Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧

CEO Jibble FREE time tracking software, Ex Morgan Stanley VP, Homeschool dad, now on X!

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Istanbul is the way it treats stray cats and dogs.

More than any other city I've been to, and by quite some margin, the attitude here is that, sure, this city was built for humans, BUT other animals should be able to live and thrive here too.

The government ensures they're looked after and people treat them INCREDIBLY well, like a collective duty. I mean, it's VERY normal to see people playing around with or stroking stray cats or dogs, feeding them, leave random bowls of food for them to eat from, not bother them in restaurants, and you see little huts for them to shelter everywhere.

And so they're really not scared of humans at all. I mean, the other day I was walking home with my wife in the middle of the night and a random dog came up to us and walked with us for perhaps a mile, just to, honestly, walk with us.

There are around 250,000 cats and dogs in Istanbul, I mean the city is littered with them.

And come to think of it, I've not once see any dog poop on the streets, so something's clearly been done about that too. And I haven't seen a single one emaciated nor with an injury, I guess if they're injured they're treated.

I can't help but feel it's so good for the souls of those living here. Because when someone gives they usually get more from it than who, or 'what' in this case, they're giving to.

Feeling in touch with nature, connecting with animals to relieve stress and improve mental health which is associated with city living, and just sharing a city with other species, there is something right and beautiful about this.

#İstanbul #cats #dogs

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

My wife and I went over to see my mum a few days ago, and we were talking about how difficult things are for young adults these days.

You know, in the UK, according to government statistics, 1 out of 7 16-24 year olds are not studying nor working. I.e. they're doing nothing, often depressed and lost.

ONE OUT OF SEVEN.

I then thought my own kids are just so constructive with their time.

Take my youngest, Sabeen, 16, who half a year ago got an unconditional offer for a course starting in late 2026 from the university of her choice.

The deal with me was that once she did her 18+ exams, which she's done, she could do whatever she wanted, including nothing.

So she could spend 2 years in bed!

But she hasn't, she's been following her passions, learning stuff, cooking incredible dishes for dinner, keeping fit, working on her spiritual side, and just using her time so constructively.

And I wonder why, because my wife and I are not making her do anything.

I think a big part of this is that she's not into any social media, none of our kids are. And that is so good for her mental health.

We, or rather my wife, did a few things that led up to this:
◆ Our kids could only use laptops in the communal areas of the house with the screen facing the open area.
◆ They handed in their laptops and phones to my wife every night and when we went out.
◆ We gave them phones very late, their first phones were Nokia-type basic phones that you could only make calls on.

So, I remember when Facebook was new, a guy called Anuj told me about it. I tried it out and was like wow, such an amazing way to connect with old friends.

But years on, social media has been a disaster for our mental health.

And it destroys our kids' souls. They see a fake fantastic world which they think is real and it makes them feel crap about themselves.

Listen, the advice I'd give parents is don't give in to peer pressure, seriously keep your kids away from social media, it is a poison.

On this one fight all the way if you have to. It really doesn't matter what their classmates are allowed to do.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

Since Zelensky became Ukraine's president in 2019, he's made a series of CATASTROPHIC miscalculations.

1. He openly pushed for NATO membership despite knowing that it was a red line for Russia, which viewed it as a direct threat. He miscalculated that Russia was willing to go to full scale war over this.

2. He dismissed US intelligence warnings about an imminent Russian attack in the months leading up to the invasion.

3. He rejected, or at least failed to agree, the peace deal under the Istanbul negotiations in 2022, the terms of which are way more favourable than anything he's going to get now. The longer this war went on the worse his negotiation position was going to get, I could have guessed this, he should have known this.

4. He COMPLETELY messed up the meeting in the White House, failing to understand the dynamics of the meeting, failing to keep his mouth shut, failing to understand Trump, and failing to understand the weakness in his position, resulting in the US withdrawing all aid.

He's now negotiating a peace deal from the worst possible position, and he's played a CRITICAL role in every single step in getting into this mess by repeatedly being over-optimistic, over-confident or failing to see the risks.

I am in the UK reading the British media much of which is comparing him with Churchill, I can't think of a modern-day leader that has done more damage to his country than Zelensky, all through terrible cringeworthy poor judgement - and none of this should be a surprise when you elect a comedian with zero political or management experience as your president.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

One of the reasons the UK needs to limit immigration is because it's a tiny island (well, not quite an island, but that's what we always say).

I mean, there already isn't enough space, how many more people can we squeeze in?

Well, allow me to answer that.

The image is from Singapore. Singapore does two weird things called "building infrastructure" and "urban planning". By doing these, they've got 5.9m people into an island 0.3% the land size of the UK, and, trust me, they have tons of greenery and parks, I mean Singapore is pleasant.

So, how many more people can we cram into the UK if we planned like they do, so we became as population dense as them?

5.9 million / 0.003 = 2 billion.

Yes, TWO BILLION. Our population is 68 million.

There is EASILY enough space in the UK to fit 1/4 of the entire planet.

Listen, we Brits DESPERATELY need to get over our xenophobic and backwards attitude, and stop worrying about whether we have enough space until we get close to that 2 billion.

Imagine, if when the land that is now the UK had a population of 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000 we stopped immigration and encouraged women to have less children because we worried about whether there was enough land?

Would the UK have become the power it became?

So, what did we do as our population grew? We built infrastructure and homes.

Look at Dubai, Malaysia, Singapore, India, China, their populations have rocketed while experiencing MASSIVE increases of living standards because they haven't feared population growth, they've embraced it and have built for it.

We should get building, Dubai-style, and fight for and welcome EVERY young educated immigrant and plenty of uneducated ones too because we won't be able to attract enough educated ones. And if they pay a certain amount of tax and commit no crimes, we should keep them, give them a passport (the big mistake the UAE is making).

Human being are the most amazing resource, amazingly productive and naturally intelligent machines, nothing exists with a higher intelligence in the known universe, and they're even capable of producing more of themselves, and if other nations can't leverage them, we should take them, in their millions.

Forget 68m, the UK should think BIG and TRY, at least try, to make the UK the most populous and powerful nation on the planet. That'd be an ambitious goal, and one that I reckon could be achieved within 50 years, bloody ambitious, agreed, but we can only even go for it if we Brits opened our mind...

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

I kept pushing someone who was unhappy with their job to quit and do something she enjoyed.

She eventually opened up and told me her husband wasn't earning much, they were struggling to provide for their kids, and she just had to do what she had to do.

And so I shut up!

The thing is, over the years, many have told me they respect me for quitting my job and going for it.

Yes, sure, BUT my wife was earning enough for us to live on, we had tons of savings, and I’ve never had to support my parents.

Life is not a level playing field.

When we urge others to do something bold, it often doesn't factor in their struggles. The ability to “follow your passion” is just not an option for most, that ability comes with privilege.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

Great question! Actually none of them are into any of those and never have been. The rule is any laptops can only be used in places where it could be seen by others. So that meant they used them in the dining area with the screens facing where anyone would enter from. And handing in laptops before bedtime. It also helped they have a very good understanding of the basis of their lives.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

https://t.co/eOAVb9PIi1

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

This was my first set of wheels when I migrated to Malaysia almost two decades ago.

A friend wasn't using it, so he lent it to me and I took advantage for 6 months.

So, there you have it, a few weeks before migrating to Malaysia, I was a Vice President at Credit Suisse (sure, not as senior as the title sounds) based in London, suddenly I was a title-less nobody in some developing city in Asia driving this and often sleeping in a construction site.

I didn't get a decent car or live in plush hotels because I wasn't earning money as I was starting a business, so I wanted to spend as little as possible.

Perhaps I went too far, my banker friends that visited me ripped it out of me over the car for years, but I'd do it again. I can imagine when I offered to collect them, they'd have been expecting me to come in some BMW, and I turned up in this!

Ok, some advice to young men in particular...

Spend less, ideally a lot less, than you can afford on your car. Always be frugal here.

Invest your money, educate yourself, or start a business. Don't be frugal here.

And stop caring about what everyone else thinks of you, stop trying to show the world you've made it, stop trying to attract the kind of people you don't want to attract. If you don't see it now you'll probably see it soon - it's just futile.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

Umair, Jibble is rarely used for that purpose. It’s to simply count time worked or at work which can be used for legal reasons, project tracking, payroll, etc.

E.g. in many countries it’s illegal to work over 40 or so hours, how do companies know if they’re complying if they’re not measuring. Or how do you pay a contractor paid $40/hour if you don’t know many hours he’s worked, etc…

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

Here's an update on our homeschool ‘experiment' my wife and I did with our kids while we both worked from home.

Ok, to recap, a decade ago we pulled our kids out of school without any ambitious goals, they ended up doing their 18+ exams 4 to 8 years early which then gave them the freedom to do what they really wanted to do.

So, what are they up to now?

Maryam, 20, who is in her second year of studying French and Arabic at Oxford, is doing a year abroad and loving it. She writes on LinkedIn, feel free to follow her!

I've long gotten over the fact she's not following the path I set for her - technology, business, etc... She needs to do her thing, not my thing, and I've realised that for all of my kids, so it's been a journey for me too.

Danyal, 18, continues to work full-time for Jibble, and has been financially independent for years. He's now a mid-level developer, he was looking to leave so not to be working for daddy's company, but as Jibble is doing so well, he's working with amazing developers and has a new role in AI, he might stay a few more years. Oh yes, he's recently started learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with me.

Sabeen, 16, has a wait until October 2026 to start her Land Economy degree at Cambridge. She's doing whatever she wants until then, learning Arabic, keeping fit, reading, cooking, just enjoying her life! She's stopped eating eggs and chicken for ethical reasons, I'm glad she's thinking about these things.

You know, they've turned out to be good kids - very kind-hearted, polite, and ethical.

Of course, you're concerned they're not "socialised"? Well, the girls are super-confident and social, Sabeen is off the scale! Danyal, is a bit of introvert like me, is fine, just not as outgoing as his sisters. Honestly, zero concerns overall.

We now do a lot more travelling as a family, taking advantage of the fact that 4 out of 5 of us can do our stuff from anywhere, and so we often visit Maryam, whether she's abroad or in Oxford.

I'll be travelling a lot this year and that will mean even more mini family holidays, 2025 and beyond will be less family together time, but way more quality.

Every trip we do is optional for each of us, often it'll be 2 or 3 of us going because, for whatever reason, some want to stay behind. Optionality is SO important, it means getting buy in.

And so we're all thriving on this balance of being a family unit yet being independent and doing our own things, and that's this amazing new phase we're going through.

Homeschool has meant a highly-personalised education and an incredible level of freedom and flexibility for our entire family. It isn't for everyone, sure, BUT it isn’t nearly as much work as most believe and can work amazingly well IF one or both parents work from home AND the kids are sold on it and so learn on their own initiative - I mean, if our own kids have it their way, they wouldn't even consider sending their own kids to school.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

@hse1232 Great question!

Mistakes by or regrets:
- too ambitious on the number of languages they learned

Erm, I can’t think of anything else!

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

@SheenBean40 They’re down to 3 to 4 now, but we hired students to speak to them over Skype.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

People assume my kids are hyper-intelligent because they’ve done so well academically. They can’t believe they or their own kids can do nearly as well. But they’re wrong.

I was, just now, reading my own diary blog about my homeschool experience: https://t.co/kJi4w341G9…

In the blog, I wrote the following in 2016…

“We’ve decided to get their GCSE’s and A-levels out of the way as soon as possible, so the kids can focus on their passions. Exams are a stressful part of childhood, for many the worst part of childhood. The hard laborious work, constant pressure, expectations, competition, and public shaming… isn’t exactly pleasant, and nearly all the stuff learned is useless.”

…i.e. them taking exams was planned in advance, and not because we suddenly discovered they were geniuses.

I then gave my plan, which broadly is what happened…

“Hopefully Maryam, 11, will have finished her A-levels when she’s 13, Danyal, 9, will be done by the time he’s 12, and Sabeen, 7, should finish when she’s 12.”

And then I explained…

“A significant benefit of doing the exams early is it sounds way more impressive on a CV, so everyone will assume they’re hyper-intelligent, when they’re not.”

…which is exactly why happened. My daughters received offers from Oxford and Cambridge, while my son decided not to do a degree and instead focused on coding - he’s 18 and has been financially independent for 5 years. No-one believes me when I tell them they’re pretty normal which is, I guess, why we did it!

Listen, I’m not saying doing exams years early is the way forward, although I’m glad our kids did. However, I am saying most kids could do what they did, but to do so they need parents that believe they can. I mean, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I didn’t just believe my kids could do it, I expected they would.

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

@arblauvelt Football back then, he still does it. Tx!!!

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

@younus965 https://t.co/B7Su99Dqrp

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

I've bought my first one-way ticket 🛩️, I am going to be leaving the UK 🇬🇧 👋.

From April onwards, for at least a year, and perhaps for decades, I will be living from a small suitcase, coming back to the UK regularly to visit family and friends.

I’ll be travelling to, in order...
Turkey 🇹🇷
France 🇫🇷 (image is from my last remote working trip)
Italy 🇮🇹
Belgium 🇧🇪
Netherlands 🇳🇱
Spain 🇪🇸
Ireland 🇮🇪
Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦
UAE 🇦🇪
Jordan 🇯🇴
Malaysia 🇲🇾
Indonesia 🇮🇩
India 🇮🇳
Pakistan 🇵🇰
Brazil 🇧🇷
Morocco 🇲🇦
US 🇺🇸, Canada 🇨🇦, and Brazil 🇧🇷 in early to mid 2026

I’m considering adding Qatar 🇶🇦 , Australia 🇦🇺, Portugal 🇵🇹, Sri Lanka 🇱🇰 and Bangladesh 🇧🇩 to the list. Have I missed any obviously-amazing worth-visiting countries?

If you know me personally, you're welcome to stay with me as I'll be booking two-bedroom apartments, so book my spare room!

Just realise it won’t be a holiday for me, I’ll be working from cafes, and also meeting people, networking, exploring cities while running and hopefully doing plenty of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, my new hobby.

I can do this thanks to remote working and an incredibly supportive family, I'm blessed to have both.

I can’t wait!!!

[Asim Qureshi 🇬🇧 @asimjibble]

For over a month, this is all I’ve had while I’ve been remote working and exploring the world.

And it’s all I’ve really wanted.

I mean, I’ve had access to the same books, news sources, TV shows, films, sports matches, social media, web pages and apps as anyone else, all while spending time with my family and friends.

And yet we all seem to want more and more things - cars, houses, holiday homes, a watch collection, a yacht.

I was thinking, would any more than what we could fit into two small-ish bags like these really make us much happier? I suspect not, so why do we desperately want more?