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 2,461–2,520.
The Trial
Where something is building up against you today, signal clearly and calmly that you have noticed it, without accusing anyone or acting on it.
Why it helps
Saying nothing means they assume you have not noticed and continue. Signalling that you have, without accusing anyone, usually ends it with no confrontation.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pour about forty mixed beads or dried beans into a tight heap containing exactly five red ones. Cup one hand around the heap to keep it packed, then use a chopstick or pencil in the other hand to swipe the five red pieces clear of the heap, one at a time, inside thirty seconds.
Why it helps
Thirty seconds of fine, fast hand control that is much harder than it looks.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Find one thing you are currently doing at half speed and badly, and stop it completely for a set period rather than continuing to limp it along. Say the end date and switch it off today.
Why it helps
Half-doing five things costs nearly as much as doing them properly and gets you none of the benefit. Switching one fully off for a set period gives the others enough to actually work.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
With the main light off, stand a second phone with its torch on, pointing at the ceiling, in one corner as a fixed reference light, and photograph the room's glowing standby lights. Switch off at the wall or unplug each device you will not use before tomorrow, then photograph again from the same spot with the reference light unchanged.
Why it helps
A slightly lower electricity bill and a properly dark room tonight.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take one space you use daily and strip it to the minimum it needs for an hour: remove everything that is not required, leave it bare, and use it in that state before putting anything back.
Why it helps
Keeping everything within reach because you might need it means you pay for all of it daily. An hour stripped bare shows you how little you actually use.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Change what you take or when you take it for one thing today in response to current conditions, and name what specifically changed to prompt it.
Why it helps
Holding a routine after the conditions it suited have gone means working harder for less and calling it discipline. One deliberate shift gets you back to the same return.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Identify one resource nobody else wants that is available when your main one is not, and secure access to it today.
Why it helps
Having only the good resource means every closed season empties you out. One unwanted fallback nobody competes for carries you through all of them.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Switch one activity to its alternative halfway through today, while it is still going well rather than once it has stalled: change the method, the medium or the source, and finish on the second one.
Why it helps
Waiting until something stops working before changing means you spend weeks in the failing version. Switching while it still works keeps you productive through the change itself.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
While your phone still has more than half its charge, switch on its low power or battery saver mode, turn the screen brightness down to the lowest level you can read, and close every app running in the background. Leave it that way until you next charge it.
Why it helps
You stop being caught at two per cent at the worst moment. Cutting demand while you still have plenty means your phone, and your evening, last as long as you need them to.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Cut a card figure with a long tail and fix a strip bearing two bent-paperclip hooks to its rear end with a split-pin fastener pushed through tightly, so the strip turns only when you twist it and then stays put. With the hooks pointing towards the head, hang the figure head-down on a towel draped over a chair back and show it sliding off; then swivel the claw strip half a turn so the hooks point up towards the tail and hang it head-down on the same towel again.
Why it helps
A clever little model that explains a rare piece of anatomy better than any diagram.
20 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Tape two squares on the floor as perches and agree six quick moves with a consenting partner, such as a sharp pivot to face your partner, a quarter turn, a bow, a heel-lift, a side lean and, last, a flick of the ribbon each of you holds. A consenting judge holds a card out at arm's length between the squares; keeping your feet in your own square, perform all six together, in sync, within fifteen seconds, with both ribbons brushing the card on the final flick; you have three attempts.
Why it helps
A burst of laughter and teamwork that is harder than it looks.
5 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Sit side by side with a partner in a dimmed room, each holding a torch pointed at the same wall. Start a steady blink rhythm and keep both spots flashing on and off together for ninety seconds, adjusting only by watching the other light.
Why it helps
A calm, quiet coordination game that builds a sense of connection.
6 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Choose a partner or two devices and coordinate one useful action to happen inside the same two-minute window. Capture a timestamped screenshot or photo.
Why it helps
You find out how hard exact simultaneity is, and how satisfying it is when it lands.
5 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Deliberately increase your contact with a group today past your usual level, and note what changes about you rather than about your output.
Why it helps
Assuming company only changes what you produce means missing that it changes what you are. Noticing that is how you choose your density deliberately.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Cut or tear ten finger-length strips of kitchen foil, wind each tightly round a pencil to set a curl, and fix all ten to one water bottle, mug or bag that has look-alikes in your home. Stand it among at least three similar items and step back at least three metres.
Why it helps
Your bottle or mug will never be mixed up again.
15 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Mark a two-metre crossing zone on a clear floor or lawn between two safe mats, and crouch behind a sofa or box beside it. A consenting partner crosses five times at moments of their choosing; you may launch only once they step into the zone, and must tag them with a rolled-up towel before they reach the far mat, landing at least two tags.
Why it helps
A fast, funny game of timing that gets both of you moving.
5 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
With your group, divide the things being watched so each person owns exactly one direction rather than everyone half-watching all of them. Assign them today and say who has what.
Why it helps
Everyone half-watching everything means nobody is actually watching anything and all of you are tired. One direction each costs less attention and covers more.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Make one brief move today and return to exactly the position you left, matching it precisely rather than settling somewhere similar.
Why it helps
Settling somewhere near where you were after each interruption means your setup degrades all day and you never notice. Returning exactly costs seconds and preserves it.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Let the badly positioned opportunities pass today and commit only to one whose angle already favours you, naming the angle before you move.
Why it helps
Chasing every opportunity means most of your effort goes into the badly angled ones and fails. Letting those pass leaves you able to take the one that works.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Take one input you receive through a contaminated channel, the noisy group chat, the cluttered inbox, and move just the intake to a clean one today while leaving the work where it is.
Why it helps
Moving your whole operation to escape a noisy channel costs you everything you had set up. Moving only the intake is quick and the noise stops reaching you.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take something you keep putting off because you want to break it into neat steps first. Start on it as it is, in its messy unsorted form, and work for ten minutes without reorganising, planning or splitting it up.
Why it helps
Insisting on tidy steps before you begin is how things stay unstarted for months. Working on the mess as it is gets you ten real minutes in, and the structure usually appears once you are moving.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick a group you have joined but still sound like an outsider in, and learn three words, phrases or shorthand they actually use. Say them out loud, then show yourself using one of them for real with that group.
Why it helps
Sounding like an outsider keeps you treated as one, however good your work is. Picking up the handful of words a group actually uses closes that gap faster than any amount of proving yourself.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
When one small useful opportunity appears today—an open seat, easy task, good photo, or helpful opening—act on it immediately instead of debating.
Why it helps
Trains rapid commitment when a short-lived opportunity appears and reduces hesitation.
5 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Set a light object on a smooth surface or floating in water and take it as you walk past at normal pace, without slowing, stopping or turning back. One pass only.
Why it helps
A quick burst that is far harder than it looks and improves every time you try it.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Find one legitimate unused slot, container, workspace or opening that is available to you and put it to immediate use for something useful. Do not displace another person's belongings or reservation.
Why it helps
You notice how much effort disappears when you use capacity that already exists.
7 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Start with your hand about ten centimetres from a small object and have someone release or move it without warning. Take it in one movement with no approach at all.
Why it helps
A burst that trains the reach you actually use for dropped things, at the distance you actually have.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Find the job everyone in your world avoids because it is tedious rather than hard, and do it properly today. Then say out loud what you now know that the people who skipped it do not.
Why it helps
Everyone skips the tedious job, which is why it holds information nobody has. Doing it fully once makes you the person who knows how the thing actually works.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take ten minutes of stored warmth today rather than making your own: sit on the sunlit step, the warm wall, the radiator-side chair, and do nothing but take it.
Why it helps
Generating your own warmth and energy for everything means you burn through what you have by midday. Ten minutes of taking what is already there costs you nothing.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Find one thing you have been generating internally that the environment could supply instead - warmth, motivation, structure, company. Today, go where it already exists rather than producing it: sit in the sun, work in a place where people are already working, join something already running. Twenty minutes there, taking it in, generating none of it yourself.
Why it helps
Manufacturing your own motivation and structure every day is the most expensive thing you do, and it is why you run out by mid-afternoon. Taking it from a place that already has it costs you nothing.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take the help you need from a shared resource today while deliberately leaving it in working order for everyone else: take your share, restore what you used, leave the rest intact.
Why it helps
Taking everything available from a shared resource gets you one good week and closes it to you afterwards. Taking your share and leaving it working means you can come back.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pick one confrontation you have been handling sideways. Meet it directly today with the part of yourself that can take it, say the thing plainly, and do not soften the approach.
Why it helps
Handling a confrontation sideways means you have it repeatedly and never settle it, and the cost accumulates quietly. Meeting it head-on once hurts more in the moment and ends it.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Instead of setting up something new, find an existing structure you can move into: a recurring meeting that already has the right people, a channel that already exists, a form already in use. Adapt it to your purpose and run your thing through it this week.
Why it helps
Creating a new channel means recruiting everyone into it before it does anything. Running your thing through a structure that already has attention works immediately and costs nobody anything new.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Do one ordinary task today after sunset, in the quiet hours when nobody else is doing it, using only the light that is already there rather than turning everything on.
Why it helps
Working only the hours everyone else works means you compete for everything you get. Shifting even part of it to the quiet hours gives you the place to yourself.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take the most visible seat available for ten minutes today: the exposed table, the front of the room, the open desk. Stay there, watch the whole space, and act on the first thing worth acting on.
Why it helps
Choosing the hidden corner means you see a fraction of what is happening and get asked for nothing. The exposed seat costs you comfort and gives you the whole room.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Volunteer today for the part of a job that nobody else wants, and do it properly rather than minimally.
Why it helps
Competing for the parts everyone wants means your result depends on beating people. The part nobody wants is yours immediately and people remember who took it.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something from a source you want to keep using, a person's time, a dataset, a goodwill, and deliberately take only the renewable part today: the small ask rather than the big one, the sample rather than the set.
Why it helps
Taking the big thing once gets you more today and closes the source for good. Taking only the part that regrows means you can come back indefinitely, which is worth far more.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something you already gather or produce for one purpose and find a genuine second use for it today: the notes that become the post, the offcut that becomes the fix, the recording that becomes the record.
Why it helps
Everything you gather costs the same effort whether it does one job or two. Finding a real second use is free output, and it usually takes minutes to spot.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take something you normally skim the surface of and go after the underlying part instead today: the source rather than the summary, the data rather than the chart, the reason rather than the decision.
Why it helps
Taking the summary means you inherit someone else's reading of it and cannot check anything. Going for the underlying thing takes longer once and you stop being dependent on their interpretation.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Do one piece of real work today in the hours nobody around you is working, early, late, or on the quiet day, and notice what was available to you that is not normally.
Why it helps
Working the same hours as everyone means competing for the same rooms, people and attention. One session on the uncontested shift usually gets you more than three on the busy one.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Identify the genuinely best spot for what you do, the light, the quiet corner, the good chair, the early slot, and take it today by arriving before anyone else. Show the spot, you getting there first, and you still in it when others arrive.
Why it helps
You compete by working harder in worse conditions. Claiming the genuinely better spot early costs you fifteen minutes once and improves everything you do in it afterwards.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Work today in the hours nobody around you has claimed, even though they are not the natural hours for what you do.
Why it helps
Working the natural hours for what you do means sharing them with everyone who does it. Unclaimed hours are awkward and nobody is competing with you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Name one need that currently forces you to return to a single place or person. Find a way to meet it from something you already do today, and use that route instead of returning.
Why it helps
Having one need that only one place can meet means your whole range is set by how far you can get from it. Meeting it out of something you already do widens everything at once.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Go into one environment today that does not support you, carrying a specific charge of what you need rather than expecting to find it there.
Why it helps
Going somewhere unsupported and expecting to find what you need is how you come back with nothing. Carrying the charge means the environment stops mattering.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Have someone toss three soft objects to you and place three more on the floor, then alternate — catch one from the air, snatch one from the ground, until all six are yours. Keep moving between them.
Why it helps
A short burst that trains two completely different reaches in the same minute.
4 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Position yourself today in a flow that already carries what you need, the discard stream, the overflow, the thing in transit, and take from it rather than producing.
Why it helps
Producing everything yourself means competing with the flow already carrying it past you. Standing in that flow gets you the same thing for nothing.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take the available version of one thing today instead of holding out for the preferred one, and name what holding out would have cost you in time.
Why it helps
Holding out for the preferred version means long stretches with nothing while it stays unavailable. Taking what is there keeps you moving and the difference is usually small.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Use one simple setup today for several different kinds of input rather than specialising it, and take whatever the place actually offers.
Why it helps
A setup specialised for one kind of input leaves you stuck everywhere it is unavailable. A simple one that takes several means almost anywhere works for you.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Define one closed form you can take today when caught outside your usual position, and practise entering it once.
Why it helps
Being caught outside your usual position with no closed form means improvising badly under pressure. One practised form takes seconds and always works.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Bury five large dried beans, such as butter or kidney beans, at the bottom of a bowl filled with uncooked rice and smooth the top; do not use marbles or anything heavy, which can sink instead of rising. Tap the side or base of the bowl steadily and rhythmically with your hands, or jiggle it on the table, until all five have risen to the surface.
Why it helps
A surprising bit of real physics you can show anyone in two minutes.
8 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Choose a glass door or large window that is easy to miss. Using bright masking or washi tape, lay one zigzag band across the pane at eye height, pressing each leg of the zigzag flat.
Why it helps
One easy-to-miss pane that people now see before they walk into it.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something new you were about to go all in on, a product, a recipe, a tool, a route, and deliberately take the smallest possible test instead. Show the full commitment you were about to make, then the trace version, then a visible wait before you decide.
Why it helps
You commit fully to new things and then cannot undo them. Taking a trace and deliberately waiting costs you a day and removes nearly all of the downside you would otherwise be stuck with.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Using hand-crackable in-shell nuts such as walnuts or pecans, crack one with your hands alone, for example by squeezing two together or pressing one against a second nut resting on a folded towel on a table, while your partner watches once in silence. Then you both race to crack one more nut each with that same technique inside two minutes.
Why it helps
You find out whether your trick is actually teachable, and someone ends up with a new skill and a snack.
5 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Sit down with one old magazine or newspaper, first tearing off any printed address label and binning it. Then tear it, page by page, into strips roughly the width of a finger, collecting them all in one bowl or bag for a future papier-mache project.
Why it helps
A calming, repetitive quarter hour that leaves a ready stock of craft material.
15 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take something that keeps slipping out of your process and add a hold at every stage rather than one checkpoint: a confirmation at each handoff, a record at each step.
Why it helps
One checkpoint means anything slipping past it is gone and you find out much later. A hold at every stage catches it where it happened and costs you seconds each time.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Add one capability today that your category does not normally have, and use it on a supply closed to everyone who lacks it.
Why it helps
Carrying only your category's standard capabilities means eating only what all of them can eat. One atypical addition opens a supply with no competition.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
State one real preference or boundary early in a normal interaction instead of waiting for friction. Keep it to one clear sentence.
Why it helps
The boundary lands as information rather than as a complaint, because it arrived before the friction.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Choose a story you know well and tell it to a willing listener for at least five minutes. Keep one continuous thread with a beginning, development, and ending; do not read from a script.
Why it helps
Builds sustained verbal endurance and narrative continuity.
8 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Build or deepen one stable refuge today, deliberately overbuilding it for conditions worse than anything currently happening.
Why it helps
A refuge built for current conditions fails in the event that actually matters. Overbuilding it costs you a day and it carries you through anything.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Choose one person or group you want something from. Spend ten minutes doing nothing but watching what they actually respond to - no phone, no interrupting. Then make one small invitation shaped by what you saw: a single message, a question, an offer of the thing they kept mentioning. Nothing bigger than that.
Why it helps
Leading with a big ask to someone you have not actually watched is why you get refused and never learn why. Ten minutes of reading first makes a tiny invitation land instead.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take a ten-minute walk at dusk today with nothing playing and no phone in your hand, going slowly enough to notice what is active at that hour and nothing else.
Why it helps
Filling every walk with audio means you arrive with nothing you did not bring. Ten quiet minutes at dusk gives you a version of the place you never see.
2 minDifficulty 2
