Barry’s Short Thoughts
Subscribe
Sign in
Home
Archive
About
Latest
Top
Leaders Who Keep Growing Accept Something the Rest Don’t
There’s a moment most senior leaders recognise, even if they’ve never named it.
Jun 19
•
Barry Joinson
The Zone Is Not Where You Think It Is
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent years trying to understand why some people experience their lives as genuinely worth living, and why that quality of…
Jun 5
•
Barry Joinson
1
May 2026
The Monkey Has No Calendar
Tim Urban’s talk is funny.
May 29
•
Barry Joinson
The Debt You Cannot Repay
Even in our mental health aware world, there’s an unhealthy willingness to get up earlier, stay up later, and push through tiredness in service of the…
May 22
•
Barry Joinson
The Enemy Within the Frame
For most of my career, I’ve worked in environments where pressure is the constant and stress is regarded as the price of doing serious work.
May 15
•
Barry Joinson
The Expert in the Room Is Often the Obstacle
There is a certain kind of failure that belongs almost exclusively to the competent.
May 8
•
Barry Joinson
The Decision You Think You Made
Ask most high achievers to walk you through a major decision and they’ll give you a clean, coherent account of what happened.
May 1
•
Barry Joinson
April 2026
You Can’t Eliminate Uncertainty. You Can Only Get Better at Living Inside It.
There’s a type of leader that many quietly worship.
Apr 16
•
Barry Joinson
The Freedom Trap
We’ve come to believe that freedom expands in direct proportion to choice.
Apr 10
•
Barry Joinson
1
The Hardest Choices Don’t Have Right Answers. They Have Authors.
Most people assume that when a decision is hard, it’s because they haven’t thought about it hard enough.
Apr 3
•
Barry Joinson
March 2026
You’re Not Living Your Life. You’re Editing It.
Most people think they are chasing happiness. I can’t help but think they’re simply chasing a better memory of their life.
Mar 27
•
Barry Joinson
2
The Hidden Cost of Success Nobody Warns You About
There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that, beyond a certain level of complexity, pressure distorts judgement and undermines the quality of…
Mar 20
•
Barry Joinson
This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please
turn on JavaScript
or unblock scripts
