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Learning & Practice

Habits and compounding practice — small actions that build lasting capability over time. Essays here explore learning, resilience, personal development, and the disciplines that compound.

Sitting next to Nellie

Learning & Practice

Sitting next to Nellie

Jim Rohn reckoned you're the average of the five people you spend most time with. Mine are my wife, three sons and a motivational speaker on YouTube. On learning by proximity, and why a chair is cheaper than a course.

The Danish Beer Debrief

Learning & Practice

The Danish Beer Debrief

A flopped afternoon workshop in Copenhagen turned into the best lesson in teaching I've had in years — given to me, generously, by the person at the front. On what actually holds a room, and the craft of helping people learn.

In Praise of Badly Formatted Word Documents

Learning & Practice

In Praise of Badly Formatted Word Documents

My early career was in software testing – and a useful thing the craft gave me had nothing to do with testing software. On what your work leaves behind, and why writing things down is how you find the thread.

How I Manage What I Learn

Learning & Practice

How I Manage What I Learn

Collecting isn't learning. A personal knowledge system — Capture, Curate, Crunch, Contribute — for turning what you read into what you do.

The Skills You Learn on a Market Stall

Learning & Practice

The Skills You Learn on a Market Stall

What trade skills, commercial awareness and practical judgement can teach us about turning ideas into value.

Craft is power — and where your power at work really lives

The Word at Work

Craft is power — and where your power at work really lives

We've made the word craft soft — craft beer, craft fairs, hand-crafted. Underneath sits an older meaning worth recovering: craft meant power. Here's where yours lives at work.

Is the CV Still the Best Way to Represent Professional Value?

Is the CV Still the Best Way to Represent Professional Value?

The CV has survived decades of reinvention around it — and viewed as a communication tool with a purpose, an audience and a context, that survival makes sense. What's missing is something else entirely.

The three areas of learning — and the one very few people invest in

Learning & Practice

The three areas of learning — and the one very few people invest in

When I first started out, I did the obvious thing. I got good at the work in front of me. It didn't take long to notice that being good wasn't enough.

The three ways ideas change (or don't)

The three ways ideas change (or don't)

Progress isn't movement — it's seeing. What stop-motion animation reveals about how your ideas actually become valuable.

The Public Commonplace Project

Learning & Practice

The Public Commonplace Project

It was some time in the mid to late 80s. A café in Bristol, a man sitting alone, and a twelve-year-old with a new notebook writing his first ever note. Thirty years on, that habit became all of this — and now a good part of it goes public.

Good teaching is the creation of understanding

Learning & Practice

Good teaching is the creation of understanding

Good teaching is not the transfer of information. It is the creation of understanding.

The anti-role model

Climate & Creativity

The anti-role model

We give a great deal of attention to the people we want to be like. The people we'd hate to become are teaching us something too — if we choose to look.