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 2,341–2,400.
The Trial
Take something that keeps slipping or sliding, literally or otherwise, and change the contact surface rather than applying more force: the grip tape, the clearer first line, the shorter handle, the better handoff.
Why it helps
Applying more force to something that slips wears you out and keeps slipping. Changing the contact point itself usually fixes it permanently in a few minutes.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Stand a pencil upright in a lump of clay on a green cloth and lean or stack twigs round it to make a tower at least a hand high. Around its base, arrange small objects in separate piles by colour, at least three colours.
Why it helps
A small piece of design practice that trains your eye for order.
20 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Collect five useful things you will need later and stack or arrange them in one obvious ready-to-grab place.
Why it helps
Converts a burst of preparation into less friction and fewer forgotten items later.
6 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something you are holding awkwardly across several supports and rearrange it onto one, neatly: consolidate the files to one place, the commitments to one day, the tools to one spot. Do the rearranging today.
Why it helps
Spread across several supports, nothing is stable and everything needs watching. Consolidating onto one, arranged properly, is what lets you stop thinking about it.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Offset each layer of something you are stacking today so no layer blocks the one beneath it, and check from below.
Why it helps
Stacking layers directly means everything beneath the top one gets nothing. Offsetting each slightly costs you no space and all of them work.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Place a soft object on a table. Stack three to five soft pads, cloths, or cardboard sheets over it as layered cover. Tap the outer layer once lightly, then add one more pad only if the stack shifted, keeping the underside hidden for ten minutes.
Why it helps
You prepare layered protection ahead of time so small probes cost little.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Make one batch of simple wrap filling, such as tinned beans with microwave rice, and three tortillas. Assemble and plate one wrap to eat now, box and label the second wrap's fillings unassembled for the fridge, and assemble the third, wrap it tightly, label it and put it on a freezer shelf.
Why it helps
One short cooking session that buys you two future meals.
20 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Choose one task for tomorrow and stage every material it needs using only things you already have.
Why it helps
You turn final splendor into one concrete, visible experience instead of an abstract idea.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take a situation heading toward a response you would regret and give one clear explicit warning today instead, stated plainly before anything else happens.
Why it helps
Skipping to the response you cannot take back costs you far more than the problem did. One plain warning first usually ends it, and you still have the response in reserve.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Find something already in motion near you today, a queue forming, a colleague's meeting, a market stall packing down, and place yourself beside it for ten minutes, taking only what its movement throws up. Add no effort of your own to create the disturbance.
Why it helps
Generating your own momentum for every opportunity is exhausting and most of your effort goes into the stirring, not the catch. Standing beside motion that already exists costs you nothing.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Put yourself today in the one place the thing you want has to pass through, and stay there without moving for ten minutes: the corridor, the kitchen, the inbox. Act only when it arrives.
Why it helps
Chasing what you want around means you arrive everywhere just after it. Standing in the one place it has to come through gets it delivered to you.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
First press down on one paper cup with your hand until it crumples. Then set at least twenty sturdy upright cups in a tight grid on a hard floor, lay a flat board or tray over them no more than 15 cm off the floor, and press hard on it with both hands; add more cups until that press crushes none. Then, with a partner holding your hand for balance, step on gently and stand for five seconds.
Why it helps
A surprising feat of balance that makes weight-spreading impossible to forget.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Place two folded towels apart on the floor and set a rigid tray across them so it spans the soft gap without touching the floor between.
Why it helps
You turn wetland build into one concrete experience with a visible finish.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Find a safe spot and stand for three minutes on the smallest possible footprint — one foot, the balls of both feet, a narrow board — with nothing to hold. Keep the contact area as small as you can for the whole time.
Why it helps
Three minutes that work your balance harder than a longer walk, in the space of a doormat.
4 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Find out where something valuable is being discarded near you, surplus, offcuts or abandoned work. Position yourself there today and take one real thing out of what is being dropped.
Why it helps
Competing for the thing up in the canopy means fighting people with better reach for the same item. Standing where it is dropped gets you a share of the same resource with nobody contesting it.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
After one genuinely immersive block of work today, do not move straight to the next thing: stand, stop, and spend ten minutes doing nothing until you have actually dried out. The recovery is scheduled before the work starts.
Why it helps
Stacking deep work back to back means the second block runs on a tired brain and undoes the first. Ten scheduled minutes of nothing leaves you with two good blocks instead.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Start one thing today entirely from nothing, with no existing setup, template or carried-over material, and get it to its first working state alone before involving anyone.
Why it helps
Adapting something existing feels efficient and quietly limits the new thing to the shape of the old one. Starting from nothing once a year is how you get something that is actually different.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take one thing you want ready for a known future date. Work out how long it genuinely needs, count backwards from that date, and begin the first step today if the backwards count says today is the day.
Why it helps
Starting things when you feel like it means you are ready either too late to matter or so early that the work goes stale. Counting backwards from the date is what makes you arrive on time.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
At a gathering or shared space, start one short conversation with someone standing at the edge rather than the centre of activity.
Why it helps
One genuinely good conversation, from the part of the room most people skip.
5 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Choose one limit that is about to be crossed: an extra job, a borrowed item not returned, a plan that does not suit you. With the other person's agreement to be included, tell them your limit in one plain sentence, in person or on a call, without apologising or explaining at length.
Why it helps
Hints get missed and then resentment builds. Saying your limit in one plain sentence early, before it is crossed, saves you the bigger argument later and shows people where your edges are.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
During a normal conversation, casually state one unusual strength or skill you genuinely have and continue the conversation without downplaying it. Do not turn it into a joke.
Why it helps
Practises owning unusual strengths without apology and makes self-confidence more natural in conversation.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Make each attempt at one thing today cost seconds and return to the same position between, so a low success rate still pays.
Why it helps
Expensive attempts mean a low success rate ruins you. Making each one cost seconds means you can afford to miss most of them.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Name one way you are more exposed than usual right now. Keep working today but shorten your radius, stay close to safe ground, and refuse the one thing that would take you furthest out.
Why it helps
Treating exposure as a reason to stop entirely costs you the whole period, and treating it as nothing gets you caught. Shortening the radius keeps you producing at a risk you can survive.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
When something approaches one thing today, hold completely still rather than adjusting or moving it, and let being overlooked do the work.
Why it helps
Adjusting something the moment attention comes near it is what makes people look properly at your work. Holding still means they pass over it without registering it.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
When something disturbs you today, do not move into the open to deal with it: stay in the densest cover you have, a known room, a known routine, and hold there for ten minutes before responding.
Why it helps
Breaking cover the moment something startles you means you are visible and reacting at the same time. Ten minutes in familiar ground gives you a choice instead.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Choose one comfortable spot and stay completely still for one full minute while the world continues around you. Move only when the minute ends.
Why it helps
Trains patience, bodily control and the ability to remain grounded while stimulation continues.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Sit comfortably for one minute with hands relaxed and body still, noticing where warmth is retained or lost.
Why it helps
One minute of stillness, and a surprisingly precise map of where your own warmth sits.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Position one thing today where something useful already flows past, and stop the collecting trips you were making to gather it.
Why it helps
Going out to collect things means the gathering is the whole cost and it stops when you do. Sitting in a flow that already exists keeps supplying you while you do nothing.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pack a small kit, such as water, a snack, a book and a blanket, and choose one comfortable spot. Settle in, start a fifteen-minute timer and stay in place without getting up or fetching anything, using only the kit until the timer ends.
Why it helps
A properly uninterrupted quarter of an hour, which is rarer than it should be.
15 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Stay where you are today and send something you produced out to travel instead: the message, the sample, the person, the file.
Why it helps
Travelling to every opportunity yourself means you reach a handful. Sending what you made means it goes further than you ever would.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Name one thing you step away from in its quiet season and have to re-establish each time you come back. Do one small act of holding it today, during the quiet, rather than waiting for the busy part to start.
Why it helps
Leaving something during its quiet months means you spend the first weeks of every busy season just getting back to where you were. Holding it through the cold is what puts you ahead when it matters.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Contribute something substantial today to a group effort you are already part of, rather than starting your own version of it elsewhere.
Why it helps
Leaving to start your own version when there is nowhere to put it means years of effort and nothing standing. Contributing where you already are gets you a share of something working.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Gather a few handfuls of soft weeds you can name as safe, such as dandelion or chickweed, grass clippings from your own garden, or outer vegetable leaves, never nettles, giant hogweed, anything that irritates skin or anything you cannot identify; tear them up and pack them into a large jar. Cover with water, weigh the leaves down with a clean stone, set the lid on loosely, label the jar 'plant feed – not for drinking' and leave it outside out of the sun, away from children and pets, for a few weeks; dilute about one part to ten with water before use.
Why it helps
A free liquid feed for houseplants or a garden in a few weeks.
15 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Clear the floor and agree a code: one tongue click means turn left, two clicks mean turn right, a long call means stop. While your partner wears a blindfold and headphones and is turned away, a third person places a fruit bowl somewhere in the room off camera; then, with the headphones off and you standing still, steer your partner to it using only the code until they pick up a piece of fruit.
Why it helps
A funny trust game that shows how precise your instructions really are.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Move toward where something will be rather than where it is today, working out the interception point before you start.
Why it helps
Chasing where something currently is means always arriving behind it. Working out where it will be gets you there first with less effort.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Increase your clearance over one class of obstruction today so you pass above it, rather than building force to push through it.
Why it helps
Pushing through obstructions costs you energy at every one of them. Clearance means they stop being obstructions at all for you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Spread rice in a baking tray and drop five dried beans on its surface. Rest your hand on the rice and walk your index and middle fingers across it one step at a time; to take a bean, pinch it between thumb and index finger while the middle fingertip stays down on the rice.
Why it helps
A slow, absorbing hand-control exercise that calms busy thoughts.
6 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Draw a large, bold eye on a sticky note or a piece of paper. Fix it to the exact spot where you act without deciding, such as the biscuit tin lid, the phone charger or the fridge door. Then walk up to it the way you normally would, and stop for one slow breath when you see the eye before deciding what to do.
Why it helps
You act on autopilot many times a day and wonder where the time or the snacks went. A visible mark gives you one second to choose, which is often all you need to choose differently.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take a condition that normally stops work, the interruption, the mess, the uncertainty, and design today's approach to use it rather than resist it: short bursts between interruptions, drafts that benefit from mess.
Why it helps
Designing around a condition that is always present means your method only works on rare good days. Designing to use it means every day is a working day.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Make one arrangement today both rigid against pressure and jointed enough to still move, and test both properties.
Why it helps
Rigid without joints means you cannot move, and jointed without rigidity means you are not protected. Both together is the only version that works for you.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take one thing of yours that flexes so much it transmits nothing, a request, a rule or a deadline. Stiffen it today, remove the give, and use the stiffened version once.
Why it helps
A request or a rule with give in it absorbs all your force and moves nothing, and you repeat it until you give up. Removing the give is what makes the same words do something.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick a spot you can hold for ten minutes with one single exit arranged - a chair by a door, a step above a path. Stay completely still for the ten minutes. If at any point something requires you to leave, take the one arranged exit immediately and do not negotiate.
Why it helps
Without a decided exit you argue yourself into staying in situations that have already gone wrong. One arranged escape lets you hold still much longer, because leaving costs you no thought.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Work quietly on one thing today with no updates, no progress notes and no visible activity, then make a single clear announcement when it is done. Nothing in between.
Why it helps
Narrating progress invites opinions while the thing is still soft and costs you the time you were reporting on. Silence then one clear announcement gets a cleaner reaction and more work done.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
In one situation today where you would normally react immediately, hold completely still instead, taking no action at all, and only move if the situation actually comes to you.
Why it helps
Reacting straight away is what pulls you into things that would have passed you by. Holding still costs nothing and removes most of them.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Stir one stagnant pile today, a backlog, a drawer, a dataset, by moving through it blind rather than scanning for a specific thing, and take whatever surfaces the moment it does. Decide nothing in advance.
Why it helps
Scanning a backlog for the item you expect means you keep missing what is actually in there. Stirring blind and taking what surfaces clears it far faster for you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Poke pairs of small holes with a pencil tip along the edges of two large leaves or leaf-shaped pieces of paper. Push a short piece of wool through each pair of holes and fluff both ends so it grips as a rivet, closing the sides into a pocket, then hang it up and drop in a small ball.
Why it helps
A delicate craft challenge that makes a real little hanging pocket.
18 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Choose one spot to rest and gather what you will want within arm's reach first: a drink, a snack, a blanket and something to read. Then settle in for fifteen minutes and live only off what you brought.
Why it helps
A properly uninterrupted rest, because nothing needs fetching halfway through.
17 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Choose a nest spot, such as a sofa with an empty plate, and a partner who agrees to take part. Take turns making single trips to the kitchen for one snack item each while the other stays with the plate, swapping roles after every trip until the plate holds six items, then share it.
Why it helps
A shared snack that doubles as a small practice in covering for each other.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
In a fridge, cupboard or shelf unit you share with others, clear one section that is yours. Take out everything of yours, wipe the section, then put back only your own items in order, adding anything you need from your shopping. Leave everyone else's sections exactly as they were.
Why it helps
You avoid arguments in a shared home when everyone knows which part is theirs to keep. Looking after your own share, without policing anyone else's, keeps the space working and the peace intact.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Release one thing today in a form others can take and pass on, and deliberately do not track or control where it goes next.
Why it helps
Controlling where your work goes next caps it at how far you can personally carry it. Letting it be taken moves it further than you ever would.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Handle something quietly and invisibly today, and switch to loud and persistent only if the quiet version is actually discovered.
Why it helps
Going loud first means you create attention you then have to manage. Staying quiet usually ends it, and the loud option is still there if it does not.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
End each stretch of work today at a clean point you chose rather than wherever you were interrupted, and note the point before stopping.
Why it helps
Stopping wherever you were interrupted means paying a reorientation cost every time you come back. Choosing the point costs you one minute.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Stop everything for five minutes today: no screen, no talking, no task, nothing continuing in the background. Then restart the exact thing you were doing from where you left it.
Why it helps
Taking a half-break with a screen still running means you neither rest nor work and the task feels worse afterwards. A total stop gives you the restart back.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pick one thing you keep preparing for by taking in more, more reading, more advice or more supplies. Stop the intake completely today and spend the next stretch using only what you already have.
Why it helps
Taking in more as preparation feels like progress and is usually the thing stopping you from starting. Closing the intake forces you to find out that what you already have is enough.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Walk one route you take regularly today and stop at least five times to look properly into something you normally pass, then say afterwards what you found that you had not noticed before.
Why it helps
Covering ground at speed means you pass the same hidden things every day without ever opening one. Five real stops on a route you already walk show you what has been sitting there unnoticed.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Before the busy stretch ahead, deliberately stop taking anything new on, and clear what is already in progress instead. Decline or defer the next incoming thing out loud today.
Why it helps
Saying yes right before a hard stretch is how it becomes an impossible one. One declined thing now is the cheapest protection you will get, and nobody minds being told early.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick something you keep pushing input into while it is plainly not processing any: the stalled project, the unread pile, the person mid-crisis. Say what it is, then visibly stop, close the tab, put the lid on, cancel the send.
Why it helps
Pushing more in while nothing is being processed makes the backlog worse and reads to everyone as pressure from you. Recognising a closed season and stopping input is what lets the thing clear and start again.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Do one expensive step today at an intermediate point where resources are currently abundant, rather than at the start or the end of the journey.
Why it helps
Doing the expensive step at either end means doing it where resources are thin. One stop where they are abundant makes it cost you far less.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Make your first response to one disturbance today stopping completely rather than moving, having first confirmed you match your surroundings.
Why it helps
Moving first makes you the thing that moved, which is what gets noticed. Stopping, when you match the ground, usually ends it without anything happening.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Break one fast task today into short bursts with a complete stop between each, using the stop to relocate the target before the next burst.
Why it helps
Pushing through fast work without stopping means you lose the target and finish something that was not the thing. Complete stops to re-aim cost seconds and keep it accurate.
1 minDifficulty 4
