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- #246: Worried about winter? 10 ways to thrive
#246: Worried about winter? 10 ways to thrive
My phone battery life doubled after changing this
Jenae Spry
December 26, 2025
Productivity Stacks Newsletter
(Formerly Productivity Express)
Issue No. 246
The Best in Evidence-Based Productivity
for Small Business Owners, Freelancers & Founders
Helping You Work Smarter and Live More
The Rundown
Worried about winter? 10 ways to thrive – from socialising to Sad lamps to celebrating the new year in April
The next revolution in neuroscience is happening outside the lab
Why "Just Five Minutes" Always Takes More Like 20
I revoked these 3 app permissions and my phone battery life doubled
Anthropic preparing new Agentic Tasks Mode for Claude
👉Did you miss an issue? Check out previous Productivity Stacks issues anytime here
🔥Quote/Prompt
The next time your mind wanders, follow it around for a while.
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)
How cool is this card? I LOVE this message. One thing I've started doing recently is […]
Did someone forward this to you?
📈 Performance
Running a business through winter months can feel like dragging yourself through mud. Your energy dips, motivation wanes, and suddenly those ambitious Q1 goals seem impossible. Clinical psychologist Stephanie Fitzgerald used to dread this season too—until she discovered science-backed approaches that transformed winter from something to survive into a season that actually supports better performance.
"I didn't feel 'sad', I felt really horrific. After researching the subject, Fitzgerald now manages her symptoms from October to April by sitting in front of a Sad lamp for at least 60 minutes every morning, using a sunrise/sunset alarm clock, taking vitamin D, eating well, exercising and getting plenty of sleep. In her book, she writes: 'I feel more balanced, stronger, better able to cope, less emotional and overall lighter.'"
Key Insights:
Winter performance isn't just about willpower—seasonal affective disorder can develop at any age and requires actual treatment strategies like light therapy, not just toughing it out.
Going to bed one hour earlier in winter (added in 15-minute increments) directly combats "revenge bedtime procrastination" and provides the extra rest your brain needs for decision-making and focus during darker months.
Reframing your calendar helps set realistic expectations—winter doesn't start until late December, so labeling October through December as "winter" sets you up to feel behind before the season even begins.
Exercise maintains cognitive performance even when your amygdala is screaming to stay on the couch—a 20-minute walk reduces cortisol enough to improve outlook and decision-making, while strength training specifically improves mental agility and executive function.
Read the full article for 10 complete strategies including seasonal cooking approaches, social connection tactics, and how to structure "hygge days" that reduce stress while maintaining productivity.
You're absolutely right. Let me revise with fewer em dashes:
⚙️ Optimization
Your brain doesn't operate in a vacuum, yet most of what we know about how it works comes from highly controlled lab environments. If you're making business decisions, managing teams, or navigating complex social situations all day, research based on isolated, artificial tasks might be missing the bigger picture. Neuroethology (a field that studies brain activity in natural, real-world conditions) is revealing that our brains work very differently when we're actually moving through the world versus sitting still in a lab.
"We know surprisingly little about how the brain manages more complex cognitive behaviors, like making a decision or socializing. Studying primates and humans in the confines of the laboratory, where they can't interact freely, won't tell you what the brain is doing when a primate forms a bond, infers an intention, cooperates, or manages conflict. Classical neuroscience doesn't fully capture how the brain operates in more natural, real-world contexts."
Key Insights:
Freely moving subjects display richer neural dynamics than restrained ones, even when performing similar tasks. This means traditional lab findings about decision-making and social behavior may not reflect how your brain actually works in business situations.
Social interaction requires your brain to simultaneously process competing variables like physical environment, other people's presence, and trade-offs between new approaches versus familiar ones. Research that captures this complexity offers more applicable insights for leadership and team dynamics.
The brain maintains a "social ledger" that tracks reciprocal exchanges, forecasts future returns, and influences alliance formation. Understanding these neural mechanisms could explain why some professional relationships thrive while others struggle.
Hurricane Maria forced macaque monkeys to rapidly shift their social behavior to survive extreme heat, with behavioral flexibility becoming life-or-death. But classical neuroscience couldn't explain why some animals adapted faster or what cognitive processes enabled tolerance over aggression.
Read the full article for detailed explanations of how neuroethology works, what researchers are discovering about social cognition, and upcoming studies tha
⏲️ Time Management
Running a business means constantly estimating how long tasks will take. Client proposals, invoicing, content creation, meetings. You tell yourself it'll be quick, then suddenly an hour has vanished and you're behind on everything else. This isn't a personal failing or poor time management. It's the planning fallacy, and according to psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, most people systematically underestimate time, costs, and risks while overestimating benefits.
"Most likely, you visualized yourself typing the message, perhaps reviewing it once, and hitting send. The problem is, when you plan, you zoom in on the task itself while ignoring the countless small disruptions, interruptions, and complications that inevitably arise while you are trying to finish it. So you don't account for the three other urgent emails that will arrive while you are writing your message, or the need to look up some specific figures you need to reference."
Key Insights:
Track actual completion times in a simple notebook or spreadsheet rather than relying on memory. For example, before estimating your next client presentation, review notes from your last three to see how long research, writing, revisions, and formatting actually took.
Add percentage buffers instead of fixed time amounts. Adding "10 extra minutes" never works, but adding 25-50% to your estimate does. If you need more time, bump it to 150% next round without feeling bad about it.
Break large projects into smaller steps to reduce estimation errors. It's easier to accurately estimate "gather last quarter's client metrics" than "complete annual business review," making the overall timeline more realistic.
Use implementation intentions with specific if-then plans. Saying "I'll work on the proposal Tuesday morning" is vague, but "If it's 9 AM Tuesday, then I'll spend 30 minutes outlining the proposal" dramatically increases follow-through.
Read the full article for the complete psychology behind time blindness, how the planning fallacy compounds in team projects, and additional strategies for building realistic schedules that actually stick.
💻 Tools & Technology
Your phone dying by mid-afternoon isn't just annoying when you're running a business. It means missed client calls, lost access to important documents, and that constant low-battery anxiety. Most of us assume it's aging hardware or that we need a new phone. But after spending years charging twice daily and carrying a power bank everywhere, one writer discovered the real culprit wasn't the battery at all. It was app permissions quietly draining power in the background.
"While checking my phone, I found that several apps were running in the background even though I use them rarely. I decided to turn off background activity for unnecessary apps. You can do this by opening the app's info and going to Settings -> Battery -> Restricted. Unarguably, it is one of the most effective ways to fix battery drain on your smartphone."
Key Insights:
Background activity lets apps sync data continuously even when closed. Cloud storage services need this, but most games and social media apps don't. Restricting background activity for rarely-used apps can dramatically reduce power consumption.
Precise location access uses GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and multiple sensors simultaneously. Shopping and social media apps don't need this level of access. Switch them to approximate location or disable location entirely while keeping it active for navigation and ride-hailing apps.
Bluetooth and nearby device scanning continues even when Bluetooth is turned off if apps have permission. These constant scans prevent your phone from entering deep sleep mode, causing steady battery drain throughout the day.
Results speak for themselves. Battery life went from barely lasting a day to a day and a half on a single charge, overnight drain dropped from 15% to 5%, and the phone stayed noticeably cooler during idle periods.
Read the full article for step-by-step instructions on checking and adjusting permissions on both Android and iPhone, which permissions you should keep enabled, and why some system permissions shouldn't be touched.
🤖 AI
Running a business means juggling research, analysis, writing reports, building presentations, and about a dozen other tasks that all need doing yesterday. Most AI tools still require you to babysit them through every step, which doesn't actually save much time. Anthropic is testing a new Agent mode for Claude that flips this approach. Instead of having a conversation, you delegate entire tasks and let the AI handle the workflow from start to finish.
"The updated interface introduces a toggle for switching between classic chat and agent modes, allowing users to focus on delegating distinct tasks rather than only having open-ended conversations. In Agent mode, users are greeted with five core sections, Research, Analyze, Write, Build, and Do More, each accessible from the main screen, pointing to specialized capabilities across different use cases."
Key Insights:
Research mode offers granular control over sources like web versus peer-reviewed articles, effort level, and interaction frequency. This could transform how you gather competitor intelligence or industry trends without manually combing through dozens of sources.
Analyze introduces validation, comparison, and forecasting options with configurable depth and output formats. Business owners could delegate market analysis or financial forecasting instead of spending hours building spreadsheets and reports.
Write and Build modules handle structured outputs across documents, slides, and spreadsheets with citation settings and theme selection. This addresses the reality that most business tasks require polished deliverables, not just rough drafts.
A progress tracker and context manager show exactly what Claude is working on and which resources it's using. This transparency lets you monitor complex projects without micromanaging every step.
Read the full article for visual examples of the new interface, details on how each mode functions differently, and what this shift toward autonomous AI agents means for productivity tools.
🎉 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!
Finished all billable work.
Made good progress by batching tasks, which improved efficiency.
Set up a new system to track small tasks and keep momentum between them.
What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!
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Wishing you much productivity!
- Jenae :)
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