Radicles; rad articles
Here’s a curated list, split into Outdoors, and Career, Creativity & Lifestyle of some Radicles I’ve enjoyed recently. Hopefully one or more of them will fire you up and provide some value in terms of confidence / inspiration / entertainment.
“Stay rad – read a radicle.”
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Outdoory Goodness
Three friends from France team up and cycle around the world for three years, touching every continent. Amazing photos.
“I am a relatively introverted type of person, and I like my share of solitude in civilised life. With the team I sometimes felt suffocated. We had no private space, it was the team first, always. For instance, one issue was that the guys didn’t mind riding long hours in the dark when I would often feel tired and would have enjoyed our comfy tent earlier. But we listened to one another and soon learned to become flexible.”
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Phil Jones is an inspiring dude. Here’s a video by Team Sky about how Phil’s life was transformed by cycling.
“In 2012, Phil Jones sat down to watch the London 2012 opening ceremony. He was morbidly obese (at his peak he had been 27 stone) and had been told by his doctor that he was unlikely to live to his 50th birthday. But when he saw Sir Chris Hoy carrying the British flag around the stadium, everything changed.”
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- [By Fair Means – by Philip Baues, Olaf Obsommer & Jens Klatt, on Sidetracked]
Three pals team up (is there a theme emerging?) to cycle around the Alps, pulling kayaks behind them, and then paddling down epic rivers. The photos are incredible.
“The first time I think about giving up is at the Col de la Cayolle, in the French Maritime Alps. I am stuck in the snow, hip-deep – one hand trying to push myself out, the other clutching the rope with which I drag my kayak behind me like a pulka. My bike is strapped on top, and every few meters the whole setup begins to totter. But for now nothing is moving – largely because I’m immobile. As I sink again into the powder, I’ve just about had enough. I scream every four-letter word I know, and even create a few new ones.”
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Tom recently put together a bike for a tenner from parts he found at scrapyards and on recycling websites, and cycled from Lands End to Edinburgh for £0.25 / $0.42. No typo.
“You don’t have to ‘be a cyclist’, or model your trip on anyone else’s experience. And anyone who tries to tell you that there’s a blueprint or some kind of standard formula for wandering the world on a bicycle is a liar and a fraud.”
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Career, Creativity & Lifestyle
Elle experiences anxiety, resentment, and doubt so decides to trade in pride and security for authenticity.
“About 6 months ago, I decided to quit my very good job at Google to explore a different way to live life. I had a loose plan of how I wanted to spend my time, but the main reason I left was that I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t put it into words at the time, but something inside of me was telling me I shouldn’t continue down the career path I was on. I felt strongly that it wasn’t getting me closer to where I wanted to be, though that destination was largely unknown, and I had to get off that road. Each month I stayed, I grew more anxious and, in turn, resentful.”
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There are few bloggers who are as honest as James, or as willing to regularly spill their guts in a post. This one riffs about how and why we’ve stopped laughing, and why we should start again.
“A kid laughs on average 300 times a day. An adult laughs on average….five times a day. What the…!? How did we go from 300 to 5? What the hell happened to us? That’s why we start to panic during the day! Did we cross some bridge of crap and tears and now here we are: drones that wake up, go to work, backstab each other in office politics, watch Breaking Bad, and then go to sleep and Die? Every single day? Did someone slip a pill into the Starbucks coffee we drink every day? A no-laughing pill? Laughter is really hard as an adult. It has to be. Else, how did we go from 300 to 5! That’s a HUGE gap. There is no arguing that something really bad and scary and sad happened to us between childhood and adulthood. And laughing is so critical.”
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Sara has been working for Automattic for 4 years and has learnt a lot about how to make remote work, erm, work. (Here’s a Vague Direction video with Automattic’s founder). In the next few years we’re going to see a lot more companies start to accept remote working as a viable (and sensible) option. Here, Sara explains about how important routine and prioritising health is.
“Meetings in the business world are often mistaken for “getting work done.” I know people who have had full-days of meetings to provide status updates a simple email would have sufficed for, and tales even of a team sitting on the phone together watching a single person work so they would be assured the project would be done on time. I had a phone call meeting recently that took a combined half hour of the participants’ time to find a good time for the meeting, and then the call lasted less than 5 minutes. And yes, we could have done it by email.”
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Tony is a busy dude, and finds out what happens when he increases the amount of sleep he gets.
“Too many of us continue to live by the durable myth that one less hour of sleep gives us one more hour of productivity. In reality, each hour less of sleep not only leaves us feeling more fatigued, but also takes a pernicious toll on our cognitive capacity. The more consecutive hours we are awake and the fewer we sleep at night, the less alert, focused and efficient we become…”
