My life has gone through a dramatic change in 2026: At the start of January, I started a new job. After four years of being a freelancer and my own boss, I'm now working full time as a principal developer for Autotrader, close to my home in Manchester (UK). Autotrader are a fabulous company and I'm loving it, but it's a very different way of living my life. I actually wrote this post around New Year, before I started the new job and while I was thinking about how to ensure my new start was a positive one. But then the new start became all consuming, so I never got round to publishing it.

Also... you'll see that one of my goals was to stop chasing readers and publicity, and stop doing things that felt urgent but were basically unnecessary. Publishing this list as a blog post absolutely came under those categories.
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And... I know the format will feel a bit weird. I wrote it as a message to myself, in an attempt to make sense of the decisions I was making and convince myself to, fundamentally, chill out and do less. Hence the "you". I thought about editing it for a public audience. Then I decided I had more important things to be spending my time on.

As well... I was diagnosed with both ADHD and autism in 2024. Knowing that might help to make sense of some of the below.
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Finally... This is also my way of saying I'll be posting here a lot less. If at all. So I'm sending this to all subscribers.
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​Do less.

• Give yourself time to relax and move slowly.
• Focus on one thing at a time, and give each thing time and space to breathe and grow.
• Stop adding new things to all your to-do lists.
• You will never achieve everything you want to achieve.
• Let go of ideas.
  • Enjoy having them. Then let them go.
  • You don’t even have to write them down!
  • After all, do you really need to write everything down?
    • Will you ever manage to do it anyway?
    • Is it part of your current mission / project?
    • If it’s really important, it’ll come back into your head without you writing it down.
    • If it isn’t important, you’ve given the gift of breath to Future You by NOT writing it down.
  • Be wary of alcohol-fuelled ideas
    • Remember: The things that make you happy and excited on a Friday night are not necessarily the same as when you’re sober
• Be mindful.
  • Aim for the present, rather than the future.
  • What are you doing right now? Is it enjoyable or satisfying?
  • What can you see, hear, smell, touch, taste?
• Be wary of reputation / publicity / social-media based definitions of success.
  • Ask why. Will it really make you happy?
  • Remember what you learnt from blogging, back in the early 00s.
  • Remember why you decided to self-publish your second novel, and how you rejected the idea that thousands of readers = happiness
    • Remember WHY you decided that.
• Be wary of excellence.
  • It’s not that mediocrity is OK…
  • It’s that you’re perfect as you are.
  • It’s that you want to do multiple things, and that’s OK.
  • It’s that the act of creation is satisfying in itself.
  • It’s that everyone is different, and there isn’t a line with the best at one end and the worst at the other.
  • It’s that comparing yourself to others is ultimately destructive.
  • Enjoy what you’re doing now.
  • Allow yourself to enjoy what you’ve created because YOU like it, irrespective of what others might think.
• Enjoy spending time with people.
  • People enjoy your company. This is not the same as the rest of the world liking some random blog post, or watching a video of you.
• Enjoy performing.
  • …both to audiences…
    • (people enjoy your performances, and this is great)
  • …and to no audience at all.
    • People enjoy your performances, and this is great, but you don’t NEED an audience.
• Understand your needs and rhythms.
  • You need (a) still times, and (b) busy times.
  • Sometimes you will struggle to move, and need to force a transition.
  • Sometimes you will struggle to focus on one thing, and will need the stimulus of change.