Friday Mindset #173

Happy Friday!

Right folks, last one before the holidays - next edition comes on Friday 9th January.

The tree is up in reception, the kids are getting flighty and you’ve been Whamageddoned at the Christmas markets, where you spent fifteen quid on a pie the size of a water biscuit. But console yourself. Break out a sachet of dishwater hot chocolate, brew up, and let’s take ten minutes while everyone else tries driving home through the rain-drenched madness.

Time to dive in…

Something we're reading...

First, a quick one for subscribers, to go with last week’s powerpoint about the 2026 Double-Your-Luck Challenge. If only we’d seen this in time! It’s an episode of Curious Cases featuring Richard Wiseman discussing his luck research. Well worth a tutorial listen before setting the challenge! Here it is:

And for this week’s read, we’ve got a similarly New-Yearsy feel.

It’s the work of a writer and podcaster, the University of Michigan’s Brad Stulberg. Stulberg’s interest is in public health, but not of the eat-your-greens-and-get-some-sleep variety. Instead, Stulberg focuses on the potentially damaging effects of technology. (Subscribers, you may recognise him from the powerpoint exploring the impact of Chat GTP use on Essay Writing.)

In this piece, he explores the idea of chaos, arguing that some people subconsciously but deliberately invite chaos into their lives. As soon as we read this, we were reminded of the great Steven Pressfield’s observations on resistance (the force that stops us doing our best work) in one of Martin’s favourite books - The War of Art. Pressfield wrote this over twenty years ago, but it’s timeless. Appropriate for this time of year, too. I bet we all know students from families like this:

Stulberg is surely aware of Pressfield’s work - you can feel the influence in his expression of ideas - and he makes a great case for banishing chaos from our lives in 2026. This is a terrific quick tutorial read…

Portal Talk...

We’ve given our Student Activities a serious glow-up in the VESPA Portal. The summer update has now had its own makeover – it’s smoother, cleaner and much easier for staff to assign activities and for students to build their own bespoke programme. Originally, MYVESPA activities were auto-prescribed from students’ VESPA scores. Helpful, but a bit… “computer says do this.” To build more independent, self-aware learners, we’ve introduced Search by Problem:

• Students start with the problem (“I leave everything to the last minute”, “I don’t know how to revise”)

• They then choose targeted activities designed to tackle that specific issue.

• In other words: less prescription, more ownership.

We’ve now rolled this Search by Problem engine out beyond MYVESPA into:

• Tutor Resources – making it easier to plan sharper, needs-led tutorials

• VESPA Videos – so staff and students can find the right clip for the right conversation

We’ve also added a bit of gamification to the MYVESPA page:

• Students earn points and prizes for completing activities

• No more “click to complete” without thinking – they must engage properly, reflect, and submit before they can finish and score.

🎥 See it in action:

If you’d like a quick tour (10–15 minutes), use the link below to book a demo – we’ll walk you through how this could work with your students and staff.

Something to try...

We’ve been doing some work recently with a college who wanted our help with high grades. Their students just weren’t getting the outcomes towards the top of the assessment criteria; kids were stalling a couple of grades below. Why?

We’re in a very lucky position - we’ve visited hundreds of schools and colleges here and abroad, and we’ve had time and space to spot the kind of patterns that are hard to see when your head’s just in one context and institution. So we put together seven things teachers should be doing to raise high grades, and delivered it to staff.

And we thought we’d share it with you this week…

Subscribe to our premium content to read the rest.