What's on Your Mind?

At eight months pregnant with my first child, I walked into my boss’s office, ready for a pivotal meeting. I had spent months designing a new crisis management program for our university—one that would improve student outcomes and reduce institutional risk. This was the moment I’d learn whether my work would be implemented. I had poured everything into this project. It reflected my expertise, positioned the university at the forefront of best practices, and—for me personally—offered the challenge and recognition I craved. My current role felt stagnant, and this opportunity was exactly what I needed. My boss was thrilled with my proposal and agreed I was the right …

Every year, millions of Muslims take part in observing Ramadan: a spiritual month dedicated to cleansing the soul and spirit, hallmarked by the practice of fasting. This means that for 30 days, from sunrise to sunset, practitioners abstain from eating food and drinking water, only breaking their fast once the sun disappears in their respective geolocation—a time that shifts up or down depending on the season. Yep, not even water. As someone who observes Ramadan, every year I am both amused and baffled by the awkwardness that surrounds the month in the workplace. Inquiries about what fasting entails are far and few, whether out of fear of disrespect, uncertainty, …

’Tis the season for carved pumpkins, god-awful candy corn, and an inevitable workplace costume that lands someone a well-earned talking-to from HR. Halloween is near, which means it’s the perfect time to reflect on a tale from the cubicle that’s even spookier than Tales From the Crypt. It starts with three words that would strike fear in the heart of anyone who’s ever worked in corporate America. Performance. Improvement. Plan. Taken at face value, the phrase sounds gentle, maybe even helpful, like the start of a company-sponsored self-care journey. In reality, a PIP is usually the workplace equivalent of a death sentence, a corporate guillotine that gives “being …

My worst workday habit is that I’m a compulsive web page checker. Throughout the day, I’m constantly refreshing the same handful of sites for updates. I’ll check the metrics on my newsletters, swing through a subreddit or two, and click through some tech news sites—and that’s before even getting to email and social media. Every time I do this, it’s hard to refocus. So I was pretty eager to try Aloha Browser’s new “Snips” feature, which uses AI to periodically monitor web pages and notify you when things change. I figured that by having AI check web pages on my behalf, I could avoid the urge to do so myself and be better at staying on task. It’s helped at least…

My work across decades has spanned sectors, geographies, and cultures, focusing on exploration, discovery, and innovation. My husband and I have defined our work across business, nonprofit, and philanthropy simply: “We invest in people and ideas that can change the world.” I spend much of my time exploring and sharing exciting developments that hold great promise. This work has taken me from building the Internet revolution, to working in villages and cities across the globe and America’s 50 states, to the boardroom of the National Geographic Society, where I just completed a decade of service as Chairman of the Board. It has been a true privilege to lead these ef…

If you’ve noticed that the internet feels different lately—more cluttered, harder to navigate—you’re not imagining it. The system is breaking down in real time, and by 2026, researchers predict that 90% of web content will be AI-generated. Quality journalism is disappearing behind paywalls while feeds fill with noise designed purely to capture attention. An innovation that was supposed to democratize information is now drowning us in it. I know this intimately because I helped build it. As founder of AppNexus, which sold to AT&T for $1.6 billion, and former CTO of Right Media, I created the technology that became the backbone of digital advertising, a multibillion…

Susan Kare, designer of the original Apple icons, is back with a new 32-icon collection, one that you can buy in the form of silver or gold vermeil mechanical keys and pendants. Called Esc Keys, the new icons perfectly capture the everlasting magic of her 1-bit legendary past work, always mesmerizing in their extreme minimalism and at the same time as satisfying as triple-chocolate cake. Kare obviously had lots of fun creating them. Her new designs—from an alien head to a light bulb to love birds to puppies, plus a ‘Panic!’ key that we all really need right now—inspire the same joy she was gleaming with when I spoke to her from New York—where she was visiting for the …

Now that AI can control your web browser, the next frontier might be to take over your entire computer. At least that’s what Seattle-based startup Vercept is trying to do with Vy, a currently free Windows and Mac app that can manipulate your mouse and keyboard to automate tedious or repetitive tasks. You just tell it what you’re trying to do, and then it takes control. Vy first launched as a beta for Macs in May, but has now been rebuilt and is available for Windows as well. My experiments with Vy have yielded mixed results. If you’ve ever yelled at ChatGPT for failing to follow instructions, that frustration becomes magnified when AI is piloting your entire compu…

Hi again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. On November 18, Google announced a new product. More precisely, it declared that it was ushering in “a new era”—which is what tech companies do when they really want you to pay attention. The product in question is Gemini 3 Pro, the latest version of Google’s LLM. It’s not just the foundation of Google’s ChatGPT-like chatbot, also called Gemini. It underlies vast quantities of features in flagship offerings such as Google Search, Gmail, and Android. It powers Antigravity, a new Google AI coding platform that debuted on the same day. And thanks to Google Cloud, the model is also available to third-party devel…

The kinds of videos that do well on YouTube Shorts are depressingly predictable: cute cats, heated arguments, crazy stunts, and plenty of good old-fashioned shots of people suffering low-key injuries. The issue is that the real world produces only so many epic fails. And of the small number that do happen, even fewer are caught on video. Think of all the airplane passenger arguments and dropped wedding cakes that have gone untaped and unposted! Enter Sora. OpenAI’s new video generator is hyperrealistic, and was clearly trained on billions of hours of short-form, vertical video. That makes it incredibly good at generating the kinds of short, grabby videos that pull…

A year ago, I started reading again. I say “again” because, like the countless friends and colleagues I’ve spoken to who have also found themselves swept up in the reading renaissance that’s currently reshaping the book industry—the U.S. market is projected to grow from $40.5 billion in 2024 to $51.5 billion by 2030, with audiobooks and ebooks seeing explosive growth—I’d lost the habit somewhere between the demands of a growing career and the chaos of early parenthood. For too long, reading was relegated to vacations—and even then, I’d be lucky to get through a full book. But last year, something shifted. Twelve months later, I’ve read over 100 books and li…

Hello again from Fast Company and thanks for reading Plugged In. Before I go any further, a bit of quick self-serving promotion: This week, we published our fifth annual Next Big Things in Tech list. Featuring 137 projects and people in 31 categories, it’s our guide to technologies that are already reshaping business and life in general, with plenty of headroom to go further in the years to come. None of them are the usual suspects—and many have largely flown under the radar. Take a look, and you’ll come away with some discoveries. Two weeks ago in this space, I wrote about Sora, OpenAI’s new social network devoted wholly to generating and remixing 10-second synth…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: I think my manager is burned out. What can I do? A: It’s tough out there for managers, especially middle mangers who are often caught in the—well—middle and may find themselves enforcing unpopular policies that they didn’t create. It’s not explicitly your job to fix your boss’s problems (and you don’t have the power or authority to do so if you aren’t in a leadership role). But, a manager sets the tone for their team and if they are burned out, their enti…

Being tired is practically a personality trait in corporate America — especially in 2025. Everybody is exhausted, it seems. Folks are doing fiftyleven jobs. You’re always juggling tasks, always late for the next meeting because the last one ran long. But when you’re one of the few Black employees at the gig, there’s a subconscious fear of looking like you’re in over your head, especially with the looming fear of layoffs. So you push through, even when you’re running on fumes. You go harder, telling yourself you’ll rest once you get through the busy patch. But that’s a lie. The job is a perpetual busy patch. For months, I kept telling myself I was just tired. Regular tire…

A new browser from the Norwegian company Opera just launched today, and it wants you to stop stressing out so much. The free browser, called Opera Air, is billed as the first-ever “mindful browser.” While existing mindfulness apps like Calm and Headspace can help you take a break to reduce feelings of stress, Opera Air proposes a product that integrates mindfulness directly into working online. The browser comes with a sleek, minimal UI and built-in mindfulness tools—like breathing exercises and binaural beats—so users can code, type, or browse the web and get a brain boost simultaneously. Nikita Walia is a brand strategist at U.N.N.A.M.E.D, the creative partners …

It looks a little like a sleek window AC, but a new device from Chinese appliance giant Midea is actually a reversible heat pump that can both cool and heat a home—and it’s designed to heat efficiently even when the temperature outside drops as low as 22 degrees below zero. The heat pump, called the Midea PWHP, just launched commercially after years of development. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been testing it in freezing temperatures in upstate New York. It works better than my gas furnace, and uses less energy. And the form factor and cost could help heat pumps—which already outsell gas furnaces—spread even faster. A new type of heat pump Like other heat pum…

The line had just died down at Hong Kong’s Apple flagship store on Canton Road when I arrived on what happened to be the release day for the iPhone Pocket, the company’s new and very buzzed-about design collaboration between Apple and Issey Miyake Design Studio. I purchased it immediately—a short one in Sapphire blue, as the cross-body version was already sold out. I observed neither pomp nor circumstance with the overwrought packaging, which I shed on the spot despite its velum-bound elegance and prominent Miyake branding. I was on a working vacation after all, and so I simply looped the Pocket around the strap of my nylon cross-body bag and went about my day in a ci…

When I recently needed to find a last-minute place to stay for a week in Palo Alto, I picked one of the cheapest options on Airbnb: a 13-by-13 foot tiny house. Inside, the main living area was smaller than a parking space. Still, it had room for everything you might find in a typical studio apartment. Along the back, a tiny loveseat disguised a Murphy bed that could be pulled down from the wall; the coffee table was exactly the right size to move to the opposite side of the room when it was time to use the bed. On the other side of the house, there was a minuscule kitchen with a tiny fridge, a two-burner stove, and a sink, next to a semi-normal-sized bathroom with a s…

Does it feel to you like there are way too many AI assistants to keep track of? Between ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, DeepSeek, and others, it’s hard to remember what each one excels at—if anything. Beyond just the underlying differences in large language models, each AI assistant has its own features, integrations, premium features, and peculiarities. I’m writing this guide both for myself and for anyone who wants to stay informed about generative AI. While I have some reservations, I also think it’s worth keeping an eye on what’s available. Rather than getting into the technical details of how these AI assistants work, I’ll focus o…

When my mom was dying, hospice came daily and stayed for about ninety minutes. They answered questions, checked what needed to be checked, and did what good professionals do: They made a brutal situation feel slightly less impossible. And then they left. Ninety minutes go fast when you are watching your mother decline. The rest of the day stretches out in a way that does not feel like time so much as exposure. Every sound becomes a data point. Every small change feels like a decision you did not train for. Her breathing sounds strange. What do we do? How often should we turn her to avoid bedsores? What is the diaper situation, exactly? That was the gap, the lo…

I was interviewing for a job as a customer service agent with Anna. She had a low, pleasant voice and she’d nailed the pronunciation of my name—something few people do. I wanted to make a good impression except I had no idea what Anna was thinking because Anna couldn’t think. Anna wasn’t technically a person. She was AI. Not only is AI changing how we do our jobs, it’s also changing how we get jobs. This ranges from using AI to screen resumes, schedule interviews, even conduct them. According to a 2025 report, 20% of companies are using AI to interview candidates. Even so, nothing can replace human recruiters, the folks who’ve deployed Anna into the wild stressed …

Fluorescent lights that softly hum. Magazines nobody reads. A television mounted in the corner playing cable news as a receptionist mispronounces my last name. I am at my first of several doctors appointments intentionally scheduled during the winter holiday season. Not because I’m sick. Because it’s the only week of the year when nothing work-related is fighting for my time. The office is closed. The investors aren’t emailing. The product update notifications have stopped. For seven days I can put my body first. So I schedule the bloodwork. The dermatologist. The physical I’ve been postponing since March. The dentist I keep rescheduling because there’s always…