Simple Makes [Life, Software, Everything] Better.
Simple Makes [Life, Software, Everything] Better.
I just returned from the Global Agility + Innovation Summit, a one-day leadership conference in DC hosted by Sanjiv Augustine and his team at LitheSpeed. It was a day packed with sharp thinking, genuine conversation, and the kind of energy that only happens when a room full of practitioners who actually care about the work they’re doing get together. Here are some conference highlights.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.