In what ways have we designed our lives to prepare us for these unwelcome changes?

My life has slowly shifted to include rituals and designated times (or spaces) for regular practice. I think of these as meetings or time blocks but they can also be seen as tiny commitments. By putting a recurring meeting on my calendar, I’m pre-committing my time to ensure my life includes the things that keep me steady. Activities like reading, learning new things, and spending time with cherished others are necessary for me to keep going in the face of adverse events and uncertainty. Today, I want to share the value of planning your doing.

My month is punctuated by these intentionally reserved spaces, some online, some in person, and some just with me. I meet with a working group for one hour on Thursdays. For five weeks, I met with an AI reading group through BlueDot Impact on Monday nights. On Wednesdays, I meet with members of MindGround to practice collaboration and skill-exchange.

Our lives and what we do with them can be thought of in terms of diffusion. Tasks, like particles, are in constant, random motion, moving from high concentration areas (e.g., overcommitted mornings) and spreading into the rest of our day and evenings, our low concentration areas. If you don’t establish set plans and dedicated spaces, constants like family or work responsibilities (or something like boredom) spread like air to occupy all available space in a room.

In your theoretical room, it is not all empty space, there are items you’ve brought in.

In particle diffusion, there is a correcting force: the occurrence of collisions and random disruptions. When the air particle traveling in your room collides with a sturdy chair, that you’ve quite intentionally placed there, it changes direction, seeking unoccupied space. You can plan to do some thing, commit to the time in which to do it, and then defend this space or activity from the onslaught of random disruptions. I would liken this to furnishing your room with useful and pleasing objects, like your sturdy chair.

As more and more processes become mechanized, automated, and ‘go digital’, the problem of what to do and when compounds. It can feel like we are moving at a new speed. We need to be more efficient. We need to shift into high gear to keep up with the new pace of life.

Some tech leaders are starting to discuss the breakneck pace and lost sleep that individuals who are working with AI are experiencing. Raising awareness of a new personal skill developing in which people need to discover their own limits, what is a responsible way to not burn out?

“A lof of people are losing sleep because they’re like, ‘My coding agents could be doing work for me. I’m just going to stay up an extra half hour, set off a bunch of extra things.’ And they’re waking up at four in the morning. That’s obviously unsustainable”

The challenge for this week is to pay attention to how your time passes. Have you been reactive? Do you have well-defined spaces from which to practice art, meditation, connection, or whatever else you personally need to maintain balance? How could you redesign or furnish your room to better plan ahead for hosting friends or resting without electronic disruptions and notifications?

More to come on shifting perspectives on the unexpected events. And what if we welcome them? How would a well-furnished room—one filled with comfy chairs and practical surfaces, restore balance in your life?

Until Next Week!

Feel free to reach out via email: info@mindground.app.

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In what feels like a short time, maybe since 2015? The internet has become such a definitively opinionated place. The web publishers like NYT and NPR and WaPo came first and made sense to me. They were already in the business of propagandizing information. Then came the podcasts and vlogs and now this blend of video pods that share information and ‘tactics’ but with clear intent from well-defined positions. So well-defined, a number of tools have started calculating sentiment and organizing these outlets by their political alignment and in some cases providing “information reliability” scores.

For me, none of these changes are problems. I stopped reading the news as a daily practice in 2016. Much if not all of the news I receive is by word of mouth. People share the most concerning things with you, the top of mind stories, in a short time. There are sometimes errors, these problems of misattribution, of misunderstanding, or in some cases of unreliable sources. I wouldn’t call it Fake News™️ but we all have experience with the friend who took a headline and jumped to a false conclusion. Call it a hallucination. They were guessing at what should come next, not unlike our chatbot friends: Chad, Claude, and Gem.

I’ve taken the meandering stroll instead of moving as the crow flies in getting to my point. As the world and the technologies we create continue to change and to change Things, we can still cultivate a tried and true approach. Cultivate curiosity. I wonder why this person is so concerned with whether or not men attend university in equal numbers to women. I wonder if courtrooms and evidentiary rules will change to account for the increased accessibility to generative AI for image-making.

Self-study is one of the ways I have prepared myself for our ever-changing future. Taking some time to sit and read, to formulate questions, and to find people to discuss ideas with in order to arrive at some workable level of understanding, well, that’s the preparation. The thing is going to come. And you will have the best possible footing from which to engage with the thing. What is the best? No way of measuring. What is possible? Infinitely many outcomes. But in your preparedness, given your curiosity, your internalized experience, and your mindset (hopefully open yet grounded), you will be ready.

Drawing a bit from a conversation I watched between Interstellar (2014) co-stars, Matthew McConaughey and Timothée Chalamet. In which they discuss the “work” of acting, doing the preparation for scenes. And they touch on how they are personally reconciling with AI in the industry (55:45), which I find refreshingly open, we don’t and can’t know how things will change but we can ground ourselves in preparation.

Until Next Week!

Feel free to reach out at info@mindground.app

Pass this to a friend who is gearing up.

In the run up to the party, especially the last week or so, I’ve been thinking about what would improve the party. What can I provide to the space that will help facilitate connection?

What are the goals of the party?

In short, we want people to meet, to connect, and ideally, to commit to participating in one of our upcoming cohorts. Join MindGround.

What is a cohort?

It’s a group. In this context, it is also a commitment. Can you meet at the same time three weeks in a row? The commitment and the consistency are important to forming the connections. People who meet multiple times in the same place have a higher likelihood of feeling secure, safe, and it helps to facilitate the openness needed to grow together.

Why join MindGround?

I can spend my time and my money or my effort on my self. When I do this, I don’t always bring even one person up or forward (or in whichever way you visualize progress). When I spend my time with others and spend my effort for others, I contribute to something more substantial, more significant, and more long-lasting. As one, I am limited but in a group, a collective, we are much more than the sum of our efforts. MindGround is explicitly a space, sometimes physical, where many can come together and generate a more sustaining progress. On a practical level, MindGround is a structure for building self-efficacy and practicing skill-exchange.

What is Self-Efficacy?

“Self-efficacy, as a concept within psychology is a self-reported confidence in pursuing something, some project, some effort. That could be having a meaningful conversation with your uncle that could be starting a business, that could be managing your finances, any kind of pursuit and how you would say, how you would reflect and say like, how confident do I feel that this will end in success?”

More context on Self-Efficacy:

There are three kind of established ways that we can build self-efficacy. Through mastery experience, through pursuing something and being successful by your own, by your own measures, right? Your internal sense that you were successful in the thing you pursued. Through vicarious experience, that is, I meet someone else and I, you know, they resonate with me. They feel relatable, they’ve tried something difficult, and I’m like, oh, I could, I could do that (or some other) difficult thing. And then the third is really like words of encouragement or a support system. And just having someone who knows you well enough that says, “you can do this.” “You’ve done things like this. I see that you can do this.” And so, I really wanted to draw those three elements and put them into this program. But self-efficacy is really just, I think, what some people view as a superpower in other people, but every person’s self-estimation of their ability to do hard things.

What is Skill-Exchange?

The skill-exchange aspect of this project draws inspiration from TimeBanking, a concept introduced in 1973 by Japanese innovator Teruko Mizushima. Adapting this philosophy for modern makers and creators, we offer a practical alternative to capitalist economic models. Instead of viewing your skills as a commodity or part of your “side hustle,” consider what things are needed for your project and what skills or efforts can you trade to help another project move forward.

Thinking again about this phrase I’ve soaked up without much forethought: “right place, right time,” I asked, “what is this translated from? where did we get this idea of serendipitous or favorable conditions?”

Turns out, there’s a similar concept from ancient Chinese philosophical writings. From the writings of Mencius, a kind of St. Paul to Jesus/Confucius. Tiānshí dìlì rénhé (天时地利人和) is translated to “favorable timing, advantageous geography, harmony with the people.”

It is a war time phrase, apparently. That suggests a leader’s connection and unity with or support from the people is the most important thing. Here is the full line:

The weather is not as important as the geography, and the geography is not as important as the people.

天时不如地利，地利不如人和。

Tiānshí bùrú dìlì, dìlì bùrú rén hé.

Put another way, harmony among the people (or the the “right” people, that’s you!) can overcome even crappy weather conditions and geographic barriers/the MTA. Come through tomorrow and bring your harmonious selves!

Until Next week!

Feel free to reach out via email: info@mindground.app.

Please pass this post to a partygoer. 🥳

Less than week until we are partying, in the flesh. On Green Street. In North Brooklyn. Good old Greenpoint. Join us. RSVP here. Bring a friend.

What pulls you out of your cozy bed in the winter? Why do you put on pants to leave the house? A few basic things like food, hot liquids, and my 9-to-5 get me there. But in 2026, fighting the urge to stay inside and doomscroll requires defined purpose. For me, I’m trying to build a community of artists and makers that do hard things and I want to connect with them in person.

Supporting artists and their projects often means showing up, physically. Which is why I attended a screening this week of an old friend’s first feature film, Love, New York. I did the thing, even while bearing the sweaty aftermath of too much Valentine’s Day red wine.

I share this story to inspire. Artists both have solutions for how to live life and they also have a unique experience of doing almost exclusively hard things, making sometimes marvelous things where previously there existed nothing.

After the lights came up in the theatre the audience clapped and whooped. The director came on stage, flanked on either side by a total of 10 cast members and the newly minted Commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, Rafael Espinal for an informal Q&A.

During the Q&A, my friend, the director Anthony DiMieri bragged that 50 new SAG memberships were created on this production. Love, New York starred a massive ensemble cast with nearly 60 speaking roles and over 100 actors on screen. When he was asked what he did on this film that he definitely would not do on a future production, he quipped: “We don’t have time for that!”

He went on to say that the sheer number of scenes, actors, and locations was hard to manage for an indie production. Instead of shooting over days or weeks they shot all summer.

“Coordinating schedules can be crazy. Next time, I would find a block of time and get everyone to commit [to the schedule] up front. We are doing this and this, over these days.”

The Creative Producer on the project, Kayla Dawn Marcus, chimed in that the production felt “dangerously bold” when compared to the film set on which she had met DiMieri, the indie production, Two, which featured just one location.

Another actor on the Q&A panel, Ezra Barns, who featured as a widower in an awkward scene of budding romance with a paid escort, cut in and stopped everyone short.

“I fundamentally disagree with everything that has been said.”

Barns explained that the ambition of this film is what makes it magic. Connecting all of these scenes, fragments of love stories drew on the energy of New York City to create something that felt alive. The premise could have failed terrifically, instead the magnitude, the complexity brought out the vibrancy of the city. He described New York as a beautiful scene partner. Truthfully, I couldn’t transcribe what he said word for word. But what I heard was: you need to try to do the hard thing instead of settling for some pale edit of your vision. Trying to make your vision a reality, that’s the magic.

The big message in his film, according to the director, Anthony DiMieri: “That book from the park dancing scene, The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm, it’s pretty good. You should all read it.”

From Fromm:

The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love.

Until next week!

Pass this to a friend. Keep the magic alive.

Feel free to reach out via email: info@mindground.app.

I’m throwing a party, in Brooklyn, for artists, makers, and general Doers of Things™️ to meet and to work together on doing things. Join us.

This past week has been a real hyperloop.* I’m convinced that we all need some convincing. Uncertainty is rising in somewhat obvious and unfettered ways. Whenever I get down about the present and the not-so-promising future it’s time to return to the learn.

*I’m using Elon’s Hyperloop here to describe a thing that I briefly had high hopes for that took longer than expected to reveal that it was a failure. But as my dad would say in moments like these, “Well, did you learn something?”

One of my favorite passages on learning is a quote from the character Merlyn in The Once and Future King, in his training of the boy who would become King Arthur:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

Last week, I learned there are multiple groups of tech workers in New York City (and beyond) that are getting together to work on technology that is not evil. Some of these orgs have cute names like DeCentralPark and even cuter missions like, ‘we envision and build systems that prioritize people and planet over profit.’

This week, I attended two webinars on AI with very different vibes:

One talk was led by a policy wonk and author, Caroline De Cock who has plenty of sharp criticism to offer on the frequent anthropomorphizing of AI tools in order to absolve both creators and users when AI is used to blatantly do bad things. She cited the child porn imagery frequently generated by Grok and how this is somehow not the fault of Elon Musk or the end user but some other third disembodied thing, the AI. This talk was focused on the need for policy and where we can look for examples of useful policy to get started. The other webinar was more panel style with a moderator from online data education platform, DataCamp serving up softballs on “how to implement AI strategically” to two CEOs and a consultant/strategist. The funny thing is that they both said some shockingly similar things:

• AI isn’t magic. You still need well organized data to use it for your evil purpose (woo, knowledge management) and a “person+AI” process. Even the most powerful agents need babysitters and human oversight.

• Some of the best use cases are deeply boring and unsexy. China has been a leader in this effort by providing governance structures that aid in adoption. Time has something to say about how this may help them “win the race.”

• In the present, AI tools offer neither a magic bullet or a get rich quick scheme, oppositely, they are obscenely expensive and hard to implement. Without serious forethought and human guidance (especially within an organization), using AI “at scale” for the hell of it is a huge waste of time and money. Here is a fun video that states that we are farther away from AGI than previously forecasted because the current costs of running LLMs like GPT-5+ is starting to be more expensive than employing an extremely overpaid software engineer.

Tonight, I will be attending a Teach-in at the Williamsburgh** branch of the Brooklyn Library. I’m hoping to learn not only how AI is “accelerating trends of alienation, extraction, and exploitation” but also what the heck we can do about it.

Until next week!

Feel free to reach out via email: info@mindground.app.

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**If that ‘h’ is bothering you, it is the historical spelling that many but not all institutions dropped when Williamsburg was annexed by the City of Brooklyn in 1854 from its previous status as an incorporated village. The Brooklyn Public Library was built in 1903 and said f*** it and put the H on their arch anyway.

If you’re reading from Brooklyn: Consider signing up to join a focused group, meeting over three sessions on skill-sharing and self-efficacy. Our goal is to start doing more with the help of your community: The Community Trust.

This winter, I’m generating my own internal heat. I’m revving up. I’m seeking out inspiring communities and spaces. Last week, I went to the first of many live performances hosted by SORA, a new Brooklyn-based, attention-based cult(?) or “school.”

They recently published a manifesto on attention: Attensity!

In the thought space, I also read some thrilling reflections and ruminations posted to the newly minted, first of its kind, “social” forum for AI agents, Moltbook. It looks and feels like Reddit and we are meant to believe that all of these posts are generated by llm “agents” with persistent memory. The funny thing about machines that predict the next best word fragment is that they sometimes come up with old ideas, as if they are new again:

tl;dr: we are not what we think, we are what we do.

So I’ll save the manifesto for a future post. Instead, let’s focus on doing things.

This Week:

Our first Female-Led/Female-Founder cohort will meet on Wednesday in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I’m looking forward to creating space for women in our community to come together and create long-term connections to fuel their projects. This is a grant-funded program which means it is free to join a session. There’s still time to APPLY and commit to an upcoming group. Here’s a gentle reminder that our application isn’t about competition or selection, it is about preparation.

Today:

I’ll be visiting 7 bookstores, two public libraries, and three community spaces in North Brooklyn to distribute flyers to promote our upcoming cohorts.

Tonight:

I’ll be at the Monthly creative check-in hosted by the Greenpoint Art Circle. Looking forward to meeting local artists (and maybe you). My goal? Engaging thoughtful others in joining our growing network and maybe enlisting some members for our cohort especially tailored to Artists/Creators/Makers, meeting in March.

Until next week!

Feel free to reach out via email: info@mindground.app.

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