Archives for 2023

About a month ago I shared how I’ve introduced three changes to my sleep routine with the goal of increasing the number of hours I’m sleeping per night.

I was rarely getting more than 6 hours per night, but I’m pleased to report back that I’m regularly getting 7 hours per night now. Although I’d love to be sleeping closer to 8 hours each night, I think a 17% improvement is a good start.

One of the big changes was substantially reducing my caffeine intake. I was drinking 5-6 cups of coffee per day. At the beginning of the experiment, I initially went cold turkey. But after 3 weeks I reintroduced one cup per day at least 90 minutes after waking up. The logic for the delay can be found here. I’m enjoying my daily coffee, but don’t need it to get by.

I’m still not satisfied with the duration of my sleep, but I’m continuing to tweak things to try and improve slowly over time.

The search for quality requires patience.

It’s our responsibility to generate a lot of ideas, and to think of all the different sizes, combinations, and methods. And then we need to leave most of it on the cutting room floor.

Only the best bits make it into the final product. Period.

If we’re working on something meaningful, new, or innovative, there will be detractors.

Yet if we try and convince all the detractors to change their minds about our work, we’re unlikely dedicating enough time to what’s most important.

Our job isn’t to convince everyone. It’s to do the best work possible, and to find and serve the people with whom our work resonates.

I’m looking forward to reading Rick Rubin’s new book: The Creative Act. Rubin is likely the most acclaimed record producer of all time. He’s worked with everyone from Run-DMC to Metallica to The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jay-Z, Adele, and many others.

One of the key ideas in the book is to not force creativity, but rather to set up the right environment and let it come to you.

It resonates because it’s the approach I take to writing these daily posts. And it’s an approach that I’m actively trying to bring into other areas of my life too.

I also liked Ryan Holiday’s commentary on Rubin’s book. Rubin could’ve written about anything. Most would expect him to write a memoir where he could talk in detail about making music with the all of the world’s biggest artists. Yet, Rubin chose to write about the creative process. I love that.

There’s a curious thing that happens with improvement: we quickly adapt and form new baseline expectations.

Salary increases. Hitting a sales target. Receiving positive feedback from customers. Upgrading from hostels to hotels. Paying for a quieter gym.

We get used to the improvement, and it becomes our new normal. We then expect everything going forward to be at least as good, and often continue to aspire to better.

I’m all for striving for more, but this topic reminds me of the philosophy of an old friend of mine called Alex. When we got our first jobs out of university, he was adamant to not increase his rate of spending. He had goals to go to graduate school, and didn’t want to pick up spending habits that he’d have to scale back at a later date. Impressively, he kept to that rule, and funded himself through two masters degrees.

Alex was a great example of two things: (1) being aware of baseline expectations in the first place, and the way they can easily change over time, and (2) deliberately crafting a lifestyle that fit supported goals and fit within his means.

If we expect the first draft to be perfect, we’re setting ourselves up to be disappointed.

Most people know that the first draft is going to be rubbish, but due to deadlines, procrastination, or an unwillingness to sit with the problem for a long period of time, they ship their first version.

They’re easy excuses to lean on. It’s rare to find people with the patience or incentive to sit with and challenge our early work.

That’s why it’s important to self-impose expectations around our first draft. To first finish, and then allow space and time for the ideas to soak, for the seeds to germinate, and for the cream to rise to the top.

Today was the first time I heard this saying, and I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before.

The metaphor is powerful because it is so easily understood. The moment my colleague uttered the words, I got it. It also requires little effort to map to any project or endeavour.

Is the result worth all the hard work required to get there? It’s something worth asking every time we set out to make juice.

Whenever I go back to New Zealand for the Christmas holidays, within 2 days of being on the ground I get punched in the face by hay fever, despite preemptively taking tablets to stave off the pollen tsunami.

A few years ago, my parents moved out to a rural property. This place had a tonne of privet—which is a weed, and a pest, that can significantly worsen asthma and hay fever symptoms.

The first time I arrived home and visited them in their new property, I couldn’t stop my eyes from watering. All my sinuses were blocked. I wanted to rub my eyes 24/7, and I could barely sleep at night. No amount of medication was helping. This persisted for my entire trip, and it was miserable.

A year later, when I arrived home I found out Dad had spent the better part of 2 weeks hunting down every privet tree on the property and gotten rid of them all. My hay fever was extremely mild compared with the previous year.

What I loved was Dad’s “no fanfare” approach. He did the work quietly, and he didn’t tell me in advance. Once I got home, mentioned it as a passing comment in conversation.

He taught me a lot about quiet, profound generosity that day.

Maru works as a Service Designer for the Government Digital Service making the UK’s digital services more inclusive and equitable. She loves her job, and I’m proud of the work she does.

In one of her recent trainings, her and her colleagues were asked to think about what design means to them. I loved what she came up with, and the stencils to boot!

Is there an invention, gadget, or item that isn’t expensive, but has made your life significantly better or easier?

For me, it’s the Tide pen. It’s a stain remover in pen format. When you have a stain, press the tip of the pen into the stain to release some stain remover, and “draw” on the stain with the pen to work in the remover. Within a few seconds the stain is gone.

Maru takes a Tide pen with her wherever she goes, and it’s saved me from a ruined shirt dozens of times now. It’s convenience, price, and effectiveness make it an excellent product.

Let me know if you have an item that’s made your life better or easier?

The gentleman who works at my local London Underground station stands at the gates and says “Good morning” to every person entering and exiting the station.

That’s thousands of people every morning during rush hour.

He doesn’t need to do it, but he does. He turns up. He brings the best of himself, with a bright and cheery attitude, and he gives some of it to others.

Although the interaction is small and brief, it has a positive effect on my day.

How we turn up matters.

When Warren Buffett was asked about his biggest investment mistake, he said his “biggest mistakes don’t show up”. That they’re ones of “omission rather than commission”.

Buffett gave the example of having the information to invest in multiple companies, but lost up to $10 billion in earnings as a result of not making those investments.

We often analyse our mistakes after the action has been committed, but it takes a unique amount of discipline to critically assess the roads we chose to avoid.

If each day is a thread, and each experience a different colour, the richness of our life’s tapestry is of our own choosing.

We don’t get to decide how big the piece is, but we can aim to fill it with beauty, adventure, warmth, and joy.

I’ve started a little thing where I save my favourite podcasts for my toughest workouts. Typically leg days and longer runs.

I used to devour my favourite podcasts the day they came out.

I also used to defer my hard workouts.

A little bit of podcast patience, and a bit of behaviour psychology hacking, creates a great carrot to ensure I get the important workouts done.

How different would life look if we stopped assuming we’ll have more time later?

What things would get done this year instead of being put off?

And what’s stopping us?