Writing
Stories filed under the parts of us they belong to
Field notes from my study, essays and reflections. Every piece is filed under a card on the map.
Field note21 Jul 2026Silence is load-bearingTaboo decides what can’t be named and stigma decides what we become if we name it, while silence is what holds the whole thing up.→Field note11 Aug 2026The work nobody seesInvisible labour keeps organisations alive while appearing in no job description, and having your expertise ignored is its own kind of injury.→Field note1 Sep 2026A wound to integrityMoral injury doesn’t resolve through rest, only through changed conditions or a coherent exit.→Field note22 Sep 2026Where you end and your role beginsThe system didn’t create the self-sacrifice schema; it found it, and it runs it.→Essay8 Jul 2025Home and rootsA train from London to Essex, a hollow heart, and the difference between where you live and where you come from.→Essay22 Jul 2025How fear shapes designBuilding contact tracing tools at speed, and what it taught me about safety, control and power.→Essay9 Dec 2025First, do no harmPolly Higgins, ecocide, and what it would mean to make care the legal baseline.→Reflection4 Nov 2025The commons inside usI used to think the tragedy of the commons happened out there, in fisheries and forests. Then I burned out.→Reflection14 Oct 2025Inherited money storiesThe beliefs about money and safety we carry didn't come from nowhere. They often come from survival.→Reflection25 Nov 2025What is the economy for?For decades we’ve been told growth is the goal. The better question is growth of what, and for whom, and what the whole thing was meant to serve in the first place.→Conversation18 Jun 2025In conversation with The Mindful BrandAsh Stapleton on the ethical investing platform I co-founded, and the question underneath it: who has been excluded from decisions, and how can we bring them in?→
How the writing works
Four forms, each with its own shape
Field notes
Findings from the study
Short findings from my study, The Incentives Are Working. Each one names a single pattern, grounds it in what people told me, and ends on what it reveals about how these systems are designed.
Essays
A story, then the system
A story from my own life or work, followed by a systems lens that traces the same pattern out into other systems and asks what would let it shift.
Reflections
Something that stayed with me
A response to a book, a talk or an idea I keep returning to, what it opened up for me, and the same systems lens as the essays.
Conversations
Other people’s words
Interviews and profiles, introduced here and linked to where they were first published.
Series
Read the seriesFindings from The Incentives Are Working
Newsletter
Letters from the map
New writing as it’s published, news of the deck, and the occasional note on the work.