American statesman and polymath Ben Franklins legacy includes inspirational quotes on frugality, honesty, and hard work. Hes less frequently thought of as an icon of successful aging. But as doctor and author Ezekiel Emanuel recently pointed out on Big Think, At a time when the average age at death was under 40, he lived to 84, fully mentally competent all the way to the end.
That makes the founding father a worthy source of advice on aging well. Whats the biggest lesson we can learn from him.
Unsurprisingly, given he lived at a time when dentures were made out of wood and surgery was done without anesthesia, Franklin cant teach us anything about the latest aging breakthroughs.
But he can remind us of a fundamental truth thats thoroughly backed up by modern science, but still frequently forgotten: Staying useful is as important to aging well as any fancy new drug, fitness routine, or diet plan.
Ben Franklins secret to healthy aging
Ben Franklin was 70 when he signed the Declaration of Independence, and he churned out inventions into his eighties. (Those include inventing bifocals to solve his own issues with failing eyesight). That might leave you with the impression that he was a work-until-you-drop kind of guy. But Emanuel points out thats not actually how Franklin understood his own life.
Franklin invented retirement for working-class people, Emanuel insists. He made enough as a printer that he could retire at 42, and he said, Im going to live a life of leisure.
That means everything that followed the ending of Franklins career as a printer, including much of his work helping to found the University of Pennsylvania and the United States, were technically retirement hobbies.
His golden years didnt look anything like the golf, pickleball, or Caribbean cruises many of us dream about today. But that, Emanuel stresses, is the central wellness lesson we take from Franklins long and exceptionally productive life.
Leisure, for Franklin, didnt mean going to the Jersey Shore. It meant that he didnt have to worry about business and making money. He could focus on doing good, and for him, doing good was science and social improvement activities, Emanuel says. Not contributing to society is not good for the soul. You have to be useful. You have to try to make the world a better place. Thats key to wellness, too.
What modern psychology says about purpose and aging
About 275 years ago, when Franklin stepped away from his first, moneymaking career, he understood that the key to aging well was to find purposeful ways to use his newfound leisure time. Thats a simple enough insight. But research suggests that even today a great many of us fail to remember it.
Research out of Insead, the European business school, shows that many successful entrepreneurs struggle after exiting their businesses with big paydays.
It is perfectly normal to discover that life post-financial freedom isnt as happy as one might have expected it to be, the researchers noted. The most common reason for these problems is a sense of aimlessness and boredom.
Studies of retired Japanese salarymen and personal commentary from many who have pursued the popular Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement point in the same direction. Many of us dream of wide open days after leaving the world of work. But when confronted with the reality of long stretches of unstructured time, unless people have many explicit plans to stay useful, they tend to spiral.
And not just emotionally. Neuroscience research has found that a sense of purpose helps delay dementia. Its absence, on the other hand, can speed cognitive decline. Meanwhile, an absolute mountain of studies testified that one of the best ways to look after your own wellness is to find ways to help others.
A Google founder and the Governator agree
It can be tempting to think of retirement in terms of numbers. If you have enough saved, your later years will be comfortable and stress free, and therefore healthy and happy, too. But even billionaires seem to flail in retirement unless they, like Ben Franklin, figure out how to continue to contribute to society.
Sergey Brin is worth a cool $200 billion or so. He unretired and went back to work at Google because, he says, I was just kind of stewing and . . . not being sharp. Bill Gates is another guy with no financial constraints, but he, too, has written about how post-work life presents a lot of time to fill and that people need a reason to get out of bed in the morning.
On the other hand, action star turned Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger credits his peace of mind at the age of 78 to a simple life motto: Stay busy. Be useful. Thats basically Ben Franklins whole approach to aging well boiled down to four snappy words.
Healthy aging wisdom thats stood the test of time
So if youre in the market for some good advice on how to stay mentally and physically health for as long as possible, you could look to wellness influencers and tech bros chasing immortality. But all their dubious routines probably wont buy you nearly as many healthy years as Ben Franklins straightforward 275-year-old wisdom.
If you want to age well, stay useful.
By Jessica Stillman, Contributor, Inc.com
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com.
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 fleeting nature of the Olympic Winter Games makes them all the more alluring. The scarcity is almost sacred. Competitors work their whole lifetimes for one shot at glory that takes place over a period of just a few weeks.
To celebrate every athletic achievement at the XXV Olympic Winter Games, the closing ceremony will take place Sunday, February 22. Heres everything you need to know including how to tune in.
Where will the Milano Cortina Olympic Closing Ceremony take place?
Just like William Shakespeare intended, its fair in Verona where we lay our scene. The Milano Cortina Closing Ceremony will be held at the Verona Arena, which many historians believe predates the Colosseum.
Unlike the opening ceremony, which took place in multiple venues, this is the sole location. Verona lies about halfway between Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the two cities where the majority of the competitions took place.
What is the theme of the Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony?
The theme of the closing ceremony is Beauty in Action.
While exact details of the two-and-a-half-hour event are always kept under wraps for the element of surprise, it is known that the event will celebrate the host country, Italy.
It will also convey climate changes impact on the games and the future challenges this brings. Elements such as music, dance, film, design, and technology will all be utilized to tell these stories and celebrate the games.
Who is performing at the Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony?
The first performer announced was ballet star Roberto Bolle. He is a principal dancer at La Scala Theatre Ballet and frequently performs as a guest artist around the world.
Joining him is singer-songwriter Achille Lauro. He made a name for himself in the hip-hop world but also excels in other genres of music like pop and rock.
Actress Benedetta Porcaroli will also take part in the closing ceremony. She is best known for her work as Chiara in the Netflix series Baby. Additionally, her film credits include Immaculate, The Leopard, and The Kidnapping of Arabella.
DJ Gabry Ponte is planning on dropping some sick beats. He gained prominence as a member of the group Eiffel 65. He even has his own record label, Dance and Love.
Who is hosting the 2030 Winter Olympics?
Another important part of the closing ceremony is handing over the flag to the next host.
The 2030 Winter Olympics will take place in France. The French Alps are already planning for another spectacular competition that will be here before we know it.
How can I stream or watch the closing ceremony?
The ceremony takes place on Sunday, February 22. If you want to catch the action in real time, turn on NBC or the streaming service Peacock at 2:30 p.m. ET.
If that time doesnt work with your schedule, there will be another chance to see the pageantry during prime-time, beginning at 9 p.m. ET.
You can watch NBC for free if you have an over-the-air antenna or a traditional cable subscription.
Peacock is a paid subscription service, but if it’s not part of your streaming arsenal, you can turn to a live-TV streaming service that carries NBC.
YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, or fuboTV carry NBC in most areas. Just make sure to double check before you sign up to account for regional differences.
AI is transforming how teams work. But its not just the tools that matter. Its what happens to thinking when those tools do the heavy lifting, and whether managers notice before the gap widens.
Across industries, theres a common pattern. AI-supported work looks polished. The reports are clean. The analyses are structured. But when someone asks the team to defend a decision, not summarize one, the room goes quiet. The output is there, but the reasoning isnt owned.
For David, the COO of a midsize financial services firm, the problem surfaced during quarterly planning. Multiple teams presented the same compelling statistic about regulatory timelines, one that turned out to be wrong. It had come from an AI-generated summary that blended outdated guidance with a recent policy draft. No one had checked it. No one had questioned it. It simply sounded right.
We werent lazy, David told us. We just didnt have a process that asked us to look twice.
Through our work advising teams navigating AI adoption, Jenny as an executive coach, learning and development designer, and Noam as an AI strategist, we have seen a clear distinction: there are teams where AI flattens performance, and teams where it deepens it. The difference isnt whether AI is allowed. Its whether judgment is designed back into the work.
In good news, teams can adopt practices to shift from producing answers to owning decisions. This new way of thinking doesnt slow things down. It moves performance to where it actually mattersand protects the judgment that no machine can replace in the process.
1. The Fact Audit: Question AIs Output
AI produces fluent language. Thats exactly what makes it dangerous. When output sounds authoritative, people stop checking it. It’s a pattern often called workslop: AI-generated output that looks polished but lacks the substance to hold up under scrutiny. In contrast, critical thinking strengthens when teams learn to treat AI as unverified input, not a final source.
David didnt punish the teams that got the statistic wrong. He redesigned the process. Before any strategic analysis could move forward, teams had to run a fact audit: identify AI-generated claims and validate each one against primary sources like regulatory filings, official announcements, or verified reports. The mandate wasnt about catching mistakes, but building a reflex.
Over six months, the quality of planning inputs improved significantly. Teams started flagging uncertainty on their own, before anyone asked.
The World Economic Forums 2025 Future of Jobs Report reinforces this: in high-stakes decisions, AI should augment, not replace, human judgment. Embedding that principle into daily work isnt optional. Its a competitive advantage.
Pro tip: Start with three. Dont overhaul the whole process at once. Ask each team member to flag three AI-generated claims in their next deliverable and trace each one to a source. Keep it lightweight; the habit matters more than the volume.
2. The Fit Audit: Demand Context-Specific Thinking
AI defaults to best practices. Thats by design. But generic advice rarely wins in a specific situation. The real test of critical thinking isnt whether an answer sounds smart, but whether it fits.
Rachel, a managing partner at a global consulting firm, noticed it immediately. Her teams were leaning on AI to draft client recommendations, and the output was consistently competent, but painfully interchangeable. Improve stakeholder communication. Build organizational resilience, she told us. It could have been written for anyone. It was written for no one.
She introduced a simple checkpoint. Before any recommendation could move forward, the team had to answer one question in writing: Why does this solution work here, and not at our last three clients? They had to map every suggestion explicitly to the clients constraints, the firms methodology, and the real stakeholder landscape.
The shift was immediate. Teams started discarding generic AI language and replacing it with reasoning that was theirs. Client presentations became sharper. Debates replaced consensus.
Gallups 2025 workplace data supports why this matters at scale. While nearly a quarter of employees now use AI weekly to consolidate information and generate ideas, effective use requires strategic integration, not just access. Managers are the ones who set that standard.
Pro tip: Make it verbal. While written fit audits are good, ask a team member to explain their recommendation aloud, in a five-minute stand-up or a quick team check-in. Misalignment disappears fast when people cannot hide behind polished text.
3. The Asset Audit: Make Human Contributions Visible
Heres what most managers miss: even when employees are thinking critically, that thinking is invisible. If its not surfaced, it doesnt get recognized, and it doesnt get developed.
Marcus, a VP of strategy at a technology company, started requiring a short decision log alongside every quarterly business review. Not a summary of what AI produced. A record of what the team decided to do with it.
The questions were simple: What assumptions did you challenge? What did you revise? What did you reject, and why? One regional manager used it to flag something the AI had missed entirely: the tension between short-term revenue targets and long-term customer retention. She rewrote the analysis framework to surface that trade-off. The review became a strategic conversation instead of a status update.
It changed what we looked for, Marcus said. We stopped evaluating the output. We started evaluating the judgment.
McKinseys research confirms the stakes: heavy users of AI report needing higher-level cognitive and decision-making skills more than technical ones. As AI handles routine work, the human contribution becomes the entire competitive edge. Making it visible isnt just good management. Its a strategy.
Pro tip: Keep the log short, at just three to five bullet points. What was the AI input? What did the team change? What was the final call and why? The goal isnt documentation for its own sake: its making thinking something the team can see, discuss, and learn from.
4. The Prompt Audit: Capture How the Team Thinks
Critical thinking deepens when people can trace their own reasoning: not just the final output, but the process that shaped it. Without it, every deliverable starts from scrach. With it, the team builds institutional knowledge.
Sarah, a partner at a professional services firm, started requiring a brief process outline before every client presentation. Not a recap of the finished product. A trail: which prompts were used, which sources were checked, where the framing shifted, and why.
After each presentation, team members wrote a short individual reflection: Where did my thinking change during this process? Over time, the artifacts became a shared learning resource. Teams could see which prompts produced shallow output, which revisions added real value, and how collaboration shaped the final judgment.
It turned experimentation into something reusable, Sarah told us. Before, every project felt like starting over. Now, we build on what we have already figured out.
The result wasnt just better deliverables. It was a team that got sharper and faster together.
Pro tip: Create a shared tracker. Keep it simple: a shared doc, a Notion page, or even a Slack channel. Log what prompt was used, what worked, what didnt, and what you would try next. No slides, no pressure. The goal is to normalize small bets and shared learning in real time.
Thinking Critically with AI
AI is only as powerful as the people who use it with intention. The best teams arent winning because they have the fastest tools. They are winning because they have built habits that keep judgment in the loop.
They question what sounds right. They demand context over consensus. They make their thinking visible, and they learn from it.
Managing critical thinking in the AI era doesnt require banning tools or lowering standards. It requires clarity about where thinking lives.
Drawing that line, between what AI should handle and what must stay human, is one of the defining responsibilities of leadership right now. AI changes how work gets done. Management shapes how people think while doing it.
Corporate leaders today are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Nobody can see events playing out in the streets in Minnesota and elsewhere and not be moved in some way. At the same time, they have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of their stakeholders, regardless of their personal feelings.
I know this dilemma because I experienced it myself. In 2004, I was managing Ukraines leading news organization during the Orange Revolution, the third in a series of nonviolent uprisings known as the color revolutions that overwhelmed autocrats in Serbia and then the Georgian Republic before arriving in Kyiv.
As I explained in my book, Cascades, these things follow a specific pattern of contagion, adoption, and defection driven by networks. Eventually, the nonlinear nature of network cascades overwhelms regimes and compels institutions to act. Now, that pattern is unfolding right here and, for corporate leaders, it is no longer something you can afford to ignore.
1. Contagion: How Movements Learn, Adapt, and Spread
2004 was an election year in Ukraine, so politics was in the air. We all saw the campaigns get underway, with ads hitting the air and rallies being held. But from my vantage point inside a news operation, I also began to hear about a youth group, called Pora, that was organizing students and activists against the regime.
But the true origins started even earlier, in a Belgrade café in 1998. It was there that a small group of five activists met and established the youth group Otpor. Their efforts got a boost from a little-known academic named Gene Sharp, who had developed nonviolent methods of overthrowing authoritarian regimes and established the Albert Einstein Institution to support activists around the world.
The Otpor activists would lead the overthrow of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milo¹eviæ. Shortly after, West Wing star Martin Sheen would narrate a hit documentary about the events, and activists from other Eastern European countries began reaching out to learn how the Serbians applied Sharps methods. In 2003, President Eduard Shevardnadze was brought down in Georgias Rose Revolution. In the spring of 2004, the Ukrainian Pora activists traveled to Serbia to receive training to lay the ground for the events I witnessed in the Orange Revolution.
We can see a similar process unfolding in Minnesota and beyond. When federal agents began to descend on the community, activist networks first established in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd were activated. They began to organize to protect their communities from ICE and CBP patrols, learning and honing their methods as they went.
Now, as other communities begin to prepare for ICE and CBP activity, activists around the country are watching and learning. Ordinary Americans are attending trainingonline and in personthat transmits what has been learned in Minnesota: how to organize, dispatch activists, and engage with federal officers on the ground.
2. Adoption: When Participation Becomes the Default
We are a product of our environments. Decades of studies indicate that we tend to conform to the opinions and behaviors of those around us, and this effect extends out to three degrees of relationships. So not only do our friends friends influence us deeply, but their friends toopeople who we dont even knowaffect what we think and do.
Yet the inverse is also true. The people around us are usually doing pretty ordinary things, like going to work, taking the kids to soccer practice, and cooking dinner. Most people who are not actively opposing agents of the state have little idea how to go about doing so. We are, for the most part, trapped in mundane, ordinary lives and resist changing our habits significantly, yet that can change quickly.
In a highly influential 1978 paper about resistance thresholds, sociologist Mark Granovetter showed how even small clusters of individuals, with low barriers to adoption, can influence those with greater resistance. Once these come on board, they begin to influence others as well. It is a pattern we see over and over again: small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose are what drive transformational change through network cascades.
We can see those same patterns unfolding in America today. Ordinary people, appalled by the actions of ICE and CBP patrols, have joined activists in opposing the raids. As they do, they tell their friends and neighbors, some of whom begin to join in. As they do, their actions influence others who are slightly more reticent and, as they join, momentum builds even more.
I experienced this directly during the Orange Revolution. In the spring of 2004, I was aware of the demonstrations, but not participating. As a foreigner, I wasnt sure it was my place. But then my wifes friends started going and invited my wife. Once she joined in, I began going too and others came with me. The numbers became overwhelming and the regime fell.
3. Defection: When Silence Stops Being Safe
At this point, many readers will begin to notice a problem. Didnt other movements, such as #Occupy and Black Lives Matter, follow these very same patterns and fail to achieve their objectives? The answer, of course, is an unqualified yes. The presence of a network cascade is necessary, but not sufficient, to bring change about. For that, you ned institutions.
Martin Luther King Jr. didnt just organize marches and boycotts. He used the power of mobilization to influence politicians like Lyndon Johnson. In much the same way, in Poland the Solidarity activists didnt just organize strikes. They actively engaged the Catholic Church. Early on during the color revolutions, activists learned that international institutions could be powerful allies and were able to successfully leverage that support.
This is, perhaps, the most striking vulnerability for the present administration. Early on, it targeted institutions, such as law firms and universities, but went about it in a very ham-handed way, and key targets successfully fought back. Others, such as Senators Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy, have voiced opposition to ICE and CBP tactics. Chris Madel, a Republican candidate for Minnesota governor, ended his campaign in protest.
Yet corporate leaders, despite widely reported misgivings, have been largely sitting it out, even as former CEOs like Reid Hoffman, Bill George and Robert Rubin have urged them to weigh in. Good corporate stewardship, however, requires more than just operating a business and managing a balance sheet. It requires being effective leaders of your corporate community.
Getting Ahead Of What Comes Next
I remember attending a group dinner in Kyiv in late 2007 and sitting across from an executive from Sony Ericsson, who confidently told me that the iPhone launch earlier that year hadnt yet affected his companys sales. Yet the same pattern of contagion, adoption and defection would soon kick in and Sony Ericsson would lose relevance and ultimately be absorbed, as the smartphone cascade reshaped the entire industry.
Once a cascade begins, it takes on a life of its own.
Corporate leaders in America today face a similar dilemma. Their first responsibility is to their stakeholders, whatever their own personal feelings. Yet among those millions taking to the streets are employees, customers, shareholders and their family members. Hoping you can stay on the fence is dangerously naive. It is only a matter of time before someone in your corporate community is affected by ICE and CBP violence: an arrest, getting roughed up, pepper-sprayedor worse.
The time to act is now. If Renee Good or Alex Pretti were one of your people or their children, what would you want to have in place for them and their families? What legal, medical, or psychological support are they and their coworkers going to need? You need to start preparing for that eventuality now.
In much the same way, you need to begin to audit your partners and suppliers. Make sure the people you do business with share your values and those of your stakeholders. If they are supporting or engaging in activities that could harm your corporate community, dont wait for an incident. Cut ties.
Most of all, you need to be explicit about your values and make sure you are living up to them. That doesnt mean taking a political position, but it does mean being clear where you stand. As someone who has had to rise to the challenge of running a business during a revolution, I can tell you from experience that someday you will want to look back on these times, reflect on what you said and did, and be proud of what you did.
Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it?
These concerns are understandable. But focusing so much on cheating misses the larger transformation already underway, one that extends far beyond student misconduct and even the classroom.
Universities are adopting AI across many areas of institutional life. Some uses are largely invisible, like systems that help allocate resources, flag at-risk students, optimize course scheduling, or automate routine administrative decisions. Other uses are more noticeable. Students use AI tools to summarize and study, instructors use them to build assignments and syllabuses, and researchers use them to write code, scan literature, and compress hours of tedious work into minutes.
People may use AI to cheat or skip out on work assignments. But the many uses of AI in higher education, and the changes they portend, beg a much deeper question: As machines become more capable of doing the labor of research and learning, what happens to higher education? What purpose does the university serve?
Over the past eight years, weve been studying the moral implications of pervasive engagement with AI as part of a joint research project between the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. In a recent white paper, we argue that as AI systems become more autonomous, the ethical stakes of AI use in higher ed rise, as do its potential consequences.
As these technologies become better at producing knowledge workdesigning classes, writing papers, suggesting experiments, and summarizing difficult textsthey dont just make universities more productive. They risk hollowing out the ecosystem of learning and mentorship upon which these institutions are built, and on which they depend.
Nonautonomous AI
Consider three kinds of AI systems and their respective impacts on university life:
AI-powered software is already being used throughout higher education in admissions review, purchasing, academic advising, and institutional risk assessment. These are considered nonautonomous systems because they automate tasks, but a person is in the loop and using these systems as tools.
These technologies can pose a risk to students privacy and data security. They also can be biased. And they often lack sufficient transparency to determine the sources of these problems. Who has access to student data? How are risk scores generated? How do we prevent systems from reproducing inequities or treating certain students as problems to be managed?
These questions are serious, but they are not conceptually new, at least within the field of computer science. Universities typically have compliance offices, institutional review boards, and governance mechanisms that are designed to help address or mitigate these risks, even if they sometimes fall short of these objectives.
Hybrid AI
Hybrid systems encompass a range of tools, including AI-assisted tutoring chatbots, personalized feedback tools, and automated writing support. They often rely on generative AI technologies, especially large language models. While human users set the overall goals, the intermediate steps the system takes to meet them are often not specified.
Hybrid systems are increasingly shaping day-to-day academic work. Students use them as writing companions, tutors, brainstorming partners, and on-demand explainers. Faculty use them to generate rubrics, draft lectures, and design syllabuses. Researchers use them to summarize papers, comment on drafts, design experiments, and generate code.
This is where the cheating conversation belongs. With students and faculty alike increasingly leaning on technology for help, it is reasonable to wonder what kinds of learning might get lost along the way. But hybrid systems also raise more complex ethical questions.
One has to do with transparency. AI chatbots offer natural-language interfaces that make it hard to tell when youre interacting with a human and when youre interacting with an automated agent. That can be alienating and distracting for those who interact with them. A student reviewing material for a test should be able to tell if they are talking with their teaching assistant or with a robot. A student reading feedback on a term paper needs to know whether it was written by their instructor. Anything less than complete transparency in such cases will be alienating to everyone involved and will shift the focus of academic interactions from learning to the means or the technology of learning. University of Pittsburgh researchers have shown that these dynamics bring forth feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and distrust for students. These are problematic outcomes.
A second ethical question relates to accountability and intellectual credit. If an instructor uses AI to draft an assignment and a student uses AI to draft a response, who is doing the evaluating, and what exactly is being evaluated? If feedback is partly machine-generated, who is responsible when it misleads, discourages, or embeds hidden assumptions? And when AI contributes substantially to research synthesis or writing, universities will need clearer norms around authorship and responsibilitynot only for students, but also for faculty.
Finally, there is the critical question of cognitive offloading. AI can reduce drudgery, and thats not inherently bad. But it can also shift users away from the parts of learning that build competence, such as generating ideas, struggling through confusion, revising a clumsy draft, and learning to spot ones own mistakes.
Autonomous agents
The most consequential changes may come with systems that look less like assistants and more like agents. While truly autonomous technologies remain aspirational, the dream of a researcher in a boxan agentic AI system that can performstudies on its ownis becoming increasingly realistic.
Agentic tools are anticipated to free up time for work that focuses on more human capacities like empathy and problem-solving. In teaching, this may mean that faculty may still teach in the headline sense, but more of the day-to-day labor of instruction can be handed off to systems optimized for efficiency and scale. Similarly, in research, the trajectory points toward systems that can increasingly automate the research cycle. In some domains, that already looks like robotic laboratories that run continuously, automate large portions of experimentation, and even select new tests based on prior results.
At first glance, this may sound like a welcome boost to productivity. But universities are not information factories; they are systems of practice. They rely on a pipeline of graduate students and early-career academics who learn to teach and research by participating in that same work. If autonomous agents absorb more of the routine responsibilities that historically served as on-ramps into academic life, the university may keep producing courses and publications while quietly thinning the opportunity structures that sustain expertise over time.
The same dynamic applies to undergraduates, albeit in a different register. When AI systems can supply explanations, drafts, solutions, and study plans on demand, the temptation is to offload the most challenging parts of learning. To the industry that is pushing AI into universities, it may seem as if this type of work is inefficient and that students will be better off letting a machine handle it. But it is the very nature of that struggle that builds durable understanding. Cognitive psychology has shown that students grow intellectually through doing the work of drafting, revising, failing, trying again, grappling with confusion, and revising weak arguments. This is the work of learning how to learn.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the greatest risk posed by automation in higher education is not simply the replacement of particular tasks by machines, but the erosion of the broader ecosystem of practice that has long sustained teaching, research, and learning.
An uncomfortable inflection point
So what purpose do universities serve in a world in which knowledge work is increasingly automated?
One possible answer treats the university primarily as an engine for producing credentials and knowledge. There, the core question is output: Are students graduating with degrees? Are papers and discoveries being generated? If autonomous systems can deliver those outputs more efficiently, then the institution has every reason to adopt them.
But another answer treats the university as something more than an output machine, acknowledging that the value of higher education lies partly in the ecosystem itself. This model assigns intrinsic value to the pipeline of opportunities through which novices become experts, the mentorship structures through which judgment and responsibility are cultivated, and the educational design that encourages productive struggle rather than optimizing it away. Here, what matters is not only whether knowledge and degrees are produced, but how they are produced and what kinds of people, capacities, and communities are formed in the process. In this version, the university is meant to serve as no less than an ecosystem that reliably forms human expertise and judgment.
In a world where knowledge work itself is increasingly automated, we think universities must ask what higher education owes its students, its early-career scholars, and the society it serves. The answers will determine not only how AI is adopted, but also what the modern university becomes.
Nir Eisikovits is a professor of philosophy and the director of the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston.
Jacob Burley is a junior research fellow at the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Ive been using ChatGPT and other AI tools recently for quite a few things. A few examples:
Working on strategy and operations for my latest business venture, Life Story Magic.
Planning how to get the most value out of the Epic ski pass I bought for the year, while balancing everything else.
Putting together a stretching and DIY physical therapy plan to get my shoulders feeling better during gym workouts.
Along the way, Ive done what I think a lot of AI power users eventually wind up doing: Ive gone into the personalization and settings and told the chatbot to be neutral, direct, and just-the-facts.
I dont want a chatbot that tells me That is a brilliant idea! every time I explore a tweak to my business strategy. Theyre not all brilliant, I assure you.
And I dont want a lecture about how if I truly have shoulder issues I should see a real physical therapist. Im an adult. Im not outsourcing my judgment to a robot.
Stop. I didnt ask you that
The result of all this is that Ive developed an alpha relationship with AI.
I tell it what to do. If it goes on too long, if it assumes I agree with its suggestions, or starts padding its answers with unnecessary niceties, I shut it down.
Stop. I didnt ask you that.
No. Wrong. Listen to what Im saying before replying.
All I need from you are the following three things. Nothing else.
As ChatGPT itself repeatedly reminds me, it has no feelings. HereI even asked it to confirm while writing this article:
I dont have feelings, and I cant be offended. You can be blunt, curt, or even rude to a chatbot and nothing is harmed.The awkwardness youre describing is entirely on the human side of the interaction.
All good, right? Until I caught myself dealing with customer service.
$800 worth of Warby Parker
Recently, I was returning most of a large Warby Parker orderprobably close to $600 out of $800 that Id spent on glasses, spread across multiple orders placed on different days last month.
I always try to remember that customer service workers are real people, often working on the opposite schedule so they can be available during American waking hours, dealing with one unhappy customer after another all day long.
I keep that image in mind, so I remember that whatever small problem Im having probably isnt a big deal.
I guess Im trying to be a decent human. I also avoid the remote possibility of becoming the star of some viral customer-service-gone-wrong video.
11 minutes of learning
But this call dragged on: 11 minutes in all. Writing that now, it doesnt seem super long, but at the time it felt like an eternity for something that should have been simple.
There was a noticeable delay on the line, and not the best connection, and the customer service rep interrupted me several times, assuming that he understood what I was asking and launching into long, off-topic explanations before I could finish.
Reflexively, I started talking to him the same way I talk to ChatGPT:
Stop. I didnt ask you that.
No. Listen to what Im saying before replying.
All I need from you are the following three things.
Entire life stories
To be fair, I caught myself pretty quickly. Also, I probably overcompensated for the rest of the call.
In real life, its almost a cliché among people who know me that I talk with everyone and often walk away knowing their entire life story, simply because I find almost everyone interesting.
My wife, sitting next to me, as I read this part aloud to her: Mmmm-hmmm.
But in that moment, I had slipped into the mode I use with machines: efficient, blunt, and completely unconcerned with the other sides experience.
Machines are not human; humans are
Ive stripped empathy out of my interactions with AI on purpose. I think that makes sense. I want speed and clarity, not emotional intelligence.
Also, Im uneasy with the idea of blurring the lines between humans and machines.
But without thinking, I carried that same way of communicating into a conversation with a real, live, fellow human being.
When you train yourself to communicate efficiently with something artificialsomething that never needs patience, kindness, or to be treated with dignity, its easy to forget that most of the world still does.
And frankly, so do you.
Bill Murphy Jr.
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister site, Inc.com.
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.
Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issueseverything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.
Heres a roundup of answers to three questions from readers.
1. A new employee missed the fourth day of work, saying something came up
I had a new employee start on a Tuesday. That Friday, I woke up to a text from my new hire from the night before, saying that she would not be in on Friday, that something had come up and she would see me on Monday.
This is an in-person job in a corporate environment. I fully respect a persons right to take a sick day and I feel nobody is obligated to share personal details, but I also dont feel like something came up quite cuts it, especially on what would be your fourth day on the job.
Im looking for some guidance on where to set my expectations (regardless of this person working out or not). Am I out of line to feel something came up is inadequate when calling out as a brand-new hire?
Green responds:
Youre not wrong! Something came up is strangely cavalier. Im sick or I have a family emergency (without giving details beyond that) would both be fine, but something came up sounds like it could be my sister called and I feel like talking to her or someone invited me to play tetherball. It also sounds like she doesnt think calling out on her fourth day of work is a big deal, when thats normally something people would really try to avoid unless they truly couldnt.
Something came up might be fine from a longer-time employee who had a track record of reliability (although it would still be kind of weird), but its pretty alarming from someone in their first week.
2. Scheduling a Zoom call to reject a job candidate
My friend has been applying for jobs and made it to the final round for one position. She didnt hear back on the timeline they had mentioned on the last interview, so she assumed they passed on her and moved on. But she got an email from them recently asking to schedule a Zoom the next day. Feels promising, right? Wrong. She hops on the Zoom (with video) and they immediately tell her, You are great, but we went with another candidate and they accepted. End of meeting.
Is it appropriate to schedule a Zoom call just to reject someone? I feel like thats really overkill and sort of the equivalent of asking someone to come into the office just to reject them. At the most, I felt like this could have been a quick phone call instead of going through the rigamarole of being on video. I also felt like scheduling the Zoom gave her the impression they would be making a formal offer, so it was doubly painful to get rejected in this manner because she got her hopes up.
Green responds:
Yes, this is not good! Im sure they didnt intend it to be awful for her, but this takes all the problems with phone call rejections (the person gets their hopes up, and then has to respond graciously on the spot to what might be crushing disappointment) and adds a horrible video twist (the person probably took time beforehand to ensure they looked professional, maybe put on makeup, all to get a rejection that could have been delivered over email).
When companies do this, they think theyre being courteous and respectful. She invested the time, the thinking goes, and we owe her the courtesy of a real conversation. Some candidates really do prefer rejections that way but so many people find it upsetting that its really better to stick to email. You can send a very gracious, personalized email rejection. You can even add a note that youd be happy to talk on the phone if the person would like feedback, if thats something youre willing to offer. But making someone get rejected face-to-face on video is not kind, no matter what the intentions.
3. How to tell my network about a job opening
My company is trying to overcome some issues weve had in the past with hiring gaps too many people promoted from within into roles that needed more experience. Ive been asked to reach out to people Ive worked with previously whom I would recommend in this role.
Its a public posting and Im happy to do that since so many people are un- or underemployed. But Im hung up on the awkwardness of it. Hi! We havent talked in literally five years, but I wondered if youd be interested in this job thats far below your skill set since its better than where you are now? Look at this posting, let me know if you or these other guys Im not in touch with but you are might be interested? Could you please suggest a better script for cold-calling a request to apply?
Green responds:
The easiest way to do it is to just say, Im trying to circulate the job posting to people who might be interested themselves or might know people who would be. (This is also the best way to do it when youre hoping the recipient themselves will apply, but you want plausible deniability with their manager that you didnt try to recruit them away, if there otherwise would be potentially awkward relationship ramifications.)
And as for not having talked in five years: It doesnt really matter! Professional relationships dont have the same rules as social relationships. In a professional context, its perfectly fine to contact someone you havent talked to in years because you need a reference, think they might be interested in a job, or so forth. Its not considered rude just because you havent stayed in touch in the interim.
Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org.
Alison Green
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister site, Inc.com.
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 highlight reel of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics was defined by extreme trickscorkscrews, twists, and flips performed by snowboarders and freestyle skiers.
These aerial feats are complex, but in many cases, they can be traced back to a simple tool: hours spent spinning and flopping into oversize plastic bags.
Over the last 20 years, a handful of manufacturerssuch as Bagjump, Progression Airbags, and BigAirBaghave perfected the art of making massive plastic landing pads, ideal for aspiring extreme sports athletes to push the boundaries of their skills and test out new tricks year-round. Beginning with the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, athletes like Shaun White, Kevin Pearce, Danny Davis, and Sage Kotsenburg began making extensive use of this kind of training, similar to the way gymnasts would use foam pits.
[Photo: Bagjump]
The extreme levels the sports are being performed at are much safer due to Bagjump training, says Martin Rasinger, a former pro snowboarder and the inventor of the device.
Sites that have these systems, relatively few and far between, have become destinations for advanced training. WyEast Mountain Academy, an extreme sports-focused secondary school in Sandy, Oregon, installed a $4 million bag on its slopes last year thats open year-round. The 80-by-200-foot airbag, contoured to the curve of the mountain and installed using snowcat vehicles, is the largest in North America, and something that is relatively rare in the U.S. Smaller versions can be found at the U.S. Ski & Snowboard headquarters in Park City, Utah, and temporarily on Californias Mammoth Mountain.
Mt. Hood, Oregon. [Photo: Bagjump]
Troy Podmilsak, a U.S. freestyle ski jump competitor who landed a “Triple 18” in Milan during competitionthree off-axis flips combined with five full rotationstrained on the WyEast bag before the Games.
Bagjump says there are around 20 locations around the world decked out with their landing pads, including their own Banger Park facility in Scharnitz, Austria.
As soon as those bags come out, youre working on doing doubles, says Elijah Teter, athletic director at WyEast and a former Olympic coach and professional snowboarder. Now youre seeing triples and even quads.
Mt. Hood, Oregon. [Photo: Bagjump]
Designing a stronger airbag
The history of these bags is a Venn diagram of entrepreneurship, extreme sports and, in some cases, stunt crews. Before they became a key part of training, learning advanced tricks either meant experimenting during the relatively rare days with extensive fresh powderwhich acted as a natural shock absorber for adventurous athletesor putting up with the pain of repeated hard landings. And after a few jumps into the powder, the impressions left by skiers and snowboarders meant that trainees needed to find a new spot.
Rasinger tells Fast Company he got the idea for an oversize training bag after watching the airbag stunt fall during the ending of the 1997 movie The Game, starring Michael Douglas, too many times. He was so inspired, in fact, that he flew to Los Angeles, tracked down the stunt crew, and performed some 30-foot drop tests with a snowboard. He realized that to work for extreme athletes, such a bag would need to be larger, softer, and much stronger to hold up to metal snowboard edges.
Rasinger went home to Austria and built a test bag in Innsbruck in 2007; a clip of an early jump was posted to YouTube. Eventually, his company, Bagjump, would settle on a formula: a fiberglass structure with a specific PVC coating to withstand the force and cuts from boards and boarders. The company has since sold a few thousand such bags, mostly to trampoline parks or gymnastics facilities.
[Photo: Bagjump]
Users can get the bags in a variety of sizes, for sports including BMX biking and even climbing. Olympic training bags, specially designed for different snowboarding disciplines such as halfpipe and slopestyle, range from 50-by-50 feet to 120-by-230 feet. The stiffness of the bags can be adjusted to provide more give when learning a trick, and also to feel more like snow to mimic a real landing.
It’s softer and therefore also safer,because it is impact-absorbing and it does not bounce you away like netting or car tires or foam, Rasinger told ESPN in 2012. You still get a bounce from it. It’s better than hitting a concrete wallthat’s for sure.
[Photo: Bagjump]
These bags and ramp systems also have whats called a dry slope in-run, which simulates the feelingand gripof snow, giving those attempting a trick a much more realistic feeling during a practice session. That ability to train safely and consistently has made them a fixture of elite training, and one of many things pushing performances forward at events such as the Olympics.
Bagjump has had a significant impact on not just the safety aspect, but also the way the sports have progressed over the years, Rasinger says.
I called Burger King president Tom Curtis a few times this week, but it went straight to voicemail. You can try too, his number is (305) 874-0520.
Okay, so maybe its not his personal cell number, but Curtis is still taking calls and texts from anyone and everyone. On February 17, Burger King announced he would be spending at least four hours a day over the next two weeksincluding nights and weekendstaking unfiltered calls and texts from customers, hoping to hear their input about all things Burger King. Want a new Whopper variation? Call him. Have a complaint about your local BK? Call him. Come up with a fun marketing idea? Call him. Want to propose marriage? Maybe think twice.
Ive had a couple of those, but Im married, Curtis tells me after I eventually tracked him down.
View this post on Instagram
It all feels like an elaborate bit, doesnt it? This is the same brand that offered free Whoppers to clowns, hacked Google Home devices, offeed a free hamburger to anyone who deleted 10 Facebook friends, and tried to usurp the Belgian monarchy.
What corporate executive speaks outside carefully curated remarks, PR photo ops, and earnings calls, let alone mix with the hoi polloi?
The biggest challenge here for Curtis isnt answering all those phone calls, but convincing everyone that its a genuine effort to permanently embed customer opinions into the companys culture and operations, and not just another stunt for the marketing hype cycle.
People need to see action, says Curtis.
These first two weeks of Curtis taking calls is the latest move in the companys broader Reclaim the Flame project, a $400 million multi-year turnaround plan launched in 2022 for the then-struggling brand. That year was marked with restaurant closures and declining market share as Wendys overtook it as Americas no. 2 burger chain. Now, its heading in the right direction. Fourth quarter revenues were up 2.1% to $383 million. (Meanwhile, Wendy’s? Don’t ask.)
This is a compelling example of what too few brandsand company executivestake to heart. Despite all the technology, social media, and always-on mentality, so many companies still find themselves out of touch with what their brand is in culture and to the people they are serving.
Witness the seven circles of Super Bowl hell Ring found itself in after what it saw as an ode to lost dogs, turned into public fury around mass surveillance. On the other hand, Lays is hyping a recent price drop across PepsiCo Foods brands on social and giving credit to customer feedback.
View this post on Instagram
Have it your way
In 1974, Burger Kings slogan was Have it your way, putting a focus on customer menu customization. So the idea of rooting the brand in customer feedback isnt completely out of left field.
This idea of Curtis, and the brand more broadly, taking direct calls from customers started small. When he first joined Burger King in 2021, Curtis got the ball rolling by asking everyone on the leadership team to wear a brand logo of some kind as much as possible whenever theyre traveling, or even at the grocery store. The idea was that the logo would be a magnet for real people to talk about the brand unfiltered. Sure enough, at every weekly leadership meeting, stories began piling up.
About four months ago, we said, Hey, what if we took this to a whole new place and just wide open, let everybody in as much as we could, just to get as much feedback as possible? says Curtis. That was the spirit behind this.
Utilizing customer feedback is something Curtis has some experience with. He was at Dominos when that chain launched its Pizza Turnaround that used direct customer comments to spark that brands resurgence. Curtis also points to Dominos famed Pizza Tracker, launched in 2008, as a result of listening to customer feedback.
It was an answer to an insight, he says (that insight being customers wondering, Hey, where’s my pizza?). And I think what we’re doing here is similar. We’re going to get a variety of insights from this process, but I want to emphasize it won’t be a two-week process. This is a kickoff to a permanent process.
Burger King has spent the better part of a decade building a cheeky challenger brand image, through irreverent work of varying success. The creepy King mascot that began popping up in 2004, was permanently retired in 2015. The brand phased him out because, frankly, even if he was making the stoners giggle, he was scaring the kids.
Whopper Detour in 2019, which used geo-fencing and its app to offer anyone within 600 feet of a McDonald’s a one-cent Whopper, was a legitimate hit, driving app downloads and enthusiasm. But Moldy Whopper (2020), which was a very artful, 34-day time-lapse video of their signature burger rotting and becoming covered in mold to make the case for its fresh ingredients, was more a marketers darling than a wide success.
Curtis says the goal now is to make sure the brand image is genuine and likeable, which can still include fun campaigns, but must be rooted in that customer connection. He credits CMO Joel Yashinsky and the brands agency partners like BarkleyOKPR for its new positioning. Let’s be a brand by consumers, and let them define where it goes, he says. That really is empowering people to feel like the architect of this brand.
Real humans?!
One of the first areas of AI implementation for many organizations is in customer service, where chatbots are used to process mass amounts of customer feedback into digestible reports quicker than ever. Research firm Gartner has predicted that AI will autonomously solve 80% of common customer service issues by 2029. But Curtis says that there is a risk of losing touch amid the waves of data.
There’s just a magic in human interaction that I think we’re in danger of losing if we allow those processes to completely take over how we understand the consumer, he says. So by institutionalizing and operationalizing human interaction, real human interaction, I think we can unlock a powerful force of understanding of the consumer, because they’re legitimately and genuinely being heard and reacted to.
Its a surprisingly rare approach, but not wholly unique. E.l.f. Beauty, for example, has largely built its brand around how it engages with and implements ideas from its community. CMO Kory Marchisotto has often talked about how the brands participation on platforms like TikTok, Twitch, and beyond is all about what its customers are saying about the brand and the places theyre saying it, and those signals become a guide that shapes everything that follows.
The starting point is cultivating community, Marchisotto told The Drum in December. Were able to catalyze community data into insights and once we have that we co-create. We co-create content experiences, platforms, products that are for them, by them.
Burger King has already begun that process with its Whopper By You work launched last summer, which solicits ideas for new Whopper variations from customers and then releases them as limited edition drops like the BBQ Brisket Whopper and Crispy Onion Whopper. According to the company, its received more than 600,000 submissions, and considers the releases so far among its most successful limited edition products.
This approach is in line with other chains looking to make personalization more fun and community-oriented by featuring fan suggestions as limited menu items. Starbucks, for example, launched its “secret menu” last summer and asked customers to submit and vote on their favorite customized beverages.
Burger King isnt abandoning utilizing complex data analysis to make sound decisions, though. After finding that its apple pie dessert was the most requested discontinued menu item at its drive-thrus, the brand brought it back in January for the first time since 2020.
Suspicion economy
Ad agency BarkleyOKRP has been Burger Kings lead ad agency since 2022, and worked closely with the brand on not only this overall idea, but how to tap into it for brand marketing campaigns. The challenge is walking the tightrope between hyping the idea that Curtis and his team want to hear from you, without making it feel disingenuous.
View this post on Instagram
The age of AI slop, media manipulation, and waves of brand BS has helped forge (or accelerate) a suspicion economy, where no one really thinks anything is sincere. BarkleyOKPR executive creative director Matt McNulty says what got Curtis and his team excited was how listening to peoplehearing the good, bad, and uglywas vulnerable. People often think vulnerability can appear as weakness, at least in the cultural lexicon of brands, says McNulty. But this is sincerely vulnerable. It’s asking someone, how can I be better? And it’s honest.
This all sounds rather obvious for brands who are constantly talking about how they want to resonate with culture. So why isnt this approach more common? McNultys fellow executive ceative director Ben Pfutzenreuter says it comes down to risk. If you look across corporate America, I think you see a position of hedging and risk mitigation, says Pfutzenreuter. But I think the answer to a culture of anxiety and risk mitigation is actual conviction.
Not a stunt man
Ultimately, the only real way to combat suspicion is with consistent action. As Curtis says, this is only the beginning.
So far there have been largely two types of feedback: The kind about peoples local restaurant, and then that about the broader brand, like menu items and marketing. The good news on the feedback about their local experiences is we’ve got those channels set up, says Curtis. We’re calling the owners of those restaurants back. Many of those restaurants we own ourselves. So they’re going to see that type of change instantly. Brand actions will take longer. If I’m going to change the french fries, I’ve got to do the right research, testing, and set up suppliers to be able to support that.
Unfortunately for Curtis, until a major product or innovation of some kind that customers can really see, touch or taste emerges, were forced to take his word for it. Thats not lost on him, either. In fact one of his biggest challenges is making sure the focus remains on the feedback and not talking about the feedback.
The agency is trying to do its job and capture amazing content, he says. But I’m trying to make sure that everybody feels heard and knows that this isnt a marketing stunt.
For now, the only way to do that is to keep putting Curtis on the phone and let him cook.
How are you feeling about the stock market these days? Depending on who you talk to, the American economy is either poised to soar into the stratosphere or fall off a cliff. As the current administration has been delighted to point out, the Dow Jones Industrial Average recently closed above 50,000 for the very first time.
However, that does not reassure the 72% of American consumers who, according to Pew Research, feel pessimistic about the economyciting concerns about the cost of healthcare, food and consumer goods, and housing. If the pessimists are correct, those high consumer costs will negatively affect the stock market sooner or later.
Even with the current good news about the market, theres a reason why it feels like were all waiting for the other shoe to drop. We are all facing a great deal of uncertainty as investors and consumers, between recent (albeit temporary) market volatility in response to political and economic news and the way AI is disrupting the market and the economy.
Its enough to make you want to cash out all your investments and bury the moolah in your backyard. But just because it feels like were ripe for a market crash doesnt mean theres one on the horizon. And if there is a correction coming, there is plenty you can do to prepare for it.
Heres what you need to know about positioning yourself and your money for a potential market crash so youre not left picking up the pieces.
Know what you have
Answer honestly: do you know where all your 401(k)s are?
If youre not sure, youre not alone. Unclaimed retirement accounts are a serious problem that the Department of Labor is working to rectify. As of 2025, there were approximately 31.9 million retirement accounts, totaling about $2.1 trillion, left behind or forgotten by employees leaving the sponsoring workplace.
The stress of watching the economic roller coaster while feeling completely powerless is bad enough. Adding the sense that you dont even know what you have, where it is, or if theres anything you can do to protect yourself is just gilding the anxiety lily. Thats why the first step in preparing for a potential market correction is to make sure you know where (and what) all your investments are.
Start by identifying all of your accounts and reclaiming any that you have lost track of. In addition to the DOL, you can also check the National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits for any missing accounts. But you can also contact the human resources department of previous employers for help.
Even if you dont have any misplaced retirement benefits, now is also a good time to review all of your accounts and investments. Do you know what you are invested in? Do you know why?
Knowing what you currently have can help you make informed decisions going forward, whether you assume a future of economic sunshine or storm clouds.
Figure out how to stay the course
Market crashes are terrifyingbut unless you cash out your investments, they can be temporary. When you see your portfolio lose a huge percentage of its value, its human nature to want to stop the bleeding. But you need to stay the course until the market bounces back, because selling your investments right after a crash means locking in the loss.
This is much easier said than done, of course. Even the most risk-loving, ice-in-their-veins investors will feel their stomachs drop when their portfolios suddenly have a lot fewer zeroes than they did the day before. Thats why its a good idea to figure out ahead of time what will keep you from panic-selling if there is a sudden market downturn.
Some strategies for staying the course include:
Invest in quality companies/stocks/indexes that are likely to survive a recession. Now is a good time to make certain you understand your investments.
Make sure you have enough liquidity. If you treat any of your investments as a potential emergency fund, set up another fund or source. If youre unable to transfer any of your investments into a more liquid asset, consider opening a HELOC as an alternative.
Look for opportunities to invest. Market downturns can be a good time to purchase under-priced assets. (Just dont be one of those jerks who crows about getting stocks on sale all over social media. Read the room, dude.)
Go on a news diet. You dont need to know every dip and drop in the market. Youll feel better when you put your phone down and youll save money on all the antacids you dont have to buy.
Rebalance your portfolio
Part of a well-balanced money diet is making sure you dont have too many eggs in one basket. You probably already diversify your portfolio by splitting your investments into long-term, higher-risk/higher-reward investments, medium-term, lower-risk investments, and short-term, low-risk investments.
While most investors think about how they want to diversify their portfolio when they start investing, it can be easy to forget to rebalance that bad boy when the ratios get out of whack.
Thats why regularly rebalancing your portfolio should be part of your semi-annual or quarterly money management plan. This financial task is when you check on where your investments are compared to your investment strategy and goals. Then you buy or sell investments to bring your portfolio back into balance.
For example, anyone currently invested in the Dow is probably over-invested compared to their investment strategy or goals. Selling off some of that investment and investing the money elsewhere will not only allow you to capture the growth that the Dow is currently enjoying, but it will also help protect you from potential future volatility in the Dow index.
Getting into the habit o rebalancing your portfolio will help ensure that you keep market growth when it occurs, which can help you keep your cool and stay invested through downturnsbecause you know you kept the gains and can wait out the losses.
Make like a hitchhiker and DONT PANIC
No politician, economist, or MBA has a crystal ball, so theres no telling what the stock market will do in the future. But if your spidey senses have been tingling about the possibility of a market downturn, there are some practical steps you can take to protect yourself and your portfolio if were headed for a fall.
Start by making sure you know what you have. If youve lost track of any of your retirement or investment accounts, take the time to hunt them down so you feel in control of your funds. Now is also the time to double check that you know what youre invested in and why.
From there, figure out what youll need to stay the course in case there is a crashsince a loss in value is temporary until you cash out. Some good strategies for staying the course include ensuring that youre invested in quality assets that you understand, providing yourself with enough liquidity to handle an emergency during a downturn, planning on purchasing underpriced assets, and putting yourself on a news diet.
Finally, regularly rebalancing your portfolio is good investment hygiene, but it will also help you feel more confident when staring down a potential market correction, since youll know youve captured the growth of the market when it went gangbusters.
Market crashes arent inevitable, even if stomach-churning fluctuations probably are. But panicking is always optional and you can opt out.
