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A “work jerk” isn’t just someone who expects perfection. It’s the high achiever whose nervous system runs at lava-like temperatures, who’s chronically stressed, and demonstrates urgency as a personality trait. It looks like hair-trigger impatience, micromanaging, sharp feedback, and an automatic reflex to see others as obstacles rather than partners. Work jerk behaviors teach people at work to focus their energy on managing you and your reactions instead of doing good work. People act out for countless reasons: a toxic work culture, impossible standards, or private stress that bleeds into work (an article for another day). None of those reasons makes treating others p…

If you’re constantly hounding your teen to get out of bed before noon on the weekend, you may want to save your energy for a different battle. According to new research published in The Journal of Affective Disorders, sleeping in on the weekend could offer some significant protection against depression. For the study, researchers at the University of Oregon and the State University of New York Upstate Medical University analyzed data from more than a thousand 16 to 24-year-olds in which participants reported their sleep/waking hours, including weekend catch-up sleep. While one might imagine that teens who spring out of bed early each morning — regardless of the …

Oscar Wilde famously noted, “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” It is arguably one of the best brief illustrations of emotional intelligence (EQ), a trait that became popular thanks to a nonacademic best-selling book by journalist Daniel Goleman, in which he insinuated that EQ is a more important driver of success than IQ (a claim that has been discredited). And yet, there’s no shortage of evidence for the importance of EQ when it comes to predicting interpersonal effectiveness, defined as the ability to manage yourself and others in everyday life. In fact, long before EQ was coined in academic research (before Goleman popularized the te…

Hi there! My name is Marcus Collins, DBA, and I study culture and its influence and impact on human behavior at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Each week, this column will explore the inner workings of organizational culture and the mechanisms that make it tick. Every entry will be accompanied by an episode from my podcast, From the Culture, that digs deeper into the culture of work from my conversations with the organizational leaders that make it all happen. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you are not having. Sign up for the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss a beat. …

You hear the blurps and bloops after you pass the food court in the Mall of Georgia on a fall Sunday afternoon, the unmistakable sound of points being scored and players eliminated. Then you see him: Standing in an oversize vitrine is a 6-foot-tall animatronic rodent. He’s grinning and waving, but frozen in place, preserved like a museum piece. This isn’t an outpost of Chuck E. Cheese, the 48-year-old family pizza chain with more than 460 restaurants in 45 states and another 88 abroad. It’s Chuck’s Arcade, a fledgling new enterprise launched this past summer by parent company CEC Entertainment in an effort to expand the brand’s reach to Gen Xers, nostalgic millenn…

A small Finnish startup says it has done what the world’s biggest automakers are still struggling to do: put a solid-state battery into a production vehicle, starting with a motorcycle that can charge to more than 100 miles of range in as little as five minutes. “For the last 15 years, the entire battery industry in automotive has been talking about solid-state batteries—that they’re the future,” says Marko Lehtimäki, CEO of Donut Lab, the startup that makes the new battery. “But up until today, despite all the talk, there’s never been a single production vehicle that uses solid-state batteries. They’ve only been used at lab level.” Verge Motorcycles, an elect…

If you’re like most Americans, you’ve already set all manner of goals and resolutions for the New Year. And likewise, if you’re like most Americans, you’ll have entirely abandoned them by February 1. Studies have found that 23% of people quit their New Year’s resolutions within a week, and almost half drop them by the end of January. Only 9% of Americans actually complete anything from their list in a given year. The biggest issue, apparently, is that we’re all very bad at setting resolutions. The things we choose are too vague, too hard, or too external. That got me wondering: Could AI do any better? Specifically: Can I mine the vast treasure trove …

We all think that we have great ideas. And we all tend to fall in love with our own ideas because, well, they’re ours. But most of my ideas—and yours—are probably mediocre. And no, that’s not an insult; it’s just a fact about the way most ideas are generated. I mean, if we were all genuinely spewing game-changers the world would be in a much different place than it is today. Most ideas are created without much thought or insight or pushback—and could probably benefit from people challenging them a lot more. Way too many ideas get approved that shouldn’t have made it out of the conference room, but with lack of time, energy, and questioning, they move forward at an al…

You’ve probably heard the saying, “If you need to get something done, give it to the busiest person you know.” This statement often rings true. However, if you find yourself nodding along to this, you could be doing yourself a disservice. Yes, reliability and dependability are strengths, but they can quickly become your Achilles heel if you’re everyone’s go-to person, all the time. Research shows that teams composed of people who are dependable perform better. In fact, Google’s Project Aristotle found dependability to be the second most important factor in high-performing teams. And yet if this dependability extends beyond the sustainable (for example, if it turn…

Brands love to insert themselves into cultural conversations or piggyback on buzzy current events, a strategy sometimes called newsjacking. But it can happen without seeking, or even wanting, the attention. The borderline absurd virality of a Nike tracksuit evidently worn by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as he was taken into the custody of American captors is the most high-profile recent example—but it definitely won’t be the last. This form of what we could call involuntary product placement can be a conundrum for brands, which prefer to be associated with upbeat or positive events, not dictators or controversial geopolitics. And that’s been made even more cha…

When a gunman began firing inside an academic building on the Brown University campus, students didn’t wait for official alerts warning of trouble. They got information almost instantly, in bits and bursts — through phones vibrating in pockets, messages from strangers, rumors that felt urgent because they might keep someone alive. On Dec. 13 as the attack at the Ivy League institution played out during finals week, students took to Sidechat, an anonymous, campus-specific message board used widely at U.S. colleges, for fast-flowing information in real time. An Associated Press analysis of nearly 8,000 posts from the 36 hours after the shooting shows how social medi…

Jan. 26 marks the official start date of the 2026 tax filing season, when the IRS will begin accepting and processing 2025 tax returns. April 15 is the filing deadline. Tax experts, including the IRS’ independent watchdog, have warned that this year’s filing season could be hampered by the loss of tens of thousands of tax collection workers who left the agency through planned layoffs and buyouts spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The IRS will also be responsible for implementing major provisions of Republicans’ tax and spending package signed into law last summer. Several provisions in the law retroactively affect the 2025 tax year, likely…

While headlines about AI replacing workers dominated 2025, behavioral health is charting a different path. The industry thrives on human connection, measuring success in trust, healing, and human relationships, not throughput. That’s not to say AI isn’t rapidly reshaping the industry—it is. Its role here fundamentally differs because it supports clinicians rather than sidelines them. Over the next year, I predict we’ll see a paradox play out: Behavioral health will become increasingly AI-enabled, and simultaneously, more human than it’s been in decades. The reason is simple. Burnout and administrative burdens have been increasingly limiting what clinicians can do. Pro…

The average rate on a 30-year U.S. mortgage edged higher this week to just above its 2025 low. The average long-term mortgage rate rose to 6.16%, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. That’s up slightly from 6.15% last week, when the average rate dropped to its lowest level since October 3, 2024. One year ago, the rate averaged 6.93%. Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, rose this week to 5.46% from 5.44% the previous week. A year ago, it averaged 6.14%, Freddie Mac said. Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond marke…

Starting today, Google is weaving its massive investment in AI into one product nearly everyone already uses—and for many people, the change won’t feel optional. Google announced Thursday that a suite of new features powered by Gemini 3 will begin appearing in Gmail, introducing automation designed to reduce inbox overload. The most consequential update is a new Gmail view called AI Inbox, which reshapes email around summaries, topics, and to-dos, rather than individual messages. What changes the moment this turns on For users, the shift isn’t about learning new tools—it’s about no longer having to manage email the same way. Instead of opening Gmail to a chrono…

Strategic planning is a big business. Companies spend millions of dollars working with consulting firms to chart a path forward. Not only does a lot of money change hands as part of this process, but the amount of time that employees invest in working on the plan likely doubles the cost of the entire process. In the end, leadership gets a shiny report they can send to employees, shareholders, external stakeholders, and others. Often, though, much less money and time is invested in implementing that plan than was spent creating it. As a result, there is a lot of cynicism around engaging in strategic plans. In many ways, this feels a lot like New Year’s resolutions.…

Over the course of 2025, deepfakes improved dramatically. AI-generated faces, voices, and full-body performances that mimic real people increased in quality far beyond what even many experts expected would be the case just a few years ago. They were also increasingly used to deceive people. For many everyday scenarios—especially low-resolution video calls and media shared on social media platforms—their realism is now high enough to reliably fool nonexpert viewers. In practical terms, synthetic media have become indistinguishable from authentic recordings for ordinary people and, in some cases, even for institutions. And this surge is not limited to quality. The v…

Welcome to the first Fast Company’s Plugged In of 2026, and Happy New Year to you. More than 18 years ago, as the internet was transforming how we consume everything from news to music, someone called books “the last bastion of analog.” That someone happened to be Jeff Bezos. And he made the observation in a Steven Levy Newsweek article about Amazon’s original Kindle e-reader, a device designed to drag books into the digital age. Bezos’s comment resurfaced in my consciousness last week, as I read a New York Times article by Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter on how the book publishing business fared in 2025. The upshot: It did pretty well overall, and remains…

Fans of Macy’s Inc. will be disappointed to learn that the iconic department store has announced its next round of store closures. Fourteen Macy’s locations in 12 states will shutter as a result of this move. Here’s why and when the closures will take place. What’s happened? On Thursday, Macy’s published a letter from CEO Tony Spring to its employees updating them on the company’s “A Bold New Chapter” strategy, which the department store chain unveiled in February 2024. As part of that strategy, Macy’s announced at the time that it would be closing 150 “underproductive” stores through the end of 2026. Fast Company previously reported on 66 stores marked for clo…

Resilience is not an inherited trait. It is a disciplined practice—a way of showing up that is cultivated over time through deliberate training of the body, mind, and spirit. In high-stress environments, whether on the battlefield, in the boardroom, or in the quiet turmoil of daily life, the ability to remain steady amid volatility is what separates reactive living from intentional leadership. What many discover, often through hardship, is that resilience is less about bracing against impact and more about widening the internal space between stimulus and response. That space—Viktor Frankl called it the foundation of freedom—allows for clarity, intentionality, and courage.…

For decades, design followed a singular truth. Whether it was the insistence that “form follows function” or the later pivot toward “form follows emotion,” the industry tended to adhere to a simple formula for design thinking: Find your North Star and follow. But that formula does not fit today’s reality. “Form follows X” is no longer a clean equation, because X isn’t a single variable. It’s a constellation that refuses to be reduced to one guiding idea. Modern design across brands, products, and experiences must use a multidimensional approach, speaking to function, feeling, context, narrative, culture, and experience, all at once. HUMAN EXPERIENCE DESIGN …