Tim Parkins
Pick one recurring piece of your work and take it apart. That’s where the rebuild starts. | Image generated by AI, prompted by me I recently saw someone on X claim that companies are already laying off anyone who can’t use AI. So I asked for the source. Crickets. That’s the AI conversation about work … Read more
Better Problems Complaining is easy from a safe distance. The work starts when you pick a mess and walk toward it. | Image generated by AI, prompted by me For months, I complained about a project that wasn’t mine. It was an IT infrastructure rollout in a large government department, and it was failing. Miserably. … Read more
Fix the Design Before You Fix the Habits Most of the weight you carry, you picked up yourself. You can hang it back up. When I was young, I went through a stretch with almost no money. I had enough cash for about a week at a place that charged by the night. I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. Every decision came down to one question: what do I need to do next so I can eat and keep a roof over my head? Next year didn’t exist, never mind the idea of a career. Getting out of that…
The Value of a Confusing Career Your career has more rooms in it than you know. | Image generated by AI, prompted by me Some people seem to have only one career in them. Others don’t. I’ve never been one of the first group. Before spending most of my career in IT, I worked in housing construction, tool and die making, welding and fabrication on large structures like arenas and airports, and operating heavy equipment in forestry. Then came a long IT chapter. Now I’m an entrepreneur. None of…
Roughly a Quarter Roughly a quarter left. Aim it at your Work. | Image generated by AI, prompted by me Labour Day weekend just passed. That long weekend sits on a clear hinge in the year, the turn from more relaxed summer energy into a season that usually gets busier. Projects stack. Calendars fill. The light changes, and so does the pace. Between now and the end of the year, you’ve got about 110 days left, roughly a quarter, give or take. That stretch can be an ideal design window if you…
Faster at the slide. Worse at the source. The trail is obvious. That does not mean it is right. | Image generated by AI, prompted by me. You sent the briefing ten minutes before the meeting. Clean headings, and a number on slide two that makes the argument land. You’re proud of how it all looks. Until someone asks where that number came from. You remember asking the AI model. You do not remember opening the file and looking into the details. Not the look you’re going for. In 2023 a lawyer…
The Title Is Your Compensation A trade you make without even noticing. | AI-generated image, prompted by me. You are making a trade every day. You give an organization your time, your attention, and a large share of the problems you are willing to care about. In return you get money, a title, a place in a room, and a story about who you are. That trade can be an excellent one. Plenty of people choose a constrained role on purpose and sleep better for it. The trouble starts when you make it on…
Your Skills Are a Snapshot, Not a Ceiling A skill I once had, gathering dust. || Prompted by me, generated by AI. We think of our skills as though they’re an inventory. And in some ways, they are. I’m good at this. I know how to do that. I’ve never been good at this other thing. Then we use that inventory to decide what seems possible for us. The problem is that your skill set isn’t fixed. It’s a snapshot of what you know how to do right now. Your skill set is fluid. Skills develop through…
Use AI Like Everyone Will Know A mark you leave without meaning to. | AI-generated image, prompted by me Anthropic caused a bit of a firestorm this week. The company behind Claude announced it is now adding invisible, machine-readable watermarks to AI-generated text, along with provenance metadata for generated files. You can read the details here. My social media feeds filled up with people celebrating the prospect of catching AI users, alongside people horrified that they might be caught….
The Gorilla You’re Trained Not to See You can train yourself to count the passes. You can also train yourself to see the gorilla. It depends what you’re aiming your attention at. There is far more happening around you than you could ever possibly notice. People. Problems. Opportunities. Threats. Ideas. Patterns. Open doors. Dead ends. Most of them remain invisible. Not because they aren’t there, but because your attention is finite. You can’t notice everything. Your mind is constantly…