Marissa Brassfield

Marissa Brassfield

Los Angeles
Trusted advisor, simplifier, and loving catalyst of your biggest and best initiatives. Discovering how to stretch time, maximize ease, and optimize work-life alignment.
Jul 10

Golden Handcuffs: Why Leaving a Job Costs So Much

Your health insurance is tied to your job because of a 1942 wage freeze. The cuffs that make leaving costly are policy accidents. Pick the lock.
5 min read
Jul 09

How to Use AI to Save Time as a Founder

AI reliably buys back founder hours in five places. The freed time only becomes a shorter week if you eliminate before you automate.
7 min read
Jul 08

Why Do We Work 40 Hours a Week?

The 40-hour week is a 1938 payroll line that reached 40 only in 1940. It never measured good work. Here is how to get paid for results.
6 min read
Jul 07

What grows when you stop selling

Every interest I've had for 20 years got the same evaluation. This one broke the pattern.
2 min read
Jul 06

The Rules You Never Chose: Who Made Them Up

Most rules you live by, from the five-day week to retirement at 65, were invented by one person for a narrow reason. Here is how to audit yours.
7 min read
Jul 03

Why Is the Weekend Only Two Days?

The two-day weekend is barely 150 years old and was built to sell cars. A medieval peasant likely rested more than you. Here is how to take it back.
5 min read
Jul 01

The Mid-Year Tax on Everything You Left Half-Done

The work you finish costs you once. The work you half-finish keeps charging you every day it stays open. A mid-year audit of your open loops gives the attention back.
7 min read
Jun 30

39 months in: it was the habitat all along

The constraint I thought was my goal turned out to be the habitat my goals grew in.
2 min read
Jun 29

The Kitchen That Taught Me About Staying Too Long

In the summer of 2015, I stood in my kitchen mid-demolition and started crying. The renovation was long overdue.
11 min read
Jun 26

Mid-Year Pruning: Releasing What Stopped Thriving

June 30 is the literal middle of the year, the natural moment to prune. A seasonal ritual for releasing what stopped thriving, with three prompts to find the cuts.
7 min read
Jun 24

Why "Set Better Boundaries" Is the Wrong Advice for Working Moms

The fix for an overloaded life starts by reviewing the commitment load itself. A one-hour elimination audit, and the three nos that gave me back Tuesday mornings with my son.
8 min read
Jun 23

Every past version of you is source material now

Ciaran made $6,000 in two days from his side hustle by combining two skills he already had.
2 min read