What's on Your Mind?

Our culture equates busyness with importance, overcommitment with achievement, and exhaustion with value. For high-achieving professionals, this belief system isn’t just inconvenient, it’s quietly eroding energy, focus, and fulfillment. Meetings pile up, emails never end, and the pressure to “do it all” becomes a measure of worth. And yet, this version of productivity is deeply misleading. The truth is, sustainable success doesn’t come from cramming more into your day. It comes from aligning what you do with who you are, and giving yourself permission to prioritize energy, clarity, and presence over perpetual motion. Because motion for the sake of it is meaningless. …

Another day, another recall. It if seems like there have been a number of recalls recently, you’re not imagining it. In the last month alone, there has been a recall for particular brands of soup, sparkling water, and vegetables. This time, it’s for butter. What’s happened? Agri-Mark, the maker of Cabot Creamery dairy products, conducted a voluntary recall for a single lot of its Extra Creamy Premium Butter, Sea Salted, totaling 1,700 pounds in 189 cases. Testing revealed an elevated level of coliform bacteria. The recall was initiated on March 26. Coliform bacteria often are considered indicators of fecal contamination. The U.S. Food and Drug Administratio…

America’s butterflies are disappearing because of insecticides, climate change and habitat loss, with the number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, a new study finds. The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. “Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years,” said study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University. “And we don’t see any sign that that’s going to e…

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 housing 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, a score of 70 or above means it’s a “strong sellers mark…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists use an economic model they call 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 higher = strong seller’s market Score fro…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists have an economic model called the Zillow Market Heat Index, designed to assess the competitiveness of housing markets nationwide. This model evaluates factors like home price fluctuations, inventory levels, days on market, and buyer demand to produce a score that indicates whether a market is hot (benefiting sellers) or cool (benefiting buyers). A higher score indicates a hotter metro-level housing market where sellers have more power. A lower score indicates a colder metro-level housing market where buyers have more power. Acco…

America’s aviation system is straining under the weight of the longest government shutdown on record: thousands of flight cancellations, long delays at major airports, and frustrated travelers nationwide. In an unprecedented move, the Federal Aviation Administration last week ordered airlines to scale back domestic flight schedules, saying the cuts are meant to ease pressure on an overstretched system and help manage air traffic control staffing. Unpaid for more than a month, some air traffic controllers have begun calling out of work, citing stress and the need to take on second jobs—leaving more control towers and facilities short-staffed. The numbers show t…

Cable giant Charter Communications is laying off close to 1,200 employees, or just over 1% of its 95,000-person workforce, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday. The job cuts will be related to corporate management positions within the company and will not impact sales or service roles, the source said, adding that the layoffs are intended to streamline operations. Charter follows other media and cable peers that are trimming their workforce. Last month, Reuters reported exclusively that Comcast was planning to cut jobs at its biggest unit, housing broadband and pay TV, to centralize operations. Newly merged Paramount Skydance will begin ma…

Immigrants selling food, flowers, and other merchandise along the sidewalks of California will have new privacy protections intended to keep their identities secret from federal immigration agents. The measure, signed into law this past week by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, comes on the heels of other recently enacted state laws meant to shield students in schools and patients at health care facilities from the reach of President Donald The President’s immigration enforcement actions. Democratic-led states are adding laws resisting The President even as he intensifies his deportation campaign by seeking to deploy National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities to r…

California’s governor called upon the state’s cities and counties to ban homeless encampments this week, even providing blueprint legislation for dismantling the tents lining streets, parks and waterways throughout much of the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, made homelessness a priority of his administration when he took office in 2019. It had previously been an issue primarily for mayors and other local officials, but Newsom pumped money into converting old motels into housing and launched other initiatives to tackle the issue. Still, he has repeatedly called out cities and counties to do their part, and on Monday, he unveiled draft language that can be adopte…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While national active housing inventory for sale at the end of March 2025 was still 20% below pre-pandemic March 2019 levels, on a year-over-year basis national active listings are up 29% between March 2024 and March 2025. This indicates that homebuyers have gained some leverage in many parts of the country over the past year. One of the biggest year-over-year increases is happening in California—where active inventory for sale is up 50% year-over-year. Despite the 50% year-over-year jump in active California housing inventory for sale—in…

California is staring down a $12 billion budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday. The Democratic governor shared the number as he laid out his nearly $322 billion state spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year. He says the deficit is partly due to broad economic uncertainty, including ever-changing federal tariff policies and a volatile stock market. California relies heavily on revenue from a tax on capital gains. The shortfall is also due to a swelling Medicaid budget, and Newsom has proposed freezing enrollment in a state-funded health care program for immigrants in the country illegally starting in 2026 to cut down on costs. The shortfall will r…

One of the most vital drugs with a high price tag will get dramatically more affordable next year – if you live in California. California will start selling insulin next year after striking out on its own in a bold deal to lower the cost of prescription drugs, making it the first state in the nation to do so. The state will offer low-cost insulin through CalRx, a state program designed to provide affordable life-saving drugs in California. “California didn’t wait for the pharmaceutical industry to do the right thing — we took matters into our own hands,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a press release. “… No Californian should ever have to ration insulin…

Oil and gas companies would be liable for damages caused by climate change -related disasters in California under legislation introduced Monday by two Democratic lawmakers. The proposal claims that the oil industry intentionally deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels on climate change that now have intensified storms and wildfires and caused billions of dollars in damage in California. Such disasters have also driven the state insurance market to a crisis where companies are raising rates, limiting coverage or pulling out completely from regions susceptible to wildfires and other natural disasters, supporters of the bill said. Under state law, utility…

California voters approved new congressional district boundaries Tuesday, delivering a victory for Democrats in the state-by-state redistricting battle that will help determine which party wins control of the U.S. House in 2026 and, with it, the power to thwart or advance President Donald The President’s agenda. The approval of Proposition 50 gives Democrats a shot at winning as many as five additional seats, just enough to blunt Texas Republicans’ move to redraw their own maps to pick up five GOP seats at The President’s urging. Texas’ move and California’s response have kicked off a flurry of redistricting efforts around the country, with Republican states appearing to…

Amid the ongoing evolution of digital privacy laws, one California proposal is drawing heightened attention from legal scholars, technologists, and privacy advocates. Assembly Bill 1355, while narrower in scope than landmark legislation like 2018’s California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)—which established sweeping rights for consumers to know, delete, and opt out of the sale of their personal information—could become a pivotal effort to rein in the unchecked collection and use of personal geolocation data. The premise of the bill (which is currently undergoing analysis within the appropriations committee) is straightforward yet bold in the American legal landscape: Com…

As millions of Americans gear up for the Super Bowl—stocking the fridge with wing sauce, beer, and myriad other snacks and confections—employers are also preparing for the inevitable avalanche of sick-day requests on Monday. Last year, the day after Super Bowl Sunday (dubbed “Super Bowl Monday”) saw nearly two-thirds more sick-day requests than the average day in 2024, and 51% more requests than the average day in February, according to recent data from cloud-based human capital management software company Paycom. Interestingly, employers seem to empathize, as the data also shows that managers approved 91% of sick-day requests on Super Bowl Monday last year, whic…

Knowing the calorie content of foods does not help people understand which foods are healthier, according to a study I recently coauthored in the Journal of Retailing. When study participants considered calorie information, they rated unhealthy food as less unhealthy and healthy food as less healthy. They were also less sure in their judgments. In other words, calorie labeling didn’t help participants judge foods more accurately. It made them second-guess themselves. Across nine experiments with more than 2,000 participants, my colleague and I tested how people use calorie information to evaluate food. For example, participants viewed food items that are generally…