What Works

Who does all of our productivity really benefit?

Show Notes

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:
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What is What Works?

"Work" is broken. We're overcommitted, underutilized, and out of whack. But it doesn't have to be this way. What Works is a podcast about rethinking work, business, and leadership as we navigate the 21st-century economy. When you're an entrepreneur, independent worker, or employee who doesn't want to lose yourself to the whims of late-stage capitalism, this show is for you. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.