Dan Cullum

I had a particularly busy patch at work earlier this year and exercise took a backseat.

One thing I noticed was my body felt a lot stiffer and I had some old injuries and strains flare up.

It reminded me of the importance of staying on the horse. Even if pace or progress is slow, it’s a heck of a lot easier than getting back on.

In-flight smoking used to be wide spread and common. However, since the 1980s, bans on in-flight smoking have become ubiquitous.

It got me thinking, what feels normal today but will be completely different decades from now?

For example, I could imagine there being autonomous driving and much fewer road accidents as a result.

Or perhaps AI will be so embedded in our workflows that we struggle to remember what it was like before it.

I’m sure we’ll be surprised by the changes.

I’ve written before about how I have a rule to try and only pack my suitcase to 80% full. However, I repeatedly find myself on trips packing more than I need.

So now I’m trying to be even more ruthless, and to pack uncomfortably light. If I get into a pickle, I can always pick something up on the road.

Now, to remember my own advice next time I pack.

When I was a kid, my mum was great with bedtime stories. She’d make up a new story each day and spend 15-20 mins telling them to my sister and I before bed.

She’d also watch and understand the lessons we needed to learn, and she’d craft her stories to have a moral that taught that lesson. For example, the importance of sharing, speaking with kindness to others, being patient, etc.

At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. But looking back, I realise how many lessons I learned through her stories and how much I enjoyed them.

Earlier this year I had a nothing weekend.

There were no plans, no work, no event or social gathering.

I had errands to run, and things to take care of at home, but I did them at a leisurely pace and in peace.

Sometimes we need a calm weekend.

Maru and I have prioritised living close to Central London. We have a rule that if invited to something in town, we don’t want to turn it down because we live far away.

This decision has made a big difference. We live in a neighbourhood that has a bustling high street and is 20 mins in the tube from town. It’s filled with cafes and restaurants, and we have wonderful food and grocery options within 5-8 mins walk from our flat.

Prioritising proximity is an investment, but the intangible dividends pay out regularly.

The beginning of this year was a busy period at work. As I put more time into work, other habits dropped off. My nutrition relaxed and the frequency of my exercise decreased.

To get back into a healthier rhythm, I started with a few shorter exercise sessions to ease me back into the routine; these also gave me a mental boost. I then tried to be consistent with smaller, shorter sessions.

Start small. Keep going.

There is a very real cost to context switching.

Some roles require it, but most of the time, it’s better if a single person can focus on a single thing.

That’s when the deep work happens, and where many of the breakthroughs occur.

The fire alarm went off at work the other day and we had to evacuate the building.

As the automated fire doors closed and I made my way to the stairwell, I immediately noticed the bright green fire exit signs.

It’s funny how you can spend a ton of time in a place and never notice some things, but when you need them, they’re the only thing you see.

Some of the big grocery chains here in the UK are now charging 40 pence for a paper bag.

The price is not reflective of the true cost to make the paper bag, it’s reflective of the behaviour change the supermarket wants to see in its customers.

There’s always more to do. There’s always more you could’ve done. There’s always room for improvement.

Use it as fuel. Don’t let it be a weight that slows you down.

If you’re stuck—it could be a tough question from a leader, a complex trade-off your team is dealing with, or a problem you’re working through on a walk—it helps to ask: what really matters?

Don’t settle for the easy, obvious answer. Really wrestle with the problem and figure out the 1-2 things that need to be true to move the situation or problem forward.

Then do it.

If you still feel stuck the next day: repeat.

One way to look at a career is to see it as a continuous sequence of puzzles.

Each new job, role, or opportunity is a different puzzle that has a unique set of characteristics.

Some are easy, some might be confusing, some may take a long time to solve. Some may be puzzles you’d happily work on in your free time, and others might be ones you’ll happily walk away from.

Seen through this light, one way to optimise a career is finding puzzles worth solving, and trying to find and solve more of these over time.

A few months ago when Maru and I were in India for a wedding, we were part of a group of the bride’s university friends dancing at the Sangeet. The Sangeet is a pre-wedding celebration filled with music and dancing and celebrates the couple and the bonding of their families. It’s a spectacular event.

Most of the group were not natural dancers, and so we were all a little nervous.

I really liked this perspective on dancing from my friend Henny: dancing is about (1) rhythm, and (2) confidence. You don’t need to be a great dancer, and you don’t even need to get all the moves right, but if you can sync with the rhythm, and you have confidence, you don’t need to be afraid of something going wrong in front of a crowd. You’ll find your way.

Of course, dancing is much more complicated than rhythm and confidence, but for a very amateur non-dancer, I thought this was a useful way to approach the dance.

I heard somewhere that the hours of sleep we get before midnight count as double.

Although not scientifically accurate—the first few hours of sleep are typically deep sleep, which is considered the most restorative—I think there is some second-order benefits to going to bed before midnight.

Many of us have commitments early in the morning, so after-midnight bedtimes likely mean that on average we’ll get fewer hours of sleep. So sleeping before midnight helps increase the window of available hours to hit the amount we need.

I often write about habits that I’m personally working to get better at. This is one of them.