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I spent three decades in the Army doing well by every measure that mattered. Rank, responsibility, recognition. The plan worked, more or less exactly as it was supposed to.

But by my early forties I was divorced, living alone, seeing my kids every second week. And in the quiet that comes with that, a question caught up with me that I’d been outrunning for years. Not why did the plan fail. It hadn't. It was: why had succeeding at it never produced what it seemed to promise?

I went looking for an answer. Buddhism, Stoicism, Taoism, philosophy, psychology, and behavioural economics. I found pieces of it everywhere, but never assembled in the shape I actually needed. So I’ve spent the last few years assembling it myself, first into a book, and now into this.

This isn’t just a personal story, either. Something similar is showing up at scale: people doing better by almost every material measure than any generation before them, without the wellbeing to match. I don’t think that’s a coincidence, and I don’t think it’s really about money. That’s what I’m writing about here.

Is this you?

You’re not in crisis. Nothing is obviously wrong. The career’s fine, or getting there. The relationship is good, or good enough. Most days are fine. And you still can’t quite account for why it doesn’t feel like enough, or why the feeling of “enough” never quite arrives once you get what you were chasing.

If that's familiar: you won't find a ten-step plan here. What you'll get is the causes, the mechanics and the triggers, laid out plainly and in detail. Then what actually helps once you can see them. What matters. What works.

What to expect

A substantial essay every fortnight. Real thinking, not a summary of it.
Topics: why achievement, money and comparison rarely settle what we ask of them; the daily mechanics of attention, energy and habits that actually change a life; and the larger questions of relationships, values, work, ageing and what a good life is actually built from.
Evidence-based thinking, drawing on ancient wisdom, philosophy, contemporary science and psychology.
All of it is free. If that ever changes, you’ll hear it here first, not find out by hitting a paywall.

If any of this sounds like your life, you’re in the right place. Subscribe below, and I’ll see you in your inbox.

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WHAT MATTERS · WHAT WORKS

Welcome to WHAT MATTERS · WHAT WORKS