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TLL
The Leverage Letter
Work less. Output more. Earn the difference.
AI Workflows · Knowledge Work · Real Results
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Issue #002 · Sunday Edition · Est. read: 5 min
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§ 01 — The Signal
THE MATH NOBODY DOES
Your inbox is a second job. You're doing work you're overqualified for. And the work only you can do keeps getting pushed to next week.
So you think: I need to hire someone.
It's a reasonable thought. It's also usually wrong.
Hiring is the most expensive solution to a systems problem. A full-time hire costs $50,000–$80,000 per year before benefits, onboarding, management overhead, and the 90-day ramp before they're actually useful. A contractor costs $50–$150 per hour and requires your time to brief, review, and correct. Both solutions assume the problem is headcount. Most of the time, the problem is workflow.
Before you hire, there's a question you haven't asked: What if the bottleneck isn't people — it's process?
This week: the exact 6-hour workflow I use to run a full content operation, manage 200+ emails, and still close client work — without an assistant, a team, or a 60-hour week.
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§ 02 — Tool of the Week
THE INVISIBLE EMPLOYEE
Most people use AI like a search engine. They ask a question, get an answer, close the tab. That's not leverage. That's just a faster Google. Leverage is when AI runs a repeatable process so you don't have to think about it anymore.
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► CLAUDE · claude.ai · $20/mo
The Thinking Layer
The highest-leverage use of Claude isn't writing emails. It's replacing the thinking work that precedes every output: the synthesis, the structure, the first draft of anything. Before a single word of this newsletter gets written, Claude has already processed the research, suggested the narrative arc, and stress-tested the argument. The job becomes editing — not starting from zero.
The workflow nobody talks about: Build a standing system prompt that contains your voice, your audience, your content rules, and your brand positioning. Every session starts with Claude already knowing who you are. Setup time: 30 minutes. Time saved per week: 3–5 hours.
◆◆◆◆◆ Leverage Score: 9/10 · Best for: Solopreneurs, Operators, Corporate Climbers
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► OTTER.AI · otter.ai · $16.99/mo
The Memory Layer
Every decision you make in a meeting disappears within 48 hours unless someone wrote it down. Nobody wrote it down. Otter fixes this permanently — it joins every call automatically, produces a searchable transcript, and generates an AI summary with action items before the call is even over.
The compounding value: after 60 days, you have a searchable archive of every conversation, every decision, every commitment. "What did we agree on in March?" is now a 10-second search.
◆◆◆◆◆ Leverage Score: 9/10 · Best for: Anyone in 3+ meetings per week
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► SUPERHUMAN · superhuman.com · $30/mo
The Inbox Layer
Email is not work. Email is other people's priorities arriving in your space. Superhuman doesn't just make email faster — it makes it finite. AI triage surfaces what matters, buries what doesn't, and drafts replies in your voice. Most users hit Inbox Zero in under 25 minutes. At one hour saved per day, you recover 250 hours per year from a single tool.
◆◆◆◆◇ Leverage Score: 8/10 · Best for: Anyone managing 40+ emails per day
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§ 03 — The Workflow
THE 6-HOUR WEEK
This is the actual system. Not a concept — a schedule. Every task has a time box. Nothing bleeds into everything else.
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Monday: 90 minutes — Inbox + Weekly Planning. Superhuman processes email in two sessions: 7–7:30am and 4–4:30pm. Nothing in between. Claude drafts any reply longer than three sentences. Monday also gets 30 minutes of weekly planning: three priorities, blocked in the calendar, non-negotiable.
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Tuesday/Thursday: 60 minutes each — Deep Work Output. This is the only time client work, content creation, or strategic thinking happens. Phone off. No meetings scheduled before noon on these days. One task only. Claude handles first drafts; you handle judgment calls and final edits.
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Wednesday: 45 minutes — Content Production. The newsletter outline, three social posts, and one piece of repurposed content — all produced in a single 45-minute block using a standing Claude workflow. The prompt doesn't change week to week. The output does.
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Friday: 45 minutes — Close the Loop. Review what got done. Log decisions in Notion. Archive Otter transcripts. Reply to anything that genuinely needs a human response. The week ends closed, not trailing off.
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Total: 6 hours of focused time. Everything else is reactive — and reactive work gets a defined container, not unlimited access to your calendar.
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§ 04 — Leverage Stat
$78,500
Average fully-loaded cost of a US executive assistant
(salary + benefits + overhead, 2024)
vs.
Under $80/month for Claude + Otter + Superhuman
The delta isn't the cost. It's the 77 hours per week an employee needs you to manage them — that this system never asks for. You don't have a headcount problem. You have a systems problem. And systems don't call in sick.
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§ 05 — Quick Wins
3 THINGS YOU CAN USE TODAY
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► Quick Win #1
The 2-Minute Email Rule — Rewritten
GTD says: if it takes less than 2 minutes, do it now. That's wrong for email. The right rule: if it takes less than 2 minutes and only you can do it, do it now. Everything else — delegate to Claude or batch to Friday. Most inboxes could be cut by 60% with this filter alone.
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► Quick Win #2
The Standing Prompt
Open Claude. Paste this: "For all future sessions, I am [your role] at [company type]. My audience is [describe]. My communication style is [describe — direct, no jargon, etc.]. When I ask you to write anything, match this style. When I ask you to analyze anything, prioritize [what matters most to you]." Save it. Paste it at the start of every session. The quality of every output improves immediately.
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► Quick Win #3
The Meeting Audit
List every recurring meeting on your calendar. For each one, answer: what decision does this meeting produce? If the answer is "none" or "unclear," cancel it or convert it to a Loom or async Slack update. Most professionals can recover 4–6 hours per week from this exercise alone. Otter makes the async version viable — record a 3-minute video, Otter transcribes and summarizes, the team stays aligned without the meeting.
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§ 06 — From the Stack · Presented by
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The AI Operator Playbook
The workflows in this issue are only as good as the prompts behind them. The AI Operator Playbook is 120 plug-and-play prompts built specifically for the systems in this newsletter — one for every workflow, every bottleneck, every use case across 12 chapters. Chapter 04 alone (Operations & Productivity) has 10 prompts that map directly to the 6-hour week above — including The SOP Builder, The Meeting Killer, and The Automation Spotter. Stop improvising. Start operating.
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§ 07 — The Close
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"The goal is not to work less. The goal is to build systems that work — so the hours you do spend are on the things only you can do."
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One Question —
What's the one recurring task that eats the most time in your week?
Hit reply. One sentence. The most common answer shapes Issue #003.
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Next Sunday → The AI research workflow that replaced a $500/month analyst — and produces better output in 8 minutes.
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