I love companies that focus on doing one thing really well.
They know their customers. They know the problem. And they put all their care, thought, effort, and attention into their singular solution.
Crocs. Gorilla Glue. Tabasco. Lucas Papaw Ointment. And my favourite London dessert shop, Cafe de Nata.
Expansion is hard. But focus is harder.
It takes extreme discipline to shun the shiny new thing and focus on the core.
One of the best parts about visiting family in Malaysia is sitting and listening to my Poh Poh’s (grandmother’s) stories.
They’re filled with surely-that-can’t-be-true plot twists, hilarity, and a healthy dose of Chinese proverbs. They’re made all the more funny due to my mum having to translate the 50% of Cantonese words I don’t understand.
During one of her stories today, Poh Poh said something to me that stood out: “In our family, there’s no need to say thank you.”
Once she explained her logic, I found it to be powerful and profound.
When you do things for yourself, like doing the dishes or cleaning the home, you don’t say ‘thank you’ to yourself. You just do the thing and move on.
In our culture, a family unit is, and operates, as one. Come rain or shine, we’re committed to one another. So in the same way that we don’t thank ourselves, my Poh Poh has no expectation for anyone in the family to say thank you to her.
‘Please’ and ‘thank you’ are such ingrained habits that I’m unlikely to let go of them when with family, but I really liked this new way of viewing the family unit.
Writer Jenée Desmond-Harris shares a great way to improve our daily to-do lists:
“I started dividing my to-do list into 1) things I have to do, 2) things I want to do, and 3) things other people want me to do.”
Desmond-Harris found she was often not getting to 3. And how having 3 was a way to introduce boundaries into our lives.
Small change. Outsized effect.
One of the first posts I wrote on this blog was about how we almost missed out on Spider-Man.
I also commented, “you can’t go anywhere without seeing a child in a Spider-man t-shirt or with a Spider-man backpack.”
Fast forward 3 years, and I see this playing out so evidently with my nephew. He’s obsessed with Stan Lee’s creation—running around the house pretending like he’s Spider-Man. It’s also his clothing, toys, and TV shows!
It’s wonderful to see the excitement I had for Spider-Man occur with my nephew. It also made me realise there are only a few characters that truly transcend generations and make such inexplicable connections with fans.
You can choose to see see it as some tires, the lid of a bucket, some paint, and a small tree.
Or you can choose to see something completely different.
Maru and I are currently in Malaysia visiting family and having the best time. Minion seen in Melaka at a Kopitiam.
I came across this interesting, London-based carbon capture start-up today. Their focus is on the container ships that spew more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than planes.
Their proposed technology “works by routing the exhaust into a container that’s filled with porous, calcium oxide pebbles, which in turn “bind to carbon dioxide to form calcium carbonate,”— essentially limestone.”
Readers who are fellow climate nerds, would love to hear your thoughts on this!
It’s an odd statement.
The open wound was the painful part.
And now that it’s healed, we get to remove the bandaid.
Ripping it off is a small price to pay for what we receive in return.
The idea that “only a few moments matter” has been a repeated learning this year.
We wake up early, eat well, head to the gym, and perform a number of warm-up sets. It’s then that we face the growth set. It’s the one where we’re lifting at the limit, and it determines whether we grow or not.
We join a meeting, people present their plans, we discuss the option and trade-offs, but the path forward is still murky and confusing. It’s that moment we get to practise bringing structure, clarity, and judgement.
We come home after a long day, we sit down at the dinner table, and we begin to chat with our family. It’s that moment that we show we can let go of everything else and focus on what matters most.
Only a few moments matter.
“Never hungry, never full,” is a great mantra from my trainer when it comes to diet.
We don’t need to go without, nor should we burst at the seems.
Deliberate moderation, balance, and planning is a superpower.
I’ve seen Nassim Taleb, Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Paul Graham all tackle this idea in different ways over the years: a percentage increase and decrease feel similar on the surface, but are drastically different in reality.
Paul Graham framed it well recently:
“Many people implicitly assume that if a number shrinks by x%, it has to grow x% to get back to its old value. That’s not far off for small x. A number that shrinks by 10% only has to grow about 11.1%. But a number that shrinks by 75% has to grow 300%.”
The decline is immeasurably more dangerous than the increase.
Act accordingly.
I never want to do it.
I dread it, in fact.
But once it’s done, I feel much better.
Lighter even.
Here’s to those (Maru) who have the foresight and resolve to know that spring cleaning is an investment for a clear mind, as well as clean home.
Maybe they don’t need advice, a plan, or even an opinion.
Maybe all they need is you to say, “Tell me more.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this unsourced quote:
“Trust is earned in drops, but lost in buckets.”
There’s a tonne of value in restraint, having a cool head, and listening more than speaking.
Although I’m not great at it, surfing a longboard—any surfboard with a length of more than 9ft—is a joy.
The people who are good at it can often be found walking up and down the length of the board.
This got me thinking.
When we’re on a wave, and it’s moving faster than we are, we can take a step forward to stay on it.
Similarly, if it’s moving too slowly, we can step backward and wait for the wave to catch up.
I think our teams function in a similar way. The problems, opportunities, and challenges we face are like that waves that roll in.
As group, we decide if we need to be a bit more aggressive and move to the front of the board. Too much though, and we nose dive. Alternatively, we may think we need to slow down, and move to the back of the board. If we move too far back though, we fall off the back of the wave due to a lack of momentum.
It takes deliberate practise, care, and intuition to know where to position yourself on the longboard—in the water and in life.
Most people agree that ice cream is delicious.
Most people disagree on which flavour is best.
A recent discussion at work made me think of this.
Teams may agree on a vision, but that doesn’t mean they agree on the pathway to get there.
Picking the right flavour requires patient, deliberate, and careful attention. But the path is made easier when team member all agree that they like ice cream.