In a world that glorifies hustle, productivity, and 5-year plans, Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s Tiny Experiments feels like a quiet rebellion—an invitation to slow down, get curious, and tune into the rhythm of our own lives. The book is structured around three movements: PACT, ACT, and REACT, each gently guiding us toward greater freedom and self-awareness.

Let’s start with the first act: PACT.

PACT: A Playful Pact with Yourself

At the heart of Tiny Experiments lies a deceptively simple idea: what if you committed to doing something—not to reach a grand goal, but just to observe what happens?

That’s what PACT is all about. It’s not a productivity hack. It’s not a new habit-forming system. It’s certainly not another SMART goal or OKR to check off. Instead, PACT is an experiment:

“I will do [Action] for [Duration].”

But first, we need to escape the gravitational pull of what the book calls the tyranny of purpose—those invisible scripts that shape so many of our decisions:

  • The sequel script: I’ve already started, so I might as well keep going.

  • The crowd pleaser script: This is what others expect of me.

  • The epic script: This is my passion, my calling, my magnum opus.

These narratives might sound noble, but they can subtly trap us. Instead of leading us to authentic exploration, they anchor us to expectations—our own or others’.

So how do we break free?

Think Like an Anthropologist Anne-Laure invites us to become anthropologists of the self. Start keeping field notes—scrappy, open-ended, observational logs of your daily life. These aren’t productivity journals or bullet-point trackers. They’re more like a dialogue with your inner world: Your energy, your moods, random encounters, stray insights. Everything counts.

From this raw data, a framework emerges:

  • Observation – What’s going on?

  • Question – What’s the underlying “how”?

  • Hypothesis – What if I try doing ACTION within DURATION given a condition?

From here, you design your experiment: a PACT.

Making Your PACT

PACT stands for Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, and Trackable—but here’s the twist: it’s all done in a playful way. It’s not about optimizing for output. It’s about noticing, learning, and showing up.

And showing up is the real success here.

Unlike a New Year’s resolution or a 30-day challenge, a PACT is low-stakes by design. It deliberately uses minimal time, effort, and resources. You don’t need to change your life; you just need to observe it differently.

Whether your experiment succeeds or “fails” doesn’t matter. The only metric that matters is: did you show up?

A Different Kind of Discipline

There’s something deeply liberating about approaching your own life as a series of micro-experiments. It shifts the focus from achievement to awareness. From “What did I accomplish?” to “What did I learn about myself today?”

And in that shift, a quieter form of discipline emerges—not one fueled by goals, but by curiosity.

What Comes Next?

The next part of the book—ACT—dives into how to actually do these experiments: how to design them, what resources to use, and how to make them sustainable. I’ll be exploring that in a separate post soon.

But for now, PACT offers a powerful reframing:

You don’t need to know where you’re going. You just need to make a pact—with yourself, for a short while—and see what unfolds.

Tiny, yes. But profound.