Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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...
Why you should hand your kid that iPhone
I see you looking at me from the other side of the coffee shop?—?yes, you: the hemp-swaddled mom with the slightly sticky child who is playing with that organic wooden toy. You probably hope that toy will teach her hand-eye coordination or bring him into harmony with...
How the Sharing Economy Can Improve Your Next Business Trip
How on-demand apps can help business travellers squeeze every last minute of value out of their time on the road.
Threat-based parenting: Dos and Don’ts
As featured on Medium, a handy guide to getting those pesky kids under control with the power of threats. Thanks to the rise of screens, there’s never been a better time for threat-based parenting.
Why the Sharing Economy Isn’t Such a Boon for the Little Guy
We love to tell the story of the collaborative economy as the rise of the little guy. The data suggests otherwise.
14 things to try if school doesn’t work for your child
If you run into challenges as your kid starts school — or if you’ve been struggling with school challenges for a while, as we have — you’re not alone. Here’s what we’ve learned from the struggle.
The Harvard Business Review
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...
Why you should hand your kid that iPhone
I see you looking at me from the other side of the coffee shop?—?yes, you: the hemp-swaddled mom with the slightly sticky child who is playing with that organic wooden toy. You probably hope that toy will teach her hand-eye coordination or bring him into harmony with...
How the Sharing Economy Can Improve Your Next Business Trip
How on-demand apps can help business travellers squeeze every last minute of value out of their time on the road.
Threat-based parenting: Dos and Don’ts
As featured on Medium, a handy guide to getting those pesky kids under control with the power of threats. Thanks to the rise of screens, there’s never been a better time for threat-based parenting.
Why the Sharing Economy Isn’t Such a Boon for the Little Guy
We love to tell the story of the collaborative economy as the rise of the little guy. The data suggests otherwise.
14 things to try if school doesn’t work for your child
If you run into challenges as your kid starts school — or if you’ve been struggling with school challenges for a while, as we have — you’re not alone. Here’s what we’ve learned from the struggle.
OneZero
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
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.
JSTOR DAILY
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
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.
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...