30 days ago, I signed up for Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole's cohort-based course, Ship 30 for 30.

In that time, I wrote & published 30 Atomic Essays, learned the fundamentals of Digital Writing, made friends, and started gaining clarity over what my niche might be. It has been a very rewarding (and challenging) journey, and I am more excited than ever to keep writing online.

Here are the 3 biggest things writing & publishing consistently every day for 30 days taught me:

1. If you really want to do something you'll find a way, if you don't you'll find an excuse

Look to be precise I managed to produce 30 articles but I missed a few days here and there and felt the pressure to catchup. You miss more than 2 days and psychologically giving up seems easier than continuing. But when you are learning so much and seeing others in the same boat (literally) then you make the time. And I'm very glad I did.

2. If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together

Writing can be such a personal and solo pursuit. A huge factor of publishing this last month has been the INCREDIBLE support from the ship30for30 community - I've met people from all over the world and they have been instrumental in encouraging, motivating and learning from. Honestly this alone has made this entire experience worthwhile.

3. Perfection is the enemy of done

I had to constantly remind myself this was about building a habit. Not every piece was going to be of the highest quality - but that artist 'resistance' that Steven Pressfield talks about is ever present. An inner critic warring with you 'You can't publish that!' 'That's not good enough' It's a war indeed - and you can't let perfectionism win. You miss 100% of the shots you never take.

If you have been thinking about getting started writing online too, let me know. I'm happy to share more about the experience and what I learned.

I used to eat more than I'd burn off exercising.

I have been doing this for years.

Rock bottom for me was when my annual medical results came in and I was borderline Type 2 Diabetes, cholesterol levels were crazily high , and the excess weight was causing my lower back problems. It was terrible. What a wake up call! I didn't think I was that old!

How did I break this bad habit?

Intermittent Fasting

Everything changed as soon as I stopped eating anything after 8pm at night and before 12 midday the next day.

And honestly, I saw almost immediate results.

• Increased energy through the day

• Understanding that feeling 'a bit hungry' does not mean I am 'starving' and need to mindlessly stuff my face

• 'Refueling' with healthy food and feeling so much more alert

• Only eating what I need the rest of the day - portion sizes

So, if you are also still believing that breakfast is the most important meal of the day (Spoiler - it absolutely is not) , I encourage you to try intermittent fasting.

Don't get me wrong - it's not a silver bullet on it's own.... but it helps trigger other healthy habits which in unison have made me healthier and happier today.

Many people struggle with Perfectionism.

Personally, I suffered from it for years. I'd tweak and rewrite work reports over and over. I had my own deep buried self-belief that this was the way to be successful. When in reality I was wasting a lot of time and effort.

Perfectionism is the enemy of done.

But what changed for me was an insightful coaching breakthrough. My coach helped me uncover that trying to reduce the time spent 'perfecting' things was a shallow response.

What I needed was to challenge my mindset by proving the beliefs I held were not true. Which meant experimenting with something that I felt was unthinkable but was a surefire way to expose the reality of my thinking.

And as soon as that clicked, I started to understand that believing my perfectionism was key to my success was THE problem.

Here's the baby steps I took to challenge that belief:

Practice deliberate mistakes

For a period of one week I made deliberate but harmless typo's in 8 emails I was sending to different seniors at work.

I know. Seems ridiculous right? But I bet there are many perfectionists out there that would feel a deep sense of shame or horror in doing exactly that. Like me they probably thought they couldn't bring themselves to do it.
My reputation! The quality of my work! WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?

And you know what happened?

Nothing. Nothing at all. None of the terrible consequences I imagined came true.

And this tiny change has had an enormous positive impact on so many areas of my life. Try it - I double dare you..

When I was 29, I set a goal to take a year off work to travel hoping to find more purpose to my life.

Of course, whenever we set goals in life, life tests us. And I was no exception. Successfully meeting my travel goal ultimately meant I had a difficult choice to make far from home :

Facing major life challenges while 17,195 km away from family

In 2001 I had ended up living and working in Sydney, Australia, at a place in my life I absolutely loved. But in a space of a few weeks everything crumbled and I'd found myself

1) Out of work during the Dot Com crash

2) Going through a painful breakup

To make matters worse

• Friends I'd made were her friends so I felt especially isolated from my family on the other side of the world in the UK.

• With no work my Resident Visa was expiring in a few weeks and I couldn't even get an interview.

The situation in my mind seemed hopeless and without understanding what was happening to me I slid into reactive depression.

The happy go lucky person who had travelled for twelve months around USA, Thailand, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia confidently on his own was no longer someone I remembered being.

I felt worse than worthless because my mind was telling me
' I WILL ALWAYS FEEL LIKE THIS AND IT WON'T GET BETTER'

My family were frantic about this severe personality change and outlook and, quite reasonably, insisted I should just come home, get help and sort things out.

But I instinctively felt if I made that choice then I wouldn't come back to Australia - I place I had grown to love. And I wanted to leave on my own terms.

Although it would have been easy to throw the towel in and go back home. Instead I threw myself into eating well, exercising and yes finding a good Counsellor (after a few false starts - Men's Mental Health back in 2001 wasn't the most socially acceptable topic). The job setbacks hurt more than ever but eventually and just in time I secured a role and found the black fog in my mind lifting. I went from strength to strength from there.

And here's the thing:

As dark as it was being forced to make these choices ultimately got me to where I am today which is

• Happily married for 20 years to my beautiful Sydney born wife I met not a few months later

• Have friends who met me at my lowest point and are brothers and sisters to me today

• Humble and grateful compared to the cocky youngster I was before

• Empathic and sympathetic to any one having mental wellness issues

• Stronger from the resilience and grit I've proved exists when times get tough

My takeaway : Difficult choices create an easier life in the long run.

Are you a visual thinker?

Visual thinking is common in approximately 60–65% of the general population

You can describe it as seeing words as a series of pictures.

It's been said that if you ask a kindergarten class who can read and write you'll get one or two hands in the air but if you ask how many can draw you'll see a sea of them.

Yet if you ask MBA graduates exiting their courses the same questions you'll get the exact OPPOSITE response.

Seems crazy right?

“It takes a lot of hard work,” Steve Jobs said, “to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.”

I've spend over 30 years in Tech translating between business and IT. I've built the ability to 'speak geek and talk business'.

It has been career critical for me to break down complex issues into simple steps easy to understand.

And the secret of my success? Drawing.

Working in technology. Working in global corporations with multiple skill levels, multiple languages and cultures. Drawing has been essential in collaborating on ideas and collaborating across communication boundaries.

Don't get me wrong. I am no 'artist'. My drawings are often nothing more than boxes and arrows and crude stick shaped figures with written labels to identify them.

But they cut through the noise. Provide an anchor to connect ideas in real time. They focus the conversation. They drive the understanding.

It's applicable anywhere - not just the technology industry. So next time you are in a meeting being bombarded with words and lists and getting lost. Be brave. Pick up a pencil or digital pen. And talk with your hands!

Everyone struggles with drama in their lives

Personally,going through the 'covid period' it seemed every week there was new drama.

Being cooped up indoors was killing my soul as I thrive on social contact.
I lost my role in Aviation because planes literally weren't flying for months. Borders were closed and my Wife wasn't able to fly back to Australia to see family members and worse didn't know when she could. Some days were easier than others but those others....oh boy oh boy.

But what changed for me was beginning a Coaching practice which helped me help others identify their own drama. Instead of them being lost within it, from identification on its own, a kind of magic happens.

Let's take a look at a Coaching tool called

The Attention Ladder

! Vision !

____________

! Strategy !

____________

! Tactics !

____________

! Problems !

___________

! Drama !

Many clients came to me and were immersed in ''Drama' talking about what's affecting them and what's happening in a jumbled blur of words, feelings. thoughts and actions.

If no one helps them to understand they are stuck there then they can spend a LOT of time there on their own.

Some sessions I felt they just wanted to vent and talk it all out - I had to resist the urge to step in and try and focus them. But it's their session and eventually once they felt they had been heard we could step back, together, and objectively look at where thier attention was.

I gained permission to share the tool and people instinctively understood which step their attention was at. And where they wanted to be.

This helped focus the session, focus what they wanted to gain from the session and helped them to focus forwards. Into a brighter future. Focusing attention on a vision taking them away from the drama and giving them something to build towards.

Coaching is a partnership and I found a strong link between helping others face thier issues and finding personal insights into how to find mine.

I trained myself to be self aware where I was focused myself and realize when I am stuck on the Drama rung of the ladder myself. It's all about where you focus your attention.

So next time you find yourself drowning in your own thoughts and feelings ask yourself - what rung of the ladder am I on?

I have been practicing Coaching for two years - including a bulk of it through the middle of a pandemic. People have been looking for purpose.

Along the way, I have done a lot of Values work. Helping people uncover their personal values is a foundational need to help people discover their purpose.

A number of things have really helped from a coaching tool perspective.

But this one is my favourite :

The Life Timeline

{Because it plots on a page someones major life events and serves as a roadmap for discussions around how they thought, felt and acted at their best times in their lives and at their worst)

What is it?

It couldn't be more simple.

1. You take a piece of A4 paper

2. You draw out an X and Y axis

3. The Y axis is labelled 'Highs' at the top and 'Lows' at the bottom

4. The X axis is the date you were born to todays date

5. Now you grab a drink and get 30 mins you time

6. And plot out MAJOR events in your life and mark them per the date and where they are on the high and low scale

Et Voila! - you have your life timeline. You, yours, unique to you. Start looking for feelings and thoughts and actions on the highs and lows and uncover patterns. Become AWARE of your own drivers.

A trained coach can really get the best out of this exercise by asking the right questions of you that will shine a light on who you really are.

But there is nothing to stop you trying the exercise yourself.

Start to uncover the values that have shaped and continue your life and your purpose will follow.

Your self-awareness journey has only just begun.

I was first assigned an executive coach by a very forward thinking company in 2019 P.C (Pre Covid!)

A Vice President of the Strategy and Programmes team had made himself available for intra-work coaching as he persued his own coaching qualifications.

He had a great reputation for problem solving in the business and I was excited to not just network with him but to get advice on solving some of my work problems.

Expectation – My Exec Coach would talk with me specifically about my work goals.

Reality - The first few coaching sessions were not about specific work problems AT ALL!

Instead he took time to really get to know me – what excited me, what didn’t, what my strengths are and some deeper work into what my values are became uncovered

Connection

Curiosity

Collaboration

Ownership

Trust

Then, and only then, did the sessions became focused on my work environment :
here was I using my values?
What was blocking me from aligning them to the work I was doing?
What ideas did I have to re-focus the work I was doing and how was I going to implement them and hold myself accountable?

The focus was on me. The ideas were co-created with the emphasis on my input. The accountability was on me.

The impact it had on me was INCREDIBLE and work suddenly had new purpose.

.

I was the global head of commercial technology for the customer facing departments of one of the biggest airlines in the world.

My days (and nights) were an exciting but relentless tide of demand management, service management, steering groups, innovation labs, deadlines and budgets. I barely found time to develop the team around me - I was firmly on the busy train. Then I met this guy.

Sebastian

Sebastian was running major programmes alongside me and his people skills were off the charts. In his early 50's and coming from an elite level military background he viewed teams and development in a way far beyond the office politics I constantly found myself dismayed by.

Over coffee one morning I realised that he went out of his way to find people around him that he thought had potential or deserved a chance.

They may be a mid career manager struggling to find purpose, somone who just needed their CV revised, a whizz kid programmer that needed help with public speaking.

Sebastian would take these people under his wing and MAKE time for them every month. What he said that morning I will never forget :

If I don't help someone every week, then that week is wasted.

I checked around us in Starbucks , leant in conspiratorially and whispered : ''Tell me the truth..... you're not Spiderman are you?" He said ''No..... you absolute idiot''
I said 'Well you appreciate that I had to ásk at least!
He laughed and said : "It's very simple. It's our role to train and help the next generation of leaders. It is about giving back."|

And, even though, quite disappointingly, he wasn't Spiderman - he was right. Instead of constantly fretting about deadlines and scrambling for promotions - finding time out to help others takes the focus off that rat race and becames hugely rewarding.

Try it if you don't believe me. Your friendly neighbourhood Coach Ropes.

Technology innovation is accelerating. Adoption means disruptive, constant and rapid change is obliterating 'tradtional' work landscapes .

What succeeded before is no longer any guide for the future.

Modern Managers don't ( how could they?) have all the right answers

Traditional command and control practices worked in the industrial era but with less distance between customers and employees in customer centric companies - no one has time to send a request up the chain of approvals and wait for it come back down.

Empowerment is the goal

Employees need an environment where they have autonomy and are trusted to make the right decisions themselves. This unlocks creativity, problem solving skills.....and COMMITMENT.

Which means simply that managers need to provide guidance and support instead of explicit instruction.

Or put another way - Managers need to be coaches.