I sat opposite a client this week and she said the words I hear more than almost any other in this job: "I know what I should be doing but I just can’t seem to start."

She isn't alone. I've heard versions of this from Sixth Formers staring at a blank revision timetable, the widower who hasn't opened his wife's wardrobe in over a year, the client three weeks into a bereavement who can't face answering the phone, friends and family members, even myself. All of us are waiting for something to arrive before we act. A feeling. A readiness. The right day.

It doesn't come, because that’s not how it works.

We've got the order backwards

The Good Enough Teacher: What Winnicott Can Teach Us About the Classroom

I loved teaching but it took me a while to embrace the concept of being good enough. Not good enough but good enough. What I mean is to be comfortable with being good enough, to have boundaries, to maintain a work-life balance, to work smarter rather than harder and to have a personal wellbeing target on your annual appraisal which was more meaningful than ‘go for a ten minute lunchtime walk once a week’. (This was a real target!)

A lifetime ago, when I was a young Mum at home with her three very small children I stumbled across a copy of D W Winnicott’s book The Good Enough Mother and it changed my life. Some time before I had been gifted Gina Ford’s The Contented Little Baby (AKA Infant Boot Camp) I love a routine but this one read like a survival manual written by a drill sergeant and so I had successfully ignored other parenting manuals until I came across Winnicott in a charity book shop.

Winnicott offered relief. Guess what? You don't have to be a perfect mother. In fact, he argued, you shouldn't try to be. What children need is "good enough”; someone who meets their needs closely at first, then gradually, tolerably, fails to meet them, giving children room to discover their own resources.

Like all good ideas it's a simple but with large implications. And it turns out that it translates remarkably well from home to school.

So far, 2026 has been a year of significant change. Even for me, a person who thrives on the variety and busyness of what my daughter calls “a finger in many pies”, this amount of change has left me feeling that I am dropping off only. Never parking up and turning off the engine. Frankly, it all seems a little out of control, much like the garden after the rapid growth of midsummer. What I need is a routine.

At the other end of the busyness spectrum are A Level students who have just finished their exams or graduates struggling to find a permanent job. They now have significant time on their hands after months of high-stakes activity. After much-needed downtime, the state of having nothing to do loses its sparkle. On days when there are no demands, you can feel equally exhausted and out of kilter. The solution is to establish a routine.

Having a routine of sorts, even on lazy days keeps you grounded, creative, connected and productive - four facets of a healthy life. Gently encouraging a sense of purpose and a goal for each day, however small, gives some vital control.