A new mantra to help you save your socially distant relationships
2020 has been tough on relationships. Between working from home, trying to minimize risk for family members, and the tumultuous changes in the availability of childcare, many formerly healthy relationships have become isolated — or overwhelming.
It can be easy to lose touch with a friend or to feel like a family member has grown distant. Prior to the pandemic, maybe you got together for coffee every week with your best friend and now she barely answers your calls. …
READER WARNING: Do not try this at home.
In the dark but tastefully decorated enclave of Mish app HQ…
Before anything else, you must create.
To dream or plan or research is not starting.
To start you must build or create or execute.
Preparation doesn’t count.
A good effort is great, in kindergarten.
Only results provide reward.
Make stuff.
Build things.
Create.
That will make things happen.
But make them happen by getting started now.
This story started as a reminder to myself.
But it can also double as a kick in the pants for you.
Go now, get working! We can do this.
Summed up in a Single Doodle
The problem with remote work is that
without defined work hours,
without coworkers wandering by to judge your productivity,
and with a laptop you can drag anywhere,
the bed becomes a temptation in the afternoon
and the laptop becomes a temptation in bed at night.
Description of the Visual for Accessibility:
At 2:00 PM: A woman looks tired, sitting at her desk with a mug of coffee and dreaming of her beautiful, rainbow-enshrouded bed.
At 2:00 AM: Looking alert, the same woman sits in bed, with thoughts of her laptop suddenly enshrouded in rainbows.
Let’s send each other more jokes during these distant days! Here’s wishing all my fellow remote workers a happy and compartmentalized workday!
Learn Korean Hangul or Bahasa for these rather non-traditional reasons
Language 1: 한글 (Hangul)
Korea has an alphabet of defiance
Prior to the Japanese occupation, Korean scholars used a complex system of writing to accompany their spoken language that borrowed heavily from Chinese Hanyu (汉语）
As many a person attempting to learn the Chinese writing system will tell you, it is a significant undertaking to learn to read or write. In order to read a newspaper in China, even after Mao attempted to simplify the language in the late 1960’s, it is estimated that you should learn 2,000 different ‘characters.’
The Koreans innovated upon the Chinese system, making writing more egalitarian by creating a phonetic alphabet, Hangul, which was used by merchants, women, and servants for practical matters. …
Medium should have learned from Wells Fargo or LinkedIn
We learned during the Wells Fargo corruption debacle that stemmed from their bonus structure causing structural racism that we need to think through the ramifications of unrealistic goals and who really gets hurt when mid-level management is pushed beyond their ability to sell.
(of course, we didn’t learn that lesson in time for Microsoft not to set Satya Nadella’s bonus on LinkedIn engagement. Hello LinkedIn Stories and goodbye, employees! Good thing he fired that 1,000 people a few months prior to the announcement of how many millions his bonus will comprise!)
So you’d think that Medium might think through how it’s paying out its incentives. …
Never feel guilty for putting your best foot forward
Can you recognize the historical figure from each of these three biographies?
Biography 1
Police commissioner. Cattle rancher. Colonel and war hero. Amazon explorer. Survived being shot and finished his appearance anyway, with a bullet hole through the note cards of his talk.
Biography 2
Asthmatic heir. Determined boxer and gymnast. Harvard grad, Phi Beta Kappa. Taxidermist and game hunter. Wildlife author and noted conservationist.
Biography 3
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of New York, youngest serving President of the United States, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.
These three short biographies are, as you likely guessed, of the same person: Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. …
CEOs: do you know when to hire your replacement?
Even after spending years in the startup and cryptocurrency space in San Francisco, the most startling and obvious advice I received about entrepreneurship was given to me by a founder in Tampa Bay. And when I moved to SF, I realized that no one was following his principle:
“There are two types of founders, the business builders and the serial entrepreneurs.”
It was Tampa Bay WaVE’s mentor speed dating day. …
History is prettier when wrapped in compassion and nostalgia and devoid of ugly truths
In January of 2019, a unanimous vote removed a plaque from the walls of the Texas State Capitol Building in Austin. Put up in 1959 by the Children of the Confederacy, the sign was an attractive series of lies.
CHILDREN OF THE CONFEDERACY CREED, it starts:
Because we desire to perpetuate, in love and honor, the heroic deeds of those who enlisted in the Confederate Army and upheld its flag through four years of war, we, the children of the South, have united together in an organization called “Children of the Confederacy,” in which our strength, enthusiasm, and love of justice can exert its influence. …
Or: how Auntie Florence and her 12 cats saved humanity
The aliens arrived in pyramid-shaped spaceships, not made of stone but instead a glowing metal that set off basement radon detectors area codes away. Historians were delighted, especially Egyptologists, who were suddenly on the speeddial of reporters and decision-making politicians. Everyone was delighted, until the pyramid doors opened and slaughter began.
Humanity fought back, of course, in the messy and nearly futile way it always does — most effective when cornered.
Seemingly at random, a ceasefire was called by the alien emissaries after only 13 days of devastating casualties.
Efforts were made to spy on the aliens, but the aliens were difficult to understand in the best of circumstances. At first humanity had assumed they communicated through telepathy. …
