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Welcome to the first Fast Companys Plugged In of 2026, and Happy New Year to you. More than 18 years ago, as the internet was transforming how we consume everything from news to music, someone called books the last bastion of analog. That someone happened to be Jeff Bezos. And he made the observation in a Steven Levy Newsweek article about Amazons original Kindle e-reader, a device designed to drag books into the digital age. Bezoss comment resurfaced in my consciousness last week, as I read a New York Times article by Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter on how the book publishing business fared in 2025. The upshot: It did pretty well overall, and remains a surprisingly analog enterprise. To be clear, the internet in generaland Amazon in particularhas transformed how we buy and consume books. Market share figures for booksellers are tough to come by, but estimates show the company controlling 50% or more of print book sales, leaving chains such as Barnes & Noble and independents to jostle for whats left. Thats before you account for e-books and audiobooks, where Amazons Kindle and Audible platforms are overwhelmingly dominant. Despite that, paper books remain popular, and many people choose to buy them at brick-and-mortar stores. As of mid-December, roughly three-quarters of the 707 million books sold last year were of the traditional, dead-tree variety. In the first 10 months, e-books accounted for only 11% of revenue, down from 17% in 2016. The American Booksellers Associations ranks swelled by 422 new shopsindependent ones, not chain operations. On top of that, we got dozens of new Barnes & Noble locations, with more on their way. All of that suggests that books in their classic form arent just running on fumes of nostalgia or consumer inertia. Much of whats delightful about the whole experience of engaging with the medium is inherently physical, in ways that other mediamusic, movies, newspapers, magazinesare not. I knew that a year ago when I declared that I was going to go out of my way to read dead-tree tomes in 2025, starting with the tower of them stacked on my nightstand. Taking the time to do so was a rewarding experience, and though life interfered with me reading as many as Id hoped, Im looking forward to continuing the quest in 2026 and beyond. As I wrote in that newsletter, Im hardly an e-book hater. Theyre often cheaper than print equivalents. They let you carry your entire library wherever you go. They can be easily searched. For nonfiction volumes being read for research purposesa meaningful chunk of my book consumptionthey beat print as the best overall format. Still, as I also wrote back then, e-books havent lived up to their full potential. Typographically and layout-wise, they remain rudimentary compared to paper. And even when they do things that print cant, they dont always do them well. Thats been my experience with a new AI-powered Kindle feature called Ask this book. Introduced last month for thousands of titles in the Kindle iPhone and iPad apps, it lets you use a chatbot-style interface to pose questions about a books contents. To avoid spoilers, it defaults to its answers reflecting only what youve read so far. The tool has proven controversial, in part because authors arent compensated and cant opt out. But when I tried it with my Kindle edition of Walter Isaacsons Steve Jobs, the big problem was that it was terrible. Its responses repeatedly mangled factual material, from the circumstances of Jobs time at Reed College to the year the iPod was introduced. They also failed to provide any citations, rendering them useless as entry points for additional reading within the e-book. Ask this book does have the potential to evolve into something more interesting and useful. But when it comes to the shopping experience, for both digital and print books, Amazon has been marching in the wrong direction for years. Author Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to describe how tech products tend to grow customer-hostile over time. In his new book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, he declares Amazon to have reached a terminal stage of the phenomenon. Indeed, the companys original taglineEarths biggest bookstorenow feels more like a threat than a promise. Even if you cut the company some slack for offering a shopping experience thats relentlessly utilitarian rather than intellectually stimulating, the place is in shambles. Search results are smothered with unrelated sponsored links and blatantly AI-generated junk books. Pages devoted to specific authors may be missing books, or, worse, list ones they didnt write. The search results for John Grisham started with a paperback copy of his 2002 novel The Summons for an absurd $51.76, with an estimated delivery turnaround of up to two weekseven though Amazon also has it for under 10 bucks with free Prime overnight shipping. For decades, the fact that local book shops couldnt compete with Amazons massive inventory seemed like an existential weakness. But the best ones curate their selections in ways that offer a powerful alternative to Amazons unedited sprawl. To my knowledge, no online merchant has replicated the artful serendipity of brick-and-mortar book browsing, where wandering the aisles and stumbling across stuff you never knew existed is part of the point, not a distraction. Recently, I did much of my holiday gift shopping at one of my favorite Bay Area bookstores, Menlo Parks Keplers. A large storebut not a completely enormous oneits a joy to get lost in. I didnt have to elbow my way past AI slop or sponsored chum, and emerged with a stack of books I would never have discovered through online shopping. Unlike Amazon, Keplers doesnt offer discounts off list price. Actually, it tacks on a small surcharge to pay its employees a living wage. I am happy to pay it. The 70-year-old store, which almost went out of business in 2005, doesnt feel like a relic. Instead, like every good bookstore, its an idea too vibrant to be rendered irrelevant by technology. Its heartening to think the publishing industry has settled into a groove that will keep such neighborhood gems viable for years to come. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on fastcompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompay.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Craiglist’s founder has some simple rules for not losing your mindor moneyon the internetCraig Newmark’s ‘Take9’ campaign asks people to pause nine seconds before reacting online. Read More LinkedIn is expanding its AI-powered job search featuresThe platform continues to grow as a hub for seeking jobs and holding professional discussions. Read More AI isn’t stealing your traffic. It’s stealing your authorityAs AI becomes the first stop for information, GEO is how you make sure your version of the story gets told. Read More Yann LeCun: Meta ‘fudged a little bit’ when benchmark-testing Llama 4 modelThe testing sparked internal frustration about the progress of the Llama models. Read More OpenAI enters the connected health space with ChatGPT HealthHealth is already a popular topic area on ChatGPT. OpenAI is now adding physician expertise, and plug-ins for health apps and records. Read More Tin Can phones have been overwhelmed since ChristmasThe company says it’s working to fix a network issue and that paying customers won’t be charged until the devices are reliable once more. Read More 12 CEOs share bold predictions for 2026Market corrections, the rise of sovereign AI, and the first AI-driven attack are among the bold predictions for the coming year. Read More
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E-Commerce
One of Ikeas most popular lamps of the past several yearsnicknamed the donut lampis about to get a smart, colorful upgrade. The original donut lamp debuted back in 2023 as part of Ikeas 20-piece Varmblixt collection with the Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis. With its glossy orange glass and soft, retro glow, the lamp quickly emerged as a fan favorite: In the three years since its debut, Ikea says one donut lamp has sold every five minutes in the U.S. Its the companys best-selling lamp, both in the U.S. and worldwide. Given the lamps popularity, Ikea has teamed up with Marcelis for a new version, this time featuring a smart function that allows it to cycle through a curated palette of colors. The new donut lamp will be available for $99.99 starting in April, alongside a $149.99 color-changing version of a pendant lamp that also debuted as part of the original Varmblixt collection. [Photo: Ikea] The updated lamps come as Ikea is investing more into its smart products with a new range of easy-to-use bulbs, sensors, and smart plugs that debuted in November. Both the donut lamp and the pendant lamp are compatible with Ikeas smart home system hub, Dirigera, as well as Matter, the smart home technical standard that undergirds the rest of the companys smart home tech. This new integration signals that as smart systems become more central to Ikeas product approach, we might see the company begin to integrate new functions into more of its most popular items. [Photo: Ikea] How the donut became Ikeas most popular lamp Theres a pretty good chance that youve stumbled across Ikeas donut lamp on your feeds. Since 2023, the lamp has gone viral multiple times among design enthusiasts. It’s become so ubiquitous that Marcelis says shes often walked past houses and seen it glowing through the windows. It was pretty wild how viral it went, she says. When designing Varmblixt, I wanted to create timeless pieces that could be interpreted in many ways. The fact that the lamp can be both wall mounted and used as a table lamp already makes it very versatile. It’s a lamp that even if you have nothing else in a room, it works. On TikTok and Instagram Reels, the donut lamp has generated an entire subgenre of videos dedicated to donut lamp hacks that use colorful electrical tape pasted over the interior bulb to darken the hue of the lamp. But with the smart donut lamp, Ikea fans will no longer need to risk overheating tape to curate their own lighting vibe. [Photo: Ikea] The donut lamp gets a colorful facelift To make the smart donut lamp compatible with a range of colors, Marcelis traded the originals glossy orange surface for a matte white exterior that lets the interior bulbs colors shine through. Its soft in texture and void of color, making the internal light source and colors it creates inside the volume glow in a really soft, diffused manner on the shell, Marcelis says. Users can choose to connect the lamp to the Dirigera hub, which allows them to access a full color spectrum of more than 40 hues, adjust light intensity, and fiddle with dimming settings. The lamps default setting, however, is controlled by a remote featuring 12 colors selected by Marcelis specifically for the collection. The sequence moves through different temperatures of white light, into glowing amber and red, followed by soft pink, cool lavender, turquoise, yellow, and back to white. I wanted the presets that you can vary between with the remote to be 12 specific atmospheres that range from alert work-mode light to party mode and all the way to cozy, calm mode, Marcelis says. I’ve had an early prototype in our guest room for the last six months, and this one pretty small lamp can change the hue of the whole room.
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E-Commerce
Resilience is not an inherited trait. It is a disciplined practicea way of showing up that is cultivated over time through deliberate training of the body, mind, and spirit. In high-stress environments, whether on the battlefield, in the boardroom, or in the quiet turmoil of daily life, the ability to remain steady amid volatility is what separates reactive living from intentional leadership. What many discover, often through hardship, is that resilience is less about bracing against impact and more about widening the internal space between stimulus and response. That spaceViktor Frankl called it the foundation of freedomallows for clarity, intentionality, and courage. For decades, both in SEAL training and in my work with leaders, Ive observed that individuals who perform well under pressure share one common characteristic: they have learned to work with their minds rather than be ruled by them. This does not happen in moments of crisis. It is forged through consistent practices that strengthen attention, emotional steadiness, and a grounded sense of purpose. These are the pillars of mental toughness and well-being, and research continually affirms their effectiveness. “Meeting the Witness” Mental toughness begins with self-awarenesswhat I call meeting the witness. Before a person can regulate emotions or reframe challenging situations, they must learn to observe their inner world without being consumed by it. In Unbeatable Mind, I describe how an untrained mind behaves like a restless monkey, leaping from fear to fantasy, often amplifying stress rather than resolving it. Neuroscientific research supports this observation: studies from Harvard and Yale show that mindfulness training decreases activity in the brains default mode network, the system associated with rumination and self-critical thought. This reduction leads to greater emotional stability and improved executive control. Breathe Once awareness is established, the next layer of resilience comes through breath control. Box breathinga cornerstone practice in SEAL traininghas profound physiological effects. Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has highlighted that controlled exhalation slows the heart rate by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting calm and clarity. Additional research from the National Institutes of Health demonstrates that slow, diaphragmatic breathing lowers cortisol levels, improves heart-rate variability (a key marker of stress resilience), and enhances cognitive performance during demanding tasks. In intense environments, breath becomes an anchorrestoring coherence when chaos presses in. Emotional regulation is equally essential, and scientific literature is increasingly clear that avoiding difficult emotions weakens resilience. Psychologist James Gross, from Stanford University, has shown that emotional suppression increases physiological stress, while emotional awareness paired with cognitive reframing reduces anxiety and improves overall well-being. Modern culture encourages distraction, numbing, or avoidance when emotions feel overwhelming. Yet true strength emerges when we turn toward discomfort and understand its message. Emotional awareness is not indulgence; it is intelligencedeeply connected to sustainable performance. Self-compassion Working with emotions also requires cultivating a compassionate inner dialogue. Research from Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer demonstrates that self-compassion reduces stress and anxiety while increasing resilience and perseverance. Many high performers assume harsh inner criticism fuels achievement, but studies continue to show the opposite: people who practice supportive self-talk persist longer, recover faster from setbacks, and perform better under pressure. This aligns closely with the warrior ethosdiscipline married to self-respect. The Five Mountains Another pillar of resilience is adopting an integrative approach to growththe Five Mountains framework. A person cannot expect to perform well under pressure when their physical, mental, emotional, intuitive, and spiritual domains are misaligned. The scientific community increasingly recognizes this integrative model. The American Psychological Association notes that resilience is multidimensional: physical fitness improves stress tolerance; emotional intelligence enhances decision-making; and spiritual or purpose-driven frameworks improve long-term well-being and post-traumatic growth. These capacities reinforce one another. Neglect one domain, and the others are forced to absorb its weight. Purpose and rituals Purpose also plays a critical role. Research from the University of Pennsylvanias Positive Psychology Center shows that individuals with a strong sense of purpose experience lower stress, recover more quickly from adversity, and maintain higher levels of long-term motivation. Purpose acts as a stabilizing forceturning challenge into training rather than threat. When we reconnect with our deeper why, stress stops feeling like something to escape and becomes an arena for mastery. Finally, resilience requires consistent rituals. In SEAL culture, the saying earn your trident every day reflects the truth that competence and courage must be renewed continually. Behavioral science supports this principle. Studies from MIT reveal that daily habits built through small, repeated actions create long-lasting neurological pathways, making resilience more automatic over time. Rituals such as breathing, movement, meditation, journaling, and visualization condition the mind and body to return to calmness quickly, maintain perspective, and operate from clarity. When practiced consistently, they create a durable internal foundation long before stress arrives. Becoming whole High-stress environments will always challenge the mind. They compress time, elevate stakes, and magnify uncertainty. But those conditions do not diminish a persons potential; they reveal it. Resilience grows when we learn to work with challenge rather than brace against it. It grows when we cultivate awareness, train the breath, embrace emotional truth, strengthen ourselves holistically, and commit to purposeful living. These practices form the stable internal structure that remains grounded even when the world around us feels uncertain. The ultimate aim of resilience is not to become hardened or invulnerable. It is to become wholeto act from a place of grounded presence, compassion, and courage. When you train your mind, emotions, and spirit in an integrated way, you develop a capacity for calm action that not only carries you through difficulty but enables you to serve others more powerfully. Resilience becomes less of a shield and more of an offering. This is the path of the warrior-leader. It is available to anyone willing to train deliberately, look inward honestly, and step forward courageously. In this work, there is no finish lineonly deeper layers of awareness and growth. Each moment presents a new opportunity to choose steadiness, clarity, and purpose over reactivity and fear. That choice, made repeatedly, builds a resilient mind for life.
Category:
E-Commerce
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