I recently read 40 Lessons from 32 years and it inspired me to write my own list of things I believe to be true, informed by my experiences in life. I'm curious what resonates with you. It’s never about the thing When you’re arguing with someone about something, you think you’re arguing about that thing, but you're often talking about ...

I first discovered Buckethead when I was playing Jordan on Guitar Hero 2. I was 12 years old, living in the UK, and I'd been struggling to pass the song for weeks, deploying star power in Solo B and desperately flailing to reach the Blue Note of Freedom. It was a monster, and it took over a year for someone to 100% the song. When I saw...

I got to spend last weekend in Finland, cheering Charlie along in the 70.3 IRONMAN World Championship after she won her age group in Seattle last year. Her family were there too, flying out from both coasts of the US for this potential once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, immersing themselves in the world of Ironman for the first time. As b...

I just read 100 ways to slightly improve your life and was inspired to make some additions, here’s another 20: 1. Ask your neighbors for a favor so you can return a favor for them later. 2. Don’t check your phone for the first 30 minutes after you wake up. 3. Wash dishes by hand without music. Did it become enjoyable? 4. Bake a dessert...

"Manage your career like you manage your product". It's a pretty innocuous phrase on the surface, and sounds rather wise - of course I should be intentional about my career and set objectives and key results to track progress. This phrase has been coined by Shreyas Doshi, ex-Stripe, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, now a start-up advisor who co...

I was recently reading "IronFit Secrets for Half Iron-Distance Triathlon Success" and after noticing a couple of similarities in how to approach training for triathlons with how to approach the PM role, I was inspired to write this post. #1 - The overload principle The book lays out the most fundamental concept of athletic training is ...

One thing that’s been running around in my mind recently is that good products change our expectations. One thing I love about my Kindle is how I can long press on a word and get the definition for a word. I don’t have to pull out my phone and search for a definition, it’s right there by pressing on the word. It’s so good that I found ...

Warren Buffett says "praise by name, criticize by group". This means when something goes well, name the individuals that made it a success, e.g., "Bob did an amazing job", and when something goes badly, refer to the group, e.g., "Our company made poor investment choices", and keep people's name's out of it. I think this is great advice...

You've probably heard Gimme Shelter, even if you don't know it by name. It's in practically every Martin Scorsese film, and one of the most popular rock songs of all time. And you'll have heard the screams of Merry Clayton backing vocals in the song: “"Rape, murder, it's just a shot away It's just a shot away"” This backing vocal turne...

One of the inspirations for this mail is from Steve Clayton (communications at Microsoft) and his similar named Friday Things. In his post this week, The Friday Thing #795, he returns to the original purpose of the mail, sharing a cool things he’s stumbled across on the internet, and in that spirit here’s a cool thing I found this week...

I almost missed this one this week. It’s been a busy one and no-one reads these, getting distribution for a personal newsletter is an interesting one because until I define my niche there's no reason to subscribe to a smorgasbord of posts. All to say that it would be easy to give this week a miss. But sticking to goals is important, an...

I came across Sounds Of The Radio from their post on Buckethead's song Soothsayer (a masterpiece dedicated to his Aunt Suzie). The blog post included some interesting details on the song, like how Soothsayer was written for Buckethead's sick Aunt Suzie, and it wasn't the first song Buckethead had dedicated to someone, Colma which had a...

Arc - a revolutionary browser Ever since I came across Arc from watching their CEO react to MKBHD's review, I've been blown away by the product and their company, it's a breath of fresh air in a tech culture that puts data over feelings. Arc helped me find peace online by solving my tab overload problem. No longer am I closing dozens o...

If you want to build a habit and stick with it over time, you better make it as easy possible to keep doing that task. I’ve used a couple of blogging platforms over the years which I've quickly dropped, but I’m feeling different this time around and I've kept the streak going longer than before. I'm confident using HEY World because pu...

All opinions are my own and aren't representative of Microsoft. "the matrix background in dark blue with AI lightbulbs digital art" - DALL·E. Two AI announcements today; the release of GPT-4, and generative AI in Google Workplace, met with a mix of excitement and skepticism. Firstly, we've seen incredible progress. GPT has gone from fa...

I was reading Little Ways the World Works by Morgan Housel at The Collaborative Fund and came across this neat example of four sets of numbers with the same average, variance, and correlation, that couldn’t look more different when they’re graphed. Sometimes the summary isn’t enough, you have to look at the data yourself.

“Have a safe flight”, friends and colleagues wished me for my recent trip from Seattle to LA. But I wouldn't be flying, I’d be taking the route less traveled - a 36-hour Amtrak service down the west coast, the Coast Starlight. The Coast Starlight route is heralded for its gorgeous scenery which is where the initial appeal of booking th...

I've enjoyed reading Four Thousand Weeks recently. It's brought a bit of peace to my life. At its core it's an anti-productivity book, going against most other productivity books like Getting Things Done and arguing that we live such short lives (four thousand weeks) that no amount of prioritization and task management system will ever...

I was reading America’s fever of workaholism is finally breaking from the Atlantic and stumbled across a neat framing of different goals we have in life - "resume virtues" and "eulogy virtues". “"Résumé virtues are what people bring to the marketplace: Are they clever, devoted, and ambitious employees? Eulogy virtues are what they brin...

I stumbled across Brett Rheeder's short Continuum a few nights ago, and wow... two minutes of pure joy. Subtractive design at its best. One rider and his bike, tracking shots where momentum matches perfectly in cuts, and a minimal soundtrack that cuts to silence at the final jump and leaves you in awe. Flow state captured perfectly. Br...

I was reading Jack Raines post on When Diversification Dies which covers his simple investment strategy of buying and holding the S&P 500. It's not a crazy investment strategy. In fact, it's arguably the industry standard for buy and hold indexers. Warren Buffet tells the average investor to buy and hold the S&P 500. Jack Bogle, founde...

A unposted recap of my favorite things in 2022 was sat in my drafts when I came to write the friday mail, so I thought it'd be fun given that we've just left January and entered February to post the recap from 2022 and think about my favorite things from 2023 so far. It feels so early, but we're almost 10% through the year already, so ...

I was playing guitar the other night and had a song come into my head from a band I listened to as a teenager; Bad Lizard, a small rock band from Chippenham, the bassist was my friend's dad. I used to have their self-titled song, 'Bad Lizard' on my iPod and blast it when I was in the mood. I'd ripped it from the CD into iTunes. The son...

Two disconnected thoughts on time and results this week. On the value of an uninterrupted hour (or eight) ⏳ I've been listening a bunch of Jason Fried's interviews recently and this one had a great bit about the power of uninterrupted work. Jason was talking about most workers rarely get more than a few hours of contiguous uninterrupte...

There can be days where nothing grabs your attention and you feel there's a lack of interesting TV shows and films, it's all the same old. But earlier this week I stumbled across a Conan O'Brien episode with Kevin Nealon and I immediately felt a connection. The sort of connection where you feel you'll spend hours binging through their ...

When I saw All Quiet on the Western Front recommended on Netflix with a reference to 1917 I was hoping for good cinematography and it went far beyond my expectations. Here's some of my favorite shots: The quiet before the storm The first shot of battle A bitter morning A break from war A war of two classes How the other half lives I wa...

I often feel that incentives for businesses don’t align with doing good business, such as Microsoft showing ads in the Window’s 11 Start Menu, but on the occasion where rejecting typical business practices to put the customer first actually results in the business being more successful it’s a great reminder that you can improve profita...