Dan Cullum

It’s worth spending a moment with Haruki Murakami’s powerful words on love:

“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”

From the 2002 novel, Kafka on the Shore.

I’m convinced that 90% of success comes from 1) a clear understanding of the basics, and 2) doing the basics well.

There is always going to be that new piece of software, the next shiny productivity tool, or a quick hack, that promises great results in less time.

But, in my small sample, a disciplined and ruthless focus on the basics has a much higher chance of leading to repeatable success.

A short one from me today.

It’s been a dawn-till-dusk moving kinda day.

We’ve had an amazing 4 years in our tiny 1 bedroom flat, but we’re looking forward to settling into our new place and having a little more space!

As I’ve done with every place I’ve lived—and as I’m sure many of you do, too—I did a final walk through, taking a moment to be grateful for the memories, laughs, and love shared whilst there.

Jacob Collier is the most talented musician on the planet.

I’m not exaggerating.

He composes and arranges music that leaves even the smartest musicians dumbfounded. If you want evidence, his arrangement of Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’ won him a Grammy earlier this year.

And so when I heard he wrote a song that moves into a musical key that none of us have heard before, I was super curious.

In typical music, there are 24 keys: 12 major keys and 12 minor. Every song you hear on the radio is in one of those keys.

So here is where Jacob Collier breaks that boundary: in his song ‘All I Need’, as the second chorus hits, the entire song is transposed up half a semitone. Instead of a traditional key change, moving from C to C sharp, the song moves from C to C Half-Sharp.

Here is a link to 10 seconds before the key change. When you listen to it, sit back and feel the key change happen. How does it feel to listen to music in a key that isn’t in any other pop song?

To me, it’s other worldly!

Packing your house for a move is a boring task. But the sorting, cleaning, and organising is made better by the company of a good audiobook.

I’ve been making my way through Bill Bryson’s ‘Body: A Guide for Occupants’, and I’m learning random, impractical, but thoroughly interesting facts about our bodies.

Here are a few that have stood out.

Each of us are made up of 37 trillions cells. Alone, these cells don’t have much meaning. But when combined in exactly the right way, they make, well, us!

We’ll grow about 7.5 metres of hair in our lifetime. And we’ll secrete 36,000 litres of saliva, which is more than a litre per day!

We also get cancer everyday—with between 1-5 cells turning cancerous in a 24 hour period—but our body captures and kills them.

And scientists still don’t know why we cry, as there is no physical benefit to it.

This is a different read for me, but I’m glad im on the journey. I’ve certainly developed a new found appreciation for my wobbly, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium, hydrogen, phosphorus home.

Imagine you’re on a hike, and a small stone finds it way into your shoe.

You’re in a rush to get to your campsite by sunset. You’ve got a long way to go.

The stone rubs against your heel. It’s painful, but not unbearable.

So you press on.

But over time, the stone makes itself at home. A blister forms, and your raw, red heel has paid the price for you not sitting down to sort the problem out when it first emerged.

We encounter many small stones in our daily lives. And despite the inconvenience, we’re often better off getting rid of them the moment they arise.

If you haven’t seen Richard Linklater’s 2014 film, Boyhood, I highly recommend it.

It’s a coming of age story, but it was filmed over a 12 year period, following the same actor as he grew from 6 to 18 years of age.

Linklater started production without a script, and only wrote the next year’s plot after reviewing the previous year’s footage. He adapted the script based on the changes he saw in the actors, too.

I marvelled at the seamless transitions between the years, and I imagined the commitment required from the producers, actors, and the production team to bring this story to the screen.

If you end up watching it, let me know what you thought of it. I think there is a lesson we can all find in Linklater’s Tenacity.

Following on from yesterday’s post, I’ve been impressed by this quote from Henry David Thoreau:

“The cost of a thing is the amount of … life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

Many of us likely believe time is our most valuable possession. Yet, I’ve never considered the trade-off as boldly as Thoreau.

But instead of getting lost in the abstract, this may just be my way of admitting I’d like a Roomba.

There’s a hidden cost when you buy something: the cost of selling or disposing of it when it’s no longer needed.

I’m really feeling the hidden cost this week, because we’re selling a bunch of things before our home move.

I feel like Newton’s third law is a fitting metaphor here: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Buying the item is easy and straightforward. Using it is much the same. But a lot of energy has been spent in the past few weeks trying to sell them. I’ve been listing items, messaging and meeting potential buyers, and posting items, too.

This process has got me thinking: going forward, I want to be more conscious about the things I buy and bring into home, because at some point, we’ll have to figure out where they go next.

Is there anything you’re avoiding just because the answer is painful?

When we answer that question honestly, we often stumble upon ways forward not previously considered.

And maybe it’s not the pain itself, but the anticipation of pain—the fear of, the dread of—that’s really holding us back.

Last week, I received my New Zealand Election voter information pack.

I love how easy it’s going to be to vote in this year’s general election.

When the voting window opens in early October, I will simply download and print my voting papers, fill them in, and upload a photo of them to the Electoral Commission’s website.

Done.

The risk of voter fraud is minimised because I had to 1) verify my electoral enrolment earlier this month via instructions in my voter information pack, and 2) my identify was authenticated through the New Zealand Government’s Real Me online identity platform.

I paused this morning to be grateful for democracy, and the ability to vote in a secure and trusted way from abroad.

I was sad to hear of Ken Robinson’s recent passing.

Like many, I first heard about Ken through his off-the-cuff, extraordinary TED Talk from 2006 titled ‘Do schools kill creativity?’

His message resonated: children don’t become creative, their creativity is beaten out of them by a broken school system. And that we need to rethink the first principles of education to ensure this natural creativity isn’t lost.

And after reading his book, The Element, I felt validated. The “bored in class” feeling I had experienced suddenly made sense. The embarrassment I felt for asking too many questions in the classroom fell away. He helped me connect some of the disparate dots in my own educational journey, and these learnings will likely have a big impact on the way I raise my future (in a while!) kids.

Here’s to you, Ken!

I’ve been reflecting on this quote by novelist and playwright, Edith Wharton, “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

We’re not one or the other. We can play a different role when it’s needed most.

We’re all part candle and part mirror.

I’m currently watching this lecture on songwriting by famed writer, Ralph Murphy.

When Ralph was writing songs full time, he’d write 100 songs per year. From that 100, he’d demo 40, properly produce 6, and would get a hit every 3 years.

Meaning he had a 1 in 300 “hit” margin.

How often is a person willing to accept those odds for anything, let alone their career?

I love this story and its lesson.

There is nothing stopping us from walking up to the plate each day and swinging at the ball. We may miss often. We may try 299 times before we get a hit. But at least were on the pitch swinging, and not settling in the stands.

We’re moving house in a couple weeks, and I’m selling a few things on Marketplace to declutter.

One of those things is my Nintendo Switch. I bought it in 2017, and have barely played it in the past 2 years.

Within 3 hours of posting, I had 7 offers to buy it. I even had someone offer to drive to my house at midnight to pick it up.

I raised my eyebrows. I’d listed 4 other items, and I hadn’t received a single message for any of them.

I realised I’d asked for below average market price for the Switch.

I sat with multiple chat screens open, pondering the question: should I go back and edit the price, or should I honour the original offer?

I decided upon the latter. I felt honouring my original offer was 1) the right thing to do, and 2) a helpful lesson to make sure I do more thorough research next time.