Michael Wade

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Sleep

What is the cheapest form of torture? Exactly.

o Sleep deprivation impairs cognitive function. o Chronic sleep loss increases the risk of serious health issues. o Even one night of poor sleep reduces focus, memory, and decision-making. o Sleep is essential maintenance. Your brain processes information, consolidates memories, and repairs itself. Skimp on sleep, and everything else suffers.

Most adults need 7-9 hours; if you need an alarm to wake up, you are sleep deprived.

How to improve the quality of your sleep. o Have a consistent schedule (same bedtime and wake time, even weekends) o Ensure the room is dark and cool o Consider no screens 30 minutes before bed o No caffeine after 2pm o Exercise, but not right before bed

Go sleep. Long and deep.

AI over the last six months.

It’s ‘the year of the agent’ where AI systems move beyond simple Q&A to autonomous task execution and multi-agent collaboration. This is my area of experimenting.

Several AI-discovered drug candidates are reaching mid-to-late-stage clinical trials in 2026, marking a shift from computational breakthroughs to tangible medical results. This is of course very exciting.

University of Florida researchers announced a photonic computing chip that performs AI computations using light instead of electricity, promising drastically lower energy consumption; this would be fabulous.

Companies are addressing generative AI’s value-réalisation problem, shifting from individual tools to enterprise-level implementation. This is where I believe the massive job losses will be.

The overall theme: AI is transitioning from experimental technology to production deployment, with infrastructure and practical implementation challenges becoming the primary focus.

How to Beat ChatGPT or How not to Lose your Job to AI.

The Tools of Excellence

Number 58: A Ball and a Wall

A ball and a wall-tennis ball, handball, any ball really-creates meditative, reflective, physically beneficial play that costs nothing and requires no partner.

Throw the ball at the wall. Catch. Repeat. That’s the activity. But within that simplicity lies a calming that can help you feel relaxed and centred.

It’s meditative: the rhythm-throw, bounce, catch-creates the same focused attention as a breathing meditation. Your mind quiets because it’s occupied with simple repetition, not because you’re forcing it quiet.

It’s reflective: the gentle physical activity frees your mind to wander productively. Problems resolve and ideas emerge. The rhythm allows background processing that sitting at your desk prevents.

It absorbs anger: a frustrating day? Throw the ball harder. The wall does not judge or argue back; it just returns what you give.

It’s terrific for mobility: hours of keyboarding create frozen shoulders and stiff backs. Throwing engages your entire body-rotation, reach, movement. It’s unconscious physiotherapy.

I love it and take regular breaks during the day just to play ball against a wall.

Keep a tennis ball in your desk drawer. Five minutes against any wall-office, home, outside-resets body and mind.

No partner is needed. No equipment beyond one ball.

No rules. Just throw, catch, think. And be.

The other 69 are here.

Old School, but it works. Like much ‘Old School’. The Agenda

Many meetings are madness; meetings without an agenda are chaos.

If you receive a meeting invitation without a goal and/or an agenda, here is a suggested reply: ‘Looking forward to it. Could you send the goal and agenda so I can prepare?’ Too often, we receive a calendar invite titled ‘Quick catch-up,’ ‘Touch base’, or ‘Sync,’ and we dutifully show up, not knowing what we are meant to discuss, decide, or achieve. Without that aim and agenda, it is not an effective use of your time, and thus, respectfully decline.

You, on the other hand, will behave differently: before any meeting you initiate, circulate a document that states: o the purpose: why are we meeting? o the desired outcome: what decision or clarity do we need by the end? o the items to cover: a small list of specific topics, with time distributed to each. o the pre-reading: anything people should review beforehand.

This takes five minutes to prepare (if it is not quick and easy to prepare then you are not ready to call a meeting!) and saves hours of meandering conversation. Be respectful of the recipients’ time, be clear, and succinct and prepare attachments with care.

Action: Only offer meetings with a goal and agenda. Only attend meetings with both. Respect the time of others; ask that others do the same of yours.

Once Upon a Time.

It was Friday evening, and we had gathered in the pub with the exhaustion that comes from spending a week trying to engage teenagers about things scientific such as the periodic table. I had not long graduated, and the plan was straightforward: a one-year transition programme from degree to chalkface. The course alternated between educational theory and increasingly long and intensive teaching practices; the Friday gathering had become our ritual debrief, where we shared tales of horror and, when fortune smiled, success.

That evening, one fellow student held her half-pint close with the stare of someone who had survived the week, but only just. She recounted how impossibly hard she was finding it, to hold her students' attention, how she felt she was pushing water uphill, how nothing seemed to land. But then her voice shifted. ‘I had one magical lesson though,’ she said, sitting up slightly. ‘I started telling them about when I was a researcher and we had a giant centrifuge in the lab.’ She explained that what had begun as a five-minute anecdote in her first class that morning-in order to fill the time before the bell-had evolved across the day. By her third set in the afternoon, the story had expanded to twenty minutes, embellished with details about the noise it made, the safety protocols, and what happened when someone forgot to balance the samples properly. The machine had transformed from a piece of laboratory equipment into a character, with personality, danger, and consequence.

She had become a storyteller.

TBC