The Best of Fast Company

Productivity expert Donna McGeorge outlines four strategies that will help your brain do more by working less.

Leading through crisis presents the biggest mental health challenge for organizational heads. Compassion, empathy, and clarity will be top priorities to stay resilient.

With 90% of companies embracing hybrid work according to a new McKinsey report, here’s how they’re solving its remaining technological and social challenges.

More or less by accident, I wound up with more than 25 years of email at my fingertips. Here’s why I’m glad I never deleted anything.

Success and happiness are built on a solid moral code that informs your business decisions and how you interact with others—your life operating system.

Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Laurene Powell Jobs are also donating huge amounts.

Gates says Jobs cast “spells” to keep Apple alive.

Self-promotion might not come naturally for some, but less outgoing people can use their natural strengths to create an authentic online presence.

Talent can only take you so far. The reason some people are high performers is because they’ve formed good habits.

«Success is often drawn from something you learned along the way. It may not have impact in the moment, but it may contribute to success later.»

Building a whole new economy will employ a lot of workers.

In Helsinki, Restaurant Nolla worked with suppliers to deliver food without packaging, serves a set menu so it doesn’t order too much food, and sends its customers home with house-made compost.

Where did we go wrong?

«UX processes in many organizations these days amount to little more than UX theater»

The Museum of Failure’s latest exhibition is an epic portrait of failures big and small—from the Ford Edsel, to CNN+.

Organizations that don’t actively support remote work are limiting their capacity to engage with top talent.

Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook remain overwhelmingly white and male. Here’s a look at their diversity numbers, visualized through their logos.

The explosive growth of their AI voice assistants has Google, Apple, and Amazon racing to put your entire smartphone in an earpiece.

Video games. Augmented reality. Plastic shoes. And headphones made of microorganisms.

Airbnb wants to get into the housing business in a big way.

Rent the Backyard will get a tiny house into your backyard in a matter of weeks—and hopes it can add some cheaper apartments in cities to help alleviate the housing crisis.

This temptation to multitask has only gotten worse in the work-from-home era. But there are ways to fight it.

You’re risking more than just wasted time. Overanalyzing can also hold you back from pursuing new opportunities.

«How many good opportunities have passed over because of analysis paralysis or decision fatigue?»

It will likely require shifting your mindset in a few key ways.

«Once you know your priorities, everything on your to-do list should serve them.»

These great apps will help you organize your digital life, avoid unwanted distractions, and more.

«As an answer to all the cruft that Google’s email service has built up over the past 17 years, Simplify Gmail is a revelation.»

Under Tim Cook’s leadership, Apple saw just how critical an issue user privacy would become. Now it’s at least as important a feature as shiny industrial design or a nice camera.

In this exclusive interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook, he explains the culture and approach that led to iPhone X, Air Pods, Apple Watch 3, and HomePod.

Effective remote work involves these five habits, which prevent feelings of burnout and isolation.

«Instead, have a reductive mindset, where it becomes second nature to get rid of unnecessary things. “Developing a reductive mindset means you adopt a habit—a reflex, tendency, effortless first inclination—to . . . eliminate, or cut the unnecessary,” says Funt. “We must dismantle the additive instincts most companies and professionals have developed.”»

Marketers are pulling back on influencer campaigns—and promoting user-generated content from ‘real’ people.

The COVID-19 pandemic abruptly changed how the world does business. Work shifted, where possible, into people’s homes and online in accordance with social distancing guidelines. As a result, businesses’ longstanding resistance to remote employees dissolved, and the lines between work and family life, long blurred, blended overnight. Even when life returns to some form of normal, some of these changes will stick, according to tech journalist Mark Sullivan's interviews with CEOs and business leaders from a cross-section of industries.

Before climbing the ladder to CEO, this ad exec had 19 different jobs at the same company.

Confidence is a trait you can get better at with practice.