Serenbe, a planned sustainable community, is a new village designed to help its residents gracefully age in place.

Fifteen years into an unplanned second career as a real-estate developer, Steve Nygren has timed his latest project perfectly. Nygren is the cofounder and developer of Serenbe, a visionary New Urbanist community in Chattahoochee Hills, outside Atlanta. Since breaking ground in 2004, Serenbe has grown to include two villages of about 500 residents. Praised by urban planners, architects, and sustainability geeks alike, Serenbe is, by most accounts, a nice place to live. (You do have to be comfortable with a certain Truman Show vibe, though.) Homes, priced from $300,000 to more than $1 million, sell briskly. Now, with construction of Serenbe's third village—or "hamlet" in the local parlance—Nygren aims to make Serenbe a great place to grow old. And maybe a model for a new kind of retirement community.

The 70-year-old Nygren, who founded and spent 20 years running an Atlanta-based restaurant group, came to be a developer "by default," he says. After retiring early in the mid-1990s, he and his wife sold their big house in Atlanta, bought a farm, and opened a B&B on the city's outskirts. "I saw how the connection to nature changed us and our kids," he says. "It changed my value judgments about what's important." When he discovered a large parcel of undeveloped land a half hour south of Atlanta coming up for sale, he set in motion an ambitious plan to protect the land's distinctive rural and agricultural character, and to build something more sustainable—and soulful—than a typical suburban subdivision.

Existing zoning rules would have allowed one house per acre on the parcel, a surefire recipe for sprawl. Instead, Nygren rallied Chattahoochee Hills locals to support a zoning change, allowing him to cluster residential and commercial buildings much more closely, thereby consolidating roads and other infrastructure while preserving 70% of the land as woods, fields, and farmland. Nygren's vision for Serenbe was modeled on the English countryside, where high-density villages are surrounded by expansive rural spaces. "The big rule is that buildings can't follow the road out of town," Nygren says. "There is a hard edge to development."

Each of Serenbe's hamlets has a walkable commercial center built around a particular aspect of what Serenbe's marketing materials call "life well lived": art, food, wellness, and education. (The name Serenbe was coined by Steve's wife and cofounder, Marie. They say it means "serenity and being.") Arts-focused Selborne, population 265, has a downtown defined by the Serenbe Playhouse, art galleries, and frequent shows and concerts that bring in visitors and locals. The Grange hamlet, which has a focus on healthy food, offers farm-to-table living with a 25-acre organic farm (run by real farmers), a seasonal farmer's market, and a well-loved coffeehouse and locavore restaurant. Blueberry bushes and other edible landscaping line paths and sidewalks. Although homes are clustered—with front porches, not backyards, to encourage the social life of the 185 residents to spill out into shared public spaces—winding roads also allow 90% of residential units to back up to farmland.

Construction on Serenbe's third village, called Mado, began this summer. As the two previous Serenbe villages were pilots for then-new ideas about sustainability, land use, and intentional community, the third village, Mado will pilot a new model for "aging in place"—a hot topic among senior advocates and forward-thinking builders and developers. Here's why: The age 65-plus demographic in the U.S. will expand from 13% in 2010 to about 20% by 2030. Surveys by the AARP Policy Institute find that 89% of adults age 50-plus hoped to remain in their homes as they age; the percentage was even higher among people over age 65. If they can no longer live in their home, 85% of older adults would at least like to remain in their local community.

Mado will not be a retirement community, at least nothing resembling the socially isolating complexes your grandparents might have known. Rather, Nygren has envisioned it as an intentionally multigenerational village—an idea with precedents in Europe, but not so much here. Initially, at least, Mado's demographics will resemble the rest of Serenbe, which Nygren says is already pretty mixed. "It's like old towns used to be. There's every size house, which allows for age and economic diversity."

Mado (a Creek-Indian word for "things in balance") is built around the theme of health and wellness, which cuts across generations. When completed, it will offer 380 housing units. These will include townhomes, cottages, and larger houses—as well and 18 rentals in a loft-style building to appeal to millennials. Older residents will have additional housing options, though, each designed to accommodate their changing needs and to provide additional levels of support on the community level. Sixteen two-bedroom, single-story garden cottages will be earmarked for buyers 55 and over. These will incorporate universal-design features to accommodate aging in place—step-less entries, multiple-height kitchen work surfaces, and wider doors, staircases, and hallways than standard homes.

Throughout, integrated electronics will enable remote monitoring of residents' health and wellness through wearable devices, GPS, and sensors. The 55-plus cottages are grouped around a shared medicinal garden, private clubhouse, and accommodations for visiting friends and families.

Additional senior options include "green" efficiency units, an assisted-living option that allows residents to have their own bedroom/bathroom and privacy, while sharing a common kitchen, living areas, and a certified nursing assistant on staff. Finally, a long-term retirement home option will offer memory care and always-on caregivers for those who require a higher level of personalized care.

Most of Mado's amenities—including a Montessori school for kids ages 3 to 14, a community pool and fitness center, a yoga and Pilates studio—are designed for cross-generational appeal. Mado's commercial center will have 40,000 square feet with an emphasis on health and wellness services, Eastern and Western medical offices, and creative and professional businesses. With restaurants and other essential services rounding out the retail mix, most of a person's daily needs will be within walking distance of home or accessible by public transportation (which is still in the planning stages).

Visually and conceptually, Mado was strongly inspired by time Nygren time spent in Sweden. "They have great fun with shape and color," Nygren says. "Their design for seniors aims to keep the mind stimulated, the same as at the beginning of life with bright lights and colors." Nygren was also impressed with Scandinavians' communal commitment to building housing and infrastructure that allowed seniors to live comfortably in their communities as they age. Europe, where one in three citizens will be over age 65 by 2050, has led the way in multigenerational living experiments, including Vienna's Miss Sargfabrik village, and Germany's multigenerational neighborhood centers (mehrgenerationenhäuser), which combine elements of senior center, health clinic, preschool, and youth group. "It seems like a much healthier lifestyle," says Nygren.

Nygren also got valuable input from Serenbe residents with deep experience in medicine and the corporate world, who held regular weekly meeting at the Blue Eyed Daisy coffeehouse to share ideas on the health and lifestyle components needed for aging in place. "We had people from Emory Hospital, a woman who ran WebMD, an executive from Coke, a lawyer who's an expert on health records, someone from Kaiser Permanente in the Southeast—an array of people who came out and gave hours of their Saturday," says Nygren. "The community here is our most valuable resource."

Since breaking ground this summer, a third of Mado's more than 55 garden cottages—and more than 10 building lots—have been pre-sold. Nygren, again, seems ahead of the curve, well-positioned to enjoy the commercial, and personal benefits, of a new model for aging. "Serenbe is an open lab," says Nygren. "With Mado, we're investigating and trying to poke at the old models, and seeing if we can usher in new attitudes about living vitally in all ages. How can we keep doing the same thing and expect different results?"

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And six jobs that will grow, according to design leaders at Frog, Ideo, Artefact, Teague, and more.

Organ designers, chief drone experience designers, cybernetic director. Those are some of the fanciful new roles that could be created by the global design industry in the next few years.

But what about current design roles? How will they favor over the next 15 years? Will every company by 2030 have a chief design officer, or will they all go extinct? Should a generation of creatives who grew up worshipping Apple's Jonathan Ive put all their eggs in the industrial design basket?

We talked to a dozen design leaders and thinkers from companies such as Frog, Artefact, and Ideo to find out which design jobs could die out in the next 15 years, and which could grow. There's no empirical evidence behind these picks, so they shouldn't be taken too seriously. Still, they represent the informed opinions of people who get paid to think about the future.

Design Jobs That Will Die

UX Designers
User experience designers are among the most in-demand designers working today. So how could their jobs disappear? According to Teague designers Clint Rule, Eric Lawrence, Matt McElvogue, "UX design" has become too broad and muddled. "The design community has played fast and loose with the title 'UX designer,'" they write in an email. "From job posting to job posting and year to year, it jumps between disparate responsibilities, tools, and disciplines. Presently it seems to have settled on the title representing democratized design skills that produce friendly GUIs." In the future, they predict that UX design will divide into more specialized fields. "The expanding domain of user experience and its myriad disciplines will push the title 'UX designer' to a breaking point, unbundling its responsibilities to the appropriate specialists," they say.

Visual Designers
Visual designers are the ones responsible for the way an app looks. UX designers, meanwhile, are the ones who concentrate on how it feels. A lot of times, designers do both, but going forward, jobs that require just visual design skills are going to die out. That's according to Charles Fulford, Executive Creative Director of Elephant, the San Francisco-based, Apple-centric stealth arm of the digital agency Huge. "Gone are the days of UX dumping a ton of wireframes on visual designers," he says, as well as "the days of visual designers being clueless about usability." What are needed instead are designers who can not only come up with the look of an idea, but make it real, with actual programming and prototyping skills.

Rob Girling, cofounder of the design consultancy Artefact, agrees. "In the next 10 years, all visual design jobs will start to be augmented by algorithmic visual approaches," he says. After all, design companies are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to create previously impossible algorithmic designs, as well as crunch UX data on millions of users. "An AI-powered tool can automatically provide a designer with 100 variations of a layout, based on some high-level template, or style definition . . . We see early versions of these algorithmic procedurally generated tools already in use by game designers." For example, the 17 billion planet universe in the recent blockbuster video game No Man's Sky was largely generated algorithmically.

The short version? If you're a visual designer, it's time to diversify.

Design Researchers
"When ethnographic research was new in design, there were designers who specialized in research," explains Harry West, CEO of Frog. "The role of design researcher is now evolving to become a fundamental skill and practice for all types of designers. Today, for any design challenge, it is assumed that you first learn what the customer wants; every designer must know how to set up customer research and learn from the source." Consequently, no one needs a dedicated design researcher anymore. "The role is so fundamental that every designer should know how to do it," says West.

John Rousseau, executive director at Artefact, puts a finer point on it: New technologies like machine learning and virtual reality are killing design research. "Design research as we know it may cease to exist—at least in terms of the types of ethnographic field work we do today," he says. "Research—-and researchers—-will likely be marginalized by new forms of automated data and insight generation, compiled via remote sensing and delivered through technologies like virtual reality."

Traditional Industrial Designers
Most designers we asked predictably thought their own fields had rosy prospects. Not Markus Wierzoch, industrial design director at Artefact. He says that classically trained industrial designers who remain too attached to the "industrial" parts of their profession—in other words, overly focused on the sculptural look of a product—will become, in his words, "designosaurs."

"More than ever before, industrial design cannot exist in a vacuum," he writes. The issuer is that form no longer follows function and function only—software is also involved. That means industrial designers in the future will need to evolve to think about the total end-to-end user experience, a role Wierzoch calls the "post-industrial designer." (More on that below.)

Doreen Lorenzo, director of integrated design at UT Austin, also sees the role of the classically trained industrial designer dying off soon. "In the future, all designers will be hybrids," she says.

Chief Design Officers
"This is a trend as of late: to have an executive-level design figurehead," says Sheryl Cababa, associate design director, Artefact. But that role might—and should—die, because it's redundant. "Good design is, fundamentally, interdisciplinary, which means that in a company that is design-oriented, all executives will be design practitioners, and the chief design officer position will vanish as quickly as it came."

Tim Brown of Ideo agrees. "Business is moving from a long period where analytical skills were of extreme value in the search for efficiency, to one where creative and design skills will be essential to deal with complexity, volatility, and the requirements for constant innovation." Such an environment, Brown argues, will make chief design officers redundant, because "CEOs will need to be designers in order to be successful."

Design Jobs That Will Grow

Virtual Interaction Designers
Virtual and augmented reality is set to become a $150 billion industry by 2020, disrupting everything from health care to architecture. UT Austin's Doreen Lorenzo thinks that more user interface designers will start strapping themselves into Oculus Rifts and becoming VI designers. "As more and more products become completely virtual—from chatbots to 3D projections to immersive environments—we'll look to a new generation of virtual interaction designers to create experiences driven by conversation, gesture, and light," she writes.

Specialist Material Designers
Yvonne Lin of 4B Collective believes that in the near future, there will be a growing need for designers who can work in and across different types of materials. For example, she sees bamboo architects as being an up-and-coming design field, as the Western world embraces "the possibilities of a weight-bearing material that can grow three feet in 24 hours and can be bent, laminated, joined, and stripped," as Asia has.

She also says that designers who can sew will soon be in hot demand to create structural soft goods. What's a structural soft good? Think of the kind of things MIT's Neri Oxman designs, or wearables that are as much tech as textile: a blend of circuit boards and fabrics, like Google's Project Jacquard.

"Today, there is a skill and knowledge gap between the soft- and hard-good world. Very few people know how to work in both," she says. "The intelligent mixing of fabrics (for comfort) and plastics and metals (for structure and function) would have significant benefits for health care and sports products. As people live longer and as sports participation increases the demand for these more comfortable and higher performance products will increase." Maybe even tomorrow's Air McFlys.

Algorithmic/AI Design Specialists
Fifteen years down the road, few of the designers we spoke to were afraid that a robot or algorithm would take their jobs. Though "applied creativity is fundamentally hard to codify," as Artefact's Rob Girling says, artificial intelligence will create new design opportunities—so much so that Girling and other designers we spoke to think that AI and algorithms represent growing field.

"Human-centered design has expanded from the design of objects (industrial design) to the design of experiences (adding interaction design, visual design, and the design of spaces) and the next step will be the design of system behavior: the design of the algorithms that determine the behavior of automated or intelligent systems," argues Harry West at Frog.

For example, designing the algorithm that determines how an autonomous vehicle makes the right human-centered decisions in an unavoidable collision. "The challenge for the designers is to tie the coding of algorithms with the experiences they enable."

Post-Industrial Designers
"As every object becomes connected—from your couch to your fitness bracelet, the hospital room to your wallet—we need to think about connected experiences," says Artefact's Markus Wierzoch. "[These] offer much broader value propositions, which means we need to change the [design] processes used to define these objects beyond their immediate form and function."

Enter the postindustrial designer. Postindustrial designers will need to think of the total end-to-end user experience to build "tangible experiences that connect the physical and digital worlds," Wierzoch says.

For example, the designer of the future, charged with designing an electrical toothbrush, will need to make sure their toothbrush can connect to an app, give users brushing stats, as well as plug into the future smart home. It's just not enough to design something that cleans your teeth well anymore. "Someone has to be responsible to stitch complex experiences together," Argodesign's Mark Rolston says.

Design Strategists
Design researchers may find fewer opportunities in the next 15 years, but Artefact's John Rousseau thinks design strategists will be indispensable. "The importance of design strategy will grow," he says. "Future design strategists will need the ability to understand and model increasingly complex systems"—for example, social media networks or supply chains—"and will design new products and services in a volatile environment characterized by continuous disruption and a high degree of uncertainty." In other words, a future defined by political, social, business, and tech disruption that can happen overnight. In such a future, Rousseau says, design strategists will be like ballerinas, dancing their companies in and out of trouble. "It will be more of a dance, and less of a march."

Freelance Designers
Get used to working in your pajamas. According to Teague's Clint Rule, Eric Lawrence, and Matt McElvogue, the future of design is freelance. "Creative AI and global creative marketplaces will give individual designers on-demand access to skill sets previously only capable within large teams," they write. "The result is a surge in the specialization, efficacy, and independence of the designer." In their vision, freelancers won't just toil away in solitude, they'll form a "network of targeted micro-consultancies" that compete with more traditional firms.

Have something to say? Drop us a note at CoDTips@fastcompany.com.

[Illustrations: vasabii/iStock]

New research suggests troubling links between job dissatisfaction and physical and mental health troubles.

You know that saying, "This job may be hazardous to your health?" Those words, according to a recent study, might not solely apply to careers spent around toxic waste or malfunctioning equipment—they could very well describe any career that's leaving you unsatisfied.

Ohio State University (OSU) surveyed workers between 25 and 39 about both their job satisfaction and physical and mental health (building off a study from the '70s), and found that those who expressed lower levels of fulfillment in their career were more likely to also report issues like depression or sleep difficulty.

Maybe that's not too surprising: If you're not happy at work, your emotional well-being is bound to take a hit. But the results suggest that the effects may go further: Those with low satisfaction throughout their careers were also more likely to be diagnosed with emotional issues, the study says, and tend to worry excessively.

Even your physical health can take a toll: Unsatisfied workers were more likely to report back pain, for instance, and also claimed to become ill with greater regularity than respondents who said they were content in their career.

"The higher levels of mental health problems for those with low job satisfaction may be a precursor to future physical problems," Hui Zheng, a sociology professor at OSU and author of the study, said in a statement. "Increased anxiety and depression could lead to cardiovascular or other health problems that won't show up until they are older."

Though there's no way to predict or guarantee how you'll eventually feel about a given job, OSU's study should serve as a wakeup call for job seekers. Take a close look at an employer's workplace culture, whether you're reading reviews on Kununu or simply observing your surroundings when you come onsite for an interview. Do people seem happy to be working there? It's not a trivial question.

Of course, it also helps to have a short list of fields where workers love what they do. A recent survey conducted by Monster and social media analytics firm Brandwatch included just that, identifying which industries tended to employ people who love their jobs. Travel, education, and media all ranked highly—but location counts, too. According to the survey, workers in low-population states like Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota were more likely to express job satisfaction.

And if you're still worried about your job potentially affecting your mental health, we've got good news: Another study ranked numerous careers by their likeliness to safeguard your brain against Alzheimer's disease. They key element? Working closely with other people: Physicians, lawyers, and speech pathologists were among the highest-ranking roles.

This article originally appeared on Monster and is reprinted with permission.

Upending the interview process lets employers see beyond candidates' best behavior to see whether they are a good fit for the work.

Hiring is a lot like dating: Both parties are often on their best behavior during the interview process, and you often don't know if the candidate and company are a good match until several months later. Unfortunately that can cost an employer time and money.

More than half of voluntary turnover happens within a year of new hires' start dates, according to a study by Equifax, and replacing that person can cost as much as 60% of their annual salary, according to research from the Society for Human Resource Management.

These companies have found a better way to screen candidates to find those who are a good fit and who will stick around.

Holding Wine And Cheese Parties

Job candidates at the staffing company Creative Niche go through two rounds of interviews. If they're deemed to be a good fit, they're invited to the third and final step, a wine and cheese party with the staff. Going to the party is voluntary for current employees, but most attend, says CEO Mandy Gilbert. When it's done and the candidate leaves, the group gives the person a thumbs up or down. It has to be unanimous in order for the candidate to get a job offer.

The strategy has boosted the company's retention rate to 90%. "The idea came from having some bad cultural hires," Gilbert says. "I tend to be a quick mover, and I needed to slow down the pace and bring more insight and more perspective," she admits. "The wine and cheese party makes my team aligned and excited," she says.

Gilbert doesn't attend the party, she gives her team the final say. "Having the team hire is more powerful because they tend to have the bandwidth to spend enough time to get to the details of what motivates the candidate and how they handle stress."

As a recruiting firm, part of the hiring criteria is finding someone who can feel comfortable talking to others and digging deep, says Gilbert. "Being in this situation shows us if you're able to ask questions and have conversations with various people," she says. "We've had about 90% of candidates pass the wine and cheese party test, and we've also avoided making some bad hires."

Ditching Resumes

If you want to get a job at the tech firm Detroit Labs, don't send a resume. The company has candidates fill out a Getting to Know You (GTKY) document instead. The form has a variety of questions, ranging from personal information about hobbies to technical questions. For example, applicants are asked to share the titles of some books on their bookshelf or Kindle, the name of their favorite blogger, and the last new skill they learned. The answers are distributed to all current employees who are invited to share their thoughts.

"The GTKY is designed to replace the filler we often see in resumes with the kind of information we really want to use to determine if a candidate should come in for an in-person interview," says cofounder Nathan Hughes. "We hope they tell us if the candidate has the aptitude for the job, the motivation to succeed in our environment, and the willingness to put in the effort and energy during this early stage to tell us their story and get us interested."

The last question on the form is Hughes's favorite: "Fill in a question you really wanted me to ask, that question you most want to answer."

"We want the candidate to present to us a knock-it-out-of-the-park question that they have an amazing answer for," he says. "Sometimes people completely waste the opportunity with a 'Why should Labs hire you for this job? I'm the best!' submission," Hughes explains. "But other times people really open up and let us see something important and meaningful about themselves," he says. "It's probably the single most influential question overall."

Hughes has been using the form for the past five years and says he's found correlations between answers and culture fit. "We are able to see patterns in the answers, the ways certain candidates answer certain questions, and how that plays out in the job over time," he says. "We use that information to better assess and predict a candidate's potential."

Watching Outside Behavior

Job candidates at Zappos may not realize it, but part of the company's interview process happens outside of their corporate offices. If the applicant isn't local, Zappos sends a car to pick them up and take them from the airport to the company's Las Vegas headquarters. During the ride, the driver is watching and taking notes.

"One of our core values is to be humble, and another one is about family spirit, so if they aren't nice to the shuttle driver . . . it's in violation of those values," Hsieh said in an interview at a recent Wharton People Analytics Conference. It doesn't matter how well the interviews went, if the shuttle driver wasn't treated well, the person is not hired.

Using Hiring Auditions

Instead of vetting and interviewing job candidates one by one, software firm Menlo Innovations holds mass auditions that mimic the company's day-to-day operations, helping leaders find candidates who would be a good fit.

"Our staff spends their days working in pairs, with each pair collaborating on a distinct task, sharing a single computer," CEO Richard Sheridan wrote in an article for Inc.com. "So when applicants show up for our auditions, we pair them up and give each pair a single sheet of paper and a pencil."

The two are asked to work together to complete a task, but they're told that the goal is to make their partner look good enough to be invited back to the next step. "We want good kindergarten skills at Menlo, and we test for them from the very beginning," writes Sheridan. "An existing employee observes and takes notes on each pair while it collaborates on a task typical of the company's work. They look for specific evidence of authentic collaboration, confidence, and humility."

After the applicants leave, the staff share what they've observed. Three thumbs up gets you to the next stage; three thumbs down gets you a polite rejection. Menlo Innovations has boosted retention by giving candidates a trial run. "Customize your hiring process to test for cultural fit and give applicants a realistic sense of whether they'll be happy and effective working for you," writes Sheridan.

Knowing how to code can take you far, but it's not necessary in order to work in the sector.

Many years back, the battle cry began: Learn To Code! That call has only become louder since, with numerous bootcamps touting the idea that if you learn the basics of computer programming, you will almost certainly be guaranteed a sweet gig. Indeed, Bloomberg Businessweek devoted an entire issue to explaining precisely what code is.

It is true that learning how to code can take you far, although one skill does not necessarily ensure a healthy career. And as the call for programmers has increased, there has been a concomitant rise of services that offer platforms to automate coding skills. An early example was Geocities, which made it a cinch to set up a simple HTML website without knowing one word of code. Many successful professionals today do technical work even though they don't have a mathematical background.

Platforms As Grunt Workers

Heather Bryant, a young woman who lives in Los Angeles and works at the company Sodexo, does just this. Her official title is a "technical solutions director," and one of her primary roles is building apps. Bryant, however, has no background whatsoever in coding. In fact, she went to school for sports journalism.

Sodexo describes itself as a "contract management services provider." In laymen terms, that means they set up all the extraneous needs of a business—be they janitorial services, painting, catering, anything infrastructure related, etc. One of Sodexo's primary functions is creating applications that help project management. These apps help streamline how information is recorded and how it's presented to people on a team.

Bryant's job is to help build these applications. Her company uses a program called QuickBase, which is a platform for app building. It automates all the technical parts to make it possible for a layman to build at least a rudimentary business application. Before Bryant took up her role, Sodexo had outsourced app building. Her first role at Sodexo was in data entry, but one day she found herself playing around with an application that just wasn't working right. After a lot of trial and error on the QuickBase platform, "I was able to rebuild the application how I thought it should be built," she says.

At the time, it was a one-off project, but her boss was impressed that she was able to tackle it. She soon made building these B2B-specific apps her role at the company, since she enjoyed the process so much. The process of building with QuickBase is more visual than most app-building processes. Users create tables about the data they want to include in the applications, and then design the presentation of those figures. Bryant learned that this sort of building, using QuickBase, is something at which she excels. "People come to us with old processes," she says, "paper Excel-based processes. We transform those into applications." Her job isn't crafting code to build brand-new products; it's figuring out how to funnel functions and data into something that is more efficient.

Products Are Skills

Like QuickBase, Squarespace is another company that provides building platforms for people with non-technical backgrounds. It helps anyone build a pretty sleek-looking website. Extra-savvy users know enough code to personalize those websites.

But the company itself hires non-technical people to educate others on the platform and evangelize it. Mal Ward, for instance, works at Squarespace as a CustOps advisor. Her role is to work with customers who use the platform and teach them how to build sites using Squarespace's suite of tools for non-coders. Her role has her liaising with multiple internal departments; she helps the training team out using her knowledge of what customers have told her. Ward also works on customer webinars. The brunt of her job is really knowing the Squarespace platform—understanding how to use it to build a good-looking site—and showing others how to successfully perform this task. Her background is in musical theater.

"I came into Squarespace pretty much not knowing anything in the tech world," she says. At first, she admits, "it was scary." But she slowly got familiar enough with the program that she could lead others in using it.

Her colleague Paulina Vo works as a community team member at Squarespace. Like Ward, she has minimal formal coding background (she did self-teach herself "the bare minimum"). She started out similarly to Ward, working predominately as a support specialist, but is now a project lead for the community team, helping to create ways to formally instruct people to use the Squarespace platform. This means she helps create processes that help build the Squarespace community and bridge the gap between its technical site-building backend and users who aren't necessarily tech-savvy. This includes writing technical instructions, webinars, and others forms of content that help educate users. She isn't exactly building Sqaurespace's backend, but the role does require expert knowledge of the product. It also requires a lot of collaboration with other, more technical departments to make sure everyone at Squarespace understands what the company is working on.

Squarespace's product relies on customers being able to use it without formal development skills. The company likes to hire people from varied backgrounds—read: not technical—to master the program, who can then make it even more intuitive for customers. Non-technical people who have learned the ins and outs of Squarespace are able to explain to others what is needed to make a good Squarespace site.

Working in tech has become a mainstream endeavor—anyone willing to learn a product can enter the workforce. More user-friendly platforms have opened up the tech industry's playing field. Of course, coding is and will continue to be an important skill. But as more people become adept at programs like Squarespace and QuickBase (and new platforms enter the fray every day), a new league of workers comes to life as tech experts who don't know code.

The decision to nix Trending's human editors has proven controversial in mere days—but Facebook has long put too much faith in automation.

When Facebook unceremoniously fired the team of human editors responsible for curating its Trending section, surely it didn't expect to be betrayed by its algorithm so quickly. Facebook laid off all the Trending curators on Friday, under the guise of wanting to reduce bias and "make the product more automated." The Trending team is being repopulated with engineers, who will oversee the algorithms charged with sussing out Trending content.

It took just two days for this approach to backfire: On Sunday, "Megyn Kelly" was trending on Facebook, supported by a story that said she was fired from Fox News and supported Hillary Clinton—news that turned out to be false.

This gaffe flies in the face of Facebook's claim that the process of choosing Trending topics has not actually changed. The Trending curators were tasked with writing descriptions and summaries for each topic; according to Facebook, the decision to automate Trending has eliminated only that step, tweaking the appearance of topics in the Trending module. Like the recently departed editorial team, the engineers who are now monitoring Trending have the ability to approve or dismiss topics—but that didn't prevent the news about Kelly from circulating, since an inaccurate post with enough traction would technically meet the criteria for being included in Trending.

As Facebook told CBS News:

We also want to share a bit more context on how it happened. A topic is eligible for Trending if it meets the criteria for being a real-world news event and there are a sufficient number of relevant articles and posts about that topic. Over the weekend, this topic met those conditions and the Trending review team accepted it thinking it was a real-world topic. We then re-reviewed the topic based on the likelihood that there were inaccuracies in the articles. We determined it was a hoax and it is no longer being shown in Trending. We're working to make our detection of hoax and satirical stories quicker and more accurate.

But it's not just accuracy that has taken a hit since Facebook restructured Trending. On Monday, the latest news about the EpiPen, for example, translated to just "Mylan" in the Trending module and only appeared in the Trending vertical dedicated to politics. An editor would have also added that Trending topic to the science vertical, a source with knowledge of the matter told Fast Company—but the algorithm on its own did not know to do this. That's why the Trending module has been more sparsely populated: Additional curators were usually assigned to verticals like science, to ensure there was enough content.

Still, the events of the past five days are unsurprising when you look at Facebook's trajectory over the last few months, after a Gizmodo article published in May alleged that the Trending section had been burying conservative news. Though a slew of publications had written about the Kelly incident, Facebook's own Trending fracas did not start trending until Tuesday night—and when it did, it was under the topic name "Megyn Kelly," a misleading description that does not mention Facebook unless you click into the topic.

If you've been watching Facebook's Trending topics for some time, you may have noted something that curators had noticed—and complained about—to the powers that be at Facebook: the increased presence of Trending spam. To fill the Trending module, curators had to draw from topics that were trending not on the internet, but specifically on Facebook. This was not the case prior to Gizmodo's story, a source told Fast Company—in fact, before the article was published, curators could introduce topics into Trending if there was major news that was not being talked about enough on Facebook or the internet as a whole. If a story was not being discussed much, the news sources included in the topic page would reflect that.

This explains why some of the topic pages include links from sites that you've never heard of or do not view as authoritative news sources. What it doesn't explain is why the "public posts" section of so many Trending topics are deluged with posts from spam accounts like "Cena Fan" and "Rihanna Fan Club."

Consider the results last week when I clicked on random trending topics related to, say, Lena Dunham or Alexa Vega. Every post I saw that appeared to be spam repeated the same text, almost verbatim, regardless of topic. And this was even before Facebook got rid of its human editors. As it turns out, the issue of spam is something the Trending curators repeatedly brought up with Facebook. The algorithms were responsible for choosing public posts for each Trending topic and additional news links; the only thing curators had a hand in was sifting through topics, writing the module topic descriptors, and putting together the story summary at the top of each topic page.

Curators, in fact, had no control over what showed up on the page, once users scrolled past the image up top—that was left to the whims and fancies of the omniscient algorithm. Any complaints about spam and questionable links fell on deaf ears, a source told us.

A Facebook representative declined to comment.

As Facebook has attempted to neutralize allegations of bias, it has doubled down on using algorithms to run the Trending section—and for what? Trending is even more muddled now than it was before, increasingly linking to irrelevant public posts. If users were not clicking on topic pages before, they certainly won't do so now, based on just a few cryptic words and a shrinking list of Trending topics.

"To be honest, I hadn't really clicked on too many trending topics within Facebook because I found they were usually hours or days old," On Base Marketing CEO and former SocialTimes editor Justin Lafferty told Fast Company. "When I did, it was rare I found what I really wanted: what my friends were saying about this topic. Others I've talked to in the past about Facebook's trending section reported similar issues. It just wasn't relevant enough to be something they explore regularly."

So what, then, is the future of Trending topics? Facebook could just ax the Trending section, rather than swallow its pride and hire back a team of editors. It's difficult to imagine a different course of action. As has been said before, relying entirely on an algorithm does not remove humans (or bias) from the equation—algorithms are created by humans and made smarter and more effective with human input. In the case of the Trending section, the proof is in the pudding.

Cook blasted an EU ruling that Apple used Irish subsidiaries to avoid billions in taxes, but his defense is only one side of the story.

Apple's business structure and tax practices in Europe were around long before Tim Cook became CEO. He didn't invent those things, but he's vigorously defending them. His arguments in media interviews sound compelling, but they present only one side of a hot-button issue that's easily relatable to the overarching wealth distribution and fair taxation themes of election cycles in both the U.S. and Europe this year.

The European Union, after a lengthy investigation, ruled Tuesday that Apple's use of Irish subsidiary companies to avoid paying taxes amounts to the tech giant receiving "illegal state aid" from Ireland. As a result, Apple may be required to pay around $14.5 billion in back taxes dating back to 2004.

Cook had a carefully worded—and, at times, sharply worded—open letter ready to publish when the judgment was officially announced. He opens the letter by describing Apple's history in Ireland dating back to 1980, when Steve Jobs set up the company's first factory there. Apple employed 60 people in Cork county then, and employs more than 6,000 there now, Cook says. He points out that Apple's Irish operations have helped create and sustain millions of app development, manufacturing, supplier, and small business jobs across Europe.

To get the other side of the argument I went to Matt Gardner, the director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (the research umbrella for Citizens for Tax Justice). The CTJ is nonpartisan and nonprofit, and it's funded by some of the same foundations that fund NPR. As it turns out, Gardner energetically disagrees with many of the statements in Cook's letter. Here are his responses to Cook's main points.

Cook: As our business has grown over the years, we have become the largest taxpayer in Ireland, the largest taxpayer in the United States, and the largest taxpayer in the world. Over the years, we received guidance from Irish tax authorities on how to comply correctly with Irish tax law—the same kind of guidance available to any company doing business there.

Gardner: We weren't in the room, so we can't know whether or not they [Apple] ever asked for a special deal. But it's hard to deny that they received one, in the sense that they're using an arcane legal structure that is simply not available to the many smaller businesses Apple competes with. When they say "the same kind of guidance" is "available to any company," they mean that in theory any company could choose to employ their highly paid accounting and legal teams to construct the same artificial, tax-motivated network of subsidiaries that Apple did. But this is ludicrous, since most small businesses simply don't have the resources to construct an elaborate tax-dodging scheme of this kind. It's like saying that anyone could go start a company to send a rocket to Mars, even though only Elon Musk actually did it.

Apple created a complicated web of subsidiaries to avoid taxes, and the Irish government allowed it. Both the company and the country were complicit in this agreement. The idea that Ireland gave Apple guidance on "how to comply correctly with Irish tax law" makes both parties sound less guilty than they are. A better characterization would be that Apple cooked up a tax-dodging scheme, and Ireland allowed it.

Cook: The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple's history in Europe, ignore Ireland's tax laws, and upend the international tax system in the process. The opinion issued on August 30 alleges that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on our taxes. This claim has no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals.

Gardner: The interesting question is the sequence of events. Like many of the most sophisticated tax-avoiding companies in the world, they pushed the limits of what the law would allow. They set up a set of subsidiaries whose purpose was almost entirely to avoid paying taxes. And they subsequently received a ruling that the setup was within Irish law. It's clear as day—and this was one of the findings of the 2013 Senate subcommittee—that there was no sensible business reason to set up those subsidiaries except to avoid paying taxes. It makes no difference that Ireland cheerfully agreed to it. It's still a tax dodge, just a state-sanctioned tax dodge.

Ireland and other tax havens have built their economic development strategies on encouraging companies to shelter their profits there, and then to take their cut. Ireland has made a choice to structure their tax laws in a way that facilitates tax avoidance and that attracts tax-avoiding companies.

Cook: We now find ourselves in the unusual position of being ordered to retroactively pay additional taxes to a government that says we don't owe them any more than we've already paid. The Commission's move is unprecedented and it has serious, wide-reaching implications. It is effectively proposing to replace Irish tax laws with a view of what the Commission thinks the law should have been.

Gardner: All the EU is saying is that Ireland's tax rate is 12.5% and wouldn't it be nice if Apple actually paid that tax rate. It's certainly not coming up with a new tax regime that's never been seen before. In order to have a level playing field among companies doing business in the European Union, all companies doing business in Ireland should be subject the same tax rate.

Cook: This would strike a devastating blow to the sovereignty of EU member states over their own tax matters, and to the principle of certainty of law in Europe. Ireland has said they plan to appeal the Commission's ruling and Apple will do the same. We are confident that the Commission's order will be reversed. At its root, the Commission's case is not about how much Apple pays in taxes. It is about which government collects the money.

Gardner: That's incredible for a couple of reasons. The first is that the commission's case is clearly about how little the company pays in taxes. The whole point is that they pay a phenomenally low rate tax rate—0.005 percent in 2015—on a very substantial amount of profits. This was the big revelation from the 2013 Senate subcommittee hearing: Apple constructed a subsidiary that was a tax resident of nowhere that would never have to pay any taxes. This is at the heart of what everyone is correctly saying Apple did wrong.

It's notable that there's no point in this [Cook's] very long letter where they discuss the question of tax rates. All they say is how many dollars they pay, abstracting away from their tax rate, and from the huge amounts that they avoid paying. They say they pay more taxes than any other company. This is certainly plausible, because few if any of the Fortune 500 can match their profits right now, but that doesn't mean they're paying anything resembling their fair share. The evidence is clear as day that they are paying one of the lowest effective tax rates in recorded history in Ireland right now. So the assertion that this isn't about how much they're paying is laughable.

Cook: Taxes for multinational companies are complex, yet a fundamental principle is recognized around the world: A company's profits should be taxed in the country where the value is created. Apple, Ireland, and the United States all agree on this principle. In Apple's case, nearly all of our research and development takes place in California, so the vast majority of our profits are taxed in the United States.

Gardner: It sounds like what they're saying is that these ought to be thought of as U.S. profits, which makes it hard to understand why they have been so eager to report these profits in Ireland up until now. As long as Apple can pretend their profits are being earned in Ireland they won't have to pay a dime in taxes on them.

It doesn't appear to be even remotely truthful based on the numbers they publish in their annual reports. Each year they report that the majority of their profits are earned outside the U.S., with roughly a third (on average, over the past five years) coming from the U.S. When you look at the 10K, the annual report for 2015, you see the company reports earnings of $72 billion worldwide, and just one third of those profits are attributed to the U.S. And yet Cook's statement says that the vast majority of their income is taxed in the U.S.

We think that is a very low estimate. It certainly appears that the company is shifting profits out of the U.S. and into tax havens overseas. So one of these things must not be true: Either the numbers presented to shareholders in their annual report are false, or Tim Cook's new statement that the majority of its profits are taxed in the U.S is false. They both can't be true.

Cook: European companies doing business in the U.S. are taxed according to the same principle. But the Commission is now calling to retroactively change those rules. Beyond the obvious targeting of Apple, the most profound and harmful effect of this ruling will be on investment and job creation in Europe. Using the Commission's theory, every company in Ireland and across Europe is suddenly at risk of being subjected to taxes under laws that never existed. Apple has long supported international tax reform with the objectives of simplicity and clarity.

Gardner: That bit made me laugh out loud. When the Senate's permanent subcommittee was describing the elaborate tax-avoidance techniques used by Apple, they had to use flowcharts to explain it. The incredible complexity and creativity in the Apple tax-avoidance scheme is almost admirable. But to say that they are interested in simplicity and clarity is laughable.

* * *

In the public policy arena we have seen two very different Tim Cooks this year. One stood up the the FBI and insisted on protecting the absolute sanctity of secure and private user data. He appeared as the frontman for a virtuous Apple. The other Cook is the person out defending Apple's version of corporate tax responsibility. That Cook is less admirable.

Instead of defaulting to what's become accepted behavior among the Fortune 500 to give more to shareholders and less to tax collectors, Apple should be actively working with governments to eliminate havens and loopholes and move toward fair and equitable tax policy. It should be in Washington negotiating the terms of the repatriation of its foreign profit stores back to the U.S. It should be setting an example for other multi-nationals by doing the right thing. That seems more in keeping with Apple's culture, and more like who we believe Tim Cook to be.

(You can read Cook's letter, "A Message to the Apple Community in Europe," in its entirety here. You can read the full judgment announcement by the European Union here.)

Amy Krouse Rosenthal's interactive Textbook uses smart bots to engage with readers in real time. A new tech lit is born.

Do you ever feel like your book and your phone are at odds with each other? You begin a new read, only to become distracted—by the ding of an email, a text notification, or the desire to Wikipedia something that piqued your interest in the very book you're reading. Before you know it, the book is abandoned in favor of the device.

Instead of attempting to write a book that would defeat the distractions of a smartphone, author Amy Krouse Rosenthal decided to make the two kiss and make up with her new memoir.

"I have this habit of doing interactive stuff," says the Chicago writer and filmmaker, whose previous projects have enticed readers to communicate via email, website, or in person, and before all that, a P.O. box. As she pondered a logical follow-up to her 2005 memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (which, among other prompts, offered readers a sample of her favorite perfume if they got in touch via her website), Rosenthal hit upon the concept of a textbook. The idea appealed to her, for its bibliographical elements and as a new way of conversing with her readers. And also, of course, because of the double meaning of the title. Textbook, which went on sale August 9, is a book readers can send texts to, and the book will text them back. "When I realized the wordplay opportunity, and that nobody had done that before, I loved it," Rosenthal says. "Most people would probably be reading with a phone in their hands anyway."

Rosenthal may be best known for the dozens of children's books she's published, but Encyclopedia was listed in Amazon's top 10 memoirs of the decade for its alphabetized musings gathered together under the premise, "I have not survived against all odds. I have not lived to tell. I have not witnessed the extraordinary. This is my story." Her writing often celebrates the serendipitous moment, the smallness of our world, the misheard sentence that was better than the real one—always in praise of the flashes of magic in our mundane lives. Textbook, Rosenthal says, is not a prequel or a sequel but "an equal" to Encyclopedia. It is organized by subject, and Rosenthal shares her favorite anagrams, admits a bias against people who sign emails with just their initials, and exhorts readers, next time they are at a party, to attempt to write a "group biography." It's as beautiful, thrilling, brief, sad, and quotidian as a sunset.

Rosenthal wrote the memoir with text-message prompts, "not knowing," she says, "if anybody in their right mind would say yes to it." But when she sent the book out to publishers, Rosenthal explains, "Pretty much everybody got it. Nobody said, 'We want to do this book but we don't want to do that texting thing.'"

After she signed with Dutton, Rosenthal's editors got in touch with OneReach, a Denver company that specializes in providing multichannel, conversational bot experiences, "This book is a great illustration of what we're going to see a lot more of in the future," says OneReach cofounder Robb Wilson. "It's conversational and has some basic AI components in it."

Rosenthal's initial vision, according to COO Daisy Weborg, involved a simple interaction based on three keywords. Once Rosenthal saw the possibilities, Weborg says, "It allowed her imagination to go wild to see how much more interactive and immersive the experience could be."

Textbook has nearly 20 interactive elements to it, some of which involve email or going to the book's website, but many are purely text-message-based. One example is a prompt to send in good thoughts, which Rosenthal will then print and send out in a bottle to sea. Another asks readers to text photos of a rainbow they are witnessing in real time. The rainbow and its location are then posted on the book's website in a live rainbow feed. And yet another puts out a call for suggestions for matching tattoos that at least one reader and Rosenthal will eventually get. Three weeks after its publication date, the book has received texts from over 600 readers.

Nearly anyone who has received a text from Walgreens saying a prescription is ready, gotten an appointment confirmation from a dentist, or even voted on American Idol has interacted with the type of technology OneReach handles. But behind the scenes of that technology were artistic quandaries that Rosenthal and the team had to solve or work around.

For instance, the reader has the option to pick and choose which prompts to engage with and in what order, which is not typically how text chains work. "Normally, with an automated text message you're in kind of a lineal format," says Justin Biel, who built Textbook's system and made sure that if you skipped the best-wishes text, for instance, and go right to the rainbow, you wouldn't get an error message. At one point Rosenthal and her assistant manually tried every possible permutation of text to confirm that there were no hitches jumping from one prompt to another.

Engineers also made lots of revisions so that the system felt like readers were having a realistic text conversation with a person, rather than a bot or someone who had obviously written out the messages ahead of time. "It's a fine line between robotic and poetic," Rosenthal says. She also made sure the system recognized common misspellings and smartphone overrides. In her world, for example, there are Amy Rentals, something akin to the Bat Signal, where if you send in a compelling enough idea, she promises to get on a plane and show up. Should your smartphone autocorrect your Amy Rental to, say, "Any Rental," you will not get an error message. But there are cases where the error message can't be avoided, and Rosenthal rewrote it to sound more human. "This was frickin' complex as hell, and we want people to think it's simple," she says.

Unlike your Instacart shopper whom you hope doesn't need to text to ask you about substitutions, Textbook readers will never receive a message alerting them to a new Rosenthal signing or a discount at Amazon. No promo or marketing messages, ever. "In a way, that's a betrayal," Wilson says. Texting, to him, is "a personal channel, and to try to use that channel for blatant reasons, I think, hurts you more than it helps you."

There were a few human elements Rosenthal would have liked to include in the texting interface that just weren't possible. She would have liked to slow down the rate of response, because her first readers felt that the lightning-fast reply was too robotic. "We designed our system to be super fast and scalable to handle things like the NFL," says Wilson. "That was an unusual request—to slow our system down."

Rosenthal also hoped it would be possible for the automated texts to arrive heralded by the blinking ellipsis that we see when someone else is typing. But no dice. However, it's not to say that this technology is not down the road: OneReach is already working with other clients that engage texting and literature.

For Rosenthal, to go from snail mail to email to texting was a natural artistic progression. "It would be easy to critique this and say, 'This is a gimmick.' And that's fair, but from where I sit, it makes sense historically for my work. It's whatever the 180 of a gimmick is for me."

When managers exercise positive psychology, employees and organizations benefit.

Every weekday, Cory Ludens starts his morning by writing out three "gratitudes"—each specific, and never repeated. Over the last four years, he has named roughly 400. "It's just a part of my life," says Ludens, vice president of culture and events at Mattress Firm, a Texas-based retailer. "It helps me to create a mind-set that I'm going to approach whatever challenges I'm faced with that day in a positive way."

Taking a few minutes to be intentional about gratitude may sound like a minor change in routine, but research suggests that "happiness habits" like the one that Ludens has adopted can have a positive impact on not just life satisfaction but also workplace engagement and productivity.

Employers like Accenture, eager to take advantage of that potential upside to such mindful practices as Luden's gratitude exercise, have started sponsoring online courses like Arianna Huffington's Thrive, developed by the Oprah Winfrey Network. More broadly, 60% of job seekers care most about whether the staff at a prospective employer feel appreciated versus 5% who care most about getting promoted fast, according to a recent survey from cloud consultancy Appirio. Happiness and vocation, it would seem, are intertwined.

Now, a new online learning program aims to turn those individual practices into management strategy. The Employee Engagement Bootcamp, developed by the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in collaboration with digital training provider CorpU, helps managers foster a "mindful" work environment. Over the course of three months, managers earn a certificate by completing modules on happiness at work, positive leadership, and talent management. Mattress Firm has been a CorpU customer for years, and many of its employees have completed versions of courses that evolved into this new bootcamp.

Step One: Know Thyself

"How do I call on my best self?" asks Melanie Barnett, chief executive education officer at Ross. "This isn't a strength-finder exercise necessarily," she explains, "it's more about the complex and integrated picture of you when you're doing well." Barnett says it's different for everyone and every situation. "It's an art as much as a science," she adds.

From there, the bootcamp layers in exercises and personal reflections based on research conducted by Harvard professor Shawn Achor, an expert on happiness at work, as well as Michigan professors Kim Cameron and Dave Ulrich, experts on positive leadership and finding purpose. By resetting your "awareness of events and potentialities within an environment," to use Achor's definition of mindfulness, you can "rewire" your brain.

Aside from the "three gratitudes" exercise, the bootcamp suggests that managers try a variety of mindfulness practices. For example, they can try meditating at their desk, journaling about a meaningful experience, or sending words of encouragement to friends or family.

"This is where you make it real," says Alan Todd, CorpU CEO. "What does this mean to me, and what am I going to do differently at work tomorrow?"

Step Two: Exercising Engagement

Over time, researchers say, managers who exhibit behaviors associated with greater mindfulness are more likely to find ways to engage with their employees. And when employees are engaged, they are more productive and less likely to quit.

Of course, engagement can prompt difficult conversations. Encouraging employees to feel a greater sense of purpose may lead to questions about a company's core values or how it operates. "This is for companies that are comfortable with the discomfort that comes from honest, open dialogue," Todd says. "If the company culture is closed or afraid, you're not going to get much out of this."

But Todd also argues that in our current era, where "software is eating the world," companies that want to succeed have no choice but to make themselves uncomfortable. "We're trying to help organizations go faster," Todd says. "Honest, open conversation is crucial because we don't have time to do it the old way."

As for Ludens, he says that the idea of happiness as a competitive advantage is now embedded in how Mattress Firm operates. "We start all of our meetings with verbal affirmations before we jump into the agenda," he says. In addition, Ludens tries to send one note of thanks to a team member every day. "We believe that if we can give people a purpose and a reason to love what they do, then they'll stay happy, engaged, motivated, and be productive at work."

The collective outcome of all that gratitude: an overall culture of collaboration and support, which has become essential as the company has grown through mergers and acquisitions. Plus, Ludens says, employees are more eager to learn in general, no matter how dry the topic.

If mindfulness and gratitude can make accounting exciting, the sky's the limit.

The government's National Eye Institute is committing $12.4 million to research technologies that can regenerate damaged neurons.

Neurons are for life, as are diseases and injuries that destroy them. That's the painful truth for people who lose their vision to diseases like macular degeneration or glaucoma, which destroy the retina—the image sensor of the eye—or the optic nerve that connects eyes to the brain. But some laws of human health were made to be broken, and that may soon be true for the law of irreversible nerve damage. The U.S. government's National Eye Institute said today that it will put up $12.4 million to fund six studies on technologies that can regenerate damaged eyes.

Blindness is curable in cases such as cataracts. Less than an hour of surgery can swap the eye's clouded-over lenses with clear synthetic replacements. Damage to the back of the eye, though, is generally forever. Among the causes are macular degeneration, which destroys the retina, especially in older people; and glaucoma, a buildup of fluid pressure that crushes the optic nerve. Rare genetic diseases like retinitis pigmentosa can also wipe out vision.

But unlike humans, some animals can regrow neurons and rebuild broken eyes. If researchers can coax the same process in humans, they might be able to reverse not only blindness but also diseases of the brain and other nerves. The NEI is funding research to do just that in three-year research projects at nearly a dozen institutions. Best-case scenario: These projects develop treatments for blind mice. Trials in humans would come later.

Vanderbilt University, for instance, is trying to coax support cells in the retina called Muller glia to transform into replacements for dead photoreceptors, the neurons that actually convert light into signals for the brain. This already happens in zebrafish, the poster child for animals that can regenerate nerves. Drugs and genetic manipulation might cause the same things to happen in our rodent cousins—and eventually in us.

Another project will try to solve the key problem with stem cell treatments. It's already possible to turn a stem cell into a replacement photoreceptor, but it doesn't connect to the rest of the eye. Johns Hopkins and University of Wisconsin researchers will experiment with molecules and genes that might coax these cells to wire themselves into the retina. Teams at Stanford, Harvard, and the Scripps Research Institute, meanwhile, will look for genes and proteins that regenerate the retinal ganglion cells' axons, the wires that form the optic nerve. All six projects are detailed on the NEI website.

"Understanding factors that mediate the regeneration of neurons and the growth of axons is crucial for the development of breakthrough therapies for blinding diseases," says NEI director Dr. Paul Sieving in a press release. "What we learn through these projects will have a health impact beyond vision."

At APF in the 1970s, as the second-known African-American video game engineer, he helped create an industry.

Thirty-seven years ago, New York-based APF Electronics, Inc. released The Imagination Machine, a hybrid video game console and personal computer designed to make a consumer's first experience with computing as painless and inexpensive as possible.

APF's playful computer (and its game console, the MP1000) never rivaled the impact of products from Apple or Atari, but they remain historically important because of the man who cocreated them: Ed Smith, one of the first African-American electronics engineers in the video game industry. During a time when black Americans struggled for social justice, Manhattan-based APF hired Smith to design the core element of its future electronics business.

What it took to get there, for both APF and Smith, is a story worth recounting—and one that, until now, has never been told in full.

Edward Lee Smith was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954. He grew up in Brownsville, an impoverished neighborhood within the borough. His parents moved there from Mississippi a few years prior, and they weren't alone. Between about 1910 and 1970, millions of black families like the Smiths fled north in a Great Migration, as historians now call it, to escape the terrors of the American South during the Jim Crow era.

What his parents found when they got to New York wasn't much more promising than the South: Government policies and widespread racism kept black residents concentrated in small areas of low opportunity and high poverty. Places like Brownsville were the result. The neighborhood had once been primarily occupied by Jews, but later became known as a black ghetto, replete with scenes of crime and misfortune that unfolded every day. It was in this environment that Ed Smith came of age, the third eldest of six brothers and sisters, in a public housing development called Nobel Drew Ali Plaza. His mother was a domestic, and his father, an Army veteran, drove trucks for a living.

Early on, Smith's father told the younger Smith not to expect any greater aspirations for himself. "Get your chauffeur's license so you can learn how to drive a truck," Smith recalls him saying, "because that's all you're ever going to do." And yet such expectations could not suppress Ed Smith's intense curiosity about how things worked. He began taking apart everything he could, and he soon taught himself to repair basic electrical gadgets like toasters and irons. Later, he moved on to radio receivers and TV sets. Smith's electronics skills came in handy as he began doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to help make ends meet for his family. At times, he largely provided for himself.

Through exposure to books and TV, Smith learned about the larger world outside of Brownsville. He devoured epic science fiction works and titles by black intellectuals such as Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and the works of W.E.B. Du Bois. As his knowledge of the world grew, Smith began to feel like Brownsville was his personal cage, holding him back from greater opportunities. He recalls the many times he sat at his window, watching the traffic on the busy four-lane street outside. "My only wish was to be sitting in one of those cars, driving down Eastern Parkway," he says. "Anywhere, any direction, I didn't care. I just didn't want to be there."

It was a tough life, but he tried his best to steer his own fate. At age 13, Smith recalls waking up to a commotion, his sisters and brothers crying. In another room, he found his mother on the floor, his father pummeling her with fierce blows. Smith tried to pull his dad off, but the elder Smith knocked him unconscious. When the teen came to, he grabbed a frying pan from the kitchen and knocked his father out. "I dragged him out of the house and locked the door," recalls Smith. "That was the last time my father ever came into our home."

1968: Creation And Chaos

In January 1968, two brothers named Albert and Philip Friedman, both veterans of the consumer electronics industry and Asian import specialists, founded a technology company named after their initials: APF Electronics, Inc. The new firm opened an office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan and got to work quickly, making deals to bring in the latest transistorized calculators and stereos from Japan.

Albert Friedman, the company's first president, then in his 60s, had previously worked for Olympic Radio, then later served as president of Delmonico International—the first company to import Sony products to the United States. His brother Philip grew up in prewar Japan, steeped in Asian culture, and had for decades been an essential liaison to U.S. firms that sought to do business with the Far East.

The pair hired other Delmonico veterans to fill out APF's initial team, including Seymour "Sy" Lipper, who took on a marketing role, and Irving Boilen, an electronics engineer that would serve as the head of their new engineering department.

On the broader American stage, 1968 marked a tumultuous low point in a decade that saw rapid social and technological change. While the Vietnam War weighed heavily on the nation's collective conscience, it was a domestic event that set the chaotic tone for the rest of the year: On April 4, James Earl Ray shot and killed Martin Luther King, Jr., as he stood on his motel balcony in Memphis.

The assassination of the U.S.'s most famous proponent of black rights triggered riots in many communities around the country, including Brownsville. The day after King was killed, 14-year-old Ed Smith sat on a street corner, watching in disgust. "I remember all of the looting going on around me," he recalls. "People were taking bricks and throwing them into white people's cars. It was mass rioting." The experience solidified his resolve: He was going to find a path out of the projects.

Smith's friends were skeptical of his passionate interest in electronics. "When they heard what I was doing, they would say, 'You would never understand that, a black guy can't do this kind of thing. It's not your world. They will laugh you out of the room,'" he says. The negative remarks only served as a challenge to Smith, who sought to prove them wrong.

During his last year of high school, Smith met his future wife, Sheila, and unexpectedly found himself becoming a father at age 18. The desire to provide for his family intensified Smith's drive, and after graduation, he started working full time doing electrical odd jobs like wiring security systems.

In 1972, Smith moved to Coney Island and landed a position at Brooklyn-based Marbelite, one of the nation's largest manufacturers of traffic signals. The job gave Smith his first taste of digital electronics technology, which would drive consumer electronics of the 1970s, '80s, and beyond.

Behind every traffic signal is a device called a traffic controller—a timer that keeps track of when to turn on and off certain lights. Prior to the 1970s, most controllers relied on electromechanical parts, but the boom in solid-state electronics saw the controllers become transistorized in the early 1970s. In 1971, Intel had introduced the first commercial single-chip microprocessor, launching a new era in electronics. Just as other industries scrambled to incorporate the new technology into their products, it wasn't long before Marbelite wanted to use the power of a microprocessor to control traffic signals.

To that end, Marbelite paid for Smith, who was then working as a technician, to attend local vocational classes on microprocessor-based circuit design. He learned to program the brand-new Fairchild F8 microprocessor (coincidentally the same chip used in the Fairchild Channel F, the first cartridge-based video game system in 1976). The classes brought big dividends to Smith, who soon leveraged the knowledge to get a taste of life in other parts of the Big Apple.

Of Calculators And Video Games

By 1972, APF Electronics had established itself as a leading manufacturer of desktop electronic calculators. In fact, the firm was doing so well that it contracted Sy Lipper's brother, Martin "Marty" Lipper, as a specialist to take the company public that November. Looking back, Marty (who joined APF full time as its CFO in 1973) emphasizes the role of calculators in the company's early success. "We built 70% of all the calculators ever sold at Sears in those days," he recalls. "The same goes for Montgomery Ward."

Calculators would carry APF's business forward until the next great revolution in consumer electronics came along: video games. Just as APF was going public in 1972, a young California company called Atari made waves nationwide with Pong, an arcade video game sensation that soon spawned dozens of shameless rip-off games and launched a wider arcade video game industry. Ironically, Pong itself was a shameless (but improved) rip-off of the first home video game system, the Magnavox Odyssey, which launched just a few months earlier.

In December 1975, Atari released the home console version of Pong through Sears under its Tele-Games label, and it proved wildly successful. Like it had done in the arcades, Pong as a home product inspired dozens of knock-offs, most of which were built using a custom "Pong-on-a-chip" integrated circuit created by General Instruments called the AY-3-8500. The mass production and general availability of this chip, and several follow-ups, made the engineering of dedicated "ball-and-paddle" consoles almost trivial affairs, with more work going into their plastic cases than into the electronics within.

In 1976, APF became one of dozens of firms that jumped headfirst into the home video game market, releasing its first Pong-like decidated console, the TV Fun. It was a sleek, compact, plastic cabinet with faux woodgrain and silver trim and two built-in rotary knobs that contained four built-in variations of the simple ball-and-paddle game. While the TV Fun utilized the same Pong-on-a-chip circuit that many other manufacturers used in their own clone consoles, APF's model quickly became one of the best selling on the market, moving 400,000 units within its first year—a stunning figure at the time.

Over the next two years, APF followed the first TV Fun with several improved models that added more games and a light gun, although sales dropped with each successive unit as the market became increasingly saturated with Pong-like consoles.

APF also found, as other companies did, that it became prohibitively risky to keep releasing new dedicated consoles—which often needed their own distinctive cases, circuitry, and marketing campaigns—to accommodate new types of video games. The solution to this problem first entered the market in 1976 with the Channel F, which was codesigned by an African-American engineer, Jerry Lawson. The Channel F approach allowed the sale of one universal console player device and many smaller, less expensive game cartridges that would add lasting appeal to the system.

An interchangeable, programmable approach to video games required the games to be written as software and run through a microprocessor—in other words, it meant designing a computerized video game system. From APF's point of view, creating such a console would require specialized expertise that few engineers at the company had developed. That led to the search for a new hire who could help design a new console that would lead APF into the next generation. Thanks to Marbelite, they would soon find their man.

Manhattan Bound

Ed Smith loved his job at Marbelite; it introduced him not only to new concepts in electronics, but also to a wider world. While attending his microprocessor classes, he visited Manhattan and took special notice of Wall Street brokers that projected a fancy, clean-cut look. "I definitely wanted to be that kind of person," he recalls. "Somebody who would be able to dress for success."

With that aim in mind, Smith signed up with an employment agency, and soon he landed a job interview with APF Electronics in midtown Manhattan. There he met Kenneth Boilen, the son of Irving Boilen and one of APF's chief engineers. After a brief greeting, Boilen introduced him to another engineer named Craig who sat Smith down at a table with a schematic and said, simply, "Build that," then left the room.

Smith found the task fairly simple; he completed the construction just after lunch. An hour later, Craig returned, surprised to see the task complete. "You're done?" he asked Smith in amazement, to which Smith replied that he had been finished for some time. Soon after, Craig reported to his superiors: "This guy knows what he's doing."

Just like that, Smith landed his dream job in buttoned-down Manhattan.

According to Marty Lipper, Smith's race never played a part during the hiring process at APF. "The man was an engineer, and he knew his business," he recalls. "When we interviewed him, he was a decent guy, and that's all I cared about." Still, it's a reflection of APF's culture that it chose, in the mid-1970s, to hire a black man who grew up in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of New York City to design the linchpin of its future electronics business.

When pressed, Lipper emphasizes the diversity of the company's workforce. He recounts an episode when he got a call from the Department of Labor, informing APF that it was being sued for being anti-Semitic. "I started laughing on the phone," he recalls. "And the one from the labor department says, 'Mr. Lipper, this is not a funny situation.'" Lipper went on to explain that APF's entire upper management team was Jewish. "I told them, 'We have 150 employees. Twenty-five percent or 30% have to be black. We have about 50 Chinese. We've got Middle Easterners, you name it. We're the League of Nations.'"

Both Marty Lipper, a Korean War vet, and his older brother Sy—the firm's president when Smith was hired—describe living lives steeped in diversity. Sy Lipper, who is now 90, grew up during the Great Depression in a poor Jewish ghetto in the Bronx. Later, he served in the European theater during World War II alongside a diverse cast of characters from all over the U.S., some of whose deep poverty meant that their government-issued combat boots were the first pair of shoes they ever wore. He also witnessed liberated Nazi concentration camps firsthand, and he says these experiences gave him a deep appreciation for the opportunities available to him in his home country—and of those denied to others. "I got to see what was going on elsewhere in the world, how people were living," recalls Sy. "I saw that what [my family] had was so much better, even though we had nothing."

Nine years his brother's junior, Marty Lipper recalls attending the first integrated high school in New York City, Morris High School, where he took classes with future Secretary of State Colin Powell, whom he knew well.

In the minds of APF's management, there was never a question of whether or not to hire a black man. Smith was fully qualified for the job. That's how he became not only APF's first microprocessor specialist, but also (after Fairchild's Jerry Lawson) the second known black engineer in the history of video games.

The MP1000 Story

At APF, Ed Smith "learned to translate binary code pretty fast," he remembers. "I learned the motto of any good engineer, which is "plug it in and let's see if it blows up." After getting established, he took the opportunity to go back to school part-time, studying computer science and marketing at Pace University. Three days out of the week, he would leave Brooklyn, go to work in midtown, leave for Pace in lower Manhattan, then come back home at night.

Around 1977, an engineering crew at APF, led by Kenneth Boilen, began work on the firm's first cartridge-based video game system. Ed Smith took the lead on designing the prototype for the console, drawing from a wide range of inspirations like the Apple I and TRS-80, but ultimately coming up with a unique design based on the Motorola 6800 microprocessor—an unusual CPU choice in the industry at the time, which was handed to him by his boss.

With contributions from APF's design team and engineers in Hong Kong, Smith developed the console's electronic design through numerous iterations over the course of six months. Meanwhile, the company's marketing department christened the new product the MP1000 (MP for "microprocessor").

What APF came up with was a small, black plastic video game unit with silver buttons and woodgrain trim. The MP1000's base doubled as a stand for two hard-wired hand controllers, each with a joystick, a large fire button, and a 12-button numeric keypad. The system generated blocky color graphics and contained one built-in game, Rocket Patrol.

Most importantly, the MP1000 also played games sold separately on removable cartridges, with each cartridge including multiple game variations that were selectable from an on-screen menu. After design was complete, Smith recalls his job as switching to play-tester for a time. He learned to complete every game on every difficultly level, and it became a mind-numbing chore before long.

The MP1000 launched commercially in mid-1978. It sold well initially, but received mixed reviews from the press. On the positive side, with the home video game industry being as new as it was at the time, there was still a general sense of wonder among the public that games could be played on a TV set at all, and thus the bar for game quality was relatively low. As such, not much public criticism was levied on the quality of the MP1000's individual games.

Meanwhile, Atari retained the industry's sales lead with its cartridge-based console, the VCS (later known as the Atari 2600) thanks to home ports of its hit arcade games. Through its coin-op division, Atari mastered the design of visceral, action-based gameplay that attracted players and kept them coming back for more, raising the bar on perceptions of home video game quality dramatically during the last few years of the 1970s. Notably, in the press, Atari's games stood out as individual cultural works worthy of review and attention separate from the VCS console itself.

In contrast, APF fared poorly in regard to game quality and innovation. At a time when Atari's games often featured tanks, jets, race cars, dragons, and haunted houses, APF's MP1000 offered low-energy games like Bowling, Backgammon, Hangman, and Tic-Tac-Toe. The few action games the MP1000 had often involved no more coordination than timing when to push the fire button to shoot a single spaceship flying slowly across the top of the screen.

Most of APF's games had been programmed by one man, a British expat named Harry Cox. According to the Lippers, APF could hardly spare the capital required to hire additional programmers. (The question of third-party game software, a business pioneered years later by Activision, did not enter their minds.)

Sy Lipper describes a huge culture clash between WW II-era upper management, who expected rigid nine-to-five schedules and clockwork production, and the new generation of laid-back baby boomers who they hired to write the software. Game development is an inherently artistic and creative process, and that proved difficult for many 1970s consumer electronics companies to grasp. Among the first batch of game console companies, Atari alone embraced the creative artistry of game design, and that fact above all others allowed the firm to dominate the industry.

Upon the launch of the MP1000, Ed Smith felt deep personal satisfaction from the completion of the project—the first commercial consumer product he had ever worked on. Thanks to nimble work by APF's sales team, the console was available through large merchandisers like Sears and Montgomery Ward.

One day, Smith visited a local Sears department store like a proud father, excited to see his progeny on the shelves. The trip quickly turned bittersweet as he beamed his pride to a salesman. "I said to the sales guy, 'I'm one of the guys that designed this,'" and he goes, 'Yeah, right.'"

Back in the lab, Smith was always conscious of how skin color limited opportunities for African-American kids in the projects, most of whom would never get a chance to play home video games because their parents couldn't (or wouldn't) buy a game console themselves. He saw an opportunity to help.

After the launch, APF began to stockpile spare and returned MP1000 consoles for demonstration and testing purposes. Roughly 300 consoles sat unused in the back of a closet at APF headquarters, ultimately destined for scrap. "Every other day I would take a console back home to the neighborhood and give it to someone in the projects that I lived in," recalls Smith, who lived in Flatbush. "So, when I was done, there were probably a good 50 people that I knew in the projects playing the MP1000." Smith, who considered his unsanctioned experiment not only a charitable exercise but part of play-testing, became impressed with the reaction he witnessed.

"They didn't know what to expect," says Smith, "But once they got it in front of them, it was all intuitive. They loved it. It was a chance to interact with someone else in the apartment versus going outside and doing something crazy. So a lot of times, people would play the video games for hours in the day, like they do today, and not be on the street."

The Imagination Machine

Around the time the MP1000 was in its planning stages, APF's head of engineering, Irving Boilen, spearheaded the firm's first personal computer project, the PeCos One (short for "Personal Computer One"). According to Sy Lipper, it was Boilen who chose to base the machine around an obscure defense contractor programming language called JOSS rather than BASIC, the industry standard. That one decision ensured the quick market death of the awkward computer upon its launch in 1978.

The failure of the PeCos One would not keep APF from trying again, however. The Apple II, launched in 1977, had proven there was a strong market for easy-to-use personal computers for consumers, and APF wanted in on it. Others did too. During the development of the MP1000, APF's management heard news of Mattel's upcoming Intellivision console, which the toy giant planned to later transform into a full-fledged personal computer using a separate keyboard. Hoping to get a jump on the competition, APF decided to pursue that path as well, using Smith's microprocessor-powered MP1000 as the core of a larger computer system.

The Imagination Machine debuted to the press at the 1979 Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago with the clever name thought up by Irving Boilen's son (and Kenneth's brother), Howard Boilen and another APF employee named Gary Sharp. APF's marketing materials emphasized the Imagination Machine's potential as a creative tool for music, art, language, education, and programming.

What the firm showed off at CES was a large off-white computer base unit with an integrated full-sized, full-stroke keyboard and a built-in cassette tape drive for data storage. The base unit and console would be mated via a J-shaped connector that plugged into the MP1000's cartridge port. With the two units combined, the Imagination Machine relied on the Motorola 6800 CPU in the MP1000 and added an additional 8K of RAM, making for 9K of memory in total.

The Imagination Machine, as a $599 personal computer, received very wide press coverage in magazines and newspapers across the U.S. at a time when a 16K Apple II Plus retailed for $1,195. Its playful logo, combined with its emphasis on ease-of-use and creativity, were attractive targets for journalists writing roundups of the first-ever wave of lower-cost, family-oriented "home computers" that arrived from manufacturers like Atari, Texas Instruments, and Commodore during the last few years of the 1970s.

To target the Imagination Machine at a home audience, APF decided to rely on traditional retail channels as it had with its calculators and video game products. But unlike the MP1000 alone, the Imagination Machine was a fully programmable microcomputer, which was inherently trickier to operate—and much harder to sell to a suite of retail executives who often possessed no technical background whatsoever.

To bridge this gap, Ed Smith's boss, Kenneth Boilen, approached Smith one day with an offer that would completely change his career trajectory. "We're going to change your role to a technical specialist," Smith recalls them saying. "And we want you to go to Sears and talk about the Imagination Machine."

Smith embraced the opportunity now laid out before him: "I threw on my suit and [grabbed] my briefcase, and I'm off to Chicago." During a large lunchtime sales call, Smith found himself in Sears Tower, then the tallest building in the world, pitching APF's new computer to Sears executives. "The sales person is there and he's hearing my pitch, and I'm talking about RAM and ROM and all of the inputs and outputs."

Smith breezed through the presentation, and at the end, the former resident of Brooklyn's poorest neighborhood, whose father had told him that he could expect no greater career than truck driver, stopped at a window and paused in a moment of triumph mixed with astonishment. Looking past his own reflection, he says, he saw the Chicago skyline and thought, "How far I have come."

APF Closes, Another Door Opens

The Sears meeting was one of the highlights of his career, Smith says, but it was only the beginning of a new era for him. Back at the office a couple weeks later, an APF sales rep approached Smith at his engineering drafting table and slapped him on the back. "Ed, you did so great," he said. "You just made me ten grand this month." Smith's jaw dropped. At the time, he earned about $20,000 a year.

"I got up from my drafting table, and I walked over to Howard Boilen, who was the VP of sales, and I said, 'Howard, if I'm going to pitch this, don't you think I should sell it?'" Boilen, pleased with Smith's performance at the Sears meeting, agreed, and Smith soon switched from engineering to sales. "I started selling the machines that I helped to build," says Smith.

Throughout 1980, Smith traveled the country showing off the Imagination Machine to executives at department stores and computer retail chains, with a string of optimistic successes. However, big-name retail support for the Imagination Machine could not make up for shortcomings in the computer's design.

Today, Smith recalls that APF's marketing department insisted on including a tape recorder with the system. The engineering team resisted, but marketing won out. APF's cassette-bound machine launched over a year after Apple had rocked the personal computer world with its low-cost Disk II drive, making slower, less reliable cassette drives commercially unattractive. And yet there it was, permanently built into each unit.

1980 passed with very modest sales of the MP1000 and the Imagination Machine, and in January 1981, Smith traveled to CES for the last time as an APF employee to demonstrate the Imagination Machine II, a remodeled unit with more memory and integrated MP1000 circuitry that looked nearly identical to the original except for a smooth surface on its top where the core console used to sit. Strangely, it retained the built-in cassette drive, but alongside the $399 base unit, APF pitched a complex "System III" constellation of peripherals and disk drive add-ons that upped the price of the machine to a far less appealing $1,195.

Such incremental, expensive improvements did not improve sales, and in the face of heavy competition from Apple, Atari, Commodore, and Texas Instruments, APF's PC failed to gain significant market share. Still, the company's management sought to keep going and try again. In fact, the Lipper brothers insist that sales of all its products were good enough to sustain the company into the future. "Nothing we did was a disappointment," says Marty Lipper with perhaps a hint of rosy glasses. "Everything we did worked out either good or excellent. We were making money, there was no problem."

The core reason for APF's downfall, according to Sy and Marty Lipper, centered on the skepticism of the two New York banks that held APF's lines of credit—the loans that APF relied on to fund production runs. Marty Lipper recalls the scene: "The banks said to me, 'You have three businesses, and we don't think there's any future in TV games because that's a fad. And this personal computer nonsense, there's no future for them. The public doesn't want or need them. But if you stay in the calculator business, we're not going to call the loans. We're happy with that business.'"

Sy and Marty Lipper refused to cave in to the banks' demands, knowing that calculators, which had become a low-priced commodity at that point, did not represent the future of the consumer electronics industry. "The banks could not understand the personal computer," says Sy Lipper. "Because as far as they were concerned, it was a toy, and the computer itself was in the hands of IBM."

In 1980, the market capitalization of Apple, one of the most successful personal computer companies up to that point, was still minuscule compared to IBM. It wasn't until August 1981 that IBM would release its Personal Computer and legitimize the market in the eyes of the banks. By then, it was too late for APF.

The Lippers warned their staff of an impending shutdown, giving them time to find new jobs, and making sure to pay the employees what they were due. "Ken Boilen, one of the best bosses and best friends I've ever had, was always honest and straightforward with me," says Smith. "He came to me and he said, 'You know, the company is not going to make it. We're not doing well with this thing, and I don't want you to get stuck here and be on unemployment and not take care of your family. You should go look for something else.'"

During a final tense meeting that Sy and Marty Lipper had with its credit lenders, bank officials threatened one last time: Leave the video game business or immediately repay your $7 million debt in full. Marty stood up, pulled the company's office keys from his pocket and set them on the table. He urged his brother to do the same, then said, "Here it is. The company is now yours."

APF Electronics effectively ceased operations in 1981 and never declared bankruptcy, although it took some years for the banks to fully wind it down.

"Being One Of The First To Do Anything Is Amazing"

When Ed Smith moved on from APF, he also left the video game field. "Frankly, had I the forethought to know the industry would become what it is today, I would have stayed the path," he says.

Still, his experience at APF stuck with him. "I learned to develop myself from an introverted bench guy to an extroverted corporate speaker," he explains. "I learned to take alternate paths when one seems to be clogged. Mostly, I learned to trust my abilities and to never think I was any less capable than anyone else."

After APF, Smith spent four years managing an Apple dealership in upstate New York. Then he worked at a computer dealer in Albany and helped expand a computer chain called The Computer Factory to a new location in Philadelphia. Another fresh start came when he signed on with PC networking pioneer Novell during its formative period.

At that point, like Smith, all of his brothers and sisters had established careers for themselves and escaped life in the projects. But over a decade after Smith had moved out, his mother still lived in public housing, among high crime and badly maintained facilities.

One day in the mid-1980s, he drove from New Jersey to Brownsville in a U-Haul moving truck. Neighborhood regulars looked on with skepticism as he stepped out and entered his mother's apartment. A few minutes later, he returned with armfuls of his mother's possessions and began loading the truck.

"Where are you taking her?" Smith recalls neighbors asking with incredulity. "I'm taking her out of here," he replied. As the rolling U-Haul door closed shut and he stepped into the cab, Smith heard someone say, "Whoa, he's actually doing it." He moved his mother to a apartment not far from where he lived in New Jersey, and two years later, he bought her a condo, freeing his family from the projects at last.

Today, Smith is still a successful tech salesman, although he is nearing retirement. He has been married to his high school sweetheart for 40 years and his kids are now grown with their own families.

A few decades removed from his work at APF, Smith has a new appreciation for what it meant. "Funny, when you are head-down doing the work, the last thing you think about is being an African-American," he says. "You're just another engineer doing his job. Once you have a chance to digest what you're able to accomplish, time passes by because you are head-down on the next thing."

In retrospect, he adds, "I can say with certainty that being one of the first to do anything is amazing. To be a man of color and a leader in the video game industry will be my legacy, and one that I am very proud of."

Team messaging platforms, social media, and even using your own devices at work all have the potential to kill your current job.

The big-ticket career gaffes are pretty well-known: Don't tell off your boss. Don't quit on the spot—especially if you don't have another job lined up. And try not to get too sloppy during office happy hour.

Fair enough. But what about the kinds of decisions that don't take place in the middle of your office—the stuff that happens on a screen, silently, in the pseudo-privacy of the digital sphere? Turns out there are just as many career killers you can fall prey to there, too. And sometimes the consequences of a misstep on social media or in your company's Slack channel take longer to unfold—which may make them trickier to avoid.

Here's what you need to know to avoid them.

1. Treating Group Chat Like A Text Message

Maybe your team uses Slack or another team messaging platform to stay connected in real time during the day. Equipped with GIFs and emoji, it probably feels a lot like texting, especially while you're just direct-messaging with a coworker one-on-one.

But be careful—you aren't just texting. "When there's something really important to discuss, it is always best to take a walk and hash it out in real life," Dan Teran, cofounder of the office management company Managed by Q, recently explained.

It makes sense why team messaging platforms often become a digital repository for the types of whispered side conversations frustrated employees used to have around the proverbial coffee machine. But they're fundamentally different. Even if your employer's platform isn't set up to let them snoop in on employees' direct messages, you should treat those the same way you'd treat group channels.

Says Teran's cofounder Saman Rahmanian, "Slack is a giant water cooler conversation that reflects your company's culture, so make sure not to say anything that you wouldn't be comfortable saying in real life."

After all, if a coworker later decides to share something you've typed out just for them, all they have to do is search for it or scroll up.

Read more:Best Practices From The Most Active Slack Users

2. That Totally Hilarious Tweet

You know those disclaimers people often add to their Twitter bios, like "Tweets reflect my own views, not my employer's"? Don't think that'll indemnify you. Recent history is littered with people who've lost their jobs over 140 ill-considered characters. Here's just one rueful roundup of employees in a range of positions who were kicked to the curb for indiscretions committed on Twitter—the internet is brimming with tales like these.

Sometimes the backlash is immediate. When a PR exec tweeted an insensitive joke in 2013 before boarding an international flight, she landed hours later to find tens of thousands of people calling for her head—and her job, which she ultimately lost (the New York Times recounted her experience of the months that followed). It might not be fair to judge someone's character on the basis of a single tweet, and plenty have argued that social media, and Twitter in particular, is disturbingly fertile ground for public-shaming rituals.

But fairly or not, it's a good bet that you will be judged on what you post to social media—even if not right away. Always assume that what goes online lives forever. Even if it's not the first thing Google coughs up when someone searches for your name, it can be found eventually—by a vengeful colleague looking to dig up dirt on you, a hiring manager doing due diligence, or even completely by accident.

"Old opinions expressed on social media become important in a new context," one unnamed Republican researcher told Time last year, amid a spate of campaign-staff purges due to incriminating, but not recent, tweets. "The challenge is then do you hire that person or not? All of it is subjective." You don't want to gamble your career on someone's future judgment call.

Read more:How To Use Social Media At Each Stage Of Your Career

3. Using Your Own Tech For Work

As remote work policies multiply, it's become common for people to use their own devices for work purposes—shooting off a work email from your smartphone or churning out that big quarterly report on your personal laptop. That flexibility often makes employees' lives easier, but there's still reason to think twice about eroding the border between personal tech and professional use.

"It's unlikely an employer would ever want access to your personal info in the normal course," technology attorney Mitzi Hill told Fast Company earlier this year, and it "might not have a right to page through your photos if you simply make work calls from the road." But the legal landscape on this question is far from settled, and that alone puts employees in a vulnerable position.

The reasons why—and the levels of actual risk involved—vary considerably, but most of the consequences are things few people think much about and so don't take precautions against. If, for instance, your employer gets hit with a lawsuit, any devices you use for work could be scoured. More common is if there's a data breach at your company (or if it has reason to fear one), your employer may need to wipe your personal gadgets to protect valuable information assets—a provision that many companies are scrambling to write into "bring your own device" policies.

You may even be putting your earnings on the line by working from your personal laptop if, for instance, you're paid hourly and your employer—not too keen to pay you overtime—notices you keep logging in to polish off work emails at 11 p.m.

These situations may sound rare or marginal to most employees' working lives, but as corporate cybersecurity concerns grow (which they are—and fast), personal device use is likely to quietly become a more perilous activity.

And like many of the most jeopardizing digital choices you can make on the job, it's one you probably do unthinkingly. So why not give it some thought now, before the future you has reason to regret that you didn't?

Read more:The Privacy Issues You Should (And Shouldn't) Worry About With BYOD

The average person's attention span is now less than that of a goldfish's. Stop the onslaught and regain your focus.

We like to know what's going on. Eighty-seven percent of respondents to a December 2014 Pew Internet and American Life survey said that the internet and mobile phones help them learn new things, and 72% like having access to so much information.

But the information onslaught comes at a price, experts say. Information overload—trying to take in and respond to too much information—can cause forgetfulness, fatigue, and difficulty with focus, says psychologist and attention expert Lucy Jo Palladino, PhD, author of Find Your Focus Zone: An Effective New Plan to Defeat Distraction and Overload.

"We can listen to all of these motivational gurus who tell us we have unlimited potential, but the brain is a physical structure. It runs on biochemicals called neurotransmitters," she says. When those neurotransmitters are depleted because we overextend them, we run out of fuel.

Experts like Joe Robinson, founder of Optimal Performance Strategies, a work/life balance and performance consultancy, and author of Don't Miss Your Life: Find More Joy and Fulfillment Now, agree those outcomes are real, along with increased stress and anxiety from trying to process too much information. He also points to a Microsoft Canada report that finds human attention span has shrunk to eight seconds—a second less than a goldfish's attention span.

So, how do we keep our information intake at manageable levels to guard against these ill effects? A combination of awareness, vigilance, and a few good tools can help.

Adjust Your Focus

It's a myth that we're at the mercy of an unending onslaught of information. Actually, we make choices about where we direct our attention every day, says neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, PhD, a psychology professor at McGill University. Sometimes, we just need to be more selective about where our attention goes.

Take a week and log how you spend your time. You'll likely be surprised at how much time you're spending on certain tasks. Look at areas where you can cut back on unnecessary information intake, such as excessive social media, email, or other digital information intake. You don't need to read every political diatribe, watch every cat video, and know what Game of Thrones character you are.

Be Your Own Gatekeeper

Turning off the faucet of information requires deciding those things to which you will—and won't—pay attention at any given time. Time blocking can help, allowing you to focus on like tasks for periods of time without interruption, Robinson says.

Palladino recommends giving certain tasks a time limit, especially those like doing online research, which have a high risk of dragging you down the distraction rabbit hole. Use a timer to ensure you don't veer too far off track. Tools like Freedom can also be helpful in blocking sites that are particularly tempting or addictive, she says.

Levitin uses Google Alerts for various subject areas in which he's interested, so he can keep on top of the latest news in his areas of interest without having to seek out the stories on various websites. That helps reduce unnecessary information intake. But it's not all business—he also keeps on top of his favorite musicians' news and other personal interests, as well.

Vet Your Sources

Another obstacle to those who wish to remain well-informed while cutting back on unnecessary information is the proliferation of sources filled with rumors, half-truths, and pseudoscience. Levitin says the internet has led to a Faustian bargain where we have limitless information, but we can't always be sure what's true, he says.

In his new book, A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age, Levitin makes the case for developing "infoliteracy"—understanding the hierarchies of source quality and bias that distort the information we take in—as a skill to guard against information overload. When we apply critical thinking to outrageous claims or unsubstantiated assertions, we can more quickly overlook or dismiss information that doesn't meet a basic credibility standard. This can reduce both the information overload as well as feelings of stress and anxiety that come from such bad information. At a minimum, look for stories, websites, and other media that cite their sources by name, use science and studies from well-known and respected entities, and provide balanced reporting on the topics that matter to you.

Retrain Your Contacts

Over the years, our communication styles have trained others in our response habits, so we may need to retrain peers, employers, and colleagues in order to lighten our information load, Levitin says. If you're someone who checks email every few minutes and responds immediately, you may feel as though you have to do so, but that's usually more pressure we're putting on ourselves than a real need for on-demand answers.

Draw boundaries with email correspondents about when and what you'll be reading. For example, you may advise them that you'll be checking email at specific times of the day and to expect responses then. If people are sending you extraneous information or communicating too frequently, you can gently explain or remind them that you're trying to cut down on email volume. You don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but many people can relate to the need to cut down on email, he adds.

Limit Unnecessary Interruptions

When we don't put boundaries on interruptions, especially the ones that take us away from more important tasks, we may eventually have trouble controlling our impulses and allow other addictive behaviors to flourish, Levitin says.

One big offender is push notifications—beeps, vibrations, and other advisories that let us know when a new email, text, or other communication has arrived—that further add to our compulsion to take in too much information, Robinson says. "You get to the place where you can't regulate your impulses, not just with their habit of checking messages, but for any habit they have, whether it's Sara Lee or Jim Beam," he adds.

Stop Trying To Multitask

Most multitasking is bad for you. It's not possible to perform two functions that require cognitive thought at the same time and do them both well, Levitin says. Distractions and multitasking reduce productivity, increase mistakes, and contribute to information overload. So, stop.

Take Breaks

It may feel like a 15-minute break will put you 30 minutes behind, but taking a real break—stopping to eat lunch, going for a walk, or otherwise getting away from your desk to recharge—can increase your productivity, Levitin says.

The good news is that you can retrain yourself to be more selective about information intake and regain your focus. Resist the temptation to read everything that crosses your screen immediately, set some boundaries, and take back control to improve everything from your memory to your mood.

A job interview isn't always the best venue for uncovering signs of bad management, but asking these questions can help.

People typically leave their jobs for three reasons: they were offered a better one, they don't see a growth path, or they don't like their bosses. As a recruiter, I see all of these scenarios play out, but boss troubles are the most common by far—and they don't always stem from employees' direct supervisors. Sometimes it's your boss's bad boss who sets the tone for everybody, a problem that can be harder to detect as an outsider.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to find signs of faulty leadership even within the formal ritual of a job interview. And it all comes down to being prepared for the wrap-up portion where it's your turn to ask the questions. Here are a few you may want to keep up your sleeve, whether you're meeting with other team members (people you'll work with), higher-level execs (your prospective boss's boss), or the hiring manager for the role (your own soon-to-be boss).

1. How Are Organizational Decisions Made?

Warning sign to listen for: Organizational changes are made without managerial input.

I know a CEO who decided that engineering recruiting wasn't happening quickly enough, so he moved all the recruiters into his office and had the whole team report to him. The entire team quit, as did the managers who only found out about the change after it had been announced. By asking this question, you can get some insight into the chain of command and how well it's abided by—including the part of it that reaches above your own prospective boss's head.

2. How Do Executives Interact With The Rest Of The Staff?

Warning sign to listen for: Executives micromanage direct or indirect reports.

Micromanagement is utterly miserable and demotivating for employees at any level. Too many mangers leer over employees' shoulders, forcing them to spend more time defending and reporting on their actions than actually doing their jobs. Sometimes even mid-level managers can't do much to curb overzealous execs (their bosses), causing an unwelcome trickle-down effect. Asking to hear how a hiring manager would describe the company's executive management style can help you spot this red flag.

3. How Often Do Execs And Managers Meet?

Warning sign to listen for: Other managers get ignored by top brass.

The opposite of micromanagement is total avoidance. I knew one large company SVP who spent literally five minutes with the CEO during her first six months on the job. The CEO considered her role to be so unimportant that he denied her many meeting requests—until the meeting involved firing her. Sometimes the best way to see signs of this problem is to ask about the typical cadence of meetings between team leaders and their higher-ups—even if you won't personally be sitting at the table. What are these meetings like? And how often do they get cancelled?

4. How Long Have You Known The CEO And In What Capacity?

Warning sign to listen for: There's nepotism and personal patronage afoot.

Public and venture-backed businesses aren't supposed to be family businesses. No one can compete with the CEO's "brilliant" uncle, second wife, or childhood best friend. When underqualified friends and family are on the company payroll—run, don't walk. You may find that the CTO lacks an engineering degree, for instance, or that the well-paid executive coach lacks real coaching experience outside the company.

It's tough to be the outsider struggling to break into an inner circle sealed by blood or personal loyalty. So don't hesitate to ask your interviewer how they first found out about the company and in what capacity they've known the CEO. You can also ask about vendors, especially coaches. Do some research to make sure any friends and family are qualified.

5. Remind Me Once More Which Qualities You Need Most For This Role

Warning sign to listen for: The manager wants a buddy, not a partner.

Beyond a kickass engineer, marketer, product manager, program manager, business analyst, or recruiter, what else does the hiring manager want? A drinking companion? A confidante? A yes-man or -woman? A bad cop? Adult supervision?

Ask the hiring manager to summarize the desired candidate's qualities one more time before wrapping up. Then ask any other team members you interview with the same question, as well as when and where they interact with the manager outside of work.

This isn't prying—it's a way to suss out an organization's culture. For example, maybe the only way into the manager's inner circle is to play on his soccer team. And hey, maybe you love soccer. But maybe you need to leave by 5 p.m. and have no time for soccer—which has nothing to do with how well you'll perform in your job anyway.

6. Does Your Manager Respond Well To Feedback?

Warning sign to listen for: Management won't admit when they've made a mistake or don't know what they're doing.

This question is best to save for any team members you speak with, but it can help you better understand a hiring manager's relationship to their own boss, too. No one is perfect, and first-time managers have especially steep learning curves. All the more so when the managers are young and have little professional experience in the first place. They're going to make mistakes—and this is fine. What's not fine at any age or experience level is a refusal to acknowledge those skill gaps and an unwillingness to learn.

7. What's The Culture Like Here During Really Intense Projects?

Warning sign to listen for: Management doesn't respect employees' personal lives.

If you're not looking to work 80-hour weeks, don't take the job where you have to travel internationally every other week or regularly call in for 3 a.m. conference calls. Researching work-life balance is common sense. Being able to find out about it without looking like a lightweight is the challenge.

So ask employees to describe the work culture both on a day-to-day basis and during intense projects. After the interview, head over to LinkedIn, Glassdoor, or a similar platform and find at least one previous employee and ask the same questions. Previous employees will obviously be the most honest.

Life's too short to be unhappy at work. Decide wisely—and to do that, ask the right questions.

Valerie Frederickson is founder and CEO of HR executive search firm Frederickson Pribula Li. Clients include Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Tesla, SoFi, Microsoft, HP, Genentech, and other technology leaders.

Most people you meet while networking aren't immediately useful to you, but they may work with people who are.

Usually, you go to a networking event, shake a few hands, hear other people's elevator pitches or career backstories, share your own, then leave with a fistful of business cards. The next day you look at them, mentally pin a few faces to a few names (but not all)—and still don't really know how to use that stack of cards to grow your business or advance your career.

That's because you probably aren't networking the right way. You already know it's not about simply collecting the most cards—that it's all about building strategic relationships. That isn't the trouble. It's that most of the potential relationships that seem to be on offer don't look all that strategic to you. But many (or at least more of them than you may think) can be if you're willing to shift your thinking a bit. Here's how.

Six (Or Even Just Two) Degrees Of Separation

The question you need to answer first is: Who do you want to build a relationship with? Many of us answer that too narrowly. If you're a business owner, you already know who your ideal client is, but chances are that multiple versions of your absolute ideal client aren't walking around every networking event you go to. You notice this, and leave feeling kind of dejected, having met only mediocre or dubiously useful connections.

But don't be so sure. In fact, it may be a mistake to seek out connections who meet your mental description of an ideal client, partner, or professional patron. Instead, find another professional who works with your ideal connection. It's that type of person who's usually easier to bump into and who can prove a surprisingly strategic alliance.

For example, as the owner of Media Maven, a PR agency, I work with small business owners to earn their brands media exposure. So while an attorney or a food distributor may not seem like useful prospects for me at first glance, they could be. A small-business attorney works with small business owners. In a meeting, the attorney's client could mention wanting a short video for his website. Because I established a relationship with that attorney, and possibly sent a client or two her way, she may return the favor and reference me as a local professional who excels in video production.

Likewise, food distributors work with restaurant owners, and if that's the niche I want to work with, a food distributor makes a great alliance for me. That food distributor may overhear a restaurant manager discussing the pros and cons of building a blog on the restaurant's new website. Because of the networking I've done with the food distributor, he knows he can mention me, and my blogging background, to his client.

These are just a couple of clear-cut examples. Real life can be messier, but if you think creatively you'll be able to spot more potential relationships where in the past you just saw people working in unrelated fields and of little use to you.

Just remember: While it's important to know what someone does, it's just as vital to know who that person works with. Here are a few good, straightforward questions to ask to determine if that person would make a strategic alliance:

• Who are your clients?
• What's your favorite kind of client to work with and why?
• What kind of clients do you wish you worked with more?
• How can I help you get more of those clients?

When you ask these questions, you get a feel for the other person's reach. This in turn gives you the chance to talk about your current and ideal clients or professional connections. So many people go into networking events wanting to make a sale or meet somebody with the direct ability to hire them.

But pinpointing just two or three connections with the potential to grow your own reach, even indirectly, will serve you a lot better than a handful of vague professional acquaintances you made while trying (and often failing) to directly fill a need of your own.

Putting Less-Obvious Connections To Good Use

Once you think you've found those strategic alliances, set up a meeting to discuss more specifics one on one. Instead of waiting to get home and go through all those business cards the next day, whip out your phone and schedule a lunch or coffee meeting right then and there. If you don't, life and work may prevent you from taking that next step.

The exact same rules apply whether you're looking to grow your business or push ahead in your career. While you may want to get in front of the head of a company or a hiring manager and wow them with your skills, you can't forget about someone who already has a relationship with the kind of person you're looking to connect with.

Most business development and career moves are built on a referral basis. And when you have a great working relationship with someone, you should be referring a variety of things—business, advice, recommendations—back and forth to one another. Not only does this increase your credibility, but it's a lot easier to have someone else sell you to someone they know than you sell yourself to a stranger.

Christina Nicholson is a former TV reporter and anchor who now owns and operates a full-service public relations firm, Media Maven. She recently launched "Master your PR," an online course that teaches small business owners and marketers how to handle public relations on their own.

Sometimes work-life balance takes getting your work-work balance right first.

If you're in your first or second job, chances are, your starting salary isn't exactly blowing up your bank account. Rather than live on Nutella and hand-me-downs forever, maybe you've decided to pick up a side-hustle—or maybe you're just thinking about it. Smart thinking, you go-getter, you.

Turns out that 43% of millennials are also freelancing, many of them burning the midnight oil in their off hours in order to make ends meet—and put more experience on their resumes.

Whether you're trying to break into the freelance scene for the first time, or if you're a few years into full-time work life, it's never easy to balance a 9-to-5 with extra work. But done right, you can earn serious side cash. Want to fit it all in without suffering major burnout? Take a look at these side-hustle strategies to help you work smart and boost your earning potential.

Prioritize The Breadwinner—But Value All Your Jobs

If your paychecks matter to you (which they do), then you'll want to think about what percentage of them are coming from where. That will help you determine whose work to prioritize.

"Personally, the full-time job came first," says Graeme Austen, founder of Cultivated Culture, a career advice website. "That's where my largest paycheck and my benefits were coming from, so I wanted to be absolutely sure everything was air tight on that front."

So, absolutely prioritize your 9-to-5, but, but if you take on freelance work, you've still got to deliver your A-game even if they're not paying the bulk of your salary. In the end, every gig adds up, and every contact could be a future or long-term employer.

Freelance In The Same Or Related Field As Your Full-Time Job

Austen recommends freelancing in the same industry as your full-time job because, well, let's face it: if you're going to be working outside of your regular job, you might as well be strengthening your skill set, right? If you're a videographer for an agency, maybe that means taking on a few video projects for clients of your own. If you're a graphic designer, you could help a small business create a more beautiful website.

On the other hand, if you're looking to change careers, Austen suggests trying to land freelance work in your desired field so you can get the experience you need. For example, if you want to break into copywriting, find a nonprofit that needs help with its website but may not have a budget for a more seasoned writer. "This experience could help you bring in quality, high-paying clients you want down the road," he says.

Get Your Freelance Work Done Early

When do you get your freelance work done if you can't do it during the day? Some people like to work at night or on weekends, but Sam Williamson, SEO Executive at Aims Media Glasgow, a digital media firm in Glasgow, Scotland, gets it done in the crack of dawn before heading off to his 9-to-5.

"This benefits me in two ways," he says. "It means that the freelance work isn't playing on my mind throughout the day while I'm trying to complete my main work, and it acts as a 'warm up' for me so I can hit the ground running with my main work."

Williamson's freelance work is similar to the work he does as a digital marketing manager for Aims Media, but "is far less formal, which is why [his] superiors have always allowed it."

If you're not a morning person (and let's face it, not many of us are), another way to manage your time is to allow a certain amount each day, with a few days off so you don't burn out. Maybe crank out your freelance work for two hours each day after work or before bed. Whatever works for you, just make sure it's something you can stick to.

Save Time by Automating Tasks

If your dream is to leave the 9-to-5 behind altogether and freelance full-time (a reality for many millennials), then you're going to have to start maximizing your minutes. Angie Nelson, who has been a freelancer since 2007, started out juggling a startup home business while working full time. (Today she's built a full-time career out of writing and blogging. Nelson suggests using automation tools to make the most of the time you spend working.

"There are so many great tools out there that can handle simple monotonous tasks," she says, citing Zapier, an online tool that lets you sync apps and automate tasks. For example, you can automatically save a new blog post to Dropbox, save an email contact to a Google Spreadsheet, or create Quickbooks invoices automatically using the online form website Wufoo.

"It may not sound like much, but those minutes add up," says Nelson. If you usually spend 10 minutes a week adding new contacts to your database, or 20 minutes filing or creating invoices, this could give you 30 minutes back—to enjoy your free time, or do more freelance work!

Avoid Burnout: Make Time For Something You Love

In your full-time job, you probably have vacation time that you can and should take. For your freelance gigs though, it's a bit trickier since you're likely working from a contract and don't have paid time off. If you're planning a big trip, just let your freelance clients know at least a month in advance that you're going to be unavailable, and be sure to get your work done on time before you go. But take that time, because all work and no play will lead to burnout before you know it.

Robin Smith, chief information officer for Hollidaysburg Area School District in Pennsylvania, also runs a freelance writing, editing and virtual assistant business. "When I do get time off," she says "I try to use the time doing things like traveling, doing something creative, something I enjoy. Even if it is just sitting down to read a book, it all fuels my creativity and passion to get back to work."

This article originally appeared on Monster and is reprinted with permission.

The company's machine-learning engines are providing tennis fans with real-time analytics of matches—including predictions of who will win.

Tennis fans watching the U.S. Open at home or in person this year will get some extra insights delivered by IBM's machine learning technologies.

"The way we're thinking about it is: the first time Watson's come to the U.S. Open," says IBM program manager John Kent.

IBM is using its cloud-based data-processing tools, including the Watson machine learning suite, to enhance its online videos by automatically generating everything from video captions to automated analyses of ongoing matches. During each match, IBM's online SlamTracker platform provides real-time scores and assessments, pulling in data from officials and on-court speed tracking radar to evaluate players' moves as they happen.

"We not only provide the real-time scores, but for each point, try to provide a little bit of insight as to what happened," Kent says. For example, the system can indicate on which areas of the court each player won the most points, how many feet each player moved over the course of a match, and which points were won by unforced error.

IBM has provided support to the U.S. Open for about 25 years, going back to when speed-tracking radar was new. It has introduced additional digital services as the tournament's online audience has grown and, recently, increasingly transitioned to mobile devices. This year, the company estimates that about 15 million viewers around the world will use the IBM-powered U.S. Open website and smartphone apps.

And since IBM, which provides technical services to all four of tennis's Grand Slam events, has years of historical data on individual players' performance, it can provide instant analyses around "pressure situations," offering the likelihood that, based on past performance, a player will, say, come back from a particular losing position. The numbers are all crunched using Apache Spark, an open source big-data processing engine hosted on IBM's Bluemix cloud platform.

After each match, players are able to use IBM's data to review their own performance.

"We provide the players with a USB key shortly after their match that has video of their match," Kent says. "Not just like a DVR kind-of version where they can fast-forward through their match [to specific moments], but we also index it to all the points and statistics."

At the same time, Watson's language-processing facilities take in highlight clips and player interviews from the tennis tournament, and automatically generate subtitles and transcripts for the U.S. Tennis Association to publish. This enables the USTA to generate accurate, Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant captions and transcripts faster than it could with a human doing it by hand. "The transcript goes into the publishing system," Kent says. "The USTA can make edits to that if they want."

Watson's visual recognition tools can also recognize players on the court and even celebrities in the stands to generate a searchable database of publishable photos, which spares the USTA's editorial team from having to toil away for hours indexing photos and searching for famous spectators. "That process used to be manual," Kent says. However, as with the audio processing, human staffers usually review the files before they are published. Any errors discovered can be used to train Watson to be more accurate in the future.

For fans watching the tournament live from the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, Watson's conversational tools will provide them with navigational and other information, including dining options and directions to Manhattan, available through a chat-like interface.

The U.S. Open marks the first time many of these Watson features are being used by IBM at a sports or entertainment event. But IBM (which also provides digital support for the other Grand Slam tournaments, the Masters Golf Tournament, and Broadway's Tony Awards) will likely soon be working on services for spectators in 2017.

This behavioral scientist harnessed the psychology of choice to grow his Twitter account from 85 to over 101,000 followers.

I opened my Twitter account a few years ago, but for a while I didn't have much to show for it. As of April 27, 2014, I had never posted a single tweet and had a mere 85 followers.

From a professional standpoint, that was a problem. I'm the head of a sales training and consulting firm that specializes in applying behavioral science—the study of how the human brain makes choices—to business and sales. I knew I needed to communicate better with more prospective clients, and I wondered what would happen if I applied my science background to boosting my social media reach.

So I decided to set myself up as a guinea pig. But from the outset, I made one rule: I'd never spend more than 15 minutes a day on Twitter. Instead, I'd have to use some behavioral science–backed strategies to produce the greatest results in the shortest amount of time.

What happened next amazed me. In just six months, I had over 42,000 followers, which continued to grow to more than 101,000 followers over the next year and a half. What's more, my interactions on Twitter also led to consulting engagements and media interviews and even helped me secure a great book deal.

As I began posting on Twitter, I used principles from what behavioral scientists refer to as "choice architecture." This concept basically says that people make choices contextually—never in a vacuum or strictly in the abstract. So by modifying the way a choice is presented, you can increase the likelihood that it'll be embraced. Here's how I put that principle into action.

Tweet What Others Find Valuable

The goal, of course, was to create productive interactions with people I wanted to connect with—pretty much the same objective of anybody who turns to Twitter to build their personal brands or professional networks. But in my case, I wanted to make use of these two powerful triggers of human behavior:

• Reciprocity. It's just what it sounds like—the social norm that affirms that you should repay others for what they've done for you.
• Social exchange theory. Ingrained within human relationships is a desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs. When these costs begin to exceed the benefits, the relationship will be cut off or minimized.

Both of these sound simple enough, right? The challenge was to make sure each interaction on Twitter followed both rules simultaneously—which was trickier than you might think. Twitter encourages impulsive, reactive content—tweets you just toss out quickly when something occurs to you. If you're only letting yourself book 15 minutes a day, that type of tweeting is a real waste of time.

Instead, I needed to focus on offering something genuinely valuable to the type of user who'd be valuable to have in my network or associated with my brand. So for me, this meant sharing sales and business tips, quotes, articles, and research studies—and avoiding anything else. This may seem to conflict with advice that's out there about being a sincere, well-rounded user with a range of interests and a clear personality.

But you don't need to turn into an automaton simply by not tweeting pictures of your dinner plate or live reactions to the Emmys. You can still be you—just the "you" that's passionate about the things that actually matter to your professional life and, more important still, to the other people you want to help boost it.

I found that this simple strategy improved the likelihood that those who saw what I tweeted as useful would reciprocate by interacting with me. And it kept anybody else, who didn't, at bay.

Choose, Then Nudge

Tweeting things that others value and not just what interests you is a smart move but will only take you so far. You'll also need to create a context that motivates others to connect with you. Here's how I did that.

I decided early on that I didn't just want passive followers; I wanted a lot of high-quality connections who could impact my business in a meaningful way. So rather than wait and see who would find me, I decided to choose those who I wanted to interact with and then nudge them in my direction. Again, intuitive enough, but not all that easy to do under daily time constraints. So I used this three-step process:

1. Identify. Pinpoint business leaders who were similar to me.
2. Analyze. Look at their most recently added followers to identify those I'd like to learn more about and interact with. This gave me a pool of potential new followers who I knew, first and foremost, were currently active on Twitter. What's more, it made their decision to follow me an easy one, because they'd clearly just shown an interest an account similar to my own. In other words, there was a proof of a pattern that they'd already established and recently acted on.
3. Connect. Go ahead and reach out to those who'd fulfilled the criteria of step 2.

If both of these ideas sound pretty basic—share content others value, and recruit new followers from recent followers of similar users' accounts—it's because they are. But very few of us know to use these tactics consistently or together, or appreciate the deep-seated psychological reasons why they're so effective.

The success of this approach surprised even me. But I found that many of the people I engaged with would engage right back (replying, favoriting, or retweeting) and, in most cases, ultimately decide to follow me. Strategically sharing content while choosing and nudging potential followers worked in harmony. Anytime you can use the basic science behind how people make choices, it's likely to pay off—even with minimal effort on your part.

The main upside, says one Buffer employee, isn't about early birds catching worms—it's about the power of choice.

I work for an incredible company, with teammates scattered around the globe. Most of us tend to work nine to five–ish hours, and up until a few months ago, I did, too. My schedule was pretty standard:

• Start work at 8 a.m.
• Lunch at 12:30 p.m., then head home to eat and put my three boys down for their nap
• Back at work for 1:30 p.m.
• Finish at 4:30 p.m.

But a few weeks ago, this all changed. I'm part of a three-person team, and recently we got the chance to build a new online product. But before we could begin, we first needed to complete a five-day design sprint to validate the idea.

The other guys on my team live in Europe (I'm just outside Toronto) so I woke up early for those five days so we could spend as much time as possible together. It was a stellar experience to have Zoom (a video-call tool) running for the entire day as we brainstormed, built prototypes, and gathered user feedback.

As the project advanced past the sprint, I no longer needed to be up early but felt an urge to keep doing it. I'd stumbled upon a remarkable discovery: I love starting work at 5 a.m.!

My New Daily Rhythm

Here's what my day looks like with this new schedule:

• Wake up at 4:30 a.m.
• Team sync at 5 a.m.
• Work until 11 a.m.
• Break from 11 a.m.–3 p.m.
• Work 3–4:30 p.m

The key part of this new rhythm is the middle section: From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., I'm free to do whatever I want! During this break, I typically hang out with my wife and kids until 1 p.m., put my two older boys down for their nap, then head to the gym for an hour. I'm back by around 2:30 p.m., at which time I grab a quick shower and meal, then jump back in to work. It's so trippy to take a four-hour midday break but still smash out a full day of work.

The other added benefit is how this schedule affects my evenings. I need to be sleeping by about 9:30 p.m. to feel fresh in the morning. Generally, I'm not doing anything super valuable late at night, so I find that most of my time awake is spent on activities that mean a lot to me (hanging out with my family and friends, fitness, reading, work).

Of course, I will stay up late if we have people over or if there's something I want to watch live on TV, but I'm usually in bed a little after 9 p.m.

The Power Of Choice

I'm aware that most people don't enjoy the same freedoms as I do at my company—the choice to work where and when I want. However, my newfound love for 4:30 a.m. wake-ups isn't just about when I start my day. Reflecting on why this new rhythm makes me feel so great, I realize that it's something deeper, something beneath the long midday break and the pride of waking up early: It's about the ability to choose.

In her book The Art of Choosing, Sheena Iyengar describes an experiment where people were given chips to use at a casino. They were presented with two options for where to use their chips:

1. At a roulette table with one wheel
2. At a roulette table with two wheels

All the wheels were identical. So which table did people prefer? The table with two wheels. Why? Because on that table, they could pick the wheel they wanted to play on, and that allowed them to feel more in control of their bets. This experiment illustrates what many people really want—to feel like they're in control of what they're doing.

I'm incredibly grateful to enjoy the same sort of privilege—the right to choose.

A version of this article originally appeared on Buffer. It is adapted and reprinted with permission.

August's top leadership stories may get you to take your to-do list analog and help you get noticed by a Google recruiter.

This month we learned how Patagonia recoups 91% of the cost of onsite child care, why an Industrial Age to-do list hack still has life in it, and why Google is thinking more creatively about hiring engineers than it used to.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership in August 2016:

1. I Hire Engineers At Google—Here's What I Look For (And Why)

Google recruiter Keawe Block says the company's methods for hiring tech talent have been getting more holistic. That's by design: "We're as interested in English or philosophy majors as we are in computer science degree holders. We don't really care if you have a 4.0 GPA, and we're not interested in whether you can figure out how many golf balls fit inside a 747."

2. This 100-Year-Old To-Do List Hack Works Like A Charm

Long before that nifty task-management app on your smartphone, an industrialist paid a hefty sum for this stupidly simple productivity method. A century later, it's still as useful as ever. Here's why and how it works.

3. Patagonia's CEO Explains How To Make Onsite Child Care Pay For Itself

Most corporate execs barely give a second thought to the idea of offering onsite child care to employees, imagining that it would be ludicrously expensive. But Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario points out that not only has the company been doing just that—sustainably—for years, it actually recoups more than 90% of the costs. This month she showed us the math.

4. 6 Things You're Doing That You'll Seriously Regret In 10 Years

One recent survey by a major insurance company found that nearly one-third of American adults regret at least one big decision in their lives. And harboring regrets, some experts say, may have long-term consequences. Here's a look at the some of the most common sources of regret and what to do about them.

5. Six Brain Hacks To Learn Anything Faster

Picking up new skills is crucial to your career but often takes time you don't have. But psychologists and brain scientists are understanding more about how we learn. This month we picked up a few research-backed tips for optimizing that process.

6. This Is Your Brain's Default Setting—Here's How And When To Change It

Is overconfidence always a bad thing? Scientifically speaking, it depends. There may be more than one psychological source of overconfidence, which researchers suspect may be our brains' way of saving us mental energy. This week we learned how to hack that system when we need to.

7. The Results Are In: Sports Reporting Is As Sexist As You've Always Suspected

According to Cambridge University researchers, sports reporters are more likely to call women athletes "girls" than to refer to their male counterparts as "boys." That may not surprise you, but it doesn't end there. Here's a close look at how gender bias pervades the vocabulary of sportscasts—including at the Rio Olympics.

8. This Is What It's Like To Work For A Marijuana Startup

Feeling like it's high time to quit your day job and get into the (legal) weed business? This month some leaders in the budding industry offer a stone-cold-sober look at life in cannabis tech.

9. Hiring Lessons From The Guy Who Recruited 9,000 Paid Staffers For The Olympics

From sheer volume and tight deadlines to local hiring quotas and diversity goals, Paul Modley had his work cut out for him when it came to staffing the 2012 London Olympics—work that began a full five years prior. Here's how he pulled it off and what he learned in the process.

10. Do Female Athletes Get Stiffed By The Sports Industry?

The Rio Olympics offered a brief moment of equality for women's athletics, which on average draw far less coverage and, subsequently, fewer fans and sponsorship dollars than men's teams do. Here's a look at the vicious industry circle in which the world's top female athletes are caught.