OutsideIn

OutsideIn Outside In is a transformative Education company, embracing empowerment and deep learning.

A few years ago I was working with a group of students in mainland China, all around fourteen. I asked them what the big...
14/07/2026

A few years ago I was working with a group of students in mainland China, all around fourteen. I asked them what the biggest stress in their lives was. The exams, they said, straight away.

So I asked why. They didn't feel prepared, didn't feel they knew enough. So I suggested the obvious: why not form study groups, help each other out, cover each other's weak spots?
Their answer stopped me. "We've been told we're not allowed to do that."

They're marked on a bell curve. It doesn't only matter how well you do — it matters how well you do compared to everyone else. Helping a classmate is helping a rival. They'd been told that explicitly.

Is it any wonder so many young people feel isolated, under pressure, with no one to turn to?

I've been thinking about this since last week, when the best part of a whole programme turned out to be twenty minutes in a rock pool — kids building a dam out of stones, talking, laughing, nobody performing for anyone. Just being kids.

So I've written a piece about the honesty of what we actually offer young people on these programmes — and why the part we tend to file as "downtime" might be the part that matters most.

Read it here 👉https://www.outside-in.online/_files/ugd/7d0f1f_baad20bf2c804ddd8c9976cd2e287ed0.pdf

Last week I spent a few days working with a group of teenagers.The programme had been sold as the be-all and end-all. Th...
12/07/2026

Last week I spent a few days working with a group of teenagers.

The programme had been sold as the be-all and end-all. The bee's knees. Leadership, resilience, independence, growth — all the words that make a proposal sound worth the money. And there was real design behind it: good staff, good intentions, a plan for every session.

But here's what I actually watched happen.

The moment we reached the pool below the falls, the objectives melted away. They sat in the water. They splashed. A few started stacking stones into a dam and laughed every time it collapsed. Others just talked — no phones, no pressure, no one performing for anyone. For a while, nobody was becoming a leader. They were just being kids.

And it was the best part of the week.

It's left me with a question I keep coming back to: how honest are the adults — the organisations, the schools, the parents, and yes, me — about what actually delivers the value on these programmes? Because more often than I'd like to admit, it isn't the outcome we sold. It's the rock pool we quietly filed as downtime. It's connection — to yourself, to the people around you, to the world you're standing in.

I'm writing about this properly in the next few days.

Quick one for a Friday.Who would you rather have teaching your staff first aid: someone qualified twenty years ago, or s...
10/07/2026

Quick one for a Friday.

Who would you rather have teaching your staff first aid: someone qualified twenty years ago, or someone qualified last month?

A lot of procurement processes answer that automatically — they ask how long you've held the certificate, and longer wins. But think about it. The person qualified last month has just been assessed on every current guideline and every current bit of thinking. The person qualified twenty years ago might have kept right up to date… or might not have touched it since.

Time-since-certificate tells you when someone was assessed. Not how good they are now.
And there's a sting in the tail. If everyone vets this way, nobody newly qualified ever gets work — no work, no experience; no experience, no work. We shut out the very people most current with the field.

Experience matters enormously. But it isn't the same thing as a date on a certificate.

So — genuine question — if you were vetting for real competence and currency, what would you actually ask?

If this strikes a chord, I've written a more in-depth piece on it here 👉https://www.outside-in.online/_files/ugd/7d0f1f_0b0c0c1794a84e84b4e927c3c9174b5f.pdf

Ever watched a young person lose five hours to a video game without blinking — then struggle to sit still for five minut...
08/07/2026

Ever watched a young person lose five hours to a video game without blinking — then struggle to sit still for five minutes of "proper" work?

It's easy to blame screens or attention spans. But something more interesting is going on. The game is creating the conditions for what psychologists call Flow — that state of complete absorption where time seems to disappear and you're fully in what you're doing.

The good news: Flow isn't magic. It's a set of conditions you can design for. Games do it on purpose. So can a well-run outdoor experience — when the challenge is pitched just right, not too easy and not too hard, and people can feel their own progress as they go.

That's the heart of what we do. And when it's working, the best thing a facilitator can do is stop talking and let the experience do the teaching.

Read the full article here: https://www.outside-in.online/articles

FacebookHere's a question worth sitting with.If a risk assessment gives you a score of 8 — is that acceptable?The honest...
05/07/2026

Facebook

Here's a question worth sitting with.
If a risk assessment gives you a score of 8 — is that acceptable?
The honest answer: it depends who you ask. Add a bit of fatigue, some time pressure, or someone keen to push ahead, and that number shifts to mean whatever is convenient in the moment.

That's not a risk assessment. That's a conversation waiting to happen.

Colour is harder to argue with. Everyone understands what a red light means. Nobody has an instinctive feel for the difference between a 7 and a 9.

The system I use runs five levels — green through to black. Green means proceed. Black means absolutely not, under any circumstances, full stop. The colours in between carry clear, shared meaning that doesn't need translating.

Combined with a bow-tie risk model — which maps threats and consequences around a central hazard before any rating is applied and tells you what to do if something does happen — it gives you a process that's both rigorous and readable.

The system doesn't make the decision for you. It makes the decision harder to avoid.

What risk assessment tools do you use in your practice — and do they hold up under pressure?

There's an argument that comes up regularly in climbing education circles.Why teach a knot that can fail? Just teach the...
01/07/2026

There's an argument that comes up regularly in climbing education circles.

Why teach a knot that can fail? Just teach the correct one.
The problem: all knots can fail. Figure of eights, bowlines, clove hitches — every one of them has a context where it performs poorly. There is no perfect knot. There are only knots that are better in certain situations than others.

And if you only teach one — without explaining why, without context, without the reasoning behind it — you're not teaching people to climb safely. You're teaching them a habit that they'll apply regardless of whether the situation calls for it.

The same pattern shows up in organisations, teams, education settings. Tell people what to do without explaining why, and you get compliance — not thinking. And when something changes, they don't adapt. They just keep repeating the only thing they were ever taught.

Teach the reasons why. What type of rope. What direction is the load. What's the situation. That context is where real understanding lives.

Promote knowledge. Not less of it.

What's the most useful "reason why" someone taught you early in your career?

A climber I know taps every hold before she commits to it.She started outdoors — loose rock, genuine hazard, good reason...
24/06/2026

A climber I know taps every hold before she commits to it.

She started outdoors — loose rock, genuine hazard, good reason. Moved indoors and kept doing it anyway. Never really thought about stopping.

We got talking about it recently. She knew exactly why the habit had stuck.
Because a habit you only apply sometimes isn't a habit. It's a task you have to remember.
And the problem with tasks you have to remember is that you forget them when you're tired. Or distracted. Or under a bit of pressure. Exactly the moments when the habit would have helped most.

Consistency isn't about being rigid or robotic. It's about taking the decision off the table entirely. When something is always done, it just gets done — and your attention goes to everything else that actually needs it.

The same logic applies way beyond climbing. The diet that works three days a week. The check-in with your team that only happens when something goes wrong. The practice that appears when you feel motivated and disappears when you don't.

Any habit is compounded by regularity. And undermined by randomness.

What's a habit you've kept long past the original reason for it — and been glad you did?

It's been a busy year for learning — and that's exactly how I like it.Between new qualifications and recertifications, 2...
20/06/2026

It's been a busy year for learning — and that's exactly how I like it.

Between new qualifications and recertifications, 2026 has included everything from Wilderness First Aid and international resuscitation guidelines, to risk management, neurodiversity coaching, marine licensing and a drone recert.

Some of it was genuinely new territory. Some of it was making sure what I already knew still reflects the current best practice.
That distinction matters. A certificate you earned five years ago and haven't revisited isn't a guarantee of anything. Guidelines change. Research moves. Better approaches emerge.

The outdoor and experiential education sector isn't immune to that. If anything, because the stakes involve real environments and real people, staying current is more important here than in most fields.

So this is what that looks like in practice. Not a highlight reel — just the work.

What professional development have you done this year that's shifted how you think or practice?

17/06/2026

Came across a comment from a US Congresswoman, Suzanne Bonamici, that summed up something I think about a lot.
She pointed out that subjects like theatre, art and the humanities aren't seen as "useful" for the workplace. But they're exactly where people build confidence, communication, creativity and the ability to work with others — skills that turn out to matter more than almost anything else.

We're quick to judge an education or a career by its immediate payoff. What does it earn you. How fast does it pay off.
But some of the best things humans have ever done — in culture, in science, in how we live together — came from people who didn't take the strictly logical, strictly profitable path.

That's worth remembering next time someone questions the value of getting kids outdoors, on a stage, or into something that doesn't show up neatly on a spreadsheet.

What's a subject or experience that shaped you in ways you didn't expect at the time?

17/06/2026

Came across a comment from a US Congresswoman, Suzanne Bonamici, that summed up something I think about a lot.
She pointed out that subjects like theatre, art and the humanities aren't seen as "useful" for the workplace. But they're exactly where people build confidence, communication, creativity and the ability to work with others — skills that turn out to matter more than almost anything else.
We're quick to judge an education or a career by its immediate payoff. What does it earn you. How fast does it pay off.
But some of the best things humans have ever done — in culture, in science, in how we live together — came from people who didn't take the strictly logical, strictly profitable path.
That's worth remembering next time someone questions the value of getting kids outdoors, on a stage, or into something that doesn't show up neatly on a spreadsheet.
What's a subject or experience that shaped you in ways you didn't expect at the time?

Address

Hong Kong
00000

Telephone

+85297099504

Website

, , ,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when OutsideIn posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The School

Send a message to OutsideIn:

Shortcuts

Featured

Share

Category