I'm pretty sure The New York Times is trolling me.Footnotes:<ul><li><a href="http://whatworks.fyi/articles/leisure-crafting">Read the written version of this episode.</a></li><li>"<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/business/leisure-crafting.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fE8.Lmbz.ZJHUIrA9PvIs&amp;smid=url-share">Hobbies Too Relaxing? Try 'Leisure Crafting'</a>" by Lora Kelley in The New York Times</li><li>"<a href="https://hbr.org/2025/04/research-how-leisure-crafting-can-help-you-recharge">Research: How 'Leisure Crafting' Can Help You Recharge</a>" by Alexander B. Hamrick, et al., in Harvard Business Review</li><li>"<a href="https://whatworks.fyi/articles/spectacle-of-competence">Our Yearning for Competence</a>" by Tara McMullin</li><li>"<a href="https://whatworks.fyi/articles/in-search-of-a-life-thats-fullbut">Always Be Optimizing</a>" by Tara McMullin</li><li><a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/self-help-inc-makeover-culture-in-american-life-micki-mcgee/9443190">Self-Help, INC by Micki McGee</a></li></ul>Turn your meaningful ideas into remarkable media—and help others make sense of chaos. <a href="http://whatworks.fyi/making-sense">Join me for Making Sense.</a> We start September 16!

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Delightful Misdirection (Or How to Rethink Your Options)

Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It's time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.