What Works
Detaily kanála
What Works
Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and cr...
Nedávne epizódy
415 epizód
Rethinking Busyness (With Help From HBO's The Pitt)
Try as we might, many of us can’t shake the overwhelming sense that we're just too damn busy—that feeling that there’s something we’re forgetting abou...
Delightful Misdirection (Or How to Rethink Your Options)
How we think about a problem or goal really matters. The variables we include, the relationships we draw between them, the flows of influence or resou...
We Can't Quit Turning Leisure Into More Work
I'm pretty sure The New York Times is trolling me.
Footnotes:
Turn your meaningful ideas into remarkable media—and help others make sense...
The Spectacle of Competence
"Competence porn" is an indistinct genre of media that showcases people doing their jobs (loosely defined) exceptionally well, often using niche skill...
3 Ways I Make Sense of the Unexpected & Perplexing
In the last episode (written version), we talked about how "sensemaking starts with chaos" and that chaos arises when our expectations don't match rea...
Make It Make Sense
"Sensemaking starts with chaos," says organizational theorist Karl Weick. Chaos is the confusion and frustration we feel when things don't turn out th...
EP 500: What if you're not off track... and never have been?
If you're like me, you often think about what you would have done to prepare for... this job, this economy, this political climate, this financial sit...
EP 499: Reduction in Force
No job is safer than a government job, right? Well, not anymore. At least not in the US.
I’m paying special attention to the fight over governm...
INTERLUDE: The Pleasure & Promise of Re-Reading
I wanted to drop in with a quiet interlude about re-reading (or re-watching, or re-listening) and its value in a world obsessed with new and different...
EP 498: Breaking The Validation Spiral
Why is it that it seems like no amount of work, accolades, or achievement is enough? Why do we keep signing up for more, even as our capacity becomes...
EP 497: Please Support My Work
If you subscribe to newsletters, listen to podcasts, or watch videos on YouTube, I've no doubt that you’ve been asked to support the person or people...
EP 496: What to Do When Things Get Messy
No matter how fastidious you are about creating and executing a plan, working toward any big goal will require adjustments. No matter how diligent you...
EP 495: Ann Leckie vs. The "Well, Actually" Bros
Is an AI chatbot, like ChatGPT, a search engine? Does it scour the internet for helpful information so that it can respond to user queries?
The...
EP 494: How Structure Transforms Ideas
"I have so many thoughts and not enough time to think them," I recently blurted out to my husband. For me, "thinking thoughts" means scribbling notes...
EP 493: The Prescription Economy
"No one is ever completely safe from the critical gaze of a culture steeped in the makeover ethos." —Micki McGee
I have a theory that you can me...
EP 492: How We Realize Higher Values Through Enabling Structures
Intractable challenges are often the result of a lack of imagination. That is, our solutions are constrained by existing systems and structures that l...
EP 491: Meet Your Tiny Capitalists
Many of us (most?) have an inner voice that loves to remind us that "If there's time to lean, there's time to clean" or that "Coffee is for closers."...
EP 490: Standardize Me
Standardization is one of those ideas that, once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's a mental model that can explain, at least in part, many of our s...
EP 489: Temporal Bandwidth
This episode is about the long term—the commitments, projects, and relationships we can work on when our "temporal bandwidth" widens. How we perceive...
EP 488: Honeydew (Or, 3 Biases That Derail Remarkable Projects)
Most of the work I do that's not this revolves around coaching, editing, and/or thinking with people who have meaningful ideas they want to better exp...
EP 487: Rethinking Our Tech Mythology
The tech industry has a central role in shaping our work, our communication, and even our identities. Its mythology is woven into the products and ser...
EP 486: How Knowledge Really Does Become Power
What does my new website, the TikTok "ban," and the ongoing purge of "woke" from government websites have in common?
The power to decide what co...
EP 485: Broken Links
I'm back! Maybe you noticed or maybe you didn't—but the show (and my newsletter) has been on its longest hiatus since its inception. In the final quar...
EP 484: The Freedom to Buy
So, health insurance is in the news. And so is Americans' feelings about it. I got to wondering how we ended up with this terrible health insurance sy...
EP 483: Avoiding Acquiescence Bias
A problem, question, or challenge is often more than meets the eye. But we're biased to accept how an issue is initially framed. We acquiesce to the o...
EP 482: Seeing Software
Do you see your software?
Do you see how it influences how you run meetings, brainstorm ideas, fulfill your responsibilities, and communi...
EP 481: Preservation in the Post-Information Age with Sari Azout
Stop me if you've heard this before: we're overloaded and overwhelmed by information. There's more content than you could ever hope to consume. More s...
EP 480: Exceedingly Complex Systems
In management cybernetics, there are 3 types of systems: simple, complex, and exceedingly complex. The systems we pay the most attention tend to be, y...
EP 479: A Theory of Resourcefulness
You've probably heard of a scarcity mindset. Maybe you've even been accused of having one!
In this short, I explore the false binary of scarcit...
EP 478: Data Never Speak For Themselves
We're constantly bombarded by data. And it's easy to think that with the right clues, we could answer the ultimate questions of life, the universe, an...
EP 477: Here's a tip
Today's episode is about tips. As in gratuity. Wait, wait, wait! Where are you going?
I know, you probably don't receive tips for your work. May...
EP 476: Cult Value
If a chatbot writes your novel, did you really complete NaNoWriMo?
Two niche internet panics caught my eye over the last couple of weeks: a bung...
EP 475: Values aren't chains; they are wings
Inspired by the current vibe shift, I'm interrupting my rebroadcast of the Self-Help, LLC series with an interlude about values—personal values, busin...
What Does Power Sound Like?
This is the 6th installment in the Self-Help, LLC series, which originally ran in October 2022. Today's episode has been revised and re-engineered!
The Spectacle of Influence(rs) with Sara Petersen
How influencers, well, influence the way we see the world, our work, our families, and ourselves? And how does the spectacle we immerse ourselves in d...
What's Your Type? with Steph Barron Hall
This is the 4th part of my series Self-Help, LLC, which I'm replaying over the summer! Enjoy!
If your Instagram feed or Explore page look...
The Paradox of Self-Help Expertise with Patrick Sheehan
This is an updated version of the 3rd installment in my series Self-Help, LLC, from 2022. Enjoy!
Our quest for self-improvement requires us to d...
"She Looks Like an Instagram" Or, How Empowerment Became a Brand with Kelly Diels
I’m continuing my rebroadcast of a series I did a couple of years ago called Self-Help, LLC, and asked the question, "Are we all in the self-help busi...
How Advice Culture Makes Us Winners (And Losers)
This is Part 1 of a series from 2022 called Self-Help, LLC. This summer, I’ll be republishing this series as I work on new essays and episodes. There’...
EP 474: Making Non-Obvious Choices at Work with Samhita Mukhopadhyay
For justice-minded people, navigating the world of work in the 21st-century economy can feel... impossible. A real no-win scenario. There's a constant...