May 2026 | Tom Harman

This now page gives a glimpse into what’s happening in my world at the moment. Written, by me, Tom, a mere human, on May 6th, 2026.

Tl;dr—

My work is roughly 80% Near Future and 20% Intentional Partners at the moment. I find building tools and structures that help design and product leaders and their teams navigate this AI-era, super interesting. I also recently wrapped up my first full year as a financially-viable independent business. Hooray!
Our boys are now 5 and almost 2, and will have completed their first year of school and nursery respectively this summer. Our eldest recently discovered a lego obsession, and learned to ride his bike like a champ. Our youngest’s main interest is kicking footballs, with an impressive grasp of ball control for such a young age.
Hopefully a family trip to Portugal this summer, if airlines still have fuel by then, but most travel takes the form of weekend drives around the UK these days. Oh and we now finally have a car. Despite putting it off for as long as possible. It turns out that cars can be incredibly useful.

For those looking for a deeper dive…

Work

After leaving my last full-time role at Monzo, I’ve been experimenting with different ways of independent working. Essentially, sifting through the various responsibilities from previous roles and going deep on the parts I most enjoy, to build up a portfolio-style career. I’ve loved the varity. It’s led me to coaching design leaders, advising startups, fractional design leadership and running AI hack weeks among other things. The goal has been to work out which pieces bring most sustainability, either because they bring me energy, or financial stability. Ideally both.

Fast forward to today and I’ve doubled-down on the work I’ve been collaborating with Jonny on to help with the practical and strategic aspects of bringing design and product-led organisations into the AI era. This began as a side project running AI hack weeks, based on the belief that AI is just hype until you have an aha moment with these tools, and the only way to do this is building real things yourself. We’re called Near Future and we publicly launched a few weeks ago.

If you know a product or design team trying to figure out where AI fits, I’m always happy to chat and grateful for any intros → tom@nearfuture.works.

I’m continuing to spend 1 day a week with Intentional Partners clients. I get so much energy from coaching Heads of Design, and advising growing startups, so wanted to make sure I kept space for a slice of this alongside whatever Near Future grows into.

I also recently started a monthly hands-on AI morning for senior+ designers in London with my pal Simon. It’s called Mostly Working, for a few reasons, but mostly because it aims to give a glimpse behind the scenes of how real designers are building with AI in their teams, not the shiny, performative demos that usually fill our social media feeds. It started with the idea of gathering a small group of likeminded peers to build together, but I secretly hope it’ll evolve into something close to how Brian Eno talks about the concept of ‘scenius’.

Counterpoint

Reading those last few paragraphs you may think I’ve fallen deeply into an AI-pilled rabbit hole. And to an extent, I have, but I’m finding it increasingly important to balance that out with the things only real humans can do together. Live music being a great example. Toe and William Tyler recently came through London and were inspiring to watch.

Like many, Angine de Poitrine has recently been blowing my mind too. But once the weird outfits and novelty wear off, it’s the level of technical craft in how these two are looping guitar parts across different time signatures that’s really left my head spinning. But in the best way. The way that makes me want to pick up a guitar again and play music again.

The weather is warming up in London, which means short runs after dropping the boys off most mornings, touching grass, and rich conversations with smart people. That last bit feels especially important right now, given how I mostly work from home these days.

Reading, listening and watching

You’re not going to discover much you don’t already know here. But I really liked One Battle After Another. That’s the best movie I’ve seen in a while. Good luck, have fun, don’t die was also weird and fun. (You can’t go wrong with a theme song that shouts the name of the film!) I’ve also started a Spotify playlist of songs I’ve been listening to this year, which range from folk guitar to palm wine music to math rock. I’ll continue adding as the year unfolds, so please follow along, if you’d like to.