Something I recently posted on the Effective Altruism forum. Epistemic status: Moderately strongly held based on anecdotal data, but I could easily imagine learning about broader patterns and withdrawing this claim. TL;DR: Grantmaking, in my view, is best viewed as a set of skills or a stage in a career…

I recently read Hold Me Tight by Dr Sue Johnson, a highly regarded relationship therapy book. The book outlines the process of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), a short-term therapy that places great emphasis on love as an attachment bond. The book provides a few useful frameworks and memes for navigating…

I’ve been lucky enough to visit some Maya ruins recently, in Guatemala and Mexico. To celebrate, here’s a short post listing some surprising (to me) facts/claims about the Maya, mostly from the excellent Wikipedia page. It’s a clichéd style of fact but I still can’t get my head around this…

I’m not a very adventurous music listener. The music I like seems to fall quite consistently into just two categories: Good songs: Well-crafted songs (often on guitar) that make me feel things. Cool sounds: Noises and beats (often electronic) that intrigue me. Still, I spend a decent amount of time…

I recently read ‘History of Modern Britain’ by Andrew Marr. Marr is a prominent political journalist and that’s evident in his writing — the book is more of a fly-on-the-wall account of the lives of Britain’s postwar leaders than a catalogue of events. This led to some excessive focus on…

TL;DR: Relationship reviews are great. They give you and your partner the space to: Talk about hard things; Make small asks of each other (and make small improvements); and Discuss your dreams and ambitions. My partner and I have been doing relationship reviews every three months for the past year…

I’ve been following British political journalist Ian Dunt for a number of years now. Through his commentary and lively Twitter feed, Dunt walks a fine line between explaining things clearly and making his moral views vivid and enticing. When I saw that Dunt had written a book about liberalism, a…

We’re often told to be ambitious. For example, people often say things like “be ambitious”. I think this is helpful for long-term goals, or goals that require a lot of our time each day (e.g. career goals). However, I think being ambitious is not helpful for day-to-day personal development; those…

Notes on a thoughtful way to reflect — I’m a fairly reflective person. I don’t naturally immerse myself in my memories or past experiences without any cues but I do often consciously reflect on them — sometimes to work out whether I would do anything differently now, sometimes to consider how my life has changed since then and…