Sponsored by

Hey there!

I hope you've had a productive week! If you are new here, welcome to our Friday Roundup.
What is the Friday Roundup?

A roundup of the best in productivity & systems for Entrepreneurs and small business owners with a ‘TLDR’ summary and our take on how to take action to systematize your business and your life.

Be on the lookout for our Tuesday Swipe file & Case study! Every Tuesday a free behind-the-scenes swipe file from an entrepreneur with the systems, tools, and hires that helped them build sustainable success.

-Jenae :)

The Rundown

• Quick Tip: 1 Simple Way to Stop Procrastinating

• Doctor's 4-7-8 relaxation technique can help you fall asleep in an instant

• Your brain needs more rest than you’re giving it. These 9 tips can help

• Self-Improvement Vs. Self-Destruction

• Mastering Time Management and Boosting Productivity with ChatGPT

• Assistant with Bard looks genuinely useful in these leaked screenshots

• List

• Add this book to your reading list

Sponsor:

Looking for visuals and charts, rather than words, to understand the daily news?

We explain the latest business, finance, and tech news with visuals and data. 📊

All in one free newsletter that takes < 5 minutes to read. 🗞

Save time and become more informed today.👇

Click here to sign up for free.

🔥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

Doctor's 4-7-8 relaxation technique can help you fall asleep in an instant

This simple technique actually underwent a study and truly helped so it’s worth a look. The section below is a snippet directly from the article. To read more about the effects of the technique (it’s not just for sleep!), check out the full article. It’s super short so worth a glance.

Dr. Weil is an expert in integrative medicine and the founder and director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.

The technique is simple:

1. Breathe in through your nose while you count to 4.

2. Hold your breath while you count to 7.

3. Exhale while you count to 8.

Your brain needs more rest than you’re giving it. These 9 tips can help.

We’re trying to stick to one article per section, but we just couldn’t pass this one up. The article discusses how most people associate rest with something passive (sleeping, TV, etc.) but that actual restfulness often comes from active things and they list a variety of ways to incorporate this concept that isn’t just “go for more walks." Below are two we loved but honestly, all 9 are worth incorporating and they’re all relatively simple things you can try to see which works best for you.

Rethink long workdays. Research suggests that we get less productive and creative when we work long hours. Research from Iceland found that workers who clocked 35 to 36 hours a week were equally or more productive and had improved well-being compared with working more than 40 hours per week.

Practice “micro” pauses: Microbreaks have been shown to boost vigor and reduce fatigue. Take three deep breaths before you start a Zoom meeting. Do a breathing exercise at stoplights. Take a coffee break and savor the coffee. “It constantly surprises me how little it takes to make a big difference,” said Poynton. “Taking 90 seconds to go outside and breathe the air and look at the mountains puts me in a very different frame of mind for the next Zoom call.”

⚙️ Optimization

Self-Improvement Vs. Self-Destruction

These two things have nothing to do with each other right? They’re opposites! Well, this article has an interesting take on that. The author purports that in fact, often in the quest for self-improvement, we actually do more harm than good.

You’re not alone if you’re skeptical but consider two ways this can happen (taken from the article, which offers 7!):

• Perfectionism: The urgent need to meet excessively high, flawless standards seeds constant anxiety and propels extreme behaviors.

• Social Comparison: Measuring oneself against the carefully curated social media lives of others is a recipe for discouragement.

Starting to be a bit less skeptical? Same here. Next here are three ways they offer as strategies for a balanced self.

• Realistic GoalSetting: Define manageable, step-by-step goals with flexibility. Don’t expect flawless results overnight. Celebrate small wins.

• Respecting Limits: Know your mental/physical bandwidth, and don’t overpromise. Make time for relaxation amidst self-growth efforts.

• Embracing Failure: Progress demands missteps. Let go of perfectionism and treat failures as feedback for improvement, not reasons for self-reproach.

In particular, click here to read this article and then scroll down to the “Recognizing and Preventing Self-Destruction” section towards the bottom, which is worth at minimum a read-through, and if you recognize any of these, perhaps printing it out and posting it somewhere.

Remember, you’ve got this! 💪

⏲️ Time Management

Mastering Time Management and Boosting Productivity with ChatGPT

If you’re saying to yourself “oh, not another one,” hear us out! If you’re a total newbie, this article has you covered with some easy ways to get started, but if you’re not, it also has a few that we hadn’t thought of and will definitely start using, so we’ll focus on those:

• Estimate task duration: Unsure how long a task will take? ChatGPT can analyze similar tasks and provide estimated timeframes. No more underestimating a research rabbit hole or overoptimistically squeezing in one too many errands.

• Organize information visually: Craving a mind map or concept diagram? ChatGPT can transform text into visual representations, aiding comprehension and knowledge retention.

• Challenge assumptions: Need a fresh perspective? Ask ChatGPT to generate alternative solutions or devil’s advocate arguments. Its ability to analyze data and consider diverse viewpoints can lead to unexpected breakthroughs.

💻 Tools & Technology

Assistant with Bard looks genuinely useful in these leaked screenshots

First, if you’re not an Android user, apologies. But this is too good not to share. We’re sharing this quick snippet below, but the rest of it can’t be done justice without the accompanying screenshots they provide so check the full article if you’re an Android user!

Upon activating Assistant with Bard on your device, you’ll be asked to either type, talk, or share a photo in a floating popup (via 9to5Google).

[see article for image]

The AI bot replies to future inputs with a “What’s on your mind?” popup, where you can then prompt it to help you with other tasks. For example, you can ask Assistant with Bard to help you capture information based on what is displayed on your screen. For now, it seems that Google will include a few different options with each Bard response, such as thumbs up/down and share/export. As always, these may change when the final version of Assistant with Bard is rolled out to the public.

👀 Read, Watch, Listen

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

Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (Book)

Summary from Amazon:

"Rest is such a valuable book. If work is our national religion, Pang is the philosopher reintegrating our bifurcated selves." (Arianna Huffington, New York Times Book Review)

Overwork is the new normal. Rest is something to do when the important things are done - but they are never done. Looking at different forms of rest, from sleep to vacation, Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang dispels the myth that the harder we work the better the outcome. He combines rigorous scientific research with a rich array of examples of writers, painters, and thinkers - from Darwin to Stephen King - to challenge our tendency to see work and relaxation as antithetical. "Deliberate rest," as Pang calls it, is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life. Rest offers a roadmap to rediscovering the importance of rest in our lives, and a convincing argument that we need to relax more if we actually want to get more done.

🎉 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 was able to deliver everything on time [despite] being sick and having ppl visiting.

• Focus on Billable went well, I got this translation done as well as a few other smaller jobs. I feel better now and I'm ready to recalibrate and then move ahead.

• I did a few hours of business-related tasks this week to gradually slide into the new year.

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

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

• Announcement: Time to submit new books — click here.

• Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: Marketing

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

• Accelerators: January 19 is your Office Hours RSVP here

🆕Enjoy the new newsletter?

We will soon be adding Referral Perks — Refer now to start earning! 👇

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 :)