You are more likely to encounter a narcissist at work than you are at your local food store. This is because there is a positive correlation between narcissism and landing a leadership position in a large corporate.

But there is no link between narcissism and leadership effectiveness. Meaning those with narcissistic tendencies might be better at reaching the higher levels of an organization but they won’t be any good at leading when they get there.

I’m sure this resonates. …

No one really tells you what to expect when you join a big company. Maybe you’re fortunate to have friends and family who can share their experiences with you. But if like me, you’re from a poor working-class background with no one around to advise you on how to survive corporate life then it’s sink or swim.

I threw myself into the deep end of a large multi-national 17 years ago. At the time, I was a postdoctoral researcher finding cures for cancer at Oxford University in the UK. I had been in academia for all of my 20s. …

In the corporate world, few subjects are more emotive than our salary. We all want to be paid fairly for the job we do. But how do we assess what is a fair wage? And how much do you consider to be enough?

Are you motivated by having enough money to buy an expensive car and a big house, or are you more concerned with making sure that you earn as much as incompetent Danny in HR?

The gap between those at the top of organisations and ordinary worker bees has grown wider over the past 40 years. The Economic…

I wanted to be a writer for a long time. A dream is just a dream if you don’t act upon it. We wait until we are ready before starting anything new. But the problem is that we will never feel ready. Because we don’t know what feeling ready means.

For too long I didn’t know that to become a writer, all I had to do was start writing. No matter how unprepared or unskilled I felt. I didn’t need to attend any evening classes, take any online courses or read any books. …

I have recently decided to buy a new domain for my personal website. I’ve had my current blog for almost a year and the name is no longer working for me. I simply don’t like ‘lifebydianne.com’ anymore. I loathe it.

I originally built the blog with a few simple goals in mind. Firstly I wanted to teach myself all the basics such as buying and hosting a domain, how to use WordPress, which plugins to use and how to design a website to a professional-looking standard.

I wanted to use a content management system like WordPress rather than a website…

Writer’s block doesn’t exist. Not in the way you think it does. It’s not an external force that’s preventing you from writing. Or something in the universe that’s conspiring to stop you from creating great content.

Writer’s block is nothing more than a lack of ideas.

Whether or not the results of your efforts resonate with your audience is another matter. The quality of your writing is not my focus here.

I want to discuss the key foundational dependency for writing — that is having a supply of ideas. And how to make sure you never run out of them.

…

You hold yourself back from starting something new until you are ready. It’s human nature. We don’t like failing. Not being good at something feels like a failure.

But you will never feel ready to start. Because you don’t know what being ready is.

In everything that you ever achieved in life, you had to start from the beginning. Even when you can no longer remember where the beginning actually was.

My marathon PB is 3 hours and 36 mins. Yes, I do write this to boast because I am effing proud of this achievement. I wouldn’t have achieved this…

Ah, financial independence! Now wouldn’t that be lovely? The freedom to spend your time how you chose because you don’t need work to pay the bills.

Want to spend all day fly-fishing? Spend your time doing surveys of your local lesser crested newt population? Or maybe you want to have the freedom to dedicate your time to writing that book that you just know is in you. Go ahead and fill your boots if you are financially independent.

What you chose to do with your freedom from being tied to a day job is completely your decision.

And oh boy…