Archives for 2020

I watched in awe at the live stream of Crew Dragon lifting off from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Last Saturday was the first time a private company sent humans into space. This alone is an astonishing fact which could fill a blog post, but today I’m going to focus on one of Elon’s statements before launch.

“I’m the chief engineer of this thing, so I’d just like to say that if it goes right, it’s credit to the SpaceX-NASA team. If it goes wrong, it’s my fault.”

I love this quote, and here’s why:

1. He made it public. Elon didn’t just think it, or say it in private, he publicly admitted that success would be because of the team, and failure would be his alone to bear.
2. He took accountability before the event occurred. It’s easy for leaders to hope for the best, and respond after the event—to claim glory in success, or deflect responsibility in failure.
3. He deferred credit, and accepted all risk.This equation is rarely seen in business or leadership.
4. He spoke plainly and clearly. There was no, “We’re taking all precautions and successful mission completion will be due to a vast array of talented people, and we’ve minimised the risk of failure through blah blah blah.” No, he just said, “If things go right, the team gets credit. If it goes wrong, it’s on me.”

Believe it or not, I don’t usually go gaga for Elon.

He’s a polarising leader whose missteps and tweets have wiped billions of dollars of value off his companies, but this moment on Saturday was true leadership.

For all the bluster and talk, he backs it up. He led the first launch of humans into space by a private company and was the Chief Designer on the project.

But in addition to the technical and commercial brilliance required to pull off such a feat, he also took massive ownership.

And I love that.

I will never completely understand.

My place of birth, my race, and my experiences will never allow me to fully grasp what the Black Community is feeling right now—and what they’ve been experiencing for hundreds of years.

The death of George Floyd was vile, despicable, avoidable, inhumane, and laced in unadulterated racial inequity.

Racism is real. It’s here. It’s among us. And it’s heartbreaking.

So today, I add my voice to the growing army of discontent that says, “Enough is enough.”

No mother, father, brother, sister, wife, husband, son, or daughter should ever have to worry about the safety of their loved ones due to the colour of their skin.

So, I say again, although I will never be able to completely understand, I stand in solidarity with the Black Community.

“I see you.

I hear you.

I stand with you.

I want to do more. To the Black readers of this blog, if you’re up for it, please share with me what you need, and what I can do better.

An old colleague of mine had it all together.

Or so I thought.

They could breakdown complex problems with ease. They could breeze through presentations. It looked effortless.

When I asked them how they did it, they responded in a surprising manner.

They said they were no better than anyone else. They said they weren’t more intelligent. They said they didn’t possess any unique skills.

But, they did acknowledge a willingness to sit and wrestle with a problem for an unusually long period of time. And that, maybe, could be the cause of the difference.

I’d like to tell you about my friend, Kevin.

Back in 2016, when I was planning this journey down the Mississippi, I had no clue where to start.

I had an idea, and that was it.

As I was wrapping up my job in Australia, a colleague said to me, “You know what? I should put you in touch with Kevin. He worked here about 15 years ago, he’s a Kiwi too, and he also quit to go and do something crazy.”

A quick google told me Kevin set a world record for rowing across the Atlantic, and had trekked to the South Pole.

I knew I had to meet him.

I had a couple weeks before I could get back to New Zealand, so I read both his books: The Oarsome Adventures of a Fatboy Rower, and Escape to the Pole. Both laugh-out-loud reads!

When we eventually met in a small Auckland cafe, Kevin was no nonsense. Within a few minutes of sitting down, he asked me point blank, “How serious are you?”

I tried to pretend like I was pausing for dramatic effect, but I really didn’t have an answer.

Kevin helped me out, “You see, I get quite a few people contacting me about how to row across the Atlantic or some other adventure, and most of them don’t follow through. I want to know how serious you are.”

I mustered the little courage I had—and although I had no idea if I could actually make it happen—I said “I’ve quit my job, and I can last about a year on my savings. I’m serious.”

From that point on, Kevin was on my side. Over the next month, we met numerous times in that small cafe. And over the next year, Kevin would spend hours with me on Skype helping me with my plans.

He kept a no bullshit approach. He was direct and told me when my ideas were stupid, and I’m so grateful for that—Lord knows I needed it.

I now call Kevin a friend, and it’s a real privilege to catch up with him each time I’m back in New Zealand.

If you’re interested in a Trans-Atlantic rowing adventure, or a hair-raising South Pole expedition, check out his books!

The man leaned out his truck’s window, brought his hand in front of his windscreen, and repeatedly flicked his fingers like he was trying to rid his hands of droplets of water.

We were about 50 meters away at this point.

As we got closer, I realised his indicator wasn’t working, and him flicking his fingers was a way of letting oncoming traffic (us) know that he was turning onto our road.

Sometimes our products break. We find bugs in the code. Our processes become stale. So we find workarounds.

But a flicking hand will never be an indicator.

It’s up to us to decide what gets fixed, and what workarounds we choose to live with.

Against all odds.

Contrary to all expectations.

Without a care for “that’s not how we do things around here.”

We find a glimmer of hope.

I’ve recently been using Metacritic to discover and listen to new music.

Metacritic does one thing really well: they aggregate the reviews from all the biggest publications, and calculate a “Metascore” for movies, albums, video games, and TV.

They also have a sound way of removing bias from their scoring. The Metascore is a weighted average that 1) takes all available reviews and converts them to a 100-point scale, and 2) weights each review based on a quality score assigned to each reviewing publication.

For example, a reputable publication like the New York Times would have a higher weighting than a small, city-focused newspaper. They also take into account if the publication has a positivity bias and typically gives good reviews.

I’ve found their All-time Album list to be a fascinating listen.

Perhaps the thing that stands out most is how uncomfortable some of the music makes me feel.

It’s not pleasure listening. There are many songs and albums that don’t follow a traditional Western-pop diet of 4-chords and a slightly-seasoned bridge.

There are piercing sounds, jarring rhythms, and unresolved melodies.

But all the while, it’s clear the artist has something important to say.

It’s music that makes me think, “How did they achieve that sound?” “What did that lyric mean?” “Why did they write this?”

Metacritic is high signal. It’s a great tool to explore new worlds sound, films, and ideas. Have fun out there!

The best way to complain is to make things.

There is never a shortage of complaints, or complainers.

But the world could certainly use a few more builders.

I was never good at skateboarding, and that’s partly because I never learnt the lesson of the Halfpipe.

Funnily enough, this lesson extends well outside of skating.

There comes a time in a budding skateboarder’s life when their friends tell them it’s time to try “dropping in” to a halfpipe—which is when you jump on your skateboard at the top a ramp (pictured below) and roll down into the halfpipe.

Without fail, everyone falls over the first time.

Why?

Our instincts are honed and practised over many years so that when we’re falling forward we automatically want to lean backwards. So when dropping in on a halfpipe, we’re fighting years of practised instinct. The only way to stay on your board is by leaning forward into the drop.

The biggest challenge is not dropping in itself, but overcoming the fear that comes with the first fall, and getting back to up to fight your instincts on the second, third, fourth, and fifth try.

These instincts are also there when we’re sharing art, public speaking, playing music, writing publicly, or starting a business.

Any time we bring something new into the world, our instincts tell us to hide. This can turn into months and years of believing we’re not ready.

But just like dropping in to a halfpipe, our first try is almost always a write-off. What matters is overcoming our instincts and trying again.

I’ve taken the lockdown and social distancing rules seriously. So I’ve mostly stayed within 2 kilometres of our flat for the last couple months.

However, this weekend was this first time since early March that I ventured outside our London borough. I went up to the famous Hampstead Heath with a few colleagues to kick around a football.

It felt like a classic British “almost summer” day. The sun was out and small groups filled the rolling hills, but the wind still whipped a chilly breeze.

I found a moment to lay in the grass and take a long look up at the sky. It helped me feel a little less isolated, a little more connected, and a little more normal.

I’ve been playing in a weekly Trivia League with some friends since lockdown started.

There’s 8-10 of us, and we each take turns being Quiz Master.

Today was my turn, and I thought I’d share my quiz in case you’d like to have a go at answering the questions, use it with your family and friends, or modify it for your own purposes.

How does it work?

1. We use Jeopardy Labs, but structure our questions in the traditional trivia Question —> Answer format, rather than Jeopardy’s Answer —> Question format.
2. There are five categories of questions, and five levels of question difficulty—100 points for the easiest questions, going up to 500 points for the most difficult ones.
3. For incorrect answers, we play -50 points for 100 and 200 point questions, and -100 points for the rest.
4. We all jump on VC, the Quiz Master shares their screen, and when a question is shown, teams send a “!” in the VC’s chat functionality to simulate a buzzer, so we can determine which team gets to answer first.

Have fun out there, and let me know how you get on with the questions!

Today marks 10 years since Maru and I met.

In the decade we’ve spent together, I can’t recall a single boring conversation.

That small fact has me looking forward to—and hoping for—many more decades to come.

Perhaps best-friendship is just that: a relentless and ever-enjoyable stream of conversation and laughter.

Kevin Kelly said in a recently blog post, “Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.”

I love this.

Of course, the value of enthusiasm can’t be quantified, but I love how Kelly uses the 25 IQ points as a way of saying, “A bit of enthusiasm can take you a long way!”

And I’m sure you’ve felt it before. You walk into a room or meeting and there is someone across the table with a genuine and heartfelt enthusiasm for the work they do. It’s inspiring.

Here’s to more enthusiasm!

I came across a great line recently:

“Brevity shows you’re a bad ass.”

Short sentences will do.

Simple words are better.

And there is magic to be found in the re-write of a first draft.

I’m one of those people who sets 8-10 alarms on my phone to make sure I get up on time each morning.

Once I’m up, instead of turning off the alarms one-by-one, I ask Siri to turn them all off in one go.

It won’t come as a surprise to you that I usually say, “Hey Siri, turn off all alarms.”

And the response I received for a long time was, “Okay, disabling all alarms.”

However, at some point in the last year, I noticed Siri’s language become a little more human.

It suddenly became, “Okay, turning off all alarms.”

“Disabling all alarms,” always made me feel like I was talking to a computer, so when it changed to something more natural, it was noticeable.

This “sounding more human” phenomenon doesn’t just apply to computers and artificial intelligence, though.

It’s much nicer talking to people without the crutches of jargon, formality, and stuffiness.

Interacting with humans, in human language, is always feels better.