Grow
Goal-setting isn't about doing more. It's about deciding what actually matters — and making sure it happens.
What gets planned, gets done
Goal-setting isn't something I do because I'm driven by pressure. It's something I do because I've learned that the things worth having don't happen by accident — they happen because you decided they mattered enough to plan for.
The difference between busy and intentional
I set objectives and key results for my personal life the same way I would at work. Not to grind, but to move deliberately. There's a difference between being busy and being intentional, and I've spent enough time being the former to know which one I prefer.
How I actually work
I work with a personal roadmap across my core life themes — breaking down where I want to go into rough quarterly objectives, horizon plans, and the now/next/later of what I'm actually doing about it.
Grow / Reflect
I read every day. Not to accumulate facts, but because reading is how I form my own perspective.
Knowledge is only useful if you do something with it
I read every day. Not to accumulate facts, but because reading is how I form my own perspective — and I'm suspicious of anyone who has a strong worldview but no reading habit behind it.
Reading without reflection is just tourism
The books I return to most are philosophy, psychology, and anything that makes me look at something familiar from a completely different angle. The goal isn't to consume more, it's to think more carefully.
Putting it into words
So I journal every morning, write publicly on Substack when something is worth saying properly, and I'm increasingly interested in connecting the dots between books, ideas, and lived experience — finding the thread that runs through things that probably shouldn't be related.
Move
It started as a habit. It became something I'd genuinely miss.
How a habit becomes a need
It started as a habit and became something I'd genuinely miss — which I know because I have missed it, and the difference is noticeable enough that I don't need to be convinced any more.
Movement, not discipline
Beyond running, I gravel bike my commute, use Zwift when the weather makes me sensible, and play football when I get the chance. Movement isn't a discipline for me any more — it's just part of the day, like coffee.
The next horizon
The running is where I set the challenges. Building toward marathon running, and eventually toward using races as a reason to explore new cities from the inside — the kind of perspective you only get when you've run through somewhere at 6AM and seen it before it's awake.
Life
Around the time of Covid, I took a proper step back and started asking the questions that are easy to avoid when life is loud.
Lymm, Cheshire
I live in Lymm, Cheshire — a village with a canal running through it and the kind of quiet that makes early mornings feel genuinely worthwhile. It's where I run, where I bake, where I read, where everything else is rooted.
Family
I'm engaged to Lucy, and we have two young children who are the best possible reason to get the important things right. Everything I'm building — the habits, the intentions, the roadmaps — makes more sense with them in the picture.
The bigger picture
I'm a Stoic at heart — or trying to be, Marcus Aurelius would probably have notes on my progress. A firm believer that small steps compound into something worth looking at, and that pressure is a privilege if you're lucky enough to have things worth doing.
Life
Not everything needs a goal. Some things exist because they're good, full stop.
Back to back with Lucy
DJing started as a genuine passion and became something I share with Lucy — we go back to back, usually techno, occasionally whatever else demands to be played loudly. No objectives here. Just the very satisfying experience of one record leading well into the next.
Slow, deliberate, occasionally wrong
Baking sourdough is slower and quieter. There's something about the process — the waiting, the variables, the fact that it occasionally goes wrong for no obvious reason — that I find genuinely calming. The end result is bread that feeds the people I love. That's enough.
