Month: October 2024

I was reflecting on two somewhat random health “unlocks” over the past decade.

In my third year of college, I started getting painful bouts of gastritis. In the decade that followed, this affliction followed me around. Eating at regular intervals kept it at bay. But such bouts still occurred every three to six months and each bout required consumption of a Magnesium Trisilicate tonic (over the counter).

Until a health-awareness phase when I decided to run a few tests to understand how I was doing. My usual doctor was away on leave and the replacement doctor spotted the bacterium “Heliobacter pylori” and recommended one course of antibiotics. It’s been 6 years since that course – and 6 years since a bout of Gastritis.

I’d mentioned this to multiple doctors over that decade – nobody had answers. Until one spotted this bacterium in a test. Unlock!

The second unlock is more benign – but impactful nevertheless. I remember one of the first times I went to a dentist for cleaning as a child. My teeth seemed coated in black marks and he reprimanded me for bad brushing habits.

That reprimand stepped up my brushing game. But it didn’t seem to matter. A few months after my cleaning, the black marks came right back. I went to dentists across different continents in the subsequent years. They’d all ask me similar questions – do you eat a lot of chocolate? Drink a lot? Any smoking? The answer was no to every meeting.

They all speculated about the cause – one shared that some people are predisposed to it thanks to the nature of the saliva. No one could figure out what I could do to avoid it.

Until a dental hygienist at a doctor close by recommended using a toothpaste from Arm & Hammer. She reasoned that the extra baking soda in the toothpaste would help keep the marks at bay.

It did. Those black marks haven’t come back in the past two years. She solved a 20 year problem that had befuddled so many people. Unlock!

I’ve learnt two lessons from these experience:

The first is to not give up on problems. Both of these were longstanding problems. They could easily have become part of my identity – “I get Gastritis a lot.” They probably were – to an extent. But I’m glad I didn’t give up on them.

Next, the Gastritis issue was spotted by a replacement doctor. Would my normal doctor have spotted it? Unclear. Similarly, I’m grateful for the dental hygienist who I spoke with about my marks. Funnily, I only took action on her recommendation when she repeated it six months later. I probably needed to hear it twice to give it a shot.

The second lesson, thus, is that solutions can come from unexpected sources. Stay curious and keep plugging away on problems – you never know when the solution might present itself.

I was fascinated by this profile of Donna Kalil – one of Florida’s top python hunters. Here’s an excerpt that lays out the context –

“Kalil jumps from the truck, long braid swinging, and moves in on her quarry. At sixty-two years old, Kalil is a full-time, year-round professional python hunter, and the original python huntress: She is the first woman to hold this job, not that gender crosses anyone’s mind out here in the living, breathing wilderness of the Everglades. I am tagging along to witness her in action and to experience what it’s like to catch one of the most devastating invasive species in the world.

The night air, heavy with the promise of rain, reverberates with frog calls. Mindful of where her shadow falls, Kalil positions herself between the python and the endless black reach of swamp beyond it. Then she pounces, angling for a strong grip just behind the head. After a tussle, the Burmese python submits even as it wraps itself, cool and smooth to the touch, around her leg. This brief fight represents the 876th time Kalil has pitted herself against a Burmese python and won—the 876th time she will snap a photo of the snake, lower it into a cloth bag, and load it into her truck. And the 876th time that, later, in private, she will take its life.

Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia, where they stalk and swim the marshes, rainforests, and grasslands, preying on just about anything that moves. By the 1970s they had started arriving in Florida, and especially in Miami, as an exotic pet trade boomed. But some pet owners found they didn’t know what to do with a hungry constrictor that was creeping toward twenty feet and two hundred pounds, so they opened cages and back doors and let their companions slither away. Other snakes, perhaps, simply escaped. In 1992, Hurricane Andrew destroyed a breeding center for pet pythons near the Everglades, loosing hundreds more. In a tropical landscape that so nicely echoed their homelands, the reptiles began to do what they do best—hunt.“

It is a well-written piece – worth reading in full. I had a few reflections:

(1) The story begins with humans in Florida who thought it’d be a good idea to bring in Burmese pythons as pets. Few paused to think about what would happen when they grew up. It is amazing how often we, as a species, don’t stop to think through second order consequences.

(2) As the writer speaks to python hunters, they all talk about how they feel the pain of killing these snakes en masse. One of them even says that the day he gets desensitized to the killing is the day he’ll quit.

And, yet, every kill saves a ton of native wildlife that hasn’t had the chance to develop evolutionary defenses.

(3) There are a couple of lovely notes about how Donna Kalil has been upending assumptions about what women can or cannot do. Donna just won the prize in the Fall challenge for python hunters. She’s just the best – gender doesn’t matter.

(4) Python hunting, as a profession, makes for a hard life. I was struck at the commitment and dedication of this group of people who are fighting a battle they won’t win in their lifetime in their attempts to clean up a mess they didn’t create.

It is a reminder of the devastating impact we can have when we disrupt the natural balance.

“Why is it that only those who have never fought in a battle… are so eager to be in one?” – Yoshi Toranaga

Poignant.

A metronome is a device that provides an audible click or sound that simulates a beat.

The metronome, in and of itself, is boring. It just produces a steady click… click… click … at some pre-assigned interval.

But metronomes are often indispensable to musicians. Many musicians practice with a metronome to hone their ability to keep a steady tempo. So do dancers. And athletes among others.

Important foundational investments are often like the metronome – they might seem boring to the uninitiated.

But they’re a key step to our ability to create something special.

One of the more fascinating stories in Matt Ridley’s “How Innovation Works” was about the humble potato.

Potatoes were initially banned in countries like England because clergyman didn’t believe they were fit to be eaten as they were not mentioned in the Bible.

That wasn’t all – potatoes had to overcome other prejudices. For example, there was a prevailing belief at the time that vegetables had an effect on the body based on how they looked. For example, walnuts look like the brain – so they were presumably good for the brain.

Potatoes, however, looked like a finger with leprosy, and thus there was a belief they might cause leprosy. As a result of such beliefs, the potato spread faster in India and China in the 1600s vs. continental Europe and North America.

It took over 200 years for these prejudices to be dropped. Even after that, it took a lot of marketing for potatoes to catch up in countries like France. For example, it took one passionate potato lover to embark on what was effectively “influencer marketing” with the queen Marie Antoinette. This marketing campaign also included stunts like planting potatoes in the outskirts of Paris and having armed guards patrol it in the morning to spark curiosity.

Eventually, the potato was adopted and there was no turning back… but this story serves as a powerful reminder of the power of prejudice and limiting beliefs.

It isn’t a story limited to the 1600s either. We can simply pick any politicized issue today – vaccines, electric vehicles, nuclear power, and so on. The same dynamics are still at play.

History doesn’t repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

One marker for our level of emotional intelligence is the speed with which we differentiate between those who care about us and those who pretend to care about us while their interests are aligned with ours.

This is particularly challenging because folks in the pretend group can be savvy social operators with high emotional awareness themselves.

In those cases, the only real identifier is a gap between what they say and what they do. While it is hard to spot that gap in the short run, it almost always shows itself in the long run.

The higher our emotional intelligence lever, the sooner we spot these gaps.

I grew up a very impatient person. It showed in everything I did. I used to rush to the end of a detailed math problem and miss a word or two that had the clue to unlock the right answer.

“Careless mistake” was the refrain that followed me through those years.

In truth, “careless” was not the right descriptor. Impatient was. I wanted fast progress. If fast progress wasn’t possible, the result was frustration. A lot of it.

In many ways, writing every day on this blog has been the therapy I needed to overcome this proclivity. I debated using the term “unhealthy” to describe it. Like all things in life, impatience is useful in moderation. But I tended to overdo it.

Writing every day for over sixteen years has helped me make friends with patience and progress. I had no other choice. I sought confidence and learning. There were no quick fixes to get to these outcomes. And then again, do you ever “get to them”? You just keep working on them for the rest of your life.

Perhaps it is that long-term view that changed my relationship with patience. Here’s an example.

I was on an exercise routine that involved a swim in the evening through the summer. As fall arrived, it was time to change it up and go back to exercising in the morning.

In the first week of this switch, I wasn’t able to get to exercise in time. I hadn’t budgeted for it and my morning work priority list wasn’t done. So I just made do with a 5 minute workout.

I realized that the sweet spot to get that 30 minute workout was to get going at 645am. I still couldn’t do it in the next week. So I managed 10 minute workouts.

Last week, I got it up to 20 minute workouts.

If I had to guess, I think I’ll be at the 30 minute mark this week or the next.

Now, I could have easily admonished myself for poor prioritization. I know how important it is to exercise. Why am I over-indexing on work? Etc.

But this is where taking a long-term view and making friends with patience and progress has made a difference. There’s no point getting frustrated and over-correcting.

Best to take the first step, then the next, and so on.

Patience.

And progress.

There’s a friend I’ve been catching up with on a roughly yearly cadence. That sort of cadence is fascinating because life just 2 or 3 catch ups ago looked and felt wildly different.

This friend reminded me of problems that were top of mind “just 3 calls ago.” I’d have taken the problems I have right now in a heartbeat.

That’s not to say life is always up and to the right. But that we often just take for granted the many good things that come our way and look to the next horizon.

We almost always pay no attention to small bits of progress we make every day.

And yet, they compound over time as long as we keep plugging away.

The combined area of our rear view mirrors is much smaller than the windshield for good reason. We can’t drive if we’re focused on the rear view mirror.

But it’s important to look back from time to time and acknowledge the many gifts that have come our way.

A team from MIT shared a breakthrough recently – a solar-powered desalination prototype that is showing great promise.

There are 2 interesting nuggets from the article –

(1) No batteries or grid connectivity: The system can quickly react to subtle changes in sunlight. So it maximizes the utility of solar energy, producing large quantities of clean water despite variations in sunlight throughout the day.

The engineers tested a community-scale prototype on groundwater wells in New Mexico over six months, working in variable weather conditions and water types. The system harnessed on average over 94 percent of the electrical energy generated from the system’s solar panels to produce up to 5,000 liters of water per day despite large swings in weather and available sunlight.

(2) Brackish groundwater. The system is geared toward desalinating brackish groundwater — a salty source of water that is found in underground reservoirs and is more prevalent than fresh groundwater resources.

“The majority of the population actually lives far enough from the coast, that seawater desalination could never reach them. They consequently rely heavily on groundwater, especially in remote, low-income regions. And unfortunately, this groundwater is becoming more and more saline due to climate change,” says Jonathan Bessette, MIT PhD student in mechanical engineering. “This technology could bring sustainable, affordable clean water to underreached places around the world.”

I’m rooting for their success.

When we’re trying to make change happen, emotion trumps logic.

And momentum trumps emotion.

An object in motion has a way of staying in motion.

When in doubt, solve for momentum.