Small ideas for looking after yourself in a world that can make even self-care feel like another job to do.

Self Care Shorts explores wellbeing and productivity without the pressure to optimise yourself, perfect yourself or somehow become the best possible version of yourself by Tuesday. It’s about the smaller, more ordinary things that help us live a little better: rest, attention, boundaries, connection, movement, creativity and occasionally doing absolutely nothing useful at all. Practical where it can be, reflective where it needs to be, and always suspicious of anyone promising to transform your life in five easy steps.

About me – I’m Stephen J. Mordue, an author and academic at the University of Sunderland with a longstanding interest in wellbeing, reflection and how we sustain ourselves in demanding lives and professions. I’ve written about self-care, productivity, attention and the pressures we place on ourselves to keep doing more. Self Care Shorts grew from that work — but also from my own attempts to work out what looking after ourselves might mean when we stop treating wellbeing as another thing we have to succeed at.