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ABB:Ed A Bit Better Every Day

A Bit Better Every Day

Field Notes

Field Notes. The bit you can take with you.

This is for the man who’s doing alright and would still like to be a bit better. I’m working out how to get better at the things that matter, and I write down what I find. Most times you get one thing to try tonight. Every time, there’s a question at the end.

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What it is

What turns up, and what to do with it.

An email from me about one thing I’m still working out, with the bit you can use left in.

They turn up every so often. Most are numbered. When one comes back from something I actually went and did, it goes out from the field instead, and it sits in the same list as the rest.

You’re meant to try the thing, not agree with it. What you write back is the half I can’t do on my own.

Named after a notebook that takes weather.

Field Notes is named after the small waterproof notebook, the one you take out into the field and actually use. That’s the bar.

Every one of them is meant to survive being folded into your back pocket on a wet Wednesday: practical, takeable, used. No gloss. No performance. Just a bit better, in writing, arriving where you are.

The writing

All of it, kept.

You don’t have to sign up to read these. Everything that has gone out is here, in full, going back to June 2026. Field Notes are written to keep, so the old ones still work.

  1. Issue 7 ·

    A direction, not a checklist

    Read as a test, Kipling’s “If” is crushing. Read another way, it’s the opposite.

  2. Issue 6 ·

    I just kept turning up

    One of my first jobs, and the question I wasn’t asking.

  3. Issue 5 ·

    Every book I own tells me to add

    Adding sets you a test. Taking something away doesn’t.

  4. Issue 4 ·

    Funny isn’t the soft one

    Funny feels like the soft one. It’s the hardest to do well and the easiest to underrate.

  5. Issue 3 ·

    Brave about the right things

    Courage is easy to admire and just as easy to point the wrong way.

  6. from the field ·

    Towards, and what I found I was carrying

    I set out running towards the views. When the beauty ran out, I found out what I was carrying the whole way.

  7. Issue 2 ·

    Four things, and why none of them works on its own

    Courageous, wise, kind, funny. Pull one out and watch it wobble.

  8. Issue 1 ·

    The first line

    The conversation in your head and the one in the room aren’t the same. Most of the gap is in one sentence.