Hey Reader, "Sorry, I just need a bit more time to think about that." If you've ever said a version of this - in a meeting, to a manager, to a partner waiting for an answer you weren't ready to give - you've done something that's costing you. You've framed the way your brain works as a fault that needs an apology. Repeat it often enough and it starts to feel true. Each apology is a small deposit in the belief that your thinking is an inconvenience; that instant response is the standard and...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Picture this: Your manager catches you in the corridor after the meeting: "I noticed you didn't say much in there. Everything alright? I want to make sure you feel able to contribute." Good intentions. Terrible timing. The honest answer needs you to explain how your brain handles information under real-time social pressure, and you've got about four seconds in a corridor to do it. So you say you're fine. Or that you were listening. Or you apologise. Your manager walks off thinking...
8 days ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, By 3pm working in an open plan office, my body felt like it was made of concrete. The work itself wasn't the problem. It was the environment that was relentless - the movement in the periphery, the conversations bleeding in from two desks away, the person stopping by for a thirty second question. Flow broken. Gone. And then the slow, frustrating process of trying to rebuild it before the next interruption arrived. When I was working on a project at Google, this was a constant...
23 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, For a long time, I believed free time only counted if it was accounted for. If someone asked what I was doing at the weekend and my answer was nothing, that meant I was available. No plans meant no excuse. No excuse meant yes. I spent years on dating apps dreading the inevitable question: What are you up to this weekend? Seven words that I had convinced myself required either a lie, an apology, or an explanation I didn't have yet. Then I had a revelation. Scrolling through social...
29 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, My mother has never stopped talking in her life. I mean that with complete love: she is warm and funny and has more stories than anyone I've ever met. A visit with her is like being showered in words - her past, the neighbours, the latest talking point in the town and EVERY detail of every conversation she's had. By the time I leave, I need an hour of silence and sometimes a sleep. For years I assumed that said something about me: a patience problem, maybe. Something to work on....
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, For THIRTY years, he assumed the exhaustion was just what work felt like. Last week, I launched my 'User Manual' for introverts and the first testimonial I received echoed something I've heard many times from members of my community: Performing extroversion comes at a cost, and it's a cost we often only realise years - or even decades - later than we should. This customer also told me in a DM that, "Sadly I really needed this information about 25 years ago". I think what he wrote...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, "Be more visible." That's it. That's the feedback. No framework. No explanation of what visible even means for someone who thinks the way you think.Just an instruction to change. I lost count of the number of times I was told this: in performance reviews, from managers, from well-meaning mentors who could see I was capable and couldn't understand why I kept making myself small. Then this month I got a LinkedIn DM from a follower who'd experienced the exact same thing. Their...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, My mortgage was approved on a Tuesday. I resigned the same day. I'd beaten over 7,000 applicants to get that job. A management traineeship at one of the UK's biggest banks. They'd told me I was a leader of the future. I had a structured graduate programme, a career path and every external marker of having got it 'right'. And I felt like a battery hen. It was my first taste of corporate and I was horrified of the reality of it. The office environment drained me in a way I didn't...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, This week, when searching my files for something, I found a spreadsheet I'd made a few years ago where I'd collated my qualifications, accomplishments, feedback and a survey I'd done of people who know me when I was training as a coach.I updated it, and then asked AI to analyse it.I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was NOT what I got: I'm world-class at facilitating training I have the kind of proof most speakers never accumulate (but have done nothing with it) I've been...
2 months ago • 2 min read