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A skeptical dive into the weird, sketchy, occasionally life-changing world
of self-improvement.
What You Can Learn From Elon Musk
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“Elon Musk is kind of a hero of mine” I wrote those words, with my own brain, controlling my own fingers. And when I wrote them, they were true. In my defence: In days of yore, around a decade ago, it was hard to avoid the idea that Elon Musk was a kind of techno-savior. […]
Apropos of something
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I was in bed, scrolling through Bluesky, when I saw it. An activist and journalist I follow broke the story, moments after it happened. I told my wife. “Are you sure? It’d be on the news sites.”…
It’s THAT time again
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The other day, while playing the famously egalitarian game of “golf” with one of my CEO buddies, we had a completely normal conversation, as humans often do. This being That Time Of Year, the topic of New…
The best self-help book I’ve read
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It was only a few short months ago, not long after the birth of our second child, that I had the vain – and, in hindsight, very funny – hope that I could continue writing this newsletter…
I painted the Prime Minister
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I am writing this using voice transcription software because at the moment I’m slowly pacing about the house, carrying a two-week-ish old infant around the lounge room, because if I stop for more than about 30 seconds…
The UNBELIEVABLE results of dopamine detox
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Last week, and by last week I mean “two weeks ago,” I wrote about how I was mid-way through a dopamine detox, which is a terrible name for something that isn’t actually possible. What it actually entailed…
Rope-a-dopamine
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Thanks for the kind emails and comments about the last newsletter. For anyone who found it a bit much, I don’t blame you! I also find it pretty full-on to dig up life traumas large and small…
I don’t like the drugs, but
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In your most distant memories, you remember colouring in. You remember being good at it, and being praised for being good. But when you slip and colour outside the lines, you howl and hide like a beaten…
The Cynic’s Guide to Sobriety
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I’ve been away plying my trade and visiting long-lost kin among the endless howling voids of Australia’s Gold Coast, and have only just returned to civilisation. Now, I collect my scattered wits, trying and failing to wrestle…
Introducing the Cynic’s Guide to Self-Improvement Podcast
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I thought it’d be fun and perhaps even convenient to record some of the posts here as a kind of mini-podcast. So here is the first episode – a recording of last week’s post, Map of the…
Map of the Problematic
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Map of the Problematic – The Cynic’s Guide to Self-Improvement Podcast 0:00 /1246.02068 1× A while back I set up a podcast to listen to while I mowed the lawns. It was ostensibly about weightlifting, by an…