Blog

Although the uphill feels harder, it’s the downhill that carries the most risk.

I remind myself of this lesson all the time. It’s an easy one to forget when you’re tempted to fly downhill.

People in the UK are quick to complain about the 4:30pm sunsets in winter. Me included. They are pretty grim.

But if we’re going to complain about the short days, maybe we need to consider celebrating the long days.

Waking along at 8pm at night, the sky still bright, the temperature perfect. That’s an evening to be grateful for.

The blank page may invoke fear or excitement. Dread or optimism. Frustration or focus.

But regardless of the emotion, the page will still be blank.

That’s why we should throw something, anything, at the blank page. When we do, we have a base from which to work.

And when we remember that the words in the first draft don’t need to make the final one, we’re free to explore.

Sometimes, just turning up is winning.

You may not make a leap. You may not progress an inch.

But in the long run, if you turn up enough times, the slow-progress-days melt away in the memory.

Today I listened to a great podcast episode from Hidden Brain. It talks about the pitfalls of “trying too hard”.

We’re raised and conditioned to try hard. To sit down and focus. To analytically work our way through a problem. Sometimes, however, this comes at the detriment of spontaneity, creativity, and authenticity.

A great example they shared was tennis, and how people—hobbyists, amateurs, and professionals alike—play their best when they’re relaxed and not obsessing over technique. When a tennis pro is relaxed, they hit with power, confidence, and finesse. But when they’re trying too hard, mistakes creep in.

Another few good examples were from the arts: musicians and improv thespians, specifically. They feel the music and what the other actors are doing, and they respond calmly and naturally. They let the instruments and the story take them on a journey.

The main lesson I took away is that good work is rarely done when we’re tense, frustrated, or trying too hard. Instead, we need to relax and let the work out.

My favourite fruit is the feijoa. It’s a small green fruit that when cut open has a “clear gelatinous seed pulp and a firmer opaque flesh”. When I was a kid, I could eat a dozen in a single sitting.

Feijoas are only grown in a few countries, and sadly they don’t grow here in the UK. And for the past 10 years, I haven’t been in New Zealand during feijoa season.

My parents told me this weekend that they’d just planted five feijoa trees in their garden. Their plan is to make feijoa jam each year, and to get me a few jars so I can have a little bit of home and my favourite fruit all year round.

It’s nice to hear an “I love you,” but sometimes love is five feijoa trees.

The Met Office is saying the UK could experience its wettest summer in 100 years, with around 50 days of rain forecasted.

It’s hard to imagine right now as I sit writing this blog post on the top of a London Double Decker bus looking out at a glorious, sunny, Sunday afternoon.

It reminded me of a thought from Paul Graham that made me chuckle, “In January you wonder why anyone would want to live in England and in May you wonder why anyone would want to live anywhere else.”

I agree with PG, I’m just hoping this summer doesn’t change my mind.

It’s the little details at the edges that can make the difference.

A meal without salt, herbs, and aromatics is plain.

Exercise without stretching is risky.

A holiday without sunscreen is painful.

A team without time for fun gets stale.

A project without exploratory time leads to ideas lacking in creativity.

It’s the little details at the edges that make the difference.

Yesterday I wrote about a 2004 Bill Gates quote, but I made a mistake and wrote ‘2024’ instead.

It was a small error, but it made the rest of the post confusing and undermined the point I was trying to make.

I used to have a rule where I would proof read each post aloud before publishing. I’d read slowly over each sentence and try to spot hidden spelling, grammatical, or logical errors.

I stopped doing it, and don’t have a good reason why. But yesterday’s post has reminded me that the simplest mistakes can be easily missed. And it’s also not the standard I want to hold myself to.

Time to proof read aloud.

In 2024, Bill Gates made a prediction that “Spam will be a thing of the past in two years’ time.”

A quote like this makes it easy to dunk on Gates, but I’m not here to do that. The world needs people with bold, positive visions for what the future could look like. And if Gates pulled his punches, we wouldn’t have Microsoft.

However, it makes me think about how everyone seems to have an opinion on AI right now. I’ve no doubt it’ll change our lives, but people claiming they know exactly how our world will change sound a bit similar to Bill Gates circa 2004.

Do you remember your parents loving the music of their generation and scoffing at how odd popular music was when you were growing up?

Apparently, this is a consistent and repeatable phenomenon. According the Department of Data at the Washington Post (see image below), Americans “like the music of childhood, and love the music of their teens”, but end up hating music produced after they turn 35.

It seems like we’re hardwired to love the music of our youth, and to find joy in the nostalgia it brings. However, I hope that in a couple years—when I’m supposed to start hating all new music—I’m able to buck that trend.

If we go in search of excuses, they’re easy to find.

We won’t even need to look hard, because unlike our keys, wallet, or phone—excuses appear without much effort.

But recognising mistakes, saying sorry, and figuring out how to do better next time. That stuff is hard. Mustering the courage to do these things is much harder than finding excuses.

So if an excuse will always be there when we want it, at someone point, we either need to embrace the role excuses play in our lives, or chose to do things differently.

My perspective on envy changed when I read Naval Ravikant’s perspective on the topic. His thoughts pasted below.

“Jealousy was a very hard emotion for me to overcome. When I was young, I had a lot of jealousy. By and by, I learned to get rid of it. It still crops up every now and then. It’s such a poisonous emotion because, at the end of the day, you’re no better off with jealousy. You’re unhappier, and the person you’re jealous of is still successful or good-looking or whatever they are.

One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn’t just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.”

It’s not always that easy. But when I look at all that I have, and in particular the people that mean the most to me, I wouldn’t trade it. And envy’s appearance is more fleeting.

I’m appreciative of Naval’s insights. With a simple principle he’s helped shape how I view a complex, challenging emotion.

My former university faculty in New Zealand is a 5-storey monster.

It’s all windows; from the ground floor to the top.

The rumour was there is a full-time duo of window washers, taking them about a month to complete washing all the windows of the building.

Once they’re finished, they start again.

There are some decisions, that once made, you can’t go back.

In this example, when you decide to build something that is made only of windows, you’re signing up to a life of window washing.

It’s a simple reminder that some decisions stick with us forever.

Wells-next-the-Sea is the name of an English seaside town. When I heard its name, I went down an etymology rabbit hole.

The town was filled with freshwater wells, and so it was logically called ‘Wells’. But to avoid confusion with similarly named towns, the ‘next-the-Sea’ was added in the 1800s. Ironically, the town is not on the coast, but is located in an inlet surrounded by salt marshes and is about a mile’s walk from the sea.

There’s no magic to today’s post. Wells-next-the-Sea was an endearing name that caught my attention, and it immediately made me curious to understand its history and share it with you. I also wouldn’t have thought a name alone would do this, but it’s certainly made me want to visit.