Top performance and wellbeing are not at odds.
Mind Matters exists to prove it: science-based training for researchers and their institutions, one-to-one work for high achievers ready to look deeper, and the validated instrument that measures whether any of it worked.
Founded and run by Dr Nadine Sinclair (Max Planck, McKinsey, author of On Track) and Paul Sinclair (Compassionate Inquiry practitioner, trained and certified by Dr Gabor Maté).
THE PEOPLE WE WORK WITH
Our clients think for a living. Researchers at the front edge of their fields, executives, lawyers, entrepreneurs: people whose entire output runs through one instrument, the mind, and who look after that instrument the way most people look after a second-hand car. Keep it running, patch what rattles, push on. All the attention goes to the destination. Almost none goes to the equipment that has to carry them there.
For researchers, we call this the Academic Athlete paradox: top performers by every measure, at the forefront of their generation's thinking, trained for years in their discipline and never once in focus, recovery or resilience, the things their performance actually runs on. That is what our training changes. And we measure that it does.
Some arrive later, when the container itself is failing. Water is coming in faster than it can be patched, and new cracks keep appearing. Some know it acutely; most know it in their bones before they say it out loud. That is where Paul's work begins.
Three ways to work with us
Training for researchers and the institutions behind them
Productivity and resilience training that people actually use.
Mind Matters delivers multi-week trainings in personal productivity and in mental wellbeing and resilience, alongside targeted short-term workshops. Every long format begins and ends with validated measurement, so institutions see what changed, and what did not. In the most recent measured cohort, the share of researchers in the at-risk range for anxiety fell from 69% to 34% while working hours stayed flat. The full measured results →
Trusted by over 1,500 researchers at more than 30 institutions. Top tier consulting firms bring the same rigour to their teams.
Such a course should be completed by everyone within the Max Planck Society.
Dr Camila Hernández Frederick ·
Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry
One-to-one work for high achievers and performance you can sustain
For the ones who built the life that was supposed to be enough.
Paul Sinclair has an uncanny ability to cut through the noise and get to the heart of the matter. People spend years circling a pattern; he names it, often within the first session, and once it is named, it can be worked with. He is a certified Compassionate Inquiry practitioner, one of a small group personally trained and certified by Dr Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur over two and a half years. He works one-to-one with executives, entrepreneurs, lawyers, senior professionals and researchers on what sits underneath performance. Straight Talk is the structured way in: six sessions, measured at the start and again at the end.
I finally have my life energy back. I'm not going back to my old patterns.
Lawyer · one-to-one client
Measurement for coaches and organisations that need proof it worked
The Personal Resilience Indicator
Every coach, HR leader and board that invests in resilience hears one question: how do you know it worked? Almost nobody can answer it with a number. Not because the work does not matter, but because nobody measured before it began. So we built the instrument: the Personal Resilience Indicator, a validated psychometric measuring resilience across six domains and twelve drivers, validated on 803 working professionals. Our own trainings run on it, measured at both ends, and coaches certify with us to bring measurement into their own practice. Every PRI is debriefed. We never hand anyone a score without a conversation.
A unique diagnostic tool for measuring resilience.
Erwin Mosselmans · CERN
We will not take you on unless we are confident we can help.
That is the first of six principles Mind Matters has worked by from the start.
Integrity-driven
We are selective. If we do not believe we can get you the outcome you are after, we will tell you, and we will not take the engagement.
Science-based
Everything we teach is grounded in neuroscience, cognitive science and behavioural economics, and we always explain the why, not just the how.
Outcome-focused
We start by understanding where you actually stand before we define the path. Structure is not the enemy of depth; it is what makes depth usable.
Tailored
There is no one-size-fits-all programme here. The first conversations shape the approach, every time.
Confidential
We never disclose your name or any information about you without your explicit written permission. It is why the client voices on this site appear by role, not by name.
Accountable
We will hold you to a higher standard than you hold yourself, because that is what you came for.
Who is behind Mind Matters
DR NADINE SINCLAIR
Molecular biologist, strategy consultant, author. Nadine completed her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry before spending six years with McKinsey, and brings 30,000+ hours of hands-on project management experience built across 18 years as a strategy consultant. She is the author of On Track, the Amazon bestselling guide to leading research projects with clarity and confidence, and co-creator of the Personal Resilience Indicator.
PAUL SINCLAIR
Practitioner, trainer, former Royal Navy engineer. Paul is a certified Compassionate Inquiry practitioner, one of a small group personally trained and certified by Dr Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur over two and a half years. He is also a certified breathwork practitioner. His route here ran through a nuclear submarine, a war, three decades of touring the world's biggest stages, and the patterns he finally had to face in himself.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Three groups. Research institutions and their early-stage researchers, through measured training in productivity, project management and resilience. High achievers, executives, entrepreneurs, lawyers and senior professionals, through one-to-one work with Paul on what sits underneath performance. And coaches, practitioners and organisations who work with the Personal Resilience Indicator, the validated psychometric we created: coaches certify with us, organisations measure their workforce with it, and in both cases we do not just use the instrument, we train the trainers and set the standard. Different doors, one conviction: top performance and wellbeing are not at odds, and change can be measured.
For researchers and coordinators
Everything from a single talk to nine workshops to the two long formats: Fast Forward, the seven-week productivity and project management training, and the Resilience Training for stress, mental health and sustainable performance. The straight hierarchy: talks create awareness, workshops give a strong impulse, and behavioural change, the thing your researchers actually need, happens in the long formats, where every tool is applied inside their own live projects, week after week, with support while change is still hard. That is why both flagships are measured at the start and the end. Over 1,500 early-stage researchers from more than 30 institutions so far, including Max Planck institutes, CERN and centres of the Helmholtz Association.
A workshop is a good tool for what a workshop does: awareness and a strong impulse. It rarely changes how anyone works by the following Thursday, and we say so openly. Change that holds needs repetition inside real work. Our long formats run over weeks for that reason alone: each week one tool goes into your actual project, with practice between sessions and support while the new habit is still fragile. Awareness versus change. Different tools, different jobs, and we will tell you plainly which one your objective needs.
Yes, and you do not need to wait for your institution. Cohorts are mixed: coordinators book seats on a sliding scale tied to annual volume, and individual researchers join the same cohorts privately, through a training grant or paying themselves. If your graduate school is not yet a partner, join anyway, and we will give you a one-page summary that makes proposing it to them easy. More than one partnership started with a single researcher who went first.
For the one-to-one work
Paul Sinclair works with high achievers whose whole life runs through their heads: executives, entrepreneurs, lawyers, senior professionals, and researchers too. Most arrive at one of two points. Either they are sustaining top performance and can feel the cost rising, or the container has started failing: water coming in faster than it can be patched, new cracks appearing, and they know, intuitively or acutely, that it is a matter of time. Both are the right moment to come. The second is just louder.
The structured way into working with Paul, and the one with proof built in. You measure where you stand with the Personal Resilience Indicator, work through what the measurement surfaces across three months, then measure again. You leave with evidence of what changed, not a feeling about it. Six sessions is the container. The change is the point.
No. Paul is a certified Compassionate Inquiry practitioner, not a psychotherapist, and this work is not a substitute for medical or psychiatric care. It is structured one-to-one work on the patterns beneath how you think, feel and perform. Where clinical support is the right route, Paul will say so plainly.
For the Personal Resilience Indicator
Our answer to the question the whole industry avoids: how do you know it worked? Coaching and training are usually sold on testimonials, because nobody measures before they begin. We refused to work that way, so we built the instrument: 80 questions, about 20 minutes, measuring resilience as a trainable state across six domains and twelve drivers, validated on 803 working professionals with an overall reliability of 0.94. Every PRI is debriefed by a certified practitioner; we never hand anyone a score without a conversation. It measures every Resilience Training cohort and every Straight Talk engagement at both ends. Organisations use it to measure workforce resilience, confidentially and reported only in aggregate. It lives at personalresilienceindicator.com.
Yes, and this is where the PRI stops being our instrument and becomes a standard. We train the trainers: certification is taught live by the instrument's creators and licenses you to administer the PRI with your own clients and to deliver its debrief, the structured 90-minute session where a measured profile becomes a development plan, with supervised practice on real profiles. If you want your practice to stand on measurement rather than testimonials, certification is the way in. Everything about it lives on the PRI's own site, personalresilienceindicator.com.
For everyone
Completely, and at every level. In the one-to-one work, we never disclose your name or anything about you without your explicit written permission, from the very first message; it is why client voices on this site appear by role, not by name. In the trainings, your PRI results are yours: institutions receive aggregate pictures only, never an individual profile. That has been a working principle from the start, not a policy we added later.
HOW WE THINK
The articles are where we work in public: productivity, project management, resilience, and the research behind all three.
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