The Rundown

• Feeling stuck at work as the New Year begins? It may be a sign of professional growth

• You Don't Need a Eureka Moment to Start a Company

• Working Fewer Hours Won't Save You — But This Will

• The Anti-Smartwatch Smartwatch We Didn’t Know We Needed: Pebble seeks to remedy the wearable industry's original sin

• Is your job AI-proof? 10 skills becoming more valuable in 2026

• 👉Did you miss an issue? Check out previous Productivity Stacks issues anytime here

🔥Quote/Prompt

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)

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📈 Performance

Feeling stuck at work as the New Year begins? It may be a sign of professional growth

Running your own business means constant evolution, but some are experiencing a restless feeling right now. It's not just post-holiday blues. When your client work feels routine, your systems run on autopilot, and you catch yourself wondering "is this it?" – that discomfort might actually signal you've outgrown your current setup.

Key Insights:

1. Professional restlessness isn't a character flaw – it's your brain recognizing that your skills and vision have evolved beyond your current business model or client base.

2. Diagnose what's driving the feeling before making changes. Is it the work itself, the clients you're serving, or how you've structured your business? For example, you might love the work but hate the feast-or-famine cycle, or enjoy your clients but feel stuck doing the same projects repeatedly.

3. Focus on activities rather than titles or business categories. Ask yourself what work you'd gladly do without being paid – those activities point to your core strengths and can guide strategic pivots. For example, if you consistently volunteer to help other freelancers with their pricing strategy, that intrinsic motivation might signal a consulting opportunity worth developing.

4. Small, purposeful experiments beat dramatic pivots. Test new service offerings through side projects, adjust your client screening process, or develop new skills through low-risk volunteer work before overhauling your entire business model.

Read the full article for research-backed frameworks on reassessing your professional priorities and preparing strategically for your next growth phase.

⚙️ Optimization

You Don't Need a Eureka Moment to Start a Company

Running a business takes luck, sure, but it also requires the scientific method – research, testing, iteration. Online success stories love to focus on the "aha moment" because that's what gets clicks and shares. The grind, the research, the systematic review? Not exactly Instagram-worthy. But that boring stuff is actually what builds sustainable businesses. This founder's framework from Fast Company reveals what the highlight reel leaves out.

Key Insights:

1. Step into the customer's world before building anything. Map the full reality of their business, not just the obvious pain point you think you can solve. For example, the Linguana founder attended creator conferences to listen rather than pitch, and brought creators in as advisors to pressure-test assumptions before developing any product.

2. Accept that your first direction will change, and that's not failure. When exploring the creator economy, the team initially considered financing as a solution, but deeper immersion revealed that operational support for global expansion was the real opportunity worth pursuing.

3. Run fast, lightweight experiments to reveal patterns. Test concepts with a few target customers, see what resonates, discard what doesn't, and adjust quickly. Small experiments remove the pressure to get everything right immediately while creating constant learning.

4. Look at the entire ecosystem, not individual features. Creators didn't just need translation—they needed production, distribution, monetization, and optimization across markets. Zooming out reveals opportunities that aren't visible when you're focused on a single workflow or pain point.

Read the full article for the complete six-step framework and specific examples of how structured exploration led to successful business ideas across multiple industries..

⏲️ Time Management

Working Fewer Hours Won't Save You — But This Will

Those precious focused hours when you actually get work done might seem to get rarer every year, and the standard advice (take more breaks, reduce your hours, set better boundaries) doesn't seem to help. That's because the problem isn't your workload. Your brain cycles through natural motivation phases, like seasons, and fighting them creates burnout faster than overwork ever could. This research-backed framework helps you work with those cycles instead of against them.

Key Insights:

1. Your brain has distinct motivation phases that recruit different neural networks. High motivation phases activate the ventral striatum for reward-driven tasks, while recovery phases require reduced decision-making load and simple objectives. Both phases are necessary and neither is a character flaw.

2. The Hemingway trick prevents next-day burnout by stopping mid-task when you're in flow. Stop working mid-project and dump all remaining thoughts into notes, which leverages the Zeigarnik Effect—our brains remember unfinished tasks 90% better than completed ones, maintaining momentum across work sessions without depleting cognitive resources.

3. Match your work type to your current phase rather than forcing productivity. High motivation phases are for creative work, complex projects, and strategic planning. Recovery phases are for administrative tasks, routine maintenance, and planning for future high-energy work.

4. Track your personal patterns without judgment to build your baseline. Notice when ideas flow naturally versus when focus requires excessive effort, when you're genuinely curious versus when you're anxiety-checking email. Major life events can reset your baseline entirely, requiring fresh tracking.

Read the full article for the complete three-step framework including specific signs of each phase, detailed task allocation strategies, and energy protection techniques that prevent burnout while maintaining output.

💻 Tools & Technology

The Anti-Smartwatch Smartwatch We Didn’t Know We Needed: Pebble seeks to remedy the wearable industry's original sin

If you're paying for a smartwatch with features you never use, you're not alone. I've written before about how smartwatches can be productivity tools when set up correctly, but also expensive distraction machines when they're not. The industry pushed us toward wrist-mounted phones that do everything (take calls, track workouts, monitor blood oxygen, run apps) when what many of us actually need is something simpler: a device that supplements your phone rather than trying to replace it. Pebble's founder is betting that approach still has value, and honestly, the specs make a compelling case.

Key Insights:

1. The Pebble Round 2 delivers two weeks of battery life while remaining just 8.1mm thick, eliminating the daily charging routine that kills sleep tracking and creates one more thing to remember. Compare that to most smartwatches requiring nightly charging, which means choosing between wearing it to bed or having it ready for the next day.

2. Strategic feature omissions make the device more useful, not less. No GPS, no optical heart rate sensor, no speaker for taking calls. For business owners who don't need fitness tracking but do need reliable notifications and reminders without the bulk, these "missing" features are actually benefits that keep the watch thin and the battery lasting.

3. Founder Eric Migicovsky learned from Pebble's original failure and is building sustainably this time. Instead of investing heavily in inventory hoping for blockbuster sales, he's making small batches to fulfill pre-orders and staying focused on serving users who actually want this philosophy rather than chasing broad market appeal.

4. The companion Pebble Index ring takes the minimalist approach even further. For $75, you get a microphone, Bluetooth, and a button for voice reminders with a two-year sealed battery—no charging, no subscription fees, just a simple tool that does one thing well.

Read the full article for detailed specs on the Pebble Round 2's e-paper display, hands-on impressions of the build quality and materials, and Migicovsky's full vision for bringing back whimsy to consumer electronics.

🤖 AI

Is your job AI-proof? 10 skills becoming more valuable in 2026

I've grown to hate articles like this. The endless "AI is coming for your job" panic pieces that either tell you to learn to code or become a plumber (which probably won't save you anyway). But this one from Tom's Guide actually gets it right. It's a thoughtful breakdown of what AI can do, what it will be able to do, and where we're still very much...us. If you're a business owner trying to figure out where to invest your learning time, this is worth reading.

Key Insights:

1. AI literacy doesn't mean learning to code—it means understanding how AI works, where it fails, and how to evaluate its outputs rather than blindly accepting them. Workers who can question AI suggestions are far more valuable than those who treat it as infallible.

2. Problem framing beats prompt engineering. AI responds to what you ask it, but humans still define which problems are worth solving and what success looks like. For example, asking "how do I automate this task?" is less valuable than asking "should this task exist at all?"

3. Critical thinking and verification skills are becoming essential as AI gets more convincing, even when it's wrong. AI systems confidently hallucinate, making human oversight non-negotiable in fields like medicine, law, finance, and journalism where accuracy actually matters.

4. Domain expertise becomes more valuable, not less, as AI spreads. AI amplifies expertise rather than replacing it—the tools need informed humans to guide them, evaluate outputs, and apply results in real-world contexts.

5. Emotional intelligence and communication remain irreplaceable because AI can generate text but can't read a room, manage interpersonal nuance, or make people feel understood. Jobs relying on human connection are significantly harder to automate.

Read the full article for all ten skills, specific research backing each one, and detailed explanations of why adaptability, ethical reasoning, and cross-functional collaboration are becoming more critical as AI adoption accelerates.

🎉 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!

• Completed and submitted billable work.

• Made progress on WOB tasks despite a heavy workload.

What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

• Monday: Doers IC Mastermind RSVP here

• Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 4️⃣ Workflow & Customer Fulfillment  RSVP here

• Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 4️⃣ Workflow & Customer Fulfillment RSVP here

• Monday/Friday: Goal Setting + Plan Your Week Party

• Accelerators: January 16 is your Office Hours  RSVP here

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Wishing you much productivity!

- Jenae :)