NEWSLETTER

Hey everyone!!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you’ve enjoyed your weekend, that you’re feeling rested, and you’re excited for the week in front of you. If not, it’s worth reflecting on why you aren’t feeling that way, and what you might do to change that. Life is too short to just keep looking forward to the weekend and dreading the work week. For the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring what I view as the biggest mistake people make when changing something significant about their career; not having a solid…

Hello !! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Another week of 2024 has already flown by. Amazing how quickly time slips through our fingers if we aren’t intentional about how we’re using it. To be clear, that doesn’t mean you should be busy and “productive” all the time. That’s a recipe for disaster. Instead, it means you need to be intentional about where you’re directing your time and attention, if you’re going to keep moving yourself in the direction you’d like to be headed. How are you doing on your 2024 goals? Are…

Hello everyone!!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you’ve had a fantastic week. Winter finally arrived here in Ottawa, later than usual, but coming in full force. I’m happy to have it though; I enjoy getting outdoors even in the cold. Living out in the wild where I do makes winter an enjoyable experience. ❄️ For an idea of how much snow we got, just last night – have a peek at my back deck this morning. Pretty crazy! In last week’s newsletter, I recommended that before starting significant transitions in your…

Hello everyone!!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 🎉 Happy New Year!! 🎉 I hope you enjoyed the holiday season and had time to connect with family and friends. And that you’re pumped for the year ahead! I know I am. 😁 I know that the calendar turning another page is really a bit of an arbitrary construct, but I measure my life in years. It is a natural transition period for me. The time between Christmas and New Year’s is usually a bit of a quieter period for me, and it provides me the perfect opportunity to go inwards…

Hello everyone! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 We’re now in the thick of the holiday season. Neighbourhoods are lit up with festive lights, trees are glowing inside people’s living rooms, and the malls are full of people scurrying about. While some find the holiday season stressful, I rather enjoy it. I always set aside time for myself during this time of year, reflecting on the year that passed. I ponder how I’ve changed, how much progress I’ve made (or not made!) towards my goals, and whether life feels “on track”…

Hello! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you’ve had an amazing week and you’re gearing up for the holiday season. Keep in mind that this season is about connecting with friends, family, and community, rather than getting too caught up in the holiday’s commercialization. It is a season for slowing down, for introspection and reflection, and for connection. Make time to treat yourself and the important people in your life well. That’s what it is really about. As I was considering what topic to touch on this week,…

Hello! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you’ve had a fantastic weekend and took time to unplug and recharge. This can be a hectic time of year for many as we prepare for the holiday season. Don’t forget that investing in yourself is not a selfish act at all; it is a key requirement to allow yourself to be at your best. The world has so many problems that need solving, so we need you to be at your best. Your contributions matter. This week’s article focuses on simple steps you can take today to transform your…

Hello! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Wishing all of my American readers a happy Thanksgiving weekend. 🦃 I hope you’ve been able to spend quality time with family and friends, and able to reflect on some of the amazing things to be grateful for. With so much focus on negativity, war, and the daily stresses of life, Thanksgiving weekend is a wonderful time to put all that on pause. Given the holiday, I focused on the theme of gratitude. But I gave it a bit of an interesting, potentially controversial twist! Gratitude…

Hey everybody! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you’ve had an amazing weekend!! I’ve had ‘change’ on my mind this week. Since change is something that we all have to deal with, I figured I’d share my thoughts with you. The pace of change will not slow down, so you might as well equip yourself to deal with it more effectively. If you found it helpful, please let me know! (and forward it on to others who may benefit as well) On with it!! Tim Channel Your Inner Chameleon: How To Navigate Constant Change “The only…

Helllo!!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 If you’re one of us who went through the switch back to Standard Time from Daylight Savings Time last weekend, I hope you’re dealing well with the shift. Every year I feel surprised by the change, by how dark it gets SO early. Ugh. Try to take advantage of the daylight when you can; making time for a quick walk outside during the working day is one of the best productivity hacks there is, as well as being good for your health and soul. Taking care of yourself isn’t a luxury;…

Hey there! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you had an amazing week and a chance over the weekend to rest up, recharge, and reconnect with yourself to prepare for the week ahead. In last week’s newsletter, I shared my thoughts about some ways in which fear impacts upon people’s careers. On Wednesday this week, some colleagues and I were discussing how we celebrated Halloween. I mentioned that my wife and I snuggled up on the couch in the basement, with a fire blazing in the woodstove, and watched a horror film…

Hello everyone! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I insist on getting outside during my lunch break for a walk as often as I can (even when the weather doesn’t cooperate). Not only does it feel great to move my body, exposing myself to nature, but these walks also let ideas bubble up. There is something about movement while being outside that gets my creative juices flowing. During one of these walks one day this week, I remembered Halloween was right around the corner. Halloween represents the transition from harvest…

Hey everyone!!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Not sure about you, but it has been a hectic week for me! 🔥 But that is just the way life goes sometimes; things happen in cycles. Trying to fight your way out of it isn’t always the most effective way; sometimes you just need to go with the flow. Make the time for the most important things, and learn to let some stuff go. It’s a key skill to have in today’s working world, but it is never easy. Anyway, here’s the usual 3 things for you: A brief article; this week…

Hello everyone!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you’ve had an amazing week and an incredible beginning to your autumn. I suspect you can relate, but mine has been incredibly busy. Note that I am not saying this to complain; being busy is a good thing. If I compare it to being bored, I know I’d prefer to be busy. You can re-frame the term ‘busy’ to mean ‘a lot of interesting stuff happening in your life’, which is how I try to look at it. (And no, I am certainly not always successful at doing that!) 😁 But of…

Happy Thanksgiving 🦃 weekend to all my fellow Canadians! It feels strange to be celebrating the Canadian Thanksgiving when the weather’s been so warm, but it’s an amazing time of the year. The leaves are just exploding with vibrant colours right now, and the bugs are mostly gone, making it even more enjoyable to be out in nature. I hope that you all had a great week, and that you took some time to rest and recharge over the weekend. Too often we use the precious weekend time to do all the…

Hello fellow seekers and explorers! 👋🏻👋🏻 I hope that you’ve had an incredible week. My luck turned when I realized I’d caught COVID for the third time. Sigh. It’s feeling like an annual tradition! The good news is that I’m doing okay; each bout seems to be less damaging than the one before it. This is the only area where my wife and I are out of synch; we never get it at the same time. Each time she’s had it, I’ve been fine – and vice versa. 🤷🏼 Anyway, I went for a walk down our quiet private…

Hello!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 Me again. I hope you’ve all had an amazing week, recharged on the weekend, and are ready to rip into the new week. If not, maybe it’s a good time to reflect on what is missing in your life. Because “better is always possible.” I am so tired of hearing people blather on about how you should “follow your passion”; it is a dangerous idea. There is a grain of truth to the idea, which is what makes it both so compelling – and so dangerous. It leads to too many people searching…

Hello!! 👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻 I hope you’ve all had an amazing week. Or at least, a better week than I had (more on this below!). Sometimes the winds of life blow right in your damn face, and things can feel hard. That’s just the way it is! You don’t need to fight back when it’s like that; it is okay to just weather the storm, wait for the headwinds to pass, and conserve your energy for another day. That was me this week. And that is okay! The storm always passes, and we carry on. Hopefully, you can benefit…

Hey there! As we prepare for the crisp air and colourful palette of autumn, I’m reminded why my logo features a multi-coloured tree. Just like fall is a season for transformation—a time when leaves change their hues and prepare for a new beginning—I help you do the same in your career. Like trees, careers aren’t built overnight; they grow slowly, nurtured by the decisions we make, the goals we set, and the actions we take. You need to establish a strong root system to ensure you are stable…

Hey everyone! Thanks for subscribing and reading. I know how valuable your time and attention are, so seek to ensure that I add value. Every Sunday I bring you an article, an interesting quote that has been on my mind, and a journal prompt, all related to working and living better. If you know someone that you think would find this content useful, please forward this on to them! I want to be useful to as many people as possible. Please reach out (tim@timparkins.com) if you have questions for…

Hey everyone! Thanks for subscribing and reading. I know how valuable your time and attention are, so seek to ensure that I add value. Every Sunday I bring you an article, an interesting quote that has been on my mind, and a journal prompt, all related to working and living better. If you know someone that you think would find this content useful, please forward this on to them! I want to be useful to as many people as possible. Please reach out (tim@timparkins.com) if you have questions for…

Hey there! Hard to believe, but we are in the last couple weeks of summer. Time just seems to pass quicker and quicker with each passing year. I hope that you’ve enjoyed some joys that the season offers. While my focus is very much on helping people design and build a career that suits what their goals are, it’s also important to pay attention to life outside of work. After all, work is just one aspect of life, even if it is an important aspect. Take some time this week, even a few minutes,…

Hey everyone! I am with my wife and my son in New Brunswick for this phase of our summer vacation. It has been great to reconnect with extended family and to enjoy the warmth and hospitality of the Acadian people, and of course, seafood! The weather has required us to keep flexibility in our plans; that is just how life along the coast is. You need to adapt your plans to what Mother Nature throws at you. There is a great lesson there; we can either try to force our will to get things to work…

Hello! I hope you all had an amazing week. I kicked off some vacation time this week, getting it started with some time with members of my neighbourhood. We had a community gathering on our beach, complete with a pig roast. After a fantastic meal, my neighbour and I put up a custom-built screen, and we had a movie night under the stars. We watched the classic ‘The Great Outdoors’ starring John Candy (it seemed an appropriate choice for a movie on a beach). These are the moments that make up…