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 241–300.
The Trial
Lay two paper cups on their sides at opposite ends of a baking tray as burrows, and stick three small fridge magnets round the mouth of one only. Scatter thirty steel paper clips across the middle, then tilt and gently shake the tray for thirty seconds and count the clips held at each mouth.
Why it helps
A quick, clear experiment that shows why the owl bothers.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Float a small empty plastic tub, about the size of a yoghurt pot, in a sink or bowl of water, then add identical small weights such as coins, marbles or washers one at a time, gently and centred, until it just goes under. Count the weights aloud as they go in.
Why it helps
A hands-on feel for buoyancy that makes sense of every diving animal.
8 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Build one reserve today that sits outside you rather than depending on your own capacity: the stocked shelf, the prepaid account, the written answer, the pre-made batch.
Why it helps
Reserves that are really just your own stamina run out exactly when you need them. One external store gets you through without costing you anything.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Produce one scarce input yourself today rather than waiting for the period when it is externally available.
Why it helps
Waiting for the window when a scarce input appears means your whole year is shaped by someone else's calendar. Producing it yourself removes that.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Run the quiet solitary version of one thing today because you are in closely watched ground, rather than the visible group version.
Why it helps
Running the visible group version where you are closely watched draws the attention that ends it. The quiet solitary mode gets the same work done.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Work one thing today from the bottom all the way up in a single sweep without skipping sections, then begin the next thing at its bottom rather than continuing across.
Why it helps
Working across several things at the same height means you miss the bottom of all of them and never finish one. Bottom to top in one sweep leaves nothing behind you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Before ranging across your tasks today, do one deliberate warm-up to working state first, the walk, the easy win, the familiar routine, and do not start the real range until you are at temperature.
Why it helps
Starting cold means the first two hours produce work you redo later. One deliberate warm-up costs fifteen minutes and makes the rest of the day usable.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Before your first real task tomorrow or later today, spend a fixed stretch doing nothing but getting ready, and do not touch the task until that stretch is complete.
Why it helps
Starting the first task cold means the first hour produces almost nothing and you carry that slowness all day. A fixed warm-up stretch costs you minutes and changes the whole morning's output.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Bring yourself up to working condition today before taking anything on, and refuse to start until that is done rather than warming up as you go.
Why it helps
Starting while you are still cold means the first hour produces nothing you can use and you blame the work. Coming up to condition first makes all of it count.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Fold ten paper helicopter spinners. A consenting partner standing on the floor holds each one up at full arm's reach and lets it go at a moment of their choosing, from different spots around a clear room; start two metres away each time and catch it in a colander before it touches the floor.
Why it helps
A fast, laughing test of prediction and footwork.
4 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
In a clear room with a soft floor, a consenting partner tosses two balloons up together just above your head at an unexpected moment. Spring straight up and swat both down with open hands before you land; you have up to eight attempts.
Why it helps
An explosive, playful jump that tests timing more than height.
4 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Take one thing of yours you have been polishing before anyone sees it. Leave it visibly unfinished today, let it sit that way, and put the time you would have spent polishing into the next piece of real work.
Why it helps
Polishing something before anyone sees it is how good work stays unseen for months, and nobody is grading the finish anyway. Leaving it rough buys you the hours the next piece actually needs.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take something of yours that looks conspicuously like it is being hidden, the unlabelled file, the vague calendar block, the unexplained absence, and give it a plain ordinary identity instead. Label it as something mundane and true.
Why it helps
Something that looks deliberately hidden attracts exactly the attention you were avoiding. Giving it a plain true label makes it invisible in a way hiding never does.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take something of yours that does not fit its context and change its proportions rather than its styling today: shorten it, narrow it, stretch it to match what surrounds it.
Why it helps
Restyling something that is the wrong shape for its context does not help and you keep fiddling with it. Changing the proportion usually fixes it in one pass.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick one place you want to be known to be active in. Make one strong audible contribution today, a comment, a question or a statement, and do not put yourself in view at all while doing it.
Why it helps
Being visible in a place means people react to you rather than to what you said, and you spend the time managing that. A strong contribution from inside cover lands on its own terms.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Contribute something genuinely useful today without putting yourself in the frame: the answer posted without a story about yourself, the fix made quietly, the note left. Let the contribution carry and keep your presence small.
Why it helps
Attaching your story to every contribution makes people weigh the story instead of the help. Letting the useful thing stand alone gets it used, and people work out where it came from anyway.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take a boundary people keep accidentally crossing because it was never obvious, and make it impossible to miss today: the bold label, the explicit line in the message, the sign, the stated rule.
Why it helps
A boundary nobody can see gets crossed constantly and you resent people for it unfairly. Making it unmistakable ends the crossings without you ever having to confront anyone.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take a role you are waiting to be given and start doing one visible part of it today without the title: run the thing, answer the question, take the decision. Behaviour first.
Why it helps
Waiting for the title before you act like it means someone who did not wait gets it. Taking one visible part of the role now is usually how the title reaches you at all.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Make one of your boundaries visible before anyone tests it: the calendar blocked publicly, the status set, the sign up, the note on the door. Put it somewhere it is seen from a distance rather than discovered on arrival.
Why it helps
Explaining your boundary each time someone arrives means having the same conversation forever. Making it visible from a distance means most people never start the approach.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Look at where your time genuinely exists, the fifteen-minute gaps rather than the free afternoons you never get, and reshape one task to fit that actual shape. Cut it down until it fits a real gap, then do it in one.
Why it helps
Designing your work for afternoons you never get is why none of it happens. Reshaping it to fit the gaps you really have means it gets done this week instead of waiting for conditions that never arrive.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Name one thing you have to do that will leave you temporarily unable to defend yourself. Arrange to do it today inside a group or alongside people rather than alone, and tell them that is why.
Why it helps
Doing the thing that leaves you exposed in private feels safer and means nothing is between you and whatever comes. Being surrounded while you do it costs you only the admission.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Move one piece of work into a genuinely undisturbed place and time today, somewhere nobody looks for you, and reduce what you need there to the minimum. Work there once.
Why it helps
Working where people can reach you means defending the time rather than using it. A genuinely undisturbed place needs no defending, and you need far less there than you think.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Close one gap today with something shaped to fit it exactly, and stand down whatever watching or reacting you were doing at that gap.
Why it helps
Standing by a gap ready to react means it is open whenever you are elsewhere, and you are often elsewhere. Something shaped to fit it exactly holds without you there.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Pick a reputation you have been trying to project and spend today building the actual underlying thing instead, with no signalling at all: the practice, the fix, the real preparation. Post nothing.
Why it helps
Projecting a reputation you have not earned is exhausting and collapses the first time anyone checks. Building the real thing is slower and then the signalling becomes unnecessary.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Find out when the thing you want actually becomes available, the sale, the intake, the posting window, the fruiting, and put the date and your preparation in place now rather than finding out after it passes.
Why it helps
Missing the window is almost never about capability, it is about not knowing the date. Finding it out and preparing once means you are underneath the thing when it falls instead of hearing about it later.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Find out when one good source is actually at its best, this week or this month, and arrange to be there for it rather than taking the mediocre version available now.
Why it helps
Taking the mediocre version now because it is available is why most of what you consume is mediocre. Finding out when the good one is open and waiting for it costs patience and nothing else.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
The next time something opens up, a request, a slot, a question in a group, respond inside the hour rather than when you have a polished answer. Send the rough early response and say you will follow up.
Why it helps
Waiting until your answer is good means someone else has already taken the opening. A rough reply inside the hour holds your place, and the polish can follow once it is yours.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Make one thing harder and less rewarding to interfere with today, spreading the pressure across a wider surface rather than preparing a response to it.
Why it helps
Preparing to win every confrontation means you have to be there for every single one. Being awkward and unrewarding to start with means most never reach you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Quiet your own noise in one channel today until you can read the faint trace underneath it, and name what you had been drowning out.
Why it helps
Your own noise in a channel masks exactly the faint trace you need from it. Quieting yourself is what makes the channel usable at all.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Where an individual move is not available to you today, form a line with others and drive the thing into a narrowing space instead.
Why it helps
Attempting a move your size or position rules out means failing publicly. A coordinated line drives the same result without any of you doing it alone.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
When something you want left alone is at risk of attention, offer a more interesting legitimate alternative rather than defending it: the other topic, the other option, the thing you are happy to discuss. Redirect once, today.
Why it helps
Defending something directly tells people it matters and makes them look harder at it. Offering something genuinely interesting instead moves their attention without anyone feeling blocked by you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Name one place where you keep acting in an old role while wanting a different one. Do one thing today that only the new role would do, and stop doing one thing that only the old role did.
Why it helps
Wanting a different role while still doing all the old role's work means nobody around you can tell the change happened, including you. Dropping one old task is what makes the new one real.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Walk into one situation today where you have been shrinking and deliberately occupy the full space you are entitled to: coat on, bag out, full posture, nothing folded in. Hold it for the whole interaction.
Why it helps
Trying to outrun something faster than you means you lose and arrive tired. Changing the shape of the problem instead takes you off the menu without a chase.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Match the pace of your surroundings exactly today and accept that you cannot move faster than them for the whole period.
Why it helps
Moving faster than your surroundings makes you the one thing that stands out. Matching their pace keeps you unremarked for as long as you need.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take the position today from which you can observe something that cannot observe you, and hold it rather than acting.
Why it helps
Positions where you can both see each other mean every move you make is read. One-way observation means you choose the moment entirely.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Check today whether a group you belong to is still above the density where it functions as itself, and take one step to raise it if not.
Why it helps
A group can dissolve from thinness alone without anyone attacking it, and nobody sounds an alarm. Checking the density is how you catch it.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Approach one thing today from a sideways angle that gets under it, rather than head-on, and state what the straight approach could not reach.
Why it helps
Coming at something head-on puts you against everyone else and against the part that is built to resist. A sideways angle reaches what none of them can get to.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick one thing you are keeping somewhere risky because it is convenient - a document in a downloads folder, a key under a mat, a plant in full sun. Move it today to the place just beside where it is used, protected but still reachable, and tell one person where it now is.
Why it helps
Keeping valuable things where they are easiest to grab is why you lose them, and convenience is why you never move them. Just beside, protected, costs you nothing in access.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Deliberately keep a second capability alive today that you have been letting lapse in favour of your main one: practise it, use it, do one real piece of work with it.
Why it helps
Specialising all the way into one capability feels efficient until that one stops paying. A second one kept barely alive is what gives you somewhere to go.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something you have been modelling closely on an existing example and change one thing to make yours more appealing than the original rather than more similar to it. Make that change today.
Why it helps
Copying the existing example closely gets you a worse version of something that already exists. One deliberate departure that makes yours more appealing is what gives anyone a reason to choose it.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Work today without discriminating between kinds of input for one purpose, taking whatever is available and recording what you actually got.
Why it helps
Refusing anything that is not the preferred kind means long stretches where you get nothing and lose condition. Taking whatever is there keeps you going until the good season.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Name the threat that is absent from your current situation and which your way of working quietly depends on, then check today whether it is absent where you are heading next.
Why it helps
Your way of working rests on something that is absent here, and you have never named it. Checking whether it is absent in the next place saves the whole move.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pass on one accurate warning today to people who have not experienced the thing, and be precise about exactly what it applies to.
Why it helps
A vague warning spreads further than the facts and people avoid the wrong things for years because of you. Being precise about the scope is what makes it useful.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Make your own entrance to something today rather than going through the intended route, and leave the opening usable by others.
Why it helps
Going through the intended route means paying its price every time. Cutting your own entrance costs once and others benefit from it too.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Commit fully to one thing today for a very short period and then disengage completely rather than staying involved to see it through.
Why it helps
Staying involved after your part is done is how you absorb damage that was never yours. Full commitment then clean disengagement gets the result without that.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Make one shelter or structure today by cutting a few structural lines in existing material rather than by building anything.
Why it helps
Building a structure from scratch costs you materials and days. Cutting a few lines in what is already there gives you the same shelter in minutes.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Set one thing up today so its ordinary state and its best state use the same arrangement, and remove whatever changeover you currently perform between them.
Why it helps
Keeping a plain version and a good version of something means you pay to switch and are caught mid-change. One arrangement that does both leaves you ready all the time.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Roll a sheet of card into a cone. Put a phone running a sound-meter app one metre in front of you, point the cone at it and let out one burst of sound under two seconds long, keeping at least three metres from anyone else.
Why it helps
A glorious release of noise with a number attached.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Pick one thing about your day that people around you have to guess at - whether you are available, which way you are heading, how it is going. Make it visible without saying it: a sign on the door, a colour you wear, a status that is actually accurate, a position in the room. Leave it in place all day.
Why it helps
People misread your availability and direction constantly, and you pay for it in interruptions and resentment on both sides. One accurate visible marker removes most of that without a single conversation.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take a boundary you have stated but never enforced and enforce it the very next time it is crossed today, at whatever small cost that carries. Pay it once rather than restating the rule.
Why it helps
A boundary you have stated ten times and never enforced is understood by everyone as optional. Paying the cost once, visibly, is what makes the next nine statements unnecessary.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Say the small uncomfortable thing at the moment it arises today rather than saving it: the correction in the meeting, the no at the time, the flag as it happens. Pay the small cost now.
Why it helps
Saving small corrections until they are worth raising means they arrive as a grievance that costs you far more. A few seconds of awkwardness at the time keeps your balance at zero.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Move around a room doing exactly what everyone else is doing for one full minute, then in a single instant switch to a completely different action and commit to it.
Why it helps
A minute of quiet build and one second that genuinely lands on a room.
3 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Make brief contact with every member of one group today, not a broadcast but something individual to each, however small. Get round all of them before the day ends.
Why it helps
Belonging quietly lapses when contact becomes occasional, and you only notice once you need the group. Individual contact round everyone takes twenty minutes and keeps you genuinely in it.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Set up five paper tokens travelling toward a container and intercept only the incoming tokens before they arrive, then show how the container stops filling.
Why it helps
Shows how pressure on a supply route can create a much larger downstream effect than the number of individual interceptions suggests.
6 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Clear the loose debris out of one situation today before attempting to extract anything from it, in that order.
Why it helps
Extracting through debris means you get a fraction of it mixed with rubbish. One clearing step first makes the extraction clean and quick.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Organise at least two other people today to each do the same simple thing at the same moment, producing a result none of you could get alone.
Why it helps
Doing a simple thing alone gets you a small result and you assume that is the ceiling. Three people doing it together produces something you could not reach.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Switch on a conspicuous version of yourself today for a period that can reward it, and set the date you will switch it off before you start.
Why it helps
Being conspicuous permanently costs you energy in every season that cannot repay it. Setting the switch-off date first means you get the upside and stop.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Pick one thing you communicate to two very different audiences. Write a separate version for each today, correct for its own direction, and send each one only to its own audience.
Why it helps
Sending one version to two different audiences means it is slightly wrong for both and nobody acts on it. Two versions cost you one extra pass and are each exactly right.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Decide today whether current conditions favour bold or cautious for one choice, state the evidence, and act accordingly rather than by temperament.
Why it helps
Always being the bold one or always the careful one means you are right about half the time and never know which. Reading the conditions first turns that into a decision.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
On a clear lawn, wearing shoes, stand still on a marker with a line three metres in front of you, a cone four metres behind you and a finish line eight metres behind you. A consenting partner walks toward you three times, starting from about ten, seven and five metres away at a steady pace of their own choosing; each time, stay still until their foot crosses the line, then turn and sprint, cutting sharply round the cone and over the finish, while the partner stops at the line and never follows.
Why it helps
A few seconds of all-out speed with a real reaction test and a big grin at the end.
6 minDifficulty 4
