Rather than following the hierarchical approach of traditional aerospace companies, Burt Rutan created a culture where experimental data, not authority or lengthy theoretical debates, drove decisions. This experimental mindset ultimately led his team to win the $10-million Ansari X Prize with SpaceShipOne, revolutionizing private spaceflight.

Traditional leadership models that rely on certainty and control are increasingly ineffective. The complexity and pace of our modern world demand a kind of different leadership, one that embraces uncertainty rather than fighting against it.

Transforming Uncertainty into Discovery

Leading like a scientist begins with a fundamentally different relationship with uncertainty. While leaders traditionally view uncertainty as a threat, research shows that teams that openly acknowledge what they don’t know consistently outperform those projecting false confidence.

An experimental mindset means approaching problems with curiosity rather than anxiety. When faced with unexpected results, scientists don’t rush to blame someone or hide the outcome. Instead, they lean in with genuine interest: “That’s interesting… what can we learn from this?”

Similarly, this mindset can transform how we collaborate. It creates environments where people actually test their assumptions and engage in what researchers call humble inquiry – asking genuine questions rather than providing ready-made answers. Their research suggests that when we lead with questions instead of solutions, critical information surfaces more readily.

However, for this to work, it requires updating our definition of success from achieving a desired outcome to learning something new. This perspective transforms the paralyzing fear of being wrong into an intellectual adventure, where uncertainty is a doorway to insights that linear goals might have never revealed.

3 Ways to Lead Like a Scientist

You don’t need a laboratory to lead like a scientist. An experimental mindset can be applied in any context where uncertainty exists – which, in today’s world, is virtually everywhere. Below are three simple practices to incorporate into your leadership.

1. Learning in Public. To lead like a scientist, openly admit when you don’t know something, share failures and lessons learned, ask questions instead of always providing answers, and document your thinking. This transparency builds psychological safety, creating an environment where everyone feels safe to contribute ideas, ask questions, and acknowledge mistakes.
2. Unlocking Social Flow. Encourage team members to design their own experiments, make space for sharing insights, and remove as many artificial barriers as possible (admin, chain of command). This will allow you to shift from “Who has the right answer?” to “How can we learn more?”
3. Redefining Success. Success isn’t just hitting targets, it’s building knowledge that can support long-term ambitions. Treat unexpected results as valuable data. When everyone understands that learning is part of success, they take smarter risks, surface problems earlier, and develop more interesting solutions to complex challenges.

Leadership in the face of uncertainty isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about asking better questions and designing tiny experiments to find the answers. By adopting an experimental mindset, we can transform uncertainty from a source of anxiety into a springboard for discovery.

So, the next time you face a challenge without a clear path forward, ask yourself: “What would a scientist do?” This will likely involve curiosity, experimentation, collaboration, and being comfortable with not knowing… yet!

The post How to lead like a scientist appeared first on Ness Labs.

There’s something surreal about thousands of hours of work culminating in a single moment.

As I write these words, I can feel the first signs of what I’ve come to call the “comedown effect” – the psychological recalibration that occurs after a major achievement, when your brain transitions from the intensity of doing to the quieter state of done.

Although it’s a natural readjustment, this comedown can feel disorienting even in the midst of success.

The emotional aftermath of achievement

The comedown effect is largely driven by our brain’s dopamine system, which regulates motivation and reward processing. Contrary to popular belief, dopamine isn’t primarily about pleasure but about anticipation.

Research shows that dopamine neurons respond most strongly to unexpected rewards. However, once rewards become expected (which is the case once we’ve completed a big project), these same neurons decrease their firing rate, creating a neurochemical environment that can feel like emotional withdrawal.

That’s why many of us experience what feels like a “post-completion void” – that hollow space that opens up when the work that once shaped our days and thoughts is suddenly complete.

Public achievements add another layer to the comedown effect. When our work becomes visible to others, we might start measuring its value through external validation. That social media post celebrating your launch might feel great when the likes roll in, but empty a day later, making you seek more dopamine hits to relive that initial high.

So, how can you land more softly after achieving something big?

Five strategies for a gentler landing

The comedown effect is a normal part of creating and achieving. We can’t avoid it completely, but we can learn to handle it better. Here are five strategies to manage this natural post-achievement emotional recalibration.

1. Create a liminal ritual. Help your mind process the transition by marking the end of your project with a simple ceremony – a special dinner, a day outdoors, or a cosy gathering with friends and colleagues who supported your journey.
2. Integrate the experience. Set aside 10 minutes daily for 10 days after your project ends to write about what happened and how you felt. This creates what neuroscientists call a “memory consolidation period”, ensuring you learn from the experience.
3. Start a small, unrelated experiment. After a big achievement, your brain craves the dopamine hit of novelty and progress. You can satisfy this by exploring something low-stakes and completely different from your main work with no pressure to excel.
4. Look inward for validation. Research consistently suggests that intrinsic motivation leads to more sustainable well-being. Consciously shift your focus from outside measures of success (sales, reviews) to internal values (what you learned, how you grew).
5. Explore what’s next without committing yet. While still celebrating your achievement, gently consider potential future directions. This provides your brain’s reward system healthy continuity rather than leaving a motivational vacuum.

Humans are wired for exploration. That’s why we derive more lasting satisfaction from the journey than from the attainment. That’s also why each big milestone is better thought of as a marker along your own unique path and not as a final destination.

The comedown effect is a natural reset that prepares us for our next creative season. It returns us to the open-endedness of curiosity, meaning-making, and lifelong learning.

Once we understand how it works, we can meet our achievements with a kind of dual awareness: celebrating the summit while remembering that an experimental life is made of both ascents and descents, forming growth loops that are sometimes uncomfortable, but always generative.

The post The Comedown Effect: Understanding the Emotional Aftermath of Achievement appeared first on Ness Labs.

But this well-meaning advice it’s not always practical. Not everyone has easy access to parks or forests – some of us live in cities, work long hours indoors, have mobility challenges, or can’t afford weekend getaways. How can we go about getting these benefits when living in an urban environment?

The Science of Everyday Nature Connection

A great way to manage your mental health is to learn how to “move outside of yourself.” This is when you focus on simply being present in the moment, as opposed to projecting yourself into the future or ruminating about the past. Some of the most effective methods to reach this state of grounded awareness are meditation and mindfulness practices.

Being immersed in nature is another way to reach this state. But not everyone lives in an area where this is possible or can afford to regularly travel to the countryside. Most people reading this will actually be living in a medium to big city.

This is why the research paper I’m going to tell you about made me so happy. In this two-week study, the researchers divided people into three groups:

• Nature
• Human-built
• Business-as-usual

While the “business-as-usual” group just went on their daily lives without any particular instructions, participants in the “nature” and “human-built” groups were asked to pay attention to how natural or human-built objects in their everyday surroundings made them feel, take a photo of the objects or scenes that evoked emotion in them, and to provide a description of emotions evoked.

As you may have guessed, the participants in the “nature” group showcased significantly higher levels of happiness, defined by their sense of elevation and how connected to other people they felt.

But what makes this study so interesting is the definition of “nature” the researchers used. This could be anything that was not human-made: a houseplant, a bird, a dandelion growing in a crack in a sidewalk, or even just sun through a window.

“This wasn’t about spending hours outdoors or going for long walks in the wilderness. This is about the tree at a bus stop in the middle of a city and the positive effect that one tree can have on people,” explained positive psychology researcher Holli-Anne Passmore.

This study is fascinating because it’s so applicable to our daily lives. It shows that it’s all about being proactive with our mindfulness and designing your own positive emotions. So, next time you take a walk in the city, take a few minutes to look up at the trees, the birds, or the flowers on the windows.

Tiny Experiments with Urban Nature

You don’t need to wait for your next vacation to connect with nature. Here are some tiny experiments you can try this week:

1. Do a five-minute window watch. Spend just five minutes looking out your window and count how many natural elements you can spot. Birds, clouds, distant trees, or even the changing light all count.
2. Follow one tree: Choose a single tree on your commute and observe it throughout the seasons. Take a quick photo every week to document its changes.
3. Take sky breaks: Instead of a coffee break, take a “sky break” – step outside for two minutes and look up. Notice the clouds, birds, or simply the color of the sky.

Each of these tiny experiments takes minutes, costs nothing, and can be done in even the most urban environments. You can create a simple “I will [action] for [duration]” pact with one of those three simple actions and a short duration of five days up to a couple of weeks.

What tiny experiment will you try this week to find nature in your everyday surroundings?

The post Taking Note of Nature: City-Friendly Tiny Experiments to Connect with the Natural World appeared first on Ness Labs.

Yet when you return home, a strange paralysis sets in. The thought of cooking a proper meal feels overwhelming, so you order takeout again. Your running shoes gather dust in the corner as you sink into the couch, mindlessly scrolling through social media until bedtime. Weekend plans with friends get canceled because you “need to recharge.”

Months pass this way, and despite your professional success, your personal life has become stagnant. This is a functional freeze – a state where you’re performing well in your duties but are unable to invest energy in your own growth.

Fortunately, this doesn’t have to be permanent. With awareness, self-compassion, and deliberate action, you can thaw the freeze and rediscover a sense of aliveness in all areas of your life.

The paradox of high-functioning exhaustion

The functional freeze presents a fascinating paradox. On one hand, you’re capable of meeting or even exceeding expectations at work. On the other, you’re completely depleted when it comes to self-directed activities that can support your wellbeing and personal growth.

This dichotomy isn’t a character flaw – it’s rooted in how our brains allocate energy and attention. Research in cognitive psychology suggests that structured environments with clear expectations, deadlines, and external accountability tap into our brain’s executive functioning system, which can operate somewhat independently from our self-regulatory resources.

The workplace provides external scaffolding that supports productivity even when our internal motivation might be waning. However, this performance often comes at a cost: ego depletion, where the mental energy required for self-control becomes temporarily exhausted.

By the time you arrive home, your reserves for curiosity, exploration, and making good decisions are depleted. Activities requiring additional willpower – like cooking a healthy meal, pursuing a hobby, or even planning a career change – feel impossibly demanding.

So instead you gravitate toward passive consumption and instant gratification: scrolling through social media, binging streaming shows, or ordering convenient but unhealthy food. These behaviors provide immediate comfort but ultimately reinforce the freeze by failing to replenish your deeper needs for meaning, connection, and growth.

What makes this pattern particularly insidious is that it can persist undetected. High performance in one domain creates the illusion of overall thriving, while the slow erosion of your personal wellbeing happens beneath your conscious awareness.

As a result you might attribute your evening exhaustion to a demanding job, while the very activities that could help you break free – reflection and experimentation – are the ones that feel overwhelming.

How to thaw the functional freeze

Breaking free requires deliberate action, but not in the form of big changes that will only add to your overwhelm. Instead, it involves small, intentional shifts that will gradually rebuild your capacity for self-directed growth.

1. Awareness (recognize the patterns)

The first step is simply noticing the functional freeze. As psychologist Carl Jung noted, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Set aside time for an honest assessment of how you spend your energy and attention. Practice self-anthropology by taking field notes, tracking your activities and energy levels for a day, noting when you feel engaged versus depleted.

Look for recurring patterns: Do you consistently postpone personal activities? Do certain work tasks drain you more than others? Are there moments when you feel more alive and present? This awareness isn’t about self-judgment but rather about gathering data that can inform your next steps. 

2. Acceptance (honor your current capacity)

It might sound paradoxical, but accepting your limitations creates space for growth by avoiding a cycle of overcommitment and disappointment that can deepen the freeze.

Resist the urge to immediately implement an ambitious self-improvement plan. Instead, acknowledge your current limited capacity with compassion. If you’re constantly exhausted, fighting that reality will only create more frustration.

Start by accepting that your energy has limits and that recovery is a legitimate need. This might mean deliberately scheduling downtime, setting boundaries around work hours, or saying no to additional commitments.

3. Action (design tiny experiments)

Small, low-stakes changes are less taxing on your depleted resources. Adopt an experimental mindset by trying one tiny experiment each week: perhaps a five-minute morning meditation, a quick walk during lunch, or turning off notifications for an hour each evening.

Tiny experiments don’t require a lot of willpower but can gradually expand your capacity for change. Each experiment provides data about what works for your unique situation, which will help you design a personalized path out of the freeze.

A functional freeze, while challenging, can ultimately serve as a powerful catalyst for growth.

Recognizing that you’re stuck in toxic productivity rather than meaningful growth, often marks the beginning of a more experimental life – one where success isn’t measured solely by external productivity but by alignment with your deeper aspirations.

The very discomfort that signaled the freeze can become the compass that guides you toward a renewed sense of aligned aliveness.

The post Productive at Work, Paralyzed at Home: What to Do When You’re in a Functional Freeze appeared first on Ness Labs.

I ended up working at Google, and now I’m a neuroscientist and author. And I still don’t really know what I want. I get hypercurious about something until something else grabs my curiosity. For years I thought this was a personal failing, and I was desperately trying to figure out my One True Passion.

Until I realized… None of us really knows what we want, at least not with the certainty we pretend to have. We think we do. We make plans as if we do. But research consistently shows that humans are surprisingly poor predictors of their future desires and happiness.

And, as we’ll see, this might seem bad but it’s actually good.

The Forecasting Fallacy

Psychologists call our ability to predict our future emotional states “affective forecasting” – and we’re surprisingly bad at it. Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert found that we routinely overestimate how happy or unhappy future events will make us feel, and for how long.

We think getting that promotion will bring lasting joy, or that a breakup will devastate us forever. Neither turns out to be true.

We’re also terrible at predicting the things we’ll enjoy in the future. In the Quarterly Journal of Economics, researchers also write that “people exaggerate the degree to which their future tastes will resemble their current tastes.”

What’s fascinating is our ability to acknowledge that our preferences have changed significantly in the past, while simultaneously believing they won’t change much in the future. Researchers call this the end of history illusion.

In reality, the data shows that the 40-year-old you will likely be as different from your current self as you are from your 20-year-old self. Your favorite music, your political views, your career aspirations – all are likely to shift in ways your current self cannot fully imagine.

I know this all sounds pretty negative, but this unpredictability isn’t a bug in our system – it’s the very feature that allows us to grow.

Finding Freedom in Uncertainty

My life changed when I stopped trying to plan my perfect future and started treating every day as an experiment instead. Rather than setting fixed outcomes (“I will become a successful author”), I began forming hypotheses (“I might enjoy writing a newsletter”).

An experimental mindset does something wonderful: it turns failure from something to be feared into valuable data. 

When I decided to go back to university to learn more about the brain, I didn’t know if I would thrive in neuroscience research. I simply had a hypothesis that the work would align better with my curiosity. Some aspects of that hypothesis proved correct; others didn’t.

Rather than seeing this as definite proof I had taken a wrong turn, I treated these discoveries as useful information that helped me refine my next steps.

There’s something liberating about acknowledging that you don’t know what you’ll want in the future. It opens you up to possibilities you might otherwise dismiss. It makes you more attentive to the present moment, where your actual preferences (not your predicted ones) reveal themselves.

The beautiful uncertainty of not knowing what we want isn’t something to overcome – it’s something to embrace. It’s the liminal space where curiosity lives. It’s what keeps us learning and evolving throughout our lives.

So the next time someone asks you where you see yourself in five years, the most honest answer might be: “I don’t know yet – and that’s exactly as it should be.”

The post The Liberating Effect of Uncertainty appeared first on Ness Labs.

We all face new challenges, but each of us tends to navigate these experiences differently, in ways that can reveal fascinating insights about our relationship with uncertainty, change, and growth.

In my book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, I explore how an experimental mindset can transform not just what we achieve, but how we experience the journey itself – and how that journey is different for everyone.

At the heart of personal experimentation are four distinct phases that work together to create meaningful change. They all work together, but every experimentalist tends to have one phase that feels like a more natural starting point.

1. Pact. This is the imagination phase where you choose the hypothesis you want to test. In this phase, you question your goal and embrace the unknown as a playground for personal growth. 

Experimentalists who are more comfortable in that phase tend to excel at seeing possibilities others miss. They often have multiple ideas brewing simultaneously. However, they sometimes struggle with following through if they don’t consciously develop strategies to move from imagination to action.

2. Act. This is the action phase where you actually conduct the experiment and collect data. If you’re more comfortable in this phase, you’ll tend to thrive in hands-on execution and maintaining momentum. You’re basically the person who gets things done.

But this can also mean you might sometimes rush through the planning phase, skip important reflection opportunities that could deepen your learning, or ignore early signs or burnout because you’re too focused on making progress.

3. React. This is the metacognition phase where you analyze results, iterate, and reflect. In this phase, you create growth loops to continuously learn and improve. Those who excel here are great at extracting insights from experiences and using metacognitive tools to navigate uncertainty.

Knowledge workers tend to be quite comfortable with this phase because analytical thinking and reflection are highly valued in their professional settings. However, they might sometimes get caught in analysis paralysis, overthinking things which can delay action.

3. Impact. This is the contribution phase where you use what you’ve learned to contribute to something bigger than yourself. That’s the phase a lot of ambitious people tend to focus on: we want to make our mark and create lasting change.

In contrast, if you approach impact with an experimental mindset, you recognize that the “lone genius” is a myth and that we grow better by sharing our learning journey. You know the value of unlocking social flow, learning in public, and engaging in generative work that benefits your communities in the here and now, versus focusing on the elusive concept of long-term legacy.

Which phase of the experimental cycle resonates most with you? Ask yourself:

• Pact: Do you love researching, imagining possibilities, and forming hypotheses?
• Act: Do you thrive in implementation and hands-on “getting things done” work?
• React: Are you naturally reflective and analytical about your experiences?
• Impact: Do you instinctively look for ways to share your journey to help others?

While it’s normal to have a preferred phase, being able to move fluidly across all four phases is key to becoming a well-rounded experimentalist. By embracing all four phases of the experimental cycle, you can become the lead scientist of your life.

Rather than being constrained by rigid goals or paralyzed by uncertainty, you can develop the flexibility to adapt, learn, and grow through whatever life brings your way. So, what will be your first tiny experiment?

The post What Type of Experimentalist Are You? appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help be more productive and more creative without sacrificing our mental health. This week, we talked to David Tedaldi, CEO of Morgen, the founder of Morgen, an AI-powered app for daily planning.

In this interview, we talked about smart prioritization based on a complete picture of how you spend your time, how to fight task overload and interruptions, how to mindfully manage competing tasks, how to balance focus and flexibility, and much more. Enjoy the read!

Hi David, thanks for agreeing to this interview! Let’s start with the big question: there are countless planners out there. What inspired you to create another one?

You’re right, there are more tools than ever designed to help us make sense of our time. I think there’s a growing realization that our most valuable resource is time and yet, most people I speak with are dissatisfied with how their time is spent.

I see a real opportunity to help people feel more intentional. This isn’t about optimizing every minute or always needing to feel productive. Rather, it’s helping people move from passively going through their days to deliberately choosing how they’ll devote their hours. 

We approach this in two ways – the first is making it easier to align their time with their priorities and the second is to design a schedule that reflects how they work best.  

Part of the prioritization problem lies in just how dreadfully complicated time management has become. Most professionals I speak with manage their time across 5+ apps. They have personal and work calendars, shared family to-do lists, a project management tool, a habit tracker, and a scattering of task lists across their PKMs. 

How can anyone make sense of how to spend their time when they’re forever jumping between so many tools? How do you adjust your work plans when personal and work collide, like unexpectedly bringing Fido to the vet in the middle of the day? How do you create space for passion projects or the things that give you energy? 

We see a massive opportunity to break away from siloed time management. Instead of treating our professional and personal lives as discrete areas, Morgen provides a holistic view of your time. It brings all those scattered tools and calendars together so you have visibility into everything on your plate.

Once you have this picture, it truly unlocks prioritization. It’s easy to spot where your time is over-indexing on things that don’t move the needle and to start protecting time for the things that matter.  

When planning in this unified view, it’s also far easier to start being deliberate about when to work on different types of tasks. We help people create the template for their time, designing days that align their tasks with their energy levels.

It’s truly amazing how transformative this approach to planning can be, and that is how we stand out from the other planners on the market.

How did Morgen come to be, and you made the decision to fully commit and bring Morgen to market? What was that moment like?

Well before we started working on Morgen, Marco, my eventual co-founder, and I first became friends while trying our hand at a software venture right after high school. That venture didn’t go anywhere, but it revealed our shared passion for creating and experimenting… and we never really stopped.

Years later, we found ourselves living in the same apartment, still building projects alongside our 9-to-5 jobs. I was working in R&D for a major US tech company, and Marco was pursuing his PhD, focused on applying AI to scheduling. As part of his research, he developed a calendar app called MineTime to test his models with real users. In many ways, MineTime became the precursor to Morgen.

At the time, though, we didn’t throw ourselves into it completely. We were also exploring some health-tech ideas on the side. Then one day, while on vacation with friends in Sicily, we realized we were still obsessing over how to improve MineTime. We wanted a tool that would give us—and others—the confidence to manage complex workloads without missing a beat. We looked for existing solutions, but when nothing fit the bill, it became clear we had a unique chance to build what people truly needed.

So we did. We shut down the other project, quit our jobs, rebranded MineTime to Morgen, and evolved it far beyond what was once “just” a smart calendar.

How did you find your first users, and how did their feedback help shape and refine Morgen?

We attracted our first few thousand users from desperately under-served niches. We put Morgen on Linux (we were, and still are, the only planner on Linux), integrated with small CalDAVs, and went cross-platform to serve Windows and Android users. 

While most competitors were layering their solutions over Google Calendar or were all in on the Mac ecosystem only, we connected with a base of people hungry for a solution compatible with their setup.

This obviously posed development challenges by introducing the complexity of being multi-platform and integrating with many calendar providers. But the upside was a user base who felt invested in our future and motivated to provide feedback on how they wanted to see the product evolve.

That early culture is still part of our community’s DNA. On our Discord, users are keen to share workflows and tips with others, Morgen Insiders actively test experimental features and early releases, and the level of activity on our public feature requests is continuous. 

How do users typically interact with Morgen and what key features make it a valuable tool for managing their time and productivity?

Most people visually plan their time in Morgen, using their combined calendars as their canvas. Those who find the most value integrate other to-do and project tools with Morgen to schedule time for their tasks directly in their calendars.

Unlike time blocking in one’s Google Calendar, we’ve designed an experience that makes it easy to ensure those tasks taking space in your calendar are indeed the most important ones at that time. The top features that make this so seamless are:

Frames. We recently introduced Frames, a deep layer in the calendar. You can think of this as the template for how you want to spend your time. Each Frame can be devoted to the specific type of work you want to happen in that block–be it deep work, creative pursuits, learning objectives, or even, the inevitable admin work that creeps up. This added dimension guides users to plan their time, but they also direct the AI Planner for when to recommend which types of tasks. 

Powerful task filters. One of the biggest challenges we hear is deciding what to prioritize when everything feels important. Even if you have tasks from multiple Notion databases, Todoist lists, and ClickUp projects, you can filter across sources to find the most important task now. 

AI Planner. We’ve taken a different approach to AI planning. Users told us they want assistance scheduling their day while staying in control of their calendars. Morgen will recommend which tasks to schedule and alert you when the plan needs to be adjusted, but ultimately, you decide which recommendations to take. 

Distinct due vs do dates. Due dates are visually distinctive from scheduled tasks in Morgen. Morgen will alert you when due dates are at risk, making it easy to schedule time in your calendar to do the work in advance. 

Calendar management. What makes this all work, is that you can manage all your calendars from Morgen. Create events, send scheduling links, RSVP, etc. so you don’t need to keep jumping between apps.

We’ve also built micro-services that enrich planning, such as auto-scheduling travel and buffer time, syncing events across calendars, and booking pages that update in real-time. But it all starts with you and the things you have and want to do.

You’ve also introduced some smart automation and AI features. Can you share more about that?

Yes, this has been an exciting part of Morgen’s evolution. We’ve long wanted to offer an AI Planner, but we wanted it to enhance rather than derail that earlier mission I mentioned: helping people be intentional about how they spend their time. Talking with Morgen users, we heard a lot of excitement about having help planning their days, while also a fear of leaving their plans entirely in the hands of AI.

We committed to three key principles when we designed the AI Planner: Users retain control of their schedule; recommendations are highly personalized; it creates achievable plans. This combination helped us shape an entirely different AI planning experience. 

First, we acknowledge no algorithm that knows how you should spend your time better than you do. That’s why we approached the AI Planner to be an assistant, not an autopilot.  It does all the “auto-magic” exactly as you’d expect, but instead of presumptuously scheduling tasks in your calendar it provides recommendations.

You preview the recommended daily plans, adjust as needed, and then confirm when you’re ready for it to be scheduled. Second, the planner goes beyond simply assessing your capacity and then recommending tasks that fit. It takes guidance from Frames, prioritizing the right types of tasks during each Frame. 

For example, I have a simple structure Framed for my workdays: my mornings are devoted to deep work when I want to tackle energy-intensive tasks, whereas my afternoons are devoted to thematically grouped tasks. Monday and Wednesday afternoons are for product and onboarding tasks, Tuesdays for partners, and Thursdays and Fridays are for support and admin. This is templated in Frames so the planner schedules those categories of tasks at the appropriate time, working around my meetings.

The cool part is you can specify what you want to do using all the data you import into Morgen. For instance, I assign energy levels to tasks in my Notion projects so Frames can filter between a hard task that requires focused energy versus an easy task that can be squeezed between meetings. I also reserve Monday afternoons for product onboarding because I get a lot of energy talking to new Morgen users. It helps me start the week strong with something I love.

You can also create Frames in your personal calendars for your life to-dos, creative projects, and more, making this a personal solution that goes beyond 9-5.

Finally, we want to help people create achievable plans. This isn’t about squeezing tasks in wherever they fit. Each person can set the frequency of breaks, choose to have the AI Planner round up time estimates to combat the common tendency to underestimate how long a task with take, and define when a task should be broken into multiple work sessions. We believe achievable plans are far more important than cramming everything in.  

One thing that stands out about Morgen is the attention to detail you’ve put into its features. What are some examples of small but powerful features that you’re particularly proud of?

Thanks for noticing. Our team is deeply committed to creating a great experience. We want to provide an intuitive and fast experience. That’s why we built a keyboard-first experience on desktop, where virtually any operation has a shortcut. It’s as easy to create a scheduling link as it is to create a meeting. There are also little touches like a button to quickly join the next meeting, or the ability to set recurrence rules using plain English.

On the other hand, we’re also committed to giving users tools to efficiently navigate and manage the massive volume of information they can import into Morgen. Things like merging events from multiple calendars to make it less cluttered, having customizable shortcuts to jump between calendars, and custom task filtering are the unsung heroes that make holistic planning in Morgen seamless. Oh, and the confetti. But I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself.

What kind of people use Morgen, and how do they typically use it?

I was recently on a call with Mike, a CEO and long-time Morgen user, and I’ll borrow his words for this one. He said, “Morgen is for anyone fighting task overload and unexpected interruptions.” 

I love this articulation. It perfectly captures a reality that so many people feel, whether they’re software developers, consultants, founders, marketers, freelancers, academics, etc. We see this reflected in the diversity of roles in the Morgen community.

The common thread is people who operate daily with the tension between devoting time to important meetings and time with their clients or team, alongside the need for uninterrupted focused time to work on big challenging tasks.

We also hear from a high proportion of our users who tell us they have ADHD and rely on planning in Morgen to make sense of the task overload. We understand that Morgen’s minimalistic experience, free of unnecessary frills, is important to maintain.

Finally, since launching the AI Planner, we have also seen an increase in the CEOs, VCs, and team leads, who are juggling a large task list with frequent changes to their schedule and last-minute meetings. The AI Planner helps on both fronts: it prioritizes tasks around meetings and adapts plans swiftly whenever disruptions occur.

What about you? How do you use Morgen?

I depend on the AI Planner daily for my planning (and re-planning, when things come up). Most of my work is mapped in Linear where we manage our projects as a team. I use the AI Planner to schedule and prioritize these tasks. I have my Frames set up to ensure I balance my energy and time across product work, partnerships, investors, and supporting the team.

But then there’s a whole range of tasks that I refer to as my “forbidden tasks.” These aren’t part of shared projects. These are the most dangerous tasks because the list sits entirely with me, and in the past, they tended to creep out of control.

I was once in a bar after a long day of work lamenting about these forbidden tasks to a friend, Sarah, who is also a successful founder and investor in the Bay Area. She responded directly with, “Get used to it, if the business goes well, at the end of every day your task list will be longer than it was in the morning.”

My fix is to ditch the list of forbidden tasks and instead schedule them directly in my calendar. This puts a hard limit on these tasks – my time. If it doesn’t fit, either something else needs to be reprioritized or it’s not that important.

I’m also a heavy user of Morgen’s open invites for external meetings. An open invite is essentially a scheduling link dedicated to a specific event, with a specific person, offering only a few alternative time slots. I find it far more professional (and caring) than a generic Calendly link. I think these details matter when you want to build a relationship.

And finally… What’s next for Morgen?

We want everyone to work, plan, and spend their time as if they had an executive assistant adapting and reacting to each person’s style and shifting priorities. There’s so much more to unlock.

We’re already working on the next generation of our AI Assistance. I can’t share much just yet, but imagine the perfect blend of an executive assistant and a productivity coach. We’re onboarding the first alpha testers, so if you’re interested, please reach out.

Thank you so much for your time, David! Where can people learn more about Morgen?

You can learn more at our website, follow on Youtube, LinkedIn and X, and join our community on Discord.

The post Master Your Time and Productivity with David Tedaldi, CEO of Morgen appeared first on Ness Labs.

There was only one problem: the Japanese university they had a partnership with was one of the most selective in the country. I remember thinking: “There’s no way I’ll get accepted.”

I told my mom about my doubts.

“It’s not your decision to make,” she said.

And, as often, she was right. We constantly limit our options by deciding for others. All I had to do was apply, and it then became the university’s job to accept my application or not.

You’ve probably seen this pattern in yourself and others. It’s far easier not to fail when you haven’t tried. It’s far easier to not be wrong when you’re not putting yourself out there. But when we avoid trying because of fear, we also avoid growth.

We all want to be loved

Fear of failure starts in early childhood. We are social animals and feel the need to be accepted by others, which begins with the acceptance and love of our parents.

In a study looking at the relationship between young athletes and their parents, researchers found a correlation between the parents’ high expectations for achievement and the children’s fear of failure. The more the parents showed a negative reaction to what they perceived as a failure from their kid, the more the kid would fear the consequences of “failing.”

In some people, this can turn into atychiphobia, an irrational and paralyzing fear of failure, often accompanied by an intense feeling of panic or anxiety, and physical symptoms such as difficulty breathing, an unusually fast heart rate, and sweating.

For most people, though, fear of failure manifests itself in a much more subtle way, mainly self-doubt that prevents us from exploring uncertain paths:

• We put off doing things because we’re unsure how they will turn out.
• We avoid situations where we may have to try something new in front of other people.
• We avoid doing things we know will improve our lives because we don’t have all the necessary skills.
• We give ourselves the illusion of growth by reading, researching, watching videos… Anything but doing the thing and risking being judged by others.

But the good news is that nobody is hoping for you to fail. Most people you know would be happy to see you succeed, and the ones who don’t know you don’t care. So how do we shift our perception and turn our fears into experiments?

Increments of curiosity

When you start reading a novel, you rarely expect to finish it in one go. Instead, you will probably read a few chapters, then a few more, until you’re done with the book.

Yet when it comes to personal growth, we often abandon this incremental approach. We design big, hairy, audacious goals then freeze because they feel unreachable.

But just like in science, we can reshape our perception of what’s possible by breaking our journey down into smaller experiments.

“Smaller” doesn’t mean something where you’re certain of succeeding, but rather something small enough that there’s no excuse not to try.

Let’s say you have a fear of public speaking and tell yourself that, in any case, nobody has ever invited you to speak at a conference. Instead of seeing this as an immovable obstacle, turn this big fear into a tiny experiment. A low-stakes pact could be applying to five local meetups to give a talk over the next five days. While speaking in public may sound terrifying, filling out an online form is manageable.

Similarly, if you fear being judged for the quality of your writing, writing a book is a daunting task that is easy to hide behind (“I’d love to write a book, but I don’t have the time”). But writing a series of blog posts? That’s just a tiny experiment.

Fail like a scientist

If you see life as a series of experiments – where the only purpose is to explore, learn, and grow – failure stops being something to fear and instead becomes a necessary part of discovery. In the words of Seth Godin: “The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.”

Scientists often repeat experiments thousands of times to get a conclusive answer. And more often than not, the answer they get is that their initial hypothesis was wrong. Not performing the experiment would have allowed them to stay in a cozy limbo of being not wrong and they’d never learn anything.

Approaching failure like a scientist is powerful because it reframes the outcome: no matter what happens, you gain new information. The real failure isn’t making mistakes – it’s refusing to run the experiment in the first place.

By making decisions that will let you learn something new, you are guaranteed to be successful – where success is learning, evolving, and growing as a human being. Failing becomes a way to cultivate aliveness.

Another way to approach your fears is to think like a child. Children tend to experiment just for the sake of it: What will happen if I press this button? How does it feel to touch this thing?

Similarly, reconnecting with your inner child is a great way to overcome your fears as an adult. For example: What will happen if I publish this post? How does it feel to speak my mind?

Instead of imagining all the ways you may fail, turn your doubts into questions. Maybe nothing good will happen… but a child would certaintly not take the answer for granted.

Start with something small, then move on to another iteration—a bigger growth loop. With time, your mind will become increasingly comfortable with trying new things and constantly expanding your horizons.

Practically, here is how you can start applying this approach of deliberate experimentation right now:

1. Pick something you’ve been putting off because of fear. Is it public speaking? Starting a blog? Producing a podcast? Launching your first product? Write it down.
2. Define one tiny experiment you can design to explore this fear. It should be actionable – something simple enough that you can just do it in a few days at most.
3. Do it! Don’t plan anything. Don’t research the best way to go about it. Don’t announce it on Twitter. Just do it.
4. Reflect on what happened. Any negative reactions? What about your emotions? What did you learn? Write all of these thoughts down. It’s a great way to practice metacognition (Plus Minus Next works great for this).
5. Rinse and repeat. Keep defining incremental steps in the form of tiny experiments that fall out of your comfort zone but are not scary to the point of being paralyzing. Again, avoid overthinking it beforehand. Just do it, and reflect only after you have performed the experiment.

You may feel some anxiety or discomfort along the way, but addressing your fears and trying new things you care about is the best way to avoid another feeling that’s much harder to manage: regret.

The post Turning Big Fears into Tiny Experiments appeared first on Ness Labs.

Curiosity works the same way. We all know the feeling: you Google something random, one link leads to another, and suddenly, an hour has disappeared.

Sometimes, these rabbit holes lead to fascinating insights. Other times, you resurface from a click spiral with nothing useful, wondering why you just spent twenty minutes reading about celebrity feuds.

Just like with food, curiosity can be either nourishing or junk. And just like with food, we can design our environment to encourage the right kind of curiosity.

What I call “curiosity snacks” are small, intentional nudges that guide our impulsive curiosity toward learning, creativity, and meaningful discovery rather than mindless scrolling.

The built-in urge to know

Curiosity and impulsivity might seem like opposites. One is celebrated as a driver of knowledge and innovation; the other is blamed for distraction and poor decisions.

But neuroscience tells a different story: these two forces are deeply connected. Studies show that curiosity and impulsivity share common neural mechanisms, particularly in the brain’s reward system.

When we feel an urge to know something, the same circuits that respond to food, money, and other rewards light up. This is why curiosity can feel irresistible: we’re wired to seek information just as we seek pleasure.

The problem is that not all information is equally valuable. Our curiosity can be hijacked by junk content such as viral social media posts, sensationalist headlines, and endless video recommendations on your feed.

But once you understand that your curiosity can operate like a craving, you can use this knowledge to reshape what you consume. Just like a well-stocked kitchen makes it easier to eat well, designing your environment to include healthy curiosity snacks can help you develop better intellectual habits.

From click spiral to curiosity snack

So, we know that curiosity can be impulsive. But the smartest strategy isn’t to fight it – instead, it’s to channel it. Small tweaks to your environment can make a huge difference in what you end up consuming.

Here are a five simple strategies to redirect your impulse to know:

1. Curate your digital landscape. Swap out mindless apps on your home screen for ones that feed your curiosity – apps like Deepstash, Kindle, Pocket, language learning tools, or even Wikipedia. The fewer taps between you and those curiosity snacks, the better.
2. Make books more visible. The easier it is to pick up a book, the more likely you’ll do it. Keep a few good ones on your desk, coffee table, and nightstand as part of your antilibrary. If you tend to scroll on the toilet (sorry, had to mention it!), consider replacing having magazines there and leaving your phone out of the bathroom.
3. Use browser extensions to guide your curiosity. Extensions like Unhook (which removes YouTube recommendations) or Toby (which organizes saved tabs) can help prevent you from falling into low-value loops – basically not finishing the bag of chips.
4. Follow mind-nourishing accounts. Who you follow online shapes what you consume. Seek out creators and fellow curious minds who tend to share interesting ideas. If you fall into a rabbit hole, at least it will be a good one.
5. Set up curiosity triggers. Subscribing to newsletters that feed your curiosity or using curiosity-driven journaling prompts in the morning can help reinforce productive habits over time.

These tweaks work for the same reason healthy eating strategies do: they don’t rely on willpower. They make the default option the better one.

However, keep in mind that what works for someone else may not work for you. The key is to experiment: try different curiosity snacks, observe what works and what doesn’t, and adjust accordingly.

It’s hard to control our impulses, but we can gently redirect them. By designing our environment to encourage learning and exploration, you can turn your curiosity into an asset rather than a distraction. So, what curiosity snack are you in the mood for today?

The post Curiosity Snacks: How to Redirect Your Impulse to Know appeared first on Ness Labs.

Fortunately, the reality of personal science isn’t so dramatic. It can be as simple as a few careful observations about our own lives: noticing how different foods affect our energy, tracking what helps us sleep better, or documenting changes in our mood.

This kind of self-study has been around for as long as humans have been curious about how their minds and bodies work. Let’s explore the origins of personal science and how you can practice it in your daily life and work.

Personal science through the ages

Throughout history, humans have studied themselves to understand how their bodies and minds work. Ancient healers documented the effects of different remedies. Philosophers kept detailed records of their thoughts.

These weren’t just random observations – they were early examples of self-experimentation. One of the most remarkable examples comes from the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. In the 1880s, he conducted extensive memory experiments on himself, methodically testing how quickly he learned and forgot nonsense syllables. His findings about memory and learning are still relevant today.

The term “personal science” itself is relatively new. Psychologist Seth Roberts defined it as “using science to solve your own problems.” When the concept first appeared in academic literature in 2016, researchers described it as “an interest in collecting data about their own bodies or lives in order to obtain insights into their everyday health or performance.”

Technology has transformed how we study ourselves. What started as the quantified self movement – a small group of enthusiasts using technology to track their activities – has become mainstream. Today, millions of people use smartphone apps and wearables to monitor everything from steps to sleep patterns.

But while these tools are useful, they’re just one part of a much bigger picture. Personal science isn’t just about collecting numbers – it’s about understanding our individual experiences and making meaningful improvements to our lives.

Beyond the quantified self

The rise of fitness trackers and health apps has made personal data collection easier than ever. But this focus on numbers and metrics can obscure that not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything we measure matters.

As sociologist Jenny Davis notes, “self-quantifiers don’t just use data to learn about themselves, but rather, use data to construct the stories that they tell themselves about themselves.”

That’s why the qualified self is as important as the quantified self. Whether it’s an athlete documenting how different warm-up routines affect their performance, or a salesperson tracking their energy levels throughout the day… Some of the most valuable self-knowledge comes from qualitative observation.

And long before digital tracking became popular, people were documenting their lives in rich, qualitative ways. They would record detailed observations about their daily experiences, relationships, and inner lives.

Personal science done well combines both measurement and meaning-making: when we track aspects of our lives across several dimensions, we can make sense of how we live. Our personal records become tools for self-discovery.

This is what sociologist Deborah Lupton calls the “reflexive monitoring self” – a practice where we continuously observe and reflect on our experiences, creating a feedback loop to develop a deeper awareness of our patterns, whether it’s habits or responses to different situations. This reflexive process helps us make more informed decisions about our work, health, and relationships.

Tools for personal science

The beauty of personal science is that you don’t need expensive equipment or complex protocols to get started. Here are some effective tools that anyone can use:

• Journaling. The simplest and most versatile tool for personal science is a notebook. Whether paper or digital, regular journaling helps you spot patterns and connections you might otherwise miss. The key is consistency – even brief daily notes can build into valuable insights over time.
• Digital tracking. Apps and wearables have made data collection almost effortless. They’re particularly useful for things that are hard to track manually, like sleep patterns or heart rate variability. But remember to focus on metrics that actually matter to you rather than tracking everything just because you can.
• Tiny experiments. You could try a new morning routine for two weeks while keeping other variables constant, or test different work environments to find what helps you focus best. Document both what you did and how it affected you throughout the experiment.
• Weekly review. Set aside time each week to reflect on your observations and experiments. Ask yourself: What worked and what didn’t? What patterns am I noticing? What experiments should I try next?
• Curiosity circle. Meet regularly with other experimentalists to discuss the ways you are capturing your observations, reviewing the data, and testing different assumptions in your personal and professional lives. Learn from each other to improve your approach to personal science.

Personal science isn’t about creating monsters or magical potions. It’s about systematic curiosity and the desire to understand ourselves better. We’re all scientists of our own lives, conducting the most important experiments of all: discovering what helps us live better, healthier, and more fulfilling lives.

The post Personal Science: Self-Experimentation from Quantified Self to Qualified Self appeared first on Ness Labs.

But today’s world is different. When the pace of change keeps accelerating and we need to adapt to constant technological, social, and economic shifts, our instinct for certainty can hold us back.

While our ancestors thrived on seeking certainty, our survival now depends on embracing uncertainty rather than avoiding it. So how can we befriend and even leverage uncertainty?

The Neuroscience of Uncertainty

When you’re uncertain, your brain activates two key regions. Your amygdala, the emotional center, treats uncertainty as a potential threat. It releases stress hormones and prepares your body for danger. At the same time, your prefrontal cortex tries to analyze the situation and plan a logical response.

These regions don’t work in isolation. The thalamus connects them, creating a dialogue between your emotional and rational responses. This teaches us something important: handling uncertainty isn’t about suppressing emotions in favor of logic. Instead, it’s about coordinating both parts of yourself to respond more effectively.

Research suggests that this integration of thinking and feeling leads to better decisions under uncertainty. When we work with our brain’s natural responses rather than fighting them, we navigate uncertain situations more successfully.

From Anxiety to Curiosity

Unfortunately, many of us fall into predictable traps when facing uncertainty. We fall prey to analysis paralysis, trying to gather every piece of information before acting, or binary thinking where we see only best/worst outcomes rather than the spectrum of possibilities.

We might experience emotional avoidance, attempting to think our way out of uncertainty without processing our emotions first. Often, we try to handle everything alone instead of leveraging social support.

Instead of trying to control everything and go back to an illusory place of certainty, the key to thriving in uncertainty is developing an experimental mindset. Instead of seeing uncertain situations as problems to solve, we can view them as opportunities to run experiments.

This mental shift can have profound effects on your brain:

• It reduces amygdala activation because experiments can’t fail – they just produce data
• It engages your prefrontal cortex in curious exploration rather than threat assessment
• It creates new neural pathways that make uncertainty feel more manageable over time

So next time you face uncertainty, don’t ask “What’s the right answer?” Instead, try approaching the question like a scientist, asking: What could I learn from this experience?

This simple reframe – the willingness to step into the unknown – will help transform anxiety into curiosity. That’s the power of an experimental mindset.

The Three Pillars of Navigating Uncertainty

While we can’t eliminate uncertainty, we can develop better ways to handle it. Here are three evidence-based strategies that work with your brain’s natural responses to uncertainty. You can think of them as three interlocking “gears” working together.

1. The cognitive gear. The Plus Minus Next method is a simple metacognitive tool to help you observe your thoughts without getting stuck in them. By examining what’s working (Plus), what isn’t (Minus), and what to try next (Next), you create an actionable framework for processing uncertain situations.
2. The emotional gear. Studies show that naming your emotions helps you better manage them. When you label your feelings about uncertainty – whether it’s worry or confusion – you activate your prefrontal cortex and reduce amygdala activation. This simple practice turns overwhelm into a more manageable experience.
3. The relational gear. Connect with others facing similar uncertainties. Learn in public by sharing your experiences and decisions with other people. This will give you new perspectives by helping you tap into collective wisdom.

Uncertainty creates space for growth and discovery. Through metacognition, emotional regulation, and social connection, understanding and adapting your brain’s automatic response will help you work with uncertainty rather than against it.

Your brain might prefer certainty, but it’s fully equipped to handle the unknown. The real question isn’t whether you can handle uncertainty – it’s what you’ll discover when you approach it with an experimental mindset.

The post Your Brain on Uncertainty appeared first on Ness Labs.

This tradition of walking and wondering together became so successful that it continued for centuries, influencing how knowledge was shared throughout the ancient world.

Yet today we rarely create space for such collective curiosity. While we have unprecedented access to information, we’re often too busy, too distracted, or too preoccupied with immediate results to engage in shared exploration. Plus, our education and workplaces usually prioritize individual achievement over collaborative discovery.

This is unfortunate, as exploring together can lead to remarkable outcomes. When you share your questions with others, you can create new possibilities that none of you could have imagined alone. Let’s explore why this happens and how you can make it work for you.

Beyond Individual Genius

History often paints a romantic picture of the lone genius – the solitary inventor in their workshop, the isolated scientist in their lab, the writer alone in their garret… This narrative is compelling but incomplete: individual brilliance is rarely enough for breakthrough innovation.

The Wright brothers didn’t invent flight in isolation; they extensively corresponded with fellow aviation enthusiasts. The Human Genome Project, which successfully mapped our genetic code, wasn’t the work of a single brilliant mind, but rather a massive collaborative effort where thousands of scientists shared their questions, challenges, and discoveries.

Collective curiosity is the practice of exploring questions and discovering answers together, where we build on each other’s insights and create an environment that encourages open inquiry and shared learning.

When you practice collective curiosity, you will:

• Learn faster. Sharing your learning journey with others creates natural opportunities for feedback and new perspectives. You also gain access to different experiences and resources, helping you grow more quickly than you could alone.
• Reduce confirmation bias. Teams that encourage respectful questioning consistently make better decisions than those that don’t. That’s because collective curiosity naturally encourages us to question each other’s assumptions, which helps everyone identify flaws in their thinking and find better solutions.
• Encourage others to explore. Research shows that seeing others engage with interesting questions makes us more curious ourselves. This creates a positive cycle where one person’s questions inspire others to join the exploration.
• Builds sustainable knowledge. Organizations that encourage people to learn together generate knowledge that stays even when individuals leave. For instance, the Mayo Clinic has maintained its culture of medical innovation for over a century because its doctors and researchers consistently share their questions and insights with each other.

Many resist collective curiosity for understandable reasons. In competitive workplaces, admitting uncertainty can feel risky. Time pressures push us toward quick solutions. You might worry that asking questions might make you seem indecisive. Yet, those who embrace a shared, generative state of unknowing often find it leads to better outcomes.

How to Wonder Together

Better ideas, stronger relationships, more enjoyable work… While the benefits of collective curiosity are clear, creating an environment where people feel comfortable exploring together takes some thought and effort.

But the payoff is worth the investment. Fortunately, there are practical ways to get started. Here are five ways you can start unlocking these benefits:

1. Mapping the unknown. Many breakthroughs start when someone admits “I don’t understand why…” Sit down with your colleagues and explicitly write down what you don’t know or understand about a topic. This turns knowledge gaps into shared opportunities for discovery. 

2. Multilevel metacognition. Question your assumptions together as a form of self-anthropology. Have your team trace back their assumptions to their origins. Start with any current practice and ask “Why do we do this?” For each answer, ask “Why do we believe that?” This metacognitive practice helps uncover hidden assumptions that might be limiting better solutions.

3. Wonder walks. Take walks with colleagues where you share what you’re working on and what questions you’re wrestling with. You can try this one-on-one or in small groups. The informal setting and movement often lead to more open conversations and unexpected connections.

4. Tiny experiments. Try a new meeting format for a week or test a different approach with three customers. Keep experiments small enough that failure feels safe – this encourages bolder questions and sometimes the most interesting discoveries come from experiments that don’t work as planned.

5. Learning in public. Start a newsletter about what you’re learning or host “Curiosity Hour” sessions where people share their work in progress. When we openly share our uncertainties, it creates psychological safety for others to do the same. It also creates opportunities for unexpected paths as others can spot patterns you might have missed.

The greatest breakthroughs in human history haven’t come from lone geniuses but from communities of curious minds, each building upon each other’s questions and insights.

When we practice collective curiosity, every conversation becomes a chance to learn something new. So let me ask: which questions will you and your team explore today, together?

The post The Multiplier Effect of Collective Curiosity appeared first on Ness Labs.

As a child, I believed in magic. During family holidays in Brittany, I would scan the landscape for korrigans, the local gnome-like spirits. I collected stones and was convinced our neighbor might be a witch. I lost myself in fantasy books, particularly those by Bernard Werber. His novel The Thanatonauts about scientists traveling to the afterlife inspired countless hours of failed astral projection.

Years passed, and my perspective shifted. Now, as a neuroscientist with a tech background, I always look for empirical evidence before accepting any claims. This creates an interesting tension whenever I discover some practices that help me personally but lack robust research.

Looking at my friends, I also notice fascinating patterns in how they approach “woo woo” beliefs. Some are deeply scientific about certain phenomena while accepting paranormal explanations for others without question. I know clinicians who believe in reincarnation, highly analytical entrepreneurs who pull a tarot card each morning, and engineers who consult astrology but reject the existence of spirits.

My own relationship to woo stuff is complex, and I wanted to create a simple framework to discuss these differences with friends. I call it the Woo Spectrum. I hope it will resonate with those of you who, like me, feel both spiritually and scientifically minded, and who want to have more generative conversations.

The Four Levels of the Woo Spectrum

Conversations can become binary and polarized when we lack language to describe our beliefs. The Woo Spectrum helps us understand and describe our relationship with debated practices and philosophies. It consists of four levels:

1) Woo Critical (rejecting). You view certain alternative practices as specious, a fun thing to do at best, but misleading and potentially dangerous at worst. You actively challenge claims about these and seek to expose what you consider pseudoscience, or avoid these topics entirely as not worth engaging with.

2) Woo Cautious (observing). You’re skeptical but remain open to evidence. You’re happy to engage in friendly conversations about these practices (although you might not be the one initiating them), but you’re not ready to try them personally.

3) Woo Curious (experimenting). You actively explore these practices while maintaining critical thinking. You’re finding some benefits but not fully convinced, or you think there might be some scientific explanation to strange phenomena.

4) Woo Convinced (practicing). You’ve integrated these practices into your life based on personal experience and evidence you find compelling. You might regularly practice or even guide others through these modalities.

This is not about factually categorizing the practices themselves or identifying yourself with an overall stance akin to a persona. Instead, the Woo Spectrum offers a frame to explore how you relate to specific practices at this point in time.

Your stance can vary across different practices and evolve based on new evidence and experiences. You might even find yourself on overlapping levels when it comes to some practices.

As an example, I tend to be critical of crystal healing, astrology, and feng shui – practices that to me have no basis in reality. My friends know I might get bored fairly quickly if these become the main topic of conversation.

I remain cautious about modalities such as acupuncture and hypnosis. While I don’t have much experience with these and am not familiar with the research, I know many people who have found them helpful, such as friends who quit smoking. These results are tangible enough that it gives me pause.

Based on both personal experience and scientific evidence, I’m convinced about practices that might be considered “woo” such as plant medicine, breathwork, meditation, and somatic movement. I find myself aligned with debated philosophical ideas such as panpsychism, which to me offers the most parsimonious explanation for consciousness.

My stance has evolved in other areas. I’ve become curious about tarot and I-Ching, viewing them as tools for self-reflection rather than divination. Sound healing intrigues me not for mystical reasons, but for its potential effects on the nervous system.

I’m also cautious-curious about manifestation from a psychological perspective – such as how visualization and self-belief might influence behavior and thus outcomes, rather than any supernatural mechanism. So I’m happy to let friends say they’re manifesting something without having to start a debate.

While we might often progress through these four levels of woo sequentially, that’s not always necessarily the case. Certain profound experiences can trigger sudden shifts – in my case it was working with psychedelics, while others have reported similar abrupt transitions after NDEs or profound meditation experiences.

We might also revert back to a previous level. For instance, new scientific research might move someone from convinced to cautious about certain practices. Rather than sequential fixed steps, these levels should be seen as a snapshot of your current beliefs.

Practical Uses of the Woo Spectrum

The Woo Spectrum offers a simple framework for exploring your relationship with alternative practices and having more nuanced conversations about them.

First, spend a few minutes filling in the map (make a copy), placing practices on a spectrum depending on how critical to convinced you are about them. Then, here’s how you can use this map:

• Self-reflection: Map out where you stand with different practices. Notice what you tend to accept or reject, and why. Track how your views evolve over time. This can reveal blind spots in your thinking and areas where you might benefit from more openness or skepticism.

• Communication: Understanding our position on the spectrum can provide language to express where we stand and why, making it easier to discuss alternative practices with others who might see things differently. Instead of binary debates about whether something works or not, we can have nuanced conversations integrating varying levels of evidence and diverse experiences that might shape and reshape our views.

• Personal development: Use the framework as a guide to explore unfamiliar practices. This might mean starting with scientific literature or trying a practice at least once. You might then choose to integrate it into your life or decide it’s not for you after actively exploring its potential benefits. The idea isn’t to accept or reject wholesale but to make intentional choices based on what you know and don’t know (yet).

We all navigate the strange territory between science and spirituality in our own way. The Woo Spectrum offers a map for this journey – not to judge where others stand, but to better understand your own path and have richer conversations along the way.

If you’re curious about these topics, here are some online communities you might want to join: (1) The Leading Edge created by Tom Morgan, who gives a “woo rating” to concepts he explores; (2) InterIntellect by Anna Gát with salons about a wide range of topics; (3) and of course the Ness Labs community for curious minds.

The post Where Are You on the Woo Spectrum? appeared first on Ness Labs.

New technologies, new ways of working, new modes of communication… Each new year is a reminder that the world is changing faster than ever. And it can feel like it’s impossible to keep up.

Fortunately, curiosity can help us keep up. When we experiment and stay open to uncertainty, we’re better equipped to handle whatever comes our way. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, we can see these changes as interesting challenges to explore.

What would your life look like if curiosity was your default mode of thinking? What kind of personal and professional growth could you unlock if any doubt became an opportunity for self-discovery? Let’s explore how you can design a year of curiosity.

The Art and Science of Curiosity

Recent research shows that curiosity does more than help us learn – it makes us better at solving problems, connecting with others, and adapting to change. It suggests that nurturing your curiosity might be one of the most effective investments you can make in yourself.

When we encounter something new and interesting, our brains release dopamine – the same neurotransmitter associated with reward and pleasure. This creates a simple pattern: the more we learn, the more we want to learn.

This drive to explore and understand isn’t just nice to have – it’s essential to who we are as humans. Every major breakthrough, from early tools to modern technology, started with someone asking “What if?” or “How does this work?”

In the same way, this experimental mindset – always asking questions, trying new approaches, and learning from the outcomes, even if they’re unexpected – can become your compass in navigating our ever-changing world.

Many of us make less space for curiosity as we get older. We get busy, fall into routines, or worry about looking like we don’t know enough. The good news is: curiosity is a skill we can rebuild at any age.

There’s no single “right” way to be curious. Learning practical skills like coding or cooking, diving into topics like history or science, joining groups of people who share your interests… These are all great ways to inject more curiosity into your life.

The key is asking questions and trying things out. Instead of thinking “I should already know this” when you don’t understand something, it’s about seeing doubt as an interesting puzzle to solve. And there are simple ways you can nurture this mindset all year round.

Designing a Year of Curiosity

Designing a year of curiosity means creating small, manageable habits that keep curiosity alive in your everyday routines. This way, you can ensure that curiosity becomes a natural part of your life instead of an afterthought.

• Monthly: Design one tiny experiment at the beginning of each month This could be as simple as exploring a topic you know nothing about, trying a new hobby, or doing something that pushes you out of your comfort zone. The goal isn’t mastery – it’s discovery. Think of it as giving yourself permission to follow a question for a few weeks and see where it leads.

• Weekly: Every week, take 10 to 15 minutes to conduct a weekly review. What went well this week? What didn’t go as planned? What will you focus on next week? This could mean doubling down on what worked or tweaking something that didn’t. Week after week, these moments of reflection will help you build momentum even if you don’t have a clear destination.

• Daily: Create at least one moment of curiosity in your day, no matter how small. Experiment with a new recipe or tool, have one meaningful conversation, try a journaling prompt, or take a different route to work. Even one minute of curiosity a day can add up to a much richer life.

Designing a year of curiosity doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. It’s about making small, intentional choices to incorporate curiosity into your monthly, weekly, and daily routines so you can make space for growth and discovery – no matter how busy life might get.

At the end of the year, you want to be able to look back, not in awe of everything you accomplished, but in awe of how much you’ve learned and changed.

Equipped for Curiosity

A bit of scaffolding can help to make curiosity a year-long habit. You need more than motivation – you need a support system that works for you. Here are some practical ways to help make curiosity a regular part of your life this year:

1. Tools. Equip yourself with tools that facilitate curiosity. Note-taking apps like Notion, Obsidian, or Roam can help you connect and organize your ideas. Your calendar can also help prioritize curiosity by timeshielding “curiosity hours” for reading and research.
2. Templates. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Try different templates for self-reflection, creativity, and productivity. Feel free to mix and match from templates others have created to build your ideal system.
3. Teachers. Whether they’re authors, podcast hosts, or course instructors, great teachers can fuel your curiosity throughout the year. Take online courses. Join learning communities. Find books and podcasts that talk about topics you’re interested in.

And consider becoming a teacher yourself! Sharing what you’ve learned is one of the best ways to deepen your knowledge. Whether you start a blog, a newsletter, or just share your thoughts with friends, learning in public will encourage you to think more critically and creatively about topics you’re curious about.

Curiosity is a skill we can all practice. Whether you’re asking more questions, exploring new topics, or stepping outside your comfort zone, tiny experiments can add up to big changes. So, what will you discover this year? There’s only one way to find out – start exploring!

Pre-order your copy of Tiny Experiments before January 7, 2025 to receive the Year of Curiosity worksheet with 52 curiosity prompts, 12 monthly themes, and fillable weekly review templates.

The post A Year of Curiosity appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us think better and live happier. Clint Jarvis is the founder of Roots, a mobile app designed to set boundaries with your phone and make time for the things you love.

In this interview, we talked about how to find balance in the digital world, how to build an intentional relationship with technology, how gamification can help us stick with our intentions, and much more. Enjoy the read!

Hi Clint, thanks for agreeing to this interview! You’re on a mission to help us live a balanced life in a digital world. What does that mean exactly?

We live in a very digital world where we are more “connected” than ever before. This has some amazing benefits, but it also comes with some big downsides. The 2024 Oxford Word of the Year was “Brain Rot”. I think this is a strong signal of how people feel about living in our hyper-connected world. 

For us, finding balance is about intentionally building a healthier relationship with our digital devices and setting clear boundaries. This applies to all technology, but I think phone usage is the most acute and addressable problem. Studies show that over 50% of us are addicted to our phones, and I suspect the real number is higher.   

The average person spends over 6 hours per day consuming content, and checks their phone around 150 times… that’s every 6 minutes. When you add it all up, we touch, tap, or scroll on our phones 2,617 times per day. 

For most of us, this was not a conscious choice. We just woke up one day and realized that our phones were stealing our time, attention, and energy. And it has a major impact on our mental and physical health. Excessive phone usage leads to an increase in anxiety and depression, neck pain, and sleep disturbances… shorter attention spans, less time outside, less time with loved ones… the list goes on and on. You’ve probably seen the infamous chart that shows how mental health problems spiked the year of the first iPhone launch. 

So, we have found ourselves in a position where things have gotten pretty out of balance when it comes to our relationship with technology.

But this is not about demonizing technology, right?

That’s a great point. We love technology. When used intentionally, it really can make our lives better. And, it’s not going anywhere. We are not suggesting that you get rid of your phone, or avoid technology completely. 

But, if we continue on our current trajectory, we could end up living in one of those near future dystopian movies where everyone is plugged into virtual reality 16 hours a day. It feels like an important moment for us to take a step back and reassess what it means to use technology thoughtfully, 

It’s really about building a balanced relationship. We believe it’s possible to use technology to its fullest potential without compromising your wellbeing.

So that’s what inspired you to create Roots.

That’s right. I’ve experienced this problem first hand. When I was building my first startup, I reached a point of serious burnout. I was working 7 days a week, and in a self-imposed way, I was never disconnected. I checked slack and email 24/7, and filled every gap in my day with my phone. 

My brain was always wired, I struggled with sleep, I was having back issues, and generally was not very happy on a day to day basis. And I was only 25 years old. I took a long look in the mirror, and decided it was time for a change. 

I started taking small steps towards finding better balance in my life. It wasn’t just about screen time or my phone, but taking a fresh look at everything I was doing. That was about 10 years ago and was the start of a journey towards finding better personal balance. It’s still a work in progress and I imagine always will be. 

Around 3 years ago I started to get the urge to build something that could help other people find better balance in our digital world, but I didn’t know what it should be. At the time I was building my second startup, Intown Golf Club, which was growing fast, we went from zero to #205 on the Inc. 5000 list over the last 5 years. Despite the success of Intown Golf Club, I felt a strong pull towards building something new. I started working weekends on a few ideas. 

Two years ago, we launched the first version of Roots — a nature-based mindfulness app — as a side project. After talking to a lot of our users, I realized that we were building something that was “nice to have”, not “must have”. But, during those conversations I started to see a pattern. People talked about how their phones were getting in the way of everyday life. This resonated strongly with my own experience. 

I joined a startup studio with Wildwood Ventures to explore what Roots could become. I came in with several broad ideas, but we honed in on phone addiction pretty quickly. Everyone we talked to had a similar story — the paradox of “I don’t have enough time”, and “I spend 4+ hours per day on my phone”. It felt like there was a real opportunity to unlock this time. 

It was clear that people needed help keeping their mindless scrolling in check, and they didn’t have a solution — they either weren’t aware of the native phone limits, or found it too easy to ignore them. 

We believed we could build a brand that promoted better balance, and create an app that acted like a friendly accountability partner with app blocking that had more friction, so you could actually stick to it.  

Even with a clear vision, the path is a winding one. There was actually a point in the journey where we almost quit. In early 2024, we had just launched our beta version of the app, we were struggling with the Apple Screen Time API, we were almost out of cash, and it felt like everything was an uphill battle. The voice in my head started having doubts. I specifically remember going for a walk in my neighborhood to clear my mind and decide whether we should keep moving forward. 

I saw 5 people on the walk. Two kids walking to the bus stop, a mom pushing a stroller, a grandparent in the park, and a man running. Every single one of them was distracted and on their phone. It felt like a sign from the universe. I went home, and decided to commit to the next phase, which included making a personal investment in our pre-seed round to extend the runway.  

We made a ton of progress over the next 6 months. In October, it felt like we turned a corner. I send a personal email to everyone who signs up. For a long time, I rarely got a reply. If I did, it was usually about a bug or potential improvement. Then, I started getting love letters. Lots of them. We track a lot of KPIs, but this one is probably my favorite. 

So, how does Roots work, exactly?

Roots works like a friendly accountability partner. We give you tools to set hard limits, offer encouraging nudges, and help turn data into actionable insights.  

We start by setting your intentions — how much time do you want to spend on your phone? How often do you want to check your phone? What kind of limits and downtimes do you want to adopt? And, importantly, what are the simple things you can use as “scroll replacements”? It’s easier to cut back on doom scrolling when you have something to replace it with. 

Then we help you set up a personalized combination of app limits and downtimes. One of our most popular blocking features is “Monk Mode” which keeps you from unblocking apps completely. Another popular blocking feature is “Intentional Mode”, which keeps apps blocked by default and forces you to unblock mindfully for each session. We think it’s important to offer a flexible set up since everyone has a unique relationship with their phone. 

We also include a small dose of gamification. We have a beautiful tree for you to keep healthy by staying within your intentions. As you stay under your limits and downtimes, you’ll build a streak, and you can earn cheat days and custom app icons as you go. 

We take boring screen time data and make it interesting. The “Daily Balance Score” is like a sleep score for your phone. We break down app usage using our patent-pending “Digital Dopamine Tracker”, which helps quantify the impact of time on each app, since not all screen time is equal. We show you “how often you check your phone” instead of just pickups, and much more.  

Finally, we help you quantify progress and encourage you to keep it up by showing you how much time you’ve unlocked by using the app, and progress over time.

Another interesting feature is challenges. Can you tell more?

This is one of my favorite features. The idea is to host time-based phone detox challenges that anyone can join. The beauty of it is, the app will track everything automatically and keep you accountable. Plus, you can invite friends or family to join and make it a social thing. 

We have hosted everything from a “Sunday Social Media Detox”, to “Be Present for Thanksgiving”. We typically will host a few unique challenges per week. All of them involve blocking your most distracting apps for the day, and only allowing a few unblocks. 

There is something special about the community aspect of Challenges. It’s fun to know that you’re in it together. Even for our team, on Monday’s, it’s always exciting to share stories from the Sunday Detox Challenge.    

Challenges are also a great way to get “back on the horse” if you fall out of your daily blocking habits. We’ve heard from many users that they will use a Sunday Detox Challenge as a way to kick things back off when they start to slip.  

What kind of people use Roots?

It’s funny, part of the playbook when you build an early stage company is to “start narrow.” Meaning, you should have a single focus on a specific type of user. 

We started with this goal in mind, but as we went along we realized that Roots works really well for many several different types of people.  

Professionals (both remote and in-office) are a big one. Folks who are tied to a screen for work and want to set boundaries so they can be more productive, and enjoy real downtime.

Parents use Roots to be more present with their family, and to set better examples for their kids. Students use Roots to stay focused on studying, and help with anxiety and mental health. Couples use Roots to be more present in their relationship, and join challenges like “phone free date nights”.    

The beauty is that many types of people use Roots to boost productivity, unlock more time, improve wellbeing, be more present, strengthen relationships, and get better sleep. The average person on Roots is unlocking two hours every single day. 

What about you, how do you use Roots?

I use Roots every day. I averaged 4 hours per day on my phone before Roots. Now I’m consistently under 2 hours per day. My pickups have gone from 150 per day down to 50. But, if I’m testing something new and delete my regular setup, it’s a slippery slope. I find myself creeping back up towards 4 hours per day very quickly. I’ve found I really need the guardrails.   

I use it in a few different ways.  First, I have a weekly set of blocking rules. I keep all social media and work apps blocked in the morning (4:00AM – 9:00AM) and evening (6:00PM-4:00AM).  In the morning I give myself 2 unblocks, so I can check in on the day, without doom scrolling my morning away. In the evening, I use “Monk Mode”, so I can’t unblock even if I want to. This helps me wind down at night and keeps me off my phone in bed. If I really need to get online I’m forced to be intentional and use my computer.

Outside of my downtimes, I keep social media blocked by default and only allow 5 unblocks per day. This has made a big difference. It’s only a small amount of friction to unblock, but it forces me to think twice each time. 

I set up my “scroll replacements” to be reading, stretching, going outside, and walking my dog. Each time I want to unblock an app, I’m forced to look at the list of things I could be doing instead. My dog gets a lot more walks than she did before I started using Roots.  

In Roots, we show you “how often you check your phone”. So I keep a close eye on my pickups and try to stay above “every 20 minutes”, which is around 50 pickups per day. I do our weekly “Sunday Social Media Detox” challenge, this serves as a nice reset each week. I will usually take a few minutes on this day to review the prior week and see which apps I consumed the most “digital dopamine” from, check my balance score, and assess my plans for the coming week so I can adjust as needed. 

Every month or so I will go phone-free by turning on Monk Mode for 24 hours. The first time I did this I was shocked by how good it felt. I hadn’t stayed off my phone for 24 hours since I got my first iPhone in high school in 2008. By the end of the 24 hours, I honestly felt like time had slowed down and I was more at peace than I had been in a long time.

And finally… What’s next for Roots?

We are very bullish about the future. I believe everyone who has a phone can benefit from Roots. It feels like the screen time space is in a similar position to where meditation apps were in 2015. Headspace and Calm were early in their journey, and over the next 10 years we would see several unicorns emerge and hundreds of millions of people start using meditation apps. 

2025 will be all about growth. We have worked very hard this year to iterate quickly, and set the app up to be very scalable. We have several exciting marketing activations kicking off in the new year. 

I expect the team will grow quickly. We currently have 4 full time co-founders, and several key part-time team members. I am very proud of our founding team. We have an amazing culture where everyone is excited about what they are doing on a daily basis. 

On the product side we have a lot of exciting things planned for Q1 2025, and beyond. We are a very design focused team. We are obsessed with continuing to iterate the app, and building it into the best possible product it can be. We still have a long way to go to realize our vision, but we’re already helping people change their lives with the current version. 

We aim to be the category winners of the screen time space. Our goal is to help 100,000,000 people build a better relationship with their digital devices in the next 5 years. I truly believe we can help change the world, and the way we live with technology. 

Thank you so much for your time, Clint! Where can people learn more about Roots?

Thank you for all the great questions! You can learn more on our website, or jump right in and download the app. Follow us on Linkedin, Instagram, or Twitter (X), where we share insights and product updates. And, if you’re up for a challenge, join us for a Sunday Social Media Detox this weekend!

The post Scroll Less and Live More with Clint Jarvis, founder of Roots appeared first on Ness Labs.

The last thing you want to do is sit down and think about the past year… You’d rather curl up with a warm drink and switch your brain off until January. But what if this winding-down period was actually the perfect moment for something transformative?

An annual review is a chance to reflect, process, and set the stage for the future. It’s about taking a step back to see how far you’ve come and where you might like to go. In fact, it’s one of the best opportunities for personal growth. Let’s explore why it’s so powerful and how you can make it work for you.

5 Reasons to Conduct an Annual Review

An annual review isn’t just another task on your to-do list. It’s a gift you give to yourself, a chance to make sense of your journey and shape the path ahead — perhaps the most valuable gift you give yourself this year. Here are five reasons to make this an annual ritual:

• Self-development: Conducting an annual review gives you the chance to reflect on your progress over the past year, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and imagine interesting experiments for the year ahead.
• Wellbeing: Reviewing the past year helps you process your experiences—both positive and negative—and provides a sense of closure, reducing stress and improving your mental health. It’s like decluttering your mind, making space for new possibilities.
• Creativity: Reflecting on your accomplishments and challenges can inspire fresh ideas for approaching the coming year. Often, patterns emerge that weren’t visible when you were in the thick of things.
• Relationships: Taking time to evaluate your personal and professional relationships allows you to strengthen connections, resolve lingering conflicts, and pursue new friendships. You might notice which relationships energized you and which ones need more attention.
• Motivation: Recognizing and celebrating your achievements helps boost your motivation and build confidence as you move forward, so you can remember what worked well when things might get tough in the future.

When you conduct an annual review, you’re not just reflecting on the past; you’re equipping yourself with insights and tools to create a more intentional future. It can transform how you approach the coming year. And these benefits also compound over time as each annual review builds on the previous ones.

How to Conduct an Annual Review

There are many ways to conduct an annual review, some more structured than others. Feel free to experiment with different methods, and don’t feel like there’s a correct way to go about it. What matters most is carving out some uninterrupted time to reflect.

That being said, here are some practical steps to get started:

1) Choose an annual review method that resonates with you. This can be free-flow writing, filling out a structured template, or following along with a workshop video by one of your favorite creators. Don’t overthink it — the best method is the one you’ll actually use. Here are some methods:

• Ness Labs Year in Review Template
• Building a Second Brain Annual Review
• YearCompass Booklet

2) Find a quiet space and make yourself comfortable. Turn off notifications and let the people you live with know that you need this time for yourself. Make yourself a cup of tea. Put some relaxing music on. You don’t need a full day to conduct an annual review. While 2-3 hours is ideal, even 30 minutes with a structured template can be incredibly valuable.

3) Complete your annual review by combining both intuition and evidence. Think about key moments, lessons learned, and patterns you’ve noticed. While your gut feelings are important, also do some “archaeology work” by reviewing your notes and calendars. This helps avoid recency bias — the tendency to overemphasize recent events while forgetting earlier experiences.

If you stop here, you’ve already done something wonderful for yourself. But if you’re feeling brave, consider sharing your review as an exercise in learning in public. By doing so, you might connect with others who share your experience and find inspiration in their stories.

An annual review isn’t just about looking back; it’s about reflecting on the past to reimagine your future. Use it to identify areas of curiosity, questions you’d like to explore, and experiments you might want to try. Think of it as creating a map of possibility, an exercise that could lead to new adventures.

Whatever your achievements this year, however life unfolded, remember to rest and recharge. The insights from your annual review will be waiting to guide you when you’re ready to restart your journey next year.

The post The Power of an Annual Review: Reflect on the Past to Reimagine your Future appeared first on Ness Labs.

I felt quite lost and had to apply all the principles in the book to enjoy this dance — one that had no clear steps, set to strange music I had never heard before — and trust that things would unfold in time. It was a meta-exercise in curiosity.

Now, the book has been officially announced, and I can’t wait for it to be in readers’ hands. As someone who loves feedback, this is the longest feedback loop I’ve ever had to go through.

Here are some of the other highlights of 2024:

• Published several research papers, received a research award, completed my PhD in Psychology & Neuroscience, and secured funding to continue my work at the ADHD Research Lab.
• Grew as a public speaker and I’m now feeling comfortable in front of fairly big crowds.
• Bought a house with my partner who moved back to London from Singapore after three years of long distance.
• Deepened my personal exploration of psychedelics as a medicinal tool and spiritual practice.
• Spent more time with my family, even if that meant lots of traveling.
• Saw flying foxes and swam with whale sharks.
• Connected with many amazing minds, whether through Ness Labs, the book, or my academic research, and even made a few new friends!

Read on for a detailed account of my year, along with the experiments I’m excited to explore next year. You can also find my past annual reviews here.

Building health

Let me start with my proudest accomplishment: in 2024, for the first time in my adult life, I didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol. Given my long struggle with depression, this feels bigger than any other milestone.

Over the past twelve months, I explored how to build healthy routines upon this foundation. It started with a meditation experiment where I committed to meditate for 15 minutes every day for 15 days, and to learn in public by documenting the process in a shared Google Doc.

This simple experiment completely changed my relationship with meditation. I went from “this isn’t for me” to “this is a tool I can learn to use.” I shared my notes, including the parts I found challenging, and people left comments suggesting different techniques, from breathing and visualization to shifting my posture. Today, meditation has become part of my toolkit.

Two other important tools this year were journaling (to connect with the mind) and dancing (to connect with the body). Although I missed a few days, I always journaled several times a week. I also attended Ecstatic Dance sessions (a freeform dance practice) several times a month.

Intentionally building those moments of self-connection into my routine has been crucial to managing my mental health despite a busy schedule. However, it wasn’t always perfect.

Around the summer, I started experiencing early signs of what my best friend and I like to call “wobbliness” — when you can feel yourself losing balance and instinctively grabbing for your usual crutches.

For me, since I quit drinking, those crutches have been sugar and social media. At first, I treat myself to a snack or some mindless scrolling, but soon enough my reward system becomes becomes overstimulated. Those bad habits impact my sleep, which affects my decisions, and the cycle repeats… You get the idea.

I’ve found that psychedelics help a lot when I’m on the verge of falling into such a vortex. They’ve become an integral part of my mental health. This year, I worked with Ayahuasca again, designed our own mini psilocybin retreat with close friends, and regularly used mushrooms on my own in a medicinal / ceremonial way.

Things still get wobbly sometimes, but thanks to these tools I can now trust myself to pick myself back up when I trip up.

Things still get wobbly sometimes, but thanks to these tools I’ve learned to trust myself to regain balance when I stumble.

I also froze my eggs at the start of the year — a decision my partner and I made when we didn’t know when we’d live together again. What a rollercoaster! As someone who’s usually emotionally level, I was stunned by the wild mood swings and how quickly my body changed.

On top of it all, navigating the medical process was incredibly complicated. Brainstorming titles for Tiny Experiments during that time became quite emotional! I was fortunate that one round was enough, and my heart goes out to anyone who has to go through this more than once.

Working and growing together

Tiny Experiments is my first book, and every decision is one I’ve never had to make before. I didn’t have ready-made heuristics or mental models to rely on — but I do have access to the internet.

At first I looked into hiring freelancers and spoke to a few agencies. I set the bar high, inspired by James Clear who went to great lengths to find Lyndsey, his “Executive Assistant / Master of Many Things.” I kept telling myself: I need to find my Lyndsey!

But I eventually realized the right people were already around me. Many members of the Ness Labs team had the skills to take on tasks related to the book — it was just a matter of transferring their expertise from one project to another.

What started as a search for outside help became an opportunity to grow together, and I feel so lucky to work with such an incredible group of people.

This was a recurring theme this year — how the people around me helped me learn, grow, and discover more about myself and the world. I attended two life-changing retreats for entrepreneurs, kindly hosted by Tiago Forte and Rand Fishkin, and was invited to give talks at incredible conferences. Friends offered to introduce me to their friends.

As a result, I connected with several people I’d previously only known online and deepened relationships with others to the point where the lines blurred between friendship and creative collaboration. What these people have in common is that I could just as easily spend hours discussing the meaning of life with them as jump on a quick call to brainstorm an idea.

I’m not going to list them all here — in fact they’re in the acknowledgement section of my upcoming book! — but I’m deeply grateful for these friendships.

Looking back to look ahead

Something has become crystal clear for me this year. My creativity and productivity are fueled by two streams that must flow freely for me to do work that feels alive and connected: my intellectual health and my relational health.

Taking care of my intellectual health means having ample time to conduct research and write, whether that’s the Ness Labs newsletter, academic papers, or even another book. It means being able to read purely for curiosity’s sake and having space for those nourishing conversations with fellow curious minds.

I’ve been fortunate over the past years to work with Prof. Ellie Dommett at the ADHD Research Lab. She’s always supported my hypercurious mind and the many projects I love to juggle. We’ve now secured funding to continue working together in 2025, and I’m also applying for longer-term funding to investigate the intersection of ADHD and curiosity, hopefully with Dr. Vincent Giampietro, my other wonderful PhD supervisor.

To make space for deeper exploration, I’d like to work with the Ness Labs team to design a system where I can continue contributing to our educational content while empowering them to manage — and even lead — the business aspects.

The other stream is relational health. In 2024, I prioritized spending time with friends and family whenever I could. I jumped on trains and planes, traveling to more than a dozen cities across Europe and the world.

I had my parents over several times and we did the visits together when I was house-hunting. We went to a big Halloween party, I introduced them to my research supervisors, and overall included them more fully in my life.

We also spent much more time together with my siblings, particularly my sister, who lives in Seoul. This year, I saw her in San Francisco, Paris, London, Singapore, and the Philippines, where we saw flying foxes and swam with whale sharks — making many lifelong memories.

In 2025, I want to spend even more time with the people I love: building a home with my partner in London after years of long distance, enjoying as much time as possible with my parents, and deepening connections with old and new friends by creating shared spaces for meaningful connection.

I see my spiritual health as the land between these two streams: it serves as the necessary foundation that supports both my intellectual and relational health. I plan to keep exploring psychedelics, journaling, and other mindfulness practices.

One experiment for 2025 is attending my first silent Vipassana meditation retreat — something I’m both excited and a little nervous about. Some other questions I’d like to explore include:

• What creative practices might I enjoy outside of writing the newsletter?
• How can I better bridge my work at Ness Labs with my academic research?
• What other modalities could I experiment with for my physical and mental health? e.g. along with meditation, I’m also curious about breathwork, running, and the role of music in mental well-being.

In short, I don’t know what 2025 will look like, but I want it to be a year shaped by curiosity and to have many opportunities to learn from others throughout this big experiment we call life.

P.S. The title of this year’s annual review is a reference of the original title of my book, which was supposed to be called Liminal Minds. In a fun twist, I had to embrace a long period of uncertainty until we settled on what I now think perfectly encapsulates the book.

The post 2024 Year in Review: Life is in the Liminal appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our Tools for Thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us work smarter and live better. Ian Inseok Seo is the founder of Routinery, a mobile application that helps you design and actually stick to better routines.

In this interview, we talked about environment-driven habit formation, the routines of successful people, how to maintain a balanced life, how to adjust routines over time as needed, the relationship between routines and neurodiversity, and more. Enjoy the read!

Hi Ian, thanks for agreeing to this interview! When did you become interested in helping people design better routines?

My journey into the world of routines began during a challenging period of my life when I faced several entrepreneurial setbacks over about four years. It was during this time that I truly grasped the importance of having structured routines. I found that routines served as a stabilizing force, helping me navigate the uncertainty and frustration of feeling stagnant in my entrepreneurial journey.

To explore this further, I started with simple, self-guided tests. I created an Excel sheet where I documented the environments and times that allowed me to wake up best, detailing everything from music to temperature settings.

I also experimented with different sequences for activities like writing and meditation, adjusting environmental factors to see what worked most effectively. This personal journey highlighted how valuable routines can be, not just for me but potentially for countless others facing similar struggles.

I realized that amidst the chaos, a solid morning routine could set the tone for the entire day. It offered me a way to regain control and establish a sense of purpose. However, I noticed that many people struggle to create effective routines, even when they understand the benefits.

Life can be hectic, and the temptation to prioritize immediate tasks over planning can be overwhelming. People often feel paralyzed by choice, unsure of how to structure their time in a way that aligns with their goals.

Through numerous self-experiments, I tested how my environment changed at different times, and I refined those methodologies over more than two years. This experience sparked the idea: “Could I help others craft their own routines?”

I started by assisting Jane, our current CTO, in developing her routine, and the results were remarkable. This success led me to a bigger vision: to create a platform that could assist even more people in designing effective routines tailored to their needs. That was the seed from which Routinery grew.

Understanding the transformative power of routines is what drives me to help others achieve that clarity and focus in their daily lives.

And what makes your approach different?

What sets Routinery apart is our fundamental focus on environment-driven habit formation. Rather than emphasizing sheer willpower, we prioritize creating the right conditions for people to effortlessly follow their desired routines. This idea is encapsulated in our slogan: “Designed to drive your action.”

Let me illustrate: if you want to read more, simply deciding to read won’t necessarily make it happen. However, if you bring a book and leave your laptop at home, then go to a cozy café, you’ll naturally start reading. This is the power of environmental design, and we’ve embedded this principle into Routinery to help users not just plan, but actually live their ideal routines. In the early days, I honestly didn’t invest too much time in formal user research. My team and I were focused on solving a problem I personally faced, and as a team with the skills to develop an app, we went for it.

We launched Routinery quickly, iterating until it met our standards. But as the app gained traction, we started receiving feedback from users worldwide, and I was struck by how serious and diverse their challenges were.

It became clear that maintaining even small routines, which some might find simple, was deeply difficult for others. And when these small efforts failed, the ripple effect impacted other aspects of their lives, often leaving them feeling overwhelmed and stuck.

From these insights, our mission evolved to “Empowering people to improve their daily lives.” Through ongoing user interviews, we learned that even minor adjustments, like a morning stretch or a few minutes of focused breathing, could have a profound effect on someone’s day. Yet, many people struggle to incorporate these small actions into their routines.

For some, these seemingly simple tasks are monumental. Recognizing this, we felt a stronger commitment to provide a solution that wasn’t just about planning but about creating an environment for consistent, positive change.

That makes sense. Actually, neurodivergent users are particularly enthusiastic about Routinery.

Absolutely, I’m thrilled to discuss this! Routinery has resonated particularly well with neurodivergent users, especially those with ADHD. Our app is designed to help individuals create structure and establish routines, which can be incredibly beneficial for managing symptoms of ADHD.

For many people with ADHD, staying organized and maintaining focus can be challenging. Routinery allows users to break their day into manageable chunks, providing clear, visual cues for each task, which can be especially helpful in navigating tasks one at a time.

This not only aids with time management but also reduces the overwhelm that can come from trying to juggle multiple responsibilities. Features like customizable routines, timers, and task flows empower users to sustain their focus by breaking tasks into manageable steps and creating a sense of accomplishment as they complete them.

For example, a user might set up a morning routine that includes specific times for getting out of bed, showering, and having breakfast. The visual representation of their progress helps keep them motivated and reduces the cognitive load of remembering each step. We’ve also included options for breaks and transitions, which are vital for maintaining focus.

That said, while Routinery is particularly beneficial for neurodivergent individuals, we’ve surpassed 5 million downloads, which speaks to its broad appeal. People from all walks of life use Routinery to design a better day, whether they’re looking to boost productivity, improve time management, or simply cultivate healthier habits. Our goal is to support everyone in building routines that work for them!

You decided to go for a mobile-first approach. Why is that?

When we started Routinery, we knew that routines needed to be woven into the fabric of our everyday lives—not just planned at a desk but accessible in those small moments when people need them the most. That’s why we decided on a mobile-first approach.

Routines aren’t confined to a specific time or place, and to make them truly impactful, they need to be adaptable and available whenever the user requires them. Whether it’s setting a morning routine as you wake up, or a calming evening ritual to wind down, we wanted Routinery to be right there, on-the-go.

A mobile app allows users to check in with their routines anytime, anywhere. This level of accessibility is key to our mission: helping users build sustainable habits that fit seamlessly into their daily lives. Imagine starting a routine on the subway, in a café, or even during a lunch break—it’s possible because of the convenience of a mobile platform.

To make Routinery truly universal, we prioritized making it available on both iOS and Android right from the start. People’s lives are incredibly diverse, and we wanted Routinery to be accessible no matter what device they prefer. By taking this approach, we’re not just supporting different technologies; we’re enabling more people to integrate routines that can help them lead better lives.

Ultimately, our mobile-first design reflects our belief that routines should be something users carry with them—not just as a reminder, but as an empowering tool to create positive changes throughout their day, wherever they are.

So, how does Routinery work, exactly?

Routinery is designed to make routine-building simple, effective, and — most importantly — personal. At its core, the app allows users to create customized routines made up of small, actionable tasks. Users can select from suggested activities or add their own, crafting a routine that aligns with their unique goals and daily needs.

Our approach is deeply rooted in behavioral science principles, particularly two key concepts. The first is habit stacking. Instead of the traditional checklist style, where users mark tasks one by one, Routinery prompts users to start their first task and then naturally flow into the next.

Once they’ve taken that initial action, momentum builds, making it easier to carry on with subsequent tasks without overthinking. By having everything mapped out in advance, they’re free to focus on simply doing.

The second principle is the use of a timer with a time limit. Humans are naturally more focused when we have a set amount of time for a task. This is especially helpful in the morning when distractions are everywhere. The timer provides a gentle sense of urgency, helping users to stay focused and avoid being sidetracked.

We wanted Routinery to support users with planning and executing routines seamlessly. When planning, users have a range of options to customize their routines. But when it’s time to put those routines into action, we aim to minimize distractions and maximize focus. This flow encourages users to follow through and complete their routines consistently.

Additionally, we’ve put a lot of thought into human-friendly interactions to make the experience feel less mechanical and more like a supportive companion. Instead of just sending reminders, Routinery communicates with users in a way that feels natural and encouraging.

We’ve also been intentional with our UX writing for push notifications, ensuring that users feel motivated and supported rather than burdened. Our goal is for Routinery to feel less like an app and more like a helpful friend guiding them through their day.

To make all this possible, we’ve put a lot of effort into a clean, simple mobile design. We believe in reducing friction and making the app experience intuitive, so users can focus on what matters — their routines. Through this streamlined design, Routinery becomes not only a tool but a friendly, reliable guide in building the life they want.

You have spent lots of time researching the routines of successful people. What are some of your favorites?

At Routinery, we highlight the routines of several well-known figures, including Andrew Huberman, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Tim Ferriss, and Haruki Murakami. While each of these routines is unique, they all share a common thread: dedication to consistency and a clear sense of purpose.

Personally, I don’t have a favorite routine, per se. Instead, I’m inspired by the commitment these individuals demonstrate in maintaining their routines. Observing their dedication helps remind me that routines aren’t about perfection but about consistent effort. This realization has been especially meaningful for me, as it offers reassurance that small, sustained actions can make a significant impact over time.

Recently, I’ve become more interested in running and writing, which is why Haruki Murakami’s routine resonates with me. Murakami is known for his disciplined approach to both his writing and his physical well-being—running a marathon every year, maintaining a strict daily schedule, and ensuring he has the mental space to create. His consistency is incredibly inspiring, and it motivates me to keep pushing forward in my own pursuits.

On the other hand, I also draw a lot of methodological inspiration from Andrew Huberman. His emphasis on science-backed practices for optimizing both physical and mental performance aligns with our mission at Routinery to make habit-building an intentional and effective process. Observing how he incorporates scientific principles into his routine has given me ideas on how to support Routinery users more effectively in structuring their daily habits.

Ultimately, I think the most powerful takeaway from these routines is the reminder that finding a rhythm that works for you—and sticking with it—can be transformative. We all have unique needs, and by curating a routine that aligns with our personal goals, we can achieve more balance and fulfillment in our daily lives.

What about you, how do you use Routinery?

In the early days, I experimented with several routines, but over time, I found that simplicity works best for me. Now, I keep my routines straightforward, focusing on a few key rituals that help me stay grounded and productive.

My regular routines include a morning and evening routine on weekdays, a cleaning routine on Saturdays, and a Sunday evening routine to prepare for the week ahead. I also use Routinery’s Pomodoro timer on a more flexible basis—primarily when I need extra help staying focused on a task.

In the morning, I use Routinery to guide me through calming activities like meditation and writing. Starting the day with a clear, centered mind is crucial because my days tend to be filled with fast-paced work and various demands. This morning routine gives me a moment to anchor myself, allowing me to approach the day with greater resilience.

My evening routine is a time for reflection and unwinding. I often review my day, noting any significant moments or insights and letting go of lingering concerns. The routine helps me mentally put the day to rest so I can transition smoothly into sleep. I also include activities like meditation and stretching to help my body relax and ensure I’m prepared for restful sleep.

Over time, I adjust my routines as needed, expanding or simplifying them depending on my situation. I’ve learned not to be rigidly bound by routines but rather to let them work in a way that suits me best. This flexibility is key to keeping routines sustainable and beneficial over the long term.

Routinery has become an essential tool that helps me maintain a balanced and intentional life. I love that I can keep these routines tailored to my needs, and I find the app’s customizable reminders and timer functionality invaluable for keeping me on track. Routinery is a constant reminder that I can set the tone for my day, and I appreciate having a system that supports me in creating my ideal environment for each part of my routine.

The best part is that I get to use the very service I’m building every day. It brings me a deep sense of happiness and gratitude to know that while I’m helping others, I’m also helping myself. As an entrepreneur, I consider it a blessing to create something that has a meaningful impact—not only on our users’ lives but on my own as well.

And finally… What’s next for Routinery?

At Routinery, our mission is clear: to empower people to improve their daily lives. While we’re currently focused on providing this support through our app, we’re excited to take our vision even further. We’re constantly researching ways to create environments and develop tools that make positive change feel natural and effortless. Our goal is to help people overcome the challenges of personal growth by designing solutions that support their unique journey, every step of the way.

In terms of future directions, we’re exploring beyond just the Routinery app. We envision expanding our offerings to include additional apps, as well as offline events that bring our community together to share insights and support one another. Ultimately, we aim to deepen our understanding of human behavior and use that knowledge to make meaningful contributions to the science of personal transformation.

We also see the future of Routinery moving into the wellness space, where we can expand our focus from behavior improvement to mental wellness. We believe that partnering with experts in fields such as psychology and mental health can help us offer even more valuable support for our users.

Many people who use our app face challenges such as ADHD, depression, and insomnia. Our goal is to help them with tailored routines that offer not only structure but also comfort. We’re designing these features with the same intention and attention to behavioral science, ensuring that even wellness-focused additions like mindfulness routines or tailored support for conditions such as ADHD or insomnia are practical, engaging, and easy to implement in daily life.

We want Routinery to be a service that aids in alleviating mental health challenges, providing a path to more balanced, fulfilling lives.

As we look to the future, we’re also excited by the potential of IoT (Internet of Things) to bridge the gap between digital and physical environments. Imagine a meditation session that automatically sets the room lighting, adjusts the temperature, and plays soothing music the moment you start a meditation timer. By creating these kinds of immersive environments, we can help users enter the right state of mind for their routines without extra effort.

Our long-term vision is to create a world where change is accessible to everyone—where the barriers to personal growth are minimized by science-backed solutions and intentional design. Whether through technology, events, or scientific research, we’re committed to helping people make lasting improvements to their daily lives.

I believe that as we continue to evolve, Routinery will remain a trusted companion that helps people live with more ease and fulfillment. We envision Routinery as more than just an app—it’s a catalyst for a global movement toward mindful, purpose-driven lives.

Thank you so much for your time, Ian! Where can people learn more about Routinery?

Thanks for having me! You can go to our landing page, blog, YouTube, Instagram, or head directly to the store to install the app.

The post Design a Better Daily Routine with Ian Inseok Seo, founder of Routinery appeared first on Ness Labs.

But the path that led to their current 626 million active users was anything but straight. They had to constantly pivot, experiment with different features, and even temporarily abandon certain markets. Their success didn’t come from religiously following their initial roadmap, but from treating each setback as an opportunity to learn and adapt.

Spotify’s story illustrates a crucial insight from decades of psychological research: the most significant breakthroughs often emerge from nonlinear paths. Yet, we cling to goal setting methods that promise certainty and control.

The Hidden Costs of Linear Goal Setting

Have you ever felt like you’re climbing an endless ladder, where each rung represents another goal to achieve? The moment you reach one objective, there’s always another waiting, leaving you exhausted and wondering if you’re making actual progress.

Linear goals dominate our approach to personal and professional lives. They offer a reassuring sense of clarity and measurability that our brains can find deeply appealing. That might be why the SMART goal-setting framework, introduced in the 1980s, is still used in companies around the world to this day.

But this traditional approach to goal setting is rooted in industrial-age thinking: straight lines, predictable outcomes, and measurable progress. While this might work well for manufacturing widgets, they fall short in uncertain environments characterized by rapid change.

Worse yet, research found that over-emphasis on specific, challenging goals can lead to reduced risk-taking, decreased intrinsic motivation, and even unethical behavior.

The problem lies partly in how our brains process goals and rewards. Neuroscience research has shown that the brain’s dopaminergic reward system is activated not only by achieving goals but also by anticipating rewards.

When goals are narrowly defined and tied to specific outcomes, the brain can overprioritize immediate, extrinsic rewards, leading to stress and fear of failure when those expectations aren’t met.  This response helps explain why linear goals often lead to:

• Constant fear of failure and judgment
• A fixed mindset that limits learning opportunities
• Toxic positivity that pressures us to always present as successful
• Unhealthy competition that isolates us from potential collaborators

These issues become particularly acute in what organizational psychologists call VUCA environments (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) – precisely the conditions most of us navigate daily in our careers and personal growth journeys.

How to Implement Nonlinear Goal Setting

Nature rarely moves in straight lines, and neither does our personal and professional development. When we embrace nonlinear goal setting, we activate the brain’s reward system differently. Instead of seeking the dopamine hit of achieving a single goal, we create multiple feedback loops that encourage exploration and sustain motivation.

1) Start with observation. Keep a curiosity journal by taking field notes tracking your emerging interests, interesting conversations, and energy patterns. Document your current challenges and doubts without judgment. In particular, notice which activities energize you versus drain you.

2) Design tiny experiments. Create small, low-stakes tests to collect data. Focus on the process and let go of the outcome. You can’t fail when any outcome is treated as a source of valuable information to support the design of your next experiment.

3) Make space for reflection. Schedule regular review sessions. The Plus Minus Next method is a simple metacognitive practice that can help integrate learnings and adjust your trajectory based on emerging insights – not based on an artificial finish line.

Remember that you’re not aiming for perfection. Instead, notice what emerges without forcing specific outcomes. By releasing the need for perfection, you will paradoxically create the conditions for more meaningful growth. This flexible approach will not only feel better but also produce more sustainable results. What tiny experiment will you try first?

The post Rethinking Goals: the Science of Nonlinear Goal Setting appeared first on Ness Labs.

Welcome to this edition of our tools for thought series, where we interview founders on a mission to help us think better and work smarter. Bálint Orosz is the founder of Craft, a rich text editor designed to be frictionless, whether you want to take notes, write papers, plan your day, or just get things done.

In this interview, we discussed frictionless creativity, the value of well-crafted tools, the power of the Apple ecosystem, integrating AI with note-taking, bridging our personal and professional lives, and much more. Enjoy the read!

Hi Bálint, thanks for agreeing to this interview! First, let’s address the most obvious question: in such a crowded space, what inspired you to create another tool for thought?

Since the early 2010s, technology has evolved so much, but the tools we use to write, think about, and organize information have essentially been pretty much the same since the 1980s. Personally, I have always been “fighting” tools because I never had the fluidity of being able to express myself easily. I love the famous quote of Steve Jobs that “computers are like a bicycle for the mind”, but I felt this was untrue for many tools I used. 

This was amplified in a previous job for which I had to travel a lot; most of the time I spent travelling was wasted because I couldn’t truly effectively work on mobile devices.

This pain point recurred year after year, until I reached the point where I decided to try to solve the problem  by creating an app which allows me to capture, organize, think, and plan; whether for buying groceries, or writing an executive summary.

Generally, I’m very picky with my tools when it comes to aesthetics and UX, so I knew this app needed to be a joy to use. That meant it must be beautifully designed, offering a native experience, and fully functional offline so that I could use it during flights, without compromise. 

So you got to work.

I’ve been doing design and engineering for 15 years, and after my early days of building Flash websites, I moved on to building native apps for iOS. There’s something in being able to have an idea and make it tangible on a touch device, that just deeply satisfies me.

I knew the space I was entering was extremely crowded, so I started out with the goal of building something truly useful for me; then maybe others would like it, too. In the first two years, I worked on the early versions and prototypes of Craft on my own, and read lots of books and research notes about productivity and human cognition. This was an insightful period, which allowed me to formalize some of my intuition.

I continuously shared prototypes with close friends for early feedback, and after many iterations, I eventually achieved a version I felt confident could be the foundation of Craft, as we know it today. This was in 2019, when the project’s code name was “Luki.” Interestingly, many aspects of that early prototype are present in Craft 3.

At that point, I was ready to go all-in, so I hired the first three team members, and together we developed the first beta version, which was released in February 2020 for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

We took a long time to build and release the first beta version! This was because I wanted to ensure the core experience of writing and syncing across devices was perfect. I knew this was core to everything that followed; without a strong foundation, the entire concept would fall apart. The solid groundwork means we’ve been able to iterate very quickly ever since, releasing major new versions every 2-3 weeks.

And you made the opinionated decision to focus on the Apple ecosystem. Why is that?

One insight from my previous projects is that it’s extremely hard to take a well-developed desktop application, and scale it down to touchscreen devices because the core mental models and UX just fall apart. However, it is absolutely possible to go too far the other way, and focusing on mobile alone places very strong constraints on how complex a product can become. 

Also, native and mobile are my core expertise, so it made sense to start as an iPhone/iPad app to ensure we could create a simple, powerful product.

Later, Apple introduced MacCatalyst, a technology which enabled us to use one code base to ship Craft across iOS, iPadOS, MacOS. Our vision has always been to deliver an exceptional experience by leveraging the unique power and capabilities that only native apps can provide: great performance, full offline support, ability to use your Apple Pencil, and features powered by Apple Intelligence, to name just a few. So, it was logical to continue on this path.

That said, it’s important to note that Craft also works on the web, Windows, and mobile web, and these versions are continuously improving. And yes, an Android app is coming, eventually!

The way you engage with your community is also quite unique.

Community has always been a big part of our approach, and we’ve developed a very strong connection with users. Since the first day of the beta in February 2020, we’ve been interacting with our community, daily. Hearing our users’ stories about how they use Craft, discussing ideas, and working together to identify and fix bugs, has been an incredibly rewarding experience unlike anything I’ve encountered with other products I’ve built.

Our team uses Craft every day, both collaboratively and individually, which creates a unique bond with our community: we can genuinely relate to people’s pain points and joyful experiences. Their feedback plays a crucial role in shaping how we prioritize upcoming features and improvements, ensuring we’re always building Craft with users in mind.

We just released Craft 3, our biggest update ever. This was a six-month process in which we worked closely with over 1,000 beta testers to refine every aspect of new and existing features. Our community has been with us every step of the way, supporting us since the very first beta.

So, how does Craft work, exactly?

Craft adapts to your needs, whether you want to capture a thought, style beautiful docs, share with others, build collections, or manage tasks. Documents are still the core of Craft, but with version 3, there are many more ways to use Craft.

First, tasks. We’ve introduced three major features to task management: a dedicated tasks inbox for quick capture, the ability to schedule tasks and view them in the calendar, and a global view showing all your tasks in Craft. We believe tasks are an integral part of docs, as we often think of them while making notes. The latest improvements are aligned with that idea. This way information is not duplicated, and the entire context from where this task is emerged from, is always present.

Collections in Craft helps you organize related information in one place. Instead of scattered notes, you can gather and arrange items like books to read, project resources, research notes, and also customize how you view and sort them, based on what matters to you.

It delivers the power of databases in a streamlined, easy-to-use interface. Building on Craft’s ability to nest content inside blocks, every item in a Collection can contain its own content.

We also want everyone to be able to create their own digital home in Craft, where they feel comfortable and in control, which is only possible if you can customize the look and feel of docs to your preference. Styling brings an extensive set of capabilities which offer precisely this level of control. Just like other Craft features, it’s simple and surprisingly powerful. You can create different worlds across docs. With Styling, it’s simple to create and share all kinds of things; from children’s party invitations, to professional documents for the workplace.

Please tell us more about the AI features.

Craft Assistant leverages the OpenAI models of GPT-4o and GPT-4o-mini. You can access it easily by using the slash command, or tapping on the “Assistant” button. Our users use it for various tasks, such as making their writing more professional, fixing typos, and translating work into other languages.

AI models are becoming increasingly powerful, but there remains a significant UI/UX challenge. This is something we aim to tackle in the coming year.

Another recent enhancement is the integration of Apple Intelligence. As a native app, we’ve been able to utilize features like Writing Tools which are already available, and in just a few weeks, we’re planning to introduce Image Playgrounds, as well.

We’re particularly excited about Apple Intelligence because it enables us to provide AI tools that function on-device and even in offline mode!

You also put a lot of effort into the small details.

Well, once you choose the name “Craft,” you need to ensure your product is well crafted! We believe it is incredibly important to build an emotional connection with users, as well as a functional one. After all, most Craft users spend more than 2 hours a day using it. 

Aside from making people more productive, it’s also an opportunity for us to provide some tiny bits of “magic.” We love adding small finishing touches like subtle animations and sound effects, that enhance your daily use of Craft and make it a delight to use.

As we continue to expand Craft’s capabilities, we’re careful not to lose this. Our goal is to keep Craft as simple and easy to use as possible. Balancing new features while maintaining simplicity is one of the most exciting product challenges we face.

A great example of this balance is Focus Mode, which allows you to hide all sidebars and controls, enabling you to fully concentrate on your document. This helps you get into the flow and pour deep thoughts into Craft without distractions.

Another example is Presentation Mode, which transforms a document into slides, making it easy to present at school, work, or even to friends and family, without ever leaving Craft.

What kind of people use Craft?

Our most passionate users are individuals who value bringing their personal and professional life in a single space, and are always looking for the best product to support their busy lives. But we see Craft resonate across many groups.

Knowledge workers integrate Craft seamlessly with their existing workflows, often alongside company systems. Real estate agents create sophisticated property presentations on their iPads in between showings. Students transform complex lecture notes into clear, structured knowledge. Even pastors have embraced Craft for sermon preparation; drawn to its clean, distraction-free environment. Creators and journalists love to write scripts and do research for future articles and posts in Craft too.

What makes Craft stand out is its thoughtful simplicity. If you appreciate well-crafted tools that just work, you’ll feel right at home. You don’t need to be a “technical” person to use it.

What about you, how do you use Craft?

There are a number of layers and dimensions to my Craft usage, spanning my personal life and work. From a personal perspective, I store lots of reference-type information like important documents, invoices, manuals, etc; basically, anything that I might need later, I put into Craft. Personally, I really enjoy travel planning in Craft.

I’m also the type of person who thinks best by writing. When I have a thought, I sit down and start writing it out. These initial notes often start out as raw and unstructured, but they evolve as I revisit and refine them over time. What makes Craft super helpful is how naturally it supports this flow: I can quickly jot down thoughts, then easily reorganize them with drag-and-drop, and grouping. This fluid interaction between capturing and organizing thoughts mirrors how my mind works. It makes Craft feel less like a tool and more like an extension of my thought process.

Craft as a company uses Craft as a product as our main form of communication and collaboration. We use daily notes heavily, where each team member writes up their day, and uses it as the basis for daily meetings and standups. We also share Craft documents instead of sending emails, so a big chunk of my day is spent consuming and creating information in Craft.

This depth of usage is so amazing to have while building a product; you’re extremely connected to all aspects of it.

And finally… What’s next for Craft?

With Craft 3, we’ve created the tool we dreamed of when we began building Craft 1.0, but this is just the beginning. We already have a long list of improvements and next steps planned for Task Management, Collections, and the app overall. We’ll roll them out continuously, starting as soon as the next few weeks. Also, we’ll address one of the longest-standing and most requested features: tags are coming in 2025!

Thank you so much for your time, Bálint! Where can people learn more about Craft?

Actually, there are quite a few places! We are very active on social media (Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, Linkedin), and with our Community (Reddit, Slack) with whom we have daily discussions. We are also updating our Help site continuously, writing blog posts, and creating video content on Youtube. 

One last thing: to celebrate Craft 3, we are running our biggest sale. It’s a 50% discount for life for all new Plus, Family, Team, and Business subscriptions or upgrades from any existing subscriptions (even from old Pro and Business ones) until December 15! It’s available through our web app and people can use the code CRAFTV3 during checkout.

The post Capture and craft your big ideas with Bálint Orosz, founder of Craft appeared first on Ness Labs.

It’s not just your imagination: large-scale industry surveys suggest that by mid-December, over half of workers report a significant decline in productivity, and that more than 20% of employees completely lose focus around that time of the year.

But rather than fighting this seasonal ebb, you can embrace it as a necessary part of our human rhythm — and even learn the art of “wintering” during other challenging times, regardless of the season.

From Birds to Humans

Wintering was initially a term used in biology to describe how certain animals and birds survive cold seasons. While some species migrate to warmer climates, others stay in place and adapt their behaviors and physiology to survive harsh conditions. Wintering can involve reducing activity, conserving energy, and drawing on stored resources.

This biological concept was translated to our human experience by Katherine May in her 2020 book Wintering, where she showed how humans, just like wintering animals, need periods of retreat to survive life’s difficult seasons. In essence, just as nature moves through cycles of activity and rest, humans too need periods of pulling back and recharging.

Research in chronobiology supports this idea that our bodies respond to seasonal changes with shifts in hormones, sleep patterns, and energy levels. Fighting these natural rhythms can lead to increased stress, decreased immunity, and emotional exhaustion.

You might be wondering about the usefulness of this concept if you live in the southern hemisphere or a warmer climate. Although darkness and cold naturally invite it, for us humans wintering isn’t strictly about the calendar season.

It’s about actively accepting and working with our own dark seasons, whether triggered by burnout, loss, or illness. It’s a useful metaphor when we need to process challenging experiences and restore a sense of balance in our lives, with self-kindness and without rushing.

Definition of wintering: The act of withdrawing from the world to focus on one’s inner world; active acceptance of dark and cold times; a form of calm resilience.

Psychologists have found that these periods of retreat, when approached mindfully, can lead to significant personal growth and enhanced resilience, and research in neuroscience shows that periods of relative quiet and withdrawal are crucial for brain health.

During these times, our brains engage in vital maintenance processes, consolidating memories, processing emotions, and rebuilding neural pathways. This mirrors what happens in nature during winter months. It’s not a time of death, but of vital restoration.

How to Practice the Art of Wintering

Wintering is not about completely withdrawing or giving up. It’s about finding the right balance between rest and movement, solitude and connection. Like a tree pulling energy into its roots, it’s about gathering strength for your next season of growth.

• Build a winter nest. Choose a quiet corner of your home to optimize for coziness and to transform into a sanctuary. Designate it as a screen-free zone. Add soft lighting and comfortable seating. Stock up on herbal teas, healthy snacks, and journaling supplies.

• Adjust your rhythm. Review your calendar and cut back on non-essential obligations during your wintering period. Be mindful of your energy levels and schedule demanding tasks during your peak hours. Leave buffer space between activities instead of scheduling back-to-back commitments. Allow yourself to sleep an extra hour if your body asks for it.

• Nurture inner growth. Start a creative project purely for enjoyment, without pressure to achieve or produce. Set aside 15 minutes daily for reflective writing. Such a simple metacognitive practice can help process emotions and track patterns in your inner life. Choose books that invite contemplation and slow reading.

• Deepen your relationships. In social situations, focus on quality over quantity. Really listen and engage rather than multitasking. Cook nice meals for loved ones. Consider hosting intimate gatherings, for example by inviting 2-3 friends for tea or dinner. 

As you move through December and beyond, consider how you might intentionally embrace wintering. What would it feel like to release the pressure to maintain peak productivity year-round? How might you create space for restoration amidst life’s inherent messiness?

The answers will be different for everyone, but the invitation remains the same: instead of enduring moments of darkness, we can welcome and honor them, so they lead to deep transformation and self-renewal.

The post The Art of Wintering: How to Find Strength in Slowing Down appeared first on Ness Labs.