Lifestyle choices can be fraught. When it comes to healthy or unhealthy living, our choices can fall anywhere on what seems to be a pretty massive scale. When you have elite athletes on one end and morbidly obese shut-ins on the other, it can be hard to assess what is “healthy enough.” I’m going to…
The new loneliness of the remote worker
I’m a fully remote human being. I’ve always been a bit remote from others. Ask any friend or family member and I’m sure they will tell you that even as I child I kept my distance. I never wanted to be too tied up in other peoples’ business. I kept myself to myself. And so…
Will you be my friend?
Will you be my friend? Just kidding, but not really. Something strange is happening to our collective social reality, and I think I need some help to figure out how to have friends. The research is clear. Those who feel socially isolated have dire health outcomes and chronic stress. Our bodies were evolved to be…
Sometimes a great Notion
Do you Notion? I had been hearing a lot about this new notes/ productivity tool, but I resisted trying it for a long time. I’ve been using Evernote for over a decade to take notes, and I have a task manager that I like (TickTick, though I have also used Todoist for years). Why would…
What if you have the Alzheimer’s gene?
Turns out, I’m APoE4 positive My Grandpa disappeared into the vortex of Alzheimer’s disease over the course of more than a decade before he finally left this world in a morphine nap at the age of 89. It was a terrible thing, to watch the journey from his first noticeable lapses—“My onboard computer is on…
Doing the things I don’t want to do
DO NOT WANT This week, I’m starting a series of user interviews at work, in an effort to develop personas for users of the content we produce. It’s all part of my role as a senior content strategist at a software company, and it is something I have been working toward for a year. I…
What’s in a January?
One month into 2023, and what have I done? Have I forgotten my resolutions and abandoned my optimistic goals? Have I made a great start to the next twelve months, or have I stayed stuck in my familiar rut? The truth is, I didn’t start the year with any grand plans for the next twelve…
My 12 favorite problems
I get a lot of ideas from podcasts lately. I sort of rediscovered them years after an initial foray into some true crime series when Serial was the cultural phenomenon. Based on a recommendation from a fellow productivity nerdette, I started listening to Hurry Slowly on my daily walks (which is more about exploring your…
Quiet Quitting since 1990
Every time someone starts talking about “quiet quitting,” I internally snicker. Like, have we just now noticed that most people show up for work and don’t actually do much? Is this a new trend? A Gen Z phenomenon? Uh, no. Look, I am arguably very productive at work. I’m a good employee—the one you can…
New year, same old me
I can’t believe we’ve made it to 2023. It sounds so far in the FUTURE. I mean—as someone born in 1971—I grew up with the year 2000 as the shimmering threshold of a futuristic technotopia. We haven’t quite figured out the utopia aspect yet, but we truly do have a lot more tech, for better…
Plumb Wonderful 