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Google might be allowing publishers to claim their profiles and publications on Google Discover. I mean, there were forms of this for Google News, Google Business Profiles, even Google Search over the years, but there are hints this is coming to Google Discover.View the full article

Are you ready for the monthly Google Webmaster report...View the full article

Google Ads has often used dynamic labels for some of the ad groupings. I mean, we've seen tons of variations of these and I am not sure if they mean anything specific. But here is one that caught my eye, this is titled "Sponsored options in the area."View the full article

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 every Monday morning. Fourteen years ago, Graham Dugoni decided to start a movement to address what he viewed as the deleterious effects of rampant smartphone usage. “What I saw was kind of impending nihilism, the sense that everyone is going to be inundated with media, and it’s going to hollow out the meaning in your life,” he recalls. An Analog Solution His response was not a manifesto or a march. It was a product: an individual, locked pouch that holds devices while users are in designated phone-free zones such as classrooms or concerts. Phones can be removed from the pouches via unlocking bases in areas where phone use is allowed. In 2014, Dugoni launched Yondr, which offers customers the tools to create phone-free spaces, including the pouches and operational resources and support. Today the company operates in more than 55 countries, works with schools in all 50 states, and counts Dave Chappelle, Bruno Mars, and Madonna among its artist partners. Dugoni acknowledges the irony of trying to combat the impacts of tech conglomerates via yet another business. “The idea of starting a company was kind of [uncomfortable] to me,” he says. He had considered pursuing his efforts via academia, but he says he realized “the only way to have a mass sociological effect was at a scale that only a company could achieve.” That Yondr sells to school systems, which often are on tight budgets, is a further complication. A recent article in The New York Times described how students are breaking into the pouches and cited examples of schools opting for low-tech (and presumably cheaper) solutions such as lockers or cubbies. “I think spending a bunch of money on a product right away was not wise,” one teacher, who instead has his students deposit their phones in a plastic caddy in his classroom, told the Times. Following In Others’ Footsteps Dugoni’s desire to turn his company into a movement echoes the ethos of Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Patagonia isn’t just a clothing and equipment maker, it “is a philosophy, a way of being, a subculture, one that represents an alternative vision of what it means to be a part of the modern economy,” writes David Gelles in Dirtbag Billionaire, his recent book about Chouinard. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Patagonia is emblematic of the uneasy relationship between capitalism and idealism that Dugoni and other well-meaning founders often encounter. Chouinard “was cautious about growing the business too quickly, but he needed to increase sales to fund his environmental philanthropy. He took good care of his employees in many ways, but never shared equity or profits with them,” Gelles tells me. “This tension is what makes Patagonia so unique. It’s a company that has wrestled with its own imperfections for decades now, using them as a source of inspiration in its unending quest to get better.” By at least one measure, Dugoni’s phone-free movement is well underway: more than 30 states ban mobile phones in schools. Dugoni views Yondr as a facilitator; enduring change needs to come from passionate people and communities. “What happens inside the spaces Yondr helps provide is really up to the people running the show,” he says. “Yondr is there to create space to allow those things to thrive.” Reader Mailbag A few weeks ago I asked you to share the youth trends you’re tracking in 2026. Many of you submitted responses that suggest that young people are embracing Yondr’s phone-free philosophies. Here’s a sampling: Lesley Gold, Cofounder And CEO, SutherlandGold Group “Gen Z is the first generation to be ‘digitally native’ and yet they are turning to analog. They are looking for wisdom that comes from experiences that are sensory. It’s like the Good Will Hunting quote (paraphrasing here): ‘You can read every book on Michelangelo, know every fact about him, and never know what the Sistine Chapel smells like.’ They want to see, touch, taste, hear, smell life . . . everything you can’t get on a screen.” Barby K. Siegel, Global CEO, Zeno Group “The youth trend we’re watching in 2026 is self-preservation. Through Zeno’s Project GAP (Generational Advisory Perspectives), we see Gen Z creating its own alignment—setting clearer tech boundaries, becoming more selective about trust, and choosing what feels livable over what looks aspirational.” Gabrielle Wesley, Chief Marketing Officer, Confectionery, Mars Snacking North America “Staying current on culture isn’t about chasing trends but earning relevance and credibility. With 93% of consumers skipping or blocking ads, Gen Z is leading the charge, and they are sending a clear message: brands must earn their time by adding real value. For Mars, that means practicing true consumer obsession—listening deeply to cultural signals and showing up in ways that are rooted in real-life experiences that reflect how this consumer thinks, feels, and behaves. For example, a live Big Game moment with Skittles turned advertising into participation, delivering a commercial straight to one lucky fan’s front yard. Younger generations don’t want to be talked at; they want to be invited in.” Read more: less tech Fast growth founders help kids break their tech addiction Why the ‘anxious generation’ needs cellphone bans in school New York law bans algorithmic feeds for kids on social media View the full article

Surveys and questionnaires are crucial tools that can provide valuable insights across various sectors. Whether you’re looking to assess customer satisfaction or gauge employee engagement, there’s a survey type customized to your needs. Each example serves a unique purpose, from measuring user experience to comprehending brand awareness. By exploring these ten inspiring examples, you can improve your decision-making processes and drive enhancements in your organization. Which survey type will be most beneficial for your goals? Key Takeaways Create customer satisfaction surveys using a mix of Likert scale and multiple-choice questions to gauge overall service experience effectively. Implement employee engagement surveys focusing on job satisfaction and career development to enhance workplace morale and retention. Design post-event feedback surveys with close-ended questions to evaluate attendee satisfaction and gather insights for future improvements. Utilize market research surveys with tailored questions to understand customer preferences and benchmark against industry standards. Conduct brand awareness surveys to assess familiarity and perception of your brand across different demographics using open-ended and multiple-choice questions. Customer Service Survey Examples When you’re looking to gather feedback on your customer service, using effective surveys can make a significant difference. Start by incorporating clear customer research survey questions that focus on overall satisfaction and staff professionalism. Use rating scale questions, allowing customers to quantify their experiences from 1 to 10, which helps identify areas needing improvement. Including qualitative survey questions, such as “What could be improved in our service?” gives customers the chance to provide detailed feedback. Post-interaction surveys can assess immediate satisfaction with specific aspects like response time and issue resolution effectiveness, gathering actionable data. Additionally, implementing Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions can help gauge customer loyalty by asking how likely they’re to recommend your service to others. These survey questions for qualitative research provide critical insights into customer sentiment, helping you improve and adapt your services based on real feedback. Employee Engagement Survey Examples In terms of employee engagement surveys, measuring job satisfaction is essential as it reflects how content you’re in your role. You’ll additionally want to assess team collaboration, which can highlight how effectively you work with your colleagues and contribute to a supportive environment. Finally, exploring career development opportunities allows you to evaluate whether the organization is helping you grow professionally, ensuring your long-term engagement and satisfaction. Measuring Job Satisfaction Measuring job satisfaction is critical for comprehending employee engagement and improving workplace dynamics. Employee engagement surveys often use Likert scale questions to evaluate job satisfaction, allowing you to express your feelings about work-life balance, communication, and professional development opportunities. Furthermore, evaluating job security and organizational commitment provides valuable insights into how you perceive your role and the company culture. By combining open-ended questions with quantitative scales, you can offer rich qualitative feedback, helping organizations pinpoint specific areas for improvement. Regularly measuring job satisfaction can lead to better retention rates, as organizations that actively seek feedback experience a 14.9% lower turnover rate. Key metrics like the Net Promoter Score (NPS) likewise help gauge your likelihood of recommending the organization as a great workplace. Assessing Team Collaboration How can organizations effectively assess team collaboration to improve employee engagement? By using effective employee engagement surveys that include both quantitative and qualitative survey questions examples. Incorporate Likert scale questions like, “My team collaborates effectively on projects,” alongside open-ended prompts such as, “What challenges do you face in collaborating with your team?” This approach yields actionable insights that can improve team dynamics. Here’s a simple table to illustrate collaboration assessment: Question Type Example Question Purpose Likert Scale My team communicates openly. Measure communication Open-Ended What could improve our collaboration? Gather qualitative insights Multiple Choice How often do you resolve conflicts effectively? Gauge conflict resolution Rating Scale Rate your level of job satisfaction in the team. Assess overall satisfaction Yes/No Do you feel heard in team discussions? Understand inclusivity Career Development Opportunities Evaluating career development opportunities within an organization plays a significant role in enhancing employee engagement and retention. Employee engagement surveys can effectively assess perceptions of available growth paths, identifying areas for improvement. You should include questions about access to training programs, mentorship availability, and clarity of career trajectories to gauge employee satisfaction. Utilizing Likert scale questions, like “I feel supported in pursuing my career goals,” quantifies sentiment toward the company’s commitment. Furthermore, qualitative research survey questions examples, such as “What extra resources would you find beneficial for your career growth?” can provide valuable insights into employee needs. Regularly analyzing these survey results helps align development opportunities with workforce expectations, ultimately boosting engagement and retention. User Experience Survey Examples When you conduct user experience surveys, choosing the right question types is essential for gathering meaningful insights. Effective methods like Likert scales, open-ended questions, and matrix questions help you measure usability and assess user engagement thoroughly. Effective Question Types What types of questions can you use to gather meaningful insights in user experience surveys? Effective user experience surveys often include a mix of qualitative and quantitative research questions. For instance, Likert scale questions can help you measure satisfaction levels, like asking users to rate navigation ease from 1 to 5. Open-ended questions, such as “What improvements would you suggest for our app?” offer valuable qualitative insights into user pain points. Rating scale questions allow respondents to score aspects like design aesthetics from 0 to 10. Matrix questions let users evaluate multiple product features simultaneously, whereas picture choice questions improve engagement by allowing visual preferences. Together, these question types improve your survey definition in research, leading to actionable insights. Measuring Usability Insights To effectively measure usability insights, it is essential to utilize a variety of question types in your user experience surveys. This approach allows you to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. For instance, qualitative survey examples might include open-ended questions in qualitative research, enabling users to provide detailed feedback. Furthermore, employing rating scale questions can help assess specific features, whereas matrix questions streamline feedback collection. Here’s a simple breakdown of question types: Question Type Purpose Likert Scale Gauges user satisfaction Open-Ended Questions Collects detailed user feedback Rating Scale Measures effectiveness of features Making your usability surveys mobile-friendly guarantees higher response rates, allowing for more accurate insights into user interactions. Enhancing User Engagement How can you effectively improve user engagement through surveys? Start by implementing user experience surveys that blend various question types, including Likert scales and open-ended questions. This approach helps you gather both quantitative data and qualitative insights on user satisfaction. Focus on specific aspects, such as navigation ease and visual appeal, to pinpoint usability issues and areas needing improvement. Incorporating interactive question formats, like sliders or click maps, makes the survey process enjoyable, which can boost response rates. Moreover, consider using follow-up questions based on initial answers to explore deeper into user experiences. Regularly analyzing feedback allows you to track changes in user satisfaction over time and make informed decisions to improve the overall user experience effectively. Post-Event Feedback Survey Examples When you’re looking to gather valuable insights after an event, a well-structured post-event feedback survey is vital. These surveys typically use close-ended questions to quickly assess attendee satisfaction levels. Common queries include overall event ratings, staff helpfulness, and the likelihood of future attendance. Such questions provide a clear picture of participant experiences. To maximize response rates, consider designing your post-event feedback surveys for mobile completion, allowing attendees to share their thoughts on-the-go. Including a comments section is important, as it encourages qualitative feedback that uncovers specific areas needing improvement—insights often missed by quantitative measures alone. Market Research Survey Examples When you conduct market research surveys, identifying key objectives is essential for gathering relevant data. Comprehending your target audience helps you tailor questions that reveal valuable insights about their preferences and behaviors. Utilizing effective data collection techniques, such as multiple-choice and rating scale questions, enables you to quantify responses and analyze trends effectively. Key Objectives Identification Identifying key objectives in market research surveys is vital for gathering valuable insights into customer preferences and behaviors. By clearly defining your goals, you can tailor your approach effectively. Here are some objectives to take into account: Identify preferred product features to improve offerings. Understand customer demographics to segment your audience. Gauge customer satisfaction using Likert scale questions for quantitative data. Gather detailed feedback through open-ended questions for qualitative insights. These objectives can guide you in creating effective surveys, such as qualitative research survey examples or sample questionnaires for qualitative research. Utilizing these strategies guarantees you gain meaningful data, helping you make informed decisions about your products and services. Target Audience Insights How can you gain a deeper comprehension of your target audience? Conducting a market research survey is a valuable method to gather insights on customer preferences, demographics, and purchasing behaviors. By incorporating open-ended qualitative questions into your qualitative questionnaire, you encourage respondents to share detailed feedback, providing rich qualitative data that can inform product development. This survey for qualitative research can reveal trends in customer expectations and satisfaction levels. Furthermore, utilizing multiple-choice and rating scale questions allows for quick data collection and quantifiable metrics, which simplifies analysis. Benchmarking your results against industry standards helps identify your position in the market, enabling you to pinpoint areas for competitive advantage and better align your offerings with customer needs. Data Collection Techniques Data collection techniques play a crucial role in market research surveys, as they directly impact the quality and depth of insights gathered. When designing your survey, consider these effective methods: Multiple-choice questions for quantitative data, helping you gauge preferences and satisfaction. Open-ended questionnaires in qualitative research, allowing respondents to share detailed feedback. Demographic questions to segment audiences by age, gender, and income, enabling targeted marketing strategies. Conditional questions that tailor follow-ups based on previous answers, gathering deeper insights. Understanding what’s questionnaire survey method can help you choose the right formats. Product Feedback Survey Examples Multiple-choice questions help streamline data collection, making it easier to analyze common trends. Furthermore, rating scale questions, such as asking customers to rate usability from 1 to 10, provide specific insights for your product development team. Consider using conditional questions to probe deeper based on initial responses, ensuring relevant and focused data collection. Net Promoter Score Survey Examples Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys serve as a crucial tool for measuring customer loyalty, allowing businesses to gauge how likely customers are to recommend their products or services. These surveys typically ask respondents to rate their likelihood on a scale from 0 to 10. To calculate NPS, you subtract the percentage of detractors (scores 0-6) from promoters (scores 9-10), offering a single metric that reflects overall customer sentiment. Here are some effective NPS survey examples: “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us?” “What is the primary reason for your score?” (an example of an open-ended question for qualitative research) “What can we improve to better serve you?” “What features do you value the most?” NPS surveys are quantitative, but combining them with qualitative inquiries can improve insights considerably. Customer Satisfaction Survey Examples How can businesses effectively gauge customer satisfaction? One way is through customer satisfaction surveys, which typically include questions about overall satisfaction and specific service experiences. By using formats like Likert scale and multiple-choice questions, you can measure satisfaction levels and pinpoint areas for improvement. Question Type Purpose Example Likert Scale Measure satisfaction How satisfied are you with our service? Multiple Choice Identify reasons What influenced your purchase decision? Open-Ended Gather qualitative insights What suggestions do you have for us? Timing is essential; sending surveys shortly after a purchase can yield more relevant responses. Analyzing these results helps track trends over time, measure changes, and benchmark against industry standards, eventually guiding your business strategies. Brand Awareness Survey Examples What methods can businesses use to assess brand awareness effectively? Brand awareness surveys are critical tools for this purpose. You can create a thorough survey by including various question types, such as: Multiple-choice questions: Ask, “Which of the following brands do you recall seeing in advertisements recently?” Likert scale questions: Use queries like, “On a scale of 1 to 5, how familiar are you with [Brand]?” Open-ended questions: Include prompts such as, “What comes to mind when you think of [Brand]?” This serves as an example of a qualitative research questionnaire. Demographic questions: Collect data to analyze awareness levels across different segments. Event Planning Survey Examples When planning an event, have you considered how valuable attendee feedback can be? Event planning surveys play a vital role in improving future events. Combining close-ended and open-ended questions helps capture both quantitative ratings and qualitative insights. Here’s a simple layout for your survey: Question Type Example Questions Close-Ended Questions How satisfied were you with the event? (1-10) Open-Ended Questions What did you enjoy most about the event? Specific Feedback Rate the venue choice (1-10) Future Suggestions What topics should we cover next time? Understanding the difference between a survey and a questionnaire is significant; surveys typically analyze data from multiple questions, whereas questionnaires gather responses. By utilizing these event planning surveys effectively, you can improve attendee experiences and tailor your events to their preferences. Frequently Asked Questions What Are 5 Good Survey Questions? To create effective survey questions, consider these five: First, ask, “How satisfied are you with our service on a scale of 1 to 5?” Second, use a Likert scale question like, “Rate your agreement with: ‘The product met my expectations.'” Third, include an open-ended question, “What improvements would you suggest?” Fourth, offer multiple-choice options: “What’s your primary reason for using our product?” Finally, employ an NPS question: “How likely are you to recommend us?” Can You Think of Examples of Surveys in Your World Today? In today’s world, various organizations utilize surveys to gather valuable insights. For instance, e-commerce companies often use customer satisfaction surveys to assess user experiences and refine services. Tech platforms frequently engage users through feedback forms, asking for ratings on features. Event organizers might send post-event surveys to measure attendee satisfaction and gather suggestions. These surveys help businesses understand customer preferences, improve services, and ultimately nurture loyalty by addressing user needs effectively. What Are Some Fun Survey Questions to Ask? When designing a survey, consider incorporating fun questions to engage participants. You might ask, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” or “What’s your guilty pleasure TV show?” These questions not only spark creativity but furthermore offer relatable insights. In addition, whimsical prompts like “If you were a kitchen appliance, which one would you be?” can evoke amusing responses. Such light-hearted questions can elevate participant enjoyment and improve overall completion rates. What Are Two Examples of Surveys? You can consider a Customer Satisfaction Survey, which measures how satisfied you’re with your overall experience using a product or service. It often employs a Likert scale for quantifying feelings. Another example is an Employee Engagement Survey, where you rate statements like “I feel valued at my workplace.” This helps organizations understand workforce morale and identify areas for improvement, ensuring a more engaged and productive work environment. Conclusion Incorporating diverse surveys and questionnaires can greatly improve your comprehension of various stakeholders, whether customers, employees, or event attendees. Each type serves a unique purpose, from measuring satisfaction to gathering feedback for improvement. By utilizing these tools effectively, you can propel informed decision-making and strategic improvements in your organization. Remember to prioritize clarity in your questions and consider the specific insights you aim to gain to maximize the value of your surveys and questionnaires. Image via Google Gemini This article, "10 Inspiring Examples of Surveys and Questionnaires You Can Use" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Plume's new platform promises to cover all the operational needs of home broadband service providers and their subscribers, the company says. The post Interview: Plume launches Open Agentic AI Platform to enable ‘full ISP customer journey’ appeared first on Wi-Fi NOW Global. View the full article

Drop reflects uncertainty among homebuyers around chancellor Rachel Reeves’ November Budget View the full article

Charter operators vie to secure slots in Muscat as airports in UAE and Qatar remain closedView the full article

The rise of full-body MRI scans has been framed as a victory for consumer empowerment. Skip the referrals. Skip the waiting. Pay out of pocket and finally see what is happening inside your body, before it’s too late. For many, especially women, these scans are compelling. They offer agency in a healthcare system that often feels slow, dismissive, and reactive, rather than preventive. What many women would be surprised to learn, however, is despite the name, many full-body MRI scans do not reliably screen for breast cancer, the most common cancer in women. Women make roughly 80% of healthcare purchasing decisions in the United States. They spend more out of pocket than men and are significantly more likely to engage in preventive care, before symptoms appear. Women are also, ironically, the same population driving the growth of direct-to-consumer healthcare, from blood testing and longevity clinics to wearables and these “full-body” scans. The assumption most consumers make is simple. If a scan purports to image the entire body, it must include the breasts. These scans assess the brain, spine, liver, kidneys, and reproductive organs. These scans may produce reports that say everything looks normal. They may even use language like “all clear.” What they cannot do, in many cases, is detect early breast cancer. Not a nuance This is not a subtle technical nuance. Breast-specific MRI requires precise conditions to be effective: dedicated breast coils, prone positioning, contrast enhancement, and high spatial resolution. Full body MRI scans are optimized for speed and coverage, not for the detailed imaging that breast tissue requires. As a result, these scans can miss small or early lesions, particularly in dense breasts, which affect nearly half of all women over 40 and are common in younger women. Radiologists understand this distinction. The companies selling these scans are aware of this as well, and they even include this disclosure in the fine print. However, the average consumer often isn’t aware. The issue is compounded by how reassurance, or an “all clear” report, can affect consumer behavior. Many women already avoid routine mammography because of fear, discomfort, radiation concerns, or prior negative experiences. Dr. Marty Makary, FDA Commissioner, pointed out in an interview recently that roughly 40% of women skip mammograms for these reasons. When those same women receive a clean full-body scan, even with disclaimers advising continued screening, the psychological effect is powerful. Relief tends to override caution. False sense of security This is not about bad intentions. It is about predictable human behavior. If a woman believes she has just paid for a comprehensive “full body” scan, she may deprioritize another screening that feels redundant or stressful. When the scan she relied on was never capable of evaluating her breasts in the first place, the sense of security becomes misleading. The way these scans are marketed makes the problem worse. Much of the language, imagery, and cultural framing around preventive imaging has been shaped by the same audience that dominates wellness and longevity media more broadly: The male “biohacker.” The optimization-focused technologist. The podcast-listening early adopter. This is not inherently negative, but it reflects who has historically held influence in venture-backed healthcare. Women, despite being the primary buyers, often remain peripheral in how these tools are designed and explained. The result is a mismatch between who the product is built for and who is actually using it. Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, and its incidence has been rising, including among younger patients who fall outside traditional screening guidelines. These are precisely the women drawn to proactive, cash-pay healthcare. Yet the most visible preventive imaging offerings do not adequately address the risk they face most. Valuable in some contexts To be clear, full-body MRI scans are not useless. I underwent one recently and not only enjoyed my experience, but was relieved upon receiving my report. These scans can surface certain conditions and provide valuable information in specific contexts. The issue is not that they exist, but that they are positioned as comprehensive reassurance without clearly communicating their limits. If a scan cannot screen for breast cancer, that fact should be explicit, prominent, and impossible to miss. Not buried in fine print, softened by marketing language, or deferred to a follow-up conversation after purchase. Healthcare innovation often celebrates disruption while reproducing old blind spots. Women are encouraged to take control of their health, to invest in prevention, and to advocate for themselves. When they do, they deserve tools that are designed with their bodies in mind and explanations that respect their intelligence. That gap is why I founded BeSound. Full-body MRI scans are a real step forward, but women also need specific imaging for the cancer they are most likely to develop. Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, and it should not require the cost of a full-body scan to screen for it. When dedicated breast imaging is done well and priced far lower, it becomes something women can actually access and repeat, not a one-time splurge meant to buy peace of mind. Preventive imaging should be honest about what it can and cannot do. It should prioritize conditions that are common, deadly, and detectable when found early. It should not rely on the comfort of a broad label like “full body” to imply coverage that does not exist. Peace of mind is not a marketing outcome. It is a medical one, and it only holds value when it is grounded in reality. 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Search engines used to work one-to-one: one search query returned a unique set of results featuring pages that best matched the exact query searched. Then they evolved to many-to-one, recognizing that queries like “Sydney plumber” and “plumbing service in Sydney”…Read more ›View the full article

This year 40 companies had what it takes to land on the Best Mortgage Companies to Work For list. View the full article

New data centers can lead to higher electric bills and lock in aging, outdated coal plants. But a Google project in Minnesota takes a different approach: The tech giant is paying to build enough clean power that existing customers won’t foot the bill, and the grid will get innovative new tech—a massive battery that will be the largest by capacity in the world. This week, major tech companies are expected to visit the White House and pledge to shoulder more of their own energy demand. The Minnesota project offers a concrete example of how that can go a step further and use clean power. “Google has long been committed to scaling our infrastructure responsibility, which includes paying for the electricity and associated costs of our growth,” said Lucia Tian, Google’s head of advanced energy technologies. “Investing in the systems that make our communities more resilient is table stakes for us.” To support the data center, which will be built in the small town of Pine Island, Google inked an agreement with the local utility Xcel Energy to fund 1,900 megawatts of new clean energy. It’s similar to an approach that Google took in Nevada to pay for a geothermal power plant from Fervo, a company with next-generation technology that otherwise would have been too expensive to add to the grid. In the Minnesota project, Google is paying for 1,400 megawatts of new wind power and 200 megawatts of solar power while helping pioneer another new technology—a battery that can store energy over days instead of hours. A unique battery for a more reliable grid The battery, from a startup called Form Energy, uses iron-air technology to help store renewable energy longer. The company describes it as reversibly rusting iron: The iron reacts with oxygen to store and release energy, with storage lasting 100 hours. The new plant in Minnesota will be big enough to deliver 300 megawatts of power and store an enormous 30 gigawatt-hours of energy, making it the largest battery by capacity that’s been announced so far. By comparison, that’s more storage than all of the battery projects built in the U.S. in 2024 added together. “The unique thing about Form is it’s one of the only options out there on the market for that 100-plus-hour storage,” Tian said. That’s useful to cover any gaps in renewable electricity. “A long-duration battery can help us maximize how we use renewable energy when we encounter extended periods of lower solar and wind generation, such as during the middle of winter when we can see several days of cloudy weather with very little wind,” Xcel said in a statement. The technology is cost-competitive with natural gas. The battery, along with the solar and wind power, won’t connect directly to the data center but will instead feed into the broader grid. Google declined to share the facility’s expected power consumption. But the new clean energy capacity will exceed what the data center requires—a reflection, according the company, of Google’s commitment to making the grid more resilient. “It’s serving as a grid resource,” Tian said. “And one of the things that is exciting for us about this project is it’s also serving to catalyze this new technology at a scale that it hasn’t been deployed at before.” The battery is a major project for Form Energy, which has spent the past few years ramping up production at its factory at a former steel mill in West Virginia. The company is finishing the installation of its first commercial battery at another site in Minnesota. That first project stores far less energy—just 150 megawatt-hours. But the system is modular, with the batteries inside shipping containers that just need to be added together for more capacity. “It’s not that we have to build a new machine at a larger scale,” said Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo, who founded the company after working on energy storage at Tesla. “It’s just more of the same.” The biggest challenge was manufacturing the electrodes; the company had to produce 100,000 of them, or around 60 miles’ worth of material, to prove to itself and customers like Xcel and Google that it was ready for large-scale production. It’s planning to quickly scale up now. “Our hope is that this project sends that demand signal that allows them to build out their manufacturing here in the U.S.,” Tian said. Will the industry follow? Other tech companies, including Microsoft and Anthropic, have said they plan to cover the cost of new energy infrastructure needed for data centers. More are expected to make that pledge now after pressure from the The President administration, though the details of those agreements—likely nonbinding—haven’t yet come out, and it remains to be seen how closely some companies will follow them. It’s also not clear how many companies will voluntarily prioritize clean energy. Meta, for example, is installing natural gas generators to power a new data center in El Paso. Environmental advocates are skeptical. “We do believe it’s possible to responsibly build large-scale/hyperscale data centers, but it’s incredibly difficult to accomplish that task due to the resource demand of these facilities,” said Kyle Rosas, Minnesota deputy director for the nonprofit Clean Water Action. Many also question the need for them. The new Google data center will power its core services like YouTube and Maps, but most new data centers are being built for AI. “There are significant concerns about an AI bubble, and the lack of profit from these companies are not necessarily inspiring confidence in the future of the industry as-is,” Rosas said. “So as of right now, it’s difficult for us to say these facilities should exist at this scale.“ Pressure from communities can have an impact: Last year, at least 25 proposed data centers were canceled because of protests from people living nearby over concerns about electric bills, pollution from fossil fuel power plants, and water use. (It’s worth noting that Google’s new data center doesn’t use water for cooling; the company will employ air cooling, which uses more electricity, but that will be covered by the new clean power.) The risk of community pushback is another clear argument for tech companies to go as far as possible to do the right thing. The new Minnesota project shows how it can work. “We think this is a great example for how to do it well,” said Form Energy’s Jaramillo. “And I expect a lot more of this kind of thing to be happening.” View the full article

Reality is melting away before our eyes. Identity spoofing against older adults alone grew by 8x between 2020 and 2024, driven in part by convincing AI impersonations of friends and loved ones. It’s a problem costing people in the U.S. nearly half a billion dollars a year with no end in sight. Which is why a pair of design studios teamed up on a provocative solution that starts with a real-life handshake. Called Quartz, it’s a ring that adds friends to your network by literally shaking hands. And from there, it gatekeeps your online communications by proving you’re alive, proving you know the person you’re talking to, and proving provenance through encrypted channels. If any of these checks fails, then anything from text messages to Instagram DMs will be cut off to avoid spoofing. The speculative project was developed by design studios Modem and Retinaa. But while it’s purely a concept, the ideas offer a sort of blueprint that seems feasible for production. How Quartz works It all begins with a ring, fit with a chunk of quartz. That quartz is unique to your ring, with geometries that transpose directly to a blockchain certificate tied to your specific jewelry. The ring is also loaded with a vein scanner, which can see beneath your skin to measure your unique blood vessels. This scan becomes a verifiable image of you, similar to FaceID. Meanwhile, integrated pulse measurement assures that you are in living, breathing condition, any time your identity is verified. When you meet someone for the first time, you shake hands—and via NFC, your ring and their ring generate a “shared secret” cryptographic key. That key becomes the foundation to all of your future communications. If any piece fails, the communication channels go dark. Naturally, all of this friction limits how many people could be in your own Quartz network—reintroducing physical barriers to friendship that have been more or less erased in the modern world. Ultimately, not every friend on your Instagram or TikTok page could be part of this network. But that’s also what allows you to protect your most precious relationships so closely. Dystopia or Utopia? Now, there is still something . . . backward? . . eerie? . . depressing? about using a series of digital technologies to verify our real-life relationships. But that paradox is intentional, according to Scott Kooken, research and design director at Modem. “Where most online identity systems are built from abstract mathematics and invisible flows of data, Quartz reintroduces something physical and human,” he writes via email. “Physical presence is a foundational layer of the security stack. Without it, the system falls apart. In a world where everything else can be synthesized, that’s precisely what makes it the most valuable layer of all. The handshake isn’t symbolic: it’s part of the architecture.” Indeed, with Quartz, the security is the design which is the culture; your safety is built upon a human ritual that manages both the ring’s natural UX and its unseen cryptographic layer. To see what I mean by that, compare Quartz to the volleyball-sized eyeball scanner proposed by Sam Altman’s Tools for Humanity. This object has largely the same function as Quartz: scan someone’s biometrics to prove they are who they say they are. But this eye scanner is completely divorced from real-world rituals and interpersonal relationships; the whole idea looks torn from a 1990s James Cameron film, or a perhaps mid-aughts Logitech webcam. Right now, with AI blowing up more or less everything about our digital lives, we have the narrowest of windows to reimagine what we got wrong with our first swing at the internet and mobile technologies. We can decide whether we want to live in a society filled with handshakes or iris scans. But will we? Haha. No. We probably won’t. Just hardwire TikTok to my pacemaker and call it a day. View the full article

Over the last decade, as consumers became more aware of climate change, the fashion industry suddenly scrambled to curb its enormous environmental footprint. Everyone from Prada to H&M launched products made of recycled nylon and organic cotton. Gucci, Patagonia, and Timberland invested in regenerative agriculture. Adidas and Nike began designing fully recyclable sneakers. Resale programs popped up everywhere. According to many industry insiders, this moment has now passed. Politics and culture are no longer focused on the climate crisis. Consumers, faced with the higher price of sustainable products, consistently choose their wallets over their values. In response, many brands have quietly abandoned their sustainability goals. Arne Arens watched all of this from the inside. As CEO of The North Face and later Boardriders, the parent company of Quiksilver and Billabong, he lived through fashion’s sustainability push—and its retreat. But he hasn’t lost faith in the industry’s ability to clean up its act. Now he’s betting the next chapter of his career on a Bay Area startup called Unspun, which has developed proprietary 3D weaving technology capable of producing pants with significantly fewer carbon emissions, reduced waste, and shorter lead times. Unspun, which has more than $50 million in VC funding, has named Arens as its new CEO. The hire is a signal that a well-known industry leader believes the technology is ready to move from proof-of-concept to scale. The Enthusiasm That Faded Ask Arens about fashion’s sustainability retreat and he doesn’t hesitate. He confirms what anyone who covered the industry closely already sensed: There was real pressure, real investment, and then a gradual letting-go. “Part of that is that people have never really been able to figure out how to do sustainability cost-competitively,” he says. “Season after season we tried to move to 100% recycled nylon and polyester and cotton. But when we looked at the margin breakdown, we realized we’d have to price everything up by $5 to $10, and unfortunately consumers are just not ready to pay for that.” More broadly, the politics of sustainability shifted. In the U.S., we went from a president who installed a climate czar to one who has staffed his cabinet with climate deniers. Much like DEI, the cultural forces that made sustainability a corporate imperative changed, and brands no longer felt pressure to signal their green credentials. But taking a step back, Arens has come to the conclusion that making an ethical argument to consumers was never going to be a successful business strategy. Ethical brands needed to find a way to make sustainable products affordable—ideally, even cheaper than traditional products. That’s when he came across Unspun, which promises fashion brands cost savings while also slashing their environmental impact. “The financial rationale for adopting Unspun technology is even stronger than the decarbonization one,” he says. “You’re getting the zero waste piece for free.” The Machine That Changed the Math Kevin Martin cofounded Unspun a decade ago on a simple insight: The fashion industry’s biggest sustainability problem isn’t the materials. It’s the mismatch between what gets made and what actually sells. His vision was to build technology that would help the industry’s largest players operate with significantly less waste—and make the economics work while doing it. The fashion industry’s current model forces brands to place orders with factories nine to twelve months out. That planning horizon generates staggering inefficiencies. A brand might forecast that soft pink will be in style next spring and place large orders for dresses and shirts in that hue. If their prediction is wrong—as it often is in our current fast-moving fashion cycle—much of their inventory will not sell. Martin estimates forecast error typically runs between five and 20%—meaning a meaningful fraction of every season’s production will end up discounted, donated, or destroyed. “All of the money and time and energy spent to make something, move it around, not sell it, and then destroy it,” he says, is “the biggest slice of waste.” Unspun’s answer is a 3D weaving machine it calls Vega. The machine controls thousands of individual yarns simultaneously, producing a complete pant leg in a single automated process with minimal human finishing required. Every part of the system cuts cost. Labor costs are slashed. There is near zero fabric waste. And perhaps most importantly, companies can respond to real-time demand, rather than year-old forecasts. The technology currently produces woven trousers—everyday casual, workwear, chinos, and soon denim—with plans to expand. Trousers make sense as a starting product. The tube shape of the leg maps well to the weaving process. It is also a relatively simple design that can be replicated across different waist and inseam sizes, and colors. Passing the Mr. Burns Test Martin has a framework he uses when thinking about sustainability impact at scale. He calls it the Mr. Burns test—a reference to The Simpsons’ greedy nuclear plant owner. “If you want to have a big sustainability impact, you have to sell to Mr. Burns,” he says. The overlap between profitability and sustainability, he argues, “is where all of us with a mission of sustainability regardless of industry need to be focused.” Unspun’s pitch to brand partners leans on this logic. Arens, drawing on two decades watching brands manage inventory from the inside, describes the proposition in stark financial terms. The ability to reduce lead times by two-thirds or more means dramatically less capital tied up in future inventory, dramatically less waste at season’s end, and dramatically better margins overall. “There are gains from a working capital perspective because you don’t have to commit dollars to inventory that far out,” Arens says. “Then, you’re cutting out the wasted inventory that invariably results from ordering a year out. Instead, you’re getting full margin on every item you make. The overall financial impact is absolutely massive.” From Microfactory to Scale Unspun currently operates a small factory (or “micro-factory” in its parlance) in Emeryville, California, where it runs machines continuously and hosts brands for sampling and proof-of-concept runs. Walmart and Decathlon are among its confirmed customers, among others that can’t yet be named. The momentum is building quickly. Martin says that new customers are visiting weekly. Now, what is holding Unspun back is capacity. Unspun is now searching for a U.S. manufacturing facility, pursuing what Martin describes as a “consortium approach”—getting brands and factories to commit together to a facility that will be capable of serving many customers. In Europe, where apparel manufacturing infrastructure still exists in countries like Portugal and Turkey, the company is pursuing a faster path by selling machines directly into existing factories. This expansion is fueled by $50 million in venture capital, but future funding is expected to incorporate public-private partnerships. Martin points to New Mexico—which offers incentives to attract manufacturing—as an example of capital that could underwrite factory buildouts. “It’s not really a left or right issue,” he says. “The common interest is making things in America.” Why This Hire Matters In a moment when much of the fashion industry has gone quiet on sustainability, Arens is betting loud in the opposite direction—leaving a career arc of large, profitable brands for a startup still building out its first real factory. He’s candid about what he’s walking into. “It’s a very different size of company that I’m used to working at,” Arens acknowledges. But he’s equally convinced of Unspun’s central premise—that a technology simultaneously solving for speed, waste, and financial efficiency represents something significant. The fact that someone with that perspective is now the one making the pitch—to the very peers he left behind—may be the clearest signal yet that sustainability in fashion isn’t dead. It’s just finally learning to speak the only language that’s ever really moved the industry: the language of money. View the full article

Australians dramatically reduced their water usage during the Millennium Drought in the 2000s. It was one of the longest recorded droughts in Australian history, and in some places where sprinklers weren’t allowed, people watered their plants and grass with shower water. Like turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth and using shower timers, keeping buckets in the shower became a part of daily life during the drought. Now a newly designed device seeks to update that water-saving impulse with a watering can specifically designed for the bathroom. The 17-by-17-inch Sevas water catcher is about the size of a bathroom scale, and holds 5 liters of water. The contraption lies flat over the shower drain to capture falling water as it heats. A silver push-latch plug can open or close the container with the push of your foot, and its sloping design funnels water into the container. Slim and easy to carry, the Sevas water catcher weighs about 2.6 pounds empty and up to 13.6 pounds when full. When not in use it can be stored vertically without taking up much space. There are wide handles on two sides; to pour the water out, there’s a separate opening where a removable watering spout can be attached. The water catcher is made out of fully recyclable HDPE plastic with a stainless steel plug. The Australian brand also commits to planting two trees and offsetting carbon with every product sold, claiming that if its contraption is used once a day, it can save 1,800 liters of water annually. Though the “big dry,” as Australians came to call it, broke by 2010 and water restrictions eased, old habits die hard, and water usage across cities in southeastern Australia remains lower than before the drought. The Sevas taps into those practices, and it’s had resonance outside Australia too. The brand, which launched last summer, sold out its U.S. stock in October. View the full article

I recently came across an interesting academic article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. It was titled, ​“The relationships between social media use, time management, and decision-making styles.”​ The paper’s author surveyed 612 university students and young adults, asking them, among other things, about their digital habits and levels of personal organization. Using a linear regression analysis, she uncovered the following: “Social media use was negatively and significantly associated with overall time management and all its subscales.” Here’s the standard interpretation of this result: Social media is distracting, and if you’re distracted, it becomes harder to maintain control over your schedule. So, the more you use social media, the worse you become at time management. But I’ve become interested in the reverse form of this argument: the better your planning system, the less time you’ll spend on engagement-based applications like social media. Here’s my thinking… When you’re following an intentional schedule, your efforts are oriented toward goals that you find important. You also feel a satisfying sense of self-efficacy. These realities engage your long-term reward system, which can override the urges generated by its short-term counterpart, dissipating the drive for quick gratification from activities like glancing at your phone. In other words: The more you organize your analog life, the less appealing you’ll find the digital alternative. If this is true, then maybe the thing social media companies fear most is not some newly-powerful application-blocking software or impossibly strict regulation, but rather a good old-fashioned daily planner. In Other News: A lot of people I know have been freaked out recently by a viral essay with a grandiose title: ​“Something Big is Happening.”​ I recently released ​a short video​ in which I conduct a close analysis of this piece. (Spoiler alert: I wasn’t impressed.) ​Check it out.​ (More generally, I’ve been considering starting a separate weekly podcast/newsletter dedicated to providing a reality check on recent AI news. It feels like it might be useful to separate this discussion from my existing podcast and newsletter, which are more focused on how individuals can seek depth in a distracted world. But also, maybe this is a bad idea? I’m interested to hear your thoughts about this plan.) The post What Do Social Media Companies Fear? Time Management. appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

I recently came across an interesting academic article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. It was titled, ​“The relationships between social media use, time management, and decision-making styles.”​ The paper’s author surveyed 612 university students and young adults, asking them, among other things, about their digital habits and levels of personal organization. Using a linear regression analysis, she uncovered the following: “Social media use was negatively and significantly associated with overall time management and all its subscales.” Here’s the standard interpretation of this result: Social media is distracting, and if you’re distracted, it becomes harder to maintain control over your schedule. So, the more you use social media, the worse you become at time management. But I’ve become interested in the reverse form of this argument: the better your planning system, the less time you’ll spend on engagement-based applications like social media. Here’s my thinking… When you’re following an intentional schedule, your efforts are oriented toward goals that you find important. You also feel a satisfying sense of self-efficacy. These realities engage your long-term reward system, which can override the urges generated by its short-term counterpart, dissipating the drive for quick gratification from activities like glancing at your phone. In other words: The more you organize your analog life, the less appealing you’ll find the digital alternative. If this is true, then maybe the thing social media companies fear most is not some newly-powerful application-blocking software or impossibly strict regulation, but rather a good old-fashioned daily planner. In Other News: A lot of people I know have been freaked out recently by a viral essay with a grandiose title: ​“Something Big is Happening.”​ I recently released ​a short video​ in which I conduct a close analysis of this piece. (Spoiler alert: I wasn’t impressed.) ​Check it out.​ (More generally, I’ve been considering starting a separate weekly podcast/newsletter dedicated to providing a reality check on recent AI news. It feels like it might be useful to separate this discussion from my existing podcast and newsletter, which are more focused on how individuals can seek depth in a distracted world. But also, maybe this is a bad idea? I’m interested to hear your thoughts about this plan.) The post What Do Social Media Companies Fear? Time Management. appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

It might come as a surprise that some open source projects like WordPress are said to be run by benevolent dictators for life. The post Why Open Source Projects Are Run By Benevolent Dictators For Life appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Voiceprint Claude plugin clones your writing style based on five writing samples. Works with any SKILL.md-compatible tool. The post New “Voiceprint” Claude Plugin Clones Your Writing Style appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

We analyzed 1.9M citations last year in an attempt to answer that question. But, as with everything AI-related, a lot has changed since then. For instance, as of January 2026, AI Overviews are now powered by Gemini 3 to better answer…Read more ›View the full article

In 2025, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson from The Atlantic released a book called Abundance, which posited that America had developed a culture of scarcity. Overregulation and overall risk aversion from the government, the authors argued, were stifling the development of infrastructure and housing in the country. To remedy this, they proposed an “abundance agenda,” one that focused on a growth mindset among elected officials that would help foster long-term prosperity. Although the provocation has its challenges, it got me thinking: What if we applied the idea of abundance to our work? For over a decade, I’ve occupied two worlds simultaneously—one foot in the world of practice as an advertising executive and one foot in the world of academia as a marketing professor. On an average week, I’d work at the ad agency from 9 to 5 and then teach a night or two at the university from 6 to 8. This duality made me better at both jobs. I taught what I practiced, which made course concepts more applicable for students, and I applied what I studied, which made my practice more rigorous. I didn’t have the language for it then. I just thought, Why do I have to choose? Essentially, I had adopted an abundance agenda for my career. I removed the confines that restricted my career to a “one-job-at-a-time” approach to navigating corporate America. I was going to do both—not a side hustle, not a moonlighting gig, not a hobby, but a portfolio career that prioritized my development in both arenas. Before long, I found myself in a university class, but this time as a student studying consumer culture theory and pursuing a doctorate. In doing so, my career has prospered. But what if we applied an abundance agenda to our organizational culture? Apparently, Bing Chen, the cofounder and CEO of Gold House and managing director of AU Holdings, was one step ahead of me. As YouTube’s global head of creator development and management from 2010 to 2014, Chen helped build the platform’s multibillion-dollar creator economy. In 2018, he launched Gold House, a nonprofit that embraces an abundance mentality and is dedicated to accelerating the socioeconomic equity of Asians and Pacific Islanders. While experiencing all the accolades and praise from his many achievements at Google, he wanted something more. In fact, during our interview with Chen for the latest episode of the From the Culture podcast, he revealed that his very first word as an infant was “more.” And this idea of “more” resonates throughout the organization and Chen’s leadership style. If Gold House was going to succeed at supporting Asians and Pacific Islanders, it first had to succeed at supporting itself—its people. But that doesn’t mean merely supporting their work, safety, and well-being; that’s just table stakes for Chen. Instead, at Gold House, this means supporting your dreams. So, the first question Chen and his team ask candidates when they interview for a job centers squarely on getting to know the candidate’s dreams. Not their skill set. Not their experience. But their dream. Chen contextualizes the questions with a scenario: “If I gave you $10 billion and the world’s biggest Rolodex, where the person on the other end of the line will say yes to whatever you ask, what would you do?” According to Chen, if the job the candidate has applied for is not related to or accelerates that dream, he will end the interview right there. Why? Because he wants to support the long-term ambitions of his team members, just as he does his clients and his constituents. The lesson for leaders that Chen realized when he adopted an abundance agenda for Gold House was that the organization will get more out of its employees when the organization understands its employees’ greater ambitions and helps advance their trajectory to achieving them. This shift toward a culture of abundance has paid off handsomely for Chen because this approach has enabled the Gold House company to prosper. Not only is the organization behind paradigm-bending shifts to cultural narratives about the Asian Pacific community through its successful marketing campaigns and strategies for movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All at Once and the Netflix series Beef, but it has also accelerated the dreams of over 100 Asian Pacific founders with the $30 million Gold House Venture Fund. For Chen, this is the power of thinking audaciously enough to desire more and commit ourselves to it. It’s not a skill so much as it is a mindset; one that we all can adopt. Check out our full conversation with Bing Chen and how he developed an abundance mindset on our latest episode of the From the Culture podcast. View the full article

Patchstack's state of WordPress Security report shows more sites get hacked within hours of vulnerability disclosure The post Report Shows WordPress Sites Are Getting Hacked At Faster Rate appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

We live in a world, especially in Western cultures, that relentlessly promotes positive thinking and celebrates self-belief to the point of sidelining reality—that inconvenient thing that does not disappear simply because we ignore it. Self-help advice and pop-psychology slogans urge us to stop worrying about what others think, to believe in ourselves no matter what, and to focus on our strengths. They rarely stress the value of acknowledging our flaws and limitations, even when this requires revising, if not abandoning, our childhood ambitions. It may sound harsh, but science shows clear benefits to confronting our shortcomings, aligning our self-assessments with our actual abilities and, when necessary, adjusting them downward. What the research says Consider some key findings from academic research. 1. Metacognition is a key enabler of learning. In any domain of skill or competence, practice improves performance, but practice without feedback, or feedback without self-awareness, leads to stagnation. Progress depends on our ability to track our own development, to know what we do well and where we fall short. Metacognition, the capacity to think about and evaluate our own thinking and performance, is the mechanism that makes this possible. Whether you are learning a language, a musical instrument, or a sport, believing you are better than you are removes the incentive to improve. And when the gap between how good you think you are and how good others perceive you to be becomes too wide, the result is not confidence, but credibility loss. When others are of the opinion that you suck, and that you are totally unaware of the fact that you suck, they will think even more poorly of you than if you were aware. 2. Excess persistence can be more damaging than insufficient persistence. We admire stories of spectacular success built on grit and determination, but we forget that these winners usually combined persistence with talent, timing, and opportunity. They are vivid anecdotes, not representative data, and the plural of anecdote is not data. The far more common stories of people who persist heroically and still fail rarely make it into biographies or Netflix documentaries. Psychologists describe this as the false hope syndrome: People set unrealistic goals, overestimate the speed and ease of progress, and double down when reality resists. The result is wasted time, sunk costs, burnout, and foregone alternatives that might have suited them better. Sensible persistence is evidence-based. Just like competent scientists abandon hypotheses that do not replicate, rational investors cut their losses, and effective leaders know when a strategy has stopped working, recognizing when your effort is no longer productive is not a weakness, but a sound judgment call. In careers, as in research, the goal is not to try harder at everything, but to try longer only where feedback suggests improvement is plausible and success has a high-enough probability of occurring. As Daniel Kahneman noted: “Courage is willingness to take the risk once you know the odds”—but if you are blind or delusional about the odds, you are simply displaying wishful thinking or self-destructive recklessness rather than courage. 3. While deliberate practice and effort matter, talent and potential are key. The popular reading of deliberate practice implies that anyone can achieve elite performance with enough hours of focused training. Yet the evidence is more nuanced. A large meta-analysis found that deliberate practice explains about 26% of performance differences in games, 21% in music, 18% in sports, 4% in education, and only 1% in typical professions (knowledge work jobs) once other factors, such as prior talent or expertise, are considered. In other words, practice matters, but far less than we think. And the best predictor of performance is not practice, but how much talent and potential someone has to begin with. Baseline cognitive ability, personality traits such as conscientiousness and openness, access to coaching, health, and simple luck also play substantial roles. The implication is not fatalistic. It is practical. Improvement is possible in almost any direction, but not infinitely and not equally for everyone. Ignoring aptitude leads to wasted effort and frustration; aligning ambition with talent or potential allows effort to compound. As in investing, the goal is not to bet everywhere, but to double down where the expected return is highest. The power of positive illusions To be sure, there are short term benefits to ignoring weaknesses. Overconfidence can help you charm an interviewer or deliver a confident presentation, provided the audience is not too discerning. Positive illusions can protect self-esteem and reduce anxiety. Optimistic distortions (which, by the way, are the norm) sometimes encourage experimentation that reveals hidden strengths. Entrepreneurs often start companies precisely because they underestimate the odds. Yet these advantages are temporary. Eventually markets, colleagues, and customers provide brutally honest feedback. In the long run, reality excels at fact-checking. There is also a moral case for recognizing our limits. When leaders refuse to confront their blind spots, others pay the price. History is full of confident incompetence—from failed mergers to catastrophic political decisions. A little humility would have saved billions of dollars and countless careers. In organizational psychology, we often say that integrity is inferred from behavior over time. Acknowledging your weaknesses is a signal of integrity because it shows respect for evidence and for the people affected by your decisions. Intelligent self-awareness So how should we practice intelligent self-awareness without slipping into paralysis or cynicism? Three habits can help here. 1. Seek high-quality feedback. Peer ratings, 360 reviews, and objective performance data are better guides than intuition. As Rob Kaiser’s work shows, colleagues often detect strengths and flaws that individuals cannot see. Treat feedback as market research on your behavior, or a way to crowdsource your reputation or internalize your professional brand. 2. Experiment at the edges. Try roles, projects, or skills that stretch you but remain diagnosable. Instead of announcing a career reinvention on social media, run small pilots. Measure results. Iterate. Learn to fail well or fail smart, as Harvard’s Amy Edmondson notes. This is the scientific method applied to personal development, and it is far more reliable than inspirational quotes. 3. Cultivate curiosity about your own limitations. Ask why certain tasks drain you, why some colleagues energize you, why your best work appears in particular contexts. Patterns will emerge. Those patterns are clues about where your comparative advantage lies. The point of recognizing weaknesses is not self-punishment. It is efficiency: Time is finite, attention is scarce, and life is too short. In an age when generative AI promises to do everything faster, the scarce resource is thoughtful human judgment about where to invest effort. Honest self-knowledge helps allocate that effort wisely, and even gen AI can help you improve that. View the full article

Learn 16 practical tips for writing search-optimized content that gains visibility and drives traffic. View the full article

The past week's Wi-Fi news includes the eye-watering US$170M price tag for sensing company Origin Wireless. The post Roundup: Origin Wireless sold to ADT for US$170M, Turk Telekom & Interdigital sensing, Fritz! & Gemtek’s Wi-Fi 8 at MWC appeared first on Wi-Fi NOW Global. View the full article