Good writers love digressions. But why? — John McPhee* has a sign posted over his desk: Have the courage to digress. Academics and students and teachers of the written word frequently criticise writers for their digressions: Stick to the point! This is irrelevant! Unnecessary! Tangential! But digress is what confident writers do all the time. David Foster…

How to make the most out of the words you’re given — There’s plenty of advice out there for writing dialogue, but most of this tells you what to write, because it’s intended for fiction writers. But what if you don’t write fiction? What if your dialogue has technically been written for you? …

There are hundreds of frameworks and principles and suggestions for telling stories in your business, but in my experience, storytelling is more of a mindset or an approach than a sweet little set of rules. It’s continually asking yourself, is this the most interesting way that I can say this? …

Our structures are what keep us sane — our systems, our routines, our frameworks. Yes, we need to break them now and again, stress-test them, step outside them, question, reevaluate. But for the most part, we need to exist inside some set of systems. You can set these up for…

There’s the view from the inside and the view from the outside.

The road to quality is a road named quantity.

There are a thousand things to do, to think about, to plan. None of them will turn out right unless you prioritise sleep first. Lack of sleep leads to high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes, and stroke. It destroys your mood, your concentration, your motivation, your memory. You know this…

The best way to get back to real creativity is to bring pencil to paper.

When we become hyper-focused on goals and habits and productivity and usefulness, we often neglect the things that inspire us, the things that draw us in and hold us there, the things we used to sink into and enjoy. Every act becomes a task, becomes something to tick off as…