Dan Cullum

The first draft can always fit on a single piece of A4 paper.

The answer to any problem. The structure for any story. The plan for any journey.

The constraint of an A4 sheet forces us to get clear on what matters most.

When the task seems big, pull out a single piece of A4. No more, no less, trust yourself, and see what happens.

When it comes to driving, it’s easy to check our blind spots. There is a simple set of rules follow, it’s easy to do, and the consequences of not checking can be disastrous. It’s a no-brainer to do the check.

There are blind spots elsewhere though, and those can be hard to identify. They span across our personal and professional lives, and can cover fields as diverse as planning, finances, creativity, communication, collaboration, as well as our social, physical, psychological and spiritual health.

When the tasks are more complicated than changing lanes, the blind spot habit is hard to develop. That doesn’t make it any less important.

Happy New Year, Folks! I started writing daily posts in 2019; it now feels surreal to be writing my first post for 2023. It’s wonderful to be on this journey with you all.

As I was reflecting on 2022 and looking ahead to 2023, I began to think about the arc of a year.

There will be moments of stress, followed by periods of rest and recuperation. There will be times of work and toil, and in the backdrop there’ll be cold and rain and heat and sleet. There will be moments filled with energy and hope, and others where our minds are clouded and grey. There will be progress and stagnation. There will be boredom and exhilaration. There will be pain. And there will be growth.

Anticipating the arc of the year ahead—when each type of moment is likely to appear—can help us better prepare for the ups and the downs.

Mistakes are typically accidents. The person at fault doesn’t usually mean to cause trouble.

We can use the anatomy of a mistake to our advantage.

In the pursuit of a goal, or perhaps the forming of a new habit, we can set up a system where the mistake becomes a deliberate choice.

If you want to eat healthily, remove the junk food from our homes. Poor dietary choices are then active decisions rather than passive accidents.

If you want to start a journaling habit, place your notebook and pen on your bedside table.

If you want to improve how you turn up and engage in meetings, always be the note taker.

Don’t let it be an accident.

Make the mistake deliberate.

It was 2007. I was fifteen, and visiting my cousins in Malaysia—there were three of them between the ages of 5 and 8. I had an idea to surprise them with a water fight when they returned home from school.

I spent 2 hours making hundreds of water bombs. They were all placed in buckets and covered with water to protect them from the sun.

As their car pulled into the driveway, I kicked off the fight. I hurled the water-filled balloons at them the moment they stepped out of the car.

We spent the next hour in the garden playing and laughing together—everyone ended the day soaked to the bone.

Interestingly, I had forgotten this water fight happened until one of my cousins reminded me recently. This made me happy on numerous fronts: (1) I love the memory, and (2) I was thrilled it left a deep enough impression on her that she’d remember it 15 years later.

So here’s a challenge for you today: think of a wonderful memory, and send a short message to remind someone of the role they played in it.

You may just make their day!

To my 4-year-old nephew, everything is an experiment.

Every conversation, play time, and new experience provide a combination of variables that he hasn’t seen before.

As the pieces interact, I can see him putting together a wider more nuanced perspective of the world.

At some point though, it seems children stop experimenting; they accept the world as it is and appear content with the status quo.

What causes that switch? And why can’t we keep that curiosity going in adulthood?

Inspired by the quote from yesterday’s post—that “the essence of writing is re-writing”—I’ve been experimenting with jotting first drafts of my posts on paper.

A blank page is a permissionless space. Its freedom from constraints allows us to explore ideas we’d shy away from if the publish button was a click away.

Once the first draft is down on paper, we can let our subconscious do the work. We continue with our day, but our minds are turning over the words, its form, and its meaning, without us knowing.

When we revisit them, we’re afforded a clarity that doesn’t come in the first writing session.

The respect we pay to our first draft is paid back with interest when we sit down to do the re-write.

The essence of writing is re-writing.

I got this idea from one of my favourite books: On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

It’s a simple concept, but one that’s so easily forgotten, or deliberately ignored due to a deadline.

Don’t skip the re-write, and you’ll find greater confidence, clarity, and conviction in your writing.

It’s not so much their reaction to Santa eating the cookies, waking up to presents under the tree, or their faces when they open their gifts.

It’s their belief in the magic, and the pure joy that flows from it.

It’s also the realisation that the window to create these special experiences only lasts a few years.

Christmas with kids is way more fun.

My family and I have a rental car whilst we’re here in Malaysia for the holiday season.

It can be a bit of a crapshoot as to what car you’ll get. Sometimes they’re modern and well maintained, other times there’s a lot left to be desired.

This time we got a car that has particularly poor acceleration; something I now realise I take for granted.

It takes a noticeable while to pick up any speed, and you need to be extra careful when trying to overtake on a motorway (you need a big gap and a lot of runway).

It got me thinking that it’s not just with cars, but speed off the mark in any project or endeavour gives advantages, options, and a margin of safety that to allows us to change our minds down the line.

For now though, with this car, we’ll be taking it easy in the slow lane; it’s a vacation after all!

We must…

We ought to…

We should…

We could…

Maybe…

Potentially…

On the odd chance that…

Of course, what follows matters. But the framing sets the lion’s share of the tone.

I’m looking forward to taking time off over the next few weeks to rest and recharge for the year ahead.

I always find there’s a temptation to “be productive”, but that’s an instinct I’m actively working to ignore.

It’s a bit of a “slow down to speed up” idea—we can’t be our best when we need to if we haven’t recharged in the quiet periods.

I’ve been playing Monopoly Junior with my 4-year-old nephew, and it’s such a great example of “disguised learning”.

The game requires no skill—similar to snakes and ladders—but it’s perfect for a child to learn more complex board game mechanics.

I make my nephew do all the work! I ask him to move my token around the board, and to tell me how much I have to pay to whom. I deliberately make mistakes and he enjoys pulling me up on them.

What I initially assumed would be “play time” is actually a rich learning experience disguised as a game.

Multiple birds. One stone.

I recently learnt that in the first US Presidential debate in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon—which was also the first ever televised political debate—the TV viewers believed Kennedy won, but the radio listeners believed Nixon won.

This was given as an example to explain a phenomenon known as ‘attractiveness bias’, which is described as “a tendency to see attractive people as more intelligent, competent, moral, and sociable than unattractive people”.

Being aware that unconscious biases exist, and understanding that people, companies, and politicians will use them to try and shape our opinions, is the first step to building a solid defence against them.

The last 24 hours have been a lot! Many pundits are calling the World Cup Final the greatest ever played. The sea of supporters in Buenos Aires was breathtaking to behold. And finally, the debate on football’s GOAT can finally be put to rest.

One thing that stood out to me was the commentary on the changes Lionel Scaloni, Argentina’s coach, had to make in the group stage to allow Messi to play at his best.

Messi, the star player of this year’s World Cup, is 35 years old. Despite being past his prime, he’s still capable of delivering moments of magic—which he did throughout this World Cup—to carry his team to victory. What many don’t realise is the trade-off the team has to make for Messi to deliver those moments of magic.

Messi moves around the pitch at barely more than a walking pace. He rarely defends, and he’s often not seen in any passage of play for 3-4 minutes at a time. But then he turns up, out of nowhere, and creates or makes a play that no one else can.

For Messi to play this role, he is surrounded by a midfield of players in their early twenties who do a tonne of grunt work—running, defending, and covering, so Messi doesn’t have to.

It was fascinating to learn that these young players didn’t feature in Argentina’s group stage loss to Saudi Arabia, but became fixtures in their starting line-up as the tournament progressed. A masterstroke from the Argentine coach that let Messi be Messi.