TL;DR 11. How to Become a Great Cook (190 words)

To cook well, you need three things: tools, space and decent ingredients.

Tools. You need fewer than you think. And you don’t need gadgets if you are willing to use a bit of muscle to beat egg whites or take the time to learn a skill such as making pastry. A good, sharp cook’s knife, a large chopping board, a heavy frying pan, a large saucepan and a roasting tin will cover most meals. Buy quality once rather than cheap many times.

Space. Clear the worktop before you start. Get everything out, chopped and measured before the heat goes on. Chefs call it ‘mise en place’, and it is why real chefs stay calm; TV chefs are different. Clear as you go.

Food. Keep a store cupboard: olive oil, salt, pepper, tinned tomatoes, onions, garlic, pasta, rice, eggs, stock cubes. With those and your very best fresh ingredients, bought locally and in season, you can always have a wonderful meal.

Learn five dishes by heart. For those in the UK I suggest scrambled eggs, roast chicken, bolognese sauce, apple crumble and a proper custard. Then build from there.

I love to cook. It’s therapy. It’s a gift for those you prepare for. It saves money. It’s better for your health.

First action: Choose one of the five dishes and cook it three times this month.

TL;DR means ‘too long; didn’t read’. It began as a put-down and became a courtesy.

The phrase has two uses: a reader can reply ‘TL;DR’ to a long post, or a writer can place ‘TL;DR:’ at the top or bottom with a summary; the writer makes the cut for the reader.

I love it. I have always sought simplicity on the far side of complexity (Oliver Wendell Holmes).

Early in my career, and partly by accident, I cut a two-day training course to one day, and it became more effective. My boss was pleased, and I was astonished. I became hooked on the idea that less is often more. My pioneering Personal Excellence course, which ran worldwide, gave attendees a focused approach to turning their lives around in just two high-value days; it regularly amazed people with what we achieved through great structure, powerful exercises and, if I may say so, good teaching.

Ancestors Th expression TL;DR is young, but the impulse is old. The best-known ancestor is Blaise Pascal’s apology in his Provincial Letters (1657): he wrote that he made the letter longer than usual only because he didn’t have time to make it shorter; I remember an English teacher introducing us to that idea, and it was an epiphany.

The observation makes TL;DR interesting rather than lazy; it takes more work than length, and a good TL;DR shows the writer did that work. One of my books, How to Be Brilliant, was (deliberately) very short. An early Amazon critic complained, ‘£10 for that!’ Fortunately, all other reviewers understood that they were paying for the work of powerful brevity.

Other approaches include the scientific abstract, the newspaper’s inverted pyramid (the most important facts first, with details lower down), the executive summary and the telegram, where every word cost money.

The ancient world valued the same thing. The Spartans were so well known for short replies that the word laconic comes from Laconia, their home region. Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, sent the Spartans a threatening message: If I invade Laconia, you will be destroyed and never rise again. The Spartans replied: If.

TL;DR 10. How to Achieve Work-Life Balance (113 words)

Balance does not mean an equal split. Some weeks work will rightly take more: a launch or a deadline. The danger comes when the ‘crazy busy week’ becomes the norm.

Put the things that matter in the diary first, before work gets a look-in: the family supper, the Saturday walk. I do this a month in advance; work will take every hour you leave unguarded; it will take your soul!

End the working day deliberately. Close the laptop, put it out of sight, and don’t open it again until morning.

Take all your holiday, and take it properly, with email switched off.

Watch for the warning signs: snapping at the people you love or spending weekends recovering rather than living.

First action: Put one family or personal commitment in next week’s diary before you add any work appointment.