FIELD NOTES / CAREER + CREATIVITY
Build a life your work can fit inside.
Reflections and practical tools for spending your time, attention and energy more intentionally—at work and beyond it.
FIELD GUIDE / ENERGY AUDIT
Your calendar is telling you something.
Look at a real week—not an ideal one. Notice the pattern before trying to fix it.
01What gives energy?People · tasks · environments+
Mark the moments when you feel more awake, capable or like yourself after doing them. Include work and everything outside it.
02What takes energy?Friction · dread · recovery cost+
Look beyond what is difficult. Which tasks create a disproportionate recovery cost, and which problems are simply asking for a better boundary?
03What is missing?Rest · creativity · connection+
Absence is data. Notice what never makes the calendar even though you keep saying it matters.
04What can shift now?Remove · reduce · protect+
Choose one thing to remove, one to reduce and one source of energy to protect before you attempt a larger reinvention.
DECISION TOOL
Find the next useful move.
You do not need a five-year plan. Write through these three questions, then copy your notes somewhere you will revisit them.
CREATIVE PRACTICES
Make room for work that is not productive yet.
Creativity needs somewhere to begin before it knows what it is becoming.
Keep a curiosity listNotice+
Write down what you cannot stop thinking about without forcing it into a project, offer or outcome.
Protect one unmonetized hourExplore+
Give yourself a recurring hour to read, wander, make or learn with no requirement that it become useful.
Make the smallest versionPractice+
Write one page, teach one class or host one gathering. Let the small version teach you what the bigger idea needs.
Career Reflections
So You Quit Your Job, Now What?
A personal reflection on changing expectations and finding a different rhythm.
Read on Substack DAILY LIFE / ESSAYI Thought I Needed Another Job…
Making room for a morning that fits your life.
Read on Substack REINVENTION / ESSAYHow’d I Get So Burnt Out with Such a Cushy Job?
Leaving, returning and reconsidering where you feel at home.
Read on SubstackFOR TEAMS + ORGANIZATIONS
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