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Asking thoughtful questions is like pulling at a stray thread.

It sticks out, so you grab it, and you keep tugging until the insight unravels itself.

It doesn’t require force, nor a specific technique. It just needs someone to pull at a thread that others may shy away from.

Alchemy was the medieval philosophy that had the aim of turning base metals, such as lead and copper, into gold.

It doesn’t matter the time period, there’ll always be someone willing to sell their blend of alchemy.

The physics don’t change though. Gold will always be rare, and require hard work and a bit of luck to find it.

Footage has been circulating this week of a Boeing plane that was forced to make an emergency landing due to a gaping hole in its fuselage. Hundreds of Boeing 737 Max 9 planes have now been grounded whilst safety checks are performed.

Despite the terrifying footage, it’s an example of the exception proving the rule. For context, there were more than 32 million flights taken during 2022, with only 39 aviation accidents recorded. In fact, the likelihood of something going catastrophically wrong whilst flying is so small,that the risk of dying in a car crash on a per mile basis is 100x higher.

The videos are sensational and will cause many people anxiety, but the data doesn’t lie; we shouldn’t be afraid of flying Boeing.

Most people are about one week into their New Year’s resolutions, and it got me thinking.

I started this daily blog on July 21st. It was about as far from Jan 1st that you can get. Yet it didn’t stop the habit forming.

Jan 1st is a great motivator to build a new habit or set new goals. But don’t let it hinder or halt you.

Progress can happen at any time.

This weekend was a serendipitous crossover of family and close friends in Singapore.

There was a group of 10 of us, a few based in Singapore, and the rest of us travelling for the holidays.

The default hang-out idea is to find a place with good food, but this time I decided to make an occasion of the crossover.

A number in the group enjoy go-karting, so I organised for us to head to Karting Jurong, a well-maintained track on the western side of Singapore.

8 of us participated, with a short qualifying followed by a 10 lap race.

There was banter, and competition, and a whole bunch of laughs; all of which added something special to the day. Of course, we followed up the karting with Hawker Centre food.

Grabbing a bite or a coffee is easy, but doing something a bit different, sometimes just because you can, is a great way to build shared experiences.

I was recently in the market for short term luggage storage—I had a day in Singapore before my late evening flight.

I found the service from usebounce.com to be excellent.

They provide the front-end booking and payment system, and then partner with hotels who provide luggage storage. I had options across the city, and booked my slot within minutes.

In the past, I had to deal with finding individual providers in Google Maps, and navigating to awkward locations. By using the infrastructure provided by hotels, Bounce has significantly increased the range and convenience of storage options for consumers.

A great example of a super simple service made more efficient with technology.

Here is a great Quartz post for the music nerds on how the pop music landscape has changed due to digital music production tools.

What was once a complicated and expensive process to capture audio to tape and produce it at scale, software such as Pro Tools, Logic, and Ableton have democratised the making of music.

Today anyone can make a record in their bedroom and have a million people listen to it the following day.

I’m also convinced AI will change music production forever. Think about prompts for film scores such as: look at the following action sequence, now create a 2 minute orchestral score in the style of Hans Zimmer; include a gradual build from 00:00 to 01:00, and reach a crescendo at 01:30.

I can see this AI being built into music production software too, allowing for immense flexibility in adjusting an AI generated piece of music.

Human musicians augmented by AI will create amazing things!

It needs time and space to work.

No trying, no straining, no forcing it.

There’s a reason why people have breakthroughs whilst walking, taking a shower, or doing chores.

The subconscious mind just needs a little room to breathe.

Everyone’s attention is on the ball. They watch players on both sides attack and defend; ferociously competing for possession.

They largely ignore the rest of the players. After all, that isn’t where the action is.

Yet most opportunities come from good positional play. From territorial control, from moving into open space, and from pouncing quickly on a counter attack.

When everyone’s eye is on the ball, there’s opportunity to create options and space across the rest of the field.

This works in football, and in many other situations too.

Back when files were saved locally on laptops, I lost a few university assignments due to forgetting to save my work.

Despite the frustration of needing to redo the work, the second time round was always faster.

I could avoid the obvious errors made during the first attempt, my muscle memory kicked in, and I already had a clear goal in mind.

It’s a healthy mindset to have when facing any setback. We’ve likely seen some flavour of this problem before. So if we treat it like it’s the second time round, we’ll get to the outcome faster, and with fewer headaches.

One of my favourite New Year’s traditions is one that I have no active involvement in.

A close friend of mine in New Zealand writes, performs, and films an annual New Year’s speech. He delivers it as the clock strikes midnight with fireworks going off in the background. It’s mostly humorous, but has a sprinkling of reflection and inspirational material in there too.

As the years have gone by (I think we’re up to video 5 or 6 now), the speeches and production value have continued to increase (this year’s had an orchestral score playing in the background). Our WhatsApp group waits in anticipation for the video to drop.

I love how these traditions and celebrations help mark the passage of time. They are important and joyous parts of the human experience; even the goofy ones!

Wishing you all a wonderful 2024! May you laugh and learn a more than last year!

One of the best implementations of AI in a consumer product that I’ve seen in recent times is Chess.com.

It’s been a few years since I last used the product, and most of the improvement seems to have been AI packaged up in a great UX, but it’s still taken an impressive leap.

The best feature is an AI coach that uses natural language processing to explain the reason why each move was either excellent, average, or poor.

A less useful feature, but one that’s amusing nonetheless, is how they’ve modelled the playing style of a set of celebrities so you can play against famous YouTube stars and NBA players.

Finally there is “adaptive” computer opponents that adjust their difficulty based on your playing performance. I think this also somewhat simulates the randomness that can be found in online matches.

Overall, Chess.com has a great UX that helps the user understand the “why” behind a move, which is often the hardest thing to grasp when playing a complex game. I’m a fan!

I’ve officially moved my password manager from Lastpass to Bitwarden.

Lastpass had a security breach in 2022, and their response couldn’t have been worse.

PC World explains it well, “LastPass’s disclosures about its 2022 security breaches was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. First came the initial announcement in August, which claimed that no customer data was affected—just a developer environment. Then three months later came an update that customer data was affected. Nearly a month after that, the company revealed that customer information and password vaults had been stolen. Not only that, but elements in those vaults (including URLs) had not been encrypted.”

I’m sure the company knew of the severity of the issue in August, but the refusal to be transparent about how user data got into the wrong hands is unconscionable for a password management company.

When you’re known for one thing, and you don’t do that one thing well, it’s no surprise when you lose customers.

When I moved to Bitwarden, an open-source end-to-end encrypted password manager, I painstakingly changed each password manually for every online account to eliminate the risk from the LastPass breach.

Despite the hassle, I’m happy with my move, and hope to avoid a situation like this in the future with my new choice in password manager.

The best books are a dialogue.

The author puts forward their story, thesis, and point of view. The reader then fills the margins with notes, picks what they agree and disagree with, and chooses how their world view changes—or doesn’t.

The author puts something worthy out into the world. And the reader turns it from a one-way monologue into a two-way conversation.

When traveling to see family over the Christmas break, I’m usually changing timezones by 8-12 hours. The change is particularly difficult on the West to East journey.

I end up building up sleep debt over the course of a week—consistently getting fewer hours per night than I normally do.

The issue with sleep debt is that it’s invisible; making it easy to ignore. But eventually, the debt comes due. So I consciously try and take afternoon naps when changing timezones because the cost of not doing so is a higher risk of illness and feeling a bit like a zombie.

Sleep debt is an simple example, but most debts are invisible, and require the same level of attention and proactive repayment.