By Tara McMullin
4.8
231231 ratings
The podcast currently has 433 episodes available.
Do you see your software?
Do you see how it influences how you run meetings, brainstorm ideas, fulfill your responsibilities, and communicate with others? Do you see how its text boxes, radio buttons, tabs, search results, and menus train you to think? Do you see it, or do you just use it?
Footnotes:
Stop me if you've heard this before: we're overloaded and overwhelmed by information. There's more content than you could ever hope to consume. More scientific theories, philosophical concepts, and art forms than you could ever hope to engage with.
Enter personal knowledge management (PKM). It's a modern term for an ancient practice—how one collects, preserves, and utilizes knowledge worth remembering. In this episode, I speak with Sari Azout, the founder of Sublime, an app for personal knowledge management (but that description truly doesn't do it justice). We talk about the philosophy behind the product and how that plays out in the product's design.
Plus, I dive into how Sari's PKM philosophy is part of a long lineage of practices people have used to remember what's worth preserving.
Footnotes:
Every new episode is published in essay form at WhatWorks.FYI!
In management cybernetics, there are 3 types of systems: simple, complex, and exceedingly complex. The systems we pay the most attention tend to be, you guessed it, exceedingly complex. In this episode, I explore what that means for how we do our work and run our businesses—and what happens when we forget that people are exceedingly complex systems, too.
Footnotes:
Every episode is published in essay form at What Works and delivered in my newsletter—check it out and subscribe!
You've probably heard of a scarcity mindset. Maybe you've even been accused of having one!
In this short, I explore the false binary of scarcity and abundance mindsets to propose a third way: resourcefulness.
Footnotes:
Essay versions of every episode are published at whatworks.fyi!
We're constantly bombarded by data. And it's easy to think that with the right clues, we could answer the ultimate questions of life, the universe, and everything.
But data aren't facts. They're not a secret code. Data are media—they mediate our interactions with the world around us. To make them useful and meaningful, we need a critical framework for working with data as media. That's what I've got for you today—a deep dive on how predictability, relevance, and actionability can help us see data for what they are and for what they're not.
Footnotes:
Get written versions of all new episodes at whatworks.fyi—where you can also become a premium subscriber for just $7 per month and help support the work I do at 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 people would it impact, how much savings are we talking about, what will this do to the proliferation of tipped work, and how much could this accelerate re-proletarianization?! You probably weren't expecting that last one.
Here's the thing: tipping is a class issue. Which means it's also a social justice issue. And it's also an issue that intersects with frustrations with the way all of us work. To find out how, you've got to trust me—and listen.
Footnotes:
Find essay versions of every new episode at whatworks.fyi!
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 intrinsic value of other activities.
So with the help of a 1935 essay by Walter Benjamin, let's unpack the cult value of novel writing, running, and social media.
Footnotes:
Essay versions of every episode are posted at whatworks.fyi, where you can also become a premium subscriber and support What Works for just $7 per month.
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.
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, too loud, too this, too that. This is especially true for women, queer people, transgender people, non-native English speakers, Black people, people of color, indigenous people, and really anyone whose voice doesn’t fit into the white, male baritone mold.
So what do we do? We try to sound more like everyone else. And that can not only mess with our ability to use our physical voices, but it messes with our ability to use our metaphorical voices and confuses our sense of self.
Samara Bay, a Hollywood dialect coach who’s worked on blockbusters like Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy, is on a mission to help everyone find “permission to speak.” In this episode, we dig into how the self-help imperative to “own your voice” might be more complicated than it sounds.
Footnotes:
As always, find the essay version of this episode at whatworks.fyi
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 for every thing these days. Camping equipment? Sure. Nutritional supplements? You bet. Miniatures? You know it. College admissions? But of course. In this episode, though, we’re going to focus on one of the original influencer niches: MOMS.
The rise of the influencer ushered in a new outlet for self-help. Now, not only are there motivational books and talks, there’s a product endorsement to help you live your best life. Influencers give us, perhaps, the direct line between personal growth and consumer capitalism. I talk with the author of Momfluenced, Sara Petersen, about all of that and more.
Footnotes:
New!
Join me for an 8-week seminar called Making Sense starting in September! I'll guide you through how to use the process of sensemaking to make media that helps your audience better understand the world.
If you're bored by your current content strategy, tired of coming up with new how-tos or advice posts, and want a fresh and impactful way to approach how you write, podcast, speak, or communicate in any way, this seminar is for you. You'll work week-by-week through on-demand learning, office hours, workshops, and small assignments so that by the end, you have the draft of an essay, script for a video, outline of a podcast series, or slide deck for a presentation.
Learn more about Making Sense!
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