Member-only story
Stop Listening to Your Horrible Boss — the One Inside Your Head
They promise to make you more productive, but they’re actually holding you back. Here’s how to demote them.
The garden fork
I was going to visit my family overseas in a global pandemic. I had to schedule three different Covid tests in a 10-day period in two countries. I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork designed by government bureaucrats who had apparently never seen a website before. Plus I had to do laundry and pack and all the usual things. And I had to do it in time to be ready for a 5 a.m. airport pickup.
But I did it. I was gulping down a cup of coffee at 4:58 a.m., with everything by the door ready to go, when something out the back window caught my eye: the garden fork, leaning against the wall where I had left it probably three weeks before.
That fricking fork! How many times had I seen it and told myself to put it away? And how had I still not done it? Why had I left it out there in the rain, probably rusting and falling to bits? This was why I never had nice things, why I never felt like a proper grown-up. Because no matter how hard I tried, I could never truly get my shit together.
