A Learning a Day

Eric Weiner, one of my favorite writers, had another lovely post on his Substack newsletter.

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I wake, heavy-eyed and disoriented. Outside, it is cold and it is dark. Very dark. I glance at my watch. 11:30 a.m. Such is life in Arctic Finland this time of year. The sun will make a cameo appearance for an hour or two, emitting just enough light to turn the sky an eerie grey-blue before disappearing again for another twenty-two hours.

As I step outside, I am met by a cold unlike any I have experienced before. A cold that cuts through my layers and shakes me awake.

My Finnish friend, Mika, warns me not to touch anything metal.

“Why,” I ask?

“Because your skin might stick to it.”

It may seem like another planet, but the Arctic is merely the natural extension of the cold logic of winter. As the days shorten, the list of ways to die grows longer. We shovel. We layer. And we complain.

Winter is the season that gets no respect. An interval between autumn and spring that must be endured. An inconvenience at best. John Updike took an especially dark view of winter. “The cold,” he wrote, “has the philosophical value of reminding us that the universe does not love us.”

Updike is not alone in his disdain for winter. One survey found that two-thirds of Americans prefer hot weather to cold weather and would rather live in a hot place than a cold one.

Not me. I lived in Miami for a few years and that was enough. The heat was brutal and relentless. Sweating that much is not natural. I craved the cold. I craved Duraflames and sweaters and thick, fluffy socks. Most of all, I craved a ready excuse to say no.

Winter is the season for introverts. Unlike spring and summer, winter does not demand that we garden or barbecue or torture ourselves into beach-shape. Winter lets us be. Winter says, “Whoa. Where are you going? It’s cold out there. Stay here where it is warm and safe. People will understand.”

Winter is a pause, a reset. The cold strips the trees, clearcuts the detritus of the previous year, and we can begin again. On a more prosaic level, winter gives us options: you can always add another layer of clothing; you can’t remove a layer of skin.

Winter is more than a counterpoint to summer, the freeze that enables us to appreciate the thaw. It possesses a meaning, and a beauty, all its own. Standing on a frozen lake in northern Finland, I experienced a stillness so pure and full it took my frozen breath away. My reaction is not unique. Arctic explorers, like Admiral Richard Byrd, reported similar experiences:

“Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence — a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps. It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man’s oneness with the universe.’”

There are other, surprising benefits to the cold. The happiest nations in the world are not tropical paradises. They are cold, dark places, such as Finland, Denmark and Iceland. Why? I have a theory. I call it the Get-Along-Or-Die Theory. In warm places, life is too easy; your next meal simply falls from a coconut tree. Cooperation with others is optional. Not so in cold places. Everyone must work together to ensure a good harvest or a hearty haul of cod. Or everyone dies. Together.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but interdependence is the mother of affection, and the cold its midwife.

During hot summers, we take everything for granted (with the possible exception of central AC.) In the winter, we take nothing for granted. Every scarf, every hand warmer, every cup of hot chocolate represents a minor miracle. Gratitude is winter’s harvest.

Cold is not merely the absence of heat. It is a presence. It is “the nothing that is,” as Wallace Stevens said in his poem, “The Snowman.”

On warm days, we turn outward and seek adventure. On cold days, we turn inward and seek the warmth of human, or canine, company and the simple pleasures of reading a good book by the light of the fireplace. Even grouchy John Updike acknowledged this. “I like winter,” he wrote, “because it locks me indoors with my books, my word processor, and my clear and brittle thoughts.” Winter, alas, is the season for writers too.

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I shared it in full because I find something so magical about Eric’s writing.

It is beautifully descriptive. I can imagine what it must be like in Arctic Finland and almost feel a shiver.

It reveals profound insights about a topic that is so commonplace. “Winter is the season that gets no respect. An interval between autumn and spring that must be endured. An inconvenience at best.”

Or “Winter is the season for introverts. Unlike spring and summer, winter does not demand that we garden or barbecue or torture ourselves into beach-shape. Winter lets us be. Winter says, “Whoa. Where are you going? It’s cold out there. Stay here where it is warm and safe. People will understand.”

Or “In the winter, we take nothing for granted. Every scarf, every hand warmer, every cup of hot chocolate represents a minor miracle. Gratitude is winter’s harvest.”

And, yet, it is pithy and concise – you can get through the whole piece quickly and you can almost feel just how economically he’s used words.

Well written prose is a thing of beauty.

#OurWorldIsAwesome – Edition 21

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Nearly every place featured in this “world is awesome” series has been a national park. The only exception so far has been Lauterbrunnen Valley – which really would be a national park in any other part of the world except Switzerland, where breathtaking beauty is amusingly commonplace.

New Zealand is another such place. And it felt right to make an exception for the Hobbiton Movie Set, located on a private sheep farm in Matamata.

The reason I wanted to make this exception is because so much of the joy of visiting New Zealand and checking out its famous landmarks is going back to scenes from the incredible Lord of the Rings trilogy – which in many ways was an ode to New Zealand. And when you think about the trilogy, the place that most signifies the beauty of Middle Earth is the Shire.

We were incredibly excited to check out what the Shire might look like in real life. And even though we went with high expectations, it still managed to blow us away.

The set beautifully brings together those rolling green hills, the water body, and the hill with the Party Tree. It has 44 hobbit holes – most of them are just facades with no interiors.

But there is a fully functioning pub on site – the Green Dragon Inn – and one hobbit hole that’s been converted into a full-scale home with incredible attention to detail.

And there are so many wonderful stories. Like the frogs who were so loud they had to be transferred out during shooting. Like the many tales of Peter Jackson’s attention to detail and ingenuity. Like the fact that they imported a special oak tree piece by piece and assembled it above Bag End to give it that signature look.

And even the fact that despite the many thousand sheep on the farm. Peter Jackson flew in a set of sheep from a different part of New Zealand because he felt they looked less modern and more Middle Earth-y. As the folks on the farm joked – the local sheep were devastated and still haven’t recovered from the shame of that choice.

Mostly, what’s special about Hobbiton is the incredible attention to detail. You feel like you’re in the movie. It is as gorgeous as you hope it would be – and maybe some more. Every time you hear Howard Shore’s wonderful soundtrack or are thinking about Gandalf entering with Bag End playing – either at the pub or on the bus or when you’re staring at the mill – you’re immediately transported to Middle Earth. It is a place that evokes magic.

It is no wonder that Hobbiton is one of New Zealand’s top tourist destinations. And despite being just one among the many thousands who spent a couple of hours in the Shire, it still remained a highlight of what was a very special trip.

#OurWorldIsAwesome – Edition 20

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Fiordland National Park is New Zealand’s largest national park – an incredible 12,600 square kilometers. It has 14 fiords carved by glaciers over millions of years, and most of the park is completely inaccessible and has never been explored.

The two fiords that are accessible are Milford Sound – actually incorrectly called a sound (which are carved by rivers vs. fiords carved by glaiers) when it was first named – and Doubtful Sound, so called because European explorer Captain Cook sailed past it but didn’t enter because he was doubtful he could sail back out. :-) This is a view of the entrance into the Sound.

Milford Sound and the broader Fiordland National Park may be one of the most special places on the planet. Milford Sound, for example, gets 7 to 8 meters of rain every year. As a result, you see rocks and mountains covered with layers of moss and massive ferns.

These form such strong root systems that you see entire trees growing on hard rock. However, the absence of soil means the ecosystem is prey to “tree avalanches” that, then, hits reset and the whole cycle starts again.

There’s a saying among the locals that you must visit Milford Sound on a day when it rains and a day when it’s sunny.

The sun, obviously, makes it beautiful to explore – especially if you decide to walk the world-famous Milford Track. While it’s normally a 4-day walk, you can do a day version and cover 10 to 15 kilometers yourself. The sun enables us to appreciate the uniqueness of this ecosystem – this view for example is the only place on earth that has the ocean, a rainforest and glaciers in one shot.

Before I come back to Milford Sound in the rain, it is worth talking about the only downside of this place -> sandflies. The Māori legend is that they were created to ensure people didn’t stick around this most beautiful place on earth. You do need plenty of sandfly repellent – and even then, you might not be so lucky. We weren’t.

It is fascinating to think that this entire ecosystem evolved without any snakes or predators. We were able to spot local wildlife — the famous Kea bird (the world’s only Alpine parrot)

a fur seal (below) and even a brief sighting of Bottlenose dolphins.

Milford Sound has overnight cruises where you get to experience the fiord at night and see the many waterfalls within. There are two permanent waterfalls, both of stunning scale – one of them is three times the height of Niagara Falls.

Though the size and sheer scale of the fiords just normalizes it all. The other one just gushes and mesmerizes you along the way.

Now let’s get back to why you hope to see Milford Sound in the rain. The rain creates hundreds of temporary waterfalls. So, you’re just surrounded by cascade after cascade after cascade.

One of the things that makes waterfalls so special is how rare they typically are. If you’re a regular hiker and you go to most national parks, hikes are usually organized around waterfalls. You go on a 2 or 3 hour hike, maybe you see one beautiful waterfall at the end of it, you stare at it for some time, soak it in, and then walk back. That’s normal…

…and then you show up at Fiordland National Park. And you’re treated to a buffet. You look left, you look right, you look all around. And on a rainy day, you just don’t know what to make of it.

We entered Milford Sound on one such rainy day and were lucky to have booked the Milford Sound Lodge – the only place to stay at Milford Sound (hospitals and groceries are 2 hours away). It was honestly hard to believe it was real. It felt like we were in a fairy tale. It was mesmerizing. We spent hours just staring out at the waterfalls.

That magic is just hard to describe.

#OurWorldIsAwesome – Edition 19

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Mount Cook / Aoraki National Park is New Zealand’s premier alpine destination – and it’s not hard to see why.

Home to the country’s highest peak, Aoraki / Mount Cook, which stands at 3,724 meters, the park isn’t massive – around 700 square kilometers. But it packs a punch. It contains 23 peaks over 3,000 meters and is home to the Tasman Glacier, New Zealand’s longest glacier at around 23 kilometers.

What stands out most is how dramatic the landscape is. There are stunning glacial lakes – these start out gray near the glaciers.

They then drain into Lake Pukaki, which has that striking blue that comes from glacial particles mixing with fresh water.

The park is also part of an International Dark Sky Reserve and is known to be one of the best places on earth for stargazing. We didn’t have luck in the 3 nights we were around – the weather here is famously unpredictable.

The trails in the park are all beautiful, with stunning views of glacial landscapes all around you. For the Lord of the Rings fans, these form the range behind Minas Tirith.

Probably the most iconic view is that of the Tasman Glacier. This is, however, bittersweet. Sweet – because the sheer size of the glacier takes time to mentally adjust to. But bitter – because you can see it receding in front of your eyes, with pieces continually falling off.

It’s a reminder that the incredible progress we’ve all seen in our lifetimes has come at a cost. And while it’s easy to talk about warming temperatures from a distance with charts, seeing pieces of this incredible glacier – one that is set to disappear entirely in the next decade – is sobering.

Mount Cook / Aoraki is where Sir Edmund Hillary trained ahead of his incredible ascent of Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay. There’s quite a lot of Edmund Hillary nostalgia at the Hermitage, which sits at the center of the Mount Cook village. The lodge has been around for the best part of the last century, and its significance fits right in with this stunning, one-of-a-kind National Park.

#OurWorldIsAwesome – Edition 18

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Mount Aspiring National Park is New Zealand’s third largest national park, covering 3,562 square kilometres. It’s part of the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage Site and is home to 100 permanent glaciers.

The park is named after Mount Aspiring – at 3,033 metres, it’s the only peak over 3,000 metres outside Mount Cook National Park. The Māori name is Tititea, meaning “glistening peak.” It’s often called “the Matterhorn of the South” due to its pyramid shape.

We only spent an afternoon in the park itself, hiking a small portion of the Routeburn Track. Most of the time in Glenorchy, it was raining heavily. And even in the small time we had, we were completely drenched.

But we were struck by how gorgeous it was. The water gushing near the track. The spectacular views. The beautiful old beech forest with its local birds. This was a kereru or a local wood pigeon – it is massive.

And this is the Tui – whose call reminded us of R2D2.

We spent more time in the surrounding Glenorchy area. And what an area it is.

The Dart River Valley and the region around Glenorchy are so popular as filming locations that it’s often referred to as “rural Hollywood.” The area was used extensively in the Lord of the Rings trilogy—the Dart Valley became Isengard, Saruman’s on-screen home.

A native beech forest near a place literally called Paradise became Lothlorien, the magical forest home of the elven queen Galadriel.

The drive from Queenstown to Glenorchy along Lake Wakatipu has been voted one of the top 10 drives in the world. And it lives up to the hype with beautiful views of the Lake Wakatipu.

This was one of those parks and surrounding areas where I would love to come back and spend more time – and hopefully experience it in less rainy conditions.

Gorgeous nevertheless.

#OurWorldIsAwesome – Edition 17

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Tongariro National Park on the North Island of New Zealand is one of the earliest national parks ever established in the world. It has dual World Heritage status – recognized for both its Māori cultural significance and its outstanding volcanic features.

In fact, it was the first property in the world to be inscribed on the World Heritage List for its cultural landscape. Some Māori view the mountains as their ancestors, with the peaks being the heads of the ancestors.

The park covers 80,000 hectares and has a truly unique landscape – a combination of volcanic and alpine terrain with three volcanoes: Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, and Ruapehu. Ruapehu is the tallest active volcano in New Zealand and the highest point on the North Island.

The fascinating part about Tongariro is the variety. It features a ski area on one side and really barren volcanic landscapes on the other.

We hiked a portion of the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing and got to see barren landscapes, including some that were shot around Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. Mount Doom itself is a digitally altered version of Mount Ngauruhoe.

At the same time, you could go into another area close by and it was lush – like Tawhai Falls, the famous Gollum’s Pool.

Similarly, you could take a hike to Taranaki Falls.

On the way to the falls, it’s a more rugged and unshaded volcanic landscape. On the way back, you’re going through a thick old forest.

That diversity makes Tongariro National Park a fascinating place to visit.

I wrote yesterday about the adoption of renewable energy and ended with the idea that “when in doubt, follow the money.” I had a few stories from some of the national parks I spotlighted recently that speak to the same idea.

At the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, we learned about one of the dominant males — Chotta Matka, or CM. You become a dominant male by challenging another dominant male. CM did that many years ago. But in his first attempt, he was lucky to escape severely injured (most die).

He found himself trying to recover near a village. As he was unfit and unable to hunt, he realized he could simply kill domestic cows. He healed himself killing a few cows and then went back, winning the subsequent battle and becoming the dominant male. He’s since continued to defend his territory by killing off any competitors.

The interesting thing about CM is that he still chooses to eat cows. He hasn’t bothered hunting deer as cows are significantly lesser work.

Which leads to the next question – why does a nearby farmer put up with that? It turns out that as soon as CM attacks a cow and the farmer reports it, the government pays the farmer 30,000 rupees – a reasonable compensation. The reason the government can do that is because CM is a major draw to the reserve and brings in revenues to the national park far greater than 30,000 rupees per cow eater. A simple illustration of cost and benefit.

There was a similar story around deer grazing in farmlands. When nearby farmers got upset, they resorted to killing the deer. But soon, the government made a deal – leave some farmland for the deer to graze, and the government would pay for its use. More deer means more ability to sustain predators, and more predators like tigers and leopards means higher revenue – revenue that can be shared back with the farmers.

Another example was from our time visiting a mangrove near Manuel Antonio National Park. The boatman’s father used to be a crocodile hunter – crocodiles were very valuable for their skin. He would literally swim into the water, find crocodiles, wrestle with them, and kill them. His son now does the opposite. He plays a role in the conservation of crocodiles, because they realized these species bring in a lot more revenue via tourists than they ever would because of their skin.

These are all examples in the wild that speak to the same idea. When the economic incentives shift, behavior shifts. None of these behaviors changed because it was the right thing to do. They changed because the incentives were right.

As humans, we often spend a lot of time talking about why certain changes matter – why something is the right thing to do. As if that leads to action.

I certainly have done that far more often than I’d like to admit.

The more effective thing to do is to figure out the incentives and change them.

A study, Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance, evaluated the performance trajectories over time of 34,000 international top performers, including Nobel laureates, renowned classical music composers, Olympic champions, and the world’s best chess players.
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The main finding: stressing out and trying to be the best as a kid can make you less successful as an adult. Most top achievers demonstrated lower performance than many peers during their early years.

In sport, knowledge work, and academia, the results showed that specialization didn’t result in elite performance. However, it is an overstatement in Chess and classical music.

As Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness share in their newsletter – “The study’s findings mirror one of the main arguments in David Epstein’s excellent book Range – In kind environments (where the rules stay the same and the variables are numbered and controlled), early specialization may prove useful. Chess and musical composition are textbook examples of kind environments. However, in wicked environments (where the rules are subject to change and there are hundreds of interacting variables) then early specialization often gets in the way of later performance. Sport, academics, and science are great examples of wicked environments.
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TLDR – if you want the highest performing child, you should push him or her to specialize and be super-disciplined from a very early age.

But if you want to raise the highest performing adult, you should encourage them to explore, not take anything too seriously, and play.
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It’s why research on prodigies shows that those who tend to make it have supportive, but not overbearing, parents – because the kid’s intrinsic motivation still has to steer the ship. So even in fields like music composition and chess, you’ve got to tread lightly and let the kid’s obsession propel the path, not yours.

I thought I’d go deeper into system iteration – one of the lessons I’ve been learning as I’ve been working on Claude Code.

During my first day, I spent a lot of time figuring out errors. Let’s imagine them to be holes in the ship. I’d point them out to Claude Code and I would get suggestions for changes. We’d keep trying to fix the holes in the ship.

However, I’d keep finding old problems recur because fixing one hole often created new ones. And, sometimes, they reopened old ones.

This process became a lot better when I adopted a three-step workflow.

First, use Claude to figure out what was missing and what the gaps were relative to the spec. Claude would identify a lot of the issues.

Second, throw those issues back to Claude Code and ask it: “What changes do I need to make structurally in my spec for this to never happen again?” It would come back with a set of improvements.

Third, ask Claude to make the changes, put it back, and have Claude Code run the job again.

Once I got this workflow going, new issues started coming up instead of the old ones.

It reminds me of a story about two men by a river who saw kids struggling in the current – it was as if they were thrown overboard. One man started jumping in to catch the kids and bring them to the bank. The other started running upstream.

The first man shouted, “What are you doing? Why don’t you help me?”

The other replied, “I need to find the jerk who’s throwing these kids into the water.”

It’s a visceral story but makes the point.

It’s important to solve problems upstream and structurally if you want the fixes to last.

Beware plugging holes in the ship.

I’ve been spending some time building on Claude Code. I started with a simple product: a morning briefing for myself.

The goal was simple. I don’t want to be checking news sites. I don’t want news briefings or notifications. I don’t want any scrolling. I don’t want to be stuck in doom cycles.

Instead, I wanted the most important news from my industry with clear “so what’s” as they pertained to me and my job. I wanted some global awareness news that didn’t require a lot of attention but was enough to not catch me off guard. And some local news.

And I wanted all of this in a one-stop source to create a high-quality information diet.

It started with a simple spec. But as time passed, the spec became more and more complex.

And as simple as this briefing was, it took about two days of iteration before getting it to a place where I was happy.

While some of this was time spent understanding how to get the best out of Claude Code, a big part of this was improving the spec.

I took away 3 lessons –

(1) If you’re able to take the time to plan and think through what you want, you’ll go much faster than if you just start building. Go slow to go fast.

(2) It helps to be systematic when we approach iteration. Initially, I used to just ask Claude what happened and make a fix directly. Every such fix then broke three other things.

Things got better when I go into the rhythm of compiling the execution errors, and asking Claude Code how I could improve the spec to avoid it.

(3) Finally, you can get to 80% quickly. But the final 20% takes a long time.

It takes time to do things well. Do fewer things. Do them well.