The argument your body keeps winning

The week I nearly accepted a retainer I did not want, my sleep went choppy. I woke three nights in a row at 3 a.m. with my chest already tight, no dream, no memory of why.

I lay there running the case for the contract: steady income, work I could do well. My spreadsheet agreed with every line. My chest kept filing its dissent.

This is the argument nobody warns you about. Your body tracks the fit of your professional life the whole time, at the cellular level, and files its findings on a different schedule than your logic.

For years I thought data-driven meant numbers. Long before writing systems and spreadsheets, though, the body's intelligence was the only data we had: the gut, the prickle at the back of the neck that kept our ancestors alive.

Your body has been running the numbers all along, and its findings are data.