The Beastwood Files: November 2025

Coming to you at that lovely time of year when companies are either already hibernating until January or scrambling to finish things before Santa arrives. Meanwhile, I’m trying to operate somewhere in between – keeping busy yet attempting to shut things down roughly one week before Christmas. In that spirit, I’m writing this while wolfing down a sandwich at my desk

Stuff I Wrote

• MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter: Dynamic work design, explained – a lengthy primer on a concept we’d all benefit from embracing, if not at the very least studying
• MIT Sloan: Large language models can help professionals identify customer needs – how LLMs can extract the nuance of what customers really need (not what they say they need)
• HealthTech Magazine: Tips for Healthcare Organizations on Getting Started With Google’s Gemini Enterprise – tips for, um, well, the headline says it all
• Digital Health Insights: Amid a flurry of telehealth activity, no certainty about its future – temporary reimbursement is back (again), but the market’s tepid (again)
• Digital Health Insights: Medicare Advantage’s evolution a sign of the times – major insurers are not only pulling back; they’re also cutting less-lucrative supplemental benefits
• Digital Health Insights: Rural health, already struggling, braces for further uncertainty – Rural Health Transformation is a dog and pony show, and it’s not enough to make up for anticipated losses

Stuff I Did

• Spend a good chunk of the first week of November napping thanks to some viral thing that wasn’t serious enough to warrant taking time off but was nonetheless enough to make it hard to look at the ol’ computer screen for too long
• Listened to my first holiday song of the season – Christmas Eve / Sarajevo from the Trans Siberian Orchestra, of course
• Somehow – SOMEHOW – listened to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald for the first time
• Cooked a 12-pound turkey for seven people, two of whom didn’t eat any (one for dietary reasons, one because he’s a very picky 4-year-old), which left plenty for turkey soup (which is really what I’m here for, let’s be honest)
• Bought a Christmas tree and immediately decorated it, because said 4-year-old is also not the best at waiting
• Entered the season of “do the tires *really* need air, or is it just that the temperature dropped?”

Adventures in Fatherhood

• We continued our annual tradition of making gingerbread houses. I fulfilled my patriarchal duties of taste-testing the candy. My son managed to decorate his house all by himself, coming up with his own ideas and drawing inspiration from Mommy as well as our friend who joined us for the evening. For some reason, my contribution – pictured here – didn’t inspire him. I don’t understand why.
• After largely ignoring our balance bike for the better part of two years, we randomly decided to try it out again. We got the hang of it but also seemed a bit frustrated as to why we had to ride on quiet paths and not one of the most well-trafficked rail trails in the nation.
• We’ve started to play a game where, when Daddy leans forward in his seat, we sneak behind him and yell, “Squish me!” I respond to this by saying, “Son, the first thing they told us in all the First-Time Parent classes was that you shouldn’t squish your baby.” I now use this to explain other, not-fun things that I do – e.g., “Another thing they told me in First-Time Parent class is that you have to make sure your kid wears socks.”
• We have discovered the Magic School Bus. This is great, except that we’re ALL IN like a poker player who just wants to leave the table. We’ve checked close to 20 out of the library – apologies to anyone in Eastern Massachusetts who hasn’t been able to put them on hold – and read them I’d say an average of five times apiece. I’ve gone hoarse more than once.

Happy holidays, everyone! May you get exactly what you wish out of the season. Talk to you in 2026.