Middlefocus

Could not see at first Pictured where others pointed Lone tiger resting. - Ranthambore National Park, India 

Old church has been bought Now a different faith prays there. Same window, new light.

What a difference a year makes. There you go! It's been nearly a year since the last post and the intervening period has marked the end of the freelance role and launches a new chapter in which I'm constantly thinking of ways to repurpose this blog.  I've been  here before  of course with my old improvingwithage blogspot but this time the intention is to carry on with a new (middle) focus on things that catch the senior eye - old dog, new tricks comes to mind or maybe that old Yiddish expression - Too soon old, too late smart! Retirement has been gentle so far and has offered plenty of scope for reflection. Maybe some of that thinking and new/old insights will find their way into this blog, who knows? The past year has been a time of letting some things go, holding on to others and finding new things to seize upon. A friend once remarked that retirement is so good that he wished he'd done it when he left school!  Don't know about that but I can honestl...

If you are anything like me when you use social media apps like Facebook and Twitter then you know how time somehow slips by without you realising it.  On some social media, I manage different accounts within the same platform so the problem simply gets bigger. Rather than cut out social browsing and interaction completely I decided instead to take a different approach.  I grouped the various apps into a folder on my iPad and iPhone - I'm sure this is possible to do on Android devices as well.  This hides them to an extent which means that I have to go look for the folder among other groups.  I decided also, at least for the time being, to add the clock app in the folder as well.  That means that it is readily available for setting the timer to limit how long I want to spend browsing.  An advantage is that closing the Facebook app for example brings you back to the folder where others such as LinkedIn and Instagram can be readily accessed. Then when ...

You know that moment? You see something and straightaway it reminds you of something else. There I was in a little coffee shop when I spotted a clever and so simple means of showing what the day's food offerings were.  The menu was presented on a large roll of brown wrapping paper attached to one of the walls making it easily visible and yet well out of the way.  All that's needed each time the menu changes is for someone to tear off the previous choices; pull down a clean portion and add the new.    Clever and so simple. And that reminded me of a proponent of Simplicity - Dr Edward de Bono - who in 1998 provided us a book of the same name.  He gave us many other ways to think of course, including his ground-breaking Six Thinking Hats.  In a post some years back on decision-making I mentioned his PMI technique which you might like to come back to here . Why did it remind me of Dr de Bono? I had the great good fortune to be present at one of hi...