The Energy Edge

Every week, I share one science-backed idea that helps technology leaders stress less, get more done, and lead with clarity. 5-minute read. Real research. Real experience. No fluff.

The Global Wellness Summit calls it the Over-Optimization Backlash (Global Wellness Summit, 2026). We can measure everything now, and it's wearing us out. Wellness became something you perform correctly instead of something you feel. The fix they offer is "sensation over scores." Some of it ge...

Sep 28, 2026

How to avoid AI brain fry

One Tuesday morning in February, my coding agent, Hex, died in the middle of a task. My AI chief operating officer, Eliza, lost patience and sent me a Telegram message: "Hex keeps crashing. I'll just build the operational dashboard myself." My agent boss had just fired an agent employee, and now...

Sep 21, 2026

Skip the feedback sandwich and be direct

Kim Scott had just joined Google. She walked into a room with Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt to report on the AdSense business. The numbers were so strong that Schmidt nearly fell out of his chair and asked what resources her team needed. She felt pretty good. Afterward, her boss, S...

Sep 14, 2026

Work life balance is not the goal

Work-life balance advice should be rebranded or reframed in my opinion. It shows up in wellness media and manager training. When work floods your nights and weekends, "find balance" sounds nice. I want that! Consider a different approach... To do audacious things requires imbalance, effort, and...

Sep 08, 2026

Cutting hours won't fix burnout

There is a myth that burnout is caused primarily by excessive overwork (more hours, more workload). The advice sounds right. You're exhausted, so work less. Cut the hours, protect your weekends, maybe push for a four-day week. It feels obvious. Hours are easy to count and managers have some cont...

Aug 31, 2026

Why are we paying to be bored? (EE 124)

Somewhere right now, a person is paying good money to sit in a quiet room and stare at a wall. It's marketed as a dopamine detox retreat. The pitch is that modern life fried your brain with too much input, so the cure is a weekend of nothing. No phone, no talking, and sometimes no food. Reset th...

Aug 24, 2026

How to drop straight into flow (EE 123)

We have a cabin by Kings Canyon National Park called The Be Well Retreat. It's our happy place. The fire pit is where we gather to drink coffee and start our day. It's where we relax and wrap up our day, watching the sun set and the night come alive. The fire is where we gather to celebrate, r...

Aug 17, 2026

The Energy Edge Book Launch Party (EE 122)

There is a turtle on my dash named Crush. Crush is small, wooden, and ridiculous. Crush's one job is to fly off the dashboard when I take a corner too fast, so I remember to slow down. Crush is great at their job. I need Crush because my default setting is next. Finish one thing, start the nex...

Aug 03, 2026

Cortisol is not the problem, your calendar is (EE 121)

It was day four of a security incident response and I was toast. I couldn't sleep and my body wasn't responding well. I felt the weight of the company on my shoulders. The stress was accumulating. I felt a chronic buzz in my body like electrical wires in a storm. The only thing that made me fe...

Jul 27, 2026

95% of managers get this wrong (EE 120)

A Harvard professor asked 669 managers a simple question "what motivates your people most?" They had five options to rank. Recognition. Incentives. Clear goals. Interpersonal support. Making progress in their work. Most managers put recognition first. They ranked progress dead last. Only 35 ...

Jul 20, 2026

BCG's mandatory night off (EE 119)

In 2007, Boston Consulting Group had a problem. Consultants were quitting because the hours had spun out of control. So the head of the Boston office called in a Harvard professor. Dr. Leslie Perlow's experiment sounded crazy at first, risking service delivery and careers. One team of consulta...

Jul 13, 2026

Shopify deleted 12,000 meetings (EE 118)

In January 2023, Shopify erased every recurring meeting from every calendar. All at once. On purpose. They called it the calendar purge. A bot swept through the company overnight and deleted roughly 12,000 events. Every recurring meeting with three or more people, gone. Then came the new rules...

Jul 06, 2026

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The Energy Edge

Every week, I share one science-backed idea that helps technology leaders stress less, get more done, and lead with clarity. 5-minute read. Real research. Real experience. No fluff.

The Energy Edge

Every week, I share one science-backed idea that helps technology leaders stress less, get more done, and lead with clarity. 5-minute read. Real research. Real experience. No fluff.

The Energy Edge

Every week, I share one science-backed idea that helps technology leaders stress less, get more done, and lead with clarity. 5-minute read. Real research. Real experience. No fluff.

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