Author Archives: rossjamesparker

Business, Personal

The formula for success

As part of my project to work through my backlog of books, I’ve recently finished The Formula by Albert-László Barabási, subtitled “The five laws behind why we succeed or fail”.

This isn’t a how-to book, it’s a why-it-works book. It’s about what separates success from mere high performance. It’s clearly written, easy to follow, and refreshingly blunt. Unlike most books in the success genre, it doesn’t offer tips or routines. Instead, it outlines five laws that, together, describe the mechanics of how and when performance translates into success.

Barabási deliberately avoids prescriptive advice—but the framework invites reflection. I won’t repeat the five laws here, as I think they are the key selling point of the book, and that doesn’t seem fair. Yet here’s how I think the five laws could translate into action:

  1. You need to nail the measurable stuff. But if your work is hard to measure, you must also make sure that you are investing in your network, and letting social measurement do its work. Find the people who shape reputations and stay on their radar.
  2. Position yourself. Don’t just be competent—be seen as the one to call. And yes, that might mean telling your story louder than feels comfortable.
  3. Stack visible wins. Say yes to opportunities that put you on stage. And keep your skills sharp—momentum without substance fizzles fast. Don’t just know the new trends, master them.
  4. Lead. Form good teams, absolutely. But step up when it’s time to speak for them. Be the person others credit when things go right.
  5. Play long-term. Keep going. Most people quit too soon.

Barabási’s point is simple, and slightly uncomfortable: performance matters—but recognition matters more. Managing that second part is a skill worth cultivating.

Standard
Personal

Two separate hobbies

There is a saying that “book buying and book reading are two separate hobbies”. I agree with this. I find it hard to resist buying or borrowing an interesting-looking book, especially when they are going cheaply at charity shops, which is my preferred method of acquisition. As a result, my shelves overflow, and the stack on my bedside table is constantly on the verge of landslide. My saving grace is that I do clear out books when I’ve read them; normally back to charity shops—so that others can indulge their bargain bibliomania too.

Early this Spring, I forced myself not to buy any more books until I’d made a dent in the piles that I had. It’s been tough. I haven’t limited my audiobook consumption, which represents around half of the books I read each year. Partly that is because audiobooks don’t take up space, and partly because I use them in different way: they are the soundtracks to my drives, my runs, and my more monotonous chores. The challenge was simply not to buy more tempting physical hardbacks that would languish on the stack for years.

Aside from the practical benefits, there is a broader psychological workout here. Neophilia tempts me to start every shiny new title. The endowment effect guilts me into finishing books I’m not enjoying. Both are distractions from the discipline of reading with purpose. I’m also trying to force myself to ditch books that aren’t delivering, rather than pushing through to the end. There is one book that’s been on my bedside stack for more than a year, as others have disappeared above and below it. I need to accept that this one may just not be for me: if there hasn’t been a good time to read it by now, when will there be? I haven’t quite let go of that unread volume yet—but I’m closer. And maybe that’s what this little experiment is really about: not just decluttering the shelf, but clearing some space in the mind.

Standard
Tech

Automatically delete old emails from Gmail

I am fastidious about keeping my systems tidy, but until recently I had been unable to solve one particular issue: removing old messages from Google’s email platform, Gmail.

I have been a heavy Gmail user for decades. Because of that, the archive is as useful as the inbox to me. It is often the first place I go to answer everyday questions, such as “When did we go on holiday to…?” or “When did I buy that pair of jeans?” As almost everything in my personal life goes through that archive, the answer is normally there, in receipts, in booking confirmations, or similar.

Yet there is also other stuff there. Things I don’t need. The bulk of this is notification or update email that is useful at the time, but useless months after the event. For example, I have an email alert for new property for sale in my area. That’s very useful when I receive it, but it’s not so useful a few months later, when that property has been sold. Now I can use Gmail’s “Rules” feature to tag these messages and auto-archive them. But I was frustrated that I couldn’t “expire” them after a few months without manually filtering them and hitting delete.

However, with some online suggestions and some coding help from AI, I have come up with a solution that stacks two great Google features:

  1. The awesome search and filter labels in Gmail, particularly being able to search for messages older_than:1m (older than one month).
  2. Google’s Apps Script, which lets you script with access to your Google Account and the apps and data therein.

With the help of these tools, some internet inspiration and some AI coding, I created a new “project” in Apps Script called Gmail Cleaner, and replaced the boilerplate code in the main file (code.gs) with the following:

function GmailCleaner() {

  // Define an array of criteria

  var criteriaList = [
    "label:property older_than:2m",
    "label:career older_than:1m from:\"LinkedIn Job Alerts\""
  ];
  
  // Process each criteria using a helper function

  criteriaList.forEach(processCriteria);
}

function processCriteria(criteria) {
  var conversations = GmailApp.search(criteria);
  conversations.forEach(function(thread) {
    thread.moveToTrash();
  });
}

In this code you should be able to see that I am deleting email that meets any of the following criteria:

  • Emails that I have auto-tagged “property” (and which already skip the inbox) and which are more than two months old
  • Emails that I have auto-tagged “career”, which are older than one month, and which come from “LinkedIn Job Alerts”.

You can add more criteria, just be sure to put a comma between them.

Note that I have escaped the speech marks above – you may need to do this too.

Once you’ve got the code right for you (and I suggest you test the filters in Gmail search first, before adding them to the script) you need to save the file, and set it up to “deploy”. To do this you can set a “time trigger”. Absurdly, you need to select the option to deploy from the “Head”. I don’t know what that means, but I don’t care, because it works.

When I tried to run this the first time, I needed to authorise Apps Script to access my Gmail account, and, amusingly, my Google browser did issue a security alert about letting this Google service access my other Google service. However, once I’d jumped that hurdle, the script has been running perfectly for weeks.

I now have this running every 6 hours, making my Gmail archive a lighter, cleaner, happier place. If you’re the sort of person who likes an inbox that earns its keep, I recommend giving this a try. The future shouldn’t be full of stale job alerts and sold properties.

Standard
Business

Terry Smith’s 2024 Letter: Three Sharp Ideas

I always read Smith’s annual letters—they’re rare examples of plain-spoken investment thinking. This year, three things stood out:

  • He expects weight-loss drugs to reshape consumer spending, particularly reducing alcohol consumption and potentially becoming tools in treating alcoholism.
  • He remains bullish on tobacco harm reduction. Not necessarily a surprise, but worth noting for its consistency.
  • Most interestingly, he argues that passive investing via index funds “is in fact a momentum strategy”—an underappreciated point.

Read the full letter here.

Standard