A doer who likes to be.
Michael Townsend Williams
I spent about twenty years learning how to do things.
Then another twenty learning how to be.
Welldoing is what I found when I stopped choosing between them.
The doing years
I started out in advertising. Saatchi's in the 80s, London, the whole thing - drinking, deadlines, the particular kind of busyness that feels important because everyone around you is busy too.
I was good at it. And I was doing it, mostly, on empty.
I wasn't afraid of the work. I was afraid of stopping long enough to ask if it was the right work.
That's true. In those years I was working hard, moving fast, and not asking any of the questions that actually mattered. I didn't know what I didn't know. That's usually how it goes.
The moment everything changed
In 1998, my brother Jonathan died. He fell from a balcony in Kuala Lumpur. He was in his thirties.
I'm not going to pretend I've fully processed it, even now. What I can say is that it changed the direction of everything. Grief has a way of cutting through the noise and leaving you alone with the only questions worth asking: what am I actually doing? And why?
I left advertising not long after. I didn't have a plan. I just knew something had to change.
The being years
I became a yoga teacher. Then a mindfulness teacher. I learned to sit still, which sounds simple and isn't. I started to understand the breath - not as a metaphor, but as a practical tool, something you could actually work with.
I liked Vaclav Havel's line: ’Follow the man who seeks the truth. Run from the man who has found it.’ I was, and still am, looking. That's the point.
These years were quieter. Less stuff, more presence. I wasn't earning much. I was learning a lot.
The integration
The work I do now began as a question: what if you didn't have to choose between being good at your work and feeling good inside it?
That question became BreatheSync - the world's first HRV biofeedback breathing app. At its peak, 14,500 people a day downloaded it in over 100 countries to train their nervous systems through the breath. I hadn't planned to build a tech company. But I knew the science worked, and I wanted to put it in people's hands.
Then came the book. Do Breathe came from what I’d learned - the connection between how you breathe, how you are, and how you work. It's sold over 30,000 copies in six languages.
The idea at its centre is simple:
Being and doing aren't opposites. They're partners.
And that became the welldoing framework. Being. Direction. Doing.
Not a system for its own sake - a way of living and working that keeps the human at the centre.
Now
I work with individuals and teams who want to do good work without burning out.
The work takes different shapes — one-to-one coaching for individuals who want to get clear on what they want and how they're working; keynotes, workshops and off-sites for teams and organisations. Often it's both.
The people I work with are usually capable, thoughtful, and tired in a specific way - not exhausted, exactly, but aware that something isn't quite right.
They want to work better and feel better, and they've usually already tried the obvious things.
I live in the south of France.
I meditate every morning.
I still don't have it all figured out.
Let’s talk
If any of this resonates, the simplest next step is a conversation.