The Top Tips Blog

A good while ago I wrote a Top Tips about the worst boss I ever had.

In that particular job I wasn’t valued and know I wasn’t seen as being worth much.

It was confusing to me that the skills and att...

A recent Top Tip was about avoiding tautologies. I realised later that most of the email was spent noticing and highlighting them but oddly I didn’t offer any ways to deal with them.

I didn’t mean no...

Recently I touched on the Diderot Effect, a pattern of buying stuff that has a sense of unity or identity. A pattern which basically will cost you an arm and a leg unless you rein it in!

Retailers kn...

I got a pretty severe summer haircut this week. I didn’t realise it was quite so brutal until everyone I met later that day said “Now, that’s a haircut!”

To be fair I did ask for it to be shorter tha...

I'm laid low with Covid right now. It's the first time I've had those two little stripes on the LFT.

"How am I feeling?"

Ropey is how I'd describe my current state but nothing horrendous. Very grate...

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking about how to change your life for the better then you’re not alone. Most people want to improve themselves in some way or another.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

People w...

Happy Friday!

Last weekend, I drove to York and back to visit family. It was a 500-mile round trip that, despite my best intentions, brought out my inner grumbler.

There I was, navigating the M1, mu...

There is a list of ideas compiled from themes I've been asked to write about and on that list is ‘how to complain’.

Well, as it happens, the ideal situation occurred for me to write about that this w...

I’ve mentioned before that I love a good acronym. The best ones are useful, clever, elegant, fun to decode and very often just sound pleasant too. 

SCUBA is a good one. You may already know that it s...

A good friend of mine is called Roger Taylor. He’s really into classical music and loathes pop and rock. For years whenever I wrote to him I would address the envelope to:

‘Mr Roger Taylor (the drumm...

A recent top tip was to embrace the line “It’s my responsibility, what am I going to do about it?”

Or perhaps you were more taken by the more direct “Who’s responsible? You f*@king are!” version on o...

I got told off for a Top Tips issue not so long ago. Apparently it was more of a Cure gig review than a useful email.

That’s fair enough, I do go on the wrong side of a ramble now and again. Apologi...