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- #234: How 45-Minute Blocks Help You Focus, Be Productive And Live Better
#234: How 45-Minute Blocks Help You Focus, Be Productive And Live Better
Want to be a better learner? Start by noticing how you think.
Jenae Spry
November 14, 2025
Productivity Stacks Newsletter
(Formerly Productivity Express)
Issue No. 234
The Best in Evidence-Based Productivity
for Small Business Owners, Freelancers & Founders
Helping You Work Smarter and Live More
The Rundown
Netflix cofounder says he stopped work at 5 p.m. every Tuesday for 30 years to stay 'sane,' no matter the crisis: 'Nothing got in the way of that'
Want to be a better learner? Start by noticing how you think.
How 45-Minute Blocks Help You Focus, Be Productive And Live Better
YouTube Music has me hooked, thanks to this one killer feature
5 boring everyday tasks I stopped handling myself, because NotebookLM takes care of them for me
👉Did you miss an issue? Check out previous Productivity Stacks issues anytime here
🔥Quote/Prompt
Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.
Use the quote as a writing or thinking prompt to finish your week strong.
A bit from mine:
(posted in our Doer Entrepreneurs Free Community — off social media)
Said another way: Not deciding, is deciding.
If we wake up every day and change nothing, then we have DECIDED that we are […]
Did someone forward this to you?
📈 Performance
Running a business often feels like you need to be "on" 24/7—especially when you're the one calling the shots. But Netflix cofounder Marc Randolph proved that even while building a $467 billion company, strict boundaries aren't just possible—they're essential for staying sane.
"For over thirty years, I had a hard cut-off on Tuesdays. Rain or shine, I left at exactly 5 p.m. and spent the evening with my best friend. We would go to a movie, have dinner, or just go window-shopping downtown together." [...] "Nothing got in the way of that. No meeting, no conference call, no last-minute question or request. If you had something to say to me on Tuesday afternoon at 4:55, you had better say it on the way to the parking lot. If there was a crisis, we are going to wrap it up by 5:00." [...] "Those Tuesday nights kept me sane. And they put the rest of my work in perspective."
Key Insights:
Non-negotiable boundaries work even at the highest levels. Randolph maintained his Tuesday 5 p.m. cutoff for three decades, including his seven years as Netflix CEO, proving that crisis mode doesn't have to be your default setting.
One consistent boundary can anchor your entire work-life balance. Rather than trying to limit hours every day, Randolph chose a single weekly commitment that gave him perspective on everything else, like how JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon tells employees they must take care of their mind, body, spirit, and relationships.
The "always-on" culture isn't universal among successful founders. While some CEOs like Scale AI's Lucy Guo work from 5:30 a.m. to midnight and credit it for their success, others like Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel prioritize using all their PTO and have implemented company policies forcing employees to take time off.
Read the full article for perspectives from multiple CEOs on both sides of the work-life balance debate and how different approaches to boundaries can still lead to business success. Heads up, this article is from Fortune and there are limited free articles available.
⚙️ Optimization
Most of us learn by doing—trying things, seeing what works, and adjusting. But there's a faster way to improve: notice how you're learning while you're learning. This approach, called metacognition, can help you catch mistakes in real time instead of after the fact.
"Your brain is constantly making predictions. It expects certain outcomes; you act on those expectations, see what happens, and then update your mental model. Touch something hot, feel pain, remember that hot things hurt. Message someone, get no response, assume they're not interested. This cycle runs automatically, usually without conscious thought." [...] "The biggest issue is that your automatic learning system often focuses on the wrong signals. It's easily skewed by recent events, your mood, and invisible biases. Worse, it can't examine itself. It can't tell whether it's actually learning the correct lessons from experience."
Key Insights:
Self-monitoring lets you catch problems while you're still working, not just afterward. For example, a chess master doesn't just analyze positions—they notice when they're being drawn to flashy moves or letting emotion cloud their judgment, allowing them to adjust their approach mid-task.
Your confidence level deserves scrutiny. Research shows that people who regularly check how confident they feel become better at distinguishing between what they actually know versus what they only think they know, leading to sharper decision-making.
Making your thinking visible accelerates improvement. Simple practices work well, such as explaining concepts to yourself to test understanding, narrating your thought process out loud when solving problems, or studying your mistakes by asking what you were assuming and where your reasoning broke down.
⏲️ Time Management
Ever sit down to knock out one task and suddenly realize hours have passed, your coffee's cold, and you're exhausted but can't point to what you actually accomplished? That feeling of spinning your wheels isn't a personal failing—it's your brain hitting its natural energy limits. This timeboxing approach works with your brain's rhythm instead of fighting it.
"Our brains aren't designed for endless focus. They follow a natural rhythm, periods of peak concentration followed by dips in energy. It's called the ultradian rhythm, where the alertness that rise and fall roughly every 90 minutes. The first 45 minutes are when you're most creative and attentive. After that, your energy drops. When you try to push past that point, you're not producing more; you're just draining yourself." [...] "So the 45-minute block isn't random. It's grounded in how your brain actually works."
Key Insights:
The structure is simple but powerful: 45 minutes of focused work followed by a mandatory 15-minute buffer. During the work block, no multitasking, emails, or phone checks allowed—just one meaningful task that truly matters today.
The 15-minute buffer isn't optional downtime; it's built-in protection against burnout. Use it to stand up, stretch, take a short walk, or handle quick email responses, but don't let it stretch beyond 15 minutes or you'll lose the rhythm.
You can customize the timing based on your brain. If you have ADHD or high energy and 45 minutes feels too long, start with 30-minute blocks and expand once you master the rhythm, applying timeboxing not just to work but to workouts, family time, and rest.
Read the full article for specific timeboxing AI tools that can automate the scheduling process and help you spot overload before it happens.
💻 Tools & Technology
Switching between audio and video versions of the same content shouldn't feel like a major hassle, but with most platforms, it is. Or they offer just one. YouTube Music figured out what other services missed: sometimes you want the audio while you're driving or washing the dishes, and other times you want to see the actual visual content. This seamless switching works for music, sure, but the real productivity win is that it works the same way for podcasts and educational content—like being able to flip between reading an e-book and listening to Audible without losing your place.
"When I'm listening to an album track, a simple glance at the top of the player screen shows two tabs: Song and Video. All it takes is a single tap on the Video tab, and the player instantly shifts. There is no buffering, no pause, and no searching again. The official music video appears right there." [...] "If I jump from the video back to Song mode, YouTube Music doesn't just play the audio from the video file. It plays the cleaner, album-quality audio track. It manages to snip out all the distracting ambient sound, long artistic introductions, or closing credits that are often part of the video file."
Key Insights:
The switch happens instantly with no buffering or searching required. You can watch a specific moment in a video—like a guitar solo or crowd reaction—then immediately flip back to audio-only mode when you get in the car or need to save battery, all without losing your flow.
This integration goes beyond music to become a serious productivity tool. For podcasts and educational content, being able to seamlessly transition between listening while you work and watching when you need visual context means you never have to choose between efficiency and comprehension.
The feature requires YouTube Premium, but it leverages Google's massive video library in a way competitors can't match. While Spotify and Apple Music are limited to their licensed audio libraries, YouTube Music pulls from millions of user-uploaded videos, remixes, and high-production content that simply don't exist on other platforms.
Read the full article for the specific caveats about which tracks support this feature and how YouTube Music compares to rival platforms in other areas.
🤖 AI
Running a business means constantly context-switching between different tools, client files, and information scattered across apps. Most of us waste hours every week on mental busywork—hunting down old documents, re-learning software features, or translating technical jargon from clients or vendors. NotebookLM can handle these repetitive background tasks so you can focus on work that actually grows your business.
"Much of my 'busy' work wasn't really work at all, but rather passive tasks and background admin that gobble up time. It's the mundane stuff like reading through old documents to find a specific piece of information or skipping through a YouTube video to quickly get to a key point. NotebookLM now automates much of that for me." [...] "NotebookLM is really where it shines – it's one of the most powerful retrieval tools out there. Not only can I instruct it to fetch what I need, but I can have it give me additional context, too."
Key Insights:
Skip the hours-long software tutorials by feeding documentation directly into NotebookLM. Instead of watching entire YouTube videos or reading full manuals, you can prompt it to explain only the specific features you need for your current task, customizing the learning experience to your skill level.
Create a personal information vault by uploading all your important business documents into one notebook. You can retrieve specific details from years-old files—such as comparing expense patterns from last year to this year—without remembering which folder or app they live in.
Translate industry jargon instantly to save cognitive energy. Rather than googling technical terms and falling down rabbit holes, NotebookLM explains concepts in plain language while keeping everything in context, like understanding what "affordance" means in UX design or "context window" in AI tools.
Read the full article for two additional ways to use NotebookLM for everyday productivity tasks, including how it can help you maintain consistent writing tone across different content types and prevent redundant research.
🎉 Celebration Corner
Every week Doers Inner Circle members do a weekly review & get help when they need it — check out the progress they made this week!
Discovered that batching bigger blocks of work is more effective than scattering small tasks, and made great progress tackling them one after another.
Got 2 new clients.
What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!
🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements
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I hope you found this valuable!
Wishing you much productivity!
- Jenae :)
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