Archives for 2020

Have you ever learnt a new word, and then soon after started seeing it everywhere?

I feel that way about the author, David Foster Wallace. I’m surprised I only learnt about him this year, but since then, he’s appeared in blogs, speeches, and in conversations with friends; all referencing the man and his wisdom.

I loved this short story from his book ‘This is Water’.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Wallace goes on to say, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

In other words, the timeless ideas for what make a good life are often hidden in plain sight, and we don’t often talk about them because they sound like banal platitudes. I’ve touched on this subject before in ‘Take the stairs, eat more veggies’.

It’s also tempting—when writing and posting each day—to always be on the hunt for fresh, undiscovered ideas to share. But this story is a reminder that it’s perhaps more important to relearn, reflect, and practise the simple, timeless ideas for living.

Every January, it’s packed in the gym.

Scant space. Claustrophobia central.

Also known as: Sardine January.

The gym business model is crazy. Since I learnt about it, I have yet to come across another one like it.

“Let’s sign up tonnes of people in January, and make our money when most of them don’t turn up for the rest of the year but continue to pay,” said the honest gym owner.

Under this model, members who don’t use the gym subsidise the ones who do. All gym owners have to do is get through a packed and miserable January.

But February is just around the corner. When resolve wanes, the gym will go back to being a pleasant, spacious place.

And for those keen to continue their gym streak, they’ll get a cracking, subsidised deal.

There is no deeper lesson or idea here, it’s just a fascinating look into a weird business model. Although, I am left with a question: does a better gym business model exist?

Note: I listened to this excellent Planet Money podcast episode last year on this topic (for those interested in learning more). It was only when I couldn’t comfortably make my way round the gym this past week that I decided to write on the subject.

I’m not a natural when it comes to home DIY. So I marvel—and get a little jealous—at how easy it comes to others.

For the past 2 months, we’ve had a few broken items in our kitchen and bathroom. I was unable to find a convenient time with the handyman, so I tried to ignore the issues.

But miraculous things happen when you have guests visiting in a few days.

I unboxed replacement items, read manuals, pulled out dusty screwdrivers, and swallowed imaginary patience pills.

I didn’t get close to fixing everything, but I made a start.

Sometimes, even if we think we’re out of our depth, all we need to do is pull out the manual, take a deep breath, and give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?

I’ve posted before about how the double decker bus is a magical way to get around London.

Every so often, though, I come across a story or idea that changes the way I see things. Being open to those ideas—and sharing them—is the point of this blog.

This weekend’s BBC article did just that.

Little did I know that during the evening hours London buses become a safe haven for the homeless. There are 24-hour routes offering warmth and sleep as they travel across the city.

The article follows the story of Sunny, a Nigerian man who slept on these buses for 21-years as he seeked asylum in the UK. It’s a story of tragedy, hardship, and hope. And one that has me looking at each red double decker with new eyes.

I don’t use cookbooks often. I stick to a few recipes that take less than 7 minutes to prepare, and about the same time to clean up.

However, this weekend we had some friends coming over for dinner, so I pulled out a cookbook to try some new dishes.

Our kitchen is small, so the book was jostling for countertop space from the beginning. A bad start. I was halfway through attempting a Blackberry Pistachio Cake (sheesh, how bougie does that sound?) when I spilt icing sugar and egg on the cookbook. I reacted with an “Oh no!” like I would if I had dirtied any other book. But Maru reminded me, “It’s a cookbook. It’s supposed to get dirty.”

A cookbook without a blemish has lived a lonely life. The bumps, rips, and spots are signs it has filled bellies and brought people together.

It’s blemishes mean something.

The empty pen has told many stories.

The scratched guitar has played a thousand melodies.

And the splitting shoe hints at miles of adventure.

Welcome the blemish.

In software development, an Easter Egg is a secret message, joke or screen buried in an application.

Software developers include them for fun, and users delight in finding them.

I recently found one by accident. I was on the New Zealand version of Last Minute, a website where you can find last minute flight, hotel, and car deals. I was reserving a hire car for my family, and when I was on the search results page, there was a banner with a link in the top right saying, “The boss is coming, look busy.”

I immediately smiled, because I knew something was coming.

When I clicked on the link, I was taken to a screen with a fake spreadsheet report filled with corporate nonsense like “innovate mission-critical paradigms,” and “revolutionise leading-edge communities.” This discovery had me chuckling away for a few minutes; just like the software developer intended.

I like Easter Eggs. They’re an injection of personality and daring. They’re also a nice reminder that, sometimes, we should build things just for fun. They may not serve a functional purpose right away, but they make people laugh and get them talking. That’s almost always a good thing.

“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.”
– Zoe Neale Hurston

Today would be great.

An answer now is better than one tomorrow, next year, or next decade.

But life doesn’t work that way. Some questions and answers only happen at life scale.

• What makes a healthy body?
• What is a sound mind, and what should that feel like?
• What amount, type, and flavour of love turns a house into a home?
• What is balance?
• What is professional success, and how much does it mean to me?
• How far am I from being true and fair in my every interaction?
• How do we go on after losing those we love?

These are slow burn questions. The answers—which are built, broken, and re-created over time—are built on our experiences. We can’t rush these things.

2019 was a year of gaining a better understanding of my own physical and mental health. I was slowly able to form a view on what works and doesn’t in order for me to feel energised and well.

Are there any life scale questions that you tackled in 2019, or ones that you anticipate answering during 2020 and beyond?

One of the things I didn’t anticipate enjoying about daily blogging is the moment when I get to say “it’s ready.”

It’s part intuition, part emotion, part calculation, part logic, but most importantly, it’s practice.

Each day, bit by bit, I get to work my “it’s ready” muscle. And that is a privilege. It’s a commitment I’ve made to myself to turn up and give it a go; regardless of how it goes.

You don’t have to be daily blogging, though, for this to apply to you.

If you’re learning a language, practising your cooking, or wanting to get to the gym on a regular basis, you won’t always have the energy to perform at 100%. But consistency will make you better. So even if you’re not at the standard you aspire to yet, the act of deciding “it’s ready,” the internal voice saying, “Today, I’ve done all I can,” is an essential part of the journey to improvement.

About 1.6 million people are responsible for the transportation of our world’s cargo.

These seafarers spend months at a time out on the open ocean. With few glimpses of land, they battle with intense loneliness.

The New York Times wrote an insightful piece on the life of these seafarers. Stories like these transport us out of our realities and help us experience the world through other’s eyes.

It’s worth a read. Enjoy!

I heard about the myth of Sidecar Doughnuts long before I first visited.

Apparently, the Californian doughnut shop throws out all doughnuts that have been sitting on the shelf for longer than 1 hour; citing they no longer meet Sidecar’s standard for freshness.

Let’s ignore the blatant wastefulness for just a moment, because there’s something to be admired—and potentially learnt—about Sidecar’s commitment to quality.

While I stood there deciding which fatty, sugary concoction I would choose, I imagined the founder saying to their team, “We focus on one thing: making great doughnuts. Everyone who walks through our doors deserves a consistent and exceptional experience.”

Maybe it’s insane standards that help create the magic that get people talking.

P.S. The last time I went to Sidecar Doughnuts was 4 years ago, but when I checked out their website today, sure enough, they still say they “fry their doughnuts in small batches every hour,” and that they “have the freshest doughnuts in the world.”

We bought an Emma mattress last year through a 70% off deal. There’s no way we would have paid retail price.

The mattress is good. We’ve got no complaints. But it hasn’t “revolutionised” my sleep like the dozens of mattress-in-a-box companies claim their “technology inspired” products will do.

So I decided to collect and share some thoughts on why I think these direct-to-consumer mattress companies—apparently hundreds of them—are mostly hot air.

Minimal technology or innovation
The mattresses are just foam and fabric. When you go digging there is little technology in the product. Most of the “innovation” is in their sales conversion rates, achieved through 1) hyper-targeted Google and Facebook advertising, and 2) optimised purchasing journeys on their websites. They are more marketing than manufacturing or technology.

Super low barriers to entry
If you can set up Google and Facebook Ads accounts, get someone to manufacture a mattress for you, and stick your branding on it, you can sell a mattress online. Mattresses were also one of the last products to gain traction in e-commerce due to most consumers wanting to lie on a bed before buying one. That barrier is mostly gone now.

Sustained on Venture Capital funding that will eventually run out
None of the mattress startups are showing signs of making a profit yet. Many are kept alive by venture capital funding. Cheap and available cash leads to more mattress startups entering the market. The increased competition from 100+ firms selling (almost) the exactly same thing will lead to higher acquisition costs, and make it harder for firms to gain meaningful market share. As this process plays out, venture capital funding will run out, and in turn, these companies will go bust due to running out of cash.

Markets eventually converge on 1-2 dominant players
Coke and Pepsi. Marvel and DC. Google and Facebook. And while there were 1,800 car manufacturers in the US over the 20th century, only 3 had any semblance of considerable sales by the 1980s. What do I think this means for global mattress-in-a-box startups? Sure, I think a few of them will do well, but I predict the majority will fail in the long run. The market won’t let all of them survive.

One good thing is that this set up is good for consumers. In the same way that heavy competition in air travel has largely held the price of an airfare constant for the last 20 years, consumers can get a great deal on a decent quality mattress.

For all the branding, “technology”, and funding touted by this industry, I’m left unimpressed by how homogenous their products and business models are, and I’m looking forward to seeing how this market plays out over the next 2-3 years.

You couldn’t find milk in Vietnam in 1946.

The nationwide dairy shortage due to the First Indochina War inspired a bartender at a Hanoian hotel, Nguyen Van Giang, to whisk egg yolks into coffee as a substitute.

If you walk into any cafe in Vietnam today—despite there no longer being a dairy shortage—you’ll be able to find Egg Coffee on the menu.

After hearing this story, I started noticing other examples of well-loved foods born out of scarcity.

A World War II cocoa shortage saw Pietro Ferrero use hazelnut paste to create Nutella. And despite today’s recipe being only 13% hazelnuts and 7% chocolate —with the rest palm oil and sugar—the spread has a cult following with its own annual celebration day.

Japanese food shortages in the aftermath of World War II resulted in Momofuku Ando figuring out that if you fried noodles in tempura oil, they’d dehydrate and create perforations that would allow them to be cooked quickly. In 2016 alone, 97 billion packs of instant noodles were sold globally.

These stories are nice reminders that a lack of something doesn’t mean we have to go without. Invention may just be an egg or hazelnut away.

It takes me the first few weeks of January to realise I’m in a new year; at least when it comes to writing the date.

Although writing ‘2020’ instead of ‘2019’ is a mild change, it’s easy to forget. Maybe you’ve scratched out a few ‘2019s’ this past week, too?

When we’re faced with new realities—especially ones more complicated than a date change—it’s normal and natural to need time to adapt.

And giving ourselves a little grace when we make mistakes is a recipe for easier transitions.

I just finished William Zinsser’s excellent book, ‘On Writing Well,’ and I love how he used the example of Joe DiMaggio, one of baseball’s all time greats, to define what makes a careful writer.

No one looked more relaxed than Joe. He “covered vast distances in the outfield, always arriving ahead of the ball, making the hardest catch look routine, and even when he was at bat, hitting the ball with tremendous power, he didn’t appear to be exerting himself.”

When a reporter asked about his outstanding form and consistency, he said: “I always thought that there was at least one person in the stands who had never seen me play, and I didn’t want to let him down.”

This idea extends beyond baseball and writing. Whatever your craft, imagine your work in the hands of at least one person who hasn’t seen it before. Who knows where it’ll take you.

If you’re interested in improving your writing—or occasionally need answers to those niggly punctuation questions—you should check out The Punctuation Guide.

It’s got a simple user interface, with clear explanations, and helpful examples. It’s a world of punctuation answers within a few clicks.

If writing comprises any meaningful part of your life (yes, this includes email), it may pay to bookmark it for a rainy day.