✅ Today’s Checklist:
🤔 Riddle me this: The people who need me most are usually convinced they can skip me. I give back more than you put in, but only if you actually stop. What am I? (Find the answer on the bottom).
🗣️ Employees who feel psychologically safe speak up sooner and catch problems before they escalate.
💼 Only 21% of employees feel engaged at work. These apps actually help fix that.
🤖 Automation vs. agentic AI explained clearly, because most people mix them up.
📊 The fastest-growing skills in the U.S. and why they’re becoming career currency.
“My biggest challenge is getting through all of the work I don’t care about so I can spend more deep work/deep think time on the stuff I do want to do.” — Sarah
There’s a version of this that feels like a discipline problem. Like if you just had more focus, or woke up earlier, or stopped checking Slack, you’d finally get to the good stuff.
But there’s a structural reason this keeps happening: low-value work expands to fill whatever time you give it.
The fix is in how your day is designed.
Brian Tracy calls it eating the frog: do the thing you’re dreading first, before anything else. Before email. Before your inbox. Once the worst thing is done, the rest of the day feels lighter, and you stop carrying it mentally through everything else.
But even that only gets you so far if your deep work is still in the wrong slot. Your sharpest thinking needs a protected window at the top of your day. Block it on your calendar before anything else can claim it. Treat it the way you’d treat a meeting with your most important stakeholder, because in a lot of ways it is.
For everything that’s left, three questions: Can it be batched? Can it be automated or handed to AI? Does it actually need to exist? Some of what’s on your plate has survived purely because nobody has questioned it. Running that filter once a week clears more than you’d expect.
One other thing to consider: the work you hate might be someone else’s zone of genius. If you dread the Excel formulas, the data pulls, or the numbers-heavy reporting, there is likely someone on your team or someone you could hire who genuinely loves that stuff.
Figure out where you add the most value and protect that space. Everything else is a candidate for someone better suited to it.
For the work you have to do and can’t delegate, done adequately beats delayed indefinitely every time. Not everything deserves your best effort. Ship the minimum viable version and move on.
The work you love deserves the first and best hours of your day. Stop waiting until the busywork is done before you let yourself earn it.
You already know AI can save time. The part most people skip is figuring out exactly what to hand off and how to build the system that actually runs without babysitting.
The AI Assistant Kit is a free download built to close that gap:
Thania
Last month, I found myself out of character, depressed. I don’t struggle with clinical depression, or clinical anxiety.
But I found myself feeling… a lot? Or maybe just feeling.
I was having a short period of anxiety, heaviness, or low mood even though there was no offsetting situation, event or catalyst.
I had a Tuesday where I spent all Tuesday depressed. And, I’m not really quite sure why.
I felt “blue” and couldn’t figure out why. I just wanted to be a lazy bum, not speak to anyone, and zone out. Maybe it’s a little burnout, maybe it’s a little luteal phase, or maybe it’s just me being allowed to have an off day.
During our editorial meeting I shared this thesis with the TA team and found I’m not the only one who feels this. As someone who is naturally high-energy, externally optimistic and emotionally grounded this day really caught me off guard. I felt a little shame, a little guilt, and even a little embarrassed.
But in sharing it and discussing it with others, I realized that it’s completely normal!
Let’s normalize experiencing temporary emotional lows as part of our human experience. These moments, or days are real and normal. You aren’t clinically anything, you can just be experiencing non-positive emotions.
Here are moments that have happened to us in the last couple of months, so you don’t feel alone.
Joanna
My instinct when I’m feeling low is to minimize. My brain goes straight to “others have it worse,” like I need to earn the right to feel bad.
My therapist has pushed back on this: sitting with your emotions instead of immediately trying to fix them actually helps you process them.
What I’ve also noticed is that my low days follow a pattern. When I haven’t made time for the people I love, when my drums haven’t been touched in weeks, when I’ve been running without a single slow morning, that’s usually when it shows up.
The fix usually sits in small actions: a long dinner with friends, an afternoon of something creative, a few hours of stillness.
And if you’re a woman, learning about the luteal phase helped me stop treating my bad days like personal failures.
A drop in serotonin and estrogen the week before your period is just biology dressed up as a personal failing.
You’re still allowed to feel it.
Cameron
I’m supposed to be in the happiest season of my life right now. Engaged, planning a wedding, busy summer, a job I love… and most days, I am happy.
But there are moments where the overwhelm creeps in anyway, and I feel like I have to have it all together, look perfect, do it all at once.
I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression my entire life. Somewhere along the way I decided my worth was tied to how much I could get done.
If I wasn’t doing a million things, I wasn’t contributing, wasn’t good enough. I’ve worked on this a lot in therapy, and I’m still working on it.
Some days my brain just goes to mush. I stare into the abyss, unable to think straight, and I used to get angry at myself for it. Now I try to give myself permission instead.
An hour or two to myself, even in the middle of a workday, isn’t me falling behind. It’s what lets me come back clearer, calmer, and actually able to function.
Self-care is productive. I’m still learning to believe that, but I’m getting there.
Kristel
As a married, work-from-home mom of two, some days I’m just down. Anxious, low on energy, no clear reason I can point to.
Could be the health anxiety I carry, the kind that has me checking a forehead twice or replaying a scraped knee long after it’s fine.
Could be that I’m always a few steps ahead in my head, running the what if, prepping for the worst case before anything’s actually gone wrong.
Add the constant scrambling on top of that: the schedule, the snacks, the appointments, my own to-do list, all before 9 a.m., with no real rest anywhere in between.
As a mom, I’m on alert by default, tracking sniffles and sleep and moods, making sure my husband and I stay healthy enough to be around for our kids, and their kids, and maybe even their kids’ kids one day.
That’s a lot of future to hold, and a lot of worst-case scenarios to pre-live, before I’ve even had coffee.
Some weeks I still push through the low day instead of resting like I actually need to. But I’m learning to ask myself what do I actually need right now, instead of what could go wrong next.
Some days the honest answer is a nap and permission to not be fine.
That same client-site trip gets booked a dozen times a year and takes just as long every time: comparing flights, re-entering seat preferences, chasing down loyalty numbers, hunting for the gym-adjacent hotel. Somewhere between the fourth tab and the miles that didn’t credit right, an hour no one had is just gone.
Navan Edge remembers all of it. Say “same as last time” and the usual seat, hotel, and restaurant picks land in one chat, no search required.
Every trip stacks the traveler’s miles, hotel points, and credit card multipliers automatically. The loyalty programs built over years finally work together. Plus 5% back in Amazon gift cards on every hotel stay.
When plans change, a real person steps into the same chat. Nothing moves without approval, and nobody’s rebooking alone at midnight.
🗺️ Unlimited free miles means your next road trip has zero mileage math, through October 31.
📝 That’s Not My Name is going straight to the top of your summer reading list.
🧊 On headache days, this cooling migraine cap wraps your whole head in cold compress.
💛 Less doomscrolling, more gratitude. Positive DONUT is a free weekly dose of good news and optimism.
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Work Wisdom of the Week:
“While you’re working on an important task, keep your phone in another room (or zipped up in your work bag). If it’s out of reach, you’ll be less likely to pick it up and procrastinate.”
Nicole Willis Meyerson (Newsletter Publisher)
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