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Field Notes
A stream of raw reflections and unfiltered ideas, exclusive to our community.
14. Are We Allowed To Change Our Minds?
I woke up some moments ago to a post on my B-School alumni group about how some companies have changed their minds regarding climate change and some CEOs quietly made changes despite screaming at press briefings to do quite the opposite. I was barely 30 seconds into the video when I decided to write immediately. You see.. lately I have been in a place of intense self awareness where I kind of... meta view my own mind and I am realising that i think too much. In the process of
Adetobi L.
Aug 284 min read


13. I Watched a Video About What We’re Losing - On the Very Platform We’re Losing It To
When my child was small and the internet went down we landed on PBS Kids because it was the only channel coming through clearly. A man in a cardigan was talking directly to the camera. Slowly. Deliberately. As though the child watching was the only person in the world and had all the time in the world to be spoken to. The child fell asleep. We moved on. Years later I watched a video on YouTube and understood what I had briefly witnessed. Fred Rogers spent thirty three (33) ye
Adetobi L.
Jul 145 min read


12. Screen 5
I walked into Ebonylife Place with regrets. My friend had chosen this location and I was questioning her judgment in real time. There was no parking. I had ended up on the road outside, making peace with my decision, wondering if the spicy chicken wrap we had planned to grab first was even going to be worth all of this. We had specifically chosen this Ebonylife because there were no flyers anywhere about celebrity activity. No signs. No buzz. We thought it would be quiet. We
Adetobi L.
May 214 min read


11. The Reverse Log
I own so many to-do tools it is almost embarrassing. There is a journal called the Anti Planner, which is supposed to help people who struggle to get things done actually get things done. So essentially it is a planner. I also have annual planners, daily planners, weekly planners. Two prayer planners, both opened with good intentions, both abandoned somewhere around page four. If I stacked everything together I am talking about six or seven of them, sitting with me across the
Adetobi L.
May 194 min read


10. I Cannot Put My Name On Something I Do Not Believe
I have been thinking about the Lebanese man. Not a specific person. A composite. The businessman who arrived on shores that were not his, built something, failed at parts of it, kept going, passed it to his children, who passed it to theirs. What I keep trying to locate is the source of that fearlessness. Because it is not recklessness. He is not careless. He just does not seem to need permission from anywhere outside himself before he moves. I have spent a lot of my life wai
Adetobi L.
May 136 min read


09. The Food Never Reaches The Mouth
This Ramadan I kept watching the same thing happen. An AI generated character would lift food toward their mouth and then the shot would cut. Every time. The food never actually arrived. The Milo sachet sat on the table looking so perfect - it had no creases in the packaging. The Terra crayfish danced. The air fresheners glided across the screen. Nobody ate anything. Nobody touched anything. Everything was central, symmetrical, slightly too… still. I noticed it immediately. A
Adetobi L.
Apr 253 min read


08. The Sparkling Water Problem
There was a machine at my hotel in Paris. It was at the breakfast station, just sitting there among the pastries and the fruit, and it dispensed sparkling water. Not from a bottle. From itself. You pressed something and out came cold, carbonated, lightly flavoured water that tasted like someone had finally figured out what water was supposed to be. I stood there probably longer than was reasonable for someone who was supposed to be getting breakfast. By the time I got back to
Adetobi L.
Apr 185 min read


07. What Are We Actually Trying To Become
I spent almost two hours in a waiting room once, holding documents I had not been told I could read. The meeting was with the head of the then Marina Securities. My boss needed certain papers and I had been sent to collect them. That was the entirety of my brief. Go there, wait, collect, come back. So I sat in that reception and I waited, and I did what I always do when I do not have enough information. I turned it over. I tried to assemble the picture from the fragments I ha
Adetobi L.
Apr 115 min read


06. The Number Said 278
I am someone who reads rooms for a living. Not in a mystical way. In the way that anyone who has spent enough time presenting to people learns to do. You watch the face of the person in the third row who crossed their arms twenty minutes ago. You notice when someone stops taking notes. You feel the energy shift in a way you cannot always name but you know, and you adjust. You slow down, you find a different entry point, you make eye contact with the person who looks lost and
Adetobi L.
Apr 14 min read


05. The Smell Isn’t On The Listing
This week, someone asked me what it’s like to live in my estate. I gave her my honest review. She listened carefully, then told me she had heard the complete opposite from someone else. She was polite about it, genuinely considering both accounts. Yet, the conversation lingered in my mind, much like certain small things that carry deeper meanings. Because here is what nobody tells you when you are researching where to live in Lagos. There is a house just outside my estate. It
Adetobi L.
Mar 215 min read


04. Mr. Emeka has what you’re looking for.
Two slightly unsettling things happened this week. Not the dramatic kind of unsettling. More like a quiet nudge. The kind that makes you put your phone down for a second and stare at nothing. A vibrant market stall brimming with colorful fabrics and diverse goods, arranged in a lively, densely packed display under a patterned canopy. The first one came from watching people move between AI tools - which I wrote about earlier this week. What I’ve noticed is that everyone seems
Adetobi L.
Mar 154 min read


03. Finish What's on Your Plate
Call it trauma, but as a child I was always scolded for not finishing my food. --- My mum would make me sit there through the tears until it was mostly gone. For her, the sign of a healthy child was a chubby child who ate everything on their plate, even if they didn’t serve that quantity for themselves. The rule was simple: finish what is in front of you. You don’t waste food. You don’t leave the table. You finish it. It’s funny how these things stay with you. Because lately
Adetobi L.
Mar 93 min read


02. The Mountain of Rice
Having been a chubby child with people pulling my cheeks at every turn and telling me how much they loved them (I hated the cheek pulling by the way, it hurt so much), I grew up watching my weight like a hawk. If I ever dared to stop checking the scale for a while, a family event would roll around and some aunt or cousin would comment on how I had “added weight” and needed to watch it. So the scale became a quiet companion in my life. When I reflect on those years now, I have
Adetobi L.
Mar 74 min read


01. The Iroko Strategy
Nine years ago I entered what I now call my “shut up and build” phase. Long before Covid, I had already begun withdrawing from most social circles. I stopped talking about what I was building and started working quietly instead. Someone once told me something that stayed with me. If a man plants an iroko tree in his backyard, the day will come when you will finally notice it. And by then, it will be too late to cut it down. Majestic Iroko tree stretches skyward with the sun'
Adetobi L.
Feb 282 min read
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