January 17, 2021
The plane had hit turbulence the rollicking kind that makes some people cry out, while others grip their armrests tightly, and mutter a prayer to the power of their choice.
But the woman seated in front of Gregory Grieve on that rocky flight from New York to North Carolina appeared perfectly calm. “She had her headphones on, and she was sitting there blissful, as happy as can be,” Grieve recalls. The secret to her serenity? She was listening to Buddhify, a mindfulness meditation app.
This was a telling moment, says Grieve, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. To him, it encapsulated both the potential and the limitations of our current generation of mindfulness apps, from Buddhify to industry leaders like Headspace and Calm. “It kept her from getting stressed out,” he says. “But it didn’t necessarily change the situation or help other people.”
January 17, 2021
If you’re looking for a way to feel more centered these days, one of the best things you can do is to take up a mindfulness practice and there’s a plethora of apps eager to help in exchange for your downloads and dollars.
More than 2,500 meditation apps have launched since 2015, so it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the choices. But it’s important to figure out which app will suit your needs and tastes, since we’re much more likely to keep up habits that we enjoy. And when it comes to meditating, consistency is key. “Research shows that the more consistently a person meditates, the greater impact this training can have on physically changing your brain for the better,” says Annika Rose, a researcher on mindfulness and well-being and author of a book on mindfulness.
January 13, 2021
Starting a company is an uphill battle even in the best of times. 2020 was not the best of times. While we don’t yet know the startup mortality rate for this annus horribilis, the pandemic derailed some of tech’s best-funded ventures (Quibi, Bird) and left entire industries reeling. For every business that has thrived during Covid-19, dozens of others are limping along or quietly winding down.
As startup founders face the prospect of starting over in the new year, how do they know when to throw in the towel? What are their career options afterwards? At Rippling, the HR and IT software firm where I work, we make a point of recruiting former founders we have more than 30 on staff, including seven alumni of Y Combinator, all keen to put their entrepreneurial experience to good use. We asked five of our entrepreneurs who shut down businesses in the last year to weigh in with their advice.