Have you been working hard during lockdown… or hardly working? Dad jokes aside, it’s a question on everyone’s mind lately.

In the early days of quarantine, some employers apparently worried that their newly remote workers might waste the workday bingeing Netflix. There was a huge uptick in sales of employee-monitoring software.

But remote work is here to stay — big companies like Twitter and Facebook are embracing it permanently.

So are we really getting more done, or just spinning our wheels?

The answer might surprise you

The New York Times says CEOs of companies including Chegg, Cisco, and Microsoft have actually observed a productivity bump.

And it makes sense. When you eliminate commutes, lengthy meetings, and small talk, you free up a lot of time to tackle real tasks.

But is it worth it to work it so hard?

Sir Isaac Newton frickin’ invented calculus during a plague (though to be fair, his story was more about passion than pure productivity). Is it so much to expect you to log into Slack and look alert?

Actually, maybe.

According to a Twingate survey of 1k+ WFHers, remote work can erode any semblance of work-life balance:

• 45% of respondents said they attended more meetings during the pandemic than in the Before Times. Only 21% reported attending fewer.
• 40% reported Zoom fatigue.

Commodifying every waking moment can lead to anxiety and burnout. Working parents face an even more fraught situation.

But productivity is a state of mind

Not to get all woo-woo on you, but maybe perception is the key to work-life happiness. After all, activity and productivity are 2 very different things. You can waste a lot of time jumping into Slack to remind your boss that you’re around and paying attention.

And a YouGov survey for Evernote suggests more people are figuring this out.

• 48% of respondents reported adopting a slower pace during quarantine.
• 51% allowed themselves to broaden their definitions of “productivity” to include learning new skills. 

Have you developed a pandemic productivity hack? Fill out this 2-question survey to tell us more.

Anyone who bought a concert ticket this spring knows what a total mess refunds are right now. 

But if you’re trapped in automated customer-service purgatory, good news: Now you can fight cyborg with cyborg.

DoNotPay is a chatbot lawyer designed to contest small-time charges like parking violations — but during the pandemic, it has found a new niche getting your cash refunds out of corporate limbo and into your bank account. 

According to Fortune, the company’s user base has jumped from under 20k to 50k+ since the pandemic. And it just sewed up a $12m round of funding. 

Perry Mason gets bionic

Here’s DoNotPay’s pitch: For $3 a month, the app will beat predatory refund policies. 

Take the classic refund head fake: Back in March, plenty of airlines tried to make up for canceled flights with vouchers instead of actual cash. 

But the DoNotPay bot knew that was against the law. It pointed out a rule from the Department of Transportation requiring airlines to shell out full refunds.

The DoNotPay bot is learning new tricks

Rent extensions, for one: The bot can now haggle with your landlord to get you some extra wiggle room on your rent. 

And the service is setting its sights on the blight of small crimes writ large. Next up for DoNotPay: Develop a tool that can get small infractions — say, an arrest for protesting — expunged from your records.

We asked our Hustle Insiders: What hurdles might get in the way of a tool like this?

From Alex Moskov, Editor at CoinCentral, Head of Content at JUICE:

“The most significant hurdles will be the local legislature and private lobbying groups in the same way Uber had to fight cities lobbied by taxi companies, Eaze had to fight their local jurisdictions, etc. I interviewed a venture capitalist named Bradley Tusk who provides these sorts of startups political, regulatory, and media guidance; I can imagine something like this would be in his court.”

Responses were lightly edited for length and clarity. Want more expert takes like this one? We’re trying something new — tell us what you think here.

Finally, we have a viable counterpart to Michael Scott’s iconic announcement, “I declare bankruptcy!” Now every midlevel worker in Silicon Valley is shouting into their apartments, “I’m going public!”

That’s right: You can now invest in humans. Entrepreneurs and futurists are selling up to 500 hours of their time — priced at 1 hour per share — over at Human IPO.

The NASDAQ is shaking 

Human IPO has been around since October, but it didn’t hit most people’s feeds until recent weeks.

The idea is this: As the people behind the IPOs become more successful, their time will get more valuable.

Let’s say you bought 10 shares — 10 hours — of Mark Zuckerberg’s time back in 2003, before Facebook launched. Probably pretty cheap. But now that 10 hours with Zuck is worth millions. 

For now, you can set your own share price. But Human IPO is working on an algorithm that uses LinkedIn and Glassdoor to automatically give you a price.

Assigning values to people — what could go wrong? 

You can imagine Human IPO making literal Silicon Valley’s pay disparities for women and people of color. What happens if the app starts placing higher price tags on one group of people?

If all of this is giving you flashbacks to failed startups of years past, you aren’t alone. Human IPO shares a core pitch of Fantex Holdings, a disbanded company that let people buy shares in pro athletes. 

Not to mention: Human IPO’s general aura of dystopia feels a lot like Peeple, the “Yelp for People” app that launched in 2016.

Want to know what it’s like to sell shares of yourself? Read our deep dive from 2017.

Racheal Williams, her mother, and her aunt spent years buying Black beauty products from non-Black retailers, and they were tired of it. 

“We found it very problematic that we were purchasing from people who don’t understand our hair, who don’t understand our pain points and our needs,” Williams said. 

Hair care in the US is a $4.2B industry, and Black shoppers represent a big chunk of the customer base. But Williams says their interests are underrepresented.

Alongside her relatives, Williams founded JSDK Hair to fix that. 

It took $10k out-of-pocket and a £5k loan from a UK small business fund to get started. The company has been providing high-quality, chemical-free hair extensions for over a year now. 

But the pandemic forced Williams to get creative. 

Stock sold out during the quarantine, and lockdowns prevented JSDK’s manufacturer, based in India, from resupplying. Williams began offering a free hair-care course to entice customers.

Over the past few weeks, Williams said the company has been using its social media accounts to “harness our economic power and uplift our community.” She’s promoted #BuyBlack movements and hosted online chats with other Black female entrepreneurs.

Google just opened up a new front in the battle against misinformation — fact-checking pictures. 

The fact checks, gathered from sources Google deems trustworthy, will be embedded in the description of potentially suspect images. They give context and verify claims as true, false, or “partly true.”

In meme-oriam: RIP to our favorite viral fake-outs

Don’t get us wrong, this is a win for truth, the pursuit of knowledge, and all that good stuff. But there may be some tragic casualties. Namely, watching people on the internet forget Photoshop is a thing.

Some iconic fake photo pranks we’ll have to kiss goodbye in the name of fact:

• Jason Derulo falling at every award show ever. It was the Joke That Will Never Die, but Google might have done the impossible and finally killed it. 
• This admittedly terrifying photo of a shark swimming on a highway that crops up after every flood, hurricane, or semi-heavy thunderstorm.
• Paris Hilton’s “Stop Being Poor” shirt. It actually read “Stop Being Desperate,” if that makes you feel better.
• The satellite pic of India during Diwali. Cool, but just not true.