What's the Best Way to Sit? (And Other Important Questions About Work)
Part-Time Genius
iHeartPodcasts and Kaleidoscope
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For all our schooling, no one ever taught us the best way to sit. Also, no one told us the ideal office temperature for maximum productivity. Or explained why cracking jokes might be helpful for elevating status in the workplace. And certainly none of our professors told us why writing in the nude is a great hack for hitting deadlines. To bridge these important educational gaps, today Will and Mango explore all the very best ways to work. (Note: the answer may involve Amtrak.)
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This episode originally aired on August 9, 2024.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:07.5 | You're listening to Part-Time Genius, the production of kaleidoscope and I-heart radio. |
| 0:16.0 | Guess what, Will? |
| 0:17.3 | What's that, Mango? |
| 0:18.3 | So I had a big writing assignment last week, and I was not nearly |
| 0:22.0 | as productive as I should have been. I procrastinated. I got distracted, and I kind of pushed off |
| 0:29.0 | the assignment for way too long. I like that you're leaving out one key fact that you were actually |
| 0:33.5 | supposed to be on vacation last week. I know, but I'd set aside a few hours so that I could keep some projects on track, |
| 0:40.8 | and then I missed my deadline. |
| 0:42.8 | So I started doing what I always do when I'm behind. |
| 0:45.6 | I looked up tricks for how to work better. |
| 0:48.2 | And I stumbled into this old chestnut about how Victor Hugo used to make sure he didn't |
| 0:54.0 | procrastinate. Basically, |
| 0:55.6 | whenever he got writer's block, he'd have his servant take all his clothes away and leave him |
| 1:01.0 | with only a pen and paper. So he had nothing to do but right in the nude, which I guess is how |
| 1:07.0 | he hit all his deadlines. And also sounds a little bit extreme, if you ask me. |
| 1:12.3 | Yeah, but one thing I've been wondering about is whether it was the fact that he was |
| 1:16.0 | stuck in his house without clothes that made him right or whether it was actually being |
| 1:20.1 | nude that put him in the mood to do the writing and inspired him. |
| 1:23.9 | Like Hemingway wrote nude at a standing desk. |
| 1:27.0 | Ben Franklin famously took airbats where |
| 1:29.2 | he'd wake up early, you know, sit by a drafty window and feel invigorated to journal before going |
... |
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