-
Reading Recap: July 2025
Reading Recap: July 2025 The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel This book offers many new insights into how we think about money, even for the experienced finance reader. It reminds me of Freakonomics crossed with personal finance. When and where you are born can play a dramatic role in your opportunities for success and…
-
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…
-
Business Continuity Planning for AI Agents
Contingency plans are nothing new for business operations. Workers get sick, take vacation, don’t perform as expected, etc. The business needs some slack capacity and/or a prioritization system when there isn’t enough capacity to meet demands. Process automation also isn’t particularly new. Again, you can build in slack capacity and/or task prioritization to manage outages…
-
Find and Cater to Your Audience
Kind of crazy, but I have been presenting on leadership and career development for over a decade now. I was taking a walk down memory lane and stumbled across one of my earliest slide decks. I actually thought it was great. Many of the ideas and style carry through to today. The problem was that…
-
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…
-
Ep. 26 A Trauma Based View of the Future of Work
In this episode we examine how the dramatic changes in the world of knowledge work over the past five years can have traumatic effects. Acute Trauma – Life is noticeably different before and after Job Loss, Layoffs, New AI Capabilities Chronic Trauma – Prolonged exposure to a harmful situation Self-doubt, hopelessness, insecurity, fear, negativity about…
-
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…
-
Reading Recap: June 2025
Trauma: The Invisible Epidemic by Paul Conti This isn’t an area that I have a lot of background. I find it valuable to be humbled by how naive I am in many areas and experiences. While making the world a place of healing has universal value, there are many practical lessons for managers to better…
-
Emergence of the Second Visible Hand
Capitalism is the driver pushing businesses to endlessly chase efficiency and growth. While it is the current cause casting so much uncertainty on human job prospects, I think that ultimately it will help produce the cure. In a market economy, it is entirely logical for businesses to lower costs and reduce profit. There is no…
-
Why Our Language for AI Matters
Describing AI Agents as digital workers who are members of your digital workforce is great marketing. It is also dehumanizing. Analogy is a powerful tool to explain innovation. Referring to something we already know and understand makes it easier to conceptualize novel ideas. There are certainly similarities between tasks currently done by human workers and…