I was awake in the early hours of the morning, staring at nothing, my heart racing. It was a bit like The Queen's Gambit, except instead of a chessboard on the ceiling, there was a kanban board, with a huge backlog of things I knew I'd failed to do.

This morning, I got up, turned my ceiling kanban board into a real one in Notion, and got to work. The world feels more manageable in the cold light of day. I'm making progress.

I'm not sure how to deal with the things that don't quite fit on a task list. You can't drag life from column to column or build it into a database. You've got to live it. Or at least, that's what I've always thought.

I'm more of an intuitive thinker than a planner. I always have been. I go off-recipe when I cook; I meander when I travel; I play with my code. Sometimes it works out and I discover things I never would have encountered otherwise; sometimes it doesn't, and I find myself in a mess of my own making. But I've started to write scripts for the hard stuff, and to my horror, it really helps.

I was stressed out about having to give difficult feedback to a colleague, but I wrote out what I was going to say ahead of time in detail, and it turned out to be nowhere near as bad as I expected it to be. I had to spend a day cold calling customers - an introvert's worst nightmare - but having my script in front of me meant my numbers were startlingly high.

Perhaps the most important thing is that writing the script is a way to cut through the fear. Getting something down in writing works: it's a step in the right direction. Then comes editing, and iteration. Which is far better than staring at the ceiling at 3am beating yourself up for being behind.