All Writing by Jamie Miles
Welcome to the full portfolio. Browse to your hearts content and discover everything from true stories to evidence-based guides.
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Trues Stories & Reflections
The Weakest Link
Would you ever hack someone’s Facebook account? What if they’re grooming underage students and you need evidence to convict them? This is the story of how I helped catch a criminal. — I remember when the internet used to sing. Explaining it to someone unfamiliar with…
Thinking Fast with Jump Notes: Note-taking for Those that Hate Note-taking (Pt 4)
We think fast, and we think slow. Jump Notes, my twist on mind mapping, is for when we need to think fast, as pausing is either impractical or not preferable. When studying or working, that’s most of the time.
The Cow Survival Guide
After the last weekend, I’ve been compelled to write a cow attack survival guide. I couldn’t find one, so I have to presume it’s because there haven’t been any survivors up until now. Below is a story on getting charged at by a cow and how I lived to tell the tale….
Example HQ&A Notes: How to Avoid Climate Disaster (2021) – Bill Gates
These example Highlight, Question and Answer (HQ&A) Notes are a companion to the third article in my Oxford Notes note-taking series, A Technique for Taking More Creative Notes: Up, Down, and Across.
Think Deeper: Upgrade your HQ&A Notes with Up, Down, and Across (Pt 3)
Ask a better question, and you’ll get a better answer.
The value of the Highlight, Question, and Answer (HQ&A) technique comes down to the quality of the questions you ask, so being able to prime a state of mind that surfaces better questions will deepen your understanding of the text and make you a more original thinker.
Imagination and Hope: Jamoe’s 1st Birthday
It’s been a year since the pandemic left me unemployed. Picking myself up from the knock, I decided it was time to stop delaying the inevitable and start my own thing. On Jamoe’s 1st birthday, here’s the story of how I decided to take on building a 21st century media…
Get More Value and Joy from Books with Handwritten HQ&A Notes (Pt 2)
Taking notes on physical non-fiction books is best done by hand. While there’s evidence to support we remember handwritten notes best, that’s not why I recommend it.
Glow in the Dark Teeth
Western media is pretty mischievous. You can see it in the UK, but it’s clearer in America. Ordinary looking people are brushed under the carpet, so centre stage can be given to those with a perfect sort of beauty. At its extreme, its the pursuit of perfect beauty…
Thinking Slow With HQ&A: Take Better Notes When Reading Non-Fiction (Pt 1)
The 21st century is an information fire hose. Being able to adjust, filter and turn information into insights has become a basic expectation. We must think deeply on a deadline.
The classic note-taking techniques haven’t caught up with the times. That’s why I’ve created two new techniques: the Highlight, Question and Answer (HQ&A) technique and Jump Notes.
Kindling and a Spark
Note: Names have been changed for the sake of privacy. It’s been a decade since a letter arrived inviting me to the place that inspired Hogwarts. The messenger of good fortune was not an owl, but a dutiful postman. He crunched his way through the snow that frosty…
Scoping: Creating Your Exam Success Guide
Exams always make me incredibly nervous because I’m always unsure if what I’ve been revising is actually going to come up. Do you have any advice on how to overcome this? And could you add some hints on how to get 100% in an exam?
Rocks and a Wise Professor
To tell this story, I have to tell you another one first. It’s about some rocks and a wise professor. ‘Can anyone tell me what this is?’ A boy in the back called out, ’It’s a mason jar, Sir’. ‘Yes! Exactly. A mason jar.’ The professor dipped his hand inside his breast…
The Art of Happiness
Con-artists make up the bulk of the self-help genre. Their words offer us a sugar-high of hope. As that high fades, we see that we’ve pegged our promise for a better future on some magic beans. Self-hate or self-denial follows, as you either disavow the entire…
Good Stress and Bad Stress: How To Use Them To Your Advantage
Doing things from home has made me an awful procrastinator. Some times I just start at the ceiling and then I panic because I’ve left everything until the deadline. How can I kick this bad habit?
Replying To A Friend
What a pickle. I know you’ve been searching for a cause to sink your teeth into. It’s a maddening task, trying to decide which fire to fight when you’re standing there with only one hose, and it looks like the world’s ablaze. Then there’s the tragedy that follows…
The Pomodoro Technique: Getting Started With Working In Bursts
I keep procrastinating and get anxious about all the work piling up as the days go by. Do you have any recommendations for how to get started instead of feeling stuck?
Life Is Crunchy
Have you met this person? They can grab a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, spill it onto the floor, and place all the pieces perfectly. No. Because that’s not how puzzles work. With experience and some luck, we can get faster, but we still have to go through the cognitive…
Time Boxing: A Technique For Balancing Your Time Across Tasks
How do I balance my time across everything I have to work on? I’m currently studying A Level Chemistry, Biology, Maths and Geography. I usually spend too much time on one, so the others suffer.
Falcons and Assassins
On weekends, The City of London is ripe for socially distanced strolling. On a typical workday, the population swells to half a million people before the tide goes out and the commuters flow back down ‘The Drain’ to return home, leaving a residue of 9,500 residences….
A Practical Guide To Memorising Anything With Spaced Repetition
Can we talk about memory? I’ve been disheartened by the constant feeling that I have a sieve brain, and wondered how you made things stick at Oxford?
Just Keep Singing
The request was in Italian, so we let our inquisitive smiles hang while our friend listened and translated the lady’s words into English. She was asking if we could repeat our performance from the top, so she could film it. The triad was born in 2016 in the seaside…
Escaping Your Phone’s Gravity: Part 1
When trying to not get distracted, do you have a recommend phone setup?
Pleasure in the Pathless Woods
As a child, hearing the call of nature during the middle of the night felt life threatening. My imagination had decided that vampires were lurking in the dark, and not the sparkling sort that would have boys and girls swooning come the twilight of the new millennium,…
What Have Cartoons Ever Done For Us?
Jamie Miles’ message to TEDxKazimierz 2016 is to ask whether lessons, wisdom and principles in our culture – from Plato to Pokémon – can inspire people to tackle one’s ambitions. Transcript Hello, during my time at Oxford, working at Google and running my YouTube…






















