- Productivity Stacks Newsletter
- Posts
- #238: Your brain has a productivity style. Here's how to find (and use) yours
#238: Your brain has a productivity style. Here's how to find (and use) yours
It's not your job. Your social media feed is ruining your workday
Jenae Spry
November 28, 2025
Productivity Stacks Newsletter
(Formerly Productivity Express)
Issue No. 236
The Best in Evidence-Based Productivity
for Small Business Owners, Freelancers & Founders
Helping You Work Smarter and Live More
The Rundown
Your brain has a productivity style. Here's how to find (and use) yours
It's not your job. Your social media feed is ruining your workday
The Friction Trick: Turn Your Brain's 'Laziness' into Your Superpower
This free browser extension replaces half the tabs I open every day
I use these Perplexity templates to improve my life
👉Did you miss an issue? Check out previous Productivity Stacks issues anytime here
🔥Quote/Prompt
Life has taught me one supreme lesson. This is that we must — if we are really to live… we must put our convictions into action.
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)
Action > Information.
This week, if you’re enjoying consuming (watching a webinar, etc.) but you’re someone who watches 100 webinars before you implement any of the content, look at […]
Did someone forward this to you?
📈 Performance
Trying to copy someone else's productivity system is like asking a jazz saxophonist to practice like a classical pianist. Your brain has its own rhythm, and fighting against it explains why that CEO's 4 a.m. routine left you exhausted instead of energized.
"Neuroscience supports this. Research on brain plasticity reveals that each of us develops distinct cognitive strengths and energy patterns based on our experiences and genetic wiring. In other words, your productivity style is as unique as your fingerprint. Leaders who thrive are those who learn to recognize, honor, and harness their style—and then build teams that groove together like a jazz ensemble."
Key Insights:
There are four main productivity styles that determine when and how you work best. The Disciplined Virtuoso thrives on structure and clear goals, the Creative Shape-Shifter excels at innovation and reinvention, the Resilient Improviser adapts quickly to uncertainty, and the Collaborative Conductor orchestrates team brilliance.
Working against your natural style drains energy and increases burnout risk. A Kronos study found that 95% of HR leaders believe burnout is sabotaging retention, and misaligned productivity approaches are a major but often overlooked contributor.
Peak performance comes from designing your environment to match your style. For example, Virtuosos need tidy desks and project management tools, while Shape-Shifters benefit from whiteboards and visual inspiration boards to generate ideas.
Read the full article for a five-step framework to identify your productivity style and specific strategies for aligning your calendar and workspace with how your brain naturally works. This is from Fast Company, with limited free articles.
⚙️ Optimization
Your afternoon slump might not be about the work itself. New research from Rutgers University reveals that scrolling social media during work hours affects your mood, productivity, and how you interact with colleagues in ways most of us don't realize.
"Researchers surveyed 133 workers twice a day for two weeks. They asked them to describe the most 'salient,' or memorable, post they saw that day, then describe how they felt and how productive they were at work. They found that while posts about family or friends tend to boost confidence, political rants spike anxiety and make people withdraw. Posts about accomplishments can either spur you or kill your drive, depending on your personality. Those with competitive natures are prone to feeling motivated by achievement-related content, while those who aren't particularly competitive are more likely to feel demotivated."
Key Insights:
Different types of content affect your work performance in measurable ways. Family posts tend to boost confidence, while political content increases anxiety and social withdrawal at work.
Your personality determines whether achievement posts help or hurt your productivity. Competitive people feel motivated by seeing others' accomplishments, while less competitive individuals often feel demotivated by the same content.
Treating social media like a designated break works better than constant checking. One writer bought a burner phone for work hours and found her anxiety dissolved, while a PR professional limits his LinkedIn time by going in with a purpose and getting out quickly.
Read the full article for specific apps that block social media access during work hours and strategies from professionals who've successfully reduced their scrolling without eliminating it entirely. This is from Fast Company, with limited free articles.
⏲️ Time Management
Your brain automates what it can to save energy - which is brilliant until you realize you've checked Instagram five times before lunch without meaning to. Understanding how to add or remove friction from your habits might be the most practical productivity strategy you'll ever use.
"Our brains are wired to create automations – neural pathways that allow us to perform routine tasks without conscious thought. These automations free up mental bandwidth for more complex tasks. However, they can sometimes work against us, leading to habits we'd rather break. Instead of relying solely on willpower, we can work with our brain's efficiency by manipulating the amount of friction associated with different actions. This approach aligns with our brain's tendency to seek the path of least resistance."
Key Insights:
Your brain will automate both helpful and unhelpful behaviors without asking permission first. For example, you might automatically reach for your phone during any pause in work, or habitually check email first thing every morning before tackling important projects.
Adding friction to unwanted habits works better than willpower alone. Using website blockers during work hours or keeping junk food out of the house makes it harder for your brain to follow automatic patterns you're trying to break.
Removing friction from desired behaviors gives your brain fewer opportunities to give up. Laying out workout clothes the night before eliminates multiple decision points that could derail your morning gym routine.
Read the full article for specific examples of how to calculate the right amount of friction for your habits and a step-by-step approach to gradually building new automations.
💻 Tools & Technology
If your browser looks like a wall of tiny icons with 20+ tabs you swore you needed, you're not alone. That chaos slows everything down and makes finding what you need nearly impossible. This free Chrome extension finally solved the tab overload problem that plagues most of us.
"Workona isn't a regular browser extension that keeps track of my opened tabs. It takes a step further and offers a workspace manager that's built right into my browser. It doesn't save my opened tabs as a long, chaotic list that's difficult to browse through. Rather, it allows me to organize my tabs into dedicated workspaces. Essentially, I get a mini-desktop for each of my projects. Having Workona feels like a switch between virtual desktops for a clean, fast, and distraction-free working environment."
Key Insights:
Workspaces keep related tabs together and hidden until you need them. Instead of keeping dozens of tabs open simultaneously, you can create separate workspaces for client projects, research, personal planning, and more, then switch between them with one click.
The free version is genuinely useful without limitations that force you to upgrade. You get five workspaces with unlimited content, automatic syncing across devices, and integrations with cloud apps like Google Docs, Notion, Asana, Slack, and Trello.
Universal search eliminates digging through browser history or bookmarks. The search bar at the top instantly finds tabs, workspaces, documents, and links across all your projects, making it faster than hunting through endless lists.
Read the full article for details on the paid version features, step-by-step setup instructions, and specific use cases showing how different professionals organize their workspaces.
🤖 AI
Setting up AI prompts perfectly takes time most of us don't have. Perplexity's Spaces templates solve this by pre-configuring the AI for specific tasks, turning it from a search engine into something closer to a brain extension without the setup headache.
"Spaces are Perplexity's version of workspaces, where you can basically sort and categorize your threads into their respective topics. What these templates do is fill out the Context settings for you, so it pre-instructs Perplexity based on what you're looking for. And this ultimately personalizes the outcome of the interactions you have with the AI."
Key Insights:
Brainstorm Buddy generates creative ideas with actual substance rather than generic suggestions. When asked for psychological thriller plot twists that challenge conventional tropes, it produced unique ideas the writer hadn't considered before, making it valuable for anyone creating products, content, or courses daily.
Website Scanner limits searches to specific sites you choose, eliminating noise from irrelevant sources. Adding Reddit as the only source for senior UX designer interview insights pulled real discussions from actual designers rather than mixing in generic career advice from across the web.
Open Research Explorer only pulls from peer-reviewed, open-access academic sources like DOAJ, PubMed, and medRxiv. This ensures health and psychology information comes from legitimate scholarly research rather than blog posts or unverified claims.
Read the full article for details on the Personal Growth Coach template that provides therapeutic-style responses and instructions for customizing any template to be even more specific to your needs.
🎉 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!
Systems are starting to run more automatically.
It was a very productive week and we made great progress with the technical setup for the masterclass.
What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!
🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements
We will soon be adding Referral Perks — Refer now to start earning! 👇
As a reminder, you’re getting this twice-weekly newsletter because you opted in to receive awesome productivity and systems tips through one of these methods:
Doer Entrepreneurs, Doers Express Newsletter, Productivity Stacks, Success by Rx, ClickUp Facebook Group, Productive & Successful Translators Facebook Group.
If you’re not interested in improving your and your business’s productivity so you’d like to break up, that’s definitely a bummer. But, you can always use the unsubscribe link at the bottom if you do not want to get these tips — but keep in mind I am hyper-focused on making these twice-weekly emails as valuable as possible.
Got a tip? Hit reply!
I hope you found this valuable!
Wishing you much productivity!
- Jenae :)
Interested in reaching thousands of motivated small business owners, freelancers & founders?
Hit reply and let’s chat about sponsorship. We only include ads that match our mission: to help our readers work smarter and live more.