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- #86: From Accra, with love.
#86: From Accra, with love.
Shem Opolot
August 30, 2024
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I’m childish and romantic, so I waited until this week to type this:
I’m writing this from my hotel room bed in Accra, Ghana.
The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the ocean waves are kissing the shore repeatedly without consent, the food is spicy, and the Jollof is better.
Hanging out with Africans from around 50 of the 55 African states is a convention of suffering Olympics: The first domino—our roads don’t have lights, then—at least you guys, for us—our roads are not even marked; our roads have potholes; our potholes have roads; our roads are murram; we don’t have roads. But we’re all united by the magical power of plantain.
LIFE.
Life is in the journey.
“At the end of the day….the day ends.”
Evelyn says this all the time, especially when I overstay in D.C., and she has to watch the kids alone. She refers to the fatigue that prevents her from planning too far into the future. Instead, she takes things one moment at a time until, eventually, the day ends.
The moment you get that dream job.
The moment you get that house.
The moment you find that great love.
The moment you’re finally happy.
Dreams, hopes, and the possibility of achieving them keep us alive.
Even as I sat at the conference today, I imagined myself as the head of Africa CDC. I looked so good on that panel, I tell you. I think I even had a full head of hair.
Even the convention of suffering Olympics suffers the same affliction:
“The problem with Africa is _____.”
“I wish Africa would do _____.”
“You know our people, they need _____.”
Always dreams of a better Africa. Always destinations. Always lofty, wordy prescriptions.
Even the world of project management is obsessed with impact. With the things we can’t control.
But life is in the journey.
The best thing about your friendship isn’t the crowning moment when you stood beside your friend at the altar. It’s a thousand moments stacked together over time. It’s skipping school together. It’s crying together. It’s laughing together. It’s calling them up right now to talk about nothing. Doing big things together. Doing small things together. Doing nothing together.
You can only control what you do now.
If you think about it, *hits blunt* the future never really exists. When it arrives, it’s the present.
Nothing has taught me this better than having children.
During the hard times, you catch yourself saying, “I can’t wait for him to feed himself.” “I can’t wait for her to sleep through the night.” “I can’t wait for her to talk and just tell me what she wants.”
But then you realize they’ll never be this age again. They’ll never babble and giggle like this again.
So, you stop mulling over milestones and focus on stacking moments together.
Instead of saying, “I can’t wait to watch the entire Disney movie catalog with them” (I can’t wait), I just try to get them to open their mouths at lunch.
What are you doing now? Take the first step to living the life you want.
THINGS.
A tweet.
I don’t know how I feel about this yet.
Addiction is a progressive narrowing
of the things that bring you pleasure.
Happiness is a progressive expansion of the things that bring you pleasure. The former emerges passively.
The latter takes work.— Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. (@hubermanlab)
6:28 PM • Oct 23, 2022
A graphic.
To reinforce last week’s point:
Pictures from Accra.
I’ve barely had any time to see Accra during the day; I hope to do so tomorrow. But here are a few highlights:
I met Emmanuel in Nairobi 5 years ago, and we hit it off. He’s brilliant, eloquent, and has finally left the street after breaking many hearts.
I met Alinafe at the conference. She’s one of those people who takes up space by force. She’s a young, free-spirited trailblazer from Malawi who runs her mouth and Malawi’s health system formidably.
At the mall with Alinafe, these two little girls on the left asked us for money to fund what Ugandan university students called “Term X.” I didn’t have change, and I told them they were probably lying to me, but I gave them $10 and forced them to take a selfie with us while saying, “School feeeeees!” Alinafe was convinced they were hitting on me, and I didn’t object because—why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
WORK.
How to paragraph in an Excel cell.
You want to add a paragraph within a cell.
Here’s the data:
Let’s give John Smith a home.
First, more often than not, you probably shouldn’t. You should consider being more precise.
But in some cases…
After typing one sentence in a cell, press Alt + Enter in Excel for Windows or Option + Return in Excel for Mac to add a paragraph within the same cell.
This document will help you start your journey to being above average with Excel.
FUN.
The Friday Fix Playlist
Shem’s picks
✅ The world’s most extraordinary tiny hotels.
✅ The books that run Silicon Valley.
✅ A statistical analysis of the greatest actors of all time.
✅ The internet’s largest word association game.
✅ See if you’re special: visualizing the most common 4-digit PIN codes.
Have a great weekend,
— Shem
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