Articles

How to square the circle of ‘wellbeing fatigue’.

Last week Lucy Reed wrote a , eloquent and thought-provoking blog entitled Wellbeing Fatigue. The rant (her word) should be read in full here , but the nub of it was that she was sick of wellbeing tips. She stated ‘the problems that were frying our resilience and longevity are structural not internal to us as individuals – take away the ‘look how busy I am b***s**t’ and there is…

Read More

How easy should excellent work be? (Clue: Easier than you think.)

Mr Carson* was my second-year chemistry teacher. My sister remembers him for his dandruff ridden comb-over and predilection for taking the eighteen year old male sixth formers to the Abbey pub at lunchtimes. I remember him as the man who unfairly ruined my Effort Card. Every term we were sent home from school with a two-columned card on which every teacher had given us two…

Read More

Are you there yet? How to get the benefits of a holiday from your home.

HOLIDAY [ Hol-li-day]  any day of exemption from work EXEMPT [ig–zempt] to free from an obligation or liability to which others are subject; release: – Dictionary.com I live just at the edge of my town, my road running off a lane that starts with a school and church and peters out to fields with horses and rabbits. Every now and again my Mum will be in the car…

Read More

Is compartmentalising stress the best strategy for lawyers?

This week I heard a retired Judge speak to a non-legal audience about the challenges of doing High Court cases. * The audience was treated to just fifty minutes of well-told stories about children forced to deal in drugs for the County Lines gangs, children trafficked from the Philippines, vulnerable women from India enticed into surrogacy arrangements they later regretted.  When questions were invited, the very…

Read More

The real gift of 2020

My coach took me through an exercise last month in which he asked me to write down a memory for every year of my life. The first interesting observation that cropped up was that the supposedly best years of my career, the nineties ,ended up blank. These were my years at the Bar and conference speaking, the ones which set me up for the judiciary…

Read More

Are your warning lights on?

The electric warning systems on my car have gone a bit bonkers. The parking sensors beep even when there is nothing but dust motes within two feet of the bumper. Random messages pop up telling me that my tyres have dangerously low pressure. At first I kept getting out of the car to check for unseen two year olds or wounded pheasants on the road….

Read More