This isn't a book about getting more done. It's a book about what it takes to keep going when the conditions around you make that difficult — and once I read it that way, I couldn't stop seeing the overlap with the work I do. We don't talk about care when we talk about productivity. We talk about systems and output and capacity. We almost never talk about what's actually required to sustain any of it.
Dr. Tiffany G. Townsend is a psychologist and former professor, and her book Weathering the Storm: Navigating the Antisocial Justice Wave argues that self-care isn't a luxury you get to once there's time — it's the precondition, and without it burnout stops being a risk and becomes arithmetic. We got into why microaggressions land as surprises you can't prepare for, why you don't owe anyone a response in the moment, what separates tokenism from actual change, and what she means by radical hope: holding a clear-eyed view of how hard something is at exactly the same time as believing it can change.
Six Discussion Points
Self-care isn't the reward for doing the work, it's the condition that makes continuing to do it possible — which makes protecting it a practical decision rather than an indulgent one.
AI was supposed to reduce intensity; inside most organisations it's raised the expectation instead, because an assistant doesn't lighten a workload so much as expand what's assumed possible.
Joy is protective infrastructure, and it's most at risk exactly when the work you care about is under attack — which is when protecting it matters most.
Microaggressions arrive as surprises, which means you won't be prepared, and that's fine — therapeutic moments don't disappear, so you can protect yourself now and respond when you've decided how.
Tokenism is representation without resources or power: it produces the appearance of change while quietly eroding the sense of efficacy of the person placed in the role.
Working collectively isn't only more effective — it's where the healing happens, which is why doing meaningful work alone has a time limit on it regardless of how capable you are.
Tiffany used the word efficacy in this conversation, which almost nobody does — it's one of the nine principles in my own book, and hearing someone arrive at it from a completely different direction was one of those moments where you realise the thing you've been circling isn't yours alone. Her practical starting point is smaller than you'd expect: find thirty minutes a week that nobody gets access to, and find people who share the thing you care about. Not a system. Just protected time, and company.
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
Mike Vardy. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Mike Vardy och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
