This is part 2 of my post on journaling, if you haven’t already seen part 1, you can find it here, it’s the best place to start! What I Tested & My Journal Habit The more research I did on the benefits of starting a journal the harder I found it to not give it a go. Despite having a fairly good idea about which type of journal would work best for me I gave each of them a go,…
Introduction This won’t be yet another New Year’s Resolution blog post, I’m sure your sick of reading or hearing about them by now. I don’t like making New Year’s Resolutions, primarily because it often feels like people make them purely to break them! Often people know they need to make a change but don’t really want to, therefore proclaim to everyone that it will be their New Year’s Resolution, so that no-one is surprised – and the individual isn’t disappointed – when they give…
My Perspective If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll see that ancient philosophy, and Stoicism in particular, re-occurs every so often. The fundamental reason is because we live in a world of so many inputs, one of the biggest being people’s desire to have and do more to keep their social media image suitably maintained. Stoicism reminds us to remember we are all human, that having material wealth is out of our control and should not impact our emotion, and also to equip ourselves for when bad events occur. This is particularly important given the festive excess many…
My Perspective Malcolm Gladwell shot to fame when his first book ‘The Tipping Point’ was released in 2000, and ‘Outliers’ – his third book – is arguably his most famous. The most often quoted part of the book is his view that 10,000 hours is the magic number to achieve mastery of a given skill. This fact is often misquoted and misunderstood, but is nonetheless a core concept in a book focused on explaining why and how we concentrate on…
My Perspective Josh Waitzkin is the child prodigy Junior Chess Champion whose early life formed the book, and later the film, Searching for Bobby Fischer. In his early twenties Waitzkin’s focus moved from chess to martial arts, specifically Tai Chi. He subsequently went on to win several US national medals and become the 2004 world champion in Taiji Push Hands. I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of either chess or martial arts so you might…
Introduction I love reading other blogs, especially by creative individuals who are established in multiple different fields. They help me become a better blogger, provide inspiration and broaden my horizons of interest. The aim of this piece is to share with you the best bloggers I believe millennials should be following right now. This article is part of a mini-series I have been sharing over the last few months, the first two articles in the series are: Favourite Men’s Lifestyle…
My Overview Richard Thaler is one of the greatest behavioural economists ever, he was pivotal in bringing the founding ideas of Daniel Kahnman and Amos Tversky into mainstream Economics. He was also one of the key experts brought in to help formulate the British Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) aka the Nudge Unit in the UK, similar units cannot be found across most Western governments. I have been fascinated by behavioural economics since I first started studying economics aged 16. I…
My Perspective There are few more famous books that Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Mediations’, it was written as a series of spiritual exercises and the common belief was that it would never to be published. For me it is the inner dialogue of an extremely powerful and rich man – the Emperor of Rome – trying to fight the same battles that we all face on a daily basis: how to be a better person, how to show courage, be just, be clever and…
My Overview: Peter Thiel needs no introduction, he is the co-founder of PayPal and was Facebook’s first professional investor, very impressive credentials. His book ‘Zero to One’ has been a hit since its publication in September 2014 and is seen as an absolute must-read in start-up circles. In the preface Thiel highlights that the book is all about ‘how to build companies that create new things’, but doesn’t try to hide the fact that he doesn’t have a success formulae,…
Introduction: On a holiday to Cote D’Azur in 2016, a post on which you can find here, I finally had the time to read Nassim Nicholas Talebs thought provoking book ‘Antifragile’, available to buy here. His book is part philosophical thesis, part whinging and complaining, however reviewing it in detail is not the scope of this piece. The focus of this piece is on the role of optionality and the importance of having optionality to be antifragile, leading to a…