The U.S. federal government shut down one minute into October, bringing with it uncertainty about jobs and the economy.
The shutdown hasnt brought significant turmoil to the stock market as of yet. Most notably, futures have dropped but not significantly, with the Dow shrinking 0.41%, the S&P 500 down 0.45%, and the Nasdaq losing 0.50%, at the time of publishing.
Meanwhile, gold prices have skyrocketed in response to the shutdown, reaching an all-time high early Wednesday morning that neared $4,000.
Just after the days 12:01 a.m ET shutdown, spot gold reached over $3,894, while U.S. gold futures hit $3,922.
Both have since dropped slightly, but remained at significant highs at the time of publishing.
Gold prices have risen significantly this year amid increasing economic uncertainty and a weaker dollar. As of early Wednesday, they were up roughly 46% year to date.
Investors tend to gravitate toward so-called safe-haven assets during times of uncertainty. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were also up on Wednesday as the shutdown began.
How bad could depend on how long
Historically speaking, a typical government shutdown shouldnt have a lasting impact on the economy, experts point out.
Government shutdowns tend to be high profile though low-impact market events, according to a report last week from financial company Truist. In the previous 20 shutdowns, there has been almost no change, on average, for the S&P 500, while it has been in positive territory 50% of the time during the shutdown period.
However, Truist notes that this is barring a prolonged shutdown.
Most government shutdowns have gone on for less than a few days, though the most recent oneduring President Trump’s first term in officelasted from December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019.
That’s a record total of 35 days. The Congressional Budget Office reported that it cut $3 billion in real GDP for the last quarter of 2018.
At the time, about 300,000 employees were furloughed, while another approximately 500,000 individuals had to work without pay. All federal workers received back pay once the shutdown was over. As Truist notes, this influx of payments should allow the GDP to recover on its own.
But this time around, the shutdown could bring permanent job loss, according to a memo viewed by Politico ahead of the shutdown.
Under Director Russ Vought, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) instructed agencies to look at removing employees working on programs, projects, or activities that have another source of funding, will see their discretionary funding lapse on October 1, and dont align with Trumps priorities.
Pushback has been swift. On Tuesday, U.S. Representative James Walkinshaw, a Democrat from Virginia, called the OMBs order an illegal power grab in an MSNBC opinion piece.
The same day saw the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) sue the Trump administration for these mass firing threats.
The groups claim that the administration is misusing the shutdown process for partisan ends and violating the very laws that govern how shutdowns are supposed to function.
Washington is bracing for what could be a prolonged federal shutdown after lawmakers deadlocked and missed the deadline for funding the government.Republicans supported a short-term measure to fund the government generally at current levels through Nov. 21, but Democrats blocked it, insisting the measure address their concerns on health care. They want to reverse the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s mega-bill passed this summer and extend tax credits that make health insurance premiums more affordable for millions of people who purchase through the marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act.Republicans called the Democratic proposal a nonstarter that would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.Neither side shows any signs of budging.Here’s what to know about the shutdown that began Wednesday:
What happens in the shutdown?
Now that a lapse in funding has occurred, the law requires agencies to furlough their “non-excepted” employees. Excepted employees, which include those who work to protect life and property, stay on the job but don’t get paid until after the shutdown ends.The White House Office of Management and Budget begins the process with instructions to agencies that a lapse in appropriations has occurred and they should initiate orderly shutdown activities. That memo went out Tuesday evening.The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 750,000 federal employees could be furloughed each day of the shutdown, with the total daily cost of their compensation at roughly $400 million.
What government work continues during a shutdown?
A great deal, actually.FBI investigators, CIA officers, air traffic controllers and agents operating airport checkpoints keep working. So do members of the Armed Forces.Those programs that rely on mandatory spending generally continue during a shutdown. Social Security payments still go out. Seniors relying on Medicare coverage can still see their doctors and health care providers can be reimbursed.Veteran health care also continues during a shutdown. Veterans Affairs medical centers and outpatient clinics will be open, and VA benefits will continue to be processed and delivered. Burials will continue at VA national cemeteries.
Will furloughed federal workers get paid?
Yes. In 2019, Congress passed a bill enshrining into law the requirement that furloughed employees get retroactive pay once operations resume.While they’ll eventually get paid, the furloughed workers and those who remain on the job may have to go without one or more of their regular paychecks, depending upon how long the shutdown lasts, creating financial stress for many families.Service members would also receive back pay for any missed paychecks once federal funding resumes.
Will I still get mail?
Yes. The U.S. Postal Service is unaffected by a government shutdown. It’s an independent entity funded through the sale of its products and services, not by tax dollars.
What closes during a shutdown?
All administrations get some leeway to choose which services to freeze and which to maintain in a shutdown.The first Trump administration worked to blunt the impact of what became the country’s longest partial shutdown in 2018 and 2019. But on Tuesday, Trump threatened the possibility of increasing the pain that comes with a shutdown.“We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them,” Trump said of Democrats. “Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”Each federal agency develops its own shutdown plan. The plans outline which workers would stay on the job during a shutdown and which would be furloughed.In a provocative move, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers in a shutdown. An OMB memo said those programs that didn’t get funding through Trump’s mega-bill this summer would bear the brunt of a shutdown.Agencies should consider issuing reduction-in-force notices for those programs whose funding expires, that don’t have alternative funding sources and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities,” the memo said.That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when furloughed federal workers returned to their jobs once the shutdown was over. A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but eliminate their positions, which would trigger another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that’s already faced major rounds of cuts due to efforts from the Department of Government Efficiency and elsewhere in Trump’s Republican administration.
What agencies are planning
Health and Human Services will furlough about 41% of its staff out of nearly 80,000 employees, according to a contingency plan posted on its website.As part of that plan, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would continue to monitor disease outbreaks, while activities that will stop include research into health risks and ways to prevent illness.Meanwhile, research and patient care at the National Institutes of Health would be upended. Patients currently enrolled in studies at the research-only hospital nicknamed the “house of hope” will continue to receive care. Additional sick patients hoping for access to experimental therapies can’t enroll except in special circumstances, and no new studies will begin.At the Food and Drug Administration, its “ability to protect and promote public health and safety would be significantly impacted, with many activities delayed or paused.” For example, the agency would not accept new drug applications or medical device submissions that require payment of a user fee. National Park Service: As the shutdown neared, the National Park Service had not yet said whether it will close its more than 400 sites across the U.S. to visitors. Park officials said Tuesday afternoon that contingency plans were still being updated and would be posted to the service’s website.Many national parks including Yellowstone and Yosemite stayed open during a 35-day shutdown during Trump’s first term. Limited staffing led to vandalism, gates being pried open and other problems including an off-roader mowing down one of the namesake trees at Joshua Tree National Park in California. Smithsonian Institution: In the event of a government shutdown, our museums, research centers, and the National Zoo will remain open through at least Monday, Oct. 6.
Impact on the economy
Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said a short shutdown doesn’t have a huge impact on the economy, especially since federal workers, by law, are paid retroactively. But “if a shutdown continues, then that can giverise to uncertainties about what is the role of government in our society, and what’s the financial impact on all the programs that the government funds.”“The impact is not immediate, but over time, there is a negative impact of a shutdown on the economy,” he added.Markets haven’t reacted strongly to past shutdowns, according to Goldman Sachs Research. At the close of the three prolonged shutdowns since the early 1990s, equity markets finished flat or up even after dipping initially.A governmentwide shutdown would directly reduce growth by around 0.15 percentage points for each week it lasted, or about 0.2 percentage points per week once private-sector effects were included, and growth would rise by the same cumulative amount in the quarter following reopening, writes Alec Phillips, chief U.S. political economist at Goldman Sachs.
Associated Press writer Ali Swenson, Fatima Hussein, Matthew Brown and Annie Ma contributed to this report.
Kevin Freking, Associated Press
The U.S. government has shut down.
Last night, Congress failed to pass a new funding bill that would have kept the federal government operating normally. However, at 12:01 a.m. today, the existing funding bill ceased to be in effect, and with no new one in place, large parts of the government are now shut down.
Fast Company has previously explored how the government shutdown will affect everyone, from Social Security recipients to travelers to federal workers. But the shutdown will also no doubt have an effect on the markets. And not just the stock markets.
The U.S. government shutdown appears to already be having an impact on cryptocurrency markets.
Heres how Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies are performing in the hours after the federal government shut its doorsand how cryptocurrencies reacted the last time there was a government shutdown.
The government is down, but crypto is up
The first thing to note about markets of all stripes today is that some are down and some are up. As of the time of this writing, futures of the three major stock market indexes in the United States are all downbut not by a staggering amount.
S&P futures are currently down by about 0.58%, Dow futures are down by about 0.52%, and Nasdaq futures are down by about 0.67%.
But those declines are opposite to how most major cryptocurrencies are performing. As of the time of this writing, nearly every major cryptocurrency is up by multiple percentages, including:
Bitcoin: Up 2.8% to $116,281
Ethereum: Up 2.8% to $4,283
XRP: Up 3.1% to $2.93
Other popular cryptocurrencies are also up as of the time of this writing, including Dogecoin, up 5.2%, and Solana, up 4.81%.
Why are crypto prices rising?
Many major cryptocurrencies began spiking around the time that the U.S. government officially entered its partial shutdown. But why?
Investors are likely seeking safe-haven assetsinvestments that are seen as safer bets than stocks or bonds when there is a wave of economic uncertaintyuncertainty that is often created by a government shutdown.
Historically, gold has been seen as the de facto safe-haven asset during uncertain economic times. But in recent years, as cryptocurrencies have become more mainstream, investors often see the digital assets as safe havens when political turmoil has the potential to upset traditional markets.
However, investors in crypto would be wise to act cautiously because while crypto currently seems to be benefiting from those seeking safe-haven assets, theres no guarantee that the digital assets will continue to riseor remain stablein the days and weeks ahead.
Indeed, the last time there was a government shutdown, Bitcoin lost value during the period that the U.S. government shut its doors.
Bitcoin lost value during the last shutdown
Prior to this government shutdown, the federal government last shut down during President Trumps first term. The U.S. government entered a partial shutdown between December 22, 2018, and January 25, 2019. This was the longest government shutdown on record.
And in the early days of the shutdown, Bitcoin appeared to receive a boost.
According to Yahoo Finance data, Bitcoin opened at $3,898 per coin on December 22, 2018. It closed the day above $4,014. Two days later, Bitcoin climbed to an intraday high of $4,271 on December 24.
But then the gradual slide began. Over the course of the next month, Bitcoin steadily declined, and by January 25, 2019, it closed below $3,600.
If you go by Bitcoin’s closing prices of $4,014 on December 22, 2018, and below $3,600 on January 25, 2019, that means Bitcoin lost roughly 10% of its value during the last U.S. government shutdown.
Of course, this historic loss cannot be relied upon to predict what might happen to digital assets during the current federal government shutdown. However, what this history suggests is that asset prices can vary significantly in the later stages of a government shutdown compared to the early stages.
Every holiday season feels high stakes, but 2025 may be the most unforgiving yet. Consumer demand remains resilient, but retailers are facing a tangle of economic headwinds, from tariffs and supply chain volatility to rising ad costs and leaner teams. In an uncertain economy, the margin for error shrinks, and the cost of a slow site or a fragile storefront grows even steeper.
For years, retailers have measured holiday readiness by promotions, inventory planning, and staffing strategies. But theres a blind spot: performance readiness. How fast, resilient, and visible your digital storefront is when shoppers show up can determine whether you hit your holiday forecast or miss it by millions.
The challenge is that many e-commerce leaders still operate under assumptions that no longer hold true. These assumptions quietly undermine performance and cause retailers to stumble at the moment they most need to shine.
Assumption 1: Performance Is a Side Project
Retail leaders spend months calibrating promotional calendars, forecasting inventory swings, and allocating marketing budgets. Yet digital performance gets treated like an afterthought, or a box to be checked by IT. In reality, it is a revenue program. What happens in the first few hundred milliseconds of a visit sets the tone for everything that follows and has measurable consequences.
A faster, more resilient storefront doesnt just feel smoother. It directly drives higher conversion rates, greater cart completion, and improved ROI on every marketing dollar. Research shows that 63% of shoppers abandon a page that takes longer than four seconds to load, and shaving even one second off load time can lift mobile conversions by 3%. Thats not just a technical winits a financial one.
When ad costs are rising, supply chains are fragile, and budgets are tight, squeezing more value out of the traffic you already have is one of the most dependable levers retailers can pull. The companies that win in 2025 will be those that recognize speed and stability not as a side project but as a boardroom priority.
Assumption 2: Shoppers Are Only Human
This holiday season has a twist: not every shopper will be human. 2025 will be the first year of Cyborg Monday.
AI agents are already comparing prices, summarizing reviews, and recommending products. They do not get tired, they do not impulse-buy, and they have little patience for heavy pages or unstable components. Just as SEO reshaped how teams built for Google, the rise of AI answers and generative engine optimization (GEO) is pushing a new discipline that favors clean markup, predictable rendering, and fast pages so experiences are easy for humans and machines to understand.
Recently, I wanted to find a kid-friendly music player with streaming capabilities. I did not start with a traditional search engine. Instead, I asked an AI. In seconds it produced options, pulled in reviews, and linked to retailers. In that moment, the agent was the primary shopper.
Multiply that instinct across millions of households this holiday season, and you can see why 2025 will be different. Retailers arent just competing for human clicks anymore. Theyre competing for placement in AI-generated answers, shopping summaries, and bot-driven carts. Thats why performance readiness is about more than keeping the lights on. Its about ensuring your site is fast, resilient, and discoverable, whether the shopper is a person on a smartphone or an AI agent buying on their behalf.
Assumption 3: More Traffic Equals More Revenue
In uncertain economic times, the reflex is to double down on traffic acquisition. Retailers pour money into ads, believing more visitors will guarantee growth. But the assumption that volume alone drives revenue is increasingly flawed. When load times lag or pages break, additional visitors do not translate into additional sales. Instead, they magnify losses. Every click that doesnt convert represents wasted spend.
Buying more top-of-funnel only works if your experience converts reliably under pressure. Under peak load, third-party tools can stall or fail. Without orchestration, you pay for clicks that never become customers. The smarter bet is to extract more value from the traffic you already have by raising conversion, reducing abandonment, and protecting every paid visit with speed and stability.
The Imperative: Build for Speed and Agility
Recognizing flawed assumptions is only the beginning. Most teams dont lose sales because they lack a strategy; they lose them because theyre weighed down by fragility. Modern e-commerce storefronts are like orchestrasdozens of third-party vendors, from ratings and reviews to personalization engines, all playing at once. But under the heavy traffic of peak shopping season, many of those instruments stall, fall out of sync, or fail to load entirely.
Performance readiness in 2025 means more than checking a Lighthouse score. It means building agility into the stack itself:
Continuous optimization, not one-time fixes. Performance isnt static. Codebases evolve, vendors push updates, and new scripts pile up. Optimization must be ongoing.
Real-time resilience under load. Peak traffic reveals fragility. Stress-testing and load resilience need to be continuous capabilities, not seasonal exercises.
Orchestrate third parties and dont blindly trust them. Every vendor integration affects performance. Leaders must demand visibility and orchestration across the stack.
Tie visibility to revenue. Technical scores are helpful, but what matters is the financial translation: how many sales are lost or gained through performance.
The Bottom Line
Holiday pressure is coming. You cant control tariffs, shipping costs, or consumer sentiment. You can control what happens when shoppers or their agents hit your site.
The first Cyborg Monday will not reward those with the loudest promotions or the biggest ad budgets. It will reward those who have built fast, resilient, bot-friendly storefronts. In this new era of e-commerce, milliseconds wont just decide whether you win or lose a customer. They will decide whether you appear in the consideration set at all.
Miklu Silvanto, Ouras chief design officer, says incorporating advanced computing power into a tiny ring is a major challenge. It’s just as challenging to make a ring that people will actually want to wear around the clock. So Silvanto, an industrial design veteran who has worked at Apple and Bang & Olufsen, must also think of himself as a jewelry designer.
“A ring is such an intimate object,” he says. “You might wear it alongside your wedding ring. You need to think comfort, and beauty, and fashion.”
On October 1, Oura launches a new collection of ceramic rings that are more fashion-forward than its previous ones, which resemble metallic wedding bands. Since ceramic takes well to color, the new rings come in an array of hues, including petal pink, tide green, cloud white, and midnight blue. The company has also developed a new charging system that will allow wearers to switch between rings seamlessly, without losing any data.
[Image: Oura]
These new rings cost $499, while the metallic versions are priced between $350 and $500 depending on the finish. Users must also pay $70 annually to use the app that presents their health data, analysis, and advice. Given how expensive this product is, the idea of switching rings based on your outfit of the day may be an affordable reality to only a small, wealthy slice of the population, epitomized by some of the most famous Oura wearersMark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, Prince Harry, and Gwyneth Paltrow, to name a few.
Still, the rings are resonating with consumers around the world. Oura sold 2.5 million rings last year, making up half of its total sales since 2015. And the company expects to generate $1 billion in sales this year, making it one of the biggest players in the wearable technology industry. After its $825 million Series E round, its now valued at $11 billion.
[Photo: Oura]
The Tiniest Computer
For a designer like Silvanto, working on a smart ring involves incorporating as much technology as possible into the tiniest of products. When Oura launched a decade ago as a Kickstarter project, its first ring was much chunkier and could monitor only sleep and daily activity.
[Image: Oura]
Since then, the Oura’s designers have managed to make the ring smaller. Both the metal rings and the new ceramic ones are roughly 8 millimeters wide, 2 millimeters thick, and weigh between 5 and 8 grams depending on the size. And the rings are able to track around 50 biometrics. To do this, they use several sensors, including an infrared LED that measures blood oxygen levels, green and infrared PPG (photoplethysmogram) sensors that track heart rate, a digital thermometer that measures body temperature, and a sensitive accelerometer that tracks movement.
Oura has benefited from broader changes in the technology industry that has been working toward miniaturization. (This is similar to what has been happening at, say, Dyson, which is incorporating more and more powerful motors into smaller hairdryers and vacuums.)
[Photo: Oura]
Silvanto says Oura has focused on incorporating this tech into a design that is as comfortable and beautiful as possible. The new rings are made from zirconia ceramic, which is significantly harder and more durable than the ceramic used for vases and dishware. The rings are shaped and then fired in a kiln, which chemically transforms them into the harder material. (In fact, it is so hard that it can scuff softer metals.)
Silvanto stresses the appeal of the materials ability to take on colors. The four hues in the new collection are glossy and vibrant. If Oura’s metallic rings look like simple wedding bands, these ceramic rings evoke the color of gemstones. It’s jewelry that allows users to express their tastes and aesthetic preferences.
[Photo: Oura]
Oura ring as fashion object
Now that Oura is framing its rings as fashion objects, it wanted to ensure users were able to easily swap them on a daily basis to go with their various styles or moods. Silvanto says creating a system that would allow users to change rings while keeping all their data intact wasn’t simple. Data is stored in the ring itself, in the app, and in the cloud. “When a user switches between rings, all of this data needs to be synchronized to ensure that the tracking would be accurate,” he says. (This new data-synching capability is live on iOS apps today and will be available on Android starting October 10.)
While the new ceramic designs are a significant launch for Oura, Silvanto says his team is already focused on dreaming up the companys next-gen rings. As sensor technology continues to shrink, rings will become even thinner. And the team will continue to work on making them as stylish and fashin-forward as possible. “The best ring is one that people actually want to wear,” Silvanto says. “And to do that, you need to think beyond technology and about culture.”
Peloton is pushing off with a new strategy for making workouts personal and more useful.
The at-home fitness company today unveiled a turnaround strategy that it says will overhaul and improve its offerings by relying on AI-powered features.
The companys ultimate goal? Leveraging technology to increase personalization and create a more sticky workout experience and prevent churn, create communities between members that will bind them to the program.
The new strategy comes after a rocky few years for the company.
Peloton went public in 2019 at a price of $27 per share, but is now trading at $9 after incorrectly predicting demand for its products after a COVID-19-fueled surge drove the price to a height of $167.42 in January 2021. In an August earnings call, CEO Peter Sternan Apple Fitness+ cofounder who joined Peloton in Januaaryannounced a 6% workforce reduction.
On the same calll, the company posted a fourth-quarter profit and signaled it would adjust prices to offset the impact of extra costs associated with tariffs. Some of those price adjustments were announced today; the companys All-Access Membership from $44 to $49.99 and App+ Membership from $24 to $28.99, and App One Membership from $12.99 to $15.99 effective this month.
With todays announcement, the company is banking on AI-powered workout advice, personalization, and more community-focused content that will restore its usership (and stock price) back to its pandemic height.
AI Integration
Pelotons newest features involve AI integration to personalize users experiences. Today, the company launched Peloton IQ, an AI and computer vision system available on its new product models to provide personalized guidance and class recommendations for members, based on movement tracking via built-in cameras, class history, and fitness level.
To power Peloton IQ, the company built its own large language model (LLM) using the data its collected over time. “We’re not using off the shelf LLMs, Pelotons Chief Product Officer Nick Caldwell says. No else on the planet has the ability to do the sort of movement tracking that you’re going to see in our products. For some aspects of the product the company is using other LLMs like Metas Llama.
To match the companys new AI capabilities, Peloton also unveiled new base and premium equipment. Its new bikes, treadmills, and rowing machines have built-in cameras that track users movements and offer them real-time feedback on their form during strength workouts. The cameras can also track weight-lifting reps and suggest different weights for each exercise. The new equipment also has swiveling screens to make cross-training in view of the camera easier.
Getting Personal
The upgraded software also includes a workout generator which comes up with personalized workout plans based on a users goals (like getting stronger or losing weight), and a self-paced strength setting that lets members take on-demand classes at their own pace while they receive live feedback from Peloton IQ. The equipment can be integrated with fitness trackers including products from Apple, Fitbit, and Garmin.
Once Pelotons products have registered a users goals, workout history, and data, the app can even rate classes for them. For example, a member might see a harder than your usual tag next to a class while they are browsing.
At the end of the class we can look at how you performed and we can give you insights, says Jen Kotter, Pelotons chief content officer. Every week we roll that up into a report that is meant to directly affect the actions that you take on our platform.
To prepare for the launch, the company has already banked 2,000 instructor-led classes that can track usersall available on the platform starting today.
Custom workouts for more people
As Peloton uses AI to expand its personalization capabilities, its also unveiling tailored content for different groups of users, including one that has been the target of a growing focus from companies: people in menopause.
In 2024 the market for menopause-related products and services was worth approximately $17.79 billion. By 2030, that number is projected to reach around $24.35 billion. Today the company announced a partnership with Respin Health, which provides coaching, community support, andproducts geared towards women in menopause.
The programming, set to launch October 6, will feature curated classes designed to relieve certain menopause symptoms, and will let women join a dedicated digital community on the Peloton app. Kotter says its an example of Peloton listening to what its ridersand instructorswant from it.
[Menopause] started to be a big conversation for a lot of members who had been with us for many years, she says. They didn’t like the way they were feeling, and they honestly didn’t know what kind of workouts would help them and they didn’t want to lose traction.
The company is also launching other dedicated content collections to help groups including those with runners knees or tennis elbows, new moms, and office workers. In tandem, Peloton is doubling down on digital teams in the app, letting users join them based on various affinities or hobbies to encourage each other, all in the hopes of getting them to stay.
Ultimately, we want to be able to have a one-to-one relationship with each one of those 6 million [members],” Caldwell says.
TikTok has been abuzz with the workplace trend task-maskingthat is, making yourself look busy so that your boss thinks youre hard at work. Cue behaviors like pounding hard on the keyboard, always keeping your status to active, or walking around the office with your laptop and looking like you have somewhere to be when you dont.
Its all show. Its all performance, one TikTok user posted. They could be typing a thousand words a minute, but really be typing nothing, posted another. Some argue that its backlash against return-to-office policies: Many of these employees, especially Gen Z, feel like their presence doesnt equal productivity, a TikTok user said. And crucially, its not just about laziness, wrote another, arguing the pressure to look busy could actually be a sign of overwhelm.
The term has come to be associated with Gen Z on social media, but in reality, the act (and art) of looking busy has been around for decades.
Task-masking is the digital equivalent of shuffling papers, says employee coach and attorney Theresa DAndrea, known as That Work Girl, whos also discussed the trend on TikTok. Its an employer’s market right now to get a job, so people feel like they have to be busier than usual in order to keep their jobs.
Nearly half (48%) of managers are concerned about employees who fake their productivity on the joband not without reason. That’s because 37% of managers and 32% of non-managers themselves admit to such fauxductivity, or trying to appear busy even when theyre not, according to a 2024 survey of 3,000 full-time employees in the U.S., U.K., and Ireland by Workhuman, an HR software company.
Thats not good for employeesor companies. Such pressure to look busy can lead to burnout and inefficiencies, DAndrea says. Rampant task-masking may be a sign of workflow or cultural issues that management needs to address. And it may be an act of defiance for some, but a scrambling to prove worth for others.
If youre feeling the pressure to look busy to show your boss how important you are, try these tactics instead of pretending to answer emails during the next all-hands meeting.
Get clear about whats important, and prioritize
ZipRecruiter career expert Sam DeMase says that in order for employees to truly add value, they need to understand the metrics used for success by both their supervisors and the company. You just need to focus on doing work that actually moves the needle, she says.
DeMase suggests asking your boss questions to get clarity: How is success defined for this project? How does this project serve the companys goals for 2025? Know your core strengths and communicate those.
DAndrea agrees. Instead of responding to every text, email, and communication platform notification immediately in an attempt to look busy, focus on what matters. Thats especially true after youve gotten a sense of what your boss and the organization value.
Maybe even help your boss put together a KPI [key performance indicators] dashboard to track the performance of the team if your boss doesn’t already have something like that, says Korn Ferry senior client partner Maria Amato. I would be delighted if someone on my team did that.
Keep learning
Instead of tackling a task just for the sake of crossing it off the to-do list, keep learning where you can, says workplace culture expert Marissa Andrada. Work on understanding more about the company and its culture and values. If you get the context of how the work that you’re doing fits in [to the team and values]why it’s importantthen you can show, Here’s what I think about it, she says.
Not only does this give you a better perspective on the work youre doing, but it can also help frame your work as more essential to your team (and boss). Its making your manager be successful by delivering on time and on point, she adds. It replaces the performative busywork of task-masking with strategic thinking that demonstrates real value.
Taking on stretch roles or additional projects can help you keep learning, too. However, Amato cautions that its important to understand the culture of your company and the nature of your supervisor: Dont make it seem like you are trying to get away or are not interested in what you’re currently doingnot wanting to pay your dues, for example, in your current role.
Document your wins
DeMase suggests keeping a weekly log of your progress and wins, such as meaningful contributions to meetings, goal completion, positive feedback, project milestones, and processes you improve along the way. She adds that documenting your successes can also keep you motivated in your job.
Amato says what you do with that information depends, again, on the culture of your organization and team. You might tell your supervisor that youve collected some data on your performance, and ask whether they would like you to share the information with them. Your boss may say, Oh, I would love to see that as it comes in. Just send it to me each and every time. But if they haven’t actually asked for [the info], it could be sort of like spamming your boss, she adds.
We need to move away from busyness bringing value, DAndrea says.
By getting more clarity about your role, reconnecting with your works meaning, and documenting your wins, you can add value and get more satisfaction. Those are payoffs that marching around the office with an open laptop simply cant deliver.
A few years into the AI boom, its clear that designers can rely on AI for some things. It can automate tedious tasks in Photoshop that once took up precious time. It can generate images on command (quality be damned!). It can schedule a meeting, respond to an email, and take notes on a Zoom call.
But for all the hype, we know that AI isnt a silver bullet for the real problems creatives face. Far from it. So we wondered: When it comes to design and creative work, in a blue-sky scenario, what do todays design leaders wish AI would actually take care of for them?
We asked nine great designers that very question, and got back some interesting answers.
Their answers, seen below, reveal more than productivity hacks. They are a prism into the pain points of a modern design practice, and a view of how some of the best minds in design are thinking about AI.
Pum Lefebure, cofounder and chief creative officer, Design Army
1. Dream Harvester: An AI that records my dreams and subconscious visions while I sleep, then turns them into usable moodboards, storyboards, or campaign concepts the next morning.
2. Taste DNA Engine: AI that learns your creative fingerprint so deeply it can filter endless options, then only show ideas that match your intuitionlike your own inner taste amplified.
3. Multidimensional Story Weaver: You give it one idea and AI spins it simultaneously into a film, song, sculpture, VR world, fragrance, and fashion lineall cohesive, all connected.
[Source Images: Westend61/Getty Images, Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images, Stefan Grau/Getty Images, Photobank2/Getty Images, PromesaArtStudio/iStock/Getty Images Plus]
Sara Vienna, chief design officer, Metalab
Everyone says they want AI to take away the busywork, and of course I agree. But I want to push it further. I wish AI could act less like a task runner and more like a thought partnera thought partner that I actually trust with context and nuance. Point out the edge cases, flag accessibility issues without watering everything down, remind me when Im stretching myself too thin, even help me recognize the milestones that matter in the lives of people around me.
Because we’re living in a sea of sameness where anyone can vibe code and ship something, the quality bar is so low. But is it good? Is it new? Does it deserve to exist? Thats the gap I want AI to help close, not just speed up production, but raise the bar on quality and meaning.
Jessica Walsh, CEO, founder and creative director, &Walsh
Join meetings for me? I know thats not great to say, but I find that when I’m in meetings all day, it takes a toll on my creativity . . . yet I know how important it is to be present for our clients.
The more obvious answerhandling all the financial aspects of the business, like accounting, invoicing, forecasting, etc. For any creative agency owner, it can be a huge creative time suck to constantly think about.
I also think there could be a much better system for archiving our work and project learnings so that anyone who touches those projects in the future has access to them in a really easy-to-understand way. After leading an agency for more than 15 years with a ton of repeat clients, were always looking to optimize this, and I think AI could integrate here in some really exciting ways
Aaron Draplin, owner, Draplin Design Co.
I will say it’s already doing exactly what I would have really ever hoped and dreamed that it would ever do, which is just that generative fill thing in Adobe. The idea that if I have a vertical image that’s given to me and I have to make it into a square, I can just do a couple clicks for that generative fillit’s not crossing an ethical line at that point. It’s just filling in dead space. That’s amazing, because I would have had to do that myself through trickery and fades and gradients and bullshits and things and stuff. Now that thing can go do it that quick.
Gui Seiz, director of design, Figma
My biggest wish for AI is to hold on to context and intent the same way a good collaborator does. I want to see AI shift from a productivity hack to a genuine thought partner in the creative process. It should track the intent behind decisions, suggest course corrections when I veer off track, and help me stay in flow. The goal isnt just to work faster, its to work with clarity and help designers navigate the messy parts of the process: the ambiguity, the feedback loops, the gap between rough sketch and refined product.
Where it gets interesting is when AI really remembers your creative journey across projects, it can start connecting dots you can’t see. Maybe it surfaces a discarded approach from months ago that suddenly fits your current work, or reveals patterns in your decision-making that point toward unexplored directions.
Leta Sobierajski, partner, Wade and Leta
I’m hyperconscious of how utilizing AI is shortening my thought process. And while it is enjoyable to embrace cut corners and shortcuts of, say, writing an artist statement or summarizing a brief, I’m a bit terrified by its ability to think more succinctly than I do and automate the processes that have led me to become the creative person that I am today, no matter how grueling they have been. A benefit to the way I work is that my interpretations are never black or whitefollowing an artistic practice is about the meandering and the daydreaming, and with the use of AI that magic may be depleted.
So, clearly I’m trying to avoid it for any high-level thiking and writing, as this dependence feels like a gradual dulling of a sharp knife. That said, I’d appreciate it more if it served me a sandwich every so often when I forget to eat, or if perhaps it could remove me from my chair when I’ve sat for too long to encourage me to go enjoy the weather instead.
[Source Images: Westend61/Getty Images, Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images, Stefan Grau/Getty Images, Photobank2/Getty Images, PromesaArtStudio/iStock/Getty Images Plus]
Giorgia Lupi, partner, Pentagram
My blue-sky scenario would be an AI model that reduces the labor of tedious tasks, allows us to test ideas faster, but does not erase the important moments of frustration, collaboration, redirection, and happy accidents in the design process, as that is ultimately what brings the language of design to life. But I think there are important considerations to be made.
First of all, when you ask about how AI can be used in the design process, you would likely get different answers from a design director than you would from a hands-on designer who might see a time-saving benefit to AI-powered visual modeling tools. And secondly, although I see value in continuing to explore what AI can do for the field, I still have open questions: Can the shortcuts made possible by AI lead to similarly valuable designs? Do these shortcuts preclude designers from important processes and experiences? Is there a way that AI can be used to eliminate tedium without necessarily informing the visual outcome?
Without AI, whether you design alone or with a team, the designs detours, loose experimentation, happy accidents, and outright mistakes all lead to a unique result. As much as Ive enjoyed generative AI in the early days, lately my experience has been marked by frustration, as AI agreeably translates my requests into outcomes that feel like the result of a very different process that is neither collaborative nor solely mine, which is what I am reflecting on these days.
When I think about why our clients come to us, it is to transform their stories, ideas, and brands into visual languages that people can connect with. For me, that still means finding the human element. No two designers will craft the same solution for a project, and the beauty in this is that a designers work so uniquely reflects their own perspective. I do not want the integration of AI, with its specific training and incentive to please, to result in a great flattening of design, where well-worn algorithmic decisions make everything look the same.
Forest Young, executive director of design, FundamentalCo
In a blue-sky scenario, a designer would never need to wait to be the recipient of a mediocre briefone that reeks with a desperate hunger for relevance. She could scrape the subreddits for unmet needs, painful experiences, and problems worth solving, for communities that she felt a kinship with, and design a solutiona brand, a product, an experience with an inspired sense of autonomy and empathy.
In short, designers should not believe the hype, but instead [they should] believe in themselves. We must endure the torrent of efficiency-laden rhetoric until we reach an equilibrium, and discover a way to harness this technology to capacitize; to imagine beyond new skins of things to new things altogether. As industries furiously build on top of identical infrastructures and de facto research implications, unique expression will become a peerless signature. Self-assured designers empowered by AI will drive world-building, product visions, and MVPs, as well as unforeseen form language. Like any worthwhile growing pains, we must place a wager on who we can become beyond who we once were.
[Source Images: Westend61/Getty Images, Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images, Stefan Grau/Getty Images, Photobank2/Getty Images, PromesaArtStudio/iStock/Getty Images Plus]
Brian Collins, cofounder, CollinsImagine if every deck, doc, and post of yours stays on-brand. Not because you had to police them all to death, but because the brand itself is living and defending its own borders like a benevolent nightclub bouncer.If AI helps the scaffolding hold itself up, we get to spend our energy on the big swingsthe ideas, the products, the campaigns no ones ever seen beforewhile the system keeps the everyday stuff from collapsing into chaos.
The dream, the way I saw it, was never to sit in front of a drafting table for three days adjusting kerning by hand. That wasnt noble. That was carpal tunnel.The dream for designers was to have a creative system that keeps running when youre asleep or sulking. To have a collaborator who has ideas faster than you can write them down, and keeps yours intact from the moment they leave your desk to the minute they appear on a screen, in a store, or in someone’s home.
Charles Eames warned us, Never delegate your understanding.
Fine. Dont.
But now you can delegate everything else and watch it go.
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
As ResiClub has closely documented, Florida has been the epicenter of U.S. housing market weakness in 2025.
However, KB Home executives now believe the worst may be behind themat least for their businessin the Sunshine State.
While giant homebuilder KB Homewhich has a $4.3 billion market capitalizationisnt ready to call it an inflection point for the entire state, it believes its price cuts in Florida were more than sufficient to stabilize demand for its business. In fact, it may have cut too deeply in Florida and could now need to raise prices in some communities.
On the companys September 24 earnings call, chief operating officer Rob McGibney said its business in Florida appears to be stabilizing after the builder moved aggressively to cut prices earlier this year. In fact, KB Home now thinks some of those cuts went too far.
We’ve actually found, in some cases, we’ve gone above what we needed to [and cut home prices too much in Florida]. So, in order to optimize those assets, we’re now increasing [the] price, McGibney said.
The executive added that KB Homes new home sales in Florida in the third quarter were higher than in the second, a sign that the price adjustments worked to restore demand. He also pointed to a decline in housing starts across the state, which is easing pressure from supply.
The good news for us is that [price cuts in Florida] worked, and now you’re seeing the orders come back up [in Florida] as a result of that. It’s also, as I mentioned earlier, one of the markets where we’ve seen the biggest decline in [housing] starts. So we’ve had some of our best results in cost reductions there, too. And now, as I’m calling, that is starting to stabilizewe’ve got that combination. I think we found that market [in Florida]. We’ve driven cost [in Florida] down, and now we’re starting to take it back the other way, McGibney said.
!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}();
McGibney stopped short of declaring a statewide turnaround but said the builder is encouraged by recent trends. I’m not necessarily calling it an inflection point for the whole state of Florida, but we’ve been encouraged by what we’ve seen recently.
KB Home executives also noted varying conditions across other major markets. California’s Inland Empire, Las Vegas, Houston, and Charlotte, North Carolina, all posted solid demand in Q3, while coastal California, Seattle, and Denver remain more challenged.
Still, for Floridathe market thats defined much of 2025s housing weaknessthe shift from deep price cuts toward selective price increases marks a notable change in tone.
ResiClub PRO members can read our full report on KB Home here.
Thinking forward is an automatic process. Cause, then effect. Input, then output. A to B. It feels logicaland normal to start with a conclusion, then find justification around it.But we can always take our thinking a step further. Sometimes, the best way to get the answers you want is to think backwards. Its called mental inversion. Turn the whole thinking process upside down. As the great algebraist Carl Jacobi said, Invert, always invert.
Put another way, What would guarantee I fail at X?” is a better question than How do I achieve X? Most people focus on the obvious process because the brain doesnt like to think through ugly pitfalls. Starting from B to A helps you avoid the results you dont want. Its one of the most powerful tools I use to think clearly.
To turn your decision-making process upside down, start from the back. Thinking backwards works because it forces you to reflect on what may be missing. The human brain is wired to save energy. It wants quick answers. Slowing down to see the full picture helps you cover all the basics of your decision-making process. Inversion helps you ask better questions. It can improve your clarity. Psychology research backs this up. A study in Cognitive Science showed that framing problems in reverse helps people make fewer errors in judgment. It works because it breaks default thinking patterns. It slows you down just enough to think more deliberately.
The antidote to mental fog
Clarity disappears in abstraction. If I try to think through every possible positive outcome, I get overwhelmed. But if I ask, Whats the dumbest mistake I could make here? I suddenly see the risk clearly.
When I want to be productive, I dont just make a to-do list. I make a not-to-do list. Thats mental inversion. It opens up a whole perspective Im missing. Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu has said, To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.
When I write, I dont just think about everything I should include. I also look for what to cut. What confuses the reader? What slows them down? I try to remove what makes the post unreadable. And try to get rid of that. Inversion works because subtraction is often more effective than addition. It applies to almost every area of life.In his book, The Bed of Procrustes, author Nassim Taleb writes, Knowledge is subtractive, not additivewhat we subtract (reduction by what does not work, what not to do), not what we add (what to do).
Think like a contrarian
Reversing your thinking also trains you to be mentally independent, assuming the opposite of what you believe and testing it. It reveals hidden assumptions. Dont just look for whats true. Look for what could be false. You dont always need a new good idea. Sometimes you just need to clear out the bad ones.
Look at opposites. Always invert. Indeed, many problems can’t be solved forward, says philanthropist and investor Charlie Munger. By exploring the worst, you can unlock the best. When in doubt, reverse. Dont just pursue outcomes. Find the blind spots people normally ignore. Sometimes the fastest way forward is to look backward first.
How to apply inversion in life
If you are stuck on big, knotty questions, invert. How do I find happiness? is vague. Instead, ask, What are the specific, proven actions that make me miserable every single time? For me, its skipping quality sleep, isolating myself, and overthinking. If life satisfaction is what you want, dont just ask, How do I live a happy life?” The more helpful question is, What makes my life miserable? List those things, and get rid of them first. Is it a specific experience in your relationship? Poor health or lack of purpose? Be specific. Detail the things that make you unhappy. Now try avoiding them. Its a precise way to eliminate everything draining your soul. For good health, avoid everything that makes your body worse off over the long term. Bad sleep, ultra-processed food, no exercise, sedentary lifestyle. Think through how people ruin their health.
Dont start with what should I do? Start with what habits destroy health? Get rid of those first. Subtraction before addition. To improve your social relationships, spend less time with your connections who drain you.
Career benefits
If you want to apply inversion to your career, think about what people do that hinders their careers. Complacency. Refusal to adapt or learn new skills. Over-promising and under-delivering. Avoid those traps. You dont need complex systems. You need fewer blind spots.
Inversion applies everywhere. In business, you can focus on what would make your new project an absolute failure in record time. The answers will be clear. Ignore your customers. Spend money you dont have on things you need. Assume youre the smartest person in the room. Dont validate your idea. Be inconsistent. Start with your anti-checklist.
Your actual plan becomes the inverse of that list. Listen obsessively. Be ruthlessly frugal. Test everything. Be more consistent on what moves the needle. Seek smarter advisors. The path forward becomes clear from the list of things to avoid. Inversion gets rid of mental traps, shows you what matters, and stops you from making the same thinking errors. If you want to think clearly, start thinking backwards.
