When an idea hits me for a post, I have to write it down, right away. At least the concept or idea.
If I don’t do it, I’ll typically find myself later in the day forgetting the idea, and spending a bunch of time trying to remember.
My blog posts are low stakes — I can always come up with another idea. But the principle of “write it down, right away” is especially useful for higher stake tasks.
I watched the Best Picture nominated film Conclave today. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The conclave is the process by which cardinals of the Catholic Church appoint a new pope after one has either died or resigned. It’s essentially rounds of voting that continue until a cardinal has a majority. The factions that form around the leading cardinals and how their support waxes and wanes over days is fascinating.
Ralph Fiennes is excellent as the Dean of the College of Cardinals, and following him as he runs the conclave is a unique—albeit dramatised—insight into a very secretive process.
I have a caffeine double standard.
Scenario 1: During Sunday-Thursday, when I have work the next morning, my last coffee will be around 15:00.
Scenario 2: If I’m on holiday, or say at a wedding, my last coffee could be after midnight. An espresso at the end of a meal, for example.
In scenario 1, I’m afraid of missing sleep.
In scenario 2, I’m less concerned.
Ironically, I’ve never had a problem with caffeine in scenario 2. But I have had problems with scenario 1 if I have a coffee too late in the afternoon.
If attention can be crudely split into undivided and distracted attention, what split do you give your family, friends, and colleagues each day?
How much time is spent thinking about other things, checking our phones, or working on something else in the background.
Distracted attention is hardly attention at all.
There’s a great ad for dogfood on the Tube that leads with the line, “Taste-tested by humans. Made for dogs”.
They get it. It’s humans who buy the dogfood. And if it’s good enough for humans, it’s good enough for dogs.
A coffee shop open in my neighbourhood recently called Redemption Roasters. They are part of a chain of coffee shops that provide barista training for people in prison; helping them transition into to the workforce once they leave. It’s a great concept.
However, the Redemption Roasters in my neighbourhood barely survived a few months. There’s a lot of competition in the area, and despite their coffee being good, it felt like the space and their selection of food just didn’t quite fit with what other cafes were offering.
It’s a real shame because I think they deserved a better shot at it, especially given what they stand for.
When I was a teenager, I loved the song ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ by the Arctic Monkeys.
I was desperate to learn how to play it on the guitar and sing it at the same time. However, the strumming pattern on the guitar is completely at odds with the vocal melody. I couldn’t figure out how to do it.
I asked someone who could do it for advice, and they said to practise the guitar part until I could do it in my sleep. Only then try to add the vocal in.
It seemed obvious once he told me, but it never occurred to me before. When you invest on two fronts at the same time, progress can be hard. But dedicate the time to getting one thing right, to making it automatic, and the other part comes.
When I could play and sing the song at the same time, it felt like magic, like a secret code that I finally cracked. It was an awesome feeling.
Maru knew for a long time she wanted to take up pottery as a hobby. And mid-last year we found her a class a short walk from home.
My default is to be proud of her for everything she does—she’s my wife and life partner after all. But she took to pottery like a duck to water. Her years of architecture, design, and art all translate so smoothly into this hobby.
My favourite piece of hers are these hugging spheres; inspired by a pottery studio called Claymen that we visited in India back in 2023.
There’s a famous quote from Jeff Bezos that when the data and anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.
The reason for this is usually due to measuring—and caring about—the wrong thing.
It’s hard to overstate the value of direct feedback from customers, users, and colleagues.
Every year around this time, I realise the sun is setting a little bit later, and that the worst of the winter is behind us.
It’s a great feeling. One where I’m eagerly looking forward to the summer months ahead.
The cold winter makes us grateful for the summer.
Whether it’s a promotion, a birthday, or new skill learned, make a point of celebrating.
Don’t move on too quickly to the next thing without soaking in the good that happened today.
Chances are I’ve written about this before, but there’s a saying at work that’s been consistently useful: it’s not prioritisation until it hurts.
We can’t do everything. But to avoid the pain of prioritisation, we keep everything on our plates and it leads to pain in the long run.
It’s better to make the tough choice now.
There’s a joke that doing the washing takes a couple hours, but putting away the clothes after drying takes 4-5 business days.
There’s an illusion of progress, but the job ain’t done until it’s done.
There is a temptation to measure everything: metrics, progress, process, and performance.
Just because we can measure everything under the sun doesn’t mean we should.
At a certain point, too much measurement is crippling. It can tie teams in knots and overwhelm them with complexity.
Knowing when to stop measuring is a skill worth learning.
When we know where we want to go, 95% of the new ideas, things, or opportunities that come across our plates are a distraction.
It takes immense discipline to get to the destination with a tonne of detours.