Category Archives: family

Four Ways to Rethink ‘Having It All’ (Without Leaning In)

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 8 May 2013

Here’s an article I just wrote for the Wall Street Journal on the dilemmas of balancing work and family life. Is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, author of Leaning In, right to think that women can ‘have it all’ if only they really believe in themselves? My approach is not to answer the question ‘Is it possible [...]

Also posted in belief, history, money, politics, psychology, public policy, simple living, travel, work | Leave a comment

Working from home: the five golden rules

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 26 February 2013

Yahoo’s new boss, Marissa Mayer, has just issued an edict banning her employees from working at home. In this article in today’s Guardian, I give my response, suggesting five ways to become an expert homeworker (and keep bosses like Mayer happy as well).

Also posted in money, simple living, work | 1 Comment

Valentine’s Day Video: The Six Varieties of Love

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 12 February 2013

The Ancient Greeks would have considered us modern creatures incredibly unsophisticated in the way we talk about love. We tend to use a single word to cover so many different kinds of relationships and emotions. On Valentine’s Day you may well whisper ‘I love you’ to your soulmate over a candlelit meal, but then the [...]

Also posted in history, love, philosophy, psychology, videos | 1 Comment

Ready for a vulnerability hangover? Five ideas from Brené Brown

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 16 October 2012

I recently had the great privilege and pleasure of interviewing Brené Brown, one of the world’s most original and exciting thinkers about emotional life, before a packed audience at London’s historic Conway Hall. It was no surprise that the event, organised by The School of Life, sold out its five hundred tickets within a record [...]

Also posted in conversation, emotions, empathy, ethics, interviews, love, psychology | 10 Comments

Can reading a novel change the world?

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 24 July 2012

‘It was through books that I first realised there were other worlds beyond my own; first imagined what it might be like to be another person,’ wrote novelist Julian Barnes in a recent Guardian essay. It’s an enticing thought that reading fiction might help us escape the straitjacket of our egos and expand our moral [...]

Also posted in art, belief, empathy, empathy through education, empathy through experience, ethics, history, literature, love, philosophy, religion | 2 Comments

New book! How to Find Fulfilling Work by Roman Krznaric

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 10 May 2012

My new book How to Find Fulfilling Work is out today. About the book Part of a new series of guides to everyday living from The School of Life (edited by Alain de Botton), How to Find Fulfilling Work aims to help people navigate the labyrinth of career choices out there and to find a job that [...]

Also posted in conversation, creativity, ethics, history, interviews, money, philosophy, simple living, work | Leave a comment

The greatest meeting of strangers in history

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 21 March 2012

  I am in the midst of a long-term project to document instances when empathy has flowered on a mass scale and shifted the course of human history. While empathy has periodically collapsed on a collective scale – just think of colonialism in Latin America or the Holocaust – there have also been moments when [...]

Also posted in conversation, empathy, empathy through conversation, empathy through experience, ethics, history, politics, public policy | 3 Comments

The lost history of the househusband

By Roman Krznaric | Published: 21 January 2012

The following article originally appeared in The Guardian. The great tragedy of modern parenting is that we’ve forgotten its history – and mothers are paying the price. Contrary to popular belief, the superdad who takes on a serious share of childcare and housework is not a new invention. Before the industrial revolution – a mere couple of [...]

Also posted in belief, ethics, history, love, work | 2 Comments

  • Welcome to OUTROSPECTION, my blog on empathy and the art of living. You'll find articles, interviews and news on the fundamental questions of how to live, with an emphasis on outrospection, which is about discovering who we are by stepping outside ourselves and exploring the lives of other people and cultures.

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