What Works – Details, episodes & analysis

So, health insurance is in the news. And so is Americans' feelings about it. I got to wondering how we ended up with this terrible health insurance system in the United States. I uncovered a fascinating story about the marketing campaign that sunk Truman's national health insurance program in the 1940s. I also discovered some interesting parallels to popular marketing messages among today's influencers, gurus, and marketers.

Today's episode is a little trip through history that will hopefully put some of our current issues in perspective.

Footnotes:

• Gallup's survey data on healthcare
• "The Lie Factory" by Jill Lepore, in The New Yorker
• Interview with Leone Baxter in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
• "Campaigns, Inc." via the California State Archives
• "The deprofessionalization of medicine. Causes, effects, and responses." by RR Reed and D Evans
• "Professional Identity Misformation and Burnout: A Call for Graduate Medical Education to Reject “Provider” by Deborah Ehrlich and Joseph Gravel
• "White Privilege and Professionalization: A Decolonial and Critical Feminist Perspective on Professional Nursing" by Natalie Stake-Doucet
• "Why Doesn’t the United States Have National Health Insurance? The Role of the American Medical Association" by Marcella Alsan and Yousra Neberai
• "Oli London & the Right Wing Grift" by Matt Bernstein

Find an essay version of this episode at whatworks.fyi!

A problem, question, or challenge is often more than meets the eye. But we're biased to accept how an issue is initially framed. We acquiesce to the original terms. That's called acquiescence bias. When we don't counteract our acquiescence bias, we miss opportunities to get to the root cause or think creatively about a challenge.

Today, I share 3 ways to resist acquiescence bias as you consider your next moves, goals, or plans.

Footnotes:

• "In Your Spare Time" from No Time to Spare by Ursula K. Le Guin (read it or listen on Spotify)
• "Don't call it a Substack." by Anil Dash
• More on why podcast metrics were so screwy this year
• A skeet thread on the difference in referral traffic from Bluesky and X

• (00:00) - What is spare time?
• (05:45) - Acquiescence Bias
• (07:30) - An Example: Should I start a Substack?
• (09:59) - Buy why?
• (12:30) - Who benefits?
• (15:07) - Remove the guise of objectivity
• (19:29) - Go forth and reframe!

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:

• Find out more about Samara Bay
• Get Samara’s book Permission to Speak
• “I still have a voice” by Alice Wong
• Samara Bay on Anna Sorokin and Elizabeth Holmes’s voices
• Women and Power by Mary Beard
• More about African American Vernacular English on Pause on the Play
• College students talk about their relationships to their Southern accents on Dolly Parton’s America
• “The Magic of Voice Transitioning with Nicole Gress” on Camp Wild Heart with Mackenzie Dunham
• “Me minus me” on This American Life (Sandy Allen’s vocal transition)
• “If you don’t have anything nice to say” on This American Life (complaints about female voices)
• More on the mid-atlantic accent

As always, find the essay version of this episode at whatworks.fyi

Over the last two years, I've transitioned from identifying as a business owner first to identifying as a writer and podcast first. In the first year—2021—I didn't realize that's what I was doing. But over the course of this year, it was quite intentional. Making that shift has allowed me to explore creative territory that I didn't think I could explore when my primary function was content marketing.

In this week's episode, I talk with India Jackson about transitioning from content marketer to writer and podcaster. I share what it's meant for my work, my sense of identity, and my mental health. Plus, we talk about some of the difficult decisions I had to make on this journey.

Tune in to India's show, Flaunt Your Fire, wherever you listen to What Works or at flauntyourfire.com

Footnotes:

• Find out more about India Jackson and Flaunt Your Fire
• Find out more about Pause On The Play
• Hear India on EP 398: Good Bodies and EP 294: Offering Bespoke Services
• Jay Acunzo's LinkedIn post

Grab your copy of my new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting!

The shelves are full of products that promise to fulfill your values: ecofriendly, independent, cooperative, woman-owned, Black-owned, sustainable, etc. And right on! Unfortunately, not every product that claims to align with your values really does. Often, values-marketing is more about maintaining the status quo than it is about doing things differently. That’s what I call “values hijacking.”

Values hijacking occurs on the consumer level, but it also occurs on the cultural and political levels. Marketing, government policy, incentive structures, and cultural norms can all short circuit our critical thinking about what action to take.

On today’s episode, you’ll hear about one my husband’s biggest soapbox issues, and then I’ll turn the mic over to Erica Courdae, host and founder of Pause on The Play, and we’ll go deep on how our values become hijacked by systems of power.

Footnotes:

• More about Erica Courdae and Pause on the Play.
• POTP Episode 178: Values hijacking, capitalism, and systemic change with Tara McMullin

What is a goal really? What purpose does a goal really serve? And is that purpose truly benefiting us, the goal-setters?

These are big, messy questions. But they are far from abstract. Our answers to these questions—whether we know it or not—shape the way we work and live on a daily basis. This intermediary space—the space between philosophical questions and practical implications—is a place I happily hang out in all day long. Luckily, I know someone who likes hanging out in that place as much as I do!

His name is Charlie Gilkey. He’s a friend of the pod—as well as the co-founder of Productive Flourishing and author of Start Finishing. He’s also the host of the Productive Flourishing podcast.

Today’s episode is a rebroadcast from the Productive Flourishing feed. Charlie and I talk about why in the world I wrote a productivity book, how the cultural code we operate in impacts the way we plan and set goals, how that code disproportionately harms some more than others, and much, much more.

Footnotes:

• What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting by Tara McMullin
• More about Charlie Gilkey
• Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey
• Listen to Productive Flourishing
• Broken (in the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson
• Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

Written versions of each episode drop on Thursdays at explorewhatworks.com. Get them deliverable to your inbox by subscribing at explorewhatworks.com/weekly.

Introducing Recovering Overachiever Club

Recovering Overachiever Club is a 3-week deep dive into why we strive and what we can do differently in the new year. Join us November 29-December 20 for exclusive essays, podcast episodes, and conversation—oh, and earn a few merit badges, too. Learn more!

Do we really have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé? Yes. And no. And… it’s complicated.

There is a never-ending stream of advice about how to make the most of your time. And honestly? Most of it is just bullsh*t. That’s because there is no way to hack yourself or your work to produce more in less time if your emotions are fried, your energy is drained, or you’re dealing with the effects chronic illness.

This conversation—originally broadcast as a Spotify Live—is an unflinching look at what it means to consider our multidimensional capacity in the realms of work and life. You’ll hear from my friends Jenny Blake, author of Free Time, and Charlie Gilkey, author of Start Finishing—and me, too!

Note: the audio quality on this episode is totally listenable—but it’s not our normal podcast quality.

Footnotes:

• Get What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting by Tara McMullin
• Find out more about Jenny Blake
• Buy Free Time by Jenny Blake
• Find out more about Charlie Gilkey
• Buy Start Finishing by Charlie Gilkey

Written versions of our podcast episodes land on Thursdays at explorewhatworks.com. Get them delivered straight to your inbox by subscribing at explorewhatworks.com/weekly

Introducing Recovering Overachiever Club

Recovering Overachiever Club is a 3-week deep dive into why we strive and what we can do differently in the new year. Join us November 29-December 20 for exclusive essays, podcast episodes, and conversation—oh, and earn a few merit badges, too. Learn more!

It’s been almost exactly 7 years since this podcast first launched as Profit. Power. Pursuit. Since then, we’ve produced 400 regular episodes (with some bonuses here and there). You know, I’ve written many more than 400 blog posts and emails. But we don’t number those—plus, they are published across different sites on the web, so I never have a handled on just how many times I’ve hit “publish.”

400 episodes is a lot. It’s more than the vast majority of podcasters will ever make. The only reason I bring that up is because today’s episode is about the power of practice. Developing a podcasting practice is the only way to consistently put out a strong episode week after week. But developing a practice of any kind was not something I knew how to do 7 years ago.

This episode dives into what I’ve learned about practice from 7 years of podcasting. Plus, I share an excerpt from my book (out today!) about the satisfaction of practice in an achievement-oriented world.

Footnotes:

• Join Tara TODAY for a live reading and Q&A about the book
• Buy What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal-Setting wherever you buy books!
• Listen to Tara’s interviews about the book on this Spotify playlist

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

I wanted to include an episode on bodies in the Self-Help, LLC series because so much of our modern discourse around productivity, empowerment, entrepreneurship, and personal growth includes messages about our bodies. These messages might not be explicit, but the messages are there—and our brains pick them up loud and clear.

Similarly, we might not realize that we’re sharing messages that insert themselves into how others perceive their own bodies—but many of us are. It’s impossible to talk about self-discipline, accountability, or efficiency without those concepts leaving their marks on our flesh.

This episode covers a tiny sliver of all the ways that the medium of self-help acts on our bodies. But my hope is that it will encourage you to think critically about the messages you receive about your body and the messages you share that might impact others’ bodies.

You’ll hear from independent beauty culture journalist Jessica DeFino, body confidence influencer Tiffany Ima, and Flaunt Your Fire founder India Jackson.

This episode contains frank talk about bodies, weight, beauty, dieting, and related topics. I know that these subjects can trigger harmful thoughts and behaviors for me if I’m not careful. So please, take care while listening to this episode.

Footnotes:

• Subscribe to Jessica DeFino’s newsletter about beauty culture and the beauty industry.
• Follow Tiffany Ima on Instagram.
• Listen to the Flaunt Your Fire podcast and learn more about India Jackson.
• Erica Courdae on reconsidering your normal, as well as “Normal is a Life with Michelle Kuei” on the Pause on the Play podcast.
• “Body acceptance stops at the skin. Why?” by Jessica DeFino
• “The Skin as an Antidote to Consumerism” by Jessica DeFino
• “How White Supremacy and Capitalism Influence Beauty Culture” by Jessica DeFino in TeenVogue
• What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon
• “Postscript on Societies of Control” by Gilles Deleuze
• Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee
• “Rachel Hollis Part 1: Hashtag Relatable” on Maintenance Phase
• “The Trouble with Calories” on Maintenance Phase
• “Bodybuilding vs Powerlifting vs Weightlifting” on Shape
• Confidence Culture by Shani Orgad and Rosalind Gill
• Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World by Danielle Friedman
• 3 Books for Remembering “You Have a Body”: On disability, on chronic illness, and on our bodies in society