Strategy & Ideas

Last week, I mentioned an article called The Making of the Corporate Athlete (originally published in 2001 in the Harvard Business Review).  If you haven’t read it, you should — it’s a short read.  Long story short: successful athletes take a “whole body” approach to optimizing their performance, an...

Last month, I attended the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s annual unconference.  My favorite session, by far, was Bill Warner‘s “Building a Startup from the Heart”. I found Bill’s approach to be inspiring, and immediately went home to incorporate his ideas into some OpenPlans materials...

I love seeing people write to their future selves. Here’s a note I came across in my very own inbox today, no doubt jotted down on my iPhone while I was half-drunk at a party. Drake. Neon Indian Groove shark – friends playlist    Darius.  Radius radius Brother “Radius radius” is my favorite part.  I...

This week, we’re on vacation in Cape Cod with my wife’s family.  They’ve been renting the same tiny cabin by the beach for the past 35 years, and coming here is pretty much the highlight of our summer each year.  Last summer, we brought Theo here when he was just three weeks old.  This morning,… Con...

This morning, I drove from Boston to Cape Cod, alone with my thoughts except for Theo sleeping in the back seat.  Once we were out of the city and smoothly on the highway, I got to thinking about work, and things really started clicking.  I found myself reaching for my iPhone to record voice memos… ...

I’ve been thinking a lot about fitness lately, mostly spurred on by the great stuff coming out of Clay Johnson’s new blog, InfoVegan. Clay has been drawing a parallel between physical obesity and information obesity, and has been diving deep on what it means to have a “healthy information diet.”  It...

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about LifeHacking.  Getting my inbox filters just right so I can get to “inbox double-zero,” syncing my iPhone and my Google Calendar, setting up ssh keys in all the right places, etc. But something I’m still not that good at is “LifePruning,” that is, the cont...

After many moons of plotting and scheming, yesterday we announced our organizational rebranding: The organization formerly known as The Open Planning Project (or TOPP) is now OpenPlans.  I am excited, and I think this is a welcome development. For years, there has been mass confusion (chaos! pandemo...

For the past year or so, the group at TOPP that I manage has been known as TOPP Labs.  TOPP Labs was originally chosen not because it was the best or most compelling name, but because as we were dialing back work on the OpenCore project, we needed a name that was better than “The… Continue reading

One of the toughest things I’ve encountered, as I attend meetings, speak on panels, do interviews, and go to conferences, is that you never quite know what the tone of the room will be like until you get there.  In other words, there are always a ton of different approaches you can take to a… Contin...