Not to do list

Simple plan beats no plan

June 30, 2026

Is ‘winging it’ a real thing?

I don’t think that winging it is having no plan- your plan is to wing it.

AKA- your plan is to be pristinely present, playful and to rely on and trust your inherent abilities.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of having no plan. What do you want to achieve? How do you want to approach this?

Even a simple plan will do: I will focus on X. I will do Y.

A plan doesn’t haven’t to be a multi step opus. It can be an outcome, an orientation or a focus.

It can be simple.

And in the competition between a simple plan and no plan- you know who wins.

Make a little plan. It won’t take long.

Do

February 10, 2026

I’m enjoying the effect simple language changes has on the way I perceive the world and myself in it.

Here’s one I just noticed.

“Try my best” vs. “Do my best”

They could be seen interchangeable. But as Yoda himself knows, there’s a world of difference between try and do.

Don’t “try” to. DO your best.

Fundamentals

February 3, 2026

Isn’t it interesting how we can forget the fundamentals so easily?

A walk in the middle of the day will probably improve your mood. So will some exercise.

Completing a massive task in many small chunks (not all at once) is a lot less taxing.

Getting enough sleep will make the joys of life crisper.

Yeah, those fundamentals. Move, eat well and sleep enough- and keep reminding yourself to do it!

Tick ‘em, boy!

January 30, 2026

Do you like to do lists?

Yeah, I do too. I noticed recently that I have a reluctance to tick things off.

I come to the end of a task, I look at the item on the list and for some reason I don’t quite believe I finished the job.

Weird aye?

I found out it was because the names I gave each item were open ended. They were things like

“Make a start on project X”

“Feel prepared for event Y”

I’d make a start or do some prep but I never felt worthy to tick them off!

So not only am I learning the art of better defined outcomes, but also the faith to rock them off!

Outcomes by accident

January 28, 2026

Whether consciously or not, we all have outcomes as teachers.

And depending on the day, they will be of varying qualities. If I’m a bit hungry and tired, in the middle of a school day my outcome might be “To get through this in one piece”

On a better day, my outcome might be “To light these kids up and get them excited about this lesson”

Taking a second state my outcome is always a good idea. We’re all here to do a job and it’s too important to let outcomes be left to chance and to be decided by the whim of your biochemistry or mood.

What is your outcome for your work today?

Useful metrics

January 25, 2026

Measuring things is useful. But not all metrics are useful at all times.

Like anything, it depends on your outcome.

How many likes you get on a video might not be a useful metric when you’re using the video to explore an artistic idea for yourself.

But if you made the thing for the likes, you ought to measure them.

Weighing yourself mightn’t be helpful… but rating yourself on a scale of 1 – 10 on how comfortable and strong your body feels might be.

To know what to measure we must know what we’re after. And to measure the right thing, we have to be strong enough to only care about the thing we are actually measuring.

Some metrics are louder than others. Real growth comes when you can listen to only what matters for your journey.

Humans are so good at generalising

December 21, 2025

It appears in phrases like “You always do that” or “It’s always like this”.

If they really did always do the thing you’re talking about, they wouldn’t have time to eat or sleep. So no, they’re not ‘always’ doing that.

It can seem harmless, right? Yes, we all know we don’t mean they literally always do it- it’s just a figure of speech.

The problem with that is figures of speech tend to pop up in other places and they affect how we think about things and so what we do.

A powerful habit is to be able to destroy generalisations and vagueness. When we aren’t clear on the details of something, we have little hope of effectively dealing with it.

If you have a ‘mountain’ of paperwork you’re in a less powerful position than having 78 documents to read and sign.

Give yourself the best shot and remove the generalisations from your speech.

Indirect Paths

December 12, 2025

Some of the most sought after things have indirect paths. I’ve heard it described like a cat- the more you chase it, the further away it runs.

Its difficult to relax by pushing or forcing it- an action directed toward that outcome is counter to it’s realisation.

The same goes for money. If you chase money you will rarely find it.

If you want to be liked by others, you won’t get there by focussing on being liked by others.

If an actor wants a scene to land as sad, they don’t go for the emotion.

Great results come from indirect paths.

To relax we have to let go. To gain financial abundance we must create value. To be liked by others we must care for them in a way that speaks to them. To play the sad scene, the actor must fight tooth and nail to hold on.

What are you going for directly that actually requires an alternate route?

Great acting is unselfconscious.

December 11, 2025

It’s one of the first things I learned from my teachers at drama school. It’s being able to be watched and, like many of the most sought after skills, the path to getting there is indirect.

We cannot push to be unselfconscious and we can’t even pull to do it. When you try to be comfortable being watched, that very tension manifests in the opposite which is self consciousness.

So how do we do it? Well I don’t have all the answers, but there seem to be patterns that help actors get there.

Listen. Miranda Harcourt taught me about ‘reversing the flow’. She said it’s like the selfie function on the phone is switched off and you’re staring directly at the world and people around you. Listen with all of you; your physical senses and your psychic senses. Someone who is listening, truly listening, has a great chance of being unselfconscious. It’s pretty awesome to watching someone who is listening and for them not to be monitoring or adjusting themselves.
Place your focus. All acting is is doin things- it’s in the name. So great actors have the ability to place their attention on an activity and wholeheartedly do it. They don’t feign doing it or display that they’re doing it; they really do it- in the imaginative reality of the piece. Believe it or not those are two different things; You can feign an action in imagined reality (bad acting) or you can really do it in imagined reality (good acting).

We can’t create unselfconsciousness, but we can place our focus outwards and invite it in.

A time for learning and a time for delivery

December 7, 2025

Learning moments and delivery moments.

We have to choose what we want.

I was exporting a large number of edited video files a few nights ago and as I geared up to hit export, I realised it may have been possible to do it a different, maybe more efficient way. I did a quick google and sure enough, there it was; this other method I could use and would probably use on into the future

I had a choice- do I go ahead with my work as planned or do I take the time to learn this new thing.

The new thing would have been useful… but mostly if I knew it right now. It’s not so useful if I add the learning and implementation time. And I needed these things exported right now.

I think of this as ‘11th hour learning’. It wasn’t the time to learn something new.

There’s a vocal warm up tape that I use before shows, though it is designed for auditions.

There’s this part that cracks me up where she goes “Remember this is an audition, you want to show them what you can do not try anything new!” I used to giggle at this in my actorly way because surely it’s all about the discovery of newness each time! Well I think she was speaking specifically about singing auditions in which you definitely don’t want to try belting for the first time.

The more I think about it though, the more I agree.

There’s a time for learning and there’s a time for delivery. And sometimes you just have to get on with your job and deliver the goods.

You can have both, just not at the same time I don’t think.

JUSTIN ROGERS

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