I did it again. The very thing I swore against when restarting this publication.

Within weeks, I went from writing newsletters from the heart to rushing through them. Trying to create a formula or blueprint each week, with my little ‘books that actually helped me’ section and the weekly quotes.

My optimisation brain piped up. And as such, I lost interest in writing these weekly letters to you.

It’s funny how that happens so often to me.

Does it for you, too?

I started photography again a few weeks ago, for example. A forgotten labour of love. And again, after merely three days of shooting, my mind goes to:

“Can I do this as a career?”

Every new discovery of a passion or hobby quickly transforms from a fun, creative outlet to something with pressure, responsibility, and urgency.

Which is sad, really. But I think it’s also symptomatic of the world in which we live.

Everything is about money — even time itself. And where time is money, efficiency is vital. We commoditise our existence, every facet of it that brings us joy, because we’re taught to succumb to the endless grind and hustle that promises us happiness.

And in turn, makes us miserable.

Why not write a newsletter for the love of writing? Or shoot images of friends simply because it’s fun?

It needn’t be more than that. Work can remain work, and play just the same.

Alas, I fell into my own trap. I keep falling into my own trap.

My entire career is much the same. I began writing because I love to write, nothing more, nothing less. Then the paid work came along, the clients, the marketing, and five years down the line, I’m writing LinkedIn posts for founders as a career.

You’d think I love LinkedIn. Let me tell you, I fucking hate it.

In the past week alone, I lost two major clients, collectively comprising 35% of my income. My business seems to be toppling.

And in any other such situation, I’d resort to the grind. More outbound. More marketing. Build the pipeline, pursue new business.

But, to be quite honest with you, I have zero interest in doing so.

Build the pipeline for what? To do more of this? More LinkedIn? And more LinkedIn for what? Money?

Is money a substitute for purpose? Is money enough to sedate a man devoid of meaning, to placate his desire for fulfilment with fresh invoices and fatter bottom lines?

After years of delusion, I am realising that the answer is, obviously, no.

For many who lack the money and freedom that comes with a lucrative one-man business, it sounds incredibly enticing — that the fruits of such labour are enough to make a purposeless life a mere side effect of wealth.

And yet, here I sit, writing these words atop the ‘empire’ I’ve slaved to build for years, feeling quite dejected.

So yes, I fell into my own trap in terms of newsletter writing.

But it’s becoming quite apparent that, in actual fact, my entire working life is also caught in the vice grip of said pitfall.

I suspect I’m not alone in feeling this way. I suspect you’re also waiting for me to pivot from complaint to solution.

However, I don’t yet know the answer. What I do know is that the start of a purposeful existence, unravelling ourselves from this capitalist-contrived snare that many of us are tangled within, is awareness.

Simply knowing that there is more to life than we’re led to believe is the start.

Indeed, we have bills to pay, and money will continue to be a necessary evil.

But whether within or outside of our career, can we remember to live, too?

This morning, for example, I went for a walk in the sunshine, sat upon a bench for half an hour, and read a book.

I’m also reminding myself as I work that work is not life. That the crushing deadlines or seemingly catastrophic blips throughout the week bear only as much weight as I attribute to them.

That there is more to living than this.

With that, I’m slowing down. Taking time away from my phone. Being more present in the things I experience.

Consciously pulling myself out of the trap.

The big, daunting questions of meaning and purpose will be answered in time, I’m sure.

But for now, I’m just remembering to live.

Perhaps we could all benefit from doing the same.

By the way, you’re very welcome to respond to these emails. I see every single message, and would love to hear your perspective on this week’s newsletter.

Maybe we can figure it out together.

Love, as always.

— Adrian

Newsletter: I Fell Into My Own Trap was originally published in Mind Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been thinking a lot about standards this week.

The idea that we fall to the standard we set for ourselves. That every little action, like deciding not to make the bed or to eat some junk food, is us defining what that standard actually is.

It comes back to the age-old saying:

“How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

And it’s true. Of course, I’m not saying we have to be rigidly optimised 24/7. I made a firm stand against that when restarting Mind Cafe.

But still, we have goals. There’s a life we want to live, a person we want to become. However, we make the mistake of thinking this relies on big, grandiose changes.

In reality, it comes down to the small things.

If we stick to our skincare routine in the morning, we’ll probably follow through and go to the gym. Conversely, if we choose to skip our calorie target and overeat today, we might let slip tomorrow, too.

These things aren’t separate. It’s the same self-respect muscle at work.

Standards don’t compartmentalise. You’re one person, holding one standard. And every micro-decision is a vote to either reinforce it or regress back to old ways.

If we break it in one area, we give ourselves permission to break it elsewhere. Sure, we might not always. But I’ve found for myself that ensuring to uphold that standard, to wash my face at night, even when I’m tired or I’m home late after a few beers, sets a rule that applies everywhere else.

That is, I won’t let my standard slip.

The mechanism works both ways, positively and negatively. It snowballs. This is why I’ve stopped negotiating with myself on the small stuff.

I tidy my bedroom every day, even when I don’t feel like it. I brush my teeth for a minimum of two minutes, morning and night. I hit my four weekly weightlifting sessions, even if it’s hot or if I have to go on a Saturday morning.

Does this mean you can never enjoy a day off — that you shouldn’t skip a single gym session or allow yourself a nice steak dinner or a Netflix binge?

Not quite. But it’s about intention, and knowing what you truly want, which we covered last week.

You can absolutely cut yourself some slack from time-to-time (not that you need my permission). I’m on a cut right now, and yet, I’ll still give myself a day at maintenance calories every few weeks. I feel I’ve earned it, and I’ve weighed up the decision, so it’s fine. It’s not a momentary temptation that I’ve succumbed to.

It’s those temptations that are the issue, however.

In the moment, sometimes, I cannot be arsed to make my bed, or to clean my face, or whatever.

But it’s precisely then that I simply say to myself, don’t let the standard slip. This approach, when we repeat it across many trivial areas of our lives, becomes second nature.

And when it comes to the more important stuff that does impact our trajectory towards the life we want, we take the same stance.

As said, this might sound like perfectionism, but it isn’t. We decide where our own bar sits.

Mine is a tidy room and two minutes of toothpaste. Yours will be different. The discipline is in deciding on your own standard and refusing to slip below it.

Most people spend their energy trying to raise the bar. But this week, I’ve realised that a better life relies less on raising the bar.

And more on ensuring we refuse to lower it.

Other Lessons From This Week

That said, here are a few other things I’ve been thinking about this week.

1. The only self-improvement books that actually helped me

Following on from last week, here’s the third book in the segment.

This week’s is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the memoir of how he built Nike from a small shoe-import side hustle into a global brand.

On the surface, it sounds like a typical startup memoir: risk, broke, almost-failed, breakthrough, empire — the entrepreneur story you’ve heard a hundred times before.

But it’s so much more than that. And I still think about it years after reading.

Phil’s whole story is one of refusing to drop the bar — on the product, the brand, the people he hired. On the work itself.

Through every setback, every cash crisis, it would have been more reasonable to compromise.

But he never moralises about discipline. He doesn’t lecture. He just shows you what one person’s standard looks like, and what happens when it’s held for thirty years.

There’s a few quotes from the book that stuck with me:

“Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where ‘there’ is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.”

“It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.”

“Seek a calling. Even if you don’t know what that means, seek it. If you’re following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you’ve ever felt.”

The whole book is, in a way, an argument for what this newsletter is really about — never lowering the bar.

If you’ve never read it, I’d strongly suggest you do.

2. You’re in charge

I was out for a walk on Sunday when something came to my mind. It doesn’t sound groundbreaking, but let me explain.

You create your own reality. You’re the one in charge. And you’ve heard that before, as have I.

Yet, most of the anxiety we carry comes from us acting as though we’re not. The feeling that things are happening to us, rather than something we’re actively building.

The job feels like something happening to us. The state of our finances feels like something happening to us. Even our own habits, our own routines, everything.

We worry so much about things that we have complete control over, which makes zero sense.

It’s like fearing taking a wrong turn when both hands are on the wheel. But why worry when you’re the driver?

If something scares you, you can usually just…make sure it doesn’t happen. If your finances are stressing you, take control of them. If a relationship is going wrong, confront it.

Yes, it’s easier said than done. But what’s the alternative?

Anxiety is usually just a desire to take control. Our bodies prime themselves for action via the fight or flight response.

I could worry about money, as I have been. Or I could make a plan to execute more outreach, find new clients, and stabilise my income.

I could stress about the fact that I should’ve gone to the gym this morning and didn’t. Or I could just…go to the gym.

Most of the time, you’re far more in control than you’ve allowed yourself to believe. But anxiety almost feels like this weirdly uncomfortable yet simultaneously safe space. And it’s driven by a false belief that we lack control.

Indeed, some things will happen beyond the influence of our agency. We must learn to accept these things — but that’s for another newsletter.

Regardless, it makes sense to compartmentalise our fears into two categories:

1. What we can control
2. What we cannot control

From there, we can create actions to rectify the former and make peace with the latter.

But without this distinction, we will continue to suffocate in the miasma of anxiety contaminating our minds.

I encourage you to consider that this week. Of your existing worries, which can you take steps to tame with action, and which can you attempt to find acceptance with?

With this in mind, you no longer need to ponder every single possible outcome for the situations you’re ruminating over.

Instead, you have a clear path forward.

3. This week’s best stories

It’s been another wonderful week of publishing many amazing stories in Mind Cafe. Three I particularly recommend:

• Why My Father-In-Law Wants to Disappear Into the Woods by John Patrick Weiss: As I said last week, if John publishes with us, you can bet you’ll find him in my picks. This week, he writes about his father-in-law, who’s in his early eighties and recently said he’d like to find a trail somewhere and disappear into the woods — and what we can all learn from him.
• Is The Search for Certainty Ruining Your Life? by Charles Black M.D.: Charles is a surgeon, and he writes from that lens about the cost of waiting until we feel ready. His central argument is that the search for certainty costs more life than uncertainty ever will. We don’t think our way into clarity, we act our way into it — very apt for this week’s newsletter theme.
• What Losing My Dad to Lung Cancer Has Taught Me About Grief by Scott Stockdale: Scott writes about Rich, his stepdad of 22 years and the only father he really had. The piece moves from the cancer diagnosis to the small waves of grief that hit him in butcher shops and clothes pegs, alongside a parallel reunion with his biological dad — a truly touching read.

A Few Quotes for the Road

That brings this week’s newsletter to a close.

All that’s left from me is three quotes to leave you with. All three, in different ways, relate to the theme of sticking to your standards.

“…not an act, but a habit.”

This one’s from Will Durant, in his 1926 book The Story of Philosophy. The line gets misattributed to Aristotle constantly, but Durant was the one who actually wrote it while summarising him.

Durant was an American historian who spent his career trying to make philosophy accessible to the everyman, lifting its ideas out of the academy and into the lives of ordinary readers.

His phrasing here is the cleanest expression of this week’s essay:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

“…how we spend our lives.”

Annie Dillard was an American essayist whose work circled around one preoccupation: the texture of an ordinary, lived day. She wasn’t interested in grand life advice.

She was interested in how a single hour gets used.

The line, from her 1989 book The Writing Life:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

“…be one.”

Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as a private journal. The fact that we have it at all is a happy historical accident.

The Roman emperor was writing notes to himself about how to live, with no audience in mind beyond his future self.

His central preoccupation was the gap between the person you say you want to be and the person you actually are, hour by hour. He had no patience for the theorising — only for the doing.

“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

I’ll leave you with those. Take care, enjoy your week.

And remember, the standard isn’t what you say it is. It’s what you actually live by, one small decision at a time.

Decide where your bar sits. Then refuse to slip below it.

Love, as always.

— Adrian

Newsletter: Refuse to Lower the Bar was originally published in Mind Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey,

This is a quick policy note for our existing writers.

Since coming back to Mind Cafe, I’ve been declining a lot of stories from writers who were added during my absence.

The submissions process is intentionally selective, designed to minimise the volume of unfit pieces that reach the inbox. However, we don’t have a policy in place for existing writers whose stories are repeatedly declined.

As such, I’m spending a lot of time reviewing and rejecting stories internally — which is exactly what our submissions process is meant to prevent.

The policy change: if you have three submissions rejected in a row, I may remove you as a writer for Mind Cafe.

This isn’t a punishment or anything; it’s just to keep the inbox aligned with the quality we ask for from new applicants.

Just to be clear on a few things regarding this policy:

• This is about Medium submissions (via Medium’s “Submit to publication” button), not new applications through the form.
• A rejection means I’ve declined to publish the piece. Asking for revisions is not the same, and does not count as a rejection (unless multiple rounds of revisions still don’t get the piece to a publishable standard).
• AI-written submissions get an instant removal, separately from the three-rejection rule. We don’t publish AI-written work — at all. This is something I feel very strongly about, hence the hardline stance. I appreciate that some styles of writing can appear AI-written when they’re not. However, I use AI extensively in my day-to-day work, so I’m pretty good at spotting the obvious tells versus coincidental similarities.

If you’re removed, you can absolutely reapply through the form in the future, and I’d welcome you to do so.

The aim is simple: every piece hitting our Medium inbox should be the same quality bar I’d accept from a brand-new writer applying for the first time.

Our new policy is meant to free up more time and attention for the writers who are submitting genuinely good work.

Thank you for understanding, and for the work you’ve been sending. This notice doesn’t intend to undermine the excellent stories we’ve been receiving, and the cases mentioned above are a minority.

It’s been a privilege to read and publish so many inspiring, beautifully-written words — and I sincerely appreciate you all for returning to this beloved publication after many years.

Love as always.

— Adrian

An Important Notice For Our Writers was originally published in Mind Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been thinking a lot about balance this week.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been a person of extremes. I have ADHD, which is largely to blame. But still, everything I do is either 0% or 100%.

Sober for four months, then drinking three nights a week. Eating impeccably for a fortnight, then living on takeaway for three days. Six gym sessions a week, then three months without lifting.

The pendulum swings one way and then the other, and every swing comes with the same internal monologue:

This time I’ll find my groove. This time I’ll stick to it.

I never stick to it.

Until recently, that is. I’ve been sticking to ‘it’. Because I’ve realised that my issue had nothing to do with consistency. It was my framing.

I kept asking myself how to make the high end of the pendulum sustainable. But maybe the better question is whether the goal I was shooting for was what I actually wanted in the first place.

When we repeatedly fail to achieve something we think we want, the failure might be telling us something.

If we genuinely wanted it, we would, surely, find a way to get there. The fact that we don’t might mean the goal wasn’t really ours to begin with.

Of course, there are caveats.

Not every repeated failure is a clue. A drug addict wants sobriety, but believes, in the moment, they want another hit. Their inability to quit isn’t evidence that they actually want to keep using.

The difference is in what the failure feels like from the inside.

If failing at the goal feels like coming back to the life you actually want, the goal may have been wrong. If failing feels like something done to you against your will, the goal is likely right, but you need help to get there.

Moderation works when both sides of the scale have real value for you.

When one side is purely harmful, the middle isn’t an option, and you don’t go looking for it.

You go looking for the support that gets you to the side that is.

But for most of us, both sides do have real value. We’ve just been told to ignore one of them.

A lot of the advice I’ve consumed over the years (and I’ve consumed a tonne of it) is about how to optimise one specific extreme.

• How to be get rich
• How to quit drinking
• How to reach single-digit body fat

There’s a whole industry built around teaching us how to do one thing or the other more efficiently.

What there isn’t much of is advice on how to live somewhere in the middle. Probably because no one can sell you a programme for it — since it doesn’t exactly sound sexy.

The moderate life is the unfashionable one. The unmarketable one.

Drinking a glass of wine with dinner sometimes, not getting blackout drunk every weekend or abstaining for life.

Eating mostly well, with a Friday night takeaway every couple of weeks.

Training because you enjoy it, three or four times a week, but allowing yourself an un-programmed day off and a few extra calories.

It sounds painfully boring, and I think it is, slightly. There’s no inspiring story in it.

But that’s the reality of life.

When we optimise for extremes, we do so from a place of passion and ambition. The trouble is, the same fuel that drives us toward perfection is the one that turns on us the moment we fall short of it.

And, eventually, we will fall short.

Life puts road bumps in front of all of us. Often, we chastise ourselves for letting them slow us down.

But what if the road bumps are a sign? What if they’re there to remind us that life isn’t a binary of 0% and 100%, and the people who insist it is are the ones selling us the solutions?

That’s the trick the modern self-improvement industry has pulled.

It manufactured a problem (‘you’re not optimised enough’), then sold us the cure (‘here’s my programme’). When the programme fails, as it inevitably must, we’re sold another.

But perhaps all along, the issue was never our lack of tenacity or discipline.

It was that we forgot what we actually wanted.

That life’s beauty was sitting in the middle the whole time, in the balance between ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

And in having the wisdom to know the difference.

Other Lessons From This Week

That said, here are a few other things I’ve been thinking about this week.

1. The only self-improvement books that actually helped me

Following on from last week, here’s the second book in the segment.

This week’s is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Published in 1936, it’s probably the most-quoted self-improvement book ever written.

It’s still the template basically every “soft skills” book since has been built on since.

The title makes it sound manipulative.

The actual content is closer to “be genuinely decent to people, on purpose, as a discipline.”

Carnegie’s insistence throughout the book is that you will make more friends by being interested in others than trying to be interesting yourself.

But the techniques only work when that interest is sincere. Flattery is the failure mode he warns against most.

I first read it in my late teens, when Mind Cafe was starting its peak and I was suddenly finding success. I wanted to become a master of communication, to ooze charisma.

Carnegie made me realise that this aim was counterintuitive.

I was efficient. I was friendly. But I wasn’t really paying attention to the people on the other side of the conversation.

I was paying attention to the outcome I wanted from them.

The book is structured around four short lists of principles. The headlines are these:

• Don’t criticise, condemn, or complain. It puts the other person on the defensive and never gets you what you actually want.
• Become genuinely interested in other people. The practice has to be sincere — Carnegie keeps coming back to the point that the techniques fail the moment you turn them into manoeuvres. Most of us are so wrapped up in our own concerns that paying real attention to someone else is, paradoxically, a rare and powerful thing.
• Listen well, and let the other person do most of the talking. Most people aren’t actually listening when they’re “listening.” They’re waiting for their turn to speak.
• The only way to win an argument is to avoid it. Argument almost always entrenches the other person further in their position. If you want them to change their mind, you have to make it feel like the new view is theirs — not yours.

The recurring theme across all four parts of the book is simple. People are driven by a desire to feel important.

Almost every technique he offers is a way of honouring that craving honestly rather than trampling it.

A few lines that have stuck with me:

• ‘A person’s own name is the sweetest, most important sound to them in any language.’ — Dale Carnegie
• ‘Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain, and most fools do.’ — Dale Carnegie
• ‘When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.’ — Dale Carnegie

It’s one of few books that truly transformed my life. You should read it, too.

2. The manifesto I wrote a few weeks ago

When I relaunched Mind Cafe in May, I wrote a short manifesto for the publication. Around 350 words, written one afternoon, trying to put on paper what I wanted Mind Cafe to stand for the second time around.

Most of it ended up being about exactly what I’ve been talking about this week, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Here’s a little snippet:

“What we want now is something warmer. The Mediterranean way. Everything in moderation, including moderation. Take care of yourself, but don’t make a religion of it. Be ambitious, but remember why you started. Read books, lift weights, save money, meditate. But for the process, not the outcome.”

That’s the whole thing, really. Moderation. Including moderation itself.

The well-lived life is mostly ordinary, mostly the bits that wouldn’t make your highlight real.

But when we forego our desire for relentless optimisation, we remember the beauty in the everyday.

3. This week’s best stories

Another wonderful week of publishing in Mind Cafe. Three I particularly recommend:

• Comfort Zones Shrink Our World by John Patrick Weiss: If John publishes with us, you can bet you’ll find his stories in my weekly picks. A retired police chief turned street photographer wanders into a chance encounter with ‘Blue’, an offbeat artist on a Santa Cruz sidewalk, and uses the moment to make the case for why our comfort zones and the labels we put on strangers quietly shrink our world.
• Why Having Full Control of Your Life Is an Illusion by Sude Hammal: Sude argues that the more we try to control every variable in our lives, the smaller and duller our lives become. The piece walks through how excess control robs us of spontaneity, flattens our days into auto-pilot, and shuts us out of the very experiences we need to grow.
• Your Trauma Isn’t Your Fault — But it is Your Responsibility by Maria Cassano: Maria opens with a brave admission — that her childhood trauma left her numb, and that for years she hurt people she cared about because of it. The piece walks through how she took responsibility for healing herself, and ends with four evidence-based techniques anyone can use for free if traditional therapy isn’t accessible.

A Few Quotes for the Road

That brings this week’s newsletter to a close.

All that’s left from me is three quotes to leave you with. All three, in different ways, make the case for the unfashionable middle:

“…the noble art of leaving things undone.”

This one’s from Lin Yutang, in his 1937 book The Importance of Living.

Yutang was a Chinese writer and philosopher who spent the back half of his career in the States, watching American culture and writing about everything it was missing.

His central interest was the leisurely civilised life: long lunches, slow walks, the kind of Sunday afternoon that takes itself seriously enough to have no particular agenda.

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

“…your self could become smaller in it.”

G.K. Chesterton was an English essayist who spent his career rejecting our desire for self-importance.

His argument throughout was that most of our suffering comes from taking ourselves too seriously. The person who can step out of the centre of the picture often finds that the picture is much larger than they’d thought.

The line, from his 1910 book What’s Wrong With The World:

“How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure.”

“…going slow.”

Pico Iyer, a British-Indian travel writer, spent most of his career arguing that the modern world has the equation backwards.

In his 2014 book The Art of Stillness, Iyer wrote about going on retreats, sitting in his cell at a Benedictine monastery in California, learning to do less rather than more.

The conclusion he arrived at:

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing could feel more luxurious than paying attention.”

I’ll leave you with those. Take care, enjoy your week.

And remember, sometimes our failure to achieve goals is not because we lack fortitude. It’s not due to weakness or fragility.

It’s because we never stopped to question what we truly wanted.

I encourage you to stop. To question.

And to strive for the life that you want to build.

Love, as always.

— Adrian

Newsletter: Maybe You Don’t Actually Want It was originally published in Mind Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been thinking a lot about control lately.

I have ADHD, so I’m naturally disorganised. Bills get paid late, the washing piles up, the bedroom mess spirals into chaos. It’s the usual stuff that comes with a brain hardwired with shiny object syndrome.

I’ve lived with that for years, and on the whole, I’ve never minded. Until lately.

Because for the last few weeks, I’ve become obsessed with organising the small, ordinary things in my life: the washing, the bedding, the state of my bedroom, the finances.

And in doing it, I’ve found a kind of peace I haven’t had before.

Here’s what I think is going on.

We carry a huge amount of stress about things we have no control over. The economy, what other people think of us, the future, the state of the world.

Meanwhile, the things we could actually do something about, we ignore. Or we delay. And we don’t do anything about them.

We have plenty of energy. We’re just spending it in the wrong place.

When I flipped that around, focusing my energy on the things I could actually do something about, things changed. The bigger worries didn’t disappear. They never do.

But somehow, taking care of the small stuff gave me the resolve to cope with the lack of control everywhere else.

We’re often told that the answer to stress is to let go of what we can’t control. But I’d argue there’s a step before that one.

Take care of what you can control first. The rest will start to feel a little less heavy.

Other Lessons From This Week

That said, here are a few other things I’ve been thinking about this week.

1. The only self-improvement books that actually helped me

I’m considering a regular segment for this weekly newsletter. I want to share snippets of the only self-improvement books that actually helped me.

Interestingly, the list isn’t long — even after reading hundreds of such tomes.

Most books in this genre are just the same handful of ideas dressed up in different metaphors. Once you’ve read three of them, you’ve read them all.

But a small number genuinely changed how I see the world, and over the coming weeks, I’ll break one of them down in each newsletter.

This week’s is Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday.

I first read it years ago, when I was devouring self-improvement material and trying to make sense of life. It found me at exactly the right time, just as my career was advancing.

The core argument is simple.

Your biggest obstacle in life is your own ego: your need to be more than you are, the story you tell yourself about why you’re winning, your urge to talk about the work rather than do it, your belief that you’ve already arrived.

Holiday splits the book into three sections: Aspire, Success, and Failure. Ego attacks differently in each.

When you’re climbing the ranks and things are going well for you, you talk instead of working.

That internal monologue tells you you’re already special, that you don’t need to keep learning. When you’ve made it, it creates blind spots and tidy stories about why you got there, so you stop being a student.

And when it all falls apart, it stops you from recovering, because you’d rather blame the world than face what really happened.

The concept I think about most often is what Holiday calls alive time versus dead time. Every setback is one or the other.

You’re either passively serving the time, watching it tick by, or actively using it, learning and preparing for what’s next. The choice is yours.

A few lines from the book that have stuck with me:

• ‘Impressing people is different from being truly impressive.’ — Ryan Holiday
• ‘Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.’ — Lao Tzu
• ‘You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.’ — Richard Feynman

In the chapter To Be or To Do, Holiday tells the story of John Boyd, a fighter pilot strategist who used to put a simple question to his young officers:

To be, or to do? Are you chasing being somebody, with all the titles and recognition that go with it? Or are you chasing doing something real, even if it means staying anonymous for the rest of your life?

Most of us spend our twenties desperate to be somebody. We chase impressive jobs, prestigious titles, the kind of external recognition that makes us feel like we’ve finally made it.

The book asks, gently, whether we’d rather actually do something instead.

I still think about that question often.

2. I published a long one this week

I spent most of the week finishing a 5,000-word essay about my decade as a writer, which is now live on Medium.

It started as a ‘how I make £10K a month from writing’ article. By the time I’d finished, it had become something else entirely.

The core question behind it:

Do you want to write, or do you want to work as a writer?

Those are two very different questions.

One is a love affair, the other is a job. And looking back, I spent most of my twenties confusing the two.

That’s the line that surprised me as I wrote it. I’d intended to write a practical guide to making money, and I ended up writing a warning against trying to.

Some things are better left as passionate pastimes rather than sources of income.

If you’ve ever loved something you turned into work, or you’re considering doing so, the piece might be worth your time.

3. This week’s best stories

I’ve been privileged to publish some beautiful stories from new and old writers this week. Here are my top picks:

• My Friend Sent Christmas Cards No One Answered by John Patrick Weiss: An 89-year-old man finally phones the old work friend he’d been sending Christmas cards to for years, with no reply, and learns the cards had meant everything to a widower whose tremoring hands had stopped him from writing back. A gentle, beautiful reminder that the people you’ve lost touch with may still be listening.
• Never Think Before You Speak by Saiprasad Metri: A counterintuitive piece on why mentally scripting the perfect sentence is exactly what makes us freeze when we need to speak. Saiprasad argues that real fluency comes from holding the idea rather than the words, and offers some practical ways to drop the mental script when it matters most.
• Trying to ‘Figure Out’ Life is Making You Unhappy by Charles Black M.D.: Using learning to ride a bicycle as a metaphor, Black argues we spend our lives trying to reach a place where we can stop pedalling and finally coast. But balance, as he puts it, is an activity. Something we have to keep renewing for as long as we’re moving. Ties in nicely with this week’s theme on control.

A Few Quotes for the Road

That brings this week’s newsletter to a close.

I’ll leave you with three quotes I’ve been mulling over this week. All three, in their own way, about doing what’s actually in front of you rather than stressing about what isn’t:

Thought process

Thought process

Three picks more on-theme and less circulated than the previous batch, with the format reshaped to match yours.

A Few Quotes for the Road

That brings this week’s newsletter to a close.

All that’s left from me is three quotes to leave you with, each about taking action and regaining a little bit of control.

“…nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

This one’s from James Baldwin, in a 1962 essay he wrote for The New York Times Book Review called As Much Truth As One Can Bear.

Baldwin spent his career writing about the most difficult subjects of his time (racism, sexuality, exile), mostly because he refused to look away from them.

He had a particular impatience for the kind of hopeful avoidance that lets things stay broken:

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

“…the purest form of generosity.”

A line from the French philosopher Simone Weil. For Weil, paying attention to something properly was a moral act. A way of giving something of yourself to another person, to a problem, or to the world.

She died in 1943, at 34, from complications after refusing to eat more than French citizens were rationed under occupation:

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

“Start close in…”

From the poet David Whyte, in his poem of the same name. Whyte writes about the inner life of work in a way few other living poets do.

This particular poem is the thesis of this entire newsletter condensed into twenty short lines. I’ve paraphrased them below:

“Start close in. Don’t take the second step, or the third. Start with the first thing. The step you don’t want to take.”

And that’s all for this week. Apologies, we’re a day late today — this should’ve been sent yesterday.

However, I was practicing what I preach with a much-needed day of rest, nice coffee, and an early night.

Let’s just say weekly newsletters, at some point near the end of the week, if not the start of the week after, from now on.

But we’ll call them weekly. That title is too long.

Love, as always.

— Adrian

Newsletter: Take Control of What You Can was originally published in Mind Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This week has had me thinking a lot.

I’ve returned to managing Mind Cafe, the publication I started seven years ago shortly after I began writing professionally.

Something happened along the way, though.

Writing started as something I just did because I loved it. Then I started making money. Then I wrote to make money. And then I stopped loving it.

My paid client work is often a series of unavoidable boxes to check.

Sure, I write. But rarely because I want to.

And yet, on Thursday, I began writing a story based on a little idea I had. It wasn’t a client deliverable or a mandatory to-do, just something from the heart.

Before I knew it, I’d produced 4,500 words and had spent five hours on it.

These are two very different approaches to the same work.

In one instance, I do it because I have to. In another, I do it because I feel compelled to.

Which made me realise: sometimes, following your passion when debating which career path is right for you might not be the best thing to do.

Ultimately, no matter how much you love your work, it is still work.

The very nature of making a living invites pressure. Suddenly, this vocation of ours is a necessity. Our livelihood depends on it.

And often, the moment we find a new outlet for our creativity or a hobby we become enthralled by, we consider monetising it.

My advice:

Sometimes, just doing what you love, because you love it, is enough.

In fact, it’s often better left that way.

Other Lessons From This Week

That aside, I’ve read and watched a few insightful things this week. Let me share them with you below.

1. Dave Evans on chasing the next thing

I listened to a Hidden Brain episode this week with Dave Evans, the Stanford lecturer behind the Designing Your Life books.

It’s worth a listen in full, but I’ll share some snippets that stood out to me below.

The first he calls the “all will be well” system.

You know how it goes.

Once I get the promotion, all will be well. Once I’m out of debt, all will be well. Once I’ve published the book, all will be well.

The ‘I’ll be happy when’ paradox.

But, as Evans says:

“There’s not a different you waiting on the other side of that finish line. There’s not a different universe you’re suddenly living in.”

Rather, you hit the goal and… that’s it. Nothing much changes.

You’re not the happy, self-actualised version of you that you thought you’d be after achieving X.

So what do you do? You set another goal. And the cycle continues.

He went on to tell a story about a nurse he’d met who works in the ICU at Stanford. She told him she sees a particular kind of patient regularly.

Mid-fifties, burned out by repeatedly chasing the next thing. Now dying.

And finally realising, too late, that the next thing they’d promised themselves would make them happy never actually existed.

She called it destination sickness.

“Most of them die in despair and realise it’s too late.”

Don’t let yourself get to that point. Remember to live before you die.

And know that goals aren’t everything.

2. Fiction

I’ve always loved to read, and yet, even that became some kind of ROI-focused pursuit. For years, I only read self-improvement books. Until recently.

When I was a teenager, I loved fantasy books.

John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things was a favourite. Before that, it was the Demonata books by Darren Shan.

Recently, I decided to return to that interest of mine — those whimsical fictional worlds and whacky tales. I picked up a book — Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman.

And I couldn’t put it down. I finished it faster than any of the non-fiction books I’ve bought recently.

I haven’t felt that way about a book in probably ten years. It was an important reminder, again, of the introductory lesson:

Not everything needs to be ‘productive’. Sometimes, you should just do things for fun.

And that’s fine. There’s no guilt in that. If it lights up your soul and brings you genuine enjoyment without causing you or anybody else harm, then do it.

Buy a fiction book. Play your instrument. Do things for fun.

And if you don’t know where to start, consider what you loved as a child. Do more of that.

Revisit an old hobby or watch your favourite teenage movie.

Learn to seek enjoyment again, not just optimisation.

3. This week’s best stories

It’s been incredible to publish people’s stories in Mind Cafe again this week, and I’ve learned a lot by reading and editing them.

Here are my standout picks from this week:

1. My Biggest Life Regrets at 70 Years Old by Sivakumar Ramanathan: A beautiful story reflecting on seven decades of hard work, questioning whether it was really worth it, whether work should be the central focus of life that it’s become for so many of us.
2. More Self-Care Isn’t What You Need by Samantha Beveridge, MA: An important reminder that self-care isn’t always about rest and relaxation. Sometimes, what we need most are experiences that make us feel truly alive. Dance, sing, laugh. Learn to live again.
3. Why the Italians Always Seem Happier by Adrian Drew: Shameless plug, you could say. However, this one felt right to include, given it expands on many of the points in this newsletter. It explores the Italian concept of Tutto Passa, and what we can all learn from the Mediterranean nation’s stress-free way of life.

A Few Quotes for the Road

That brings this week’s newsletter to a close.

I’ve got a few quotes to leave you with. Each proves the point that even some of the greatest minds in history knew:

Life isn’t solely about work or optimisation. Life is about living.

“…to make your soul grow”

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter in 2006 to a class of high school students who’d written asking for advice. He told them he wouldn’t visit, but wrote them a poem:

“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”

“Creating a life that satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.”

One here from Bill Watterson, from his 1990 Kenyon College commencement address. Watterson walked away from Calvin and Hobbes at its peak to protect the strip’s artistic integrity:

“Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive.”

“Don’t do it.”

And lastly, the infamous Charles Bukowski, from his poem So You Want to Be a Writer?

“If it doesn’t come bursting out of you in spite of everything, don’t do it. Unless it comes unasked out of your heart and your mind and your mouth and your gut, don’t do it.”

I’ll leave you with those. It’s a pleasure to be back in this space with you, and thank you to each and every one of you for your support on my return.

Love, as always.

— Adrian

Newsletter: Don’t Do What You Love was originally published in Mind Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there!

If you’ve been a Mind Cafe reader for a while, you might remember me. I’m Adrian — I founded the publication in 2018, ran it until 2021, then stepped away.

As of today, I’m back as chief editor.

I just published a personal piece explaining why I left, why I’ve returned, and what’s changing about Mind Cafe going forward. I won’t run through it all here, but feel free to give it a read if you’re curious.

Read the full story: ‘Mind Cafe is Changing’

The short version: my beliefs about self-improvement aren’t what they were four years ago, and the publication’s direction is evolving to reflect that.

If you’re a writer, I’ve also redrafted the submission guidelines and tightened the editorial bar. They’re worth a read before submitting anything new.

Read the new submission guidelines here.

One more thing.

The newsletter is changing, too.

From this Sunday, every week you’ll get a personal note from me — a short story, a passage I’ve been thinking about, or some useful resources.

(Perfect light reading with your morning coffee, I hope.)

It’s the first time in years there’s been a proper weekly newsletter from this publication. I’m excited to write it.

If that’s not what you signed up for, you can unsubscribe at the bottom — no hard feelings.

If it is, I’ll see you Sunday.

And of course, keep an eye on Mind Cafe’s Medium publication, where you’ll see all of our new stories.

Love, as always.

— Adrian

Mind Cafe is Back! was originally published in Mind Cafe on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.