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For some, moderation works. My mother, for example, can leave food on her plate and limit herself to two squares of chocolate a night.

For others, elimination is better. I am prone to eating everything on my plate and gobbling two ROWS of chocolate. I am therefore better to serve smaller meals on smaller plates, eliminating the decision whether and how much to leave. Eliminating chocolate from the house also works best for me.

Whether you are wired to moderate or eliminate will have a large...

My Top 5 TED talks on behaviour change, including key take outs.

After returning from a 16-day hike of the Larapinta trail in 2017, I swore I would never take a hot shower for granted again.

Of course I did, because taking things for granted is our default.

We take for granted people, possessions, freedom (if we have it) and that the sun will rise tomorrow. Three weeks ago, I treasured each square of toilet paper. Now I barely think about it.

When we stop, though, we find ourselves in awe of sunrise. Of our freedom. Of our loved ones.

But it’s...

You might be feeling more tired than usual at the moment.

Understandable if you are working harder than ever, but what if you aren’t?

Some of us have long expanses of unscheduled time on our hands. No more travel. No more commuting. No more gyms, dinner parties or sporting events.

Why so tired, then?

The other reason you are tired

Partly this may be due to stress and anxiety. Your body is working overtime to remained composed, with your parasympathetic nervous system trying to calm the...

It’s the “so what?” I’ve been grappling with.

The “so what?” of what I do. Of who I am.

I mean, I can tell you people are lazy, scared and overwhelmed, but to what end? What do you do with that?

My plan today is to talk you through a seemingly vapid example of a business communication and then more specifically address our Covid-19 infected world.

The worst invoice I have ever seen

When I talk about people being lazy, I mean we generally like the path of...

It’s difficult to know what to write today.

It feels like we’re living in a snow globe that has been violently shaken. While things will eventually settle, we are in the midst of being rattled to our core by COVID-19.

So, this is a collection of things I’ve been reflecting on. 

We’re all connected

As a global pandemic, we’re all in it. We can’t look away and pretend it’s someone else’s issue. It became tangibly personal as soon as our...

It’s been called a “loyalty tax”; the practice of charging existing customers more than new customers, penalising them for their longevity. But what we’re really talking about is a “lazy tax”, and that is lazy business.

Lazy tax trades on our tendency as humans to leave things as they are. It’s our preference to set and forget because we’ve got more interesting or important things to think about. It plays out most strongly in ‘low...

I have a frosty relationship with cooking. It’s not something I find relaxing. It’s not something I like to spend time on. It’s not something in which I have confidence.

This has meant being bound to recipes. I stick to the process and trust the outcome will be okay.

But there’s a difference between following a recipe and knowing how to cook.

Recipe-culture is infecting business

Recipe-culture is infecting - and ruining - business.

• On LinkedIn, for example, people are...

Right now you are probably feeling like you want things to be different. Maybe a little different, maybe a lot. Maybe at home, maybe at work.

That’s a precious feeling because it can motivate you to seek change.

And now is a perfect time because of the “fresh-start effect”. Researchers Dai, Milkman and Riis (2014, PDF) found students were more likely to adopt new behaviours at the start of a week, month or semester. Such temporal landmarks can help us delineate...

A perennial challenge in business is making your priority someone else’s priority too. You know the drill. You have a project that you are under pressure to complete, but it relies heavily on input from other people. Problem is, they have projects they are under pressure to complete and don’t want to divert time, energy or effort to your patch.

Here’s how to go about it.

1. Minimise effort
2. Maximise relevance

Minimising effort

Minimising effort means stripping back what you...