The Rundown

• Neuroscience Says Making a Simple Change to Your Workday Will Help You Make Smarter Decisions and Be More Productive

• Want to Get Smarter? Neuroscience Reveals 6 Simple, Remarkably Effective Ways to Learn Faster and Retain More

• Hate Rigid Schedules? Meet Your New Go-To Scheduling Method: Theme Blocking

• Google Chrome Under Attack—Do This One Thing Now

• The unexpected AI-whisperers: Language Experts? Yep. Here's what's happening — The rise of the English major: BlackRock COO wants to recruit liberal arts consultants that ‘have nothing to do with finance or technology’

• Add this book to your reading list

Want To Stay Relevant As A Writer?

Are you worried ChatGPT will…

• Replace you as a writer?

• Make it harder to land new writing projects?

• And make it even more difficult to stay ahead as a writer?

Then you need to learn how to write with AI (not ignore it).

This FREE email course will help you:

• Use AI to write ANYTHING

• Train ChatGPT to generate infinite ideas

• Harness ChatGPT as your personal writing assistant

Click here to get instant access.

🔥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

Neuroscience Says Making a Simple Change to Your Workday Will Help You Make Smarter Decisions and Be More Productive

Basically, decision fatigue is a real thing. And just because you can’t always work 3 hours a day during only your peak hours, the key is self-awareness and stick important decision-making in high-energy spots to make the best decisions. And not just that, but remember that if you have a team, you’re not the only one available to make decisions. Even a second person means that many more “high energy” time slots are available!

Excerpt below:

Whenever possible, structure your day so you can tackle tasks requiring focus and concentration as early in your workday as possible. 

Or right after lunch, when you've had the chance to physically and mentally recharge. A study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research found that a short rest period can replenish your decision-making muscles.

Do the same for important decisions. By late afternoon, you're much more likely to choose lower-effort actions that involve shorter-term rewards. 

Another option is to decide who is the best person to decide (the right person is often further down the org chart than you think) and then empower that person to make those decisions.

That way you'll save your decision-making energy for the decisions you are the best person to make.

⚙️ Optimization

Want to Get Smarter? Neuroscience Reveals 6 Simple, Remarkably Effective Ways to Learn Faster and Retain More

Not having to look things up saves a LOT of time. So how do you retain more…according to science?

Here’s my least favorite because I am so hard on myself, but according to the author, that’s actually a good thing! Who's trying it with me?

3. Test yourself -- a lot.

A classic study published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest shows that self-testing is an extremely effective way to speed up the learning process.

Partly that's because of the additional context you create. Test yourself and answer incorrectly and not only are you more likely to remember the right answer after you look it up, but you'll also remember the fact you didn't remember. (Especially if you tend to be hard on yourself.)

So don't just rehearse your sales pitch. Test yourself on what comes after your intro. Test yourself by listing the four main points you want to make. Test your ability to remember cost savings figures, or price schedules, or how you will respond to the most common questions or types of customer resistance.

Not only will you gain confidence in how much you do know, but you'll also more quickly learn the things you don't know -- at least not yet.

⏲️ Time Management

Hate Rigid Schedules? Meet Your New Go-To Scheduling Method: Theme Blocking

Time blocking is awesome BUT it’s not for everyone and it’s definitely not for everyone all the time. That’s what’s so great about theme blocking. In particular, if your days don’t fit into neat time blocks or you’re struggling to force them to, theme blocking is a great way to get organized and productive, without feeling overly restricted. Check it out the exerpt below and then read the full article for the full breakdown.

Enter theme blocking

Theme blocking is a far more flexible way to plan your days (or even weeks or months) and I’ve seen a lot of success in business owners that know they need to plan more/better and have better control over their schedule…but they also kind of want to do what they want to do when they want to do it.

Theme Blocking in Short

Theme blocks can be any length of time. Sometimes they are an hour long and sometimes an entire day. You might even find that you prefer to set a theme for the week or month. Some inner circle members do morning and afternoon theme blocks as well. 

This system is completely flexible and is really meant for the schedule-haters among us. 😊

💻 Tools & Technology

Google Chrome Under Attack—Do This One Thing Now

Update Chrome. Right now. And for that matter, read this article in case you are wondering why your phone and other connected tools are asking you to update. It’s usually not just because they’ve invented some great feature. It’s because someone with less-than-stellar intentions has figured out a way to leverage that tool/thing or a way for said bad-doers has been discovered and prevention is under way.

If you really don’t want to read the article, here’s the key item below, but it’s good to understand how these things work so you can protect yourself and your business before you’re hacked.

Excerpt:

Most users will have Chrome set to update automatically, which it should always do for security updates of this kind anyway. But that’s not enough in itself. You should always fully close and relaunch Chrome to ensure the update has fully installed.

🤖 AI

The rise of the English major: BlackRock COO wants to recruit liberal arts consultants that ‘have nothing to do with finance or technology’

I’ve been screaming this from the rooftops — if you’re worried about AI because you have a language-heavy business or job and today’s versions are literally called “large language models”, this is your time to shine. Yes, really. And if that’s not you, you might want to make friends with some language experts.

After all, who better to describe in perfect and great detail what you’re asking the AI tool to do with language…than a language expert? Check out the exerpt below but definitely read the full article regardless of whether you’re the language expert, or might need to hire one.

AI brings about the liberal arts consultant

BlackRock is not the only company looking towards new types of consultants: the creatives. This desire for liberal arts grads is in part fueled by the rise of AI, which creates a demand for different skill sets. “Questioning, creativity skills, and innovation are going to be hugely important because I think AI’s going to free up more capacity for creative thought processes,” Matt Candy, global managing partner in generative AI at IBM Consulting, told Fortune this past December. Coding, perhaps, wanes in importance as generative AI becomes more popular. But those who have a language background could take advantage of the new market by becoming prompt-engineers for said tools, he explained.

👀 Read, Watch, Listen

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

Indistractable by Nir Eyal (Book)

If you’re new to this book…go buy it right now. Seriously. It’s one of the simplest books that will also REALLY boost your ego. He does a great job of reminding you that the products you feel you’re addicted to…are actually hacking your brain. And how to fight back. Just do it.

He wrote this book…after writing Hooked…which was used to build a large number of those products…so…you could say this is the anecdote. Enjoy!

🎉 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!

• Gratitude practice + recap in the evening.

• I managed to get some intentionality back in my planning.

• I went to bed at reasonable times (before midnight).

  Did my [workout] every workday morning.

• Discussed the principle of a CEO Family meeting with kids.

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

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

• Accelerators: May 31 is your Office Hours RSVP here

• Wednesday, June 5: Book Club RSVP here

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I hope you found this valuable!

Wishing you much productivity!

- Jenae :)