BTD Newsletter – November 2025: What I'm Struggling With, The Productivity Trap, and 12 Minutes to Change Your World

As established clients will know, I believe that we make better progress by defining what we aren't going to do, rather than what we are going to do – or at least defining it first. So, it is ironic that my biggest struggle at the moment is in exactly this area. Specifically, my news diet. For the last five years I have been avoiding all news. "Following" news is a massive waste of time, so my practice has been to scan the headlines (and only the headlines, takes 30 seconds) while morning coffee is brewing, then get on with my day and stay away from news for the next 24 hours.

But recently, I have been following the UK news in detail five or six times a day. Well, partly, this is because I find our political leaders highly entertaining (in a Victorian freak-show sort of way), but eventually I had to admit that I had fallen into the dopamine-response trap. I had accidentally become a rat in a cage being fed cocaine pellets. Addicted to news.

Well, once understood, to fix this was for me the work of a moment. So, I'm allowing Messrs Starmer, Lammy and Co. to seek a new audience for their antics. And I'm feeling much better, thanks.

Anyway, my question to you is: what are you struggling with at the moment – in the domain of Wellbeing, or Cognition, or Productivity? Let me know by return email. I will collate the responses and offer some approaches to all the collective woes (on an anonymised basis) on Monday.

Last week, I ran a client session called "Avoid the Productivity Trap". In brief, many things that were sent to help us to do things more quickly or more cheaply, when fully understood and costed, have the opposite effect. For example…. Transport speeds have not improved in a hundred years. And Email costs the same to send as an old-school letter. Driving, and email management are "self-reinforcing behaviours": the more we do it, the more we need to do it. So, how do we get away from this?...

Idea 1: rather than saying "Oh, look at this cool new thing! I wonder what I can use that for…" (e.g. every bit of consumer tech ever invented), turn it around and think about need. What do I actually need to do? And, from there, what is the simplest, cheapest and most sustainable way to do it? You will find that much tech that seems essential really isn't.

Idea 2: find something more charming. I have recently binned a lot of entertainment services and replaced them with a record player. And I have binned a lot of entertainment hardware, and replaced it with a second spaniel. See? Vinyl. Dogs. More charming. Try Idea 1 and/or Idea 2, and let me know how you get on.

Occasionally, a client will ask: "Can I have all of those years of experience residing in your head, Matthew, boiled down to under 15 minutes, and not quite so sodding expensive?" My answer is usually a polite No. But actually, if you have 12 minutes, here is the ever-excellent Dan Pink: