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“It’s the most ‘orrible time of the year. (Ding Dong!)”

11 Wednesday Dec 2019

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14 sleeps.

Yes, two weeks tomorrow, it is Christmas Day. Many have been planning it since July. Christmas movies have been accompanying those who have been planning for Christmas since the start of Summer. My wife is watching one now. 10p says the girl’s cured of cancer after a last minute scare, the split family gets together and the choir wins. Or all three, and more.

The celebration, the Feast of Stephen as it were, consists of a birthday party for Jesus Christ. Notwithstanding the present giving to everyone but Jesus, part of the day is given over to a celebratory dinner. Turkey with all the ‘trimmings’, an expression that no-one can define.

Think about that for a second. A Christmas Dinner. ‘A’. Signifying ONE dinner.

Why is it, then, that right now thousands of people are clogging up the local shopping centre car parks in a mad panic to buy enough food to serve HMS Queen Elizabeth’s entire crew for a 6-month cruise around the equator?

Why is it that they are buying so much food in one go, knowing:

  1. It’s for one day’s celebration (really):
  2. They will eat it all because it’s there:
  3. With the exception of a very small percentage, it’s all over-salted or over-sugared, non-nutritional crap; and
  4. They know will later bitch about the weight they put on while eating that ‘one’ meal twice daily for about 7 days? Excluding between-meal nibbles.

How much money are they spending and how much time are they taking that could (in both cases) be better used?

How about next year (“It’s too late for me, save yourselves!”, they cry) you decide what you are going to eat on the day, buy that and get it delivered, and then glory in the way you feel better than everyone else when you go back to work?

In other words, plan the celebration and manage your time in its regard, with your common-sense personal value system dictating what you do, instead of complying with Christmas ‘conventions’ and (occasionally) a desire to compete to see who can demonstrate the most largesse and/or stupidity over Christmas.

Not to mention that, at THE most expensive time of the year, everyone wants to have an expensive works ‘do’ where you spend more on a three hour party than you will on your own present. Where people buy rounds all hoping you get as much as you give and that no-one abuses the ‘system’ – which, if you think about it, would happen if you just bought your own drinks.

And don’t forget! Most important of all!!

All that food you don’t eat, which you won’t eat because of the weight you gained and the fact that you’re starting that diet ‘tomorrow’?

Don’t forget to take it to work to valiantly, considerately and generously help all those doing and feeling the same???

 

Happy Christmas.

Pay yourself what you owe yourself.

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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We are all thinking about them right now.

(Which is American for ‘now’, you know, just like the American for ‘What!?’ is ‘Wait. What!?’ And a new one I have noted is they never just call anyone in the NYPD/LAPD/Hawaii 5-0 world. They ‘Reach out’. Said no cop. Ever. I digress Moving on.)

We are all moving close to a New Year, when we consider making some promises. They are promises to do something we know we should. They are promises to behave at a higher standard than we have been doing. But they are promises that are doomed.

They are doomed because they are promises to ourselves and they are doomed because they are promises to ourselves. Subtle distinction.

(I read today that the ‘b’ in subtle really gets it. I liked that one.)

The distinction is hard to explain in separate clauses, but in essence the reason they fail is down to the fact that the person making them is also the only person to whom the person making them is accountable. (You might want to read that over a couple of times.)

In other words, if I fail to come through on the promise, the only person who has to forgive me is, well, me. And I can be very forgiving where I am concerned.

You see the challenge?

Unless we make ourselves accountable to ‘someone’ out there, there is a tendency to fail.

My own greatest successes have probably been the result of making a commitment either to somebody else, or to myself but where there would be a negative effect on someone else if I failed. In other words, I succeed only when there is direct or indirect accountability to somebody else.

But we all have difficulty keeping promises to ourselves, where only we suffer the consequence of failure.

The answer? I’m not sure, but I think two potential solutions come to mind.

The first is to make the promise more public than usual – outside the family, maybe where a failure would result in absolute embarrassment and humiliation. The workplace, perhaps! (The internet works IF your readers interact. Hint hint.) Create the external pressure – perhaps as part of a team – to make yourself and others accountable for the promises you make to yourselves.

The other – perhaps less certain, certainly less public but perhaps more suitable to those who don’t have a team to turn to, or a family that can help – is to write a journal.

First of all, say what you want and why you want it. Then, check to see if the answers to those two headings really are the right answers – remember, the wrong goals create feeble commitment and divert you emotionally and psychologically from the ‘better’ goals.

Then ask yourself – am I truly committed to the result I seek? Am I willing to pay the price, this time? What exactly IS that price?

Once you have truly looked deep inside yourself and answered the questions honestly, then and only then should you commit to the Resolution. And you support yourself by chronicling the experience by writing down daily what you did, what you ‘didn’t’, why you did/didn’t, and what your feelings are about all that happened. Detail the conversations you have with yourself and others about how it’s going, what needs doing, and whatever else comes to mind in terms of the events that are enabling or obstructing your progress.

Look. Don’t make New Year Resolutions that you know, in your heart, you aren’t willing or able to achieve. Find the ones that really, viscerally matter to you and only commit to those. Even if there are only a couple. Then work daily to their achievement. And write about it.

Make sure you pay your IOU – to U.

 

Find the harmony within.

09 Monday Dec 2019

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I like music. When I was about 13 years old, I remember being in school when a million hip youngsters (it seemed) turned up carrying the same album, a blue sleeve upon which was a picture of heavy waves striking a sandy beach under a blue sky, in which was positioned a twisted tubular bell. At the time, it was either Tubular Bells or Yes’ ‘Close to the Edge’ that was the accessory of fashionable choice. In 1978, my brother bought Tubular Bells and after a covert listen (‘Don’t touch my records!’) I invested in Mike Oldfield’s album Incantations. I now have a copy of everything he’s ever done.

What I learned from listening to Oldfield’s music in particular, and which became evident in other records (of course) was that music relies on an interplay – the melody, it’s harmony, the rhythm, percussion. Music is incomplete without every element, and what I find truly magical in some music is that even the silent space between notes creates its own ‘sound’. I often hear music within music that careful listening tells me isn’t actually there. Or I will hear something through headphones for the first time (as opposed to house speakers) and I will hear a whole different tune hidden in the song.

Another thing I often notice is how, if you take the music away from some really famous singers – they sound bloody awful. As if, were you to stand them on a stage and ask them to go acapella they’d get the Big Red Buzzer off Cowell and Co by their second line. (Imagine Van Morrison or Bob Dylan on The X Factor, today.)

In effect, it is the synergy between all the parts that create the symphonic beauty that music can be.

Reading First Things First, Stephen Covey reminds us that, like my take on music, being good at ‘one bit’ can be satisfying and rewarding but being a master of all the bits is better.

We all have four human endowments – they are:

  • Self-awareness – the ability (not utilised buy many) to realise who we are and that we can improve on that;
  • Creative imagination – the ability to see what we want;
  • Independent will – the ability to pursue what we have seen we want; and
  • Conscience – the ability to see that what we want is – or is not – what we should seek.

If you have one bit, you may be

  • Self-aware – but with no idea what to do with that knowledge.
  • Creatively imaginative – but have no discipline to bring into reality what your brilliant mind saw.
  • Independent and productive – but while your trains run on time the way you made that happen destroys other people.
  • Conscience – you’re a saint, but people walk all over you to get their things done.

If you have all the bits, you know that you are capable of imagining a better way, know what to do in order to create it, have the discipline and energy to create it, and can do so with the assistance of others who you bring along with you to mutual benefit.

What does that mean in time management terms?

Having this knowledge means that you can focus your efforts on achieving things within your capabilities, or those of your team. It means not wasting time and effort on things outside your Circle of Influence. It means acknowledging your weaknesses and either manging them or making them irrelevant. It means knowing your strengths and maximising their effect. It also means spending less time on faddy PR programmes that make you seem all fluffy and nice but have little or no effect on what you are for.

(That last one was just me. Maybe. But then again, maybe I’m partly right.)

Now tie all this to your neediness. Can you address your needs to live, love, learn and leave a legacy better by focusing your efforts on knowing who you are, what you can do about it, and how? And all in a conscience-controlled way?

This is where you know that to live long, you need to be aware of your appetites and willingness to exercise, find systems that suit your situation that can help you do that, and then fully implement them. This was where you decided, once, what you wanted to be ‘when you grow up’ and now realise you aren’t there – yet – and you strart to work in that direction. This is where your conscience tells you whether you’re treating loved ones properly, and you rekindle that loving relationship. And this is where you realise that what you want to contribute needs some deep, foundational work on your part if it’s to get done.

It’s weird, isn’t it? That’s how music works. Every separate part designed to complement the other parts so that the whole is magnificent.

But while living that was it isn’t common practice, it could be. Start now.

Compose yourself. 😊

We are all needy – part 2

07 Saturday Dec 2019

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Well, did you think about it? Did you think about your answer to the question, “Can you think of any time management problem that isn’t connected at the root to fulfilling one of those needs?”

I’ve opined in the past that once we know what we are about (or what we are for), the rest of it is time management and communication. (I’m rather smug that Stephen Covey thought the same thing, having worked it out for myself, a momentary intellectual parallel to the great man.)

Our biggest challenges arise when we are stopped from doing what we think we should be doing, are they not?

If we are prevented from taking action because procedures change, laws are made that slow us down or add bureaucracy to our fun, we get frustrated if we have to wait, and we get disappointed and angry if we are just plain stopped from doing it ever again. (I used to love car chases until they stopped me playing on 2001.) A lot of those influences are outside our direct control, and all we can do is proactively grin and bear it (unless we can find a loophole).

Look at it from outside – we are stopped from doing something which pays us, which we love or which we do with those we love, which made us clever and now requires more effort to re-learn, or which gave us meaning and now we can’t do it. All of these are time management problems in the sense that we have to re-adjust how we do what we do, and doing what we do is why we have to manage our time.

Of course, there are also self-imposed obstacles to us living our best life – unwillingness to change, unwillingness to learn, inter-personal differences and a reluctance to invest our finances into something – all Four Needs’ time management problems. And all within our Circle of Influence in terms of the problem to be solved.

When you can’t do something because you haven’t managed your time properly, because (in turn) you haven’t taken the time to discover, learn, apply and master a time management system, your needs won’t be met as well as they could have been met.

If you don’t manage your time well, you can’t take your daughter to that event you looked forward to, which you could enjoy together. If you don’t manage your time well, you can’t exercise with your friends and fulfil a physical and socio-emotional need to connect. If you don’t manage your time well, you may not collect, study and fully understand the data you need for that job interview that will set you up for life. If you don’t manage your time well you may never join that Institute that created intellectual and contribution opportunities that changed your life.

You can, probably, live a reasonably successful life without a time management ‘system’. But it would be a life led by luck, by waiting for opportunities to arise instead of making them happen. Jim Rohn famously said that people who don’t have a plan usually work for someone who does have a plan. “And what have they got planned for you? Not much.”

Are your four needs – to Live, to Love, to Learn and to Leave a Legacy – being met?

If not, ask yourself this – “Will having a values-based, meaning orientated time management system help me meet my needs as a human being?”

Stupid question – you know the answer. It’s just that some of you will now pretend that you’re too clever for that.

It’s called Denial. Try admitting it and try spending a few quid learning better.

We are all needy. All of us.

06 Friday Dec 2019

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Notwithstanding the whiny, self-aggrandising neediness of Extinction Rebellion, who this week must have felt pretty stupid gluing themselves to an eco-friendly, multiple-occupancy electric bus in protest at carbon emissions, we have got to admit that we are all, all of us, needy.

Psychologists and pseudo-psychologists are agreed on one thing. All human beings have needs.

Abram Maslow created his hierarchy of needs, which showed us first of all that we have needs, then that they ‘flow’ from basic physical safety, through connection, usefulness and eventually to self-transcendence (service), and finally that one met need no longer drives us, so we have to move up the pyramid.

Maslow

Tony Robbins, leading coach, suggested we have 6 needs – certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth and contribution. And Hyrum W. Smith and Stephen Covey essentially narrowed the list all the way down to four needs – to Live (physiological/economical), to Love (socio-emotional connection), to Learn (mental) and to Leave a Legacy (contribution and meaning, or spirituality).

For his part, and following on from the last couple of posts in terms of connecting goals to values, Covey made a few observations.

Firstly, that we clever intellectuals have a nasty habit of compartmentalising our activities by connecting them to only one of the four needs. For example, our job is physical/economical and is something to be endured so as to feed and clothe our families. Our hobbies are strictly mental, keeping our minds active. We love those we are supposed to (friends and family) but tolerate everyone else. You get the picture – each activity serves only one need.

In our heads.

But Covey also opined that when we start to combine needs as applied to tasks, we start to improve our performance of those activities. If we decide to involve others in our hobbies, we create new relationships which in turn make hobby-time more satisfying. If we than add some kind of contribution, e.g. by joining and involving ourselves in a specialist hobby group, we enhance our enjoyment and performance even further. And if we can get paid to do that – all four needs are satisfied in one activity.

Covey called that ideal – when what we do ‘feeds’ us physically, socially, intellectually and in terms of meaning – The Fire Within.

Do you have such a flame burning inside you?

Now, turn it upside down for a moment. If fulfilment of all four needs is the ideal, what happens when a need isn’t being met?

We worry, we fret, we get depressed and ill. All the other needs start to suffer. It’s like a cancer, spreading its nastiness from the initial, single-need ‘cause’ into the all-encompassing, the ‘collateral’.

Going even deeper, in the sense that everything we do requires an activity of one kind or another and in a question that one can ask oneself, he asked:

“Can you think of any time management problem that isn’t connected at the root to fulfilling one of those needs?”

Think on that for 24 hours. I’m going to, and I’ll provide my thoughts in tomorrow’s blog.

Does it REALLY matter? If so – how much?

05 Thursday Dec 2019

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Do you know what ‘priorities’ are?

In most organisations, ‘priorities’ consists of a long list of important ‘stuff’. The bigger the organisation, the longer the list. What’s more, the higher the number of individual departments in the aforementioned corporate monolith, the more varied and even greater the priority number.

Each department, if it is like the public sector, will have its priorities met by the activities of other departments and, more often than not, front-line staff.

Think about that.

Department A will set priorities, as will departments B and C. All three departments’ activities will be conducted by their staff. Department A’s priorities may not be B’s (etc), but without a doubt Dept A will state that ‘X must be done by the end of the day and returns submitted by 5pm by staff in Departments B and C.’  Meanwhile, Department B expects the same of staff in Departments A and C, which means all three departments will be working hard at complying with three sets of priorities, and I’ll bet a week’s wages that they all have to be complied with ‘by 5pm’ so even though NOTHING WILL BE DONE WITH THEM until the end of the next week.

But by setting that 5pm today deadline, they expect that any late returns won’t be too late. In other words, an artificial deadline is set so they save time – at the expense of the other people running around after them.

Ring a bell?

Did you know that ‘priority’ means:

“the fact or condition of being regarded or treated as more important.”

Synonyms include: “prime concern, first concern, most important consideration, most pressing matter, (etc).”

Notice that each of those terms implies that NOTHING is more important than the ‘priority’.

Make a note, staple it to your forehead and wear it as you walk into to the C-Suite.

If you have too many priorities, you have NO priorities.

I suggest that, in acknowledgement that some organisations do have more than one ‘service responsibility’, the number of priorities should at least be reduced to a couple, instead of hundreds; that the departments in the entity be told when ‘their’ priority is not a priority at all; and that staff be so briefed so that they can act on THE priorities that remain.

This is not to suggest that all work is not important. But there are degrees to which (for example) the assembly of statistics (and their circulation to the disinterested) by an administration department is far less important than the activity of the front-line employee actually delivering the service that your organisation was created to deliver.

And, might I say, constantly berating said employee for not blindly prioritising the said admin department’s number crunching really has to stop.

I say this because, from a time management perspective, creating false priorities warps the decision-making of the employee to the degree that mistakes are made in failed efforts to comply with too many masters.

You make better decisions when you have to make fewer decisions.

And having to many priorities undermines quality decision-making.

 

You ONLY score Own Goals.

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

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“Why aren’t I sticking to, and achieving my goals?”

Been there? Done that? Me too.

This week I are been mainly studying First Things First, as Jesse would say*, and last night I was reading about the continuity of goal planning.

(Briefly, and as many a corporate employee would understand it, continuity in goal-planning means ‘Values dictate Mission dictates Roles dictates Goals dictates Action.’)

Covey was illustrating how often people fail to come through on their goals they set because they don’t truly understand themselves, a subject he also touched upon his The Three Resolutions chapter in Principle-Centred Leadership (1991). By extension, if you are not sure what your role is (at work or in any other context), you are already hampering any potential achievement.

This all struck a chord with me. There are some goals I have executed upon – and executed well. For example, my time management book and The Three Resolutions were the result of a disciplined effort over quite a period of time. My advanced driving qualifications and the subsequent opportunities to teach others that arose from achieving that goal are also a bit of a source of smugness. The jobs I got and the professional qualifications I have – all the result of a goal set and the work done.

But there are so many goals I have made over the years that simply never get ‘done’. Or they do get ‘done’, but only temporarily.

Why is that?

I suspect it is because I can’t answer the following question in the right way. Covey asked me to ask myself

“Do I really want to do it? Am I willing to pay the price? Do I have enough strength to do it? Do I accept the responsibility for my own growth? Am I settling for mediocrity when I could be achieving excellence? Am I blaming and accusing others for my own inability to set and achieve goals?” (Covey, Stephen R.. First Things First . Mango Media. Kindle Edition.)

In this order – No. No. No. I would normally, but not here. Yes. Yes. (Ouch.)

Charles R. Hobbs also touched upon this area when he wrote how Ben Franklin set 13 values-based goals. He’d originally set 12 but asked a Quaker friend his opinion on those. The Quaker suggested he add ‘Humility’ as a value, and act accordingly. In his autobiography, Franklin wrote how this was the hardest value/goal to achieve, and he’d frequently failed to achieve anything other than the appearance of humility.

The reason for his failure? The value, and the goal – weren’t his. They were suggested by A.N. Other.

The goals I fail to achieve are the ones I am supposed to want to achieve. They’re the ones espoused by all the coaches in the civilised world – health and fitness. Even when I have achieved them – got to the target weight, trained and run the long distances – I have drifted back to largesse once the goals’ metrics were achieved.

Achieving ‘other peoples’ goals’ is rarely sustainable. (Which means when I see a colleague is ‘delighted’ to have been awarded a career-threatening project, I cringe. I always noted people had to be ‘sent’ to domestic violence units but volunteered for fraud squads.)

That said, if you can genuinely, smilingly and pleasantly commit yourself to achieving that other person’s goal because doing so satisfies your own values, then I happily salute you. While jealous.

So in order to achieve someone else’s goal, you have to find a way to make it your own. Not by force, mind. The connection between values and goal has to be genuine, or it just won’t sit right and get done well, if at all.

Today, try this: See which of your values support – or even undermine – your personal and work goals.

You might find out something that you really need to know.

 

*You have to be British and over 40

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Are you REALLY politically correct? Or still rude?

03 Tuesday Dec 2019

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Bear with me – the first words may be moot for most readers but stick with it.

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey introduced the concept of the Circle of Concern – which contains that about which we have an interest, but no real influence (for many , a good example is politics)– and the Circle of Influence, which is inside the Circle of Concern but contains those things over which we do have some control (like our jobs and family, and our attitude).

Explaining them, he also wrote, “Because of position, wealth, role or relationships, there are some circumstances in which a person’s Circle of Influence is larger than his Circle of Concern. This situation reflects a self-inflicted emotional myopia – another reactive selfish life-style focused in the Circle of Concern. Though they have to prioritise the use of their influence, proactive people have a Circle of Concern that is at least as big as their Circle of Influence, accepting the responsibility to use their influence effectively.”

For me, this observation sums up what I think of people in the media whose roles do not include politics (as a pertinent example) but like to insist on sticking their oars in, abusing their talent and position to try and convince people of ‘their’ side of things.

(Gary Lineker, if you’re reading this, you’re the British one.)

Now, in their defence, as the things they write/speak/yell about are firmly in their personal Circles of Concern, I have no issues with them having an opinion. I have one, too. Everyone has an opinion and an a****ole, and many are full of (insert your own epithet here).

But until Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign try to dictate to Gareth Southgate whether England should use the 4-4-2 or 4-5-1 approach in the next World Cup, I’d prefer to hear what the people in power are doing, saying and thinking without a football pundit’s interference. Even if he is a thoroughly nice bloke.

I – and other people seeking information upon which to base choices – do not need the interested but ideologically biased and routinely uninformed opinion of a sports/music/screen personality or comedian’s thoughts on the matter. They are the ones abusing their Circles of Influence, as described by Covey.

(And why ARE 98% of them left-wing? It’s statistically weird, unless people are too frightened to argue the righter side of the divide. Discuss Virtue Signalling. And Orwell.)

How do you tell whether someone of that type is abusing their Circle of Influence badly? Easy.

As soon as they are criticised by people for expressing their un-informed or ill-informed opinion, they attack using vulgarity, insults and threats. It’s clear that you are not allowed to disagree with their pontificating, you ignorant oik.

Which raises another question I have.

In the 1980s, alternative comedians quite rightly decided that racially-based humour was not cool. Insulting whole races, genders and mothers-in-law was no longer acceptable.

Fair dinkum. It makes us cringe when we watch old comedy, now.

But why did it then become okay to call identified people effing pricks just because they politically differed from you? See Selfish Myopia, above. (Russell Howard, that’s you.)

In conclusion, the concept of the Circles of Concern and Influence provide an interesting tool to gauge where you spend a lot of your mental time, and may provide you with the stark realisation that what angers you, shouldn’t.

And if something does anger you ‘properly’ – speak up and have the courage of your convictions. Challenge is definitely and justifiably in your Circle of Influence. And saves a lot of time.

Leave something behind.

02 Monday Dec 2019

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Being ill is a pain in the ‘arris.

Hardly a profound philosophical statement, I’d agree. To be fair, it’s also inaccurate unless you have piles.

Which means it depends on the illness, or the consequences thereof in terms of personal productivity.

I have a serious head cold with an uncontrollable cough and a sore throat that seems to improve and then bites me back. I can lessen the quantity of coughing by taking a deep lungful of air but doing that aggravates the throat.

A lot of people (you know them, the ones you work with who get sick about World Cup o’clock) use the tiniest tickle to justify getting their spouse to call the boss ‘because I’m too ill.’ I knew one chap who only ever got sick on Mondays or Fridays, making nearly every weekend just that little bit longer.

Well, I also have a friend who had a serious, life-threatening cancer which required a bone-marrow transplant and he spent a month in an isolation ward preparing case files and related documents for an investigation he was involved in. Gawd Bless Wi-Fi.

Recollection of which suddenly made me feel like a fraud, hence the fact I’m blogging while coUGh9jbg my guts up.

It IS true that, in workplace terms, no-one notices you’ve gone when you leave (although I left a couple of big ‘you-sort-it-outs’ when I left). Within a surprisingly sobering and short lapse of time, they don’t need your input anymore. They learn to cope.

Maybe.

But that shouldn’t stop you trying to leave some kind of legacy.

Find opportunities to develop new protocols, to train others, to write professional articles and even books. The learning you get while doing that can be immensely useful, and you get a reputation. A GOOD one. And the opportunities that follow can be equally rewarding. The people I’ve met and the work I have influenced over the past 20 years because I did those things are my legacy, even if it all does get forgotten when the people I worked with float off into the ether. (And I read a book that suggested it, so it’s not entirely my idea.)

Until then, I say give it all you’ve got. Do more than expected and think outside the proverbial for ways to teach and influence others.

Like all those people YOU remember.

A bit of fun.

28 Thursday Nov 2019

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A few amusing timesavers, today, just for fun. (Still a bit flu-ey.)

  1. Christmas films. They always turn out fine in the end. Even in July.
  2. The guy they arrest at 40 minutes into a US crime drama never, ever did it.
  3. The man/woman witness they talk to briefly at the start of said drama, and never see again? If they did it in something else, they did it in this one.
  4. If you had to wait the correct amount of time for a DNA result in NCIS you’d still be sat there watching it next week. If they aren’t busy.
  5. Ask any copper how much fun it is to see Special Agent Gibbs have a full prosecution file in by the end of the shift that started with that murder.
  6. In NCIS, they often phone their office and ask them to send an ambulance. WTF??? Phone ‘em yourself!
  7. ‘Trending’. People follow trends, they seldom ‘lead’ them.
  8. #Overusing #hashtags #that #no-one #will #ever #conduct #searches #on #is #annoying.
  9. The time you spend touring shops to get better deals. How much petrol did you use??
  10. How much time and data does it take to upload a picture of your dinner and the associated witty bon mot? Amusing nobody in the process.
  11. How many hours did you spend watching I’m A Cooking Celebrity Skating on a Love Island in Chelsea Shore last week?
  12. Pop Stars. If your song intro is long enough for an ‘ooooooohhhh’ and a ‘yeeaaah’ and a ‘mmmmmmmmm’ it’s to flipping long. Shorten it, or just shut up.
  13. LinkedIn users. See that quote by Richard Branson that has 1 billion likes? I’ve bloody seen it and so has 1/6 of the population of the planet. Do NOT share again.
  14. How fiddly is it to pick up your phone when in a rush, only to ring someone to say, “I’m just entering your building”?
  15. Move along, no more to see here.