• I'm using a process initiative at work to demonstrate to the company, especially to folks not on the product team, a basic UX research and design process. The main idea is to short-circuit the all-too-common impulse to leap from an identified problem or need to one seemingly obvious solution. Executives are famous for this, but it's common in other parts of the company as well. Executives are also famous for mixing generation and evaluation, which should be held apart for a while.
• Going hard at the gym has started (at long last) to result in less or even no knee pain at night, leading to better sleep. Hallelujah.
• I'm getting closer to a unified field theory of UX research and design. Watch this space for stabs at explaining parts of it at various levels. The first bullet above holds one fragment.

• My two conference talks went fine. It's not easy to gauge audience response when using some of these online conference platforms, so I'll reserve further judgement until the survey results come in.
• One of my online participatory design exercises went fine (the other was marred by low participation). These are hard to do online, but better than nothing, and we learned some things even so.
• I tried doing a pull-up on a pair of cannonball grips, and surprised myself by succeeding without much trouble. I haven't trained pull-ups for years. Maybe I should. (Word is you should "Spock" your grip on these, with two fingers on either side of the bracket at the top.)

There has been a lot of scuttlebutt about people secretly holding two jobs of late. This is partially due to a labor market that remains tight, especially in tech, publicity around fraudulent interviewees, and employees having more control over their time in remote and hybrid work environments, among other concerns. This has led to some needlessly inflated rhetoric and managers comparing notes about how to detect people who are working more than one job.

I'm not that worried about it. The number of jobs an employee has is not my concern.

• If the person is getting their work done and meeting my performance/communication/availability standards, I don't have a problem.
• If they are not getting their work done and/or not meeting my performance/communication/availability standards, I do have a problem.

In neither case do I need to cast about for proof that the person is working another job or two, or distracted by caring for an elder parent, or going through a messy breakup, or what have you. I gain nothing by investigating each employee to see if they might be working another job. If I determine that there's a performance problem, I need to talk to the employee and manage the issue.

No one seems to care if an employee in the C-suite serves on multiple boards (unless they are competitors) or advises multiple startups (unless they are competitors). No one seems to care if an employee also plays in a band. No one seems to care if a person sells their ceramics or tunes pianos or works on software projects on the side for free; perhaps it's conflict of interest we're worried about?

If there's no performance problem and no conflict of interest, is there a problem?

Here's a quick one that has saved me time and helped me mask my frustration:

When dealing with a support agent via online chat, keep a copy of everything you type in a separate text file. That way when you think of a better way to explain yourself, or inevitably have to re-explain everything to another agent, you have text at the ready. It's much less work to copy and paste the relevant bits than to write them all again, is less emotionally taxing, and you can look like the nice person you really are, even if this all has gone on far too long.

• My eight minute talk wherein I tried to explain/demo the accomplishments of my department over the prior year seemed to go fine. Folks in my department liked it, anyhow.
• The gym was closed on Tuesday. No matter – I went for a run. And it was somewhat enjoyable.
• A former coworker sent me a very nice message. It made my week!

I hope you’re doing well! It’s been quite a while since I last spoke to you, and I wanted to say how much I appreciate the impact you have had on my life. I reap the benefits of it almost daily, and I hope to be like you when I grow up.