In partnership with

The Rundown

• New Study Reveals That Simply Looking at Trees Can Boost Your Mental Health

• An honest conversation with the CEO of Instagram

• Plan for a Vacation Even If You Don’t Go Anywhere

• Chrome rolling out ‘Listen to this page’ TTS on Android

• Ray Kurzweil on how AI will transform the physical world

• Add this book to your reading list

Sponsor

Learn how to become an “Intelligent Investor.”

Warren Buffett says great investors read 8 hours per day. What if you only have 5 minutes a day? Then, read Value Investor Daily.

Every week, it covers:

• Value stock ideas - today’s biggest value opportunities 📈

• Principles of investing - timeless lessons from top value investors 💰

• Investing resources - investor tools and hidden gems 🔎

You’ll save time and energy and become a smarter investor in just minutes daily–free! 👇

Subscribe now with one click.

🔥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

New Study Reveals That Simply Looking at Trees Can Boost Your Mental Health

Not long ago we wrote a study breakdown about viewing nature and how you don’t even need to leave your office to get the benefits. Now, it turns out we can even hone in on simply looking at trees!

So, if you’re a city dweller and wondering if walking around your concrete jungle counts as a “walk in nature” there’s some good news for you! Excerpt below. Click the link to view the article because the images from the eye-tracking software are really neat! (Or maybe it’s just me 🙈)

Study Details and Findings

A total of 117 urban residents participated in the study. They embarked on a 45-minute urban walk while wearing eye-tracking glasses. Participants were instructed to focus their gaze on trees, plants, lawns, flowers, man-made structures, or a combination of both. The results showed that focusing on nature, particularly trees, was linked to improvements in mental health metrics such as anxiety levels and feelings of restoration.

⚙️ Optimization

An honest conversation with the CEO of Instagram (Video)

Is Instagram one of your ‘top of funnel’ strategies or maybe your main distribution mechanism for your business? You may then wonder how to work with the algorithm so it likes you.

Below is a quick summary of the conversation.

Doers Members: Get a detailed summary with timestamps here.

• Short-form video, especially Reels, is now a huge focus and over half the time spent on Instagram. Creators should optimize short videos for sending and sharing, as sends per reach is a key metric for success.

• Instagram is investing heavily in tools to help creators, especially supporting smaller emerging creators. However, monetization and revenue sharing for short-form video is complex, and programs need to be sustainable for Instagram's business. Creators shouldn't rely solely on platform monetization.

• A strength of Instagram is the variety of formats (feed, stories, Reels, messaging) that give creators flexibility. Instagram also enables creators to build community and connect with their audience more personally compared to some other platforms.

• Instagram is focused on surfacing original content over aggregators and is using AI to identify and avoid recommending unoriginal content in places like Explore and the Reels tab. Creators should aim for originality.

• Looking ahead, short-form mobile video still has room to grow, likely taking share from TV. New technologies like AI and AR glasses may significantly change the social media landscape in the coming years. Instagram will need to evolve quickly to stay culturally relevant.

⏲️ Time Management

Plan for a Vacation Even If You Don’t Go Anywhere

I’ve written about a very similar concept here but I love their thoughts on it too and when it landed in my inbox I knew I had to share it! Their newsletter is geared towards ‘content entrepreneurs’ but honestly this specific newsletter article works even if that’s not your business model so don’t worry.

Determine your minimum viable work: A business introduces a ​minimum viable product​ (MVP) to the market—it has enough features to attract consumers’ attention. In some cases, the business updates the MVP after receiving feedback from buyers.

In the get-ready-for-vacation strategy, you can follow a similar process. Create a list of what must get done in a week to deliver for your audience and business.

For example, The Tilt publishes this newsletter twice a week. So, we would need to complete the content and production for two newsletters. However, we could take the week off from working on a long-term research project.

💻 Tools & Technology

Chrome rolling out ‘Listen to this page’ TTS on Android

I tested this out and I am SUCH a fan. I have been waiting for a feature like this. I am an avid “Audible” person but the robotic voice of the ‘accessible’ feature drove me nuts. Now the AI-enhanced version of this is actually digestable. This means you can listen to articles while washing the dishes and it won’t sound like a robot from the 90s! Check the article for step-by-step instructions.

Excerpt:

Chrome for Android has been working on its own text-to-speech (TTS) capability for a few months now, and Google is now rolling out “Listen to this page.”

This TTS is available on most text-heavy web pages. After the site fully loads, “Listen to this page” appears in the three-dot Chrome for Android overflow between “Translate” and “Add to Home screen” in the fourth section of this ever-growing menu.

🤖 AI

Ray Kurzweil on how AI will transform the physical world (The Economist)

This article is semi-paywall meaning that if you have or create an Economist account you can view a few articles for free but it is limited. I definitely recommend spending one of your credits on this if you’re not a subscriber.

I would love for you to hit reply and tell me your thoughts on this article in particular. It’s very optimistic, but the author is certainly qualified to write it. However, the same optimism could also make you wonder about where we humans fit into the world he describes.

I’ll provide an excerpt below but the ‘TLDR’ is that he suspects that AI will essentially make things like solar energy, labor (via robotics), and medical/scientific advancement abundant and cheap and he suspects it will happen/start to happen 2029-2035.

I’m torn on whether I hope he is right or not. After all, I think about the benefit of abundant solar energy and medical advancement. And yet, I think about the people in the chain of those clinical trials that would potentially no longer be needed.

An interesting thought experiment that may not be a thought experiment at all.

Excerpt:

After cheap, abundant solar energy, the next component is human labour, which is often backbreaking and dangerous. ai is making big strides in robotics that can greatly reduce labour costs. Robotics will also reduce raw-material extraction costs, and ai is finding ways to replace expensive rare-earth elements with common ones like zirconium, silicon and carbon-based graphene. Together, this means that most kinds of goods will become amazingly cheap and abundant.

[…]

Yet ai is starting to turn medicine into an exact science. Instead of painstaking trial-and-error in an experimental lab, molecular biosimulation—precise computer modelling that aids the study of the human body and how drugs work—can quickly assess billions of options to find the most promising medicines. Last summer the first drug designed end-to-end by ai entered phase-2 trials for treating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease. Dozens of other ai-designed drugs are now entering trials.

👀 Read, Watch, Listen

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

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (Book)

In "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck," Mark Manson challenges the notion that positive thinking is the key to happiness. Instead, he argues that accepting life's struggles and embracing our limitations can lead to a more fulfilling existence. Manson encourages readers to prioritize what truly matters to them and to confront painful truths head-on. By learning to manage adversity and focus on meaningful experiences rather than material possessions, individuals can cultivate resilience, honesty, and contentment. Through a blend of humor, profanity, and thought-provoking insights, Manson offers a refreshing perspective on personal growth and living a grounded life.

🎉 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!

• Logo and brand design is done, uploaded logo and banner to LI + Insta profile.

• Had a look at different starter templates and installed one.

• Scheduled call with graphics/webdesign who helped me with website to discuss Wordpress.

• Posted 3x on LI so far (probably one more on FR or SA).

• I kept up the confidence work as often as I could. I'm doing the planning on Friday. High levels of motivation and inspiration.

• Bookkeeping is scheduled for SA and for next week (together with freelancer friend who has the same accountant).

• I did some reflection in terms of overall vision and what's important in my life and where I stand and how this might shape my business decision. Maybe that's a good thing since we have the Bash and vision challenge coming up and I can use this.

• I'm doing the Wealthy Speaker school and I've done a lot on that this week.

• I made the difficult decision this week to let go of a client. I love his business idea and creating content but the conditions/payment weren't right. I was torn between my people-pleasing syndrome and standing up for myself. It was hard but I managed it. I'm proud of it (but it still hurts.)

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

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

• Challenge: The North Star Challenge is happening now and it isn’t too late to get going! Read info here

• 90-Day Formula Bash kicking off: RSVP here

• Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 3️⃣ Sales & Marketing RSVP here

• Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 3️⃣ Sales & Marketing RSVP here

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

• Accelerators: June 28 is your 30-day goal-setting workshop 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 :)