There’s a critical distinction in experimentation: when you feel tension or discomfort, stay. That’s where the learning lives. But when you feel a should—“I have to do this,” when identity is at stake—that’s when you rearrange the experiment.
Joe illustrates with the trash story: in an experiment of not doing anything he didn’t enjoy, he faced a pile of rotting garbage. He couldn’t take it out (didn’t enjoy it), couldn’t leave it (didn’t enjoy the smell). That uncomfortable tension was exactly where the breakthrough lived. Quitting there would have missed the whole point.
“There’s usually this moment of discomfort and you don’t want to just jump out of the experiment during that discomfort—embrace intensity.”
Learning the difference between productive discomfort (stay) and obligation-based pressure (iterate) is itself one of the greatest gifts of running experiments. It sharpens your ability to distinguish your migratory path from your shoulds.