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The Forgotten Art of Deep Work in a Distracted Digital Age
When is the last time you actually focused on a single task? Truly, deeply, focused on a task? For too many of us, without realizing it, it has been too long. Days string along as we bounce randomly around our devices with fragmented attention, constantly context switching as we fight off a seemingly endless demand…
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My 2023 Year in Review
The fact that this post isn’t being published until late in January 2024 pretty much reflects the state of my blog over the past year. I completely neglected my blog in 2023 so it’s fitting that I’m late in posting what my 2023 looked like. So, without further delay, let’s get into it. Welcome to…
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My 2022 Year in Review
2022, I barely knew you. This year seems to have moved so fast, I can’t believe it’s over. Welcome to another Year in Review post where I spend a bit of time reflecting on what happened last year to hopefully position myself better for the year to come. If you are interested, check out my…
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5 Daily Habits for Technical Leaders
As a technical leader, you likely have a lot on your plate. Between managing your team, staying on top of industry trends, and making important business decisions, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of the small, daily habits that can help you be more effective and successful in your role. Here…
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My 2021 Year in Review
Welcome to another Year in Review—where I spend a bit of time reflecting on what happened last year to hopefully position myself better for the year to come.
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The Importance of Product Design and Your Face
I just received the November 2021 print issue of Wired magazine at the house and there’s an interesting Chartgeist graphic by Jon J. Eilenberg inside. The diagram plots the relationship of tech intended for your face in terms of both style and creepiness. I love this diagram because it fulfills its intended mission of being…
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Why My First Foray Into Deep Work Failed
Toward the end of 2020 I watched a Lex Friedman video on YouTube where he went over his daily routine. I found it fascinating for some reason and was especially interested in what he was calling Deep Work. The concept seemed like something that would work for me given the need for more focused work…
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What Humans Can Do to Really Make Autonomous Driving a Thing
Some day, hopefully soon, I’ll have a Tesla. With this thought in mind I tend to find myself contemplating Autonomous Vehicles (AVs), most often while manually driving my current car. What really gets me thinking is when I’m driving down a road that’s a bit off the beaten path. You know those windy and hilly…
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What’s Better Than a Generalist or Specialist?
When I first started out in the technology industry back in the mid-90s, things were much simpler. There were a limited number of programming languages, a typical way of building applications, rather mundane architectures, and minimal toolkits. Fast forward to today and we have virtualization, cloud services, containers, infrastructure as code, DevSecOps, microservices, and serverless.…
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Why I Moved My Blog from Gatsby Back to WordPress
I have been building websites and blogging for the last 5+ years using self-hosted WordPress sites. This approach worked well for what I was doing, including building my own personal website. At the same time I felt—as a former coder and someone in the technology industry—I should probably be coding my own website. It almost…
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One Thing Developers Can Improve in Their Next Sprint
I’ve held many roles within the agile software development lifecycle, from developer to architect to scrum master. The one mistake I’ve seen developers commit over and over again is not including a sufficient level of detail in their user stories.
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4 Mistakes You Don’t Know You are Making as a Tech Lead
When you are a tech lead there’s no doubt that you have a lot on your plate. You not only have the responsibility of setting the technical direction for your team, but you also need to be in control of managing them. This includes the non-technical and less sexy parts of software development like managing…