John Yolton’s Post

"These days, many workers are experiencing strained or fractured relationships between themselves and their work, their coworkers, their leaders, and their employers. This is evidenced by quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and the broken contract between employers and employees.   "In a misguided attempt to stop the fracturing, many leaders are demanding that employees physically return to the office. Whether it’s three days a week or six days a month, their message is clear: We want you back because we believe that’s how we can keep people connected. "The rationale is that when employees are connected with each other, that connection drives greater innovation, collaboration, and engagement. Although it’s true that strong social connections can lead to these outcomes, return-to-office policies are not always having the intended results. In actuality, we’re seeing that productivity can drop when people are forced back, and many employees continue to reject the return to office, sometimes resulting in organizations losing their most tenured employees." #returntooffice

"The search for life on Mars goes ever on. "Every day we inch closer to finding out whether or not life on Mars ever existed — or even could have existed. Most recently, scientists studying data from NASA's Curiosity rover have new insight into how Mars might have changed from a potentially habitable, water-rich planet to an absolutely uninhabitable desert."

"Sofidel, an Italian multinational paper company, acquired the ST Paper mill in Duluth, Minnesota, earlier this year and plans to invest approximately US$ 250 million to expand the facility. With the unanimous approval of the city’s Planning Commission, the company will not be required to submit an environmental impact statement. The assessment was considered sufficient to ensure that the project will not cause significant environmental harm."

"The global transition to a sustainable economy will open up all sorts of opportunities for investment, innovation, and growth. This is hardly a secret to CEOs: 58% of those polled in PwC’s 27th Annual Global CEO Survey said their company has completed or begun initiatives to innovate climate-friendly products, services, or technologies—in part to support decarbonization, but also to respond to market demand. "It’s a smart play: recent PwC analysis shows that climate-related innovation has a positive effect on profit margin, as do a half dozen other climate-related business moves, both individually and when analyzed in aggregate:" #sustainability

"How do you account for the hours in a day? Even when my workday isn’t consumed by meetings, I often look up and feel surprised to find that it’s already afternoon and I don’t have nearly as many things crossed off my to-do list as I planned. Distraction is a big culprit. The constant pings of emails and Slack notifications certainly feel like work, but I’m usually left with little to show for attending to them. "Over the years, I’ve found a few things that work for me when I need to focus: instrumental music in big headphones, shutting off notifications, and using a timer to stay on task—and taking a 10-minute walk outside. "Here are a few ways to figure out your personal productivity style:"

"Rosa’s boss, a man named Peter, allowed me to follow her around the dairy because he believes that more people need to understand how economically precarious America’s production of milk has become. The problem, as Peter sees it, is that the price of everything in America has gone up except the price of milk. In the 1980s, a tractor cost him roughly $60,000, the federal minimum wage was $3.35 and his first hundred pounds of Class III milk — the kind used in making yogurt and cheese — sold to a processing plant for $12.24. Since then, many of his expenses have doubled or tripled. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Peter says, his costs soared, and they still haven’t come down. Fuel-tank fittings that cost him about $2,000 in 2014 now run $13,000. Mechanics who once charged $60 an hour now charge $95. "Yet the farm value of milk has been dropping since the 1970s, if you adjust for inflation. For consumers picking up a gallon at the supermarket, this is a blessing. It’s the reason long-term inflation for store-bought milk is roughly half that of other foods in America. But for Peter, it’s a tragedy. When we talked this past spring, the selling price for a hundred pounds of Class III milk hovered around $15.50 — roughly $3 above where it was 40 years ago and a 55 percent drop in real value. "Every time it dips below $18, Peter runs his dairy at a loss. "Over the years, Peter and his family have found ways to manage the declining value of milk. They’ve built fences out of recycled oil pipes, used brewers waste for cow feed, rented fields to grow their own alfalfa. They hedge the price of milk in futures markets and purchase revenue insurance. But the biggest cost that they can control is the cost of labor. And the productivity of his dairy — and of almost every successful dairy in America — now depends overwhelmingly on immigrants."