What's on Your Mind?

The next big meeting on your calendar might not have any other attendees—it might just be you. A growing number of high-performing leaders, including managers at Google and other Fortune 100 companies, are carving out protected “focus blocks” and treating them like mission-critical meetings. With constant pings, shallow tasks, and back-to-back calls, this might be the only way to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time features that automatically block off calendars to protect deep work. Paige Donahue is a product marketing leader at Google who helps YouTube creators grow their communities and monetize their followi…

I saw my first holiday-themed ad on TV before Halloween. I was startled, yet not surprised. Kind of a funny feeling, really. Yes, the annual holiday shopping sprint is upon us. For years, the process has been defined by frantic comparison searches and endless product review scrolling. But this year, you can finally delegate the busywork to an army of digital assistants. AI is no longer just a party trick: it’s a legitimate, price-savvy, personal shopping engine. Want to skip the agonizing research and focus on finding that perfect gift without blowing your budget? Here are four essential AI tools you should be using right now. Gift Idea Generator You ne…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country. This model looks at key indicators—including home price changes, inventory levels, and days on market—to generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers. Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power. According to Zillow: Score of 70 or above = strong sellers market Score…

Tennis is experiencing a resurgence, with almost 26 million people playing in the U.S. alone. That number has been on an upward trajectory five years in a row. While the sport’s renewed cultural relevance can be attributed to multiple factors, brands across fashion, entertainment, and even sports leagues like Major League Baseball are capitalizing on the trend through unconventional opportunities. On December 8, LoanDepot Park, home of baseball’s Miami Marlins, will undergo a temporary redesign to host the Unified Events Miami Invitational, a one-night, first-of-its-kind exhibition featuring top tennis stars Carlos Alcaraz, João Fonseca, Amanda Anisimova, and Jessica …

Which terms best represent 2025? Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a word of the year. Sometimes these terms are thematically related, particularly in the wake of world-altering events. Pandemic, lockdown, and coronavirus, for example, were among the words chosen in 2020. At other times, they are a potpourri of various cultural trends, as with 2022’s goblin mode, permacrisis, and gaslighting. This year’s slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughts—when words like w00t, blog, t…

This year’s busiest shopping day was a boon for live-shopping apps. Even at a time of inflation and economic uncertainty, Americans were ready to spend come Black Friday. U.S. online spending was up 9.1% from last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics. While holiday spending has typically been dominated by traditional e-commerce, live-shopping platforms TikTok Shop and Whatnot also reported record-breaking sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. On Black Friday, the livestream marketplace Whatnot reported more than $75 million in single-day live sales, tripling last year’s total. On average, shoppers bought 40 items per second. One small busi…

When people use hand gestures that visually represent what they’re saying, listeners see them as more clear, competent, and persuasive. That’s the key finding from my new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, where I analyzed thousands of TED Talks and ran controlled experiments to examine how gestures shape communication. Talking with your hands Whether you’re giving a presentation, pitching an idea or leading a meeting, you probably spend most of your prep time thinking about what you’ll say. But what about the ways you’ll move your hands? I grew up in Italy, where gesturing is practically a second language. Now that I live in the United St…

A meeting drags on. People are talking, but no one is saying the thing that needs to be said. Direction is unclear, the energy dips, and everyone is waiting for someone to speak with authority. When you finally do speak, the words come out softer than you intended: – “Maybe we should consider . . .” – “I think it might be good if . . .” – “Sorry to interrupt, but . . .” One of the biggest challenges leaders face isn’t just what they decide, it’s how they communicate it. Clarity, confidence, and authority are what set the tone for the room. If you tend to soften your tone or worry about sounding pushy, being more direct can feel uncomfortable.…

It’s been an unprecedented and brutal week for the advertising industry. The finalization of Omnicom Group’s $13 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group (IPG) (the biggest takeover in advertising history) is affecting tens of thousands of workers—most immediately the 4,000 expected to be laid off by the end of the year. Both Omnicom and IPG own many different ad agency brands, all of which will be profoundly impacted by the merger. Omnicom is retaining only McCann from the IPG roster of agency networks, while folding FCB into BBDO, and both DDB and MullenLowe into TBWA, in order to achieve Omnicom Chairman and CEO John Wren’s goal of $750 million in synergies. Th…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Back in his 1996 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett famously wrote: “If you aren’t willing to own a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.” That statement only makes the recent homebuilder stock purchases and sales by Berkshire Hathaway—led by Buffett, who will step down as CEO at the end of 2025—even more eyebrow-raising. Here’s the timeline. August 2023: Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that in Q2 2023, the company made a bet on U.S. homebuilders and bought 5,969,714 shares of D.R. Horton, 152,572 shares of Le…

Ask friends what kind of tech gift you should get for your parent, grandparent, or another older person in your life, and chances are you’ll get the same generic suggestions, like a digital picture frame or a portable Bluetooth speaker. But these gifts will almost certainly remain little used throughout the year. (I mean, how many digital picture frames would you like?) Instead, this holiday season, why not get an older loved one a tech gift they’ll actually use (and that might put your mind at ease, too)? Here are five types of gifts that older people may truly find beneficial. Smartwatches with fall detection Talk to any older person about health concer…

While digital live shopping has been popular for years in Asia, the phenomenon has only recently begun to take off in the U.S., thanks in large part to the rise of retail disruptor Whatnot. The platform’s cofounder and CEO, Grant LaFontaine, shares how his team has managed to evoke the feel of in-person shopping inside an online experience, and how Whatnot’s breakthrough is influencing other retailers and brands. LaFontaine also digs into the startup’s response to deep-pocketed rivals like eBay, and why he believes the viral Labubu trend is here to stay. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief R…

Most entrepreneurs are familiar with diminishing returns: how, when other variables stay constant, at some point putting in additional time and effort results in increasingly smaller results. Since resources are always limited, figuring out where to spend your entrepreneurial time so it delivers the best bang per hour is critical. That same premise extends to health and fitness. If you’re like many entrepreneurs, you try to stay reasonably fit not just because it’s good for you, but because exercise helps you perform better under stress. Can elevate your mood for up to 12 hours. Can even make you a little smarter. Still: how healthy and fit . . . is healthy and fi…

In South Korea several weeks ago, the U.S. and China came to a temporary agreement, in which they’ll kick a rare-earth can down the road. The agreement took the form of a one-year pause in the dispute between the two nations over rare earth elements (REEs): China postponed imposing newly announced export controls on 17 different REEs and, in turn, the U.S. announced it would reduce certain tariffs on Chinese goods. For years, the United States and its allies have grappled with a troubling resource reality: China dominates the global supply of REEs and critical raw materials (CRMs)—the essential ingredients of our digital age. From smartphones to electric vehicle…

It is a relatively rare phenomenon: While the stock market continues to experience record gains (the S&P 500 is up over 16% this year), Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to struggle, making it the first time the crypto and stock markets have split since 2014, Bloomberg reported. That split, with Bitcoin down while stock markets soar, is somewhat unusual. On midday Friday, at the time of this writing, the digital cryptocurrency (BTC) was trading down over 4%, hovering around $88,945—far below its record high of over $125,000, but still above a recent low of $85,000 (down almost 30% from the high). Here’s what to know. Why is the split between cryp…

When film cameras were invented, people didn’t become filmmakers overnight. We pointed cameras at theater stages, digitizing what already existed. It took us a while to reimagine what film cameras could unlock. The real opportunity wasn’t recording theater plays. It was stepping outside and inventing cinema. That’s where many nonprofits are with AI today. Most still layer it on top of existing processes, not because they don’t care about innovation, but because they lack both the frameworks to identify the right use cases and the capacity to act on them. True innovation starts when organizations have the space, skills, and confidence to reimagine how impact itse…

In April 2000, Elsevier published an article in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, which claimed that the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) from the Monsanto Company didn’t pose a risk of cancer or other health issues for humans. Twenty-five years later, the publisher has retracted that paper, citing litigation that revealed it was based solely on unpublished studies by Monsanto itself. Furthermore, Elsevier states that the article (titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans) appears to have been co-written with Monsanto employees, despite no explicit accreditation. Mo…

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation changed little in September, likely easing the way to a widely expected interest rate cut by the central bank next week. Prices rose 0.3% in September from August, the Commerce Department said Friday, in a report that was delayed five weeks by the government shutdown. It matched the increase recorded during the previous month. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.2% in September from August, the same as August, and a pace that if it continued for a year would bring inflation closer to the Fed’s 2% target. Compared with a year ago, overall prices rose 2.8%, up slightly from 2.7% i…

The The President administration will be expanding its ban on travel for citizens of certain countries to more than 30, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, in the latest restriction to come since a man from Afghanistan was accused of shooting two National Guard members. The expansion would build on a travel ban already announced in June by the Republican administration, which barred travel to the U.S. for citizens from 12 countries and restricted access to the U.S. for people from seven others. In a social media post earlier this week, Noem had suggested more countries would be included. Noem, who spoke late Thursday in an interview with Fox News Channel…

Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96. Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica, California, after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP. Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of some of the most striking buildings ever constructed and brought him a measure of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles; and the DZ Bank Building in B…

A powerful advisory group within the CDC voted Friday to overturn a longstanding precaution designed to protect newborn babies. If the change is approved by the acting director of the agency, the government will no longer universally recommend the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. The shot, which provides protection from the leading cause of liver cancer, has been standard practice for newborns since 1991. Friday’s 8-3 vote is a milestone for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who quickly began reshaping the public health agency to reflect his personal views on vaccines after being sworn in early this year. Kennedy has long been a prominent vo…

Entrepreneurs face more stress, fear, and anxiety in a single day than most people experience in a year. When building something in a crowded market, motivation doesn’t just dip—it can disappear entirely. What is the difference between those who burn out and those who break through? They’ve mastered the three fundamentals: finding their real “why,” setting their own scorecard, and playing the long game. New competitors launch monthly in the vertical drama space where I work. At DramaShorts, we’ve maintained our position among the top 15 apps globally by refusing to play someone else’s game. While others chase viral trends, we focus on building sustainable engagement.…

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. It fuels boardroom debates, guides priorities, defines access to information, and nudges consumer experiences. But while AI promises sharper insights and faster action, it also accelerates blind spots leaders already struggle with. The paradox is this: AI can widen vision, but if used without the right insight, it narrows it. And when those blind spots meet the speed of AI adoption, the consequences multiply. I’ve seen this play out across industries—through my leadership roles at Google, Maersk, and Diageo, and in advising executives shaping some of the world’s largest organizations. The pattern is clear: technology does not…

When it comes to market segmentation, I don’t see truly well-documented cases often. At a more simplistic level, we think of classic matrices such as BCG or McKinsey’s. But the real exercise of segmentation is far more complex. In certain contexts, it comes close to the behavior of a tensor: multiple dimensions, cross-dependencies, distinct weights, temporality, and contextual factors that shift the meaning of data depending on the axis being analyzed. Thinking like a tensor is practicing Model Thinking, which remains, above all, an analog discipline. It requires a brain, not a machine. The challenge is necessarily multidisciplinary, and this is exactly where …

When Vlad Drǎgușin founded his midcentury inspired toy car company, Candylab, in 2013, he had a Kickstarter page and a dream. His goal was to create wooden model cars inspired by hot rods and classic American car designs; toys that would be both durable enough for play and sleek enough for display. As it turns out, there’s a major growing market for that kind of thing—and Candylab just rebranded to capture it. Since its founding, Candylab has secured retail placement in stores like London’s Design Museum, MoMa, The Guggenheim, Barnes & Noble, and the cult favorite apparel brand Kith. It’s also notched major brand collabs including with Saint Laurent, Zara Kids, Cr…