Most of the time I feel I ought to be trying harder. Sometimes, this feeling is correct: there are days when I need to put down the distractions and just get on with it, whatever “it” happens to be.
But often, I have the opposite problem.
Category: Goals
What If I Don’t Know What I Love to Do?
Being skilled is a curse.
I don’t mean to sound conceited. (How could I be? One of my very best features is my world-beating humility.) It’s just that…when you can do something, it’s easy to feel like you should.
How to Let Go of an Old Life, or Neil Hughes and the Fiery Death of the Phoenix
Readers of How To Be Everything—Emilie Wapnicks’s guidebook to life—will be familiar with the Phoenix Approach, which describes how people occasionally reinvent themselves like the legendary phoenix rising from its own ashes.
This sounds exciting—and it is. But it turns out burning up and rebirthing out of the remains can hurt.
Making Good Choices
Making good choices is hard. In fact, there’s only one thing I hate more than not having any choice, and that’s having to make one at all.
How to Be Happy By Understanding Instrumental Values
You could make a strong argument that the universe is poorly designed.
Don’t get me wrong, I doubt I could do a better job. But, due to what appears to be a mistake in the grand universal design, nothing is purely, unequivocally good. There’s always a trade-off.
When Every Day Is The Same… Make Each Day A Little Better
Last year, life was tedious. It was like my own personal Groundhog Day, except I actually got older and I barely learned anything. Each day was the same: I awoke, I worked in my little office, I slept.
And repeat.
Six Lessons from Writing the Book I Swore I Wouldn’t Write
“Never again.” – Neil Hughes, after writing one book… and before writing another book.
After winning four Olympic gold medals, Steve Redgrave famously said that if anyone found him close to a rowing boat again, they could shoot him.
Four years later, he won a fifth gold.
The Shop Before Life – A Novel by Neil Hughes
” This is one of those books that I’m sure will stay with me for a while, if not for the rest of my life. There’s just something so unique and real about it and I just felt very connected to the themes it presented. ” – review The day has finally arrived –…
Why Goals Aren’t Enough—You Need to Set Directions Too
Recently, I caught up with a friend I don’t get to see often enough. Neither of us were in a Major Life Crisis, so we were doing that thing where we swap minor problems back and forth—everything from busyness to boredom to the various ways our ageing bodies are mysteriously misbehaving.
Naturally, we…
Freedom vs Security
Today: some thoughts about life decisions.
But First: Let’s Talk About Fourier Transforms.