Amber R Field

May 12, 2026May 10, 2026Habits, Writing

There Is No Right Way to Be Brilliant: A Review of Daily Rituals by Mason Currey

Several clocks on the cover of Mason Currey's book "Daily Rituals"

I’m reading Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, and I keep having the same thought over and over again, “Well, if they can do it that way, then anyone can”. The book profiles 161 creative minds from novelists, scientists, and painters, to philosophers, composers, and poets, documenting their daily working routines. And after one hundred pages of profiles, the takeaway I’m getting is that you can be brilliant in your own way, on your own schedule, with your own strange routines.

May 5, 2026May 4, 2026Intentional Living

When You Combine What You Love, Something Remarkable Happens

This past weekend, 580 people in Milwaukee did something that seems almost too simple to be true: they played board games for a weekend and raised over $46,000 for cancer care at Aurora Healthcare. I left the weekend thinking about how often we underestimate what happens when we stop treating our passions as separate from our purpose and start treating them as the same thing. When we combine what we love, extraordinary things happen.

April 28, 2026April 26, 2026UW-Madison

Introducing CS Marketplace: Where Student Talent Meets Real-World Problems

CS Marketplace is a new initiative from the UW-Madison Department of Computer Sciences that connects campus organizations with skilled computer science students who can build the software solutions they need. The Summer & Fall 2026 cohorts begin soon. Find out more about this exciting new program!

April 21, 2026April 19, 2026Simplification

When Life Gets Overwhelming, I Organize Things For Stress Relief

To say we had a lot going on this week is an understatement. So yesterday, I did something that might sound counterintuitive when you’re drowning in life: I picked a drawer and got rid of everything in it I no longer wear. By the end of both sessions, I felt measurably better. This is not an accident. It turns out the science on this is pretty compelling. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, this is the article for you.

April 14, 2026April 12, 2026Product Discovery

AI Is Changing What Your Engineering Team Should Be Doing: Are You Taking Advantage of It?

AI is giving engineers the gift of time. And most organizations are squandering it. Figuring out what to do with your organization’s newfound time is one of the most important strategic questions that engineering leaders and product teams need to be wrestling with right now. The answer, I’d argue, is discovery. Real, rigorous, customer-focused product discovery. And most teams are not doing nearly enough of it.

April 7, 2026April 6, 2026Travel

Scuba Diving Cozumel with Teenagers: How to Give Your Kids the Underwater Trip of a Lifetime

When three of our teenagers (ages 12, 13, and 15) first expressed interest in getting scuba certified, I was thrilled (and then a little nervous)! Could they handle the training? What actually happened was better than anything I could have planned. And then nature helped us out a little bit because we saw dolphins on their very first open water dive.

March 31, 2026March 23, 2026Intentional Living

What If Your Goals Were Experiments Instead?

Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a neuroscientist, former Google executive, and founder of the Ness Labs newsletter has a new book, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World, and her ideas around ditching goals and focusing on experiments is really interesting. Could you do something like this in your life?

March 24, 2026March 22, 2026Early Retirement

The Five Values That Make Retirement Actually Work

Nobody ever asks about the harder part of retirement: what do you do with yourself? The Minimalists have a five-value foundational framework that make a life feel full and meaningful and retirement needs these same things: health, relationships, creativity, growth, and contribution.

March 17, 2026March 14, 2026Habits

The Quiet Power of Showing Up Every Day

I’ve recently realized that all of the things I’ve found most worth doing, I’ve accomplished by showing up every, single day. My daily habits have led me to write a book, become fluent in new languages, and retire at 41. I blink and suddenly I hit huge life goals. You have to love the power of the daily habit.

March 10, 2026March 8, 2026Common Sense

Who Should You Blame for Daylight Saving Time Still Being a Thing?

I’m writing this on Sunday, March 8, 2026, when most of us woke up with that sinking feeling that only Daylight Saving Time (DST) can bring: we lost another hour of our lives. Let me walk you through the history of how we got here, what’s been done to try to fix it, and why ending this practice once and for all would be genuinely good for all of us.