What if AI just makes us work harder?
In a column in January about the paradox of work, I recalled the immortal Douglas Adams joke about working conditions: the hours are good, but “most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy”. The joke is back already — and generative AI has flipped the script.
Academics at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business have been doing ethnographic research into
https://timharford.com/2026/04/what-if-ai-just-makes-us-work-harder/
The refreshing power of disagreement
One of the most famous experiments in social psychology took place in the early 1950s. Solomon Asch, a professor at Swarthmore College, gathered together groups of young men for what he told them was an experiment in “visual judgment”. It was no such thing.
What happened is often known as the “conformity experiment”, but that is a misleading label for
https://timharford.com/2026/03/the-refreshing-power-of-disagreement/
The link between material and moral flourishing is real
If the 21st century has produced a more prescient book, I’ve not seen it. I’m thinking of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman. The book was published in late 2005, making it the same age as this column.
Friedman’s argument was wide-ranging but the bottom line
https://timharford.com/2026/03/the-link-between-material-and-moral-flourishing-is-real/
Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email
Am I the only one still using email instead of WhatsApp? Perhaps so. I find it ever harder to persuade my contacts — and more vexingly, my friends — to use email for important messages instead of interrupting me with the ping of an instant message. And my failure to persuade others is a problem, because communication is a two-way
https://timharford.com/2026/03/ping-the-whatsapps-that-should-have-been-an-email/
The tyranny of targets
I recently described the contradictions inherent in my fitness-tracking watch. On the one hand, it had unlocked the joy of running for me, encouraging me to run further and faster and set goals I’d never dreamt of achieving. On the other, the watch could also push me into counter-productive behaviour, such as running through injury — and had a tendency to turn a pleasant run into a q
It’s the end of the world as we know it (but I feel fine)
How are you doing? Well, I hope, despite everything. And if you are, then you are just like all the friends and colleagues who sent me messages at Christmas, all of them claiming that they were also doing just fine, also despite everything.
The contradiction here is worth exploring: I’m fine, you’re fine, they’re
https://timharford.com/2026/02/its-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-but-i-feel-fine/
The paradox of work
In the late 1930s, the Roosevelt administration embarked on a curious project. Officials hired thousands of unemployed writers to produce guidebooks, children’s books, local histories, collections of folklore and a variety of other essays. Some of these writers were, or would become, American greats such as May Swenson, Ralph Ellison, Studs Terkel and Saul Bellow. Many others were more “wr
When psychologists mislead us
In February 1912, noted scientist Arthur Woodward received an intriguing letter from Charles Dawson, a country lawyer with a growing reputation as an amateur geologist. Dawson told Woodward that he had found fossilised fragments of human skull in the flint beds of Piltdown near the south coast of England. The find looked pretty special. It was.
The skull of Piltdown
https://timharford.com/2026/02/when-psychologists-mislead-us/
How British Queues Got Out of Hand
As a way of dealing with high demand, the age-old practice of forming a long, orderly queue has something to be said for it: simplicity, transparency and equal treatment for all. But no matter how much the British are said to love a queue, you can have too much of a good thing. The UK’s public services are under strain in all sorts of ways and it is striking h
https://timharford.com/2026/01/how-british-queues-got-out-of-hand/
Why populism became popular
Say what you like about the tenets of populism, it certainly seems to be, well, popular. But what are the tenets of populism? It’s easy enough to say what a centre-left party is likely to stand for, or a libertarian. But a populist? Maybe it is a mistake to describe populism as an ideology at all.
The Canadian philosopher Joseph Heath recently published an essay making
Tim Harford 
