Why break convention?
...let's get this substack up and running.
Most of what we do is inherited.
Ways of working.
Definitions of success.
Ideas about productivity, ambition, creativity and progress.
We don’t choose them. It’s like we absorb them.
They arrive through our education, culture, platforms, algorithms and well-meaning advice. Over time they harden into rules. Defaults. Expectations. Things we stop questioning because everyone else seems fine with them.
Break Convention exists to question those defaults.
Not because I believe everything is broken. Because very little is examined. It’s what I’ve been doing in business now for 2 1/2 decades and I guess with/in music for longer. This is something my long-haired worldly-challenged teenage self would like me to write.
In business, we’re told growth is the goal, scale is the prize and speed is a virtue. That if something isn’t expanding, it’s failing. That visibility equals value. That busy means important.
In music, creativity is expected to be pure but profitable, passionate but sustainable, authentic but optimised. Art is encouraged, right up until it becomes inconvenient or uncommercial.
In life, we’re encouraged to optimise ourselves. To be more productive, more efficient, more available, more impressive. To turn curiosity into content and rest into something we have to earn.
None of this is accidental.
These conventions serve systems.
They don’t always serve people.
Well. Fuck that.
Break Convention isn’t here to provide answers or replacements. It’s not a how-to guide for doing things differently. It feels like I’m challenging myself as much as anything. It’s a place to slow down and ask better questions.
Why does this feel compulsory?
Who benefits from it staying this way?
What happens if I don’t play along?
What have we lost by normalising this?
Some of the writing here will be reflective. I’m hoping some of it will get uncomfortable. Some of it may contradict things I’ve believed, taught, or practised myself. Hell, from post to post I may contradict myself. I hope not, but if I do, cut me slack. I’m learning as I progress. Doing.
If I do, I’ll just pretend it’s intentional anyway.
This is not thought leadership. It’s not self-help. It’s not a brand.
It’s my body of work built around paying attention.
To tension. To doubt. To the quiet moments where something doesn’t sit right but we usually move past it.
Break Convention is for people who are no longer interested in performing success, optimising their identity, or pretending that the default path fits everyone.
You don’t need to reject everything.
You don’t need to rebel loudly.
You just need to be willing to ask whether the rules you’re following are still yours.
That’s where this starts. Thanks for reading.