Build Yourself Monthly Round Up: February 2022
Here’s what I’m loving, reading, watching, and following these days. These are resources and opportunities that I’m cheering on, are teaching me something I needed to know, or made me laugh out loud!
Amanda Holden’s youtube channel.
Amanda is an investing expert for women and I love her funny, feminist, and super real take. I particularly like her new Youtube series, A Brief History of Getting this Bread – which has the funniest–but also super fascinating–histories of the financial concepts and institutions we throw around today. I particularly love the one on the first stock.
Want to restore trust in the government? Start with customer experience.
Sha Hwang’s coauthored piece on Brookings on Biden’s executive order outlining a vision to improve the customer experience of government services. Sha is a friend of mine that cofounded Nava, a design consultancy that improves government services. (He was part of the original crack team to improve the HealthCare.gov user experience.) I love his and his coauthor’s take on how service improvement might be a way to improve trust in our governments.
Greater Good Studio and saam
I recently caught up with Sara Cantor of Greater Good Studio, a human-centered design studio focused on the social sector in Chicago. She mentioned that they’re looking for a multidisciplinary designer to join their team. I admire their integrity and their focus on racial equity in their work. In other news, saam, an architecture firm I’ve long admired in Boston (because of their radical flextime policy and emphasis on trust and accountability with staff), is looking for an architect with about 3-7 years of experience.
The future of work and wellbeing: creating the new work-life balance
Remote work might be with us, but it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. I’m hearing from many of my clients on the challenges they’re facing in setting boundaries, and feeling connected. Now that it’s not just a short-term thing to get through, we’re all realizing that remote or hybrid work takes a whole different set of strategies and approaches. Tiffany Shlain, a filmmaker, author of 24/6 (one of the top books I read in 2021), and new friend has run a hybrid remote studio for years. She’s built on her learnings from work and a weekly break from tech to create a program for companies building successful hybrid workplaces.
Platejoy
I have been obsessively telling everyone about the app Platejoy since I started using it this fall. Platejoy is like Blue Apron without the food and the waste… What I mean by that is that based on a pretty in-depth survey of your (and your household’s) eating preferences, Platejoy will make you a bespoke meal plan every week with recipes.
You get to choose how many meals you want it to plan for you each week, how many people will be eating, and how much time you want to spend prepping each meal. It keeps track of the food you have leftover (and in your pantry) and automatically generates these delicious weekly meal plans. And then, it breaks down the groceries you’ll need by supermarket aisle for easy shopping—or you can send the list off to Instacart. I like having home-cooked healthy meals, and don’t dislike cooking, but I *hate* having to think about and plan meals in advance. With this app I eat great food without carrying the mental load of it all.
