Tim – Tim O'Hare

Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, Keep Going – Austin Kleon #reading

I’m not sure how I first came across the work of Austin Kleon, but since I did, I have come to love his approach to creating and, in particular, his books. I’ve read Steal Like An Artist (2012) three times – in 2014, 2015 and 2025, Show Your Work! (2014) twice – in 2014 and 2025, and Keep Going (2019) twice – in 2019 and 2025. I also treated myself to a hardback edition of a special 10th Anniversary edition of Steal Like An Artist. He has now added a fourth book to his oeuvre, Don’t Call it Art (June 2026), which I’ve not read yet but surely will do soon.

It’s hard not to like Austin Kleon’s books as every aspect of them is quirky and charming… the neat, unusual, almost 15cm square size, the brightly-coloured covers, the way that regular printed text is interspersed with Kleon’s somewhat random handwriting (as per the covers) and clever, cartoon-like illustrations, and their satisfyingly uniform internal structure of ten short sections. Reading any one of these titles is a fun experience within which are embedded many nuggets of wisdom, stimulation and encouragement. An Austin Kleon book is almost guaranteed to leave you with the feeling that you have been given permission to throw caution to the wind and get creating, with words, images, musical notes or anything else that comes to mind.

To give a flavour of the books’ contents, I’ve listed the ten section headings (chapter titles) below each book cover and in most cases, included a quote from that section, a thought that I had in relation to it or just some random observation. This isn’t meant to be a systematic review of each book – think of it more as a partial view of the results of the collision between my Austin Kleon’s books and my brain!

Steal Like An Artist. There are obvious issues that can arise with copying the work of others, although as a means of developing technique, direct copying can be very effective (it was how many of the master painters of history learned their trade). Consequently, Kleon’s exhortation to steal like an artist could be seen as entering difficult territory. But what Kleon is really driving at here is the value of exposing yourself to many different styles, sources and influences and then hoovering up ideas and little bits and pieces that you can then bring together in, or use as inspiration for, your own creative work. I particularly liked a quote from the French writer Andre Gide: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.“
Don’t Wait Until You Know Who You Are To Get Started. My key takeaway here is a reminder that action does not follow motivation, it leads it. As Kleon puts it ‘… you have to start doing the work you want to be doing.‘
Write The Book You Want To Read. Here, the reader is given a simple instruction that is really a reminder that the best creative work is an authentic reflection on the inner workings of its creator, and not produced to meet the needs of others: ‘Do the work you want to see done.‘
Use Your Hands. Kleon is a strong advocate of the idea that the best creative work involves some kind of physical labour. To encourage this, he suggests having two separate workspaces – one for physical work and one for digital work. This is something that I have utilised in my ‘home office’, where I now have a small desk where I do all of my computer-based work, and a bench where I mostly paint and create artworks.
Side Projects and Hobbies Are Important. Unlike many writers on topics related to productivity, Kleon argues that it is good to have a lot of projects going at the same time. A key benefit of this approach, he notes, is that it enables you to bounce between them, something that he describes as ‘productive procrastination’. I love this idea in principle, and it’s certainly the way that I have always wanted to operate, but I’m not at all convinced that it works. My own experience is that if I allow myself to think that I can have many ongoing projects at the same time, I end up being unable to decide which project to work on and end up making progress in none of them. I guess that perhaps it’s a matter of scale – too many (or maybe just two) major projects and action paralysis becomes likely, but having lots of interesting and stimulating minor activities that you can dip into as the mood takes you could certainly be a path to a lot of fun creating.
The Secret: Do Good Work and Share It With People. In the past I would have struggled with the latter part of this one, and I suspect this is the case for a lot of people. The problem lies with the word ‘good’ of course… As soon as you allow self-judgement to enter the fray there is every chance that you will judge what you have created as not being good enough – certainly not good enough to share with people. I think I would slightly adapt Kleon’s heading here, simplifying it to ‘Create and Share‘.
Geography Is No Longer Our Master. Kleon’s idea here is that you don’t have to physically locate yourself somewhere inspirational. You can, instead, bring inspiration into your own space by surrounding yourself with books and objects that you love. This is certainly something that I do, as my work/creating space at home is full of books, artworks, and other special items… crammed full in fact!
Be Nice (The World Is A Small Town). Within this section, Kleon stresses that it is important not to seek validation from external sources. Hmmm… this is definitely something that I struggle with, and to some extent, I can’t always see the point in doing anything if it isn’t noticed and given some kind of positive response by an audience. But, I recognise the merit of the idea – it’s much healthier to pursue an activity for the enjoyment that the process brings than using the response gained to the outcome of that activity as a measure of success.
Be Boring (It’s The Only Way To Get Work Done). Just do it.
Creativity Is Subtraction. The idea here is that creativity is much easier to develop when you place constraints on yourself. This is a point that I fully agree with. I think it’s far easier to start creating when you are faced with constraints – a small piece of paper, access to limited tools, a short period of time – than when you have everything available to you, and the results of the time spent creating under constraint are generally much more interesting too.

You Don’t Have To Be A Genius. The main takeaway message of Show Your Work! is that it’s good to allow others in to see your creative process. Kleon again visits the idea that action leads motivation, and notes that it is only by taking action that you can know what it is you have within you to create. As he puts it: ‘The only way to find your voice is to use it.‘
Think Process, Not Produce. Here we find Kleon giving another push to the idea of putting enjoyment of process above attainment of output. This is something I always have to remind myself (a point made very persuasively by Keiran Setiya in his excellent book Midlife).
Share Something Small Every Day. I try to spend a little time every morning painting – time I refer to as my ‘art practice’. I’m not always successful, but I probably manage it for 5 out of 7 days most weeks. Whenever I can, I finish up my art practice session by posting the results of my efforts on my social media accounts, so I’d say that sharing something small every day is absolutely how I do things!
Open Up Your Cabinet of Curiosities.
Tell Good Stories.
Teach What You Know.
Don’t Turn Into Human Spam.
Learn To Take a Punch. In this section I particularly liked this passage: ‘Keep your balance. You have to remember that you work is something you do, not who you are.’ I think this connects with the idea that it is important not to judge yourself on the basis of some perception of the quality of your work.
Sell Out.
Stick Around. The theme of continuous creative production is one that permeates much of Kleon’s writing. The challenge isn’t to produce one super-duper piece of creative work, it’s to be a person who creates on an ongoing basis. Kleon obviously likes this idea, so much so that he captures it in the title of his next book …

Every Day is Groundhog Day. There is an obvious overlap here with Paul Hannam’s book The Wisdom of Groundhog Day which I like a lot. I also like the quote from Anne Dillard in this section: “A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days” although my own experience is that I often tend to do whatever is not on my schedule rather than what my past self told my future self it wanted it to tackle.
Build a Bliss Station. This is a revisit of Geography is No Longer Our Master from Steal Like An Artist… and why wouldn’t it be a good idea to make your working spaces places that you love to hang out?!
Forget The Noun, Do The Verb. There’s a common piece of productivity advice to ‘verbify’ the tasks on your to do list. In this context, it’s a case of striving to be a person who creates rather than a creator, a person who is writing regularly rather than a writer, a person who enjoys painting rather than being a painter. Again, it’s all about process rather than output.
Make Gifts. One of the nice things I’ve found since I started painting about two and a half years ago, is how much pleasure it gives when I gift someone a piece of my art. It’s not a one-way gift either – they seem delighted to have received the gift, but as the gift-giver it is also very satisfying to observe that delight.
The Ordinary + Extra Attention = The Extraordinary. Kleon tells us that ‘You do not need to have an extraordinary life to make extraordinary work. Everything you need to make extraordinary art can be found in your everyday life.‘. My reading of this again takes me towards the territory of avoiding judgement and remembering that you don’t have to get all of the ducks into line before your start. It’s also a case of keeping your eyes and ears open so that you notice all of the wonderful things that surround you.
Slay The Art Monsters.
You Are Allowed To Change Your Mind. Good.
When In Doubt, Tidy Up. It’s true, sorting out my workspace, or my headspace, is pretty much a sure-fire way of jump-starting myself into some kind of action.
Demons Hate Fresh Air. How could I not like a section that quotes Henry David Thoreau? “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.” Kleon suggests that going outside and moving around is an antidote to being in a funk of inaction… ‘But you get outside and you start walking and you come to your sense. Yeah, there are a few maniacs and some ugliness, but there are also people, smiling, birds chirping, clouds flying overhead… all the stuff. There’s possibility. Walking is a way to find possibility in your life when there doesn’t seem to be any left.‘ When I read this passage I am immediately put in mind of my poem Home.
Plant Your Garden. Kleon gives us a good place to end here, with the following passage: ‘Whenever life gets overwhelming… think about your days. Try your best to fill them in ways that get you a little closer to where you want to be. Go easy on yourself and take your time. Worry less about getting things done. Worry more about things worth doing.‘ I think it would be quite hard to find a better manifesto for how to live one’s life.

Tottenham Hotspur and Norwich City #art

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (October 2025)

One of the things that I do quite frequently with my art is to create bespoke birthday and special occasion cards to send to family members and friends. I generally paint these on rough-edged, rag paper that I bought a stash of a couple of years ago. This fits nicely onto a 5 x7 inch recycled card blank to give the finish card a really distinctive appearance (quite apart from the fact that the picture is a one-off painting completed specially for each occasion). Obviously, the idea with these is to paint a picture that has some kind of special significance for the recipient, and to that end, within the space of a few weeks in the later months of of 2025, I found myself painting two pictures of different football stadia.

The first of these (see above) was for a birthday card for my younger daughter’s partner. For his sins, he is a fan of Tottenham Hotspur, although at the moment this isn’t something that he is particularly quick, or proud, to broadcast, and fortunately, he’s now also a season-ticket holder at Plymouth Argyle. I’ve heard it said that the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium is the best new stadium in the country, and it certainly looks impressive when viewed from afar, with a satisfyingly neat and modern, wraparound, design. When painting the picture, I focused on putting a good amount of detail into the stadium itself to ensure that it was distinctive and recognisable, and then I just tried to capture the general impression of the surrounding streets, roads and buildings (partly because it was pretty much impossible to do otherwise). I think that this contrast works well and I like the way that the picture turned out overall.

I followed up my Tottenham Hotspur Stadium picture with a painting of Carrow Road (see below), long-time home of Norwich City, for a birthday card for my father-in-law. He was originally a Chelsea fan, but Norwich City become his adopted club when he moved to the city in the early 1970s, and he was a season-ticket holder there for many years before it became too difficult for him to make it to games. Carrow Road is a stadium that has been developed and upgraded multiple times over the years, and so unlike the sleek lines of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, it consists of an assortment of stands of different sizes and structures. Looking at the Carrow Road picture now, I can’t help but wonder whether my photo shows the final version, because it surprises me that I apparently left most of the surrounding buildings unpainted. However, this seems to be the only photo of this painting that I have, so I guess it must have ended up that way. Funnily enough, I quite like the unpainted buildings and kind of wish that I had left the ones on the left-hand side as uncoloured ink drawings too. Perhaps this is a style/approach that I might deliberately incorporate into another picture someday. I also like the way that I put in the cutting stripes on the pitch, and the way that you can see the countryside landscape that surrounds the city in the background.

It’s always fun to create these bespoke birthday and special occasions card pictures, partly because they are always well received of course, but also because it’s interesting to tackle subjects that I might not otherwise attempt to paint.

Bristol Miniatures #art

Towards the end of last year I had got myself into a pretty strong routine of spending 30-40 minutes at the start of most days painting. In almost all of these ‘art practice’ session I would produce a miniature watercolour painting, about 5cm square, working my way through different themes. Pretty much as soon as I finished one series of 12 pictures, I would move onto a new theme and begin the next series. So, having completed my London Landmarks series I was in search of a new theme to work through and a chance comment by one of my personal tutees plus a comment from someone who had purchased a small composite print of my Plymouth Miniatures series pictures, led me to select the city of Bristol for my ninth series.

Some of the subjects for the series were immediately obvious – for example, the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the SS Great Britain – and it wasn’t difficult to identify other buildings and views that were suitable for miniaturisation. The full list of the pictures (working left to right and top to bottom in the grid of pictures shown above) is:

the brightly coloured houses of Cliftonwood
Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge over the Avon Gorge
the interior of St Nicholas Market
the Bristol Balloon Fiesta
the M-Shed museum on the dock side
Bristol Templemeads Railway Station
the Cabot Tower
the Bristol Hippodrome
the Old Vic Theatre
the Clifton Observatory
Brunel’s SS Great Britain
Bristol Cathedral

As with all of my other miniature watercolour series (Dartmoor Scenes, Capital City Landmarks, Cornwall Landmarks, Exmoor Views, Plymouth Miniatures, House Plants, Trees, London Landmarks), I have listed composite prints and greetings cards of these pictures on Etsy. The best sellers so far seem to be the ones of the Old Vic Theatre and the Bristol Hippodrome, but I also had one order for almost the entire set of cards!

I’ve got two favourites from this set, the colourful houses of Cliftonwood, and the interior of St Nicholas Market. In the first case, I just like the simple blocks of colour that make up the houses, and in the second, I’ve always liked views that have a straight feature such as a road, railway line or canal that disappears towards a central vanishing point…

Reckoning | Beckoning #poem

Note: This poem has a three column structure so if you are reading it on a small screen device you should switch from ‘mobile’ to ‘tablet’ view to see it properly…

Reckoning?

It is time to rid myself
of
reckoning

The harsh
interrogation of
“How did it go?”

Checking off the actions
against
all those on my list

Only really noticing
the many
I have missed

Assessing my
progress, comparing
with my plan

Keeping track of
distances,
measuring their span

Monitoring my
output so I always
know the score

Emerging with the
figures, highlighting
my flaws

Counting up the wins
and losses,
totaling
to find their sum

I feel kind of
useless when the
reckoning is done

or

and

or

or

or

or

or

or

or

or

so

Beckoning?

Instead, I will try to see
what’s
beckoning

A gentler
introspection
of my flow

Seeking the resonant
vibrations that prove that
I exist

Keeping mind wide open
so that
nothing is dismissed

Reminding myself
that all the time
I’m doing the best I can

Recognising that
what matters is
simply that I ran

Realising the damage
done by
always wanting more

Noticing the many things
born deep
within my core

Dispensing with
judgement,
to prove the worth
of all I’ve done

I embrace my
beckoning question
“What has come?”

(c) Tim O’Hare, February 2024

About this poem: This poem has its origin in a conversation that took place during my last coaching session a couple of weeks ago. I was recounting how terrible I am at following the plans I make and how this generates an intense feeling of frustration and results in me being in a constant spiral of planning, frustration, planning, frustration and a pervading sense of uselessness. I was challenged to come up with an alternative non-judgmental question that I could ask myself and responded almost instantly that I could replace “How did it go?” with “What has come?“. We played with this idea for a while – focusing on how my “What has come?” question would naturally lead me to draw out achievements, output and activities that had emerged from within me without triggering my natural tendency to measure progress, evaluate success and generally judge myself against the completely unnecessary and arbitrary ‘success criteria’ that I carry in my head. My coach loved my question and referred to it as my ‘beckoning question’…

The poem is written as two verses, one relating to the ‘reckoning question’ (on the left) and the other relating to the ‘beckoning question’ (on the right), but it is also possible to read the poem taking one line from each verse in turn and adding the additional bridging word (‘and‘, ‘or‘, ‘so‘) shown in italics between the two verses. I suspect that this layout won’t work very well if the poem is viewed on a small screen (mobile) device but hopefully it works well enough!

Extra Focus – Jesse J. Anderson #reading

I first came across Jesse J. Anderson’s work in June 2025 via a live-streamed episode of the ‘A Productive Conversation‘ podcast that I was able to view through my membership of Mike Vardy‘s online community The TimeCrafting Trust (this is a link to the specific episode: A Productive Conversation – Episode 625: Jesse J. Anderson Talks About ADHD, Extra Focus, and Finding Flow). It was an interesting and engaging conversation discussing Anderson’s book (Extra Focus: The Quick-Start Guide to Adult ADHD) that, amongst other things, highlighted the idea that whereas most neurotypical people are motivated by importance, people with ADHD tend to have a more interest-based motivational drive. One impact of this is that it is generally assumed that if a task is important, it will get done, and so much of the advice on how to get (more) things done focuses on how to make tasks more important – or at least to seem more important. I guess that for many, perhaps even most, such advice can be useful, but for those battling against the unseen challenges posed by possessing an ‘ADHD-brain’, things are often rather more difficult. Not only do commonly used motivation-boosting tricks not work much of the time, but the fact that they don’t work, and for no apparently good reason, adds a big dollop of frustration and even shame into the mix too.

In the podcast interview, Anderson talked through what he calls the 4 Cs: a simple framework designed to enhance motivation by appealing to the ADHD-brain’s focus on interest. The 4 Cs in the name each stand for a different word that captures an approach that could be used to try to stimulate motivation, namely:

CAPTIVATE – making tasks interesting
CREATE – using creativity and seeking novelty
COMPETE – stimulating interest via competition and challenge
COMPLETE – making use of deadlines and ramping up urgency

After viewing the livestream event, I was impressed with the openness and authenticity in the way that Anderson spoke, and so a few weeks later I listened to the audiobook version of the book. It was an interesting listen, but whilst I enjoy listening to audiobooks, I do find it difficult to hold on to the detail of much of what I have listened to, especially as most of my listening takes place while I am walking to and from work. Consequently, my notes from this first pass through the material are rather limited, basically consisting of a restatement of the 4 Cs framework, along with a set of related questions that can be used to try to build motivation towards the completion of tasks when necessary:

How can I make the task more interesting for me?
How can I approach the task in a different/creative way?
How can I add a competitive edge to the task?
How can I ensure that I obtain positive (external) feedback on completion of the task?

Apart from this, my notes only reveal one other thing that I was particularly struck by, namely an assertion that the commonly-given productivity advice to ‘Eat the Frog‘, as popularised by the business coach/author Brian Tracey, is not at all effective for many people with ADHD. [The idea behind ‘eat the frog’ is that you should tackle your most difficult, significant, tricky, and as a result high value, task as your first action each day]. Instead, Anderson suggests starting the day with some fun/easy tasks in order to build up what he calls ‘motivation momentum‘. This chimes with my own day-to-day experience, and was perhaps the first time I had come across this way of thinking about my preference for a ‘slow morning’ start, rather than seeing it as being related to having a ‘night owl‘ chronotype (something that I am not convinced I possess to any great extent).

The rather limited nature of my initial notes might suggest that the content of the book did not prove especially interesting. However, I obviously did feel that there was more in Extra Focus that might be useful, not only for me, but to pass on to the considerable number of neurodiverse/ADHD-brained students that I work with in my job as a university lecturer, because in December 2025 I decided to make a second pass through the book, but in print format. Looking at my fairly extensive notes, it’s clear that in this second reading I did a much more thorough job of working through the material…

Anderson starts out with some general thoughts about the challenges of ADHD, noting that calling it an attention deficit is inaccurate, and suggesting instead that it is better viewed as being a dysregulation of attention. He then sets out the 4 Cs approach and suggests that instead of eating the frog first, ADHDers might be better served by eating the ice cream first… something which sounds like a much better idea to me!

The book then moves into a fairly long list of different motivation-enhancing strategies, things like adding action verbs to tasks, altering your environment to make it more stimulating, finding a ‘body double’ to provide some external accountability, gamifying tasks, and racing against the clock. There was not much in this section that stood out to me, but I think this would be a useful section for someone who is at the start of their ADHD-adaptation journey.

The later part of the book has three areas of focus – TIME, MEMORY, and EMOTION – and I think that all three of these sections contain useful content and advice. In particular, the chapter on Emotion, which covers topics such as ‘success amnesia‘ (the tendency to forget/ignore past successes), ‘imposter syndrome‘, ‘rejection sensitivity‘, ‘shame distortion‘, and ‘impulsivity and inhibition‘ might be quite eye-opening for readers who have not previously linked these characteristics or challenges to ownership of an ADHD-brain.

The book ends with encouragement that when you understand how your brain works you can use that knowledge to your advantage, guidance that may well seem obvious to many readers. However, my own experience of ADHD is that it can be very difficult, if not downright impossible at times, to understand how an ADHD-brain is working in any given moment. With this in mind, having a well-written and straightforward guide such as Extra Focus to lead you through consideration of many of the key related topics and ideas, can only be a good thing.

I’d say that of all the books I have read about coping with the challenges of owning an ADHD-brain, Extra Focus is up there in my top two or three. It’s written with the ADHD-brained reader in mind, in simple, plain language and has a clear emphasis on practical implementation throughout. Overall, I think it would be an excellent starting place for anyone new to exploring the challenges posed by an ADHD brain, whether driven by personal need, a desire to better understand or support a friend or family member, or just for general interest.

Now, where’s that tub of ice cream?

London Landmarks #art

For my eighth series of miniature watercolour paintings, completed last September, I decided that it was time to tackle some of the well-known landmarks in the U.K.’s capital city London. I have to admit that my own visits to London are relatively few in number, with most of the recent ones revolving around trips to watch Plymouth Argyle playing at Wembley (twice, both times depressingly unsuccessful), and against Arsenal, Chelsea and Brentford in the FA Cup. However, like pretty much everyone else, I’m very familiar with many of the obvious historical and touristic landmarks… but when I paint a series of miniature watercolours, I like to throw in a few less obvious subjects, and in the case of this set, that led to me choosing Hampton Court Palace, Battersea Power Station, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Globe Theatre.

The full list of the pictures (working left to right and top to bottom in the grid of pictures shown above) is:

the Big Ben clock tower
London Bridge
Buckingham Palace
Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square
the London Eye
the Tower of London
the Globe Theatre
St Paul’s Cathedral
Hampton Court Palace
Battersea Power Station
the Royal Albert Hall
Westminster Abbey

As with all of my other miniature watercolour series (Dartmoor Scenes, Capital City Landmarks, Cornwall Landmarks, Exmoor Views, Plymouth Miniatures, House Plants, Trees), I have listed composite prints and greetings cards of these pictures on Etsy and have sold quite a few of the greetings cards since doing so. Interestingly, as with some of my other series, I am finding that it is the cards featuring more unusual subjects that tend to be the ones that sell. I found this a bit puzzling at first, but on reflection it makes sense because with the more obvious subjects, buyers have lots of choice and the platform algorithm is much less likely to show them my picture in response to their search.

If I was going to pick out a favourite from this series I think I might go for Hampton Court Palace. I think I have picked out enough of the detail in the building and also managed to give it a bit of depth with the shadow under the archway. I think the people in the foreground also help to add interest.

Suffolk Holiday August 2025 #art

Back in April 2025 we spent a week in rural Suffolk, our third visit to the county in three years. Our first trip there, in summer 2023, was something of an accident. We had booked accommodation for a week in Horning in the Norfolk Broads, but almost instantly recognised that it wasn’t a place we wanted to spend a week (too many ‘Private’ signs, too little access to the edges of the waterways, too many noisy ‘party’ boats cruising around, and so many people boozing their time away). As a result, after two less-than-great days, we decided to look online for somewhere different that we could stay that was not too expensive and not too far away for the rest of the week. After a bit of deliberation about the sunk cost of an aborted trip, we headed south to the small village of Redgrave, just on the Suffolk side of the Suffolk-Norfolk border. At the time, Suffolk was a county I had never visited before, and of which I had no great expectations, but within minutes of arriving there I felt settled and relaxed, able to enjoy walks and runs from the doorstep in the marvellous farmland countryside of the surrounding area. We enjoyed our stay so much that we returned to the same accommodation for an Easter holiday break the following year, but for our third visit, in 2025, we were forced to move to a different location. [I should note here that trips all the way over to East Anglia from our home in Plymouth were partly linked to visits to elderly family members in Norwich].

Consequently, in August 2025 we found ourselves staying in another small village, a little to the east of Redgrave and a little deeper into Suffolk. Once again, we enjoyed our stay, although the location wasn’t quite as good, with less options for walks in the immediate vicinity, and no cafe or pub within walking distance. We occupied ourselves with visits to Norwich, and the nearby village of Eye, and walks from Hoxne and Walsham-le-Willows, and we were able to meet up with an old university-friend and his wife for a quick circuit of Framingham Castle. We relaxed, we read, and, of course, I painted…

The picture at the top of this post shows a quick, and with hindsight slightly abstract, picture that I painted from a photo I took while walking from Hoxne, showing a typical view of Suffolk fields. The same walk provided the subject for my second painting (below), depicting more fields, a group of farm buildings, and some sharply lined fields. I find that the photos I take quite often feature fields with patterns of lines from ploughing or grass cutting, so it seems that I have a bit of a thing for parallel lines and angles!

The final picture (below) is of the holiday accommodation that we were staying in. I painted this one to leave behind as a thank you to the owners – a practice that has now become something of a tradition whenever we go away.

We didn’t make it back to Suffolk this year, but we did end up making two trips to Norfolk in April and May. Hopefully, at some point in the not-too-distant future, I’ll share some thoughts about those trips and some of the pictures that I painted on them, as I work my way forwards in time to bring my blog-posting-writing up to the present day.

Four Thousand Weeks | Meditations for Mortals – Oliver Burkeman #reading

I’d better come straight out with it… I’m a huge fan of Oliver Burkeman’s writings, dating back to the days when he was a regular contributor to The Guardian newspaper with a column delving into productivity-related topics. I read his first book, The Antidote (subtitle: ‘happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking’), back in 2015, and a few years ago I was lucky enough to attend a couple of fascinating online workshops that he led coinciding with the launch Four Thousand Weeks (FTW), the first of his two more-recent books that are my focus here. FTW was a book that really thrust Burkeman into the limelight, and I don’t think it is going too far to describe him as one of the most respected and influential voices in present-day discourse about the complex relationship with all seem to have with time.

Burkeman often describes himself as a ‘recovering productivity addict’, i.e. someone who in a previous phase of life had a voracious appetite for all of the latest productivity hacks and time management systems. This is a moniker that I could certainly apply to myself (especially as it is ‘recovering’ not ‘recovered’!), and so it’s no surprise that whenever I read anything written by Burkeman, or hear him speaking in an interview, I have an overwhelming feeling that he is peering directly inside my skull and is able to see and comprehend the inner workings of my brain!

Four Thousand Weeks was published in 2021, and I first read it pretty much as soon as I could get my hands on a copy, within a few weeks of the publication date. I found it so interesting and thought-provoking, that my initial reading was followed up just a few months later with another run-through the material, as I listened to Burkeman himself narrate the audiobook version. The basic premise of the book is that a typical human lifespan amounts to ~4000 weeks, and that recognising, and indeed embracing, this finite nature of life (it’s finitude), and thus appreciating that you simply cannot do all of the things you might feel that you should, or want to, do, is the secret to leading a sustainable, meaningful life (or at least a slightly less-frustrating and stressful one).

Burkeman’s most recent book, Meditations for Mortals (MFM), arrived on the scene in September 2024. Again, I read it almost immediately, having pre-ordered it as soon as it was possible to do so. MFM has a neat structure of 28 short chapters arranged into four sections, and is designed to be read one chapter per day over a period of four weeks. In this way, it forms a kind of manual that guides the reader through an exploration of many of the ideas introduced in FTW. After my first reading of MFM, I remember thinking that it would almost certainly be a good idea for me to re-read it on a fairly regular basis, perhaps annually, like a top-up dose of medicine for the mind.

I returned to FTW, and read it for a third time, in June 2025 when it was chosen as the monthly read for The TimeCrafting Trust Book Club that I participate in. That re-reading spurred me to listen to the audiobook version of MFM the following month. My feeling is that whilst FTW works pretty well as an audiobook, MFM is better consumed in physical form. In fact, I’m coming to the conclusion that most works of non-fiction don’t really work that well as audiobooks if you have any real hope of holding onto any nuggets of information or wisdom from them.

In the last year or so I’ve been making a particular effort to write notes and clip passages from the non-fiction books that I read. Sadly, I’m not really very good at doing this. Whilst I am well aware that book notes are of most value when they are a synthesis or personal summary of the material that is covered, I find that kind of note-making very difficult, and so my notes tend to be verbatim copies of phrases and passages that resonate with me in some way. I’d love to be able to write something more considered as I read, but I feel that to do so would take far too much time (that I think I don’t have), and require a lot of patience (that I am pretty sure I don’t have). [Here I find myself putting on my academic tutor voice to remind myself that ‘too much’ is a value judgement statement, and that the value that I get out of the time I choose to put into note-making is clearly directly influenced by my choice of how much time to put into the activity: small time in = probable low value, large time in = potential high value.]

Anyway, it probably won’t be a surprise for me to report that the notes that emerged from my most recent readings of FTW and MFM are extensive… This leaves me with a difficult decision to make in relation to how I go about writing the rest of this blog post. In fact, the need to make that decision is one reason why my blog post writing activity stalled in recent months, and it’s also why I am only now making significant progress writing this post having started it several days ago. What I probably ought to do is to review all of my notes, and synthesise them into a coherent whole that I can summarise in three or four nice, neat paragraphs. But, dear reader (if you exist!), I fear that to approach things that way will just result in yet more delay. [Again, I hear the academic tutor voice in my head telling me sternly that the job of a writer is to make things easy for the reader…]. Consequently, I’m not going to do that… Instead, there are, below, (mostly) a series of short passages taken directly from the text of one or other of the books, with a brief comment or response from me, a little bit like a conversation of sorts…

Four Thousand Weeks

OB: ‘it’s painful to confront how limited your time is, because it means that tough choices are inevitable and that you won’t have time for all you once dreamed you might do‘ (p30)
TOH: Well yes, that’s exactly the problem – there are so many things I want to achieve and so little time to achieve them..

OB: ‘Or we procrastinate, which is another means of maintaining the feeling of omnipotent control over life – because you needn’t risk the upsetting experience of failing at an intimidating project, obviously, if you never start it.‘ (p30)
TOH: I certainly don’t need much persuading that my chronic procrastination is a result of the fear that what I produce might not be enough to prove that I am as special as my upbringing steered me to believe that I am supposed to be.

OB: ‘You have to choose a few things, sacrifice everything else, and deal with the inevitable sense of loss that results.‘ (p55)
TOH: I know, I know, but it’s just so hard for me to let go of things. (although I guess I let go of them anyway, because I procrastinate so much that they never get done…)

OB: ‘Perhaps the most appealing way to resist the truth about your finite time is to initiate a large number of projects at once; that way, you get to feel as though you’re keeping plenty of irons in the fire and making progress on all fronts. Instead, what usually ends up happening is that you make progress on no fronts – because each time a project starts to feel difficult, or frightening, or boring, you can bounce off to a different one instead.‘ (p75)
TOH: Exactly. That is absolutely what I do and have always done. I get so far with something, it gets a bit tricky, and so I move on to something else, with the result that I am constantly frustrated with myself for not finishing things. I think that because I was pretty good at most things at school, it was easy for me to make these switches, and so I never fully developed the skill of pushing through when things got difficult.

OB: ‘whenever we succumb to distraction, we’re attempting to flee a painful encounter with our finitude‘ (p105)
TOH: I’ve seen this referred to as ‘comfortable-familiar-easy-life-syndrome’. And then you die of course.

OB: ‘The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is just to stop expecting things to be otherwise – to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold.‘
TOH: Didn’t someone (Susan Jeffers) write a book once about this? ‘Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway’…

OB: ‘Other people hold off entirely from starting on important projects or embarking on intimate relationships in the first place because they can’t bear the anxiety of having committed themselves to something that might or might not work out happily in practice.‘ (p215)
TOH: Indeed, and especially when, like me, your sense of self-worth is almost entirely focused on demonstrating ‘specialness’.

OB: ‘Because now is all you ever get‘ (p219)
TOH: Okay, okay, you don’t have to rub it in.

OB: ‘taking on too many projects at once [is a way] of trying to maintain the illusion that you’re in charge of things‘ (p220)
TOH: Some years ago, a colleague suggested to me that my difficulties stemmed from a need to be in control. At the time, I couldn’t square this idea in my head at all – I’ve never thought of myself as a control-freak – but over the last few years I have come to realise that yes, I’m very much constantly striving to feel some semblance of control over things/my life.

OB: ‘Let your impossible standards crash to the ground‘ (p222)
TOH: Far better to finish something and get it ‘out there’ than never finish is at all (or never even start it for that matter).

OB: ‘If you can face the truth about time in this way – if you can step more fully into the condition of being a limited human – you will reach the greatest heights of productivity, accomplishment, service and fulfilment that were ever in the cards for you to begin with. And the life you will see incrementally taking shape, in the rear-view mirror, will be one that meets the only definitive measure of what it means to have used your weeks well: not how many people you helped, or how much you got done; but what working within the limits of your moment in history and you finite time and talents, you actually got round to doing – and made life more luminous for the rest of us by doing – whatever magnificent task or weird little thing it was that you came here for.‘ (p228)
TOH: ‘what… you actually got round to doing’ [sigh]

OB: ‘The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fuelled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible – the quest to become the optimised, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.‘ (p234)
TOH: Okay, you’ve convinced me. I’ll make a really good plan of action and have a careful think about when the best time to get started on it will be… 😉

Meditations for Mortals

OB: ‘‘insecure overachievers’… our accomplishments, impressive as they may sometimes be, are driven ultimately by feelings of inadequacy‘ (p21)
TOH: it’s strive, strive, strive to be special

OB: ‘perhaps you’ve tethered your self-esteem to the most crazy-making standard of all “realising your potential” – which means you’ll never get to rest, because how can you ever be sure there’s not a little more potential left to realise?‘ (p21)
TOH: Well someone will tell me won’t they? Won’t they?

OB: ‘What is worry, at its core, but the activity of a mind attempting to picture every single bridge that might possibly have to be crossed in future, then trying to figure out how to cross it.‘ (p39)
TOH: Have you read my poem? What If? So What?

OB: ‘What the novelist E.L. Doctorow said about novel-writing applies to everything else, too: it’s “like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way”.‘ (p48)
TOH: But that means being brave enough to embrace uncertainty… Perhaps I need to read my poem What If? So What? again!

OB: refers to an analogy from the book Time Surfing by Paul Loomans, a Dutch Zen monk, in which tasks or areas of life that you are avoid are referred to as ‘gnawing rats’ and the suggestion is that rather than fearing them or feeling like you should fight them it is better to befriend then. He uses the example of sorting out your shed – the advice is simply to go and stand in the shed and just observe and take stock. Solutions will start to present themselves and some small actions may be taken. (p58)
TOH: I refer to these kinds of things as ‘bad smell tasks’ – the ones that seem to hang around on your to-do list for ever.

OB: describes the value of aiming to complete an activity ‘Dailyish’ rather than setting an unattainable ideal of completing it every single day
TOH: This is very much something that I have tried to embrace, since being introduced to the idea.

OB: ‘Beyond the mountains, there are always more mountains, at least until you reach the final mountain before your time on earth comes to an end. In the meantime, few things are more exhilarating than mountaineering.‘ (p78
TOH: It’s all about the journey and not the destination as they say, or the difference between atelic and telic activities (or adopting an atelic versus a telic mindset to how you complete activities), as Keiran Setiya sets out wonderfully well in his book Midlife.

OB: ‘… if you see all of this [everyday life] as leading up to some future point when real life will begin, or when you can finally start enjoying yourself, of feeling good about yourself – then you’ll end up treating your actual life as something to ‘get through’ until one day it’ll be over, without the meaningful part ever having arrived.‘ (p122)
TOH: I can distinctly remember that when I was younger, I often wished that I was, say, ten years further on in life, which in my head was a time when I had ‘arrived’ and everything was as it should be. Life doesn’t work like that of course.

OB: ‘To treat life as a pilgrimage to a future and better existence is to disown its present value’ (W. Somerset Maugham)‘ (p127)
TOH: Beautifully put, but also devastatingly damning! Perhaps it’s time to make a start on something… 😉

Plymouth Miniatures #art

As might be apparent from some of my previous pieces on this website, through the latter part of 2025 and early months of 2026, I got into a nice routine of spending ~30 minutes on many mornings, creating miniature square, ink and watercolour paintings. Once I got established with this routine, I decided that I would always aim to produce these pictures in sets of twelve in what I now refer to as one of my ‘Miniature Watercolour’ series. On completion of one series, I would pick a new theme and then launch straight into painting the next set of pictures. Initially, most of my themes were geographically based, and most of those were relatively local (Dartmoor Scenes, Capital City Landmarks, Cornwall Landmarks, Exmoor Views), but a few other themes did find their way into the mix (House Plants, Trees). Consequently, given that I live and work in Plymouth, the only surprising thing about me completing a Plymouth Miniatures series is that it was the seventh theme I had tackled.

Some of the subjects depicted in this Plymouth Miniature watercolour series overlap with ones I included in the (larger) Plymouth Postcards series I painted earlier in the year, but there are quite a few that I hadn’t tackled before. Working from top-left, across and down the grid of pictures above (with the different ones marked with a *), the paintings show:

the Mayflower Steps* – which are not actually the steps from which the Pilgrim Fathers departed English shores in 1620, but a more modern creation.
the Dolphin Pub* in the Barbican – possibly the most iconic and well-known drinking establishment in the city.
boats moored on the quayside of Sutton Harbour*.
Smeaton’s Tower – formerly the lighthouse on the Eddystone Rock, it was rebuilt on Plymouth Hoe in the 1880s as a tourist attraction, and is arguably now the best-known symbol of the city.
the Custom’s House and Three Crowns pubs next to Sutton Harbour.
Tinsido Lido – a restored open-air art-deco swimming pool on the city waterfront.
the National Marine Aquarium.
the Roland Levinsky Building on the University of Plymouth campus next to the city centre – named after the former Vice-Chancellor of the university (2002-2007).
Anthony Gormley’s Look II* sculpture, gazing out pensively over Plymouth Sound with the Hoe beyond.
the Melville Building in the Royal William Yard – formerly the Royal Navy Victualling Yard, built between 1826 and 1835, and now a location for swanky flats, a cinema, some restaurants and small retail outlets, and fairly frequent food and craft fairs and art exhibitions.
Saltram House* – the Georgian home of the Parker family on the southern bank of the River Plym, now owned by the National Trust and a key location used in the film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility.
the 16th century The Merchant’s House*, one of the few really old properties in the city that survived the German bombing raids in World War II.

If I had to pick a favourite from this set I think I would select the Look II sculpture, partly because it’s an unusual and somewhat quirky subject, but also because I’m pleased with the way that I captured the variation of colour of the copper blocks…

In the autumn (2025), I decided that, given their local interest, I would list framed, home-produced prints of these miniature pictures on Facebook Marketplace, and I was really surprised and a little shocked, to find that quite a few people decided to buy them as Christmas presents. I’ve also sold a few prints and greetings cards featuring the individual pictures via my Etsy shop. In addition, I used the pictures to make a small desk calendar and sold a few of those too – in fact I have one on my desk in front of me at the moment! So what started off as a fairly brief, meditative morning diversion, has ended up being a (very minor…) commercial success!

Exmoor Views #art

Exmoor Views Miniature Watercolour Series

Our holiday in Exmoor in July 2025 obviously left me in an Exmoory mood, because within a couple of weeks of our return home I found that I had painted nine miniature watercolours of Exmoor Views. These were in the same small square format that I had used for my previous miniature watercolour series (Dartmoor Scenes , House Plants, Capital City Landmarks, Cornwall Landmarks, and Trees), with each one being painted quickly as part of the ‘morning routine’ that I generally try to get through each day before I try to settle into some more substantive activity.

Most of the subjects for these pictures were locations that we had visited during our holiday, with a couple being other Exmoor locations that I was familiar with from previous visits (including the many family holidays we had in Exmoor when I was a child). Working from top-left, across and down the grid of pictures above, the paintings show:

a ruined barn in Porlock Bay
the Valley of the Rocks near Lynton
Landacre Bridge over the River Barle (possibly my mother’s favourite spot)
the bridge and ford at Malmsmead at the head of the Doone Valley
Dunkery Beacon – Somerset’s highest point
St Bueno’s Church at Culbone (said to be the smallest parish in England)
Oare Church (where Lorna Doone was shot on her wedding day)
Robber’s Bridge
a view across Porlock Bay from Bossington Hill

At the time I painted these pictures I had not fully settled into a pattern with my miniature watercolour pictures, but at some point in late summer 2025 I decided that I wanted all of these series to consist of twelve pictures, and so in October I painted three additional paintings to complete the set. These depict:

the ancient clapper bridge – Tarr Steps (also over the River Barle)
Dunster Castle
a group of red deer

Of these pictures, the most surprising one, both in terms of the subject matter and how the picture turned out, is the last. As I noted in Trees, my paintings generally avoid having people or animals in them (at least not in any detail), so the decision to have a go at drawing and painting Exmoor’s most dramatic wildlife was, for me, an unexpected and somewhat brave one! I was pleasantly surprised when they turned out quite well, in fact I think that this final picture is my favourite of the twelve:

As with my other miniature watercolour series (the ones listed above and several more that I have produced more recently), I sell greetings cards featuring the individual pictures, and home-produced prints with either nine or twelve of the pictures, in my Etsy shop and on Facebook Marketplace.