How Weather Influences Career & Business Success

Pay attention to the climate when making big life decisions.

Image by Osman-Rana on Unsplash.

When I was writing my relocation book, I interviewed a psychologist to get the official mental health professional perspective. To my surprise, she talked about challenges newcomers face with (of all things) weather.

Weather? Seems like a small thing. We make jokes about changes in the weather. But the weather has a profound impact on mood.

I’ve always had a hard time with bitter cold. Two years in Alaska and 5 years in Manitoba — and I still won’t drive in snow.

I was living in Seattle when we enjoyed a mini heat wave. It lasted just a few days but I lost a couple of nights' sleep. That put everything back…and then I was stumbling around making mistakes…and had to spend *more* time undoing them.

One day, during the heat wave, I was waiting to cross a street when a well-dressed man asked, “Is the weather always like this?”

I felt like saying, “Go see Sleepless in Seattle. The state symbol is the raindrop.”

But instead, I mumbled something about how rare this weather was. That’s why, I explained, so few places are air-conditioned. My apartment building is one of the nicer ones in Lower Queen Anne. So we have…