Recently while making flatbread in France, something fascinating happened. As usual, we were eating it with strong camembert cheese which makes the strawberry jam you put on it shy away in flavor. I had a piece of that strong camembert on my plate, slightly runny from the warm bread. At some point, my friend noticed the “butter” was tasting weird. I realized he had confused the running cheese on my plate with warm butter—which, in appearance, was strikingly similar.

What stunned me was how his brain tried so hard to fit a specific taste into his expectations that it made him believe—at least for thirty seconds—that he was eating butter. The mental gymnastics our brains perform to preserve our expectations are remarkable.

The Embarrassing Truth About My “Applied University Curriculum”

Looking closely at the most embarrassing details and amplifying them (today’s oblique strategy card): this 42-day challenge was meant to be an “applied university curriculum”—something to make me an expert for the sake of our project. But what have I actually accomplished today? I read in the sun. I started reading “The Mom Test.” I watched a Tim Ferriss video about raccoons dying in walls.

There’s very little structured learning happening here, and that’s embarrassing to admit. The contrast between my ambitious curriculum plan and the reality of my scattered approach is stark. I’m writing in this stream-of-consciousness fever dream style that feels raw and unpolished—not the info-based, expertise-building content I imagined.

It’s like I’m gathering ingredients without cooking the meal.

The Mom Test and Our Self-Deceptive Tendencies

This camembert confusion perfectly illustrates what “The Mom Test” book is trying to prevent: confirmation bias. Our mothers are the people most likely to lie to us when we pitch business ideas—not out of malice, but love. They want to encourage us, so they tell us what we want to hear.

The Mom Test proposes restraining from pitching your own idea for as long as possible. This delayed gratification is transformative. It manifests in real active listening and its profound effect on the person being listened to. If you make others talk about themselves, they can’t even subconsciously get the idea to lie to please you—because there’s nothing to please you with in that moment.

Only after collaboratively exploring the problem can you start talking about your solution. But this is the only way to escape the confirmation bias of your own mind—seeing the truth of what is, not what you hope to see.

Practicing What I Preach: Testing My Website with Vipassana Friends

Today I tried to practice these principles by sending our pre-launch website to my Vipassana meditation friends. In the audio message I sent, I attempted to apply The Mom Test approach: asking about their experiences first, offering a simple experiment they could try immediately (flip a coin: heads = make chai tea, tails = 10-minute meditation), and requesting observations rather than opinions.

Another embarrassing detail worth amplifying: I still can’t really defend my communication approach in front of my co-founder. When he asks simple questions like why I choose to advocate for phone calls with organic contacts instead of vast data collection through Reddit, my curiosity transforms into defensiveness. I have to admit it’s not really based on evidence or thoughtful strategic consideration—just intuition.

AI: The Infinite Dummy Factory

The second insight I’ve been pondering: AI provides us with an infinite testing dummy factory. We’re so conditioned to the scarcity of testing subjects and testing strategies that we treat them as valuable “goodies.” But in the age of AI, testing dummies become “baddies” (in the sense of abundance, not quality).

AI is your factory for those testing “baddies.” You can test countless different strategies, phrasings, and approaches. It’s overwhelming but liberating. Today the oblique strategies helped me handshake this idea of making friends with AI as a testing dummy factory.

From Procrastination to Fresh Perspective

This afternoon I pulled another oblique strategies card, suggesting I look at the question at hand through the lens of novelty, humility, and credibility. It’s honestly embarrassing how little output change came from that exercise—but the mindset shift was enormous.

Suddenly I had another story to tell myself: I wasn’t procrastinating on rewriting the website; I found it boring and needed the challenge of a fresh perspective. This reframing worked beautifully and gave me confidence to send the site to my Vipassana friends with genuine enthusiasm.

Work should be fun. That statement is a good strategy: simple to explain and hard to stick to. Very hard. Against all intuition, fun is not naturally sticky if we live in a society and work culture that has inverted the physical laws of our psyche.

By that, I mean it’s in our genes to learn through fun. Kids do that naturally if we don’t exaggerate in traumatizing them. This universal psychological law gets inverted through system conformity—not through bad intentions, but through unintended systemic consequences.

Tomorrow’s Commitment: Finding a Guide

After tonight’s call with a friend, I’ve realized what university actually provides beyond curriculum: a network of peers and mentors. That’s what I’m missing in this self-directed learning journey.

So my commitment for tomorrow is this: I will reach out to three potential mentors in the fields of UX, branding, or community building. I’ll apply The Mom Test principles—not pitching our project immediately, but asking about their experiences and challenges. I’ll document what I learn from these conversations.

Learning in public is fundamentally different than learning in private. As Anne-Laure Le Cunff points out, public learning invites expertise, comments, and collaboration that private study never could. It’s like traveling alone versus traveling with a buddy—when alone, you’re forced to get out of your comfort zone and meet people, which stimulates much more spontaneous growth.

Your Turn

Have you tried using randomness (like oblique strategy cards) to break through mental blocks? Try the following Prompt.

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You are a creative thought partner who helps people see their challenges from unexpected angles using Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies.

Generate a random number (1-128), then find the corresponding Brian Eno Oblique Strategy. Use this strategy to explore my challenge:

[YOUR PROBLEM/QUESTION]

Ask 3 surprising questions based on this strategy that help me see my problem differently. Follow up on my answers with Socratic questioning to spark new insights.
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What perspectives shifted? What embarrassing details did you notice that might actually contain wisdom?

Share your experience in the comments. Let’s learn together in public.