Hi ,

I missed you last week! Well I guess not really, I literally just forgot to write and send the newsletter. Amateur hour, week after week, seems to be the main thing you can count on, along with a couple of news and fun or interesting links too - perhaps a photo of Paris.I hope you had a good week! Like most, mine went by in a flash. What did you get up to, anything exciting? Keep in touch with a reply, always happy to hear from you.I published a fun new podcast episode for Ice Cream for Everyone, which is either on video or audio. I had a fantastic conversation with Andy Nairn, the chief strategy officer and co-founder of Lucky Generals, an advertising agency. Andy is publishing a new book, Go Luck Yourself, about the role of luck in life and business. To pepper in some play, we organised to demonstrate simple creative tools, which we used to come up with new ideas for a fictional book launch event for Andy. It was great fun and really interesting too.New brilliant conversations on Teaching Tangents with James D'Souza, the question two weeks ago was:"Is it pointless to aim lower than 100%?"And last week was: "When playing games, it it better to win or to make people want to play with you again ? in that regard, do you consider life as a game ? (there are rules to follow, you try to do what you enjoy...)"I also just updated the audio feed, so you can listen to all those on Spotify or your favorite podcasting app.Already May! Of course it was the International Worker's Day / Labour Day yesterday. I walked by the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris, which is still occupied by artists (I believe I mentioned it before), and has been since early March if memory serves.Take care,Willem

 Weekly Combo Typically a mix of playful and strategy flavours. 

I've Cried on a few runs lately 

(Medium, 6 min read)

Heidi was in the middle of a rough patch at the time and going against the grain of only sharing the curated beautiful and positive life on social media, openly shares about her experience of failure after she had been fired from a prestigious job, had to fold her brand strategy consultancy, and family members had health issues. In the midst of the pandemic I believe we can regularly stand to hear we're not alone whenever we go through those rough times in life. It's inspiring, I wanted to share it with you.

(HEY by Jason Fried 6-7 min read)

They announced changes that are rocking a lot of perspectives, apparently disappointing a lot of people, and on top of that given the changes can be significant for some they offered generous severances to employees not interested in going in the new direction (apparently a lot of employees are taking the offer). The particularly controversial - though I find really interesting - point, is they say societal and political content and comments are no longer accepted within the working environment - in chat groups, projects, and message threads directly relating to actual work the company does, because in their view it has become too fraught and distracting. Employees are encouraged to pursue their societal and political interests or passions on their personal communications channels or wherever they choose, and no longer at work. Interesting take, and interesting that it's so controversial, worth checking out.