I build things.
I always have.
Code, businesses, websites, PCs — different materials, same instinct. Take the parts, understand how they fit, make something that works.
Systems before willpower.
Stoic philosophy is part of the operating system. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, Ryan Holiday’s Ego Is the Enemy and The Obstacle Is the Way — I return to them often. They’re not lifestyle reading; they’re a working framework for staying focused on what’s controllable and not flinching when the situation gets uncomfortable.
I build personal operating systems the same way I build commercial ones — capture, decide, act, review. Mental models from outside the industry travel further than experience alone: first principles, second-order effects, inversion. The PC builds are the same thing in miniature — specify, assemble, tune, iterate. Something either runs or it doesn’t.
Under pressure I get quieter, not louder. Boards, transformations, platform crises — the team doesn’t need me to perform the stress. They need the next clear decision. I operate consistently, and I don’t need managing.
A workspace, mid-build.
Warm natural light · clean, organised desk · books and something being made · energetic, not corporate
Open books, wide interests.
Bright and curious · open books, notebooks, colour · wide interests signalled visually · light warm tones
Curiosity across domains.
I read and listen widely. Ryan Holiday on Stoicism. Andrew Huberman on the biology of focus, sleep and discipline. The Diary of a CEO for how operators actually think. Roy Baumeister on willpower. Sci-fi when I want to think about systems and futures that don’t yet exist.
Coding is a hobby, not a credential. I build small tools and sites because I want to keep the muscle of making things from scratch — it keeps me honest in engineering conversations and grounded in what the work actually is.
First principles before precedent. The most useful question in any meeting is usually “what are we actually trying to achieve here?” — and I’ll ask it without apology. Most underperformance isn’t a tooling problem; it’s a thinking problem that hasn’t been named yet. The best commercial insights tend to arrive sideways, from outside the industry.
Off the clock.
Personal trainer three times a week. Hiking — long walks in the countryside, the kind that take a Saturday and leave the head clear. Yoga and meditation, regularly enough to matter; not the wellness-influencer version, the version that makes you a better thinker on Monday morning.
Cosplay and comics. I’ll build a costume, photograph it, and stand in front of a camera at a convention. It signals what it should — I make things, I’m comfortable being seen, and I don’t take myself too seriously.
PC builds for friends and family. Social — dinners, long conversations, the people side of the week. The non-work life feeds the work, and the discipline runs in both directions.
None of it is separate from the work. The same person shows up to all of it.