I caught myself doing it again the other morning. I wrote something I was quietly proud of, and before I had even finished deciding how I felt about it, I was already imagining how it would land with everyone else.
A few years ago I bought a motorbike I had wanted for a long time. The kind of thing you tell yourself is a marker, proof you got somewhere.
A note on framing: I'm not a philosopher or a psychologist, and this piece isn't a clinical guide.
Here is a number that should give any manager pause. At Nvidia, the company that makes the chips much of the AI boom runs on, one senior leader says the computers can cost more than the people.
Imagine you send the wrong email to the wrong person. Not a small wrong, either.
The window on the descent into Ireland showed me nothing useful. Just green, then grey, then a coastline that could have been almost anywhere.
I spend a few months each year in Ho Chi Minh City, based around District 7, and between work blocks I have a route that takes longer than it needs to.
I'll admit something that bothers me a little. Most mornings now, my first move when I hit a hard sentence is not to think harder.
Pick an opinion you actually hold, something you feel reasonably sure about. Could be political, could be about diet, could be about whether remote work makes people lazy.
Sit with the line for a second and one word does more work than the rest. Not love, which everyone nods along to.
I notice it most when I am choosing where to eat. Two cafés sit on the same street.
There is a particular kind of internet post that promises you Beethoven's day, or Kant's, as if the schedule were a recipe and the genius the inevitable bake.
How many times do you check your email on a normal workday? Be honest. Not the number you'd like to say, the real one, counting every quick glance at the phone and every tab you flick back to between actual tasks.
Imagine your flight is delayed three hours. Or someone leaves you a bad review that you think is unfair.
Can one question really tell you how a whole life is going? It sounds too simple.
Most lunch breaks are not really breaks. A sandwich at the desk, the screen never quite off, an eye on the next message.
