Hustle. Grind. Boss up. Do more. Love them or hate them, these words are embedded into the ways we think about work and entrepreneurship. But as we’ve seen with the enormous growth of the r/anti-work subreddit and the panic about quiet quitting, more people than ever are thinking about different ways to go about building their lives, careers, and businesses.

As we close out the Self-Help, LLC series, I wanted to address where our productivity hang-ups come from, who our productivity really benefits, and how we might go about doing things differently. This episode is in 2 parts. The first half or so is an introduction to how employers (including self-employers) profit from unpaid work and why the productivity-wage gap has become so immense. The second half of the episode is my conversation with Jadah Sellner, about the vision for business she lays out in her new book, She Builds.

Footnotes:

• Find out more about Jadah Sellner and her new book, She Builds.
• “TikTok ‘5-to-9’ Trend Shows Quiet Quitting Hasn’t Killed Hustle Culture” on Bloomberg
• Dolly Parton rewrites her working woman’s anthem for SquareSpace
• THE ULTIMATE MORNING ROUTINE (parody)
• Revolution at Point Zero, essays by Silvia Federici
• Data on the productivity-wage gap (Economic Policy Institute)
• Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
• Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

Essay versions of each episode of the podcast come out on Thursdays at explorewhatworks.com and in my newsletter. Sign up free: explorewhatworks.com/weekly