Sarah Owen

Social psychologists have known for decades that people are motivated to work harder when others are watching. When they are observed, people run faster, are more creative, and think harder about problems.

"frictionless experiences with technology mean that we notice less about the tools we’re using and what it is they actually do. This, he thinks, promotes a kind of self-absorption. We don’t see ourselves as being in conversation with our tools or the physical world; instead, we see ourselves as masters of our environment, with the expectation that... See more

So far, the Libermans have traded around three per cent of their futures, which investors have valued at four hundred million dollars, or about a hundred million dollars per Liberman. They spent a few months in conversation with the Securities and Exchange Commission to list themselves on the stock market, which they hope to do by 2023.

Thus we stumble across a new standard for productivity: non-self-coercion. If you wouldn't vociferously berate your coworkers or roommates for their various foibles and inefficiencies, why do you keep behaving as if it’s acceptable to do it to yourself?

“Non-self-coercion” is the conceptual distillation of several converging threads of what you could call productivity criticism (if not outright backlash).

People understand things through narratives, including the future. Everyone is the science fiction writer of their own life. When hoping for a good life, and thinking about what might bring that about, we are utopian writers; when fearful that bad things will happen, we are dystopian writers.