Aging and work
Last week I was on BBC Radio 4's morning show talking about REST and the need to change work and careers in a world where life expectancies are
Rest with Alex Pang, Episode 4: Jessica de Bloom and the Science of Vacations
https://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-wn9tz-952bd4 Since we're in the middle of summer break, I thought it would be fitting to take a break from the shorter hours interviews, and talk about something that's
Rest with Alex Pang, Episode 3: Spencer Kimball and Free Fridays at Cockroach Labs
In this episode I talk to Spencer Kimball, cofounder of Cockroach Labs , a startup that's reinventing how databases work. It's kind of technical, but fortunately Spencer does
The gendered consequences of “Do what you love”
The Atlantic has an article arguing that our belief that you should be passionate about your work has the unintended effect of discouraging women from working if they
Rest with Alex Pang, Episode 1: Stephan Aarstol and the five-hour day at Tower Paddleboards
So the first episode of my podcast Rest with Alex Pang is now up: it's an interview with Stephan Aarstol, the founder of pioneering stand-up paddleboard and beach
Signals, complexity, and knowledge vs data in baseball
Okay, first a caveat: I go to a few Oakland As games every season, but I'm not a baseball fanatic; I married into the game. My wife agreed
Finland’s basic income experiment ends
Finland has been running a limited experiment with Universal Basic Income, and has decided to pull the plug. The experiment with so-called universal basic income has captured global
“a life spent dutifully responding to emails is a dull one indeed. And ‘wasted’ time is, in fact, highly fulfilling”
The World Economic Forum blog has an Olivia Goldhill piece that argues for the importance of "wasted" time. when we spend so long frantically chasing productivity, we refuse
Automation, leisure, and the problem of avoiding “overwork for some and starvation for others”
In her essay on the meaning of leisure, Washington Post editor Christine Emba notes that Uber recently announced that it would debut self-driving cars in Pittsburgh later this fall. This, she argues, marks another step
Shorter working hours don’t always reduce work-to-family interference
One of the strategies that companies and countries use to try to reduce "work-to-family interference" (a term sociologists use for a concept that's fairly close to work-life balance)