What I’m working on:
My book Lost in Curiosity came out in July, and after the initial flurry of launch events, I’m settling into a slow-and-steady pace for promotion. I recently spoke at Smarty Pints, a fun science-and-beer event series in Seattle, and told stories from a few chapters about geologists struggling with harsh fieldwork conditions on a Greenland glacier, an evolutionary biologist searching for an elusive frog in Borneo, and astronomers trying to detect moons orbiting exoplanets. Now I’m thinking about how to expand the material into a longer talk about the “messy middle” of science that I can give at universities, museums, libraries, and other venues. I also just published a round-up of books exploring the human side of science in the Wall Street Journal and chatted about my reporting and writing process with the Curious Reading Club. I’ll likely spend the next several months pitching podcasts, spreading the word to science organizations, connecting with more book clubs, and visiting indie bookstores to sign copies.
On the freelancing side, I’m ramping up communications work again. My main gigs are writing about finance, economics, and business for Northwestern and Yale’s management schools. This year, I’ve been working on expanding my client list to cover basic science research for other university publications as well.
Finally, I’ll teach my next investing and retirement planning workshop for writers and artists later this fall. I’m a massive personal finance nerd, and I launched these online classes about a year ago when I realized that creative types could use some help navigating money management tasks, which can often seem opaque and overwhelming. I also run an informal Money Motivation group for writers; we check in with each other every Friday to stay on top of financial to-dos such as contributing to retirement accounts, cutting expenses, shopping for insurance (ugh), and estate planning.
Where I work:
I live in Kirkland, a town across the lake from Seattle, and my office is in my bedroom. I splurged on a standing desk several years ago, but at some point I sort of forgot that the standing feature existed; I think I had to reprogram some settings and never got around to digging out the manual. So I now have a very expensive desk that I just sit at all the time. I should probably fix that.
I do have a window that looks out onto greenery in our backyard, but to be honest I’m so zeroed in on my screen the entire day that I barely look outside.
Daily routine:
When I was writing the book, I was waking up around 5:00 a.m. to get more writing done in the early hours. Now I let myself sleep until 6:00 a.m. if I feel like it. For half the weekdays, I’m in charge of getting my 12-year-old kid fed and out the door for school by 7:15 a.m. Any difficult work like writing or fact-checking has to happen early to mid-morning; I almost never schedule calls during that time. Late morning and afternoon are for email, interviews, reading papers, admin, and the occasional errand.
I usually take a break around 3:00 p.m. when my kid gets home from school to chat about her day and then go back to work until 5:00 p.m. I try not to do any work after 5:00 p.m. because the evening is reserved for cooking, family time, and winding down. If I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll plink around on our upright piano.
Most productive part of my day:
Morning. Morning. Morning. Afternoons are a disaster brain-wise. Nights are an absolute no-go.
When I was desperate for more writing time during the book project, I sometimes manufactured a “second morning” by taking a nap in the early afternoon and returning to the manuscript revitalized.
Most essential ritual or habit:
This isn’t exactly a habit because it’s automated by software, but I use the app Freedom to block email, Slack, texts, social media, news, YouTube, and other distracting sites during those critical early-to mid-morning hours. Ideally, I’ll block them for a good chunk of the afternoon as well. There are times when I make exceptions, like if I need to be available for quick turnaround edits or during unusual periods such as book launch month, but I try to do that as rarely as possible. Freedom also shuts down these sites at the end of the workday to keep me from lingering too long at my desk and pointlessly checking social media.
Favorite note-taking techniques/tools:
I use Scrivener to type and organize interview notes and Obsidian for more casual notes. Obsidian also has a great web clipper tool that I use to save news articles to read and highlight later. For features and book chapters, I use OmniOutliner to create massive nested lists of bullet points from all the interviews and scientific papers.
How I keep track of my to-do list:
I have tried so many apps and fancy journals, and in the end I always come back to two. First, OmniFocus for digital to-do lists because it works the same way my brain does (hierarchical nested lists; I hate tags). And second, a blank bullet journal with no prewritten dates or formatting for when I feel like going analog. Typically, the work tasks get tracked in OmniFocus, and the evening/weekend personal tasks often end up in the bullet journal so I don’t have to look at my computer or phone during off-hours.
Essential software/apps/productivity tools:
Aside from the ones above, I use Harvest for time tracking and invoicing, Calendly for scheduling interviews, Zotero for organizing papers, and YNAB for budgeting and logging expenses. Also, many, many Google spreadsheets for tracking my income, freelance schedule, clients, and book promotion activities.
Favorite time waster/procrastination habit:
Making elaborate plans in said spreadsheets to avoid doing actual work.
My reading habits:
On an ideal day, I’m up early enough that I can read a book for half an hour before getting my kid ready for school or starting work. This is when I read more challenging material like serious/classic novels (currently reading Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus), science books, or nerdy finance books.
Over lunch, I’m usually more in the mood to read news but I don’t want to look at a screen, so I might read a print newspaper or magazine. I used to subscribe to the daily print New York Times and felt overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of reading material, so my current technique is to buy a Sunday edition once in a while and read it for a few weeks—yes, it takes me that long to get through the entire thing! To keep up with breaking news, I scan headlines on Feedly (am I the only one still using RSS feeds?) or peruse daily newsletters from the New York Times, Nature, and Science while I’m at my desk.
Also in the mix are books about work and the creative process. The ones that probably had the biggest influence on how I think about my writing, freelancing, and career are Deep Work by Cal Newport, The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo, Essentialism by Greg McKeown, and Organizing for Creative People by Sheila Chandra.
Evenings are for light reading only—nothing too stressful or intense. Comedic contemporary novels (currently reading Maria Semple’s Go Gentle), occasional cozy fantasy or sci-fi (I liked Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series).
Sleep schedule: I’m somewhat fanatical about sleep hygiene and try to avoid screens and bright lights as much as possible after dinner. Usually in bed by 9:00 p.m. and pass out after 15 minutes of reading.