When Cassandra turned down god, Apollo’s sexual advances she was cursed to be able to predict the future but suffer none of her predictions being believed. In the end it drove her mad.
I intended to start this piece with a mention of my latest book, Intentional: How to Live, Love, Work and Play Meaningfully but in the end, as I was planning it, Hemingway’s insistence of starting anything difficult by writing down “one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” became impossible to ignore, for reasons that I am about to explain.
I’ve been fit for as long as I can remember. My earliest childhood memories are of activity. Chasing imaginary friends around my childhood home’s sizeable garden. Or swinging from the low hanging branches of the orange trees that adorned the bottom part of it.
As a young boy I did sports at school. I ran. I played tennis and baseball. Did swimming and field hockey. During the week I’d run to school and back each day. On the weekends I surfed, cycled and ran round the block when there was nothing else to do.
When you read the title of this article you had one of two predictable reactions: A. You said “ah, yes!” or, B. You scoffed. Both of these are predictable reactions and they mark the mindset you carry. The title of this piece is a statement that, on the surface at least, flies against our perception of our sense of agency.
In cognitive neuroscience the sense of agency we experience is an awareness that we are the cause of our actions. This leads us to believe that we are the architects of our journey in life and the force behind who…
A Chinese-made Type 69 tank, when it is battle-ready, weighs about 35 tons. At 2.8m tall it towers a good meter over an average sized person. Even when it is moving at half its top speed of 50km/h its 580 horsepower engine is sufficient to make the ground tremble. A column of these tanks, in line, is an intimidating sight. The belching of fumes from the diesel engine’s exhaust, the sound of the caterpillar tracks as the tank moves and the sheer bulk of all that hulking metal implacably bearing down upon you must be sufficient to make a person…
Our systems are not failing, they are just failing us.
Right now, even the briefest amount of time spent flicking over social media posts or channel-surfing news networks is all that’s required to make us feel the world we live in is in serious trouble. The “Culture of Broken” we encounter is not new and I’ve written extensively about it before, citing both the reasons behind it and offering possible solutions.
Yet here we are, nine years out from the time I touched upon those ideas and we’re all experiencing a reality that reveals the gaping holes of inadequacy in…
It helps to think of technology as clothing. In the past we killed animals and wore their skins to protect ourselves from the elements. As our knowledge and skills evolved so did our needs. Just like with clothes, we use technology not only for practical things but also for social signalling.
Just like with almost every kind of technology we’ve used in the past, from the spinning jenny and its Luddite detractors to coffee and refrigeration and those who resisted them the “new” both excites us and frightens us. …
Today I am going to teach you a lesson. Depending on your own experiences, memories, background, assumptions, knowledge and perception; my opening line will either excite you, anger you, turn you off me or intrigue you. All of these responses are appropriate, and justifiable, when the context of the person who feels them is taken into account. This means that no response is quite without justification when context is considered though; some may not be appropriate.
Let me explain this last line in the paragraph above before I go back and unpack the full meaning of the opening line of…
Back then when linking things up in a tangential way that stripped back hidden connecting layers and generated deeper thought The Sunday Read was born.
Over the course of seven years it came out each Sunday, evolving and changing as we did, until it couldn’t (or at least I was unwilling to make it change further).
This is no attempt to revive it. I already write articles and opinion pieces on several different platforms, I am still writing books (because I feel I have something meaningful to say) and I am still bringing out videos and podcasts. …
Let’s run a thought experiment: Suppose I invite you to a business dinner to discuss something of great professional importance to both of us. I set up a beautifully arranged, delicious-looking meal and seat you opposite me on a plush chair with an amazing cushion. We are now set to have a great meal and memorable, mutually beneficial conversation for the next two hours.
There’s a catch: neither of us can move from our seats until the dinner is up. Should that happen it’ll be a potential professional deal breaker. It seems a ridiculously easy bar to beat of course…
I know you know that everything is changing. We all feel it in the way consumer behavior is changing and in the way responses to traditional marketing methods are changing. We feel it in the way things feel different, the disparities that emerge when we compare what we perceive. What others perceive. And what we perceive that others perceive. It’s like we no longer have a common language as people, let alone marketers.
Understandably, faced with this challenge and its bewildering attendant list of effects, we fail to understand its depth and breadth. …
