I’ve told my friends to break up with bad partners many times before. I know all the signs, blatant and subtle, and I’m quick to call them out.

But fake friends? They fly under the radar all the time. (For my part, it’s usually because I’m so eager to be liked that I rationalize any kind of crappy behavior from my so-called friends. )

From long, painful, and bitter experiences, I know these five warning signs mean you’ve got a fake friend on your hands. …

cw: discussed disordered eating, weight loss, and weight with numbers.

Let me start off with honest: I’ve struggled with disordered eating since I was about 13. I’ve monitored my caloric intake for so long that I can list the calorie count of nearly any food at a glance. I still get a weird sense of pride when I go to bed hungry.

As a result of my checkered history, I’m very susceptible to weight-loss ads. …

I felt a familiar sinking dread as I read the news that the Icelandic four-day workweek experiment was considered a roaring success. (The full report, released by progressive thinktank Autonomy, is well worth a read.)

Why? Because, as always, people learned the wrong lesson.

Folks hailed the huge success as groundbreaking because it “improved focus,” “improved productivity,” or “increased…work-life balance.” What almost everyone ignored, or relegated to second-place importance, was the critical fact that this means work can release the chokehold on employees’ lives — and that there are vast groups of people who will be left behind.

We know 40 hours is pointless

I won’t…

The fact is that many of us sleepwalk through building our businesses, totally unaware that we waste a lot of our precious time. We have all the trimmings of efficiency— we have the to-do lists, we earn the right income, we have degrees, potted plants, and a beautiful desk layout.

But truthfully told, we pour our time down the drain and then wonder why our business is failing.

Here are these five habits of inefficient entrepreneurs. Drop these five timewasters and watch your income and actual productivity skyrocket.

1. The old “40-Hour Workweek” mentality.

I finished work today at 11:30 am. So I got up off…

At this point, there’s no excuse for the naive belief that content creators should keep posting stuff for free. We know our worth. But Facebook has not yet caught up.

So many big platforms that pivoted (or were originally created) to reward creators directly for posting are doing well, financially speaking. YouTube is set up to share ad revenue with creators. Twitch is designed to help streamers earn an income. Substack’s booming growth, even through the turmoil of the past few months, proves that blogging isn't dead, and that newsletters are vastly profitable for individuals.

That’s what makes Facebook’s tragic…

If you can get away with it, you should cheat on your job with your side hustle. I am giving you permission with this article.

If you love your hobby and you truly care about it, but you’re afraid to go full time because you still need benefits, feel absolutely no guilt about writing articles, baking cakes, painting scenes, or filming outfit shows during your work hours.

Nobody told me this until it was too late, so I’ll tell you now: your boss doesn't care about you. Your boss and your company don’t want you to “prioritize your mental health…

When I started to learn to code in school, coding challenges were the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, I was struck with one particular issue: I didn’t really want to learn to code. I didn’t care enough about coding. I didn’t care about the language. I wanted to get a decent grade and get out.

Like a lot of other coders, I’m competitive by nature, but only when it suits me. I need a reason to care. That’s why one of my earliest coding successes was a personal coding challenge. Could I get a Python bot up and…

I’m writing a rom-com. In pursuit of market research, this has driven me to read many (many!) rom-coms, from the heights of The Hating Game to the lows of The Playboy.

If you’re confused why I’m using “romantic comedy” as my term instead of “women’s fiction,” know that it’s because I hate the term “women’s fiction.” Why shouldn’t everyone enjoy these books? They’re awesome.

My diligent research has led me to the inescapable conclusion that these books rely on a specific set of cliches. Like dragons in fantasy, or the neighborhood boy — bad boy — plain, ordinary girl love…