‘The surest way to shorten our lives even more is to scare us about sleep’

‘You know what might help us sleep better? Fewer scary studies about lack of sleep.’

Vinay Menon at the Toronto Star

Don’t “read studies about sleeping if you want to get a good night’s sleep,” says Vinay Menon. Science has “tricked us with a false promise: thinking about sleep will help us sleep. It does the opposite.” At a “time when the world has entered a chaos moon phase, the last thing your brain needs is an internal narrator freaking you out.” There “should be a moratorium on all sleep studies until the news isn’t so disturbing.”

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‘America’s a la carte economy is making everyone feel poorer’

Beth Kowitt at Bloomberg

The U.S. has an “a la carte economy, with an add-on, up-sell or ‘optimization’ around every corner,” says Beth Kowitt. Companies have “gotten smart to the practice of unbundling: break down the cost of a product or service into its component parts, advertise the lower sticker price, and then spin the additional costs to consumers as a perk that offers customization and freedom.” But this is “exacerbating the deepening sense among many in this country that they can’t keep up.”

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‘Stephen Miller wants us to fear him’

Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian

If “you want to understand what’s happening in the U.S. right now, and what is likely to happen next, don’t just focus on Donald Trump. Rather, pay close attention to Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller,” says Arwa Mahdawi. Miller is the “driving force behind the Trump administration’s most extreme policies.” What “people like Miller want most of all is for us to fear them; that’s why they’re all so obsessed with talking about strength and force and power.”

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‘Working more doesn’t make you more productive’

Joe O’Connor and Jared Lindzon at Time

Historically, the “worker who logged the most hours at work was an organization’s most valuable employee. But that isn’t necessarily the case anymore,” say Joe O’Connor and Jared Lindzon. As “AI promises to transform how we work, and the four-day workweek movement gains steam, it is time to admit once and for all that working more does not make you more productive.” Amid an “emphasis on hours over outcomes, workers are under constant pressure to forgo their rightfully earned time off.”

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