Life Update (November 2022)

TL;DR… I’m joining Tana full-time!

The sort of work that I am leaving behind

Hey friends,

I’ve been a bit flaky with the newsletter lately (read: this fall) and there are three factors at play:

1. I’m one human, not a machine;

2. After having done regular-ish publishing for a year, I feel I’ve earned the right to not stress about missing weekly publishing dates if it happens. The habit, desire and ability to publish is still there, I’m giving myself slack because…

3. I’m leaving my current job at Sweeny&Co Architects (where I’ve been for the past 11 years! ❤️) to join Tana Inc. full-time starting December!

This is a huge move for me. For a start, millennials like me don’t typically stay at one workplace for as long as 11 years, but for people with broad minds and many interests, let me tell you that architecture and design work is addicting. No two weeks ever look the same, and for me, that’s how this job has outlived many changes in addresses, passports, hobbies, intimate relationships... For all the dysfunctions of the architecture, urban planning and development professions, this particular office is a fantastic place to work, and I would recommend anyone in architecture or planning who is looking to do good honest work in Toronto to check it out. I have long-time friends and much subject-matter expertise… let me know if you need an introduction.

So, why am I leaving?

Well, I changed a lot the past year after Write of Passage 7. There’s no denying it. I did WoP because I hoped that writing would help me progress my Urban Planning career. Instead, I found myself investigating other things that I felt were related to the DNA of cities and they often were related to big cloudy topics like culture, identity, patterns, art, history, law… and I am continually discovering through my reading and writing how everything is connected if you look far enough back in history, or zoom out enough to see context. This led me to a most futile yet motivating quest: to improve my knowledge management skills. And as many readers of this newsletter may know, we’re currently living in a really exciting time for personal knowledge management. I want to believe that the rising “popularity” of PKM (despite being an extremely cumbersome activity for most: just picture rolling a square wheel, because that’s how primitive our PKM tools, methods, and theories still are) is a reaction to information overload brought upon us by current internet environments,

and I am totally here for it.

It is empowering as heck to feel in control of your thinking and knowledge. I believe PKM will lead to a bloom of positive change. I believe that when exposed to a receptive mind, PKM supercharges their curiosity and gives them permission to take charge of their own sense-making. They can break the shackles of learned helplessness. I know, because I was that person. It helped me, a lost person, feel less lost. Rather than helplessly tumbling down the whitewater rapids of information overload, learning about PKM was like being shown the idea of paddles and introduced to the notion of navigating the treacherous waters. It’s not an instant solution, but it serves as a strong inspiration, and a glimmer of hope. For this reason, I’m very passionate about learning, sharing, and helping shape the narratives around PKM.

Nearly in lockstep with the rise of PKM, the past 5-7 years has seen the birth of many wonderful new tools that set out to help people navigate the esoteric nature of knowledge management. Tana is one of them. They’re also set on tackling knowledge leverage (how to get the most out of existing knowledge in your graph), and collaboration (especially in light of distributed, async work and measuring the value of ever-more complex knowledge work). Both are hugely relevant today and important questions for many work situations across professions, disciplines, and industries. Making a difference here could have a huge impact and ripple effect. All this to say: It is a really exciting time to be alive, and to be given an opportunity to be part of this conversation through Tana.

So that brings us to the present day. I am in mourning, and in celebration. The preparations on both ends make me feel unusually alive, and I’m drinking it all in, trying to slow the days down so I can cherish this liminal time as much as possible.

Because once I start full-time at Tana, it’s going to be full throttle on everything :)

—F

PS. I’m working on an MVZK book update every spare moment I have in between jobs! It’s going but it’s slow, so please forgive me. To give you a sneak peek, the topic of this update is the anatomy of a workflow… it’s gonna be a good one!