Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Resistance is futile: A success story
Sometimes success looks like a little boy sobbing his eyes out. This success story begins yesterday morning, when Peanut showed up at school in his Halloween costume: a Borg cube. For those of you who aren’t Star Trek fans, let me explain that the Borg are a race of...
In The Orange Dot: Is my kid addicted to tech or am I just old?
Even adults can get obsessed with their social media analytics. So what do you do when your kids start measuring their every online move.
Rock Bottom
When we finally pulled Peanut out of public school at the end of Grade 2, I thought we’d reached rock bottom. We had a 7-year-old with a basket of diagnoses and labels: anxiety, ADHD, sensory processing issues, tic disorder, fine motor lags and a 99.99th percentile...
Telling tales about my autistic son
Introducing The Peanut Diaries: dedicated to sharing the experience of raising our gifted, autistic son.
Now on JSTOR: A Novel Defense of the Internet
Like the Internet, the novel was once viewed as a colossal waste of time. My post for JSTOR Daily looks at how fiction became respectable — and how the Internet can, too.
How people feel about sharing a name online
Thanks to the Internet, more and more of us have digital doubles: people who share our name, and may often be confused with us. I try to keep track of all the other people out there named "Alexandra Samuel", and yet I also feel vaguely uncomfortable with the fact that...
TV for every occasion: shows for family viewing, multitasking and more
The problem with the golden age of TV is that with so many choices, it’s hard to know what to watch. This guide and cheat sheet helps you choose the right shows for four different occasions: dedicated viewing, multitasking, working out and family viewing.
Where to find the best shows
Where to find my favorite shows via streaming or download.
How to tone down your tech
If you’re looking for a little online sanity, there are better options than a digital fast. My first post for the Headspace blog shares five great alternatives.
How to raise a white hat hacker
Today in the Christian Science Monitor’s Passcode, I look at what it takes to turn a curious, tech-minded kid into an ethical hacker.
The Harvard Business Review
Resistance is futile: A success story
Sometimes success looks like a little boy sobbing his eyes out. This success story begins yesterday morning, when Peanut showed up at school in his Halloween costume: a Borg cube. For those of you who aren’t Star Trek fans, let me explain that the Borg are a race of...
In The Orange Dot: Is my kid addicted to tech or am I just old?
Even adults can get obsessed with their social media analytics. So what do you do when your kids start measuring their every online move.
Rock Bottom
When we finally pulled Peanut out of public school at the end of Grade 2, I thought we’d reached rock bottom. We had a 7-year-old with a basket of diagnoses and labels: anxiety, ADHD, sensory processing issues, tic disorder, fine motor lags and a 99.99th percentile...
Telling tales about my autistic son
Introducing The Peanut Diaries: dedicated to sharing the experience of raising our gifted, autistic son.
Now on JSTOR: A Novel Defense of the Internet
Like the Internet, the novel was once viewed as a colossal waste of time. My post for JSTOR Daily looks at how fiction became respectable — and how the Internet can, too.
How people feel about sharing a name online
Thanks to the Internet, more and more of us have digital doubles: people who share our name, and may often be confused with us. I try to keep track of all the other people out there named "Alexandra Samuel", and yet I also feel vaguely uncomfortable with the fact that...
TV for every occasion: shows for family viewing, multitasking and more
The problem with the golden age of TV is that with so many choices, it’s hard to know what to watch. This guide and cheat sheet helps you choose the right shows for four different occasions: dedicated viewing, multitasking, working out and family viewing.
Where to find the best shows
Where to find my favorite shows via streaming or download.
How to tone down your tech
If you’re looking for a little online sanity, there are better options than a digital fast. My first post for the Headspace blog shares five great alternatives.
How to raise a white hat hacker
Today in the Christian Science Monitor’s Passcode, I look at what it takes to turn a curious, tech-minded kid into an ethical hacker.
OneZero
Today in The New York Times: How to Navigate the Postpandemic Office
How much time should employees spend at the office, and how much time can they continue to work remotely? How do we schedule office time for our teams so that we get the most from our space—and our employees? What do we do if some employees want to stick with remote...
Taking a Break Doesn’t Always Mean Unplugging
While you can and should take breaks by stepping away from your devices and screens, you may not always have the time or the autonomy to do so. But if you choose the right screen-based breaks, they can provide you with similar benefits as the offline variety and help...
How to Protect Your Privacy When Working From Home
Today in the Wall Street Journal, I look at How to Protect Your Privacy When Working From Home: There is, for instance, the loss of privacy when your colleagues overhear you arguing with your children, or see what you read on the bookshelves behind you. Or the loss of...
Today in the WSJ: The key to creating virtual conferences that work
What makes for a great virtual event? Now that all our conferences, workshops and speaking engagements have to take place online, it's a crucial question. In today's Wall Street Journal, I map what it takes to make an online event successful, including: If at all...
How A.I. could change the workplace
What about a system that automatically changes wording in communications to eliminate your co-workers’ unhelpful quirks? This is just one of the interesting ideas in my Wall Street Journal article about how A.I. can help with workplace communications. An excerpt from...
The definitive guide to Google Drive
When the senior editors at Medium approached me about writing the definitive guide to Google Drive, they weren't expecting the Sext-o-matic: a Google sheet that automates the tedious job of sending sexy text messages to your lover. But I couldn't resist building...
What The World’s Most Influential CMOs taught me about remote work
Every year, my experience of remote work changes dramatically from winter to spring. In the fall and winter, I lead a relatively independent existence as a freelance tech writer and researcher. That pace changes when it comes time to rejoin the team at Sprinklr, where...
Remote Work Isn’t Going Away. So Let’s Deal With the Obstacles.
It’s hard to figure out work-life balance when work and life happen in the same place. It’s hard to stay focused on that client document, that PowerPoint deck or even that expense report when you can see your child getting paint all over the coffee table, hear your...
JSTOR DAILY
Today in The New York Times: How to Navigate the Postpandemic Office
How much time should employees spend at the office, and how much time can they continue to work remotely? How do we schedule office time for our teams so that we get the most from our space—and our employees? What do we do if some employees want to stick with remote...
Taking a Break Doesn’t Always Mean Unplugging
While you can and should take breaks by stepping away from your devices and screens, you may not always have the time or the autonomy to do so. But if you choose the right screen-based breaks, they can provide you with similar benefits as the offline variety and help...
How to Protect Your Privacy When Working From Home
Today in the Wall Street Journal, I look at How to Protect Your Privacy When Working From Home: There is, for instance, the loss of privacy when your colleagues overhear you arguing with your children, or see what you read on the bookshelves behind you. Or the loss of...
Today in the WSJ: The key to creating virtual conferences that work
What makes for a great virtual event? Now that all our conferences, workshops and speaking engagements have to take place online, it's a crucial question. In today's Wall Street Journal, I map what it takes to make an online event successful, including: If at all...
How A.I. could change the workplace
What about a system that automatically changes wording in communications to eliminate your co-workers’ unhelpful quirks? This is just one of the interesting ideas in my Wall Street Journal article about how A.I. can help with workplace communications. An excerpt from...
The definitive guide to Google Drive
When the senior editors at Medium approached me about writing the definitive guide to Google Drive, they weren't expecting the Sext-o-matic: a Google sheet that automates the tedious job of sending sexy text messages to your lover. But I couldn't resist building...
What The World’s Most Influential CMOs taught me about remote work
Every year, my experience of remote work changes dramatically from winter to spring. In the fall and winter, I lead a relatively independent existence as a freelance tech writer and researcher. That pace changes when it comes time to rejoin the team at Sprinklr, where...
Remote Work Isn’t Going Away. So Let’s Deal With the Obstacles.
It’s hard to figure out work-life balance when work and life happen in the same place. It’s hard to stay focused on that client document, that PowerPoint deck or even that expense report when you can see your child getting paint all over the coffee table, hear your...
THE VERGE
Inbox overwhelmed? Here’s how I kept mine empty for a year
This week marks my 52nd consecutive week of “Inbox zero”. I’ve been amazed at how regularly getting my inbox to empty has changed not only my relationship to email, but the way I work. In this article, I’ll tell you how I got to zero and how it’s paid off, so you can...
The new hybrid work
The new hybrid work isn’t just about where we work: that is, some combination of home plus office. It’s also about who we are working with: humans, or AIs? Thinking about hybrid work as an intersection of location and collaboration gives us a much better handle on how...
25 ways remote work has changed
25 years ago this month, I moved to Vancouver for love. That meant leaving my graduate-school program and associated work opportunities on the other side of the continent, and the other side of a national border. I needed some kind of income to keep me afloat in my...
The real risks of AI
AI is in headline after headline, most of which focus on the risks that are supposed to be keeping us up at night. The very people who developed these technologies and brought them to market are now warning us that their creations threaten to wreak….well, they can’t...