Dan Cullum

The Lindy Effect is “a theorised phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable thing, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to its current age.”

Basically, the longer something has survived, it’s also likely to have a longer life expectancy.

Plato. Shakespeare. The Beatles. We can reasonably expect the works of these masters to last well into the future. But in this case, we’d expect Plato to survive a lot longer than the Beatles, and for Shakespeare to fall somewhere in between.

For me, the Lindy effect is super useful when deciding what to read next. To “read a Lindy book” is to read texts that have stood the test of time. Compare that to books on the current New York Times bestseller list, like Matthew McConaughey’s memoir ‘Greenlights’. Sure, McConaughey is a big star now, but his book’s prominence and relevance will eventually wane, and it’ll one day just be noise.

Focusing our limited time and energy on Lindy books, will give us the maximum return on investment in the long run.

I love this video from the Association of Tennis Professionals on how Andre Agassi was able to read Boris Becker’s serve through one of Becker’s small ticks: before he tossed the ball, he’d stick out his tongue; if he poked it out straight, the ball would be served down the middle, if he put it out to the left, the ball would go wide.

The part I found most interesting though was how Agassi used this information to his advantage. He says, “the hardest part wasn’t returning his serve, but rather not letting him know that I knew this.”

Agassi would save reading Becker’s serve until he needed to win an important point in a match, so he didn’t give away that he knew.

Agassi’s genius wasn’t in the “mind reading”, nor was it in returning the serve (although that was pretty hard to do too!), it was in knowing when to selectively, deliberately, and specifically use the information to his advantage.

In his final letter to Amazon shareholders as CEO, Jeff Bezos quotes biologist, Richard Dawkins:

“Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself – and that is what it is when it dies – the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content or the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surrounding temperature, but all animals do some comparable work. For instance, in a dry country, animals and plants work to maintain the fluid content of their cells, work against a natural tendency for water to flow from them into the dry outside world. If they fail they die. More generally, if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.”

Although Dawkins’ quote is talking about the physical world, Bezos uses it as a metaphor for “being distinct”. He goes on to say in his letter:

“In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal? How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness? To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?This phenomenon happens at all scale levels. Democracies are not normal. Tyranny is the historical norm. If we stopped doing all of the continuous hard work that is needed to maintain our distinctiveness in that regard, we would quickly come into equilibrium with tyranny.

We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to “be yourself.” What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.

You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it. The fairy tale version of “be yourself” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.

The world will always try to make Amazon more typical – to bring us into equilibrium with our environment. It will take continuous effort, but we can and must be better than that.”

What’s the price you’re willing to pay to be distinctive?

Step 2 is usually easier than Step 1.

Steps 1 is fighting inertia, the unknown, imposter syndrome, and any other form of Resistance that stops from you getting going.

Step 2 is about building on a base, gaining momentum, and greasing the groove.

We need some initial motivation to get going, but it’s habits that get us there.

Hair salons and barbers recently re-opened here in the UK. Comically, I heard a story about someone receiving a really bad haircut.

The reason—and the apology from the hairdresser—was, “I’m so sorry, I’m just out of practise.”

It reminded me of a piece of advice given to me by a friend who worked for a large electronics manufacturer—think kettles, toasters, and sandwich presses—he said, “Never buy a new electronics product in the first 6 months after its release. The company will still be ironing out bugs in the product it wasn’t able to identify during testing. After 6 months, the products on the shelves will be much more stable and reliable.”

Whether you’re offering a service or building a product, how can you avoid being out of practise?

The fruit from the grocer sits in the fridge, hidden inside a brown paper bag. A few days go by, then a week, and when we’re rummaging for something else, we realise we forgot about the fruit, and it has now spoiled.

The simple act of making food visible—taking fruit out of paper bags, or using clear tupperware—helps us waste less.

Although a banal example, it’s a good metaphor for our own personal goals. What we see every day will inevitably get more of our attention and focus.

I’m a fan of writing out goals—whether they’re daily, weekly, quarterly, annually, or life goals— and putting them up on the wall.

We can’t work on them if we forget they’re there.

Make them visible.

Confucius—despite being the most important figure, and key thinker, in Chinese philosophy—claimed to not innovate, but rather transmit the wisdom and knowledge of those that came before him.

When truths and lessons are timeless, perhaps our goal should simply be to share and to practise, rather than reinvent.

All meaningful, long-lasting progress is built on consistency.

We don’t need the big product launch. Start small. Test quickly. See how things go.

We don’t need the deep clean. We just need to do a little work each day to keep our home in order.

We don’t need fad diets. We just need a nutrition system we can maintain in the long run.

Greasing the groove is about starting, and starting small. When we persistently apply pressure, we’ll find momentum begets momentum, and that progress happens bit by bit, not overnight.

If you haven’t used Shazam before, it’s an app that listens to a song and tells you both its name and the recording artist.

I was recently in an Uber and liked a song on the radio. I didn’t have Shazam on my phone, so I quickly went to the App Store to download it. Once complete, I opened the app, and hit the big blue button.

The whole process took about 25 seconds.

The team at Shazam knows the average length of a song is 3 minutes, so they built with that constraint in mind, and it has resulted in a user interface that has remained largely unchanged for more than 10 years.

There is no complicated sign-up process. It’s laser focused on helping the user complete the most important job on their mind.

I love it.

When building software products, teams often talk about “blockers”, which is anything that stops or slows down the delivery of a product.

When dealing with these challenges, we often use language like, “We need to ‘unblock’ the problem.”

But there’s another way.

By solving the issue, what we’re really doing is unlocking opportunity.

This subtle shifts in language can have a dramatic impact on the way our teams and organisations turn up, and the way our customers experience our products and services.

Looking at this another way: why is it called a Stop Light?

Why not a Go Light?

I almost lost access to my password manager this morning.

And it terrified me.

For years I’ve maintained complex, randomised passwords for all my online accounts in Lastpass. They’re protected behind a master password and 2-factor authentication.

What I didn’t realise was my master password had became part of my muscle memory—much similar to the 6 digits we use to access our phones.

So today, when I paused and thought about the password—the specific letters and digits—I blanked.

I tried multiple times, attempted to reset, used Face ID to see if that made a difference, was temporarily suspended from logging in, and finally tried to contact Lastpass’ customer service, but nothing worked.

And given this is a password vault, it has the odd quirk of being completely inaccessible if the recovery methods don’t work.

Don’t worry though, I eventually regained access, but only through an unlikely method. After trying all of the obvious online methods, I sat down with a pen and paper and started to write the possible combinations and variations of my master password.

And finally, it clicked.

A few lessons from my morning:

1. Carefully judge when it’s safe to rely on muscle memory. Some things are too important to be complacent about.
2. Sometimes the advanced, automated approach can’t beat the basics
3. There is still a lot of power in the paper and pen

Lauded investor, Howard Marks, developed the Consensus-Contrarian Matrix to show how being a contrarian, and being right, leads to outsized returns for a business or investor.

The path of least resistance is consensus. The journey is easy when we agree. There’s little pain when we all see the world with the same pair of glasses.

The hard part is getting things right. But when we do, and when we think, and act, based on a contrarian point of view, magic can happen.

In the future, no matter how horrid, weird, or ghastly, I don’t want to tell my kids to turn down their music.

It’s also an attitude I’d like to extend far beyond the car or kitchen playlist.

You may have seen images of Michelangelo’s work. His ceiling in the Sistine Chapel has inspired visitors for over 500 years. And his statue of David unfailingly outshines every other sculpture in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence.

It’s an easy trap to fall into: looking at the finished product—of the artist, the founder, the Olympian, the speaker on the stage—and finding it hard to imagine how they got there.

However, when we look at Michelangelo’s unfinished work, it puts his completed works into perspective.

“In every block of marble, I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to other eyes as mine see it.” – Michelangelo

Michelangelo turned up every day, without fail, slowly revealing the masterpiece hiding inside the marble. When we look at the finished product, we only see what remains.

In sport, a team’s win / loss ratio shows successful they’ve been that season. A number >1 is a “winning” season—where more games are won than lost.

I love a good sporting analogy and how they can help us think about other parts of our lives, but this one—in my opinion—isn’t a good one.

In sport, a loss is a loss.

In life, a loss is only a loss if we don’t learn from it.