Learning to bring a conversation to life turned out to be simpler than I expected, and the insight came from an unlikely place: improv.

Specifically, from realising I’d been misreading its foundational principle, ‘Yes and…’. Once I corrected my understanding, I started noticing it everywhere, especially in the people I find the most magnetic to talk to.

Your past effort is never wasted. Even after injury, illness, or years of neglect, your body and brain retain far more of what you built than feels possible and, when you return, you recover it far faster than the first time you built it. So let’s get into the consoling truth and change how you approach your next comeback.

Actors don’t memorise lines through repetition, they make lines memorable by understanding the intention and meaning behind the words. That’s the engine behind their incredible feats of memory.

A few of my friends saw my new habit and followed suit, so I thought you’d also enjoy my trick for being less of a doomscrolling phone-zombie.

The trick is well-known: turn your phone screen black and white. But how I do it is different.

Acronyms and acrostics are the oldest memory tricks in the book for creating and recalling long lists of information. While they are powerful, creating them is tedious; with the AI workflow I teach, you’ll be able to take advantage of their power without the tedium, and create enduring mnemonics that make new lists of information unforgettable.

50% is better than 0, especially when 100% isn’t possible. Embracing this attitude is one of the most useful tricks for “cheating” your way towards your goals, building new habits, and ditching old ones.

With no other obvious culprit, we blame our exhaustion on our modestly packed schedule. Yet, when we check our maths, the numbers don’t quite add up. There’s another factor at play. We have too many open loops.

The unanswered message.
The unfolded clothes.
The unframed art.
The unwanted, still‑uncancelled toothbrush subscription.

This family of unfinished business beeps away in the background, like a ceiling full of smoke alarms with low batteries. Every loop demands a slice of attention, a sliver of guilt, and carries a haunting worry that we’re falling behind.

There’s a mean story many of us carry around: if you can’t keep up with the dishes, the laundry, the bathroom, there is something wrong with you. Not with what you’ve been through. With you.

Of course, that’s not true. You’re suffering because you’re moralising your domestic chores. You believe that your self‑worth is tied to the crumbs on the kitchen counter. You believe that whether you are good or bad, a success or a failure, is informed by your performance at completing your chores.

Most advice about productivity quietly assumes you have plenty of energy and not enough time. It shouts ‘swim harder’ when you’ve already swallowed half the pool and is blind to the exhaustion you feel after years of standing up only to get knocked down again.

In this state, the issue is not that you’ve mismanaged your time, but that your nervous system is fried and your capacity has been hacked to a stump.

A common misstep during these tough times is to use the classic Important/Urgent prioritisation matrix.