I Quit the 5 AM Club and My Career Moved Faster (Seneca Saw This Coming)

Watch the short companion video on YouTube, or read on for the full essay. This piece also lives on Medium.

I used to be a proud member of the 5 AM club. At 11:43 PM on a Tuesday, I was answering emails that could have waited until Thursday.… Read the rest “I Quit the 5 AM Club and My Career Moved Faster (Seneca Saw This Coming)”

The Conviction Gap: The Career Skill AI Cannot Replace (And Most Professionals Don’t Have)

Quick read: Most mid-career professionals plateau at the same spot — somewhere between senior individual contributor and director. They produce great analysis, structure problems beautifully, and write competent memos. But they never quite cross into leadership. This piece is about what’s actually going on, why it’s getting worse in the AI era, and the three habits that close the Conviction Gap.

Read the rest “The Conviction Gap: The Career Skill AI Cannot Replace (And Most Professionals Don’t Have)”

The 6 Emotional States Most Likely to Distort Your Professional Judgement — And Specific Protocols for Each

This post draws from the full taxonomy in: Emotional Granularity: The Evidence-Based Alternative to Emotional Intelligence Training — which covers all 27 states and includes the downloadable PDF reference.

Why Emotional States Distort Professional Judgement

The six emotional states most likely to distort professional judgement are not random. They appear at the same hinge points, across industries, across roles, across decades.… Read the rest “The 6 Emotional States Most Likely to Distort Your Professional Judgement — And Specific Protocols for Each”

The Three-Layer Career Framework: How Mid-Career Professionals Choose Their Next Move

If you’ve arrived here from the Medium article — The Thirty-Minute Conversation That Cost Me Everything I’d Spent a Decade Building — you already have the story. This is the framework.

If you’ve arrived here directly: the short version is that a senior professional made an unilateral decision in a domain they knew extremely well, without seeking authorisation, because they had enough experience that seeking authorisation didn’t feel necessary.… Read the rest “The Three-Layer Career Framework: How Mid-Career Professionals Choose Their Next Move”

The Analysis Paralysis Trap: How Your Brain Uses Intelligence Against You

This post is part of a series connected to the MBA Alternative Reading Kit — a curriculum built around seven books that changed how I think. If you downloaded the free reading kit recently and haven’t started yet, this post was written specifically for you. If you don’t have it yet, enter your details using the form on the right.
Read the rest “The Analysis Paralysis Trap: How Your Brain Uses Intelligence Against You”

This post is part of a series connected to the MBA Alternative Reading Kit — a curriculum built around seven books that changed how I think. If you downloaded the free reading kit recently and haven’t started yet, this post was written specifically for you. If you don’t have it yet, enter your details using the form on the right.
Read the rest “The Analysis Paralysis Trap: How Your Brain Uses Intelligence Against You”