notes
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My Grandad’s Life Advice
My grandad started as machinery worker at 16 in a Med device company. After WWII he returned and then made steady progress all the way to General Manager. The factory workers loved him for his honesty, fairness and the genuine love he showed for his people. He used to take me to the factory when… Read more
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Parenting: With No Instructions
My son Xander was born 25 years ago. I was 20 years old when he was born. My wife Melanie and I arrived home after the most careful drive ever. I put the baby down in his crib and I saw the new computer I had purchased a few days earlier. That computer build was… Read more
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Marshmallow Anyone?
Every so often there is a study, article or report which feels so correct when we read it we trust it without challening the data. It states a truth we believe in and now we have validation. Case in point: The marshmallow test at Stanford University. Small kids sit in a room and offered a… Read more
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Learning From Rain
Staying at the beach this weekend and it rained in biblical proportions last night. It caught me by surprise and I was left stranded at the beach hut with a short walk to go to get to our holiday home. Determined to get home as dry as possible I began to run along the seaside… Read more
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Got to Do, Get to Do
I had some great questions on my blog this week. Someone asked if posting every day is hard to do or a burden. I considered it for a while and then replied “reflecting on a subject of interest. Writing a thoughtful post that is easy enough to be read and understood in 2 minutes or… Read more
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Better Prepared Zoom Meetings
Many of us are on more calls now. Not all calls are as prepared as they can be. The phrase, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” is spot on. We can get a huge advantage if we start off on the right foot. When a person is prepared, they think… Read more
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If Content Is King Then Story Is the Emperor
Writing a brief thoughtful post in this blog everyday is fun. The posts that resonated most all mentioned or contained an element of a story. The best stories have been personal experiences or stories relayed from a point of view. That invites others to share in it with us. I have applied this to my… Read more
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Walking to Think
I have been walking a lot recently, walking to think, walking to get healthier, just walking anywhere with whoever will walk with me. I observed something that happened when I was walking with different people and I thought it had only been me who noticed this. What I noticed was that, I walked with tall… Read more
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Beautiful Prose
My Saturday posts are traditionally where I share a more personal story, something that reveals a bit more than I would on a week day. I have two loves beyond my family. 1. The written Language in all its forms but good old fashioned books are my fave. 2. The ocean, I love being near,… Read more
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Social Dilemma
2020 we can all agree is best forgotten but I am pleased with one thing. I have removed myself from social media and now since last month have not visited certain online news sites either. I read the guardian in paper form or iPad and if I go online it would be the BBC. If… Read more
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Two Thieves Both Called Regret
Saturday morning down the beach hut is a day of reflection for me, a day I look back and try and see the week just passed at arms length. It is important to learn and try and improve but also not to beat yourself up too much. Regrets for the week past on events and… Read more
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Your Experience Is Just That, Yours!
How many shops and stores do you have close to you? I was on a zoom call with a colleague the other day and we were talking about a new bit of tech which we both liked. I suggested to my colleague could go buy it at weekend. I then learned that where they live… Read more
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![[Parenting] The Enemy of Great Is Good Enough](https://seastheday.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/pexels-photo-395196.jpeg?w=1024)
[Parenting] The Enemy of Great Is Good Enough
My kids have grown up now and they are forging their way in the world. It is part of the reasons I am writing this blog to reflect on a life which for 25 years was a whirlwind of life lesson. My kids have always worked and even though they did not need to they… Read more
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Seeing Others’ Perspective
Not sure why I remember this but it just came back to me this morning on hearing someone talking about the problems in our country at the moment with Covid-19. I remember travelling to Scotland over 10 years ago, right up to the Northern most tip of our beautiful island. Where I had driven for… Read more
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My Podcast Episode: Mentoring
I had the pleasure of appearing on the Grasp.hr Podcast a few weeks ago and the episode just dropped. Click on the link above to listen. I talked about my earliest mentoring experience as a caddy to businessmen at 13, my life at Eli Lilly and my eventual move to Veeva Systems. We discussed the… Read more
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Knowledge vs Execution
When you push into areas that are totally new for you there is a perfectly natural tendency to to feel like you cannot be effective without the full information or knowledge that you are missing. That something which will help you be effective. Knowledge is great, it is key and you must seek it and… Read more
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Feel, Felt, Found
Today, I had the opportunity to talk with a colleague. The discussion was how to handle the situation when a customer is perhaps reacting to some unwelcome news. I shared with him a ‘tried and tested’ technique. Situation: A customer has heard a piece of disappointing news, how to manage this is adopt the method… Read more
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Sorry, I Could Not Find Time!
I hear this stated on occasion, many subscribe to the fallacy of time as this elusive currency we all struggle with, what we actually mean is; “I did not consider this task important enough over my other things.” It ranked low on their list and they don’t like saying it as they have not truly… Read more
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Seen It All Before
I think we can all agree age is a very high price to pay for maturity, but what maturity teaches you is the feeling so often that you have seen that before, heard that debate before, experienced that moment before. Being married to a historian just cements this assertion. My wife reminds me that we… Read more
action, advice, aphorism, Beach, beaches, blog, Blue mind, books, carpe diem, choices, endeavour, failure, fate, first lines, hard work, hardwork, heat, ideas, just do it, just keep swimming, knowledge, lancing, learning, lessons, life, loss, narrative, newspapers, people, philosophy, quotes, Reading, Sea, seas, seaside, sharing, ships, Shoerham-by-sea, Story, storytelling, sussex, swimming, water, waves, wisdom, Writing -
Little Disappointments
When I was a teenager studying english literature at College I was fascinated by the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, I loved her writing and a collection of short stories including ‘The dill pickle’ and ‘Miss brill’ those tales will be forever a joy to me. I loved the idea that rather than the big… Read more
