What Works helps you make sense of work, business, and leadership in the 21st-century economy. Tara McMullin uses philosophy, media theory, social science, and systems thinking to explore how to work (and live) better in the digital age.
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Rethink. Rework. Reimagine.
More and new seem to present themselves as possibilities, when really, they are more often dead-end cycles that do nothing to satisfy us.
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Culture & Media
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Systems & Society
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Critical Thinking
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Business & Entrepreneurship
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Management & Productivity
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Data & Metrics
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Future of Work
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Culture & Media ☞ Systems & Society ☞ Critical Thinking ☞ Business & Entrepreneurship ☞ Management & Productivity ☞ Data & Metrics ☞ Future of Work ☞
Tara McMullin is a writer, podcaster, and critic who studies emerging forms of work and identity in the 21st-century economy. She’s also a respected business strategist and educator who prioritizes fundamentals over flashy tactics, nuanced analysis over easy answers, and sustainability over profit for profit’s sake.
Bringing a rigorous critique of conventional wisdom to topics like success and productivity, she melds conceptual curiosity with practical application. Her work has been featured in Fast Company, Quartz, and The Muse.
Featured Essays & Episodes
Temporal Bandwidth
How do you think about the future in a world that seems to reward short-term thinking? Reach back into history, reacquaint yourself with the past, and expand your sense of Now.
Whether in work, business, or leadership, a more capacious temporal bandwidth offers us a more stable footing.
More and new seem to present themselves as possibilities, when really, they are more often dead-end cycles that do nothing to satisfy us.
A meditation on the long term—the commitments, projects, and relationships we can work on when our "temporal bandwidth" widens.
What the push for AI everything has to do with the “great feminization” panic—and how both propose to reshape the workplace
How do you get others to care about what you care about? You have to care about what they care about.
If competence porn is media that titillates by showing highly skilled people doing their thing, then what could an erotics of competence look like?
Taking time to reread, rewatch, or relisten can be taking time to rediscover yourself.
What really happens when we ask for or give support to the creators we love?
A meditation on the long term—the commitments, projects, and relationships we can work on when our "temporal bandwidth" widens.
How HBO’s The Pitt can help us rethink busyness—and find ways to navigate it with care and grace
How I use the “man behind the curtain” framework, the process of normalization, and the theory of value capture to make sense of chaos.
According to danah boyd, social media is parasocial media now—and that’s part of why I’m reconsidering my long absence.
“Who is a business owner?” is a more complicated question than it seems.
Doing some decision-making? Need to choose between a few good options? Well, a little logic puzzle might help.
More and new seem to present themselves as possibilities, when really, they are more often dead-end cycles that do nothing to satisfy us.
To tackle the problem of job loss in the 21st-century economy, we need to disentangle “jobs” from “work.”
“Who is a business owner?” is a more complicated question than it seems.