skills

Mar 8, 2022

Technology’s potential to enhance the best of our nature instead of inflaming the worst

Technology's potential to enhance the best of our nature instead of inflame the worst

Probably the biggest battle for productivity is fighting the barrage of psychologically manipulative social technologies that have been designed to make us feel we are not enough, have missed out and need to keep clicking. I have always struggled to harness the never-ending stream of thoughts and ideas that course through my brain.  Social media bombards me with even more ideas, thoughts and feelings I could live without. I also have a very distorted view of time and reality.  This means that I feel like I can tackle every single one of those ideas all of the time.  While this is exciting...

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| 4 min read

Feb 4, 2022

I need to be clear – how learning Spanish is changing how I communicate

I need to be clear how learning Spanish is changing how I communicate

I am revisiting my Spanish course on Duolingo. I love the multilingual voice in my head that sees an object and knows two words for it - it makes everyday life a bit of a game.  The table - La Mesa... ding ding 10 points for you! In a recent set of lessons, I had to translate 'quiero' and 'necesito'.  Funnily, I knew the actual meaning of these words - 'I want' and 'I need' but when translating sentences my brain regularly substituted 'I would like'.  So I translated 'Yo quiero una falda verde' as 'I would like a green skirt' but the actual meaning of this sentence is 'I want a green...

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| 2 min read

Feb 3, 2022

Use it or loose it

Use-it-or-loose-it-skills-and-evolution

I had a baby three months ago. Three months seems such a short amount of time.  Yet, on my first full web design project back, I found some of my skills rusty.  Some things I did without even thinking about before, skills that were in my fingers had gone missing or were slow and clunky.  Clearly, those professional neural pathways had weakened as I concentrated on the urgent needs of a newborn. I am shocked at how fast this happened - years doing these same repeated movements and just three months to weaken or lose them.  I had to think deliberately and in some cases seek documentation to...

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| 2 min read