#ThirstyThursday Issue #255

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🗓 Productivity myths leaders still fall for.

💪 Women took 98% of August’s new jobs, even as wage growth hit a years-long low.

📬 Paid Gmail plans can now answer questions about your inbox in plain English.

🔄 Only 26% of workers say their job still matches what they were hired for.

Takeaways:

• Start with the history. Have Claude find the meeting on your calendar (the person’s name, company, role, and when you last talked), then pull your past notes for decisions, commitments, open threads, and anything they said they needed. It works best with your calendar and notes connected, so Claude is working from what actually happened.
• Then ask for a one-page brief: what happened last time, open items and who owns them, their goals and KPIs, three talking points, five questions to ask, two likely objections with a response to each, and the outcome and next step you want.
• Add a few guardrails so it stays tight. Tell Claude to skip closed threads, leave out anything older than six months unless it’s still live, and quote the person directly when their exact words matter. Have it confirm the meeting and your goal before it starts, so you don’t get a beautiful brief for the wrong call.

Get the full prompt on LinkedIn.

You’ve ordered company swag before. Half of it went to a donation box, and the rest is still sitting in a supply closet nobody opens. With holiday gifts and year-end events coming up, the last thing you have time for is chasing a vendor on a rush order.

Swag.com puts a full catalog of brands people recognize in one place. Drop in your logo, see real pricing before you commit, and build exactly what you need.

• Onboarding boxes that ship straight to new hires, wherever they’re based
• Event apparel from brands people ask for by name
• Holiday gifts that end up on desks all year

👉 Browse the catalog and build your first box.

Takeaways:

• Use it or lose it, and get specific. Your brain strengthens the connections you use most, so practice the exact skill you want to improve. If presenting is the goal, rehearsing out loud will do more for you than rereading your slides.
• Repetition, intensity, and meaning do the heavy lifting. Plenty of quality reps, at a level that feels a little hard, on something you care about, is what drives change. It’s why a skill tied to a goal you want sticks faster.
• Age slows the process without stopping it. Your brain keeps rewiring for life, and a new skill can carry over to similar tasks. One catch: two tasks competing for the same circuit can interfere with each other, so give a new skill some room before you stack another on top of it.

See all 10 principles on IG.

Takeaways:

• Let Copilot handle the blank page. Paste in rough notes and ask for a structured report, an outline before you draft, or a full first pass at a proposal, project brief, or SOP. (You’ll need Copilot included in your Microsoft 365 plan or turned on by your company.)
• Point it at the documents you already have. Ask questions about a long report, pull out every task, owner, deadline, and decision, turn a wall of text into a table, or reorganize a messy doc under clear headings.
• Use it as your editor before anything goes out. Have it cut the length, adjust the tone for a specific audience, write the executive summary, proofread, and catch inconsistent terms, capitalization, and formatting.

See all 20 on LinkedIn.

You finally log off, and your brain is still replaying the meeting you just left. By midnight you’re wide awake, and tomorrow’s review prep hasn’t gone anywhere.

WAVwatch is a wearable that delivers acoustic sound frequencies through your skin, designed to help calm your nervous system and support deeper sleep. Pick a setting on the touchscreen for stress, sleep, or energy, then wear it like a regular watch.

• 1,250+ built-in frequencies, with no app, WiFi, or Bluetooth needed
• One-time purchase, no subscription
• 4.5 stars from 3,600+ reviews
• HSA/FSA eligible, so leftover benefit dollars can go somewhere useful before year-end
• Risk-free 30-day trial with a full refund, plus monthly payment plans

👉 Try WAVwatch risk-free for 30 days.

Takeaways:

• The core move is separation. Wealthy people rarely hold everything in their own name. Kim Kardashian’s assets, for example, sit across business entities and a trust, so a problem in one area doesn’t put everything else on the line.
• LLCs wall off business risk. Running a side business or rental through its own LLC can help keep a lawsuit or debt tied to that business away from your personal savings, as long as the entity is set up and maintained properly.
• Trusts decide who gets what, and when. A trust can hold property, investments, or business interests for the people you name. The right setup depends on the type of trust, where you live, and your situation, so this is one to build with an estate attorney and a tax pro.

See the full breakdown on IG.

🚗 Future you, scraping ice at 7am, will be glad SimpleTire shipped your winter tires free to a local installer.

☕️ Happy International Coffee Day: the Ember Mug 3 keeps every sip at the exact temp you set.

✏️ Doing Inktober this year? This 11×14 sketch pad gives all 31 drawings plenty of room.

🌾 Cameron found the most beautiful dried flower fall wreath on Etsy.

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