Fighting with Kindness

Everything Everywhere All At Once is my favourite movie of the year so far. This scene in particular hit me hard. I found myself thinking about it for weeks afterwards. I think I know why.

Dating at middle age is hard. You’re at a stage in your life where you have an established career, a home, maybe a few kids, and a lot of emotional baggage. That means all of your potential dates are carrying the same baggage. Life is both rewarding and incredibly difficult. So we have a choice to make. Do we let ourselves become more cynical and pessimistic? Or do we continue to work harder at improving ourselves and being kind to those around us?

August 14, 2022

Sometimes it’s hard to know where the line is. The line where trying be positive crosses over to toxicity. I do think we’ve reached a point where it’s crossed more often than not.

Toxic positivity is pressuring people to look on the bright side. They have to suppress anxiety, anger, sadness, and grief.

Healthy support is shielding people from the dark side. You invite them to express their pain, and show them they’re not alone and won’t feel it forever.

— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) April 2, 2022

April 3, 2022

No joke, this is real!!

Very excited to show off my latest passion project!!

Welcome to Braille Scanner.

Braille Scanner allows you to scan braille paper and have it translated to text. It uses CreateML and Vision to do the heavy lifting.

Now available on the App Store.
1/2 pic.twitter.com/nVDpRL3QYO

— Aaron Stephenson (@azzoor) March 31, 2022

This is the kind of stuff that gets me excited about tech! Reading braille with your phone camera? Amazing.

Too often all people focus on is the potential money to be made from a new app or service. What’s the potential market size? The profit margin? How fast can we grow? This was built simply because someone saw a need, thought it could be done, and did it.

April 1, 2022

This drone shot is stunning! Found via Kottke.org.

March 30, 2022

Pomodoro

I like systems to keep me on task. Journals, lists, charts, notes, all of it. I was a kid constantly getting into trouble for doodling in class. It helped me to focus. Without it, I would fall asleep listening to the teacher’s lecture. The one time management system that I’ve stuck with is the Pomodoro technique. Pomodoro is Italian for tomato. It was conceived by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s to help him focus on his studies. It’s the simplicity of the technique that speaks to me.

1. Get a timer.
2. Set a timer for 25 minutes and focus on a single task until the timer is complete.
3. Take a 5-minute break.
4. After four Pomodoros, take a longer break. Usually about 15-30 minutes.

That’s it!

Francesco used a tomato-shaped kitchen timer. I use an app called “Forest”. It kind of gamifies the technique which also seems to work for me.

March 30, 2022

Context

I want to hang this tweet on my office wall. If you’re leading other leaders, don’t make assumptions. If you’re missing some context or the “why” behind a decision, just ask.

Maybe, just maybe, what you’re asking that Manager to do isn’t in the best interest of their team and you can’t see it.

Don’t conflate a manager’s perceived inability to ask their team to do hard things with a manager’s need to balance those asks in the context of a dozen other hard asks by the rest of the org.

— Cameron Moll (@cameronmoll) March 10, 2022

March 28, 2022