Blog

If we succeed, it’s the team’s win.


If we fail, it’s my mistake.

The point of having gears on a bike is not about travelling faster or slower, but about maintaining a steady pace and effort expenditure regardless of the gradient or terrain.

While cycling up a hill in Central London, it got me thinking about how we should all have our own internal gears. Not every problem we work on is equal. Some challenges are steeper or more difficult than others.

We should adapt our effort to each challenge. Rising to the occasion when we need to, but also taking it easier when there isn’t a fire.

Ask for advice from enough people and eventually the advice will conflict.

Not everyone can be correct.

Adding too many sounding boards to the mix can create an overwhelming amount of noise.

However, finding and filtering for the signal is where most of the value lies.

OK Go is a band more famous for their music videos than their music. It all started with treadmills in their song ‘Here it goes again’, and moved to progressively more ambitious videos as the years have gone on; with their most famous video being a 3-minute Rube Goldberg machine.

They also share videos with more behind the scenes commentary about how their music videos are made. In revealing how the sausage gets made, they give an insight into the level of thought, preparation, and dedication required for their videos. I particularly enjoyed this one from their zero gravity music video for their song ‘Upside Down Inside Out’. Enjoy!

As we get further and further into winter, we hold out as long as we can. We layer up, put on additional sweaters, and try keep the heaters off.

But eventually, the cold gets in. We turn on the heaters and let the flat warm up.

There’s a little winter defeat in this moment, but it’s followed by gratitude that each distinct season marks the passing of time. And although winter can be a drag, spring and summer aren’t too far away.

For Formula 1 cars, it’s not their speed on straights that is impressive, but rather their speed in the corners. The aerodynamic design of the cars mean they’re able to carry more speed through corners than any other cars on the planet. At the speeds they travel, it’s baffling that all four wheels remain on the ground.

I find it a helpful metaphor for my own work and projects. Anyone can put their foot to the floor and travel fast in a straight line, this is when the work is clear and easy. But it takes great skill to design a machine that can carry speed through the corners, and in life and in business, there are always unexpected corners.

By the time I walked in to the Delhi bar to catch the end of the Cricket World Cup Final, the energy had long since dissipated.

Australia’s probable win had now become an inevitability. They just needed to avoid grievous errors, and the victory would be theirs.

The hundreds of people watching the screens were deflated. This was their World Cup to win, on their home soil, and to miss out at the final step was tough. It reminded me of my own disappointment from a few weeks ago with the Rugby World Cup final.

All of it made me think: that’s just sport. Sometimes we get the fairytale we want, and other times it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

When we’re trying to do something new—say, writing a novel, recording a song, or launching a new product—we have to be willing to be wrong alone.

Being wrong is bearable.

So is being alone.

But being wrong alone is much harder than the sum of the above.

It’s an often-forgotten risk of trying to do something that hasn’t been done before.

I believe the basics make up 90% of the work.

The final 10% is for finessing, being creative, and innovating.

Most of the time, the game is won is just doing the boring, hard, and simple things really really really well.

I find it easier to exercise every day than to exercise 2-3 times per week.

Working out every day makes it a non-negotiable. Zero energy is spent deciding—the habit already made the decision.

But when I exercise only a few times per week, it’s easier to convince myself I’ll do it tomorrow. I end up spending far more energy planning when to fit in a workout than if I just spent that time working out first thing every morning.

If we don’t need to negotiate with ourselves, the path is easier to follow.

The Cricket World Cup semifinal between India and New Zealand took place today.

India outplayed the Kiwis by a significant margin. In particular, their sublime batting performance left too much for the New Zealanders to catch up to.

India thoroughly deserved the win, and on this day, they have were the better team.

That’s what I love about sport: how one team can be better than another “on this day”, but that doesn’t guarantee tomorrow’s success, or next month’s, or next year’s. So even if we win today, we need to ready ourselves for the inevitable competition and challenges that will come from someone else on some other day.

Between the ages of 4 and 7, my family travelled back to Malaysia once a year to visit my grandparents and other relatives.

One of the few memories I have from these trips is waking up early in the morning to drink milo and watch the cartoon, Tom and Jerry, with my uncle. We had an hour to ourselves each morning laughing at the cat trying to catch the mouse, and Jerry outsmarting Tom at every turn.

I was reminded of this memory because our hotel here in Delhi has a TV outside the lifts on each floor, all of them playing Tom and Jerry on a loop. Each time I arrive at the lifts, I smile and chuckle at whatever plan Jerry has devised to catch Tom out.

I don’t know why this hotel placed TVs outside the lifts, nor do I know why they chose Tom and Jerry as the content to play on repeat, but I’m glad they did.

When John Carmack left Meta, he wrote in his exit letter to the company, “Fill your products with Give a Damn”. It’s since become a frequently used line by people around the organisation.

With a few words, Carmack communicates a tonne of nuance. He simultaneously advocates for thoughtful design, for high-quality decisions, for sweating about the details, for avoiding bloat, for operating with conviction, for not settling.

It’s a helpful reminder when faced with a tough decision or a complex trade-off to not take the easy road, but to choose to fill our work with Give a Damn.

I loved seeing that Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car—released 35 years ago in 1988—win this year’s Country Music Song of the Year award.

The song became a country music favourite following Luke Combs cover, and makes Chapman the first black songwriter to win the award in the ceremony’s 57-year history.

The song is a “haunting folk-rock rumination on trying to escape poverty” and deserves a focused listen whilst reading the lyrics. Half the song is verses with a mellow guitar motif underpinning the vocals, and then the upbeat chorus is an excellent auditory metaphor accompanying the change in narrative.

Have fun listening to both the original and the cover. It’s well worth it.

I sometimes work on my laptop until I have less than 5% battery remaining. At this point, the laptop is sluggish because it’s using every last bit of power to keep the machine on. It doesn’t care about app speed. It’s in pure survival mode.

If I want proper performance, I need to plug it in.

If I don’t want my laptop to ever be sluggish, I need to charge before it’s necessary.

It works for laptops, as well as humans.