The Productive Pessimist

  "It's not pie! More for other people doesn't mean less for you!" This was the howl of social media's self-declared #neurodivergence, #disability communities in the late twenty-teens and into the twenty-twenties. It sounded almost convincing, a worthy rallying call that everyone who wanted to be On The Right Side of History should immediately get behind. And if you dared  to hesitate to get behind the statement, if you so much as thought  that it maybe didn't sound quite  right - well, you were privileged , you were guilty of ableism , you just wanted disabled people to not exist!  If you were  disabled yourself, and had some reservations about the pie-ness of inclusion, then you were "everything that's wrong with the world!" But - as so often happens - those who were hesitant have been proved right.  It turns out that, as many disabled people with observable, high-impact impairments, who need  workplace accommodations - and, most importantly, w...

  At The Productive Pessimist Ltd, we're proud to say that, in all the areas we offer coaching, training, and consultancy , we do so from lived experience. That means when your organisation books autism awareness training with us, that session will be taken by our Neurodiversity Lead, Morgana, who is autistic herself. It means any training course around autism, ADHD, and neurodiversity more widely you book through us will have been developed in consultation with Morgana, as her autism is co-present with ADHD (as is the case for an increasing number of individuals, particularly women and girls.) What does it mean to 'Work In Acceptance?' When we say that we work in acceptance, we don't just mean 'one of the remits The Productive Pessimist holds is the acceptance niche of diversity training.' We mean we work in  acceptance, the same way a professional swimmer works in  water. Acceptance determines what we do, and how we do it. So - what is 'acceptance'? . ...

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...

  Do you love your job?  Do you love your life? What would you most love to do? What's your heart's desire for your business, yourself, your family? Other coaches talk a lot about 'love'.  Every other piece of professional advice tells you to 'find a job you love.' What do they actually mean when they use 'love' like this? Clearly, no one's suggesting you get into the same mindset around going to work Monday morning, sitting through yet another PowerPoint presentation, or organising the kids and arranging the online grocery deliveries as the thought of a hot date with someone who hits all your buttons, or a weekend spent in the company of your best mate puts you in.  And we're definitely not advocating that 'married to the job' should be a literal matter of legally-validated fact. You're not going to be serenading your office block, or sending a dozen roses to your project teams.  You're not going to be inviting your new hire out ...

If you have any experience of teenagers, you'll be very familiar with the response of "nothing" when you ask them "What did you do at school today?" They're not being sullen, uncommunicative, or rude. They're not 'so addicted to their screens they've forgotten how to have a conversation with real people!'   They're not keeping secrets. What did you  do at work today? What did you do when you went out earlier? What did you do at the weekend? I suspect a significant number of you, at least initially, thought "nothing" or "nothing much". Clearly, 'nothing' doesn't actually mean nothing , either when we say it as adults, or when children say it. A proof of this: Ask a five year old what they  did at school - but make sure you have at least an hour to listen to the answer! Ask a teenager, without judgement, what happens in a gaming stream, or what's going on in the book they're reading, or how their late...

  "I think you'd benefit from some personal development." "We need to develop ourselves as an organisation." You've probably all heard at least one of these, or, if you haven't, you're likely to have had occasional thoughts - probably around the 1st of January! - about 'self-improvement' or 'personal development'. But how do you know what you need to develop or improve about yourself, your team, or your organisation? Well, what is guaranteed to make you absolutely furious? What is the recurring focus of your bad dreams and Monday-morning blues? That's your brain telling you, in its unique, sideways way, what you need to work on. If you get furious about the fact that your team never seem to do anything they're asked, and, to all appearances, just sit there in between project check-ins twiddling their thumbs - your development needs are motivational communication, resilience, and adaptability. (Yes, your team likely have develo...