Here are some useful (and sometimes unconventional) travel tips from Kevin Kelly:

• Laser out, meander back. When you arrive in a new country, immediately proceed to the farthest, most remote, most distant place you intend to reach during the trip. Do not rest overnight in the arrival city. Then once you reach your furthest point, unpack, explore, and work your way slowly back to the big city, wherever your international departure airport is.
• Paradoxically, the best way to avoid that is to give strangers your trust and treat them well. Being good to them brings out their good. If you are on your best behavior, they will be on their best behavior. And vice versa. To stay safe, smile. Be humble and minimize your ego. 
• Take a chance. If things fall apart, your vacation has just turned into an adventure. Perfection is for watches. Trips should be imperfect. There are no stories if nothing goes amiss. 
• Counterintuitively, the longer your trip, the less stuff you should haul. Travelers still happy on a 6-week trip will only have carry-on luggage. Use laundry detergent sheets if needed and pack a layer no matter what.
• When you are traveling you should minimize the amount of time you spend in transit—once you arrive. The hard-to-accept truth is that it is far better to spend more time in a few places than a little time in a bunch of places. 
• A souvenir should have some meaning from the trip. When buying a souvenir, ask yourself where will it live once you get home. The best souvenirs from a trip are your memories of the trip so find a way to commit them to your memory: keep a journal, send updates to a friend, make a photo book. 
• When asking someone for a restaurant recommendation, don’t ask them where is a good place you should eat; ask them where they eat. Also, walk at least five blocks away from a tourist attraction to get an inexpensive and authentic meal.
• The list of most coveted cities to visit have one striking thing in common—they are pedestrian centric. They reward walking.
• When checking the status of your flight, first check whether your plane has even arrived at your departure airport. Put AirTags into your bags, so you can track them when they are out of your sight. 
• The Google Translate app for your phone is seriously good, and free.
• Organize your travel around passions instead of destinations. 

The #yearly_roundup of things that I enjoyed in 2024 is not too different from the previous one. In fact, looking back at the yearly roundups since 2017 I see some recurring themes: reading, work, football, traveling, health, a few TV series/games, maybe a device or a service that really brought me joy. So this time I’ll try to skip those and focus only on the things that stood up in 2024.

1. Learning how to swim. Perhaps swimming it’s too much, and ‘advancing in water one lap at a time without fear of drowning’ would be a more accurate representation of what I’m doing. Either way, according to my Apple Watch, I had 64 swimming sessions in 2024, covering over 32 kilometres. I call that a win.
2. Spending more time and energy on my kids growth. I even came up with a framework covering what they should know by the time they leave home. There’s a fine line though between helping them and overdoing things. Also a lot of frustrations along the way, but definitely worth the time.
3. Finding joy in little things. That colour-changing, ambient light lamp. A scented candle. The digital frame reminding you about a random photo you took years ago. Having an unscheduled beer with the neighbour while chatting about your day. The first warm days of the year. The nice wallpapers. Magnets. The scent of the garden leaves in September. That puzzle game with your kids.
   Sometimes you need to actively look for thin slices of joy.
4. Biking. Spending less time in traffic while also doing a good workout? I’m up for it (except when it’s freezing outside, because I don’t enjoy the cold).
5. The law of unintended consequences. “People respond to incentives, although not necessarily in ways that are predictable. Therefore, one of the most powerful laws in the universe is the law of unintended consequences.” source: the Freakonomics guys
6. Data science and data visualisation.

Yearly stats 2024:

• 10.300 pages read (up from 7100)
• 33 books read (up from 17)
• 5.10m steps (down from 5.19)
• 498 exercise hours (up from 459)
• 3870 kms covered (down from 3916)
• 259 Mcal energy burned (up from 246)
• 7h 52m slept on average (up from 7h 49m)

Until the next time 👋

Look for thin slices of joy

Notice the joyful moments in your day, however small, however fleeting. Notice how good it feels to have that first sip of your drink. Or how tasty that first bite of food is. The pleasurable feeling of your skin in warm water when you wash your hands or take a shower. The moment of delight and comfort when you see your friend.

These thin slices of joy only last a few seconds but they add up! The more you notice joy, the more you will experience joy in your life.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/happy-happy-joy-joy-1.3804787/joy-on-demand-the-three-second-fix-1.3804789

Cherish the “garbage time”

Every minute can be “quality time.” All time with your kids — all time with anyone you love — is created equal. What you do with it is what makes it special. Not where. Or for how long. Or at what cost. Eating cereal together can be wonderful. […] There is no such thing as “quality time.” Cherish the “garbage time.” It’s the best kind of time there is.

https://dailydad.com/cherish-the-garbage-time/

Pull yourself together

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year…

The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

CS Lewis, 1948. https://fscsmn.org/email-article/very-applicable-to-today-written-by-cs-lewis-in-1948/

“The world doesn’t owe you a living”

He didn’t judge a man by how many times he got knocked down but by how fast he got up. ‘Get up!’ That was his phrase, and it has echoed through my life. The world dropped you on your head? My dad would say ‘Get up!’ You’re lying in bed feeling sorry for yourself? Get up! You got knocked on your ass on the football field? Get up! Bad grade? Get up! The girl’s parents won’t let her go out with a Catholic boy? Get up!

Joe Biden – Promises to keep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promises_to_Keep_(Biden_book)