What's on Your Mind?

It’s time to reckon with the reality that nonstop doomscrolling has delivered us: a hard-to-ignore erosion of our cognitive skills. We’ve lost the ability to focus on words for long stretches of time . . . er, read books. Years of turning everything worth consuming into “content” that’s been “optimized” for attention has turned our brains into mush, shoved our mental health into free fall, and reduced our ability to pay attention to anything for more than five seconds at a time. (In fact, I clicked away from completing this sentence to check Facebook Marketplace for credenzas on sale.) While we’re still in the early days of what the long-term impact of artificia…

From boardrooms to startup garages, leaders need ideas that work in the real world. These 10 books offer a broader perspective on business, helping us see the patterns behind the day-to-day grind. Learn something new every day with “Book Bites,” 15-minute audio summaries of the latest and greatest nonfiction. Get started by downloading the Next Big Idea App today! Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously) By Bree Groff When we wish away the workweek, we wish away our lives. What would it take for us to look forward to Monday? Find out in this refreshing and unconventional take on the world of work. Listen to our Book Bite summary, read by author Bree…

As 2026 takes shape, the most successful leaders will adopt new tools with responsibility and vision while keeping the human side of shopping alive. These 10 tech trends in retail tech and AI are evolving, transforming how brands design, distribute, and deliver experiences. These are not distant forecasts, but happening in real time across retailers, marketplaces, and consumer ecosystems. 1. Predictive intent engines Reactive personalization is being replaced by predictive intent engines. Instead of waiting for a customer to browse, AI anticipates the customer’s next wants based on contextual data like weather, life events, and even local cultural moments. For …

There’s a lot of chatter right now about an AI bubble, fueled in part by a perception that productivity gains from AI are largely illusory. I can’t speak to the market, and whether AI is broadly overvalued or undervalued, but I can tell you that in the past year alone, AI has completely transformed how I work. Looking at the tools today that didn’t exist a year ago—deep research, browser agents, the big leaps in performance for all the latest models—there’s a host of ways AI can speed up or enhance many tasks of knowledge workers, especially journalists. As an independent journalist, I’m perhaps a little less constrained than most (my AI policy is whatever I want it t…

Even managers with the best intentions can sometimes compromise team morale without realizing it. The art of team management involves balancing professional competence with genuine interpersonal connection. We consulted with 10 experienced industry professionals who shared the common pitfalls that can zap a team’s spirit as well as practical tips to help you avoid missteps and lead a motivated, high-performing group. Shift from micromanagement to autonomy One specific way managers unknowingly harm team morale is through micromanagement. We noticed a roughly 20% drop in employee satisfaction scores and a decline in on-time project delivery whenever team leads checke…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. I recently talked with Lance Eaton, Senior Associate Director of AI and Teaching & Learning at Northeastern University and writer of AI + Education = Simplified. We traded ideas about what’s actually working. We came up with 10 specific, practical ways anyone who teaches, coaches, or leads can put AI to work. 1. Spark Richer Student Reflection Lance: Ask students to reflect through a conversation with AI rather than staring at a blank page. A well-prompted AI will keep asking follow-up questions, pushing students past “I didn’t…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just +0.2% year-over-year between January 2025 and January 2026. That marks a deceleration from the +2.6% growth rate a year earlier—though national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking a tad higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since pretty much stopped ticking up. 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (i.e., 10% of …

Pretend you and 99 peers had to duke it out against a gorilla. Would your squad emerge victorious? That debate has been dividing the internet over the past few days. The conversation originally surfaced on Reddit back in 2020, when a user posed the question in the r/whowouldwin subreddit. It recently reignited after the question was put to X users last week. The viral post—now with over 288 million views—suggests that 100 men could defeat a single gorilla if everyone was “dedicated” to the task. Since then, arguments have raged across social media. MrBeast even joined the discussion: “Need 100 men to test this, any volunteers?” he wrote, alongside a fake thumbnail…

Nearly 100 years ago, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Harland Bartholomew designed a master plan for the city of Los Angeles, drawing a ring around the river at its heart. The plan addressed their concern about the rapid urbanization of cities in the West, which was frequently pushing nature to the outskirts. By centering the river and allowing it to move freely amid fields and wetlands, the planners envisioned a public green space where distant neighborhoods could come together as one. But the plan was quickly dismissed as out of step with the industrialist vision of the 1920s and ’30s. Then, in 1938, after a devastating flood, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began t…

The Great Gatsby, Maintaining relevance after 100 years in the public consciousness is no small feat, but that’s exactly what the American novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has managed to do. First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on April 10, 1925, it initially received mixed reviews and was a commercial failure. As this now-beloved novel celebrates its centennial, how did it finally find an audience and what are its most-enduring themes? Also, here’s to maybe catch a bit of the bash. From failure to required reading Fitzgerald died in 1940 from a heart attack thinking he had failed as a writer. What he didn’t know was that Gatsby had been chose…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up just 0.1% year over year from December 2024 to December 2025. That marks a deceleration from the +2.6% growth rate a year earlier—though national price growth has recently stabilized, ticking slightly higher from a low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro-area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since pretty much stopped ticking up. 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housing markets (10% of market…

When a friend and I began investing in thoroughbreds in 2018, it wasn’t fantasies of running in the Kentucky Derby or the Preakness Stakes that excited us most. It was naming the racehorses. We’d seen California Chrome and American Pharoah etch their names in the sports lexicon. And while producing a horse of that caliber was a longshot, just the prospect of the announcer yelling, “Here comes [name we chose] down the stretch!” was unexpectedly thrilling. This weekend’s Preakness Stakes, the second leg of the Triple Crown, features some elite thoroughbreds, and even some better names. Journalism, the favorite, has arguably the best name in the field. American Promise h…

Hiring professionals who see countless job applications every year begin to notice patterns of red flags that can instantly disqualify a candidate. Here, experts share their thoughts on the most commonly made mistakes. Avoid the White Fonting Trick Surprisingly, many candidates still use the “white fonting” tactic on their résumés. This practice stems from an outdated piece of advice that has spread over time: include extra keywords or copy the entire job description, reduce the font size, and change the color to white. The intention is to make the text invisible to the eye but still detectable by applicant tracking systems. It’s essentially an attempt to game the …

The best leaders share a few predictable habits: They’re curious, self-aware, and genuinely invested in their team’s growth. But there’s a big difference between simply having these traits, and developing new leaders to embody these traits as well. A 2022 study published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes found that when leaders visibly act with curiosity—by questioning, learning, and exploring—they signal to team members that the environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. In turn, employees feel more confident speaking up, sharing ideas, and contributing meaningfully. In a new book, The Power of the Learning Mindset, autho…

Standing out in today’s job market requires more than listing AI tools on a résumé. It demands proof of real-world application and measurable results. So how can professionals signal genuine AI fluency on their résumés or LinkedIn profiles? Industry experts reveal eleven concrete strategies to demonstrate AI competence that hiring managers actually notice. These techniques show how to translate hands-on experience into credible signals that separate casual users from skilled practitioners. Lead With Outcome Statements Stop listing AI tools as skills. “Proficient in ChatGPT, Copilot, and Midjourney” tells a hiring manager you have internet access. Replace it with an…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Twenty twenty-six will be a year of financial corrections, AI-driven biological breakthroughs, and new thinking about cybersecurity and executive protection—at least according to the CEOs I recently asked to provide bold prognostications. Here’s how 12 of them responded. New threats, ne…

Remote work is here to stay, and late-stage startups offer a nice mix of financial backing, stability, and potential for success that might be lacking in your current job. If you’re looking for a chance to join a company on the move while working from the comfort of your own home, this is the list for you. From AI to health to cybersecurity and more, these remote-friendly companies have plenty of openings. Grafana Labs: 50 Grafana Labs provides a suite of tools—including Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, and Tempo—that help organizations monitor, analyze, and understand their applications and infrastructure. Grafana Labs is hiring for a variety of remote roles, in…

A one-day strike by workers at 13 German airports, including the Frankfurt and Munich hubs and all the country’s other main destinations, caused the cancelation of most flights on Monday. The 24-hour walkout, which started at midnight on Sunday, involves public-sector employees at the airports as well as ground and security staff. At Frankfurt Airport, 1,054 of the day’s 1,116 scheduled takeoffs and landings had been canceled, German news agency dpa reported, citing airport traffic management. All of Berlin Airport’s regular departures and arrivals were canceled, while Hamburg Airport said no departures would be possible. Cologne/Bonn Airport said there was no regular …

The commercial starts with an actor sitting in front of a TV, remote in hand. Suddenly the world around her changes, and she changes, too, as makeup artists transform her from a couch potato to a Victorian-era lady to a skeleton buried in dirt. The time-lapse filming looks like AI, but it’s exactly the opposite. In fact, the 90-second commercial—shot for BritBox’s first ever brand campaign—is the product of a single, continuous shot that took 14 hours, 45 minutes, and 31 seconds, and was filmed with 11 different sets, at one frame per second using a precision motion control unit. The British streaming service is aiming to woo potential subscribers with its attention to de…

Delivering feedback as a leader can feel challenging, but with the right training and awareness, you can set yourself up for success. In this article, industry leaders share the common mistakes they’ve observed and practical tips that can help you communicate feedback more effectively and constructively to foster a more productive work environment. Focus on Behavior, Not Character When feedback judges the individual—and not the action—a poor outcome is almost guaranteed. “You’re not a team player” is an example of feedback that makes an assertion about a person’s character. The receiver of this feedback is likely to experience a “fight, flight, or freeze” response …