Hey future-proof friends 💜

I share a lot that for 7 years I stayed stuck in exactly the same spot - setting goals, then overthinking and procrastinating.

But 15 months ago I just decided to stop trying to make perfect decisions and start making fast ones I could correct later instead (and I used AI to help me every step of the way).

That one shift did more than 7 years of “planning and researching” ever did for me. Since then I've grown an audience of 100,000+, grown my income significantly, and landed amazing opportunities.

Overthinking kills more dreams than failure ever will.

So today, we’re covering 3 ways to stop overthinking and make faster, better decisions - each backed by real research, and turned into a Claude prompt you can steal.

But before we dive in:

Every manager faces the same situations before lunch: a message to land, a meeting to run, a hiring call, a report due. The AI Report built 37 Claude prompts for exactly those moments, organised by the situations every manager faces. 

Copy the prompt, fill the brackets, run it in Claude, and get back 10+ hours a week. Oh, and it's free. 

All you have to do is subscribe to The AI Report, a 5-minute daily AI brief read by 400,000+ business leaders at IBM, AWS and Microsoft, and the full prompt pack lands in your welcome email. The newsletter and the prompts, both free. Subscribe and grab both

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TL;DR - today’s lineup:

💌 Your say genuinely shapes this newsletter: I genuinely check for feedback like a maniac after I send this out because I really want to know what you honestly think. So thank you!

Think of the last time you were helping a friend who was struggling with a decision you could see the answer to clearly in about 4 seconds. For you it was obvious.

But answers to your own decisions are never obvious.

There's a name for this: Solomon's Paradox - we reason wisely about everyone else's problems and completely lose the plot on our own.

This is something Claude is amazing for!

But don't ask it to decide for you. Make it pull your own wisdom out:

Most overthinking isn't really thinking. It's actually just vague fear replaying on a loop.

In 1989, researchers found that imagining an event has already happened (rather than might happen) makes you around 30% better at correctly naming why it turned out that way.

So before you commit, you pretend the decision already failed spectacularly, then write the story of how.

It helps you spot the real risks you were too optimistic (or too panicked) to see. Plus the fear shrinks, because a named, specific worry is always smaller than the nameless dread you'd been marinating in.

Psychologists split people into 2 types: Maximisers hunt for the best possible option. Satisficers decide what "good enough" looks like, take the first thing that clears it, and get on with their lives.

In a 2006 study, graduates who maximised their job hunt landed salaries around 20% higher - and felt worse. More stressed, more regret, less satisfied with the job they actually got. They did better and felt worse. Because when your standard is "the best," you're never allowed to be happy. There's always a maybe-better option haunting you.

Overthinking is just maximising with no off switch.

The fix is a 2-step you set up before you look at a single option:

And be ruthless about picking 3 goals to focus on. I know 3 feels stingy when you've just written a gorgeous long list. But 3 goals you actually hit in 12 weeks will do more for you than 9 you half-chase and feel guilty about all autumn.

Pick a decision you've been circling for weeks and run it through just one of these today.

Then go and do the thing. Momentum is the whole point.

Last month I made $780 from tech UGC (also known as canvas UGC), from an app I'd only signed up to a few weeks before.

I created my SideShift account in mid-May, and June was my first proper month actually posting. That led to $780 for small tasks I was fitting around everything else I do, mostly posting simple little videos that take a few minutes each.

I'd been hearing about tech UGC everywhere, so I thought, I'm going to stop wondering about this and actually try it properly.

And I'm really glad I did. It's turning into one of the easiest little side streams I've added all year.

Very important to note: this is not the same as the "normal" UGC I wrote about in my previous playbook. With that kind, you create content and the brand posts it on their own channels.

With tech UGC, you create your own social accounts and you post simple videos on them every single day for an app or SaaS tool, and you get paid for posting. You don't need a following and you don't need a personal brand to do this.

That's exactly why I think this one is such a good side hustle for anyone who wants to add some form of income, especially if you've still got a 9-5. It's low-lift, you can do it around a full day, and the videos are genuinely quick once you've got your system going.

Let me show you exactly how it works.