you notice your experiments consistently make you feel worse, more hopeless, or more critical of yourself, pause the lab and talk to a professional you trust.
From overthinking to running your own lab
You don’t need to decide today what you’ll do for the rest of your life. You can start smaller: two weeks, one pact, one curiosity.
As the data points accumulate — what drains you, what quietly energises you, what you consistently do better than you expected — “What am I good at?” stops being a philosophical question and becomes something you can answer with real examples.
If you’d like some structure for that process, download the Tiny Experiments Lab Kit above, run your first 14-day experiment, and see what you learn about yourself.
Editorial note: This article combines Peter Drucker’s feedback analysis concept with Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s PACT tiny experiments framework, adapted and integrated for the Starry Mind Lab audience.
