Dan Cullum

Earlier this year I had a nothing weekend.

There were no plans, no work, no event or social gathering.

I had errands to run, and things to take care of at home, but I did them at a leisurely pace and in peace.

Sometimes we need a calm weekend.

Maru and I have prioritised living close to Central London. We have a rule that if invited to something in town, we don’t want to turn it down because we live far away.

This decision has made a big difference. We live in a neighbourhood that has a bustling high street and is 20 mins in the tube from town. It’s filled with cafes and restaurants, and we have wonderful food and grocery options within 5-8 mins walk from our flat.

Prioritising proximity is an investment, but the intangible dividends pay out regularly.

The beginning of this year was a busy period at work. As I put more time into work, other habits dropped off. My nutrition relaxed and the frequency of my exercise decreased.

To get back into a healthier rhythm, I started with a few shorter exercise sessions to ease me back into the routine; these also gave me a mental boost. I then tried to be consistent with smaller, shorter sessions.

Start small. Keep going.

There is a very real cost to context switching.

Some roles require it, but most of the time, it’s better if a single person can focus on a single thing.

That’s when the deep work happens, and where many of the breakthroughs occur.

The fire alarm went off at work the other day and we had to evacuate the building.

As the automated fire doors closed and I made my way to the stairwell, I immediately noticed the bright green fire exit signs.

It’s funny how you can spend a ton of time in a place and never notice some things, but when you need them, they’re the only thing you see.

Some of the big grocery chains here in the UK are now charging 40 pence for a paper bag.

The price is not reflective of the true cost to make the paper bag, it’s reflective of the behaviour change the supermarket wants to see in its customers.

There’s always more to do. There’s always more you could’ve done. There’s always room for improvement.

Use it as fuel. Don’t let it be a weight that slows you down.

If you’re stuck—it could be a tough question from a leader, a complex trade-off your team is dealing with, or a problem you’re working through on a walk—it helps to ask: what really matters?

Don’t settle for the easy, obvious answer. Really wrestle with the problem and figure out the 1-2 things that need to be true to move the situation or problem forward.

Then do it.

If you still feel stuck the next day: repeat.

One way to look at a career is to see it as a continuous sequence of puzzles.

Each new job, role, or opportunity is a different puzzle that has a unique set of characteristics.

Some are easy, some might be confusing, some may take a long time to solve. Some may be puzzles you’d happily work on in your free time, and others might be ones you’ll happily walk away from.

Seen through this light, one way to optimise a career is finding puzzles worth solving, and trying to find and solve more of these over time.

A few months ago when Maru and I were in India for a wedding, we were part of a group of the bride’s university friends dancing at the Sangeet. The Sangeet is a pre-wedding celebration filled with music and dancing and celebrates the couple and the bonding of their families. It’s a spectacular event.

Most of the group were not natural dancers, and so we were all a little nervous.

I really liked this perspective on dancing from my friend Henny: dancing is about (1) rhythm, and (2) confidence. You don’t need to be a great dancer, and you don’t even need to get all the moves right, but if you can sync with the rhythm, and you have confidence, you don’t need to be afraid of something going wrong in front of a crowd. You’ll find your way.

Of course, dancing is much more complicated than rhythm and confidence, but for a very amateur non-dancer, I thought this was a useful way to approach the dance.

I heard somewhere that the hours of sleep we get before midnight count as double.

Although not scientifically accurate—the first few hours of sleep are typically deep sleep, which is considered the most restorative—I think there is some second-order benefits to going to bed before midnight.

Many of us have commitments early in the morning, so after-midnight bedtimes likely mean that on average we’ll get fewer hours of sleep. So sleeping before midnight helps increase the window of available hours to hit the amount we need.

I often write about habits that I’m personally working to get better at. This is one of them.

I’m really glad that I had the experience of travelling during a time when telephone cards were still a thing. I caught the very tail end of that era.

When abroad, I would go to a local corner store and purchase a little plastic card with maybe 10 or $20 on it. I’d go to a payphone and your dial the number on the card, it would say how much balance I had left, and then I could call any number in the world for a certain rate per minute.

I’m really glad I had that experience. The disconnection was liberating.

Don’t confuse supplements for sustenance.

Vitamins or shakes support a healthy diet, they don’t replace it.

This is less a commentary on twice-a-day multivitamins than it is on the search for quick fixes.

Many people will try sell you an easy solution (taking a supplement), when what usually matters is consistently doing the hard work (sourcing and cooking your own sustenance).

When I was in the car with Dad when I was a kid, he’d always point out if another driver was speeding, and he’d comment on how unnecessary it was. He explain how the driver would likely only save a few minutes by travelling at a dangerous pace.

Given the lifetime odds of death by automobile accidents is 1 in 95—which is an insane statistic in terms of what it says about our tolerance for death in return for the convenience of automobile travel—speeding is rarely faster, but always riskier.

The trade-off is never worth it.

Earlier this year I sold a few items I no longer needed on Facebook Marketplace. I checked the prices of similar items, and set my price at the average for comparable products: about £50.

After 24 hours, I had received no messages of interest, so I dropped the price by 20% to £40. All of a sudden my inbox was flooded with messages—it was a night and day difference. The theory bells from my Economics 101 less on the price elasticity of demand were ringing.

It’s impressive how fast these second-hand markets move and calibrate to an collectively agreed going rate.