The current trend of advice and focus, particularly financial advice and focus, is "sacrifice, go all in on work, work, work, save and invest through your 20s and 30s, which is the best decades of your life for compound growth! so you can have an absolutely amazing retirement, with enough money to do everything you want, and not worry about money, because there won't be social security!" This feeds into a wider toxic focus of positioning work as "the thing that exists in opposition to the life we deserve to live." In reality, work is part of life. Retirement is actually the thing that exists in opposition to life. The vision that's being sold is "if you sacrifice all fun and socialising, and just grind through your 20s and 30s, you'll get to have this wonderful, rewarding retirement" - but the reality is, many of us will not be in good enough health by the time we reach our 60s or 70s to actually do much of anything. Many of u...
Solving business' REAL problems. The Productive Pessimist offers business consultancy focused on inclusive practice and inclusive recruitment, as well as inclusive design of corporate, private, and public spaces. We are lived experience specialists, with professional expertise across private, public, and VCSE sectors.