Dan Cullum

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.

The Blue Plaques is a programme run by English Heritage where permanent plaques are installed on buildings around the UK commemorating when a famous person in history lived there.It’s a lot of fun walking around London and inadvertently spotting where Freddie Mercury, Agatha Christie, or Sigmund Freud used to live.

We were delighted earlier this week when dear friends sent us a wedding gift (for our now much delayed wedding), which were a set of decorative plates of some of these iconic Blue Plaques.

Rather than use them for dinner, we thought they’d look awesome on our walls.

The 2020 Nobel Prizes were announced this week, and I love this video of Robert Wilson knocking on the door of his colleague, Paul Milgrom, at 2am to let him know they’d won the Nobel Prize in economics.

Yes, it’s the Nobel Prize. Yes, it’s some of the world’s leading academics. Yes, it’s a big deal.

But underneath it all, it’s simply a charming moment of a friend sharing some good news with another.

I’ve written before about ‘The 1-minute Answer’.

Which is, for any given problem, when we give ourselves the constraint of 1 minute to come up with an answer, it usually provides a strong direction or hypothesis to pursue for deeper problem solving.

In the past few weeks, I’ve found myself spread across a half a dozen projects—leaving little time for focused attention on any of them.

In this busy period, I’ve been using The 1-Minute Answer as a forcing function to clarify my early thinking on each of these projects. This exercise often helps me realise the problem is simpler than I first thought, or it helps identify my knowledge gaps.

Although I’ve written about the 1-Minute Answer before, I find it helpful to revisit, remind, and reflect back on these tools and techniques because many take years to master.

It’s the dedicated, sustained, and repeated practise that adds up over time.

Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, often wrote his reflections in the second person: using “you” instead of “I”.

Writing in the first person is emotional—we feel much closer to the situation and its consequences.

Writing in the second person allows us to disconnect from our emotions and look at an experience objectively.

It’s something I’m experimenting with in my own journalling. Let me know if you find it helpful.

Three years ago, we bought a plant for £1.

A straight-from-the-supermarket variety.

We didn’t have a pot, so we placed him in a candle holder.

A couple months ago, when it came time to move flats, I suggested to Maru we throw him out, “because he was only £1, and probably not worth the hassle to transport.”

Shocked, Maru told me he was part of the family, and he was coming. Recognising my mistake, I sheepishly agreed.

Today, we finally got down to our local garden centre, bought new soil, found a new pot, and placed him comfortably in a new home.

We don’t give up on family.

Today, I printed off my New Zealand voting papers, ticked my boxes, had Maru sign as my witness, and uploaded them to the New Zealand Electoral Commission’s website.

It was insanely easy. I was amazed how seamless it was for me to take part in New Zealand’s democratic process.

Specifically, I got to have my say on:

1) the party I hope will govern for the next 4 years,

2) the candidate who will represent my area (and my family),

3) whether I think recreational marijuana should be legalised, and

4) whether I think a terminally ill person should be able to request assisted dying.

These are all consequential issues—the impacts of which will be felt for many years to come. In the current, uneasy global political climate, I’m grateful to have had an opportunity to vote, and to have my voice be counted in a fair, free, and democratic society.

I never want to take that for granted.

Here’s a quote that’s on my mind, and one you may find helpful to ponder upon this weekend.

It’s from the author Esther Hicks on living well:

“If all you did was just looked for things to appreciate, you would live a joyously spectacular life.”

Whenever I get an idea for a blog post, I write it down in my ‘Drafts’ folder.

Ideas may sit there for days, weeks, or even months before they get published.

However, today as I was flicking through the 70+ posts, I had a mental shift.

Rather than seeing them as potential future posts—or perhaps as seeds yet to germinate—I felt disconnected from them. I saw them as clutter, rather than potential. I knew I was keeping them there to feel like I had lots of “back up” ideas, rather than having any real intention to post them.

So, for the first time, I archived my entire Drafts folder. Facing that blank folder this morning was scary, but also liberating.

Pruning the dead leaves is often painful, but it leaves us lighter, allows us to see clearer, and leaves us better prepared for the journey ahead.

Perhaps the hardest opinion to change is the one held by our former selves.

We often feel a responsibility to behave in a way that’s consistent with our previous opinions.

However, famed physicist, Richard Feynman, states, “You are under no obligation to remain the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a day ago. You are here to create yourself, continuously.”

We can always be better.

Some books only have 1-2 ideas, and then 150 pages of words explaining why they’re right.

For these ones, it’s best to just get the idea and ditch the unnecessary words.

You can learn more reading the same book 10 times, rather than 10 different books.

Which book could you read 10 times? Let me know!

I’m a fan of Naval Ravikant, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor.

He’s been dubbed ‘The Angel Philosopher’ due to being an angel investor in companies like Twitter, Uber, and Yammer, and his penchant for sharing words of wisdom through his Twitter feed and through interviews on topics such as startups, investing, crypto, wealth, and happiness.

Given Naval hasn’t written a book summarising his world view, it can be hard to find and synthesise his work.

Enter ‘The Almanack of Naval Ravikant’, a free to download curation of Naval’s top tweets, podcasts, essays, and interviews over the past decade.

I’m grateful to Eric Jorgenson for taking the time to collate this free resource, as it’s a massive shortcut to help people access and understand Naval’s unique perspective.

If you end up reading it, let me know what you think.

I always forget how painful it is to assemble a piece of IKEA furniture.

Luckily… I’m reminded of it every couple of years or so via a new bookcase or sofa.

People often marvel at how IKEA can offer low prices because of their 1) flat-pack designs, and 2) efficient shipping.

However, I think IKEA’s real secret sauce is convincing their customers to do the hardest part of the job, and simultaneously making them feel good about it.

My bet is an IKEA sofa is just as expensive as a traditional sofa once you take into account the customer’s labour.

The magic question, for IKEA and for business models, is: who’s doing the work?

Maru and I have recently started reading a book called ‘How Not to Die’ by Dr. Michael Greger.

Slightly morbid title, I know, but it came highly recommended to us by a physician friend, so we thought we’d give it a try.

The basic premise is this: Almost all healthcare and medicine in the modern world is focused on solving problems rather than preventing or reversing them. The simplest and easiest way to reducing the risk of premature death is changing our diet and lifestyle.

This message isn’t new, but although we know a healthy diet and lifestyle are important, we’re often lacking the practical manual defining “what’s good”.

Once we finish the book, and make some changes of our own, I’ll report back with what we’re doing differently.