Category Archives: life

Why time booking isn’t just for grown-ups

November 26, 2009 – 11:27 am

According to the testimony of friends who work as lawyers, the worst part of the job (apart from putting paper into colour-coded files) is the hassle of accounting for every minute of every day. They do this so their practice can charge its outrageous fees to the right clients – it seems that anything not […]

By Jonathan Lister | Leave a Comment

A short jog with Eddie Izzard

September 16, 2009 – 3:08 pm

About 1:45 yesterday afternoon, Nick and I stood in the rain near Stratford station, waiting to see if Eddie Izzard would run round the corner, so we could join him for the last 10 miles of a marathon finishing in Trafalgar Square. A marathon is never something to be sniffed at, but in this case, […]

By Jonathan Lister | Comments (8)

Baselining my life (part 1, money)

September 10, 2009 – 5:28 pm

Introduction I began to seriously contemplate the idea of going freelance back in May, and realised I wasn’t very prepared. For one thing, I didn’t really know how much money I spent each month or what I spent it on. Nor did I have a good handle on how I spent my time. I wanted […]

By Jonathan Lister | Comments (11)

This is not an…

May 20, 2009 – 7:35 pm

Tomorrow is Osmosoft’s 2nd birthday. Today I’m handing in my resignation: this is it. In just over four weeks, I’ll be working for myself. In a recession? Yeah. I think it’s a fair assumption that I’ll take on some freelance work to pay the bills, but hey, everyone like’s to dream, so here’s the plan: I […]

By Jonathan Lister | Comments (11)

Motivation and common ground

April 24, 2009 – 2:26 pm

I’m interested in what makes a group of independent, smart people work on a project together; and what makes such a project fizzle out or take-off. Open source projects are of the type where people are generally not being coerced into contribution by the firm hand of hard cash; and yet, there are many thriving […]

By Jonathan Lister | Comments (1)

Work for perks

March 16, 2009 – 3:00 pm

I’ve been thinking about ways that people can get rewarded for doing small jobs that aren’t suitable for formal contract-based renumeration. There’s lots of reasons you might find yourself, as a creator of THINGS, in this situation: you’re hunkering down in a recession-proof job and have some spare time but it’s not appropriate to be […]

By Jonathan Lister | Comments (4)

mmm… stuffed piquillo peppers

November 22, 2008 – 3:16 pm

We had our OsmoXmas party at my flat on Thursday evening and I cooked a few things to keep the evil alcho-gremlins at bay (the Belgian beers confounded that). I think the most tasty thing was a plate of Italian piquillo peppers stuffed with a funky tuna and nutmeg mixture. They went down pretty well, […]

By jayfresh | Comments (2)

So this was weird

October 9, 2008 – 9:01 am

So I was in the pub last night, happily typing away, and a lady came to talk to me about stuff. For some reason that is lost to me now, she had me search for her on YouTube (Gina Joy if you’re interested) and was amazed when this little gem from the 80′s turned up: […]

By jayfresh | Comments (3)

Idiocy in Somerset

August 5, 2008 – 10:42 am

I don’t like stereotypes. Having said that, while I was in beautiful Wells, Somerset for a wedding this weekend, I happened upon some unusual incidents of carelessness, which may or may not be evidence of an over-consumption of scrumpy. 1. The most useless ‘In Use’ indicator in the world At what point could a prospective […]

By jayfresh | Comments (3)

Tim Ferriss comes to town

April 3, 2008 – 3:33 pm

Tim Ferriss, author of “4-Hour Work Week“, rocked up in the Trafalgar Square Pitcher & Piano last night, for 3 hours of meeting the fans and answering questions about his Lifestyle Engineering exploits. This was in aid of the launch, today, of the UK version of 4-Hour Work Week. Tim announced that he’ll be giving […]

By jayfresh | Comments (1)
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