The Productive Pessimist

  Ageism is often seen as exclusively about protecting older  people. However, "age" is a protected characteristic in UK law, and means any  age . People often use "ageism" to rail against statements such as "Ok, Boomer" - but "Ok, Boomer" relates to a mindset  - the mindset that says "the way I  do things is the best  way!",  "people don't have a right to be themselves  - they have to fit in, because that's what I  did!",   "I should be prioritised in every single situation!"  People of any age can have this "Boomer Mindset", while, equally, people of the "Baby Boom" generation can be very open-minded, very engaged with technology and change, and very enthusiastic about emerging trends. If you don't want to be referred to as a "Boomer", all you need to do is change your mindset. In contrast, millennials and Gen Z can't  escape accusations of "laziness",  "...

  With changes to the UK's welfare provisions making it harder for people facing mental health challenges to get basic financial assistance without  an expectation that they will be pursuing employment, British business can no longer carry on its time-honoured practice of subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) pushing people experiencing mental ill-health out of the workplace, and people trying to manage even complex mental health conditions can no longer assume that they will be allowed to focus on getting to a point of reliable stability before they have to look for work. The burden on people experiencing mental ill-health is cruel, especially for those whose condition is not  "just a normal response to the challenges of life", and is, for example, something like schizophrenia, bipolar, or one of the Cluster B personality disorders , which can be exceptionally disruptive to the individual experiencing the condition, not just those around them. At The Productive Pessimist ...

  I don't normally do personal deep dives on this blog, which is, after all, my professional presence as The Productive Pessimist Ltd. In the past - in jobs, when building connections and relationships, in social media discourse, and yes, in blog posts - I've apologised for "going into all of that"  or "going on about me".  In several jobs, I've been made  to apologise - and to feel ashamed - for mentioning personal challenges I was facing.  In my first office-based job, aged 21, on my first day, I was told, directly: "When you come to work, you leave all your personal shit at the front door of your own house. You're not you , here; you're the company, and the company doesn't have headaches, the company isn't tired, the company isn't worried about how it's going to pay its rent, the company doesn't have family members or friends who die, that it gets sad about. You're being paid to be the company for 10 hours a day, f...

As soon as air travel began to become more affordable, Britain's small museums, and other smaller tourism attractions were in trouble. The problem was that, being British, those organisations didn't consider that they were  in trouble. Their entry fees were still a lot  cheaper than a plane ticket, and flying abroad was so much hassle , wasn't it? And besides, they were British.  You could have a conversation  with the lovely, British volunteers working in lovely, cosy, local British museums, you could enjoy the bracing British seaside, or the beautiful British countryside, whilst exploring quaint, quirky tourist businesses, and - the really cool  payoff - keeping your money in the local economy! And, for a while, the British public agreed with all of this. They pottered, they provided endless 2ps, 1ps, and 5ps, they brought quirky knick-knacks that would sit on a windowsill for a few weeks, then be moved to the mantlepiece, before finally being scuttled off to ...

  Re-skilling isn't about your current skillset being obsolete, or at risk of being overtaken by developments in the business sphere. Re-skilling is the "fourth R" in the sustainability focus cycle, and, increasingly, that sustainability cycle is being seen not as "second best", or "something to consider for some quirky retro content", but as central to personal resilience and business success. Reduce means identifying what's necessary, important, and the cause, not just a symptom. At The Productive Pessimist Ltd, we focus on helping you reduce your problems, down to the one  issue which is actually your barrier. We work with you to reduce the distractions to your strategic focus, and reduce the number of steps from where you are now to where you want to be. Reuse prompts you to hold a 'stock' of approaches, skills, and mindsets which can be applied to a diverse range of challenges and opportunities. For example: communication  is a skill w...

  What do you consider a reasonable commuting distance?  20miles? 30?  Maybe, for a hybrid role, up to a two-three hour drive away, depending on how many times you're expected to be in the office?  The Department for Work and Pensions expects jobseekers on Universal Credit to travel up to 90minutes, each way - yes, including  for minimum wage roles. Well, John Tuckett, the UK's new "Border Tsar" (or Immigration Services Co-ordinator, to give him his official title), considers a commute of 1,834miles, from his "family home" to the UK, to be completely reasonable, and believes it won't have any impact on his ability to effectively carry out his new role - which comes with a £140,000 a year salary. If you were driving, you'd be on the road for almost two days, with a 37hr drive time. Of course, John Tuckett is going to be flying to the UK to carry out his new job (carbon footprint, anyone..?); with a flight time of 2hrs 52mins, plus travel to and from...

  "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...