In Katy Milkman’s recent newsletter, she interviews Alison Wood Brooks about how to reappraise or reframe anxiety. This from Alison makes a lot of sense: “One way is just talking about your feelings differently. The way we label our emotions verbally to ourselves, out loud and to other people is consequential. So, when someone says, “H...

I finished reading The Guest List a couple of nights ago. This was a book recommended to me when I asked people via social media for some fiction suggestions a couple of months back. I can’t recall who mentioned this, but I’m so glad they did. I loved it! The setting is a remote island off the Irish coast. Guests are heading over for t...

I love the not-to-do list Anne-Laure Le Cunff shared on the Ness Labs website recently. I’ve copied the first three of the ten below, but do take a look at the rest: “1. Do not constantly check your emails. Instead, batch your email-checking time in one or two slots during the day. Some people also add an auto-responder to let senders ...

Morgan Housel shared this quote in a recent blog post of his, and I couldn’t agree more: “Psychologist Amos Tversky once said “the secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”” Work can easily become little more than completing one task after another. Very ofte...

It’s hard to believe another six weeks have already passed. Regular readers of my blog will know what I've decided to take a week off from writing here every six weeks. I consider it a sabbath or rest week. I also break from social media, news, and my exercise regime. And I then use that time to freshen things up: read more, journal mo...

Since around October 2019 I’ve struggled with back pain. I hasn’t affected me much during the daytime, but it has caused me considerable discomfort at night. Until the start of this year, it would be a very rare occurrence for me to sleep through the night. Typically I would wake several times – often for significant amounts of time. I...

My friend, Geoffrey, sent me a link to a delightful article about hand-writing last week. I loved this paragraph in particular: “I believe that handwriting still serves a deep purpose in our lives and that letting it fade away will be a loss to our spirit. Precisely because it is no longer essential for communication, handwriting can n...

There’s lots of wisdom in Morgan Housel’s latest blog post. He explores the problems of how we perceive the people around us, and how, more often than not, what you see is not what you get. And that causes us problems. He writes: “When you are keenly aware of your own struggles but blind to others’, it’s easy to assume you’re missing s...

If you have access to Between the Covers (on BBC Two and iPlayer here in the UK), it’s well worth a watch if you’re a fellow book-lover. I mentioned the TV show a month or so ago, and it continues to cause me to add new books to my book pile. One of those recent additions was The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré. After hearing A...

I’ve been watching Mare of Easttown with my wife this week. Still have a few episodes to go, but what great TV! (UK readers, it’s available on Sky Atlantic or Now TV with an entertainment pass. If you’re in the US, it’s on HBO.) First off, Kate Winslet is her usual, brilliant self. I love the fact we get to see top notch actors in tele...

I wrote last week about multitasking. Pointed out there’s no such thing. It was unlikely a complete shock to discover that our attempts at multitasking are massive productivity killers. But is there a danger in being too quick to pick one thing to focus on? Anne-Laure Le Cunff thinks so. Her recent article for Ness Labs makes the case ...

I love it when a provocative quote gets inside my head and starts messing with me! That’s been the case all day today since reading this from St. Francis of Assisi: “We can patiently accept not being good. What we cannot bear is not being considered good, not appearing good.” I think that’s something that fits in the category of ‘bruta...

Avni Patel Thompson wrote a moving piece on her blog recently*, reflecting on beauty and brokenness. Her words are powerful and true: “I’ve been thinking a lot about “kintsugi” over the past couple of days. It’s the Japanese art of putting together broken shards of pottery – only instead of using a clear glue, you use a lacquer dusted ...

If you’re anything like me, you may have an unfortunate tendency to make negative occurrences a bigger deal than they really are. Something goes wrong and your response is: ‘This day is ruined!’ But does the whole day have to be written off, just because something has gone off track? Gretchen Rubin doesn’t think so. I love what she say...

If you’ve not yet seen Ethan Hawke’s TED talk, ‘Permission to be creative’, you should make the time. It’s nine minutes long and full of sage insight. It’s a healthy reminder of the roles creativity and art need to play in our lives. These comments in particular resonated with me: “Do you think human creativity matters? Well, hmm. Most...

I was reading through my collection of quotes in my Notes app earlier, and I came across this from Fr. Richard Rohr: “You practice non-addiction every day by letting go, not needing, and not desiring anything in particular. Fasting, detachment, and simplicity were the original words for non-addiction in the spiritual traditions.” Readi...

Here in England this last week there’s been a story in the sports pages about a debutant playing his first match for the England cricket team. Sadly, the story hasn’t been about his cricketing prowess. Instead it’s been all about some tweets he posted. Nine years ago. When he was a teenager. And here’s the thing: they were vile. Racist...

Reading Morgan Housel’s latest blog post, I enjoyed this story told by Kurt Vonnegut: “True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money th...

I always enjoy reading Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter. And his latest issue is no exception. In particular, his comments about multitasking were a good reminder: “And just to spell it out: the point here isn't "stop multitasking and focus on one thing, and you're a bad person if you don't!" Rather, it's that (with a few technical excepti...

I am acutely aware that holidays are a thing of privilege. I’ve spent enough time with people both home and abroad to know that many people never get to go anywhere. Sure, there may be other factors sometimes, but it’s pretty much always money why they can’t. It’s a good reminder that, though I may not be rich by some people’s standard...

I’ve shared an entry from Rebecca Toh’s blog before. And I love another recent post of hers titled A beautiful life. I’ll include a few lines below, but you should go and read the whole piece: “A beautiful picture of your life isn’t the same as a beautiful life… …A beautiful life is one lived awake, or one lived trying to be awake… …A ...

Having written yesterday about talent not being enough and the importance of hard work, I came across the following segment in an interview with Kate Winslet in the New York Times: “Ms. Winslet has been known to warn young actors on a set not to confuse social media fame with the hard work of acting. “I have certainly heard, twice, of ...

When we look at others who are extremely good at something, we assume it’s all natural talent. And, thus, unfair. Why do they get all the talent? We all probably have particular people who we’re especially jealous of. Me? It’s Lin-Manuel Miranda. He seemed to get far to big a piece of the talent pie! I was reminded of this discovering ...

I wrote about the podcast Learning How to See a while back. If you didn’t take the time to listen back then, I’d still recommend it. The six episodes walk you through 13 biases that Brian McClaren has identified. Biases that get in the way of us seeing clearly. In a recent blog post, Richard Rohr (who joins Brian and Jacqui Lewis on th...

I watched Friends: The Reunion yesterday lunchtime. I put it on while eating my sandwich, expecting to watch fifteen minutes or so, and then head back upstairs to my office. A little shy of two hours later, the final credits were rolling. I loved it! Friends was the perfect time for me when it first aired. I was at university from 1996...

I watched the first couple of episodes of The Me You Can’t See on Apple TV+ this week. What a powerful series this is shaping up to be. Forget the headlines about Prince Harry you may have seen. There’s a depth and richness to this documentary series on mental health and well-being that goes beyond the tabloid news stories. Though I’m ...

I enjoyed this response by the actor Mads Mikkelsen when asked about his philosophy in an interview for Vulture*: “My approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’...

I while ago I put a request out on my Instagram Stories asking for fiction recommendations. My fiction pile was down to nothing, and I was struggling for inspiration. Thankfully, friends and followers came through and my fiction pile has been thoroughly reestablished. One of the recommendations was The Power of the Dog. It’s actually t...

My cousin, Peter Radford, wrote a heartfelt post recently that touched a nerve. He addresses the reality that all our online meetings and working from home make it easier than ever to fake it when it comes to expressing how we are feeling: “Faking has got easier this year. Remote team meetings are easier to fake than in-person meetings...

It’s Friday. It’s nearly the weekend. So here’s something a little lighter for today’s post. I thought I’d share some of my favourite TV shows I’ve been watching lately. I’ll start with ‘Roadkill’. This is a BBC political drama starring Hugh Laurie. It’s four one hour episodes. And – confession time – I watched them all last night! It’...