It’s not money. Or fame. Or marriage. But you know that already.
Those aren’t secrets. They come with their own rewards and challenges.
The real secret to a happy life?
It’s helping others.
That’s it. Really. But hardly anyone talks about it.
The world makes you feel like happiness is something you can earn. But it’s not a product. It’s a consequence. It’s what happens when you stop thinking about what you need, and start asking what you can offer.
Not in a “donate to charity” kind of way. That has its place—but writing a cheque or setting up a direct debit doesn’t really do it. Not in your bones. Not in your soul. You don’t feel the friction—and that friction is the point. You need to labour for others. You need to face their problems with them, use what you know, what you’ve learned, and actually solve something.
We often call this “sending the elevator back down.” Helping people who are earlier in their journey than you. Sharing the map after you’ve already found the way out of the woods.
Some of the most fulfilled people I know aren’t defined by the size of their bank account. In fact, a lot of them who retired started working again—because there’s a kind of work that has nothing to do with salary. It’s a calling. A compulsion. They mentor. They volunteer. They build. They give—not passively, but with effort.
Compare that to the people who retire and slowly dissolve into daytime television. The body might hang around for a while, but their spirit leaves. And statistically, that matters.
Turns out, retirees who volunteer even a few hours a month literally age slower at the cellular level. Their DNA says so. Meanwhile, the more TV you watch post-retirement, the shorter your lifespan tends to be. One study even found that just three hours a day in front of the screen doubles your risk of death over eight years.
So maybe the secret to a longer, happier life isn’t about freedom from work. It’s about finding the kind of work that sets other people free.
What happens when you start counting what really counts
About four weeks ago—somewhere in the hazy early days of new parenthood—I picked up a book I’d been meaning to read: The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. It sat next to our bed, within arm’s reach while the baby slept beside us. I thought it was a timely one. It was.
In one part, Bloom talks about the moment he realised how few times he might see his parents again. Not in terms of years, but in visits. If they lived another 20 or 30 years, and he only saw them once or twice a year—well, do the maths. The number was alarmingly small. Finite. A countdown, not a horizon.
That idea hasn’t left me.
Now, in the quiet moments—when I’m pacing the dining table with our baby in my arms, or watching his chest rise and fall in sleep—I find myself doing my own mental sums.
How many more Mother’s Days will my mum be here to receive flowers and eat pastries together?
How many anniversaries with my wife will we get to spend exploring a new culture together—wandering along coastlines, ordering food we can’t pronounce, and sharing that feeling of being exactly where we’re meant to be?
And maybe one day, how many more birthdays will I be part of for my son—before he’d rather spend it with his mates, with me in the background as chauffeu?
It’s not just family. I think about friends too. I’ve already lost people I love. Some didn’t make it to their twenties. Others, not to their thirties. The idea that we’ve all got unlimited time is… generous at best. Who might not make their forties?
Even the friends who are still here—how many times will we actually see each other again? Once a year? That means maybe five more catch-ups before life intervenes, or distance stretches too far, or… who knows?
And what about us? My wife and I talk about living abroad—giving our child new languages, new worlds. But if we go, what happens to everyone else’s numbers? The grandparents, the godparents, the friends who might now only see us in photos or fleeting visits. How does our decision to move shift their remaining moments with us?
It’s strange how something so simple—just thinking in terms of how many times instead of how many years—can change the entire texture of life.
It doesn’t make me anxious. It makes me intentional.
It reminds me to linger. To say yes more. To call back.
To book the trip. To send the text. To pay attention.
We all carry invisible countdowns. Most of them we’ll never see. But every once in a while, we get a glimpse. And when we do, we owe it to ourselves—and the people we love—to look straight at it and not turn away.
In a world that feels like it’s permanently spinning just a bit too fast, the smallest routines can feel like sacred acts.
I’m talking about the coffee you make for your partner each morning, half-asleep but still reaching for the coffee pods before they’ve opened their eyes. The pint with your dad in the same corner of the same pub, before kickoff. The walk with your colleague at lunch, tracing the same stretch of the Thames no matter the weather.
They’re not big. They’re not revolutionary. But they matter.
Because the world today is chaos dressed up as convenience. Everything’s available. Nothing’s grounded. Our attention is a currency we’re spending recklessly on things that do not give a single shit about us. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re lonely. The endless scroll won’t hold your hand when life cracks open.
And yet we let it in, constantly. Like moths to the light.
So these tiny rituals? They’re rebellion. They’re resistance. They’re deeply, quietly human.
If you rewind just a few decades—before the avalanche of content, before phones became appendages—life was defined by routine. You knew the rhythm. Friday: Top Of The Pops with fish and chips. Saturday: football. Sunday: roast then The Simpsons. Monday: EastEnders at 8PM. You weren’t just surviving. You were participating in a kind of secular liturgy with millions of Brits. You belonged to something, even if it was just a pattern. And that had weight. It had meaning.
Now? Everything’s a blur. Every app wants to be your new home. Every platform wants to colonise your time. And in all of that noise, it’s these small, self-defined moments of routine that whisper: you’re still here. You’re still a person.
I’m not writing this to help you. I’m writing this because I had to. I needed to say it out loud. Maybe because I’m trying to remind myself, too.
Forge your own rhythm. Mark out your own minutes in the day that no one can steal from you. They don’t have to be profound. They just have to be yours and you have to turn up for them.
I think about words a lot. Not just what we say, but how we say it, when we say it, and most importantly, why.
It’s something I come back to often when I’m writing anything meaningful – whether that’s an email, a WhatsApp message, a pitch… The act of writing gives us space. We can think, self-censor, edit. I can optimise every word until I’ve shaped what I believe is the best possible version of what I want to say. It’s incredibly intentional.
But speaking? That’s a different beast entirely.
When I speak, in real-time conversations or voice dictation, there’s barely enough space to think beyond the next few seconds. Maybe a little longer if I’m lucky – helped along by filler words or pauses – but it’s fast-thinking by nature. Reacting more than crafting, drawing on what I’ve said and heard before.
Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow lays this out perfectly: System 1 thinking is quick, instinctive, emotional. System 2 is slow, deliberate, logical. Most of my writing happens in System 2. But the most important conversations usually happen in System 1.
That contrast hit me recently during a negotiation that, if I’m honest, has been seven years in the making. It’s a partnership I could only have dreamed of when I first started the company. I’ve been incredibly patient – careful to build trust, maintain the relationship, and not push too hard. This company in question is synonymous with our industry. What they’ve done represents tens of millions of dollars in development and years of a head start that we simply couldn’t afford to replicate. But because of the strength of the relationship, we’re now on the brink of working together in a way that could fundamentally shift what’s possible for us.
Just over a year ago, an enormous Fortune 500 company pipped us to the post. I remember the call when our ally at this company phoned up and cautioned me that a press release was imminent. “That’s fine,” I choked. As is often the way with larger companies, a budget cycle later and their work in this space has been sidelined. Their partnership is on ice.
Once the dust had settled, I went again. After years I could feel the timing was indeed different. I was finally asked to lay out what we wanted. So I did – and I didn’t hold back. I wrote a full view of how we could win together, including one particular request: exclusivity. I knew it was a big ask, but from my side, it wasn’t about dominating – it was about reducing risk. Earning something defensible.
The CEO pushed back, as I half-expected. So I suggested we jump on a call.
Here’s where the difference between fast and slow thinking came into play. I didn’t go in with a line to hold. I didn’t say, “We need exclusivity or we walk.” I just talked honestly about the real concern. If we go all-in on integrating their technology and someone else comes in later with more leverage or volume, we’re toast. Our entire effort could be marginalised. And if that happens, we’re fucked.
You could feel the shift in the conversation. It clicked.
Suddenly, we weren’t debating the word “exclusivity” anymore. We were problem-solving together. Within minutes, they were offering ways to give us the protections we needed – effectively solving the same issue, but in a way that worked for both sides.
What struck me afterwards was how close we came to missing that breakthrough – all because of a word. If I’d stuck to slow-thinking, writing carefully worded emails, trying to make the case from a distance, we might have missed the moment entirely. But speaking honestly, and trusting the relationship, gave space for something better.
There’s a risk with slow thinking – you can over-optimise, over-edit, and lose the human part. Sometimes it’s better to stop hiding behind carefully crafted words and just get on a call, look someone in the eye (or at least the camera), and say what you mean.
Because at the end of the day, the words matter. But the why behind them matters even more.
Becoming somebody’s beginning is something that nothing in life can prepare you for.
I’m so aware of how unoriginal this experience is—billions of people have done it, are doing it—but it’s also the most personal thing I’ve ever lived through. That contradiction is wild. It’s ordinary, but it’s cosmic.
My wife and I were saying the other day how fast the first six weeks of our son’s life have gone. But at the same time, it feels like we’ve never really lived without him. Like he’s always been here, folded into the shape of who we were, slowly emerging.
People gave me all kinds of advice. Everyone has their version of what it’s going to be like. The most vivid one I remember is someone saying, “It’s like a grenade goes off in your bedroom.” Which… fair. But also: a bleak metaphor.
I prefer to think of it as an evolution. Kind of like a Pokémon.
You and your partner evolve almost overnight—from some final form of adulthood you thought you’d reached—into something new. Something nobody else can quite train you for. You become a person who a human being needs to survive. Not just survive, but to become whole.
If you don’t do right by them, they won’t thrive. They’ll be hungry, or cold, or feel alone in a world that’s supposed to feel warm and held.
So you do it all. Feed them. Clean them. Dress them. Entertain them. Read the instructions of the world and try to translate it into something soft and safe. You think about everything in their life—and somehow, you try not to get too caught up in the future.
You live in the moment, even when it’s two in the morning and you’ve forgotten what day it is.
It’s just such a beautifully complex situation for one of the most tried, tested, and ancient experiences in the history of humankind.
And still, it feels like something brand new. Because it’s ours.
Every time I walk into my local supermarket, which happens to be one of the largest in the UK, I am struck by a feeling that I’m stepping into a treasure vault of modern day miracles. Of course, most days I don’t consciously feel wealthy as I visit the shops for a milk top-up, baked treat or last-minute asparagus side dish. It all feels routine, often mundane. But now and then, I pause in the middle of a clinically lit aisle, surrounded by towering shelves of produce from all over the world, and I realise: this is what unimaginable wealth looks like.
Not wealth in the sense of bitcoins or Ferrari’s, but wealth as abundance – an incredible, historically unprecedented abundance that we’ve normalised in daily life. The supermarket, in its ordinary bustle, represents the greatest yet least appreciated form of wealth in modern society.
The largest Sainsbury’s supermarket in the UK is located in Stanway, near Colchester, Essex, and covers nearly 150,000 square feet.
Walking through those automatic doors, I’m greeted by fruits that my ancestors centuries ago might never have seen in their lifetime, let alone all at once. I stroll past crates of bread, dozens of different freshly baked loaves filling the air with a warm aroma. A few steps further, I see an entire wall of cereal boxes, a hundred varieties catering to every taste and diet. There’s aisles of beer, wines and spirits, which were previously reserved for royalty and upper classes. The store is climate-controlled, brightly lit by steady electric light. It’s such a normal errand that it’s easy to not marvel at it. But when I do think about it, the sheer ease and variety on display leaves me awe-struck.
The life we consider “normal” would be utterly astonishing to people living 150 ago. The contrast in how much effort it took in the past to obtain basic goods versus how easy it is now cannot be overstated. I often try to imagine what a time traveler from 1700 or 1800 would feel if I brought them to my supermarker. For most of human history, daily existence was defined by scarcity and toil. Keeping your family fed, clothed, and warm required constant work and careful planning. Food wasn’t something you’d expect to have in dozens of varieties year-round; it was something you grew or bartered for, stored for winter, and hoped wouldn’t run out before the next harvest.
A glimpse of a small grocery store from about a century ago. Even in 1920, stores had limited variety and goods often came in bulk, far from the selection we see in supermarkets today.
To really appreciate how far we’ve come, consider a few then-and-now comparisons that highlight this shift:
Food Variety and Availability: A couple of centuries ago, your diet was limited to what was locally grown or produced. A medieval serf or even a 18th-century farmer ate coarse bread, some root vegetables, maybe occasional meat, and that was about it. Exotic spices or fruits (like a pineapple or cinnamon) were literal treasures, rarer than gold, often reserved for royalty. Fast forward to today – even a budget supermarket has more variety than the grandest royal feast of old. I can buy strawberries in December, shipped from the opposite hemisphere. I can choose rice or pasta or quinoa; chicken or tofu or lentils; spices from India, coffee from Colombia, olive oil from Italy. The average supermarket carries tens of thousands of different items in one place.
Work and Time: Imagine being a peasant in the 1700s – you spend all year plowing, sowing, reaping, and still worry if the harvest will be enough. Perhaps you labor daily just to churn butter, bake bread, salt meats, and preserve what you can for winter. In contrast, I, or any modern person, can work a few hours at my job (whether a teacher, engineer, barista, anything) and with a fraction of a day’s wages fill a cart with a week’s worth of food. It might take me 30 minutes in the store versus months of backbreaking work for the peasant. That time and labor freedom is an incredible wealth we forget we have. I don’t have to grow my own wheat, grind my flour, or cure my meat – it’s all waiting for me neatly packaged. This convenience was unimaginable in the past.
Security and Abundance: In the past, if droughts hit, communities faced famine and possibly extinction. Food insecurity was a constant spectre. Today, thanks to global trade and robust supply chains, a bad harvest in one region is barely felt by consumers elsewhere. The supermarket’s shelves stay full through storms and droughts by drawing on a global network of producers. That peace of mind – not worrying that my family will go hungry because of one bad season – is an enormous form of wealth.
Thinking about these differences fills me with gratitude and frankly awe. We live in a time of bounty that earlier generations, even the richest of them, could hardly imagine. Author Benjamin Lorr aptly described the modern supermarket as “a miracle” that offers “a continuous, dreamlike bounty of products” seemingly without effort.
What makes this system even more fascinating is how invisible its complexity and wealth have become to us. We are so used to convenience that we only really notice when something is missing. The COVID-19 pandemic lives in recent memory. The global dance of trade, transportation, and market competition that fills the supermarket operates quietly in the background of our lives. Farmers in distant countries plant crops talking in languages and dialects we will never hear, factories churn out goods and far away lands, trucks and ships and trains move everything around the globe. All that so that, for a few quid, I can pick almost any ingredient or household item I want. It’s the result of centuries of innovation in agriculture, trade, and economics. In a subtle way, the principles of global trade and free-market enterprise have woven together this cornucopia – oranges from Spain meet salmon from Norway and rice from India, all in one place, because it makes economic sense to trade and stock whatever consumers desire. It’s fair to say that the freedom to trade and the incentives of a market system helped enable this breadth of choice.
Yet for all its magnificence, the supermarket is massively under-appreciated. We don’t typically gush about how lucky we are to have supermarkets – but maybe we should, at least once in a while. We reserve the word “wealth” for mansions or yachts, but real wealth is also having full fridges and cupboards and options to feed your family nutritiously, affordably, and with delight. Real wealth is living without the constant fear of want. By that measure, the average person in a developed country today is incredibly wealthy just by having access to a place like a supermarket. When I can choose between thirty different kinds of cheese, or pick up gigantic fresh blueberries in winter, I am enjoying the kind of abundance that emperors of old would envy.
This perspective has humbled me and made my routine shopping trips feel almost like walking through a museum of progress. I try to remind myself to be amazed. Instead of rushing through the chore, I’ll sometimes deliberately slow down and soak it in: the colours of produce from across the earth, the smells of baked goods and roasted coffee, the fact that all of this is here every day, waiting for us. It fills me with a quiet happiness and respect for the ingenuity and hard work – often by unseen hands – that makes this possible. I think about the farmers, the truck drivers, the store clerks stocking shelves at midnight, the engineers designing refrigeration systems, all contributing to this system that hands me wealth on a silver platter (or rather, a shopping trolley).
In the end, the supermarket is more than just a store – it’s a testament to human progress and cooperation. It stands as a cathedral of abundance where the everyday person can partake in a feast of choices. It represents security against hunger, freedom of choice, and the convenience of time that frees us to pursue other goals in life. This is profoundly positive, and yet we often only see it as ordinary. My goal is not to be sentimental or to gloss over problems (of course there are issues like waste or inequalities, and not everyone in the world has this access), but simply to appreciate the profound good fortune we do have in this system.
In a world so full of abundance, remembering to appreciate it is its own kind of wealth – a richness of perspective. And for me, all it takes is a trip to the supermarket to remind me just how astonishingly wealthy my ordinary life really is.
There’s something about islands that evokes a deep kind of wonder — and a deeper kind of resilience.
Malta’s not a country that shouts. It doesn’t have the scale or the swagger of Italy, or the gloss and glamour of the French Riviera. It’s small, sure — an unassuming dot on the map. But that dot’s been holding the line for centuries. Against weather, war, colonisers, corruption — whatever the century’s thrown at it.
In fact, Malta’s resilience once changed the course of history.
During the Second World War, this little island found itself again under siege — starving, battered, out of options. Operation Pedestal — a desperate, near-impossible convoy mission — was launched to get supplies through. Against all odds, one ship, the SS Ohio, limped into the Grand Harbour, practically held afloat by the ships on either side of her. Maltese people cheered, half in relief, half in disbelief. My grandfather, a 7 year-old boy, was one of them in that crowd. If the Ohio hadn’t made it, Malta might have fallen. And if Malta had fallen, everything else — North Africa, the Mediterranean campaign — could have unravelled.
If that ship hadn’t come in, I might not be here to write this.
There’s a particular kind of strength that comes from geography. Malta’s been in the middle of everything and has belonged to no one for very long. It’s been used, celebrated, bombed, sold off, built up, and left behind — sometimes all in the same decade. The land remembers all of it. You see it in the way the limestone wears its age. In the way the buildings refuse to be modern, even when they try.
It’s imperfect. But it’s not trying to be anything else. And that’s where the resilience sits. In the contradictions. In the fact that you can be standing in a UNESCO World Heritage site and still smell frying pastizzi and hear someone shouting over a football match from a window with laundry flapping in the breeze. That’s Malta. History and mess and pride, all jammed in together.
And when you look at the geography — a rock with barely any fresh water, blistering summers, and a location that’s made it both vital and vulnerable — you realise that the real miracle isn’t survival. It’s the way this place keeps shaping itself around the chaos, again and again.
Let’s go back 20 generations. That’s roughly 500 years – give or take – depending on how early people started having children in your family tree. We’re talking Tudors, plagues, revolutions, the whole lot.
You start with 2 parents. Then 4 grandparents. Then 8 great-grandparents. Then 16 great-great-grandparents. Then 32 great-great-great-grandparents. Then 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents. Then 128 great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. Then 256 great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. Then 512 great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents. Then 1,024 ancestors 10 generations back – roughly 300 years ago. Then 2,048 from 11 generations ago. Then 4,096 at 12 generations. 8,192 at 13. 16,384 at 14. 32,768 at 15. 65,536 at 16. 131,072 at 17. 262,144 at 18. 524,288 at 19. And finally… 1,048,576 ancestors, 20 generations back – around 500 years ago.
Over a million people. Just in that one generation. And if you add up all the ancestors from generation 1 to 20, the number’s even bigger – over two million in total.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple. People married cousins, villages were small, and sometimes family trees loop back on themselves. It’s called pedigree collapse (a weird name, but a real thing). Still, it’s wild to think that over a million separate lives might have shaped yours – genetically, culturally, geographically.
99.99% of them we’ll never even know the names of. But they’re all in there somewhere. Each one adding a line to the story that ended up with you.
It’s been over a decade since I last wrote something that wasn’t tied to work. Not a proposal, not a self-promotional post, not a carefully worded strategic email. Just putting thoughts into words—for no reason other than to figure out what I think. The kind of words that don’t need to justify themselves. That don’t have an end goal. That just feel worth getting out of your head.
Back in the earlier days of my career, I found blogging to be a kind of outlet. I had several websites, wrote the odd guest article, and used the space to stretch beyond 180 characters and try out new ideas—some half-formed, some attention seeking, some that still make sense now.
Over time, like a lot of things, that habit faded. Life and work moved forward. Writing became more instrumental. Everything became more “on-message.” And that’s fine—it’s part of the territory. But something gets lost when every sentence has to be justifiable and re-enforce your persona. The joy of simply reflecting—without needing to prove anything—quietly disappears.
And so here I am, starting again. Not for clicks. Not to build a “personal brand.” Just to reconnect with that slightly freer part of myself that used to enjoy writing for its own sake.
This time around, though, the context is different. I’m writing (or more accurately, dictating) this while doing laps slowly around our dining table. It’s late at night. My wife is in our bedroom, trying to bank a few hours of sleep. And I’m holding our newborn son in one arm while The Simpsons plays softly in the background—more for me than for him.
I am shattered. I am frayed. I am more present than ever. And yet I have the desire to express and store my ideas in the beautiful time capsule that is the internet. Perhaps eradicating hours a day of scrolling Twitter/X has freed up some mental capacity in me to create, alongside my newfound responsibilities.
Becoming a dad is a strange and enormous shift. My experience is obviously not unique—it’s happened billions of times throughout history. But it’s entirely personal to me. I wasn’t sure if we’d have children. I had, at one point, reached a kind of peace with the idea that maybe we wouldn’t. And now here he is. A whole new human being, half-asleep in my arms, changing everything.
I’m only just beginning to understand the outer edges of what that means. The shock of frustration I didn’t know I could feel. The deep infatuation that shows up in strange moments. The surreal exhaustion and beauty of it all. It’s early days, and I know I’ll look back at this from some future vantage point and see just how little I knew—but I want to capture this moment while I’m in it. Because it already feels fleeting—something that will be hard to hold onto and truly relive later.
And maybe that’s what this blog is for. Not to write about parenthood necessarily, or about work, or about anything in particular. But just to record the thoughts that pass through in this season of life. To make sense of the changes. The evolution. To leave some kind of breadcrumb trail I can return to later.
Some posts might be short. Some might go nowhere. Some might contradict others. But that’s part of it. I want this to be a space where I don’t have to think about what others think.
I still look back at old blog posts and cringe a little, but also smile. There’s something oddly satisfying about recognising the younger version of yourself and how you used to think. Maybe I’ll do the same with this one day—look back from my 50s and marvel at how raw and weird and lovely this season was.
For now, though, I’m just here. Writing again. Starting over. Holding a small boy who’s barely a month old, and re-learning how to put my thoughts into words—not for anyone else, but for me.
3D5G 