Trust and results are essential when you are making a play to work from home.

If you think working from home on Fridays sounds good, you're not alone. "Flexible work hours" is the most desired benefit among workers, with more than half of adult U.S. workers picking it as their top perk, according to the technology staffing firm Modis.

While 80% of companies offer flexible hours, just 44% advertise this to employees, according to a study by WorldatWork, the nonprofit human resources association. That means working from home on Fridays might be as simple as asking.

"When a company values an employee, managers are usually willing to have a conversation about working from home, and often are willing to work out some type of an agreement when feasible," says MaryAnne Hyland, professor of human resource management at the Robert B. Willumstad School of Business at Adelphi University.

The real issue is about trust, says Anna Conrad, founder of Impact Leadership Solutions, a Denver-based leadership development and consulting firm. "You are asking your manager to trust not only your willingness to stay focused and work, but your ability to work autonomously with little or no guidance," she says.

Preparation Is Key

Before you ask, Conrad suggests knowing how you will use your time and how you will provide evidence of the work you accomplished. "This is especially critical during the first month when trust is being established," she says. "Assure your manager you will be readily available when needed, just as if he wanted to stop by your cubicle."

You also have to prove that you can work autonomously. Consider your last performance review, suggests Conrad. "Was any of the feedback related to your inability to get things done with little or no guidance? Was any of it related to your inability to meet deadlines?" she asks. "If your answer to either of these is 'yes,' explain to your manager things you have done to prove this is no longer an issue."

You also need to make sure you have the required information technology tools and skills, says Wilma Jones, author of Is It Monday Already?! "High-speed internet and excellent telephone service are required at your home office," she says. "Working from Starbucks every Friday is not a sufficient arrangement. And make sure you have an Ethernet cable so you can hardwire into your router if your computer has a Wi-Fi issue," she cautions. "It happens. Be prepared."

Finally, think about your typical Friday schedule and identify how telecommuting might enhance it, says Jones. "For example, you have reports to complete, and working from home allows you to concentrate with fewer interruptions," she says. "Or you have a day full of conference calls, and you can focus without your cubicle neighbor's noise and distractions."

How And When To Ask

Timing is everything. "You can't just stand up on your desk one Friday afternoon and declare, 'From now on, I will work from home!' says Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich. "Everyone will think you're a weirdo, and building security will usher you out of the office," says Sethi.

The best time to ask is immediately after you've received a glowing performance review or had a business success, says Sethi, and approach the topic using the "ARMS" technique:

• Agree
• Reframe
• Make your case
• Shut up

Sethi suggests starting the conversation like this: "I'd love to provide even more value to the company in the future. But lately, I've been getting burnt out from the commute. It would make a world of difference if I could work from home a day or two each week."

If your manager says 'no,' adding that it isn't a perk the company offers, agree with what was said, and then reframe your request by turning it into an opportunity. For example: "I understand that Acme Co. hasn't done it in the past. But this could be a great opportunity for the company. If it works out, we can find candidates in other states for X role that we've had a hard time filling. And given my track record here, testing it out with me on a small scale is low risk. If it doesn't work out, we can always go back to the old way."

After you've made your case, shut up and wait, says Sethi. "The important thing to remember is that you're proving the concept for now. Once your boss agrees to this small request, and it works out well, they're more likely to agree to you working from home regularly," he says.

Strengthen Your Case

You can improve your odds of getting a 'yes' if you share research that shows employees who have flexible work arrangements are actually more productive than those who don't, adds Katina Sawyer, assistant professor of psychology and graduate programs in human resource development at Villanova University. "This may be because employees feel valued and trusted, or it may be because it allows employees to better multitask," she says.

Finally, do your homework to find out if there are other employees in your department that currently have approval to telework, says Jones. "If their situation is working well, accentuate how your arrangement would be similar or even better," she says. "If it's not going very well, contrast how you would handle your telework arrangement to ensure the same concerns will not exist with you."

When it's time to take leadership development into your own hands, here are six places to start.

Today's organizations have a leadership gap. According to Deloitte's "Global Human Capital Trends 2016" report, 89% of executives found the need to strengthen, reengineer, and improve organizational leadership. However, more than half (56%) said their organizations are not ready to meet leadership needs, and more than one in five companies (21%) have no leadership programs at all.

For those who are willing to take the initiative to develop themselves as leaders, this gap represents an opportunity, says leadership coach Karen Lawson, founder of Lawson Consulting Group, Inc.. Developing oneself as a leader takes time and effort, but can position you for more opportunities, she says.

Here are six essential components to put yourself on the track to become a more effective leader.

Assess Yourself

In order to know where you need to develop, you need to have a good sense of your strengths and weaknesses, says Sandra Peart, PhD, dean of the University of Richmond's Jepson School of Leadership Studies. Tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality inventory or DiSC personality assessment can give you clues about leadership qualities that are typical for your personality. Think about your daily interactions and where you're successful or where you struggle, she says. Those can be important indicators telling you where you excel and where you might need additional development.

In addition, you can check in with trusted colleagues and get feedback, Peart suggests. Sometimes, people in leadership roles are worried about not appearing in charge, so they don't ask questions, because doing so might be perceived as a sign of weakness. "Actually it can be a sign of strength—a sign of being confident enough to check in with yourself, and with others, to make sure that people are actually understanding," she says.

Find Your Leadership Style

Matt Fawcett was confident as he arrived at one of his first legal team meetings in Amsterdam as the new general counsel of data management and storage company NetApp. He had previously held a similar post at a different publicly traded company and thought his arrival would be met with "cheers and huzzahs."

But when one of the team members asserted that Fawcett didn't even know what they did, the rest of the meeting "went downhill from there," he says. Reflecting on the event afterward and how it could have gone differently, he remembered an aphorism someone once shared with him: "No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care," he says.

"I was focused on my intellect as being the thing that's going to persuade people to follow me, and I probably lacked a little bit of that humanity at first. I needed to really think about that," he says. Six years later, his department has doubled in size, and he successfully manages 70 people in 15 countries and 23 cities globally by treating his role as that of a coach and mentor, he says.

Get The Help You Need

If you're truly going to develop yourself as a leader, you're going to need the resources to do so. That means setting aside time and money to take classes, hire a coach, attend conferences, or do the other things you need to develop your skills, says Bonnie Hagemann, CEO of Executive Development Associates, Inc., a leadership coaching and development firm.

"We budget for everything we think is important—if we need a new car or a home improvement. Why not budget for leadership development?" she says.

But even if you're cash-strapped, leadership development is possible, Fawcett says. Leadership students can find a wealth of information online, including business courses from sources like Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) OpenCourseware to Coursera, which offers free online university courses, as well as podcasts, books, blogs, and other free resources. A good mentor can also do a world of good, she says.

Work On Your Presence

If you're trying to gain respect as a leader, you need to also think about how you present yourself, from the way you act to what you share on social media, Lawson says. Leadership presence is how others perceive you, and it's an important part of building your credibility. That doesn't mean that you suddenly need to show up to work in suits, but it's worth thinking about the impression you make and whether it's how you want others to perceive you, she says.

"[Leadership presence is] your blend of poise, self-confidence, control, and style, and it's all about creating this perception about your character, your abilities, and your worth to the organization as well as to colleagues," Lawson says. Look at the leaders you admire, think about why their styles resonate with you, and examine how they behave, manage, and motivate people around them to see if those styles hold clues you can use to improve your own leadership skills and approach.

Seek Out Different Types of People

Another way to build your leadership confidence is to surround yourself with people who are different than you, Peart says. Seek out those who have different viewpoints and strengths, which shows that you're confident enough in yourself and your abilities to work and interact with people who may hold different opinions and challenge you, she says.

Leaders often fail because they gravitate to others like them, which can insulate them from new ideas and innovation. She gives a simple example: Let's say you like to hire people who like sports. You might not think much of that habit, but if everyone has the same interests, you might be missing out.

"It might be that someone could come in who likes the symphony, and says, 'Well, actually, maybe we should do this instead,'" she says. "That's a new idea, and you never thought of it before, and it happens because you've put this interesting mix of people together."

Get To Know Your Moral Compass

One leadership area that's often overlooked is understanding our own moral compass, Peart says. You have to know what your values are and "where the lines are that I will not cross or the things I will not do," she says.

"Leaders get asked to do all sorts of things, and they have to sometimes do things on the fly, and move very quickly," she says. "It's important to have had some time with yourself, and talking to other people, reflecting on what your ethical priorities are, and making sure that you don't get pushed—without having time to think about it—over one of those lines." Understanding those lines can help you make the right decisions for you, regardless of the pressures around you.

Part-time gigs outside the tech industry are moving toward the higher end of the salary spectrum.

U.S. employees are demanding more part-time and flexible work, and employers are listening. Many, like Amazon, are among the more than half that reported investing in flexible work options this year, according to a 2015 Workplace Trends study.

But tech workers aren't the only ones who can score these lucrative, part-time gigs. FlexJobs, an online marketplace that connects freelancers and employers, recently identified 10 high-paying jobs for those seeking part-time work. While the hours are reduced, the salaries start at $50 an hour.

Those positions are:

1. Director of operations
2. Jazz music instructor
3. Curriculum writer
4. Dentist
5. Clinical pharmacist
6. Controller
7. Software engineer
8. Financial consultant
9. Government contracts attorney
10. Mobile developer

Each of these professional-level positions requires advanced experience or education, and would translate to six-figure salaries if the candidate was employed full time.

Other research by FlexJobs also demonstrated how the industries that offer the most freelance gigs are becoming more diverse. They now include computer and IT jobs, as well as administrative, accounting and finance, customer service, medicine and health, and education and training positions.

"Part-time work is sometimes associated with less professional, lower paying jobs, but, as this list indicates, that isn't necessarily true," wrote Sara Sutton Fell, founder and CEO of FlexJobs, in a statement. "The opportunities for high-paying part-time jobs span industries and positions, while still offering competitive salaries."

Part-time work has exploded in popularity in recent years, and employers in highly competitive recruiting environments have had to get more creative with the flexible working options they provide.

Amazon, for its part, recently announced a 30-hour workweek program, which will allow select employees to work 16 of those hours at the office (between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday) while making up the rest on their own schedule. These employees will still receive full-time benefits, but only 75% of the salary.

Though workers are demanding more flexible and part-time employment, however, there has been some question as to whether part-time gigs are providing them with more freedom, or demanding the same results in less time.

"The employee who gets five days of work done in four days shouldn't be punished for this, but rewarded," Douglas Rushkoff, author of Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, recently told Fast Company. "But that only works if management sees its employees as part of its company . . . You don't have to take the money away from them and deliver it to the shareholders," he says.

Such arrangements are also sometimes viewed as a symptom of the disappearance of stable, full-time employment, which has forced many to juggle a wide variety of side gigs to earn the equivalent of a full-time salary. A 2015 report by the Freelancers Union and online freelancing platform Upwork (FU/U) found that over one-third of U.S. workers (nearly 54 million) did some freelance work in the past year. That represents a growth of 700,000 more freelancers than the previous year.

"We're a generation that's used to juggling projects and interests, and when you graduate, 'part-time' is a great way to test the waters of different career paths," wrote Kelsey Manning in a post published by Fast Company in 2014. Manning explains that managing multiple gigs at once is often the only way to make ends meet in the new economy. "Full-time, full-salary jobs are difficult to come by and—have you heard?—we're in debt," she wrote, detailing how she spends her weeks balancing four part-time and freelance gigs.

The erosion of full-time employment opportunities has put many into a precarious career (and financial) position. As Contently revealed in its "State of Freelancing in 2015" report, median salaries were between $10,001 and $20,000 per year, with just over 19% earning over $50,000 in the past 12 months. If part-time flexible work opportunities on the higher end of the salary spectrum in a wider variety of industries continue to trend upwards, juggling multiple, low-paying gigs may become a thing of the past.

The once-unstoppable iPhone has suffered a decline in sales over the last two quarters. The new models could end that slump.

Over the last two quarters Apple suffered its first-ever downturn in iPhone sales, a trend that caused quite a stir in the financial community, where the groundbreaking device was seen as something of a perpetual out-performer. Some analysts said iPhone sales had peaked. Others predicted sales would be flat for the next four quarters.

But another theory also emerged: that iPhone sales were only at a lull, and that we could soon see the next "super cycle" of iPhone sales—perhaps starting in 2017.

With the introduction of new iPhones this week, Apple could actually be jumpstarting this super cycle of iPhone sales and upgrades. That's because it's introduced some key features in the iPhone 7, and because of its successful "iPhone Every Year" program.

One new feature that could be a big draw for upgraders is the dual-lens camera on the iPhone 7 Plus. When Apple introduced the first iPhone, it included a camera, and from that point on camera phones have had an impact on the point-and-shoot camera market. The most important camera in your life is the one you have with you when you need it, and more often than not, that's the one on your smartphone. Ever since Apple first introduced the iPhone, users hoped and expected its camera would get better and better every year.

Thankfully, Apple has continued to evolve the quality and capability of iPhone cameras, and the current 12-megapixel rear camera on the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are among the best in any smartphone today.

However, the iPhone 7 Plus, with its dual-lens camera with greater image quality and capabilities, is closer to a DSLR than a point-and-shoot camera. That could cause serious interest in the new iPhone 7 Plus among upgraders and new customers, and drive many to upgrade their iPhones in the next year.

Dual cameras that infringe on the DSLR camera market could be a game-changer for Apple (and DSLR camera vendors). It could force all premium smartphones in this direction. To be clear, this dual camera will not replace a DSLR for serious photographers. But it will give those who upgrade to this iPhone model some DSLR features, and for many, that will be enough to satisfy their picture-taking needs.

The second feature that could draw interest in upgraders is the removal of the 100+ year old 3.5mm audio jack. I realize this is very controversial. Some see it as a money grab by Apple, because the company can now collect licensing fees from third-party headphone and speaker makers that need to use the Lightning connector in future products. But Apple diffuses this argument somewhat by including with the iPhone 7 a Lightning-to 3.5mm-adaptor, allowing buyers to continue using their older analog headphones.

But with this removal I believe Apple is signaling that it is time to start moving the smartphone to a true wireless metaphor, and I would not be surprised if this is their first step to eventually adding wireless charging to iPhones in the near future. The new AirPods earphones are a nod to their vision of a wireless future too.

Remember, Apple has a history of killing off old technology to drive the industry forward. It did this when they introduced the 3.5 inch floppy that eventually killed off the 5.3-inch floppy drive. It added CD ROM and CD-RW (Compact Disc-ReWritable) drives to the Macs and forced the entire PC industry to follow suit. It created the All-in-One category with the candy-colored Macs in 1998, and now this is the main form of desktop computer in the market.

With wireless carriers no longer offering subscription service plans, we are moving to what is more like a monthly leasing program for new iPhones. So a new iPhone from any major carrier will start around $30 per month for the lowest-end model, and move upward with the amount of memory capacity in the device. These new "iPhone every year" programs will be attractive to many iPhone users, and this too could help jumpstart this next iPhone sales super cycle.

Next fall, Apple will very likely introduce a new iPhone with a very new design on the tenth anniversary of the iPhone. If the "super cycle" theory is correct, that model would drive huge upgrades across the board for the following two years.

I personally believe that a new iPhone super sales cycle is in the cards. Given what Apple just introduced it is very possible that the new iPhones 7 and 7 Plus may jumpstart a very strong upgrade super cycle that could last for a full three years beginning this holiday season.

BuzzFeed veteran Jenna Weiss-Berman strikes out on her own with a new podcasting company, Pineapple Street Media.

Jenna Weiss-Berman is no stranger to side hustles and 80-hour workweeks. Even after joining BuzzFeed as its first-ever director of audio and producing hugely successful podcasts like Another Round and Lena Dunham's Women of the Hour, she continued to make podcasts on weekends, adding to a production resume that includes NPR, The Moth, and WNYC.

Then, earlier this summer, Weiss-Berman quit her job at BuzzFeed, became a parent, and started her own podcasting company—all in the span of a couple months. Pineapple Street Media, a full-service podcast production company she cofounded with Max Linsky (who also cofounded Longform), has already premiered Hillary Clinton's show (the first ever for a presidential candidate) and a new podcast for the New York Times called Still Processing, and has shows in the works with Wieden + Kennedy, and Dunham's Lenny. The company is already profitable, and has no venture backing.

But why leave BuzzFeed? Fast Company sat down with Weiss-Berman to get the answer, plus learn how she stays creative, and what Pineapple Street has in the works for the coming months.

So . . . do you want to talk about why you left BuzzFeed?

[Laughs] Sure. I had a really good time at BuzzFeed. I started the podcast division there. Since no one at BuzzFeed had done anything with podcasts before, I sort of had to run a company within a company. So I was working on not just content but also sponsorships and finding ad partners for our podcasts. I was working on legal contracts. I was dealing with all the different sides of it, not just being a producer, and I was running the department and managing the staff. It taught me how to have my own business.

But I kept constantly hearing from people who wanted to start podcasts but didn't know how to, whether it was somebody at a big media company or a celebrity or an interesting person who wanted to start a show. And I'm lucky enough to have this skill set that's kind of rare in this world—podcasts blew up fairly recently and I happen to know how to make them. I feel extremely lucky that I got in at a good time. So my friend Max Linsky, who runs the company Longform, was also hearing from tons of people, he knows a lot of journalists through his work at Longform, and all different places. He knew the New York Times was starting a division and he had a friend who asked us to start a show there. We both kept hearing from people and we didn't want to keep saying no when people asked us to help start podcasts. We wanted to say yes.

We started looking around and realized there are podcast companies but there are very few places that are in the business of production. They'll produce their own shows, but they don't want to produce other people's shows. So we were like, what if we became these smart, good producers for hire and we worked within different companies and help them get their podcasts off the ground, produce them, soup to nuts or whatever. So we started Pineapple Street to confront that problem.

Yeah, it feels like you all are a firm, like an architecture firm for podcasts.

We are! Yeah, I like that. So we're doing a lot of shows for other people, mainly for media houses. We're doing Lena Dunham shows and a bunch of Lenny spinoffs. But we're also going to make original content that we own, so we will have intellectual property. And then we're also doing branded content for big companies, like a major bank and a huge cosmetics firm.

To backtrack a little bit, you come from places like NPR and WNYC and these places that are very much audio first. What was it like coming into BuzzFeed, where that might not necessarily have been the case?

Yeah, well to be honest it was really hard. It was me trying to convince people why I needed certain resources. It's a great place, BuzzFeed, and they got on board with it. But it's really hard to work at a not-audio-first company. It was a huge challenge, but it went really well. We ended up creating big hit shows and BuzzFeed fully supported those shows. It is nice to be back doing my thing, which is audio first. But what BuzzFeed taught me that was super invaluable was how to make podcasts for non-audio companies. And that's what we're doing here. Our work with Hillary Clinton or the New York Times or Lena Dunham—those places aren't audio companies, but they're turning to us to try to help them put their stories into an audio format.

You were talking about running both the business and editorial sides while at BuzzFeed, did that prepare you for Pineapple Street also?

Yeah, I learned so much by having to figure out what a good podcast CPM rate is for an advertiser and all about the business side as an advertiser. I had to meet with the business teams at BuzzFeed and explain to them how podcasts work, and this is a good CPM rate, here are people who advertise on podcasts, here are some people who might want to advertise on podcasts. Writing contracts for Lena Dunham, I worked with our lawyers on that. I totally learned how to run a business when I was at BuzzFeed. And I was like, I love BuzzFeed but what would be even cooler is if I could do this for myself. And when I started telling people about it they were like, of course you should do that. You should have done that a long time ago.

When Max came to me and was like, "Why shouldn't we start a business together?" the only reason I gave him was fear. I've never had my own business. I've always worked for other people. I had a baby a month after we started this business, it was like an insane time. I would have gotten a three-month paid maternity leave at BuzzFeed. Instead I quit my job just before my baby was born and that is actually how much I believe in what we're doing and how much I think we'll succeed. This is the perfect time to have a podcast business, podcasts are blowing up everywhere and everyone wants one. So I was willing to take a big risk right before my baby was born.

What is a good podcast CPM rate?

Oh! It totally depends on who the host is and what the show is. With a show that has a celebrity host that companies want to associate their brand with, you can get between $100 and $200, which is amazing. And that would be like $100 for a mid-roll ad, and if your show has 500,000 listeners and you're doing 10 episodes, what's the math there? So you might get $50,000 an episode for that one mid-roll ad. But if you do more, you could get over $100,000 per episode. But that's pretty rare. It's usually the case that a really good CPM on another show is like $30 for a mid-roll and maybe $20 apiece for two pre-rolls. And on a podcast with 150,000 listeners, that comes out to about $12,000 an episode. So then if you're doing 50 of those a year, that's $600,000, so it's not bad. Not as good as 10 episodes at that other rate.

And a lot of what we're doing is not CPM-based. For example, when we do shows with the New York Times or for Hillary Clinton, we're just getting paid on a per-episode basis. Hillary Clinton doesn't have ads in her podcast, that would be weird. So we just charge them a fee and it varies for everyone we work with. So we have a few different revenue streams—some of our shows we do revenue split with, some we just get paid a fee-for-service per episode, and for our own stuff we take our profits and pay out our hosts. It's interesting . . . the New York Times pays you a certain amount of money, and then a major bank pays you uh, a different amount of money [laughs]. And I think we're actually going to make really interesting branded content. We want everything we do to be really good. And on some of the branded stuff we make more money than we do on the not-branded stuff, and that allows us to take more risks in other content.

So I know part of your vision at BuzzFeed was to make podcasting less of a boys' club and less geared toward older audiences (as opposed to most public radio). Looking back, how would you evaluate yourself as having succeeded in that vision?

I feel very proud of what we did at BuzzFeed. I think that Another Round was kind of the first really well produced show hosted by black women. I don't want to sound like it was the first one with black hosts—it was not, at all. But it felt like the first really well-resourced podcast with young black women as hosts. And I think it really started a big trend in podcasting. After we launched, WYNC launched Two Dope Queens, which has been a big hit. There were places all around us that said, okay, I guess there is a black audience for podcasting and maybe we should make content for them. I'm proud of any role I had in making stuff not just for white guys. I think we worked really hard to bring in younger audiences, and Lena's show definitely did that too. Podcast stats are notoriously not great, but we got a lot of tweets about it and so we have some level of Twitter evidence that told us a lot of that audience was women between 18 and 25. And that hasn't been the main podcast audience before.

I think everything I do, I always want to strive to bring in new audiences to podcasting. I have this crazy dream of making a kids' show, like the Sesame Street of podcasts. It would be such a guilt-free listening experience for parents because they don't put their kid in front of a screen. And then parents don't have to listen to the same damn story CD every week or whatever. I guess people don't listen to CDs anymore. I just remember when I was a kid I listened to a Rapunzel tape every day for two years, and I can't imagine how that made my parents feel.

We're working on a bunch of stuff for young women of color. We're working on a travel show focused on women of color that is hosted by Aminatou Sow of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast. So that will be coming out soon. We're doing a culture show at the Times with Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham.

Pineapple Street recently produced the podcast for Hillary Clinton. How did that come about?

So Hillary had been on Another Round when I was producing that show. I have some friends who work on the campaign, so I stayed in touch with them. And when we started Pineapple, Max and I were like, what would our dream shows be? We were just sitting around, thinking, what do we really want to do here? And we were like, wouldn't it be amazing if Hillary Clinton wanted to have a campaign show? One that wasn't just us walking around her campaign office interviewing people about why they're working for her, but that was just her speaking honestly about her life on the campaign trail and how exhausting it can be, and what she eats and the stuff you just don't hear her talk about. So we emailed her campaign and they were like, "Oh my god, we've been wanting to make a show like that for a year, we just haven't really been able to figure out how to produce it." And we were like, well that's what we do.

We had a bunch of meetings with them. The team is incredible—it feels a lot like BuzzFeed. Her office is all these really cool young people who are passionate about what they're doing. They're super professional and awesome and smart. And it was interesting because I worked in public radio and at BuzzFeed, and I couldn't ever be political because I was working at these news outlets. So it was kind of fun to be like, I want to make a Hillary Clinton podcast because I feel like it's a good medium for her, an intimate medium, and it's a way she could connect with an audience in a one-on-one way, not just giving a speech. And I can be like, I'm a fan of Hillary Clinton. I really want her to win this election. And I don't have to pretend that I don't anymore!

Yeah, I was going to ask about the mind-set shift from Another Round, where Heben and Tracy asked her all these really tough questions, to this kind of podcast.

Yeah, we've gotten criticized for that a bit. We've read the criticism. I read the Politico article. And I get where they're coming from. They're upset Hillary Clinton isn't talking to the press. And that has nothing to do with me or what I'm doing. We are not pretending to be journalists. I'm not pretending to be an unbiased journalist. A way that I also feel is that I love journalists, but journalism isn't the only way to get someone to talk about something interesting. We're going to ask different questions of Hillary than a journalist would, and she's going to tell different stories. That doesn't mean that they're not true and they're not valuable. I think what we're doing is true and valuable even though we're not journalists. Like I said, we're not pretending to be journalists. Journalists do amazing work that's totally unrelated to what we do. We're podcast producers, we're Hillary Clinton fans, we wanted to use the skill we have to contribute to her race, basically . . . I don't know, I just fucking want her to win.

So with the Lena Dunham podcast . . . how did that move from BuzzFeed to your domain? Had you already decided you wanted to do something together outside of BuzzFeed?

Lena is an old friend of mine, we went to college together, I dated her roommate—that's how we know each other. She and I had been talking about podcasts long before I started working at BuzzFeed. And I basically said, "Why don't we do this? I am at BuzzFeed, so it would be a BuzzFeed podcast, would you want to do that?" And she agreed. And that was just as Lenny was starting out, it wasn't yet its own real thing. So then Lena came to me and said, "Look, I wanna to do a second season of Women of the Hour, but I have Lenny now and I want to do it for Lenny." She didn't want to do it for another journalistic outlet, for obvious reasons.

That was after Max and I had already been talking about Pineapple. So it was just yet another really good reason to leave. I loved doing her show, it was so good, it won awards. It was really fun to make. We had such a great time. And thinking about doing it outside of BuzzFeed was appealing, and being able to get sponsorships for it and have a real budget and all this stuff. I was like, that sounds really cool.

So that will be Women of the Hour season 2? The same name and everything?

Yep, and it will be twice as long. She owns it, so BuzzFeed didn't own it. And to be fair, BuzzFeed didn't really want to do the show again. They really want to focus on internal talent, which makes sense because they have a ton of amazing internal talent. Lena doesn't make sense as a show for them. And that's also a big part of why I left. I loved working with BuzzFeed internal talent, but I really want to expand who I'm working with. I love that I get to work with Hillary Clinton one day, the New York Times one day, awesome culture writers the next day, Lena Dunham the day after that. All these cool projects we're working on, I just love to have a real diversity of content that I'm working on and I can do that a little more now.

What are some challenges you've had so far with Pineapple?

I mean, running a business is really fucking hard. When you work for a company you're shielded in some ways from the deepest bullshit. You deal with some bullshit, like you might be the one to write up a contract, but you don't have to be the one fighting for that contract. It's really hard to deal with criticism. With this Hillary Clinton show coming out, even though it got great reviews and people loved it, there were these journalists who were calling it propaganda. Which I truly don't think it is. It's just looking at her from a different lens. So I'm trying to figure out how to deal with criticism.

The money stuff has been less of a challenge than we thought it would be, to be honest. I don't want to sound too cocky. We thought we would probably be digging from our savings for a year. Or before we started we considered taking venture capital. Not doing that has been amazing. We were able to really quickly get a bunch of contracts done and start making a profit in two months. It's been really shocking and I'm proud of that.

So what has it been like growing a baby and a company at the same time?

I'm really fucking tired. It's hard. My job in my family is that I'm tasked with making all the money, and my spouse is tasked with taking care of the baby. So I really need Pineapple to do well.

The way I built my career is by taking on a ton of side hustles. So I was working a full-time job but I was also editing the Longform podcast, I was producing a podcast for the Believer magazine, I'd be editing a show for the New Yorker, and NPR, and WYNC at the same time. I kind of got my name out everywhere. So what I've done since starting Pineapple is I've dropped all my side hustles so I could spend my evenings and weekends with my baby. And I don't regret losing the side hustles. I spent three years working 80-hour weeks, and I'm ready to have a company that is successful and a family that is also successful. Max also has a little kid, a not yet 2-year-old, so it's been nice to have a business with someone who understands the challenges of work and family.

So how do you stay creative without burning out?

I stay creative by being a part of many different kinds of projects that are vastly different from each other. Everything is super different, not just in who the hosts are but in the style. We do some things that are straight two-way chat shows. We're working on a show I can't talk too much about, but it's a mystery series basically, not a crime show, but trying to find someone who has disappeared from the public eye. And that's a very highly produced story-driven show that's super different from a two-way talker.

I'm really lucky right now. I'm so interested in all the projects we're working on, even this show we're making for a big bank. It's going to be a really interesting show that tackles things I'm really curious about but don't really understand, like how a company goes public and what that means, or an episode about athletes and wealth management and how some athletes will be 18 and they blow all their money. Even the branded stuff we're doing, we only want to do branded stuff that feels really interesting to us. We want to take content and make it really fascinating. I'm genuinely excited about all our projects and I get to peek in on each one and help edit and work with hosts. So much of my job is coming up with ideas for stories and then making them happen. It's really cool.

What is your ultimate vision for Pineapple Street? Who are some dream people you'd like to work with?

I'm kind of working with them, which is crazy. My dream people would be like, a presidential candidate, an actress I love, the best publication in the world—oh, I shouldn't say that because you work for one. One of the best publications in the world. Big ad firms, big brands. We're really doing it. A next dream would be to really start developing original content not related to brands. What I want to do is build Pineapple in a way that is smart, I don't want to build it in a way where we get cash infusions but aren't really making actual money.

I want us to always be thinking, what is the staffing structure that can make us money? I want us to always be making really cool and interesting stuff. We want our staff to be proud of the stuff we're putting out. And I'd love to see it grow to a place where in two years we have like 20 ongoing shows that are really good and a staff of maybe 20 people. This is something I've thought about a lot—we don't feel like we need to be the biggest podcast company in the world. We want to be among the three to five best. And I think we're really headed there.

An integration of BlueJeans Networks' Primetime service with Facebook Live brings interactive streaming broadcasts to millions.

The next time former New York Yankees superstar and The Players' Tribune founder Derek Jeter gives a large address to talk about his Hall of Fame-worthy career or how he's helping to give athletes a voice, every single one of his millions of Facebook followers could have the opportunity to tune in live and even ask questions.

There have long been ways for celebrities, athletes, or company executives to speak to, and interact with, large numbers of people in near real-time, but they've been limited to text-based tools such as Twitter Q&As, Reddit AMAs, and the like. It's never been possible at massive scale with live video.

That's changing today, with the launch by BlueJeans Networks' Primetime service for Facebook Live. Already a tool used by prominent companies like Facebook, The Players' Tribune, the Sundance Film Festival, TED, as well as celebrities, athletes, and political figures such as Sheryl Sandberg, Drew Brees, David Ortiz, Chelsea Clinton, and others to broadcast things like internal town halls or all-hands meetings, Primetime now works on Facebook Live. That means the live streams can be seen, and interacted with, by anyone on Facebook.

The integration also means that for the first time, Facebook Live can be a many-to-many platform rather than a one-to-many system. It is, said BlueJeans Networks CEO Krish Ramakrishnan, the marriage of TV and social media.

Silicon Valley-based BlueJeans Networks is a leader in video conferencing technology, and a wide variety of big-name companies are already using Primetime for internal broadcasting purposes. But the company is now thinking much bigger by extending the service to Facebook Live.

While it's of course impossible to allow millions of people to simultaneously ask questions during a live broadcast, Primetime has a built-in moderation system that allows those running live broadcasts to queue up questions. The system has a "green screen" tool that lets them ensure that someone wanting to participate has an quality microphone, sounds good, and that their question is appropriate for the forum.

BlueJeans Networks plans on making its Facebook Live integration free to all current Primetime customers, as well as those who sign up for Primetime in the next 30 days. The company said it is still figuring out how to price the service for those who sign up after two months.

Primetime customers pay for the amount of time they use the system, as well as the size of the audience. An average large corporate broadcast costs about $2,500, BlueJeans Networks said, while pricing for smaller events varies.

Facebook partnership?

While Facebook has itself been a Primetime customer, the Facebook Live integration is based entirely on BlueJeans Networks' use of Facebook Live APIs, Ramakrishnan explained. However, he said, the two companies are having conversations to "extend" the service and to "take it to the next level."

Added Ramakrishnan, both Facebook and BlueJeans Networks see the integration as marrying broadcast scale with social media, something that's never been done before. "This is what both companies are excited about," he said.

Facebook would not directly address Ramakrishnan's assertion of ongoing discussions between the companies.

A Facebook representative did tell Fast Company that "since launching the Live API at F8 earlier this year, we've been thrilled by the incredible live experiences that developers have enabled for publishers, organizations, and public figures alike. We now have more than 200 developers integrated with the Live API, and they've opened up a range of possibilities for broadcasters. We know that people enjoy going live with another person, so it's exciting to see integrations that make it easier for multiple people in different locations to go live together and share the moment with their audiences on Facebook."

To Ramakrishnan, the roster of people and companies that will want to utilize Primetime on Facebook Live is broad, and includes company town halls, sports league draft days, and even political debates.

While this year's presidential candidates are obviously not utilizing the service, Ramakrishnan said he expects the future of political debates to be on a service like this, given that it enables multiple people in multiple locations to talk live to large-scale audiences, much like TV, while also giving those watching the ability to directly participate.

"You can imagine how you're watching CNN from your sofa," he said, "and you say, 'I want to be part of that, I want to ask a question.' This is the future."

Websites and international smuggling rings are fueling a surge in overdoses thought to be due to the elephant-strength opioid carfentanil.

In the past few months, a string of overdoses across the U.S. has been linked to an opioid drug so potent that it's not intended for human consumption.

Carfentanil is the world's most powerful commercial opioid, considered to be 100 times more potent than its relative fentanyl, the carefully controlled prescription painkiller linked to Prince's death, which itself is 50 times stronger than heroin.

Originally synthesized in the 1970s, carfentanil is marketed under the name Wildnil as a general anaesthetic for large animals like elephants, and was never intended for humans. But like any number of new synthetic drugs, it's easily finding its way from clandestine labs and into the illicit drug supply through the mail. Sold openly on the web or through drug markets on the anonymous Tor network, the drug is being added to heroin and counterfeit pain medication by traffickers and often taken by users who don't know exactly what they're consuming.

"We're seeing a lot of the activity take place over the internet through anonymous relationships between a consumer and the drug manufacturer or source of supply," says Russ Baer, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration. The agency has warned communities across the country to be on alert for the drug, and has told first responders to wear protective gloves and masks, since the drug can be dangerous to someone who simply touches it.

Both drugs, along with a growing cornucopia of illicit synthetics, are largely being manufactured in China, Baer says, and smuggled into the United States both over land and through the U.S. Postal Service. In June, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it had seized almost 200 pounds in fentanyl and other synthetic opioids—that is, those made purely in labs, rather than from the opium poppy—compared to only 8 pounds the previous year.

In recent months, hundreds of drug overdoses have been linked to carfentanil and fentanyl, a related opioid said to be 100 times the strength of morphine and commonly used to treat severe pain in cancer patients. The drug has showed up on the Gulf Coast of Florida, in western Pennsylvania, central Kentucky, and in Ohio, where, in one county this August, at least 96 heroin users overdosed in a single week.

Cursory internet searches turn up options to order the drug from Chinese sellers on numerous e-commerce websites and through dark web markets on the Tor network, where users can trade largely anonymously using bitcoin and purchase other controlled substances, from ketamine to cocaine.

Dark web vendors contacted about their supplies didn't respond to requests for comment, and one Chinese vendor advertising carfentanil on a Korea-based e-commerce site responded only with a price quote—$300 for 200 milligrams—ignoring questions about how the product would be shipped.

Vendors often use discreet packaging for the drug. Last month Canadian border officials reported seizing one kilogram of the drug labeled as printer accessories, with agents wearing hazmat suits to handle the highly potent chemical.

The risks of the drug have also led some vendors to limit who can purchase the substance and to caution users about its dangers. In one recent listing, a vendor offering the drug pledges to only make it available to users who've already tried fentanyl or a related drug.

"Again, we can't stress this enough, carfentanil is meant to be purchased by *only* experienced fentanyl users with a high tolerance," wrote one dealer on a hidden site. "This stuff is NO JOKE."

Another vendor, offering to ship the drug from China, warns users on safe handling instructions, which mirror those used by the veterinary industry.

"You need to wear mask and gloves to handle this chem," the seller writes. "Accidental contact can result in OD."

"Thousands" Of Clandestine Labs

Authorities say the drug is often shipped from China, an epicenter of synthetic chemical manufacturing and the source, according to the DEA, of the ingredients that Mexican drug traffickers use to make most of the methamphetamine consumed in the U.S. Drug officials have complained of "thousands" of clandestine labs in China, and said that despite the country's strict drug laws, authorities there have been slow to address the problem.

"We aim to help and support other countries in any way we can," Liu Yuejin, China's assistant minister of public security, has said about the government's commitment to international cooperation against drug traffickers.

Chinese officials have acknowledged that the country produces "a substantial" share of the newer synthetic drugs on the global black market and have been stepping up efforts to control the traffic. Last year the country's courts handled nearly 140,000 drug-related cases, up 30% from 2014, according to official data. DEA officials are also in ongoing discussions with their counterparts in China about how to stem the tide of opiate imports, Baer says.

Many of the country's illicit labs attempt to stay one step ahead of laws that ban illicit synthetic drugs simply by altering a few molecules of the chemical compound, creating new and not-yet-illegal drugs. While some countries, like the U.S., have banned whole ranges of chemicals that mimic illegal drugs, many nations have not.

Following a ban last fall of more than 115 synthetic drugs, including various analogs of fentanyl, a new, unregulated analog, furanyl fentanyl, began to appear in the U.S., according to U.S. drug officials, who subsequently moved to ban the drug stateside. At least one Chicago man died from an overdose of the drug.

"Fentanyl and fentanyl-related compounds, whether we're speaking about fentanyl analogs such as a carfentanil, or compounds that haven't been scheduled—for example U-47700—for the most part are originating in China," Baer says.

Since Baer spoke to Fast Company, the DEA has announced plans to move U-47700, a powerful experimental opioid discovered in the 1970s but never approved for use in humans, into the same legal category of drugs as heroin and LSD, effectively banning it.

Legal chemicals to manufacture the drugs are also being smuggled from China into Mexico and ultimately being used to strengthen heroin or make counterfeit versions of pain pills like oxycodone, Baer says. In some cases, those precursor chemicals are stolen from licensed labs in Mexico and end up in the hands of drug traffickers.

"As far as the precursor chemicals go, you've got a legitimate drug manufacturing company in China shipping a precursor chemical to a legitimate chemical handler in Mexico," says Baer. "Once they arrive in Mexico, these precursor chemicals are often then diverted to these Mexican trafficking organizations."

Carfentanil isn't often sold to users on its own, but rather significantly diluted and sold as heroin. One dark web listing contains a recipe for China White—a term used for potent varieties of heroin—that suggest mixing 100 milligrams of carfentanil with 100 grams of a cutting agent. Carfentanil prices on the site and elsewhere online range from $800 to about $2,500 per gram, while a report last year from the Ohio Substance Abuse Monitoring Network found heroin for sale in the Cleveland area for roughly $90 to $120 per gram, and similar prices are available through the dark web.

But if one gram of carfentanil equivalent can be used to produce the equivalent of 1,000 grams of heroin—in line with the recipe and published reports of the drug's potency—carfentanil is still orders of magnitude cheaper per dose than heroin.

Since an equivalent dose is smaller and easier to smuggle without necessarily being much more expensive to manufacture, more potent drugs can be easier and cheaper to distribute, says Steven Kurtz, the director of Nova Southeastern University's Center for Applied Research on Substance Abuse and Health Disparities. But, he says, retail-level dealers, let alone the rising number of people affected by what's been called an epidemic of opioid addiction, often don't even know what's in a particular packet sold as heroin. Most of those who overdose on carfentanil likely don't even know they've ingested it.

"It's very lucrative," he says. "The good thing about high potency from a distribution network standpoint is it can be shipped in very small containers, but the problem from a user standpoint is you have no idea what you're taking."

After a rash of deaths in Cincinnati over the Labor Day weekend, the city's coroner said she believed that the area was being used as a "test tube" by drug dealers who were cutting carfentanil into fentanyl and heroin.

The Unknown Risk

Since the drug was until recently so rare outside of specialized veterinary practice, scientists aren't entirely sure what the lethal human dose of the drug is—though experts have speculated it could be less than the weight of a grain of sugar. Only 19 grams of the drug were legally produced in the U.S. last year, according the DEA, though more than 50 times that amount was found in just one shipment from China seized by Canadian authorities in late June.

In 2010, the authors of a paper in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine reported what they called the first confirmed case of poisoning with the drug. They described a veterinarian who, while sedating elk for a tuberculosis test, accidentally splashed his face with carfentanil while pulling a misdirected tranquilizer dart from a tree trunk. Within two minutes, he became drowsy and had to be treated with an opioid antidote kit that's kept on hand when the drug is used. He recovered without serious incident, according to the report.

And while the drug is increasingly available to drug traffickers and dark web buyers, it's still hard to come by for law enforcement officials who need samples to compare against seized substances and to determine the cause of death of overdose victims.

"When we first started talking about fentanyl in July, we were unable to actually get a sample [of carfentanil] for testing, so we reached out to the zoo," said Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco, the coroner of Ohio's Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati, in a Tuesday press conference. "It is a compound that is used for large animal sedation and opiate use, but we weren't able to get any from our zoo—they didn't have any. So we reached out to our fellow coroners in Franklin County, Summit and Cuyahoga County, and nobody had enough."

Only by working with Senator Rob Portman and the DEA was Sammarco's office able to obtain a sample of the drug and confirm it had killed at least eight people in the county since July. Since carfentanil is still rare, and many labs don't yet have the ability to test for it, it's difficult to know how many deaths are attributed to the drug. But Centers for Disease Control researchers have said fentanyl-related deaths in Ohio rose 526%, from 84 to 526, between 2013 and 2014, as synthetic opioids first began to appear in the state in large numbers.

County officials are also worried about the efficacy of naloxone, or Narcan, the opioid antidote that helps users recover from a heroin overdose. While emergency responders typically use one or two shots to counteract a heroin overdose, carfentanil can require six or even more. A spokesman for the city of Cincinnati told the local Fox affiliate that a typical Narcan dose costs about $32, a cost that's increased in recent years from $15 a dose.

Senator Portman is part of a group of lawmakers who introduced legislation to require more digital information for packages shipped internationally in an effort to make it harder to import drugs through the mail. The Postal Service currently receives less electronic information about packages before they arrive in the U.S. than private carriers such as UPS and FedEx do, making it harder to detect suspicious shipments, he said in a statement.

"That includes information like who and where it is coming from, who it's going to, where it is going, and what's in it," he said. "Having this information in advance will enable CBP to better target potential illegal packages, and that will help ensure that dangerous drugs like fentanyl and carfentanil don't end up in the hands of drug traffickers who want to harm our local communities."

The bill was referred to the Senate Finance Committee, though it's unclear, assuming it passes, whether it will do much to limit the flow of synthetic drugs or simply drive smugglers to get them into the country by other means.

According to Baer, much of the carfentanil and other strong opioids causing overdoses are likely delivered through more traditional channels. In the case of Cincinnati, it's thought that the drug is mostly coming in through heroin shipments that flow north on Interstates 71 and 75.

"Traditional smuggling methods are being used in terms of the bulk smuggling activity," he says.

And while opioid addicts are likely increasingly aware of the dangers posed by chemicals of unpredictable potency, they're often left with limited alternatives.

"People in communities that are using the drugs are becoming more and more aware that they can't necessarily trust the potency of what they're taking," says Kurtz. "At the same time, opioid addiction is extremely powerful, so having them stop isn't usually an option."

The company probably began adding waterproofing tech in earlier products, but the new products "sealed" the deal.

Apple first used water resistance as a selling point around the two new products it announced Wednesday—the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2—but it's certainly not the first time Apple has built waterproofing into its products.

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are now officially rated with the same IP67 water- and dust-resistance rating as other premium smartphones. That rating comes from a standards body called the International Electrotechnical Commission. It means the devices can resist the ingress of water for a half hour at a depth of one meter. Actually Samsung's Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 7 lines are rated at IP68, meaning that they can withstand slightly deeper water (1.5 meters) with more water pressure.

The new Apple Watch Series 2, being targeted at swimmers, can survive in fifty meters of water for thirty minutes, Apple says. It's rated under ISO (International Organization of Standardization) standard 22810:2010. This means that it may be used for shallow-water activities like swimming in a pool or ocean. However, Apple Watch Series 2 should not be used for scuba diving, waterskiing, or other activities involving high-velocity water or submersion below shallow depth. That's way better than some other smartwatches on the market. Samsung's new Gear S3 is rated at IP68. The Huawei Watch is rated IP67.

But both the first Apple Watch and the iPhone 6s were treated to resist water and dust to some degree.

I personally have showered with my Apple Watch (Series 1) on my wrist and the device kept right on ticking.

As for the iPhone 6s, several people showed in videos that the phones do surprisingly well under water for extended periods.

NOTE: DO NOT TRY TO PLACE YOUR IPHONE 6S (OR EARLIER) IN WATER AND EXPECT IT TO SURVIVE.

In iFixit's teardown of the iPhone 6s, they noted the presence of waterproofing material in several places inside the device. (However, to be fair, I note that some of the commenters took issue with this assertion.)

One supplier source told me that many electronics manufacturers use waterproofing treatments on materials, and use water for cleaning during the manufacturing process. But the game changes when the battery is connected. Everything must be sealed so that water does not form a connection between the metal in the phone an the power from the battery.

I suspect that Apple did not have the waterproofing work done in the first Watch and in the iPhone 6 to the point where it felt it could get a formal water- and dust- resistance rating or make any guarantees to customers about it. This is in line with Apple's commendable habit of not bragging about features and attributes before it knows they work.

The iPhone 6s and the first Apple Watch may have been seen by Apple as test devices for the water- and dust-proofing efforts.

Your boss isn't necessarily being careless or setting you up to fail. Here are a few tips for handling open-ended feedback.

I've worked with a number of bosses in a variety of creative industries. And in my experience, these are industries in which some of the greatest results require a good balance of skill and creative experimentation. I've come to learn this combination means that a good manager (for better or for worse) won't—can't, really—give you clear guidance 100% of the time.

Not feeling like you have clear instructions can be frustrating, to say the least. When you're in a role where you're continually learning, it's natural to look to your supervisor to advise you when you're stuck on a problem or at a loss for solutions. So what do you do when that person simply doesn't provide explicit directions? How will you ever know if you're on the right track or if you're completely wasting your time?

When it seems as though the person that's supposed to be leading you toward success isn't making it any easier for you to get there, what are your options?

Okay, first, let's give your boss the benefit of the doubt and examine how three common vague statements could—and maybe should—be interpreted.

1. "I Trust You to Make the Right Call"

What it sounds like:

There's a "right call" and a "wrong call," and I expect you to know the difference by proving it to me.

If it feels like your boss is trying to test you (or worse, catch you failing), then it might help your nerves to take a step back. Consider why she might be giving you more responsibility (because hint: That's not necessarily bad news).

What it actually means:

I trust you to know how to make this decision. If I really felt it were that high stakes, or that you were incapable of handling it, I wouldn't be leaving you to defuse this bomb alone.

Or:

You need to take initiative on your own—because I don't have an easy answer to this either.

In either case, the statement is about granting freedom, because you honestly have earned it. This may be hard to swallow if you've worked with nightmare management in the past, if you've gotten used to working under micromanaging reigns, or if you're the kind to jump to imagining the worst.

From a practical point of view, your failure wouldn't exactly make your supervisor look good, either. So as easy as it is to imagine that she's acting as your ultimate career foil, that's most likely not the case. Think about your past experience working with this specific type of problem, researching solutions, and making decisions. Somewhere along the way, you've proven that you're very capable of handling things on your own, so cut yourself some slack and be confident in your next move.

2. "Keep Going And See What Happens"

What it sounds like:

There's a chance this could be cool, but you could also be wasting your time. We'll see which it is once you're done.

Does it feel like your manager just wants to keep you busy because there's nothing better for you to be working on? Or worse, because she doesn't trust you to be doing anything else? Before you let your mind wander to that suspicious place, take a breather for yourself. Your boss is probably thinking of the big picture, and if you can do the same, it'll help you understand where the project needs to go next.

What it actually means:

This is a really innovative approach, and I think it has potential—you're definitely on to something. I'm curious to see what you can come up with on your own, and don't want my own opinions to derail your creative process.

Fortunately, most companies don't have unlimited resources to keep you busy and waste your time. So, if it even looks like you could be on the wrong track and wasting company resources doing it, know that your supervisor would put a stop to it if that were truly the case.

You may believe you could be doing something worthwhile, but trust that your boss sees this as the most important assignment for you right now—even if that means putting other tasks on the back burner.

Use this period to take creative risks because that's what your manager is actually trying to encourage here. If there's time, consider trying multiple approaches to discover the best possible option.

3. "What Do You Think?"

What it sounds like:

I don't like what you did, but I want to hear your defense. Try to convince me why you're right.

This question can often feel like a trap. Say the wrong thing, and your boss will find out that you made decisions for all the wrong reasons, or worse, that you're a fraud who's unqualified for the job.

What it actually means:

I'm curious why you made certain choices rather than others. Given my experience, I would've approached it differently, and I'm intrigued by your thought process.

Being honest about your thought process is the only way you can get feedback on it—otherwise you'll continue making the same mistakes, or worse, you'll ditch those practices without fully understanding why.

Disagreeing with your boss is a huge learning opportunity, though it might take a little courage if you're unaccustomed to doing it. Having a conversation and gleaning more information from each other's different professional backgrounds and creative processes will hopefully help you both improve your craft.

When you're the kind of person who craves a step-by-step manual for every assignment, it's easy to write your boss off as uncaring, uninvolved, and uninterested in your professional success. But try to step into his or her shoes and understand where the ambiguity is coming from, and embrace the liberty that's a part of your manager's vague tendencies.

From a managing viewpoint, there's actually plenty of reason to be open-ended and take a hands-off approach—especially when your employee is struggling to take flight for the first time. So, next time your boss tells you to "just throw something together," don't overthink it. The trying, failing, and trying again process produces results that he never could have instructed you toward otherwise. And when you do finally soar, you'll realize how valuable he was in giving you the freedom to make it happen.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.

Informal and informational chats are no excuse not to do your homework beforehand.

I'm sure you've lost count of the number of times you've heard that you should reach out to your network when you're looking for a job. The people you know might be able to introduce you to a hiring manager, or they might have some knowledge about your field that would help you become a better candidate, or they might be hiring themselves.

However, there are a few ways your requests could actually be annoying people. Here are some common mistakes people make before they even sit down for that seemingly innocent cup of coffee.

1. You're Not Doing Enough Research

It's always a good idea to take a peek at someone's LinkedIn profile, social media, or blog (if one exists) to make sure that you know what he or she's been up to lately. It's an even better idea to include a detail or two in your networking request. But if you're not careful, you could end up making that person laugh—and not in a good way.

In a recent request that I received, the person who wanted to pick my brain made some wild guesses about when I finished graduate school. I probably would've missed this in a lot of cases—but in this instance, the person asking for a meeting was someone with whom I graduated.

While this isn't a complete deal breaker, make sure you double (and triple) check every networking request email you send before you mistakenly point out something that's not true or wildly outdated.

2. You're Asking Your Contact To Do Too Much Work

Many people I know tend to be pretty open to getting together for networking purposes—even when they don't know the other person very well. In some cases, my friends will say to themselves, "Well, I usually step out at that time for coffee anyway, so why not?"

You shouldn't be afraid of asking to meet up, but be careful not to ask for too much. Think about how you might feel if someone you haven't heard from in a long time said, "I'd love to pick your brain about how to become a full-time writer. Please review my resume, cover letter, three writing samples, and my college transcripts before our meeting."

You probably wouldn't be super motivated to meet with that person—so keep that in mind when you're coming up with your "ask."

3. You're Beating Around The Bush

I can't think of anyone in my network who enjoys reading emails that don't get to the point as quickly as possible. When it comes to meeting for coffee or lunch to discuss an opportunity, these emails should be relatively short and sweet.

I've gotten a few that've danced around the fact that the sender wanted something from me, and each time I've been equal parts amused and irritated. "Why doesn't he just ask me to meet? I would say yes if I knew that's what he wanted," I always say to myself. Even if you haven't spoken to the person you'd like to chat with in ages, don't worry—it's perfectly okay to send a brief email.

How short? Try this on for size:

Dear Rich,

Hope you've been well! I know it has been a while, but I was wondering if you'd be willing to let me pick your brain about a career in writing. I've been keeping up your work via LinkedIn and have been so impressed with all your articles. Please let me know what would work for you!

Best,
Your Name

That's it. If you send something even shorter and it makes sense, that's fine as well. Don't write full-length novels when you want someone to meet for coffee. You'll get brownie points for, well, getting to the point sooner.

Getting the chance to talk to someone about a potential job opportunity or increase your knowledge on a topic is something that you should always pursue. However, you also need to be smart about how you approach people. If you're not careful, your requests will start to fall on deaf ears on a regular basis. And that would be a shame, because even though these mistakes are subtle at times, they stick out to someone who has a busy calendar and has to be selective about the types of networking inquiries they entertain.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.

This week's top stories may help you guard against digital career gaffes and be more accepting of your incomplete to-do lists.

This week we learned why our unfinished to-do lists might not be such a bad thing, how bad apples slip through the interview process undetected, and which digital career slip-ups to avoid.

These are the stories you loved in Leadership for the week of September 5:

1. How Writing To-Do Lists Helps Your Brain (Whether Or Not You Finish Them)

The very act of planning can be a productivity booster all by itself. This week we took a crash course in the psychology that makes writing (if not actually completing) to-do lists so powerful.

2. Why Your Hiring Process Keeps Missing Candidates' Character Flaws

According to one moral psychologist, the standard methods recruiters and hiring managers use to screen candidates aren't the best at judging character. Here's a look at why and some tips on how to better test someone's ethical mettle.

3. Three Digital Decisions You'll Regret Someday

Big-time career blunders are usually the stuff of office lore: loud arguments with a boss, a happy hour that got out of hand. But there are just as perilous missteps you can make in the digital sphere, and many of them are harder to avoid. These are three of the most common.

4. 7 Questions For Spotting Employers' Hidden Flaws On A Job Interview

Job interviews are typically pretty short, scripted experiences that don't often give candidates the clearest window onto what it's like to work at a company day-to-day. But you can use the wrap-up portion, when it's your turn to ask the questions and probe under the surface. Here's what to ask and the types of responses to listen for.

5. Three Warning Signs That Your Personal Branding Has Gone Too Far

Like it or not, personal branding—at least to a certain extent—is useful for most professionals. For people who work for themselves, though, it's absolutely crucial. That increases the risk that the typical branding methods can become onerous, disingenuous, or worse. This week writer and independent worker Suzan Bond explains how to prevent personal branding from becoming a form of "identity labor."

Evolving technology and app store frustrations could give the once-overhyped web app another shot at relevance.

For Alex Russell, a developer at Google, making web apps better isn't just a job: It's a personal belief.

Since last year, Russell has been championing a new breed of web-based apps that could replace the ones you get from an app store. He calls them "Progressive Web Apps" (his partner, web designer Frances Berriman, brainstormed the name with him) and has been rallying developers to adopt them through talks and blog posts.

Russell is hardly alone in his faith in web apps. For about a decade now, a faction of technologists have argued that the web can provide sufficiently app-like experiences. Steve Jobs originally felt this way about iPhone software, and Google bought into the concept with Chrome OS, a computing platform that was little more than a web browser at its inception. Web apps represent an optimistic view of the world, in which users are free from walled garden app stores, and developers don't have to rebuild their software for a half-dozen platforms.

In recent years, that optimism has faded, as native apps have handily outperformed web-based ones—both in the marketplace and in terms of the speed they deliver to users. Still, Russell and others believe the web app is ready for resurgence. Developers are getting frustrated with the app store model, and might benefit from the low friction that the open web affords when it comes to getting their wares in front of consumers without middlemen. At the same time, new web technologies allow for apps that are fast and full-featured.

"Building immersive apps using web technology no longer requires giving up the web itself," Russell wrote last year in a blog post that in retrospect reads like a manifesto. "Progressive Apps are our ticket out of the tab, if only we reach for it."

What's In A Web App?

On first visit, Progressive Web Apps are indistinguishable from any other website. You access them through a web browser, and you see all the usual browser clutter—address bar, tab switcher, back button—while using them.

But as the name suggests, these websites can progress into an app-like experience over time. As a first step, they can store some elements locally on the device, using a process called "service workers." This allows some apps to run without internet access, but more importantly, it cuts down on loading times when the connection is slow, just like native apps do.

"Every time you look at a picture of a kitten, or watch a sloth video on the web, it assumes that the network is there. Native apps don't do that," Russell says. "To get something on screen, native apps have a bunch of that [user interface] cached locally, and they only go to the web for fresh data."

Locally stored data is only the first step in the progression. If the user keeps visiting the same website, it might take another step and ask if you want push notifications. It might also offer an icon for your home screen, just like a native app. Tap on that icon, and the browser chrome might not appear at all. At that point, you're basically using an app, not a website.

The idea is to make web apps more appealing for the types of tools and experiences that people use constantly rather than just once in a while. "With Progressive Web Apps you're starting to see us lean toward that heavy usage part of the pie, as well as the ephemeral part of the pie where the web today really shines," Russell says.

The pursuit of better web apps isn't just academic. Progressive Web Apps have a real-world advantage, Russell says, in that they don't have to prove their value to users up front. We're all used to seeing those obnoxious messages when we visit Yelp or some random news source, urging us to install their native apps instead of loading the mobile website. Most of us ignore these nags, because we don't want to stop what we're doing just to download an app we're not even sure about. Progressive Web Apps at least get a chance to ingratiate themselves first.

"You have a lot less friction," Russell says. "And I think that's really the story here."

Alex Komoroske, the group product manager for Google's Chrome platform team, gives an example of how a Progressive Web App might work in the real world: Say you've just checked into a flight on your phone for an airline that you rarely fly on. You probably don't want to install their app, but you might still want to get notified of delays or gate changes.

"It's nice for users to be able to decide precisely how they want to engage with these things, and to do so from a much more informed space because they're already working with the thing," Komoroske says.

Why Web Apps Matter

Some tech pundits have argued that it's too late for the web, citing survey data that shows we spend most of our time (85%, according to Forrester) in just a handful of apps. But those figures are misleading, because they don't convey how often people visit individual websites, even for short periods, says Jason Grigsby, cofounder of Portland-based web design firm Cloud Four.

"People look at the data around the amount of time people spend in apps versus the web and mistakenly think that means people aren't visiting mobile websites, or aren't doing things on mobile web," Grigsby says. "I hate that statistic . . . it's just an asinine measure."

A report last year by ComScore reveals the other side of the story: Collectively, the top 1,000 mobile web properties have an audience that's 2.5 times larger than the top 1,000 mobile apps. That represents a huge opportunity for Progressive Web Apps.

Except for the highest-profile apps, consumers are increasingly resistant to downloading native software onto their devices, says Max Lynch, cofounder and CEO of Ionic, a company that offers tools for building and scaling mobile apps. "They're installing these big-ticket apps, and we need reasons for everyone else to be accessible. To me, the answer's obvious: Google search, SEO, and the mobile web, and then have a native app down the road when someone's bought into your products."

Google, for its part, points to case studies where some early Progressive Web Apps have delivered results. Africa-based e-commerce site Jumia, for instance, saw a ninefold increase in conversions by delivering push notifications to web users—a higher rate than its native app. Shopping site AliExpress increased conversion rates by 104% and and time spent by 74% across all browsers. Indonesian news aggregator BaBe saw similar time spent in its Progressive Web App compared to the native version. And at Google's I/O developer conference in May, visitors spent more time in the Progressive Web App than they did in the native Android app.

"In general, there's a narrative around the usage of apps that isn't helpful for businesses making decisions," Grigsby says. "And I think when you get into savvy businesses, they know that, because they look at their bottom line. They know revenue's coming from the web, and they can see visitors coming to their website and leaving, and they're looking for ways to convert those people once they visit their site."

Dialing Back The Hype (Again)

As promising as Progressive Web Apps sound, the concept is still young, with plenty of unresolved issues.

Some of them are relatively minor, and should improve over time. Progressive Web Apps can't yet interact with Bluetooth devices such as wireless headphones or a smart door lock, and secure payments through services like Android Pay are only available in the beta version of Google's Chrome browser. And once an web app becomes more immersive, shedding its browser chrome, no one's settled on the best way to expose URLs, which are what make websites so shareable to begin with.

But Progressive Web Apps also face some knottier existential questions. For instance, they have responsive designs that can scale up to laptops and desktops, but how they should behave on those devices is uncertain. While Microsoft has said it will list Progressive Web Apps in the Windows Store, and run them within Microsoft's Edge browser, Google's Komoroske acknowledges that in general there's a lot left to figure out.

"On desktop, we support Chrome OS, Windows, Linux, Mac, and each of those have different paradigms about where you launch apps, and where you go to manage them, and you have windows and tabs, and it's a just bigger design challenge to dive into it," Komoroske says.

Meanwhile, Google itself isn't betting the farm on Progressive Web Apps as a solution to app store friction. The company has also introduced "app streaming)," which allows Android users to run pieces of an app directly from Google Search. This approach, along with deep linking and new ways to search for content within apps, could erode the web's inherent advantages.

Russell's answer to this issue is diplomatic, noting that developers may choose one approach over the other depending on whether they started with an app or a website. "Google doesn't necessarily have just one opinion about these sorts of approaches, but we're trying to help developers succeed no matter where they started," he says.

There's also the question of whether Apple is on board with the whole Progressive Web App concept. While Apple's Safari browser supports some of the frameworks, tools, and techniques that make for better web apps in general, it doesn't enable service workers (for storing website elements locally) or push notifications.

Russell downplays Apple's limited involvement, noting that designing a modern Progressive Web App will still give iOS users a better experience, even without some of the concept's more advanced features. But in making this point, he also drudges up deeper question: What if people don't care about the "progressive" part of Progressive Web Apps?

To Ionic's Max Lynch, the answer may not really matter.

"To me, the selling point is mobile web, is Google Search," Lynch says. "When someone searches for a thing on a phone, they get an awesome mobile web experience. To me, that's the draw, not necessarily the concept that slowly we'll get more integrated into your life. It's all about distribution."

Either way, Russell is happy to tackle these challenges collaboratively with other companies, such as Microsoft, Opera, and Mozilla. The result will be a more advanced version of the web that works everywhere, regardless of browser or operating system.

"It's not just Google making a thing," he says. "We've tried that in a lot of cases. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But the thing that I'm really excited about here is that it isn't just us."

It seems, then, that the decade-old optimism around web apps and open platforms still has a spark left. Why is that?

"I honestly can't tell you," Russell says. "I just feel very lucky."

Basic cable, premium cable, and broadcast networks are all airing more originals than they were in 2009. This is what "peak TV" looks like.

In the time it takes you to read this article, your DVR will fill up with 500 hours of TV programming that you'll never have time to watch. Okay, that's a fake fact, but this next one is real: The number of new original TV shows has doubled over the last eight years, and the TV industry is starting to feel the pinch. While the term "peak TV" is bandied about a lot these days, it looks like we may actually be in it.

According to an analysis from MoffettNathanson, 419 new original series aired on broadcast, cable, and streaming platforms last year, compared to just 210 series in 2009. And this year is on track to be even higher, with 322 new original series already in the can. MoffettNathanson analyzed data from FX, whose chief executive, John Landgraf, has been vocal about the dramatic rise in programming and its cumulative effect on content costs. The data, disclosed in a research note this week, reveals the extent to which networks have been ramping up their original content efforts. As competition mushrooms, new entrants flood the market, and audiences demonstrate an ever-growing appetite for more diverse types of programming, networks are facing thinner margins and a strain on their resources. In short, the TV bubble is probably not sustainable.

Naturally, a lot of this has to do with Netflix. The streaming giant debuted its first original series, House of Cards, in 2013 and hasn't looked back. With revenue of $6.78 billion last year, the company has boatloads of cash and is not afraid to spend it on riskier bets that would never see the light of day on a traditional network. That strategy continues to bear fruit for Netflix, whose recent buzzy offerings like Stranger Things and BoJack Horseman ensure that viewers will keep paying their subscription fees, which is the only metric Netflix really cares about.

But while it would be easy to point the finger at Netflix and other streaming platforms, they are not the sole source of the current content glut. The increase in TV shows is the result of much busier programming slates from the Old Guard, in particular basic cable networks, which aired 186 new original series last year, compared to just 66 in 2009. By contrast, online platforms aired 46 last year, although, to be fair, they were at almost zero in 2009.

The rise of basic cable is not surprising given the trajectory of cable TV as a whole. While many niche-oriented networks—IFC, TBS, and A&E, to name a few—began as repositories for reruns and also-rans, they have developed robust programming slates over the last few years. FX has been a leader in this trend with shows like American Horror Story and Fargo that are hits with both audiences and critics.

But analyst Michael Nathanson wrote this week that the increase in competition could push the network to rein in its output and take fewer risks. "As viewership continues to fragment and it becomes harder to launch new shows, we could see a scenario where FX curtails its spending or at least focuses spending on key original series/character universes," Nathanson wrote.

New camps developed by the Chicago Architecture Foundation that use the super popular video game are winning over parents and kids.

Six-year-old Olive Sáenz has been "obsessed" with Minecraft for about a year, says her mother, Andrea Sáenz. "She spends hours building stuff, blowing stuff up, and building stuff again. She's been pretty amazing at self-teaching."

But until this past summer, the video game was a solo experience for Olive, who is just now learning to read. Because she wasn't able to communicate with other players she instead spent hours watching Stampy Cat's popular YouTube videos, which serve as a Minecraft "how to" for beginners, and putting her own spin on challenges like constructing a roller coaster.

Then, she went to Minecraft camp. At "Skyscrapers of Tomorrow," a weeklong summer program developed by the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Olive worked on a team—dubbed the Unicorns—that used Minecraft to design a skyscraper that would function as a towering vertical neighborhood.

"It's super fun because you can make whatever you want," Olive says. "We even added a pink street."

The last day of camp, when all the teams presented their skyscrapers to parents and teachers, was by far Olive's favorite. "There was cookies! Everyone ate a cookie, I ate a brownie."

"What I think she got out of the camp was the ability to observe how the world is built and organized, and then bring that back into Minecraft," her mother says.

This fall Minecraft, the blockbuster game acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, is moving into classrooms with an education-specific edition geared toward elementary school students. Microsoft, which is selling licenses between $1 and $5 per student, hopes to see teachers embrace the game as an entry point to lessons on computational thinking as well as traditional subjects like history, math, and science. To help teachers get started, the company has developed lesson plans around topics like the Temple of Artemis as a way to inspire creative applications for what is in many respects a remarkably free-form digital learning environment.

In the meantime, educational organizations including the Chicago Architecture Foundation have been at the forefront of developing curriculum around Minecraft, which even in its mainstream format lends itself to teaching and learning.

"The kids and parents love it," says Gabrielle Lyon, vice president of education and experience for the foundation. "The parents are so relieved—they feel like, my kid is on Minecraft all the time, I don't know if they're learning anything. They come here and they feel great that their children are developing skills and getting to be social, but also doing things that take them outside."

Students in the weeklong camp programs that the foundation introduced in August spend time at their computers, but also visit sites around Chicago in order to observe built environments with a critical eye and experience otherwise abstract architectural concepts, like pathways. On their first day, they measure the size of a Minecraft cube.

"Students leave with a real idea of scale and context," Lyon says. "'Read a building:' we're talking about materials, we're talking about structures."

So far, the foundation has introduced two variations on Minecraft camps, the skyscraper program and another called "Build a City" that emphasizes green space. Both run for five days, culminating in a 90-minute "showcase" that allows students to present their work. During the school year, the foundation plans to offer weekend workshops that use Minecraft to engage students in projects like repurposing historic buildings.

LEGOs and other physical blocks play a supporting role in the Minecraft programs, and a central role in other classes and workshops. Across all tools and mediums, Lyon says, the foundation's focus on design and critical thinking remains intact. "The technology is a means to an end. Minecraft works best when it's the best tool to get the job done."

Chicago parent Jennifer Goolsby says she saw that philosophy come together in her son's experience. "They don't even realize they're learning about arches and trusses and domes," she says. "The hook is the technology." Of course, the learning extends far beyond the redstone walls.

Saying a principled "no" to your boss isn't easy, so let the experts show you how.

You're not going to be thrilled with every assignment you're given, with every task you're asked to carry out, with every project you're instructed to oversee. That's the reality of having a job. It's a lot like life—you take the good with the bad and the annoying or boring.

But, navigating tedious responsibilities or work that doesn't stoke your fire is a far cry from handling a request from your boss that requires you to basically throw a colleague under the bus. If your manager approaches you about taking one for the team, framing it as an item that's simply part of your job and something that has to be done, you're probably not going to feel good about it.

If you have any kind of moral compass and a reluctance to injure a team member's reputation or inaccurately blame a coworker for a project gone wrong, then you'll likely want to find a way to say no to your supervisor without risking your position at the company.

Seven Muse Career Coaches weighed in with excellent advice for handling this tricky situation. Just because the request isn't illegal or even really unethical doesn't mean you have no choice but to heed the demand. There's a big picture here, and if you ignore it just to appease your manager, you could come to regret it later.

1. Repeat The Request

Share with your boss what you think the task is so that you are 100% clear about her request. Saying it aloud before acting on it may also help your manager see why and how she's put you in an uncomfortable position. If, after repeating it, you're still expected to carry out the request and you're feeling apprehensive, speak up. Clearly, tell your boss—face-to-face is best—why you're not cool with it.

—Avery Blank

2. Investigate With Questions

If you find yourself in this awkward situation, one of the most powerful strategies you can deploy is asking probing questions. Skilled conflict mediators know that digging for information about the other person's agenda, interests, and needs increases the chance of arriving at a favorable solution.

Put on your negotiator hat and say to your boss with confidence, "I'm not sure I grasp the reasoning behind sharing those details with the entire company. Can you help me understand the approach?" This expresses interest and curiosity on your part, while also subtly communicating an assertion of boundaries, maturity, and professionalism.

You're demonstrating that you make informed, measured decisions. Using psychologically disarming questioning ensures neither side becomes defensive and helps you set the stage for a fruitful back-and-forth dialogue with your boss.

—Melody Wilding

3. Consider The Big Picture

Any request from a manager needs to be considered relative to the long-term impact on the company and your standards for personal integrity. If you feel a request would violate either of these, you have an obligation to express your concerns before agreeing to take any action. If you're pressed to follow through with the request, simply say no and explain your reasoning.

Just be prepared to stick to your guns and suffer the consequences. A healthy organization will look at the full context of a situation before taking action. And if it doesn't or if you're singled out by a manager, you probably don't want to work there anyway. Keep good notes and be ready to explain to new employers what happened and why you left.

—Bruce Eckfeldt

4. Enlighten Your Boss

I once had a similar instance with a director at the company (who was not my boss, but still senior to me). We were scoping out a client project, and there was a lot of internal disagreement over a specific component of the project. We were asked to have a back-up solution in place for a highly unlikely scenario. Although it was highly improbable that we'd need this alternate fix, we had to devise it based on the client's marketing plan.

Unsure whether we were capable of creating that back-up solution in the timeframe given, I was, nonetheless, instructed by the director to tell the client that the deadline wasn't a problem. I felt very uncomfortable misleading the client, and so I decided to be straight up with my supervisor on the project, "If I gave the phone to you, would you be able to tell them the same thing in good conscience?"

He admitted that no, he wouldn't be able to do that, and I think at that moment he saw the error in what he was asking me to do. We, ultimately, ended up figuring out a way to build the solution the client was looking for, and we didn't lie to them. Sometimes, it's going to be up to you to show your boss the problematic nature of his request.

—Rajiv Nathan

5. Offer An Alternate Solution

Be honest in a diplomatic and tactful way. Let your boss know that you're uncomfortable with the request, but don't just leave it at that. If you're going to take issue with something, it's always best if you can offer a solution.

Brainstorm a better, more professional way of handling his request and suggest an alternate approach. If your idea is rejected, continue to stand your ground and explain that you're hopeful that you can find a way to work together to develop another way of dealing with the issue.

—Heidi Ravis

6. Be A Team Player

Bosses come and go, but your sense of justice and conscience are with you for life. Of course, you still need a paycheck, and, thus, a way to handle moral ambiguity in the office.

Navigate a distasteful request from your boss by bringing up the team. Assuming your organization values teamwork, say, "We talk a lot in this company about teamwork—about winning and losing as a team. As such, neither I nor the rest of the team feel it's fair for me or any other single person to shoulder the responsibility for the failure of this project. It also sends the wrong message to the other team members. We'll recover and rebuild. But let's not just talk about being a team, let's be one in spite of this obstacle."

By sending the message that it's not just you who feels this way but the entire team, you're showing respect for your colleagues and refusing to throw anyone under the bus. It's unlikely that your boss will fire or censure the entire team.

—Yuri Kruman

7. Articulate Your Concerns

There is no doubt that this scenario presents a tricky situation of power. When a supervisor asks you to do something you don't want to do, it's always challenging to walk the line of honoring your values and being professional.

However, in an instance in which the request is so clearly antithetical to common tenets of strong team culture and positive leadership, it's especially important to hold your ground. Explain what makes you uncomfortable about the approach; lean on the company culture (if possible) of promoting collaboration and team efficacy.

You can also note that it's more important to figure out a strong way forward as opposed to placing blame on the past breakdown or failure. Your boss is more likely to be impressed by your pushback and dedication to your team than frustrated by your unwillingness to abide by the request. At the end of the day, you want to feel comfortable that you can live with your actions, even if you don't love your leader's.

—Lauren Laitin

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission.

There's a fine line between sharing and boasting, but people who talk for a living know how to walk it.

"I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round!"

Muhammad Ali wasn't just one of the best boxers of all time; he was also one of the best braggers. Bragging worked well for Ali's career, but for most people it's a different story. You already know that. And you also already know not to boast around the office.

But that may mean you err too much on the other side and, like many people, fear that sharing your accomplishments amounts to bragging about them. So you keep quiet, even when you shouldn't—like on job interviews and during performance reviews. Sometimes getting better at talking (tactfully) about yourself in work settings starts by knowing the difference between a few key behaviors you're afraid of confusing.

Here's a look at four of them that the best public speakers, tasked with talking about themselves all the time, have mastered.

1. Announcing Versus Revealing

When you boast about an accomplishment, you announce it. You simply state what you've achieved, usually in bright, shining terms. But great speakers know that these displays of brilliance are often a little too bright for an audience—they pull back, shielding themselves.

When you share, on the other hand, you invite your audience to take a closer look. Think of pulling back the curtain and letting people see for themselves. Just as fiction writers are taught to "show, don't tell," you need to describe your accomplishments instead of just stating them.

For example, if you met a significant sales goal, bragging about it would sound like this:

I sold more than any other salesperson in the company. We have over 150 salespeople, and I sold the most.

Sharing, on the other hand, might sound like this:

Some people have dreams of being doctors, lawyers, or scientists. My dream has been to be a great salesperson. Today, I realized that dream.

One is approach is declarative, the other narrative. The most effective speakers favor the latter.

2. Highlight Commonalities

When you brag, you emphasize the differences between you and your audience. Your goal is to show how special your life is—you're up here, they're down there. You were the one who worked harder than everyone else. You were smarter, more cunning. You had more courage. Like shooting a video with a wide-angle lens, you drive your audience toward the margins of the frame.

But when you share, you still talk about your achievements, but you add comments that connect your audience to them. Sharing means you want whoever you're speaking with to feel included, like they're a part of your success. Like a zoom lens, you bring your audience closer to you.

For example, if you're talking about your academic credentials, bragging would sound like this:

I graduated from Harvard Law—top of my class, too!

Sharing, on the other hand, would sound like this:

Like many of you, I've had the benefit of receiving a great education. And like you, when the door of opportunity opens, I rush in and push harder. I like to win. I worked hard to graduate from Harvard, and even harder to graduate at the top of my class.

3. Offer Insight, Don't Just Seek Admiration

When your goal is simply to boast, you're trying to get others to appreciate what you've done. So you center your comments on your feelings and your experience—it's all about you. This often backfires. But when you share, your goal is to give others a window into an experience that was powerful for you but offers some insight for them, too.

I recently attended an event where I sat with the new CEO of a Fortune 50 company. If I was bragging, I might say something like this:

I sat next to [CEO], and he spent the entire event talking to me! Imagine that—everybody in the room wanted to talk to him, but he chose to talk to me.

Kind of makes your skin crawl, right? But if I was sharing, I'd approach it very differently:

I had the opportunity to sit next to [CEO]. I asked him, "What's changed now that you're CEO?" He told me, "Now, every move I make is a big deal. Everything gets scrutinized." It made me think about how critical self-awareness is for all leaders and the shift in mind-set it takes to maintain it once you're pushed further into the spotlight.

Now it's not about me hobnobbing with high-level execs, it's about a common challenge that lots of people experience, which that interaction illustrates. Great speakers know to connect their personal stories with an idea that others can relate to—even if they haven't experienced the exact same thing.

4. Don't Be The Hero, Be One Of Many Heroes

When you brag, you're telling the story of how you became Superman or Superwoman. You're the protagonist, and every detail of the account is meant to make sure your audience understands that.

When you share, on the other hand, you're still an important part of the story, but you're not the only hero worth talking about. You're more like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings—he's the main character, sure, but you can't tell his story without Sam and Gandalf and a supporting cast of other key players.

So single-hero bragging might sound like this:

I'm a turnaround expert. I can go into a store and instantly know what's broken. I see the signs of dysfunction. I know how to pull the levers to fix the problems.

Sharing would sound more like this:

I'm a turnaround expert. When I walk into a store, I focus on listening to the people. Fixing a store is not about turning screws; it's about understanding what the team has been going through and getting to the root of their ideas.

That doesn't mean being patronizing—just paying lip service to others—or adopting false modesty. It's about knowing your place in the bigger story, where others unavoidably factor in already. In order to boast, you've got to exclude them from what you say. As the most effective speakers know, being inclusive—connecting with others—is the only real way to deliver a message.

From new overtime laws to salary transparency, a handful of recent initiatives could wind up impacting your take-home pay in 2017.

Starting a new job can come with a lot of unknowns, like how long it will take to adjust to a new team, or whether this year you'll finally understand your benefits package.

Regardless of your title or position, however, you can probably expect that a few things will stay the same: You'll be encouraged to stay hush-hush about your salary, will probably be up for a raise at your yearly review, and, odds are good, you will not be eligible for overtime.

Until now, that is.

"The way we work is changing, and businesses have to take a fresh approach to motivate and retain employees," says Kris Duggan, CEO and cofounder of BetterWorks, a creator of company goal-setting and management software. These days, many companies are evolving toward pay transparency, more frequent evaluations, and other changes in how employees are compensated.

Here are three prominent trends that are switching things up in offices across the country—and could affect how much you take home.

1. A Push Toward Pay Transparency

Public conversations about salaries historically have been discouraged, even though it's a worker's right to discuss the terms and conditions of their employment under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. While your boss can't outright forbid you from chatting about how much you make, chances are you probably don't share that info around the water cooler. But new laws are helping to usher in an age of transparency.

In May, the governor of Maryland signed a law that will bridge the gap between salaries for men and women and make it illegal for businesses to restrict employees from discussing their salaries. Also on team transparency, the Obama Administration's proposed equal-pay rules would require companies and federal contractors with 100 employees or more to report salary and hours-worked data broken down by race, gender, and ethnicity. (This is in addition to workforce profile data already collected from employers.) That way, beginning with the 2017 reporting year, the government will know which companies are not compensating their employees equally and can investigate accordingly.

Many people believe that a push for transparency is a big step toward equal pay for women and people of color, two groups that tend to be paid less than white men for the same work. According to the Labor Department's weekly earnings report for the second quarter of 2016, women's median earnings amounted to 81¢ for every dollar paid to a man. The gap widens for women of color, with black women being paid 69¢ and Hispanic women paid 62¢ for every dollar paid to a white man. Taking the gender wage gap out of the equation, black men were paid 75¢ and Hispanic men paid 69¢ for every dollar paid to a white man. Armed with information about what colleagues take home, employees will have the information and support they need to push for equal pay.

"If there's true transparency, it would help to give people a little more level playing field or ammunition to negotiate a better salary," says Jody Friend, president and CEO of JLM HR Consulting. Some employers may even take matters into their own hands, as Salesforce did in 2015. After analyzing the salaries of more than 17,000 of its employees, the San Francisco-based tech company realized about 6% of its employees (both men and women) weren't being paid fairly and spent $3 million to close that gap.

Potential downsides. There is a valid concern among employers and employees alike that knowing how much your cube mate makes could be depressing, enraging, or both—even if the company feels that everyone is being compensated fairly. "I think that could lead to lower morale in the workplace," says Friend.

2. The End Of The Annual Raise

The annual evaluation process is one employees dread, except for the fact that a raise or cost-of-living adjustment often comes out of it. About 90% of companies handle performance and salary evaluations this way, with a fixed date when nearly everyone in the company receives a raise, according to Mercer's 2015/2016 U.S. Compensation Planning Survey.

One company moving away from that process is General Electric. The Connecticut-based company recently announced it's exploring the option of doing away with yearly raises in favor of rewarding deserving employees on a more frequent evaluation basis.

"When companies give out an annual raise, it's like spreading a layer of peanut butter super thinly across the whole company, not factoring in who is achieving the most," Duggan says. "It's more effective to reward and compensate high performers and invest in opportunities for learning and development across the board." Recurring conversations with managers about pay and performance can help employees learn what they're doing right, where they could improve, and how they can grow in their position.

There's another upside to more frequent check-ins: Employees receiving real-time feedback may be more motivated to stick around, which is important since it's not uncommon for young people to leave a company before their one-year anniversary. "When we overhaul the performance compensation structure to reward fairly and develop all employees to become high achievers, we can retain workers who would otherwise find reason to leave," Duggan says. "If your highest achiever isn't rewarded or recognized for her performance, what's keeping her at your company?"

At the end of the day, these changes can be a pro for both employers and employees, Duggan says. "If done correctly, managers can expect more from employees, and employees can feel more motivated and satisfied in reaching bigger goals," he says.

Potential downsides. A performance-review overhaul could see managers and employees shuffling to redefine their goals and benchmarks, leaving some money issues on the back burner as a result. "Any time a company chooses to put a new HR policy in place, change management can be a challenge," Duggan says.

Not to mention, some companies may be tempted to replace compensation rewards with perks, say more vacation time or the ability to work remotely, which may not be as motivating as a salary bump. "Employees must be able to understand the long-term benefits under a new performance-related pay structure, or it could feel like they're being asked to do more for less," Duggan adds.

3. Changes To Overtime Laws

Starting December 1, salaried workers earning up to $47,476 a year will be eligible to receive overtime, which is time-and-a-half pay, after clocking 40 hours a week. This is a big deal since the new threshold is nearly double the current one of $23,660. The Department of Labor estimates the new rules could affect 4.2 million people. You can read the Department of Labor's fact sheet to check your exemption status, as well as "Will I Be Eligible for Overtime? What the New Department of Labor Rules Could Mean for You."

Of course, there are many ways employers can approach these updates. The overtime changes could force some employers to take a close look at how much time workers are spending on the job. If overtime-eligible employees are consistently putting in more than 40 hours a week, employers may need to reevaluate how tasks are divvied up among employees, streamline workloads, hire additional hands, or completely overhaul their business goals to better adhere to a 40-hour workweek.

Or they could figure out how to work around the rules. Some companies may choose to raise employee salaries to over the $47,476 threshold so they're no longer eligible to receive overtime. Nearly 40% of HR professionals surveyed by RiseSmart, a career transition services company, said they plan to take this route. Rebecca Davies, a labor and employment attorney at Detroit law firm Butzel Long, predicts workers making between $40,000 and $47,476, or generally those in low-level management, will be bumped up to meet the threshold. Other companies might reduce hours or base pay so workers end up making the same amount after overtime is accounted for, Davies says.

Potential downsides. Many businesses may choose to simply spread their salary budget in a different way. That could mean people who were on track to receive a raise may not get one because that money is now being paid to another employee for overtime. And of course some prices—such as restaurant bills—may go up so the businesses can pay their employees overtime.

Not sure if these three workplace changes will affect you and your take-home pay? Set up a meeting with your HR representative to discuss how they could apply to your individual situation in detail. And add these trends to the growing list of reasons—along with work-from-home capabilities and pet-friendly offices—that the workplace is decidedly different than it was 10 years ago.

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

Storytelling is a shortcut to building quick yet meaningful relationships with users. Super Mario Brothers nailed that.

Growing up, I wasn't allowed to watch TV or play Nintendo on weekdays. This was a real problem, because of the handful of things that mattered to 8-year-old Brian, saving a fictional princess from an evil turtle named "Bowser" topped the list.

The first time I played Super Mario Brothers—which just so happened to be the first time I played any video game—was on my eighth birthday. I usually had the attention span of a gnat, but I was hooked immediately; my parents swear that I screamed out, "Later!" when they called me in for cake. I'd found something I cared about more.

Entrepreneurs' main task is to make people care: customers, cofounders, investors— everyone. The problem is most peoples' default state is to not care. You're reading this, but I could lose you at any second. You owe me nothing. Each sentence is a transaction: I write something interesting, you read another sentence.

The conventions of storytelling help with this transaction. They're a shortcut to help get across what you're building and why it's interesting—quickly. For early-stage startup founders, this is enormously helpful. (My favorite book on the topic, and one I'll lean on in this story, is Nobody Wants To Read Your Shit by Steven Pressfield). So with an assist from Pressfield and inspiration from Mario . . . here we go!

Who's The Hero Here?

The first time you play Super Mario Brothers on Nintendo, you immediately see a Princess get kidnapped by Bowser. Mario then appears on the screen, and the game begins.

It's clear that you're Mario—this tiny, unlikely hero. We like to see ourselves as the heroes or heroines of own own lives, so this makes intuitive sense. And since heroes save the day, you've got to save the Princess. It doesn't matter that you don't know what the buttons do or how many boards there are, or why turtles with wings are hellbent on stopping you—or even why you're doing this in the first place (were Mario and Peach dating?!).

All that goes out the window: mere seconds into your first time playing the game, you know your fate is an epic battle with Bowser to save the Princess. The stakes couldn't be clearer—or higher. Time is of the essence. Go.

That's how you get an 8-year-old boy to skip his birthday cake. And here's how you do it with your startup.

Your Company Needs A Theme, Not Excuses

Everything great has a clear theme. Books, startups, movies, vacations, online dating profiles, a dinner party—everything. But themes are hard, particularly for entrepreneurs. They force us to do something we hate: Focus.

To make things more confusing, most entrepreneurs (rightfully) preach "lean," a methodology that prioritizes testing and iteration and encourages experimentation and data-based decisions. But a dangerous misunderstanding of the lean mind-set tends to serve as an excuse to stay unfocused.

When I was building a startup called 3Degrees, I initially shied away from launching it as a Facebook-driven dating app for people under 30 (which didn't yet exist). Instead, I built an unfocused "connection" tool. "Let's launch with a bunch of features and see what resonates," I thought. "If people date, we'll build a dating app. Let's not exclude anyone."

I wasted six months and a bunch of investor money. Entrepreneurs tend to use lean methodology to paper over their fear of choosing a unique, unifying theme because that always feels risky—even if the bigger risk is having no theme at all.

What's more, giving your customers a clear theme gives them permission to care. Unclear themes urge them to opt out. The theme of Super Mario Brothers is that you're an underdog hero on a quest to save the Princess. "That's cool," thought 8-year-old me, "I'm into that." And every ounce of the game supports that theme.

The theme of Southwest Airlines is great customer service. Every decision is made through that lens, from flight offerings to plane size to the heart-shaped logo. A clear theme makes subsequent decisions easy: if it supports the theme, do it. If not, don't.

The theme of this post is that storytelling is a shortcut to building quick yet meaningful relationships with customers—and that anything that doesn't serve that goal should be nixed.

Setting The Stakes

As soon as the Princess is kidnapped, the stakes are set. Her life is on the line. Intense. The stakes for your customer need to be meaningful, too. They need to elicit action. And they might not be obvious—finding stakes is an exercise in empathy.

Let's say you're a company that helps early-stage founders track various metrics in their company's app. The obvious stakes are that your customers can make better decisions with the data you let them track. Ho hum. Higher stakes might be that cash is probably running out (as it often is with companies that size), and your customers need to raise money—the metrics you measure will help them figure out how to optimize their funnel and boost sales immediately, leading to a round and company survival. More interesting. You could position yourself as a tool that's critical for your customer's immediate survival. Those are the stakes.

You company's theme and its stakes should play off each other. Take Facebook and Twitter. When Facebook launched, its theme was (and remains) "connect with your friends." The stakes were implied: If you don't connect with someone on Facebook, you aren't friends. Yikes.

Facebook's features—"share photos and videos, send messages, and get updates"—all support the theme of connecting with friends.

On the other hand, Twitter whiffed here (and still whiffs). Its theme isn't clear, so the stakes aren't clear. Twitter is for, uh, "breaking news and entertainment, sports, and politics . . . with all live commentary"? Huh? If I'm not on Twitter, then what? Well, that simply lets customers do what they love doing most: Nothing. Think maybe I'll download it and "see what's happening" some other time.

What are your stakes? What does the customer have to lose if they're left out? Do they care? Is there urgency? And how does it fit with your theme?

Now For The Twist

This next part is the "how," and it's by far the least interesting part to your customer—which makes it tricky because it's what you'll spend most of your time doing and is probably most interesting to you. So chances are you'll want to really talk about it. Don't.

Patagonia recently launched wetsuits with a drastically smaller footprint. Here's a masterclass in how to highlight a "how" while supporting the theme (sustainable, high quality outdoor products), the stakes (you're not an outdoorsman without us), and the goal (adventures). Perfection.

Patagonia isn't talking about how its wetsuits are neoprene-free or why that's a big deal. It just shows you a surfer hitting a gnarly wave, presumably in a Patagonia wetsuit, which presumably has no neoprene, which is presumably bad. But since we already know the company's theme, we trust that it's nailed it yet again.

This is all well and good, but you're building a SaaS product for nonprofits or a tool for freelance journalists, not a fun video game. Sure, but it's all the same.

You've got to make people care, and crafting this story—making your user the hero, establishing a strong theme with clear stakes, and supporting that with the pillars that are your product's features—will help push people through the tough early stages from "don't care" to "care." You can't win if you can't first get them to play.

Managing a team of rocket scientists doesn't have to be rocket science—even if you aren't one yourself.

I landed my first management position at an early-stage startup when I was just a year out of college. Whenever colleagues knocked on my door and I beckoned them in from behind my desk, it always felt like I was wearing one of my dad's suits and just playing the part. That impostor feeling was never more acute, though, when a senior engineer would swing by to argue about something. It would go something like this:

Engineer: "Do you realize that these requirements mean we'd have to rewrite all the database scripts? Are you telling me that's what you want two engineers doing for two months?"

Me: "Um . . . yes?"

Debating with the engineers was a real source of stress for me back then. I hadn't yet learned how to deal with abrasive personalities (of which we had a couple), and I was learning everything on the fly. Usually when someone came calling, I really had missed some important detail or other. Other times, though, I would realize later that I should've held firm—but just didn't know how to discuss points of strategy with more technical team members.

"Non-technical" managers often struggle to give instructions on more technical issues and wind up deferring to those subject-matter experts in the company. The two sides can easily come into conflict, thanks to a shortage of context shared between them. Some conflicts, of course, are inevitable—even desirable. But those that come from mutual distrust and misunderstanding aren't. In my experience, nontechnical managers face an uphill battle for two reasons.

The Two Biggest Sources Of Conflict

First, technical folks often think they understand the business side because it's inherently more accessible to outsiders. A smart engineer can, for instance, read a few Harvard Business Review articles and then make arguments about strategy that at least sound plausible to themselves (if not to others). That usually doesn't happen in the opposite direction. Even a smart marketer or salesperson can't spend an hour on Stack Overflow and make credible inquiries into system design.

Second, engineers, data scientists, and other technical staff tend to make decisions with a level of certainty that the rest of us often can't. A particular software architecture, for instance, can objectively run faster than the alternative; a new jet engine can objectively consume less fuel. A marketing strategy—even a really well-researched one—just doesn't come with that kind of clean certainty.

And understandably, people accustomed to more data-backed or deterministic outcomes can be uncomfortable with their work being guided by people whose choices seem so much more subjective—or even even superficial—by comparison. When neither side fully understands each other, you have a recipe for occasional conflict. But there are a few things you can do to become more effective at bridging the gap as a non-technical manager.

1. Above All, Know Your Stuff

Some business decisions will always be subjective, which means there's no room for sloppy thinking. You need to be able to explain your decisions and describe expected outcomes. If you've really done your homework and can lay out clear thinking every time, you'll build trust with your team. As they say, game recognizes game.

2. Be Confident—Or Fake It

If you've done your due diligence, stand behind your work. That's not to say you stop being open to new information and ideas, but it's good to show some backbone. Don't be afraid to acknowledge the unknowns and risks, but don't cave just because people push back or raise questions based on technical expertise you don't have yourself. If you don't demonstrate conviction, your effectiveness will be undermined no matter what.

3. Pin Down What Really Matters To You

Whenever you lay out a plan that affects the work that technical team members will have to do, figure out what's most important to you and do that first. You may find that the things others push back about aren't especially critical to you, and that you can satisfy everyone's interests without too much pain.

But that means you need to distill whatever the ultimate goal is in your mind beforehand. Decide what's absolutely crucial, and what's negotiable will be come clearer. This way you can also give technical employees as much leeway as they need to figure out the "how," which they'll likely appreciate.

4. Steadily Build Your Own Technical Knowledge

This one's obvious: The better you understand your colleagues' concerns, the better you'll be at working with and managing them. You don't need to become a programmer or a statistician or a mechanical engineer or what-have-you. But you do need to understand the major complexities involved in what they do so you can understand the trade-offs involved in strategic, business-related choices that ultimately affect everyone.

Between learning on the job, books you can read, free and paid online courses, brick and mortar classes, and other resources, there's just no excuse for not building your technical knowledge—especially if you interact with high-tech workers every day. In fact, they're a great starting point: Ask your peers what resources they'd recommend, and get cracking. The very fact that you're making the effort often creates room for common ground you might not otherwise share.

Christian Bonilla designs analytics software at Resonate, despite having no formal engineering training. You can follow his business ramblings at SmartLikeHow.com or on Twitter at @smartlikehow.

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

It can be easy to slide into workaholism when you're far away from friends and family and want your overseas gambit to work.

Nine months ago, I boarded a plane in the U.K. with a plan to launch two businesses out of a backpack. It was to be an 8,000-mile startup pilgrimage to four countries—India, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia—during which I'd bring two great business ideas to life.

Some expat entrepreneurs have found they can make ends meet and live much less grueling work lives. After all, that's part of the appeal of leaving the urban rat race behind to become a digital nomad overseas.

My expectations were different. I was prepared to go abroad and work really, really hard. Even so, I was surprised at just how hard—and wound up having to adjust course. I'm glad I did. Here's how.

Tropic Workaholic

There are plenty of advantages to leaving home in order to launch a startup: Swapping gray skies for blue, saving money on living costs, keeping expenses down while bootstrapping your company. The rise of international coworking hubs means you can get reliable internet access and find potential collaborators as you travel the world. But it's not all coconuts and cocktails.

After two weeks of struggling to get online in Goa, I moved to Chiang Mai, where I knew virtually no one. And that's where the workaholism began. I was juggling freelance work at the same time that I was trying to chip away at the two new business projects of my own. I'd set myself the arbitrary target of two months to get them going.

The laptop came out at 6 a.m. and stayed nearby until 11 p.m., sometimes reappearing at 4 a.m. I ate alone. I barely socialized. I nearly gave up on sleep. I found that it's frighteningly easy to fall into this kind of behavior when you're far away from family and friends.

I reached my nadir in Koh Lanta, a region of coral- and mangrove-wreathed islands in southern Thailand, when I launched Start Me Up, which connects young people with opportunities at startups in emerging startup hubs. I fell ill but carried on regardless as applications for the program began to roll in. I should've been resting but I found myself in contact with hundreds of students all over the world. Predictably, as the momentum behind the startup grew, so did my aversion to sleep.

Self-Imposed Pressure, Little Perspective

Being able to travel the world and work remotely is a dream for many stuck in dreary offices in big, crowded, overpriced cities. And living in a holiday destination should, in theory, afford you a greater work-life balance. You slash your living costs and your commutes. If you're in Thailand, for instance, you don't have to earn that much to pay your way as a knowledge worker. And you generally have a much better view as you toil.

But in my experience, many so-called "solopreneurs" wind up working harder than we did in the jobs we left behind—the ones we ditched largely because we wanted better work-life balance. That's partly because the lifestyle of living overseas can be addictive. "I'm here!" you think to yourself. "This is incredible!" So you work extra hard to maintain those tropical vistas and $10 massages—after all, it's no secret that many emerging digital nomad hubs (even the most affordable ones) are based in major resort locales; not everything is dirt cheap.

And being away from friends and family means you don't always have people to offer you their perspective, keep a check on your hours, or tell you to shut the damn laptop already and get some rest. Instead, for many of us, having our own business becomes an obsession.

Before long, dinner conversations with other expat entrepreneurs veer off into the latest best-practice-around-marketing funnels. And you may not actually think to yourself, "Wasn't this why I left San Francisco in the first place?" But this often comes with the territory—even if that territory is tropical. Many people who seek a better lifestyle through a location-independent business get trapped in a cycle of overwork.

I didn't realize how distorted my perspective had become until a close friend from home came to visit. I should've been excited to see her. Instead, I was stressed about taking time out from my business. If an opportunity for fun comes along and you think, "I don't have time for this," chances are that you actually need it.

People Are The Answer

I ended my period of enforced solitude after leaving Thailand. I reconnected with friends. I went back to Bali (also a major hotspot for expat entrepreneurs) where I'd spent a prolonged stint previously and knew more people. Here's what I learned:

People help you keep perspective. Hire them. Befriend them. Just don't try to do everything by yourself. Many solo business owners can become control freakish and reluctant to outsource anything. The coworking communities I tapped into in Asia were a valuable human resource. I've worked with people from over 10 countries since I left for Asia who've helped me with every aspect of my businesses.

Coworking spaces, like Hubud in Bali, provide vital support networks. If you're working too hard, they'll notice. But forming friendships with people outside the remote-work community is also a good idea, because you're more likely to have dinner conversations about something other than your business.

You can't work all the time. You should only have one startup phase, and it shouldn't last an eternity. I basically allocated two months to my get-off-the-ground phase. And that's the length of time I spent largely alone. It wasn't easy to break out of it, so I'd recommend warning those close to you in advance so they can keep an eye on you and nudge you (or drag you out of it) if need be.

Don't say yes to all offers of work. Like many people who launch their own projects, it can be tempting to want to work on everything at once. You want to take up every opportunity—this way, you think, you'll get a steady stream of income right away, expand your network, and hit the ground running. But you essentially fall victim to business FOMO. By continuing to work on my freelance business and keep a retainer client at the same time I wanted to launch my startup, I was trying to have it all. You can't.

Still, my belief that taking yourself out of your normal life is one of the best ways to swiftly get a project off the ground remains unshaken. There's no one around to question your sanity. Or drag you out to a bar. The flip side is that there's no one around to question your sanity. Or drag you out to a bar.

Isolating myself in Thailand was a great strategy for bootstrapping, and it helped me launch a business quickly and cost effectively. But was it as easy and glamorous as it looks in the photos? Absolutely not.

Clare Harrison is the founder of Start Me Up, a program that connects young people with educational internships at startups, and The Story Scientist, a remote communications consultancy. Follow her on Twitter at @ClareJHarrison.