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It’s official: Samsung has found a way to turn fridges into giant, unavoidable ads. In a move that comes as a shock to pretty much no one, Samsung announced on October 27 that its premium line of Family Hub fridges, which each come with a giant, AI-powered, embedded screen, will start displaying a widget featuring curated ads. By early November, anyone in the U.S. who owns a Family Hub fridge with a 21.5″ or 32″ screen will start seeing the ads, even if they bought the appliance well before the news was announced. Commenters on Reddit and Tiktok are reacting with outraged shock to the concept of their kitchens becoming the next venue for the performance of late-stage capitalism, and for good reason. But the fact that Samsung has made this move isn’t exactly surprising, despite the fact that it explicitly promised not to do so mere months ago. When we incorporate screens into every mundane aspect of our daily routines, it stands to reason that companies will view those tiny, coveted windows into our everyday lives as an advertising opportunity. Samsung walks back its promise Back in April, Samsung told The Verge that it had no plans to incorporate ads into its series of screen-ified fridges, washers, driers, and ovens. By September, though, it had already walked that promise back. In a statement to Android Authority at the time, Samsung shared, “As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market.” Now, according to Samsung’s new announcement, fridge ads will begin appearing in the form of a widget that also cycles through weather, news, and calendar updates. In a statement to Fast Company, Samsung clarified that users will have the option to turn the widget off entirely via their settings, or dismiss certain ads at will. Still, the feature is rolling out automatically to everyone who already owns the fridge and chooses to update its software, despite the fact that nearly all customers bought these appliances before they knew that such a feature was a real possibility. If this was really a user-centered UX, shouldn’t they get to opt-in to ads, rather than be forced to opt-out? For now, the ads are only related to Samsung products and services. But Samsung hasn’t exactly promised that the ads will stay internal. In an interview with The Verge, Shane Higby, Samsung’s head of home appliance business in the U.S., said that “future promotions will depend on the feedback and insights gained from the program.” Higby added that the current ads are “contextual or non-personal” and that the fridges are not “collecting personal information or tracking consumers.” (In other words, your fridge isn’t keeping track of how many carrots you have left in order to sell you more carrots.) Still, users have reason to feel a bit wary about that possibility, given that major companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon have all faced recent lawsuits alleging that their home devices were eavesdropping on users. Samsung told Fast Company that the ad program is part of an effort to “strengthen the value” of its home appliances for customers, but it’s unclear exactly what value customers get out of this supposed exchange. The writing was always on the wall Online, reactions to the Samsung Family Hub fridge ad feature are overwhelmingly poking fun at the dystopian idea of an appliance that’s trying to sell you something. One TikTok video from September with more than half a million likes shows a man trying to open a locked fridge with the caption, “POV: it’s 2025 and you forgot to pay your Samsung fridge subscription fee so now you have to watch 67 unskippable ads to retrieve a glass of choccy milk.” On the subreddit r/technology, most users are in agreement that, if a fridge is going to try to sell ads, it should cost significantly less than a normal fridge, not more. “I am definitely paying 5x for a fridge that solicits me!” one user joked. “Can it also target specific ads to all my family members? …or maybe that is the $6000 fridge that I need? Can I get an add-on option where it also keeps food cold?” Another added, “Fridge should be $100 (delivered!) then if they expect me to put up with that crap.” These reactions are certainly a fair response to Samsung trying to sell you a microwave while you’re just trying to grab a snack. But the writing was probably always on the wall for a company that started replacing physical buttons on almost all of its appliances with smart screens—and has literally made its modern tagline “Screens Everywhere.” As consumers, it’s our job to show Samsung that we’re not interested in seeing our own kitchens turn into a marketing opportunity—and we can do that by collectively opting to purchase regular old appliances that couldn’t advertise to us if they tried. View the full article

Anthropic's research explores how large language models perceive and structure text instead of simply producing it word by word. The post Anthropic Research Shows How LLMs Perceive Text appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Better than expected performance comes after French output grows at fastest pace since 2023View the full article

But updating website content shouldn’t just mean changing a publish date. It’s a chance to improve user experience, build your owned audience, and shape how AI represents your brand. I’ll walk you through tactics that help you accomplish all of…Read more ›View the full article

Japanese psychology often likens attention to a flashlight. Wherever you shine this flashlight is where your focus and energy go. However, problems can arise when people shine this flashlight inwards for too long. They focus obsessively on their thoughts and emotions, and particularly those related to things outside of their control. Another common tendency that causes problems is shining the flashlight on other people’s behavior, the past, or the future. These are all inherently uncontrollable areas. Worrying about these factors can lead to a mental loop where it seems impossible to find solutions. When you start fixating on past events you can’t change, it can lead to feelings of guilt, regret, and depression. Similarly, focusing excessively on the future and constantly trying to predict and prevent every possible negative outcome can lead to anxiety. A powerful example In a 2020 study by Lucas LaFreniere and Michelle Newman, the researchers asked participants with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) to track their worries over time through a journal. When they then looked back on those journal entries, they found that 91.4 per cent of their worries never came true. What’s even more striking is that 30 per cent of the worries that did come true turned out better than expected. The implications of this study are profound. We waste the vast majority of the mental energy we invest in worrying. That’s because the vast majority of the time, the outcomes we feared either don’t happen or aren’t as bad as we anticipate. This research underscores the importance—whenever possible—of redirecting the flashlight of attention. You need to shift from uncontrollable, anxiety-inducing thoughts to more practical, solution-oriented thinking. Attention in the world of high performance I recently co-authored a research paper called Building a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure: An international multi-panel Delphi study. The study focused on identifying the cognitive elements of performance in high-pressure situations, including the military, first responders, upper echelons of business, and competitive sport. The study included 68 experts from the military, elite sport, high-stakes business, and performance neuroscience. Our task was to identify the cognitive drivers under pressure and rate them in order of importance. Across those four high-performance fields, the experts unanimously ranked attentional control as the most critical trainable skill for thriving under pressure. More than processing speed, more than working memory, more than effort, they identified attentional control as the number one driver of performance under pressure. That’s because attention is the brain’s gatekeeper. It dictates what we notice, how we feel, and, ultimately, how we behave. If there are things hijacking your attention, whether that be notifications, headlines, or other distractions, you lose the ability to act with intention. Practical exercises for shifting the flashlight of attention Here are some quick tips to shift the flashlight of your attention: 1. Zones of control exercise On a piece of paper, draw two circles. In circle 1, write down everything you can control about a problem. In circle 2, list what’s outside of your control. Focus your energy solely on circle 1, which is what you can control, and do your best to let go of circle 2. 2. Attentional flashlight practice Imagine your attention as a flashlight. Throughout the day, periodically pause and ask yourself: Where am I shining my flashlight? Is it focused on something productive and within my control, or is it caught in rumination or worry about uncontrollable events? 3. Social media detox Take a break from social media for a day or a week. Use this time to observe how much better you feel when you’re not comparing yourself to others. Replace your social media time with activities that enrich your life, whether that be exercise, reading, or spending time with loved ones. 4. The news headlines challenge Set a timer for five minutes. Read today’s news headlines on your preferred website (don’t click through to articles). List each headline in two columns: zone 1, ‘Can I directly influence this?’, and zone 2, ‘Outside my control’. Notice how the zone 2 column is likely full while the zone 1 control column is nearly empty. This isn’t about avoiding important issues—it’s about recognizing where you can spend your energy in a productive way. Focus on local actions you can take rather than global problems you have no way of solving. 5. Mindful breathing Spend five to ten minutes each day practising mindful breathing. This exercise helps redirect attention from racing thoughts and worries to the present moment. This grounds you in what you can control, which is your breath and your immediate surroundings. 6. Attentional audit exercise Grab a blank page and write out a list of categories for how you spend your time. Record every purposeful activity, social media, TV or streaming, ruminating or worrying in your own head, exercise/movement, meaningful connections, and hobbies or meaningful activities. Estimate how much time you spent on each category in the last 24 hours. Finally, sketch this as a heat map, using circles of red or orange for activities of high attention, and blue or green circles for low-attention activities. Make sure the size of the circles reflects the time spent. Are you happy with your heat map? If you have a partner and/or kids, this activity is worthwhile doing it together, and then using your heat maps as discussion prompts for what makes a meaningful life. Attentional deployment is about redirecting your focus away from the unhelpful and toward the helpful. Attention is your mental currency, so spend it wisely and don’t waste it on worrying about things that are beyond your control. Japanese psychology often likens attention to a flashlight. Wherever you shine this flashlight is where your focus and energy go. However, problems can arise when people shine this flashlight inwards for too long. They focus obsessively on their thoughts and emotions, and particularly those related to things outside of their control. Another common tendency that causes problems is shining the flashlight on other people’s behavior, the past, or the future. These are all inherently uncontrollable areas. Worrying about these factors can lead to a mental loop where it seems impossible to find solutions. When you start fixating on past events you can’t change, it can lead to feelings of guilt, regret, and depression. Similarly, focusing excessively on the future and constantly trying to predict and prevent every possible negative outcome can lead to anxiety. A powerful example In a 2020 study by Lucas LaFreniere and Michelle Newman, the researchers asked participants with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) to track their worries over time through a journal. When they then looked back on those journal entries, they found that 91.4 per cent of their worries never came true. What’s even more striking is that 30 per cent of the worries that did come true turned out better than expected. The implications of this study are profound. We waste the vast majority of the mental energy we invest in worrying. That’s because the vast majority of the time, the outcomes we feared either don’t happen or aren’t as bad as we anticipate. This research underscores the importance—whenever possible—of redirecting the flashlight of attention. You need to shift from uncontrollable, anxiety-inducing thoughts to more practical, solution-oriented thinking. Attention in the world of high performance I recently co-authored a research paper called Building a transdisciplinary expert consensus on the cognitive drivers of performance under pressure: An international multi-panel Delphi study. The study focused on identifying the cognitive elements of performance in high-pressure situations, including the military, first responders, upper echelons of business, and competitive sport. The study included 68 experts from the military, elite sport, high-stakes business, and performance neuroscience. Our task was to identify the cognitive drivers under pressure and rate them in order of importance. Across those four high-performance fields, the experts unanimously ranked attentional control as the most critical trainable skill for thriving under pressure. More than processing speed, more than working memory, more than effort, they identified attentional control as the number one driver of performance under pressure. That’s because attention is the brain’s gatekeeper. It dictates what we notice, how we feel, and, ultimately, how we behave. If there are things hijacking your attention, whether that be notifications, headlines, or other distractions, you lose the ability to act with intention. Practical exercises for shifting the flashlight of attention Here are some quick tips to shift the flashlight of your attention: 1. Zones of control exercise On a piece of paper, draw two circles. In circle 1, write down everything you can control about a problem. In circle 2, list what’s outside of your control. Focus your energy solely on circle 1, which is what you can control, and do your best to let go of circle 2. 2. Attentional flashlight practice Imagine your attention as a flashlight. Throughout the day, periodically pause and ask yourself: Where am I shining my flashlight? Is it focused on something productive and within my control, or is it caught in rumination or worry about uncontrollable events? 3. Social media detox Take a break from social media for a day or a week. Use this time to observe how much better you feel when you’re not comparing yourself to others. Replace your social media time with activities that enrich your life, whether that be exercise, reading, or spending time with loved ones. 4. The news headlines challenge Set a timer for five minutes. Read today’s news headlines on your preferred website (don’t click through to articles). List each headline in two columns: zone 1, ‘Can I directly influence this?’, and zone 2, ‘Outside my control’. Notice how the zone 2 column is likely full while the zone 1 control column is nearly empty. This isn’t about avoiding important issues—it’s about recognizing where you can spend your energy in a productive way. Focus on local actions you can take rather than global problems you have no way of solving. 5. Mindful breathing Spend five to ten minutes each day practising mindful breathing. This exercise helps redirect attention from racing thoughts and worries to the present moment. This grounds you in what you can control, which is your breath and your immediate surroundings. 6. Attentional audit exercise Grab a blank page and write out a list of categories for how you spend your time. Record every purposeful activity, social media, TV or streaming, ruminating or worrying in your own head, exercise/movement, meaningful connections, and hobbies or meaningful activities. Estimate how much time you spent on each category in the last 24 hours. Finally, sketch this as a heat map, using circles of red or orange for activities of high attention, and blue or green circles for low-attention activities. Make sure the size of the circles reflects the time spent. Are you happy with your heat map? If you have a partner and/or kids, this activity is worthwhile doing it together, and then using your heat maps as discussion prompts for what makes a meaningful life. Attentional deployment is about redirecting your focus away from the unhelpful and toward the helpful. Attention is your mental currency, so spend it wisely and don’t waste it on worrying about things that are beyond your control. Excerpted from The Hardiness Effect: Grow From Stress, Optimise Health, Live Longer. Copyright © 2025 by Dr Paul Taylor. Available from Wiley. View the full article

Mike Zatz was not planning to leave the Environmental Protection Agency. For two decades, Zatz worked within the department’s Energy Star program, managing the commercial building side of the public-private partnership focused on energy efficiency. “I loved the program. I loved what we were doing. I loved the success that we were having,” he says. But in June, when the EPA offered a second round of early retirement (or deferred resignation), Zatz was one of more than 1,400 employees to step away. The offer came after President The President and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency rolled out mass terminations and program cuts to shrink the federal workforce at large. It also came after The President took aim at Energy Star specifically. In May, The President announced his plans to shut the program down, part of a larger attack on energy efficiency measures since his return to office. No matter that the program was voluntary, that it saves Americans $40 billion on energy bills annually, that it’s notably cost-effective for a government program (for every one federal dollar invested, Energy Star delivers a return of $350), or that it has long had bipartisan support. It’s in The President’s crosshairs. At Energy Star, Zatz was crucial to getting commercial buildings on board with Portfolio Manager, a free tool to track and benchmark building energy use, which helps owners and operators comply with local laws, get green financing loans for investing in efficiency measures, and earn environmental recognitions. Zatz even helped expand Portfolio Manager to Canada. Under him, the tool became the industry standard in North America: a trusted, free, essential resource. It’s not the only such tool though; there are a slate of private companies that track and benchmark building energy efficiency. And now, Zatz works for one. He recently started as the senior vice president of Global Data Ecosystems and Partnerships at Measurabl, a sustainability data platform that allows the real estate industry to measure, manage, and report on their emissions and energy performance. Zatz will use his experience building up Portfolio Manager to help grow Measurabl’s customer base—this time with a global approach. Though now in the private sector, Zatz says Measurabl has the “same vision” that the EPA had for Energy Star. It’s an example of how the private sector is filling gaps in government services following The President DOGE-powered gutting of the federal workforce and programs—and also shows how former government workers, forced out by recent administrative moves, have plenty of skills to offer such companies. Taking Energy Star’s mission global Our built environment plays a huge role in our carbon footprint; In the U.S. alone, residential and commercial buildings together account for 31% of our greenhouse gas emissions. The building sector uses 75% of the country’s generated electricity. Tracking energy use is the key to reducing these emissions, and can also save operators significant money on energy costs. By benchmarking their energy use and aligning with Energy Star standards, building operators can increase their profits, apply for efficiency rebates, and access certain loans. Apartment managers can use it to keep from passing increased utility costs to residents, and school districts can even free operating funds, making more resources available to teachers if less money is spent on energy costs. Other roles look at building energy use too, like brokers, loan underwriters, and policymakers. The potential end of Energy Star has shaken building owners and operators. Both building owners and sustainability experts have said that the private sector (or the act of privatizing Energy Star itself) can’t completely replace the government program’s offerings—specifically Portfolio Manager, which is currently used to track and benchmark the energy use of more than 330,000 buildings. Measurabl is trying, though. And a crucial step toward offering a similar experience is having a free version. Even before the rumblings of Energy Star coming under The President’s ax, Measurabl began working on its Free Sustainability Software Solution, which also collects and tracks energy use data, and even integrates with Portfolio Manager. “The leadership at Measurable recognized that in order to build an ecosystem like this, you have to lower the barriers to entry. And the main barrier to entry, and to all the other tools that are out there that build on Portfolio Manager . . . like Measurabl, was that you had to pay,” Zatz says. After launching that free software tool in July, Measurabl says new subscribers onboarded more than 12,000 buildings, representing 2.2 billion square feet across 40 countries. It was fastest software adoption Measurabl has seen in its 13 years in business. Along with the free version, Measurabl offers premium tools, charging for software upgrades that allow building owners to do scenario planning to decarbonize properties, automatically collect data from utilities, help prepare reports to HUD or loan providers, and generally conduct more granular analysis. Across all its offerings, it serves more than 1,000 organizations across 90-plus countries, representing more than $3 trillion in assets and 22 billion square feet of real estate under management. The company has raised a total of more than $235 million in funding since its founding. Measurabl and Energy Star actually overlap. Even when he worked at Energy Star, Zatz knew of the company, because multiple Energy Star partners are also Measurabl clients. Measurabl was named Energy Star’s Partner of the Year six times. And Measurabl’s software uses and integrates with Portfolio Manager, allowing data to sync between the two. But to really expand, especially around the world, Measurabl needs to build up its partnerships and connect to all the players in the building industry—not just building owners (which includes Fortune 500 companies to schools to religious congregations) but builders, utilities, state and local governments, product manufacturers and retailers, sustainability consultants, architects and engineers, and so on. This is the kind of ecosystem Zatz created at Energy Star. Now at Measurabl, Zatz isn’t looking to completely replace Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager. In fact, he hopes it stays around, not just because he’s spent nearly 20 years working on it. “As far as Measurabl and the ecosystem we’re trying to put together, I think certainly it will be beneficial to us to have Portfolio Manager running as a tool,” he says. How government tools are constrained Portfolio Manager is a useful tool, allowing owners and operators to track changes in their water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy costs over time. It gives buildings a score between 1 and 100, and lets them compare their energy use to similar buildings. But as a government tool, it was also constrained. “People were not shy about asking for enhancements. We had a running list of hundreds of enhancements that we wanted to do, and in any given year we could only get to a dozen of them, maybe two dozen,” Zatz says. Even before The President’s attacks, Energy Star’s budget had been shrinking. A decade ago, its funding was $54 million; today, it’s $38 million. (Another constraint was the fact that in previous government shutdowns, like in 2018, Portfolio Manager was also shut down; now it’s marked as essential to keep running.) Portfolio Manager was intended to offer buildings the basics. And it was “never built to compete with anything,” Zatz adds, but to foster more ideas. The EPA knew that the private sector could put more resources towards developing tools, and also create sustainability jobs. “We wanted to build sort of the core, something that everybody could use,” Zatz says of Energy Star, “but we wanted it to then be something that could feed into other things that would be even more beneficial to the wide variety of stakeholders.” Along with building owners and operators, others like lenders, insurers, investors, and auditors like to track this kind of sustainability data. This is where private companies like Measurabl can come in to offer more features. Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager looks at Scope 1 and 2 emissions, for example—direct emissions from a company’s operations and from buying the electricity, heat, or cooling to power those operations, respectively. But can’t incorporate Scope 3, the indirect emissions from up and down a company’s value chain, like business travel or employee commutes, investments, and so on. “That’s something Measurabl can offer,” Zatz says. Portfolio Manager didn’t have the bandwidth to keep a list of which buildings are subject to which emissions laws up to date, but Measurabl can. Zatz says Measurabl can work off the same model that has made Energy Star so successful: building up partnerships, creating an ecosystem of industry stakeholders, and providing data that anyone can see in useful, clear ways. And when it comes to bringing this tool to buildings around the world, he says it’s in the best position to do so. “Measurabl has the most sustainability data in the industry, second only to Portfolio Manager,” he says. Zatz will bring his contacts to the private company to help expand that reach: “I love that in this role, I can keep working with a lot of those same people as partners,” he says. In markets where buildings are already on Portfolio Manager, he’ll leverage that relationship to grow Measurabl. And he’ll also use his decades of experience building Portfolio Manager’s reputation to bring Measurabl to new places, “to take the same concepts and put and send them overseas, where these things don’t really exist.” Portfolio Manager wouldn’t have been expanded that way anyway, even before the The President administration’s threats. “It was not in the vision of the EPA to make it global,” Zatz says. But still, he emphasizes he hopes it sticks around for the U.S. and Canada. Zatz will miss the EPA, and he’ll miss, most, working as a “public servant.” Working for Measurabl, a private company, he won’t be considered such anymore, “but I still view it that way,” he says. He hopes the real estate industry sees him in that way, too. “I’m hoping I’ll have that same support from them, and hopefully we can continue to build on Portfolio Manager,” he adds. “And if not, we’ll hopefully be there to help the industry if, God forbid, something bad happened with the Energy Star program.” View the full article

The former AIME boss and current Rocket Pro leader claims the megalender has threatened to pull the trade group's funding should it pay her a $240,000 bonus. View the full article

President Donald The President is getting rid of members of the federal agency that would have reviewed his planned building projects as he works to physically remake Washington, D.C. The President fired all members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) on October 28. The commission, a federal agency established by Congress, has shaped the look of the nation’s capital for more than a century, from its museums and monuments to office buildings and parks, and now The President is set to stack it with loyalists. The CFA was expected to review The President’s planned White House ballroom and arch monument, but the White House told The Washington Post, which first reported the firings, that the administration is “preparing to appoint a new slate of members to the commission that are more aligned with President The President’s ‘America First’ policies.” As The President looks to remodel the White House campus with a massive ballroom where the East Wing once stood and build his own monument in Washington, D.C., amid a wider attempt at expanding presidential power and an ongoing government shutdown, he’s taking over the nation’s capitol’s commission on arts and architecture. Here’s what the commission is and how The President’s firings fit into a broader strategy to remake D.C. in his vision. What is the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, or CFA? Congress established the CFA in 1910 to “advise the federal government on matters pertaining to the arts and national symbols, and to guide the architectural development of Washington, D.C.,” according to the commission. The scope of its work began first as advising on statues, fountains, and monuments, but it grew by executive orders in 1910, 1921, and 1950, respectively, to include the review of public buildings and park designs in D.C., and the “Old Georgetown” area of Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood. As part of its responsibilities, the independent agency reviews federal construction projects, like the White House tennis pavilion constructed during The President’s first term in 2019. It was also expected to review The President’s planned triumphal arch and White House ballroom. The National Capital Planning Commission ultimately approves projects. It is now also run by The President appointees. The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts typically consists of seven members appointed by the president. Members serve four-year terms on the commission without compensation. Who was on the CFA board? The CFA’s most recent members had backgrounds in architecture. It’s members were: Bruce Becker, president of the sustainable architecture and development firm Becker + Becker, who was appointed in 2024 Peter Cook, design principal at HGA Architects & Engineers, who was appointed in 2021 Lisa Delplace, director of the landscape architecture firm Oehme, van Sweden, who was appointed in 2022 Hazel Ruth Edwards, a Howard University architecture professor, who was appointed in 2021. Bill Lenihan, principal and partner of the planning and design services firm Tevebaugh Architecture, who was appointed in 2024 Justin Garrett Moore, program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, who was appointed in 2021 Former CFA chair Billie Tsien, whose firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects designed the Obama Presidential Center, was appointed in 2021 but resigned from the commission earlier this year. Former members of the CFA contacted by Fast Company did not respond to a request for comment. What do the CFA firings indicate about presidential power? The President’s firing of the entire board represents an expansion of executive actions first taken by then-President Joe Biden when he replaced four members in 2021. The White House at the time said the change was made to bring “a diversity of background and experience, as well as a range of aesthetic viewpoints” to the commission. At the time, Luebke, the CFA secretary since the George W. Bush administration, told the Post he couldn’t recall a time a member of the CFA was replaced before their term ended unless they resigned. For The President, the firings represent just the latest attempt to clear guardrails. The move mirrors his administration’s past actions to similarly takeover other cultural institutions, like the Kennedy Center, which elected The President its chair in February after The President named an entirely new board, and the Smithsonian, which is facing a review. It also runs parallel to The President’s other moves to expand presidential power, including the imposition of tariffs, deployment of troops to U.S. cities, and the bombing targets without congressional approval. How does this fit in with The President’s plans to redesign D.C. architecture? The removal of the CFA board ultimately makes it that much easier for The President to execute on his plans to redesign Washington, and the firings fit into a larger aesthetic argument by the The President administration. The President signed an executive order in August making classical architecture the preferred and default architecture in Washington, D.C. It’s a style whose proponents include McCrery Architects, the architectural firm behind his planned White House ballroom, and Justin Shubow, one of the The President-appointed CFA members who Biden replaced. Considering the board’s advisory role on “on matters of design and aesthetics,” according to its website, the firing of CFA members allows The President to pack it with like-minded members who share his architectural point of view. In addition to the ballroom, The President has plans to remake the nation’s capital’s monuments. A statue of a Confederate general that was destroyed in 2020 was reinstated this week in Washington’s Judiciary Square. The President has also announced plans for the arch near Memorial Bridge. New CFA membership could reduce any remaining friction that would otherwise make The President’s plans more difficult to execute. How have The President’s building projects been received so far? The President’s building projects are off to a rough start, though, even facing criticism from the right. Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan called photos of the East Wing demolition a metaphor, writing that “all this was done without public demand or support, and was done in a way that was abrupt, complete, unstoppable.” And a YouGov poll of U.S. adults found out 53% oppose his demolition of the East Wing, compared to 24% who approve and 24% who aren’t sure; 28% of Republicans also said they oppose the demolition. While the public isn’t yet sold on The President’s D.C. renovations, his new commission will be. With only allies installed in the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, The President has made any negative reviews from the agency tasked with advising him even less likely. View the full article

Syracuse University is rolling out a new “Center for the Creator Economy,” looking to train the new class of influencers, streamers, podcasters and YouTubers. The center, the first of its kind in the U.S., is a joint project between the university’s communications and business schools, and aims to attract students planning to participate in the $250 billion creator economy. With rising unemployment rates, and a college degree no longer unlocking the career opportunities it once did, the creator economy could be a beacon of hope for young graduates in a dismal job market. The number of creators globally is expected to grow at a compound annual rate between 10 and 20%. The total addressable market, from influencer marketing spend to platform payouts, is expected to increase to a projected $500 billion by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs. In a 2023 Morning Consult survey of 1,000 Gen Zers, more than half said they want to be influencers. Two in five U.S. teenagers already earning income through digital channels. Influencers with followings over a million can charge upwards of five figures for just one post. Higher education is now paying attention. From MrBeast and Alix Earle giving guest lectures to Harvard Business School students, to universities from Penn State to Duke introducing online courses, clubs, and summer camps dedicated to the business of content creation, colleges are embracing this once-dismissed career path. For now, Syracuse doesn’t plan on offering majors or minors in content creation. Instead, the center will include undergraduate and graduate classes in “creative content, audience engagement, and digital strategy,” according to the university, to help young entrepreneurs optimize their chosen platforms. The center will also host workshops and speaker series and on-campus incubators, and provide avenues for mentorship and funding for student ventures. Opening in spring 2026, the school is making an at least six-figure investment for equipment and design for the new space, according to reports, including a green screen, podcast booths, and a corner for gamers to livestream. Of course, the appeal of content creation is anyone can pick up a camera and start. At the same time, a growing number of Gen Zs are questioning the value of a degree to begin with. Yet, as the creator economy evolves, now with six-figure deals on the table, the algorithm to conquer and advertising laws and contracts to navigate, and a growing number of adjacent careers, a college degree might turn out to be a lucrative investment after all. View the full article

In early 2023, Shopify made a bold and deliberate decision that rippled through its entire organization. Without warning anyone or conducting a phased rollout, they removed over 12,000 recurring meetings from employee calendars. They put a company-wide pause on all Wednesday meetings, and consolidated larger group sessions into a single window each week. From the outside, it looked like a scheduling adjustment. On the inside, it was an intentional reevaluation of how the company valued time, attention, and collaboration. Surprisingly, the decision resulted in very little chaos. Teams adapted and work moved. Space led to clarity surfacing. Shopify reported that the shift freed up more than 322,000 hours annually of time that employees previously spent in motion, but not always in progress. This two-week experiment was an act of leadership that asked, “what are we doing simply because we always have?” For many, that became a permanent way of working. Many organizations everywhere have practices and processes that persist by default. Meetings, reports, systems, and sign-offs become embedded not because they are essential, but because no one ever questioned them. But over time, demands on our attention continue to multiply. It becomes increasingly difficult to protect our time, and leadership needs to show its strength through discernment. They also need to let go of anything that no longer makes a meaningful contribution. Our bias towards addition Leadership, by its very nature, invites accumulation. Over time, it gathers layers: inherited systems, obligations that no longer serve a purpose. Often, there’s the comforting illusion that being across everything means being in control. But this is a fragile place to be. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology explored this human tendency toward addition. When researchers asked participants to improve an object, design, or process, they almost always added something, even when taking something away would have created a better outcome. The study revealed the instinct to equate improvement with increasing something. The act of removing feels risky because it disrupts what we know. I’ve watched this play out in countless organizations. Leaders respond to a growing workload by creating new layers of process, new forums for communication, and new metrics for accountability. They do so with the best intentions. However each layer eventually becomes another brick in the wall of complexity. And before you know it, employees are spending more time on the process than their actual work. The weight of more A few years ago, I began using the phrase “red brick thinking” to describe the moment a leader stops adding and starts questioning. It came from an exercise I often run in workshops using a small, uneven LEGO bridge. When I ask how to level it, most people instinctively reach for another brick. They start to build higher, wider, stronger. It takes only one person to realize that balance comes not from addition, but from removing the small red brick that caused the imbalance in the first place. That simple shift in perception can change the way a leader approaches everything. To lead with subtraction is to lead with discrimination, but in a good way. It means pausing before responding, questioning before committing, and creating space before filling it again. It invites the kind of simplicity and creativity that’s difficult to find when your calendar is full and your attention is divided across too many demands. I worked with a senior executive who felt trapped by the very systems she had helped design. Her weeks were consumed by meetings, status reports, and requests for sign-off. When we examined her schedule, it became clear that she was operating inside a structure that no longer reflected her priorities. Together, we began removing the elements that had quietly accumulated: a report that no one read, a meeting that produced little value, and a responsibility that belonged elsewhere. Over time, her energy returned, her thinking sharpened, and her team grew more capable. It wasn’t a dramatic shift, but it was decisive, And it all started with the willingness to ask one simple question, “Does this still belong?” Leading with subtraction Letting go is not about abandoning responsibility or lowering standards. It’s a conscious act of leadership that requires courage, restraint, and trust. Doing this requires us to believe that we can create results by doing less. By releasing what no longer serves us, we create the capacity to serve better. In the language of red brick thinking, we build every organization from necessary structure and unnecessary weight. Over time, those red bricks turn from supportive to obstructive and slow everything down. And when leaders choose to remove them, they don’t just reclaim efficiency, they reclaim perspective. They begin to see what truly matters, and they allow others to see it, too. When you lead by subtraction, it’s measured, deliberate, and deeply human. It recognizes that progress isn’t always about movement. Sometimes, the most powerful thing a leader can do is stop, notice the weight they’re carrying, and decide that carrying less might just be the wisest way forward. View the full article

When Hurricane Melissa began moving toward Jamaica earlier this week, Amazon’s chief meteorologist was watching closely—not just for the company’s global shipping operations, but also to see how its disaster relief team might need to act. “As soon as the hurricane formed, we had eyes on it,” says Abe Diaz, principal technical product manager for Amazon’s disaster relief team. “We’ve been tracking this for multiple days.” Inside an Amazon fulfillment center near Atlanta, pallets are stacked with disaster relief supplies, from medical supplies to solar-powered lights. It’s one of 15 massive “disaster relief hubs” that the company has stationed inside warehouses around the world. In the wake of the record-breaking hurricane that hit Jamaica, with flooding and 185-mile-an-hour winds that destroyed homes and infrastructure, the hub was poised to send shipments to partners like the Red Cross. When the team spoke to Fast Company yesterday, they were planning a potential shipment of power supplies on a cargo plane for today. “Damage assessments are still underway at both of the airports and then they’re going to be prioritizing life-saving, rescue and response teams for access first,” says Jeff Schweitzer, who leads Amazon’s global disaster relief operations. If all went as planned, though, the power systems would also be on a flight, ready to support first responders and “provide augmented power in areas that just simply won’t have power for weeks to come,” he says. Other early shipments will likely include tarps and solar lights that can also charge phones. Each delivery will happen only after nonprofits or agencies on the ground assess the situation and order what they need. “As with everything at Amazon, we work backwards from the customer,” Diaz says. In the warehouse, some pallets are wrapped in color-coded shrink wrap, to help nonprofits easily tell from a distance what’s inside, such as diapers. One pallet is designed to include everything needed for a nonprofit to set up a mobile office. Amazon first began its disaster relief work in 2017, after conversations with organizations about how difficult it is to get the right supplies quickly after disasters. Since then, it has been closely working with organizations to understand what they need and to track data about what’s used in each event so it can better prepare. The team works to find the most efficient products to donate—for example, water filters instead of bottled water. “It makes no sense for us to send a whole bunch of water bottles and fly them out to Jamaica when high-efficiency water filters can do 100 times the volume with just a pallet of product,” Diaz says. “These are the kind of items that we’re just trying to be really smart on what is needed and what we’re getting there.” The hubs, which are each located inside existing Amazon fulfillment centers to make use of the company’s existing infrastructure and workers, are each filled with products most likely to be needed locally. A hub near L.A. is stocked with supplies for wildfires, such as masks. The Atlanta hub has kits for cleaning up homes after a flood—from gloves and shovels to respirators—that have been used in previous hurricanes and events like the floods in Central Texas this summer. Organizations also make their own preparations; the World Food Programme, for example, prepositioned a shipment of food and other supplies to the area before Hurricane Melissa hit. But Amazon can quickly respond as more is needed, with pallets ready to be sent out as soon as a request comes in. It’s one example of corporate philanthropy that makes use of a company’s core competency, rather than simply giving money to causes. (Amazon also uses its delivery infrastructure to help food banks reach more clients at home.) Toyota did something similar when it donated kaizen training to the Food Bank for New York City, helping cut wait times for dinner from an hour and a half to 18 minutes. View the full article

A first-of-its-kind refinery has been in the works for a decade and half. Set to be completed this year, the facility is design to produce climate-friendly jet fuel, a material in increasing demand in response to climate commitments and regulations around the world. The refinery—called the Freedom Pines Fuels—was designed to showcase new methods of producing the fuel, and was receiving government support to help clean up air travel. Now, a year behind schedule due to a hurricane and equipment glitches, the project hit another roadblock this summer, when a major shift in U.S. energy policy under the new administration threw a wrench into the business model. It’s now a story of a company quickly adapting under pressure, and an illustration of the challenges—and continued opportunity—of clean energy in a more hostile political environment. The goal of the company behind the project, Illinois-based LanzaJet, is to produce a close facsimile of the kerosene-based fuel that powers jets and many helicopters and propeller planes today—without using petroleum. Instead, the Freedom Pines Fuels plant in the forest hamlet of Soperton, Georgia, will use ethanol to make what’s known as sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF. LanzaJet was ready to start with ethanol made from Brazilian sugarcane, until a new U.S. law forced a quick shift to midwestern corn. The fuels that make modern travel possible—kerosene, gasoline, and diesel—are typically refined from crude oil, rich in hydrocarbon molecules that release copious energy when burned. But burning them also inundates the atmosphere with heat-trapping carbon dioxide. SAF is essentially lab-grown jet fuel, made from carbon already in the environment, rather than pumped up from oil wells. It’s a tweaked formulation—for instance, with less sulfur—designed to burn cleaner. Sugarcane and corn are two of many possible carbon sources, along with cornstalks, twigs, vegetable oil, factory exhaust, and even garbage. The CO2 released by making and burning SAF should, in theory, be offset by the carbon captured to make more SAF, forming a closed loop. The Freedom Pines Fuels plant is a mini version of a typical refinery, slated to produce nine million gallons of SAF and a million of green diesel fuel in its first year. (A standard crude-oil refinery could churn a billion or more gallons of fuels.) But the Georgia plant is meant to be big enough to show the technology can work at scale. “Most process technology companies . . . almost never build plants of this magnitude,” says Jimmy Samartzis, a climate-focused airline industry veteran who became CEO when LanzaJet was founded in 2020. “It’s expensive, it’s big. But we thought and felt—accurately, looking back on it today—it was the right move to make.” Before the 2024 election, the federal government was also promising generous financial support for Freedom Pines. A Potential Market Boom LanzaJet is backed by companies that are counting on, or stand to benefit from, the shift to carbon-neutral jet fuel, including All Nippon Airways, British Airways, Southwest Airlines, and plane maker Airbus. The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has committed the industry to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In addition, laws and regulations, such as in Singapore, the U.K., and the European Union, have started requiring airlines or suppliers to blend SAF into the jet fuel supply, beginning at around 1–2%, then ramping up in later years. More such requirements are in the works in India, Indonesia, and Japan. The European Union is by far the most ambitious. From a mere 2% SAF blend required today, quotas rise steeply about every five years, hitting 70% in 2050. There’s further demand from companies, such as LanzaJet backer Microsoft, striving to meet aggressive greenhouse gas reduction goals. In addition to reducing its own footprint, Microsoft has announced plans to buy “SAF Certificates,” which subsidize the cost of the fuel to boost its usage. SAF has a long way to go in making a dent. It will account for just 0.7% of all jet fuel in 2025, according to the International Air Transport Association. “Obviously, if you look at the size of the overall aviation fuel space, in theory the [SAF] market is potentially huge for those that can offer a product at a competitive price,” says John MacDonagh, senior research analyst at capital markets research firm PitchBook. LanzaJet has raised “approximately” $400 million, according to Samartzis, from these companies and other backers, including energy producers Shell and Suncor, the U.S. Department of Energy, airport operator Groupe ADP, and Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy fund. Another backer is LanzaTech. Founded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2005, it relocated its headquarters to Skokie, Illinois, in 2014. The company has engineered microbes to convert waste such as carbon monoxide and dioxide from factories into ethanol, as another route to carbon-neutral fuel and other chemicals. In 2010, LanzaTech and the U.S. Department of Energy started collaborating on technology to transform ethanol into jet fuel. In 2020, LanzaTech spun out LanzaJet as a new company to continue the work. LanzaJet is dipping a toe into the SAF market with Freedom Pines, with plans to build more plants, such as a collaboration with British Airways to open a facility in the U.K. by 2028. LanzaJet has also announced partnerships in India, Japan, and Kazakhstan to build additional facilities. But as it continues to announce expansion overseas, things have gotten messy back at home. SAF Meets MAGA The U.S. has no SAF requirements for aviation companies. Instead, the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act introduced tax credits to subsidize fledgling SAF operations to scale up production and bring down prices. (Various estimates put SAF from two to five times as expensive as traditional jet fuel.) While the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act didn’t scrap SAF incentives completely, as it did for many other clean technologies, it did complicate LanzaJet’s plans just as it was completing the Freedom Pines plant. LanzaJet had obtained EPA approval to use traditional ethanol to make its fuel. The company was focused on Brazilian sugarcane, which Samartzis says would cut CO2 emissions by more than the 50% threshold to qualify for credits under the Inflation Reduction Act. The new Republican legislation cut maximum subsidies from $1.75 to $1 per gallon—and limited them to fuels made with resources from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. So LanzaJet has shifted focus to ethanol made from U.S. corn, which is more carbon intensive, for a number of reasons, says Samartzis. Sugarcane tends to have higher yields per acre, with less fertilizer, according to LanzJet, and of course it provides sugar that can be fermented directly into ethanol. Corn provides starch that first has to be converted to sugar, which takes energy. Brazilian ethanol producers also make use of crop leftovers, burning them to provide energy for their operations. U.S. producers often use natural gas or even coal. Given all that, using corn won’t cut overall greenhouse gas emissions anywhere near the 50% target, without longer-term changes such as more sustainable farming practices and capturing the carbon released in making the ethanol, he says. Despite all these challenges, Samartzis says that Freedom Pines will start churning out fuel soon. “Yeah, I’ve faltered in the past, right?”, he says with a chuckle. “But my expectation is that it’s certainly this year . . . How soon? I don’t want to speculate on that at this point.” Meanwhile, LanzaJet has to compete with an established technology, called HEFA, that is already making jet fuel from fats such as used cooking oil. “Most [SAF demand] right now can be met, or all of it initially can be met, with the HEFA fuels that are less costly to produce,” says Andy Navarrete, coauthor of a recent study on sustainable aviation fuel by the International Council on Clean Transportation. A New Starting Point However, HEFA can’t scale up for the boom in demand coming in the next decades, he says, without turning to environmentally destructive options like clearing land for palm oil plantations. Navarrete is also circumspect about corn ethanol. “You’re not getting a ton of greenhouse gas savings relative to just using [traditional] jet fuel,” he says. “And then there’s this bigger question of food versus fuel. And how sustainable is it, in general, to be using farmland to produce a fuel?” Samartzis cites USDA estimates of U.S. ethanol supplies exceeding domestic demand and frames SAF as a new market for American farmers. But beyond corn and sugarcane, there can be bigger climate benefits in making ethanol from the cellulose in agricultural leftovers—like corn stalks, leaves, husks, and cobs—that might otherwise release CO2 when they rot. This approach was always part of LanzaJet’s strategy, and it had already submitted its plan to the EPA for approval. (The U.K. plant is meant to begin operations with this “cellulosic” ethanol when it opens in 2028.) But U.S. politics are creating another roadblock. “All of these things take time, and with the government shutdown on top of it, rest assured, those processes are not moving forward right now,” says Samartzis. Navarrete is skeptical, noting that makers of green auto fuels also foresaw a progression to using cellulose from agricultural waste. “It relied on a completely different set of technologies . . . that never quite got figured out,” he says. “[Starting with] conventional ethanol wasn’t really a useful bridge forward.” Technology has progressed since then, with new incentives to fill the growing SAF market. Samartzis remains optimistic about a transition for the longer term. “Maybe it’s a 10 or 20% improvement rather than a 50 or 60 or 70% improvement,” he says of initial CO2 reductions using corn ethanol. “We can start to capture the improvement and then continue to invest in the changes that are required to further improve that carbon [reduction] intensity.” View the full article

JPMorgan Chase’s new $3 billion global headquarters in midtown Manhattan was finally unveiled the week of October 20 after six years in the making. But rather than highlighting the Danny Meyer-curated food hall, imported taps that pour a perfect pint of Guiness, or lighting that adjusts with circadian rhythms, online attention has been focused on another feature of the 270 Park Ave. skyscraper. “Congratulations JPMorgan on the opening of your new headquarters!” billionaire Michael Dell posted on X last week, alongside a photo of what seems to be a trading floor in the new office. The image features row upon row of his company’s monitors in four-screen setups, duplicated as far as the eye can see. Less than a week later, and the post has more than 17 million views. But maybe not for good reasons. Many in the comments are calling the image “dystopian.” Others are using it as an opportunity to rail against return-to-office mandates. “‘Remote work kills the culture and warmth that only real human interactions in an office can create,’” one X user mockingly cited, immediately followed up in the next line with “the culture and warmth” right above Dell’s computer-lined image of the trading floor. “Are these for cage free or free-range analysts?” another quipped. Some defended the setup, saying this is simply what a typical trading floor looks like these days. (Who thought we’d be nostalgic for office cubicles in the year 2025?) “Imagine ripping a ‘nothing from my end’ from row E, seat 15 at the new JPM HQ,” one X user wrote. “For efficiency, they ask everyone with no updates to repeat ‘nothing from my end’ at the same time,” another joked in response. “Every morning at 9:05am you can hear it reverberating throughout the building in a haunting hum.” Earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase enforced its return-to-office mandate, which requires employees to work at the site five days a week. “Now I understand why everyone at JP wants to work from home,” claimed another X user. “This is an awful work environment.” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has been a vocal supporter of scaling back remote work and getting employees back in the office full time. His employees, on the other hand, have other thoughts. A large number have signed petitions asking for more flexibility in the workplace, and unionization efforts are underway in response to the policy. (Fast Company reached out to JPMorgan for comment but hasn’t received a response as of this writing.) For now, at least, Park Avenue is where you’ll find the banking giant’s 10,000-strong New York City workforce. The 60-story skyscraper is betting on a vision for the future of work that’s centered on in-person collaboration. Open all hours of the day, the building is packed with amenities, including a state-of-the-art gym, 24/7 food options, and even a pub. Sounds incredible. It’s almost like you never have to leave. View the full article

As the largest art and design school in the United States—with nearly 17,000 students enrolled at its Savannah and Atlanta campuses—the Savannah College of Art and Design prides itself on offering a course of study for almost every type of creative person. Along with degree programs in animation, film and television, game development, graphic design, and illustration, SCAD tempts students with courses in beauty and fragrance, sneaker design, luxury and brand management, and equestrian studies. There’s a new degree program this school year, in Applied AI, that is attracting a different sort of attention. As I learned directly from faculty, students, and industry veterans, and read on Reddit forums, the idea is enticing to some—and prompting others to question the school’s priorities and its very reason for existing. Using AI “Right” The idea behind the Applied AI program at SCAD is to . . . . . . equip students with the knowledge and skills that employers want: SCAD’s website boasts that within a year of graduation, 99% of students are typically employed, pursuing further education, or both. According to SCAD, the Applied AI program will prepare students for professions including AI product developer, AI design strategist, AI story engineer, autonomous agent designer, and “ethical design strategist.” SCAD is also offering a minor in Applied AI that’s open to students across all majors. This is a “researched best guess” about a changing employment landscape, says Nye Warburton, chair of interactive design and game development at SCAD, who leads the Applied AI program. “Our assumptions are that AI will create new domains in product development, design, story, and ethically focused systems. Our major is designed to develop the skills and practices that we see emerging in those fields.” Guided by input from creative and design leaders in industry, the Applied AI curriculum was developed by Warburton in collaboration with SCAD’s curriculum and assessment team, the deans of the school of creative technology and the school of animation and motion, and various professors and department chairs. It has three pillars: story, action, and impact. “We already have foundational and general education classes at SCAD,” says Warburton, referring to offerings such as drawing and design thinking, math and English. “So if you’re a writer or an architect, or whatever, you still need to have those fundamental understandings.” The AI “story” classes, he stresses, are not about that kind of basic storytelling, but aim to help students “build more resilience and understanding of their purpose”—what they want to use AI for—as they move forward. The “impact” component of the program involves making sure students understand intellectual property, environmental issues, and other broad concerns about the use of AI. The last component of this is an “impact test,” currently in development, that students will have to pass after their sophomore year. “We don’t let you go to the higher levels—designing AI agents and doing capstone work—until you’ve placed out of these civics classes.” The “action” part of the program looks at “workflow practices and application-specific ways of using them,” says Eric Allen, associate chair of interactive design and game development and an instructor in the Applied AI program. Major game studios, for example, “are already using AI models for generating and amalgamating ideas,” he says. “And, of course, they vibe code, building plugins that can help them in their workflows.” SCAD aims to engage faculty from across the school to teach these interdisciplinary classes, focusing on uses of AI that are most relevant to their fields. In addition to current faculty who will teach these cross-disciplinary classes, SCAD is in the process of hiring a dedicated Applied AI faculty. “One of our main goals for curriculum development is to embrace design and art workflows and push [them] further with applied AI learnings,” Warburton says. “It is an opportunity to invent new collaborative interdisciplinary things. And my hope is that that’s where the jobs will be—in the intersection between these disciplines, even if traditional disciplines become disrupted.” Disruption and de-skilling Of course, AI is already disrupting fields like gaming, film and animation, graphic design, and copywriting. In a 2024 State of the Game Industry report from the Game Developers Conference, 84% of developers indicated that they were somewhat or very concerned about the ethics of using generative AI, which has already contributed to large-scale layoffs in the industry. According to an industry tracker, an estimated 14,600 people were laid off from game development positions in 2024, up from 10,500 layoffs in 2023. “Generative AI is an automation technology, full stop,” says Reid Southen, a concept artist whose credits include movies The Hunger Games, The Woman King, and Matrix Resurrections. While he agrees that there are cases where AI tools can speed up certain tasks and potentially benefit artists, he says, “There’s no world in which it creates jobs.” He and other artists are reporting less work and lower pay—and they’re increasingly asked by clients to fix up concepts originally created with AI. Adding insult to injury, image video-generating models such as Midjourney, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion, and Open AI’s Sora are all facing lawsuits over the alleged use of copyrighted imagery in their development. Another concern is that AI will lead to a broad de-skilling. “As an artist, you make thousands of micro-decisions while making a piece of art,” Southen says. “Every brushstroke or click is a choice, and both you and the work evolve throughout that process. With AI, you give it a few large decisions about what you want, and it makes all those micro-decisions for you and fills in all the gaps.” Warburton understands the threat to artistry and industry know-how. “I think it is an obligation to vehemently defend the expertise that we have. The friction is, How do you use these new tools to augment these skills, as opposed to just prompting your way through it? I’m worried that we’re not going to have a senior level of talent in the future,” he says, noting that junior-level designers won’t learn how to make creative decisions. Enthusiasm varies For these reasons and more, enthusiasm for the new AI curriculum varies widely among SCAD faculty and students. Many in industrial design, UX, architecture, and interior design “are proactively moving forward in AI,” Warburton says. “They have a clear idea of how they can integrate it into their processes. The business classes are really interested in how we do simulations and predictive models. I thought photography would be way against it, but a lot of the professors said they’ve already been disrupted by digital, so they’re kind of ready for [AI].” On the other hand, he says, “I’m not a very popular human being in certain majors”—such as illustration and sequential art (comic books, graphic novels). “What I hear a lot is, ‘I can’t make a graphic novel with AI because the publishing industry will never accept it.” The school’s animation department is ambivalent. “The animation professors are really into it, because they see the possibility of the pipeline accelerations like rigging and compositing and different kinds of rendering. However, the students are very against it,” Warburton says, noting that students express concerns about the use of artist data in training generative models, and issues with AI’s environmental impact. “However, I personally believe that automation anxiety is the root.” Since the program was announced this fall, four students have declared Applied AI as their major, and 25 have declared it as their minor. (The first official Applied AI class, AI 101—featuring exercises in developing a personal story, and a crash course on LLMs and image models—starts this winter.) The school expects the number to increase significantly next academic year. “A cold day in hell” As always, the most honest discussion seems to be happening on Reddit. “The general consensus among students here is that the ai major is a joke. and so are the bots studying it,” writes Redditor @sunadherstars. “I just graduated from the SEQA [sequential art] program like this past quarter and let me tell you: it’ll be a cold day in hell before they ever push AI,” writes @electricaaa. “The entire department is extremely against it, no matter how much the administration tries to push it.” Still, there’s no doubt that for companies hiring creative talent, familiarity with AI is high on their wish list. Ami Frost, who will graduate from SCAD with a BFA in industrial design in December, reports that “that’s a recent shift. Some friends have actually gotten jobs because they know AI. I think learning how to use AI is definitely going to be a good stepping point in your career, like it or not.” “Taking a few extra classes to get better at AI makes sense,” says a recent SCAD graduate in UX and industrial design, who preferred not to give their name in order to be able to speak more freely. “But a degree drastically impacts the trajectory of your life. Would you want to choose something based on the hottest trend? Imagine if [SCAD] had started offering a major in NFTs when those were the next big thing. I think AI is too new to really have had the time for a robust education on how to use it to emerge. Personally, I’d rather wait for a boat to be fully constructed before taking it for a four-year ride down the Nile.” SCAD’s critics have often felt that the school operates more like a business than a traditional academic institution (even though it operates as a nonprofit). For the fiscal year ending June 2024, the school reported revenue in excess of expenses of more than $220 million, and president and founder Paula Wallace received compensation of more than $2.6 million. (Yearly undergrad tuition and fees, minus room and board, is currently $42,665.) But while it may be tempting to write off the Applied AI degree as a slapdash money grab, it’s worth noting that SCAD’s rivals are increasingly AI-curious. ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, and Rhode Island School of Design in Providence both offer classes that integrate AI. Last year, Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, launched an AI certificate program similar to SCAD’s minor. Perhaps today’s new generative AI tools will become like once-novel programs such as Adobe and CAD, absorbed seamlessly into the design process. If they take designers’ jobs, though, or thwart students’ ability to learn the basics, there may be no one left to use them. 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Learn how to measure visibility in AI search and move beyond outdated ranking metrics with expert insights in this webinar. The post Measuring Visibility When Rankings Disappear [Webinar] appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Below, Paul Leonardi shares five key insights from his new book, Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your Life. Paul is a professor of technology management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a frequent consultant and speaker to a wide range of companies, such as Google, Microsoft, YouTube, McKinsey, GM, and Fidelity. He is also a contributor to the Harvard Business Review. What’s the big idea? We are the first generation in human history to carry the entire world’s information, connections, and distractions in our pockets. It’s no wonder that the technology once promised to make life easier now leaves us tired and overwhelmed. Paul Leonardi refers to this as cognitive and emotional weariness, calling it digital exhaustion. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With intention, we can turn our devices from sources of drain into tools of connection, empowerment, and creativity. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Paul himself—below, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Exhaustion isn’t weakness—it’s physics Maya wakes up at 5:50 a.m. to her phone buzzing. Within seconds, she is scrolling on Instagram. A news alert pops up—she clicks it. Three text messages arrive—she switches to a different app. Her partner tries to talk to her, but she doesn’t hear him because now she’s checking WhatsApp. By the time Maya gets out of bed, she has made dozens of micro-decisions and context switches. Her brain has already started burning through its limited energy reserves, and she hasn’t even had coffee yet. This routine is a growing epidemic. In my research tracking over 12,000 workers across 12 countries for two decades, I found something startling. In 2002, the average digital exhaustion score was 2.6 out of 6. By 2022, it had skyrocketed to 5.5. My nine-year-old daughter looked at the graph and said, “It looks like a snake about to strike.” She was right. And that snake has struck. Think about a phone battery. When it’s new, you charge it overnight, and it lasts all day. But after thousands of charge cycles, it drains faster and faster. Eventually, it barely holds power at all. Our brains work the same way. Every notification, message, and screen switch drains our cognitive battery. Take Andi, a product manager I worked with at a software company. She told me, “I feel like my brain is a phone battery that just doesn’t hold a charge anymore. I used to be sharp all day. Now by 2 p.m., I’m staring at my screen, unable to focus on even simple tasks.” Andi wasn’t weak or lazy. She was experiencing what neuroscientists call cognitive depletion. Every time you switch your attention, blood rushes to your prefrontal cortex. Your brain sounds a two-tone alarm, searches for the right neurons to handle the new task, then activates them. This process, called rule activation, happens in tenths of a second. Each switch burns precious metabolic energy. “Every notification, message, and screen switch drains our cognitive battery.” Your brain accounts for only 2% of your body weight, but consumes approximately 20% of your daily calories. Most of that energy is devoted to keeping your body running: breathing, heartbeat, and temperature regulation. Only a tiny reserve is left for active thinking. As neurologist Richard Cytowic told me, “The brain’s reserve margins are slim and quickly eaten up by constantly shifting attention.” I tracked 20 teams at three Fortune 500 companies and found that the average knowledge worker toggles between apps and websites 1,200 times per day. That’s 1,200 energy-draining attention switches. If each switch takes just two seconds, that’s 40 minutes a day just transitioning between tools. But the real cost isn’t time, it’s the cumulative exhaustion from all that switching. Since ancient Greece, writers have described exhaustion as the depletion of a finite resource. Today, that resource is attention. Just like muscles grow sore from physical labor, minds weaken when overtaxed by constant switching, scrolling, and interpreting. The problem is that our bodies are great at signaling physical fatigue—sore muscles, aching joints—but our brains rarely wave a red flag. Instead, exhaustion sneaks up on us. We don’t realize we’ve crossed the line until we’re already depleted. Stop blaming yourself. If you feel exhausted by digital tools, you’re not failing. It’s the inevitable physics of finite energy colliding with infinite digital demands. 2. Tools multiply faster than our capacity We often assume the solution to digital overload is better tools. “If I just had the right app,” we think, “everything would be easier.” But the more tools we adopt, the more fragmented our lives become. Consider HealthCo, a global company I studied. When I asked employees to list their digital tools, I found that they weren’t just using email anymore. They had Slack for chat, Zoom for meetings, Jira for project management, Salesforce for customers, SharePoint for documents, Teams for cross-department updates, plus dozens of specialized tools. Each promised to make work easier. Together? They created chaos. One employee, Marcus, told me, “I spend more time figuring out where to respond than actually responding. Did that question come through email? Was it on Slack? Did someone tag me in Jira? I’m constantly hunting for conversations across platforms.” My research revealed that the average knowledge worker spends 57 minutes per day switching between applications. They also spend 30 minutes daily deciding which tool to use for each task. Should I message on Slack or email? Should I put this in Notion or Google Docs? These micro-decisions seem trivial, but when you’re making them 1,200 times a day, they create what psychologists call decision fatigue. Let me tell you about Shireen, a marketing specialist who listed 36 different digital tools she used daily. Everything from Adobe Illustrator to TikTok to her banking app. After our conversation, she looked at her list and said, “Oh God. That exhausts me just looking at it.” “The average knowledge worker spends 57 minutes per day switching between applications.” Shireen decided to try an experiment: she cut her tools in half. She identified tools that were redundant (using both Alexa and Siri), tools she barely used (Evernote for notes when she had Word), and tools that weren’t essential (three different social media apps for posting the same content). Six months later, her exhaustion score dropped by 40%. She told me, “I thought I’d miss those tools, but instead I feel liberated. It’s like I decluttered my digital life.” Technology expands faster than our cognitive capacity to manage it. We’re running software from 2024 on hardware (our brains) that hasn’t been upgraded in 300,000 years. Exhaustion isn’t built from volume alone, but from fragmentation across too many platforms. 3. Interpretation is more draining than information It’s not the flood of emails and notifications themselves that exhaust us most. It’s what I call inference fatigue, meaning the mental work of constantly interpreting ambiguous digital communication. Take Aaliyah, who runs a nonprofit in Georgia. Her inbox was overwhelming, but what really wore her down was the constant interpretation. She told me, “I spend so much mental energy trying to decode messages. Why did my colleague only reply with ‘ok’—are they annoyed? Why hasn’t the donor responded—did I offend them? What does that emoji really mean? It’s exhausting trying to read between the lines all day long.” Digital communication strips away crucial context: tone of voice, body language, facial expressions. Our brains work overtime to fill in the gaps. This creates what neuroscientists Susan Fiske and Shelley Taylor call controlled processing, or slow, deliberate, effortful thinking that demands huge amounts of cognitive resources. Researchers examined college students responding to ambiguous Facebook posts. Not only did students feel mentally exhausted trying to figure out if someone was genuinely depressed or just seeking attention, but the emotional toll of arriving at these conclusions left them feeling depleted and dispirited. Think about your own digital life. How often do you reread a text, worrying about its tone? How many times have you analyzed a brief email response, wondering if the sender is upset? These micro-interpretations pile up until we’re mentally drained. In the analog world, a face-to-face conversation offers dozens of cues that help us interpret quickly and accurately. A slight smile, a furrowed brow, the speed of response—all provide instant context. In the digital world, every interaction becomes a puzzle to solve. “These micro-interpretations pile up until we’re mentally drained.” But it gets even more complex. We’re not just interpreting others; we’re also constantly evaluating ourselves through digital mirrors. Take Zoom fatigue. Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford found that seeing ourselves on video calls creates unprecedented self-scrutiny. As he put it, “Imagine in the physical workplace, for the entirety of an eight-hour workday, an assistant followed you around with a handheld mirror.” That’s essentially what happens on Zoom. One of my students, Xiao, confessed to me, “When you’re teaching on Zoom, I’m constantly managing how I appear. Am I nodding enough to show I’m engaged? Can you see I’m taking notes? I was so busy thinking about how I looked to you that I missed half of what you were saying.” Exhaustion isn’t just about too much input. It’s about the invisible, constant work of decoding others’ meanings and managing our own digital presence. 4. Boundaries create energy, not limits We tend to think of boundaries as walls that keep us from being responsive and connected. But my research shows the opposite: boundaries create energy. Consider Vicente, a high school teacher and soccer coach I studied. He made one simple change: he turned off all notifications during soccer practice. No emails, no texts, no pings for two hours each afternoon. “At first, I was anxious,” Vicente told me. “What if I missed something important? But then something magical happened. I was fully present with my players. I could see their technique improving, and have real conversations with them. And when I checked my phone after practice, I had more energy to deal with messages because I wasn’t depleted from constant interruptions.” Boundaries are like fences around your attention. They don’t shrink your world; they protect the space where energy regenerates. In one study I conducted with companies using internal social media platforms like Jive, employees who set specific times to check messages improved their ability to find expertise by 31% and identify key contacts by 88%. Why? Because when they weren’t constantly interrupted, they could pay attention to patterns in communication and learn who knew what in their organization. But many of us resist boundaries. We worry we’ll miss something critical or appear unresponsive. Jed, an investment banker I interviewed, prided himself on responding to every message within minutes. “I’m dependable,” he told me. “People know they can count on me for fast responses.” “We worry we’ll miss something critical or appear unresponsive.” So, I interviewed his colleagues. Most didn’t even notice his quick responses. His boss actually wished he’d slow down: “Sometimes Jed responds too quickly without thinking things through. I’d prefer more thoughtful responses, even if they take longer.” Jed was exhausting himself to maintain a reputation that didn’t exist. His always-on approach scored him a five out of six on the exhaustion scale, while providing no real benefit to his colleagues. Boundaries are about saying “yes” to energy, focus, and genuine connection. When we protect our attention, we create energy. 5. AI could save us . . . or exhaust us completely Let me present two scenarios based on my current research with ten companies that are implementing AI. AI as liberator. Imagine an AI assistant that truly understands your work patterns. It filters your inbox, showing you only the three decisions that need your input today. It summarizes those lengthy Slack threads into two sentences of relevant information. It drafts routine responses that sound like you, leaving you free to focus on creative, meaningful work. I’m seeing glimpses of this at companies like HealthCo, where junior lawyers use AI to review contracts. Tasks that took days now take hours. They use their freed-up time to do higher-level work: strategic thinking, relationship building, creative problem-solving. AI as amplifier of exhaustion. My students recently used ChatGPT to write thank-you notes to a guest speaker. The AI expanded their brief thoughts into lengthy, formulaic essays. The speaker’s response? “If you’d sent me all these AI-expanded notes, I would’ve just fed them back into ChatGPT to summarize them.” Think about the absurdity: We’re using AI to expand our content, forcing recipients to use AI to compress it back down. It’s an exhaustion amplification loop. I’m already seeing this at scale. One executive told me 70% of internal documents at his company are now AI-generated—longer, more verbose, but not more valuable. As he put it, “We’re drowning in synthetic content that no human actually wants to read.” The scariest part? AI is getting better at keeping us hooked. In one study, personalized messages crafted by ChatGPT were remarkably effective at persuading people. AI can recognize our emotional states better than many humans, and it never gets tired of talking to us. A company I consulted for developed an AI sales assistant specifically designed to keep customers on the phone longer. As their product chief told me, “Our AI figures out the perfect next thing to say to maintain engagement. It’s like a conversation that never wants to end.” If we design and use AI thoughtfully, it can reduce exhaustion by handling routine tasks and freeing us for meaningful work. But if we let it run wild, it will accelerate our exhaustion to unprecedented levels. AI is either the beginning of the end of digital exhaustion—or exhaustion’s final evolution. The choice is ours. Enjoy our full library of Book Bites—read by the authors!—in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

In these volatile times, how do we navigate the intersection between values and commerce? Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert and Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya join New York Times reporter David Gelles onstage at the Masters of Scale Summit to reveal their different strategies for dealing with an activist White House, the pressure for what moderator Gelles calls “anticipatory compliance,” and how they grow their businesses while also prioritizing causes like environmental conservation and immigration. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response recorded live at the 2025 Masters of Scale Summit in San Francisco. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. Gelles: Ryan, Patagonia is a very different sort of company. This company has been meddling in politics, sometimes quite loudly, for more than 50 years now. Gellert: Meddling is a strong word. Meddling . . . oh, that’s a gentle word. [Patagonia founder] Yvon Chouinard has been donating to grassroots environmental activist campaigns for more than 50 years. In 2017, Patagonia sued President The President and his cabinet during the first . . . Gellert: Yeah, that’s meddling. That’s meddling. And you still, even at a moment when most CEOs are afraid to say anything about this administration, you’re still out there raising the alarm almost every single week, it seems. When your business is selling clothes, why do you spend so much time talking about politics and policy? Gellert: Well, first of all, it’s super interesting being on the stage with you, Hamdi, and with you, David. I think you made reference to it. You wrote a book that’s just come out in the last month about our founder and our 52-year history. You and I have gotten to know each other quite well over recent years, and I think there’s a lot that we have spiritually in common as companies. And then I think, to the nature of your question, to each of us, there’s a lot that’s actually quite different in how we navigate that. I think for us to now answer your question, we are focused on protecting the natural world. Period. That’s why we exist. It’s not about making money. It’s not about being the biggest player in outdoor apparel and equipment. It’s about protecting the natural world. And so that’s what we do, and we exist in a world right now, here in America, where the threats are absolutely unprecedented. And I think that what you might describe as speaking out, I just think is telling the [expletive] truth about what’s going on in the world right now. Okay, so the climate’s at risk, pollution and polluters, the regulations are coming off, and conservation, particularly public lands here in America. I mean, it is one goddamn threat after another, every single day. And so what are we speaking up on? Those things that matter. Same things we’ve spoken up on for 52 years. As the CEO of a company and as an individual, do you ever worry about the fact that this is a moment and an administration that has shown a willingness to be retributive? Gellert: Yeah, of course. And how do you navigate that? Is there any, I mean, the word is anticipatory compliance? Are you holding back at all? I think we have to be very strategic. I think we have to be very considered. I think what we talk a lot about is, where do we have authenticity to offer an opinion on something, and where can we be truly additive? If it’s performative and we’re just offering an opinion to offer an opinion, that’s not a space we’re going to play in right now. I don’t think the times benefit from that. I think where we can be truly authentic is in one or two places. One is we’re a business, and so we can speak from the business sector. And the other is on environmental and climate issues. We’ve got a 52-year history. We work our asses off to minimize our footprint. As you made reference to, we’ve supported grassroots activism for 40 years and counting. And so that’s who we are, what we do, and I think we’ve earned the right to offer opinions on that. You get a sense of the different approaches to really a very similar and consequential set of issues. We’re going to talk about more than politics, I promise, but I do want to come back to this issue of, Hamdi, how you navigate a moment like this, and when you decide to work with Ivanka The President, even when you decide to work with the White House. It can seem like a no-win situation. You work with someone, you piss one side off. You say something, you piss the other side off. How do you think about engaging in these partnerships where you are trying to find common ground without alienating any of your consumer base? Ulukaya: Yeah, look, what I do and what we do at Chobani is really, we have the known instinct or reflex that we react regardless of what the world thinks and all that kind of stuff. Ivanka actually did not start now. I worked with her in Idaho after President Biden got into the White House, actually. And what we did is, we made boxes of food from the farmers, and we delivered to people in need in communities at that time. And later on, even before the election, she and her partner, they created this organization called Planet Harvest, and she says: “Do you realize that in California, 40% of all the fruits and vegetables are wasted and left in the land because they don’t look good and there’s no buyer?” And I couldn’t believe it. I am aware of these things, but I didn’t even realize. And I went to the land and I saw, and partnered with her and her partners who had studied quite knowledgeably. Absolutely, we’ll do it. Absolutely, we’ll do it. I’ll invest with it, and I’ll lead it and improve the concept. So to me this . . . and when I said we are going to hire refugees during the first, I don’t know how many years ago, we got death threats and boycotts—all kinds of stuff like that. The first time I wrote about your company. Ulukaya: You wrote it in The New York Times, and we got death threats. We all have to react as human beings, who we are. And businesses are a combination of people. You’ve got to do the right thing regardless of what lawyers and communication experts will say. On the advisor council stuff right now. Ulukaya: I want to invite everybody to—we have some serious, serious issues that we have to bring everybody to the table to. Look, we really do. I do see some egocentric reaction . . . just anger because of the other person. Okay, they are enormous about the differences. I don’t know. I was invited to the White House because I’m announcing a huge investment in Idaho and another one in Rome in New York, and being part of Invest in America. I don’t have any working relationship with the White House, but my view on immigration and refugees is the same. I have an organization called Tent. I just came from Mexico. I’m meeting all those people who are encouraging people to hire refugees and train refugees. These are timeless truths. People are going to move, and we have to make a system that works for every single person. And we proved it in our factories, in our communities. And today, you will not have farmworkers, or you will not have functioning farms and agriculture, without immigration. Everybody knows that. Everybody. View the full article

What if you could read your audience’s mind? You could create the products your customers need, improve your profits, and save many hours. You’d become the creator or brand that just “gets it.” Ding, ding, ding! Your wish is granted. 🧞 There is a way to keep your pulse on the market and proactively anticipate what your audience wants — through social listening. What is social listening?Social listening is observing what your audience is saying about your brand and industry online to understand their needs. Let’s say you’re a skincare company. You want to launch a new product but have no idea what your audience is struggling with. Along with interviewing your current customers, you join a bunch of niche communities around skincare on Reddit, Facebook, and Discord and learn a lot of your target customers are battling adult acne. Now, you know you should launch a product targeting this issue. 👆That is social listening in action. You listened to your audience — including (both) current and prospective customers — and made a data-informed decision. Social media monitoring vs. social media listening: Is there a difference?Social media monitoring and social media listening are often clubbed together under digital marketing. But they aren’t synonyms. The differences are somewhat clear, but it’s still muddy waters. Some articles will say social media monitoring is proactive while listening is reactive. Another will mention how monitoring attacks the “how” while social media listening attacks the “why.” All of these statements are true, but there are always exceptions. For example, monitoring your brand’s reviews on third-party seller sites is both proactive and reactive.Similarly, even while grazing through your social media comments, you might notice how multiple comments on your account highlight the same issue and wonder “why” alongside “how.”Our take is that brand monitoring is a part of social listening. The latter encompasses any kind of listening you do — whether it’s proactive or reactive, whether it’s questioning how or why. (The intermingling of the two concepts is also why many social media monitoring tools contain plenty of social media listening features.) Cassey Ho Vinh, CEO and Founder of Blogilates, is an excellent example of how to do both simultaneously. She saw a relevant creator in the fashion industry talk about the troubles she faces with hoodies. Vinh did some sentiment analysis and found many of her target audience members also feel the same way. So she applied social listening and made a product — a new hoodie — with all the features the market wanted. Soon, Vinh got customer feedback on that same product via social media monitoring: People wanted hoodies without zippers. So, she made a hoodie without zippers. Vinh is a pro on how social media monitoring and social media listening work in tandem. After all, both have the same goal — delighting your audience. Why practice social listening: 5 major benefitsWhy go to the lengths of taking charge when you can make do with social media monitoring? Here are five reasons why social listening should be a non-negotiable part of your social media marketing strategy. 1: Social listening helps you understand customer sentiment It’s hard to get genuine and detailed feedback from customers. Interviewing your audience in-depth is also a time-consuming endeavor. Not to mention: It’s hard to do at scale. Social media listening enables you to go out there and get your hands dirty without these limitations. You can be a bystander to online conversations and pick up on something valuable. Take Ian Evans, content creator at tl;dv. He creates social media content around jobs he’s never done himself. How? By learning from memes, comments, and his network, according to his LinkedIn post. This TikTok video, for example, originated from a meme. Evans knew developers get mad when their code fails to run. Witnessing the meme made him understand why that’s funny. The post got over 100 likes, comments, and shares. Through social listening, Evans could pick up on a latent customer sentiment and optimize it for entertaining content. It proves how social listening data can direct your marketing campaigns and solidify your content strategy. And social listening isn’t limited to content creation. It can evolve into tangible product developments, too. Tl;dv launched on Microsoft Teams right at the cusp of when people started asking about the feature’s launch date. Social listening can come to your aid — whether it’s for creating relevant content or launching much-needed features. Both of which ultimately boost the customer experience. 2: Social listening boosts your reachSocial listening means you’re on top of the latest industry trends. You know what’s happening in your niche, which types of social media posts are getting more engagement, and what people are saying about you in real time. And when you leverage trends, you increase your reach on all social media platforms. For example, budgeting app YNAB used a classic meme format when they learned their competitor, Mint, was shutting down. Not only did this post get over 2000 likes in 14 hours — boosting their Instagram reach — but it also helped them shine as an alternative for all the Mint users. It isn’t the first time YNAB has used trending memes to increase engagement. They frequently use popular dialogues from pop culture — like Gilmore Girls, Mean Girls, The Office, and Modern Family — in the context of relatable financial struggles. Hopping on trends and making them your own is the easiest way to grow on social media. Social listening ensures you know those trends at the right time. 3: Social listening enables solving buyers’ objections pre-purchaseImagine if you could resolve the friction point for a prospective buyer before they got a chance to complain. Your brand reputation would elevate instantly, and you’d start customer relationships on the right note. For example, Dave from our team saw a tweet asking for a tool to repost his content on Twitter onto other social media platforms. Using social listening at its finest, he jumped in and pitched Buffer. If you know your buyers’ problems, hunt for them on social media and pitch your product or service as the solution. Or, if you notice people are complaining about an important feature missing from your competitors’ product (that you have), enter the conversation and let people know your solution as an alternative. It can also go the other way: If you notice negative sentiment from potential customers in social conversation, you can tackle it effectively. Social listening pushes you to have a crisis management plan in place before things go downhill. 4: Social listening helps you snoop on your competitors’ weaknessesWhen you’re aware of what’s going on in your industry, you know your strengths and your competitors’ weaknesses. Social listening improves your competitive analysis — enabling you to highlight your advantages to win over your rivals’ audience. Take us. When Hootsuite announced the extinction of its free plan, we were quick to share our take. Having an ear on the market helps you understand what you have that your competitors don’t and make that your selling advantage. 5: Social listening can aid in finding key thought leaders and influencers in your industryEvery industry has influential people. Partnering with these thought leaders helps you get in front of a new audience with the creator’s borrowed seal of trust. And social listening makes it easy to run into these people — especially if they aren’t household names — but small & influential micro-influencers. Hair brand Shaz & Kiks sends relevant creators their products as gifts. The influencers post it in their Instagram Stories often, like Victoria did — increasing the brand’s online presence and laying the groundwork for a potential collaboration. Social listening is a fertile ground for influencer marketing because it helps you stumble across the best creators in your industry organically. How to shape your social listening strategy in 3 stepsThe benefits are all well and good, but what happens when you actually step into the messy grounds of social media to practice social listening? It can be daunting to figure out how to navigate the wild landscape. Here’s how you can form a clear social listening strategy in three steps: Step 1: Decide how you will use the insights you uncoverThe first step for achieving any goal is figuring out your why. Knowing why you want to practice social listening — and how it can contribute to your business goals — will help you understand the actionable insights you should look for. And you don’t have to be limited to one aim, but you have to set priorities. For example: Your primary goal with social listening can be understanding customer sentiment. Maybe you’re still in the early stages of building your business and would like to understand what customers in your industry truly lack. Your core aim is set. Your secondary goal can be to analyze your potential competitors to find your unique selling proposition.Or your primary goal can be to drum up your business engagement to get more customers. Your secondary goal might be partnering with influencers in the space to elevate your first goal.The steps you need to take for both those goals will differ. In the first example, you don’t need to have an online presence yourself. You can be a silent observer and build in the background based on the insights you acquire.But in the second example, your approach has to be different. You must participate in online conversations, connect with thought leaders on DMs, and be visible on social media.Your social listening strategy will depend on how you plan to use the insights you receive from the process. Deciphering that should be your first step. Step 2: Make a game plan for finding trends & conversationsThere are a plethora of ways to find trends and conversations surrounding your brand & industry. We can primarily divide it into two methods: Manual: You use the built-in capabilities of social media to monitor conversations.Automated: You use a specific software to uncover the trends in your industry.Ideally, you’d have a mix of both methods in your workflow. Automating tracking mentions of your brand and specific industry keywords isn’t going the extra mile. You must be on the ground and do some grunt work to uncover precious insights. 5 manual ways of practicing social listening 1. Spot influencers using your product. Keep an eye on your customer list and see who’s purchasing from you. If you spot a well-known celebrity or influencer sporting your product, leverage it on your social channels. A Vintage Fit often shares pictures of popular creators wearing their clothes. But ensure the celebrity or the influencer is relevant to your customer personas and caters to your ideal demographics. 2. Do an advanced search on Twitter Twitter’s advanced searching features are a goldmine for market research when you know how to use them right. You can search for relevant keywords from certain accounts and filter based on engagement metrics. It’s the place to be if you want to stay in the loop of the latest trends, hop on conversations, and connect with relevant influencers in your industry. 💡 Learn more: The Superhuman Guide to Twitter Advanced Search If your audience’s choice of social network is YouTube or Instagram, both of them also have excellent search engine capabilities. It’s not as specific as Twitter, but it’s ideal for seeing what other people are saying on a topic. Or you can set up Google Alerts for industry-related keywords and stay updated on relevant conversations. 3. Search for industry-related hashtags on social media Making the most of hashtags — whether on Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter — isn’t solely about using them in your posts; it’s also about searching for them to stay updated on the latest news in your industry. Let’s say you’re a content creator in the productivity space. Use hashtags like #productivity, #productivitymethods, and #productivityhacks to discover the latest and popular conversations around the topic. TikTok even suggests keywords “others searched for” to make your job even easier. 4. Discover what’s trending on each social media platform Social networks have built features to help creators and small business owners learn what’s trending. You can find the trending hashtags on Twitter in the “What’s happening” section on the right-hand side.TikTok has a creative center for browsing what’s trending in your country.Instagram’s @creators account regularly releases a Reels Trends Report. All of these features are in place for you to spot trends and be a part of the conversation. 5. Join communities For social listening, you don’t need to build your own community. You can join existing ones. One Google search can lead you to hundreds (if not thousands!) of niche forums in your industry. They can be Slack channels, Facebook Groups, or Reddit threads. For example, a member of the Pretty Little Marketers Facebook Group recently inquired about whether or not he should purchase a particular camera to shoot social media content. If someone from the brand or a competing company was already a part of this Group, they could take advantage of the opportunity. It’s necessary to remember that almost all manual methods for social listening are time-consuming and challenging to scale. You need to have an eye on the market and do as much as possible, but you also need to bring in more efficient methods of tracking industry & brand conversations. 5 social listening tools for practicing automated social listening 1. Buffer Buffer lets you reply to all your social media comments from the comfort of your desktop. Interacting with the audience you already have is a crucial aspect of social listening. Use Buffer to communicate with your followers and keep them engaged. The best part? You can do a lot more with Buffer — like scheduling posts and tracking their performance — for free. 2. Keyhole Keyhole has a social media listening suite specifically catering to social media listening. You can track mentions of your brand, hashtags, keywords, and influencers. It has a QuickTrends feature, like Google Trends for social media. But it’s an advanced social listening tool priced at $79/month. Purchase it when you have the budget and have exhausted all other ways of social listening. 3. SparkToro SparkToro is the ultimate tool for audience research. You can find topics your audience is discussing, discover relevant influencers, and see which websites your target customers hang out on. It has a free plan for up to 20 searches per month. 4. Answer The Public Answer The Public is specifically useful for finding what your audience is searching for on Google and YouTube. You have to enter your topic in only one to two words, and the tool will offer various questions people have around that topic. You get three free searches every day. 5. Talkwalker Talkwalker is more than a social listening tool. It’s a complete consumer intelligence platform that provides insights into your buyers through its various features. It helps you discover trending topics, potential crises, and consumer pain points. Its pricing isn’t publicly available. But given its plethora of features, it might be pricey. Talkwalker is best to use when you have a full-fledged customer research initiative. Social media listening tools are an essential toolkit for your social media management efforts. They make the process more efficient and easy to implement. But remember: There are some things social listening tools just can’t do yet. For example, Gumroad and Beehiiv often retweet their customers’ achievements displayed via their products — even if the buyers don’t specifically tag them. Spotting your product in the wild is difficult for social listening tools. You have to have some skin in the game and eyes on the road to catch these instances. The ideal social media strategy has part-automated and part-manual methods for social listening. Step 3: Regularly measure the results and tweak your strategy to improve ROISocial listening is futile if you’re taking a shot in the dark. You have to see if your arrow hit the mark. Remember those goals we set in step one? Set a timeline to achieve them and check your progress once the deadline arrives. Let’s say your aim was to build brand awareness. You can check whether or not you were successful through various metrics and social media analytics: How many press mentions did your brand receive?How many thought leaders or influencers did you partner with?How many customers’ UTM codes showed they discovered you via social media channels?Set these metrics in step one to make your goal more concrete. But hold the numbers lightly. Like any social media data, the actual effects of social listening on business are often hard to quantify. An example: Someone might’ve read your brand’s name multiple times in articles, seen you pop up on social platforms, and witnessed influencers praising you. But they take action two months later (!) when they need your product or service — because you were top-of-mind. It’s impossible to attribute this to social listening efforts, even though it’s a major factor in play. In the end, remember the ultimate goal of social listening is to understand customers better and help them at the right time. Be a good listener to ace social listening“Listening” is the crux of using social media to grow your business. Your customers are more vocal than ever about what they need and like. All you have to do is keep your ears open. If it all looks too overwhelming, start by dedicating 30 minutes of your day to catch up on industry news and online conversations. And keep reading the Buffer blog — we have plenty of resources for small and large queries alike. Start by reading how to make your social media marketing plan from scratch. View the full article

Some 99% of hiring managers in the U.S. say they’ve used AI in some form during the hiring process, a 2025 report reveals. AI can whiz in and speed up cumbersome workflows (or make them disappear altogether). But after Fast Company spoke to several hiring managers and chief human resources officers to understand how HR is using AI to hire today, it became clear that for every benefit that AI offers there’s a human cost. In this piece paid subscribers will: Get a step-by-step guide outlining how AI is reshaping hiring—and who gets jobs. Learn what HR is doing to ensure hiring remains as fair as possible across the workforce. What job seekers can do to maximize their chances of landing the position. 1. Writing job descriptions, scheduling interviews Most jobs come with repetitive tasks that can be easily automated, and hiring is no different. According to the 2025 AI in Hiring report from international staffing firm Insight Global, which surveyed more than 900 workers in the professional services industries, 75% of hiring managers use AI to schedule interviews, 54% use it to write job postings, and 53% use it to take notes during the interview and to draft emails to candidates. At Zillow, using AI to book interviews reduced the time it takes to schedule an interview with a candidate from 19 hours to 30 minutes, a 97% reduction, the company says. Meanwhile, documenting interviews with AI saved the team 33 hours per quarter. Bosses maintain that these are all good things. “Our team was freed up to do more strategic thinking,” says Roz Harris, VP of talent acquisition, engagement, and belonging at Zillow. “AI removes the administrative no-joy work,” says Mary Alice Vuicic, chief people officer at Thomson Reuters, where AI is used to help write job descriptions, screen résumés, schedule interviews, and transcribe meetings. Companies are also building AI chatbots to help answer candidates’ questions as they navigate the hiring process. At Genpact, an IT consulting firm, the Genpact Engage chatbot has handled a million-plus questions across 30 countries to date. It has also nudged candidates to finish their applications, improving completion rates by nearly 50%. However, this has come with a cost. Harris points out that as her team of 15 built these tools at Zillow, they knew they were making their own work obsolete. “There’s no hiding that the tool we’re asking you to design could replace you,” she says. Zillow worked with team members to re-skill them and ensure they could still work at the company, despite AI taking over a lot of their duties, Harris adds. But in a world where workers may be being replaced by AI, an HR team designing themselves out of jobs speaks to the reality we live in. 2. Screening résumés The vast majority of companies today are also using AI to screen résumés. According to a report from Harvard Business School, more than 90% of companies are using an automated system to filter or rank middle- and high-skilled job candidates. And yet? The same report mentioned 88% of companies say qualified high-skill applicants are filtered out because they don’t match the criteria in the job description. HR management company Workday uses AI to screen candidates for jobs. It’s currently facing a collective-action lawsuit by applicants who allege the algorithms discriminated against them because of age, race, and disability. Many of the experts Fast Company spoke to pointed out that human resources departments are deluged with job applications, in part because AI has made it easier than ever to apply for jobs and spam hiring managers: DealBook reports that applications with AI-generated résumés submitted on LinkedIn have increased 45% this year. Overwhelmed HR departments have little choice but to fight fire with fire. “Candidates are using AI and AI agents to apply for thousands of jobs, so the candidate funnel has exponentially increased,” says Ali Bebo, chief human resources officer (CHRO) of educational assets company Pearson. Cognizant, an IT services provider, is developing an AI screening system that will score and rank résumés with the aim of rolling it out in December. The AI will fast-track qualified candidates, allowing them move through validation steps and get to an interview with a hiring manager more quickly. Kathy Diaz, Cognizant’s chief people officer, is careful to point out that the company is doing a number of testing and quality checks on the AI. “We want to ensure we’re not missing candidates that we shouldn’t and we’re selecting the right ones. We don’t want to waste anyone’s time,” she says. The hope, she says, is to eventually save enough time to be able to offer coaching and feedback to candidates who don’t make the cut. Still, while several hiring managers say they use AI to screen résumés and provide a recommendation, the final decision, they contend, is up to humans. Absorb Software, an AI-powered learning platform provider, uses AI to rank candidates’ résumés. But humans review each application to make sure the AI didn’t miss anything; highly ranked résumés get a couple of minutes of human review, while lower-ranked résumés get about 30 seconds. Not all companies are on board with automating the process. Zillow and Pearson refrain from using AI to screen résumés. “We’re not using AI to screen candidates, per se, because there are some challenges that are out there, some issues that have been out there where folks have been sued,” says Bebo of Pearson. “We’re quite cautious with using AI to do the screening for us.” Résumé screening rewards candidates whose experience matches the job description, but it can miss the candidates with unconventional backgrounds who might be potential stars. For example, an econ doctorate with a popular blog might make a great personal finance columnist for a media company, but an AI might skip over that person if they have no newsroom experience. To avoid falling through the cracks, Cheryl Yuran, CHRO at Absorb Software, recommends that candidates provide detailed résumés. While a one-page résumé has been standard for years, she says candidates can go up to two pages and should also include a cover letter. “We went through a phase where the shorter the better because people were reading every résumé,” she says. “Now with AI reading it, you want to include a decent amount of description to show your full experience so AI has enough data.” 3. Interviewing So far, companies that use AI to conduct interviews are in the minority, but perhaps not for long. According to a 2024 Resume Builder study, about a quarter of companies use AI to conduct interviews, and another 19% plan to do so within the next year. Brian Jabarian, a researcher at the University of Chicago, conducted an experiment analyzing the results for 70,000 candidates who interviewed for a customer service position. Candidates were interviewed by a human, AI, or given a choice of interviewing with a human or AI. Overall, Jabarian found that the AI interviews offered a more consistent experience: AI interviewers had a 50% chance of covering 10 of 14 required topics, compared to 25% for human interviewers. He also found that candidates interviewed by AI were 12% more likely to get a job offer. PSG Global Solutions, the company that built the AI bot that Jabarian used in his experiment, is planning to roll out its AI interviewer in 80 countries with more than 5 million candidates in early 2026. “We wanted to do this earlier, but this represents a major process change and has a significant impact on the candidate experience,” says David Koch, PSG’s chief transformation and innovation officer. “We wanted to be sure it worked as intended and to fully understand its effects, so we began with a pilot and asked Dr. Jabarian to conduct an independent large-scale field study to evaluate its impact.” Despite the encouraging outcomes, Koch still recommends AI interviewing only for specific cases: high-volume, high-turnover jobs for which applications are pouring in. “AI interviews are not a good fit when you have to sell a candidate on the job, or you need specific talents and fit such as a senior leadership position,” he says. (As someone who asked to try an interview with PSG’s AI, Koch’s statement struck a deep chord, as I found the AI competent but soulless.) Currently, Cognizant uses AI to make screening calls that check a candidate’s availability and interest. AI can handle 300 screening calls in one hour compared to a recruiter, who can go through four to five calls, while producing the same success rate as a human recruiter. While some companies are using AI to interview, the vast majority of those Fast Company we reached out to drew a hard line at using AI for interviewing. Safe Software, a Canadian company that helps organizations manage their data, notes that it’s critical to keep a human in the loop for interviews. “We recently brought a new employee on board with multiple offers. She [said] the fact we did not utilize any AI interviewers was a big reason [why] she chose Safe,” Bonnie Alexander, the company’s chief human resource officer, writes in an email. “Our human-centric approach to the hiring process spoke to her values, which is exactly the feeling we want to maintain as we continue to expand.” Not all job seekers are a monolith, though. Per Jabarian’s study, 78% of job seekers selected AI when given a choice between a human or an AI interview. Jabarian believes this is because AI interviewing allowed candidates to schedule interviews at their leisure. 4. Onboarding According to the Insight Global report, 50% of hiring managers are using AI to handle onboarding. Onboarding is ripe for disruption: In a 2025 study, 48% of more than 1,000 employees surveyed said a bad onboarding experience made them want to leave their job within six months, and only 28% of employees said their onboarding process prepared them for their job. At Atlassian, HR professionals built Nora, an AI agent that onboards new employees, which was rolled out in February of this year. When a new employee signs on, Nora shares information relevant to their role as well as the specific tasks they need to complete. Within the first month, Nora completed 2,000 hours of work answering questions from new hires and is now one of the most highly used agents at Atlassian. Going forward, Atlassian is working toward using AI to make the onboarding journey a one-click proceess. New hires will be able to start by clicking on Atlassian’s AI-onboarding hub, which will automatically assign new tasks and training on Atlassian’s tools and products. At Cognizant, AI handles onboarding for new hires—ensuring that forms are filled out properly and fielding routine questions. One of the priorities Diaz has for the time AI saves is to reinvest it in improving the new-employee experience. “We aren’t going to spend less time recruiting, we’re going to spend different time—more time speaking with candidates about our culture and matching them up with buddies and mentors to make sure they have a good experience,” she says. She points out that ideally onboarding should be a long experience where new employees get a 30-, 60-, 90-day, and one-year check-in, and HR can ask how things are going and if there are any gaps. “We’re not just automating what we’re doing,” she says. “We want to totally reimagine it.” View the full article

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The latest buzzword is “AI literacy.” Much like “social media,” “ESG,” and “CSR” before it, employers are now looking for proof of fluency on résumés, and individuals are desperate to differentiate themselves to show that they are keeping pace. And it’s everywhere, mentions of terms like “agentic AI,” “AI workforce,” “digital labor,” and “AI agents” during earnings calls increased by nearly 800% in the last year, according to AlphaSense data. Over the last five years, workers across industries have become expected to be well-versed in a technology that is ever-evolving and still relatively new for so many, including the leaders implementing it. The trouble with AI is that by the time a candidate hits “send” on a CV, their level of proficiency is already outdated. It’s a quiet, corrosive force that’s keeping people silent in the very moments when we need their voices most. But what if the real problem isn’t the pace of change or people not understanding AI, but instead that we have made them feel ashamed for their lack of understanding, preventing people from raising their hand to say, “I don’t know”? Vulnerability makes us human. Mark Cuban recently posted on X, The greatest weakness of AI is its inability to say ‘I don’t know.’ Our ability to admit what we don’t know will always give humans an advantage. Why, then, are we creating an environment and fostering workplace cultures that encourage people to “fake it, until you make it” as it relates to AI? The cost of staying quiet is real. We’re at risk of shaming ourselves into obscurity. The Shame Spiral in Action Everyone’s talking about the AI hype cycle. But almost no one is talking about the shame spiral it’s creating. AI not only has a long-term impact on the economy, but also on the day-to-day lives of people. Companies are replacing roles faster than they’re training workers and in some cases, like Klarna, laying off workers only to hire back when AI tools fall short. People miss out on jobs, not because they’re unqualified, but because no one gave them a path forward. They walk around feeling like impostors in rooms they’ve already earned the right to be in. Inside companies, we see biased tools get approved and shortcuts turn into systems. A recent report by LinkedIn shows 35% of professionals feel too nervous to talk about AI at work, and 33% feel embarrassed by how little they know. These aren’t just workers, they’re parents and community leaders. This shame spiral, fueled by hype that says “everyone gets AI except you,” risks shutting down curiosity and critical questions before they even start. The pattern signals a bigger issue: at the same time people feel too ashamed to engage, AI systems are taking over and making decisions, incremental and important, that affect everyone. To avoid embarrassment, people take shortcuts. A recruiter might rely on an AI résumé screener without understanding how it works and which candidates it may be discarding. A manager might approve a tool that decides who gets extended care without asking what drives the algorithm. A parent might sign off on an AI-powered teaching tool without knowing who designed the curriculum. A 2024 Microsoft and LinkedIn survey found that only 39% of people globally who use AI at work have gotten AI training from their company. We’ve seen what happens when these systems go unchecked. Amazon scrapped its AI recruiting tool after it was found to discriminate against women. Workday faces a class-action lawsuit alleging its AI screening tools systematically exclude older workers and people with disabilities from job opportunities. Microsoft’s chatbot Tay launched with the intention of learning from conversations, was exposed to trolls, and within 24 hours, was posting racist, misogynistic, and offensive content. When silence replaces curiosity, people essentially remove themselves from the decision-making process until they are no longer accounted for. Reshaping The Workplace Reality AI is here, and it is changing the workforce. The choice is ours: Bring people along with us and help them be part of the transformation or leave them behind in the name of efficiency? What moves people from anxiety to agency isn’t more lectures or tutorials. People are inspired by permission and tools. Permission to be a beginner. The freedom and the space to learn. The most confident AI users aren’t experts; they play with different tools until they find what works for them. Digital dignity starts with that permission—permission to ask basic questions, to slow down, to admit gaps. It means leaders modeling vulnerability before demanding employees fill theirs. To truly embrace and harness the potential of AI, we must focus on impact, not mechanics. You don’t need to code a neural net, but you do need to spot when AI systems are making decisions about you. Start with what affects you directly: parents can ask what tools schools are using, job seekers can learn how résumé screening works, and managers can ask what AI tools are coming into their workplace—and what training comes with them. Practice saying “I don’t know.” The best leaders see gaps as opportunities to ask good questions. JPMorgan created low-stakes spaces for managers to experiment with AI, encouraging leaders to admit when they were stuck. That openness built trust and sped up adoption. Johnson & Johnson encouraged broad experimentation across business units, generating nearly 900 AI / generative AI use cases across research, supply chain, commercial, and internal support. The result? An internal chatbot for employees and a fresh approach to making clinical trials more representative. This isn’t just a knowledge gap. It’s a culture of silence. And if we don’t break it, AI won’t be a tool for transformation; it’ll be a mirror for all the systems we were too ashamed to question. The most powerful thing we can say in this moment is: “I don’t know. But I want to learn.” Because the future is still being written, and we all deserve a seat at the table and a hand on the pen. View the full article

For leaders today, the pressure to do more with less feels relentless. Leaner teams, flatter organizations, and the rise of productivity tools such as Slack, Notion.ai, and Monday.com promise efficiency but often deliver the opposite: more reporting, more deliverables, and the demand to be “always on.”​​Organizations are increasingly falling into the “acceleration trap,” taking on too much too quickly and undermining their effectiveness and well-being. Sandra, a senior leader in the tech sector, saw this firsthand. After a reorganization left her team stretched thin, she slipped into a “9-9-6” routine—working nine to nine, six days a week. Gallup’s research shows unmanageable workloads and unclear priorities are top drivers of burnout and disengagement. For Sandra and her team, competing priorities created the illusion of progress. Quick wins piled up, but strategic projects stalled. Through our work advising dozens of companies navigating high-stakes transformations, we have seen this pattern repeatedly. Kathryn, as an executive coach and keynote speaker, and Jenny, as an executive adviser and learning & development expert, help leaders recognize when they’ve fallen into the productivity trap, and how to climb out before it undermines their long-term impact. Productivity isn’t the problem. Unbounded productivity is. Nonstop execution drains energy, mutes your voice, and erodes your ability to lead strategically. Here are four ways to avoid the trap. 1. Set Boundaries Against Over-Execution Deloitte finds that when AI and productivity tools lack clear ways of working, they create more work. Sandra’s team once tracked 157 projects, spending more time updating systems than moving work forward. As deadlines slipped, Sandra found herself diving into the weeds to close gaps—a vicious cycle that left her team dependent on her and pulled her away from the strategic work only she could do. “Long hours backfire,” undercutting both people and organizational outcomes, with over-execution producing diminishing returns. To avoid this death by a thousand cuts, leaders must set clear rules of engagement. Focus only on mission-critical projects and eliminate the noise. Create a not-to-do list. Steve Jobs said, “I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.” Empower your team to say “not now” when requests don’t align with priorities. And keep stakeholders aligned by communicating progress and risks, reinforcing that the team is tackling the biggest problems. By following these principles, Sandra’s team cut the list to 25 priorities. But protecting time is only part of the equation; leaders must also decide how to spend it. 2. Balance Operator and Architect Modes Even after narrowing the list, Sandra was pulled into details. Her CEO wanted project-level updates, so she dug into the weeds herself, time that should have been spent on architect-level work, such as setting direction, aligning stakeholders, and shaping long-term priorities. If she had stayed at the right level, her team would have managed the details, and her CEO would have been hearing about trends, risks, and strategic shifts proactively through her updates. The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) frames this as: “rocks, pebbles, sand.” Rocks: the 3–7 strategic priorities that truly move the business Pebbles: mid-sized projects matter but don’t transform the business Sand: daily tasks, emails, and meetings that eat capacity The insight is simple: protect the rocks. Each time Sandra dug into sand, she sacrificed architect time. Ask: Am I building the future, or just surviving the present? Protecting rocks advances strategy and gives leaders clarity to speak up when new requests threaten to divert focus. 3. Speak Up—Don’t Suffer in Silence One of the most common traps for leaders is quietly absorbing more work than they can handle. The instinct often comes from a desire to help and prove capability. However, silence signals capacity and quickly leads to overload. Gallup research shows unmanageable workloads are one of the biggest drivers of burnout and disengagement. The antidote is to make trade-offs explicit and visible. Leaders who speak up frame pushback not as resistance but as stewardship of priorities. Ground conversations in data: dashboards and workload views turn invisible strain into concrete evidence, elevating the discussion from “Can you take this on?” to “How do we prioritize what matters most?” Simple routines also normalize dialogue about focus. Start-stop-continue discussions encourage teams to decide what to pause or drop before new work is added. Asking, “Which initiative should we deprioritize to make room for this one?” reframes pushback as alignment, not reluctance. When Sandra faced mounting demands from her executive team, she shifted from silent acceptance to strategic dialogue. Instead of taking on every initiative, she began saying, “If we add this project, here’s what won’t move forward.” That change forced trade-offs onto the table, protected her capacity to act, and strengthened performance. 4. Protect Your Strategic Energy Sandra thought she was shielding her team by absorbing the overflow. It felt generous, even necessary, to keep them from burning out. But the more she took on, the more depleted she became. What looked like support drained her clarity and influence. That realization became a turning point. Protecting her strategic energy wasn’t selfish; it was the only way to lead effectively. Leaders safeguard energy by channeling it into high-leverage priorities only they can drive: setting strategic direction, strengthening client growth, aligning stakeholders, and developing talent. McKinsey research shows sustainable productivity depends less on visible activity and more on aligning day-to-day focus with core strategy. Once Sandra redirected her attention to those high-value areas, her team stepped up operationally. The company advanced with greater focus, and her CEO engaged her in forward-looking conversations that reflected her true value. Protecting her energy unlocked not just her effectiveness, but her company’s. When leaders over-execute, chase quick wins, or stay silent under pressure, they risk undermining the very future they are trying to build. Busyness doesn’t create results or innovation; focus and reflection do. The leaders who thrive aren’t the busiest, but the ones who know how to protect their capacity for the work only they can do. 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