What Works

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. Maybe you don't live in the US, and you're thinking, 'What is this American BS about tips?' Well, when I first heard about Trump's (and then Harris's) proposal to eliminate federal taxes of tipped income, my brain went a hundred different places: how many pe...

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 bungled AI policy by the organization that promotes National Novel Writing Month and a viral story about people hiring Strava surrogates to run for them so they can claim the kudos. And those two stories got me thinking about the ways that we delegate away the...

Inspired by the current vibe shift, I'm interrupting my rebroadcast of the Self-Help, LLC series with an interlude about values—personal values, business values, American values, even Christian values. And it's about what is so often misunderstood about values.  Values aren't chains; they are wings. ★ Support this podcast ★

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! We form an impression of our voices early in life. While it might shift some as we age, those impressions tend to stick with us. For many of us, what we learn about our voices is how they don’t quite measure up to the ideal: too high, too low, too soft...

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 daily contribute to our perfectionism, anxiety, or fear? In the fifth installment of Self-Help, LLC, I talk about all that and more with Sara Petersen. This is an edited version of an episode that originally ran in October 2022. There’s an influencer...

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 looks anything like mine, then you likely see a preponderance of posts about personality types, conditions, or other self-knowledge. We’re hooked on learning about ourselves! And perhaps even more hooked on sharing what we’ve learned—which means that the Instagram al...

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 decide who (or what) to trust with our time, energy, and money. What book do you decide to read next? Which coach do you hire? What accounts do you follow? Our consumer choices seem endless—so finding someone or something to put your trust in might feel lik...

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 business now?" Today’s episode is all about the aesthetics of self-help and what my guest Kelly Diels has dubbed the female lifestyle empowerment brand. If you’ve ever fussed with your hair or outfit before taking a selfie or sought out the perfect Insta...

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’s a good chance this series is new to you, and if its previous reception is any indication, I think you’ll love it! If you listened to it the first time through, I’d love to know how it hits differently today. *** It’s hard to escape the language and...

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 tension between what's good for the communities we inhabit and what's good (and necessary) for us as individuals. But it's in this tension that we find a "margin of maneuverability"—a source of hope, possibility, and creativity. That's the theme of...

Our podcast feeds and streaming services are full of real stories of real people. And not all of those stories feel...  true . I mean, even if the facts are accurate, the way something is edited, packaged, and marketed can dramatically alter a story's impact. Artist and audio producer Jess Shane wanted to create a project that would expose some of the problematic elements of this booming (and high...

Okay, this isn't really an episode about speculative investing. Well, it is. But I'm not talking about crypto or meme stocks. I'm talking about the challenges of living and working as a speculative investment. Today's episode is a brief reflection on self-speculation, the "anticipatory, speculative self," and why the second person is so ubiquitous on social media. Footnotes: "Verified: Self-presen...

What would happen if you archived  all of your Instagram content, announced that you had taken a job at a fictional wellness company, and then got fired for disclosing your experience with company-mandated colonic hydrotherapy? Well, Leigh Stein did exactly that. Leigh wears many hats—novelist, poet, cultural critic, book coach, publishing expert. And when she realized that she wasn't wearing the...

Good luck going anywhere today without running into a message about creativity. I was going to say, "anywhere online," but really, it's just about anywhere . We get creative in the kitchen. Creative in our workouts. Creative in bed. And of course, creative at work. Creativity is somewhat of a "cult object," as Samuel Franklin put it in his cultural history of creativity. Today, I want to get uncom...

I'm teaching a new workshop on May 15 & 16, 2024! It's called World-Building for Business Owners , and it's based on a process I've been honing for more than a decade. I'll help you apply creative, even playful thinking to your business strategy—and help you create an internally consistent business that causes fewer headaches, meets your needs more efficiently, plays to your strengths, and cre...

"How do I want to live?" Philosopher Rahel Jaeggi says this question is bound up in the concept of alienation. Our disconnection and dissatisfaction keep us from answering that question—but they also keep us from asking it in the first place. So in this episode, Kate, Charlie, and I ask that question—and five more. We examine how work in the creator economy can reinforce competition and individual...

It seems the creator economy is booming. Or is it? And what even is the creator economy?? Platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TechTalk are quite happy to advertise the ways they support creators with features and advice. Their aspirational creator hubs give the distinct impression that becoming a creator is akin to getting paid to be yourself. But that said, when Kate Tyson told me that she doe...

The labor market has undergone a sea change in the last 20 years. A full third of US workers are part of the independent workforce, including gig workers, contract workers, freelancers, and sole proprietors. And yet, key provisions in our labor regulations do not cover independent workers. What's more, platform companies have further changed our idea of work. If you sell your labor on a platform,...

The Center for Nonviolent Communication describes what they teach as "empathy in action." And so it seems fitting to close out this series on Decoding Empathy with a look at nonviolence, Nonviolent Communication, and making social spaces at work & beyond that work for more people. I talked with Leonie Smith, founder of The Thoughtful Workplace , about how she uses the tools and practices of no...

I have learned a lot about cognitive empathy by learning copywriting. After all, copywriting is a puzzle—the puzzle of figuring out what someone is thinking or feeling and how you can connect your idea to that thought or feeling. So, it seemed only fitting that I would invite a copywriter to this series on decoding empathy to share her process and give you a behind-the-scenes look at cognitive emp...

Typically, the question of accessibility online is considered in technical terms: How does this website need to be designed? What ALT text is appropriate for this image? Are captions available for this video? And obviously, knowing the technical aspects of accessibility is important. But if accessibility stops at the technical requirements, we forget that there are people on the other side of thos...

How do you get seen in a world that doesn't see you? How do you get recognized when so many systems are designed to keep you unrecognized? Those are the questions at the heart of today's episode. In the 2nd episode in my 5-part series on decoding empathy, I talk with behavioral scientist and brand strategist N. Chloé Nwangwu about how she helps underrecognized people "emerge from the margins" and...

Today, we peel back the layers of a term that's become ubiquitous in the business world and beyond: empathy . In this episode, empathy's origin story. Er, stories . We'll explore its philosophical roots deep in the 19th century, through my personal trials and errors with empathy, to some of the challenges we face in empathizing with people we have less in common with. Ultimately, I want to explore...

Are you waiting for a glorious day with your system, plan, or business just  work ? I hate to tell you this—but you will be waiting a long time. Plans, systems, and businesses  evolve . Change isn't a bad thing—it's the only thing. In today's edition of This is Not Advice, I share how I recently coached Sean through a run-in with process entropy and process evolution. To get the full essay or epis...

Our beliefs leave an indelible mark on how we interact with others and our environment. Even when those beliefs aren't conscious.  Beliefs about quality of life are a whole other can of worms. Who gets to decide the relative quality of a life? Or what lives are worth living? And how do our beliefs about quality of life and worthiness impact the way interact with others and the way we treat ourselv...