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My Non-Negotiable Mindset started with exercise, or more accurately, with not wanting to. That moment of resistance became a turning point in how I show up and follow through. I wasnt lazy or undisciplined. I was human. And thats when it clicked: if I only exercised when I felt like it, Id never do it often enough to matter. So I made exercise non-negotiable, like brushing my teeth or showing up to teach a class. This commitment was to myself. No mood checks. No internal bargaining. No excuses. Four times a week, minimum. That was the contract. What changed wasnt just my behavior; it was my identity. My thinking shifted from I need to exercise to Im the kind of person who exercises. Commitment replaced motivation. Routine replaced inspiration. Once that clicked, I started applying the same logic everywhere I noticed myself negotiating. Why was I waiting for the perfect moment to write? Why did a project I already knew mattered require inspiration before action? What began as a personal experiment became something I couldnt help but share. Years later, when I introduced this mindset to faculty I mentor through a national design-writing fellowship, it clicked for them, too. One day, I casually mentioned that I sometimes write on my laptop while on the elliptical or stationary bike. The room went quiet. Their expressions hovered somewhere between disbelief, admiration, and curiosity. We’ve been conditioned to believe meaningful work requires perfect conditions. It doesnt. It just needs to happen. Not long after, I started hearing the same question on repeat: How do you get so much writing done while working full-time and parenting? The answer wasnt superhuman discipline. It was decision designdeciding once, then removing the debate. High performers dont rely on motivation; they make decisions their Future Self wont regret. They design hesitation out of their day by asking one simple question before important choices: Will tomorrows me thank me for thisor have to clean up after it? The hidden cost of hesitation Most productivity systems treat hesitation as harmless. It isnt. Every small internal debateShould I start now or later? Email first or focus?drains cognitive energy before meaningful work even begins. You dont just lose minutes. You lose momentum, follow-through, and the ability to act decisively when it matters most. In organizations, this shows up as delayed launches, deferred decisions, and teams waiting for clarity that never quite arrives. This is why capable, motivated professionals struggle to execute: not because they lack discipline, but because they burn cognitive bandwidth negotiating instead of doing. The Non-Negotiable Mindset The solution isnt more motivation. Its fewer decisions. The Non-Negotiable Mindset eliminates hesitation by turning essential actions into pre-commitments: decisions made once and executed automatically. When something is non-negotiable, theres no internal debate. You just do it. Most habit advice says to start small and repeat until the behavior becomes automatic. The Non-Negotiable Mindset reverses that logic. Automaticity comes first, not last. You block time on your calendar, show up, and act. An author writes because thats what the writer version of herself does. An entrepreneur schedules investor outreach every Tuesday morning because their Future Self needs those relationships built. These people arent more disciplined than everyone else. Theyve stopped asking permission from their present-moment selves. Weve been trying to solve a systems problem with motivational tools. This mindset flips that equation. Why Future-Self thinking beats willpower What makes this approach stick isnt grit or self-control. Its perspective. Your Future Self isnt a distant stranger. Its you, living with the consequences of todays choices. Research by psychologist Hal Hershfield shows that the more connected people feel to their future selves, the more likely they are to make wise, long-term decisions. But the real shift happens when you dont just think about your Future Selfyou decide as your Future Self. Non-negotiables arent arbitrary rules. They are actions anchored to identity, not momentary comfort. When you ask What would my Future Self do? follow-through stops feeling optional. The decision is already locked in. A four-step execution framework You can implement the Non-Negotiable Mindset immediately: Identify what matters to your Future Self. Choose actions that compound over time. Not everything deserves non-negotiable status. Focus on the critical few. Systematize only what truly moves the needle. Automating everything creates rigidity. Act consistently, not reactively. Systems run whether you feel inspired or not. Consistency beats intensity. Make it non-negotiable. Remove the option to delay or debate. Flex the method if needed, but honor the commitment. When action becomes automatic, you free mental energy for creativity, judgment, and strategic thinkingthe work humans still do better than machines. Why this matters now In 2026, competitive advantage will belong less to those with the best ideas and more to those who act on them consistently while others hesitate. As AI absorbs routine cognitive labor, human value increasingly depends on what machines cant yet replicate: discernment, prioritization, and action under uncertainty. Your Future Self is building a company, leading a team, or creating meaningful work. That person needs you to act on what matters, now. This mindset isnt about hustle. Its about protecting what moves the needle from the daily erosion of indecision. Its productivity designed for the attention economy, where the scarcest resource isnt time, but the clarity to use it well. What to do today Think like your Future Self right now. Pick one action youve been negotiating with yourself about, something important youve been meaning to get to. Ask yourself: Six months from now, will I wish I had started today? Then decide once. Make it non-negotiable. Set a time. Remove the debate. The only question is whether you’ll decide as the person you are today or the person you’re becoming. Stop negotiating. Start doing.
Category:
E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. I recently celebrated my 56th birthday, and Im feeling my age. Not because Im slowing down (which I am), but because I feel increasingly removed from the passions, peeves, and predilections of Gen Z and Generation Alpha. This matters, as young people shape popular and workplace cultures, and their tastes drive big swaths of consumer and tech spendingall things Inc. and Fast Company cover. To help me figure out how to stay tuned into their wants and needs, I asked six executives to share their strategies for staying ahead of the youth culture curve. They shared some interesting initiatives and resources in the edited insights that follow. Craig Brommers, chief marketing officer, American Eagle At AE, we have a Gen Z panel, a group of our key consumers between the ages of 15 to 25 that help us test everything we do. They are excellent sounding boards for key marketing initiatives, product decisions, partnerships, and more. They help to drive insight into the consumer and also allow us to figure out what matters most to the people shopping our brand. We also have a very large network of creators we work with at any given time. They are not just making content for us; they are teaching us. From the biggest macro influencer down to the most micro, the more creators we are working with the more patterns and trends we have seen emerge, even before they hit the mainstream feed. Jackie Jantos, CEO, Hinge I try to be very intentional about surrounding myself with folks whose lived experiences are different from my own, so Im always learning. Humility, curiosity, and listening go a long way. I love newsletters, Substacks, and fictionWilla Bennett, Casey Lewis, Shit You Should Care About, The Audacity, and Sylvains Progress Report are a few people and places I regularly return to for inspiration. Im [based] in New York City, so I get to walk the streets and ride the subwayyou can learn a ton just from being out in the world and paying attention. But best of all, is this incredible Hinge team. The shortcut to staying current is to surround yourself with people different from you. The education and inspiration unfolds on its own. Kory Marchisotto, chief marketing officer, E.l.f. Beauty My intention word is Shoshin [a Buddhist term] meaningfully chosen to remind me to wake up each day with a beginners mindset. Staying current is about showing up curious, staying grounded, and engaging with total presence. At E.l.f., 78% of our employee base is Gen Z or millennial, so culture is in the room with me every day. I am also an active member of our community. Its me responding to every comment on LinkedIn, engaging in director dialog equally on TikTok lives, in social comment pools, and alongside the shoppers at shelf. Tuning E.l.f. into what gives people energy is my rocket fuel. Every conversation, every story, every connection is a new star in my constellation. Its zero distance between me and the community we serve. Maureen Polo, CEO, Hello Sunshine Our Sunnie Gen Z Advisory Board functions as both a cultural council and a co-creation engine. Theyre not a focus group; theyre collaborators who act as cultural translators between lived youth behavior and brand and creative strategy. We engage this group through regular working sessions, collaborative projects, and early-stage creative reviews. They help surface emerging trends, challenge assumptions, and shape concepts before theyre finalized. With our brand partners, we collaborate on insight, not just activation, using shared learnings to co-create platforms that feel culturally meaningful and deliver unforgettable consumer experiences. This is how weve approached building Sunnie and Sunnie Reads alongside partners like E.l.f. Beauty, If/Then, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, Purdue University, Victorias Secret Pink, Invisalign, and Coach: grounding creativity in real youth insight, inviting the audience into the process and building ecosystems rather than campaigns. Josh Rosenberg, CEO and cofounder, Day One Agency Nearly 40% of the Day One team is Gen Z, and I learn so much from each of themwhat they read, watch, and listen to, where they hang out and travel, how theyre embracing adulthood (or not!). We also host a youth insights focus group called Group Chat. Its a Slack community made up of 75 Gen Zers from across the country who share their perspective on trends, headlines, or specific client askstheir thoughtful answers are an invaluable part of how we know what young people are actually thinking about, focused on. And then my other youth culture go-to is our good friend Casey Lewis, who tirelessly reports upon both Gen Z and Alpha in her daily After School Substack. We recently published a report on Gen Alpha in collaboration with Lewis. Jane Wakely, chief consumer and marketing officer, chief growth officer, international foods, PepsiCo For me, scrolling TikTok or Insta remains the fastest way to understand whats resonating, whats becoming a trend, whats already passé, and what people are quietly rolling their eyes at. Looking for the weak signals and using data and tech to help create real foresight is key. I also have college-aged kids, which is maybe the most authentic insight you can have. They have no tolerance for anything that feels try-hard or inauthentic, and just listening to how they talk, what they buy, what they share, what they laugh at, and what they ignore is incredibly insightful. Seeing through their eyes is so powerful. At PepsiCo, we pair our instinctive read with constant cultural listening and rapid signal-sharing. Our teams are always tracking whats bubbling up across social, sports, entertainment, and creator ecosystems, looking for momentum: whats accelerating, whats losing energy, and where sentiment is shifting. Those signals move quickly across our organization so our brands can make real-time decisions in how we show up in cultural moments, which creators we partner with, and how we adjust creative, media, and experiences. Keeping up with Gen Z and Gen Alpha culture How do you keep current on youth culture? And what trends are you watching in 2026? I asked Brommers, Jantos, Marchisotto, Polo, Rosenberg, and Wakely to share their top trends, and Ill publish themalong with reader insightsin an upcoming newsletter. Read and watch more: understanding the next generation Managing Gen Z: Fast Companys 143-point guide for leaders What Gen Z really wants at work Gen Alpha may find the workplace even tougher than Gen Z does
Category:
E-Commerce
It has been two weeks since Winter Storm Fern swept through the United States, and many cities are still busy digging themselves out of waist-high snow mountains. A brand-new building in Antarcticawhere temperatures average 14 degrees Fahrenheit along the coastmight offer some useful insights for a more efficient approach. Perched on the southern edge of Adelaide, an island on the Antarctica Peninsula, the Discovery Building spans two stories and nearly 50,000 square feet. It is clad in highly insulated metal composite panels and topped with a mono-pitch roof that slopes in just one direction, so snow slides right off instead of piling up. [Photo: BAS] Most notably it sports an innovative feature called a wind deflector, which protrudes on the leeward edge of the building (the one sheltered from the prevailing wind) and prevents snow from piling up right next to the building. So far, the system has most commonly been used above doors to clear snow that would otherwise fall adjacent to the building, but the architects say it’s never been used at this scale before. The feature could change the way we design buildings for harsh climates. [Photo: Stle Eriksen] Design for extreme conditions The Discovery Building is located within Rothera Research Stationa center for marine and atmospheric studies and the U.K.’s largest research facility in Antarctica. (The station is famously served by one of the most advanced, icebreaking polar research vessels in the world, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, which itself carries the autonomous underwater vehicle Boaty McBoatface, of internet fame.) [Photo: BAM] For years, the research station was spread across nine separate buildings, meaning researchers often had to navigate between them in blizzard conditions. Now, all functions are consolidated under one (very unique) roof, in a building that acts as the stations nerve center. [Photo: Matt Hughes/BAS] The Discovery Building was designed by British firm Hugh Broughton Architects, which, over the past decade, has a gained a reputation for designing buildings that exist in extreme conditions. In 2013, the firm completed Halley VI, a raised building that sits on a floating ice shelf. Mounted on hydraulic legs with retractable skis, the station was specifically designed to be relocated if the ice shelf showed signs of breaking off, which it did in 2017. The entire base was successfully moved 14 miles inland. Halley VI Science Modules, ca. 2012. [Photo: Hugh Broughton Architects/Wiki Commons] Halley VI, which went on to earn over a dozen awards, led to several commissions in other extreme, isolated environments, including a health center in the world’s most remote island, Tristan de Cunha, and Juan Carlos 1, a radial modular research base also on the Antarctic Peninsula. The firm is also currently designing a new building for the Australian Antarctic Division at Davis Station in East Antarctica. What keeps bringing Broughton back to such punishing conditions? #8220;The briefs are interesting and challenging,” he says of the requirements and constraints such projects often demand. Over the years, Broughton has gained an understanding of the challenges that come with harsh climate of the Antarctic, but every site, he says, continues to bring with it its own set of complications and peculiarities, whether those are topographical, climate-related, or simply differences in the way the building is used. “I must admit, when we first started on Halley VI, I thought ‘is there any chance for a cookie-cutter approach here?’ But there most definitely isn’t,” Broughton says. “Every site has its own idiosyncratic, environmental, but also cultural and social challenges.” [Photo: Matthew Scott /BAS] The wind as a resource In the case of the Discovery Building at Rothera, which took six years to build due to the limited construction season (October-March), wind was one of the primary challenges. Lifting the building on stilts, like the architects did at Halley VI, would have helped the wind blow underneath the building and chase the snow away from it. But the building’s requirementswhich called for workshops and science offices, a heating and power plant, a health facility, and stations that could serve as a launchpad for expeditions in the fieldmade it too heavy to be lifted. The need for constant vehicle access to stage expeditions also meant the building had to sit on the ground. The architects had to find another way to prevent snow from building up. To understand snow behavior in those particular windy conditions, Broughton’s team worked with Canadian engineering agency RWDI, which conducted detailed wind and snow modeling studies. It was RWDI that introduced Broughton to wind deflectors, which look a bit like angled metal fins and function like aerofoils in Formula One cars, redirecting airflow to work with the building rather than against it. [Image: BAS] By channeling wind down the facade and along the ground, the deflector transforms what would normally be a liability into an asset that actively clears snow. This means the building remains accessible, but also that snow doesn’t pile up right up against the facade, which could lead to damage. In a climate where blizzards can last for days, a wind deflector reduces the amount of effort needed to clear the snow, as well as the fuel required to power the snow plows. “There’s both a resource and a carbon cost,” says Broughton. [Photo: BAM] Lessons from Antarctica There are currently 70 permanent research stations dotted around Antarctica, representing 29 countries from every continent on Earth. Many of these stations were built in the late 1950s, after the explosion of polar research that took place during the International Geophysical Yearan 18-month global scientific collaboration that involved more than 60 countries conducting coordinated research on Earth. After an initial renovation period in the ’80s, many of these buildings have been reaching the end of their lifespan. This, combined with an increased emphasis on climate change research, is leading to what Broughton calls a construction boom on the Antarctic Peninsula. “There’s also a geopolitical aspect to it,” he says. “Everybody wants to have a presence.” Antarctica is not under the sovereignty of any single country and is regarded as the “international continent.” Over the past few decades, scientists have become better at understanding how wind blows and snow drifts around a building, and as a result, Broughton’s team has become better at responding to these challenges. He thinks these lessons can carry over to the urbanized world. [Photo: Matthew Scott /BAS] As climate change reinforces the strength and frequency of extreme weather eventslike Fern in the U.S., and Storm Goretti in Europecities are scrambling to mobilize resources and clear snow. (New York City, for example, converted garbage trucks into snowplows.) Broughton believes that buildings where winters are harsh and winds are strong could benefit from relatively low-cost systems like wind deflectors, but he says there are other lessons architects can borrow from Antarctica. These include focus on thermal efficiency by favoring air-tight envelopes instead of relying on heating, as well as efficient planning that means you’re achieving more with less built space. “There is a whole raft of principles that are applied to these buildings by absolute necessity that could be applied more by choice in a more temperate environment,” he says.
Category:
E-Commerce
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