Category: Practical philosophyPage 1 of 2
Serendipitously, as I was preparing for my first dance teaching workshop this morning at the Idler Festival, I spotted a quote in one of my other open browser…
The tools you use define your work. They lock in choices about what you turn your attention to, what you can do and what you can’t. Before you…
With our household suddenly in self-isolation pending results of a Covid test, my daughter and I are back playing lego together and I’m revisiting that recurring question: how…
I am speaking to more and more people who are disillusioned with their work. Often what is in the balance is a purpose-led career versus job security and…
So many things that I am working on at the moment lead me to the conclusion that there is power in the gaps. But I feel like for…
Boring post alert. Sometimes you need to be boring to be creative. This is a really boring post about something I find myself doing lots and lots: setting…
It wasn’t what I was expecting but volume 5 of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time ends on a cliff-hanger. It is incredible how such separate threads from…
I sit in my current preferred cafe bolthole and the jacket of the person opposite me catches my eye. It’s a slightly faded turquoise, not unlike a jacket…
Yesterday my daughter and I left the house and flipped a coin. Heads for left, tails for right. Right it was, then left, then left again, et cetera….
Yesterday our household returned home from an imaginary holiday. Despite being in lockdown, we realised that we could imagine going on a trip anywhere in the world. Our…
Across all the of the projects I’m involved with we are working out what can go ahead and what must be postponed. A significant factor in whether to…
It’s hard to know where to start. So much has changed in the last fortnight and there is so much that I feel compelled to write about. But…
I met with a friend earlier in the week to talk about setting some life goals. It’s a conversation we had had five years ago and then did…
I’m a slow reader. The problem is I can’t seem to retain things unless I write them down or sketch them out. It means that I read very…
I am reminded this morning of much I like working out what all the buttons do on a machine. Quite often the machines we use, be they an…
I spend most of my time designing creativity training for engineers. In this episode we flip the format. Alexie Sommer, Independent Design and Communication Director and collaborator on…
Readers of this blog will know I started a project a couple of years ago to write a book called ‘Analogue Skills‘, a re-examination of the pre-screen skills…
It will probably be very muddy. At least it was for my first visit of the year to Hazel Hill Woods. Recent rain has made the forest wetter…
My daughter is now seven. I have been trying to remember what being seven was like for me. Memories start to become more frequent around this time. Some…
This question came up on the way home this evening. On the back of the tandem, my daughter was experimenting with counting in French. Things were going fine…
A key part of problem-based learning is reflection. But how do you get people not interested in reflection to start thinking critically about the decisions they take over…
I’ve started experimenting with leaving the house without my phone. On purpose. Here are some things I’ve noticed. I need to get a watch. Without a watch, however,…
Marseille A morning walk up the steep hill to the Basilica of Notre Dame de la Gard granted me panoramic views of the city of Marseille and the…
For my birthday this week my partner Mary gave me Alistair Humphreys’s inspirational book ‘Microadventures’. According to Humphreys, a microadventure is an adventure that is short, simple, local,…
I just read this great paragraph on the debilitating impact of false modesty on judgement.
When you get into it, PBL is a fundamental philosophical shift in the role of the instructor, and it is that realisation that has had such a personal impac...
As part of my Visiting Professorship at Imperial College I have been asked to think about how peer-to-peer assessment works in group works. Here are my thoughts. One…
In Janaury 2018 I decided I would try veganism. I have been vegetarian all my life but in recent years I have found it harder to reconcile concern…
Today I have been reviewing the action learning diaries that half a dozen people have sent me from Greece and Cyprus. They are getting ready for training in…
For generations it has been a tradition on the French side of my family to spend summer evenings out in the garden looking at the stars. I happen…