Itineraries: As The Recession Waxes, Business Meetings Wane

How companies are rejiggering the workweek to offer 4-day and 32-hour options. Welcome to Work Smarter, Fast Company‘s newsletter on career, leadership, and productivity advice. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here.

Yonason Goldson explains how leaders who project an autotelic sense of mission, vision, and nobility promote a cultural attitude geared to succeed. Many years ago, I introduced my six-year-old son to Chutes and Ladders. He took to the classic board game immediately, and we bonded while moving our respective pieces up and down the board. At last, he rolled a five and counted square by square until his piece landed on the finish line.

While pregnancy discrimination can be notoriously difficult to prove, the majority of the workers ‘Fast Company’ spoke with believed their pregnancies made them more vulnerable—and affected their ability to secure new employment. Nichole Foley had worked at Google for well over a decade when she was laid off in the fall, as part of yet another round of layoffs at the tech giant.

It’s no secret we all dawdle too much on our smartphones. The founder of phone addiction app BePresent has some thoughts on reducing the time suck and getting back to deep work. The threats of social media are making front-page news. Proposed bans of TikTok for ties to the Chinese Government or state governments enacting legislation limiting social media are getting mainstream attention across the country.

These schools lead the way when it comes to faculty pay in higher education.

The grandson of founder John W. Nordstrom, it was Bruce's generation that had the vision to turn Nordstrom into a national brand and took the company public.