Start Here

New here? Welcome. Slowly Better is for people who want to live a little more intentionally — without overhauling everything at once. Start wherever feels most relevant to you right now. There’s no right order — just pick the thing that’s been quietly nagging at you.

I’m Dave. I’ve been figuring this stuff out slowly, mostly by getting things wrong first. These are the posts I’d have wanted to find when I was starting out.

Not sure where to begin? Take the two-minute quiz and I’ll point you at the right starting post.

Mind and Calm

Most of us are running on autopilot. This pillar is about slowing down, getting clear on what actually matters, and building the quiet habits that make everything else easier. No retreat required.

• Why I stopped trying to optimise my mornings
• A simple approach to mindfulness for sceptics
• How I found my values — and why it changed everything
• The life pie — a brutally honest look at where your time actually goes
• Why gratitude feels silly until it doesn’t

Money and Freedom

This isn’t about extreme frugality or racing to retire super early. It’s about intentional living and building a calmer, clearer relationship with money — spending on what matters, wasting less on what doesn’t, and quietly building something that lasts.

• The slow path to financial freedom — why boring works
• Buy it once, buy it right
• From macadamia nuts to index funds — my money journey
• Spending plans vs budgets — why one feels like freedom and the other feels like a prison
• The day I did the coffee maths — and lifestyle creep finally made sense

Body and Home

Health without obsession, food worth eating, and a home worth coming back to. The everyday stuff — how we move, what we cook, where we live — turns out to matter more than we think.

• Cooking simply and well — what I’ve learned after years of average meals
• Why I started gardening and what it taught me about everything else
• Making a home you actually want to be in
• Slow travel — why staying put might be the best holiday you ever take
• Why sleep is the habit that turbocharges other habits