Dan Cullum

I’m thrilled to be reunited with my family, and understandably, all I can muster for today’s post is a massive grin!

For those celebrating today, Merry Christmas to you and yours!

I received my final negative COVID test result today, and I’m set to be released from the Managed Isolation facility on Christmas morning.

Now that I’m coming to the end of my time here, I thought I’d reflect a little on the experience.

Managed Isolation has been excellent. I really have no complaints. The staff have been attentive, polite, and helpful. The room was clean, and the food has been healthy.

My days usually started around 4 or 5am so I could catch my colleagues in London and New York for a few hours. I then had a solid block for focused work which allowed me to get ahead of a lot of planning and preparation for 2022.

I hired an exercise bike for the week, so in the afternoons I’d get in a cycle and some bodyweight exercises. I’ve played quite a bit of Starcraft II, got lost in a few YouTube rabbit holes, binged Ted Lasso, and spent time calling my family and friends.

I think the New Zealand government runs a really tight ship, and I’m so impressed by how seriously they’re taking border security. There is a reason why millions of New Zealanders will be able to enjoy a summer without the risk of Omicron, and I’m grateful.

I’ve just started watching Ted Lasso, and it’s the best series I’ve seen in a long time.

It’s the story of an American college football coach from Kansas, Ted, who is hired to manage an English Premiere League football club. The catch is Ted knows nothing about football, nor England, which sets him up for a wild set of discoveries and adventures.

Ted is likeable from his first minutes on screen, and his cast of supporting characters are equal parts hilarious and human.

There are lots of films and TV series that laugh at the cultural differences between the US and the UK—that’s well trodden territory. But what’s great about this series is the mixing of two sub-cultures I never thought I’d see together: warm mid-western and diehard English football.

You know, after 5 years living in the UK, I still don’t support a Premiere League football team. But now, I may just be a fan of the fictitious ‘AFC Richmond’ coached by Lasso.

I also love that the concept for Ted Lasso started off as an advertising skit from 2013 promoting Premiere League Football on NBC. It’s a good example of how sometimes an idea is so good that it can’t help but have a life of its own.

Every month or so I end up sharing something really random, but uber heartwarming, from the internet.

It’s usually a hobby or a project someone has worked on: like the woman who collected every Penguin book ever published, or the food history librarian who catalogs the evolution of food.

Today’s is about the man called Brady who buys a live lobster from the grocery store, and keeps him as a pet in his aquarium—a wonderful alternative to the traditional story ending.

He gives the lobster a name: Leon. He documents Leon’s eating, how he cleans and organises the aquarium, and how he regains use of his claws after a long time being bound up.

It’s wholesome internet content, and I’m all about it.

Check out Brady’s video here.

Imagine you’re going on a 3-day hike.

You’ll need to carry food, water, clothing, and a tent. You’ll need to plan what time you’ll set out, and where you’ll stop along the way. You’ll need to check the weather. You’ll also need to let someone know when they should expect to hear from you once you’re done.

When we’re going on a lengthy journey, planning is required.

Yet it’s funny how often people in the workplace just launch into meetings, writing document, or starting projects without doing the thinking upfront.

Few meetings are worth having unless we’ve prepared for what we want out of them, and what decisions need to be made to get there.

Few documents are worth reading if we’re writing them on the fly without some structure to guide us.

Few projects are impactful without a solid plan.

Doing the thinking upfront almost always pays off in the long run.

Omicron is everywhere right now. It’s currently responsible for about 40% of COVID cases in the UK.

Unsurprisingly, there were quite a few people on my Dubai to Auckland flight (almost 10%) who tested positive for COVID following their arrival.

Given New Zealand currently has an excellent grip COVID’s spread in the community, it’s understandably taking extra precautions to prevent the spread of omicron; at least until more is known about this variant.

That means I’ll be spending an additional 3 days here in hotel isolation.

The good news is I’ll be getting out on Christmas morning, so I’ll still be able to celebrate with my family, and I won’t have to do any further home isolation after my release.

Wherever you are right now, I hope you’re staying safe, and are able to be with those you love over this Christmas and New Year break.

AI researchers at Meta recently released a tool that takes a kid’s drawing and uses an algorithm to bring it to life through animation.

Imagine a future where kids can draw characters and objects on a tablet and instantly bring that world to life with animations, music, and sound.

Drawing fun characters isn’t just for kids though, so I gave it go. Check out my dancing alien below (if you read by email, you may need to head to the post to see it).

I encourage you to do the same, and then send me yours!

I’m a fidgeter.

I’m often playing with a pen in meetings, or my leg is bouncing away whilst I’m concentrating on a presentation.

So I went and bought a couple of fidget toys: a Tangle Jr and Flippy Chain.

They’re both small enough to fit in my pocket, make no sound, and the Tangle Jr in particular has endless shapes and forms that make it really fun.

Fair warning, this could be placebo, but I feel like keeping my hands busy helps my conscious mind focus on the content, and gives my subconscious mind a discrete release.

Whether its placebo or real, I’ve found them to be an enjoyable addition to my work setup. And perhaps the biggest lesson was learning how to embrace the fidgeting. I used to fight it, now I try and direct that energy to help my conscious mind process things more effectively.

Most of what we’re currently reading about Omicron—particularly the implications for 2022—is conjecture.

There isn’t enough data to accurately predict what’s going to happen. Thankfully, this evidence is expected to emerge within the next few weeks, or early in the new year.

An article that is gaining a lot of traction is ‘The Omicron Question’ by Thomas Pueyo. I admire how Pueyo has approached the topic, laid out his perspective based on the available data, and called out its limitations.

One of my key takeaways was that Omicron may not actually be more transmissible than Delta with respect to its R0, but given the number of mutations in its spike protein, it’s likely to be better at evading immunity. Here’s an excerpt from the article that explains it better than I can:

“If most people are either infected or vaccinated—as is the case in South Africa—a new winning variant is not going to be the one tweaking its transmission rate in an unprotected population. The winning variant will be the one bypassing existing immunity the most, even at the cost of some transmission rate reduction in unprotected people.

If 90% of people are not immune yet and 10% are, as a virus you want to optimize for those not immune yet. But if it’s the opposite, and now 90% of people are immune, you’ll switch your efforts and evolve to increase your transmission rate among immune people.”

So if you’re vaccinated or have had COVID, you’re unlikely to be infected or re-infected with Delta. Whereas that may not be the case with Omicron.

The critical piece of the puzzle we’re still waiting for is the data on Omicron’s fatality rate “with vaccines, with previous infection, and without vaccine or previous infection.”

Once we get this information, we’ll have a much better idea about what 2022 will look like.

I also appreciated Pueyo’s perspective in his conclusion:

“This is the final battle for COVID. It’s throwing everything it has at us and will overwhelm the world. But in doing so, it might have weakened itself. And it’s attacking at a moment when the world is well-armed with vaccines and prior infections.

I’m hopeful based on anecdotal evidence and community prediction, but we just don’t know.

In the meantime, I’ll get my booster shot, mix-and-match it, get my N95 masks back out, avoid massive indoor parties, and vaccinate my kids. Which is what I was going to do anyway.

Hopefully we’ll emerge on the other side of this wave in a world where our immunity to COVID is so strong that we don’t need to worry about it beyond getting our booster shots every now and then.”

As we head into the end of year and start looking towards 2022, I’m reminding myself regularly to measure what matters.

For all of us, there are only ever a few things that really matter.

How does thinking about that idea change how you’re thinking about 2022?

Here’s another cracker from Our World In Data: a visualisation of democratic rights from 1789 to 2020.

In 1789, there was not a single democratic nation on earth.

In 2021, billions of people around the world now have the right to vote and elect their representatives.

It’s amazing to watch the visual shift from autocratic to democratic, and especially to see the rapid spread of democratic ideals since the beginning of the 1980s. If I had to have guessed, I would’ve thought the wave started much earlier.

It’s easy to forget how young and new democracy is, but this visualisation puts it into stunning perspective.

After more than 2 years, I’m finally on my way to New Zealand.

Although it’ll be 30 hours of travel, not to mention a week of hotel isolation, before I get to see my family and friends, I’m just grateful to be heading home.

For many months I thought it wouldn’t be possible; where getting a quarantine spot felt more lottery than probability.

It’s important to remember these moments, to realise what could’ve been, so that the experience—long flight included—is all the sweeter.

Yesterday was the thrilling finale of the Formula 1 World Championship, and it didn’t disappoint.

The two title protagonists, Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen, came into the winner-take-all race equal on points.

Journalists whispered throughout the week that this could be the greatest ever season of Formula 1, but none were willing to call it before the end of the final chapter.

Hamilton was dominant for the vast majority of the race—his raw pace and power seemed unmatchable. And Verstappen’s team, Red Bull Racing, tried to keep his championship hopes alive via multiple aggressive strategy calls.

The race ended up coming down to the very last lap, and it too was filled with controversy and edge-of-the-seat madness. Ultimately, and against what seemed like an inevitable Hamilton victory, Verstappen won and was crowned champion for the first time.

Even if you’re not into Formula 1, these highlights are worth a watch to see all the drama unfold in less than 10 minutes.

We may not get a season like this for some time, but I already can’t wait for next year.

Yesterday Maru and I watched the latest Marvel film: Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

In addition to being action-packed, hilarious, and a great watch, I loved Marvel and Disney’s embrace of Chinese culture.

Being half Chinese-Malaysian myself, it was so cool to see Marvel’s first asian superhero being brought to life on the big screen.

I loved the tasteful representation of Chinese culture and mythology, as well as the heavy presence of Mandarin throughout the film. I also thought Simu Liu did an awesome job in the lead role, and I can’t wait to see him in the upcoming Avengers.

What started with Black Panther, and continued with Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and now the Eternals, is I hope the start of a long term trend of more diverse superheroes and lead stars. What a great example for young kids (and kids at heart) around the world.

Everything we buy, process we establish, plan we develop, line of code we write, debt we take on, all of it requires maintenance.

And maintenance is hard.

It’s hard to forecast the amount required. It’s easy to forget. And there always seems to be some other pressing priority begging for our attention.

But if we’re not careful, the cost of maintenance can grow and stifle us—leaving us less nimble, less bold, and less ambitious.

What things can we throw away? What processes can we remove? What plans can we simplify? What debt can we pay down?

How can we reduce the hidden cost of maintenance?