Anchored, Aligned, Accountable summary

Laughter ripples through the room as the band starts to play. People spill onto the dance floor, champagne flutes in hand. For a second, you’re there, fully present, immersed in the moment.

Then your phone buzzes.

You told the team about your friend’s wedding, checked in with your boss, okayed the time off with HR. But here you are, alone in a corner, replying to emails that shouldn’t be in your inbox.

If it isn’t a wedding, it’s a holiday – or an anniversary or a baby shower or just a weekend away. In the moment, it feels urgent. In hindsight, it’s easy to see it for what it is: bullshit.

In his essay On Bullshit, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt makes a useful distinction. Bullshit isn't the same as lying. When people lie, they assume a knowable truth – the point is to conceal it. Bullshit is indifferent to truth; it distracts more than it distorts.

What it’s really about is keeping the show on the road, never mind the destination. Dysfunctional cultures can’t stop telling stories that sound compelling but really aren’t. Bullshit is all style, no substance. But it works right up to the moment it doesn’t. Sometimes it flatters. You’re indispensable, it says – if you don’t do it, no one will (not properly, anyway). Other times, it bullies. You don’t get to set boundaries, it scolds; suck it up and be grateful you’re here at all.

Bullshit is a just-so story you’ve heard a million times. Like so much conventional wisdom, the emphasis falls on "conventional", not “wisdom”. It’s everywhere too. It’s companies celebrating diversity in theory while expecting assimilation in practice. It’s leaders praising candour and punishing dissenters. It’s your boss emailing you in the middle of your friend’s wedding. All too often, it’s us. Burying yourself in work to avoid personal problems is bullshit; so is obsessing over others’ flaws to avoid confronting your own frustrations.

Bullshit can’t be out-argued. The fears it feeds on can’t be reasoned with. Challenging it head-on is like grabbing a scared cat. You get scratched, and the cat’s still scared.

This Blink takes a different approach. It’s about creating space – space to question inherited assumptions, to have difficult conversations, and to notice the stories that keep us trapped. As we’ll see, different choices become possible when we make that space.