Archives for June 2024

A colleague comes into work once a week with a large tennis bag. He’s clearly just come from the court.

I usually ask, “Did you win?”

However, the other day I paused and thought: why do I ask this question? Is it habit? Conditioning? My competitive nature?

Why don’t I ask: Did you enjoy it? Did you learn something? Where is your game improving?

It’s not about my colleague and tennis, it’s about a general attitude towards work and hobbies. Of course winning matters, but there are often more useful questions to ask.

I had LASIK eye surgery a little over two years ago, and it is pound-for-pound one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

I wore glasses for almost twenty years, and now every day I wake up with excellent vision and have no need for glasses.

I still find myself marvelling at the surgery and how much better it’s made my life. I’m certainly grateful for this one-off investment and its daily dividend.

Okay, so today Google saved me a tonne of time.

I picked up the phone to call a customer service line.

Dread, because I’m expecting to wait.

Sure enough, I was put on hold.

And then I saw a button on my phone’s screen that said ‘Hold for Me’.

When I pressed it, the elevator music stopped, but I could see the call was still connected. There was also a message saying the Google assistant was on hold for me.

After about ten minutes, my phone alerted me that there was someone on the line. I picked up my phone, pressed a button to resume the call, and in seconds I was speaking with a customer service agent.

During the call, the agent needed to put me on hold for a few minutes, and the assistant worked perfectly in a mid-call scenario too.

Today’s experience was a game changer. I’ve lost many hours to companies with poor customer service availability, and this was a huge step towards eliminating that pain.

Google, you crushed it.

I try and avoid last minute trips. Not because I don’t enjoy them; I still do.

But rather when I book trips in advance, the anticipation is part of the fun.

It’s the looking forward to seeing family, trying new foods, and seeing new places. I’m also find that it makes me more grateful for these experiences.

Have you ever made a risk register? It’s a thing companies like to do to ‘map their risks’. They create a long list of things that could go wrong, and they assess each of them along two dimensions: severity and likelihood. If they realise a risk will have severe consequences and is likely to happen, they try and ‘mitigate’ that risk quickly.

The thing about risk registers is they’re often built on guess work. Sure, data plays a role where it can, but sometimes it comes down to a subject matter expert making an informed guess about how bad things could get, and how likely it is that the bad thing will happen.

This is not a treatise against guess work. Rather it’s an acknowledgement that we’re unlikely to escape it. It’s part of how we map, estimate, assess, and mitigate risk, and we should be aware of its usefulness, as well as its pitfalls.

Some good friends recently told me about a sleeping programme they participated in during the pandemic, and how one of their big learnings was to not stress about sleep—the quality, the amount, the timing.

Stressing about sleep creates anxiety, and it’s one of the things that can prevent us from getting a good night’s rest.

It’s better to give ourselves a window where we can get the required amount of sleep (i.e., 7-9 hours), but to not stress about falling asleep quickly or staying asleep. Rather trusting that our bodies will know what to do, and what it needs.

1. Just start.
2. Be comfortable with throwing away the first draft.
3. Don’t follow recipes, rules, or feel like you need to be reasonable. Just see what happens and follow your nose, and your gut.

I’m sure there are many more, but these will go a long way to unblock the mind and soul.

Although the uphill feels harder, it’s the downhill that carries the most risk.

I remind myself of this lesson all the time. It’s an easy one to forget when you’re tempted to fly downhill.

People in the UK are quick to complain about the 4:30pm sunsets in winter. Me included. They are pretty grim.

But if we’re going to complain about the short days, maybe we need to consider celebrating the long days.

Waking along at 8pm at night, the sky still bright, the temperature perfect. That’s an evening to be grateful for.

The blank page may invoke fear or excitement. Dread or optimism. Frustration or focus.

But regardless of the emotion, the page will still be blank.

That’s why we should throw something, anything, at the blank page. When we do, we have a base from which to work.

And when we remember that the words in the first draft don’t need to make the final one, we’re free to explore.

Sometimes, just turning up is winning.

You may not make a leap. You may not progress an inch.

But in the long run, if you turn up enough times, the slow-progress-days melt away in the memory.

Today I listened to a great podcast episode from Hidden Brain. It talks about the pitfalls of “trying too hard”.

We’re raised and conditioned to try hard. To sit down and focus. To analytically work our way through a problem. Sometimes, however, this comes at the detriment of spontaneity, creativity, and authenticity.

A great example they shared was tennis, and how people—hobbyists, amateurs, and professionals alike—play their best when they’re relaxed and not obsessing over technique. When a tennis pro is relaxed, they hit with power, confidence, and finesse. But when they’re trying too hard, mistakes creep in.

Another few good examples were from the arts: musicians and improv thespians, specifically. They feel the music and what the other actors are doing, and they respond calmly and naturally. They let the instruments and the story take them on a journey.

The main lesson I took away is that good work is rarely done when we’re tense, frustrated, or trying too hard. Instead, we need to relax and let the work out.

My favourite fruit is the feijoa. It’s a small green fruit that when cut open has a “clear gelatinous seed pulp and a firmer opaque flesh”. When I was a kid, I could eat a dozen in a single sitting.

Feijoas are only grown in a few countries, and sadly they don’t grow here in the UK. And for the past 10 years, I haven’t been in New Zealand during feijoa season.

My parents told me this weekend that they’d just planted five feijoa trees in their garden. Their plan is to make feijoa jam each year, and to get me a few jars so I can have a little bit of home and my favourite fruit all year round.

It’s nice to hear an “I love you,” but sometimes love is five feijoa trees.

The Met Office is saying the UK could experience its wettest summer in 100 years, with around 50 days of rain forecasted.

It’s hard to imagine right now as I sit writing this blog post on the top of a London Double Decker bus looking out at a glorious, sunny, Sunday afternoon.

It reminded me of a thought from Paul Graham that made me chuckle, “In January you wonder why anyone would want to live in England and in May you wonder why anyone would want to live anywhere else.”

I agree with PG, I’m just hoping this summer doesn’t change my mind.

It’s the little details at the edges that can make the difference.

A meal without salt, herbs, and aromatics is plain.

Exercise without stretching is risky.

A holiday without sunscreen is painful.

A team without time for fun gets stale.

A project without exploratory time leads to ideas lacking in creativity.

It’s the little details at the edges that make the difference.