Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
Collecting isn't learning. A personal knowledge system — Capture, Curate, Crunch, Contribute — for turning what you read into what you do.
meeting notes
A field note on the deck that becomes the point. And brioche.
Learning & Practice (Flywheel)
What trade skills, commercial awareness and practical judgement can teach us about turning ideas into value.
Usually read as the regret of waste, mottainai points somewhere more hopeful: the time, energy and attention we bring to work were never a cost — they're potential, backed.
Creativity isn't a talent problem. It's a climate problem. Five conditions consistently show up in environments where creativity actually flows — not as theory, but as reality.
A long-form photo essay across eight cities and one recurring pattern; why learning to notice is to be human again.
An essay on empty office buildings, urban decay, and the potential to repurpose spaces for community, housing, and creativity in modern cities.
A practical guide to using sound while you work — and knowing when to switch it off.
Where your good ideas turn into good work. Essays, field notes and practical guides on work, creativity and communication — free newsletter each week.
Here's how to structure a talk with a two-pound stack of index cards - plus the full step-by-step method, free to read in a complimentary edition of The Department of Interesting Things.
Most organisations think they're managing projects, products or people. But what if the thing being managed is the idea — and everything else is infrastructure?
A hot Sunday, a stand full of tat, and my 12-year-old turning into a formidable negotiator.
A field note on exploration, uncertainty, and finding unexpected things.
I don't know where my father took this photograph or who the figures are. But it taught me something important about storytelling, memory and the way we make meaning.
A reflection on Britain's postboxes, Anthony Trollope, and the remarkable act of trusting an invisible system for almost 175 years. And what we might learn about work.
Every presentation is an exchange. The audience gives us their finite resources, and the speaker gives value, perspective, meaning and something worth paying attention to.
A brilliant, vastly interesting man, a telegraph pole, and half of Sheffield's phones. On the strange gift of fast feedback — and how much better work gets the moment the signal comes back quickly.
A wall in Winchester bearing initials dating back to 1772 offers a reminder that every organisation is built on decisions made by people who came before us.
The telescope didn't improve the view at all. It just magnified the murk.
Dame Judi Dench, Louis Theroux and feeling alive on stage. The power of public speaking.
A lot of what underpins a business goes unnamed precisely because it often works. An episode of The Word at Work on gratitude as a form of seeing — and the question it leaves behind about what's carrying your work this week that you've stopped noticing.
