Category: Inspiration

I already have a blog post on how to work out your basic purpose in life which I heartily recommend you read soon.
https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=37862

I am told it was Confucius who said, “Do something you love to do and you will never work a day in your life.”

My reality is, when you are working on your basic purpose it is almost like you are being paid to have fun.

I often say to people, “When you are on your Basic Purpose, progress is more like a hot knife through butter than walking through molasses in the middle of winter.”

In my experience there is a particularly strong inverse relationship between “Purpose and Motivation Requirement”.

The more aligned an activity is with your:
basic purpose
identity
meaning
values
curiosity
mastery
contribution
or intrinsic enjoyment
the less external motivational force is required.

This could be represented by a graph with ‘on Purpose’ on the horizontal axis and ‘Necessity to Bootstrap Your Motivation’ on the vertical axis. The line would start at top left and progress on a straight line to bottom right indicating the more ‘on purpose’ are people’s activities, the less they needed to try to motivate themselves.

The more people are meaningfully engaged, the less exertion feels like “effort” or work and the more it feels like flow or fun.

You could even visualise it something like:

Top Left:
“Maximum motivational force required”
drudgery
coercion
meaningless labour
externally imposed goals

Bottom Right:
“Self-sustaining engagement”
vocation
calling
obsession
creative flow
mission

Purpose does not eliminate difficulty, it changes the relationship to difficulty as even purpose-driven work still contains:
administration
repetition
maintenance
frustration
uncertainty
and sacrifice

A parent caring for a child may be exhausted but still deeply willing.
An entrepreneur building a mission-driven company may work extremely hard without perceiving themself as oppressed by the work.
That distinction matters.

One useful framing is that motivation is multi-faceted. Different activities are powered by different energy sources.

Source	Stability	Example
Fear	Short-term	Avoid punishment
Reward	Moderate	Earn treat/money/status
Obligation	Moderate	Duty/responsibility
Identity	Strong	“I am this kind of person”
Purpose	Very strong	Meaningful mission
Love/Curiosity	Extremely strong	Intrinsic engagement

The higher the source, the less conscious willpower is required.

But we are not all blessed enough to be working on our basic purpose right now. So we need ways to feel more motivated towards the task at hand. One way is to look at the product of the activity rather than the task. Another is to offer yourself a reward for completing the task. As discussed in the blog post ‘Systematizing Willpower’ there is also constructing a framework that makes it easier to do the task rather than not do it.

Motivation vs Discipline vs Willpower

These are often confused.

Motivation is the emotional desire to act.
It is useful but fluctuates heavily.

Discipline is conditioned consistency of behaviour.
Doing things whether emotionally inclined or not.

Willpower is the short-term override capacity.
The ability to resist impulses or force action temporarily.

Willpower is best viewed as:
finite
exhaustible
and unreliable if overused

Which is why a systems approach is so important.

The Problem With “Try Harder”

Many motivational systems fail because they rely on continual conscious exertion but humans are not designed for perpetual self-coercion.

A better strategy is:
reduce friction toward desired behaviours
increase friction toward undesired behaviours
automate good defaults
attach behaviours to identity and meaning

In other words it is vastly more sustainable to construct environments where the right behaviour is easier than the wrong behaviour.

Decision

Just a quick word here on the subject of decision. I have sometimes pulled myself up after observing that I had not done something for some time and realised I had been aware of the necessity to do a certain task without actually making the decision to do it. These things take up mental memory as unfinished tasks. They occupy your head space without paying rent! Just like a bad tenant they need to be moved on!

The Four Major Levers of Sustainable Motivation

1. Purpose and Meaning

These are the strongest long-term drivers.

Questions that increase motivation:
Why does this matter?
Who benefits?
What larger goal does this serve?
What future does this create?

Humans can tolerate enormous effort if the effort feels meaningful. Without meaning, even light work becomes draining.

2. Vision the Outcome

Focusing on the product rather than the task is extremely powerful. A bricklayer may consider “I am stacking bricks.” or “I am building a cathedral.” The physical actions may be identical but the mental experience is radically different.

Visualization techniques work partly because they focus on futue emotional gratification rather than present effort. They minimize present discomfort by concentrating on future reward.

Examples:
athlete visualising victory
dieter visualising health
entrepreneur visualising impact
student visualising competence

The mind tolerates present sacrifice more readily when future value feels vivid.

3. Reward Systems

Immediate rewards help bridge the gap between:
present effort
and delayed benefit

Because humans are strongly biased toward immediate gratification.

Useful rewards
breaks
favourite drink
music
recreation
social reward
tracking streaks
visible progress markers

Rewards work best when
modest
immediate
and linked clearly to completion

4. Environmental and System Design

Is porobably the most underrated factor. Behaviour is highly situational. People often overestimate character and underestimate environment.

Examples:

Factors That Increase Desired Behaviour

Prepare workspace in advance
Put gym clothes beside bed
Keep healthy food visible
Use checklists
Schedule tasks into calendar
Batch similar tasks
Reduce startup friction

Factors That Decrease Undesired Behaviour

Remove distracting apps
Use website blockers
Keep phone in another room
Disable notifications
Add accountability
Increase effort required for bad habits

The goal is to make good behaviour:
obvious
easy
automatic
and repeatable

Identity-Based Motivation

People defend identity remarkably strongly. One of the strongest modern insights is that behaviour tends to stabilize around identity.

Instead of “I want to write.” the stronger frame is “I am a writer.”

Instead of “I should exercise.” the better alternative is “I am someone who trains.”

This shifts behaviour from externally forced to internally coherent.

Momentum and Activation Energy

Starting is often harder than continuing.

Many tasks have high:
emotional resistance
uncertainty
cognitive startup cost

Once begun, resistance falls sharply so effective systems reduce “activation energy.”

Examples:
Commit to 5 minutes only
Open the document
Put on shoes
Write one sentence
Do one push-up

Action frequently generates motivation more reliably than waiting for motivation to generate action.

The Motivation Trap

Many people wait to feel motivated before acting. They natively think: Motivation > Action > Progress

But in practice the sequence is often: Action > Progress > Motivation

Progress itself is motivating.

Which is why:
checklists
visible tracking
completion markers
streaks
and milestones
are effective progress boosters.

The Importance of Friction

A surprisingly useful concept is that tiny frictions dominate behaviour.

Examples:
one extra click
needing a password
shoes not nearby
unclear next step
cluttered workspace

Similarly:
tiny conveniences encourage action.

The practical implication:
small environmental modifications can outperform large amounts of willpower.

Emotional Resistance

Often “lack of motivation” is not laziness. It may actually be:
fear of failure
fear of judgement
overwhelm
perfectionism
ambiguity
lack of clarity
or lack of emotional reward

Sometimes the solution is not “motivate harder” but “reduce psychological threat.”

Breaking tasks into smaller pieces is powerful partly because it reduces perceived danger and uncertainty.

Rest and Recovery

Motivation collapses without recovery. Sleep deprivation, chronic stress and cognitive overload reduce:

impulse control,
emotional stability,
persistence,
focus,
and optimism.

Many people try to solve exhaustion with discipline. That usually fails. Biology eventually overrides ideology.

Social Reinforcement

Humans are deeply social.

Motivation increases when behaviour is:
visible
shared
encouraged
or culturally reinforced

Examples:
workout partners
writing groups
public commitments
mentoring
accountability systems

Isolation weakens persistence for many people.

Perhaps the Most Important Principle

The ultimate goal is not maximum self-coercion it is alignment.

Alignment between:
basic purpose
values
identity
goals
environment
incentives
habits
and behaviour

When alignment is high:
less willpower is needed
less internal conflict exists
and effort becomes far more sustainable

At the extreme end, people sometimes experience:
vocation
calling
mission
or devotion

At that point motivation becomes almost self-fueling.

Action recommendations:
0. Make a list of your incomplete tasks or projects.
For any area where you experience anything other than full motivation or drive:
1. Work out the end product of the activity.
2. Specify how it aligns with your goals and purposes.
3. Decide on a reward for completing that task.
4. Identify actual or potential friction points and implement a convenience that eliminates the friction point.
5. Make the decision you are going to achieve the end-product of the activity.
6. Set a target date and time for the completion of it.
7. Set a starting time for it. Even if it is only for 50-15 minutes of allocated time.

Lastly, recognise that there is a part of the mind set up to help you fail and that it is a non-ending source of resistance to your success. Do not be surprised or dismayed when you experience thoughts counter to your intentions. Some of the above recommendations are ‘work arounds’ to help you overcome the mental resistance. The optimum solution is to remove that part of the mind, the source of the counter-intention. Can you imagine how freeing that would be?

If you wan1t to improve your time management, the very first thing to do is take stock of where you are investing your time at present. This is one of the highest-leverage things a person can do. Most people feel short of time but have never actually measured where it goes.

There is an old management principle often attributed to Peter Drucker, “What gets measured gets managed.”

Time tracking is useful because it often reveals:
hidden time drains
context-switching costs
optimistic self-estimates
emotional avoidance patterns
and activities that give very poor return for the time invested

A practical system usually works best when it combines:
1. Measurement
2. Classification
3. Review
4. Adjustment

Here are some tools and methods, from simplest to most sophisticated.

1. The Notebook Method (Surprisingly Effective)

Carry a notebook or use a notes app.

Every 15–30 minutes, write:
time
activity
optional energy/mood score

Example:
7:00–7:30 Breakfast + news
7:30–8:10 Emails
8:10–9:40 Deep work: proposal
9:40–10:15 YouTube drift

This works because:
it is frictionless
creates awareness
and immediately reduces unconscious behaviour

A variation is to use categories:
Work
Admin
Learning
Family
Entertainment
Exercise
Social media
Travel
Sleep

2. Spreadsheet Tracking

Good for analytical personalities.

Columns:
| Start | End | Activity | Category | Energy | Value |
| —– | — | ——– | ——– | —— | —– |

Additional useful ratings:
Importance (1–5)
Enjoyment (1–5)
Return on Time (low/medium/high)

After a week, patterns emerge quickly.

Many people discover:
2–4 hours/day vanish into reactive behaviour
interruptions are worse than expected
high-value work occupies surprisingly little time

3. Pomodoro + Logging

The Pomodoro Technique combines:
focused work blocks
timed breaks
and implicit tracking

Typical structure:
25 minutes focused work
5 minute break
after 4 cycles take a longer break

Each completed session is logged.

Advantages:
improves focus
creates measurable output
helps estimate real task duration

4. Digital Time Tracking Apps

These automate much of the process.

Popular tools include:

[Toggl Track](https://toggl.com/track/)
Excellent for manual time tracking and reporting.

[RescueTime](https://www.rescuetime.com/)
Automatically tracks computer/app usage.

[Clockify](https://clockify.me/)
Free and strong for projects/categories.

[Timeular](https://timeular.com/)
Physical tracking device + app.

[Forest](https://www.forestapp.cc/)
Gamifies focus sessions.

[Notion](https://www.notion.so/)
Flexible dashboards and habit/time systems.

[Obsidian](https://obsidian.md/)
Powerful for reflective tracking and journaling.

5. Passive Digital Tracking

Sometimes people resist logging manually.

Passive monitoring tools reveal:
websites visited
app usage
screen time
pickup frequency
notification interruptions

Useful built-ins:

[Apple Screen Time](https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iphb0c7313c9/ios)
[Android Digital Wellbeing](https://wellbeing.google/)
Browser extensions like:

[StayFocusd](https://www.stayfocusd.com/)
[LeechBlock NG](https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/)

These are particularly valuable because self-estimates of screen usage are often wildly inaccurate.

6. Energy Tracking (Often More Important Than Time)

Two people can both work 8 hours:
one produces enormous value,
the other burns time inefficiently.

So some systems track:
energy
clarity
motivation
stress
cognitive sharpness

Example:
| Time | Activity | Energy |
| —- | ——– | —— |
| 8am | Writing | 9/10 |
| 2pm | Admin | 4/10 |

Patterns emerge:
best creative hours
best analytical hours
when breaks are needed
what activities drain energy

This can radically improve scheduling.

7. Outcome-Based Tracking

This is more advanced. Instead of tracking “How long did I work?” track “What meaningful outcomes were produced?”

Examples:
pages written
sales calls completed
designs finished
exercise sessions done
lessons learned
problems solved

This prevents:

“productive-looking busyness.”

8. Weekly Review Systems

Tracking alone is not enough. The real gains come from review. A weekly review might ask:
What consumed the most time?
What created the most value?
What felt wasteful?
What should be automated?
What should be delegated?
What should be eliminated?
Which activities restored energy?
Which drained it?

Without review, people often collect data but change nothing.

9. Time Auditing Categories

A useful framework is to classify activities into:

| Category | Meaning |
| ———– | —————————— |
| Investment | Builds future capability/value |
| Maintenance | Necessary upkeep |
| Consumption | Entertainment/rest |
| Waste | Little or no value |

The goal is not eliminating all consumption:
rest
recreation
socialising
and reflection
as these are essential

The goal is reducing unconscious waste.

10. Environmental Design

One of the strongest insights in behaviour management is:
people often do not need more discipline — they need better environments.

Examples:

phone in another room
website blockers
scheduled email windows
prepared workspace
default routines
checklists
batching similar tasks

This aligns closely with creating systems that channel behaviour toward optimum outcomes rather than relying on continual willpower.

11. Common Discoveries People Make

After tracking for 1–2 weeks, people commonly discover:

interruptions are devastating
multitasking is inefficient
small distractions accumulate enormously
reactive communication dominates the day
sleep affects productivity more than expected
and a few activities generate most results

Often the solution is not “work harder” but “remove friction and low-value activity.”

12. A Very Simple Starter System

If someone is overwhelmed, I would suggest:

For 7 days:
Track only:
Start time
End time
Activity

Then review:
What surprised you?
What should increase?
What should decrease?

Simple systems are far more likely to be sustained. Overly elaborate systems often collapse under their own administration overhead.

It was the summer of 1876, and Sandford Fleming was stranded.

He stood in a small railway station in Ireland, staring at a schedule that had cost him everything: his connection, his plans, and now his evening. The timetable clearly listed the train to Londonderry at 5:35. What it failed to mention was that it meant morning, not afternoon. By the time Fleming arrived expecting an afternoon departure, the train had been gone for hours./p>

A printing error. Two tiny letters — a.m. written as p.m. — and here he was, settling into an uncomfortable waiting room for what would become a very long night.

Most people would have cursed, written an angry letter, and moved on.

Fleming was not most people.

He was already one of Canada’s most accomplished engineers — a Scottish immigrant who had arrived at eighteen with little more than ambition and a surveyor’s training, and built a career designing railways, postage stamps, and even an early prototype of inline skates. But as he sat in that cold Irish station, watching the hours drag by, something larger began forming in his mind.

The missed train wasn’t really about a printing error.

It was about a broken world.

In the 1870s, virtually every town on Earth kept its own time, set by when the sun reached its highest point in the sky. This had worked perfectly for centuries, when most people never traveled far from home. But railways had changed everything. A train could now carry passengers hundreds of miles in a day, through dozens of towns each ticking away on their own local clocks. In North America alone, there were more than one hundred different local times in use. A traveler crossing the continent needed to reset their watch at nearly every stop.

Railway companies had tried to solve this by creating their own “railroad time” — but with dozens of competing lines, this only created more confusion. Some major stations displayed several clocks at once, each showing a different time for a different railway. Trains occasionally collided because engineers were operating on different standards. Scientists couldn’t coordinate astronomical observations because observers in different cities couldn’t agree on what time an event had occurred.

The world had built a modern transportation system on top of a medieval approach to time.

Fleming spent that long night in Ireland thinking. And then he spent the next several years doing something about it.

He proposed dividing the entire world into twenty-four time zones — one for each hour of the day — each spanning fifteen degrees of longitude. Within each zone, every clock would show the same time. Between zones, the difference would always be exactly one hour. The zones would be labeled alphabetically, A through Y, with G designating the zone aligned with Greenwich, England.

To prove the concept was real, not just theoretical, Fleming commissioned a custom pocket watch around 1880 — now held at the Smithsonian’s American History Museum. One side showed conventional 12-hour time. The other showed his new 24-hour “Cosmic Time” system, with alphabetical zone markers. He carried his solution in his pocket.

He spent years as an evangelist for the idea: presenting papers at international conferences, lobbying railway companies, and building a coalition of scientists, engineers, and government officials across the globe. In November 1883 — a day that became known as “The Day of Two Noons” — American and Canadian railways simultaneously synchronized their clocks to four standardized continental time zones. Some cities experienced noon twice that day as the old system gave way to the new.

The following year, forty-one delegates from twenty-five nations gathered in Washington, D.C., for the International Meridian Conference. After considerable debate, twenty-two nations voted to adopt the meridian passing through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England, as the global standard for zero degrees longitude — the foundation of the system we use today.

Fleming’s original dream of a single universal “Cosmic Time” was never adopted. But his framework of twenty-four hourly zones became the backbone of modern Coordinated Universal Time. His alphabetical zone labels survived too: in aviation and the military, “Zulu Time” — Z for zero meridian — remains the global standard.

The man who missed a train because of two wrong letters had given the world a common language for time itself.

Today, when you check what time it is in another country, when airlines synchronize international schedules, when financial markets trade across continents in real time — all of it traces back to one long, uncomfortable night in an Irish railway station, and a man who refused to accept that the problem was simply bad luck.

He was the wrong person to strand in a waiting room.

He had too much time to think.

1986. Nottingham, England.

Margaret Humphreys is a social worker. She is not famous. She has no political connections, no private funding, and no reason to believe that a single letter from a stranger in Australia is about to change her life forever.

The letter is from a woman who says that at the age of 4, she was placed on a boat by the British government and shipped to a children’s home in Australia. She was told her parents were dead. She grew up an orphan on the other side of the world.

Now she is an adult. She wants to know if any of her family is still out there.

Humphreys agrees to investigate. She expects to spend a few weeks searching records and confirming what the woman already suspects — that her parents are gone.

Instead, she finds the woman’s mother. Alive. Living less than an hour from Nottingham.

The woman’s parents were never dead. They were never even told where their child had been sent.

The Secret That Had Been Hidden in Plain Sight.

Humphreys begins pulling on the thread. What unravels is one of the most shocking government programmes in British history.

For over 100 years – from the 1860s all the way to 1970 – the British government and a network of charities and religious organisations had been systematically removing children from care homes and shipping them to Australia, Canada, and other Commonwealth nations. The children were told they were orphans being given a better life.

Most of them were not orphans. They had living parents. They had siblings still in England.

They had families who had surrendered them temporarily during times of poverty or illness, fully expecting to be reunited.

Nobody told the parents where their children went. Nobody told the children their parents were alive.

More than 130,000 children were transported. The youngest were as young as 3 years old.

Here’s what makes it worse, many of the institutions receiving these children in Australia were run by religious orders who used the children as cheap labour. Boys worked farm fields from before sunrise. Girls cleaned and cooked for institutions that kept them entirely cut off from the outside world. Some were denied any education at all. Investigators would later describe what happened in those institutions as “widespread and systematic sexual abuse.”

The children were told they were the sons and daughters of whores. That they were worthless.

That nobody back in England loved them or wanted them back.

Many of them believed it for the rest of their lives.

1987. Humphreys’ Living Room, Nottingham.

After traveling to Australia and posting newspaper advertisements asking for former child migrants to come forward, Humphreys is overwhelmed by the response. At first it is a trickle.

Then it becomes thousands.

She establishes the Child Migrants Trust – initially from her own home, with her husband Mervyn as her closest support – and registers it as a charity in both Australia and Britain.

She has no government backing. No institutional support. The organisations responsible for the scheme – including powerful church bodies and charities – are not remotely pleased to see her digging.

She faces legal pressure. She faces institutional stonewalling. Files go missing. Doors are closed. She is one social worker from Nottingham going up against organisations that have decades of experience in making things disappear.

She does not stop.

The Work.

For the next 23 years, Humphreys travels constantly between Nottingham, Western Australia, and Victoria, combing through emigration records, church ledgers, government archives, and institutional files that were never designed to be found by people like her.

She reunites more than 1,000 individuals with their biological families in those first decades alone. Every reunion is its own extraordinary story. Elderly parents meet children they last saw as toddlers. Brothers and sisters discover each other after 40 or 50 years of believing the other was gone. Middle-aged adults finally learn their own real names.

Some of those parents are in their 80s and 90s by the time Humphreys reaches them. Some die before she can bring their children home.

In 1993, the Australian government awards her the Medal of the Order of Australia – one of the country’s highest civilian honours – for her services on behalf of the child migrants.

In 1994, she publishes her full account in a book called Empty Cradles. It causes a national outcry in Britain.

The Apologies.

It takes 23 years of campaigning to force a government to say sorry.

In 2009, the Australian government issues a formal national apology to all former child migrants for the suffering caused by the scheme.

In 2010, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown stands before Parliament and delivers an official apology on behalf of the United Kingdom. He acknowledges the “misguided” programme that unjustly broke up thousands of families and caused immeasurable harm to the children caught inside it.

A few years later, Humphreys is appointed CBE – Commander of the British Empire. The same empire that once shipped children across the world to serve it.

The film Oranges and Sunshine, released in 2010 and starring Emily Watson as Humphreys, brings the story to a global audience for the very first time.

What She Found When She Started Pulling That Thread.

Margaret Humphreys was not a detective. She was not a barrister or a politician or a crusading journalist. She was a social worker who opened a letter and decided that the person inside it deserved to know the truth.

She found over 130,000 reasons why that decision mattered.

The Trust she built from her living room is still operating today – still reuniting families, still supporting survivors, still running offices in England and Australia. Because the work is not finished. Some of those stolen children are still searching. Some are still waiting.

1 letter. 1 social worker. 1 decision to follow the truth wherever it led.

Share this with someone who believes that ordinary people can change the world – because Margaret Humphreys proves it, 1 family at a time.

He played Wolverine. But most people who drink his coffee don’t know he founded the company—or why.

2009.Yirgacheffe, Ethiopia.

Hugh Jackman landed at a small airstrip in the highlands of southern Ethiopia.

He was 40 years old. He was the most famous Australian actor in the world. He’d played Wolverine in four X-Men films. He’d won a Tony Award on Broadway. He’d hosted the Academy Awards a few months earlier.

He was in Ethiopia as an ambassador for World Vision.

He’d come to make a short documentary about a community development project.

He hadn’t come to meet anyone in particular.

The Land Rover drove him and his wife Deborra-Lee Furness six hours into the highlands, to the Yirgacheffe region.

Yirgacheffe is the birthplace of coffee.

The Land Rover stopped at a small farm. Two hectares. The house had dirt floors and no electricity.

The farmer was 27 years old.

His name was Dukale.

He had a wife named Adanech and five children. His oldest son was five years old.

His name was Elias.

Hugh asked if he could spend the day working with Dukale.

Dukale said yes.

They started at dawn.

They planted seedlings together. They worked the soil. Dukale showed Hugh how a coffee tree grows. He showed him the careful shade-growing technique he used. He showed him the small drying patio where he laid the beans out to dry in the sun.

Hugh listened.

Dukale told him about the price of coffee.

Coffee farmers in Ethiopia received 1 to 2 percent of the final retail price of the coffee they grew.

The other 98 percent went to middlemen, exporters, roasters, and grocery chains.

A farmer like Dukale could work 12 hours a day for a year and still not have enough money to send his children to school.

Dukale told Hugh he had a dream.

He wanted Elias to be educated.

He wanted all five of his children to be educated.

Before Hugh left that evening, he and Dukale planted two more trees together.

They named them after Hugh’s children.

Oscar. Ava.

Hugh promised Dukale he would come back. He promised he would do something.

He didn’t know yet what.

He flew back to New York.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Dukale.

A few months later, he gave a speech at UN Climate Week. He stood in front of presidents and prime ministers and made a pleading case for the world’s coffee farmers.

He said the words “fair trade“ twenty-five times.

He told them about Dukale.

He flew home from the UN.

He realized a speech wasn’t enough.

In 2011, Hugh Jackman opened a small coffee shop in Tribeca, New York.

He called it Laughing Man Coffee & Tea.

He had one rule.

100 percent of his personal profits from the company would go to the Laughing Man Foundation.

The foundation would fund education, water wells, and agricultural training in coffee-growing communities.

The first community it would fund was Dukale’s.

The cafe bought Dukale’s beans directly. It paid him a fair-trade price.

The most popular blend on the menu was called Dukale’s Dream.

It still is.

In 2015, Hugh signed a partnership with Keurig.

Dukale’s blend went into K-Cups.

The coffee Dukale grew on his 2-hectare farm in the Ethiopian highlands started being brewed in homes across America.

By 2024, Laughing Man Coffee had grown into a national brand.

Two cafes in Manhattan. Bagged products in over 6,000 grocery stores. A wholesale program serving hundreds of restaurants and offices.

Every cent of Hugh’s personal profits has continued to go to the foundation.

The foundation has now funded education and infrastructure programs in seven countries.

It has helped over 1,000 coffee-farming families lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

It has built schools.

The trees Hugh and Dukale planted together in 2009 are now 16 years old.

They’re bearing fruit.

The coffee beans from the Oscar tree and the Ava tree—named after Hugh’s children—are sold in the Tribeca cafe.

Dukale himself is now 43 years old.

He’s expanded his farm. He’s bought more land. He’s opened his own cafe in his own town.

He’s built a larger house for his family with a tin roof and electricity.

His son Elias is in college.

Elias is the first member of the Dukale family to attend college in five generations.

Hugh Jackman has continued, in the 16 years since that afternoon in Yirgacheffe, to act, sing, and tour.

He returned as Wolverine in “Deadpool & Wolverine“ in July 2024. The film grossed $1.3 billion worldwide.

He won his second Tony in 2022.

He hasn’t been back to Ethiopia since 2009.

He’s said in interviews, more than once, that he’s been waiting for his own children to be old enough to travel with him to meet Dukale.

Oscar and Ava are now 25 and 19.

He’s told a reporter that the trip is on the calendar.

There are now two Laughing Man cafes in Manhattan.

The walls of both of them are decorated with photographs of Dukale and his family.

There are no photographs of Hugh.

He designed it that way.

Most of the customers who come in for a flat white in the morning don’t know that the cafe was founded by the man who played Wolverine.

They don’t need to know.

The coffee is excellent. The price is fair. The beans were grown by a farmer in the Ethiopian highlands who’s now able to send his children to school.

That’s enough.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself and remind myself it isn’t Kansas anymore–or wherever I came from way, way back, when I formed the belief that everyone shot straight from the hip, or at least straight.

Last week, one of my Advanced Class students said something which has bothered me ever since. It’s not that I haven’t heard it before–in fact, I’ve heard it much too often–but usually from business executives, and jaded ones at that.

The whole thing started when I commented that a number of songs on the radio recently have sounded quite a lot like another song called, “Old Time Rock & Roll.” The student defended them with the statement that they were making money from these clones. I suggested that integrity might enter the picture somewhere (he was a new student, so I was more tactful than I might have been on his 4th week). To this he responded with the line in question, “Integrity doesn’t pay the bills.”

First of all, I can understand the attention a person might have on paying the bills, especially in this economy. But I feel it’s such an incredibly dangerous viewpoint for an artist to have, I wanted to address it–or undress it–publicly. The student who said it is talented and bright, and I don’t think he actually embraces this as a heartfelt philosophy. I think it was an offhanded remark. But since he said it, here goes.

Check out the definition of “integrity.” It’s not just honesty or incorruptibility. It’s also “wholeness,” “soundness.” It’s in the writer’s nature to put things together to form a whole–and that’s the main meaning of “integrate.” I’ve observed many writers–colleagues, mentors, students–some hugely successful, some total unknowns. But one thing I’ve noticed is that the ones who are doing it because they love it and have something to express are generally the ones being successful at it. The ones who got into it to make money usually never did. It’s sort of like a guy who takes a girl out just to go to bed with her and can’t figure out why he never gets to.

It’s not that you’re getting punished for being mercenary, or anything else so linearly Puritan. It’s simply that you’re coming from the wrong place and that’s where your attention will be–on the money, not on the music. You’ll make decisions based on that; your passion will be centered somewhere away from the song. It’s like trying to get turned on by the person you married for money. You’ve created your own prison.

Now somewhere, some songwriter is reading this who has made a lot of money with his/her art and he/you may be smiling. But think back to when you first started writing. Weren’t you doing it for the love of the process, the heat of the communication, the thrill of the music? And when your attention is on writing “something that will sell,“ do you like what you come up with as well as you do when you write because you really want to say something or get that musical idea on tape?

I have heard my producer, Nik Venet, say that even though McDonald’s may be the biggest restaurant chain, one would not ask to meet and compliment the chef there. Similarly, “Citizen Kane” never made its investment back, whereas “Love Story” made millions. But which one do we remember?

In my own experience, songs I wrote from that burning desire to communicate were always my most successful copyrights. And here I’m talking about songwriting–not assignment writing for films or records, because that’s a whole different subject. They are commissioned anyway. I’m referring to those songs that are an extension of who you are as an artist–that you would perform yourself, proudly, if you sing.

“Integrity doesn’t pay the bills“ may be true. But neither does chasing trends, writing at the radio, ripping off other songs, and focusing on writing something that will make a lot of money. To make a lot of money, it has to sell a lot or be played a lot or both. That means lots of people have to hear it and buy it. That means it has to move people when they hear it. Now, if you think you’re good enough to write something that’s going to move all those people, while you’ve got your attention and your passion over there on your bank statement, be my guest. Give it a try. But your craft had better be unbelievably good to pull that one off. And between the time you start and the time your craft is THAT good, there’s a lot of dues paying and songwriting you’ll have to do. So you might just as well do it for the love of it. Maybe you’ll even discover in the process that integrity has fewer bills to pay.

© 1995 Harriet Schock

Harriet Schock wrote the Grammy-nominated standard, “Ain’t No Way To Treat A Lady,” and co-wrote “First Time On A Ferris Wheel,” plus many other songs for records and films. She has seven solo CDs as an artist for which she wrote all the songs. She co-wrote all the songs for the “The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking” “The Secret Garden” and many other films and TV shows. Harriet teaches Songwriting Classes via Zoom and will return at some point to to teaching around her dining room table. She provides One-on-One Private Consultations, delivers her Online Songwriting Course as well as Song Critiques via e-mail, and teaches at selected Seminars and Workshops. She also showcases songwriters in L.A. as well as performing with her six-piece band. Currently a documentary about her called Hollywood Town – the Harriet Schock story is now available at Fawesome.tv. https://fawesome.tv/movies/10692250/hollywood-town-the-harriet-schock-story

Harriet’s book, Becoming Remarkable: For Songwriters and Those Who Love Songs, can be purchased on her Author page at her HarrietSchock.com.

(Tom: The older I get, the more this principle appeals to me. No idea why. 🙂 )

Centuries ago in Japan, there was a harsh custom said to have come from a local ruler’s decree. Once people reached the age of sixty, they were taken deep into the mountains and left there to die. The ruler believed the elderly were simply “extra mouths to feed” and no longer useful to society.

One day, two brothers carried their aging father up a steep mountain trail. As they walked, they kept hearing a strange cracking sound behind them. Eventually, they realized their father was quietly snapping branches and dropping them along the path.

“Why are you doing that?” the brothers asked.

The old man replied gently, “I’m making sure my sons can find their way home.”

Even as he was being abandoned, he was still thinking about his children.

By sunset, they finally reached the remote mountain peak known as Obasute. The brothers left their father beneath a large tree and began planning their trip home. Instead of taking the same trail back, they decided to explore a different route and enjoy the scenery on the way down.

At first, the unfamiliar path seemed easy enough. But before long, it twisted through the dark forest, dipping downward before climbing sharply upward again. Night fell quickly. Wolves howled in the distance, and owls called from the trees. Though the brothers tried to stay brave, fear soon overtook them.

That was when they remembered the broken branches their father had left behind.

Ashamed of themselves, they hurried back to the place where they had left him. For the first time, they truly understood how deeply their father loved them and how much care he still showed, even in his final moments.

Moonlight filtered through the trees as they found the old man sitting quietly beneath the same tree. The brothers admitted they were lost and begged him to help them find the correct trail home. Their father quickly recognized the proper path and pointed them in the right direction.

But now the brothers could no longer bear the thought of leaving him behind.

Filled with guilt and compassion, they pleaded with their father to return home with them. They decided they would rather disobey the ruler than abandon the man who had spent his entire life caring for them.

The old man resisted at first. He warned them that breaking the law could bring severe punishment. But the brothers refused to listen. They lifted him onto their shoulders and carried him safely back home.

Once there, they secretly prepared a hidden room beneath the floorboards and sheltered their father there. Every day they brought him food and sat with him so he would never feel alone.

About a year later, the ruler issued a challenge to everyone in his lands: create a rope made entirely of ashes.

People struggled day and night, but no one could solve the impossible task.

When the brothers told their hidden father about the problem, he smiled and said the answer was simple. He instructed them to soak straw in salt water, twist it tightly into a rope, and then carefully burn it. The result was a delicate rope made from ash that still held its shape.

The ruler was amazed.

Soon after, he presented another challenge: thread a string through every curve of a spiral seashell.

Again, the brothers turned to their father for wisdom.

The old man asked for an ant, a long thread, and a few grains of cooked rice. He tied the thread to the ant and placed it inside the shell after making a tiny opening at the pointed end. Then he placed the rice near the shell’s wider opening.

Drawn by the scent of food, the ant slowly traveled through every twist of the shell until it emerged on the other side, pulling the thread behind it.

Once again, the ruler was astonished.

“There are truly wise people living in this land,” he declared.

At that point, the brothers confessed the truth: the wisdom had come from their elderly father, the very kind of person society had cast aside.

The ruler was deeply moved.

“Older people are a treasure of wisdom,” he proclaimed.

From that day forward, the cruel practice of abandoning the elderly in the mountains was forbidden. The brothers were rewarded for their courage and devotion to their father.

This old Japanese story carries a message that still matters today in both the United States and Canada. Too often, modern society measures people only by productivity, speed, or physical strength. But older generations carry something equally valuable — experience, resilience, practical knowledge, and perspective that can’t be learned overnight.

Respect for elders begins at home. Children learn how to treat grandparents by watching how their parents treat them. If kindness, patience, and appreciation are modeled in the family, those values are usually passed down to the next generation.

Many families today don’t abandon elderly relatives physically, but emotional neglect can be just as painful. Some seniors may live in the same house as their family and still spend most of their time isolated and ignored.

This story reminds us that aging does not erase a person’s worth. In many ways, the wisdom of older generations becomes even more valuable with time.

“Find something you’re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.”
Julia Child – Chef (1912-2004)