Even when I know better, “yes” rolls off my tongue much easier than that pesky little “no” word. As a result, I often end up agreeing to things that I probably should’ve passed on in the first place.

Oh, you too?

Well, fortunately, I’m here to help. I’ve pulled together eight email templates that’ll help you say “no” in a variety of situations. Customize them to your unique situation, and suddenly turning things down will be a whole lot less panic-inducing.

1. When You’re Asked To Take On Extra Work by A Colleague

Hello [Name],

Thanks for thinking of me for [project]. However, I’m going to have to turn this down.

I want to ensure I continue to do my best with my existing workload and my plate’s a little too full for me to be able to take this on right now.

Sorry I can’t be of more help!

Best,
[Your name]

2. When You’re Invited To An Event

Hey [Name],

Thanks so much for the invite! I really appreciate you thinking of me.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to [event] on [date]. But thanks again for sending an invitation my way.

Hopefully we can get together another time.

Cheers,
[Your name]

3. When You’re Asked For A Favor

Hi [Name],

Great to hear from you!

Because of [short and sweet reason], I can’t help you out with this at this time. But I’m wishing you all the best with [thing you’re turning down].

Have an awesome week, [Name]!

Sincerely,
[Your name]

Related:When It’s A Better Career Move To Turn Down A Big Assignment From Your Boss 

4. When You’re Asked For A Recommendation

Hey [Name],

I’m flattered that you thought of me for this! However, I don’t think I’m the best fit to provide you a recommendation for [opportunity] due to [brief reason, if you’re willing to offer one].

Know that I’m rooting for you, [Name].

All the best,
[Your name]

5. When You’re Asked To Meet For Coffee

Hi [Name],

Thanks for reaching out!

As much as I’d love to network over some caffeine, my schedule’s currently packed a little too tightly for me to make room for these types of casual chats.

If you had some specific questions you were hoping to pick my brain about, feel free to pass those along via email and I’ll do my best to answer them when I have some downtime.

Hopefully we can connect another time, [Name]!

[Your name]

Related:What Is An Appropriate Response Time To Email? 

6. When You’re Approached By A Relentless Recruiter

Hey [Name],

Thanks for getting in touch!

I appreciate you reaching out about [position]. But I’m not currently looking to explore other opportunities.

Wishing you the best in finding the right candidate!

Best,
[Your name]

7. When You’re Asked To Make A Networking Introduction

Hey [Name],

Great to hear from you! I hope things are going well with you.

While I do know [person], I don’t feel comfortable sharing their contact information. I hope you understand.

Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s any other way I can help, [Name].

Have a great day!
[Your name]

Saying “no” can be tough. But it’s much easier if you aim to keep things short, sweet, and to the point.

If you’re looking for ways to cushion the blow a little bit more, this article offers some great advice for turning things down, without seeming rude.

Otherwise, leverage these email templates to your advantage, and that little two-letter word will be much simpler to say.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is adapted with permission.

More From The Muse:

• 27 Key Email Templates You’ll Need In 2017 
• 4 Completely Inoffensive Ways To Say “No” At Work (Because “Yes” Isn’t Always An Option) 
• How To Tell Your Boss “No”– Without Saying “No”

This story reflects the views of this author, but not necessarily the editorial position of Fast Company.

“Amazon just bought Whole Foods,” my friend texted me seconds after the announcement of the proposed acquisition. “It’s over. The world.”

This unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for breaking up Jeff Bezos’s impending monopoly by force. Surely the company, which already controls more than 30% of all online and offline retail in the United States, as well as 40% of internet cloud services, has reached too far. The 3% hike in Amazon’s share price since the announcement—which would alone more than pay for the acquisition—may attest less to the deal’s appropriateness than to investors’ growing fear that missing out on Amazon means missing out on the future of the economy.

Whatever you may think of Jeff Bezos, and whether or not antitrust regulations can justifiably be applied to a company whose expansion doesn’t raise but actually lowers costs for end consumers, may be beside the point. Many of us get that something is amiss, but are ourselves so deeply enmeshed in the logic of last century’s version of free-market industrial capitalism that we can’t quite bring ourselves to call this out for the threat it poses to our markets, our economy, and even our planet.

Related:Amazon’s Grocery Ambitions Are Far Bigger Than Whole Foods

The reason why monopolies were broken up in an industrial economy was that they tended to gain control over the platforms through which their products were distributed. The biggest oil company ends up controlling shipping and refineries, the biggest airline controls too many gates, and the biggest phone company controls the wires.

But in a digital economy, the platform is the business. Netflix content sells its platform. Apple’s devices sell its supposed “ecosystem.” Amazon’s book business, like Uber’s cab business, was just an easy foothold—the low-hanging fruit of an existing but inefficient marketplace—through which to establish a platform monopoly. From that beachhead, the company then pivots to other verticals.

The problem is, when an existing market is merely a means to another end, the company doesn’t consider the long-term effects of its actions. Amazon treated the book industry the same way companies like Walmart once treated the territories into which they expanded: Use a war chest of capital to undercut prices, put competitors out of business, become the sole employer in the community, turn employees into part-time shift workers, lobby for deregulation, and effectively extract all the value from a given region before closing up shop and moving to the next one.

This model of doing business—one that even a proto-fascist like Henry Ford would have considered obscene—has not served corporations well. As the data now reveals, corporate profits have been steadily decreasing relative to corporate size over the past 75 years. That’s right: Corporations are great at extracting all the value from a marketplace, but really bad at deploying the money they accumulate in the process. They take all the poker chips off the table, leaving nothing for the other players to exchange between themselves. And by sucking their customers and suppliers dry, such companies end up destroying the marketplaces on which they depend for revenue. It’s a form of financial obesity, where the only thing left for the company to do is acquire a new marketplace, extract all its value, and move on.

In the real world, such extraction took years, even decades to run through its cycle. In a digital economy, “network effects”—which is when a product or service’s value increases the more people who use it or work to create it —accelerate the cycle so that an entire taxi industry can be turned into an “internet of things” in a matter of months.

It’s not that internet founders are somehow more evil or rapacious than their forebears. It’s simply that when companies are platforms, survivability and scalability amount to the same thing. Just as winner-takes-all network effects lead to just one Taylor Swift and millions of penniless artists, these same dynamics promote the establishment of platform monopolies like Amazon.

The problem is less that these single platforms emerge than the fact that their business plans are taken from the obsolete play books of the industrial age, where extraction was the only game in town. While internet servers and financial capital can scale up almost infinitely, the real world cannot. Humans only have so much time and attention in a given day, and the topsoil only has so many nutrients in a given acre. As the merchants of abstracted digital products, like ebooks and streaming media, apply their same business models to the markets and environment on which real people depend for sustenance, power-law dynamics become a lot more dangerous.

Related:Could The Amazon-Whole Foods Union Be What Takes Organic Sales To The Next Level?

Not that Whole Foods was ever a sustainable business in itself. Healthy food and sustainable agriculture are simply incompatible with year-round organic summer produce in all 50 states. However catchy the slogan, capitalism really has no room to be conscious. Of the three factors of production—land, labor, and capital—the “consciousness” part of the equation has always been provided by the places and the people.

Which means that if we’re actually going to confront the devastating potential of an Amazon monopoly, we have to come to grips with more than the way one company has seized control of multiple verticals. We must look instead at how we’ve employed our digital platforms solely in the service of an extractive industrial-age model of growth, and decide whether we’re capable of upgrading to a genuinely digital and distributed form of capitalism. This would mean adopting circular, even revenue-based models that sustain our marketplaces—instead of simply colonizing them.

To the surprise of just about nobody, State Street Global Advisors’ “Fearless Girl,” created by agency McCann New York, has won the Glass Lion Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. The Glass Lion is the award category for implicitly or explicitly addressing issues of gender inequality or prejudice.

On March 7 earlier this year, the night before International Women’s Day, the third-largest asset management firm in the world installed a statue of a defiant girl in front of the iconic Wall Street bull to highlight its campaign to increase the number of women on corporate boards. It sent a letter to 3,500 companies, urging them to improve their gender diversity.

The response was immediate and massive. It went far beyond a marketing campaign–in fact, many people didn’t know it even was one. But love it or hate it, it was one of the most talked about pieces of work by an ad agency and brand all year. Expect the Glass Grand Prix to be just the beginning of its Cannes Lions hardware haul. The McCann creatives behind the idea, Tali Gumbiner and Lizzie Wilson, are also members of Fast Company‘s 2017 Most Creative People In Business.

There were two Gold Lions winners in the Glass category. First is #GIVEHER5, a campaign by The Ammada Trust to raise money and awareness to provide girls in rural India with sanitary supplies for their period. According to the campaign, by agency Law & Kenneth Saatchi & Saatchi Mumbai, more that 350 million girls in India miss five days of school every month because of their period. As a result of the missed days, one in every five girls in India is forced to drop out of school.

Beer company Tecate grabbed the other Gold Lion for “Gender Violence,” by agency Nomades Mexico City. The spot took the beer ad cliche of manliness and turned it on its head to raise awareness around domestic violence.

The Trump administration is currently conducting a review of the electricity grid–with an eye to bringing back coal at the expense of renewables. But bringing back coal is not the way to move the economy forward. If the administration cares about jobs and economic development, modernizing the grid to take advantage of the next generation of clean energy and efficiency technology would be the best way to grow the industries of tomorrow.

In April, Energy Secretary Rick Perry asked his staff to put together a report analyzing the reliability and resiliency of the U.S. electric grid. Perry claims to be concerned about reliability as renewables–which produce power when the sun is shining or wind is blowing–replace coal as an energy source. Several studies, however, show that the grid can reliability accommodate more renewable power. The real aim of the grid study, many experts say, is to provide justification for removing federal and state policies that support renewables in an attempt to bring back coal.

As head of the nation’s largest cleantech hardware incubator, Greentown Labs, I’ve seen first-hand how clean technologies are making a serious impact not only on our nation’s energy future but also on our economy.

Greentown Labs is part of a larger group called the Incubatenergy Network–a consortium of clean energy incubators from red and blue states across the country sharing resources, knowledge, and funding opportunities while serving as “landing pads” for startups as they enter new U.S. markets. Collectively, the network has supported more than 500 companies that have raised more than $1 billion in capital, generated more than $330 million in revenue, and created more than 3,000 direct jobs.

These startup companies are making our nation’s grid more reliable and efficient at delivering power. They are driven in no small part by the increasing role that renewables are playing in our electricity mix. Pulling the rug out from under federal and state leaders would be a huge disservice to this economic engine.

As noted in a memo to his staff, Secretary Perry will do everything in his power to ensure American families and businesses are provided “an electric system that is technologically advanced, resilient, reliable, and second to none.” Clean energy startups are eager to work with Secretary Perry on this effort at the city, regional, and state level.

What’s needed is cooperation and progressive policy to move the country forward with a mix of new technologies that will not only make the grid stronger and cleaner but also grow our economy. Not a backward-looking study designed to prop up a 19th-century fuel.

Dr. Emily Reichert is the Chief Executive Officer at Greentown Labs, the largest cleantech hardware incubator in the United States.

Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker will hit the market in less than six months, and some new market research suggests that conditions are falling into place that could lead to some early success for the much-anticipated device. The big question remains, how much of Amazon Echo’s market share can HomePod take, and how fast?

Amazon’s Echo device has overtaken Sonos speakers as the category leader, according to a report released today by Strategy Analytics, estimating that Amazon shipped more than 5 million Echo speakers during 2016, compared with 4 million speakers shipped by Sonos. “Sonos has long been synonymous with connected home audio and as recently as 2014, it accounted for 50% of the small but growing Wi-Fi speaker market . . . ” the report states.

No big surprise there. The reason Amazon’s Echo is doing so well versus Sonos is because it’s designed to be far more than a speaker–it’s loaded with third-party “skills” and can be used to control the connected home, among many other things.

In fact, Strategy Analytics says the future for dumber or purely audio-focused speakers isn’t bright. The firm believes smart speakers will make up 90% of all Wi-Fi speakers by 2022. That number was just 42% in 2016.

That bodes well for Apple’s HomePod, which, while being marketed as a high-end audio device, will act as a vehicle for the Siri assistant. Out of the gate it will act as an ambient voice control interface for Apple Music and Apple’s HomeKit connected home framework, but over time it will likely act as a control point for other Apple platforms (like HealthKit, for example).

Because the general public is now quite familiar with the Echo speaker and what it does (other than stream audio), the bar is raised on all other speakers. This expectation will benefit the speakers with the most AI behind them. Expect Amazon, Google, and Apple to lead the category by imbuing their speakers with the most intelligence–about the user, the context of use, and the world in general.

In a horse race between Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod, Apple will have advantages and disadvantages.

It will offer by far the most expensive speaker of the three, at $349 per device. (The Echo is $180, while the Home sells for $130.) Putting one in the living room, one in the kitchen, and one in the bedroom quickly adds up to more than a grand.

Also, smart speakers are emerging as a key front in the tech platform wars, and Apple’s entrant will be showing up late. Amazon started selling Echo in 2014, and Google began selling the Home a little more than six months ago. Apple is hoping to start selling the HomePod in December of this year. Consumers who invested in a smart speaker early on–even those in iPhone households–may be inclined to keep adding the same brand of speaker in more rooms in the house. Those who have already gotten used to talking to Google Assistant via their Google Home may be reluctant to switch over to Siri and HomePod.

Apple is hoping to win those consumers over by delivering a better music experience. In fact, I’ve heard all three speakers, and Apple’s sounds the best, in part because it simply has a larger woofer inside. I also heard HomePod in a head-to-head against the Sonos Play3, and again HomePod prevailed. No doubt Apple sourced some high-end components for the device.

The good news for Wi-Fi speaker makers is that it’t not a zero-sum game: They’ll be fighting for slices of a cake that are  growing ever larger. Strategy Analytics says that demand grew by 62% in 2016 to a total of 14 million units, with Amazon accounting for 77% of the increase.

I hope Apple’s flavor of augmented reality is more interesting than just helping me picture new Ikea stuff in my living room.

And yet Ikea appears to be the first marquee partner out talking about apps it’s developing on Apple’s new ARKit augmented reality development platform.

Ikea exec Michael Valdsgaard said his company has a 150-person “innovation team” in its hometown of Älmhult, Sweden working on the AR app, and another 20-person team creating the 3D, 360-degree images of the furniture products pictured in the app.

Tim Cook talked about the Ikea partnership during a recent Bloomberg interview. Ikea was mentioned as a partner during the announcement of ARKit at WWDC on June 5. Ikea says its ARKit-powered app will launch in the fall with the launch of iOS 11.

The most interesting and fun augmented reality app we’ve seen to date is Pokémon Go. The arrival of ARKit raised hopes that a whole new group of developers would be enabled and inspired to create new and cool AR experiences. AR apps for fitness and health, apps for learning and discovery, apps for travel.

ARKit’s existence has only been public knowledge for two weeks, so it’s too early to judge how well developers will leverage its potential once iOS 11 ships this fall. But the earliest examples of iOS 11 AR apps we’re seeing on the consumer side are apps for shopping. And other examples include commercial AR apps that do things like help a field service rep put an air conditioning unit motor back together.

New research from IDC says augmented reality headsets will sell in the order of 25 million by 2021. More interesting is the split between AR headsets for commercial use and those for consumer use. IDC believes 20.5 million (or 83.3%) will be for commercial use, while just 4.1 million (or 16.7%) will be for consumer use.

While the ARKit apps like the one Ikea is building will run on phones and tablets rather than headsets, at first, the IDC research shows that most of the energy in the AR field is focused on the technology’s business applications.

Google’s competing AR development platform, Tango, is apparently also being used mainly for shopping apps. Google has already demonstrated Tango apps that place new products in a home, so Ikea’s concept is nothing new. At Google’s I/O developer conference in May, the company announced a new slant on Tango with Visual Positioning Service (VPS), which can create something like GPS mapping for indoors. But the use case given was, again, about shopping. Google showed how Lowe’s shoppers will be able to use VPS and Tango running on a phone to guide them to a specific tool within the store.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe developers will eventually come up with some cool, non-shopping apps based on ARKit. In fact they’ve already posted some promising samples on YouTube.

Before he begins to tell me about living through Hitler’s rise to power as a young boy in Warsaw, Pinchas Gutter, now in his mid-eighties, seems to pause and collect himself. His hands grip the armrests of his chair.

“Before the war, in the Yiddish newspapers, they always used to show Hitler like a caricature, like a quasi-comic figure,” Gutter tells me. “And then in the Warsaw ghetto, once we started suffering at his hands, the majority of people I heard–and it wasn’t my opinion because I don’t think as a child I formed an opinion–was that he was a madman. That Hitler was not a person. They either called him the Devil or a madman; nobody even called him a beast, because beasts did not behave the way that he did.”

I had asked Gutter to tell me how old he was when Hitler came to power. He didn’t tell me that, exactly, though he has the precise answer on file somewhere: The version of Gutter I was speaking to was a hologram, compiled from footage collected over a period of five days and over 25 hours filming the answers to over 2,000 questions.

The hologram–1 of 13 developed for the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation’s New Dimensions in Testimony initiative–is still in the pilot phase, and still learning. My conversation with Gutter, Stephen Smith, executive director of the Shoah Foundation, tells me, will be recorded and fed back into the natural language processing software developed by USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), that the hologram pulls from in order to answer any question someone might have about Gutter’s life before, during, and after the war.

Talking with the hologram Gutter is a surreal experience. The hologram can be set up anywhere; we’re in a bland conference room in the middle of midtown Manhattan, and Gutter, life-size and sitting against a black background, is projected onto a screen that hangs against one of the walls. He is very obviously not a real person, yet when I stop my slew of questions–“What was it like being separated from your family? Can you describe the day you were liberated?”–and turn to speak with Smith and Maio, I feel like asking Gutter to excuse me for being rude. Because while he’s far from lifelike, Smith and Maio have meticulously ensured that the answers surfaced by the algorithm mimic natural conversation as much as possible.

“The field has been concerned about what’s going to happen to Holocaust education when survivors are no longer present,” Maio says. It’s estimated that in a decade’s time, every person who, like Gutter, lived through the atrocities of the Holocaust will have passed away. And to Smith and Maio, the loss of in-person testimonies will be profound. “We find that when a survivor speaks to a classroom or in the public domain, that impact that the meet-and-greet, the questions and answers, has on people and how we understand that history is significant,” Maio says. “We don’t want to lose it.”

The interactive hologram, Smith says, doesn’t replace the testimony of a live person. It can’t. But amid all the talk about future-proofing the wealth of history and emotion contained in the personal testimonies of Holocaust survivors, Smith and the Shoah Foundation are attempting to preserve it for as long as possible. By collecting more data than they needed, in the highest resolution possible, and keeping that data neutral and raw, the Shoah Foundation is accounting for the fact that no one really knows what future technology will look like or enable. In the augmented-reality field, it’s an unusual approach. “Generally speaking, in the industry around interactive media, everybody is building content for specific platforms and engines,” Smith says. The Shoah Foundation’s comprehensive approach to data collection, he hopes, will allow this new wave of dimensional testimonies to adapt to future platforms that have yet to be invented.

But for Gutter, agreeing to pilot this new format of testimony necessitated a difficult journey back into the past. Just 14 years old when the war ended, Gutter eventually made his way to Canada, where he worked odd jobs and never spoke about what he went through during the Holocaust: being uprooted from Warsaw at the age of 11 and being taken to Majdanek, where his twin sister and parents were killed upon arrival; surviving a death march from another camp in Germany to Thereseinstadt in Czechoslovakia, which was liberated by the Russian army on May 8, 1945. But a professor at the University of Toronto knew of Gutter, and convinced him in 1992 to record his testimony for the archive she was compiling. Later, he met Smith, who recorded Gutter’s testimony for the Shoah Foundation, and who convinced Gutter to return to Poland with his family in 2002 to share with them his personal history that he’d so long kept quiet.

Yet translating the personal experience of the Holocaust to digital form was a taxing process. In a circular studio, around 50 feet high, Gutter sat in a chair in the middle of 52 cameras, arranged in concentric circles and all aimed at him, along with the 6,000 LED lights that illuminated the space. Though Gutter began the filming process in 2014, Smith, Maio, and the team at ICT have been working on developing the technology and the format since 2009. (Maio’s company, StoryFile, uses a less robust version of the technology to allow individuals to record recollections from their loved ones in a similar way.) Bound up in that process, Smith says, was finding survivors willing to share their story in this way. “It was tough, it was difficult, it was taxing,” Gutter says.

While many of the questions Gutter responded to came from the Shoah Foundation organizers, he also fielded questions from children, and people who have experienced the interactive as its been piloted over the past year in various institutions, like the Houston Holocaust Museum. Over time, Maio says, the algorithms embedded in the hologram will learn to respond to vocal cues signifying age, and will adjust its answers to the inquisitor’s demographic, and learn to respond to different versions of the same questions. “Every person has their own way of asking: ‘Do you believe in God?'” Maio says.

The first formal installation of the hologram will open at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie in October. Until then, the holographic Gutter will be learning and iterating through its various pilot appearances. The technological improvements, though, will only serve to better transmit the real Gutter’s message, which is to make real and permanent his firsthand knowledge of what happened in the Holocaust, and what can happen in any country, so future generations will not perpetuate the monstrosities.

Turo is a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace that currently lists about 150,000 vehicles. The way it works is simple. As a consumer, I don’t need to go to Avis or Budget to rent a car—I can rent my neighbor’s vehicle for cheaper. And as an owner, I can make money to pay off a car’s cost just by agreeing to share it. Turo (formerly known as RelayRides) estimates that renting out a new Honda Civic for 14.5 days a month earns enough to pay off a standard car loan over 72 months. Turo thus claims to be “changing the economics of car ownership.

The only catch is that, as a owner, I still need to give up a fair amount of economic value. Owners “typically receive” 75% of the amount paid by renters, according to the website, which means giving one in four dollars of everything I might earn to Turo. As with much of the sharing economy, you have to be willing to share a lot with the platforms to share with your friends. Just ask Uber drivers. They will typically sacrifice 25% of what customers pay just for the privilege of being part of the car-hailing giant’s digital matrix (perhaps more).

To true believers in the blockchain community, these sort of transaction fees are unreasonable and, perhaps in the future, unnecessary. They envisage a world where sharing would be more frictionless and where the platforms would play less of a role than they do now. In fact, we might do away with some companies entirely. By moving the sharing economy to the blockchain’s decentralized network, we would in effect own the platform ourselves.

“Blockchains have the potential to reduce the transaction and trust costs that prevent car owners from monetizing their vehicles and driving data,” says Chris Ballinger, director of mobility services at the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) in an interview. “The ability to monetize their car could potentially provide greater financial security and better options to car owners facing financial difficulty or in need of extra cash.”

To be sure, this future is some way off, but TRI wants to make it happen. It recently formed a working group with several startups and academic institutions to explore applications of blockchain technology in the mobility space, and it wants to bring other manufacturers along with it. In the long term, it sees automakers creating a sort of secondary market in sharing. As you buy a car, we would be able to share it out when we don’t need it.

To find out about how shared mobility, like peer-to-peer car rentals and hailing, could move to blockchains I sat down with the team from Oaken Innovations. Oaken is an early-stage startup that’s part of the TRI group. It’s working on ways of fusing the internet of things–that is, networks of machines–with blockchain systems. They have a prototype for car sharing where Raspberry Pi devices (representing cars) have their own identity on a blockchain and where vehicles and people interact autonomously. The system is coded on the Ethereum computing platform, which is similar to the bitcoin blockchain but has better processing ability for large volumes of transactions and incorporates “smart contracts”–protocols that authenticate identity and enforce pre-negotiated contractual terms.

“On the software side we have tools to graphically monitor and manage smart contracts–the pieces of code on the blockchain that allow for these seamless transactions and rules to occur without a middle party,” says Oaken cofounder Hudson Jameson. “The back end would be vastly less expensive for the consumer to use because there wouldn’t be an entity taking a fee to run the service. It would be run by everyone using the service.”

Then, of course, there’s the question of automation. We may not be driving cars at all for very much longer. When we talk of a future of automated vehicles, we should talk about automating more than the driving system itself. The automation could also occur around the shared ownership of the car, the services associated with it (like insurance), and all the data that’s produced from the car. Ballinger hopes that manufacturers will collaborate in building a blockchain-based car-sharing network (he argues if the automakers don’t do it, other companies will) and also in the development of automated cars. It’s likely that such vehicles will need to be tested over hundreds of billions of miles before producing enough data to demonstrate their safety and reliability. If the manufacturers share their results through a blockchain network, they can move more quickly into the future and create “economies of scale,” he says.

On the eve of publishing her new book, Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer in the field of CRISPR-Cas9 biology and genome engineering, spoke with Fast Company about the potential for this new technology to be used for good or evil.

“The worst thing that could happen would be for [CRISPR] technology to be speeding ahead in laboratories,” Doudna tells Fast Company.“Meanwhile, people are unaware of the impact that’s coming down the road.” That’s why Doudna and her colleagues have been raising awareness of the following issues.

Related: CRISPR Pioneer Jennifer Doudna On Gene Editing’s Potential For Good And Evil

Designer Humans

Editing sperm cells or eggs—known as germline manipulation—would introduce inheritable genetic changes at inception. This could be used to eliminate genetic diseases, but it could also be a way to ensure that your offspring have blue eyes, say, and a high IQ. As a result, several scientific organizations and the National Institutes of Health have called for a moratorium on such experimentation. But, writes Doudna, “it’s almost certain that germline editing will eventually be safe enough to use in the clinic.”

Gene Bombs

Using a CRISPR-related technique known as gene drive, bioengineers can encode DNA with a selected-for trait, which propagates to future generations—and across entire populations—with unnatural speed. This could give mosquitoes resistance to a parasite responsible for malaria or encode them with a gene for female sterility—thus breeding the pests themselves out of existence. But there’s also the risk of spreading unwanted mutations and crossbreeding the change into another species. “There could be real dangers to releasing organisms into the environment that are out of control at some level genetically,” Doudna writes, “where there’s some trait that’s being driven through a population before we understand what the implications of that really are.”

De-Extinction

Woolly mammoths roaming the earth once again? It’s far from easy to do, but scientists are working on just such a Jurassic Park scenario. “Ever since I first heard about experiments like these, I’ve struggled to decide whether they’re admirable, deplorable, or something in between,” writes Doudna. They could enhance our planet’s biodiversity, but bringing back certain species could also open the door to dangerous pathogens or upset ecosystems.

Altering Nature

Since CRISPR’s discovery, scientists around the world have been finding new ways to apply gene editing to plants and animals. Here are some of the developments Doudna tracks in A Crack in Creation.

3. Pigs: The University of Missouri has bred pigs that are resistant to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome. “The virus costs U.S. pork producers more than $500 million annually,” Doudna writes, “and reduces production by 15%.”

5. Monkeys: Researchers in China are harnessing CRISPR to create monkeys that mimic human conditions and diseases, from muscular dystrophy to cancer, which would allow “scientists to hunt for disease cures without endangering human lives,” Doudna writes.

For more, pick up a copy of Doudna’s book: A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution.

Jim’s firing took place in a cramped, gray conference room with squeaky chairs and the smell of stale doughnuts. He’d been in that room before—though not much lately, he realized. In retrospect, that was as good a sign as any that his career with his company was careening toward an unhappy ending.

He’d been hired to manage a massive corporate rebrand two years before. The assignment pinched him between rank-and-file middle managers on one side and senior execs on the other. But it came with a lot of power and some important perks, one particularly sweet benefit being that Jim could work from home an awful lot.

Remote work is getting a bad rap lately. IBM recently earned heckles for instructing thousands of employees to march back into the office or else find new jobs. But much of the time, remote work policies take the fall when other issues are to blame. One of them is simply the way people tend to react when they’re trying to change entire teams, departments, or companies—in other words, the problem is often behavioral, not technological or organizational.

Related:IBM’s Remote Work Reversal Is A Losing Battle Against The New Normal

Using Technology And Distance As A Crutch

Initially, Jim (a former coaching client of mine), dived into his role with an intense focus. He wasn’t surprised when he met with some resistance; sometimes he even forced through a few painful changes. But he felt they were getting there.

As the overhaul progressed, things naturally got tense. Jim was pretty self-aware, though. He knew he felt uncomfortable coming out of many of his work encounters, but he tried to ignore that feeling—no matter how persistent it was and how much it grew. He could also sense the effect he was having on others, occasionally adding to their discomfort while trying to get them to change the ways they worked.

Over time, those feelings built up on both sides, and Jim figured out a few avoidance tactics—which often involved taking advantage of that remote-work perk. “Unhappy communications staffer wants to meet? Let’s work that out by email,” Jim thought. “Designer timelines don’t match C-suite demands? They can probably get together without me.”

“Program managers hate the new logo? Couldn’t we handle that with a screen share?!”

The more uncomfortable things got, the more Jim defaulted to working from his retreat position. And ultimately that made his superiors nervous because he didn’t seem to be doing anything—one of the most common complaints when remote work policies go south. Finally, Jim’s boss made him come in that one last time.

But the moral of the story isn’t that remote work is doomed to fail, or that you shouldn’t take advantage of your company’s flexible work policies if it has them—far from it. Jim’s tendency in that direction was just a symptom. His larger problem was that he kept dodging discomfort until it ultimately landed him in that dingy conference room. If you’re going to successfully make changes in your workplace—whether you show up in person five days a week or five times a year—you first need to learn how to deal with uncomfortable interactions. Technology and distance can’t be your crutch.

Good, Old-Fashioned Alienation (And How To Avoid It)

You’ve probably experienced something similar yourself, or seen it happen to others: A work situation starts out all right but inevitably gets uncomfortable. That discomfort isn’t addressed, it grows, and alienation follows. Eventually, either the project dies or someone gets fired.

This often happens when you’ve been given a mandate to make a big change. Lucky you, you’re about to piss a lot of people off. If you can handle that gracefully, well done—you’ve mastered a major life skill in addition to pulling off an especially hard leadership task. But if you’re a mere mortal and you stumble into thickets of discomfort for everyone, welcome to the club.

Work gets uncomfortable, that’s a reality that stays pretty much constant no matter how much the workplace evolves. But it’s often to mistake these fundamental human factors for signs of broken work cultures or busted work policies—and then to scrap those, rather than dealing with the underlying, and decidedly low-tech issue.

The better approach starts with catching yourself falling into avoidance and inattention early on. Learn to be alert for the signs of your own discomfort and indicators of coworkers’ and superiors’ discomfort. Then act fast. Here’s how:

1. Explain why, and acknowledge the past. People need to know why all the change and disruption you’re proposing is actually necessary. And they simultaneously need their past efforts acknowledged. No matter how awful the past work appears to you, remember that over the years it helped the company grow and prosper. Describe why the past model was created, used, and then outgrown. Acknowledge why it was successful and why a change is needed now, in a tight narrative anyone can understand.

2. Keep talking, keep listening. Don’t just stay in touch—push your communication beyond the basic requirements of your company culture, even if that also means going beyond your own comfort level. If you’re in a meeting-centric culture, check in with everybody by phone or email before and after meetings. Flip that around and press for extra face-time if email and Slack are your team’s default tools.

Whatever you do, push yourself to communicate (do you need to apologize to someone?) in ways you’d rather not (wouldn’t that apology mean more if you made it face to face?).

3. Look for ways to compromise everywhere. Many company cultures insist that outcome (or product) is king. I’m here to tell you that process is every bit as important. If your job involves making someone else uncomfortable—and inevitably most jobs do—pay attention to how things happen as much as what results. When others share their ideas, take them up with genuine consideration. Start every day—and every meeting and communication with your colleagues—with a beginner’s mind, open to learning regardless of the source.

4. Stay attuned. This is probably the hardest because it’s difficult to define—it’s not an action you can cross off a to-do list. How much more rewarding just to pound out deliverables! Staying attuned is much subtler. It requires taking stock and continuously asking: “How did my communications affect others? What might I have overlooked or passed over too quickly? What signs should I take into account tomorrow?”

No matter what kind of work culture you’re tasked with shaking up, you really only need to follow one rule: Stay connected and humble. That may not always mean being physically present, but it always means staying tuned in, recognizing when you’re pushing people outside their comfort zones, being as patient and empathetic as possible. Avoidance is everyone’s knee-jerk reaction when the going gets tough, but fighting it isn’t a tech challenge—it’s a human one.

Scientists now have a relatively easy and inexpensive way to read, write, and edit the building blocks of life—the genome-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9. And while the technology was developed only five years ago, CRISPR’s ability to target—and modify—specific sections of DNA is already supercharging the pace of scientific breakthroughs in medicine and agriculture. It’s even being used to try to bring the woolly mammoth back to life. Investors (including Bill Gates and Sean Parker) and pharmaceutical companies have plowed millions of dollars into CRISPR-driven research; philanthropies have granted millions more to support scientists working on cures for genetic diseases; and in China, at least seven human clinical trials are moving forward. But it all started when a small group of scientists, working in collaboration, stumbled on an organic biological process that had existed for millennia. Among the leaders was molecular biologist Jennifer Doudna, who heads the Doudna Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. She’s the coauthor of a new book tracing CRISPR’s evolution, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. “[CRISPR] is a great illustration of how technologies are born,” says Doudna. “They often come about in unexpected ways.” And the outcomes can be just as unpredictable, and dangerous—a fact that has prompted her to become a global advocate for the responsible use of CRISPR. In this excerpt, Doudna talks about its transformative power. —Noah Robischon

Tomatoes that can sit in the pantry slowly ripening for months without rotting. Plants that can better weather climate change. Mosquitoes that are unable to transmit malaria. Ultra-muscular dogs that make fearsome partners for police and soldiers. Cows that no longer grow horns.

These organisms might sound far-fetched, but in fact, they already exist, thanks to gene editing. And they’re only the beginning. As I write this, the world around us is being revolutionized by CRISPR, whether we’re ready for it or not. Within the next few years, this new biotechnology will give us higher-yielding crops, healthier livestock, and more nutritious foods. Within a few decades, we might well have genetically engineered pigs that can serve as human organ donors—but we could also have woolly mammoths, winged lizards, and unicorns. No, I am not kidding.

It amazes me to realize that we are on the cusp of a new era in the history of life on earth—an age in which humans exercise an unprecedented level of control over the genetic composition of the species that coinhabit our planet. It won’t be long before CRISPR allows us to bend nature to our will in the way that humans have dreamed of since prehistory. When that will is directed toward something constructive, the results could be fantastic—but they might also have unintentional or even calamitous consequences.

The impact of gene-edited plants and animals is already being felt in the scientific community. For example, researchers have harnessed CRISPR to generate animal models of human disease with far greater precision and flexibility than before—not just in mice, but in whatever animals best exhibit the disease of interest, whether it be monkeys for autism, pigs for Parkinson’s, or ferrets for influenza. One of the most interesting aspects of the CRISPR technology is the way it enables the study of features unique to certain organisms, such as limb regeneration in Mexican salamanders, aging in killifish, and skeletal development in crustaceans. I love the notes and pictures colleagues send me describing their CRISPR experiments—the beautiful butterfly-wing patterns whose genetic underpinnings they’ve uncovered, or the infectious yeast whose ability to invade human tissues they’ve dissected at the level of individual genes. These kinds of experiments reveal new truths about the natural world and about the genetic similarities that bind all organisms together. They’re enormously exciting to me.

Related: The Ethics Of CRISPR

At the other end of the spectrum are gene-editing applications that read more like science fiction than the contents of a scientific journal.

For example, I was amazed to learn that several research teams are using CRISPR to “humanize” various genes in pigs in the hope that life-threatening organ-donor shortages might one day be solved by xenotransplantation—the transfer of organs grown in pigs (or other animals) into human recipients. In a sign of the kinds of aesthetic changes to animals that are now possible, companies have used gene-editing technologies to create new designer pets, such as gene-edited micropigs that never grow larger than small dogs. And in a page taken straight out of a famous book-to-film sci-fi franchise, some laboratories are pursuing a venture known as de-extinction, which is nothing less than the resurrection of extinct species through cloning or genetic engineering. My friend Beth Shapiro, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is excited to use this strategy to re-create extinct species of birds for the purpose of studying their relationships to modern species. Along the same lines, efforts are already under way to convert the elephant genome into the woolly mammoth genome, bit by bit, using CRISPR.

Ironically, CRISPR might also enable the opposite: forcible extinction of unwanted animals or pathogens. Yes, someday soon, CRISPR might be employed to destroy entire species—an application I never could have imagined when my lab first entered the fledgling field of bacterial adaptive immune systems just 10 years ago.

Some of the efforts in these and other areas of the natural world have tremendous potential for improving human health and well-being. Others are frivolous, whimsical, or even downright dangerous. And I have become increasingly aware of the need to understand the risks of gene editing, especially in light of its accelerating use.

CRISPR gives us the power to radically and irreversibly alter the biosphere that we inhabit by providing a way to rewrite the very molecules of life any way we wish. At the moment, I don’t think there is nearly enough discussion of the possibilities it presents—for good, but also for ill. It’s a thrilling moment in the life sciences, but we can’t let ourselves get carried away. It’s important to remember that, while CRISPR has enormous and undeniable potential to improve our world, tinkering with the genetic underpinnings of our ecosystem could also have unintended consequences. We have a responsibility to consider the ramifications in advance and to engage in a global, public, and inclusive conversation about how to best harness gene editing in the natural world, before it’s too late.

From A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, by Jennifer Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg. Reprinted with permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

How to describe Wes Anderson’s visual aesthetic? Fast Company has often used the same term over the years, and that term is immaculate composition. Anderson’s pristine interiors, meticulously arranged and often symmetrical, have crystallized into a genre of production design unto itself. When Anderson designed a bar in Milan recently, we knew exactly what to expect before laying eyes on it: pastels, formica, and a Tetris wizard’s economic use of space. So, of course, when the existence of a Subreddit called Accidental Wes Anderson came to Fast Company’s attention yesterday, courtesy of Tim Donnelly, we strapped right in. It was no disappointment either.

Accidental Wes Anderson is an online hub for finding a little bit of Wes out in the wild. It could be an abandoned classroom where the tile style and arrangement of desks appears to be perhaps where Chaz Tenenbaum went to school, or the Ben Tre Hotel in Vietnam, which looks like a surplus set from Grand Budapest Hotel. It’s a phenomenon this writer is familiar with, having spotted such a building during a February expedition to Norway.

It may be surprising that such places exist, looking as if they were conjured into reality from the storyboards of the beloved auteur’s latest. On the other hand, this subreddit also gives a hint of how Anderson may have absorbed his signature style in the first place.

Have a look at more Accidental Wes Anderson in the slides above.

In recent years, beauty has become increasingly intimate. Brands like MatchCo scan your skin to create a fully personalized foundation; haircare startups like Function of Beauty allow customers to target specific hair concerns—say, split ends or frizz—with personalized shampoo and conditioner. A skincare brand called Skin Inc tailors a serum-based skincare regimen to users based on a quiz.

Customers now expect—no, demand—customization from brands. But Tristan Walker, founder and CEO of Walker & Company Brands—the health and beauty startup behind shaving brand Bevel—believes that in pursuing personalization, some brands might overlook the importance of how customers actually use those products.

“It’s not only about product customization,” Walker says. “It’s about usage. And that’s something that I think a lot of these personalization companies lose sight of.”

Form wants to be both inclusive and minimalist, serving a diverse audience with just a handful of products and guiding women who feel overwhelmed by all the choices available to them.

“We asked the question: Why haven’t brands changed?” Walker explained to Fast Company.“Why are most haircare brands focused on a single hair texture—curly, or straight, or kinky, or coily? Why are brands focused on like a single ingredient? . . . Why is it that these brands are forcing consumers to cross over into different brands for all of their haircare needs?”

Form’s pitch to consumers is a minimal, 10-product lineup of shampoos, conditioners, and styling products that range from $22 to $32. The packaging and marketing recall the sleek aesthetic of Bevel, down to the muted color palette. Form claims the line is free of sulfates, parabens, and phthalates—ingredients that many higher-end haircare brands now steer clear of.

“We have completely uncompromising standards with the quality of our ingredients and our formulation,” Walker says. “The reason why we’re targeting the prestige category is to show people just that.”

But what jumped out to me most was the Form consultation, a questionnaire that helps women determine which products are best suited to their hair, as well as a hair analysis that Form is beta testing. The latter builds on the consultation by analyzing hair samples to offer more personalized feedback; using this feature, customers can also tangibly see how Form’s products are impacting their hair. “We want to, over time, show people that we do what we say we’re going to do,” Walker says.

Walker & Co. marketing head, Cassidy Blackwell, walked me through a Form consultation, which included the expected questions about my haircare routine—how often I wash my hair and what products I use. But the consultation also inquired about my exercise routine—or lack thereof, in my case—including how often I swim, and asked for my zip code, to take into account how the weather might affect my hair. Interspersed between all these questions were what Blackwell referred to as “Form facts,” which offered tidbits on how much hair people shed each day, how chlorine can affect hair, and more.

Once the consultation is complete, Form recommends a lineup that caters to your haircare needs. In my case, for example, Form’s recommendation included the Hydrate: Moisturizing Conditioner—which is meant for unprocessed hair—rather than the Revive: Restorative Conditioner, which focuses more on battling breakage and heat damage. After you make a purchase, Form outlines how you should use each product; one of the most important criteria for his team, Walker says, was ensuring the products would play well together.

“The consultation thing is so uniquely interesting because it really speaks to what software can enable for an industry like this,” Walker says. “It’s online right now, but think about what it could mean if it were offline.”

I’ve never had a “mentor,” no well-connected older colleague I go to for career advice and moral support. I don’t have regular check-ins involving my professional life with anyone other than my manager, and I’m betting that’s true for lots of people.

Sure, a formal mentoring relationship might be great. The idea of having a go-to industry leader to help me steer my career whenever I need advice sounds really appealing. I’ve just never locked one down because if we’re being honest here, it’s hard to do! Getting somebody to invest themselves indefinitely in your career success, like an unpaid coach, is more than many people can reasonably pull off.

So if you’re like me and are fine foregoing mentorship, here’s what you can do instead and end up no worse for the wear.

Stalk People You Admire Online

This one’s easy. You can start by diving down the rabbit holes Twitter and LinkedIn present you with each time you hit the “follow” or “connect” buttons—they’ll recommend other, similar people you might be interested in. But internet stalking is a multi-pronged affair.

On one hand you should probably follow leaders you’ll never hope to chat with directly, just to keep tabs on what they’re thinking about and sharing. And on the other, you should follow your peers who work in similar jobs or at similar companies. It’s called “benchmarking.” Mentors are typically pretty good at letting you know where you stand relative to the competition—what’s a stretch position for you, what you’re overqualified for, which projects you should try getting assigned.

But you can gather the same sort of intel from social media: What sorts of things are people at the same level as you posting, where, and how often? Who are they following and talking to? Pay attention over time, and you’ll gradually get a sense of your own strengths and weaknesses professionally.

Look For Ways To Take On “Stretch” Work

A mentor’s main job is helping you find ways to advance your career, but as one Fast Company contributor pointed out recently, you may be able to do a lot of that yourself. The secret to getting more responsibilities—and eventually positioning yourself for a promotion—isn’t a secret at all: You have to nail everything in your job description and then pick up a few tasks that go beyond it. After all, few mentors can actually set you up with that killer project that’s going to make you shine—usually only your boss can. Here are a few ways to get yourself ready for it all on your own.

Stop Going To Pointless Networking Events

You might think that without a designated mentor you’d be even more hard up to find influential people in your space. But that doesn’t mean you should hit the networking circuit with abandon. Generic networking events tend to under-deliver, so feel free to be selective. Only check out networking opportunities where you’re likely to find these kinds of people:

• People who currently work in a job you want
• People who work directly with the people who work in a job you want
• People who have a unique point of view on an industry you’re trying to advance in

If you can’t make first- or second-degree connections there, or hear something really interesting about your field that might directly change your career strategy, don’t go.

Invite Four People To Coffee Every Year

It doesn’t need to be an actual coffee. Tea is fine. So is a beer. So is a 20-minute informal phone call with no beverages involved whatsoever. The point is to have a strictly informational chat with somebody you admire in your field. What does “informational” mean? That you don’t have any particular endgame or “ask” in mind—you just want to hear more about what they do.

Years ago when I’d just started freelance writing, a journalist friend of mine invited me to tag along to his company’s holiday party in Washington, D.C. I could count on one hand my grand total of published bylines at the time, but I’d just worked with an editor that he’d connected me with. So I grabbed a Megabus ticket and showed up, schmoozed with the editor , and went on work to with him again. This counts as a “coffee meeting”—and yes, it sometimes involves being a bit of a groupie (then again, being somebody’s mentee is the ultimate groupie move), but who cares?

The main thing is to make a habit out of this. Reaching out to someone new roughly once a quarter should be all that it takes (you’re taking a “less is more” approach to networking, remember?).

Get In On What The Higher-Ups Are Saying

There are lots of ways to do this. Maybe you ask your boss if she wouldn’t mind sharing her notes from her meeting with the department heads. Or perhaps instead you just seize on your next chance to chat up the exec you find yourself riding the elevator with. Most of these opportunities are small and hard to plan for, but that’s precisely why so many people pass them up. You shouldn’t.

Early on in your career, it’s easy to feel insulated from the discussions going on at the top. So when in doubt, keep this line on standby for your next one-on-one with your boss: “Since my day-to-day doesn’t really touch on this, how’s the company doing in general? Anything on the broader business front that I should know about?”

Realize All The Informal Mentors You Already Have

Anyone who’s ever written a job recommendation for you, championed or praised your work (social media shoutouts count), or even just given you one-off advice that you’ve really valued—for all practical purposes, they’re your mentors. All it takes is for somebody to go out of their way for you once to make it totally fine for you to reach out for their opinion again later. (They can always ignore you or decline, but most probably won’t.)

Another hidden career resource that few people tap enough are their own friends. As Fast Company contributor Reva Seth wrote year, there’s still a huge taboo around talking compensation, which she points out plays right into employers’ hands; knowledge is negotiating power.

But it goes beyond compensation. Anytime your friend texts you, stressed out about a tense interaction with his boss and asks for your take, guess what? You’re mentoring! And it’s vice versa whenever you’re bouncing your own workplace problems off your friends. Commiseration itself is valuable (one career-change company built a whole business out of what started as informal, entry-level misery-fests), but you’re also learning from each other—pooling your workplace experiences and expanding your points of reference so you can decide how best to act.

Plenty of successful careers are made without mentors, but none are made in a vacuum.

I couldn’t quite decide whether it was his agonized expression or the detailed tattoos covering his arms that bewildered me the most, but the full-size dummy in a hospital gown wasn’t there to freak people out. He was there to help improve health care for U.S. veterans, part of the technology arsenal of the Veterans Health Administration’s high-tech SimLearn facility, housed in an impressive building on the outskirts of Orlando.

Medical institutions invest so heavily in anatomically correct dummies like these—not to mention elaborate dissections of actual cadavers—because being able to act out scenarios in a safe learning environment can drastically enhance learning and improve patient care. For surgeons, simulation is an essential part of training.

But the equipment is costly, and clunky, and only a few medical students can work with it at a time.

“Right now, the way they’re doing it is people have these devices in their trunks, you can only fit like one in and they drive around with hundreds of dollars in disposable, simulated bones to allow people to practice one procedure once,” Dr. Justin Barad, an orthopedic surgeon and entrepreneur, told an audience at Health 2.0 last year. Last year he cofounded Palo Alto-based Osso VR, one of a number of companies turning technologies that are typically thought of as vehicles for fantasy into tools meant to teach surgery—better, faster, and ultimately cheaper, they say.

“I’ve done surgeries where I just sat there reading the instruction manual like we were putting together Ikea furniture because people don’t have a training option that’s something like [virtual reality],”wi he said. The technology could “increase patient safety, decrease complications, and increase the learning curve for complex medical devices.”

As countries around the world struggle to find health care provision models that balance the needs of aging populations with shrinking budgets—and as startups jostle to get into operating rooms—the virtual world is already being used to impact the health care of real people.

“I could be in Cleveland and teach a group of students in, say, London with all of us able to see one another and the holograms simultaneously,” says Professor Mark Griswold, Case Western Reserve’s faculty leader for the university’s efforts with Microsoft’s HoloLens, the $3,000 developer-edition-only augmented reality glasses. “The professor can see how students are interacting with the hologram in real time, and respond immediately with additional explanations or encouragement as needed.”

Devices like the HoloLens and consumer VR helmets like Samsung’s Gear VR and Facebook’s Oculus have received the most attention as vehicles for escape, but their real-world applications are growing fastest in the workplace. IDC, which pegs current industry revenues at around $5.6 billion, says much of the growth in shipments of VR and AR headsets over the next five years will come from industrial uses (80% a year), versus consumer uses (50%), like video games, films, porn, and other entertainment. Among current non-health care HoloLens customers, for instance, are companies like Lowe’s, Volvo, and ThyssenKrupp, whose technicians use the glasses to operate on ailing elevators.

In health care, revenues for VR and AR technologies reached nearly a billion dollars in 2016, according to Kalorama Research. Some estimate that by 2025, that number could reach over $5 billion, thanks to uses in areas like telemedicine, pain relief, robotic surgery, and, increasingly, medical simulations.

Medical instructors say a VR helmet, coupled with haptic-feedback “syringes,” can help a surgeon practice a complex operation in detail before carrying it out—or help a doctor with limited access to education locally get better medical training, improving patient experience and outcomes. A pair of augmented reality goggles can put an animated “patient” in front of students, making the expensive dummies obsolete altogether. And as medical operations become more sophisticated and high-tech, computer glasses could help get practitioners up to speed faster.

Health care experts have proposed new technologies like these as one of various solutions to what some have called a crisis in medicine: The United States could be facing a shortfall of between 48,000 and 100,000 physicians by 2030, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Since it takes between five and 10 years on average to train a new physician, medical industry experts say the U.S. urgently needs more people to enter that training pipeline now, particularly in highly specialized fields: The greatest shortfall, on a percentage basis, will be in the demand for surgeons, especially those who treat cancer and other diseases more common to older people.

Alleviating that shortfall and upgrading decades-old simulations with mixed reality could also ferry in cost savings that can’t come soon enough. In the U.S., the cost of health care continues to surge, far beyond the price of drugs: Open-heart surgery is 70% more than the next highest country; an appendectomy over two times more. And the price for a day in the hospital is about five times more in the U.S. than other developed countries.

Better Learning Through Virtuality?

For years, surgeons have relied on 3D modeling on computers to plan complex procedures down to the millimeter, so there are as few surprises as possible. The technology proved valuable for the team that separated conjoined twins Erika and Eva Sandoval at Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto in 2013. In that case, surgeons donned 3D glasses to study digital renderings of the twins’ organs, allowing them to perform a heart valve replacement using an incision less than half the normal size. More recently, 3D modeling has merged with VR at Stanford Health Care, where an app called True 3D technology, developed with Mountain View-based company EchoPixel, promises to increase a surgeon’s ability to visualize and plan complex procedures beforehand.

“Our biggest problem is cutting into an artery or vein that we did not expect,” says Eric Wickstrom, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who co-authored a 2013 study on the use of 3D models in surgery.

A clinical study published last year in the Journal of Neurosurgery looked at how surgeons rehearsed their operations using a VR-based brain modeling platform developed by the company Surgical Theater. The tool, in use at New York University, University Hospitals in Cleveland and Mount Sinai among others, appeared to help surgeons reduce the time it took to repair aneurysms, suggesting it also made the surgeries safer.

Making Virtual Bodies Feel Real And Real Bodies More Virtual

The next step in the equation will be to accurately reproduce not only the look but the feel of any surgical procedure. HoloLens partner FundamentalVR is already working on the addition of haptic feedback to surgery simulations, says Richard Vincent, the company’s founder. The London-based startup is developing a tool called FeelRealVR, which it describes as a “flight simulator” for surgery. In its current version, students use a stylus in place of a syringe, which provides realistic levels of pressure and resistance in relation to a hologram of a patient’s open knee joint, for instance.

Vincent argues that tools like this can make for better learners. The enhanced cognitive involvement that comes from not only seeing, but interacting with the holograms triggers active “Involved Learning,” he says, a recognized teaching methodology in which students have been found to retain much more of the subject matter than with traditional approaches.

AR is also augmenting instruction during real-life surgeries. Hands-on, face-to-face lessons during real-life operations are in short supply, often limited to the limited number of students who can fit inside an operating theater. Surgeons who can teach are in such high demand, meanwhile, that experiential learning can be increasingly infrequent at medical schools, taught only once to a small group.

“Surgery is very visual. You can read it in a book if you want but it’s not the same as watching it live,” says Dr. Nadine Haram, a NHS registrar in plastic surgery at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. “Yet it’s physically difficult to get many medical students in the operating room at any time.”

Haram is cofounder of a company called Proximie that developed a way to use augmented reality to let a distant surgeon virtually place his or her “hands” or instruments onto a patient’s body. The idea is to let experienced practitioners guide operating teams on where each incision should be made and how to proceed. After being selected by the U.K. Lebanon Tech Hub Accelerator, Proximie is now rolling out a training pilot at The Royal Free Hospital, allowing 150 of its students to log in remotely to watch surgery through the application.

Mixed reality is also improving operating rooms in less obvious ways. ByDesign, a HoloLens app, helps surgeons, nurses, and technicians save precious time in configuring the setup of operating theaters. Whenever there’s a rotation, operating rooms need to be carefully reconfigured to meet each team’s very specific requirements, since even minute errors in that context can have dangerous consequences for both patients and practitioners.

Traditionally that means multiple people moving around heavy, delicate, and expensive equipment to test various configurations. In an environment where most facilities already operate near capacity, this resource-intensive process translates into higher costs and slower delivery of care, says Andy Pierce, president of Global Endoscopy at Stryker.

By donning an AR headset, practitioners can visualize objects in full-scale 3D, with the flexibility of being able to easily move virtual objects. Two surgeons hundreds of miles apart can both stand in different rooms looking at accurate holographic renditions of the same equipment, moving them around until they’re satisfied the optimum setup has been reached. This can then be saved and relayed to those in charge of setting up the operating rooms themselves.

Upgrading The Cadaver

A review of augmented reality in medical training published last year in the journal Surgical Endoscopy couldn’t say whether the technology would contribute to patient safety. But author Esther Barsom, a researcher in the department of surgery at the University of Amsterdam, noted that AR is “preeminently suitable” for helping improve the training of situational awareness during operations, a facet that is “lacking in medical curricula.” And, she wrote, “as training methods become more engaging and reliable, learning curves may be expected to become steeper and patients will ultimately benefit.”

Prof. Wickstrom of Thomas Jefferson University suggests that virtual simulations could also widen the recruiting pipeline: By making medical education more interactive and engaging, the medical field could become more accessible and attractive to those who previously might have been put off by traditional medical learning.

The time-honored way of teaching anatomy, for instance, is to have students spend months dissecting cadavers. But these procedures—not unlike the realistic mannequins at SimLearn—can cost tens of thousands of dollars. And cadavers can only be used by a limited number of students, and, naturally, only once.

Under Prof. Griswold at Case Western Reserve, anatomy students use the HoloLens to interact with virtual patients and organs, allowing them to pull back the various layers of the human body, visualize the muscles on top of the skeleton, and understand exactly where things are located. AR means that medical students are not confined to learning the terrain of a single body, but can see accurate visualizations of particular conditions such as cancers, heart disease, or spinal injuries.

“In the fall we did a pilot test of HoloLens with medical students who already had studied the cardiothoracic region for several weeks in the cadaver lab,”Griswold says. “After one session viewing the same area of the body wearing the devices, 85% said they had learned something new.”

Just 15 minutes with the HoloLens could have saved them dozens of hours in the lab, students who participated in the pilot told Pamela Davis, dean of the school of medicine. Case Western is now in the process of developing a broader holographic anatomy curriculum. “The quicker our students learn facts like these, the more time they have to think with them,” Davis said at last year’s Microsoft’s Build conference. “We are teaching them to think like a doctor.”

If attendees at this year’s CES took a moment to remove their virtual reality headsets, they might have spied a bunch of new home robots that debuted in Vegas. Unlike the toy bots that have driven, crawled, and flown around tech shows for years, these next-generation machines promise to not only entertain but also help out with tasks such as home security. They also aim to act like Amazon Echo speakers on wheels, answering questions and controlling smart home functions. The transition from plaything to domestic help is embodied in toymaker Sphero‘s launch today of spin-off company Misty Robotics after 18 months as a stealth project.

“It’s explicitly not a toy. Our business isn’t about toys, and so it’s spinning out,” says Tim Enwall, Misty’s CEO. (Sphero cofounder Ian Bernstein will serve as head of product.) Autonomous robots would seem to be a big transition from Sphero’s roots, beginning with its eponymous product, essentially a smartphone-controlled cue ball that started rolling around floors in 2011. The ball gained a head and basic intelligence in 2015 as a wildly popular $150 toy version of the BB-8 droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. There are some clues to Misty’s capabilities in Sphero’s latest toys, though. They include an agile, talking Lightning McQueen car tied to the debut of Disney’s new Cars 3 animated film and a wisecracking Spider-Man doll arriving shortly before the latest Marvel franchise release.

“The robotic being of the future, the one that’s going to go into everyone’s home or office, it has to build a relationship. It has to be familiar,” says Enwall. “It has to be useful, and it has to be multipurpose.” Don’t expect Rosie the Robot from The Jetsons, however. “The technology is not at the point where Rosie has hands and cruises around and does the dishes,” he says.

Mysterious Misty

Misty hasn’t provided a name, price, or comprehensible image for its robot, which Enwall says will debut sometime in 2018. The company has released only a hilariously vague image showing the left edge of what appears to be a white robot’s head and shoulder. Even that is just, “roughly the kind of thing we’re talking about,” says Enwall. The company likely has a more developed concept under wraps, however, to attract $11.5 million in funding from investors Venrock and Foundry Group. Misty is already planning construction of the robots. I spoke to Enwall hours after he’d returned to California from a meeting in China with manufacturing partner Jetta, the same company that makes Sphero’s toys.

Enwall hints that Misty’s product will be more sophisticated than the robots that debuted at CES, such as Kuri, a $699 model from Mayfield Robotics (an offshoot of German tech giant Bosch), due to ship in spring 2018. Kuri can wheel around the house, using cameras, microphones, speakers, and artificial intelligence to recognize people and understand questions and requests—the next stage beyond smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home, says Berkeley robotics professor Ken Goldberg, who is not affiliated with Sphero. “The device will now . . . have some moving component, so it can essentially look around, and it can also respond in terms of motion to different cues,” says Goldberg, mentioning duties like identifying guests or intruders, or taking photos at parties. Enwall mentions keeping an eye on the condition of elderly family members, too.

Misty’s teaser image hints at a humanoid form, perhaps more like Softbank’s Pepper, a business-grade robot that performs duties like in-store customer service in Japan and beyond. Enwall stresses that Misty’s bot will be a serious multitasker, performing the duties that would otherwise require several robots adding up to $2,500 or more. “I think that would be too much,” he says of such a price tag. In addition to being a mobile digital assistant, it appears that Misty will be able to do some physical work. Enwall mentions examples such as watering plants and playing with the cat. (Of course, cats would likely play with a robot whether or not it was designed with that purpose in mind.)

Enwall isn’t simply being coy about what Misty’s robot can do: Its capabilities will be up to the tinkerers who buy the first model. Like Softbank’s Pepper, Misty’s robot will begin as a developer platform. “We’re focused on innovators who take to early robots and do a zillion things that they have in their brains but they’ve never been able to do before,” says Enwall. He does foresee a broad range of applications, saying that before Misty recruited him, he had been looking for “ideas in the area of smart home, elder care, robotics, and voice interfaces. And you know, this opportunity landed in my lap, and I was like, ‘Hey, that’s all of them,'” he says.

Misty’s robot probably won’t be landing in the homes of anyone other than early adopters and makers at first, but versions customized by entrepreneurs may reach consumers in later years. “I think this whole notion of an independently mobile, independently seeing, speaking, hearing entity . . . that’s something that’s maybe just starting to reach the mainstream,” says Enwall. “Our ambition is certainly to deliver [a robot] to every home and every office. But we’re not ready yet to walk into Target, see Rosie on the shelf, and walk out with it.”

The Next Tech Product Boom?

Misty is not the first company to develop consumer-priced home robotic helpers, and won’t be the last. Mayfield Robotics appears to be one of the furthest along, if it keeps to its 2018 delivery promise. Dates tend to slip, though. Tabletop home assistant Jibo was unveiled in 2014, although it’s yet to ship, and the company has been vague about when that might happen. A device similar to Jibo, the LG Hub Robot, debuted as a prototype at CES 2017 with no firm shipping date.

Misty might also keep an eye on Sphero’s well-funded rival toymaker Anki. Started by roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University, Anki has been building AI into its robotic toys since the company’s founding in 2010. Its $180 Cozmo, for instance, is a mischievous robot that zips around on tank-like tracks. Debuting in 2016, Cozmo recognizes different users, with whom it plays games like stacking and knocking over special toy blocks. Cozmo emits beeps and bloops as dialog and displays facial expressions on its small front screen. Anki also builds autonomous toy race cars, including a Fast & Furious-licensed line. With $157.5 million in funding according to Crunchbase, Anki–which has always said it aspires to be more than a toy company–has the cash on hand to go beyond creating playthings.

Your most common fear might also be the skill that will help you get ahead in your career. Employers say that the most in-demand skill is strong communication skills, according to a study by LinkedIn. But more than a quarter of us rank public speaking as our top personal fear, second to snakes but before spiders. How can you improve your speaking if you’d rather handle a tarantula than make a presentation?

“No one is born a great communicator; it takes practice,” says Audrey Mann Cronin, founder of the communications firm Say It Media. “Strong communication skills—the ability to be a powerful, persuasive, and articulate speaker—can be pivotal to success.”

Fortunately, technology can help. From too many “ums” to too many butterflies, apps can help you get over these four speaking fears so you can impress your listener.

Using Filler Words

We’ve all encountered a speaker who fills pauses with words like “um” or “okay.” Unfortunately, this habit can be harmful, says Mann Cronin, creator of the app, Like So: Your Personal Speech Coach (iOS).

“We all want to speak in a way that compels others to listen, but when we insert too many ‘likes,’ ‘sos,’ ‘ya knows,’ and ‘totallys,’ we lessen our credibility, water down our meaning, distract our listeners, and invite unnecessary judgment,” she says.

LikeSo uses voice recognition technology and a fitness tracker approach to train you to avoid poor verbal habits. With two modes—freestyle and speaking prompts—LikeSo tracks and monitors your words and pacing, giving you a score from A+ to Uh Oh!

Two more apps perform a similar function: Ummo (iOS and Android) records your speech and highlights filler words so you can identify areas where you rely on this crutch. And Um Counter (Android) counts the number of times you use the word “um,” so you can determine your stumbling patterns and work on correcting them. You can also personalize Um Counter to recognize words like “okay,” “uh,” and “basically.”

Nervousness

If your problem is stress, there’s an app that will help you relax. Confident Public Speaking (iOS and Android) was created by hypnotherapist David Ridgeway and includes guided meditations to help you calm down before taking the stage. The 10-minute session prompts you to release the anxiety you may have from real or imagined bad experiences. The app also includes video interviews that explain stress, so you can better understand and use it to improve your speaking.

Forgetting What You’re Going to Say

If you are afraid you are going to freeze and forget what you are going to say, Prompster Pro (iOS and Android) is an app that can help. It turns a smartphone or tablet into a teleprompter so you no longer have to fumble with notecards or a faulty memory. Create or import a document, and then set the app to scroll the words, personalizing the speed and font size.

Having Too Little Or Too Much To Say

If you’ve watched TED Talks, you’ve seen that clock at the foot of the stage that tells speakers how long they’ve been on stage. SpeakerClock is an app (iOS) that does the same thing. This app helps you master your timing so you don’t ramble on too long or speak too fast. Presentation Timer Pro (Android) is another timer app. It also silences your ringer so a call doesn’t interrupt your presentation.

English Isn’t Your First Language

If English isn’t your first language and you’re afraid this will be apparent in your speech, Orai (iOS) is an app that provides you with instant feedback. It gives a report on your clarity, use of filler words, pace, and vocal energy. The app was created by Drexel University engineering students Danish Dhamani and Paritosh Gupta.

“The one thing we had in common is that English was not our first language,” Dhamani tells Fast Company. “Paritosh grew up in India. I was born in Pakistan, but my family moved to Tanzania when I was very young, so I was raised in Africa. When we came to the U.S., it was hard, from job interviews to networking events, talking in front of groups of people.”

Orai includes vocal exercises to perform for a few minutes a day to help train and improve your speaking habits. It also includes speaking prompts that are graded and provide feedback.

“Public speaking is like going to the gym. You can’t go once and get bigger biceps—you have to train on a consistent basis,” says Dhamani.

As with any modern masterpiece, designer Jenna Josepher and photographer Jesse Untracht-Oakner‘s vision started with a box of dildos.

SFW is an art experiment that features GIFs of sex toys that have been desexualized through jazzy design–well, somewhat desexualized. At first glance, it’s not so easy to decipher the various objects rotating and squishing about. However, stare just a few seconds longer and the cheekiness of it all avails itself.

“And I instantly thought of Jenna because we had worked together on a few fashion lookbooks,” Untracht-Oakner says. “I remember, specifically, Jenna saying, ‘yes, for the cause.'”

“The cause” being to cast sex toys in a less skeevy light. Or, as SFW‘s writer Leah Dworkin more eloquently puts in their mission statement:

Sex-toy imagery is often suggestive, triggering, and discriminatory, not to mention, advertisements for sexual products can easily make certain viewers feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, judged or excluded. Even though this is how the sex-toy industry has marketed itself in the past, we thought it was time for a change. We not only felt a real responsibility but saw an exciting opportunity to create a new breed of visual imagery within the sex-toy marketplace that was progressive, inclusive, positive, socially conscious and approachable–to all sorts of human beings.

SFW isn’t necessarily an ad for Doc Johnson–Josepher and Untracht-Oakner just saw an opportunity rebrand sex toys in general by casting them in Memphis-style backgrounds (think the Saved by the Bell intro montage) with, most importantly, no bodies attached.

“I really didn’t want to use any skin tones whatsoever because I didn’t want it to imply this is for use by X people at all,” Josepher says. “And then, along that line, no gender implications either because to imply one you’re going to have to imply all of them. So we found our lowest common denominator, which is movement.”

SFW is just that: safe for work. Josepher and Untracht-Oakner purposely created GIFs that would circumvent any social media policies on sharing lewd imagery with the goal of people posting and reposting their work as widely as possible.

“I mean, they’re sex toys,” Josepher continues. “We couldn’t get rid of that aspect.”

You just lost your job. You may be crushed. You may be in denial. You may realize your work was toxic and be genuinely happy you never have to go back. Or you may not fully understand how you’re feeling.

Regardless of your state of mind, it’s hard, and finding a new job can be even harder. Many people simply update their resume and apply for positions that look interesting. That’s one way to handle it, but it’s also likely to be insufficient. Plus, it’s important to give yourself time to process the loss.

I’ve been in the exact spot you’re in now. I was laid off from an investment bank at a time when finance roles were hard to come by. Through personal experience, and through my work as a career coach helping countless people find jobs, I’ve put together a comprehensive timeline of the steps to follow if you’re in this situation.

Day 1

The very first thing you should do after leaving the office is find someone to talk to. You probably won’t be in the mood to talk to everyone about your situation, but speaking with a close friend can help.

Once you’ve had the opportunity to vent, it’s time to start writing. Write about what just happened, how you’re feeling, how this impacts your plans, and what you might do going forward. The goal isn’t to come up with a full game plan or even to write coherently. Rather, the goal is to capture the thoughts and emotions you’re experiencing so you won’t replay them over and over in your mind.

Related: Could The Way Unemployment Is Reported Change Under Trump? 

Day 2

When I was unemployed, I spent days sitting on the couch in my pajamas. My wife would get home from work to find me in the exact spot as when she’d left in the morning.

Without the structure of a job, you’re likely to feel less productive and your well-being might suffer, and that’s OK. But even if you’re not ready to start looking for work, there are other things you can do, including filing for unemployment benefits if you’re eligible. This was a step I didn’t take for a few months and I missed out on a lot of money. Don’t let that happen to you.

Day 3

The next step is to update your resume. Depending on the condition it’s in, this may take more than a day. Here are a few resources to help:

• How To Update Your Resume In 30 Minutes And Turn In An Impressive, Typo-Free Version
• 4 Better Ways To Organize Your Resume, Depending On Who You Are And Where You’re Going
• 3 Things You Should Know About The Robots Reading Your Resume, But Don’t

Day 4

With your resume in tip-top shape, let’s turn your attention to LinkedIn. Check out these links to get your profile looking amazing:

• All-Star LinkedIn Users Are 40 Times More Likely to Get Contacted—Here’s How To Score That Rating
• The Stealthy Job Searcher’s Guide To Getting Your LinkedIn Profile Recruiter-Ready
• 5 Templates That’ll Make Writing The Perfect LinkedIn Summary A Breeze

Day 5

Make a list of companies you’d absolutely love to work at. Start with a minimum of five, but no more than 20. Once you have this list, think about people you know at each company. LinkedIn’s a great tool to help with this as the company page will show the first and second degree connections you have at each one.

Starting with companies rather than just looking for openings will put you in the mind-set of pursuing opportunities you love, rather than looking for what’s available. Additionally, 80% of roles never get posted, and the majority of people find jobs through networking.

Day 6

With your networking efforts underway, now you can start searching for positions. Depending on your industry, you may also find these niche job-search websites valuable.

Pro tip: Don’t forget to set up alerts on each site as this will automate a lot of your search, saving you both time and energy.

Day 7

Make a list of 10 people you haven’t connected with in awhile and invite them to lunch or coffee. This may take you out of your comfort zone. Do it anyway.

Related:The Idiot’s Guide To Networking, No Work Experience Required

Then, I strongly recommend sending an email to your network letting them know you’re looking. Head over to LinkedIn and click the “My Network” tab. In the top left, you’ll see your total number of connections. Select “See all.”

From this list, identify people who can help. Put them into two groups: those who’ll receive a personal note and those who’ll get a mass email. In your message, explain what you’re looking for and how they can help. The more specific you are, the better they’ll be able to help. For more details on this approach, check out “Help Me Find a Job!” Emails to Send to Your Network.

Day 8

You’ve been at this search for over a week and could benefit from a day off. After losing my job, I worked hard on my search Monday through Friday, then unplugged on the weekends. This gave me the stamina I needed to keep moving even when I faced setbacks.

Now may be a good time to plan a fun trip. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but a change of scenery, even if just for a few days, can be a nice break from your search.

Day 9

As you continue your networking efforts, check out the LinkedIn Alumni Tool. I think it’s the most underutilized feature, and it’s a great way to connect with people who have a similar background.

Day 10

Have you started a daily practice? Are you exercising, writing in a journal, reading uplifting content, or doing whatever you committed to? It’s not too late to get started. I can’t overstate how important it is to take care of yourself during this period.

Related: Here’s How To Find A Minute Of Mindfulness Anywhere

If I may, here’s one more thing to add to your daily practice. Identify one thing you’re grateful for each day and write it down. Studies have shown that regularly expressing gratitude will make you happier, and who doesn’t need an extra dose of happiness during a job search?

Day 20

If you haven’t already, start prepping for interviews. “The Ultimate Interview Guide: 30 Prep Tips for Job Interview Success” provides solid advice for putting your best foot forward.

Day 30

You’re one month in. Now’s an appropriate time to assess how it’s going. Are you actively interviewing for several roles? If not, continue the networking activities outlined in days five through nine. In fact, even if you’re experiencing some success, don’t stop until you have that offer in hand.

One of the mistakes I made was taking my foot off the gas pedal when I was confident I was going to land a position. The role didn’t work out and since I had put all my eggs in one basket, I had to start back at square one.

Focus on completing the activity, and not just the outcome. Set a goal for the number of people to connect with each week and then follow through.

Day 60

Now’s another suitable time to take stock of how things are going. If you’re not having success, it may make sense broaden your search. Are there similar roles in a different industry? Are you open to moving to a new city? Is now the time to change your career path?

If you’re several months into your search and not making the kind of progress you’d like, you may start to lose confidence. This is why it’s critical to surround yourself with positive influences. Negativity is contagious, so avoid people who will bring you down. Seek out those who are uplifting and will bring out the best in you.

You can do this. Keep up with your daily practice. Keep networking. Keep applying for relevant job openings. Focus on the things you can control and ignore those you can’t.

My final piece of advice is to treat your job search like a full-time job. Show up each day, do the work, then wrap things up and start over the next day.

Losing your job is hard, and we all handle it in different ways. But by following the timeline shared above, you’ll be well on your way to landing on your feet. And hey, you might end up finding a job that’s even better than the one you had before.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is adapted with permission. 

More From The Muse:

• How To Bounce Back After You Lose Your Job (And Feel Like The World’s Ending) 
• 5 Career Lessons You Only Learned From Being Laid Off 
• 4 Surprising Lessons You Lost Your Job, Despite Working Your Tail Off 

Americans donated a combined $268 billion to charity in 2015. Subtract the huge gifts from millionaires and billionaires, though, and each household really contributes around $2,500. That’s lovely gesture, but not really change-the-world kind of coin, especially because it’s often spread out numerous pet causes.

So in February, the Centre For Effective Altruism, a philanthropy research group that advocates for cost efficient, evidence-backed interventions that help the most people per dollar spent, debuted its own fix for that problem: The Effective Altruism Funds. The EA Funds are comprised of four separate cause-related investment portfolios. The topics include global health and development, animal welfare, long-term future crises like extreme climate change, nuclear war, pandemics, and particularly unforeseen AI complications, and effective altruism community building (to research and fund similar programs.)

Because they have large amounts to donate the funds’ managers can have direct conversations with cause groups, figuring out exactly what their wants and needs may be. When money gets doled out in a large grant, it’s often more impactful, a windfall that lets groups plan for bigger, catalyzing real change.

The group has yet to disclose how much it has collected for continuing EA work or how it will be used. At the same time, previous investments–like the organization’s Giving What We Can pledge to commit 10% of your annual income toward EA-related charities–may help the new venture gain traction. Since that effort started in 2009, more than 2,500 people have signed up, generating an estimated $59 million in donations. That pledge group is now recommending giving to EA Funds.

To avoid diluting its own impact, CEA kept the offerings intentionally narrow. For those who can’t decide what to put in each bucket, it’s done some math. The default settings on its online giving platform are 45% to global health and development, 20% a piece to animal welfare and future issues, and 15% to the EA community.

Each fund is managed by a representative from GiveWell or the Philanthropy Project, two nonprofit charity evaluators in the space, both of which have public track records about what groups they’ve recommended in the past and why. So far, however, the distribution approach of each fund has varied widely.

For health and development, Elie Hassenfeld, the cofounder and coexecutive director of GiveWell, is currently not using the pool-for-impact strategy but rather distributing all money coming in directly to the Against Malaria Foundation, which is in need of constant and perpetual funding to do things like distribute insecticide-treated bed nets in sub-Saharan Africa.

For long-term future fixes, Nick Beckstead, another program officer at Open Philanthropy, fulfilled a request from the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative, which needed $50,000 for continuing research. Beckstead’s EA Fund has yet to raise that, so he used what he had in the coffers and searched out a partner. In this case, that was the EA Giving Group, a Donor Advised Fund that he co-manages in another joint venture separately. The new pooled-contribution EA Fund gave $14,800 while the like-minded DAF covered the difference.

Not surprisingly, many EA disciples are tech buffs. Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna both give heavily and have ties to GiveWell and Open Philanthropy. Many see this the effort as an open-sourced kind of philanthropy, documenting theories on what might attract donations and spur smart change while sharing data on any personal experiments that appear to be working. To that end, the EA Funds launch is more iteration than pure invention. As MacAskill notes, the concept was preceded by a novel donor lottery that pooled money among participants (winner-take-all, with public pressure to spend wisely) and the EA-based Donor Advised Fund that Beckstead, one of the new fund managers, was already involved with and sharing about openly.

In its search to optimize the process, there’s sure to be more tinkering. “Ultimately, it could even be that anyone in the EA community can run a fund, and there’s competition between fund managers where whoever makes the best grants gets more funding,” writes MacAskill.