Chapter Content
Okay, so, um, this is kind of about, like, how I, uh, completely changed my life, I guess you could say. It all started, well, I was, like, twenty-seven, living in San Francisco, you know, the dream, right? And I just quit my job at Google. I mean, seriously, who does that? My manager, she, like, actually asked me, "Are you sure?" and she looked, like, genuinely concerned. I mean, it was my dream job, amazing pay, traveling the world, you know, cool, challenging work, awesome colleagues, and it seemed like I could, like, go as far as I wanted, climb that corporate ladder all the way to the top, right? My parents were, like, over the moon when I got the job, straight out of university. And, honestly, so was I! Being in the heart of the tech world was a, was a huge opportunity.
So, yeah, her question, it made sense. I wasn't, like, super sure I was doing the right thing, but, you know, I just nodded, gave her a hug, thanked her for everything, all that.
So, you're probably wondering why, right?
Okay, so Google in California was kind of a weird place for me to end up, if you think about it. I'm French Algerian, grew up in Paris. My mom was from this place in Algeria, Sidi Okba, which is also known as the "city of magic" because, apparently, it attracted all these spiritual leaders. It's, like, at the edge of the Sahara Desert, a gateway where Arabs and Bedouins met to trade spices, camels, fabrics, all that stuff. My dad was born in Dinan, this fortified French city, a strategic spot between Normandy and Brittany. They even have this massive medieval festival every year, celebrating the city walls with themes like, you know, "gates to the imagination."
Christmas in my family was, like, halal turkey and champagne. I'd wear miniskirts to school in France and then, like, cover my hair with a veil when visiting family in Algeria. My dad, super into math, you know, the French way, he'd teach me about fractals and chaos theory, while my mom would share Arabic proverbs.
But, even though they were from different worlds, my parents agreed on one thing: education, super important, and picking a career wisely. I was the first woman in my family to get a higher education, which my dad saw as the path to success and my mom as the path to survival, you know? My studies, science and business, all about getting a good job.
Growing up with the internet, I was always fascinated by how it all worked. I spent my teens playing around, you know, things like, uh, running a blog with a different design every few weeks, translating Japanese songs into French, and managing this online community for young writers. Millions of people were online, learning, connecting, creating. There was this sense of mystery, and, honestly, a lot of respect for the people at companies like Google who were making it all happen.
I got the Google interview, get this, by just chatting with someone on a flight to San Francisco about the future of tech. Went through their crazy hiring process and landed the job. The perfect job. Showed up on campus feeling lucky, and, you know, maybe a little bit like a fraud.
Google's big on data, so everything was pretty clear. Each project had objectives. Career success was all mapped out, you know, with levels and seniority. Promotions were based on a rubric telling you exactly what you needed to do to get to the next level. No guessing, no tinkering, everything was right there.
So, I was inspired by everyone, cheered on by my parents and friends back in France, I started climbing that ladder. Scheduled my days, like, every thirty minutes, answered emails super fast, volunteered for extra projects, even met with mentors to plan my career. They flew me around the world for conferences and stuff. Got promoted, got a global role in digital health. I sometimes had to cancel plans to work late, but it seemed worth it. My path was laid out, all I had to do was keep climbing.
American psychiatrist Irvin Yalom wrote about these "awakening experiences," you know, events that shake you up, break down your defenses, and open you up to new stuff. Some are major, like losing someone, divorce, war, illness. Others are, like, "a sort of petite existential shock therapy," basically, thoughts that make you rethink how you're living. It took a mix of both to wake me up.
One morning, getting ready for work, I noticed my arm was, like, purple. Went to the Google clinic, they sent me to the hospital. Turns out, I had a blood clot that could have gone to my lungs. Needed surgery. I was so worried about messing up my team's projects that I, like, asked to delay the surgery until after the company retreat. My manager would have been furious if she knew, so I didn't tell her.
After the surgery, my friends picked me up from the hospital and took a photo, you know, the classic group shot. Me in the middle, in a wheelchair, smiling, holding flowers. My face looked the same, but I could already feel something had changed. I recovered, went back to work, hit my targets, supported my team, but it all felt, like, mechanical.
Not long after, I went home to France for Christmas, first time in a year. Friends and family, hadn't seen them in forever. Someone asked, "How's life?" Seemed like such a small question, right? But when I said, you know, "work-is-great-and-San-Francisco-is-nice-thank-you," I noticed how empty my voice sounded.
How was life, really?
I had never even asked myself that. Too busy, always focused on the next thing. And I was living the dream, so, you know, everything must be great, right?
Away from San Francisco, I finally let myself think about it honestly. Life wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. I was probably burned out, but that was just a symptom. I was so caught up in the routine, the rubric, the ladder, that I had stopped noticing anything else. I stopped asking myself what I wanted out of my day, or my future.
And, even though I was working so hard, I was also bored. I used to be driven by a real desire to learn and grow, but now I was just following a path that so many other people had already taken.
Realizing this was like getting shocked. A lot of people can build a good life at Google. I wasn't one of them. On my first day back after the holidays, I quit.
Looking back, I probably should have taken some time to just think, you know, after quitting. But I was too scared of being this unemployed nobody. My mom was already worried I'd end up homeless. So I jumped into the next thing everyone says you should do: after working at a big tech company and saving money, you start your own company.
I moved back to Europe and started a tech startup.
Within a year, it was being called one of "the healthcare startups you need to know about" in WIRED magazine. I broke up with my first cofounder, got into this fancy startup accelerator, and met a new cofounder. We spent, like, all our time building pitch decks and meeting with potential partners. I was so busy, I didn't realize I'd just gone from one kind of hyperfocused, goal-oriented thing to another.
It was only when we didn't get to the next stage of the accelerator and had to shut down the company that I finally let myself just stop for a moment. I mean, I didn't really have a choice. There was no clear next step. After years of hustling, I finally went to a place I had never let myself go before: I admitted that I was lost.
And that was the most freeing thought I'd ever had.
So, you might know about the Hero's Journey, right? It's this pattern that Joseph Campbell talked about, where you face challenges, go into the unknown, and find what you need to come back changed. Like in those stories, life's made of cycles of getting lost and finding ourselves.
Feeling lost and free, I started thinking about this "in-between" time not as something to escape, but as something to explore. And with that, I reconnected with an old friend: curiosity.
Not having a clear plan opened up all these possibilities. I started paying attention to what conversations made me excited, what topics I liked. I took online courses. Went to workshops. Bought books just because I wanted to. And I freelanced to make money. I felt like my old self again, and I loved it. I wasn't falling off a cliff. I was living in my own "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel.
My curiosity kept leading me back to the human brain. Why do we think and feel the way we do? The more I read, the more interested I became, until I decided to go back to school to study neuroscience. This time, I didn't have some big plan. I just wanted to explore, learn, and grow. I was really stepping into the unknown.
Even though I was in a formal program, I didn't want my curiosity to stop. So, inspired by the scientific mindset, I asked myself: what experiment could I do on my own life that would make me feel good, no matter what happened?
I love writing, so I made a promise to write and share 100 articles in 100 workdays, drawing on my studies and what I was reading. I wrote about mental health at work, creativity, mindful productivity.
Sharing my work every day was scary at first. I felt, like, exposed. I was admitting that I was a work in progress, and so was everything I wrote. The only thing keeping me going was the promise I made. I didn't think about the end goal, just focused on showing up. It wasn't easy, so I tried to learn from it. I took notes, wrote in a journal. Watched for signs of burnout and tried different formats, like shorter articles for when I was busy.
Slowly, a path started to appear. I finished the 100 articles and decided to keep going. My newsletter grew to, like, a hundred thousand readers. I called it Ness Labs, a combination of "-ness," like in "awareness" and "mindfulness," and "labs," because I wanted it to be a place for personal experimentation. People emailed me, thanking me for helping them turn chaos into creativity, for sharing tools to reduce anxiety, for helping them explore parts of their minds they were afraid of. Some even asked if I'd ever make a course or write a book.
I kept up with my studies, and now, I'm a neuroscientist, studying how different brains learn differently using things like, you know, electroencephalography and eye-tracking. Ness Labs is now a small business with an amazing team. I get to speak and write about things I actually care about.
The uncertainty hasn't gone away, but I wake up every day excited to see what's next. I'm always looking for new experiments. I'm not trying to get to some specific place. I'm playing a different game: a game of noticing, questioning, and adapting.
So, uncertainty can teach us a lot. We feel it not just during big changes, but also in smaller moments, like when we're in the middle of a project and just want to give up. When we're in those tough moments, we usually just feel scared or anxious. And so we rush to find a solution to escape it, like I did with my startup.
But there's another way: the experimental way.
I've spent the last few years at Ness Labs developing tools to help us live lives of joyful experimentation. My 100-article project was the start of a new way to grow, based on research and what I learned teaching thousands of people how to use it. Through research and experience, I've found some practices that help with burnout and boredom, a way to fight the fear, overwhelm, confusion, and loneliness a lot of people feel when they try to use old ideas of success in today's world.
This isn't a recipe for achieving a specific goal. Instead, it's a set of tools you can use to find and achieve your own goals, especially if those goals are different from what society expects.
Together, these tools will fill your life with systematic curiosity, you know, a real commitment to living between what you know and what you don't, not with fear but with interest. Systematic curiosity helps you believe you can grow even when you don't know exactly what to do, knowing that your actions can match your real desires.
So, it is about learning how to: commit to curiosity, practice mindful productivity, collaborate with uncertainty, and dream bigger by growing with the world.
It's about changing the old, straight line to success with a new, experimental way to grow. In this new way, your goals are discovered, pursued, and adapted in conversation with the world. It is about asking big questions and designing small experiments to find the answers. It is about getting comfortable with not following a straight path, where every crossroads is an adventure.
This way of life is based on old wisdom and backed by modern science. It shows that when you embrace your curiosity, uncertainty can become a state of possibility, a chance for change. It's a way to turn challenges into chances for self-discovery and doubt into opportunity. So get ready for this new thing: your experimental life.