Dan's Daily

There is a famous line from the movie Dodgeball where in their first training, the coach says to the team of ragtags, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.” He then begins to throw wrenches at the team, with a number of them getting hit by the tool.

The scene is nonsensical and hilarious, but it has some truth to it.

If you’re trying to accomplish something, why not train on hard mode?

Why not make our training harder than the task will be? By putting ourselves under pressure before the event, we give ourselves breathing room to better deal with the nerves, adrenaline, or things that could go wrong on the day.

The detours, inconveniences, delays, and wrong turns, can be all those things.

Or they can be a chance to seeing something new, trying something for the first time, and explore and learn a little more.

Everyone nods their head in agreement when someone proposes the workaround.

It may be a hack, but it solves the short term problem. The longer term solution can wait for when we’ve got the time, and space, and resources to solve it properly.

But people get comfortable with the workaround.

They get used to its quirks, and accept its faults.

The workaround becomes the final product.

And over time, the workarounds add up, and mediocrity seeps into the product or service.

My mum has a rule for deciding on a restaurant: go where it’s busy.

Even if you need to queue for a seat, or wait a bit longer for the food. People work hard for their money, so the busyness is a signal that the place they’re buying from has worked hard to earn their trust.

Healthy self down motivates us. It helps us prepare, focuses our mind, and increases our intensity.

However, self-doubt is dangerous when it paralyses us. When our uncertainty prevents us from making any forward progress.

Self-doubt will usually accompany any6 new or meaningful work. We need just enough of it to give us the energy to rise to the challenge and the occasion.

When it’s cold and there has been snow or rain, salt is often thrown on the roads and footpaths to prevent ice from forming.

I was cycling this morning in sub-zero temperatures—which is odd for London—and I was grateful for the salt along my path.

Someone out there thought of it, planned for it, and made it happen.

It made me think: every family, friendship group, and organisation needs someone to throw the ice at some point, and we’ll often take turns doing it to help each other out. It’s a great metaphor for the essential, unseen work that keeps us safe and secure.

There is an unbelievable story sweeping the UK. It’s a battle that’s been going on for more than 20 years, but it has more recently leaped with ferocity into the public consciousness due to the an ITV produced mini series called ‘Mr Bates vs. The Post Office‘. The final episode of the four part series has now been viewed over 10 million times; in other words, more than 15% of the country has seen it.

The context is in the late 90s, the Post Office, which is a state-owned enterprise, procured and launched a piece of software developed by Fujitsu called Horizon. The Horizon software manages financial transactions and accounting for more than 11,000 post offices around the UK.

Due to a bug in the Horizon system, the end of day cash balances for many post offices were incorrect. Rather than balancing, they showed a shortfall. The people running these post offices, called subpostmasters, repeatedly complained to the Post Office that there was an error with the software, but no action was taken. Instead, the Post Office fired many for their cash shortfalls, and convicted hundreds for fraud, theft, and false accounting. Four of these subpostmasters even committed suicide due to a combination of stress, financial hardship, and shame.

It’s hard to imagine that such a large miscarriage of justice can happen in the UK, but the evidence is clear—it happened.

A few things baffle me more than others. First is the deliberate cover-up from Post Office executives and their refusal to acknowledge the issue. Second is how not a single executive from the Post Office has found themselves in any hot water over the Horizon failure. And finally, the tragedy that many subpostmasters are still fighting for full compensation; a full twenty years after their quest for justice began.

This miniseries is a great example of media launching this issue back into the spotlight. I sincerely hope that its success helps earn justice and restitution for the honest, hard-working subpostmasters, and that it serves as a lesson so that nothing of the sort is repeated.

My dental check-ups make me feel like I’m back in school.

I work throughout the year—brushing and flossing and rinsing and cleaning—but when I sit in that chair, I’m nervous for the upcoming exam. Afterwards, I realise it wasn’t so bad, and that I did reasonably well with my preparation after all.

The exam parallels are strikingly similar. Above all else, if you do the work, the results are usually what you expect them to be.

Note: I also realise that I probably blog about the dentist each time I visit them. It’s a routine life experience, but it’s never comfortable, and I always end up thinking up a post whilst in the chair. Perhaps that’s just my way of escaping the pain of the clean.

I love to know, what are your two favourite apps, and why?

It could be on your phone or PC, or it could be a messaging app or a game. What it is doesn’t matter, but I’d love to know why they’re your favourite.

I spent almost two hours on the phone today waiting to speak with a customer service representative.

I got passed between three departments, each of which were only capable of solving a pre-defined set of issues. Each time I was transferred, I had to restart the waiting process.

I don’t want to call out the company, or spend too much time complaining about their customer service issues, that’s not the point of this post.

I’d rather highlight that when we design products and experiences we’ll inevitably get to make decisions about someone else’s time; someone that has chosen to trust us with their business.

How we handle that time says a lot about our priorities, how much we care, and how we’ll treat future customers.

I love this store I found in Oxford. They have a rule: every item sold must be useful, and it must be a high quality product sourced from a reputable producer.

Walking through their shop is a journey of discovery in and of itself.

Being useful rarely goes out of style.

Tetris has been famous for 34 years as “the unbeatable game”.

For >99% of players, the pieces simply end up descending too quickly, resulting in a tower of pieces that reach the top of the screen and end the game.

However, for the top players, the speed of descent maxes out at level 29, and a world of other challenges open up to them.

Recently a player called Blue Scuti reached the “kill screen”, which is when the game’s code stops working as intended and the game crashes. This was considered an almost impossible feat and the Holy Grail of Tetris achievements.

The journey of the Tetris community over three decades to eventually reach this point is filled with twists and turns. But what surprised me is how the community is immensely positive and supportive of each others and the game’s development. It’s a collective of people vs. the unbeatable game.

For my fellow video game nerds, I recommend checking out this great short YouTube documentary covering Blue Scuti’s achievement, and what may be next for Tetris.

A microlife is a “unit of risk representing a half an hour change in life expectancy”. It’s a “simple way of communicating the impact of lifestyle or environmental risk factors”.

For example, smoking 15-20 cigarettes is -10 microlives; equating to 1 hour for every 3-4 cigarettes.

Eating your 5 fruits and vegetables in a day is equal to +4 microlives, or +2 hours.

The first 20 minutes of exercise (+2 microlives), 2-3 cups of coffee is a day (+1 microlife). However, one 85g portion of red meat (-1 microlife), and two hours of sedentary TV watching (-1 microlife).

Of course, all of these are calculated based on population averages, but they’re a fascinating insight into the impacts of micro decisions and habits that compound over time.

There have been a number of news articles over the years where I’ve been close enough to the action to assess the accuracy of the reporting. And I caveat this post by saying these news outlets were typically smaller, regional players.

One thing I noticed was that despite the overarching story being correct, the reporting often had multiple mistakes and inaccuracies. Descriptions. Details about what things happened when. Names and places.

Seeing this first hand changed the way I read the news. I still believe the headline and the big picture, but I take the detail with a pinch of salt—especially on the big news items—because errors will always find their way in.

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.