Pick one recurring piece of your work and take it apart. That’s where the rebuild starts. | Image generated by AI, prompted by me I recently saw someone on X claim that companies are already laying off anyone who can’t use AI. So I asked for the source. Crickets. That’s the AI conversation about work … Read more
Better Problems Complaining is easy from a safe distance. The work starts when you pick a mess and walk toward it. | Image generated by AI, prompted by me For months, I complained about a project that wasn’t mine. It was an IT infrastructure rollout in a large government department, and it was failing. Miserably. … Read more
Your Skills Are a Snapshot, Not a Ceiling A skill I once had, gathering dust. || Prompted by me, generated by AI. We think of our skills as though they’re an inventory. And in some ways, they are. I’m good at this. I know how to do that. I’ve never been good at this other thing. Then we use that inventory to decide what seems possible for us. The problem is that your skill set isn’t fixed. It’s a snapshot of what you know how to do right now. Your skill set is fluid. Skills develop through…
The Gorilla You’re Trained Not to See You can train yourself to count the passes. You can also train yourself to see the gorilla. It depends what you’re aiming your attention at. There is far more happening around you than you could ever possibly notice. People. Problems. Opportunities. Threats. Ideas. Patterns. Open doors. Dead ends. Most of them remain invisible. Not because they aren’t there, but because your attention is finite. You can’t notice everything. Your mind is constantly…
Retiring the idea of retirement The reflex outlasts the reason for it. A few days ago, I retired. The pension paperwork is filed. My government job is over. The employment contract, the paycheque, and the schedule that belonged to someone else all ended at once. My body still thinks I have a job. A couple of times a day, I catch myself reaching for my phone to see if there’s something I need to handle. There isn’t. Nobody is waiting for an answer. I don’t even have a work phone anymore….
You’re Allowed to Outgrow What You Once Wanted Better is always possible, but better doesn’t always mean more. It used to fit. You’re allowed to want something that now fits better. A few years ago, I was sitting in my favourite room of our house, drinking coffee and looking through a wall-to-wall window facing the Ottawa River. It’s a ridiculous view. Water stretching out in front of me, trees on both sides, ducks paddling around. It’s the kind of place people rent for a week or two to…
You’re Telling the Wrong Person Your Story The org’s draft is always ready. Yours needs to be too. Recently I gave a talk to 38 cybersecurity professionals about how to communicate so their work actually lands. Not just reports, dashboards, briefings, and risk registers, but meaning. The whole talk hinged on one idea: there’s always a story being told about your work, and if you don’t tell it, someone tells it for you. Be the storyteller, or be a character in someone else’s story. I didn’t…
The Week You Can’t Remember You kill your dreams the same way you kill houseplants — neglect. My journalling app threw a question at me that stopped me cold. “What’s a moment from this week that felt meaningful to you?” That was it. The bar was so low! One moment, just one, that meant something. It didn’t have to be a career milestone or a life-altering epiphany. Just something that meant something to me, something to remind me how glorious life can be. Nothing came to me. I sat there with…
Your Paycheck Costs You a Lot Most people ignore the hidden costs of their paycheck. You signed a contract. You didn’t read all the fine print. Time and labour in. Money out. That’s the deal you read. That’s the deal you remember signing. Flip the page. There are hidden costs on the back. And they’ve been compounding for years. The story you tell yourself “I need this job to survive.” Like all good stories, there’s truth in it. That’s what makes it dangerous. The truth keeps you from looking…
Hero Mode Put Me in the Hospital This is where Hero mode got me. I was telling myself I just needed to go harder. Lean in. Push through. Dig deeper. The project was slipping, the people around me weren’t moving fast enough, and somewhere in my head I had decided that if I just willed it hard enough, I could drag the whole thing across the finish line by myself. Then one night I found myself on the floor. Curled up in a ball. In tears. A couple of days later I was in the hospital. And lying…