The Focused Wall Calendar for 2027 is now available. Mike and I have been working with the NeuYear folks for years to make a calendar that helps you see what you’re getting yourself into. Over the years, this calendar on my wall has gotten…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, Mike and I review Q3 and talk through our plans for the rest of the year. We look at keeping a menu of opportunities without turning every interesting idea into a commitment, and setting quarterly milestones for projects that…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, Mike and I look at how AI becomes a distraction precisely because it feels like work. We cover tool tourism, infinite collaboration, system procrastination, cognitive debt, and authority drift, then set a few boundaries that keep the robot useful…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, Mike and I work through practical questions about capacity, chronotypes, delegation, accountability, and what to do when a careful plan collapses. We also talk about task overload and the difference between getting human help and handing work to a…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, Mike and I are joined by Cat Mulvihill to look at a frustrating productivity problem: having a good system and still not doing the work. Cat separates the reasons we get stuck into three categories, logical, biological, and psychological,…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, Mike and I try to build a personal philosophy for when AI writing help makes you sharper and when it just makes you soft. In Deep Focus, Mike walks through hiring his first full-time virtual assistant. Episode Links How…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, Mike and I take apart our complicated relationship with measurement. We start with Goodhart’s Law, the idea that a number stops measuring the thing you cared about the moment it becomes the target, and follow that through law school…
Listen & read notes →If you’re a Relay Member, I recorded a bonus episode you might enjoy. It’s called “Intentional MPU, with Focus: A Productivity Tool Draft,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The hosts from Mac Power Users, Focused, and Intentional AI got in a room…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, Mike and I dig into defaults, chronotype, and capacity. Three things that quietly shape how you work whether you pay attention to them or not. I talk about my practice of writing down my own belief systems, and what…
Listen & read notes →On this episode of Focused, I’m joined by Mike and our guest Stephen Robles, the new co-host of Mac Power Users who went fully independent last October. Stephen makes the case for the generalist, the person who’s good at a lot of things instead…
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