Anne-Laure Le Cunff on off-peak days, Buddha head reproductions, and the unmapped life

Welcome to The Bagatelles Salon. As none of us has been here before, I feel the need to both introduce and establish the concept. This is an attempt, on my part, to move closer to the world, to seek out people who fascinate me for one reason or another, and to ask questions whose answers I believe others might take pleasure in.

Everyone who will feature in this conversation series shares this: my admiration.

It also makes The Bagatelles slightly more extroverted than previous dispatches. With the help of you, almost 3,000 individuals, I have formed connections with like-minded people in more than ninety countries, and now I want to go deeper. Ideally, a series of conversations like this might lead to travel, excursions and unexpected collaborations. It also allows me to draw on more than a decade of steady work as a journalist. The circle closes.

The Bagatelles Salon is influenced by many similar projects that have enriched my thinking over the years, for example Designboom’s structured interviews on creativity, The Paris Review’s monumental series “The Art of …”, John Airaksinen’s physical salons in Hornstull, as well as my own proto-experiment, 10 Answers on Creativity (a series consisting of two interviews).

I believe our very first guest would be pleased with this development. She does not believe in finished states at all. Even if she herself seems to have brought one into being in The Bagatelles Salon.

Welcome away ꩜
Jörgen Löwenfeldt

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When I was a teenager, I grew up in a suburb outside Stockholm. Everyone’s parents seemed to live the same life. I often saw them on the commuter train, looking as though they were on their way to1 their own funeral. They all worked in offices in the city, sat there all day, then commuted back only to fall asleep on the sofa in front of the TV. This is how it appeared through a teenager’s gaze, with a limited understanding of the world.

For myself, I imagined the following destiny: a few years of studying, a job in finance or whatever it was adults worked with, then finding someone to marry, buying a house in the suburb, taking on a mortgage, having children, and being stuck forever.

Consequently, the only thing I wanted from life was to be surprised.

And oh, how that wish came true. On the one hand: be careful what you wish for (I never specified that the surprises had to be positive). On the other: I did ask for it, and I remind myself of that regularly when facing setbacks. It is still much better than that parallel unlived life.

For people like me, Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s book Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World strikes a particular chord. She, formerly at Google and now a neuroscientist, puts it simply: forget the map and focus on the landscape. Her philosophy resonates with architect Christopher Alexander’s ideas about unfolding (his alternative to imposing a fixed vision), and with the very American philosophy of pragmatism, where outcomes matter more than theory.

In the book, she makes a lot of bold statements: for instance, that we should let go of the idea of “following your one true passion” (because we are more than just one thing). She also asks the reader to stop obsessing over the concept of “legacy”, and instead focus on what the psychologist Erik Erikson called generativity: the act of contributing to others and to the world around you, here and now.

How to begin? One practical way is to start seeing life as a journey rather than a tedious march towards a fixed destination. Instead of deciding to keep a diary every evening for the rest of your life, and becoming the kind of person who keeps a diary, why not start with four entries, just to see what happens? Do it first, evaluate later. Like a scientist approaching a problem.

The perfect tiny experiment is not only doable and limited in time, it should also tickle your curiosity and sit at the edge of your comfort zone. So I chose to reach out to people I admire. One of them was Anne-Laure, and she kindly agreed to answer a few questions I had.

You must have bad days, like the rest of us. How do you make sure you keep moving your projects forward, even on a sleep-deprived Tuesday in November? And how do you build those kinds of habits?

— Yes, of course I have “bad” days, although I tend to think of them as “off-peak” days when I’m not at full capacity and shift my focus to maintenance and recovery.

The first thing I do is stick to my morning routine, which becomes even more essential on those days: stretching and journaling. Then I look at my to-do list and move anything that’s not urgent and important to another day. If there’s anything left, I use the limited energy and focus I have to do the one urgent and important thing, and take the rest of the afternoon off.

“Off” here doesn’t mean going back to bed. It might be reading papers, going to an exhibition, or doing some light admin work while listening to music. Whatever I choose, I make sure to close my laptop early, read a novel in bed, and get a good night of sleep so I wake up refreshed the next day.

I don’t have any trick for building these habits. It took me a long time to break the cycle of having a bad day, pushing through anyway, and turning it into a bad week. Now I trust my body and brain to recover if I give them the space and support they need.

Which work of art has influenced you the most? Could you tell me how that came about?

— As a writer, I could point to a book, but there are too many that have shaped me and choosing just one would feel arbitrary. So instead I’ll mention something less directly connected to my work.

Growing up, my dad had a large collection of Buddha head reproductions he brought back from his time working in Indonesia. Being surrounded by non-Western art, along with the stories he shared, exposed me early on to different ways of seeing and thinking about the world. It made me curious about what else was out there, and over time that turned into a desire to travel and see it for myself.

Those Buddha heads were just part of the background of my childhood, but they left a lasting imprint on how I think. It’s fascinating how much your environment can shape your outlook without you fully realising it at the time.

This year, my dad didn’t know what to get me for my birthday, and then he had a dream that he should give me one of the heads. So he picked one, packed it in a suitcase, and dragged it from Paris to London. These things are heavy! It now sits in my living room and I’m looking at it as I answer this, which feels like a nice way of closing the loop.

What is your best advice for someone who hasn’t nurtured their creativity for a while?

— Run a tiny experiment! Just pick a simple action and a short duration to give it a try. It could be writing one line every morning for a week, doodling for five minutes a day for five days, or reading one poem every evening for a couple of weeks. Choose something you’re genuinely curious about, and that feels so small it’s almost impossible not to start.

Do you have a book, a website, a song, or something else you think more people should experience?

— I’ll recommend some music I think people should experience. One of my favourite artists is Thylacine. He blends electronic music with field recordings and sounds captured during his travels, so each track feels atmospheric in a way that’s tied to a specific place.

Thank you for reading.

– Jörgen Löwenfeldt ✦ jorgenlowenfeldt.se

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A related post, on claiming all that you are:

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