Life and Living What if you did the exact opposite? (like the rogue bees do) Bees have a dance to indicate to others where food is. It’s called the waggle dance. Great name. But a significant portion of bees in a hive completely ignore the waggle dance and venture off on their own accord. Scientists studied this and were perplexed as to why. It
Creating Who’s going to take responsibility? With opportunity comes responsibility. You can’t have the benefits of opportunity without the efforts of responsibility. The internet has given you the opportunity to create things at little to no costs. Writing is basically free. But it’s your responsibility to sit down and get the words out. A
Life and Living Over too soon You never know when it’s going to happen. Justin told me about his parents going for a walk down the street. They’d done the walk hundreds, thousands of times over the years. It was their nightly ritual. A short stroll down through the village before bed. Except this
Life and Living All advice adds to 0 For every person telling you to go left, there’ll be an equal amount telling you to go right. Thinking about this, you might start to believe the best way to give advice to someone is to say, “I don’t know.” That’s one option. It’s the easy
Life and Living Your own best company Emotions get amplified with others. People act differently in groups than on their own. Some people can’t exist without being around people. I flip back and forth. I go from needing to be around someone to wanting nothing else but to sit here and write down my thoughts. You’
Life and Living Have you got scars? Life is all about risk taking. All about the outliers. All about having skin in the game. People relate to other people having scars. Superman requires Clark Kent to make him relatable. If he continued being invincible, no one would be able to relate. That’s what you need to
Life and Living You’re weird A previous girlfriend of mine once said to me, “what you’re doing is weird.” She was talking about my absence from social media, no Facebook, no Instagram etc. I’d tapped out of them all. I realised the facade I was putting on. All the things I’d share
Life and Living Long gamma I learned a new phrase today. Long gamma. It’s from the book Antifragile (you should read it). It was used in the quote, “Life is long gamma.” In non-jargon terms, “long” means “benefits from” and “gamma” means nonlinearity. In other words, “long gamma” means “benefits from volatility and variability”
Life and Living There’s no need for genius envy I read through Twitter, watch videos on YouTube, read the headlines. See what others are up to. See their achievements. And I get jealous. All these geniuses! Why aren’t I like that? Why aren’t I earning the respect of others? Why aren’t I that smart? Why why
Books The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity: Which part of the graph are you? A simple way to reflect on what you’re doing or what the people around you are doing is to imagine a graph with four quadrants. On the X-axis is whether or not your actions benefit you in some way. On the y-axis is whether or not your actions benefit
Life and Living Are you full of shit? Two concepts worthwhile remembering are Cunningham’s Law and the Dunning-Kruger effect. Cunningham’s Law states, “The best way to get the answer on the internet is not to post a question, it’s to post the wrong answer.” And the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people
Poems Let the animal out Where’s it been? Hidden away Someone told you so Don’t do that Don’t do this You can’t You can’t do that It’s not all their fault You listened. Thought they were right. Held onto what they said. An early death comes to those who
Life and Living You have to go deep inside yourself The search of fulfilment, the search of meaning, the search of worth. It doesn’t come in anything you show can show someone else. It doesn’t end with some amount of numbers on a page. It’s generated from within. And it’s available right now. But be careful.
Life and Living When it doesn’t go your way You've got a choice. Accept it, learn from it, reflect on it, use it as fuel for the next one, be thankful for the opportunity, tell yourself this is a chance to improve. Or... Blame someone, "They shouldn't have done that!", blame something, tell
Stories What if it was right there? When I was little I used to wonder where people would go when they died. I learned about souls. Learned about heaven. It sounded like a great place. I looked at the clouds above and tried to jump and touch them. My Dads friend asked what I was doing. I
Life and Living Via Negativa I sent a message to my friends, a photo of my shoe rack. Who wants free shoes? A few responded. Enough to get rid of half of them. The rest can go to charity. Same with the other things I have sitting around, an old watch, a few devices. One
Life and Living The laughing skull Have you ever noticed, when you look at a human skull, it appears to be smiling, even on the border of laughing. It’s a reminder. That’s where we’ll all end up. I like to call it the laughing skull. Laughing at ourselves for taking it all so
Stories Worst advice: Stay in your lane His bike had a Hulk doll on the front. It was connected to a big spring so it dangled a little. “Looks good,” someone said. “Yeah, there’s still a creak in the back wheel but it’s coming along.” He took off his helmet and sat down. “How long
Stories “Barcodes made my life easier” Overheard a story of a lady who had worked at a supermarket since 1967 (50+ years!). And the most helpful change in that time was the introduction of barcodes. When people were asked what their favourite things about her were one woman responded, “She’s disgusting,” then she kept going,
Life and Living I've never been so excited Imagine growing up watching a television show and then getting to meet your favourite character. You get there and they realise how excited you are. They know what you're thinking. They say, "you've been waiting for this haven't you?". You say, "
Learning A cheaper alternative to college Dear younger self, here's how you could've saved $31,897 in college debt.
Life and Living It all works out Walking past older people and saying hello, talking to my Grandfather, seeing elderly couples at the cafe. I enjoy these moments. They remind me of where I’m heading. If I’m lucky I’ll get to that age. And I’m lucky enough to be here already so I’
Life and Living Thinking about starting a farm I try to get to first principles as often as I can, keep it simple, with writing, with what I work on, with how I spend my time, with health. The more I learn about health, the more I keep coming back to food being a first principle which has
Life and Living Sudden vs. Gradual Your biggest changes can happen suddenly or gradually. Losing 50kg starts with a decision starts with a decision to lose weight and get healthier. Getting a new job starts with a decision to get a new job. Running your own business starts with a decision to start and run your
Stories The sun will shine on you differently There was a bit of a bump getting into the car park. I found a spot and stopped. The door handle is broken so I opened the window, opened the door from the outside and held it open whilst I put the window up. As I got out, it started
