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Ryan Pavel

http://3DProductivity.com

☄️ Thanks For Your Patience

I typically steer away from productivity "hacks." Even when they work, the gains are ephemeral. You get some type of boost for a day, maybe a week, and then you're back to your old ways. But from time to time, there really is that one weird

☄️ On Feedback — Soliciting, Listening, and Responding with Intention

I get a lot of feedback in this job. A lot. Students, alumni, staff, board members, donors, partners, colleagues, strangers…there's no shortage of folks who opine on how I'm doing. We keep tight feedback loops rolling throughout our busy summer season, but there's

Artificial Knowledge

Jurassic Park holds up. I mean that not only in a holy-cow-this-mix-of-anamtronics-and-CGI-is-actually-passable-in-2024 kind of way but also in a this-movie-has-some-oddly-prescient-things-to-say-about-AI kind of way. One of the many iconic lines comes from Dr. Ian Malcolm: "your scientists were so preoccupied over whether or not they could, they didn't

The Human Behind the Profile

A little experiment, eh? Take a minute to skim the LinkedIn profile of someone you admire. What stands out? How do you feel reading through it? Social media is a curated, incomplete view into someone's life. We all know this, yet it’s inexhaustibly easy to forget. LinkedIn

How the End Gives Life to the Means

Note: This post is heavy, but I'm not writing from a negative headspace. It may be triggering for folks who are processing the passing of a loved one or who suffer from depression. Decades ago, I came across a Kafka quote: "The meaning of life is that

Procrastination in a Bunker

On deployment, I wrote a newsletter. I was 21, sending reflections from a foreign land with tight restrictions on what I could and could not do and say. I knew how to string sentences together, but I hadn't read or written enough to move beyond adolescent syntax and

The Thing That Made Me Read

Two weeks ago, I posted a poem with a shade of mindefulness. Last week, a guacamole recipe with a dash of democracy. Dear reader, you'd be forgiven for wondering what this blog is actually supposed to be about. In my defense, my working structure here is to interrogate

For Country and Guac

Last week, three things happened: First, I got to lead a seminar on the Declaration of Independence and Tocqueville's Equality of Conditions argument with a stellar group of enlisted veterans. Second, we witnessed quite a presidential debate. And third, I bought a bag of avocados. As the avocados

Is Be

On an evening flight home from a deeply rewarding trip, I caught a confounding mix of exhaustion and pulsing energy. I started writing, and words coalesced into verse: In times I cannot see the path, I find my way to peace By stepping through the woods without concern for every

Think - Part Two

Last year around this time, I reflected on one of the most important things my father taught me: to think. Father's Day was last weekend, and I'm reflecting again on that sage advice, which I heard so many times as a kid but didn’t really