When I’ve had a few big weeks, particularly after travel, I’ll often arrive at the next weekend pretty tired.
I’ve learned that I have two options: (1) have a good nap and catch up on the sleep, or (2) operate in a low-grade stupor where I don’t feel I’m 100% present.
I’ve found it’s almost always better to pay the price of the nap. A little bit of extra rest drastically increases the quality of the rest of the weekend and coming week.
I’m heading to Prague this coming weekend with Maru and my in-laws, and I’d love any recommendations from those of you who have been.
Maru and I usually prioritise beaches and less populated places when we travel, but I’m excited to spend a few days staying in Prague’s Old Town.
You folks delivered with the recommendations when we went to Poland, so please don’t hesitate to send them over!
This quote from Friedrich Nietzsche struck a chord with me:
“Artists have an interest in … so-called inspirations; as if the idea of a work of art, of poetry, the fundamental thought of a philosophy shines down like a merciful light from heaven.
In truth, the good artist’s or thinker’s imagination is continually producing things good, mediocre, and bad, but his power of judgment, highly sharpened and practiced, rejects, selects, joins together; thus we now see from Beethoven’s notebooks that he gradually assembled the most glorious melodies and, to a degree, selected them out of disparate beginnings.
The artist who separates less rigorously, liking to rely on his imitative memory, can in some circumstances become a great improviser; but artistic improvisation stands low in relation to artistic thoughts earnestly and laboriously chosen. All great men were great workers, untiring not only in invention but also in rejecting, sifting, reforming, arranging.”
In short:
I loved this video from Rory Sutherland about the power of “making something visible”.
Sutherland starts by poking fun at North Londoners and our inability to get around without the tube map. This part is true—I’ve been a North Londoner for eight years and I mostly rely on the tube map. South Londoners on the other hand are much more adept at London travel as they frequently use trains that aren’t on the tube map.
The London Overground is the bright orange line on the London Tube Map. It’s a convenient way to get from North London across to the east side of the city, as well as down to south of the river. However, for 20 years it was called Silver Link Metro and it wasn’t on the tube map. But when it received a name change, a paint change, and was included on the London Tube Map, its usage tripled.
Very little changed to the actual train line, almost all of the uptick in usage came from making the thing visible. I love that.
I was at Cardio Tennis the other evening, it’s where we have 10-12 people turn up at the club to play mini games for an hour.
I found myself (silently) frustrated or annoyed at everyone. The comments they made on the court, the way they played, how the coach decided the teams. I almost convinced myself everyone else was the problem.
I then realised that I was the one who was tired and with a short fuse. The problem was not them, it was me. I had a chuckle to myself, gave myself a bit of grace, and (most importantly) kept my mouth shut. I saw out the session and resolved to be better rested for the next one.
It’s how they treat you when things go wrong that matters most.
Anyone can be a fair-weather friend, but it takes guts to stand with someone through a tough time.
I’ve written numerous times over the years about the value of improvised comedy, in particular its principles that also serve as pieces of wisdom for life.
One of its most valuable rules is, “Make your partner look good”.
The person who tries to make themself look good on stage, who isn’t generous or gracious to their fellow actors, who hogs the limelight and thinks the whole show is about them, they’re much less fun to watch. This inevitably leads to them being less funny too.
In contrast, the person who saves others from a pickle, gives others great prompts, and is always thinking about how to better support their team mates, that person ends up being an audience favourite. The audience appreciates the work, the effort, and the thought that goes into playing the team game. And you guessed it, these end up being the hilarious improv actors.
The extension of this rule to life is simple. The less we focus on ourselves, and the more we try to make our family, friends, and colleagues the stars, the more fun we have. Although success isn’t guaranteed, it’s a worthy way to live.
I recently learned about the impressive ‘Drawing Marathon’ at the Rhode Island School of Design from a colleague who participated in the program a few years ago.
It’s an intensive course where participants draw from 9am to 9pm every day for a month. The only thing they do (or have energy for) outside of drawing is eating and sleeping.
My colleague mentioned the positive benefit it had on how they approach creative work. The good ideas are often 20+ ideas deep, so they make sure to create, and explore, and try a lot of ideas because they know the first ideas won’t cut it.
I think this is an idea that people get conceptually, but programs like the Drawing Marathon help people internalise and truly understand the amount of work required to get to the good ideas.
I liked this thought from the Orange Book on Twitter.
“You already have the opportunity to hang out on a daily basis with many of the smartest people who ever existed, you just need to read the books they wrote.”
Choose careful. Read slowly. Re-read. Digest. Then act on it.
Maru and I hopped on one of our return flights to the UK from Australia. We were on an older aircraft; small and without personal entertainment screens.
I grimaced, thinking I was in for a long flight without entertainment, when I noticed a small sticker on the seat in front of me advertising their streaming service.
Everyone has a WiFi compatible device and headphones, so if the airline can stream content via WiFi, why do they need physical screens that inevitably break and malfunction.
I ended up sleeping most of the flight, but not before I verified that the streaming service worked like a charm. I thought it was a great way to upgrade the entertainment options on smaller and older aircraft.
When the playwright writes the script, they provide the dialogue and some minor descriptions of character actions and setting, but they leave a lot of space for the directors and actors to make it their own. If the playwright is too prescriptive, they suck the joy and possibility out of the roles of those further down the line.
It’s a good lesson to think about when we work with others on both professional and personal projects. There’s always a temptation to be overly prescriptive, but much of the magic happens when we give people space to make it their own.
A former colleague once said: each day spent by the sea without entering the water is a wasted day.
The idea has stuck with me. There’s something natural, primal, and good-for-the-soul about swimming in salt water and hearing the lap of the water and the crash of the waves.
Maru and I do our best to stick to the rule of swimming in the sea whenever we’re near a beach. It never fails to put us in a good mood.
Building on the idea from yesterday’s post on “Showing the Thing”, I spotted this poster on a local community notice board.
It made me chuckle. I’m sure Sarah is great at her job, but if you’re in the business of designing great graphics, it’s a good idea to show it in your marketing.
Who knows, maybe Sarah and her customers love that Sharpie vibe.
One of the mantras of the UK’s Government Digital Service—the organisation that led the modernisation of the UK’s digital services during the 2010s—is “Show the Thing”.
There’s always a temptation to “tell”—through words, documents, or slides—but what really matters is what the end user sees, touches, and interacts with. The reminder to “Show the Thing” is a plea to team members to share the actual product, even if it’s in a work-in-progress state.
It helps build empathy with customers, identifies issues earlier and faster, and moves teams faster towards concrete, shippable products.
Maru and I have spent the past few days on Rottnest Island. Its nearest landmass (bar the Australian mainland) is more than 3,000kms away. It’s a small island with a 24km ring road and 63 bays and beaches.
Rottnest receives thousands of visitors per day, but with only two hotels on the island, most visitors are day trippers. They hire bikes, cycle round the island, take a few selfies with the impressively docile Quokkas, and then head back to the mainland.
Maru and I decided to stay for three nights, and we are so thrilled with our decision. The island is practically deserted in the early morning, and in late afternoon onwards (as the last ferry to the mainland is at 04:30pm).
I went for a sunrise run this morning and hardly saw a soul. And yesterday evening Maru and I found a high point, watched the sunset, and cycled back to the settlement on silent roads.
We’ve also been impressed with the infrastructure on Rottnest. It seems like each detail has been thought through carefully; from the quality of the roads, hydration stations, signage, rubbish bins, walkways and paths, and the few bakeries, cafes, public toilets, and restaurants on the island. They’ve made it easy for people to travel here and not leave a trace of rubbish or cause any damage to the local flora and fauna.
These fewer days have been magical and we’re thrilled with our decision to stay a a few nights.