Blog posts

Rule of 3

Submitted by Jack Milner on September 10, 2025

Three things that have made a massive difference to my productivity, mental health, and overall effectiveness—so I thought I’d share them:

  1. I don’t need to keep checking my favourite news websites. A quick glance at the TV news is enough.

  2. Avoid social media. It’s designed to eat time.

  3. And Stoke City really don’t need me constantly checking how they’re doing.

I love the rule of 3 - breaking things down into threes. It’s not just a productivity hack, it’s also a comedy staple.

Impostor Syndrome: The Rude Motivational Coach

Submitted by Jack Milner on September 3, 2025

 

Meet Your Noisy Inner Critic

One of the biggest challenges in presenting is that little chap on your shoulder: Impostor Syndrome. Giving you constructive feedback like, “You’re rubbish, nobody’s listening, you’ve messed it up again. Oh God, you’re so boring, no one’s listening!” Meanwhile, you’re just trying to get through your slides without your laptop or your boss catching fire.

Why Serious People Are Ruining Everything

Submitted by Jack Milner on August 22, 2025

We all know them. The Serious People™.

They speak in that “business voice” – the one that makes everything sound like it was written by a legal bot with attitude. Sadly they’re convinced that anything less will make them look like a candidate for Love Island. They have to look uber professional and are under the impression this will make them look impressive. It doesn’t. It makes them forgettable. It makes them exhausting.

Why too much Seriousness Fails

The Rogue Monkey. Why We Should All Be Looking for One

Submitted by Jack Milner on July 22, 2025

 

Ever heard of the rogue monkey effect? No, it's not a new IPA or a yoga move. It’s actually something brilliant from the mind of performance psychologist and world class speaker, Jamil Qureshi (seriously, check him out https://www.jamilqureshi.com/— he’s worked with astronauts, Premier League footballers, and me writing this post, which is clearly the pinnacle of his career).

“You Can’t Say Anything These Days…”

Submitted by Jack Milner on July 5, 2025

I was running a workshop with some clients last week and, as often happens over lunch, the conversation turned to comedy. Someone asked if I'd worked with any famous comedian, and then someone tossed out the classic line: “Well, you can’t say anything nowadays, can you?”

We didn’t dig into it right then-we had a session to get back to-but I’ve been thinking about it since. Especially because Reginald D. Hunter, one of the most brilliant and fearless comics working today, is currently being dragged through the courts for doing, well… comedy.

Life Changing Moments (When I Was 13)

Submitted by Jack Milner on June 4, 2025

The image above is a scrap of writing from when I was 13. It’s part of a moment that changed my life.

Our English teacher at the time was Mr Self , a modest, hesitant, lovely man with a quiet passion for making a difference. One day, he shook things up in class by asking us to fill in a random series of prompts. We didn’t know it at the time, but they formed the opening of a story – an absurd paragraph with odd characters and surreal details.

Our task was to take that opening and turn it into a short story of 2 or 3 pages max.

Confidence is Overrated – Focus on Connection Instead

Submitted by Jack Milner on May 28, 2025

I was running a leadership workshop at Samsung when the topic of confidence came up. I tossed out, half-jokingly trying to layer on the irony, “Can you ever be too confident?” expecting a polite laugh and a knowing nod – as in probably not.