Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· education · found

Are you settling for less?

Are you settling for less?

Stop settling for less and discover how raising your standards can lead to greater success and fulfillment in life.

““It’s optimizing past the point of diminishing returns.” Obviously, stop before you hit the point of diminishing returns. The problem is people stop way before reaching the point of diminishing returns but claim they’ve hit diminishing returns.” —Are your standards too low? In defense of raising the bar

Why customer tools are organized wrong

This article reveals a fundamental flaw in how customer support tools are designed—organizing by interaction type instead of by customer—and explains why this fragmentation wastes time and obscures the full picture you need to help users effectively.

Infrastructure shapes thought

The tools you build determine what kinds of thinking become possible. On infrastructure, friction, and building deliberately for thought rather than just throughput.

Server-side dashboard architecture: Why moving data fetching off the browser changes everything

How choosing server-side rendering solved security, CORS, and credential management problems I didn't know I had.

The work of being available now

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The practice of work in progress

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

Dev reflection - February 20, 2026

I want to talk about the difference between execution and verification. Because something happened this week that made the distinction painfully clear, and I think it matters far beyond software.

Dev reflection - February 18, 2026

There's a moment in any system—a team, a company, a workflow—where the thing you've been optimizing for stops being the constraint. And you don't notice right away. You keep pushing on the old bott...

Dev reflection - February 17, 2026

I want to talk about staging areas. Not the technical kind—the human kind. The places where work goes to sit. The inbox you check before forwarding. The draft folder. The approval queue. The meetin...

The power of high standards

Elevate your leadership by instilling high standards in your team, fostering accountability even in unseen moments for greater success.

Stop making all the decisions

Overcome decision fatigue by empowering others to share the load and elevate your standards for better outcomes. Discover how today!

Leveling up skills with AI

Unlock new research and professional opportunities by enhancing your data-analysis, writing, and analytic skills with powerful AI tools.