Publications
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The hybrid worker’s guide to screen time
How do you keep screen time intentional, healthy and rewarding? It’s a question many of us ask about our screen-glazed kids, but it’s also a question we need to ask of ourselves. Phones, computers and other gadgets are easy to overuse, not simply because we are frail...
No, Coda didn’t pay for that post.
No, Coda didn’t pay me to write that last post. But a few people wrote to ask, so I want to share the incriminating truth: I wrote that ode to Coda because I’m geeky, enthusiastic and incredibly bossy. I’m geeky enough to love a really good piece of software the way...
Your virtual Swiss Army Knife: Coda
What’s the best task list tool? How should I manage my social media content calendar? What system should I use to manage my startup’s sales pipeline? How can I keep track of my kid’s homework? I give the same answer to all of these questions: Coda. Coda is a flexible,...
Weird at Work
There is nothing like daily office attendance for teaching an employee how to fit in. That’s exactly why so many employers are fretful over the impact of hybrid and remote work on workplace culture, that nebulous term for the alchemy of knowledge exchange, human...
Meet the Dirty Digital Dozen
I grew up with a single mom who was half Wonder Woman, half Mary Tyler Moore: She managed to combine a significant career with raising a kid on her own. You know what she didn’t have to deal with? 7 p.m. emails. Digital communications tools like email, Google Docs,...
Why your rights shouldn’t depend on your employer
The Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe v. Wade also ushered in a new era for the workplace, and for how all of us—yes, in every country—relate to our employers and employees. Within hours of the decision, a string of major companies announced their intention...
The 3 questions everyone’s asking about hybrid
Like so many people, I’ve started my return to the world of in-person work. In the past two months I’ve delivered four in-person keynotes, enjoyed my first multi-person boardroom meeting, and attended a large client event. The audiences I’ve addressed could not be...
Are you ready for Peak Colleague?
“I miss seeing my colleagues and being able to bounce ideas off them.” “I get to work with much more skilled people, now that our teams don’t have to be made up of people who are all in the same place.” “I get so frustrated waiting for my co-workers to reply to my...
What we’re getting wrong with hybrid
Organizations are getting a lot right in the transition to hybrid work: Recognizing that most professionals want to keep working remotely at least part of the time. Taking a team-based approach to hybrid, because the right structure depends on the kind of work you do....
The dimensions of hybrid equity
Those of us who enjoy the professional and personal benefits of remote work are a large and lucky minority—but yes, a minority. Most estimates show that about 60% of North American jobs just have to be done in person. Not incidentally, these are jobs that are more...
The Harvard Business Review
The hybrid worker’s guide to screen time
How do you keep screen time intentional, healthy and rewarding? It’s a question many of us ask about our screen-glazed kids, but it’s also a question we need to ask of ourselves. Phones, computers and other gadgets are easy to overuse, not simply because we are frail...
No, Coda didn’t pay for that post.
No, Coda didn’t pay me to write that last post. But a few people wrote to ask, so I want to share the incriminating truth: I wrote that ode to Coda because I’m geeky, enthusiastic and incredibly bossy. I’m geeky enough to love a really good piece of software the way...
Your virtual Swiss Army Knife: Coda
What’s the best task list tool? How should I manage my social media content calendar? What system should I use to manage my startup’s sales pipeline? How can I keep track of my kid’s homework? I give the same answer to all of these questions: Coda. Coda is a flexible,...
Weird at Work
There is nothing like daily office attendance for teaching an employee how to fit in. That’s exactly why so many employers are fretful over the impact of hybrid and remote work on workplace culture, that nebulous term for the alchemy of knowledge exchange, human...
Meet the Dirty Digital Dozen
I grew up with a single mom who was half Wonder Woman, half Mary Tyler Moore: She managed to combine a significant career with raising a kid on her own. You know what she didn’t have to deal with? 7 p.m. emails. Digital communications tools like email, Google Docs,...
Why your rights shouldn’t depend on your employer
The Supreme Court decision that struck down Roe v. Wade also ushered in a new era for the workplace, and for how all of us—yes, in every country—relate to our employers and employees. Within hours of the decision, a string of major companies announced their intention...
The 3 questions everyone’s asking about hybrid
Like so many people, I’ve started my return to the world of in-person work. In the past two months I’ve delivered four in-person keynotes, enjoyed my first multi-person boardroom meeting, and attended a large client event. The audiences I’ve addressed could not be...
Are you ready for Peak Colleague?
“I miss seeing my colleagues and being able to bounce ideas off them.” “I get to work with much more skilled people, now that our teams don’t have to be made up of people who are all in the same place.” “I get so frustrated waiting for my co-workers to reply to my...
What we’re getting wrong with hybrid
Organizations are getting a lot right in the transition to hybrid work: Recognizing that most professionals want to keep working remotely at least part of the time. Taking a team-based approach to hybrid, because the right structure depends on the kind of work you do....
The dimensions of hybrid equity
Those of us who enjoy the professional and personal benefits of remote work are a large and lucky minority—but yes, a minority. Most estimates show that about 60% of North American jobs just have to be done in person. Not incidentally, these are jobs that are more...
OneZero
Variety is the spice of work
From social media bios that declare expertise in a specific niche, to the way search engines reward us for “owning” particular topics or keywords, the modern professional world loves to signal that depth matters more than breadth. But breadth and variety are essential...
The robots are coming
If you think your working life changed a lot in the past three years, buckle up: It’s going to change even more in the next three. That’s because artificial intelligence is now mature enough to dramatically change the way many of us do our work. And while it may be...
TV that works harder
I watch a lot of TV. My TV habit often surprises people, because I seem like a pretty productive person—and it’s true, I get a lot done in a day! But I also watch a lot of TV: four or five hours a day, according to both subjective experience and hard data. If those...
The Joy of Tedious Work
Coaches and strategists often encourage us to maximize impact by spending most of our time and attention in the zone where we make the greatest contribution. We’re told: Focus your days on the projects and tasks where you have something unique to add, or where only...
The Hybrid Worker’s Guide to Information Overload
The overwhelm that so many people feel when working from home—or when returning to the office, conferences or other group settings after a few years of relative isolation—is intimately related to the cognitive, psychological and sensory challenges of living in a state...
Culture in the hybrid workplace
What does hybrid work do to our organizational culture? How do we help nourish a sense of culture within a distributed team? Why do I feel so disconnected from my colleagues, or so isolated in my time at home? These are questions I hear when speaking with...
Tune up your burnout busters
Combine meeting and walking. If you don’t need to be on camera, or need to take only minimal notes, go for a walk during the call. I’ve found that these meetings often allow me to be more creative—and make a stronger personal connection—than what happens on a...
R.I.P. social media. Long live hybrid work?
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has sent me into mourning — not just for that once-beloved social network, but for social media in general. And with that grief has come something like recognition: recognition that my optimistic view of hybrid work parallels the...
JSTOR DAILY
Variety is the spice of work
From social media bios that declare expertise in a specific niche, to the way search engines reward us for “owning” particular topics or keywords, the modern professional world loves to signal that depth matters more than breadth. But breadth and variety are essential...
The robots are coming
If you think your working life changed a lot in the past three years, buckle up: It’s going to change even more in the next three. That’s because artificial intelligence is now mature enough to dramatically change the way many of us do our work. And while it may be...
TV that works harder
I watch a lot of TV. My TV habit often surprises people, because I seem like a pretty productive person—and it’s true, I get a lot done in a day! But I also watch a lot of TV: four or five hours a day, according to both subjective experience and hard data. If those...
The Joy of Tedious Work
Coaches and strategists often encourage us to maximize impact by spending most of our time and attention in the zone where we make the greatest contribution. We’re told: Focus your days on the projects and tasks where you have something unique to add, or where only...
The Hybrid Worker’s Guide to Information Overload
The overwhelm that so many people feel when working from home—or when returning to the office, conferences or other group settings after a few years of relative isolation—is intimately related to the cognitive, psychological and sensory challenges of living in a state...
Culture in the hybrid workplace
What does hybrid work do to our organizational culture? How do we help nourish a sense of culture within a distributed team? Why do I feel so disconnected from my colleagues, or so isolated in my time at home? These are questions I hear when speaking with...
Tune up your burnout busters
Combine meeting and walking. If you don’t need to be on camera, or need to take only minimal notes, go for a walk during the call. I’ve found that these meetings often allow me to be more creative—and make a stronger personal connection—than what happens on a...
R.I.P. social media. Long live hybrid work?
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has sent me into mourning — not just for that once-beloved social network, but for social media in general. And with that grief has come something like recognition: recognition that my optimistic view of hybrid work parallels the...
THE VERGE
6 Ways to Recharge
Watching The Lazarus Project is one the ways I recharge at the end of a workday We can only sustain our attention for so long before we need a cognitive break. That's one of the key points in Attention Span, by Gloria Mark. Her book takes decades of...
Get ready for upload
Hybrid work warmed us up for the world of generative AI in many ways: When you’re already used to interacting with your colleagues via chat rather than in person, it’s easier to get used to riffing with a chat-based AI. When you’re constantly overloaded by...
Pssst! Someone put a chip in your head.
I love implanting computer chips in my friends’ brains. At least, I did until recently, when Elon Musk announced he’d gotten in on my action by actually implanting the first Neuralink chip in a live human subject. That’s when I realized Elon had killed what has long...
How to train your own AI in 15 minutes
The non-geek’s starter guide to building the skillset of the future with a custom GPT Managing people has long been the path to advancement. Now, the same is true of managing AIs. In many professions, there’s a point at which the only way up or forward is if you take...