Last month, I published a three part interview with ex-Googler, neuroscientist and author Anne-Laure Le Cunff.

Anne-Laure is a good example of someone holding down a job (she's a Research Associate at King’s College London) while building her community, writing her newsletter and travelling the speaking circuit on the side.

Very inspiring.

And not too dissimilar from what I’m shooting for myself.

I’ve interviewed trailblazers like Anne-Laure, Paul Millerd and Jenny Wood for many reasons. Not least to get a feel for how they think, to ask them the questions I’m asking myself and to shine a light on the fact that designing your work around your life (and not vice versa) is becoming more and more common.

That’s the context for one of the questions I asked Anne-Laure:

You’re very open about sharing your journey publicly. Do you ever worry that this might impact your professional reputation?

I won’t repeat Anne-Laure’s answer here. If you like, you can go back and read the interview.

But I will share a short story I read on a similar topic in Anne-Laure’s book Tiny Experiments about a mathematician called Tim Gowers.

Tim’s a bona fide boffin by anyone’s standards. 

Rewind the clock to 2009 and Tim was tearing his hair out over a particularly knotty maths problem. 

So what did Tim do?

He opened up the comments on his blog and invited feedback on his problem from his readers.

This is quite the departure from the usual stereotype of the solitary maths nerd who spends all day in his basement talking to his calculator.

But it worked.

Over the next month, twenty-seven mathematicians submitted more than EIGHT HUNDRED comments, ideas and suggestions about the knotty problem that Tim was trying to solve.

Thirty-seven days later, Tim shared an update. 

He hadn’t just solved his problem. He'd also solved an even harder problem that included the original problem as one slice of a much bigger, tastier pie (or should that be pi?).

I have to say, this story has got my dusty cogs turning. 

And I’m going to try something similar myself.

Here’s the puzzle I'm trying to solve:

I want more interaction with my newsletter readers (yes, that means this newsletter and that means you). 

I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts about work and life, the questions you’re wrestling with and how you're figuring out the answers.

And I’d like your ideas on how I can do this.

Could I be more open about the fact that I want more interaction with you?

Could I ask for your questions more directly?

Could I talk more about the benefits of sharing your thoughts?

If you have any bright or not so bright ideas about how I could cultivate more interaction with you and my readers more generally, I’m all ears. 

Over to you. I look forward to hearing from you.