The Best Articles in Future of Work
The most useful articles and videos in Future of Work from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Future of Work Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Future of Work by Refind users in 2023 so far.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
Why Do Millions Of Men Not Want To Work?
Nicholas Eberstadt is a political economist, demographer, American Enterprise Institute scholar, and an author.More than 7 million prime working age men in A...
How AI Is Already Reshaping White-Collar Work
Artificial intelligence doesn’t just make fantastical images. For white-collar workers, generative AI like ChatGPT can make jobs easier by creating drafts of...
How to ...?
How to make a remote-first approach work
A Q&A with Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo about the tech company's detailed approach to becoming a remote-first organization.
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Future of Work on Refind.
What Kant can teach us about work: on the problem with jobs
There is always a demand for more jobs. But what makes a job good? For that, Immanuel Kant has an answer
What Happened When Zapier Cancelled Meetings for a Week? (Hint: Not Much)
Several readers pointed me toward a recent NPR Marketplace segement about a fully-remote tech company called Zapier that tried an interesting experiment last summer: they ... Read more
‘The office is for socializing’: how work from home has revolutionized work
Even as some firms are mandating workers come into the office, work from home has permanently changed the work landscape
On Tools and the Aesthetics of Work
In the summer of 2022, an engineer named Keegan McNamara, who was at the time working for a fundraising technology startup, found his way to ... Read more
This summer is giving us a glimpse at the dangerous future of work
It’s hot and only getting hotter. Could this be the next big labor battle?
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Future of Work—all under 10 minutes.
The Importance of Play at Work
A Q&A with IDEO's Michelle Lee about about the importance of play at work, how to build design thinking into the employee experience, and how to optimize team-bonding efforts for maximum engagement.
‘Can I just … rest?’: guilt, the four-day working week and what to do with the fifth…
As support for the four-day working week grows, we wrestle with the culture of achievement and busyness, and feelings of guilt and accountability
What Is Emotional Labor, and Why Does It Matter?
A new book explains how devaluing emotional labor—disproportionately done by women and other disadvantaged groups—perpetuates inequality.
How the Push for Efficiency Changes Us
Layoffs are in the news. 21,000 at Facebook. 27,000 at Amazon. 12,000 at Google. 600 at Spotify. LinkedIn maintains a running list of layoff announcements in its News feature area. Every person laid…
«A Year of Efficiency is bound to make shareholders happy. But what does it do to the humans who create the value those shareholders add to their portfolios?»
How to Make Meetings Shorter (for Real)
Time is money. Reclaim your precious minutes with these strategies for in-person and virtual meetings.
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Future of Work.
AI and the automation of work — Benedict Evans
ChatGPT and generative AI will change how we work, but how different is this to all the other waves of automation of the last 200 years? What does it mean for employment? Disruption? Coal consumption?
How to craft a harmonious life
Forget the ideal of work/life balance – your needs and interests are much richer than that, and your life can be too
A Way to Make Work More Meaningful (The Science of Happiness podcast)
We all overestimate how much we know. Our guest tries a practice in slowing down to ask more questions, and finds it leads to higher quality connections.
«Think about the scenario from the perspective of a person who disagrees with you. Try to imagine how they came to believe what they believe:»
On Workplace Productivity
What does it mean to be productive? At the beginning of the pandemic, when many workers went remote, some managers were tempted to start counting things — whether hours, objects, or other things. But…
«Measures matter: they change our focus and our behavior»
The Future of Work is Not Corporate — It's DAOs and Crypto Networks
In the future, it’s likely that the average person will not work for a company. Instead, people will earn income in non-traditional ways by taking actions such as playing games, learning new skills,…
«DAOs as open economies will power the X-to-earn trend, which will make work more flexible, fluid, and playful than the 9-5s we are accustomed to.»
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Future of Work, including:
Benedict Evans
Trying to work out what's going on, and what happens next. Mostly tech.
Christoph Magnussen
CREATOR at heart ❤️ CEO by profession 🔥 latest video, podcast, post here👇🏼 (pls no DM here)
Harvard Business Review
The best ideas in business and management to help people, organizations, and economies work better.
MIT Sloan Management Review
Transforming how people lead and innovate.
General Assembly
We transform careers and teams — including more than one third of the Fortune 100 — through dynamic courses in coding, data, design, and business.
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Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
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The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
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We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Who are the thought leaders in Future of Work?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Future of Work, including Benedict Evans, Christoph Magnussen, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, General Assembly.
Missing a thought leader? Submit them here
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