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Hungry Dogs Run Faster
Jason Kelce quoted his offensive line coach towards the end of an emotional retirement speech. He talked about missing his time as the underdog. Life is often more straightforward when you have something to prove. When you achieve success, you have to keep motivated by finding new doubters to prove wrong. Fortunately, there is almost…
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Copilot, make me a better presenter
I can’t say the initial PowerPoint demo with Copilot building out a fifteen-slide deck to plan a child’s birthday party resonated with me personally. Perhaps there are people out there doing this, but even the thought of it is beyond anything that will ever happen in my life. That being said, I have found some…
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Do we need tech support anymore?
AI is increasingly going to answer more and more complex questions. The types of questions that technical support organizations field from customers. It is not clear exactly what percentage of questions AI will be able to answer and how soon, but there is no doubt that it is a non-zero number. Every manager who runs…
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Reading Recap: February 2024
Most of my February reading was dedicated to Black History Month. This was the first time I had done a themed reading month. It was a great opportunity to learn more and to read some books that I might not have gotten to otherwise. ♀️ Sister Outsider – Audre Lourde The writings of Audre Lourde…
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Revisiting FIRE
In 2015, I discovered and dove into the world of FIRE aka Financial Independence, Retire Early. This movement was my first exposure to intentional lifestyle design. Many of the themes from FIRE are present in current-day productivity advice. The Retire Early portion of FIRE wasn’t really about retirement in the traditional sense. It was a…
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Mastering My Monkey Mind
MMMM…meditation. My nemesis. Whenever I read a list of wellness habits, I gleefully check off items I practice habitually. Until enviably I land on meditation. I have sporadically meditated over the years, but it has never become an atomic habit. So, I decided to take on a meditation challenge with the goal of ten minutes…
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Failure is Painful
We often grow and learn the most through our failures. We like to believe that when we do that right thing, it will feel good. When it comes to learning through failure, even the best kind of failure, this belief is a myth. Learning from failure is not always fun. In fact, it usually isn’t.…
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Reading Recap: January 2024
🦡Where the Deer and the Antelope Play – Nick Offerman Shout out to Brinton Johnson who recommended I read Nick Offerman. I don’t know much about his acting career, but he is a great writer. I chose this title from Nick’s catalog, because I love hiking and national parks. I enjoyed Nick’s storytelling about his…
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Build Durable Skills
Durable skills, skills that last, have been top of mind for me lately. During Microsoft’s Discover Day, I heard Nadim Abdo recommend building durable skills like communications. Serendipitously, I was writing myself a note about durable skills in a presentation on the value of developing a deep reading practice. Durable skills like communication and reading…
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Become a Culture Leader
Early-stage career development in technical roles is driven by developing the ability to deliver more and more complex solutions. If you increase your technical skills, have basic professionalism, and are reasonably productive, that is usually enough to propel you upward in seniority. But there may come a day when this formula ceases to be so…