There are a few factors complicating my sleep recently. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Some combination of the switch to Daylight Saving Time, a new medication, aging, and pandemic anxiety has left me with erratic energy levels and an unpredictable schedule of slumber.

Despite a full night’s sleep, I might be totally exhausted in the middle of the day. In that moment, I’ve got a dilemma: coffee, or a nap?

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I am grateful to my longtime mentor, Neil Bainton, for his perpetual nudges toward clarity.

We’d meet for a meal where I’d talk about my plans for my business or whatever, sharing the various options and possibilities I was considering.

Neil would never get mired in the details. He always brought the conversation back to one simple question: “What do you want?”

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My husband and I just moved into a new house. Actually, it’s a very old house, built in 1880.

Accordingly, it’s small by modern standards, just under 900 square feet. But it doesn’t feel small. It feels just right.

I’ve lived in places that felt too small. And the logical solution was to move somewhere bigger. But what I now see, after spending some time living miserably in an enormous house, is that bigger isn’t necessarily better. It is more useful to identify and address specific challenges.

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A colleague of mine told me how she used to spend hours in lesson planning.

Or so she thought. What she was actually doing was stewing in her own anxiety for hours, then spending a relatively short time completing the lesson plan.

As she became healthier, she realized that the hours of anxiety didn’t “count.” In other words, that time wasn’t actually helping her to accomplish anything.

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I’ve talked to many families over the years who have told me how much they love my school program — but won’t be enrolling their child.

It goes something like, “We love your school and we’ve gone around and around on how to make it work, but she doesn’t want to leave her friends.”

It is entirely possible that these people are just saying that to be nice, but I think there’s more to it.

It seems related to a logical fallacy that Cal Newport points out in his book Digital Minimalism. Newport suggests that people tend to be hesitant to give up an activity or situation that has any benefit, despite the unwanted downsides.

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