Essays
Small enough to see.New essay
When life gets wider, paying attention to the most important people gets harder.
There’s no map for this.
Why the advice that works for them doesn’t work for you.
Freedom. Sort of.
What if the freedom you quit your job for isn’t really freedom?
Sweat the small stuff.
The self-help industry sold us a cure for a disease we don't have.
Selective editing.
The stories we make up about our heroes (and why we shouldn’t…)
Synthetic purpose.
When problem-solvers run out of problems, they manufacture fake ones. I've been doing it every morning at 5:30 a.m. for a year.
The machine or the life.
Some mornings I wake up and think, what the hell did I just do?
Pick a table.
Two people joined the same company the same year with the same pay cut. One became a CEO. The other has had seven jobs in fifteen years.
Just tell me when you’ll be here.
Most people communicate what's in their own head instead of what the other person needs to hear. A nurse, a boardroom, and the difference between the two.
Thief of Joy.
When I was 27, a friend asked me point-blank how much money I made. My answer — and my reaction to her answer — taught me something I've never forgotten.
Missing someone who doesn’t exist.
My old boss texted me during the pandemic. I went back for eight months before I realized I wasn't missing the job — I was missing a version of myself that was already gone.
I'm a crazy person.
The most successful people I know don't have better habits. They have something slightly wrong with them.
Bored to death.
At some point I got really good at my job. Nobody talks about what happens after that. I was bored to death.
Get out.
We squeezed into two bar seats on Valentine's Day without a reservation. When the bartender handed us menus, I noticed something that changed how I think about business.
Rock bottom.
She threw herself down a mountain at 70mph — the same mountain that nearly ended her career four years ago. She won by four hundredths of a second.