Making better use of Kindle Highlights 1
I love how easy it is to store highlights on Kindle. Swipe and that’s it. But I hate how hard it is to then do something meaningful with those highlights. Getting them “out of Amazon” is a pig, and I wonder sometimes if I should just go back to my old ways – dog ear […]
Snippets from Black Teacher
I cannot begin to do this book justice, nor will these snippets. so I’d really highly recommend reading Beryl Gilroy’s wonderful memoir in full. Of Lady Anne: “I could never really grasp how sincere she was in anything she said. She was able to laugh or cry inside without moving a single muscle in her […]
Snippets from The Old Boys
Really enjoyed William Trevor’s The Old Boys. “As the future narrows one turns too much towards the past. One sees it out of proportion, as though it matters.” “Mr Nox was not lonely … but he had faced loneliness as a boy and come to terms with it. It was like getting over measles, knowing […]
The Jaffa Cake Fitness Plan – Efficiency vs Effectiveness
I wonder if sometimes looking for the most efficient solution might actively damage our chances of finding the most effective solution. Let’s take an example “fitness drive”. Being lazy, I’ll usually want to do this in the most efficient way, so I’ll lie on the sofa, ploughing through the internet, clicking,...
Snippets from A Gentleman in Moscow
From A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles Tiptoeing down the stairs of reason “Whatever the endeavour, if the setting is glorious and the tenor grandiose, it will have its adherents. In fact, as the locations for duels became more picturesque and the pistols more finely manufactured, the best-bred men proved willing to defend their...
Snippets from The Science of Story
The cure for the horror is story We know how this ends. You’re going to die and so will everyone you love. And then there will be heat. All the change in the universe will cease, the stars will die. And there will be nothing left of anything but infinite dead freezing void. Human life, […]
Being “nobody-but-yourself”
In the face of "a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else" and to make you a "consumer", it feels very easy to follow the crowd and feel like you are "losing yourself"
Jaron Lanier, BUMMERs and Being Human
I’ve just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s 10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts. Some are more persuasive than others, but they’ve made me decide to delete my Facebook account for 2020. The arguments are all linked and as follows: There are plenty of other ways to enjoy the internet and all it provides...
Trust and Whole Selves
This video is worth a watch, I think. John Mackey, founder of Whole Foods, makes some great points about people in organisations. At its simplest, viewing people as ”Human Resources” gets it wrong because it limits. It ignores the idea that people come to the workplace wanting to bring their whole selves. It ties in […]
Facts, Stories & Brain Scans
“We tend to use the word story casually, as if stories and narratives were ephemeral decorations for some unchanging underlying reality. The deeper neurological truth is that stories do not cloak reality but create it, triggering cascades of perception and motivation. The proof is in brain scans: When we hear a fact, a few isolated...