Weekly Distillation No.11
Coronavirus; Economy; Robots; Migration; Island Living; Deep Work; Anti-Satellite Weapons; Digital Detox; Vaccines; Elections; China; Gin
Photo by Ethan Robertson on Unsplash
This newsletter is written for entrepreneurial organisational leaders and aims to help identify themes of our current context and provide questions, tips and tools that can help in navigating that.
“As a parent, I tell my boys to keep away their smartphones and go outdoors and play. I take them to our farm where my father does a bit of farming, where they get their hands dirty. It is their digital detox.” - Prabhu Deva
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” - US President Trump
“I would admit I'm an introvert. I don't know why introverts have to apologize.” - Bill Gross
“If you keep interrupting your evening to check and respond to e-mail, or put aside a few hours after dinner to catch up on an approaching deadline, you’re robbing your directed attention centers of the uninterrupted rest they need for restoration. Even if these work dashes consume only a small amount of time, they prevent you from reaching the levels of deeper relaxation in which attention restoration can occur. Only the confidence that you’re done with work until the next day can convince your brain to downshift to the level where it can begin to recharge for the next day to follow. Put another way, trying to squeeze a little more work out of your evenings might reduce your effectiveness the next day enough that you end up getting less done than if you had instead respected a shutdown.” - Cal Newport
“Migration is often misperceived as the failure to adapt to a changing environment. It is, however, one of the main coping and survival mechanisms that is available to those affected by environmental degradation and climate change.” – Sylvia Lopez-Ekra
“Good is not good enough. Great is barely acceptable in this arena. It takes those who have the fire to impact these issues, to think differently about problem-solving, and those who take improbable risks.” - Vinod Khosla
Skim it in a minute
Thematic insights from the news and the web to help you think about potential future and current contexts and how to be productive, creative and successful in your work now
Deep Work and why you need a digital detox
Photo by Eduardo Flores on Unsplash
I didn’t write a newsletter for the last two weeks because I went on holiday. Once a year I go away for two weeks with my family, usually to the beach, and go off-grid. For me that means no-phone, no internet, no email. This helps me with three important things:
I can spend time with my family where I am fully present. Family or not, fully present time with other human beings is rare these days.
It reminds me I’m not really that important in the scheme of things. It’s a good exercise on learned humility. Life carried on perfectly well without me.
It clears my mind to stop, reflect and make plans
This year I went into it pretty mentally and physically exhausted. I found it took me around 9 days to switch off completely but I’ve come back refreshed, energised and focused on a few key goals for H2. I’m really into regular rhythms these days - this annual digital detox is an absolute must for me now.
I came back to 400+ emails, 390 WhatsApp messages, 1 voicemail, 2 Voxer messages, 0 text messages, some real post, a handful of messages on LinkedIn and Slack. I don’t think there was a single urgent message in all of that that someone else couldn’t or didn’t pick up. And I got to dig a LOT of sandcastles.
While I was away I read 6 books, including the excellent 2016 edition of Deep Work by Cal Newport. This is a great dive into how we reach our most productive states and why we need to distinguish deep work from shallow work. Very practical and well worth a read. Another good writer on productivity is Scott Belsky and this article shares some of his tips - his book Making Ideas Happen should be a must for any creative.
Coronavirus - the good, the bad and the ugly
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
The Coronavirus news this week has been pretty bad, with increasing cases again in England, Spain and much of Europe. The US and Brazil remain a big political hot potato rather than the more medical/scientific conversation that is just holding on in Europe currently. Authoritarian Asian countries are doing well in controlling it. Australia, after a wave of self-congratulation at the start, has real problems in Victoria. My sister lives in South Australia so this is on my mind.
We need to get used to the reality that as we open up we’re going have to keep accepting the presence of the virus until we get a vaccine. On that front there are now 200 Vaccines in development or testing. Some scientists are just testing the vaccine on themselves rather than waiting.
In the economy, investors I talk to are seeing a bifurcation of their portfolios - companies that are hitting record sales - tech, direct to consumer, home improvement, home entertainment, robots - and those that may never recover - tourism, travel, bars, nightlife, cinemas etc. The ongoing government support is holding off the insolvencies and the unemployment but surely this is just a matter of time? China released GDP figures that showed growth again - but driven by Government spending and Industry, not the consumer, who remains disappointing.
US President Donald Trump remains a strong advocate of controversy, division and getting himself re-elected. Despite his call to delay the election, constitutional lawyers say it is never going to happen.
The future of work and the spaces we inhabit
Photo by Oliver Sjöström on Unsplash
Google announced it would not return to work in offices before June 2021. Other companies are following suit, with varying lengths. I’m preparing for ongoing WFH (albeit I do this a lot anyway, regardless of Covid). I have my first face to face meetings this Tuesday. The future of the office is under threat - which I think will lead to a rise in local co-working spaces as we’ll all need a change of scenery - but some people think that this WFH is going to suck.
I was on a call today with someone who had recently visited my city and said “it is like a ghost town”. There’s no doubt there is a desolate part of our cities now - but will this change or is it a permanent shift?
Possibly the most interesting article of the week came from Ryan Holmes, ex CEO of Hootsuite, who raised the point that this may be the coming era for introverts in the workplace (and in society as a whole?). He noted that despite a 50/50 split in extrovert/introvert, it has tended to be the extrovert that has gained prominence. As an introvert I say bring it on, as long as I don’t have to go to lots of cocktail parties.
The other question intriguing me with WFH is if you can work from anywhere, why don’t you? I returned from holiday to find Tamsin Calidas’ book “I am an Island” about her move to a remote island in Scotland - it felt apt that the delivery driver had left it outside my house on its own and it was soaking wet, having suffered a summer deluge, not unlike a Hebridean experience. I also am looking forward to wading into the New Yorker’s article on how people have moved to the Falkland Islands and found prosperity (note - this is a 47 min read). Will we all pack up and move to anywhere remote where house prices are cheaper, schools are better and quality of life is greater?
How technology is changing our future
There remains an optimism in Silicon Valley that technology can cure all ills. Sometimes this is misguided, but when Vinod Khosla expressed that only a few critical technologies needed developed by 12-15 entrepreneurs to achieve breakthrough on climate change, it was a refreshingly positive note in a very negative news week. It’s hard to see any government intervention being sufficient globally to slow down climate change, so the private sector or mass individual movements may be the only viable alternatives before we move to accepting the reality and adapting life.
Elon Musk believes that technology will enable us to have music streamed right into our brain. This feels like a problem that isn’t worth solving. The ongoing battle for ethics in tech companies (See WeWork and Uber in recent years) reared its head again with this challenge to Robinhood on how it is making money and the behaviours it is (according to this article) encouraging in unsophisticated investors.
Regulation remains an issue for tech companies - the US discussed “monopoly” break-ups but VCs helpfully point out the better solution may be to open-up rather than break-up. The European Court of Justice ruled in a way that will make it more difficult to transfer data to the US - which has implications for those organisations that rely on the cloud and don’t know where the servers are that hold their data. It also has implications for UK co’s, where we will be seeking to strike a data deal with the EU.
Keep an eye on the rising geopolitical tensions
With the UK rejecting Huawei for 5G (thanks to Trump?), China is taking reciprocal action - following on from the offer of the UK to 3m British Nationals in Hong Kong to come here following the new security laws. There’s a lot in here on TikTok and why taking action against it may be the best way forward.
Russia recently tested an anti-satellite weapon - one of the great unspeakable sins of space militarisation. The UK intelligence report confirmed Russian intervention in the UK’s affairs and mentioned the Scottish Independence referendum, the EU referendum and that Russian influence in the UK was the “new normal”.
Turkey cracked down on social media but in India, despite the Covid battles, Flipkart has undertaken a large fundraising and Sequoia just raised new funds to invest in the country. I had three conversations with people in India this week - one of which evolved into whether I could set up a social enterprise by importing tea from Darjeeling into the UK. The sort of fun conversation that needs to be prioritised appropriately!
A long read for the weekend
Photo by Max Böhme on Unsplash
This year was supposed to be all about the environment, with COP20 in Glasgow. That has all been buried by the pandemic we are facing. But climate change hasn’t stopped (albeit we had a few months breathing room as factories and travel stalled). Living in a country with plenty of water, food, energy, spare land and good relationships with our neighbours, it is hard to understand the problem. This excellent article looks at what would happen to people migrating as climate change kicks in where they live. The consequences of this will be one of the main factors in politics, business, culture and geo-politics for the next 50 years.
The other weekly distillation
“the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling.”
A couple of years ago a friend introduced me to the The Port of Leith Distillery. (Sidebar - I usually have a dislike of all things Leith as the home of Hibernian FC, arch rivals to Heart of Midlothian FC which is my team - but I make an exception here). Ian Stirling and Paddy Fletcher have really interesting, non-traditional backgrounds coming into the industry. But what really fascinated me as I dug into a fine lunch with Ian in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society Vaults was the design of the distillery. A vertical distillery blew my mind - you can immediately see the flow as a visitor and how different it would feel from the norm. Right next to the sea also, and in a high footfall area (the Royal Yacht Britannia is right next to it), you can really grasp the genesis of the plan.
I had the chance to catch up with the founders again this week and we got to talking about Gin. The Port of Leith Distillery has created Lind & Lime gin and this is flying off the shelves. There’s a great back story to the name that involves the treatment of scurvy, the rise of citrus fruits on ships and the resultant extra naval warfare power for the British Navy.
The tasting notes by Master of Malt say “Bright citrus, fresh and authentic. Juniper is oily and subtly spicy, bolstered by pepper and cardamom warmth.” I’ll be sampling this next week as the founders have, despite my protestations, sent me a bottle. Too kind.
This distillery, once open in 2022, will make an excellent visit. In the meantime, get yourself some of the gin from John Lewis.
If you have a favourite spirit you’d like to write about, or you make spirits, please do get in touch as I’d love to share about them.
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