Now now now

Greetings, fellow humans! As you know, my professional pursuit is all about maximizing productivity and making the most of our limited time on this planet. But behind the scenes, I'm a work in progress just like everyone else. Here's a candid look at what's been occupying my world lately:

What I'm Reading:

• "Untamed" by Glennon Doyle - A powerful memoir that's inspiring me to fully embrace my authentic self, flaws and all.
• Research papers on "attention residue" - Geeking out over fascinating studies on digital distractions.

What I'm Watching:

• Monthly movie nights with my kids - Treasuring low-key family time amidst my busy schedule. Recent picks include "The Mitchells vs The Machines" and "Soul."
• Nature documentaries for "focus reboots" when I need a brain break from screens.

What I'm Listening To:

• The "Forever35" podcast - Laughing along with these hilariously relatable conversations about life, work, and everything in between.
• 1990s throwback playlists - A little musical nostalgia for when I was just starting my productivity journey.

What I'm Working On:

• Launching a scholarship program to bring affordable coaching to diverse communities. Opportunity = productivity!
• Testing different ADHD productivity methodologies for an upcoming blog series. Always striving to make achievement accessible.
• Writing workshop curriculum for my teenagers on building healthy digital habits. Practicing what I preach at home!

What's Next:

• Planning a family camping trip to disconnect from devices and reconnect with nature's restorative energy.
• Researching speaking opportunities aligned with my passions: education, mental health, diversity & inclusion.
• Dabbling with different analog tools and planners. Sometimes low-tech is high-impact!

Behind the scenes, I'm juggling ordinary life demands alongside my professional pursuits. But that inherent busyness fuels my motivation to keep optimizing. I'm tremendously grateful we're on this journey together! Let's continue nurturing our productive selves while embracing life's messy beauty.

Wishing you all the best,

What I'm Reading:

• "Atomic Habits" by James Clear - Re-reading this incredible book and applying its lessons to help clients build productive habit stacks.
• "Indistractable" by Nir Eyal - Fascinated by Eyal's strategies for mastering internal triggers and becoming indistractable.

What I'm Watching:

• "The Biggest Little Farm" - This documentary reinforces my belief in the power of resilience, patience and a positive mindset.
• Productivity YouTube channels like Matt D'Avella, Thomas Frank, and Keep Productive - Always looking for fresh perspectives.

What I'm Listening To:

• "The Ground Up Show" podcast - Loving the nitty-gritty tactical advice for entrepreneurs.
• "Insight Timer" meditation app - Prioritizing mindfulness to stay centered and focused daily.

What I'm Working On:

• New online course: "The Productive Morning Routine" - Condensing my best morning ritual strategies into an interactive program.
• Quarterly Productivity Coaching Mastermind - Small group setting to troubleshoot challenges and keep each other accountable.
• Book proposal: "The Simplicity Mindset" - Exploring the paradox that the path to productivity lies in simplifying.

What's Next:

• Speaking at the Lifehack Summit in July on "Purging Productivity Myths"
• Starting a monthly Accountability challenges on social media
• Redesigning my website with a fresh, minimalist aesthetic

I'm feeling inspired and grateful for the opportunity to pursue my passion for helping others optimize their time and energy. If you'd like to connect or share productivity tips, find me on [social handles].

Stay focused!

London flipped from sweltering summer back to drizzling grey yesterday. Autumn was overdue. Summer was a little too manic for my taste anyway. I spent a bunch of time in Maine, New York, and San Fransisco. A mix of long back porch hangouts with family, collaborator coffees, and in-person problem-solving with the Ought team.

But the Ought team are no longer the Ought team. We've changed names! And whole companies come to think of it. Ought as a legal entity was a non-profit research lab. But we found it difficult to get enough funding from the charitable space to hire people and grow 

Elicit, our primary product. Our founders decided to pull the same move as OpenAI and Anthropic and flipped to become a VC-backed startup. The new company is just called Elicit. We raised a seed round and rebuilt the product.

We're slowly moving our 200,000 active users over to the new beta version. We shipped it while we're still deeply embarrassed by it. It has a thousand big and small UX cuts that fill me with sadness. Every morning I get on and hack away at them, trusting at some point it will feel beautiful to use.

My work on Elicit and explorations of 

Language Model interfaces have compounded into some strong opinions. I gathered some of them into a new talk called Squish Meets Structure. I did one round of it for Smashing Meets AI, and then drastically improved it for Smashing Conference in Freiburg, Germany a few weeks ago.

I'm headed to 

Web Directions in Sydney, Australia and FFConf in Brighton later this year to present my slightly more macabre talk on the Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI. Expect to be all talked out after that.

Currently taking in writing advice from men named Ste(v/ph)en. Working through Steven Pinker's “

The Sense of Style” and Stephen King's “On Writing” – both excellent. The former for grounded advice on non-fiction communication, the latter for an extraordinary account of persistently writing through double-shift minimum wage jobs and a raging alcohol and drug problem.

Spent the summer discovering how much I love dresses and 

jumpsuits with deep pockets. Found some of my favourites from Boden, Ro&Zo, Whistles, and Thought.

I've realised I spent the last decade avoiding femme clothing, aesthetics, and mannerisms in an attempt to be taken more seriously in the all-male spaces I hang out in. Spaces where I am routinely treated like a small, insignificant girl, ignored, and spoken over. Feels pretty freeing to give fewer shits and permanently live in dresses. They'll ignore me either way.