Work & Career
Reputation, and how it is actually built
It accumulates from unremarkable behaviour repeated, and the largest single component is whether people can predict you.
Peppy Talks — Small changes, honestly assessed
Work & Career
Ambition, at a sustainable size
The costs of a demanding career are real and are frequently paid unconsciously, and the accounting is worth doing deliberately.
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Work & Career
Being new at something in public
The discomfort of visible incompetence is what stops most people learning after about thirty, and it is largely a misreading of the audience.
Work & Career
Remote and hybrid work, honestly
The arguments on both sides overstate, and the parts that are genuinely well established are narrower and more useful than either.
Goals & Motivation
Wanting the thing versus wanting to have done it
A distinction that explains a great deal of stalled ambition, and a test that resolves it in about a minute.
Communication
Small talk, and what it is for
Widely dismissed as empty, and it performs a function that nothing else performs.
Confidence
Confidence and competence are different things
They come apart in both directions, and the social rewards attach to the wrong one.
Habits
All habits →
Habits
Reviewing your own systems
Personal systems accumulate features and stop being used, and a periodic review is the only thing that prevents it.
Habits
The advice industry and how to read it
Self-improvement writing has a structural incentive to overstate, and a handful of tests separate the useful from the confident.
Habits
Accountability, and what makes it work
Telling someone your plan does very little. Specific arrangements with specific people do considerably more.
Focus & Attention
All focus & attention →
Focus & Attention
Noise, music and working in shared space
Speech is the specific problem rather than volume, which explains why open offices are worse than building sites and why some music helps.
Focus & Attention
Single-tasking, in practice
A simple prescription that almost nobody follows, and the obstacles are practical rather than motivational.
Focus & Attention
Attention and anxiety
Worry consumes the same capacity that concentration requires, which is why anxious people struggle with tasks they are entirely capable of.
Confidence
All confidence →Confidence
Confidence and competence are different things
They come apart in both directions, and the social rewards attach to the wrong one.
Confidence
Knowing what you are actually good at
Self-assessment is unreliable in known directions, and the corrections are external rather than introspective.
Confidence
Self-compassion, without the softness
A construct with a reasonable evidence base and a name that puts people off, whose main finding is that self-criticism does not work.
Communication
All communication →Communication
Small talk, and what it is for
Widely dismissed as empty, and it performs a function that nothing else performs.
Communication
Apologising properly
Most apologies fail on identifiable components, and the research on what makes one effective is unusually practical.
Communication
Conversations with people you disagree with
Persuasion by argument works less often than it should, and the approaches with better evidence are mostly about asking rather than telling.
Goals & Motivation
All goals & motivation →Goals & Motivation
Wanting the thing versus wanting to have done it
A distinction that explains a great deal of stalled ambition, and a test that resolves it in about a minute.
Goals & Motivation
Intrinsic interest, and where it comes from
The advice to follow your passion assumes interest precedes competence, and the evidence generally points the other way.
Goals & Motivation
Momentum and the cost of stopping
Restarting is expensive in ways that are invisible until you have done it several times.
Work & Career
All work & career →
Work & Career
Ambition, at a sustainable size
The costs of a demanding career are real and are frequently paid unconsciously, and the accounting is worth doing deliberately.
Work & Career
Reputation, and how it is actually built
It accumulates from unremarkable behaviour repeated, and the largest single component is whether people can predict you.
Work & Career
Being new at something in public
The discomfort of visible incompetence is what stops most people learning after about thirty, and it is largely a misreading of the audience.
About Peppy Talks
Habits, focus, confidence, communication and motivation — what the behavioural evidence supports, what it does not, and what to actually do on a Tuesday. We publish explanatory articles rather than news, which means an article here is written to still be useful a year from now. Every piece is bylined, sourced and read by an editor before it appears — the full process is set out in our editorial policy.