Making progress while living fully is a tough balancing act.

(Caution: Page is under reconstruction!)

Two facts:

1. I want to live a rich, meaningful, slow life with my wife, daughter, and toy poodle.

2. I earn my living as a software engineer.

Two problems:

1. It’s easy for people in tech (including me) to live in a bubble. Yet, we’re typically building and selling software for the masses. There’s an ethical problem.

2. Technology shifts bloody quickly and keeping up with the latest takes a lot of time away from my life. There’s a logistical problem.

This newsletter offers two potential solutions.

1. Thursday’s Field Notes – learnings from the field worth sharing

As a software engineer, I am a practitioner in the heart of technology.

Perhaps you are too? Maybe you’re a software engineer yourself, or a product designer, PM, data engineer, data scientist, solutions engineer, technical consultant, customer success manager, or developer advocate.

As long as it’s your job to manage, implement, and/or deliver technology products, there should be something that is useful for you here.

Every other Thursday, I’ll hose down my muddy boots to write and send you a list of things worth sharing, straight from the field of software engineering. Accompanying each point will be a short write up describing how I believe you can apply it to make your life more easy, effective, and enjoyable as a human in tech.

You can expect:

• Lessons from working daily with the multi-fecta of technology (engineering, design, product, data)

• Lessons from being a dad and husband living in Germany away from home

• Only the most noteworthy — though not necessarily the most mainstream — news at the intersection of Life and Technology

• Lessons from experiments in product development, project management, people relations, and more that helps you find the signal in the noise

Field Notes is what all subscribers will receive for free.

2. Sunday’s Safe Space – a column about the intersection of Life and Technology

While Field Notes is a curated list of things worth sharing from our field, Safe Space is a column that deep-dives into the specifics of a topic.

You can expect:

• Bold and honest writing, with the understanding that we’re in a psychologically Safe Space (gated content and community)

• Anecdotes and mini-interviews with other humans in tech about certain topics to help (…)

Safe Space is a weekly column that I write for paid subscribers.

Start here

New and still not sure what this newsletter is about? Here is a handpicked list of posts that I’ve been particularly proud of having written as a sample:

• Focus on understanding, not on what is right

• YAGBEM - Ya ain't gonna be Elon Musk

• I've been dishonest in my writing for 7 years

• The only reason you need to keep a blog

• Prioritise regularity over quality

• 7 Things I’ve Learned from my First Year Living in Berlin (away from Singapore)

• Raising a newborn in Berlin vs Singapore

• The magic of a light touch

• You are not buying that with money

What readers say

I just wanted to drop you a note to tell you that you write very well - as in I'm, not saying in the literary sense but in a straightforward and straight to the heart kind of writing. No bullshit and unnecessary preamble.

I want to thank you for helping me down this path of facing the finite nature of my time and abilities (trying to internalise that that's okay) and figuring out what a meaningful life truly means for me (an answer that needs to come from me)

I really like your style of writing, hence I subscribed! I have been off social media ever since my child was born and have been searching for non-influencer types blogs to read, so it was a pleasant discovery.

I used to follow many blogs, but then I realized they're becoming too formulaic and inauthentic. Your blog is the opposite. I love it for being raw, for being honest.

Your PKM experiments and process notes are what drew me to your work. Minimalist approach to writing and publishing keeps me coming back.