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 2.401–2.460.
The Trial
The next time something pushes you to move quickly today, stop, hold position and assess before responding, rather than reacting at the pace you were given.
Why it helps
Reacting at the pace you are handed spends the resource you cannot get back. Stopping to assess looks slow and is why you still have anything left.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Name one thing of yours that only functions while it is in motion. Give it movement today, however small, and stop treating the pause as neutral.
Why it helps
Treating a pause as neutral is what kills the things that only exist in motion, and you only notice once restarting costs more than continuing would have. A small move today keeps it alive cheaply.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Put one thing away today against a fixed reference you state out loud as you place it, rather than in whatever space happens to be free.
Why it helps
Putting something wherever there is room means you will search for it when you need it, which is as good as not having it. One stated reference makes it retrievable.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Take one reserve of yours that you cannot currently see the size of, money, time or energy. Put it somewhere today where its level is visible without checking, and look at it once before the day ends.
Why it helps
A reserve whose level you must look up is a reserve you find out about too late, usually when it is already gone. Making the level visible means you adjust early instead of reacting.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Choose one genuinely useful spare item and place it somewhere dry and easy to retrieve later. Label it so you will remember why it is there.
Why it helps
A quiet reserve is ready before conditions turn bad.
6 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take one irritation today that you normally discharge immediately. Hold it instead without acting, carry it through the day, and deal with it in the evening when doing so costs you nothing.
Why it helps
Discharging every irritation the moment it arrives costs you credibility and relationships at the most expensive possible time. Carrying it to the evening deals with the same thing for almost nothing.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Carry one stress through the expensive part of the day today without discharging it, and release it in the cheap hours instead.
Why it helps
Discharging stress during the costly hours spends the resource you cannot replace. Holding it until release is free costs you nothing at all.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Set aside one resource today for a need weeks away, and set it aside in a form that will not degrade: not the perishable version, the keepable one. Seal it away where present-you cannot reach it casually.
Why it helps
Storing things in a form that spoils means you either use them now or lose them. Keeping the durable version instead means the reserve is still there when you actually need it.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something you have learned to handle that others still find difficult, the awkward tool, the hard format, the difficult person, and make that capability explicit today: write it down, list it, tell someone it is a thing you do.
Why it helps
The hard thing you learned to handle feels ordinary to you and is invisible to everyone else. Stating it once is what turns a private tolerance into something people come to you for.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Look at the overlooked base layer of your situation, the raw records, the unglamorous data or the physical stuff. Work directly through a measured amount of it today and bring out what was in it.
Why it helps
Working from the summarised version of your situation means you only ever see what someone else already noticed. Going through the base layer yourself is where things nobody has seen actually are.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Take something you have been handling item by item and run the whole volume through one filter today instead, keeping whatever it catches.
Why it helps
Handling things one at a time means you process a fraction and the rest piles up. One filter run through the whole volume clears it in an hour.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Fill a baking tray with 1 cm of cold water and stand a battery or USB-powered hand fan on its own surface just beyond one end, 10 to 15 cm from the water, on low or medium. Stir a drop of food colouring into a teaspoon of warm water and lower it gently onto the surface at the fan end, then leave everything untouched for up to fifteen minutes until the colour trail reaches the far end.
Why it helps
A calm, mesmerising way to see how a signal can drift a long way from a still source.
15 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Find one artificial concentration today and work circuits around it rather than searching the wider area with your usual method.
Why it helps
An expensive search across a wide area means most of your attempts return nothing. One artificial concentration makes the same method pay every pass.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Stand hidden just behind a doorframe while a consenting helper, out of sight, drags a sock on a long string past the doorway at a moment they choose within two minutes. Shoot out a hand, grip the sock, hold it through a gentle three-second tug, then reel it in hand over hand without wrapping the string round your fingers.
Why it helps
A jolt of fast reaction and grip strength, and a great game to play in turns.
5 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Cut or punch a coin-sized hole on the lower edge of one side of a cardboard box and load it with about 5 kg of books (no more). Stand a step back, start a twenty-second timer, push a drinking straw into the hole without touching the cardboard around it, then drag the box by a looped rope to a doorway five metres away and throw a blanket over it.
Why it helps
A sharp twenty-second burst of precision followed by honest pulling effort.
4 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Have someone place a warm mug or hot-water bottle somewhere within reach while your eyes are shut. Find it by the heat on your skin and put your hand straight on it in one attempt.
Why it helps
You find out you have a heat sense you have never once deliberately used.
3 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Use one fast action today only to establish contact, then switch deliberately to a slow process to finish rather than continuing fast.
Why it helps
Trying to finish something with your fast move means missing or doing it badly. Using it only for contact and finishing slowly works nearly every time for you.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Concentrate your distinctiveness today into what is only visible close up, and remove anything that makes you identifiable from a distance.
Why it helps
Being identifiable from a distance means people decide about you before meeting you. Keeping it close up means they only form a view in conversation.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Clear the background around one thing today before presenting it, and change nothing about the thing itself.
Why it helps
Improving the thing while the background is cluttered means nobody sees the improvement. Clearing the background costs you minutes and changes everything.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take one warning or label you rely on and today make it readable in the actual conditions people encounter it: the noise, the rush, the small screen.
Why it helps
A warning readable only in ideal conditions is one nobody reads, and you will blame them for it. Testing it where it is actually seen fixes that.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Pick a strip of window-blind light or lay thin shadow bars across a floor with a chair or railing. Take one striped or patterned cloth and one plain one, place each in turn inside the bars, and step back five paces. Note which one you can still find at a glance and which has lost its edges.
Why it helps
You spend effort hiding things from angles nobody views them from, and leave the one angle that matters wide open. Seeing which pattern vanishes from one viewpoint tells you where protection is worth putting.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
List which of your current strengths are structural, surviving a bad month, and which depend on continuous input. Then top up one of the input-dependent ones today.
Why it helps
You assume all your strengths persist, so the input-dependent ones quietly fade and you cannot work out what changed. Sorting them once tells you exactly which need feeding.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Each displayer stands on their own spot on open ground, a few steps apart. At your own rhythm, puff out your chest, take two short strutting steps forward, make two sharp cheek pops with a finger, then step back, five times; a consenting helper playing the hen walks along the line and picks one winner by standing in front of them.
Why it helps
A ridiculous, joyful group performance that gets everyone laughing.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Trace today what a subsidy or advantage in one place is doing to whoever is adjacent to it, and name the second-order effect.
Why it helps
Looking only at the direct effect of a subsidy means you miss what it does to everyone next to it. Naming the second-order effect is where the real cost sits.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Put what one thing yields today straight back into the activity that produced it, within the same session, and bank none of it.
Why it helps
Banking what something yields while the activity stalls means you lose the momentum and the stored amount was never enough anyway. Putting it straight back keeps it running.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Get out one thing that has been stored away unused and put it to real use in the same session. Return it to storage properly before you finish.
Why it helps
You find out whether the thing is worth keeping, instead of storing it for another year unexamined.
5 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
While walking with someone, confidently suggest one harmless unexpected detour to see something nearby, then lead it without overexplaining.
Why it helps
Practises decisive redirection and turns an ordinary journey into a small shared discovery.
6 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Begin one ordinary interaction normally, then switch into a completely different harmless character or voice for one sentence. Return to normal immediately afterward.
Why it helps
Five seconds that a room genuinely does not expect, and everyone gets to carry on immediately afterwards.
15 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Choose the highest normal chair or seat you can safely use without climbing and spend ten minutes surveying the whole room from it without getting up.
Why it helps
You turn thermal command into one concrete experience with a visible finish.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Place the fragile part of one arrangement first and suspended today, before any of the bulk goes in around it.
Why it helps
Putting the fragile part in after the bulk means it is crushed or lost among it and you rebuild. Placing it first and clear means nothing reaches it.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take something you usually break into small chunks and handle it as one whole piece at a slow pace instead: read the whole document in one sitting, do the whole task start to finish, have the whole conversation.
Why it helps
Chunking something into fragments means you never hold the whole shape of it and the joins stay broken. Taking it whole once, slowly, is usually faster in total and the result hangs together.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take one thing whole today without processing it where you found it, and deal with the remainder somewhere else entirely.
Why it helps
Processing something where you found it means standing exposed while you do it. Taking it whole and dealing with the rest elsewhere is faster and safer.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take what you need from one thing today and pass the remainder on intact to somewhere it can be used, rather than consuming or discarding it.
Why it helps
Consuming or binning everything you touch means nothing you handle leaves any value behind you. Passing the remainder on intact costs nothing and compounds somewhere else.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Collect without processing at the expensive site today, and do all the processing afterwards where time costs you nothing.
Why it helps
Processing on site means spending your scarcest minutes on work that could happen anywhere. Collecting only is how you get twice as much.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Meet a need today entirely from what is already in the room rather than ordering or fetching anything: the substitute, the improvisation, the thing repurposed. Nothing new enters.
Why it helps
Ordering what you need means the task waits days for delivery and you lose the thread. Meeting it from the room usually works and the thing gets finished today.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Choose one drawer, shelf or rail and take out everything suited to the season that is ending. Store it away, fill the space with the clothes you will need for the coming season, and fold them in place.
Why it helps
The first cold or hot morning of the new season finds you ready.
20 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Replace one standard tool of your field with something unconventional that suits what you actually do, and complete a real task with the replacement today.
Why it helps
Using your field's standard tool when your work is different means fighting it daily and assuming that is normal. One swap usually makes the work straightforward.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Reconfigure one setup for the season you are actually in rather than leaving it in the compromise state: change the hours, the tools, the layout. Make the seasonal swap today.
Why it helps
A setup tuned for the average of all seasons is wrong in every one of them. One seasonal swap takes an hour and the conditions stop fighting you.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Take a task you do with a general-purpose tool and make or set up a dedicated one for it: a cut-down template, a single-purpose shortcut, a jig, a saved filter. Build it, then do the task with it instead.
Why it helps
A general tool used carefully still costs you setup every single time. Building the dedicated version takes twenty minutes once and the task stops being a task.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Sit on a chair, blindfolded, while a consenting helper moves silently to a new spot around you each round, holds an empty crisp packet at your arm's length and crinkles it once. Reach out and tap the packet with an open palm within two seconds; play ten rounds and count the hits.
Why it helps
A fast, surprising test of how well your ears can aim your hands.
5 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Mark a web zone on a bed, sofa or rug with tape and wait at its edge holding a ball of yarn or a crepe paper streamer. A helper tosses a rolled sock into the zone at a moment you do not know, and you must wrap at least ten full turns around it within ten seconds, three rounds.
Why it helps
A quick, frantic burst of hand speed with a ridiculous-looking result.
5 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Hold one inactive position for a long stretch today, adding only the small motion the setting would naturally have, and do nothing else for its duration.
Why it helps
Breaking your stillness every few minutes to do something small means you were never actually out of sight. Holding it long enough to become boring is what works.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Build the expected disturbance into one arrangement today so it survives that disturbance rather than being exposed by it.
Why it helps
Arrangements built for still conditions get exposed the moment anything moves. Building the disturbance in is what makes yours hold through it.
2 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Before the blindfold goes on, lay the tube on the floor and mark a circle of tape one tube-length round the spot where you will kneel. Kneel blindfolded in the middle while a consenting helper silently places a soft toy somewhere inside the circle, then sweep a long wrapping-paper tube slowly in arcs along the floor until it touches the toy, follow the tube down with your hand and pick it up.
Why it helps
A calm, absorbing game that shows how much a long reach can tell you.
10 minDifficulty 1
The Trial
Rather than searching for one specific thing, find where several of them cluster and work that whole area: the one folder, the one conversation, the one shelf. Go to the density and take what is there.
Why it helps
Hunting for one specific item in a big mess is slow and often fails. Finding where they cluster and working the whole patch gets you that item and several others you had forgotten about.
2 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Stand a row of light objects on a clear surface. Make one fast sideways sweep with your forearm to knock them down, then immediately gather everything that fell.
Why it helps
Five seconds that are far more satisfying than they have any right to be.
3 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Tear a sheet of tissue or paper into about fifty tiny bits and rub a balloon (a latex-free one if anyone present has a latex allergy) on your hair or a jumper. Throw all the bits into the air at once, then sweep the balloon through the falling cloud in one pass and hold it up.
Why it helps
A burst of static-electricity magic that also explains a very strange life cycle.
3 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
While you wait in another room, a helper hides five paper clips under a flat sheet of card or newspaper laid on the floor. Tape a strong magnet, such as a whiteboard or bar magnet, to the end of a ruler, keep it away from phones, cards and young children, and sweep it in low side-to-side passes over the sheet, stopping when you feel a clip pull and reaching under to take it.
Why it helps
A clever little detection game that makes an invisible force easy to feel.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
One person hides ten numbered tokens inside a single room, only on open surfaces, under cushions, under furniture or inside boxes set out for the game, never in drawers or anyone's personal storage. The others then search it together for ten minutes or until all ten are found, dropping every find straight into one shared bowl.
Why it helps
A short cooperative game that rewards patience over speed.
15 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Gather two or more others and give each person a basket or bag and a different kind of item to collect, such as clothes and textiles, dishes and cups, or paper and rubbish. Start at the doorway together and move through the room as one group, spot by spot, each putting only their own kind of item in their own basket, until the room is clear.
Why it helps
A tidy room in a quarter of the time, and a cheerful shared job.
15 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Stand in one place and use a long safe tool such as a broom to gather scattered light objects into reach. Keep both feet inside one marked spot.
Why it helps
You extend your effective reach without chasing every target.
7 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Float ten small clean paper or cork pieces in a bowl of water and sweep a spoon sideways through the water until all ten collect against one side, then scoop them once.
Why it helps
You turn sifting into one concrete experience with a visible finish.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Work only the top layer of something today with a sweeping technique, and accept that this restricts you to very specific ground.
Why it helps
A surface technique is fast and only works on exactly the right ground, which you will not notice until it fails. Accepting the restriction keeps you where it works.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Spend time today clearing and memorising your exit routes rather than your routes to the reward, and test one.
Why it helps
Knowing the routes to the reward and not the exits means one disturbance leaves you stuck. Clearing the exits costs an hour and you never think about it again.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Put on gloves and visit the recycling bin and two other clean, dry-waste containers such as a paper basket or packaging box in one loop, never general waste or food bins, leaving glass, sharp items and any letters or documents untouched. Pull out three things that still have a use, such as a plastic tub, a box or a sturdy bag, stick a note on each naming its new use, then wash your hands.
Why it helps
Three free useful things and a little less rubbish.
10 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
When this goes off, pick the most recent request you said yes to while meaning less, or the one you are about to shrink from. Send one message that states your real terms in full: the time you can give, the limit, and the condition. No apology. Send it before the window closes.
Why it helps
Small yeses that you do not mean pile up into weeks you resent. Stating your full terms once, quickly and plainly, makes you harder to take for granted and keeps your time your own.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Agree with one person at home who is happy to take part. Without speaking, call them over using only a slow, even side-to-side swing of your raised forearm, repeated at the same steady pace until they come. No words, no faster waving and no pointing.
Why it helps
You raise your voice to be heard and people tune you out. A calm, repeated signal gets attention without tension, so the room stays calm while your message still lands.
2 minDifficulty 2
The Trial
Change your physical position today so one signal reaches where it needs to, rather than repeating it louder from where you are.
Why it helps
Repeating something louder from the same place means the people who could not hear you still cannot. Moving so it carries reaches them the first time.
1 minDifficulty 3
The Trial
Hold one tool ready today for a specific thing you invited, use it on exactly that, and build nothing general to catch whatever else arrives.
Why it helps
Building something general to catch whatever turns up means maintaining it constantly for things you did not want. One tool for the thing you invited costs nothing to keep.
1 minDifficulty 4
The Trial
Approach something today from the side rather than head-on, so nothing is displaced ahead of you and nobody is warned.
Why it helps
A head-on approach pushes a warning ahead of you and the thing is gone. Coming across it means you arrive before anyone has reacted.
1 minDifficulty 3
