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Some days, the idea of going to work can feel like a heavy weight you have to carry. If you wake up yearning for something more, youre not alone. Many professionals reach a point where they question whether their career aligns with their values, passions, and goals. They ask themselves whether theyre living the life they imagined, and if theyre doing fulfilling work. It makes sense that we ask ourselves these questions at different stages of our lives. Your career goals at 40 shouldnt be the same as when you were 20. Something needs to change. As two executive coaches who help people discover their purpose and achieve success, weve noticed that this challenge is on the rise. The good news is, you can take steps to mitigate this feeling of purgatory when youre so comfortable doing what you are doing and craving a challenge. The problem: feeling stuck Take Susan, for example. Every morning, she had to peel herself out of bed to face a job she could do in her sleep. There was no challenge, no spark, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Susan had reached the top of what she could achieve in her organization. As a loyal employee who spent 18 years at the organization, she struggled to imagine leaving the company she had grown up with over the years. But deep down, she knew it was time to explore a new challenge. Susans story isnt unique. A recent 2024 study revealed that nearly half of the workforce feels burned out or dissatisfied with their current job. The reasons vary, but the outcome is the same: a gnawing sense that theres something more for you out there. The solution: Ten steps to take action Moving forward when you dont know your next career stepbut knowing that you want more and something needs to shiftcan be a very uncomfortable crossroads. It can evoke feelings of overwhelm. Thats why weve created a road map to help you navigate the uncertainty and move toward clarity and action. Step 1: Admit youre ready for change The first step is acknowledging that its time to make a move. Susans inflection point came when she admitted to herself that her current role no longer served her growth or happiness. Naming the problem is the first step toward solving it. Step 2: Find a guide Hire a career coach or find a mentor to help guide you through the process. They can provide clarity, accountability, and a structured path forward. A good coach can help you break down what feels overwhelming into actionable steps. Step 3: Tap into what energizes you Pay attention to the moments when time flies, and youre in a state of flow. What work energizes you? Keep a journal or use the notes app on your phone to track these moments. Over time, patterns will emerge, revealing what excites you most. Step 4: Do a passion audit Evaluate your passions and interests to identify what lights you up. Use tools like Ruths Passion Audit framework to assess where you draw your motivation, excitement, and where you can best spend your energy. What kind of work makes you feel alive and fulfilled? The Passion Audit helps differentiate between work youre good at, enjoy, would give up, or would do for free. It offers clarity on what work you should keep and what responsibilities you should shed. Step 5: Create a target list using the 3 Ps Build a target list of potential companies or roles by focusing on the 3 Ps: Prospects, Pivots, and Passions, like Marys MVP 360 Degree Pivot Program This 10-step program uses a proven approach to ensure alignment between your values, your passions, your purpose, and your needs at this stage in your life, including your future career goals. Step 6: Assess your skills and build a learning plan Evaluate your current skills and identify gaps that you need to address. Start developing those skills through courses, certifications, or hands-on experience. Platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Udemy are great resources for building new capabilities and even have AI tools to help craft your learning plan based on skills you want to learn. Step 7: Network before youre ready Begin exploratory conversations with your trusted network even before youre fully ready to make a move. Networking creates momentum and opens doors to opportunities you might not have considered. Step 8: Look within Sometimes, the best opportunities are closer than you think. Are there roles within your current company that could reignite your passion? By showing initiative and a desire for growth, you might be surprised at the doors leadership is willing to open for you. Marys client, Adam, explored external opportunities but ultimately decided to stay at his company. His initiative paid off: he was promoted twice and now finds fulfillment in his work. Step 9: Update your résumé and LinkedIn profile Polish your résumé and LinkedIn profile to reflect your most relevant achievements and skills. Reconnect with your extended network and make it easy for others to find and engage with you. Your online presence should showcase the value you bring to the table. AI can help you here too. Step 10: Create clarity around your next steps As you refine your search, focus on roles that align with your values, passions, and skills. Having a clear vision for whats next will help you recognize the right opportunity when it comes your way. Navigating career uncertainty is challenging, but its also an opportunity to reassess what truly matters to you. By following these steps, youll not only gain clarity but also set yourself on a path toward work that excites and fulfills you.
Category:
E-Commerce
People like to say that change happens gradually, then all at once. That pattern seems to be holding with respect to AI in search, and we may be at the beginning of the “all at once” part now that Google has officially launched AI Mode, which turns internet searches into conversations where you get answers instead of links. The point of AI Mode is for Google to act as an assistant to help you accomplish what you were trying to do with the search in the first place. Need to book a flight, find a sushi restaurant nearby, or grab a statistic that supports the email pitch you’re authoring? AI Mode will simply find what you need and even complete the action for you in many cases. And those cases will continue to expand: The company showed a future shopping capability where Google completes checkout for you without ever needing to leave the search page. Potential for Disruption The potential disruption to industries is staggering, not just for the media but also for marketing, e-commercethe whole web, really. For now, however, it remains mostly potential. AI Mode primarily lives as a button on the Google homepage and one of the tabs on results pages (alongside tabs for News, Photos, Videos, etc.). Users need to deliberately engage with it. And the omnibox in Chrome, where most Google searches occur, still defaults to regular search. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} So despite the hype and panic emanating from Google’s I/O conference over AI Mode, Google isn’t going all-in just yet, and with good reason: Its existing business model depends greatly on the search results page. AI Mode can display ads, too, but it’s going to take time for the product to mature as a business. There’s also the simple fact that it costs Google more to serve up an AI answer versus a search pageit needs to move slowly in order to keep from tanking its own profits. The undeniable rise of AI search Make no mistake, though: The AI Mode summary will be the new battleground for attention. It’s fundamentally more engaging than even Google’s AI Overviews that appear at the top of search results pages. Whereas Overviews are a kind of “extra” to the list of links, AI Mode effectively creates a bubble around your Google experience, one that you deliberately enter and stay within. It’s designed to “fan out” from your initial query, turning search into something that’s more like a collaboration with Google on a task that search is just one part of. While that may sound like work compared to just getting served a search query, you have to remember: Once you had those results, you had to do the workthe navigating to sites, judging which were credible, and then manually absorbing information, filtering the irrelevant stuff. Now AI Mode does most of that work for you, greatly reducing the friction or “cognitive load” involved in getting information. I see this all the time in my own experience: Over the Memorial Day weekend, I ended up looping in AI assistants for several different projectshanging outdoor lights, what those metal ring-thingies are called, and how to optimize my cooking methods for pork ribs versus beef ribs. In all those interactions, no list of links was required, and in many cases, I got the information verbally, reducing friction even more. I’m a sample size of one, but studies suggest I’m far from alone. A recent study revealed 17%, or one in five consumers, now rely on AI answers more than traditional search. Referrals from generative AI to websites surged over 1,200% between July 2024 and February of this year, according to Adobe research. The AI search wave is real. When knowledge goes flat AI search experiences are more convenient, but it comes at a cost. If the AI summary is the new place for information brokers to conquer, there’s less land to fight over. Summaries simply can’t meaningfully cite dozens of sources in a curt answer. Moreover, if one or two sources change, the effect on the summary will be minimal. If an AI answer gets a new site fueling it, it’s still an averaged, homogenized consensus built from several sources. You don’t have the unusual link suddenly gaining prominence on a results page, inviting users to go down a rabbit hole. An AI summary is made to pave over those holes. This tendency toward singular, concise answers may have the inadvertent effect of flattening knowledge diversity. Mainstream perspectives will get prioritized, and niche or contrarian voices will have a tougher time standing out. Signal generators This shift puts a burden on journalists and media organizations to act not just as content creators but also as distinctive signal generators in a noisy, compressed ecosystem. In a world where AI systems synthesize information from thousands of sources, what gets retained are the most statistically common patternsnot necessarily the most insightful or original voices. That’s why it’s going to be essential for media sites to be able to do both: structure content to acknowledge and align with the mainstream view, but also provide original and unique perspectives that will offer real value for those who go deeper. It’s an updated version of a diverse content strategy, only in the AI world it can mean serving those ingredients in new ways: possibly by remixing content into formats recognizable by a multimodal AI that cares just as much about sound and video as it does about text. One thing’s for sure: AI answers are here to stay, and “winning” them is going to be the game to master. What’s unclear is what will be harder: influencing readers through what the summary says, or getting them to click through the AI ode bubble so you can influence them yourself. Let the games begin. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/mediacopilot-logo-ss.png","headline":"Media CoPilot","description":"Want more about how AI is changing media? Never miss an update from Pete Pachal by signing up for Media CoPilot. To learn more visit mediacopilot.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/mediacopilot.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
CosMcs, the glimmering, retro, space-agey concept restaurant from McDonalds, is no more. In 2023, McDonalds announced the spin-offbilled as the next frontier for the fast-food chain to test its most otherworldly specialty beverage ideasto a deluge of marketing fanfare. CosMcs was a drive-through-only concept with a pared-down menu of neon-colored drinks and a few snack items. The first CosMcs restaurants opened with lines around the block before the sun was even up. Now, less than two years later, McDonalds is jettisoning the stores back into the ether. According to a press release published late last week, McDonalds plans to shut down all five of its CosMcs locations (one in Illinois and four in Texas) in late June, as well as delete the restaurants associated app. In the coming months, CosMcs-inspired flavors will be landing in hundreds of U.S. McDonalds locations as part of a wider beverage test. The announcement comes in the wake of McDonalds first-quarter 2025 financial report on May 1, which revealed that the chains sales dropped at the beginning of the year, marking its second consecutive quarter of declines. Experts say there are a few main reasons why CosMcs didnt work out as a stand-alone conceptbut that doesnt necessarily mean the spin-off was a failure for McDonalds. [Photo: Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images] Bubble tea, energy drinks, functional soda, oh my! From the beginning, it was fairly clear what McDonalds hoped to gain from CosMcs: an entry point into the speciality beverage category (dominated by players like Starbucks, Dutch Bros., and Dunkin) thats been on the rise in recent years. As Gen Z has become increasingly interested in beverages like bubble tea, functional soda, and colorful energy drinks, other quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have moved to catch up. In 2024, Starbucks experimented with adding bubble tea to its menu; Dunkin introduced an energy drink lineup; and even Taco Bell opened its own beverage-only spin-off called Live Más Café. Meanwhile, McDonalds beverage offerings have remained largely limited to its soda machines and McCafé coffee menu (which, interestingly, also originated as an Australian spin-off concept). CosMcs was McDonalds answer to this gap in its offeringsa space to, as the restaurant put it at the time, perform a limited test of otherworldly beverage creations at a safe distance from its main restaurants. Within CosMcs blue-and-yellow beverage test kitchen, the chain was free to trial-run concepts like Tropical Spiceade and Island Pick-Me-Up Punch to a smaller audience of consumers. On the companys first-quarter 2025 earnings report, CEO Chris Kempczinski called this strategy quarantining the complexity in a stand-alone concept. [Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images] According to Matt Michaluk, executive creative director at the branding agency JKR, CosMcs made sense as a viable innovation for McDonalds. With an increasing share of occasions within QSR now solely drinks-only missions, and the diversification of menus by the big coffee chains, this should be a competitive yet fertile ground for growth, Michaluk says. In spite of that promise, he says, there are three reasons CosMcs fizzled out as a stand-alone: brand contradiction, absence of experience, and decline of hype. To start, Michaluk notes, CosMcs was shaped around a pseudo-nostalgic play on historic McDonalds brand characters, like the oft-forgotten 80s alien CosMc. But the spin-offs menu failed to align with that conceit. Further, the pilot format’s focus on drive-through architecture takes away from the overall brand experience, leaving consumers overwhelmingly underwhelmed. And, to cap it off, he says, Innovations and pilots work best when theyre new, exciting, and highly salient. McDonalds seemingly didnt invest in sufficient marketing efforts to support CosMcs. Hence, the hype died far too quickly. Within weeks of launch, there was nothing more to talk aboutnothing new, nothing to get people to come back. [Photo: Matt Schwerin for The Washington Post/Getty Images] Why CosMcs hasn’t failed yet Michaluks assessment might seem like a fairly bleak one, but Danny Klein, editorial director of the trade publication QSR, says the failure of CosMcs as a stand-alone doesnt necessarily equate to a failure for McDonalds business. From its inception, Klein says, McDonalds likely viewed CosMcs as more of a test run for a potential beverage expansion on its main store menus than a restaurant in its own right. Now that CosMcs recipes are rolling out across stores in the U.S., it appears that the initial experiment was a success. Hundreds of locations are going to start testing [CosMcs beverages], and I think from the general McDonald’s system standpoint, a beverage extension is what they all wanted, Klein says. I don’t think its a failure. People are going to say that because it was such a big deal, and then it just flamed out into the universe. But in my opinion, it was always a marketing test with the potential to be something else, and that just didn’t materialize. In addition to broadening the availability of CosMcs beverages, McDonalds also announced last week that it would create a new beverage category team dedicated to gaining share in the space. As Kempczinski told investors in early May, There’s a lot of growth that we see in beverages, and the profitability of beverages is very attractive, adding, frankly, we think there’s more that we can be doing to capture our fair share of that. Ultimately, Klein says, the true test of CosMcs will be whether the average McDonalds customer is interested in supplementing their Big Mac and fries with a Sour Cherry Energy Burstor if they choose to stick with a plain old Coke.
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E-Commerce
This week, JAMA Internal Medicine published the results of a large new study that tracked mothers health from 2016 to 2023. It found that maternal mental health declined significantly over the past seven years. The crisis we regularly write about in Two Truths, my best-selling Substack on womens and maternal health, is now being reported in one of the world’s most respected medical journals. Which journals matter I read the story with interestnot just because I write about womens health for a living, but because I still pay a little bit more attention when I see JAMA in a headline. When I started my career as a health journalist at Mens Health magazine in 2011, we were quickly taught which medical journals mattered most. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The Lancet. JAMA. These were the powerhouses. When research appeared in one of them, it carried weight. It still does. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/Two-Truths-single.png","headline":"Subscribe to Two Truths...","description":"a newsletter that explores the many truths of motherhood through news round-ups, trend reports, and expert-backed deep dives on topics that matter to moms. To learn more visit twotruths.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/twotruths.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}} The maternal mental health study published this week found, among other things, that in 2016, 1 in 20 mothers rated their mental health as poor or fair. In 2023, that figure rose to 1 in 12. The research underscored the need for immediate and robust interventions in mothers mental health. Not a niche issue The study wasnt perfect; it was cross-sectional (meaning it examined women at different points versus following them over time) and it relied on self-reported healtha far from flawless strategy. Still, its presence in JAMA Internal Medicine signals what I know and what you know to be true: Maternal mental health is not a niche issue. Its national. Urgent. Undeniable. As my friend and trusted source Dr. Catherine Birndorf, cofounder of the Motherhood Center, told The New York Times, We all got much more isolated during COVID. I think coming out of it, people are still trying to figure out, Where are my supports? The sad truth is that theyre still missing; were actively fighting for them over at Chamber of Mothers. Corrupt vessels But heres the thing that really caught my attention in all of this: Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested potentially banning federal scientists from publishing in leading medical journals, calling The NEJM, The Lancet, and JAMA corrupt vessels of Big Pharma. He proposed creating government-run journalsones that would anoint scientists with funding from the National Institutes of Health. Its true: Leading medical journals do accept advertising and publish industry-funded studies. There is also a long history of criticism surrounding the influence of pharmaceutical companies in academic publishing. Kennedys concerns are not new. Whats also true is that these journals disclose their funding, have rigorous peer-review processes (where independent experts, usually leaders in a field, assess the research and flag concerns), and have low acceptance rates. They publish research that changes the way medicine is practiced globally, informs policy decisions, and protects patients, particularly women and mothers. (The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations on breast cancer screening, which many clinicians follow, have been published and updated in JAMA; The Lancet regularly highlights maternal mortality disparities; The NEJM has published large-scale trials on critical womens health issues, from cardiovascular disease to hormone replacement therapy.) Program terminated And heres something else you need to know: Last week, I interviewed a leading physician and expert on gestational diabetes at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She shared a statistic that surprised me (sometimes hard to do when Ive been reporting on health for 15 years): Up to one-half of women who have gestational diabetes in pregnancy go on to develop type 2 diabetes within 5 to 10 years of giving birth. The landmark study that laid the groundwork for understanding diabetes prevention in high-risk groups, including women with a history of gestational diabetes? It was called the Diabetes Prevention Program, and it was first published in The NEJM in 2002. Recently, under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s leadershipan administration that claims to be committed to ending chronic illnessthat program was terminated. Holding institutions accountable Im not a doctor, scientist, or researcher. Im trained as a health reporter. And I trust that trainingjust as I trust the countless physicians and researchers Ive interviewed over the years, many of whom have spent their careers trying to get their work published in the most rigorous medical journals out there. As a journalist, I believe in holding institutions, including medical journals, accountableespecially when it comes to conflicts of interest. Thats part of the job. But this administration has attempted to infuse a tremendous amount of chaos and confusion into a whole host of topics, health included. Health is nuanced. So is science. But lets be clear: Suggesting that medical research be limited, controlled, or replaced by in-house publications is dangerous. Defunding evidence-based programs that serve high-risk groups, including mothers, is backward. Supporting high-quality, peer-reviewed research should be the bare minimum for anyone who cares about womens health. Canary in a coal mine In their report, the authors of the new JAMA Internal Medicine study wrote, Our findings are supportive of the claim made by some scholars that maternal mortality may be a canary in the coal mine for womens health more broadly. Its a statement that places maternal health where it belongs: at the center of womens health. As Dr. Tamar Gur, director of the Soter Womens Health Research Program at Ohio State, told The New York Times, Now I have something I can point towhen Im seeing a patient and say, Youre not alone in this. This is happening nationally, and its a real problem. Thats the power of credible, peer-reviewed research. Thats where real change starts. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/Two-Truths-single.png","headline":"Subscribe to Two Truths...","description":"a newsletter that explores the many truths of motherhood through news round-ups, trend reports, and expert-backed deep dives on topics that matter to moms. To learn more visit twotruths.substack.com","substackDomain":"https:\/\/twotruths.substack.com","colorTheme":"salmon","redirectUrl":""}}
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E-Commerce
Parents used to be freaked out when kids were reading romance novels or Horatio Alger books. It seems quaint now, when so many parents (and teens!) are concerned about the effects of social media and screen time. But it speaks to a universal truth: The stories we learn have the power to shape our lives. Stories are among the oldest forms of teaching. They dont just shape our thinking, they actually affect us at a neural level. This is especially true for kids: The entertainment that children consume during their most formative years plays an important role in shaping who they become and how they relate to the world around them. Now, however, some of the most reliable sources for high-quality childrens media are on the chopping block with the administrations threat to cut federal funding of PBS, accounting for 15% of its funding, which will only limit access to valuable programming that can impact future generations. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education recently notified the Corporation for Public Broadcasting about the immediate termination of its Ready to Learn grant, taking away the remaining $23 million of a grant that was set to end on September 30. PBS has received this grant every five years for the past 30 years, and it accounts for one-third of PBS Kids annual budget. There have been many studies on the immediate effects of media on children, from specific learning goals to impacts on self-esteem. But one thing that hadnt been measured extensively was how much those learnings persist over time. Thats why my colleagues and I at the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied the long-term impact of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, a modern-day Mister Rogers-inspired program. The show, which we weren’t involved with, was developed in close collaboration with child-development experts to purposefully and thoughtfully model social skills and emotional regulation tools for young kids. [Image: Fred Rogers Productions] To see how much teens had learned from watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood as younger children, we conducted a mixed-methods study surveying 150 teenagers across the United States. The results were striking: 57% remembered learning strategies from the show, like understanding and managing emotions, academic success, and behavioral regulation. And one in five told us they still use those techniques (like deep breathing and other calming strategies) when theyre upset today. Interestingly, the teens in our study didnt just recall facts or songs. They also remembered feelings of safety and warmth. Many associated watching the show with solace during difficult moments in early childhood. We know that storytelling can provide frameworks for coping during times of uncertainty. And in fact, this kind of comfort is increasingly important to kids today: In our research, we found that young people ages 10 to 24 now rank safety as a higher priority than having fun. Media can be a powerful way to support kids mental health: One study found that a popular hip-hop song featuring a story that has a man calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline led to increased calls to that hotline and a reduction in suicides. But given our nation’s ongoing youth mental health challenges, we cant leave this to chance: Storytelling grounded in researchdesigned to meet children where they are emotionally, cognitively, and sociallyis more needed than ever. These kinds of stories can act as a form of early intervention, providing children with tools that can support their psychological well-being for years to come. When Fred Rogers testified in front of Congress back in 1969, he said, If we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health. Our study of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood provides concrete evidence supporting his prescient statement, showing how quality children’s programming can indeed make feelings mentionable and manageable, thereby serving mental health. Nearly 60 years later, public television continues to be a haven for thoughtfully produced programs that have a research-backed positive impact on kids. PBS Kids is one of the rare organizations that intentionally creates media in deep collaboration with researchers who study child development. Another study we published found that movies featuring more character virtues like gratitude or empathy make more money at the box office. This is a real opportunity for the rest of the media industrypublic media has shown us where the bar should be: If we give young people stories that honor their feelings, and help them navigate an increasingly complex world, the positive impact will last for years to come. Were not going back to the days of romance novels and Horatio Alger for teens: Screens are here to stay. But the real question is: What kinds of content are we putting on them? The majority of the media industry is motivated by profit, which means putting kids first is not always the objective. This is exactly the reason we need to continue to fund public media. Because when we prioritize and fund thoughtful, research-based content that meets kids where they areand shows them where they can gowere not just creating better programming. Were building the foundations for better mental health, a stronger society, and a healthier democracy.
Category:
E-Commerce
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