Critical examinations of productivity culture, excellence, and professional identity. These essays challenge conventional wisdom about work-life balance, success metrics, and organizational culture, offering alternative frameworks for meaningful contribution in a post-growth world.
We’ve turned pain into pathology and healing into a business plan. But what if our symptoms aren’t signs of brokenness, but clues that something larger is sick, and screaming to be overthrown?
In our relentless pursuit of productivity, we’ve inverted an ancient wisdom: leisure isn’t what remains after work, but the foundation from which meaningful work emerges.
Categorizing capabilities as “hard” or “soft” skills fragments what is fundamentally whole. This artificial division reflects a philosophy that reduces humans to skill assemblages rather than integrated beings, potentially blinding us to the qualities that make us fully human.
Emotional bureaucracy—the internalization of administrative logic into our most intimate psychological processes—transforms how we experience life itself. We become both bureaucrat and bureaucratized, simultaneously administering and being administered by our own hearts.
In our obsession with excellence, we’ve become slaves to arbitrary metrics. The concept of ‘good enough’ isn’t surrendering to mediocrity, but recognizing that sustainable achievement often emerges precisely when we stop demanding perfection from ourselves and others.
In our obsession with productivity, we've forgotten the value of uselessness. Paradoxically, history shows our greatest breakthroughs often emerge from seemingly 'useless' activities—the mind at play accomplishes what the mind at work cannot.
