Slave Voyages

The politics (apology, reparations) of the transatlantic slave trade is currently being highlighted by the UK Royal visit to the Caribbean. When I visited Brasil a few years ago I became much better informed of the role that country played in this as well. Reading the numbers gets mind boggling after a while so I

Getting Ideas (Walking Versus Sitting)

I read this recently: “The world is loud. A podcast on the commute, a playlist at the gym, an audiobook on the school run, voice notes at double speed. Some of us haven’t had a thought on our own in weeks. So in 2027 we think more people will start leaving the headphones at home

Wisdom And Growing Older

Rather beautiful and eloquent quote from Bertrand Russell: “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and

The Message And Messenger

“Evaluate every lesson twice: once when considering the messenger, and once when taking the messenger out.” From Scott Berkun on Substack. Talking to someone can be inspiring, annoying, amusing, depressing, surprising or exhilarating. However if they’re actually making an insightful point it’s often good to separate that from the associated emotions to fully benefit from

Information As A River

Interesting thought from Oliver Burkeman, well-known from his books on productivity and it’s limits (my emphasis in bold): “To return to information overload: this means treating your “to read” pile like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket

The Underappreciated Voice

I’ve been dipping into the interesting book Do Nothing: How To Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing and Underliving by Celeste Headlee. The extracts below reminded me how easily we take the voice, eyes and ears for granted in communications even though immeasurably more sophisticated and advanced than any smartphone: “Human beings are perhaps the best

Moving On In New Ways

Somewhat by accident I listened to a radio programme by Matthew Syed on what we value and why. For me, I interpreted one of the powerful stories discussed slightly differently as ‘moving on in new ways’. It centred on the classical violinist and prodigy Min Kym having her very expensive Stradivarius violin stolen by professional

Isolation And Conversation

There has been a lot of discussion in the media on the reduced role of conversation in society with the increasing use of digital tools. In addition in this hectic world people may be concerned that conversations may be non-productive or simply not interesting/fun. Surprisingly some of these biases may be unimportant in practice (here’s

Seeing Things From Another Angle

I’ve written a few articles on the skill of better noticing things (in business and everyday life) and then, if relevant, joining up some areas/dots in an impactful manner. As an extreme visual example of noticing I found this (above): vertical panoramas of churches. Usually when you visit a church you look straight ahead with

AI And The Information Market

From Tiago Forte: “You may never have conceived of information as a market, but it absolutely is. You invest your time, attention, and effort into collecting, organizing, and utilizing information, and you expect a certain return on those investments, whether that’s measured in income, business results, creative fulfillment, or social status. Information is a market,