READING – 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.

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?

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… 😉

A Whole Life – Robert Seethaler #reading

I read Robert Seethaler’s novel A Whole Life last summer, after it was recommended to me by a student that I teach (a recommendation that shows a remarkable level of insight from someone who doesn’t really know me or much about my life at all). Published in 2015, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, A Whole Life is, on the face of it, a simple story, recounting the life of Andreas Egger – a life that plays out almost entirely in a single valley in the Austrian Alps. It’s one of those stories within which nothing much happens and yet, in a strange way, everything happens; and everything that does happen has a significance and depth that gets right the heart of what it is to live.

Andreas Egger is born between the two world wars and arriving in the valley as a young boy is taken in by a farming family. Somewhat surprisingly, given his rather gruff and lone manner, he falls in love and marries, but the promise of a happy life shattered by when an avalanche strikes his home. He leaves to fight in the Second World War, is taken prisoner and eventually returns home only to find that a rush of development has spread its tentacles into the remote terrain of his world. He does what he needs to do, and works as an engineer building and maintaining the cable cars that have come to the area as skiing begins to grow into the modern tourism industry it is today.

Egger’s life has moments of brightness, or perhaps it is better to say that it promises moments of brightness, but the overall tone of the book is somewhat bleak and foreboding from the outset. Egger makes it through to the ripe old age of almost eighty, but throughout his life it is clear that he is always an outsider, never really integrated into the close community, never fully adjusting to the ever-changing world around him, and never being able to fully experience the loving relationships that at one point seemed to lie ahead for him.

I really enjoyed reading A Whole Life. Seethaler’s writing is precise and unfussy and through his words, it felt like an honour that Egger was sharing his existence, his whole life, with me. There were a couple of passages that stood out for me, to the extent that I grabbed hold of them as I read. The first (page 112 in my edition) captures something of Egger’s quiet, contemplative quality:

Egger didn’t usually speak on his walk. ‘When someone opens their mouth they close their ears,’ Thomas Mattl had always said, and Egger was of the same opinion.

and the second nicely illustrates the kind of philosophy that Egger absorbed by keeping his mouth shut and his ears open, in this case from a fellow inmate in a Russian prison camp:

If you’re on the way to Hell, he’d say, you have to laugh with the devils: it costs nothing, and makes the whole thing more bearable.

I don’t think it would be a bad thing to embrace some of Egger’s calm, just-get-on-with-it, approach to life. And whether I’m on the way to Hell, Heaven, or (more likely) somewhere in between, it surely does make sense to laugh with whoever you are travelling alongside.

Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome #reading

I listened to the audiobook of Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome’s classic novel for children during the period from late March through to early June this year. It was a fairly long process, almost 9 hours of listening, accomplished mostly on my walks to and from work. There were two reasons for my choice of listening, the first linking to my desire to read explore more novels for children as I tried to find stories that were in any way comparable to my own attempt at a children’s adventure story (something that I have written about in my post on Cornelia Funke’s book The Thief Lord), and the second being that Swallows and Amazons was a suitable ‘R’ pick as I worked my way, for the second time, through an alphabet of author surnames in James Mustich’s wonderful book ‘1000 Books To Read Before You Die’.

Swallows and Amazons is, of course, a very well known title, and for many people it is a much-loved one. But despite its name being very familiar to me, I had never previously read a single word of it. I had a vague idea of what it was about – a bunch of kids having adventures on a boat – but for some reason I thought it was set in the Norfolk Broads rather than the Lake District.

The story revolves around the adventures of four siblings, conveniently, to give a nice balance, two boys and two girls – John, Susan, Titty and Roger – as they spend a summer holiday camping on an island in the middle of a lake and sailing their boat, Swallow, around and about each day. Published in 1930, the children unsurprisingly fall into neatly gender-stereotyped and age-constrained roles, John is very much the responsible old-head, and, naturally, captain of the Swallow. Susan, next oldest, and mate of the Swallow fulfills the ‘mother’ role, taking great care and pride in keeping their camp tidy, preparing meals and keeping the younger children in order. Titty, the younger sister, is the Able Seaman and, it turns out, a little bit of a rebel (the privilege of youth!). Finally, Roger, the baby of the family and ship’s boy, is very much treated as the youngest – being taught how to swim, sometimes being allowed to stay up late or accompany the others as a special treat, and frequently falling asleep.

The main action in the story involves the Swallows interactions with two local children, Nancy and Peggy Blackett, captain and mate of their own boat Amazon, and very much portrayed as rather unsophisticated and down-to-earth locals, in comparison to the rather ‘smart’ Walker children. Initially, the relationship between the Swallows and the Amazons is somewhat hostile but, as you might expect, they end up joining forces, first against the Blackett’s uncle James, who lives in a houseboat on the lake and seems to be inexplicably grumpy and awkward, and then against some rather unsavoury characters who they become embroiled with. Throughout the story it is very much John and Nancy who are held up as the masters of the craft of sailing their boats and leading the adventures, but in the end it is young Titty who turns out to be the real star.

Listening to the audiobook of the story was quite an odd experience. The attitudes and happenings of the story are very dated, and I will admit that the constant references to Titty took some getting used to. The story is absolutely chock full of nautical references to the extent that practically everything the children do is rendered in nautical-speak – for example, everyone else is a pirate or a landlubber, they are constantly jibing or backing the mainsail or trimming the freeboard, and everything they drink becomes grog. All of these things – the datedness, the setting, the obscure language – left me wondering how it could be that, more than 90 years after its publication, Swallows and Amazons is still often lauded and recommended as a story for modern children. Perhaps there is some innate craving for a return to the semi-wild that a child can connect with, even if they (probably) haven’t got a clue about one end of a boat from another, and almost certainly have no idea whatsoever what ‘pemmican’ is!

So did I enjoy Swallows and Amazons? Would I recommend it?

Well, let’s be honest, Swallows and Amazons wasn’t written to entertain an almost 60 year old man with limited interest and experience in sailing, reading it 95 years after it was set and published. It’s probably not surprising then, that I would have to say that I was left underwhelmed… But maybe if I was 12 years old with my thoughts turning to imagined adventures and challenges, and yearning to escape from the constraining influence of the adults in my world I might have felt differently. Then perhaps, I would have leapt onboard at the chance to join John, Susan, Titty, Roger, Nancy and Peggy as they hoist their flags, cast off and allowed the wind to fill their sails and send them racing across the lake in pursuit of their next adventure!

Wild Courage – Jenny Wood #reading

In the early months of this year I read and heard several references to a soon-to-be published book: Wild Courage by Jenny Wood. My interest was piqued further after I viewed a Livestream of an episode of the podcast ‘A Productive Conversation‘, in which the host, Mike Vardy, chatted with the author about her book (A Productive Conversation: Episode 611 – Jenny Wood talks about wild courage and fearless self-advocacy). I duly ordered the book and began reading it soon after it arrived on my doorstep, optimistic that it was going to be an interesting and enjoyable read.

Wood’s basic idea is that in order to progress we need to have courage – to push through fear of the unknown, fear of discontent, fear of failure and fear of judgement by others. She argues that successful people feel, but put aside, all of this fear, becoming their own strongest advocate, and having the courage to take whatever steps are necessary to advance towards their goal(s).

The distinctive feature, or twist, in Woods espousal of this feel the fear and do it anyway approach to life is that she identifies nine traits that generally hold negative connotations, and then recasts each of them as a type of courage that the reader is encouraged to develop and deploy. The nine traits, and their associate courage, are as follows:

WEIRD – the courage to stand out
SELFISH – the courage to stand up for what you want
SHAMELESS – the courage to stand being your efforts and abilities
OBSESSED – the courage to set your own standard
NOSY – the courage to dig deeper
MANIPULATIVE – the courage to influence others
BRUTAL – the courage to protect your time and energy
RECKLESS – the courage to take calculated risks
BOSSY – the courage to listen and lead

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this approach, in fact I think it provides an interesting route into thinking about this territory…

(can you tell that there’s a but coming?)

…but what I wasn’t expecting from the book, and what disappointed and annoyed me as I read it, was the way that at every turn Wood focused on deploying all of this courage in one area only – career advancement and promotion – so much so that I was left feeling rather battered by the notion that this is the only thing that really matters in life.

At various points in the book I found my anger rising as Wood gave precisely the kind of advice that I detest. For example, in Brutal she instructs readers to ‘let the tree fall‘, i.e. to skip ‘unimportant’ tasks quietly. She suggests that ‘if they’re actually necessary, they’ll come around again, and you’ll have been busy doing unambiguously important work in the meantime.‘. To this I say ‘no, no, no‘. There is nothing more annoying than colleagues who fail to respond to simple requests for information citing the ‘if it’s important I’ll be asked again’ line of reasoning… It’s selfish, inefficient, and plain and simply rude; it says to the person who has sent the request that their time is not important and that it is yours to waste. No, just respond to the request promptly and don’t force people to keep track of your lack of response and to ask twice, or however many more times it takes to rouse you out of your own little world… [rant over]

I also found Wild Courage to be guilty of over-using the ‘personal story’ approach to illustrating the points that were being made. Perhaps some readers like this kind of thing. The odd personal story is fine, I think, but please sprinkle in a few from different scenarios, different worlds, other people etc., so that not every example is drawn from the world of working for Google.

In the end, I found myself frustrated by my reading of Wild Courage. It’s not that the approach and the ideas contained in the book aren’t valid. In the end, the courage that might stem from embracing each of the ‘negative’ traits can be expressed in a nice, succinct and positive manner that has much wider application that career advancement simply by putting the word courage to one side in each phrase. Then, the lessons that flow from those nine traits become a simple set of instructions:

stand out
stand up for what you want
stand behind you efforts and abilities
set your own standard
dig deeper
influence others
protect your time and energy
take calculated risks
listen and lead

which to my mind is a whole lot easier to absorb and a lot more useful than getting caught up having to justify the adoption of those negatively associated words, spinning the idea of courage out of them and suggesting that there is something a little wild about doing so. And what’s more, it’s a set of instructions that is clearly applicable to almost every aspect of life and not just the narrow, corporate-career-focus that Wood chooses to target.

Revelation – C.J. Sansom #reading

I read Revelation, the fourth title in C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series during April and May 2025. As with the other books in this series, it is quite a weighty tome and follows the lawyer Matthew Shardlake and his general assistant Jack Barak as they investigate another peculiar set of crimes during the reign of King Henry VIII in early 16th century England. The previous book in the series, Sovereign, had seen Shardlake travelling north to York, but Revelation returns the action to the rapidly expanding, crowded and evidently crime-ridden city of London.

Initially, Shardlake finds himself caught up in the investigation of a single, macabre, murder of a legal colleague friend. However, it soon becomes apparent that the murderer is working through the seven prophesies of the Book of Revelation in the bible as more bodies, brutally killed in ways that match the prophesies, are uncovered. As Shardlake’s investigation unfolds and they second-guess the murderers next moves and race to neutralize them, Shardlake comes to realise that he is also very much at threat, adding an extra dimension of urgency to his searches. This is added to by concerns that the crimes have the potential to impact at the highest level, drawing Henry VIII’s future wife Catherine Parr into peril. Along the way, Shardlake spends a lot of time working to free a young man from Bedlam, rekindles his love for an old flame (the wife of the first victim) and Barak becomes ever more distant from his new wife Tamasin, who he first encountered in York while helping investigate the crimes described in the previous book, Sovereign, after the death of their young child.

I remember really enjoying the first book in this series, Dissolution, and I have enjoyed the rest of the series too, but I feel that, perhaps surprisingly, rather than growing in strength as the characters mature and settle into their fictional world, the stories have become progressively weaker with each title. The introduction of the more personal, relationship-base activities of the main characters seem to be rather forced and somewhat out of character, and after making a significant impact in the first two books, Shardlake’s physician friend Guy, potentially the most interesting character of all, seems to have become rather sidelined.

Despite its weaknesses, I still felt that Revelation provided a fairly gripping historical adventure yarn with plenty of twists and turns, and I will certainly continue with the series in the future.

The Mountain Is You – Brianna Wiest #reading

The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna West is probably not a book that I would have picked up to read of my own accord, despite that fact that I am pretty much certain that a lot of the struggles I have in pushing myself into action and gaining the sense of achievement and fulfillment that I crave are driven at a fundamental level by self-sabotage in one form or another. There is just something about the whole mountain metaphor, along with the kinds of words used in the book blurb that I read online (‘deep internal work of excavating trauma’, ‘building resilience’, and ‘adjusting how we show up for the climb’) that instinctively put me off. Why then did I work my way through this book for a few weeks in April and May this year? Because it was voted as the reading matter for the May meeting of The Timecrafting Trust Book Club that I participate in, and so, dutifully, I ordered myself a copy and set to work.

Almost from the start, I realized that there might well be a bit more value for me from The Mountain Is You than I had envisaged. I was immediately stuck with some obvious similarity between some of the content being covered and the ideas of psychotherapist Carl Jung that I found enthralling and thoroughly convincing when I read James Hollis’s excellent The Middle Passage a year or so ago.

Wiest begins her book by describing the various forms that self-sabotage can take along with the underlying reasons why each type of self-sabotaging behaviour occurs. There were quite a few lines in this section of the book that resonated with me…

‘sometimes, we sabotage our professional success because what we really want it to create art‘
‘sometimes, our most sabotaging behaviours are really the result of long-held and unexamined fears we have about the world and ourselves‘
‘human beings experience a natural resistance to the unknown, because it is essentially the ultimate loss of control‘

… because yes, I do increasingly seem to be seeing myself as an artist, yes, I definitely have a lot of fears squashed down into my head that hold me back, and yes, I do tend to get overwhelmed and feel very uncomfortable when I perceive that things are spinning out of my control. But why then, knowing all of this, does nothing much really seem to change? Wiest delivers the killer answer:

‘most people do not actually change their lives until not changing becomes the less comfortable option‘

Wiest goes on to argue that, in fact, we might be better off re-framing self-sabotage because, ultimately, the habits and behaviours associated with it are actually a result of your very clever subconcious ensuring that some unfilled need, displaced emotion or neglected desire is being met – that those actions are, in fact, deliberately designed to provide a positive outcome that some hidden part of your subconscious seeks.

Aand funnily enough, just this morning, quite coincidentally, I wrote in my journal that perhaps I allowed myself to procrastinate and hold myself back from taking certain actions even though I know this will result in an intense wave of frustration and anger with myself, because at least those negative feelings and emotions are something that I am familiar with and are, in some weird and twisted way, somewhat comforting.

The next section of The Mountain Is You describes a long list of different manifestations of self-sabotage, and whilst many of these did not feel relevant to me, some of them certainly did – hello Perfectionism, Worrying About Least Likely Circumstances, Being Busy, Fear Of Failure, to name a few.

The start of the process of overcoming self-sabotage begins, Wiest suggests, with tuning into, and listening to, the negative emotions associated with it – things like anger, jealousy, regret, chronic fear. She highlights a basic need to be able to ‘allow yourself to feel what you feel without judgement or suppression and notes that understanding your needs, meeting the ones you are responsible for, and then allowing yourself to show up so others can meet the ones you can’t do on your own will help you break the self-sabotage cycle’. For example, feel angry, notice that you are angry, understand why you are angry, remember that it is okay to feel angry… and then get on with life.

There are then a couple of chapters with fairly standard fare on building emotional intelligence and on letting go of baggage from the past, but as these progressed I could feel the book moving steadily into the kind of territory that my initial instincts had led me to expect. Then, aargh, I hit a section titled ‘Releasing your past into the Quantum Field‘ and my brain was instantly screaming at me that I was now thoroughly into pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo land… the kind of land where, apparently, ‘You store … emotions, energies and patterns at a cellular level‘. Now, I guess that in some sense everything associated with an individual human is stored at a cellular level, but I am pretty sure that Wiest is suggesting there’s something rather more mysterious and perhaps spiritual going on. I’d be inclined to simply say that statements of that kind are just nonsense!

I guess that from that point onwards, my brain was in a state of high alert, warning me, perhaps unfairly, that much of what I was reading had no real, solid basis. There were lots of nice, almost mantra-like phrases: ‘be willing to be disliked‘, ‘do your inner work‘ and a series of suggestions to ‘create aligned goals, ‘find you inner peace’, ‘detach from worry’, ‘take triggers as signals’, ‘honour your discomfort’, ‘stop trying to be happy’, ‘arrive into the present’ etc., but in the end it was all a bit too much – too many suggestions, too many affirmations, too many challenges to think about overcoming, with the result that I came away confused and somewhat disappointed. After a promising, really very readable first half, everything seemed to have unraveled as the book reached its conclusion. There was just nothing much that was concrete or tangible for me to cling onto.

Late on in the book there was one phrase that I rather liked in a section titled ‘Be aware of what you give your energy’, namely that ‘the wolf that wins is the one that you feed‘ and strangely, on the day that I read those lines some spoke almost the exact same words to me (perhaps that pesky quantum field was doing its thing…). In fact, the whole book is stuffed full of short phrases and sentences that you could lift off the page and incorporate into an inspirational poster or social media post if that is your thing. I may not have warmed to Wiest’s mountain metaphor or felt that the argument in The Mountain Is You hung together in a fully coherent and convincing manner, but she certainly knows how to write what might be called ‘soundbite sentences’. Forget all the gumph about releasing you past into the quantum field and storing emotions at a cellular level, and take this phrase, right at the end of the book… …

‘One day, the mountain that was in front of you will be so far behind you, it will barely be visible in the distance. But who you become in learning to climb it? That will stay with you forever.‘

BOOM!

The Thief Lord – Cornelia Funke #reading

Since I finished writing my children’s adventure story, Empedocles’ Children, earlier this year, I have been exploring the various avenues through which I might eventually get it published. By far the most likely is that I will end up self-publishing Empedocles’ Children as an eBook and print-on-demand paperback, largely because to get a book out into the world via a traditional publishing route you have to first be successful in gaining the interest of a Literary Agent and, by all accounts, the chances of that happening are pretty minimal… As a result, I am adopting the working assumption that the doors to traditional publishers will remain firmly closed to me, but that doesn’t mean that I am not going to give that route to publication a try, in fact I have already started, having worked my way through an online course from Jericho Writers called ‘How To Get A Literary Agent’. About a month ago, following the approach suggested in that course, I sent off ‘query letters’, accompanied by a one-page synopsis and whatever portion of the manuscript the agent requested querying authors to send (usually the first three chapters), to eight Literary Agents. My plan is to send off a further set of query letters to another group of eight agents sometime in September, and then complete a final set of eight submissions in November(ish). The logic of this staged approach to submissions is that it provides the opportunity to modify the submission made to the later groups of agents on the basis of any responses (or lack of responses) received from the earlier one.

But what has any of this got to do with Cornelia Funke’s children’s novel The Thief Lord? The answer is that one of the things Literary Agents generally ask is that authors liken their work to what are termed ‘comparative titles’ (or ‘comps’). This is supposed to be a good way of the author showing where their book fits into the market (and that they know where their book fits into the market), and so help the agent decide whether or not it might be the kind of book that they want to represent and think they can sell to a publisher. With this in mind, before I could finalize my submission package I had to try to come up with a few such comps. Since I don’t routinely read children’s fiction, I spent a long time perusing the shelves of the local bookstore, but this didn’t really help me much because it seems to me that almost all new children’s books now feature magic, witches and wizards, dragons and suchlike. I also decided that I should try to get into the habit of reading some children’s fiction, and so when I stumbled upon a copy of The Thief Lord in a charity shop, I grabbed the opportunity to read a title by one of the most successful writers for children of recent decades.

The story of The Thief Lord is set, rather randomly, in Venice, and follows two orphaned boys, Prosper and his younger brother Boniface who have travelled from Germany after escaping from the clutches of their rather severe aunt who only wants to adopt the younger Boniface. In Venice, the two boys fall in with a group of street children led by the super confident, and extremely talented ‘Thief Lord’, Scipio. The first half of the book sees Prosper and Boniface become steadily more drawn into the group and their schemes to steal items to sell on, often to a corrupt antique dealer Barbarossa. The story hangs together pretty well and I found it a fairly enjoyable read…

…but then in the second half of the story, everything turns a bit weird. The group of children, rather improbably end up being befriended by a woman, Ida Spavento, whose house they were trying to rob, and then the plot suddenly takes Prosper and Scipio to an island where they find a merry-go-round that magically changes the age of those who ride it. I won’t spoil the story by saying who rides it and the extent to which they become younger or older, suffice to say that two of the main characters undergo contrasting permanent transformations after the merry-go-round breaks, trapping them at their new ages. I found the whole of this section of the book to be rather random – as if Funke knew that she wanted (or needed) to put a surprise twist into the book but hadn’t really worked out how to embed it into the story that she was in the process of writing. However, I’m an almost-60-year-old adult and The Thief Lord clearly wasn’t written for someone like me. Perhaps younger readers like (or liked, The Thief Lord was published in 2002) stories that change tack quite radically partway through. Who knows?

Overall, I quite enjoyed reading The Thief Lord, but I didn’t find it particularly satisfying. Interestingly, according to the Wikipedia entry for the book, a review in Publishers Weekly ‘found fault with the pacing’, a comment which matches up well with my own feelings about the story. In the end, I wasn’t left much the wiser in terms of finding a comp for my own book, although there is some similarity in the way that our stories unfold as they go along rather than following some obvious up-front structure or plot. I think there is also some similarity in the way that the stories bring together a group of children with different backgrounds and attributes. But in most respects the two books are very different, not least because Funke’s book has been published, translated into different languages, turned into a film (albeit apparently not a good one) and sold many thousands of copies, whereas my book hasn’t been published, hasn’t been translated, hasn’t been turned into the film and hasn’t sold a single copy…

…yet!

The Productivity Diet – Mike Vardy #reading

The Productivity Diet is the latest book written by Mike Vardy. Mike, who is based in Victoria, British Columbia, on the western side of Canada, describes himself as a ‘seasoned productivity expert, writer, coach and podcaster’ (quoting from his own website biography), and it was through the latter, his podcast A Productive Conversation, that I first became aware of his work. I don’t know how I initially stumbled on this podcast but for some years I have been a sucker for consuming content related to productivity (or ‘how we operate’ as I prefer to think of it). At some point, listening to episodes of the podcast led me to signing up for Mike’s email newsletter and then, after he sent out a request for people who felt they had a tendency to get started later in the day to contact him, I ended up chatting with him via Zoom about the productivity challenges that I faced and the approaches to overcoming those challenges that I used. At the end of the call, I politely declined the opportunity to join a coaching course with him (£££!!!) but did sign up as a member of his online community The TimeCrafting Trust. That was in March 2024, and over the last 15 months I have got to know quite a few other members of the community, most of whom are based in North America, and participated in a wide range of online events including monthly Book Club meetings, podcast livestreams, workshops and seasonal planning sessions. I think it’s fair to say that whilst Mike and I have never met in person, I could properly describe him as a friend, albeit of the online variety.

But what of The Productivity Diet itself? Mike’s basic view is that we cannot ‘manage time’ and so, instead, we should focus on managing our attention, in particular taking into account how much energy we have at any moment. To paraphrase the book: Productivity isn’t about managing time. It’s about how we use it, how we relate to it, and how we move within it. Mike argues that we should eschew rigid productivity systems in favour of thinking about productivity as a continuous interaction between Intention, Attention, Reflection and Action. Mike’s approach, which he calls TimeCrafting, involves laying out some broad intentions for our areas of focus, but then navigating the reality of our daily experience with a sense of gentleness and responsiveness to our evolving needs.

The Productivity Diet was the subject of a Kickstarter Campaign that Mike started before I got to know him. I think there were a few hiccups along the way, but the book was launched successfully earlier this year. The launch included Mike making appearances on a number of other productivity-related podcasts, and when he announced that he was going to focus an episode of his own podcast on the book I thought it would be fun to offer my services as a stand-in ‘host’ so that rather than it being Mike Vardy having a productive conversation with himself, the episode had a more normal host-author format. A little to my surprise, and despite the fact that I have pretty much no experience of working in broadcast communications, Mike thought this was a good idea and we went ahead and had a lot of fun recording the episode. You can pick it up here if you’re at all interested: A Productive Conversation Episode 603.

There are three major pillars to TimeCrafting as set out in The Productivity Diet: Time Theming, Attention Paths and Reflection.

Mike is big on the first of these pillars, Time Theming, suggesting that it can be beneficial to designate different kinds of themes to act as guide-rails as you decide, in the moment, exactly what to do next. These themes are time-based, for example, daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal or what are termed ‘horizontal’ themes where you select to focus your attention on a particular type of activity at the same time each day. At an even longer timescale, it is suggested that you adopt an ‘Annual Axiom’ – essentially a very short (e.g. three word) description to guide your overall approach to the year ahead. In the world of TimeCrafting, one might decide to group administrative tasks together to tackle on, say, Thursday, or to designate Friday as a day to consider finance-based activities, Tuesday for ‘creating’ etc. One might decide that the focus for the week ahead is, say, ‘rejuvenation’ or ‘correspondence’, or that the next month is for ‘growing contacts’ etc. A key aspect of Time Theming is that the themes are not meant to be a way to rigidly enforce a particular regime of action, but serve more as beacons to guide you back to an intended path if you move away from it. In addition, it is perfectly fine to do tasks and activities that do not match the current intended theme if there is time and space to do so.

The term ‘Attention Path‘ relates to a factor that will influence what you choose to, or can, focus your attention on at any given moment. The Productivity Diet introduces the acronym TREAT as a way to separate out five different types of attention path. TREAT stands for Time-based, Resource-based, Energy-based, Activity-based and Theme-based. The idea is that when selecting tasks to work on next, one considers the options in relation to each of these attention path types, asking questions like: Can this task be accomplished in the time I now have available? Do I have the resources I need to hand? Do I have the energy for this? Does it make sense to do this alongside some other similar task? Does this fit within my intended theme? I know from my interactions with him, that Mike is a firm believer in designating tasks as being low, medium or high energy so that, for example, when you hit a point in a day where you feel fatigued and might otherwise grind to a complete halt (as we all do…) you can glance at your list of possible tasks and pick one or two low energy tasks to accomplish. In this way, time which might otherwise be lost to the void of the internet (for example) can still result in some useful outcome.

The third pillar of TimeCrafting is Reflection. This is the key to continuous evolution and improvement. By reflecting on your actions, for example by writing in a journal, you can identify adjustments that can be made, obstacles to overcome, approaches that can be reinforced or extended. Without meaningful reflection there is no evidence base to use to help inform the decisions you make about what to do when and how etc., and so everything just unfolds somehow in a rather haphazard manner.

I will admit that in my own day-to-day operations, I have not had a great deal of success in using daily, weekly or monthly themes. I think my work days are too variable and I do not have sufficient control over exactly what needs to be done when, for them to work in a very consistent manner. But I think that having the general approach in mind is still helpful, especially at the longer timescales (‘this week/month I will focus on finishing X’). I have had more success with horizontal theming, but the variability of my days (sometimes I have classes to teach, other days I have a meeting etc) means that my attempts to impose order on my day through horizontal themes is generally most successful during the earlier and later (non-work hours) parts of each day. Similarly, I do consider attention paths to some extent, but I find that once my day is underway I tend to forget my plans and just go with the flow. It doesn’t help that I am not very good at checking in with myself to consider whether I would benefit from re-directing my attention (even setting reminders to do this doesn’t work very well – I just ignore them much of the time!). It’s not that I think the ideas underlying TimeCrafting are not valid, quite the reverse really, but I just seem to revolt against any attempt to constrain or direct my attention even though I would very much like to be able to do so!

I like the general approach of TimeCrafting that is set out in The Productivity Diet. I’ve tried to implement what might be called ‘heavier’ systems – things like time-blocking/time-boxing – and whilst they seem to offer an attractive level of control, I always (and quickly) end up revolting against them as my feelings in the moment take over. TimeCrafting offers a more gentle, sensitive, approach to keeping yourself on track, or at least somewhere close to being on track. To use a travel analogy, TimeCrafting is like having a traditional map, understanding what all of the symbols mean and knowing generally where you want to end up, but allowing yourself flexibility to move around the terrain, informed by the map, in the way that feels most appropriate at the time. This seems to me to be a much better way to travel than to switch on the SatNav and following it blindly to the selected destination, even when the road you have just been instructed to turn down is clearly little more than a rough and ever-narrowing track heading to an almost inevitable dead end and a ton of frustration as you try to turn around or back-up, surrounded by a herd of angry cows. Give me the map and my intuition any day!