Dan's Daily

Last month, I tried to cancel my subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Much to my surprise, there was no option for me to cancel online.

I then found out that if you’re a WSJ subscriber, and you live outside of California, Maine, or Vermont, you have to call the Journal’s customer service centre to cancel your subscription.

California, Maine, and Vermont, on the other hand, have consumer protection laws where businesses must provide an online option for users to cancel their subscription.

I can’t understand the WSJ’s logic here.

Making money off a complicated cancellation process is a short term play—highly unlikely to result in long term brand loyalty, trust, or shareholder value.

The inverse of this—giving your customers the ability to walk away at any point in time, and retaining them because your product is excellent—is the kind of long term game I’d rather play.

The no-reply@company.com email address irks me to no end.

It’s a megaphone. A one-way communication device.

And by choosing it, a company says, “I’ve got something to say to you, but I don’t care—or want to hear—what you’ve got to say to me.”

A help@company.com email address, on the other hand, is an invitation.

It’s a telephone. A two-way conversation.

Whether you’re building a product, a service, an experience, or a process, is it a megaphone or a telephone?

Yesterday was the first time I dipped into my ‘Emergency’ folder.

I have 2 weeks of blog posts that are 80-90% finished, and they sit in a folder called ‘Emergency’.

These posts give me peace of mind that if I can’t muster the energy to write a post, I won’t break my blogging streak.

Yesterday, I sat down at 23:45 to write my post, but I felt drained and depleted.

So for the very first time, I dipped into my Emergency stash, took a post I drafted back in 2019, edited 3-4 sentences for clarity, and posted it.

Until yesterday, I was proud that I hadn’t yet used any of these posts. In the back of my mind, I told myself the tale that I’d feel rotten if I ever did.

This may sound over the top, but this process helped me learn about self-compassion and preparation.

There is a reason why I set up the Emergency folder in the first place: I knew someday there’d be rain, and that I’d be ready for it.

A woodsman was once asked, “What would you do if you had just five minutes to chop down a tree?”

“I would spend the first two and a half minutes sharpening my axe,” he answered.

Many mistakes stem from jumping hastily into solution mode without investing time to deeply understand the problem.

It’s hard to pause, map out the symptoms, understand its root cause, identify potential solutions, and then prioritise those solutions based on cost, speed, and quality.

It’s hard because the above takes time, and it often feels easier to just jump into building the solution.

This is one of the “take the stairs, and eat more veggies” insights—straightforward strategies for success that are often disregarded as being too simple and boring. But investing into these habits pay compounding dividends in the long run.

Back when I was in school, I came home one day and I told my mum I wanted to try vegetarianism due to its positive impact on the environment and animal rights.

The next day, I returned home from my part-time job to a steaming plate of spaghetti bolognese. I paused, looked at mum, and said, “Mum, I’m trying to be a vegetarian.”

“I know. This is vegetarian mince,” she said.

Thrilled, I sat down and began to eat. After the first mouthful, I was shocked to find the flavour was rich and full. I turned to mum and said, “This is so good, I can’t believe vegetarian mince tastes just like real mince!”

It was then that I saw the look in her eye.

I tentatively asked, “This is just normal mince, right Mum?”

With a wry smile, she nodded and then shared how when she was growing up she’d get salted fish every now and then, and only eat “proper meat” once a year: a chicken drumstick during Chinese New Year. For her, it was a point of pride to be able to put meat on our table every day. She made it clear that as long as I lived under her roof, she wanted to serve meat at our table—and I respected that.

I feel like we all have our own points of pride. Mine is books. A few years ago, I decided that I would no longer question the cost of a book. If I think I’ll benefit from it, I’ll buy it.

Do you have any points of pride?

I’ve previously written about Marcus Aurelius’ tactic of journalling in the second person—how it can help distance us from our situation, and allow us to look at our opportunities and challenges with objectivity.

Here is another tactic you may find helpful: ask yourself hard questions, then give yourself time and space before putting pen to paper.

The time and space is important, because our first thoughts are often knee-jerk, emotional responses.

Some examples are:

• If money was no longer an obstacle, what would you spend your time doing?
• If you had all the attention in the world, what would you choose to do then?
• What’s the biggest lie you’ve told yourself recently?
• When was the last time you were wrong? What happened?
• Why are you doing what you’re doing?

My hands currently have a number of little nicks and cuts.

For 4 years, we had one utility knife and one small bread knife; neither of which were sharpened during that time. It just wasn’t a priority.

However, a we recently purchased a set of stainless steel knives, and it has required me to relearn some good kitchen habits.

A cavalier chopping rhythm has been replaced with a more methodical approach. Lazy attention has been switched out for cautious focus.

When we upgrade the tools we use—in the kitchen, workplace, gym, etc.—we must also get up their learning curves safely. The best tools in the world won’t replace poor technique.

The less meaningful our goals, the more we overthink.

Given this relationship is negatively correlated, we suddenly find ourselves with the cure to overthinking.

My father-in-law once approached his surgeon before an upcoming procedure and asked, “Is it true this operation can be performed in two different ways?”

The surgeon replied, “Of course, good and bad.”

There’s a nice lesson here. Each time we’re faced with a new task, we’ve got two options: to do it well, or to do it poorly.

H/T Salvador for the anecdote!

We love being given options. They feel safe, certain, and controllable. When we see them, we immediately start performing trade-offs. We ask ourselves, “Which is best?”

But options can be dangerous. They can be used by others to create a false sense of security. Just because we’re given a set of options, doesn’t mean that those are the best options available. It takes a lot of effort to imagine the possibilities that are not on the page.

Whenever we’re given a set of options, it’s always worth pausing as asking ourselves, “What could be missing from this list? And could they be better than the options I’ve been presented?”

I love this story about financier J.P. Morgan

“J.P. Morgan once told a jeweller that he was interested in buying a pearl scarf-pin. Just a few weeks later, the jeweller happen upon a magnificent pearl. He had it mounted in an appropriate setting and sent it to J.P. Morgan, together with a bill for $5,000. The following day the package was returned. Morgan’s accompanying note read: “I like the pin, but I don’t like the price. If you will accept the enclosed check for $4,000 please send back the box with the seal unbroken.” The enraged jeweller refused the check and dismissed the messenger in disgust. He opened up the box to reclaim the unwanted pin, only to find that it had be removed. In its place was a check for $5,000.“

There are many little lessons hidden in this story. Some that I gleaned were: 1) it never hurts to ask, 2) there is value in thinking 2 steps ahead and “controlling the deck of cards”, and 3) saying “no” in a negotiation doesn’t always mean you’re closing the door on the deal.

I’ve recently had conversations with multiple friends about their willingness to take the COVID-19 vaccine if it was offered to them today.

I’ve heard a wide range of answers: from complete trust in the government, to not wanting to be vaccinated until there is proof there are no long term side effects—particularly from the new mRNA vaccine.

The conversations got me thinking about this idea: we often make decisions based on averages, but we experience life as a single data point.

The difference between the known quantity (the average), and how we’ll experience it (the single data point), can often be a source of internal tension.

I like to think I live probabilistically, but I admit that in personal matters, I’m often swayed by my own experience as a single data point.

How about you?

I’ve been enjoying David Goggin’s book ‘Can’t Hurt Me’.

Goggins is a retired US Navy Seal turned world class ultra-endurance athlete. But what really stands out about his story is how he overcame a troubling childhood, and an abusive father, to develop a mind of steel. He attributes his ability to perform astonishing physical feats down to the strength of his mind.

One idea from his book is the concept of suffering every day through physical exercise.

I know it sounds masochistic, but his point is that when we put our bodies through daily exercise pain—whether through a long run, a boxing class, strength training, or another form of exercise—we’re readying our mind to faces the challenges the rest of the day will bring.

If we can beat our own mind in the morning—and bear with that little bit of suffering—we’ve got a better chance at winning what’s to come.

Here are 3 unconventional reading ideas:

1. Read multiple books at the same time. This allows us to connect thoughts across disparate topics—history, science, health, technology, politics, etc. This opens the possibility for us to find patterns that don’t exist when we read linearly.
2. Read books written by dead people. Modern books are still on trial; they haven’t stood the test of time. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the only way to protect ourselves from our modern biases and assumptions was to “keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”
3. Ditch more than you finish. If you read one book a month between the ages of 20 and 80, that’s 720 books in your adult lifetime. To put that in perspective, UNESCO estimates 2.2 million books are published every year. Once we know how few books we actually get to read in our lifetimes, it’s nuts to push through to the end when one doesn’t resonate.

I’d love to hear if you disagree, or if you’ve got any additional rules to make your reading and learning more effective.

Maru and I have been living in the same London borough for the last 4 years, but today was the first time we visited our local farmers market.

We loved it, but also thought to ourselves, “Why haven’t we been here before?”

No matter how comfortable we are with a place, there is always something new to discover; we just need to be open to giving it a try.