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 episode, visit: https://www.whatworks.fyi/p/process-entropy-and-process-evolution ★ Support this podcast ★...
Feb 20, 2024•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ourselves? In this episode, I reflect on how my beliefs about quality of life were influenced by my favorite...
Feb 15, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast The proliferation of derivative nonsense on various social media platforms begs the question: Is it possible to make a TikTok video, Instagram post, or LinkedIn update that's remarkable ? Is it possible for repetition to be an asset? For repetition to even be remarkable ? In this episode, I take a deep dive into gimmicks—the formulaic and repetitive media that can help us think in new ways. Specifically, I'm looking at Frankie's Cultural Observations. If you don't know the series, I'm delighted ...
Feb 08, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last week, Vox published an article by internet culture reporter Rebecca Jennings about how everybody needs to be a self-promoter now—and we all hate it. Then, I read a response by writer and book coach Leigh Stein, who was quoted in the Vox piece, in which she admitted to actually enjoying creating her social media content. Stein said that she was considerably more optimistic about the state of things than Jennings article was. I found the exchange fascinating. I find it hard to disagree with e...
Feb 06, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Layers. Unless we're talking about cake, you can have too many layers. In today's episode, I share a recent metaphorical revelation I had about sound and sensory sensitivity. And then, I introduce you to a different way of thinking about stress that can help you identify better ways to manage it. Footnotes: Rethink Work : an 8-week cohort-based course The Highly Sensitive Brain by Bianca Acevedo Stress: A Brief History by Cary Cooper & Philip Dewe Stress, Appraisal, and Coping by Richard Laz...
Jan 25, 2024•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast So, you're stressed. Or work feels intense . Or you're putting more energy than you should into manifesting a day with "no surprises." But why? Even if you're not working on an especially challenging project or hustling to get in under a deadline, the work we do can be stressful in a sort of ambient and ambiguous way. And we might downplay that stress because, hey, aren't we just lucky to have a cool job like this? When we think about work, we're often dealing with an outdated metaphor—The Facto...
Jan 18, 2024•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why is it that our bodies and brains tend to function on so much outdated code? Our personal algorithms and mental shortcuts are often stuck in a different time and place. We jump to conclusions or inadvertently flood our systems with cortisol because some stray line of code gets triggered. In this episode, I examine the tricky way that our beliefs have a way of creating our reality—not just describing it. What we believe ends up being what we see. Case in point: work-life balance . Footnotes: "...
Jan 16, 2024•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast The only sure bet is uncertainty. As we start a new year, I want to take a closer look at navigating uncertainty and how we can normalize not knowing. In this episode, I introduce you to a nerdy, wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing badass of a German pastor and guide you through 4 questions you can ask whenever you're navigating uncertainty (which is all the time...). Footnotes: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Wikipedia overview) Letters & Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer Small Arcs of Larger Circles ...
Jan 04, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today, a short meditation on time, the end-of-year season, and how we might carry what we experience now into the next season of work. Footnotes: Dr. Who: the " Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey " speech Time On Our Side , featuring essays by Tim Jackson and Barbara Adam (among others) Daniel Dombeck's 2018 study of mice and time Exhalation , including "The Lifecycle of Software Objects" by Ted Chiang Read today's piece at whatworks.fyi Love What Works ? Support the show and my work by becoming a premi...
Dec 21, 2023•13 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the 3rd edition of Cold Pitch , an experimental project from YellowHouse.Media exploring media, curiosity, and identity. I'll be sharing one more episode from this project next week before returning to the usual What Works program in 2024! How do you feel about "showing up" in online spaces? What fears or anxieties do you have about hitting the publish button or connecting with strangers on social platforms? My husband and YHM partner Sean has long avoided the public side of working onli...
Dec 15, 2023•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Planners and project management apps reinforce linear, chronological thinking. What if we used a completely different medium to plan for growth? I'm hosting a workshop on Thursday, December 14 at 12:30pm ET/9:30am PT for premium What Works subscribers. If you'd like to learn more about planning as a learning process and make a syllabus for your next learning project, upgrade for just $7 per month: http://whatworks.fyi/subscribe ★ Support this podcast ★...
Dec 12, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the second edition of Cold Pitch , an experimental project from YellowHouse.Media about media, curiosity, and identity. In this edition, Sean and I talk about our favorite daily YouTube show, Good Mythical Morning . It's the backbone of our evening routine, the content we rely on to draw a thick line between the workday and rest time, and, as you'll hear, a rich text . Footnotes: Good Mythical Morning on YouTube Ear Biscuits on YouTube " Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal " on Wikipedia " Fr...
Dec 07, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Over the next few weeks, I've got something a wee bit different for you! This is the very first edition of Cold Pitch, an experimental media project from YellowHouse.Media. Cold Pitch explores media, curiosity, and identity through a variety of forms and methods. In this first edition, Sean McMullin (my husband & partner at YellowHouse.Media) and I talk about, well, cold pitches . A cold pitch, simply put, is a request to a stranger to do something for you. Podcasters deal with cold pitches ...
Nov 30, 2023•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the final installment in Strange New Work, a series that uses speculative fiction to explore radical work futures. Power. Some fear it. Others hoard it. Some with power speak softly. Others carry a big stick. Power is charisma, or coercion, or violence. Power is name recognition, or money, or computer code. Regardless of your definition or perceptions of it, power plays a critical role in how we work. Today, we explore power—what we can do with it, how we can grow it, and, critically, ho...
Nov 02, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the penultimate episode of Strange New Work, a special series from What Works that explores the future of work through the lens of speculative fiction. What's the most undervalued skill of the 21st-century economy? Moderation. I very well might be forgetting something. But with more of our lives and work showing up online every day, the way our feeds, data, and connections are moderated is critical to our daily lives. Moderation can be many things—it's how platforms are designed, how con...
Oct 26, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast I've got something short, sweet, and really special for you today. Sean, my husband, my go-to extrovert shield, and the co-founder of YellowHouse.Media has a new project that is pretty cool, if I do say so myself. It's a hotline! Or rather, it's a weekly call-in prerecorded pep talk. It's sort of like a podcast, but you have to call a phone number to hear it. Trust me, this is a very Sean thing to do. Each week, he shares a fresh pep talk along with a poem, some tunes, and other audio goodies. Y...
Oct 23, 2023•4 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the 6th installment of Strange New Work, a special series that uses speculative fiction to explore radically different work futures. Find the work you were born to do. Do what you were meant to do. Discover the work that makes you feel alive. We've all heard these messages. Crack open any career, self-help, or personal development book on your shelf, and you're sure to find a similar message. It seems pretty convenient that our "purpose" in life is work , doesn't it? In this episode, I u...
Oct 19, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the 5th installment of Strange New Work, a special series that explores how speculative fiction can help us imagine radically different work futures. Think the future of housework looks like Rosey the Robot from The Jetsons ? Or maybe just a fleet of Roombas keeping every inch of a house free of dust or dirt? Think again. Housework is ready for a much, much bigger disruption. Of course, housework is rarely portrayed in pop culture space cowboy science fiction. And when it is, it's all ab...
Oct 12, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the 4th installment in Strange New Work, a special series from What Works that explores how speculative fiction can help us imagine new ways of working. Social and professional norms aren't natural or innate. They're political. Those in power exert their preferences on those who aren't, and throughout history, have exerted social, cultural, and physical violence to either force subjugated people to assimilate or drive them out of society altogether. Speculative fiction is rife with tales...
Oct 05, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the third installment in Strange New Work, a series that explores how speculative fiction can help us imagine the future of work. Today's work happens in tiny slivers of time. And we try to optimize each minute or hour for all its worth. But remarkable work? Well, that takes time. And lots of it. The kinds of work that are central to our evolving economy—care work, maintenance work, creative work—require more time rather than more optimization. In this episode, I consider how viewing wor...
Sep 28, 2023•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the 11th edition of This is Not Advice, a "not advice" column for premium subscribers of What Works. In this episode and essay , I tackle the assumed quid pro quo that's at the heart of content marketing. It's that quid pro quo that causes us to see the ideas, information, and stories we share online as a favor that demands something in return—follows, subscriptions, and sales. When we say, "I'm tired of sharing all this stuff for free and not seeing sales in return," we're hinting at th...
Sep 27, 2023•10 min•Transcript available on Metacast This is the second episode in my new series, "Strange New Work." Artist and writer Morgan Harper Nichols is a world-builder. She says, " Worldbuilding, for me, [is] a form of expansive hope—a necessary imagination for being alive." What is world-building? It's the process of creating secondary, fictional worlds. There's world-building in all sorts of fiction—but especially science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy. And world-building as a practice—a necessary imagination—can be a tool fo...
Sep 21, 2023•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast The future of work doesn't have to be an extension of today's reality. This is the first installment in Strange New Work, a new series from What Works about imagining radically different ways of working and doing business. In this episode, I take a closer look at speculative fiction and its role in the collective imaginary. Is science fiction all space operas and apocalyptic battles? Not hardly. Science fiction isn't really about the future. It's a commentary on and reimagining of the present. F...
Sep 14, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Join Tara McMullin for a journey into the far future of work, and consider how we can create more humane, inclusive, and supportive work environment. The first episode of Strange New Work drops September 14! You can find Strange New Work wherever you listen to podcasts—and each new episode will drop in the What Works feed, too! Support the show at: whatworks.fyi Strange New Work is brought to you by What Works with Tara McMullin and YellowHouse.Media. ★ Support this podcast ★...
Sep 08, 2023•3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Today’s episode is a sneak peek of Work In Practice , my new 12-week training program for guides of all kinds. This program offers a toolkit for identifying the beliefs and stories that make a more sustainable relationship with work possible. If you’re a coach, consultant, manager, or trainer who works with people rethinking how they work, this is for you . *** "Anyone can succeed if they work hard and apply themselves!" That's the voice of meritocracy. Unfortunately, that sweet, encouraging voi...
Sep 07, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast There are rules you know about—and rules you don't. Some rules are written down—and other rules are "just the way things are." And there are rules that make things clear to everyone—and rules that exclude through their lack of clarity. Charlie Gilkey is on a mission to bring those unclear rules and unspoken agreements out in the open and improve the way we work in the process. His new book, Team Habits: How Small Changes Lead to Extraordinary Results , is both a treatise on better work and a det...
Aug 24, 2023•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Play, learn, work, retire—those are the four stages of what Mauro Guillén calls the sequential mode of life . In his new book, The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society , he proposes a new story for moving through life. It's a story that actually reflects the facts on the ground—rather than our grandparents' idea of what life was supposed to look like. In this episode, I talk with Guillén about his research and his vision for how life, learning, and work could be differe...
Aug 17, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 here to upgrade your subscription and get the full episode! Or learn more about becoming a Premium Su...
Aug 14, 2023•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 nothing more than we've already given. In this episode, I share wisdom from Randi, additional wisdom fr...
Aug 10, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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. In this episode, Manisha details Counterfeit Financial Culture, and I offer the mimetic theory of d...
Aug 07, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
