Dan Cullum

Early during the pandemic, one of the comments frequently—and incorrectly—thrown around was, “It’s just a flu.”

Of course, it wasn’t. COVID was much more serious.

However, recent data published by the Financial Times now puts the risk of dying from COVID in the UK at less than the risk of dying from the flu.

I like how the data clearly outlines the three underlying causes of the reduced mortality risk.

1. Vaccinations
2. The reduced severity of Omicron, and
3. Immunity via infections

Even though daily life is very much normal, or “pre-pandemic”, this does mark a symbolic turning point.

Many of us live without fear of the flu, and as of now, this data gives us a benchmark to feel the same way about COVID.

Here’s something I’ve been mulling over:

The more we are willing to be proven wrong, the more likely we are to find the right answer.

It’s important to check the ratio of our default responses:

What percentage of the time are we responding with an opinion?

What percentage of the time are we responding with a question?

And where does this ratio lead us in the long run?

Ernest Shackleton and his crew set out on an expedition in 1914 with the goal of a completing a trans-antarctic crossing.

Their expedition fell apart when their ship, Endurance, became frozen within an ice floe in the Weddell Sea. They spent the winter camping on the ice, and held hope that the ship would become free in the spring.

When spring rolled round, the breaking of the ice put immense pressure on the ship’s hull, and the boat was lost.

Shackleton and his crew spent two months on a floating pack of ice in the hopes they’d be carried to an island 250kms away. Unable to reach this island, they hopped into lifeboats, and travelled for 5 days to arrive at Elephant Island; an inhospitable place far away from any shipping routes.

Shackleton then took 5 of his men, and only 4-weeks worth of food, and set sail for South Georgia; knowing that if they didn’t make it, they and crew left on Elephant island were all likely to perish.

Eventually, Shackleton made it to South Georgia, and after an almost 2 year ordeal, his men were rescued.

Why do I write all this? Because it puts the recent discovery of the sunken Endurance into perspective. Marine archaeologists recently found the ship in the Weddell Sea at a depth of 3,000 metres, and they’re immensely excited.

“Without any exaggeration this is the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen – by far. It is upright, well proud of the seabed, intact, and in a brilliant state of preservation,” said marine archaeologist Mensun Bound

The video imagery of the sunken wreck is breathtaking! Enjoy!

Back in 2019 I wrote a post called French Onion Ceiling.

It tells the story of how I dropped a steaming bowl of French Onion soup, how it splattered everywhere (even the ceiling), and how Maru reversed my foul mood as we cleaned by cracking jokes about how our ceiling never looked so good.

History repeated itself today. This time it was a smoothie. It went all over the carpet. And I was the culprit. Again. Does anyone else see a theme here?

Maru’s first words when she saw the mess, and my frustration, and before we even started to clean up, was, “French Onion Soup.”

On this International Women’s Day, when there are already so many reasons to celebrate the amazing women in our lives, Maru gave me yet another reason.

It’s the daily acts of care, empathy, patience, and love that add up to a lifetime worth sharing together.

Intelligence is hard to define.

In school we’re conditioned to measure intelligence against arbitrary and archaic benchmarks: can I remember this fact, or spell this word, for example.

This creates habits that can become harmful if we don’t unlearn them before adulthood.

It was only in university, and in my first job, where I started to learn that critical thinking, curiosity, flexibility, empathy, persistence, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to synthesise, were better measures of intelligence than fact regurgitation.

But my above list is just a hodgepodge, cobbled-together collection of ideas based on my own experience. It’s by no means a definitive or exhaustive list.

Which is why I really liked this excerpt from Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 book ‘Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid’:

“No one knows where the borderline between non-intelligent behaviour and intelligent behaviour lies; in fact, to suggest that a sharp borderline exists is probably silly. But essential abilities for intelligence are certainly:

• to respond to situations flexibly;
• to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances;
• to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages;
• to recognise the relative importance of different elements of a situation;
• to find similarities between situations despite differences which may separate them;
• to draw distinctions between situations despite similarities which may link them;
• to synthesise new concepts by taking old concepts and putting them together in new ways;
• to come up with ideas which are novel.”

Seeing intelligence as a pattern of behaviours rather than as a defined set of ‘have or don’t have’ skills is a great starting point for self-improvement.

I really liked this recent tweet from The Orange Book. It sums up a lot in so few words.

“People take you seriously once you take your commitments seriously. Have a long-term coherent vision, calmly execute every day.”

Multiple friends have recently, and independently, brought up the topic of Effective Altruism.

I’d like to learn more.

The basic idea is “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis”. This could include donating a certain percentage of one’s income to impactful causes, or making career decisions that maximise good over the long term.

Apart from some appetiser-sized reading, I have little to no understanding of the deeper nuances, who are the leading thinkers, and what are the most pressing topics in the field.

I have a feeling a number of you will have already explored this topic in some depth, and I’d love if you’d be willing to share some of the articles and people that got you thinking!

Product and technology companies are obsessed with Product-Market Fit.

The key question is does our product solve a customer’s need well enough so they pay us for it? And are we solving this problem for a meaningful number of customers, meaning are we making enough money to stay afloat?

In the early stages of a company, this is really all that matters.

One thing that product teams often get wrong is a poor definition and understanding of Product-Market Fit. They define arbitrary metrics and targets thinking that when those targets are reached, they’ve achieved Product-Market Fit.

That’s just not how it works.

The more time I spend working in technology, the more I believe Product-Market Fit is a feeling. It’s when people can’t wait to recommend your product, when your product is flying off the shelf, and when you can’t keep up with orders or customer queries. There’s a papable buzz in the team where it feels like you’ve discovered the secret sauce.

The data, metrics, and targets are just guides.

Real Product-Market Fit is a feeling.

My usual barber—Jimmy, who I’ve written about before—was closed earlier this week, so I tried a new place.

I went to a place in a downtown, office-riddled part of the city. The barber and I started chatting, and we quickly got to how they fared during the pandemic, and what it’s been like since the UK has re-opened.

Sadly, they’re still struggling. With many people embracing hybrid working, and fewer people returning to the office than they anticipated, this year is make or break for them. They’re in limbo. They don’t know how things are going to play out.

For the most part, the way I live my life is now very similar to pre-pandemic life. But it’s moments like these that make me realise there are second and third order consequences from the pandemic that are still being felt by people and businesses. And how there is still an arduous and uncertain road ahead for many.

It’s an important thing to keep in mind when we think about where we shop, and from whom we buy.

You can double, triple, and quadruple check your writing, but if your title has a typo, you’re going to undo some of the hard work.

Despite double checking my posts before they go out, a typo found its way into the title of my post yesterday.

Those of you who replied to the post were gracious, you didn’t point out the error. But I cringed and went back to the post to change it.

Many will say a typo doesn’t matter.

But it does.

How we do anything, is how we do everything.

The way we treat even the smallest typo communicates something about how we turn up each day, how we approach problems, and how we strive for better.

I’ve been 90% plant-based for almost a month now.

After reading and writing about the book ‘How Not to Die’, and being confronted by the science on health, environmental, and ethical reasons for eating less meat, I decided to give it a go.

I’ve had a few principles that have made the whole process easier.

1) In my previous attempts at vegetarianism I took an “all or nothing” approach. This made meat tempting, and when I caved, I felt like a fraud and the whole habit fell apart. This time round, I’ve opted for a target of 90% plant-based, and have found it much easier to integrate with my daily life, as well as social calendar.

2) I’ve optimised around maintaining a high protein intake. I feel even more motivated to maintain a plant-based diet if I can still hit my target protein intake as part of my exercise programme. I’ve been pleasantly surprised here. A mixture of tofu, tempeh, seitan, peanut butter, protein bread, soy milk, and protein bars enable me to hit these targets.

3) 90% adherence over the long run is better than 100% adherence for a sprint. Consistency over time matters, not what happens in the next few weeks. So I’m happy with my current levels of plant-based adherence.

This is still an experiment, and I’m only a month in. But I’m really enjoying it so far, and feel little desire to eat meat.

Sushi, though, that one is still hard to resist.

Some readers will know that I’m a big Kevin Kelly fan. I like how he thinks about the future, and also like the myriad of interesting projects he always seems to have on the go.

One of those projects is Recommendo. A free, weekly newsletter that Kelly writes with a few friends sharing “cool stuff”. It could be articles, gadgets, or tools and tips. The recommendations are always well curated, and are fun to read.

For those who sign up to their newsletter this week you get a free copy of their e-book, which has over 1,000 brief reviews.

I’m not usually a fan of the “sign up to get a free e-book” club, but this group has built up a lot of trust and goodwill, and I thought some of you would enjoy getting their emails too.

I loved watching my 3-year-old nephew riding his balance bike when I was back in New Zealand over the holidays.

As he rode it around the campsite, he was building his confidence, gaining speed, and practising lifting his feet off the ground.

But he was so focused on moving forward, and moving faster, that we all had to remind him, “Look where you’re going!”

Head staring down at his feet, he hadn’t yet developed the instinct to look ahead.

It’s an obvious and literal example, but the same principle applies to trying almost anything new.

That new role, job, hobby, habit, friendship, relationship, exercise, or recipe, all of these things take time and require patience.

It’s easy to look down, but training ourselves to look where we’re going, that’s a shortcut to a smoother ride.

The UK loves to crowdsource.

Perhaps the most famous example is the public voting ‘Boaty McBoatface’ as the preferred name for a new polar research vessel back in 2016. The National Environment Research Council—with its tail between its legs—vetoed the vote and chose RSS Attenborough instead.

Given we’ve had a couple of large storms roll through the UK in the past couple weeks, I got curious about how our storms are named. And I found that the crowdsourcing continues.

Every year, the Met Office invites the public to propose names. Last year more than 10,000 names were submitted. And once the list is published, the names of storms are used in order; alternating male and female for each storm.

Recent storms were named after an unruly cat (Storm Ruby), or a lightning-fast, goalkeeper grandson (Storm Logan).

Although we name storms because it helps people take their risk more seriously, I love how the naming process is fun, simple, and participatory at the grandest of scales.