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Month: October 2009

Anything, but please, not the bludgeon of a huge ‘to do’ list

Published October 8, 2009 by Jo Jordan

It’s October. In January, I found myself with far too much to do.

I tried all the tricks of the trade. I decluttered. I prioritized. I still had too much to do.

At last, I quietened my panic by drawing each goal as a spoke, coming in to a central hub. I marked off months and quarters. And wrote down some milestones.

Bicycle spokes for planning

Inevitably (and it is inevitable), I made heaps of progress. I am sure that resolving my panic was important, if only because I could do something useful with the time that I would otherwise spend panicking!

I am still busy. Horribly busy. Work is cutting in to my sleep as well. So, I am motivated to give my planning system a thorough overhaul.

Umbrella goal

Fortunately, I am much clearer now about what I want to do. I’ve managed to phrase a super-ordinate goal and the many goals that gave me such grief in January, all contribute in their own way. When I make a decision on one project, I’m able to check in my mind how work on that project fits in with the overall goal and all the other projects.

There is a lesson in this, I think.  Don’t discard your competing goals.  Live with the strain until you can see why you are attracted to apparently conflicting projects.

Eventually the bicycle wheel takes shape as an umbrella!

From wish to intent to action

Now I am more focused, my attention has shifted from goals – to critical mass & priorities.

I could list everything I have to do.  I could even put everything on a spreadsheet.  But I think I would throw up.  There is too much to do and seeing it in one place won’t help.

That kind of planning is better when there are lots of steps that are critical, and when they must be done in a specific, and known, order. That will come later.

Impact vs ease

I had a brain storm last night. I remembered a technique which I learned from Zivai Mushayandebvu in Botswana.

Sort tasks into four piles (2×2):

  • What will make a huge impact and is relatively easy to do.
  • What will make a huge impact but is hard to do.
  • What will make a small impact and is easy to do.
  • What will make a small impact and is hard to do.

The first, we do.

The second, we see if we can buy in.

The third, we might get do as filler tasks.

The fourth, we discard.

Keeping it simple, cheap, disposable (and green)

This whole project can be done on the back of old envelopes and a set of shoe boxes. My guess is that the priorities to develop critical mass are going to emerge quite fast.

I am going to try it. Anything rather than the bludgeon of a huge ‘to do’ list.

UPDATE: In another phase of overload, I think I shall rate my tasks like this again!

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Help the caterpillar of your professional profile metamorphize into a butterfly

Published October 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

From something to nothing

I came to the UK two years’ ago. Before coming here, I had taught in two good Commonwealth Universities. I published articles in journals. And as a work & organizational psychologist, I had consulted to household-name multi-nationals.

I worked on major projects that many psychologists would give their right-arm for.  I led the post-graduate training of occupational psychologists in one country for over a decade.  I represented us at international forums and negotiated inter-country agreements.   I taught on an MBA ,and I taught a huge class of first year class of 850 students.  An experience, indeed!

But when I came to the UK, only a few people knew me.   I had little name-recognition.  Without an university affiiliation, Google no longer recognized my name, and no longer put me at the top of its page.

In short, without institutional affiliation I went from being central and prominent to invisible. Overnight, other psychologists didn’t see me. Clients didn’t know me. Google didn’t tip its hat when I typed my own name.

Back from nothing to something

Over the last two years, I’ve rebuilt my profile. I’ve become known, well-known, in foreign land.  When I type my name into search, Google returns my Linkedin profile and my blog.  At the top, of the first page.

  • Yay! Google no longer minds that I don’t work at a University.
  • Yay! I rank higher than Jo Jordan, the power weight lifter (sorry Jo, but Google rankings are competitive).
  • Yay! I rank higher than all the other Jo Jordan’s out there – psychologists, academics and management consultants. And believe me there are a lot of us with this very common name.

How did I do this? How did I go from nothing to something in two years?

Believe me getting recognition in a place as big and crowded as the UK is hard.  I can put the names of leading British psychologists into Google and struggle to find them.

Where are they? Page 56? Page 87? Academics come up because Google privileges University urls – did you know that? Many people don’t. Until they leave the university sector and they drop off the internet as it they have never existed at all.

This is how I re-built a solid online profile. I used social media.

Social media is the two-way, readwrite web. Most of us know Facebook and Twitter. These are the two best known ‘social networks’, or ‘platforms’ in the UK

Some people dismiss these platforms as trivial socializing. Trivial socializing, if socializing is trivial, does happen on these networks. But that is not why they are important for managing our careers. Nor are they the whole story. Not by a long shot.

The two-way web is a place where we can relate directly to each other, without going through a third party.  And it is an opportunity to use virtual space to expand our world, just as the penny post and the telephone did when they were first invented.

‘Social’ means the opportunity to interact. This is the central idea.   The opportunity to interact.  can talk to you and you can talk back.   When you talk to me, I can reply.

We meet people fast on the two-way web.  As psychologists we know that when we meet people. we get feedback.  And when we get feedback, we develop really fast. We develop our thinking quickly. We develop our relationships quickly.

And then our professional practice begins to take shape around what is ‘good and true, better and possible’. It takes shape in ways we would never have dreamed possible, and at speeds we would never hope for in our wildest dreams.

5 common social media tools help us build our professional profile

In the two years that I have been settling successfully in the UK, social media has developed with dazzling speed. Some of the platforms and techniques I used 2 years ago are outmoded now, and some of the techniques I use now were not popular 2 years ago.

These are the 5 that I recommend that you use at October 2009. I’ll keep it brief to get you started and hold the nuances for other posts.

1 Keep your CV uptodate on Linkedin and the European equivalent Xing

You’ll get established quite well using the free version of Linkedin . By all means, connect with me, Jo Jordan, to get started.

2 Blog under your own name

Set up a blog and start writing.  WordPress, Blogspot, Posterous, and Tumblr are all free.

Remember, though, you are writing to be heard.  Don’t say anything silly.  Do write about professional matters that interest you.

Also set up your About page. There is no point in being anonymous when you are developing a profile. When your blog is set up, let me know and I’ll be your first reader.

Don’t agonize. Pick one of the four services and begin. The marvel of these services is that it is easy to change things.

3 Read and comment on other people’s blogs

To find good blogs, set up a Google Alert using keywords that interest you. Then make a folder for these Alerts in your email. There will be a lot of Alerts.

Everyday, scan the headlines and visit the blogs that interest you.

And now for the social media component: leave useful, helpful comments.

When you comment, you leave your full name, your email address (that won’t be shown) and your blog name Far from being alarmed, be happy. You email address protects the blog owner. You benefit in 4 ways:

  • By writing down your comment, your clarify your own thinking.
  • You make a friend of the blogger who likes to get replies.
  • Anyone who visits that blog and thinks your comment interesting will click on your name and visit your blog.
  • Google notices the link between your blogs and puts a tick against both. Google likes sociable people!  The more ticks you have, the higher up you come when someone puts a relevant keyword into Google Search.  Get found by getting sociable!

4 Organize your feeds

In the last step, you set up Google Alerts and found interesting blogs. Now you have found other people in your field, you want to visit them often.

To save yourself time, you subscribe to their RSS feed and receive a message everytime those blogs update.

Fortunately these don’t go to email – or don’t need to. You store all your feeds in a feed aggregator. Most people use the Google feed reader. I use Pageflakes. It has become a little unstable since it was bought out but it has a great advantage from my point of view.

I organize my feeds as ‘flakes’ into ‘pages’. Each flake has the headlines of 5 to 20 of the latest posts from the blog (my choice). I have a page for Morning, another for UK, another for Further, another for Evening, another for Sunday. You can see where I am going with this: attention management. I don’t want interesting articles to catch my eye when I have more mundane work to do on my desk!

5 Yahoo Upcoming and Meetup

And finally, for the biggie. Sign up to Yahoo Upcoming, put in you postal code, and sign up to events that seem worthwhile. You can RSVP positively, or “watch”.

Go back regularly and always check whether any event that you are going to anyway has been posted here.

Why?

Because you see who else is going. And that is not all. You can check what else they are going to.

No, you are not going to stalk them. But when you find someone whose does interesting work, you see what other events they go to.  That is how you find your way around cluttered, crowded UK!

This is how you find out where the interesting work gets done. This is how you find out where business gets done.

The mainstream media covers the big events – the anonymous events, the too-big-to-meet-anyone fairs. We use the self-connecting character of 2.0 to find our niche.

You can also sign up to another service, Meetup. I find Meetup organizers spam a little. Tolerate some junk mail to get started. Then cut them off. Once you are moving in productive interesting circles, you will work ‘on spec’ less but you;ll still come back here to relook at your horizons from time to time.

And now to the social networks: Facebook and Twitter

You’ll haved notice that I haven’t mentioned Facebook and Twitter. They are important too because they are the most popular networks in UK. Join up!

Try to choose names that are short, memorable and easy to spell. On Twitter, do NOT protect your updates. And join in! If you follow me @jobucks, I’ll introduce you to get you started.

On Facebook, connect with all your relatives and friends. DO protect yourself there. Or rather, protect your relatives because anyone coming to you sees a lot about you relatives as well.  Later, we’ll tell you how to set up a Facebook ‘page’ for your professional practice. Begin now by meeting your friends and relatives there.

The 7 basics of professional networking in virtual space

So those are 7 things to get you started.

1. Your resume/CV on Linkedin and Xing

2. A blog

3. Comments

4. Feeds

5. Yahoo Upcoming and Meetup

6. Twitter

7. Facebook for your personal network.

Meet you in virtual space – and watch your professional practice metamorphize from caterpillar to butterfly

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Psychologist in the wilds of social media – pleeease edit my elevator speech!

Published October 7, 2009 by Jo Jordan

How many times are you bored silly by someone’s elevator speech?

Sometimes I find myself furtively looking past someone’s left ear, scanning the room desperately to find a way to escape from this person who simply cannot tell me in a few words what they do and what they want from me?  Just like this sentence – wordy!

Oooh, and how often do I bore other people?

I try to work hard at listening.  I find myself cross-examining other people to find out what they do. Then I rephrase what they say they do to make sure “I get it”. I even introduce them to other people using my summary to save time.  I find it quite easy to summarize someone else’s elevator speech – though they don’t always thank me for it.

I sweat to edit my own though. I wish some one would do it for me. And that person is YOU!

My elevator speech

I’ve given this a lot of thought.

I want to give people some idea of where I am from, and because I have a fair bit of business experience, I want to convey that too but without wasting time, or being overbearing.

Then, I want to find out from them what they do so I can figure out what we can do together. Of course, if they aren’t really sure what they do, then they’ll depend on my framework to guide their response.

I also need to be ready to provide details, explain where I live and tell people where I am from. (Locals will be curious about my accent.)

Here goes.

My name is Jo. I’m a work psychologist. I find the smallest way you, or I, or [the business who is our host] can use social media to achieve our biggest dream.

  • We use the self-connecting features of social media networks to get opportunity to find us.
  • We show you how to do it. Simply.
  • And we stick with you as you try it out.

In a year, if you have the guts, you’ll have a viable business doing what you love.

(Or for an established business: If you get started in small ways today, in a year, the world of Facebook and Twitter will be making money for you.)

How do we work?

We come to you – where you live your life – in cafes, on trains, on line.

We charge a fee to match the task and what you can afford.

Or we work out a joint venture.

Whichever, we only work on big dreams that have little steps that we can take today.  We want short punchy projects that show results, or get dropped and we try again.

My company?

Is Rooi – one word – Rooi – red. The colour of our future together.

My town

Olney, north Bucks. Where you are coming to do you Christmas Shopping. British Art.  50 miles from London on the M1. J14 East.  The opposite way from Milton Keynes. Great to stop off on a long journey.  Great to see the best of Britain and 24 places to eat beginning with a great New York deli!!

Where am I from?

My accent?  Zimbabwe where I learned to organize profitable businesses and the New Zealand where I learned to play a little.

Over to you

  • Do you know what I do?
  • Where am I being long-winded or vague?
  • Is it clear where we can have an interesting conversation?
  • Can you see how some aspect of your business or life would get a lift by working with me?
  • Would you want to take the conversation further?

All comments appreciated.  Not only by me, but by the next person I bump into on the rounds of business networks!

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Yay! The greatest green app of all time!

Published October 6, 2009 by Jo Jordan

This is the greatest application of all time.  It rests on a basic idea that you can have my attention, you can use my telephone line, but you will pay me for the privilege!

Making junk callers pay for their calls

1.  When you telephone me, your caller ID is matched with several ads and you are redirected in the first instance to your competition, whereupon you hear an ad, and I get 25p!

2.  If your caller ID matches anyone on my list, then the call comes straight through.

3. If your have a promotional code that you add to the end of my number, the call comes straight through.

All calls are tracked.  So I can find out quite easily who is giving my special number away.

The sister app works for email

1.  When your junk mail arrives, I press one button and a message is sent back to the server who work out the sender and send one email back to them for every email they sent out.  And I get 25p!  Someone who blasts out 1000 unwanted mails is going to get 1000 back!

2.  The email that is returned reflects their competition.  For example:  when emails arrive from a scammer in Bakino Faso, they are sent scrumptious ads of something in Bakino Faso (what is scrumptious in BF?). Or a message from Interpol!  When Virgin Media sends me an email full of pictures, we send back an email about the thing they are obviously short of – social media specialists!  And so on.  Anyway, the app does that.  I get 25 p.

The cousin app works for junk mail

The cousin app works similarly but takes more work from me.  Instead of sending my junk mail to landfill, I strip off my name for security and put it back in an envelope and return to to the sender – in their envelope.  They pay the postage.

The app makes it money by collecting the returned junk mail from the big senders and recycling it properly.  They work out the cost details with the junk pushers.

I told you life is getting better!

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Education level that was good for the top 3% is now necessary for all but the bottom 3%

Published October 6, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. — Soren Kierkegaard

Good to remember!

Though most people are better living forwards that understanding backwards

In industrial psychology, we distinguish between “tracking” and “diagnosis”.

Take a pilot landing a large plane, for example. They assimilate a lot of information, that changes before they have time to put it into words, and bring the plane down, hopefully, to a gentle landing at high speed.

When, God forbid that something goes wrong, highly trained investigators will come in to work out what happened. The investigators aren’t likely to be pilots and the investigators probably don’t land fully laden passenger jets.

We have specially trained people to think backwards

In factories, we make the same distinction. We have hands-on people who keep complex, continuous flow plants going, safely.  It’s as demanding as landing a plane.

Yet, the day the process breaks down, we call the process engineers. They work out what went wrong and bring science to bear to figure out what the factory managers can do to get the plant going again.

The two people groups aren’t interchangeable. Simply, the managers think forwards. The engineers think backwards.

Usually the engineers are more highly educated. They often earn more.

But they aren’t “line”. And the “line” thinks they are egg-heads because they can’t do the “real thing”.

So it is funny that we have to be reminded not to think backwards. Most of us don’t. Most of us can’t. We need experts for that.

In the future, we might have to do thinking forward as well as thinking backwards

What has been puzzling me recently, or truthfully what is in my in-basket marked “puzzles”, is how the “design-thinking” approach to management will change this divide.

Take Toyota, for example. Every worker on the assembly line is capable of doing quite sophisticated experiments.  They use statistics equivalent to Honours in any subject except statistics itself.   The two types of work seem to be merging.

The idea of ‘failing informatively’ will also change what professions like engineering and psychology learn and contribute in the work place. We will not only be required to diagnose what went wrong. We will be required to play a more hands-on role in moving things forward.

This is the age of statistics

The attitude of Google to data makes simple A B experiments a day-to-day job rather than the job of an expensive graduate. The burgeoning use of good visuals makes statistics a discipline of communication.

I sense there is more to this change than I am saying here. What is clear though, is that the education levels that used to be regarded as the preserve of the top 3% of the population are now necessary for all but the bottom 3%.  Necessary. Not optional.

How can every child learn statistics?

So what are we going to do about illiteracy in Western countries?   It amazes me that people who cannot read books play computer games quite well.

So I doubt this is a real problem. We need to get kids into factories where they see statistics being used

And then they can teach us!

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Do you live restlessly in the shadow of adrenaline-inducing goals?

Published October 5, 2009 by Jo Jordan

This is what I did not know in my 20’s. That I would come to dislike the adrenaline-rush that made me feel so good.

In our twenties, we feel competent

We have smashing time. Suddenly we have a little money. We set ourselves up independently.  We take on responsibility at work.  We feel omnipotent.

We are in, a way. We have more energy than our jobs demand. And we throw ourselves into everything with gusto.

Until one day,

.   .  .  the story changes. We burn out.  We wake up in the morning so tired that the only thing to do is to sit quietly in the sun, if we can find it. We are too tired to read.   We are too wearied to put up with the banality on the TV.

From that day forward, we are wiser, if sadder

We resist the adrenaline-rush.  We put off being totally involved in anything because we know the withdrawal is not worth the excitement and the buzz.

We also become skeptical about what is accomplished while we are ‘high’.  We come to agree with poet, David Whyte. We are not nice people when when we are moving so fast that we trample over people who are moving slowly.

But we are also restless

When we are undecided, when we are still on the plains of ‘wish‘ and are still to cross the famed Rubicon river to the land of ‘intent‘, we feel restless and doubt we are achieving anything at all.

But does our restlessness have good cause?

I am not sure if anything gets done or nothing gets done when we resist the urge to become charged-up and driven. To my knowledge, no one has every compared our output in the two states.

Goal setting research has shown a more limited result. When our attention is focused solely on one goal, the goal is achieved.  Hardly surprising, is it?

We should be worried about more

The bigger question is what happens to other goals when we are focused on only one of the many things that are important to us.  What happens to everything else – including our health and the health of people around us?

In our thirties, we begin to get an inkling .   .  .

.  .  .  that we should pick our adrenaline-rush carefully.

How old do we have to be before we learn to balance our lives?

Do we ever learn the art of achieving balance?

Is it true that we achieve less when are lives are balanced?  Or is just that we feel cold in the shadow of a helter-skelter adrenaline-fueled chase of a goal?

Who is able to resist starting towards an overarching goal that destroys all else?  Who is able to go further and to dismiss such goals altogether and stop them casting a shadow over a life where all our different parts have equal call?

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Mana: between ourselves and others

Published October 5, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Introverts often enjoy solitary activities lik...
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In the west, we think about ourselves as individuals

We think of “individuals” as something real. Let me explain, what I mean.

You probably think of yourself as having a personality. You are introverted, or extroverted, for example.

And because that is “you”, you are always introverted or extroverted, wherever you are, and whomever you are with.  What’s more, because you are always the same, we can “measure” you, or your personality, with a test. And of course, psychologists do.

In other cultures, “individual” is not so central to thinking

It is quite hard to grasp, and quite hard to get our heads around the idea that people are not separate from their circumstances.

Where I grew up for example, people are described by their relationships to other people: mother of Jack, daughter of Sam, for example.  This not fuzzy thinking. It is very advanced thinking that we find hard.

People are not focusing on the person and the things around the person

They look at the space between the person and the things. Or, the space between one person and another.

Theory, philosophy, cultures, manners, all describe that space.

If you visit New Zealand, you will hear everyone, Maori and Pakeha, talking about Mana

Loosely, mana is a combination of status and respect.

Explained using our concepts, this is confusing. Mana comes partly from our character – who we are as an individual.  Mana also comes partly from our position, as a teacher, say.

Using our thinking, this seems untidy and undeveloped.

But mana, like concepts in other cultures, describes the space between people. When we we look at this space, mana makes perfect sense.

3 poetic phrases to explain mana for your new week

As a gift for the week, I thought I would share 3 phrases that I keep on my desk.   These quotations are from poets & scholars in the West who write about our need to look at the space between ourselves and others.

“put yourself inside the river”

“everything is waiting for you”

“strength is in contact with the environment”

Have a winning week!

And remember to look after your mana – the space between you and others.

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I want a British TED – and a parallel show for Luddites

Published October 4, 2009 by Jo Jordan

I want a British TED

The world is divided it seems – in to those who watch TED and those who don’t.

I watch TED because I like positivity – I like my daily fix. And I admire technological advancement. I wish we had a British TED too – the best of science and technology that is coming out of the UK.

But is my wonder of TED shared?

It seems strange to me, but so many people don’t share my wonder.  They aren’t interested.  They even proclaim themselves proudly as Luddites.

What bothers the Luddites?

Of course, the original Luddites weren’t just disapproving of new technology.  They smashed  the new weaving presses too.

The people around us who claim they are Luddites, simply don’t understand the technology they decry.  But they don’t stop anyone else using it.

They share with the original Luddites, though, a sense of disapproval.  Most of all, the new technology threatens their status.

Should we bother with Luddites?

I am impatient with people who are ‘tight’.   But all fear is genuine – sincerely and acutely felt.   And I am willing to spend time to help people find a positive place in the world.

What I am not willing to do is hold up improvements for others while they have a sulk.  That’s not on the agenda at all.

The general class of bereavement counseling

When we are counseling people who are fretting about change, we are working with a ‘general class’ of issue – bereavement at the highest level, and adjournment at the level of group formation.

Because disdain of new technology belongs to broader, general class of situations, we have the know-how and experience to help people.  We work through three broad steps.

1.  Acknowledge the contribution they made to our welfare and celebrate the skills they used.  We do this fully, sincerely and elaborately.

2.  Focus attention on the opportunities that are opening ahead of us, and new patterns of relationships with new people who are coming into view.  We are concrete & specific and we introduce them, in person, to people who work in the new technologies.

3.  Help individuals, one-by-one, to formulate a personal plan.  We get down & dirty, one person at a time.

I think we should be bothered with Luddites.  If they cannot see how technological change will benefit them, then we haven’t worked hard enough to show them around the new world that it is coming.

Better Reality TV?  TED and the parallel program for Luddites?

I want a British TED, because I like to watch science, and I want to know the best of British science, up and down the land.

I’d also like to see a parallel program that offers respect for the work of people in ‘old technologies’ and welcomes them into a world that we find dear.

Shall we put reality TV and our license fees to good work?

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CMT? Compulsive mind tidying!

Published October 3, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Mind tidying

When you were a kid, did you clamor for the responsibility of untangling a ball of string, or a skein of wool?  I did. I always sort out computer cables too.  Do you?

It is not surprising, then, that I like coding. I like sorting out the logical flow behind a computer program.

The trouble, I find though, is that I can’t multi-task when I am writing a program   Trivial tasks can fit into breaks.  But “the balls of muddled kitchen string” begin to pile up.  I don’t have time to follow through and sort out the good ideas that are sparked by feeds and conversations.  Good ideas clutter my mind jostling for attention, and my brain becomes as jumbled as a kitchen drawer.  I begin to feel quite antsy.  I may have a whiz-bang computer program but the rest of my head is in a mess.

I need several hours a day to think and write.  I can’t live without it.  Even writing this has cleared my head.  Another good idea on the scrap pad beside me!  It may used. It may not.  I will only know when I’ve played with it a bit more.

How much time do you devote to writing each day? How much time do you need to keep your head clear?

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If you plan ahead, you will be interested in this list . . . and add to it

Published October 3, 2009 by Jo Jordan

As a relative “noobe” in the UK, I’ve been frustrated in my search for data about the economy. It is incredibly difficult to get information from the National Statistics Office that in the US and NZ can be slurped online in seconds.

There also seems to be little vision about where we are going.

Repeating complaints and doomsday scenarios doesn’t help, I know. But asking the right questions does.

Yesterday, IT writer, Philip Virgo posted a summary of his lobbying at each of the Party congresses. I’ve reorganised his post below as a set of questions – using his words when they graphically describe the issue.

Questions about the future of work in the UK

  • Which are the industries of the future? [Which are they are, and how are developments in these industries consistently highlighted in the media?]
  • Which industries will have “integrated career paths”?
  • What would be consequences of not having industries with integrated career paths? What is the alternative?
  • Will “home made” careers do? Or, will our children be condemned to a “professional backwater . . . no longer part of the mainstream route to the top – unless they emigrate and don’t come back”?
  • Will our children and grandchildren be “condemned to surf the cybercrud on the fringes of the global information society – as the UK becomes the electronic equivalent of Cannery Row – a post-industrial poor relation to the economic powerhouses of Asia”?

What will attract industries of the future – particularly in IT and information-management?

  • A competitive communications infra-structure and access to world-class broadband
  • Regulatory simplicity, clarity and predictability
  • Fiscal certainty [presumably for companies and employees]
  • Removing planning controls designed for the 50’s and replacing them with controls we need for the information age.
  • “Workforce skills programmes” that develop a critical mass of skilled people in the industries that interest us

Virgo describes the migration of IT businesses out of the UK – Maxwell’s newspapers, Google and Yahoo. Isle of Man, Switzerland and Singapore seem to be attractive destinations largely because they undertake to defend data privacy from interference from the US. If that is so, then a foreign policy component of future planning is also clear.

These questions seem to be a good way to start thinking about life and prospects in the UK in the future

What do you think of them?

Being a ‘noobe’ here, I’d be interested in your thoughts on the right questions to ask . . . and the likely answers.

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