Why do we feel the need to apologise sharing a win?. Why do we need to explain that we hate posts that do exactly what we’re about to do?

I’m saying ‘we’ because this is exactly the sort of thing I do.

It’s almost an acknowledgement that it’s not quite OK to share what we did well. That shouting about our successes is what? Arrogant? Showing off? Too much? That it might make other people who haven’t achieved the same thing feel uncomfortable or inadequate, as though they’re not enough?

I don’t KNOW any of this, you understand. I’m just wondering why so many of us feel the need to put in that little apologetic disclaimer. A little acknowledgement that we know it’s wrong to show off.

You see versions of it all the time. I don’t normally post things like this. I hate blowing my own trumpet. This feels a bit uncomfortable to share. And then comes the thing we’re really proud of.

So why do we do that?

Maybe we’ve been taught not to show off or get too big for our boots. Maybe we’re worried about what other people will think of us, or that our success might make somebody else feel bad. Maybe we’ve confused being proud of ourselves with thinking we’re better than somebody else. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

But I do wonder what would happen if we just stopped apologising for it.

Why can’t we just say, “Hey, look at what I did. It’s fucking awesome. I worked really hard, but I’m also clever at this. It’s something I do really well and I’m so proud.”

What’s up with saying that?

Being proud of something you’ve done doesn’t mean somebody else has failed. Being good at something doesn’t mean somebody else isn’t, and saying you’re good at something doesn’t automatically make you arrogant.

Perhaps we could just get a bit more comfortable with people saying, “I did this and I’m fucking pleased with myself.” And perhaps, when it’s our turn, we could say it too, without the disclaimer.

So now I’m wondering about some practical ideas to make it feel more comfortable. I think one of them could be balance. If you’re publishing your wins, you could also talk about what was complete pants. What went horribly wrong. Because stuff will have gone wrong, if it didn’t then you’re living a charmed life, smoking something wonky or lying to yourself.

How about giving these posts a little title (for example, Win of the Week) so they become a theme people can start to recognise, relate to and appreciate how by sharing your wins, you’re also helping them to start sharing their highlights.

Cheer on others who are sharing their wins - a little like, restack or comment to acknowledge their success.

Whilst it’s always lovely to include others - I couldn’t have done it without..... you did it so make sure you own it.

And finally - get used to doing it - once a week, post something you’re proud of with absolutely no apology, qualification or attempt to make yourself smaller. Just see what happens.

I’m one of those people who can’t settle, and I’ve decided that now is the time to go with my flow.

Here’s how it usually plays out.

Let’s say it’s ‘catch up day’ and I need to sit down and organise myself; catch up with journal notes, my to-do lists, where I am and what I’m doing.

But I can’t just sit down at my desk and do that. I have to go somewhere fresh.

I’ve got my chair in the lounge, but I can’t sit down at that either.

In my head, I’m picturing sitting in some place that’s a 20 or 30-minute drive away. The John Lewis café in Bluewater, for example. That pops into my head, and that is the place I need to go.

But it seems daft to drive for 30 minutes, take all my books, my computer, my phone, my iPad, my journals and my process books. I’ve got lots of books. I have to take all of that with me to the café, spread myself out and work there, when I have perfectly adequate desks already here that are completely fit for purpose.

Instead of getting in the car and heading off, I sort of wander aimlessly around doing SFA.

And that can go on for several hours. Sitting down, not sitting down, pottering around and still not getting it done.

What I’ve now learned is that this is just how my brain works. My brain needs a fresh space, higher ceilings, different colours and textures and a new view to get things to click together

So instead of fighting that, I’m now going with it and letting it happen.

Because, actually, driving for 30 minutes and taking everything with me is less ridiculous than spending several hours wandering around the house in a sort of no man’s land of work whilst not actually working.

But it has made me wonder why some people can sit at the same desk for 30 years and that is simply their place. They sit down, switch on and off they go. The desk itself seems to tell them what to do. This is where I work, this is where I think and this is where I get things done.

Then there are people like me, who seem to need to keep moving around, and I do wonder why that is. Why does one person find the same place grounding, while another person starts to feel stuck in it?

I think that for some people, familiarity helps to ground them into their working space. The same chair, the same view focuses their brain into action.

For other people, perhaps familiarity does the opposite.

I also wonder whether some of us need the journey, not just the place itself, but the act of leaving one place and arriving in another. Maybe that 30-minute drive is not wasted time. Maybe it is the transition that allows my brain to catch up with itself and understand that we are now doing something different.

By the time I get to John Lewis with all my books, my laptop, my iPad, my phone, my journals and everything else I have decided I need, I have made a proper commitment. I am there now and I have come to do this.

There is also something about the space itself. The higher ceilings, the light, the different view and the people moving around in the background all seem to help. There is enough activity to make me feel awake, but not so much that I have to be involved in it.

At home, silence can sometimes feel too silent. The desk can feel too still, and I become very aware of myself sitting there trying to make myself work. In a café, I seem to disappear into the surroundings a bit. I am not sitting at home attempting to be productive. I am simply there, doing the thing.

Perhaps some people need consistency to concentrate and other people need a bit of novelty. Perhaps some people settle by staying still, while other people settle by moving.

I think that is the part I have spent years missing. I have kept looking at the desk and thinking there is absolutely no reason why I cannot work there, and technically that is true. There is no reason why I cannot.

But there is a difference between being able to do something and creating the conditions in which you are most likely to actually do it.

So, when the John Lewis café at Bluewater pops into my head, perhaps I need to stop having an argument about it, pack the ridiculous number of books, get in the car and go.

A friend and colleague asked me recently whether it would be alright if she joined a meeting with her camera turned off.

She wasn’t feeling particularly well. She still wanted to attend. She still wanted to contribute. She just didn’t want to be on camera.

Of course, I didn’t mind.

But afterwards I found myself wondering why she felt she had to ask.

Why do we feel we need permission for things like this?

Why do we feel we need to explain ourselves before making small adjustments that help us get through the day?

The thing is, she was still showing up.

She was still attending the meeting.

She was still contributing.

She was still doing what needed to be done.

The camera being on or off didn’t change any of that.

And yet she felt she needed permission.

It made me realise how often we apologise for being human.

Sorry I’m tired.

Sorry I’m not feeling well.

Sorry my camera is off.

Sorry I don’t have much energy today.

Sorry I don’t look my best.

Sorry I’m not as cheerful as usual.

Somewhere along the line we’ve learned that showing up isn’t enough. We feel we have to perform showing up.

Now don’t get me wrong. There are situations where presentation matters. If you’re meeting a client for the first time, giving a keynote speech, attending a job interview, or representing your business publicly, then how you present yourself is part of the job.

But most meetings aren’t that.

Most meetings are simply people trying to get things done.

Now, I appreciate not everybody experiences video calls in the same way.

Some people barely notice their own image on screen. They switch the camera on, get on with the meeting, and think nothing of it.

But for others, the experience is very different.

One of the strangest things about modern working life is that we’ve somehow accepted that it’s normal to spend part of the day with our own face staring back at us.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t particularly enjoy spending hours looking up my own nostrils.

In a face-to-face meeting, I don’t carry a mirror around and stare at myself while I’m talking. I pay attention to the conversation.

On video calls, though, there can be an extra layer of self-awareness. We might notice our hair, our expression, the lighting, whether we look tired, or whether we appear engaged enough.

Not everyone finds that distracting, but some of us do.

And sometimes turning the camera off isn’t about hiding.

It’s simply about removing one more thing that’s competing for our attention.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised this wasn’t really about video calls at all.

It was about permission.

Or perhaps the fact that we often don’t need it.

Maybe it’s enough to say:

“I’m here.”

“This is how I’m showing up today.”

No long explanation.

No apology.

No justification.

Just an honest acknowledgement of where you are.

Because showing up is not the same thing as performing.

Some days I show up full of energy, ideas and enthusiasm.

Other days I show up tired, distracted, overwhelmed, under the weather, or simply not in the mood to spend an hour looking at myself on a screen.

Both versions of me are still me.

Both versions can contribute.

Both versions deserve a seat at the table.

Perhaps we would all be a little kinder to ourselves if we stopped demanding perfection before allowing ourselves to participate. Perhaps we could simply trust that being present has value. And perhaps, every now and then, we could allow ourselves to say:

“I’m here. This is how I’m showing up today.”

And let that be enough.

I was watching a video on Insight Timer about internal clocks and our sense of time. The speaker was talking about how some people seem to have a very loud internal clock. They instinctively know what time it is during the day without needing to check. Other people don’t.

What struck me was that not only do I actually do know what time it is most of the time (within about 10 minutes and without looking at my watch) I’m very good at sensing whether it’s morning, afternoon, lunchtime, or “I should probably have left ten minutes ago.”

What I’m not good at (complete crap actually) is what I’ve started thinking of as “big time.”

I lose track of:

• what day it is

• what week we’re in

• what month it is

• how long ago something happened

Sometimes something from three weeks ago feels like it happened six months ago. Other times I’ll talk about something from 2019 as though it was practically yesterday.

I can think I last spoke to a friend a couple of months ago, only to find out it’s years!

How can someone be good at sensing time during the day but terrible at tracking time across life?

But I don’t actually think it’s a contradiction anymore.

I think there’s a difference between having a sense of passing time and having a structured mental map of time.

I seem to have quite a strong sense of short-term passing time:

• how long something has taken

• whether I’m late

• when something is “about now”

• the rhythm of the day

But calendar time is different.

That’s more about mentally placing events into structure:

• Was that last week or last month?

• Is Easter soon?

• How long since I spoke to that person?

• Have I been “just about to start” this project for six weeks or six months?

I’ve started thinking of it like this:

I may have quite a strong internal rhythm clock but a much weaker time map.

My brain tracks lived time better than administrative time.

And as a busy businesswoman, my life contains a lot of overlapping projects, conversations, plans, deadlines, ideas, events, emotions, and half-finished thoughts all happening at once.

That creates what we might call time crowding.

The brain stops neatly filing things into linear order because too many active threads are running simultaneously.

So instead of experiencing time as:
Monday → Tuesday → Wednesday → April → May → June

it can become more like:

• now

• not now

• recently-ish

• ages ago maybe

• future fog

And I suspect a lot of people with ADHD, stress, overwhelm, creative brains, or simply very full lives experience this too.

It doesn’t necessarily mean we’re disorganised or incapable.

It may simply mean that our brains are more tuned into flow, momentum, emotion, and lived experience than into neat calendar boxes.

Which is probably why external structure helps so much:

• visible calendars

• reminders - on paper

• seasonal themes

• routines - if you can manage to hold one!

• planning systems - paper or whiteboard

• weekly resets

What I find essential is having a physical calendar for the year with key events and then monthly and weekly calendars to keep tighter track. I also had a lot of trouble marrying my vision of the calendar with what I could buy or find online to print out. So I asked Claude to build my my own!

There’s something about service stations, train carriages, and long car journeys that I’ve never quite been able to explain. It’s not the destination, and it’s not even the journey, not really. It’s the in-between space.

There’s a strange, suspended place where you’re not where you were, but you haven’t yet arrived where you’re going. No one expects anything of you there. You don’t belong to the last place anymore, and the next place hasn’t claimed you yet. You’re… unanchored. And there’s a kind of freedom in that.

Sitting in a service station with a cup of tea you didn’t really want, watching people who are also passing through. Or staring out of a train window, fields blurring past, knowing none of it is yours to hold onto. For a moment, you’re not tied to roles or responsibilities or expectations. You’re just moving. Existing. Passing through.

Perhaps this is what Kermit meant when he sang “Halfway up the stairs is the stair where I sit.” Not up, not down, just… there.

But I think it’s more than just calm. I think these in-between spaces are some of the only places where we can actually think properly.

Because when you’re “in” your life; your home, your office, your routines, you’re already inside the decisions you’ve made. You’re surrounded by them, reinforcing them, living them out. There’s no space to question them. But in the in-between space, you’re not held in place by anything. No walls, no expectations, no immediate demands pulling at you.

Your mind can shift and lift.

And that’s when the questions sneak in. Is this actually where I want to go? Do I still want what I said I wanted? Is there another way?

It’s not planning in the usual sense. It’s not lists and deadlines. It’s orientation. A quiet moment where you can see both where you’ve been and where you might be heading, without being pulled too hard in either direction.

And here’s the interesting bit: you can’t quite fake it.

Driving to a service station as a destination isn’t the same. Sitting in a café “to think” doesn’t quite land either. Because part of what creates this space is the fact that you are genuinely in transit. You’ve stepped out of one identity, but you haven’t stepped into the next one yet. It’s real. No one knows where you are - a sort of Heisenbergs uncertainty service station - you may be there, you may not.

So what do you do if you don’t have a journey? How do you create that kind of space on purpose?

Maybe it’s not about copying the environment. Maybe it’s about creating the conditions — stepping away from where you normally think, removing yourself from the people who know you, being somewhere you don’t belong for a little while, giving yourself a clear before and after. Even a walk where you deliberately leave your “normal” behind, without rushing to arrive anywhere. Perhaps it’s about no one knowing where you are - so keep it to yourself.

Because what we’re really looking for isn’t the service station or the train carriage.

It’s the moment where life loosens its grip just enough for you to ask:

Am I still heading where I want to go?

This didn’t happen overnight. There wasn’t a big moment when communication suddenly became stressful. It just evolved.

First we had mobile phones. Then texts. Then messaging apps. Then little ticks to show it had been delivered. Then read receipts. Then “last seen”. Then the typing bubbles.

Each step made sense. Each one felt helpful. More efficient. More connected.

And because it all arrived gradually, we didn’t really stop and ask what it might be changing.

But what changed is how messages stopped ending.

The Loop That Stays Open

There used to be a point where you sent something and that was it. Even when post was relatively quick, you still posted the letter and it disappeared into the system. You couldn’t see if it had been opened. You couldn’t see if the other person was holding it. You definitely couldn’t see them thinking about it.

You had done your part.

Now when you send a message, it doesn’t really leave you. The thread stays there. You can see they’ve read it. You can see they were online five minutes ago. Sometimes you can see them typing… and then stopping.

You’re not just waiting anymore. You’re slightly connected to the waiting.

It’s not that speed is bad. Speed is brilliant. I don’t want to go back to waiting weeks for a reply.

But there used to be built-in space. You sent something and life carried on because it had to.

Now there’s always the possibility that it could come back at any second.

So part of you stays slightly tuned in.

You might check.

You might re-check.

You might think about what you said.

You might wonder why they’ve seen it but not replied.

Not everyone does this. Some people genuinely send a message and move on without a second thought. But for some of us, unfinished things stick a bit.

Especially if you have an ADHD brain, where open loops don’t always close neatly. Or if you’re someone who’s sensitive to rejection, where silence can quickly turn into a story, even when you know perfectly well the other person is probably just busy.

What’s interesting to me is that none of this was deliberate. No one announced that communication would now feel slightly ajar all the time.

It just grew that way.

We made everything faster and more visible. And in doing that, we removed the natural ending.

Messages don’t arrive and depart anymore. They linger.

And when something lingers, part of the mind can linger with it.

Not in a dramatic way. Not necessarily in a crisis way. Just in a low-level, slightly-on way.

So what do you do about that?

There probably isn’t one answer.

For some people, it won’t matter at all. For others, simply noticing it changes things. Instead of thinking, “Why am I overthinking this?”, you might think, “Ah. This is just an open loop.”

That alone can take the edge off.

You might decide to turn off read receipts. You might archive threads after you reply so they’re out of sight. You might give yourself a rule about not interpreting silence for a set period of time. Or you might decide none of that is necessary.

The point isn’t to fix communication.

It’s just to recognise that something subtle has shifted.

We solved waiting.

But in solving it, we may have lost the clean pause that used to close a conversation for us.

Now, sometimes, we have to create that pause ourselves.

Thoughts I’m Not Fully Finished With Yet

I’ve seen a few posts this week about how you need to do something uncomfortable.

Once a week, you need to do something uncomfortable.

Once a week, you need to make a decision that’s uncomfortable.

That’s how you know you’re growing.

This isn’t a new thing. It’s been around for years, hasn’t it?

I felt like I really needed to get something down about this because I’ve done this. I’ve fallen for it. Nobody’s trying to con you into anything. People don’t necessarily have a vested interest in what you’re doing. But unless you’re really in tune with your feelings, and you understand what uncomfortable actually means for you, there’s a chance it can go horribly wrong.

Because uncomfortable is such a big umbrella term.

What does it actually mean?

Are you feeling uncomfortable because the step you’re about to take is exciting? Because it’s growth? Because it’s expansion? Because it’s a new path, bigger and better than anything you’ve done before and so yes, it feels uncomfortable?

Or are you uncomfortable because it’s just wrong?

Because your body is going, I’m not sure about this?

I’ve made business decisions - things that really affected my business and my life - because I mistook feeling uncomfortable for it being bigger and brighter and growth, when actually it was my body going, there’s something off here. This isn’t quite right.

If you put this into another context, say going out with someone, or meeting someone for the first time, it becomes clearer.

You might be sat in a bar with them, feeling uncomfortable. But are you uncomfortable because this is lovely? Are you out of your comfort zone because this is new and exciting?

Or are you uncomfortable because there’s something not quite right?

And if the person you’re with is quite good at this - if they’re charming, if they know how to turn it on then it can become really confusing. You can talk yourself out of what your intuition is saying. You can stay because you think you’re being out of your comfort zone in a good, exciting way.

When actually, your intuition is going, ‘there’s something not quite right here.’

So this really is an unfinished thought. It’s just something I felt I needed to get down. Probably more for me than for anyone else.

What is uncomfortable for you?

What does that actually mean?

Because using discomfort as a compass for your life, your business, or whatever, just feels too broad.

Wishy-washy.

Unfinished.

And potentially treacherous.

I don’t believe being busy means you should be permanently overwhelmed, endlessly productive, or fixing yourself. And I don’t believe every thought needs to be published the moment it appears.

The (Too) Busy Businesswoman is where I share compiled, considered writing — usually weekly or fortnightly — focused on things that are genuinely useful, such as:

• business ideas and ways of working

• tools and techniques I actually use

• ADHD, focus, and decision-making

• carrying too much responsibility

• doing less of what drains you

This isn’t hustle culture.

And it isn’t therapy.

It’s practical thinking, real experience, and perspective you can take or leave — without pressure to do everything at once or turn your life into a project.

Some of my more exploratory or personal writing lives elsewhere.

This space is intentionally filtered and contained.

If you want:

• clear ideas rather than constant output

• usefulness without urgency

• space to think, not be pushed

You’re in the right place.

Read quietly, dip in when it helps, or unsubscribe at any time.

No guilt. No pressure.

— Sian

Let’s talk about those people who get themselves into a little bit of a moral panic about the quality of other people’s work, (be they poets, authors, painters, creatives, whatever it is that they’re doing), who feel it necessary to stop what they’re doing and go and give their own opinion, to criticise, if you like, the quality of the work that somebody else has published. They comment on the post, add their little review or sometimes actually contact the publisher directly to carefully explain how they’re getting it wrong.

How helpful of them.

If you’re starting out, or one of these little snipes has made you pause and consider if your work is good enough, let’s put that into an everyday setting and hopefully that will help us see that these people are not ok, and it doesn’t matter how many awards and industry accolades they’ve notched up. They are not normal and they should really just be ignored. You don’t need to take any notice of these people.

Imagine this…

You’re sat in a restaurant and it’s inside a shopping centre, so you can see other people walking by. You’ve ordered a lovely bottle of wine, a super special meal, and your starters arrive on your table, brought by a really nice waiter. It’s quite an expensive meal as well, so it’s a quality meal.

You take your first sip when, fork poised for a tasty morsel, you glance out into the mall to see somebody walking along quite quickly. They’ve got a takeaway burger, and even though it’s clear they are enjoying the juicy burger, it’s in paper and they’re trotting along at a right old pace.

That’s not the way to do it at all.

So, it’s beholden on you to help them see how wrong they are. You leave your table. You leave your wine. You leave your companion, if you’re with one. You take the time and trouble to go out into the mall, trot after them (because they’ve probably gone on a little bit by now) and finally you reach them. After catching your breath, you manage to point out how they’re eating that wrong; how they should in fact be sitting down at a table, like the one you would in fact be sitting at if you hadn’t taken all that time and trouble to leave your lovely meal and your lovely wine to go and chase after them and tell them how they should in fact be doing it.

Whilst you’re helping them be better (even though your lovely meal is now almost cold), you decide to help them even more by pointing out how their trainers are not the sort of casual style people expect to see in a shopping mall like this, and it would be best for everyone (especially them as you’re being so helpful) if they left and went down the road to the Saturday market, which is clearly where their type of creative belongs.

They will of course feel much more at home with their own kind.

Your expensive meal is now ruined, but how noble of you to sacrifice yourself, your time, your effort and your lunch.

And that is no different to a creative of some description who takes precious time away from their own creating to seek out and explain to those less able how THEIR creating is all wrong.

How much of your thoughts do you think this sort of person actually deserves. What sort of credibility do they have to comment on your work?

I’m going to jump in with someone who has probably won more stuff than anyone - Steven Spielberg - a god of the film world. I can imagine him constructively helping film-makers who asked him for help. I can’t imagine him hunting through Substack for people to have a go at because they used the wrong word in their video.

Before you take notice of what some arrogant, snotty dick has said, maybe ask yourself - WWSD?

What Would Steven Do.

What a devisive little word ‘too’ is. Can it ever be anything apart from a judgement?

Whether you use it to describe yourself, or you’ve had it said about you, it could be time to look at what it actually means. The little micro-message of aggression it brings with it.

You’re creative - you’re too creative.

You’re ambitious - you’re too ambitious.

My personal favourite - you’re too much.

How loaded is that - too much, too fucking much.

Too much for what? If that’s said to you, then the chances are that your brains, personality, brightness is diminishing the bearer of that little sip of poison. They can’t keep up with you and so rather than speed up, they want to slow you down, clip YOUR wings rather than spread theirs.

Can I suggest you listen out for this little word because when you hear it, then you are being judged, and I bet it’s not in a good way.

And the more I think about it, the nastier this little word becomes. It slides in so quietly that it can slip straight past our defences. On the surface, it looks shallow, but it’s meant to cut deep. And here’s the thing: what else could you really say to someone who’s ambitious, or creative, or full of energy? How could you actually criticise that without sounding daft? So instead, the sly little “too” gets dropped in, a whisper of control, from jealousy, fear, and the need to rein you in without being obvious about it.

So here’s the heads up: when you hear it, proceed with caution. They’re showing you their fear, and how they want to keep you contained to something they can handle, control how high you can soar and to keep you comfortably within their orbit.

This isn’t about being too something-or-other in context. Of course, you can be too creative for a particular job, or too loud and so you selfishly disturb everyone else in the cinema. But that’s not what this is about…

…this is about you — about being too you. For them.

This is about bared teeth behind a smile.

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It’s never occurred to me that anyone else experiences life any differently, and so why would I think to ask or compare?

I appreciate people have different challenges: I know how some deal with depression, addictions, bi-polar and none of these are my experience. At least, I don’t think so.

When my son was diagnosed with Dyslexia, I found out how he could do things I had no idea about. This was mainly around his ability to visualise and manipulate diagrams, sculpture and artwork with his mind’s eye. He didn’t think to share he could do this, he thought everyone could. I didn’t think to ask if he ‘saw’ anything different than my orange and brown 1960’s swirly carpets when he closed his eyes, and why would I?

So why would I think my continual anxiety, with occasional bouts of what I now call a slow panic weren’t everyone’s lived experience. I didn’t even realise I was anxious, it’s been my normal since I was a child. I didn’t appreciate how other people look forward to a holiday, a day or a meal out. Doesn’t everyone see snippets of their life as little snapshots rather than a full memory like a film? And, isn’t it normal to be in pain 24/7 with your joints?

So I started to really look at what my life is like in my mind and my body.

Anyhoo - turns out my stuff is very much like a lot of other people’s stuff who have ADHD and Autism.

• Flat all the time - unless I have to ‘perform’ by running an event, a meeting, a radio show.

• Exhaustion-mainly due to having to perform to stay on top of things.

• Shame and self-blame over continual resolutions to do better, be better, be less me, get more done.

• Hyper-mobility (who would seriously have put this in with ADHD) which means pain.

• Continual, nerve draining, life diluting anxiety about every little thing.

• Shockingly high cortisol levels.

• Thinking an event happened yesterday when it was 10 months ago.

• Money Money Money

• Days and weeks where I can’t find it in me to talk to anyone. But of course you can’t run a career or a business like this without awareness and planning for these times. I call it Indoor Cat. Sometimes I’m Outdoor Cat when I’m on stage, out there, tapping into the energy and sparking. Other times it’s Indoor Cat and I’m inside my head, non-verbal and unseen. Unfortunately there are those times when Indoor Cat arrives unexpectedly and I have to make a supreme and debilitating effort to just get out there a get on with the show - which can knock me back for weeks.

• Bounding around like Tigger followed by bone-deep exhaustion.

• Losing track of letters, jobs, possessions and anything if it isn’t actually in front of you. How much of your life can you actually have in front of you? Does anyone have walls and tables that vast?

• Taking rejection really badly. It’s called Rejection Sensitivity Disorder (RSD) and it means that if I don’t get a reply to a text or message almost straight after I’ve sent it then I have a little freak out. Being asked to do something in a different way can create a whole story around doing it wrong, badly, stupidly and on top of that they may have gone off me altogether.

I could go on for ages. There will be more come to light over time, and you could have your own which are totally different to mine.

Never has the phrase ‘knowledge is power’ meant so much.

None of this is solved as of now, but I do understand what’s happening which means I can get things into proportion and certainly not be so reactive. Someone hasn’t responded to my text because they are busy doing something else - just as I am; their phone may be out of charge; they’re away from a signal - could be anything else apart from I’ve done something wrong.

By understanding where this is coming from, I now also get that I can’t dash around implementing complicated solutions. The power here is in acceptance. I can’t tell you the relief in accepting how I’m feeling anxious and that’s just how it is. I don’t have to worry about worrying feel stupid because I’m worrying, right now I don’t have to do anything apart from acknowledging the worry has come to stay, and just for now that’s ok because that’s just how it is. For now.

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I’m sat in my gym restaurant overlooking the Medway - it’s a super place, it really is. I’m trying out the new keyboard for my new iPad Pro and using my new iPhone to take the photos.

It’s all just expense out of our business and it’s just for me. The trouble is I don’t know what the ROI will be. Which sort of translates into I don’t know if I’m worth it.

I don’t have imposter syndrome.

What I do have is ADHD and Autism. For me that manifests in ideas that no-one else comes up with. Unique stuff. It would all be brilliant, but can I bring it into reality; bring the money into reality and bring the justification I feel I need?

All of these new tools are for my business. I use the gym restaurant as an office. I use the iPad and my phone for business, and obviously a lovely new keyboard makes me loads more efficient.

But, how does this work out when I can’t remember to send the email reminding attendees about an event; the fees for which are supposed to pay for all of this stuff.

It’s a circular problem and it’s one I’m tackling right now.

One thing I do know is that giving up and lurking in a corner isn’t going to cut it. I was born to be this business. I’ve been doing this since I left my job in local government and I will carry on doing.

Well, I’m happy to report that so far so good. The keyboard (ESR 360 Rebound for IPad Pro) is working really well and the keys are easy to type with and feel nice. I have the keyboard backlit in blue, but I might change it to green in a mo. The trackpad has a bit of a lag on it - I’ll have a chat with ChatGPT to see if there’s a way of speeding it up. The IPad Pro is just wonderful. I had my last IPad for over 10 years and so I have high hopes for this one. There isn’t anything to say about the IPhone 16 Pro Max. All of these also have the new Apple Intelligence on it - which is a fine exploration project for a Bank Holiday Monday.

One thing I did need to do is make sure my photos were syncing properly. As they weren’t. The good news is they should sync instantaneously, the solution was to open photo apps on both devices, then go to iCloud > ICloud Photos on both and make sure the syncing hadn’t been paused - which it had.

So there we are. My very first post from my very favourite place and this has made me very happy for today.

I’ll leave you with the view from the balcony where I will shortly be having lunch.

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Actually, Would You Mind Thinking Before You Shout Out Your Orders?

Do you really speak to people like this?

I think of myself as someone who doesn’t like complainers and drama. My mantra has always been to live and let live. If you don’t like a TV show, change the channel. Don’t like a book? Stop reading it.

But I’m noticing more and more posts barking orders into our feeds. Of course, you can scroll past, block, or delete, but what if you’re not in a good place and aren’t making the best conscious decisions?

Here’s an example, and this one is re-stacked, re-tweeted, and posted all over by profiles supposedly helping us to be mindful:

Stop taking your phone to the bathroom.
Stop using your phone when you're eating.
Stop checking it during every moment of downtime.

I can scroll past—thanks, but no thanks. My choice. But it’s not always as simple as that.

As someone who has spent decades listening to others—self-improvement experts who must know better than me—I know firsthand how easy it is to promise yourself you’ll do what they say and improve yourself.

But that didn’t happen, and now I know why. Mainly, it was because it wasn’t the right advice for me. All I was doing was turning their way of doing things into my own ‘shoulds’—a brand-new way of beating myself up. Now, I have enough confidence to do things how I want and to know that it’s the right way. For me.

Leave people alone to give themselves some grace.

Yes, everyone else also has the choice to scroll past, but some people, albeit temporarily, aren’t able to do that. They may be dealing with bereavement, a debilitating mental illness—who knows what. The problem is, the authors of these orders have no idea either. Mostly, it seems to be orders to stop doing something without any suggestions on how to actually do that.

Of course, it’s excellent advice to leave your phone out of the loo, away from your food, and out of the bedroom. But there are times when we just need to hold on tight to these coping mechanisms.

If you’re a coach barking out these orders in your posts, then, in my opinion, you should be ashamed of yourself. Would you talk to a client like that? I’d be livid if you spoke to your dog like that.

Do you really think people don’t know that overusing their phone isn’t the best life tactic? It’s a bit like smoking, isn’t it? Do we honestly believe that every single person still smoking hasn’t heard the message about the dangers and is puffing away in complete ignorance? Of course, they know, they are just doing the best they can with what resources they have available to them right now.

Stop it. Have some respect for the road other people may be travelling.

Disclaimer: This post may have…

• Spelling and grammar mistakes

• AI generated text (the boring factual bits that are just too boring to write)

• Swearing (not sure, let’s see how it pans out)

• Affiliate Links

• Made up words

• Wobbly Facts

On Wednesday, I had the privilege of speaking with the BBC about Stepping Out. This is our new Kent, UK, based programme designed to help businesses connect, collaborate, and work on their targets in a focused environment away from the distractions of home or office.

The interview tied in with Stuart Rose's recent report on working from home, which claimed it had set the UK economy back by 20 years. His report highlighted concerns about productivity, mental health, and the challenges faced by young people entering the workforce.

While some of his points were valid, I don’t see this as a binary “good vs bad” debate. One controversial comment suggested that working from home isn’t “proper work.”

This sparked a discussion at Ladies Who Latte in Sheppey, where we explored how to strike a balance—making our time both productive and fulfilling while growing our businesses.

Here’s what we thought:

Key Challenges and Solutions

1. Distractions and Interruptions (people, animals, washing machines!)

Create a dedicated space: Even a small, well-defined area can help you focus.

Schedule distraction time: Allow 20 minutes after every hour of work to deal proactively with potential interruptions or deal with any issues arising.

Hybrid solutions: Muckash Sharma was also interviewed by the BBC as the creator of Ascend, the new co-working and office space in Medway, ideal for hybrid working. We recently experienced working as a group in this inspirational space which offers the focus of an office without the cost or commitment.

Think small: If carving out focus time alongside family and other pressures is difficult, try just 15-minute blocks.

2. Stagnation and Procrastination

Change your scenery: A coffee shop or a new location can energise your mind for new ideas. Also try different types of spaces, high ceilings can spark new and abstract ideas.

Reward yourself: Treat yourself after tackling difficult or boring tasks.

Network and connect: Meeting others can spark new ideas and break the monotony.

3. Isolation and Introspection

Without feedback it can be difficult to assess if we’re doing a good job. Clients can often focus on what’s gone wrong, and without regular appraisals as we usually get in employment it can be tricky to know how we’re doing. As our brains have a tendency to steer towards the negative, that’s often where we can end up.

Plus, it can seem as though everyone else is doing a fabulous job growing their business when the only views we have are from social media.

Build a peer network: Collaborate with trusted peers for support and fresh perspectives. Think of people in the same industry as your support network instead of your competition.

Stay connected: If employed, ensure regular contact with colleagues to exchange ideas.

4. Overworking (The day never ends!)

We agreed that far from being lazy, home workers often struggle to stop working. Here are some tactics we shared:

Keep your to-do list tight: Use a DAILY to-do list and focus on just that day’s priorities.

Time block: Schedule your day with clear start and finish times.

Respect boundaries: Train clients and colleagues to respect your working hours. You may be happy to accept messages after hours, but scheduling your response times to be within your core hours shows clients and colleagues that you aren’t available 24/7; that you respect your down time, and expect them to do the same.

Take real breaks: Step away from your workspace for meals and walks.

Close the office: Shut a door, cover your desk with a cloth or the cat.

5. Increased Costs: Heating and lighting costs can add up when working from home. Some members recommended exploring deals with providers like Octopus or Utility Warehouse, which have ranked highly in recent reports.

So, What Did I Do? That night, I took a leaf out of our own discussion!

As a magazine publisher and event organiser, my workspace is often cluttered with display materials, paper, inks, really all sorts, shapes and sizes of stuff which really will be needed at some point. It makes me feel messy and scattered having all this in my view. So, I shifted my desk to a smaller, more defined area that I can keep clear, helping me stay productive. It made it much trickier to just pop stuff on my desk instead of sorting it out. Also, as I am now in a corner I gaze at inspiring picture on my wall instead of mounds of boxes with things spilling out of them.

We’ll be following up on these ideas at the next meeting of Ladies Who Latte on 28th February in Sheppey and at Stepping Out on 14th February in Medway.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to these discussions!

Apologies that there’s no photo from yesterday (I may have been slightly distracted by a sausage sandwich!). Luckily, someone else snapped one, and it’s on its way to me. I’d love to hear your thoughts—what challenges have you faced while working from home, and what strategies have worked for you? Drop your ideas in the comments!

Disclaimer: This post may have…

• Spelling and grammar mistakes

• AI generated text (the boring factual bits that are just too boring to write)

• Swearing

• Affiliate Links

• Made up words

• Wobbly Facts

Have you been told or suspected you’re self sabotaging? For those of you blessed to never have had to wonder, it’s basically where part of you is working like stink to get things done, whilst a little worm in your brain is doing rotten stuff to stop it working.

For years I was reading books and joining self-help programmes to tackle self-sabotage and weedle out limiting beliefs. Basically the stuff I thought my head was doing to stop me succeeding.

It’s very unnerving to think that a part of your brain, over which you have no control, is doing things you don’t want to do, to make sure you fail. Very unnerving.

But, what if it’s not self-sabotage? What if there’s another explanation? Here are a few examples of things you might do, which MIGHT mean you have ADHD and so there is a physiological reason behind the struggle:

• You’ve written 100 business plans, and lost them.

• You set goals but can’t find them, let alone work towards them; or,

• You can’t set goals for your business

• You spend weeks setting up yet another new project manager and with daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual to-do lists (in all of the available colours, labels and tags; in alphabetical and numerical order - and then cross referenced by context, location and time of day). Two days after you’ve finished you can’t bear to look at it. After three days you can’t find it. By day five you forget it ever existed. You find it two years later and think what a fantastic plan, I wonder who did that?

• You’ve been told you can’t delegate because you won’t relinquish control - a control freak (nice), when really you find it so hard to tell someone what you want that you might as well just do it yourself.

• You set intentions for your day, but don’t do any of them. You do however achieve a load of stuff you had no idea even existed before 7am that same morning.

• Your working day could be sitting looking at the computer whilst opening and closing hundred’s of random tabs; 4 hours of work; or, you get 40 hours of work done in 8 hours. But you won’t know until you get back into bed that night.

• Every now and then you gather up all your papers and stick them in a big pile do deal with later. After 5 years, you feel ok throwing the whole pile in the bin without even glancing at what’s in the pile.

• You’re anxious a lot of the time. Hardly surprising when you can’t trust yourself to finish anything.

• You have a to-do list but ignore it (even if you can find it) and produce a ta-da list instead. “Ta da! Look at what I’ve done today!”

I could go on as there’s loads of examples. You don’t have to relate to all of the above, everyone is different, and these are just a few things you might catch yourself doing.

Generally we’re talking about tasks that are affected by your executive function and which are around your personal or business organisation. These are very different behaviours to self-sabotaging, such as by literally telling a client to fuck off, instead of acting professionally by helping them to move on to another service provider. Or deciding to go to the shops instead of meeting your business partner.

So, now what? Well, my advice is to have a chat with someone who will challenge what you do so you can move past your coping mechanisms to reveal what’s happening below.

People with ADHD and Autism often mask their symptoms from the rest of the world, and themselves very well, and you may need to delve deeper to find out what’s going on. As an example, when I did a self-test for ADHD, it came out as a big no - not got it, carry on being disorganised. However, years later someone who knew what they were doing deliberately pulled the mask aside by asking deeper questions. For example, when asked if I was repeatedly late for appointments, I could honestly answer that no, I was never late. A little delving showed that I wasn’t late because I deliberately arrived 3 hours early and found a cafe close by, just so that I wouldn’t be late.

What this is about is looking at other options before you spend years on self-improvement trying to unravel and repair what isn’t wrong.

Apparently 30% of entrepreneurs have ADHD so it’s certainly worth considering.

Highlights

☕ I read the most in the afternoon

💌 I subscribed to 12 new Substacks

📽️ I watched 18 minutes of video

❤️ I liked 6 posts

💬 I left 2 comments on posts

📜 I scrolled 106 meters in Notes

🕵️ I discovered 16 new posts via Notes

Top Substacks

The Good in Us by Mary L. Trump by Mary L Trump

In which we come together to save American democracy, or at least have fun while trying.

Top post this summer: Trolling the Troll

A Message From The Universe by The Universe

I'm here supporting and guiding you... I'd love to send you a little gentle reminder each day. With love from the Universe x

Top post this summer: Wealth

Productive Flourishing by Charlie Gilkey

A newsletter and community for driven possibilitarians who are seeking full-spectrum thriving, hosted by award-winning, best-selling author of Start Finishing, Charlie Gilkey.

Top post this summer: July 2024 Planning Tips: What's Your Starting Point?

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Highlights

☕ I read the most in the afternoon

💌 I subscribed to 12 new Substacks

📽️ I watched 18 minutes of video

❤️ I liked 6 posts

💬 I left 2 comments on posts

📜 I scrolled 106 meters in Notes

🕵️ I discovered 16 new posts via Notes

Top Substacks

The Good in Us by Mary L. Trump by Mary L Trump

In which we come together to save American democracy, or at least have fun while trying.

Top post this summer: Trolling the Troll

A Message From The Universe by The Universe

I'm here supporting and guiding you... I'd love to send you a little gentle reminder each day. With love from the Universe x

Top post this summer: Wealth

Productive Flourishing by Charlie Gilkey

A newsletter and community for driven possibilitarians who are seeking full-spectrum thriving, hosted by award-winning, best-selling author of Start Finishing, Charlie Gilkey.

Top post this summer: July 2024 Planning Tips: What's Your Starting Point?

Share your own Summer Recap

You can see your own summer recap in the Substack app. I’d love to see what you’ve been reading.

Get my Recap

Last Thursday was the annual Women In Business Big Show - it’s very big. It involved corralling 100 plus exhibitors, 20 speakers, visitors, VIP’s etc into a very large building for a massive networking and business event. It’s followed by a regular small Sunday event, which this time was at a brand new venue and without enough support as our table humper was away.

So a physically and mentally exhausting few days.

In the run-up to the big event, I decided to publish an event programme, a mini magazine—a biography of all the speakers and exhibitors and what’s happening on the day. When I say run-up, I mean five days before, not five months before. There were more than a few raised eyebrows when I told the sponsors what I was doing and asked them for a special event offer to pop in.

The problem with my brain is it thinks everything will take 5 minutes, when the reality is days. For instance, each magazine took 9 minutes to print. 15 hours solid, non-stop printing to publish only 100 copies.

Back to the wonky. My brain loves to deep-dive into a problem and the stumbling block for this was getting the entries for each exhibitor lined up square on the page. They all had different-sized logos and profile pictures, and I was fiddling around for hours trying to get them all straight. It was like that rat-and-trap game at the village fair; as soon as I got one sorted, another popped up out of place.

Then it struck me - the key question - why do they have to line up?

Well, of course, they didn’t. I dragged them all around, randomly on the page, and a few minutes later, the job was done.

How often does this stuckness happen and steal hours away from us for no good reason?

What other tracks am I running along that I need to derail?

The other thing is, they looked much better wonky.

I wish I could share how to easily wake yourself up from running along a pointless groove. I guess asking yourself the question, why is it done like this? Perhaps starting with a routine task that takes longer than 1 hour and reviewing why it’s done and why is it done in this way? What’s the outcome? What’s the objective?

For the magazine I was glued to the objective of creating lined-up lists of exhibitors. The better objective is to create an event magazine programme highlighting our exhibitors, what they do and how to connect with them; making our exhibitors feel special, and extending the community inclusion beyond one day.

An unexpected outcome was its impact. To me it was a little magazine for the day, thrown together with amateur publishing. Imagine my surprise when posts, which included the magazine, like the one below from a speaker, started appearing social media.

This could be the start of a new publishing career. The thing is, if I had carried on trying to make it all line up perfectly, it would never have even made it to the printer.

I’ve just started a thread in a chat; quite frankly, it feels a bit daft. But I did it anyway, and here’s why….because it all has to start somewhere. At some point, our most loved characters, who now have to stay behind locked doors for fear of being smothered by love, once stood in that wasteland, looking into the emptiness.

As I posted my first chat, “When you started your business, what reaction did you get from friends and family?” - I’m not expecting anyone to stop by and join in. Still, it does pose an interesting topic for future discussion on the radio show or in a new post, so it’s good content.

It’s not just on Substack either is it? Doesn’t this happen with everything new we start? In our business, there is a day when there aren’t any clients, and so making sure you can send an invoice seems silly. On any social media channel, unless you’re going to pay some bot to build a fake following, at the start there will just be you and the cat, but if you don’t ever post anything, how will that change?

Moving on, subscribers need to build and here is a useful post from Substack about building subscribers.

On Substack

How do I find my first subscribers?

You don’t need a large pre-existing audience to start growing your Substack. We recommend taking a few simple steps to share it with the people already in your network. Link to your Substack everywhere Add your Substack URL to your email signature, personal website, and social media bios. On social media, pin a post about your Substack…

Read more

4 years ago · 269 likes

This is a conversation space in the Substack app that I set up exclusively for my subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

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