Dan's Daily

I’m looking forward to reading Rick Rubin’s new book: The Creative Act. Rubin is likely the most acclaimed record producer of all time. He’s worked with everyone from Run-DMC to Metallica to The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jay-Z, Adele, and many others.

One of the key ideas in the book is to not force creativity, but rather to set up the right environment and let it come to you.

It resonates because it’s the approach I take to writing these daily posts. And it’s an approach that I’m actively trying to bring into other areas of my life too.

I also liked Ryan Holiday’s commentary on Rubin’s book. Rubin could’ve written about anything. Most would expect him to write a memoir where he could talk in detail about making music with the all of the world’s biggest artists. Yet, Rubin chose to write about the creative process. I love that.

There’s a curious thing that happens with improvement: we quickly adapt and form new baseline expectations.

Salary increases. Hitting a sales target. Receiving positive feedback from customers. Upgrading from hostels to hotels. Paying for a quieter gym.

We get used to the improvement, and it becomes our new normal. We then expect everything going forward to be at least as good, and often continue to aspire to better.

I’m all for striving for more, but this topic reminds me of the philosophy of an old friend of mine called Alex. When we got our first jobs out of university, he was adamant to not increase his rate of spending. He had goals to go to graduate school, and didn’t want to pick up spending habits that he’d have to scale back at a later date. Impressively, he kept to that rule, and funded himself through two masters degrees.

Alex was a great example of two things: (1) being aware of baseline expectations in the first place, and the way they can easily change over time, and (2) deliberately crafting a lifestyle that fit supported goals and fit within his means.

If we expect the first draft to be perfect, we’re setting ourselves up to be disappointed.

Most people know that the first draft is going to be rubbish, but due to deadlines, procrastination, or an unwillingness to sit with the problem for a long period of time, they ship their first version.

They’re easy excuses to lean on. It’s rare to find people with the patience or incentive to sit with and challenge our early work.

That’s why it’s important to self-impose expectations around our first draft. To first finish, and then allow space and time for the ideas to soak, for the seeds to germinate, and for the cream to rise to the top.

Today was the first time I heard this saying, and I’m surprised I haven’t come across it before.

The metaphor is powerful because it is so easily understood. The moment my colleague uttered the words, I got it. It also requires little effort to map to any project or endeavour.

Is the result worth all the hard work required to get there? It’s something worth asking every time we set out to make juice.

Whenever I go back to New Zealand for the Christmas holidays, within 2 days of being on the ground I get punched in the face by hay fever, despite preemptively taking tablets to stave off the pollen tsunami.

A few years ago, my parents moved out to a rural property. This place had a tonne of privet—which is a weed, and a pest, that can significantly worsen asthma and hay fever symptoms.

The first time I arrived home and visited them in their new property, I couldn’t stop my eyes from watering. All my sinuses were blocked. I wanted to rub my eyes 24/7, and I could barely sleep at night. No amount of medication was helping. This persisted for my entire trip, and it was miserable.

A year later, when I arrived home I found out Dad had spent the better part of 2 weeks hunting down every privet tree on the property and gotten rid of them all. My hay fever was extremely mild compared with the previous year.

What I loved was Dad’s “no fanfare” approach. He did the work quietly, and he didn’t tell me in advance. Once I got home, mentioned it as a passing comment in conversation.

He taught me a lot about quiet, profound generosity that day.

Maru works as a Service Designer for the Government Digital Service making the UK’s digital services more inclusive and equitable. She loves her job, and I’m proud of the work she does.

In one of her recent trainings, her and her colleagues were asked to think about what design means to them. I loved what she came up with, and the stencils to boot!

Is there an invention, gadget, or item that isn’t expensive, but has made your life significantly better or easier?

For me, it’s the Tide pen. It’s a stain remover in pen format. When you have a stain, press the tip of the pen into the stain to release some stain remover, and “draw” on the stain with the pen to work in the remover. Within a few seconds the stain is gone.

Maru takes a Tide pen with her wherever she goes, and it’s saved me from a ruined shirt dozens of times now. It’s convenience, price, and effectiveness make it an excellent product.

Let me know if you have an item that’s made your life better or easier?

The gentleman who works at my local London Underground station stands at the gates and says “Good morning” to every person entering and exiting the station.

That’s thousands of people every morning during rush hour.

He doesn’t need to do it, but he does. He turns up. He brings the best of himself, with a bright and cheery attitude, and he gives some of it to others.

Although the interaction is small and brief, it has a positive effect on my day.

How we turn up matters.

When Warren Buffett was asked about his biggest investment mistake, he said his “biggest mistakes don’t show up”. That they’re ones of “omission rather than commission”.

Buffett gave the example of having the information to invest in multiple companies, but lost up to $10 billion in earnings as a result of not making those investments.

We often analyse our mistakes after the action has been committed, but it takes a unique amount of discipline to critically assess the roads we chose to avoid.

If each day is a thread, and each experience a different colour, the richness of our life’s tapestry is of our own choosing.

We don’t get to decide how big the piece is, but we can aim to fill it with beauty, adventure, warmth, and joy.

I’ve started a little thing where I save my favourite podcasts for my toughest workouts. Typically leg days and longer runs.

I used to devour my favourite podcasts the day they came out.

I also used to defer my hard workouts.

A little bit of podcast patience, and a bit of behaviour psychology hacking, creates a great carrot to ensure I get the important workouts done.

How different would life look if we stopped assuming we’ll have more time later?

What things would get done this year instead of being put off?

And what’s stopping us?

Deep in the belly of London’s Underground, passengers rush to get on their trains. Just before the doors close, there is a often a flurry of people jumping in or out of carriages.

A family of four sat across from me. A mother, father, and two boys between the ages of nine and twelve. As we sat at Warren Street Station, the father realised that it was their stop.

He jumped up from his seat, and his family followed suit. They dashed for the door, but only the father and the eldest son got out. The doors closed leaving the mother and the youngest in the train.

Through the door’s windows I first saw the wide grin on the face of the eldest boy. Followed by the chuckling of the father. I could hear the laughter of the two stuck in the train. Between the glass they made hand gestures signalling they’d meet at the next station. And as the mother and youngest sat down, they were smiling and giggling.

There was not one hint of annoyance, frustration, or anger on any of their faces.

This moment, perhaps 30 seconds in total, told me so much about this family. It’s easy to imagine them supporting each other after a tough day, having patience with one another, and smiling regardless of the weather; literal or figurative.

I’ve had a personal trainer for almost two years now. Julian has been an immensely positive influence in my life. He has helped turn health and fitness into a core part of how I live, rather than a chore that I try and fit in.

I realised after today’s session that Julian has never been late, he’s never been absent, and his energy has always been at 100%.

This level of consistency is admirable. Mostly because in the past two years, he almost certainly has had an off day, he’s just never let it impact his work. He cares deeply about what he does, and he turns up with an amazing attitude every time.

Turning up a bit like Julian is a good thing to aim for.

Today I learnt about Quaero. It was a company set up in 2005 to be Europe’s answer to Google in the search market. It was jointly funded between the French and German governments.

It didn’t last long. The French and German governments went separate ways in 2006, each investing in their own search technology, and sinking in the range of 100 million euros a piece. Quaero closed down by 2013; years too late.

Their vision was grand, but the execution was poor, and the market was terrible. In the case of Quaero, the recipe of a big government organisation handing money to a private company to try build a new search engine was always going to come out undercooked. Not to mention Google already being lightyears ahead with their technology investment and innovation.

The context within which I discovered Quaero was commentary in the Economist on how Europe should avoid being knee-jerky in its reaction to American subsidies supporting the rollout of renewable energy and electric vehicles. If Europe chooses to go down a similar protectionist pathway—which is at odds with it foundations as an open, free-trading economy—European nations could end up in a messy subsidy race.

Quaero serves as an interesting example—and one not talked about enough, in my opinion—of how throwing public money at a problem can result in more headaches and waste than gain. In a world that’s desperate to decarbonise, it’s hard to see mistakes like this not being made.