This is a question ive been pondering since the oil markets went negative at the start of this week. Is this a good time for some reflections and a change?

Ive also been pondering the quote from the America writer “One finds limits by pushing them” and wondering to myself just where do my limits lie.

Ive worked in the energy industry since school and one way or another I have a feeling that an enforced break of some sort is coming. After all the commodity that my employment supports is currently unstable in the markets to put it lightly.

I’m a big fan of the line of thought that says if you cant control it don’t worry about it. In that sense the fear of losing my job isn’t there. I cant control that, if it happens it happens.

What I can do is have a plan in place to control the aftermath.

Because my chosen industry has been unstable for 6 years now that plan has been in my mind for some time, it was a fixed plan, it was rigid and it was mine.

The joy of the energy industry for someone like me is that you can progress and pick up a lot of transferable skills even if you don’t have great qualifications.

The downside of that is none of them are documented, so transferring them to another industry is tough. I don’t say this negatively its just a statement of fact.

So the fall back position has always been to do some consulting, and something mechanical using my hand again until work picks back up, however long that takes. This had always been the back up plan. Not terrible but not necessarily exciting either.

Then writing happened.

I had picked up love of writing in school but never developed it. In work that transferred to being the weirdo that didn’t mind writing the reports, but again it never developed further than that.

Then 6 months ago my partner suggested I write if only for myself as another creative hobby. I never dreamed I would become so enthusiastic about it and that I’d be able to publish it, share with the public willingly or be paid for it.

What writing has done is all those things and more. It’s also given me a firm push to explore doing something else with my life and the possibility to potentially do something creative that I enjoy at my own pace and on my own terms, if i need to now, or when the time comes that I decide that I’m ready to sometime in the future.

Especially in times like these now when it can seem tough, if we have a passion or a hobby or interest and we are dedicated to it. It can open our minds to a whole new world of fresh and exciting possibilities.

How do we prepare Children for life after education?

Are children who don’t go into higher education well catered for?

This is another one of those life and educational questions Ive been asking myself recently. I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone who left high school at 16 and went into engineering through what in the UK we would call an apprenticeship and in other places an internship or a trade.

20 years later in circling back to my education and pursue it a degree, but at the time I left school that was never a realistic expectation for me.

I had no desire to continue in classroom based education, still don’t to be honest. I love to learn but hate to be taught as they say.

I really cannot say that the education system failed me because it didn’t, but there is still a gap that exists between children and young adults who will pursue higher education and the support offered to those who will not.

Is there an answer?

I believe that there is and it’s relatively simple of the surface, but perhaps more complex in its execution The education system is almost entirely geared towards preparing us for higher education.

The problem is its a one size fits all solution that tries to fit many different shapes through the same round hole.

By the time we are 14 and we start to prepare for life after school we know what the path is going to be in terms of when our full time education is going to end.

This is a point where divergence is possible and this is where the short comings in the system currently come into play.

So many children or young adults leave the education system at 16 with a few random exam qualifications but few life skills and no vocational skills.

It’s a problem, manufacturing, engineering, construction are all essential to an economy. But we routinely miss the opportunity to take these folks into these industries to help them make the most of themselves.

Instead they get pushed out of the door into low paid jobs in the service industry where they receive no vocational education, they may go to college with no idea of why they ended up there other than to fill in time, or tragically they just end up as statistics in the unemployment line.

The lucky few get that opportunity of a trade and vocational training. It’s a missed opportunity for educators to develop those skills in young adults at 14.

If thats true then what would the advantages be?

That’s another good question, and the advantages its key to note would be to our education system, our children and business so its a win-win all round.

It places less pressure on the educational system. If you take a kid who isn’t interested in trigonometry and algebra for example, but is interested in plumbing or electrical. The school goes from having someone who is disengaged and potentially disruptive, to having someone interested and engaged in what they are doing.

The young adult gets a reason to get up in the morning, they learn a set of skills and critically they are helped to be ready for the working world.

Add to the their educational skills some financial literacy and they will be set for life.

These young adults then become much more appealing to business. They have started their education in their education in their vocation have some trade skills, have some life skills and motivation because they can immediately be of some use to the business.

The business benefits because they don’t have to start with the very basic, like this is how to hold a screwdriver.

Does it mean that business gets someone who is the full package and ready to go?

Well no of course not, in the same way that those businesses don’t get that from their graduate hires.

What they do get is someone who is on the right path, knows the basic requirements of the job and the basic skills required.

It’s a big swing in the way that education is delivered but if you look at the numbers of young adults leaving school today and either lifelessly dropping into the gig economy with no prospects, dropping into college with no clear aim, or worse the unemployment line.

We could and should be doing more to prepare those folks for a bright future outside of education.

It’s possible we just need to think outside the box and pivot to what works best for those who are ever more quickly becoming the lost generation.

Could this be one of the most important life skills we pass on today?

This is a really good question as I think about parenthood one day and as I think about the life skills and behaviours I’m trying to pass on and develop in my god children, nieces and nephews. It’s a question I keep coming back to.

Why is this keeping me up at night?

What we see today is that for the first time in living memory at least, the generation starting their adult lives today are not expected to be as financially secure as their parents have been.

It’s a nightmare scenario that could affect generations to come.

Terms like generation rent really do keep me awake at night with concern for the future.

What’s the resolution? Does it sit within mainstream education?

Well it really has to be education in some shape or form. Along with trade or business skills, financial literacy is totally missing from mainstream education today, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

So if the school system isn’t going to educate children on its own what are the options to bring financial literacy into schools?

Financial institutions can do a lot to help but at the same time there is a level of trust still missing from the 2008 financial crash, People struggle to trust banks with their money, never mind their children’s preparation for adulthood.

Still there are a lot of materials, resources and literature out there provides by these institutions to help give kids a good grounding in financial literacy. Opening a children’s saver account with a bank or building society with those resources can be a great first step.

As members of the public we can be more vocal about the issue and push for 1 hour per week in junior and senior schools where a bank, building society or non profit organisation comes into play.

Think there is nothing in it for the bank? Think again, it gets savers early so that it has more money to invest. Those savers have less risk attached to them so become good investments later down the line. That sounds cynical but its TRUE.

It also happens to be a win – win situation.

If the system isn’t supporting this, what else can we do?

Luckily there are other resources out there, some great books written for adults like the richest man in babylon by George S Clason is a classic example of a book that presents financial literacy in such a simple way that it crosses to young teenagers and early adults very well.

There is however a gaping hole in the market for children’s literature on the subject which remains to be plugged. Which is no surprise given how difficult it is to get children and parents alike hooked on a book about finances.

Other than this its leading by example, showing the next generation how to save, how to invest, how to build a secure financial foundation for life.

In the UK for example you can invest in premium bonds for children which is a fun and safe way to build an investment for them with as little as £10/$12.

It’s a pretty daunting task for me as i see it personally and something which I need to focus on with my loved ones, but one that when I look at the world around me I’m getting more and more passionate about.

This is a question I’ve been asking myself all weekend.

In Central Asia our winters tend to be long 5 or 6 month affairs, brutally cold with howling wind. So waiting for the seasons to change can seem like forever.

We have a short spring end of March to mid April and then its straight into summer.

This weekend it’s finally here, we have been enjoying temperatures in the 20’s, it will stay like this for another 3 or maybe 4 weeks and them climb into the high 30’s before cooling down again in September.

This last week was pretty rough, we are 5 weeks into working and strictly staying at home, with the knowledge that we have another 4 weeks minimum to go here.

But now that summer is here at last, i do have a real positivity about me this weekend.

Today Ive spent out in the garden getting some small maintenance jobs and the weeding done, its also my exercise at the moment. I cannot tell you how good it fees to have the warm sun on my back as I write this.

My house is now the land of opportunity, short are now the official dress code of the office. The office itself will be moving outside at least as an experiment to make the most of the great weather and the beautiful sunshine.

As a proud Scotsman who comes from wet and windy Aberdeen, summer and warm sunshine are my favourite combination.

Even though our social interaction is still limited to online, I can spend time outside with my partner, we can spend time on projects in the garden which give us something else to do with our time.

More importantly we can get the Bbq fired up, just need to make sure that we ration ourselves so that the charcoal lasts.

In the next few weeks keep an eye out for spring changing into summer where you are, take a note to make the most of the time you can spend outdoors. Even if its not with friends and family right now, a bit of the old vitamin d and some nice temperatures can make a world of difference to your perspective.

Summer is here folks, make the most of it!

Is the current development path for our cars really the correct one?

Ill start off with an admission here, I’am a massive fan of all things petrol powered. Cars, bikes, boats, it it has an engine I’m all over it.

Ive driven brand new cars, Ive driven cars which were over 50 years old and depending on where in the world ive been for work, ive spent a large amount of time in cars.

I think though that we are at a crossroads of what a car needs to be for a consumer vs what it needs to be for the environment.

Year over year the tech development in cars is phenomenal, especially in the last 10 years. However this development comes at a price. Our cars are getting more efficient sure, but they are also getting heavier and thats an issue.

A car that is so rammed full of electric gizmos and technology is heavy, if it’s heavier than necessary its not as efficient as it could be, it puts more load on tyres, rubber suspension components and the road system.

That leads to more road repairs, more tyres that need to be both manufactured and disposed of and more small components of a car that need to be changed over its lifetime, which all puts a strain on the environment which is not nessecary.

Ive been giving this a lot of thought, I like electric cars that are being developed now but are they as efficient as they could be? I argue that like their petrol and diesel counterparts there is room for improvement.

So what’s the issue? Well what if i told you that an average hatchback type car is over 150kgs heavier than it was 20 years ago?

Some of that is safety improvements, cars today have evolved so much that folks routinely walk away from crashes which would have been fatal 20 or so years ago.

But some of that development we can and should be challenging for the fact that this development means the car is not as efficient as it could be.

A lot of what is fitted to cars today we have just gotten used to over the last 25 years:

Power steering

Electric Windows

Electric Seat Back Adjustment

Electric Sunroof

Cruise Control

CD Player or multi-changer (Who uses cds nowadays)

Electric suspension

Heads up displays and integrated touch screens

Do we really need all of these things and the wiring and other ancillary systems in our cars?

We are after all carrying around an extra 2 people with us on each journey with all this additional weight in the car. That reduces the efficiency of the engine, meaning that fuel economy and emissions are not as efficient as they could be. It also creates additional wear on the car and the road system.

I’d argue that we don’t actually need any of these things, and that our cars would be lighter, more fuel and emission efficient and actually a lot more engaging to drive without the additional weight.

It’s something ive also been thinking about experimenting with for some time now, can I take an older car like an escort or a nova with just the bare essentials in it and fit it with a modern engine system or electric conversion.

I think I would be surprised by the results and I think you would be as well.

As we see the positive effects on the environment and planet as a result of this quarantine, I really do believe that we need to question how we develop the tools we use everyday and how we could make them more efficient and safer for the environment.

This argument about car development is one way of me doing that, travel, office vs home work, there are a whole host of other things we can do to be smart to help ourselves and the environment.

If we challenge ourselves we could make a huge difference.

Yep its that time of the week again work is ending or slowing down for the week and its time to chill out and enjoy some time and maybe some drinks with friends.

Whether those dink’s and that time together involves alcohol or not normally that is spent somewhere. Maybe a favourite restaurant, coffee shop or bar.

Most likely thats not happening right now and i get it, not having that opportunity to switch off and enjoy downtime with friends is tough.

Help though is at hand.

Technology can help us massively. We can catch up via video group calls, its good fun, something different and gets us halfway there to the social interaction we all need and enjoy.

As you may have guessed by the title of the article, beer is the chosen drink for my friends and myself. Catching up on video calls brings the challenges of who can bring the most interesting beers to the party.

Obviously we are all social distancing so that doesn’t mean we need to flock to the shops, oh no.

The fun is dragging the stuff out of the back of the cupboard thats not seen the light of day in years or making our won beer even. It gives us a creative challenge for the week and something to look forward to on a Friday.

Music streaming is also our friend. We can create a playlist to suit us and share it, this evening some almost middle aged people in as far flung places as Kazakhstan and remote Norway will be listening to, a diverse of heavy metal and dance music reminiscent of a Friday evening in Henry J Beans, Aberdeen Scotland circa 2003.

Getting creative with this challenge is great fun. It’s also surprising to discover some stuff you hadn’t listened to in years and equally to discover that some of the stuff you listened to endlessly back in the day, is actually truly awful.

This reappraisal of our social lives and having to move online has also reconnected a bunch of us who have not been in touch for years having spread out to the 4 corners of the globe many years ago.

It’s great fun, gives something to look forward to, gives some additional challenges through the week in preparation and honestly can also be a great way to interact with friends that got lost along the way. Importantly it also does not have to involve alcohol if thats a consideration, so what’s stopping you doing the same?

Enjoy the weekend folks!

Maybe this is old news for some of us, but for me and my adventures in working from home, ive been surprised at just how powerful my mobile phone is. As a tool for communication, business and leisure its only real limitations are those that i place on it by not utilising it to its full potential.

It’s probably 20 years since I first started owning and using mobile phones.

In that time what we use our phones for has changed completely. Remember a time when texting was seen as rude and informal? The world now literally runs on whatsapp and telegram web text services.

What Iam surprised with is just how powerful a business tool I carry around in my pocket.

The temptation to feel guilty about working from home and to end up chained to your laptop indefinitely is huge, the phone can set us all free, with the use of just a few apps.

Video calls I’m a big fan of at the moment for social and business interaction. I can use all manner of software to hold a video conference, but to be honest none of them are working so well. They are just being overwhelmed, WhatsApp on the other hand has yet to let me down. I just set up a group and dial. No codes, no dial in, just simple connectivity from my phone.

Email is easy, messenger is easy so I’m always connected when i need to be.

Got documents you want me to review or edit, I can do that easily on my phone also.

Spreadsheets are a little more demanding but its do-able.

The content I write, edit and publish online is all executable from my phone.

Sure I prefer my laptop or I-pad (Laptop vs I-Pad is a whole different conversation. The point I’m trying to make is that its all possible from my humble mobile phone. If I use it as the powerful business tool that it has the potential to be, I no longer have to be chained to my laptop.

Some of the free to use apps I’m using right now on my phone both for work and for writing, editing and publishing include:

Word, excel and PowerPoint, to view edit and create documents

Outlook and Gmail for email and calendar

Google lens for transcribing text and handwriting into documents

Google keep for notes

Trello for project management

WhatsApp for communication

Medium for writing and publishing

WordPress for writing and publishing

Grammarly for editing

Canva for editing

Teams for collaboration and sharing

All of these I can link to my laptop or iPad or both and all give me the freedom to work from my phone and stay connected without sitting for 10 hours plus per day with a laptop on my knees feeling guilty about how productive or not I’m being.

Give it a go, you never know you humble mobile phone may just amaze you, I know mine certainly has….

The paradox of living and working at home…

The Dalia lama once said, sleep is the best meditation.

In fact sleep is one of the most important things we can give our bodies and our minds.

However thats not always possible. Many of us will be feeling more anxious than usual right now, which may be affecting our sleep, or we may be lacking sufficient physical activity to help our bodies feel tired at the end of the day. We may even be feeling cooped up with cabin fever.

When the the days and weeks all merge into one another it can be terribly difficult to maintain a healthy level of sleep.

Personally I’m a monster if I don’t get enough sleep. I’m irritable, loud, obnoxious and just generally a horrible person. The last few days I have been in that mode for sure. I recognised some of the warning signs yesterday and some were very kindly and subtly pointed out to me by my partner.

Now normally for me I have no trouble sleeping. Sure at times I fail to get enough sleep, but that’s normally work or activity driven where I’m just not giving myself enough time in the day.

Struggling to fall asleep and/or maintain sleep through the night is not something that I experience too often.

While the amount of sleep each person needs per night is different, most experts tell us we should get between 7 and 9 hours as a minimum per night.

Right now I’m just not finding that possible and I think I may have found the reason why.

Working from home 24/7. I’m too connected and there is no physical separation between my working and living spaces. My mind is constantly filled with thoughts.

I’m used to lots of quiet time on my own and I’m also used to being stuck in a restricted space with restricted movement on ships and rigs for long periods of time. So having time with my thoughts is not new to me, being unable to turn them off is however.

My mind clearly struggles with having no separation between work mode and personal mode. Add to that the fact that while I’m a Brit and so have very fixed and firm ideas about core business hours and maintaining a sense of routine, my colleagues come from diverse backgrounds, experiences and cultures. To some of them this is the ideal times to embrace being a night owl.

It’s now the norm to get calls and emails late into the evening.

That’s ok as everyone is different and this way of working for me in my industry is only temporary.

What I need to work on however is my routine to ensure that I get a quality and quantity of sleep that works for me.

I’m quickly working that aside from essential calls and some time critical daily tasks, there are 24 hours in a day, how I use them and how I schedule work is up to me.

An early start will tire me out so its time to set that alarm clock for 6am.

I’m my days working on location I was a huge fan of a “safety snooze” 30 minute nap at lunchtime. I tried it today and got 30 minutes quality sleep. I’m refreshed and feeling much better about myself already.

Netflix and chill is destroying my sleep. I need to develop another routine at night. Too much TV is filling my head with thoughts and I’m just not able to switch off and maintain a full nights sleep. Some TV is ok but its going to me a very limited amount for me.

I can channel those thoughts, now I’m not a fan of the bro culture around hustle porn at all. In fact thinking that you can keep going 24 hours a day on little to no sleep is just a recipe for disaster. But i can do more with the thoughts that I have.

I can write more, it doesn’t need to be online, i can journal for myself, I can draw, I can paint, I can cook or learn to play the guitar.

I can go for a walk around the garden and spend an hour in the fresh air.

Anything which forces me to use the creative side of my brain is going to help tire me out.

Mindfulness and meditation techniques when i cant fall asleep or I’m struggling to maintain sleep will help me. Imagining I’m on a ship in rough weather being rocked to sleep by the motion of the boat works for me as does lying on a tropical beach.

Exercise and creative activity will tire me out.

There are lots of things that I can try and probably there are more changes I need to make to my routine to make sure I get back to a healthy sleep pattern, but thats ok.

If you having similar issues you are far from alone. Feel free to try some of these tips yourself and find out what works best for you.

A lot of my writing is based on my own experience and self reflection from events on the day I’m writing the article, or blog post. Today’s effort is embarrassingly no different.

I’m working from home right now, and while I have written about the many, many advantages that I perceive I’m getting from this arrangement while in quarantine that doesn’t mean I spend my days in a perfect utopia.

Oh no I have good days and bad days the same as every one else. Today started off badly, very badly for me. On the flip side I have learned an important lesson and moved on, so the day will at least end on a positive note.

So why the negativity and bad start to the day? Well I work with a team of about 20 to 30 individuals who all contribute different skill sets, backgrounds, experience and technical backgrounds to a project. We have people with less than 3 years experience working with us, to folks with over 30 years experience in their chose field. It’s a pretty diverse range of people and skill sets and generally I love every minute of it.

This morning was different though and now that I’m able to reflect on it I’m a bit embarrassed and ashamed that I ignored my emotional intelligence and allowed myself to utter those dreaded words to myself that no one should ever speak “That’s not my job”.

The result was about 2 hours of stomping around, swearing at myself and generally just wasting time, huffing and puffing before I finally tackled the issue.

The issue in this case was a report. Part of the issue is that I have very high standards, sometimes too high and I seek perfection in everything related to my work. Part of the issue however was a lack of attention to detail in the report.

This is a development task for a junior member of the team, who is developing and isn’t always going to get it right the first, second or third time. The person comes from a different culture from me and has a different set of expectations. A large part of my role is to mentor and develop junior members of the team so that they grow in their roles and gain responsibility.

The team member is unwell and the report is due to be submitted today. My first reaction was one of anger, clearly this is not my job, clearly this person has not taken pride in their work, clearly this is an outrage, blah, blah, blah…

3 hours later its revised and The work is ready to be submitted. Is this due to superhuman effort, nope just experience and this is where the lessons I needed to learn become apparent.

1. Did I set a clear expectation of what was expected? No I asked for a report and handed out a template

2. Did I ensure that my colleague understood what was required? No I just asked for a report and handed out a template

3. Did I check that my colleague was familiar with the template and the formatting requirements? No I asked just asked for a report and handed out a template

4. English is not my colleagues first language, did I check that they could navigate the spell checking and grammar tools? No I just asked for a report and handed out a template

This for me honestly is a warning sign, I don’t know how long my perception had been shifted before but its dangerous and now that I have recognised that I can put the steps in place to correct it.

Just as i want to help people, empower and inspire them with my random scribbling online. I strive to do the same thing in my job.

Here I have failed, and I need to now spend the time to rectify the mistake, ensure my team have clear instructions and understanding of the tasks we do and documents that work for them…

Especially when we are working from home and lack face to face communication, now is the time to do some reflection to make sure this isn’t happening in your teams. While online communication is great, I think we still lack the confidence online to tell someone we don’t have the support we need or expect from them.

I have found this one out the hard way, and to say I’m pretty disappointed in myself for today would be a huge understatement.

It’s really not as hard as you might think…

This is something I have written about in one of my earliest posts and since I’m at the beginning of the journey towards my goal of professionally writing I have no doubt its something I’ll return to many times. If I’m able to help someone then that’s fantastic, and if no one else reads this post then at least I have documented the lessons for myself.

My first leap of faith was to open a medium account and actually start writing and publishing content. It didn’t and still doesn’t matter if I’m being paid for my writing and that the only person reading and clapping for the articles is my partner. The point is I started writing and publishing content daily, this now become a routine and I hope a habit. After lunch I’m normally in a reflective mood and I have found that this is the time that works best for me.

Secondly I created this website http://www.writingforthought.com and started blogging here. It’s another creative outlet for me and while the content is more or less similar to everything I’m publishing today. I plan to expand into sharing my book ideas etc on this site as time goes on. As well as the other writing experiments I’m sure ill want to explore as time goes on.

Thirdly I’ve gotten myself into social media on Instagram @writingforthought2020 where I can share my content with a different audience.

All 3 forms of writing and/or sharing content are for the same purpose which is to make writing a daily habit, to gain a readership that may offer me feedback and critique, whether or not I want that, to gain the confidence in publishing my own ramblings and ultimately to help me improve as a writer and move forward towards my goals.

I have been putting this off for years quite honestly. I’m young enough to be a part of the computer generation but nothing about IT ever excited me. I prefer mechanical things, I’d rather be outside with hammers and welders making noise than trying to work a computer with any technical finesse.

The outcome is that I have developed an irrational fear of getting started online.

Now I confess I’m not completely computer illiterate, but I only really know what I need to, so for me this was going to be a big uphill challenge and more daunting than writing published content that people may or may not read and critique.

Well just how wrong can one person be… If only I’d tried this years ago I’d be much closer to my goals. In the end all of this time and effort and uphill challenge took a day, 8 hours of my time to be exact. Let me explain.

I started with medium and I have to say its the easiest tool to interface with to get writing, editing and publishing, in fact I’m online within 30 minutes from written to published on an average day. I can choose to add images if I like or leave the story as is without embellishment. Adding photos is as simple as selecting something from my phones gallery. It’s fantastic, if you are wondering whether to take the plunge I’d say do it, its an easy first step to take and first step really is the toughest. You can start with a single sentence and work your way to something longer. Just make sure you press the publish button. You will thank yourself for it.

I’ve since added a webpage for my blogging and to share my book ideas, you know this since your reading it and although I paid for the premium version you could do it for free. It took 4 hours to build the website from the free templates on offer and to set it up with the information and get it looking that way i wanted it to. Building a website was another thing I never thought i could do. In the end following the guide wordpress provided, it was so accessible that I wondered why I had feared any of this to begin with.

Lastly I also developed an instagram page @writingforthought2020 where I can share quotes, hints, tips and content with as many people as possible while also expanding my skills.

I use the free app canva to create free graphics for my posts and add captions to that. Again for someone with no experience it was all very accessible and I was up to speed in no time.

After all of this in a few weeks have I blown up the internet? Well no but that’s ok, its not my intention. What I have done is given myself the confidence to write and publish along with developing the skills I need to develop my online presence. It literally just took a small leap of faith and 8 hours of my time.

Now I’m much closer to my goal than I ever was before.

Especially with the extra time we all have on our hands today, you could get there too. You just need to visualise your goals and start taking those small steps towards them.