Dec 18, 2025 | Life Hacks
At IDEO, we were often told to resemble ducks. No matter how hard we were paddling underwater, we should look serene and glide gracefully above the surface where everyone could see us. Was I tried to look serene but was still the frenetic duck. My wings thrashing, my...
Jun 11, 2025 | Life Hacks
I was listening to the Ezra Klein podcast while folding my daughter’s 47th unicorn t-shirt when Kathryn Schulz said something that made me stop mid-fold. She was talking about the philosopher William James and how he described thoughts like birds:...
Apr 9, 2025 | Career, Life Hacks
The Overworked, Underthought Executive Do you actually have time to think? 🤔 Or are you just bouncing from Zoom to Zoom, Slacking mid-meeting, and holding your pee until 6pm? That used to be me—in the “before” era. When my calendar looked like a losing game of Tetris...
Apr 2, 2025 | Career, Life Hacks
Can you learn microproductivity from piano lessons? When my 7-year-old daughter Vivi first tackled piano, each new song overwhelmed her. Sight-reading notes while grasping rhythms and mastering hand placements simultaneously felt impossible—because it was. Let’s...
Sep 16, 2021 | Career, Life Hacks
I stared at the blank page so long I started to see Rorschach figures in the white. I had writer’s block bad. There was nothing to write about, nothing to say. My life was either too confidential for mass consumption OR it was too boring. (likely the latter as the...
