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Each January, we set lofty resolutions for ourselves: increasing our output, landing that promotion, and negotiating a raise. Then progress stalls, motivation dips, and those big goals become distant dreams. Research from Headwaya book summary app designed to help people achieve their self-development goalsshows that 60% of people are embarrassed by how little progress theyve made this year, with 44% close to writing off their 2025 resolutions. As a productivity coach, I know how beneficial resolutions can bebut also how quickly they can sap morale and motivation when combined with the wrong mindset. But it doesnt have to be all or nothing. Theres no deadline, and you havent failed if you dont complete your resolutions by December 31st. So if youve hit a midyear slump, dont panic. These strategies can help you to reset, refocus, and rebuild momentum: 1. Reframe your setbacks Setback carries negative connotations, but its just another word for experience, and experience is essential for growth. Instead of brushing these moments asideor beating yourself up over themnote down each time youve tried and failed, then reflect on what these experiences taught you, shifting your mindset from self-criticism to self-awareness. Where did it go wrong, and what would you do differently next time? Setbacks arent roadblocks; theyre stepping stoneswith each one providing valuable insight that will aid your next attempt, making you more resilient and better prepared. In fact, research shows that a failure rate of around 15% is optimal for self-growth. 2. Utilize the Zeigarnik effect Many people recommend breaking your resolutions down into smaller, more achievable tasks. Yet, that constant sense of achievement can kill your productivity. You tick a small step off your to-do list and reward yourself with a break, hitting reset on your momentum. Instead, you need to use the Zeigarnik effect to your advantage. This is a phenomenon where our brains are hardwired to focus on unfinished tasks and quickly forget about the ones weve completed. Instead of wrapping up your day with your to-do list at 100% completed, end at 80%. The next day, youll be ready to pick up where you left off. But once you finish a task, move immediately on to the next to keep the momentum going. This approach will keep your goal front of mind, maintain a sense of urgency, and prevent that post-completion slump that too often derails our progress. 3. Cut yourself some slack Youre not the person you were six months ago. Life shifts and priorities change, so your January goals might be unrealistic today. Thats okay. Some 27% of people say simply surviving 2025 is commendableand theyre right. Close to half fear a global conflict is on the horizon, one in five find themselves worrying that a loved one could face deportation, and there has been a sharp rise in the number of people struggling to make ends meet. Tensions are high, and were all struggling with something, so go easy on yourself. If you need to scale back your resolutions or hit pause until 2026? Theres no shame in it. 4. Stop striving for perfection You dont have to navigate your goals aloneor stick rigidly to the resolutions you set in January. You simply need to stay connected to your intentions, especially when motivation starts to dip. That might mean scheduling regular check-ins with yourself where you can remind yourself why you set certain goals in the first place, take time to note whats working and what isnt, and adjust accordingly to match the current pace of life. Progress isnt about perfection. Its about staying in tune with what matters most to you and seeking to better yourself. By being too tough on yourselfdenying yourself the space, flexibility, and self-trust to get there in the endyoure not pushing yourself to achieve; youre pushing yourself to quit. 5. Focus on recovery With 61% of people having suffered a meltdown in 2025, its clear were demanding too much of ourselves, and another midyear resolution wont help. The problem is, we set ambitious goals on top of our already overloaded schedules, then sacrifice our sleep and downtime to pursue them. Its no surprise we burn out when our bodies and minds are running on empty. So instead of pushing yourself to do more, push yourself to rest more. Your midyear resolutions should be to sleep eight hours each night, stop checking your emails after hours, and use up all your vacation days. Theres a reason athletes take rest days and CEOs swear by meditation. Whats good for the body and mind is great for productivity, so if you set resolutions that help you rest, relax, and recover, your career will undoubtedly profit.
Category:
E-Commerce
It’s not uncommon for large companies to acquire startups primarily for their talent rather than their product. Acquihires, as they are called, allow big companies to gain talented employees, while bypassing traditional methods of hiring. However, as the AI talent wars have heated up, major companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft have been engaging in reverse-acquihires at AI startups. That is, they are swooping in to hire star talent and license technology, discarding the rest by the wayside. The tech giants gain talent while sidestepping the need for government approval and antitrust scrutiny that would happen if they bought the company outright. The remaining employees are left to flounder in the husk of their former company. By Bloombergs count there have been six since last March, and as the AI talent wars continue, were likely to see more. 6. Google DeepMind and Windsurf In July 2025, Googles DeepMind division hired Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and cofounder Douglas Chen, along with other key members of their R&D team. The $2.4 billion deal also included Windsurf technology. Google did not take a stake or any controlling interest in the startup. The deal came after Windsurf was nearly sold to OpenAI in what was set to be a $3 billion deal. The Windsurf employees whom Google did not hire went from expecting to be part of OpenAI to being left behind at a company with no leaders. In a surprise twist Windsurf was quickly acquired by AI coding startup, Cognition. Still, the story doesnt have a happy ending. Shortly afterwards, Cognition laid off 30 members of Windsurfs team and offered buyouts to the remaining 200 TechCrunch reported. 5. Meta and Scale AI This June, Meta finalized a deal with data labeling company Scale AI. Meta acquired a group of its top engineers, including founder Alexandr Wang, and took a 49% stake in the company, for a $15 billion price tag. “As part of this, we will deepen the work we do together producing data for AI models and Alexandr Wang will join Meta to work on our superintelligence efforts,” a Meta spokesperson said. A month later, Scale laid off 14% of its workforce. Interim CEO Jason Droege said the company plans to focus on its government and enterprise businesses going forward. 4. Google and Character.AI In August 2024, Google also struck a deal with chatbot startup Character.AI, hiring its founders Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, as part of a $2.7 billion deal. “Were excited to announce that weve entered into an agreement with Google that will allow us to accelerate our progress,” Character.AI said in a statement at the time. The statement also explained that the startup would grant a nonexclusive license to the tech giant for its LLM technology. In the wake of the reverse-acquihire, Character.AI has shifted to a cheaper business model. Instead of training LLMs, it simply develops AI characters. Interim CEO Dominic Perella told Bloomberg: We were left much better positioned than some folks, pointing out that for a reverse-acquihire Character.AI is doing well. 3. Amazon and Covariant In August 2024, Amazon hired robotics company Covariants three founders (Peter Chen, Pieter Abbeel, and Rocky Duan) as well as about a quarter of the staff. They also received a nonexclusive license to Covariants robotic foundation models. According to a whistleblower, Amazon paid $380 million, which is much higher than $119.5 million, which is when deals need to be reported to the FTC. The Washington Post reported that according to the whistleblowers filing, Covariants current CEO, Ted Stinson, said if Amazon had bought the company outright, the deal would have been killed by antitrust authorities. According to the whistleblower, the deal restricts which licenses Covariant can sell without paying a fee to Amazon, hobbling its ability to grow. The whistleblowers filing said Covariant was only expected to last for a year after the deal went through. 2. Amazon and Adept Similarly, in June 2024, Amazon hired CEO David Luan and most of the AI startup Adept’s 100-person team in a deal that also included licensing the startup’s technology. At the time, Adept, which had raised $400 million, was developing AI agents to do software tasks, and the deal came before it had launched a product. Post-deal a blog post from Adept seemed to suggest that the company was now low in fund and needed to shift to a cheaper business model. Continuing with Adepts initial plan of building both useful general intelligence and an enterprise agent product wouldve required spending significant attention on fundraising… the post stated. Adept will now focus entirely on solutions that enable agentic AI, which will continue to be powered by a combination of our existing state-of-the-art in-house models, agentic data, web interaction software, and custom infrastructure. In December 2024, Amazon announced it was launching a new lab led by David Luan that would build AI agents that can handle complex workflows. Only around 20 employees remained at Adept after the Amazon deal. Bloomberg noted only four people currently list Adept as their employer on LinkedIn. 1. Microsoft and Inflection Microsoft kicked off the reverse acquihire trend last March when it agreed to pay chatbot startup Inflection about $653 million in a deal that effectively gutted the startup. The move included hiring founders Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonya and most of Inflection’s staff. Around $620 million was for nonexclusive licensing rihts to Inflection’s AI models, and a $33 million payment for Inflection to waive any legal claims related to the hiring of its staff. Inflection had raised $1.3 billion in June 2023. However, Bloomberg noted CEO Suleyman was worried about the companys ability to raise enough funds to stay viable given the size of its competition. The deal triggered a FTC investigation to determine whether it was designed to avoid antitrust review while allowing Microsoft control over Inflection. Inflection is still in operation, but has changed course to focus from building new AI models to working on AI in the enterprise space. Sean White, a former Mozilla executive, became the new CEO. White told Bloomberg that Inflection is still in rebuilding mode: The ship, over time, was slowly replaced, board by board, piece by piece, right? But it was still always the same ship, he said.
Category:
E-Commerce
Amazon is the the most efficient, popular online retailer. So maybe it shouldnt be surprising that its a gold mine for scammers. These individuals, bless their blackened hearts, are adept at crafting new and increasingly plausible ways to trick the unsuspectingand posing as Amazon is an easy way to attract attention. So, with a healthy dose of skepticism, let’s examine a few of their more popular ruses. And, more importantly, how to avoid becoming the next victim. Your Account Is On Hold! This particular chestnut arrives via email, often with a subject line designed to induce mild panic. It’s adorned with a passable Amazon logo and a link, invariably urging you to verify your details or update your billing information. How to avoid it: Amazon, for all its technological prowess, rarely communicates critical account issues via unsolicited links in an email. Outsmarting this one can be done the same way you outsmart just about every other phishing email out there. Make sure to examine the sender’s address. Does it genuinely end in “@amazon.com”? Or is it a peculiar string of characters, perhaps including amazon.com somewhere? The latter is a strong indicator its a scam. In the message itself, are there peculiar grammatical constructions or spellings that suggest English might not be the author’s primary language? These subtle imperfections are often telltale signs, though theyre getting harder to spot thanks to AI. And finally, resist the urge to click. If theres genuinely an issue with your Amazon account, manually navigating to Amazon.com in your browser and logging in will reveal all. Any legitimate alerts will be visible there. The “Unexpected Refund” Text Message This rather sneaky tactic involves a text message, ostensibly from Amazon, informing you that a recent purchase of yours has failed some sort of routine inspection. Perhaps it’s being recalled, or simply isn’t up to Amazon’s exacting standards. The good news, the message purports, is that a full refund is due, often without the hassle of returning the offending item. All you need do is click the convenient link provided to claim your compensation. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, among others, has recently issued warnings about this particular brand of mischief. How to avoid it: Excitement for an unexpected windfall should be tempered with a healthy dose of doubt. For starters, while Amazon does send legitimate texts, an unsolicited refund notification, particularly for an unspecified item and without requiring a return, is highly suspect. Clicking the link in the text message will, in all likelihood, lead you to a meticulously crafted phishing page that looks just like the official Amazon login pagejust waiting to collect your Amazon credentials, payment information, and any other personal details you’re willing to volunteer. Should you harbor even a fleeting thought that the message might be legitimate, bypass the text entirely by logging into your Amazon account via the official website or the app. Any legitimate refund or recall information will be clearly displayed within your order history or official notifications. The “Accidental Over-Refund” This is a somewhat more sophisticated deception. You might receive a call or an email asserting that Amazon has, through some inexplicable error, refunded you too much for a recent return. The request is for you to remit the “overpayment,” often via the purchase of gift cards or a wire transfer. How to avoid it: Before doing anything, consult your actual bank statements or Amazon account to confirm the alleged overpayment. It’s almost certain you’ll find no such anomaly. When it comes to Amazon’s refund protocol, the companys internal processes are reasonably sophisticated. Should a genuine error occur, the company would rectify it internally, not solicit funds from you via questionable methods certainly not gift cards! And if anyone purports to be from Amazon and requests remote access to your computer to “correct” a refund issue, it’s time to end the conversation. Amazon will never, ever, ever ask for access to your computer. Your Order Has Shipped!” Wait, what order? This particular trick plays on a combination of alarm and curiosity. A plausible-looking order confirmation arrives in your inbox for an itemoften expensive that you most certainly didnt purchase. The objective is to prompt you to click the “Cancel Order” or “View Details” link in a state of agitation. How to avoid it: Bypass the email entirely. Log into your Amazon account and go to your “Orders” section. If the supposed order isn’t there, it’s a fabrication. Though generally ill-advised, should you feel compelled to examine a link, hover your mouse cursor over it and observe the URL that appears. If it deviates significantly from www.amazon.com, then it’s best left unclicked. The “Mystery Package” Brushing Scam This particular oddity is less about financial theft and more about system manipulation. You receive a package from Amazon, addressed to you, containing an item you never orderedoften something inexpensive and utterly random. The purpose? A third-party seller is using your details to create fake purchases, allowing them to post fraudulent positive reviews under your name, thereby artificially boosting their product’s standing. How to avoid it: While seemingly harmless, receiving freealbeit often useless goods does indicate your personal information is being exploited. Do a good deed by contacting Amazon customer service and reporting the unsolicited package. The company takes a dim view of such practices. And given that your address is being used, a periodic review of your credit report for any other unusual activity is probably in order.
Category:
E-Commerce
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