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Trying to find authentic, consistent joy in the midst of a reality that is relentlessly delivering devastating blows feels akin to finding a needle in an impossibly large haystack. But according to Michelle Obama, it is possibleand the power lies in acknowledging the depth of despair and apathy while still finding reasons for hope. At SXSW this week, the former first lady and her older brother, Craig Robinson, who is executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, took the stage for a live session of their new podcast, IMO. The pair were joined by Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist, the Yale professor behind the school’s most popular class to date, The Science of Well-Being, and host of The Happiness Lab podcast, to discuss how to cultivate a hopeful mindset given the state of the world. On the current climate and drawing from childhood lessons Obama acknowledged the tense political climate, job loss, and growing divisions among Americans. I worry about folks being out of work, and I worry about how we think about diversity and inclusion. I think about how we treat one another and the voices that we hear, and what that does, what models thats setting for the next generation, she said. Who do we want to be as a country?” she continued. “All of that keeps me up at night, and I know that a lot of people are struggling with some of those things. But I find in those moments that it is better not to try to figure that stuff out alone. The siblings shared anecdotes from childhood to underscore several themesthe value of in-person interactions, the limiting of social media consumption, and how childhood experiences led them to develop the skills necessary to cope with adversity. They were raised by parents who, Obama pointed out, had many reasons to wallow in despair. Their father was a blue-collar worker raised in desegregation who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young man. The two discussed what it was like growing up with a parent with a disability dominating his life, yet rarely missed a day of work and still managed to raise two successful children. For me and Craig and our families, you know, we always try to step outside of our loneliness and talk as a family and as a community to share those concerns, Obama shared. And I hope that our listeners are pushed to do some of the same things too.” On tackling apathy and negative emotions An audience member posed the question to panelists: How do we plan for a future that looks different from the one that we were promised, without feeling apathetic? To Santos, a crucial piece of it is acknowledging that these times are not normal, and so feelings of apathy and disconnect are normal. All too often we can get into this, like, toxic positivity bag, where it’s like, I’m feeling kind of embarrassed that I’m so upset and frustrated and overwhelmed and sad about what’s going on in the world, she said. We’re supposed to feel that! Negative emotions are normal in an abnormal world. All three speakers agreed that social media and technology play an active role in exacerbating unhappiness. To combat this, Santos urged the audience to consider the impact scrolling on a timeline can have on the psyche and be deliberate in how we spend our time. Social media companies wouldn’t have the algorithms if all our eyeballs weren’t on phones anymore. And we actually have more agency than we often remember in that fight, she said. On finding hope A recurring theme in the conversation was rooted in finding ways to help others, even in small ways. Impacting the people around us and our loved ones, was a surefire way to find joy. Our mom used to say, You’re responsible for your own passion. And that was some of the most empowering advice she ever gave us, said Robinson. How can we help those out there who don’t have a Marian Robinson or a social group? How can we help them work through making themselves happy? For Santos, hope did not mean toxic positivity or simply remaining optimistic. Hope says things are not fine, but I can actually see at least a few paths for things to get better,” she said.
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E-Commerce
As we enter spring, the days may be getting longer, but the average workday seems to be contracting. Corporate employees in the U.S. now seem to be ending their day at 4:39 p.m., according to a new report by the workforce analytics platform ActivTrak. That’s more than 40 minutes earlier than when workers clocked out just two years prior. While employees still start their day on average just before 8 a.m., the average length of the workday has dropped to about eight hours and 44 minutes. The report, which looked at data from nearly 220,000 workers at 777 companies, indicates that productivity has actually increased by 2% despite the slight reduction in time worked. Some employees seem to be embracing tactics like the Pomodoro technique and working in short bursts of time: ActivTrak found that the average “productive session” had jumped by 20%, from 20 to 24 minutes. (A productive session is defined as the time spent working without disruption.) There’s also some seasonal variability in working hours, according to ActivTrak. People tend to work more during the months of August and December, when they might be playing catchup after a vacation or hustling to meet end-of-year deadlines. Given the productivity figures and the prevalence of hybrid work, however, it’s possible that the workday has actually shifted more than shortened. People may be logging off earlier but then finishing up their work later or during weekends. (Since the workday timings are an average, some people could be working longer hours than what the report captures.) The report’s findings seem to support this idea: Employees are logging nearly 12 hours of work during the weekend, up from about 10 hours and 35 minutes. On average, about 5% of employees worked on the weekend in 2024, a 9% increase from the year prior. This was most common at larger companies with between 1,000 and 5,000 employees, where 12% of people worked on weekends. While U.S. employees may appear to be working less, it seems more likely that they’re leaning into the flexibility enabled by hybrid work. Long before the pandemic, many parents and others with caregiving responsibilities said they logged back on after hours to stay on top of their work. With more people now working remotely at least part of the week, it’s possible their days are truncated by doctors’ appointments and bedtime routines, leaving them to play catchup on weekendsor earlier in the morning. The report also found that on average, hybrid employees actually had longer workdays than people who were entirely remote or worked in the office full-time, which could be explained by greater variability in their schedules. The promise of a more flexible workday has driven much of the pushback to return-to-office mandatesand for good reason, if this report is any indicator. Employees seem to want the flexibility to set their own schedule, even if that means working during off-hours, and the variability in the average workday has not caused a dip in productivity. (In other surveys, workers repeatedly list a “flexible schedule” and the “ability to work remotely” as the top perks they seek in a job.) The ActivTrak report suggests that RTO policies don’t necessarily have a clear impact on output: In a case study of five companies, some saw an increase in productivity after implementing strict in-office mandates, while others saw a decline. While CEOs continue to extol the benefits of in-person collaboration, there’s little evidence that employees need to be in the officeor clock longer hoursto be effective in the workplace.
Category:
E-Commerce
The US Postal Service (USPS) will begin working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut costs. On Thursday, US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy signed an agreement with the Trump era organization, welcoming the agency’s infiltration, which other federal organizations have railed against in recent weeks. In a letter sent to Congress, DeJoy explained that DOGE will assist” USPS “in identifying and achieving further efficiencies” within the operation. DeJoy praised DOGE by saying, the “team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with. It has long been known that the Postal Service has a broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and fundamental core change.DeJoy was hired by President Trump in 2020 to head USPS as Postmaster General as it struggled financially through the pandemic. Under DeJoy’s leadership, USPS has already been slashing jobs since 2021. In the past four years, it has cut 30,000 jobs, and plans to make another drastic round of layoffs, cutting 10,000 more employees over the next month. Last month, DeJoy announced plans to step down from his role, as Trump announced he would make sweeping changes to USPS. He mused about firing the board and allowing the Commerce Department to seize control. “We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money. And we’re thinking about doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office at the time. Doing so would be a step towards privatizing the postal service, something Trump has previously talked about. But, despite the call for massive changes, USPS is the federal agency Americans view most favorably, second only to the National Parks Service. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 72% had a favorable view of the postal service. In his letter, DeJoy pressed that USPS retirement assets and the Workers Compensation Program have been mismanaged” and the Postal Regulatory Commission, an agency which helps ensure the Postal Service operates transparently, abides by the law, and sets fair rates “unnecessary”. The agency “has inflicted over $50 billion in damage to the Postal Service by administering defective pricing models and decades old bureaucratic processes that encumber the Postal Service,” DeJoy said. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was quick to push back on the move, issuing a statement that sharply criticised DeJoy’s decision to work with DOGE. The only thing worse for the Postal Service than DeJoys Delivering for America plan is turning the service over to Elon Musk and DOGE so they can undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans loss, Connolly said. He continued, This capitulation will have catastrophic consequences for all Americans especially those in rural and hard to reach areas who rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more. DeJoy’s agreement with DOGE comes as the agency moved to dismantle the department of education this week. On Tuesday, more than 1,300 workers were told they would be losing their jobs, halving the number of employees working for the department and sparking fears that school lunch programs will be likely to disappear amid the cuts. With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health, said SNA President Shannon Gleave, RDN, SNS, in a statement this week.Gleave continued, These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs. Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.
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E-Commerce
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