The other day I walked from Sheffield to Manchester with my university housemate. I’m not kidding. Here’s the route… But how did this come about? Having talked about it since March, we were wondering whether a walk like this was possible and how hard it was going to be. The involved housemate finished his summer internship a week before the university year was going to start and walked into my room that Monday saying ‘Bro, we need a side quest…’. I mentioned that we had been talking about doing this for the longest time and we fired each other up until train tickets home from Manchester were booked for the coming Wednesday. ...

Since around the start of 2022, I’ve made daily notes/journaled in some capacity, recording the happenings and feelings of my life as it happens. And the other day I looked through some of these journals, especially the ones made around a year ago and earlier. What I came across surprised me. Although I feel as though life has progressed in lots of different ways in the last year, the problems that I was coming across in my journal were very similar at their core to the ones I still experience. ...

Originally, this note was going to be completely private. I started writing these commandments with no intention of sharing but the further in I got, the more I realised the piece looked like Twenty observations from 20 years on Earth, a piece I published almost exactly a year ago (I’m turning 21 on Thursday). So I thought I’d tidy this list up a bit. There’s no harm in making it easier to consume for the reader and in turn easier for me to refer to. ...

One of the short pieces of writing that has resonated most with me is ‘Style is consistent constraint’ by Steph Ango, the CEO of Obsidian (convenient, I know, seeing as I do all my writing in that app). The first time I read it, the piece put into words something that I understood was true but could never quite cross the line from simply feeling to having a set description for. ...

Hello again, This week’s issue is going to be about the evident decision to move my newsletter writing back to Substack. Here’s the lowdown on the change… This is intended to be for the foreseeable future - I give a bit more detail on what I picture as a goal for the future later in the issue I’m going to take videos down from YouTube and hold them here on Substack in each week’s issue instead This is where I’m going to post personal pieces and newsletter issues from now on, rather than the Fundamentalised website The newsletters will look and read the same as they always do and I won’t send emails for new essays, meaning I’ve still got work to share in the ‘What I’ve written this week…’ section that you haven’t seen yet The fundamentalised.com domain now points to this publication rather than the old website, so original links should still work. I’ll go through all the issues and change the ones that need updating though. The reason for doing this right now is because Fundamentalised is something that doesn’t earn me money - it’s really just for me to write because I love writing. ...

I’ve been building and launching PARAZETTEL V3 for the whole of this week and this has come with little problems and issues that I have to be on my toes to fix. But there’s no worry about there, as I’m not aiming for a perfect launch - I’m aiming for a launch that gets the product to people to help them work on their own things. And as of today, two out of three days in, it’s done just that. ...

Shorter newsletter today. I’ve been building PARAZETTEL V3 for launch next Friday (relevant in a minute) and haven’t had much time to do any other writing. But I wanted to quickly discuss building skills and setting goals… A while back I wrote a piece called The real reason why you set number-based goals​- it was all about the real motive behind setting arbitrary numbers as goals and targets. In short, the point I was making was that when you reach said number you’re going to get a quick spike of satisfaction only. ...

In terms of building a future that you’ll continue to enjoy sustainably, which of the following is more useful to ask? “What’s the worst thing you’d tolerate doing if you got paid what you wanted to do it?” “What would you continue to do even if you knew you weren’t going to get paid to do it?” The first is something one might ask a friend as a bit of fun. Even though it’s more common, there’s not a realistic application - nobody’s queueing to pour money into your lap. ...

I ‘quit’ Instagram a bit more than a year ago. What actually happened - I deleted one of two accounts I had (it was the personal one I was addicted to completely). After a prolonged break (around six months), I came back to using the secondary one, promoting my photography and being careful to stay away from excessive personal use. Long story short, I’m still on Instagram. However, the hiatus was necessary to reset how I approached my use of the platform. These changes are what the issue is going to be about today… ...

Decision fatigue and overthinking are silent killers of consistent and patient progress. Lord knows I’ve been there myself, dedicating too much time during the day to doing just one thing, ending in overthinking and making no progress. You only have a certain amount of worthy attention and focus to spend during the day, and there’s no more once that’s gone. Instead of forcing yourself into too many hours of work, it’s better to be more consistent with less over more time, giving your projects space to grow and develop. ...