About
The man in the study.
Face Dragons is written by one person, from one desk. This page says who, and why.
My dragons have had names like inaction, weakness and emptiness, and for years this site organised itself around facing them.
Face Dragons is written by one person: me, Gregory J. Gaynor. I've run my life on GTD for twenty years, spent the best part of two decades living and working in Asia, and I've been training martial arts since I was six. These days I lead AI development for a multinational firm, which means the thing I'd been doing privately for decades, building systems that make a life run, somehow became my day job.
Four threads
Where it comes from.
事
Twenty years of GTD
I’ve run my life on Getting Things Done for twenty years, long enough to have built my own task manager in Bash and a workout planner that argues with a database. These days an AI reads the system too, and that’s most of what I write about now: which tools survive, which become unnecessary, and what’s left for the human to do.
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Two decades in Asia
I left England for China at twenty-one and stayed the best part of two decades: Beijing mostly, with long stretches in Thailand, Nepal, India, Laos and Cambodia. I worked in IT for a multinational, then ran a corporate-training consultancy in Beijing with a team of sixteen, coaching people through jobs, careers and the occasional life.
Huo Yuanjia’s memorial park, Tianjin, 2017.
Shaolin Temple, 2018.
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Martial arts since I was six
I started at six and was teaching classes by sixteen: a black belt in Taekwondo, brown in Mo Gwai Kune. I’ve trained with Shaolin monks and boxed through Muay Thai gyms in Thailand, and these days I practise Yang and Chen style tai chi.
书
The brush
Most Saturday mornings you’ll find me grinding ink for Chinese brush practice before anyone else is awake. Bamboo, mostly, with the same two brushes I’ve been painting with for twenty years.
The site
It's been through eras.
For a while it chased search traffic, and some of the older posts still read that way: lists, tips, the occasional overexcited headline. I’ve kept most of them. They’re part of the record, and some are useful. But the newer writing is what this site is now: essays on work, knowledge, training and living well. The systems that hold a life together, and what happens when you hand parts of them to an AI.
What you won’t find here: hustle content, miracle routines, or anyone being turned into a legend.
Facing dragons isn’t a war you win. It’s a practice you come back to. Everyone falls off. The trick is a practice you can get back on.
Start here