Dan's Daily

A reliable recipe for tackling big challenges is deceptively simple: take the big thing and break it down into it’s smallest logical pieces, order them by importance, and tackle each of them one by one.

It’s deceptively simple because some will think complex problems need complex approaches, when this isn’t the case. Although following the recipe doesn’t guarantee success, but it’s very likely to leave us in a better state than when we started.

In these final weeks of the year, many companies and brands have sent polished wrap-ups of their year; it’s their last chance to get a word in about what they accomplished for the year.

But in this cosy corner of the blogosphere, I simply want to thank you for joining me for another trip round the sun. It’s been a blast!

I wish you health, happiness, and adventure for your 2025. May it be a year where you learn new things about the world, yourself, and those closest to you.

Tim Urban, the author behind Wait But Why, introduces a concept called ‘Forgettable Wednesdays’ in one of his blog posts. It’s about how marriage isn’t butterflies, nor honeymoons, nor once-in-a-lifetime events. Rather it’s the joy we find on hundreds of ‘Forgettable Wednesdays’.

It’s the simple, the mundane, and the normal. This is what makes up most of life. Finding happiness in the day-to-day, and not in the grand adventures or big displays of affection, that is what is important.

I’m lucky to still have grandparents on my mum’s side of the family. My grandma, or Poh Poh in Cantonese, has always been known within the family (and further afield) for her cooking. However, now that she’s approaching 90, she no longer has the energy to cook.

However, she makes one exception. When any one of her eleven grandchildren visits, she cooks. She buys ingredients weeks in advance, partially cooks each dish, freezes them, and assembles a banquet for when we arrive.

It’s a literal labour of love, filled with thought, care, and love. And our hearts and bellies are full because of it.

I only see my nephew for a few weeks per year, but I love playtime with him when we’re together.

There are a few things I’m trying to get better at when it comes to playtime:

1. It’s his world. If we’re going on a mission, or playing a game, or simply having a chat. I follow where he leads.
2. Yes and. I try and follow the classic improv principle of accepting every idea and expanding on it; always opening us up to more avenues for adventure.

Playtime changes each year as he gets older and his interests evolve. It makes me appreciative of each stage that I get to share with him.

There’s a joke about guitarists that they’re addicted to buying pedals. Pedals are the electronic devices that sit between the guitar and amplifier that modify the sound and tone of a guitar’s signal. They can be used to add distortion, compression, delay, and a wide range of other effects. Whatever sound you can imagine, there’s probably a pedal that allows you to do it.

The reason why pedals are a joke among guitarists is because they consistently get sucked into buying “yet another pedal” with the hope they’ll create a new sound that’ll work for a yet-to-be-written song. But everyone knows that it’s rarely a new pedal that helps you write a good song.

Deep down, guitarists know that the time, energy, and money spent on pedals would be better spent on investing in the fundamental skills that make one a better guitar player or a better song writer. But pedals are a fun distraction that give an illusion of progress.

In every job and every hobby, there’s likely a similar “yet another pedal” mistake that is all too easy to make. The hard part is having the discipline to invest in core skills and avoid the distraction.

Billions of photos are snapped around the world each year. And although I’ve got nothing against a selfie, some photos are better than others. And the best ones communicate a lot via a single snap, they are nuanced, and they are always visually striking.

Which is why I enjoyed looking through the BBC’s 12 most striking images of 2024. Someone has gone through the effort of synthesising the world’s photos from 2024 down into a simple set. There is a mix of impressive, haunting, historic, and tragic in there. But all of them a reflection and representation on the year gone by.

Have a scroll and enjoy!

I was at Christmas Eve dinner when I heard American Airlines were having a “technical issue” grounding more than 3,000 flights the morning before Christmas.

As someone who travels every year to be with family for the holidays, I felt a lot of sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of people trying to get home for Christmas.

Given the British Airways 2017 outage lasted for three days and impacted 75,000 people, I imagined the chaos if a similar-sized issue occurred at American Airlines.

Thankfully, within a few hours of the reported groundings, passengers were starting to board their flights, and I assume most—if not all—will make it home for Christmas.

Close call, American Airlines!

Warren Buffett is well known for asking his employees to share bad news quickly because “good news will take care of itself”.

Over the years I’ve been curious about how to best build a culture where the messenger is celebrated, and not shot, for sharing bad news.

For example, if implemented well, how much time does it buy an organisation? And how many problems can be solved before they become bigger ones? And how much more satisfying is it to work in a place where we don’t shy away from the bad news?

Making it safe for the messenger is a high leverage principle.

When I meet up with family at the end of each year, we tend to pack our schedule full of activities. Since we all live in different places, we see activities as a way of making the most of our time together.

This year we’re in Indonesia, and due to a combination of rainy weather and illness, we’ve been taking things slower than usual. Although it has been an “unplanned” rest week, I’m grateful for it after what has been a busy year.

Wishing you and your families a restful holiday season!

One big advantage the ride-sharing apps have over taxis is price predictability.

Sitting in a taxi in a traffic jam is stressful. You watch the meter creep up, and because there is no upper cap on the fare, you could be paying well beyond what you estimated.

In comparison, the ride-sharing apps all provide fixed fare quotes which give riders price predictability. There is no stress during the ride because a ceiling has been placed on the fare.

When it can be provided, there’s a lot of value in price predictability.

You’ve been gracious readers and haven’t protested at my infrequent, but decidedly niche, Formula 1 posts. However, every so often though there is reason to share something from the world of Formula 1, and today is one of those days.

Back in 2022 I went to my first ever Grand Prix at Silverstone. It was a magical experience in many ways, and one core memory was seeing my fellow countryman, Liam Lawson, racing in Formula 2; the junior series that “feeds” drivers into Formula 1.

Lawson was an unknown then. He was one of the many young talents hoping for a shot at one of the few slots at the pinnacle of motorsport.

I’ve followed his career over the past three years where his pathway to Formula 1 often looked like a long shot. But I’m thrilled that Lawson was recently announced as a full-time driver for 2025, and not only that, but he’s earned a seat at Red Bull Racing partnering with 4-time world champion, Max Verstappen. It’s a dream scenario for Lawson.

Lawson doesn’t come from money, not does he have a fan base that can rival other drivers (we come from a country of only 5 million people after all). So he’s there on merit. And sadly that means if he doesn’t perform, the risk of a swift exit is higher than other drivers who bring in a lot of sponsorship money.

However, he’s in a top seat and has a world of opportunity at his feet for 2025. I can’t wait for next year’s season to begin!

Keeping a garden alive and healthy requires consistent care and attention.

Planting flowers and picking fruit accounts for a small portion of time spent.

The rest is watering, pruning, weeding, fertilising, and monitoring.

To see flowers in bloom, or fruits on the tree, we need to do the other stuff consistently.

If you want to surf, you have to be willing to paddle. And when you’re green and inefficient, there’s a lot of paddling, especially to get “out the back” where the waves are just beginning to break.

But once you’re out there, it’s not the amount of paddling that determines if you catch a wave or not. It’s your positioning relative to where the waves are breaking.

We can’t out-paddle a wave, so if we try, it ends up being wasted effort. Our effort is better spent putting ourselves in exactly the right position where minimal energy needs to be expended to catch the wave.

The lesson is applicable beyond surfing too!

Three years ago, Daft Punk announced the end of their musical duo.

Enigmatic and icon as always, they announced it with this short 3-minute film.

Instead of just announcing the end of the band via a social media post (which is the easy thing to do) they chose a deliberate, thoughtful, and cinematic end. I respect that!