Heres a common pattern in my house. See if it seems familiar to you. After my husband showers, he often forgets to put his dirty clothes in the hamper. This drives me batty, so I remind him to please pick them up. Again and again and again.
Weve been married for 15 years now and the result of all my nagging appears to be exactly zilch. Half the time I go in the bathroom there is a ball of socks and underwear on the floor.
My husband is an otherwise thoughtful and considerate guy. So whats going on? According to psychology research, the problem likely isnt him. Its my belief that nagging is an effective strategy to get another person to change their behavior.
The psychology of why nagging doesnt work
We have a perception that we wont get what we want from the other person, so we feel we need to keep asking in order to get it, psychologist Scott Wetzler explained to The Wall Street Journal. But rather than prompting change, nagging causes people to feel demeaned and withhold the desired behavior. The nagger then nags more and resentment builds.
This dynamic can kill a romantic relationshipstudies find that, unsurprisingly, a lot of nagging is associated with low relationship satisfactionbut its equally useless between parents and kids, cofounders, or bosses and employees.
So what works better to get someone to actually change their behavior? A new study has a suggestion. But, be warned, if youre stuck in a pattern of habitual nagging, it will probably feel counterintuitive.
The jujitsu mind trick that actually changes behavior
After years of low-level laundry conflict, I admit the last thing I feel inclined to do is thank my husband the one time in a dozen that his clothes end up in the hamper. But according to a new study out of the University of Toronto recently published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, when it comes to changing his behavior, gratitude would beat nagging.
The research was conducted by psychologist Natalie Sisson and colleagues and consisted of three separate studies looking at the connection between expressions of gratitude and behavior change in couples.
One study asked 151 couples to keep a daily diary of their interactions around some change sought by one member of the pair. These diaries showed that the more a member of the couple felt their partner was grateful for their efforts to change, the more likely they were to make further adjustments. After nine months, partners who felt their better halves were most grateful had made the biggest changes.
Taken together, all the findings suggest that, if you ask your partner to change something about themselves or their behavior, and they say they are willing to try, being grateful will help them to develop their own motivation to make that change, making it more likely to happen, writes the British Psychological Societys Research Digest, summing up the results.
Easy to explain, harder to implement
In some sense, thats intuitive. When you praise someone for their efforts, even if theyre minimal, they feel positive about you and themselves. When you nag them, the opposite happens. Which scenario do you think is more likely to result in someone putting in more effort?
But my personal experience at least suggests that, in the heat of the moment, this jujitsu mind trickpraising faint signs of improvement even when you feel like complainingcan be hard to muster. The last thing I want to do when I finally spot one of my husbands socks in the hamper is to offer him kudos. Its hard not to think about the hundreds Ive had to deposit there before.
If you care about effectiveness more than venting, though, psychology suggests this is the way to go. Positive reinforcement works best to train a puppy. It also apparently works best to train people. Bigging others up with gratitude is more likely to motivate them to change their behavior than tearing them down with nagging.
Other tricks to help someone change their behavior
What else can you do to help other people change their behavior? This isnt the first study to dig into ths question. Experts have other ideas that may complement a liberal application of gratitude.
BJ Fogg, director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, has suggested catching a ride on the other persons motivational wave. When you notice the other party seems keen to make the desired change, step up and offer them concrete support.
If you want someone in your life to exercise more, that could mean going to tour gyms with them when they express an interest. Or it could mean sitting down with your perpetually disorganized employee and walking them through a new calendar system when they come to you for help.
Another idea, suggested by psychologist Devon Price, is digging into what barriers or obstacles might be preventing a person from changing. If my husbands laundry delinquency is a result of being rushed in the morning, maybe we could switch around some chores to ease his time crunch. If your colleague is putting off a task because of fear of failure, additional training or support will probably work better than scolding.
Finally, time-use expert and author Laura Vanderkam says that, if you want others to change, you should first talk about your own self-improvement projects. If a direct report is struggling with time management, for instance, she advises walking them through your own diary as a way to get a conversation about tradeoffs and challenges started.
Step one: Give up the nagging
What all of these experts agree on is that if you really want someone to change their behavior, nagging might relieve some of your frustration. But its not going to actually work. Try gratitude, support, and open dialogue instead.
By Jessica Stillman
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
This article originally appeared in Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
Caralynn Nowinski Collens, Ramille Shah, and Adam Jakus spent years developing an innovative technology to regenerate injured bone. The results, they thought, were . . . okay. The company they founded, Dimension Bio, received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration for its approach: providing a 3D-printed lattice or “scaffold” for new bone to grow in. However, it didn’t form new bone fast enough to compete with established treatment methods, such as transplanting a patients own bone tissue.
But Collens, Dimension’s CEO, sees the experience as a net positive, validating the companys technology and processes with the FDA. That could help the Chicago-based startup work toward a more-ambitious goal in about three years: building a human liver using its scaffold and donated cells. It would actually be a miniature, simplified version of the organ, meant to function well enough to keep someone alive. That could provide breathing room for an injured or diseased liver to heal, or buy time for the patient to receive a transplant.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 52,222 people died of liver disease and cirrhosis in 2023. The death rate from cirrhosis increased 26.4% from 2000 to 2019, per the National Institutes of Health. (Cirrhosis is most often the result result of fat buildup, viral hepatitis B and C, or long-term alcohol abuse, though there are other causes.)
“The mortality rates are very high when a patient can’t get a transplant. And so that’s where we’re looking to be able to provide [help],” Collens says.
[Photo: Dimension Bio]
Reprinting Older Science
Building a scaffold for cells to grow in is not novel, Collens concedes, nor is the material the company uses: poly lactic-co-glycolic acid. PLGA is found throughout everyday medicine, including in dissolving sutures, dermal fillers, and tiny capsules to deliver drugs to the body.
Dimension Bios innovation is in how it utilizes 3D printing to build the PLGA scaffold, part of an overall system its dubbed BioNidum. [When] we put that in the body, what happens is it gets new blood vessels very quickly, and that’s unusual,” says Collens, noting that typically the immune system walls off the foreign body and prevents blood vessels from growing easily.
Collens attributes the success to a scaffold structure that provides pores of different sizes, designed to help cells move into the scaffold easily and not provoke a strong immune response. The larger pores allow the blood vessels to grow into the new tissue.
The company was originally called Dimension Inx, a bit of wordplay. “We make biomaterial inks,” Collens says.
The technology grew out of Northwestern Universitys TEAM lab, short for tissue engineering and additive manufacturing (a fancy name for 3D printing), founded by Shah in 2010. At the time, Collens was running an advanced manufacturing innovation center in Chicago, part of a national network of institutes funded by the federal government and companies including Microsoft and Lockheed Martin. In 2015, one of the board members sent Collens an email, “and he said, I just saw this rock star young faculty member present, and I think you should meet her,” she recalls.
Shah, a materials science professor at the time, and then-graduate student Jakus founded Dimension Inx in 2016, and Collens joined as a cofounder and CEO 2019. Jakus left the company in 2023. Shah serves as chief science officer. She, Collens, and three other women account for all voting members on Dimension’s board of directors. The overall staff is about “70% diverse,” Collens says. “I’ll say it’s intentional only in the fact that we have a strong belief, and it’s one of the values of the company, that diversity leads to better outcomes and better innovation.”
The company raised $20.52 million through seed rounds in 2020 and 2021, and a series A in 2023. Lead investors include KdT Ventures and Prime Movers Lab. Another major investor is Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, which focuses on startups outside top investment regions and doesnt typically fund biotech. The company is planning what it calls a series A2 funding round in 2026, with the goal of raising up to $50 million.
Boning Up on the Technology
CMFlexthe companys earlier bone repair productis considered a “medical device, requiring a less-stringent FDA review than medications or Dimensions upcoming mini-liver. Thats because CMFlex is just the scaffold for the patients own cells to grow into, rather than to introduce new cells. Bone provided the “lowest hanging fruit,” for Dimension to prove out its technology, Collens says, because its a naturally regenerative tissue. “We were putting this matrix or scaffold inside to serve as a guide or an instigator to get new bone.”
The FDA didnt require human trials for this medical device. Although it had success in animal studies, Dimension chose to do a pilot program in patients before making the product available. “We have lots of examples of being able to create bone in patients and in animals,” Collens says, adding, however, “We didn’t do it fast enough for the structure that’s neededand the structure meaning the hardness to withstand the forces that bone allows you to withstand.” Dimension eventually decided working with tissue would be more impactful, and decided not to go to market with CMFlex.
Moving to soft tissue and then organs was part of the original pitch deck to investors. The company is investigating restoring function in ovaries, for instance. It also succeeded in growing insulin-producing cells seeded in its scaffold in diabetic mice, which could pave the way for treating diabetes in humans. But that area was already a crowded market, Collens says.
“We ended up focusing on liver failure for a variety of reasons, but probably one of the biggest reasons is it’s a huge problem with no good alternative, except for liver transplant,” she says.
Dimensions plan is to grow a small, simplified liver under the skin as a temporary fix until either the full liver can recover or the patient can get a transplant. “I think that’s a good way to go, says James Anderson, a retired professor of pathology, macromolecular science, and biomedical engineering who taught at Case Western Reserve University for more than 40 years. Anderson, who is not associated with Dimension Bio, reviewed its research and was impressed with the methods and results. The liver, he says, is not only a worthy target for regenerative medicine; its also a conducive one. “They picked an organ that can reproduce itself,” he says.
But even a mini-organ is much more complicated than bone. “It’s a fundamentally ifferent type of product, when we’re talking about putting cells on a scaffold,” Collens says.
In mice whose livers were deliberately damaged, the company reports that it increased the survival rate by more than 70% after seeding with liver cells from mice and humans. That required hundreds of millions of cells. But according to Collens, building the miniature human liver could require seeding the scaffold with 5 billion to 20 billion cells.
For humans, Dimension will use stem cells to produce those billions of liver cells. But first come tests in rats and pigs. The companys timetable is aggressive. It aims to start clinical trials in humans in 2028.
The next question might be: Why not grow an entire liver replacement? That seems to be, at best, a very distant goal. Anderson is not sure its possible, given the complex structure of the full organ. Collens says Dimension Bio is not working on that lofty goal, for now. But she doesnt rule it out.
“I think we’re at a really interesting inflection point . . . of this convergence of engineering and biology, where we can actually engineer biological systems that support function that we couldn’t do before.”
You may think working hard, showing initiative, boosting your skill set, and being a team player is what it takes to be noticed to get promoted. But even with all these notable wins and strides, the call to a higher position often never comes.
The reality of being repeatedly passed over is frustratingand such a promotion plateau can leave you questioning whats really within your control.
To learn more about the concept, Fast Company asked three career experts for advice on how to handle a stagnant job path . . . as well as what you can do to add some momentum to your promotion game plan.
What exactly is a promotion plateau?
The most significant telltale sign is the feeling of stagnation with ones career. This can include feeling like a promotion is coming slower than anticipated, ones skills are not improving, or that one is no longer being challenged in their role, says Ryne Sherman, chief science officer at Hogan Assessments, a personality insights provider based in Tulsa.
Typically, a promotion plateau results from the organizational structure of a business with barriers of advancement: hierarchy, red tape, poor structural systems in place, even budget constraints. In some cases, an employees apathy and lack of transferable skills due to these structural challenges can affect the possibility of being promoted.
Whatever the reason, if you cannot see a clear path for advancement in your organization, you may be at a promotion plateau, Sherman says.
Many large, long-standing organizations have built-in promotional structures that are reliable and predictable in nature. But if you work for smaller, midsized, or younger organizations, they may not have reliable promotional steps built into their system, says Sherman. So you might have to get a bit introspective instead.
Another place to look is in your gut, he also says. Ambitious employees who feel they have reached a promotional plateau will begin to feel dissatisfied with their work.
The upside of hiring ambitious workers is that they are often highly engaged and productive, continues Sherman. The downside? Organizations without a plan for them will struggle to retain talent.
The warning signs
Erin Pash, a Minneapolis-St. Paul-based CEO and founder of Pash Company, a social health incubator, offers the following red flags that signal youre approaching a promotion plateau:
A lack of new responsibilities or challenging assignments
Annual reviews that feel like carbon copies of previous years
Watching peers or junior colleagues advance more quickly
Receiving no substantive discussions about career development during evaluations
Feeling intellectually unchallenged and professionally stuck
Minimal or no exposure to strategic company initiatives
A sense of professional invisibility within the organization
Its a persistent sense that your career has hit an invisible wall, despite your continued dedication and competence, says Pash.
Surmounting the plateau
It requires a multifaceted approach, says Pash, and a commitment of effort and action is expected.
Broaden your skills. Invest in your own skill set and accomplishments by pursuing relevant certifications in your field, and by taking online courses to expand technical and soft skills, Pash explains.
Networkand network some more. Attend workshops and conferences to keep a pulse on your industry. These opportunities can help you develop skills that can keep you aligned with emerging industry trends, says Pash. Plus, attending such events can also build up contacts in your professional circle.
Consider other internal roles. Explore lateral moves within different departments of your company which could offer more room for growth.
Seek targeted feedback. Engage directly with supervisors to understand specific barriers to advancement, says Pash. Request a comprehensive performance review that outlines precise skills and achievements needed for progression, she continues. This candid dialogue transforms performance conversations from passive assessments to active career development planning.
Leave when you have to. Sometimes you can do everything right and still hit a brick wall with your career. Some companies are like old boys’ clubs where your brilliant ideas and hard work feel about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, adds Pash.The smartest move isn’t always fighting the system, but recognizing when it’s time to take your talents somewhere that actually values what you bring to the table. All the skills you learn to overcome the plateau will absolutely prove to be helpful in the event you begin looking to jump to another ship.
What are some ways of finding a growth-friendly organization?
When evaluating whether an organization offers growth opportunities for its employees, Karen Burke, a knowledge adviser with the Society of Human Resource Management, says the following strategies are recommended:
A review of a companys organizational chart can provide valuable insights. Companies with multiple hierarchical levels, such as associate, manager, director, and vice president, typically demonstrate clear pathways for advancement, says Burke.
Assess a companys management structure. The presence of various management positions (e.g., assistant manager, manager, senior manager, assistant vice president, vice president) reflects distributed leadership and increases the likelihood of opportunities to progress into management roles, she points out.
Evaluating a companys departmental structure is helpful as well. Organizations with a broad range of departments (such as marketing, operations, and finance), including specialized sub-departments, tend to offer greater internal mobility. This structure supports both vertical and lateral career progression, outlines Burke.
Consider any evidence of business expansion, such as published information regarding business growth, new initiatives, or expanded networks. Whether identified through company communications or external research, this information often signals the potential for future opportunities, she adds.
Identify project-based teams. Companies that utilize project-based or rotational teams frequently facilitate rapid skill development and provide avenues for promotion, notes Burke.
Monitor a companys vacancy trends. Commonly, frequent or multiple job vacancies may indicate active hiring and suggest the possibility of upward mobility within an organization, Burke says.
Or if youre up for the challengestart your own company
But Burke also says another option, as opposed to adapting to the dynamics and timing that ead to promotions, is simply to go into business yourselfa drastic change, to be sure, but it can lead to drastic growth.
Thats especially if you find yourself in a company or industry with inherently limited growth opportunities, says Burke. Again, sometimes growth-limiting organizational structures are simply too much for you (or anyone else) to overcome.
Should you decide to explore this option, its recommended that comprehensive market research is conducted: evaluating your risk tolerance, and developing a strong business plan. Starting your own business can provide a platform to pursue professional opportunities that align with your aspirations and skill set. Entrepreneurship also offers the ability to shape your own career path, respond proactively to market needs, and foster both personal and professional development.
This strategic approach will enable you to leverage your experience and expertise, resulting in greater autonomy and, possibly, career satisfaction, she says.
Unfortunately, a promotion plateau is tricky, because there can be so many different factors limiting your growth.
Fortunately, though, you do have a lot of options available to you, if youre willing to do your research and think outside the box.
Based on my experience, employees who encounter a promotion plateau typically pursue several strategies to advance their careers, says Burke.
After writing more than one article a day for the last 23 years, Ive accumulated a body of text large enough to train an AI model that could convincingly write like me. With todays technology, it would not be difficult to build a system capable of generating opinions that sound as if they came from Enrique Dansan algorithmic professor that keeps publishing long after Im gone.
That, apparently, is the next frontier of productivity: the digital twin. Startups such as Viven and tools like Synthesia are building AI clones of employees and executivestrained on their voices, writing, decisions, and habits. The idea is seductive. Imagine scaling yourself infinitely: answering emails, recording videos, writing updates, etc., while you do something else, or nothing at all.
But seductive doesnt mean sensible.
A world full of digital ghosts
We are entering an era where professionals will not just automate tasks; they will replicate their personas. A company might build a digital copy of its best salesperson or customer service agent. A CEO might train a virtual twin to respond to inquiries. A university might deploy an AI version of a popular lecturer to deliver courses at scale.
In theory, this sounds efficient. In practice, it invites a form of existential confusion: If the replica is convincing enough, what happens to the person? What does it mean to be productive when your digital version is the one doing the work?
The fascination with cloning ourselves digitally reflects the same temptation that has driven automation for centuries: outsourcing not just labor, but also identity. The difference is that AI can now replicate the voice of that identity, both literally and metaphorically.
What I would look like as an algorithm
I could easily do it. Feed a large language model the millions of words Ive written since 2003every article, every post, every commentand youd get a fairly accurate simulation of me. It would probably have the right tone, vocabulary, and rhythm. It could write plausible articles, maybe even publish them at the same pace.
But it would just miss the point.
I dont write to fill a schedule or a database. I write to think or to teach. Writing, for me, is not an act of production, but of reflection. Thats why, as I explained recently in Why I let AI help me thinkbut never think for me, I never let AI write my articles for me. It makes no sense. Asking a model to think for me would defeat the very reason I sit down every morning to write.
Of course, I use AI constantly: summarizing sources, checking facts, exploring counterarguments, and finding references. But I never let it finish my sentences. Thats the boundary that keeps my work mine.
The illusion of scaling yourself
The promise of digital clones is rooted in the same misconception: that replicating output equals replicating value. Companies now talk about bottling expertise or scaling human capital as if personality were a production line.
But cloning output is not the same as extending competence. A persons professional value is not their words or gestures. Its their judgment, built over time through context and curiosity. A model trained on your past decisions may imitate your tone, but it cannot anticipate your evolution. Its a fossil, not a future.
An AI clone of me could mimic my writing style from 2025. But if I let it publish, it would freeze me in that year forever, a museum piece updated daily.
From productivity to presence
Executives, entrepreneurs, and creators should be careful what they wish for. A digital twin may handle the inbox or record video briefings, but it also dilutes what makes leadership or creativity meaningful: presence.
In Axioss coverage of CEO clones, many executives confessed that they liked their AI doubles but didnt fully trust them. The clone could handle repetitive interactions, but not empathy, timing, or nuancethe qualities that define credibility.
Delegating those things to an algorithm is like sending a mannequin to a meeting: technically present, emotionally vacant.
Corporate immortality and the ethics of legacy
Theres also the question of what happens when your digital twin outlives you. Some companies already treat employee data as assets, so why wouldnt they treat their digital clones the same way?
Imagine a firm continuing to deploy the AI version of a beloved leader or educator after theyve passed away. It might seem like a tribute, but its really a form of corporate necromancy: using a persons intellectual remains to perpetuate a brand.
Its not hard to picture universities selling virtual professors or corporations reusing former CEOs as permanent avatars. In a recent academic paper on digital twins, researchers warned that the boundary between representation and possession is getting blurry. Who owns the clone? Who profits from it?
When we replicate people as data objects, we risk turning identity into infrastructure, into something that can be licensed, monetized, or rebranded at will.
The right way to use AI for personal scale
There is, however, a rational way to use AI for scale: as augmentation, not imitation.
I use AI every day as a thinking partner. It reads drafts, proposes structures, suggests sources, and critiques my logic. Its like having a tireless research assistant, one that never gets offended when I ignore its advice. But the act of reasoning, the decision of what to say and how to say it, remains mine.
Thats the key difference between using artificial intelligence and becoming it. When we outsource thinking, we lose the feedback loop that makes us human: the constant process of reflection, revision, and growth.
Professionals who embrace AI responsibly will amplify their reach without diluting their essence. Those who dont will eventually find their own voices indistinguishable from their machines.
What businesses should learn from this
For companies flirting with employee clones or AI avatars, heres a checklist worth remembering:
Define purpose, not imitation. Dont build AI twins to replicate people. Build systems that free them to do higher-value work.
Keep the human in the authorship loop. AI can assist in drafting, coding, and summarizing, but final judgment must remain human.
Treat data as legacy, not property. Respect employee and creator autonomy. No one should become a perpetual digital asset without consent.
Focus on augmentation, not automation. Use AI to enhance collective intelligence, not to eliminate the need for it.
AI is not here to replace human expertise; its here to challenge how we apply it.
The paradox of self-replication
Soon, anyone with enough data will be able to build a digital version of themselves. Some will see it as immortality; others, as redundancy. I see it as a mirror, a test of what truly matters in human work.
When my own digital twin can write a decent article about AI, I wont be impressed. The question isnt whether it can write. Its whether it can care, and whether it serves me for the purpose Im trying to achieve.
And until algorithms can care about truth, nuance, curiosity, or purpose, Ill keep doing what Ive done for the last 23 years: Sit down, think, and write. Not because I have to, but because I still can.
Do your office, inbox, and calendar feel like a ghost town on Friday afternoons? Youre not alone.
Im a labor economist who studies how technology and organizational change affect productivity and well-being. In a study published in an August 2025 working paper, I found that the way people allocate their time to work has changed profoundly since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
For example, among professionals in occupations that can be done remotely, 35% to 40% worked remotely on Thursdays and Fridays in 2024, compared with only 15% in 2019. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, nearly 30% worked remotely, versus 10% to 15% five years earlier.
And white-collar employees have also become more likely to log off from work early on Fridays. Theyre starting the weekend sooner than before the pandemic, whether while working at an office or remotely as the workweek comes to a close. Why is that happening? I suspect that remote work has diluted the barrier between the workweek and the weekendespecially when employees arent working at the office.
The changing rhythm of work
The American Time Use Survey, which the U.S. Labor Departments Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts annually, asks thousands of Americans to recount how they spent the previous day, minute by minute. It tracks how long they spend working, commuting, doing housework, and caregiving.
Because these diaries cover both weekdays and weekends, and include information about whether respondents could work remotely, this survey offers the most detailed picture available of how the rhythms of work and life are changing. This data also allows me to see where people conduct each activity, making it possible to estimate the share of time American professionals spend working from home.
When I examined how the typical workday changed between 2019 and 2024, I saw dramatic shifts in where, when, and how people worked throughout that period.
Millions of professionals who had never worked remotely suddenly did so full time at the height of the pandemic. Hybrid arrangements have since become common; many employees spend two or three days a week at home and the rest in the office.
I found another change: From 2019 to 2024, the average number of minutes worked on Fridays fell by about 90 minutes in jobs that can be done from home. That change accounts for other factors, such as a professionals age, education, and occupation.
The decline for employees with jobs that are harder to do remotely was much smaller.
Even if you just look at the raw data, U.S. employees with the potential to work remotely were working about 7 hours per weekday on average in 2024, down about 13 minutes from 2019. These averages mask substantial variation between those with jobs that can more easily be done remotely and those who must report to the office most of the time.
For example, among workers in the more remote-intensive jobs, they spent 7 hours, 6 minutes working on Fridays in 2024, but 8 hours, 24 minutes in 2019.
That means I found, looking at the raw data, that Americans were working 78 fewer minutes on Fridays in 2024 than five years earlier. And controlling for other factors (e.g., demographics), this is actually an even larger 90-minute difference for employees who can do their jobs remotely.
In contrast, those employees were working longer hours on Wednesdays. They worked 8 hours, 24 minutes on Wednesdays in 2024, half an hour more than the 7 hours, 54 minutes logged on that day of the week in 2019. Clearly, theres a shift from some Friday hours, with employees making up the bulk of the difference on other weekdays.
Fridays have long been a little different
Although employees are shifting some of this skipped work time to other days of the week, most of the reductionwhether at the office or at homehas gone to leisure.
To be sure, Fridays have always been a little different than other weekdays. Many bosses allowed their staff to dress more casually on Fridays and permitted people to depart early, long before the pandemic began. But the ability to work remotely has evidently amplified that tendency.
This informal easing into the weekend, once confined to office norms, can be a morale booster. But as it has expanded, its become more individualized through remote and hybrid arrangements.
Those workers in remote-intensive occupations who are single, young, or male reduced their working hours across the board the most, relative to 2019, although their time on the job increased a bit in 2024.
The benefits and limits of flexibility
There are a few causal studies on the effects of remote work on productivity and well-being in the workplace, including some in which I participated. A general takeaway is that people tend to spend less time collaborating and more time on independent tasks when they work remotely.
Thats fine for some professions, but in roles that depend on frequent coordination, that pattern can complicate communication or weaken team cohesion. Colocationbeing physically present with your colleaguesdoes matter for some types of tasks.
But even if productivity doesnt necessarily suffer, every hour of unscheduled, independent work can be an hour not spent in coordinated effort with colleagues. That means what happens when people clock out or log off early on a Fridaywhether at home or at their officedepends on the nature of their work.
In occupations that require continuous handoffssuch as journalism, healthcare, or customer servicestaggered schedules can actually improve efficiency by spreading coverage across more hours in the day.
But for employees in project-based or collaborative roles that depend on overlapping hours for brainstorming, review, or decision-making, uneven schedules can create friction. When colleagues are rarely online at the same time, small delays can compound and slow collective progress.
The problem arises when flexible work becomes so individualized that it erodes shared rhythms altogether. The time-use data I analyzed suggests that remote-capable employees now spread their work more unevenly across the week, with less overlap in real time.
Eventually, that can make it harder to sustain the informal interactions and team cohesion that once happened organically when everyone left the office together at the nd of the week. As some of my other research has shown, that also can reduce job satisfaction and increase turnover in jobs requiring greater coordination.
The future of work
To be sure, allowing employees to do remote work and have some scheduling flexibility on any day of the week isnt necessarily bad for business.
The benefitsin terms of work-life balance, autonomy, recruitment, and reducing turnovercan be very real.
Flexible and remote arrangements expand the pool of potential applicants by freeing employers from strict geographic limits. A company based in Chicago can now hire a software engineer in Boise or a designer in Atlanta without requiring relocation.
This wider reach increases the supply of qualified candidates. It canparticularly in jobs requiring more coordinationalso improve retention by allowing employees to adjust their work schedules around family or personal needs rather than having to choose between relocating or quitting.
Whats more, many women who might have had to exit the labor force altogether when they became parents have been able to remain employed, at least on a part-time basis.
But in my view, the erosion of Fridays may go beyond what began as an informal traditionleaving the office early before the weekend begins. It is part of a broader shift toward individualized schedules that expand autonomy but reduce shared time for coordination.
Christos Makridis is an associate research professor of information systems at Arizona State University, Institute for Humane Studies.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Inspired by the ongoing auction of Bob Ross paintings to raise money for public television, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver is putting some of its own TV artifacts up for auction for a good cause.
Host John Oliver dedicated the close of Sunday’s season finale to local public television, which is facing an unprecedented crisis. Federal budget cuts could by next year close as many as 115 public television and radio stations in the U.S. serving 43 million Americans, according to the Public Media Bridge Fund, a philanthropic initiative.
“These stations can fill a vital community role,” Oliver said during Sunday’s show.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
Bob Ross Inc. said in October that it was putting 30 paintings by the late artist up for auction to pay for public station licensing fees. The first three paintings sold last week in Los Angeles for more than $600,000 total.
Oliver said Last Week Tonight originally tried bidding on one of the recently auctioned Ross paintings in hopes of flipping it to raise even more money for public television.
“Sadly, those prices were outside of our budget,” Oliver said. So instead, the show is tapping its own archives with the auction site johnoliversjunk.com.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
Items like the giant Reese’s mug that made its first appearance during a 2017 episode about net neutrality are now up for auction alongside Oliver’s “on-screen wife,” Mrs. Cabbage, and a quintet of bad wax replicas of presidents originally purchased by the show from the now-closed Hall of Presidents and First Ladies in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. All the proceeds from the auctions will go to the Public Media Bridge Fund.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
Though Last Week Tonight didn’t have the budget to drop six figures on an original Bob Ross painting at last week’s auction, Bob Ross Inc. did donate one to Oliver’s auction. “Cabin at Sunset” was created during an 1987 episode of Ross’s PBS show The Joy of Painting, and it’s presently the first item shown on Oliver’s auction site. The painting currently has a bid of more than a million dollars.
The top bid for a sculpture titled “LBJ’s Balls” is over $25,000, and the top bid for a trip to New York City to meet Oliver is higher than $50,000 at the time of this writing. So far, the leading bid to appear in a photo over Oliver’s shoulder during a future episode has just passed $100,000 after 45 bids.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
The show found some lower-priced ways to raise money, too, like signed merchandise from the Moon Mammoths, the minor league baseball team Last Week Tonight temporarily rebranded in July, and a Mr. Bean DVD signed by Joel McHale.
The auction closes on November 24. Oliver also promoted Adopt A Station, a nonprofit for people who want to help out and donate to public media stations but aren’t able to participate in his auction.
Trump administration budget cuts meant an end to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which said in August that it is winding down operations. The Public Media Bridge Fund says the end of CPB funding will destabilize the public media system. It’s seeking to raise $100 million over two years to help the most at-risk communities.
The influence of the AI industry is becoming a major topic in New Yorks 12th congressional district, where a crowded Democratic primary packed with millennial and Gen Z candidates is heating up. The seat represents one of the wealthiest communities in the country — and is a liberal stronghold — so whoever wins could eventually become a major player in the fight to limit the most noxious impacts of large language model (LLM) technology.
On Tuesday, Cameron Kasky, a political activist and Parkland shooting survivor who lives in the district (which includes the Upper West Side and Upper East Side) announced he was running. His campaign is making fighting the AI oligarchs a pivotal focus, adapting the rally cry used by progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for the ChatGPT age.
Generative AI is undoubtedly one of the most societally damaging innovations that humanity has ever created, and people do not understand the toll it will be taking on us, says Kaskys new campaign site. This damage includes the fresh water supplies it is depleting, a media literacy crisis that has already gotten out of control in this country over recent years, and the degree to which children are leaning on AI for therapy, companionship, and more — at the cost of their critical thinking skills and cognitive development.
Kasky says his legislative priorities will include holding AI companies accountable for their environmental impact, preventing mass layoffs, and better regulating the influence of tech companies on child safety. I have no sympathy for AI, and no tolerance for what it has done to our population. It will only get worse if we do not get in the way as aggressively as possible, he says.
Hes not the only person planning to take on AI in the primary. Alex Bores, a Palantir alum who has proposed state legislation the RAISE Act that would rein in the industry, has also made clear that one of his focuses would be regulating artificial intelligence.
Earlier this week, he was targeted by ads funded by Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC funded by OpenAI executive Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz thats intent on blunting the influence of tech critics in the upcoming congressional primaries. The group has called Bores’ legislation a clear example of the patchwork, uninformed, and bureaucratic state laws that would slow American progress and open the door for China to win the global race for AI leadership. Bores, in turn, has started fundraising off the ads.
This AI super PAC’s first target? Me, said Bores in a tweet. Why? They’re scared of leaders who understand their business regulating their business. They want unchecked power at your expenseand I’m the guy standing in their way.
It is a crowded race, with about ten people running for the Democratic nomination in total. Most of the other candidates, who include Nadler favorite Micah Lasher, community organizer Liam Elkind, and attorney Jami Floyd, have yet to issue strong positions on artificial intelligence but that could change.
Meanwhile, Kennedy family heir and social media provocateur Jack Schlossberg, who also announced his campaign this month, has at least some thoughts on the tech. Last year, he tweeted his reflections: Question about AI Is it sexual ? Were are ALL sexual beings, thats just a fact. If AI is non-sexual, does that limit its potential ? or make it unstoppable ?
Across the country, data center demand and construction have been skyrocketing throughout 2025.
And so has local opposition to those projects.
From Indiana (where a developer withdrew its application to build a data center on more than 700 acres of farmland after local opposition) to Georgia (where now at least eight municipalities have passed moratoriums on data center development), residents and politicians are pushing back against the water- and energy-hungry sites.
Between late March through June of this year alone, 20 data center projects, representing about $98 billion in investments, were blocked or delayed in the United States, according to a new report from Data Center Watch, a project from the AI security and intelligence firm 10a Labs.
That number is higher than all of the data center disruptions the research group had tracked in the two years prior to its most recent report.
A turning point against data centers
Data Center Watch began keeping tabs on this trend in 2023, and released its first report earlier this year, covering 2023 through the first quarter of 2025. In that time frame, 16 projects, worth $64 billion, were blocked or delayed.
Though a project may be cancelled for myriad reasons, these were cases where local opposition was reported to have played some role in the decision, says Miquel Vila, an analyst at the Data Center Watch project.
In the second quarter of 2025, that opposition surged 125%. We were expecting a few more cases, Vila says of Q2, but not 20.
One important caveat, Vila notes, is that the data center industry is booming; it makes sense that opposition would, too. But even accounting for record high construction spend, he sees these recent numbers as a turning point in the trend.
What’s wrong with data centers?
Tech giants are building out data centers at a rapid pace to meet the enormous power needs of artificial intelligence (AI).
But data centers have faced local criticism because of the resources they consume, like water (which is especially a concern in scarce regions like Arizona) and energy (which has been linked to rising electricity prices across the country.)
Along with water use and utility prices, communities have also taken issue with noise, landmark preservation, and transparency, Vila addslike if it isnt clear who the end user of a data center will be.
Data Center Watch has found 188 community groups that have formed to fight data center projects. Between March and June alone, 53 active groups across 17 states were targeting 30 data center projects.
Amid that pushback, lawmakers have also been reconsidering their regions tax subsidies to data centers, as well as regulations around zoning, and the projects environmental impacts.
That community opposition is even causing some lawmakers to change their regulations or hold off on building data centers in the future.
Local opposition is having an impact in the regulatory landscape of data centers, Vila says.
Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the industry group Data Center Coalition, said in a statement that it continues to see “significant interest” across the country for “responsible data center projects,” and said such projects create jobs, economic investment, and local tax revenue.
He added that the coalition’s members are committed to community engagement, stakeholder education, and to working with policymakers and regulatory bodies.
“Data centers are also committed to being responsible and responsive neighbors in the communities where they operate,” Diorio said.
Data centers and politics
Data center opposition has become a talking point in recent political races.
In Virginiathe biggest data center market in the worldGovernor-elect Abigail Spanberger campaigned in part on making sure data centers pay their fair share, and on addressing rising electricity prices.
In Georgia, Peter Hubbardwho was elected to the states Public Service Commission, which regulates its utilitieshas specifically highlighted how data centers can drive up peoples energy bills. Georgia is increasingly becoming a data center hotbed, and is in fact the second-largest such market in the world.
But while both those politicians are Democrats, data center opposition is a bipartisan issue, Data Center Watch found. Both blue and red states are rethinking incentives to developers or tightening their rules around such projects.
That tracks with other research about data center support: a recent Heatmap poll found that only 44% of Americans would welcome a data center near them.
Looking ahead
Data Center Watch plans to keep an eye on project delays and cancellations going forward.
Already, it seems the trend is continuing into Q3: In one prominent example, Amazons proposed Project Blue data center, was rejected by Tucson, Arizonas town council in August.
(In Data Center Watchs latest report, two of the 20 affected projects were from Amazon: one in Becker, Minnesota, which was suspended as lawmakers reconsidered tax incentives, and one in King George, Virginia, which was delayed because of legal issues and resident pushback.)
Vila expects data center opposition to keep growingand to increasingly become a part of project calculations.
Before, local opposition was more of an anecdotal possibility, he says. Now, its becoming a core feature of development . . . in the same way issues like land, energy, and water are taken into account.
Pigs famously have thick skin, and Donald Trump does not. Its just one of myriad distinctions between the cloven-hoofed barnyard animal and Americas 47th president.
Theres a good reason, however, why many social media users are currently addressing Trump as Piggy, and sharing crude, AI-assisted images of him in porcine form. Rest assured, he paved his own pathway to hog heaven.
On Monday, a clip of Trump addressing reporters aboard Air Force One went viral. It begins with reporter Jennifer Jacobs pressing Trump about the eternally unfurling Epstein scandal. The president seems as though hed rather not answer the questionat least, thats how it comes across when he admonishes Jacobs: Quiet, Piggy.
While leaders in most professions might be disciplined or even fired for such a transgression, Trump has proven uniquely immune to formal consequences for violating norms. But he is in no way immune to informal consequences, which is why the internet has already repurposed Quiet, Piggy into a memetic insult against Trump.
Bluesky users have started quote-tweeting Trumps latest TruthSocial dispatches with the new catchphrase, and theyre doing the same for media appearances from Trumpian underlings like House Speaker Mike Johnson and U.S. Representative Nancy Mace.
Quiet, Piggy.— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T13:30:52.321Z
Quiet Piggy. — Amanda Weaver (@amandaweavernovels.com) 2025-11-18T16:50:48.163Z
Over on X, Governor Gavin Newsom is among the many users adding a body-shaming component to the catchphrase, tweeting unflattering photos of the president along with it.
Quiet, piggy. pic.twitter.com/RIKsI4iDjV— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 18, 2025
Quiet, piggy. pic.twitter.com/3uOoRnjGpX— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 18, 2025
Quiet, piggy pic.twitter.com/CKORVzGGpG— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) November 18, 2025
Meanwhile, some TikTok users are also posting unflattering images of the president to accompany the insult, and others are posting AI-generated images of the president, alternately as Miss Piggy or as himself yelling at Miss Piggy.
If social media users seem especially eager to weaponize Quiet, Piggy by reflecting it back at the president, its likely because of how well this outburst fits in with Trumps previous behavior.
Trump has a documented history of calling women like Rosie ODonnell and former Miss Universe Alicia Machado pigsalong with dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. He also has a more recent and pointed history of insulting and berating journalists.
Just after the 2016 election, 60 Minutes journalist Lesley Stahl reportedly said that Trump told her the reason he regularly bashes reporters is to demean and discredit them so that the public will not believe negative stories about him.
And Trump continued to insult journalists in his tone-setting first post-election press conference, refusing to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta and telling him: You are fake news.
Over the course of his initial term, Trump would escalate attacks on press that seemed to be insufficiently friendly, deeming them the enemy of the people. He seemed to harbor a special animosity, though, toward journalists who happened to be women. In one typically fiery exchange with CNNs Abby Phillip in 2018, for instance, Trump responded to Phillips question about then-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller by saying: What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions.
In his second term, Trump appears even more committed to attacking reporters for asking questions hed prefer not rceive. He regularly refuses to answer questions, tells reporters Youre not supposed to be asking that, or calls them obnoxious and very evil for asking anyway. Indeed, the whole TACO Trump attack over the summer, which accused the president of Always Chickening Out on tariffs, would likely not have blown up to the level it did had Trump not told a reporter who asked him about it: Dont ever say what you said.
Still, despite Trump having been extra combative with reporters all year, he has lately seemed even more prickly with an uptick in questions about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump on Epstein Files: I dont want to talk about it because fake news like youyoure a terrible reporterfake news like you just keeps bringing up to deflect from the tremendous success of The Trump Admin pic.twitter.com/rZjobTujCN— Acyn (@Acyn) November 16, 2025
Trump: Will you let me finish? You are the worst. Youre with Bloomberg right? You are the worst. I dont know why they even have you. pic.twitter.com/mTmZ77KTYv— Acyn (@Acyn) November 17, 2025
When an ABC reporter asked Trump about the Epstein files on Tuesday, during the course of this writing, Trump responded by saying, I think the license should be taken away from ABC, and urging FCC chairman Brendan Carr to look at that.
As heated as Trump can get when asked about this issue, though, Quiet, Piggy stands out as an exceedingly juvenile and degrading insult. Many social media users have been speculating about why the schoolyard name-calling went unchallenged in the moment; why Jacobss fellow reporters didnt make sure her question got answered or demand an apology on her behalf.
Perhaps its the absence of any heroes aboard Air Force One, though, that has inspired social media users to push back on Trumps hogwash themselves.
