Making work suck less: your guide to workplace wellbeing

Work takes up roughly a third of your waking life. If that third consistently makes you miserable, exhausted, or numb — that's not "just how it is." That's a problem with a solution.

I'm not going to tell you to "find your passion" or "manifest better energy." I'm going to give you the practical stuff: how to set boundaries, how to recognize when a workplace is draining you, how to decide what's worth your energy and what isn't.

This page is your starting point. Everything I've written about making work more sustainable, more human, and — yeah — less sucky.

The mindset shift

Before you fix anything external, it helps to recalibrate how you think about work:

• Presence of mind: a present for your mind — The single quality that makes people great at their jobs without burning them out.
• Permission to be good enough — Perfectionism isn't a strength. It's a trap. Here's Pete's blessing to ship the B-minus work.
• A Festivus approach to New Year's — Why most goal-setting is broken, and what to do instead.

Boundaries and the "always on" problem

If your phone buzzes at 9 PM and your first instinct is guilt — this section is for you:

• Always-on culture: how artificial urgency makes work suck — Most "urgent" things aren't urgent. Here's how to tell the difference and protect your time.
• Dealing with burnout at work — Burnout isn't just being tired. Take the self-assessment, figure out what's driving it, and build a plan to fix it.

AI, automation, and the future of work

The robots aren't coming for your job. But they are changing it:

• Dear Peter: Will AI take my job? — Short answer: probably not. Longer answer: here's what to focus on.
• Let AI be the robot: Meetings are for people — The stuff AI can't do is exactly the stuff that makes you valuable.

Understanding your options

Sometimes making work suck less means getting help. Here's how to think about that:

• What does a career coach actually do? — It's not therapy, and it's not your friend over drinks. Here's what it actually is.
• Career coach vs. therapist: which one do I need? — They're different tools for different problems. Here's how to figure out which one fits your situation.

Want help making it suck less?

That's the whole point. Here's how we work together →