The Productive Pessimist

  Here at The Productive Pessimist, we've decided to start a weekly email newsletter - and, to make the choice of whether or not you sign up to receive it every Monday in your inbox as easy as possible, we'll be posting an excerpt from it here every Sunday - a sneak preview, if you like. Week One's excerpt brings The Productive Pessimist approach to challenges as diverse as Gen-AI, civil unrest, and welfare reform: Productive Pessimism in the Denial of Human Interest From Generative AI, through welfare reform, to the cost of living, governments around the world are ignoring what their citizens need and want: That’s the problem that’s perceived ; what’s the problem behind the problem, and what are three possible solutions? Riots in France. Militaristic units being used against ordinary citizens in the USA. Dismissal of the rights of disabled and unemployed people to be able to afford to remain engaged with society, and rising ableist rhetoric from government and media, in t...

  Towards the end of  yesterday's post , we briefly mentioned the need for recruitment to move beyond interviews (and application forms, and cover letters!)  A call to action, however, doesn't deserve to be listened to unless it also answers the most obvious questions: . What do we do instead? . How do we do that? . Will it work? . What's wrong with what we're already doing? Interviews feel uncomfortable for both  sides of the table, because everyone present is intensely conscious of a significant power imbalance - if an interviewer turns down an interviewee, they're not just saying "hey, we're not a good fit for each other"; they're saying - whether they intend to or not - "You don't have enough value to earn the right to confidence in remaining housed."   A job rejection is not just a stone on a path of opportunity; it can end up being the cliff edge between getting by and literal destitution: homelessness, not just a smaller home. ...

  Is it unprofessional to bring an iced coffee to a job interview, or are people who object just racist, ableist, and not engaged enough in revolutionary praxis? How do you handle rejecting candidates for opinions and attitudes uncovered during a social media background search? Is a 45minute vibe check where all parties are uncomfortable and awkwardly aware that bias is going to be operating, regardless of how frequently and loudly insistence is made that it isn't, the best way to choose your next high performer, or even your next mediocre-keeps-the-lights-on-and-customers-satisfied hire? Social media is the devil's current preferred mode of transport, especially where employability and recruitment are concerned.   While it would be a very control-focused employer indeed who thought it appropriate to stalk not just current employees, but potential  employees who have merely dared to send in applications for advertised vacant positions, and listen in to their conversa...

  In my run down coastal UK town, the past few weeks have been hell for local retailers, with teenagers treating major shoplifting sprees - taking electrical items, clothes, alcohol, not "just a few sweets or a bit of makeup" (assuming you're the kind of person who thinks it's 'fine' to steal 'small' things in the first place... I'm very much not  of that mindset...) - as something that's just...a normal part of them not having to be in school, and their parents aren't able to afford to be at home to supervise them. (If they're not actually at a legitimate job or course...lock them in the house. Take every set of keys, including those for the windows, with you...or teach your kids basic morals...) Parents aren't able to even take three  consecutive weeks off from most jobs, let alone six - so, even if you believe parents "should share the school holidays equally if they both work", it's not possible. In offices and oth...

  Everyone wants to be able to not just charge  the luxury price, but actually reliably bank  the luxury price, customer after customer, week in, week out, with no complaints or refunds, but without offering the luxury experience. 'Luxury' doesn't have to be unique, exclusive, or out-of-this-world 'special'; what makes something a luxury  experience, and has people choosing it without thinking about it, even when a very similar experience is available from a nearby business charging 50% or more less than the luxury item is that luxury = zero friction. The experience of minimal friction is why people will pay half a week's groceries cost to have a single meal delivered to them; for those people, the friction of identifying the meal you want to eat, pulling out/buying the ingredients, prepping and cooking them, and cleaning up afterwards is more friction than they can handle at that moment; in contrast, putting in an order and waiting for it to arrive is very low ...

  I don't usually write personal accounts. That's not what The Productive Pessimist  is about, I tell myself. Problems are universal. Problems don't have names. We're here, as a company, to solve anyone's  problems. But The Productive Pessimist also claims to provide the solution by living through  the problems.  We talk about how our lived experience informs and complements our professional expertise.  Which means, sometimes, personal accounts are exactly  what The Productive Pessimist is about. The recent EHRC legislation around access to "single sex" spaces is deeply personal. So is Kathleen Stock's recent musing on "why are  so many young people using walking sticks, hmmm?" I won't be linking to either of them. They'll come up easily enough on a Google search. I'll be speaking on both of them, because of both of them bring up problems for businesses, and both of them are deeply, brutally personal. The advisory in the title isn...