I became a manager and could not let go of the doing. What that revealed about me was more important than any management technique.
The belief that things will not be done well without your direct involvement is sometimes true and more often a story about your relationship with co…
Delegation is not a time management technique. It is a test of whether you can hold your need f…
Every year from November to February I became a slower, darker version of myself. I thought that was just how I was. It was not just how I was.
What you have always experienced is not always what is unavoidable. Patterns you have normalised as personality may be treatable conditions. Ask the …
If you are significantly lower in emotional energy, motivation and mood at the same time every …
I had always avoided being alone because it felt like loneliness. Learning the difference changed my relationship with both.
Learn to be with yourself - genuinely, comfortably, without the immediate reach for company or stimulation. It is one of the most useful skills avail…
Loneliness is about the quality of your connections. Solitude is time without company. They fee…
I did not go sober because alcohol was ruining my life. It was not. I went sober because I wanted to find out who I was when it was not there.
You do not need a reason to stop drinking beyond curiosity about what is on the other side. The answer to that question is worth knowing.
Sobriety is not only for people with a drinking problem. It is also an experiment in finding ou…
I thought the relentless voice that catalogued my failures was keeping me honest. It was keeping me small.
Self-criticism that produces shame is not useful. Self-assessment that produces action is. Know which one your inner voice is producing and where it …
The inner critic is not your conscience. It is a collection of other people's voices that you h…
I had been wrong in a way that had cost someone something real. Acknowledging it properly was one of the most difficult and necessary things I have done.
If you have done something that cost another person something real, the time for the acknowledgment is not when it becomes comfortable. It is as soon…
Making amends for something you got wrong is not primarily for the other person's benefit, thou…
Everyone warned me I would regret it. Five years on I am still waiting for the regret to arrive.
Regret for the path not taken tends to compound. The cost of trying something and it not working is almost always lower than the cost of not trying i…
The career that makes the most sense on paper is not always the one that will make the most sen…
I told myself I could outlast it. I could not. And the two years I spent trying cost me more than the leaving would have.
Leave the environment that requires you to manage yourself down to fit it. No career is worth the sustained cost of adapting to something that is str…
A toxic workplace does not improve by waiting. It extracts a continuous cost from everyone in i…
I spent my twenties disappointed by my parents in ways that confused me. Then I understood I had been disappointed by an idea of them rather than by who they actually were.
When you see your parents clearly - as people with their own fears and compromises and unlived lives - disappointment is replaced by something that l…
Disappointing parents is often a sign that you were relating to a projection of what parents sh…
We had been close for years. Then I started earning differently and discovered we had been standing on opposite sides of an invisible line the whole time.
Check your assumptions about what is easy or accessible against the actual circumstances of the people you make them to. The gap between your default…
Class differences in friendships do not disappear when you start earning similarly. They live i…
She was one of the most important people in my life. Then one day she simply was not. The not knowing was the hardest part.
Being ghosted by someone important is a particular kind of loss that does not resolve the way most loss does. Let yourself grieve it without needing …
Some endings do not give you the explanation you need to fully close them. The peace you make w…
Every reason I gave myself for not going turned out to be a reason to go. The most common one - that I could handle it myself - was the most expensive.
You do not need a crisis to benefit from therapy. The work is useful in ordinary times and invaluable when the ordinary times become difficult. Do no…
The reasons you give yourself for not going to therapy are usually produced by the same system …