Passion Pioneers

Where you work & where you live should be within 20 minutes of each other. That’s all you need to know. Whether you drive, walk, cycle, ferry or fly to the office, 20 minutes is the sweet spot. I HEAR YOU NOW: “But there’s no jobs in my area!” “I get stuck in traffic!” “The train is an express & only takes 1.5 hours… one way.” “I have to work in the city!” These are all stories you tell yourself to justify your own suffering. Trust me - I know. I grew up in Frenchs Forest, Sydney, & worked in a cafe one suburb away. On weekdays, it was a 20 min walk to work from school. That was ok. But on the weekends, without any reliable buses, it was over 45 min walk to work… and on Sundays I’d work 7 hours. LET’S PUT THIS IN PERSPECTIVE A 20 min walk for a 7 hour shift is 5% of my working hours. Back & forth = 10%. A 45 min walk to work for a 7 hour shift is 11% of my working hours. Back & forth = 22%. Which means on the weeke...

Saucy stares through your morning meeting. Tempting whispers over the photocopier. An office fling at the Christmas party. Workplaces tend to be hothouses for sending sexual sparks flying. But why? Here are my top 3 reasons: 1. Values It’s often not the first thing we think about when it comes to choosing a spouse, but it’s such a powerful & driving force within our lives & our choices that it probably should be. Values are the things that are most important to us, and they drive our beliefs & behaviour every day in both personal & professional spheres. A good company (& even most industries) will have strong, clear organisational values & ways of doing things that align to those values.  Staff MOSTLY tend to align to them too, and that’s a large part of organisational culture & why a team feels so connected. Think of Apple’s drive for innovation & good design, or the medical industry’s passion for helping people & honour of human life....

The invisible mental load borne by almost all women is secretly wiping us out. Are you in a relationship? Are you also working? And do you feel exhausted most of the time? Chances are you’re not only doing more than your share of the physical housework, but most of the psychological work too. I’ve talked about the split of household duties when both partners are working before , & my plans to evenly divide our chores between me & my boyfriend when we started living together. And yet over a year later, I couldn’t understand why I still felt so overwhelmed by the constant grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, dishes, washing when my boyfriend & I divide it up so well. I never felt this way when I was single, even though I was doing all those chores on my own. It just feels like the doubling of clothes in the dirty laundry basket, & the fact that food disappears twice as fast, seems to make 10 times the amount more work… it doesn’t add up! THE MENTAL L...