Why I Am Not Interested In Benefits

Harriet Harman is a skilled and experienced politician, and if she feels the need to support her political opponents' policy to reduce benefits to claimants  I am inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she knows what she is doing.  As to the issue itself, I am inclined to be generous when it comes to benefits.  But I don't really care too much about it.  I am quite sure that a journalist who put his mind to it could come up with a highly outrageous story of people living dreadful lives funded by the public purse.  And likewise, J.K.Rowling is not going to be the only example of someone for whom benefits provided a vital help in an otherwise highly productive life.

Jazz Notes

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I came across an idea a while back called Morning Pages.  The idea is aimed at creative writers and is rather prescriptive. You have to write three pages of free form prose first thing every morning.  I liked the idea but for me it wasn't free form enough.  So I have adapted it.  I try and do it fairly early in the morning but I already have other things I want to do first.  So I might leave it to lunchtime. I also don't have a set time allocated to it or a set amount I need to write.  So I have taken the free form but and really run with it.  In light of this I call them my Jazz Notes.  Basically, once a day I just sit down with a reporters pad and pencil and jam.

Focus Blocks

Steve Pavlina's blog has not been offering me much value lately - though I always read anything new he comes up with. But today he managed to deliver something really handy and right on time. I am at the stage with developing my business where finding the time to get things done is critical.

Will Smart Phones Change The Way We Write?

I am writing this blog post was just walking down the street. Well I say writing it, in fact I'm using the voice recognition software built into my smartphone. As it happens I have just come back from a meeting where lots of people were getting up and giving talks. I was taking notes on those talks, and it is very noticeable that we have a very different way of writing things down to the way we speak them out loud.

How Different People See The Same Thing

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Today there was a vote at the UN about whether or not Israel has committed war crimes during its invasion of Gaza.  You'll know what I think about the situation if you follow my Twitter feed - but I was interested in the pattern of voting.  The US opposed investigating.   It was as far as  I could see from a quick glance the only country to do so.  Most European countries choose to abstain, and the rest of the world wanted to carry out an enquiry.

Epicurus Was Right - Don't Overdo It

I don't follow football much, and in fact don't even support a particular football team.  But I do like the big international matches in the European and the World Cups.  Being English I don't get to support my own national team for very long most seasons, but I follow the drama through to the end.  My son is in his twenties and his level of football interest is about the same as mine, so we often watch the matches together with a few tins of beer and some highly processed unhealthy snacks.  We cheer.  We drink. We eat. We bond.  It is one of those things that don't seem important but really are.

Can You Write A Book Without Even Noticing?

My last blog post was on the 7th of June, where I pondered whether writing a book on the management was a good way of keeping my focus on managing my time well.  Two weeks isn't long enough to make a definitive judgement, though it certainly isn't doing any harm. I think the 10 to 15 minutes I spend on it every morning before is returned in increased productivity, but I will keep an open mind on it for while.