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 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...
A Practical Guide To Learning Anything Faster With The Feynman Technique
What’s the best way to learn something? I know there are many ways, but if you had to choose one, what would it be?
Good Time Wine
The lady in the supermarché handed me my groceries. I beamed a smiled, 'Arigatou gozaimasu’. She stared at me, leaving me blushing as I made my exit. I was in Paris for work, and on my way to see some friends for the evening. I was picking up a few things from the...
Motivation Is A Myth: How To Be Disciplined By Design
What’s the best way to stay motivated and not get distracted?
Bending Adversity
There’s a fine line between creepy and compassionate. Turning up at your best friend’s house confessing your love for their partner is a bit much. Though on this occasion, that’s not what I did. I was on a train from Hiroshima to Tokyo. In the Friday rush to get home...
Using Retrospective Revision Timetables
What’s the best way to track and prioritise my revision when learning a new topic?
The Locksmith Paradox
We all love the thrill of a good bit of vacuuming. It sits at the seductive intersection of being productive and offering instant gratification. Though I discovered that the admission of vacuuming as a hobby crosses some sort of social line. ‘How’s your lockdown...
Locked Out
Location Sydney, Australia 2017. Jamie has returned from his trip to the city centre. His backpack is swung over his shoulder, and he's dressed in swim shorts and a t-shirt. Jamie:Hey – are you awake?I have a quandaryI’m locked out of my friend’s flat in SydneyAnd...
Sigh of Relief
Nowadays, why I cry is upside down. Like most children, sad things would move me to tears. I assume it’s because when we’re young, we’ve not grown accustomed to the world’s misfortune. Growing older, my settings have changed. Expecting the unfortunate, it can no...
Learning to Hate Fiction
I can pinpoint the exact moment that I learned to hate reading fiction. I was six years old and sitting in class, happy as a lamb inhaling the book I’d picked up. ‘Oh dear, what was this doing in there? You shouldn’t be reading this.’ My teacher lifted the book away...
My Nemesis
One moment you're making shapes on the dance floor. The next the police are escorting you outside. It was 2016, the year of 'Pokemon Go'. New Year's Eve had rolled around and my friend suggested we spend it at Europe's best fancy dress party. The suggestion seeded...
The World as a Playground
My colleagues walked in with their coffees, and I had my bag of frozen peas. It was an autumn day, so the peas were still nice and cold when I popped them on my desk. Yesterday I had thought it just a bruise, but I was wrong. The bone had cracked. My suspicions were...
Kill the Witch
I went to a performing arts school, which meant everyone had to take at least one performing arts class. Think Drama, Music, Dance, Expressive Arts, and the like. Most people hated this. I was most people. The performing arts wasn’t what I disliked, but standing...