What's on Your Mind?

Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1980, grew up with MTV and empty houses, earning them the name “latchkey kids.” The first generation who logged onto AOL Instant Messenger and played video games while still enjoying the freedom that came before helicopter parents took over is fascinating. But as a small generation that falls between baby boomers and millennials, they’re often overlooked. When it comes to their spending power, however, Gen X is small but mighty. According to a new report from ICSC, a trade association for retail real estate, Gen X may have more spending power than brands realize. While Gen X only makes up around 19% of the U.S. population, th…

Life with a fluctuating income is a lot like being left-handed: The world isn’t designed to meet your needs, so you need to adjust accordingly. Those who make the leap into solopreneurship are often struck by all the little things they took for granted as salaried employees. Things like having health benefits, taxes and retirement savings deducted from their earnings, knowing exactly when the next injection of cash is coming, or what they’ll make next month. Even monthly billing cycles for things like rent, student loans, and car payments are based on the assumption of predictable monthly earnings. Most don’t ditch the corporate life because they’re really good a…

In 2018, Joy DasGupta walked away from a steady job in marketing at Starbucks after 13 years to work for herself as a rewards program consultant. As a caregiver with a young child, DasGupta says the corporate life proved too inflexible, and the logistics of balancing her personal life and career were becoming overwhelming. Starbucks was also undergoing restructuring, and DasGupta’s once-secure corporate job was starting to feel a little shaky. She explains that for most working mothers, “if you get the opportunity to make as much money—maybe even a little less—and get flexibility, many will take that option.” She adds that “there aren’t enough companies that are i…

“Well, friends. I did it. I’ve now had my highest-income month of my life again.” So begins a TikTok video by content creator Chelsea Langenstam detailing her “$56,244 income month” breakdown, along with deductibles, as a solopreneur. Langenstam then outlines her various income streams: budget templates, brand deals, referral fees. “I don’t share to brag,” she says in the video, currently sitting at over 100,000 views. “I share because I want to show you what’s possible in real time.” Her videos are among hundreds on TikTok and Instagram, lifting the curtain on how much solopreneurs of all kinds actually earn month to month—and exactly where each dollar come…

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has announced two separate large-scale food recalls due to the same reason: possible contamination with metal fragments. The first recall was for BBQ pork jerky and the second was for ready-to-eat frozen chicken products. Both notices were posted over the weekend. In total, a combined 7.1 million pounds of the products—which were distributed nationwide in both cases—are included in the recalls. Here’s what you need to know. 2.3 million pounds of BBQ pork jerky recalled According to a notice posted by FSIS on Friday, October 24, a company called LSI, Inc. of Alpena, South Dakota, is recalling approximatel…

Flights departing for Los Angeles International Airport were halted briefly due to a staffing shortage at a Southern California air traffic facility, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday, when the agency also reported staffing-related delays in Chicago, Washington and Newark, New Jersey. The FAA issued a temporary ground stop at one of the world’s busiest airports soon after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy predicted that travelers would see more flights delayed and canceled in the coming days as the nation’s air traffic controllers work without pay during the federal government shutdown. During an appearance on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Fu…

Leaders are praised for “seeing around corners” and told to “skate to where the puck is going.” But what if you can’t even see your own feet, let alone a puck or a distant corner? Today’s volatility and uncertainty obscure any clear path to the future, and the forecast isn’t improving any time soon. In a recent World Economic Forum survey, 52% of experts expect an unsettled two-year horizon, 31% anticipate turbulence, and 5% foresee storms. Even if the weather were clear, setting a direction of travel is increasingly difficult as leaders face more complex problems with no obvious or easy solution. Close to 60% of business executives admit that they are missing opp…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself. Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman faces a rare leadership challenge: He is managing an organization that has announced its intention to spend $200 billion during the next 20 years—double what the organization dispensed in its first 25 years—while working to permanently close its doors on December 31, 2045. S…

Amazon is well aware that you’re spending hours agonizing over the reviews for seven different near-identical toaster ovens before you actually make a decision. Now, it has an AI feature for that—and we have to admit, it’s pretty helpful. “Help me decide” is a new AI shopping function that rolled out on October 23 across millions of U.S. customers on the Amazon shopping app and mobile browser. It uses large language models and AI tools from Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) suite of offerings to analyze your shopping history, purchase details, and preferences, and then match those insights with product details and customer reviews to recommend products that you might be most…

In 2025, Amazon, Dell, Apple, Google, IBM, Meta, Salesforce, and dozens more have doubled down on demands for employees to return to the office (RTO) at least three days a week, if not all five. And they’re getting exactly what they want. Now, when I say “exactly what they want,” you might be expecting me to paint a picture of workers happily returning to their daily commutes, overcrowded highways, cavernous or claustrophobic offices, constant interruptions, and extra expenses, and all of it resulting in massive productivity gains. That’s not happening, the productivity-gains part. And the longer we play this out, the sillier the performances of “productivity thea…

Once upon a time, the big idea was simple—work from anywhere! Thanks to technological advances, you didn’t need to be tethered to your office desk to collaborate with coworkers (or swap memes with them). As long as you had your laptop and good Wi-Fi you could be by the pool on a tropical island, drink in hand, and a magnificent sunset in the background. Forward-thinking companies would recognize that talent could be found in the most unexpected places. Employees get to mix and match their work with the life they love. Governments would enable this with offers of special digital nomad visas. The whole world would become one big, friendly workplace. Hold that though…

It’s a well-known fact that phone time before bed makes it harder to sleep. Studies show that a nighttime scroll keeps your brain active, delays REM sleep, and may even disrupt your circadian rhythm. Now, Ikea has created an unusual solution to this damaging habit: designing a dedicated bed for your phone. The Ikea Phone Sleep Collection is essentially an ultra-miniaturized version of an Ikea bed frame, made in the perfect dimensions to cradle your smartphone on a bedside table. Embedded in the bed’s frame is an NFC chip that tracks how long the phone has been tucked in. If the time exceeds seven hours for seven consecutive nights, the user is rewarded with a shopping…

The quality of our decisions defines our legacy as leaders. We make around 35,000 decisions a day and close to 800,000,000 in a lifetime. Not all decisions are equal. Many are default, some are reversible, but the consequential ones leave us with no U-turn. Decision-making is inescapable. So, let’s delve deeper into the anatomy of good decisions. What drives good vs. bad? Our decisions are deeply rooted in our values, competence, courage, and compassion. The psychological context from which decisions flow includes our emotional intelligence, comfort zone, values, moods, needs, decision-making style, and crucially, our self-awareness. Good decisions matter, but what…

On a recent vacation in Berlin, Emma Watkins, a marketing assistant working in the U.K., wrote a three-star review of a bar she visited. “It was fine, but not amazing, and not what I expected from the high ranking review—it was four-point-something,” she recalls. Upon returning home, she noticed her middling review of the establishment was taken down. “When they said it was defamatory I was confused,” she says. “I did some Googling, then realized what had gone on. And suddenly the high rating for what I thought was pretty average made sense.” (Fast Company is not naming the bar so as not to fall foul of Germany’s defamation laws itself.) Watkins isn’t alone in losing…

It’s the digital equivalent of a clogged drain. You boot up your computer, click the Google Chrome icon, and… wait. You wait to type a search term. You wait for the page to load. You wait while your once-speedy gateway to the internet chugs along like a steam engine trying to keep up with a bullet train. The problem: Chrome is a beast – a powerful, functional beast, but a beast nonetheless. Over time, it gets bloated, weighed down by all the digital detritus we pile onto it. But don’t despair. You don’t need a new computer, you just need a digital declutter. Here’s how we’re going to put some pep back in your browser’s step. Note that though feature names …

It feels like they match anything. Black. Silver. White. Cream. All rendered in gloss and knit. I wasn’t sure how the silhouette would look in person when I first saw it in photos from Junya Watanabe’s Fall/Winter 2024-25 show. But they made my stomach churn in just the right way. I needed them. And so did a lot of other people. The New Balance 1906L launched last year, kicking off a new type of shoe: the sneaker loafer, aka (and please never say this term aloud) the snoafer. With a loafer silhouette, technical fabrics, and bouncy foam outsoles, they represented a new mix of formal wear and street style. Nike, Hoka, and Puma all quickly followed suit with sno…

In 1995, the kids’ brand Hanna Andersson debuted matching family pajamas, kick-starting a trend. Three decades later, it’s become a tradition in many families to buy PJs emblazoned with reindeer or Christmas trees or menorahs to wear during the holidays. But if you’re concerned that seasonally specific sleepwear may not be so eco-friendly—after all, how much use will your toddler get from those Santa Claus jammies?—Hanna Andersson has a suggestion for you: Why not buy them secondhand? In 2023, Hanna Andersson launched Hanna-Me-Downs, a website for customers to buy and sell pre-owned products. If you scroll through the site, you’ll find thousands of gently used Hanna A…

America’s next great riverfront park has just opened in Detroit. Covering 22 acres along the Detroit River, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park is the latest high-profile project to open in a troubled city now on a much-touted rebound. With an $80 million budget buying world class design from two highly regarded firms, it’s a major investment in the city’s public realm. And though a massive embezzlement scandal nearly derailed the project in 2024, the park is now open to the public. Designed by the landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Detroit’s new riverfront park is a multidimensional destination intended to draw people from across the reg…