A half-hour before bedtime, I remind myself that I now deserve to prepare myself for a good night's sleep. You can't focus on your work if you're sleep-deprived even if you have a fascinating job.

You might want to keep trying to rise, using a path that builds on your natural strengths: sales, analysis, managing people, whatever, and keep asking for honest feedback. When you reach the point at which it feels clear you've topped out, revise your job description or take a step back. Up is not the only way.

The lack of crispness comes significantly from a societal change in what's valued: a replacement of bold individual initiative with collaboration, consensus, teamwork etc. All that team-involved decision-making often leads to tepid solutions and a slow-moving organization.

It's absurd how aspirants to designer-label colleges become obsessed with perfection so they can get into one. I'm not convinced it's worth prostituting yourself for that.

Many psychotherapists believe laziness is usually just the symptom. That the real problem is fear of failure, fear of success, or fear of authority.

I'm one of the many people for whom coffee helps but often, inattention is a symptom of something else: for example, that you're not getting six to eight hours of sleep.

Senescence is an inevitability. All we can do is try to strike the balance between graceful acceptance and raging against the dying light.