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- Issue No. 178: The Science-Backed Case For Moving More To Get More Done
Issue No. 178: The Science-Backed Case For Moving More To Get More Done
The Power of Single-Tasking
Jenae Spry
May 02, 2025
Productivity Express
Issue No. 178
The Best in Evidence-Based Productivity
for Small Business Owners, Freelancers & Founders
Helping You Work Smarter and Live More
The Rundown
The Science-Backed Case For Moving More To Get More Done
LinkedIn Study Finds Adding Links Boosts Engagement By 13%
The Power of Single-Tasking
I don't use Google Keep, OneNote, or Evernote, I use this app to manage my notes on Android
Anthropic's Claude can now read your Gmail
Add this book to your reading list
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🔥Quote/Prompt
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
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)
I'm "guilty" of sometimes being what I prefer to call "too practical" but that's really just a disguise. The truth is that a better description would be "too negative" or even "too afraid of failure". 😳
"Too practical" sounds more like […]
Did someone forward this to you?
📈 Performance
Those overpriced ergonomic chairs you bought for the office? They might be part of the problem. Well, only if it makes you sit even more. While we've been obsessing over perfect sitting positions and marathon Zoom calls, science suggests what we actually need is to stop sitting nonstop and just... move more.
Brief, intentional movement, known as exercise snacks or mindful motion, can dramatically improve posture, focus, stress resilience, productivity and mental well-being. However, framing movement as both medicine and a powerful tool for professional growth is a decisive step toward an optimal, innovative and consciously crafted way of living and thriving.
Key Insights:
The body responds to frequency, not just duration—adults who added just 1-2 minutes of movement three times daily saw a 49% lower risk of all-cause mortality without ever setting foot in a gym.
That "sitting is the new smoking" cliché isn't just annoying, it's accurate—just 3 minutes of movement every 30 minutes significantly improves spinal mobility and reduces discomfort.
Your best ideas don't happen staring at your laptop—research shows brief movement increases blood flow to your prefrontal cortex, which explains why solutions often arrive during walks or stretches.
The best part? We're talking about absurdly simple movements: 30 seconds of breathwork, two minutes of spinal mobility between calls, or a quick dance while waiting for your coffee.
Read the full article for detailed breakdowns of the specific research studies, practical implementation ideas for "exercise snacks," and how these micro-movements specifically benefit knowledge workers.
⚙️ Optimization
Everything you thought you knew about LinkedIn optimization just got flipped on its head. For years, "social media experts" have been warning us not to include links in LinkedIn posts like they're some kind of digital poison. Turns out, that advice may have been wrong.
A new study of over 577,000 LinkedIn posts challenges common marketing advice. It finds that posts with links get 13.57% more interactions and 4.90% more views than posts without links. The LinkedIn study by Metricool analyzed nearly 48,000 company pages over three years. The findings give marketers solid data to rethink their LinkedIn strategies.
Key Insights:
Those links you've been avoiding? They actually increase engagement by 13.57% and views by 4.90%, completely contradicting years of "expert" advice about keeping users on the platform.
Carousels are engagement goldmines with a 45.85% engagement rate, making them worth the extra effort to create compared to standard text posts.
Polls are criminally underused, making up just 0.00034% of posts but getting 206.33% more reach than average, which means most of us are ignoring a massive opportunity.
Video content is exploding with 53% growth and 87.32% higher engagement, outpacing even TikTok and YouTube growth rates.
Read the full article for detailed breakdowns by industry, practical implementation tips, and specific data on which content formats drive the most traffic in 2025.
⏲️ Time Management
Despite what productivity gurus might claim, science suggests our brains simply weren't designed for multitasking. That constant switching between your inbox, Slack, and actual work is actually making you less effective at all three.
Distractions are everywhere. Emails pop up while you try to finish a task. You remember that your taxes are due soon, but you are busy trying to meet a deadline. It often feels like we should be doing a dozen things at the same time. The temptation is to multi-task — answering your email while monitoring social media and listening to a presentation.
Key Insights:
Your brain has a "cognitive bottleneck" that prevents it from processing two thinking tasks at once, so when you "multitask," you're just rapidly switching between tasks and doing all of them poorly.
Heavy multitaskers think they're more productive, but studies show they're actually less effective than people who focus on one thing at a time.
Time-boxing (dedicating specific time blocks to single tasks, like "emails from 9-9:30am") can dramatically increase your productivity without requiring a complete lifestyle overhaul.
The sweet spot is scheduling your work and chores but leaving leisure unscheduled—research shows that time-blocking your fun makes it feel like another obligation.
Read the full article for detailed explanations of time-boxing, task-batching, and time-blocking techniques, plus specific strategies to implement them gradually without disrupting your workflow.
💻 Tools & Technology
That endless quest for the perfect note-taking app feels like dating—lots of promising first meetings that ultimately leave you disappointed. Google Keep is too basic, OneNote gets cluttered fast, and Evernote keeps asking for your credit card number. If you've been searching for something in that sweet spot, this article highlights an interesting alternative.
Unlike Notion and even Evernote, UpNote isn't a web app pretending to be native. It's a cross-platform solution with dedicated, native applications for all major operating systems. This native approach translates to better performance, smoother animations, and tighter integration with each operating system's specific features.
Key Insights:
UpNote offers truly native apps across platforms, resulting in better performance and smoother integration than web-based alternatives.
The organization system uses Spaces, Notebooks with subnotebooks, and tags that give you flexibility without overwhelming complexity.
The pricing structure is refreshingly straightforward—free plan to test it out, $2/month subscription, or a one-time $40 lifetime purchase.
It focuses on getting the basics right first, with a powerful text editor that doesn't require watching tutorials before you can use it.
Read the full article for a detailed breakdown of all the major advantages over competing note apps and specific features that make it worth trying.
🤖 AI
Good news for anyone drowning in email overload—Claude just gained the ability to help you make sense of your Google Workspace chaos. Anthropic's AI assistant now integrates with Gmail, Calendar, and Docs, acting like that incredibly organized assistant who actually remembers what you said last week and knows where all your files are.
Anthropic announced on Tuesday that its AI chatbot, Claude, now integrates with Google Workspace, allowing it to search and reference your emails in Gmail, scheduled events in Google Calendar, and documents in Google Docs. The integration is rolling out in beta first to subscribers to Anthropic's Max, Team, Enterprise, and Pro plans.
Key Insights:
Claude can now access your Google Workspace data if you're on Anthropic's premium plans, with the promise of more personalized assistance without you having to repeatedly upload files or craft detailed prompts.
The integration includes in-line citations when referencing your content, so you'll know exactly which document or email it's pulling information from.
Anthropic claims they've implemented "strict authentication and access control mechanisms," and says they don't train models on user data by default, for those concerned about privacy.
Claude Research also launched alongside this integration—a feature that runs multiple web searches to generate detailed answers, positioned to compete with similar offerings from OpenAI and Google.
Read the full article for details on exactly which Anthropic plans will get these features first, how administrators can enable the integration, and specific limitations of what Claude can and can't do with your Google Workspace data.
👀 Read, Watch, Listen
This week’s awesome books, YouTube videos, newsletters, etc. to add to your list!
Martell challenges the myth that entrepreneurial success requires endless hustle. Instead, he argues your greatest constraint isn't money but time, and teaches a counterintuitive approach: literally buy your time back by investing in systems, automation, and strategic hiring. The book provides practical frameworks for identifying your highest-value activities, systematically delegating everything else, and developing operating procedures that scale your impact without scaling your hours. Perfect for entrepreneurs drowning in to-dos but skeptical about whether they can afford to delegate.
🎉 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!
I made great progress with my [business] strategy.
Good focus sessions and good progress on deliverables.
Boosted my marketing goal.
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I hope you found this valuable!
Wishing you much productivity!
- Jenae :)
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