The Reflective Practice Radio took a two-week break.
Not intentionally—just life. Scheduling conflicts. That familiar reality where the calendar wins.
And when we came back to record, we didn’t start with a plan.
We started with a feeling.
The world is moving fast.
AI headlines. Tool launches. Hot takes. Layoffs. Anxiety.
That sense that if you step away for a week, you’re already behind.
So we asked a simple question:
How are you staying grounded?
Focus on what you can control
For me, grounding starts with a reminder:
Most of what’s happening out there isn’t mine to steer.
I can’t control the industry’s trajectory.
I can’t control the macro story.
I can’t control whether some executive somewhere decides “efficiency” is the theme of the quarter.
But I can control the quality of my work.
I can show up.
I can learn.
I can keep my attitude intact.
That doesn’t eliminate the anxiety.
It just gives it somewhere to land.
A place to stand.
The hidden cost of “keeping up”
At some point, “staying informed” becomes something else.
It becomes a form of context-switching disguised as responsibility.
A feed that jumps from layoffs to outrage to a new AI tool to someone announcing their “10x workflow” to a thread about why everything you know is obsolete.
Not because any single post is wrong.
Because the environment is chaotic.
So I made a small change:
I stopped looking.
And something surprising happened.
Nothing broke.
My life continued.
My work improved.
My attention came back.
Tools come and go. Process stays.
We drifted into nostalgia in the episode—dial-up internet, floppy disks, Zip drives, Packard Bells, Novell networks.
Not because we miss it.
Because living through that era teaches something useful:
Tools come and go.
And if your identity is built on tools, every new tool threatens you.
But if you’re rooted in a process, tools are just options.
That’s the question I try to keep asking:
Does this tool fit anywhere in what I already know works?
If it does, I’ll experiment.
If it doesn’t, I let it go.
I don’t need to chase every ice cream truck.
Learning isn’t just input
This is where our conversation shifted into education.
Students today have an escape hatch.
They can avoid wrestling with material.
They can get an answer without grappling with the question.
But there’s another layer that matters just as much:
It’s not only how people learn.
It’s how they think.
How they connect.
How they translate a concept into something they already understand.
I notice this when books lean heavily on sports analogies.
If you reference a baseball legend I’ve never heard of, I don’t just miss the reference.
I disconnect.
And it’s not because the idea is bad.
It’s because the bridge isn’t there.
Translation is a kind of empathy
We talked about translation in the episode—not just language translation, but cultural translation.
The difference between:
- “Here’s how I think. Keep up.”
- “Here’s how you think. Let’s meet there.”
That’s what accessibility really is.
And it’s what good communication requires.
Not forcing someone into your perspective.
Learning how to see from theirs.
Where AI actually shines
This is the part that’s hard to talk about publicly right now.
Because AI is carrying so much fear.
It’s difficult to share genuine excitement when someone else is reading headlines and wondering if they’ll still have a job in six months.
But we can still be honest about one thing:
AI can be a powerful translation layer.
Not “replace the human.”
Bridge the gap.
Take something unfamiliar and reframe it so someone can understand it.
Explain American football through a soccer lens.
Prototype a Brazilian card game without needing perfect terminology.
Rewrite a confusing explanation into clear, simple language.
Not to make people dependent.
To make learning possible.
Record more than you think you need
The conversation ended up circling around something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately:
Capturing data.
Not because data is truth.
But because time changes how you interpret everything.
The past doesn’t change.
Your understanding does.
That’s the value of journaling.
The value of recording calls.
The value of keeping transcripts.
Without that… you’re measuring yourself against a ghost.
Better questions, better outcomes
We closed with a practical idea I can’t stop thinking about:
If we’re recording meetings and generating transcripts…
What if we could analyze the questions?
Which questions moved the conversation closer to the goal?
Which questions sent us sideways?
Which questions unlocked clarity?
Not to shame anyone.
To learn.
To refine intuition.
Because this is the real work:
Connecting wants to needs.
And the only way you do that is by asking better questions.
A pause you can actually take
If you’re feeling that constant pressure to keep up…
Maybe your next best move isn’t a new tool.
It’s a pause.
A small one.
Long enough to ask:
What’s actually in my control?
What do I need to build?
What process do I trust?
What information is just noise?
The world will still be loud when you come back.
But you might be steadier.
And sometimes that’s the win.
