Hey , 

This is the third edition of my monthly newsletter - "The Round Up". 

Since it's that time of the year here is an article I wrote on how to set realistic and achievable new year resolutions. A basic summary could be: 

1. Establish what type of person you want to become
2. Study people with those characteristics
3. Implement their systems into your daily schedule

Survivorship Bias

I recently heard an intriguing story. During world war two the American Army wanted to find a way of decreasing the amount of ally losses to aircraft. 

During World War 2 America lost about 90,000 aircraft!

The simple solution would appear to be to add armour to the fuselage of the aircraft. This would help the aircraft withstand a greater amount of damage. The problem with armour is that it adds weight, which decreases the aircraft's range. This isn't so great if you're trying to fly across the English channel and drop a bomb on Hitler. 

So what now? 

The American Army employed Abraham Wald to investigate the best way to decrease losses to their aircraft. 

During an interview, Elon Musk revealed to principles which he believes are behind SpaceX's incredible success. SpaceX has launched over 25 Rockets in 2020 alone. 

Principle One

Everyone is an Engineer. At SpaceX everyone is expected to have a global general knowledge of the entire rocket. If you are an engineer working on a booster, you can't have no knowledge of how the nosecone works. This principle helps SpaceX avoid information silos. 

Principle Two

Don't overoptimize something that doesn't need to exist. Instead of trying to improve a system, rather ask "does this system need to exist?".

I go into more depth in a twitter thread which you can find below. 

Blur-Lights in the Videodrome is a nearly 40-minute drum solo. The solo was initially filmed at Meinl's Drum festival but due to sound issues Improta decided to re-record it in a studio. This solo is quite possibly one of the most brilliant blends of pure talent and artistic creativity that I have seen in a long time. 

Here is a quote from one of the technicians: 

There’s no video trickery or mixing trickery. It’s just a good sounding room with good mics, and a really good drummer. I was at the festival in July and watched Aric’s performance from start to finish and I was at the studio and watched this performance from start to finish. What the attendees at the festival witnessed is what you are now about to witness.

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! 

As always, please ask me any questions by 

replying to this email.