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 2,221–2,280.
The Trial
Get as close to the surface of something fast-moving today as you can, the ground level, the detail, the direct contact, rather than operating above it.
Why it helps
Operating above a fast-moving situation means taking the full force of it. Getting flat against the ground level means the same flow barely touches you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Set up today so that waiting for the right moment costs you nothing, somewhere comfortable with your tools ready. Then act only in short bursts, and return to the waiting position after each one.
Why it helps
If waiting is uncomfortable you will act early just to stop waiting, and you spend your energy on the wrong moments. Making the wait cheap is what lets you hold out for the one that is worth it.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Position yourself today in the low-effort side of a boundary with the high-traffic side within reach, and hold there.
Why it helps
Sitting in the fast flow means spending everything to stay in place. The seam gets you the same traffic for almost no cost at all.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Sit in one spot for one minute without moving your body and use only head movement to scan the whole space. Name five details you had not noticed.
Why it helps
Trains focused observation and demonstrates how much information appears when movement stops.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Sit upright for one minute using the smallest movements possible to keep your posture balanced and relaxed.
Why it helps
One minute of balanced sitting, and a clear sense of how much your posture normally costs you.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Position yourself on the moving edge of a cycle today rather than at any fixed point in it, and move as the edge moves.
Why it helps
Holding a point on a cycle means you get the good conditions for a fraction of the year. Riding the edge means you are in them continuously.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Put a cushion in a back door, porch or balcony doorway that is in shade, and frame the camera so no neighbours, passers-by or house numbers are identifiable. Sit on the threshold facing out and stay still for ten minutes while a time-lapse behind you shows you and the view.
Why it helps
Ten minutes of cool calm with a view, between busier parts of the day.
12 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Sit or kneel at a doorway or hallway edge for eight minutes without fidget toys or screens, and note when you first feel footsteps or door movement through the floor before you stand.
Why it helps
You train noticing what travels through the ground before you commit.
8 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Find one sunny or warm spot and sit there for ten uninterrupted minutes without entertainment. Leave only when the timer ends.
Why it helps
Ten minutes of actual warmth and quiet, which is different from ten minutes of scrolling in a warm room.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Put your phone out of reach and sit for ten minutes with nothing playing and nothing to scroll. Stay there until the timer ends.
Why it helps
Ten minutes with nothing running, which is now an unusual enough experience to be worth having.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take a visible position today that you would normally avoid, specifically because it gives you a view you cannot get from anywhere discreet.
Why it helps
Staying discreet means you never see the whole field and keep being surprised. One exposed position gives you the view, and the exposure costs less than you think.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Pick one thing you have been meaning to do in a single big session. Today do it in six separate bursts of five minutes each, spread across the day, starting the first one in the next ten minutes. Each burst ends at five minutes whether or not it is going well.
Why it helps
Saving a task for a big session you never get is why it has sat there for months. Six five-minute bursts finish more than the session you keep postponing, and they fit the day you actually have.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Work out today what your apparent high performance on something is actually compensating for, and name the underlying requirement driving it.
Why it helps
High performance can mean your margin is thin rather than that you are doing well, and you will not notice until it slips. Naming the requirement tells you which.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Pick one group you are part of and one hour today. For that hour, send a short signal every ten minutes saying only where you are up to - six signals, no explanations, no questions. Ask one other person to do the same back. At the end, say what you knew that you would not have known.
Why it helps
Saving up an update until the end is why people make decisions without you and work gets duplicated. Short constant signals cost you seconds each and keep everyone pointing the same way.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Identify the single thing that actually produces most of your income, progress or wellbeing. Today, resize one other commitment to fit it: shrink a side project, decline something that competes with it, or move a fixed appointment out of its best hours. One real change, made today, not planned.
Why it helps
Keeping every commitment the same size as the one that actually pays you is why the important thing never gets your best hours. One resizing today frees the capacity you keep wishing for.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something that keeps slipping out of your system, the task, the item, the note, and resize the holder to fit it exactly rather than adding more force: the right-sized box, the correct field, the matching slot.
Why it helps
Gripping harder fails because the problem is fit, not force, and you are tired of re-securing it. A holder matched to the thing holds it with no effort at all.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick one simple subject in front of you, such as a mug, a plant or your own hand. Draw it three separate times on three sheets of paper, twenty seconds each on a visible timer, with no rubbing out and no going back to an earlier sheet.
Why it helps
Holding out for one perfect attempt means you rarely finish anything. Several quick versions show you what works faster than any single careful one, and you end with something real to choose from.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
A consenting helper floats five corks (or bottle caps) in a basin of water while you wear a blindfold. Sweep two fingertips in straight lines across the surface and pinch each cork the moment you touch it, dropping it into a bowl beside you.
Why it helps
A playful sensory game that shows how fast your touch reflex can be.
8 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take only the thin good layer off the top of something today rather than attempting to process the whole volume.
Why it helps
Processing the whole volume to get the good part costs you the day and most of it is waste. Skimming the top layer gets you the same value immediately.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Reapply one protection today that needs continuous renewal, and set it to recur rather than relying on remembering.
Why it helps
Protections needing continuous renewal fail on the day you forget, and that is the day it matters. Setting it to recur removes the memory entirely.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Lay a cardboard box on its side with its open end facing you, four metres away across a clear floor, and move anything breakable out of range. You have five throws in sixty seconds to send a tennis ball low and fast so it bounces off the floor at least twice before ending inside the box.
Why it helps
A quick burst of trick-shot skill that is instantly satisfying when it lands.
3 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Stick a note on a wall a hand's width above your tiptoe reach, on a non-slip floor with the ceiling well clear. Sink into a deep squat facing the wall with arms back and hold still; a helper claps once at an unannounced moment 5 to 20 seconds later, and you spring straight up and slap the note. You get up to five attempts to land one clean slap.
Why it helps
A quick, explosive challenge that shows how much spring a held load can give.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Rest one forearm palm-up on a table with three spots marked on it in washable pen, and wear a blindfold or sleep mask and headphones playing music, your other hand resting still on your thigh. A consenting helper rolls a die off camera to pick the moment and the spot, lightly touches that spot with the tip of a soft paintbrush and pulls it straight away, and you slap your free palm down over the touched spot as fast as you can; do five touches.
Why it helps
A sharp, funny reflex test of how fast and precisely touch alone can make you act.
3 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Sit at a table wearing an opaque blindfold and headphones playing music, with the fingertips of both hands spread flat on the tabletop beside four taped squares, a near and a far square just beyond each hand. A consenting helper drops a beanbag or rolled sock from arm's length and about twenty centimetres up into a randomly chosen square five times, withdrawing their hand straight after each release, and you slap the square you felt it land in within two seconds.
Why it helps
A fast party game that reveals how much your hands can feel through a tabletop.
4 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Arrange one repeating, unglamorous shared slot with the people you want to stay close to: the same walk, the same table, the same half hour. Make it the same place and time each occurrence, and hold the first one this week.
Why it helps
Friendships you keep by arranging each time quietly fade, because the arranging is the cost. A fixed repeating slot removes that cost for you entirely and the closeness maintains itself.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Rest or store something today somewhere your category does not, chosen because that is where the threats are not, and name the threat avoided.
Why it helps
Resting where your category rests puts you where everything that hunts it is looking. One unconventional location removes the whole class of threat.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
When activated, on a clear non-slip floor take four controlled shuffling steps backward while making exactly three finger snaps before stopping.
Why it helps
You turn courtship precision into one concrete experience with a visible finish.
5 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Draw round a mug's base on a large sheet of paper and mark a tick on both the mug and the outline. Scatter twenty grains of rice or lentils across the far side of the sheet, slide the mug out without lifting it, push every grain into one heap with its rim, and slide it home so both ticks line up.
Why it helps
A small precision game that rewards a steady hand.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Mark a start and a finish one metre apart with tape on a floorboard seam, tile grout line or rug stripe, and colour a paper or plastic straw with a marker to match the line, or pick one that already does. Lay the straw exactly along the line and, with one fingertip, ease it slowly from start to finish, then step back about two metres and see whether you can still find it.
Why it helps
A few minutes of absorbing, steady focus.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Step away from one thing you are protecting today before anything is near it, and draw the attention to somewhere else rather than standing over it.
Why it helps
Standing over the thing you are protecting is what shows everyone where it is. Leaving early and drawing attention elsewhere means nobody ever looks at it.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
A helper stands by an open box and leaves the room on trips whose length they set off camera by rolling a die (five seconds per spot), calling 'back' as they re-enter. From a line three metres away, you may cross, drop one token and get back behind the line only while they are out, until all five are in.
Why it helps
A funny, sharp timing game for two.
10 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Lie flat and still on a mat or rug with a folded paper tent resting on your belly. Breathe slowly and gently through your nose, never holding your breath, so the paper rises no more than sixty times in ten minutes, and stop at once if you feel dizzy.
Why it helps
Ten genuinely calming minutes and a slower heart to show for it.
12 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
In a dim room, wrap yourself snugly in blankets on a bed, sofa or floor mat, lie on your back with your knees drawn up and a small soft toy resting on your belly, and breathe slowly and gently through your nose for ten minutes. For the final minute, with a timer in view, keep to six or fewer full breaths, each a slow in and a slow out with no holding.
Why it helps
A genuinely calming ten minutes and a feel for how far you can slow yourself down.
12 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take one thing of yours that has grown past the place that protected it. Reduce it today until it fits back inside that shelter, and keep it there rather than finding a bigger exposed home.
Why it helps
Letting something grow past the arrangement that protected it means you then have to protect it yourself, forever. Shrinking it back inside the shelter costs you ambition and almost nothing else.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Reduce how threatening one thing of yours appears today so the people around it become willing to protect it rather than remove it.
Why it helps
Anything that looks threatening gets removed by the people nearest to it eventually, including yours. Reducing the perceived threat makes them protect it instead.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Deliberately keep one thing small enough today to fit a space nothing bigger could use, and refuse the expansion that would push it out of that space.
Why it helps
Letting something grow because growth sounds good pushes it out of the cheap safe space it was thriving in. Keeping it deliberately small keeps that space available to you.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Produce one tightly sequenced short performance today with limited means, rehearsing the order of beats rather than adding anything to it.
Why it helps
Adding more to compensate for small means gets you something cluttered that still reads as small. Precision in the order makes the same limited means land much larger.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Make several small shallow tests across one area today rather than one deep attempt, and move on from each as soon as it has given what it has.
Why it helps
Committing deeply to the first spot means you find out it was the wrong one after you cannot stop. Several shallow tests tell you where the food is for almost nothing.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Where an input is thin today, improve how much you extract from each unit of it rather than trying to get more of it.
Why it helps
Chasing more of a thin input means competing for something scarce. Extracting more from each unit you already get costs you nothing extra.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Shrink the area you cover for one purpose today and widen what you will accept within it, rather than travelling further for the preferred version.
Why it helps
Travelling further for the preferred version means most of your effort is transport. Shrinking the area and widening what counts gets you the same result nearby.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick one thing you are carrying through a space it does not fit, an overloaded bag, a bloated agenda or an oversized plan. Cut its width down today until it genuinely passes, and move it through once.
Why it helps
Carrying something too wide for the gap means you stall at every narrow point and decide the route is the problem. Cutting the width is usually cheaper than the detours you keep making.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Drop one elaborate tracking or monitoring method today for something that is not actually moving, and use the simple direct check instead.
Why it helps
Running elaborate monitoring on something that does not move costs you daily effort for no information. One direct check gives you the same answer.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Accept today that a method you use to find your own things works on other people's too, and plan for the traffic running both ways.
Why it helps
Assuming your retrieval method only works for you means being surprised when things go missing. Planning for two-way traffic makes the losses survivable.
1 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Stop speculative searching today. Before you open or dig into anything, name the specific signal telling you something is there, and only commit effort where you can name one.
Why it helps
Digging speculatively feels like diligence and spends most of your day on empty holes. Requiring a named signal first means almost everything you open has something in it.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Pick one kind of opportunity you always hear about too late and set up the earliest possible signal for it today: the alert, the person who always knows, the feed, the subscription. Make it reach you before the general announcement.
Why it helps
Hearing about things when everyone else does means you are always competing from behind. One earlier signal costs an afternoon to set up and changes which opportunities are still open when you arrive.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Draw a dot near one long edge of each of five long paper strips. Rest your forearm on a table and hold an open peg just past the table edge; a helper slowly slides each strip along the table with the dotted edge overhanging, so it passes between the open jaws, and you wait, still, and pinch once when the dot is between them.
Why it helps
A calm focus game that rewards patience over speed.
8 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Wear dark clothes against a dark or plain background, tuck one bright scarf or sticker at your throat, and stand on a doormat as your stage. A consenting helper claps, or a random-interval timer beeps, five times at unpredictable moments within one minute; on each signal, snap both arms up so your hands meet above your head in a ring within one second, swing your head left and right once, then drop your arms and wait still.
Why it helps
A quick, silly jolt of reaction and showmanship that wakes the whole body.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
When this goes off, close every window, tab and app open on your screen within ten seconds and turn your phone face down. Sit for twenty seconds with nothing open. Then reopen only the single thing you actually need next.
Why it helps
Having everything open feels productive until it swamps you. Being able to shut it all in seconds and come back to one thing gives you a clean restart whenever your attention starts to fray.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Tie a sock to about two metres of string. Your helper stands to the side behind a chair at the far end of a clear room or lawn, with a tape stop line between you that you may not cross, and twitches the sock unpredictably on your side of it. Set a fifteen-second timer, dash from the start line, snatch the sock and get back over the start line before the beep, resting twenty seconds between three dives.
Why it helps
A fast, focused burst that rewards aim over panic.
5 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Sit at a table in a normally lit room wearing a sleep mask. Each round, a helper places a coin at a random spot and takes their hands off the table, then says 'look': lift the mask for a one-second glimpse, pull it back down and snatch the coin; a miss simply starts a new round, and all five coins must be caught within ninety seconds of the first 'look'.
Why it helps
A thrilling memory-and-reaction burst that trains fast visual locking.
4 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Sit on a low stool in a clear room. A helper drops single tissues from head height at random spots within two steps of you. Launch, catch each tissue before it touches the floor, and sit back down before the next is dropped; a missed tissue is simply dropped again.
Why it helps
A playful reaction game with a steady, repeatable rhythm.
8 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Have someone drop five crumpled paper balls one at a time from shoulder height and catch each before it reaches the floor.
Why it helps
You turn branch illusion into one concrete, visible experience instead of an abstract idea.
5 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Stand in a clear space with your arms tucked in while a consenting helper two metres away gently tosses a rolled pair of socks past your side, never at you, five times at unannounced moments within one minute. Shoot one arm out to full reach and grab each one-handed out of the air.
Why it helps
A quick reflex game that wakes you up and makes everyone laugh.
3 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
A consenting helper sits with eyes closed and a clothes peg clipped to one sleeve while you hide behind furniture about three metres away. On go, you have thirty seconds to slip out, unclip the peg and return to your hiding place; if the helper hears you and points at you, you are caught.
Why it helps
Thirty seconds of silent, giggling suspense and a real test of light footwork.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Bend one arm so the elbow points forward and the hand is beside your ear. Balance three coins in a small stack on the flat of the forearm near the elbow. Hold completely still for ten seconds. Then drop the elbow and snatch the coins out of the air with the same hand in one movement. One attempt only.
Why it helps
When a chance comes, people who have been fidgeting are slow to act. Practising stillness followed by one committed move trains you to be quick exactly when it matters and calm the rest of the time.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
A consenting partner rests one open hand palm-up on a table with a scrunched paper ball in it, ready to close it gently, never grabbing, the instant they see you strike. Holding plastic or silicone-tipped tongs, ease the tips slowly to a finger's length from the ball, then strike and lift it out; you get five attempts in sixty seconds and need three clean snatches.
Why it helps
A fast, laughing reflex duel that sharpens timing and hand control in under a minute.
3 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Lay a three-metre line of masking tape on a clear floor and place three rolled socks about an arm's length off the line, alternating sides. Holding a broom or long tube level across your body as a balance aid, walk the line heel to toe, lean out to pick up each sock, and reach the end without either foot leaving the tape.
Why it helps
A playful balance drill that works your core and footwork.
8 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Identify today who is using something you built without having built anything, and decide explicitly whether to allow it.
Why it helps
Anything expensive you build attracts people who use it without contributing, and you notice late. Deciding explicitly stops the resentment.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Leave the room while a helper uses a cotton bud to dab one food scent (vanilla, coffee, cinnamon or citrus; no essential oils, chilli or cleaning products) into one of six identical cups, sticks a small sticker under that cup only, washes their hands and shuffles the cups into a row. Return blindfolded, sniff each cup in order from about 5 cm above it and tap your pick, then take off the blindfold and turn the tapped cup over; if there is no sticker, leave again for a fresh shuffle and repeat in the same clip until you find it.
Why it helps
A playful test that shows how much your nose can do when it is the only sense you have.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Size one capability today for the largest case rather than the typical one, and change what surrounds it to accommodate that rather than trimming it to fit.
Why it helps
Sizing for the typical case means the rare large one, which is the one that matters, finds you short. Building around the big case costs you room and never leaves you stuck.
2 minDifficulty 2
