I’ve been helping overwhelmed professionals for years. Last month I was one.
I was doing the thing I teach others not to do
Last month I sat an exam.
Not a practice run. The real thing — high stakes, binary outcome: pass or fail.
I’d prepared as thoroughly as I could. But the night before, the spiral started.
What if I blank? What if it’s harder than I expected? What if I’ve missed something?
I noticed something in that moment. The anxiety wasn’t really about the exam. It was about the gap between how prepared I felt and how prepared I thought I was supposed to feel.
I’ve spent years studying that gap. Working in learning and development, designing programmes for professionals under pressure, watching capable people underperform not because of what they didn’t know — but because of what they told themselves in the hour before it mattered.
So I did the only thing that actually helps.
I stopped trying to feel ready. I focused on what I could control in the next hour. One step. Then the next.
On the day, I wasn’t perfect. I made mistakes. I corrected some. I left some behind. I finished.
Afterwards, someone asked how I stayed calm.
I told them the truth: I didn’t stay calm. I kept choosing it. Repeatedly. Under pressure. With imperfect information.
That’s what calm actually looks like in practice. Not the absence of doubt. The decision to act anyway.
That experience reminded me of something I’d been avoiding.
I’ve been writing about exactly this kind of pressure for years.
For the past few years, I’ve been building Embracing Imperfection Academy — courses, tools, and frameworks for professionals who are doing well on paper and running on empty underneath.
Every week, I sent a letter called The Compass Letter. Over a hundred professionals across the UK and beyond read it each week. Some told me it was the one thing in their inbox that didn’t make them feel behind.
That meant everything to me. But I kept putting off giving it a proper home.
Too busy. Not ready. One more thing to sort first.
And then I recognised what I was doing.
I was doing the thing I teach other people not to do.
Waiting to feel ready before starting something that only starting can make you ready for.
So this week, I stopped waiting.
Imperfect Club is the new home for that weekly letter. And for everything else I’ve been meaning to say.
Every Friday, one essay. One thing I’m genuinely thinking about — a reframe, a framework, a practical way of sitting with the pressure of professional life without either burning out or pretending it’s fine.
No hustle culture. No toxic positivity. No advice that sounds good in a podcast and falls apart by Tuesday afternoon.
Reading is always free.
If you’d like the weekly Calm Kit too — a one-page tool you can use the same day it arrives, built around the same evidence base I use in my courses — Founding Member spots are open at £3.75 a month. That rate closes after the first 50 members or 30 June, whichever comes first.
Join free — one essay every Friday
I want to be honest about who this is for.
This isn’t for people who want to optimise their mornings or 10x their output. There are plenty of newsletters for that.
This is for people who are already doing a lot — probably too much — and who are tired of being told that the solution is to do it differently, think more positively, or simply try harder.
This is for the professional who lies awake at 3am not because something is wrong with them, but because nobody has given them the right tools for what they’re actually carrying.
If that’s you — welcome. I built this for you.
One question before I go:
What’s the thing you’ve been putting off because you don’t feel ready yet?
Reply here. I read everything.
Ricky
Creator, Embracing Imperfection Academy