The Friday provocation for experimenters everywhere.

Some testing programs feel like motion disguised as progress.
There’s always another dashboard, another “test in flight,” another slide of results that no one can quite remember authorizing.

You can almost hear the hum of productivity—but no one’s sure what’s actually being learned.

That’s the paradox of modern experimentation. We’re running more tests than ever, yet learning less than we used to.

Somewhere along the way, we confused activity with insight.

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When a program starts to spiral, it usually sounds like this:
“We’ll just test it.”
It’s said casually, like it’s the safest, most responsible option in the room.

But “we’ll just test it” has become a corporate reflex. A shield against decisions. A polite way to say, We don’t really know what we’re doing, so let’s pretend we do.

If you test everything, you eventually learn nothing.

Real experimentation requires focus. It’s not about running every idea. It’s about running the right ideas—and having the discipline to ignore the rest.

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I’ve seen teams run hundreds of tests with no clear insight to show for it.
Not because they lacked talent, but because they lacked pause.

They were spinning faster and faster, chasing significance thresholds instead of significance in meaning.

They forgot that testing isn’t about proof—it’s about discovery.

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So, if you’re feeling the exhaustion of “always testing,” take a step back.
Ask one question:

When was the last time we learned something that changed how we worked?

If you can’t remember, you’re not running tests. You’re running laps.