#ThirstyThursday Issue #249

💬 How to ask for feedback after an interview rejection, with a sample email.

🧘 Eight workplace mental health trends shaping how teams function in 2026.

🤖 What leaders need to upgrade to actually succeed in the AI age.

🧠 Your brain can’t multitask. Here’s what’s actually happening up there.

Takeaways:

• Skip the endless theory and ask Claude to make you functional fast. Try: “You have four hours to teach me [skill]. Tell me what to learn first, what to ignore, and the one exercise that will put me ahead of most beginners.”
• Practice inside realistic situations instead of passively consuming information. Use: “Put me in a real scenario where I’ll need [concept]. When I make a mistake, ask questions that help me find the flaw in my reasoning before giving me the answer.”
• Build a learning plan around your actual goal. Tell Claude the specific result you want, your deadline, and what you already know, then ask for a seven-day plan with one 45-minute task, a success criterion, and one distraction to avoid each day.

Read the other 4 prompts on LinkedIn.

Forget the ping-pong tables. Culture comes down to whether people feel seen for their work, and the data there is hard to ignore: well-recognized employees are 45% less likely to leave, and 53% say they’d stay longer if their manager recognized them more. Yet most employees rarely get any.

Bonusly makes recognition a habit without adding to your plate. It’s a peer-to-peer platform: people give each other points for good work, points cash out for real rewards, and a recognition feed makes the good stuff visible instead of buried. Its AI companion, Bizy, reads the patterns and flags where connection is fading before it becomes a resignation.

Getting started takes an afternoon: connect Slack or Teams, set a monthly point allowance, and let the team run with it.

📙 Get our full Bonusly breakdown here.

Takeaways:

• Vague feedback doesn’t help people grow. Instead of saying, “You need to communicate better,” point to a specific example, explain the impact it had, and offer a clearer alternative they can use next time.
• General criticism creates confusion. Rather than saying, “This isn’t meeting expectations,” identify the exact shortcomings, share what success looks like, and work together to uncover what’s getting in the way.
• When the same issue keeps happening, don’t assume it’s just a people problem. Before blaming the employee, ask whether a broken process, unclear expectations, or a system issue is contributing to the pattern.

Read all 7 phrases.

Takeaways:

• ROMO (relief of missing out) and JOMO (joy of missing out) are outpacing FOMO (fear of missing out). Choosing rest, a lighter calendar, and a no without an explanation is getting framed as the win now, not the thing you apologize for.
• “Project Pan” and “No Buy Year” start from the same place: use what you already own first. Skincare, makeup, clothes, supplements, notebooks. Less clutter, less spend, fewer decisions to make.
• “Till the candle burns” is the ritual worth stealing. Light a candle, work one task until it goes out, no scrolling and no second tab. It is a focus session with a built-in timer.

See all 10 on IG.

The tool your team loved last year can start feeling like the wrong fit this year. The work changed, and the tool didn’t.

If the problem is visibility, monday.com puts every task and deadline on one board the whole team updates live, with AI agents that draft status reports and schedule meetings on their own. Trusted by over 60% of the Fortune 500.

If the problem is app sprawl, ClickUp folds tasks, docs, chat, and goal tracking into one workspace, with an AI layer that already knows the context behind them. Five million teams run on it, rated 4.7 on G2 by more than 10,000 reviewers.

If the problem is operations a spreadsheet can’t hold, Quickbase builds the exact app your process needs with no coding: construction schedules, manufacturing workflows, multi-team handoffs. Amazon and Procter & Gamble run parts of their operations on it.

All three are free to start, so you can test the fix before you pitch it to your boss.

👉 Compare all three side by side.

Takeaways:

• If your Instagram account is public, Meta may allow people to use your public posts and Reels with certain AI features. If you don’t want your content included, you can opt out or switch your account to private.
• To change the setting, go to your Profile → Settings and activity → Sharing and reuse. Under “Allow people to use your content on Instagram and with AI features on Meta,” turn off sharing for your Posts and Reels. If you don’t see the option yet, it may still be rolling out.
• If keeping control over your photos is important to you, it’s worth reviewing your privacy settings now. A quick settings check can help you decide whether you want your public content available for AI-powered features.

Read more on IG.

🧭 TheFutureParty covers where business and culture collide, so you walk into Monday already knowing what everyone is about to bring up.

👉 Free event: Get the enterprise playbook for moving intentionally on agents, August 26. RSVP here.

🎬 Turn your ideas into polished videos (no editing experience required).

🩳 Cameron’s actual daily underwear: seamless cotton thongs that don’t bunch, gap, or show.

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