True Stories & Reflections

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Setup the tools in your life to enrich, not subtract. Most tools will stay in their drawer, but modern tools are needier. Especially our phones. By default, they don’t want to live peacefully in our pockets. They want to be picked up, played with, and will whine with...

You’ve found my journal, and decide to flick through it. May 2016 stands out. It’s longer than the other entries, and there's a quotation written in large letters with three underlines. You realise that the quotation was from a lady that I had met that month. You...

Reject competition. Embrace collaboration. There’s a joke at Oxford University that ‘Imposter Syndrome’ started here. It’s easy to believe. This syndrome is the belief that you don’t belong somewhere, despite having all the required skills. You feel like an imposter....

Working remotely has created a subtle shift in power. Before, those that shouted the loudest shaped the agenda. Now it's those that write the clearest, and this will only become more true with time. Writing well is the art of copying an idea from your brain to someone...

I wrote my first book aged four. It sits in the drawer of broken dreams at home, dusted with time, its potential wasted. I wondered if things could have been different, the stars aligning a few degrees to the left, and unlocking a world where lucky readers would care...

Sushi trains have much to teach us about procrastination. Unlike today, sushi trains had yet to make a dent in 2012 London, so my first experience was in Tokyo while completing an internship. For the uninitiated, a sushi train involves plates of sushi being placed on...

“We’re all watering cans really”. “Watering cans?” “Aye, think about it. We wake up each day fresh and full, and then we start watering the parts of our lives we want to go well: we brush our teeth, fill our bellies, kiss our loved ones good morning. The sorts of...

‘The Cupcake Theory’ was my cure. We’ve all been frustrated working in a team. Some people do all the work, others are all ideas and no action, and some teams seem to just hang around wasting oxygen. When the expectations you had for a team haven’t met reality, you...

Giving away my blood had always been on my list. The list, one that I maintain to this day, was the product of asking myself the question, ‘What would the man I want to be do?’, and, in this instance, the enthusiastic voice in my head replied, ‘Give away your blood’....

The day had started well but by its end, I would be homeless for the night. During my internship in Japan, I’d managed to sneak in some backpacking with two of my fellow interns, and today we were exploring the beauty of Kyoto in the summer. It was only after I had...

It was the summer of 2012 and in a few minutes, I would be cancelling my flight to China. ‘We would love to have you’ read the email that had chimed in my inbox moments earlier, ‘Can you arrive in a week?’. The message was from a lady in Tokyo. There are two important...

"Do you use your degree at work?" It's a fair question as we don't have the luxury of spending a fortune on a degree that's decorative. It should be functional, too. So, was my degree a chocolate teapot? It turns out what I learned during my time studying Philosophy,...

Some times taking the less obvious path is the right move. ‘Can I leave after 5 weeks?’ is an unrecommended way to end a job interview, but that’s how I wrapped up mine back in 2015. I was due to start my Software Engineering job at Kano, but I needed some money to...

Inertia's a funny thing. Back when I was 14, I decided to give up something for three months for New Year's. The choice was obvious: fizzy drinks. They'd become a staple, and at 14 it felt like a true test of will power. 3 months passed, and I found myself celebrating...

‘Is this another one of your phases?’ would be my dad’s go-to challenge when I was a kid. Like how thunder always follows lightning, my dad’s question would always follow from me sharing my latest obsession – Pokemon, martial arts, building my own house out of...

Many of your will be graduating into the slosh that is the current employment market. While the front doors to most companies are shut, the back doors are wide-open to those with the will to create their own opportunities rather than waiting for something to...

Like many others in 2014, I sat eight three-hour exams as part of my Oxford finals. Thats 24 hours worth of mental sprinting that would be scrutinised, judged, and distilled into a degree representing the effort I'd poured into my academic career – a career that...