There was a wonderful moment on holiday in NYC last week. On our first day in the city I’d taken my sons to the huge Uniqlo store on Fifth Avenue. As I was leaving I noticed a stack of Uniqlo ‘LifeWear’ magazines by the door. It was definitely one of…

In his early twenties Ian Rogers, chief experience officer at cryptocurrency company Ledger, got a tattoo on his forearms. The tattoo stretches across his right hand and onto his fingers. In an interview with the Financial Times in 2018 Ian explains that the tattoo was his younger self seeking to…

A few years ago my wife Zoë started an experiment. She set her alarm for 5.30am. Already a fairly early riser, she pushed her start time back a good hour. Zoë says she started the experiment as a way to counter the sense she had of the day always running…

In the beginning It was March 1977, I was eight years old. One day at school I swallowed a marble. I wrote a three page story all about it, ‘An hour to remember’. It included my mother’s reaction, the trip to hospital, what happened next. I think of it as my very first…

It was late March 2020. The sun was shining, the UK was in lockdown and the pandemic had mothballed most of my talks and workshops. So, I had time on my hands. In our little summerhouse at the foot of the garden I started a new daily practice, revisiting a…

In October 2017, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella published a post on LinkedIn about his experiences of becoming a father (‘The moment that forever changed our lives’). His son, Zain, was born prematurely in 1996. He has severe cerebral palsy that requires 24/7 care. In his post, Satya explains how Zain’s…

“The way we live and travel has changed…” So began the somewhat unconventional in-flight announcement before the cabin attendant told us about the precautions being taken on board this flight. It’s Monday morning and I’m on a British Airways flight from London City to Edinburgh. …

We’ve become so ‘efficient,’ haven’t we? In remote working there are few wasted minutes. Many of us are optimising every waking minute of our working day. Days full of online meetings. No commute time. Productivity has skyrocketed. …

On the edge of transformation December 1999. On a chilly morning I was sitting in my doctor’s surgery as she scribbled out a prescription for antidepressants. It certainly wasn’t the outcome I thought my career would have. After nine years of organisational life, I had succumbed to the fact that my job was making me…