For much of this week, my blood pressure was so low that I couldn’t think. Making a sandwich was a physical challenge, but worse, I couldn’t even work out what I would need once I had a plate in front of me. So, I succumbed—opening the prescription of steroids I had been given 8 months ago and popping a quarter of one pill.
Boom!
After about six hours, like magic, I wanted to go nightclubbing, running, working. I could think. I was buzzing. Even our dog got a walk.
Why wait so long before taking the pills? Because past prescriptions of antibiotics have permanently damaged me. These steroids are likely to become a permanent fixture, like my thyroid medication. These pills treat the symptoms, but could they prevent me from finding the root cause? The body is meant to be able to heal itself, right?
Every choice like this comes with trade-offs. Taking these pills gives me my life back but exposes me to a higher risk of infection. Selling a business—and I’ve sold three—means gaining access to capital but losing so much: friendships, networks, status (if that’s a thing), and routine. Yet, opportunities now abound. Being reliably unreliable in terms of my work has meant I needed to hire talented colleagues to help run the businesses—an expensive decision, but one that has helped us grow faster while also building resilience.
With many big decisions facing me, my approach to decision-making is what I call logical-illogic. My method is to read around the subject, gather evidence, listen to opinions, run thought experiments, create my own AI bots, and then go for walks. After that, the decision is pure intuition.
For me, intuition is the sum total of every experience—every bit of schooling, every book I’ve read, every person I’ve met, all my philosophies and values, every film I’ve watched—coming to a head. So, if you and I have spoken, you have shaped my decision-making.
To be intuitive, I hope, is to utilise every piece of evidence in my life—the very definition of logic, but without the precise language to explain why I’ve made the decision.
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Whilst the week wasn’t going as planned, with my Suffrago hat on, we impacted the political weather. For a time, our constituency analysis of possible Inheritance Tax changes was the first headline on The Daily Express website, proving our thesis that modelling datasets along constituency lines performs a useful function.
And here in Harrogate, a profile of my work with Suffrago appeared in the wonderful Harrogate Advertiser thanks to the editor, Graham Chalmers. The article is here (I haven’t dared read it yet).
