We’ve officially started kindergarten, which means our schedule is (relatively) normal up in here. After roughly four months of juggling – I think I had five uninterrupted weeks of work between late May and early September – I almost have the working hours of a normal full-time employed person. Almost.
Stuff I Wrote
- MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter: AI boosts worker productivity — but does that translate to final outputs? The short answer is “No,” and the reason isn’t entirely surprising…
- MIT Sloan: Trading energy stocks turns skeptics into supporters of climate action, which is an article best read while humming “The More You Know” from the after-school specials of our youth
- MIT Sloan: An MIT expert on which companies will succeed in the AI era and why Moore’s Law remains influential more than 50 years later
- Digital Health Insights: How organizations can help physicians spend less time managing portal messages, which can easily creep into their after-hours work
- Digital Health Insights: How California’s Carbon Health ruling impacts MSOs and tech companies that don’t have clinical leadership in place
- Digital Health Insights: CMS proposal to end third-party RPM puts vendors on their heels, especially if they lean heavily on monitoring and are light on clinical or consulting services
- Healthcare IT Today: Leading ACCESS Model Participants – a list that was surprisingly difficult to cobble together, as few companies are doing all the clinical tracks on a national scale
- Custom content for companies in AI-driven clinical documentation, enterprise tech, specialty pharma tech, payer dispute resolution, and more
Things I Did
- Navigated the transition from preschool to summer camp to vacation to kindergarten without my hair getting any more gray than it already was
- Took our son on his first “hike” up a “mountain” (Flying Mountain in Acadia, elevation 284 feet) while surviving multiple outdoor potty breaks and mangled attempts at a downhill piggyback ride
- Honored the cat’s 18th birthday by leaving her all alone in a quiet house for an entire week, interrupted only by a catsitter who ranks among the handful of people who can confirm she exists
- Went to my second Red Sox game with my son, who said the best parts of the game were watching the tarp getting removed and participating in The Wave
- Started decorating and acquiring candy for Halloween, even if we’ve yet to decide what we want to be
Adventures in Fatherhood
- During Kindergarten Rumspringa – the week and a half bookending Labor Day when we had one day of school out of seven weekdays – we hit just about every museum and major tourist attraction that Boston has to offer. The Duck Tour was a favorite, we liked the View Boston gift shop more than the experience itself, and (as usual) nothing beat the Discovery Museum.
- We’re now ranking supermarkets by the availability of Cool Shopping Carts. Stop & Shop and Trader Joe’s are boring, while Donelan’s (a small chain west of Boston) is not; depending on the location, there’s the option to sit in front of the car and use a steering wheel or – even better – a child-size shopping cart to push and fill on your own. Market Basket is a wild card: If we can find the carts with bench seating *and* have the patience to wait in line *and* Dad says we can get yet another novelty balloon, then it’s a win.
- Thing I Learned the Hard Way: Don’t let your kid talk you into getting a fly swatter. We found one on a recent grocery store trip, and I allowed it since 1) it was 30 cents, 2) it’s practical, and 3) it was used for a preschool craft project. Now, though, I’m being pestered to print out sheets of paper with pictures of flies on them that we can “swat” with paint – and while I garner the courage and wherewithal to figure this out, we’re using the flyswatter to smack light switches. Not my best moment as a father.
Happy September. May you achieve the levels of cozy, pumpkin spice, flannel, and football that are right for you.
