Author: Joshua

There’s a passage in the Bible where Paul, one of the early church leaders, talks about a problem in a community (1 Corinthians 3). Apollos and Paul, two preachers who loved to share with others, were both teaching and preaching in the same general area. As a result some people started calling themselves followers of Paul,…

March 2019 update: I’ve just purchased the 15L (got a 15″ laptop and the 10L featured here doesn’t fit it). I’ll be posting a followup in the coming months based on a new trip to share on my experience.  Eureka! The perfect backpack exists, for me at least. Ok, I’ll try not to get too…

Evernote, Apple Notes, Simplenote, TextEdit, Notepad++, Field Notes, Google Docs, Confluence. Over the last decade I’ve tried out a lot of options for capturing notes. My perfect notes doc would: Be universal – It’s always with me, or easily accessible. This doesn’t necessarily preclude an analog option, such as my beloved Rhodia notebook, but it’s…

Earlier today I attended a talk by Adam Morgan, a senior Creative Director at Adobe. He shared why creativity and design matter, and why they deserve a seat at the table alongside logic and data. The question that started the talk was, “do creative ideas work better?”. To find out the answer he discussed the differences…

This weekend I spent a few days by myself in the middle of nowhere. Thank you my lovely wife for handling the kiddos by herself! I’ll likely share some more thoughts soon, but the short takeaway is it’s important to take time to think; to stop and take stock of what’s going on. For myself…

So I’m struggling with something. I love to help people out and love to tinker and try new things. This means I take on more than I can handle and then end up working backwards to try and prioritize. Last night I started reading two books about this very thing. They’re really driving the point…

Last year I started running 1 mile each day. Running is my favorite exercise. I can get enjoy exercise, enjoy nature, and listen to an audiobook. However, in the past I’ve only run if there’s an event to train for. In April, 2017 we had our second child, and training for a big event wasn’t realistic.…

Abridged summary from the publisher: Radical Candor is simple, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring, it’s obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging, it’s ruinous empathy. When you do neither, it’s manipulative insincerity. Below are some bullets that really stood out to me:…

Just finished listening to this book on Audible (pro tip: Listen at 150% speed). Below are some bullets that really stood out to me. Business plan – Google initially created a business plan that didn’t actually tie the engineers to anything. In hindsight this worked quite well in allowing them the freedom to be creative. Obligated…

  There’s some task managers out there, as well as information on productivity and task management systems, whether digital or something analog. I started thinking about what a task manager that works how I think, taking inspiration from all the things I’ve used over the years. This conglomerate system I use helps me focus and get…

Just finished watching an excellent video from James Clear on the small changes you can make in your life to improve over time. This lines up very closely with the daily habits I’ve been practicing last year. I highly recommend checking out this talk! Sharing my sketchnotes below:

Last week I installed the iOS 11 public beta on my phone. After playing with it on my iPad for a few months I figured it’d be safe enough to add to my daily driver. It’s a new OS that adds features to a pretty established OS, no real surprise there as someone who uses…

Contributing to WordPress Core as a non-developer Sharing a post I wrote for XWP, where I work as a Product Owner / Designer.

I gave talks/workshops at WordCamp Toronto 2017, WordCamp Baltimore 2017, WordCamp Europe 2018, and WordCamp for Publishers 2018 on the importance of sketching, wireframes, and prototypes. You can watch these online at WordPress.TV.  In this talk I shared simple steps to create sketches and wireframes that you can add to any development ticket or website…

While I’m busy building my life, working, learning, planning, and all around staying busy, I often catch glimpses of something far more important that’s quickly passing me by. My son is 4 years old, and right now one of the highlights of his day, especially since it’s Summer time and he isn’t in preschool, is…

As a teenager I tried running. Any attempts quickly ended in a fit of coughing with my lungs feeling ripped out. Finally around 19 a friend took me running for 2 miles. He kept us at a medium jogging pace, and at the end I didn’t feel like I had lost any major organs. Just…