What Works

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 by Nora Bateson
• "Dancing With Systems" by Donella Meadows
• "Sustainability in Knowledge-Based Companies"  by Peter Brödner in Creating Sustainable Work Systems
• On Religion by John D. Caputo

Note: I talk at length about God in this episode—but there's no evangelizing. It's about "religionless Christianity." Just trust me.

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You can also read today's piece at whatworks.fyi

• (00:00) - Navigating Uncertainty

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

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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 online. But that's changing.

In this edition of Cold Pitch, I ask him about his fears, where they come from, and how he's getting on now that he's been a bit more public with him work. Plus, I offer some analysis on how recognition—or perhaps more importantly, misrecognition—shapes our identities. The conversation ends up in a place that neither he nor I expected but were glad to have arrived at.

Footnotes:

• Find out more about YellowHouse.Media
• Dial Sean's phone tree: 1-406-200-8460
• Learn more about artist Tamar Ettun
• "The Politics of Recognition" by Charles Taylor
• Read the essay version of this edition

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

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
• "From Work to Text" by Roland Barthes
• "Parasocial Interaction" on Wikipedia
• "Mass Communication and Para-Social Interaction" by Donald Horton and R. Richard Wohl in Psychiatry
• "We Found Extremely Rare Toys in These Blind Boxes" on GMM
• "Five Guys vs. Shake Shack | FOOD FEUDS" on GMM
• "Our 2500th Episode!" on GMM
• "We React to Photos That Will Break Your Brain" on GMM

• (00:00) - EP 2: This YouTube Show is a Rich Text

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 every single day. Most are terrible. Not only are they irrelevant and poorly executed—they most often start with an outright lie.

I have feelings. Clearly.

In this conversation, we talk about the social "meat space" basis of a cold pitch, the psychology of email, what you might learn from the autistic folks in your life about honest & direct communication and more.

If you dig it, follow along with Cold Pitch at coldpitch.substack.com
And you can find a written version of this edition, along with links to references, here: https://coldpitch.substack.com/p/an-inbox-full-of-lies

• Learn more about YellowHouse.Media, our audio production agency
• Find out more about Sean McMullin
• Support What Works

• (00:00) - Script

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, how we can share it—because power in the future of work will look very different than it does today.

Footnotes:

• Find out more about Tania Luna
• Lead Together by Tania Luna
• The Power Paradox by Dacher Keltner
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
• "The Lathe of Heaven" BBC film adaptation
• "Mary Parker Follett—Creativity and Democracy" by Gary M. Nelson in Human Service Organizations
• "There Is a Better Way to Use Power at Work. This Forgotten Business Guru Has the Secrets" by Matthew Barzun in Time Magazine
• "Content Decision Making" via Sociocracy For All
• Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
• "A Band of Brothers, a Stream of Sisters" by Ursula K. Le Guin

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 content is incentivized or de-incentivized, and how communication between people is mediated. Some moderation is done structurally, some is done with code, but lots of moderation is done by real people all over the world.

In this episode, I take a close look at the skill of moderation, its role in our evolving tech futures, and the politics that complicate this essential work.

Footnotes:

• "Welcome to hell, Elon" by Nilay Patel on The Verge
• "Why Elon's Twitter is in the Sh*tter with Nilay Patel" on Offline with Jon Favreau
• Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson
• Work Without the Worker by Phil Jones
• "Content Moderation is Terrible by Design" featuring Sarah T. Roberts on Harvard Business Review
• "Moderating Social Media" on the agenda on YouTube
• "How Microwork is the Solution to War" by Ben Irwin on Preemptive Love
• "Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge" by Scharon Harding
• Rosie Sherry on tips for content moderation
• "Neal Stephenson Explains His Vision for the Digital Afterlife" on PC Mag

Love What Works? Become a premium subscriber for just $7 per month. Your subscription helps make my work sustainable and gets you access to twice-monthly This is Not Advice episodes, quarterly workshops, and more. Click here to learn more and preview the premium benefits!

• (00:00) - EP 7: Moderation is the Skill of the Future

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. You just select from the phone tree which you'd like to hear. Plus, you can even leave him a message yourself! 

You can hear this week's edition by listening to this quick episode. Or, dial 1-406-200-8460 to get the full experience. You can also learn more about Sean and grab the number from his website: seandmcmullin.com.

Without further ado, here's this week's dial-in affirmation for daily living!

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 unpack the "made for work" message, take it to its logical sci-fi ends, and draw on a key idea in the sociology of work to consider how we might shape the next 40 years into something more humane.

Footnotes:

• "If you 'don't dream of labor,' should organize for socialism" by Caitlyn Clark for Jacobin
• Embassytown by China Miéville
• Translation State by Ann Leckie
• The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
• The New Spirit of Capitalism by Eve Chiapello & Luc Boltanski

Love What Works? Become a premium subscriber for just $7 per month. Your subscription helps make my work sustainable and gets you access to twice-monthly This is Not Advice episodes, quarterly workshops, and more. Click here to learn more and preview the premium benefits!