When do you stop exploring career options? How do you know when you should commit to one job or project?
Here’s one tool to help.
Read more2023 Recap
A review of my favorite posts and themes from 2023, plus a glimpse at what I’m looking forward to in 2024.
Read moreBe surprised by failure
When you fail at a goal you set yourself, treat it like you would finding a penguin in your bathtub. Something surprising happened here, and I want to figure out why!
Read moreOf Practice and Paintings: The Art of Practicing on the Job
How to integrate practice into your work? My thoughts on the benefits of practicing within the scope of your normal work, rather than purely in isolated exercises.
Read moreDIY Deliberate Practice
In the spirit of growth and self-improvement, I recently attempted to apply Ericsson’s principles of deliberate practice to my own growth goal: speeding up my writing. If you're unfamiliar with the minutia of Ericsson's methods, don't worry, I was in the same boat — and hence my initial goal had substantial room for improvement. This is the story of how I used to deliberate practice principles to workshop my growth goal.
Read moreWhy Do Tattoos Last?
A fun, nerd-sniping post that resulted from me noticing my confusion about why tattoos don’t slough off with dead skin cells.
Read moreLeveling Up or Leveling Off? Understanding the Science Behind Skill Plateaus
Doctors, painters, writers, and composers seem to get worse at their jobs after a couple of extra decades of experience.
What’s going on here?
Read moreWhat is ADHD?
I recently wrote a post about ADHD, and I got some (fair) pushback that the experiences I’m describing happen to most people, not just people with ADHD. If everyone has trouble focusing sometimes, what does it mean to “have” ADHD? How do we draw that boundary?
Read moreDo deadlines make us less creative?
Occasionally, my clients struggle to get things done, but worry that setting themselves deadlines will make them less creative.
Is this a reasonable worry?
Read moreHow to get diagnosed with ADHD
“I think I might benefit from ADHD meds, but I don’t know how any of this works. What do I do now?”
Getting an ADHD diagnosis is sufficiently complicated that there’s a joke, "You know which people don't have ADHD, because no one with ADHD could make it through the process to get diagnosed."
Hopefully this quick overview of my diagnosis process can make finding a doctor and getting diagnosed more approachable.
Read moreInside the Minds of ADHD
I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) last winter.
I’m a productivity coach who frequently works with people who have ADHD. I’d studied diagnostic questionnaires and read about the official symptoms of ADHD.
I’ve also been struggling with those symptoms for decades. I was unable to consistently focus on demand, felt constantly tired, and often needed to force myself to get started on my projects. Yet I never seriously considered that I might have ADHD.
Why not?
Read moreRewriting My Mindset: My Experience with CBT for Perfectionism
I felt scared just thinking about the ideas, and terrified at the thought of telling others I was attempting them. What if I tried and failed? Or just decided it wasn’t worth it after all? Would they write me off as a failure?
Those fears were my wake up call. I couldn’t really explore career options if just thinking about them felt scary. So I scheduled some sessions with a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) therapist and started Overcoming Perfectionism by Roz Shafran (a CBT workbook). Here you can see what that process looked like.
Read moreHow to Make Easy Decisions
I respect how carefully the effective altruists around me try to use reason and logic to make good decisions. However, I sometimes see these people spending way too much effort to make careful decisions in situations where the outcome doesn’t matter.
Here are a couple questions that help decide how important a decision is to get right, plus lots of Chidi Memes from The Good Place.
Read moreThree Coaching Stories
Occasionally people ask for more detailed case studies of my productivity coaching, so I’m publishing these lightly polished notes from a talk I gave a few years ago.
The following are real stories of people that I have permission to share under fake names: Ariel, Pat, and Phil.
Read moreInterview series: Do you have any general advice?
The Peek behind the Curtain interview series includes interviews with eleven people I thought were particularly successful, relatable, or productive. We cover topics ranging from productivity to career exploration to self-care.
This ninth and final post covers general advice from my guests.
Read moreInterview series: Who encouraged or inspired you?
The Peek behind the Curtain interview series includes interviews with eleven people I thought were particularly successful, relatable, or productive. We cover topics ranging from productivity to career exploration to self-care.
This eighth post covers thoughts on mentors, colleagues, and feedback.
Read moreInterview series: What skills have you put deliberate practice into?
The Peek behind the Curtain interview series includes interviews with eleven people I thought were particularly successful, relatable, or productive. We cover topics ranging from productivity to career exploration to self-care.
This seventh post covers “What skills have you put deliberate practice into trying to develop?” plus thoughts on good judgment and public facing work.
Read moreSix weeks doesn’t make a habit
I occasionally get asked some version of “How long do I need to practice my habit before it will stick?” The coachee has often heard some magic number – 21 days, 6 weeks, 9 weeks – that will make a new habit automatic and robust. (I hear surprising different numbers, giving how similar the rest of the statement is.)
It’s an alluring idea. Habits form the backbone of our default actions. We probably would be happier, healthier, and wealthier if we could just make doing the “right thing” automatic.
But I think this mindset is missing something important about habits really work.
Read moreInterview series: What does self-care look like for you?
The Peek behind the Curtain interview series includes interviews with eleven people I thought were particularly successful, relatable, or productive. We cover topics ranging from productivity to career exploration to self-care.
This sixth post covers “What does self-care look like for you?”, including what sustainable work hours look like for these folks.
Read moreInterview series: How do you prioritize?
The Peek behind the Curtain interview series includes interviews with eleven people I thought were particularly successful, relatable, or productive. We cover topics ranging from productivity to career exploration to self-care.
This fifth post covers prioritization, including “How do you decide which projects to pursue?,” “How much of your time is allocated top down versus being in more reactive mode or just following what's exciting?,” and “How do you prioritize/plan your work?”
Read more