Workplaces are sites of cultural assimilation. At work, we learn how to fit in better and play by the rules everyone expects us to. Every worker has a learning curve, but for marginalized people, the learning process can be long and full of risk. Changing how we approach the cultural rules of the workplace—making expectations explicit, for example—can make it easier for people to participate on equal footing.

Capitalism squeezes and distorts our experience of time. Everything feels like it’s moving so fast, that every problem is an urgent one, that there are never enough hours in the day because the imperative to maximize and optimize every moment is omnipresent. Rethinking our approach to time and adopting a long-term, abundant view of our most precious resource could help us improve our work lives dramatically.

World-building is the process that speculative fiction writers use to think through the setting—geographical, cultural, personal—they’re creating for a story. Tara speaks with artist and writer Morgan Harper Nichols about her personal practice of world-building, and how we might approach rethinking work with world-building as a tool.