The Practice of Small Experiments
On curiosity as a way of being, not just doing
There's a particular quality to summer light that makes ordinary things feel experimental. Maybe it's the way late afternoon sun transforms a kitchen counter into something worth photographing, or how the extra daylight stretches possibility into the evening hours. Whatever it is, summer has always felt like permission to try things differently.
This year, instead of grand resolutions or ambitious projects, I've been drawn to something smaller: the practice of daily experiments. Not the kind that require equipment or outcomes, but the gentle kind that ask simply, "What if I just...?"
The Architecture of Attention
An experiment, at its core, is a question posed to the world. What happens if I change this one variable? What shifts when I interrupt the expected pattern?
In daily life, our experiments are often invisible, even to ourselves. We try a new route to work and notice different trees. We eat lunch outside and discover our relationship to the hour changes. We read poetry instead of the news and feel something in our nervous system settle.
These aren't experiments in the scientific sense—there's no control group, no measurable outcome. They're experiments in attention, in the architecture of awareness. They're ways of asking: How does this choice change what I notice? What becomes available when I shift just slightly off the familiar path?
The Summer of Small Changes
This summer, I've been collecting these small experiments like some people collect shells. Not to display or analyze, but simply to accumulate evidence that life is more malleable than our routines suggest—even when those routines involve constant interruptions and little hands reaching for everything you're trying to do.
Opening the side porch during breakfast. Maybe once a week, when I have the bandwidth to deal with the inevitable mess, I'll open up the side porch to let fresh air flow through while we eat. The oldest will inevitably drift toward the plants, maybe dig fingers into soil, and I have to decide in real time whether I can handle the cleanup later. But something about that fresh air mixing with morning chaos changes the entire feel of breakfast—less contained, more connected to the world outside our walls.
Going barefoot (when possible). My feet have gotten soft over the years. I remember walking over rocks and coral to catch waves when I was living on the island, feet tough enough for any surface. Now even the pebbles by our front door make me wince. But there's something about feeling the earth directly that I'd forgotten—the cool bathroom tiles first thing in the morning, the scratch of the welcome mat, the way flagstone feels different when it's dry versus when moss has made it damp and soft. It's a small reminder to reconnect with surfaces, to feel the ground beneath me instead of just walking over it.
Reading during snack time. After years of literary fiction, I started grabbing whatever was on hold at the library without overthinking it—fantasy, non-fiction, the occasional light romance. The constraint was that it had to work in fifteen-minute chunks between "Mama, can you..." and "Mama, where is..." I found the sweet spot: either light romance that carries you forward with pure momentum, or non-fiction dense enough that you can read a few lines and spend the interruptions digesting what you just absorbed. Some books are built for fractured attention; others demand more continuous focus than motherhood allows.
Five minutes with Beans. When the kids go down for nap, I've been trying to give our dog at least five minutes of undivided attention. All our interactions are usually with little hands reaching for her, voices calling her name, someone always needing something from me. But in those quiet minutes, I remember what it's like to just sit with her, to notice how gray her muzzle has gotten, how she still leans into scratches behind her ears the same way she did as a puppy. As the years pass, I'm increasingly aware we probably only have a few left together. These small moments of re-connection feel like preparation for the next stage, when the house will be quieter and it will just be us again.
The Beautiful Ordinary
None of these experiments changed my life in dramatic ways. I didn't discover hidden passions or have profound realizations about existence. But that misses the point entirely.
The value wasn't in the outcomes but in the practice itself—the willingness to interrupt autopilot, to stay curious about the shape of my own days, even when those days are shaped primarily by other people's needs and schedules. Each small experiment was a reminder that even within the constraints of constant caregiving, there are still variables we can adjust.
This is what I've come to think of as the beautiful ordinary: the recognition that within the constraints of any given day—even days filled with constant interruptions, snack requests, and the elaborate negotiations required to leave the house—there are always micro-choices available. We can't always change our circumstances, and as parents we certainly can't always find quiet moments to ourselves, but we can almost always change our position within them.
Experiments as Resistance
In a culture obsessed with optimization and productivity, there's something quietly rebellious about experiments that serve no purpose beyond curiosity. They resist the tyranny of efficiency, the demand that every action produce measurable results.
Small experiments are a form of resistance against the flattening of experience, against the tendency to sleepwalk through familiar routines. They're a way of insisting that attention itself is valuable, that noticing is its own form of productivity.
When I open the porch during breakfast or spend five quiet minutes with Beans, I'm not trying to become a better version of myself. I'm practicing a different relationship to time, to space, to the thousand tiny choices that make up any ordinary day—including the choice to see interruptions as part of the experiment rather than obstacles to it.
The Season of Trying
Summer, with its abundance of light and its invitation to move more slowly, feels like the natural season for this kind of experimentation. There's something about long evenings and warm mornings that makes small changes feel possible, even inevitable.
But the practice doesn't have to be seasonal. The invitation to experiment—to ask "what if I just..."—is always available. What changes is our receptivity to it, our willingness to believe that small adjustments can create meaningful shifts in how we inhabit our lives.
Where Experiments Lead
The most interesting thing about practicing small experiments is how they compound. Not in obvious ways, but in how they change your relationship to possibility itself. When you discover that moving breakfast outside transforms your morning, you start to wonder what other assumptions about "how things are done" might be worth questioning.
You begin to see routine not as a prison but as a series of choices made so frequently they've become invisible. And invisibility, it turns out, is just another variable you can experiment with.
The experiments I've shared here are deeply personal, shaped by my particular life and circumstances. Your experiments will look different—they should look different. The point isn't to copy specific changes but to cultivate the curiosity that makes experimentation possible.
What small thing has been tugging at your attention? What routine has become so automatic you've forgotten it was once a choice? What would happen if you introduced just one small variable into the familiar rhythm of your days?
The summer is long, and there are countless small experiments waiting to be tried. The question isn't whether they'll change everything—it's whether they'll help you notice what's already there, waiting to be discovered in the spaces between the expected and the possible.
This post is part of an ongoing exploration of attention, curiosity, and the art of small changes. What experiments are you trying this summer? I'd love to hear about them.
