Two weeks ago, I was facing a week that I can only describe as a rather stressful work squeeze.

My to-do list was shaped like a vice, and I had been shoved inside it.

***
I was in the thick of a major deal, I had a big project I needed to update people on (but didn’t have enough grasp on the content), an early morning flight for a three day work trip for meetings that required me to be fully present, time-choked initiatives and a general sense that everything was going to come undone like a loose thread on a cartoon sweater.

To top it all, I wasn’t feeling 100% - Grade 1 Man Flu - and I was due to run a race the following weekend that I wasn’t fully prepared for - I swear I could hear a little voice convincing me I was going to explode somewhere along the route.

***

I’m not unique.

It’s called life.

But the fog of the work week ahead on that Sunday evening felt like it had descended only on me - thick, heavy and with extreme prejudice.

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The week passed, and in the end nothing failed. It all moved forward. Most of it slowly, a lot of it messy, with outcomes that could have been far better. A normal week, by all accounts.

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But it did serve to remind me of something I have to remind myself of time and time again:

Most of the problems that we think will happen, are inventions of our own future fearing minds.

The Jolt? I didn’t do anything spectacular or clever to get through my squeeze of a week, but I did recognize what my mind was trying to do - protect me by assessing the billion different scenarios of how the future might play out, so it could prepare me for every eventuality.

It’s not easy to counter human biology, especially when you’re in the thick of it.

The secret is to acknowledge that that’s exactly what it is - biology - and that our human programming doesn’t change. That is, unless we change the inputs we give it.

So I took each moment as it came - the flight, the big meeting, the project - and while I was in the moment, I focused on how I could create a positive outcome, consciously putting thoughts of everything else to one side.

Instead of thinking about what could go wrong, I asked myself a different question - what could go right?

In marathon running, there are moments throughout the race when the distance feels overwhelming. Rather than focusing on the fact you have to run 26 miles, instead, you pick an object ahead, and run towards that. Then you pick another. And another. Until you finish - the thought isn’t “I won’t finish”, it’s “How can I finish”.

It’s not magic. But it does work.

With peace and love,

The Jolt.

No. 92.

This was literally my A-ha moment.

Whether you remember "Take On Me" from its 1985 release or are among the 2 billion who've since streamed the song or watched its legendary video, there are two surprising facts about this iconic hit that most people have never heard.

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First, that it failed miserably on its first release in Norway in 1984.

Second, that the original 1982 demo is, by all accounts, a diabolical shadow of the “Take On Me” you know today. This demo is featured on the Hunting High & Low Deluxe Edition, and it even goes by a different name - “Lesson One”.

It’s awful.

Morten Harket sounds like he’s stubbed his toe and badly needs to take a poo. The rest of the band sound like they’re on laughing gas, playing at a bad school concert while the batteries in their keyboards slowly run out.

A-ha had raw talent, but the song we all know and love was not the original song that now lives forever in our brains.

***

It actually took two producers, the first called Tony Mansfield, the second called Alan Tarney, and an army of studio engineers and technicians to bring that song to life.

In short, A-ha didn’t just pop out of a musical canon with a fully rendered piece of musical genius.

***

There’s a lesson here.

We all need Producers in our lives.

People who help shape us; soften our edges or polish our strengths, bring us new ideas, or push us to experiment, tell us when something sounds off.

They don’t try to change the song inside us; they help us make it sound like we know it can.

Close friends. Mentors. Parents. A good boss.

Producers are everywhere.

This week, I counted on two hands - well, I started with one hand and then realized I had quite a few more - the people who’ve really helped shape me.

It gave me an enormous sense of gratitude. None of us are islands. We are the sum of the people around us.

Mentors, peers, bosses, colleagues, and friends all help shape who we are at work.

And it reminded me of the advice I give to people who start any new gig - that there are, in particular, three functions in most organizations that are worth over-investing your relationship time in.

Often, when I tell people what these functions are, I’m met with a quizzical eye - followed quickly by a knowing smile.

Here they are -

• Finance: so you have someone to turn to when it comes to tricky numbers, or you need help creating a spreadsheet that’s been making your eyes water. Finance can help you get straight to the commercial point fast, and with authority. Numbers tend to level set most initiatives.

• HR: so you have behind the scenes support when your next reorganization comes along, or top of the line consideration for future growth opportunities. HR often acts as the back-channel chat for your performance narrative. Have them like you.

• Legal: so you don’t get tied into knots because of the stupid email you sent or the deal you shouldn’t have done. Legal has a canny knack of giving you worst case scenarios, which are often very useful to have in a project narrative.

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Some people think of these functions as administrative back-ups to the real world of work. I’ve always thought of these functions as critical to your career success.

I had just never thought of them like a personal production team.

With love and A-ha moments,

The Jolt

I was listening to a podcast recently with Stephen Starr, a very successful American entrepreneur whose restaurant operation makes over $400m annually, from a curated collection of just over 40 sites.

What struck me about the interview was not what he did, but how he did it - his focus.

Collective wisdom tells most of us - if you are employed by a company with any form of profit goal - that the most important metrics to focus on for success are revenue, volume, cost management, profit, cash position, and market share.

These metrics are usually the executive summary, the kitchen sink, and the endless appendix of most business reviews.

Brand, storytelling, creative, and - dare I say it - the human experience, so often play second fiddle to the drum of the P&L.

***

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But this is exactly what Stephen focused on.

An entire set of experiential measures for his restaurants that you’d never see in a regular business review:

• The lighting and the mood.

• The ambience when you first walk in.

• The warmth of the greeting at reception.

• The feeling of the carpet underfoot.

• How the music sounds in different parts of the restaurant.

• The smiles on the staff.

• And of course, the food and presentation.

Good lord, I mean, he’s talking about measures that are entirely based on how they make people feel!

His insistence - as maniacal as a CFO with an EBITDA tattoo - to focus on how these experiential measures impact our feelings and our desire to keep coming back was why his company does $400m in annual sales.

Not the margin on the glass of wine, or jacking up the prices of the breaded calamari appetizer.

It doesn’t take an MBA to work out that good lighting, a warm greeting, perfect music, great food and a classy ambience make for a nice night out.

You could argue that it’s stupidly obvious.

Stupidly obvious was his constant north star.

***

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Listening to Stephen reminded me that I get as wrapped up in the traditional metrics of a business as anyone.

But it did make me download a new filter into my mind: one I call the stupidly obvious filter.

What is so obvious to the success of what I’m trying to do that I may be overlooking?

I’m going to use it more often.

With love, feelings, and stupid obviousness,

The Jolt

This is Jolt #90.

Someone popped into my social video feed this week that made me smile.

Kate Winslet, to be precise.

She was being interviewed by a young budding journalist back in 2023.

The girl was probably around 10 years old, and she admitted she was very nervous, having never done an interview before.

Let alone with Kate Winslet.

Rather than pander to the girl’s age - and her nerves - Kate did something different.

She leaned in and simply said;

“This is your first time doing it? OK, well, guess what. When we do this interview, it’s going to be the most amazing interview ever. And do you know why? Because we’ve decided that it is going to be.”

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****

I often write about the things in our working lives that happen to us. But this small moment reminded me that we have the most magnificent power to influence what happens to others - namely, our ability to use empathy to decide how we want others to feel, and how we want situations to go.

Just like this young journalist, we will all do things for the first time, our entire careers; give presentations, manage projects, pitch ideas, launch initiatives, maybe manage people, hold a business review, give tough feedback, get tough feedback, get blamed for shit we don’t do.

In fact, we’ll likely never stop facing things for the first time, big and small.

Things that are new to us are often an alchemy of excitement and white-knuckle fear, no matter how senior, smart, or seemingly indestructible we think we are.

We just don’t like to admit it.

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Our ability to take a pause and recognize from our own experience what the other person might be experiencing themselves, is a skill we all have; empathy.

It’s also a skill we may sometimes overlook.

Especially when that person is doing something for the first time, or doing something they feel less confident in.

Using the power of empathy to help determine the outcome of a situation for someone else is one of the most magical leadership skills we can use.

You could also call this skill kindness, a word you don’t hear much in business. I mean, I’ve never seen kindness as a line item on a P&L, even though, in the past, I’ve advocated for a happiness index at work.

Kindness is a word that has profoundly wide-reaching impact on performance.

I know how it impacts me.

It’s grounded in an insightful level of confidence from the person saying the words.

It’s immensely empowering to those who hear the words.

And it’s a delight for all of us to see it happen.

Even simple words, like “I’ve got your back”, “We’re in this together”, “I’ll help you make this a success”, can be worth their weight in gold.

And yes, she ended up having a great interview with Kate.

With love and Winslet’s

The Jolt.

Issue No.89.

PS I don’t think I need to say this, but I will: no AI is used by the Jolt. Just good old human experience.

Oh, how true this is. We really like to beat ourselves up, don’t we?

I was thinking this while flying to NYC the other week and seeing all the books on the newsstands telling me I’d essentially failed at the following: leadership, life, presentations, influence, managing others, teamwork, creativity, strategic thinking, stress management, anxiety, time planning, fitness, health, finance, and my career.

I don’t mean the truly valuable self-help books that help nudge you to think differently, offer you practical tools you hadn’t thought of, or just make you laugh at your human daftness; I mean the ones that make you feel as if you’re living a desperately inferior life to everyone else around you.

Let’s put a grenade in that world for a second, and pull the pin.

Coz we all need it now and then.

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Fact: we highly overestimate others’ happiness, and dramatically underestimate our own - and these books feed on it. They equate success with a flawlessness that others have apparently mastered.

It’s an utterly unattainable state of being.

They know that our realities are of our own making, fanned by an inherent negativity bias that requires other people’s lives to be the measuring stick for our own.

So they present us those alternate lives - lives we can have if we’d only buy their book!

What they never say is, hey, those alternate lives are ghosts, haunting the imagined rooms of our minds; we’re actually all in the same boat, and always have been, trying to figure all this crazy shit out.

***

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So what if you showed up at work tomorrow knowing that what you are is good enough? Truly, good enough.

How different would you be, approaching a big presentation, if The Jolt whispered into your ear, “You’ve done this many times; even if you make a few mistakes or trip up on stage, you’ll learn and do it better next time. It really won’t matter either way; go get ‘em, tiger”.

Now, we may not say tiger, but the point is, rather than read the book “How To Present Like Steve Jobs” - which will take at least a week to read, two months and an army of people to implement and even then, make you feel crappy at your alleged ineptness in comparison - what if you go in believing you’re already good enough, versus not as good as you think you should be?

“You’re already good enough”.

Say it to yourself out loud (even if you’re on a train right now. Heck, say it to the stranger sitting next to you).

It’s a free, subtle, three-word mantra to level your mental playing field against the cult of pseudo-perfection.

Give it a shot this week.

With much love and blessed imperfection.

The Jolt.

When Airbnb hit a wall with weak adoption, the founders sold limited edition cereal boxes to raise an extra $30K to fund their existence. Investors later said that if the Airbnb team could convince people to buy $40 limited edition cereal, they could probably convince strangers to sleep in each other’s beds.

Muddling at its best.

These are the hindsight stories that we love; the almost-didn’t-make-it-but-somehow-found-a-way-to-muddle-through moments of business lore.

But what about the day-to-day muddle for those of us not launching streaming services or billion-dollar travel apps?

When it feels like our role is juggling hell-hole dumpster fire after another, while everyone else is laughing at us?

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***

I remember my first ‘proper’ job. Proper, as in, I got a salary that was calculated annually and a nice folder I could put my benefit package in.

I was a graduate trainee for HMV Music. One of those young whipper-snappers handed the promise of running an HMV Music store after just 12 months of on-the-job training.

All with the commensurate vision of becoming terribly important one day.

My training was a little different from what was advertised. It consisted of 12 months of grind; stacking shelves, dusting shelves, mounting shelves, breaking down cardboard boxes, and - stacking shelves.

I remember being ignored by people with far more experience than I had and then having to figure out a way to handle them. It turns out the real world of managing people was nothing like the training.

I was given a set of store keys and the number for the local police in case of an armed robbery. That was not a career aspiration of mine.

Chasing shoplifters down Southend High Street? Nah, not really what I signed up for, thanks.

That first year became a muddled theme; a realization that things weren’t quite what I thought they’d be - and would they ever?

I remember one dark, cold, rainy Monday morning, I was made to drive my banged-up Mini to a warehouse just outside Birmingham. It was 5 am.

My car was leaking, the footwell filling up with rainwater. At the warehouse, nobody knew who I was, and neither did they care. I had to explain I was the Assistant Manager from HMV, sent to pick up the order of the new Depeche Mode album - 10 large boxes of CDs in total - so we’d get that new album onto our shelves by 830am, and steal a few sales from die-hard fans before any other record store opened their doors.

They just laughed.

I found the boxes and loaded my car, the bumper almost touching the ground from the weight, and finally got back to the store as the dawn light came up. I remember dropping the rain-soaked cardboard boxes into the stock-room, then firing up the shrink-wrap machine, knowing that in a few minutes it would bring the caustic smell of burning plastic to my nose.

If this really was the music business, then I had had enough.

I wanted to quit.

Somehow, though, I muddled through.

***

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These muddles happen to us all.

And always will.

It’s called work, and the grass is rarely greener somewhere else.

Stalled projects. Promotions that only whisper intent. Promises of more responsibilities that vanish with a strategic pivot.

Muddles are those times when everything feels like it’s compounding to create the stretches where nothing seems to go as they said it would.

But what I’ve learnt from these muddles - and I’ve had many - is simply recognizing that I’m in one in the first place, and then taking a mental step to one side to look at it for what it is.

A moment, caused by factors I can’t control.

It’s a bit like a rip-tide. You don’t fight a rip when you’re in it; you feel it, know you’re in it, relax, and swim parallel to it.

And that’s The Jolt.

Muddles are job rip tides, moments that will try to drag you to places you didn’t plan to go.

If you can resist the urge to panic or overreact (“This all sucks”, “It’ll never get better”, “I can’t do it”, “Nothing is ever going to go my way”, “I’m stuck”), you’ll notice that even the deepest and dirtiest of muddles have a way of resolving themselves.

The water always, eventually, gets calmer.

You just have to keep on going that little bit further than you expected, with a slightly adjusted path.

With Love and Muddles.

The Jolt.

If you’ve ever checked how many open apps are running in the background on your phone (I counted 52 just recently, before I closed them all with a vengeance), you’ll appreciate that if these apps are set to continuously sync, they suck the living daylights out of your battery.

In other words, they’re a constant loop of hungry gremlins eating your battery from the inside out.

And it’s no different for us.

***

For us, these open-app gremlins are called cognitive drag, and they drain our mental batteries too.

They’re driven by our brains innate survival impulse to stop us forgetting something important. Our brains are exceptional at keeping unfinished thoughts active, even when we’re doing something else.

When these unfinished thoughts build up, they loop like unresolved alerts, flashing that “something needs to be done”. The more alerts we have, the more anxiety permeates, the more trickles of stress drip in the background, the more restless and distracted we become.

Loops can become vicious cycles; emails you’ve been pondering replies for, conversations you need to have, tickets you need to book, errands you need to run, conflicts you need to address. They all add up, and they don’t go away.

In fact, some people argue it’s not the work you’re doing right now that’s causing you the stress or angst, it’s the work you’re not doing; the endless open loops you have playing in your mind.

I can concur.

***

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One of the best techniques I’ve used is to capture and write down those loops. It’s not a to-do list as such, but a weekly background app-check on the unresolved stories your mind is playing over and over and over.

This week, give it a try; even if it’s one loop that’s been rattling in your mind; write it down, and close it.

I closed one just before writing this Jolt.

I have a significant project that I need to initiate, and the entire why, how, what and when of that project has been a constant loop, running pretty much 24/7 in my head.

When I thought about it in the context of it being a drain on my energy, I realized it had been punctuating my thoughts non-stop - even at dinner last night - and taking up far more air than it needed to.

So I wrote it all down, built a plan, and now that loop is closed. The project isn’t done, but the chatter is.

1-0 to me.

It was quite the liberation.

With loopy love,

The Jolt.

P.S. A very warm welcome to all the new readers who joined us over the last month. Thank you for subscribing to The Jolt. We show up in your inbox every 2 weeks or so with career advice that’s practical, proven in the real world, and easy to use.

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One of those, “this meeting isn’t going to go well” kind of thoughts. The kind of thoughts that have mutant babies that turn into screaming banshees of career doom.

As I entered the meeting, I had to remind myself that the gnawing thoughts were entirely in my head. It wasn’t reality. It was a set of fictional scenarios I had totally - and admittedly, rather imaginatively - invented.

Dang our minds!

Everything bad I thought might happen in the meeting, didn’t, and everything good I didn’t think would happen, did.

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The Jolt?

Never forget how good our brains are at confusing possible with probable.

Yes, it’s possible that the person at the end of the table is going to throw up on my pitch and then post about it on LinkedIn. In the same way that it’s possible we might, one day, in a gazillion years, grow an extra thumb exclusively for using our phones.

But it’s more probable that none of this will happen. Ever.

If you don’t believe me, study after study shows that 9 out of 10 of our fears never come to life (91.4% actually).

And if they do, it’s highly and universally proven to be probable, that we’ll handle them just fine; just as we have everything else in life up until this point.

Our brains are brilliant at skipping the middle of everything; brains zip straight to disaster, without stopping at GO and collecting $200 for a tip. In this case, my brain skipped the middle in a spectacular way - it skipped the actual meeting itself - which ended up productive, informative and totally different than I expected.

I had walked in with a weed of doom, but walked out with a flower.

It was a great reminder that most of what we fear, is a spurious invention of our own flawed noggin.

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With Love, Brains & Banshees,

The Jolt

But I purposely didn’t send a Jan 1st Jolt about resolutions to kick off 2026.

I waited - because the flipside of the resolution coin is like riding a bandwagon with a set of wonky wheels that fall off when the road gets bumpy.

Which is around about….now, when January feels like a dried out Christmas tree, shadowed by dark skies, cold nights and returns to work.

Kinda sucks.

But it doesn’t suck for everyone.

The self-improvement industry loves it.

It’s an industry built on the recycled premise that you’re never quite as good as you’re supposed to be, as if something vital is missing for you to be ever considered whole.

Ouch.

If only you do X, act like Y and behave like Z, everything will fall into place.

It never, ever works like that.

If it did, the self-improvement industry wouldn’t be an $88BN business. Instead, it would be on a marvelously altruistic decline, disappearing like a boat on the horizon, as people set sail into their futures as perfectly rounded versions of themselves.

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It was with this in mind that I asked Chat GPT for some future advice last week.

I was curious how it would handle my existential question to assess and figure out my path in 2026. I added some detailed prompts of what I was feeling and observing, and some vague ideas of what I wanted to work on and do.

Go at it, Team Chat GPT, hit me with some artificial-inspiration.

What it delivered back stopped me in my tracks:

“Your nervous system has already reached a conclusion your intellect is still debating”.

Dang if it didn’t cut to the core.

Team Chat was right. I already knew what I wanted in my heart. I mean, I basically typed out my desires and asked it to give me validation. And it did. It was like a friend saying, listen mate, you already know, while they take a sip of beer.

Spooky.

But it got me thinking.

Maybe we don’t need the self-improvement industry to tell us what we should be.

***

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Oddly, as I’ve got older, I’ve stepped away from chasing self-improvement as a means to an end. I’ve come to acknowledge my many flaws, my tendency for creative idiocy, forgetfulness, ignorance, biases, selective hearing, laughing at people who fall off chairs and my inability to pack a dishwasher correctly.

I think it’s called being human.

It doesn’t mean I don’t want to improve and learn. And it doesn’t mean I don’t read books, websites & listen to podcasts to give me different tools and perspectives. Not at all. I still love them.

It just means I have a better grasp on who I am.

Which is why I wanted to turn the idea of 2026 resolutions on their head.

Rather than letting someone else tell me what I needed, to “Have the Life of Your Dreams”, I did this.

I picked only 3 things I want to work on this year. Nobody told me what those 3 things should be. And I didn’t ask for feedback or notes.

I simply knew, in my heart, I wanted these three things to happen:

• Drink less alcohol.

• Care less about what others think of me.

• Finish a screenplay.

Then I found a sentence from three people I deeply admired to sum them up. I wanted a mental shortcut, a Jolt to remind me why I’m doing these things in the first place: an on-demand friend of sorts, who I felt comfortable with and who I could trust to surgically cut to the chase whenever I needed to be slapped back onto the path.

I just wanted some simple words that resonated.

So here they are:

For drinking less alcohol:

“The mornings are now better than the evenings”. Steve Coogan, when asked why he quit booze.

For finishing a screenplay:

A picture of my father, because he has always told me to chase my dream.

For caring less about what others think of me:

“No-one has it figured out. Everyone is guessing”. Stephen Merchant, when asked “what do you wish you had known”.

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**

They’re broad. They fly in the face of conventional goal setting.

They may not even make perfect sense.

But if I can hold these sentences close to me through 2026, I think they’re about as a good a guide as I can get to keep me on my path.

Give it a shot and see if it works for you.

With love & resolution,

The Jolt

A couple of weeks ago, I was at my Doctors for a check-up after a colonoscopy. They are so much fun.

As the nurse unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from my arm, she called out numbers I hadn’t heard before - my blood pressure was very high.

As she left the room to get the Doctor, I started to ruminate.

I mean, this was hypochondriac rumination on a highly professional level. If you know me, you’ll know this is a skill of mine.

I went from having high blood pressure to imminent death within the space of 60 seconds. In my mind, I had every possible life-threatening ailment I was reading on the walls of the posters in my Doctors office - heart disease, degenerative bone disease, every form of cancer. I swear for a minute, I even thought I might be pregnant.

The Doctor finally came in.

As I hurriedly asked about my highly elevated blood pressure number, he simply brushed it off.

“We’ll check again when you leave on a different machine, or maybe you had a load of chips and salsa last night. Salt does that”.

I had.

He checked my blood pressure again and it was normal.

I was going to live.

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***

Dr. Fowler, a clinical researcher at Houston Methodist Hospital, says overthinking and problem solving can feel very similar in nature, but they are strikingly different in their outcome -

“Problem-solving is when you ask questions with the intent of finding an answer and/or enacting a solution,” says Dr. Fowler.

“Overthinking, on the other hand, is when you dwell on possibilities and pitfalls without any real intent of solving a problem. In fact, a problem or potential problem may not even actually exist.”

May not even actually exist.

The thought that the blood pressure machine might actually be wrong, never crossed my mind.

I wasn’t problem solving.

I had a serious case of overthinking.

***

Given this topic, it made sense for this week’s Jolt to not overthink the message.

It’s simply this.

At work, we’re presented with blood pressure moments that cause us undue stress, everyday.

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When these arise, how often to we skip our problem solving mode and go straight to over thinking?

How often to we ask if the facts that are presenting themselves, are actually the facts? Or, like my blood pressure reading, are they actually messy, faulty, blurry and vague corporate grenades for our overthinking minds?

The next time I get a blood pressure moment at work like I did with my Doctor (great Doctor by the way), I’m going to remind myself - maybe the information I’m looking at is wrong.

With love and the highest levels of hypochondria,

The Jolt.

If you ask me why (go on, ask), it’s because I have a secret love of musicals and it reminds me of my mum.

She took me to every London theater production on earth as a kid, so blame her. I even got to meet Elaine Paige at the stage door one time. Belter of a voice.

Even if musicals make your skin crawl and your fur stand on end, there’s a lesson for us all in how ideas like Cats come into being.

I’ve always been fascinated by how creativity manifests itself in the most bonkers ways, and how, ultimately, it’s the most beautifully indulgent gift us humans have ever been given.

And I’m here to say we can all learn from it.

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***

As the song “Old Deuteronomy” played in my car on my drive home, here’s where my day dreaming mind wandered…

…I’m in a meeting with a bunch of important looking people, far more senior, clever and worldly than me, and I’m pitching my idea for a musical, using the exact same concepts, and ideas as composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

But I’m not Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I’m just me.

“I’ve got a fabulous idea for you.” I say, proudly, to the people in front of me.

“Go on.” They say, in unison.

“A musical.”

“Go on.”

“About cats.”

“….go on.”

“That can sing.”

The room falls silent. I continue.

“There’s no plot, or story, I’m just going to have the cats sing about their names, one after the other, after the other, after the other.” I pause.

Silence.

“You know, like the cats in the poems of TS Elliot”.

“TS who?” one of them barks back at me, a look of disdain on her face.

“And it’s going to become a $3.5 billion theatrical juggernaut with movies and hit singles and merchandise and everything!”

Raised eyebrows flutter. I hear a giggle.

“And then I’m going to follow it up with a musical about people on roller skates!”

Someone stands up and points to the door, but I’m unperturbed.

“But the roller skates are just a proxy for steam engines..and I’m going to call it Starlight Express, as a nod to trains, get it? I mean, everyone likes trains right?!”

They point to the door again. I stand, but just as I get to the door, I turn, more belligerent now.

“Give me one more shot,” I plead.

They pause. I jettison Lloyd Webber from my brain for a moment.

“…how about a cartoon?” I say.

I see one of the people say something about calling security.

“Listen…” I continue, “…it’s a cartoon, about a talking sponge, that lives under the sea”.

Someone says “security” again, louder now, I see one of them reach for something under the table, like a loaded shotgun for instance.

“…and he’s called, I dunno….Bob. And he wears underpants, but they’re square, and that part is really really important…and he lives in a pineapple on the ocean floor, and…I swear…it’ll become a $14 billion franchise with movies and merchandise and everything!”

Someone grabs my arm. I try to pull away, shouting;

“He has a pet snail called Gary!!!!”

They shove me now, bundling me out the door, but not before I get my last idea in, lassoing Lloyd Webber back into my daydream.

“And then I’m going to come back and do another musical, casting Jesus as a rockstar!”

“SECURITY!!”

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***

The Jolt is this.

Musical Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (who perhaps needs no introduction for some) and Stephen Hillenburg (former marine biologist who created Sponge Bob), both had ideas.

Like, stupidly crazy ideas.

Ideas that, when you describe them as I did in the above, don’t make a ton of sense. They sound weird, unintelligent, lazy, flippantly basic. Even amateur. Not ideas to the tune of over $17 billion in sales combined (real numbers).

But Andrew and Stephen believed in their ideas like no one else on planet earth. They had built a world in their noggins, and as far as they were concerned, that world was already real.

No research.

No consumer insights.

No giant strategic decks.

Just conviction.

They were able to see that world; hear it, feel it, sense it, taste it and unequivocally revel in it:

• Putting singing cats on stage.

• Sticking a talking sponge under the sea.

• Making a wooden contraption fly (Wright Brothers).

• Pumping out burgers en masse (Ray Kroc of McDonalds).

• Getting the entire world to watch a simultaneous dual city concert performed by the biggest bands on earth, broadcasting it live on one single day, with no rehearsals, mobile phones or the internet, to raise money for Africa (Bob Geldof and Live Aid in 1985).

***

You get the picture.

What I’ve learned over the years, is that we tend to look at the conclusion of these ideas as the benchmark of awesomeness- and not the original spark.

And we say “no way I could do that”.

But the conclusion, the amazing end result, is always the work of the many: the amplification of the spark, the sweat, the tears, the investment, the grit, the teams of all sorts of sizes and disciplines, the brains that powered the technological advances that the spark ignited.

The Wright brothers couldn’t build an A380 Airbus.

But they could fold a paper plane.

That’s the spark.

The point is this - it’s not the end game that’s the creative genius.

It’s the spark.

It’s always the spark.

We are all full of sparks.

***

When someone tells me ideas are nothing without execution, I grimace.

It happened to me last week, in a meeting. I wanted to walk out.

In corporate speak, these people sure sound right - even convincing - but they’re dream killers. Destroyers of innovation. The clowns of mediocrity. They walk round offices extinguishing creativity with their EBITDA soaked fingers on the candle flame of dreams.

Imagine saying this to a child -

“If you can’t make it real son, don’t bother dreaming it”.

Boy, is that wrong.

Ideas are everything.

Cats existed in Andrew Lloyd’s Webbers head long before it was executed as a stage show.

The Wright brothers dreamt of flight long before their plane went airborne for 12 seconds.

Don’t let the fact that you haven’t brought your ideas to life yet assuage you from believing you can’t or won’t.

Sparks ignite.

I have an entire hard drive of sparks.

Many I’ve had a crack at and they’ve failed with a whimper.

Others I’ve brought to life in small ways, a tickle of possibility, a kernel with the word “maybe” etched on the side, like those artists who can write your name on a grain of rice.

But I’m convinced one day, one of these sparks will ignite.

And nobody on earth, can convince me otherwise.

Make sparks, peeps.

With love, cats, sparks and pants,

The Jolt.

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I was at a meeting a few weeks ago, when someone threw a picture of a red chair on the screen.

At first, I giggled like I did when I accidentally opened Instagram in a meeting yesterday and saw a reel of the Queen rapping in a Sora AI video (sorry, but you can’t top those right now).

When I saw the red chair, I thought I was about to endure a meme that would go down like a cup of cold sick.

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But then... it actually got interesting.

Turns out, this person was explaining that they had physically placed a red chair in their main meeting room. Not for decoration or because they’d popped a gasket; this chair was symbolic.

It represented their audience: the consumer — the one person who was never actually in the room when the teams met, but without whom they’d all be “open to work” on LinkedIn and posting how passionate they are about cross-functional collaboration.

The red chair was the reminder that amidst the strategy debates, deck-clicking marathons, and financial reviews that make the clouds outside the window appear interesting - it could be all too easy to lose sight of who they’re doing this for.

In this case - the consumer. Their audience.

That was my Jolt.

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***

Because here’s the thing: the entire world outside of us is our audience.

And that means it’s full of red chairs.

When someone interacts with what you make, say or do, you’ve got a red chair.

That spreadsheet you created? Red chair’s reading it and was glad you added three additional tabs of detail even though they didn’t ask you for it.

That alignment meeting you set-up? Red chair was really appreciative because it helped them get a grip on all the chaos that had gone on before.

That email you rewrote five times before hitting send? Well done, because red chair forwarded it.

The red chair was a great reminder to keep the focus on my audience - and maybe, just maybe...not to focus quite so much on me.

With love (and lumbar support),

The Jolt

It feels like a nudge from somewhere deep in my subconscious, and almost always slides its way in when I sit down to write.

Over time, I’ve learned to get curious when these moments happen. There’s often a little thought tucked inside — like a package with a wagging tail of meaning I didn’t expect.

This time, the wagging tail was a single word:

Impermanence.

It led me to a thought that is so over-played, it’s become a meme unto itself:

Nothing ever stays the same.

Seasons shift. Empires fall. Even mountains slowly erode. It’s the oldest and most unbreakable law of the universe.

For anyone who’s ever felt imposter syndrome, performance anxiety, or just the creeping dread of a Sunday night (so, basically, all of us, everywhere), impermanence is the hidden gift we forget to unwrap.

Let’s unwrap it.

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***

When I think back to the companies I once worked for, most of them are unrecognizable now. Everyone’s either left, in new roles, or tragically and regrettably, not even with us anymore. The offices, the logos, the strategy, the goals, the culture, the purpose — all different, or all gone.

Remember HMV?

Exactly - my first company.

I think back to those jobs, the distant memories of big meetings, trips, and important pitches, but never the details or the conversations — just that it happened, at some point, and I was a part of it.

Even standout moments blur over time. Like the Phonogram Christmas party, where fake Gold Amex cards were issued to every employee so you could “lose control" at the bar alongside the former British boy band, East 17 (yes, for real, it actually said “The Card That Let’s You Lose Control” - on the card itself).

That memory is a feather now, floating down to me occasionally, a story that’s highly likely embellished in my retelling.

But then I ask myself: what about the memory of more recent events? Like the work things that happened last year?

They’re hazy too, washed-out snapshots of things I would like to remember better. I even had to think hard to figure out whether some events happened last year… or five years ago.

I mean, COVID started five years ago.

***

Let’s wind that clock tighter and unwrap some more.

What about the things from last month?

Feels a little clearer I admit, until I realize I need to open my calendar to second guess my guesses.

Let’s wind the clock forward to last week.

I wipe my brain with mental windex and remember that I need to call someone I’d promised I’d call last week, but I have a decent grasp on my to-do list and goals for the coming week.

And what about yesterday?

I had two Teams meetings, and I can probably remember what shirt I was wearing.

But it’s still a probably.

OK, I exaggerate a little. This isn’t early onset dementia, it’s to illustrate a point.

And the point is this: all the stress, the obsessing, the pontification of “what ifs” and “should I’s” — the meetings, the bosses, the emails, the differing flavors of work soups that we know we have to make, boil or consume — it’s all largely forgotten once eaten.

By everyone.

Fast.

Like, yesterday fast.

Add to that this truth: no one at work is even thinking about you as much as you think they are anyway. Assume that 0.1% of the people you work with think about you, and you’ll be pretty close.

If you yourself have largely forgotten about it, and you were the one who owned the memory in the first place, then not only was it irrelevant back then — it’s even more irrelevant now.

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***

So, what’s the Jolt?

From what I’ve seen over my time in business, most of our work-related stress comes from trying to control outcomes that are simply beyond our control.

It’s a colossal waste of energy.

And yet it’s incredibly hard to stop that worry, no matter how many self-help books we’ve read. You can’t just un-think worry about work.

But what you can do is hold a mirror to it. Remind yourself of the one fundamental law of working life:

It will all pass. Guaranteed.

So show up, be present, and do the best you can with what is in your control.

The rest?

Rather wonderfully, it takes care of itself, far faster than we all ever imagine.

With Love and Impermanence,

The Jolt.

The Monday just gone was the first day back from my barnstormer of a two week vacation. Within 5 minutes of flipping open my laptop though, I was shot out of the holiday confetti cannon into a tornado of work.

Oh how I’d missed those “per my last email”, CC’d to seven people I didn’t know, subtly cursing my vacation soul.

After two weeks away, it was never more stark to me than it was on Monday, that we are drowning in work.

As I flicked through unread messages of context switching and “hey, do you have an answer on…” (I confess to having checked in a few times while away, my anxiety likes to punch me in the chops now and then), I came to a fast and furious conclusion that my brain was now entirely made of soup, and I was the ladle.

It was only 9.05am.

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***

About ten years ago, I was someone who aspired to inbox zero, an utterly ridiculous goal created by people who sold software as a service.

Inbox zero was the equivalent of trying to dig a hole in wet sand with a fork, right on the edge of the shore. My inbox would fill with digital flotsam with every new wave.

Add to that the 17 google tabs I had open, my only joy was to attend a meeting that was going to derail my day.

It was impossible to keep up.

And that was 10 years ago; before Slack, Teams calls and bosses who learnt how to text.

Why My Brain Felt Like Soup On Monday.

Our brains were not designed to process a gazillion micro-decisions a day while pretending to care about Q3 Objectives. It evolved for slightly more straightforward tasks, like occasionally inventing fire.

Now we’re expected to monitor emails, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Slack, Concur, Workday and texts, track six different projects, read between the lines of passive-aggressive CC’s, go to the dentist, and still be “present” in every meeting while “streamlining workflows”.

This level of multi tasking voodoo isn’t real.

Our brains are being bullied by high speed EBITDA trains that spill coffee on our ambitions.

We are cognitive roadkill.

***

Over the last few years, more and more things I’m expected to remember seem to fall out of my noggin as quickly as a child chucking toys out of the stroller.

Which is why I’ve given the finger to inbox zero and virtually every productivity app, book and system I’ve ever attempted to deploy.

These days I’ve become quite shockingly ruthless in my approach to dealing with the chaos of work.

It’s by no means perfect, but here’s what I do::

1. One Thing at a Time.

I pick one task. And try to finish it. How old skool. If not, all I end up doing is spreading my mediocrity across multiple platforms.

2. Beyonce Block.

I put time on my calendar throughout the week for actual work and protect it. Like a meeting with Beyoncé, I do not reschedule it.

3. Inbox Gazillion.

I don’t care how big my inbox is anymore. I don’t create folders and move things in and out. I just use search. Search is so powerful now, I can find whatever I need instantly.

4. Reset.

I step away from the tsunami and go outside, and I do it frequently.

5. Lower The Bar - Slightly

As a self-confessed perfectionist, my goal today is progress, not Pixar level designs on slide 12.

And I’ve survived.

***

That dying hamster on roller skates? It’s your brain - and it’s behaving quite normally.

It’s the world of work that isn’t normal. It’s louder, faster, and messier than ever before.

But that doesn’t mean you need to match its intensity 24/7. Those who do, will fail.

You’re not a machine.

You’re a meat-based miracle trying to do your best.

Simmer down.

With Love and Hamsters,

The Jolt.

But let me straighten the bed sheets first: you’re not the only one ruminating on your turn to do your update in front of the team.

We all are.

Even the person leading the meeting - the one with the title and the cloying ability to say “circle back” and “break frame” with a straight face and no hint of irony — is just as anxious as you are.

And in my experience, probably more anxious.

After all, they have to pretend to know what they’re doing - and really pretend that they know what EBITDA means.

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Anxiety Is Work’s Most Popular Employee.

Workplace anxiety is not a sign of weakness, fragility, or lack of professionalism.

It’s actually a skill. Yeah, odd to say I know; but it means you are a thinking, caring human who is trying not to ruin their career before lunch.

You might feel anxiety’s brusk and painful horns, just as I used to, when:

• Your boss says, “Can I see you for a minute?”. Holy f@ck, what did I do!

• You get CC’d on an email with the subject line: “Urgent.” Ah, sh@t, busted for being rubbish!

• Or you send a message, then reread it 47 times to make sure it doesn’t accidentally sound like you’re starting a military coup.

Congratulations. You’re alive. You care.

And all because your brain is just trying to protect you from being eaten by a lion, when it’s not a lion at all - it’s just Eric from accounting.

CEOs Are Nervous Wrecks Too

Let’s humanize the big dogs, shall we? That woman pacing on stage at the all-hands meeting while clicking a tiny PowerPoint remote?

She woke up at 3 a.m last night wondering if she accidentally offended an entire department by calling them “our scrappy little team”, while pointing at the only individual on the performance-improvement-plan who’s a high risk for litigation.

She’s googled, “How to look confident while panicking inside.”, then deleted her search because it made her feel inferior and she’s convinced the board get copies of her search history.

She’s rehearsed saying “we’re pivoting” in the mirror, so she doesn’t spit on the front row as she enunciates the letter “P”.

She has the same imposter syndrome as you - she’s just got a more expensive manicure and a practiced poker face.

So How Do You Handle Your Anxiety Without Mentally Moving to Mars?

1. Name It to Tame It.

This worked for me. Saying “I’m feeling anxious” meets anxiety head on. It’s not an admission of defeat. It’s a power move. It turns a wily monster into something manageable. Say it out loud. Whisper it if you have to. It’s like saying “Beetlejuice”—once you name it, it loses some power.

2. Your Coworkers Don’t Hate You. They’re Just on Mute.

Anxiety loves to whisper little lies, like, “Everyone thinks you're incompetent”. But here’s the beautiful thing; everyone - and I mean everyone - is too busy wondering if they sound incompetent. We’re all a collection of nerves wrapped in to-do’s, projects and deliverable’s.

3. Write the Email. Then Don’t Read It 12 Times.

Perfectionism is anxiety in Spanx. I don’t wear Spanx, but looking at it gives me hives. It looks tight, restrictive, and no one likes it. Just like anxiety. Write the email. Spellcheck it once. Check your mum would be happy receiving it. Then send it. Breathe.

4. Take a Bathroom Break.

Go for a walk. Whenever I feel like my skull is being crushed by ann onslaught of things my mind can’t quite find room for, I go for a very deliberate walk. To the loo. Go. Breathe. Regroup. Maybe cry. All of it is allowed.

5. Make Friends With Other Humans.

Having one person you can message “This meeting is worse than root canal surgery without anesthetic and that twat from finance needs a good smack in the face” makes all the difference. Anxiety thrives in isolation. Connection is its kryptonite.

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The Jolt.

Everyone has anxiety. It’s not proof that you’re bad at your job. It’s proof that you care. That you're trying. That you don’t want to let people down. And while that’s exhausting, it’s also deeply human.

It’s a skill.

You are not alone.

You are not failing.

You’re a good person trying your best in a system that runs on deadlines, caffeine, and lumps of EBITDA masquerading as the meaning of life.

Remember, it’s just a game.

With love and calm,

The Jolt.

***

A bottle of water in a store is $1.

A bottle of water at the gym is $3.

A bottle of water at the airport is $4.

A bottle of water in Vegas is $8.

…and, should you have the money to throw around in a fountain of misspent wealth, a bottle of Acqua di Cristallo Tributo a Modigliani will set you back a chirpy $60,000.

Yet it’s all the same product: water.

And you can get it for free out of a tap.

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The reason that the same product can sell for such hugely different prices is based on three fundamental principles:

1. Context: the environment that surrounds the product (e.g., on a shelf in a supermarket, or on a menu at a high-end restaurant).

2. Positioning: how the product is presented and marketed (e.g., a quick thirst quencher for a buck or a life-changing vitamin enhanced electrolyte mouth bath).

3. Differentiation: what makes the product better, more interesting or more valuable (e.g., versus any other life-changing vitamin enhanced electrolyte mouth bath, this product has a better taste).

Yes, it’s water. But water is also one of the best marketing examples to use for this Jolt; because if you can do it with water, you can do it with anything, offering some interesting parallels for how we market our careers.

Here are a few thoughts.

***

First, context. When we’ve worked in an industry for a while, the collective knowledge we gain is highly valuable: we are surrounded by an environment that underlines and endorses our skills. Never underestimate the world you operate in and the collective experiences you have gained - or will gain - from being in the thick of it. Accountants, lawyers and doctors know this intimately and value themselves accordingly. It’s no different for anyone who has expertise in an area, we just don’t often use it in our favor.

For example, if you’ve been in marketing or sales for 5 years, that’s 5 years of working in the context of an environment that has given you terrific insight and experiences - don’t take those insights for granted.

Second, positioning. How do you present and market yourself to others? We all have the ability to stand for something that we believe in or are good at, regardless of the role or how big or small we feel that role (or impact) is. This might be as simple as being known as a strong communicator because you enjoy it, you’re good at it, and it comes naturally. Use it, regardless of role.

Finally, differentiation. Is there a specific skill or expertise you can bring to a role that allows you to stand out from the crowd around you? For example, using your strong execution skills in a role that was previously lacking that focus? Or your ability to think big picture when there aren’t many people around you who do. Or perhaps doubling-down on how well you get on with people in a team that needs to gel and come together, because you’re the one who can help the team succeed.

***

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The above is not an exact science.

We are human, not bottled water.

As hard as we may try, we’re all a messy mix of subjectivity, ego and wonderful unknowns, but it’s food for thought for ways to help stand out in a career competitive world.

And, no, I didn’t buy the $8 water in Vegas. I found a fountain and got it for free 😇.

With love and self-worth,

The Jolt.

A coffee, a burrito…and a pair of eyes.

It’s 9am, I’m at a huge convention about to have breakfast, meeting a potential candidate to join the team.

It’s busy, scores of people milling back and forth, the purposeful movement of people on a mission to be somewhere else.

We’re talking, an easy morning banter, but I’m suddenly conscious of one thing - their eyes.

They’re darting, back and forth to the people walking past us, as if these people were dopamine magnets - and far more interesting than me. Now, that’s not difficult to be, but I couldn’t help thinking, you’re not really listening to me are you?

They glance away from me again, just as I finish my thought.

I dig my mental heels in, determined to keep eye contact, even when their own eyes have been lost to fleeting thoughts I can’t see.

We wrap.

I leave, the conversation echoes like the throw of a stone on a lake, skipping across the surface of a half baked chat, a few momentary pops, but nothing of depth.

The ripples subside and we go about our day.

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****

I’ve been reflecting on the power of eye contact ever since.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Perhaps. But they’re definitely the window to communication.

I remember a colleague whose eyes had a mind of their own, darting to their phone whenever it buzzed, no matter how serious or meaningful the conversation we were engaged in.

It was often accompanied by a sorry, give me a second to check that, followed by a feeling that everything that had just been said had left their consciousness with a silent, trust-killing, thud.

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****

There’s entire parables on the importance of eye contact. How it builds trust, enhances rapport and signals sincerity. There’s even science about your blink rate, or that you should follow a 50/70 rule: maintaining eye contact 50% of the time while speaking, and 70% of the time while listening.

But perhaps the most important thing to take away from this Jolt is so simple in its essence and meaning - eye contact lets the other person know you’re interested.

There’s nothing worse in any form of communication, when the other person isn’t interested in anything you say or do.

You might as well be talking to their hand.

With big eyes and big love

The Jolt.

Do this, do that, do it with bells on.

But I was struck recently while listening to Oliver Burkeman, the journalist and fascinating productivity chap.

He questions the following: why do we rarely assess our to-do lists based on the consequences of doing the thing or not do the thing?

What we tend to do, is write the list with a focus on the action, not the consequence the action creates.

Because every thing we do or don’t do has a consequence.

From crossing a road, to not crossing a road.

To speaking up or not speaking up.

We simply cannot do both things, so we must choose to do or not to do.

Everything in life is a choice of consequences, from seemingly minor to large and meaningful.

It really changed my thinking this week.

The concept is brutally simple.

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We have about 4,000 weeks to live our one time lives (give or take). Toiling on earth as entirely finite beings with an expiry date none of us will ever know.

Being finite means we can never do everything we want to do with our time here on earth. It’s utterly impossible.

We must consciously choose what we want to do or not want to do.

Despite what the click-bait 4-hour work weeks and the unbelievably productive morning routines those preternaturally successful executives you read about will have you believe.

They seem to be able to do it all.

But it’s not simply BS, it’s an utter fallacy, and we know it.

No-one has actually mastered time. If they did, undertakers would be busking on street corners to make ends meet.

***

Remember the fad of inbox zero? Utterly impossible. In fact, attempting that creates far more stress and wasted time than the promise itself.

Replying to emails fast? You just get more emails.

Doing work on time or ahead of time? You just get more work.

Productivity apps that answer our cry of “if only I can get control of my time, I’ll be the person / do the thing / live the dream I was made for?”

It’s impossible.

Which is why Oliver suggests this different approach.

Accept your finitude.

Accept you are finite in your resources and capabilities. Accept that, along with every other human on the planet since we first walked on earth, nobody has mastered time.

What a relief.

The mindset of finitude is guided by the fact that you have control of how you cash in your 4000 weeks on earth.

Rather than looking at your to-do list as a never ending list of all the things to be done, look at it as a choice to determine the consequence of doing that thing, or not doing it at all.

And then use that to determine if it’s really worth it after-all. Only you can determine that. Not an app. Or a self-help guru.

For example, you need to get a presentation done by the end of the week. Delivering it on Monday night annoy your team or your boss, but getting it done by Friday means you would have to cancel dinner with your partner. Those are the consequences.

Piss off the people at work, or piss off the person you love.

By thinking about the action as a consequence, you align with what you want out of life - or what you don’t.

This week, I wrote down my to-do list. It was long, the kind of Godzilla sized to-do list that had babies. Lots of them. Breeding like sub to-dos in an orgy of utterly urgent and stupidly important.

It has always been this way.

And will always be this way.

Every job or company I’ve ever worked for has been comprised of an unrelenting tsunami of work.

I have tried everything. Productivity apps, self help books, Instagram gurus. They always give me the same hit of adrenaline at first, starting with the delicious excitement that finally I have found the answer to managing my life.

I never do.

Within a few days or hours, I’m back to my bucket full of to-do list sand, the one with the hole in it, filling up, just as always, while missed opportunities and emails pour out the bottom as I helplessly watch.

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***

Taking my pen and channeling my inner Oliver, I looked at my list through the lens of the consequences.

Miraculously - and liberatingly - I came up with 3 things. Just 3. And it’s all I did this week, give or take a few things that I had to bat away.

I can’t say it didn’t give me slight nerves. I could still hear the things I had not put on my to-do list, crying like stabbed banshees.

But I accepted my finitude and said to myself, these 3 things are what I need to do and want to do to fit with my values.

By focusing on these 3 things, the summed consequences of doing them and not doing the rest made me more motivated than I had been in a while. They aligned with my goals and value in life.

Give it a shot and see what it brings up in you.

With love and choosing how to spend your 4000 weeks on earth,

The Jolt.

PS, here is Oliver’s site:

https://www.oliverburkeman.com/fourthousandweeks

Such is my level of excitement these days, that an email from an electrician makes my day.

***

You see, we have a new car. It’s an EV, and we needed a home charger.

$2500 to install.

$2500?

No way, I said, as I scanned the price. That’s way too much! That charger is $688 online, so that’s nearly $2k of labor and a bit of wiring.

No way, I said again. Saying it twice made me believe it more. I even contemplated doing it myself.

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***

Knowing that doing it myself would end in an explosive death, the likes of which would garner me the greatest ever posthumous Oscar given at the Darwin Awards, I called another electrician with glowing 5-star reviews.

They’ll know what they’re doing and I bet they’ll be cheaper. With hundreds of reviews, they’ll have volume on their side. Discounts. Cheaper parts. Cheaper labor.

So what if they charge $99 for a call out fee, it gets put towards any work you do with them anyway. Perfect.

I bet it’ll be half the price!

They came out and I paid them the $99.

An hour later I got the estimate via email.

It was $3500.

$1000 more.

****

I spent $99 to find out I was wrong. The point is, I was convinced I was right.

Assured to the point of certainty that I’d be finding someone who’d put my EV charger in for $1500, tops.

I had no facts to base it on. No comparisons. Just a hunch.

****

How often are we so dead certain of a fact that’s not a fact?

It was quite The Jolt.

I went back to the $2500 estimate and read it again. It was pretty detailed. It explained all the steps that were needed. The work entailed. The parts. The labor. With hindsight I realized it was actually quite a bit of work to install an EV charger.

They have to run conduit through the basement, getting on their hands and knees in the dust and dirt. They have to test the electrical load on the main panels. Weather proof it. Make sure it’s positioned on the right part of the house.

I realized I had simply run my eyes down the page to the number and decided I didn’t like the answer. I’d ignored everything else.

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***

This week, I’m reminding myself to take a pause before jumping to conclusions.

I’m spending more time to actually read what’s in front of me. And then read it again.

I’m going to challenge my first assumption, remind myself to be curious and ask if the assumption is whispering from the mystically hopeful side of my brain, or preaching loudly from the altar of good old fashioned fact.

With love and electrical humble-pie,

The Jolt.

The need to compare yourself to others.

The need to get things right all the time.

The need to be liked.

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I mean, we all do it. With extreme capability! For virtually all of us, it’s human nature.

We’re programmed not to stick out. Sticking out used to mean being cast out of the tribe. And being cast out of the tribe, meant a closed cave door and no dinner.

Dropping these needs is one of the hardest things we can do in business and in life. Yet addressing them is one of the single most rewarding things for our growth.

Even if it only means a 10% improvement in our existence (or 11.5% for those of us who suffer from more acute perfectionism and desire to measure progress in obtuse and unnecessary ways), taking action can have an outsized impact on our long-term performance and perspective - and happiness.

***

If you’re reading this on the Sunday it was sent and you’re not hungover, you might be in a more relaxed state of mind, even if the week ahead is starting to gnaw at you a little. Either way, it’s times like these that offer us a moment to reflect. To take a beat and ponder.

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According to the accepted wisdom of death dulas (yep, people who comfort the dying in their last few days and hours), the No.1 regret of the dying is the following -

“I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”.

Blimey. Quite a Jolt.

What strikes me about these words the most, is one word: courage.

Not comparing yourself to where others are in life, takes courage, especially on LinkedIn, where everyone else’s career appears to be going so remarkably, so humbly, so well.

Not trying to get things right all the time, takes courage, especially if you’re in a culture that consciously or unconsciously punishes failure with a not so subtle nod and wink.

And not needing to be liked, takes courage, especially if you’re uncertain or unsupported in your role, or suffer from any form of performance anxiety or imposter syndrome.

These things can’t be cured by a magic wand. But they can be chipped away, so that over time, they’re slowly diminished to an occasional annoyance.

So here’s a tip.

This week, pick one of the needs above: the need to compare yourself to others, the need to be perfect, or to be liked - and counter them, just a little, with a positive nudge in the opposite direction.

No matter how small. And no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel.

Let me give you an example.

Last week, I had to have a very tough conversation with someone. It was not going to make me liked and it certainly had no perfect script to follow. In my head, it was going to end up a blancmange of awkwardness. Burying my head in the sand of avoidance was appealing.

An hour before we were due to meet, the person I was meeting with wanted to reschedule to later in the week.

In the back of my mind, I celebrated with a tiny sigh of relief. I could boot the conversation a few more days. Kick the can down the road, gone off to lunch instead and avoid the conflict.

Mañana is a wonderful thing.

I didn’t.

I sent them a note back saying, sorry, I need to talk to them in an hour as agreed.

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***

That note might sound like a small win. Even inconsequential.

But it was turning round this moment and not letting my mind get the better of me, that allowed me to live true to what I needed to say.

With Love and Courage,

The Jolt.