Dan Cullum

Our direction of travel matters much more than our progress on any given day.

A leap in the wrong direction is far worse than a single step towards the goal.

Keep that chin up.

Every time I’ve made a wrong turn on the road, I’ve still reached my destination. Albeit with a delay and a bit more spent on fuel.

It’s not always so simple in life. The destinations often change whilst we’re on the journey, and the detours may be large and long.

But the learning is the same: little good comes from getting frustrated at the detour.

The Drumeo channel on YouTube is great. The company uses content marketing to sell their drum lessons and courses, and their content is excellent.

One of their best series is getting well-known drummers to listen to a song they haven’t heard before without the drum parts, and getting them to create their own parts; culminating in a single, final take.

After the drummer finishes their recording, they get to listen back to the original track, now with the original drum parts included. There’s always a mixture of surprise and delight. The drummers are usually in admiration of the original part, and equally happy at their own version.

Today I came across Jess Bowen’s take on Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine (I saw RATM at a music festival when I was sixteen and have always had a soft spot for their music). She recorded one take and nailed it on the first try. Apart from being musically impressive, she’s also having a blast! And that’s the essence of the Drumeo Formula.

Great video. Great series.

Getting better is all about trying again. Over and over. Inching forward when we can, and not slipping too far back when we make mistakes.

Harry Craddock, the father of the cocktail, had a strong point of view about how you drink one.

His recommendation was to drink it, “Quickly, while it’s laughing at you.”

A cocktail isn’t to be sipped. It should be consumed decisively and with intention. This is when the temperature of the drink and the ratio of ingredients are at their best. The drink isn’t watered down due to ice, and it hasn’t warmed up due to sitting in the glass for too long.

Craddock’s approach is opinionated, and I like that.

Try it next time you make or order a cocktail and note the difference.

The most important metrics are often the hardest to move.

Customer retention. Net promoter score. Customer lifetime value.

They are the cumulative impact of many micro decisions made consistently and patiently. They can’t be gamed. They can’t be boosted at short notice. They are lagging indicators that show the value of doing the right thing over and over and over.

I was put on to this excellent video of Tony Hawk landing his final ever Ollie 540 by Ira Glass via the This American Life podcast.

For those who aren’t familiar with Tony Hawk, he’s widely regarded as the G.O.A.T of skateboarding. He was the first to land a 900, which is a two-and-a-half-revolution aerial spin, and has been the most recognisable face in the sport during his multi-decade career.

Three years ago, Hawk was trying to land an Ollie 540 one last time—which is a move where the skater completes one-and-a-half rotations without touching the board with their hands.

Hawk is seen trying, and trying, and trying, and failing, and failing, and failing. He just can’t land the trick. But he keeps going. Falling hard on the surface of the halfpipe, and slipping off into camera equipment.

Finally, Hawk lands the move, kicks his board into the air, and falls to his knees. He’s almost in tears. He admits he feels sad because it’s the last time he’ll land the trick. The pursuit is what has been driving him his whole career, and the finality of knowing he won’t attempt another Ollie 540 was relief and anguish at the same time.

It’s a brilliant moment, and an amazing insight into the mind of a fiercely ambitious competitor.

Today I learned about the first pancake rule: the first pancake usually doesn’t turn out right.

And that’s okay, because it sets the stage for the second, and third, and fourth pancakes.

I’ve noticed this rule is true for pancakes, and almost any project that requires creative experimentation.

So don’t stress too much about the first pancake.

I’m not talking about quality nor preparation method.

In our house, a tea is better when it isn’t asked for. It’s got a unique I-thought-of-you flavour.

If a tea has been asked for, it’s good, but not on the same level as its spontaneous counterpart.

Jason Fried, co-founder of 37 Signals, has a unique product development principle that I really like: build the wacky thing first.

When teams are in the early stages of new product experimentation, when the stakes are low, and the experience is mainly in a sandbox for early adopters, there’s clear rationale for building the wacky thing first.

If we default to the conservative, constrained, or timid option from the start, it’s unlikely we’ll have the courage to try the wacky idea later. Users will acclimatise to the tame baseline, and it’ll be more difficult to break those expectations in the future.

However, if we start with the wacky idea, we’ll likely learn more from being bolder and more aggressive in the first version of our product, and we leave the door open to scale back the experience to a less wacky version later.

There’s greater optionality and upside that comes with building the wacky thing first, but it takes commitment, conviction, and a willingness to look a little silly to do it.

The average? The median? The max? The min? The percentile? The standard deviation?

The problem is that there’s always a charitable message to be found when you cut the dataset in a certain way.

The hard part is having the discipline to stick to an objective measure even when the output looks dire.

If you’ve ever done squats as part of a strength training programme, you’ll know the importance of keeping within your limits.

Go too heavy, too quickly, and at the bottom of the repetition you’ll get caught. You won’t be able to return to a standing position, and you’ll need to let the bar fall behind you to the floor or the safety racks.

There are many benefits to squatting, but operating that close to our max weight adds a significant number of physical risks. It’s much better to go lighter and to do more repetitions.

This concept applies far beyond squatting to almost any difficult activity or endeavour.

When playing darts, beginners aim for the bullseye.

But there’s a thin strip at the edge of the board where triple are available. A player can earn more points than a bullseye, but there is also more risk. There is also a chance of ending up with no points.

It should come as no surprise though that the pros play at the edge. They’re conditioned to the risk, and relentlessly pursue the reward.

Where do you choose to aim for the bullseye? And where do you play to the edge?

No matter how long we work in an industry, we can still learn new things—even things that are seemingly basic!

In a post earlier this week I confused bits for bytes. Despite working in tech for almost a decade, I’ve never had to work at the scale of a bit before, so I’m giving myself a break here. But if you want to dig into it, or need a refresher, try here.

One part about writing in public is not going back and changing the past via the edit button. The reason I don’t use the edit button is because it’s a lesson in how to handle real life challenges. For most mistakes, we can’t just hit the edit button and perform revisionist history. So sure, little grammatical errors can be fixed retrospectively, but at the post level, the bigger picture is about about embracing mistakes and learning for next time.

Cultivating this mindset on the small things prepares our minds for bigger challenges and mistakes.

H/T to Sri for spotting my error and letting me know about it!

Most people write goals for who they are now, for where their organisations are today, and for how people around them expect to perform and grow.

But what if we wrote our goals assuming a certain level of personal and organisational growth. I think this little bit of extra optimism and vision will result in more ambitious goals, and a better visualisation of what could be.

And I think that little bit extra counts for something.