Why You Keep Doing Productivity Systems That Don't Work

Three topics:

1. Controversy! How hard should we work? This week a startup with a cute soup dumpling logo tweeted a tweet that got them in trouble, about how you have to work hard if you want to work there. We discuss why people didn’t like it, and finally for once and all end the debate about how hard people should work. (Ha!)
2. Crying CEO gets NYT trend piece! A few episodes ago we talked about the crying CEO meme and why people didn’t like it. This week, the NYT covered it as a broader societal trend, where bosses “are racing to show they are not just empty suits.” What did they get right? What is the story missing? What can you do as a normal human being to avoid the madness? We get to the bottom of it.
3. The surprisingly tricky art of stopping trying to do things that don’t work. This week Dan wrote an article about how he noticed a pattern in his life, where he would beat himself up for not doing a thing (like inbox zero) and then go right back to trying to accomplish it in the same way as before. This hardly ever works, it’s usually much better to change your approach instead. In this segment we discuss how to actually do that.