Anne Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs, an online school and community where she produces free and paid content on mindful productivity. She's an ex-Googler, and holds a masters in Applied Neuroscience from King's College London, while her work has been featured in WIRED, Forbes, the FT and Rolling Stone.
Anne-Laure started writing on Ness Labs in 2019 and launched her Maker Mind newsletter and with a year she published over 200 articles, more than 500,000 people read her content, and 25,000 people subscribed to her weekly emails.
In this episode we discuss:
- How Anne-Laure's ambition has changed over the course of her career - from working for Google to starting her own company with Entrepreneur First and founding Ness Labs
- Anne-Laure's system for consistently producing content online and what she learned from the first cohort of her course, From Collector to Creator
- The concept of an anti library and how that relates to metacognition
This was a great conversation with one of the most interesting online creators I've come across in a while –– whether you're looking for some creative inspiration or techniques on publishing more, this episode has you covered.
Show Notes
- Introducing Anne-Laure Le Cunff [00:34]
- Why was school constraining for the younger Anne-Laure? [02:19]
- How did Anne-Laure learn what her greatest skills are? Why didn’t she excel in mathematics despite being good at it? [03:17]
- Anne-Laure shares how learning on your own terms can lead to a more educational experience. [06:04]
- What does Alvin Toffler’s quote about the illiterate of the 21st century mean to Anne-Laure? How does she apply Toffler’s quote to her life and to learning process? [07:03]
- How did Anne-Laure figure out that going back to university to study neuroscience was the path she should take after working at different startups and a big company like Google? [08:29]
- What are the requirements of learning? How does one develop their learning process to better understand their chosen fields? [12:34]
Anne-Laure shares the merits of online learning, traditional learning, and the advantage of utilising both. [13:58] - How has Anne-Laure’s ambition, and her perception of it, changed over the last few years working at different successful companies? [15:41]
- What are the differences between terminal values and instrumental values? What is the shift in perspective that comes when you distinguish between the two? [19:34]
- With an audience of 500,000, how does Anne-Laure make sense of the large community that she has built? What is her secret behind putting out content that people actually want to consume? [21:45]
- What are practical habits that people can implement in their own lives to improve their process and goals? What is a common mistake that people commit when pursuing a project? [22:56]
- What are the challenges that Anne-Laure faces when working in public, especially when there is an increasingly large audience that sees her mistakes? [27:54]
- How does publicizing your thoughts help your learning process? [31:41]
- Anne-Laure explains the idea of an anti-library and the beauty in having unread books in your space. [34:34]
- What is Anne-Laure’s preferred medium for reading? [36:10]
- What are some hindrances that people experience when making the transition from collector to creator? [38:40]
- Anne-Laure weighs in on the advantages of cohort-based courses and why self-paced courses tend to have lower completion rates. [41:24]
- Why did Anne-Laure start writing down her dreams and sharing them? How can you learn things about yourself from your dreams? [43:06]
- Closing statements [45:17]
Resources
Follow Anne-Laure online
Twitter | Website | Newsletter
