Checking email, perusing social.. We all see the acute productivity cost with distraction. We don’t get as much work done, we feel frustrated. This is fairly clear and fairly self-centric. However there’s another cost which is far bigger. If we set any agreement with ourselves, another person, a group or organisation, become distracted, then fail...

When spearfishing, depending on the type of fish you are looking for, there can be a lot of waiting. Depending on your intent, you could be waiting 5 minutes, or 5 hours. Ultimately, if you get bored, distracted, cold, frustrated and get out, then, well, you aren’t in the water. You’ve just created zero chance...

Gardeners often believe if their trees are growing too close together, they will deprive each other of light and water. It turns out, as Peter Wohlleben writes in the Hidden Life of Trees, that this idea stems from the commercial forestry industry. Here, trees are spaced apart, grown as quickly as possible and only live...

In 2003, when I started at University, the secret weapon was still consumption. “Online” bandwidth was limited and slow, so it was a valuable commodity – the bottleneck that we all lined up behind to “develop” ourselves intellectually and even culturally (movies, music). Now, the pendulum has swung. Bandwidth and information is in abundance. Overwhelm....

There’s an abundance of peer pressure to join something new, or peer pressure to quit that and join something else. There’s peer pressure to over-work, over-train, over-drink and over-think. But what about peer pressure to keep connecting, to keep contributing? What if you seek out people who care as much about you as you do...

The minimum role of the follower (or maybe employee) might be to follow a system, an operating procedure for maintaining order. The leader welcomes the unknown and disorder. They are creative. They move forward, even though they see the fear. It may be with your self or it may be among others, but if you...

Increase awareness Cultivate emotional intelligence Take consistent action Forward focused, repeatable, simple… but not easy. To do it, we all use help. In the first step we use others – conversation, a coach, a mentor. We zoom out. In the second step we use tools – repeatable processes. Notice the nature of our thoughts, and...

In the day-to-day, it’s business as usual. Autopilot, the daily routine, back to back work, home, partner or kids and trying to fit in a workout. But sometimes, a disturbance! Sometimes chosen, sometimes unexpected, it’s the jack-in-the-box that springs up after we forget we are turning the handle after a while. In nature, this is...