What's on Your Mind?

We’ve all heard it: For decades, it’s been a crux of career advice. Keep every door open. Stay on good terms. Never fully walk away. Don’t burn that bridge. But that advice was followed during a different time and for workplaces that were designed to keep you in line, not further your career. In today’s fast-moving workforce, clinging to outdated relationships, toxic workplaces, or unfair structures isn’t loyalty. It’s self-sabotaging. It’s time to rethink what was once considered the norm. Sometimes burning a bridge isn’t reckless. It’s strategic. It’s the first step toward building something better in your career. Why “Don’t Burn Bridges” No Longer Works …

Empathy is not just a “nice-to-have” soft skill—it is a foundation of how children and adults regulate emotions, build friendships, and learn from one another. Between the ages of 6 and 9, children begin shifting from being self-centered to noticing the emotions and perspectives of others. This makes early childhood one of the most important periods for developing empathy and other social-emotional skills. Traditionally, pretend play has been a natural way to practice empathy. Many adults can remember acting out scenes as doctor and patient, or using sticks and leaves as imaginary currency. Those playful moments were not just entertainment—they were early lessons …

The life of a junior associate at a prestigious law firm involves hours of research and analyzing contracts. Three years ago, Winston Weinberg found himself buried in these kinds of tasks as a first-year antitrust and litigation associate at O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles. And there Weinberg might have remained, diligently climbing the BigLaw ranks from associate to partner, logging thousands of hours of drudgery along the way. Instead, he’s cofounder and CEO of Harvey, the high-flying legal AI platform that’s raised more than $800 million by promising to handle much of this work. “A lot of the tasks junior [associates] do are going to get automated,” Weinbe…

The world of popular psychological ideas, which is largely the self-help industry, is not short of contradictions. For instance, it simultaneously promotes the benefits of emotional intelligence (the ability to empathize with others and engage in strategic impression management) and authenticity (the tendency to express what you really feel and think without much consideration for others’ opinions). It also frequently celebrates self-acceptance and constant self-improvement (“love yourself as you are”… but also “become the best version of yourself”), mindfulness and relentless ambition (“stay in the zone, present and serene”… while hustling aggressively toward big goals),…

I like chatting with my friends—who doesn’t?—but I don’t always know where to find them. There are simply too many apps. Some of my friends text, others use WhatsApp, while others yet insist on using Discord or the DM feature in whatever random social network they prefer. It’s a mess, and it can mean keeping several tabs open all day just to keep the conversations flowing. It makes you wish some application could combine all of your conversations into one place. This is a dream that used to be reality. Applications like Trillian, Pidgin, and Adium all combined instant messaging services like AIM, MSN, and ICQ in one handy interface. Over time, though, messaging se…

When the confetti settles and the ball has dropped, many Americans will wake up on New Year’s Day — Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026 — with errands to run, groceries to buy, or just the urge to grab coffee. But because New Year’s Day is a federal holiday, the holiday clock affects a wide range of services differently: some go dormant for the day, others hum along with normal or modified hours, and a few offer the convenience you might need as you kick off the new year. Here’s what to expect if you’re planning to be out and about — or just need to know whether that store you’re counting on is open. Will I get mail on New Year’s Day? Thursday is a full federal holiday, whi…

In July, President The President signed an executive order aimed at expanding access to alternative investments like private equity and cryptocurrency in retirement accounts. The move reflects a broader shift in how Americans think about wealth building and financial freedom, and it is a signal to employers that the future of employee benefits is going to look very different. While crypto may have once seemed fringe or speculative, digital assets have steadily moved into the mainstream. From Fortune 100 companies to institutional investors, the appetite for diversification beyond traditional asset classes is growing. According to a survey by NYDIG, 36% of employees ag…

Digital tools are a necessary part of work life for just about any office gig. But using too many apps, communication platforms, and other tools can be massively frustrating. And according to newly released research, switching back and forth between online systems is also a time thief. Localization platform Lokalise recently surveyed 1,000 U.S. white-collar workers from 11 industries to examine how digital tools impact professionals and how they feel about using a variety of online systems. Overwhelmingly, the report found that workers are frustrated by having to use many different platforms. Some 17% of workers say they have to switch platforms more than 100 ti…

Below, Scott Anthony shares five key insights from his new book, Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World. Scott is a clinical professor of strategy at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. His research and teaching focus on the adaptive challenges of disruptive change. Previously, he spent over 20 years at Innosight, a growth strategy consultancy founded by Harvard Business School professor (and father of the idea of disruptive innovation) Clayton Christensen. What’s the big idea? In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon wrote that there were three technologies for which it was possible to draw a clear line before and after: the printing pre…

I slip on a pair of Nike running shoes. I clip a chunk of metal to the heel, which wraps around my lower leg like a shin guard. The battery goes on last, hugging it all like a high ankle bracelet. In all of 30 seconds, I’ve turned my legs into robots. I’m wearing Nike’s new exoskeleton footwear, dubbed Project Amplify. My legs feel heavier for sure. But with each step, there’s a little kick in my heel. Like a cherry bomb exploding underfoot. And when it launches next year under a new name for an undisclosed price, Project Amplify will power runs up to 10 kilometers long on a single charge, increasing your energy output by 15% to 20% along the way. “Think of i…

Changing an organism’s genome is a profound act, and the tools you use to make the changes don’t alleviate the need for responsible regulation. Since bursting onto the scene in 2012, CRISPR technology has been used to modify dozens of species from bacteria to livestock to plants, and even human embryos. Many countries have put ethical guardrails in place to prohibit creating designer babies. However, in agriculture, gene-edited crops are largely exempt from regulatory oversight, creating a “Wild West” where anything goes and edited crops are free to enter the food supply. Unlike “traditional” genetically modified organisms (GMO)—used since the 1990s to create Roun…

Halloween is a fun, scary time for children and adults alike—but why does the holiday seem to start so much earlier every year? Decades ago, when I was young, Halloween was a much smaller affair, and people didn’t start preparing until mid-October. Today, in my neighborhood near where I grew up in Massachusetts, Halloween decorations start appearing in the middle of summer. What’s changed isn’t just when we celebrate but how: Halloween has evolved from a simple folk tradition to a massive commercial event. As a business school professor who has studied the economics of holidays for years, I’m astounded by how the business of Halloween has grown. And understanding why …

Below, Jodi-Ann Burey shares five key insights from her new book, Authentic: The Myth of Bringing Your Full Self to Work. Jodi-Ann is a writer and critic on race, culture, and health equity. Her essays appear in various arts, business, and literary publications. She created and hosts the prose and poetry salon Lit Lounge: The People’s Art, as well as the Black Cancer podcast. What’s the big idea? Authentic is more than a critique of the empty promise of being authentic at work. It is an invitation to question the structural realities of what it takes to be a person at work. To begin, we must take seriously the health and wellbeing of workers most impacted by ha…

A blood test for more than 50 types of cancer could significantly boost early detection and speed up diagnosis, according to a new study. Made by U.S. pharmaceutical company Grail, the Galleri test aims to find fragments of DNA in a person’s blood that can indicate the presence of a cancerous tumor. Among the cancers that the test can detect, many have no current screening programs. The PATHFINDER 2 study included more than 36,000 people aged 50 and older who had no cancer symptoms. In participants who were followed for more than a year, the test caught some 40.4% of cancer cases. For those who got a positive result on the Galleri test, 61.6% of them went on to …

Eat this, not that. This one food will cure everything. That food is poison. Cut this food out. Try this diet. Don’t eat at these times. Eat this food and you’ll lose weight. With society’s obsession with food, health, and weight, statements like these are all over social media, gyms, and even healthcare offices. But do you need to follow rules like these to be healthy? Most often the answer is no, because health and nutrition is much more complex and nuanced than a simple list of what to eat and what to avoid. Despite this, rules about health and nutrition are so common because of diet culture—a morality imposed by society that sees falling outside the arbitrary idea…

Sinking morale. Low productivity. Lots of gossip. Quiet quitting. Sloppy work. Cynicism. Talent leaving. These are all examples of “culture rot”: the slow, subtle unraveling of what made a good company good. “You can feel it before you can name it,” Tara Kermiet, a corporate burnout strategist, explained in a recent TikTok post. “It’s less about one big event, and more about the daily drift that no one claims responsibility for.” Instead of some big scandal or massive profit loss, culture rot is the gradual, subtle decay of a team’s culture. It’s fueled by bad, unaccountable leaders, and is characterized as a slow straying from original core company values. Your …

A decade ago, I spearheaded my organization’s strategic expansion into a new Eurasian market. Almost immediately, it became evident that our conventional playbook was inadequate. Success in this complex landscape required not just an understanding of business metrics, but a profound appreciation for cultural nuances and regional dynamics. We made a pivotal decision: We set aside our polished PowerPoint presentations and embraced a more human-centric approach. Instead of relying on formalities, we engaged in candid, face-to-face negotiations—often over a steaming cup of tea. This deliberate shift in strategy was about building genuine relationships, and it worked. …

You’re in a meeting when your boss suggests changing a number to make the quarterly report look stronger. Heads nod. The slides move on. You feel a knot in your stomach: Do you speak up and risk being branded difficult, or stay silent and become complicit? Most people picture defiance as dramatic outbursts. In reality, it’s often these small, tense moments where conscience collides with compliance. I first saw the power of defiance not in the workplace, but closer to home. My mother was the ultimate people-pleaser: timid, polite, eager to accommodate. Barely 4 feet, 10 inches tall, she put everyone else’s needs above her own. But one day, when I was 7, I saw a dif…