In recent years, especially in the USA, a few leading companies have introduced a policy of offering their staff ‘unlimited’ vacation time. At first this new policy innovation seems to have been greeted with enthusiasm, but it’s not turned out as well as expected. The intent seems to have been...
This month has been hard. I’ve had 20 days filled with pain, struggling with brain fog and fatigue, but I’ve also had to force myself to keep working; propping myself up with pain killers, sleep meds and Red Bull. It was not a good strategy, the myriad habits that I’ve...
I’m in one of those vicious cycles of decline, no clear idea of what triggered it and no clear way out of it. It’s the complexity of decline that makes doctors run for the door and leaves me one my own struggling forward. As is my habit I often like...
I’m not one to drift through life without a plan of action, even at school and university I was always focused on doing just enough work to succeed, but not too much as to curtail the rest of my life. So one of the first things that I did when...
There’s endless talk on the blogs about the dangers of sitting often linked to the benefits of a standing desk. I agree completely with the former, but the idea of standing still for long stretches of the day fills me with horror. In my experience there’s nothing worse for me...
I’ve been meditating in one form or another for 40 years, I first discovered it as a kid through yoga and I didn’t think of it as meditation then, just conscious breathing. Fifteen years ago this occasional anonymous practice became more systematic and got a name, Vipassana Meditation, now a...
Even though I only do traditional ‘work’ for 4 hours a day my life is still packed full of activity, often too much activity! Over the years I’ve gradually created a coping strategy based on simplifying my life and in particular simplifying all the little things in life, with the...
Most people only have one job, it’s at the centre of their lives, it’s the way they make their living and often the main thing that defines their purpose in life. My job used to be that for me, I spent 50+ hours at work and mostly loved every minute...
I’ve been tracking my health data for many years now, using combination of blood tests every month, tracking in a variety of IOS apps and using a fitbit and Moves apps to track my activity. It’s trivial in terms of time, taking maybe a few minutes each day, but it’s...
For me infections (colds, flu …) are one of the major triggers for flares. Every year I used to get a couple of colds and a couple of sore throats and Tonsillitis which combined would result in 5-6 weeks of pretty bad flares, essentially turning these mild infections into the...