Dan Cullum

Here’s something I’ve been pondered a lot recently:

If you don’t have a point of view, you inevitably let someone else make the decisions for you.

Agency. Influence. Potential. Progress.

All of it starts with having a point of view.

When it’s hard, complex, and the answer seems more illusive by the day.

Just remember that everyone else is figuring it out too.

Just remember that we’re all figuring it out.

When in these situations, the best we can do is arm ourselves with questions, ask them one by one, and slowly unravel the knot.

You may be familiar with the saying “mind over matter”: if we believe in our minds that we can do something, we can make it a reality.

But the inverse can also be a path to progress.

Getting out of bed before 6am can help us learn to love early mornings.

Going for that run 3 times a week can reprogram our brain to enjoy exercise.

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt when they’ve made a mistake can build our empathy muscle.

Singing a song or delivering a speech in public can help us overcome our fear of crowds.

Matter over mind: we can use action to rewire our minds.

Back in 2011, when I used Skype every day to chat with Maru whilst we were doing long distance, it was the number one video calling app. It had more than 100 million users, and I assumed its dominance was unassailable.

That same year, Zoom was founded.

Pre-pandemic, Skype had fallen from its lofty heights to a mere 23 million users. This grew to 70 million during the pandemic, but that’s just a rising tide raising all boats.

Zoom, on the other hand, is far outperforming Skype. Zoom doesn’t share user level data, so it’s hard to make an exact comparison, but they grew during the pandemic from 10 million “daily meeting participants” to more than 350 million.

I’ve blogged about it before. Zoom just works. It’s easier to use, has fewer bugs. and 20+ people can appear on a single Zoom screen; that’s something Skype can’t do.

Skype, when acquired by Microsoft in 2011, arguably had a pathway to long-term, global dominance akin to Google’s Search. Yet, an upstart, a minnow, an ant, focused on the product, made it better, easier, and faster. And now, more than 300 million people vote with their feet on a daily basis for Zoom over Skype.

The giant may sit high on the perch. But the giant must never forget the perch can be a precarious place if you’re not looking down at what’s happening below.

H/T to my future father-in-law, Salvador, for this story!

I recently blogged about dogfooding: the practice of company employees using their own products in real-life situations to develop empathy for customers.

Well, yesterday we may have witnessed the greatest dogfooding commitment ever made: Jeff Bezos will be on Blue Orgin’s inaugural human flight into orbit.

I get that Bezos wants to experience space and microgravity, but the very first flight?

If everything goes to plan, though, it’ll be a massive “status” move in Bezos’ favour in the Musk / Bezo race for space dominance.

I give huge kudos to Bezos. His belief, ambition, and courage is astounding. And he’s literally got 100% of his skin in the game on this one.

I’ll definitely be watching the live stream.

I recently came across a great idea shared by Eric Jorgenson on Twitter.

Of course, life isn’t this simple.

Our world is more complex and nuanced.

But the reason why I like this idea is its deliberate simplicity.

It’s a great framework for how to think about growing older: do I want to be someone who laughs more, or less?

And by answering this question with a “yes”, perhaps it allows us to age with a greater willingness to add laughter, and to look for it, in all that we do.

Note: This post is part of a weekly series called ‘Seneca Sundays’. Each week, I reflect on one of Seneca’s ‘Moral Letters to Lucilius’, and summarise the most practical and useful principles to share with you.

A common theme among Seneca’s letters is his encouragement to “withdraw from the world” and focus on philosophy and pursuing virtue.

When applied to a modern context, Seneca is talking about the rat race. It’s a critique on our insatiable appetite for work, long hours, and productivity. It’s a warning against consumerism, and our desire to keep up with everyone else’s expectations.

In this letter, Seneca starts from the assumption that Lucilius already wants to withdraw from the world, and offers numerous ideas on how he can achieve it.

1. No one is forcing you to pursue wealth.

Seneca kicks off by saying that the pressure to pursue wealth is self imposed. And that the ability to bring that desire under control is admirable.

Seneca isn’t saying wealth is bad, or that we should avoid it. He was one of the richest people in Rome after all. His point is rather about our rabid pursuit of wealth, and how it can easily become unhealthy.

2. It’s not weak to step back from what has previously hurt you. It’s wise.

It’s easy to want more. To take on more than we can handle. To pursue growth, status, and success. But this path can be dangerous. Like a violent and fickle storm, the pursuit of more can throw us around.

Seneca says when a wise person “sees the dangers, uncertainties, and hazards in which he was formerly tossed about, he will withdraw, – not turning his back to the foe, but falling back little by little to a safe position.”

I think this point is especially relevant to mental health in today’s workplace. I’ve seen brilliant and talented people over the past few years take time off to protect against, or recover, from burnout.

Most simply worked too hard, for too long.

And almost all of them admitted that the gain wasn’t worth the cost.

Seneca then encourages us to be careful about what we take on: “A good man will not waste himself upon mean and discreditable work, or be busy merely for the sake of being busy.” Instead our “perseverance should have an object that is worth while.”

3. Don’t complain about situations you’ve chosen.

Have you ever met someone who wants success, but doesn’t want to do the work to get there? Seneca comments there are many who “love the reward of their hardships, but curse the hardships themselves.”

He goes on to say we shouldn’t flinch under a burden, but rather wrestle with the task we’ve chosen for ourselves, such as a challenging job or project. We can’t grow unless we’re challenged, which is to say, “No man is brave and earnest if he avoids danger, if his spirit does not grow with the very difficulty of his task.”

Seneca then asks us to look at people who complain, and how many times they’re “lingering of their own free will in a situation which they find hard.” Poignantly, Seneca then comments, “there are a few men whom slavery holds fast, but there are many more who hold fast to slavery.”

4. Commit wholeheartedly, and live nobly.

When a person jumps out of a boat, they can’t “swim ashore and take their baggage with them.”

Which is to say, if you want something—whether that be withdrawing from the rat race, as Seneca describes, or something else entirely—we must commit wholeheartedly to that venture.

Even if that means leaving some luxuries behind.

Seneca ends the letter with a thoughtful paradox: “Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.”

When I think of the word ‘decide’, I usually think about ‘choosing’ or ‘selecting’ from a range of options.

However, I recently learnt that the word decide comes from the Latin “to cut off”.

A decision is not about saying ‘yes’ to one thing, it’s really about saying ‘no’ to everything else.

Framing decisions in this way adds gravity and pressure to them. But maybe that weight can help us be a little more careful, considered, and deliberate.

To “pull a punch” in boxing is to throw a punch with less force than what you’re capable of.

Sometimes it’s good to pull a punch. Maybe we’re experimenting with a new exercise routine, entertaining a “coffee chat” with a potential employer, or simply learning something in a foreign domain for the first time.

But for the things that really matter: pull no punches. Leave nothing in the ring.

The hard part, though, is knowing when to pull, and when to commit.

Earlier this year, Nestle executives saw an internal presentation reporting “more than 60% of Nestle’s mainstream food and drinks portfolio could not be considered healthy under a ‘recognised definition of health’.”

When the Financial Times got wind of this document and reported the story, it sparked a reaction: Nestle is now updating its nutrition and health strategy.

KitKat. Milo. Maggi. Nesquik. Smarties. Aero. Milky Bar. Cheerios.

You’ll likely be familiar with many of these brands. All of them unhealthy.

The question I have is why did it take bad press to get Nestle to take action? Why didn’t they proactively acknowledge the problem, and work to find a solution?

I’m grateful for good journalism, and how it brings these issues to light and forces big companies to pivot. I just wish these companies would take more initiative. For all our sakes.

Preferably one. Never more than three. Over a reasonable period of time, say 3 months.

A team or individual can rarely focus, and I mean really focus, on more than one thing at a time.

But if they must, three goals is the limit.

It’s not saying yes to only 1-3 things, it’s really about saying no to everything else.

I recently came across a powerful rule for deciding when to debate a topic.

“Educate the people you care about. Validate the people you don’t.”

When someone we care about has faulty thinking on an important topic, we should try and help them see reality.

This isn’t arrogant because when we’re the one with poor judgement, we’d like them to return the favour.

Sometimes, though, we meet people that speak at length, and in ignorance, about an idea.

It could be that we’re unlikely to see them again, or that our fates are not tied together, or perhaps we just don’t want the hassle of debating a stranger. For these people, it’s okay to simply “validate” them: acknowledge their point of view, tell them it’s an interesting way to look at a situation, but neither agree nor disagree with them.

We have a limited amount of energy each day. It’s wise to save that energy for the people and topics we really care about.

There is a large salt bunker in New Mexico. It’s deep. And we’re planning to store dangerous radioactive waste in it.

Here’s our challenge: we need to stop people opening the bunker for at least 10,000 years.

This was the challenge given to a group of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers in 1990.

Can you imagine what 10,000 years in the future looks like?

To put this into perspective, if we wind back the clock 10,000 years, we had just invented farming.

And so this group set out and considered everything from symbols, to storyboards, to shaping the natural environment to prevent people entering the site. In the end, they opted for large granite monuments, with buried libraries containing information in 7 languages warning future generations of the dangers.

The thing that blew my mind, though, is the radioactive waste actually needs to be stored for more than 250,000 years. But designing 250,000 years into the future is crazy, so the team settled on a more “reasonable” 10,000 years.

What are we doing creating radioactive waste today—in our lifetimes—that will still exist 250,000 years from now?

It reeks of irresponsibility and a lack of foresight.

Us humans are shortsighted creatures.

But it sure does make for an interesting design problem to solve!

Note #1: H/T 99% Invisible podcast for this story, and to Maru who has been a fan for years and recently got me into it.

Note: This post is part of a weekly series called ‘Seneca Sundays’. Each week, I reflect on one of Seneca’s ‘Moral Letters to Lucilius’, and summarise the most practical and useful principles to share with you.

In this letter, Seneca outlines a recipe for being your own best company—how one should carry themselves, think, act, and pray.

1. If you’re going to spend time alone, here is how you should carry yourself

Seneca starts with a caveat: it takes a lot of trust to be alone with oneself. So if we’re hurting or in mourning, it’s best to be in the company of others who can prevent us from betraying ourselves.

However, Seneca then looks to Lucilius as an example of someone who should spend time in their own company. He describes how Lucilius’ self-respect and self-esteem is clear to see in the way he carries himself.

“I remember in what a great-souled way you hurled forth certain phrases, and how full of strength they were… These words did not come from the edge of the lips; these utterances have a solid foundation. This man is not one of the many; he has regard for his real welfare.”

There’s a lot to unpack here. It’s the way Lucilius speaks: with great soul and strength. It’s the substance of what he’s saying: his words aren’t flippant, they’re deliberate and purposeful. It’s the prioritisation of his welfare: having high standards for how he should live and be treated.

I also love how Seneca goes on to say “speak, and live, in this way; see to it that nothing keeps you down.” In this statement he acknowledges that although things will knock us down, it’s within our control to see they don’t keep us down.

2. How to pray, and how to act

Seneca closes the letter by saying we should pray to God as though all people are listening, and act among people as though God is watching.

Regardless of your beliefs, this idea is the essence of integrity, where there is harmony between our internal thoughts and intentions and our outward actions.

Are you experiencing discomfort or pain?

One may be a signal that you’re growing. Becoming better. Learning.

One may be a signal to stop.

Where is the line? And when you’re in the moment, can you tell the difference?