Dan Cullum

As year end approaches, my team has been brainstorming about the products we’ll build next year.

Earlier this week, we had a session where the ideas proposed felt vague and flat.

A couple days later, we changed one thing: we added a constraint. We narrowed down the field of possibilities, and forced ourselves to think about a more specific problem.

The ideas came thick and fast, and the creativity in the room was infectious.

Constraints, rather than hindering, can often bring out the best in our teams.

The New York Times recently ran a completely random—but fun—experiment.

Can you tell a ‘Trump’ fridge from a ‘Biden’ fridge?

“We teamed up with Lucid, an online survey platform, to ask a representative sample of U.S. residents whom they’re planning to vote for — and whether they’d open their refrigerators and take a picture of the contents. Hundreds did.”

And as a reader, you can participate by guessing which candidate people are planning on voting for based on the contents of their fridge.

And as it turns out, the contents of a persons fridge is a horrible indicator of how someone is likely to vote, with people only guessing right about 53% of the time—barely better than a random guess.

I love the internet for how it can make these random experiments possible. They’re a lot of fun to watch and participate in.

I’ve got a group of best buds from New Zealand. Although we grew up together, we’re now scattered around the world.

One of them—his name is Chingy—got married last week in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, due to COVID and New Zealand’s tight border rules, it wasn’t possible for the group to return home for the celebration.

However, we knew we needed to send the happy couple a special video to replace what would’ve been our speeches at the reception.

We ended up writing and recording a song, and filming a music video to go along with it. We had an amazing two months brainstorming ideas and putting it together, and we were stoked the happy couple loved it!

Here it is!

It took 6 months, 7 hours of phone calls, and a dozen emails to set up my online account with the UK tax office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

What caused the delay?

4 years ago, I filled out a paper form to register for my National Insurance Number (this is a unique number all residents have to make sure their income tax is recorded against their name).

And either due to 1) my messy handwriting, or 2) a misreading of my name by the civil servant, my last name had a single-letter typo. This one error resulted in me failing all the security and verification steps to set up my online tax account.

But what’s perhaps most shocking is it took 6 months of back and forth communication with HMRC until this typo was diagnosed as the root cause.

The systems we build are only as effective as the weakest link. And the second-order consequences of minor errors can be far reaching, and take a long time to solve.

Back in 1937, George Orwell wrote these words:

“Our civilisation is founded on coal more completely than one realises until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil.”—The Road to Wigan Pier

Less than 100 years ago we were dependent upon coal.

Since then, we’ve discovered and harnessed new forms of energy, and have also realised that uninhibited burning of fossil fuels will lead to climate disaster.

The early morning sun hits my face as I write this, and it has me thinking about 2037—16 years from now, and the 100 year anniversary of Orwell’s words—and about where humanity will be.

I’m encouraged by the fact that 2019 was the first time the UK generated more electricity from renewables than fossil fuels. That switch alone is a big milestone.

With this trend set to continue, here’s hoping my blog post update in 2037 will tell that story!

I’ve been reflecting on Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues today. And after pondering on them, I thought you may find value in them too.

Not all of them will resonate, but even if it’s just one, that’s worth something.

1. Temperance – Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence – Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order – Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution – Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality – Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry – Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity – Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice – Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation – Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness – Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility – Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity – Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility – Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

If you read the news headlines in the UK, and you read the headlines in Australia, both countries are talking about the coronavirus.

It’s hard to tell them apart, and it’s all too easy to think the story of the virus in each country is similar.

But when you look at the data, the story is dramatically different.

On 27 July 2020, the UK had 421 daily confirmed new cases, Australia had 453.

On 22 October 2020, the UK had 26, 687 daily confirmed new cases, Australia had 14.

Nations are complex systems, and I’m at risk of over simplifying here, but this data provides some evidence that lockdowns, border closures, and obedient citizens can control this virus.

For those of you reading this in the UK, the US, or other countries with rising case counts: wear your mask, and please stay safe this winter.

I was thrilled to learn Sir Paul McCartney will be coming out with an album, McCartney III, in December.

This will be the third album he has made completely alone; playing all the instruments and singing all the vocal parts.

The 78 year old legend recorded the album during a 9 week period at home over lockdown.

Could this guy get any cooler? I also love how he’s still putting his art out into the world at such a reliable pace and quality.

Here is the McCartney track I was bouncing to whilst writing this post.

There’s always an opportunity to make things better.

Here are some examples of “cross-industry innovation,” meaning borrowing ideas from one industry to make another one better.

James Dyson created the Dyson vacuum design after seeing how sawmills use cyclone force to eject sawdust.

Henry Ford’s car assembly line borrowed from multiple industries, he adopted 1) interchangeable parts from the watch industry, and 2) continuous flow manufacturing from the canning industry.

When French doctor, Etienne Tarnier, was searching for solutions to try and help premature babies survive, he spotted poultry incubators in the Paris zoo. A short while later, he’d made the first infant incubator.

There is magic everywhere if we’re willing to look, learn, and experiment.

Before we make any big decision—in the home, or in the workplace—it helps to ask the question, “But, what if we’re wrong?”

It’s easy to forget there are a set of assumptions behind every decision.

It’s easy to believe that because we’ve been right before, we’ll be right this time too.

It’s easy to block out the potential downsides of outcomes we don’t want.

But a sense check, a simple reminder of the potential consequences, can help us avoid big mistakes. And avoiding a bad decision is much easier than making a good one.

“Finding your passion” can be illusive.

An alternative is finding what you enjoy refining.

When you can’t help but make things better, it’s no long work, it’s play.

The electrician said it was a “high tech” bathroom fan, “much better” than the previous.

I blindly trusted.

However, once he left, the fan never turned off.

After some shoot-from-the-hip problem solving, I pulled out the user guide, and that’s when the pain started.

Its sentences were vague, contradictory, and seemed like suggestions rather than directives. The diagrams confused me more than they helped—and that’s pretty hard to do.

I thought to myself: the person who wrote this user guide is out there sipping their coffee, completely unaware of the confusion they’ve caused me this Sunday morning.

Any time our words are used as a map by others, or used to convince others of a change needing to happen, we should pick them carefully. As our words scale to larger audiences, the probability that someone misses the message only increases.

You’re allowed to say, “I don’t know.”

You shouldn’t be afraid to say, “Could you please help me understand?”

It’s not weak say, “Please bear with me, I’m still learning.”

There’s a huge difference between those who claim they know what they’re talking about, and those who really do.

A big part of the difference is understanding and being vulnerable with one’s ignorance.

When reflecting on your actions from today, this week, and this month.

How many of them were for Present Me?

How many of them were investments into Future Me?

What does the ratio between the two say about where you are, and where you want to go?

I posted earlier this week about how easy I found it to vote from abroad in the upcoming New Zealand general election.

So I was shocked today to read about how some voters in the state of Georgia in the US faced a 10-hour wait to cast their ballot.

Many voters made admirable comments like, “If I’ve got to wait six or seven hours, that’s my duty to do that. I’ll do it happily.”

But it got me thinking, and it’s a question worth considering for all of us: if you were faced with an indeterminable delay on polling day, how long would you be willing to wait?

Would your civic duty come above all else and you’d wait through rain, hail, or shine? Would you wait for hours, days, or weeks? Or would that urgent task, familial responsibility, or frustration take priority?

It’s unlikely we’ll ever be faced with such as situation, but it’s an interesting thought experiment, nonetheless.