Archives for 2024

It’s how they treat you when things go wrong that matters most.

Anyone can be a fair-weather friend, but it takes guts to stand with someone through a tough time.

I’ve written numerous times over the years about the value of improvised comedy, in particular its principles that also serve as pieces of wisdom for life.

One of its most valuable rules is, “Make your partner look good”.

The person who tries to make themself look good on stage, who isn’t generous or gracious to their fellow actors, who hogs the limelight and thinks the whole show is about them, they’re much less fun to watch. This inevitably leads to them being less funny too.

In contrast, the person who saves others from a pickle, gives others great prompts, and is always thinking about how to better support their team mates, that person ends up being an audience favourite. The audience appreciates the work, the effort, and the thought that goes into playing the team game. And you guessed it, these end up being the hilarious improv actors.

The extension of this rule to life is simple. The less we focus on ourselves, and the more we try to make our family, friends, and colleagues the stars, the more fun we have. Although success isn’t guaranteed, it’s a worthy way to live.

I recently learned about the impressive ‘Drawing Marathon’ at the Rhode Island School of Design from a colleague who participated in the program a few years ago.

It’s an intensive course where participants draw from 9am to 9pm every day for a month. The only thing they do (or have energy for) outside of drawing is eating and sleeping.

My colleague mentioned the positive benefit it had on how they approach creative work. The good ideas are often 20+ ideas deep, so they make sure to create, and explore, and try a lot of ideas because they know the first ideas won’t cut it.

I think this is an idea that people get conceptually, but programs like the Drawing Marathon help people internalise and truly understand the amount of work required to get to the good ideas.

I liked this thought from the Orange Book on Twitter.

“You already have the opportunity to hang out on a daily basis with many of the smartest people who ever existed, you just need to read the books they wrote.”

Choose careful. Read slowly. Re-read. Digest. Then act on it.

Maru and I hopped on one of our return flights to the UK from Australia. We were on an older aircraft; small and without personal entertainment screens.

I grimaced, thinking I was in for a long flight without entertainment, when I noticed a small sticker on the seat in front of me advertising their streaming service.

Everyone has a WiFi compatible device and headphones, so if the airline can stream content via WiFi, why do they need physical screens that inevitably break and malfunction.

I ended up sleeping most of the flight, but not before I verified that the streaming service worked like a charm. I thought it was a great way to upgrade the entertainment options on smaller and older aircraft.

When the playwright writes the script, they provide the dialogue and some minor descriptions of character actions and setting, but they leave a lot of space for the directors and actors to make it their own. If the playwright is too prescriptive, they suck the joy and possibility out of the roles of those further down the line.

It’s a good lesson to think about when we work with others on both professional and personal projects. There’s always a temptation to be overly prescriptive, but much of the magic happens when we give people space to make it their own.

A former colleague once said: each day spent by the sea without entering the water is a wasted day.

The idea has stuck with me. There’s something natural, primal, and good-for-the-soul about swimming in salt water and hearing the lap of the water and the crash of the waves.

Maru and I do our best to stick to the rule of swimming in the sea whenever we’re near a beach. It never fails to put us in a good mood.

Building on the idea from yesterday’s post on “Showing the Thing”, I spotted this poster on a local community notice board.

It made me chuckle. I’m sure Sarah is great at her job, but if you’re in the business of designing great graphics, it’s a good idea to show it in your marketing.

Who knows, maybe Sarah and her customers love that Sharpie vibe.

One of the mantras of the UK’s Government Digital Service—the organisation that led the modernisation of the UK’s digital services during the 2010s—is “Show the Thing”.

There’s always a temptation to “tell”—through words, documents, or slides—but what really matters is what the end user sees, touches, and interacts with. The reminder to “Show the Thing” is a plea to team members to share the actual product, even if it’s in a work-in-progress state.

It helps build empathy with customers, identifies issues earlier and faster, and moves teams faster towards concrete, shippable products.

Maru and I have spent the past few days on Rottnest Island. Its nearest landmass (bar the Australian mainland) is more than 3,000kms away. It’s a small island with a 24km ring road and 63 bays and beaches.

Rottnest receives thousands of visitors per day, but with only two hotels on the island, most visitors are day trippers. They hire bikes, cycle round the island, take a few selfies with the impressively docile Quokkas, and then head back to the mainland.

Maru and I decided to stay for three nights, and we are so thrilled with our decision. The island is practically deserted in the early morning, and in late afternoon onwards (as the last ferry to the mainland is at 04:30pm).

I went for a sunrise run this morning and hardly saw a soul. And yesterday evening Maru and I found a high point, watched the sunset, and cycled back to the settlement on silent roads.

We’ve also been impressed with the infrastructure on Rottnest. It seems like each detail has been thought through carefully; from the quality of the roads, hydration stations, signage, rubbish bins, walkways and paths, and the few bakeries, cafes, public toilets, and restaurants on the island. They’ve made it easy for people to travel here and not leave a trace of rubbish or cause any damage to the local flora and fauna.

These fewer days have been magical and we’re thrilled with our decision to stay a a few nights.

My grandfather tried to help me learn how to ride a bike by sending me down his sloping backyard with a little push. I can’t remember if I fell off or if I crashed into the fence at the end of the yard. Both equally terrifying for a young lad.

Because whole ordeal with my granddad spooked me, it must’ve been my dad who later removed my training wheels and helped me learn how to ride.

However, since getting my nephew a balance bike, and seeing other young kids riding them through the London parks, it now seems like a much more obvious way to learn.

What really matters is learning how to balance. Training wheels are designed to compensate for poor balance, whereas balance bikes get kids to focus solely on building up their balance and coordination muscles before worrying about other things like peddling.

This feels like a much more natural way to learn how to ride a bike, and is a method I anticipate will continue to grow in popularity.

We’re at a beautiful spot in Western Australia where the view of the stars is unspoiled by light pollution.

Maru took a number of iPhone long exposure photos over the past few days, and the results were stunning.

We got especially lucky that the moon was just beginning to wax, so the sky was still very dark. Maru was able to capture multiple shots of the Milky Way, and considering the photos were taken on an iPhone, I think they turned out much better than I expected them to.

Here are my two favourites:

I wrote a few weeks ago about how Maru is a massive Oasis fan and how we missed out on tickets for their 2025 UK shows.

Since missing out, we’ve been following their tour announcements for other countries and have been signing up to all their ticket ballots.

The good news is we managed to secure tickets… in Mexico City in September 2025!

We’ve never travelled across continents to see a concert before, and we don’t take it for granted in the slightest that this is an extravagant expense. But we resolved long ago to invest in experiences over things, and I know we won’t regret this one!

Vamos!

It’s been a while since I’ve driven a really new car, but every few years or so—usually when renting a car—I get paired with one.

We picked up a lovely Mazda SUV here in Aus earlier today, and it’s well suited for Outback driving.

The thing that really impressed me was the car’s Heads Up Display (HUD). It’s a little projector that sits in front of the driver and projects a bunch of information onto a reflective screen on the windshield. This information looks like it’s floating out in front of the car, and it makes it easy for the driver to look at their speed, the speed, and other information without having to take their eyes off the road.

It’s simple, but it feels magical. It’s the kind of product that now I’ve experienced it, I want every driving experience to have it, and I struggle to imagine why I would ever not want it. That’s the best sign of a well designed product.

Maru and I are on the tarmac at Heathrow and are about to take off for Australia. It’s my first time visiting since I lived there nine years ago.

We’re super excited to celebrate the wedding of close friends of ours, and then we’ll spend a week travelling around (a little bit of) Western Australia (it’s a big place!).

We’re heading to Rottnest Island; we hear the quokkas are cute, and that cycling around the 20km ring road and snorkelling in the tranquil bays are a good way to spend a few days. We’ll then head down to the Margaret River region for another few days at the beach. And of course, we’re looking forward to the great Australian coffee and food!

I also recently picked up an inexpensive film camera from the early eighties, a Canon AE- Program, and I’m looking forward to capturing and developing the photos from this trip!

Right-o, let’s go!