Archives for 2023

Imagine what the world would look like if the global cumulative effort put into coming up with excuses was put into doing the work.

Excuses are like comfort food. They satisfy in the short term, but we know they’re the wrong fuel for the journey ahead.

My local park has a run club every Wednesday evening.

I’m not a member, but I often seem them doing their thing when I’m on my way back from touch rugby. They run a small circuit, so I often see the same people pass me multiple times as I make my way through the park.

The few vocal people in the group make me smile. They are keeping with the pace, but have also got the energy to shout encouraging phrases at the rest of the group.

“You’ve got this!”

“Nice work, Alan!”

“Keep it up!”

When a team is out of breath, tired, and struggling, sometimes all it takes is one person to muster the energy to throw out some positive energy.

From the smiles I saw on the faces of the other runners, it sure works.

Some of you may recall Maru and I recently repotted all the plants in our home.

Everything looked to have gone to plan until we found spider mites and fungus gnats on one of our larger plants.

We quickly sequestered him, and I began a neem oil treatment: a spray followed by a drench in the neem oil solution.

But the bugs wouldn’t abate.

Maru then googled what a proper neem oil drench is (I’m the eyeballer, she’s the googler), and my “drench” was a light sprinkling in comparison.

So yesterday we placed our plant in the bathtub, and we poured multiple litres of the neem oil solution into the pot, ensuring the treatment reached all parts of the plant’s soil.

I don’t want to celebrate prematurely, but it’s been 24 hours, and we’ve yet to encounter a bug.

Some problems need a good drench. A light watering won’t do.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Or big.

Or flashy.

Or even successful.

By beginning, we allow ourselves to learn something we wouldn’t have otherwise.

We can take that learning and channel it into bigger and better things.

Just start.

Maru and I are heading to Poland next weekend for a wedding. It’ll be the first time either of us will have visited the country, and we’re excited to explore around Krakow for a few days.

We’ll be staying in the Old Town, and I was recommended the restaurant Chlopskie Jadlo by one of my Polish colleagues. We plan to walk around the town and explore and get lost.

If any of you have been before, would love to hear your recommendations!

It’s great if people read and find value in these posts. But the real value in writing them is learning how and what I think about a topic.

Writing isn’t a means to an end, it’s an end in and of itself.

We have five closed terrariums in our home. I’ve posted about them before. They range in age from freshly planted to 4 years old.

A few of the older ones have dead plant matter and a small amount of mould growing inside them. So this week I bought a starter colony of springtails.

Springtails are tiny critters, about 1mm in length, that feed on mould and other decaying matter. They’re the perfect bioactive additions to a terrarium.

I need to figure out how to keep the culture alive first, let them breed a little, and then transfer them to their new homes.

Our terrariums to date have been an almost-microcosm of the larger ecosystems found in nature. However, with the addition of springtails, they’re soon to become bio-active habitats with their own little clean-up crews.

Most good things require consistent effort over a long period of time.

But in the toil of our day-to-day work, there is such a thing as healthy impatience.

It’s the do-it-today attitude.

It’s the “we must fix this problem for our customers” mindset.

It’s the conviction that work done today will make tomorrow easier.

Like any tool, though, we must learn when and how to use it effectively.

Sun Tzu is attributed the original idea that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy”. I’m not one for using war-based analogies in the workplace, so I enjoyed learning of Steve Blanks’ modified saying that “no plan survives first contact with customers”.

It’s true. We can plan all we want, but what we first launch to market is unlikely to be what customers want. And when they share with us what they actually want, it’s up to us to either ignore them and stubbornly execute our original plan, or take heed of timeless advice and make changes to our product.

A little more patience.

A little more persistence.

And little more progress with each day that goes by.

It’ll add up.

You can either be selling painkillers or vitamins.

Painkillers solve a need; a painful problem the customer is struggling to get rid of.

Vitamins solve a want; they’re a nice-to-have, but aren’t essential.

The odds of your product succeeding are higher if you find a problem, preferably a big one, and solve it well.

Whether it’s medication, exercise, or preparing for that upcoming exam, in most situations there is a minimum effective dose. Doses below the minimum won’t yield results. And depending on the activity, the dose required can be high.

For example, running the London marathon requires a significant minimum effective dose of training each week compared to, say, the local park’s 5km fun run.

Decide on the goal, and be aware of the minimum effective dose required.

I watched the Women’s World Cup Final this morning between England and Spain. The game was decided by a 1st half Spanish goal—a sublime strike by Carmona.

The game today, and its tight margin throughout, reminded me that winning is not just about stepping up in the big moments to make the big play. It’s also about consistently avoiding errors: both the unforced and the fatal.

A bold charge by England defender, Lucy Bronze, up to the centre of the pitch and her subsequent loss of the ball left the a gaping hole for Spain to launch an attack into. Spain still had to execute, but the England error was what opened the door in the first place.

Intelligent and immense consistency from the Spaniards; a well deserved World Championship victory.

It doesn’t matter if it’s fungus gnats or spider mites, neem oil is a great bet to getting rid of the bugs and keeping your indoor plants pest free.

When we had a plant pest invasion a few years ago, we tried everything from drying out the soil, to yellow sticky traps, to buying nematodes.

But none worked as well as a teaspoon of neem oil mixed with water and a drop of dishwashing liquid.

Give it a try the next time.

My family moved homes more than ten times during the first twelve years of my life. It was never a move overseas, or even to another part of town. We always moved between properties in the same suburb.

At the time, I enjoyed moving. Being in a new house, on a new street, where I could make new friends with kids in the neighbourhood; all of it was exciting. And at the end of a long day playing, I’d always have my home and my room to come back to.

Since I left home ten years ago, Mum has always kept a room in the house for me. Sometimes it has been used as an office, or for storage, but when I’m home, it’s mine.

There’s something comforting about her saying, “there’ll always be a room for you,” no matter how far away I am, or how long I spend away from home.