Dan's Daily

There’s no shortage of people selling their recipes.

They may work for a cake, but they’re less likely to work for more complex things, like a career, love, or friendship. This is because their combination of support, talent, effort, and luck can’t be replicated.

Ray Dalio has a good model called “believability weighting” your decision making. In short, when taking advice from multiple people, we need to give more weight to people who’ve had the types of experiences that are most relevant for the decision in question. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to forget.

Not everyone’s recipe will serve us, but by being vigilant and believability weighting our decisions, we can get better inputs for our decision making.

I loved this advertisement from British Airways. It was digital billboard in London’s Piccadilly Circus where each time a British Airways plane flies overhead, an image of a young boy points up to it and the flight name and destination appear on the screen.

It’s fun, it’s unique, it’s specific, and although it’s a little dated now, it a great example of what can be built with a few real-time APIs and some creativity.

It’s an annual event in the London. On the first sunny weekend of the year, everyone in London heads out to a park to have a picnic or drink with their friends. However, after more than 6 months of cold, dreary weather, many people forget the sunscreen.

On Monday morning, the office is filled with sunburnt people. I’ve seen this pattern repeat reliably year after year, and I think it deserves its own name: Sunburnt Monday.

It’s tempting to move, to make a decision, to take action, even while the dust is still swirling

But whether it’s in the air, in the glass, or in our minds, sometimes we just need to let things settle before making our next move.

I played my first game of touch rugby of the spring season yesterday.

Given my ankle injury from 3 weeks ago, I was nervous and questioning whether or not I should play.

I constantly reminded myself of the “Not above 70%” rule, and (mostly) played below that threshold.

Alongside a good warm up and icing after the game, my ankle is feeling great today.

Sometimes, the goal isn’t winning, it’s getting the chance to play again next time.

Nora Ephron, the writer and film-maker who passed away in 2012 from cancer, wrote a list called ‘What I’ll miss, what I won’t miss’.

What I like about her list is how simple, quirky, and specific it is. It’s very human. Reading her collection of likes and dislikes can also help us put things in perspective. I’ve taken a bunch from the list and pasted it below.

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What I won’t miss

Dry skin
Bad dinners like the one we went to last night
E-mail
Technology in general
My closet
Washing my hair
Bras
Funerals
Illness everywhere
Polls
Fox TV
The collapse of the dollar
Bar mitzvahs
Mammograms
Dead flowers
The sound of the vacuum cleaner
Bills
Small print
Taking off makeup every night

What I will miss

My kids
Nick
Spring
Fall
Waffles
The concept of waffles
Bacon
A walk in the park
The idea of a walk in the park
The park
Shakespeare in the Park
The bed
Reading in bed
Fireworks
Laughs
The view out the window
Twinkle lights
Butter
Dinner at home just the two of us

Am I working to become a better version of myself compared to yesterday, last week, last month, last year, or the last decade?

Anything else is superfluous and unproductive.

I’ve felt under the weather for the last couple weeks.

I was harbouring a bit of a cold after arriving back from Argentina, and that, coupled with the jet lag, has left me feeling low on energy.

However, a few important principles I try to live by are “do the basics well” and “just stay on the horse”.

Although I haven’t been feeling up to exercise at my usual level, I’ve made time for walks and shorter strength training sessions that are well within the energy I have available.

It’s important to me to keep some level of momentum at all times, because once I feel better, I’m not having to begin again from a standing start.

A useful mental model I’ve committed to memory is ‘the map is not the territory’.

The territory is everything at a 1:1 scale. For example, the city of London.

The map is an abstraction of the territory. For example, the tube diagram of the London Underground.

It’s impossible for us to remember the vast detail of the entire territory, but it’s possible for us to grasp a map.

What’s important to remember is the map is only a representation. Over-reliance on the map can lead us to form incorrect assumptions about the territory.

When we take this idea and apply it to other examples, we see it at work everywhere.

The software on our computers are just an abstraction of the zeros and ones that process and compile actions under the hood.

The organisational chart is just an abstraction of the relationships in a company, but decisions are often made within a complex web of influence.

The script is a guide for the director, but the play gets mapped out as the cast work together on the show.

The map can help show the way, but reality is almost always more complex. We shouldn’t forget that.

When I was 11-years-old, my parents sent me to a school holiday programme with an academic leaning. This one stayed away from sports, games, and films, and instead focused on literature, science, and history.

My favourite part of the programme was playing the board game Diplomacy, which is a simulation of World War I. It’s a game where chance plays no part in the result. Every move on the board is based on a human decision, and victors are determined via alliances and negotiation. Our group of 16 student were separated into pairs, and each pair was assigned a country. It was chaos, but I loved it.

The least enjoyable part of the programme was the literature class. I was still obsessed with teen action and spy fiction novels, but the teacher busted out Chaucer. I didn’t understand the poetry, the structure of the verses, the old English, nor the subtleties of the texts.

I wasn’t ready for Chaucer. And to this day, I haven’t picked up any Chaucer. But just because I wasn’t ready then, doesn’t mean I should shy away from it now.

I think life is filled with these Chaucer-esque experiences, and it’s up to us to know when to have a go them at a later date.

I have a theory, although I’ve yet to prove it with a stop watch.

The London Underground has signs that display the time, in minutes, until the next train arrives. However, I don’t believe their 1 minute equals 1 minute.

I think their 1 minute is something shorter, more like 50 seconds, because I often feel the train arrives sooner than expected.

Similar to the “under promise, over deliver” approach many of us have been coached to follow in the workplace, I think Transport for London end up with happier customers if their trains feel like they arrive earlier than expected. Over time, I think this could build up subconscious good will towards tube travel.

It sounds a bit weird, but wouldn’t you prefer a train that always feels like it arrives earlier than expected? Wouldn’t you accept the timing inaccuracy for the psychological benefit of your train early?

I should probably follow up this post with a stopwatch and an experiment.

I really enjoy following the content creator Robert Edison. He’s a 90-year-old who is in great shape, with a great attitude, and who is on a mission to share his life’s learnings.

He’s quirky, full of character, and generous with his wisdom.

One video which stood out to me—and admittedly, my confirmation bias—was his logbook video.

Edison has kept a logbook for over 40 years, and I love how he can go back and recall specific days from his past with clarity.

As with most investments, the dividends get paid long into the future.

I love this post from Jason Fried on innovation.

“Innovation should almost never happen. It’s incredibly rare. It mostly happens by accident, not by intention. It’s wonderful when it does, but you merely fluctuate in and out of it, it’s not steady state.”

“Work is mostly mundane. It’s mostly maintenance. It’s mostly local improvement and iteration. Work is mostly… Work. Any innovation is an outlier, nearly a rounding error.”

“Even the most innovative projects or products are full of rote, prosaic stuff that still needs building. The poetic magic may be in the 5%, but the bulk of the work is in the other 95.”

I believe even the most innovative teams and people spend most of their time working on the meat-and-potatoes type stuff.

And every so often, on the odd occasion, innovation strikes. But it only turns up if and when we’re willing to do the basics well.

Mixed in with the big ones, small ones can be powerful. They can give us a sense of accomplishment, and can help us form better habits.

Taking a walk every day.

Reading a book a month.

Trying a new recipe when friends come over.

Not all goals need to be big ones.

We can plan all we like, invest a tonne in design, and spend a load of money bringing our idea to life, but if its hard to get the thing into peoples’ hands, it’s all for nought.

Spotted on my walk today: