Check-in on my phone. Confirm airport, departure time, and gate. Count the number of days I’ll be gone. One outfit for each day. Always extra socks and extra underwear because the unexpected is amplified while traveling. If the trip requires more outfits than my overhead Tumi luggage will hold, remind myself there is dry cleaning… More
Tech Life
Kobayashi Maru Management
Ted’s feeling pretty good. He sits across from me in the conference room and says, “Program launch is solid. We’ve been working on the details for almost a month. We vetted the concept with all the affected teams and made tweaks, and now they’re fine. The only step left is sending the announcement to the… More
Everything Goes in a Context Bucket
The easiest way to improve your information consumption practices is to watch someone you trust to do their work. I get glimpses every day. At the beginning of meetings during the traditional inane five minutes of wondering why the AV never works, I eagerly await your shared screen on the room’s monitor see how you… More
Rands Information Practices
Your most precious asset is your time. You’ve developed a set of time management practice that work for you. Super. Thing is, tools change and, more importantly. you change. Every couple of years I believe in re-examining how I work and the following is my latest and great set of information management and consumption practices.… More
Anti-Flow
Being in the Zone is such an essential concept to me, I did a shirt. The Zone is a place, and Flow is an activity that occurs within this precious mental place. Flow is the ability to consider a project or a problem deeply. In Flow, you can keep a superhuman amount of context in… More
Two Keyboards at a Bar
INT. EVENING. CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIA. BJ’S RESTAURANT AND BREWHOUSE. A RECENT FRIDAY NIGHT The bar is full. Two keyboards sit at the bar: APPLE EXTENDED II and MACBOOK PRO. The front door opens, TOUCHBAR looks around, sees the two keyboards at the bar, grins, and heads their direction. Skipping. APPLE EXTENDED II sits at the bar… More
Your Professional Growth Questionnaire
Do you know what time of year it is? It’s not performance season. Given that I have no clue when you read this piece, how do I know it’s not performance season? For many of the companies I’ve worked at for the past three decades, performance season is three weeks once a year. More progressive… More
Welcome Back to the Village
Founded in 2009, Strava meets every definition of a social network. A loosely connected group of athletes: bikers, runners, swimmer, and more. Strava allows us to record our activities and, if we choose, compare those results with others. You can follow friends or strangers. You can compare your athletic activities with others. You can celebrate… More
The Worst Seven Minutes
The worst seven minutes of a presentation are the seven minutes before you present. Writing a deck, editing it, getting feedback, rewriting it, practicing it over and over again, final touches, one more practice, ok two more practices and now you’re standing stage left waiting those last seven minutes with absolutely nothing to do except… More
So
We need to talk about the end of sentences. Specifically, the end of spoken sentences. They’re a problem for me. I’m solidly in my 40s. And to this day when I finish a spoken thought, I often say “so,” and the reason is… you aren’t saying anything, yet. So. I should explain. To begin, self-diagnosed… More