Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Facebook Reactions: Campaign Edition
The advent of Facebook Reactions has brought forth a remarkable range of suggestions for alternative icons; the endless presidential campaign has produced an ever-growing range of tribute memes. But if we're going to have the reactions we need to survive this campaign...
9 kid-friendly meals for children outside of NYC
The New York Times has posted a roundup of 14 kid-friendly meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes or less….if you have the kind of kid who likes food seasoned with anchovies, cumin or ginger. If, on the other hand, you are raising a child who does not ask to...
Dystopian fiction: What to read when you want to worry
My latest post for JSTOR Daily looks at the value of dystopian fiction to those of us trying to navigate a complicated digital world and an even more confusing future. The post mentions many of my favorite dystopian reads, so I thought I would offer a handy list of...
Why Small Businesses Are Getting LinkedIn Wrong
This piece for The Wall Street Journal’s Report on Small Business looks at the most common mistakes small businesses make on LinkedIn, and how they can do better.
Wanted: A quantified child app for helping special needs kids
When you've got a special needs kid, you're often trying successive strategies or interventions to help your kid develop new emotional, cognitive or behavioral skills. But if you're also on the roller coaster of living with a challenging kid, it can be really hard to...
How to lock your kids out of every device
I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on hacktivism: politically-motivated computer hacking. Interviewing fifty politically engaged computer hackers turned out to be great preparation for running a business that built nonprofit online communities, because I really know how to speak...
How to balance evening work with family life: the 2×2
Blame it on after-hours email, but it seems like the extended workday is here to stay. If your household is anything like ours, you often have work to do in the evening...and if you're a parent, that means that work often intrudes on family time. To help with the...
The Five Competencies of Social and Emotional Learning
Social and emotional learning focuses on five key competencies. These are framed slightly differently by different organizations, so I have created a table that incorporates the (verbatim) descriptions found on several different sites. Dalai Lama Center: Heart-Mind...
How to end screen time without tears
Turning off the phone, TV or videogame is hard. Here’s how to make that transition easier for you and your child — and to build your child’s core skills in the process.
What kind of digital parent are you?
My recent piece for The Atlantic, Parents: Reject Technology Shame, tackles the question of how to raise kids in a digital world. Data from more than 10,000 North American parents shows that they are deeply divided on this question, and that there are three distinct...
The Harvard Business Review
Facebook Reactions: Campaign Edition
The advent of Facebook Reactions has brought forth a remarkable range of suggestions for alternative icons; the endless presidential campaign has produced an ever-growing range of tribute memes. But if we're going to have the reactions we need to survive this campaign...
9 kid-friendly meals for children outside of NYC
The New York Times has posted a roundup of 14 kid-friendly meals that you can prepare in 30 minutes or less….if you have the kind of kid who likes food seasoned with anchovies, cumin or ginger. If, on the other hand, you are raising a child who does not ask to...
Dystopian fiction: What to read when you want to worry
My latest post for JSTOR Daily looks at the value of dystopian fiction to those of us trying to navigate a complicated digital world and an even more confusing future. The post mentions many of my favorite dystopian reads, so I thought I would offer a handy list of...
Why Small Businesses Are Getting LinkedIn Wrong
This piece for The Wall Street Journal’s Report on Small Business looks at the most common mistakes small businesses make on LinkedIn, and how they can do better.
Wanted: A quantified child app for helping special needs kids
When you've got a special needs kid, you're often trying successive strategies or interventions to help your kid develop new emotional, cognitive or behavioral skills. But if you're also on the roller coaster of living with a challenging kid, it can be really hard to...
How to lock your kids out of every device
I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on hacktivism: politically-motivated computer hacking. Interviewing fifty politically engaged computer hackers turned out to be great preparation for running a business that built nonprofit online communities, because I really know how to speak...
How to balance evening work with family life: the 2×2
Blame it on after-hours email, but it seems like the extended workday is here to stay. If your household is anything like ours, you often have work to do in the evening...and if you're a parent, that means that work often intrudes on family time. To help with the...
The Five Competencies of Social and Emotional Learning
Social and emotional learning focuses on five key competencies. These are framed slightly differently by different organizations, so I have created a table that incorporates the (verbatim) descriptions found on several different sites. Dalai Lama Center: Heart-Mind...
How to end screen time without tears
Turning off the phone, TV or videogame is hard. Here’s how to make that transition easier for you and your child — and to build your child’s core skills in the process.
What kind of digital parent are you?
My recent piece for The Atlantic, Parents: Reject Technology Shame, tackles the question of how to raise kids in a digital world. Data from more than 10,000 North American parents shows that they are deeply divided on this question, and that there are three distinct...
OneZero
Today in Elemental: How keto saved my sanity during Covid
I try not to be an evangelist about keto. Really, I do. But my two-year "keto-versary" has hit right as many people are coping not only with all the bread-induced weight gain of Covid, but with the mental health impact of isolation and anxiety. Much to my surprise,...
Today in the WSJ: Collegiality during Covid
How can you support your colleagues during the most challenging work year most of us have ever known? That's what I tackle in today's Wall Street Journal, writing about How to Be a Good Colleague During the Coronavirus Crisis. As I argue in the piece, Even though...
Today in the WSJ: What I’ve learned from two decades of remote work
Let go of the eight-hour workday. That's the single most crucial piece of advice I have for any newly remote worker, after more than two decades of work in which I've been based from home for most of the time. Today in the Wall Street Journal, I share my most vital...
Today in HBR: The productivity app that will change your life
If you have seen me anytime in the past year, you've probably heard me obsess over my new love, Coda. Coda is my new tech and productivity Swiss Army knife: I've used it to replace countless docs and spreadsheets, and I've also used it to build entire websites. Most...
Today in OneZero: What Autism Can Teach Us About Overcoming Digital Burnout
Today in OneZero, Medium's flagship tech publication, I look at what we can all learn from autistic strategies for managing sensory overload. As I write in my story, [B]y increasing the frequency, variety, and intensity of incoming stimuli, the digital world has...
11 essential foods for the ketogenic diet
At the beginning of March I decided to get serious about losing the 40-ish pounds I've gained in the past three years, and after conferring with my posse, I landed on the ketogenic diet. Initially developed as a treatment for epilepsy, the perfect keto diet lowers...
How to create short link stickers for your best content
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, I share my favorite hacks for getting more out of conferences -- including the trick of making stickers that let me add a short link to my business cards. I love my short link stickers because they give me an immediate way of...
My pre-Trump dystopian anxieties may be getting the better of me
JSTOR DAILY
Today in Elemental: How keto saved my sanity during Covid
I try not to be an evangelist about keto. Really, I do. But my two-year "keto-versary" has hit right as many people are coping not only with all the bread-induced weight gain of Covid, but with the mental health impact of isolation and anxiety. Much to my surprise,...
Today in the WSJ: Collegiality during Covid
How can you support your colleagues during the most challenging work year most of us have ever known? That's what I tackle in today's Wall Street Journal, writing about How to Be a Good Colleague During the Coronavirus Crisis. As I argue in the piece, Even though...
Today in the WSJ: What I’ve learned from two decades of remote work
Let go of the eight-hour workday. That's the single most crucial piece of advice I have for any newly remote worker, after more than two decades of work in which I've been based from home for most of the time. Today in the Wall Street Journal, I share my most vital...
Today in HBR: The productivity app that will change your life
If you have seen me anytime in the past year, you've probably heard me obsess over my new love, Coda. Coda is my new tech and productivity Swiss Army knife: I've used it to replace countless docs and spreadsheets, and I've also used it to build entire websites. Most...
Today in OneZero: What Autism Can Teach Us About Overcoming Digital Burnout
Today in OneZero, Medium's flagship tech publication, I look at what we can all learn from autistic strategies for managing sensory overload. As I write in my story, [B]y increasing the frequency, variety, and intensity of incoming stimuli, the digital world has...
11 essential foods for the ketogenic diet
At the beginning of March I decided to get serious about losing the 40-ish pounds I've gained in the past three years, and after conferring with my posse, I landed on the ketogenic diet. Initially developed as a treatment for epilepsy, the perfect keto diet lowers...
How to create short link stickers for your best content
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, I share my favorite hacks for getting more out of conferences -- including the trick of making stickers that let me add a short link to my business cards. I love my short link stickers because they give me an immediate way of...
My pre-Trump dystopian anxieties may be getting the better of me
THE VERGE
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...
Nature is your new office
When I was in school, there was an easy way to tell the nice teachers from the mean teachers: The nice teachers moved at least one class meeting outdoors as soon as the weather was good. The mean teachers ignored the end of Canadian winter and kept us at our indoor...