Life & Perspective
Reflections on how to live, work and learn.
Pricing & Proposals for Tech Services
Skilled technical freelancers lose work and money not on the number itself, but on how they present it. Here is why a single price invites a no, and what to send instead.
Finding Your First Clients
The first paying client feels impossible right up until it isn't. Here is the unglamorous, reliable path from zero to one, without an audience or an ad budget.
Facilitation Skills for Workshops
Most meetings fail for lack of a process, not a lack of ideas. Facilitation is the learnable skill that fixes that - and you do not need to be the most senior or the loudest person in the room to do it well.
Creating Engaging Slide Decks
The problem with most slides is not the font or the color. It is that nobody decided what the slide was supposed to say. Fix that one thing and the rest of the deck falls into place.
Starting a Freelance Tech Career
Thinking about going independent? Here is an honest, practical map of how to start a freelance tech career without the hype, the regret, or the rookie mistakes.
Foundations of Adult Learning
Adults do not learn the way children are taught. Here is what every new trainer, teacher, and subject-matter expert needs to know before stepping in front of a room of grown-ups.
Navigating Passion and Purpose: My Journey to a Master's Degree in Radio Engineering - Embedded Systems
Embarking on the pursuit of a Master's degree in Radio Engineering - Embedded Systems was more than a mere academic endeavor for me.
Forget the Grand Theory: How a "Theory of Nothing" Can Help You Be Healthier
Health psychology is obsessed with finding the one theory to rule them all: a master key to unlocking every health behavior. But what if that's a dead end?
The Heart of the Matter: Why Relationships Fail and How to Find True Intimacy
Why relationships fail and how to build true intimacy: friendship and trust, mercy over mere love, red flags to heed and authentic expression.
The Meaning Found in the Desert: Saint-Exupéry's "Wind, Sand and Stars"
Saint-Exupéry's Wind, Sand and Stars: meaning forged through danger and responsibility, human bonds and lessons from a near-death desert crash.
The Realization of Life: Rabindranath Tagore's "Sadhana"
Rabindranath Tagore's Sadhana: unity with nature and all life, the infinite in the finite and realizing life through love, joy and harmony.
Order in Disorder: James Gleick's "Chaos"
James Gleick's Chaos: the butterfly effect, fractals, strange attractors and the maverick scientists who found hidden order in disorder.
Having or Being: Erich Fromm's Two Modes of Existence
Erich Fromm's To Have or To Be?: the having mode of possession versus the being mode of living, and why our society's choice leaves us anxious.
We Are Made of Star-Stuff: Carl Sagan's "Cosmos"
Carl Sagan's Cosmos: we are made of star-stuff, the cosmic perspective, science as a source of wonder and the fragility of knowledge.
Everything, Briefly: Bill Bryson's Curious Tour of Science
Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything: an amateur's funny, curious tour from the Big Bang to us, and why science deepens wonder.
The Cup of Humanity: Okakura's "The Book of Tea"
Okakura's The Book of Tea: Teaism, beauty in simplicity and imperfection, and finding the profound in the ordinary act of drinking tea.
Thinking Without Thinking: Gladwell's "Blink"
Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: thin-slicing, when snap judgments beat analysis, when bias makes them dangerous and how expertise sharpens intuition.
Satori and the Sudden Glimpse: D.T. Suzuki on Zen
D.T. Suzuki's An Introduction to Zen Buddhism: satori, the limits of the intellect, koans and Zen as direct experience rather than doctrine.
On Dying Well: Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal"
Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: why modern medicine fails the dying, what matters at the end of life and how to ask better questions.
Gaining From Disorder: Taleb's "Antifragile"
Nassim Taleb's Antifragile explained: fragile, robust and antifragile, why removing all volatility backfires, and how to gain from disorder.
The Way of the Sword and the Self: Musashi's "The Book of Five Rings"
Musashi's The Book of Five Rings: the Way of mastery, clear perception, the five rings of Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void and lessons beyond combat.
Why We're Bad at Predicting Our Own Joy: Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness"
Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness is not, despite its title, a how-to guide for becoming happy.
How Little Things Make a Big Difference: Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"
Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: social epidemics, the Law of the Few, stickiness and context, and how far to trust his compelling stories.
The Watercourse Way: Alan Watts' "The Way of Zen"
Alan Watts' The Way of Zen: Zen's roots in Buddhism and Taoism, direct experience beyond concepts, koans and the watercourse way.