Image credit: Eleni Kalorkoti

I’ve kept a journal on and off since I was 14 years old. In addition to journaling, which documents my most personal thoughts, I also keep work notebooks. The structure of my notebooks is a little fuzzier: they serve as a catch-all for ideas, resources, people, and places. It’s amazing to revisit them to get a snapshot of where I was and what I was thinking about at that moment in time. And yet it’s not a particularly accessible or well-organized system. If I want to share these thoughts more widely, I’ll need to take a page from David Sedaris’s book and take his advice: “Jot things down during the day, then tomorrow morning you flesh them out.”

As a runner in NYC, I’m spoiled: the community here is unique and beautiful. Not only do I have tremendous teammates on North Brooklyn Runners, but I’ve met fantastic people in other clubs around the city. Patricia Tirona is one such human. She’s run nine marathons, loves the Spurs and hot wings, and cheers her face off when she’s not actively racing.

I love reading about famous peoples’ processes. I look for meaning in their rituals and routines in hopes of finding wisdom that will make me more productive. Joyce Carol Oates an excellent productivity role model: she’s written over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction.

Empatico is a free tech tool for teachers to match & connect classrooms around the world. Launched by the KIND Foundation, the tool provides opportunities for students from different backgrounds to collaborate on standards-based activities and learn about each other in the process. Empatico targets third and fourth graders because children are very developmentally pliable at that age. By introducing students from different backgrounds during this critical period, Empatico helps them cultivate a stronger sense of empathy and responsibility towards others. Love this intentional use of technology.

This blog post came out earlier this year, but it’s been lodged in my brain since then. As a woman in tech, I’m not thrilled with the current state of the startup landscape. Watching companies with questionable motives lock down millions in seed funding and “disrupt” institutions to only to serve a more exclusive clientele feels gross.

There are two types of people, askers and guessers. Askers will ask a favor without any expectation that you will say yes. Guessers will only ask a favor if they believe there is a high probability that you will say yes. I am a guesser, so I need to recognize that people don’t always expect a “yes” and I have the power to exercise my “no.” Shoutout to Jocelyn K. Glei for blowing my mind apart with this revelation.

This piece circulated on the North Brooklyn Runners Google group this weekend and I cannot get enough of it.