Consulting Swordsman
Today, Finland celebrates its 100th anniversary of independence. They paid a terrible price for it, both in the civil war that followed the declaration, and in resisting the Soviet invasion during the Second World War. The Finnish conduct of the Winter War was an incredible effort of skill, heroism, and sheer sisu (guts, bottom, sheer stubborn refusal … Read more
Your knees are the keys to everything. For many martial artists knees are the first thing to go, and signal the end of a career. I don’t want my career to end. I have put my basic knee maintenance program online for free here, and for some reason best known to my subconscious I didn’t … Read more
Time spent sharpening is never wasted. A couple of weeks ago I helped a friend to lay a nice oak wooden floor. This entailed lots of standing up and bending over, and I’m delighted to say that I felt it in my legs the next day, but not in my back at all. Ergonomics for … Read more
Do you ever have days when it feels like you’re carrying an invisible anvil around with you? Probably. Most people do. I’ve been going to a therapist for the last few weeks to try to sort out why I’ve been having irrational downswings. Everything in life is going splendidly, and yet I can sink into … Read more
The OURA Ring: the future of fitness wearables? One of the challenges of maintaining my fitness since retiring from teaching classes four nights a week is getting reliable feedback. I’ve been looking into heart rate monitors for this purpose, specifically to track recovery times (how long it takes my heart rate to come back to … Read more
Back in the bad old days I used to have to choose between swinging swords and working. Every time I picked up a sword, my wrists would swell up and my hands would be useless. It was hell. Then I met a kung-fu instructor, Num, who in 20 agonising minutes fixed my wrists. And in the … Read more
I was expecting to be far more nostalgic about seeing Helsinki again after nine months away. It’s by far the longest time I’ve been absent from my city since 2001. There are changes here and there- most excitingly perhaps a bespoke shoemaker has opened a workshop near Kamppi. Good thing I’ve been too busy to … Read more
The New Year is upon us, and with it, a new opportunity to do interesting things, and a time to perhaps take stock and think about what’s important. That would be lovely, except right now I’m totally overwhelmed with stuff to do. You might be to, so here’s how I deal with it. First, let … Read more
In “Following my own advice” I described how I try to get something important done every day before checking emails, because prioritising the important over the apparently urgent is key. In that post I rather blithely referred to concentrating on ‘creating assets’, and loosely defined assets as “anything that adds value to your life. Value … Read more
I just uninstalled the Facebook app off my phone. Shock! Horror! How could I do such a thing? Well, yesterday I gave a class to some students on a professional writing course at the University of Suffolk here in Ipswich. The topic was time management, and my advice boiled down to the following key points: … Read more