1/ Some initial thoughts on personal moats:

Like company moats, your personal moat should be a competitive advantage that is not only durable—it should also compound over time.

Characteristics of a personal moat below:

❤✈️🌎 2 years ago today @JamesIvings and I sold all our belongings and left the UK to travel for a year. We've never been happier and we have no plans to ever return there 🙂

Thread 👇

Since then we've started a remote web dev company @SquarecatWebDev and been lucky enough to have completed several freelance projects 💻 that have kept us on the road.

In the last few months we've become a huge part of this amazing new Maker community and have found so many new friends from @makerskitchen, @women_make_ and several others! 🥰

We love travelling together (even if I'm only a glorified laptop watcher 😒) but we're both much happier being able to share our ideas outside of our own little bubble and our products have benefitted too!

Here's to another year of nomading with my favourite person and to the Maker community continuing to grow with our help! Maybe one day we'll all get to meet each other ✌️ 💛

Imagine going about your life, when a virus develops into a pandemic. Suddenly the rulers of your country are like "We're going to let the virus infect us, don't listen to the outside world".

Most people in your country are like "Awesome!", and ridicule you if trying to opt out

You hear about all these stuff like chronic health issues the virus causes, in different research papers available on the internet. It appears to be a serious problem, likely to ruin many lives. You do however never hear it mentioned in the debate in your country.

On the news you hear people with fancy titles, downplaying the virus, and ridiculing other countries for trying to stop it.

The resistance is futile, they say. We are all going to get infected in the end anyways.

You see the schools in other countries closing down, but in your own country they remain open. Parents are not allowed to keep their children at home. If they do, they are punished by the government, shunned as bad parents by those who think the herd immunity strategy is awesome.

You later find out that the people leading the response to the pandemic, reasons around how it is beneficial to keep schools open in e-mails with each other. They reflect on the benefits of open schools, for children getting infected, thus contributing to the herd immunity.

"I grew up in Finland.

a) it rains all year round.

b) we have a lengthy and cold winter.

c) Finland is a sparsely populated country with just over 5mil ppl, with land size ~3/4 of CA and most of it forests and lakes.

d) no friggin body is raking the forests." @mallahadley

. . .

Trump's "assertion that California’s forest management policies are to blame for catastrophic wildfire is dangerously wrong."

Trump's message attacking California is "ill-informed, ill-timed and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines."

"Wildfires are sparked & spread not only in forested areas but in populated areas and open fields fueled by parched vegetation, high winds, low humidity and geography. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of California forests are under federal management ...

I'm just back for a COMPLETELY NECESSARY trip to a supermarket.

And... something dramatic happened.

So, okay, looks like we're going to have a little bit of a THREAD.

Buckle up for an unbelievable anecdote that gets to the heart of London life in this nightmarish pandemic.

(I won't name the supermarket, NOT because I don't want to shame the members of staff [I will be doing that privately by reporting their actions to the police later today - as soon as I've finished tweeting this thread], but because I don't want to give them free advertising.)

Okay, right. I'm still shaking so I'm struggling to write this out. I've opened a bottle of Campo Viejo Rioja (an underrated affordable offering which is currently on special offer at Tesco) to steady my nerves. No shame in that.

So. Yes. I was walking down the dairy aisle...

I saw a northerner.

(apologies for the delay, I'm on the phone to an upset friend - her husband of 15 years has just confessed to an affair with her own sister. It's not really the sort of situation where you can say, "Excuse me Julie, awfully sorry but I'm writing an incredible thread on twitter!")

//Thread of wisdom//

The modern mind is overstimulated and the modern body is under stimulated and overfed. Meditation, exercise, and fasting restore an ancient balance.

~ @naval

Retweet to add another.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

~ Galileo Galilei

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

~ Richard Feynman

Your best work involves timing. If someone wrote the best hip hop song of all time in the Middle Ages, he had bad timing.

~ @ScottAdamsSays

When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everyone will respect you.

~ Lao Tzu