The Productive Pessimist

  This morning, I should have been hosting a networking event alongside my business partner.  Unfortunately, I woke up with a particularly bad cold - far more than just sniffles and feeling under the weather - which didn't improve as the morning went on.  I asked myself what I would do if I had a "regular" job; the answer was "I would identify that I was well enough to work from home, but not well enough to go into a physical location." So, that's what I'm doing today, while my partner handles the networking event.  "But if someone's well enough to work from home, they're well enough to come in to work!" I'm not dying, and my vision is only minimally playing up (I have multiple active sight-loss conditions; it takes actual work for me to be able to benefit from the little useful vision I have left; that is compromised when I'm ill), but I am probably contagious, and have no way of knowing how what for me is a bad chest cold woul

Pride isn't just about slapping rainbow stickers on things, hiring flamboyantly gay or visibly trans influencers, and doing 'awareness training.' As businesses and leaders, Pride month should be where your LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, Asexual/Aromantic, and other non-cishet identities and experiences) colleagues guide you in the groundwork that needs to be done for lasting change. Stonewall wasn't just a random incident of civil disobedience; it was the detonator blast that broke ground to begin to build a new way of being human, and a new way of seeing and welcoming other human beings. LGBTQIA+ Inclusion For Life, Not Just For Pride There are things which are a common, unconscious part of how people who are not LGBTQIA+ behave and set up the world, especially in workplaces, which, unintentionally, exclude LGBTQIA+ people, especially those who are also experiencing financial challenges, and/or have intersectional  disadvant

  It's happened again.  Your cookies have tracked what seemed to be an engaged, potentially high-spending customer across your website. They lingered the appropriate amount, clicked suitably quickly, examined the full, carefully-crafted description your copywriter had two fits of screaming profanity, three breaks to cry in the loo, and one episode of throwing a hardbacked version of the Oxford English Dictionary  at a colleague's head before their words were finally approved. The customer's virtual basket shows enough variety to suggest new marketing angles, but not so much that your software can't categorise them effectively. It will be possible for the software to prompt the tried-and-tested selection of marketing approaches that (mostly) work with their demographic. To appeal to their ambitions, their glittering image of themselves, their fears, their hopes, their prejudices, and, in doing so, get more money from them. Then - disaster! They've left your website!

  "Mental health at work" has become something of a buzz phrase in recent years, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. "Mental health" is the reason people "need to get back to the office" - because the extroverts are suffering, since they're no longer able to dominate meetings, talk people into agreeing to take on more work than they're actually comfortable with, or enthusiastically create a situation where, if getting drunk with people you already spend too much time with, or leaping on a zip wire, aren't really your thing, you're "unadventurous", "anti-social", and "not really a team player." The UK government insist work is good  for our "mental health", even as successful GPs decide they literally can't carry on anymore, and choose a permanent solution to the problem of burnout.  While the low wages, in comparison to the cost of living, and long hours of many jobs are actually c

  Today is International Day of Happiness. We're The Productive Pessimist; those two things may seem to be completely at odds.   Can pessimists be happy?  Isn't pessimism essentially a guarantee of lifelong discontent? Pessimism is actually more likely to create a state of calm, enduring happiness, because pessimism prevents unrealistic expectations from being built into believable ambitions. Pessimists have dreams, like everyone else, but they are grounded in a realism that has been subjected to often quite extreme analysis. Just because a dream doesn't make it through this analysis, it doesn't mean a pessimist can't or won't indulge it; sometimes, it can be pleasant to play with a dream which we know won't go anywhere - after all, if the dream is acknowledged as impossible, we can enjoy our ideal of it, without any risk of having to encounter the downsides which come with any dream. Dreams which make it through a pessimist's analysis much more readily

This week (March 18th-24th 2024) is Neurodiversity Celebration Week. As a neurodiverse-led organisation (our Director, co-founder, and lead Trainer, Morgana, has ADHD and autism, both of which were diagnosed in adulthood, but which influenced her experience of childhood and adolescence), The Productive Pessimist are aware that 'celebration' can feel like a very loaded word, both to people who live with a particular condition or experience, and to those who work with them, educate them, and parent them. Social media, in particular, has often centred white-passing female/femme individuals, who are highly verbal, skilled at art, and with strong social skills as "neurodiversity rep", a backlash to society's frequent presentation of socially-inept, emotionally unavailable men, or hyperactive boys, often as the "accepted medical presentation" of neurodiversity. Many people would ask how someone who is non-verbal, someone who lacks awareness of their basic bodi

  We've had the UK Spring Budget 2024. We've had the media commentary on Jeremy Hunt's Budget. You may be scratching your head, wondering what you're supposed to do  with all the information about the information you have. What's the best move? Where should your business be? How screwed are you? Here at The Productive Pessimist, we're all about keeping it simple, whilst respecting that you're not stupid. So: Are You Screwed? If you earn under £32,500 a year, probably. But, then, you probably already knew that. However, the freeze on tax bands means the best advice is not  "get a better paid job".   As the government has opened up the definition of 'high net worth individual', enabling more people to qualify as 'sophisticated' investors, and thus be approved to take a chance on unproven entrepreneurs, the best thing you can do if you're not making £32,500 a year is to get together a business plan, and a series of pitch decks (we

  Have you been watching BBC One's The Apprentice over the past few weeks? (or years, for many of us?!) Here at The Productive Pessimist , our Director, Ash, has been a fan of the show from the beginning - he even got an audition for the 2011 series! (Unfortunately, he was out of work at the time, and ended up having to go to a less illustrious job interview on the same day... he didn't even get the job... the paths we didn't take, eh?) We all sort of know, the way we do with all 'reality' shows, that it's probably not as disastrous as it seems. Editing can tell a completely different story to what actually went on, and how many of us would actually tune in every week to see people being competent, capable professionals? (Our bosses tell us that's what we go to work for!) However true or constructed it may be, all we have to go on as far as the capabilities of the wannabes are concerned is what we see when we switch on. Which...isn't always that inspiri