We get into why so many people feel stuck in doom loops, how social media and the attention economy are reshaping our minds, and why endless scrolling can leave us feeling helpless rather than informed. We also unpack the emotional whiplash of modern life - seeing war, climate disasters, and political chaos alongside entertainment content - and what that does to our ability to care, act, and stay present.

Plus practical strategies you can use today, including how to retrain your algorithm, reduce unconscious phone use, create intentional friction with technology, and build healthier habits around information consumption and real-world connection.

In this episode:

• Why the modern world can feel overwhelming and hopeless
 • How algorithms are optimised for negativity and outrage
 • The psychological effects of doomscrolling and digital desensitisation
 • Why quick dopamine hits from technology can reduce motivation and agency
 • How to intentionally train your social feeds toward balance and nuance
 • Tools and apps that help reduce compulsive phone use
 • The power of long-form thinking, dialogue, and deeper research
 • Why collective individual action still matters in times of crisis
 • Practical ways to stay engaged without burning out

Journaling prompts:

• What content leaves you feeling energised, informed, or hopeful - and what leaves you feeling anxious or powerless?
 • What small change could you make this week to create more intentionality around your phone or media consumption?
 • Where in your life could you replace passive consumption with meaningful action or connection?

Apps, tools, and references mentioned:

 • ClearSpace
 • Brick
 • FOQUS

Books and references mentioned:

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Subscribe to the newsletter for full journaling prompts, resources and reflections from each episode: https://substack.com/@untanglinglifepod

Our take: it's complicated. There are people walking around with way too little of it (we're looking at you, British politics) and people drowning in too much of it (the founders we coach who leave themselves off their own pitch decks). We unpack both, why one of us needs more humility and the other needs more of their own evidence, and what to actually do when the voice gets loud.

We talk through the questions that have helped us most. What is true here, not what's the worst case. Whose voice is the imposter voice using. So what if it is true. And the practical tools we've stolen and shared along the way: Amy Widener's wind bank, Hattie's rejection therapy challenge from her Wimbledon survey-job days, Andy's three-futures prompt for when imposter syndrome dresses itself up as a career decision.

Plus the question we've found genuinely useful: what would someone completely mediocre but very overconfident be doing right now that you're not?

In this episode:

- The bicycle face history and why labels matter
- Andy's definition of imposter syndrome as the voice that gets louder when confidence is low
- Why some people need more imposter syndrome (and what unchecked confidence looks like)
- Why others need much less (and how systemic signals get internalised as personal failings)
- "What is true?" as the most useful grounding question
- The three-futures prompt for big career decisions
- And the always-useful: what's the actual worst that could happen?

Subscribe to our substack for the journalling prompts: https://substack.com/@untanglinglifepod

• Reinvention to escape vs reinvention to grow
• Andy on quitting football at 16 and finding his way from "footy to the FT"
• The hair-cut-after-a-breakup phenomenon and what's really going on underneath
• Why identity often gets tangled up in job titles and status
• Evolution as a kinder alternative to reinvention
• Career reinvention and the "multiplier effect" of stacking experiences
• How family and long-term friends both ground you and risk holding you to your old self

Journaling prompts:
When you feel at the edge of a reinvention, pause and ask:

• Am I trying to escape something I should actually process?
• What do I want to let go of here (what do I need to unlearn)?
• What do I want to take forward into the next stage (what do I need to learn)?
• At my core, who am I, and what are the parts of me that stay the same regardless?

Bonus prompt: ask one or two people who know you well - what have you seen in me that you think I could step into even more?

We get into why live experiences are becoming more valuable as AI grows, the widening gap between people who use AI well and those who don't, and why critical thinking is the single most important skill to protect. We talk about what's being lost when entry-level and middle-management jobs disappear, why "walk slower to run faster" applies to AI, and the timeless human skills that machines genuinely can't replicate: vulnerable storytelling, designing for feeling, mutual learning, problem-solving, and making work fun.

Plus practical prompts you can use today, including how to build a personal budget with AI, how to approach job applications, and our rule that AI-assisted work is only as good as the pre-work you did before you opened ChatGPT.

In this episode:

• Why live events and human experiences are becoming premium in an AI world
• The capability gap between "humans with AI" and "humans without AI"
• Critical thinking as the #1 skill to protect (and how to train it)
• Why AI is being used as an excuse to cut middle management (and the medium-term problem this creates)
• How companies are gutting entry-level roles and what it means for career progression
• Timeless skills AI can't replicate: designing for feeling, problem-solving, mutual learning, vulnerable storytelling, making things fun
• The ingredients of a good prompt, with a worked example (building a personal budget)
• How to use AI for job applications without losing your voice
• Why "pre-work is the work" when using AI well

Journaling prompts:

• For the next two days, notice tasks that drain you. Which one could AI actually help with in a way that would reduce your anxiety or save your time?
• Before using AI on any real task, find two ways to solve the same problem without AI first. Compare, contrast, then prompt.

Books and references mentioned:

• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo
• Ari Emanuel on live events vs AI

Subscribe to the newsletter for the full journaling prompts, resources and reflections from each episode: https://substack.com/@untanglinglifepod

In this episode, we're talking about the one thing most of us are genuinely not doing well: resting. Not stopping. Not collapsing. Actually restoring. We get into the guilt that sits underneath most people's relationship with rest, the ADHD boom-bust cycle that keeps so many of us in a permanent pattern of sprint and crash, and what it actually looks like to build recovery into your life before you need a holiday to survive it.

We also ask the uncomfortable question about AI: now that technology can do more of the work, are we actually resting with the time we save — or just quietly raising the bar for what enough looks like?

This episode covers:

• The difference between stopping and resting — and why most of what we call rest doesn't actually restore us
• Rest guilt in all its forms: the feeling that you haven't earned it, that you should be doing more, or that even sitting still isn't good enough
• The ADHD boom-bust pattern — running until you can't, then stopping entirely — and what small release valves look like instead
• Yutori: the Japanese concept of living with spaciousness, and why it's almost impossible to build into a Tuesday
• Andy's emotional audit — a four-quadrant framework for figuring out whether you're performing, burning out, disengaging, or actually recovering (and why you can't skip straight back to the first one)
• The AI efficiency question: if technology saves you four hours, what will you actually do with them?

Rest doesn't have to be still. It just has to work. This episode will help you figure out what that actually looks like for you.

Listen now and grab your journal 🧶

We share journalling prompts after every episode — sign up to get them straight to your inbox: substack.com/@untanglinglifepod

In this episode, we dig into borrowed goals: the ambitions we absorb from the people around us - parents, teachers, religion, culture, social media - without ever really stopping to ask whether we actually want them. Marriage. University. The promotion. The venture-backed startup. Some of these feel so deeply ingrained it's almost impossible to know where they came from in the first place.

We get into why so many borrowed goals are unconscious (and why that's not always a bad thing), plus the idea of 'gifted goals' - the ones that people who believe in us hand over intentionally, opening doors we didn't know we could walk through.

This episode covers:

• The difference between borrowed goals and gifted goals — and why it matters
• How to spot a goal that isn't really yours (wheel-spinning, hollow wins, and that nagging feeling of tug-of-war)
• The invisibility test: if no one could ever know you'd achieved it, would you still want it?
• Why we borrow timelines as well as goals — and the pressure to hit milestones when everyone around you is hitting theirs
• How to customise a goal so it actually fits your life, not someone else's version of it

Your goals deserve to be yours. This episode will help you figure out which ones actually are.

Listen now and grab your journal 🧶

We share journalling prompts after every episode — sign up to get them straight to your inbox: substack.com/@untanglinglifepod

In this episode, we dig into continuous learning: what it really means, why most of us arrive in the workplace at about 40% of our true selves, and how we can reconnect with the childlike wonder we all started with.

They get into why curiosity gets socialised out of us long before we even enter the workforce — and how the generational gap at work means younger people's curiosity is often treated as an inconvenience rather than an asset. They also explore the difference between directional curiosity (learning with a goal) and expansive curiosity (exploring just because), and why you need both.

This episode covers:

• Why even the most experienced learners can accidentally shut down someone else's learning
• The shift from mentoring to mutual mentoring - and why the senior person gains just as much as the junior
• How to figure out how you actually learn best (and why personality tests are useful tools, not life sentences)
• Why starting badly at something is part of the deal — and why quitting isn't always failure
• A simple journaling exercise to track both types of curiosity in your own life

Continuous learning isn't an act. It's a mindset. And this episode will help you build it.

Listen now and grab your journal 🧶

While recording the latest episodes, we heard about the viral essay by Matt Schumer that's been doing the rounds. His argument? We're in the "this seems overblown" phase of something much bigger than most people realise - and the job displacement is coming faster than anyone is prepared for.

So we hit record and reacted to it in real time.

In this mini bonus episode we get into:

- The pace of AI development and why it's different this time

- Who gets left behind and why that matters

- The bias baked into these models and why it's a bigger deal than people realise

- Practical advice for what to do if you're worried - including if you can't afford the paid tools yet

No clean answers. Just an honest conversation about how to move forward when you don't know what you're moving into.

🔗 Read Matt Schumer's original essay: https://x.com/mattshumer_/status/2021256989876109403

In this episode of Untangling Life, we explore what boundaries really mean - at work, at home, and with ourselves - and why we often wait until we’re at breaking point before setting them.

From family dynamics (“it’s always me”) to back-to-back meeting culture, from people-pleasing to entrepreneurial overwhelm, we unpack the hidden opportunity cost behind every yes - and what your time is quietly being traded for.

You’ll hear:

• Why we tend to set boundaries in explosions rather than early signals
• The difference between work-life balance, integration and separation
• How opportunity cost can reframe your decision-making
• Andy’s “2 and 5” rule for protecting family time
• The red / blue / black framework for auditing how you spend your time
• Why strategy time (and thinking time) needs protecting
• How managers can model boundary-setting for their teams
• And how to experiment with boundaries without blowing up your relationships

We also get honest about the boundaries we struggle to keep with ourselves - the deep work we avoid, the uncomfortable tasks we procrastinate, and the internal narratives that get in the way.

If you’ve ever snapped after saying yes too many times, felt resentful about your workload, or struggled to protect your own time… this one’s for you.

As always, we close with practical journaling prompts to help you experiment with boundaries in your own life.

In this episodem we’re talking about transitions - the in-between periods where the old version of your life has ended, and the next one hasn’t fully arrived.

Whether you’re between jobs, navigating a breakup, grieving a loss, moving house, changing how you work, or simply feeling unsettled without knowing why, this conversation is for you.

We explore:

• what a transition actually is (and why it feels so uncomfortable)
• why being “in between” can feel like purgatory
• how identity, grief, and self-worth show up during change
• why you don’t need to understand a transition to accept it
• how to reclaim agency when a change wasn’t your choice
• the idea of the neutral zone — and why you can’t fast-forward through it
• the role of community, honesty, and support during uncertain seasons
• how play, curiosity, and rest can help you move through transition more gently

This episode isn’t about fixing your life or rushing to the next chapter.

It’s about learning how to be where you are, without attacking yourself for finding it hard.

As always, we share practical journaling prompts you can use whether you’re:

• currently in a transition
• avoiding one
• or feeling stable but wanting to prepare for future change

If you’ve ever felt lost in the middle of something ending and something beginning - you’re not alone.

In this episode of Untangling Life, we get into the real impact of environment and community - from messy rooms and what's in your backpack (yes, we went there) to the bigger stuff: how where you grow up can shape your beliefs about what’s possible.

Andy shares the moments that expanded his world beyond Tottenham - including the stories his dad brought home as a minicab driver, a work experience placement that shifted his view of wealth and belonging, travelling that widened his sense of connection, and the mentor who changed the trajectory of his career.

Hattie unpacks why physical space matters more than we realise (especially when life feels tangled), how small “environment tweaks” can make a huge mental difference, and why your village isn’t just something you’re lucky enough to have - it’s something you can build (and be).

You’ll leave with a few practical prompts to try this week:

• How to “play” with your environment so you can work and think better
• How to map your current village - and start building one if you don’t feel like you have it yet
• Better questions to ask when you meet new people (because “so what do you do?” is… not it)

We took it to the streets and asked people to describe limiting beliefs in the real world and from there, we break down what limiting beliefs actually look like in practice - including the difference between “I’m not good at this yet” and “I’ll never be good at this,” and how that connects to fixed vs growth mindset. We also talk about where these beliefs come from: other people’s fears, throwaway comments that stick for decades (especially from teachers), and how representation plays into it - because sometimes what gets labelled as “imposter syndrome” is really about being in a space where no one looks like you or shares your background.

We share the tools we use when a limiting belief is running the show: grounding ourselves in what’s true, separating stories vs knowns, asking what the worst-case scenario actually is, and finding ways to turn “trying” into play so it doesn’t feel like a high-stakes performance.

To close, we leave you with a journaling prompt: write down the things you’d love to do (in and outside work), notice the limiting beliefs that instantly show up, and then look back at what you haven’t done - and ask yourself why. And as always, we’d love you to share what came up for you (and what’s helped you move through it) via the newsletter and on socials.

We introduce the core idea of Design vs. Drift: the subtle difference between building the life you want versus simply defaulting to the one you accidentally inherited. It's a cosy invitation into the central theme: You can choose your path, even if you trip over a few knots on the way.

Want to dive deeper? Checkout our newsletter for journalling prompts and resources with each episode https://substack.com/@untanglinglifepod