Yesterday, I nearly ran a woman over with my car. Luckily, I was looking for parking on a side-road, and wasn't doing 20mph. From the headline, you might think I was dicking about on my phone when this happened. Nope. She was. I saw her walk across the pavement staring at her phone. I thought she would stop at the curb, but she just ke...

I've been thinking quite a bit about doing things for the last time this week. The inspiration for these thoughts highlighted the fact that there are distinct types of Last Time events. The first type I'll call Unaware Last Time - the things we do for the last time, without knowing it is the last time. There was a last time I carried e...

I recently spent a few days in Stockholm, Sweden. I loved the city and am looking forward to returning for a few days in January. Whilst sitting in a pancake cafe, I sat listening to the conversation at the table next to me, as well as the girls running the place. (I was not eves-dropping, I don't speak a word of Swedish.) I love the s...

At first glance, it might be safe to assume that by simply doing something for a very long time ensures that you will get better and better at that something. I recently explicitly came to the realisation that this is not always, maybe hardly ever the case. Here's the example that made this clear to me. Lars Ulrich, the drummer in Meta...

On one of my daily morning walks, I listened to a podcast which ended up discussing many aspects of death. Not so much anything morbid or sad about it, but more towards the amazing creative restriction on life death really is. This was not related to any particular way of dying, but death itself. It is the restriction on life, provided...

My brother Jean and I had a few days in Holland last week to see Metallica live on their new tour. The shows were great, but that is not what this idea is about. On the flight to Amsterdam, there was not real way of know who were travelling for King's Day and who were travelling for Metallica. Waiting for our flight out of Amsterdam on...

The title is not simply there to get your attention, it also summarises my thinking and indicates the seriousness I see in this simple question: When should I let my daughters have their own smartphones? I’ve heard multiple people describe TikTok as being very similar to heroin, in the way it affects the brain. Cal Newport mentions a s...

Had a curious experience last night. Like Schrödinger's cat, being alive and dead at the same time, I found my self in the same taxi as my family, but traveling on a different road in the complete opposite direction. We returned from Holiday in Portugal, and landed at Heathrow Airport. We live pretty much halfway between Heathrow Airpo...

Earlier this week, the girls' Grandmother was in the house, when it became clear that O, age 9, was making me a cup of tea. Grandmother's response was: "With boiling hot water?" My answer: "Yes". (Inside I thought, well, no good tea is made with cold water). Grandmother promptly decided this was too much and she left the house. I've wi...

Here's a novel idea for the education system as a whole: For each child, track their progress made, and improvement, not just a single mark on the day. What made me think about this? Eldest daughter, A, received her result for an Algebra test from 2 weeks ago. She got a really good mark, but she is still disappointed. I started thinkin...

Had an interesting conversation with Sophie over the weekend. Our eldest, A, started learning Chemistry at school this term, and loves it. At the same time I'm spending more time studying computer programming and building software projects. It struck me that for both myself and A, the hardware required to acquire these new skills, was ...

Something I've experienced over and over, is that spending more time thinking about what I need to get done, markedly improves what eventually gets done. In this I am not referring to the very critical thinking you need to do in order to discern what it is you need to do. I am specifically referring to the thinking required AFTER you'v...

I have been known to have a higher than normal interest in systems and processes. For me, an awful lot of our day to day can be described as a system or process, maybe that is why I like engineering so much. Now, think what you will about them, but nobody has systems and processes nailed down like Amazon. They have to, otherwise they'd...

I recently noticed something on my drive home from dropping the girls off at school, which reminded me of a section in Jordan B Peterson's 12 Rules For Life, about the fact that we are actually blind, at least 90% so. His discussing mentions it in the context of the available spectrum of light, compared to the tiny portion of that spec...

Why do we punish? It seems there is either no intention behind the punishment we dole out as individuals, or as a society, or, we are using the exact same motivation for punishment in all instances. Neither of those options seems to achieve anything. Examples of punishment I've been thinking about: 1 - Corporal punishment - spanking a ...

In the lead-up to the email I never wanted to send, I had some very frank and honest conversations with some of the people closest to me. One of those people started an email reply with something like: "I don't mean to be unkind...". This was then followed with some very honest and frank feedback on several aspects of what we were aimi...

I love Cal Newport and the concept of Deep Work. I've always viewed it solely within the context of the work I have to get done. However, over the last week I started realising that the same principles can be applied to the times when you specifically are NOT trying to get work done, but simply living an experience. I'll share a couple...

T. Harv Eker talks about a concept of `stepping into the corridor` in order to unlock or gain access to new opportunities. The metaphor is simple. You current situation is like being inside a room, with a single door. As long as you stay inside this room, the single door is you only option. We sometimes mistake this for a binary choice...

Since sending the email I never wanted to send, I have been struck by the kindness and understanding from so many people. Yes, there are some people who are upset or angry, and I completely understand their frustrations. However, this was a very hard decision to make. Some of the comments suggest that this was a decision made over week...

This morning, after informing our small team, I sent an email to all Macanta customers, informing them that we have taken the decision to close Macanta down. I imagine the next few days will be filled with a mix of good and bad. Right now, I have developed a splitting headache, so taking the rest of the afternoon off. Still lots to do....