I’m thrilled my parents are visiting Maru and I in London for the first time in 6 years. Thanks to COVID and New Zealand being pretty far away, it’s taken a while for them to make it back here.
I’m looking forward to sharing a couple weeks of London life with them; doing day-to-day things like getting coffee and walking in the park.
We’ve got a short road trip planned, but otherwise, it’s all about quality time and enjoying the city and its spring weather.
I’ve been reminded recently that the easy option is often the safe option. More often than not, this is decision-by-consensus; where no one rocks the boat.
But I’ve noticed that it’s the opinionated products that are memorable. The ones that take a risk, that do something different with their language, branding, and design. AirBnb’s icons is a great recently example of this.
They don’t try and be all things to all people. They draw a line in the sand and say, “this is what we are, and this is what we’re not”. And I love that.
Many drivers in London default to aggression, and it’s unpleasant. If someone changes lanes too quickly, gets cut off, or takes too long to get moving, people get annoyed. They honk, flash their lights, and the show their displeasure. When I’m driving in Malaysia, the roads are less orderly than London. People move into each others space and people cut you off regularly. But no one is angry at each other. There may be a little honk to let you know that they’re there, but there’s no aggression.
Whether we like it or not, defaults everywhere. Every human system has a way of doing things, and people respond others in the system in a predictable way.
As long as people are safe, my preference is for systems that default to tolerance. This is where the attitude is a more relaxed, and where people assume good intent.
I may not be able to change the attitude of London drivers, but I can change the default in my home, teams, and friendship groups. That’s something we all have some influence over.
…make it even simpler.
Keep going.
Perhaps push it a little too far just to see where things break.
But more often than not, we don’t push far enough.
There’s almost always opportunities to make things simpler.
We’re in the middle of spring in the UK, and it’s the best time to repot house plants. The plants are gearing up for the warm and sun of the summer, and are ready to grow.
I think us humans have similar stages. We may not follow the seasons, but there are times when we’re ready to grow, and there are times when we need to hibernate and rest.
All of us need repotting from time to time.
There’s been a lot of chatter about Beyonce’s latest album. I love country music, and I think it’s great that Beyonce did her take on the genre. I really enjoyed the album.
For her cover of The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’, Beyonce recorded her vocals over the original backing track Paul McCartney laid down for the song. It provides a simple, less-is-more sound that elevates the cover.
I was a little perplexed at first because I thought Beyonce had decided to leave the click track, or metronome, in the recording. Have a listen, it initially feels quite jarring. However, after doing some research, I found that that this was Paul McCartney’s foot tapping on the original backing track. I love that she left it in as is.
I’ve been using a new fitness tracker called Morpheus for the past two weeks, and despite it being early days, I’m close to calling it the best fitness tracker I’ve used to date.
Morpheus is a heart rate monitor that is used for (a) a daily “recovery check”, and (b) tracking exercise.
Each morning when I wake up, I answer four simple questions: (1) how much did I sleep (which imports automatically from my Garmin watch), (2) how did I sleep, (3) how do I feel, and (4) how sore am I today. I then do a 2:30 minute Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measurement. The questions and HRV measurement are then used to calculate a ‘Recovery Score’. The score is a guide for how much I can push my training on a given day. A score above 80%, and I can push hard. Anything between 40-80%, I need to be careful. And below 40%, I should make it a rest day.
When I track my training sessions—both cardio and strength—my Recovery Score updates to reflect additional strain on my body. And Morpheus also updates the target time I should spend in my recovery, conditioning, and overload cardio zones each week.
I love the simplicity of the four questions each day, using recovery to adapt my level of exertion, and having clear time-based targets for training each week. I also really like how Morpheus is a pay-once product; no annoying monthly subscriptions like Whoop.
The UI and UX could still use some work. There are a bunch of kinks that haven’t been ironed out yet, but the core functionality is solid and useful.
There’s a great initiative in London called the ‘Library of Things’. The idea is simple: people can rent useful items from their local high street.
This is especially helpful for items that are are expensive and used infrequently. For example, Maru and I recently hired out a heavy duty carpet cleaner. We’d never own one ourselves, and the cost of getting someone in to do the work was 10x the price of hiring the machine.
The best part about Library of Things is their thoughtful user-centred design. The reservation process is quick, seamless, and all online. You get a 6-digit code that you take down to your local library, and entering this code opens a cabinet with your item inside. You can rent anything from a sewing machine, to a pasta maker, to a hedge trimmer.
There have been lots of community-sharing-type ides over the years, but they typically lack the momentum to reach escape velocity; often suffering from a lack of items and discoverability of the service. Library of Things have nailed it in a simple and elegant way. It’s a great example of a service that delivers a lot more value than its cost.
There are a few sentences that make me chuckle and are my go-to examples when sense checking punctuation; particularly comma usage.
“The bear eats shoots and leaves.” — that’s a normal bear.
“The bear eats, shoots, and leaves.” — that bear is a criminal.
“Have you eaten, Grandma?” — is a perfectly reasonable question.
“Have you eaten Grandma?” — is suggesting cannibalism.
The little things matter. Even commas.
The touch rugby season started back up today. For the past few seasons I’ve turned up minimally trained, which is a bad idea. Not only does it increase the risk of injury, but sending my heart rate to its max with any warning is unwise.
Thankfully, I’ve taken more thoughtful approach this year. I’ve been running consistently for the past few months. Not crazy distances, but around 15-20kms per week and (I think!) it has made a difference.
Touch rugby is a fast sport with rolling substitutes, and in the past I’ve felt the need to substitute relatively early into a game. However, today I found that even when I pushed into higher heart rate zones, I was able to recover faster and remain on the field without the same levels of fatigue that I usually feel during the first games of the season.
I’m hoping to build more of my endurance base over the course of this summer, and I’m hoping to make little forward progress each week.
Oliver Burkeman has a great saying, “Everyone is totally winging it”.
So worry less. People aren’t looking at you and critiquing you, they’re too worried about looking like a goof themselves.
Give it a go. Loosen up. Say it plain and shoot straight.
Everyone is totally winging it.
I was on the tube on Sunday afternoon in central London and saw swathes of runners hopping on the Underground.
They were buoyant. They’d just finished the London Marathon after all.
It was impressive to imagine the millions of hours of training that the more than 50,000 participants would have done in preparation for the race.
I didn’t know the London Marathon is the most popular marathon in the world. If you enter the public ballot you have a 3% chance of getting a spot.
It made sense to me why all the runners were elated. It’s not just about finishing the marathon, that’s certainly important, but it’s also about getting to the starting line of a race that so many want to do, but most never get the chance.
Maru and I have adopted a principle in our home and we remind each other of it often: why risk a lot to gain a little.
It’s not that we’re choosing to be conservative at every turn, but it’s a commitment to objectively looking at a situation and calculate what could be lost vs. gained.
And although we use it for big decisions, we use it for small things too. For example, being a little late to an event by driving a little slower on a dark, rainy London evening is a trade-off that we’re both happy with.
To gain a little, don’t risk losing a lot.
Experiences have Best Before dates too.
That backpacking journey in my early twenties was a priceless adventure, but sleeping in a small room at a hostel with eleven other people is not something I’m signing up for now.
Seeing my favourite band in the front row of a heaving mass of people was great when I was sixteen, but I now prefer to appreciate the show from the stands.
Kids only believe in Santa for a short 4-5 year period, the magic of their belief and joy is real for less time than we realise.
Some things have a window when they’re best experienced. It’s worth consciously thinking about them and planning accordingly.
You can measure, test, and calculate.
You can also use your gut, sense what’s right, and go on a feeling.
You can use a ruler, and you can eyeball it.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other.