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- Issue No. 158: Your Brain On AI: 'Atrophied And Unprepared' -- or is it?
Issue No. 158: Your Brain On AI: 'Atrophied And Unprepared' -- or is it?
Cultivating Optimism With Neuroplasticity
Jenae Spry
February 21, 2025
Productivity Express
Issue No. 158
The Best in Evidenced-Based Productivity
for Small Business Owners, Freelancers & Founders
Helping You Work Smarter and Live More
The Rundown
Cultivating Optimism With Neuroplasticity
ChatGPT Tasks: Your New Digital Butler (But With Better Memory)
10 ChatGPT Prompts Your Assistant Needs To Know
Perplexity just made AI research crazy cheap—what that means for the industry
Your Brain On AI: 'Atrophied And Unprepared' — or is it?
Add this book to your reading list
Hey there!
I've been obsessed with productivity for years, but what I discovered recently shocked even me.
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🔥Quote/Prompt
We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
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)
Hesitating to: Decide? Take a chance? Start something? DO something?
Here's what's happening: It's. All. Hard AF.
Let's normalize this reality for a moment:
Staying where […]
Did someone forward this to you?
📈 Performance
Those negative thought patterns that seem to run on repeat in your brain? Turns out they're not permanently wired in—they're just habits your neurons have gotten comfortable with. This Psychology Today article explains how neuroplasticity gives you a scientific pathway to rewire your thinking.
Each time you engage in positive thinking, you strengthen the neural pathways associated with optimism. Over time, these pathways become more dominant, making optimism an automatic response. Positive thinking also triggers the release of feel-good hormones like dopamine, creating a reinforcing feedback loop. The more you practice optimism, the more your brain associates it with reward, making it easier to sustain the habit.
Key Insights:
Optimism isn't some magical personality trait you either have or don't—it's a habit you can develop through practice, much like any other skill.
Small daily habits add up quickly. BJ Fogg's "Maui Habit" (simply saying "It's going to be a great day" when your feet hit the floor) might sound basic, but your neural pathways don't judge—they just form connections.
Your body actually rewards your brain for optimism. Research shows optimistic people have lower stress levels, better cardiovascular health, and stronger immune systems—turning positive thinking from feel-good advice into a legitimate health strategy.
Read the full article for a five-step neuroplasticity-based approach to cultivating optimism and specific techniques to rewire those negative thought patterns. Your brain will thank you.
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⚙️ Optimization
ChatGPT Tasks: Your New Digital Butler (But With Better Memory)
I'm fairly obsessed with ClickUp as my task management tool, but after reading about ChatGPT's new Tasks feature, I'm seriously questioning my loyalty. These two articles have me wondering if I've been doing task management all wrong.
Tasks are designed to help you build and manage those to-do lists by automating their creation and maintenance. What sets Tasks apart is that the feature can break down big projects into manageable steps while keeping everything in one organized system. Unlike my usual method of jotting down random reminders and hoping I remember to check them, Tasks ensures nothing slips through the cracks. [Article 1]
Key Insights:
It's not just another reminder app—Tasks actually breaks down complex projects into bite-sized pieces. One user asked it to create a year-long guitar improvement plan, and it designed daily practice routines with specific skills to focus on each day. [Article 1]
Let's be honest—we're all that person who says "I'll remember to buy milk" and then somehow returns with everything BUT milk. Tasks sends notifications across devices (even when you're offline!), and unlike your Post-it notes, it doesn't fall behind the fridge. [Article 1 & Article 2]
The prompting flexibility is what makes it actually useful. You can set up everything from personalized morning weather briefings to weekly meal plans with categorized shopping lists—and unlike asking your partner to remind you, the AI won't get annoyed when you request the same thing for the fifth time. [Article 2]
Read the full articles for real-world examples of Tasks in action, including how one dad used it to plan a forest outing with his toddler without forgetting crucial supplies, and five starter prompts to test the feature's capabilities. Currently available in beta for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, with only 10 tasks allowed at a time.
⏲️ Time Management
Those administrative tasks that pile up daily? Whether you're handling them yourself or have an assistant to help, most of us aren't maximizing what AI can do to make this work more efficient. This Forbes article reveals powerful ChatGPT prompts that transform how routine tasks get handled, freeing up valuable time for higher-impact work.
Long reports and rambling emails waste everyone's time. Smart assistants use ChatGPT to extract what matters. They turn walls of text into actionable points their client can scan in seconds.
Key Insights:
The document summarization prompt is like having a personal editor who actually reads everything—it extracts only the points worth your attention from those 30-page reports people insist on sending.
For those with assistants, these prompts help them work more independently while maintaining your voice—so your emails don't suddenly sound like they were written by a chipper robot who loves exclamation points!
Solopreneurs can reclaim their weekends with the email management prompts—because nothing says "healthy work-life balance" like answering client emails at 11pm on a Saturday.
Read the full article for all 10 power prompts with exact wording you can implement immediately, including how to create SOPs from video transcripts and generate social media content that stays on-brand without sounding like everyone else's AI-generated posts.
💻 Tools & Technology
Remember when "enterprise-grade AI" meant remortgaging your house to afford it? Perplexity just crashed that exclusive party. Their new Deep Research tool is generating comprehensive research reports in minutes at prices that make OpenAI and Anthropic look like luxury brands selling digital snake oil.
In a typical query, Perplexity's Deep Research tool performs 8 searches and consults 42 sources to generate a 1,300-word report in under 3 minutes. The system scored 93.9% accuracy on the SimpleQA benchmark and reached 20.5% on Humanity's Last Exam, outperforming Google's Gemini Thinking and other leading models.
Key Insights:
The pricing difference is laughable—Perplexity offers five free Deep Research queries daily and 500 daily queries for $20/month, while competitors charge up to 100 times more for similar capabilities.
Small businesses that couldn't afford thousand-dollar AI subscriptions can finally access advanced research tools, potentially ending the digital divide between well-funded companies and everyone else.
The technical performance is embarrassing the big players—Perplexity's 93.9% accuracy on SimpleQA benchmark puts it within striking distance of OpenAI's results, but at literally 1/100th of the price.
Read the full article to see why companies dumping millions into enterprise AI subscriptions might be seriously overpaying, and how Perplexity plans to expand this tool across iOS, Android, and Mac platforms to further democratize access to powerful AI research capabilities.
🤖 AI
That powerful AI assistant making your work easier? It might be rewiring your brain circuits—but before you panic and ban any AI tool from your toolkit, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. This Forbes article cuts through the AI doomsday predictions with actual research from Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft that shows a more nuanced reality.
One of the most striking findings from the study is that 62% of participants reported engaging in less critical thinking when using AI, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks. Conversely, those who had greater confidence in their own expertise were 27% more likely to critically assess AI-generated outputs rather than accept them at face value.
Key Insights:
AI is shifting us from creators to curators—we're spending less time staring at blank pages and more time saying "that's pretty good, but let me fix this part." It's like having an eager but sometimes confused intern handling your first drafts.
Let's be real—some people fact-check everything while others share random Facebook posts as if they're peer-reviewed studies. People are highly likely to treat AI outputs the same way. Some verify, others publish whatever ChatGPT spits out.
Turns out your brain doesn't necessarily turn to mush when using AI—the research shows thoughtful AI use can actually sharpen your critical thinking by exposing you to multiple perspectives and making you consider alternatives you might have missed.
Read the full article for strategies on developing a balanced approach to AI that preserves independent thinking while boosting productivity and learning opportunities. Your brain cells will thank you for not treating them like they're obsolete just yet.
👀 Read, Watch, Listen
This week’s awesome books, YouTube videos, newsletters, etc. to add to your list!
Four Thousand Weeks (Book)
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman explores how to meaningfully use our limited lifespan (approximately 4,000 weeks if we live to 80). Instead of focusing on productivity hacks and time management techniques that often increase our anxiety, Burkeman draws on philosophy, psychology, and spiritual wisdom to help readers embrace life's finite nature. He argues that our struggles with time management reflect deeper questions about how to best use our brief existence.
If you feel like you’re having a deja vu moment, you’re not. I am really liking this book so I am including it again this week! I’m a little further in and it really is kind of a breath of fresh air – I promise to do another book next week, I am just REALLY feeling this one!
🎉 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!
Time-blocking and productive work mornings went really well
I actually felt on top of my billable work and inbox without it dragging out
One regular client say they were happy to continue working with me
Generally felt quite calm and in control of my week
What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!
🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements
Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 1️⃣ Strategy & Mission RSVP here
Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 1️⃣ Strategy & Mission RSVP here
Wednesday: Doers Book Club — How to Talk to Anyone RSVP here
Monday/Friday: Goal Setting + Plan Your Week Party
Accelerators: Feb 28 is your Office Hours RSVP here
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I hope you found this valuable!
Wishing you much productivity!
- Jenae :)
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