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Less than three months ago, the world watched the Trump administration reduce the White Houses historic East Wing to a pile of rubble to begin construction on a massive new ballroom. But it looks like the dust from that demolition will have barely settled before Trump starts another project to turn the presidential residence into his own personal real estate development endeavor. This week, Trump and the head architect behind the ballroom construction, Shalom Baranes, revealed several heretofore unknown plans for the nations most symbolic building. They include multiple proposals that would add considerable architectural bulk to a White House thats already set to be burdened by a 90,000-square-foot East Wing (for context, thats nearly double the square footage of the White Houses main residence). East Wing demolition, November, 2025. [Photo: Andrew Leyden/Getty Images] Trumps ostentatious vision for the White House feels alarmingly similar to the ethos behind Americas suburban monstrosity, the McMansion: Maximizing for square footage by adding a hodge podge of extensions, additions, and flourishes, with no actual regard for architectural sensibility. Heres everything we know so far about his latest plans. A new “Upper West Wing” The most eyebrow-raising aspect of Trumps latest scheme is to construct what he calls an Upper West Wing: an entire additional level on top of the existing colonnade that connects the West Wing to the White House residence. In an interview with The New York Times on January 7, Trump said this concept was currently in design phases, and proposed that it could serve as first ladies offices for future first ladiesan ironic proposition, given that he just destroyed the East Wing, which historically served that very purpose. Baranes added a bit more context to this proposal at a public meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission on January 8. He told attendees that the West Wing addition will serve to restore a sense of symmetry to the White House after the East Wing renovation is complete by ensuring that both wings of the building stand at the same height. He did not provide any specific timetable for this new project. Many experts have pointed out that the 90,000-square-foot East Wing addition will dwarf the rest of the White House by comparisonin fact, that concern is reportedly one main reason that Trump cut ties with the ballrooms original architect, McCrery Architects, back in December. It seems unlikely that simply slapping more architectural mass onto the White House will offer an elegant solution to this problem. New details about the East Wing ballroom At the commission meeting, Baranes also offered a bit more insight into the future of the new East Wingan addition that Trump has repeatedly demanded be made both bigger and more costly, according to multiple reports. Architect Shalom Baranes shows elevation drawings for a new $400 million White House ballroom to members of the National Capital Planning Commission on January 08, 2026 in Washington, DC. [Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images] Baranes told commissioners that the entire East Wing project will encompass 90,000 total square feet, 22,000 of which will be taken up by the ballroom. The ballroom is set to feature towering, 40-foot ceilings, with enough seating to accommodate up to 1,000 seated guests. He added that it will be attached to the White Houses East Room via a two-story colonnade, hence the idea that an added story to the West Wings colonnade might help to even things out. In his interview with The New York Times, Trump also added a bit more color to his ballroom concept, explaining that he sees the space as a secure site to hold a future inauguration, complete with four to five inch thick bulletproof glass. Its being designed very much with the inauguration in mind, he said. Itll be able to hold six times what the Capitol can hold, and its all bulletproof glass, drone-proof roof, yeah, serious. The biggest drone could crash into ityoud hear a noise up there. It wouldnt be bad. Other plans Trumps apparent concern with the White Houses security from outside threats was echoed in his plans for Lafayette Park, located just north of the White House. He told The New York Times that he plans to tear up the park’s brick walkways and replace them with granite, in part due to fears that protestors could use the paths bricks as weapons. Unlike the ballroom, whose current estimated cost of $400 million is being bankrolled by a hefty list of corporate donors, Trump claimed the park renovation would be self-funded. Im spending my own money and Im going to redo it, he said of the project’s estimated $10 million price ag.
Category:
E-Commerce
Run a small business and you probably feel like you make dozens of decisions every day. Whether to cut a quality corner, or miss a ship date. Whether to respond to a customer complaint, or hope the problem goes away. Whether to address an employees behavior, or kick that can down the road. Then there are all the personal decisions. Whether to get up and going, or hit the snooze button. Whether to ditch the food you packed, or go out for lunch instead. Whether to keep grinding, or work out. None of those are actually decisions, though, since you already know you should do so. Nearly everything you decide already has an answer. Quality problem? Fix it. Customer complaint? Respond. Underperforming employee? Address the behavior now; a performance issue takes care of itself. The same is true for personal decisions. The nine minutes of sleep you get after hitting the snooze button isnt restorative sleep; youre better off setting your alarm for nine minutes later. (Or going to bed earlier.) The food you packed isor should bean integral part of your healthy lifestyle; going out for lunch when you didnt plan to is almost never better for you. Work out? Exercise can be your physical (and mental) competitive advantage. Thats the beauty of processes and routines. Rules arent restrictive. Rules are liberating, because rules free you up from having to make decisions. Over time, those actions become habits. Then you definitely dont need to make a decision, because habits are effortless. (In both good and bad ways, obviously.) Instead of wasting mental energy and willpower on choosing, all you have to do is act. As Jeff Bezos says, you dont get paid to make thousands of decisions every day. You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. As Bezos wrote in Fast Company: You need to be thinking two or three years in advance, and if you are, then why do I need to make a hundred decisions today? If I make three good decisions a day, thats enough, and they should just be as high quality as I can make them. Warren Buffett says hes good if he makes three good decisions a year, and I really believe that. Clearly, theres a huge difference between making three good decisions per day, and three good decisions per year. Yet that difference is also easy to explain. Launching a startup, like starting anything from a relatively blank slate, requires making seemingly countless decisions. Infrastructure, branding, pricing strategies, marketing strategies . . . everything is up in the air. Its impossible to work in the future when you havent figured out the present. But once youve made a decision, you no longer have to decide. Barring evidence that decision was wrong and needs to be revisited, all you have to do is act. With time, the number of decisions you need to make every day should rapidly decline. Which means you can focus all that mental energy on making strategic rather than tactical decisions. You can focus on making decisions that set the course for the next months, or even years. To launch a new product line, or not. To open a new location, or not. To take your lifehealth, education, relationships, etc.in new directions, or not. Making fewer decisions (better yet, constantly revisiting fewer decisions) frees you up to think about the things that will make the biggest difference in your professional and personal life. Think of it that way, and you really dont need to make more than three good decisions a year. Especially if those decisions help you become the person you want to be, and to build the life you really want to live. Jeff Haden 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.
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E-Commerce
Barely 10 days into the new year, it already feels like you cant look away from the news. In the last week alone, the U.S. military captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and took over operations of the country; President Trump withdrew the U.S. from dozens of international organizations, including a major climate treaty; and an ICE agent fatally shot a Minneapolis resident, sparking outrage and widespread protests. If it seems impossible to focus on workor anything else, for that matteramid all this troubling news, youre not alone. Plenty of research in recent years has shown that Americans are overwhelmed by the state of politics and feel a heightened sense of anxiety over the news cycle. Theres also clear evidence that doomscrolling and constantly absorbing negative media can interfere with our physical and mental health. It might feel like theres no reprieve from the endless onslaught of news, and the idea of staying productive seems almost quaint when each day has something new in store. But there are, in fact, some things you can do to help ground yourselfand get through the workday without being consumed by the news cycle. Create some guardrails Our media consumption habits are unhealthy, and not only because of the obvious effects on our productivity. Engaging with the news cycle takes a toll on our well-beingand from an evolutionary perspective, our brains are wired to pay closer attention to negative news. When we see something in the news that triggers our perception of danger, we have a physiological response in our bodies, says Emma McAdam, a marriage and family therapist who also shares mental health resources on YouTube. So in order to not be reactive, we have to be really intentional consumers of the news. And we have to ask ourselves: Am I consuming news for entertainment, or am I consuming news to inform action? If the news youre taking in is not actionable, McAdam says, it can just increase your stress levels or serve as a distraction. It’s easy to pretend that we’re doing some important job by reading the newsthat we’re being informed, she says. But realistically, we’re probably more emotionally driven to read the news. At the same time, its also not realistic for many people to entirely block out the newsespecially when it directly impacts their lives. McAdam argues you can, however, be more intentional about how you consume news to avoid simply consuming information that is not actually actionable. This can be as simple as turning off push notifications and carving out specific times of day to catch up on the news. Or you might remove certain apps from your phone so youre less inclined to check the news unless youre on your laptop. Our bodies respond very differently to acute stress than chronic stress, McAdam says. We’re actually very good at managing little bits of stress. A big stressor in a short dose gives your nervous system a chance to get activated and then to relax and restore your internal sense of safety. But when we consume the news throughout our entire day, then we have this low level of chronic stress. Step away from the devices There are, of course, jobs where you simply cant avoid the news, or maybe a push notification pops up when you pick up your phone for something work-related. In those moments, you may have an emotional response that makes it difficult to stay on task. We’re not able to focus and concentrate as well because our nervous system is activated, says psychologist Maggie Stoutenburg, who works with the telehealth provider NY Mental Health Center. We feel this distress, but then we also feel hopelessand people can feel kind of paralyzed by that. If you find yourself in that situation, it can be helpful to just step away from your desk. When youre activated and on edge, doing something that lights up your parasympathetic nervous system can help calm you down, Stoutenburg says. Deep breathing can be quite powerful, she says, or you might try going on a brief walk or listening to soothing music. Even a funny video can do the trick. When you need to get back on track after a distressing news alert, Stoutenburg recommends trying to work for just 1015 minute increments without letting your mind wander. Give yourself some compassion, she says. Validate your own feelings, and try to acknowledge it and then redirect it. Okay, there’s this stress here. Maybe there’s not a lot I can do about that in this moment, but what I can do is accomplish something in the next 10 or 15 minutes that will give me more of a sense of productivity and control. Focus on what you can control Embracing the things that are within your control can be a crucial tool for managing news-related anxiety. McAdam recommends an activity that can help you gain agency, by articulating exactly what is within your control and what is out of your hands. You take a piece of paper, you divide it in half, and on one side, you write things I can’t control, and on the other side you write, what I can control, she says. I can’t control what the President said today. But I can control whether I’m going to show up at a protest. I can control whether I love my kids. In other words, you do have a say in how you respond to depressing newsand McAdam points out that even anxiety can be a useful response at times, by nudging you to take action and relieve that feeling. Anxiety isn’t just something bad that happens to us, she says. Anxiety is actually supposed to ask the question: Am I in danger? Is there something I should do about it? When we ask that question, we can get more clarity and be like, well, I can’t change this. I’ll let it go . . . And if there is something actionable, that little spurt of anxiety can help us take that action. When theres so much happening in the world, it can be difficult to stay motivated. You may have a harder time finding purpose or meaning in your work, especially in the face of more serious concerns. It can be helpful, then, to reframe how you think about your job or other elements of your life and understand where you can actually have an impact. Most of the news we read is very far from us, and most of the good we can do is very close to us, McAdam says. Parenting matters. Being connected to our neighbors and being kind to our neighbors matters. Doing good in my sphere, doing good in my job, being kind to my coworkers, being really productive and solving [problems] at workthese are things that actually do make a difference and hopefully make the world a better, kinder, happier, safer place.
Category:
E-Commerce
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