Each Trial is a strategy a real species uses, turned into something you can run yourself in about ten minutes. Each card says what to do and why it helps.
What each Trial asks you to do, and what it does for you. Reading a Trial needs no account. 3,017 Trials across 2,325 species. Showing 1,141–1,200.
The Trial
Check today whether one concealment of yours has to work against two different kinds of observer, and test it against both.
Why it helps
Testing concealment against one kind of observer means it fails against the other without warning you. Checking both takes twice as long and actually works.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Choose one large soft target and hit it once with a soft thrown object after a short setup. You get one committed attempt, not repeated corrections.
Why it helps
Trains decisive commitment under a one-shot constraint and gives a clear success-or-miss result.
15 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Put a soft toy on the floor two steps from you and six steps from a consenting rival, next to a shelf or wardrobe top you can reach while standing flat-footed. On a shout of "go" from either of you, grab the prize and set it on the high surface before the rival lays a hand on it; play three rounds.
Why it helps
A fast, loud little contest that shows how much a short start is worth.
4 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Pick one small area you will take complete responsibility for, a shelf, a page, a process step, and walk it end to end today, fixing everything wrong in it. Then tell someone it is yours.
Why it helps
Spreading thin across everything means nothing is ever actually right. One small patch covered completely gives you somewhere that is genuinely sorted, and people start trusting you with more.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take an exposed situation you cannot leave and improvise cover from what is already to hand today: the screen moved, the hat, the headphones, the thing placed between you and it. Use whatever is nearby rather than acquiring anything.
Why it helps
Leaving the exposed situation is usually not an option, so you endure it uncovered. Improvising cover from what is already lying around takes minutes and makes the same place tolerable.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pick the single variable that matters in one situation today, hold only that, and explicitly let go of the others you were also trying to control.
Why it helps
Trying to hold every variable means you hold none of them well and the important one slips. Naming the one that matters and releasing the rest keeps you where you need to be.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Sit on the floor with your forearms resting on your knees. Lay five small leaves or paper scraps along your forearms and the backs of your hands, start an eight-minute timer and stay settled until it ends.
Why it helps
Eight minutes of genuine stillness, with a gentle built-in check that you managed it.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Arrange five pencils crosswise in one hand, then add a sixth without dropping the first five.
Why it helps
You turn cliff fellowship into one concrete experience with a visible finish.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something you have been attacking generally and today find its weakest point, brace it, and apply small repeated force exactly there.
Why it helps
Attacking something generally means most of your force goes nowhere and you get tired. Finding the weak point first means small pressure opens it.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Take a safeguard you apply at one point only, the final check, the one gate, and distribute it through the whole process today so every stage carries it.
Why it helps
A check at one point catches problems only after everything downstream is already wrong, which lands on you. Distributing it means each stage catches its own and nothing accumulates.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take a situation where you were about to use the sharp option, the ultimatum, the escalation, the hard email, and instead hold the position steadily with no force: restate it calmly, keep it in place, do not escalate.
Why it helps
Reaching for the sharp option gets compliance and costs the relationship you needed afterwards. Holding steadily without escalating usually gets the same result with nothing broken.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take one decision you have already made and keep reopening. Write it down as a single sentence with a date, say out loud that it is closed, and put the paper somewhere you will see it. For the rest of today, every time it comes back into your head, read the sentence and move on without debating it.
Why it helps
Reopening a settled decision costs you the same energy as making it, over and over, and the answer never changes. Closing it in writing gives you back the attention it was eating.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Hold a sheet of cardboard or stiff paper in gentle fan airflow and find an angle that lets it resist or redirect the flow with the least wobble. Keep fingers clear of the fan and use no sharp material.
Why it helps
You turn a large surface into a steering tool and feel how orientation changes force.
6 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Hold the tip of a pencil above a coin-sized circle for thirty seconds without touching the surface, then immediately move it to a second marked circle.
Why it helps
You turn hover balance into one concrete, visible experience instead of an abstract idea.
5 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Choose the most prominent seat or standing place overlooking a space you spend time in, take it, and stay there for ten minutes doing nothing but being there. Do not hide behind a screen or a book.
Why it helps
You find out what a space feels like from the seat everybody can see, which is rarely the one you take.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Choose the single best position you hold in one area, a time slot, a seat or a role. Stop drifting from it today, take what comes past from there, and decline one thing that would pull you off it.
Why it helps
Drifting between several decent positions means you defend none of them and lose the best one to whoever stayed. Holding one and declining a pull off it is what keeps the good water yours.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Fill a bowl with warm tap water and put in a kitchen, bath or aquarium thermometer. Check it every three minutes for fifteen minutes and correct any drift by adding or removing folded towel layers over the bowl or stirring in a spoonful of warmer or cooler water.
Why it helps
A surprisingly engaging lesson in how insulation and small corrections hold a temperature.
17 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Choose one seat by a window with a view of sky, trees or garden and set your phone to one side of you, at a three-quarter angle, so a timelapse shows your hands, your head and a clock, with the view outside angled away from neighbours' houses. Sit there for ten minutes with your hands empty on your lap or the armrest, letting your eyes scan the view while your body stays settled.
Why it helps
Ten quiet minutes that rest the body while keeping the mind alert.
12 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pick one piece of help that has been offered to you and that you keep working around. Go to it today, stay still while it happens, and do not assist or redirect it at any point.
Why it helps
Staying busy while someone tries to help you means the help never actually lands and they stop offering. Holding still for a few minutes gets you maintenance you cannot do yourself.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Before committing to a context today, check it actually suits what you bring, and choose a different one if it does not. Pick the surface deliberately rather than taking the first.
Why it helps
Taking the first available context means your strengths often read as weaknesses there. One check before committing puts you somewhere the same qualities simply work.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Stay completely still and unspent while one situation holds today, then commit everything at once the moment it stops holding, with nothing held back.
Why it helps
Spending a little the whole time something holds leaves you with nothing when it breaks, which is the moment you needed it. Holding everything back makes the sprint possible.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Pick one thing you have been responding to in small nervous increments. Hold entirely still on it today until the real moment, then act completely in one move with nothing held back.
Why it helps
Responding in small increments gives away your position and commits you before you are ready, so each step costs you leverage. Stillness then one complete move keeps both the surprise and the force.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Keep yourself clear of one situation today, sensing it at arm's length through something expendable before any part of you commits.
Why it helps
Putting yourself into a situation to assess it means you are in it before you know. An expendable extension tells you the same thing at no risk.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pick one position worth holding, a stance, a price, an availability window, and hold it unchanged for the whole of today without renegotiating with yourself.
Why it helps
Positions you renegotiate with yourself hourly are not positions, and everyone can tell. Holding one unchanged for a day is usually all it takes for the situation to move toward you.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
In one group thing today, stop waiting for direction. Set your pace and position from whoever is immediately next to you in the work, keep that relationship steady, and do not ask anyone in charge.
Why it helps
Waiting for direction before you move means the group stalls on whoever is slowest to decide. Taking your position from the person next to you keeps the whole thing moving with nobody steering.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Name the part of your situation that could release the pressure if exposed, a conversation, a number or a limit. Expose that specific part today rather than changing anything else.
Why it helps
Carrying pressure in a body built for something else means you overheat slowly and treat it as normal. Exposing the one part that can shed it is usually the whole fix.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take a space you keep losing, the time slot, the surface, the remit, and make it genuinely not worth taking today: the standing booking, the stated cost, the condition attached.
Why it helps
Defending a space by occupying it means being there constantly or losing it. Making it unattractive to take means it stays yours while you are elsewhere.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Be audibly present in one thing you hold today, asserting it at intervals rather than waiting to defend it when someone questions it.
Why it helps
Waiting to defend what is yours until someone questions it means arguing from behind every time. Being audibly present in it means the question does not come up.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take direct hold of the leading edge of something you are letting run today, so you are controlling it rather than merely slowing its descent.
Why it helps
Letting something run while only slowing it means you arrive wherever it falls. Holding the leading edge means you choose where it lands.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Identify one thing where too much and too little are both bad for you, effort, contact or intensity. Work out where the narrow band actually is today, stay inside it, and note each time you drift out.
Why it helps
Treating something as needing more of itself means you overshoot into the other failure, then undershoot back. Naming both edges gives you a band to hold rather than a direction to push.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Instead of setting something up and leaving it, hold the mechanism yourself today, ready and aimed, and deploy it on one specific thing.
Why it helps
A trap left running catches only what walks into it. Holding the mechanism yourself means you catch the thing you actually wanted.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
In the next group situation today where everyone is half-deciding, take the single decision channel yourself for ten minutes: say out loud that you are calling it, make the calls, and do not reopen any of them. At the end, hand the channel back explicitly.
Why it helps
Groups where nobody holds the decision channel stall, and you lose hours to half-made calls. Taking it openly for ten minutes and handing it back costs you nothing in goodwill and ends the drift.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Hold one configuration for a long stretch today without adjusting it, and resist each improvement that occurs to you while the stretch is running.
Why it helps
Adjusting your approach every time a better idea arrives means you never find out whether any of them worked. Holding one for a long stretch gives you a real answer.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something currently propped up in several places and reduce it to one solid anchor, removing every other support while it still holds: a shelf, a plant, a cable, a plan. Show all the props, their removal, and the thing holding on one.
Why it helps
Things propped up in five places look stable and fail in five ways. Reducing it to one anchor that genuinely holds makes it simpler to maintain and tells you immediately if the anchor is bad.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take one thing you currently share responsibility for in a vague way and claim the whole of it today, out loud, with the others: say you will own all of it, and let something else go to make room.
Why it helps
Shared vague ownership means nobody drives it and everyone feels guilty, you included. Taking the whole of one thing and dropping something else is the only version where it actually gets finished.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Hold completely still today until something is much closer than is comfortable, having first confirmed you could not win the chase anyway.
Why it helps
Moving early when you cannot win the chase hands them an easy trail to follow. Holding still is uncomfortable and most of them never find you.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Find one thing you are holding up by constant effort - a routine, an appearance, a commitment that only works while you push. Redesign it today so it holds with no effort at all: remove the moving part, lower the standard to one that needs no maintenance, or hand it to whoever it actually belongs to. Make the change before the day ends.
Why it helps
Anything that stands only while you keep pushing will fall over the week you are ill or busy, and you will read that as your failure. Rebuilding it to need nothing from you ends that cycle.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Reduce the cost of holding your current position to almost nothing today, and then hold it without any activity.
Why it helps
A position that costs you something to hold forces activity to justify it. Making it free lets you stay much bigger while doing much less.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Build one small enclosed warm pocket somewhere in your home where you can actually rest - a chair with blankets round three sides, a corner with a curtain, a nest of cushions. It must be warmer and more enclosed than the room around it. Then spend fifteen minutes inside it doing nothing.
Why it helps
Resting in the middle of a cold open room is why rest never feels like rest to you. Twenty minutes building an enclosed warm pocket changes what every evening afterwards feels like.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Write down an ordered sequence of three responses to a recurring problem today, cheapest first, and use only the first one.
Why it helps
Reaching for your strongest response first means you spend it on small problems and have nothing left. A written sequence means the cheap one usually suffices.
2 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Bend a paperclip into a small hook. Prop a board or tray as a gentle ramp, let a toy truck roll down it, and as it passes, hook the paperclip onto the truck so it rides off the end of the ramp and along the floor. You have three passes.
Why it helps
A fiddly, fast challenge that makes a clean catch feel huge.
4 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Drop a key ring into a tall plastic vase, jar or bottle (or a sturdy vase standing on a towel) that your hand cannot reach into. Start a ninety-second timer, fetch one item from a drawer or box where it was already kept, such as a wooden spoon, chopstick, pipe cleaner, paperclip or a whole uncut coat hanger, bend it by hand if you need to, and hook the ring out.
Why it helps
A small, satisfying puzzle win and a reminder of what your drawers can already do.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Keep the means of taking one thing out of sight today until the moment of contact, and bring nothing out in advance.
Why it helps
Showing what you intend to do before you are in contact means the thing moves away and you never get near it. Keeping it out of sight until contact means one attempt works.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Match your replacement rate today to the wear rate of a demanding situation, measuring both and increasing replacement if it falls short.
Why it helps
Working ground that wears you faster than you recover means you break without noticing the arithmetic. Comparing the two rates tells you what to change.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Move on the first faint cue for one thing today without identifying what it was, and accept the moves that turn out to have been unnecessary.
Why it helps
Waiting to identify what the first faint sign was means the thing has already happened to you. Moving on the cue costs you some wasted jumps and nothing else.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Restructure one contest today so the two sides interlock on an agreed measure rather than collide, and let it resolve.
Why it helps
A contest built on collision damages both of you whoever wins. One that interlocks settles rank just as clearly and nobody is injured.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Work out today where attacks on you actually arrive from and point one defence there rather than forward.
Why it helps
Pointing your defences forward while attacks come from behind means they never help you. Checking the evidence takes an hour and changes where you aim.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Give one conspicuous thing of yours a physiological or practical job today, so it earns its keep beyond being seen.
Why it helps
A conspicuous thing with no practical job is the first thing anyone questions, including you. Giving it a real function settles that permanently.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Make the search phase almost free today and then deliberately reject everything that is not the exact thing you want.
Why it helps
An expensive search forces you to take something to justify the time. Making it almost free lets you hold out for the one you actually wanted.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pick one opportunity you have skipped because there was no proper way in, no formal process or no invitation. Engage with it today without one, do the short thing you came for, and leave straight after.
Why it helps
Skipping opportunities that have no proper way in means you only ever get the ones everyone else can also reach. Going in without one costs you some effort and almost no competition.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Hover over one decision today until the target is genuinely fixed, then commit in a single movement rather than approaching gradually.
Why it helps
Approaching a decision gradually gives everyone time to move and you still miss. Fixing it first and committing once lands it.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Place yourself today where the thing you want already passes and stay there without searching, naming why that spot is where it passes.
Why it helps
Searching for something scarce burns more than the thing is worth and you still miss it. Sitting where it already passes costs nothing and eventually it comes to you.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Where you are heading for a clash today, state your position once, find out where the other party's is, and then deliberately move away from it.
Why it helps
Defending a boundary by presence costs you everything and still leaves gaps. Saying where you are once and moving away from them avoids the fight entirely.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
When one window is genuinely closed today, spend that time at near-zero cost alongside others rather than finding something marginal to do.
Why it helps
Filling a closed window with marginal work means you arrive at the open one already tired. Spending it at near-zero cost with other people is what funds the dash.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Lie on your front on a soft floor with cushions piled over your back and legs, your face and head fully uncovered. A consenting partner rolls a large soft or exercise ball past you three times at unpredictable moments; burst out and hug it to a stop before it crosses a tape line a metre beyond you.
Why it helps
A big, silly burst of effort that rewards patience with one total commitment.
4 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Hum a steady low note, then, keeping the hum going, shape your lips and whistle a higher note over it. Practise until you can hold both together for three seconds, then try moving the whistle while the hum holds.
Why it helps
A genuinely odd new vocal trick you can show off for years.
15 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Share ordinary non-urgent information continuously with your group today rather than only communicating when something is wrong.
Why it helps
Only speaking when something is wrong means every message from you is alarming and people brace for it. Continuous ordinary contact removes that entirely.
2 minDifficulty 21 completed
The Trial
Find the steepest climb you can reach on foot today - a hill, a stairwell, a bank. Pick one single movement you can repeat identically and use only that: same step height, same two-footed landing, same hand placement. No pausing to find a better way up. Reach the top using nothing but that repeated move.
Why it helps
Looking for an easier route up is how you stall at the bottom of hard things. Committing to one move you can repeat without thinking gets you up ground that defeated your cleverness.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Find a place where the thing you want is already concentrated by someone else's effort, the event, the thread, the list, the shop, and position yourself there today rather than gathering it yourself.
Why it helps
Gathering the thing yourself takes months and you get a worse version. Standing where someone else has already concentrated it costs you an evening.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Find the boundary between two things you work across, two teams, two tools, two subjects, and do one piece of work that belongs to the boundary itself rather than either side.
Why it helps
Working inside one area means you compete with everyone who lives there. The boundary between two is usually unowned and your work there is immediately valuable to both.
2 minDifficulty 2
