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Reading Recap: July 2024
🌳An American Marriage by Tayari Jones Just when you get used to a situation, things change. A compelling story that shows that no matter where you are in life, systemic oppression can take you down. People are imperfect and don’t turn out how you might expect. A happy life can be complicated. 💗10 Poems to…
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A Heuristic for Personal AI Use
When deciding if and how to leverage AI tools in my work, I find it helpful to think about a breakdown of the work’s value between the process and the output. The more biased the value distribution is towards the end result, the more we should utilize AI tools. When the value distribution is primarily…
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Reading Recap: June 2024
🎭Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines by Joy Buolamwini Starting with facial recognition accuracy leading into intersectionality and systemic bias. Already oppressed groups can be further excoded by AI systems. Neutral does not mean unbiased. Why should we trust closed AI systems let loose on society? On…
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The No Project
When we say “yes” to something, we say “no” to something else. Oftentimes we are saying no to ourselves or taking time away from our priorities. With that in mind, I set myself a goal of saying “no” three times a week. I figured that was a manageable number and would help keep my focus…
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Reading Recap: May 2024
💸The Go-Giver: A Little Story About A Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann The more you give of yourself to help others, the more that comes back to reward you. A short, fun read that inspires and educates. 🪕Born Standing Up by Steve Martin An overnight success; decades in the making.…
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The Power of Nuance
David Epstein’s book, Range, highlights how a broad set of experiences helps us drive innovation. Knowledge in different domains enables us to make analogies to describe new and unexplored territory. Epstein doesn’t specifically call out vocabulary, but I believe an extensive repository of words helps us build the analogies necessary to explain the yet unknown.…
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It’s ok to be the smartest person in the room.
The slogans we tell ourselves shape our actions and mindset. The common adage to surround yourself with smart people, aka “be the dumbest person in the room”, has some merit. You are prompting yourself to listen, to learn, to ask clarifying questions. These are all valuable actions. But this mindset can also hold you back…
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What Powerlifting taught me about planning.
I competed in powerlifting for several years. One of the things I enjoyed most about the sport was building and executing a training program. As I delve deeper and deeper into the world of planning for productivity, I am finding many principles that translate from the world of strength to the world of getting what…
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Reading Recap: April 2024
📢Talk like Ted by Carmine Gallo Great advice and examples on successful public speaking. My favorite tips were to make an emotional connection, not to read your slides, and to speak with your body language. 🧘Tranquility by Tuesday by Laura Vanderkam Another helpful planning and productivity book. I loved the focus on some of the…
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Eyes up. Breathe. Let’s Go!
This is a little mantra I put together before a recent presentation. 👀Eyes Up When I saw pictures of myself from a previous presentation, I noticed that my body language was very different at the beginning of the talk from the rest of it. Getting started is the hardest part of presenting for me. This…