The Productive Pessimist

  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

  “I don’t want your face looking like that while I’m talking.”  (Face was ‘bland neutral.’) “People here don’t like you, because you’re too negative.” (Used very light sarcasm to defuse workplace tension.) “I think it’s a bit inconsiderate to overshare the way you do…everyone is struggling here, and they don’t need to be worried about you.” (Had responded to “How’re you doing?” with “Okay, I think…it’s been a bit tough at home, but I’m getting through. How’s everything with you?”) “We need happy, bubbly team players here - if that’s not how you feel, every day, then I’m sorry, but we’re just not the right place for you to thrive.” (Person was behaving normally, being professionally welcoming, supporting their colleagues.) Employers don't want to employ people with "mental health problems" (or disabilities), but the government don't want those people claiming welfare. Yes, depression and anxiety are natural, normal responses to life, especially life as it is current

  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'? .

Today is Trans Day of Visibility in the UK. At The Productive Pessimist Ltd, we offer coaching, consultancy, and training from lived experience. That includes lived experience of being on the 'less-likely-to-have-national-newspaper-columns-and-a-huge-fanbase' side of the 'transgender debate.' Both our Founder-Directors - Ash, who leads on business consultancy, and management coaching, and Morgana, who leads on neurodiversity inclusion, support, and training - are trans. Ash is a trans man (assigned female at birth, and raised as a girl) who first expressed a male identity aged 9, and began medical transition aged 21.  He has experienced physical violence and conversion therapy as a result of his gender identity. Morgana is a trans woman (assigned male at birth, and raised as a boy), who, in childhood, persistently experienced a 'wrongness and lack of connection' with gender, and began social transition (identifying and living as a woman) aged 22, and medical tra

(*names and features have been changed for privacy) GullRun Health Services are an independent healthcare provider, established as a Community Interest Company (CIC) who are looking to move away from their current business model, which is heavily dependent on NHS (National Health Service) commissioning.  GullRun want to move away from this model in order to establish a more visible presence in their local area, and also to avoid the significant payment lags that they are experiencing on many of their contracts - in some cases, it has been over a year since the service they were commissioned to provide started seeing patients, and they still haven’t received a single payment from the NHS. This is obviously having an impact on their ability to maintain a prudent level of reserve funding, and preventing them from addressing pressing healthcare needs within their communities. GullRun Health Services approached The Productive Pessimist Ltd, and requested a supported session working through