A recent episode of the Best of Both Worlds podcast took a Q&A question about engaging with career coaches. The hosts took a very skeptical view of most coaches and recommended that the listener proceed with caution. Despite my title here, I wholeheartedly agree with this advice. It isn’t easy to differentiate before meeting between…
🧑⚕️Disabling Professions by Ivan Illich A series of essays arguing that professional societies make individuals less able to understand certain decisions. This lessens our individual agency and we become dependent on professionals. Professional societies sustain their relevance through a cycle on increasing complexity which requires us to rely on them more and more. 🎢Thrillville U.S.A….
Outsourcing drudgery is a common recommendation from productivity experts and leading entrepreneurs. Tim Ferriss recommended leveraging human virtual assistants as a key strategy to unlock The 4-Hour Workweek. Cal Newport and Laura Vanderkam have sung the praises of outsourcing various chores to enable parents to be both highly productive and live a well-balanced life. Despite…
You have probably seen that prominent tech leaders such as Mark Zuckerburg and Elon Musk are training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Maybe you wonder how fighting appeals to these titans of the tech industry. I won’t argue the efficacy of one martial art over another, but one thing that stands out for Jiu-Jitsu is that you…
A quick summary of the books I read this past month. I will do a deep dive later this month. On the road to 60 it’s 41 down, 19+ to go. 🤫Quiet Leadership by David Rock Drive workplace performance by changing how we and our colleagues think. Coaching techniques to help others change their own…
Establishing new habits and routines is hard. It is common to feel some mental resistance when you try to take action on your new practice. When I talk with people about building a reading practice, they often comment that it is hard to focus and make progress on reading if they have not been doing…
🌳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…
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…
🎭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…
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…