Finding my bliss as a writer

Most writers choose this career for the creative outlet, but when I was young writing felt more like a necessity.

I always had a terrible short-term memory and struggled to manage my emotions. I would later discover both are associated with ADHD, which I was diagnosed with four years ago, at age 33. Growing up I only knew that I was more sentimental and forgetful than my peers.

Gradually I discovered the best way to get rid of the bad feelings and to hang onto the good ones was to write them down. It’s how I got the things I wanted to let go of out of my head and put the things I wanted to hang onto somewhere more reliable than my forgetful brain. Over time, I got better at capturing those feelings in words.

Like many children with ADHD, I also struggled in school. In old report cards teachers noted my potential but warned of disruptive tendencies and a lack of focus. My parents did all they could, but the tutors, therapists and the special accommodations only furthered the feeling that I was less capable, less stable, less intelligent than those around me.

That was until one essay I wrote near the end of high school. It wasn’t just any essay; this was the biggest assignment of the first semester of grade 12, which had a huge impact on university early acceptance applications. Much to everyone’s surprise, including my own, I got the top mark in the class.

With that one essay and a lot of help from tutors in most other subjects I got into every program I applied for.

The natural choice would have been English, but despite my writing abilities I was never much of a reader, unable to sit still and focus for long. Instead, I pursued a degree in Media Studies, a faster-paced writing-centric discipline that listed movies, TV shows and comic books as mandatory course material.

In first year, I followed my classmates’ lead and volunteered for the school newspaper, and that’s when everything clicked; I found a fast-paced career opportunity where I could leverage my writing skills, learn through hands-on experience, make a positive impact, and do something different every day.

I loved it so much I ended up extending my time in school, despite spending my childhood dreaming of leaving the classroom behind, to earn a master’s degree in journalism.

I’ve spent the last 12 years working as a freelance journalist writing about many topics for many publications — including the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Fortune Magazine, TIME Magazine, and the Toronto Star — but primarily covering “the future of work” for publications like Fast Company and the Globe & Mail.

As someone who has been working remotely since long before the pandemic, as a freelancer long before the “gig economy” existed, and as someone who liked to question the rigidity of our existing school and workplace structures, the subject matter proved a natural fit. 

You can’t spend too long as a professional writer without considering working on a book, but I had always assumed that I would never be able to concentrate on a single subject for long enough. That all changed about 2 years ago, thanks to an Irishman named Joe O’Connor.

Years earlier Joe began running pilots of a four-day workweek, helping companies make the switch and inviting research institutions to study the results. Though it sounds counteractive, the data suggested they were able to accomplish more in four days than they previous did in five. They did so by using the reduced schedule as an incentive to cut back on wasted time, encourage the adoption of new tools and techniques, and drastically reduce absenteeism and turnover.

What really spoke to me on a personal level was how a central school and workplace structure we all assumed was necessary had proven not. If the one-size Monday-to-Friday really doesn’t fit all, what other standards are doing more harm than good?

After interviewing Jobe about a half dozen times and finally meeting in person in Toronto (where I live and where he had recently moved) Joe proposed the thing I had always been afraid of — a book project.

At first, I was hesitant, afraid I’d lose interest and abandon the project partway through, as those with ADHD are prone to doing. After speaking with Joe about it further, however I came to appreciate the many dimensions of this topic.

In our proposal and eventual manuscript, Joe and I connected the four-day workweek to the history of work before, during and after the industrial revolution, demonstrating how our modern work structures were built for an economy that no longer exists.

We then dug into how the four-day workweek is a natural answer to the many questions brought by the quickly approaching age of AI, supported by original interviews with a Nobel Prize winning economist, a former presidential candidate, and Bill Gates.

Our book also explores how the four-day workweek can offer solutions to many of our collective challenges, including declining birth rates, the workplace gender gap, even global warming.

I then sat down with organizations from Toronto to London to New Zealand to learn about the novel ways they used the four-day workweek to solve business challenges that they otherwise couldn’t.

Finally, Joe and I used his experience helping hundreds of organizations make the switch to offer a playbook for advocating for and implementing a four-day workweek at both the organizational and individual level.

The most incredible part, however, is who chose to publish the book. After a lifetime of struggling in academic settings, I am about to have my first book, Do More in Four, Why It’s Time for a Shorter Workweek, published Harvard Business Review Press. Given my academic experience prior to finding my bliss as a writer, it feels surreal to be affiliated with that brand in any capacity.