In my most recent writing workshop, one writer, Suzy, had a little trouble staying focused for an entire 15-minute writing session. (For my recommended writing process, see Writing Secret 12: Subheadings Help Guide Readers Through Your Content for how I use 15-minute timeboxes.) Suzy realized she could not always write forward. Sometimes, she had to […]
Because I’m trying very hard to avoid starting another book before I finish Effective Public Speaking, my podcast this week is from a fiction story: historical mystery, to be precise. Enjoy! The Podcast: The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is Writing in Public with Johanna Rothman for February 28, 2025, where I read an
Do you want to write better and faster? Make your writing easier? You can—and you do not need to use AI to make your writing easier, better, or faster. Instead, enroll in my Q2 2025 Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer workshop. You can start the prework as soon as you register. Then, the workshop starts
This is the February 2025 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. Last month, I wrote about technical leadership micromanagement and the technical leadership overwhelm. (See One Secret to Free Yourself from the Overwhelm of Leadership Work for that post.) I heard from several product managers.
My podcast this week is the opening of a historical short story. Enjoy! The Podcast: The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is Writing in Public with Johanna Rothman for February 21, 2025, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This is from a short story titled “A
I use many apps on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone. There is clearly something in the air because, during the past three weeks, most of them broke. Here’s a partial list: The password manager (on all three devices, with at least 4 failure modes) Two different health-based apps Various kinds of email-based apps What do
My podcast this week is from a short story I need to finish today. (Yeah, nothing like the last minute, Johanna.) A very kind person also offered me feedback about the titles from previous “60 seconds” posts and the podcast. I expect to change the titles here and on my YouTube channel. I’m not totally
My podcast this week is from a fiction story I need to finish. (Today!) Enjoy! The Podcast: The Transcript: I’m Johanna Rothman, and this is Johanna’s 60 Seconds of Writing WIP for January 31, 2025, where I read an excerpt of just a minute of some writing in progress. This is from a short story,
This is the January 2025 Pragmatic Manager Newsletter, from Johanna Rothman. The Unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email. Several of my leadership clients have this problem: they feel overwhelmed by all of their work. Here’s how one technical leader, Peter, describes his problem: “I’m in the middle of all the work. Because
When I wrote Manage It!, I included an idea called a Hudson Bay Start. I wrote an article about that later, in How to Use Iteration Zero—Or Not. Hudson Bay Starts are not a new idea. However, you might not know what they are. Here’s the idea: the team chooses one item from their backlog.