Archives for April 2022

Each year on his birthday, Kevin Kelly shares a list of pithy life advice.

I’m a big fan of Kelly. He’s a futurist, optimist, technologist, and creative powerhouse all wrapped into one.

Kelly turned 70 earlier this week and I’ve already read his latest list of life advice multiple times, as well as re-reading his previous lists.

Here are some of my favourite:

Productivity is often a distraction. Don’t aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible, rather aim for better tasks that you never want to stop doing.

Speak confidently as if you are right, but listen carefully as if you are wrong.

The consistency of your endeavors (exercise, companionship, work) is more important than the quantity. Nothing beats small things done every day, which is way more important than what you do occasionally.

What you do on your bad days matters more than what you do on your good days.

You can be whatever you want, so be the person who ends meetings early.

Cognitive biases can be dangerous. If left undetected, these errors in our thinking can lead us down many a wrong road.

Given their abstract nature, it can be difficult to find 1) an exhaustive list of cognitive biases, and 2) clear descriptions and explanations for each. Which is why I’m writing today about Wikipedia’s List of Cognitive Biases.

It doesn’t take long to read, but by the end of it, I’m confident you’ll have learnt something new, or will have been reminded about a bias that you want to avoid.

Here was my favourite new one: Effort Justification. We tend to attribute greater value to an outcome the more effort we put into achieving it. This can result in more value being applied to an outcome than it actually has. A great example of this is the IKEA Effect: people place higher value on items they assemble themselves, regardless of the quality of the end product.

Happy reading!

I’m not against acronyms. Groups that have a shared understanding of their content and culture can use them effectively.

But acronyms can be hard for new members of the group to grasp. In addition to meeting new people, learning new content, and figuring out how the team works, they have to deal with a bunch of letters lumped together that make no sense at first glance.

So here’s a simple rule: when someone asks what an acronym means, why not introduce an acronym moratorium for the next 10 times the acronym is used? This would involve writing out, or speaking, the acronym in full words. You can follow-up with the acronym (in brackets) to help people learn it.

I’ve learn that if one person has a question on what an acronym means, or on a particular piece of content, there is usually someone else in the group who has the same question.

Why not invest in making it easier for everyone to follow along?

“If you can’t be happy with a cup of coffee, you won’t be happy with a yacht.”

You can replace yacht with anything you like.

And you can replace coffee with your drink of choice, but don’t go any further.

This simple thought can serve as a powerful, daily reminder to be grateful for today, the present, and what we already have.

Note: I had trouble finding the source of this idea—I thought it was from Naval, but I believe it may be misattributed. Regardless, the idea is strong enough to stand on its own, even without a named author.

The crowd gathers, gets excited, and eventually dissipates.

What’s new never stays new for long. We make progress, and move on to the next thing.

The photo below is from the opening of the first ATM in the world. It’s taken outside a Barclays Bank in London in 1967.

What we remove is often more important than what we add.

It doesn’t matter if we’re building products, buying things, cooking a meal, or planning our social calendar, things end up getting messy, bloated, and inefficient when we get caught in the trap of always adding more.

Removing stuff is hard though. It forces us to decide on the relative importance of things. It’s easier to skip deciding and live with the clutter.

But when this happens, our possessions end up owning us, our processes slow us down, our products become unusable, our meals are a traffic jam of flavours, and our social calendars are exhausting.

So, what’s one thing you could remove to make next week easier?

A few of you may recall Maru and I were recently locked out of our flat, and had to call a locksmith to let us back in.

The 20 minute call-out ended up costing an eye-watering sum, but after a long-haul flight and a two week trip, we were just happy to get back into our flat.

This experience made me notice what’s called the locksmith paradox; a concept from Dan Ariely, a Psychology and Behavior Economics Professor at Duke University.

He describes that as a locksmith gets better at their job, they upset their customers because they get the job done faster.

This example gets to the heart of a mistake we’re prone to make with respect to perception of value. It’s easy to equate value with time, rather than outcomes.

If the locksmith puts in a solid hour’s work, and you pay them $200, that’s fair. But if they get you back into your house in 3 minutes, all of a sudden it’s a rip off—even though they got you back into your house in 5% of the time.

This paradox extends to many fields, disciplines, and projects—especially when outcomes have a non-linear relationship with inputs.

Aspire to be the master locksmith. And remember to reward the master locksmith commensurate to the outcome, not the input.

I played my first game of Padel today, and I loved it.

It’s a hybrid between tennis and squash that is played on an enclosed court a little smaller than a tennis court. The scoring is the same as tennis, but the rackets are smaller, solid, and stringless. And similar to squash, the ball can be played off the walls which adds a really interesting dynamic to the game.

It’s less physically demanding than tennis, but the use of a tennis-like ball makes it more forgiving than squash—where the ball doesn’t bounce much.

I also love how easy it was to learn, and positive energy that can be built between 4 players on a small court.

To give you a better sense of the game and the gameplay, why not watch ‘the best point in padel history’. One caveat, I definitely didn’t play like this!

I came across a stunning chart today: Partisan differences in perceived share of deaths by age from COVID-19.

This isn’t a commentary on US politics (that’s not my thing!), but rather an appreciation post for how data can often tell the stories we can’t tell ourselves.

In life there is 1) what we think happens, 2) what everyone else thinks happens, and 3) what really happens. All three are usually different, and that’s okay.

But when there is data, and when it’s presented cleanly and clearly, we can start to identify gaps in our thinking.

Taking the above as an example, everyone overestimates COVID’s share of deaths for under 65s; swinging as far as 87x what’s actually occurring (i.e., democrats estimating COVID is responsible for 8.7% of deaths for those 24 and under). But everyone also massive underestimates COVID’s share of deaths for the over 65 category.

Data points that are placed into context tell fascinating stories. And if we’re willing to take the time to craft, check, and verify those stories, it can help us avoid or undo our faulty thinking.

Netflix is in a tough spot.

They made headlines this morning for their first decline in subscriber numbers in 10 years. They forecasted Q1 subscriber growth of 2.5 million, but actually lost 200,000. Even more striking is they forecast losing another 2 million in Q2.

They’re citing saturation in key markets, as well as mounting pressure from the likes of Disney, Apple, and Hulu, as being the reason for the decline.

However, what was most shocking to me was the 100 million people that watch Netflix by borrowing credentials from other users. That’s huge when their total subscriber base is 220 million.

To sum up the situation, Netflix has lost about 65% of its market value within the last 6 months. A staggering decline.

To combat the above, Netflix is considering clamping down on borrowed credentials, and is also looking to bring in a lower priced ads tier to their platform within the next year or two.

I worry it’s too little too late for Netflix. I don’t see how the above two responses will close the gap in revenue nor growth expectations.

It’s going to be interesting watching all this shake out over the coming year or so.

With respect to good habits and life principles, pick reminding over relearning.

Relearning is making the same mistakes and feeling the pain all over again.

Reminding is small actions to ensure the we keep the habit, or stick to the principle.

One example that’s been impactful for me is ‘Mind follows body’.

If I wake up, push past the inertia, and exercise first thing in the morning, my mind is much better prepared for the day ahead. I feel more alert, confident, and able to handle the volatility or challenges that come my way.

The easy part is believing in the principle. The hard part is putting it into practise everyday.

And on days where I don’t feel like it, I tell myself: reminding is a lot easier than relearning.

I love liking songs on Spotify. When you tap on that little heart icon, it immediately saves your songs in your ‘Liked Songs’ playlist. This allows me to create a powerful chronology of songs.

I’ve saved about 1,000 songs since early 2017, and when I scroll back through this date-ordered list I can identify periods, themes, and motifs in my listening. There’s the country phase, the a capella and musical theatre era, and the 70s period; all of it interspersed with a healthy mix of pop.

Each song I save adds to my musical story. It’s a fingerprint, a record, a set of breadcrumbs in the forest that can transport me back to moments, emotions, and periods in my life.

That’s special, and it’s something I look forward to continuing for years to come.

I was out on a walk earlier today when I heard a cacophony down the road.

Looking ahead, I saw it was a food delivery rider with a boom box on his bike. I couldn’t make out what he was blasting, but he was dancing and jiving to it without a care.

As he passed, I looked at pedestrians around me. All had big smiles on their face as they too enjoyed seeing the dancing cyclist on his joyride.

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, if you’re doing it with heart and personality it’ll rub off on others and help them have a better day too.

When Conan O’Brien wrapped up his final appearance on The Tonight Show, his parting message was about cynicism.

“I’m asking this particularly of young people that watch: please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favourite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

What’s missed is the context within which O’Brien shares these words.

He’s at the end of a 22-year relationship with NBC. Only 7 months earlier they moved him from ‘The Late Show’ to ‘The Tonight Show’, where he took the reins from Jay Leno, and held the primetime slot: directly after the late night local news.

However, due to poor ratings, NBC wanted to reshuffle the programming order and move O’Brien later in the evening. O’Brien refused, citing it would ruin the long and rich tradition of ‘The Tonight Show’ (it started back in 1954!).

O’Brien had every reason to be cynical, bitter, and despondent. Yet he chose to encourage the exact opposite. It’s the context that make his message all the more resonant.

The Formula 1 season is back, and I have to admit: it’s more than a phase.

I’ve watched most races within the past two years, Maru and I are going to the British Grand Prix later this year, and my family even got me a driving experience at the famous Silverstone Grand Prix track for my 30th birthday.

In the Formula 1 community, I’m what you’d call a “Neutral Fan”, meaning I don’t support a specific driver or team.

Instead, there are a handful of drivers and teams that I like seeing do well. And because that “handful” is about half the grid, I rarely disappointed.

This is in stark contrast to fans who are loyal to one driver. I even know folks who switch off the race if their driver crashes or has a bad start.

It’s a juxtaposition of density and volatility.

I spread my support, so I’m broadly happy with the result of most races.

Others concentrate their support, risking massive highs and painful lows on how their driver performs.

It’s comfortable to sit on the sidelines and be non-committal, but something tells me there’s more heart, soul, and fun when you go all in.

I’m also sure it applies to a lot more than Formula 1.