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🤔 Brainteaser of the day: I can be found at the start of every journey, the root of every goal, and the heart of every change. What am I?
Click here to see the answer.
✅ Today's Checklist:
Thania shares AI home design tips The new HBO show that's giving major Game of Thrones energy Pet of the week: Meet Murphy
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What Happened When I Let AI Design My Airbnb Bedroom
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I love ChatGPT. I use it for everything. But when I think of AI for interior design, it sounds gimmicky. And honestly, a couple of Instagram ads have gotten me. I've downloaded an "AI" interior design app only to be fooled and disappointed.
But Joanna (co-founder of the Assist) swears by it. She's successfully used it to design several rooms in her home. I've dabbled with it for helping me find a certain type of pillow or asking it to help me with my color scheme, but I haven't yet honed it in for a full-blown interior design consult.
So let's give her a whirl, shall we?
Styling my Airbnb bedroom
I recently listed my condo on the Airbnb market and need help styling my primary bedroom. What goes on the nightstands? What kind of lamps? How do I tie it in with my bedspread and pillows?
Here's how I used AI to actually solve this problem.
Step 1: I fed it my vision
Before touching AI, I'd already spent tons of time collecting visual inspiration. I pulled together Pinterest boards, saved images of rooms I liked, and created a color palette mood board. I had a clear vision of what it should look like. I fed it some poorly taken pictures of the room and screenshots of my personal mood board deck I'd created on Canva:
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Step 2: I crafted a strategic prompt
I didn't just say "design my bedroom." I was specific about the role, constraints, and goals.
Here's the prompt I used:
"You're a top short-term rental interior designer. Craft me 3 mood boards or mockups based on my photo and the inspo document I've provided. What questions do you have for me?"
You could customize this based on your needs:
"You're a top interior designer for busy families with young kids" "You're a top interior designer specializing in small apartment living" "You're a top interior designer for maximalist, colorful spaces"
The more context you give, the better.
Step 3: I answered the follow-up questions
ChatGPT asked me clarifying questions. I answered them thoughtfully:
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The more details I provided, the more tailored the results.
Step 4: Review the drafts and request specific deliverables
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It provided me with 4 awesome options! However, #4 was cut off, but I could still get the gist.
Then I asked for exactly what I needed:
ChatGPT generated:
Shopping lists with specific items Multiple design concepts to choose from Mockups showing how the room could look Product recommendations within my budget
Step 5: I refined with follow-ups
The first result was good, but I wanted to see more options. So I asked:
"Can you mock up the room with my preferred colors and this pop art?"
And it generated a mockup with my "BIRDIE baby" pop art piece above the bed, blush pink accents, and the exact vibe I was going for.
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My verdict
I was skeptical. But this actually worked. I think ChatGPT's 5.2 Model has come a long way and the image creation is way better than it used to be.
If you've been hesitant about AI for interior design, I suggest giving it a try! It saved me a lot of time and as a visual person, having the mockup was incredibly helpful.
So, I'm officially a convert. I can't wait to make this Airbnb bedroom design a reality!
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Doing Everything Doesn't Mean Doing It All Manually
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Modern HR is more than payroll + paperwork. It's onboarding, performance, compliance, manager support, engagement, reporting, and still answering "where do I find that form?" without losing your mind.
If your current setup relies on spreadsheets, scattered docs, and manual follow-ups, the bottleneck usually isn't your team. It's the system.
Here are two HR platforms that excel in different lanes:
If you want culture + insight across teams
HiBob is the move when employee experience and visibility matter as much as admin.
Best at: engagement tools (shoutouts, surveys), dynamic org charts, and people analytics that help you spot trends (like team health, retention signals, and manager patterns), especially useful for distributed or global teams.
If you want clean, centralized HR that actually runs itself
BambooHR is a great fit when you need one home base for employee info, onboarding, time-off, and approvals without building a whole HR tech stack to get there.
Best at: organizing employee records, simplifying onboarding + offboarding, managing PTO/approvals, performance check-ins, and reporting that doesn't require 12 tabs and a prayer.
Quick pick: "level up engagement + insights" → HiBob. "streamline core HR + onboarding + approvals" → BambooHR.
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Make Excel Do the Work for Once
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If spreadsheets keep turning into a time-suck (and you're constantly fixing the same issues over and over), it's probably not your Excel skills — it's that no one ever taught you the systems.
Miss Excel's free 60-minute class shows you how to stop "hand-cleaning" data and start setting up repeatable shortcuts, including how to:
Clean messy data fast (extra spaces, weird formatting, inconsistent names, duplicates — gone) Record simple macros you can run anytime to repeat the same steps in one click (no coding required) Automate the tasks you dread, like standardizing reports, prepping files, and tidying exports
Bonus: you'll learn a quick "before you touch anything" checklist so you don't accidentally break formulas, overwrite columns, or turn one fix into five new problems.
You'll leave with practical skills you can use immediately — the kind that save you minutes every day and hours every month (and make you feel mildly unstoppable).
👉 Register free and let Excel do the heavy lifting for once.
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Murphy is 1 year old and a complete purr machine. She almost always has a grey mouse toy in her mouth and loves bringing them into bed or leaving them in our shoes. She is obsessed with swimming in the laundry hamper, sitting on the bath mat to supervise showers, and cuddling with her older brothers Fritz and Phineas.
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Click the link below and on the "Update Your Preferences" page, click the "Email me a link" button. Open the email with the subject line "The Assist Subscribers: Update Profile" and click the link inside. Choose the weekly email newsletters you'd like to receive from us (Tues, Wed, Thurs, Sat). Click "Update Preferences" to save your changes—and you're all set!
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