Archives for 2022

I went to the doctor for a standard health check up this week, and they offered me an optional blood test to assess my health across a few key indicators.

Curious, because I hadn’t been offered these tests in the past, I asked the doctor why they were offering them now.

He shared how the medical community—and broader society—are shifting from more reactive models of healthcare to proactive ones.

Typically, doctors recommend diagnostic tests when a patient reports concerning symptoms (i.e., any action was typically a reaction).

However, now there are communities of people that religiously track a range of indicators such as their basic metabolic panel, lipid profile, and thyroid panel.

They make changes to their diet, exercise, and sleep regimes. They’ll couple that with supplements, mediation, and tactics to reduce workplace stress. They then test every 3 months with the hope of seeing positive movements in their key numbers.

Companies like Thriva offer this as a subscription service, but with the cost coming in at around £100 per quarter to measure a good set of biomarkers, it always felt a bit expensive for me.

I do wonder if the shift toward proactive health monitoring will actually become mainstream—as in the majority people participate. Or whether it will retain its niche like status because it either remains too expensive, or people simply aren’t that interested to know and make lifestyle changes.

I went with my sister and 3 year old nephew to the zoo today.

I was astounded by the continued influence and ubiquity of The Lion King.

Children at the Lion enclosure shouted ‘Nala’. Kids were pointing at Rafiki near the baboons. And my nephew immediately identified Timon; the lone meerkat standing atop a rock.

It’s amazing how a film from almost 30 years ago can still be so wildly popular, and continue to play a special role in connecting children with animals.

Based on the Lindy Effect, I expect The Lion King will continue to be just as influential for at least the next 30 years.

Perhaps my nephew will one day make this very same observation with his own children or nieces and nephews.

A great piece of writing advice is to write like how you speak.

One term for this is called using the “human-voice”.

Rather than stuffy corporate speak, the human-voice is open, relaxed, and confident.

A good test is to read your writing out loud. If it feels or sounds like it’s something a human wouldn’t say, it probably needs a re-write.

It can always be simpler, shorter, and infused with more of your personality.

It’s easy to confuse the two.

Consistency is turning up every day and performing to a high level.

Clutch is delivering at a critical moment.

We often remember the clutch moments.

But seasons, records, careers, and relationships are built on consistency.

“You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.”

I like this idea from Daniel Kahneman’s ‘Thinking fast and slow’.

The challenge is 1) being self aware enough to notice the change in behaviour, and 2) remembering to write down and reflect on the change so it can be used in the future.

But if we can do those two things, there’s a lot of room for growth.

I met up for dinner with some good friends this week, and before the evening was over, we all had to pen down a big bet for 2022.

The idea was to pick something that we think will happen during 2022, but seems relatively unlikely right now.

Mine was that Tesla will be worth less at the end of the year than it is now at a market cap of $1.1b.

Tesla has outperformed all expectations over the past few years, and global electric vehicle sales are expected to continue climbing rapidly this year.

But in my opinion, their valuation feels disconnected from reality.

Get this, Tesla’s market cap is more than the value of the 2nd to 11th placed car companies combined, and they recently announced the need to recall more than 600,000 cars. I can’t help but feel that the market will correct itself, sooner or later.

Do you have any bold, unlikely, contrarian bets for 2022? Go on, take a punt!

If I think about what shopping will be like in 20-30 years, I believe that in the same way we can scan a barcode and get a product’s nutritional information today, we’ll also be able to access the carbon intensity and environmental impact of a product.

This idea harks back to Economics 101 and the concept of externalities: every good or service has a price, but it may also have positive and/or negative consequences that aren’t accounted for in the price.

For example, when a bee keeper sells honey at the local farmers market, the price of the honey doesn’t include the positive externality of the bees pollinating local flora.

Conversely, the purchase and consumption of cigarettes leads to the negative externality of second hand smoking.

An environmental impact score is about making the externalities known, transparent, and easily accessible.

Perhaps it’ll be an environmental impact rating that sits right next to the price tag. Green for good. Red for bad. Or it’ll may be something a little more hidden; only accessible via the barcode—so it’s something only environmentally conscious consumers end up looking for.

There are many obstacles to such a system working—and many unknown unknowns I’m sure to miss—but one of the biggest challenges, in my mind, is an objective measure to quantify environmental impact.

It needs to factor in raw materials, where they’re from, how they were transported, how they were transformed into the final product; shipping, the ability for the product to be recycled or repurposed, whether or not the product is biodegradable, etc.

It’s complex data to collect and process, a complex idea to get companies to buy-in to, and complex to get consumers to understand quickly and easily.

Now take calories as a point of comparison. A calorie is simply the energy to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius.

Measuring environmental impact is super nuanced, so it makes sense there isn’t a global measurement yet—or that the closest thing we have is probably the Fair Trade label; which has environmental protection built into its standards.

But, again, when I think about what shopping will be like in 20-30 years, I’m convinced there will be some global standard.

Perhaps therein lies the opportunity?

I’m sure some of you will have heard or read about a standard or measure in this space that’s trying to accomplish something similar. If yes, I’d love to hear about it!

I was 11 when I first took a “computer class” at school.

I say “computer class” because I think it was an introduction to Word, or PowerPoint, or something. But it certainly wasn’t useful.

In the first lesson, the teacher introduced the acronym ICT as short for ‘I Can Type’.

She said it with confidence, and I believed her.

As a young boy, I had no reason not to.

It was only a few years later in high school when I learnt it actually stood for Information and Communications Technology.

This was a trivial, non-consequential misunderstanding. But what happens when people share erroneous information on more important topics?

If you ask ten people for advice on what to do in a nuanced and sticky situation, they’ll all give you a slightly different answer.

The wisest will likely ask you questions. The fool will likely tell you there’s only one answer.

“I Can Type” can come in many forms. It’s up to us to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I’ve been wearing glasses for almost 20 years, but next week I’m going to get Laser Eye Surgery (LASIK) to correct my myopia and astigmatism.

A couple years ago I wrote about outsourcing unhappiness. The idea is “it’s better to spend money on things that remove unhappiness, rather than spend on things that add happiness.”

It’s within this context that I reconsidered my opinion on LASIK. Here’s my logic and here is a Google Spreadsheet you can use to follow along:

Glasses and contact lenses cost about $300 per year.

There is an additional cost, which I call the “myopia burden”. I’ve always felt glasses place a barrier between me the person I’m talking to—it’s difficult to quantify, but there is a cost to me feeling that way. Additionally, contact lenses dry out my eyes and begin to feel uncomfortable within 8 hours—making it hard to get through an entire day at work without feeling some discomfort. This isn’t an exact science, but I’ve priced the “myopia burden” at an additional $300 per year. Which if I’m being honest, is on the low side.

LASIK, however, is around $5,000. Which is a hefty sum to pay upfront.

When doing the cost benefit analysis, we also need to factor in the time value of money (i.e., due to inflation, a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in 1 year, 5 years, or 10 years time). This actually makes LASIK more expensive, because I’m spending the money now as opposed to incurring a $300 annual cost with glasses and contacts.

To complete the analysis, I need to map out the costs incurred—or cashflows—under each scenario over a given time period, say 15 years. I then need to discount future costs back to their present day value using a discount rate (i.e., the rate of inflation; assumed at 3%). This calculation can be completed using the Net Present Value formula.

In summary, although LASIK costs $5,000 upfront, which is higher than the Net Present Cost of glasses and contacts over a 15 year period ($3,581), it’s lower than the Net Present Cost of glasses and contacts + the myopia burden ($7,163).

Each person will have their own cost assumptions, and some will disagree with mine, but for me, I felt the evidence was clear: I’m better off getting LASIK, not because it’s cheaper than glasses and contacts, but because I outsource unhappiness by removing the “myopia burden”.

I got my booster today.

I thought it’d be prudent given I’m soon heading back to the UK—which is a bit of a COVID mess right now.

It’s crazy to think that two years ago we hadn’t heard about COVID, yet now we sit here with global vaccination programs and a possible end of the pandemic in 2022.

With each vaccine dose, I’ve paused to be grateful. They’re our best shot at returning to normalcy and giving us the freedom to spend time with those that we love.

I don’t want to take that for granted.

The competition for attention is exhausting.

Take our inboxes for example, they’re constantly flooded with promotions, special offers, and deals. It all becomes one big blur.

We used to have to sort through the noise one by one. Read emails, check notifications, or sort through circulars. We also used to feel a responsibility—and obligation—to do so.

But once we accept the noise will be incessant and never ending, we can free ourselves from it.

Features like automatic filtering within Gmail’s inbox turns the chore of sorting into a quick glance. Notifications on most apps and devices can be turned off without consequence. And almost all circulars can be thrown out without a first look.

The most important information will rise to the top. We can rid ourselves of the noise.

I’m staying in an AirBnb on Mount Paku for a weekend away with my best friends from childhood.

It has a wonderful view of the Tairua Estuary, and has a bird feeder that attracts a number of native New Zealand birds.

I managed to capture a few slow motion videos of the birds flying up to the feeder.

They may not know it, but they’ve got an amazing breakfast with a view.

The competition for attention is exhausting.

Take our inboxes for example, they’re constantly flooded with promotions, special offers, and deals. So much so, they all become one big blur.

We used to have to sort through this noise one by one. Read emails, check notifications, or sort through circulars. We also used to feel a responsibility—and obligation—to do so.

But once we accept the noise will be incessant and never ending, we can free ourselves from it.

Features like automatic filtering within Gmail’s inbox turns the chore of sorting into a quick glance. Notifications on most apps can be turned off without consequence. And almost all circulars can be thrown out without a first look.

The most important information will rise to the top. We can rid ourselves of the noise.

I’m not usually one for the motivational quotes on gym walls—I find them a bit trite and cheesy—but today I saw one that I liked.

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.”

It’s easy to complain about the challenge, but it’s often the only thing between us and getting better.

We got up at 05:30 this morning to walk up Mauao. I love the story of how the mountain came to be.

“Mauao is the sacred mountain at the entrance to Tauranga Harbour. Its name, meaning ‘caught in the light of the day’, comes from the legend in which Mauao was once a nameless mountain, spurned in love by the beautiful mountain Pūwhenua. One night he begged the fairy-like creatures of the forest to drag him to the ocean and end his misery. But the creatures fled as the morning sun’s rays struck, and he was transfixed on the spot.”

We caught the sunrise and were equally transfixed.