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Run a small business and you probably feel like you make dozens of decisions every day. Whether to cut a quality corner, or miss a ship date. Whether to respond to a customer complaint, or hope the problem goes away. Whether to address an employees behavior, or kick that can down the road. Then there are all the personal decisions. Whether to get up and going, or hit the snooze button. Whether to ditch the food you packed, or go out for lunch instead. Whether to keep grinding, or work out. None of those are actually decisions, though, since you already know you should do so. Nearly everything you decide already has an answer. Quality problem? Fix it. Customer complaint? Respond. Underperforming employee? Address the behavior now; a performance issue takes care of itself. The same is true for personal decisions. The nine minutes of sleep you get after hitting the snooze button isnt restorative sleep; youre better off setting your alarm for nine minutes later. (Or going to bed earlier.) The food you packed isor should bean integral part of your healthy lifestyle; going out for lunch when you didnt plan to is almost never better for you. Work out? Exercise can be your physical (and mental) competitive advantage. Thats the beauty of processes and routines. Rules arent restrictive. Rules are liberating, because rules free you up from having to make decisions. Over time, those actions become habits. Then you definitely dont need to make a decision, because habits are effortless. (In both good and bad ways, obviously.) Instead of wasting mental energy and willpower on choosing, all you have to do is act. As Jeff Bezos says, you dont get paid to make thousands of decisions every day. You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. As Bezos wrote in Fast Company: You need to be thinking two or three years in advance, and if you are, then why do I need to make a hundred decisions today? If I make three good decisions a day, thats enough, and they should just be as high quality as I can make them. Warren Buffett says hes good if he makes three good decisions a year, and I really believe that. Clearly, theres a huge difference between making three good decisions per day, and three good decisions per year. Yet that difference is also easy to explain. Launching a startup, like starting anything from a relatively blank slate, requires making seemingly countless decisions. Infrastructure, branding, pricing strategies, marketing strategies . . . everything is up in the air. Its impossible to work in the future when you havent figured out the present. But once youve made a decision, you no longer have to decide. Barring evidence that decision was wrong and needs to be revisited, all you have to do is act. With time, the number of decisions you need to make every day should rapidly decline. Which means you can focus all that mental energy on making strategic rather than tactical decisions. You can focus on making decisions that set the course for the next months, or even years. To launch a new product line, or not. To open a new location, or not. To take your lifehealth, education, relationships, etc.in new directions, or not. Making fewer decisions (better yet, constantly revisiting fewer decisions) frees you up to think about the things that will make the biggest difference in your professional and personal life. Think of it that way, and you really dont need to make more than three good decisions a year. Especially if those decisions help you become the person you want to be, and to build the life you really want to live. Jeff Haden This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
Category:
E-Commerce
Barely 10 days into the new year, it already feels like you cant look away from the news. In the last week alone, the U.S. military captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and took over operations of the country; President Trump withdrew the U.S. from dozens of international organizations, including a major climate treaty; and an ICE agent fatally shot a Minneapolis resident, sparking outrage and widespread protests. If it seems impossible to focus on workor anything else, for that matteramid all this troubling news, youre not alone. Plenty of research in recent years has shown that Americans are overwhelmed by the state of politics and feel a heightened sense of anxiety over the news cycle. Theres also clear evidence that doomscrolling and constantly absorbing negative media can interfere with our physical and mental health. It might feel like theres no reprieve from the endless onslaught of news, and the idea of staying productive seems almost quaint when each day has something new in store. But there are, in fact, some things you can do to help ground yourselfand get through the workday without being consumed by the news cycle. Create some guardrails Our media consumption habits are unhealthy, and not only because of the obvious effects on our productivity. Engaging with the news cycle takes a toll on our well-beingand from an evolutionary perspective, our brains are wired to pay closer attention to negative news. When we see something in the news that triggers our perception of danger, we have a physiological response in our bodies, says Emma McAdam, a marriage and family therapist who also shares mental health resources on YouTube. So in order to not be reactive, we have to be really intentional consumers of the news. And we have to ask ourselves: Am I consuming news for entertainment, or am I consuming news to inform action? If the news youre taking in is not actionable, McAdam says, it can just increase your stress levels or serve as a distraction. It’s easy to pretend that we’re doing some important job by reading the newsthat we’re being informed, she says. But realistically, we’re probably more emotionally driven to read the news. At the same time, its also not realistic for many people to entirely block out the newsespecially when it directly impacts their lives. McAdam argues you can, however, be more intentional about how you consume news to avoid simply consuming information that is not actually actionable. This can be as simple as turning off push notifications and carving out specific times of day to catch up on the news. Or you might remove certain apps from your phone so youre less inclined to check the news unless youre on your laptop. Our bodies respond very differently to acute stress than chronic stress, McAdam says. We’re actually very good at managing little bits of stress. A big stressor in a short dose gives your nervous system a chance to get activated and then to relax and restore your internal sense of safety. But when we consume the news throughout our entire day, then we have this low level of chronic stress. Step away from the devices There are, of course, jobs where you simply cant avoid the news, or maybe a push notification pops up when you pick up your phone for something work-related. In those moments, you may have an emotional response that makes it difficult to stay on task. We’re not able to focus and concentrate as well because our nervous system is activated, says psychologist Maggie Stoutenburg, who works with the telehealth provider NY Mental Health Center. We feel this distress, but then we also feel hopelessand people can feel kind of paralyzed by that. If you find yourself in that situation, it can be helpful to just step away from your desk. When youre activated and on edge, doing something that lights up your parasympathetic nervous system can help calm you down, Stoutenburg says. Deep breathing can be quite powerful, she says, or you might try going on a brief walk or listening to soothing music. Even a funny video can do the trick. When you need to get back on track after a distressing news alert, Stoutenburg recommends trying to work for just 1015 minute increments without letting your mind wander. Give yourself some compassion, she says. Validate your own feelings, and try to acknowledge it and then redirect it. Okay, there’s this stress here. Maybe there’s not a lot I can do about that in this moment, but what I can do is accomplish something in the next 10 or 15 minutes that will give me more of a sense of productivity and control. Focus on what you can control Embracing the things that are within your control can be a crucial tool for managing news-related anxiety. McAdam recommends an activity that can help you gain agency, by articulating exactly what is within your control and what is out of your hands. You take a piece of paper, you divide it in half, and on one side, you write things I can’t control, and on the other side you write, what I can control, she says. I can’t control what the President said today. But I can control whether I’m going to show up at a protest. I can control whether I love my kids. In other words, you do have a say in how you respond to depressing newsand McAdam points out that even anxiety can be a useful response at times, by nudging you to take action and relieve that feeling. Anxiety isn’t just something bad that happens to us, she says. Anxiety is actually supposed to ask the question: Am I in danger? Is there something I should do about it? When we ask that question, we can get more clarity and be like, well, I can’t change this. I’ll let it go . . . And if there is something actionable, that little spurt of anxiety can help us take that action. When theres so much happening in the world, it can be difficult to stay motivated. You may have a harder time finding purpose or meaning in your work, especially in the face of more serious concerns. It can be helpful, then, to reframe how you think about your job or other elements of your life and understand where you can actually have an impact. Most of the news we read is very far from us, and most of the good we can do is very close to us, McAdam says. Parenting matters. Being connected to our neighbors and being kind to our neighbors matters. Doing good in my sphere, doing good in my job, being kind to my coworkers, being really productive and solving [problems] at workthese are things that actually do make a difference and hopefully make the world a better, kinder, happier, safer place.
Category:
E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced that government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will buy an additional $200 billion in mortgage bonds. Trump wrote: Because I chose not to sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in my first term, a truly great decision and against the advice of the experts, it is now worth many times that amountan absolute fortuneand has $200 billion in cash. Because of this, I am instructing my representatives to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds. This will drive mortgage rates down, monthly payments down, and make the cost of owning a home more affordable. Long-term yieldslike the 10-year Treasury yield and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rateare set by demand / lack of demand for the underlying bond. Yields move inversely to bond prices. If demand for long-term bonds rises, prices go up and yields/mortgage rates fall. If bond demand falls, bond prices drop and yields/mortgage rates rise. For example, when the Federal Reserve engages in quantitative easing, as it did during the pandemic, it buys long-term assets like Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (MBS), increasing bond demand and pushing bond prices up and long-term yields down, including mortgage rates. The Feds MBS purchases put additional downward pressure on mortgage rates in 2020 and 2021. Conversely, during quantitative tightening since 2022, the Fed has been letting MBS assets roll off its balance sheet without replacing themeffectively removing a major MBS buyer from the marketwhich can put additional upward pressure on 30-year fixed mortgage rates. Effectively, Trump is proposing to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Macboth in government conservatorshipto absorb a larger share of mortgage bonds, increasing relative market demand for MBS. That could put some short-term upward pressure on MBS prices and downward pressure on mortgage rates, further reducing the mortgage spread. Around the same time the Federal Reserve began raising short-term rates and stopped buying long-term bonds in the spring of 2022, financial markets started pulling back from bonds, causing long-term yieldsincluding mortgage ratesto surge. Only, without the Fed buying MBS, the 30-year fixed average mortgage rates saw a bigger jump than the 10-year Treasury yield. At its peak in June 2023, the mortgage spreadthe difference between the 10-year Treasury yield and the average 30-year fixed mortgage ratehit 2.96 percentage points (296 bps). That was far above the 1.76 percentage point (176 bps) historical average since 1972. Over the past 2 years, the mortgage spread has slowly compressedhitting 2.05 percentage points (205 bps) in December 2025. The goal of Trumps announcement on Thursday (i.e., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying an additional $200 billion in mortgage bonds) is to accelerate that mortgage spread compression. As reported by Bloomberg in December, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have already started to accelerate their retained mortgage holdingswith them climbing around $69 billion in the second half of 2025. According to John Burns Research and Consulting, if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were to add another $200 billion in mortgage bond holdings in 2026, it would put the GSEs pretty close to their $450 billion legal limit ($225 billion each). On Thursday, Alex Thomas, research manager at JBREC, tweeted: Fannie [Mae] and Freddie [Mac] have already added ~$70B to their retained mortgage portfolios since May of last year. Adding another $200B would basically put the GSEs at their legal cap ($225B each). Following Trumps Thursday post, there was some immediate MBS pricing movement. That said, its unclear exactly just how much impact an additional $200 billion in GSE retained mortgage bonds ould have on the mortgage spread and the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate. Through the end of June 2025, there is $9.26 trillion in agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS), according to data the Urban Institute recently provided to ResiClub. Below is the breakdown: > $3.00 trillion held by depositories (banks) > $2.74 trillion held everyone else > $2.14 trillion held by the Federal Reserve > $1.33 trillion held by foreign buyers > $0.06 trillion held by GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) The chart below is the same as the one above, but it shows MBS holders by distribution. Prior to the Great Financial Crisis, the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) used to be much bigger buyers of mortgage-backed securities. In an Urban Institute report published in January 2026, Laurie Goodman and Jim Parrott explain what happened: For years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the buyers of last resort in the market, stepping in to profit from widening spreads and, in doing so, putting a comforting outer bound on MBS volatility. Once they went into conservatorship, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) were replaced in that role by the Federal Reserve, which stepped into the agency MBS market to calm much larger swings in the economy. All of this went unnoticed outside of the MBS market until recently, when the Federal Reserve finally ended its time in the stabilizing role, leaving the MBS market without a buyer of last resort for the first time in decades. The GSEs gave up their role as market stabilizer when they went into conservatorship and began reducing their portfolio under the terms of their bailout by the Treasury. The Federal Reserve then promptly stepped into the role. As part of its broader effort to shore up the market in the wake of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve bought $1.25 trillion in agency MBS between January 2009 and March 2010 and bought another $823 billion between 2012 and 2014. Largely because of that aggressive posture, along with the bailout of the GSEs, the MBS market and mortgage liquidity generally remained stable through the depths of the crisis, a remarkable feat given the level of dislocation in the rest of the economy. The Federal Reserve was then well positioned to handle the next major disruption in the MBS market, when financial markets seized up in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In February and early March 2020, the financial markets froze, and investors were forced to sell their agency MBS to build cash reserves, pushing mortgage spreads wider by 75 basis points. The Federal Reserve stepped in in March, committing to buying agency MBS and Treasury securities in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy to broader financial markets and the economy. 1 True to its word, the Federal Reserve, over the next month, bought more MBS than the entire gross production of the securities, stabilizing spreads and, with them, mortgages rates. Spreads ultimately settled a bit higher than they had been before the pandemic, but that was attributable to volatility in fixed income and a refinance wave triggered by the drop in Treasury rates. The Federal Reserve relinquished its role as the stabilizer of the agency MBS market when it pivoted to quantitative tightening in March 2022, ending its purchases of MBS and committing to running off its MBS portfolio. With the GSEs still operating under the portfolio constraints imposed in conservatorship, that left the market without a stabilizer for the first time in recent history.
Category:
E-Commerce
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