Little Wins

I don't know if your like me, but I can spend far too much time worrying about big things; so I decided to keep a list of all my Little Wins ... small moments that made me smile, laugh, lifted my mood, restored a tiny bit of faith in humanity, or just left me quietly satisfied for reasons that probably make no sense to anyone else.

Not life-changing moments. Just tiny victories. The sort of things that barely matter in the grand scheme of things, but somehow still improve your day.

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Saturday 6th June 2026

I’m sure I’m going to have lots more days like this, but today I felt like a proper Grandy to our beautiful grandson Freddie.

We met Freddie and his mum at Taylor Hill Animal Farm in Huddersfield. I carried him loads, and we saw all sorts of animals, including fish, turtles, sheep, hens, ducks, and rabbits.

We had lots of laughter from him today. I helped him with his lunch, he walked to me, and a couple of times he properly cuddled in. Those are the little moments that absolutely get you.

He won a small octopus toy with his Nana on Hook a Duck, and a couple of cuddly toys, a bear and a donkey, on a tombola. We also bought him a wind-up tractor book.

Such a gorgeous boy. Such a great day.

Remember Freddie "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, rabbit ..."

Monday 25th May 2026

Our grandson Freddie was 1 year old today, and we had a party for him at my daughter's house. As an added bonus, my other daughter was there too.

What a gorgeous little boy he is. The sun was shining, we were all sat in the back garden, and Freddie was on great form. It can sometimes take him a minute or two to realise that everyone around him is a friendly face, but once he settles in, he's such a joy to be around.

A couple of moments really stood out for me. First, his Nana Deb came out of the house and he was more than happy to be carried and cuddled by her for ages. Second, I was wearing a summer straw cowboy hat and he became fascinated by it.

At first, he loved taking it off my head and dropping it on the floor with howls of laughter. Later, with a little help from Grandy, he started taking it off my head and putting it back on again. He had the most gorgeous laugh as he did it.

It was an absolute joy to spend time with the little fella on his very first birthday.

Friday 22nd May 2026

It feels like it's been a long week today, but with Bank Holiday Monday, it's only actually been four days!

In many ways, it's been a pretty challenging week at work. We've had our share of issues across Sales and Marketing, and at times it felt like things could easily have gone off the rails.

I can't go into the details because it's commercially sensitive, but what I can say is that I'm genuinely proud of the work I've done this week. The communications plan and content I put together helped turn what could have been a very difficult situation into something much more manageable.

Anyone that does a similar role to me will know that marketing doesn't always get the credit when things go right, and that's fine. Sometimes the satisfaction comes from knowing you've done your job well, even if most people never see the work that went into it.

So, despite the frustrations and challenges, I'm leaving work tonight feeling pretty chuffed with myself ... and walking a little taller because of it.

Monday 25th May 2026

OMG, what an absolutely brilliant day today.

It’s been a glorious Bank Holiday weekend, with temperatures in our back garden hitting 42°C. We’ve mostly just lounged around doing very little, enjoying the sunshine and spending time together.

But today was extra special, because today was Freddie’s first birthday.

As well as seeing both of my daughters, Freddie himself was an absolute joy. We don’t get to see him often because they live so far away. We catch up on FaceTime, but it’s never quite the same.

Today though, he smiled and laughed the entire time we were with him.

At one point, he found it hilarious to take my summer straw cowboy-style hat off my head and throw it on the floor, only for me to pick it back up and put it on again so he could repeat the whole process. Later on, while I was holding him, he was crying with laughter as he took my hat off and carefully placed it back onto his Grandy’s head.

He also had the longest cuddle with his Nana.

He’s such a loved little boy, and today was just amazing.

Friday 8th May 2026

We were staying at the H10 Salou Princess in Salou, Spain, and had rented one of the hotel’s Balinese beds for €25. After we’d settled in, someone wandered over and decided to sunbathe on the bed next to ours without paying for it.

Now, a lot of people probably wouldn’t care. But I did.

So I wandered down to reception and quietly mentioned it. A few minutes later, a member of staff came up and asked them if they wanted to rent the bed properly. They suddenly lost interest, gathered their things, and moved on.

And honestly... I was absurdly satisfied.

Not because anyone got told off. Not because I wanted an argument. Just because, for once, the world briefly worked exactly as it should.

Monday 27th April 2026

At ProSolve, we tend to take our time when refreshing the brochure. As it changes every 12 months, we can have hundreds of new products to add, along with countless amendments.

So when our Sales Director challenged me to get one completed, printed, and ready within two weeks, with 165 new products to add and endless changes to make, it felt like a massive ask.

But I said “yes”.  And today, 14 days later, I did it.  Very chuffed ... and just in time for an event too.

Safe Jobs in an AI and Robotics World

This is way too late for me, but a recent conversation got me thinking about safe jobs in an AI world ... I'm talking short to medium term here!

Not safe forever. I’m not sure anything gets that badge anymore. But jobs that AI and robotics will struggle to take over easily.

Like I said, this is far too late for me. I’ve already made my questionable career choices. But it might be a useful little list for my grandson one day, assuming he doesn’t end up doing something wildly impressive that I don’t understand.

But some jobs are harder to replace than others. The safest ones seem to be the ones that need human judgement, awkward hand skills, trust, empathy, or the ability to walk into a messy real-world situation and figure it out.

In a world where you can now buy chips from a vending machine, is any job truly safe? 

Electrician

This feels like a strong one. Every building is different, every fault has its own little personality, and the work often happens in tight, awkward spaces where a neat little robot arm would probably give up and ask for a career change.

AI can help with diagnosis, planning, and testing, but someone still needs to turn up, understand the problem, and do the job safely.

Plumber

Leaks rarely happen in convenient places. Pipes are hidden, floors are awkward, old houses have their own ideas, and customers tend to be quite keen on not having water coming through the ceiling.

That mix of physical skill, problem solving, and mild panic feels hard to automate.

Carpenter or joiner

Machines can cut, measure, and repeat. They are brilliant at that. But working with real wood, real houses, and real wonky walls still needs a human touch.

Good joinery is part skill, part patience, and part knowing how to make something look right when the building itself is slightly arguing with you.

Care worker or nurse

AI can help with admin, monitoring, and records. It can support care, but it can’t properly be care.

People need reassurance, kindness, judgement, and another person who can read the room. You can’t automate a steady voice at the right moment.

Emergency services

Police officers, firefighters, and paramedics deal with unpredictable situations where decisions matter quickly.

Technology will help them. It already does. But real emergencies are messy, emotional, physical, and full of human judgement.

Electric vehicle technician

This one feels like a good modern trade. Cars are becoming computers on wheels, but they are still physical things that break, wear out, and need skilled people to fix them.

Someone who understands electrical systems, diagnostics, software, and hands-on repair should have plenty to do.

Robotics engineer

If the robots are coming, someone has to build them, repair them, improve them, and stop them doing daft things.

This is probably one of the clearer “work with the change rather than against it” options.

AI trainer

AI does not magically know everything. It needs training, checking, correcting, testing, and improving.

The people who understand how these systems behave, where they fail, and how to make them more useful should be in a strong position.

Builder, roofer, plasterer, or other skilled trades

Construction sites are not clean little factory floors. They are full of weather, noise, dust, awkward access, missing materials, late changes, and people asking whether it can be done by Friday.

Robots will help with parts of construction, but replacing a skilled tradesperson on a real site feels like a much harder job.

Teacher

AI can explain things. It can mark work. It can create lesson plans. But teaching is not only the transfer of information.

Good teachers spot when a child is struggling, manage behaviour, build confidence, and know when to push and when to pause. That is deeply human work.

Creative work with real taste

I say this as someone who works in marketing and copy. Basic content is already under pressure. Generic words are cheap now, and they are getting cheaper.

But original thinking, taste, humour, timing, instinct, and knowing what will land with real people still matter. The safer creative work will be the work that feels harder to copy.

So what makes a job safer?

The safest jobs are not really AI-proof. That sounds too neat. They are jobs that are harder to automate because they involve real people, real places, real human judgement, and real consequences.

If a job happens entirely on a screen, follows a repeatable process, and does not need much human trust, it is probably more exposed.

If a job needs skilled hands, emotional intelligence, responsibility, or the ability to adapt when things go wrong, it stands a better chance.

So if I was starting again, I don’t think I’d chase what looks easy. I’d chase what is hard to copy.

Letting Them In (Mild Horror)

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I thought I was just tired.

That was the strange thing about it. I didn’t feel dangerously exhausted. I wasn’t falling asleep at my desk or drifting off in meetings. I just felt slightly out of step with myself, like my brain was lagging behind everything else by a fraction of a second.

We’d just come back from holiday and the shift back into normal life had completely wrecked my sleep pattern. One week I was wandering around Spain in the sunshine with no alarms and nowhere urgent to be, then suddenly it was back to work, deadlines, emails, and lying awake at three in the morning staring at the ceiling for no obvious reason.

The night before had felt fairly normal. Not great sleep, but enough to get through the next day. At least that’s what I thought until I checked my sleep app the following morning.

SLEEP: 2hrs:11mins

Deep: 33%

Light: 24%

REM: 8%

Awake: 35%

I remember staring at the screen for a while because the numbers didn’t even seem possible. I’d spent longer than that lying in bed. Somehow my brain had barely switched off at all, although I thought I was asleep. Initially confused, I then blamed my sleep app for just being wrong, but ... I was very tired.

The effects of my tiredness started showing almost immediately at work. Nothing dramatic, just little mistakes that kept irritating me because they weren’t the sort of mistakes I usually make. Typos in emails. Wrong filenames. At one point I wrote down a project delivery date that had already passed. Tiny things, but enough to notice. Enough that I started feeling uneasy about how disconnected my thoughts felt.

Physically, I felt OK, but couldn’t stop the urge to yawn all the time and my eyes were feeling gritty in that way they do late at night.

Around eleven that morning I went and got a couple of minutes of fresh air, then to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.

Our large workplace kitchen sits off a long corridor to the office, and the lights outside are motion activated. They always take a second or two too long to register you and burst into life, so when you open the kitchen door the corridor sits in this awkward half-darkness for a moment.

I pushed the door open and something black and low to the ground moved quickly past my feet.

This wasn't a case that I thought I saw something, I mean I physically reacted to it. I bent my legs instinctively to avoid it bumping into me. The reaction was immediate, completely automatic, like somebody avoiding a dog running across their path.

Then the corridor lights flicked on, I looked around, but nothing was there.

No shadow disappearing around the corner. No bag on the floor. No movement at all. Just an empty corridor and the gentle hum of fluorescent lighting.

I stood there for a few seconds, the door had shut behind me and the tea was still sloshing around in my mug, trying to process what had just happened. The unsettling part wasn’t what I’d seen. It was how convincingly real it had felt. My body had reacted before my brain had time to question it.

I shook it off as a trick of the light, got back to my desk and carried on with my day, although I kept replaying the moment in my head. Every now and then I’d catch myself glancing down corridors slightly too quickly, or looking twice into empty rooms without really meaning to, but probably subconsciously looking for something.

That evening as my wife and I settled in to watch some TV, I picked up my phone and started reading about sleep deprivation.

That was probably a mistake.

Once you start reading deeply enough into severe sleep loss, you realise how fragile the brain actually is. People who miss enough REM sleep begin experiencing something called REM intrusion, where fragments of dreaming begin bleeding into waking consciousness. Hallucinations, movement in peripheral vision, shadow figures, distorted faces. The brain, desperate to complete the dreaming cycle it’s been denied, starts forcing parts of it into reality.

At least that’s the official explanation.

The thing that bothered me was how similar all the accounts sounded.

People described the same shapes. The same movement. The same feeling that whatever they’d seen wasn’t random. Some of them even described the exact same instinctive reaction I’d had, where their body responded before their conscious mind did. I found a couple of online forums, and Reddit provided some fascinating discussions around sleep, hallucinations, and narcolepsy.

Much of my research made me a little uneasy, not fearful, mainly because what I felt seemed strangely familiar.

That night I barely slept at all. Partly because my sleep pattern was already ruined, but mostly because every time I started drifting off I kept thinking about that thing in the corridor. My rational brain knew there had been nothing there, but another part of me seemed less convinced.

At around half past two in the morning I got up to get a glass of water. As I walked back upstairs I glanced absent-mindedly into the spare bedroom and saw someone standing beside the window.

I stopped instantly. There were only two of us in the house, and that wasn't my wife standing there.

The figure didn’t move. It was tall, unnaturally still, one arm hanging slightly lower than the other. For a moment I genuinely believed somebody had broken into the house.

Then I switched the landing light on and the room was empty. I went around the house and checked all the doors and windows, but I didn’t sleep properly after that.

The next few days became increasingly difficult to explain away. I started noticing movement where there shouldn’t be movement. A dark figure at the far end of a supermarket aisle that disappeared when I reached it. Someone sitting motionless in a parked car outside work who vanished the second time I looked. Once, while driving home late in the evening, I became convinced somebody was sitting silently in the back seat behind me.

That one frightened me enough that I had to pull over, get out of the car, and check the back seat and boot.

The strange thing is that these 'visions' never move once you properly focus on them. You only ever catch the movement beforehand, that brief glimpse of approach at the edge of your vision. Once you actually look at them directly, they’re completely still.

Watching. Waiting.

By then I was sleeping with the television on because silence had started making me uncomfortable. Every creak of the house sounded deliberate. Every dark reflection in the windows made me pause slightly longer than it should have.

Everywhere else I was becoming more wary of opening doors and walking into rooms, mildly worried about what I might see.

The exhaustion was building. The less sleep I got, the more often I saw them. Then seeing them made sleeping even harder. It became a loop that fed itself night after night.

I tried all the sensible explanations first.

Stress. Fatigue. Anxiety. Too much caffeine. Too much alcohol. Eating late at night. Poor sleep hygiene.

I went to the doctor. I cut down caffeine and alcohol completely, and I stopped eating after 8pm. I tried meditation apps, sleeping tablets, breathing exercises, all the normal advice people give you when your brain starts betraying you a little ... but none of it helped.

Three nights ago I woke at around four in the morning and saw one standing beside the bed, not near it, beside it.

Tall. Thin. Completely motionless. Its face looked almost human in the same way mannequins look almost human. Close enough at first glance, but wrong in tiny ways once you looked properly. The eyes were too still. The expression slightly delayed, like it was copying what a human face should look like rather than understanding it naturally.

I couldn’t move at first. Not because I was particularly scared, but because some buried instinct was telling me not to fully acknowledge what I was looking at.

The thing leaned closer until its face was inches from mine, and then it whispered something.

Not words exactly. More like a thought pressed directly into my head.

You’re letting us in. You’re letting us in. You’re letting us in. It kept repeating.

I don’t remember falling asleep afterward, but I woke properly just after sunrise with the bedroom empty and my heart hammering hard enough to hurt.

I called in sick to work that morning. I was too exhausted and my mental state just wasn't in the right place.

I was sat on the sofa all morning, casually aware that life was happening around me, but also deeply aware that something just wasn't right. These events just didn't feel like hallucinations, they felt very real. I continued my research, trying to understand what was happening. My thoughts wouldn’t settle. Even sitting still, I felt wired and exhausted at the same time.

Around lunchtime my wife casually asked why I’d been standing in the garden during the night.

I shot her a puzzled look and told her I hadn’t.

She looked immediately uncomfortable, like she regretted mentioning it at all, then quietly said she’d seen me through the bedroom window sometime around three in the morning.

Apparently I’d been standing completely still at the bottom of the garden facing the house. I was just staring up at the bedroom window.

Last night I finally understood what they are.

People think sleep deprivation causes hallucinations because the brain is failing. I don’t think that’s true anymore.

I think exhaustion weakens something. Some barrier between us and whatever these things are. That’s why they stay hidden in microsleeps and fragments of REM sleep, appearing only in glimpses and peripheral movement at first. They need you exhausted before you can properly perceive them.

And once you do, they start getting closer, much closer.

They don’t kill people. At least not physically. What they want is quieter than that. They replace you slowly, and carefully.

By the time it happens properly, nobody notices at first. You still remember names, routines, conversations. The thing now wearing you uses your memories like instructions from a manual.

Only the people closest to you sense something wrong. A slight delay before you smile. An odd flatness behind your eyes. Moments where you become strangely still and distant without realising it.

Tonight I’m trying not to sleep. But every time I blink I catch movement near the bedroom door. Something standing there patiently in the dark.

Waiting.

And deep down, somewhere beneath the exhaustion, I think I already know the worst part.

I don’t think they’ve been trying to get into the house.

I think they’ve been trying to get into me.

Biscuit Moon (Kids)

Once the rain had stopped, little drops of water still clung to the windows outside Freddie’s bedroom.

“Freddie!” Mum called from downstairs. “Are you ready yet? Nana and Grandy will be here soon!”

“I can’t find it!” Freddie shouted back.

“Can’t find what?” asked his mum, but Freddie didn’t respond. His head was tucked under the bed.

After looking under his bed for the third time, Freddie looked in one of his many toy boxes, then under his chair. But his bright red racing car was nowhere to be seen, and this wasn’t just any car. This was his favourite one.

There was a knock on the door.

"Freddie" his dad called, "Nana and Grandy are here."

Freddie sighed. A moment later he heard Grandy’s cheerful voice.

“Where’s our little man?” he shouted upstairs.

Freddie slowly walked downstairs. “What’s wrong?” Nana asked gently.

“I can’t find my car,” Freddie mumbled. “I wanted to show you it.”

“The bright red one?” said Grandy.

Freddie nodded sadly.

“Well,” Nana smiled, “the rain’s stopped now, and it’s turned into a lovely bright day.”

“And,” she added cheerfully, “I happen to know the park has some excellent puddles today.”

That made Freddie smile a little.

So off they went.

The park smelled fresh after the rain. Tiny puddles glittered along the winding paths, and the wet grass sparkled in the sunshine.

Whilst Nana and Grandy walked side by side, Freddie raced ahead in his little green wellies. He held his hands out like he was holding a steering wheel, and as he raced along, he made a quiet “brum, brum, brum” noise.

SPLASH.

He jumped in a little puddle.

SPLASH.

He jumped in an even bigger one that sent water flying everywhere.

Nana laughed. “I think that puddle nearly got Grandy!”

“Nearly?” said Grandy. “I think it soaked my socks!”

Freddie giggled and ran off again.

They watched ducks swimming across the pond. They counted dogs. They spotted a squirrel playing in some nearby trees.

By the time Freddie finally sat beside Nana and Grandy on a wooden bench, his cheeks were warm and pink from all the running.

As Freddie sat between them, Grandy gave Nana a knowing smile.

“What?” Freddie asked.

Grandy looked down at Freddie as Nana put an arm around her little grandson.

“Shall we tell Freddie about the Biscuit Moon?” he said quietly.

Nana’s eyes widened slightly.

“Oh…” she said quietly. “Yes. I think he’s old enough now.”

Freddie sat up straight and looked at them both.

“The Biscuit Moon?” he asked.

Nana reached into her bag, pulled out a small packet of biscuits, and handed them around. “Oh yes,” she smiled. “The Biscuit Moon.”

“Before you eat one,” Grandy whispered, “you have to snap it in half.”

“All at the same time,” Nana added. “Quite right, Nana,” Grandy replied. “I almost forgot that.”

Freddie held his biscuit carefully in both hands and watched Nana and Grandy raise theirs.

“One, two, three,” Nana said.

On three, they all broke their biscuits into two pieces.

“Good,” Nana smiled as she took a bite from hers.

“But what is the Biscuit Moon?” Freddie asked as he took a bite from one of his halves.

Grandy looked up at the pale daytime moon hanging above the clouds.

“Well,” he said quietly, “most people think the moon only comes out at night to shine.”

“But really,” Nana added, “the Biscuit Moon listens.”

Freddie looked up at the sky. “Listens to what?” he asked.

“Just listens,” Nana replied. “But it always seems to leave a little bit of happiness behind.”

“Nobody really knows how it works,” Grandy smiled. “It just does.”. “Not huge things,” continued Grandy. “Just little bits of happiness.”

“Like what?” Freddie asked.

Nana thought for a moment.

“Feeling better after being poorly,” she said, “or finding an extra sweet in your pocket when you think you’ve finished them.”

“Seeing someone you really hoped to see,” added Grandy.

“Or spotting a rainbow when you least expect it,” continued Nana. “Just something special and magical.”

Freddie looked down at the last half of the biscuit still in his hands.

“The Biscuit Moon seems to like shared biscuits best,” Nana explained softly.

So the three of them sat together on the park bench and finished eating their biscuits while the breeze rustled the trees around them.

And high above them, faint and pale in the bright afternoon sky, the moon quietly listened.

Freddie smiled to himself. It was probably just one of those funny little stories grandparents liked to tell.

Still, as he walked home between Nana and Grandy, holding both their hands, he secretly hoped the Biscuit Moon might really be listening after all.

The next morning, Freddie woke early.

The sunlight shone a beam of light across his room and over his blanket.

He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and was about to drop off to sleep again, when he spotted something, and then suddenly froze.

There, sitting neatly beside his pillow, was his bright red racing car.

Freddie grabbed it quickly. “The car!” he shouted, racing downstairs.

Mum looked up from the kitchen.

“You found it then?” she smiled.

“Did you put it there?” Freddie asked.

Mum shook her head.

“No, Freddie. But I’m pleased you found it again.”

Freddie looked down at his favourite toy.

Then he remembered the park. The biscuits. The story. The pale moon in the daytime sky.

A tiny smile spread across his face.

Very quietly, so only he could hear, Freddie whispered:

“Thank you, Grandy and Nana. And thank you, Biscuit Moon.”

I Thought Facts Would Matter More

I noticed something during my brief spell as a paper candidate for the Liberal Democrats recently, and that is that people don't just hold opinions anymore ... they hold beliefs. Deep ones.

And once those beliefs settle in, facts barely seem to matter, in fact I don't think they do matter.

During the May 2026 local elections I spoke to several people who wanted to vote for Reform UK because they wanted someone who would “stop the boats”. The strange part was that even when you pointed out that local councillors have absolutely no control over immigration policy or border enforcement, it often made no difference at all.

The belief had already locked into place and cannot (always) be rocked.

I saw the same thing online. A Facebook friend confidently posted that “there’s only one party not funded in any way by Israel, and that’s the Greens.”

The problem is that this is simply untrue.

As I pointed out, under UK law, political parties cannot accept funding from foreign governments or foreign states anyway. It’s illegal under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000.

When I asked for evidence that the Liberal Democrats were receiving money from the State of Israel, there was a change of goalposts, this time they pointed out that response was that the party has a “Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel” group ... which it does ... it also has "Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine" group too..

Both of which, as I explained in my exchange with them, are internal associated groups made up of members and supporters with particular views on the Middle East. Neither means the party is secretly funded by a foreign government.

But again, the facts didn’t really matter.

That’s the bit I struggle with.  If I’m wrong about something, and somebody proves it properly, I’ll usually back down. I’ll probably try to save face first because I’m human ... but eventually facts win.

For some people though, belief seems to become reality. Even when reality itself disagrees.

And I still can’t quite get my head around that.

Attention Tax

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about interruptions at work; not just obvious interruptions like phone calls, Teams messages, or someone asking “got a minute?” (although they can be a pain too), but the hidden cost that comes after the interruption.

I think most workplaces still treat interruptions as a simple time problem, where if somebody interrupts you for 10 minutes, then supposedly you've lost 10 minutes of work.

But that isn’t really how it works is it. Well not for me anyway!

You'll notice it especially if you’re doing deeper work ... writing, planning, problem solving, analysing data, designing something, trying to properly think something through ... the interruption itself is only part of the damage.

There’s also the refocus time afterwards.

You have to mentally reload the task back into your brain. Remember where you were. Rebuild the momentum. Re-enter the thought process you were already halfway through before somebody derailed it.

Sometimes a 2 minute interruption can cost 20 minutes of useful thinking.

I’ve started thinking of this as an “Attention Tax”.

Every interruption taxes your concentration a little bit. One interruption is manageable. Ten in a day starts fragmenting your thinking completely.

And I think this is partly why some days feel mentally exhausting even if you’ve technically “done loads”, you haven’t spent the day doing productive work, you’ve spent the day rebuilding momentum over and over again.

Modern workplaces almost seem designed around interruption now.

Side note: I remember when I started by career in British Telecom in 1987, been told that when it was still the civil service, managers had flags attached to their intrays, and if a red flag was showing, you couldn't talk to them ... I sometimes wish I had that here. 

Emails. Teams notifications. Meetings. “Quick questions”. Artificial urgency. Constant deadline pressure.

We also seem to reward responsiveness, it's deemed to be a good things if you accept the interruption and rude if you don't, but I’m not convinced we reward depth anymore.

I touched on some of this already in my post about why I hate deadlines, but I think there’s probably a bigger idea buried in all this somewhere.

This is definitely a seed post for now. I think there’s more to explore here.

Best Way To Get AI to Sound Like A Human

OK, I've been working with AI for quite a while now, and honestly I love it for writing content.

But one thing still stands out ... what's the best way to get AI to sound like a human instead of a polished marketing robot?

This is the current base prompt I use. It works reasonably well across most AI tools.

I will keep adding to it and updating it because AI writing styles keep evolving. What sounds human today probably becomes tomorrow's obvious AI pattern.

I've tested variations of this across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot, and while none of them become perfectly human, this sort of structure definitely helps calm down a lot of the obvious AI writing habits.

"Write like an experienced human writer, not a marketing template or assistant.

Vary sentence length and structure naturally. Mix short, medium, and longer sentences. Let the rhythm feel uneven in a human way.

Use plain English, active voice, and concrete wording. Prefer everyday phrases over jargon, buzzwords, or corporate language.

Humans like contractions (hasn't, wouldn't, and couldn't etc), so add a good mix of these types of word were appropriate, as they make communication sound more natural and fluid.

Avoid clichés, filler, forced transitions, and predictable paragraph patterns. Do not make every paragraph the same length or end with a neat concluding sentence.

Use contractions naturally. Address the reader directly where appropriate.

Keep a calm, confident tone. Avoid sounding overexcited, overhelpful, or overly polished.

Cut unnecessary words. Rewrite awkward phrasing instead of adding explanation around it.

Use specific observations, grounded examples, and occasional conversational phrasing where it improves flow.

Avoid repetitive grammar patterns, repeated connector words, and overly balanced sentence construction.

Do not use em dashes.

Prioritise clarity, rhythm, and readability over sounding impressive.

Ordinals when written as numerals should always have a suffix: '-st' ('first', '21st') '-nd' ('second', '32nd') '-rd' ('third', '103rd') etc

If a sentence sounds robotic when read aloud, rewrite it."

The interesting thing is that no single prompt can fully force AI to sound human. You still need task-specific modifiers underneath it.

Things like:

"Write academically"
"Write casually"
"Write for UK tradespeople"
"Write for beer enthusiasts"
"Write for busy business owners"
"Write for someone aged 18"
"Write like a newspaper column"
etc.