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The Rundown

• I booked an Airbnb 15 minutes away from home for one night. It allowed me to catch up on work without distractions

• Google advisor has a simple trick for identifying your productivity 'power hours'

• Creating Focus Days: The Key to Effective Time Management

• Exa.ai Search — What we want in search

• Anthropic publishes the ‘system prompts’ that make Claude tick

• Add this book to your reading list

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🔥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)

Did someone forward this to you?

📈 Performance

I booked an Airbnb 15 minutes away from home for one night. It allowed me to catch up on work without distractions

I feel like I did not truly discover the untapped benefit of the real staycation until the pandemic hit but now I have taken a few and I can confirm everything this person says. It’s such a great way to get the benefit of stepping away without as much of a hassle or cost. Below is a short excerpt and might be all you need but if you’re skeptical I really encourage you to read this story and consider if it could help you.

Being notoriously frugal, I also wasn't about to shell out mega-bucks. The rental I found was basic but sufficient: a small bedroom with an armchair, a kitchen table, fridge, stove, bathroom, and shower. It cost all of $49, about $100 less than other rentals in the area.

"I don't have time" is one of my excuses, but as it turned out, a small pocket of time was all I needed. Check-in was 3 p.m., check-out was noon, and less than a day was ample.

⚙️ Optimization

Google advisor has a simple trick for identifying your productivity 'power hours'

5 AM might be ideal for someone, but I promise that someone isn’t me! I have spent lots of energy tracking my time and energy to discover my best hours, and also identify when there’s a shift so I can shift my schedule as well. So, I LOVE this article because it breaks down how to do it for yourself. Excerpt below and some examples in the article.

To uncover these internal clocks, the first question she asks executives in her coaching sessions is: "If you had an entire day tomorrow, with no meetings, no interruptions, no standing commitments, but a bunch of things to get done, how would you structure your day?"

Their answers varied drastically. Some clients preferred working into the evening after late lunches, while others liked starting at dawn with an afternoon break or workout.

But everyone has their "power hours," which Martin describes as "the two to three hours a day that you feel your most productive."

Martin suggests keeping a little notepad by your desk for two weeks and writing down any time you feel particularly productive or have low energy.

"Once you've come up with some of your general productivity patterns, you can start mimicking your ideal conditions as often as possible," she said.

⏲️ Time Management

Creating Focus Days: The Key to Effective Time Management

I recommend this method frequently to my clients especially when they have something big they have put off 3 times in a row. It’s a great way to discover why it’s being put off at worst and at best, actually move the needle forward. Instructions in the article and the excerpt below explains the results.

Let me share a real-life example to illustrate the effectiveness of focus days. As a successful entrepreneur, I initially struggled to balance strategic planning with daily operational demands. By dedicating specific days each week to focus solely on high-impact activities, I saw a significant improvement in my productivity and business growth.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I block out my calendar for focus days. During these periods, I work on long-term projects, develop new marketing strategies, and build relationships with key partners. By protecting these time blocks from interruptions, I am able to make substantial progress on critical initiatives that had previously been neglected.

💻 Tools & Technology

Exa.ai Search — What we want in search

If you have been reading my newsletter, it’s no secret that I’m fully over Google for the most part and use Perplexity.ai frequently. However, THIS one is true search — almost like Google used to be. Give it a go (not sponsored) and see what you think. For the input, you can also use “chatbot” like input and still get back a list of search results instead of an “AI overview” style response.

🤖 AI

Anthropic publishes the ‘system prompts’ that make Claude tick

The title says it all. They did it on purpose, it’s not a leak. They’re definitely shooting for the “ethical AI” brand. Excerpt below and the article goes into the various prompts you might find interesting and what’s happening behind the scenes.

Every generative AI vendor, from OpenAI to Anthropic, uses system prompts to prevent (or at least try to prevent) models from behaving badly, and to steer the general tone and sentiment of the models’ replies. For instance, a prompt might tell a model it should be polite but never apologetic, or to be honest about the fact that it can’t know everything.

But vendors usually keep system prompts close to the chest — presumably for competitive reasons, but also perhaps because knowing the system prompt may suggest ways to circumvent it. The only way to expose GPT-4o‘s system prompt, for example, is through a prompt injection attack. And even then, the system’s output can’t be trusted completely.

However, Anthropic, in its continued effort to paint itself as a more ethical, transparent AI vendor, has published the system prompts for its latest models (Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3.5 Sonnet and Claude 3 Haiku) in the Claude iOS and Android apps and on the web.

👀 Read, Watch, Listen

This week’s awesome books, YouTube videos, newsletters, etc. to add to your list!

That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea (Book)

This book is so motivating — check it out. We are reading it in Doers Book Club here this month. Description below.

Marc Randolph's book recounts the founding of Netflix, from its inception as a wild idea to its transformation into a global streaming giant. It details the company's humble beginnings, early struggles, and pivotal moments, including pitches to investors and a fateful meeting with Blockbuster. Randolph shares insights on entrepreneurship, perseverance, and dealing with both failure and success. The narrative explores how Netflix disrupted the video rental industry and offers lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs on innovation, risk-taking, and building a transformative business in the face of skepticism and challenges.

🎉 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!

• Started completing the mapping section for [new] content business

• Having planned and prioritized actions for the week saved my life [this week during a difficult time] and helped me just focus on execution of the plan and wait until things settle down

• Some progress on the site with the help of graphics designer

• I managed to check my goals off for the most part, some active work on the site even though I was nervous about it; I felt stressed by the planning but still did plan realistically

• I made money with billable work and I got my eyebrows and nails done.

• As some of you know, I was pretty stuck in overwhelm and not being able to focus on billable any more. I followed the suggestion in office hours and just picked out a task randomly out of a box.... and this morning, I finished the first draft 🎉I will deliver and invoice tomorrow... and pick out the next task from my "jobs box" 😇

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

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

• Ending Sept. 9: Post in the Content Challenge before it’s too late  Click here

• Sept. 9: Doers Mastermind RSVP here

• Sept. 18: Doers Book Club RSVP here

• Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 3️⃣ Sales & Marketing RSVP here

• Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 3️⃣ Sales & Marketing RSVP here

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

• Accelerators: September 6 is your Office Hours RSVP here

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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 :)