| | | In July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea walked into a street in Strasbourg and started dancing. She didn’t stop for six days. Within a month, 400 people had joined her and up to 15 were dying daily from exhaustion and heart failure. | The city’s official response was to build them a stage and hire musicians. The leading modern theory is mass stress hysteria. Nobody has ever fully explained it, which means somewhere in history there is an entire city that collectively lost the plot and danced itself to death and we just have to accept that and move on. | What’s in store: | Google Docs is so much better with Gemini. That’s actually wild: My washing machine takes longer to finish a cycle. Our tool of the week is… Get our top free Gemini tips!
| Read Time: 5 minutes |
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| | | | | PRODUCTIVITY HACKS | Everything you can do in Google Docs thanks to Gemini | | If you haven’t opened Google Docs in a while, it’s not the same tool you remember. | And to be honest, until recently, Gemini felt a little clunky to me. | But now, Gemini mixed with some UI updates means it has a completely different feel. | The new bottom bar | Before, Gemini lived in a sidebar on the right. | Now, it’s a bar at the bottom of your screen (kind of like a Google search bar) and it makes you wonder what took so long. | How to use it: | Hover near the bottom-middle of your screen and the bar appears Highlight anything you’ve written, or start from scratch and prompt it You can also pull in context from Google Drive
| Quick actions you’ll see: | Meeting notes
→ turns your doc into structured notes
→ can connect to Calendar events Templates
→ Docs templates now live here Email draft
→ formats what you wrote into something sendable in Gmail Match doc format
→ keeps styles consistent without fixing everything manually
| The bar’s editing tools | If you’re not starting from scratch, just highlight text and you’ll see: | | This is Gemini baked directly into your writing flow. | Instead of rewriting something 5 times (or copying it into ChatGPT), just:
highlight → Rephrase → tweak | It’s faster and you don’t have to leave your doc, so you stay in the flow. | What are “Building Blocks”? | Click the bar → “More” → and you’ll see Building blocks on the right. | These are reusable, structured sections you can drop into any doc. | You’ll find: | meeting notes project trackers contact lists communication logs email templates
| They’re not just templates—they’re connected to the rest of Google Workspace. | So you can: | link people from Contacts tie notes to Calendar events manage tasks across tools
| How to use it: | | If you’re constantly recreating the same docs, this saves a lot of time. | A few quick tips | Search your Drive inside the doc (no tab-switching) Gemini suggestions feel more “in place,” less like a separate tool Word count is easier to keep visible while typing
| Screenshot This | Docs is now a workspace, not just a document The bottom bar = your command center Use highlight → Rephrase / Shorten instead of rewriting Building blocks = reusable, connected templates You can go from notes → doc → email without leaving Docs
| TBH, I still go back and forth with ChatGPT, so you will need to train that muscle here. | But, for now, Google Docs has had a GLOW-UP and we’re here for it. -HL | Get our Gemini tips guide to get more out of Google’s AI! | |
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| | | | | THAT’S ACTUALLY WILD | | According to a report, Kenya's Sabastian Sawe completed the London Marathon in 1:59:30, becoming the first runner to break two hours in an official marathon. Ethiopia's Yomif Kejelcha followed just 11 seconds later, also finishing under two hours. Sawe reportedly smashed the previous world record by 65 seconds, reaching a milestone previously achieved only in a specially arranged, unofficial event. |
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| | | | | Kiro is an agentic coding tool that turns prompts into full specs, architectural designs, and sequenced tasks before writing a single line of code, with parallel agents that catch edge cases and keep your implementation aligned with your requirements. | Check it out! → |
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| | | | We don’t know where it goes either… | |
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| #1256
Pour one out. | | | | |
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