Category: Productivity
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In Defense of the Office
My first professional office had a door, two desks, a computer at each desk, and atop each desk sat two monitors. There was a large window out of which I could watch the squirrels play. They were merry, and so was I. Even though I was a junior intern, there was a sense of permanence…
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John McPhee and More Personal Computing
In Draft No. 4, McPhee describes his pre-computer writing method. Handwritten notes and audio tapes are transcribed by typing on a typewriter. He manually rolled the paper after each note to leave space. Once all the notes were typed up, he photocopied them and then used scissors to cut out each individual note. Notes were…
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Small Seasonality and Productivity
We often think about productivity as the tactical progress we make while at work. While it is important to be able to execute effectively on plans, it can be difficult to strategize on big picture ideas at the same time. Some time and space away from day-to-day activity enables our strategic brain to work at…
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Rules for Cognitive Offloading
You may have seen the recent MIT paper presenting data suggesting that using ChatGPT for your writing causes your cognitive abilities to atrophy from lack of use. So, I thought it was worth thinking a bit about when one might choose to take the trade-off of ease and speed as opposed to writing the painful…
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FOMO, AI, and the Infinite Buffer Problem
I see a lot of people thinking of AI as a solution to avoid missing out on meetings or email responses. While this isn’t necessarily a bad idea, it can be problematic if the time saved just gets spent on more meetings and emails. The challenge is the Infinite Buffer Problem: in organizations of a…
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Hard things are hard
Yes…I know…Quite the hot take. 🌶️ This time of year, it feels like a reminder is in order. It doesn’t matter if you have 🗓️The perfect productivity system. 🏋️The perfect workout program. 💰The perfect financial plan. Success in any of those domains is still going to be hard. 🪨 Systems are helpful, maybe even necessary…
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How I read 60 books in a year with S.M.A.R.T goal setting
Specific: Clearly define what you want to accomplish. Avoid vague descriptions. Print books. Read end-to-end. Measurable: Ensure you can track your progress and measure the outcome. 5 books a month. I tracked the books on my planning whiteboard and checked them off as I completed them. Achievable: Set realistic goals that are attainable given your…
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VidIQ Keyword Automation Part 1
Starting with a list of keywords, we sort them by their VidIQ scores and select the top 8. In the previous video ( • AI and Automation to add YouTube Vide… ), we asked GenAI to give us 6-8 tags. In this case, we ask for 30 potential keywords that we will whittle down to 8. We start with those keywords in cell A1.…
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AI and Automation to add YouTube Video Description and Keywords
Here is a short video showing how I leveraged AI and automation to reduce the amount of work I need to do to put out content. In this example I start with a text transcript of a video that I uploaded to YouTube. I ask generative AI to create a description and keywords, then run…