This is a writing site about self-development and personal growth coaching. It publishes essays on how people actually change: what a structured conversation does to a problem, how goals fail for mechanical rather than moral reasons, why habits are largely a matter of arrangement, and how to think about decisions that resist comparison.
What is here
Nine essays at present, grouped under five topics — Sessions, Goals, Habits, Attention and Decisions — and listed newest first on the essays index. Each one is intended to be readable on its own in ten to fifteen minutes, and to leave you with something you could try this week rather than a framework to admire.
How the essays are meant to be used
They are written to be argued with. Self-development writing has a tendency to state general principles at a level of abstraction where nothing can be checked, and the ambition here is the opposite: to be specific enough that you can notice where your own case differs. Where an essay gives a method, the method is written out in steps, and the steps are small enough to be done rather than merely agreed with.
The most useful way to read them is probably one at a time, with a fortnight between, testing the one thing that seemed most obviously true of your own situation. Reading all nine in an afternoon will produce the pleasant sensation of insight and very little else — which is itself one of the subjects the essays keep returning to.
What is deliberately not here
There are no rankings, no scores, no promises about outcomes, and no claims about what these ideas have done for anyone. There is no programme to enrol in and nothing is sold or arranged through this site. Where a subject sits outside the scope of ordinary self-development writing — sustained low mood, trauma, anything that calls for medical or psychological care — the essays say so and stop, rather than offering technique in place of the right kind of help.
Where to start
If the subject is new to you, the three worth reading first are What a coaching conversation actually does, for what the format is for; The honest audit, because most useful change starts with finding out what is actually happening; and Habits are a design problem, which contains the idea that does the most work across the rest of the writing.