I’m a digital product and strategy guy working at Critical Mass in New York City. I help people solve problems and build useful, intuitive and delightful products and services.
It’s been a month since my last post, and while nothing has changed, everything has changed. I’ve got to be honest here… I’m struggling to keep up with all of the things that are happening, much less process them in any meaningful way (and I wonder how different my state of mind would be if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic?). At a societal level, it’s abundantly clear that the status quo cannot be allowed to continue, and at a personal level, there are so many things I need to work to understand better and so many things that I need to work to do better.
On a different note, and in an effort to stay busy, I borrowed an idea Anne-Laure Le Cunff and Tom Critchlow and started cultivating my own “digital garden”. It’s been a slow start—and I’m not especially patient with things like this—but I think maybe that’s not such a bad thing, and expanding slowly might actually work out better for me over the long run.
Happy endings are common in the movies, but rare in real life. Sometimes they do happen. And sometimes they happen because of the movies. That’s the only way to describe Carl Reiner’s final curtain call.
I met that elderly monkey in a small Japanese-style inn in a hot-springs town in Gunma Prefecture, some five years ago. It was a rustic or, more precisely, decrepit inn, barely hanging on, where I just happened to spend a night.
I want to spend an essay talking about tacit knowledge, and why I think it is the most interesting topic in the domain of skill acquisition. If you are a longtime Commonplace reader, you’ll likely have come across this idea before, because I’ve written about it numerous times in the past.
Unbelievably disappointed, but I understand the decision. At least it looks like I’ll be able to re-apply for 2021 with my 2020 qualifying time. 🤞🏻 https://t.co/D8zTgrtEHk
The @BAA has announced that the 124th Boston Marathon will be held as a virtual event, following Boston Mayor Martin Walsh’s cancellation of the marathon as a mass participation road running event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. https://t.co/tlIdvsU9sq
Steven Levy, writing for @WIRED, may have the only sensible take on the WFH vs WFO debate that I’ve read this week: “My view is that you may be able to get by for a very long time without physical interaction. But eventually, it will catch up with you.” https://t.co/vRRjq6jPcQ
