2026 will be a good year for people who love to walk where cars once drove.
As climate change acceleratesand cities continue to grapple with congestion and air pollutionurban priorities have been shifting. In May this year, Parisians voted to close 500 streets to traffic across all 20 arrondissements. London is moving forward with plans to pedestrianize sections of the world-famous Oxford Street, as well as Regent Street, and Piccadilly Circus. Meanwhile, Barcelonas centuries-old promenade, La Rambla, is in the last stretches of a long-term redesign that will be completed in 2027, widening the pedestrian promenade and limiting access to residents vehicles and public transport.
The U.S. isnt exempt from the trend. Next year alone, half a dozen cities, from Bentonville, AR, to Houston, TX, will reduce or remove car traffic on some of their streetsnot for a weekend pilot or a seasonal experiment, but for good.
These projects matter in a country that still funnels tens of billions of federal dollars every year into new roads and highways. And they are particularly notable after the Trump administration recently withdrew previously awarded grants for some bike, trail, and pedestrian projects.
Ever since cars became dominant in the 1950s, urban thinkers like Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl have argued for cities designed around people, not vehicles. The conversation is still timely. According to several experts interviewed for this story, the tides are shifting. I think we are certainly seeing momentum in the car-free or car-lite movement, says Ben Crowther, policy director for the nonprofit America Walks.
Here are six streets pedestrians can reclaim next yearno cars, or fewer cars, allowed.
[Image: courtesy Downtown Houston+]
1. Main Street in Houston, TX
Houstons Main Street, long a transit corridor, is being reinvented as a seven-block pedestrian promenade through the heart of downtown. The Main Street Promenade will feature shaded walkways, plazas, outdoor dining, and a series of flexible public spaces designed for lingering, not just passing through.
Led by Downtown Houston+ in partnership with the City of Houston, and designed by Workshop, the project builds on the success of the More Space: Main Street initiative, a temporary program launched in 2021 to test reduced vehicle access. Its permanent transformation is timed to welcome visitors for the 2026 FIFA Mens World Cup, but the redesign is meant to serve residents long after the crowds leave.
The streets physical makeover is substantial. Pedestrian space will be expanded across seven blocks, creating a continuous, safer corridor through downtown. Tree canopy will increase by more than 150%, with new trees added alongside shade structures and storefront awningscritical infrastructure in a city defined by heat. A series of outdoor rooms will support activities like casual dining and small events, while murals and public art installations will reinforce Main Streets identity. A raised street design and improved crossings aim to make the promenade accessible to people of all ages and abilities.
The new promenade is a fitting evolution for a street that has carried Houston through multiple transportation eras, from horse-drawn carriages to trolleys, cars, light railand now, pedestrians.
[Image: courtesy KC PWD]
2. 18th Street in Kansas City, MO
Kansas Citys 18th Street, the cultural backbone of the historic Jazz District, isnt becoming fully car-freebut its redesign marks a significant shift toward people-first planning. Like Houstons Main Street, the 18th Street Pedestrian Mall project has been years in the making before accelerating toward completion ahead of the 2026 World Cup.
Rather than banning vehicles outright, the project will remove curbs, gutters, and on-street parking to create a seamless corridor that is more akin to a shared street. Vehicular traffic will still be allowed at the center, but its dominance will be dramatically reduced. Replacement parking is being relocated to a new garage just south of the street, freeing up space for wider sidewalks, traffic calming measures, and safer, more accessible crossings.
The redesign also lays the groundwork for expanded programming like farmers markets and live concerts. A City spokesperson said it will also make it easier for the Jazz District to close three blocks of 18th Street for major events like Juneteenth, First Fridays, and Halloween celebrationssomething that was logistically difficult under the old street design.
The nuance matters here. Patricia Brownwho helped lead the pedestrianization of Trafalgar Square in London in the early 2000sargues that framing projects as car-free versus car-lite can be counterproductive. Were never going to have a car-free city, and we shouldnt, she told me. The real question is how you put people front and center and reduce vehicle dominance.
Kansas Citys 18th Street offers a case study in exactly that approach.
[Photo: courtesy Design Workshop]
3. A Street Promenade, in Bentonville, AR
In Bentonville, Arkansas, pedestrianization is less about reclaiming a single block and more about stitching an entire downtown together. At the center of that effort is “A Street Promenade“a linear, pedestrian-only plaza that is part of the citys broader “Quilt of Parks” initiative.
“A Street Promenade,” which just opened in November, has been remade from a vehicle corridor into a pedestrian promenade that links the town square with parks, local businesses, and civic spaces through a sequence of garden rooms and parklets. The promenade is designed for everyday use, but flexible enough to support markets, parades, and citywide events.
The project emerged from a Design Excellence partnership launched in 2018 between the citys Parks and Recreation Department, the Walton Family Foundation, and Design Workshop (the same studio behind Houstons Main Street transformation.)
The goal was never just to remove cars, says Conners Ladner, a principal at Design Workshop. It was about strengthening how people move through and gather within the city center.
[Photo: courtesy Qmunity District]
4. Post Street in San Jose, CA
In downtown San Jose, Post Street has become a template for how temporary street experiments can turn into permanent change. Once a conventional downtown roadway, the street was permanently closed to cars this spring following years of pandemic-era pilots. It now functions as a pedestrian-only corridor at the heart of the citys LGBTQ+ district, known as Qmunity. (Its the citys second major pedestrianization effortfollowing San Pedro Square, which closed in 2024.)
Earlier this year, the city unveiled a permanent street mural by local artist Danny Feliz Hanson and community volunteers. Next year, the city is planning further upgrades, including an artist-led initiative to transform the safety barricades at each end of the street into reflective, neighborhood-branded design features.
When the World Cup rolls around, Post Street will be a designated Entertainment Zone, but a spokesperson from the San Jose Downtown Association emphasized that the decision to pedestrianize Post Street wasnt driven by FIFA. San Jose began experimenting with temporary closures during the pandemic, and after tracking their impacts, the City Council voted unanimously in February 2025 to make the change permanent. Recent data shows consistent increases in foot traffic and visitor dwell time in the area since the closure.
[Image: Greektown Neighborhood Partnership/SmithGroup]
5. Monroe Street in Detroit, MI
In Detroits Greektown, Monroe Street is being reimagined as a civic space. The Monroe Streetscape Improvement Project, led by the Greektown Neighborhood Partnership and designed by SmithGroup, is transforming a four-block stretch into a safer, more walkable corridor that can flex between everyday use and large-scale events.
Backed by $20 million in funding from the state of Michigan, the project is branded as A New Greektown, and prioritizes pedestrians without eliminating access altogether. Wider sidewalks, curbless lanes, and designated pick-up and drop-off zones reduce barriers between street and sidewalk, while still accommodating transit and essential vehicles. More than 50 new trees, enhanced lighting, and signature district signage aim to improve both comfort and safety, especially during evening hours.
The redesign also leans into Greektowns role as one of Detroits most active entertainment districts. Eighty thousand square feet of granite paversmaking it the largest granite-paved street in Michiganwill create a unified surface for outdoor dining, festivals, and markets.
Integrated art and heritage installations will celebrate the neighborhoods history, while removable bollards will allow Monroe Street to become fully pedestrianized during programmed events. A spokesperson from the Greektown Neighborhood Partnership said that current plans envision pedestrian-only weekends, with flexibility to adjust based on what works.
Construction is unfolding in phases: the first segment is already complete, while the second phase is scheduled to wrap up in late 2026.
[Photo: courtesy Sunset Dunes]
6. Sunset Dunes in San Francisco, CA
San Franciscos Sunset Dunes marks a different scale of ambition altogether. Stretching across two miles, the 50-acre coastal park is billed as the largest pedestrianization project in Califonias historytransforming a former highway into a public park.
The shift began with a ballot measure passed by voters, asking whether a long-debated stretch of the Great Highway should stop functioning as a road and start functioning as a park. The answer was yes. The city officially opened Sunset Dunes as a park in April 2025, rolling out initial activations like bike infrastructure, public art, and wayfinding. Since then, the space has continued to evolve, with picnic tables overlooking the ocean, a rotating outdoor art gallery, and free weekly programming.
Whats notable is how explicitly the city is treating Sunset Dunes as a living experiment. A first round of community engagement wrapped up this year, focused on understanding how residents want to use the space and whats currently missing. The results will be published by the end of 2025, with a second phase of engagement launching in 2026 to shape a long-term vision plan, supported by landscape architecture firm CMG Landscape Architecture. The goal: to move from a repurposed roadway to a purpose-built coastal park, much like Crissy Field, a former military airfield that was transformed into a coastal park two decades ago.
A spokesperson from local nonprofit, Friends of Sunset Dunes, told me design priorities will center on access and restoration. Since the park runs alongside a sensitive dune system, planned improvements will aim to restore dune ecology, improve beach access for people with mobility challenges, and create a continuous promenade that feels like one park.
In the meantime, the programming will keep testing what works. In January next year, the nonprofit will launch weekly traditional Chinese dance classes designed for the neighborhoods large senior population. More temporary installations and pilot uses will follow as an intentional strategy to learn from the public before locking in permanent design decisions.
Imagine this: One day, you won’t have to waste hours of your life doing your most arduous, least favorite forms of shopping. You know what I’m talking aboutbuying Christmas presents for distant aunts, getting supplies for your kid’s birthday, ordering groceries for dinner.
In the near future, you’ll empower your AI agent to tackle the task, then off it will go, identifying the right items, comparing prices andmost impressivelymaking the purchase for you. Within hours, a tin of your aunt’s favorite biscuits, the correct number of Peppa Pig plates, and a bag of groceries will arrive at your doorstep.
We’re not quite there yet, but experts say that this future is much closer than you think. Consumers are incorporating AI into their shopping at a meteoric pace, tapping agents to discover products and making purchases bases on their suggestions. Shopify, which runs online stores for more than 5 million brands, has found that AI-driven traffic had grown sevenfold this year compare to last, and AI-driven purchases have increased by 11 times.
In November, Adobe determined that three quarters of all purchases made on a computer were referred by AI, as were a quarter of those made on a phone. The likelihood to purchase if you come from an AI source platform is higher than a non-AI source right now,” says Vivek Pandya, director of digital insights at Adobe. “Thats happened in a very short period of time.
This spike in AI adoption suggests that 2026 is going to be a transformational year for shopping. We’re shifting away from searching for products on Google and discovering them on social media, and instead we’re going to start our shopping journeys from within an AI system. Now, retailers and brands are scrambling to adapt to this reality, beefing up their technological capabilities for this new era. Fully autonomous buying will be here before you know it.
How we’re shopping now
Since the late 1990s, shopping on the internet has followed the same script. We opened Google, typed in what we wanted to buy, then scrolled through endless rows of links before making a purchase. Finding a black cashmere sweater means scanning through rows of thumbnailsthe digital equivalent of digging through an enormous bin of inventory in a backroom. “The cognitive load that the consumer has to deal with day in and day out is profound,” says Pandya. “They had to go from online store to online store, opening multiple windows.”
But this year, we realized we could offload this mental burden to AI. This was particularly true for products that require a lot of research, like an expensive gift, or a lot of planning, like supplies for a party. We describe our criteria to an agent listing our budget, style, and constrains, then let it generate ideas and compare products. In other words, it’s much more like the experience of visiting a department store and having a well-trained retail associate advise us on what to buy.
According to Adobe’s analyticswhich tracks more than a trillion visits across sitesit’s not that AI is referring us to products and retailers. It’s also that AI-driven traffic leads to higher levels of conversion and more time on a brand’s website than traffic coming from a Google search or social media. In other words, AI isn’t just sending clicks; it’s sending shoppers who already know what they want and are ready to shop. “People are bouncing off less once they hit the retailer’s websites when they came from an AI source, and their spending more time exploring pages,” Pandya says.
How Brands Are Adapting
Both Pandya and Lee agree that this sudden shift in consumer behavior is going to reshape the retail landscape very quickly. And the faster retailers and brands are able to adapt to AI are more likely to thrive in the years to come. But retailers are taking very different approaches to AI. Walmart, for instance, partnered with OpenAI in October to make it possible for people to shop directly from ChatGPT.
Amazon, conversely, has decided to block AI agents from crawling its website so that links don’t appear in searches because it believes that these platforms degrade the shopping experience. In a cease and desist letter from October demanding that Perplexity stop using its data, Amazon pointed out that agents may not provide the best price, delivery method, and recommendations that Amazon itself would provide.
Shopify, one of the biggest e-commerce players on the market, has made the decision to go all in on AI on behalf of its five million merchants. This will be transformative, because it serves a wide range of companies, from tiny local shops to digitally native startups like Allbirds and Glossier, to big names like Mattel and Nestle. Earlier this year, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke said that the company was mandating an AI-first strategy, explaining that using AI is now a “fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify.”
For two years, Shopify has deployed AI to help merchants on the backend to build and run their stores. In 2023, it launched Shopify Magic, AI-powered tools that would generate product descriptions and marketing content. Last year, it launched Sidekick, an AI assistant that helps merchants with complex tasks like creating discount codes and analyzing sales trends. And this year, it deployed AI Store Builder, which lets merchants generate fully formed online stores from keyword prompts. It also acquired Vantage Discover, an AI search company that provides more personalized, context-aware results when a customers searches for a product on the merchant’s website.
Shopify is betting that consumers will increasingly begin their shopping journey on an AI agent, so it’s important for their brands to be easily searchable by AI. How do they do this? According to Pandya, the quality of data on a merchant’s site influences whether the agent will recommend a product. “Deep, rich, authoritative information helps the agent feel comfortable recommending one result over another,” he says.
This is why Shopify has been working with merchants to ensure that the data on their sites will show up in AI queries. This year, the company introduced Agentic Storefronts, which makes merchants product catalogs discoverable inside AI chats like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Depending on the query and how much detal the consumer is searching for, the response will simply surface a product link, in others, the response will surface ‘cards’ that provides a thumbnail image, a brief description, and a link.
Lee points out that shoppers also want to know that the results that the AI is providing is trustworthy. So Shopify has worked with all the major agents to ensure that products come with a citation from the brand’s website, much like the AI might cite a book or a magazine. “Citations matter,” she says. “Consumers want to know where a fact came from.
But perhaps Shopify’s most powerful new tool, says Lee, is OpenAI Instant Checkout, which launched in September. It allows customers to shop directly from ChatGPT without leaving the conversation. Right now you can only buy a single item at a time through this system (like say, paper plates), but soon, you’ll be able to put several items in a cart over the course of a conversation (like balloons and table cloth) then buy them all at once. Merchants need to opt in to this technology, and already more than a million of them are using it. “We want merchants to be in the control seat,” Lee says.
What’s Coming Around the Corner
Shopify’s checkout tool offers a glimpse into the futureto a time when fully autonomous shopping may become the norm.
For now, Lee says there are two obstacles to this. There’s the technical challenge of creating the infrastructure and safety precautions to allow an agent to shop on a user’s behalf. This will mean everything from partnering with payment companies to establishing the legal basis whereby a consumer empowers an agent to make purchases they did not approve beforehand.
There’s also the fact that consumers are’t quite ready to trust an agent to make the right decisions, especially when it comes to matters of individual taste, and especially if it has access to your credit card. “Consumers still want to stay in control,” says Lee.
All of this is changing, and quickly, Lee says. Shopify is already working on many tools that will make buying easier from within an agent. The company has a lot of experience making shopping more seamless. In 2017, it launched Shop Pay, which allows consumers to save their payment and shipping information so they can use it across Shopify merchants. To keep these transactions secure, it has leaned heavily into Apple Pay and Google Pay, which consumers trust to store their credit card information. Shopify is already working to incorporate a similar system into AI agents.
Lee says that Shopify and other online platforms like Apple and Google took a long time to build trust with consumers, so that they feel comfortable sharing their payment information. But the next frontier is feeling comfortable enough to let a third party actually make purchases on your behalf. Right now, consumers expect to confirm their purchase. “We still think the verification screen is important for both consumers and merchants,” she says.
But change is happening quickly. People already trust AI to help them do many things in their life, from making parenting decisions to doing aspects of their job. And there are many forms of shopping that consumers wish they could hand off to an assistant. So it may not be long before we let our AI agent handle these pesky tasks.
In 2026 (and beyond) the best benchmark for large language models wont be MMLU or AgentBench or GAIA. It will be trustsomething AI will have to rebuild before it can be broadly useful and valuable to both consumers and businesses.
Researchers identify several different kinds of AI trust. In people who use chatbots as companions or confidants, they measure a feeling that the AI is benevolent or has integrity. In people who use AI for productivity or business, they measure something called competence trust, or the belief that the AI is accurate and doesnt hallucinate facts. Ill focus on that second kind.
Competence trust can grow or shrink. An AI tool user, quite rationally, begins by giving the AI simple tasksperhaps looking up facts or summarizing long documents. If the AI does a good job of these things, the user naturally thinks what else can I do with this? They may give the AI a slightly harder task. If the AI continues to get things right, trust grows. If the AI fails or provides a low-quality answer, the user will think twice about trying to automate the task next time.
Steps forward, steps back
Todays AI chatbots, which are powered by large generative AI models, are far better than the ones we had in 2023 and 2024. But AI tools are just beginning to build trust with most users, and most C-suite executives who hope the tools will streamline business functions. My own trust of chatbots grew in 2025. But it has also diminished.
Example: I entered a long conversation with one of the popular chatbots about the contents of a long document. The AI made some interesting observations about the work, and suggested some sensible ways of filling in gaps. Then it made an observation that seemed to contradict something I knew was in the document.
When I pointed out the missing data, it immediately admitted its mistake. When I asked it (again) if it had digested the full document, it again insisted it had. Another AI chatbot returned a research report that it said was based on 20 sources. But there were no citations in the text connecting specific statements to specific sources. After it added the citations within the text, I noted that in two places the AI had relied on a single, not-very-trustworthy source for a key fact.
I learned that AI models still struggle with long chats involving large amounts of information, and that theyre not good at telling the user when they’re in over their heads. The experience adjusted my trust in the tools.
Grappling with ambiguity
As we enter 2026, generative AIs story is still in its early chapters. The story started with AI labs developing models that could converse, write, and summarize. Now the big AI labs seem confident that AI agents can autonomously work through complex tasks, calling on tools and checking their work against expert data. They seem convinced that the agents will soon manage ambiguity with humanlike judgment.
If large companies begin to trust that these agents can reliably do such jobs, it would mean enormous revenues for the AI company that developed them. Based on their current investments of hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, the AI companies and their backers seem to believe this outcome is close at hand.
Even if the AI could bring human-level intellect to business scenarios tomorrow, it may still take time to build trust among decision-makers and workers. Today, trust in AI isnt high. The consulting firm KPMG surveyed 48,000 people in 47 countries (two-thirds of which use AI regularly) and found that while 83% believe AI will be beneficial, only 46% actually trust the output of AI tools. Some may have a false trust in the technology: two-thirds of the respondents say they sometimes rely on AI output without evaluating its accuracy.
But I doubt that AI agents are ready to complete complex tasks and manage ambiguity like human experts might. As the AI is used by more people and businesses, they will encounter a universe of unique problems within various contexts that theyve never seen before. I doubt that current AI agents understand the ways of humans and the world well enough to improvise their way through such situations. Not yet anyway.
The limitations of the models
The fact is that AI companies are using the same kind of (transformer-based) AI models to underpin reasoning agents that they used for early chatbots that were essentially word generators. The core function of such models, and the objective of all their training, is predicting the next word (or pixel or audio bit) in a sequence, Microsoft AI CEO (and Google DeepMind cofounder) Mustafa Suleyman explained in a recent podcast. It is using that very simple likelihood-of-word prediction function to simulate what it’s like to have a great conversation or to answer complex questions, he said.
Suleyman and others doubt it. Suleyman believes that current models dont account for some of the key drivers of the things humans say and do. Naturally, we would expect that something that has the hallmarks of intelligence also has the underlying synthetic physiology that we do, but it doesnt, Suleyman said. There is no pain network. There is no emotional system. There is no inner will or drive or desire.
AI pioneer (and Turing Prize winner) Yann LeCun says the LLMs of today are useful enough to be applied in some valuable ways, but thinks theyll never achieve the general or human-level intelligence needed to do the really high-value work the AI companies hope they will. In order to learn to intuit paths through real-world complexity the AI would need a much higher-bandwidth training regimen than just words, images, and computer code, LeCun says. They may need to learn the world via something more like the multisensory experience babies have, and possess the uncanny ability to process and store all that information quickly, as babies can, he says.
Suleyman and LeCun may be wrong. Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic may achieve human-level intelligence using models whose origin is in language.
AI governance matters
Meanwhile, competence is just one factor in AI trust among business users. Enterprises use governance platforms to monitor whether and how AI systems might be creating regulatory compliance issues or exposing the company to risk of cyberattack, for example. When it comes to AI, large enterprise companies . . . want to be trusted by customers, investors, and regulators, says Navrina Singh, founder and CEO of the governance platform Credo AI. AI governance isnt slowing us down, its the only thing that allows measurable trust and lets intelligence scale without breaking the world.
In the meantime the pace at which humans delegate tasks to AI will be moderated by trust. AI tools should be used for tasks theyre good at, so that confidence in the results grows. Thatll take time, and its a moving target because the AI is continually improving. Discovering and delegating new tasks for AI, monitoring the results, and adjusting expectations will very likely become a routine part of work in the 21st century.&nsp;
No, AI won’t suddenly reinvent business all at once next year. 2026 wont be the year of the agent. It’ll take a decade for AI tools to prove out and become battle-hardened. Trust is the hardening agent.
Work consumes around a third of our waking hours during the weekday. Yet, according to Gallup, nearly a third of employees are disengaged.
80,000 Hours, a London-based nonprofit that helps people find the best career fit for themselves, reviewed 60 studies on dream jobs and found that a dream job meets six criteria: its engaging, it helps others, youre good at it, you work with supportive colleagues, it doesnt have major negatives, and it fits with the rest of your life.
Dream jobs seem difficult to landone 2024 survey of 3,000 employees across the U.S. finds only 14% of American adults are working their dream job. The same study found that 38% of adults hate their job, and 66% would be willing to switch careers to chase their dream job. And at a time when the labor market is shedding jobs of all sorts, a dream job may seem like a chimera.
And yet? There are people who pull it off.
Fast Company talked with four workers who have the gig of their dreams. While some of them knew exactly what they wanted and went to school for it . . . others had no idea their dream job even existed, or navigated countless twists and turns. One interviewee spent a period of time homeless; another is busy building up other paths just in case it turns out her dream job, well, stops being the dream.
How do you fashion the job of your dreams? We first asked this question back in 2007and while industries and culture have changed, workers desire to do something meaningful to them has not.
Nathalie Pereira: pilot
What she does: Pereira is a first officer for United Airlines, where she flies a Boeing 777. Shes based out of New Jersey and makes long-haul international flights.
Her career path: I fell in love with flying when I was five and visiting Brazil, says Pereira, who has Brazilian heritage. Ever since, I wanted to be in the skies. After high school, she attended flight school and worked as a pilot at a regional airport for five years, three as a captain. In 2021, she joined Uniteds Aviate program, a career development initiative started by United Airlines to find and develop pilots. Aviate offers candidates mentorship and guarantees them a job at United after completing the program and meeting hiring requirements. Pereira became a first officer for United in 2022.
A day in the life: Pereira says she thrives on spontaneity. On a regular day, shell go through her morning routine of gym and coffee, and then look over her flight plan on the company iPad, which has information on everything from the weather on her route to plane maintenance status. Then shell go to the airport where she does a briefing with the other pilots on her crew. After the briefing, theyll do a walkthrough of the plane to ensure everything works. Once Pereira touches down, shell meet up with her crew, grab a bite to eat, and explore the city. Some of her favorite stops include Tokyo, Brussels, and Barcelona.
Her advice: Being a pilot is highly feasiblethere are a lot of resources, she says. If the cost of flight school is holding you back, just do it. Youll make it back. She points out there are also tons of scholarships available through organizations such as the Latino Pilots Association and Women in Aviation International. In addition, Uniteds Aviate Academy is designed to take candidates from their first flight to a job at United.
While women only account for 11% of the pilots in America, Pereira wants other women to know that shouldnt be a barrier. Aviation has traditionally had fewer women in pilot roles, but access to the profession is based on meeting the same training, performance, and regulatory standards for all. Success comes from skill development, discipline, and experience. I never let gender deter me from pursuing what I love, she says.
Elizabeth Casper: personal stylist
What she does: Casper works with clients at Stitch Fix to offer tips on styling. Shes also on Stitch Fixs content creation team and helps make merchandise videos with fashion advice.
Her career path: Casper comes from a family with fashion roots. Her family owns a bridal shop and her grandfather had a degree in pattern design. Casper ended up pursuing a degree in musical theatre and was at an audition when she saw a friend working remotely for Stitch Fix. It blew my mind that you can be a stylist. That became the dream, she says. I didnt know being a stylist was a thing. I assumed Id need to learn to sew and become a designer, but what I really loved was the curation of outfits. Casper monitored the Stitch Fix website for jobs and landed one in 2021.
A day in the life: Casper starts the day by checking if she has any messages from clients, answering questions and helping them put together outfits. In the middle of the day, shell take a break to work on filming some content, and then shell wrap the day by styling more clients. Im always trying to delve into personal experiencewhats something that youve worn recently that made you feel good? Whats a color that makes you feel like you glow? Is there anything coming up on your calendar? How can I help make that easier?
Her advice: Pursue the things that you love and allow all of the avenues that are open to you to teach you something to take forward, Casper says, pointing out that her own career has been full of zigs and zags. Style your friends, style yourself. Learn what fabrics feel like so you can take all of that knowledge into the next phase. Put your creativity and your art out there.
Melissa Lewis Gentry (MLG): video game designer
What they do: MLG is a game designer for Demiurge Studios, which does code development for larger studios like Blizzard and Epic. A game designer is analogous to a product designer, MLG says. Im often the person who solves whatever problem comes up, whether its technical design, or gameplay programming.
Their career path: I loved games as a kid and was definitely a Dungeons & Dragons nerd when I went to college. My dad was a programmer, so I grew up building my own computers. But when I got to college, I flunked that class, MLG said. A lot of it had to do with ADHD and not being diagnosed as a young woman in the early 2000s. Instead, I put down the idea of working in video games until the pandemic.
MLGs path to video game design is long and winding and includes a stint working in a call center, taking a 50% pay cut to manage a comic and board game store which folded, working in sales and marketing at a board game company which also folded, and then trying torun a board game café that opened during the first month of the pandemic. When the board game cafe shut down, MLG became homeless.
While MLG was crashing on a friends couch applying for jobs, they were invited to join a game jam (the equivalent of a hackathon). At the game jam, MLG started programming again and fell in love. They took online courses in programming and started searching for jobs in the video game industry.
Ultimately they landed an internship at Demiurge Studios in 2021 for candidates with nontraditional experience who would otherwise be overlooked. Shortly after, they were promoted to full-time and still work there today.
A day in the life: As a video game designer, you have in your heart the perfect experience you want to give a player, but then you have to marry it to time and budget. On a given day, MLG might be brainstorming ideas for a game with themes and characters and then narrowing these down. MLG also spends a lot of time problem-solving: Every morning I look in [project management tool] Jira to see what tickets I have. For example, if the designers want players to click a button to get a reward and the engineers say we cant do that, “‘its my job to say what if we do this instead?
Their advice: No amount of education will give you the résumé experience of having shipped a game, and the best way to do this is make a game on your own and ship it. The video game industry has been seriously hit during the past two years and its brutally hard to find a job, but nothing is preventing you from making a game.
Zinia Lee Fengel: influencer
What she does: Lee Fengel, who goes by Zinia Lee, has been a fashion influencer on Instagram for the past five years and has over 115,000 followers on Instagram. For many members of Gen Z, Lees path is the dream. However, given that, Lee is still in her early twenties and unsure of what shell want in the future. So shes carving out other career options: Shes also a full-time student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and a public relations intern at Retrofte, a New York fashion label; influencers commonly have day jobs or additional side hustles, especially Gen Z.
Her career path: Lee posted her first video during the pandemic when she was 16. I love putting together cool outfits and wanted to share them, she said. Within the first year, she started getting invites from brands. At first, they offered her free merchandise in return for a post. However, gradually this turned into paid deals. This summer, Lee got a manager and started landing four-figure brand deals. While influencing could be a full-time job for her, she chooses to work with brands that represent her valuesfor example, she only works with cruelty-free makeup brands, and only wears leather if its secondhand.
A day in the life: Since Lee is juggling classes and an internship, she fits content creation where she can. I have certain times of the day blocked off and I multitask, she said, I like going to the gym and being active, so Ill set the treadmill to an incline walk and edit. I have CapCut Pro on my iPhone so Ill also edit during my commute. Lee keeps a Notion, an AI workspace, full of video ideas, as well as a timeline for whats publishing when, and batches filming. If I do my hair and have my makeup on, Im gonna film five videos, she said. Going forward, Lee doesnt know if shell keep influencing, despite it already being a dream income stream for much of her age group. I want to go wherever it takes me, she said. But I know its very easy to resent something you love.
Her advice: Lee notes that success is not linear. Sometimes a video you put two seconds into goes viral. Other times a video that you agonized over tanks. Instead, she said, the key is consistency. A lot of people think, if I have one really good video idea itll go viral and then Im set . . . I try to post every other day, so Im constantly filming, editing, and producing. However, she said the first step is easy: Post a video. It really is that simple.
January is a time when many people reflect on their goals for the year aheada new job, a promotion, hitting the gym, or overall better healthbut research from Baylor College of Medicine and psychologist Richard Wiseman shows 88% of people actually fail to achieve their New Years resolutions.
But according to the experts we asked, you should forget resolutionsand do these things instead.
Rewire your brain
“Repetition, not intention, rewires behavior,” says Cherian Koshy, author of Neurogiving. “Resolutions fail because they rely on willpower, and willpower is unreliable. What works is design.”
“The brain follows whats easy, not whats aspirational, and behavior changes faster when [it] requires less decision-making,” Koshy adds.
According to Koshy, New Years resolutions live in an imagined future, but behavior lives in todays defaults. The brain learns who you are by what you repeat, not what you declare.
If something matters in 2026, stop promising to do it later, and practice it now. That’s how to achieve your first win of the year.
Make a to-don’t list
Resolutions can help us be more intentional about how we spend our time in the year ahead. At least, that’s the theory.
But with so many people already overwhelmed by their to-do lists, adding resolutions is likely to just lead to burnout in January, says Sally Helgesen, women’s leadership expert and coauthor of How Women Rise.
“That’s why it can be helpful to focus on what we want to avoid in 2026: our to-don’ts rather than our to-dos,” she says. “For example: Don’t use the phone on Sunday (or Saturday), don’t make promises without taking a day to think them through, and don’t set the alarm clock one morning a week.”
Ask yourself, what do you want to leave behind?
Start small rituals
Instead of chasing big New Years resolutions, try small daily rituals.
“Taking three slow breaths before getting out of bed or stepping into morning light when you wake up can have a powerful impact and help life feel more grounded, clear, and steady long after January ends,” Marsha Ralls, founder and CEO of wellness retreat The Phoenix, Asheville tells Fast Company.
“My best recommendation is to identify habits that naturally fit into your daily routine and begin incorporating them right away, whether that means taking an afternoon walk outside, or committing to a more consistent bedtime, even on weekends,” she says. “Over time, these small daily actions go a long way in supporting overall wellness.”
Try New Year’s intentions
“I would recommend having New Year’s intentions instead of resolutions, [which] are often based in shame and focus on what you are lacking,” therapist Esin Pinarli tells Fast Company.
“Be more emotion-based than action-based,” Pinarli adds. “What was one thing you learned this past year? What is one thing that you will not be bringing into the new year, whether that’s a person, behavior, or habit?”
When the confetti settles and the ball has dropped, many Americans will wake up on New Years Day Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026 with errands to run, groceries to buy, or just the urge to grab coffee. But because New Years Day is a federal holiday, the holiday clock affects a wide range of services differently: some go dormant for the day, others hum along with normal or modified hours, and a few offer the convenience you might need as you kick off the new year.
Heres what to expect if youre planning to be out and about or just need to know whether that store youre counting on is open.
Will I get mail on New Year’s Day?
Thursday is a full federal holiday, which means most government offices are closed from Social Security offices to local administrative buildings. If you were planning to visit a DMV or city hall, make sure to reschedule.
The U.S. Postal Service will be closed, and no regular mail delivery will happen on New Years Day. Retail post office services are also shut for the holiday.
Is the bank open on New Year’s Day?
Major bank branches, including Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, will not open their doors on Jan. 1. If you need cash, ATMs and mobile apps are your go-to since theyll still work even though physical branches are dark.
Is the grocery store open on New Year’s day?
When it comes to stores, the picture is decidedly mixed.
Costco plans to be closed all day. The wholesale giant will shutter all 623 of its U.S. warehouses for 24 hours on New Years Day, meaning members cant shop at any location on Jan. 1.
Other superstores like Walmart; however, are expected to keep their doors open under normal schedules (though its always smart to check ahead).
Home improvement chains like The Home Depot plan to remain open with regular holiday hours (e.g., roughly 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.)
Groceries and pharmacies also tend to be open on New Years Day. Many regional grocery chains, such as H-E-B to Whole Foods, will operate regular or reduced hours, though some pharmacy counters within larger stores may close earlier than the main store.
What restaurants are open on New Year’s Day?
If your January 1 plans include grabbing a bite or a caffeine lifeline, youre in luck: many restaurants and fast-food chains will be open, though individual locations might choose to adjust hours.
In practice, that means staples like McDonalds, Starbucks, and other chains are likely to operate on holiday schedules.
Likewise, 24/7 convenience stores such as Wawa, Speedway, and Dollar General, in most areas stay open, making them a reliable choice when youre in a pinch.
That said, if you have a specific local favorite in mind, its worth a quick call to check todays hours before heading over.
Is the stock market open on New Years Day?
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq are closed on New Years Day. Wall Street takes the holiday off just like it does every year.
Are schools open on New Years Day?
No. Public schools and most all private schools will be closed on New Years Day.
Does the bus run on New Year’s day?
Airports, Amtrak, Greyhound, and major transit systems generally run through New Years Day.
Expect holiday or Sunday schedules on buses and trains in many cities, so check schedules in advance if youre moving between cities or across town. Service levels vary widely by region, but no major carrier shuts down entirely.
Are movie theaters open on New Year’s Day?
For those looking to unwind on day one of 2026:
Movie theaters almost universally screen films on New Years Day greeting crowds with morning and afternoon showtimes.
Malls and shopping centers also typically open, often hosting post-holiday sales. Some may operate on a reduced schedule.
Check local listings for showtimes and event schedules; big cities often host New Years Day brunches, skating sessions, and other seasonal attractions.
When the confetti settles and the ball has dropped, many Americans will wake up on New Years DayThursday, January 1, 2026with errands to run, groceries to buy, or just the urge to grab coffee.
But because New Years Day is a federal holiday, the holiday clock affects a wide range of services differently: Some go dormant for the day, others hum along with normal or modified hours, and a few offer the convenience you might need as you kick off the new year.
Heres what to expect if youre planning to be out and aboutor just need to know whether that store youre counting on is open.
Will I get mail on New Year’s Day?
Thursday is a full federal holiday, which means most government offices are closedfrom Social Security offices to local administrative buildings. If you were planning to visit a DMV or city hall, make sure to reschedule.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will be closed, and no regular mail delivery will happen on New Years Day. Retail post office services are also shut for the holiday.
Is the bank open on New Year’s Day?
Major bank branches, including Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, will not open their doors on January 1. If you need cash, ATMs and mobile apps are your go-to since theyll still work even though physical branches are dark.
Are grocery stores and retail chains open on New Year’s Day?
When it comes to stores, the picture is decidedly mixed.
Costco plans to be closed all day. The wholesale giant will shutter all 623 of its U.S. warehouses for 24 hours on New Years Day, meaning members cant shop at any location on January 1.
Other superstores like Walmart, however, are expected to keep their doors open under normal schedules (though its always smart to check ahead).
Home improvement chains like The Home Depot plan to remain open with regular holiday hours (e.g., roughly 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.)
Groceries and pharmacies also tend to be open on New Years Day. Many regional grocery chains, such as H-E-B, Kroger, and Whole Foods, will operate regular or reduced hours, though some pharmacy counters within larger stores may close earlier than the main store.
You can find store hours for your local locations via the chains’ store locators:
Walmart hours
Target hours
Kroger hours
Whole Foods hours
Walgreens hours
CVS store hours
What restaurants are open on New Year’s Day?
If your January 1 plans include grabbing a bite or a caffeine lifeline, youre in luck: many restaurants and fast-food chains will be open, though individual locations might choose to adjust hours.
In practice, that means staples like McDonalds, Starbucks, and other chains are likely to operate on holiday schedules.
Likewise, 24/7 convenience stores such as Wawa, Speedway, and Dollar General, in most areas stay open, making them a reliable choice when youre in a pinch.
That said, if you have a specific local favorite in mind, its worth a quick call to check todays hours before heading over.
Is the stock market open on New Years Day?
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq are closed on New Years Day. Wall Street takes the holiday off just like it does every year.
Are schools open on New Years Day?
No. Public schools and most all private schools will be closed on New Years Day.
Does the bus run on New Year’s day?
Airports, Amtrak, Greyhound, and major transit systems generally run through New Years Day.
Expect holiday or Sunday schedules on buses and trains in many cities, so check schedules in advance if youre moving between cities or across town. Service levels vary widely by region, but no major carrier shuts down entirely.
Are movie theaters open on New Year’s Day?
For those looking to unwind on day one of 2026:
Movie theaters almost universally screen films on New Years Daygreeting crowds with morning and afternoon showtimes.
Malls and shopping centers also typically open, often hosting post-holiday sales. Some may operate on a reduced schedule.
Check local listings for showtimes and event schedules; big cities often host New Years Day brunches, skating sessions, and other seasonal attractions.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
Ive recently written about free, private AI tools and the best AI mobile apps. To build on that AI series, Im sharing a new guest post today on how to make the most of AI by Frank Andrade, The PyCoach. Hes an AI & Python instructor who has helped thousands of people on YouTube and Substack master AI with beginner-friendly guides and in-depth tutorials. As he starts a new journey on Instagram, hes offering his ChatGPT course free to anyone who follows & DMs him.
Ive been using ChatGPT since the day it was released. Back then, there were no fancy features, model picker, or alternative AI tools to choose from.
Things have changed in 2025 and Id like to share with you some things Ive learned so far:
A couple of times per year, youll see headlines about a new worlds most powerful model. Ignore the hype. Stick to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or whatever tool you use. Give it a couple of months, and the headlines will be about your tool.
ChatGPT can make you more productive or dumber. An MIT study found that while AI can significantly boost productivity, it may also weaken your critical thinking. Use it as an assistant, not a substitute for your brain.
If youre a student, use study mode in ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. When this feature is enabled, the chatbots will guide you through problems rather than just giving full answers, so youll be doing the critical thinking.
ChatGPT and other chatbots can confidently make stuff up (aka AI hallucinations). If you suspect something isnt right, double-check its answers.
NotebookLM hallucinates less than most AI tools, but it requires you to upload sources (PDFs, audio, video) and wont answer questions beyond those materials. That said, its great for students and anyone with materials to upload.Share
Probably the most underrated AI feature is deep research. It automates web searching for you and returns a fully cited report with minimal hallucinations in five to 30 minutes. Its available in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, so give it a try.
ChatGPT and other chatbots have a short-term memory limit. In long threads, they may lose earlier details. Ive learned to periodically restate key points from the initial instructions or start a new chat when necessary.
ChatGPT may occasionally misclassify a legitimate question as policy-violating. When it does, I reword the prompt or explain why Im asking.
Free < Plus < Pro. Paid tiers are worth it for the extra intelligence and features. Pro tiers go further and can give you an edge, though not everyone needs it. If you handle high-stakes tasks, try Pro at least for 1 month.
You shouldnt stick to the default ChatGPT mode. Go to the model picker and try instant, thinking mini, and thinking (here I explain each mode). If you have a pro subscription, use pro mode more often.
The next big thing in AI is AI agents. An example is ChatGPT agentthink of it as ChatGPT that can take extra steps beyond a text response. It doesnt just respond to prompts. It can take actions on the web (visit sites, click buttons, scroll) and work toward a goal with minimal human input.
Em dashes were around long before tools like ChatGPT ever existed, so dont hesitate to use them if that is part of your writing style.
It doesnt hurt to learn the technical stuff behind AI tools. In fact, it can clarify some key concepts and make you more confident when you talk or use AI.
ChatGPT cant browse the web by default, but if you turn on Web Search, it can even become a good replacement for Google Search (another good AI alternative is Perplexity).
Its not wrong to use ChatGPT like Google Search sometimes. Youll often get immediate answers and move faster. Just dont forget to use temporary chats and projects to keep your chats tidy.
Prompt crafting (or prompt engineering) is a skill you need to build if you want to make the most out of AI tools.
AI moves fast, so you need to adapt. As ChatGPT gets smarter, some prompting techniques get outdated, while new ones emerge.
Text expanders are a big time-saver for prompts. Tools like Alfred, Beeftext, or Text Blaze let you quickly type prompts and save, organize, and reuse prompt templates. [JC: Raycast is another good option for this.]
You can be just as productive on the ChatGPT mobile app as on the web. On iPhone, the built-in Text Replacement feature works like a text expander and helps you type prompts faster. Find it under General Keyboard Text Replacement.
Use voice mode in your phone to brainstorm or talk through topics when you want a second opinion. Ive tried this many times, and Im usually satisfied with the results.
ChatGPT speaks many languages. You can practice your speaking and writing skills anytime. For translation, it beats literal, word-for-word tools like Google Translate because it understands context, intent, and cultural nuance.
Chatbots can be overly agreeable. To get less agreeable responses, ask for opposing viewpoints, multiple perspectives, nd a critical take (if possible, avoid inserting your own opinions). See Jeremys piece on how to prompt boldly for more surprising, unusual responses.
Midjourney is great for generating outstanding AI images, but for beginners, ChatGPT offers a better balance of ease of use and image quality (just make sure you follow this simple tweak).
AI tools have made coding more accessible through vibe coding. However, if you dont know (or want to learn) the basics of programming, youll waste your time, because, at least for now, you have to guide the AI, check its work, and put it on the right course.
Some AI companies are more privacy-invasive than others. According to a report, Le Chat (Mistral AI), ChatGPT (OpenAI), and Grok (xAI) are the least privacy-invasive platforms. Meta AI and Gemini (Google) were found to be the most aggressive in data collection and the least transparent about their practices. See Jeremys resources for private AI.
Making the most of ChatGPT features
Since ChatGPT was initially released, OpenAI has added a lot of features to improve the way we work with it. Some are essential, while others are more domain-specific. Most features can be accessed via the + button.
Here are the features that every ChatGPT user should know:
Web Search: Web search can help you get answers to contemporary questions.
File Uploads: You can upload files such as PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and presentations to ChatGPT.
Projects: You can create folders to better organize your chats.
Temporary chats: Great for one-off questions, helping you avoid clutter in your chat list.
Voice mode: You can speak to ChatGPT instead of typing. Very useful when youre on the phone. See Jeremys guide to ChatGPTs Advanced Voice Mode.
The rest of the features are more advanced and for specific use-cases.
Create Image: A beginner-friendly tool that creates images or edits existing ones from plain-English prompts (this tweak helps me get the most out of it). See Jeremys guide to ChatGPTs new image generation tool.
Deep research: Spends several minutes searching the internet to build complete reports on topics that need evidence, comparisons, and step-by-step reasoning.
ChatGPT agent: It can take actions on the web (visit sites, click buttons, scroll) and work toward a goal with minimal human input.
Study mode: A learning-focused mode that explains answers at your level, breaks topics into steps, and tracks what youve mastered or need to review.
GPTs: Custom versions of ChatGPT you can configure with specific instructions, knowledge files, and tools to specialize in a topic or workflow.
Personalization: Setting up custom instructions and memory lets ChatGPT know more about you and provides tailored responses.
These features can also be used in the mobile app. In the guide below, I explain how I set up my iPhone to boost my ChatGPT productivity.
iPhone setup for ChatGPT: Features to boost productivity in ChatGPT
Want to learn more?
Stage 1: Sharpen how you write prompts
Prompting is how we communicate with AI. Writing good prompts is essential for anyone working with AI tools. ChatGPT has many features and modes, but they wont matter if you dont know how to write good prompts.
The basic prompt: Task + Context
Theres a ChatGPT prompt formula to get better responses. However, if I were learning prompting again, I wouldnt start with the formula. Why? The complete formula is valuable for advanced work, but for most everyday tasks, its overkill.
Using all elements from the formula will slow you down and waste time. Most of the time, youll only need two elements: task + context
Task: What you want ChatGPT to do
Context: The extra details the model needs to deliver a more tailored response
Heres a prompt example:
Im a 75kg man who wants to gain 5kg of muscle in 1 year. Build a 1-year training program to follow. I dont have previous experience and I can train 45 days per week (6075 min per session).
In the example, the task is to build a 1-year training program, while the context is the persons information and background to create a personalized program.
The basic prompt should be enough for most everyday tasks. That said, when we do more complex tasks, well need to use more elements from the formula.
Advanced track: The complete prompt formula
The prompt formula I use has four extra elements:
Exemplar: A short sample response that shows the structure to emulate
Persona: Who ChatGPT should be while answering (aka role)
Format: The required structure and presentation (tables, length, etc)
Tone: The voice and vibe the response should adopt (friendly, formal, etc)
When you feel that task and context arent enough to get a good response, add one of these extra elements to your prompt.
For example, if I were a personal trainer, the basic prompt would be a good start to build a program for a few clients. However, as my client base grew, Id need a more robust, reusable prompt I could apply across clients.
In the guide below, I transform our basic prompt into a more robust one by using every element of the formula.
ChatGPT prompt formula: Examples, when to use it, and when not
Stage 2: Learn how GPT-5 works
ChatGPT used to have a wide variety of models to choose from (o3, 4o, o4-mini, etc). They were consolidated into GPT-5, which has a system that decides whether to use its Chat or Thinking mode for your task. The issue with GPT-5 is that the system doesnt always do a good job and might assign low reasoning to a task that needs deeper reasoning.
Its best to avoid the default mode (aka auto) and choose manually the mode we need:
Instant: Gives fast answers without spending extra time on reasoning steps
Thinking: ChatGPT will think more carefully before answering. Responses take longer, but theyre more structured, detailed, and well thought out.
Pro: Research-grade intelligence for high-stakes tasks
Pro mode is only available to Pro subscribers. For 95% of people, instant and thinking (available to Plus subscribers) should be enough. For more details, check out my guides below.
Complete guide on ChatGPT-5 modes: Who should use it, use-cases, & weaknesses ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscriptions: Worth it?
Advanced track
There are more advanced concepts you can learn to get better responses with GPT-5. Lets start with those that can be applied in the ChatGPT web app:
Instruction following: Avoid contradictory instructions in your prompts. The model may get confused or waste time trying to reconcile the conflicts.
Verbosity refers to the length and detail of ChatGPTs responses. Low verbosity is good for critical info and key takeaways, while high verbosity suits comprehensive, in-depth answers. You can explicitly set a word limit in your prompt.
GPT-5 prompt optimizer: OpenAIs advanced tool helps sharpen your prompts. It can identify contradictory instructions or other weaknesses.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
Below, Judd Kessler shares five key insights from his new book, Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want.
Judd is an award-winning professor of economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His research and writing have been featured in leading media, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and Harvard Business Review, among others. For his work on organ allocation, Kessler was named one of the 30 under 30 in Law and Policy by Forbes. He has been researching market design for the past 15 years.
Whats the big idea?
Life is full of hidden markets quietly deciding who gets whatand learning their rules is the real competitive edge. See the system, play it strategically, and you can manufacture your own luck.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Judd himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. You are constantly playing in hidden markets all around you.
Economists think about the world as a bunch of markets. In each market, people are trying to get something that they want. But we have a problemscarcity. There is rarely enough of what people want to just give it to everyone. So, we need a way to decide who gets access to the scarce resource and who does not.
We often decide who gets what by letting the price rise. As the price rises, a bunch of people decide that paying such a high price isnt worth it and they leave the market. (Fewer people wanting something as the price rises is so reliable that economists call it a law of demand.)
I call markets that use prices to decide who gets what visible markets. Theyre visible because its easy to see them. And playing in them is also easy: you simply decide whether something is worth the price and then buy it (or not).
But scarcity is not always resolved with prices. Some things are doled out by hidden markets that do not rely on prices to decide who gets what. These hidden markets are harder to see and more complicated to play in, but they are all around you.
Sometimes prices exist but are set too low to resolve the scarcity: Taylor Swift sold tickets to her most recent tour, the Eras Tour, for an average of $204, but some tickets were as low as $49 each. At those prices, many people would have happily bought each ticket. Some restaurants are so popular that its nearly impossible to get a table. New iPhones used to fly off the shelves the day they were released. Fad toys (most recently the Pop Mart product Labubus) may be incredibly hard to get your hands on.
Scarcity is not always resolved with prices.
Other times, we decide not to use prices at all: government benefits like public housing, seats in public schools, and library books are not sold to the highest bidder. We dont let price decide who gets life-saving donor organs or access to the last hospital bed or ventilator.
In these cases, we still resolve scarcity: some people get the tickets, reservations, products, government benefits, and life-saving medical care while others do not. Those are the hidden markets all around you. They have their own rules, and you need to learn them.
2. You need to learn the market rules.
Every hidden market has its own set of market rules. Your first step toward success in hidden markets is learning them. What are the types of market rules?
One class is based on the principle first-come, first-served. With first-come, first-served, whoever gets to a product first gets to claim it. But while this principle might sound simple, the market rules it generates take three very different forms.
For example, first-come, first-served market rules can take the form of a race. If you want a reservation at The French Laundry, a world-renowned restaurant with three Michelin stars in the Napa Valley of California, you need to secure a reservation for one of its 17 tables in a first-come-first-served race. All reservations for a given month are offered online simultaneouslyif you want to eat there in November, you need to be ready to click quickly at 10 am on October 1st.
First-come, first-served market rules can also take the form of a waiting list or line. People who need a life-saving kidney transplant can join a multi-year waiting list for a deceased donor organ through their local transplant center. The longer that they have been waiting, the higher their priority for an organ when it becomes available.
If you want to see a masterpiece like the ceiling frescos of the Sistine Chapel, buy high-end apparel at a clothing drop, or just make your way through airport security, youll be standing in a first-come, first-served line. These first-come, first-served market rules all reward arriving early or waiting the longest. But other market rules operate completely differently.
Another class of market rules uses lotteries to decide who gets what. The New York City Summer Youth Employment Program gives 100,000 jobs to youth each summer, but still has to turn away tens of thousands of kids. They use a lottery to decide who gets a job and who does not. Lotteries also provide access to spots in the London Marathon, license plates in Beijing, seats in charter schools, and tags to hunt big game.
Every hidden market has its own set of market rules.
Another class of market rules involves centralized clearinghouses, where you must rank your preferences: telling an algorithm your first choice, second choice, and so on. This is how we decide which kids go to which elementary schools in New York City, how doctors are assigned to residency programs, and how college admissions work in China.
Dating markets, labor markets, and private school admissions markets operate with different market rules. I call these markets choose-me markets because you are choosing someone, a firm, or an academic institution. But for a match to take place, you must also be chosen.
Every hidden market has its own specific set of market rules. To succeed in a given market, you need to learn them. Once you know how the game is played, you can develop a strategy to win.
3. You might want to settle for silver.
Once you have figured out the rules of the game, you can develop an optimal strategy to get what you want. Across many hidden markets, one common strategy you might want to play is what I call settling for silver. This strategy requires acting like something less desirablesomething that is not your real first choiceis at the top of your list.
Why might you want to play this strategy? Imagine youre in a first-come-first-served race, like for a restaurant reservation at The French Laundry. Say you really want to have dinner there on a Saturday night in November. All the reservations are going to be released on October 1st at 10 am. And when theyre released, you will race to click on a particular reservation time. Which time should you click first?
Your real first choice might be 7:30 pm on Saturday. You might decide to click that time slot first. I call playing that stratgytrying to get the thing you actually want the mostgoing for gold. The problem with going for gold is that its risky. What you want is often popular with many other people. So, when youre racing for that highly desirable reservation slot, youre likely competing with many other diners who want the same thing as you.
Settling for silver would mean pretending that an earlier dinner reservation, say 5 pm or even 4:30 pm, is your first choice. If you prefer getting a reservation at 4:30 pm to not getting to eat at the restaurant at all, settling for silver might be the right strategy for you. Since many fewer people will be racing for a 4:30 pm reservation, you are much more likely to get it.
The same logic applies in markets with much higher stakes. Many applicants to private colleges in the United States choose to apply early decision, which commits them to attending the school if theyre admitted. Since an early decision application comes with a binding commitment to attend, you can only apply early decision to one school. Colleges like it when you commit to them, so they reward early decision applicants with a higher chance of admission.
This strategy requires acting like something less desirablesomething that is not your real first choiceis at the top of your list.
So, what school should someone apply to early? They might be tempted to apply to a reach school early decision. This could be the right move. But if the candidates chance of admission is exceedingly slim, then even if its their top choice, it might be suboptimal to apply there early. Rather than trying to go for gold, they might do better settling for silver by applying to a less selective school early. This way, they can take advantage of their improved admissions chances at their second-, third-, or fourth-choice school.
4. You might want to double dip and multi-list.
Another strategy that comes up regularly in hidden markets is what I call double dipping. This strategy involves simultaneously playing in a market multiple times.
Double dipping is a common strategy in markets that use lotteries. The U.S. Diversity Visa Lottery has historically offered visas to those from countries that dont send many immigrants to the U.S. The program selects applicants by lottery and gives winners a chance to come to the country and get a green card. But the lottery lets you bring your whole family if you win, so a married couple does better if they each submit an entry: if either of them wins, the whole family gets to come to the U.S.
When you enter a theater ticket lottery, you can usually enter for a chance to win two tickets. If you want to go to the theater with a friend, then you should double dip. You should both enter the lottery, effectively doubling your chances of seeing a show.
Allowing double dipping can be good for the efficiency of the lottery overall. People who are more motivated are more likely to put in the extra effort needed to play this strategy. Allowing double dipping gives people who care more about winning a higher chance of success.
A related strategy is called multi-listing. If there are a limited number of daycare slots in your city and lots of families who want them, spots may be offered on a first-come, first-served waiting list. In that case, you might want to add yourself to waiting lists at multiple daycare centers to increase the chance that you will have secured a spot for your tot when you need it.
And people in need of life-saving organ transplants may decide to multi-list by adding themselves to organ waiting lists through transplant centers in different regions. Since being affiliated with a transplant center closer to a deceased donor organ increases the chance you get offered it, being on waiting lists at multiple transplant centers increases the number of organs you get offered. In that case, multi-listing could save your life.
5. You are a market designer!
Many hidden markets are designed by others, and you just have to learn the rules to try to get what you want. But there are also hidden markets that you control, like the hidden market for your time and attention or the hidden markets for household resources.
You get to decide which emails you respond to promptly, which friends to call back and which to ignore. At home, you get to decide how to allocate everything from financial resources to the television remote to desserts for your kids. In these cases, you get to set the market rules.
As a market designer, you can prioritize the three Es in your hidden markets:
Efficiency: Not wasting resources and giving resources to people who value them most.
Equity: Distributing resources as equally as possible to market participants.
Ease: Letting market participants be honest about what they want and not putting them through an ordeal to get it.
Good market rules strive to get as close as possible to achieving all three.
Efficiency might mean prioritizing email responses where your prompt reply will be most helpful to the recipient: perhaps someone who is actively working on a project and will be more productive once they receive your feedback. It could also mean devoting your limited time to whatever your highest-return activity is today, rather than to a recurring meeting you put on your calendar months ago, which canand probably shouldbe skipped.
Equity might require giving people whom you want to treat fairly the same amount of time, attention, and resources, rather than (intentionally or unintentionally) favoring the one who is most demanding.
Finally, in some markets, we can make more of a scarce resource by how we prioritize access to it. In some countries, people who register as organ donors receive higher priority for organs if they ever need one. Similarly, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we prioritized medical treatmentlike the last hospital bed or ventilatorfor medical professionals serving on the front lines. These priority systems help ensure that we allocate more of the scarce resources we have. The same logic applies to your time and attention. Prioritizing some of it for yourself (perhaps for self-care) can also mean theres also more to go around.
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This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
The past year saw unprecedented change and turmoil in the labor market, from pandemic-era layoffs to AI fundamentally and tangibly turning the workforce on its head. But its in these times of uncertainty and transition that leadership becomes of paramount importance. In 2025, the very nature of leadership itself morphed along with the times, and specific themes resonated with readers in specific ways. And theyre bound to remain very much in the game heading into 2026.
Here are some of Fast Companys most popular leadership stories from the last year.
Managing underperformers
We live in a world of quiet quitting and more workers rejecting hustle culture and the rise-and-grind that defined the last couple of decades. While there are valid reasons fuelling some of this behaviorworkers holding steadfast in their desire for work-life balance, for example, or resisting corporate control when they can be brazenly let go at the drop of a hatother team members may simply be phoning it in or slacking. Underperformance doesnt just materialize, writes Roxanne Calder. Unfortunately, far too many companies prioritize optics over results, turn to placating instead of coaching, and compensate instead of addressing.
Multi-hyphenate leadership
Entrepreneur. Author. Executive. Board member. Founder. Teacher. Storyteller. These are just a few labels business leaders may gravitate toward when describing their careers, or even current roles. Nowadays, multi-hyphenated monikers not only better describe the full dimensionality of a leaders skills, but also how success involves lots of paths, not a straightforward ladder to a single title. Awareness of this multifaceted quality gained more attention in 2025especially for women, write Alison Moore and Nada Usina. Mother and manager, founder and caregiver, mentor and innovator, they write. What looked nonlinear was simply a different kind of training ground, one that creates resilience, adaptability, and perspective.
Not everyone wants to be a leader at all
Theres a truism in work: if you want the fancy title, the extra respect and responsibility and most important, the big bucks . . . you have to become a manager. You can only go so far unless you manage people, writes Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic. We live in a culture that glorifies leadershipbut not everyone wants to have direct reports. And thats okay. Especially because, in truth, a lot of people are just bad at it. Data from organizational psychology is sobering: Most people are not competent leaders, Chamorro-Premuzic continues. Studies suggest that 50% to 60% of leaders are seen as ineffective by their employees, and engagement surveys regularly show that my manager is the single biggest factor driving dissatisfaction at work.
The rise of fractional leaders
2025 saw more of a spotlight on whats known as fractional leaders: senior leaders moving away from high-power, high-profile roles at a single company and instead providing strategic consulting and C-suite-level experience on a part-time basis to many different companies. Typically theyre people with executive experience who are looking for better work-life balance. From fractional CEOs to CFOs, its an employment setup for leaders whove long sat atop the summit of the org chart desiring a change of pace, and it was on the ascent this year: Sara Daw writes that [fractional leaders] feel like they can have a greater impact on a small organization than within the constraints of a large corporation.
The interim CEO
And with CEOs specifically, 2025 saw more turnover in the head boss position at many companies, leading to a trend dubbed interim CEOs. Nearly a quarter of new CEOs named in the first two months of 2025 were hired on an interim basis, versus 8% in the same period last year, Mansueto Ventures CEO Stephanie Mehta writes. It often occurs when theres a sudden vacancy in the position, and someone needs to quickly step in to buy the board more time in a search for a successor. And currently, the talent pool for CEOs is uniquely robust: Many of the CEOs exiting business right now are baby boomer and Gen X retirees who are eager to remain active by taking on interim roles.
