The Playlist - P22-02
thomasvs-playlist
Soundtrack for this issue: Tacocat - Men Explain Things to Me
Draft emails from Google Docs#tip #productivity
In the ever more vertical company that Google is becoming, it is even more important to collaborate on some of your communication - more people want to contribute to the message and get it right, and more thought needs to be given to the ever wider audience you're sending mails to.
A while back I copied over AppScript code from an internal Google project to send meeting notes to make a different tool which makes it easy to go from Google Docs draft to a mail in GMail and avoid embarrassing copy/paste errors. I'm happy to be able to retire that little side project in favor of a recently released built-in feature of Google Docs: Draft emails from Google Docs - Docs Editors Help
Rebecca Solnit - Men Explain Things to Me#article #dei
"Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being."
In honor of International Women's Day 2022 (this past March 8th), some quotes from the 2008 article that inspired the term "mansplaining": to comment on or explain something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner.
I've certainly been (and probably still am) guilty of this behavior, and this is a standing invitation to let me know when I'm doing it to you.
Read the original article with a new introduction at Men Explain Things to Me – Guernica
"None was more astonishing than the one from the Indianapolis man who wrote in to tell me that he had “never personally or professionally shortchanged a woman” and went on to berate me for not hanging out with “more regular guys or at least do a little homework first,” gave me some advice about how to run my life, and then commented on my “feelings of inferiority.” He thought that being patronized was an experience a woman chooses to, or could choose not to have–and so the fault was all mine. Life is short; I didn’t write back."
What's the next action?#book #tip #productivity #gtd
"Without a next action, there remains a potentially infinite gap between current reality and what you need to do."
David Allen's Getting Things Done is the non-fiction book I've reread the most in my life. I reread it every couple of years and still pick up on new ideas that I missed before, or parts that resonate better now and I'm excited to implement. Before Google, I used to give this book to new employees as a welcome gift.
The book got an update in 2015, and I haven't read the new version yet, so I'm planning an extended GTD book club at work in Q2, spreading the book out over multiple sessions. (In fact, I did just that for the young adult version of the book with my 16 year old godson back home in Belgium) If you've run a GTD book club, drop me a line!
Find out more at Getting Things Done® - David Allen's GTD® Methodology
"Too many meetings end with a vague feeling among the players that something ought to happen, and the hope that it’s not their personal job to make it so. [...] ask “So what’s the next action on this?” at the end of each discussion point in your next staff meeting"
Running Anthos inside Google#blog #anthos
"With everyone and their dog shifting to containers, and away from virtual machines (VMs), we realized that running vendor-provided software on VMs at Google was slowing us down. So we moved."
Bikram co-authored this blog post last year about DASInfra's experience moving workloads from Corp to Anthos. The group I run at work is going down a similar path by migrating VMs to Anthos on bare metal for on-prem.
The COVID Cocoon#document #allyship #transgender #rto
"The global COVID-19 pandemic has had countless impacts on society. One interesting effect is that it has created an environment in which many people have been able to explore their gender identity and, in many cases, undergo a gender transition. As organizations return to in-person work, be it full-time or hybrid, there is a greater chance of “out” transgender, non-binary, or gender non-conforming employees in the workforce." (From the "5 Ally Actions Newsletter - Mar 25, 2022")
March 31 is the Transgender Day of Visibility. The COVID Cocoon is a nickname given for the phenomenon of people discovering their gender diversity during the pandemic environment.
The full report is an interesting read; one recommendation that we can all contribute to is on Culture and Communication: Proactively communicating that gender diversity is accepted, asking staff for their input, and being open and ready to listen helps create a culture where employees can feel safe, welcome, and valued.
Building a Second Brain#video #course #pkm
"Your Second Brain is for preserving raw information over time until it's ready to be used, because information is perishable. Your Second Brain is the brain that doesn't forget." - Tiago Forte
Personal Knowledge Management is going through a wave of innovation with new tools like Roam, Logseq, Obsidian, Notion, RemNote, and others gaining traction over Evernote, OneNote and the like. It's a great time to get curious or reacquaint yourself with the tools and processes that strengthen learning, processing, and expressing your knowledge work.
The expression "Second Brain" has been popularized by Tiago Forte, who's been running an online cohort-based class called Building a Second Brain I took the class last year and found it a powerful distillation of an approach to PKM and note-taking. If you want to learn more, they just wrapped up the Second Brain Summit and posted all videos online: Second Brain Summit 2022 - Full Session Recordings - YouTube
The next class cohort is open for enrollment until March 30th midnight ET, at Building a Second Brain: Live 5-Week Online Course, and runs from April 12th to May 10th, 2022.
"Taking notes is the closest thing we have to time travel." - Kendrick Lamar
This Pandemic Life#tweet #life
"another day of staring at the big screen while scrolling through my little screen so as to reward myself for staring at the medium screen all week" (delia_cai on twitter)
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