Many of us are fascinated by the idea of manipulating time and space in order to create opportunities for a ‘do over’. We love to explore how life might have turned out if we’d chosen a different path. It’s why movies like Back To The Future and The Time Traveller’s Wife are so popular, along with mind-bending ideas like the ‘butterfly effect’.

We love the concept of having a ‘reset’ button — of being able to start fresh, without botching things up, or being able to handle things better a second time around, with the benefit of wisdom and hindsight.

Our minds play tricks on us, as we imagine how things might have turned out had we been a more capable, experienced version of ourselves. And when we imagine the future, it’s always with the assumption that our ‘best self’ will show up there. In our daydreams, we’re usually at our healthiest and most productive, organised and confident when handling our future challenges.

We come to our senses and understand that life isn’t like this. We...

From Emma:

“I had a maiden hair fern that all but died in the laundry, some time in the first few months of living in my new house. When I realised it was on the way out, it had just one tiny hint of a green stalk left.

There was something so vulnerable and sad about this. Even though I have never really had much success with indoor plants (or outdoor ones, for that matter) I started to nurture this one.

I moved it into the bathroom instead and every morning and night, I pick it up off the window ledge and take a close look at it. Over a few weeks, signs of life re-emerged. Tiny green stalks started growing out of the brown clump of dead stuff in the middle. It had found the will to live.”

This post could go in several directions now. We could talk about finding strength during adversity. We could talk about never giving up hope. Or we could talk about simplicity and the power of a pause at each end of the day.

We call this ‘bookending’. It’s about finding little anchor points...

When we're deep in work and focused on projects that we want to complete - like finishing our second book - we often have conversations about motivation (and lack thereof). There’s a paradox between wanting more time and freedom in order to achieve the big things we only dream about doing ‘if we won lotto’, versus the reality: having too much time on your hands can suck every ounce of oomph.

Employers will often say they love employing parents because they’re more focused. There’s a hard deadline each day, for childcare or school pickup, and that makes it so much easier to prioritise and get things done. At the other end of the spectrum, people will often go on long service leave with huge goals to renovate a house or try out a new hobby or potential business idea, only to return to work sheepishly six months later and say they ‘wasted’ the time off.

While we have issues with the concept of ‘asking a busy person’, we understand why it exists. The more you do, the less time you have, ...