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Thrive Global is Ariana Huffington's vehicle to repackage the last several years of self-care fads and sell them to corporations under the guise of improving em

Thrive Global is Ariana Huffington's vehicle to repackage the last several years of self-care fads and sell them to corporations under the guise of improving employee productivity. It doesn't have anything of value to add to the conversation, as this article makes clear.

vga805 6y ago
Would you like to actually engage with the content of the article? Edit: my snark was unwarranted, as commenters helped me realize. Apologies.
- tbalsam 6y ago
  He is.
- goodmachine 6y ago
  Would you actually like to engage with the content of the comment? Rated: informative
  - 4eor0 6y ago
    Right, because social media points can’t be gamed.
- wpietri 6y ago
  Why would one engage with the content of an article from a vendor one thinks produces self-serving garbage? That's not to say that's what the article is, just to be clear. But given our incredibly finite amount of time alive, I think it's important to have good filtering heuristics on how one spends one's time. As an example, people who criticize Qanon as bonkers often get asked to just watch a few (long) Q-fan videos. If somebody asked me to do that, I'd say no. I have an infinite number of better ways to spend my time. All of that goes in my "garbage content" bucket. I know all I care to from the reports of others who have dug around in the bucket. If you'd like to convince somebody they've mis-bucketed something, I think a better approach is to say exactly what you see as redeeming about the content of the article.
- pyrophane 6y ago
  Sure: * Give up clutter. Here they make some vague statements about clutter causing chronic stress and then talk about "Marie Condo" (actually, its Marie Kondo). They don't cite any real research to back up their statements about clutter and stress. Here's an article suggesting a correlation between cluttered workspaces and innovation: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/a-messy-desk-is-a-sign-of-genius-according-to-scie.html https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/a-messy-desk-is-a-sign-of.... That is the only one of these points I really take issue with. Rather, I'm just saying that all these other points are pretty well published on just about every other self-help or productivity blog to have ever existed, and this article is just repackaging them without adding anything, which is what I'm saying is the problem with Thrive Global in general.
neuralise 6y ago
Interestingly, GPT3 is great at generating content like this. It seems to thrive on the productivity niche. It could absolutely write this entire article!
chiefalchemist 6y ago
Yes and no. While it's true there's not much new, for better or worse she has "juice" with her C Level peers. Would I prefer someone else? Probably. But all in all Thrive - for now - is better than nothing at all.
- wpietri 6y ago
  Is it? As somebody who got involved in the Agile movement before it had that name, I initially thought the productization of the movement was a positive. In retrospect, it was terrible. The packaged version of "Agile" ended up having most of the nutrients and all of the fiber removed. It was empty calories and an organizational sugar high, all the feeling of process improvement with none of the work (and none of the value). My expectation with packaged, CEO-friendly wellness is more of the same: a way for CEOs to pay lip service to the trend of the moment without ever having to do anything difficult, without solving the systemic and organizational problems that harm the health of their workers.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    Fair enough. Then how would you suggest we raise awareness otherwise? In a celebrity obcessed culture, how do you get "old school" types to appreciate and embrace newer ideas about employees, health, mental health, and so on? I'm not being combative. I'm sincerely looking for a conversation on such things. To me it's all very obvious. But even a pandemic hasn't seemed to change necessary behaviours (e.g., diet).
    - yowlingcat 6y ago
      Well, raising awareness and persuasion are two different things. For old school types, one of my favorite techniques is incepting a very low stakes experiment into their head and making them believe it was their idea/having them take the credit for it. To do this properly, you can't proselytize, which is generally what I see "raising awareness" to be -- you need to translate beyond the interpersonal gap and figure out how to say things in someone else's language building on their values. To your point, if that means sending a cookie-cutter Thrive Global clickbait article, well, maybe that's exactly what the product is designed for. Funny, by writing this all out, I seem to understand that old canard about management consultants being primarily paid to help executive fight internal battles a lot better...
anotherhue 6y ago
[exec at Thrive, about as biased as you can get] Putting aside whether Thrive is a solution, would you not agree that the forces pushing our corporate culture towards burnout behaviors warrant some push back? And if so, deserve something less like lip-service and more like the tools used to capture our attention?

vga805 6y ago

Would you like to actually engage with the content of the article? Edit: my snark was unwarranted, as commenters helped me realize. Apologies.

tbalsam 6y ago
He is.
goodmachine 6y ago
Would you actually like to engage with the content of the comment? Rated: informative
- 4eor0 6y ago
  Right, because social media points can’t be gamed.
wpietri 6y ago
Why would one engage with the content of an article from a vendor one thinks produces self-serving garbage? That's not to say that's what the article is, just to be clear. But given our incredibly finite amount of time alive, I think it's important to have good filtering heuristics on how one spends one's time. As an example, people who criticize Qanon as bonkers often get asked to just watch a few (long) Q-fan videos. If somebody asked me to do that, I'd say no. I have an infinite number of better ways to spend my time. All of that goes in my "garbage content" bucket. I know all I care to from the reports of others who have dug around in the bucket. If you'd like to convince somebody they've mis-bucketed something, I think a better approach is to say exactly what you see as redeeming about the content of the article.
pyrophane 6y ago
Sure: * Give up clutter. Here they make some vague statements about clutter causing chronic stress and then talk about "Marie Condo" (actually, its Marie Kondo). They don't cite any real research to back up their statements about clutter and stress. Here's an article suggesting a correlation between cluttered workspaces and innovation: https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/a-messy-desk-is-a-sign-of-genius-according-to-scie.html https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/a-messy-desk-is-a-sign-of.... That is the only one of these points I really take issue with. Rather, I'm just saying that all these other points are pretty well published on just about every other self-help or productivity blog to have ever existed, and this article is just repackaging them without adding anything, which is what I'm saying is the problem with Thrive Global in general.

neuralise 6y ago

Interestingly, GPT3 is great at generating content like this. It seems to thrive on the productivity niche. It could absolutely write this entire article!

chiefalchemist 6y ago

Yes and no. While it's true there's not much new, for better or worse she has "juice" with her C Level peers. Would I prefer someone else? Probably. But all in all Thrive - for now - is better than nothing at all.

wpietri 6y ago
Is it? As somebody who got involved in the Agile movement before it had that name, I initially thought the productization of the movement was a positive. In retrospect, it was terrible. The packaged version of "Agile" ended up having most of the nutrients and all of the fiber removed. It was empty calories and an organizational sugar high, all the feeling of process improvement with none of the work (and none of the value). My expectation with packaged, CEO-friendly wellness is more of the same: a way for CEOs to pay lip service to the trend of the moment without ever having to do anything difficult, without solving the systemic and organizational problems that harm the health of their workers.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Fair enough. Then how would you suggest we raise awareness otherwise? In a celebrity obcessed culture, how do you get "old school" types to appreciate and embrace newer ideas about employees, health, mental health, and so on? I'm not being combative. I'm sincerely looking for a conversation on such things. To me it's all very obvious. But even a pandemic hasn't seemed to change necessary behaviours (e.g., diet).
  - yowlingcat 6y ago
    Well, raising awareness and persuasion are two different things. For old school types, one of my favorite techniques is incepting a very low stakes experiment into their head and making them believe it was their idea/having them take the credit for it. To do this properly, you can't proselytize, which is generally what I see "raising awareness" to be -- you need to translate beyond the interpersonal gap and figure out how to say things in someone else's language building on their values. To your point, if that means sending a cookie-cutter Thrive Global clickbait article, well, maybe that's exactly what the product is designed for. Funny, by writing this all out, I seem to understand that old canard about management consultants being primarily paid to help executive fight internal battles a lot better...

anotherhue 6y ago

[exec at Thrive, about as biased as you can get] Putting aside whether Thrive is a solution, would you not agree that the forces pushing our corporate culture towards burnout behaviors warrant some push back? And if so, deserve something less like lip-service and more like the tools used to capture our attention?