I spent a lot of last week doing bookkeeping. I know, I hear you groan! But it’s a necessary evil, right? I’m still relatively new to doing it in QuickBooks Online, and there were a few things I just could not seem to keep straight. Which category does this go in? Didn’t I already have…
I didn’t want to buy my Thanksgiving plates last week. It’s September for goodness sake! Thanksgiving is a lifetime away. But if I wait until November to buy Thanksgiving plates, and I want the napkins to match? Forget it. It’s too late. The stores have started stocking Valentine’s Day. So now, I’ve learned that if…
Last week I was reminded how easy it can be to unintentionally add friction to someone else’s problem. Someone needed some information, and while I couldn’t really solve the problem for them, I did have something that I thought might help. So I made a little extra effort to get it to them. They were…
Marie Kondo famously asks whether something sparks joy. I’m not sure if that’s quite the right question for technology. My bookkeeping software definitely does not spark joy in me. 😂 But I need it. It works. And I do think our technology needs to earn its spot in our lives. Think about the app you…
Last week, I clicked on a client’s website and it was completely down. And yes, I panicked a little. Ok, maybe more than a little. 😳 I’d never dealt with that particular problem before, so I started working on it. I checked the site, got into the backend, looked at the hosting, and eventually figured…
I spent a few days at the WordPress WordCamp US last week, surrounded by people who know an astonishing amount about, well, an astonishing amount of very specific things. I came home with pages of notes. There are things I want to try, things I want to learn more about, and more than a few…
Whew! Four days, 19 official keynotes, sessions, fireside chats, and a million conversations later, I’ve been trying to distill my notes into what might be useful beyond the conference. Here are my four biggest takeaways: 1. Our jobs are changing, not ending.The future of AI isn’t in better prompts, but in better coworking. It’s learning…
Good ideas are everywhere. You hear one at a conference. Someone shares what’s working for them in a Facebook group. You read a post on LinkedIn, listen to a podcast, or have a conversation with another business owner and think, Oh. That’s a really good idea. And it might be. The tricky part is what…
Last week, I noticed that not every productive week looks “productive.” There weren’t any big client wins or dramatic technology problems to solve. Mostly, I was getting ready for WordCamp US – making decisions, finishing loose ends, and trying to be intentional about how I want to spend my time there. It felt… ordinary. But…
One afternoon last week, I had a minor hissy fit and decided I was finally going to take something off my ever-growing “I’ll get to it someday” list. Not because the task I had chosen had suddenly become important. It hadn’t. I was just tired of watching that list grow. If you run your own…
Last week, I noticed that I’m spending less time asking, “How do I rank this page?” and more time asking, “How would someone actually ask this question?” It’s a subtle shift, but it changes how I think about websites. I’m finding myself looking for ways to make sites easier for both people and AI to…
Last night I wasn’t building a website. I was (gratefully!) maintaining a bunch of them. One needed a plugin update. Another had an image that wasn’t displaying quite right. A couple just needed someone to look them over and make sure everything was still healthy. None of it was particularly exciting, but by the end…
What I noticed last week… One of the easiest traps for me when designing a website is forgetting that I already know where everything is. I know the organization. I know the terminology. I know how all the pieces fit together. The person visiting the site… doesn’t. I’ve found that some of my best design…
What I noticed last week… I have a tendency to build the infrastructure before I know if I need it. After a conference, I wanted to keep talking with a few people I met. My first instinct was to think about spreadsheets, recurring reminders, Zoom meetings, and a follow-up process. Instead, I sent one simple…
Most websites collect far more information than most people realize. They can tell us how visitors found the site, which pages they looked at, how long they stayed, and whether they came from Google, social media, or a link someone shared. That’s a lot of information, and it’s easy to assume that more data is…
Things I noticed last week: I’ve spent a long time, probably years, trying to make time blocking work. To be fair, a lot of successful people swear by it, and I can absolutely see why. If your days are fairly predictable, blocking time for important work makes a lot of sense. The problem is that…
I need to catch up on my email. Those calls aren’t going to answer themselves. My desk is a wreck. Add in housework or laundry, and the list gets even longer. At first glance, these all sound like tasks. Things that need to get done. But what if none of them are actually tasks at…
Things I noticed last week: Sometimes the thing causing my stress isn’t the delay. It’s that I keep thinking about the delay. I was waiting on information from a client and found myself getting increasingly annoyed. Not because I needed it that minute.Not even because the information was late yet.I was annoyed because I knew…