How the book "Tiny Experiments" by Le Cunff Helped Me Code with Curiosity Instead of Frustration

Black and white calendar showing a distant future goal: 'Became a developer.'

8 MINUTE READ

In this article:

🔄 From Burnout to Breakthrough
How I stopped chasing rigid goals and started looping my way to growth—by trading in the ladder for a learning loop.

🧪 3 Real-Life Experiments That Changed Everything
What I tried, what flopped, and what actually worked:

• ⏰ 5am Scrimba Sprints – Spoiler: I’m not that person.

• ✅ Smaller Wins, More Often – The dopamine hit I didn’t know I needed.

• 🧘‍♀️ Do. Less. – Radical idea: You don’t have to do everything to make progress.

• 🚫👨‍💻 Less Typing, More Thinking: Why Stepping Away From the Screen Helped Me Go Deeper

“Fall in love with problems. Instead of finding answers fast, train yourself to become comfortable with open issues”

— Le Cunff

---

Yes, I Brought My Laptop to Costa (And My Existential Productivity Crisis)

It was a typical Saturday in my quiet Midlands suburb. After a long week at work, I’d decided weekends were the most productive time for chasing my coding goals. So there I was, in Costa—when an older man approached me, I knew what was coming.

“Don’t you have a desk at home?” he asked. “Is this your personal office?”. Oh he was riled.

I sighed. I had a few well-rehearsed comebacks about full-time work and closed libraries—but I let it go.

Laptops in cafes debate aside, It did make me reflect: Why can’t I focus without chaos and people around constantly around me? Why did working towards my future goal of ‘get a coding job’ feel like such a heavy burden to carry with me psychologically? I searched for a solution.

---

🎯 I was burned out from chasing goals—until I stopped climbing and started looping. Shifting my mindset from “fixed ladders to growth loops”.

I started learning to code in 2022 after a bootcamp promised I could become a developer in six months. I’ve always thought of myself as immune to psychological gimmicks—but that pitch hooked me. Six months to a shiny new tech career? Let’s go.

Fast forward three years. I’m still working full-time, have completed another intense bootcamp and a UI course—and I still don’t feel ready for a junior role. I was frustrated, even angry with myself for buying into the hype. But that mindset was keeping me stuck.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff talks about how linear goals can trick us into feeling like we’re constantly failing, even when we’re making progress. I couldn’t agree more. That uncertainty we all feel? It’s normal—but it often leaves us burned out and frozen.

Her antidote? Shift from rigid, linear goals to iterative cycles of experimentation. When we treat our goals as experiments, without fixed outcomes, we rediscover curiosity—and finally start moving forward.

So how did I put these ‘experimentation cycles’ into practice?

Instead of chasing a big future goal, I asked myself: What learning style actually brings me joy—and motivates me to keep going? That’s when I started experimenting. Small, manageable changes. No pressure, just curiosity.

---

🧪 Experiment 1: 5am Scrimba Sessions

The Plan: Wake up at 5am and code for an hour before work. You can’t make this stuff up.

Outcome: Lasted about two weeks.

What I Learned: Great in theory. In reality, sacrificing sleep wrecked my energy for work—and made coding a chore.

What I Did Next: I focused on winding down earlier to get proper rest (no more endless scrolling—just finish the damn Netflix episode). I moved coding to a realistic three times a week, once being a Saturday and started getting an Uber to work to avoid the 40-minute laptop-carrying hike. Unsuprisingly, this gave me more focus to code later.

🧪 Experiment 2: Smaller Wins, More Often

The Plan: Tackle bite-sized tasks for quick wins. I picked the 30-day CSS challenge on icodethis.com after reading solid reviews.

Outcome: Loving it. These mini projects are focused and rewarding.

What I Learned: I’d been using Frontend Mentor, which is great—but the challenges take longer and often lack reliable solutions. Icodethis provides walkthroughs by real devs. Huge plus.

🧪 Experiment 3: Do. Less.

The Plan: Fit in coding, physio stretches, and gym multiple times a week. Who did I think I was?

Outcome: Chaos. Burnout incoming.

What I Learned: Scaling back actually helped me stay consistent. Now I hit the gym twice a week, and do shorter physio sessions 4x a week. Less overwhelming = more sustainable.

🧪 Experiment 4: Less Screen Time. WHAT?

The Plan:
Dry eyes. Stiff neck. Constant screen fatigue. I had to switch it up. So I alternated:
→ 30 minutes coding on-screen
→ 30 minutes reading a physical coding book

Outcome:
Total game changer. My eyes stopped hating me, and I actually enjoyed coding for longer stretches. The reading time gave my brain space to zoom out and absorb the why, not just the how.

What I Learned:
You don’t always need to be typing to be learning. Stepping back = deeper thinking. And your body (and brain) will thank you for it.

💡Big Takeaway

Progress isn’t about grinding harder—it’s about working smarter, staying curious, and experimenting until something clicks.