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It's increasingly rare for me to eat new foods as I age. But this weeks thanks to the lovely and brilliant artist Jay Batlle and family (check out his art here) I had a puffball mushroom to try.
Simple is some times best. Plain fried in a butter olive oil mix, finished with some flat leaf parsley and fried eggs. The earthy, savoury smells of porcini and forest. but a chunkier, slightly tannic-sweet tang. Yum.
I’ve had discussions on 3 different occasions in the last 2 weeks on email management so, I thought I’d follow up on some extra ideas and thoughts from my last email management post.
First, You need to assess what type of person you are, how you use your email and what your email load is.
If you know unread email bothers your brain, then you will need a different tactic to my core strategy.
The use of email is changing. Especially in younger companies, and people, and in Asia. Here chat, slack, persistent chats are becoming more common for communication and email is more formal.
In US and Europe, outside of tech, letters remain more formal (attached as pdf often) and email is the core communication medium.
You can see the move to persistent chat in Gen Z use of chat, the China use of Wechat, and the strong use in tech and start-up world of Slack and other persistent chat tools.
With that in mind, I suggest a few strategies. One is using a triage system that uses filters, deletes and flags to get to a zero inbox. You need to set up good filters and flags.
Personally, I think obtaining a zero inbox is too demanding if you have a heavy email load, but some need it for good brain feeling.
Under this strategy, I also suggest using 2 or 3 email addresses. One for newsletters, sign-ups, non-urgent, non-vital matters. One for work exclusive matters and a third for personal email. You need a certain level of organised personality for this (it’s not me!) and you will need mail check times for the various addresses. Eg 1x week for non-vital email, 1 hour for personal etc.
As I mentioned previously having a set time to review email (not first thing in the morning), I think is an efficient practice.
This is also because constant email alerts interrupts “flow” - the concentration / creative work flow which is efficient writing / reading / thinking time.
As I described earlier, I advocate reading headlines, flagging emails which need a thoughtful reply, dealing with emails which need only 30 seconds, and then ignoring all others - even the time spent deleting emails is a waste of time under this method.
My latest thinking is:
-Make your headline informative
-Have an interesting link in your email signature
-Put an interesting link in your out-of-office, plus let them know if emails will not be read.
-Write “No reply required” if no reply is required to your email
Newspaper have dedicated roles for headliners. A short succinct one-line headline of what your email is about saves everyone time. Further, it concentrates your mind on what the focus of email is about.
Say something interesting in your email signature. Ideally a link to a piece of work or thought you want to engage people with. It’s a “free” piece of promotion if used carefully (I tend to go a bit overboard, but a single link or phrase works well). Update it from time to time. You can link to a corporate item or a personal thought or any insightful matter.
Same goes for the “out of office” email. But here you should also state, if you are taking a proper break and not reading email – in which case ask them to re-send the email if important, when you are back in the office. Then you can safely ignore most emails sent when away.
I’ve also started to write “No reply required” if no reply is required to my email. Many emails are vague as to if a reply is required. Time spent thinking about if a reply is needed is a waste. Further, if a reply is not needed then receiving an email back is also a waste of both your time and their time. This is a small addition, which has incrementally cut down some of my incoming email.
Any other ideas let me know!
The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog. Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism. Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).
My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.
Current highlights:
A long read on Will Hutton looking at Brexit causes and solutions.
Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.
A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.
Some popular posts: the commencement address; by NassimTaleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.
Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity
New Forest horse (c) B Yeoh
Reflecting on the second order and third order forces behind Brexit. I think Will Hutton’s observations mainly stand, but having travelled to some small pockets of England over the last 2 years I have some personal observations.
Lymington is a relatively wealthy town. Nestled at the edge of the English New Forest, it has traditions of rural life stretcing back centuries. I walked down the high street and it was busy, thriving even - helped by British tourists, there were few spaces to rent, and a mix of independent and chain shops.
For a Londoner, the absences were notable. People of colour were absent. Different languages were absent. Different styles of dress and fashion were mostly absent.
The variety of food was absent. (True, Indian and Chinese were represented as they have been for decades in Britain; the fish and chips were good).
The wealth is based on a marine industry supplemented by tourism and to a lesser extent farming and forestry around the New Forest.
Unlike around Dymchurch (an area on the Kent coast, where I observed support for Brexit but for subtly different reasons) the infrastructure is fairly well maintained - with absent dereliction, better planning (although nothing in my back yard).
But the advantages of international trade are invisible, or seem invisible here. Mostly residents seem unaware of any advantages but seem to believe faceless beaurocrats control rules and regulations of moderate vexation to the marine industry. (I don’t pass judgement on Brexiteers viewing a Brexit as being positive for trade, people are still arguing over this point.)
The arts and culture, the museums and dance, the music and international travellers are absent from New Forest and Lymington life.
The yearly pantomime, the cricket season, the pheasant season, the trees and the tide, these mark time here.
The local coffee shops (two chains on the high street) have local staff, no Europeans.
I imagine no one here views themselves as racist, but there simply are few foreigners or people of colour here and why would Lymington want to embrace any change ? It’s not the creative destruction and churn and vibrancy of an international London.
If anything, I had the impression that the New Forest wants to be left alone.
This is another dimension to what I think will be a defining theme of this century. A localism vs a globalism. Whether globalism will turn into multi-localist or federalist. And how societies end up (if they manage to at all) dealing with systemic externalities and systemic concerns eg climate change, water stress, mass migration, defence.
It is a different dimension to the left/right axis.
Pottering around the New Forest stopping for cows and horses reminded me of travels in rural Japan.
The localism in rural Japan, old traditions (kept firmer in Japan than in Lymington) and skepticism of the big City. Even nervousness over foreigners - do they know how to use our baths? Have they learnt about shoes ? Are they pointing with their chopsticks ? How could they order autumn food in the summer, that’s crazy ?
Whereas I draw parallels with Dymchurch to parts of India I travelled through, another story.
Lymington has an uneasy relationship with its second home owners and holiday cottages, like parts of Cornwall. (I sense thought I may be wrong). The summers months are needed to keep the money flowing to help the local residents through the winter months.
It's a little different to "true travellers", in rural Japan, there's also a tradition of treating travellers with great hospitality. Not only money they bring, and trade, and news but true travellers do pass through. Second home owners, oft feel neither here nor there, perhaps taking more than they give back.
Reflecting back, is it a surprise this area is a Brexit town? And, apart from the mess politicians are making in trying to come to terms with what Brexit really means, I'm unsure it would sway opinion in this corner of the world. I sense it would be happy left alone.
Horses have run semi-wild here for hundreds of years. I expect most believe horses will run for hundreds of years more.
There are muddy, shingle beaches; good sailing, peaceful forest walks - it makes for a good holiday.
The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog. Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism. Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).
My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.
Current highlights:
A long read on Will Hutton looking at Brexit causes and solutions.
Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.
A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.
Some popular posts: the commencement address; by NassimTaleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.
Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity
My father had a full life, but a mediocre death. Not a bad death by any stretch, but not a good death.
He was taken in an ambulance to hospital suffering from complications from his recurred cancer.
He was somewhat scared but partially comforted by his family. The hospital was about as hospitable as you’d expect. After not too many days, he lapsed into a coma and shortly afterwards I witnessed his last heartbeats.
It was the second set of final heart beats I had witnessed. One of my best friends had died at university 2 years earlier.
Up until that stay in hospital he had spent most of that time at home and we had a Macmillan nurse regularly visit to help.
In that he was at home for most of his final years, and that surgery/radiation defeated his cancer long enough to see me finish high school and university, made for a good death but that he spent some of his last days scared, and not easily at comfort, made the very final reckoning mediocre by my count.
When he lapsed into a coma, a harried doctor handed me a Do Not Resuscitate form and awkwardly suggested we consider it. I had limited-to-no discussion of this with any doctor before but had recalled conversations with my father from several years before (at initial diagnosis). This lack of preparation on how to die well is common as I found in reading Atul Gawande’s book Mortality.
“As recently as 1945, most deaths occurred in the home. By the 1980s, just 17 percent did. Those who somehow did die at home likely died too suddenly to make it to the hospital—say, from a massive heart attack, stroke, or violent injury—or were too isolated to get somewhere that could provide help.
People live longer and better than at any other time in history. But scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying into medical experiences, matters to be managed by health care professionals. And we in the medical world have proved alarmingly unprepared for it. This reality has been largely hidden, as the final phases of life become less familiar to people.
Across the entire industrialized world, the experience of advanced aging and death has shifted to hospitals and nursing homes.”
“Death, of course, is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order of things. I knew these truths abstractly, but I didn’t know them concretely—that they could be truths not just for everyone but also for this person right in front of me, for this person I was responsible for.
The late surgeon Sherwin Nuland, in his classic book How We Die, lamented, “The necessity of nature’s final victory was expected and accepted in generations before our own. Doctors were far more willing to recognize the signs of defeat and far less arrogant about denying them.” But as I ride down the runway of the twenty-first century, trained in the deployment of our awesome arsenal of technology, I wonder exactly what being less arrogant really means. You become a doctor for what you imagine to be the satisfaction of the work, and that turns out to be the satisfaction of competence. It is a deep satisfaction very much like the one that a carpenter experiences in restoring a fragile antique chest or that a science teacher experiences in bringing a fifth grader to that sudden, mind-shifting recognition of what atoms are. It comes partly from being helpful to others. But it also comes from being technically skilled and able to solve difficult, intricate problems. Your competence gives you a secure sense of identity.
For a clinician, therefore, nothing is more threatening to who you think you are than a patient with a problem you cannot solve. There’s no escaping the tragedy of life, which is that we are all aging from the day we are born. One may even come to understand and accept this fact. My dead and dying patients don’t haunt my dreams anymore. But that’s not the same as saying one knows how to cope with what cannot be mended. I am in a profession that has succeeded because of its ability to fix. If your problem is fixable, we know just what to do. But if it’s not? The fact that we have had no adequate answers to this question is troubling and has caused callousness, inhumanity, and extraordinary suffering. This experiment of making mortality a medical experience is just decades old. It is young. And the evidence is it is failing.
This is a book about the modern experience of mortality—about what it’s like to be creatures who age and die, how medicine has changed the experience and how it hasn’t, where our ideas about how to deal with our finitude have got the reality wrong. As I pass a decade in surgical practice and become middle-aged myself, I find that neither I nor my patients find our current state tolerable. But I have also found it unclear what the answers should be, or even whether any adequate ones are possible. I have the writer’s and scientist’s faith, however, that by pulling back the veil and peering in close, a person can make sense of what is most confusing or strange or disturbing. You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life.
Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers. I wrote this book in the hope of understanding what has happened. Mortality can be a treacherous subject. Some will be alarmed by the prospect of a doctor’s writing about the inevitability of decline and death. For many, such talk, however carefully framed, raises the specter of a society readying itself to sacrifice its sick and aged. But what if the sick and aged are already being sacrificed—victims of our refusal to accept the inexorability of our life cycle? And what if there are better approaches, right in front of our eyes, waiting to be recognized?”
Gawande has written with insight on check lists (amazon link here) and on his time as a surgeon (amazon link here). In his book, Mortality, (Amazon link here) he tackles the medicalisation of our deaths.
There is a parallel in how some doctors medicalise the “treatment” of autism.
Reading Atul, I can see how the principles of hospice, palliative and gerontology can be applied more fully across the whole medical chain.
Atul - a high performing surgeon - was himself surprised at what a hospice worker does:
“Outside, I confessed that I was confused by what Creed (the hospice worker) was doing. A lot of it seemed to be about extending Cox’s life. Wasn’t the goal of hospice to let nature take its course? “That’s not the goal,” Creed said. The difference between standard medical care and hospice is not the difference between treating and doing nothing, she explained. The difference was in the priorities. In ordinary medicine, the goal is to extend life. We’ll sacrifice the quality of your existence now—by performing surgery, providing chemotherapy, putting you in intensive care—for the chance of gaining time later. Hospice deploys nurses, doctors, chaplains, and social workers to help people with a fatal illness have the fullest possible lives right now—much as nursing home reformers deploy staff to help people with severe disabilities. In terminal illness that means focusing on objectives like freedom from pain and discomfort, or maintaining mental awareness for as long as feasible, or getting out with family once in a while—not on whether Cox’s life would be longer or shorter.”
The parallel with autism is that you want to help autistic people have as a full a life possible, not by doing nothing but not by over medicalising them.
The voice of the terminally ill, their wishes are important - this is recognised and increasingly so. Similarly, we are increasingly aware of the autistic voice itself. (This is complicated when that voice is a child’s - there is the parent-child dynamic conflict known the world over typical or atypical) and that autistic voice is increasingly being heard.
At some point most families come to understand that autism is a life long condition and that a “cure” in a traditional medicalised sense is not possible. That understanding has some parallels to a family that comes to understand that an old age illness is also not curable.
However, whereas most people would accept that it would be desirable to cure cancer, and that some cancers can be cured. Autism is not in that bucket. The autistic experience can be made into a full life.
One other aspect to note is the idea of purpose and being in enough control to shape your own life - no matter how long or short time might be.
Those with a terminal illness, as described in the book, who could adopt a purposeful mindset and feel in control of their decisions seemed to do better on many measures - happiness but also living longer. The irony being only living longer, when no longer concerned with living longer.
The ingredients of a full life can be found at any time in life. Its beginning. Its end.
I recommend this book as a thoughtful meditation on it. There’s a secondary effect as well. The system spends a large portion of your lifetime healthcare spend on the last few months of your life. This spend often not extending your life, and not making your life better. If this money can be re-channelled into “ways of dying well” everyone would benefit.
"As Montaigne wrote, observing late-sixteenth-century life, “To die of age is a rare, singular, and extraordinary death, and so much less natural than others: it is the last and extremest kind of dying.” So today, with our average life...
...As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world—to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities.”
Atul's book - amazon link here.
The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog. Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism. Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).
My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.
Current highlights:
A long read on Will Hutton looking at Brexit causes and solutions.
Some writing tips and thoughts from Zadie Smith
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.
A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.
Some popular posts: the commencement address; by NassimTaleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.
Buy my play, Yellow Gentlemen, (amazon link) - all profits to charity
Why disabled people like me give up on careers (In the FT recently, Niamh Ni Hoireabhaird wrote, it gained her a visit to the Prime Minister's office - demonstrating the platform the FT can give you.):
“…When I was 13, I was diagnosed with a rare, progressive neuromuscular condition called Friedreich’s ataxia. My condition means I find it hard to balance and my energy is low, so for the past two years I have relied on a wheelchair. My cognitive ability and aspirations of a career remain intact, despite the obstacles. In England and Wales nearly one in five people has some sort of disability, so the chances are you know somebody in my position — whether their condition is visible or not. So why do so few of us make it through mainstream education and into the world of work? Now I am 21, my attention should be focused on my degree in French and Italian, and my summer internship in London at the Financial Times. Yet, I am struggling with the practical and administrative problems that go with being disabled. Each day brings low-level difficulties that add up to an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and defeat. It’s no wonder so many of us give up on our ambitions….” The article is behind the paywall, but I can send you a copy if you ask nicely or there are free articles available.
It highlights the daily problems of disability, where the world is set up for typicals. This chimes with this blog from an ASD person (see here on how hard the day can be)
Somehow, for most of my life, I’ve played lots of games of all sorts. Theatre games, scrabble (under 9 UK champion type of level), chess (mediocre, enough to get on to school team just about) to running around games particularly with sneak element (eg 40-40) , fighting games (earned a blackbelt), Mah Jong to computer games. One of my open secrets is that I’m a fairly proficient games player across a number of genres – I’m quite good where patience would be a winning strategy. I can hit the top 1% for a number of games (but not the 0.1% of e-sports pros).
I’m fairly proud of having won a Fortnite victory (Victory Royale!) egged on by my 6 year old son, who is way too influenced by YouTubers. First Person Shooters, or reaction time type of games are not my genre, neither are Sports or Racing…
On the less competitive side, Minecraft is amazing and wonderful and everyone in our family gets something different out of it. Interestingly, since being bought by Microsoft it has continued to strengthen as a game and platform (much like LinkedIn has…).
Anoushka has written a lovely blog about it, which you can read here ( 4 min mincraft blog).
The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog. Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism. Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).
My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.
Some popular posts: the commencement address; by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.
A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.
View of Grenfell tower, 2018 (C) B Yeoh
Power of silence. I was reminded about the power of silence when joining for a short time the silent walk in memory of the Grenfell fire. For all the disaster that it is, I can see how it has knitted the community in the North Kensington area together and while the divides ever-present in Kensington remain – I feel some people from all sides have crossed and those divides are being more critically examined. Whether it will amount to much is harder to judge. However, the North Kensington library has been saved for a community value use and pressure post Grenfell has been reported to have played its part (ES article). A few pictures below.
It also reminded me of the power of silence used as rhetoric in Emma Gonzalez’s remarkable speech advocating for gun control. See post on it here.
Silent Walk, in memomry of Grenfell, 2018 (C) B Yeoh
There has been scrutiny as to the scope of the Grenfell inquiry. (Inquiry site here) "The Grenfell Tower Inquiry will examine the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017. It will establish the facts and will make recommendations as to the action needed to prevent a similar tragedy happening again."
While debates have centred around legal technicalities on the scope, it seems to me that it is the causal degrees to be investigated which are the underlying debate. The terms of reference centre around the immediate first order causes (Grenfell Inquiry terms of reference) whereas there is anger about the first order causes, there is perhaps more fury at the second and third order causes.
The first order causes centre around the cladding, the advice to stay in vs evacuate, and the poor state of repair of parts of the building. There will be debate as to if a sprinkler system would have helped. Although interlinked, in my view, all of those factors will be implicated as a first order cause.
The second order causes relate to council management of social housing, the unheard voices of social tenants and the race to the bottom for pricing on maintenance and construction work.
This level of causality is interlinked with the problems that Carillion has revealed on the poor state of subcontracted work. (This FT article on Carillion (behind paywall), and also see my posts on it here, go over some of the factors in play; plus the government report)
It is also interlinked with the problems of “ownerless companies” or “ownerless assets” which is an expression of the problems of investing for longer term benefits and value; and also the problem of investing into intangible values - the type of items which might be very valuable but hard to price in dollar terms such as the value of good design, communal spaces and deceptively simple matters such as sound proofing or fire proofing.
This then harks to a third order cause. The cultural and sociology-political structures that can over-emphasise well funded, well articulated special interest groups (cf. gun lobby in America) and processes and political decision makers that find it hard to invest in long term intangible matters that don’t relate to political cycles.
There is also likely some uniquely conflicted about land use and planning which pits landlords against tenants, and systemic vs local concerns, and historic elite land ownership. (Martin Wolf, economist, has argued for a Land Value Tax all the back in 2006)
No one wants a wind turbine near them, even if it would benefit the whole country or world.
No one on the edge of a green belt, would want the green belt restrictions loosened, even if that would ease housing and infrastructure pressure.
Few people next to an airport would want it expanded even if there were proven economic benefits to the rat of the country.
Still on the level of the first and second order causes, one solution is listen more closely to the people involved. Use primary evidence and don’t dismiss it.
This can be tough when those involved already feel marginalised or also don’t understand how to make their voice heard in the system.
A second solution is to attempt to put a value on the longer term intangible items which we are currently not pricing. Items such as great urban design with community consultation.
Will this cost more money upfront? Yes. But we should think of it as building more valuable long term assets and also saving us the cost of a Grenfell disaster and the conflicts such as riots that under investment causes.
The current Arts blog, cross-over, the current Investing blog. Cross fertilise, some thoughts on autism. Discover what the last arts/business mingle was all about (sign up for invites to the next event in the list below).
My Op-Ed in the Financial Times (My Financial Times opinion article) about asking long-term questions surrounding sustainability and ESG.
Some popular posts: the commencement address; by Nassim Taleb (Black Swan author, risk management philosopher), Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.
A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.
Parents waiting outside a school visit (C) B Yeoh
Waiting in a line outside Vincent Square, with my parent hat on, it is a discombobulating experience to go back to your old school of over 30 years ago.
What makes great schools, great? Why is it perceived that it is so hard to replicate what great schools do?*
How much influence do parents and teachers really have on children as compared to all the other forces cajoling, buffering and nurturing our children?
The qualities of curiosity, empathy and creativity - qualities I value in myself and others. How are they nourished in schools ?
How do you shape girls and boys into good women and good men?
I don’t have answers but I do have a few observations and some hope.
On the elite side, my grandfather went to Cambridge presumably as a partial recompense and apology for colonial rule in Malaysia. My father went to Cambridge due to nepotism and a polite letter my grandfather wrote to the Master of the college. I went to Cambridge as I was gifted, worked hard and had extraordinary teachers and educational institutions. I came out with the top first in my year and a scholarship to Harvard. I then learned some of the craft of play writing and poetry, and have ended up a writer and a fund manager.
As a scholar to my school, you can see my name in the 1992 section.
Although the power of elite networks remains strong, I would not have made it to Cambridge on the word of my father. While challenges remain, meritocracy has arguably partially developed. Like the late Hans Rosling’s point in Factfulness large challenges remain but today is better than the past.
I have now toured 3 elite prep schools and continue to interview pupils from elite private schools. I have experience across the spectrum into state and learning disabled education.
I remain hopeful.
In the 1960s, if you studied languages at O-level (16 years old) you would achieve great grammar but you could hardly speak much and would not be able to converse in Paris.
Similarly, for maths your geometry would be great you might know Euclid but you would know nothing of statistics.
Today, the ability to converse and to understand statistics is - rightly in my view – prioritized although the joys of Euclidean geometry are mainly untaught now. Education has evolved.
While walking round these schools listening to teachers and senior staff; hearing the children - seeing the classes – looking at the messages three items stuck me:
Everyone is learning about notions of sustainability
Everyone considers diversity important
An articulation of values and “growth mind set”… learning from failure, happiness before success, with ability comes responsibility…
All these ideas were strongly expressed (whether in state or private) to an extent that I do not recall 30 years ago.
Education has moved on, and it’s for the younger generations to evolve and reject those of them before them (which is why the voter turnout for aged 18-25 in recent local elections, general elections and Brexit are somewhat disappointing)
And so to… with ability comes responsibility…
I do think matters might be very different, if those in the upper tiers of society, and for instance under one measure that would include everyone earning more then £30,000 a year and about 40% of the country did give back a more substantial portion to those in the bottom 60%.
I’m not thinking money. I’m thinking more about time, experience, learnings. Perhaps, we’ve always been so – I haven’t examined closely – but we’re so concerned with the near-by day-to-day, the grind of life, it seems like we struggle to reach out and cross divides. It’s one of the small ideas behind the mingle. If that top 40% gave back 2 hours of time a week to something other than themselves, I wonder what our world would look like.
Source: Factfulness, Rosling (2018) quoting UNESCO
Diving back to education and away from Level 4 rich country concerns, I also see hope in Level 1 country concerns. Look at the rates of literacy, and of children who finish some school. It’s been incredibly positive. Still a lot of work to do, but every reason to think that those trends will continue as basic educational teacher practice start to be embedded in Level 1 countries (alongside basic health practice, electricity, hygiene.)
Dipping back to Level 4 London concerns, I am syncretic over many ideas. I simultaneously hold ideas about educating an elite (and we can see every generation a handful of boys and girls who go on to be country and company leaders trained through this system – which I am a product of) and a comprehensive system. I also have a lot of time for a “home school” ideology , and a “technical-vocational-mastercraftsman-system”. All of these systems have run in parallel with pros/cons for decades and will likely run for decades more (the decline of the UK Mastercraftsman technical system being of detriment, in my view, versus the German continued investment in that system).
Still, watching these young boys and girls, it does feel hopeful. I’m unsure how I feel that there’s no space for Spike here in these institutions. There’s barely a Spike-shaped space anywhere in the world. But, do I see an Oscar space shape with a gentle, quirky boy?
Over 30 years ago, I was 6 years old going on 7 as I started at WUS. Small and not super sporty, I found a second home in the pottery studio. I remember Miss B – her deft kindness in letting a shy quirky thoughtful boy while away break times with some clay (below is one, now somewhat currently broken I made 30 or so years ago) but also her emotional insightful intelligence in when to nudge such a boy into outdoors action.
Many an autumn day, 30 years ago, I would chase leaves falling from this exact tree and try and catch them.
This creative thread remains with me today (see clay play post).
A pot I coiled and made about 30 years ago, now ready to be repaired.
Still she is on my list of teachers and mentors I have a lot to be thankful for (Gideon Lester here plus a few others, Adrienne Kennedy here).
I guess this system believes that if you run with the swift, you run faster. Certainly, some fall, and I see, some to never recover. But at least with the cohort I knew and am in touch with, I see they’ve grown from little boys into great men.
Compassion, kindness and honesty.
Curiosity, empathy and creativity.
Service, openness and love.
These - along with independent critical thinking - have been taught to me and I’d wish to teach my children.
*Part of what makes certain schools great are the external speakers and visitors who come. These people can't go everywhere and are often draw to schools in easy to reach places and with strong historic reputations. This is not an easy thing to scale or replicate.
Source: Children's Commissioner (2011), Children and young people's views of education policy.
One concerning systemic note is whether we - adults - are listening enough to what children want from their education. One slowly increasingly positive note over the last decades is the importance of the child but it arguably still lags.
If you consider companies now use customer net promoter scores and via Amazon in level 4 countries we know the 5 star rating of every product... then the rating children give British schools is not brilliant.
Only 1 / 2 enjoy lessons...
Source: Children's Commissioner (2011), Children and young people's views of education policy.
And most children can tell when teachers are poor...
This would suggest a simple teacher Net Promoter Score as reported by children could be a useful measure to note and perhaps to incentivise on ?
More thoughts: My Financial Times opinion article on long-term investing and how to engage with companies.
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man. On play and playing games.
If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude.
A provoking read on how to raise a feminist child.
Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.
Our studies converge on three central findings. First, people use emojis in text-based communication to convey emotional experience. Second, the amount and diversity of emojis causally increases happiness during social interactions. Third, across 122 countries, higher total amount and greater diversity of emoji usage per capita and per user correlate with higher national happiness. Across levels of analysis, our results suggest that both the amount and diversity of digital emotion expression influences well-being.
An academic paper looking - essentially - at emojis :-OOO !! ;-)
Fail Forward. Fail Often. "Failure is a massive part of being able to be successful".
Will Smith echoes JK Rowling on the benefits of failure, and also billionaire investor, Ray Dalio.
Dalio's views on mistakes sound very much like Neil Gaiman's view on mistakes, one written by a story teller (I take a look at Gaiman's commencement address extolling mistakes in an earlier post) and the other written by an "investor-philosopher".
Will Smith probably has a larger following than Ray though...
If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on Principles.
Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.
More thoughts: My Financial Times opinion article on the importance of long-term questions to management teams and Environment, Social and Governance capital.
Until relatively recently, I took about an eight year absence from social media. I didn't miss it. I don't miss items I don’t know about and never had. I thought I would observe what I've seen coming back.
I left at – what it now turns out to be – the height of blogging. I look at my old theatre blog roll and vast majority of bloggers have stopped. My little blog here remains mainly for friends and people who've met me, and is my small response to producing the type of content I want to read.
If you don't see the stories you want – write them!
I do miss those blogs. The theatre ones gave me a lively insight from critic to practitioner to audience. What I see now is a shadow of then. Ever pragmatic, I do not see that short era coming back.
I've seen many short form tweets, as noisy and divisive. I have seen pockets of wonder there, Robert MacFarlane's words of the day. The story of Megan Phelps-Roper leaving her religious cult. The way you can dive down into one person's threads of thought. But, despite Phelps-Roper's story, I am with Ray Dalio that we've mostly lost the art of thoughtful disagreement.
The weaponisation of Facebook and its response (with links to thoughtful early investor and critic) was as surprising to me as it was initially to Mark Zuckerberg, but obvious in hindsight (perhaps the clearest but least useful of the 4 sights: oversight, foresight and insight).
Still, I see social media reflect humanity. The best of us, the worst of us. I've seen a post on the death of a partner, next to a birth of a child; the sorrow of a sudden infant death, the joy of a cancer cured; cake recipes next to diets; incredible generosity for a struggling homeless lady next to streams of hate.
I've observed Zuck's stated purpose – of connections – flourish, when bringing together vehicle transport enthusiasts in a way unthinkable 20 years ago.
It's allowed me to reconnect with an early dramaturgical teacher, many theatre people and allowed me insight into disabled and other communities, I would have struggled to find.
Like does seem to connect with like, which leads to less thoughtful disagreement and less creativity to difficult problems; and my small contribution leaning against that is in the Mingle and in pushing for real world connections. Minglers have really enjoyed it.
Taking a step back, like so many tools of human ingenuity, it can be used for good, or used for ill; or used for cat memes.
But, if those who know better, or can do better – if those people step away – then the eco-system will be poorer.
Social media embodies many facets of humanity, it's not going away, and it will be what we make of it, for better or worse.
More thoughts: My Financial Times opinion article on the importance of long-term questions to management teams and Environment, Social and Governance capital.
How to live a life, well lived. Thoughts from a dying man.
If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on on Principles.
I’ve lost large patches of hair over the last several months. I finally decided it had to go short. One upside it that it allows me to have this meditation on hair.
Hair can be wrapped tightly with our identity. I was surprised by how many readers and friends were unacquainted with the nuances of black women’s hair and why we don’t touch it (here Solange Knowle’s song and video – 19.7m views – and check out the hair).
"Don't touch my hair
When it's the feelings I wear
Don't touch my soul
When it's the rhythm I know
Don't touch my crown
They say the vision I've found
Don't touch what's there
When it's the feelings I wear
They don't understand
What it means to me
Where we chose to go
Where we've been to know..." (Don't Touch My Hair – Solange)
It’s looked at here in a BBC article. I’ve had female friends say many men don’t understand.
Solange further writes this opinion piece here "You and your friends have been called the N word, been approached as prostitutes, and have had your hair touched in a predominately white bar just around the corner from the same venue."
The black hair experience for many is tied tight into culture, discrimination and all the way into slavery and freedom.
Afrua Hirsh writes in Brit(ish) - her book on identity (from her personal view – column here - book link here - ):
“All bodies are not equal, all hair is not equal. My WhatsApp group members still share experiences of being given unwarranted feedback, in a manner that is careful to avoid any mention of the words ‘black’ or ‘Afro’, that we looked ‘more professional’ when we wore our hair ‘the other way’, i.e. straight. We share first-hand dilemmas about life at the Bar (can you reasonably place a barrister’s white horsehair wig at high altitude over a voluminous natural hairstyle?), as a teacher (told you look too ‘young’ with natural hair), or stories we observe around us, like the woman who wore her hair in braids to a job…. interview in 2015, and was told that it was not a suitable hairstyle for selling ‘high end’ products. We noticed when, the following year, the fashion website ASOS announced that box braids, which have been loved by black women for thousands of years, were having a fashion moment –they had become a ‘thing’ –because the model Cara Delevingne, who is white, had decided to wear them. … Black women still experience a penalty for wearing their own hair in traditional, natural styles, one reason why they spend billions of pounds globally on straightening or covering their hair with European hair-textured extensions. Black children in Britain –and around the world –have been told they cannot wear their hair in cornrows or Afro styles to school. 31 When white-owned businesses, such as the Braid Bar, or white celebrities, such as Delevingne or Lila Grace Moss, embrace these styles as mainstream fashion, they often do so on platforms that neither reference nor credit the black originators of the craft, the black women who continue to remain invisible in mainstream fashion and beauty marketing. It’s no surprise therefore that ‘cash-crop cornrows’, as the actor Amandla Stenberg described them, feel to many black women like a further pilfering from the best bits of the black experience. A white child penalised for wearing cornrows to school can just revert to their natural hair again. A black child has to mould themselves into something else, something their institution deems appropriate, at the expense of their cultural identity. Taken together, these experiences leave many black people feeling that their ingenuity is ignored but its creations appropriated when it suits. This doesn’t feel like an exchange, but an ongoing kind of exploitation. There is nothing wrong with exchange –cultural ideas and identities are forever cross-pollinating, merging and evolving
….Black people do not wish to be the ‘gatekeepers’ of black hairstyles, policing the imagined borders between races, monitoring the exchanges that do occur. The debate about cultural appropriation is not about the hairstyles themselves, or Jamaican jerk chicken, now commonly served in restaurants with no black owners or staff, or African print clothes, often seen on the catwalks of European designers who continue to show little interest in black models. It’s about power. As long as black women feel the critical, even disgusted gaze of white, mainstream beauty standards, telling them that their hair, skin, bodies and clothes are strange, primitive or ugly, not worthy of styling, modelling or celebrating, or that their look is unprofessional, or associated with poverty, then the sight of these cultural markers in a white context is never going to feel like cross-pollination.
... It’s going to feel like an act of theft, with the sting of a double standard.”
I’m unsure how far empathy goes. The willingness to share grief perhaps can be shared. Personal grief itself is perhaps too unique and powerful to share.
Losing hair is a form of grief to some. I’m unsure if I’d go so far myself. Nevertheless my hair has been knit as a part of my identity.
Grown too long in teenage years in reaction to a nag from parents to have it short.
Spiky. Messy. Different. In my working years, a reaction to note, I’m not quite the mainstream City finance worker. O Lo No. I’m some thing else.
How do we fool ourselves?
Perhaps fooling ourselves is a very human way of getting on with life.
Donald Trump scored a full 30 out of 30 on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which is used by medical professionals to test for dementia.
The 10-minute test was created in 1996, and assesses concentration, attention, memory, language and other skills.
Here is a snippet:
You can see the full test pdf here (only for educational purposes, commercial purposes please see MOCA site above)
(Adding one point if the subject has fewer than 12 years of formal education.
Around 16: cognitive health of an Alzheimer's patient
Around 22: cognitive health of someone with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
Above 26: Normal 30: Perfect score (Trump scored 30/30)
Showing where the British people have priorities, Michael Wolff’s book on Donald Trump has only reach #2 on the bestsellers in UK (made it to #1 on NYT). It has been pipped to the post by a diet/recipe book ?! by Tom Kerridge.
Kerridge seems to generally advocate a lower carb, lower calorie but still tasty set of foods and recipes.
I’ve been writing a long post on diets and touch upon the diets of some of the long-lived humans of the world in this post on longevity. (Lots of vegetables, don’t over eat, avoid processed foods – so not too different from Kerridge).
I wanted to contrast low carb, super low carb, ketogenic, Mediterranean type diets and point out that much of the data and science was confounded. But after I started writing about it, I realized this meta-study review by Katz and Meller (2014) did a more thorough and expert job – so I put the abstract and link here:
"Diet is established among the most important influences on health in modern societies. Injudicious diet figures among the leading causes of premature death and chronic disease. Optimal eating is associated with increased life expectancy, dramatic reduction in lifetime risk of all chronic disease, and amelioration of gene expression. In this context, claims abound for the competitive merits of various diets relative to one another. Whereas such claims, particularly when attached to commercial interests, emphasize distinctions, the fundamentals of virtually all eating patterns associated with meaningful evidence of health benefit overlap substantially. There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding, and for many reasons such studies are unlikely. In the absence of such direct comparisons, claims for the established superiority of any one specific diet over others are exaggerated. The weight of evidence strongly supports a theme of healthful eating while allowing for variations on that theme. A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention and is consistent with the salient components of seemingly distinct dietary approaches. Efforts to improve public health through diet are forestalled not for want of knowledge about the optimal feeding of Homo sapiens but for distractions associated with exaggerated claims, and our failure to convert what we reliably know into what we routinely do. Knowledge in this case is not, as of yet, power; would that it were so."
Link to Can we Say What Diet is Best for Health
One aspect – mentioned in the review but not in detail - I would point out is that many people can not sustain a keto diet long term, and that unsustainable diets are problematic. Also that part of why keto diets might work for some is that fats have high satiety effects, such that some people on super low carb or keto diets are also on calorie restricted diets at the same time.
Further as a technical point we thought keto diets might have brain effects due to ketones, but it might be due to fatty acid chains instead. There are limited long term studies on keto (though some data from epileptics). As a separate point, there are limited studies on fasting too, or intermittent fasting which have interesting short term data but long-term might be hard. Those looking for more esoteric case studies then Tim Ferris has some interesting thoughts, while not as rigorously tested, he has tested extensively on himself (though at its core his diet is slow-carb mostly, he goes through a lot of other systems which might suit you).
Those interested can look at a few more links below.
In sum, avoid too many processed foods, don’t over-eat (nudge yourself behavioural to achieve this eg fill a plate up 80% and put extra food out of sight) and eat lots of vegetables.
The science on epigenetics and microbiome are also advancing, and I’d be interested to see how that continues to develop.
Studies on keto and low-carb:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29290352 a meta-review suggesting “There is convincing evidence of beneficial effects of controlled trials implementing high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets in both sedentary and obese individuals”, but also advocating longer trial durations needed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29269890 (2017) another meta review looking at low-carb for diabetes it concludes low carb may be effective but also shows that there’s limited standardization on what low carb means – it also highlights the super low carb (<50g/day) is not realistic, but the low-card (<130g/day) might be OK for compliance. Looking at 18 studies, 15 were considered at high risk of bias.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29263011 a debate on keto, on what the mechanism of action might be in neuro disorders. Traditionally it was thought to be the ketone effect, but some now think it might be a medium-chain fatty acid effect.
Studies on Mediterranean diet:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4179172/ meta-stduy suggesting lower cardio-diabetic risk
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21947643 Athens study on med diet, suggesting benefit on metabolic syndrome
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22999065
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29259973 An overview, with some thoughts on epigenetics and microbiome
Studies on intermittent fasting
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29199853 a review suggesting good evidence in animals, but limited human research, some small trials suggesting benefit but nothing longer-term or gold standard.
This https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26135345 meta- review similar “
Intermittent fasting, alternate-day fasting, and other forms of periodic caloric desistance are gaining popularity in the lay press and among animal research scientists. Whether clinical evidence exists for or is strong enough to support the use of such dietary regimens as health interventions is unclear.” And “Clinical research studies of fasting with robust designs and high levels of clinical evidence are sparse in the literature. Whereas the few randomized controlled trials and observational clinical outcomes studies support the existence of a health benefit from fasting, substantial further research in humans is needed before the use of fasting as a health intervention can be recommended.” Could only look at 3 small trials.
If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try: Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure. Or Charlie Munger on always inverting; Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on on Principles.
"It turns out that between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year." Johann Hari writes in his new book on depression (Guardian article)
That broadly chimes with what I know of the academic literature (see here and here for examples)
But, you also have to flip it. 20% to 35% of people are not depressed after 1 year. If you look at one 15 year long term study, there are some people who seem to fully recover.
Cognitive therapy and other non-drug therapy also have efficacy rates similar or better to drug therapy. Although this still means a majority of relapse after 1 year.
Hari writes in his book about 9 causes which have a social root (and 2 which are biological tendencies, ie genes which make it more likely to suffer).
"We need to feel we belong. We need to feel valued. We need to feel we’re good at something. We need to feel we have a secure future. And there is growing evidence that our culture isn’t meeting those psychological needs for many – perhaps most – people. I kept learning that, in very different ways, we have become disconnected from things we really need, and this deep disconnection is driving this epidemic of depression and anxiety all around us.
Let’s look at one of those causes, and one of the solutions we can begin to see if we understand it differently. There is strong evidence that human beings need to feel their lives are meaningful – that they are doing something with purpose that makes a difference. It’s a natural psychological need."
If you take that writing and compare it posts I have written on gratitude (eg Sheryl Sandberg, see end) and purpose (Oprah Winfrey, many others particularly Emily Esfahani Smith, on the power of meaning and purpose, the post on it here), you see an interesting chime, I think.
Especially when looked at through the lens of a job, which most of the population spend most of their time doing. If you view your jobs as a calling, not a chore, you are happier, more fulfilled.
Hari makes the flip point, an unfulfilled job can and does lead to depression (as can no job).
"Gallup... found that 13% of people say they are “engaged” in their work – they find it meaningful and look forward to it. Some 63% say they are “not engaged”, which is defined as “sleepwalking through their workday”. And 24% are “actively disengaged”: they hate it. Most of the depressed and anxious people I know, I realised, are in the 87% who don’t like their work."
" Professor John Cacioppo of Chicago University taught me that being acutely lonely is as stressful as being punched in the face by a stranger – and massively increases your risk of depression. Dr Vincent Felitti in San Diego showed me that surviving severe childhood trauma makes you 3,100% more likely to attempt suicide as an adult. Professor Michael Chandler in Vancouver explained to me that if a community feels it has no control over the big decisions affecting it, the suicide rate will shoot up"
And so Hari finishes on:
"“This pain you are feeling is not a pathology. It’s not crazy. It is a signal that your natural psychological needs are not being met. It is a form of grief – for yourself, and for the culture you live in going so wrong. I know how much it hurts. I know how deeply it cuts you. But you need to listen to this signal. We all need to listen to the people around us sending out this signal. It is telling you what is going wrong. It is telling you that you need to be connected in so many deep and stirring ways that you aren’t yet – but you can be, one day.”
If you are depressed and anxious, you are not a machine with malfunctioning parts. You are a human being with unmet needs. The only real way out of our epidemic of despair is for all of us, together, to begin to meet those human needs – for deep connection, to the things that really matter in life."
Read Oprah on gratitude and service. Sheryl Sandberg on death, gratitude and resilience. The Power of Meaning a book by Emily Esfahani Smith, the post on it here. Johann Hari writes in his new book on depression (Guardian article)
Hari at his 2015 Ted talk above. There's a side story here about Hari's own quest of redemption after some large misdeeds in the public eye around 2011 (major plagiarism and malicious wiki editing).