Dan's Daily

Yesterday, I played my first game of football in 2 years.

Most of my cardio is either cycling or high-intensity resistance training in the gym, so running in short, sharp bursts whilst quickly changing direction is foreign to me right now.

I deliberately played at 60-70% effort with the aim of minimising the risk of injury.

I succeeded on that front, but I still woke up this morning with aches—the good kind—throughout my hips and legs.

It reminded me how healthy and beneficial it is to change up the routine on a regular basis. The new stimulus shocks our body, and it forces us to grow and get stronger.

Today I read a book to my 3-year-old nephew via Caribu.

Caribu is a family, video-calling app that integrates books, games, and activities. It’s goal is to help people connect and bond with the little ones in the family, even though they may be miles away.

We read a story about dinosaurs, we made sounds together, and my nephew helped turn the pages.

Although it’s not the same as being there in-person, but it’s a great option for those of us that are far from nieces, nephews, and grandkids.

I saw this sign in Kings Cross today.

Nice idea, but it fails in practice.

Here’s some data from UK charity, First Aid For Life:

“Currently less than 10% of people experiencing cardiac arrests in the community survive.” That’s pretty grim.

“CPR alone can double the chances of survival. When you use a defibrillator in addition to quality CPR, the odds of someone’s survival can jump from around 6% to 74%.” That’s an insane improvement in odds.

Yet “research has shown that deploying a defibrillator within 3–5 minutes of collapse can produce survival rates as high as 50–70%.” Yes the defibrillator is powerful, but it has to be deployed really quickly.

If someone had a heart attack in the Kings Cross square, I’m certain it’d take longer than 5 minutes to call the number and get the defibrillator to the site.

It’s a good lesson: we may design the solution with the best of intentions, but it’s all for naught if the solution has no chance at success from the outset.

When I put a draft down on paper and share it with someone, I’ve gotten into the habit of asking 2 questions:

1. What’s wrong?
2. What’s missing?

I’ve almost certainly got something wrong. By proactively asking the reader to help me identify what’s wrong, we get the a better answer, faster.

And I’ve almost certainly missed something. While it’s easier to just react to what’s on the page, the someone else is usually able to identify my gaps in logic and reasoning.

I loved this video of 3 centenarians sharing life lessons.

None of them wished they worked more hours.

All of them talked about the importance of relationships and love.

And my favourite answer of all was from a gentlemen who was asked to talk about his failures:

“I don’t have many failures. If I’m making a cake, and it fails, it becomes a pudding.”

Going “back to the drawing board” is always said like it’s a bad thing.

Why?

The drawing board is a great place to be. It’s full of possibility. It’s a safe space. It’s a chance to stare into the distance, without distraction, and dream about what could be.

Instead of trying to avoid the drawing board, what ideas and innovations could we come up with if we just tried to spend more time in front of it?

My personal trainer, Julian, shared a great idea with me this morning.

He said there are three things that make a great personal training session, and that if you can do these three things, a personal trainer will never lose a client:

1. Help your client perform a workout they couldn’t achieve on their own (e.g., motivate them to lift a heavier weight, or help them with forced repetitions)
2. Help your client learn something new to aid their fitness journey (e.g., actionable dietary, training, or sleep advice)
3. Make sure your client has fun

I love how simple, clear, and effective this formula is.

It got me thinking about how 90% of success—not just in personal training, but in many professions—is often down to doing a few critical things really well.

Microsoft recently published the results of an employee remote work study.

Putting aside the skewed sample, the headline finding was: average length of workweek has increased 10% during pandemic.

For all the love remote working has been getting in the last 18 months, this is a pretty scary stat! And the immediate next question is: why?

“The increase in workweek hours could be an indication that employees were less productive and required more time to complete their work, or that they replaced some of their commuting time with work time; however, as we are able to measure only the time between the first and last work activity in a day, it could also be that the same amount of working time is spread across a greater share of the calendar day due to breaks or interruptions for non-work activities.”

Reflecting on my own experience, I’m working later now compared to when I was in the office. I’ve also found the lack of separation between “work time” and “home time” to be challenging (my cycle home from work used to help me decompress and work through any remaining problems from the day. I don’t get that now).

I’m not aware of any global studies that are similar Microsofts’, but I’m willing to bet many of those working from home will be able to relate to the Microsoft findings.

What’s been your experience?

I caught an Uber boat for the first time today, and loved it.

The super fast ferries run up and down the Thames, and are a much more scenic way to travel than by London Underground.

It started to rain mid journey, and I was lucky to capture a timelapse of the river and city with a beautiful rainbow overhead.

Here is a link to the timelapse.

I love how you can live in a city for 5 years and still find new ways to experience it.

Maru and I ticked over 5 years in the UK this week, and milestone has had me reflecting on when we first arrived.

We were lucky. Maru’s parents were with us for the first month, which made settling in easier. But it was still daunting though to arrive with no jobs, scant savings, and few connections. To be honest, I didn’t think we’d stay for more than a 2 years.

Yet here we are, 5 years on. In that time, we’ve made wonderful friends, both of us have changed careers, Maru’s in the middle of graduate school, and we don’t see ourselves leaving in the foreseeable future.

This reflection reminded me of a moment from almost 10 years ago on one of my first visits to the UK. I was standing on the side of a London road with my backpack, and I was lost. A couple came up to me and asked if I needed help or directions. The gentleman immediately recognised my accent and said he was a Kiwi too. I asked him how long he’d been here, and he said, “8 years, and it’s flown by.”

8 years felt like an eternity to me back then. I never thought that one day I’d be celebrating 5 years here, and also looking forward to the 6th, 7th, and 8th.

In 2005 Robert Dimery published 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

Back then it’d have been hard—and expensive—to get all the CDs.

And even now, the Spotify playlists are massive and unwieldy; making it hard to sort, choose, and listen to these albums in any structured way.

So I love this free web app: 1,001 albums generator. Each day, you get a random album from the list. It makes tackling the 1,001 albums much easier.

You can review the albums, and you can also set up a group so that everyone in that group gets the same album recommendation each day.

Finally, if you’re interested in checking out someone who is making their way through the albums in a much more DIY way, I really liked gilest’s 1,001 albums listening project.

The US open this past weekend was impressive.

The meteoric landing of Emma Raducanu was the main talking point, but there’s already been much said about that topic, so I’m going to skip it.

However, there was a smaller moment that I really liked: Novak Djokovic’s gracious defeat.

A win at the US Open would’ve seen Djokovic win all four of this year’s Grand Slam titles. However, Daniil Medvedev foiled those plans by beating Djokovic in straight sets.

As Djokovic approached the net, a handshake would’ve been fine.

Yet he gave Medvedev a hug, spoke words in his ear, give him a congratulatory shoulder shake, made eye contact, and touched heads. All small actions, but all signals of genuine respect and congratulations.

It says a lot about a champ when you see how they act when they lose.

John Maynard Keynes famously predicted in 1930 that the labour-saving technologies of the future would result in us only working 15 hours per week.

Of course, that’s not how things played out.

Instead of maintaining our standard of living and working less, we work the same amount and have simply increased our standard of living.

Are we hardwired to work? Is too much leisure a fairytale?

New research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology seems to think so.

“Many people living in modern society feel like they do not have enough time and are constantly searching for more. But is having limited discretionary time actually detrimental? And can there be downsides of having too much discretionary time?”

They found—as you’d likely expect—having no leisure time is detrimental. But oddly, having too much leisure time also has a negative impact on subjective well-being.

According to the data, life satisfaction in the US peaks between 2-5 hours leisure time
per day. More leisure time may result in people feeling frustrated at their lack of productivity.

How much leisure time is enough? And what is your optimal?

It’d be unfair for the traffic light to immediately change from green to red.

There’s no margin for error.

The amber light allows for an adjustment period—for drivers to use their best judgement and err on the side of caution.

Many pear-shaped decisions I’ve witnessed in the workplace were green-to-red moments: a decision was made too quickly that perhaps lacked empathy or an understanding of the potential second and third order consequences.

Moving fast is usually a good thing, but when a decision impacts many people, or could cause confusion or chaos if rolled out haphazardly, it pays to build in some amber buffer.

Unlike a traffic light, though, our amber buffers need to be a conscious, deliberate decision.

I love my Kindle Paperwhite. It can download any book within seconds, and it goes with me everywhere.

However, a friend recently shared a new way to read that I’m really enjoying.

The Kindle App on mobile allows you to change from swiping to scrolling. This means the book comes one, long, continuous page. You can keep your eyes fixed on a central point and alter the speed of scrolling to suit how fast or slow you’re taking that particular section of the book.

I thought reading by scrolling would feel unnatural—and that it would feel too much like I was on a news or social media app—but it pleasantly surprised me. And although it sounds like a tiny optimisation, it’s amazing not having to move your eyes over the entire real estate of the screen.