The Rundown

• How ‘Not’ Changes Everything: Brain Interprets Negated Adjectives

• Secrets from the Algorithm: Google Search’s Internal Engineering Documentation Has Leaked

• My Simple Productivity System (YouTube Video)

• AI Chatbots, AI Agents and…the Stone Age?

• Sam Altman Admits That OpenAI Doesn't Actually Understand How Its AI Works

• Add this book to your reading list

🔥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

How ‘Not’ Changes Everything: Brain Interprets Negated Adjectives

The study discussed here looked at the phrasing of “not” — “not bad” vs. “good” or “bad”. Before giving you the details, let’s talk about why we should even care about this.

Any time we are trying to communicate whether it’s to sell to a customer, negotiate with a customer, figure out what our customer wants, or navigate interpersonal relationships with partners, hires, and more, LANGUAGE is a huge component of all of these.

Consider how you may use these terms without thinking about it. Do you ever “soften the blow” a little too much?

From the study abstract:

The behavioral data show that participants first interpret negated adjectives as affirmative and later modify their interpretation towards, but never exactly as, the opposite meaning.

In other words, most people perceive “not bad” as “less good” than simply “good” and our brains first interpret it as “bad” but then correct this to head the direction of its opposite…without quite making it there.

The point of this study is linguistic in nature, and for business, language is incredibly important.

From the article:

Key Facts:

• Negated adjectives are processed more slowly and with more varied interpretations.

• Initial brain activity for negated adjectives is similar to affirmative ones but weaker.

• Understanding negation in the brain can illuminate other linguistic processes.

So let’s imagine you’re trying to get the person you just hired to improve instead of completely firing them. Giving them feedback like “it’s not bad” may well not achieve your goal.

In particular, in a book called the Culture Map, the author discusses how in certain cultures, this type of phrasing actually could mean “you’re doing a phenomenal job”. If you work with clients or hires from other cultures and backgrounds, I highly recommend that book to understand these types of linguistic (and other) nuances.

⚙️ Optimization

Secrets from the Algorithm: Google Search’s Internal Engineering Documentation Has Leaked

Google has almost become synonymous in many ways with “the internet” so as Google changes, we as business owners need to be on top of it. Recently, there was a Google Search Algorithm leak and a lot of content written about it but this article did a great job of breaking it down.

The short version is if you’re already fairly knowledgeable about SEO and have been following many well-known SEO hypotheses, you’re probably already doing things “right” according to the leak.

If you’ve been generally frustrated with SEO and getting your content to rank because you feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at a wall, well this might giving you some insight.

My personal opinion as someone who is NOT an SEO expert…is that the things mentioned here were true but may be less true now.

Check out this article to see what I mean: Google Zero is here — now what?

As you can see, even those supposedly doing everything “right” are getting the boot by Google in favor of Reddit and other forums or AI-generated summaries.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out as people are increasingly complaining about Google’s algorithm and this time, it’s not coming from SEO website owners but from people just trying to find information on Google.

So stay tuned, we’re keeping our ear to the ground so we know what’s happening in this area.

⏲️ Time Management

My Simple Productivity System (YouTube Video)

Normally when someone says they are a productivity expert and makes a video, I expect them to immediately start talking about time blocking, which is important, don’t get me wrong. BUT there is something that is more important and she actually addresses it — asking yourself WHY you aren’t as productive as you want to be in the first place.

In other words, if we go to the doctor, they don’t immediately start telling us what to do, they diagnose us first, and that’s how she goes about her video. She gives you a few different “diagnoses” to treat.

If/when you’re stuck in any area, this is a good watch/listen.

💻 Tools & Technology

AI Chatbots, AI Agents and…the Stone Age?

Note: Because I have multiple articles to talk about here, they’re linked in the text below.

Recently I’ve shared about this concept of AI agents, which is a really important concept we should all keep an eye on because it is how our future landscape will be defined in terms of our clients, the services/products we provide as business owners and who (or now…what) we hire.

The Wired wrote an article here about how we are in yet another new age — the AI stone age. And no they don’t mean this is a “going back in time” sense. Quite the opposite. The stone age was when humans started using tools. And now, we’re seeing that with AI. In other words Anthropic has recognized that the next step will be what AI agents can do if it has access to a given tool. From the article:

[Anthropic] is allowing developers to direct its chatbot Claude to access outside services and software in order to perform more useful tasks. Claude can, for instance, use a calculator to solve the kinds of math problems that vex large language models [sic]; be required to access a database containing customer information; or be compelled to make use of other programs on a user’s computer when it would help.

If you’re new to this concept of “AI Agents” you can actually make your own. The Verge wrote about how to do this here (when it is released). From the article:

Anthropic is releasing a new feature for its AI chatbot Claude that will let anyone create an email assistant, a bot to purchase shoes, or other personalized solutions. It’s called “tool use” (or the nerdier “function calling”), and it hooks up to any external API of your choosing.

🤖 AI

Sam Altman Admits That OpenAI Doesn't Actually Understand How Its AI Works

The article begins as follows:

OpenAI has raised tens of billions of dollars to develop AI technologies that are changing the world.

But there's one glaring problem: it's still struggling to understand how its tech actually works.

If your response was, “Wait…what? Really?” you’re not alone. And yes, really. It continues:

A panel of 75 experts recently concluded in a landmark scientific report commissioned by the UK government that AI developers "understand little about how their systems operate" and that scientific knowledge is "very limited."

Read the full article to get more on what we do and don’t know (and what they do and don’t know). I’m not sharing this in a “AI will take over the world” way but we all need to be aware of how fast this technology is moving as business owners so we can understand the map is moving a breakneck speed and we have no choice but to keep navigating.

👀 Read, Watch, Listen

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

The Culture Map (Book)

An international business expert helps you understand and navigate cultural differences in this insightful and practical guide, perfect for both your work and personal life.

Americans precede anything negative with three nice comments; French, Dutch, Israelis, and Germans get straight to the point; Latin Americans and Asians are steeped in hierarchy; Scandinavians think the best boss is just one of the crowd. It's no surprise that when they try and talk to each other, chaos breaks out.

In The Culture Map, INSEAD professor Erin Meyer is your guide through this subtle, sometimes treacherous terrain in which people from starkly different backgrounds are expected to work harmoniously together. She provides a field-tested model for decoding how cultural differences impact international business, and combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice.

🎉 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 finished the brief, sent it to the logo designer and she starts work soon.

• Posted 4x on LI.

• New audio file for confidence work which I find very useful.

• Started listening to new Book Club book.

• Attended Doers Mastermind and Tuesday Workshop.

• I'm glad I addressed my issue of not knowing how to get started with my 1:1 coaching during Office Hours. I got way more clarity now.

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

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

• CHALLENGE MONDAY: Doers North Star Challenge RSVP here

• Mastermind Monday: RSVP here

• Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 2️⃣ Process & Productivity RSVP here

• Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 2️⃣ Process & Productivity RSVP here

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

• Accelerators: June 14 is your Office Hours RSVP here

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I hope you found this valuable!

Wishing you much productivity!

- Jenae :)