Dan Cullum

When I was offered my first full-time job, it was a role in Australia, and it wasn’t due to start for another 10 months.

I saw this 10-month period as a unique moment I’d unlikely get again.

So I took my meagre savings and went travelling.

When I returned to New Zealand, I only had 2 weeks before moving to Australia. Weirdly, though, enough time had passed that my family and I had already settled into the idea that I’d “moved away.”

This got me thinking about how easy it is for some decisions to “just happen”. I didn’t explicitly plan on leaving New Zealand, life just unfolded that way.

Of course, I wouldn’t change anything, because I’m grateful for where I am today. But this reflection did serve as a reminder that even though some things are out of our control (e.g., global pandemic lockdowns 😉 ), we can still think carefully about all that is within our control.

“Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.” – William Bruce Cameron

No matter the moment, or the context, I always find this to be a helpful reminder of what’s important.

When the Oracle at Delphi claimed Socrates was the wisest person in the world, Socrates was shocked.

He immediately went and spoke to the wisest people he could find to see if what the Oracle said was true.

The only difference he found was that whilst others saw themselves as wise, he saw himself as ignorant.

Socrates was respected for his wisdom because his default assumption was that he knew so little.

This is the ignorance assumption.

In my own career, each time I’ve allowed myself to think, “I’ve got this, I’m doing well,” something usually goes awry, and I’m humbled.

On the flip side, when my default assumption is, “I could be wrong,” “Perhaps there’s another explanation,” or “Let’s double check this data,” I’m usually able to catch a flaw in my logic or approach.

This doesn’t mean I’m an advocate of timidity or risk aversion, though.

I still believe meaningful progress depends upon bold ideas executed by bold people.

What it does mean is that I have a clear goal: to try, every day, to bring a little more humility to the table than I did yesterday.

And maybe, then, I’ll have a shot at using the ignorance assumption to become a better version of myself.

It’s the splinter in the finger. The pebble in the shoe. The sand in the sandwich.

It doesn’t take much to throw things off course.

These aren’t limited to our physical world, though.

The words we speak—and how we deliver them to others—can have an outsized impact on someone’s day, year, or life.

It’s wise to deal with the splinter the moment we realise it’s there.

Here’s a question to ponder: is there anything you do that isn’t for the return you get?

Is there anything that matters so much, you’d do it for free and indefinitely?

H/T Philosophize This! Podcast, and to Lucy for sharing!

I cut my own hair today.

Lockdown is helping me try new things!

I was well prepared: YouTube tutorial, clippers, scissors, and naive confidence.

The hardest part about cutting your own hair, though, is each moment is a point of no return. Make a mistake, and you can’t go back.

It gave me a newfound appreciation for the sculptor’s dilemma.

Unlike art forms that are mostly additive—like painting—the sculptor reveals their art by subtraction. It requires a crystal clear vision before they begin.

Let’s just say that based on today’s events, I don’t plan on taking up sculpting any time soon.

5 years ago, I went on a kayaking trip with two friends along New Zealand’s Coromandel Peninsula.

It was a week of island hopping, low-lumbar-pain paddling, and friendship.

On the 4th day we met Fiona.

We were about 500 metres from shore, and saw some movement in the distance. We thought it may be a dolphin or a school of fish, but as we approached we saw a blackbird caught in a fishing net.

My friend, Marcus, untangled the bird and placed it on the front of his kayak. It sat perfectly still, as we paddled south down the coastline.

Within 20 minutes, we gave her the name Fiona (we didn’t know how to tell her sex, so we took a gamble).

As we paddled into a secluded bay for the evening, Fiona was still sitting quietly. Unmoving. She showed no sign of being in pain, but her silence was worrying.

The moment we pulled our kayaks up onto the sand, she hopped off and slowly hobbled towards a large coastal rock formation. She nestled into a nook and refused all food. It was like she was winding down and bracing for a long night ahead.

The next morning, when we went to look for her, she was gone.

Pythagoras discovered his famous theorem around 500 BC. At the time, it was heralded as one of the brightest ideas of humanity.

For any given right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse always equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

It baffled and impressed people because there were few immutable mathematical theorems at the time. Furthermore, it was something easy for many to understand.

Fast forward 2,500 years, and what was once a shining star of the human intellect is now a run-of-the-mill subject in 7th grade mathematics classes.

Children spend 2-3 weeks learning the theorem, and then move on.

It’s a stunning example of how our world, humanity, and knowledge progress over time.

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P.S. Over the past few days, about 10% of my blog posts haven’t been delivered. I spoke to Feedblitz and there was an issue with my RSS Feed used to automatically send out each day’s post. This should be fixed now.

Thanks to Simone and Dan for pointing out the bug!

The average non-fiction book has 50,000 words.

Since launching this daily blog in July 2019, I’ve published over 52,000 words.

I’m certainly not making the point that I have a collection of content worthy of a book, but I am thrilled to see how turning up every day is a silent action, but it adds up over time.

I came across a great blog post by Mark Manson on how to build positive mental health habits during self-isolation.

If it’s a topic that you’re interested in—or concerned about—I highly recommend reading it for it’s focus on simple and practical tips.

My only caveat is I’m not a fan of Mark’s signature tone of voice. I get that his style resonates with a sizeable audience, so good on him, but he uses more expletives than I can stomach, and I find his humour can undermine his arguments. However, when you get past that, I think his points are sound and genuinely helpful.

You can find a link to his post here.

Over the past month, I’ve watched my 1-year-old nephew, Lachlan, learn to walk. It’s become part of my daily routine to wake up to Whatsapp videos with the latest progress.

I love seeing how my sister’s cheers give him confidence to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Seeing him change from ‘New Born’ to ‘First stepper’ got me thinking about how different we are to other animals. The young horse is walking within minutes, and the baby spider monkey is strong enough to cling to its mother as she swings through the trees just a few weeks after birth.

The scientific explanation for this difference is us humans are born with immature brains. The pelvic canal is too narrow for a mature brain to get through, so we’re born pre-maturely compared to other primates, and need a lot of care in our early years until our brains develop sufficiently to control physical movement.

Yuval Noah Harari in his book, Sapiens, describes our underdeveloped birth as the reason we can be educated and socialised to a far greater extent than any other animal. We can learn, change, improve, and become. Whereas animals born with mature brains have largely fixed traits and habits.

I’ve enjoyed thinking about this concept over the past couple years, but it was put into perspective with the small, bold steps of my little Lachlan.

I’ve been listening to Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, which is an account of his journey along the famed Appalachian Trail.

I love Bryson’s ability to describe life’s moments—big, small, hilarious, or sombre—with so much personality. He’s had me laughing out loud multiple times, and that doesn’t happen often when I’m listening to books.

Early on in the journey, Bryson and his hiking buddy, Katz, fall into a rhythm he calls ‘companionable silence’. They’re at ease with one another, they help each other with their daily chores, and they do it all in complete, comfortable silence.

Maybe you’ve felt it before, too. Perhaps with family, or a close friend. Where time passes with few words spoken, but the world feels right.

And maybe, just maybe, this is a unique time in our lives when companionable silence is something we can cultivate, get good at, and enjoy.

Meet a master in any discipline, and they’re usually the first one to tell you they’ve got much left to learn.

On the flip side, it’s the fool who talks with arrogance, and in absolutes.

Perhaps the master’s humility is their secret ingredient, and the fool’s arrogance their biggest hindrance.

When we moved into our flat, we had a hunch the extractor fan in our kitchen wasn’t working properly.

We’d turn it on, it would whirr, but it made little difference to the ventilation when cooking.

Our landlord insisted it was fine.

He even said he’d bought insurance on it, so if it ever stopped working, he’d have someone come out to fix it.

So we lived with it; diligently turning it on each time we cooked in the hope that it was helping.

I don’t know why it took three years, but the other day, I finally decided to investigate. I got up on a chair and peered around the back of the unit.

Lo and behold, there was no ducting hose. The fan was simply moving air around our kitchen, rather than transporting it outside.

It wasn’t the fan itself that surprised me, it’s the fact I spent 3 years believing something about it that wasn’t true.

We all have habits. These could be diets, exercise routines, or ways of working. If we’re not careful, it’s easy to take things at face value and say, “That’s just the way it is.”

Sometimes, though, a quick investigation reveals that we’ve operated on an incorrect assumption for quite some time.

What really matters, then, is what we do about it.

This quote from Theodore Roosevelt has inspired me time and again over the past 5 years.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

It’s given me the confidence to step out, try new things, and take on challenges that scare me. It’s helped me realise that it’s only when we’re in the ring that we have a fighting chance at success.

I also love how the friend who shared this quote with me—back in 2014—had a dream to start a company that made the world a better place.

I’m thrilled to see him living out this quote, as he co-founded and is now leading a renewable energy company in Australia. He’s in the ring, and daring greatly.