What's on Your Mind?

Early in their leadership journey, many leaders believe they need to have all the answers and be experts in every aspect of their team’s work. They assume that credibility comes from knowing every detail, every strategy, and every technical nuance. However, the most effective leaders soon realize that leadership isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about knowing enough to ask the right questions, spot key trends, and guide their teams toward success. Rather than micromanaging or dictating processes, strong leaders focus on creating clarity through shared goals and measurable outcomes. By setting clear performance metrics, they establish a common language with their…

Ever find yourself behind the wheel watching all the other cars go by and think to yourself, “Man, I’m a much better driver than all these clowns on the road?” It’s a funny thing about this question. Pretty much everyone reading this is likely to say “yes.” It seems we all think we’re better drivers than the next guy. In a landmark 1981 study, psychologist Ola Svenson asked people in the U.S. and Sweden to rate their driving skills compared to the average person. The results? Around 80–93% rated themselves “above” average—statistically impossible—with an eye-popping 93% in the American sample doing so. Psychologists call this “illusory superiority,” the human …

Basketball great LeBron James has become the first professional male athlete to have his likeness depicted in a Ken doll. Mattel Inc. unveiled the LeBron Ken doll on Wednesday to kick off the toy manufacturer’s “Kenbassador” series. Last year, nine female athlete Barbies, including tennis star Venus Williams, were introduced. “As a young kid, I was fortunate to have role models who not only inspired me but also showed me what’s possible through hard work and dedication,” James said. “Now, as an adult, I understand how vital it is for young people to have positive figures to look up to. That’s why partnering with Barbie to release the LeBron James Kenbassadors doll…

LeBron James had another “decision” to announce. Turns out, it was an ad. The Los Angeles Lakers star teased that he would have something to say Tuesday. The “decision” reference is a nod to how he announced in July 2010 that he was joining the Miami Heat. It was supposed to come out at noon Eastern, but Hennessy — the cognac brand that James has been partners with for some time — made the announcement public about 90 minutes ahead of schedule. James’ training schedule for the day changed, the brand said, necessitating the change in release plans. “This fall, I’m going to be taking my talents to Hennessy V.S.O.P,” James said in the clip. Even the wording he us…

I have never had any interest in getting a hardware wallet like the new Ledger Nano Gen 5. But talking with Susan Kare—the designer of the original Apple Macintosh icons and an endless torrent wonderful pixel art—made me realize I need one. “The idea that an individual can really control their own assets without a government or anything political coming between you and your assets. I like that,” she tells me. The Ledger Nano is a 0.3-inch-thick credit card-sized block that keeps your digital assets secure by storing them offline. It has a frontal e-ink display that displays a grid of pixel art icons that look very much like the original Mac. For the Nano Gent 5, Kare …

Everything from global turmoil to inflation has caused consumers to tighten their purse strings. While many businesses have subsequently reported lower sales, some companies are still seeing significant success. On Tuesday, March 10, The Lego Group announced impressive 2025 financial results that included a 12% increase in revenue year-over-year. The privately held Danish toy company reached 83.5 billion Danish kroner (DKK), about $13.2 billion, up from 2024’s 74.3 billion DKK, about $11.6 billion. Similarly, the company’s operating and net profit rose 18% and 21% YOY, respectively. Lego also reported a 16% increase in consumer sales, a figure it primarily …

Lego has a nostalgia problem. I do, too. Like Hollywood and its eternal cycle of remakes, the Danish company has found a bottomless treasure pot full of GenX and Gen Z people willing to burn their credit cards to turn their golden memories into bricks. By my count, 2025 alone brought a record-setting 16 sets related to old Lego properties and external IPs, shattering 2023’s previous peak of 9 sets. Whether that’s considered a problem or not depends on who you ask. You can argue that we (the people who keep buying these sets) are all the ones who have the problem. The Danish are just milking it. Building Lego soothes kids and adults alike but, when you are putting …

Lego’s new building kit will turn your wall into an ode to ’80s graffiti art. The latest in Lego’s art-inspired sets is a customizable brick-built version of Keith Haring’s dancing figures, an instantly recognizable motif of five breakdancing stick figures articulated in Haring’s iconic pop art style. The kit comes with 1,773 pieces, can be mounted on stands or affixed to a wall, and stands at just over a foot tall. It retails for $119.99 and is set to hit Lego’s website and land in stores on May 15. In recent months, Lego has been working to build out a more extensive catalog of eye candy kits aimed at adults, ranging from a Lego-based version of Leonadro da Vinc…

Recently, I have developed a conflicted relationship with Lego. I love it. There’s so much Lego in our apartment that you can remove the brick and mortar, and I would still have a standing home. But lately, I’m getting fed up with how hard the Danish company is pushing it. Pushing the absurd licensing deals. Pushing nostalgia. Pushing the gigantic sets that adults want, kids dream of, but so many parents can’t afford. And sure. I can’t really blame Lego for wanting to make money. It’s a private company, and they are in the business of, you know, selling stuff. But by pushing so hard in every department, Lego risks brand exhaustion. At least, it’s exhausting the br…

Lego just announced its first book nook: Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street. I was guessing this was coming sooner than later, with Lego’s ever-increasing focus on the adult market and the growing popularity of book nooks. The design is fantastic, full of the fine details you expect of high-quality book nooks, which are miniature dioramas that are designed to fit between books on a shelf. But, unlike those, you can actually take this off the bookshelf, unfold it into a three-building Victorian London street, and play with it. Conceived by Japanese artist Monde in 2018, book nooks often depict a street, a room, or some other structure inspired by a theme from a real boo…

From afar, Lego’s new set inspired by Claude Monet’s painting Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies looks like a slightly more vivid version of the original. Step a bit closer, though, and you’ll find that its intricate brushstrokes are composed of Lego bananas, katana swords, and carrot tops. The new 3,179-piece set was created in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Monet’s original 1899 artwork, inspired by his idyllic garden in Giverny, is on display. Lego’s designers spent more than a year working in tandem with the museum’s curators to faithfully re-create the original painting’s iconic Impressionist scene. The set will be available to the publi…

Now this is a Lego set suitable for framing. Soon Lego will release an artful 2,615-piece set based on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which has the original work in its permanent collection. There’s no oil paint required for this rendition, though: The Lego set has enough blocks to make 16 sunflowers with adjustable petals, plus a tile with Van Gogh’s signature and a removable frame. The set is currently available for preorder for $199.99 and will ship starting March 1. Lego’s Amsterdam store and the Van Gogh Museum will permanently display sets of their own beginning March 1 as well. [Photo: Lego…

Legoland Florida plans to lay off 234 workers, primarily performers, in an effort to be more competitive in central Florida’s thriving theme park market, company officials said. The theme park resort in Winter Haven, Florida, said in a notice to the state of Florida last Friday that the permanent layoffs would start at the end of March and last through the beginning of April. Three-quarters of the workers cited for layoffs were performers, and another fifth also was involved in the entertainment side of the theme park, according to the notice. The theme park resort, whose workers are nonunion, has about 1,500 employees. The theme park resort is owned by Me…

While some girls dream of getting their first designer handbag, Lela Rose—who grew up in Dallas—dreamt of getting her own pair of boots from Lucchese, the legendary luxury bootmaker founded in 1883 in San Antonio. When she got married, her whole family got fitted in Lucchese boots, blending their formal wear with a nod to their Texas roots. Nearly three decades later, Rose is not just wearing the brand—she’s designing for it. Rose’s eponymous clothing label, which she launched in 1998, and Lucchese, the 143-year-old bootmaker, will launch a collaboration on March 10. It’s a partnership that makes sense: two brands with deep Texas roots finally finding each other. …

When the FIFA World Cup 2026 arrives in the United States this June, it will signal more than soccer’s return to its fastest-growing commercial market. The tournament will span three countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada—for the first time, becoming the largest World Cup ever staged. The scale, however, is also forcing a technological reset. As modern global sporting events grow in scale, expectations have evolved alongside them. Audiences now look for more immersive broadcasts and real-time data, broadcasters face rising reliability demands, and governing bodies continue to push for greater transparency and precision. Together, these pressures are starting …

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. We sleep with our phones. 😴 📱 We’re tied to these devices for work, at home—even on vacation. 🏖️🤳 43% of Americans feel addicted I was intrigued when writer Daniel Parris offered to share tips and tools he relies on to weaken the distracting pull of his phone. Daniel is a data scientist and data journalist who writes Stat Significant, a weekly newsletter with more than 23,000 readers. It’s a lively read, with data-centric essays about movies, music, TV, and more. Between his consulting projects, pop culture data analyses, a…

Are you human? A new game wants you to prove it. I’m Not a Robot is a fun spin on the popular CAPTCHA game synonymous with using the internet. Except it’s not just one game, but 48 increasingly absurd puzzles designed to help you prove you have a soul—and the patience to parallel park a Waymo using your arrow keys. The game begins as you’d expect. Level 1 asks you to check a box to prove you’re not a robot. Level 3 prompts you to decipher text wiggling on the screen. But the more you progress, the whackier it all becomes. Level 11 asks you to find Waldo on a crowded beach. Level 17 wants you to use your mouse to draw a circle that is 94% accurate (it’s not as easy…

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. When you factor in home, school, work, and other public spaces, the average person spends 90% of their time indoors. Given this, it’s probably no surprise that the built environment is responsible for 42% of the world’s carbon (CO2) emissions. This number is too big and the likelihood of it increasing is high when you consider aging buildings, extreme weather, a rising number of…

One need not be a sadist to enjoy the deeply unflattering body cam footage of Tiger Woods’ recent drunk driving arrest. Even before factoring in anyone’s personal feelings about the peerlessly accomplished but past-his-prime athlete, or their feelings about drunk drivers in general, the photos are internet-gold that lend themselves easily to memes and jokes. Still, there’s an unsavory aftertaste to this schadenfreude fiesta. It’s the same gamey flavor baked into the release last month of body cam footage from Justin Timberlake’s 2024 arrest, also for drunk driving. While there may be a cheap dopamine hit in watching famous people with highly managed public images in a…

At a recent academic conference, I noticed a familiar unease ripple through conversations about “soft skills.” Many participants winced at the term. They recognized the inadequacy of the term, yet struggled to agree on a better alternative. People floated around suggestions like “human skills,” “essential skills,” or “power skills,” but none seemed to stick. This persistent terminology problem reflects a deeper tension in our educational system. There’s a long-standing bias that elevates “hard” technical competencies over the nuanced, deeply human capabilities that actually define long-term professional success. Historically, hard skills emerged from the natural s…

Exciting news for anyone who’s already burned through the entirety of Netflix: there’s a new online movie rental platform coming to town. Letterboxd, the movie tracking app and the preferred social media of your most insufferable film-loving friend, announced this week that a Letterboxd Video Store is on the way. The announcement was made Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival. While the company hasn’t revealed too many specifics just yet, we do know the upcoming streaming service will be called the Letterboxd Video Store and will feature curated “shelves” of handpicked titles. Like other services such as Prime Video, Apple TV, or Google Play, users will be able …

Letterboxd, the movie tracking app and social media platform for cinephiles, first announced its new online film rental platform earlier this year at Cannes Film Festival. Now, more details about the launch date and titles have been revealed. The Video Store will officially launch on Wednesday, December 10, and will feature nine films across two curated shelves, which includes titles from nine countries. Here’s some of what film fans can expect: Think a Todd Haynes deep cut, to a restored version of a Filipino classic, and more, including Chile and Indonesia’s submissions for the upcoming 98th Academy Awards, a hit from the 2025 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, a…