A couple practical tips — I recently had a couple of coding mentoring sessions on the same day about the same topic — frustration. Here are some of the specific questions that I heard: How do I deal with frustration? Is there a way to avoid it? Do I have any advice for people experiencing…

Today I had a couple of mentoring sessions. Generally, I’m talking to people about career advice with an eye toward getting a new or better job. But today, one of the people already had an offer in hand and was asking for advice as he transitioned into the role he…

Your first three hours will make or break you. — The traditional 9–5 workday is poorly structured for high productivity. Perhaps when most work was physical labor, but not in the knowledge working world we now live in. Although this may be obvious based on people’s mediocre performance, addiction to stimulants, lack of engagement, and the fact that most people…

The long term effects of constant context switching — Work was destroying my brain. Seriously. I’m not talking about work being mind-numbingly boring — if anything my job is very demanding on brainpower. Nor am I talking about the well-documented productivity losses associated with context switching. I’m talking about my belief that, over time, the demands of my job…

Inspired by Seth Godin’s latest book The Practice, I have decided to dedicate a portion of my day to the simple practice of being creative. Writing, coding, building something. The what is less important right now than the doing; than being consistent and creating. Reading books, articles, social media ……

I’ve long been a fan of the Pomodoro Technique and recently I was looking to restart using it to focus my work. However, I ran into some problems finding the right tool for me. Below you’ll see how I solved this problem and maybe this walk through will help someone. …

Ideas on creating human connection from anywhere — “Do you have a minute? I have a quick question.” I had 20 minutes and I needed an answer from Jerry, one of my tech leads, before my next meeting. What happened instead was an undeniable reminder that the world had changed and I needed to change how I ran my team going forward. “How are you doing?” “How is…