“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

~ Steve Jobs

Are you the kind of person who gets a high from cancelled plans? Yeah, me too. You also say ‘sorry’ a lot when it isn’t your fault, right?

Problem is, getting excited about cancelled…

Don’t deny it- it’s only wasting more time. Just admit it and we can move on.

Working alone means you inevitably find a millionty zillion other things to do than the one thing you’re meant to be doing; especially on a big job you’ve been given lots of time to do. Also when you have a tonne of different things to do and you don’t know which one to start.

I have two solutions for you:

1. Make a really cool excuse for not doing the thing you’re meant to be doing. Impress yourself with how cool you are.

2. Use the trick I’ve found works 100% of the millionty zillion times I’ve done it:

You have a bunch of things that…

5 years ago, my friend Naomi Brockwell and I collaborated on a children's book about Bitcoin for young kids. It explains cryptocurrency in a very simple and understandable way through the story of a young schoolboy who gets bullied on his way to school. You can buy it on Amazon or Apple Books.

Here’s a little teaser video about the book:

(I don’t work for MUD or anything. I just like the idea and it’s giving me exactly what it said it would.)

Mud Water. It sounds revolting. Whomever came up with the name needs a hard slap across the face with a sack of Matcha, but they’re definitely on to something.

The point at which Mud water (or MUD\WTR as it’s known) slid into my DMs, was the exact same point at which I’d just consumed my fifth doppio espresso for the day. It wasn’t pretty. I was a jittery, caffeine-addled sleepless mess.

The caffeine spiral happened after returning from…

The surprising benefits of keeping a diary, and the Stoic mindfulness “Last Time” meditation.

Every day for the past 13 years I’ve kept a digital diary of what I did that day. It’s part daily review, part ‘separating the days for each other’, part written memory to aid my faulty in-built one. It sends me an email asking, “What did you do today?” I reply. It goes into a secure cloud-based platform and gets stored. (I used to use OhLife.com, but now I use Maildiary.net)

It’s nothing fancy — I don’t go into detail about my feelings unless someone died, or I got a cartoon published in the New Yorker, or I get the…

“You can’t really hear yourself until you’re able to turn down the volume on everyone else.”

~ Cal Newport

In writing about an article by Arthur C. Brooks about Beethoven’s deafness, Cal Newport expounds on the vital importance of blocking out the noise of the crowds in order to hear your own voice.

The TL;DR of the article is that once Beethoven had gone completely deaf, his work became more original and innovative. It is surmised that this was due to his inability to be influenced by prevailing compositional fashions. …