investing
I was at a professional event recently and met an incredibly successful person who was sharing some stories of his career journey. His path included twice losing obscene amounts of money, much more than most people make in their whole lives, and yet now being successful a third time. One
Organizational Culture
I've heard of the concept of mise en place, which is French for "putting in place" or "everything in it's place." While I'm not a culinary artist, I appreciate increasingly appreciate, as a parent of three young children, the importance
lessons-learned
Daniel Pink recently posted a great 10-minute video about finding your life's purpose with some great suggestions, several of which I haven't heard before:
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Ethan Mollick, in his recent Using AI Right Now: A Quick Guide, made a great point that GenAI newbies often miss that after you pick a GenAI platform (e.g., ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini), you should be intentional when you pick a specific model, based on your query. It&
miscellaneous
I'm a big fan of listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and struggle to find the time to read the articles and PDF docs I want to prioritize that aren't available in audio format. I recently found (thanks to a sponsorship on the Daring Fireball blog) a
leadership
I found this podcast interview with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky (the transcript is available here) fascinating on how he considers organizational design at the enterprise level. He makes the point that if an organization wants a single, fast-moving flywheel (a cohesive set of priorities), they should have a lean, functional
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
A few weeks ago, I attended UVA Venture Capital Conference, which was in UVA Darden's (their business school) beautiful building in Arlington, overlooking the DC skyline. The event was great, but the session that really stuck out to me was the Investing in AI session -- the panel
lessons-learned
I recently read a longform article High Agency In 30 Minutes by George Mack, which was an incredible ride! In a world of infintite entertainment, so much of it so tempating (see Cal Newport's concept of Ultra-Processed Content), Mack's article was an emotional rollercoaster with an
fun
Our family has been enjoying 3D printing as a 2025 adventure, which has been fun. I took our older kids to a 3D printing conference (https://3dprintopia.com/), after a friend mentioned it (he runs HueForge). Our older kids were excited to see the creations people made. Santa generously brought
lessons-learned
When you're asking for help (e.g., looking for career advice, asking for recommendations/referrals for a new job, asking to borrow something from a friend), make it as easy as you can for them to help you. For example: * If you're looking for a new
data
To become better at visually communicating (e.g., creating diagrams for technical documents, facilitating a meeting with a whiteboard or digital whiteboard), you should expose yourself to many different people visually communicate. This allows you to build a mental library of visual concepts you can use. Some examples: * Lucidchart has
lessons-learned
While we live in an era of impressive Generative AI capabilities regarding graphics (ChatGPT and other GenAIs have some capabilities here and Napkin looks impressive regarding diagram creation), my recommendation when you're trying to think through a conceptual graphic is still to use PowerPoint to explore different diagram