Category Archives: Uncategorized

Welcoming Disruption. I like a challenge.

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Time Management, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The wife’s got the painters in. Not a euphemism, we’re having the lounge done properly. If I painted it, it would look somewhat off-centre because I can’t paint straight lines. Of course, losing the main living area of the house for the day is quite disruptive and I insisted on making sure that the wi-fi was still plugged in, even if I am missing the morning TV and the amusement of the Trump Impeachment debacle. Hence the early post.

There are two kinds of disruption – planned and unplanned, and the amount of whining associated with either is often disproportionate to the amount of notice provided. It’s as if knowing in advance what could go wrong is more annoying than the unexpected. Having notice gives you time to plan, but it also gives you time to consider ‘what is wrong’ and ‘why didn’t (someone else) think about this when they organised it?’. NOT having notice brings out the martyr in us, but it also brings forward a surprising amount of initiative and creativity.

And people like that, because it the adults’ time to play.

Personally, I prefer the forward-planned disruption because of the time management protocols I can bring into play, but I also enjoy the unplanned interference with a plan.

Why is that?

It is because the unexpected disruption brings into focus just how well I planned the day.

If I have planned well, I have done the most important tasks before the disruption arises or, if the disruption opens the day, I can plan major events around it. I can fit the new problems in and that’s the exciting and challenging part.

When I was a DC in a busy city, disruption was the order of the day. Murder, death and mayhem were routine. But unlike many of my great colleagues, who’d abandon their intended plans when ‘something big’ came in, I’d work my tasks in around the new stuff. If there was a ‘prisoner in the bin’, they would just sit and wait and think. I would use the time where I was waiting for solicitors and other teams’ input by making telephone calls, altering priorities and even conducting previously-planned interviews around the new priority.

On the day, the effect didn’t show. But a week later, when they were playing catch up with all the stuff that hadn’t gone away while they ‘waited’, I was free to deal with new things, or able to do a better job of all the ‘old’ things like paperwork, case file preparation, and so on. I’d created time, while they had just packed what was available with the stuff they could have already done.

Priorities matter, but you can work all of your priorities around each other.

I tried, goodness I tried, to train colleagues in time management but the organisation itself wasn’t open to mass TM training for all. Despite a paper in 2010 about it, colleagues still run around chasing their tails because they haven’t been taught how to manage themselves in the context of the time available and the people they spend that time with.

There are many professionals who don’t even think they need time management training – which is odd in some cases because they bill by the hour.

Personally, I consider it not just a professional necessity but in times of mental health focus I consider that it is a lifestyle necessity, one which would have a positive effect on not just our work but our personal lives, too.

Imagine how much stress you’d NOT suffer if that small pile of paper had been done at the optimum moment instead of the ever-growing pile being addressed ‘when I get around to it’.

Think about it. Disruption is fun – if you have a strategy for dealing with it.

 

NEVER Mind the Gap. (I’m proud of this one….)

23 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Character and Competence, Discipline, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

I’ve been cogitating about another space. Not the one between stimulus and response, where we can choose that response and, in that choice, choose wisely or otherwise. There is another Gap, which must be important because I used a capital ‘G’.

The self-help (ugly term) industry is designed to help people close the Gap between ‘where they are and where they want to be’, as Jack Canfield trademarked it. This is the Gap of which I write.

In my latest rewrite The Three Resolutions, which I regularly review as my understanding of the contents improve as my experiences and studies dictate, I reminded myself of a time when I was providing personal development to police colleagues, and in one of my lectures I drew a diagram which illustrated the Gap. It looked a bit like this

The Gap

and was also intended to show how some of us have a HUGE gap between where we are and where we (careful…..), some of us are lucky and have a smaller Gap to close.

And it struck me, counter-intuitively, that the larger that Gap the easier it was to make it smaller, whereas once the Gap narrowed to a sliver its closure was harder to achieve. Which meant I had to figure out why this was.

My conclusion was this: when we start out in that HUGE Gap, we believe we have a million things wrong about our lives that need correction. As time passes, we tick off the faults which are easy to correct, and each closure has a massive effect on our lives. But as we get ever closer to our ideal ‘self’ we start to address the harder challenges, the ones which cause us the most stress, the ones we avoided earlier but which are also, by their very nature, the biggest of our problems.

But here’s the kicker. Despite that remaining Gap and the challenges it represents, we have become better individuals through making the Gap that much smaller. But we tend to forget how far we’ve come. We get so focused on the last 10 yards we forget we’ve travelled miles and miles.

Now and then, I suggest, look at what you were and compare it to what you are.

Not just in terms of wealth and professional standing, but in terms of knowledge, relationships, freedom and some other immeasurables. Are you better than you were at 25? Are you better after closing some of the Gap? In which case, CONGRATULATE YOURSELF.

Then set about that last bit in the knowledge that you are more capable of closing it now than you ever were. Celebrate the fact that you even know that the Gap exists, because penny to a pound you didn’t recognise it when you were younger/less experienced/alone or skint.

Yes, there may be one or two challenges left, and they may be the hard ones, but what have you got now that reflects your progress?

In 1995 I was a sit-at-the-back, let it happen of guy. Now I always sit at the front, I can think and write at a level I would never have thought possible even in my 30s, I have pursued things rather than waited for them.

So I’m a bit broader in the beam than I ought to be.

My family loves me and I love them. I am financially secure. I can read, write, count and argue with people and yet happily lose an argument.

Yup. Today, I like me. Like yourself, see how far you’ve come. Then gird your loins for the next bit……

The hardest 100% Pass Mark you’ll ever achieve.*

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Character and Competence, Discipline, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

In his book ‘The Success Principles’, coach Jack Canfield wrote about a principle he called ‘99% is a Bitch, 100% is a Breeze’. The idea was that once you make a self-growth (denial or discipline) decision you act on it 100% of the time. This is because acting in accordance with your decision 100% is easier than doing so for 99% of the time for a simple reason that is both philosophical, and surprisingly logical.

With 100% there is no need to apply any further mental or emotional effort to the decision and its subsequent consequence. There is no reconsideration, doubt, angst or time wasted. With 99% you have to reconsider that decision every time you have to decide whether or not you should apply your standards/discipline/denial/values/principles ‘this time’.

For example, if I decide I will write 500 words a day (like Ernest Hemingway, apparently), then if I am taking the 100% route, that’s it– I will write 500 words a day, come what may. I’ll make sure I have my laptop with me, or I will write longhand on paper and transcribe it tomorrow, along with the 500 words for that day, too. If I go ‘99%’, then I have to decide, each day, if I am going to bother. That’s when the easy excuse will be ‘I have to go shopping, instead’. Or ‘I don’t have a pen’. Or ‘my laptop’s battery is a bit low and I’ll never make it’. Or ‘just one packet of crisps/pie/cigarette won’t hurt’.

(As I it here considering if/when/how/where to ride my bike I feel that pain.)

The same applies to not doing something (self-denial). If I decide that I will no longer eat chocolate eclairs, then application of the 100% principle means just that – never.

You can set your own rules for applying this principle. You can, if you wish, go ‘never’ – or you can include justified exceptions to ‘never’. You can decide not to eat chocolate eclairs ever again, or you can add an exception – but it must be a specific exception, and it must be observed. In the case of the eclairs you may elect to eat one on a new moon, your birthday, the 1st of the month, or whatever exclusionary rule suits you provided that it does not excuse you. That’s the material distinction. If you have a rule it must be specific and it must not undermine the original intention, nor can it allow for or provide excuses for non-compliance. 99% or less doesn’t cut it.

99% doesn’t work because it allows for mistakes, errors and, most of all, excuses. 100% not only disallows excuse or failure but it also demands creativity, imagination and discipline. If you ‘cannot’ execute on your disciplined objective for some external reason, the 100% rule demands of you that you find a way to overcome that temporary barrier/obstruction. Wayne Dyer, famed writer on metaphysics and life philosophies, overcame a ‘cannot go for a daily run’ when flying by running up and down an aircraft’s aisles. (BTW – not recommended!)

This concept, when fully applied 100% (see what I did there?), covers the appropriate application of both self-discipline AND self-denial. The only caveat I have to add here is this – don’t commit to 100% compliance until you are absolutely certain that you want to. This is because without that commitment you will make excuses the first time you are required to make decision whether to comply or not. And as soon as you make the decision not to comply that ‘one time’, you are already on the path to failure and guilt. It’s already 99%, or even less. And the next time that decision arises it will be even harder to make the right choice and the downward spiral speeds up. Momentum works both ways.

My final piece of advice? If you want to try the 100% Rule – only commit when you are truly ready. If necessary, prepare your environment (fridge and kitchen cupboards?) before you commit.

Then go for it.

 

(*An excerpt from The Three Resolutions book.)

 

Read this post twice….you’ll see why.

21 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Character and Competence, Time Management, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Stephen Covey wrote, “Most of our mental development and study discipline comes through formal education. But as soon as we leave the external discipline of school, many of us let our minds atrophy. We don’t do any more serious thinking, we don’t explore new subjects in any real depth outside our action fields, we don’t think analytically, we don’t write – at least not critically or in a way that tests our ability to express ourselves in distilled, clear and concise language.”

Just to allow for context, those words were published in 1989, and were probably an extension of his thinking from earlier years. And I add that because I think he is slightly mistaken.

(WHAT!!! A disciple questioning the Master! Next he’ll be chopping off his master’s arm and running the Jedi himself!)

Worry ye not. I think he is mistaken now because more and more people are subject to constant training at work, whereas in 1989 in-house, on-the-job developmental training was less de rigueur than it is now. No diversity, first-aid, health and safety input back in those days, and CPD hadn’t been invented yet.

But the essential premise remains sound. Few of us actively seek out additional training, while even being reluctant to attend that which is provided at work.

Which is self-defeating.

Every professional update improves your ability to execute on your responsibilities, and every voluntary educational experience broadens your mind and improves personal creativity. And quite often, what you learn away from your professional life impacts on that professional life. I did a law course in 1999 and the stuff I learned there certainly impacted positively on what I did at work. It changed my level of thinking and vastly improved my understanding of Sith (defence lawyers) practices, which I promptly turned back upon them, mwahahahahahahaha!

But it doesn’t have to be formal training, although that is best.

Every article you read on a subject of interest to you is an example of well-spent time. That’s why I write these articles, yet keep them short. It’s a minute, maybe two, away from your work focus but it might just broaden your thinking and/or provide new tools for increased quality of productivity without an increase in quantity (although you do get to do more of what you like, of course). And other writers on other subjects can add to your toolbox, either in work or just for qualified conversation at a posh dinner.

The message today is to take two minutes to read more articles – on LinkedIn or elsewhere – and identify areas of interest that will make you smarter.

One caveat. At the end of the opening, quoted paragraph Covey added, “Instead, we spend our time watching TV.” There is a lot of good stuff on TV, and I like an escapist cop-show as much as anyone. But the drivel that peppers the airwaves (The Masked Singer? FGS!) serves no-one’s interests but the financiers. Watching them takes more than two minutes and only provides the vapid with dinner conversation.

Go back to reading if you need 30-60 minutes that will make you better as an intellectual. Or just take two and use them wisely, Padawan. Better still, read this twice so it sits comfortably in your pre-frontal lobe and causes you to see your next valuable, voluntary training opportunity.

 

Speaking of which……. Me book. (Blatant plug.)

51SrzOWl+nL__SX312_BO1,204,203,200_

Save money through Time Management. But not how you think……

20 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in Discipline, General, Time Management, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Anyone who has ever read about time management will be familiar with the Time Matrix. You know, the one which is segmented to identify Urgent v Important, and looks like this.

TM Matrix

Have you ever thought how applying this same Matrix to your financial habits might just make you more wealthy?

Think about it. You have a spending pattern. There are things you like to buy, things you have to buy, things that you want to buy but can’t – a whole range of purchasing options based on the same two criteria you use when spending ‘time’.

There are Quadrant 3 things – you ‘want’ it now and so you buy it ‘now’, even though a sober reflection may have said it wasn’t important enough to spend hard-earned cash on, but you (or someone you love/like/respect) suggested it was NOW or never.

There are Quadrant 1 things – things you genuinely have to buy now because they are vital to something in which you are presently involved. For example, I recently had to buy longer screws to fit a light switch that stuck out just too far for the provided screws to reach the fitment. (I know it’s an off example but read on.)

There are Quadrant 4 things – things that aren’t urgent or important but your heart overrules your head and you buy it because it’s pretty or funny or quirky or you’re just so fed up you need to demonstrate your personal power by possessing this bauble.

And there are Quadrant 2 things – things which aren’t necessarily urgent but which are, or may be, urgent now or in the future. Back to my screws. I needed 50mm screws, but could only get 75mm screws, which, it turned out, were far too long. I therefore had a Q1 need for a pair of pliers strong enough to cut the screws to length. Looking around, I realised that I anticipated a need to cut even bigger metal rods, so I bought bolt-cutters, instead. And that made me realise that notwithstanding the urgency of the screws, now would be a good time to make an anticipatory spend on a toolkit and, being Christmas, there were many good kits available at a discount price. The bolt-cutters were Q1, but the extra purchase was Q2.

What else can we allocate to these Quadrants?

Q1 – unexpected fines/bills, repairs to broken electronics, fuel for an empty tank, fast food when we’re hungry.

Q3 – tips for surly waiters, money for chuggers (charity muggers).

Q4 – extra SkyTV channels, that emergency pasty fat people buy at 9AM, our expensive Starbucks coffee to carry to work – the one that we worked 20 minutes to afford, a copy of OK magazine.

Q2 – fuel for the car before we run short, household bills, a 30th anniversary copy of The Seven Habits (I am genuinely excited), good food, investments and savings, tithing if that’s what you do, etc.

Where do you spend most of your money?

Don’t worry about it to stress-point. As with time, occasionally what looks like a Q4 spend is, in fact, a Q2 spend if we genuinely need something to de-stress ourselves, for example. A Q3 spend on a friend may hurt but may pay dividends in terms of that friend’s realisation that they are loved, making it Q2, or even Q1 spend.

Have a think – do you have foreign holidays because other people do, when you could spend the same on personal development? Do you have a plan to buy a new car on a monthly rental when buying an old one outright could leave you with money you could invest, and an asset to sell if you wanted to?

The Time Matrix – a way to save money. Who’d have thought it?

Juggling is for Jugglers.

14 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Time Management, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

In 2006, I attended The Seven Habits Workshop run by FranklinCovey in the UK, at their then HQ in Banbury, Oxfordshire. It was facilitated by the skilled coach Stephen Smith who, like me, looked a lot younger in those days.

During a ‘Why are you here’ session, Stephen asked the hitherto reluctant, waiting-to-see-how-the-land-lies participants “Well, do you want to improve your work-life balance?” As one might expect, we chorused in a fashion designed to at least give the impression of enthusiasm, “YES!”

“Okay then, let’s see just how much more work we can get out of you, then.,” said a smirking, ‘I-knew-you-were-going-to-fall-for-it’ Steve.

Very few people want to skew their work-life balance in favour of the former. Which is odd, really, because so many people do unconsciously skew their lives that way.

I know people who work every hour God sends in an effort to maximise income, only to swear blind that their ‘family comes first’. Which is not to say that they’re lying, just that what they are doing (working) may not be what they think they’re doing (providing a secure lifestyle for their family).

And I say that because I wonder if they’ve asked their families do they want mummy/daddy working for mo’ money – or do they want mummy and daddy present.

(I suppose teenagers may provide a different answer, depending on the level of gadgets they have or want.)

I believe, as do many in the ‘family field’, that what families need more than anything else, is presence. They want Ma or Pa to ‘be there’ at school concerts, recitals, sports events – and above all to be waiting when they need picking up. Selfish, really. But that’s what kids want.

Go home, be present. At least sometimes.

On another tack, in terms of the balance between work and ‘life’, since Steve regaled us on the matter the world has changed to the degree that the lines between work and ‘life’ have blurred. We are, thanks to the smartphone, available to work when at home, and home when at work. Few think about the appropriateness of crossing the divide. Most think it’s alright to interrupt people when they want, because they can. You may notice that phenomenon when you’re chatting to A and B butts in without an ‘excuse me’, because the smartphone has legitimised interruption.

Of course, in terms of the aforementioned work-life balance ‘thing’, when either interrupts the other our eye is taken off the ball in the moment. Concentration wanders, mistakes are possible, disaster can occur.

As far as possible, and in recognition that I use the word ‘appropriateness’ in this article, try to keep communication under the right heading. Work for work time, life for life-time, at least as much as you can manage. It’s the most productive approach to ‘The Balance’. It means you can get work done without thinking about cooking dinner, and it means putting the right amount of salt and butter into the mashed potato without wondering if that report you submitted is in the right post-tray.

Damn – now I’m hungry………………

 

For more, read this book!

PTM Pic

Time Management = Emotional Control = Stress Management.

13 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in General, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

The first paragraph of TimePower by Charles R. Hobbs (Harper and Row, 1987) reads thus:

“How often do you have the kind of day when you feel like you hold the world on a string? It’s the kind of feeling you would probably like to enjoy more often. The moment when you feel this way is the moment when you are most in control of the events in your life: most in control of what you are doing, most in control of your relationships with others. As your ability to control events increases, those exalted moments become more frequent.”

The counter philosophy to that paragraph must therefore be that you are most stressed when the opposite is true – when you feel least in control or, worse, when you feel completely out of control in terms of the events in your life and your relationship with others.

Note the use of the word ‘feel’ in both of these paragraphs. I spotted it for the first time when I read the paragraph last night. Then I realised:

To be content with your control of your time and relationships, you don’t necessarily have to be in control.

You just need to feel that you’re control.

Quite profound.

I had a supervisor, once. We called him a shit magnet. (Sorry.) When he came into work, it was as if all the robbers, rapists and murderers had been waiting for him before acting. Oh, and all the wanted persons in Wales got arrested, too. All at the same time, but hundreds of miles apart.

He never skipped a beat. He would quietly look at what was happening around him, decide what needed to be done, and then quietly delegate or act with an appropriate level of urgency. For those around him, his calm was catching. And part of his process was to think with a pen and a book in his hands.

Despite the fact that there was no way he could be in complete control of what was going on, he took enough action to feel as if he had it all managed. Maybe more than enough. But he felt in control, and his calm attitude and approach manifested itself in the rest of his team feeling as though they were in control, too. We didn’t feel stressed, either.

The only truly effective way to ‘feel’ this way is to have a complete, systematic approach to ‘stuff’ that means you can prioritise what needs to be done, dump what need not be done, and fit anything else around those decisions.

What this lesson says to me is that, to a certain extent, time management as most people would understand the term is a key technique for emotional- and stress-management. One which few counsellors, coaches and managers seem to realise, promote and/or teach.

Traumatic incidents aside, stress is frequently the result of a build-up if unaddressed issues. It’s not the pile of paper that needs dealing with – it’s the way you feel about that. It’s not that appointment you won’t manage to keep, or which you aren’t prepared for – it’s the way you feel about being late or unprepared. It’s not that conversation you need to have but the way you feel about what happens if it doesn’t go well when you finally manage to have it.

And all of those feelings can be controlled by taking the ‘time management’ actions people like Hobbs, Covey and Smith promote. Deciding what needs to be done, making a plan that helps you act on that decision, and then executing that plan. Once you have that level of appropriate control, your feelings about those events change for the positive.

Go learn time management.

The Wisdom That Saved Me.

09 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Character and Competence, Time Management, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on The Wisdom That Saved Me.

Tags

, ,

This will be an absolute, unashamed plug. But it has an X-Factor style back story about me.

In the early 1990s I read a book. I have, admittedly, read some more since then. In the mid-1990s, I threw what those in my former profession called a ‘double-six’, which is an inexplicable euphemism for losing it emotionally and doing something that exhibits the point at which a straw broke your camel’s back. In my case, and I really didn’t see it coming, I broke down in tears in front of one of the best, most understanding supervisors I ever had the honour to serve. I suspect he was as surprised as I was. Evidently, a build up of stress factors over a period of time just hit me and I suffered an emotional collapse.

Traditionally, when this happens to coppers they have 6 months off, see the doctor for some pills, and later debate with their friends who has the highest dosage of said pills. Which is not a judgment on whether or not they were suffering from stress, because they invariably were. It is just a statement based on my experience of my colleagues’ response to it. Absence, medication, discussion. Standard procedure.

In my case I left work at the start of the shift during which it happened, had the following shift off, then after a three day weekend was back for my morning shift on the Monday. Two workdays lost, a weekend off as per the rota, and back.

One might suggest I wasn’t really stressed. Well, I don’t cry easily. I am/was a macho, rooftop-chasin’, car-chasin’, door-kickin’ kind of guy. So tears at lunchtime suggest a breakdown.

What ‘sorted’ my depression for me was not drugs. It was application of what I’d learned in the aforementioned book. It espoused taking control of events by using the gap between stimulus and response to decide, consciously, deliberately, in a considered way what, exactly, to do about the event. I took my family to dinner, decided what changes I felt I needed the job to make in my regard and, with that clarity, sought and got it.

Never lost it again. I’ve suffered some severe cr4p since then but it’s never brought me to tears or caused a lay-off.

On the 9th of March 2020, the 30th Anniversary Edition of that book will be released. It’s been updated, and if the font size remains the same there’ll be an extra 120 pages of ‘stuff’ in it. I’m already pumped and waiting to buy it.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey (1932-2012), amended by his son Sean.

If you want an intelligent, profound and systematic take on effective living that doesn’t dictate what you should do but focuses on how it is you who decides what and how you need to do things, this is it.

I’ve read tons of stuff. Anthony Robbins, Ziglar, Tracy, Sinek, and others. They all provide great advice on how to get what you want.

But every time I think about ‘life’ and consider ‘doing’ what these writers promote, I find that I always come back to the wisdom – and the book – that Stephen Covey gave me. And if the book blurb is true, 50,000,000 suspect the same.

Go on. Treat yourself. Buy a book that I can assure you from experience, really is life-changing.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Yep. Shook his hand……

Do you treat yourself like you do your car?

08 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Character and Competence, Discipline, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Do you treat yourself like you do your car?

Tags

, , , ,

Does anyone else think their car feels cleaner, faster and snappier as you drive away from a passed MOT inspection? Or is it just me?

By the same token, how do you feel when you leave the dentist after a clean and polish? Or when you’ve filed all your paperwork?

The reason for all this contentment is because your essential maintenance is finally complete and you feel that you have a fresh start available to you. Despite the fact that most of us consider ‘maintenance’ to be in the pile of ‘things I HAVE to do but which don’t achieve anything meaningful’, our brains recognise that completion of those things is an enabler to carrying out of more important things. Our brains are cleverer than we are.

Think about it. How well could we do what is important if we didn’t, at some point, carry out the foundational ‘unimportant’ admin and saw-sharpening that supports us? How well could we write and research if we didn’t maintain our computers? How could we get around if we didn’t maintain our transportation? How could we charge clients if our billing records weren’t up to snuff?

How embarrassing is it when your pen runs out of ink just at the signature stage of a contractual negotiation?

Maintenance is a way of ensuring effectiveness at the front end, folks.

That goes as much for ‘you’ as it does your ‘stuff’. It’s all very well you accepting this advice and setting about checking your pens for ink, your pencils for lead and your car’s service schedule for late oil changes, but what about you?

Your body needs to be properly maintained constantly if it is to enable success and effectiveness in all of your roles. Eat too much and you slow down while your body digests it. Poison it with alcohol or excessive caffeine and you make it jump before it plummets again. Fail to exercise and the lubricants clog and congeal and eventually need changing. If they CAN be changed.

Your brain needs to be fed and nurtured, too. That doesn’t solely mean intellectual data input, it also means that stuff which calms the neurons, like music and (paradoxically) silence in nature. Although from a work perspective, keeping up to speed with practice and protocol changes is a necessary activity if we aren’t to become redundant in an intangible way – or worse, a tangible, ‘go-work-somewhere-else’ kind of way.

Take a few minutes today to find out if there is anything you need to know or do to improve your relevancy at work, and to ensure that the only tool through which you do everything – your body – will remain capable of serving you for longer. Like until you are 101, not up to ‘65 and knackered’ There are plenty of apps, books and facilities providing advice and equipment for these purposes.

You can also ignore all three of those and just take the odd moment to sit quietly and enjoy the silence.

Keep your saw sharp. It’s a cutting edge philosophy.