What's on Your Mind?

We live in a world that seems to get busier and busier! Not only do we have our daily work tasks but we also have more meetings, longer commutes, and more interactions with more people in more locations than at any time in the history of work. In addition to the many real and present external distractions, there are also internal obstacles to great listening. Our internal worlds can be loud. At times, they are a blaring noise of emotion, attitude, and motives that can make it impossible for us to give others our full attention. As two positive psychology experts, we’ve identified six of the most common internal barriers that can interfere with your ability to l…

After more than eight decades in operation, craft retailer Joann is going out of business, closing all 800 of its stores and laying off 19,000 employees. The news comes after the retailer’s restructuring plans failed and a liquidator opted to purchase its assets. Joann is far from the only retailer in its death throes these days. Recent data shows that the number of retail-store closures is expected to double during 2025, to roughly 15,000 from the 7,300 or so in 2024. Accordingly, Joann is in a similar boat to companies such as Red Lobster, Big Lots, and Party City, which have each announced plans to either completely close up shop or enact big restructuring in …

Influencers, how many late payments are you waiting on? Odds are, more than one. Influencer marketing is a booming $10 billion industry, but for creators, inconsistent cash flow remains a major pain point. Brand budgets shift, campaign timelines change, and payments can take months to land. For many influencers who rely on brand deals as their main source of income, financial instability is the norm. According to the Wall Street Journal, fewer than 13% of online influencers earned more than $100,000 last year—while nearly half made $15,000 or less. A fintech startup called Alchemy wants to change that. Founded by Isaac Wagschal, the company has launched a $100 mil…

Meta has spent 15 years shunning the iPad. Now, it seems they’re finally ready to embrace the tablet lovers. WhatsApp users can finally text from the big screen. On Tuesday, Meta announced that the popular messaging app is finally available on iPadOS devices, including expanded features for multitasking. Meanwhile, reports indicate that Meta is finally building Instagram for the iPad as well. It’s a curious time to embrace tablets. While still a high-volume sales item, the iPad is losing its popularity. The device has endured a yearslong backslide in growth, comprising only 6.8% of Apple’s revenue in 2024 compared to the boom of more than 15% in the early 2010s.…

When you think of an electrical outlet, the first thing that likely comes to mind is a simple, rectangular device mounted on the wall—purely functional, often hidden from sight. Architect and designer India Mahdavi has different ideas, though. Working with the high-end electrical brand 22 System, Mahdavi reimagined the outlet as a cheerful pop of color that’s reminiscent of a smiley face. [Photo: Thierry Depagne/22 System] Omer Arbel, co-founder of 22 System and design brand Bocci, asked Mahdavi to bring an unexpected element of joy to this everyday utility by creating a distinct colorway for the existing outlet face—transforming it from a discreet necessity i…

The plight of the middle manager has taken a turn for the worse since the pandemic, leaving many in the role prone to burnout as they juggle competing expectations with limited support from their employers. Managers were already tasked with addressing low morale and absorbing additional work as companies have been hit with layoffs in recent years—but now a number of employers are more pointedly culling their ranks, too. A dwindling force Amazon is reportedly cutting thousands of middle managers by the end of this month, following in the footsteps of other tech companies like Meta and Google that have sought to flatten their workforces. Additionally, Gartner analys…

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency faces a legal challenge after approving a controversial plan to include radioactive waste in a road project late last year. The Center for Biological Diversity filed the challenge last month in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals under the Clean Air Act. The advocacy group says the federal agency has prohibited the use of phosphogypsum, a radioactive, carcinogenic, and toxic waste generated by the fertilizer industry, in road construction since 1992, citing an “unacceptable level of risk to public health.” The legal challenge is centered on a road project proposed at the New Wales facility of Mosaic Fertilizer, a subsidi…

Imagine everyone around you sounds like they’re shouting underwater. That’s my world without hearing aids—a reality I’ve hidden since I was a kid. Words reach me as a cacophony of blended vowels, forcing me to piece together meaning from your lips, your expressions, your gestures. And a year ago, if you’d told me artificial intelligence would help me finally embrace this part of myself, I would’ve laughed in your face. Let me explain. In the days before social media could connect you to “others like you” with a single swipe, I was the only kid I knew who needed hearing aids. So at a young age, I made a decision to hide this at all costs. And I became an expert at i…

More Klarna customers are having trouble repaying their “buy now, pay later” loans, the short-term lender said this week. The disclosure corresponded with reports by lending platforms Bankrate and LendingTree, which cited an increasing share of all “buy now, pay later” users saying they had fallen behind on payments. The late or missed installments are a sign of faltering financial health among a segment of the US population, some analysts say, as the nation’s total consumer debt rises to a record $18.2 trillion and the The President administration moves to collect on federal student loans. Shoppers who opt to finance purchases through BNPL services tend to be younger t…

There’s a quiet transformation underway in how we eat. It’s not being led by chefs, influencers, or climate activists. It’s being driven by a new class of pharmaceuticals that are changing the way millions of people relate to food itself. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy work by altering hunger signals in the brain. These medications don’t just help people feel full sooner. They are reshaping consumption patterns across the board. When hunger changes, everything from portion sizes to snacking habits and flavor preferences follows. This is fueling a broader redefinition of how we think about protein. What used to be a food category mostly associated with muscle-…

Even as the right to disconnect movement has picked up steam, true work-life balance is still hard to come by for many employees. Fielding emails and other work-related messages after hours continues to be the norm across workplaces, despite ample evidence that it can contribute to burnout and actually decrease productivity. Part of the issue may be that the average workday is punctuated by a mounting number of drains on productivity. A new report from Microsoft, which compiled input from 31,000 workers across more than 30 countries, sheds light on the scale of interruptions and hurdles workers are currently facing on the job, as well as the degree to which the averag…

When construction started on a new affordable apartment building in Brooklyn, most of the work on the site happened very quickly. Instead of typical construction, cranes lifted giant modular units into the air—each made up of two separate apartments, plus the corridor between them—and set them into place. Trucks delivered nearly four dozen 60-foot-long “mods” from the factory where they were built in Pennsylvania, staging them next to a nearby cemetery in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush. Then, each day for two weeks, construction crews stacked together as many as six of the units. (The massive size of the units made them more challenging to transport than a…

There’s a cat-and-mouse game between those using generative AI chatbots to produce text undetected and those trying to catch them. Many believe they know the telltale signs—though as a journalist fond of the word “delve” and prone to em-dashes, I’m not so sure. Researchers at four U.S. universities, however, have taken a more rigorous approach, identifying linguistic fingerprints that reveal which large language model (LLM) produced a given text. “All these chatbots are coming out every day, and we interact with them, but we don’t really understand the differences between them,” says Mingjie Sun, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and lead author of the st…

Adobe will be giving its priciest subscription tier an AI-first rebrand—and adding an even higher price tag. Adobe’s Creative Cloud All Apps subscription, which includes access to more than 20 Adobe apps, will soon be known as “Creative Cloud Pro,” the company announced last week. The renamed subscription plan will give users expanded access to Adobe’s AI-powered tools and apps, but for a price: For subscribers on an annual plan, the cost will increase from $59.99 to $69.99 monthly, or from $659.88 to $779.99 annually. Beginning on June 17th, any members of Creative Cloud All Apps will be automatically opted into Creative Cloud Pro. According to Adobe’s announceme…

It’s fair to say that 2025 continues to fly out the blocks on a wild mission to bring even higher levels of change, unpredictability, and flux shaping our world. But, as I started writing this on Blue Monday in January, apparently the saddest day of the year, this is not intended as an article lamenting the cultural whiplash we are experiencing within our daily feeds. Instead, it is a more positive perspective on how as businesses and brands, we can not just survive but supercharge in this era of incredible unpredictability. The only constant in a changing world is change itself According to an article by GlobeScan, at the end of 2023, nearly 8 out of 10 people…

The U.K. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a woman is someone born biologically female, excluding transgender people from the legal definition in a long-running dispute between a feminist group and the Scottish government. Several women’s groups that supported the appeal celebrated outside court and hailed it as a major victory in their effort to protect spaces designated for women. “Everyone knows what sex is and you can’t change it,” said Susan Smith, codirector of For Women Scotland, which brought the case. “It’s common sense, basic common sense and the fact that we have been down a rabbit hole where people have tried to deny science and to deny reality and hopefull…

This nondescript piece of home decor is about the size of a narrow bookshelf, and it looks like a vertical soundbar speaker. In reality, it’s a new home fitness device—and it hides a gym’s worth of workout machines. Amp is a $1,995 home fitness device that streamlines the clunkiness of a cable-based workout machine into the form of a thin, wall-mounted home accessory. It’s now available to pre-order for $99. Just six feet tall and one foot deep, Amp consists of a vertical mounted bar with a movable arm that pivots off the side and serves as the main workout interface. Unlike the typical gym machine with a stack of weights attached to a cable, Amp’s single cable interf…

U.S. TikTok Shop employees received a memo on Tuesday, recommending staff to work from home Wednesday ahead of “difficult decisions.” The memo, which was earlier reported by Bloomberg, told staff they would be updated on “organizational and personnel changes” via email, followed by HR outreach, suggesting possible layoffs. TikTok Shop, the Chinese-owned company’s marketplace feature launched in 2023 in the U.S., allowing users to shop for products in the app. The marketplace—which hosts everything from popular US brands like Crocs, to third-party merchandise in the likes of Temu and Shein— hit $100 million in single day sales on Black Friday alone. “TikTok Sh…

If you’re trying to keep an eye on March Madness but you still need to get some actual work done, Google’s Picture-in-Picture Extension feels like a secret weapon. This free Chrome browser extension lets you move any video into a resizable, floating window that sits on top of anything else you’re doing. It’s perfect for keeping the games on in the background while still doing other things on your computer. How to use the Picture-in-Picture Extension Start by downloading the picture-in-picture extension from the Chrome Web Store. In addition to Google Chrome, it also works with most other Chromium-based browsers, including Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, and Microso…

As the geographic center of Indianapolis, Monument Circle is in many ways the heart of the city. The 284-foot Soldiers and Sailors Monument towering in the middle is a beloved local landmark, and the plaza and fountain around its base has been a gathering place since it opened in 1902. But the way most people experience it is through the window of a car. Monument Circle is technically a traffic circle, which means the center of the city is little more than a place for cars to drive. The past couple of years, however, have shown another possibility. Since 2023, from June through November, part of the traffic circle has been closed to cars and converted into Spark on th…

Building trust and forming meaningful relationships within teams can be a daunting task for leaders, especially when time is limited. Through our research, we identified a streamlined approach that Generators—the type of leader that people want to work for, known for creating strong, collaborative environments—use to foster relationships quickly. We call it the SWIFT process, an acronym that guides leaders in cultivating meaningful connections. The SWIFT process entails: Setting aside time for relationship-building sprints Welcoming others warmly Intentionally inquiring about others’ lives Following up with thoughtful questions Taking time to self-ref…

When you describe it in words, the Indianapolis 500 might seem like a boring watch: Cars go round and round an oval track 200 times, totaling 500 miles over the course of a few hours. But if you were a driver, you’d be having a hell of a different experience. Think screaming speeds of 230 miles per hour, pulling 4 Gs on corners, with one’s reflexes and split-second decisions drawing a thin line between victory and tragedy . . . over the course of a few hours. It’s a level of intensity that TV networks have been trying to bring viewers into for years with in-car cameras and things like driver radio communiques. It has been working. Last year, NBC—which covered the spec…