Unexpectedly, I’m kicking my heels in Matlock Bath today, which seems a mini-mecca for bikers here in Derbyshire. There’s everything from an outrageous Kawasaki H2 to the sedate Royal Enfield Bullet, detouring through the predictable Harleys and R1200GS. There aren’t many that I wouldn’t describe as beautiful – not so much for their looks or handling, as their emotive power even when stood still. To … Continue reading Matlock Bath Biker Bounty

One of the most usefully perverse ways for me to get stuff done, is to take things off my to-do list every day. According to Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies, I’m a questioner with streaks of rebel. I don’t wholly subscribe to the tendencies theory, but there’s definitely some correlation with how I respond to expectations and that’s why I’ve come to manage the to-do list … Continue reading Shortening the ToDo List.

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine for well over a year now and I’m really happy with it. It feels good to be one step further from Google’s corrosive privacy invasion. When I first looked at DuckDuckGo, I noticed these odd things called !Bang searches. I scoffed at little; how wholly unnecessary! It takes a good engine and large index to persuade … Continue reading Bang! Searches – how I scoffed.

The challenge I have at work at the moment, is to implement some of our services in a different environment to the one we’ve been using. The new environment itself is unfamiliar. How to get things done in this environment isn’t clearly understood and there isn’t a guide to turn to. We’re spending time and effort feeling like we might be banging or heads against … Continue reading Repetitive knowns vs figuring it out.

In my day job I’m doing a lot of learning right now. There’s a need to get things done quickly, amid a recognition that collectively we don’t have all the skills we’d like. In some organisations there could be a lot of defensive behaviour going on; delightfully, we don’t have that. We can safely say “I don’t know, but I’m working on it”. Knowing we … Continue reading The safety of “I don’t know”.

I know I want to exercise more. No-one is stopping me and nothing physically prevents me. So it’s simple; I can just do more exercise. Just doing more exercise doesn’t feel easy! ‘Better than Before‘ by Gretchen Rubin is my next read. It’s a book about habits and, so the cover tells me, a ‘force for real change’. I’ll read it, which is simple, then … Continue reading Simple? Yep. But easy?

Libraries. Stack Overflow. Wikipedia. Skillshare. TED. Duolingo. So, so many could be listed; large and small, general and niche. What a treasure each of them can be when we make use of them. It used to be that our learning was limited and very sadly that’s still the case in large parts of the world. Increasingly though, it’s our desire and the choices we make … Continue reading Free resources are awesome!

Self-efficacy. An individual’s belief in their innate ability to achieve their goals. Locus of Control. An individual’s belief in the degree of influence they have on the outcome of events in their lives. The word and phrase are linked, but not the same. I’ve been questioning my self-efficacy when I think actually the crux of my motivation problem is that my locus is external. Which … Continue reading New word. New phrase. New understanding.

Today had an unfortunate episode – a disagreement and upset that I regret happened. In the hour or so after that though, I reached a deeper understanding and appreciation for how meditation encourages us simply to observe our thoughts. As I walked my dog following the upset, my mind kept looping over thoughts about what had just happened. How I was right, but at the … Continue reading Observing thoughts

If thinking back from a place that seems unfair, recognising the choices you’ve made helps absorb the lessons available. That’s not to say it’ll all suddenly seem fair. It doesn’t mean anything immediately changes, apart from your perspective. Acknowledging past decisions (even passive ones, which is deciding to do nothing) reinforces how we have choices today. I have often been frustrated that I don’t have … Continue reading Choose your lessons.