FRIDAY THE 13

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The best thing I did for my mornings this year wasn’t another cold plunge, a perfect journaling spread, or a twelve-step routine with a timer. My old mornings looked great on paper—hydrate, meditate, sunlight, gratitude list, inbox triage, macros dialed in. Most days I hit maybe three of those and then punished myself mentally for missing the rest. It felt like prepping a ten-course tasting menu on a Tuesday lunch. Too much mise en place for the moment. I wanted a single move I could do on five hours of sleep in a hotel room or ten hours at home. So I threw out the routine and kept one habit. The one small habit Before I look at a screen, I do a 20-minute “output-first sprint” on the one thing that matters most. That’s it. No apps. No dashboards. No “quick peek.” A timer, a pen, and whatever tool actually makes the thing real—notes app, doc, slide, script, sketch, spreadsheet. Some mornings it’s one paragraph of a draft. Other days it’s a single slide for a pitch, a recipe edit, or a call outline. Twenty minutes. Real progress. Then I can eat, train, or do whatever the day needs. But the day has already paid for itself. How it works (and why it sticks) I stole the principle from kitchens: cook before service gets chaotic. When the lunch rush hits, you don’t start making stock. You ladle from the pot you made earlier. The sprint does three things for me: First, it cuts decision fatigue. I pick my “one thing” the night before on a sticky note and put it on my keyboard. I don’t wake up and negotiate with myself. Second, it front-loads a win. Mornings used to start with consumption—email, messages, headlines. I’d soak up other people’s priorities and spend the rest of the day trying to crawl back to my own. Now I start by creating. Mood follows momentum. Third, it shrinks the barrier to entry. Twenty minutes is absurdly doable, even jet-lagged. Most days I go longer because I’m already moving. But the rule never changes: twenty is a win. What I actually do in the sprint I keep it boring and tactile on purpose. I drink water, set a 20-minute timer, and write one sentence that defines the next step: “Draft the intro,” “Outline the email,” “Price out ingredients,” “Refactor the logic for X.” If I’m stuck, I lower the bar until I’m embarrassed not to start: “Write a bad paragraph,” “Type a list of bullet points,” “Sketch the layout on paper.” No music with lyrics, no phone in reach, no tabs that can hijack me. If I need a fact, I leave a bracket like [CHECK THIS] and keep moving. Research is afternoon energy for me; morning is for building. After the timer, I stop. Even if I’m on a roll. Because the point isn’t heroics; it’s consistency. I want my morning success to be repeatable on any continent, in any season. What changed (and what didn’t) I won’t call it magic. I still have messy days. But here’s what shifted fast: I stopped “carrying” tasks across three calendars. The needle moves daily, even if it’s small. That built a quiet confidence I wasn’t expecting—like watching a bank account grow from regular deposits, not windfalls. My relationship with food in the morning softened. Instead of white-knuckling a perfect routine, I eat what helps me think. Most days that’s simple and plant-forward: oats with chia and berries, or leftover lentils over rice with a fried egg. Some days it’s coffee and fruit, and that’s fine. The sprint makes breakfast taste earned, which weirdly makes me choose better fuel. Workouts got easier to keep. Because my first win doesn’t depend on a run or a lift, I’m less likely to skip movement out of rebellion. A short strength session or a walk fits better when I’m not treating it like moral homework. What didn’t change? My calendar is still full. Life is still life. The difference is I get a little less rattled by it. The work that matters has already started before the world wakes up. The two-minute night setup that makes it effortless None of this works without the night-before. I make a tiny “prep list” like I would for a dinner service. It’s one sticky note with three lines: Outcome: the one thing that matters tomorrow (e.g., “Send draft to editor”). Next step: the minimum viable action (e.g., “Write rough intro”). Tool ready: open the doc, or stack the notebook and pen on the keyboard. I also put my phone to charge in the kitchen. If I need an alarm, I use a cheap analog one. It’s not about being anti-phone; it’s about protecting the first twenty minutes from a thousand tiny negotiations. What about journaling, reading, meditation? I still like all of those. I just stopped pretending I’m a better person if I do them first. Most mornings, I’ll read a few pages while coffee brews or take five slow breaths before I sit down. But I’ve accepted that my brain is sharpest after I’ve made something, not before. If journaling is your ignition key, do it. If not, you have permission to make and then reflect. I treat the nice-to-haves as optional condiments. The sprint is the meal. Food rules that support the sprint I promised one habit, and I’m keeping it. These are not rules, just the little choices that make the twenty minutes feel clean and strong: Delay caffeine 60–90 minutes. I hydrate first and let my brain wake naturally. Coffee tastes better when it’s not doing emergency work. Keep a two-minute breakfast on standby. A jar of overnight oats, a bowl of fruit and soy yogurt, or toast with tahini and honey. No decisions required. Prep a weekday sauce. Something punchy (tahini-miso, chili crisp, sesame-ginger) that can turn rice plus vegetables into a satisfying bowl post-sprint. Make your kitchen easy to enter. Clear the counter the night before. Visual calm makes starting frictionless. https://vegoutmag.com/lifestyle/n-i-replaced-my-morning-routine-with-this-one-small-habit-and-my-productivity-skyrocketed/

For days, farmers in the Indian state of Punjab watched the pounding monsoon rains fall and the rivers rise with mounting apprehension. By Wednesday, many woke to find their fears realised as the worst floods in more than three decades ravaged their farms and decimated their livelihoods. Hundreds of thousands of acres of bright green rice paddies – due to be harvested imminently – as well as crops of cotton and sugar cane were left destroyed as they became fully submerged in more than five feet of muddy brown flood waters. The bodies of drowned cattle littered the ground. “The crops are ruined, and even our homes are in danger of collapsing,” said Parmpreet Singh, 52, a farmer from Ajnala in Amritsar district, Punjab. His family, including his elderly mother and two young children, were now living on the roof of their house to stay safe from the murky flood waters.“My entire livelihood depends on my seven hectares of farmland, all of which has been destroyed by flood waters,” he said, despairing that his only option left would be to sell his land and abandon farming. “I had already invested most of my money into seeds and fertilisers for the previous crop. Now everything is gone.”While monsoon season usually brings heavy rain, the extreme levels of rainfall that fell across northern India this week caused untold damage in Punjab, resulting in flash floods and swollen rivers breaching their banks and overflowing into fields and villages. So far, 43 people have lost their lives and almost 2,000 villages in the state have been affected, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity and access to clean water. The stench of rotting animal carcasses hangs over many villages.“This is the worst time Punjab has ever faced,” said Parminder Singh Pinki, a lawmaker from Firozpur district in western Punjab, one of the areas badly hit by floods. “I have never witnessed such devastation in my lifetime. Entire farmlands are submerged under water, now layered with mud and sand.” India’s farmers have already faced mounting hardship, with millions saddled with high debts, low incomes and heavy crop losses in the face of increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather conditions brought on by the climate crisis. Pinki was among those who accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government, led by Narendra Modi, of negligence towards farmers and simply abandoning them to their fate during this year’s extreme monsoon. “The government had been aware for months about the weather forecasts and should have put proper measures and emergency responses in place,” he said. “But that never happened, and this failure has led to destruction on such a massive scale.” He was echoed by Surinder Singh, 75, a farmer from Sarala Kalan village in Patiala. For days, he had watched the canal near to their village getting higher and higher, but had been powerless to stop it. “The government will make promises of relief, but the farmers will end up receiving nothing,” he said. “In the end, we are left to take care of ourselves.” Like many, he questioned the long-term viability of Indian agriculture, which employs half the country’s workforce and keeps food on the country’s tables. “I cannot imagine what is left for our future generations,” he said. “Floods and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, and the future does not look any better. If the farmers of Punjab – the food bowl of India – cannot even feed themselves, how will they feed others?” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/06/everything-gone-punjabi-farmers-suffer-worst-floods-three-decades

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There aren’t many video games that let you hone your combat skills while perfecting your flirting techniques at the same time. Well, that’s the crux of Love and Deepspace, a romantic visual novel developed by a Chinese studio called InFold Games which is predominantly made up of female designers. Released on iOS and Android devices in January 2024, the game is plot and character focused as the player builds relationships with various male love interests (all of whom have fancy names like Sylus and Xavier) by making narrative decisions and completing mini games. There’s also a bunch of strange cosmic beings to fight off too. It’s now amassed 70 million players globally and while it’s free to play, it’s accumulated over $650 million in revenue from in-app purchases, according to a report from June this year. At Gamescom 2025, it even pipped the likes of Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero to the best mobile game award.Despite all the success, Love and Deepspace’s creator (who wishes to remain anonymous) has never spoken with a journalist from a Western country before. She travelled to Cologne for Gamescom in August for the first time where I met with her to discuss (via a translator) the game’s huge success. What do you think is behind Love and Deepspace’s success? First of all, the core nature of a romance game is that it must be a good experience and have good storytelling techniques. That’s what we’ve been focusing on to deliver the best experience for our gamers. For example, we’ve used technological techniques such as 3D capture to make the game more interactive and immersive. This really gave our players a wow factor. To develop any character or love interest in our game, it takes us two years to design them and to make them appear lifelike. We aim to make the design high quality and have a cinematic feel - I think that’s why our gamers love it. The video games market is more competitive than it’s ever been. Did you expect to find success like this when the game was first launched? When we first designed the game, we wanted it to be well received, of course, but it’s actually exceeded our expectations. Our original objective was to make a 3D game that has never been seen before and was unprecedented on the market. We’re really happy to see that [it’s become so po[CENSORED]r] after we dedicated so much time and effort into making it. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshualamb/2025/09/03/exclusive-love-and-deepspaces-creator-discusses-the-mobile-games-success/

Tomb Raider studio Crystal Dynamics has imposed another round of layoffs, putting an undisclosed number of people out of work in the face of "evolving business conditions." "Today we made the very difficult decision to part ways with a number of our talented colleagues as the result of evolving business conditions," the studio announced in a message posted on LinkedIn. "This decision was not made lightly. It was necessary, however, to ensure the long-term health of our studio and core creative priorities in a continually shifting market." This is the second round of layoffs for Crystal Dynamics, which put 17 people out of work in March, cuts that were also made to ensure "the studio's future success." Crystal Dynamics took another hit in July when Microsoft cancelled the Perfect Dark reboot as part of its layoff of roughly 9,000 employees across its company. That project was being led by The Initiative, which was closed following the cancellation, but Crystal Dynamics came on board as co-developer in 2021, and the cancellation appears to be at least partly responsible for these layoffs: Multiple employees who have been let go by the studio specified in their LinkedIn profiles that they were working on the Perfect Dark reboot, and one, narrative designer Leilan Nishi, said her layoff came "in the aftermath of Perfect Dark's cancellation." The Embracer-owned studio said people who no longer had jobs as a result of the cuts will be offered "the full extent of support and resources at our disposal," and thanked remaining employees and fans for their "continued support as we build a creative, sustainable, and resilient tomorrow together." It also confirmed that "the future of Tomb Raider" will not be impacted by the cuts. The future of Tomb Raider is also kind of unclear, however. The 'Unified Lara' art released in early 2024 seemed to suggest that something was in the works, and the new-look Lara has since appeared in Pinball FX and World of Tanks, but there's been no subsequent word of when to expect an actual new Tomb Raider game. The most recent, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, was released in 2018. The layoffs at Crystal Dynamics feel similar to recent cuts seen at Romero Games, which cancelled an in-development FPS and laid off employees after losing funding for the project: Not part of Microsoft, but still forced to let people go as a result of Microsoft's deep cuts. But that industry instability has also helped fuel a push for increased unionization: Just today, more than 450 people on the Diablo development team at Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard voted to unionize, in part a response to the lack of job stability and near-constant threat of mass layoffs. The past few months have also seen Blizzard's World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 teams form unions, as has Microsoft-owned Bethesda Game Studios. I've reached out to Crystal Dynamics parent company Embracer to ask how many people have been let go and will update if I receive a reply. https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/were-still-feeling-aftershocks-from-microsofts-destructive-july-layoffs-and-cancellations/

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