Tiny Experiments in Hydration (and Blogging)

If Lisa and I had a formal relationship agreement, there would be a clause like this:

3.1 Peter agrees to monitor the zeitgeist, and to supply Lisa with a consistent flow of interesting reading material, including material related to topical issues and works of contemporary fiction.

3.2 Peter agrees that, even in situations where Peter appears to have secured materials for his own consumption, Lisa will have “first dibs.”

I write this without malice: it is one of the great joys of this chapter of my life that I have a partner who is as curious as I am, a partner with a broad intellectual palette, and a willingness to dig into seeming tangents and make them our own.

One example of this came last month, when I brought home the book Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, after reading this brief review by Rishikesh Sreehari in his 10+1 Things newsletter:

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been slowly reading and digesting this beautiful book called “Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World” by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. I’ve been following Anne via her newsletter for a while now and was excited when she released this book. It challenges the traditional linear approach to goals and instead proposes treating life as a series of small experiments guided by curiosity rather than rigid outcomes. What I love most is how she reframes uncertainty as an opportunity rather than something to fear, and shows how to use tiny experiments to discover what truly matters to you. 

Lisa glommed onto the book immediately, read it from cover to cover, and started mulling how to inject its lessons into our daily life.

One of the concepts that author Le Cunff focused on is that of the “pact,” something she described in a blog post:

Make a pact. Trying to force a specific outcome in chaotic times is like trying to herd butterflies. However, just like chaos theory has its attractors orienting a system in a particular direction, you can orient yourself by defining a pact with yourself.

Make a commitment to dedicate a certain amount of time or a certain number of repetitions towards a project you care about. Similar to a compass, a pact encourages you to show up and surf the chaos, letting a new self-organization emerge over time. It needs to be purposeful, actionable, contextual, and trackable. Examples of such pacts include:

• Writing for one hour every morning before everyone wakes up
• Publishing one newsletter every week about a topic you care about
• Studying for a JavaScript certification for two hours every Sunday

As you can see, there is no finish line; no success metrics except for whether you show up or not. Each pact is simply a little experiment, a chance to learn about the world and about yourself. Focusing on your output rather than the outcome will rekindle your sense of agency without falling prey to the illusion of control.

Lisa came to me a few weeks ago and proposed that she assign me a pact. I can’t recall whether I had to pre-agree to the pact without knowing what it concerned, or whether I got to hear about it first.

The pact was simple: agree to drink 1½ litres of water every day.

I’m notorious, at least inside the confines of our relationship, for not keeping hydrated. For whatever reasons—false bravado, exceptionalism, laziness—I’ve never been a water bottle carrier (and may have, in my private moments, looked askance at those who were).

I certainly was nowhere near drinking 1½ litres of water every day.

I said yes.

I just took a swig of water from my water bottle. “Pact drinking,” I call it.

Between the water I engulfed during our morning workout, the water I had at lunch out, and the water I’ve had from the bottle, I’m probably near the one litre mark already, and the day isn’t half over yet.

The utility of the pact isn’t statistical, though (output, rather than outcome): it’s been a nudge toward building a habit, and that nudge has become linked to being thirsty, and feeling the positive effects of drinking nearby water (and learning to withstand the more-frequent-peeing needs).

Meanwhile, as Lisa writes in more detail in her own blog post about pacts, Lisa agreed to take on a pact assigned by me, blind, as a counterpoint. 

The one I assigned her—to write, vulnerably, on her blog every day for two weeks—was several orders of magnitude more involved than “drink some more water,” but she rose to the challenge, and I’ve been delighted to read what she’s been writing:

• Rings of Fire (27 June 2025)
• I’ve Changed for the Better (29 June 2025)
• The Pesticide Showcase (23 June 2025)
• Funkitude (24 June 2025)
• A Bias Toward Action! (22 June 2025)
• I Was Angry (20 June 2025)
• Yoga to Guide My Way On (18 June 2025)
• Recipe for Frustration (20 June 2025)
• Hedging Against Death (17 June 2025)
• Resisting Writing (16 June 2025)

I am, it should go without saying, a huge proponent of the practice of writing introspectively in public, and in reading what others have written in the same spirit (there are 94 RSS feeds in my RSS reader; words from these authors are the bulk of what I read online every day). 

To have a partner who’s a talented writer, whose words challenge me, delight me, and sometimes confront me, how great is that!

Lisa finished the pact yesterday with these words:

And so, I have completed this particular pact. I’m grateful to Peter for buying the book and saying yes to a pact of his own. It feels like a big success, as I feel more capable and less resistant. I intend to continue writing, but what to do from here? Just write blog posts everyday for the rest of my life? Hardly. Clearly I’ll need a new tiny experiment so I can pact it up!

Pact it up, my darling, pact it up.