On my phone, there are already videos of the next moon landing. In one, an astronaut springs off the rung of a ladder, strung out from the lander, before slowly plopping to the surface. He is, alas, still getting accustomed to the weaker gravity.
In another, the crew collects a samplea classic lunar expedition activitywhile another person lazily minds the rover. A third video shows an astronaut affixing the American flag to the ground, because this act of patriotism is even better the second time around. The blue oceans of Earth are visible, in the background, and a radio calls out: Artemis crew is on the surface.
America is going back to the moon, and NASA is in the final weeks of preparing for the Artemis II mission, which will have astronauts conduct a lunar flyby for the first time in decades. If all goes well, during the next endeavor, Artemis III, theyll finally land on the lunar surface, marking an extraordinary and historical and in some sense, nostalgic, accomplishment. The aforementioned videos are not advance copies, or some vision of the future, though. They were generated with OpenAIs video generation model and are extremely fake.
Still, this kind of content is a reminder that the upcoming Artemis missions promise a major epistemic test for the deniers of the original moon landing. This a small but passionate and enduring community who doubt the Apollo moon landing for a host of reasons, including that (they allege) the government lied or (they believe) it is simply physically impossible for humans to go the moon. Now, when NASA returns to the lunar surface, these people will be confronted with far more evidence than from the last time around. The space agency operation will be broadcast, live, and including camera technology and social media platforms that just werent around in the 1960s.
But theres also a bigger challenge before us. NASA will be launching its moon return effort in a period of major distrust in American scientific and government institutions, and, amid the proliferation of generative AI, declining confidence in the veracity of digital content. Most observers will be able to sort through the real NASA imagery, and anything fake that might show up. Still, there tends to be a small number of people who doubt these kinds of milestones, especially when a U.S. federal agency is involved.
Adding AI to the conspiracy theory cocktail
When the moon landing first came in, AI wasn’t a thing. The sophistication of [the landing] didn’t necessarily make us question it, says David Jolley, a professor at the University of Nottingham who studies conspiracy theories. But now, with the power of AI and the power of images that you can create, it certainly offers that different reality if you want to interpret it in that way.
Its the trust in those sources that we need to kind of really create. Of course, if you haven’t got trust in our gatekeepers and you don’t trust scientists, well, suddenly you are going to lean into: well, this, is this real? Is this just AI? he continues.
The upcoming Artemis missions arent yet a major topic among lunar landing deniers. But there are hints it will attract more attention from conspiracy theorists. During the last Artemis mission, which was unmanned, Reuters had to push back on online posts suggesting the expedition proved that Apollo 11 didnt actually happen. (Skeptics suggested longer Artemis I mission timelines, a product of a change in route, actually cast doubt on the original Apollo timeline).
Other online skeptics have already suggested that, with Artemis, NASA is yet again faking a space endeavor. Some people in internet conspiracy communities suggest the upcoming moon missions will be entirely CGI (computer-generated imagery).
Generative AI stands to introduce even more confusion, says Ben Colman, the CEO of Reality Defenders, a deep fake detection platform. Generating a believable image of a (fake) moon landing is now something any consumer can do. Any astute physicist will be able to tell you if these videos get star placement or physics wrong, as they are likely to do, he says, but even that is getting better with each model iteration.
Conspiracy theories are sticky
There are, of course, many reasons why people say they deny reality of the first lunar expeditions. They are canonical, misinterpreted references, like Van Allen belts, a zone of energetic charged particles that surrounds the planet (critics say the belts are too radioactive for manned vehicles to traverse) and the suspicious flag-in-the-wind (theres no wind on the moon!). All of these pointsand the many other points deniers bring uphave been thoroughly debunked.
Still, this small community of self-appointed detectives are insistent. Even decades after the missions ended, people are still combing through NASAs videos and images, mining for signs of alternations or other surreptitious editing. To them, an expected shimmer reveals a film operation just beyond the view of the camera. A movement that might not look right is a hint that the world has been duped. Open source intelligence (OSINT) becomes the rabbit hole.
Some allege we didn’t go to the moon, perhaps because we were trying to trick the Soviets into thinking that we had superior technology than they did, explains Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who also studies conspiratorial beliefs. Some people think we did go but it wasn’t televised. And that footage that we saw was made later in a sound studio. Some people think Stanley Kubrick was in charge of filming the faked Moon Landing footage.
For its part, NASA is preparing to point to evidence, should any deepfake allegations come their way. Agency spokesperson Lauren Low tells Fast Company: We expect AI experts will be looking closely at all our images and will be able to verify they are real images taken by real astronauts as part of the Artemis II test flight around the Moon. Moreover, Low added, there will be many ways for people to watch the lunar flyby themselves, including live broadcasts, two 24/7 YouTube streams, a new conference, and views from Orion cameras. In other words, the reality of Artemis will be very hard to deny.
Research suggests that conspiracy theories are entertaining, and even serve peoples core psychological needs, like a desire to understand the world or a way of dealing with uncertainty. Finding other people, including on social media, pushing these theories can help normalize them, and make someone feel like theyre part of a broader community.
Some people simply dont trust institutions, and evidence that something did, indeed, happen only raises further questions, and suspicions that it didnt. To an extent, politics matters, too; people outside the United States are more likely to deny the moon landing, polls show.
In the end, says Uscinski, we should prepare for people who are prone to conspiratorial thinking, or prone to mistrusting institutions, to take a skeptical view of any big news event. This may happen again when the Artemis missions finally launch. “The good news is that belief in conspiracy theories isnt likely to get worse,” he explains. “The bad news is that this conspiratorial thinking has always been this pervasive.
People are very good at waving away evidence that tells them things they don’t want to hear, and they’re very good at believing things, either without evidence or with really shitty evidence when it tells them what they do want to believe about the world, Uscinski adds. You don’t need AI or sophisticated technology to provide a justification.
It looks like OpenAI is taking the “new year, new you” approach when it comes to its business strategy. To kick off 2026, the company announced it would soon introduce ads into ChatGPTwhich was a bit of a surprise, considering CEO Sam Altman had previously said ads would be a last resort as a business model.
It’s hard to say how final a resort this is without looking at OpenAI’s balance sheet, but we do know the company is feeling the heat. After Google released Gemini 3 in the fallwhich scored well on leaderboards, market share, and plaudits from the AI communityAltman declared a code red at OpenAI to ensure that ChatGPT is best in class. And as impressive as OpenAI’s fundraising has been, Google is a $4 trillion company. OpenAI needs all the resources it can get.
So ChatGPT users are getting ads. It’s a risky move, since there are strong indicators that consumers are wary of ads in AI answers. A report from Attest, a consumer research company, found that 41% of consumers trust AI search results more than paid search results, suggesting that AI users like that they don’t have to worry about ads in AI summaries, even if their accuracy may sometimes be questionable. Hallucinating is apparently less of an offense than selling out.
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However, ads in AI experiences look increasingly like an inevitability. Consumers don’t love ads on TV or streaming either, but they’re endemic to the media ecosystem. Google is already serving ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and it may someday bring them to Gemini, too, although company executives deny there are any plans to do this. Regardless of what it does with the Gemini chatbot, Google appears determined to weave advertising into many of its AI experiences, which is hardly a shock.
Big Tech, bigger bite
For the media, this isn’t exactly thrilling news. OpenAI entering the ad business means yet another Big Tech player is competing with them for digital ad dollars alongside platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon. And there’s less traffic to go around since those same AI chatbots summarize content, often negating the need to click through. There’s a reason web traffic to publishers dropped by a third last year.
However, advertising tied to AI answers might end up being exactly the leverage publishers need to make their case for compensation. When a publisher’s content is used to create the answer to a query, the line back to revenue is always somewhat indirectafter all, the user likely subscribed to the chatbot well before they ever typed their question, and most AI services have a free tier anyway. But if your content fuels an answer, and that answer directly leads to revenue for the AI company through either impressions or transactions, the chain from content to dollars is clearer.
It’s also more trackable than it’s ever been. Whereas the world of SEO inferred a lot from search terms and clicks, queries in AI search are more specific, and the tools much better at pinning down intent. Understanding which answers, and what content within them, best facilitate transactions is a very knowable thing.
OpenAI did its best to quash fears about commercialization by stating its first principles of advertising, one of them being that ads will not influence the substance of the answers in ChatGPT. The idea is that if, say, Coca-Cola pays for an ad campaign, then any answer will not be any more or less likely to mention Coke than if that campaign didn’t exist. But I wonder if the answer might be more or less inclined to steer the user toward buying a soft drink in general, with the ad providing a little card for you to tap on that does just that.
Optimize and persuade
Even if OpenAI insists that won’t happen, it can’t speak for all the brands and content providers that fuel the answer. How successful such efforts might be is extremely unclear at this point, but it’s a safe bet they’re going to try. The nascent field of GEO (generative engine optimization) seems destined to give rise to a new dimensionnot just how content affects AI answers, but how it convinces users to take action. You’re not just optimizing for presence, but also for persuadability.
All of this is theoretical, of course, and perhaps Google, OpenAI, and everyone else will succeed in keeping the ad-revenue pie all to themselves. But as revenue from AI answers increases, every marketer on the planet will want to know which answers are the most lucrative, and what content they’re made from. If publishers can prove they’re providing the secret sauce, they’ll have more leverage in demanding their slice.
Proving that value is not trivial. Successful bargaining oer this “content-to-click” effect starts with measuring it, and that’s going to take work. Understanding how content appears in and affects AI answers is brand-new science, but it is science: Experimentation, iteration, and leveraging different kinds of toolslike snippets, bot blocking, and dedicated GEO platformsare what’s needed.
Over the past 25 years, Silicon Valley slowly built tremendous platforms that ended up consuming the vast majority of advertising revenue, locking out the media in the process. And let’s be honest: There’s a good chance artificial intelligence will end up continuing that trend. But the irony of monetizing AI answers with advertising is that it may end up creating the best opportunity for publishers to define exactly how much value they bring to them.
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In 2023, Ken Lux found himself in an FBI briefing on child trafficking. The CEO of Luxe Aviation was there as the past commander of the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office’s Air Squadron, a volunteer cadre of 50 general aviation pilots supporting police missions and community service. Lux recalls the FBI agent relaying the story of a since-jailed airline pilot who used his credentials to traffic children to clients in the Philippines with chilling negotiations.
I have a girl thats 12 years old for your client, the pilot said.
The clients response: No, we think we need an 8-year-old.
The group was horrified. I have two daughters, Lux says. We said, ‘Wait a minute, really? Where are these people?’ Until that time, I thought it only happened overseas. And they said, ‘No, it happens in every community in the United States.”
The agent showed them photos of girls crammed into squalid rooms, branded with clipped ears, tattoos, and burns, with life expectations averaging just seven years in such conditions.
A lot of times, its just kids that get mixed up with the wrong people, or somehow get tricked into it. And then they dont know how to get out, Lux says.
Lux and his colleagues would learn the extent of the crisisa $150 billion global criminal enterprise whose size trails only that of illegal drugs. Human trafficking involves more than 27 million victims worldwidewho are forced into marriages, slave labor, military service, organ sales, and sexual exploitation. That includes some 200,000 victims domestically, prompting January to be designated as National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
Flying rescue missions
The briefing so rattled the squadron pilots that they began volunteering for police rescue missions, focusing on victims of sex trafficking. Their first trip shuttled a trafficked teen in Sacramento back home to Oregon. Then came more requests from surrounding counties and district attorneys needing to ferry the rare survivor brave enough to testify against her captor to court.
F2F Chief Pilot Andrew and K9 Beltane [Photo: Flights to Freedom]
Its really hard to pin down and prosecute these guys because they use burner phones and hide behind technology, Lux says. Its not like the drug business, where they find you with so much cocaine in your car.
As demand grew, Lux realized that they needed a more formalized organization. In April 2024, he founded Flights to Freedom (F2F), a nonprofit that matches 200 volunteer pilots nationwide with law enforcement, Child Protective Services, aftercare advocacy centers, and medical staff. We could probably use 200 [pilots] just in California because the problem is so pervasive, he says.
F2F board adviser Kevin LaRosa, the aerial coordinator for films such as Top Gun: Maverick and F1, considers the organization a lifeline to the most vulnerable. Aviation isnt just about speed and connectivityits about human impact, he says. When law enforcement rescues a child from exploitation, swift and secure transport can literally be the first step toward healing and safety.
F2F has organized just over two dozen flights to transport survivors ages 12 to 24 across 11 states. But it can accept only half of its monthly requests due to time constraints or a lack of planes. Because law enforcement cant reserve rescuers, F2F has only a 24- to 48-hour window to organize flights.
If I cant find a pilot available, we have to turn [down requests], Lux says. Its heartbreaking.
[Photo: Suzette Allen]
The nonprofit operates on a $60,000 budget, which covers insurance and an office at McClellan Airport in Sacramento. It is funded by individual donations and an annual fundraiser at the Aerospace Museum of California, where Lux was a past president. Except for a few regional jets, most of its pilots fly smaller airplanes that hold four to six people. (Luxs ride is a Beechcraft 58 Baron, a six-seater twin-engine plane.) On rare occasions, F2F has chartered flights when it hasnt found a pilot. The problem is, we dont have a lot of money, he adds.
[Photo: Suzette Allen]
Luxs focus for this year is recruiting more pilots (who can apply here), partnering with larger charter companies, and increasing awareness of F2F and similar services like Freedom Aviation Network and Wings of the Way. Hes already mapped out a $750,000 to $1 million plan to eventually expand F2F’s operations. Weve proven it works; now its time to push it to the next level, he says.
The first steps in healing
Every F2F flight includes a chaperoneusually a deputy sheriff, a Child Protective Services advocate, or a licensed therapistwho accompanies the survivors and evaluates both their state of mind and ability to fly by means of a customized psychiatric and medical questionnaire. The chaperone also serves as a buffer between the pilots, who are often male, and the very traumatized survivors.
Theyre often on drugs. Theyve been brainwashed. Theyve been abused up to 20 times per day, Lux says. We dont want someone to have a really bad experience on an airplane with a strange pilot and a strange plane going to different places. We follow a sterile cockpit policytypically, the pilot doesnt know who the deputies or survivors are. Its all confidential. Its all safe.
Victims, sometimes rescued in the middle of the night or in sting operations, are given backpacks with a blanket, a change of clothes, hygiene products, and a blue teddy bear. Theyre walked down a red carpet to the plane entrance and treated to a private jet experienceoften their first time on an airplane.
I feel like we really are one of the first steps in healing, Lux says. We hear back from some of the survivors through the agencies, and theyre just, like, ‘We are so grateful to Flights to Freedom, because it was the first time in my life anyone ever paid attention to me.’
Think of your creativity like a high-performance garden: If you focus only on the visible harvest (outputs) and never allow the soil to lie fallow (liminal space) or the bees to roam freely (play), the ground eventually becomes depleted. Boredom is the signal that the soil needs replenishing, ensuring that your next season of work is a flourish rather than a struggle.
In our current “busyness addiction,” we have come to glorify the hustle, over-indexing on output while neglecting the very well-being that fuels it. We treat leisure and rest like guilty pleasures rather than sacred pauses. Yet the truth of the Imagination Era is this: Our best work often happens when we are not visibly working. To flourish in a world of ubiquitous technology and unprecedented burnout, we must stop grinding and start cultivating what I call the “sexy bits” of productivity: boredom, play, and the magical in-between of liminal space.
Boredom: An Invitation to Create
We often reprimand ourselves for feeling bored, yet boredom is not a behavior to repress, its an invitation. It serves as a neurological cue to find new sources of stimulation. When we allow ourselves to be bored rather than reach for a digital distraction, we activate the brain’s default mode network (DMN), the “meaning-making” part of the brain that connects dots, finds patterns, and synthesizes information when we are not laser-focused on external tasks. It acts like a “washing machine” for our ideas, taking deeply felt information and making sense of it.
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By viewing boredom as a trigger for curiosity, we move away from a mechanical “1 + 1 = 2” productivity mindset toward one of cultivation, where we value what is evolving in the dormant, invisible realm.
Consider the following sobering insights from neuroscience and workplace research.
Mind-wandering is your competitive advantage. While we spend 47% of our waking hours thinking about something other than what we are currently doing, mind-wandering isn’t a distraction. It’s a survival mechanism that, when channeled, aids in aha moments for problem-solving. Daydreaming is scientifically linked to an increase in alpha waves in the brain’s frontal cortex, a pattern directly associated with enhanced divergent thinking and creativity.
Yet we’re suppressing it relentlessly. Here’s where it gets urgent: According to a November 2023 Linearity blog post, 80% of people believe that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth. Yet 75% of respondents in a Thrive My Way study reported being pressured to be “productive” (output-oriented) rather than creative at work. We’re systematically shutting down the very neural pathways that drive innovation.
Heres something you could do to carve out time for creativity at work: Institute “thinking hours” in your calendar, protected time (even just 30 minutes daily) where team members are encouraged to step away from their screens with no agenda. A 2021 study by Tork found that 9 out of 10 employees reported being more likely to stay at a company where management encouraged taking breaks. That’s not wellness theater; that’s a retention strategy with a 90% success rate.
So position this carved-out time explicitly as creative work, not procrastination. Measure the impact on idea generation in your next sprint or project cycle.
The Power of Play and Meta-Cognition
To navigate today’s complex systems, we must reintroduce play, which toy designer Brendan Boyle defines simply as “engagement.” The opposite of play isn’t work; the opposite of play is boredom. Integrating play at work, whether through prototyping rough draft mock-ups or gamifying meetings, boosts morale and stimulates critical executive leadership skills like empathy, negotiation, and the ability to improvise.
This playful mindset is enhanced by meta-cognition: the practice of thinking about one’s own thinking. By engaging in what I call “backcasting” (reflecting on past experiences to make sense of skills acquired) we build an “inventory of courage.” This self-inquiry allows us to recognize that our pains plus our gains equal our assets, providing the firm foundation needed to leap into the unknown.
The data on this is striking, and it challenges everything we think we know about efficiency.
That same research by Thrive My Way showed that creativity training delivers a 350% return on engagement. Groups trained in creativity tools and principles generated 350% as many ideasand those ideas were 415% more originalthan those from untrained groups. This isn’t a soft-skill metric. This is innovation measured in the ideas that move your business forward.
But we’re facing an engagement crisis. As of 2024, only 20% of employees are engaged, marking the lowest level of employee engagement ever recorded. We’re grinding harder while our teams check out. The correlation is clear: We’ve optimized engagement out of work entirely.
You can avert an engagement crisis at your own company by launching a “play audit” in your next strategy session. Identify two nonnegotiable meetings per month that will be redesigned around play. Those could be improv exercises, Lego Serious Play, or physical problem-solving. Track engagement scores and idea quality before and after. You’ll likely find that the most serious strategic challenges get solved when your team stops taking them so seriously.
Engaging the Liminal Space Amid Distraction
We live in an age of “stolen focus, where the average knowledge worker now switches tasks every 47 seconds. The shift is staggering: In 2004, the average knowledge worker switched tasks every three minutes. That’s a 73% compression of attention span in less than two decades.
Research from distraction expert Gloria Mark indicates that we spend approximately 47% of our waking hours tinking about what isn’t currently happening, a type of mind-wandering often linked to unhappiness. This constant task-switching drains cognitive resources and spikes cortisol levels, creating a neurological state designed for crisis response, not creativity.
The antidote is to intentionally engage in liminal spacethat transitional “betwixt and between” phase where growth happens under the surface. Liminality can be physical, like a commute, or metaphorical, like the fallow time between project cycles. Instead of filling every gap with a screen, we should embrace restorative ambiguity, where we feel expectant and at peace in the not knowing.
The financial toll of ignoring this is substantial, and something we all need to hear.
Burnout is an economic crisis masquerading as a personal problem. Workplace stress is not just a personal issue but a massive economic one, costing U.S. industries more than $300 billion annually in absenteeism, turnover, and diminished productivity. Some 71% of knowledge workers reported experiencing burnout at least once in 2020, with burned-out employees taking 60% more sick days and being 2.6 times more likely to seek a different job.
Many of us are performing productivity instead of creating it. The pressure to appear busy is pervasive, with 83% of full-time U.S. workers admitting to engaging in “performative work behaviors” (productivity theater) in the past year. Your teams aren’t actually more productive, they’re just better at looking busy while running on fumes.
Whether it’s a two-minute daydream break or a weeklong sabbatical, these pauses allow us to unburden the cognitive load on our neocortex. By valuing the dormant times as much as the growth spurts, we transform our work from a series of tasks into a progression of cultivated learning experiences. In this new operating system, rest is not a soft perk, its a fundamental human right and a critical tool for sustainable, innovative leadership.
Try mapping your organization’s task-switching velocity. How often are meetings scheduled back-to-back? How many channels are teams expected to monitor? Implement “no-meeting blocks, similar to what Zapier did when it instituted a get stuff done week. These could be two-hour windows weekly where no meetings are scheduled. Explicitly frame these as liminal space where people can complete deep work or simply think. Monitor retention and productivity metrics over a quarter. You’ll likely see both move upward.
The Bottom Line
We stand at a crossroads. We can continue grinding our teams into burnout while generating incrementally better ideas, or we can cultivate organizations that honor boredom, play, and strategic pause as the foundations of sustainable innovation. The choice sounds simple until you realize it requires us to fundamentally redefine what “productivity” means.
The organizations that will outthink their competition in the next five years won’t be the ones that eliminated downtime. They’ll be the ones brave enough to design it in. They’ll be the leaders who understand that creativity isn’t a luxury, it’s infrastructure. And they’ll be the companies that attract and retain the best talent because they respect something far more valuable than productivity theater: the human capacity to flourish.
Your move.
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Henry Ford famously noted, Whether you think you can do it or not, you are usually right. His point was that beliefs, especially about our talents, performance, and even luck, can be self-fulfilling. Irrespective of whether they are right or wrong, they will become true by influencing objective success outcomes.
Ford was hardly alone. Along the same lines, decades of psychological research show that beliefs matter, often profoundly so. Perhaps the most influential work comes from Albert Banduras theory of self-efficacy, defined as peoples beliefs in their capability to organize and execute the actions required to manage prospective situations. Across hundreds of studies, higher self-efficacy has been linked to greater motivation, resilience, learning, and performance. People who believe they can improve are more likely to set challenging goals, invest effort, persist in the face of difficulty, and recover from failure.
Closely related ideas emerged from attribution theory and expectancy value models, which showed that individuals who attribute success to effort rather than fixed ability, and who believe their actions will make a difference, tend to perform better in school and at work. The most popular variant of these, at least in the world of HR and management, has been Carol Dwecks research on growth versus fixed mindsets, which popularized the idea that believing that abilities can be developed encourages learning-oriented behavior, greater perseverance, and better responses to feedback.
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Taken together, this body of research persuaded a large number of people of the importance of mindset, implying a counterintuitive causal chain whereby beliefs shape performancerather than the other way around. Specifically, the story goes, irrespective of how rational our thoughts are, they will likely shape attention, effort, emotional reactions, and behavior, which in turn impacts tangible results and outcomes.
A mental software update
Suitably, much of the self-help industry has run with this idea at full speed. Bookstores, podcasts, LinkedIn feeds, and corporate off-sites are now saturated with advice urging us to reframe, manifest, believe harder, and upgrade our mindset. According to this logic, success is largely a mental software update away. Change your thoughts, and the universe will follow!
This is where things start to get a little silly. Mindset does not suspend physics, probability, or competence. It still matters whether you can actually cross the road without getting hit by a bus. And even if you firmly believe you are Serena Williams on the tennis court, lacking the ability to play tennis means you may be the only person on earth who shares that belief. Confidence does not magically produce a serve, a backhand, or a Grand Slam title.
Motivational cosplay
At its most extreme, mindset culture drifts into motivational cosplay: people repeating affirmations in the mirror while ignoring the inconvenient details of skill, preparation, competition, and luck. Worse, it can quietly turn failure into a moral flaw. If you didnt succeed, you must not have believed enough, visualized hard enough, or optimized your morning routine sufficiently. Structural barriers, unequal opportunities, and plain bad luck are written out of the story.
The irony is that the science never claimed mindset was omnipotent. Beliefs help when they are tethered to reality. They amplify effort, persistence, and learning, but they cannot substitute for ability, practice, or opportunity. Positive thinking works best when paired with negative feedback, deliberate practice, and a sober assessment of constraints.
In short, mindset matters (a bit), but not in the magical way the self-help industry sells it. Thinking you can do something helps you try. It does not guarantee you will succeed. And no amount of positive thinking will turn wishful confidence into world-class talent.
Modest effects
Indeed, a closer look at the scientific evidence indicates that popular interpretations on the power of mindset and positive thinking have gone too far.
First, the effects of mindset are actually not that large. Meta-analyses show that growth mindset interventions produce small to moderate effects, particularly when compared with structural factors such as prior ability, socioeconomic status, quality of instruction, or access to opportunity. Put differently, believing you can improve is helpful, but it is no substitute for actually improving. Between thinking you are as good as Lionel Messi and being half as good as him, the latter is unequivocally preferableunless your goal is to impress people who dont understand soccer, in which case you can hope to deceive or fool them! Confidence without competence may feel empowering, but it rarely wins matches, promotions, or championships. (It does make for popular sitcom characters like Michael Scott or David Brent, though.)
Second, beliefs do not operate in a vacuum. Confidence helps most when it is paired with real skills, feedback, and environments that reward effort. The problem with overvaluing confidence or self-belief is that, roughly half the time, it is correlated with actual ability. When people are genuinely competent, their confidence is often earned, which is why Muhammad Ali could plausibly claim that it isnt bragging if you can back it up. In those cases, belief is less a psychological trick than a reasonably accurate signal of underlying skill.
The trouble starts when confidence drifts away from competence. Underconfidence, while uncomfortable, can be oddly functional: It pushes people to prepare more, seek feedback, and close gaps they suspect (or know) they have. Accurate confidence, by contrast, reflects self-awarenssa realistic calibration between what one can do and what the situation demands. Delusional confidence is different altogether. It may help people impress, persuade, or temporarily fool others, but this is usually a short-lived strategy unless everyone else is equally deluded. When confidence consistently outruns competence, the cost is eventually paid, either by the individual when reality catches up or by everyone else who has to deal with the consequences.
Third, an excessive focus on mindset risks slipping into a form of psychological moralizing, where success is credited to the right attitude and failure is blamed on the individuals thinking rather than on constraints, inequality, or bad luck. This becomes especially problematic when people are encouraged to believe not only that they live in a meritocracy, but also that their outcomes hinge primarily on how strongly they believe in themselves. In such a world, effort and optimism are not just virtues but moral obligations, and when success does not materialize, the only plausible culprit left is the self.
The result is a quiet but corrosive form of self-blame. If belief is supposed to be the main lever of success, then failing to succeed feels like a personal deficiency of character, motivation, or mental toughness. Structural barriers fade into the background, while disappointment is internalized as guilt. Ironically, this narrative can be demotivating, not empowering.
A better way
A more helpful alternative would be to focus less on upgrading peoples beliefs and more on developing their actual skills and competence. This remains valuable even when individuals start out with low confidence in their abilities, which may simply reflect an accurate awareness of the gap between their current and ideal selves. Closing that gap through practice, feedback, and learning does more for long-term performance and well-being than insisting people feel confident before they have much to be confident about.
Needless to say, there is also evidence that positive beliefs can backfire when they become detached from reality. Inflated self-beliefs are linked to poor calibration, overconfidence, and reckless decision-making. In organizational settings, confidence without competence can be costly, especially when it crowds out learning, dissent, or accurate self-assessment.
In some cases, acknowledging that you are simply not very good at something is not an act of pessimism but of strategic realism. Persisting in a poorly matched role or career path on the basis of false hope can be actively harmful. Psychologists refer to this as false positive self-beliefs or miscalibrated optimism (which appear to be the norm), where individuals overestimate their likelihood of success and continue investing in goals that are unlikely to pay off. By contrast, recognizing limits early allows people to redirect their effort toward domains where their abilities, interests, and opportunities are better aligned.
There is also a social cost to miscalibration. If others realize you are less capable than you believe yourself to be, the reputational penalty is typically higher than if you had reached that conclusion first. Self-awareness signals judgment and maturity; obliviousness signals risk. In practice, what matters most is not how good you think you are, but how good others think you are, because it is other people who allocate opportunities, responsibilities, promotions, and trust.
Ironically, some of the best performers are those who initially underestimate themselves. Mild underconfidence can motivate preparation, learning, and skill acquisition, leading to steady improvement and positive surprises. Conversely, people who overestimate their abilities often stagnate, mistaking confidence for progress and reassurance for feedback. Over time, belief divorced from performance does not just fail to help; it actively prevents development.
The science, then, supports a more nuanced conclusion. Mindset matters, but it is not magic. Beliefs are best understood as enablers rather than engines of success. They help people make use of their abilities and opportunities, but they cannot substitute for them.
And yet, we tend to praise self-belief far more enthusiastically than self-knowledge. Confidence is celebrated as a virtue; realism is often mistaken for negativity. But from the perspective of everyone else, self-knowledge is usually the more valuable trait. Most of us have worked with at least one person who is spectacularly pleased with themselves, modestly competent at best, and blissfully unaware of the gap between the two. Their confidence may be admirable in the abstract, but it is considerably less charming when they are making decisions, leading teams, or presenting their vision.
If we evaluated the world from other peoples point of view, we would quickly realize that it is not in anyones interest for the unjustifiably confident to succeed because of those very flaws. When people advance on the strength of misplaced self-belief rather than demonstrated competence, the costs are externalized: Colleagues pick up the slack, organizations absorb the damage, and reality eventually intervenes, often expensively.
A healthier mindset, then, is not blind optimism but informed confidence: knowing what you can do, what you cannot yet do, and where your effort will actually pay off. In short, self-belief may feel good, but self-knowledge gets things done.
Reality rewards competence, not confidence. The only role of belief is to signal whether you know the difference.
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If youre a millennial and youre going through your midlife crisis, this post is for you.
So begins a viral TikTok video posted last month by comedian Mike Mancusi. Many millennials are now in their forties, with the youngest about to turn 30, putting the generation at the beginning of the unofficial age bracket when midlife crises traditionally hit.
But Mancusi argues that the millennial version is a singular experience.
For past generations, a midlife crisis followed a familiar blueprint: graduate college, climb the career ladder, get married, have kids, thensomewhere between roughly 40 and 60confront mortality and blow it all up for a red sports car or a younger trophy partner.
That is not the case for millennials, many of whom missed those milestones due to economic and social upheaval during their formative years. In fact, according to a 2024 study from mental health platform Thriving Center of Psychology, 81% of millennials polled said they couldnt afford to have a midlife crisis.
Can you imagine having a midlife crisis while owning your home, easily paying all your bills, and saving for retirement? one user commented on Mancusis post. Like what?
Mancusi suggests theres another reason at play.
Other generations’ midlife crisis has been built off of looking forward, he says in the clip. Ours has been built off of looking back.
Where midlife crises were once triggered by a sense of fading youth, millennials are reckoning with something else entirely. We look back and go, Wait a minute, I was told to do all these things. I did them, and still I’m not happy, Mancusi explains. And that is a way different crisis.
The stability that previous generations found stifling rarely exists in the same way today. The social contract between employees and employers has fractured. Millennials who followed the prescribed path and climbed the ladder are now realizing that the stability and success they were promised is largely a pipe dream.
A majority of U.S. workers (60%) dont have a quality job that provides basic financial well-being, safety, and autonomy, among other things, according to Gallup research. These days, 71% of millennial employees are not engaged or are actively disengaged at work, according to a separate Gallup report, and about 66% of millennials report moderate or high levels of burnout, according to a recent Aflac report.
The problem for millennials is we listened, one commenter wrote.
As another put it: Our crisis isnt mid-life, its existential.
Mancusis recommendation for anyone who fears a midlife or existential crisis coming on: You have to find something else to do, he says. I don’t know what you’re into, but you need to find that thing and build it into every single day, because that is what’s going to allow you to move forward in a way that you feel in control of and that you feel passionate about.
In other words, instead of a sports car, get a hobby.
The “New Tab” page in Chrome is the digital equivalent of a blank stare. A white void. Nothing, and plenty of it.
Why are we settling for this? Your browsers start page is the most valuable real estate on your computer. Its the first thing you see!
Instead of looking at an empty space, you could be looking at a command center. Here are five Chrome extensions that turn that boring start screen into something actually useful.
Momentum
If you want your browser to feel less like a software application and more like a high-end wellness retreat, Momentum is the gold standard.
Every day, it greets you with a stunning, high-res landscape photo and a simple question about your main focus for the day.
Its minimalism that works, keeping a single to-do list and your primary goal front and center so you don’t forget what you actually sat down to do.
Bonjourr
If Momentum feels a bit too inspirational, Bonjourr is the lightweight, open-source alternative built for speed and clean lines.
Its a minimalists dream, featuring transparency, clean fonts, and zero bloat. You can even tweak the CSS if you’re willing to dig into the code a bit, but most people will just appreciate that it loads almost instantly and looks beautiful while offering enough flexibility to use whatever niche search engine theyre currently experimenting with.
Presentboard
Maybe you dont want a pretty picture; maybe you want data.
Presentboard is a hidden gem that treats your New Tab page like a literal dashboard, using a grid-based system where you can drop widgets for Google Calendar events, latest emails, stock tickers, and custom RSS feeds.
Its for the person who wants to see their entire digital life at a glance before they even type a single URL. You can resize and move boxes around until the layout is exactly how your brain likes it, turning your browser into a functional workstation rather than just a window to the web.
Dashy
For those who have 14 apps open just to manage their life, Dashy acts as a “mega-dashboard” that lets you pin functioning widgets directly to your start page.
Were talking full integrations where you can check your calendar, scroll a Reddit feed, and manage Todoist tasks without ever leaving the New Tab screen.
It even allows for custom profiles, so you can toggle between a “Work Mode” filled with Slack widgets and a “Weekend Mode” dominated by Spotify and news feeds. Its the closest you can get to turning Chrome into its own operating system.
This is for serious dashboard connoisseurs: The free version offers basic widgets and integration with popular websites, while the $5-per-month paid version offers unlimited widget access, a side panel, custom website embeds, and more.
Tabliss
If youre tired of extensions locking the best features behind a monthly subscription, Tabliss is the open-source hero you need.
Its completely free, respects your privacy, and offers a massive library of backgrounds from Unsplash and Giphy.
This one sits comfortably between beauty and simplicity, offering unique widgets like a “Work Hours” countdown or live sports scores. Its highly modular and even includes a binary clock for the truly dedicated geeks who find reading time normally to be far too easy.
Its 9:30 p.m. Snack time. A sacred fourth meal, when I pull out my handwash-only kobachi and drop in a small handful of Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds. Ive been eating them for more years than I care to admit, appreciating the mix of natural (high protein and fiber) almonds with a splash of addictive processing (mmm, hickory smoke flavor and maltodextrin) to keep them feeling dangerous.
Its the perfect portion of the perfect snack in the perfect bowl. Almost.
[Image: Blue Diamond]
The problem with Blue Diamond Smokehouse isnt the product. Its the packaging. Specifically, the Ziploc-esque “resealable zipper stops working, like clockwork, when Im about halfway through the bag. The plastic zip itself seems to hold too strongly, so that inevitably, theres a point when I open the bag, and the heat-sealed weld gives out. The zip stays zipped, but now its attached to only one side of the bag. ONE SIDE!!! A bag that now gapes open, possibly in shock from my own ineptitude in opening and closing a snack.
I know its not my fault. Its the damn dysfunctional bag. But like dropping a cheap glass, Im left with an unnecessary burden of guilt. Was it something I did, Blue Diamond?? I can change! Ill do better next time! (I never do.) WHY DOES NOTHING EVER GO RIGHT IN MY LIFE????!?? WHY DO I DRIVE ALL SOURCES OF MONOUNSATURATED FATS AWAY??!??!
From there on out, Im left with this domestic conundrum: Shove the almonds into another bag (feels wasteful, and the powder is gonna stick to everything)or curse . . . curl the bag up the best I can . . . and wedge it between two canned goods to keep it from springing open. Inevitably, I choose the latter. But more air gets in over the coming weeks. The smoky almonds grow stale.
This sounds dramatic. I am being dramatic! But also, cmon: 3 gallons of water go into each nut. That means my 25-ounce pack represents 2,100 gallons of water. And Blue Diamond cant even take the time to make sure that so much investment isnt leaking all over my pantry.
Resealable packs suck
To be fair, Blue Diamond is far from the only culprit when it comes to poorly built zips. Since the late 1980s, resealable bags have taken over supermarket shelves for products including nuts, pre-shredded cheese, and frozen nuggets. Into the 1990s, these technologies were largely perfected to replace boxed goods with soft packaging in pyramidic forms, creating bags with a wide bottom and thin top that stood up and stood out on the shelf.
Despite decades of manufacturing innovations, resealable packs can still be stupidly hard to cut open without hitting the zip. Bits of food can clog the seals. And, more and more, Im noticing how one side of the zip can inevitably fail, as with Blue Diamond, leaving the pack less than airtight.
But when they work, its the best UX that the American supermarket has to offer (dont get me started on self-checkout!), inevitably helping to keep food fresh and reduce food waste. As much as 40% of Americas food is thrown away each year. And resealable packs help reduce this numberall without introducing more packaging (looking at you, Ziploc!) to solve the problem.
So consider this an open call for Blue Diamond, and all those making suss resealable products, to rethink their packaging. We must have the technology to actually seal bags shut . . . again . . . and again.
Across Appalachia, rust-colored water seeps from abandoned coal mines, staining rocks orange and coating stream beds with metals. These acidic discharges, known as acid mine drainage, are among the regions most persistent environmental problems. They disrupt aquatic life, corrode pipes, and can contaminate drinking water for decades.
However, hidden in that orange drainage are valuable metals known as rare earth elements that are vital for many technologies the U.S. relies on, including smartphones, wind turbines, and military jets. In fact, studies have found that the concentrations of rare earths in acid mine waste can be comparable to the amount in ores mined to extract rare earths.
Scientists estimate that more than 13,700 miles of U.S. streams, predominantly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, are contaminated with acid mine discharge.
A closer look at acid mine drainage from abandoned mines in Pennsylvania from the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission
We and our colleagues at West Virginia University have been working on ways to turn the acid waste in those bright orange creeks into a reliable domestic source for rare earths while also cleaning the water.
Experiments show extraction can work. If states can also sort out who owns that mine waste, the environmental cost of mining might help power a clean energy future.
Rare earths face a supply chain risk
Rare earth elements are a group of 17 metals, also classified as critical minerals, that are considered vital to the nations economy or security.
Despite their name, rare earth elements are not all that rare. They occur in many places around the planet, but in small quantities mixed with other minerals, which makes them costly and complex to separate and refine.
China controls about 70% of global rare earth production and nearly all refining capacity. This near monopoly gives the Chinese government the power to influence prices, export policies, and access to rare earth elements. China has used that power in trade disputes as recently as 2025.
The United States, which currently imports about 80% of the rare earth elements it uses, sees Chinas control over these critical minerals as a risk and has made locating domestic sources a national priority.
Although the U.S. Geological Survey has been mapping potential locations for extracting rare earth elements, getting from exploration to production takes years. Thats why unconventional sources, like extracting rare earth elements from acid mine waste, are drawing interest.
Turning a mine waste problem into a solution
Acid mine drainage forms when sulfide minerals, such as pyrite, are exposed to air during mining. This creates sulfuric acid, which then dissolves heavy metals such as copper, lead, and mercury from the surrounding rock. The metals end up in groundwater and creeks, where iron in the mix gives the water an orange color.
Expensive treatment systems can neutralize the acid, with the dissolved metals settling into an orange sludge in treatment ponds.
For decades, that sludge was treated as hazardous waste and hauled to landfills. But scientists at West Virginia University and the National Energy Technology Laboratory have found that it contains concentrations of rare earth elements comparable to those found in mined ores. These elements are also easier to extract from acid mine waste because the acidic water has already released them from the surrounding rock.
Experiments have shown how the metals can be extracted: Researchers collected sludge, separated out rare earth elements using water-safe chemistry, and then returned the cleaner water to nearby streams.
It is like mining without digging, turning something harmful into a useful resource. If scaled up, this process could lower cleanup costs, create local jobs, and strengthen Americas supply of materials needed for renewable energy and high-tech manufacturing.
But theres a problem: Who owns the recovered minerals?
The ownership question
Traditional mining law covers minerals underground, not those extracted from water naturally running off abandoned mine sites.
Nonprofit watershed groups that treat mine waste to clean up the water often receive public funding meant solely for environmental cleanup. If these groups start selling recovered rare earth elements, they could generate revenue for more stream cleanup projects, but they might also risk violating grant terms or nonprofit rules.
To better understand the policy challenges, we surveyed mine water treatment operators across Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The majority of treatment systems were under landowner agreements in which the operators had no permanent property rights. Most operators said ownership uncertainty was one of the biggest barriers to investment in the recovery of rare earth elements, projects that can cost millions of dollars.
Not surprisingly, water treatent operators who owned the land where treatment was taking place were much more likely to be interested in rare earth element extraction.
West Virginia took steps in 2022 to boost rare earth recovery, innovation, and cleanup of acid mine drainage. A new law gives ownership of recovered rare earth elements to whoever extracts them. So far, the law has not been applied to large-scale projects.
Across the border, Pennsylvanias Environmental Good Samaritan Act protects volunteers who treat mine water from liability but says nothing about ownership.
This difference matters. Clear rules like West Virginias provide greater certainty, while the lack of guidance in Pennsylvania can leave companies and nonprofits hesitant about undertaking expensive recovery projects. Among the treatment operators we surveyed, interest in rare earth element extraction was twice as high in West Virginia than in Pennsylvania.
The economics of waste to value
Recovering rare earth elements from mine water wont replace conventional mining. The quantities available at drainage sites are far smaller than those produced by large mines, even though the concentration can be just as high, and the technology to extract them from mine waste is still developing.
Still, the use of mine waste offers a promising way to supplement the supply of rare earth elements with a domestic source and help offset environmental costs while cleaning up polluted streams.
Early studies suggest that recovering rare earth elements using technologies being developed today could be profitable, particularly when the projects also recover additional critical materials, such as cobalt and manganese, which are used in industrial processes and batteries. Extraction methods are improving, too, making the process safer, cleaner, and cheaper.
Government incentives, research funding, and public-private partnerships could speed this progress, much as subsidies support fossil fuel extraction and have helped solar and wind power scale up in providing electricity.
Treating acid mine drainage and extracting its valuable rare earth elements offers a way to transform pollution into prosperity. Creating policies that clarify ownership, investing in research, and supporting responsible recovery could ensure that Appalachian communities benefit from this new chapter, one in which cleanup and clean energy advance together.
Hélne Nguemgaing is an assistant clinical professor of critical resources and sustainability analytics at the University of Maryland.
Alan Collins is a professor of natural resource economics at West Virginia University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Below, Jay Belsky shares five key insights from his new book, The Nature of Nurture: Rethinking Why and How Childhood Adversity Shapes Development.
Belsky is emeritus professor of human development at the University of California, Davis.
Whats the big idea?
Seen through an evolutionary lens, early adversity can shape development in adaptive ways. And because children differ in their sensitivity to their environments, early experiences may matter a lot for some and much less for others.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Belsky himselfin the Next Big Idea app.
1. A radically transformed understanding of development
It is beyond dispute that the Hubble Telescope, launched in 1990 (to say nothing of the James Webb Space Telescope launched 11 years later), radically transformed our understanding of the universe. To virtually everyone involved in the life sciences, Charles Darwins theory of adaptation by natural selection in the mid-19th century and William Hamiltons insights on kin selection and inclusive fitness in the mid-20th century have functioned much like these recent telescopic wonders in understanding life on planet Earth.
This is true not simply with respect to human nature, as long highlighted by many evolutionary-minded scholars, but specifically with respect to why, how, and for whom early-life conditions shape, or fail to shape, child, adolescent, and even adult development.
2. Childhood adversity looks different when cast in evolutionary perspective
What stimulated the radical shift in my thinking some three decades ago was the realization that the prevailing, mainstream view of development I cut my teeth on reflected an idealized, romanticized view of the human condition: Good experiences foster well-being, whereas bad things lead to disorder, dysregulation, and dysfunction.
Putting on evolutionary lenses made me realize that because childhood adversityin the form, for example, of threat and deprivationwas not uncommon over the course of human history, the ways children develop in response to it likely evolved and reflect adaptation rather than problematic functioning, as so long presumed. Critically, adaptations evolve because they increase, directly or indirectly, the chances of an individual reproducing, that is, passing on genes to future generations, the ultimate goal of all living things.
Thirty years after first coming to view life on Earth through an evolutionary-developmental, or evo-devo, perspective, I find it astonishing that the discoveries this perspective led to remain extremely underappreciatedby developmental scholars, clinicians, parents, and policymakers alike. While genetics has been how nature has been conceptualized for decades in nature and nurture thinking and research, evolution itself has been more or less ignored, especially with regard to the effects of early life on later development.
3. Early-life adversity accelerates development
Early-life adversity should accelerate development, resulting in earlier pubertal maturation than would otherwise be expected. Because adversity can result not just in compromised functioning, but early death, accelerating sexual maturity, I theorized that adversity would have increased the chances of our ancestors successfully passing on genesdespite the fact that early puberty carries health and longevity risks. The perhaps sad truth is that evolution privileges reproduction more than health, wealth, and happiness, though these can serve as means to that end under some conditions.
4. Children differ in their susceptibility to environmental effects
The future is, and always has been, uncertain, making it somewhat unpredictable. This means that developing in a manner consistent with the nurture a child experiences, whether adverse or supportive, could undermine the passing on of genes if and when the future environment proves substantially different from the one the child was prepared for. This realization led me to predict that children would vary in their developmental plasticity, that is, susceptibility to environmental influenceswhat I labeled the differential-susceptibility hypothesis. Whereas some would be strongly shaped by their early-life conditionsfor better and for worseas those emphasizing nurture have long argued, others would be far less so, as those emphasizing genetic nature have long asserted.
By implication, then, those most vulnerable or susceptible to the negative effects of adversity would, at the same time, prove most susceptible to the beneficial effects of support and nurturance. Conversely, those who prove resilient in the face of adversity, so as not to succumb to its pernicious effects, would also prove less susceptible to the developmental benefits of support and nurturance.
Clearly, then, the benefits and costs of being more or less developmentally plastic depend on the quality of the development context to which the child is exposed early in life. Being resilient is a benefit, for example, in the face of adversity, but a cost in the face of support and nurturance.
5. Implications of evo-devo thinking
One implication of evolutionary thinking aligns with mainstream developmental thought: If we dont like the effects of adversity on development, given prevailing values, we can intervene to reduce these anticipated risks, and probably the earlier, the better. At the same time, we need to appreciate the second implication that even the most successful such efforts will fail to benefit, or benefit modestly, many childrenbecause they are less developmentally plastic. Factors that shape susceptibility to environmental influences include genetics, early temperament, and physiology.
The Nature of Nurture challenges long-standing ways of thinking about human development, the role of the environment, as well as genetics, while advancing a 21st-century way of thinking about why and how early life conditions doand do notshape later life by underscoring evolution and thus natural selection, adaptation, and reproduction.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea app.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
