I had the distinct privilege of delivering a keynote presentation at cf.Objective() 2017 in Washington, DC. The slides — probably the most important one is the list of resources at the end — are on GitHub. Thanks to all who did me the honor of listening. I am humbled and grateful.
A while back, I was made well aware of my, shall we say, un-presence. I’d be physically present with my family, but distracted the point of absence. Usually, it was due to a device stealing my time from them. The phone in my pocket was becoming a time-and-attention thief. A Facebook message. A Twitter reply. An email. I am still not great at this — my kids would probably say I’m terrible — but I’ve come a long way and thought I’d share some of my tactics for helping reduce social media and email overload. The point of this is to … Continue reading Remaining more present by controlling information overload
This is a quick story about parenting, and about positive self-talk. Several months ago, our youngest daughter joined a local soccer rec league. It’s her first experience playing soccer outside of the occasional game in gym class. We’re not a rabid soccer family; my wife never played, I played a year in high school, and our oldest daughter played for a few seasons when she was little, much to her displeasure. Now, being her first time and all, our youngest had pretty much no clue what to do, or what was going on in general. There’s a ball; there’s a goal. there’s lots … Continue reading It’s my chicken!
Before diving head-first in to 2016, I want to look back a year and look forward a bit less than that. It’s said, “The days go by so slowly, and the years go by so fast,” and I see evidence of that when reflecting over a timeline of at least as long as a year This was my 2015: Changes at work Since about mid-2013, at my dayjob I’ve been the nominal, non-supervisory team lead for what was once called our “Release Management” team and is now called “Software Delivery” team. It’s grown considerably since its inception, both in terms … Continue reading 2015 Year in review; What’s coming in 2016
In February, 2014, I started working >50% at a proper standing desk at my house. In the year prior, I occasionally worked at a make-shift standing desk in my kitchen, which comprised standing at the island and resting my laptop on a flimsy Disney Princess art tray. The ergonomics were obviously terrible, so I only did that for a short spell. I had become enamored with the $22 standing desk and started planning my own. The final component was a proper monitor, which my employer provided in February. I followed the instructions to build the monitor / keyboard stand, and in no … Continue reading Standing desk: A 1-year retrospective
