What Works

A few episodes ago, I shared that I was rethinking social media as a way to fix my "distribution problem." Well, it's been a month, and I've posted 8 videos. The results have been not at all what I expected. In this quickie, I share my results so far, what's changed, and—because I can't help myself—a bigger question I have about interest-based distribution algorithms. Summer Seminar is back! Join...

If you're like me (and frankly, you probably are), you're easily overwhelmed by the sheer scope of your ideas. Not so much because they're so grand or world-changing, but because you see all the connections that could be included in your projects. Background information, theory, history, caveats... if you're curious and value context, any project can take on epic proportions. And that's when you n...

Today, I'm resharing an episode from last spring but with a fresh introduction about the feeling (too) late and some timely advice for my daughter, who graduates from high school tomorrow. It might be a good one to share with the graduate in your life! *** This episode is about the long term —the commitments, projects, and relationships we can work on when our "temporal bandwidth" widens. How we p...

"No matter how hard you post or what sites you do it in it’s never going to be 2019 again." — Amanda Mull on Bluesky I'm thinking about getting back on social media. Weird, I know. But (1) I have a distribution problem, and (2) it's not what it used to be... which is bad, but maybe also good for me? Today, I'm putting my thoughts into words and relying on a new essay by communications scholar dana...

Eight months before ChatGPT launched to the world, I wrote about "the eggbeater effect," or the tendency for labor-saving tools to create new labor. Four years later, I'm revisiting that idea. Remember: just because you can doesn't mean you should . Footnotes: Read the essay version of this episode. " The Stepford Wives " on You're Wrong About More Work for Mother by Ruth Schwartz Cowan " The Illu...

You can always rely on me to channel my righteous indignation at shoddy data analysis into a lengthy podcast episode. Footnotes: Read the essay version of this episode. " How Short-Form Clips Took Over the Internet " on Galaxy Brain with Charlie Warzel " The Clip Economy " by Ed Elson on the Simply Put newsletter " What happens when the short-form video bubble bursts? " by Ryan Broderick on Garbag...

Another episode featuring HBO's The Pitt? You know it. This time: finding your course of action in the space between personal challenges and systemic and structural failings. Footnotes : Read the essay version here. " Rethinking Busyness " on What Works HBO's  The Pitt " Changes in Burnout and Satisfaction With Work–Life Integration in Physicians and the General US Working Population Between 2011...

On March 11, the 5-time World’s Best Restaurant, Noma, began a 3-month Los Angeles residency. The vanguard establishment of New Nordic Cuisine, was finally available to Americans without an international flight. All-inclusive bookings—sold out well ahead of opening day—went for $1500 per person. Diners, arriving in luxury vehicles with tinted windows, anticipated the hyper-local, painstakingly pre...

To the uninitiated, "being your own boss" sounds pretty nice. Of course, the moment you go into business for yourself, you realize the wide variety of skills it requires—skills that you yourself do not possess. Skills that you don't want to and have no intention of learning. Being your own boss means balancing a host of functions within one corporate (that is, "body") system. You can address the v...

I live for people explaining how they approach analysis and critique. I desperately want to know how other people think about things so I can learn to think in new ways. I want a compelling intellectual or journalistic project, but I also want to know how it was conceived and executed. I hope you enjoy hearing that kind of behind-the-scenes, too, because that's exactly what this episode is. It's a...

So a couple of weeks ago, I downloaded Final Cut Pro and committed to learning how to use it. Despite logging hundreds, if not thousands, of hours in other video editing software, this is a big challenge. I took some time to reflect on how I make sense of learning a new skill like this—because learning new skills is an essential component of navigating the 21st-century economy. Footnotes : Read th...

You’re going along, minding your own business, and then it hits you: “Wait,  what?! ” Your expectation or assumption bumps against the facts. Things aren’t the way you thought they were. It’s not always a life-altering surprise. It might be something tiny—just enough of a shock to make you rethink what you thought you knew. Today, how we resolve those “Wait, what?!” moments. I’m kicking off my 8-w...

It's no secret that one of my, let's say, special interests is higher education. The reasons for this are at least threefold. First, I have a kid heading off to college next year. Second, I have past regrets and future fantasies about the academy. And third, the world of work and the realm of education overlap in myriad ways. Work and education have always had a close relationship. Access to educa...

A brief meditation on grief at the loss of one's future self and how often that loss passes unacknowledged. Footnotes: Read the essay version of this episode. “10:00 am” (Season 1, Episode 4) The Pitt on HBO “ Ho’oponopono ” on Wikipedia Unlearning with Hannah Arendt by Marie Luise Knott The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt More from Tara: Blank Slate is a guide to rethinking your business for sus...

How often do you revisit old work? Do you have systems for circling back to what you've created in the past to see how you could improve upon it or take it in a new direction? In this episode, I consider the practice of circling back through Mckenzie Wark's theory of "hacking." And I explain why my latest project, Blank Slate, is a hack and how it came to be. Footnotes: Read the essay version of t...

I've had all the various parts of this episode swirling in my head for months—from The Paperclip Maximizer to The Great Feminization to Meta's Masculine Energy to mind-body dualism to the AI industry's role in what I propose is The Great Re-Masculinization.  It is absolutely about both the present and the future of work, and whether we accept the inevitability of regressing to an imagined past or...

Have a big decision on your mind? Trying to choose between a bunch of good options? Today, I'm talking about decision-making… not so much how to choose, but the context of our choices. No decision gets made in a vacuum. Choices are always framed by circumstances, relationships, emotions, fears, and desires. The good news is that deepening our self-knowledge can be a great way to illuminate the con...

Here we are at the tail end of 2025. I just "opened" my Spotify Unwrapped... And after 3 years of burnout recovery, I’m finally ready to figure out what getting my shit together in the shadow of everything I’ve learned about myself and my needs in the last five years is going to look like. It’s tempting to assume that getting one’s shit together is a forward-looking pursuit. You know, “Here are al...

How do you get people to care about what you care about? It's a marketing question. A movement-building question. A question at the heart of the attention economy. And in one form or another, it's the question I've probably received more than any other over the last 15+ years. After all, there is no silver-bullet social media plan , no door-knocking strategy, no magical meeting agenda that produce...

If you’ve ever chosen an ambitious, unconventional, or deeply meaningful aim only to see your plan devolve into something far more run-of-the-mill, this one is for you. Footnotes: Read the essay version of this episode. " AI Can't Even Turn On the Lights " on The Vergecast About OpenAI " Applying Systems Archetypes " via The Systems Thinker Sam Altman saying we've "surpassed" the definition of AGI...

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 about, somewhere we should be, some person we should be checking on. Busyness is sticky. And that’s because busyness is more than the amount of stuff we have on our to-do lists or the appointments on our calendars. Busyness is social, structural, and eve...

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 resources—they change the interventions we choose. They change what interventions might even be possible. Today, an episode about crosswords, coffee shops, and rethinking your assumptions. ☞ By the way, just 3 spots remain in this cohort of Making Sense!...

I'm pretty sure The New York Times is trolling me. Footnotes: Read the written version of this episode. " Hobbies Too Relaxing? Try 'Leisure Crafting' " by Lora Kelley in The New York Times " Research: How 'Leisure Crafting' Can Help You Recharge " by Alexander B. Hamrick, et al., in Harvard Business Review " Our Yearning for Competence " by Tara McMullin " Always Be Optimizing " by Tara McMullin...

"Competence porn" is an indistinct genre of media that showcases people doing their jobs (loosely defined) exceptionally well, often using niche skills or uncommon expertise. You've no doubt seen it in documentaries, in short-form video, and even in a courtroom procedural or medical drama. What is it that's so appealing about competence porn? And why call it "porn?" And what can it tell us about w...

In the last episode ( written version ), we talked about how "sensemaking starts with chaos" and that chaos arises when our expectations don't match reality. That mismatch occurs because the mental model we have that creates our expectations doesn't work for the situation at hand. To alleviate the frustration (or at least make sense of it), we need a new mental model. Well, in this episode, I want...