As always, many of this year’s best apps are ones you’ve probably never heard of.
Sure, there are some big names on this list, particularly in the buzzy field of artificial intelligence, but the real standouts of 2025 innovated on a smaller scale. They give you better ways to take notes or remember things, write with just your voice, have fun snapping photos, or even indulge in some gaming classics.
For this list, “apps” include desktop and mobile software, along with browser extensions and web tools. Some apps are entirely new, while others received transformative updates that make them worthy of a fresh look. Hopefully, you’ll discover something that quickly becomes a must-have.
Productivity
Raycast: Open Raycast with a keyboard shortcut, and you can quickly find files, search the web, access your clipboard history, paste frequently written text snippets, reposition your windows, look up emojis, ask AI questions, and more. It’s a Swiss Army knife of time-saving tools for power users, and it finally arrived on Windows and iOS this year to complement the long-running Mac version. (Windows, Mac, iOS)
Payload: Cloud storage is great, but sometimes you need a faster way to send files to yourself. Payload checks your Wi-Fi network for any devices where its app is installed, then uses that connection to transfer files almost instantly, without ever leaving your local network. Previously desktop-only, Payload arrived on mobile devices this year and launched an optional online service for remote file sharing. (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android)
Ghost Capture App: This free app streamlines the act of adding items to your to-do list. Just long-press the little ghost icon and say what you’re trying to accomplish, and it will create a task that syncs to either Apple Reminders or Google Tasks with no extra buttons to push. (iOS)
Monotype: Typewriter Simulator: If you miss (or, for that matter, remember) the feel of writing with a typewriter, this app is for you. It provides an on-screen typewriter that produces a satisfying clack with each key press, followed by a ding and the need to hit Enter (or, more appropriately, Return) at the end of each line. When you’re finished, you can copy the text into whatever document editor you normally use. Thankfully, the app allows you to delete without any Wite-Out. (Mac)
Antinote: Apple’s default TextEdit app is too clunky when you’re just trying to jot down some quick thoughts. Antinote speeds things up with a clean, plain-text scratch pad, which you can pop open with a keyboard shortcut (Option+A by default). You can also create to-do lists by typing “todo” at the top of a note, or perform calculations by typing “math” at the top. It’s a $5 onetime purchase after a free trial. (Mac)
Orb: Most internet speed test tools just give you a snapshot of upload and download speeds. Orb instead lets you run persistent speed tests throughout the day, providing a clearer view of overall reliability. You can even set up the app on multiple devices around the house to see where the connection is weakest. (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)
AI
Proton Lumo: While most AI companies keep a record of your chat history and may even share conversations with human reviewers, Proton’s Lumo AI makes a point of being oblivious. Proton doesn’t log users’ chats or use them to train its models, so the company has no way of accessing your chat history. (iOS, Android, web)
Perplexity Comet: Amid a wave of AI web browsers, Perplexity stands out for its ability to navigate the web on your behalf. Try letting it cancel your subscriptions, search across multiple flight deal sites, or even put a single question to multiple AI tools to see how their answers differ. Just be careful about letting it access sensitive data. (Windows, Mac, Android)
Wispr Flow: Your phone or computer’s built-in voice dictation features are fine if you don’t mind doing a lot of manual cleanup. Wispr Flow manages to be a lot more accuratesometimes eerily soas it uses AI processing to both clean up your text and learn from your writing tendencies over time. It’s also just convenient to use in short bursts with push-to-talk keyboard shortcuts. (Windows, Mac, iOS)
[Screenshot: Jared Newman]
Superwhisper: Another voice dictation app, Superwhisper stands out by letting you use on-device speech-to-text models with no online processing. This allows for unlimited usage without any privacy concerns while still offering handy shortcuts for push-to-talk mode. (Windows, Mac, iOS)
Google Gemini: Google’s AI assistant isn’t new, but its built-in “Nano Banana” text-to-image model that arrived this year would be a killer app on its own. Start by uploading any image, then ask to render it in a different visual style, remove objects (including chain link fences), zoom and enhance, or add more images to the scene. You can even draw around parts of the image to show where the edits should go. (iOS, Android, web)
Dia: The most thoughtful of the AI browsers, Dia lets you @ mention your open tabs to synthesize information from them, ask questions about your browser history, and take action in web apps like Gmail and Google Calendar. Its smartest feature, though, is its search box, which automatically routes your queries to AI or web search, based on what you write. (Mac)
Sora: What if there was a social network where you didnt need to stop and wonder if something was generated by AIbecause everything was generated by AI? Thats the premise behind OpenAIs Sora. You can even create an AI doppelgänger of yourself and control who can use it in their videos (just you, just your friends, or everyone). Yes, deceptive Sora deepfakes leaking onto the rest of the internet with their watermarks removed is an issue. But at its best, the app itself is silly, fun, and not at all misleading. (iOS, Android)
Photo and video
Affinity: Serif’s image editing suite is a popular subscription-free alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and Designer, so users got nervous last year when the company was acquired by Canvaitself a subscription-driven business. This year, Canva didn’t just honor its promise to offer Affinity without a subscription, it released the entire desktop suite for free. The only catch is that you need a Canva accountand a subscription if you want to use some AI tools. (Windows, Mac)
Not Boring Camera: This iPhone app offers a more fun way to take photos, with skeuomorphic buttons and knobs for zoom, exposure, focus, and more. The two-second preview of snapped photos that appears in the viewfinder is an especially nice touch, allowing you to quickly discard a bad picture while staying in photography mode. (iOS)
Cassette: The self-proclaimed “Home Video Player” app offers a fun way to revisit all the footage you’ve captured on your iPhone. The app groups your videos by year, presenting them as VHS tapes on a shelf. Tapping on a cassette gives you a stream of auto-playng videos, which you can either swipe through TikTok-style or advance through with the fast-forward and rewind buttons. (iPhone, iPad)
Google Vids: Google’s foray into multitrack video editing lets you combine multiple video and audio clips with transitions, voice-overs, and subtitles. Of course, there’s an AI angle, with an option to generate video clips using Google’s Veo 3 model, but otherwise it’s just an easy way to edit videos online for free. (Web)
Detail: Apple’s winner for “Best iPad App of the Year,” Detail is a handy tool for professional (or aspiring) content creators. It helps record video in a variety of ways, including making reaction videos and reading script from an on-screen teleprompter, and its AI editor can help trim out unwanted bits. The real power, though, comes from being able to combine multiple iPhones and iPads for things like split-screen video podcasts, live monitoring on an iPad while shooting on your phone, and recording top-down iPhone footage while speaking into an iPad. (iOS, Mac)
Camo Streamlight: The free Windows app makes you look better on Zoom calls by surrounding the outer edges of your screen in bright white. It takes inspiration from those ring lights you can attach to your screen, and while the effect is subtle in a well-lit room, it can make a big difference when the room lightning isn’t great. (Windows)
Shutter Declutter: If your Apple Photos library is swimming in tens of thousands of images you couldnt care less about, youre not alone. Shutter Declutter can help you finally make progress at pruning them. It lets you efficiently swipe to delete the detritus, and reminds you each day to review pictures you took on todays date in previous years. The fewer fuzzy and/or accidental shots that remain, the more you can enjoy the photos worth preserving. (iOS, iPadOS)
Security and privacy
UBlock Origin Lite: Apple’s Safari browser finally has the free, open-source, customizable ad-and-tracker blocker it’s been missing. This offshoot of the venerable uBlock Origin does a great job decluttering web pages, and you can dig into its settings menu to tailor the filtering rules to your likingfor instance, to hide cookie notices or social media widgets. The same extension is also available for Chrome. (iOS, Mac)
Have I Been Pwned?: For more than a decade, Have I Been Pwned? has been invaluable for checking whether your email and passwords have been exposed in data breaches. (The answer is almost certainly “yes.”) This year, the site added a personal dashboard with a full history of breaches for your email address, the types of data exposed, and optional email addresses for the next time your email is compromised. (Web)
Proton Authenticator: Proton’s two-factor authentication app is what Authy used to be before it discontinued its desktop apps. It allows you to set up 2FA codes that add an extra layer of protection to your online accounts, then back up and sync them to your other devices. This makes 2FA more convenient while reducing the odds of getting locked out. (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android)
Leisure time
WikiTok: This clever website takes the addictive infinite scroll of TikTok and applies it to random Wikipedia pages, so you can swipe through until something catches your interest. The experience is far less scintillating, but that’s kind of the point. Try using it before bed. (Web)
Iconfactory Tapestry: If you’re feeling burned out by social media, Tapestry lets you stitch together a chronological feed of your favorite internet content sources. Those can include publications, YouTube channels, Reddit forums, Bluesky accounts, and even custom sources such as a Gmail inbox. (iOS, Mac)
Pocket Casts: This venerable podcast player continues to establish itself as the best option that works on any device, not just those made by Apple. This year, Pocket Casts made its web player free, and it syncs your progress from the mobile app for picking up where you left off. It also overhauled its search function, added recommendations for similar podcasts, and launched searchable transriptions as a paid feature. (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, web)
DOSBox Pure Unleashed: This free app drastically simplifies the previously complex task of running old DOS games on your computer. Instead of having to deal with command prompts, you can just drag and drop the files into the DOSBox window and select the .EXE file you want to run. All you need to do beyond that is supply the games, which are easily obtainable from sources like the Internet Archive and My Abandonware. (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Two years ago, a $575 million battery factory planned in St. Louis, Missouri, was set to be the first large-scale lithium iron phosphate (LFP) facility in the U.S. This November, after the Trump administration withdrew a grant for the project, it was cancelledbecoming one of more than 50 major clean energy projects to be scrapped or scaled back in 2025.
From January through November, as federal policy turned against clean energy, companies abandoned more than $32 billion in investments, according to the most recent data from E2, a nonpartisan organization that tracks clean energy projects in the U.S.
Some companies are still announcing new projects, but lost investments are now outpacing them by three to one. “The scale of cancellations shows how fragile this moment is for Americas clean energy economy,” says Michael Timberlake, director of research at E2.
The list includes a new $4.3 billion General Motors EV plant in Michigan that’s being retooled to make gas-powered vehicles, a $3.2 billion Stellantis battery factory in Illinois that was cancelled, and a $2.6 billion battery factory in Georgia that was scrapped by a Norway-based manufacturer, among dozens of other projects. The majority of the cancelled projects are factories, not clean energy generation plants, though some solar or wind farms may not show up on the list because their cancellations are harder to track. (Though there is some evidence the administration is changing its mind about batteries, specifically.)
The cuts add up to nearly 40,000 lost jobs, according to E2. Republican congressional districts lost the most large-scale projects, 37 in total.
What’s harder to track than cancellations is how many projects might have been announced under different political conditions that now won’t ever break ground. Up until the 2024 election, Timberlake says monthly announcements consistently exceeded $1 billion in investment. Last month, that total was $550 millionless than the value of the cancelled battery project.
“We’ll never recover those jobs and those investments that were going to be announced in 2025 under a different political environment,” says Timberlake. “And thats going to add up over time to a significant loss in step with the rest of the world. We’ve now lost a lot of what could have been, and it’s going to be hard to ever get that back.”
It’s not clear yet what will happen in 2026. Still, despite the setbacks, the industry still has strengths. The fact that the list of cancelled projects wasn’t longer “is a good sign of the health of the clean energy economy and how robust it is and how the economics still work,” Timberlake says.
Nearly all of the energy added to the grid in 2025 came from solar, wind, or batteries, despite the Trump administration’s efforts. As the surge in energy demand continues, driven in part by data centers, clean energy is still a quick, affordable way to meet that demand. And some projects are continuing to move forward. “The market is still there,” he says.
Culture rot is when everything that once made a company good gradually starts to disappearresulting in sinking morale, low productivity, lots of gossip, quiet quitting, and overall cynicism. And it can cause big problems for everyone.
The end of the year is the perfect time to take stock of where you are, what youre good at, and what you want to develop in the new year. The job market continues to be intense and competitive, so youre wise to consider hiring trends and how you can best prepare and set yourself apart.
There is one skill that tops the list for getting the job, building your career, and becoming indispensable: resilience.
Resilience has many forms. At a general level, resilience is about adaptability, flexibility, and responsiveness to multiple situations. But when you consider it through a few lenses, it brings terrific focus to what you must be wicked good at for the brightest future.
RESILIENCE WITH PEOPLE
Topping the list of which skills will set you apart are people skills also known as soft skills. And while theyre called soft skills, theyre actually not soft at all since they are hard to find, hard to master, and its hard to get anywhere without them.
In particular, a survey by Resume Template found that 24% of hiring managers believe soft skills are most important, followed by 62% who say they are just as important as technical skills. And data from TestGorilla found that 60% of hiring leaders believe soft skills are more important today than they were five years ago.
But whats helpful to consider is that soft skills are really made up of an ability to be resilient with people. When you can listen with empathy, youre better able to respond. When you can communicate effectively with diverse groups of people, you can get more done. When you can demonstrate teamwork and collaboration, youre able to move others to action and effectively achieve objectives together. And when you show professionalism through tough issues, youll generate a lot of panache. These are all among the top-ranking skills that hiring managers want, according to Resume Template.
Ultimately, resilience is required with people because youll need to be constantly adjusting to their moods or their styles. Youll also need to flex your style if you face conflict, staying calm when you feel angry, or finding a way to talk with someone even if you disagree.
Build your resilience with people by focusing on listening and tuning in when youre interacting, rather than getting distracted by devices or your internal chatter. Also ask for feedback from a trusted colleague about how you interact and how you can improve. Look around for people you believe are especially good at building relationships and rapport. Consider how you can learn from what makes them effective, so you can put new strategies into practice.
RESILIENCE WITH SITUATIONS
Another way that resilience is a primary skill for success is that it helps ensure youre adaptable to whatever situation you face. Youll need to be contextually aware, staying in tune with shifts that might be occurring with customers or with an emerging problem. In fact, in the Resume Template survey, problem-solving was one of the top skills that hiring managers are looking for in candidates.
Youll also need to manage time effectively, and this is rarely linear or predictable, requiring flexibility. The project will take longer than you thought, or youll need to wait for a teammate to give you key information before you can make progress on your task. Or you may finish with a set of responsibilities more quickly than you planned and be ready to position yourself for whats next. Time management is one of the most important skills, according to the Resume Template data.
Resilience with situations also requires you to take initiative. When you see a barrier, youll need to step up and figure out how to get past it. Or when you see an opportunity, youll want to lean in, raise your hand, and volunteer to get involved. This kind of approach will get you noticed so you can get promoted or secure the next opportunity.
You can think of situational resilience as grit. Its the ability to stick with things and adapt to whats needed in the moment. Its also the ability to be flexible in terms of how you apply your skills based on what the team or the organization needs and based on where you want to head with your career.
Build your resilience with situations by staying aware of whats going on around you in the world, in your organization, and with your customers (whether theyre internal or external). Consistently ask yourself how you need to respond and how you can take initiative with whats changing.
You can also build your situational resilience by reminding yourself that youre capable and that you can learn all the time. If you stumble, reflect on what happened and make plans for how you can improve. This will keep you in a learning mode and a resilience mindset.
RESILIENCE FOR THE FUTURE
Resilience is also the most important skill as it relates to your ability to learn, grow, and develop. The landscape of work is changing at breakneck speed, largely because of technology. As a result, the very best candidates are those who can figure out how to make things happen in the midst of uncertainty and keep their skills fresh and continually developing.
There is also an element of optimism and energy that is part of resilience for the future. When youre investing time and effort in your own growth, youre necessarily anticipating whats next and planning on where you can go. This is a hope-filled strategy, and people are drawn to others who are powering through and engaged with the team in moving forward together. This is the true essence of leadership, another in-demand skill, in which youre motivating and inspiring others.
When you demonstrate resilience for the future, youre also staying aware of trends, markets, customers, and competitors. Whatever job you do, youre constantly sensing whats changing, whats coming, and how you can respond.
In the Resume Template survey, among the top 10 hard skills that leaders wanted candidates to have were data analysis, project management, and AI. A survey by Resume Builder agrees that AI is the most important skill that hiring managers want to see on résumés.
But the nuances of these skills and how theyre applied will change over time. The ability to learn whats new and flex over time will be most critical to success.
Build your resilience for the future by staying optimistic. There are always plenty of barriers as you look forward, but try to focus on the opportunities that are also coming up. Make plans for the new skills you want to learn. Also lean into how you use technology. Try, test, and experiment so you can develop both skills and a point of view about what works best. And engage other people, involving them and sharing te positive energy youre feeling to move ahead.
THE ACTION HERO EFFECT
Resilience is an action-hero skill. Think of MacGyver, who was an action hero who could solve any problem to get himself out of thorny situations. Or consider Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible, surviving and achieving the objective no matter the challenge.
Resilience allows you to make things happen in spite of challenging colleagues, conflicts, problems with projects, or changes in direction. You wont avoid difficulty, but youll be able to work your way through by adapting, flexing, and demonstrating resilience. Building this ability in the new year will allow you to stand out and set yourself apart whether youre interviewing for a new job, getting noticed for a promotion, or expanding your credibility in your current role.
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.I love apps like Metronaut and Tomplay, which let me carry a collection of classical (sheet) music on my phone. They also provide piano or orchestral accompaniment for any violin piece I want to play.
Todays post shares 10 other recommended tools for music lovers from my fellow writer and friend, Chris Dalla Riva, who writes Can’t Get Much Higher, a popular Substack focused on the intersection of music and data. I invited Chris to share with you his favorite resources for discovering, learning, and creating music.
By day, Chris works at the music streaming service Audiomack. His debut book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves comes out today, November 13, 2025, via Bloomsbury. He wrote it while listening to every single #1 hit in history. The rest of the post is by Chris. – Jeremy Caplan
Learn about Music
Genius
Chris: If you are looking to understand the lyrics to your favorite songs, turn to Genius, a crowdsourced website of lyrical annotations. Sometimes youll even find artists annotating their own lyrics or breaking things down in a video. (FREE)
WhoSampled
Searching through WhoSampled is like looking at musical DNA. Based on crowdsourced information, the site allows you to see how songs are connected through samples, interpolations, and covers. This was an incredible resource for researching the decline of cover songs in my book. (FREE, but you can pay $3/month for additional features.)
Discover new music
Every Noise at Once
Maintained by Spotifys former data alchemist Glenn McDonald, Every Noise maps all genres on Spotify. For any of the thousands of genres in Spotifys catalog, you can see four playlists.
The Sound Of playlist will give you a wide taste of the genre.
The Intro playlist is where beginners should start.
The Pulse playlist is what fans are listening to right now.
The Edge playlist spotlights more obscure tracks in the genre.
(FREE, though more useful with a Spotify subscription.)
Radiooooo
The name looks fake, but this site is real and incredible. It allows you to listen to music not just from around the world, but across time, as curated by humans. Want to hear the music of Nicaragua in the 1980s? Canada in the 1940s? Thailand in the 1960s? Radiooooo is the place for you. (FREE)
Radiooooo: listen to popular music anywhere in the world, from 1900 to now
Radio Garden
While Radiooooo curates recordings, Radio Garden actually lets you hear whats playing on thousands of radio stations around the globe right now. (FREE)
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Learn an instrument
Yousician
Available on the web, Android, iOS or Mac/PC, Yousician is one of the most robust music education platforms. Learn guitar, bass, ukulele, piano, or voice, with thousands of interactive songs and lessons. Its helpful whether youve been playing for years or are picking up an instrument for the first time. (7-day free trial, then $30/month or $140/year; Black Friday 72% sale ends December 6).
Chordify
Chordify makes learning new songs easy, especially if you are a novice. Not only do they list chord progressions and give you the ability to transpose them, but those progressions will sync with the recording, so you can really get your timing right. Note: Chordify lacks the lessons youll find on Yousician. (Much of the platform is free, but you can access additional tools for between $2 and $3.50/onth, and theres a Black Friday sale for $1/month.)
Ultimate-Guitar
This long-running guitar tablature site helps you play any song you like. Its catalog may be bigger than any other learning platform. I recommend using Ultimate-Guitar on the web, as the app locks many features behind a paywall. (Most tabs on the site are free, with paid access to special features like interactive tabs, for $10/month or $40/year; 80% Black Friday sale.)
Tools for artists
Splice
Do you need instrument plug-ins, sound effects, and royalty-free samples for your next creation? There is no better destination than Splice. ($13 to $40/month, depending on your plan.)
Moises
Packed with everything from smart metronomes to lyric transcription, Moises is my favorite tool for stem separation. It allows you to break an audio file into its component tracks, which can help with remixing, remastering, and reimagining recordings. ($6 to $30/month.)
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
On day one of Donald Trumps second term as president, he issued a wave of executive orders to radically expand the enforcement of immigration law. It was the first step toward Trumps promise to carry out mass deportationsthe largest, he pledged, in the countrys history.
What followed, throughout 2025, was an aggressive campaign that included Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at workplaces such as farms; the deployment of National Guard units in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles; and a Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for racial profiling during immigration enforcement.
Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, New York City. July 16, 2025. [Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
These actions played out in stark images that have come to define Trumps immigration agenda: scenes of federal agentsoften with masks covering their facestackling people inside courthouses, or protesters gathering en masse to face off against National Guard members.
Los Angeles, California. June 08, 2025. [Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images]
Getty Images photographers captured many of those scenes. And as they did, they witnessed the chaos of Trumps immigration enforcement firsthand.
In one picture photographed in a New York City courthouse, photographer Michael M. Santiago saw a family exit their immigration hearing when Border Patrol agents approached the man, asking if he was a specific person.
Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, New York City. June 30, 2025. [Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images]
He said he was not, but the agents did not believe him, Santiago says in a statement to Fast Company. The wife immediately began advocating for her husband, stepping between him and the agents and telling them they would have to take all of them. As agents attempted to detain the man, the daughter and older son began to cry.
Eventually, the agent did verify that the man was not the person they were looking for.
Charlotte, North Carolina. November 19, 2025. [Photo: Ryan Murphy/Getty Images]
In another shot by photographer Ryan Murphy, two Border Patrol agents wrestle a man to the ground inside a fast-food restaurant under construction. Murphy had been following Border Patrol vehicles when they stopped at that construction site.
After hearing a commotion inside, I ran into the building to find this scene unfolding in front of me, he says. This time it happened at a Panda Express construction site, but it could have been the parking lot of a department store, a hair salon, or a gas station. All places you and I would visit on a regular day.
Photographer Scott Olson photographed residents of Chicagos Brighton Park neighborhood crowded against a door, watching as Border Patrol agents patrolled their street.
Like many retirement communities, The Terraces serves as a tranquil refuge for a nucleus of older people who no longer can travel to faraway places or engage in bold adventures.But they can still be thrust back to their days of wanderlust and thrill-seeking whenever caretakers at the community in Los Gatos, California, schedule a date for residents many of whom are in their 80s and 90s to take turns donning virtual reality headsets.Within a matter of minutes, the headsets can transport them to Europe, immerse them in the ocean depths or send them soaring on breathtaking hang-gliding expeditions while they sit by each other. The selection of VR programming was curated by Rendever, a company that has turned a sometimes isolating form of technology into a catalyst for better cognition and social connections in 800 retirement communities in the United States and Canada.A group of The Terraces residents who participated in a VR session earlier this year found themselves paddling their arms alongside their chairs as they swam with a pod of dolphins while watching one of Rendever’s 3D programs. “We got to go underwater and didn’t even have to hold our breath!” exclaimed 81-year-old Ginny Baird following the virtual submersion.During a session featuring a virtual ride in a hot-air balloon, one resident gasped, “Oh my God!” Another shuddered, “It’s hard to watch!”The Rendever technology can also be used to virtually take older adults back to the places where they grew up as children. For some, it will be the first time they’ve seen their hometowns in decades.A virtual trip to her childhood neighborhood in New York City’s Queens borough helped sell Sue Livingstone, 84, on the merits of the VR technology even though she still is able to get out more often than many residents of The Terraces, which is located in Silicon Valley about 55 miles south of San Francisco.“It isn’t just about being able to see it again, it’s about all the memories that it brings back,” Livingstone said. “There are a few people living here who never really leave their comfort zones. But if you could entice them to come down to try out a headset, they might find that they really enjoy it.”Adrian Marshall, The Terraces’ community life director, said that once word about a VR experience spreads from one resident to another, more of the uninitiated typically become curious enough to try it out even if it means missing out on playing Mexican Train, a dominoes-like board game that’s popular in the community.“It turns into a conversation starter for them. It really does connect people,” Marshall said of Rendever’s VR programming. “It helps create a human bridge that makes them realize they share certain similarities and interests. It turns the artificial world into reality.”Rendever, a privately owned company based in Somerville, Massachusetts, hopes to build upon its senior living platform with a recent grant from the National Institutes of Health that will provide nearly $4.5 million to study ways to reduce social isolation among seniors living at home and their caregivers.Some studies have found VR programming presented in a limited viewing format can help older people maintain and improve cognitive functions, burnish memories and foster social connections with their families and fellow residents of care facilities. Experts say the technology may be useful as an addition to and not a replacement for other activities.“There is always a risk of too much screen time,” Katherine “Kate” Dupuis, a neuropsychologist and professor who studies aging issues at Sheridan College in Canada, said. “But if you use it cautiously, with meaning and purpose, it can be very helpful. It can be an opportunity for the elderly to engage with someone and share a sense of wonder.”VR headsets may be an easier way for older people to interact with technology instead of fumbling around with a smartphone or another device that requires navigating buttons or other mechanisms, said Pallabi Bhowmick, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who is examining the use of VR with older adults.“The stereotypes that older adults aren’t willing to try new technology needs to change because they are willing and want to adapt to technologies that are meaningful to them,” Bhowmick said. “Besides helping them to relieve stress, be entertained and connect with other people, there is an intergenerational aspect that might help them build their relationships with younger people who find out they use VR and say, ‘Grandpa is cool!'”Rendever CEO Kyle Rand’s interest in helping his own grandmother deal with the emotional and mental challenges of aging pushed him down a path that led him to cofound the company in 2016 after studying neuroengineering at Duke University.“What really fascinates me about humans is just how much our brain depends on social connection and how much we learn from others,” Rand said. “A group of elderly residents who don’t really know each other that well can come together, spend 30 minutes in a VR experience together and then find themselves sitting down to have lunch together while continuing a conversation about the experience.”It’s a large enough market that another VR specialist, Dallas-based Mynd Immersive, competes against Rendever with services tailored for senior living communities.Besides helping create social connections, the VR programming from both Rendever and Mynd has been employed as a possible tool for potentially slowing down the deleterious effects of dementia. That’s how another Silicon Valley retirement village, the Forum, sometimes uses the technology.Bob Rogallo, a Forum resident with dementia that has rendered him speechless, seemed to be enjoying taking a virtual hike through Glacier National Park in Montana as he nodded and smiled while celebrating his 83rd birthday with his wife of 61 years.Sallie Rogallo, who doesn’t have dementia, said the experience brought back fond memories of the couple’s visits to the same park during the more than 30 years they spent cruising around the U.S. in their recreational vehicle.“It made me wish I was 30 years younger so I could do it again,” she said of the virtual visit to Glacier. “This lets you get out of the same environment and either go to a new place or visit places where you have been.”In another session at the Forum, 93-year-old Almut Schultz laughed with delight while viewing a virtual classical music performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and later seemed to want to play with a puppy frolicking around in her VR headset.“That was quite a session we had there,” Schultz said with a big grin after she took off her headset and returned to reality.
Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
Few things seem more obvious and unquestionable than the notion that leaders should always be true to their values, no matter what.
This widely-endorsed mantra, known as moral authenticity, is based on two rather logical assumptions.
First, leaders (unlike, say, first line supervisors or mid-level managers), are not just in charge to coordinate human activity, but also to act as agents of meaning. Indeed, what most people expect from leaders is some form of inspiration, including ethical guidance, spiritual direction, and strong alignment between their values and behaviors.
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Second, followers gravitate towards leaders who share their values or core beliefs. Therefore, they have an incentive to know and understand how leaders feel and think about critical issues (e.g., ideology, politics, social issues, and current affairs) in order to decide whether they are worthy of being followed.
Accordingly, leaders who are either unclear about their values or unable to convincingly project what their values are may be incapable of leading, and questioned, if not plainly ignored, by followers. For a modern example in politics, consider John Kerry, who became an emblem of political flip-flopping when, during the 2004 campaign, remarked that he had voted for the $87 billion before he voted against it, referring to a wartime funding bill he initially supported with conditions and later opposed, eroding public trust in the consistency of his convictions.
The case for changing course
And yet, there are reasons why adhering to a strict consistency isnt always best. For example:
(1) Uncertainty invites self-doubt: In an age where almost nothing is certain and the world seems unpredictable, it is only rational (and human) for leaders to think before they act, and have the capacity to not follow their heart, controlling their instinctive impulses and decoupling the stimulus-response chain from knee-jerk reactions. What looks like hesitation is often a sign of maturity: the ability to pause, reflect, and override ones own emotional intuitions in order to choose the response that serves the group, not ones ego. In other words, a leader who never second-guesses themselves is not confident; theyre dangerous.
(2) Tolerance requires flexibility: The ability to not just park their values aside, but to attempt to understand and accept the values of others (not just followers, subordinates, and voters, but also critics and opposers) strengthens leaders ability to unite and, well, lead: since leadership is about bringing people together rather than dividing them or enhancing existing divisions. Conversely, leaders who treat their own values as sacred commandments will enhance factions and polarize, appealing to fans and fanatics with cult-like charisma but repelling and antagonizing almost everyone else. Dogmatic rigidity to ones values creates tribes; flexible curiosity creates pragmatic coalitions and unity.
(3) Toxic or problematic values: What if the leaders values are wrong, antisocial, or toxic? In those instances, surely leaders would benefit from at least entertaining the possibility that better values can be adopted and espoused in favor of the majority. Values are generally stable over time, but we do have the capacity to change, and that includes changing our views and beliefs around core values (if you want to know yours, take this very short, free assessment). This is especially important when values are maladaptive, or plainly wrong. As I illustrate in my latest book, the most the brutal dictators in history happen to have very few reservations about following their own crooked valuesin fact they were transparent and uncompromisingly true to them, but to everybodys detriment. A leader who insists on being true to their values, even when those values harm others, is doing nobody a favor. From an other-perspective, such leaders would be better off questioning, changing or ignoring their own values, so as to behave according to the prosocial values of the majority.
(4) Basic decency and integrity suffice: After that, values are a nice add-on, but what matters is leaders actual competence and ability to lead. The real test is not whether leaders have the right values but whether they behave with integrity, fairness, and restraint when it counts. Competence, empathy, and impulse control routinely outperform any abstract commitment to ones internal belief system, no matter how logical or psychologically appealing that system may be to some (which tends to mean it will be unappealing to others). People dont follow you because they agree with every value you supposedly hold; they follow you because you make good decisions that benefit more than just yourself, and because you have the skills, personality, and ability to make them better.
Adapt, rethink, and revise
In short, when leaders are decent human beings, with the ability to control their dark side and resist short-term temptations to benefit individually but at the expense of the collective, what matters is not so much what they think or how they feel about polarizing issues, but their ability to persuade a group of people to set aside their individual agendas to become part of a unity, a strong collective that can function and perform. This also means convincing people to set asid their own differences in values, at least when they are at work or attempting to collaborate, so the group can get on with the task of actually achieving something rather than endlessly litigating their personal worldviews.
What followers need is not leaders who perform their values but leaders who regulate themselves in service of the group. Teams, organizations, and indeed nations will generally benefit from leaders who can adapt, rethink, and revisenot because they lack conviction, but because they have the humility to prioritize collective progress over personal purity.
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Its a new year, which means millions of people are setting resolutions they genuinely want to keep.
We want to eat better. Move more. Make more money. Finally get control of our time. Were taking advantage of the Fresh Start Effect, a principle rooted in the idea that people often view new beginnings as an opportunity to distance themselves from past failures and shortcomings. This can lead to a psychological reset, where we experience a renewed sense of optimism, self-efficacy, and motivation, common around the New Year.
And yet, by February, most of this motivation will quietly evaporatenot because people dont care, but because the way we set resolutions is fundamentally flawed.
Why most resolutions faileven when you really want them to work
As a culture, New Years resolutions are tests of your personal discipline. If you stick with them, youre committed. If you dont, you fell off the wagon. Cue the familiar guilt/shame spiral.
But new behavioral research suggests something very different.
A 2025 multi-country study examining goal persistence found that the strongest predictor of whether someone follows through on a resolution isnt willpower, discipline, or even how specific the goal is. Its intrinsic motivationwhether the behavior itself feels personally meaningful and rewarding, rather than externally pressured.
In other words, people dont abandon resolutions because they lack grit. They abandon them because the goal never fit into their real lives in the first place. That helps explain why the most common resolution formatsrigid, outcome-focused goals set once a yeartend to collapse under pressure.
The hidden problem with outcome-based goals
Most resolutions are framed as endpoints: lose 20 pounds, run a marathon, read 50 books, get promoted.
They sound motivating, but behavioral scientists increasingly argue that these outcome-first goals are poorly suited for behavior change. In fact, research suggests that popular frameworks like S.M.A.R.T. goals are no more effective than telling someone to do your best when it comes to sustaining new habits.
These types of goals skip the hardest part: the messy bridge between who you are today and who youre trying to become.
Tiffany Clevinger is a high-performance hypnotist who says, Its better to make identity-based goals over outcome-based goals . . . Who am I becoming in the process? She suggests reframing a goal like Save more money to an identity target of Become someone who is more responsible with money.
When progress inevitably slows, outcome-based goals create a psychological trap. Youre either on track or youve failed. Miss a few workouts or break a streak, and guilt creeps in. Shame follows. Motivation drops. The resolution quietly fades. But some high performers know how to avoid this trap altogether.
Why you should think in weeks, not years
People who consistently change their behavior dont rely on annual resolutions. They design systems that create momentum every week, not once a year.
Weeks offer fast feedback. They allow room for course correction. They make it easier to recover from setbacks without abandoning the entire goal. Instead of asking, Can I do this for a year? they ask, Can I do this easily this week?
And, as Clevinger explains, you can still take advantage of the Fresh Start Effect. Instead of looking at January 1st as being the only fresh start, we can look at every Monday as being a micro fresh start, she says. It feels so much lighter, so much easier for the nervous system to commit to.
This shiftfrom outcomes to process, from years to weeksis where sustainable change begins.
Want to try it out? Heres a science-backed alternative to traditional resolutions, based on our work at Lifehack Method with thousands of professionals who are trying to change real habits inside already full lives.
Step 1: Choose one identity shift plus one small habit
Behavior change is not easy. Each new habit competes for attention, energy, and willpower. Consistent achievers know this, which is why they focus on a single identity shift theyd genuinely like to evolvenot a full personality overhaul. Their focus is on long-term durability, not 75-hard level intensity.
A one percent improvement repeated daily compounds far more reliably than a burst of motivation followed by exhaustion, guilt, and abandonment. As Atomic Habits author James Clear notes, If you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time youre done.
For example, if you want to become the sort of person who takes care of their body, the one small habit you might commit to is to drink a glass of water each morning when you wake up. As this becomes more automatic, and you have success, you might add an additional small habit such as cooking a healthy breakfast each day.
The early stages should feel almost underwhelmingbecause the system is designed to work after motivation fades, not while its high. If it feels boring, youre probably doing it right.
Step 2: Add a number to make progress tracking easy
Vague resolutions fail because they dont give the brain anything concrete to act on. Adding a simple numeric anchorminutes, frequency, pagesturns a wish into a decision. Exercise more becomes jog for 30 minutes twice a week. Read more becomes read 30 pages before bed.
This isnt to make them more rigid, its to increase their clarity. Clear commitments reduce mental friction and give you a satisfying sense of doneness. They are harder to wiggle out of, especially on days when motivation is low.
Step 3: Identify the friction before it shows up
Most people plan for success and hope obstacles wont appear. But people who stick to their goals assume friction is inevitable, and plan accordingly.
Fear, overambition, scheduling conflicts, travel, and fatigue are highly predictable barriers. The more explicitly you identify what might derail a habit, the easier it becomes to respond without spiraling into self-criticism.
Asking, What stones are in my path that I need to clear? is a mental shift that keeps you focused on achieving your target for the long term.
Step 4: Borrow motivation from structure and accountability
Willpower is unreliable, especially when youre already juggling work, family, and constant digital demands.
Thats why external structure matters. Research on behavior change consistently shows that accountability increases follow-through by introducing eustresspositive, motivating pressure that reduces the cognitive load of self-regulation.
Behavioral scientst Susan Ibitz points to her experience in the military as an extreme but illuminating example. The environment created by the sergeants and soldiers creates momentum; action becomes easier because the structure removes friction. She encourages those of us to design structure into our own lives, starting with someone who can hold us accountable. You need to find a cheerleader who is not your mom. You need someone who sees real value in you, not because they love you, Ibitz says.
By joining a social mastermind or working with an accountability partner or coach, youll gain a supportive environment that calls you to the mat in a loving way. When accountability is built into your environment, it keeps you on task when willpower fades.
Step 5: Put the habit on your calendaror it doesnt exist
Habits dont form through intention alone. They form through repetition in a specific context.
Research suggests that simple habits can become more automatic within roughly two months, while more complex behaviors take longer. The mistake most people make is assuming the habit will find a place in their schedule.
It wont.
Blocking time on your calendaraccounting for travel, energy levels, and realistic constraintsturns the habit into a commitment instead of a hope. Many people also find success by chaining a new habit to an existing one, reducing the mental effort required to start.
Step 6: Use rewards
Reward is one of the most underused levers in habit formation, especially among high achievers who are often more comfortable with self-criticism than self-reinforcement.
Some people rely on negative incentives, like penalties for missed actions. While these can work short-term, they often undermine intrinsic motivation over time.
Positive rewards are different. They reinforce identity. They make the process itself feel worthwhile. For example, rewarding yourself with a quick walk around the neighborhood, a bike ride, frisbee with your dog, or a break from work to watch inspiring TED videos is all it takes sometimes to make the juice worth the squeeze.
Think of it as an insurance plan against failure, rather than an unnecessary indulgence.
Why this system works when resolutions dont
Traditional resolutions ask people to change their behavior without changing the system around that behavior. But the people who make lasting changes arent more disciplined than everyone else. Theyre more focused on identity-based, consistent change.
By focusing on intrinsic motivation, weekly momentum, structural support, and realistic planning, the goal shifts from perfect execution to staying in the game. Miss a week, and you dont failyou get up and try again.
They stop trying to reinvent themselves every January and start designing habits they can live with in February, March, and beyond.
So if 2026 is going to be different, it wont be because you wanted it more. It will be because you built a system that made change easier to sustain.
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
Zillow economists just published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home pricesas measured by the Zillow Home Value Indexwill rise 2% between November 2025 and November 2026.
Heading into 2025, Zillows 12-month forecast for U.S. home prices was +2.6%. However, many housing markets across the country softened faster than expected, prompting Zillow to issue several downward revisions. By April 2025, Zillow had cut its 12-month national home price outlook to -1.7%.
In the second half of this year, Zillow began upgrading its forecast. In August, it revised its 12-month outlook to +0.4%. In September, the forecast increased to +1.2%, and in October Zillow upgraded its 12-month national home price forecast to +1.9%. In November, Zillow slightly downgraded its 12-month outlook to +1.5%. This month, however, Zillow revised its 12-month outlook for U.S. home price growth back up, just a tad, to +2%.
While Zillows national home price forecast is no longer negativeit isnt exactly bullish either. It’s calling for a soft national housing market in 2026, one where national housing affordability may improve slightly as U.S. income growth outpaces U.S. home price growth.
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Among the 300 largest U.S. metro-area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price increase from November 2025 to November 2026 to occur in these 15 metros:
Atlantic City, New Jersey +5.9%
Rockford, Illinois +5.6%
Knoxville, Tennessee +5.1%
Concord, New Hampshire +5.1%
Green Bay, Wisconsin +5%
Saginaw, Michigan +4.9%
New Haven, Connecticut +4.7%
Appleton, Wisconsin +4.7%
Wausau, Wisconsin +4.7%
Fayetteville, Arkansas +4.6%
Jacksonville, North Carolina +4.6%
Kingston, New York +4.6%
Janesville, Wisconsin +4.6%
Bangor, Maine +4.6%
Morristown, Tennessee +4.6%
Among the 300 largest U.S. metro-area housing markets, Zillow expects the biggest home price decline from November 2025 to November 2026 to occur in these 15 metros:
Houma, Louisiana -7.0%
Lake Charles, Louisiana -6%
New Orleans -4.1%
Shreveport, Louisiana -3.1%
Lafayette, Louisiana -3%
Alexandria, Louisiana -2.4%
Beaumont, Texas -2.3%
Austin -2.2%
Chico, California -2%
Punta Gorda, Florida -2%
Monroe, Louisiana -1.9%
San Francisco -1.6%
Odessa, Texas -1.5%
Corpus Christi, Texas -1.3%
Santa Rosa, California -1.1%
U.S. home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, are currently up 0.01% year over year. If Zillows latest 12-month outlook (+2%) comes to fruition, it would represent a small acceleration nationally.
Below is what the current year-over-year rate of home price growth looks like for single-family and condo home prices. The Sunbelt, in particular Southwest Florida, is currently the epicenter of housing market weakness right now.
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With supply no longer as tight as it was during the pandemic, price gains are likely to stay modest. Buyers should see a bit more time and leverage when they shop, while sellers can still build equity, just at a slower pace than in past boom years, wrote Zillow economists in a report published on Monday.
Zillow economists added: Looking ahead, Zillow projects sales will strengthen in 2026 as mortgage rates trend lower and affordability improves. Existing home sales are forecast to reach 4.3 million next year, a 5.2% yearoveryear gain. After two slow years, the recovery is expected to be led by the Southeast and West, where demand is more ratesensitive and is starting to rebound as borrowing costs ease.
