Take your own advice
August 29, 2026
The advice you give someone else is often the advice you need to follow yourself.
I mean, I find this is true with everything I write on here…
Post Category:
Difficulty
Don’t force it
August 26, 2026
When I was a kid I remember doing a puzzle and being frustrated that a piece wouldn’t fit.
As I think we’ve all done, I tried my best to jimmy a piece in that looked like it should fit.
My mum said “Don’t force it”
When a piece isn’t fitting, forcing it will just break the puzzle…and you’ll get frustrated too.
To advance, sometimes we need to do less, not more.
Take more time, not be quicker.
Both are counter intuitive when we want to take action.
But don’t force it.
Go in with a question
August 24, 2026
It’s easy to want all the answers.
If you have all the answers you feel certain, maybe you look cool and you might even be able to relax.
In lieu of ‘all the answers’ though, we’d do better to just go in with a whole lot of questions.
You don’t need to know it all when you have questions. But you do need to give your all to explore.
Do I need more patience, or more action?
August 20, 2026
We know good things take time. But in practice, time feels a lot longer than that maxim lets on.
Exercise feels long because it’s hard on the body. Before you start, “good things take time” sounds true and useful. Halfway through the strain of actually doing it, that maxim doesn’t help you much at all.
So it can be genuinely hard to know: is the reason I’m not hitting my goal that I need to push harder, or wait longer, or change what I’m doing altogether?
One answer is just to do it a little longer. But you don’t want to run the same action with no results for too long either, because you’ll run out of playing time.
The real trick is the balance between more action, different action, and more time. Like a good cake, if you get the ratio right, it comes out delicious.
Life is a puzzle, not Russian roulette
August 17, 2026
I think it’s important to remember that life is a puzzle, not Russian roulette.
With a puzzle, you try a piece. Maybe it doesn’t fit. That’s fine, you put it down and you try another one. It probably won’t fit either. Still fine. You just keep trying pieces until one does. Nothing about a wrong piece ends the game.
Russian roulette doesn’t work like that. Get it wrong, and you don’t get to play again.
We do well to remember that most things in life are a puzzle, not Russian roulette. The piece that doesn’t fit isn’t a verdict. It’s just information. Put it down, pick up the next one, and keep going.
Who not how
August 11, 2026
Once you know what and why, you shouldn’t ask how.
You’ll end up doing it yourself.
Ask “Who?”
Then find a person to carry out the how.
It won’t always be that hard
July 31, 2026
Things that start off being difficult are usually things that are worth it in the long run.
Remembering that may help us to stick at it in the beginning.
Because it won’t always be that hard.
Do you remember something that’s easy to you know that once seemed impossible?
yeah, keep going.
What’s useful and what’s hiding?
July 28, 2026
There’s a quiz that happens every day. It’s called the “are you hiding?” quiz.
Certain things present themselves throughout our day that pose as helpful but really they’re helping us only to hide from our real work.
Sorting your computer desktop is one. Planning how you will do something when you actually already know how to do it is another.
The big clue is if it’s a step removed from the scary thing- but it might still feel like it’s in the same area.
“I’ll just watch a few more videos on this first before I get going”.
If it’s scary and awkward and a bit unknown you’re probably not hiding.
Spend less time hiding.
A walk doesn’t take very long
July 22, 2026
But you almost always are glad you went on it.
There are lots of things that are good for us that don’t take long that we seem to avoid.
And the things we’d rather do takes longer (like watching an episode of a tv show)
So would you rather take a shorter amount of time, feel reset and feel energised…
…or take a longer amount of time, doing something slightly easier but that doesn’t really serve you?
Things I learned from weight lifting: Pt 2
July 18, 2026
You need little rewards.
There’s a spreadsheet I follow at each gym session that tells me what I lifted last time and I what I want to lift this time.
It worked fine and then I discovered you can change the colours of the boxes…
So now every time I lift slightly more than last week or increase my reps, I get to change the colour of the box GREEN!
Now when I go into the spreadsheet at the gym, I see green boxes dotted all over the place.
This little visual reward seems to give me the boost I need in those moments.
You need little rewards.
