Every year, new productivity hacks promise to save us from burnout, inefficiency, and disconnection at work. We reorganize calendars, color-code to-do lists, and install apps that track keystrokes and hours. And yet, despite all the hacks, employees are exhausted, disengaged, and creatively stuck.
What if the problem isnt that we need more productivity toolsbut that we need more play?
Thats not a metaphor. I mean literal play. The kind that is open-ended, imaginative, and unconcerned with outcomes. In my decades as a play designer and educator, Ive watched executives, engineers, and designers from companies like Google, Nike, and Lego light up when they are given permission to play again. Not because they suddenly learned to be creativebut because they remembered they already are.
Play as Permission, Not Performance
Play is not the opposite of work; it is the antidote to burnout. Free playspontaneous, nonhierarchical, and outcome-freerequires us to embrace possibility, release judgment, and reframe success. Those three elements are exactly what todays teams are missing.
When I lead workshops, I dont hand out another strategy framework or ask people to brainstorm. I hand them Rigamajig planks or a pile of cardboard and say, Create something. Thats it. No rules, no rubric. At first, people fidget, waiting for the point. Then they loosen up. They laugh. They collaborate without titles or hierarchy. They invent.
What Ive really given them is not a toy but permissionto stop performing professionalism, and to start playing again.
I think of myself as a play coach. Like a sports coach, I help people unlearn the stiffness of adulthood, the belief that play is frivolous, and retrain their instinct to experiment. The difference is that play is not about winning. Its about rediscovering curiosity.
Why Hacks Fail and Play Works
Productivity hacks focus on controlling the process and outcome: more efficient emails, tighter schedules, and measurable success. But outcomes arent the only reason we work, and controlling the process usually kills any joy in the work. Play demands the opposite of control: letting go.
Consider what happens in my sessions. At first, people compare credentials and second-guess every move. Then they start tinkering. Soon theyre laughing too hard to judge one another. Some even take off jackets and shoes. The shift is unmistakable: They move from performance to presence.
Play is also radically egalitarian. In a room where the CEO and an intern are both building oddball contraptions out of wood planks, hierarchy fades. Everyone is invited to contribute, not for efficiency, but for the diversity of talents that play reveals. That leveling effect fosters the kind of psychological safety that research shows is essential for innovation.
The Playful Mindset
From my research and practice, Ive found that adult teams thrive when they adopt what I call the Playful Mindset:
Embrace Possibility. Ask what if? and treat the workplace like an adventure playground.
Release Judgment. Let go of worrying about looking silly or wasting time. Play is a judgment-free zone where odd ideas arent embarrassing but essential.
Reframe Success. In play, success isnt about hitting a metricits about the experience itself. The fun is the point. And paradoxically, that freedom often produces the very innovations teams are chasing with their hacks.
Be Your Own Play Coach
The good news: You dont need an outside facilitator to begin. You can become your own play coach. Start small. Turn the next team meeting into a tinkering session with random office supplies. Walk the long way to lunch and make a game of it. Bring in an activity that has no deliverable attached.
Play doesnt ask you to stop workingit asks you to work differently. It invites teams to reconnect as humans, to experiment without fear, and to rediscover the joy that fuels real creativity.
If you want better collaboration, stronger resilience, and more authentic innovation, dont download another productivity app. Hireor becomea play coach. Because your team doesnt need another hack. They need to play.
I can’t think of anything better than assembling Lego blocks. Except assembling gigantic Lego that I can actually walk, jump, and nap on. Which is precisely what Lego and Nike did at Baoshan No. 2 Central Primary School in Shanghai.
The school has 1,400 students who previously had insufficient sport and play facilities. Nike, which is building 100 playgrounds in schools all around China, decided to partner with Lego to fix that (the two are already partners in a series of cross-branding Lego sets and sports gear). According to the companies, the design was deeply collaborative and student-drivenand it shows: Instead of the previous sad concrete playground there’s now a bright orange-and-yellow shock-absorbent bouncy surface. On it, drawn in white, a 2-by-3 brick outline marks play areas, serving as a blueprint for students to arrange giant blue or white Lego pieces of different shapes in obstacle courses and any other structure they can imagine.
The concept originated from students at Baoshan No. 2 who participated in a Lego China Build the Change workshop, where they used Lego bricks to design their ideal playground. Several student insights directly shaped the final architectural design, according to the company. “Children are our role models and creativity is their superpower,” a Lego spokesperson told me. “They have an endless imagination and can think outside the box.”
OLA Shanghai then translated the children’s miniature prototypes into a playground layout and full-scale modular structures, which are giant interlocking Lego pieces that could be easily assembled, reconfigured, and stored.
Legos golden 2-by-3 rule
The architects decided to build the playgrounds layout around the geometry of a standard 2-by-3 Lego brick, a plastic block with two lines of three studs, much like the Danish companys own Lego House. The 2-by-3 shape is painted on the ground, which serves as a blueprint for students to organize the Lego blocks that they can assemble for their own training and play circuits with bricks big enough to climb on. There are infinite configurations for the playground; the bricks can be stored when theyre not being used so the space can serve other purposes.
In practice, the whole thing works like a life-size Lego set that allows children to become the architects of their own space. The playground features more than 10 dynamic zonesfrom athletic activities to imaginative spacesdesigned specifically for China’s “10-minute breaks, the government-mandated rest periods between classes designed to promote athletic and social interaction. Nike says that within these breaks kids are invited to move freely, play boldly, and unleash their creativity. The zones include adaptable climbing structures, balancing and exploratory elements, interchangeable routes and obstacle zones, and seating.
Recycled sneakers
The playground is made from recycled sneakers; Nike used approximately 4 tons of Nike Grind to build it. This is a material made from manufacturing waste and consumers’ old shoes, all processed into rubber granules at a facility developed and managed by Nike’s technology partner Tongji University. The entire buffer coating layer, which is the safety surface kids land on when they fall, was paved exclusively with Nike Grind.
This playground is number 50 in Nike’s Sport Access for All initiative, which is committed to building 100 sustainable courts in Greater China by 2030 as part of the company’s Move to Zero sustainability program. Nike has been partnering with athletes, artists, and designers across China to create these spaces.
Previous collaborations included the “Bufferfly Court” in Yunan province with fashion designer Susan Fang, the “CR7 Court” in Gansu province with footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (where limited-edition football boots were auctioned to fund construction), and the “FIBA Pigalle Basketball Court” in Beijing with Parisian designer Stéphane Ashpool. Nike told me the company partnered with Lego “because both brands share a deep belief in the power of creative play and movement to unlock kids’ potential.”
The court at Baoshan No. 2 Central Primary School, Nike tells me, marks a “significant milestone” in combining youth sport, creative play, and sustainability in a single collaborative model. Lego says the company was “glad to join hands with Nike to support their Move to Zero initiative and help create an active play themed playground and bring the Lego play experience to more children,” which is marketdroid speak for We made a playground where kids can finally build something bigger than themselves.
The playground is something they can actually use. And it’s something that doesn’t require batteries, screens, or a subscription service. Just imagination, rubber granules from old shoes, and blocks big enough to prove that sometimes the big ideas come from the people small enough to dream them up.
A single stream of income is simply not cutting it for todays young professionals. Instead, income stacking is the new way young people are weathering an unstable job market and rising cost-of-living.
The annual Next Gen of Work survey from freelancer services company Fiverr polled over 12,000 respondents from both Gen Z and Gen Alpha across the U.S., the U.K., France, and Germany. It found that for almost half of Gen Z (46%), their biggest career fear is not making enough money to live comfortably.
Cue income stacking.
Gen Z is watching the single-paycheck model wobble, and instead of waiting for it to steady, theyre building safety nets of their own design, Michelle Baltrusitis, Fiverrs associate director of community and social impact, told Fast Company. Income stacking is their response to a volatile economya way to diversify risk and create stability on their own terms.
While its not unusual for young people to work multiple jobs through college and early in their career, Gen Zers are stacking jobs on top of jobs as a way to DIY their own careers. (One Gen Zer, Carissa Ferguson, says shes earned more than $144,0000 selling voiceovers, content creation, and copywriting on Fiverrs platform.) Of those surveyed, 67% said that multiple streams of income were essential for a sense of financial security.
Many are already striking out on their own, with 38% already freelancing or planning to startthe average age to start being just 19.
The rising cost of living is just one part of the picture. Gen Z also isnt buying into what they see as a broken social contract, where a linear path up the career ladder is seen as the most reliable route to success and financial stability. Its also a generation in which freelance employment has been modeled in the form of influencers, content creators and podcasters online.
As career paths grow less predictable, 56% of GenZ predict traditional employment will be rendered obsolete in the future. By forging their own paths, younger workers are no longer at the mercy of big companies that can lay them off at the drop of hat.
In fact, the desire to work for a household name corporation ranked as one of the lowest career ambitions for Gen Z, at just 14%. Early-career workers are not trusting anybody else to take care of their future.
For the first time, Gen Alpha was also included in Fiverrs survey, despite the oldest being just 14 years old.
Rather than lemonade stands, social media has made it easier than ever for the next generation of workers to start their own side hustles. Of the more than 4,500 13- to 15-year-olds polled, 31% said they wanted to freelance, with 30% crediting social media for introducing them to different career paths.
Their screentime is already paying off. A recent survey by social commerce platform Whop found Gen Alpha are pulling in an average of $13.92 per hour from their online side hustlesnearly double the U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25. Based on those hourly earnings, that equates to a $28,000 full-time annual salary, all before turning 16.
Hows that for pocket money?
Below, Marc Brackett shares five key insights from his new book, Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want.
Marc is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at Yales Child Study Center. He is the author of the bestselling book Permission to Feel and over 200 scholarly articles, with his research featured in the New York Times, Good Morning America, and Today. Together with Pinterest cofounder Ben Silbermann, Marc launched the award-winning How We Feel app. He is also the producer of the documentary America Unfiltered: Portraits and Voices of a Nation and host of the podcast Dealing with Feeling.
Whats the big idea?
Emotion regulation is one of the most important skills for both personal and professional success. With the right training, we can all replace poor habits (yelling, isolation, blame) with better strategies (breath, positive self-talk, reframing) that strengthen connection and well-being.
1. We need to give ourselves permission to feel.
Most of us grew up hearing things like:
Stop crying.
Dont be so sensitive.
Shake it off.
And so, we learnedexplicitly or implicitlythat emotions are problems to avoid, not signals to explore. But ignoring or suppressing emotions can lead to anxiety, chronic stress, headaches, digestive issues, sleep disturbances, and even long-term impacts on physical and mental health. It also makes it harder to connect with others and regulate emotions effectively.
Giving yourself permission to feel means embracing all emotions with curiosity, not judgment. It means saying to yourself: This is how I feel right now, and its okay to feel this way. Let me understand it. That moment of acknowledgment is the gateway to healing, growth, and making wiser decisions. Emotions are not weaknesses. They are data.
When we approach emotions with empathyfor ourselves and otherswe create the conditions for insight and resilience. The challenge is that only a third of people report having permission to feel when they were young. What will make us all feel that we have permission to feel?
2. Emotion regulation is 100 percent learned.
Where did you learn how to manage emotions? Was it through watching your parents? Was it from teachers? Friends? Maybe no one ever taught you directly, but you still learned. We all did.
Ask yourself, on a scale from one to five, how much emotional education you received growing up. And how much of that education helped you develop effective regulation strategies? My research shows that only about 10% of people feel as if they had a solid education in emotion regulation.
Common default strategies (especially in moments of stress) include avoidance, yelling, eating, scrolling, numbing, blaming others, or blaming yourself. These are not character flaws. They are just what you learned. But the good news is that because emotion regulation is learned, it can also be relearned.
My research shows that only about 10% of people feel as if they had a solid education in emotion regulation.
You can upgrade your emotional regulation strategies to include techniques such as deep breathing, accurately labeling emotions, practicing positive self-talk, reframing situations, or seeking support. These are teachable, learnable, and they work. But they require intention, practice, and sometimes unlearning what no longer serves you.
3. Breathing is necessary but not sufficient.
Breathing is a powerful tool, and I teach it to everyone, from kindergartners to CEOs. Conscious breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, helping us move from the fight-or-flight response to the rest-and-digest state. It deactivates our stress response and creates space for wiser choices. Thats why I call it the master strategy.
But breathing is only the beginning. The real transformation happens after breath. Once youve calmed your body, what do you do with your mind? What story do you tell yourself? What action do you take? Breathing helps you press pause, but it doesnt solve the problem. That takes reflection, strategy, and sometimes courage.
The other day, I visited a middle school classroom and asked a student what hed do if someone were mean or hurtful to him. He said, Take a deep breath. I replied, Thats great, but whats next? He couldnt answer. Breath is only the bridge that takes you to the side where real emotion regulation work can begin.
4. You are what you think.
When you make a mistake, whats the first thing you say to yourself? Do you call yourself an idiot, or do you say, Hey, everyone messes up. Its okay. Ill apologize, learn from it, and move on. That inner voice shapes everything from your emotional state to your behavior to your sense of self-worth. And that voice can be trained. Two of the most powerful strategies are positive self-talk and reappraisal.
Positive self-talk isnt about pretending everything is fine. Its about being kind and encouraging to yourself, especially in tough moments. Its even more effective when spoken in the second or third person: Marc, take a breath. Youve got this. That subtle shiftcalled psychological distancinghelps us regulate better by stepping back from the heat of the moment.
Reappraisal, or reframing, means choosing a new lens through which to view a situation. Its the difference between This is a disaster and This is a challenge I can learn from. I like to say: reframe instead of blame.
That inner voice shapes everything from your emotional state to your behavior to your sense of self-worth.
For instance, I tend to repeat myself a lot during keynote presentations. There are days when I say to myself, Really, Marc, this is what you are going to do for the rest of your life? But I know better than to go on stage with that mindset. So, I reappraise. Recently, I gave a big talk at a tech company, and I switched my internal dialogue to, Marc, you are going to present your lifes work to over 1,000 engineers, managers, and leaders. Think about the impact you can have on their personal and professional lives. With that mindset, I gave one of my best talks!
5. Focus on other people.
When were anxious, angry, or overwhelmed, the instinct is often to withdraw, ruminate, isolate, or spiral inward. But research tells us that reaching out to support others who are suffering is a helpful strategy for healing not only them, but us too.
This is a form of co-regulation. When we help others manage their difficult emotions, we simultaneously help regulate our own. Parents do this with their children all the time, but its just as relevant in friendships, workplaces, and partnerships.
When you show up for someone else with empathy, patience, and presence, then you also create connection. You model emotional intelligence, and your kindness has the potential for ripple effects. Even witnessing someone else being emotionally supportive can inspire others to do the same.
Next time youre feeling low, ask: Who else might be struggling? And how can I helpeven in a small way? You might find that helping someone elseis the most effective way to help yourself.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Your interest in longevity may be entrepreneurial; after all, people who want to live longer, healthier lives are a huge market. Or maybe, if you hope to be wealthy, theres what Warren Buffett called the Methuselah technique: a long life and a high rate of return.
More likely, though, your interest in longevity is personal. We all hope to live a longer, healthier life.
The problem is, the recommendation bar for living a longer life can seem impossibly high. One study found you need between 150 and 300 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity to mitigate the risk of death associated with sitting. Another study found you need to jog five days a week for 30 to 40 minutes for your body to have the age progression of someone nine years younger.
Fortunately, theres an easier way to add years to your lifespan. Two studies, one that spanned 10 years and the other 30 years, found that high optimism was linked to 11 to 15% longer lifespans, even after taking into account factors like health and socioeconomic status.
As the researchers write:
Among psychosocial factors that appear to be potential health assets (e.g., social integration), optimism has some of the strongest and most consistent associations with a wide range of health outcomes, including reduced risk of cardiovascular events, lung function decline, and premature mortality.
Investigators have speculated that optimism may facilitate healthier bio-behavioral processes, and ultimately longevity, because optimism directly contributes to how goals are translated into behaviors.
Thats a lot, so lets break it down. Social integration directly correlates with living longer.
A clinical review of nearly 150 studies published in PLOS Medicine found that people with strong social ties had a 50% better chance of survival, regardless of age, sex, health status, and cause of death, than those with weaker ties. Make and keep a few close friends, youll likely live longer.
Yet optimism also directly correlates with living longer, since optimistic people tend to behave differently: While everyone has goals, people who fall on the less optimistic end of the spectrum are much less likely to try to achieve their goals. Why start a journey that feels impossible?
On the flip side, the researchers say optimism directly contributes to how goals are translated into behaviors. When the journey seems possible, starting feels much easier.
Sounds good. But still.
Knowing you should be more optimistic, if only to extend your lifespan, is different from actually becoming more optimistic. There isnt a more optimistic switch you can flip.
Or maybe there is. Research shows that approximately 25% of our optimism set-point is genetic.
That means 75% of your level of optimism can be shaped and learned.
For example, participants in a study published in Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry who spent five minutes a day for two weeks imagining their best possible selfin terms of professional, relationship, and personal goalsexperienced significant increases in optimism.
If visualization isnt your thing (it isnt mine), try another approach. If, as Jim Rohn says, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, simply spend more time with optimistic people. Theyll be more encouraging. Theyll be more supportive. Their enthusiasm will naturally rub off on you. (Plus, youll reap the social integration longevity benefits.)
If spending time in groups isnt your thing (it kind of isnt mine), then take a step back and think about your mindset. Generally speaking, people fall into two camps:
People with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence, ability, and skill are inborn and relatively fixed; that they are what they were born with. Someone with a fixed mindset might say, I didnt handle that well. Im not cut out to be a leader.
People with a growth mindset believe that intelligence, ability, and skill can be developed through effort; that we are what we work to become. Someone with a growth mindset might say, I didnt handle that well, but next time Ill make sure Im more prepared.
People who embrace a growth mindset believe success is based on effort and application, not innate talent.
Think about a challenge you overcame. A goal you achieved. A time when you doubted yourself, but still persevered. Youve done it once.
You can do it again.
That, in effect, is a growth mindset. Embrace it.
Not only will you be more successful, youll be more likely to live longer, too.
Cant beat that.
Jeff Haden
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
Amid dramatic disruption, what role should business play in building the future? Airbnb cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky shares his candid perspective on business, politics, creativity, and AItracing from Airbnbs humble beginnings to bold plans for the companys future. Through a designers lens, Chesky also reveals the single question leaders must ask themselves, and explores how best to make tricky decisions in a volatile climate.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company, and 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 todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
Your cofounder, Joe Gebbia, now works at the White House as the chief design officer, although you were not among the cohort of tech CEOs who had dinner with Donald Trump there. What’s the state of the conversation between you and your peers about how to navigate this new administration, this new environment? I mean, it’s incredibly tricky to know what to do. And I don’t even know how you’re going to answer this question.
I don’t know either, actually. So let’s see. Silicon Valley’s gotten more political. And when I came to Silicon Valley, maybe it was more left, but it kind of felt more moderate. And it didn’t feel as much like it was as political. I do think that another thing that I am noticing is people are running toward a certain administration, obviously Trump. There’s a very good chance there will be a new administration in three years, maybe not, but let’s say there’s a 50/50 chance of a new administration. And I’m kind of curious: Do they run the other way, and do the worlds swing back and forth?
And I think there’s a lot of swinging. There was all this focus on DEI, and then there was all this focus to roll it all back. And there’s all this focus to go here, and now there’s all this focus to go here. And it’s like back and forth and back and forth. I think I try to imagine what will still be true in 20 years. What do we believe in? Because whatever’s true in 20 years are our principles and our values, and everything else is just a trend. Everything else is just trying to fit in. Everyone else is just rushing to whatever is popular at that current time.
And so I think every company just has to ask themselves what do they stand for? What are their values? And I think I try to be pretty clear about what we stand for. And so I try not to wade into too many political topics unless I feel like I have something to add to the conversation, and it’s something that is connected to our vision or our values. I mean, the other thing about politics is, we’re trying to bring the world together. That’s what I’d like to do. The problem with politicsI don’t have a better system, but it’s 50-plus-one. You have to divide them and get plus one. And it is inherently a divisive thing, and Airbnb’s mission is inherently unifying.
Do you know the number of Trump supporters who stayed in a house of a Kamala Harris supporter over the course of the election? Millions. Do you know the number of Democrats, Republicans that live together and don’t even know they’re Democrats and Republicans? When you travel, it’s one of the few times in your life that you’re truly open-minded. Even prejudice, people with prejudice, don’t have prejudice when they travel because they’re in someone else’s land and they’re now open-minded. You don’t talk to the Uber driver in your own city, but you do in another city. You have a completely different orientation. Travel brings out the best in you.
And there’s this ancient hospitality. It started with the ancient Egyptians, started with the Greeks, that the guest is God and we’re going to serve them. And so I try to zoom out. I try to focus a little less on divisive issues and say the best way to change someone else’s mind about other people in a time that’s really divided is to walk in their shoes, to live in their home, and to bring people together and remind people that basically . . . I’ve learned two lessons after having started Airbnb: People are fundamentally good, and we’re 99% the same. And you read the newspaper and you engage in political discourse and you can forget that we’re basically all the same. And if that wasn’t true, we would have been out of business a long time ago. And so that’s why I’m very careful about falling and treading into politics. We will, but very selectively.
And these swings that you talk aboutwhere it swings from one way to the otherhow do you keep yourself from getting caught up in those? Because there’s a lot of pressure sometimes behind those.
Well, I stay off Twitter a littleor Xa little bit. And I mean, there’s this temptation to want to participate in every conversation and to feel like you have to have an opinion and wade into everything. And actually, I try not to have opinions about things that I don’t know a lot about until I learn about them.
I think there was a period of time where people in tech felt like we had to have a statement about every single issue. That was quite a burden, though, because either you learn about the issue or you’re just jumping on a bandwagon. You don’t really know, and you’re not really informed. So I just try to make sure I tell the company, “We are going to be thoughtful as a company. We’re not going to swing back and forth. We’re going to do whatever we think is the right thing to do.”
Yeah. You talked to me before about the difference between a business decision and a principle decision.
A business decision is like trying to gamify the outcome to win. A principle decision is, I don’t know how it’s going to end, so how do I want to be remembered irrespective of the outcome? And if you do that, it’s another way of doing whatever you think the right thing to do is, whatever you think is true. And maybe you lose in the short run, you lose the battle, but you win the war. Because ultimately, you’re rarely going to get out of business because you stick to your principles and your values. And people want to work for a company like that, and we want to buy products from people who lead in that way.
What do you think Airbnb’s role is in building the future? And for the folks who are sitting in this room, what’s the role that they should be taking in building the future?
I like to ask an entrepreneur a question: “Why does your company deserve to exist?” And the best kind of generic answer I’ve ever heard is: “Because if I don’t do it, no one else will.” And I like to ask that question to myself. What could we uniquely do that if we don’t do it, ayone else will? And I think that we’re just this particular company and we were naive to believe that people are basically good, and it was a good idea to have a stranger in your home.
And ultimately, I think that what we’re trying to build, again, is this global community because I think communities are eroding all over the world. I think we have a place in this world to do something unique. I think that design is a hugely underleveraged superpower. I think it’s going to be really important in the age of AI. I think for every business leader, I think that you should ask: “If you never existed, what would be different about the world? What is your unique imprint to do?”
I say this because I think a lot of people like to chase trends. And by the way, by the time it’s a trend, sometimes it’s late. Once it has a name, it’s late. Although AI will go on forever, so that one might be different. So then what in AI? What in AI, because everything’s AI at some point? What is not AI?
So I think business leaders should focus on a unique contribution they can make. I think we are in building mode. I think it’s going to be so revolutionary. You ask, is it a new house or a renovation? I think it’s a new house. I think that’s exciting. I think it’s slightly scary.
Leading in these times isnt easy. Youre expected to be relatable yet reliable, compassionate yet competent, and authentic yet professional. You have to do all of this in an environment where global upheaval, economic uncertainty, and technological changes are creating widespread anxiety. And perhaps you, on occasion, have some stressors in your own work and personal life to navigate?
Masking emotions at work is both exhausting and counterproductive. Acting as though everything is fine when its clearly not creates an environment of toxic positivity, erodes trust, and makes it harder for others to be honest. Its also not healthy. As noted in Psychology Today, suppressing our emotions puts us at higher risk of heart disease and hypertension, and causes us to feel less socially connected and satisfied with [our] friends [and] more likely to experience anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues.
Of course, we also dont want to swing too far the other way. Oversharing can leave colleagues uncomfortable, reshape how others judge us, or place emotional burdens on the very people were supposed to support.
Its important to find ways to be our authentic selves at work, and to do it in a way that is professional and sustainable. Here are three ideas that can help you strike that balance.
1. Model, Dont Vent
One leader found herself facing an all-staff call with thousands of employees the day after their city faced a mass violence event. At first, she tried to grit through it, sticking to her agenda and talking points. Eventually, though, she realized how inauthentic it felt not to acknowledge the horrors they had all witnessed. She paused, took a breath, and allowed a few tears. Then she shared from the heart how difficult it was to see their community under attack, how much the staff meant to her, and how grateful she was for their service.
It was a rare moment of rawness for herand it landed. Her inbox was flooded afterward with thank-you notes from staff who appreciated her honesty and humanity.
What made this effective? She modeled vulnerability without slipping into venting. She displayed honest emotion, but without asking her staff to manage that emotion for her.
Its one thing to say, Its been a tough week, and I may be slower to respond. Its another to launch into the details of your family drama in a team meeting. One builds trust; the other may leave colleagues uncomfortable and can call on your employees to provide emotional support that is not part of their job description but which they may not feel able to decline.
2. Use Shared Language
One helpful way to facilitate honesty without oversharing is to develop a team vernacular around well-beinga shared language around that allows individuals to signal what theyre feeling without going into detail that they may not be comfortable sharing. These shorthand tools facilitate conversations on mental health and make it easier for people to be open without requiring them to go into specifics.
Ive seen teams use a traffic light analogy, a numeric check-in, or a weather report (its been nothing but storms this week). On one team that was entirely remote, the manager sent everyone a toy cat (an inside joke on the team) that anyone could place so that it was visible on their Zoom screen when they were having a hard day, as a quick, visible indicator that they might need a little extra support that day.
One manager was glad that his team had developed this shared understanding on a day when his childs school went on lockdown. He said to his team, Im a 2 today, unfortunately; I may need some help keeping things on track. That allowed him to say what he needed to without having to go into detail while he was still uncertain and anxious. Later, when he learned that everything was okay, he was grateful that he hadnt had to discuss his fears in real time.
3. Find Your People
Being authentic doesnt mean being transparent with everyone. In fact, trying to share openly in an unsafe space can backfire. But you do need places where you can process your emotions, including at work. For leaders, that often means cultivating a small circle of trusted peers or mentors who can serve as sounding boards.
Look for people who understand your context but arent directly affected by your decisionscolleagues in other departments, peers at your level in different organizations, or professional networks outside your organization. The key is finding those who can hold your confidence, challenge your thinking, and offer empathy without judgment. It may take time to develop those relationships, but its worthwhile to invest in them, and to hold on tight to them once youve got them.
Gallup research shows that having a close friend at work boosts engagement, creativity, and performance. Building a trusted circle also protects you from isolation at the top and allows you to show up for your team with steadiness and clarity.
Authenticity at work doesnt mean being raw with everyone. It means showing up in ways that build trust, connection, and resilience. Leaders who strike this balance protect their own well-being and create workplaces where others feel safe to do the same. Thats the kind of leadership that helps teams not just endure hard times, but thrive through them.
Robert De Niro and Al Pacino are famously close, with a friendship that spans five decades. The actors were first seen together in The Godfather Part II, but their friendship has propelled them to do several other films together, including Heat and The Irishman.
Today, they appear in a different creative project: a campaign for the luxury outerwear label Moncler. The campaign is premised on expanding the definition of warmth. Moncler, which is known for creating warm jackets, also wants to be known for the warmth of feeling between friends and loved ones.
[Photo: Platon for Moncler]
In the imagery for the campaign, De Niro and Pacino are captured in black-and-white by Platon, the renowned portrait photographer who goes by one name. In one image, they’re on a rooftop, looking out at the New York skyline. They also appear in a series of short video clipsalso shot in black-and-whitesitting across the table from one another, occasionally touching hands affectionately. In voice-overs, the actors speak with their distinct, gravely voices.
Moncler’s moment
The campaign is part of Moncler’s broader effort to immerse itself in the creative world. In 2018, it launched the Genius project, in which it partners annually with 10 creatives across various disciplines who come up with interesting ideas for new products and runway shows.
Last year, it featured all of these ideas in an immersive experience called the “City of Genius,” which took place in Shanghai and was attended by 8,000 people. The actor and singer Donald Glover designed an architectural farmhouse inspired by his farm in Ojai, California, along with a collection of clothes perfect for farming.
Edward Enninful, the founder of EE72 magazine and the former editor of British Vogue, designed a multisensory performance art piece that showed a weather station being overrun by a sandstorm, a snowstorm, and a windstorm. It was meant to reflect a future of extreme weather and the clothes that we might wear to survive the elements.
Moncler also partnered with Jony Ive, the iPhone designer, to design a five-piece outerwear collection that offered a futuristic take on a field jacket, parka, and poncho. Ive’s team also designed an entirely new button made from a clasp with magnets to make it easier to secure and separate layers.
Now, Moncler is turning to these beloved actors, now in their 80s, to tell a story about their friendship and creative partnership over the decades. The photography captures their longevity, documenting wrinkles and age spots, while also offering a rare glimpse into their intimacy. It’s a touching portrayal of a softer side of masculinity that contrasts the macho roles the two actors have often portrayed across their careers.
If youre still using Google Calendar like its 2009just punching in appointments and letting it rideyoure leaving productivity on the table.While were all drowning in digital noise, the single best thing you can do is carve out some actual, useful time. These five tricks are simple to implement, and they turn your basic calendar into a surprisingly effective time-management copilot.So, stop scheduling and start planning.The shortcut-iest shortcutsYou know whats less efficient than a two-hour conference call? Constantly clicking the Create button or dragging your mouse to the next available time slot.Instead, just hit the C key on your keyboard.The event creation box pops up instantly, ready for you to title your meeting and select a time. Its basic, but the cumulative time savings of not having to drag the pointer to the left-hand corner of your screen for the ten-thousandth time is non-trivial.Also, while youre at it, hit T to jump straight back to todays date, and check out other useful shortcuts here.Block out Focus TimeWe all have a task list that never ends. You need two hours to write that report, but your calendar is a patchwork quilt of calls, reminders, and quick syncs. If its not on the calendar, it doesnt exist.Carve out some actual work time by scheduling a Focus Time event. Note that for this to work, youll need a Business, Enterprise, Education, or Nonprofit Google Workspace account.In the past, youd just block off the time. Now, Google Calendar has a specific Focus Time event type. Its like a regular event, but it gives you an option to automatically decline any conflicting invitations during that block.Use it, abuse it, and get something done.Color-code your eventsYour work calendar is a mess of identical blue events. Is that blue dot a mandatory team meeting, or just a reminder to take the recycling out? You have to click it to know.Instead, assign a color to specific types of events.When editing an event, change its color next to your name about half-way down the modal. I like to use red for anything thats a Hard Stop or external meeting, green for personal stuff, and yellow for internal work things.Now, when you glance at your week, you can instantly see the type of week youre having: a color-coded visual indicator of your commitments.Schedule meetings without herding catsLets be honest: The absolute worst part of scheduling a meeting isnt the meeting itself, its the five emails and three Slack messages that happen before the meeting, all dedicated to the question, When are you free?Youre not a reservation agent. Use the Find a Time feature instead.When you create an event and add your guests, click on the Find a Time tab right next to Event Details.Google Calendar instantly overlays the schedules of everyone you invited, so you can see exactly who is busy and who is free and at which times. Drag the event block to the first open slot that works for everyone.Build in some breaksThe bane of modern office life is an entire day of back-to-back, 30-minute meetings. No time for lunch. No time for the bathroom. No time for . . . well, anything.Dont be a time miser. Instead, go to Settings > General > Event settings > Default Duration and click the Speed meetings box.This is a subtle but powerful change. Now, when you create an event, it automatically stops five or ten minutes before the hour.You and your attendees get a break and a chance to prep for the next call. In a world insane with meetings, its a small victory for sanity.
Financial technology is now entering its third act, marked by a significant shift in how platforms and businesses interact with financial services. The first wave brought democratization, with businesses gaining access to online credit and lending tools aimed at leveling the playing field. The second wave moved these products inside platforms, embedding payments and finance into everyday software workflows. Despite their impact, these steps left business owners managing multiple fragmented systems.
Today, platforms are in a race to embed financial services; as of 2021, 73% planned to integrate lending features into their software within two years. The opportunity is huge: Such integrations can increase EBITDA, retention, and user acquisition for platforms. Yet, most current efforts stick to static, product-first solutions rooted in earlier fintech phases. The real transformation is reaching its third actplatforms evolving into true financial operating systems (OS): intelligent, integrated, and predictive.
This third act is crucial for end users, who want to manage and resolve their financial challenges directly within the platforms they use daily, without juggling separate systems or applications.
ACT I: DIRECT-TO-BUSINESS FINTECHS
The first phase of fintech focused squarely on increasing access. Online lenders and challenger banks used bureau data and alternative signals to provide credit and unbundle financial services, making them accessible outside traditional institutions. Capital flowed more freely, yet these assets remained siloed: Businesses had to navigate a separate financial stack from their core operations, consuming valuable time and resources.
For fintech providers, reaching customers directly was fraught with acquisition costs and operational hurdles, often making profitability elusive.
ACT II: SINGLE EMBEDDED SOLUTIONS
The second wave introduced embedded productspayments, lending, accounting, and payrolldirectly into existing platforms. Small and midsize businesses could access financing or manage payroll without leaving the tools they relied on for day-to-day operations.
Platforms experienced increased growth and retention, but the integrations were narrow. They often addressed only isolated events in the customer journey, like a loan for payroll, without considering broader impacts on cash flow, vendor payments, or inventory management.
Most solutions in this stage felt bolted on rather than truly integrated, providing businesses with options but not holistic or proactive solutions. Many fintechs still operate in this single-product mode, mistaking integration for innovations finish line.
ACT III: THE EMBEDDED FINANCIAL OPERATING SYSTEM
The third act marks a major leap. Instead of simply adding products, the financial OS embeds finance into the entire user workflowmaking it not just about payments or credit, but intelligence.
In practice, these platforms anticipate cash flow gaps before they arise, deliver insights in real time, and proactively match users with the best financial tools or resources when needed. Every interaction adds context and intelligence, going far beyond what static loan products or one-off integrations can offer.
AI drives this evolution, analyzing unstructured data, predicting financial needs, and constantly improving the OS with every transaction. This approach doesnt just create stickier platforms; it transforms the core experience by reducing the complexity of financial decision-making.
For platforms, fully integrating finance means owning the end-to-end workflow, becoming the trusted system of record and deepening user relationships over time.
STAKES FOR PLATFORMS
The competition to embed fintech at deeper levels is escalating. Platforms that linger in Act I or II will be overtaken by those embracing the financial OS approach. Users are tired of fragmented dashboards and single-point appsthey want systems that remove friction, automate financial decisions, and free up time for growth.
Companies that evolve into a financial OS dont just provide servicesthey become indispensable, earning trust and increasing loyalty as financial intelligence compounds with each interaction.
THE NEXT ERA
Fintechs evolution is about aligning closer to the workflows that drive real value for businesses and consumers. Act I expanded access; Act II brought capital into software. Now, Act III is defined by intelligence and seamless, proactive integrations.
Static tools may address temporary issues, but only platforms powered by AI and a true financial OS will define the future. The next era will belong to those that shift from product-centric models to embedded foresight, enabling businesses and consumers to focus on further unlocking their potential.
Luke Voiles is CEO of Pipe.
