Atomic Essays

The last film I watched in 2025 was Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man. The way I tend to watch films now is in about 20/30-minute chunks, so when I sat down to watch it with my breakfast one Saturday, I expected to finish my beans on toast, drink my coffee, then go about my day. But for the first time, probably in years, I watched a film the whole way through, excluding when I’m in the cinema and British politeness forbids me from leaving. I bloody loved it! Dystopian

At the start of this year, I gave myself the goal of writing at least 1,000 words a day. We’re going strong thus far, but what I’ve found is that there can be times when I have absolutely no idea what to write. I’ll sit in front of the laptop, the little blinking cursor on the infinite expanse of the blank page, and not have a clue what to do. Often when that happens, I’ll just start typing and see where it leads. To quote the great Michael Scott: Sometimes I'll start a sente

One of the skills that I didn’t expect to develop when I started working at a social media agency is the ability to research. But now, a huge part of what I do each day is research. For new clients and projects, researching to find out more about the respective industry. And then also research for industries I already work in, to keep up to date, figure out new angles for content, and so on. And over the years, one of the most invaluable tools - one I use virtually every time

Shower thoughts are those interesting, out-of-the-box, and sometimes a little weird ideas that pop into your head when you’re (obviously) taking a shower. Shower thoughts are credited as being the genesis of some pretty interesting ideas. The point isn’t really that the shower is some magical portal to unique ideas, but rather that it’s a block of time in our day with no distractions. Apart from the sound of the water, we have silence. And that silence is essential. You Need

There’s always talk of finding your voice in your writing, content, music, whatever. You have to find a style that’s uniquely yours. And at the same time, there’s this pressure, right from the very moment you begin creating, that you have to be unique. If you do something even remotely similar to someone else’s work, then you’re a plagiarist. But the reality is this: we’re not born knowing who we are. We don’t come into the world with a voice and a style all our own. From the

To quote the British rapper Scroobius Pip: “ nothing is original .” That quote isn’t original either. Any number of people before Scroob have echoed the same sentiment. When we think about the work we make, we often put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be original, to come up with a concept that the world has never seen before. The reality, though, is that (big surprise) nothing is original. Every creative concept is built on what came before. Most concepts we believe to be

At the start of the year, I began a mission to de-rot and de-slop my life. With our attention being pulled in a million different directions, it’s easier than ever to resort to the default habit of consuming meaningless content for hours on end. With so much of my time being pissed away scrolling on Instagram, watching garbage on Netflix, or – even worse – just staring into space, I decided that enough was enough. It was time to make a change. The Changes I treated it like a

Have you ever walked into a shop and seen a product that’s NOW ON SALE? When this happens, you’ll also see the Before and After price. It’s satisfying to see the Before price crossed out, with the After price below it in big, bold letters, isn’t it? And because you’ve seen how high the Before price was, it looks like an absolute steal in comparison, right? This is the Anchoring Bias at work. How It Works Our brains are associative in nature. This means we link things to other

Working with a client is a two-way street. They come to you for your expertise and your ideas. Yet many creatives forget that. Many will stop suggesting ideas and concepts, stop pushing back on bad ideas or things they don’t think will work. This doesn’t happen all at once, though. They’ll explain ideas. They’ll show other options. They’ll try to improve the original idea. But when these ideas aren’t actioned or taken on by the client, creatives can feel disheartened. All too

There’s this idea that you can’t call yourself something (Writer, Painter, Singer, etc) if it isn’t your job . For some reason, many of us think that unless we’re being paid for something, we just don’t have the right to refer to ourselves as someone who does those things. “Yeah I like to write sometimes, but I’m not a writer .” Bullshit. You don't need permission to call yourself a writer. You don't need permission to call yourself a singer. You don't need permission to cal

Starting is the hardest part. When you want to start a new project, you can give yourself any number of reasons why you shouldn’t . These reasons can be a fear of trying something new, of being laughed at, because we’re too scared, because we don’t want to put effort in, or a million other things. The result is that at the end of the year, we’ve not completed what we said we were going to do, and we’re all upset and pissed off with ourselves. Yet there’s any easy way of fixin

At the start of 2026, I set myself a list of goals. Various things I wanted to do, which included writing more, walking more, reading more, a whole lot “mores.” Yet when it got to January, I realised there wasn’t some magical switch that got flipped at the turn of the new year which suddenly made me a hardcore, ultra-disciplined robot. By 5th January, I was still doing the same stuff as I was in 2025. Things needed to change. Enter the Streaks Tracker Inspired by Dominic Hart

Did you know that our brains don’t read letter-by-letter, or even word-by-word? Instead, we look for patterns in what we’re reading, and fill in the gaps. It’s why those images you see your auntie share Facebook work so well: 7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! We’re not reading the words themselves, but instead recognising patterns and filling the gaps in real-time. The same can be said for words like “and,” “said,” and more. Our brains skip the

If you’re waking up and scrolling on your phone, you’re making the day harder than it needs to be. You can divide everything we do each day into two groups: Easy Dopamine and Hard Dopamine. Things like scrolling on your phone, eating junk food, watching Netflix, and more fall into the Easy Dopamine category. But to our brains, dopamine is dopamine. Dopamine is…? Put simply, dopamine is the chemical your brain releases when you complete a task or achieve a goal. It gives us a

You can’t move on social media for posts speaking about “The 10 Signs of AI-Generated Content,” and invariably, each of them will mention the humble emdash. They all scream and shout from the rooftops that the harmless little line — the staple of grammar for centuries — is a warning sign that this or that piece of content has been written by AI. There’s truth to this, of course. Emdash usage has surged in recent years , conveniently aligning with the rise of large language mo

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned over the last few years is that not having an opinion on something is a perfectly valid option. In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with news and media from all over the world, it can be very easy to get yourself worked up about every little thing. From serious issues like social injustice to pointless things like a celebrity’s favourite brand of cereal, we’re constantly told to have an opinion on anything and everything.

Working in marketing, you get to dip your toes into a whole bunch of different industries. And a core part of that is learning . Each industry has its own turns of phrase, jargon, acronyms, writing styles, and so much more. Once you’ve got to grips with all this, it can be very tempting to start applying all your new knowledge everywhere. If you work for a finance brand, for example, you might want to use all those fancy acronyms - like ROI, A2A, BCPP, etc - in every piece of

Everyone needs to take breaks. You’re not a robot who can work for hours and hours with no respite. The problem with how a lot of us take breaks, though, is what we do during them. A (Very) Quick Guide to Dopamine Dopamine is the “reward chemical” that our brains release when we achieve something. It’s the thing that makes us feel good when we get a job done. That little boost when you cross something off your to-do list? That’s dopamine. But the modern world has heavily mess

Recently, I was exploring Substack to see what it could do, and I found something pretty cool. When you’ve scheduled a post, you’re able to export a graphic version of it (either the whole post or the headline) in a variety of different layouts and designs. This graphic can then be used to promote your article on social media, newsletters, etc. This kind of thing is exactly what brands should be doing. Often, when we think of branding, we think of a logo, or perhaps we might

Motivation won’t save you, discipline will. Have you ever had a goal, but never felt that it was the right time to work toward it? There’s a pervasive idea that to make progress on something, we have to wait for motivation to hit us. We think that without it, we cannot do anything. The problem is that motivation doesn’t come all that often. So, you’re going to have to rely on something else. And that something else is discipline. Habits Over Goals Say you have the goal of wri