Turning assumptions into afternoon experiments

Jessica Böhme runs the Life as a Lab Fellowship, where she asks participants to identify a single assumption governing their daily behavior, such as the belief that they must always be useful (life as lab). She instructs fellows to spend one afternoon acting as if that assumption were false, specifically by intentionally remaining useless for the duration of the afternoon. This experiment forces participants to observe the immediate internal reactions—such as restlessness, relief, or guilt—that arise when they cease to prioritize productivity.

Jim Palmer describes this process as existential exposure, the state where an individual faces the demands of daily life after a previously held framework—such as religious doctrine or rigid social expectations—loses its authority (Deconstructionology with Jim Palmer). He suggests that individuals often seek external justification to settle questions with no clear answer, such as whether to start a family or change careers, to avoid the discomfort of personal responsibility (Koenfucius’s Substack). Instead, he encourages people to use their capacity for judgment to weigh these decisions against their own values rather than appealing to tribal norms or status-based logic.