Dan Cullum

A good decision may go unrewarded for a long time.

The seed may choose to sprout after the gardener has lost hope and thrown away their tools.

How long will you keep at it? How long are you willing to wait? How patient are you prepared to be?

The age of Netflix has brought with it a gravitational pull towards long-form content.

We’re watching fewer movies, and instead diving into shows that need many seasons to tell their story.

The characters are deeper, the plots more nuanced, and the experience more immersive.

This isn’t limited to fiction either.

A surprising number of long-form documentaries have sprung up, and I’ve been completely drawn into the ones about sport.

I don’t follow basketball, but the story of Michael Jordan in The Last Dance is a stunning depiction of one sport’s G.O.A.T., and his path to greatness.

I don’t follow Formula 1, but the Drive to Survive series gave me an insight into the complexity, competition, and danger of the world’s fastest sport. After watching it, I’m half convinced the drivers are not human.

Finally, I don’t follow any football team, but the story of Sunderland Football Club in Sunderland ’til I Die is an amazing tale of how the history and identity of a city can be so tightly tied to the journey of its sports team.

Yes, these documentaries are about sport, but they’re also vignettes into how top performing athletes respond to the immense pressure of being—and staying—on top of the world.

At the beginning of this year, I shared some articles and thoughts about what 2020 and the next decade could look like.

Let’s just say, none of them predicted a global pandemic.

No matter how hard we think, analyse, or anticipate, accurately predicting the future is nigh on impossible.

Although we still try and figure out what is to come, perhaps we should also spend time readying our minds for what may come.

“Imagine a mountain of sand, a million miles high, reaching from the earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad, extending to remotest space, and a million miles in thickness, and imagine such an enormous mass of countless particles of sand multiplied as often as there are leaves in the forest, drops of water in the mighty ocean, feathers on birds, scales on fish, hairs on animals, atoms in the vast expanse of air. And imagine that at the end of every million years a little bird came to that mountain and carried away in its beak a tiny grain of that sand. How many millions upon millions of centuries would pass before that bird had carried away even a square foot of that mountain, how many eons upon eons of ages before it had carried away all. Yet at the end of that immense stretch time not even one instant of eternity could be said to have ended.” – James Joyce

But, we get today. This moment. This precious opportunity.

And that’s something.

Some scratches heal on their own.

Others need work to be fixed.

Knowing the difference—especially in cases when work is required—can be the difference between success and failure.

At the end of last year, my family and I played and completed the board game, Pandemic Legacy. It’s a co-operative game, where you work with the other players to save the world from, well, you guessed it, a global pandemic.

If a normal board game is like a movie—where it’s over in a couple hours—Pandemic Legacy is like a TV series, where each game is part of a broader story and builds on the previous games.

It was, hands down, the best board game I’ve ever played. And we often discussed—over the 16 games we played—what would happen if a real pandemic hit the globe. Little did we know…

Us humans are good at finding the humour in tough situations, though. Humour helps us cope with, reflect upon, make sense of, and lighten the circumstances.

Over the past few months, our family has made jokes about how it’s a good thing we’re not responsible for the world’s COVID response—often poking fun at someone who made a particularly bad board game decision.

We also jokingly wonder if 2020 have been different if we hadn’t played the game? As if us playing had some Jumanji-esque impact on the world.

Of course, none of this is true, but the humour is a welcome break from the talk of lockdowns and vaccines.

Humour is a tonic.

I was recently reminded of this hilarious video from comedian, Oobah, where he breaks dated British laws in front of police.

A few examples are 1) carrying a salmon in suspicious circumstances, 2) shaking out a rug in public after 8am, or 3) being without socks within 100 yards of the reigning monarch.

Of course, the video is only funny because the viewer understands how ridiculous these laws sound. I’m sure there was a logical reason to pass the Metropolitan Police Act of 1839 preventing public rug shaking, but do we really need it now?

Although parliament may be a little slow to update their laws, it got me thinking about the rules, customs, and values we set for ourselves. How often do we say, “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”? And at what point do we say, “we can do better, our world could be different.”?

Back in 1988, Bill Clinton delivered an astonishingly long—36 minute—speech at the Democratic National Convention to endorse Michael Dukakis as the Democratic presidential nominee.

It was so long that in the final minutes when Clinton uttered the words, “In closing,” the crowd erupted with cheers. They were happy to hear he was on the verge of finishing. And that odd moment has not been forgotten.

We only have a short amount of time to land our message, to tell our story, and to persuade others. It doesn’t matter if you’re an employee, a CEO, or Bill Clinton, having a deep understanding of your audience is more than half the battle when trying to land a message.

I was recently reminded of the lesson “show me, don’t tell me”.

This principles works in almost any setting: presentations, blog posts, textbooks, friendships, and even in displays of kindness for our loved ones.

Around the same time, I was reminded of a previous blog post where I shared how you only need to water a basil plant when it’s drooping—I was previously overwatering and killing them.

So I decided to put the two lessons together this week. Here’s a before and after photo of the same basil plant—with only 3 hours and a watering between them.

Regardless of what’s going on today, remember: 100 years from now, there’ll be all new people.

And, perhaps, it can serve as a reminder that today—however bland, challenging, or joyous—is a special day.

H/T Theo Katzmann’s ‘100 Years from now’

I’ve admired Jack Conte for a long time.

He is in two amazing bands: Pomplamoose and Scary Pockets. Pomplamoose landed on the map 10 years ago with their cover of Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, and they continue to perform tasty mashups on YouTube today. Scary Pockets do insane funk covers of classic songs.

In addition to the above, Conte is the founder and CEO of Patreon, a website that allows content creators to get paid directly by their fans. For example, a musician can have a community of ‘Patrons’ that pay a monthly subscription fee. In return, the Patrons get access to early music and exclusive content.

Since I first heard about Conte, it seemed like everything he touched turned to gold. His videos got millions of views, and his company is clearly the leader in its market.

So you can imagine my surprise when I came across his amazing talk called ‘Nothing Works’—where he vulnerably shares hundreds of his failures, and they all ultimately led to his successes.

It’s long—at 35 minutes—so I was hesitant to share it. But I got so much out of it, and think you may, too. If you’ve ever felt called or compelled to create something, this talk will inspire you, I can guarantee that.

I went cycling yesterday. As soon as I set off, it started to drizzle. And after 5 minutes, the rain had picked up to a steady patter.

I stopped on the side of the road and contemplated returning to my dry, comfortable living room.

I then had a flashback to 2016, when I spent 2 months travelling down the Mississippi River with friends. We were outdoors the entire time. And when it rained, if we weren’t in our tents, all we had were our jackets.

I wasn’t concerned about the rain back then, so why was worrying about it now?

The tension in my shoulders subsided, I lifted my face to the clouds, and felt the droplets fall on my face.

This week, after 102 days of being virus free, New Zealand identified its first resurgence of COVID-19 community transmission.

In order to battle the spread of the disease, the New Zealand government has announced a dramatic change to their containment strategy: going forward, any person who tests positive for the virus will be quarantined in a government facility.

This is a no tolerance approach, and is similar to the strategy China used at the beginning of the outbreak.

This aggressive response is only possible when the problem is small.

It got me thinking about the way we deal with other problems in our workplace, in our homes, and in our communities.

When the problem is small and measurable, it’s better to move fast and nip it in the bud. But once the issue has multiplied and embedded itself, elimination no longer becomes and option, and we need to shift our focus to mitigation.

I loved this quote from the cartoonist and creator of Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson.

Here’s hoping it helps you take a step back and think about the big picture. It did for me.

“…having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another. Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential—as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth. You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”

It was 36 degrees Celsius (97 degrees Fahrenheit) in London this past weekend. Which, if you know London weather, is insane.

As I walked along a road with a melting ice cream in hand, I noticed someone leaving a shop with a large box under their arm—a fan.

The peak of summer isn’t the time to prepare for the heat wave. There are fewer fans to go round, and they’re more expensive. The fan we bought back in April—before the summer—has increased in price by 32% on Amazon.

Of course, fan-buying-timing is a trivial problem, but early preparation is a timeless lesson.