The good procrastinator accepts the fact that she can't get everything done, then decides as wisely as possible what tasks to focus on and what to ne… - Oliver Burkeman

The point is certainly not that it's better not to have money, say, than it is to have it. But it's surely undeniable that if you don't have it, it's much harder to overinvest emotionally in it. The same goes for prestigious jobs, material possessions, or impressive educational qualifications: when you have little chance of obtaining them, you won't be misled into thinking they bring more happiness than they do.

It's weird how when I don't respond to someone's email, it's because I'm busy,' observes the novelist Leila Sales, poking fun at this tendency in herself, 'but when other people don't respond to my emails, it's because they hate me.

It's quite sufficient a challenge to seek to follow what the philosopher Iddo Landau calls the 'reverse golden rule' – that is, not treating yourself in punishing and poisonous ways in which you'd never dream of treating someone else. Can you imagine berating a friend in the manner that many of us deem it acceptable to screech internally at ourselves, all day long? Adam Phillips is exactly right: were you to meet such a person at a party, they'd immediately strike you as obviously unbalanced. You might try to get them to leave, and possibly also seek help. It might occur to you that they must be damaged – that in Phillips's words 'something terrible' must have happened to them – for them to think it appropriate to act that way.