This is one I learnt from Simone Giertz, or rather it's the name she has given to the concept. We'll see how broadly this applies but as I'm primarily coming at this from the perspective of a maker. Perhaps it'll be relevant more broadly - let's find out together. In simple terms the Make-Your-Own Gnome is that little voice in your head that says "How much?! Pah, I could make [...] Read more

Such a bleak title! Thankfully the concept is not all grimness, although that kind of depends on your own self-image, I expect, and whether you have disproportionate emotional baggage attached to reductive concepts such as "being a quitter". They're things we teach children but rarely get around to teaching the extra layers that help provide nuance, context, and the tools we need as adults. In fact, the more I think [...] Read more

Time for another deliberately inflammatory title! Yep, this phrase is usually for messy situations involving relationships and whilst I expect most of us have come across that at some point this is not related to infidelity. There are a few parallels though that we'll touch on when they come up. To start with we should talk about workspaces. If you're anything like me you don't have as many workspaces as you [...] Read more

Growing up from about age seven we would leave south Wales during the nicest time of year and migrate to the north of England where the weather could be best described as "Autumnal" and the terrain "open" (read: barren). It was part of a contract to supply hunting falcons - they needed to be supplied trained during that period. I was dragged along because I was a child and couldn't be abandoned [...] Read more

Life is full of people giving advice. You're literally reading some right now. Sometimes it's because we want to share what we've learnt, sometimes it's just to monetise an audience in whatever is the popular medium of the day. Sometimes it's both. This chapter isn't a treatise on the good and bad of all that, it simply needs you to bear in mind the existence of self-help techniques, systems, [...] Read more

As with many other chapters the title of this one is deliberately a little provocative and misleading. Misleading in that it looks a lot like one of those silly decorations you find in people's houses. You know the ones - they say stuff like "Mad house" or "Enjoy life, this isn't a rehearsal". Something that's not inherently wrong but comes off as a bit twee and mass market. In this [...] Read more

Cleaning is Rarely the Wrong Answer I don't know about you, but many of my projects have awkward points where I'm either struck by analysis paralysis, or simple uncertainty. Those two sound quite similar but under the hood they're distinct. Let's deal with the former first - this occurs when I can't be confident in the critical path for a project. I'll give a real example to better explain - [...] Read more