Maru knew for a long time she wanted to take up pottery as a hobby. And mid-last year we found her a class a short walk from home.
My default is to be proud of her for everything she does—she’s my wife and life partner after all. But she took to pottery like a duck to water. Her years of architecture, design, and art all translate so smoothly into this hobby.
My favourite piece of hers are these hugging spheres; inspired by a pottery studio called Claymen that we visited in India back in 2023.
There’s a famous quote from Jeff Bezos that when the data and anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.
The reason for this is usually due to measuring—and caring about—the wrong thing.
It’s hard to overstate the value of direct feedback from customers, users, and colleagues.
Every year around this time, I realise the sun is setting a little bit later, and that the worst of the winter is behind us.
It’s a great feeling. One where I’m eagerly looking forward to the summer months ahead.
The cold winter makes us grateful for the summer.
Whether it’s a promotion, a birthday, or new skill learned, make a point of celebrating.
Don’t move on too quickly to the next thing without soaking in the good that happened today.
Chances are I’ve written about this before, but there’s a saying at work that’s been consistently useful: it’s not prioritisation until it hurts.
We can’t do everything. But to avoid the pain of prioritisation, we keep everything on our plates and it leads to pain in the long run.
It’s better to make the tough choice now.
There’s a joke that doing the washing takes a couple hours, but putting away the clothes after drying takes 4-5 business days.
There’s an illusion of progress, but the job ain’t done until it’s done.
There is a temptation to measure everything: metrics, progress, process, and performance.
Just because we can measure everything under the sun doesn’t mean we should.
At a certain point, too much measurement is crippling. It can tie teams in knots and overwhelm them with complexity.
Knowing when to stop measuring is a skill worth learning.
When we know where we want to go, 95% of the new ideas, things, or opportunities that come across our plates are a distraction.
It takes immense discipline to get to the destination with a tonne of detours.
Digital file formats theoretically don’t have a size restriction. However, today I learned that Adobe Acrobat sets the size limit for their PDFs to 15 million by 15 million inches. That’s over 145,000 square kilometres.
Here’s a photo of what the max PDF looks like superimposed over a map of Europe.
Good luck finding a printer.
Crisp is a pizza restaurant in London that books out 2-3 months in advance. That sounded crazy to me, but today I tried them for the first time, and I wasn’t disappointed.
I had their hot honey pizza, which is their best seller making up more than 50% of their sales.
Long time readers know I’m a big fan of companies that focus on one thing, and do that one thing so damn well. That’s Crisp Pizza. And I’m here for it.
Maru recently cut off 30cm of hair—almost 3 year’s worth of growth—to donate to the Little Princess Trust. They’re a charity that “provides free real hair wigs to children and young people up to the age of 24, who have lost their own hair through cancer treatment or other conditions”.
The reason why Maru waited til her hair was long enough to donate 30cms is the Little Princess Trust has a shortage of longer hair, and a surplus of shorter hair.
I’m really proud of her. It took multiple years and a lot of hair care to get here. And I hope her donation will make a child very happy.
If you’ve lived in London, or ever asked a Londoner for a food recommendation, you will likely have heard about Dishoom.
Dishoom is a restaurant, an institution, a London culinary staple. Its decor, ambiance, and Bombay-inspired menu come together to make it justifiably one of London’s favourites.
One of Dishoom’s ten spots is right next to my office. When I head home from work, without fail there will be a massive line outside the restaurant. The wait is easily 1.5-2 hours.
I wouldn’t wait, but clearly the experience is good enough for hundreds of others to do it. I marvel at the brand strength, loyalty, and longevity of restaurants and companies like this.
Note: my personal Dishoom tip is to go for breakfast. Much quieter, and the breakfast menu is better!
In my career thus far it’s been really clear when I’ve worked with someone who cares.
Whether they care about the product, the results, their craft, or their team members, there are many flavours of carrying, but there is an undeniable energy about these people. It’s impressive, admirable, and infectious.
They’ll move mountains because they want to.
Maru and I are getting a bunch of vaccinations in preparation for our upcoming honeymoon. We’re going to a few remote and rural places which mean vaccinations against diseases like Rabies and Japanese Encephalitis are important.
I thanked past-Dan this week when I pulled out my little yellow vaccination book. I’ve got almost my entire vaccination history in there from when I was a young boy.
Although I haven’t had many vaccines in recent years, it was a breeze to show the vaccination clinic my past records and for them to immediately recommend what vaccines to get before my trip.
A little bit of organisation and preparedness can save money and headaches down the line.
The pain of a missed warm up may not be felt during the game, the run, or the workout. But it’s often felt afterwards.
I was running late to a tennis match today, and I raced on to the court and began playing with a token warm up. Barely a few lunges and leg swings. To make matters worse, I haven’t played in a many weeks.
I’m sure the tightness and aches in my back I’ve been feeling the rest of the day are directly tied to this (poor) decision.
This isn’t a lesson I want to learn a second time.