Dan Cullum

When putting together a puzzle—the literal, jigsaw variety—finding a corner is the most important step. Corners represent certainty; a base upon which the rest of the puzzle can be deduced and built.

When solving a puzzle—the figurative kind—finding a corner, or cornerstone, is essential to working through the rest of the problem. What are the irrefutable facts we’ll use? What are the reliable assumptions that underpin our approach.

In any puzzle, look first for the corners.

P.S. Thanks to Sofi and Kiko for the recent puzzle gift that sparked this post 😉

I recently invested in some kettlebells.

With the gym out of bounds for the moment, and with a significant lack of strength training over the past 8 months, I thought it’d be worth a try to bring the gym home (somewhat).

Kettlebells take some getting used to though. In contrast to barbells, dumbbells, and machines found at the gym, these lumps of iron can be unwieldy and awkward.

So I decided to start simple: the 10,000 Kettlebell Swing Challenge.

The challenge is to complete 10,000 kettlebell swings in 1 month. This equates to 20 sessions, each with 500 swings. 2 days on, 1 day rest.

The kettlebell swing is a deceptively effective workout: in addition to strengthening the entire posterior chain, it also serves as a great cardiovascular workout.

I’m 10 days in now (7 sessions, and 3,500 swings) and my body is starting to acclimatise. The aches, ever present in the first few days, are starting to subside, and the overall workout is becoming easier. In addition to the swings, I’ve added a stretching routine, foam rolling, and some jump rope.

Once I get to the end of the challenge, I’ll report back on how it went.

I’m about 3 hours in to Obama’s new book, A Promised Land, and I’m loving it. At 30 hours, it’s a biggie, but his care and devotion with each page is evident.

I’m used to seeing “Presidential Obama”, so reading about his childhood, his years in education, his relationship with Michelle, his experience becoming a dad, and his journey to being the only sitting black Senator in 2004, are wonderful behind-the-scenes insights I’ve read about so far.

I’ll post a reflection on the entire book when I get to the end of it, as there is still a long way to go.

If you’re thinking about reading it, I highly recommend the audiobook. There is something unique about hearing Obama narrate his story. You get a richer understanding of his message and intention through not just his words, but with his every pause, inflection, and change in pace and energy.

Tip: Instead of paying $45 for the audiobook, signing up to a 1 month Audible membership for $8 will get you 1 audiobook credit you can use to buy A Promised Land. The 80% discount is well worth it!

Though the stars in the sky may be bigger, brighter, and hotter than our sun, they’re distant.

Our sun, by comparison, is present, warm, and dependable.

If all the stars in the sky disappeared, the world would still turn. But we can’t live without our sun.

In your life, who is a sun, and who are the stars?

Here are two ideas I’ve been pondering.

The first is from Sam Altman, the former president of start up accelerator Y Combinator.

“When you learn that you can learn anything, you are willing to take on anything. And when you learn that you can win with execution speed alone, you are willing to take on anyone.”

The second is from famed investor, Ray Dalio.

“I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want.”

Powerful ideas in isolation, and potentially even more useful when paired together.

Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit and venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, recently posted about a unique “2%”.

Seven Seven Six invests in start ups. And in addition to the investment, they give an additional 2% in cash for the founders’ personal growth and family care.

1% can be spent on anything from therapy, to personal training, to ups killing.

The other 1% can be spent on childcare, or travelling to see a sick relative, or home renovations.

The idea was born from Ohanian’s experience in the early days of Reddit. A few months into starting the company, he learned his mom had terminal brain cancer. At that point, he was 22 years old, a first time CEO, and had just raised his first ever round of funding from investors. He reflects on what it would’ve been like to have had money from his investors set aside to afford the flights back to Baltimore to spend time with his mom.

Seven Seven Six’s approach inspires me. They don’t need to earmark this 2% for personal growth and family care, but they do. Their actions speak loud and clear.

If you enter Navy Seals training, there’s a 75% chance you’ll quit.

When you can’t do another pull-up, when you can’t run another mile, when you can’t hold your breath underwater any longer, all you need to do is walk up to the big brass bell in the centre of the camp, ring it 3 times, put your helmet on the ground, and you’re done.

The bell is a symbol of freedom. It represents a return to civilian life. It’s a reminder you’re only 3 rings away from a warm drink and being able to put your feet up.

However, this is not a post about pushing through the pain and refusing to ring the bell.

On the contrary, I wish we had brass bells in the “real world”.

How often do we see projects, ideas, and plans peter out? How often do ideas lose their spark, and people lose their ambition?

Instead of a slow burn, we’d be better off with brass bells—to cut our losses quickly, admit it wasn’t for us, and move on.

The world watched with a smile when Professor Robert Kelly was famously interrupted by his family whilst on a live BBC broadcast back in 2017. Numerous memes about this charming moment have circled online since, and it feels especially relevant in 2020 now that many are working from home and on video calls all day.

I smiled again today when I saw this Twitter campaign. Kelly is in a familiar setting, speaking to camera, and is interrupted by his kids, a robot vacuum, and a whole crowd of strangers.

In what was—no doubt—an embarrassing moment 3 years ago, Kelly has used it for his benefit. He’s owned his weird, and he’s better for it.

Whilst extensively discussing elections and politics over the past few months, Maru introduced me to a thought experiment called ‘The Veil of Ignorance’.

Imagine if you could re-design society from scratch.

You have the pen, and you decide how everything works. Justice. Wealth distribution. Education. Healthcare. Human rights. All of it.

But there’s a catch.

You must stand behind the Veil of Ignorance.

The veil prevents you from knowing who you’ll be—and what role you’ll play—in this society. It places you in a position where the fair and just decision for all is also your best interest.

Although the Veil of Ignorance is an impossible experiment at a societal level, perhaps we can use it to make fairer decisions in our teams, workplaces, and among our family and friends.

By biweekly, do you mean twice a week? Or once every two weeks?

Or would it be better to say “fortnightly”, meaning once every 14 days.

This is an on-the-nose example, but in situations where our words scale—blog posts, work presentations, project proposals—one rogue word can cause costly confusion.

Any time our words scale, it’s worth putting in the time on word choice.

The other day, I posted about trying Nourished, a 3D printed, personalised vitamin subscription service.

I wrote about the personalisation of products, about Nourished’s business model, and I even talked about how it felt like “the future”.

And then, I received a reply from a reader-turned-friend, Barry, “So, how did they taste?”

I’d spent so much time talking about the bells, whistles, and opinions, and I missed the obvious question.

I would’ve written a better post had I taken a step back and asked if I was missing anything obvious. This is true for blog posts, projects at work, and general decision making.

P.S. I owe you a reply, Barry. The vitamins are yum compared to the typical chalky vitamin pills. They’re not as chewy or sweet as a candy gummy, but they are a morsel I now look forward to each morning this week.

A colleague recently apologised for raising a concern late in our quarterly planning process.

Sure, concerns late in the game can be stressful, but it’s better to know about them so we can have the hard conversations now.

I’d much rather work through a problem before it turns into a bigger headache 6 months down the road.

How can you create a safe space for your colleagues and team members to raise their concerns, and to have those hard conversations now?

When we moved flats a couple months ago, we committed to one tiny change that’s made a huge difference: every item in our house now has a home.

When everything has a place, it’s hard for clutter to creep up on you. Whenever you’re done with something, it goes back “home” and doesn’t have the chance to pile up.

Although simple, this example stands out to me because we can often find ourselves working hard on projects and feeling like we’re making little progress. However, when we pick the right action and the right application, the benefits keep on giving.

I’ve recently been fascinated by the concept of personalisation. In the last 10 years, technology and automation have enabled a level of product personalisation that never could’ve existed before.

I’ve been following a few companies built around personalisation, and one that I’m fascinated by is Nourished.

You start by filling out a short survey about your health goals, they then recommend a combination of 7 vitamins specific to you. Following this, they 3D print a “gummy stack” with each of the vitamins printed as a distinct layer. And a few days later, a box arrives at your door with your vitamins for the month wrapped in individual biodegradable packaging.

I’m trying it once out of curiosity, as I’m not about to stump up £30 a month for vitamins, but I love how personal it feels.

It fees like the future.

And I’m certain that as the years go by, we will come to expect a level of personalisation in our products and services that would’ve felt foreign only a few decades ago.

There are some moments in sport, where no matter the outcome, everyone smiles.

Today was one of those days.

Argentina’s rugby team—Maru’s team, Los Pumas—bet the New Zealand All Blacks for the first time ever.

When a team defies history, precedent, and expectation, and accomplishes something for the first time, it’s a moment to be savoured. There is elation, pride, and relief that the hard work has finally paid off.

And to defeat a team with a 77% win rate since 1903, it’s a huge achievement!

Kudos to Los Pumas!