"The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood."
— Voltaire
Pico Iyer once said, “Only by doing nothing can you do anything at all.” It sounds like a riddle, but he’s really talking about stillness—the kind we forget to make space for. We live in a world that confuses motion with progress, but sometimes the smartest move is to stop. Doing nothing isn’t zoning out; it’s clearing enough space for clarity to show up. Most of my best ideas arrive in those blank moments—the walk, the shower, the quiet between things. So here’s your reminder: pause. Let your brain idle. That’s where the good stuff is.
Thanks for reading!
Format experiment alert: I’ve trimmed things down this week. Love it? Hate it? Want the longer reads back? Hit reply and let me know.
This is music I always come back to that I think you'll like too: Public Library Commute
AI in L&D: How to Make It Play on Your Side: Free online conference
📅 Mark your calendars for Wednesday, October 29th.
AI doesn’t have to be complicated or intimidating. Join iSpring’s online conference to see how AI can make creating learning content faster and more effective. Get hands-on with iSpring’s newest AI features and see how they transform course creation.
Who Should Attend:
Instructional Designers
Course Creators
L&D Specialists and Managers
What’s Included:
Talks from three expert speakers
A panel discussion with tips and best practices
A closer look at iSpring’s new AI tools and how they can support your work
Join us online on October 29th and see how AI can work for you.
Smarter Prompts for Smarter Learning with Google Gemini
Big thanks to Ross Stevenson for surfacing this gem: Google dropped a short, punchy LearnLM Prompt Guide — a free 10-page reference on how to write prompts that teach, not just tell.
It’s packed with examples that show how small wording tweaks can change how AI responds — scaffolding thinking, giving feedback, and reducing cognitive overload. Think of it as instructional design for your prompts.
Connecting Neuroscience with Education: Critical Considerations
Connecting Neuroscience with Education: Critical Considerations by Donna Coch and David Daniel takes a much-needed, clear-eyed look at what brain science can (and can’t) do for learning.
Instead of adding to the “brain-based learning” hype, the authors focus on how to responsibly translate neuroscience into classroom and workplace practice. They unpack why flashy lab results rarely equal ready-made teaching strategies — and offer practical tools for spotting solid evidence versus neuro-nonsense.
It’s refreshingly balanced: part myth-buster, part bridge-builder. You’ll come away seeing neuroscience not as a magic fix, but as one piece of a much bigger learning puzzle — especially around emotion, memory, and stress.
👉 Takeaway:Neuroscience can inform learning — but only if we connect it critically, humbly, and with both feet planted in real-world practice.
We’ve all sat through that “here’s the agenda, breaks, tech tips” slide—and zoned out. Jody Wissing shows you how to drop the dry “housekeeping” label and embed those necessary details seamlessly into your talk.
What she teaches:
Weave timing, breaks, Q&A, tech tips into your story flow
Drop the slide that screams “mandatory info dump”
Engage the audience from the first minute
👉 Takeaway: Even mandatory info can feel like part of the experience rather than an interruption
This is the conversation that caught my ear this week. Check out previous episodes in the Friday Finds podcast playlist.
Human-Centred Approach to AI Literacy
Christine Gaynor-Patterson shared her team's framework and strategies for successfully bringing AI literacy to 10,000 professionals at a large U.S. organization. This practical example highlights how L&D can responsibly lead the integration of AI as a tool to enhance human work.
This book is for everyone tired of watching marketers effortlessly grab attention while we're over here begging people to care about compliance training.
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