The Science of Goal-Setting, with Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

Careers, Business

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We spend so much of our lives chasing goals: big ones, small ones, some we barely remember choosing. But what if the goals we’re working toward aren’t really ours? This week on Hello Monday, Jessi Hempel sits down with neuroscientist and author Anne-Laure Le Cunff to talk about how we really achieve the lives we want to live. Anne-Laure is the founder of Ness Labs, a popular online school focused on mindful productivity for knowledge workers. Her new book, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, offers an alternative to rigid goal-setting: a flexible, curiosity-driven approach to figuring out what matters most—through trial, reflection, and self-compassion. In today’s episode, Jessi and Anne-Laure discuss: • Why we put too much pressure on “capital P” Purpose • How to design tiny experiments to better understand yourself • The role of curiosity in redefining ambition • The “Head, Heart, Hand” framework for navigating uncertainty • How to make peace with evolving priorities • The dangers of hustle culture, and how to opt out This conversation is a gentle invitation to slow down, reflect, and explore new ways of working that are more aligned with who you are rather than who you think you’re supposed to be. Continue the conversation with us at Hello Monday Office Hours—live on the LinkedIn News page, every Wednesday at 3 PM ET.

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn News.
0:05.7	You don't have to have that one big P purpose. You can have the purpose of being an amazing
0:12.7	entrepreneur or an amazing manager, leader, but also maybe an amazing spouse, an amazing parent,
0:19.7	an amazing runner, whatever it is that you want to be.
0:23.7	And you can have all of these things and pursue them at the same time.
0:29.5	From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hempel and this is Hello Monday.
0:33.5	It's our show about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing us.
0:38.3	Folks, deep breath here.
0:40.9	We are so hard on ourselves.
0:43.3	Yes, you, even if we don't know each other, I can tell you for sure that you are hard on yourself.
0:48.3	And I am too.
0:50.1	We're always chasing these goals and sometimes we know why we're chasing them.
0:54.4	A lot of times though those goals come from external places, expectations set by other people.
1:01.0	And sometimes we work so hard day in and day out without ever stopping to ask, do I even want to be chasing this goal?
1:07.8	Am I going about it in the right way?
1:10.2	Instead, we just beat ourselves up and we think
1:13.3	that working harder is going to be the way to get to those goals. Well, I'm here to tell you,
1:18.4	first of all, that you are capable of achieving anything you want. And second, it might be time
1:24.2	to re-examine some of those goals. And maybe it would even be a useful thing to reexamine them in the context, not of why you need to accomplish them, but how?
1:35.8	How you work.
1:37.4	When you really understand how you work, you'll also have a much better understanding of what you want to achieve.
1:43.5	Our guest today is Anne Laura LeCompf. She is a
	...

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