Your Influence Changes Everything

Issue 51 - Room to Think

AuthorAuthor

Catherine Heiter & Wendy Ganey
September 01, 2026

What you do matters.

We honor the everyday impact of executive assistants.

One Reminder of Your Impact.

This series reflects a truth you already live.
It may be invisible.
But it changes everything.

Stay Sharp - Stay Intentional - Stay Indispensable.

A Moment of Context

Because every story begins in a real moment you already recognize.

It's 4:47pm on a Tuesday.

You've been moving since 7am. Your inbox has been answered, the calendar has been managed, the meeting notes have been sent, the travel has been booked. You have done everything right — and yet, sitting at your desk right now, you feel strangely behind.

Not behind on tasks. Behind on thinking.

There's a proposal you haven't had the mental space to properly consider. A process that's been nagging at you for weeks that you know could be better. A conversation with your executive that deserves more than a rushed five minutes between meetings.

This is not a time management problem. This is a capacity problem.

And the answer isn't another hour in the day. It's a bigger bucket.

This week we explore the difference between compressing your capacity (doing more, faster, harder) and expanding it — using the right tools to free your mind for the thinking that only you can do.

What bucket could you pick up today?

In The Wild

Real-World Finds - Articles, books, and listents that carry the bucket for you.

Book: Smarter Faster Better — Charles Duhigg Explores why the most productive people and organisations aren't working harder — they're thinking differently about how work gets done.

Book: The Extended Mind — Annie Murphy Paul A fascinating look at how our thinking doesn't just happen in our heads — and how the right tools, spaces, and habits literally expand our cognitive capacity.

Podcast Episode: How to Reclaim Your Cognitive Bandwidth — Hidden Brain, NPR Explores the invisible mental load we carry and what happens when we finally set it down.

From One EA to Another

A resource worth passing down the hall — or across the industry.

Tool Spotlight: Otter.ai AI-powered meeting transcription and summarisation

Every EA knows the feeling. You're in an important meeting, trying to listen, contribute, track action items, and take detailed notes — all at the same time. Something always gets missed. And the mental cost of trying to do all of it at once is higher than we ever admit.

Otter.ai changes that equation entirely.

It transcribes meetings in real time, identifies speakers, captures action items, and generates summaries — automatically. It integrates directly with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, so there is no complicated setup and no extra step. You simply show up to the meeting and be fully present in it.

The notes take care of themselves.

Why it matters for EAs specifically:

  • ✅ Your executive gets accurate, detailed meeting notes without you sacrificing your ability to actively participate

  • ✅ Action items are captured and searchable — nothing falls through the cracks

  • ✅ Follow-up emails and recaps become faster to write because the heavy lifting is already done

  • ✅ Your attention stays where it belongs — on the room, the dynamics, and the decisions being made

💡 This is the bucket, not the pawful. Stop carrying the words. Start hearing what's behind them. (Otter.ai offers a free tier that is genuinely useful — making it one of the lowest-barrier, highest-return tools an EA can add to their toolkit today.)

Worth Watching

Deceptively simple. Surprisingly powerful. Pogue walks through small, practical tools and shortcuts that most people don't know exist — and the cumulative effect on your daily capacity is significant. A great starting point for any EA looking to audit their own toolkit.

What all this says about the EA Effect

The best Executive Assistants in the world are not defined by how much they carry.

They are defined by how clearly they think — under pressure, at speed, with incomplete information and competing priorities — and how that thinking shapes everything around them.

But clear thinking requires cognitive space. And cognitive space doesn't appear by accident. It is created — deliberately, strategically — by EAs who understand that the right tool isn't a shortcut. It's a force multiplier.

When an EA uses better tools, they don't just save time. They elevate the quality of every decision, every interaction, and every outcome they touch.

That is the EA Effect.

Why The EA Effect Matters

The Fox carried water until his back gave out — and called it dedication.

But dedication without capacity is just depletion.

EAs sit at the centre of some of the most consequential decisions, relationships, and operations in the world. The work you do — the calls you field, the calendars you protect, the chaos you quietly prevent — shapes the direction of organisations, teams, and people.

That work deserves a mind that is sharp, spacious, and fully present.

Not a mind that is one pawful away from empty.

When you invest in tools that expand your capacity, you are not being lazy. You are being responsible — to your executive, to your organisation, and to the full weight of the role you carry so well.

The EA Effect isn't just about getting more done. It's about being fully available for the moments that matter most.

This Week's EA Effect in Action

This week, choose one task you do repeatedly that drains your time and cognitive energy — and find one tool, template, or system that can carry it for you.

Just one.

It might be:

  • A saved email template for your five most common responses

  • A calendar audit that eliminates the decisions you're making over and over

  • A one-page reference document for your executive's preferences that you stop reconstructing from memory

  • A simple automation that handles a transfer of information you do manually every week

Then notice what happens in the space that opens up.

That space? That's where the real EA work lives.

This Week

Now on to other stuff

Bookmarks

Things that didn't fit neatly anywhere else — but still belong in your world.

  • Podcast: Beyond the To-Do List — Erik Fisher Honest, practical conversations about productivity that go deeper than tips and tricks.

  • Podcast: The Lazy Genius Podcast — Kendra Adachi Don't let the name fool you. This is one of the smartest takes on doing less to achieve more — with warmth and zero judgement.

  • Book: Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman A beautifully argued case for stopping the war against time — and making peace with what we can actually hold.

If you've come across something worth sharing, reply to this email with it. I'd love to see what's on your radar. I may feature it in a future issue.

The Dream Desk

A desk that holds space for thinking — not just doing.

Where's your dream office this week?

Reply to this email with your idea or your own image.

Ambient Luxuries

Your desk might be covered in to-dos, but your mind? That deserves a view. Each week, we’ll drop a dreamy background and soundtrack to help you through the day like the behind-the-scenes wizard you are. Headphones in, magic on.
Note: These links are publicly available and not affiliated with us just something we love and want to share.

The EA Effect is not just a newsletter.
It's a weekly reminder of your influence.

That's Issue 51. Thanks for being here — and for carrying the water that keeps everything flowing.

If you’re curious to explore other issues on influence, prioritization, emotional intelligence, and leading without a title you’ll find them all on the website. We invite you to explore.

TheEAEffect.com  ·  See you next week.

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