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💌 From the Editor’s Desk
Welcome to Work In Progmess, Issue #X –
Your weekly reminder that writing your own legacy doesn’t require bullet points, burpees, or a LinkedIn headline that scares your intern.
This week, we’re breaking down:
- A man who turned his goals into an obituary (spoiler: it’s in landscape mode),
- The rise of fitness coaches in corporate meetings (now with 30% more shouting),
- The micro-managers lurking in your shared docs,
- And a deeply confused Sigma trying to find himself between TikTok and trigonometry.
Remember: personal growth doesn’t require a brand strategy. Sometimes it just means not correcting someone’s font choice on a DRAFT.
Let’s get into it.
— The Mess
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📊Messy Metric of the Week
72% of professionals say they want to “leave a legacy.”
Only 9% have defined what that actually means.
And at least 1 guy formatted his as a carousel post with branded emojis.
(Source: A Google Doc titled “My Impact Statement” and three hours of procrastination.)
But here’s what is real:
👉 Employees who find their work meaningful are 3 times more likely to stay with their company.
(Source: Harvard Business Review)
So maybe the legacy starts with showing up like it matters—
before you design the tombstone in Canva.
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📰Headline Shocker
Man Spends Entire Weekend Writing His Own Obituary, Submits It as Q4 Goals
Work In Progmess: Your weekly reminder that a legacy is not a landing page.
NAPERVILLE, IL — In what experts are calling “a bold merger of mortality and performance culture,” local marketing consultant Tyler Penrose reportedly spent his entire weekend writing a working draft of his own obituary—complete with action verbs, quantifiable impact, and a hyperlink to his portfolio site.
“I just realized I’ve been spending so much time building my résumé,” Penrose said, “but what about my forever résumé?”
📄 Legacy, But Make It Scalable
The draft obituary, which Penrose formatted as a one-pager with bullet points and optional footnotes, includes the following highlights:
- “Lived with intention, caffeinated clarity, and a strong understanding of brand voice”
- “Survived three acquisitions, two breakups, and several rebrands (personal and corporate)”
- “Known for his strong handshake, emotional availability (post-2019), and well-crafted away messages”
According to close friends, he also A/B tested multiple closing lines, including:
- “He left it all on the field—and most of it in Google Drive.”
- “He came. He saw. He sent the follow-up.”
📈 Performance Reviews from Beyond
Tyler’s manager, who was cc’d on the document under the subject line “FYI: Legacy Planning in Progress”, admitted she was “concerned but not surprised.”
“Tyler’s always been obsessed with impact,” she said. “I just didn’t think I’d be measuring it against his imagined tombstone.”
Penrose has since requested quarterly feedback on his obituary’s tone, reach, and posthumous brand resonance.
🧠 Work in Progmess Editorial Analysis
Writing your own obituary can be a powerful exercise—when done to clarify your values, define your impact, and create a compass for the life you’re building. The problem isn’t the act. It’s when it becomes a branding stunt.
Your legacy isn’t about polish.
It’s not about what you say you’ll be remembered for—
It’s about whether anyone would remember you that way.
So go ahead: write the obituary. But make sure you’re also living a life that earns it.
You don’t need to go viral after you’re gone. You just need to live a life that makes people glad you were here.
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💡The Sports Page
🌽 SPORTS PAGE
Push Through the Pivot! Online Trainers Bring Gym Hype to Corporate Life
BY STAFF WRITER: TRICEP P. TENSION
STREAMING FROM EVERY DEVICE — What started as a harmless attempt to “get in shape before the company retreat” has now evolved into a full-blown movement: online personal trainers are infiltrating the workplace, and they’ve brought their signature brand of loud encouragement, vague metaphors, and alarming calf muscles with them.
Across the country, employees are logging into meetings only to be greeted with phrases like:
- “Crush this quarter like it’s leg day!”
- “You don’t need rest—you need purpose!”
- “Get uncomfortable. Then optimize.”
- “We’re not just here to present… we’re here to TRANSFORM.”
📈 The Rise of Corporate Fitness Coaching
The trend started subtly: a manager quoting their HIIT instructor during a quarterly review. But soon, entire departments were being “motivated” to have more effective meetings by planking their way through them.
“We were just trying to build alignment,” said one product lead. “Next thing I know, our project roadmap is on a whiteboard next to someone doing burpees.”
Some teams are now starting every sprint planning session with a 3-minute “Mindset Mobilizer” led by a personal trainer named Torque.
“It’s all about shredding limiting beliefs and also your quads,” Torque explains, shirtless, in an open-concept conference room.
🧠 Work in Progmess Editorial Analysis
Motivation is powerful. But there’s a fine line between encouraging your team and threatening them with a kettlebell metaphor about annual reviews.
Not every obstacle is a “wall to climb.” Sometimes it’s just a shared doc that needs proofreading.
This is your reminder: progress isn’t always loud, sweaty, or shouty. Sometimes it’s a quiet Tuesday where you complete the task and move on. And that counts.
🏁 Final Burnout Rankings
🥇 Coach Torque – Leading twelve teams and six streaming programs. Hasn't blinked since March.
🥈 Dana from Accounting – Showed up to stand-up with resistance bands. Emotionally and physically.
🥉 Brett, middle manager – Replaced status reports with burpee challenges. Lost both reports and team morale.
📉 Everyone Else – Experiencing tight hamstrings, vague panic, and an unusual desire to “crush Q3.”
Remember: just because someone screams “YOU GOT THIS!” doesn’t mean you know what "this" is.
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🤝 Unhinged List
🧠 YOU KNOW YOU MIGHT BE A…
📋 YOU KNOW YOU MIGHT BE A MICRO-MANAGER WHEN…
By the Work In Progmess Editorial Team
Inspired by Jeff Foxworthy’s iconic “You might be a redneck if…” series, we proudly bring you the corporate remix—starting with a condition that affects 8 out of 10 leaders and 11 out of 10 team members.
You know you might be a micro-manager when…
- You’ve edited someone’s calendar invite for tone.
- You hover over people’s shoulders—on Zoom.
- You say “I trust you” and then immediately share a screen to show how you would do it.
- You’ve ever started a sentence with “Not to nitpick, but…” and then proceeded to nitpick 14 things.
- You’ve tracked task progress in a personal spreadsheet... separate from the team tracker... that you update in secret.
- Your team has a code word for when you’re in “the spreadsheet.”
- You gave someone ownership of a project… then assigned deadlines, rewrote the deliverable, and booked the follow-up meeting yourself.
- You’ve corrected someone’s font choice on a shared doc labeled “DRAFT – DO NOT TOUCH.”
- You think “giving feedback” means sending screenshots with arrows, timestamps, and color-coded urgency levels.
- You told someone to “run with it” and then jogged six inches behind them giving suggestions the whole time.
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💌 Dear Work in Progmess
“Am I Using Sigma Right?”
Dear Work In Progmess,
My manager told me to “step up more,” so I changed my LinkedIn headline to:
Sigma Ops Leader | Tactical Closer | CEO of Execution.
Since then, my intern won’t make eye contact, two teammates left our Slack channel, and I’m 90% sure I got uninvited to the team lunch.
Just checking—am I using “Sigma” right?
—Trying to Be That Guy
Dear That Guy,
Look… no.
Here’s the deal:
Sigma in math means “to add things up.”
Sigma on TikTok means “brooding lone wolf who doesn’t need anyone.”
If you were really a Sigma, you wouldn’t ask us. You’d just disappear from Slack, build a company in silence, and emerge six years later with a TED Talk and a jawline.
But instead, you changed your job title and scared your intern.
Dial it down, Calculator.
Sigma isn’t a personality—it’s an excuse to ghost people and blame it on leadership style.
Try this instead:
“Independent Thinker | Team Player When Absolutely Necessary”
Stay mysterious—but not like… confusing,
—Work In Progmess
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📩Until Next Time…
If you loved it, forward it to a friend. If you hated it, forward it to your boss with the subject line “thought you’d relate.”
We’ll be back next week with more unsolicited clarity, corporate weirdness, and maybe a coach named Torque doing burpees on your org chart.
Until then:
Write the obituary if you must—
Just live a life worth laughing about.
Stay delusional (but in a productive way),
Snarkily yours,
—The Progmess Editorial Team
P.S. We’ll leave you with this:
"You don’t need to go viral after you’re gone. You just need to show up while you’re here."
(And maybe hold a plank during your next status meeting. For strength. And for spite. And to the Bitter End.)
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