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Take a look at your to-do list. Does it seem never-ending? The thing about task lists is that they are filled with specific things you need to accomplish. Combine that with an ever-expanding inbox, and you have a recipe for busy work days. While you may get many things done, you may not feel like they are adding up to a more significant contribution to the mission of your workplace or your own big-picture goals. To ensure that the specific things youre doing lead to important outcomes, you need some time in your schedule to reflect on the big-picture goals you have and their relationship to the actions youre taking day-to-day. Here are a few things you can do to clear the mental space to make sure your days are not just busy, but productive. The value of unstructured time Ensuring that your daily activities lead up to something more substantial will not happen by magic. Instead, you need to regularly save some time that is not devoted to the particular tasks that are already on your task list. There are several purposes for this time. You want to reflect on whether the things that take up most of your time are related to the most important goals both for you and the organization. Chances are, there are many things you have to do each day that do not contribute significantly to that mission. Identify some of the activities that soak up your time that are not that productive. Are they necessary? Are there things youre doing that you can put further down the list of priorities? Do you need to talk to your supervisor about some of the things that clutter your calendar? Are there things you should be doing to make your contribution that are not happening? You also want to have a list of activities youre not doing that you need to be doing. Youll need to figure out how to add more of those into your daily and weekly schedule. Finding a space to make space One problem with trying to take a big-picture view of things is that you are likely to be surrounded by reminders to take care of the next task. You probably have documents on your desk and your computer desktop that need to be completed. You have an email inbox with a constant drip of new messages crying out to be answered. You have DMs from team members asking for information. That can make it difficult to disconnect enough to create the mindset you need to think about strategic issues. It can be helpful to use physical distance from your most pressing tasks to think strategically. Consider taking a walk or going to a conference room at your workplace that has a whiteboard. The distance has two benefits: First, it separates you from the specific reminders of the tasks at hand; second, psychology research suggests that physical distance can actually help you think more abstractly about your work. When you think more abstractly, youre better able to ignore the specific tasks and focus on the primary accomplishments youd like to achieve as well as the general barriers that may stand in the way of success. Drawing your big-picture goals When talking about strategic goals, we often use phrases like achieving a vision or seeing the future. Yet we also tend to lay out our goals in written documents. Sometimes, it can be helpful to take the language of envisioning more literally. Sketches and diagrams may be helpful for changing the way you think about your desired contribution. So many of our workplace tools involve writing (like email, instant messages, and meeting agendas) that we get locked into needing the right words to describe what we want to bring about. Grab a big sheet of paper or use a whiteboard. Leave the words behind at first and just sketch out processes, concepts, or prototypes. Dont worry if you dont think youre good at capturing likenesses. The power of sketches and diagrams comes from being able to use space as an element of your thinking to engage the massive amount of brain real estate devoted to vision more deeply.
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E-Commerce
These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenesin back rooms that most customers never seeevery single clothing retailer has enormous piles of flimsy plastic bags (sometimes called poly bags). These bags keep clothes clean as they travel across the complex global supply chain before arriving at the store. We need to keep clothes in good condition as they move from factories to shipping containers to trucks, says Candan Erenguc, chief operations officer at Anthropologie. [Photo: WM/Anthropologie] Most local recycling facilities don’t have the equipment to recycle poly bags, which are more complicated to break down than more solid plastics like water bottles. So most retailers simply send them in the regular waste stream where they will end up in a landfill. Since plastic does not biodegrade, these bags will break down into tiny fragments of microplastic that will end up in our waterways and food. Anthropologie has been on a mission to find a way to recycle the poly bags it collects across its 215 retail stores. Over the past 18 months, it has partnered with Waste Management (WM), the largest recycling company in the United States, to develop a solution. Now, store associates collect these bags and send them to special facilities that are equipped to recycle them into other plastic products, extending their life. Anthropologie has already recycled more than 60,000 tons of poly bags, which have been transformed into pellets that will be used to create other plastic items, including trash bags. It has been a very seamless process, and we want to make sure other retailers know they can do it as well, says Erenguc. That said, things like trash bags cannot be further recycled, so they will eventually end up in a landfill. So it is still incumbent on brands to find ways to reduce the amount of plastic they consume and discard. For decades, flimsy plastic bags have been a challenge for municipal recycling facilities that collect household waste. If you accidentally put them in your curbside recycling bin, they can clog up the recycling equipment, shutting the system down. As a result, people have been encouraged to simply dispose of these bags in the regular waste stream, where they will be landfilled or incinerated. However, recycling technology is quickly improving, according to Tara Hemmer, chief sustainability officer at WM. For one thing, WM is now investing in robotics and computer vision technology that can better catch plastic bags that end up in the waste stream and separate them from the rest of the trash, so they don’t cause a major disturbance. And perhaps more impressively, there are now several industrial recycling facilities across the U.S. that are specifically designed to recycle poly bags. Some of these plants are owned by WM. But there are also independent recyclers that partner with WM. We work with our customers to make sure they can direct their waste to the right facility in our third-party network, says Hemmer. [Photo: WM] Erenguc wanted to find a way to collect poly bags and ship them to these locations. However, as a major retailer, this presented a logistical challenge. It was also important for the process to be easy for employees to understand and follow. Each of Anthropologie’s 215 stores is staffed with dozens of employees who must be trained on best practices when it comes to waste disposal. Moreover, it was unclear where the nearest recycling facility would be for each store. We didn’t want to be transporting poly bags back and forth across the country, because that isn’t good for the environment either, Erenguc says. But this is where WM could help. Anthropologie brought in members of the WM team to study the situation and come up with a solution that would be easy for retail employees to adopt. WM identified the address of the closest recycling facility for each store. Retail associates now collect plastic bags and when they have achieved a certain volume, they ship them out to a designated facility. The recycling plants turn poly bags into pellets that can than be used to create other products. It’s such a streamlined solution, Erenguc says. It was so easy to execute, but we’ve already managed to divert 60,000 pounds of plastic from landfills. [Photo: WM] Hemmer says that many retailers are eager to divert waste from landfill. While there’s been a narrative that companies have abandoned their sustainability goals, that hasn’t been her experience. We’ve found that companies still have goals and are marching towards them, she says. And consumerproduct companies are trying to increase the amount of recycled content that goes into their products. Hemmer says that recycling technology is improving every year. WM is currently working to make it possible to recycle plastic bags in residential areas, beginning with a plant in Chicago that will reach about 3,500 households. But often the obstacle to bringing about change at scale isn’t technologicalit’s logistical. People, as well as companies, are more likely to adopt new processes if they’re simple. Part of our job is to help troubleshoot, says Hemmer. But diverting waste from landfill is actually a lot easier than you’d imagine.
Category:
E-Commerce
Elon Musk’s foray into government has proven disastrous for his business life. Since taking up work for President Donald Trumps’ so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk’s electric car company Tesla has seen sales slide and has become a target for protests. Now some believe that damage could be terminal and that Musk poses a risk to companies outside of his own. The Reputation Risk Index looks at reputational threats facing companies and organizations. It recently found that being associated with Musk posed the second biggest threat to companies, between the harmful or deceptive use of artificial intelligence and backtracking on DEI. The index, which is based on a survey with 117 public affairs leaders and former heads of state, found it’s not just being associated with Musk that’s risky, but being singled out and publicly criticized by him. In an aerial view, brand-new Tesla cars and Cybertrucks sit parked in a lot at a Tesla dealership on April 02, 2025, in Corte Madera, California. [Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images] With his controversial omnipresence in the media landscape, 28% of the council identified this association as a top reputational risk, highlighting Musks impact on businesses that extend well past his own, Global Risk Advisory Council chair Isabel Casillas Guzman said in the report. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives predicted in a note Sunday that even if Musk were to quit DOGE and get back to his car company there will be permanent brand damage.” And if Musk stays in government, brand damage could grow for Tesla, calling it a code red situation for the company. Musk “needs to leave the government, take a major step back on DOGE, and get back to being CEO of Tesla full-time,” Ives wrote. Musk’s hard turn to DOGE has shown that mixing business with politics can backfire, especially for a public CEO of a company that relies on customers who in large part don’t share his views. If Musk wasn’t planning on leaving his post as a special government employee after the 130-day limit comes up, he might find a more persuasive business reason that it’s time to get back to his day job.
Category:
E-Commerce
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