Simply Better Living

NVIDIA and the Danger of Settling Too Soon I am not expecting many readers of SIMPLY BETTER LIVING to start a semiconductor company this week. Nevertheless, the extraordinary story of NVIDIA has something to say to all of us, especially those reaching an age when life is supposedly meant to be settling down. NVIDIA began in 1993 when three engineers met in a booth at a Denny’s restaurant in California. They believed that computers were going to become increasingly visual and that this would require a new kind of technology. It was a bold idea. Unfortunately, their first attempt was based on the wrong technology. The wider computer industry moved in a different direction, their expensive new product became almost useless and the young company came dangerously close to collapse. Even its important contract with the Japanese gaming company Sega was built around the wrong system. This is where the story becomes particularly interesting. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s chief executive, told Sega th...

What nobody tells you about homesickness.    If you've been following this series, you'll know that we've already talked about starting over, learning new languages and building a life rather than simply planning a move. There's one part of moving abroad, however, that almost nobody prepares you for. Homesickness. Not the dramatic kind you see in films. The quiet, unexpected kind. The kind that sneaks up on you when you're least expecting it. Mine arrived one ordinary evening in Berlin. After a long day at work, I came home tired and hungry. Without really thinking about it, I suddenly found myself craving my favourite comfort food from childhood. Baked beans on toast. Not just any baked beans on toast. Toast spread generously with Marmite, topped with a slice of mature Cheddar cheese, and then covered with hot baked beans. To most of the world, that probably sounds completely ridiculous. To me, it tasted like home. There was just one problem. Back in...

A new country can change your surroundings. But only you can change yourself.  If you read my last post, Starting Over , you'll know that I argued we don't have to spend our lives living by assumptions that other people have handed to us. Sometimes we really can choose a different path. This article is the first in a short series about one particular way of starting over: moving abroad. Having now lived in Britain, Germany and Spain, I've learned that changing countries can be one of life's greatest adventures. It can broaden our horizons, introduce us to wonderful people and force us to grow in ways we never imagined. But it also taught me one of the most important lessons I've ever learned. Changing countries is much easier than changing yourself. When my husband and I finally decided to leave Germany after almost sixteen years and begin a new chapter of our lives in Spain, it felt like the culmination of months of planning. The EasyJet flight landed in Mála...

It's never too late to question the assumptions that shape your life   A friend once told me a story about a mother who always cut the end off a roast before putting it into the oven every Sunday. One day her daughter asked why. "I don't know," she replied. "Because my mother always did it." Curious, the daughter asked her grand-mother. The answer was simple. "We had a very small oven." What had begun as a practical solution had quietly become a family tradition. Three generations were cutting perfectly good meat from their roast for a reason that no longer existed. We smile at stories like that, but many of us do exactly the same thing with our lives. We follow rules that nobody consciously chose. We accept limitations that may once have been true but no longer are. We inherit assumptions about what people like us can do, where people like us belong, and what is possible at our age, income level or stage of life. Sometimes the most important quest...