The Cliff Illusion | How to Generate Better Ideas | Interview with Luke Burgis ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
July 2nd, 2026
_A newsletter by_ Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Hi friends,
Today is the exact midpoint of the year! It’s a good moment to pause and take stock of how things are going, and how you actually feel about them.
Have you been productive but run yourself into the ground? Did you ship something you’re proud of? Have you made time for the parts of your life that matter most to you?
The halfway mark can also be a tempting time to throw in the towel if the year hasn’t gone to plan so far. But in my experience, many of the best ideas and projects come from deciding to persist just a little longer.
So this week, we’ll look at the science of creative persistence, and how you can apply it in your own life and work.
Stay curious,
Anne-Laure
When I was writing my first book, I couldn’t land on a title. The first brainstorm gave me Liminal Minds. I loved it, but people found it confusing, so I did a second brainstorm. That one produced The Uncharted Life. I sat with it, and it didn’t feel right. It was only on the third brainstorm that Tiny Experiments finally clicked as a title.
It was a very similar process for the book cover. By the time we settled on one, I had looked at more than twenty options!
What strikes me looking back is the pattern. Every time, I was ready to quit and go with whatever was already in front of me. And every time, when I pushed a little further, that’s when the creative breakthrough happened.
You’d expect creativity to run dry the longer you go, but it did the opposite. So what was going on? It turns out there’s research that explains this well.
Researchers ran a series of studies on persistence and creativity. They found that people underestimate how many good ideas they’ll produce if they keep going. Partway through a task, the next stretch of effort feels like it will be a waste, when in reality it’s far more productive than people predict.
This seems to happen because creative thinking is hard, and that difficulty misleads you. The first ideas come easily, while the later ones take more effort, and that effort feels like a warning that you’re running out. So you stop a little too early, right when ideas are actually getting interesting.
In 2020, the same researchers published a follow-up. Across eight studies, they found that people expect their creativity to fall as an ideation session goes on. But when they measured what actually happened, creativity held steady or climbed. They named this gap the ‘creative cliff illusion.’
It’s genuinely hard to predict how creative your ideas will be, so your mind leans on something easier to track: how many ideas you’re generating. As the number of ideas does drop over time, we make the mistake of assuming that fewer ideas means worse ideas, although the quality tends to hold or even improve.
Here’s how you can avoid falling prey to the creative cliff illusion:
1. Plan to go past the point where you feel like stopping. The moment it starts to feel like you’ve run dry is actually the moment worth pushing through. So if you’ve set aside thirty minutes to brainstorm, keep going until the end and treat the final ten as the most valuable stretch.
2. Don’t treat “this is getting hard” as a measure of creativity. When the work starts to feel effortful, read it as a sign you’re leaving the obvious creative territory behind. This is good news!
3. Separate generating from judging. A lot of people quit early because the new ideas feel weak in the moment. Give yourself permission to produce rough, half-formed ideas without judging each one as you go. You can sort the good from the bad later.
The next time you’re looking at a decent-enough option and thinking about calling it, notice the pull to stop, and persist for just a little longer, whether that’s ten more minutes or just one more round.
Tiny Experiments only got its title because I gave it one more round. It’s worth giving it that extra little push and seeing what new ideas shop up.
Ready to put these ideas into practice? Try this week’s tiny experiment to practice creative persistence:
I will [brainstorm for 10 minutes longer on every creative task] for [10 days].
This will help you avoid the creative cliff illusion and generate better ideas. Want to dig deeper? Get your copy of Tiny Experiments.
GEORGE NEWMAN
Each week I ask a curious mind about their habits, routines, and rituals. This week we learn from cognitive scientist George Newman, a leading expert on creativity and the author of How Great Ideas Happen.
1. One daily practice you can’t do without? The best piece of advice I’ve received is “write every day.” Carve out a time. Make it a habit. Be ruthless about protecting it. It has become such an important part of my daily routine that I will often work on things that never see the light of day, just for the act of doing it.
2. One strategy to restart your creative engine? When we hit creative blocks, our tendency is to turn inwards: block out all distractions, put on the noise cancelling headphones, look deep within… But this is a mistake. Creativity comes from the outside – exploration, trial and error, collaboration, and feedback. So, when I hit a block, I find a totally new domain and spend some time learning about it.
3. One mindset shift that transformed your work? When we present our work to others there is the tendency to take everything and try to cram it all in. However, your audience is not in the tower business. They’re in the raft-inspection business. When we evaluate a project, we are looking for all the weak spots and holes – the things that will sink it. Next time you share your work with others, make sure you first ask, “Am I building a tower or floating a raft?”
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If you enjoy the newsletter, you’ll love our community of curious minds conducting tiny experiments within a safe space and learning together. Here is an overview of upcoming events (full calendar):
• Embrace the art of listening. In this workshop, Timothy Lydgate will discuss the physiological, linguistic, psychological and social dynamics which impact outcomes in our personal and professional interactions, whether engaging with friends or strangers, in copacetic or conflictual contexts.
• Learn to care wisely. Join Alex Snider for this author session to question your relationship with deadlines, productivity, and presence – and what it might look like to work in a way that supports both output and a life you actually enjoy.
**• Explore the neuroscience of hope.** When William Collins experienced a series of life changing losses, he found myself faced with a large liminal space. Join this workshop to explore the science of brain-friendly ways to think about your future.
**• Protect your mental health at work.** In this one-hour session, Adina Dinu will teach you the work factors that undermine your well-being, the differences between stress, burnout, and trauma, and healthy ways to respond to stress and adversity at work.
**• Make progress on your projects.** Join Kathryn Ruge for our Monday ‘body doubling’ coworking session to work on personal or work-related projects that you want to make progress on, covering all timezones. Ethan Miller is also hosting a cowriting session on Sunday this week.
**• Improve your knowledge management system.** Join our next PKM meeting where we learn from one another through sharing how our systems work in the real world and give new PKM users a leg up.
**• Host your own workshop.** Do you have an idea for a short presentation and Q&A or a workshop you’d like to trial? Test your first iteration in the Ness Labs community and get feedback. We promote all sessions here in the newsletter.
All of these and future events are included in the price of the membership (only $49 for one year), as well as access to our courses, workshop library, and a dedicated space to track your tiny experiments.
Until next week, take care!
Anne-Laure.
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