Author: wildgreenquest@gmail.com

Errands, Target runs, tennis games, and even flying to Europe—these are just some of the things employees have done while taking “soft off days.”  The idea of taking soft off days, in which you use a work day to do just about anything else, has become a phenomenon. Videos across social media instruct employees on the best way to take a soft day while assuaging any guilt. While employers might see it as wasting company time, many people believe soft off days are harmless—even needed. So-called “time theft,” the practice of running errands or doing personal matters on the clock,…

Professional workdays are full, fast, and designed for productivity, not recovery. In Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index, 80% of global workers said they don’t have enough time or energy to do their work, and workers were interrupted about every two minutes during the day. That’s the experience of modern work: back-to-back meetings, endless emails and chats, and constant task-switching. The day doesn’t pause for you. We know breaks matter. But for most of us, the problem in taking them isn’t desire or discipline, it’s that the workday doesn’t seem to have room. The good news is you can build short,…

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As Jennifer Harris, director of the Economy and Society Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, has recently pointed out, we are at a particularly fraught moment. Rising inequality means that fewer people have spending power, creating incentives that sharpen the affordability crisis for everybody else. But there are remedies that don’t require draconian taxes and are proven to work—at their core is ownership.  Since 1984, worker productivity in the United States has risen by 80%. Real wages have risen by 20%. The stock market, in the same period, has risen by roughly 9,000%. Now comes artificial intelligence—poised, in…

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways AI adoption without shared standards creates fragmented systems that limit real transformation. Speed alone doesn’t drive value; alignment, governance and consistency determine outcomes. Leadership ownership is essential to turn AI from a tool into a scalable advantage. Nearly 80% of organizations have already flipped the switch on AI. Teams are racing to experiment, hacking their workflows, and hitting speeds that were impossible a year ago. But moving fast doesn’t mean you are moving in the right direction.Most of the time, what’s actually happening beneath that momentum is AI being adopted…

A tariff refund program will open next week following the invalidation of President Trump’s tariffs by the Supreme Court. But consumers shouldn’t get too excited—the program is aimed only at companies, not individuals.  On Friday, the program was introduced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which said the tool, Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), will open in phases, with the first one beginning on April 20. “CAPE will simplify International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) duty refund requests made pursuant to court order and in accordance with appropriate statutory authority by providing an electronic pathway to submit valid…

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Founders who want stronger ideas and more resilient companies should pay closer attention to the quiet minds already working inside their teams. To help surface those strengths, leaders should build decision processes that reward analysis (not volume), protect time for deep work and reflection, and expand the ways people can contribute ideas. They should also redefine leadership beyond charisma. Leadership built on curiosity and observation invites participation from people who felt like outsiders in traditional startup culture. A familiar scene plays out at startup demo days. Founders stride onto the…

The same ChatGPT chatbot that gave OpenAI’s chief financial officer Sarah Friar a tilapia recipe for a recent Sunday night dinner at home is also now doing her most mundane tasks at work like summarizing her emails and Slack messages. Friar and other company executives are banking OpenAI’s future on more of the latter as it shifts its focus to business-oriented products while shedding some of its consumer offerings as a pathway to profitability. OpenAI says it will introduce a new artificial intelligence model for “high-value professional work” as the company faces heightened competition with rival Anthropic in attracting corporate…

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways Big brands struggle to stay creative. Their size brings bureaucracy, approval chains and risk aversion, which slows innovation, dampens initiative and discourages experimentation. Small businesses have a structural creative edge. Fewer decision-makers, close customer connections and flexibility let small teams experiment more freely and embed creativity into their culture. Practices like curiosity, empathy, playfulness and bravery, combined with practical tools and a “Yes, and?” mindset, help small businesses turn imagination into action and compete beyond their size. Big brands have more money, more people and more data. That assumption usually…

Tax Day isn’t normally a cause for celebration. The annual due date for filing taxes usually comes with headache-inducing financial stress and mountains of difficult-to-decipher paperwork. But this year, Tax Day apparently came with an unexpected upside for some New Yorkers, thanks to an announcement from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich,” Mamdani said in a video posted to social media on April 15. “Today, we’re taxing the rich.” Mamdani went on to say he had secured a new pied-á-terre tax, or second home tax, a…