A skeptical dive into the weird, sketchy, occasionally life-changing world
of self-improvement.
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Go warm turkey on screen-time
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It’s Thanksgiving, or near enough to it, and that’s enough of a segue to another article about the benefits of cold-turkeying your phone screentime
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Making The Link
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While I’m working on a bigger piece, I figured I’d write up some self-improvement links I thought were worth collecting. I haven’t done this before so I’m not sure if it’s a good idea. Do you like…
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Going To Pot
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It’s not about marijuana, sorry. I’ll save that for another time. It’s about the garden. See, we have these potted plants on the deck. There’s herbs, some plants some friends gave us, a plant with a horrifically…