Jan Bosch

The phrase belongs to Jocko Willink and it sounds, on first hearing, like a contradiction or a piece of motivational sloganeering. Discipline is constraint. Freedom is the absence of constraint. How can one be the other? But the longer I live with it, the more I think it is one

I have watched myself write a paper over six leisurely weeks and I have watched myself write a paper in the four days before a deadline. Often the four-day version was the better one. Parkinson noticed the same thing decades ago: work expands to fill the time available for its

There is a particular kind of satisfaction that I do not think we talk about enough, and it is the plain, uncomplicated pleasure of finishing something. Not finishing something that will change the world. Just closing the loop on a thing that was open. My mood on any given day

For a long time I thought of routines as the enemy of an interesting life. Routine sounded like stagnation, like the slow settling into a rut, like the opposite of the spontaneity and adventure I wanted. I have changed my mind almost completely. What I have come to understand is

I have changed country more than once. I have changed jobs, changed roles, changed the kind of work I do and the people I do it with. And every single time, there was a quiet fantasy running underneath the decision: that on the other side of the move, I would