On Falling Apart at the Office
I. Office Victorians In the 19th century, British explorers were famous for not getting stressed. They might – like David Livingstone in his travels in central Africa between 1851 and 1883…
The Sorrows of Competition
At the heart of how modern individuals work, there is a dream of security: security from humiliation, penury, dependence, arbitrary dismissal and uncertainty. At the heart of how a modern capitalist…
The Nature and Causes of Procrastination
Introduction The history of every life is made up both of the life we lead, and the richer, more ambitious one we dream of leading – but never quite do… because…
The Children of Snobs
Given how pejorative the term is, we’re understandably keen to locate snobs somewhere far from us. They are the people in the newspaper, or the ones who live in the other…
How Parents Get in the Way of Our Career Plans
For most of human history, what we did for a living was decided for us by our families. We would either directly copy what our parents did, or else we would…
The Need to Keep Believing in Luck
We don’t anymore nowadays much believe in Luck – or what was, in earlier ages, known as Fortune. We would think it extremely suspicious if someone explained that they had been…