Tools for Team Collaboration

5-second summary Research shows that weather impacts mood, focus, and energy. Seasonal Affective Disorder and disrupted circadian rhythms reduce winter productivity, while summer sun boosts mood but offers distractions. Mindset matters: People with a positive view of winter stay more engaged. Studies from Harvard Business School show people are more focused on rainy days, and that time of day and weather conditions affect ethical decision-making and performance. Tips: Adapt workspaces and schedules to match the season, such as cozy, light-filled spaces in winter and flexible hours with outdoor breaks in summer to support different personality types. Subscri…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe Burnout at work is nothing new, but it has gotten more attention since the height of Covid-19). There’s no shortage of advice on how individuals can beat burnout, but there’s a growing understanding that burnout prevention also has a lot to do with systemic factors – like workplace culture – and not just individual coping mechanisms. Plus, some aspects of burnout overlap with symptoms of depression, which can have implications for how we treat it. “We always focus on the professionals themselves. That is a very narrow-minded view,” says Yi-lang Tang, a clinical psychiatrist and associate prof…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe 5-second summary Divergent thinking is a creative process that generates new ideas through free-flowing, unstructured brainstorming. It encourages exploring any and all possibilities, rather than taking the fastest, straightest path to one answer. Divergent thinking is most effective when the people doing it feel safe, have the time and space to get inspired, collaborate with others, set expectations as a group, and warm up first. Using divergent thinking exercises can help you get started by providing a little structure and inspiration to a purposely unstructured process. If you’ve ever c…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe This is the season for drafting goals and dusting off New Year’s resolutions. Maybe you’ve got a big, audacious dream you want to achieve in 2026, but you’re a bit scared of the growth and work it will take to get there. That’s understandable enough. But the good news is, you’d be following a path that many others have trodden before you. So, how do the most successful people think about growth? How do they overcome fear? How do they deal with mistakes along the way? We collected a list of quotes about growth to help you understand and navigate it all – and keep you inspired along the way. …

Consider the wisdom you might share with your 16-year-old self: there are other fish and a much larger sea, that outfit is not all that, and you will actually use what you’re learning in school out in the real world. If your index cards on PEMDAS and affect vs. effect are buried in a box in your parents’ home, we have you covered with a handy cheat sheet going over all the basic math, extra credit art, and long-forgotten grammar tips and tricks you learned in school that literally might come up in your next meeting. Get the printable Math For some, no math counts as “basic,” sweat forming on our brow the second the bill comes at the offsite or we’re shared o…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe AI is changing the way we work at lightning speed. Tools that once felt experimental are now handling everything from scheduling to drafting reports. By 2030, executives predict only 1/3 of work will be fully done by humans. That leaves us with an urgent question: How do we future-proof our skills? As part of our 2025 AI Collaboration Index report, we asked leaders and knowledge workers around the world: As AI takes over more routine tasks, which human qualities will matter most? Their answers reveal a clear direction. Taken together, their answers highlight the timeless skills that become even mor…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe AI tools often claim to make our work (and our lives) easier, faster, lighter. Instead, many of us are feeling in the dark and, at the same time, sprinting to keep up – juggling tools, prompts, and pressure to “leverage” all that functionality, all at once. The result? AI fatigue. That drained-yet-frantic feeling of trying to stay relevant in a system that never stops changing. Is the solution to stop using AI altogether? Probably not, considering AI can be such a powerful unlock. Instead, the solution lies in how we’re collaborating with it. Just like email overload wasn’t really about the technol…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe 5-second summary Knowledge workers often struggle to uncover relevant insights (like past research results or a list of ideas brainstormed last quarter) exactly when they need it, leading to wasted time, energy, and money. Intentional async practices surface vital knowledge that helps teams prevent duplicate work and make better decisions, faster. AI can serve as a helpful partner in gathering and summarizing what already exists before creating anything new. The worst thing you can do is sink a lot of money into something that you end up having to scrap, for reasons that could have been fla…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe Picture the scene: You’ve returned from a wonderful holiday break, invigorated to tackle ambitious projects, and then it hits you. Maybe it’s pinned to your Jira board, or taking up a tab in Confluence. It’s that one project that won’t go away. Its status hasn’t updated in three weeks. The Slack channel for the project is silent. Everyone else knows that they’re never going to find the time or the energy to see it through, but the boss still considers it “active.” We call this a Zombie Project – and it’s just as scary as it sounds. Atlassian, in partnership with Censuswide, recently surveyed 8,…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe Sharing information freely makes it easier for everyone to do their jobs. For example, opening up project plans and retrospective notes can save teams from re-inventing the wheel, and makes aligning on goals much simpler. Documenting why a decision was made and what other options were explored helps teams understand the “why” behind where the company is headed and how their work fits in. There’s the proactive kind of sharing, where you send out a link, document, or video to a select group of people because it’s relevant to what you’re working on together. There’s also the passive kind of sharing, …

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe As recently as a year ago, AI tools were seen as a “nice to have.” Now, AI is emerging as a strategic partner. According to new research from Atlassian, the number of knowledge workers using AI tools on a regular basis doubled from 2024 to 2025, with those who use them saving a little over an hour each day. This begs the question: what to do with all that newly freed-up time? Some of the most popular options from our survey include: Skill-building and training Brainstorming, prototyping, or spinning up a side project Clearing out bottlenecks and improving processes that slow the team do…

Subscribe to Work LifeGet stories like this in your inbox Subscribe Though it’s become something of a cliche, it’s probably not too often that we’re actually posed the question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Some among us will have that five-year plan mapped out and memorized – they’d be able to answer without missing a beat. But for many more of us, even if we’re happy at work, there’s a distinct lack of ownership over our professional paths. A whopping nine in 10 workers say they feel stuck in their jobs. Rapid changes in the workplace — from shifting priorities to new AI-powered tools – can make it feel like your career is happening to you instead o…

Introducing Remix with Rovo and partner agents in Confluence — a new way to instantly transform Confluence pages into charts, prototypes, presentations, and apps The last mile of knowledge Something strange happened over the past decade of work. Teams got incredibly good at creating knowledge — documenting decisions, capturing meeting notes, writing specs. But all that effort exposed a different problem: most of that knowledge never reaches the people who need it, in a format they can actually use. Confluence pages with 1 or more visual element are 18% more likely to be read by a wider audience. This isn’t a search problem. It isn’t an access problem. It’s …

When was the last time you conquered that mountain-high list of tasks within an 8-hour workday? Can’t recall? That’s okay. It’s common to feel like you live in a place where time disappears into the abyss, leaving you downright frustrated. But burning the midnight oil and working long hours to accommodate for incomplete work doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a productive person. You’d be surprised to know that lots of folks get their work done in less than 8 hours. For example in Europe, German knowledge workers have been praised for only clocking in 35 hours of work each week, Finns work under an average 6.5 hours per day, and a typical Dane ends their workday at 4 pm. …

Motivational speaker and entrepreneur Chris Winfield struggled for years to make proper use of his time. After countless research, trial and error, facing sustained burnout, and a few bangs of his head against the wall, Chris has discovered that the key to living a permanently productive life is a 25-minute block and a simple timer. A little backstory: Desperate for a way to improve his productivity methods, resist distractions, and free up more of his time, Chris settled on the Pomodoro method. Invented by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980’s, the Pomodoro method maximizes efficiency by blocking out a 25-minute interval of heads-down work, free of interruption (also known as…

France is a secular country, but there sure is one religion that all French people share—food and eating. With its rituals, omnipresence, and etiquette, eating is a pillar of French culture and social interaction. It not only has an impact on how families interact and bodies are fed but it’s a central part of our professional lives, from closing deals to building strong team relationships. So besides helping us enjoy a glass of wine with some cheese, what can French eating culture teach us about the importance of taking the time to focus on interacting with each other at the workplace? The Value Of The Ritual In 2010, UNESCO declared French gastronomic meals a part …

Did you know that when you first wake up in the morning, your brain is physically bigger than it will be when you go to sleep? It’s because our brains are the most hydrated after a period of rest. According to authors Dr. Robert Carter and Dr. Kirti Salwe Carter in their book, The Morning Mind, the best performing brain is a hydrated brain. So here’s the conundrum: If humans already have an inherent biological advantage to being morning people, why is it so (so, so, so) hard for so many of us to be chipper and productive at the crack of dawn? One way to channel your inner early riser is to mimic the habits of successful morning people: have a routine, meditate, exer…

Stop “using” AI. Start collaborating with it. Our latest research from Atlassian’s Teamwork Lab shows that when it comes to getting the most out of working with AI, mindset matters far more than adoption – and is key to maturity. Advancing past adoption Much existing research focuses on AI adoption rates, or how often someone uses AI. We take a different approach to instead look at how people work with AI. Our data clearly shows that employee mindset is the key to AI maturity. In other words, adoption matters far less than attitude when it comes to optimizing AI capabilities and improving work quality within an organization. Our data reveals two primary group…