Dan's Daily

The best teachers from my childhood went above and beyond. They did things for our class that were well outside of what was expected, but these actions had an outsized impact on my life.

When I was twelve, Mrs. J would take a small group of us out of our scheduled class once every two weeks to run a full day workshop on a surprise topic. I remember one was on the life and works of Galileo, and how we tried to simulate the gravitational experiments he conducted at the Tower of Pisa.

I can’t remember much of the subject matter from these workshops, but I certainly remember how I felt. Bursting with energy, curiosity, and confidence. Mrs. J created an environment where asking questions was celebrated, where learning was a joy, and where the pursuit of knowledge was cherished.

Those workshops set a baseline expectation for me going forward. I expected learning to be fun and rigorous. And when future teachers found my incessant questions annoying, I wasn’t phased because those behaviours were validated by Mrs. J in earlier years, so I knew I should continue to question everything.

Twenty years later, the dividends from Mrs. J’s lessons are still paying a return. They influence how I approach new challenges at work, and will influence how I choose to raise my children.

That’s above and beyond.

The boy, perhaps six-years-old, hopped on to the train with his grandfather. They sat down across from me, and the older man couldn’t get the boy to sit still.

The boy left his school backpack with his grandfather and ran up and down the carriage saying he wanted to be a train driver. He had memorised the words to all the pre-recorded messages on our branch of London’s Northern Line, and he would shout out the names of the stops and warn people to ‘mind the gap’.

As I hopped off at my stop, I could still hear the boy shouting the all the words to the automated messages in the carriage speakers. The boy’s unbridled excitement and showmanship was a bright spot in my commute home. I loved how his grandfather didn’t dampen the boy’s spirit or action. He let him be.

My favourite thing about high school was having so many extra-curricular activities in one place.

I didn’t sign up because it would look good on a university application, I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. I signed up because I enjoyed it all. If there was a single day in my week where I had to come home straight away and I didn’t have some sort of activity, the day felt flat.

I played rugby, football, hockey, touch rugby, dragon boating, volleyball, did theatre, improv comedy, played in bands, and participated in debating. And all of it for a very modest cost because the school was publicly funded. I’m convinced that it built within me a habit of play—that working hard at something, learning new skills, and facing challenges, are all fun.

I’m so grateful for having all of those experiences in one place, and what those experiences enabled me to learn.

When I was a kid and we would go back to visit family in Malaysia, I would always find it intriguing that seatbelts weren’t required when sitting in the backseat of cars.

I would ride without a seatbelt just because I could.

When I visit Malaysia now, there’s no way that I’m in a car without a seatbelt on. Front or back seat.

Just because the rules are different in different places, the risk doesn’t change.

Some of you may remember that towards the end of last year I wrote about buying a film camera. I took it on a number of trips, and it captured photos that had a raw and textured feel to them.

I bought the camera with the intention of taking it on Maru and my belated honeymoon, however, the night before flying out, I tried to load some film and found it was broken.

I was frustrated. I had built up in my mind that the camera would be a companion on our trip capturing our memories in a unique way. And now I had no time to get it fixed or buy a new one.

I eventually decided to not get beat by the broken camera. Old secondhand items will break—that’s part of the game and risk of buying them. We still had our phones and digital cameras, and I knew we’d still capture great memories from the trip.

I had a particularly busy patch at work earlier this year and exercise took a backseat.

One thing I noticed was my body felt a lot stiffer and I had some old injuries and strains flare up.

It reminded me of the importance of staying on the horse. Even if pace or progress is slow, it’s a heck of a lot easier than getting back on.

In-flight smoking used to be wide spread and common. However, since the 1980s, bans on in-flight smoking have become ubiquitous.

It got me thinking, what feels normal today but will be completely different decades from now?

For example, I could imagine there being autonomous driving and much fewer road accidents as a result.

Or perhaps AI will be so embedded in our workflows that we struggle to remember what it was like before it.

I’m sure we’ll be surprised by the changes.

I’ve written before about how I have a rule to try and only pack my suitcase to 80% full. However, I repeatedly find myself on trips packing more than I need.

So now I’m trying to be even more ruthless, and to pack uncomfortably light. If I get into a pickle, I can always pick something up on the road.

Now, to remember my own advice next time I pack.

When I was a kid, my mum was great with bedtime stories. She’d make up a new story each day and spend 15-20 mins telling them to my sister and I before bed.

She’d also watch and understand the lessons we needed to learn, and she’d craft her stories to have a moral that taught that lesson. For example, the importance of sharing, speaking with kindness to others, being patient, etc.

At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. But looking back, I realise how many lessons I learned through her stories and how much I enjoyed them.

Earlier this year I had a nothing weekend.

There were no plans, no work, no event or social gathering.

I had errands to run, and things to take care of at home, but I did them at a leisurely pace and in peace.

Sometimes we need a calm weekend.

Maru and I have prioritised living close to Central London. We have a rule that if invited to something in town, we don’t want to turn it down because we live far away.

This decision has made a big difference. We live in a neighbourhood that has a bustling high street and is 20 mins in the tube from town. It’s filled with cafes and restaurants, and we have wonderful food and grocery options within 5-8 mins walk from our flat.

Prioritising proximity is an investment, but the intangible dividends pay out regularly.

The beginning of this year was a busy period at work. As I put more time into work, other habits dropped off. My nutrition relaxed and the frequency of my exercise decreased.

To get back into a healthier rhythm, I started with a few shorter exercise sessions to ease me back into the routine; these also gave me a mental boost. I then tried to be consistent with smaller, shorter sessions.

Start small. Keep going.

There is a very real cost to context switching.

Some roles require it, but most of the time, it’s better if a single person can focus on a single thing.

That’s when the deep work happens, and where many of the breakthroughs occur.

The fire alarm went off at work the other day and we had to evacuate the building.

As the automated fire doors closed and I made my way to the stairwell, I immediately noticed the bright green fire exit signs.

It’s funny how you can spend a ton of time in a place and never notice some things, but when you need them, they’re the only thing you see.

Some of the big grocery chains here in the UK are now charging 40 pence for a paper bag.

The price is not reflective of the true cost to make the paper bag, it’s reflective of the behaviour change the supermarket wants to see in its customers.