Your brain fog is real

The thick, foggy feels of the past year aren’t only happening to you or just in your mind ... it’s a real thing. 

“After a year of lockdown, many of us are finding it hard to think clearly, or remember what happened when”.

Less social interaction, heightened uncertainty, a low-grade kind of trauma underpinning our life ... 

“People are finding themselves more sluggish – their physical and mental weight is somehow heavier, hard to carry around”. 

If you’re leading a team, and you’re not acknowledging or noticing this, it’s time to. 

And if you’ve felt it but aren’t doing anything but persisting and pushing on through, it’s also time to acknowledge it... 

Psychologists say, “For some of us, brain fog will be a temporary state, and will clear as we begin to live more varied lives.”

The sooner you can vary things, at home, at your desk, in your surroundings, throughout your day... the sooner the fog will lift. 

Read more in this great article in The Guardian ... and acknowledge the fog. 

‘I love your posts and pictures!’, they said

‘Oh, thank you,’ I said. ‘Now theres a heap of them together ... in the one place.’ 

I’ve curated a collection of ideas, posts and imagery from the last year or so and published them in ‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working’. 

In this era of change, uncertainty and complexity, how are you adopting better ways of thinking and working? 

What are these better ways, anyway … and how do you get started?

In this 180 page full colour collection of practical and mind-shifting essays, you’ll find inspiration, insights and a path to better.

It also features the practical, creative and inspiring hand-drawn visuals that accompany many of my ideas. 

When you need a shot of insight, a change of perspective or a reframing about how you could do things, possibilities are on every page. 


‘Better Ways of Thinking and Working: How Changing The Way You Do Things, Changes What You Can Do’. 

Get it here

Close by and included. Far away and left out.

Would you know it if you were doing it : excluding or forgetting someone because they’re not right here? 

You’d more likely notice it if you were on the receiving end of being excluded, left out or forgotten. 

As hybrid work has some of us here, some of us there and some of us anywhere, the danger of the unconscious ‘proximity bias’ is also here, there and anywhere!

The challenge of remote leadership may be deferred to focus on the ease of leading those who are here, near us. 

This article in Digiday highlights some of the things to consider about proximity bias. 

And as with all unconscious biases, we may not even realize it’s happening or that we’re doing it. 

Seek to include. Deliberately. No matter where people are. 

Career killers to beware of

Balance, solution thinking, self-care. 

These kinds of things now fit into the category of helping your career ... not killing it. 

Check out this Forbes article and see how you might be killing it. 

And not in a good way! 

Self doubt. 
Willing to make mistakes. 
Risk taking. 
Empathy and biases ... 

They’re here too. 

Read on. 

When there’s no space for more to dos

It feels rough when your to do list gets a few more things added to it. 

Particularly when nothing has been ticked off or deleted from it. 

It can feel like there’s just no space. 

So how do tasks end up on your list? 

- Boundaries
Do you let or allow tasks to be added? 

- Requests 
Are they added once you’ve heard about them and accepted a task? 

- Assumptions 
Is it just assumed that it’s your task ... after all, you usually do it? 

- Defaults
Do you step in to pick up a task ... because no one else does? 

Or something else? 

This is not about being unhelpful or rude or not volunteering. It’s about recognizing what’s on your list of responsibilities and actions. 

And it’s even more about being aware of how they got there. 

Check the actions you’re planning on doing: today, tomorrow, next week. 

- Keep a handle on your boundaries. 
- Tune in carefully to requests. 
- Remain aware of assumptions. 
- Challenge the defaults. 

Why something is on your list is important to understand. How it gets there is just as worthy of our attention. 

It could free up a heap of space.