What Works

This is the 8th edition of  This is Not Advice , my "not-advice" column for premium subscribers of  What Works . Today, I'm talking about our over-reliance on metrics and how easily we're seduced by reductive data . When does a metric turn into an incentive for bad behavior? And why are we so happy to accept the feeling of clarity and certainty without actually understanding what's going on? Click...

Making work for the public seems to come with a slew of fuzzy social expectations. What do we owe our readers, listeners, viewers, and followers? What more is expected beyond the post, episode, or video? How do you navigate the tension between care and boundaries? When I came across a LinkedIn post that Randi Buckley made, I felt a wave of relief. Her answer to those questions? Nothing. We owe not...

The media give us wildly exaggerated images of wealth and consumption. And even if we recognize that a tv show or an Instagram account is more fantasy than reality, those images impact what we believe we should be earning and buying. MoneyZen author Manisha Thakor calls the result Counterfeit Financial Culture and argues that it's one of the reasons we end up feeling like we're never quite enough....

At age 50, Manisha Thakor realized that she'd sacrificed her life at the altar of work. How did that happen? And what was she to do about it? Manisha's new book tackles how to unwind a toxic relationship with work and money. Footnotes: MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your Enough by Manisha Thakor Find out more about Manisha Thakor Alienation by Rahel Jaeggi Capitalism and Desire by Todd McGowan Wh...

This is an excerpt from the 7th edition of  This is Not Advice —a not-advice column exclusively for premium subscribers. In this episode, I take a closer look at flexibility. When is it a feature? When is it a bug? When does flexibility create more opportunities for learning or value? And when does it devolve into chaos? To hear the whole episode, become a premium subscriber for just $7 per month....

This episode originally ran on May 25, 2022. It's been lightly remixed for today's release! “Rugged individualism” is the very language we speak in America. It shapes the way we approach work, family, and society. And rugged individualism has a direct impact on the decisions we make about our businesses and careers. In this short episode, I unpack where rugged individualism comes from and highligh...

So much of our modern discourse around productivity, empowerment, entrepreneurship, and personal growth includes messages about our bodies. These messages might not be explicit, but the messages are there—and our brains pick them up loud and clear. Similarly, we might not realize that we’re sharing messages that insert themselves into how others perceive their own bodies—but many of us are. It’s i...

This is an episode of "This is Not Advice," a bonus podcast I do for premium subscribers of What Works. Instead of just a teaser this week, I wanted to share the whole episode with you. If you'd like to receive future episodes, go to whatworks.fyi/subscribe and become a premium subscriber for just $7/month. For this edition of This is Not Advice , I wanted to piggyback on the conversation I had wi...

This is an episode about Meta's new app, Threads. It's also about Substack and Substack's new-ish feature, Notes. But really, it's an episode about what we're looking for from the category we call "social media" and how we think about achieving those ends. And perhaps what it's really, really about is how we go looking for and creating meaning in the digital sphere. Jay Acunzo, a writer, podcaster...

"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," say Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. Capitalist liberal democracy is construed as the "end of history"—the culmination of millennia of civilizational progress, the inevitable outcome of a long march toward justice and freedom. But is it? And if it's not the best system for our economic and political needs, what is the alte...

Welcome to the 5th edition of This is Not Advice, a non-advice column for premium subscribers of What Works. If you’re already a premium subscriber, thank you! If you’re not, I still think you’re great—and you can read a solid chunk of this column for free. Or, subscribe to get access to full-length columns and podcast episodes. Or, read this excerpt here. Next week, I’m teaching a workshop on how...

"Failure" got a glow-up sometime in the last 20 years. Instead of something to be feared, gurus tell us to  embrace failure. That failure is a waypoint on the path to success. But this shift in our relationship with failure has only further inscribed the winner-loser binary that causes so much of our anxiety about the future. What if "failure" wasn't part of the "success" formula? What if we looke...

Buckle up—today's episode was inspired by something that got me  really worked up this week: "I think home-baking is one of the stupidest things anyone can engage in," says Rick Easton of Jersey City's Bread and Salt. This episode is about shoulds and supposed-tos, baking at home, and the ways we devalue certain kinds of labor. Whether or not home-baking is your thing, you'll recognize the way val...

"Outsiders" shoulder a disproportionate burden when it comes to fitting in. Can we demand more from the "insiders?" This is a preview of the 4th installment of This is Not Advice, a not-advice column for paid subscribers of  What Works . If you’re not a paid, enjoy the first half of this essay (audio or written) or upgrade your subscription to access the whole thing. For just $7 per month, you get...

What gets labeled as "authentic" is often quite predictable. It's a market-compatible expression of what was once something unique or personal. Authenticity is a  vibe— and a valuable one at that. "Predictably unique" is how David A. Banks defines authenticity in his book,  The City Authentic . Authenticity, or what's "predictably unique," describes how culture, place, and style are packaged to be...

On June 8, Skye Pillsbury opened the latest edition of her newsletter, The Squeeze , with the header RIP Gimlet. She continued: I’m heartbroken over the news that Spotify has laid off another 200 podcast employees, though I’m not shocked. — Skye Pillsbury, The Squeeze I devoured Alex Blumberg's Startup when it first came out, which was about a year before I started podcasting. Then, I inhaled Repl...

I’m about to write the most journalistic thing I’ve ever written: I received a tip. I wish I could say it was an “anonymous tip” because that sounds even more journalistic. But it wasn’t anonymous, though I won’t say who it was. Anyhow, my source told me about a small business owner—someone who sells online courses and does quite well—paying an outrageous sum for a fairly standard service. This, o...

Welcome to the 3rd edition of This is Not Advice , my advice column that’s not an advice column for paid subscribers of What Works.  This week, I am tackling a question that came up during last week’s workshop on media ecosystems (link to replay below!) and that my husband Sean asked me just this morning. It also came up a number of times during a workshop on audio essays that I taught earlier thi...

Today's episode is all about trust and responsibility—and how those qualities impact the cost of doing business and the work that's required for any company to be successful. And specifically, it's about something I'm calling the Trust-Profit Paradox. Simply put, you can't build trust and optimize for profit at the same time. After losing my ish listening to The Verge 's Nilay Patel stump Airbnb's...

What are we really talking about when we talk about our hopes and fears about AI? It's us. We're the problem. Actually, we're not the problem—we're more like the solution. But that's less mimetic. Sure, this is yet another pod hitting your feed with a take on AI. I'll assure you, though: this episode isn't really AI. There's no fear-mongering or cute suggestions for prompts. It's a bit of a medita...

There's a sort of inside joke in the online business space of coaches, creators, and service providers. Or maybe, at this point, it's an "outside joke?" Q: What's the surest way to make more money as a creator or small business owner? A: Teach other people how to make money as a creator or small business owner. Hilarious, right? Anyhow, this isn't some weird quirk of extremely online people. It's...

“This cancerous economic principle means that executives and venture capitalists have abandoned the concept of value within a business. Through decades of corporate greed, production has become almost entirely separated from capital, meaning that executives (and higher-ups) are no longer able to understand the nature of the businesses they are growing.” — Ed Zitron, “Absentee Capitalism” This migh...

Today’s quick episode is a sample of something I’m creating for paid subscribers to What Works. I’m calling it my “This is Not Advice” column. Or, TINA for short. Not to be confused with TINA a la “ there is no alternative ”—if you know, you know. Paid subscribers not only receive this subscriber-directed content, but they also have the chance to, well, direct the content! When you’re a paid subsc...

What does a bad movie from 1992, loss aversion, Steinbeck, pizza, farm animals, and the founder of a software company have in common? Well, you’ll find them all in this episode. This episode will take you places . I don’t want to spoil it. So suffice it to say, this episode is all about questioning why we act the way we do when it comes to how we scale up (and scale down) our dreams.  Footnotes: L...

I am on board when it comes to technological progress. I look forward to updating my devices (although I don’t do it as frequently as I used to). New apps and features excite me. I’m pretty quick to adapt to change.  I am not a Luddite. Or so I thought.  “The word Luddite still means an old-fashioned type who is anti-progress,” writes Jeanette Winterson in her book 12 Bytes . “But the Luddites of...