As a kid, Matt Stevens and his neighbor used to hunker down and get set up for a game of flick football. Stevens was always the Cowboys. His neighbor was always the Steelers. Only problem was, they barely ever got to finish the game itself.
We would oftentimes run out of time, because I would spend so long making the poster for the game, Stevens says.
The North Carolina-based independent designer has long had a knack for using his creative skills to bring fictive worlds to life based on real-world IPand, well, it tracks that if anyone was going to make an idea as random as Good Movies as Old Books work, it would be him.
[Photo: Chronicle Books]
MID-CENTURY MASH-UP
Stevenss new bookin which he delivers exactly what the title promises across 200-plus fake vintage book coversis out today. And it works delightfully.
As for how he found himself turning the book-to-screen paradigm on its head in the first place, around 2020, he was helping his friend, former NFL player turned entertainment producer Ryan Kalil, pitch a project. Seeking a way to give a potential film project a unique visual spin, Stevens designed an image of it as an old linen-bound book.
I’ve always loved the whole mash-up culture, he says. Putting something in a new context and seeing it differently has always been very interesting to me.
[Photo: Chronicle Books]
After losing his father when he was young, Stevens says cinema offered a cathartic outlet, and he developed a lifelong passion for it. So after creating that first film as book for the pitch, he realized he had stumbled upon a new side project combining the things he lovesand he kept going.
He began putting his initial creations on social media, and they resonated. Having initially experimented with early 1900s cover aesthetics, he discovered his sweet spot in mid-century book cover design (he particularly loves Penguins work during the era).
Anything where the idea is reduced down to its bare essentials is really satisfying for me, he says. And I think a lot of that just showed up in the mid-century stuff where they’re printing in very limited colors, and they’re paring it down to the most bare-bones details.
[Photo: Chronicle Books]
His chameleonic ability to design across styles and eras is a testament to the small shops and agencies where he worked over the years, where every member of a nimble team was responsible for, well, everything.
In the book, that manifests in a Saul Basstinged spin on Cameron Crowes Say Anything; a veritable Push Pin Studios take on Mad Max: Fury Road; a Terminator cover that feels almost as if its a lost paperback history of the Roman empire.
At first, he was hesitant to touch IP that had a deep legacy of specific imagery associated with it. But he eventually embraced the thrill of itsuch as in the case of, say, his unexpected take on Ghostbusters. Breaking the title typographically immediately sets it on new ground, and the ominous silhouetted figures set against the limerick green background offer a fresh look at a beloved, well-worn property.
It was exciting to me to go, Okay, everybody knows that there are a million iconic images of this thing. How do I come up with something that’s different?
[Photo: Chronicle Books]
KICK-STARTING A COLLECTION
Designing a fake book for a very real movie is not unlike designing an actual cover for a very real book.
I love the medium of book design, Stevens says. To me, it’s one of the purest andmost satisfying challenges in the way that a poster is.
Sometimes he starts with the idea he wants to explore, and sometimes he starts with a style that he wants to play within. Either way, when he sets out to design a fake cover for a flick, he rewatches ita process that can reveal the film to him in all-new ways.
[Photo: Chronicle Books]
It’s just a different way of watching [movies]. You’re looking at themes and iconic images, he says. I think it just deepened my love for some of them.
As for his subjects, he says hes not out to create a Best Of cinematic list. Rather, he goes with the films he loves, the films that inspired him, or films that seem fertile ground for a fresh spin. He says the latter is often what resonates with viewers the most, such as his cover for Mad Max: Fury Road.
After he reached 100 books, in 2020 he launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a book of them, which brought in $57,000, nearly doubling its initial goal. When he designed 100 more, he Kickstarted a second volume. A literary agent, meanwhile, had been gifted one of Stevenss prints, and hung it on her wall. Someone in her office asked if she liked Stevenss bookbut the agent had no idea one even existed. So she reached out to him, and thats why Chronicle is now publishing a new volume collecting the best of his first two, with an additional 60 new covers (and an accompanying box set of 100 postcards).
[Photo: Chronicle Books]
The ironic thing? Designing fake book covers has led Stevens to gigs designing real ones. For the moment, he has taken a break from his fictive jacketsbut when someone lands on such a curious mix of passion and side-project success, can they ever really give it up?
I just saw Sinners this weekend, and it’s like, Oh, I’d love to work on that, he says with a laugh. So who knows?
Youve been knocking it out of the park. Your projects deliver, your name comes up in leadership meetings, and now youve been tapped for the next step: your first management role. Its exciting. Its validating. But its also a lot like stepping off a cliff with no parachuteespecially if no ones told you what leadership really requires.
In fact, nearly half of first-time managers report feeling unprepared when they take on their new roles. Why? Because being a high-achieving individual contributor is a completely different job than managing people. It’s not a promotionit’s a profession.
So, before you accept that new title and the corner Slack channel that comes with it, hit pause. Ask yourself these four essential questions, drawn from my work with hundreds of managers at Arrowhead Engineered Products and OTC Industrial Technologies. Each one will help you determine if youre readyand what to work on if youre not.
1. Do You Genuinely Enjoy Empowering Others? Or Do You Prefer Doing the Work Yourself?
All too often, Ive seen rising stars get promoted only to flounder under the weight of delegation. The problem isnt intelligence or ambitionits a mindset mismatch. Management is no longer about what you can do; its about what you can enable others to do.
Two useful questions to ask yourself are, Do I find satisfaction in helping others succeed? and Am I willing to let go of doing it my way in favor of coaching someone through theirs?
One high-performing sales rep at one of our subsidiaries had a stellar track record and was promoted to manage a regional team. Six months in, results were stagnant. At a leadership retreat, he realized hed been micromanaging every dealunintentionally robbing his team of growth and ownership. With targeted coaching, he transitioned to a mentoring model. The result? Revenue climbed, morale improved, and he built a far more resilient team.
If your dopamine still comes from crossing tasks off your own list, management might not be the right moveyet. Instead, look for opportunities to lead informal teams or mentor junior staff before you make the leap.
2. How Comfortable Are You Owning Both Team Winsand Failures?
When things go right, great managers give credit away. When things go wrong, they take responsibility. Its counterintuitive, and its hardespecially if youre used to being rewarded for your own performance.
This isnt just about accountability. Its about resilience, emotional intelligence, and setting the tone. Your team will take cues from how you respond to adversity. Do you spiral or solve? Do you blame or build?
Try these reflection prompts: How do I react when something goes wrong thats outside my control? Can I coach someone through a tough performance conversation without making it personal?
At OTC, we train managers using scenario planning. One notable case study involves a division leader who faced a serious service failure that caused a major client to threaten walking away from the contract. Rather than deflect blame or point fingers at the team, the leader chose to step up, take full ownership of the situation in front of the client, and offer a clear plan for how the problem would be addressed. This response not only salvaged the client relationship, but it also strengthened it. The client later expanded their contract with OTC.
This example underscores one of the key tenets in leadership: Leaders earn trust when they absorb the blame and redirect the credit. When done right, this kind of accountability builds lasting trust within teams and with clients, turning potential crises into opportunities for deeper connections and future success.
3. Are You Prepared to Create Both a Personaland TeamDevelopment Plan for Growth?
Management isnt a one-and-done skill set. You dont learn it once and coast. Great managers are obsessed with improvementfor themselves and for their teams.
Do you have a plan for how youll develop as a leader? Do you know how to identify skill gaps on your teamand help close them?
Ask yourself: When was the last time you asked for feedback? What did you do with it? Could you sit down tomorrow and outline growth goals for each of your direct reports?
At one of our leadership retreats, a newly promoted engineering manager discovered that she had never asked her team what skills they wanted to develop. When she did, it revealed a strong desire for cross-training and professional growth opportunities. She responded by introducing monthly “learning lunches” where team members could share knowledge and build skills together. The results were immediateengagement and collaboration skyrocketed, and the teams performance improved.
The best managers dont just set development goalsthey actively ask their team about their aspirations. To put this into practice, try using a simple grid to map out development goals for each person on your team, including timelines, support needs, and growth areas. This exercise helps you align team ambitions with business goals, creating a mutually beneficial development plan.
To take it a step further, regularly take part in self-assessments to evaluate your own growth areas as a leader. Self-awareness is key to understanding where youre excellingand where you may need more support.
4. Can You Navigate Ambiguity and Prioritize Like a CEO?
Finally, one of the most underappreciated skills of a first-time manager is prioritization. Not everything can be doneand not everything should be. Youll be responsible for choosing what matters most, often with incomplete information and imperfect data.
Start thinking now: When faced with 10 tasks, can I confidently identify the top three? Can I say noor not nowto requests that dont align with team goals?
We teach managers to use an impact-versus-effort matrix to triage tasks. Anything high impact and low effort? Do it immediately. High effort but high impact? Plan for it. Low impact, low effort? Delegate it. Low impact, high effort? Consider eliminating it altogether.
One manufacturing site manager used this model to rework his teams weekly meeting structure. The result: fewer redundant check-ins, more time for coaching, and a 12% uptick in on-time project delivery.
A Road Map
Becoming a manager is one of the most important transitions of your careerbut only if youre ready. These four questions arent just a test; theyre a road map. The more honestly you can answer them, the more successfully youll navigate the leap from standout individual to impactful leader.
Because at the end of the day, management isnt about the title. Its about the trust you build, the growth you spark, and the results you drivethrough ohers.
So before you say yes, take a moment to ask: am I ready to lead?
Fans of the discount retail chain Big Lots will be happy to know that the company is just days away from making the second phase of its comeback. On Thursday, May 1, Big Lots will reopen an additional 54 stores, followed by another 78 stores two weeks later on May 15.
Heres what you need to know about the companys continued retail revival, including which locations will be opening again soon.
Big Lots back from the brink
Back in September 2024, Big Lots filed for bankruptcy. Like many big box discount retailers, Big Lots had struggled from falling foot traffic and declining sales for years. In December 2024, the company announced it would go out of business and close all of its 800 stores.
But just before the end of the year, the Big Lots brand got a last-minute reprieve. Thats when Variety Wholesalers, the company that owns discount retail chains including Bargain Town, Roses, and Super Dollar, agreed to buy just over 200 Big Lots locations from the liquidation firm Gordon Brothers.
Variety Wholesalers said it would continue to operate the locations under the Big Lots brand after closing its newly acquired stores for a short time to prepare them for a new launch with reinvigorated inventory.
Variety made good on its plans when it launched the first wave of a four-phased store reopenings plan in April. As Fast Company previously reported, the company is continuing its reopening push with its phase 2 reopenings on May 1, followed by phase 3 reopenings on May 15.
In other words, many of those stores will open for business on Thursday.
Finally, in June, Variety is expected to complete its final phase 4 reopenings, upon which time a total of 219 Big Lots locations will be open and operating again.
Big Lots reopenings on May 1 and May 15
Variety says its phase 2 and phase 3 Big Lots reopenings will kick off this Thursday, May 1, with 54 additional store reopenings. Two weeks later, on Thursday, May 15, an additional 78 stores will reopen.
First Company has previously published a full list of all the phase 2, 3, and 4 Big Lots stores that are reopening. What follows now is a list of all the 132 Big Lots stores that will reopen in phases 2 and 3 in May. Those stores cover locations in 14 states.
North Carolina will see the most store openings in May, with 27 locations total. Ohio will see 14 stores open in May, and Pennsylvania will see 13 locations open their doors.
(Note that you can see a list of locations, addresses, and opening dates on the newly updated store locator tool on the Big Lots website.)
Alabama (7):
Athens, Decatur, Dothan, Guntersville, Jasper, Mobile, Northport
Florida (5):
Crystal River, Jacksonville, Marianna, Ormond Beach, Panama City
Georgia (11):
Augusta, Brunswick, Buford, Cornelia, Dallas, Fort Oglethorpe, Marietta, Smyrna, Valdosta, Vidalia, Waycross
Indiana (1):
Jasper
Kentucky (9):
Campbellsville, Danville, Elizabethtown, Glasgow, Hazard, London, Middlesboro, Richmond, Somerset
Michigan (5):
Burton, Flint, Port Huron, Shelby Township, Southgate
Mississippi (1):
Southhaven
North Carolina (27):
Belmont, Burlington, Clemmons, Dunn, Elizabeth City, Elkin, Fayetteville, Gastonia, Greensboro, Greenville, Hickory, Kinston, Lexington, Lincolnton, Mocksville, Mooresville, Mount Airy, Newton, Roanoke Rapids, Rocky Mount, Selma, Shelby, Southport, Statesville, Wake Forest, Wilkesboro, Wilson
Ohio (14):
Alliance, Boardman, Bridgeport, Columbus, Elyria, Fremont, Grove City, Kettering, Lancaster, New Philadelphia, Reynoldsburg, Toledo, Warren, Wintersville
Pennsylvania (13):
Bloomsburg, Camp Hill, Cleona, Du Bois, Dunmore, East Stroudsburg, Erie, Eynon, Franklin, Lehighton, Lewisburg, Meadville, New Castle
South Carolina (8):
Easley, Greenwood, Lexington, Rock Hill, Seneca, Simpsonville, Spartanburg, West Columbia
Tennessee (10):
Alcoa, Cleveland, Greeneville, Jefferson City, Johnson City, Knoxville, Morristown, Murfreesboro, Rogersville, Sevierville
Virginia (10):
Chesapeake, Chester, Fredericksburg, Front Royal, Martinsville, North Chesterfield, North Prince George, Waynesboro, Winchester, Yorktown
West Virginia (8):
Beckley, Bridgeport, Charleston, Elkins, Fairmont, Martinsburg, Oak Hill, Princeton
Big Lots phase 4 store reopenings in June
Big Lots phase 1 in April saw nine locations reopen. Phase 2, on May 1, will see another 54 locations reopen, followed by the May 15 phase 3 reopening of 78 stores.
Variety says it plans to reopen 219 Big Lots stores across four phases, which means that phase 4, which is scheduled for June 2025, will see the final 78 planned store reopenings. The exact date for when the final phase 4 reopenings will occur in June is unknown, but it will likely be earlier in the month.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party has won the federal election, capping a stunning turnaround in fortunes fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s annexation threats and trade war.Carney’s rival, populist Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, was voted out of his seat in Parliament, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation projected Tuesday.The loss of his seat representing his Ottawa district in Monday’s election capped a swift decline in fortunes for the firebrand Poilievre, who a few months ago appeared to be a shoo-in to become Canada’s next prime minister and shepherd the Conservatives back into power for the first time in a decade.But then Trump launched a trade war with Canada and suggested the country should become the 51st state, outraging voters and upending the election.Poilievre, a career politician, campaigned with Trump-like bravado, taking a page from the “America First” president by adopting the slogan “Canada First.” But his similarities to Trump may have ultimately cost him and his party.The Liberals were projected to win more of Parliament’s 343 seats than the Conservatives. It wasn’t immediately clear if they would win an outright majorityat least 172or would need to rely on a smaller party to pass legislation and remain in power.Elections Canada said it has decided to pause counting of special ballotscast by voters who are away from their districts during the electionuntil later Tuesday morning. The Liberals were leading or elected in 168 seats when the counting was paused, four short of a majority. Elections Canada estimated that the uncounted votes could affect the result in about a dozen districts.The decision means Canadians won’t know until later in the day whether Carney’s Liberals have won a minority or majority mandate.In a victory speech, Carney stressed the importance of unity in the face of Washington’s threats. He also said the mutually beneficial system Canada and the U.S. had shared since World War II had ended.“We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” he said.“As I’ve been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” Carney added. “These are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so America can own us. That will never . . . ever happen. But we also must recognize the reality that our world has fundamentally changed.”
A defeat for the Conservatives
Poilievre hoped to make the election a referendum on former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose popularity declined toward the end of his decade in power as food and housing prices rose.But Trump attacked, Trudeau resigned and Carney, a two-time central banker, became the Liberal Party’s leader and prime minister.In a concession speech before the race call on his own seat, Poilievre vowed to keep fighting for Canadians.“We are cognizant of the fact that we didn’t get over the finish line yet,” Poilievre told supporters. “We know that change is needed, but change is hard to come by. It takes time. It takes work. And that’s why we have to learn the lessons of tonight so that we can have an even better result the next time Canadians decide the future of the country.”Poilievre can still lead the Conservative Party.Even with Canadians grappling with the fallout from a deadly weekend attack at a Vancouver street festival, Trump was trolling them on election day, suggesting again on social media that Canada should become the 51st state and saying he was on their ballot. He also erroneously claimed that the U.S. subsidizes Canada, writing, “It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!”Trump’s truculence has infuriated Canadians, leading many to cancel U.S. vacations, refuse to buy American goods and possibly even vote early. A record 7.3 million Canadians cast ballots before election day.Reid Warren, a Toronto resident, said he voted Liberal because Poilievre “sounds like mini-Trump to me.” He said Trump’s tariffs are a worry.“Canadians coming together from, you know, all the shade being thrown from the States is great, but it’s definitely created some turmoil, that’s for sure,” he said.Historian Robert Bothwell said Poilievre appealed to the “same sense of grievance” as Trump, but that it ultimately worked against him.“The Liberals ought to pay him,” Bothwell said, referring to the U.S. president. “Trump talking is not good for the Conservatives.”
The Liberal way forward
Carney and the Liberals secured a new term, but they have daunting challenges ahead.If they don’t win a majority in Parliament, the Liberals might need rely on one of the smaller parties. The Bloc Québécois, which looked set to finish third, is a separatist party from French-speaking Quebec that seeks independence. Trudeau’s Liberals relied on the New Democrats to remain in power for four years, but the progressive party fared poorly on Monday and its leader, Jagmeet Singh, said he was stepping down after eight years in charge.“This is a dramatic comeback, but if the Liberals cannot win a majority of seats, political uncertainty in a new minority Parliament could complicate things for them,” said McGill University political science professor Daniel Béland.Foreign policy hasn’t dominated a Canadian election this much since 1988, when, ironically, free trade with the United States was the prevailing issue.In addition to the trade war with the U.S. and frosty relationship with Trump, Canada is dealing with a cost-of-living crisis. And more than 75% of its exports go to the U.S., so Trump’s tariffs threat and his desire to get North American automakers to move Canada’s production south could severely damage the Canadian economy.While campaigning, Carney vowed that every dollar the government collects from counter-tariffs on U.S. goods will go toward Canadian workers who are adversely affected by the trade war. He also said he plans to keep dental care in place, offer a middle-class tax cut, return immigration to sustainable levels and increase funding to Canada’s public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Associated Press reporter Mike Householder contributed to this report.
Rob Gillies, Associated Press
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s second term reached its first 100 days milestone, marked by a sweeping wave of executive orders promising to reshape the American government with immediate actions.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump signed 137 executive orders (published in the Federal Register as of Monday), addressing everything from immigration and tariffs, to higher education and government spending.
Navigating the head-spinning flood of executive orders and their impact can be a complex task, so Fast Company took a closer look at Trump’s executive orders in his first 100 days and found reliable trackers to keep up.
What is an executive order?
Executive orders are written presidential directives, which order a specific action pertaining to the federal government and are signed by the current president. Since the country’s founding, all presidents have signed at least one executive order, and such directives have become a more regular action in recent administrations.
Trump’s first 100 days in context
In a little over three months, Trump has signed just 25 fewer executive orders than his predecessor Joe Biden signed in the span of his four-year term.
In their first 100 days in office, former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden signed 19 and 42 executive orders respectively.
!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
Trump’s executive orders by topic
Fast Company categorized President Trump’s executive orders by the topics they covered: economy, energy, environment, government, health, social issues, tech, DEI, and other. Many of the executive orders could fit into more than one category, yet they were labeled based on the best fit.
!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}();
The analysis found that the largest category was executive orders relating to the government, with around 24.8% of EOs focused on government spending or regulating and deregulating various government bodies.
This was followed by economy-related orders, which amounted to 21.9% of all executive orders, primarily pertaining to Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs.
Executive orders also related to the environment, health, higher education, and DEI.
How to track Trump’s executive orders
Amid the chaos, various organizations are offering online tracking tools to better understand the mass executive orders and their impact.
Presidential executive orders are officially published on the Federal Register, the federal government’s official journal. Its website offers all the executive orders by president since 1937, with PDF versions of the original documents.
The White House also publishes the signed executive orders once they are announced.
CNN’s “Tracking Trumps executive actions” index tracks all of Trump’s executive orders and provides a visualization based on topic category. This tracker also offers a search engine based on the categories.
The American Presidency Project, a UC Santa Barbara initiative, tallies the amount of executive orders enacted by presidents, although it is not immediately updated.
The Akin Trump Executive Order Tracker is a searchable tool that analyzes the impact of the executive orders and breaks them down for easier undertsanding.
The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation executive order tracker utilizes check-boxed filters to search for executive orders, and provides access to fact sheets and analysis on the impact on Black Americans.
Unlike in the U.S., Canadian politics is multiparty and often defined by issues without salience to its neighbors to the south. But after President Donald Trump took office for a second term earlier this year and threatened Canada’s sovereignty and economy, the top issue in Canadian politics became one intimately familiar to Americans: Trump.
Trump was the central figure in Canada’s election Mondayand voters were impressed by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s vision for standing up to him. In a campaign video released on Election Day, Carney laid out his closing message. “The crisis in the United States doesn’t stop at their borders,” he says. “But this is Canada and we decide what happens here. Let’s choose to be united and strong. Canada strong.”
[Image: liberal.ca]
“Canada Strong” is Carney’s campaign slogan, itself a crib on an American trend of cities messaging resilience following tragedies like shootings or natural disasters. But Carney’s message is pure Canadian and emphasizes national unity against Trump’s saber rattling and trade wars. It’s defiant and conveys Carney’s “elbows up” approach toward the U.S., and it also provides a handy counterpoint to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose campaign slogan “Canada First” echoes Trump’s own “America First” refrain.
“You cant stand up to Trump when youre working from his playbook,” Carney says in his campaign announcement video. The video juxtaposed footage of Trump and Poilievre, including a clip of Poilievre chomping on an apple during a viral interview where he was asked about “taking a page out of the Donald Trump book.”
The Liberal Party’s fundraising message on its homepage emphasizes its anti-Trump stance by being Canada nice: “Support #PositivePolitics,” the site says, with a call to action to support things like “diversity over division” and “evidence-based decision making.” And Carney’s campaign logo and visual identity is simple and patriotic, reflecting a public image of someone who’s handled crises before and is prepared to do so again.
Carney, a former central banker for Canada and the U.K. during Brexit, never held elected office before being elected Liberal Party leader in March. He replaced former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and came to the campaign with a simple message and a present threat with Trump in office. Trump repeated his rhetoric against Canada Monday, calling the country a “beautiful . . . landmass” in a social media post and suggesting the U.S.-Canada border is an “artificially drawn line from many years ago.”
Canadian consumers have already responded to Trump’s tariffs and threats by not vacationing in the U.S. or selling their U.S. homes. Canadian consumer brands have responded in the form of initiatives like “Made in Canada” advertising and in-store signage at grocery store chains. Politics followed suit.
Carney’s campaign strategy and the brand built to communicate it is similar in ways to what U.S. voters sometimes see in down-ballot elections when the president is unpopular, as Trump is (his approval is at 39%, according to an ABC News-Washington Post-Ipsos poll, the lowest of any presidential approval at this point in their term in 80 years). With Trump, the trend of tying your opponent to an unpopular president has now gone international.
While 40 hours has been the standard workweek for the last few generations, the promise has long been that technology will give us more free time. Yet many Americans still find work spilling over into nights and weekends.Whether you want to cut back your hours to make room for a side hustle, to spend more time with your family, or to pursue your own interests and hobbies, it is possible to complete your full-time job in 30 hours a week.
As a time management coach for over 16 years, Ive worked with a lot of people in a lot of situations. What Ive seen is that almost everyone can reduce the amount of time theyre working. Getting down to 30 hours or less per week isnt possible in all circumstances, but it is possible in many. Here are the steps to make it happen.
Set clear constraints
If youre used to working more, youll need to put in place very intentional time constraints to learn to limit yourself to 30 hours a week or less. To make this as easy as possible, I recommend setting a new schedule and trying not to deviate outside of it.
For example, this could look like working 8:30 a.m.2:30 p.m. so that you can pick up your kids from school and take them to their activities. Or it could look like a 10 a.m.4 p.m. schedule if youre training for a huge competition and want to get in both early morning and evening workouts.
Without these limits, its too easy to fall back into more of a 95 and never really feel free to put extra time into your outside of work goals.
Consolidate your work
Most likely youve been keeping busy for 40 or more hours per week, but that doesnt mean that youve been effective.
One of the fastest ways to reduce your hours is to consolidate your meetings. Take a good, hard look at any recurring meetings. Could they be reduced by shortening them, reducing the frequency, or even eliminating them? Could you cluster meetings on fewer days of the week so that you can open up longer stretches of focused work time on other days? Could you reduce spontaneous meetings by asking people to schedule in advance or send you an email with more details before agreeing to meet? All of these strategies can shave off hours from your schedule.
Next, youll want to look at the content of how youre spending your work time. If youre like most professionals, youre likely overinvesting time in communication and under investing time in the highest impact activities. Theres room to consolidate here, too.
Some work environments do require instant responsiveness, but in the majority of them, its not necessary. If permissible, turn off all notifications so that youre only engaging with your inboxes and IM tools when you decide its the priority. Then limit your checks to a few times a day. For example, you may set aside time to process through your inboxes at the start of the day, around lunch, and as youre wrapping up.
For myself, I have a rule that I reply to business email messages by the next business day, and I reply to LinkedIn messages once a week. You need to figure out the cadence that works for you so that youre checking just enough, but not too much.
With the time opened up from reducing meetings and communication time, you can then invest in consolidated focused time where you can complete tasks from start to finish without constant starts and stops.
Delegate out as much as possible
If you have the ability to delegate to others, youll want to fully leverage other peoples time to open up hours in your schedule.
As you go through your day, make a list of what others could do to support you and then begin to hand those items off bit by bit. Here are a few ideas of areas that have been effective for my clients to delegate:
Doing research
Following up on outstanding items
Completing expense reports
Booking travel
Calling clients for longer conversations
Scheduling meetings
Answering standard email
Putting together presentations
Booking meeting rooms
Planning events
Taking meeting minutes
Posting on social media
Theres a potential that almost everything outside of your core responsibilities could be done by someone else.
Challenge yourself to let go of some task at least once a week so that you can eliminate excess work from your schedule.
Automate where you can
With rapid advances in technology, more and more parts of your life can be automated or at least augmented. So where its supportive, let tech do the work.
For example, for many of my clients, getting some sort of email filtering in place can radically change their relationship with their inboxes. It could be as simple as setting up some of their own filters or using tools like SaneBox that utilize AI for email sorting.
For clients who struggle with longer email replies, theyll dump their thoughts into a tool like ChatGPT and ask it to write an email for them. Or theyll write their own email and ask for AI to change the tone.
If youre someone who schedules a lot of meetings with outside parties, online scheduling tools like Calendly can be a game changer. You eliminate all back and forth.
And if you really struggle with weekly planning, you may want to check out tools like SkedPal, Focuster, or Motion that use AI to come up with a plan for you.
If you notice anything else time-consuming and repetitive in your work that you cant give to someone else on your team, see if theres a tool that would gladly do it for you. The options are increasing daily.
I cant guarantee that youll carve your schedule all the way down to 30 hours a week or less. That can depend on a number of different factors. But what I can say is that if you try out these strategies to consolidate, delegate, and automate that you can find yourself working significantly less and opening up significantly more time for life outside of work.
Ernest Hemingway had an influential theory about fiction that might explain a lot about a particular weakness of artificial intelligence, or AI. In Hemingway’s opinion, the best stories are like icebergswith what characters actually say and do located above the surface, but making up only a fraction of the unfolding action. The rest of the storythe characters motivations, feelings, and their understanding of the worldideally resides instead beneath the surface, like the bulk of an iceberg, serving as unarticulated subtext for all that transpires.
Perhaps the reason Hemingways theory struck a chord is because human beings are like icebergs. Whatever people say or do at any given moment is undergirded by reams of nonverbal context that exists beyond the cold, hard facts of what may appear to be happening. What does it look like when theres tension between two people, or supreme comfort? What kind of face does someone make when theyre desperately trying to end a conversation? These are things humans come to understand intuitively. According to a new study from Johns Hopkins University, though, AI is hopelessly out of its depth at interpreting such things so far.
“I don’t think humans even have a full understanding of how we pick up on nonverbal social cues in the moment, but the idea behind most modern AI systems is that they should just be able to pick up on it from all of the data they’re trained on,” says Leyla Isik, lead author of the study.
Isik is a cognitive scientist whose work centers around human vision and social perceptions. She had read a lot of scientific work recently suggesting that current AI models are adept at discerning human behavior when they categorize objects in static images. Since plenty of AI in the near-future wont be parsing static images, though, but instead processing dynamic action in real time, Isik set out to determine whether AI could correctly identify what is happening in videos depicting people engaged in different social interactions with each other.
Its the kind of thing a person would want their self-driving car to excel at before trusting it to correctly size up, say, whether two people are having a heated exchange on a nearby sidewalk, and if one of them seems to be perhaps one harsh word away from bolting into the crosswalk.
Isiks team asked a group of people to watch three-second video clips of humans either engaging with each other or doing independent activities near each other, and interpret what the clips portrayed. Sourced from a computer vision data set, the clips included everyday actions ranging from driving to cooking to dancing. The researchers then fed the same short clips to 350 AI language, video and image models, and asked them to predict what humans would say and feel about them. All of the videos were soundless, so neither humans nor AI models could make use of vocal tone, pitch, or dialogue to contextualize what they were taking in.
The results were conclusive; while human participants were overwhelmingly in agreement about what was happening in the videos, the AI models were not.
To be clear, participating AI were able to determine some aspects of what transpired in the clips. The scientists asked questions about things like whether a video was taking place indoors or outdoors, and in a small enclosed space or a large open setting. The AI always matched humans on those kinds of questions.
They were less successful, however, at peering beneath the surface details.
Pretty much everything else, we found that most AI models struggled at some subset of it, Isik says. Including questions as simple as ‘Are these two people in the video facing each other or not? All the way up to higher level questions like, ‘Are these people communicating?’ and ‘Does this video seem like it’s depicting a positive or negative interaction?’
The researchers asked, in particular, about both the emotional valence of a scenewhether it appeared to be positive or negativeand the level of arousalhow intense or engaging the actions in the video seemed. While a lot of humans involved couldn’t always pick up on what was being communicated in a video, they were able to determine whether a scene seemed intensely positive or mildly negative. AI models could not read the subtext in nonverbal cues, though.
This disparity is likely due, the study claims, to AI being largely built on neural networks inspired by infrastructure from the part of the brain that processes static images, rather than the parts that process social interactions. Most AI models are trained to see an image and recognize objects and faces, but not relationships, context, or social dynamics. They may be trained on data sets that encompass movies, YouTube clips, or Zoom calls, and they may have encountered labels that explain what smiles, crossed arms, or furrowed brows mean. But they do not have the accumulated experience from years and decades spent constantly encountering these data sets and cultivating an intuitive understanding of how to navigate them in real time.
Since another line of research in Isiks lab at Johns Hopkins is developing models for building more human-centered priorities into modern AI systems, perhaps her research will help close some of these gaps eventually.
If so, it wont be a second too soon, as the AI boom continues to expand out into therapy and AI companions, along with other areas that rely on nonverbal cues and everything else lurking beneath the surface.
“Any time you want assistive AI or certainly assistive robots in the workplace or in the home, you’re gonna want it to be able to pick up on these subtle nonverbal cues, Isik says. More basically, though, you also just want it to know what people are doing with each other. And I think this study highlights that we’re still pretty far from that reality with a lot of these systems.”
The most indelible image from Donald Trumps inauguration in January is not the image of the president taking the oath of office without his hand on the Bible. It is not the image of the First Lady scowling under the capacious brim of her hat or the memeified image of Hillary Clinton giggling at Trumps mention of the Gulf of America.
It is, of course, the image of the worlds richest and most influential menhenceforth known as the broligarchylined up both literally and figuratively behind Trump. It was a carefully choreographed moment designed to illustrate Trumps strength. But the tableau could also be viewed another way: as a bunch of billionaires who looked scared out of their minds.
Just about every man in the lineup had faced off against Trump in his first term: Mark Zuckerberg deemed him too dangerous for Facebook. Jeff Bezos sued him for harboring a personal vendetta that allegedly cost Amazon a $10 billion cloud contract. Tim Cook called Trumps immigrant family separations inhumane and condemned his moral equivalence after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. And when Sundar Pichai protested Trumps ban on immigration from majority Muslim countries, Sergey Brin was right there with him. Even Elon Musk clashed with Trump 1.0 after the president pulled out of the Paris climate accords.
Now, all of these men stood side by side on the dais, many of them in what appeared to be a naked act of self-preservation as Trumps retributive and transactional second term took off.
So, 100 days in, how have these business leaders been rewarded for their subservience? Why, with tariffs and trials and tanking stock prices, of course.
The billionaires have begged and bargained in the Oval Office, theyve kicked millions of dollars Trumps way, and theyve compromised on the values they once professed to hold dear. But while their fates under Trumps second term certainly could have been worsethe president once threatened Zuckerberg, for one, with life in prisonthe president has yet to totally forgive and forget.
Take Zuckerberg. As Trump took office, the Meta founder bent over backwards to appease him, very publicly announcing, though not in so many words, that he would make it easier for people to say hateful things about immigrants and trans people on Facebook and Instagram and shelling out $25 million to settle a baseless lawsuit Trump filed after being banned from Facebook. But none of that insulated Zuckerberg from the Federal Trade Commissions ongoing antitrust lawsuit, which seeks to unravel Metas ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The same goes for Google, which is currently facing its own antitrust trial, through which the Department of Justice has asked a district court to force the search giant to sell off its valuable Chrome browser.
As one Trump ally recently told The New York Times about the Meta case: The president still wants his pound of flesh.
Tech leaders fealty also hasnt shielded them from turmoil tied to Trumps so-called Liberation Day tariffs, which briefly sent the global markets into freefall. Meta’s stock price plunged on the fear that advertising would dry up. Amazon got walloped as Trump imposed a 145% tariff on goods from China, tossing a grenade into its global supply chain. Google’s data center expansion plans were poised to suffer, as construction costs were set to skyrocket. Even Apple, which scored a tariff exemption on goods from China, may not be spared forevera possibility the company is preparing for as it scrambles to move iPhone production to India.
Trumps so-called reciprocal tariffs are still on hold, but all of these companies are still struggling to find their footing in the face of so much uncertainty.
Then theres the relentless assault on the very infrastructure that made the United States a tech powerhouse to begin with. Funding for key research institutions has been gutted, driving scientists overseas. Billions in broadband expansion grants have been held up, stalling projects meant to bring faster internet access to rural America. Trump even said during his joint address to Congress that he wanted to get rid of the CHIPS Act, a rare spot of bipartisan consensus designed to spur the construction of new semiconductor plants through billions of dollars in Congressional funding. (So far, the president seems satisfied placing CHIPS Act programming under a new office that will, he says, strike much better deals.)
The war on talent has been just as chilling, as the U.S. government revoked more than 1,500 student visas in recent months, before abruptly reversing course. Already experts have called the crackdown a gift to China, which is eager for U.S.-educated STEM graduates to return home.
At this point, its hard to see whats in it for the broligarchs. Thats doubly true for Musk. The cost of aligning himself with Trumpand becoming the chainsaw-wielding face of his government slashing efforthas been particularly steep. His popularity has sunk alongside Teslas profits, as protests of the electric vehicle maker have exploded.
And yet, at least Musk is an indisputably true believer in Trumps cause. nlike the others who scrambled to make nice with Trump after election day, Musk spent nearly $300 million to get him and other Republicans elected last November. He recruited fellow investors and software engineers to do his bidding at the Department of Government Efficiency, unleashed AI tools on government databases, and bulldozed the regulatory state that he so loathes.
After 100 days, Musk may be the only one standing on the dais who got exactly what he paid for.
Former Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg launched Meeno less than two years ago with the intention of it being an AI chatbot that helped users through relationship issues. Now, the company is pivoting to focus on teaching predominantly male users how to connect romantically with women through interactions with voice-based AI characters.
[Male loneliness] is a problem thats been getting worse for 30 years, Nyborg tells Fast Company. I never thought that this was something we could just go and snap our fingers and [fix].
The first iteration of Meeno, Nyborg says, allowed the company to prove that it could build something that appealed to men. She says the original platform, which will still be available on the Meeno app, attracted over half of its 100,000-user makeup as men.
But they wanted it to yield faster results, and rapid developments to OpenAIs Whisper API and other technologies in the past few months meant it could rapidly decrease the amount of time its AI needed to offer insights. Users, she says, could get benefits within minutes instead of over three to four weeks thanks to the OpenAI advancements.
The new Meeno is entirely web based, meaning it’s not going to be hosted on an app store. Users will go to the site, take a brief voice survey, and then get insights into how they present themselves. They’ll then make an account and go through fake scenarios, such as being prompted to talk to a woman while waiting in line at a pizza place. Users who want to go through more scenarios each day can pay $19 a month for a premium subscription. Think of it, she says, like Duolingo for dating.
As part of its pivot, Meeno is raising a seed extension, with $2.7 million committed in the past few weeks. (The name, by the way, is a nod to Platos Meno writings.)
The key to the platform, Nyborg says, was making it audio based so that it shows a clear intention of getting out of the house and interacting with people in the real world. A Pew Research Center survey from January found that while men and women report roughly equal rates of feeling lonely all or most of the time, men aren’t reaching out to their networks for help as much as women are.
Nyborg says she and her investors have been testing out the product in the mornings, often feeling more confident in their conversations later in the day because they were warmed up.
“Maybe someone pays you a surprise compliment, based on the band T-shirt that you’re wearing, which has happened to me, and what I’ve realized about myself is because I’m an introvert, if I’ve just left the house and I haven’t spoken to anyone, I’ve realized I can be a bit standoffish or aggressive,” Nyborg says. “And again, people are usually just trying to be nice and it can really make someone’s day doing that.”
