Digital Dilemma, Social Media

Teenage Awkward

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I occasionally get the good fortune to interact with the teenagers in my life. Mostly they’re relatives or my friends’ kids. I’m endlessly curious about their experiences. What is it like to be a teenager in the age of social media? And now AI? ChatGPT?

I sometimes think I only made it through my tween and teenage years because there wasn’t a lot of documenting going on. For some of my classmates, the only picture I might have of them is in a year book. Even then, it’s probably a small, grainy photo. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be photographed, tagged, and posted for everyone to see. It seems like there’s a lot of pressure for something that’s impossible to avoid. Even for teenagers who might not want to partake in social media, there’s nothing they can do to stop others from taking their photos and posting them.

Aside from the worry some of these kids must feel about ending up on somebody’s social media feed, it detracts from social experiences. I constantly see kids walking around with headphones in, even while they’re conversing with others! Or they’re heads down on their phones, even when they’re walking together in a group. When I was growing up, we didn’t have any of these things. We had to learn to deal with our awkwardness, build resilience, and explore. Then again, we also had the freedom to do these things without being photographed and put on display for everybody to see. We could collectively forget and reinvent.

The pandemic likely impacted many of these kids. While the pandemic started almost 6 years ago, it lasted for years. For some of these teens, the isolation and lockdowns hit during formative social years. Lots of school districts were remote, or hybrid, during the early part. It’s hard to even understand or quantify the effect. These kids isolated before they even had a chance to develop social skills. Will these teens be more starved for human contact? Or will they prefer solitude and more technology-driven interactions?

With all this talk, and some action, of people returning to the office 5-days/week, I also think about the newer workforce. No doubt many of them were teenagers when the pandemic hit. How will they adjust to so much face-time in the office? Working onsite includes more than just being there physically.

Digital Dilemma, Productivity

A Use Case for AI

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Submitting insurance claims is one activity I would gladly delegate to AI and automation. The transition from paper forms and snail mail to online data entry definitely improved the process. However, the transformation wasn’t enough to create a real high-quality digital experience.

With paper forms I felt annoyed filling in all the information. Then I had to assemble them with the receipts and mail it. I had to make my own scans or photocopies to retain in case something happened to the claim. The whole thing took a long time, both to prepare and to wait for the result. Usually I received a check in the mail which took even more time to go and deposit.

While some of the wait times are dramatically improved with the online process, some of it remains frustratingly outdated. I appreciate that the processing time is now days with direct deposit into my bank account. However, I still submit the claims by filling out a clunky online form. A couple years ago my company switched insurers and the online forms became even worse. Here are a few examples.

One question on the form asks if your partner has insurance. Even though my partner had insurance with the same insurer, every time I selected yes I had to fill out his plan, policy number, and birthdate. Every. Single. Time. As though these things would change frequently. Also, the insurer inconsistently submitted the remainder of my claims to my partner’s insurance policy. We discovered this months later and it was annoying to fix.

Earlier this week I had to submit a dental claim. Fortunately my regular dentist submits the claims for me, but this was for a new dentist that wasn’t able to do that. For a dental claim, I had to enter in each line item as a separate procedure code. Even though six codes were from the same visit, I had to re-enter the date and some other repetitive information every time. The whole time I kept wondering why I couldn’t just upload the receipt and have the system automatically fill out the claim. This would be much easier and likely more accurate as many of the codes were similar and ripe for typos. Just one example of how a technological improvement didn’t go far enough to transform the clunky parts of a process.

Digital Dilemma, True Confessions

The In-Office Conundrum

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The hybrid work arrangement was one of the pandemic’s few silver linings. It was a crazy, forced, social experiment many of us endured. However, in the end, we know the hybrid arrangement worked in a lot of ways. For me, personally, I love the work-life balance. With a hybrid arrangement, currently two days in office and three remote, I save lots of commuting time. I have the flexibility for a lunchtime physio appointment, or right at the end of my workday. Whereas if I worked 5 days in the office, I would have to leave early to go to physio. Or try to get one of the coveted evening or Sat morning appointments. There’s usually long waiting lists.

I also appreciate being able to have hot lunch. Packing lunch can get tiring. Going out for lunch can get expensive. And for people like me, with stomachs wrecked by food-court food poisoning, I usually prefer safer options. These perks may seem small, but they’re meaningful.

However, working from home 5 days a week would also seem challenging. I appreciate the social aspects of being onsite and the opportunity to meet new people. A lot of new people were hired during the pandemic, when we were fully remote for a while. Consequently, I haven’t met a lot of them in person. I find this can sometimes lead to a lot of miscommunications with people over teams chats, emails, or even virtual meetings, especially when cameras are always turned off.

Herein lies the conundrum. How do we evaluate work-life balance against the valuable in-person experiences? Now some people would say that they can work efficiently being 100% remote. Truthfully, I sometimes feel more productive at home where I can more easily tune out distractions. However, on the flip side, remote work doesn’t afford people, especially new employees, the same opportunities for connection. Those small, random interactions can be important. I know I certainly missed those tiny waves to neighbors or exchanged pleasantries waiting for the elevator when we remained isolated during the pandemic. I even missed swapping a few snippets of conversation with a friendly cashier or somebody talkative on public transit. It felt so lonely.

Lots of companies are going back 5 days/week. But is this the standard we should be aiming for? Did we learn nothing from those long years spent remote, overly reliant on technology, and digital chatter?

Human Archives, True Confessions

Reacting in Real Time

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This past weekend I had the great pleasure of playing in the pit orchestra for the Nutcracker for the fourth year. This time around, I’m expecting at least one thing will not go as planned. However, the fun part is that we never know what it is until it happens. Then we’re just reacting in the moment. Or in some cases, trying hard not to react.

The pit is long and narrow. It’s located in front of the stage, rather than underneath, like a real orchestra pit. Seating arrangements are always a bit odd. First of all, the configuration is completely different from how we sit for rehearsals. The elongated shape of the pit separates us from instruments we normally play with. For example, the bassoons sit at one end and the double bass and cellos sit all the way at the other end. This can make it pretty difficult for us to play together at times.

For the first three years I sat right up against the stage. There was barely enough space for me to hold my instrument without occasionally hitting it. I also couldn’t see anything except for a few arm flaps during the Snowflake Waltz. Though to be fair, it eliminated a lot of distractions. This year, however, we had a last minute seat swap with one of the percussion players. I ended up on the edge closer to the audience. I could see the stage, but my head was mere inches from the timpani. Luckily, my musician’s ear plugs protected my ears even while it created a lot of interesting vibrations in my body.

I happened to have my ear plugs out to play the coffee character dance. It features a very beautiful bassoon duet while the dancers sashay around in glittery, colorful costumes. It’s a sensual and fascinating depiction of arab-themed dancing. Everything was going well until about halfway through the piece. Suddenly we heard this loud, scratchy squeak from one of the ballerina’s shoes! It persisted until the end of the piece and came back again during the “Waltz of the Flowers.” While I felt a pang of compassion for the ballerina, I was also feeling some for myself trying to keep a straight face so I could play all the delicate, hard notes at the end of the movement. Always something to keep us on our toes.

Productivity, Spring Cleaning

Tidying vs. Cleaning

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Some people excel in the art of tidying up. Though there are some merits to tidying, most of the time, it results in future “make work” projects. This has been my experience when tidying, instead of cleaning and organizing, is the first line of defense. Although if the area, or room, is already relatively uncluttered, than some light tidying can be beneficial.

To clarify, tidying is different from a “piling” system. This system aggregates “like with like”. Or collects seemingly random things together because they make sense contextually. For example, storing writing implements with notebooks because the two go together. I tend to have a special place in the cupboard for my go-to breakfast foods, even though it looks a little chaotic to anybody not familiar with my eating habits.

Tidying is also different from cleaning and organizing. To me cleaning and organizing means taking time to put things where they belong. Throwing things out, even if this sometimes means making hard decisions or being a little ruthless. In recent months, during preparations for the renos, I even had to face some hard truths that I was never going to get around to all the little repair projects and other lofty plans. Consequently, I ended up clearing a lot of stuff from the house. And there’s still more to go!

Finally, tidying is different from a junk drawer. In my opinion, a junk drawer is a necessary convention to store organic accumulations of stuff. This is usually stuff that you kind of need, have a hard time tossing, but is really “homeless”. Enter the junk drawer, a perfect solution.

So what is tidying? Tidying aggregates a little bit of everything, even stuff that could be thrown out or put away, all in one jumble. Usually it’s in a bag, or a box, making it impossible to know where anything is. Even worse, is when somebody else tidies up for you creating pockets of random stuff mishmashed together. I find this super annoying and often it takes double the time to clean up and organize. Far longer than taking time to put things away in the first place. Plus there’s the added aggravation of not being able to find things, or even knowing which bag/box/drawer to start the search!

Digital Dilemma, Productivity

AI Missing the Obvious

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I’ve been using my AI goggles for almost a year now. In the beginning I plodded along with my same boring workouts. Except for the first time, I could visually see how boring the sets were in the recorded results. I also noticed that the set lengths were too long resulting in a gradual time decrease.

Eventually, I succumbed to the pressure of the head coach subscription. This definitely improved my experience with the goggles, even though I felt a little turned off that so many cool things were inaccessible without the subscription. For example, I couldn’t upload or save workouts to the goggles. I also missed out on tips and insights related to my workouts and some customization.

Since subscribing, I noticed my scores increasing. In the first couple months they climbed several points. Lately, they’ve hit a plateau. The goggles offer some explanations for this claiming as the workouts get harder, it takes time for my skills, technique, and endurance to catch up. However, much to my surprise, the goggles missed probably one of the most important and obvious insights. The time at which I go swimming impacts my score, sometimes by almost 10 points!

I felt surprised when I came to this realization. Despite all the fancy graphs, dashboards, timings, and measurements the goggles provide, the biggest difference in my swim performance is based on the time of day. This is not something tracked, measured, or even observed by the goggles. I noticed it by scrolling through the latest dashboards.

Fortunately, I mostly swim at the same times every week. I usually do one evening swim on Wednesdays. This is a tough day because it’s one of my in-office days. At the end of the day, I drive home in rush hour traffic, around 45 minutes. I do a quick turnaround at home to grab my swim gear and instrument before heading to the gym followed by a 2.5 hour rehearsal. Needless to say, my swim scores are usually lower for this swim, or any weekday evening swim, in general.

The second swim is earlier in the day on weekends. The gym closes at 8 these days, so I accidentally discovered earlier times work better for my energy and performance levels. While the technology helped to provide the data, it was simple human observation that made the connection. We’re not ready to be replaced by machines yet.