Dan Cullum

There is a saying that you’re a Londoner when you don’t change your plans based on the weather.

Maru and I have friends visiting from out of town, and despite the today’s rain, we (mostly!) pressed on and put London on show.

Although it’s a phase associated with London, it’s filled with “let’s make the most of it” energy, and it’s an attitude that I want to take with me to other places and adventures.

King Charles III’s coronation is today. The streets are packed, the food is all coronation themed, and there’s no shortage of people with an opinion on the state and future of the monarchy.

It’s coinciding with the beginning of warmer weather and sun-filled evenings, a decision I’m sure was deliberate. London is thrumming with excitement, and it’s a joy to observe and experience.

That being said, I’m staying well clear of Buckingham Palace and downtown tomorrow.
I’ll enjoy the festivities from the parks close to home.

The noise is only going to get louder.

There will be more people demanding your attention, wanting you to buy from them, offering their opinion, and sharing their work with you. There will be no shortage of things trying to steal you away from what’s most important to you.

And once we realise that, we’re liberated to be judicious with our time. If we don’t decide how we want to spend it, and who we’re willing to listen to, someone else will decide for us.

One of the things that separate good and bad sports teams, at least at the amateur level, is how much they talk.

In poor teams, individuals will focus on their own game and not tell others what they are seeing, thinking, or going to do. When team members act alone, the team is disjointed.

In good teams, the chatter is relentless. People are constantly telling each other their positions on the field, warning team members about an incoming defender, letting others know they’re supported when making a move up the field.

And when we step into the realms of professional teams, great and constant communication is a baseline expectation. Every team does it.

It got me thinking about the teams I’ve worked with over the years, and how this same principle applies in the workplace. I’m not talking about mindless chatter, but direct, purposeful, clear communication. The stream of helpful updates is “relentless” in the best sense of the word.

“I’m sorry” is fine, but we can do better.

Better apologies come in three parts:

1. I’m sorry for “X”
2. It was my fault “X” happened
3. What can I do to make it better?

Numbers two and three demonstrate accountability and a willingness to right a wrong. Embedded within those is genuine remorse and a clear intention to improve.

There’s no shortage of people selling their recipes.

They may work for a cake, but they’re less likely to work for more complex things, like a career, love, or friendship. This is because their combination of support, talent, effort, and luck can’t be replicated.

Ray Dalio has a good model called “believability weighting” your decision making. In short, when taking advice from multiple people, we need to give more weight to people who’ve had the types of experiences that are most relevant for the decision in question. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget.

Not everyone’s recipe will serve us, but by being vigilant and believability weighting our decisions, we can get better inputs for our decision making.

I loved this advertisement from British Airways. It was digital billboard in London’s Piccadilly Circus where each time a British Airways plane flies overhead, an image of a young boy points up to it and the flight name and destination appear on the screen.

It’s fun, it’s unique, it’s specific, and although it’s a little dated now, it a great example of what can be built with a few real-time APIs and some creativity.

It’s an annual event in the London. On the first sunny weekend of the year, everyone in London heads out to a park to have a picnic or drink with their friends. However, after more than 6 months of cold, dreary weather, many people forget the sunscreen.

On Monday morning, the office is filled with sunburnt people. I’ve seen this pattern repeat reliably year after year, and I think it deserves its own name: Sunburnt Monday.

It’s tempting to move, to make a decision, to take action, even while the dust is still swirling

But whether it’s in the air, in the glass, or in our minds, sometimes we just need to let things settle before making our next move.

I played my first game of touch rugby of the spring season yesterday.

Given my ankle injury from 3 weeks ago, I was nervous and questioning whether or not I should play.

I constantly reminded myself of the “Not above 70%” rule, and (mostly) played below that threshold.

Alongside a good warm up and icing after the game, my ankle is feeling great today.

Sometimes, the goal isn’t winning, it’s getting the chance to play again next time.

Nora Ephron, the writer and film-maker who passed away in 2012 from cancer, wrote a list called ‘What I’ll miss, what I won’t miss’.

What I like about her list is how simple, quirky, and specific it is. It’s very human. Reading her collection of likes and dislikes can also help us put things in perspective. I’ve taken a bunch from the list and pasted it below.

What I won’t miss

Dry skin
Bad dinners like the one we went to last night
E-mail
Technology in general
My closet
Washing my hair
Bras
Funerals
Illness everywhere
Polls
Fox TV
The collapse of the dollar
Bar mitzvahs
Mammograms
Dead flowers
The sound of the vacuum cleaner
Bills
Small print
Taking off makeup every night

What I will miss

My kids
Nick
Spring
Fall
Waffles
The concept of waffles
Bacon
A walk in the park
The idea of a walk in the park
The park
Shakespeare in the Park
The bed
Reading in bed
Fireworks
Laughs
The view out the window
Twinkle lights
Butter
Dinner at home just the two of us

Am I working to become a better version of myself compared to yesterday, last week, last month, last year, or the last decade?

Anything else is superfluous and unproductive.

I’ve felt under the weather for the last couple weeks.

I was harbouring a bit of a cold after arriving back from Argentina, and that, coupled with the jet lag, has left me feeling low on energy.

However, a few important principles I try to live by are “do the basics well” and “just stay on the horse”.

Although I haven’t been feeling up to exercise at my usual level, I’ve made time for walks and shorter strength training sessions that are well within the energy I have available.

It’s important to me to keep some level of momentum at all times, because once I feel better, I’m not having to begin again from a standing start.

A useful mental model I’ve committed to memory is ‘the map is not the territory’.

The territory is everything at a 1:1 scale. For example, the city of London.

The map is an abstraction of the territory. For example, the tube diagram of the London Underground.

It’s impossible for us to remember the vast detail of the entire territory, but it’s possible for us to grasp a map.

What’s important to remember is the map is only a representation. Over-reliance on the map can lead us to form incorrect assumptions about the territory.

When we take this idea and apply it to other examples, we see it at work everywhere.

The software on our computers are just an abstraction of the zeros and ones that process and compile actions under the hood.

The organisational chart is just an abstraction of the relationships in a company, but decisions are often made within a complex web of influence.

The script is a guide for the director, but the play gets mapped out as the cast work together on the show.

The map can help show the way, but reality is almost always more complex. We shouldn’t forget that.

When I was 11-years-old, my parents sent me to a school holiday programme with an academic leaning. This one stayed away from sports, games, and films, and instead focused on literature, science, and history.

My favourite part of the programme was playing the board game Diplomacy, which is a simulation of World War I. It’s a game where chance plays no part in the result. Every move on the board is based on a human decision, and victors are determined via alliances and negotiation. Our group of 16 student were separated into pairs, and each pair was assigned a country. It was chaos, but I loved it.

The least enjoyable part of the programme was the literature class. I was still obsessed with teen action and spy fiction novels, but the teacher busted out Chaucer. I didn’t understand the poetry, the structure of the verses, the old English, nor the subtleties of the texts.

I wasn’t ready for Chaucer. And to this day, I haven’t picked up any Chaucer. But just because I wasn’t ready then, doesn’t mean I should shy away from it now.

I think life is filled with these Chaucer-esque experiences, and it’s up to us to know when to have a go them at a later date.