Ryan's Rules #52: Stop Consuming, Start Creating

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There is a quiet anxiety that runs through modern life, and most of us feel it even if we can't quite put our finger on it or give it a name. The feeling that there isn't enough. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough food in the fridge, not enough fuel in your car, not enough opportunity, not enough recognition. Just not enough. We scroll, we shop, we stream, we consume, there’s all this stuff that bombards us every day. There’s so much of everything. There are so many people doing things that we didn’t, don’t, can’t, won’t. Somehow, even with all of this everything, the feeling only grows. The well gets shallower the more we drink from it.

This is not an accident. It’s the only logical outcome of a life based on consumption.

Originally, Rule #52 was: "If you only ever consume, everything will always be running out. When you create, nurture, and produce; abundance follows." Hopefully the TL;DR version does not lose any impact. It sounds simple. Almost too simple. Like a motivational poster that doesn’t really mean anything. A thing that people say to seem profound but without scratching beneath the surface of it. A smile on their mouth but not in their eyes. A cold, dead look with a hand out and the expectation that you’ll fritter away your resources to pay for this meaningless jumble of words. The most important truths are always simple on the surface but hold within them depth and an opportunity for you to think for yourself.

Stop for a moment and reflect on what consumption feels like in the moment. It feels good. Buying something new delivers a small but real hit of satisfaction. And it’s often actually delivered. A nondescript cardboard box holding dopamine. Hopefully you’ll actually use the thing after you buy it, too. Hell, people even watch unboxing videos to get some of that second hand goodness. But it’s not just about buying physical things. Watching a great series, eating a delicious meal, reading a brilliant article, listening to the perfect song. None of these things are bad. Human beings are designed to take pleasure in beauty and experience.

Consumption itself is not the problem. When consumption becomes the only mode you operate in, though, that’s where things begin to fall apart. When you are purely a consumer, you are always dependent on something outside yourself to fill you up. This arrangement has no end. There is no final shovel full that fills the hole. The more you consume, the larger the hole gets. Madness, right? That would be like if you were eating and instead of getting full you got hungrier! Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. The new car stops feeling new. The promotion stops feeling special. The dopamine hit fades faster each time, and you need a bigger one to feel the same effect. Suddenly you find yourself looking at other cars on the road with desire. You want something else. Something more.

Consumption, by its nature, depletes. It drains your time, your money, your attention, and gives nothing back in return. If you only ever withdraw, eventually the account runs dry. You feel this already. Look at your actual bank account. A game of keepy-uppy where everyone and everything wants a piece, and you scramble to the end of every month just to top the balance up again.

There is a better way. I'm not going to tell you to stop consuming. That would be like telling you to stop breathing, and that only ends one way. The better way is simpler than that. Start by creating something.

Making Things Changes Everything

I’m going to be Captain Obvious here for a moment. Creation works differently to consumption. Scientifically, you cannot create or destroy energy. So we’re not really creating in that sense. But in a way consumption feels like destruction. A destruction that we are all addicted to. Creation then is the antidote to that addiction. Once you begin to create, the difference is almost physical. The dopamine doesn’t come from the easy task of consumption. It comes from solving problems because creating is actually difficult.

When you make something, you are no longer waiting for the world to hand you a feeling. You are generating one. Creating doesn’t have to be “making” per se. You could be writing a business plan, a novel, a blog post. It can be planting a vegetable garden, building a piece of furniture, recording a podcast, raising a child (after all you’re effectively creating a future adult in that glorious chore). You could be cooking a meal from scratch instead of ordering delivery or going to a takeaway. It could even be work related. But let’s leave that one alone for a moment. There’s other problems down that route. Creation is when you add something to the world that wasn't there before. That act has a compounding quality that consumption will never have.

Let’s take the vegetable garden example. Think about what it actually means to grow a garden. You start with seeds. Maybe you got them from someone or bought them in a shop. They cost almost nothing. You put them in soil, you water them, you tend to them and nurture them. Weeks later you are pulling real actual food out of the earth or from a stem or branch. You didn't consume your way to that onion, or carrot or tomato. You created a garden where it grew. With the right care and attention, the right weather and some luck you'll probably have more vegetables than you can eat. With more luck, you'll get the seeds needed for the next growing season out of it too. That's the nature of creation. It tends toward surplus.

As an aside… if you do decide to grow vegetables, grow ones you will eat. Don’t pick the ones that look fancy or seem “cool.” There’s nothing worse than growing something that goes to waste. Start small and simple. Grow the ingredients for a mirepoix (carrots, celery, onion). A tomato vine. Overwinter garlic or leeks. Corn. Peas. Beans. Ok, ok, I’ll stop.

The same dynamic of surplus from creation plays out everywhere.

If you write and publish regularly, it builds a body of work that will continue to reach people long after the writing is done. The mentor who invests in a younger colleague creates a ripple effect of growth that neither of them can fully trace. The parent who nurtures a child is, quite literally, creating the future. The volunteer who cleans up a stretch of road makes the area better for everyone in it. Creation will not only fill you up, it will overflow.

Let’s Not Forget Nurture

I mention three things as the antidote to excessive consumption: creating, nurturing, and producing. That middle word is the one that will be easy for you to skip over, and it might be the most important.

Nurturing is what makes a single act of creation into a lasting abundance. You can plant the seed, but if you don't water it, it may not grow. You can write the first chapter, but if you don't return to it, there's no book. You can finish the book but not edit or publish and nobody will ever know about it. You can start a business, but if you don't tend to the relationships, the culture, and your craft, whether that’s making a product or providing a service, it will stagnate and fail.

Nobody has time for patience anymore. It's unfashionable, practically a character flaw. We live in a world that rewards speed and novelty above everything else. Something new every thirty seconds. A new video, a better frontier AI model, new car, new clothes, new opinions, new wars. The idea of returning to the same thing, day after day, tending to it without any guarantee of reward, feels almost absurd. For the generations raised on instant delivery and algorithmic feeds, patience is suspicious as well as difficult.

Nurturing requires patience. Here's where the trouble starts.

The internet makes it feel like billions of people are constantly doing extraordinary things, and somehow you are not one of them. Everyone is launching something, building something, shipping something. That comparison freezes you. You sink back into the couch, reach for the phone, and do the only thing that reliably makes the feeling go away, even if only for a few minutes. Back to the dopamine. Back to the scroll. Afterward, you’ll feel worse than before.

Abundance doesn't come from a single heroic act. It comes from showing up to the same thing, again and again, long after the initial excitement has worn off.

An oak tree doesn't grow from an acorn overnight. A successful business doesn't happen on day one. Your meaningful life will not be assembled from a flat pack in a weekend. These things have to be grown or built. It requires you to put something into them, not just feed from them. You will need patience and concentration. Effort.

Abundance Is Not The Goal

Here's something interesting about the word "abundance" in this context. I’m not saying "create things so that you can have abundance." It says abundance follows. It's a by-product of the process of creation. To borrow from Dr Seuss, This may not seem very important, I know, but it is, so I'm bothering telling you so.

When you create purely for external reward, for money, for fame, for validation, it’s likely that you will find the work hollow and the success, when (if) it comes, unsatisfying. You’ve just found a way to keep digging that hole with extra steps.

The people who seem to genuinely thrive are almost always people who are so absorbed in the act of making and tending to something that the abundance catches them by surprise. A writer who hones their craft ends up with a readership. A craftsperson who builds quality products ends up with a waiting list. The teacher who pours everything into their students ends up, decades later, surrounded by a community of people whose lives they shaped.

Abundance exists as the byproduct of creation because that generates value. It generates connection, skill, identity, meaning, and sometimes, eventually, material reward. It won’t come though if you lead with the getting, not the making.

So what does this actually look like, in a practical sense? Why all the words, Shane?

Start smaller than you think. Changing from full-time consumer to starting to be a creator isn't an immediate jump. It's a decision, made once and then often, to add something to your world rather than only take from it.

Write. Build. Cook. Teach.

Starting that project you've been thinking about. Say yes to something that requires you to make instead of simply buy. Don’t just Surf, Click, Pay and wait. Use the things around you to make the thing you need. The opportunity to consume and get those dopamine hits will always be there. The streaming services aren't going anywhere. The scrolling is always available. Make some room in your day, real room, for the other thing.

Once you experience the particular satisfaction of looking at something that didn't exist before, you start to understand what I’m really trying to get at. It's not a life hack. Or easy. It won’t yield results straight away. It might frustrate you even.

Sure, you’ll keep consuming. But create more. Nurture what you've made. Produce with intention. The abundance will follow.

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Grandma's Recipes

By shaner

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Have you recently searched for a quick recipe for dinner or for a seasonal dish? Did you then have to read a convoluted tale about the author's favourite time of year, the colours of fall reminding them of the sprinkle of cinnamon spice or visions of snow at Christmas being associated with a delicious slice of the cake their grandmother used to make? (Recipe below, just scroll until you find it!). There are a bunch of reasons why popular recipe sites do this, Search Engine Optimization, copyright etc but realistically you just want the recipe and to find out how good it is before putting in the effort. Because in fairness, the worst case scenario is that you go buy a bunch of ingredients and spend time and effort making a dish and then nobody will eat it... Except maybe you, because you're willing to still eat the thing because of the sunk cost fallacy - it may not taste as great as you expected but by gum, you made it so you'll eat it...

Anyway. I found a bunch of written recipes that my grandmother used to make all of the time when I was younger. They were cluttering one of the shelves here. Information wants to be free, so I'm sharing them here. If you read them and attempt to make them, you might just find them delicious. If you don't at least the information is recorded somewhere available to more than just the paper sitting on the shelf.

The measurement units from the original recipes were a mix of imperial (Oz = Ounces, lb = pounds) but with Celsius for temperature, I've added the metric and Fahrenheit equivalents as accurately as I can for you. I've made all but one of these successfully in the past. If I can do it, I'd hazard a guess that anyone can. Anywhere that called for Margarine in the recipes I've swapped it for salted butter instead. The 1980s called and they want their horrible crap Margarine back. They can have it too. It may or may not be better for you but the taste just isn't for me.

And there you have it, that's how a simple post with some recipes turns into a story completely unrelated to them... Sorry. Here's the recipes, I'll try improve the formatting later.

"Light" Christmas Cake

Make this in November and "feed" it with additional whiskey once a week. It'll store well until halfway through January if it hasn't been eaten by then. It's a heavy cake in my opinion.

Ingredients:

12oz / 340g Odlums Cream Flour (cream flour contains less raising agents than plain flour but I think either can be used here if you are in a pinch)
8oz / 225g butter (use Kerrygold)
8oz / 225g brown sugar
The Juice & Zest of 1 lemon (the original recipe calls the zest, "rind")
Half a glass of whiskey (125ml / 4fl oz... ish. See note below in step 10)
6 eggs
1oz / 28g chopped almonds
1/4 tsp baking powder
8oz / 225g Sultanas
8oz / 225g Raisins
8oz / 225g Currants
8oz / 225g Cherries (I left these out, glace cherries can go live with Margarine)
1 tsp almond essence
1/2 tsp mixed spice
A "pinch" of nutmeg
Additional whiskey to "feed" the cake prior to consumption

Method:

Prepare a 9in / 22cm round cake tin or 8in / 20cm square cake tin (you can line it with parchment or grease it with butter)
Cream the butter and sugar until light in colour and soft in texture
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well to incorporate each addition
Fold in the sieved flour, baking powder, mixed spice and nutmeg
Add grated lemon zest, the lemon juice and almond essence
Mix in the prepared fruit (sultanas, raisins, currants and cherries) as well as the chopped almonds and half of the whiskey
Turn the mixture into your prepared tin from step 1, you can smooth it out now if you like too
Bake in a "very moderate" oven (160C / 320F) for 3 - 3.5 hours
Check the cake with a skewer after 3 hours, by poking the skewer into the cake. If it comes out of the cake with anything on it, keep baking it. If it comes out clean then the cake is done
Remove from the oven and pour the remaining whiskey over the freshly baked cake. If you drank the whiskey already get another quarter of a glass. My gran used a tumbler to measure so this one is a little difficult to estimate but let's say a half a glass is approx 125ml so you're putting in about 60ml each time
Leave the cake in the tin until it goes cold
Wrap the cake in tinfoil to store
I usually leave the parchment on the cake, wrap in tinfoil and then put it in an old biscuit tin
Optionally: You can "feed" the cake with a splash of whiskey once a week. If you bake the cake in November and feed it a couple of times before consumption in December it should be good. The intent here is to preserve the cake as far as I know
More optionally: If you don't drink alcohol or don't like whiskey you can leave it out of the recipe. If you're doing this, replace the whiskey with some water in step 6

Some people will choose to put a layer of marzipan and then royal icing and decorations on the cake before eating it. Despite it being traditional I have no love for marzipan or royal icing or whatever else so I leave that decision up to you.

Date Pudding

This is also known as Sticky Toffee Pudding if you add toffee sauce to it. I never knew this growing up. A good thirty years of ignorance! Delicious warmed up and served with custard or toffee sauce. An alternative to the traditional plum pudding.

Ingredients:

9oz / 250g Dates
4.5oz / 125g breadcrumbs
3.5oz / 100g plain white flour
4.5oz / 125g salted butter
3.5oz / 100g brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp milk, to bind if necessary

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar together
Beat the egg and add to the mix, make sure it's well incorporated
Sieve the flour and baking powder and fold in gradually
Remove the stones from the dates, if present
Chop the dates (I chop them finely, you might want to chop coarsely)
Add the breadcrumbs and chopped dates to the mix
Make sure everything is well mixed. Note: doing this by hand requires muscle. The resulting mix is seriously stodgy. A stand mixer might work best
If the mix is too dry or you can't get lumps of breadcrumbs to mix in properly add a small amount of milk at a time
Put the pudding mix into a heat-proof bowl (e.g. a round Pyrex bowl)
On the top of the bowl put a layer of baking paper / parchment, followed by a layer of tinfoil. Wrap and tie a string around the rim of the bowl to make sure these stay on during cooking
This pudding is best cooked by steaming. If you have a pressure cooker this is the easiest option. Cook in the pressure cooker for approx 1.5 hours. Here's my gran's instructions:

Boil a kettle of water
Place a saucer, a pot lid or something heat proof on the base of the pressure cooker
Put the neatly wrapped up pudding on top of this
Fill the pressure cooker with the boiling water until the water level reaches half-way up the pudding bowl
At this point you'll have to follow the instructions for your pressure cooker but my gran and my mother used a big metal contraption that went directly on the stove top. The instructions for those were: full heat until the pressure cooker starts hissing, then turn down to low to ensure the hissing continues
Cook for 1 - 1.5 hours

Be careful releasing the pressure from a pressure cooker. When I was small those things terrified me. The pudding should be a light brown colour. If it is dark brown and the cake is dry it's overcooked. Custard or an accompanying sauce can help mask any failures here. If you don't have a pressure cooker you can also use a regular saucepan and lid on the stove to cook this pudding. Just make sure that the water doesn't boil dry during the cooking process so keep it topped up. Puddings like this don't rise so the temperature change won't impact the cooking process unlike baking a cake in the oven.

Gingerbread

This one is a cake, not a man like gingerbread man biscuits. Best served spread with real salted butter but you can eat it without any toppings. You can add more ground ginger or crystalized ginger if you like things a bit spicier. I think the last time I made this I just chopped up a small handful of crystallized ginger and threw it in the mix without any other modifications to the recipe.

Ingredients:

1/2 lb / 225g plain white flour
1/4 lb / 115g golden syrup
1 level tsp baking soda
2 level tsp's ground ginger
1 egg
3oz / 85g salted butter
2oz / 60g white sugar
2 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons milk

Method:

Sift the flour, ground ginger and baking soda into a large mixing bowl
Make a well in the middle for the liquid ingredients
Beat the egg and mix it in well
Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan. Make sure not to burn it. This liquid mix is incredibly hot once melted. Be careful.
Take the liquid off the heat and stir in the water
Allow the liquid to cool until lukewarm
Mix into the flour / egg mix until smooth
Add milk a little at a time to moisten the mixture
Turn this into a prepared tin (I'm guessing 9in (22cm) round / 8in (20cm) square for this, my gran used to always make a square cake for this one. Corner slices were fought over)
Bake in a "slow" oven (150C / 300F) for 35 minutes
Test with a skewer before removing from the oven
Allow to cook on a wire rack

This cake can be sliced and eaten "as is." You can also add a layer of icing to the top (water / icing sugar mix) or whatever else if you're fancy. The closest commercial product I've had to this is Jamaica Ginger Cake although that is far stickier a consistency, this one should be light and have a decent crumb.

Sultana Cake ("Stand-By Recipe")

This is one recipe I haven't made but it's there on the paper so may as well record it. I presume a stand-by recipe was for when a visitor would be coming at short notice, probably on the same day. Back in the day there were no mobile phones, no instant messages so it was either telephone or letter that would be the most likely way to know if someone was going to pop by. I can't see my gran baking this after someone had arrived unexpectedly.

Ingredients:

4oz / 115g salted butter
8oz / 225g plain white flour
4 - 6oz / 115g - 170g sultanas
4oz / 115g caster sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Flavouring (Sherry, Orange or Vanilla)

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar
Add the flour and beaten egg
Add the flavouring and baking powder
Mix well
Lastly, fold in the dried sultanas
Put into a lined, greased baking tin
Bake in a "moderate" oven for 1 - 1.5 hours
Put on a wire tray to cool

This recipe was sparse and written in the corner of a page. You could probably make some of it up. Likely would have been served alongside cups of tea. As I haven't made it I can't attest to how nice it would be but I've made similar cakes before and they were tasty enough, a quick search for tea cake (made by soaking fruit in cold tea overnight) should yield something similar.

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Ryan's Rules #51: Invest in yourself. Especially if nobody else will.

By shaner

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There's a piece of financial advice that gets repeated so often that it may as well have lost its meaning: diversify your portfolio. In other words, don't put all your eggs in one basket. And yet, there is one investment the majority of people never think to make, even those in the financial world, one that compounds more reliably than almost anything else available to them. The investment in themselves.

Who Believes in You?

Here is something most motivational content skips over, because it's not particularly comfortable to say. There will be stretches of your life, sometimes long ones, when nobody is lining up to invest in you. No mentor is seeking you out. No employer is fast-tracking your development. No institution is handing you a scholarship. No investor is backing your idea. No one is pulling you aside to say, "I see something in you."

The people that are there for you now, may not always be there. Opportunities pass. People change. Things happen.

One Friday afternoon in either late 2018 or early 2019 I was sitting at my desk, finishing up a few things, looking forward to the weekend. It was a bright day. I recall the sun shining through the window, a warming feeling even though the weather would have been cold for that time of year. My phone rang. The first line that came out of the small speaker by my ear, the reply to my greeting, caused my stomach to drop. Across the other side of the world, my manager and mentor had been let go. I got on incredibly well with him. He was knowledgeable, patient and invested in his staff. Was there for us. With that one sentence, that was now gone. I don’t know if he knew that it was coming or not but he had gone to work that morning, likely looking to round out the week. I’d hope they let him collect his things but maybe he never even made it past the front door. In the grand scheme of things, maybe not a biggie. Nobody died. Life went on. He found success elsewhere in time. But it goes to show, things change and not always how you would expect.

You might say that this is simply the nature of the world. Attention and resources follow existing signals of success, accumulating around people who are already compounding, people who have already made an investment in themselves.

If you are at the beginning, or starting over, operating without a network or coming from a background that didn't hand you connections and credentials, you need to be your own first investor. You may be your only investor for a while. Even more worryingly, if you’ve been written off by your peers, perhaps made a mistake that they are not willing to forget you’ll be travelling a redemption arc while being that solo investor. Grim, isn’t it?

However! However, this tragedy is actually an opportunity in disguise. One that most people miss because they're too busy waiting for someone else to go first. For someone to hand something to them. For Lady Luck to shine on them. Luck is not arbitrary. You have to place yourself in a position to be able to receive it.

What It Means to Invest in Yourself

This phrase can be used too loosely at times, so it's worth being specific.

Creating an investment in yourself means deliberately directing your resources back towards yourself in order to advance your own growth. Resources isn’t just money, even though it might take some. You also have time, energy, and attention to spend. Particularly if you don’t have money you may be incredibly rich in time. The energy and attention may require significant effort in that case. There’s the problem. In a bad situation you might be tempted to spend those resources purely on immediate comforts. Investing in yourself means being kinder to yourself than treats. In the long run that’s not kindness at all, it’s a false economy. You need to imagine yourself as an asset worth developing, rather than someone that either has what it takes or doesn't. If it helps you can think about someone you know that you feel has potential. Someone where an investment of your resources would help them turn into something more than they currently are. Then look in the mirror. Look at your reflection. That person staring back at you, that’s the person that’s worth the investment. Who can become something more. That has the potential to grow and excel.

When the investment looks like spending money. Buying the course, the book, the coaching session, the tool that makes you better at your craft, you may need to fight against your instincts. Shelling out money, particularly when you don’t have a lot, can feel indulgent. Especially if you were raised to be careful with money. Spending is a transaction with limited return. You buy a thing and use it. Investing your money can still be done carefully but with the expectation that you might not get an immediate return. You’re putting your money into something that will repay you in the future. You may need to take some risk to get that reward. That said, you can still be careful in considering the investments you make. If it looks too good to be true, it is.

Ok, but you said I have other resources to spend, what about those?

Spending time well starts with one truth: motivation is a result of doing, not the other way around. Don’t wait to feel ready or in a special mood. Start. Spend some time reading instead of aimlessly watching. Practising instead of consuming. Sitting with a hard problem instead of scrolling past it. Showing up consistently, long before there's any external reward for doing so. A simple way to “just start” is to choose to take 5 minutes to tackle the hard problem. If you’re not feeling it, switch to something a little easier. Don’t be surprised if the 5 minutes turns into much longer and you make progress.

Your energy is a limited resource. Protect it. Work on getting enough sleep. Move your body. Choose which relationships and environments you allow to shape you. If you are totally depleted you cannot develop. Full stop. If the answer to the question “What are you working on right now?” is “I’m working on my sleep.” that should be enough for anyone.

Lastly, investing in yourself can look like just taking yourself seriously. Make the decision that your growth matters even if nobody around you acts like it does. You don’t need to tell anyone, unless you have someone that will hold you accountable. Just make the decision for yourself, make a promise to yourself, and keep it.

It Compounds. All Of It.

Everyone talks about compounding. Investors in financial markets probably understand it better than most. The returns that get reinvested generates their own bigger returns. Even small gains over time produce results that do not seem real.

Personal development compounds the same way. There’s no change to the calculation. It’s just as powerful. The skills you build this year make next year's learning faster. The book you read today connects with an idea in the book you read six months from now. The combination of those two ideas produces something neither could alone. (As an aside, that’s a definition of innovation that I love. Putting two existing ideas together and coming up with something new.)

The habits you establish now shape your capacity a decade from now. If you invest a little in yourself every day for ten years you’re guaranteed to be almost unrecognisable to the person who coasted through the same decade.

For personal development and growth, we are explicitly talking about small gains. This isn’t The Matrix or a William Gibson novel. You can’t plug a USB into a port in your head and suddenly know kung-fu. Small daily investments will feel insignificant in the moment. Annual returns may also feel modest. The decade-long results are extraordinary though.

Most people won't notice the effect until it has either worked spectacularly or failed to materialise at all.

This is why the people who start early, or who start again after setbacks, are rarely sorry they did. You will banish regret by your actions.

When Nobody Else Will

This is my real message to you. "Especially if nobody else will." This is when it is difficult, maybe even the hardest. It's easy to invest in yourself when you have backing. You can conquer the world when you’ve got more than just your own resources behind you. When your employer is paying for your training. When your education is funded. When your peers encouraging your ambitions. When the environment around you is saying, clearly and consistently, that you are worth developing.

What about when the opposite is true, and the feedback you're getting, implicitly or directly, is that your growth isn't a priority? Or you’re ignored and passed over for others? Where your potential isn't obvious to others? That the resources and support available to the people around you somehow aren't available to you?

This is where investing in yourself should become your default strategy.

Waiting for external validation before doing hands control of your development to people who may not have your best interests at heart. Your growth is then conditional on other people's perceptions. Where perception does not always match reality, that approach is a wager that a lot of people lose.

The alternative is to decide, quietly and without drama, that you are worth the investment regardless. It’s not arrogance to do this. It’s not a delusion about where you currently stand. You are very simply making a clear commitment to where you want to go.

Nobody builds a life they're proud of by accident. It is always the result of accumulated choices, practised skills, sustained effort, and a belief, even when it was not widely shared, that the work was worth doing. You don't need a champion. You don't need a sponsor. You don't need someone to see your potential before you start developing it.

Invest in yourself. Especially when nobody else will.

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Ryan's Rules #50: Some jobs require dry weather, most just require an indifference to getting wet.

By shaner

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In any given month in the year I can look out my window and there’s a good chance that it will be raining. Some days it feels like it’s been raining for months on end. This is the price we pay for living in a country so lush and green.I’ll sit there and think, “I could be doing something in the garden right now” or maybe I’ll have a short day dream about a little project I could take care of. As someone who sits behind a desk for a living, I catch myself doing this and know exactly what it means. Ask anyone in the trades what they do when it’s raining and they’ll tell you that they get on with it, because they have to and because it’s just a part of the job. And ultimately, this isn’t about being soft or a wizened, gnarled, burly worker who doesn’t care what nature throws at them. This is about whether or not you wait for motivation to strike or whether you have the discipline to start something. This isn’t about the weather, is it? It’s about action, not a line about meteorology.

Stop Waiting for Perfect Conditions. Most Success Happens in the Rain.

Maybe you have a great idea, a side project or a career change you've been turning over in your mind for months. You're almost ready. You're just waiting for the right time. For things to settle down at work. For the kids to be a bit older, better able to look after themselves. For the economy to stabilise. For the stars to align.

While you're waiting though, someone else ships the product, takes the job, starts the company. The one you were going to. They didn't have it any better than you. They probably didn’t even have the same resources or knowledge as you do. They just decided that good enough conditions were sufficient and went for it. They showed an indifference to getting wet. An impatience for perfection to manifest. A moment where they said “F*** this noise” and did it anyway.

There's a name for what stops you from doing the same. Call it “precondition thinking.” The belief that something has to be solved or just right or true before something else can begin. It feels like it’s the work itself. It's not.

I understand the impulse to wait for things to be favourable. Chasing the perfect moment can be like getting the perfect bite of food. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does… However, when it comes to perfection, you will tell yourself little lies. These lies masquerade as diligence, preparation, professionalism. You're not ready yet. You're doing more research. Waiting until you have more confidence, more money, more time, more clarity. The details need to be sorted before the bigger stuff can come together.

This precondition thinking attempts to get everything right before you do something. You’re identifying requirements. Constraints have to be considered. You need to understand the bare minimum that you need before the problem can really be solved.

Everything that is blocking your progress is a preference that’s pretending to be a requirement.

Waiting for perfection doesn't just delay success. It actually degrades your capacity to succeed when conditions do improve. If you had shipped in the rain, clumsily, with a substandard setup, you’d have ten months of real experience. What do you get from waiting, ten months of readiness?

The frustrating thing is that the more you do this, the more you feel like you’re making headway. You’re building in stealth. Once this thing gets to market, once the project is started, it’s going to be amazing. This process, however, is really you attaching action to something that will never arrive. It’s a waste of time. Procrastination in disguise. Every week you wait, or every new risk you try to mitigate, the imagined optimal moment becomes further away. It’s like saying “I was going to…” in response to your parents asking why your room wasn’t tidied. It’s not much use to you, or them, and the room still isn’t tidy.

To be fair, sometimes you do need dry weather. There are genuinely weather-dependent tasks. Pouring concrete in a downpour is counterproductive for one thing. But truly figuring out whether a task needs dry weather or not requires you to stop, take a step back and assess the lies, half-truths and truths you have told yourself. Most of these are part of the first two categories and not the last.

The Two Categories of Work

Simplifying everything into a binary dry weather vs who cares is an oversimplification. Generally things exist on a spectrum rather than one or the other. But you’re trying to get things done. So bear with me. If you want to get moving and take action you have to make it that simple. Either you start or you don’t. Not, you’ve started but you’re really just pretending.

You can use the 80/20 rule as verification. If you have 10 tasks and more than 2 of them require dry weather, you’re either actually pouring concrete or you’re convincing yourself the task is harder than it actually is.

Perhaps, even, it’s not the work that is actually holding you back. Maybe it’s just getting started. There’s a lovely phrase in Irish that goes “Tús maith, leath na hoibre.” It means “a good start is half the work.” I think this ageless piece of wisdom talks to the inertia of starting a task. The first five minutes. The getting up off the couch bit. Once you’re past that initial hump, you will often find that the motion required to overcome the inertia keeps you going for longer than you expected.

20% - Work That Genuinely Requires Dry Weather

Dry weather work may be less than 20% but is highly unlikely to be more than that. These are tasks with hard technical dependencies. A sterile environment, regulations to adhere to, safety measures, specific legal filings that come with stringent deadlines etc

If you proceed with this work without addressing these dependencies, the outcome will be objectively worse or even downright dangerous. Not uncomfortable or awkward or harder. Materially lesser.

80% - Work That Just Requires Getting A Bit Wet

Almost everything else the weather is aside from the point. Writing, selling, building, designing, managing, teaching, creating. The quality of your outputs in these tasks are not set by conditions. They’re held back by a lack of sustained effort and iteration. The false desire for perfection before starting gives you an excuse to not put in effort or put in the wrong effort. From there it doesn’t matter if you iterate. Working on the wrong thing brings you further away from your goal instead of closer to it. So, pick the right thing, even if you suck at it. Try get a little less sucky at it over time, until eventually you aren’t.

Your first draft written down is better than the draft never written. A sales call made when you're not feeling 100% can still close a deal. Even if it doesn’t close the deal, it can progress it. And if that deal was going to be lost, trust me, waiting or ignoring it would have lost the deal for you anyway. Even a business launched in a difficult economic climate can still find its footing. History is crammed with evidence to support this assertion. JK Rowling drafted Harry Potter as a single mother on benefits. Disney survived a war, a studio split, and a near-bankruptcy before it made Cinderella. It wasn’t a little bit of rain hindering these examples, was it? The work got done anyway.

There are some easy steps to get started and begin to make progress.

Without knowing how big your task is, setting a completion date will not help you. It might just discourage you. Set a start date. Tomorrow is good, today is better. The start date is when you will start regardless of anything else. Ask someone you know to hold you accountable. If you don’t know anyone, set a calendar reminder.

Start with one small step. Make one call, write one page, send one email.

If you’re still struggling you spend one hour defining the problem. Some requirements are real. The rest are not. Know the difference. If, at the end of the hour, you don’t have a solid grasp on the topic, put it aside and come back to it the next day. Your subconscious will work on the problem for you overnight.

When you still need to be convinced… write down the condition(s) you think you need. If this perfect state never arrived, would it make the work impossible or just uncomfortable? Answer this honestly. If you’re afraid of a bit of discomfort then abandon the idea entirely. Close your browser and don’t finish this article. It isn’t for you.

The Waiting Game Will Kill Things

Waiting is not a neutral act. It feels passive, but it has an active cost. Forget your imagined competitor building their skills - that is another excuse. Forget the shifting market. Without being on the market you cannot possibly know it. The gap between "now" and "later" is not empty.

The biggest thing you are breeding by waiting is a psychological toll. Chronic waiting builds anxiety instead of readiness. It’s the Sunday night dread. The feeling that nothing will work, everything is wrong and incomplete is the best your project will ever be. The longer the gap, the heavier the imagined task becomes.

Skill, confidence, and momentum are all built through action. Some say perfect practice makes perfect. Maybe, maybe not. You and I both know that any practice with good intention and a little help from time to time will get you to good. Perfect isn’t where you are going nor where you need to be. Strive for perfection and you’ll convince yourself to give up before you've started.

Indifference to getting wet is not indifference to quality. It is the understanding that quality emerges from iteration, and to iterate you first need to start.

So Pick Up Your Tools

Most of us are not surgeons scrubbing in before an operation. We're writers, builders, founders, and professionals who have confused preferences for prerequisites. The rain is coming. In one form or another, it’s always going to be less than ideal. The work that defines careers, companies, and creative lives is almost never done in the sunshine. It is done by people who decided that a little wet was part of the deal. Grab a rain jacket and get moving.

Think about the one thing you've been holding back on until things improve. What would it look like to start it this week? Leave your answer in the comments if you like but more importantly answer this for yourself. This will be more useful than the ideal moment you've been waiting for.

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Ryan's Rules #49: You remember the effort you put in more than that of others, take a moment to reflect and appreciate the effort that others put in once in a while. Be thankful.

By shaner

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I’m willing to bet you always think that you are working harder than everyone else. Think back to the last group project you worked on, whether it was at the office, in a classroom, or even planning a family event. Remember the little devil sitting on your shoulder that whispered “Hey, you’re doing most of the work here!" To vent your frustration you might have even said it out loud afterward, half-joking but meaning every word. From there, your course of action really depends on which wolf you feed. Take a step back for a moment and consider, were you actually doing more? Or did it just feel that way?

Even the best of us have blind spots and this is one of them. You remember the effort you put in more than that of others. You're not an arrogant or unkind person, this is just how memory and perception work. Taking a moment to reflect and appreciate the effort of others once in a while will help you feed the right wolf.

Be thankful. This sounds simple, maybe even obvious, but this one small thing can alter your perception of your relationships with others, and even yourself.

Are you the Actor or the Observer?

Blind spots are not character flaws. This isn’t main character syndrome. They are core to how we experience the world. You are in the driver's seat behind every ounce of effort you've ever put into your life: the late nights, anxious rewrites, moments where you bit your tongue instead of saying something rash. You lived all of that!

But you only see the outcome of other people's effort. It’s exceptionally rare to see the process that produces it. The excellent presentation to the board doesn't show the three drafts scrapped the night before. Or the timestamps on when it was last saved. Your partner's easy smile at dinner doesn't reveal the stressful phone call they handled right before walking in the door.

Effort is invisible to everyone except the person putting it in.

This is sometimes known as actor–observer bias or asymmetry. We are the actor, we judge ourselves by our good intentions and desperate struggles. Then we judge others by what we see, usually just the finished product. You are not a bad person for doing that, it’s human nature. If you leave this unchecked, however, the difference can breed resentment, score-keeping, and a horrible nagging feeling that you're always giving more than you get.

If You Look, You’ll See It Every Day

At Work

Ever felt like you're the only one pulling weight on a team project? I have. Everyone on the team is having a private version of that same thought. Each person is acutely aware of their own contributions and only dimly aware of everyone else's.

At Home

Chores, remembering birthdays, keeping the household running. You walk around with a significant load on your shoulders most of the time. Even if your other half does the dishes and cleans the living room, they probably left you the ironing, didn’t they? The invisible tasks that you didn’t notice were done are notorious for triggering the effort blind spot. Then things get adversarial and one of you starts to track every dish washed…

In Friendships

Who initiates plans more often? Who remembers to check in after a hard week? Who consistently says no to plans instead of yes? Who paid for drinks or dinner last time? Keeping a mental tally that favours your own generosity is an easy trap to fall into. You felt the intention behind each gesture after all.

Break the Pattern!

You don't need therapy or a personality overhaul to show some gratitude. You can make it a small effortless habit. Do it at a set time once a week. This will help build that habit. You could do it last thing on a Friday before you down tools, or just before a 1:1 for one of your team. Pick a day and time and stick with it for 6 - 8 weeks.

Name one thing you were thankful for. Pick a specific person in your life, a coworker, partner, sibling, friend, and ask yourself: what effort did they put in recently that I might have overlooked?
Say it out loud, or write it down. Be vague here and it will fade fast. Being specific will stick in your mind. Instead of "thanks for being you," try "I really appreciate you staying late to help me finish that report." Even if you didn’t say it at the time, it’s better late than never. Importantly, share it with them. Don’t just sit there talking to yourself or writing notes you’ll throw away.
Ask, don't assume. I suffer from this one a lot, I’ll make an assumption as a default. If you don't know what someone is dealing with, ask them. Sometimes a simple question can reveal a level of effort you had no idea was there.
Bonus: You can show thanks via acts instead of words. Actually do the ironing instead of leaving it for them to do 🙂

Your effort still matters, it absolutely does. So don’t completely ignore yourself. This post is not about introspection though, it's about broadening your view and really seeing that everyone around you fights the same battle you do.

This Is Not A Social Problem

I mentioned main character syndrome earlier, which is not by any stretch of the imagination a recognized psychological phenomenon. This might seem like a wider social problem. The tendency to think about yourself more than others can look like an extension of that. Let’s be careful not to miss the point. This is not a social problem, despite the fact it’s not just you that does it. And it can make things worse. If you constantly feel underappreciated, you will start doing less, almost as a kind of self-protection. "Why should I go the extra mile if no one notices?"

The truth of it is, the people around you are probably thinking the exact same thing about you. They have no idea how much you're carrying. The blind spot works both ways. If you recognize this, that others might be underestimating your contribution, the same way you do with theirs, it can be freeing. The whole situation goes from "I'm unappreciated" and “woe is me” to "we're all a little blind to each other.” Sounds simple enough to fix, that.

Small Stones Can Make Huge Waves

You may have heard the phrase that small pebbles can make big ripples. (Hat-tip to Damien Dempsey on the slight variation.) Essentially, none of this requires grand gestures. You don’t have to keep score more fairly or demand recognition. In fact, this should help you stop keeping score completely. Even if you’re not going to try develop a habit, just take a pause every once in a while, and look past the finished result and wonder or ask about the process behind it. What did that tough client meeting actually cost someone in stress? What did the handmade birthday cake require in time and planning? How much did a calm tone take to maintain when things were going south?

Gratitude isn't just a nice sentiment to put on a card or hand out on holidays. It's more than that and it will make you and those around you feel a lot better about yourselves. So the next time that little devil whispers in your ear, flip them off and take a moment to ask who else might be thinking the exact same thing.

Who in your life deserves a moment of unexpected appreciation today, and what's stopping you from telling them right now?

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AI will never know the feeling of riding a motorcycle

By shaner

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That's ok, because you can.

I wrote this down after the phrase appearing as a shower thought one morning. I've been meaning to write about it for a while. I'm not sure I even scratch the surface of this thought let alone doing it justice. This post isn't really about motorcycles so if you've never ridden a motorcycle don't worry. If you have you will hopefully understand exactly what I mean when I say that riding a bike for fun is a completely different way of travelling than a car or other ground based transport. Even with a helmet on (ATGATT!) you're more connected to the outside world, more vulnerable. It takes physical effort to change the direction of the bike. Over low speeds you have to countersteer and ignore what your brain knows, that left is left and right is right. After a while on two wheels your body understands this principle and you are unconsciously competent in turning right but pushing left.

There's a lot of people throwing around phrases like "AI won't replace people. But people who use AI will replace those who don't." and "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." After a while of all this AI stuff, I get tired of it, anxious, worried for the future of humanity. You know what though, a bot that talks (sometimes talks nonsense while projecting that it's genuine and true) isn't going to ride the bike. Not properly. Maybe one day it can power the "Mind" that makes two wheels go in a certain direction but it will likely never experience what it's like to ride the bike. Not like you can.

Credit: https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/Moto-Terminator

AI doesn't experience visceral feelings. It doesn't really tell right from wrong. It doesn't bring clarity after a long ride out either solo or with friends. It doesn't share a story with you about how you dropped your bike at low speed on a gravel car park. It won't nod understandingly when you talk about a moment on the motorway when you wished you had brought your brown trousers or when you felt something was off with the engine and it turned out that feeling was a mechanical problem.

AI, like a motorcycle, may leave you stranded on the side of a road. Unintentionally or otherwise.

I'm still on the fence about what the current most popular AI models actually do for us as a civilisation. There are applications of AI that are decades old that actually make a difference, catch things that humans can't, provide indicators that things aren't quite right that a real person could miss. Actual, objective good. On the flip side recently there has been a darkness as to how AI has been put to use. An excuse to cut a workforce. Generate untold amounts of revenue for a small number of people. Burn up massive amounts of energy for little actual good. AI doesn't reduce poverty or clean up our environment right now.

LLMs are all the rage. They can be incredibly useful if you know what to do with them. Just like being good at using a search engine used to be a thing. They can be damaging too though. Provide you with incorrect information that you don't pick up on. Be built within a framework that uses dark patterns to keep you engaged and "chatting" but not really getting anything done. I won't get into the insanity that is people befriending AIs. Get a pet rock or a stuffed animal. They'll give you the same levels of genuine emotion.

I don't doubt that AI is here to stay. I don't doubt that it can be harnessed and used for the common good but ultimately I doubt that it will ever know the feeling of riding a motorcycle.

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Ryan's Rules #48: Beware of those who point out problems but are unwilling to try fixing them.

By shaner

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I’ve worked with a huge number of people in the last twenty years. More people than I can recall to be honest. There are people I remember who probably don’t remember me and visa versa. Over the years there are a couple of types of people that emerge. The one I want to focus on today is the constant critic. Don’t get me wrong, a healthy dose of constructive criticism is always a good thing. Delivery of a critique and willingness to fix things, however, are two very different things.

My previous job was with a fast growing startup. When I joined there were twelve of us, last count I think they’re around two hundred and fifty or so. Quarterly management reviews were always exciting, even if they were a tough slog. We looked at the big bets we were making and focused on solving problems where they cropped up. After two or three days you would be mentally exhausted but overall they were productive and so, well worthwhile.

One particular meeting stands out in my mind. The business was launching a significant new service. As we went through the presentation people began to shift in their seats. This was a bigger bet than we had made as a group previously. People were naturally a little nervous. Then it happened, the interruption. I won’t go into the details but essentially what followed was about ten minutes of why the plan wouldn’t work. People began to stand, walk to the screen and point. Right down to the detail of what would and wouldn’t fit through a specific door. The failure of the project was a foregone conclusion. This was put forward with total confidence, but there was no solution offered. Not a good way to do business in my book.

When you challenge someone like this, what’s the usual response that you get? Silence. A shrug. Maybe a vague hand waving "I don't know, just... not this."

Criticism without ownership is one of the safest positions a person can take, and it can poison a team under the guise of robust discussion. Once you see it, examples will show up left, right and centre forever more.

Stop Diagnosing Things To Death

Every idea should go through some critical analysis. Just to make sure you’re getting things right and not about to do something monumentally stupid. I’ve written a lot about procrastination and getting stuck and as part of that, sometimes pointing out problems can feel like you’re contributing.

But there's a way this behaviour is exhibited that isn't about helping. There are various reasons behind why people do this but ultimately if you never propose a solution, you never risk being wrong. You can be "the person who saw it coming" and never risk failure.

Startups, and teams in general, don't often fail from a lack of criticism. Believe you me, they get enough of that from their board and their investors. Failure comes from a lack of progress. A group that has more critics than problem solvers and builders will over time diagnose itself to death. When every idea gets picked apart to the nth degree before it can be tried how can it ever have a chance? Any chance of forward momentum dies before it can be tested in the real world. You know, the place where it might have actually made a difference.

Our Instincts Are Wrong

Nowadays, catching mistakes is often treated as a mark of intelligence. The person who finds the bug, or the loophole in the contract, will get the praise. It’s a legitimate skill, and there are definitely times when it should be rewarded. We use the same instinct to avoid danger and risk to find those mistakes.

Thousands of years ago we lived from day to day, hunting and gathering. There were predators we had to deal with. Avoiding risk or danger was a key skill for survival. It kept the tribe alive. Like a lot of our built-in instincts, this one no longer serves us as well as it should. The original intent was to keep you alive as part of a broader set of skills and instincts. It was not the only skill required. You had to bring in the big game or contribute in other ways as well as understanding the dangers involved.

The caveman who looked out for the panther but couldn’t sharpen a spear in the fire didn't last long.

Spotting the Difference

Most people are inconsistent. A critic without a plan doesn’t always mean ill intent, sometimes it means the person has spotted the issue but hasn’t had time to think through a fix yet. Not every critic is a coward. On the flip side, having a solution doesn't automatically make you a hero.

There are ways to spot a consistent critic who doesn’t help. Ask these four questions when someone raises a problem:

Have they offered an alternative, even a rough one?
Are they willing to take ownership and test their idea, roll up their sleeves and dig in?
Does their opinion change when new information appears?
Do they want to be right or do they want to fix things?

If the answer to these questions is no, challenge them. Ask for the critic to come up with a plan and get them to collaborate. Whenever possible, do this in the moment. You don’t have to call people out or generate conflict to do this. Offer the questions calmly and quietly. Let them lean in to hear you. The challenge can be simple: “Fair point, what would you try first if it were up to you?” That’s not confrontational. It puts the ball in their court without putting them on the spot.

When someone does consistently fail these questions, you have just identified a different problem. You've got someone who looks like a team player but is operating as a saboteur.

The Critic’s Litmus Test

If you want to maintain momentum, your goal is not to silence criticism or demand that everyone take action. Some of the sharpest minds are naturally better at seeing flaws than building solutions. In the right place that can be a legitimate way to stress test plans before they are put into action. But you need to have the ability to pair this with team work and collaboration. At the very least the critic needs to help out the person they are criticising.

The real problem is not the criticism itself but how it is used. Criticism used as an offensive weapon does nothing to help you, your team or your business. That’s just being inside the tent pissing on everyone. Instead, it needs to be used as a shield to protect what you are doing. The distinction between weapon and shield may only become obvious when you see what the critic does after offering their input.

So, the counter-intuitive move here isn't to ignore criticism. The next time someone (even a consistent complainer) points out a flaw in the plan, don't argue with them. Ask them to help and watch what happens. To borrow from a phrase, genuine people will get going when the going gets tough. Performance artists will just make their excuses.

Look Within

You might have been thinking about someone you work with as you read this. But did you stop to ask if you’ve done this yourself? Next time you're about to voice a criticism, stop for a moment and think of at least one possible next step to make that criticism null and void. It doesn’t need to be perfect. This will show that you're willing to get stuck in and not just point the finger at those doing the work.

Employing this trick consistently may change how people experience you. You won’t be seen as the person who stalls things. You can become the person who makes things happen despite being the bearer of bad news. Problems are easy to find. Solutions are rarer. The willingness to clean up the mess and try something, anything, even if it might not work is invaluable.

The next time someone offers a critique without a proposed solution, ask the four questions above and see whether you are met with silence or solutions and ownership. That will tell you exactly who you're dealing with.

Are you a critic or a problem solver? Or have you run into both during your career? I'd love to hear your stories in the comments.

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Ryan's Rules #47: Keep your tools clean and well maintained. They'll take care of you in return.

By shaner

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Think about when you reach for a wrench mid-project and find it caked in old grease, or when you have to unclog that poor lawnmower that’s got three years of old grass caked onto the underside. Neither are broken. Not technically. But you could have taken better care of them. Let’s talk about maintaining your tools. And I don’t mean for a given definition of a "tool." Forget your MacBook, CRM, or your body after a workout.

Now, as with any rule there are exceptions. A rusty hammer will still drive a nail just as well as a shiny one. The swing matters more than the surface. A dull chisel, however, will cause wood to tear out. It crushes the wood fibres instead of cutting them cleanly. This means your work will be less accurate and the tool actually becomes more dangerous to use. That poor lawnmower of yours will still cut your grass but the results are pathetic compared to a well sharpened blade and a sweetly running engine.

I find a certain pleasure in restoring tools. They feel better in your hand, they work better. I even enjoy watching other people doing the same thing via YouTube. When a tool does break from a lack of maintenance, old father time has his hand out. The bill is now due for those years of neglect.

This Is Not A Motivational Poster

On the surface, you might tell me this sounds like a novelty poster stuck to a workshop wall. Like one of those motivational posters. Or a sign that says “Somewhere it’s 5pm” with a frosty beer in a glass beside it. While I could ask you to read about how effort compounds (as does a lack of effort) I want to bring today’s post in a couple of other directions which I think are more useful.

There is no doubt that we live in a world built around planned obsolescence. Enshittification makes things crappier. Luckily, shrinkflation doesn’t apply to tools. If they got smaller all the time we’d have chisels the size of matchsticks. Combine that with the aforementioned and they’d probably have the same strength too.

Right to repair movements are gaining some momentum which is great news. But there’s a way to live in this world without (literally) buying into Enshittification. Just take care of your damn tools!

Neglected tools don't fail all at once. They degrade over time. A dull blade requires you to apply more force, which means less control and ultimately leads to more mistakes. Mistakes can damage your tools which worsens the cycle. You might even get to a point where you are tempted to blame the tool… My advice, blame the craftsman. If the tool itself makes the work more difficult instead of easier then you have failed not your tools.

Regular maintenance doesn’t make the tools your best friend. A well-kept tool is more likely to disappear into the work. It allows you to focus on what you are doing. You stop thinking about the chisel and start thinking about how much more material to remove for the perfect joint. How those two pieces of wood will fit together seamlessly once you are done. I will admit, some tools I am more fond of than others. It’s sad, but I will admit to having a favourite screwdriver. It does the job when I need it, every time. I keep it nice and clean in return.

This Is Not A New Idea

Surprise, surprise, I have yet again failed to have an original thought. Craftsmen have obsessed over tool care for centuries. With the exception of the roof over their heads, a craftsman's tools were often the most expensive things they owned. Think about these examples: a blacksmith's anvil, a carpenter's chisel or saw, a tailor's shears. Keeping them working well wasn't optional when a livelihood depended on it, and replacement often simply wasn't an option. So apprenticeships spent as much time teaching how to care for a tool as they did teaching how to use one. A skilled hand with a ruined tool will still produce poorer work, but a well taught apprentice turns into that skilled hand fast.

Little And Often

You don't have to be a master craftsman to do this. Nor do you need to be a perfectionist. Take five minutes a week for your tools. They’ll give you this back and more.

Garden shears: oiled the pivot to prevent rust. Each cut will require less grip strength.
Chainsaws: top up the bar oil every time you are finished using it. Inspect the chain and get it sharpened or replace it when needed.
Lawnmowers: a small amount of time with a ratchet set and an angle grinder once a season will sort you out. Or get a man to do it for you.
Chisels / kitchen knives / bladed objects: get a cheap set of diamond sharpening plates and give them some love every couple of weeks. Sharpen them for a few seconds before use too. Sharpness is your friend here, not your enemy.
Files: brush free of debris after use. De-rust and treat with machine oil or WD once in a while. It’ll keep the file singing.

There’s more, but you get the idea.

Wipe them down, put them back where they belong. Inspect regularly to see if maintenance is required. This doesn’t take any more than a quick glance. Small issues become expensive ones when you forget but if you don’t have the time right then and there to make good, set a reminder in your phone and do it later. Some tools will require seasonal maintenance. If you have something that requires a full inspection, service, or reset and you don’t have the time, find someone who does and reward them handsomely (or just pay the bill when they ask). They might just catch slow-building problems that you missed.

Don’t Go Overboard

Most advice on this topic stops at "clean your stuff" and spends more time on spreadsheets and other stretchers of the analogy but in seriousness, the part people usually miss is that you can over-maintain. This can be its own form of neglect.

Sharpening a knife you never cook with will just wear down the blade. A spotless tool takes more time than a mostly clean but sharp one. Any maintenance you do that doesn’t serve the work the tool is supposed to be doing is too much. If you develop an almost compulsive maintenance ritual, you're as badly off as the person with the rusty shears.

The real skill is knowing what care a tool needs to perform reliably and stopping there.

Tools Don't Ask For Much

A little attention after use. A regular check-up. The occasional deeper look. Your tools stop being obstacles and start being a simple part of whatever you're trying to build, cook, or fix.

Ten minutes of care can save hours of fighting a tool that’s on its way to the bin. So the next time you are in your workshop, garage or shed, take a look around and ask which tools have you been taking care of and which have you been neglecting.

What's one tool in your life that's been quietly asking for a little maintenance? And what's stopping you from giving it five minutes of love today? Drop a comment too if you’ve got a favourite like me!

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Ryan's Rules #46

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Ryan's Rules #45

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Ryan's Rules #44

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Ryan's Rules #43

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Ryan's Rules #42

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Writing into the void

By shaner

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Write into the void, send it out and let it find its audience. The electronic equivalent of dancing as if nobody is watching. Write even if nobody reads it. Write it to get the thoughts out of your brain. Write to order those thoughts and really reflect on whether what you write is what you believe in. Write to forget, to stop the thoughts circling round and round in your head. Rumination is bad for your health.

There's a phrase, you have two ears and one mouth so listen twice as much as you speak. Does this translate to writing? Read twice as much as you write? You can only write with one pencil or pen at a time unless you're an exceptional outlier.

What about typing? Well, you'll probably type with both hands, but maybe it still holds true. Or what about write-once, edit many times? The measure twice, cut once of the written word.

For online posting, it doesn't matter what time you write or when you post. Frequency matters. If people like what you have to say, they'll want to read more of it. If you want a following, you have to regularly tell people things. Things that they want to know and understand. Or maybe things they want to hear so you can re-inforce the echo chamber they reside in with comfort. You can write at 8am or 9pm, or even 1am if you like. Write gibberish, write what you feel. Write what your brain says to write next. Edit in the cold light of day or when you are best rested. You might laugh at what you wrote. You might be happy with it. You'll find typos, better ways of saying things. Repetitive ideas or sentences get cut in the edit.

Perhaps you'll find a better way to communicate your ideas to the universe. And people will read them. Or not. But if you don't put it out there, it can never be found. If you only write for yourself that's fine too. But if you want to be read, you have to send it out there. It's not inspirational. It's common sense.

Maybe you read this. One of approximately 8 billion people on the planet. If you did, thank you. These words were written in the daylight, not edited and were posted on a whim. But I hit Publish and didn't keep them sitting, rotting on a hard disk.

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Ryan's Rules #41: Always, always take a before photo

By shaner

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There’s ivy that grows over the back wall of my garden. Every year I spend an afternoon ripping it out. It’s not too unsightly, it just grows really fast. The itchy, sweaty, dirty feeling having dealt with all the creepy crawlies and debris in it probably bugs me more than the visual clutter. Usually, when I’m done with it, I’ll stand back and admire my handiwork. The wall looks a bit cleaner. The rest of the garden may still need attention but the following day, it looks like I did nothing at all.

To a stranger, the wall might look like it had always been this tidy. In a few weeks I’d forget again and the nagging thought of the ivy would recede back to the cobwebby corners of my mind. Some other more pressing task would take its place.

This is not a unique phenomenon. In a previous job we followed the “Danaher Business System,” a management system not unlike the Toyota Production System but with fewer TPS cover sheets to fill. One of the techniques we deployed in the office every couple of years was 5S. Essentially this was spring cleaning on steroids.

The name of the 5S methodology comes from the five Japanese terms; Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke. These can be translated as Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. Without turning this into a lean seminar, let’s just say it’s particularly effective for a server room which over time had turned into a store room. Or for the store room that became the new dumping ground after we had the server room 5S’d. But guess what… both times, we got done and things looked great, “as they should have been.” We stood there, basking in the glory of a job well done and someone uttered “hey, did anyone take a photo of how bad it was before?”

That was the moment when this rule crystallized for me and stopped being a cute piece of advice. This is a rule I actually follow. Even if nobody will ever see the photo.

Like some of my other writings, this sounds almost too simple to write about. Snap a quick picture before you start. Big deal, right? No framework needed. Then get on with it. But I believe this small habit can bring incredible value to you if you decide to use it.

A Single Photo Carries More Than You Think

Human memory can be dodgy. People have been known to imagine things that never happened. Sometimes we reconstruct the past based on how we feel now, not based on facts. Psychologists call this a version of hindsight bias: once a change occurs, our brain alters our perception of the "before" to fit a narrative. A before photo can interrupt that process. It's a fact that your brain (or others) can't argue with later. A small action with big benefits!

It proves your effort actually happened. Whether you're clearing a garden, working with a personal trainer on your body, or doing a huge cleanout, the after never speaks for itself. Context is everything. It may still look messy or unfinished now but it was ten times worse before. The before photo combined with the current state is the evidence of your effort.
It helps with motivation on hard days. I’ve said before, and I will say again, that motivation doesn’t show up. You do. Motivation comes from work, not the other way around. Anyone who has tracked a weight-loss journey knows there are frustrating plateau weeks. The needle on the scale doesn’t move. Doubt begins to creep in. Pulling up the before photo, next to where you are now, is a morale booster better than any pep talk.
It might just protect you legally and financially. A timestamped before photo can be useful evidence. Walk around your rental car and take a few snaps before you drive away. Disputes about "who caused this damage" or "this scratch will require a payment" are resolved in seconds with a photo. It can drag on for weeks without one.

The list of places this habit pays off could go on forever. Here's a handful, just to give you a feel for it.

Home renovation (when someone else is doing the work): gutters that weren't broken before they got "cleaned"
Home renovation (when you're doing the work): the damage on the cabinet doors or the hole in the wall that was already there before you started
Training: a screenshot of your 5k time, or your beer gut, take your pick
Web design: a screenshot of what the site used to look like
Renting an apartment: the stain or burn on the carpet that wasn't your doing
Borrowing equipment: the crack in the handle of your friend's angle grinder that was there before you touched it

I could keep going. But you get the idea.

You Skip It Because You Don't Want To Look

The value of a before photo isn't really about the after. Or the act of comparing between where you are now and where you were.

Often you’ll forget to take a before photo because it’s not a habit you have developed. But why not? You’ve got a device in your pocket more powerful than the computers that guided men around and onto the moon! The uncomfortable truth is that you probably skip the before photo because, deep down, you don't want anyone to see how bad things really are. You ignore the extra weight, the dirty kitchen, the messy code base, the packed comms room. You recoil with embarrassment to think that anyone else might see it. That recoil though is exactly the signal to take the photo and do it anyway. Bask in the discomfort of documenting where you actually are, rather than where you wish you were. This changes the eventual comparison from a mechanical act of A - B = C into something meaningful.

You will benefit most from this habit when you go beyond remembering it occasionally. Maybe one day you’ll have enough projects where you sigh and say “Should have taken the before photo!” Or you can make it an unconscious habit, one that’s automatic, the same way you'd check your mirrors before changing lanes. It takes seconds, costs nothing and it pays off later. Like a lot of things, you can only do it before, not after.

So next time you're about to tackle something that has gotten out of hand, take the before photo. I’ll be out in the garden, doing my annual chore and swearing at the ivy but I’ll definitely be able to show the difference once I’m done.

What's one project in your life right now where a before photo would actually make a difference? Drop a comment. It might mean something to someone more than just you.

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Ryan's Rules #40: If you are replacing something you usually wouldn't, bring it with you

By shaner

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The bulb in the wax burner in the hallway gave up the ghost the other day. I quickly popped the burner open (with the wax cool of course, you only make that mistake once…) and took a look at the bulb. Screw fit, 15W, no code like G4 or 9 or whatever but I thought, "Easy, I know what this looks like." I drove around the corner to my local hardware shop, and made a beeline to where they had the bulbs. A pile of boxes on a forgotten shelf in the corner past the white goods. Forty nearly identical bulbs in boxes. I picked the one that looked most like what I had taken out of the burner just minutes ago. I’ll admit, I guessed. I didn’t ask anyone in the shop for help. I knew what I was looking for. When I got home, guess what? It didn't fit. The screw part was right but I had remembered the shape of the bulb completely incorrectly.

I’m sure you have done this yourself. This must happen millions of times a day across the globe, with lightbulbs, washers, that one oddly-shaped screw for adjusting your cabinet hinge. Entirely avoidable with a pinch of common sense: bring the bloody thing with you.

It's tempting to dismiss this as obvious advice. It’s the sort of thing your dad used to sigh and say while rummaging through the bin for the old part he threw out. However, common sense isn’t common and it rarely shows up in the room at the same time as “most people.” Really though, the reason it deserves real attention is that it solves a problem that most of us blame on being tired or scatter-brained.

Think about it. You know your shoe size, your usual coffee order, your phone's storage capacity, because you interact with those categories constantly. I know what an M6 hex bolt with a 1.0mm thread pitch is, but do you? Does the guy in the shop? What’s the difference between a CR2032 and a CR2025 battery? If I say “a button battery” do you and I see the same thing? What about the things you aren’t familiar with and only replace every few years?

This is not a personal failing. We can make excuses to avoid admitting it. Or we can acknowledge that it's just how memory works. Specific, low-frequency details fade fast, and get replaced by vague approximations ("it’s a kind of a small silver yoke"). The part itself, though, never forgets. It doesn’t have to. It has the numbers stamped right on it, or a shape that instantly rules out the majority of the options on the shelf.

The cost of guessing wrong is more than just the wasted trip. It's the wasted time, money (if they won’t accept a return on the item) and a sneaky one is that it kills your momentum. The unimportant wax burner sits waiting for a bulb and takes up precious space in your head you could be using for other, more important tasks. The common sense of bringing the old part helps you bypass all of these pitfalls.

You don't need a framework for this rule. Next time you're about to replace something, familiar or not, just remember to bring it with you.

If it's too big to carry, photos are your backup. Get a few shots of the part itself, any serial numbers, and whatever identifying marks you can find. Put something for scale next to it too. Not a banana. A ruler or a notepad works fine.

And if you're still standing in the aisle unsure whether you've got the right thing, check the returns policy before you head back to the house. It won't guarantee you get it right, but it means a wrong guess only costs you a second trip, not a wasted tenner.

Bringing the old part isn't really a massive lifehack to be honest. But the part that failed is always going to be more reliable than your brain. Memory is not something we can just "get better at" for the most part. Remembering better is difficult, so remove the need to remember in the first place. The old bulb or screw in your pocket or a filter in your hand requires zero-effort.

I’m confident you’ll find this useful beyond hardware stores too. “Just remember it" is usually weaker than a reminder or something written down. The cost of the ten seconds that might take now could save you an entire afternoon later.

What's the worst "should have brought the part" story you've got? And how many trips to Screwfix did it take to get the right one? Drop it in the comments, I'd genuinely love to hear it.

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