Category: Effective Writing

The Curse of Knowledge

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11 COMMENTS

I was in Croatia and Slovenia last week, celebrating my 30th wedding anniversary. I have no idea where my wife decided to go. I’m kidding; we were there together. Both are beautiful countries with nice people, quality beer, and lots of silent consonants. We had a terrific time. When we arrived in Slovenia’s capital, Ljubljana (pronounced: “Las Vegas”), we had to check into our Airbnb. This was more difficult than anticipated. The problem was that while the apartment owner had emailed step-by-step instructions regarding how to find the lockbox, get the key, […] Click to read more…

The Time Is Now

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5 COMMENTS

I don’t read many “standard” business books. As a one-man band with no interest in expanding, books about CEO excellence, leadership strategy, hiring, firing, motivating others …  little of it applies in my world. Plus, between you and me, I find those topics kind of dull. Instead, I like and read a lot of social psychology-ish books: Different, Nudge, The Paradox of Choice, Made to Stick. And while they aren’t intended to be business books, they are very much about how people think, behave, and make decisions. Which, if you boil it all down, is […] Click to read more…

Language Lab Lessons

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13 COMMENTS

As has become our annual habit (a two-year pause during Covid not withstanding), my wife Linda and I are working remotely in Costa Rica for the month of February. It’s a great way to escape winter – not that it ever showed up in New England this year – and thanks to the legendary degree of Costa Rican friendliness, it’s pretty easy to settle in here. Spanish, of course, is the native tongue and we do our best not to sound like complete idiots when attempting to communicate. The other day, […] Click to read more…

I *NOT* Robot

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31 COMMENTS

Maybe you’ve heard about the new artificial intelligence thingy called ChatGPT? According to Wikipedia – my go to source for quick explanations, music trivia, and unreliable medical facts – ChatGPT is, “a prototype artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI which specializes in dialogue.” You create an account (it’s free), log-in, and type in a question or request. However, unlike a traditional search engine (Google, Bing, etc.), it doesn’t point you to things out on the Internet. Instead, it responds, in dialogue form, based on the vast trove of “knowledge” it has at its robotic fingertips. […] Click to read more…

One-Armed Bandit

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15 COMMENTS

For the past two weeks, I’ve had my arm in a sling. That’s because a week ago Thursday, I had rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder. Apparently, this is pretty significant stuff, and so for the month or two leading up to the event, I was focused on the surgery itself. Fortunately, all went well. But, as I soon learned, the procedure, at least from the patient’s perspective, is not the hard part – all I had to do was show up on time and go to sleep (insert your […] Click to read more…