While Im happy to extol the powers of the written word, sometimes you need a little something extra to get your point across.
Im not just referring to pictures, either, but also to annotations, flowcharts, and freeform drawings. These illustrative tools can be a powerful way to convey your message, whether by themselves or on top of an existing image.
Allow me to (*ahem*) illustrate exactly what I mean, using a free tool that might end up being the image-editing, markup-magic-creating supplement you never knew you needed.
This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures!
The picture of productivity
Next time you need to mark up an image or feel like rolling your own flowchart, remember this website: Excalidraw.com.
Excalidraw is a web-based app that bills itself as a digital whiteboard, but it is actually much more than that. With Excalidraw, you can also import your own images and then insert arrows, boxes, lines, and textor create completely freeform drawingsall on top of them.
Youll be ready to start drawing or annotating in just a few seconds. The site is free to use and doesnt require any logins.
To start using Excalidraw, just pick one of the drawing tools at the top of the screen, then click and drag on the canvas to insert it.
You can easily import any image into Excalidraw and then mark it up in all sorts of interesting ways.
To add an image, either click the image icon orif youre using the site on a computer and the image is in your clipboardjust hit Ctrl+V or Cmd+V to paste it in.
Use the Cursor tool to select items that you want to move or delete, and use the Hand tool to move around the canvas.
Excalidraw lets you save works-in-progress as files on whatever device youre using. Once youre finished, you can copy the resulting image to your clipboard or export it as an image file.
If youre an expert at editing photos on your phonethanks, perhaps, to my colleague JR Raphaels Android Photography Masterclassyou may wonder why youd need a separate app for annotating images.
For one thing, Excalidraw works on any device, not just your phone or tablet. (Ive found it especially helpful when marking up screenshots for my own tech advice newsletters.)
Excalidraw also supports illustrations without an image, so you can build a flowchart from scratch or doodle away on an infinite canvas.
Lastly, Excalidraw has more powerful annotation features than your phones photo markup mode, with additional drawing tools and a Layers feature for moving elements to the foreground or background.
Excalidraw’s annotation options are especially exceptional.
Some extra tips to keep in mind when using Excalidraw (some of which will only make sense if youre using a device with a mouse or keyboard):
Right-clicking on the canvas reveals some useful options, including a grid mode and a Zen mode that hides the toolbar.
Right-clicking individual items is helpful as well, allowing you to duplicate, flip, or move items forward or backward in the scene.
While drawing lines or arrows, you can connect them to the edges of a shape, and theyll stay connected even if you move the shape later.
Use Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z to quickly undo edits.
If you ever want to start from scratch, click the menu button in the top-left corner, then select Reset the canvas. (But consider saving your work first.)
To save your creation as an image file, click the menu button and select Export. Youll see a preview of what your image will look like along with some extra options. (Of note: Embed scene includes some data in the image file to allow for future editing in Excalidraw.) You can then save the file (as a PNG or .SVG) or copy it to your clipboard for easy sharing elsewhere.
Excalidraw.com is entirely web based, though you can install it as a Progressive Web App if youd like.
The site is free to use with no ads, including the ability to save project files to your local device and export images. An optional subscription for $6 per month lets you save files online and access extra features such as presentation mode and team management.
Excalidraw requires no sign-in, doesnt ask for personal information, and advertises end-to-end encryption for drawings.
Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
Frequent flyers and travel hackers who visited SeatGuru on October 31 were met with an unpleasant surprise: a shuttered website directing them to Tripadvisors homepage. After nearly a quarter-century in operation, the beloved website that helped fliers determine which seats to grab, and which to avoid, is gone. Heres why, and three SeatGuru alternatives to try now.
What was SeatGuru?
SeatGuru was a website highly regarded by frequent fliers. The site hosted seatmaps for thousands of airplanes and categorized every seat on each aircraft in order to help fliers figure out which to book and which to avoid. Good seats were those with qualities like the most legroom in their class, the deepest unobstructed recline, and amenities like power ports. Bad seats were those with limited recline, proximity to the toilets, or obstructed windows.
Since airlines rarely made customers aware of the drawbacks of certain seats, and priced them similarly to preferable ones, there was always some risk involved when selecting your seat while booking. SeatGuru took that uncertainty away. By visiting the site, you could pull up the exact make and model of your airplane for a selected flight and click any seat to see whether it’s good, bad, or something in between. You could then use the data SeatGuru provided to choose the seat that works best for you.
SeatGuru was founded in 2001 and was one of those websites that exemplified the promise of the early internet: that newly accessible data could help improve our lives in many small ways. In SeatGurus case, it meant frequent travelers could make more informed choices about which seats to select.
SeatGuru became so popular that in 2007, travel website king Tripadvisor acquired it. But now, 18 years after the acquisition, and 24 years after its founding, SeatGuru is no more.
What happened to SeatGuru?
While once a reliable repository of seat data, SeatGuru began to take a turn for the worse when the Covid pandemic started. Around 2020, SeatGuru stopped producing content for its blog, delisted its smartphone apps from app stores, and fell behind in publishing the latest seat map data, leading the site’s data to become increasingly unreliable.
Still, even until this year, provided the configuration of any planes seat did not change, SeatGuru remained a valuable resource for frequent travelers hoping to find the best seats on their flight. But then, on October 31, with no notice and no fanfare, Tripadvisor pulled the plug on SeatGuru. Now, visitors to the site are redirected to Tripadvisors homepage.
As for why, a Tripadvisor spokesperson told me that the companys pivot to AI initiatives was a driving factor in SeatGurus decline. Tripadvisor has been evolving its business for its next era of growth, one that is centered on experiences and powered by AI, the spokesperson told me. We’ve been focusing strictly on optimizing our legacy offerings, and deprioritizing areas of the business as we shift resources towards our marketplace growth opportunities.
SeatGuru was one of the areas the company felt should be deprioritized.
3 SeatGuru alternatives to try
SeatGuru may be joining many of its fellow useful websites from the early 2000s in the internet graveyard, but there are other ways to learn about a seat before you book it.
The first is SeatMap.com. The site was launched in 2022 and was founded by AMD and Microsoft veteran Djois Franklin and Fred Finn. Finn has the distinction of holding two travel-related Guinness World Records: most airmiles flown by a passenger and the person who has flown the most flights on the Concorde.
SeatMap hosts seat maps for planes operated by more than 750 airlines worldwide and categorizes each seat by color, based on comfort and amenities. In an email, SeatMap CEO Djois Franklin told me that the site was seeing a sharp uptick in traffic across the globe after SeatGuru shut down. To use SeatMap, just enter your flight information, and youll be presented with an interactive diagram of your flights seatmap.
A second website SeatGuru fans should try is AeroLOPA. The site, founded in 2021, doesnt have the interactivity of SeatGuru or SeatMap.com (meaning you cant click on an individual seat to learn more about it), but you can look up specifc planes in the fleets of nearly 200 airlines to find detailed cabin maps showing the relative positions of all seats along with general information about any cabins seat widths, recline, legroom, and more.
Finally, those wanting more social feedback about the best and worst seats should give SeatLink.com a look. The site lets you look up your specific flight, as SeatGuru did, and shows an interactive map detailing the amenities of each seat. SeatLink also lets users post comments about individual seats, enabling crowdsourced reviews and other socially aggregated data.
Legendary documentarian Ken Burns is set to release his long-awaited series after a decade in development. In the lead-up to the premiere of The American Revolution, Burns shares key lessons he gleaned from the founding of the United Statesand the parallels between the revolutionary era and today. He also reflects on his admiration for Lin-Manuel Mirandas Hamilton, and the obstacles he faces in his ongoing quest for truth.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. 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.
You have a new, six-part series about the American Revolution premiering on November 16. Why were you drawn to this? And why now?
I’ve been working on this for almost 10 years. . . . I said yes to this project in December of 2015. Barack Obama still had 13 months to go in his presidency. What drew me to the Civil War was organic and interior to my choices. I was looking at a map, a kind of 3D map, where I suddenly saw an arrow of British moving west through Long Island towards Brooklyn. This little, tiny town of Brooklyn, which is the largest battle in the entire revolution.
While there are no photographs in newsreels, I felt being a lover of maps and a willingness, I think, to reexamine my usual disdain for reenactments, they’re not going to reenact that battle. They’re just being there to make you feel the weather, make you feel the heat, make you feel the cold, make you feel the location, the interiors of all of these actions, and at that point, I realized maybe we can do this. Of course, I went about three years into this project and said, “Wow. If we hit our marks, we’ll be in 2025, which is the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord.” Then, all of a sudden people would arrive and say, “Oh. You planned this so well.”
Yes, yes.
We didn’t. I’m glad that a very deep dive into the revolution is going to happen way in advance of the 4th of July of next year, which is, for many people, the 250th. Of course, it’s been going on for some time, and will go on if you want to follow it through to the end, until 2039, which is 250 years after our government officially got started and George Washington became the first President of the United States of America. There’s lots of things going on, but a lot of it will be focused next July, and there is that risk that it could become super-ficialized. The war itself is already encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia. It is not bloodless or gallant.
You do not want to die when a cannon takes off your head, a bayonet guts you, or a musket ball rips through you. There’s just a remarkable set of characters and remarkable interiors to the war, the details of the battles, a really long, six and a half year war from Lexington to Yorktown. We need to know about our origin story, particularly in a time when people are sort of ringing their hands. We’re so divided. Well, you just look back there, and we’re really divided back then, and that maybe reinvesting with our origin story helps us find out what’s real and what’s artificial in all of the stuff that’s going on right now.
The current cultural story about the American Revolution that maybe is most prominent or most well known is Hamilton, is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s retelling in that. Did that impact the way you told the story at all?
Look, let me give my props to Lin Manuel. Hamilton is the greatest cultural event of this new millennium, this new century. It is a phenomenal thing. I mean, I’ve got a teenage daughter who’s 15, a 20-year daughter and an almost 15-year-old granddaughter, and they can recite, sing the whole thing, two-and-a-half hours. And so, they know tensions between big and small states. They understand between a strong federal Hamiltonian system and a state’s rights Jefferson model. They know who Hercules Mulligan is. They know all this sort of stuff about the revolution, and they have a kind of great glee about it that must mean that history teachers of this period are just lying down and thanking God for Lin-Manuel Miranda.
I mean, truth and fact are increasingly contested today, and we mentioned Hamilton. I mean, Lin-Manuel, the big picture is certainly there, but there’s a lot of artistic license in what he pulled together. When you look at this as a storyteller, and for our listeners who are business leaders and other leaders, the responsibility to promote strict accuracy, or like as long as we get the big picture right, it’s okay the details don’t matter as much.
The people that are listening to this have to do the former, right? Strict accuracy, and so do I. There’s not a filmmaker in a world when a scene is working, you don’t want to touch it, but we’re always finding new and destabilizing information that are true and you need to incorporate them. Lin-Manuel can actually take the poetic license necessary to do a big, Broadway musical, and God bless him.
I mean, there’s a guy that we know in our past who would take the histories and conflate characters, change countries, move these characters around. His name is William Shakespeare, and we don’t believe that there are any truths higher in fiction, which are sometimes more true than what’s real, but I can’t do that. I will sacrifice the art for the correct story. That makes it super complicated, but what’s interesting is when you do that, when you try to fit the round peg of the truth into the square hole of art, if you will, and you successfully negotiate it, it’s as good as anything. You’re right, we’re in an age where we’re supposed to be post-truth. No, we’re not. Are you post-truth? I’m not. I’m not.
Right.
Nor are the business leaders of the country. You’re going to fudge your figures? I don’t think so. We do know that large sections of where we supposedly get information are, themselves, unaccountable. They do not care, one way or the other. Whatever political persuasion, whatever it is, people are manipulating the truth all the time. Always has been. The problem is just the sheer size of the internet and its ability for a lie to get started before the truth can come back, but one and one is always going to be two. You can’t build an airplane, you can’t run a business, you can’t work the budget of a documentary film without one and one equaling two.
You can’t just make it up, right? You cannot make it up. George Washington rides out on the battlefield at least three times, that I know of, risking his life at Kipp’s Bay in Manhattan, at Princeton, and at the Battle of Monmouth, and these are significant things. If he’s killed, it’s all over, because he is the only person that held us together as a historian, Annette Gordon Reed says, that there’s one person who was able to figure it out. I’m interested in him. He’s deeply flawed. He’s rash. Those movements potentialy sacrifice the whole thing, and he makes terrible battlefield mistakes. He leaves his left flank exposed in the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolution, and loses it and New York for seven years.
It’s the British headquarters and the loyalist stronghold for the rest of the war. He does the same mistake at Brandywine in Pennsylvania, another huge, huge battle, where this time he leaves his right flank, but there’s nobody who knew how to inspire men in the dark of night, in the dead of cold, who could pick subordinate talent, that he wasn’t afraid of their skills or talent, who could defer to Congress and understand how they work, who could speak to a Georgian and a New Hampshireite and say, “You’re not that. You’re an American, this new thing.” Nobody. Nobody could do that. Does he have undertow? Yes. Does that make him any less heroic? No. Heroism is not perfection. Heroism is a negotiation within yourself between your strengths and your weaknesses.
Has truth always been sort of fungible and selective in U.S. history, a kind of a matter of debate and perspective, or is this time we’re in now different?
Human beings have always lied. People have been lying as long as there have been human beings.
When the camera was invented in 1826, many people thought painting would die. But it didnt. Instead, painters found new ways to express themselves. Painters reinvented expressionism, impressionism, and abstract art. Monet, Munch, and later Picasso, all thrived after the camera arrived.
When personal computers became common in the 1980s, there was fear that creative thinking would become less valuable. But computers opened the door to digital design, animation, and new forms of storytelling. Studios like Pixar, founded in 1986, showed how technology could help artists create worlds that were impossible before.
When Photoshop launched in 1988, photographers worried that editing tools would destroy the purity of photography. But Photoshop expanded what photographers and designers could do. It made visual creativity more accessible and helped build the modern creator economy.
So why does AI, today, make so many creators feel threatened?
History tells us one clear truth: New technology has never replaced creativity; it has always expanded it. Every time new technology arrives, progress follows.
The AI Genie Cant Be Rebottled
Artificial intelligence is simply the next chapter. It can help creators work faster, explore more ideas, and bring their imagination to life with fewer barriers.
Human imagination cant be replicated by a machine. The spark that evokes tears in a storys readers or a swoon from a melodys listeners is innately humanthat intangible side of creativity: talent, taste, lived experience, a unique point of view, and the urge to express it. But turning those intangibles into something others can see, hear, or feel also requires tangibles: time, tools, access, and resources.
Too often, thats where great creators get stuck. Not everyone can dream up and create a world worth caring about. But even those who can often lack the means to bring it to life in a way that others can enjoy as well. That’s where AI can help. It cant create soul, but it can remove barriers to entry by lowering the cost, time, skills, and resources needed to truly bring creative expression to life.
In this sense, AI can be a force multiplier for creativity. Just as the smartphone made photography universal, AI can democratize storytelling itself.
Collaboration, Not Replacement
In my work building an audio storytelling platform, Ive seen how AI can help creators, not replace them. Our platform lets anyone write and publish serialized audio stories. To help them, we’ve built AI tools that act like creative partners. They dont write for the authorsthey assist them. They help a writer stay consistent across hundreds of episodes, suggest plotlines when inspiration stalls, and offer real-time feedback on pacing and dialogue. Other tools turn text into natural-sounding audio, add background sound, or generate artworkcapabilities once available only to professional studios.
These tools dont take jobs from artists; they open doors for them. Many of our creators couldnt afford to hire professional narrators, sound designers, or illustrators. Without AI, their stories would never be heard. With it, they reach millions of listeners.
Thats not replacing creators. Its expanding who gets to be one.
Keeping Humans at the Center
Great art doesnt come from pattern recognition or probability. It comes from emotion, contradiction, curiositythe things that make us human. AI can help a writer structure a story, but it cant feel heartbreak or hope. That’s why we must build creator systems that keep those human creators squarely at the center: ensuring transparency, maintaining creative ownership, and deeply valuing the originators of ideas.
A New Chapter for Creativity
Were at a pivotal moment in a long story. The history of art and technology has always followed the same arc: disruption, fear, adaptation and, ultimately, expansion.
Steve Jobs once described the home computer (a technology that stirred up a frenzy of fear when it came to market) as a bicycle for the mind. He envisioned a tool that didnt replace our thinking but accelerated it, amplifying human imagination in the same way a bicycle amplifies human movement. This next chapter of creative innovation is ours to write. We can let AI reduce creativity to algorithms, or we can shape it into a bicycle for the creative mind, something that helps human talent travel farther and faster.
The future of storytelling shouldnt be about machines replacing humans. It should be about more humans telling more stories, reaching more people, and inspiring more imagination (and tears and swoons) than ever before.
Every fall, I anticipate the winter holidays with almost childlike joy. I look forward to familiar traditions with friends and family, eggnog in my coffee, and the sense that everyone is feeling a little lighter and more connected.
At the same time, I feel anxious and annoyed by the manufactured sense of urgency around gift giving: the endless searching and second-guessing shaped by advertisers, retailers, and cultural expectations.
Dont get me wrong, I mostly love givingand, yes, receivinggifts during the holidays. But as a researcher who studies consumer psychology, I see how those same forces, amplified by constant buying opportunities and frictionless online payments, make us especially vulnerable and often unwise this time of year.
Buying behavior, including gift giving, doesnt just reflect needs and wants but also our values. Frequently, the values we talk about are more akin to aspirational ideals. Our actual values are revealed in the seemingly inconsequential choices we make day after dayincluding shopping.
The cumulative effects of our spending behaviors carry enormous implications for society, the environment, and everyones well-beingfrom the purchaser and recipient to people working throughout the supply chain. This makes consumer behavior an especially important place to apply the emerging social science research on wisdom. While wisdom is defined in different ways, it can be understood as seeing decisions through a broader, values-informed perspective and acting in ways that promote well-being.
Over the past decade, consumer psychology researcher David Mick and I have studied what that means when it comes to consumption. Consumer wisdom? you may wonder. Isnt that an oxymoron?
But there are vast differences in how we consumeand as our research shows, this can lead to very different effects on individual well-being.
Defining consumer wisdom
Building on some of Davids earlier work, I began my own research on consumer wisdom in the summer of 2015, interviewing dozens of people across the U.S. whom others in their communities had identified as models of wisdom. Previous research guided me to settings where I could easily find people who represented different aspects of wisdom: practicality on farms in upstate New York; environmental stewardship in Portland, Oregon; and community values in Tidewater, Virginia.
I didnt use the term wisdom, though. It can be intimidating, and people often define it narrowly. Instead, I spoke with people whose peers described them as exemplary decision-makerspeople leading lives that considered both the present and the future, and who balanced their needs with others needs.
From those conversations, David and I developed a theory of consumer wisdom. With the help of a third coauthor, Kelly Haws, we validated this framework through national surveys with thousands of participants, creating the consumer wisdom scale.
The scale shows how consumer wisdom is not some lofty ideal but a set of practical habits. Some are about managing money. Some are about goals and personal philosophy, and others are about broader impact.
We have found that six dimensions capture the vast majority of what we would call consumer wisdom:
Responsibility: managing resources to support a rewarding yet realistic lifestyle.
Purpose: prioritizing spending that supports personal growth, health, and relationships.
Perspective: drawing on past experiences and anticipating future consequences.
Reasoning: seeking and applying reliable, relevant information; filtering out the noise of advertising and pop culture.
Flexibility: being open to alternatives such as borrowing, renting, or buying used.
Sustainability: spending in ways that support the buyers social or environmental goals and values.
These are not abstract traits. They are everyday ways of aligning your spending with your goals, resources, and values.
Importantly, people with higher scores on the scale report greater life satisfaction, as well as better health, financial security, and sense of meaning in life. These results hold even after accounting for known determinants of well-being, such as job satisfaction and supportive relationships. In other words, consumer wisdom makes a distinctive and underappreciated contribution to well-being.
Putting it into practice
These six dimensions offer a different lens on holiday normsone that can reframe how to think about gifts.
Interestingly, the English word gift traces back to the Old Norse rune gyfu, which means generosity. Its a reminder that true giving is not about checking boxes on referral, revenue-generating gift guides or yielding to slick promotions or fads. Generosity is about focusing on another persons well-being and our relationship with them.
From the perspective of consumer wisdom, that means asking what will genuinely contribute to the recipients life. One of the most important dimensions of consumer wisdom is purpose: the idea that thoughtful spending can nurture personal growth, health, enjoyment, and a sense of connection. Out with trendy gadgets, fast fashion, and clutter-creating décor or knickknacksthings that feel exciting in the moment but are quickly forgotten. In with quality headphones, a shared cooking class, a board game, and a workshop or tools to support a hobbygifts that can spark growth, joy and deeper connection.
In my ongoing research, people have described wise gifts as those that define value from the recipients perspectivegifts that stay meaningful and useful over time. The wisest gifts, respondents say, also affirm the recipients identity, showing that the giver truly understands and values them.
Wiser consumption is learnable, measurable, and consequential. By choosing gifts that reflect purpose and the original spirit of gyfutrue generositywe can make the holidays less stressful. More importantly, we can make them more meaningful: strengthening relationships in ways that bring joy long after.
Michael Luchs is a JS Mack professor of business at William & Mary.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Underperformance usually shows up in the guise of missed deadlines, low-quality work, or a bad attitude. This gets spotted sometimes, but not always, by a leader who then has to make a choice: when and how to tackle the underperformance.
However, the problem can be exacerbated by acting too quickly: there is often a fierce desire within leaders to jump to action. They want to stop the badness, stop the ripples, and solve the situation as quickly as possible. But often, this means that they make assumptions about what is causing the underperformance and how to solve it without taking a little time to explore the real reasons behind the poor performance.
The problem can also be exacerbated by acting too slowly: underperformance has a nasty habit of rippling out. Whether it creates a sense among colleagues that this low standard is acceptable, or whether it means that team members get annoyed that this individual is getting away with it (and therefore reduce their own efforts to create a sense of parity), it all ends in the same place: more underperformance and a potential impact on the workplace culture.
I developed SOLVE, a leadership problem-solving model, to deal with exactly these sorts of problems: ones that need solving but arent as easy as jumping straight to action. Causes need establishing, options need considering, context needs to be taken into account. In the case of underperformance, the five stages of the SOLVE model would work like this:
S State the ProblemTry to express, in 12 sentences, what the problem appears to be and the impact its having. Try to be precise about the behaviour causing concern: “Theyre regularly late with deliverables and hesitant to give their opinion in meetings, which reduces their impact and makes our team look unprepared.”
O Open the BoxHere, leaders dig into the problem more deeply, trying to work out why this situation is occurring. I encourage them to do a bit of research, and in this case, research should absolutely include talking to the team member in question to find out whats going on.
In the case of underperformance, I would investigate the following areas:
Has their workload increased recently, either because youve given them more tasks, or someone else has without your awareness?
Are they being asked to do work at a higher level than before? You might not perceive this in the same way they do, so its worth asking them the question.
Has anything changed in their personal life? In some country and company cultures, its not appropriate to ask this outright, but there is no harm in a catch-up asking them how things are going in general and seeing if they bring anything up.
Are they still finding their work interesting? Has anything changed that may have put their values out of line with the companys or vice versa?
Has the level of clarity over whats expected of them changed? If the companys strategy has changed, youre a new manager, or they are working across two projects, they may simply be confused as to what to prioritize and why.
L Lay Out Your SolutionBased on what youve discovered, you can now create a workable response. It might be offering clearer priorities, adjusting scope, or helping them to see the value of their work again. Leaders should think hard about what fits the context and the individual. With these very messy leadership problems, there is no such thing as a universal solutionthink about how your organizations size, industry, and status affect which solutions would work. If its a team issue, what impact does your function, size, and sub-culture have? And with regard to the individual involved, how does their background, personality, and experience affect your approach?
V Venture ForthHere, leaders start to put their actions into practice while looking out for problems along the way, ready to pivot. It may be that, as the underperformer starts to roll out actions to improve their performance, more factors reveal themselves as being important to take into account. For example, a leader I worked with recently thought that the solution to team disengagement was to increase rewards. However, the very mention of rewards led one team member to start to gripe about how this company thinks you can pay off anyone. It emerged that, even though the team member hadnt previously said it, their disengagement was as a result of feeling bored with the work, rather than feeling unrewarded. The leader focused instead on providing work that team member perceived as more interesting, and their engagement rapidly improved.
E Elevate Your LearningThis is about using the new skills and knowledge youve gleaned to generate further positive impacts. For example, if youve learned more about how to help team members manage their workload, can you share this with other leaders who have overstretched teams?
I believe, and have seen through my work, that the SOLVE model can make a meaningful difference in handling underperformance (as well as plenty of other types of leadership problems).
Leaders I work with on staff underperformance benefit from the encouragement that they should slow down, lay the situation out clearly, and then pick a solution that properly fits their context. They also appreciate being shown, through the Elevate stage, how to make sure that the time theyve taken solving this problem hasnt gone to waste. They have developed skills and approaches that will continue to help them and others in the future.
The SOLVE framework allowed one leader I recently worked with to break down precisely why their sub-teams were underperforming, looking at the issue on an individual basis, and come up with targeted solutions. Importantly, they were also able to use their skills to help other leadership teams across the firm, multiplying the impact that their careful handling of underperformance had for their firm.
I recommend, if you are keen to deal with an underperformance issue, to work through the five stages and see the positive impact that they can have on your team and, therefore, your leadership.
As soon as ChatGPT launched, Odyssey Gohain saw the writing on the wall.
The now 27-year-old was working as a marketer in Amsterdam at the time, looking to move into a more senior role when the powerful AI tool started replacing individual tasks, then team membersincluding an older colleague whose career Gohain idolized.
I thought maybe in three, four years, I’ll be in her place. And then she got laid off, says Gohain, who was let go soon after herself.
After moving back home with her parents in 2023, Gohain started an independent marketing business as a solopreneur. Two years later, she is still earning less than at her previous role, but says the transition has offered other benefits.
After that [career] roadblock, I was really struggling to figure out my next step. It felt like I was staring at a blank wall, she says. Now there is more stability. Even though there is not a lot of money in it, there is a confidence that I will get there. Things felt harder before.
Ironically, the very technology that threatened Gohains career in the traditional workforce is proving to be a game changer in her new independent venture of assisting startups with their organic marketing strategy.
I actually made a few sales through ChatGPT, she says, explaining that the AI platform has come to replace online search. People are searching for my niche on ChatGPT, and I have been seeing a lot of traffic come from it.
As young people struggle to kick-start or grow their careers in a stagnant job market, and as the barriers to entry for entrepreneurship continue to plummet, thanks to technology (ironically, the same tech thats turning the workforce on its head), many are taking the leap into solopreneurship.
A New Generation With a New Definition of Career Success
In a recent survey of 2,300 Americans ages 18 to 34 that was conducted by Citizens, a Rhode Island-based financial institution, only a quarter expressed interest in climbing the corporate ladder.
Instead, 67% respondents said they have pursued an entrepreneurial ventureof which more than a third identified as solopreneurs rather than employers or gig workers.
There’s a complete redefinition of careers happening among young people, says Mark Valentino, head of business banking at Citizens. They’re redefining what career success looks like, what life success looks like. And they’re stating it in a manner that is more about adventure, flexibility, sustainability, and a quality of life that is goodbut that is not necessarily so tied to monetary success.
Valentino explains that values like flexibility, meaning, and work-life balance are often more attainable as an independent business owner than as a traditional employee, especially in the current job market.
The barriers to starting a business today are also the lowest they’ve ever been, he says, suggesting one can now register a business and develop a business plan in a matter of minutes online. There’s a little bit of a steer away from traditional corporate America in this generation as well, and theres been more economic barriers in their way, like the cost of college.
Economic necessity drives solopreneurship
That lack of financial independence is, ironically, also making it easier to start a business, Valentino says, as many are living at home for longer.
The fact that they’re staying in the nest a little bit longer than previous generations gives them a little bit of freedom to take more risks, he says. If you are somebody who does have a little bit of support, or can live at home a little bit longer, you can take a little bit of a chance on becoming a solopreneur.
According to a recent study conducted by payroll and HR solutions provider Gusto, Gen Z solopreneurs earn, on average, less than $10,000 during their first year, which is 73% less than those who are traditionally employed.
By year five, however, average earnings exceed $60,000, or 28% more than their corporate counterparts.
After five years, theyre able to really start taking advantage of the financial freedom that solopreneurship offers, says Gusto economist Nich Tremper. They’re able to take their skills to market in a way that allows them to really set their own price.
That, he says, is an appealing prospect for a generation that is experiencing significant wage stagnation.
People who are just starting out in their careers are dependent on early wage growth and gains to set the course for their overall earning potential later in life, and they do that by moving around to different jobs or getting promotions at their current job, Tremper explains. In a frozen labor market, solopreneurship is an opportunity for people to get that next boost in their income.
Its about more than money
Like the Citizens survey, however, Gustos data also suggests that this generation is motivated by more than money.
According to the survey, 88% of Gen Z solopreneurs were motivated by the opportunity to set their own schedule, compared with 70% among all solopreneurs.
Furthermore, 68% wanted to be their own boss, 41% reported being unsatisfied with their current or former job, and 40% said they took the leap to have a positive impact on their community.
They really want to define what work means for them, Tremper says. The labor market is pretty frozen, so theyre going out and starting their own thing.
The public disclosure of more than 20,000 pages of newly released documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been the subject of much online discourse this week. While the emails themselves are full of damning revelations, particularly regarding Epsteins relationship with President Donald Trump, the internets attention has been caught on another detail.
BREAKING: Newly released emails reveal Jeffrey Epstein struggled to compose sentences in English, journalist Tom Elliott posted on X. Why can none of these very rich and powerful men type or spell, journalist Jill Filipovic asked.
In case you havent seen it, one such email reads: i want you to realize that that dog that hasnt barked is trump.. [REDACTED] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there. Thats verbatim.
While undoubtedly there are more important things to focus on than Epsteins grasp of the English language, it is, for many, a point of interest.
I know that once you get to a certain status, you dont bother with email signatures and salutations, but taking out proper nouns and punctuation is a psychotic power play, one X user wrote.
Gagging here trying to read Epstein emails with these unwarranted spaces before every comma and no caps to speak of, another added. Such naked contempt for the reader. Messed up guy no doubt.
Epstein isnt the only one who seemingly struggled with email writing. Nearly one in five Americans now turn to AI to help write their emails, making it the most common way people offload to AI in their daily life. ResumeTemplates.coms August 2025 survey found 25% of ChatGPT users can no longer pen emails without it.
I never understood why white-collar professionals would need AI to write their emails as if they were that illiterate, another X user wrote. but after reading Jeffrey Epstein write hay Grlmane I thk mebbe wire $30K [REDACTED] girl Mrlago I kinda get it.
Another week, another questionable TikTok trend. The latest internet sensation has social media users asking someone to film them dancing. Instead, the dancer clicks the flip-camera button mid-dance filming the filmer instead of themselves. And while the trend is meant to be funny (and, of course, get clicks), not everyone is laughing.
The prank, called the flip-camera trend, has resulted in hundreds of videos showing awkward, close-up faces of people who believe they are filming friends (or even strangers) circulating on the platform. However, some of the videos are awkward to view, and are resulting in some major embarrassment. That’s especially true when the videos get major traffic.
While some of the videos appear to be all in good fun, some of them seem downright hurtful. Some videos show well-meaning strangers simply trying to help out, only to have their faces posted to the internet to be mocked by hundreds, thousands, or more. Some users have posted ultra-emotional responses showcasing the true embarrassment that may come with having your face shared across the internet without consent.
Recently, TikTok user its.jusninii shared a video showing her in tears over the prank. “Me after seeing the flip camera trend and realizing how cruel you little kids are,” she wrote. The video clearly struck a chord, as it has over 2 million likes at present. But the user is not the only one who is airing their feelings about the prank. Hundreds of response videos have been trending where users, instead of making their own flip-camera videos, are calling out the users who are taking part.
Many of the videos have the same message: they say the prank isn’t all in good fun. It’s actually bullying.
In one recent video, TikTok user Nathalie Reynolds acts like she’s about to flip the camera on her filmer. Instead, she takes the opportunity to bash the prank, yelling into her phone “You thought I was about to flip the camera? This is not a trend. This is bullying!”
And on Instagram, user @coquettesvanilla wrote that the entire trend is built around embarrassing people, and from that lens, it’s not okay. “We shouldnt be building a whole trend around tearing someone down,” the user wrote. “Bullying isnt always loud or obvious, sometimes it hides behind its just for fun. But if someone gets hurt, then it wasnt fun to begin with.”
Bullying can take many forms, and these days, internet bullying is a huge concern, as kids spend more and more time online. But, according to StopBullying.com, it’s also worrisome because, in some cases, like if videos arent removed when someone asks, it can be permanent. “Most information communicated electronically is permanent and public, if not reported and removed,” the website explains.
While many who’ve been pranked might not mind having their faces make the rounds on the internet, it seems clear that many feel downright violated. And when it comes to the question of bullying, the TikTok victims say it fits the bill.
The 2025 Leonid meteor shower is forecast to peak this weekend, lighting up the night sky with up to 15 meteors an hour whizzing by at 44 miles per second, according to Live Science.
The Leonids peak is expected to be visible in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere this Sunday, November 16 into early Monday, November 17, according to the Planetary Society.
Expect prime meteor shower viewing, since the moon is expected to only be 9% full, giving viewers mostly dark skies.
Here’s what to know about seeing the dazzling display.
What is a meteor shower?
Meteor showers, or “shooting stars,” occur as Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet, per NASA.
Meteor showers are usually named after the constellation or star near where the meteors first appear.
The Leonids are aptly named after the Leo constellation, and come from debris from the Tempel-Tuttle comet.
When is the best time to see the Leonid meteor shower?
Typically, the best time to see a meteor shower is between midnight and before dawn. For the best viewing times in your area, see timeanddate.com.
If you miss Sunday’s peak event, don’t worry. The Leonids will still be active the rest of the month, until November 30.
Leonid meteor storms are a special treat
About every 33 years, a Leonid meteor shower turns into a meteor storm, dazzling viewers with a treat1,000 meteors each hour, producing a dazzling light show.
The last Leonid meteor storm occurred in 2002, with the next one forecast for 2031, the Planetary Society reported.
The Leonids are best known for producing meteor storms in 1833, 1866, 1966, 1999, 2001, and 2002, according to the American Meteor Society.
