Archives for May 2021

There is a large salt bunker in New Mexico. It’s deep. And we’re planning to store dangerous radioactive waste in it.

Here’s our challenge: we need to stop people opening the bunker for at least 10,000 years.

This was the challenge given to a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers in 1990.

Can you imagine what 10,000 years in the future looks like?

To put this into perspective, if we wind back the clock 10,000 years, we had just invented farming.

And so this group set out and considered everything from symbols, to storyboards, to shaping the natural environment to prevent people entering the site. In the end, they opted for large granite monuments, with buried libraries containing information in 7 languages warning future generations of the dangers.

The thing that blew my mind, though, is the radioactive waste actually needs to be stored for more than 250,000 years. But designing 250,000 years into the future is crazy, so the team settled on a more “reasonable” 10,000 years.

What are we doing creating radioactive waste today—in our lifetimes—that will still exist 250,000 years from now?

It reeks of irresponsibility and a lack of foresight.

Us humans are shortsighted creatures.

But it sure does make for an interesting design problem to solve!

Note #1: H/T 99% Invisible podcast for this story, and to Maru who has been a fan for years and recently got me into it.

Note: This post is part of a weekly series called ‘Seneca Sundays’. Each week, I reflect on one of Seneca’s ‘Moral Letters to Lucilius’, and summarise the most practical and useful principles to share with you.

In this letter, Seneca outlines a recipe for being your own best company—how one should carry themselves, think, act, and pray.

1. If you’re going to spend time alone, here is how you should carry yourself

Seneca starts with a caveat: it takes a lot of trust to be alone with oneself. So if we’re hurting or in mourning, it’s best to be in the company of others who can prevent us from betraying ourselves.

However, Seneca then looks to Lucilius as an example of someone who should spend time in their own company. He describes how Lucilius’ self-respect and self-esteem is clear to see in the way he carries himself.

“I remember in what a great-souled way you hurled forth certain phrases, and how full of strength they were… These words did not come from the edge of the lips; these utterances have a solid foundation. This man is not one of the many; he has regard for his real welfare.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. It’s the way Lucilius speaks: with great soul and strength. It’s the substance of what he’s saying: his words aren’t flippant, they’re deliberate and purposeful. It’s the prioritisation of his welfare: having high standards for how he should live and be treated.

I also love how Seneca goes on to say “speak, and live, in this way; see to it that nothing keeps you down.” In this statement he acknowledges that although things will knock us down, it’s within our control to see they don’t keep us down.

2. How to pray, and how to act

Seneca closes the letter by saying we should pray to God as though all people are listening, and act among people as though God is watching.

Regardless of your beliefs, this idea is the essence of integrity, where there is harmony between our internal thoughts and intentions and our outward actions.

Are you experiencing discomfort or pain?

One may be a signal that you’re growing. Becoming better. Learning.

One may be a signal to stop.

Where is the line? And when you’re in the moment, can you tell the difference?

We’re going to miss a day.

It happens. It’s normal.

But when it does, there is a simple trick to get back on track, and remind ourselves why the habit is important.

Let’s take flossing as an example.

We all know we should do it. The dentist reminds us at every visit. But it’s easy to forget.

So when we realise we’ve missed a day, we floss twice that day.

The second flossing doesn’t actually do anything, but it’s a physical and deliberate reminder of the habit. It drills into our minds that flossing is a priority. It makes us take note of the habit.

Apply it to anything: stretching, exercise, taking a walk, spending time with friends or family, or creating time for learning or reading.

When you miss a day, do it twice the next day.

If everything went to plan, the job would be easy.

If everything went to plan, people would agree on the answer.

If everything went to plan, the charts would just move up and to the right.

If everything went to plan, there would be no crises.

But if everything went to plan, you wouldn’t have a job, there wouldn’t be a market for your business idea, and you wouldn’t get an opportunity to learn.

There is a world of possibility when things don’t go to plan. We just need to choose to see it.

We can choose to see the world as it really is, or we can choose to see what we want to see.

Reality vs. Delusion.

We can choose to see opportunity, or we can choose to only see downsides.

Optimism vs. Pessimism.

It’s a powerful exercise to combine the two and ask ourselves: what type of person do I want to be? What types of people do I want to work with? In what way do I want to raise my kids? How do I want to approach challenges and setbacks?

“Without owning something over an extended period of time—like a few years—where one has a chance to take responsibility for one’s recommendations, where one has to see one’s recommendations through all action stages, and accumulate scar tissue from the mistakes, and pick oneself up off the ground, and dust oneself off, one learns a fraction of what one can. Coming in and making recommendations without owning the results, without owning the implementation, I think is a fraction of the value, and a fraction of the opportunity to learn and get better.”—Steve Jobs in a lecture at MIT

This is the best explanation for ‘skin in the game’ that I’ve come across.

Implicit within this quote is ‘skin in the game’ is also a willingness to fail publicly under one’s own name. Along with all the risks, there are also outsized benefits if you win.

When we’re giving it 100%—in a race, in the gym, rushing for that deadline—we’re focused on getting to the finish line as fast as we can.

And in these moments, it helps to be operating from muscle memory: where we’re in a state of flow, and the connection between mind and action feels natural.

However, we can’t build muscle memory when we’re running at 100%.

To allow the connections between mind and muscle to form, we need to be operating at a lower cadence.

There are times to sprint, and they are few.

And then there is time to go a little slower—which is the majority of the time—where we’re simply investing in building our muscle memory for the sprints of the future.

Note: This is the second post in a weekly series called ‘Seneca Sundays’. Each week, I’m reflecting on one of Seneca’s ‘Moral Letters to Lucilius’, and summarising the most practical and useful principles to share with you.

Summary

Seneca’s main point in this letter is that Fortune can be both kind and violent, and that we must prepare ourselves for both of her moods.

1. Test your resilience by preparing yourself for misfortune.

Seneca challenges Lucilius to “set aside a certain number of days during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare.”

To sleep on a straw mat, to wear coarse clothing, and to eat hard and grimy bread.

Seneca’s point is simple: we should “toughen the soul” in good times so we’re prepared for the moments of greater stress that will come in the future. He goes on to say, “If you would not have a person flinch when the crisis comes, train them before it comes.”

It felt a little odd reading this letter, and writing about it, without trying it for myself. So this week, I took 3 days and slept on the floor, wore my plainest clothes, didn’t shave, and ate pasta, canned tuna, and frozen vegetables for every meal.

At the beginning, it felt weird and self-absorbed. Food is never actually missing from my plate, so how could this simulated experience actually be valuable? I felt like a fraud; playing a game that had no purpose.

But over the 3 days, as I asked myself Seneca’s question, “Is this the condition that I feared?” I realised that my imperfect and simulated “scantiest of fare” was teaching me that even with little, I can still sleep soundly and avoid hunger.

2. Learn to love the test, and you won’t be scared of misfortune.

I like how Seneca challenges us to not just endure—or survive—the test, but rather to find pleasure and enjoyment in it. This turns the experience into a psychological advantage we can take into the future.

“It is the highest kind of pleasure to be able to derive pleasure from this sort of food… and you will understand that a person’s peace of mind does not depend upon Fortune; for, even when angry she grants enough for our needs.”

3. Learn to be happy with or without wealth.

As one of the richest people in the Roman Empire, Seneca wasn’t saying we should shun wealth, but encourages us to learn to “live happily without it as well as with it.” And that with the wealth we have—regardless of the amount—we should possess it “dauntlessly”. Unafraid of losing it.

I’m at the very beginning of my learning journey on this topic, but this letter—and my experience this week—has been a small window into preparing my mind for moments of future toil, experiencing the difference between need vs. want, and understanding how little we need to be happy.

After hurtling through the air at 800 kph, at an altitude of 36,000 ft, no one wants a bumpy landing.

So after that tough week in the office, that long workout, that evening university class, find a way to land the plane softly.

Cosy up with your favourite book, have a meal with your family, or take a warm bubble bath.

When we’re so focused on getting there, it’s easy to forget that a smooth landing is good for both passengers and pilots.

When building a product, bringing a new service to market, or even sharing a new idea with our team at work, it has to be both unique and valuable.

The operative word being “both”.

Innovation for innovation’s sake is like treading water. Lots of Movement but no progress.

On the other hand, doing something valuable, but following the status quo, will lead to mediocre results. Another suboptimal outcome.

It’s when we 1) bring something unique to the world, and 2) people find that thing valuable, that’s when the magic happens.

H/T to my ever-supportive mum for challenging me on this topic!

When you’re playing Catan, tennis, or even participating in a marathon, regardless of how you’re performing, you shouldn’t quit. These are “simple games” with limited consequences, clear rules, and knowable outcomes.

But “complex games” should be treated differently.

Complex games have big consequences, ambiguous rules, and unknowable outcomes. Examples could be the prestigious company that overworks its employees, the high-status but fickle friend group, or the business partnership where the benefits all fall to one side of the table.

We don’t need to play these games if we don’t want to.

There is no shame in leaving a losing game.

Dogfooding is the practice of a company’s employees using its own products in real-life situations to develop empathy for customers.

Yesterday, the UK government relaxed COVID travel restrictions, and I was impressed by Advantage Travel Partnership’s CEO, Julia Lo Bue-Said, who was on one of the first flights out from the UK to Portugal—one of the few countries on the UK’s “green list”.

She gave an interview to the BBC’s Today radio programme just after 6am, and then headed directly to the airport. She posted on Twitter throughout the day about all the hoops she had to jump through before successfully making it to the Algarve coast—including a pre-departure test for entry back into the UK, and obtaining her fit-to-fly certificate which was downloadable to her phone.

It’s great to see a leader being on the first flight out—literally and figuratively.

Today the World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organisation released results from the first global study on the relationship between long working hours and the loss of life and health.

In summary, “working 55 or more hours per week is associated with an estimated 35% higher risk of a stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, compared to working 35-40 hours a week.”

Official studies and reports are characteristically understated. But these numbers are insane. And robust too: the study is based on synthesised “data from 37 studies on ischemic heart disease covering more than 768 000 participants, and 22 studies on stroke covering more than 839 000 participants.”

I’ve previously spent time in industries where pulling long hours was seen as a badge of honour, but the evidence is clear: working too much can kill you.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom from the WHO summarises it well, “No job is worth the risk of stroke or heart disease. Governments, employers and workers need to work together to agree on limits to protect the health of workers.”

If you find yourself regularly working more than what the data says is healthy, what are you going to do about it?

See the WHO’s summary here, and the full report here.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb shares a helpful rule in his book, Skin in the Game.

“Anything you do to optimize your work, cut some corners, or squeeze more ‘efficiency’ out of it (and out of your life) will eventually make you dislike it.”

Taleb summarised a feeling I’ve often had, but haven’t been able to articulate.

Last year I started doing stretching and mobility exercises each morning. It should take about 20 minutes, but when I tried to condense the exercises into 15 minutes, I felt sick of them after 2 weeks.

After reading this idea, though, I put no time limit on my next session. It took 27 minutes to get through all the stretches, but I felt amazing at the end of it. The slower pace allowed by body to get the most of of the exercises.

For the activities that we do for our mind, bodies, and the home, perhaps its worth trying to take the foot off the gas and move at a slightly slower pace. Maybe we’ll end up loving something that used to feel like a chore.