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“Are your obligations real or imagined?”

I read this question in a James Clear email newsletter from last year. There’s a lot to unpack and explore with this one.

I woke up this morning and looked out at London.

The sun was piercing—the kind of morning light that makes you squint.

And the rain was pattering—the kind that makes you happy you’re inside.

When I was 5, my teacher said every time there was a sunshower, monkeys were getting married.

It’s stuck with me for 25 years.

Sometimes it’s simply the names we give to moments that help them live on.

My thoughts today are with my family, friends, and readers in the US.

There are a lot of nerves, and rightly so—this election will have huge consequences for the United States, and for the rest of the world.

You don’t need me spouting off an opinion here, but please know I’m thinking of you all, and hoping a positive and peaceful day for democracy will prevail.

I’m running an experiment this week by trying Mindful Chef’s ready meals for my lunches.

If I’m being honest—because I’m at risk of sounding overly first-world problemish here—I still want the healthy option of grilled salmon and vegetables, but not the mental switching cost that comes with preparing it.

Additionally, when I read the list of ingredients on a Mindful Chef’s meal, I know them all. There is no long list of chemicals or preservatives. This is important to me if I’m going to eat a ready meal.

Once I take into account the raw ingredient cost of the meal I’d be cooking anyway, I’m paying £1-2 ($2-3) for the cooking and delivery of the Mindful Chef meals.

The portion sizes are exactly where I need them (about 400-500 calories per meal), and the macronutrient ratios are scannable right into MyFitnessPal; where I track calories.

I’m hoping this experiment saves me time and mental bandwidth over the next week or two. I’ll report back when I’m done.

It’s been 6 months since I’ve started cutting my own hair. For those new to the blog, I wrote about the first time here.

My measure of success is: if I can avoid comments like, “What happened, dude?” I assume I’m doing okay.

As I cut my hair this morning, I had two reflections:

1. Building muscle memory is hard when there is a 4-6 week break between practice sessions. When we want to learn—and learn fast—we need frequent, deliberate practice.
2. The hard part about cutting your own hair ends up not being the cutting itself, but the clean up. Interestingly, my focus whilst cutting has now shifted from the cutting to trying my best to avoid a lengthy sweep-up.

I think 2) is a helpful metaphor for our work and projects. We’re used to focusing on the task at hand, but it’s easy to forget about the mess we may be making now, that we’ll have to clean up down the road.

When everyone is doing the same thing, it’s easier to pick one thing, and stand out.

As year end approaches, my team has been brainstorming about the products we’ll build next year.

Earlier this week, we had a session where the ideas proposed felt vague and flat.

A couple days later, we changed one thing: we added a constraint. We narrowed down the field of possibilities, and forced ourselves to think about a more specific problem.

The ideas came thick and fast, and the creativity in the room was infectious.

Constraints, rather than hindering, can often bring out the best in our teams.

The New York Times recently ran a completely random—but fun—experiment.

Can you tell a ‘Trump’ fridge from a ‘Biden’ fridge?

“We teamed up with Lucid, an online survey platform, to ask a representative sample of U.S. residents whom they’re planning to vote for — and whether they’d open their refrigerators and take a picture of the contents. Hundreds did.”

And as a reader, you can participate by guessing which candidate people are planning on voting for based on the contents of their fridge.

And as it turns out, the contents of a persons fridge is a horrible indicator of how someone is likely to vote, with people only guessing right about 53% of the time—barely better than a random guess.

I love the internet for how it can make these random experiments possible. They’re a lot of fun to watch and participate in.

I’ve got a group of best buds from New Zealand. Although we grew up together, we’re now scattered around the world.

One of them—his name is Chingy—got married last week in New Zealand.

Unfortunately, due to COVID and New Zealand’s tight border rules, it wasn’t possible for the group to return home for the celebration.

However, we knew we needed to send the happy couple a special video to replace what would’ve been our speeches at the reception.

We ended up writing and recording a song, and filming a music video to go along with it. We had an amazing two months brainstorming ideas and putting it together, and we were stoked the happy couple loved it!

Here it is!

It took 6 months, 7 hours of phone calls, and a dozen emails to set up my online account with the UK tax office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

What caused the delay?

4 years ago, I filled out a paper form to register for my National Insurance Number (this is a unique number all residents have to make sure their income tax is recorded against their name).

And either due to 1) my messy handwriting, or 2) a misreading of my name by the civil servant, my last name had a single-letter typo. This one error resulted in me failing all the security and verification steps to set up my online tax account.

But what’s perhaps most shocking is it took 6 months of back and forth communication with HMRC until this typo was diagnosed as the root cause.

The systems we build are only as effective as the weakest link. And the second-order consequences of minor errors can be far reaching, and take a long time to solve.

Back in 1937, George Orwell wrote these words:

“Our civilisation is founded on coal more completely than one realises until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil.”—The Road to Wigan Pier

Less than 100 years ago we were dependent upon coal.

Since then, we’ve discovered and harnessed new forms of energy, and have also realised that uninhibited burning of fossil fuels will lead to climate disaster.

The early morning sun hits my face as I write this, and it has me thinking about 2037—16 years from now, and the 100 year anniversary of Orwell’s words—and about where humanity will be.

I’m encouraged by the fact that 2019 was the first time the UK generated more electricity from renewables than fossil fuels. That switch alone is a big milestone.

With this trend set to continue, here’s hoping my blog post update in 2037 will tell that story!

I’ve been reflecting on Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues today. And after pondering on them, I thought you may find value in them too.

Not all of them will resonate, but even if it’s just one, that’s worth something.

1. Temperance – Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. Silence – Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order – Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. Resolution – Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality – Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. Industry – Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity – Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice – Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation – Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness – Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility – Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity – Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. Humility – Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

If you read the news headlines in the UK, and you read the headlines in Australia, both countries are talking about the coronavirus.

It’s hard to tell them apart, and it’s all too easy to think the story of the virus in each country is similar.

But when you look at the data, the story is dramatically different.

On 27 July 2020, the UK had 421 daily confirmed new cases, Australia had 453.

On 22 October 2020, the UK had 26, 687 daily confirmed new cases, Australia had 14.

Nations are complex systems, and I’m at risk of over simplifying here, but this data provides some evidence that lockdowns, border closures, and obedient citizens can control this virus.

For those of you reading this in the UK, the US, or other countries with rising case counts: wear your mask, and please stay safe this winter.

I was thrilled to learn Sir Paul McCartney will be coming out with an album, McCartney III, in December.

This will be the third album he has made completely alone; playing all the instruments and singing all the vocal parts.

The 78 year old legend recorded the album during a 9 week period at home over lockdown.

Could this guy get any cooler? I also love how he’s still putting his art out into the world at such a reliable pace and quality.

Here is the McCartney track I was bouncing to whilst writing this post.

There’s always an opportunity to make things better.

Here are some examples of “cross-industry innovation,” meaning borrowing ideas from one industry to make another one better.

James Dyson created the Dyson vacuum design after seeing how sawmills use cyclone force to eject sawdust.

Henry Ford’s car assembly line borrowed from multiple industries, he adopted 1) interchangeable parts from the watch industry, and 2) continuous flow manufacturing from the canning industry.

When French doctor, Etienne Tarnier, was searching for solutions to try and help premature babies survive, he spotted poultry incubators in the Paris zoo. A short while later, he’d made the first infant incubator.

There is magic everywhere if we’re willing to look, learn, and experiment.