Staying focused for an entire workday can feel like a losing battle. Between constant notifications, shifting priorities, and mental fatigue, even the most disciplined professionals struggle to maintain momentum from morning to evening. To understand what actually helps people stay in the zone, we turned to experts who study attention, performance, and productivity. They shared nine practical, research-backed strategies for sustaining deep focus and getting meaningful work done throughout the day.
1. Reset With Box Breath
High performers don’t usually lose discipline. They lose regulation. When your body flips into fight-or-flight, focus gets choppy and your thinking narrows. The fastest lever you control is your breath because it shifts you back into a more focused state, the zone.
One technique I use to regulate is box breathing. It’s widely used by elite performers, including military and athletes, and is also recommended by medical practitioners to reduce stress and restore calm.
Here’s my exact reset with box breathing. When my nervous system starts running hot, or I notice I’m rushing when I have to present, I pause for two minutes. I close my eyes and mentally put my inbox and to-dos into an imaginary jar outside my door. Then I breathe in a simple cadence: inhale four counts, hold four counts, exhale four counts, hold four counts, for four cycles. That small sequence restores presence, focus, and clarity fast, so I’m not stumbling through on adrenaline by the time I reach my audience. With self-regulation, I have full attention and get full results. I’m in the zone.
It works so well that I also teach it to my clients. One CEO I coached had three back-to-back calls immediately after our session, followed by a high-stakes pitch to his board. We practiced four cycles together before he started his day.
Later, he told me he used it twice. First, right before his second call, when he noticed his pace speeding up and his thoughts scattering. Two minutes of box breathing helped him slow down, speak with intention, and stay on message. The meeting ended 10 minutes early, decisions were cleaner, and the team left with concise deliverables instead of a vague “we’ll circle back.”
He repeated another four cycles right before the board pitch, not as a “calm down” trick, but as a performance switch: nervous-system reset, remarkable clarity, and executive-level delivery. The result was a tighter presentation with a more confident ask, which shortened the Q&A and increased alignment in the room. The CEO told me the biggest difference wasn’t just that his message landed better, but that he felt in control of his narrative.
That’s why I love this tool. It’s fast, repeatable, and portable. You can do it at your desk or in an elevator before any high-stakes conversation, mid-day, or anytime your attention scatters and your energy dips. When you box-breathe back into regulation, you trade adrenaline for authority and get back in the zone on demand.
Shelley Goldstein, Leadership Development Coach and Corp Trainer, Remarkable Speaking
2. Cycle Dopamine With Structured Focus Intervals
Unlike traditional productivity advice that focuses on time management or motivation hacks, I target the neurological substrate where sustained performance actually lives: your dopamine regulation cycle.
What I have found working with Fortune 500 executives is this: high-performance states are not willpower; they are dopamine availability. When your prefrontal cortex has optimized dopamine, you stay in flow. When dopamine depletes, you cannot force focus.
The technique that produces the most consistent results is strategic dopamine cycling through 90-minute work blocks with complete neural reset intervals. Here is how it works. Your brain can sustain peak dopamine availability for approximately 90 minutes before the prefrontal cortex starts losing executive control. Most executives push through this, not realizing they are operating on progressively degraded neurological capacity.
I coached a hedge fund managing director who was working 12-hour days but losing decision quality after hour four. We implemented strict 90-minute work blocks followed by 15-minute complete disengagement: walking outside, no screens, no cognitive load. Within three weeks, he reported that his decision speed improved 40% and he was leaving the office two hours earlier while producing better work.
The mechanism is straightforward: during the 15-minute reset, your brain clears dopamine metabolites and restores prefrontal capacity. This is not a break for rest; it is a neurological recalibration that makes the next 90 minutes as sharp as the first.
The key insight most people miss: productivity is not about working longer; it is about protecting the neurological windows when your brain actually performs.
Sydney Ceruto, Founder, MindLAB Neuroscience
3. Set Tomorrows Three Clear Tasks
One technique I use to stay in the zone is a three-task reset at the end of each day.
In my coaching practice, my to-do list is always long. If I start the day reacting to everything on it, I end up busy but not effective. To avoid that, I spend the last 30 minutes of each workday reviewing everything on my list and then narrowing it down to three small, specific tasks that will genuinely move my work forward the next day.
Those three tasks go on a sticky note that becomes my only priority list the following morning. When I sit down to work, I’m not deciding what matters as I already decided that the day before. This removes decision fatigue and keeps my attention on progress rather than activity.
Since adopting this approach, I start my days with clarity, stay focused longer, and avoid the trap of spinning my wheels on low-impact work. It’s simple, but it consistently keeps me operating in a high-performance zone.
Brandi Oldham, Career Coach, Talent Career Coaching
4. Honor Your Energy and Pace
In 2025, I wrote a book. As a first-time author, I was barraged with advice: write X number of words every day, write first thing in the morning, set a timer and write until it rings. I quickly realized that while those techniques might sustain high writing performance for others, they did not work for me. What did work was to write when I was excited to write, when I wanted to write. When my brain overflowed with ideas and insights itching to translate to fingers on keyboards. And to stop writing when my brain stopped generating, my back started aching in my chair, and my fingers cramped. My recommendation for staying “in the zone” is to identify what this zone feels like and to recognize when you enter and leave it. Make your zone real for youand ignore everyone else’s advice for maintaining high performance throughout the day. If you’re energized early morning but need a break by 10, own it. If you rev up after lunch, terrific. If your juices flow when the sun goes down, optimize the evening. Manag your time as the gift that it is.
Tina Robinson, Founder and CEO, WorkJoy
5. Design Intentional Work Windows
We should abandon the myth of all-day “peak performance” and replace it with what I call “designed performance windows.” Most high achievers believe that staying “in the zone” from morning to evening is a willpower and/or discipline issue. It isn’t. It is a biological and cognitive impossibility, and treating it as a goal impacts judgment. The creative and emotional processes are also affected.
I work with clients to structure their day around intentional performance cycles, rather than continuous intensity. This is how the technique works in practice.
With each client, we identify three separate windows:
One primary high-intensity 90120 minute block used exclusively for work that requires analysis, synthesis, or decision-making. No meetings. No tasks reactive to external impulses are allowed, including meetings, emails, and SMSs.
One secondary, lower-intensity window, used for either preparation or refinement/execution work that needs less focus.
Deliberate recovery and low-stakes periods. These are not “breaks” in the motivational sense. They are important periods necessary to reset to consolidate insight.
One senior executive was trying to maintain the same level of intensity across 1012 hour days toward the end of a particularly difficult quarter. The result was predictable, with slower, more conservative decisions, and a more burdensome management of emotions.
We redesigned his schedule so that:
All critical analytical work happened in the protected morning window.
Meetings were clustered after that window, when relational and operational skills mattered more than analytical thinking.
End-of-day work was intentionally lighter and reflective.
Within weeks, decision quality improved because he worked better, rather than simply more. His best thinking happened when his mental system was capable of it.
This technique rests on a simple but widely resisted idea: Long-term high performance comes from respecting natural mental fluctuation, not fighting it. It is not about staying activated at all times. It is about timing effort, accepting limits, and preserving long-term capacity.
Federico Malatesta, Founder & Executive Coach, FM Transformational Coaching
6. Block Time for Top Priorities
Staying in the zone requires being realistic about what you can actually achieve in a day, particularly when you’re a high-performing senior leader. It’s common to overestimate daily capacity and then feel defeated when tasks inevitably spill over.
Instead of attempting to conquer a massive to-do list, clarify the top two to three priorities that would make the day a success. Here’s the critical part: realistically estimate how long each will take and deliberately block that time on your calendar.
My executive clients who consistently map their highest priorities are recognized for their ability to deliver sustained, repeatable value. And remember, two to three completed priorities per workday add up fast. That’s 10 to 15 per week, 40 to 60 per month, and 500 to 700 meaningful wins per year.
Kyle Elliott, Tech Career Coach & Executive Coach, CaffeinatedKyle.com
7. Integrate Brief Meditation Sessions
One technique I rely on to stay in the zone and sustain high performance throughout the day is meditation, practiced consistently and intentionally integrated into my daily rhythm rather than treated as a one-time fix.
To begin, I set a clear eight-week commitment. For me, the goal is not to “clear my mind,” but to strengthen focus, emotional regulation, and self-awareness. I choose a realistic structure: 10 minutes of meditation at the start of the workday and five minutes midafternoon. Framing it as a leadership practice, not a wellness add-on, helps me to stay consistent.
During a demanding eight-week stretch involving overlapping deadlines and stakeholder expectations, the afternoon meditation is essential. Instead of pushing through fatigue, I used those five minutes to reset attention. As a result, late-day meetings are more focused, communication more thoughtful, and the end-of-day fatigue that previously affected my performance is mitigated.
Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Your Choice Coach
8. Name Triggers to Regain Control
The real productivity killer is not your phone or overflowing inbox. It’s the background anxiety, the tension you can’t quite put your finger on, or the boredom that comes from being stuck on a challenging problem. In the early days of my business, I was reactive to every ping and distraction. I was hopping from one priority to the next, and it seemed like no matter how disciplined I was, the overwhelm always managed to shatter my attention span. But then I learned to treat distraction as an opportunity to pilot my attention instead of treating it as an adversary.
Now, whenever I have the urge to check out from whatever I’m supposed to be doing, whether it’s writing our crisis playbook or mapping out narrative threats for one of our clients, I make it a point to first pause and write down on a physical piece of paper the internal trigger or thought that makes me want to break focus. It could be, “I’m anxious about my presentation next week,” or simply, “This work is hard and challenging.” It sounds trivial, but doing so gives me control over my itch to escape. Instead of running from it, I’m now using my internal discomfort as a launch trigger to bring me back to what I should be doing right now.
Confirming and tracking your internal triggers when you want to chase distractions will give you data on what exactly causes you to want to break focus so you can do something about it. If you keep a log for a week, you’ll have enough data to uncover a pattern about your attention escapes. For me, capturing that thought in that time of itch revealed to me that the best way to manage it is to reframe and treat the discomfort as a trigger to perform on the hard, high-value task I should instead be doing versus an escape to a lower-value one.
Adrienne Uthe, Founder, Kronus Communications
9. Estimate Durations to Reduce Friction
Managing my cognitive load and staying “in the zone” as much as possible is essential.
My biggest win is a technique I call Time-Tagging, where I assign a specific duration to every item on my to-do list. I found that when a task lacks a time estimate, my brain perceives the effort required as infinite. This ambiguity creates subconscious resistance and fear. When every task has an estimated duration, like 15 minutes, I can easily scope theproject and jump in.
This approach boosts the total amount of time I spend in the zone because I simply start with a task labeled 10 minutes or less. This low barrier to entry allows me to generate immediate momentum. I complete that first small win and use the dopamine hit to roll right into the next larger task. I have tracked my output on days using this method versus days I do not, and the increase in deep work is significant enough that I now do this every single day.
Phil Santoro, Entrepreneur and Cofounder, Wilbur Labs
In my suburban Boston Ulta, I’m sitting with my hand in a little box. I’ve been promised that in roughly 30 minutes I’ll have nails that are shaped, buffed, and paintednot by a human, but by an AI-powered robot.
It feels like an episode of The Jetsons come to life, but the truth is that the AI boom has officially entered the physical world. Most of us interact with artificial intelligence through screensGemini drafts our emails, ChatGPT summarizes our docsbut behind the scenes, engineers are racing to give AI hands and feet. Robots already pack boxes in warehouses and make guacamole in fast-food kitchens. Soon, they will be washing dishes, taking care of pets, and performing your manicure.
Here at Ulta, the robot holding my hand was built by Boston-based startup 10Beauty. After six years of R&D and $50 million in venture funding, the company has created a machine meant to replicate the entire manicure process: polish removal, shaping, buffing, and painting. The company plans to roll the robots out to Ulta, Nordstrom, and high-end salons later this year. The manicures will be priced at $30no tipping required.
[Photo: 10Beauty]
But first comes the beta test. Ulta has agreed to pilot the machines in select stores, where customers can get free manicures while 10Beauty gathers real-world data. Human nail techs stand by to fix mistakes, ensuring customers still leave with salon-worthy nails.
Weve done more than a thousand manicures on real people already, says Justin Effron, 10Beautys cofounder. Thats how we’ll figure out exactly what works and what doesnt. Were cocreating this with customers.
The Benefits of Being an Early Adopter
Kecia Steelman, Ultas CEO, says the retailer is now on a mission to weave AI into nearly every corner of the businessfrom experimenting with agents like ChatGPT to fine-tuning its inventory management. “None of us have figured it out,” she says. “But youve got to start moving in that direction and pivot as things continue to change. Thats whats going to separate strong retailers in the future.”
The robot manicures are an example of one such pivot. The 10Beauty team reached out to Ulta, whose leadership team was intrigued by the way the technology fuses AI with a service that customers are asking for. The nail salon industry is expected to hit $14 billion by the end of this year. Ulta already differentiates itself from rivals like Sephora by offering in-store beauty services, often in suburban strip malls. But rising labor costs and finding skilled nail technicians can make it challenging to meet the demand.
[Photo: 10Beauty]
Ulta has agreed to buy hundreds of 10Beauty’s machines when they officially launch this summer. But it has also taken the bold move of allowing 10Beauty to test the service with customers. “This pilot allows us to learn alongside [10Beauty], gathering real guest feedback, understanding how the technology performs in a retail environment, says Amiee Bayer-Thomas, Ulta’s chief retail officer. “We can shape what the future of tech-enabled beauty services could look like.”
The Robot Manicurist
I’m among the group of early testers. The robot works on one hand at a timeintentionally. In focus groups, 10Beauty found that users wanted to be able to continue using their phone with their other hand.
I slide my left hand into the machine and try not to move as seven cameras scan my fingers, creating a precise 3D map of each nail. Then a robotic arm gets to work, tackling one finger at a time using tools far smaller and more precise than what a human would use.
[Photo: 10Beauty]
Instead of cotton pads, 10Beauty designed a star-shaped sponge that glides over the nail to remove polish. Instead of clippers, it uses a crystal file to shape the nail safely. And rather than cutting cuticles, it applies a softening serum and gently pushes them back with a brush. That part, Ill admit, didnt quite work. The brush barely touched my cuticles at all.
Then came the moment of truth: painting. A thin brush applied delicate layers of polish to each nail. This is where things went sideways. Some nails had bare gaps along the edges; others overshot the mark, leaving polish on my skin.
Effron wasnt surprised. Were working on a software update that should fix this, he says. And even after launch, well keep improving it based on how customers use it.
A human nail tech quickly stepped in, cleaned up the polish, and applied a top coat. From start to finishincluding dryingthe whole process took under 40 minutes. Eventually, Effron says, the goal is to do both hands in about 20 minutes.
The Future of AI Is Physical
Walking out, it was clear the robot still isnt as good as a human manicuristyet. But the appeal was obvious. The machines dont depend on skilled labor, which means manicures could become cheaper, faster, and available 24/7. You could imagine them popping up in airports, hotels, coffee shopsor, one day, even your own bathroom.
Ulta believes that by being an early adopter, it might be able to influence how these manicure robots evolve. “We saw this as an opportunity to bring something entirely new into the store experience,” says Bayer-Thomas. “Piloting early allows us to help shape the experience, ensure it meets our guests expectations, and continue delivering newness and excitement.”
Effron argues that the beauty industry is full of tasksblow-drying hair, dyeing roots, plucking browsthat could be easier with machines. The challenge, of course, is proximity to the human body. Beauty requires precision and gentleness. My manicure made that tension obvious: The robot was so careful with my cuticles that it barely touched them at all.
Still, 10Beauty is betting that rapid improvements in software, sensors, and robotics will soon close that gap. If my slightly imperfect robot manicure is any indication, the future of beauty isnt flawless yetbut its already here, humming quietly inside a little white box at Ulta.
Its been more than half a century since astronauts last stepped onto the moon. Now, NASAs Artemis II will return four humans to its vicinity in a 10-day lunar loop that lifts off from NASAs Kennedy Space Center as early as February 8. An Orion spacecraft will carry NASAs Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, some 230,000 miles to the far side of the moonfarther from Earth than anyone has traveled. Using a free-return trajectory enabled by lunar gravity, they will slingshot back to Earth for a splashdown off the coast of San Diego.[Photo: NASA]NASAs Artemis program, along with private and international partners, aims to return people to the moon for scientific exploration, establish a lunar economy, and ultimately pave the way for crewed missions to Mars. An initial uncrewed lunar flyby, Artemis I, provided a proof of concept in 2002. This mission adopts a more human-centric approach, evaluating Orions life support systems in situ and gathering additional data on how spaceflight affects the human body. It may also offer views of the moon never before seen.I was around for Artemis I, and this one feels a lot different, putting the crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon, said John Honeycutt, Artemis II mission management team chair, during a NASA press conference last month in advance of the rocket rollout to the launch pad. This will be our first step toward sustained lunar presence on the moon.Life in deep spaceTesting will begin almost immediately after NASAs Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launches Orion into orbit with 8.8 million pounds of thrust, 15% more than that of Apollos Saturn V. Once in orbit, Orion will deploy solar arrays. Meanwhile, astronauts will conduct system checkouts and docking maneuvers in anticipation of future dockings, which could include lunar landers or the proposed lunar-orbiting Gateway Space Station. During the six-day mission, the astronauts will evaluate radiation shielding and operational, communications, and emergency systemsWe want to put Orion through its paces, said Jeff Radigan, mission flight director, flight operations directorate.The missions science goals include space weather measurements using four deployed international CubeSats (more easily deployable building brick satellites), lunar observation, and biometric responses. Astronauts will monitor their health and performance using immune system biomarkers and wearable devices that track sleep, stress, movement, and radiation exposure. Their findings may help future missions better optimize astronaut time.The star science payload, however, is AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response), which uses tissue chips mimicking astronaut organs and bone marrow to gauge how spaceflight affects blood cells and other systems. The mission will mark AVATARs first use outside the Van Allen belts, bands of high-energy radiation particles surrounding Earth. The space agency hopes to measure human responses to deep-space stress by comparing its data with International Space Station findings and Artemis crew samples collected before and after flight.The AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) organ chip [Photo: Emulate]For NASA, AVATAR could lead to personalized medical kits for each astronaut or, for folks back on Earth, individualized treatments for diseases such as cancer, said Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist, exploration systems development mission directorate.The mission also plans to attract public interest by dedicating a day to observing the moons hidden dark side. From Orions farthest vantage point4,700 miles beyond Earths satellite, the moon will seem the size of a basketball held at arms length, with our planet appearing in the distance. Pending the crews launch time and flight path, Bleacher added, its possible theyll see parts of the moon that have never been viewed by human eyes.
The spacecrafts return home will occur naturally, using Earths and the Moons gravity to enter Earth orbit without propulsion or complex course corrections. Reentry from the moon into Earths atmosphere will be faster than from low-Earth orbit, requiring more parachutes. However, following a finding that parts of the Artemis I heat shield degraded more than expected upon reentry, Artemis II will engage a shorter entry range. While this approach is safer, it reduces the number of potential launch days. Yet even with this adjustment, retired astronaut Charles Carmarda and former NASA engineer Daniel Rasky have raised grave concerns about the heat shields efficacy. If I had to rate it an A, B, C, D, or E, Id rate it an F, Rasky told ABC News last week.[Illustration: NASA]Postflight, the crew will attempt an obstacle course and a simulated spacewalk with tasks while wearing pressurized spacesuits. The exercises, which will gauge how quickly astronauts can function after a gravity transition, should help preparations for future lunar and Mars landings.Expecting the unexpectedThe Artemis infrastructure is a work in progress. Over time, launching missions like this, were going to learn a lot and the vehicle architecture will change, noted NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman during a follow-up media event with the astronauts. And as it changes, we should be able to take repeatable, affordable missions to and from the moon. Reusability is whats going to enable missions like Artemis 100.[Photo: NASA/Mark Sowa]As the crew engages in final preparations, including hard talks with their families about the inherent risks of spaceflight, theyve learned to balance focus with the unexpected.This is the first time weve put humans on this rocket, said Hansen, who will become the first non-American astronaut to travel beyond low Earth orbit on a NASA mission. Weve done a lot of testing of these systems, but when we get to space, well probably see signatures that look a little bit different from testing.The trajectory for NASAs Artemis II test flight [Animation: NASA]The sheer distance creates its own set of demands, even for a veteran like Koch, who set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 328 days.I really have to make sure my husband knows that its not like the International Space Station, where we can just make a phone call, she said with a grin. So, hes not going to be able to call me and ask where something is in the house. Hes going to have to find it.
For business partners Victoria Jackson and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, their lives are intermingled with work. As cofounders of 15-month-old bookstore Godmothers in Summerland, California, the pair have built a space that they both longed for: a bookstore perched on a magical slice of Santa Barbara County, outfitted with cozy nooks to read and gather, a cafe, and an events space for author events and workshops.
Since its September 2024 opening the space has become a beacon of community, creativity and conversationwhat Walsh calls a beautiful creative cathedral for everyone from that mom in carpool to Oprah Winfrey. Godmothers is a great representation of coming up with an idea and seeing the building I pictured, says Jackson, an entrepreneur best known for founding cosmetic company Victoria Jackson Cosmetics. Its creative visualization. I see it in pictures, and I work to create it.
[Photo: Riley Reed/courtesy Godmothers]
Walsh, who built her career as a literary agent, says that for her the store is exactly what its website proclaims: a local shop with a global dream, the product of a partnership born of big ideas, hard work, and the circuitous process of following gut instincts.
In these conversations, we talked about framing creativity in business and personal endeavors, cultivating the ability to slow down to accelerate ideas, and the value of a little fresh air.
Jennifer Rudolph Walsh: I view myself as a creative person, but not in an artistic sense. I dont paint. I dont do morning pages. I love brainstorming sessions with people. I love hearing their ideas and adding my ideas. I love taking those ideas that come out of nowhere and imagining how they can manifest themselves in different ways.
RW: Im a morning person. I wake up at 5 a.m. with a tremendous amount of energy. I first meditate and then I read everything. I send articles to people that I think would be helpful to them. That gets the creativity going. I am full of ideas and inspiration in the morning.
RW: My life post-NYC is very free form. I really resist structure in my day and thats one of the great things about being my own person here [in California]. Im not answering to clients. So I love the freedom of that and the creative spirit can just take me anywhere. It might be on a hike or going through the store and talking with a customer about a book they loved. But its very freeform and go-with-the-flow.
[Photo: Riley Reed/courtesy Godmothers]
RW: We opened the store as a bookstore and a gathering space because its something we ourselves craved. Its a place to go to dive into the deep end of the ocean. We wanted to create a sense of community around that container; I think there needs to be more of that. People long to be there in person. Our shop is in a beautiful setting, which adds to the experience. Its a place where people can be open-hearted and open-minded.
[Photo: Sara Prince/courtesy Godmothers]
Victoria Jackson: Jennifer is a critical piece in the telling of Godmothers. We are trying to align and manifest something together. She is also a big believer and a manifester in her own right. Godmothers: how the community has, in such a short time, embraced it. How we have in all the best ways put ourselves on the map, with the trust and respectreally the big warm hug weve gotten from the community. I was going to be focused more on the beauty of the space, making it a cozy and welcoming physical space. She is working on the actual storytelling. She does most of the hosting and interviewing. I think we both respect each others opinions a lot; its a very easy collaboration.
VJ: I think there are certainly aspects where you can learn to open your mind. I think there is a certain amount of it thats learned, but I think a bigger part of it is innate in how you see the world. Even early days in schoolthere are kids that are looking at the teacher and there are kids that are looking out the window. Im a looking out the window person and Ive been looking out the window ever since.
VJ: I have the ability to build bridges and communicate whatever that thing is that Im working on. The fact that I can sell cosmetics on TV and have my authentic passion around it, while building community and connection. Everything Ive done in the world of medicineIve needed to build a bridge. In cosmetics, its connecting with women and consumers based on a product and an idea I had. I think the throughline is how I tell the story.
JRW: I love storytelling in all forms. I watch a ton of TV and movies. I read books. I read newspapers and magazines. Longform stories.
JRW: I see entrepreneurship as intricately tied to creativity. Creativity to me is business. I dont see them as two separate things. I never understood a personal life and a professional life
I dont really separate it from business. You cant grow without change, and you cant have change without creativity.
[Photo: Sara Prince/courtesy Godmothers]
JRW: My motto is try easier. If something isnt working or when nothing is working, I do nothing.
Im not someone who is trying to force a solution. If I cant think of three options, I’m going to keep thinking. I don’t move until Im ready, and Im not ready until I have at least three possibilities. I am at ease and I trust the universe. I see it through the eyes of wonder and miracle.
JRW: Im not someone who will ask 10 people what they think of my shoes. There are people like that. I dont really have a big appetite for what other people think about what I think is cool. If I have a big idea, I move on quickly. I dont hold tightly to anything.
JRW: Everything about my life is a learned thing. No one used to try harder than me. I had to learn how to hold things lightly and go with the flow so things were always going my way. There is a magic place between making it happen and letting it happen. Thats a creative calibration. But I live there now.
[Photo: Sara Prince/courtesy Godmothers]
JRW: I spend some time in nature every single day. All of those things are both spiritual and creative practices for me. In every conversation, I try to plant a seed or receive a seed. Its about trying to say, What do you think of this idea? Or, Oh, thats an amazing idea. You brainstorm and add on.
JRW: I live two miles up a mountain on a farm. Im not on Twitter or Facebook. I live an intentional, slow life. I read and consume and carefully curate an intentional series of things. Im not someone who is reacting to the world. Im cocreating my own reality, with all of the choices I make.
VJ: I can lack patience. I set very high standards for myself, and at times, for others. When theyre falling short or very short, I have a hard time being patient, especially as Im older and have accomplished a lot. I want people to be the best version of themselves. I get a little frustrated when theyre not willing to do that.
VJ: When I get stuck, Ill go for a walk. Ill put myself in nature. I will take a break. I will do that in meditation. You picture yourself going under the water and everything above you is stormy and waves and everything around you is quiet. Usually then, Ill find some way.
The University of California Irvine’s new healthcare campus has a long list of innovative features, from its combined inpatient-outpatient surgical suite to its outdoor chemotherapy infusion terrace to an entire floor dedicated to staff only. The one thing it doesn’t have is a gas line.
The multi-building healthcare campus with 144 hospital beds officially opened in December as one of a very few major hospitals around the world that runs entirely on electricity. CO Architects, which designed the all-electric hospital alongside design-build partner Hensel Phelps, claims it’s the only hospital larger than 500,000 square feet to pull this off.
[Photo: Tom Bonner]
“Healthcare is just about as big of an energy hog as you can get,” says Fabian Kremkus, a design principal at CO Architects. Room-sized MRI machines, medicine refrigerators, and commercial kitchens cranking out hospital food represent just a snapshot of the energy needs of a healthcare facility. At UCI Health, as the campus is known, feeding this energy demand with only electricity required nimble design.
The project has been in the works since 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was putting unusual scrutiny on the ways hospitals functioned. UCI Health’s design was inevitably influenced by the pandemic, leading to an emphasis on flexibility and the ability to handle an influx of highly contagious patients should another pandemic occur. At the same time, the University of California system was plowing ahead with its own goal of achieving carbon neutrality in its buildings by 2025, which made electrification another priority.
[Photo: Tom Bonner]
But when the building’s design was being finalized, there wasn’t enough commercially available equipment to do the entire project without fossil fuels. By the time the project went up for its construction permit, the plan still included things like a gas-powered central heating and cooling plant and a gas line feeding the hospital’s kitchens.
As the project got deeper into construction, new equipment started coming onto the market, including all-electric air-source heat pumps and air chillers, as well as all-electric cooking equipment. “Since the start of the project versus couple of years ago, there are a lot more options,” says Jill Cheng, an associate principal at CO Architects.
[Photo: Tom Bonner]
As more and more electric options came to the table, the design-build team and the university decided to go all in on the carbon-neutral goal, aiming to create an all-electric hospital.
“It required a midstream redesign of our central plant when the decision was made,” says Kremkus. “So it was very challenging, with a really aggressive construction schedule.”
[Photo: Tom Bonner]
Now, the entire campus uses a unique central heating and cooling plant that eliminates the need for gas-based boilers, as well as the staff resources to monitor such high-pressure infrastructure around the clock. On-site photovoltaic panels help offset the hospital’s high energy needs, and the entire complex is primarily fed by California’s majority renewable electricity grid.
[Photo: Tom Bonner]
That’s just one of many savings on this project, according to Kremkus. CO Architects analyzed the costs and benefits of taking an all-electric approach and found that even when electric equipment had higher upfront costs, they would be more than offset by energy savings over time. The annual energy cost of using natural gas, for example, would be about $650,000 cheaper than the all-electric alternative, but its annual maintenance costs would be $1.4 million more, making the choice fairly clear. The payback period for investing in the all-electric system is less than three-and-a-half years. “We’re building a 50-year facility, so there’s no question that this is economically the right thing to do,” Kremkus says.
This all-electric hospital design is a replicable approach. “All of our future projects that we have in the pipeline will be all electric, and it’s largely championed by this project,” says Kremkus. “We were able to test it here, and now we can roll it out in an even better way because there’s a lot of lessons learned.”
The best recruiter I know is going to spend the next three months hiring without posting to a single job board website, like Indeed or LinkedIn.
LinkedIn? She laughed. You mean Facebook for thought leaders? No, I wont be using any of those sites.
Rosa is head of HR for a large tech startup, and someone I trust to tell me whats really going on in the world of professional recruiting and jobs the unflinching truth. The last time we talked, she had finally taken back control of her companys recruiting process, rescuing it from over-automation, misguided AI, and what she called results-last hiring.
Ive hired hundreds of people to work with me over my long career. And Ive partnered with some great recruiters and some not-so-great recruiters along the way. I can tell you she has a point about LinkedIn, but its not just LinkedIn. Rosa wants to sidestep the whole damn hiring system, even down to how her company views hiring and talent.
We were treating people like fuel when theyre actually critical machine parts, she said. Once you understand that, you realize the whole damn hiring system is broken, and the path becomes clear. Not easy, but at least clear.
Her latest experiment, over the next three months, with her executive team behind her: Hire without LinkedIn and the rest of the job boards.
The Digital Job Funnel Is Not Going to Be Fixed Anytime Soon
On the other side of the country, a CTO friend of mine spent his holiday break clearing a backlog of support tickets.
Why?
Because a bunch of folks quit, and when he tried to replace them, the modern automated hiring systems his company was using kept throwing up roadblocks.
Wasnt that what all of this automation was supposed to do? he asked me. Find me people quickly?
He lost three support people the week before Christmas and figured he could get by with two. After getting vague answers from his HR team, the last day before everything shut down for the holidays, he went full White Goodman and took the bull by the horns.
I got into the system myself, thought Id be a hero, and I spent hours going through stacks of applications just trying to filter out the bots, or the résumés that werent even close to what I needed. I wondered if I should just write some code to filter [the applications] myself, but I was running out of time and [support] tickets were piling up. I gave up and said Id just handle the tickets on my own over the holidays.
After a holly jolly Jira holiday, he had an epiphany.
This never should have happened, he said. Were going to take a hard look at why we have all this hiring technology.
Its Always the Quiet Ones
In my last column, I speculated that were reaching a bottom in the job market, especially in tech, where a sense of capitulation has leaders in the recruiting industry advising tech employees to become baristas, bartenders, and builders.
Yeah, thats the right amount of capitulation.
I mentioned in that column that, out of the dozen or so SMB tech startup leaders Ive talked to while going down this particular hiring rabbit hole, not one of them is using a major hiring channel to fill their talent needs.
In their view, the LinkedIns, the Indeeds, basically all the job boards, have devolved into an automated slippery slope that, in their eyes, produces no signal, just noise. A lot of noise.
Were Hiring, Just Without the Purple Sash
So these companies are opting out. Theyre posting jobs on their own websites, or sometimes not, and using their current employees and investors networks of networks to find channels. Theyre going through traditional but smaller recruiters, trade associations, user groups, colleges for entry-level positions, even niche online communities like Reddit and Hacker News.
Theyre going through me, not to hire me, but asking if I know anyone who knows anyone who would be perfect for the role, like they used to before LinkedIn ate all of hiring which is right before LinkedIn decided there was more money in letting ambitious professionals post AI-written opinions on everything.
Oh, sorry, before you ask me who these companies are, Id love to tell you, and I am telling people whom I think they might find a perfect fit, but if I splash their names here it defeats the purpose of what theyre trying to do. Theyre tightening the aperture, as one put it, which sounds uncomfortable, but is really just a way of saying they want 100 targeted résumés for an open position and not 10,000 résumés that are mostly people who didnt read the job requirements plus bots.
Crazy, right? But oddly enough, with the sheer volume of talent already on the sidelines, theyre filling these roles much more quickly than they did using LinkedIn, Indeed, and such.
So, no, I cant out them, but I can tell you this. Based on how Rosa and her low-tech colleagues are hiring, heres my best advice for joining this worldwide loose hiring network.
Turn Your Friends Into Recruiters
Good old-fashioned networking is back in vogue. And this isnt just about blasting an email asking everyone you know if they know anyone who knows anyone who is hiring. You want to build an army, a group of folks who will work for you.
Be specific about what you can do and what you want, Rosa told me. A personal, concise message is best. Your friends are already willing to help you, they just need to know how they specifically can do that. Itll be different for everyone.
Take Time to Do Deeper Company Research
Smart companies are, like Rosa said, looking for critical machine parts, not fuel. They need talent, not labor. They want results, not butts in seats.
Your best shot is going to be finding a company that can use you, right away, to get the results they need. Use AI to find these companies that are sidestepping tese channels, instead of using AI to turn your résumé into one more needle in an ever growing haystack.
Then, instead of sending an application to 50 companies if you might be a fit for five, find 50 companies where you would be valuable and hope that five of them are hiring, whether they have a job posted for you or not.
Look for Positive Proof That the Job They Have Is for You
When you do find a job that looks right, dig a little. Is it real? Is it what it says it is? Are you going to be dumped into an applicant pool with thousands of other candidates?
Then dig a little deeper. Read the job description with some skepticism. Is it generic? Is it a carbon copy of all the others youve seen? Are they hiring just because they have fresh money? Is it more about joining a club than getting results?
On that last one: Companies will do that when they have a lot of problems but they dont know what they need, said Rosa. Instead of a finely tuned job description, theyll spend a lot of time on values and goals and what they believe. Theyre hiring fans, not talent.
And finally, focus on companies that move quickly. The truth is there is still a huge supply of available talent out there, thus theres no need for a hiring company to wait for the right fit. If theres no urgency, the company might be just testing the waters or, again, not really sure of what they need. Neither of those aspects works in your favor.
Dont Fall For False Progress
These are desperate times in the job market. I know there will be counterarguments to these strategies, probably led by Well, thats nice advice, but I need a job now.
Heres the thing. Job now is more about luck than reach. Scanning or spamming job board websites might feel like progress, but weve gone so far down the digital black hole of hiring that a lot of the companies that are hiring now, quickly, and for the right reasons, are bypassing those job boards entirely.
Im not talking about Easy Apply and Im not suggesting these strategies will speed the process. Im talking about adding a growing channel that isnt getting attention because it doesnt want the attention. Theyre not going to find you. Youll need to find them.
I can also speculate that these companies wont stay in the shadows for long. The success of this loose network will get noticed, and it will get centralized, maybe not with AI, but it wont be long before Rosa and all the recruiters like her are up to their eyeballs in tens of thousands of applications again.
So now is a good time to go job hunting instead of job scrolling.
Now is also a good time to join my email list, a growing rebel alliance of professionals who want a different perspective on tech and business.
Joe Procopio
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
The era of the empowered worker is behind us, at least for now. The last year has seen a stark reversal of the dynamics that were at play in the aftermath of the pandemic, when employers were scrambling to hold onto their workers. Companies couldn’t seem to cut jobs fast enough in 2025, as over a million layoffs swept across tech giants and other major employers. Hiring came to a standstill as the corporate world grappled with political headwinds and economic anxieties. Employers have gone all in on artificial intelligence, in the hopes that it will make their workers infinitely more productive.
We are entering a new phase that is much more employer-centric in terms of who holds the keys, says Lars Schmidt, the founder of HR consultancy Amplify and the vice president of talent acquisition and innovation at superfruit startup Fruitist. With all the volatility of the job market, the displacement of jobs from AI and automation, and the economic uncertainty causing some companies to dial backI think that the power is very much in the employer’s hands again, and kind of at the detriment of employees.
In this climate, the role of human resources has grown ever more complicatedand crucial, as they seek to keep employees motivated and manage burnout alongside mounting demands from their employers. Heres what HR leaders are focused on and expect to see in the year to come.
AI: Were making it up as we go
As workplaces invest in generative AI, many HR leaders are being tasked with not only using those tools to streamline their own operations, but also to help companies figure out how to deploy the technology effectively across their organization. Schmidt argues its an opportunity for people in HR to step up and help shape how their company approaches AI.
Like any emerging technology with the promise of automation and less headcount and more profit, there’s going to be pressure to use that, he says. It’s just as important to have a clear point of view of where not to use AI than where to use AI, and you can’t be a strategic adviser to your C suite peers if you are not informed yourself.
Melanie Naranjo, the head of people at HR compliance training startup Ethena, believes companies are now reevaluating their AI investments, after throwing money at expensive AI tools or unsuccessfully attempting to automate jobs. Many HR teams are also thinking about how to encourage employees to get adequately trained on AI without making it an onerous burden: How do you keep a workforce trained on the latest and greatest in AI adoption, when AI is constantly changing? she says. How do you structure that? What does that fall under? How do you hold people accountable? Is there space to do it in a strategic way that doesn’t burn everyone out?
Another challenge for some HR leaders is how to determine compensation and pay packages for valuable AI talent, or potential hires who are well versed in AIsomething that many of them are figuring out in real time, amid economic uncertainty.
It’s really worth as much as you’re willing to pay for it at this point, Naranjo says. I imagine over time this will even out, because the long-term expectation will likely be that everyone has some level of AI expertise within their field. But right now we’re all just asking each other and making it up as we go, candidly.
Focus on retention over hiring
Amid a hiring slowdown and a tricky job market that favors employers, many workers are staying putotherwise known as job hugging, in recent parlancerather than looking for new opportunities. For companies, this presents its own challenge.
A lot of employees are hesitant to make a move right now, given all the volatility and uncertainty, Schmidt says. So they are kind of growing roots, which creates some tension. The natural attrition of an organizationthrough both voluntary and involuntary turnovercreates a bit of a steady flow of talent in and out of the organization. Workers also face new pressures as their employers expect them to both embrace AI and use it to boost their productivity. Companies, in turn, may see a dip in morale and find that employees are checked outwhich means HR leaders need to figure out how to incentivize them.
Even in the midst of this being an employer market, I think smart employers are going to start thinking a little bit more about retention, says Naranjo. The reality is your top performers are always going to be able to find work, regardless of the market. And then everyone else? Even though they’re not leaving in droves because of the market, productivity and morale is going to start to shift.
In the past, the answer might have been to give employees a generous raise. Now, Naranjo says, many HR leaders are trying to figure out how to reward them in a low-cost, low-lift way. Beyond looking at compensation, one way companies could address this is by expanding benefits. While benefits are not nearly as much of a focus as they were during the Great Resignationwhen companies were clamoring to retain employeesthey remain a competitive advantage for many organizations, particularly around fertility and caregiving.
Mita Mallick, a workplace strategist and former DEI executive, argues that companies have an opportunity to differentiate themselvesand retain top performersby investing in unique benefits. Mallick points to platforms like Multiply Mortgage, which helps employees get a mortgage and discounted rate.
With some of these benefits, you might be like, well, it’s niche utilization, Mallick says. Cost utilization is low, but then those individuals become your company advocates.
Housing-related benefits are also an example of employers essentially providing social services that would not otherwise be covered. Mallick cites paid leave, which has repeatedly faced pushback as a federal policy.
When government fails, and there [are] gaps in the infrastructure, companies are stepping up, she adds.
Investing in DEI . . . quietly
Back in 2020, the racial reckoning in the aftermath of George Floyds murder led many companies to make bold promises about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some of them pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to bolster these commitmentsbut in the years since, the appetite for DEI has radiclly changed. After the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action in 2023, corporate America slowly backed away from DEI work, particularly as right wing agitators like Robby Starbuck ramped up public pressure on companies. And over the last year in particular, the Trump administration has set its sights on DEI programs across both the federal government and private sector, even threatening to investigate corporate employers who engage in illegal DEI work.
All this has seemingly set the stage for a public retreat from DEI, as many employers fear legal action and being targeted by the Trump administration. Across the federal workforce, DEI offices were shut down, and many DEI professionals in the corporate world lost their jobs as the work fell out of fashion. Companies eliminated representation goals and pulled out of external rankings that measure workplace inclusion.
But while employers have, in fact, slashed DEI programs, a number of them are merely rebranding it as belongingor doing the work behind closed doors.
For certain companies, this shift is more about revising the language of DEI, which has been weaponized by conservatives: When you look at the fundamentals of why DEI is important, that didn’t change, Schmidt says. What [has] changed is how people are twisting the definition for political purposes.
As DEI teams have shrunkor have been dismantled altogethersome of this work has fallen to employee resource groups or is now within the purview of HR. But on the whole, many of the companies that have publicly pulled back on their investments in DEI were never particularly committed.
There are people quietly doing the work, Mallick says. And there are people who never wanted to do the work. It was performative. It checked the boxand now they have permission to say they don’t need to do it.
Navigating a new political climate
A few years ago, many HR leaders felt compelled to speak out about politics and current events. But the tides have turned, as many CEOs and other executives have largely avoided weighing in on political issues since Trump assumed office again.
There was a lot of pressure on HR leaders to take a stance on every event that took place, Schmidt says. Now we’re obviously in a very different environment You’re seeing very few companies speaking out in this current environment for fear of retribution.
For some folks in HR, this has been a bit of a welcome correction; for others, its an adjustment after years of being more vocal.
At the moment, against the backdrop of an immigration crackdown that has claimed the lives of two civilians in Minnesota, some HR leaders have felt like they need to acknowledge whats happening around them. What I’m sensing in one-off conversations with HR professionals is: I kind of want to say something, but I don’t know how it will be received, and I don’t know if it’s the right time, Naranjo says.
While a handful of tech workers and leaders have finally commented on the violence in Minnesota, most of them have remained relatively silent. An open letter from the CEOs of Minnesota-based companies like Target and Best Buy called for an immediate deescalation of tensions but stopped short of any pointed condemnations.
You’re seeing very few business leaders stepping into the moment and making a statement, Schmidt says. CEOs understandably don’t want to put a target on their company. This reticence leaves HR leaders in a tough spot, if they feel a responsibility to speak out or their employees are demanding it.
But Naranjo says companies should recognize there can be a cost to not acknowledging the political moment.
From an HR perspective, that’s not actually a distraction, she says. Your employees are already distracted. So if you’re being really strategic about this, and your employees are struggling, you can actually help them focus and be more productive by addressing it correctly.
In 2021, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee history professor Thomas Haigh began teaching a course on the history of computers.
Haigh, the coauthor of a book on the subject published around that same timenoticed that many classic histories of computing from the 1990s assumed that readers would have firsthand knowledge of technology from around that eradesktop PCs and Macs, early game consoles, and the once-ubiquitous floppy disk. But for many of his students, that equipment was obsolete before they were born. While it might make millennials grimace, Windows 95 and Nintendo 64s GoldenEye 007 are now firmly in the purview of the history department.
With today’s undergraduates, they’re just as distanced from the days of the Apple II, or the IBM PC, or the first Mac as people [then] were from ENIAC and the very earliest computers, Haigh says.
Haigh can’t practically show his students how to use the ENIAC or the other room-sized machines from the mid-20th century. But he realized he could stock a lab with equipment from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, letting students experience and understand what it was like to load a spreadsheet from floppy disk on an Apple IIe, boot up Windows on a Gateway PC, or play a game on a vintage Atari or Nintendo 64.
The idea isn’t to collect one of everything, and it’s also not really to collect rare and exotic things, Haigh says. We’re more interested in recapturing what the typical experience was of using computer systems in different eras.
Haigh believes the Retrocomputing Lab, or simply Retrolab, may be the only such lab run out of a U.S. history department. Its one of a handful of university labs around the country that provide students and researchers with access to machines and software from before the age of ubiquitous internet and cloud computing. Its stocked with a mix of eBay purchases, university surplus, and faculty hand-me-downs (meaning students are sometimes greeted with the names of users from decades gone by when they load vintage operating systems or floppy disks). Lab organizers say the labs help students and researchers understand how computing and communication technology has evolved, both for better and for worseand help them use ideas from the past to understand and shape what the future of tech might be.
What I’ve noticed, especially in the last year, is that young people are just fascinated and utterly compelled by typewriters, by technology that they can see into, that they can understand how it works, that they sometimes can open up, says Lori Emerson, founder of the Media Archaeology Lab (MAL) at the University of Colorado Boulder. And especially the pieces of tech that we have in the lab that’s not connected to the internet, that’s not surveilling them, tracking them, collecting data.
Its something that emulation, which can make it possible to use vintage software and games on modern equipment, doesnt fully capture. Emerson founded the lab in 2009 while working as a professor in the English department and teaching students about a digital poetry project called First Screening, released on floppy disk in the 1980s by the celebrated Canadian poet bpNichol. Emerson wanted to show students how the poems would have been seen on the computers of their day. The lab she set up for that purpose continued to expand, ultimately growing into a sprawling collection thats now available for use by students, visiting researchers, and curious members of the public.
I think that was pretty much the beginning of the end for me as an English professor, says Emerson, now a professor in the media studies department. And then I just couldn’t stop collecting old pieces of technology, and I couldn’t stop convincing people to give me their things.
Even with commercial software, the tactile experience of using particular keyboards, mice, and disks, and the entire concept of unpacking disks and manuals from a store-bought box, just cant be simulated.
One of the things that surprises students is that software used to come in a box full of manuals and stuff, Haigh says. They just think of software as this purely immaterial thing that downloads.
Emma Culver, a Ph.D. student in UW-Milwaukees media, cinema, and digital studies program, says she discovered installing and playing The 7th Guesta 1993 DOS horror adventure that helped pioneer the use of the CD-ROM for full-motion video and inspired a generation of game designerswas far from smooth, experiencing firsthand the trial-and-error frustrations of PC gaming in that era.
And it’s much more satisfying once you actually sit down to play it after you’ve been through all that effort to set it up, she says.
But though todays students will likely play a role in the next steps in technologys evolution, its not clear whether theyll be able to show future generations the technology they currently use. Thats because over the past decade or so, software has become dependent on connections to cloud servers, AI models, or online gaming infrastructure cant easily be archived in fully operational form.
In the future, once systems aren’t there to activate copies and download patches and so on, none of this stuff is still going to be accessible unless enthusiasts do a huge amount of work to replicate parts of that system, Haigh says.
But for now, universities are working to share and preserve what they can of the digital past. At Georgia Tech, a similar retroTECH program run out of the university library similarly helps archive and share with students vintage technology from the slide rule to millennial favorites like The Oregon Trail and early Mario Kart offerings. Games for historic consoles are a big focus, especially since they were released as static products rather than updated and patched over time like PC games, says digital accessioning archivist Dillon Henry. Students are sometimes intrigued by how quickly cartridge-based games could load compared to todays releases, and the games are often accompanied by print gaming media of the day, so students can see how they were advertised and promoted in outlets like Nintendo Power.
The library has hosted informal gaming nights, but its also seen plenty of use by students in classes looking at everything from interactive narrative storytelling to game design. Engineering students also learn to fix the vintage machines.
It’s a win-win, because you can’t o to an Apple Store today and ask them to fix your Apple II, Henry says.
Theyre also inspiring students to make their own creations. One student brought classmates from a game design class to the lab to study elements of Final Fantasy IX9 (released for the original PlayStation in 2000), Henry recalls, and visitors are also often intrigued by the evolution of video game interfaces and forgotten elements of the industrys history. The collection includes technology like the Virtual Boy, a famously odd Nintendo VR system from the mid-1990s, and the Fairchild Channel F, which introduced the concept of removable cartridges and featured a unique, joystick-like controller.
Now controllers are getting more or less standardized, Henry says. It was kind of a Wild West there at the beginning of the gaming world, when people were just trying stuff that hadn’t been done.
The retroTECH programs vintage material isnt all computer-based. The library has an Edison wax cylinder phonograph from 1902 and a set of blank cylinders, and Henry hopes in the future to work on recording projects based around the medium, perhaps in conjunction with the universitys celebrated music technology program.
Historic technology is also a creative medium at CU Boulder. The Media Archaeology Lab has hosted a residency series thats attracted artists creating work with the equipment, and seen musicians perform using vintage music software and computerized keyboards on site. The lab has also recently begun acquiring typewriters and other historic printing and copying equipment, and Emerson and lab managing director Libi Rose Striegl plan to offer zine-making workshops in the near future. Students weary of AI and cloud computing have generally been showing an interest in technology from before the age of the always-on internet, Emerson says.
A theme that’s been coming up recently is that they say, I feel like my mental health would be a lot better if I used these machines, she says. And we laugh, but were also like, yeah, it probably would be.
A variety show thats still revered for its absurdist, slapstick humor debuted 50 years ago. It starred an irreverent band of characters made of foam and fleece.
Long after The Muppet Shows original 120-episode run ended in 1981, the legend and legacy of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo and other creations concocted by puppeteer and TV producer Jim Henson have kept on growing. Thanks to the Muppets film franchise and the wonders of YouTube, the wacky gang is still delighting, and expanding, its fan base.
As a scholar of popular culture, I believe that the Muppets reign, which began in the 1950s, has helped shape global culture, including educational television. Along the way, the puppets and the people who bring them to life have earned billions in revenue.
Johnny Carson interviews Muppet creator Jim Henson, Kermit and other Muppets on the Tonight Show in 1975, ahead of one of an early The Muppet Show pilot.
Kermits origin story
Muppets, a portmanteau of marionette and puppet, first appeared on TV in the Washington, D.C., region in 1955, when Henson created a short sketch show called Sam and Friends with his future wife, Jane Nebel.
Their motley cast of puppets, including a lizardlike character named Kermit, sang parody songs and performed comedy sketches.
Hensons creations were soon popping up in segments on other TV shows, including Today and late-night programs. Rowlf the Dog appeared in Canadian dog food commercials before joining The Jimmy Dean Show as the hosts sidekick.
After that show ended, Rowlf and Dean performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, where Kermit had occasionally appeared since 1961.
Rowlf the Dog and Jimmy Dean reprise their schtick on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1967.
From Sesame Street to SNL
As Rowlf and Kermit made the rounds on variety shows, journalist Joan Ganz Cooney and psychologist Lloyd Morrisett were creating a new educational program. They invited Henson to provide a Muppet ensemble for the show.
Henson waived his performance fee to maintain rights over the characters who became the most famous residents of Sesame Street. The likes of Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and Big Bird were joined by Kermit who, by the time the show premiered in 1969, was identified as a frog.
When Sesame Street became a hit, Henson worried that his Muppets would be typecast as childrens entertainment. Another groundbreaking show, aimed at young adults, offered him a chance to avoid that.
Saturday Night Lives debut on NBC in 1975 when the show was called Saturday Night included a segment called The Land of Gorch, in which Hensons grotesque creatures drank, smoked and cracked crass jokes.
The Land of Gorch segments ended after Saturday Night Lives first season.
Saturday Night Lives first season included Land of Gorch sketches that starred creatures Jim Henson made to entertain grown-ups.
Miss Piggy gets her closeup
The Muppet Show was years in the making. ABC eventually aired two TV specials in 1974 and 1975 that were meant to be pilots for a U.S.-produced Muppet Show.
After no American network picked up his quirky series, Henson partnered with British entertainment entrepreneur Lew Grade to produce a series for ATV, a British network, that featured Kermit and other Muppets. The new ensemble included Fozzie Bear, Animal and Miss Piggy Muppets originally performed by frequent Henson collaborator Frank Oz.
The Muppet Show parodied variety shows on which Henson had appeared. Connections hed made along the way paid off: Many celebrities he met on those shows sets would guest star on The Muppet Show, including everyone from Rita Moreno and Lena Horne to Joan Baez and Johnny Cash.
The Muppet Show, which was staged and shot at a studio near London, debuted on Sept. 5, 1976, in the U.K, before airing in syndication in the United States on stations like New Yorks WCBS.
As the shows opening and closing theme songs changed over time, they retained a Vaudeville vibe despite the house bands preference for rock and jazz.
The Muppets hit the big screen
The Muppet Show was a hit, amassing a global audience of over 200 million. It won many awards, including a Primetime Emmy for outstanding comedy-variety or music series for which it beat Saturday Night Live in 1978.
While his TV show was on the air, Henson worked on the franchises first film, The Muppet Movie. The road film, released in 1979, was another hit: It earned more than US$76 million at the box office.
The Muppet Movie garnered two Academy Award nominations for its music, including best song for Rainbow Connection. It won a Grammy for best album for children.
The next two films, The Great Muppet Caper, which premiered in 1981, and The Muppets Take Manhattan, released in 1984, also garnered Oscar nominations for their music.
As The Muppet Movie opens, Statler and Waldorf tell a security guard of their heckling plans.
Fraggle Rock and the Disney deal
The cast of The Muppet Show and the three films took a break from Hollywood while Henson focused on Fraggle Rock, a TV show for kids that aired from 1983-1987 on HBO.
Like Hensons other productions, Fraggle Rock featured absurdist humor but its puppets arent considered part of the standard Muppets gang. This co-production between Henson, Canadian Broadcast Corporation and British producers was aimed at international markets.
The quickly conglomerating media industry led Henson to consider corporate partnerships to assist with his goal of further expanding the Muppet media universe.
In August 1989, he negotiated a deal with Michael Eisner of Disney who announced at Disney-MGM Studios an agreement in principle to acquire The Muppets, with Henson maintaining ownership of the Sesame Street characters.
The announcement also included plans to open Muppet-themed attractions at Disney parks.
But less than a year later, on May 16, 1990, Henson died from a rare and serious bacterial infection. He was 53.
At the end of Fraggle Rocks run, its characters look for new gigs.
Of Muppets and mergers
Hensons death led to the Disney deals collapse. But the company did license The Muppets to Disney, which co-produced The Muppet Christmas Carol in 1992 and Muppet Treasure Island in 1996 with Jim Henson Productions, which was then run by Jims son, Brian Henson.
In 2000, the Henson family sold the Muppet properties to German media company EM.TV & Merchandising AG for $680 million. That company ran into financial trouble soon after, then sold the Sesame Street characters to Sesame Workshop for $180 million in late 2000. The Jim Henson Company bought back the remaining Muppet properties for $84 million in 2003.
In 2004, Disney finally acquired The Muppets and most of the media library associated with the characters.
Disney continued to produce Muppet content, including The Muppets Wizard of Oz in 2005. Its biggest success came with the 2011 film The Muppets, which earned over $165 million at the box office and won the Oscar for best original song Man or Muppet.
Muppets Most Wanted, released in 2014, earned another $80 million worldwide, bringing total global box office receipts to over $458 million across eight theatrical Muppets movies.
The Muppet Show goes on
The Muppets continue to expand their fandom across generations and genres by performing at live concerts and appearing in several series and films.
Through these many hits and occasional bombs, and the Jim Henson Companys personnel changes, the Muppets have adapted to changes in technology and tastes, making it possible for them to remain relevant to new generations.
That cat of characters made of felt and foam continue to entertain fans of all ages. Although many people remain nostalgic over The Muppet Show, two prior efforts to reboot the show proved short-lived.
But when Disney airs its The Muppet Show anniversary special on Feb. 4, 2026, maybe more people will get hooked as Disney looks to reboot the series
The Muppet Show will be back for at least one episode on Feb. 4, 2026.
Jared Bahir Browsh, Assistant Teaching Professor of Critical Sports Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Around 70% of large-scale corporate transformation efforts fail. That figure has remained consistent for 25 yearsand it comes from an era of relatively manageable change. Artificial intelligence will demand far more of companies: faster adaptation, more comprehensive reinvention, and continuous evolution rather than periodic adjustment. Yet more than three years after the launch of ChatGPT, only 5% of businesses report extracting significant value from their AI initiatives. If companies struggled with transformation before, the coming years will be harder still. Managing rapid change is becoming the central competency for business leadership.
Every serious observer agrees that executives need to develop new skills and mindsets to navigate what is coming. Yet there is a paradox at the heart of corporate America’s response. In a recent survey of leaders at large organizations, the Center for Creative Leadership found that 82% believed leadership development offers a competitive advantage amid economic uncertainty, and 72% said that cutting development budgets would create significant challenges. Yet 71% expected those budgets to be reduced in the event of any downturn.
How can leaders simultaneously believe that executive development is essential while treating it as expendable? The answer isnt confusion or hypocrisy. It is that businesses have lost faith in the solutions on offer.
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The Problems With Traditional Approaches
And rightly so. Traditionally, companies have turned to executive education programs to help guide them through change. But most of these programs tend to focus on information transfersharing research findings without showing how to apply them to the specific realities of an individual business. The work of translation falls entirely on the leadership team. At the same time, much of the research informing these programs is backward-looking. Foundational studies may have been conducted two, three, or even more years ago. That cadence just cant keep pace with the speed at which AI is reshaping competitive landscapes.
The classic consulting model does not fare any better. Whether providing leadership coaching or conducting transformation work directly, these engagements are expensive and the results they deliver are unreliable. More fundamentally, the pace of change ahead makes it simply unfeasible to bring in external teams to reshape the organization every time an advance in AI tech delivers paradigm-shifting capabilities. This approach is not sustainable financially, operationally, or culturally.
The Resources Are Already There
At present, most companies see organizational change as something rare that needs to be handled episodically. As a result, they lack the embedded processes that enable continuous innovation and transformation. They invest in a leadership program here and an external engagement there without ever establishing the permanent mechanisms that can capture value from new developments on an ongoing basis. This means that every disruption must be addressed from scratch, as if the organization had learned nothing from the last one.
Instead of looking outward, corporations should be making the most of the resources they already have. Most companies employ extremely capable leaders who understand how their organizations actually work far better than any outside advisor could hope to. I have seen this repeatedly in the more than thirty years I have spent leading transformation initiatives at major corporations and government agencies. The talent and the institutional knowledge are already therethey just need to be unlocked.
What is missing is not capability. It is a repeatable management systemand a spark.
Repeatable Management Systems
If the internal resources are already there, why aren’t companies already building these management systems on their own? The answer is that potential is not the same as momentum. Most organizations need something to break through the inertiaa catalyst that disrupts established patterns and creates the conditions for change to take hold.
This is where outside expertise remains essential. But the nature of that expertise must change. The goal is not to perform the transformation work on the organization’s behalf. It is to provide the spark that sets internal capabilities in motion: diagnosing the current state, establishing the right frameworks, and building the confidence that allows leadership teams to take ownership of what comes next.
Think of it as the difference between hiring someone to drive your car and hiring an instructor who teaches you to drive yourself. Both involve external help. But only one leaves you with a capability you can use forever.
The key is establishing repeatable management systems that can be applied consistently across different challenges. When transformation processes are repeatable, each new disruption becomes an occasion to deploy proven methods rather than an emergency that demands improvisation from scratch.
Building repeatable management systems is not a matter of snapping one’s fingers. But all the core ingredients exist within most large organizations. Outside partners can help establish the frameworks and get things moving in the right direction. But once an organization has built the engine to manage its ongoing evolution, it should not have to keep returning to the well again and again.
The Compounding Advantage
Businesses cannot afford to keep approaching change in the same way they have for decades. It has not worked well historically, and it will work even less well in the years ahead. The companies that thrive will be those that stop waiting for external partners to perform transformation on their behalf and start building the internal systems that make continuous adaptation part of how they operate.
The organizations that get this right first will build a compounding advantage. Once the spark has been provided and the engine is running, each successive change becomes easier. The organization leans from one transformation and applies those lessons to the next. Meanwhile, competitors who remain locked in cycles of episodic external intervention will struggle to keep pace with technological shifts that arrive faster than any outside partner can respond to.
Five Steps to Unlock Your Internal Transformation Capability
Recognize that the capability already exists. Stop assuming that transformation requires importing talent or expertise your organization lacks. Audit the skills, institutional knowledge, and leadership capacity you already have. The gap is rarely capabilityit is the management systems and confidence needed to channel that capability toward change.
Seek sparks, not ongoing support. When you bring in outside help, structure engagements around ignition, not dependency. The right external partner diagnoses your current state, establishes frameworks, and builds internal confidencethen steps back. The measure of their success is whether your organization can manage the next transformation on its own.
Establish permanent change infrastructure. Create the internal systems, frameworks, and repeatable processes that will allow your organization to manage continuous evolution. This includes clear decision-rights for transformational initiatives, standardized methodologies for workflow redesign, and protocols for evaluating and deploying new capabilities. The goal is to make transformation a core organizational competence rather than an occasional intervention.
Move transformation ownership to the CEO. Stop treating leadership development and organizational change as HR functions or IT projects. When the chief executive owns the transformation strategy, it becomes integrated with business objectives rather than running parallel to them. Development initiatives should be evaluated against strategic outcomes, not training completion rates.
Build learning loops into every change. The compounding advantage comes from treating each transformation as an opportunity to strengthen your capacity for the next one. After every significant change initiative, capture what worked, what failed, and what you would do differently. Feed those lessons back into your frameworks and processes so the organization genuinely learns rather than simply moves on.
The age of AI demands a new approach to how organizations change. The old modelswhether executive education or traditional consultingserved a slower world. That world is gone. The companies that will lead in the years ahead will not be those that find the best external partners to perform transformation for them. They will be those that find the right spark to unlock the transformation capability they already possess.
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