Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
How Email destroyed the world
I spent the last day of Western Civilization addressing the very phenomenon that caused our collective downfall: email. On November 8th—Election Day—I spent six hours in a rented studio in Manhattan, taping a new class for Skillshare. Email Productivity: Work Smarter...
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.
The Harvard Business Review
How Email destroyed the world
I spent the last day of Western Civilization addressing the very phenomenon that caused our collective downfall: email. On November 8th—Election Day—I spent six hours in a rented studio in Manhattan, taping a new class for Skillshare. Email Productivity: Work Smarter...
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.
OneZero
Remote work is a learned skill
Nobody is born knowing how to work...
Remote work: A conversation
What does it take to succeed in the hybrid workplace? I'm delighted to join my friends at the Lavin Agency for an Author's Corner conversation with Charles Yao, Lavin's Director of Intellectual Talent. Our conversation will take place online at 9 am Pacific (noon...
How Working From Home Has Changed Employees
Today in The Wall Street Journal, I offer an expert-driven roadmap to managing employees who've been changed by the experience of remote work. As I write in today's story, They have spent over a year adjusting to a radically different rhythm—both in terms of work and...
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...
JSTOR DAILY
Remote work is a learned skill
Nobody is born knowing how to work...
Remote work: A conversation
What does it take to succeed in the hybrid workplace? I'm delighted to join my friends at the Lavin Agency for an Author's Corner conversation with Charles Yao, Lavin's Director of Intellectual Talent. Our conversation will take place online at 9 am Pacific (noon...
How Working From Home Has Changed Employees
Today in The Wall Street Journal, I offer an expert-driven roadmap to managing employees who've been changed by the experience of remote work. As I write in today's story, They have spent over a year adjusting to a radically different rhythm—both in terms of work and...
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 VERGE
How to work when your life is a mess
This is the time of year when I often hear from other parents with autistic kids, or kids with other kinds of complex challenges. It’s the same time of year that often found our own family in crisis: Far enough into the school year that classroom meltdowns or calls...
The 3 meetings you need on your calendar
At their core, meetings are about relationship enablement. That’s the argument I make in my piece for the Harvard Business Review, 3 Project Management Strategies for a Hybrid Workplace. As I write in HBR: When so many of us have packed calendars, it’s tempting to...
The paradox of hybrid work
At long last, I have Covid. Our family had eluded the plague all this time, largely because we entered lockdown already optimized for isolation: Rob and I both worked from home, and one of our kids is homeschooled. I got Covid the way I expected: speaking to a roomful...
How to foster culture on hybrid teams
At its best, hybrid work not only boosts your employees’ individual effectiveness; it also strengthens your organization and team culture. But “culture” means different things to different people, partly because we tend to be a little fuzzy about defining it (is it...