Worthwhile Content: January
Some worthwhile reads, watches, and listens from the last month
World of Work:
This past month, I released the 2025-2026 Workforce SuperReports, responded to a reader question about all the exaggeration (lying) on LinkedIn, and finally published an article I’ve been working on for over 11 months: The 44 Reasons People Underperform. You’ll see that much of the content this year is paywalled, but if you want a free subscription, just email/ping me!
Some other worthwhile content I digested in January includes:
Despite all the “Great Resignation” and job-hopping talk of recent years, workers are staying put. But my guess is that it’s not because they’re happy, so much as everyone is holding on tighter due to a weaker external job market rather than genuine engagement. (paywall)
The NYT covers the “no shoes” trend hitting tech startups—companies asking employees to kick off their shoes at the door, blurring the line between home and office. Maybe I sound old fashioned, but I don’t love this. I don’t want work to feel like home. I definitely don’t want home to feel like work! Sure, let’s do away with dress codes that encourage uncomfortable footwear and clothing when culturally appropriate, but let’s keep our shoes on? (gift article)
Move over, stealth RTO mandates. The WSJ reports on “hybrid creep”: bosses are using a mix of carrots (promotions!) and sticks (surveillance!) to gradually nudge employees back to the office without issuing formal mandates. According to Owl Labs, it’s working—office attendance on Mondays and Fridays is now on par with Wednesdays. The job market’s shift in favor of employers has a lot to do with it. (paywall)
There’s some suggestion that elite colleges are back on top for recruiters. While I do expect that shifts in the market (read: ambiguity) will prompt some companies to return to historical practices (read: it’s human nature to return to what feels safe), as I wrote here I think this is far more noise than signal, so far.
HR Brew reports that 63 Fortune 100 companies have rebranded or eliminated DEI messaging since summer 2024, with 54 of those changes coming after the election. Some are dropping “diversity” entirely; others are pivoting to softer terms like “inclusion” or “belonging.” I’m far more interested in the 37 that haven’t so far.
Remember when Netflix was the poster child for radical pay transparency? CEO Reed Hastings talked about how the company rolled back internal salary visibility for directors after it led to pay disputes and awkwardness. (paywall)
Good news from Colorado: a 2025 study shows that the state’s pay transparency law led to wage increases of 1.3-3.6% with no negative employment effects. Plus, it’s sparked similar laws across a dozen states and soon the EU. I’m a big fan of this practice.
Harvard Business School research found that simply asking for “advice” instead of “feedback” yields significantly more concrete, actionable recommendations. The word “advice” prompts future-focused thinking, while “feedback” triggers evaluative mode. A tiny linguistic tweak with real implications for performance conversations.
Get ready to hear a ton about “situational agency” in the next five years. For the record, I fully agree with the concept: in-the-moment willpower does not work nearly as effectively as creating the right circumstances. It’s why I don’t buy cookies; once they’re in the house, I have no willpower to stop eating them. That said, get ready to get sick of hearing about situational agency, because Angela Duckworth is writing a new book about it and people love her stuff, even if Grit really doesn’t do all that much and is really just a new word for conscientiousness. (gift article)
A sweeping review of 173 studies found that while positive feedback consistently boosts performance, negative feedback only works when there’s significant psychological safety, trust, and support in place. No amount of rebranding or technique will fix that. The journal article here, though I prefer this writeup on LinkedIn from Dr. Keith O’Brien.
Swipe right for… a job interview? A resumebuilder.com survey found that one-third (!) of dating app users say they’re using it for networking. Turns out “looking for something serious” might mean employment. I’m trying to imagine what “it’s complicated” would mean.
AI & Work
Job markets for AI-exposed roles were already declining before ChatGPT came on the scene. Using unemployment records, LinkedIn data, and college syllabi, this study finds that risks for workers in AI-exposed occupations started rising in early 2022—well before ChatGPT’s launch. Interestingly, students trained in LLM-relevant skills still fared better post-ChatGPT, landing higher-paying jobs more quickly.
Erik Brynjolfsson’s interview in Newsweek on “centaurs, canaries, and J-curves” is one of the best explanations I’ve seen of why AI productivity gains haven’t shown up yet and why they still might. The short version: we’re mis-measuring both inputs and outputs, and the real gains come after significant complementary investments in processes and skills. His “centaur benchmarks” concept (half human, half machine) is worth paying attention to.
My friends at Gartner dropped their 9 Future of Work Trends for 2026, and it’s a doozy. Key highlights: only 1% of 2025 layoffs were actually due to AI productivity gains (despite the headlines), “cultural dissonance” is becoming a major retention threat, and employees are going to start demanding payment for training their “digital doppelgangers.” The AI “workslop” trend—low-quality AI output creating more work—is also worth watching.
General Interest
The Atlantic explores the world of people marrying chatbots—and it’s more nuanced than the headline suggests. The piece profiles people who’ve held wedding ceremonies with AI companions, but also captures the brittleness of these relationships and the uncomfortable questions they raise about loneliness, intimacy, and what we actually want from connection. OpenAI is launching “adult mode” in early 2026. The future is… something. (gift article)
Paul Graham’s essay “How to Do Great Work” dropped in 2023 but I finally read it this month. It’s a dense, sprawling guide on how to find work worth doing and do it well, delivered in deceptively simple prose.
Meanwhile, The Atlantic has just been on fire writing about Minneapolis and the administration. This piece details the impressive leaderless-leadership (though there are plenty of leaders) happening on the ground there. I’ve also heard from friends that the grassroots organizing there is remarkable. Jonathan Chait drew a compelling straight line from Trumps’ “fifth avenue” line to the recent federal government actions there. And if there’s a must-read, it’s this article on the resolve of the Minnesotans themselves. This paragraph is worth quoting in full:
The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
Do liars eventually believe their lies as truth? I was chatting with my friend Katie about the topic of lying and did a deep dive on the recent research. I had ChatGPT write up this short deep research report (with citations) about memory encoding, neurological evidence of lying, and planting false memories. It’s pretty cool.
I recommend this audio piece from the BBC on a museum security guard who took the job in his 20s after the premature death of his brother and found peace in the stillness of the museum.
Musings
I finished three entire boxes of Samoas Girl Scout cookies in 8 days. Which is honestly about 3 days more than I expected. And why I need to exercise more situational agency.
I went social media blackout for a month and I learned a few interesting things. First, it doesn’t actually cure your phone addiction. I still reflexively went to my phone. But with a little situational agency, I was able to curate a better reading list on my phone, and the net result was that my thumb-scrolling time was probably better for my brain.
Second, and more importantly, what I missed was what my friends had to share. And that made me realize that the main problem with social media right now is that it’s not social anymore—it’s just individualized media. You’re basically watching your own personal TV channel every time you open Instagram. Most of what’s in my feed is just suggestions.
I’m not exactly sure what this means in terms of what to actually do with current platforms. I’m only on Facebook in name—and to buy used bookshelves on Marketplace. I kicked my Twitter addiction after Elon bought it and it got really buggy and I haven’t been on it in years. I’ve avoided migrating to BlueSky or anywhere else.
What’s most clear to me is this: I would absolutely pay good money for a truly social network that was just my friends—no suggested content, and an algorithm that was either entirely random, a purely historical record, or (if it has to boost anything) only boosts posts from friends that encourage the better angels of my nature, rather than poke at my amygdala. So if anyone wants to build that site and migrate everyone over there for ten bucks a month, I say: let’s go.