5 Quick Updates
I enjoy so much writing these posts.
But there would be no joy if you weren’t reading them.
So thank you.
I’m in a reflective kind of mood today, so instead of one piece covering one aspect of my work, this post is more of a collection of reflections about where my projects (and my mind) are now.
As you read through them, I invite you to nudge me to write more on some of them, or to suggest future musings for this blog. (For that, you can get in touch, or fill in the simple poll at the bottom of the post.) I’d also love to know whether you prefer short or long pieces.
1) Spiralling Creativity
As well as showing up to connect with you through my work, I’m discovering how much I like to experiment with space on the screen, as well as with words.
What do I mean by that?
Well,
Something like this.
Finding a way of conversing with you by how the words line up (or align) on the page.
A bit like free verse,
Some would say.
2) Shakespeare
This point should continue to be under the heading “spiralling creativity”, because I started elaborating on one thought and ended up with a separate blog post. That’s why my posts are usually so long!
(You can click here to go to the post which describes why Claude AI will not provide me with Shakespeare speeches.)
Back to Shakespeare.
I’ve been focusing this week on writing “All the World’s A Workplace”, a memoir-style book on the human side of remote work, inspired by adaptations of Shakespeare speeches by AI. (What do you think, have I got my elevator pitch yet?)
I’m beginning to doubt the value of this experiment, through which I’ve been feeding Shakespeare speeches to ChatGPT, and asking it to adapt them to reflect an aspect of remote work.
As inspiration, I’ve been reading Peter Brook’s The Quality of Mercy, which is a collection of his reflection on Shakespeare. In the chapter on “the Dream”, which talks about his iconic adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1970, he says:
”It is an understandable difficulty for actors, directors and designers facing a play of Shakespeare not to ask, “What should we do with it?” So much has been done already and so often filmed, recorded or described that it is hard not to begin by searching for something striking and new.”
The same could be say for the use of gen AI. Put them both together and, is the output of this “search for something striking and new” worth putting out there as a piece of work?
That’s where I’m at with this one.
3) Emotions at the Management Café
Writing this down, it seems like “emotions” is the topic of the week.
Tim and I have decided to start a series for our podcast Management Café, focusing on manager emotions. This is due to how much we enjoyed recording an episode on regret, and the good feedback we’ve had around it.
We’re asking for listener stories to feed into the series. The episode with this request comes out on Monday, but you can have a sneak preview by clicking here.
4) I love to learn
Reading Adam Grant’s “Hidden Potential”, I’ve realised that I like to teach, because I like to learn. And I like to write because I like to learn. Hence why these posts are so long!
5) Unexpected evolution
Some of you might remember that last year I co-wrote “The Remote Worker’s Guide to Time Management” with ChatGPT. After that, I turned it into a “GPT”, which is a bot that sits within the ChatGPT ecosystem, that you can customise to focus on one topic, skill, goal, etc.
My GPT is called Beat Procrastination, and it’s supposed to help people understand what is preventing them from starting or continuing some of their work, and giving them ideas on how to, well, beat that procrastination.
I just did this for fun.
It takes about five minutes to set up a GPT, and right now it’s free to do so.
I thought I’d open it up to the public.
And you know what? One of my connections has started using it in unexpected ways and is now seeing whether it can be of help to others.
He’s shared his conversations with the bot with me, and it’s really rewarding to have someone evolve your own thinking, and find different ways of using the material you’ve created.
Coda
As you can see, I can talk and talk forever on all the things I’m doing - because I have time for discovery and I have time for reflection.
I’m very thankful for that and not taking it for granted.
If you would like me to pick up on any of these topics/ideas, or have something to suggest, let’s test together this Polls feature:
Or you can get in touch by leaving a comment here, replying to this email (if you’re reading me in your inbox) or through here.
Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in a week or two!
Pilar