Perhaps my favourite line from Sandra Martin’s obituary:

Elizabeth wore the crown and Philip the trousers.

This is my favourite obituary of the day. Brought tears to my eyes. The world will never see another individual — especially a man — take the role Philip took without a word of public complaint.

Honourable obituary for an honourable man. Seventy-three years of marriage and ever the man of duty. Incredible.

I’ve drooled over the Nomos Tangente Neomatik 41 Update the last few years — I’m silently hoping it’s my graduation gift in a few months. But the latest update to the Metro line gives the Tangente a run for its money. This watch is stunning.

I’m sure the majority of my readership will look at this headline, nod their head, and move on with their day. Asynchronous communication, even from the outside looking in, appears to have enormous advantages. But you try telling that to different generations of workers. There’s a certain instant gratification element baked into more-traditional office environments that’s very difficult to overcome. You can chip away at it, slowly but surely, but this isn’t a change you can make overnight.

But putting on your noise-cancelling headphones to toil away at your desk is actually different than doing the same surrounded by other people buzzing over your shoulder. There are many ways coffee shops trigger our creativity in a way offices and homes don’t. Research shows that the stimuli in these places make them effective environments to work; the combination of noise, casual crowds and visual variety can give us just the right amount of distraction to help us be our sharpest and most creative. (So, no, it’s not just that double espresso.)

This is fascinating — I have these types of distractions at the office and they are totally, 100%, unequivocally distractions.

Jason Fried speaking the truth:

Truth is, every day work is rarely exciting. Most work is pretty mundane. Even work on meaningful things. The most profound stuff is built one mostly boring brick at a time. Even the most creative ideas, the best art, the breakthroughs have to be assembled, and assembly isn't typically what fires people up.

If people ask me if I love accounting, I usually answer with “I don’t hate it” or “I don’t dread going to the office in the morning” or “I enjoy it most days”.

Matt Birchler lists three of his unfair advantages... so I wanted to do the same. These may be mundane (and maybe completely inaccurate), but if I gave my list, they’d be:

1. Fast typer.
2. Patient/willing to work hard for a long time for a result.
3. I come from nothing, so even a small gain is something.

What are yours?

Assuming Rory’s actual best is in the mid-700 kilojoules, I’m still utterly blown away. My personal best is 242 kilojoules on a 20-minute ride, or a 545 kilojoule pace in 45 minutes (something I was proud of until I read this piece about Rory). So he’s still 37.6% better than I am. And that’s if I could somehow keep my pace up — I fell to the floor moaning for 10 minutes after I finished my PR ride.

Ain’t this the truth. Here I am, 10:15PM, having arrived at the office at 7:30AM, and only stopping for a 30 minute supper break and a 25 minute ride on the Peloton. I chose this profession, so you won’t catch me complaining about it. But I can sympathize with those who can’t find the guts to call it quits for the day.