THE BOONDOGGLE SHUFFLE

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Everything You Want Gets Harder With Approval

Published on February 2nd, 2012 by in Personal Musings

  Ever wondered what happens when someone says yes? Let’s face it, most of the time we’re all looking for approval. You’re looking for sign-off, funding, acceptance, whatever – the key is that someone above you in the chain of command has the power of yay or nay. Sure, it’s easy to complain against the establishment, the management, the rain. Complain all you like. It’s not your fault after all. It’s always someone else that’s holding you back, straining hard against your destiny. But what if someone actually says the word. Yes. That’s another ballpark altogether. What do you do

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The Power of Less (How to Make a Big Impact with Less Effort)

Published on January 23rd, 2012 by in Personal Musings

Modern culture isn’t designed to give us much downtime these days. Most fill this desire for relaxation with the simplest option possible. Yet as Seth Godin so succinctly puts it, “What the smartest and richest people in the world have done is switch off their televisions”. Yet for all of the additional demands on our time, by the same token, it’s become easier to find work than it has ever been in an information economy – whatever the official statistics tell you about the ‘average person’. In this age of instantaneous communication, the disproportionate successes of a few remain constantly visible,

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The Power of Acknowledgement

Published on January 14th, 2012 by in Personal Musings

Tonight, I’ve finally got round to ploughing through 2 of the 46 thank you cards following the birth of my son. Well, that is of course assuming that 30 minutes represents a genuine ‘plough’ – it seems kind of restricted to me. OK, so the big day itself occurred over two months ago. But tonight finally the pressure from not doing was sufficient to tip the scales and force me to take action to face the mounting guilt. As I started on the first of many, I found myself wondering – is it still important to send the cards? It’s

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Caution: Slow-Moving Brain

Published on January 13th, 2012 by in Personal Musings

  I’m currently struggling in the day job. I realise I’m not alone as we all face our own miniature battles daily in order to get paid regularly to feed our families and settle our debts. And yet the current issue that I’m grappling with is a particularly ticklish piece of work that’s taxing the limits of my small brain. It’s not the first time the expectations have exceeded my self-belief in my abilities. And, sadly, I can’t even claim that it’s an unfamiliar feeling. I’m sure you’ve had a similar feeling – you know the one. Your instructions are

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Review: A Prayer For Owen Meany – John Irving

Published on January 3rd, 2012 by in Book Review

I don’t intend to post many reviews as such on this blog. Whilst I find a strong recommendation as convincing as the next guy – indeed, isn’t that the whole value of social media in its most basic form – it’s hard to  escape from the fact that any endorsement inevitably relies upon how closely my tastes coincide with yours or how open-minded you are to investing hours of your time on the promise of some form of future payback. But… If you haven’t yet read “A Prayer For Owen Meany” by John Irving (1989), I demand that you hunt

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Be-not-fuddled 2011

Published on December 30th, 2011 by in Uncategorized

  As previously mentioned, here at the sharp end of 2011, I start to think about the year that’s passed. And the conclusion? It’s been a big year. Whilst I may still physically be in the same location, the scenery looks kind of different from where I’m standing. In no particular order of importance, 2011 saw me: write my first novel, slip three stones of weight (THREE STONES?!) that I didn’t think I needed to lose (thanks Tim Ferris), have a second child…. oh, and I ended the year in the same job. In the present climate, avoiding the boot still ranks as

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How much is enough?

Published on December 27th, 2011 by in Uncategorized

As the end of December looms large on the horizon, you’re not alone in starting to think about your goals for the year ahead. Some might say that spending little more than a couple of days determining how to live the next 365 underestimates the task at hand somewhat. But not me. Full marks if you’re even making the effort. And if you end up actually achieving any of those goals, you can tell them that the Shuffler sent you to claim your bonus points. But even if the real value of this process lies in forcing yourself to focus

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The Age of Experience

Published on December 26th, 2011 by in Uncategorized

Have you ever heard critics mithering on about actors being either too old or too young for a part? I’m thinking mainly of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and King Lear – according to popular opinion, roles best suited for guys in their early 20′s and 60′s respectively. “He just doesn’t have the necessary life experience to play it realistically”, you’ll hear critics opine. In that way that only critics can. Lest we forget, these are individuals who make their living by pointing out just how they believe that those with the balls to stick their heads above the parapet somehow fail to

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Trumpington’s Guard

Published on December 22nd, 2011 by in Uncategorized

  The BBC News website ran a great story yesterday about an 89-year old member of the House of Lords in London, the impressively named Baroness Trumpington. Taking offence at a statement that she was perhaps more mature than she believed herself to be, she spontaneously attempted to convince those present otherwise by sticking two fingers up at a colleague in full view of the chamber. Suddenly realising that she was in a public forum, not the schoolyard, and followed it up with a somewhat feeble attempt to disguise the motion as a ‘slip of the hand’. Check out the

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The Power of the Curator

Published on December 21st, 2011 by in Uncategorized

I’ve just read a fantastic article by the constantly interesting Maria Popova, the, er, brains, behind the excellent Brainpickings website. It makes a couple of key points which I’d like to share with my fellow shufflers here. In ‘Accessibility vs. access: How the rhetoric of “rare” is changing in the age of information abundance’, Maria points out that it’s never been so easy as it is today to access information. In a world dominated by Google’s mission to catalogue every available piece of information, the chance that any one individual will remain the exclusive owner of any particular piece of information

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