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...
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...
More and more organizations are forcing workers back to the office, imagining that economic pressure and a loosening job market mean employees will have to accept whatever job schedules or flexibility they’re offered. These remote-skeptical employers need to pay close...
With all the big-picture discussions about how AI is going to change the future of work, it’s easy to lose sight of how AI could change our working lives right now. But the more time I spend using ChatGPT, and honing the skill of coaxing really useful responses...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
Don’t be surprised if you make some mistakes during the transition to hybrid work. I’m not just talking about mistakes in how you transition to a hybrid work arrangement: I’m talking about garden-variety operational, service and professional errors that happen as a...
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