In a bid to embrace change (or is it accept the inevitable!) I am in the process of giving up my landlines, bidding farewell to the two strands of copper that first arrived in the house almost 100 years ago and replacing them with a single glass tube – not much thicker than a human […]
TV today has a raft of programmes all built around the same theme – all of us have too many possessions and these shows encourage you to let go of at least 50% of what you own with the promise that you’ll enjoy the remaining 50% far more. Recently I found myself with an opportunity […]
The day after one client ‘retired’ he took all his business suits to the charity shop. For him they were a uniform and this marked a clear ‘transition’ – the end of his ‘first career’ and a first step forward to what comes next. Another took over a decade to discard the last business suit […]
When Bismark created the world’s first state pension scheme in the 1880s he never expected to pay out – it was simply a creative (and seemingly popular) tax raising exercise. Life expectancy in Germany at the time was 48, so 65 was selected for benefit payments to start, thus ensuring there were few, if any, […]
When something comes along that sends an established market into turmoil it is usually described as a ‘disruptive technology’. Recently I have spotted at least two such changes. When EML started I saw a friend had a home office printer/copier/scanner which looked ideal – and so it proved, but with one big drawback. The unit […]
When reviewing your possessions – try this. Ask your close family what they would do with ‘your stuff’ if you were hit by the proverbial bus? Most likely their response will fall into one of a number of categories: – Items of value to be sold (house, car etc) – Items of personal value but […]
If the old saying is that ‘a picture can tell 1000 words’ – just imagine what a collage can do! One of my long term clients found that with each successive year he is embracing new experiences while continuing with the things he loves. Looking to illustrate the huge variety of these many activities I […]
As we approach Christmas the annual marathon of giving and receiving cards has already started – and I continue to object! Not in a ‘Scrudge-like’ manner – rejecting the Spirit of Christmas in it’s entirety, but in a more selective way – the giving and receiving of cards to people we see all year round […]
When coaching others, I use an analogy of the decks of an old galleon where the lowest deck was called an orlop while the captain spent his time up on the bridge. In truth, when charting our way through life we all spend time on every deck – sometimes doing the reassuringly mundane chores of […]
For the first time in nearly 40 years there are no desktop computers in use at home, and, come to think of it, apart from an old TV recorder, there are no disc drives either. In parallel, along with much of the country, we are about to switch over from those two tiny copper wires […]