Tech Productivity Issue #388 (Evidence for the Four-Day Workweek)

Issue #388 (Evidence for the Four-Day Workweek) 07/20/26

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Can people make better decisions by improving their breathing habits? This is what is discussed in a newly-published study called Slow breathing impacts inter-organ dynamics modulating brain function and risk behavior. That's certainly a mouthful, but the basic idea is to find out whether or not slow breathing helps people make better decisions and take fewer uncalculated risks.

The paper is pretty heavy on the technical jargon, but here are a few notable quotes from the summary. First, what was tested:

"It remains unclear whether and how intentional autonomic regulation affects human decision-making. In this study, we tested instructed use of prolonged exhalation, a slow-breathing technique designed to boost parasympathetic activity during risky decision-making."

And the basic results:

"Prolonged exhalation increased risky choices by enhancing reward sensitivity and elevating cardiac parasympathetic activity... Our work reveals the transformative role of breathing-based interventions, demonstrating that autonomic regulation via breathing can shape value-based decision-making through neuro-cardiac pathways."

Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!

Tools & Apps

this+that — An email and messaging integration (Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, etc.) for teams that reads everything that lands in your inbox, pulls out the real work, and handles the busywork on its own, like OpenClaw with a team account.

Cheese Paper — A text editor specifically designed for writing, particularly fiction, with a simple file format and notes feature as well as syncing across any device you use.

Meco — Enjoy newsletters in a space designed for reading. Meco is a distraction-free space for reading and discovering newsletters, separate from the inbox. Add your newsletters in seconds and liberate your inbox today! sponsor

Files.md — An open source alternative for Obsidian, offering notes, a second brain, Zettelkasten, journaling, checklists, and more.

ResumeWriting — An AI-powered resume writing and editing tool that was specifically designed to rewrite and improve your existing resume, just paste the job description, no prompt hacks or other tedious work.

Lite Agent — A browser copilot for Chromium that allows you to chat, automate, and search your browsing history from one sidebar, on any page, instantly.

Fungible — An open source finance app for Mac, Windows, and Linux, that offesr a terminal UI and desktop GUI for personal finance, featuring Plaid sync, CSV import, AI assistant, MCP server, and more.

Articles & Resources

The Last Technical Interview — A long read on the technical interview process, from someone who's been conducting such interviews for 35 years, with some suggestions on how tech interviews can be improved.

Meetings Are Forcing Functions — "Everyone has other obligations, fires to put out, and emails to answer. It’s easy for long-term strategic, high-impact work to sink to the bottom of everyone’s todo list."

The Deep View — The go-to daily newsletter for 700k+ founders, knowledge workers and professionals who want to stay up to date with AI. sponsor

I Am Retiring from Tech to Live Offline — I doubt many reading this will consider a similar change in lifestyle, but it's nice to see someone trying to better their life outside of tech.

Australia Just Proved the Four-Day Work Week Works. Here Is What the Data Actually Says. — Based on research that tracked 15 Australian companies taking part in a trial between 2022 and 2024, with the result that 14 of the companies chose to continue with the four-day week after the trial ended.

The Architecture of Focus — A beautiful deep dive into the art of focus, with some helpful visuals and some encouragement to think of your scheduled events as a design document.

Why I Email Complete Strangers — Most of us probably don't care much for cold emails, but I appreciate the author's suggestions here on what to do if you plan on sending cold emails.

Suggestions?

Have a suggestion for a productivity-related tool, article, or other resource? Send me a direct message via X or chat via Bluesky and I’ll consider including it in a future issue.

Stay productive!

Louis
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