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For many people, the word sabbatical conjures a very specific image: a long break from work, perhaps time spent on a beautiful beach, maybe a few weeks of rest before returning recharged. Its often perceived as indulgent, impractical, or reserved for academics and executives with generous benefits. That image misses the point. A sabbatical isnt a more extended vacation. It isnt an escape from responsibility. And paradoxically, it isnt even primarily about rest. When well executed, a sabbatical is a deliberate interruption that creates the conditions for identity discovery, integration, and renewal. When done poorly, it can leave people just as disoriented as when they left, only with some good photos. Theres growing evidence that intentional time away can meaningfully change how people think, work, and relate to their lives. Research published in Harvard Business Review shows that extended breaks can improve creativity, strategic thinking, and long-term performance when paired with reflection and learning, rather than pure disengagement. Neuroscience research on insight and learning also suggests that novelty, reflection, and reduced cognitive load are essential for sustainable change, not merely rest alone. Weve seen this firsthand, not only in our own travels and explorations, but in the leaders, founders, and creatives we work with. The difference between a sabbatical that changes someones trajectory and one that simply delays burnout has little to do with duration and everything to do with intention. The Sabbatical Paradox Theres a paradox at the heart of meaningful sabbaticals: sometimes we have to step away from our lives to find ourselves inside them. Modern professional life has a quiet way of narrowing identity to fit a job description. Over time, we become knownand rewardedfor our role, capabilities, or reputation. What begins as focus slowly becomes constraint. The narrowing works, until one day it doesnt. Most people dont notice whats been edited out along the way. Not because it disappeared, but because the environments we move through every day no longer reflect it back to us. A sabbatical introduces distance from those mirrors. Stepping away from job titles, expectations, and familiar routines creates a kind of productive disorientation. Without constant reinforcement of who we are supposed to be, something else begins to surface: questions we didnt have time to ask, interests we parked years ago, capacities that never quite fit our professional containers but never stopped calling for expression. This is why sabbaticals often feel unsettling before they feel liberating. They interrupt identity before they clarify it. The discomfort isnt a sign that something is wrong; its evidence that something deeper is loosening. Integration comes later, but only after we allow the disruption to do its work. Why So Many Sabbaticals Fail The most common sabbatical myth is that time alone does the work. It doesnt. Weve met people who took months off only to return unchanged; rested, perhaps, but no clearer about what they wanted next. One senior leader I worked with stepped away for nearly a year, spending the time traveling and in downtime, assuming clarity would eventually arrive. Instead, the absence of structure amplified anxiety. By the time he returned, he felt disconnected from his previous role but equally unprepared to move forward. Yes, you can fail a sabbatical. Failure usually happens when the pause is treated as an absence rather than a practice; when theres no intention beyond getting away, when reflection is optional, when the use of time is accidental rather than designed, or when people expect certainty to arrive without first sitting with uncertainty. A meaningful sabbatical asks something of you. It requires participation, not just permission. Designing a Sabbatical That Actually Matters A powerful sabbatical, whether its three months or three intentional weeks, has a shape to it. It begins with a question, not a destination. Not Where should I go? but What part of myself needs space right now? Sometimes the answer is exhaustion. Sometimes its curiosity. Sometimes its a quiet knowing that the way youve been operating is no longer sustainable. From there, exposure matters. New cultures, unfamiliar languages, and different rhythms of life interrupt habitual thinking. Travel isnt essential, but dislocation often is. Being outside your comfort zone has a way of revealing whats essential and whats been propping you up. Equally important is capture. Insight has a short half-life. Without practices for noticing and recording what youre learningthrough writing, sketching, voice notes, or conversationmuch of the value evaporates on reentry. The sabbatical becomes a memory instead of a resource. And then theres skill-building. The most impactful sabbaticals dont just create space; they develop new muscles. Learning a language, navigating unfamiliar systems, volunteering, or studying a craft can rewire confidence and expand identity in ways rest alone never will. Annettes experience reflects this clearly. During her second sabbatical, focused on purpose-seeking both personally and professionally, she adopted a simple daily practice: creating one sketch each day alongside her morning journaling. The practice slowed her thinking, surfaced patterns, and helped her make sense of complexity beyond words alone. What began as a sabbatical experiment became a lasting integration practice she continues to use to capture insight, navigate uncertainty, and connect more deeply with others. When You Cant Take a Sabbatical, Design a Powerful Pause Not everyone can step away for months, and thats understandable. But skipping the process entirely comes at a cost. A powerful pause can be designed within real constraints: a few weeks between roles, a recurring solo day each month, or even a temporary relocation layered inside your current workflow. What matters isnt the length of time away, but the quality of separation and reflection. We have seen leaders design micro-sabbaticals that changed everything, not because they escaped their lives, but because they stopped rushing through them. They created containers for asking better questions, experimenting with new rhythms, and noticing who they were becoming when performance pressure loosened its grip. The same principles apply: intention, exposure, capture, and learning. The Role of Uncertainty Another common misconception is that a sabbatical should always provide clarity upon completion. Sometimes it does. Often, it delivers something more valuable first: disruption. Plans unravel. New paths appear. Identities loosen before they reassemble. This isnt failure; its the work. A sabbatical creates a liminal space where old narratives lose authority, and new ones havent fully formed. Being open to that uncertainty is part of designing a successful pause. The goal isnt to come back with all the answers. Its to return more integrated, more honest, and more attuned to what matters. At their best, sabbaticals deepen connection to ourselves, to others, and to purpose. They remind us that we are larger than our rols and more capable than our routines suggest. They create space for identity integration rather than identity performance. In a culture obsessed with acceleration, choosing to pauseintentionally, courageously, and with curiosityis a radical act. Whether you call it a sabbatical or a powerful pause, the invitation is the same: step far enough away from your life to see it clearly, and long enough into yourself to decide how you want to return. Because the most meaningful journeys dont just take us somewhere new, they bring us back to ourselves, changed.
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E-Commerce
Rarely have I more appreciated the chasm between me and Silicon Valley than I have while using OpenClaw. This new AI program, which previously went by Moltbot and before that Clawdbot, has achieved virality over the past week for its ability to control your digital life via text message. It’s an unashamedly geeky tool at the moment, but those who’ve been using it have hailed it as the future of digital assistants. There’s just one problem: OpenClaw is exorbitantly expensive to use. Okay, maybe not for the AI boosters who think nothing of dropping $200 per month on ChatGPT Pro or Claude Max. But definitely for me as someone who balks at even a $20 per month AI subscription. Continuing to use OpenClaw would cost me a lot more than that, which isn’t worth the time it saves on a handful of menial tasks. What is Clawdbot/Moltbot/OpenClaw? OpenClaw isn’t like other AI tools that you access in a web browser or mobile app. Instead, you set it up on your computer via command line instructions and plug it into existing AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and others. As long as your machine stays on, its available. [Screenshot: Jared Newman] Much of what OpenClaw does is similar to existing AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude. It can answer questions, browse the web, and connect with an array of third-party services, including your email and calendar. But it also does a few key things differently: It can access anything on your computer. You can access it through popular chat services such as WhatsApp and iMessage. Because it’s always running, it can proactively message you and run tasks automatically. Like a lot of AI tools, OpenClaw is ultimately what you make of it. And while I’m not the most inventive AI user, I quickly found a few ways in which it could be more useful than conventional AI assistants. For instance, I gave OpenClaw access to my weekly to-do list board in Obsidian, which allowed it to summarize my agenda, add new items to the list, and remove or rearrange existing items. I could do all this just by dictating into a WhatsApp message. I also had OpenClaw handle the tedium of invoicing. After pointing out an existing invoice in my Obsidian vault, I asked it to create a copy and turn it into a new invoice based on a block of text from my FastCo author page. [Screenshot: Jared Newman] From there I started playing with OpenClaw’s scheduling abilities. I asked it to create a 9 a.m. roundup of Techmeme headlines that focused on consumer news and skipped over things like earnings reports and personnel changes. Then I had it set up a bi-hourly digest of a few different subreddits, thereby discouraging me from compulsively checking them during work hours. [Screenshot: Jared Newman] At this point I was feeling pretty good about what OpenClaw could do, and was even looking forward to thinking up more ideas. Then I realized how much it would cost to keep using it. Cost creep Although OpenClaw uses major AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, it doesn’t tie into their consumer-facing products. Instead, you must connect with those companies’ developer APIs, whose pay-as-you-go model charges for every query. A couple years ago, when I dabbled in those APIs to generate playlists in Plexamp, each request cost a fraction of a penny. Using OpenClaw is wildly more expensive, especially if you opt for Anthropics Opus 4.5 model, as the developer recommends. Just getting OpenClaw set up cost me about $4, because I didnt trust it with access to my entire file system given the significant security concerns involved . Setting up OpenClaws sandbox mode, which lets you choose which folders it can access, took some back-and-forth troubleshooting. By the time I’d set up my other automations, I was already about $10 deep. If those were just one-time costs, I wouldn’t have cared too much. But every time I asked OpenClaw anything, I’d see a surprising leap on Claude API cost chart. Just asking why a particular story was excluded from its morning Techmeme roundup, for instance, cost $0.64. Confirming which language model OpenClaw was using cost another $0.37. Those fractions of a penny snowballed. Eventually I decided to ask OpenClaw why it was so pricey, which revealed part of the problem: Each query was drawing on our entire conversation as contextincluding my initial sandboxing setupand that gets expensive. (It may have also explained the occasional rate limit errors I was getting in response to some queries.) “Either accept it (continuity has a cost) or periodically start fresh when we switch contexts,” OpenClaws AI informed me. Ultimately, I did wipe OpenClaw’s memory, which meant I had to teach it my to-do list and digest tasks all over again. I also switched from Claude Opus 4.5 to Claude Sonnet 4.5, which is cheaper, as some users have noted. Even with those changes, the costs added up quickly. Managing my to-do list cost about five cents. Delivering my daily Techmeme digest cost about 10 cents. The bihourly Reddit briefings cost about 20 cents. It doesn’t sound like much, but it puts me on track to spend over $30 per month, and that’s without even bothering to give OpenClaw any new tasks or ask it any extra questions. Again, the AI enthusiasts in Silicon Valley might shrug off such costs, but it’s more than I care to spend on any individual service, let alone one that’s only providing a few modest conveniences. What I’ve learned OpenClaw’s overnight fame has at least proven a few things: Interacting with AI via an existing messaging app can be pretty neat if it’s useful enough, especially when it can can reach out proactively. Giving AI access to your computer also opens up some interesting possibilities (but also some serious security risks). For me, though, the biggest takeaway is how much this stuff actually costs when it’s not being subsidized by venture capital or being given away by a big tech company in growth mode. OpenClaw is the rare AI product that actually seems sustainable. But unless the economics of AI API access change, mass adoption may escape its grasp.
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E-Commerce
Record cold temperatures are once again expected to hit a swath of the country this weekendeven plunging Florida into its coldest stretch of the last 15 years, potentially bringing snow to areas of the state that haven’t seen it in four decades. This arctic blast is actually a sign of climate change, and how more extreme weather happens in an increasingly warming world, despite erroneous claims by the president and others. Theres a difference between weather and climate Ahead of the winter storm that brought intense snow, ice, and freezing temperatures to about two-thirds of the United States earlier this month, President Trump took to Truth Social to repeat a common piece of climate misinformation. Record Cold Wave expected to hit 40 states. Rarely seen anything like it before, he wrote. Could the Environmental Insurrectionals please explain WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING??? Trump repeated this sentiment in a recent speech. But his comments reveal a deep misunderstanding about climate change. There is a difference between weather and climate. Weather is short, variable, and has to do with the current conditions in any place at a specific time. Climate, on the other hand, has to do with long-term trends and patterns. As climate change worsens and the planet warms, it leads to trends of hotter and hotter years. But it also exacerbates weather extremes. Climate change also specifically destabilizes the polar vortex, which then brings arctic air and freezing temperatures further south than usual. What is the polar vortex? Swirling around the Arctic above the North Pole is the polar vortex, a large mass of cold, fast winds. Typically, the polar vortex is pretty fixed in terms of its shape and reach: it sits as a band above the top of the planet, like a hat made of cold, low-pressure air. The Arctic is the fastest warming region of the planet, and as it warms, it throws the polar vortex out of whack. [Graphic: AFP/Getty Images] Underneath the polar vortex is the polar jet stream, a river of air that sits closer to the Earths surface and affects our winter weather. As climate change disrupts and destabilizes the polar vortex, it causes it to wobble and distort out of shape. That in turn affects the polar jet stream. Instead of blowing its cold winds straight across the Earth, the jet stream turns wavy, curving up and down and bringing storms and frigid Arctic air further south than usual. Thats what is expected to bring dangerously cold temperatures to much of the country this weekend. Overall, our winters are still getting warmer. On average, 210 locations around the U.S. now experience six more extremely warm days than they did in the 1970s. A warmer atmosphere also holds more precipitation, which can even mean more snow. And generally, climate change fuels all sorts of extremesfrom more intense hurricanes to hotter heat waves to, yes, more severe winter storms.
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E-Commerce
The feeling of languishing is likely relatable for many workerseven if they dont quite have that exact language for it. And new research shows its not many workers who feel this way. Its most. What gets a little confused in people’s minds is that they assume languishing is almost like distress and mental illness, says Oscar Ybarra, business professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But it’s more like: I’m just kind of stuck. I’m not really engaged. I don’t know where I’m going. Ybarra wanted to capture the malaise that employees often experience in the workplace, which doesnt always rise to the level of mental illness. When he first polled workers in 2024, Ybarra learned that a majority of them identified as languishing at work, rather than flourishing. In a new survey conducted in partnership with YouGov, workers seem to be doing even worse: About 61% of the 2,000 respondents said they were languishing, compared to 57% the year prior. Nearly 18% of them claimed to be languishing severely. The study found that there is little variation along demographic lines, and the experience of languishing tends to be correlated with high rates of burnout. I feel very conflicted about that, Ybarra says of the uptick in languishing. As a researcher, you always want some consistencybut that consistency suggests there’s a lot of people who are just not doing super well at work. Beyond just documenting the phenomenon of languishing at work, Ybarra hopes to offer some potential relief for organizations and employees. The spectrum of languishing to flourishing is a useful framing because it broadens how psychologists tend to think of well being, according to Ybarra. Especially when you apply it to the work settingwhich is something that hasn’t been doneit really provides a lot of targets for potential intervention, he adds. There are certain common elements across workplaces with flourishing employees: Many of them report a high degree of autonomy alongside strong support from colleagues and managers. The study characterizes this as an “empowered squad, and found that 68% of employees in those workplaces were flourishing; a muted squad in which employees have high levels of support, but less autonomy, yielded a lower rate of flourishing employees at 42%. (Ybarra points out, however, that there is such a thing as too much autonomysomeone who works entirely remotely and very independently might actually feel isolated.) On the whole, the surveys findings indicate that work environment seems to inform an employees experience more than demographic background. Companies that boast a strong sense of ethics and hold people accountable for their behavior also had a higher share of flourishing employees. But there are steps individual employees can take to thrive more at work, even if their workplace lacks structural support. Flourishing workers rely on a number of strategies for emotional regulation, which Ybarra describes as the three Rs: reframe, reach out, and reset. Reframing is a common technique in psychotherapy, in which you might try to find the positive in a difficult situation or remind yourself that it wont last. Reaching out can involve connecting with family or friends or even consulting your colleaguesthough Ybarra notes that seeking this kind of support is not the same as venting frustrations, which is a little less healthy. Resetting really depends on what works best for you, whether thats physical exercise or meditation, or something else altogether. What previous research has shown is that the more of these [strategies] you have in your toolkit, the better, Ybarra says. It gives you more things to choose from. As workers are up against a tough job market and growing pressure from their employers to adopt AInot to mention the political unrest in our midstany strategies to protect their peace may come in handy. The conditions can be so overwhelming that you could have the perfect toolkit in your head for thinking differently about things, but its just working against too much, Ybarra says. There will always be stress and difficulties at workbut when we have those supports in place, individuals may be better able to use [them] to some good effect.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump says hell tap former Federal Reserve governor Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chair to replace Jerome Powell in May with Trump believing that he can finally get the booming economy that he promised to voters. When Trump said that Warsh comes from central casting, the president revealed a lot about his own views of the 55 year-old’s looks and conventional pedigree. Warsh has many of the trappings of a traditional pick to lead the world’s most important central bank, yet he’s doing so at a decidedly unconventional moment for the Fed as Trump has said the new chair needs to cut its benchmark rates to the White House’s liking. Hes very smart, very good, strong, young, pretty young, Trump told reporters on Friday about Warsh. He was the central casting guy that people wanted. The president added, Looks dont mean anything, but hes got the look. Rate cuts of the degree sought by Trump could temporarily boost growth, but they also pose the risk of overheating the economy at a time when inflation is already elevated and affordability is a top concern for much of the American public. Warsh was previously a runner-up for the Senate-confirmed post of Fed Chair in 2017, when Trump selected Powell to lead the central bank. Trump has since said that he was given bad advice regarding Powell. Warsh is credentialed with degrees from Stanford University and Harvard University Law School. He is also married to Jane Lauder, the daughter of billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, a major Republican donor. At 35, Warsh became the youngest governor on the Fed’s seven member board, serving in that post from 2006 to 2011. He was previously an economic aide in George W. Bushs Republican administration and was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Warsh worked closely with then-Chair Ben Bernanke in 2008-09 during the central banks efforts to combat the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Bernanke later wrote in his memoirs that Warsh was one of my closest advisers and confidants and added that his political and markets savvy and many contacts on Wall Street would prove invaluable. Still, Warsh appeared in key moments to be misguided about the depth of the challenges confronting the U.S. economy as mortgage defaults and layoffs mounted in the Great Recession. He wanted the Fed to keep its benchmark rates higher when the economy was at risk of deflation and possibly collapsing. Warsh raised concerns in 2008 that further interest rate cuts by the Fed could spur inflation. Yet even after the Fed cut its rate to nearly zero, inflation stayed low. And he objected in meetings in 2011 to the Feds decision to purchase $600 billion of Treasury bonds, an effort to lower long-term interest rates, though he ultimately voted in favor of the decision at Bernankes behest. Warsh also behaved at times like a pre-Trump Republican, calling in a 2010 speech for ending the creep of trade protectionism that he declared to be the opposite of pro-growth policies. Trump has since largely overhauled GOP dogma by pushing for massive hikes in import taxes, having unilaterally imposed them last year by declaring an economic emergency. Warsh has been working as a visiting economics fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located at Stanford University. He is also a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a partner at the Duquesne Family Office, which manages the wealth of billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller. In recent months, Warsh has appeared to engage in an active campaign for the Fed post with TV interviews and articles. He has become much more critical of the Fed, calling for regime change and assailing Powell for engaging on issues like climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, which Warsh said are outside the Feds mandate. In a July interview on CNBC, Warsh said Fed policy has been broken for quite a long time. The central bank that sits there today is radically different than the central bank I joined in 2006, he added. By allowing inflation to surge in 2021-22, the Fed brought about the greatest mistake in macroeconomic policy in 45 years, that divided the country. In a November opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, Warsh said that the Fed should abandon the dogma that inflation is caused when the economy grows too much and workers get paid too much. Inflation is caused when government spends too much and prints too much. He suggested that inflationary pressures would be lowered because technologies such as artificial intelligence would lead to higher levels of productivity. His bet that AI will lead to growth without inflation aligns closely with Trump’s own belief that inflation has been defeated and that the AI buildout will power growth this year. AI will be a significant disinflationary force, increasing productivity and bolstering American competitiveness, Warsh wrote. Josh Boak and Christopher Rugaber, Associated Press
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E-Commerce