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When you have work life balance and fulfillment, youre set up not only for success, but also for happiness. The big questions though, are about how you can find the best approach to work and life based on where you are in your journey, based on whats unique about you, and based on what you find most important. The work-life mix is critically important. In fact, a survey of 26,000 people in five countries by Randstad found that for 85%, work-life balance was the most important element that people were looking for in both current and future jobsa critical feature for their satisfaction. Importantly, this is the first time in the surveys 22-year history that work-life balance was a higher priority than pay (79%). But work-life balance is hard to achieve for many. According to the American Psychological Association, 33% of workers report they dont have adequate flexibility to balance their personal and work lives. In addition, three out of five workers are struggling with burnout, according to a survey by AFLAC. Millennials report the highest levels of burnout, and the stress for all generations is primarily based on heavy workloads and long hours at work. The bottom line is that creating a plan to gain fulfillment from work and life is a very (very, very) good idea. But unfortunately, there are no quick fixes or standard solutions for perfect work or life. Instead, everyones approaches will be different and will evolve over time. Personalizing your own strategies for success and happiness is possible with these key considerations. KNOW YOUR EXPECTATIONS One of the first ways to personalize your plans for work and life is to get real about your expectations. Achieving true work-life balance is a myth. Instead, youll have ups and downs and ebbs and flows through stages and seasons of life. If you have young children and a full-time job, youll be especially busy. If youre building your career and caring for elders, youll be facing tons of demands. And if youre an empty nester, youll face new challenges as well. If you believe you should be perfectly balanced all the time, youll set yourself up to fail. Instead, realize there will be busy (or exhausting) times and there will be easier times. Focus on managing and adjusting your choices, your time, and your boundaries throughout lifes stages, knowing regular adaptation is constructive and effective. As youre setting your expectations, also think big about not only work and family, but also your volunteer and community efforts, time with friends, and time for yourself. When youre happy at work, youll tend to feel happier at home. But the opposite is also true. When youre happier outside of work, youll perceive greater happiness within work, according to research published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Personalize your work-life plan by setting realistic expectations for the demands youll face and thinking broadly about all the elements of work and life that will contribute to your experience. KNOW YOUR STRENGTHS Another way to personalize your plan for work and life is to play to your strengths. When youre doing work that you enjoy, youll be much happier. Of course, there will always be elements of a job you dont love, and most people must work to pay the bills and cant just quit if they dont feel fully blissful every day. But no matter what you do, youll benefit when you lean into your strengths. Identify what youre especially and uniquely good at. You can even consider activities you loved to do as a child since these can be windows into your natural gifts. Perhaps you work in customer service and youre especially good at empathizing with people and talking them down when theyre upset. Or perhaps you work in accounting, and you have a unique gift for seeing details and identifying discrepancies. No matter what you do, bring your best and remind yourself about what you do really well, and how your work matters to your customers and coworkers. Personalize your work-life plan by taking inventory of your strengths, finding work that taps into them, and validating your own value no matter what you do. KNOW YOUR SOURCES OF FULFILLMENT Too often were in a hurry so we go through the motions of our days or our weeks. But pay attention to what brings you joy and how you most enjoy spending your time. Its a little-known fact that when you spend time on things that you enjoy, youll actually perceive you have more time because youre energized by the activity. Manage your commitments based on what pays you back most. Perhaps you dont enjoy the work of a school committee as much as you enjoy volunteering in a classroom and having contact with your child and their classmates (think: kids not committees). Or perhaps you love spending time in the hands-on work of a community garden, rather than on the board of your local museum. Despite long hours, you may relish the opportunity to participate on the new innovation team at work. Also consider adding or subtracting activities based on your season of life. If youre building your career, joining the advisory council for the local charity is a great way to network. But when youre running carpool with three children and supporting all their activities, its a great time to decline additional invitations for extra project work at your job. Know your limits and boundaries and dont be afraid to manage to them. Personalize your work-life plan by determining what feels most rewarding for you and making choices for how you spend your time based on the right mix. Often, work-life gurus recommend saying no as often as you can. A better approach is to be intentional, saying yes to things that are rewarding or rejuvenating and saying no (when you can) to the activities that are less energizing. KNOW YOUR PEOPLE Another key to a great experience of work and life is to surround yourself with people you can rely on. Choose to spend time with those who encourage you, support you, and help you. Invest in the friends whom you trust and who need your help as well. Be ruthless with your time while youre gentle with people, turning them down tactfully or being understanding when they are requesting your time. But choose to invest less in the relationships that are minimally rewarding or that sap you. Giving back and focusing on others is correlated with happiness, but youll want to be intentional about avoiding people (as much as you can) who may be negative or who fail to reciprocate in terms of their time and investment in you. Personalize your work-life plan by making connections and prioritizing time with people who are most important to you. CULTIVATE GRATITUDE And finally, no matter what stage of life youre in, one of the best ways to increase your fulfillment is to emphasize ratitude. Gratitude works because it focuses you on what you have, rather than what youre lacking. The relationship between gratitude and happiness is well-established by various studies. Emphasize gratitude and think consciously about what you appreciate. Beyond things, focus on experiences, capabilities, family, and friends. Robert Braults advice is helpful: “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. Gratitude fosters positive experiences even as you face significant demands, and linguistic determinism helps, too. Essentially, how you talk to yourself affects how you think and feel about them. When you consider that you get to pick up the kids from school, it can feel more positive than if you have to pick them up. Or if you invest time in something, it can feel more rewarding than if you spend time in the same pursuit. Personalize your work-life plan by being grateful and by managing your language, thoughts, and feelings about all the challenges you face. Ultimately, the best work-life fulfillment comes from your own mix of how you spend your time and how you perceive the value of both your contributions and rewards. And over time, youll adjust and adapt as demands shift, life evolves, and as you grow and develop.
Category:
E-Commerce
Lets be honest: No matter your perspective, taking in news these days tends to be a pretty tiring experience. At best, its a bit boring. At worst, its anxiety-inducing and mind-melting, often leaving you with more questions than answers. This week, a whole new kind of news app is officially breaking cover. And, I knowyadda yadda yadda, right? Another earth-shattering news app with more of the same as every other app before it? I had the same thought when I first came across this. Then I started to actually use it. And man alive, lemme tell ya: This is not like any other news app Ive ever encountered. Its fresh, its interesting, and its absolutely different. And it introduces some truly remarkable high-tech twists that turn news consumption into a uniquely personal and genuinely interactive experience. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! A news app like no other First things first: While the app were about to go over is about as new as can be, it actually comes from a fairly familiar source. The three guys behind it were among the early developers on Googles acclaimed NotebookLM toolone of the first legitimately useful standouts of our current (all-too-often overhyped) AI era. NotebookLM, if you arent familiar, has won over oodles of fans with its clever approach to using AI in a limited, situation-specific way: It analyzes only the documents, web pages, and other info you feed into it and then lets you interact with that info in all sorts of engaging ways. One of those ways is having the system turn your info into an on-demand podcastan undeniably intriguing new option for listening to info of your choosing in a conversational, audio-based form. Thats the same basic philosophy behind Huxe, a cross-platform, audio-centric news app thats officially available for anyone to use today. In short, Huxe lets you specify your areas of interestanything from technology and productivity to business, health, food, sports, books, and (if you must) current eventsalong with optionally adding in your location for local news, traffic, and weather updates and, if you really wanna get wild, connecting it to your calendar and/or email so it can include updates from those fronts as well. Whatever you pick, each morning Huxe uses your preferences to serve up a single daily news brief made specifically for you. Its computer-generated, of course, but it sounds like two human hosts performing a podcast solely for your benefitwith a focus on the areas you asked for and as much personalization as youve opted to include. Huxe serves up a single, personalized news brief every morningbut that’s not all. Now, heres where it gets really surreal: While your podcast is playing, you can tap a microphone icon and interrupt itto ask questions about something, ask for clarifications or more info about a story, or ask anything else that comes to your mind as youre listening. Whenever you speak, the hosts stop speaking and listen; then, within a matter of seconds, they respond to your request as if they are actually chatting with you. After theyre done addressing your inquiry, they segue naturally back into the rest of your predetermined program. Here, for instance, I interrupted a segment about some incoming Google Play Store changes to ask whether the new features would be available globally or only in the U.S., for nowwhich hadnt initially been mentioned in my podcast. (I turned on live captioning to capture the apps spoken response.) Your Huxe podcasts will stop and listen whenever you ask a question, then respond before continuing on with the program. In addition to the standard morning briefings, you can open up Huxe anytime to get an on-the-spot custom podcast update, and you can tune in to a variety of live stations with varying themes related to your interests. You can even create your own custom live stations or DeepCasts to get instant podcasts on practically any topic imaginable, anytime. The app gives you a sprawling selection of custom and on-demand podcast options. And all of that is still just scratching the surface. Now, two unavoidable reality checks: First, could the systems involved here get facts wrongas AI systems so frequently do? Its certainly possible ad arguably even likely. AI has thus far proven itself to be extremely fallible and untrustworthy, and thats in large part just par for the course with the way the underlying technology works. In my relatively limited experience with Huxe so far, Ive yet to run into any obvious examples of errant information. But that doesnt mean it wont happen. And its something Id strongly suggest anyone using an app like this keep a close eye on and keep top of mind. Second, is it slightly unsettling how good this is and how human it seems? Yupsure is. But is it insanely impressive at the same time and something I could absolutely see being appreciated by an awful lot of people? Youd better believe it. Whether you end up using the app often or just playing around with it for a while, its one seriously cool and impossibly interesting tool thats well worth your while to investigate. And hey, who knows? You might just end up loving it. Huxe is available for both Android and iOS. There isnt a web version (yet), but itll work on essentially any phone in front of you. Its free to use for the moment, without any asterisks, and Ive yet to encounter any kind of advertising. Ive gotta think therell eventually be ads integrated into the shows and/or premium subscriptions of some sort offered, but the company hasnt spoken to any such specifics so far. The app does require you to sign inwith either a Google account or an email addressbut no other form of personal info is required. Huxes privacy policy says the service may use your voice data for improving its system but never uses any personal calendar or email info for training without an explicit opt-in. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
Category:
E-Commerce
Of all the things weve used ChatGPT for in 2025, one of the most specific was: What should we drink on a Dalston dive bar expedition on a Thursday night with cooler, younger clients, to avoid a hanxiety-filled Friday, with a board presentation to write? The answer? Neat Patrón or margaritas, with tips on hydration and sleep. It actually worked. We had a great night, and woke up (relatively) clear-headed. This is what millions of people are doing every day: trading Google rabbit holes for AI when seeking product advice, personal hacks, and brand choices. ChatGPT isnt just an influencing preference. It increasingly is the preference engine. KILL THE FUNNEL For decades, brand and marketing strategy has operated around a simple concept: the funnel. First, you capture awareness. Then, cultivate interest. After that, you guide consumers toward decision, and finally, conversion. Clean, rational, linear. We all knew it was flawed but there was a directional truth to it that made it very useful to plan around. But in 2025, the time has come to kill the funnel. We set out to write a paper on what to replace it with, drawing on extensive research, our client work, and input from our friends at Reddit. Here are the highlights so far. HOW TO REPLACE THE FUNNEL Consumers arent moving predictably through stages. Theyre outsourcing research and shortlisting to machines. Theyre skipping steps entirely. Just six months ago wed have called BS on this proclamation. But today, this is very much happening: Roughly 50% of shoppers in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia use GenAI for e-commerce tasks Over 60% of U.S. Gen Z and millennials use GenAI to help manage their finances Leading venture capitalists and tech leaders are speculating about a future where AI superagents dissolve the role of apps and traditional user interfaces Of course the rate of change varies widely by purchase complexity, with an incredible 47% of travel shoppers feeling confident when using AI compared to 17% knowingly using it in grocery. But the overall picture is of a collapsing customer journey. That means the strategies designed to move people through it will collapse with it. The implication is profound. Brand building now has two audiences: Humans and machines. 2 MODES OF MODERN BRAND-BUILDING To succeed in this new reality, marketers must operate in two parallel modes: Priming and proving. Priming is about creating long-term predisposition with humans. Building familiarity, cultural relevance, and emotional affinity regardless of whether theyre currently in market. Proving is about surfacing the evidence that both humans and deep learning algorithms trust. Delivering the information and signals that win in a machine-mediated, AI-driven decision moment. HOW TO PRIME Priming creates familiarity and favorability in human memories, to become the default choice in someones mind before they need to choose. That means: Emotional storytelling that travels Memorable brand codes and consistent assets Participation in culture, including TikTok trends, Discord, or headline-making activations Community-led content people want to remix, share, and live with Experiences that build brand belief through action, not just ads Orientating brand health measurement around equity metrics that track progress on how well youre influencing human perceptions and memory structures In other words, best-practice, 21st century upper funnel marketing. But less focused on interruption at scale and more on a coherent ecosystem of authentic, useful, and entertaining content/experiences. HOW TO PROVE Proving is where humans and machines overlap. It’s what shows up when someone (or something) is checking whether you’re credible, relevant, and worth recommending. That means: High-quality, up-to-date product and brand information across the web Clear alignment between brand promise and experience Independent reviews and endorsements High-authority media mentions and expert takes Fast correction of misinformation and inconsistent signals Orientating brand health measurement around entity metrics that track progress on how well youre influencing large language model (LLM) representation and retrieval The proving layer is what determines whether AI assistants recommend your brand or skip it entirely. THE NEW CUSTOMER JOURNEY IS A FLYWHEEL Heres the shift: Where the funnel assumes a one-way path, priming and proving are a constant loop. This is a flywheel, where strong priming makes AI recommendations feel more trusted, while great proving strengthens memories and impressions with humans and machines alike. Viewing our Patron/hangxiety experience through this model, wed already seen the Nothing to Hide platform (priming). The subsequent experience of the LLM recognizing bartender advocacy (proving) on the same topic likely influenced our momentous drinks decision. This is what brand leadership looks like in the AI era: not guiding people down a funnel, but building a self-reinforcing system where emotional equity and informational credibility compound. FINAL THOUGHT: HELPING HUMANS > HACKING SYSTEMS The brands that win in this new era of customer decision making wont do it by hacking a single channel or reverse-engineering one LLM’s ranking logic. The innovation rate is so fast that no one really knows how this will play out. What feels like a hack today may be obsolete tomorrow. But there are clues. Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT said recently that while they are still really in the MS-DOS phase, ultimately the expeience is being optimized to help people thrive rather than for a specific engagement or time metric. So it follows that the brands they favor will do the same, through being as useful, trustworthy, and interesting as possible. Great brand building has always been about these qualities. But we cannot underestimate the paradigm shift caused by them being codetermined by hyperintelligent machines. The flywheel previously known as a funnel is already spinning. CMOs should jump on it now, or watch competitors generate exponential growth while they wait. Neil Barrie is global CEO and cofounder of 21st Century Brand. Dan Hauck is executive strategy director and partner of 21st Century Brand.
Category:
E-Commerce
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