1. Quote I’m pondering this week “Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness.” –Frank Tyger
2. Favourite discovery this week: A blog post by a former colleague, which led me to her website happydayspsychology. Years ago, I was a young manager of a team and the author Emma worked in HR where her support and coaching was something I greatly missed when leaving EA to join Microsoft (where HR was focused on protecting the business). Now I’m at Unity I’ve returned to a more coaching, mentoring and proactive HR, one with people like Emma and it’s amazing. Her post on living the life you want includes the idea of creating a dream or vision board what a great idea! I’ve started one already.
3. In my continuous quest for increased productivity through music I’ve definitely found video game music is the most effective. I’ve been going through many genres over many months and when you think about it, video game soundtracks are specifically designed to simultaneously stimulate your senses and blend into the background of your brain, that’s the point of the soundtrack. It has to engage you in a task without distracting from it. The most impactful and quite frankly stunning soundtrack for me in the last couple of weeks is EA’s Battlefield 1, I’ve even noticed a reduction in my bruxism. You can find it here on Spotify and here on Apple Music.
4. Change I’ve made this week: In line with lessons from the book Longevity diet I’ve started a daily routine of walking 15 minutes to a coffee shop for a drink rather than just using the rather handy machine at work (thus increasing my walking). I’m also experimenting with skipping lunch, replacing it with a snack (fruit, almonds and walnuts). I’m already feeling less sluggish and more energetic. I’ll continue for a few weeks and update here on progress. If you haven’t seen the book you can check out a good summary here
5. Game I’ve started to play – Meow Wars by Taco Truck Games. I rarely make time for solid stints of gameplay nowadays. What with a family, Denmark to explore and a new job with lots of interesting challenges, it’s been hard to justify. Yet Meow Wars (made by a former colleague from my time on Minecraft) is a great card battle strategy game! If that’s your thing I recommend you check it out.