“Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.” Socrates – Philosopher (469 – 399 BC)
Quote of the Day
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison, Inventor (1847 – 1931)
Do You Prefer To Sweat Or Bleed?
Prediction, Practice, Competence and Professionalism
Apparently there is a saying in some branches of the armed services:
“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.”
This concept is easily translatable to other areas. It is based on the ability to predict the consequences of actions. The understanding that the first time you do something is a learning experience. That only by doing something over and over do you get really good at it.
Some (most?) people do not get this. They operate on the basis of giving things “a lick and a promise”. If you are not familiar with the phrase, it means, “A cursory effort, for instance at painting or tidying up. It alludes to the perfunctory washing performed by children.”
In software (and probably many other areas as well) there is a caution against it:
“There is never enough time to do it right…
but…
there is always enough time to do it again.”
And therein lies the mark of a true professional. A true professional is one who accurately predicts that in order to obtain a high level of competence he is going to need to devote time to learn, practice and drill the actions of his job. He disciplines himself to continue to practice and hone his skills, learning all he can and drilling the basic actions of his job until those actions are done to an incredibly high level of skill, thereby producing top quality products.
I read some time ago that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become world class at something. Doesn’t matter if it’s sport (tennis, football, swimming, athletics), arts (singing, painting, acting), or a trade.
Just as an aside, if the thought of doing that in your current profession leaves you down in the mouth or you are only to eager to leave work and forget all about it until the next day, then may I suggest you may be in the wrong profession?
And that opens the door to another very good question that might help someone to work out what their basic purpose is in life and what profession may better suit their talents and personality. For as Confucius is alleged to have said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”
If you are going to practice 10,000 hours at something it is optimum to be doing it at something you are talented and enjoy.
So the question is, “What activity would you not mind spending 3 hours a day at for the next few years to become world class at?”
And if spending a few years to become world class at something seems a daunting task, more than one person has opined that “Most people over-estimate what they can get done in a day and under-estimate what they can get done in 5 years.”
And if you would like some more tips on “How To Work Out Your Basic Purpose In Life”, head on over to https://www.tomgrimshaw.com/tomsblog/?p=37862
Quote of the Day
“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.”
Chinese Proverb
Be Careful Of Chesterton’s Fence
Having had to look at, understand and modify software code written by other people, the wisdom of this story instantly struck me.
How Civilizations Fail
A lesson in productivity, or lack of it
This is how people fail, organisations wither and die and civilizations vanish from view. The individuals are not able to quickly and efficiently perform the functions of their job thus wasting their own time, the time of their colleagues and customers and thus take too long to produce a product and lose business.
When you register a domain name you have a choice of which Registrar to use.
I have used TPP Wholesale to register Australian domain names and GoDaddy for my .com domains. I will no longer.
Nearly 50 days ago I submitted a support request to TPP as I needed to change details on one of my Australian domains.
Twice I received an email saying they acknowledge receipt of my request, apologised for the delay and will get back to me.
Instead of supplying the answer to my request R at TPP asked to confirm if it was still required.
“Hi Thomas,
I was reviewing the last ticket that you have submitted handled by the previous support representative. It seems that this was left on pending status. Our Apologies.
Given the delay, can you confirm if this issue has been resolved yet? If not, kindly provide details of your concern. In the meantime, I will set the ticket to waiting for response status, if there are any further outstanding issues please do reply and I will be attending to your enquiry.
Again, we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience.
Kind regards,
R”
I replied,
“G’day R,
You may tell your supervisor that taking 47 days to respond (not resolve, merely respond for additional data) to my support request was the single worst support incident I have experienced in my entire 73 years. It has caused me to make the decision to move my business elsewhere.
Please provide the necessary information to migrate my 6 domain names currently registered with you to another registrar.”
R replied, “The delay was due to our customer service department undergoing a transition, which unfortunately affected our response times. We understand how important timely support is, and we regret that this situation impacted your experience. Please be assured that we are already addressing the issue and improving our processes to ensure faster responses moving forward.
We understand if you would like to proceed transfer your domains to another registrar. The domain transfer will begin with your new registrar by supplying them with your domain transfer password (EPP, auth-code or domain password). Once the transfer has been initiated by the new registrar, a notification will be sent to the registrant contact email address which the registrant needs to confirm the transfer.”
without providing the EPP necessary to do so. I responded.
“G’day R,
I am going to be very honest and very blunt. You will shortly have the choice to make this a vary valuable learning experience or just dismiss it out of hand as a rant from a grumpy old man. While it may appear that your decision will not affect me in the short term, your long-term success is nevertheless important to me. Your chances for future success in business will be indicated by your choice. Choose wisely.
You say how “our customer service department undergoing a transition, which unfortunately affected our response times” like it is an explanation rather than a confession of an epic customer service catastrophe, a damning indictment of poor management planning re the transition and complete disregard for customer satisfaction. Which is why your organisation lost me as a customer.
Then you tell me what needs to be done without providing the necessary data to do so.
Your future personal productivity and potentially your success, or lack of it, will depend in part on understanding what the customer needs in order to be able to do what they need to do and helping them obtain what they need with a minimum of wasted time and communication.
From an alternative contact at TPP I have received the EPP for 5 of my registered domain names but not that for xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Please supply this at your earliest convenience.”
Agatha Christie
In 1928, Agatha Christie’s life fell apart. Her marriage had ended, her heart was broken, and she felt completely lost. But instead of hiding away, she did something extraordinary—she packed a suitcase, bought a ticket for the Orient Express, and headed east. Alone.
Her journey took her through Istanbul’s spice-scented streets, across the deserts of Iraq, and into the ruins of ancient Ur. She went looking for peace—but what she found changed her life.
At the dig site, surrounded by sand and history, she met Max Mallowan, a young archaeologist with sharp eyes and a kind smile—fourteen years younger than her. What began as friendship soon turned into quiet love. Two years later, they married.
Their life together wasn’t glamorous—it was gentle. They drank tea on dig-site verandas, worked side by side brushing dust from relics, and wrote their notes by lamplight. Agatha even used her own face cream to clean ancient pottery.
Those years in the Middle East shaped her imagination. The deserts, bazaars, and train journeys became the heart of her stories—Murder in Mesopotamia, They Came to Baghdad, Murder on the Orient Express.
Agatha Christie didn’t just recover from heartbreak—she rewrote her life. She turned pain into adventure, loss into love, and mystery into meaning.
Sometimes, the best stories start when you decide to keep going.
Operation Beluga
In December 1984, a group of 3,000 beluga whales were trapped by ice in the Chukchi Sea, near Russia. The whales were confined to small open water ponds surrounded by thick, impassable ice up to 3 m thick in some areas.
Without access to larger areas of the ocean, the whales had difficulty breathing and were at risk of dying. To help rescue them, an icebreaker named Admiral Makarov was brought in, equipped with a specially reinforced ice-breaking hull. The ship attempted to take the whales to safety by breaking the ice, but the belugas initially refused to follow.
When the crew began playing classical music like Tchaikovsky over the ship’s speakers, the whales finally began to follow the Makarov through the narrow open-water channel. This allowed 2,000 whales to reach the unfrozen ocean after a journey of almost 100 miles.
The successful rescue effort lasted several days and was later dubbed Operation Beluga. It was a massive undertaking that involved several countries, including the Soviet Union, the United States, Canada, and Japan.
Text credit: Irregular Earth
I See You
I know the exact pressure it takes to crack a rib during CPR. But last Tuesday, I learned a patient’s silence can break a doctor’s soul.
His name was David Chen, but on my screen, he was “Male, 82, Congestive Heart Failure, Room 402.” I spent seven minutes with him that morning. Seven minutes to check his vitals, listen to the fluid in his lungs, adjust his diuretics, and type 24 required data points into his Electronic Health Record. He tried to tell me something, gesturing toward a faded photo on his nightstand. I nodded, said “we’ll talk later,” and moved on. There was no billing code for “talk later.”
Mr. Chen died that afternoon. As a nurse quietly cleared his belongings, she handed me the photo. It was him as a young man, beaming, his arm around a woman, standing before a small grocery store with “CHEN’S MARKET” painted on the window.
The realization hit me like a physical blow. I knew his ejection fraction and his creatinine levels. I knew his insurance provider and his allergy to penicillin. But I didn’t know his wife’s name or that he had built a life from nothing with his own two hands. I hadn’t treated David Chen. I had managed the decline of a failing organ system. And in the sterile efficiency of it all, I had lost a piece of myself.
The next day, I bought a small, black Moleskine notebook. It felt like an act of rebellion.
My first patient was Eleanor Gable, a frail woman lost in a sea of white bedsheets, diagnosed with pneumonia. I did my exam, updated her chart, and just as I was about to leave, I paused. I turned back from the door.
“Mrs. Gable,” I said, my voice feeling strange. “Tell me one thing about yourself that’s not in this file.”
Her tired eyes widened in surprise. A faint smile touched her lips. “I was a second-grade teacher,” she whispered. “The best sound in the world… is the silence that comes just after a child finally reads a sentence on their own.”
I wrote it down in my notebook. Eleanor Gable: Taught children how to read.
I kept doing it. My little black book began to fill with ghosts of lives lived.
Frank Miller: Drove a yellow cab in New York for 40 years.
Maria Flores: Her mole recipe won the state fair in Texas, three years running.
Sam Jones: Proposed to his wife on the Kiss Cam at a Dodgers game.
Something began to change. The burnout, that heavy, gray cloak I’d been wearing for years, started to feel a little lighter. Before entering a room, I’d glance at my notebook. I wasn’t walking in to see the “acute pancreatitis in 207.” I was walking in to see Frank, who probably had a million stories about the city. My patients felt it too. They’d sit up a little straighter. A light would flicker back in their eyes. They felt seen.
The real test came with Leo. He was 22, angry, and refusing dialysis for a condition he’d brought on himself. He was a “difficult patient,” a label that in hospital-speak means “we’ve given up.” The team was frustrated.
I walked into his room and sat down, leaving my tablet outside. We sat in silence for a full minute. I didn’t look at his monitors. I looked at the intricate drawings covering his arms.
“Who’s your artist?” I asked.
He scoffed. “Did ’em myself.”
“They’re good,” I said. “This one… it looks like a blueprint.”
For the first time, his gaze lost its hard edge. “Wanted to be an architect,” he muttered, “before… all this.”
We talked for twenty minutes about buildings, about lines, about creating something permanent. We didn’t mention his kidneys once. When I stood up to leave, he said, so quietly I almost missed it, “Okay. We can try the dialysis tomorrow.”
Later that night, I opened my Moleskine. I wrote: Leo Vance: Designs cities on paper.
The system I work in is designed to document disease with thousands of data points. It logs every cough, every pill, every lab value. It tells the story of how a body breaks down.
My little black book tells a different story. It tells the story of why a life mattered.
We are taught to practice medicine with data, but we heal with humanity. And in a world drowning in information, a single sentence that says, “I see you,” isn’t just a kind gesture.
It’s the most powerful medicine we have.
Brazil beats hunger. GM wasn’t part of the solution.
Brazil shows people-first food access policies can conquer hunger, after lifting over 40 million people out of food insecurity in just two years, the UN confirms. Brazil now sends a timely signal to world leaders that tackling hunger, inequality and climate crisis together is achievable and replicable – if they make the political choice to do so.
“Brazil didn’t beat hunger by chance – this took concerted political action. We did it by putting people, family farmers, Indigenous and traditional communities, and access to good local food at the center – and by including those most affected,” says Elisabetta Recine, IPES-Food panel expert, and President of the Brazilian National Food and Nutrition Security Council (Consea).
With global food insecurity high and UN hunger goals dangerously off track – amid conflict, climate shocks and a spiraling cost of living – the success of Brazil Sem Fome offers both a wake-up call and a roadmap. It was achieved not through techno-fixes or increases to yields, but people-first policies to guarantee food access. Read more here to learn how they did it without GMOs.