Fast Company

The 5G arms race is about to kick off in India and Google has a head start.

Last month, the company announced that it’s partnering with Reliance Jio, India’s leading wireless carrier, to launch an “ultra-affordable” smartphone in the country. Called JioPhone Next and due to arrive in September, it will run on an optimized version of Android OS. It will also aim to leverage Jio’s vast network and ability to reach Indian consumers to reach “millions of new users who will experience the internet for the very first time.”

In order to understand the significance of JioPhone Next, it’s worth taking a step book to look at what Google has been up to in India. Over the last few years, the country has undergone a digital revolution. As cellular data and smartphone prices continue to fall, hundreds of millions have logged on for the first time. Today, India hosts nearly 700 million internet users–more than double that of the United States–and this upward trajectory will only climb, since half of the country’s population still isn’t online.

Due in September, the JioPhone Next is an Android phone optimized for the emerging market of price-conscious Indian consumers. [Photo: Jio]With the Chinese market either cut off to western companies or rife with hazards, U.S. tech giants consider India their last chance to acquire a giant pool of new users. For Google, the country is a project that’s been a long time in making and it’s been part of the country’s digitization journey well before the current connectivity boom.

With its six-year-old “Next Billion Users” effort, Google has been hard at work to capture this upcoming wave of internet users, most of whom will come from non-English speaking rural regions. Its  initiatives have covered the end-to-end online experience—from teaching digital literacy to offering free internet access—and prepared it for this moment. For instance, its “Internet Saathi” program offered Android and internet lessons to millions of women from underprivileged backgrounds. And Google Station supplied complimentary internet access at over 400 railway stations. The list goes on.

A $10 billion bet

Last year, Google further amplified its investment in India with a $10 billion “India Digitization Fund”–about half of which went into acquiring over 7% of Reliance Jio. The JioPhone Next is, in many ways, the culmination of these efforts for Google.

Prachir Singh, a senior research analyst at Counterpoint Research, estimates that the JioPhone Next can potentially target 520 million users, which includes 320 million dumbphone users and 150 million unconnected people who will likely come online in the next year or two.

The JioPhone Next is fine-tuned for such first-time smartphone and internet users. It comes loaded with Google’s services for emerging markets, such as instant translation in regional languages and a “Listen” tool that can read-aloud any on-screen content like web pages and text messages.

Jio has emerged as the hot ticket into India’s burgeoning digital economy.

The JioPhone Next also benefits from a range of Android perks usually reserved for Google’s own Pixel line of phones. Its camera app comes bundled with Google’s HDR technology, which will come in handy given the hardware won’t be top-of-the-line. Plus, Google says it will regularly roll out “feature drops” and security updates to the JioPhone Next.

While Google takes care of the underlying technology, Reliance Jio is responsible for driving traffic to the JioPhone Next. Jio has been able to sell its phones at a breakneck pace by offering them at little or no cost and earning when people pay for its cellular plans. In 2018, when the telco announced a 4G-enabled feature phone, it soared to the top of the world leaderboards in just 10 months. Google is hoping it can replicate that success with the JioPhone Next.

For both Jio and Google, Counterpoint’s Singh says, this new initiative is about more than selling smartphones. Like Google, Jio has a suite of content services for movies and news. And it’s still looking to quickly add more subscribers to its mobile network. As has been the case with Jio’s feature phones, the JioPhone Next will be heavily subsidized. If history is any indication, it will be available for free to existing Jio feature phone users.
That’s an easy 60 million user win for Google—and an opportunity to sign all those new smartphone owners up for its services.

Local expertise

The Jio alliance has broader significance for Google. Although the search engine giant has stayed in local authorities’ good books by complying with any new laws, U.S. tech giants have recently come under increased regulatory pressure in India as the government tightens its grip over media and social networks. Partnering up with a local conglomerate, experts believe, will ensure that Google can continue its march without undue hassle.

Globaldata analyst Deepa Dhingra says that local support and collaboration “can reap significant returns for western companies,” and it’s vital for them to join hands with domestic players to sail through the “fiercely competitive nature of the telecom market and highly regulated regime in India.”

Besides, just on its own, Google has been unable to crack the sub-$100 price segment in India. Two other initiatives to build devices for emerging markets, Android One and Android Go, struggled to take off.

“With Jio, it could be different,” says Singh, thanks to the “local expertise of Indian companies” like Reliance Jio that have historically done well in offering products customized to Indian consumers’ needs.

In addition, the Jio partnership is also unlocking several new avenues of growth for Google’s enterprise arm. As part of the tie-up, Jio has agreed to shift its core retail businesses–the largest retailer in the country–to Google Cloud’s infrastructure, a deal that will reportedly earn the latter at least $1 billion in revenue.

Google isn’t alone either. For a series of U.S. tech giants, including Facebook, Snap, and Qualcomm, Jio has emerged as the hot ticket into India’s burgeoning digital economy. Next owners, for instance, can access Snapchat lenses right from the camera app. Though the JioPhone Next is a 4G device, U.S. companies hope that it will help them secure a front-row seat as India gets ready to deploy 5G widely.

“We believe,” Globaldata’s Dhingra says, “that Google is likely to play an important and crucial role in the development of India’s 5G ecosystem and forthcoming digital era.”

This past year has revealed with brutal clarity the intersection between a global health crisis, climate crisis, and systemic social injustice. It has also made clearer than ever the moral imperative not only to deploy all the tools in our arsenal, but also to seek out new solutions. We need discontinuous, ambitious, change and we need innovations that can help drive solutions at a systemic level. Dame Ellen MacArthur recently told us that her vision for a circular economy “is a much bigger idea than recycling,” she said. “This is about systemic change and restructuring the global economy.”

While innovation can sometimes come in the form of a flash of individual inspiration, it can also come from looking at problems in a new way, collaborating with new partners, and sometimes, using old-fashioned tools in new combinations. Take, for example, solutions like India’s SELCO, which bridges the need for light with education. Rural families receive LED lamps that use a pocket-sized rechargeable solar-powered battery in place of dirty kerosene lanterns. The central solar charging station for the batteries is intentionally located at the local school, creating incentives for families to send children to school to get the batteries recharged. Not only do families receive clean, safe light at home, but the school-based charging stations encourage school attendance and improved education outcomes.

In that spirit, the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing is sharing our people, our expertise and our network to lean into on the power of innovation and cooperation; the result is the Morgan Stanley Sustainable Solutions Collaborative. Our first cohort features five of the brightest, ground breaking concepts from around the world—representing industry, non-profits, and academia, as those selected bring forth innovations in health care, climate solutions, plastic waste reduction and ecosystem services, together with re-engineered distribution methods, technology platforms, and a new perspective on the value of nature.

One such company from our cohort is SunCulture. SunCulture brings together innovations in solar technology, sustainable agriculture practices and access to inclusive finance to help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa address their biggest challenges: getting affordable, accessible, clean energy to electrify their homes and power irrigation to their farmland. By solving these problems in tandem, SunCulture can help farmers boost their crop yields between two to five times and increase their incomes by five and ten times.

Based in Kenya, the company offers a proven solution that is now aggressively scaling across Africa, with plans to take the idea global. They’re working hand-in-hand with local and national governments to promote the uptake of solar irrigation. They’ve recently launched a partnership with the government of Togo to offer thousands of solar irrigation systems across the country and have an ongoing project in Kenya through the World Bank. At a time when an existing global food crisis is exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially doubling the number of people facing starvation globally to 265 million, SunCulture’s solutions are even more critical to ensuring smallholder farmers are productive and families are fed.

The collaborative mindset isn’t limited to startups. Clothier Eileen Fisher has created the Renew and Waste No More takeback program, reclaiming and reselling clothes as “second life” garments. And, for “third life” garments, the company takes damaged and old clothing, deconstruct the items, and remanufacture them as totally new garments. Even acrylic and nylon pants can be remade into a new pair. Since 2009, the brand has kept 1.24 million garments from going into the landfill and has opened its doors to collaborate with other designers, sharing and creating new systems with innovation and remanufacturing techniques.

For some corporate leaders, this may require a mindset shift. As IKEA’s CEO Jesper Brodin recently told me, “Before, we were thinking, ‘How do we protect the uniqueness of our company by locking others out of it?’ I think now we protect our companies by having speed, we protect our companies by being relevant for our customers and co-workers, and … [those that] work in your own funnel and [do] not collaborate with others, will also have a price to pay.”

Ultimately, we are excited to partner with innovators from all corners—those that have Eureka! moments of discovery as well as those who discover new ways of combining existing tools to meet the accelerating challenges we face. We draw great inspiration from a recent conversation with U.N. Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed who urged us, “Make each step count. If you do that, when you look back, you’ll appreciate those steps. You’ll know that your journey was rich, it was fruitful, and you made a difference in people’s lives. And hopefully your footprint was green”

Audrey Choi is chief sustainability officer and chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley.

The history of cinema as an art parallels its history as a technology. Ever wondered why the color in The Wizard of Oz is so saturated? Well, it wasn’t the first technicolor film, but it was the first to effectively advertise MGM’s new 3-strip color process to a global audience. Why advertise something at half mast?

This kind of technological innovation in cinema is, of course, spurred by economic motives. For instance, 3D thrived in three waves in direct response to the economic threats posed by new technologies: in the 1950s, in response to television, in the 1980s, responding to VHS, and in the 21st century in the face of increased online streaming. (Now we have 4DX, a gimmick one suspects won’t take off.)

In this era of digital cinema, with celluloid virtually replaced by video technology, the latest technological battle concerns image resolution.

A digital image is made up of pixels—little shapes (usually boxes) that are the smallest controllable element of the image. Resolution refers to the number of pixels appearing in an image, and is usually measured in pixels per inch. As a rule, the more pixels, the crisper the image—that is, the sharper the edges of the subject appear.

In digital cinema’s resolution wars, you will often hear people speak about 4K—as in, 4000—or 8K, or now even 12K resolution. This number refers to the number of horizontal pixels. A typical 4K digital cinema image for instance, has a resolution of 4,096 (horizontal) x 2,160 (vertical) pixels.

Image capture resolution is only one factor in how an image looks—dynamic range, that is, difference between the darkest and lightest parts of the image, is another. But most cinematographers and techies agree the camera’s resolution is crucial to the crispness of the image.

In 2018, Netflix were snubbed by the Cannes Film Festival on the basis Netflix-produced films are not true cinema. This year again, there are no Netflix-produced films in the festival competition due to a rule all films selected to compete must have a local theatrical release.

Cannes is right. Most made-for-Netflix productions don’t look like the cinema we’re used to. Why? There’s a technical answer. Though the company streams some films that are not “Netflix Originals,” it requires narrative feature films made for Netflix be shot on cameras with a “true 4K UHD sensor.”

In other words, the sensor—which detects and conveys the information required to make an image—must be at least 3,840 pixels wide, or “Ultra High Definition.”

Flat and depthless

This technical specification is strikingly evident in David Fincher’s recent Netflix Original production, Mank, a black and white biopic about Herman J. Mankiewicz’s ghostwriting of Citizen Kane.

An old black and white film, shot on celluloid, has a grainy texture that draws the eye into and around the image. This is partly the result of the degradation of the film print, which occurs over time, but primarily because of the physical processing of the film itself.

All celluloid film has a grainy look. This “grain” is an optical effect related to the small particles of metallic silver that emerge through the film’s chemical processing.

This is not the case with digital cameras. Thus video images captured by high resolution sensors look different from those shot on celluloid. The images in Mank look flat, depthless, they are too clean and clear.

This is not as much of a problem on a big screen, when the images are huge, but the high resolution is really noticeable when the images are compressed on the kind of domestic TV or computer screens most people use to stream Netflix. The edges look too sharp, the shades too clearly delineated — compared to what we have been used to as cinemagoers.

The absurd thing is companies like CineGrain now sell digital overlays of film stock that can endow video with the grainy film look. (Their company motto is “make digital more cinematic using CineGrain.”) The natural result of the physical process has been superseded by video, but digital cinema makers reintroduce this as one component in achieving a “film look.”

Netflix does allow limited exceptions to its rule, with use of non-approved cameras requiring its explicit approval and a “more flexible” approach to non-fiction productions. According to Y.M. Cinema magazine, 30% of Netflix’s “best movies of 2020” were made on non-approved cameras. Still, in stipulating the use of 4K (or higher) sensor cameras, Netflix radically reduces the aesthetic autonomy of film directors and producers.

If we think of Netflix as a production studio, this is not surprising—all studios (like all major corporations) dictate the nature of their products, including the aesthetics and feel of their films. But this requirement means their productions look similar, and the imagery (to a cinephile, anyway), too clinical.

Glorious granularity

All film festivals, distributors, and networks request delivery of films conforming to their specifications, but this usually has nothing to do with the source camera behind the delivered file. If it looks and plays well, it looks and plays well.

The film Open Water (2003), for example, which made over $50 million at the box office (from a budget of under $200,000), was shot on mini-DV, a low quality and now obsolete video format, but it perfectly suited the film and thus works.

Netflix, in stipulating 4K camera sensors, reproduces the assumption higher resolution is necessarily better, for all (or even most) films.

But one of the reasons American film noir still looks so good — or the New Hollywood films of the 1960s and 1970s, like Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde — is partly because of the celluloid technology itself, in all its glorious granularity. The beauty of these cinematic images has nothing to do with the sharpness of the edges of the photographed subjects.

From where is this assumption that sharper images are better, and more aesthetically effective? Art has always sought to say something in its deviation from its realistic reproduction of the world — that is, in its expression.

As with all technological innovation in a capitalist context, this assumption stems from the competitive impulse to appear to be doing something better than everyone else — the bigger, more expensive, clearer, the better. But when it comes to aesthetics, this is a redundant form of economy.

Ari Mattes is a lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

I don’t have any career goals at the moment. I’m not worried about it.

Career progression is one of the most important stories in our culture. The American Dream. You’re supposed to start at the bottom and work your way toward the top. But you know what? The top sounds like a nightmare to me, and so do the steps in between.

I still want to get better at what I do, and I still want to learn new skills, but I’m doing those things for their own sake, not because of any sort of career plan.

I’m not saying everyone should give up on moving up the ladder—if that’s what you want, do it. But if you don’t want to, that’s ok. Let’s talk about why.

If I work hard enough, I can get to where I am now

Here’s a thought experiment: what would you do with your time if you didn’t have to work?

My initial reaction is probably like yours—drinks, beach, sleep, repeat—but I’d get bored with that eventually. I know myself. I need to be creating something, and words are how I do that. So I’d probably end up writing blog posts about things I think are interesting.

Which just happens to be the job I have right now.

I work in a marketing department. To move up the ladder, I’d have to advance as a marketer—not a writer. I know from experience that would make me deeply unhappy. But it’s easy to suppress those feelings and work toward a promotion you don’t want, especially when you feel that pressure in the background radiation of our culture. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do—advance, keep moving.

But if my money-isn’t-an-object ideal would mean doing what I’m doing now, why should I spend any time at all doing something else? And if I have no desire to be a leader, why work toward being one?

Most people don’t have a job they enjoy. I’m lucky. If you don’t like your current job, it makes sense that you’d want something else, and it’s worth working toward that goal. But the pressure in our culture to advance, always advance, makes it hard to notice when you’re already in a good spot. Try to pay attention to that.

What to do when you don’t have goals

You know what I like about Star Trek? (Please don’t leave, I’ll keep this short.)

Star Trek is set in a future without scarcity. Technology means there’s plenty of food and energy for everyone, so the only reason to work is self-improvement—to become better at something for its own sake. People work hard anyway because it’s fulfilling to them. That’s enough. It’s a utopia built around the idea that people aren’t primarily motivated by need: they’re motivated by achievement and learning.

It makes sense. Most people on earth have at least one hobby they will never get paid to do: playing guitar, gardening, I could go on. These things are fun because you get better at them, and that feels good. Heck, even video games are built around this basic human need for progression.

And this can translate to your career—you don’t need goals to feel motivated. Getting better at what you do can be motivation enough, and that’s what I’m focusing on.

Lately, I’ve been thinking in terms of themes, as an alternative to goals. I was inspired by a video by CGP Grey, in which he suggested giving up on New Year’s resolutions and thinking in terms of themes instead. For example: I’m pretty good at writing once I have an idea, but recently, I’ve had trouble coming up with things to write about. That’s why my current theme is “ideas.”

• I’ve turned my daily journal entries into brainstorming sessions.

• I’m taking a course on writing personal essays, which is in part built around thinking up ideas.

• I’m asking questions every day on Twitter, in the hopes that a response might inspire a blog post.

• I’m taking more walks, alone, so I can think up ideas.

In a few weeks, I’ll think up a new theme and keep finding small ways to improve on that front. This system is working for me, so I’m going to stick to it for a while.

It’s not scientific, it’s not based on metrics, and it’s not the sort of thing that will get me promoted in the short term. That doesn’t matter: I feel like I’m improving, and that’s enough.

You don’t need to have specific goals to get better at what you do. You can focus on improvement for its own sake, even if it doesn’t feel that way.

This article originally appeared on Zapier’s blog and is reprinted with permission.

There are few things in the world that can tempt me to work out in a heat wave. I’m already a hesitant participant—I need to have my yoga mat pre-unfurled on the floor, completely obtrusive to my direct path to the sofa, in order to get in a daily stretch. But when temperatures spike over 80 degrees, I’d sooner lift ice buckets at my desk than head out for a jog.

That said, sportswear companies are clever and know aversion can arrive in the form of sticky, sweaty summers. From innovations in fabric tech to breezy, featherweight design, these are the clothes I would wear to work out when it’s hot, hot, hot. If I have to.

[Photo: courtesy Lululemon]

Lululemon Cool Racerback Tank Top

I love Lululemon’s Align leggings made with the Cool Nulu fabric. They have the same nearly naked stretch that makes those a cult favorite, with added breathability. This tank follows suit—with a no-tug shape and buttery feel that won’t ride up when you break a sweat. 

Lululemon Cool Racerback Tank Nulu - $48)

Lululemon Hotty Hot Low-Rise Short

The Hotty Hot short is the adult answer to my beloved Soffe shorts of yore. But unlike those thick poly-cotton blends that were sometimes unbreathable, Lululemon’s short-shorts are made with the company’s sweat-wicking Swift fabric with mesh panels for even more movement. 

[Photo: courtesy Artic Cool]

Arctic Cool Vortex Vent Cooling V-Neck

Arctic Cool built a fan following among runners for its HydroFreeze X fabric tech—a cooling stretch fabric powered by your own sweat. The Vortex Vent V-Neck adds another level with micro-ventilated panels to help keep air flowing in and heat out. 

Arctic Cool Vortex Vent Cooling V-Neck - $44.99 [Photo: courtesy Sweaty Betty]

Sweaty Betty Longline Sports Bra

One more layer can feel like extra punishment in this heat, so I tend to gravitate toward compression crop tops for summer workouts. Sweaty Betty’s Stamina Longline Sports Bra gives medium support in a seamless sweat-wicking fabric designed to reduce chafing. Extra perforation below the bust may also be the key to keeping under-boob sweat at bay.

Sweaty Betty Longline Sports Bra - $44 [Photo: courtesy Summersalt]

Summersalt Convertible Split-Back Tank $50 10%

Summersalt’s Convertible Split-Back Tank is handy for creating the shape you want for different exercises. It’s also ideal for throwing on and leaving untied, when it’s so hot you don’t want anything touching your body at all.

Summersalt Convertible Split-Back Tank - $50 [Photo: courtesy Summersalt]

Summersalt Do-It-All Biker Shorts

I live in bike shorts during the summer, and these cute ones from Summersalt feature recycled polyester and sweat-wicking CoolCore fibers. Plus, UPF50+ because heat isn’t the only thing wreaking havoc on your body in the summer. 

Summersalt Do-It-All Biker Shorts - $55

Naomi Osaka x Nike Court Njc Crop Top

Is there anything cooler than this bright-orange crop top by tennis megastar Naomi Osaka for Nike? Honestly, no.

Naomi Osaka Nike Court Njc Crop Top - $65

[Photo: courtesy Knix]

Knix Catalyst Sports Bra

If you want a sports bra with more support, Knix’s Catalyst Sports Bra is made for high impact—strategically ventilated, versatile (hello, adjustable straps!), and designed to fit up to a G cup.  

Knix Catalyst Sports Bra - $89 [Photo: courtesy Outdoor Voices]

Outdoor Voices Hudson Short

The Hudson shorts are my go-to for all-day wear. They’re made from quick-dry polyester with an extra-wide, stretchy waistband that will. not. budge. Plus, I love the flattering dolphin hemline and zipper pockets.

Outdoor Voices Hudson Short - $58 [Photo: courtesy Ten Thousand]

Ten Thousand Distance Tank

My boyfriend swears by the brand Ten Thousand—but especially its Distance Tank, an unbelievably lightweight workout garment designed in collaboration with top competitive and endurance athletes. Bonded seams make chafing a thing of the past, and there’s just enough stretch for even the worst days of summer. 

Ten Thousand Distance Tank - $54 [Photo: courtesy Ministry of Supply]

MoS Newton Active Shorts

Naturally Ministry of Supply has a well-designed, science-forward pair of shorts for your gym bag. The Newton Active shorts feature S.Café Silver threading, an eco-conscious, odor-controlling material made from coffee grounds. Also, pockets.

Ministry of Supply Newton Shorts - $95 [Photo: courtesy Saxx]

SAAX Hot Shot

I have been told this is the shirt to own. Similar to the Arctic Cool V-neck, the SAXX T-shirt features an evaporative cooling fabric called DropTemp, which uses a unique weave to quickly wick sweat for even, fast drying.

SAXX Hot Shot Shirt - $50 [Photo: courtesy Vuori]

Vuori Elevation Bra

“Cozy” is the kiss of death in the dead of summer, but Vuori knows how to keep things light and super, super soft.

Vuori Elevation Bra - $58

[Photo: courtesy Rhone]

Rhone Swift Tank

Rhone’s lightweight, ultra-breathable Swift tank is designed to move with you, combat odor, and keep you cool and dry. Plus, it also comes in a short-sleeve style.

Rhone Swift Tank - $58

Fast Company’s Recommender section is dedicated to surfacing innovative products, services, and brands that are changing how we live and work. Every item that we write about is independently selected by our editors and, whenever possible, tested and reviewed. Fast Company may receive revenue from some links in our stories; however, all selections are based on our editorial judgment.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has asked residents and businesses statewide to cut their water usage by 15% this summer, as low precipitation and low snowpack threaten reservoir levels and raise the specter of another deadly wildfire season.

While some California counties have already instituted mandatory water restrictions, Newsom’s request to reduce usage is voluntary.

“We’re hopeful that people will take that mindset they brought into the last drought and extend that forward,” he said at a Thursday press conference, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We’re not trying to be oppressive,” he added. “Again, these are voluntary standards.”

California previously experienced emergency drought conditions just two years ago. Now, as the state prepares for a hot, dry summer, its 1,500 reservoirs are 50% below their typical levels. Some, like Lopez Lake, are at just 35% capacity. Lake Mendocino is at risk of emptying before the end of the year.

Though Newsom has so far declined to institute a statewide drought emergency, on Thursday he paved the way for the State Water Resources Control Board to institute localized water restrictions by declaring a drought state of emergency in specific counties. So far, 50 of California’s 58 counties, or 42% of its population, are subject to that designation.

Water usage in California is already 16% below 2013 levels, according to the governor’s office. A further 15% reduction would save enough water to supply 1.7 million households.

Impulse buying and overspending defeat all of us on occasion. But no longer! The good people of the psychology department at Germany’s Julius-Maximilians-Universität have found a solution: It all comes down to understanding your type.

• Pleasure seekers crave enjoyment, and are frequently driven by spontaneity or curiosity, such as wanting to treat themselves to a truffle they’ve never tried before, or add a great pair of jeans to their wardrobe. They are reaching for pleasure. So curbing those expenditures is a matter of curbing the spontaneity by forcing a pause between the urge and the purchase. The solutions here are low tech, such as keeping a note on your wallet that says “STOP,” or limiting immediate access to money (by locking cash or credit cards in a desk drawer or car, for instance). The goal is to halt the impulse.
• Security seekers are slower to buy. They’ll stand in front of an object and think, Will this taste as good as it looks? or spend 10 minutes hovering over the “buy” button online. For them, the key is to simply not give themselves the time to consider: They need to walk away, or stand up and take a break from their computer.

These findings are based on two research studies—recently published in PLoS One—carried out on 250 participants. Interestingly, security seekers were just as likely to impulse buy, and just as likely to want to treat themselves. But the motivational state of the would-be consumer also plays a large role. For example, the researchers found that someone who has just studied their dwindling bank balances is less likely to buy, while a pleasure seeker who just got a promotion may well celebrate further via consumerism. You can manipulate your own mood before shopping accordingly.

Summertime is in full swing but during the COVID-19 era, fall is of chief concern as the virus’s delta variant rises and Americans remember the case surges of last autumn. As we fight on and into this next season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reminding us that of all things the pandemic can take, learning shouldn’t be one of them.

For kids, that means getting the best education possible—which is most likely to happen in-person. When K-12 schools reopen this fall, the CDC and federal officials are urging that all students, vaccinated or unvaccinated, be welcomed back into their hallways and classrooms. The agency has released its newest guidance for COVID-19 safety in grade schools, and the report recommends typical precautions including testing, ventilation, social distancing, and contact tracing, but also mentions “the importance of offering in-person learning, regardless of whether all of the prevention strategies can be implemented at the school.”

Here are some key takeaways:

• The CDC recommends that people who are not fully vaccinated wear face masks indoors. However, it suggests that people who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks, which is in line with its nationwide guidance.
• Masks are generally not necessary outdoors.
• The CDC also recommends maintaining at least three feet of distance between students within classrooms wherever possible. Schools without enough space to place every student’s desk this far apart should focus on other strategies such as indoor masking.
• COVID-19 screening should be done regularly.
• Students, teachers, and staff should stay home if they show any symptoms of infectious illness.
• Vaccines, it stresses, are the leading public health initiative for a safe return to schools, extracurricular activities, and sports. Currently, children and teens aged 12 and over are eligible.
• As children under 12 years of age are still not eligible for the vaccine, schools should layer other precautions.
• Localities should monitor community outbreaks and make calls on strengthening the level of prevention as needed.
• The guidance, it reminds, is secondary to any federal, state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, with which schools must comply.

Did a colleague blow you off? Or ignore you in a meeting? Or say something cutting? That rudeness will affect your work for hours, and not for the better.

Researchers from a quintet of organizations (Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, University of Maryland, Envision Physician Services, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital) collaborated on a quartet of studies tracking the impact of mild slights on both workers and coworkers who observe the rudeness, such as witnessing a doctor yell at an instructor for missing a meeting. They found that in tasks afterward, all are much more likely to “anchor,” which is a psychological phenomenon of fixating on one piece of information (rather than considering all available information). Such fixations can sway decision-making.

“While small insults and other forms of rude behavior might seem relatively harmless compared to more serious forms of aggression, our findings suggest that they can have serious consequences,” says coauthor Binyamin Cooper, a post-doctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. “Our work demonstrates how dangerous these seemingly minor behaviors can be, whether they are experienced directly or even if people just observer incidental rudeness.”

The narrowing of perspective that comes along with anchoring can have deadly consequences in healthcare, where the study shows that physicians exposed to rudeness may incorrectly diagnose patients, and then treat them for ailments that they don’t have. The impact could also be particularly large in tasks like negotiation, legal sentencing, financial forecasting, and pricing.

The researchers call for managers to reduce rudeness among employees, especially in high-stakes situations where judgment is essential. Two strategies can help avoid anchoring in real-time: information elaboration, where you pause to think what information you need to help someone make a decision, and perspective taking, where you imagine yourself viewing the problem from another person’s point of view.

More research is needed on rudeness and other well-known cognitive biases.

Plastic is the most common type of debris floating in the world’s oceans. Waves and sunlight break much of it down into smaller particles called microplastics—fragments less than 5 millimeters across, roughly the size of a sesame seed.

To understand how microplastic pollution is affecting the ocean, scientists need to know how much is there and where it is accumulating. Most data on microplastic concentrations comes from commercial and research ships that tow plankton nets—long, cone-shaped nets with very fine mesh designed for collecting marine microorganisms.

But net trawling can sample only small areas and may be underestimating true plastic concentrations. Except in the North Atlantic and North Pacific gyres—large zones where ocean currents rotate, collecting floating debris—scientists have done very little sampling for microplastics. And there is scant information about how these particles’ concentrations vary over time.

Looking for smooth zones

To address these questions, University of Michigan research assistant Madeline Evans and I developed a new way to detect microplastic concentrations from space using NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System. CYGNSS is a network of eight microsatellites that was launched in 2016 to help scientists predict hurricanes by analyzing tropical wind speeds. They measure how wind roughens the ocean’s surface—an indicator that we realized could also be used to detect and track large quantities of microplastics.

Annual global production of plastic has increased every year since the 1950s, reaching 359 million metric tons in 2018. Much of it ends up in open, uncontrolled landfills, where it can wash into river drainage zones and ultimately into the world’s oceans.

Researchers first documented plastic debris in the oceans in the 1970s. Today, it accounts for an estimated 80% to 85% of marine litter.

The radars on CYGNSS satellites are designed to measure winds over the ocean indirectly by measuring how they roughen the water’s surface. We knew that when there is a lot of material floating in the water, winds don’t roughen it as much. So we tried computing how much smoother measurements indicated the surface was than it should have been if winds of the same speed were blowing across clear water.

This anomaly—the “missing roughness”—turns out to be highly correlated with the concentration of microplastics near the ocean surface. Put another way, areas where surface waters appear to be unusually smooth frequently contain high concentrations of microplastics. The smoothness could be caused by the microplastics themselves, or possibly by something else that’s associated with them.

By combining all the measurements made by CYGNSS satellites as they orbit around the world, we can create global time-lapse images of ocean microplastic concentrations. Our images readily identify the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and secondary regions of high microplastic concentration in the North Atlantic and the southern oceans.

Tracking microplastic flows over time

Since CYGNSS tracks wind speeds constantly, it lets us see how microplastic concentrations change over time. By animating a year’s worth of images, we revealed seasonal variations that were not previously known.

This animation shows how satellite data can be used to track where microplastics enter the water, how they move and where they tend to collect.

We found that global microplastic concentrations tend to peak in the North Atlantic and Pacific during the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months. June and July, for example, are the peak months for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Concentrations in the Southern Hemisphere peak during its summer months of January and February. Lower concentrations during the winter in both hemispheres are likely due to a combination of stronger currents that break up microplastic plumes and increased vertical mixing—the exchange between surface and deeper water—that transports some of the microplastic down below the surface.

This approach can also target smaller regions over shorter periods of time. For example, we examined episodic outflow events from the mouths of the China’s Yangtze and Qiantang rivers where they empty into the East China Sea. These events may have been associated with increases in industrial production activity, or with increases in the rate at which managers allowed the rivers to flow through dams.

Better targeting for cleanups

Our research has several potential uses. Private organizations, such as The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit in the Netherlands, and Clewat, a Finnish company specializing in clean technology, use specially outfitted ships to collect, recycle and dispose of marine litter and debris. We have begun conversations with both groups and hope eventually to help them deploy their fleets more effectively.

Our spaceborne imagery may also be used to validate and improve numerical prediction models that attempt to track how microplastics move through the oceans using ocean circulation patterns. Scholars are developing several such models.

One possibility is surfactants on the ocean surface. These liquid chemical compounds, which are widely used in detergents and other products, move through the oceans in ways similar to microplastics, and they also have a damping effect on wind-driven ocean roughening.While the ocean roughness anomalies that we observed correlate strongly with microplastic concentrations, our estimates of concentration are based on the correlations that we observed, not on a known physical relationship between floating microplastics and ocean roughness. It could be that the roughness anomalies are caused by something else that is also correlated with the presence of microplastics.

Further study is needed to identify how the smooth areas that we identified occur, and if they are caused indirectly by surfactants, to better understand exactly how their transport mechanisms are related to those of microplastics. But I hope this research can be part of a fundamental change in tracking and managing microplastic pollution.

Christopher Ruf is a professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Inside a new and nearly finished coffee roasting facility in Washington D.C., Joel Shetterly is animatedly leading a video tour through the building. As head of design for Compass Coffee, a seven-year-old company with 13 cafe locations and bagged beans in stores across the D.C. region, Shetterly is eager to show off the 65,000 square foot building’s new roasters, packaging equipment, and lots of welded steel.

He’s excited about how the largely automated new space works, and also excited about how it can help the small coffee chain expand to new locations and retail opportunities. But mostly he’s excited about who made it all possible. “We have motors hanging from the ceiling, pipes crossing through one another and dropping through the floor to the level below,” Shetterly says, panning across the room. “This was all installed by baristas.”

[Photo: Courtesy Compass Coffee]

The multi-million dollar roasting facility, unlike probably any other, was largely built by employees of Compass Coffee’s cafes.

“We realized at the start of COVID it was going to be very bad for the cafes. Our business was down 90%,” Shetterly says. About 80% of employees were laid off in early March. “Rather than laying everybody off, we said for people who wanted to come learn construction and equipment installation and rigging, that they could come to the facility and we would put everyone to work.”

About 20 cafe workers agreed. Because it was a renovation of a former tomato cannery, most of the structural work on the building was already completed, but much of the interior was an empty space. Shetterly, who has led the construction management on all of Compass Coffee’s cafes, became a kind of teacher-slash-foreman, showing cafe managers, espresso techs, and delivery drivers how to weld, guiding them in installing wiring, and helping get all the facility’s new equipment in place. Instead of pulling espresso shots and foaming milk for lattes, they were driving scissor lifts and framing walls. “Literally none of this was in here a year ago,” Shetterly says, walking through the facility. “This is entirely the product of work put in by our team during COVID.”

[Photo: Courtesy Compass Coffee]

After some basic training, the unconventional construction crew started building. Shetterly says he brought the team in every morning and walked them through a digital model of the project, showing which parts of the building they’d be working on that day. The model, made using technology from Autodesk, “is the only way it was possible to build this incredibly complex factory using people who had never worked in construction before,” Shetterly says. “There’s no doubt that it required a ton of oversight, and really good coordination.”

Nicolas Mangon, a vice president at Autodesk, says that during the pandemic, the company’s digital design tools were being used by a lot of people who were new to construction and trying to adjust their physical spaces to accommodate new distancing and safety requirements. “We saw a lot of companies use similar technology to reconfigure spaces, to organize restaurants, to organize stores and facilitate how people were moving through,” he says. It’s not unheard of for non-designers to use these kinds of design tools, he says. The U.S. Navy Seals reportedly used Autodesk modeling tools to plan out the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

The stakes were somewhat lower for Compass Coffee’s project, but not completely risk-free. The company wouldn’t disclose how much it spent on the project, but has characterized it as a make-or-break investment for a growing business trying to survive the pandemic. “We had to finish this. We couldn’t not work on this for a year,” Shetterly says. Trusting inexperienced baristas was worth the risk.

[Photo: Courtesy Compass Coffee]

That doesn’t mean it all went smoothly. Shetterly says the construction and installation was slow, and certain things like bending sheet metal for ductwork proved too complicated. “There’s no question that it took longer than it would have if we’d thrown millions of dollars at a general contractor with a specialized equipment installer. But at the end of the day we’re a really small company. We don’t have a tremendous amount of cash. Building something like this is really expensive,” he says.

To help the company survive, every employee from bottom to top took a pay cut to $15 an hour right at the start of the pandemic. Shetterly says pay was gradually increased and is now back at pre-pandemic levels. All but three of the company’s cafes are now open, and the company is hiring.

Now that the facility is nearly complete and cafes are reopening, will all the baristas moonlighting as builders ditch their hardhats and get behind the bar? Shetterly says Compass Coffee does all of its cafe construction and furniture making in house, so as long as the company keeps growing, the new skills people picked up can be put to use. “For people who want to stay on board, we’re going to be able to find opportunities for them to continue working in fabrication and construction,” he says.

For many employees, the pandemic was worse than any scary movie they could imagine and, by the American Psychological Association’s definition, traumatic. In layman’s terms, trauma is an emotional response to terrible, shocking, and/or life-changing events. Many of the direct effects of the pandemic, such as economic loss, prolonged social isolation or uncertainty, or death of a loved one all add to an employee’s psychological distress and could fall within this category.

Even as vaccines become more widely available, the trauma is still taking a significant toll on this country. If your employees are still feeling anxious or depressed from the pandemic, they are not alone, as a recent survey found that 47% of adults continue to report negative mental health impacts related to worry or stress from the pandemic.

As many of us heal and process these traumas and feelings of anxiety and depression, it may feel impossible to deliver 100% at work. As business leaders plan for what the future of work looks like, understanding where employees are and how the pandemic may impact their work performance is important. Here are a few things to watch for if an employee is struggling with the transition back to the office:

• Hypervigilance. If someone is suffering from anxiety, they may appear to be very alert or easily startled. This could look like someone pacing around the break room, constantly fidgeting, or getting easily startled by small sounds.
• Longer and/or more frequent breaks. It’s important for employees to take breaks in their day to keep their minds sharp, but it also could indicate someone is dealing with emotional triggers. Perhaps that employee who has been taking several bathroom breaks is actually crying in the bathroom or is looking at their phone frequently because they have a relative in the hospital.
• Spikes in sick days and used PTO. When someone is struggling with high levels of depression and anxiety, getting out of bed can feel like running a marathon. There may be days when this feels too overwhelming, and they call in sick or use extra PTO days. While many are trying to take time off to travel again, watch for employees who don’t seem to have plans or who have been calling in sick a lot.

If you think your employee has been underperforming and may be exhibiting some of these signs, it can be hard to figure out how to talk about it or what to do next. Here are a few ideas:

• Ask what the pandemic has been like for them. We have no way of knowing exactly what everyone has experienced over the last year. However, it’s important to start an open dialogue. Try saying something like, “I know the last year hasn’t been easy for me; what was it like for you?” If you can allow yourself to show a bit of vulnerability and share some examples of how you have struggled, this may open the door a bit more to meaningful communication. Active listening is also key.
• Allow the employee the flexibility to ease into a “new normal.” After working remotely for more than a year, many employees might suffer from culture shock when suddenly asked to go into the office five days a week. However, a person can slowly begin to ease back into the office through safe, gradual exposure so that there are small wins and only minor stresses to cope with. In an office setting, this might mean allowing employees to have flexible hours, so perhaps they can come into the office for a few hours at a time and gradually work their way to a longer day.
• Sit down and make plans together. Back-to-back meetings and endless to-do lists would make anyone stressed, let alone someone experiencing mental health challenges. Offer to sit down with your employee to plan their week and adjust their schedule, and get additional resources as needed. These small adjustments can really add up and make a difference in someone’s day.
• Offer resources for employees to seek professional help.
  Be proactive about sharing resources for employees to navigate yet another new normal. Is online therapy an available benefit? Are there nearby community resources that employees can leverage without having to take PTO? Are there mindfulness apps like Headspace that might be discounted for employees? These are all great resources to help people feel supported in and outside the office. It’s also important to create a safe environment to use these resources in the office. Let’s end the days of taking teletherapy appointments in our cars, and instead create private spaces where employees feel comfortable getting the help they need.

We have all gone through a lot over the last year. It’s important to take steps to show compassion for employees (and yourself), as we reflect on the impact of what’s happened and get accustomed to what the future of work looks like. Consider these warning signs and suggestions to create a healthier work environment, where employees feel comfortable and ready to innovate. Who knows, the employee who is struggling now could turn out to be one of your top performers later on.

Dr. James Wantuck is the cofounder and chief medical officer at PlushCare, a company offering virtual healthcare.

Melissa Dowd is a licensed marriage and family therapist, as well as the therapy lead at PlushCare.

When we marvel at female athletes beating world records at the Olympics, few of us stop to ask: Who’s watching their kids right now?

Allyson Felix, the most decorated track and field Olympian in history, knows exactly what it’s like to be worried about childcare while she’s training and competing. So this week, she announced a partnership with her primary sponsor, Athleta, and the Women’s Sports Foundation to launch a $200,000 grant aimed at covering childcare costs for professional athletes competing during 2021. Nine athletes have already been chosen, including Olympic hammer thrower Gwen Berry and Olympic saber fencer Mariel Zagunis, each of whom will receive $10,000.

Over the past two years, Felix has become one of the most vocal advocates for female athletes. After Olympian runners Alysia Montaño and Kara Goucher broke their nondisclosure agreements with Nike to share how poorly the company had treated them while they were pregnant, Felix stepped up to do the same. In 2019, she described in a New York Times op-ed how she tried to push back against Nike’s policy of cutting female athletes’ pay during and after pregnancy. When Felix asked Nike to guarantee that she wouldn’t be punished if she didn’t perform at her best in the months surrounding childbirth, the contract negotiations ground to a standstill.

“One of my first races back after giving birth to my daughter, Camryn, was the World Championships,” Felix tells Fast Company. “Not only was I still breastfeeding and physically and mentally exhausted from being a first-time mom while training and competing — I was assigned a roommate at the competition. There was no way I could bring my daughter into a shared room with another athlete who is trying to get in her zone.”

A few months later, Felix signed a sponsorship deal with Athleta, Gap Inc.’s activewear brand. “They get that I am a whole person beyond the track,” Felix says. “They jumped right in to support my training as well as my passions and advocacy platforms. In fact, part of my contract with Athleta includes provisions for Cammy to join me whenever I am competing. ”

[Photo: Getty]But very few athletes have this kind of support from a sponsor. Felix wanted to establish this grant program so that other mom athletes could get childcare support as they compete at the highest levels. The Women’s Sports Foundation, the organization founded by tennis legend Billie Jean King in 1974, will be responsible for allocating the $200,000. Athletes from all sports can apply for a $10,000 grant through August 31, and all recipients will be announced in October. Given that most athletes headed to the Olympics don’t have big sponsorship deals, a grant like this can make a big difference.

Lora Webster, a 34-year-old Paralympic volleyball player, is among the recipients and plans to use the funds as she heads to Tokyo. Webster has three children, ages 6, 8, and 10, and says she has struggled to balance her responsibilities as a mother and an athlete. She’s traveled around the world to compete, from the Athens and Beijing Olympics to the Volleyball Masters in the Netherlands to the World Cup in Egypt. At the London Olympics in 2012, she didn’t tell her team that she was 20 weeks pregnant. “I didn’t want them to worry that they could do anything that might harm the baby,” she says.

But she says traveling to sporting events for weeks at a time with three kids at home is just as challenging as competing pregnant. Her kids miss her and she feels like she’s abandoning them. Then there’s the sheer cost, particularly since Webster doesn’t have a major corporate sponsor. She and her husband have had to pay thousands of dollars for babysitters while she’s traveling. This year, she has one less thing to worry about. “It’s not an exaggeration to say that this grant is life-changing,” Webster says. “It’s not just the money: It’s that big companies are now beginning to understand what the struggle really is for mom athletes.”

Webster says that she’s spent most of her life carefully separating her identity as a mother from her identity as an athlete. She rarely talks about her children when she’s training or interacting with her teammates because she’s concerned it might make her look weak. “As moms, there’s so much guilt leaving our babies at home to pursue our sport,” Webster says. “It’s something we can’t really talk about, because it makes us look like we’re not focused on the game.”

Felix wants to break that code of silence. As she heads to Tokyo as one of the top track and field athletes in the world—with six Olympic gold medals and 11 world championship titles—she’s using her clout not only to advocate for herself, but to start a conversation about what it’s like for professional athletes who choose to become mothers. “These grants are about showing the industry that all mom athletes need this same comprehensive support to be able to participate in their athletic endeavors,” Felix says.

And for Webster, this means a lot. “I’m floored that she has made this a priority,” Webster says. “It sends the message to all female athletes that we don’t have to choose between motherhood and our sport. We can do both.”

When it launched 40 years ago, on August 1, 1981, MTV signaled a new era where artists forged deeper connections with fans through music videos, on-air interviews, live performances, and contests. While there’s been tremendous change in every aspect of the music industry since, I’d argue that nothing has sparked the same outpouring from fans and reshaped how artists connect with their followers quite like MTV did.

Until now, with cryptocurrency.

We are just starting to see artists of all levels experiment with their own cryptocurrencies to tap into new revenue streams and deeper fan engagement. Performers are embracing it as an alternative to the big tech-owned social media platforms that have been profiting from their labor over the past decade. And much like MTV’s early years, cryptocurrency has the same independent game-changing spirit to shake up the system and the potential to massively shift pop culture.

From its inception, MTV understood the symbiotic relationship between artists and fans and helped drive a significant change in the industry’s business model, whereby fans expected interaction with their favorite artists. During my time at MTV (and sister net CMT) from 2010 to 2018, the brand continued to expand beyond music, but that fundamental understanding was ever present in early experimentation across digital platforms.

With the O Music Awards, MTV pioneered new ways for fans and artists to connect online, including the world’s largest digital music festival and the Flaming Lips’ record-setting tour during which they performed eight concerts in 24 hours, starting in Memphis and ending in New Orleans. The launch of MTV Artists platform in 2012 marked an ambitious effort to help artists gain entryway into our corridors by self-submitting their videos to air across MTV, VH1 and CMT, while also creating a one-stop-shop where fans could listen and buy music, purchase tickets, and more. At the 2013 VMAs, we provided a new type of immersive experience, giving viewers the ability to choose camera feeds and chat with other fans from around the world. And in the last five years, CMT has pushed for equality with the “Next Women of Country” campaign, which introduces fans to up-and-coming female artists that have largely been ignored by country radio. 

While MTV was innovating during this time, social media startups, music streaming services and video platforms were taking off and showed tremendous promise in bringing fans closer to their favorite artists than ever before. Just when social media was gaining massive traction in 2013, MTV released a study called “Music to the M Power” which showed how social media was dismantling barriers between artist and fans, creating a “zero-distancing” effect. More than half of millennial respondents stated that they felt closer to their favorite acts when they shared personal information with them.

Despite the promising start, when we analyze the digital landscape today, there are still factors that cause rifts in the artist-fan relationship. Although we have the ability to access nearly all recorded music from our smartphones, we’ve sacrificed intimacy for urgency. Twitter and Instagram provide followers access to their favorite performers with the touch of a button, but there is no sense of real connection. Streaming platforms like Spotify and YouTube provide a way for fans to quickly access music at an affordable price, but there is a lack of engagement and excitement through these mediums. Fans are just a number on a screen—a contributor to a listenership count.

But crypto has the potential to close this gap. Where fans have always been on the floor of the arena looking up at the artist, with crypto, for the first time ever, fans and performers earn together. Fans are holders of a token demonstrating their super fandom and can use that token as an access pass to exclusive content, NFTs, experiences, and communities of their favorite artists. Artists can offer goods and services in exchange for their own currency, and both fans and creators can participate in the growth and success of this economy. Every day with Rally, I work with creators to experiment with seemingly endless fan benefits. Rally has collaborated with Portugal The Man, who are looking to re-invent the fan club with crypto, Beyoncé’s Grammy Award winning producer !llmind, who is collaborating on new music with fans, and DJ Wax Motif, who will let you hang with him at a music festival. 

Much like music videos existed before MTV, the concept of social tokens and NFTs is not new. Over the past few years, a massive investment has been made to build out software, networks, and platforms that can mint NFTs and launch social tokens at zero or an extremely low cost. This ease of use has opened access to the technology and led to amplified experimentation by mostly emerging artists.

Crypto allows performers of all levels to own their financial relationship with fans instead of relying on the traditional record label system and/or tech giants to serve as a middleman. Artists are using NFTs to earn years worth of streaming revenue in one day and unlock unique experiences for fans without relying on a centralized platform to facilitate it. Moreover, crypto gives artists control over their own economic success. In the next few years, we’ll see crypto become core to an artist’s strategy, not only as a fan engagement tool, but as a consistent revenue generator as well. We’ll see artists build their empires around crypto: from album releases to new music videos and merch powered by their social tokens. NFTs will be used for secure ticketing, ensuring that the artists will earn even if the ticket is scalped. The power dynamic between fan and artist will shift and finally place fans on the same level as their favorite artists, creating a much-needed sense of community where artists and fans are building a brand-new digital economy together.

Just like it seemed almost unfathomable that a small upstart on a fledgling new medium would forever change the landscape of music, crypto offers artists and their fans endless connection points, all while moving the business to the next level with an alternate revenue stream that brings greater value to the creator-fan relationship.

Kurt Patat is Global Head of Communications at Rally and formally SVP of Communications at MTV/CMT.

With the shift to remote work during the pandemic, many workers settled into new routines—whether that meant doing more caretaking, balancing household responsibilities, or simply adjusting to a new productivity pattern. So returning to the office isn’t as easy as simply reverting back to our 2019 selves. But that’s sometimes a good thing.

As many workers return to the office (at least part time), now’s the moment to apply the lessons learned about the power of flexibility and maximizing efficiency during remote work. These lessons can benefit a whole organization and result in happier, less-burned-out teams.

Here are three productivity tips from remote work to continue implementing as you return to your office:

1. Rein in the multitasking

Juggling multiple tasks simultaneously may feel affirming, but it rarely results in high-quality work and can lead to decreased productivity because you make more mistakes and ultimately expend more energy.

This isn’t to say multitasking isn’t alluring. Too many of us are familiar with the unfortunate sensation of having to shift away from a time-sensitive project to attend an hours-long meeting. It can be easy to tell yourself that you can do both in order to alleviate some stress later on. Multitasking can be especially tempting when working remotely, as workers are often drawn to a side activity, splintering their focus and derailing how present they are during meetings.

But during the pandemic, many learned to resist this draining temptation. And, as you begin to show up to a physical office, continue to fight the urge to multitask. Your brain is getting used to more distractions and input and will likely appreciate the chance to focus on one task at a time.

2. Reduce garbage tasks—don’t just reorganize them

One of the best time-saving strategies is cutting out low-value activities that suck up minutes, energy, and unnecessary space on your to-do list. “Developing a reductive mindset means you adopt a habit—a reflex, tendency, effortless first inclination—to cut the unnecessary,” Juliet Funt, CEO of WhiteSpace at Work, told Fast Company.

This is an especially important tip to keep in mind as you transition back to an office setting, complete with a time-sucking commute, and a limited number of hours in which to get work done. Fast Company contributor Scott Dust says when you’re running up against a fixed amount of time, it’s less about managing your hours and more about filtering things you agree to.

This involves knowing when to shut down new opportunities so you can perform your best on what is already on your plate. Granted, filtering may be difficult for less-senior employees looking to build their career. Instead of outright rejecting requests, look to tailor your meetings and invites to the most essential and constructive occasions. If these sorts of meetings are to occur in person, try to batch them together so you get the most value out of your in-office days.

3. Look out for your well-being

Overworking is a scourge to productivity and can set a bad habit where hustling for a dangerous 55 hours or more per week is normal. Working remotely allowed some employees to start as early as they wanted and end as late as they wanted—without any monitoring of or encouragement to control these impulses. “While team members may feel they’re doing the company a favor, individuals [are] setting themselves up for burnout,” writes Ed Beltran, CEO of Fierce, a training and leadership development firm.

Carry over techniques from the remote work environment such as establishing clear boundaries for when you check work communication and when you’re officially calling it quits for the day. Fast Company writer Stephanie Vozza advises creating an end-of-day ritual to signal to yourself to stop working. When working remotely that might have taken the form of a walk, or time catching up with your roommate or spouse. These rituals are easy to continue when working in person as well; by making time to chat with coworkers before leaving, or listening to your favorite podcast on your commute home, you can signal to yourself that the workday is over.