SUCCESS

Matt Zames will take on an unpaid adviser position at the Social Security Administration, according to reports.

Micron Technologies (MU) CEO Sanjay Mehrotra has already given investors plenty to think about in 2026. Now he’s asking investors to look beyond the current memory boom, backing a sprawling $10 billion investment to push the envelope on technologies that go well beyond anything on its existing roadmap. 

Micron’s arguably been the pick of the AI trades this year, with the memory-chip maker’s stock more than tripling this year, putting it in rarified air even after a choppy summer.

Despite weakness of late, Seeking Alpha data show Micron stock has risen 33% over the past three months and 128% over the past six. 

Also read: History of Micron: The story behind the computer memory giant

Its illustrious run has everything to do with surging demand for high-bandwidth memory and growing confidence that the relentless AI spending isn’t slowing anytime soon. 

Now Micron’s putting a massive number behind that optimism, unveiling plans to invest $10 billion over the next decade in Micron Research Labs.

Speaking with CNBC’s veteran analyst Jim Cramer from Micron’s headquarters, Mehrotra linked that enormous $10 billion commitment to a far bigger claim about where memory now sits within the AI boom and why its old role may no longer fit. 

 Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra outlines a $10 billion research push for AITing Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Why Micron is looking past today’s memory cycle

Mehrotra’s broader message to investors is that Micron isn’t treating memory as essentially a supporting act in the AI buildout.

“Memory is strategic infrastructure of AI,” the Micron CEO told Cramer, arguing that smarter, quicker AI entails a ton of high-performance, lower-power memory. 

According to him, memory is “no longer a commodity”, and without it, AI cannot scale. That said, the sheer scale and scope of Micron’s latest commitment lend it greater weight. 

More Micron:

Michael Burry increases his bet against popular chip giant

Bank of America doubles down on Micron stock after AI bombshell

Micron stock jumps as investors look beyond GPUs in AI chip trade

Micron is planning to invest $10 billion over the next decade in Micron Research Labs, which is a long-horizon research institution headquartered in Boise. 

Interestingly, the work will stretch beyond today’s product roadmaps into critical memory technologies, advanced memory, compute architectures, packaging, and future chip manufacturing.

Additionally, Micron is planning university collaborations, global satellite labs, and major ecosystem partnerships, with a flagship Boise facility likely to break ground in 2027 and host hundreds of researchers.

With a 10-year horizon. Mehrotra described the strategy as “looking around the corner” to the memory and compute systems future AI will need.

For investors, that’s a clear message that Micron’s looking to be proactive in influencing what comes beyond the current HBM cycle.

Over the long-term, that might position the company further upstream in the AI stack, while giving it earlier exposure to emerging technologies and tighter links with customers, universities, and chip-industry partners.

Naturally, that payoff is far from guaranteed or immediate at this point, but Micron is spending heavily today to redefine what AI hardware will need next.

Why Micron can’t afford to fall behind

Micron’s $10 billion research push also has a defensive angle, given that its biggest memory rivals are generating a ton of cash and aren’t standing still.

SK Hynix remains the company Micron needs to chase in HBM.

According to Counterpoint Research data, SK Hynix accounted for 58% of HBM sales in Q1, while Micron and Samsung each accounted for 21%. 

Naturally, that lead translates into massive earnings power. SK Hynix reported Q2 sales of 79.3 trillion won and operating profit of 60.5 trillion won, up 257% and 557% from a year earlier.

At the same time, SK Hynix is reinvesting aggressively. Reuters reported that the company is looking to raise 2026 capital spending to the high-40-trillion-won range, up from 30.2 trillion won last year. 

On top of that, it is in talks with nearly 10 long-term customers on agreements lasting five years, giving it stronger visibility into future AI memory demand.

Moreover, Samsung might be the more immediate technological threat.

A recent TrendForce report showed that Samsung became the first supplier to complete HBM4 validation and begin shipments in Q2, while Micron remained more focused on HBM3E. 

Moreover, Samsung has shipped what it calls the industry’s first HBM4E samples to major customers. Looking at the numbers, its semiconductor division generated 127.5 trillion won in Q2 sales and 89.2 trillion won in operating profit.

Also, the broader DRAM market remains tough, too. TrendForce data cited by Biggo put Samsung’s Q1 sales at 38.5%, SK Hynix’s at 28.8%, and Micron’s at 22.4%.

For Micron, that makes its enormous $10 billion commitment look less optional, as its rivals already have incredible scale, customer relationships, and enormous cash flows to fund the next generation.

Micron stock looks cheap, but there’s a catch 

For Micron investors, the valuation picture seems strangely split.

The stock has already delivered tremendous gains, but earnings-based multiples suggest Wall Street expects bottom-line strength to improve much more quickly than the share price.

Seeking Alpha data shows Micron trading at 13.27 times forward non-GAAP earnings, around 42% below the sector median of 22.86. 

Moreover, its forward GAAP P/E of 13.42 is even further behind the sector’s 29.77 multiple. 

Those numbers make Micron look relatively cheap if today’s AI earnings surge continues to prove durable. 

Related: Jim Cramer sees trouble brewing for stock market 

However, other metrics convince investors not to confuse a low PE with an outright cheap stock. Micron trades at around 8.5 times forward sales, about 150% above the sector median. Moreover, its trailing price-to-cash-flow sits 27% above Micron’s historical norm.

Nevertheless, Wall Street remains bullish. 

Seeking Alpha’s Wall Street consensus shows an average price target of $1,515.11, implying 55.5% upside, although the range from $361 to $2,200 underscores how widely views still differ.

The $10 billion research commitment in particular could strengthen the case long-term, but it also raises the stakes: 

Micron must continue to convert today’s spending and AI demand into sustained margins. Further evidence of that, along with support from the broader market, could push the stock’s next leg higher.

More On Micron Stock:

Does Micron pay dividends? Its yield and payouts explained

Micron Technology’s stock buybacks explained

Is Micron Technology a good long-term investment? What buy-and-hold investors should know

“You’ll have to trust me when I tell you that she had love, support and opportunities.”

Multiple reports have claimed Meghan Markle is in talks to join Netflix’s “The Gentlemen,” marking a return to acting.

The court still has to issue a more lasting ruling on the ballroom’s fate.

Imagine launching a marketing campaign that nearly doubles your daily active customer base, drives thousands of dormant users back into your ecosystem, and sparks global conversation about your product—all without spending a single dollar on advertising.
Sounds like a fantasy? It actually happened.
When Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film The Odyssey hit theaters in July 2026, something extraordinary occurred in the gaming world. Within just ten days of the movie’s premiere, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey—a video game originally released by Ubisoft back in 2018—saw its daily active users jump by a staggering 90%. According to data from Alinea Analytics, daily active users climbed from 122,000 to 233,000 across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.
The renewed interest wasn’t enough to put Ubisoft among the top stock gainers given the company’s ongoing challenges, but it gave one of the company’s older titles an unexpected second wind.
Ubisoft didn’t run a massive marketing push. They didn’t spend millions on targeted ad campaigns. Yet, a third-party Hollywood release gave an eight-year-old product a massive second wind.
For entrepreneurs, founders, and growth-minded leaders, this surge isn’t just trivia—it is a masterclass in positioning, friction reduction, and leveraging external momentum. Here are the four critical business lessons you can steal from this unexpected phenomenon to scale your own venture.
1. Friction Is the Ultimate Growth Killer
The data tracked by Alinea Analytics revealed a fascinating platform split: Xbox posted the largest relative player jump at 134%, followed by PlayStation at 94%. Meanwhile, growth on PC (via Steam) lagged behind.
Why did console engagement skyrocket while PC lagged? The answer comes down to friction.

Console Users (Zero Friction): The game was already included in subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. When moviegoers left the theater with renewed curiosity about ancient Greece, they could download the game immediately without opening their wallets.
PC Users (High Friction): On Steam, curious users had to make a purchasing decision and justify the price for an older game.

Curiosity + Financial Friction = Hesitation & Abandonment
Curiosity + Zero Friction = Immediate Action & Conversion

The Entrepreneurial Lesson here is: How many steps are standing between your prospect’s initial interest and their first experience with your brand? If your onboarding, buying process, or lead-capture funnel requires too much effort or decision-making, you are bleeding potential customers. Eliminate friction, and you unlock exponential speed.
2. Build Evergreen Assets That Age Like Wine
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey wasn’t a rushed, temporary product; it was built as an immersive, highly detailed digital recreation of ancient Greece during the Peloponnesian War (431 BC), complete with historical landmarks from Athens to Sparta. Years earlier, Ubisoft even added “Discovery Tour,” an educational, non-combat mode designed specifically to let players explore classical history.
Because the original product was crafted with depth and quality, it remained relevant eight years later when a major cultural wave hit.
The Entrepreneurial Lesson here is: In a world obsessed with quick trends, focus on building evergreen assets. Whether it’s a flagship digital product, high-value evergreen content, or an unbeatable service framework, create work that holds its value long after the initial launch. When external trends align with your industry, your evergreen assets will be standing ready to capture the fallout.
3. Reactivating Your Dormant Base Is Cheaper Than Buying New Leads
Alinea Analytics noted that the user surge was driven predominantly by returning players rather than brand-new buyers. People who had bought the game years ago—and had long since stopped playing—suddenly reactivated.
In business, acquiring a brand-new customer is often 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining or reactivating an existing one.

Customer Type

Friction Level

Acquisition Cost

Conversion Potential

Cold Prospects

High (Requires trust-building)

Expensive

Moderate

Dormant Customers

Low (Trust already established)

Nearly $0

Very High

The movie served as a passive, external trigger that reignited interest among a warm audience. The lesson for founders is clear: do not neglect your dormant email list, past clients, or churned users. A single timely message, relevant market event, or simple re-engagement campaign can wake up a goldmine of existing demand.
4. Position Yourself to Surf Cultural Waves
Ubisoft didn’t make Christopher Nolan’s movie, but their product occupied the exact cultural real estate that the movie energized. When the film reignited global fascination with classical epics, players turned to the best available experience sitting right in their subscription libraries. In fact, the surge was so strong that gaming communities actively began calling for a remastered “Resynced” edition of the game.
While this temporary spike wasn’t enough on its own to solve broader corporate challenges for the publisher, it proved the incredible power of positioning.
The Entrepreneurial Lesson here is: You don’t always need to build the wave; sometimes you just need to be positioned on the board when the wave arrives. Pay close attention to macro-trends, cultural shifts, and emerging conversations in your market. Position your brand so that when interest in a broader topic explodes, your solution is the most accessible choice sitting right in front of the audience.
The Bottom Line
Success isn’t just about how hard you hustle during a product launch; it’s about building a business model that captures value long after the launch is over. By lowering friction, building timeless assets, and positioning yourself where attention naturally flows, you set your business up for unexpected second winds—turning global cultural moments into pure, leveraged growth.
The post The Odyssey Effect: How an 8-Year-Old Product Doubled Its Users Overnight appeared first on Addicted 2 Success.

The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition. It defines burnout by three factors: exhaustion, growing mental distance from the work itself, and a decline in how effective someone feels.
Two of those three are about the work itself, not the worker. That distinction matters because it changes where you look for a fix.
If burnout is occupational, then the tasks you write off as admin are not really admin at all. They are your workflow: requesting work, assigning it, and tracking it until it closes. These are all parts of a single mechanism that most small and growing businesses never build, and the resulting bottlenecks drain people to the point of burnout.
Below are four changes to how your team manages tasks. Each one targets a specific element of burnout while lifting productivity and strengthening client relationships.
1. Create one intake point for all tasks
A single intake point means nobody has to visualize the entire work in their head before executing it.
There are several channels through which work ends up on employees’ desks. Like, a call that ends with a handful of action items. Some more requests may arrive via email or chat messages. Those working from the office would have tasks stemming from hallway conversations and shoulder taps while at their desks.
When those channels are not captured in one place, the requests land with no shared priorities and end up as noise in silo without a clear picture of which affects the greater goal. Somebody has to be the integration point between them, and in a founder-led business that somebody is almost always the founder.
There’s a cognitive load of holding an uncommitted list in memory. And this is why psychologists have long observed that unfinished tasks occupy attention more persistently than completed ones, a phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect.
Which is why people wake at 4 am running a mental audit of what they might have dropped, and that audit only ends when the list is trustworthy somewhere outside their head.
​What can you implement here?
Implement a single rule where team members request work in one system and treat requests made elsewhere as non-commitments. A verbal ask in a meeting becomes a task before the meeting ends, or it does not exist. Expect some internal friction, but building it as a habit for 2-3 weeks would help create a greater impact.
How to evaluate success?
See if you have team members asking less about action lists and execution and more about impact and results. The noise will be clear, breaking the clutter that created chaos in the first place.
2. Assign a named owner and one due date to every task
Another critical aspect of managing burnout in an organization through task management is assigning tasks at the individual level rather than the team level. Otherwise, many ‘assumed’ responsibilities go unresolved until someone escalates them.
And escalation in a founder-led company means the work returns to the founder, who then has to navigate a path forward as an operator, which takes a lot of time.
Instead, implement single-assignee ownership where a named owner with a due date can act on tasks and even have team members review their week to see whether they can make a case to push back some tasks or dates based on what they’re doing and whether other work got in the way. This also opens the door for re-negotiating the deadline by flagging early that something will not be accomplished within a certain time.
As opposed to that, a team-level assignment doesn’t provide any standing to do any of that, so overcommitment stays invisible until it fails.
What to start implementing?
The implementation is an unglamorous answer because it requires ensuring that each task has one owner and one due date, mapped to the project and outcome it rolls up to. This is not a departmental or rotating-pool task, but a clear set of executable lists, along with the project and goal they affect (given a deadline).
When work genuinely requires several people, break it into subtasks with one owner each, rather than one task with four watchers and no clear owner.
What does success look like?
Expect a measurable drop in the number of items escalated to the most senior person in the business. It’s because there will be fewer decisions that stay structurally stuck.
3. Set a definition of done for recurring work
Another common issue with a founder-led small business is the lack of a clear definition of done
For example, pulling the raw numbers for a monthly report is one subtask, but cleaning and reconciling is another. If the result is building a dashboard or a report, then it’s a third subtask, not a separate request.
When someone defines a task, “send the monthly report,” as a single task, they have created a parent task with its subtasks left implicit, making work that is already happening invisible in the system.
So the first step is to break each recurring deliverable into its subtasks, so the real scope of work becomes visible in the system.
The second gap is the standard that remains in the founder’s head and never reaches the assignee. So start by writing down the acceptance criteria for each task and documenting them in an SOP accessible to everyone on the team. Then, attach them to the work itself, through a task template, a project brief, or a custom field on the task, so the standard travels with the work instead of sitting in a separate document.
That is how the output starts to match what the founder is picturing, without them having to reread every report first.
Founders rarely count rechecking as real work, so the exhaustion it produces is blamed on the team rather than the process, and the response is to hire another person, which changes nothing.
A series of fixes here:
The fix is to build a task template for each recurring deliverable, with the subtasks and acceptance criteria already in place, and an approval step before the task can move to done..  Have the assignees document the SOP themselves rather than receiving it top-down. The goal is to define done for the team to apply without the founder in the room.
A better solution is to begin operational consulting engagements with businesses specializing in systems and design. For example, if Asana is your system of choice, working with an Asana partner like Cirface is one way to get those in-the-head standards written into the workflow itself. Success here means a drop in rework and deliverables stop bouncing back through one person for a final check.
4. Check capacity before you assign the work
The fourth and final way to counter organization-wide burnout is to stop committing to new work before you can see the team’s actual workload through capacity-based commitment
The commitment to work is based on whether the work sounds doable on its face value. But it’s also the one that happens without reference to what the person executing it is already carrying on their plate. Burnout builds when there’s a gap between what’s been promised and what can be delivered within the available hours.
A common objection is that gating commitments can disrupt work momentum and eventually create bottlenecks that disappoint clients or stakeholders. In practice, it does the opposite and rather helps set the right expectations, making them more manageable by meeting the right deadlines and building a case for a reliable client relationship.
Missed deadlines are cost relationships, and that’s why setting it up right at the start can help manage employee workload as well.
The implementation looks like this:
Check the team’s workload before assigning a task to a colleague or committing to a client on deliverables. Asana provides Workload Management features that you can use to help cut burnout before it even crops up. This view in a task management tool ensures that, before committing to a task, it checks what that person is already assigned for that period, and the date reflects that.
What does success look like:
Success in managing expectations through gated commitments is reflected in an improved ratio of committed dates to met dates. Also, the number of weekend recovery pushes goes down, giving employees a much-needed breather to wind down.
Why this is a cure rather than a coping mechanism
The recovery practices most burnout advice points to- sleep, training, cold exposure- help a person tolerate a workload. They do not change the workload itself. Task management systems operate on the implementation side, helping to reduce the number of decisions that must pass through a single person.
Marquis Murray, a Halifax-based founder at Cirface who has built three companies and burned out in two of them, describes the diagnostic shift this way.
Every decision went through him earlier because there was a set standard written for anyone to follow on how things got done or what a complete task looked like. In that case, team members had no option but to reach out to him for almost everything. Teams that are burned out don’t necessarily need a supplement stack or more sleep; they need better systems by identifying the part of work that pulls more out of the founder than they can give back.
The goal is to make commitments more visible before they are made, moving the standard out of one person’s head and into something a team can apply. 
The takeaway is not to drop your recovery habits. Sure, rest and exercise matter a lot, but if you’re a founder waking up tired every week, the more useful question is not what to add to your morning routine. It is which decisions, standards, and approvals still run through you, and which of them could live in a system instead.
The post Why Task Management Systems Are the Antidote to Workplace Burnout appeared first on Addicted 2 Success.

“Lanterns,” HBO and HBO Max’s new DC series starring Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre, is getting off on the right foot in its first season thanks to big numbers for its series premiere.

Also in Weekend Reads: The Gen Z online sports-betting trend, what’s next for Apple as Tim Cook exits, and a bullish take on Nvidia heading into earnings.

How many credit cards do you have in your wallet?

Team Clark has often fielded the question: How many credit cards should I have?

And while there’s no “perfect” answer to that, rarely do you come across someone who has as many as Richard in New Jersey.

Richard, who is a frequent traveler, opened more than 25 credit cards for various bonuses, rewards and perks. He recently wrote to money expert Clark Howard seeking advice on trimming some of those cards from his wallet now that he doesn’t travel as frequently.

In this article, we’ll look at Clark’s advice to Richard as he navigates annual fees and credit score implications. We’ll also look at some lessons we can take from what Clark told him to apply to everyone’s credit card situation.

Ask Clark: How Should I Eliminate Credit Cards from My 25+ Card Collection?

During a recent episode of The Clark Howard Podcast, Clark addressed Richard’s credit card situation.

Richard in New Jersey says:

“I know you don’t say don’t close credit cards as it impacts your score. Due to a lot of previous travel, I have over 25 credit cards. Five are not active, and I would like to start closing these not just for fees but for relevance. I closed my first one with an annual fee of $495, and my score dropped from 850 to 838. But it’s back climbing. What strategies should I use? Wait until 850 again, or every two months close the next one?”

Clark responds:

“You can close some cards if you want! 25! As long as your score is 780 or above, you can do whatever you want. I wouldn’t willy-nilly close all those cards at once, but I would periodically close cards that are no longer relevant to you that have annual fees. Cards that don’t have annual fees: I would keep them open. But the annual fee cards that have no relevance anymore, you should give them the heave-ho.” “On this point, I’d like to add one annex … for people who have been playing the mileage game and you got a card because they had a sign-up bonus of 60 to 120,000 miles, and you really don’t fly as much as you thought or anything like that: Go ahead and bite the bullet and downgrade that card to one with little or no annual fee. If it’s an airline-issued card and it’s just not doing a lot for you, they all have an entry-level card. That’s $95 to $99 a year, somewhere right in there. You get a free bag if you check bags and a few other token benefits, but not the big package. You don’t get the lounge or anything like that. Downgrade to that, at least. You keep the card in the game with that airline, and you reduce your expenses so much. The airline cards are getting up to the point where they’re like 700 bucks for the premium cards. It’s a good idea at the very least, if it’s not truly relevant, to do the downgrade.”

How You Can Apply This Advice To Your Wallet

Odds are pretty good that you’re not carrying around more than 25 credit cards with a near-perfect credit score like our friend Richard.

But there still are some actionable items that you can take away from this interaction between Richard and Clark:

Keep no-annual-fee credit cards open and active. Clark has this as a tenant of his rules for using credit cards, and he held to that in his advice for Richard. It has a few clear benefits for your credit score: Your total available credit remains high, which helps keep your credit utilization rate low. Additionally, you’ll continue to show good payment behavior and your average age of credit history remains higher if the accounts stay open. Team Clark suggests using a small recurring payment, such as a streaming service, as a way to make regular payments that keep the account in active status.

Before outright canceling, consider downgrading your premium credit cards if you’re not seeing clear value. This is a topic we’ve talked about several times recently in the age of the premium travel credit card. Are you actually seeing clear value above your annual fee each year? If not, you need to stop paying for a credit card you’re not using enough to justify. Call the number on the back of your card to explore your options for downgrading. You may be able to drop to a no-annual-fee option without closing your account. And as Clark mentioned above, airline cardholders may find that the $95-99 annual fee level is a good fit thanks to free bag perks.

Make sure you actually need a high-annual-fee card before applying for a new one. Clark says that you should be able to check these 3 boxes before you apply for a big annual fee card. If you can’t, maybe you should avoid joining Richard by jumping deep into the travel points game. You’ll likely save yourself some cash by opting for a no-annual-fee card instead.

Do you have credit card annual fees you need to get rid of? We’d love to hear how you’ve handled it in the Clark.com community.
The post Why Clark’s Advice to a Man With 25 Credit Cards Is Relevant to Your Wallet appeared first on Clark Howard.