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This, for me at least, must be one of the fundamental questions to ask about the way I spend my time and the things I choose to do.

I still remember vividly when I met Chris Barrow back in 2011 at our first meeting at the Belfry Hotel in Nottingham and he asked me what I wanted from him. I didn’t want him to create new opportunities for me or money or ‘growth’ I wanted him to help me select which opportunities to take because it seemed to me that the opportunities were endless.

It still feels the same now, the different ways I have to choose to spend my time are staggering and there’s only so far that efficiency can go.

You can become more and more efficient with your time until you realise that even then you run out of time and even then you have to say no to some things and yes to others and prioritise which is which and that is where ‘what it’s for’ comes in.

So last year Shaun and I decided to start recording conversations between ourselves in a recording studio type environment (that Shaun designed and set up) to release the podcast ‘Incisive Decisive’.

I didn’t bring any expertise to the table in terms of podcasting like Shaun did but I did have some money that I could spend to buy a little bit of equipment and also some help setting up the electronic parts of it like the website etc, so that people could comment on it and talk about it and at least find out it was there.

Never though at any point did Shaun and I think we would make a penny from Incisive Decisive and we still think exactly the same.

To give you an example, a successful podcast might secure 250 subscribers on average, hardly enough people to change the world is it? So, what is it for?

It’s about trying to connect with people who have the same world view as us and who are interested in having discussions about how to make things a little bit better, or at least what we think better means.

It’s about blowing a trumpet for evidence-based healthcare and ethically based healthcare and having fun while we’re doing that so it doesn’t seem that it’s really dull, to try to make a difference and do the thing that you set out to do.

Incisive Decisive is a lever to open a box to a place where other people are that think the same things. I would reckon that for every 100 people that come across it, only 5 will like it, but that’s ok because it’s not supposed to be for everyone. It’s supposed to be a place for people to come, to listen and to enjoy and to engage, comment and discuss things that are going on that other people don’t talk about in our tiny little corner of the world. It’s the same thing we do on our courses, which are not for everybody either, they’re only for people who are interested in setting solid foundations and making friends and joining a tribe of people who want to do things the right way for a long time. The type of place where you have an ethics lecturer on your course, not to talk at you about ethics but to talk with you and promote discussion.

Over the past few years I have thought a lot about what it’s for, why I spend my time doing this or that and particularly in the dark times when I thought I didn’t want to do it anymore.

It has to be beyond collecting things, there has to be a finish line to that, and when you go beyond that, through the noise of hyper consumerism and collectables there’s another place. A place where it’s possible to count your thank you cards over the whole of your career (I cleaned my office the other day) and realise that at least sometimes, in some places, you made a difference and that’s what it was for.

Blog Post Number: 1894