Asian Efficiency

ASIAN EFFICIENCY
PRIMER
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ASIAN EFFICIENCY PRIMER

Published by Asian Efficiency Limited
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
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Copyright 2014 Asian Efficiency Limited
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The term Getting Things Done is a registered trademarks of the David Allen
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This product refers to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Stephen
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Contents
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Chapter 01: Simple Email Management . . . . . . 14

The Simple Guide to Managing Your Email Effectively . . . 15
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Chapter 02: Simple Task Management . . . . . . . 29

Simple Task Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Managing Your Task List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Chapter 03: Calendar and To-do List . . . . . . . . 65

How to Use Your Calendar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
How To Use A Calendar and To-Do List With Each Other 71
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Chapter 04: Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Introducing Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Morning Ritual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Action Steps for Morning Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Daytime Ritual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Contents
Evening Ritual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Action Steps for Evening Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
In Closing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Chapter 05: Clear to Neutral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

The One Habit That Stops You From Procrastinating . . . . 99
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Chapter 06: Eat That Frog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Do Your Most Important Tasks In The Morning . . . . . . . . 106
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Chapter 07: Beat Procrastination . . . . . . . . . . 111

Beating Procrastination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Hero Mode: Productivity Super Powers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Action Steps for Implementing Hero Mode . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Solar Flaring to Overcome Procrastination . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Action Steps for Using Solar Flaring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Timeboxing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Timeboxing Technique Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Beating Procrastination Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Chapter 09: Going Paperless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

8
Contents
The Simple Guide to Going Paperless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Going Paperless with Your Magazines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Chapter 10: Organizing Your Files, Folders and

Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Organizing Your Files, Folders and Documents . . . . . . . . 145
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Chapter 11: Time Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Basics of Time Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Chapter 12: Putting It Together (Case Study) 183

Putting It Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Implementation and Action Steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
In Closing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
In Closing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
About Asian Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Contents
10
Introduction
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Thank you for purchasing the Asian Efficiency Primer.
This work represents an introduction to the best of the best of Asian
Efficiency weve taken our most high-impact and popular writing, cleaned it
up, addressed issues that have arisen since it was written and put it together
in an easy step-by-step format that any productivity novice can take, follow
and implement.
This book has been written in a modular manner, meaning that you can pick
and choose any chapter that you find most interesting and dive right in.
However, you will get the most benefits from reading and working through
the book in sequential order future chapters do build on prior chapters.
Heres a brief overview of each chapter:
Simple Email Management: A look into the high-stress world of
email, and how some simple guidelines and rules can keep it neat and
organized.
Simple Task Management: The basic principles of modern-day task
management, and some examples of different applications you can use.
Calendar and To-do List: How to differentiate your calendar from our todo list, and how to use your calendar effectively and properly.
Rituals: How to build a foundation of solid physical and mental energy
every single day, skyrocketing your productivity.
Clear to Neutral: A simple habit that lets you stop-and-start work
effectively.
Eat That Frog: How to really prioritize your days and get more things
done than 90% of the population.
Beating Procrastination: Some assorted techniques and strategies for
beating procrastination. Think of them as tools to pull out when you
really need them.
Sex, Relationships & Productivity: The most controversial content we
have ever published, rewritten with a big emphasis on actionable items.
Going Paperless: A brief guide to going paperless.
Organizing Files, Folders and Documents: Once youve gone paperless,
12
Introduction
heres how you keep your files and documents on your computer
organized and accessible.
Time Tracking: How to track the one metric that really matters, and some
of the surprising conclusions it may give you.
Putting it Together (Case Study): How the principles in this book look
together in an integrated whole. Recommended reading after everything
else.
Youll notice that a lot of the screenshots used in this book are from Mac OS
X at Asian Efficiency, we love Macs, but if youre on Windows or another
platform, dont let that distract you. The principles and underlying structure of
the systems remains the same, and where possible weve included Windows/
Android alternatives to Apple products.
We want this book to be interactive. Youll find a lot of hyperlinks scattered
throughout the text, often to articles we have written on our blog or studies
that we reference. None of these are required in the journey to become more
productive, but they are there if you are interested.
For simplicity we use the third-person pronouns he and she
interchangeably and where possible the text has been presented as a
conversation between us, and you, the reader. We or I refers to the team
at Asian Efficiency or the writer of the particular chapter.
Thanks again for making the purchase of the Asian Efficiency Primer we
hope you will enjoy it and get a lot out of it.
- The Asian Efficiency Team
Hong Kong, SAR
13
Chapter 01: Simple

Email Management
Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

THE SIMPLE GUIDE TO MANAGING YOUR EMAIL
EFFECTIVELY
Managing your email has become an important part of modern knowledge

work. As common it is for everyone to have email, most people still do not
know how to properly managetheir email inboxes. People often complain that
email is one of their largest sources of distraction, and that using email ends
up wasting a lot of valuable time.
One of the best things you can do for getting your email under control is
to apply a folder structure and have a specific workflow that you can use.
I am going to introduce to you a workflow that has been proven to be very
effective for managing email.
For the purposes of this chapter, I will use Gmail as an example on how to
use folders for managing your email. This idea can be applied to any other
email providers too (Yahoo!, Hotmail, and so on) or email clients (Apple Mail,
Postbox, Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, etc). So if you use something other
than Gmail, dont panic. You can use the same ideas for your email provider or
application.
Our recommended email clients are:
Mac Mailplane, Postbox or Apple Mail.
Windows Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird.
15

INBOX ZERO
The first idea I want you to understand is the idea of what some people call
Inbox Zero. Most people see their email inbox as the place where all emails
are stored, but I want you to start looking at your inbox differently. Heres
how I want you to look at your inbox:
View your email inbox as a temporary holding place where you need to start
processing emails.
Put in other words, only unread emails are in your inbox. Processed and read
emails are not in your inbox (they go somewhere else, as I will show you in a
bit).
Each time you process your email

the objective is to go through your
inbox and get the count to zero.
Each time you process your email, the goal should be to have your inbox count
at zero. Psychologically it is much better to know that you have managed your
email and that you only have to process whatever is in your inbox.
When your inbox is full of email, it makes it very hard to look for certain
messages that you need to reply to, especially if you have to scan through
hundreds of emails. Additionally, looking for emails you are awaiting for a
16

response to is a pain when your inbox count is at 295,346. There is a simple
solution for this as we will see later.
A clear and empty inbox give you a sense of organization and the feeling that
you have email under control. Thats why its important to make that mental
shift on how you view your inbox and what its purpose is. Start looking at
your inbox as a temporary holding place of emails you still need to read and
decide on what to do with. Each time you process your inbox you want to get
it to be zero.
FOLDER STRUCTURE
Lets get to the setup of the workflow. This workflow requires for you to
create 3 folders: Reply, Waiting and Archive.
Here is what each folder is meant for:
Reply: all emails go in here that take longer than 2 minutes to respond to.
Waiting: all emails go in here where you are waiting for a response or
want to process later.
Archive: all other emails go in here that you want to be able to access
later.
Whichever email client you use, you need to setup these folders. In this
chapter I will use Gmail as an example. Within Gmail, they use folders too but
they call them labels. Here is how you set them up:
1. Top right corner, click on the Settings Gear image and then click on
Settings.
17
Go to Settings Gear > Settings (top right corner)
2. Click on the Labels tab.
Click on the Labels tab to create the labels / folders.
3. Create the new labels Reply and Waiting. Gmail already comes with an
Archive folder called All Mail so you dont have to create one (but you do
in your email clients and other email providers).
Create the labels/ folders in Gmail.
18

PURPOSE REPLY FOLDER
Some typical emails that belong in the Reply folder:

Someone is requesting you to do something (with or without deadline).
Examples include submitting reports, verifying something, and taking
on any task.
Someone is asking you to respond to something but it requires more
deep thoughts from you to respond.
Examples include people asking for your opinion or asking about your
availability for an event.
After youve replied to emails in this folder, you then move them to the
Archive folder. Within Gmail its easy, you remove the Reply label by clicking
on the X next to the label name.
Removing a label from an email in Gmail
PURPOSE WAITING FOLDER
Typical emails that go in the Waiting folder:

Tracking codes for UPS or Fedex packages coming your way.
Examples include shipping tracking numbers from online shopping.
You delegated a task and you are waiting for a response / result.
Examples include emails from (virtual) assistants, employees, and
anyone you are waiting to hear from.
Confirmation from someone.
Examples include asking another person if he/she received something
from you (like a package).
19

THE 2-MINUTE RULE
Another golden rule of managing your email is the 2-minute rule. Its really
simple:
if it takes longer than 2 minutes to process or reply to an email, reply to it later
and put the email in the Reply folder. Otherwise, reply right away.
When it comes to managing your email, you want to apply the productivity
principle of touch it once. Do not reread the same email thats just a waste
of time. Especially when you have to deal with dozens or hundreds of emails
every day. To put it another way, as soon as youre reading an email decide
right away what to do with it. Dont let it linger around in your inbox because
you will forget what the email is about and this will force you to read it again.
Touch it once and move to the next email.
The value in this rule is that you go through your inbox really fast, and you
initially process only what is necessary. If someone needs a quick response,
youve taken care of that. If an email needs more attention, you can work on
that later and prioritize which email gets the most attention (after your inbox
is processed and at zero).
What most people tend to do is process emails one-by-one and sequentially
handle each email as they receive it throughout the day. This is a very
inefficient way of managing your email, because you arent prioritizing.
Lets say you have 10 unread emails in your inbox. How do you know if email
#2 is more important and higher priority than email #9? You dont know if you
spend a lot of time on each email. Thats why this time limit rule is so effective
because you will quickly find which emails need the most attention.
Two minutes is the limit Ive set for myself. Adjust this for yourself based on
how much time a day you want to spend on email and the volume of emails
you get. Personally, I want to spend less than one hour a day on managing my
email. At my current volume, I receive fewer than 50 emails a day, and with
the 2-minute limit I get to manage my email daily in less than an hour.
As a guideline: the more emails you get per day, the shorter your time limit
should be.
20

I cannot stress this enough, but when it comes to managing your email you
really want to apply the touch it once rule. You will waste a lot of time by
rereading emails over the span of weeks and by just implementing this rule
youll save a lot of time.
21

WORKFLOW
To quickly recap as you process your inbox, you want to apply the inbox
zero, 2-minute rule and the touch it once principle. These are essential to
this workflow and now lets tie all the pieces together. Below is a simplified
diagram of the workflow.
Email Management Workflow Diagram
Once you have your inbox at zero, thats when you can effectively start
managing your email. By default, you know that all emails in the Reply folder
require your focus and attention (they require more than 2 minutes of your
22

time).
When you apply this workflow this is what happens:
As you process your email, you will have responded to all the messages
that didnt require much attention from you (each email took less than
two minutes to respond to).
Anything that was important is in the Reply folder, and you can work
on it later and prioritize accordingly (each emails takes longer than two
minutes to respond to).
Once your inbox is zero thats when you can decide how you are going to
prioritize your emails in your Reply folder. You should be able to process your
inbox fairly quickly by scanning the email content, decide what the next step
is and process accordingly.
After your inbox is at zero, usually you want to process your Reply folder
next and treat each email with focus (because you know they require more
attention hence why there are in the Reply folder).
23

For more intermediate and advanced readers: you can make every email in
your Reply folder an action item on your to-do list. This is actually what I
prefer but it requires that you use a to-do list or task manager (well discuss
tasks in the next chapter). By the mere fact that emails that go to the Reply
folder, I want to make it an item in my task manager.
Email Management Workflow Diagram (Advanced)
24

It also is not uncommon that a request in the email requires you to do
something that might be a (big) project. Your boss might say, Hey I want you
to research what the 3 hottest stocks are in precious metals and recommend to me
which one has the best prospects. Please send it to me within 5 days from today.
Now this is an extreme example, but I hope you see what I mean. With such
emails you have to create an action item (or even a project), work on it, finish
it, and then reply to that email.
A simpler example might be that a friend is asking if you can join her for a
concert in two weeks. What you can do is respond right away saying youll
look into it, put it on your to-do list and figure it out later. Three days later,
after you figured out your schedule, you reply saying Yes Ive checked my
schedule and Im available. Lets do it! and put a check mark on your to-do list
action item.
SEPARATING EMAIL FROM TO-DO LISTS
A common mistake people make is that they see their email inbox as a to-do
list manager. Rather, you want separate a to-do list manager and email inbox.
You want to view your email inbox as another source of where tasks might
come from. Just like your boss might give you a task, or a phone call, so is email
another source.
By creating action items on your to-do list you force yourself to stay within
the email client (or on the same website) and you prevent yourself going
off doing something else. Its common to read an email, click on a link, read
something interesting, click on something else and before you know it youve
wasted an hour. Thats one of the many reasons why treating your email inbox
simultaneously as your to-do list is so dangerous. Please try to avoid that and
use a separate task manager (such as OmniFocus).
25

WORKFLOW EXAMPLE
The key to make this system work is that you have to review your folders
regularly. A good habit to this workflow is to check your email twice a day at
fixed times. That means going through your inbox twice in one day and where
you apply the inbox zero concept and 2-minute rule. As an example, I will show
you how I manage my email.
Monday-Friday: process email at 11am.
Monday-Friday: process email at 4pm.
Friday: review Waiting folder at 4:30pm (usually after processing email).
This is roughly how my days look like where you can see when
and how long I manage my email
I process my email only twice a day and at fixed times. Once in the morning
after Ive done my most important tasks (never check email first thing in the
morning, it will kill your productivity). By the time Im processing my emails, I
have already done my highest level activities and anything after that is nice to
complete.
26

Between the time I process my email inbox the first time and second time,
there is a gap of time I can use to get work done. This work may include tasks
that I got assigned through email earlier that morning. As Im processing my
email inbox the second time, I can update my task list again and prepare my
to-do list for tomorrow (if I got any emails with assignments and tasks handed
to me). By checking my email again at the end of the day, I can setup what my
most important tasks are the next day.
Before the weekend hits, thats when I review my Waiting folder. I do this
once a week. I treat it like a separate inbox and go through it as fast as
possible. If I didnt get a response from someone within 48 hours, Ill send a
quick reminder.
What I really like about this workflow is the sequencing of doing your most
important tasks first, then checking email, and then planning. Since Ive already
completed work between 9 and 11 (I usually start working at 9) without the
distraction of email, by the time Im checking my email Ive already done the
most important thing I could do that day. Whatever tasks I might get my way
through email can be done later that day or some other time.
9-11am: do highest leverage work (can be stuff from email from
yesterday).
11-11.30am: process emails.
12.30pm 3.30pm: do other work (that include new tasks just processed
from emails earlier in the morning).
4pm 4.30pm: process emails.
4.30pm 4.45pm: manage to-do list based on tasks worked on today
and the last set of emails.
This is a great workflow for people who work in an environment where email
is the main communication medium.
Now this was a lot of theory and examples. It can be overwhelming to learn,
but experiment with and implement this email management workflow.
27

ACTION STEPS
1. Create the 3 folders: Reply, Waiting and Archive.
2. Move your current inbox into the Archive folder.
3. Starting now, follow this workflow.
4. Figure out how many times a day you want to check your email and at
what times.
5. Review your Waiting folder every Friday.
28
Chapter 02: Simple

Task Management
Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

SIMPLE TASK MANAGEMENT
Task Management is a simple productivity concept but one that is often

overlooked. Anyone who has tried to get more organized, or get their
priorities or life in order has inevitably used a task list of some sort. This
chapter will explain exactly what a task is (and how it differs from say an
appointment or a piece of information), how to prioritize, organize and
manage your tasks on an ongoing basis. It will also provide some strategies
for managing your task list so that it doesnt grow nonstop and spiral out of
control.
We are going to introduce four different methods for managing your task list
in this chapter pen and paper, a text or Microsoft Word document, Things
(for Mac) and Remember the Milk (online). All these solutions work, and well
outline their pros and cons as we go along.
Note: Task, To-do and Action are used interchangeably.
If you read this and decide that you need a more complex solution, we highly
recommend OmniFocus (for Mac and iOS) and our guide, OmniFocus Premium
Posts.
30

WHAT IS A TASK
A task is an actionable item that needs to be done now, or at a later date.

By exclusion, a task is something that you have to do that doesnt occupy a
specific time slot on your schedule (those are appointments).
It is important to not confuse tasks and information. The act of filing
information or organizing a piece of information is a task, but the information
itself is not.
For example:
Dinner with Suzie on Friday appointment.
Call restaurant to make dinner reservations for Friday task.
Restaurants address, phone number and directions information.
People who are familiar with task lists will recognize the above immediately.
Once upon a time, tasks were single-sentence descriptions in numerical
order. Now, they are far more complex you now have the ability to describe
tasks in terms of the projects they belong to as well as the contexts (tools,
locations, mindsets) they belong to. While to some it may seem that this extra
information attached to each task is unnecessary, in reality it has increased
the level of clarity we have over our to-do lists by allowing us to see the
relationship between individual actions, and how they all add up to our goals
and different parts of our lives.
WHY TASK MANAGEMENT
Task management is important, for the simple reason that success in this
world (however you wish to define it) seems to be the result of 1) knowing
what you want, and then 2) directing action towards it. Without a clear list of
tasks, there can be no directed action.
At the most basic level, tasks allow you to externalize the ideas and thoughts
you have floating in your head. We all have thoughts and ideas that in the
moment we think are fantastic, and tell ourselves Ill remember that later.
Well, maybe we will or maybe we wont. Writing them down and turning them
into actionable items guarantees that you will.
Having actionable items captured and externalized also allows us to utilize our
31

organizational skills to decide what is important and what is not. Is watching
reruns of Lost more important, or is doing your laundry?
Actively managed task lists also create a certain degree of accountability. It
very clearly indicates where we have fallen short in terms of directed action,
and is a good (and somewhat pressure-free) wakeup call to get more done.
THE 2-MINUTE RULE
Heres the 2-minute rule from Getting Things Done:

If it takes less than 2 minutes to do it, do it now.
If you think of something to do and it takes less than 2 minutes to handle, do it
now. Dont put it in your task list. Try to apply this anytime youre dealing with
something to do.
TASK HIERARCHIES
This is the most complex part of this guide. Different people have different
ways of dividing up the different parts of their lives, but the one that we have
seen fairly often and that works for most people is a division into:
Health
Wealth (including career)
Relationships (friends, family, significant other)
General Happiness (catchall for everything else)
Errands (mundane everyday tasks)
It would therefore make sense for our tasks to fall into these categories
too. The Errands category is for the everyday mundane that doesnt belong
anywhere else things like going to the bank, doing the laundry, doing the
grocery shopping etc.
Now for some people this is too structured. In which case we would recommend:
Projects: personal projects you have that you want to complete, like redecorating
the living room, cleaning out the garage, or finishing a certain book.
Events: planning a dinner party, outlining a vacation, organizing a family
trip out of town.
Errands: same as the Errands list above.
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Things For Later: ideas that you want to revisit one day, just not at the
moment.
PEN AND PAPER TASK MANAGEMENT
Pen and paper is the simplest form of task management, and the one that
most people use (to varying degrees). The biggest problem with pen and paper
is actually that most people start to develop a great task management system,
then they stop using it or maintaining it due to the busyness of their lives.
The benefits of paper are many. It is very simple you dont need any
complicated or expensive equipment or apps, and its something you could
easily teach to your mom/dad/family or any non-technically-inclined friends.
Thats not to say there arent downsides compared to other task management
systems the biggest probably being that you have to copy tasks over to the
next day every single day to maintain a functioning system. For this reason,
while you can work with pen and paper, we highly recommend a digital system
(outlined later in this chapter).
With that out of the way, heres what youll need:
Paper. Preferably in the form of a notebook (We recommend US Letter or
A4/A5 size).
Post-it notes.
At least 2 different colored pens one for writing, one for highlighting.
Getting this system started is straightforward. Sit down, and take the time to
write down everything on your mind. Write down all the things you have to
do, all the random thoughts you have everything. Grocery shopping for this
week? Write it down. Doctors appointment in 2 weeks? Write it down. Call
Jean back about dinner next week? Write it down.
You should end up with a large list of unorganized thoughts and actions the
first time you do this.
Now you need to sort. In general, there will be three types of items you have
listed: tasks, appointments and information.
You want to separate these out. Appointments will go in your schedule or
calendar (see the chapter on Calendar and To-do List). Information should
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technically go into a personal wiki or database (covered in the chapter on
Going Paperless), but if were being simple here, just transfer it to another
notebook for the time being. Tasks are what you want to focus on for now.
Taking this list of tasks, start ordering them start at 1, and go through to x,
where x is the number of items on your list.
Theres no real need for categories with a paper system, it just tends to
complicate things. You may find that certain tasks group together around
events or projects, and if they do you can list them that way.
Now that you have your initial list of tasks, its time to learn how to use the
system effectively. Youll have two lists: an immediate action list, and an
everything else list.
At the start of every day, pick a new page in your workbook, put down
todays date, and list down all the immediate action items on your task list.
These are tasks that are due today, or overdue, or will be completed in the
next couple of days. Usually about 5 items is right for most people. All the
other tasks, should sit in a separate notebook or in a page at the back of your
notebook well come back to this second list later.
Now as you start your day, look at task number one, and start doing it until its
done. Then onto task number two, and three and so on
As you complete each task, tick it off or cross it out using a different colored
pen. You can also reorganize the order of tasks on-the-fly if necessary (just
cross out the numbers and write beside them).
At the end of every day, transfer everything left over to the next day. Now is
also the time to take a look at that second everything else list, and see what
needs to brought into your immediate action list for the next day.
If you have random thoughts or ideas during the day, grab a post-it and write
it down. At the end of the day, the content of these post-its should either
go into your immediate action list or everything else list the post-its
themselves should go in the bin.
As an example, heres a sample list of tasks on pen and paper.
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Day 01
Day 02
35
Day 03
36
Heres the everything else list where tasks are crossed off
and added on a daily basis. You may want to start a new
one of these every week.
Now were going to take this sample list of tasks, and show you how to set it
up in Microsoft Word or more fully-featured task management applications.
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NOTEPAD, TEXTEDIT AND MICROSOFT WORD TASK MANAGEMENT
Digital text or what we like to call Microsoft Word Task Management is the
next logical step towards more easily automating and managing your task list.
It is essentially the same as pen and paper task management, except
everything is stored as files on your computer rather than in a notebook. This
system is best used in an office environment, and where you dont have the
ability to mix your business and personal tasks together into one list.
Starting to use the system is the same as with pen and paper begin by
typing out everything you have on your mind. Sort out the appointments and
information, and then organize the remaining tasks into a hierarchical order.
You will likely want to use the task hierarchy we mentioned earlier here,
especially in a workplace where things are completed based on projects.
Using the system is a little different.
You will have one new document per each day. The filename should be
something like tasklist-yyyymmdd.docx, i.e., tasklist-20130201.docx. This
document will have both your task list (at the top), and at the bottom, it
should have your everything else list your items for later action.
At the beginning of each day, sort your tasks into relevant order (under
projects or subsections if necessary) and begin working through them. At the
end of each day, use the save as function to create a file with the next days
date. As with pen and paper, move items into or out of the everything else
section as necessary. Any random notes and ideas you accumulate throughout
the day should go at the bottom in the everything else section.
While this system works best in the workplace, you can also adopt it for
personal use at home. Simply replace your work projects with a list of your
personal projects, events and errands.
Here are some example documents showing the progression of tasks over a
few days, and how the system is used to manage them.
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Text Task List Day 01
39
40
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THINGS (FOR MAC) TASK MANAGEMENT
Of the systems that have been outlined here, Things(for Mac only if you are
on Windows, see the next section), is the most complex yet the most elegant.
Its also our recommended choice for learning how to use tasks to boost your
personal productivity.
Things has a distinct hierarchy built into the software. There are:
Tasks.
Projects.
Areas of Responsibility.
These are equivalent to:
Tasks: individual actions.
Projects: sets of tasks that have a finite limit. i.e., after a certain number
of tasks, the project can be considered complete.
Areas of Responsibility: an ongoing list of activities that is never
complete.
If we look back at our task hierarchy, we see that Areas of Responsibility
match up well to the general areas of Health, Wealth, Relationship and
Happiness. They also serve well as a Things for Later list and an Everyday
list.
If you use Things, it is highly recommended that you use this particular
hierarchy. If you choose instead to go organize around personal projects and
events, that is also possible. You will likely not use Areas of Responsibility in
that case, except for your Things for Later and Everyday lists.
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As with the prior two systems, begin by collecting all your thoughts and
actionable items in one place. In Things, this is called the Inbox and can be
found at the top of the sidebar.
Things Inbox View
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The next step is to establish your task hierarchy. You should create an
Everyday/Errands Area of Responsibility. The for later area found in the
prior two systems is replaced in Things by the Someday list.
If you choose to use structured categories, set them up too:
If not, then you will create appropriate projects as
you sort the tasks now collected in your inbox, which
is the next step.
Take each of the tasks in your Inbox, and put them
into projects as necessary, and put those projects (or
tasks) into the appropriate Areas of Responsibility.
One of the great benefits of a task manager like
Things is that you can assign due dates to individual
tasks (and projects) in a useable fashion. So, be sure
to assign due dates where required, and appropriate
notes and tags to each task as necessary.
Using this system is as deceptively simple. Use the
different views in Things to see your tasks through
different perspectives and filters.
Things Sidebar
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The Today view lets you see everything immediately due similar to the
immediate actions lists from the pen and paper and digital text systems.
Things Today View
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The Next view lets you see the next available actions across each of your
projects.
Things Next View
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The Scheduled view lets you see items set to start at a later date.
Things Scheduled View
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The Someday view lets you see items that are actionable later.
Things Someday View
We suggest starting with the Today or Next views at the beginning of the day,
and switching back and forth as necessary. As you complete a task, simply
check it off your list (you can always review what youve completed in the
Logbook).
At the end of each day, review what youve done in the Logbook, then look at
the Someday and Inbox views and move items into projects as necessary.
Any thoughts or ideas you collect during the day should go into the Things
Inbox, for categorization at the end of each day.
The main benefit of using a dedicated task manager like Things is that theres
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no need to create a new list for each day the list is always active, and
automatically carries onto the next day. The other big benefit is the ability to
synchronize with your iPhone and have your task list on-the-go all the time.
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REMEMBER THE MILK
Remember The Milk (RTM) is a simple web-based task manager that also has
mobile applications across most major platforms. Its a good alternative for
Windows users or people who dont want to be tied to any one particular
operating system.
This is not to say that other web-based applications like Wunderlist cant
be used almost any task manager will work, it just seems that a lot of
productive people who use Windows use Remember The Milk.
The first thing you want to do is sign up email, Facebook or Google login
any will work.
Remember The Milk signup page
Once youre signed up, be sure to log in.
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Remember the Milks hierarchical layout is a little different from the solutions
weve outlined before. In this case, Remember The Milk uses what are called
Lists to equivocate to both Areas of Life and Projects. You can modify these
by going to Settings > Lists.
Adding in our areas of life under Lists in Remember The Milk
Youll notice that for differentiation weve prefixed each list with Area or
Project.
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As with all applications and methods that weve mentioned before, you want
to input your tasks and items into Remember The Milks Inbox list. From
there, you can drag and drop items into the different relevant Lists (Areas and
Projects).
Remember The Milk Inbox
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Your someday items can sit in a separate list called Someday.
Someday list view
Using Remember The Milk is a matter of using the correct views.
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Here is the Inbox where items are input:
Remember The Milk Inbox
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You can of course, navigate to each individual list to see what you need to do,
but that is largely inefficient. It is much better to use the Overview view to see
what is due today, tomorrow or overdue.
Overview View
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The Weekly Planner view is also not bad for forecasting what you have due in
the upcoming days.
Weekly Planner View
Remember The Milk also uses a priority system for tasks you can assign
each task priority 1-3, similar to how you assign tasks as Today tasks in
Things or select tasks for Immediate Action in the text-based systems. It can
be found under the More Actions drop-down menu. We recommend keeping
it simple everything immediately actionable due today gets a Priority of 1,
everything else has no priority.
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You can use these priorities as a filter in either Overview view (flicking
between Today/Tomorrow/Weekly Planner), in each individual list, or in the
All Tasks list.
All Tasks View
As you complete tasks, remember to check them off as Complete!

If you have any other devices you use, Remember The Milk also syncs across
to your smartphone and other devices.
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GENERAL PRINCIPLES
All these task management systems are easy to use and apply with a tiny bit
of effort. They are all built on solid principles that should be in every task
management system, namely:
Easy to maintain.
Sequential order of tasks.
Ability to capture new tasks.
Recognizing that not everything is immediately actionable.
You can start with these and make them as simple or complex as you like.
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MANAGING YOUR TASK LIST
As we collect more and more tasks and more and more things to do, our tasks
lists can start to grow quite complex. Here are some guidelines that will help
you keep you task list manageable. Think of them as guideposts to help you
decide what to do with a particular task when youre unsure.
1. CLEAR YOUR INBOX EVERY DAY
Your inbox is where you collect all stray thoughts and incoming items. It can
be physical (an in-tray), note-based (post-it notes in the pen and paper system
above) or digital (in the case of a text document you can create an inbox
section, and for apps there will usually be a dedicated inbox area).
While our inboxes are a great place to collect things we need to do and
process, we must remember to clear them at least once per day. The digital
version of clutter is an inbox that is overfilling with tasks and items.
Just like your email inbox, you must set aside some time every day to clear
your task inbox. Having an overly-full inbox is not good it becomes this big,
scary monster that were afraid to look at because it just keeps on growing
and growing and growing and this leads to procrastination and missing
important items.
Try to clear your inbox at least once a day. Either do it, file it in a list or delete
it.
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2. GET RID OF JUNK
We all have times when we come up with a great idea or something we need
to do, so we write it down. Sometimes days, weeks or even months later, we
find out that we never acted on them and theyre just filling up space on our
to-do list.
If an item has been on your list for too long, delete it! If it is really important, it
will find a way back on your to-do list. Until then, out of sight, out of mind.
3. 80/20 YOUR ACTIVE PROJECTS
There is no point in having over dozens of active projects (collections of tasks)

on your task list, because you cannot work on all of them at the same time.
You have to focus on your most important projects, or in other words apply
the 80/20 rule. Keep 3-5 active projects and focus on those.
4. NO MORE OUTCOMES
Stop writing down outcomes and start writing down actionable steps. When
you read your to-do list, you should be able to know right away what you
should be doing next. What a lot people often do is that they write down the
outcome they want, but the problem is that they often dont know how to get
started which leads to procrastination.
Instead of writing down supplements, write down Go to the pharmacy and
buy multivitamins.
Instead of boxing, you write Order the PPV package for Saturdays match.
You get the idea.
5. START YOUR TASKS WITH VERBS
To follow up on the previous point, to make your action items actionable

you should start all of them with a verb. This is really simple trick and it does
wonders. For example:
Email John about the Q2 reports
Text Gina for availability for a date this Saturday
Call Alan and ask which car mechanic he uses
Take the trash out
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By starting your task with a verb, you know right away what to do. This also
helps you avoid writing down outcomes. One verb to avoid using is contact
because it is too ambiguous; it could mean texting, calling, emailing, and so
on. When you read an action item, there should be no ambiguity on what
needs to be done.
6. WHY?
We have written before on the power of having a why. When you deal with
your tasks, ask yourself these questions:
Why am I adding this to my to-do list?
If you dont plan to act on it, dont bother to add it.
Why do I need to do this?
If you are not the best person to do this, outsource it.
Why is this important?
If it is not important, delete it.
7. ADD A TIME ESTIMATE
Not all tasks take the same amount of time. By adding an estimation to your
tasks you will see if a task is too big to handle. When a task takes longer than
an hour, that is a sign that the task is too big. Break it down into smaller tasks,
because if the task is too big you are more likely to procrastinate. About 20
minutes is right for most tasks.
An example of a task that is too big is renovate the living room. This will
definitely take more than an hour to complete and it involves a lot of other
tasks, so it is a good idea to break this down and maybe even make this a
project.
In the beginning we are all horrible at estimating, but as we continue to
practice, we get better at it. You will build an intuition for how long something
will take which in turn makes you even better at managing your time.
A simple notation to use is to follow the task name with (x minutes) e.g.,
Email Thanh about TPS reports (5 minutes).
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8. HAVE YOUR NEXT ACTIONS READY
Popularized in the book Getting Things Done, next actions are tasks that are
need to be done to move a project forward. You can also look it at it from
another perspective: what is the bottleneck of a given project? By removing
the bottleneck, your project isnt stalled anymore and you can start working
towards completing it.
If you ever feel like you have some free time and you dont know what you
could be doing next, thats a red flag. You either are overwhelmed by the
amount of things you have on your list, or you havent set up your to-do
list properly. If the latter is the case, get out your next actions list and start
working on them.
9. REVIEW ONCE A WEEK
Reviewing your to-do list is the process of going over each and every project
and making sure everything is in order. To keep your to-do list in order, you
need to at least review it once a week. Just like you should go see a dentist
every six months for a checkup, the same idea applies to your to-do list but on
a weekly basis.
If you tend to procrastinate on your weekly reviews, thats a sign that you
have too many projects going on. A review shouldnt take more than 10
minutes.
10. HAVE REFERENCE INFORMATION READY
To avoid procrastination you want to make it as easy as possible to get started

on things (thats why we recommend the habit of clearing to neutral see the
chapter on Clear to Neutral). Any friction can to lead to procrastination. For
example, if you need to call your local grocery store but you dont have the
phone number within reach, you will have to first search for it. This extra step,
or barrier to what you want to achieve, is a waste of time and if youre not in
the right mood or state of mind you will procrastinate.
If you need to call someone, have the phone number as part of your action
item. For example, instead of writing Call grocery store and ask for availability
of Dutch peanut butter you would write down Call grocery store (123-5555555) and ask for availability of Dutch peanut butter. If you need to go to a
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store, have its address attached to the notes of the task. If you need to access
a document, attach the document to the task (or reference it).
Make it easy for yourself to get things done right away so you dont waste
time looking up reference materials.
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ACTION STEPS
At this point you should have a good idea of how important task lists are and
how to construct and use one. Heres what you do:
1. Do a brain dump of everything in your head any stray ideas, things you
need to remember to do or otherwise. Collect it all onto paper.
2. You may also want to do the same with any post-it notes that you may
have and any other physical reminders too. Steps 1 and 2 help you get
all the important things you need to do in one place, which makes them
much easier to handle.
3. Pick your task management system of choice. Pen & paper works well. So
does a simple text or Word document (our recommended starting point).
If you want to get fancy, go with Things or Remember The Milk.
4. Input the items collected in steps 1 and 2 into your task management
system.
5. Follow the details outlined in this chapter to sort into your different
projects, categories or areas. Set appropriate due dates.
6. At this point everything should be set up and ready to use you simply
need to reference your task list as you go about working.
7. Follow the 10 tips outlined in the latter half of this chapter for keeping
your task management system clean and functional.
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Chapter 03:
Calendar and To-do
List
Chapter 03: Calendar and To-do List

HOW TO USE YOUR CALENDAR
The simple calendar is an almighty tool that tends to get swept away underneath
all the flashy task managers, productivity systems and context-specific
smartphones apps that we have nowadays.
The shocking truth is that most business professionals simply dont know how
to take advantage of their calendar applications despite them being pretty
much default on every platform in use (desktop, phone), and very easy to set
up.
Well be making the assumption that you will use your calendar between your
desktop and phone some sync solutions will be mentioned below.
SOFTWARE AND SYNC
In Apples ecosystem we highly suggest you stick with iCloud, which will pull
data from your Mac to your iPhone to your iPad pretty much seamlessly. It
does get the occasional hiccup maybe once or twice a year, but its otherwise
hassle-free.
We dont use Windows or Android (much), but from talking with users on those
platforms syncing seems to be a patchwork of solutions. The easiest solution
it would seem is to use Google Calendar and their sync solution, which goes
something like this:
Outlook syncs to Google Calendar (on desktop).
Google Calendar syncs to calendar app (on phone).
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As a bonus mention for Apple users, while the default Calendar applications are
pretty good, we like:
BusyCal for the desktop (easier to use than the standard calendar app).
WeekCal for the iPhone and iPad (best calendar app on iOS by far).
WHAT GOES IN YOUR CALENDAR
Anything that you have to do at a specific time is an appointment that should

go in your calendar.
You can contrast this with tasks, which are things that can be done at any
time.
Most people are familiar with what should go in their calendar:
The time youre at work.
Meetings at work.
Social engagements.
Reserved time for things you are working on (time blocking).
Deadlines of important projects and commitments.
Exercise/gym time.
This can be extended further to include things like:
Scheduled meal times (especially if youre on a specialized nutrition plan).
Morning/Evening rituals (see next chapter).
It seems that most people tend to think about what goes in their calendars
as official and something that they try to stick to. You can use this to your
advantage and schedule in time to work on important projects in your life.
STRUCTURING YOUR CALENDAR
A really common question that we get is how rigidly or in how much detail
should people structure their calendars.
What this comes down to is your life, your lifestyle and what you have going
on. Some people find it highly beneficial to have meal times, their morning
ritual and work times in their calendar. Other people will probably hate having
those things in there as a reminder of what they should be doing.
Be sure not to go crazy with chunking down time we recommend 1 hour, or
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maybe 30 minutes max as the smallest unit of time you have in your calendar.
Any more than that and the amount of micromanagement and modeswitching makes it counterproductive.
Heres what we found: most people adhere too rigidly, or too loosely to their
calendar.
The best approach is to respect your calendar, and to see it as your vision of
an ideal day, and to put in your best effort to follow it but to also recognize
that sometimes things crop up and you need to be flexible.
Simply put: try your best to follow it, and dont beat yourself up if you dont
100%.
With that in mind, here are some structures you can put in place to turn your
level of adherence into feedback:
Decide what meetings or appointments you wont be flexible on e.g.,
meetings at work, particular social engagements, scheduled morning/
evening rituals.
When you do deviate from your preset schedule, make a note in your
journal. If it happens a lot, that is a sign that your schedule needs to
change.
A quick bonus tip is to use all-day events to highlight significant periods across
a number of days, for example:
When an important business contact is in town.
When you are away on a conference.
STRATEGIC USE OF REMINDERS
One of the best uses for your calendar is to set strategic reminders for
yourself.
Most people already have alerts turned on for their desktop and phone-based
calendars, and you can use this to your advantage by setting yourself alerts for
things you want to remember throughout the day.
Heres how its done:
1. Set up a 5-minute appointment at the time you want to be reminded of
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something.
2. Input what you need to be reminded of in the appointment title.
3. Set the alert to on date of event or at start of event.
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This is incredibly, incredibly useful and can be used to remind you of things like:
When you need to drop off/pick up your laundry.
Meal and supplement times, especially if youre on a complex nutritional
plan.
Important time-blocked events, like when you should be doing some
mind-expanding reading or working on an important side-project.
Why not set task alerts via something like OmniFocus or any other task
manager? Because you cant define which specific tasks have alerts, and if
youre a complex (or efficient) task organizer, you probably have 10-20 things
due the next day, and alerts for all of them going off is not that helpful.
Remember to also use alerts for normal appointments like social
engagements to help you get there on time. It still amazes me the number of
people who cannot estimate transit time and set themselves a reminder to
leave home/work the required 15/30/60 minutes beforehand to make it to an
event on time.
MAKING IT WORK WITH EVERYTHING ELSE

So where does your calendar fit in your workflow?
Remember that tasks go into a dedicated task manager or todo list not
your calendar. And despite various software companies attempts, dont try to
combine the two (more on that in the next section).
You should look at your calendar in the morning to see the pace and rhythm
of your day, then as you need to, refer to it throughout the day. As with your
tasks, also take a look at the end of the day and work out what youve done
(or not), and see what youre doing to do tomorrow.
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HOW TO USE A CALENDAR AND TO-DO LIST WITH
EACH OTHER
A lot of people use their calendar as their daily to-do list. Most of us learned
it ad-hoc that we put the things we need to do in our calendar, but we think
thats a bad approach to planning. We want to show you how to use your
calendar more efficiently together with your to-do list. Each has its own
functions and responsibilities, but they can work great in harmony once you
know how.
TASK MANAGEMENT 101
Earlier in this chapter we covered basic ground on how to use a calendar. We

will recap some of the basics of task management here but we recommend
that you read the chapter on Simple Task Management for further details.
In short, I want you to view your tasks on your to-do list as things you need
to do that have no strict deadline. In other words, your tasks have no specific
date or time attached.
Nowadays we have so many things on our plate that there is no way we can
do them all. Especially things that we cannot do within the next week(s) or
month(s) but we still need to do the at some point. Where do you keep this
information?
Thats right, on your to-do list.
The key to managing your to-do list is that you have to review it at least once
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a week. Thats when you go over your to-do list, and see which tasks need
attention, which can be deleted, and which tasks can be added to projects.
Maintaining your to-do list is very important because you will use this
information for planning your days and weeks ahead. Again, if this is all new to
you I highly suggest reading the chapter on Simple Task Management.
CALENDAR + TO-DO LIST
Now that we have covered how to use a calendar and to-do list, its time to
show you how powerful they can be together. The starting point of planning
is knowing what commitments you have already. Once you know that, thats
when you can see which tasks on your to-do lists can taken care of on which
days.
For example, when youre planning and you notice that on a Tuesday you have
a lot of meetings and appointments, then you know planning a lot of tasks on
Tuesday is a bad idea. Whereas if you notice that on a Wednesday you dont
have a lot of items on your calendar, you could schedule that you work on
specific tasks that day.
Calendar planning workflow
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This is how using a to-do list and calendar together can be very powerful. You
can plan how much you want to get done on specific days.
Make sure you review every week your to-do list and calendar. Start looking
first on your calendar how busy you are and supplement days with tasks that
you have on your to-do lists.
GETTING STARTED WITH THE RIGHT TOOLS
Using a calendar and to-do list together is a great idea but it takes a little
bit of practice. Doing this syncing between calendar and to-do list on paper
can be very tedious with a wall calendar. Thats why we recommend you use
software as your solution.
There are many calendars and to-do lists / task managers that can mesh
together really well. We tend to be a bit biased because we love OmniFocus
(OS X) and Calendar (built in OS X) so with that endorsement out of the way,
here are some other recommendations.
CALENDARS
Google Calendar (web)

Microsoft Outlook (Windows)
BusyCal (OS X)
TO-DO LISTS / TASK MANAGERS
Remember the Milk (web)

Microsoft Outlook (Windows)
Things (OS X)
To get your feet wet on the Mac, you should try out Things in harmony with
Calendar.
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For beginners on a Mac, we recommend using Things

with Calendar
For Windows users, Microsoft Outlook is the most popular option. It has a
built in to-do list manager and calendar. Plus it handles all your email too so
these options can all work great together. The learning curve is pretty simple
and Microsoft has a simple training course for managing Outlook with email,
calendar, and to-do list.
Microsoft Outlook has a built in calendar and to-do list. Great for people who
also use it as their primary email client and dont want to get too fancy.
In case you want to manage your email better, read the chapter on Email
Management. Regardless of which operating system or email client you use,
the chapter also explains how to use email, to-do lists, and calendars together.
In case you dont want to tie yourself to an operating system, there are great
web based solutions too. Google Calendar is one of the best online calendar
applications out there. For task managers, Remember the Milk is the most
popular. These two work together well too.
That means you can access your to-do list and calendar from any computer or
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device, as long as you have an internet connection. Sign up for RTM and it will
show you how you can sync it with your Google Calendar.
For a web based solution, Remember the Milk and Google Calendar is a
great one
Now Im pretty sure Ive mentioned this lethal combination before, but for the
advanced readers on Macs you should try OmniFocus and Calendar together.
They work really well together, especially when you put certain contexts on
your Calendar. A better approach is if you have your Calendar synced with
iCloud so you can access and manage your calendar anywhere.
If you want to reach Asian Efficiency level, you need to have OmniFocus and BusyCal
Yours truly uses OmniFocus and BusyCal (Calendar on steroids) together with
Google Calendar. I love the interface and features of BusyCal over Calendars.
Its similar, simpler, and faster. Plus it can sync with Google Calendar which I
use a lot in combination with other Google services.
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ACTION STEPS
1. Open up your calendar app.
2. Start planning your ideal day for the upcoming week/month/year.
3. Schedule it in.
4. Set strategic reminders.
5. Pick a task manager that complements your calendar.
6. Sync up your task manager and calendar.
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Chapter 04: Rituals

INTRODUCING RITUALS
Rituals are sets of habit that frame each day. At their simplest, they are a
checklist of things you do every morning (morning ritual), during the day
(daytime ritual) and before you go to sleep (evening ritual).
This chapter will look at all three rituals, and provide guidance for how to
assemble your own and then how to tweak them and make them stick. We
will also be covering some of the common problems that people have when
implementing rituals, such as length, boundaries and activity choice.
Note: The term ritual can be used interchangeably with routine or process.
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MORNING RITUAL
Lets start off with morning rituals. The eventual aim of your morning ritual is
to get to the point where you can do it on complete autopilot you wake up
and your body and mind just start moving in the right direction through the
steps of the ritual until you find yourself working productively.
While all rituals are important, your morning ritual is the most important
ritual as it sets the foundation of managing your energy for the day. If done
correctly and consistently, it will help you pace yourself for the remainder of
the day, and help you avoid that early-morning crash that most people seem
to have. In short, it makes the rest of your day much easier.
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ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS
Here are the essential components of your morning ritual.

1. WATER
Drink 500ml-1L of water immediately upon waking (16-32 ounces for US

readers). What this does is rehydrate your body and provide fluids for all your
internal organs, signaling to them that your sleep cycle has ended and that the
day is about to begin. Youve just gone 7-9 hours without any fluid intake, so
water is critically important as the first thing you do every morning.
If you like a bit of a kick/shock in the morning, you can make it cold water
from the fridge.
2. MOVEMENT
One aspect of morning rituals that Thanh developed was the idea of adding
some sort of physical movement to the morning ritual, to signal to your body
that yes, you are up and that the day is about to begin. He prefers some light
stretching and a couple of pushups.
Anything that is light, or would otherwise serve as a warmup to exercise will
do sun salutations, 5 minutes at low speed on the treadmill, joint rotations
etc. 5 minutes is more than enough.
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3. BATHROOM/HYGIENE
This should be pretty self-explanatory: keep good hygiene. Brush your teeth,
wash your face, use the toilet, shower.
Note that it doesnt matter if you shower in the morning or not.
Also note that movement/bathroom are interchangeable.
4. MAKE BED, GET CHANGED
Making your bed and changing into your day clothes should be pretty
straightforward. It also nicely signals your brain that youre shifting into a
daytime activity mode, and no longer sleeping.
5. GOALS AND OUTCOMES
You want to make sure that you set your goals/outcomes for the day as part
of your morning ritual. You can do this is your task management system, in a
journal entry or just on a piece of paper. We havent covered setting long-term
goals in this primer, but you can read up on them here if you want.
The best way to set your outcomes for the day is to reference:
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Your long-term goals
Your schedule for the day
Your tasks for the day
Based on these, you will know what you have to do during the day and
roughly what your day will look like.
If you set your outcomes the night before (recommended), you can simply
review them at this point in the ritual.
6. MOST IMPORTANT TASK
The idea of doing your most important task of the day first will be covered
extensively in the chapter on Eat That Frog, but for now, know that it will
always be the last step in your morning ritual.
OPTIONAL COMPONENTS
As we have taught more and more people the power of morning rituals, we
have discovered that some of what we thought were essential components
really arent all that essential after all. And, we learned about some of the new
things that other people have added to their rituals to make them even more
effective.
STEAM
If you happen to live somewhere that the air quality is not all that great, or if
you just like having better breathing capacity, you can breathe in some steam
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every morning. This can be as simple as boiling some hot water and pouring
it into a bowl, then putting a small towel over your head and breathing in the
steam for 30-60 seconds.
Or, you can get one of these steam machines.
Steam machine
BREAKFAST
We used to believe that eating a solid breakfast was essential to starting the
day productively further testing has shown that this is not true.
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Thanh prefers a protein-rich breakfast with fruits, while other people prefer a
green drink or shakes in the morning. Some people prefer no breakfast at all
(like me). Our only advice here is that if you are eating breakfast, keep it light
avoid the heavy carbohydrates that are likely to rob you of mental clarity as
you digest them.
This will largely depend on your health and fitness goals and the systems you
have running there, but experiment a bit and go with what works for you.
Exception: if you work out/exercise in the morning, be sure to take something
(food/supplements) before doing so. Please consult your physician/trainer for
professional advice.
COFFEE AND TEA
While we are not huge fans of coffee here at Asian Efficiency we do recognize
its power its a great thermogenic when youre on a diet, and we have found
that some people absolutely, must have their morning coffee or nothing else
happens that day.
Our first suggestion would be to gradually learn to wean yourself off coffee, or
switching over to something like tea (green or black) instead.
Barring that, having a morning cup of coffee/tea as part of your morning ritual
isnt necessarily a bad thing, though we would leave it as the last step before
starting your most important task of the day (well get to that in a second).
SOCIAL FIX
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Social refers to the checking of text messages, email, Facebook, Twitter,

Instagram and any other social networking feeds you are part of.
We highly, highly recommend that you leave this until after your morning
ritual is done, particularly after your most important task of the day is done.
However, as with coffee, we recognize that some people simply cannot live
without their social fix in the morning. A great time to check all this is over
breakfast, or when youre on the toilet. Scrolling through your news feed
doesnt require all that much effort and concentration, so this is your chance
to multitask while doing something else too (and dont multitask for the rest
of the day).
Exception: if your work requires you to critically check email (e.g., you run a web
hosting company), then check it as your most important task of the day.
OTHER OPTIONAL COMPONENTS
There are other optional components that can be added to a morning ritual,
such as exercise/working out, meditation or say syncing your phone and
laptop. We havent included detailed listings of these here as they are not
all that common and we would be here for a very long time if we had to list
everything that everyone does in the morning. Our suggestion is to start with
the essentials listed above, then add optional components in one at a time,
and see if they make you more productive. Youll see some further examples
of these in the example rituals just below.
EXAMPLE MORNING RITUALS

GENERIC MORNING RITUAL
Here is an example morning ritual for someone who say, works at an office and
has a commute. Note that the order of the steps is important, and that the
optional components are simply woven in amongst the rest. An (e) indicates an
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essential component, an (o) indicates an optional component.
1. Water (e).
2. Movement standing stretches, align back/posture against wall (e).
3. Use bathroom (e).
4. Make bed, change clothes (e).
5. Eat Breakfast check Facebook, Twitter and Instagram over breakfast (o).
6. Commute to work.
7. Morning coffee (o).
8. Review goals and outcomes (e).
9. Most important task of the day (e).
NO COMMUTE MORNING RITUAL
Thanhs morning ritual is similar to the generic example given above, except he
doesnt have a commute.
1. Water 16 ounce bottle on the bed-stand, to make sure he doesnt
forget (e).
2. Stretching and 10 pushups (e).
3. Use bathroom wash face (e).
4. Breakfast protein rich and fruits (o).
5. Gym or Reading, depending on day (o).
6. Eat breakfast check social feeds (o).
7. Use bathroom brush teeth, use toilet etc (e).
9. Review goals and outcomes in task manager (e).
10. Meditation (o).
NO BREAKFAST MORNING RITUAL
Aaron doesnt eat breakfast in the morning. Apart from that, everything else is
pretty similar to the essential + optional pieces above.
On a normal day:
1. Use bathroom use toilet (e).
2. Track weight and body-fat first thing to keep consistency (o).
3. Water 500ml (e).
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4. Movement light standing stretches (e).
5. Use bathroom brush teeth, wash face (e).
7. Breathe steam for 60 seconds (o).
8. Make tea boil water or set tea machine (o).
9. Review goals and outcomes in journal (e).
10. Grab tea (o).
This ritual takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.
COMMON QUESTIONS AND ISSUES
WHEN DOES MY MORNING RITUAL START AND END?
The start of our morning ritual is your 500ml of water. The ritual ends when
you begin your most important task for the day.
HOW LONG IS MY MORNING RITUAL SUPPOSED TO BE?
Ideally, morning rituals are supposed to be short and efficient no more than
an hour. If you workout in the mornings, you can think of that as separate
from your morning ritual a break from which you come back from to
continue the rest of your morning ritual.
It usually takes a bit of practice to get your morning ritual down and routine,
but with consistency it becomes second nature.
WHAT ABOUT IF I NEED TO COMMUTE TO WORK AND/OR I EXERCISE IN THE
MORNING?
As mentioned, dont count them as time towards your morning ritual. Simply
slot them in where necessary a suggestion would be after getting changed
into your day clothes, and before you set/review your goals and outcomes.
WHAT HAPPENS IF I MISS A DAY?
Try not to. If you do, dont worry about it and simply go back to your morning
ritual for the next day.
WHAT HAPPENS IF I HAD A LATE NIGHT THE DAY BEFORE?
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It doesnt matter if you wake up at 6am or 2pm do your morning ritual
regardless. You want to keep the habit consistent to really reap the benefits it
provides.
WHAT HAPPENS IF IM TRAVELING?
Still do your morning ritual, in the timezone of your destination. There will be
some lost time if you have a long trip (e.g., Asia to North America) but you
can still make it work, by doing your morning ritual at the start of your trip on
the day of travel, then doing it again on the next morning in your destination
timezone.
HOW DO I MAKE THIS A HABIT?
It takes about 30 days to form and solidify a habit. The more you do it, the
better youll get at it. And once youre used to it, you can start swapping in
and out optional components and see which make you even more productive.
ACTION STEPS FOR MORNING RITUALS

1. Take the essential components from above and write them down as a
checklist.
2. Slot in any optional components that you already have or feel you need.
3. Take this new and combined list, and post it somewhere you will see
it every morning in the bathroom, on your dresser, or in your task
manager on your phone.
4. As of tomorrow, follow the checklist as your new morning ritual.
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DAYTIME RITUAL
The term daytime ritual describes what you do during the day. It is basically
what you do at work/school/during the day, and there is (obviously) a lot of
variation from person to person.
All the other chapters in this book are designed to help you with your daytime
productivity specifically, Beating Procrastination, Eat That Frog, Clear to
Neutral and Putting it Together will all assist you in making your daytime hours
much more productive.
What you will find is that your daytime hours are better governed by a series
of habits rather than a linear, set ritual.
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EVENING RITUAL
While your morning ritual starts your day, your evening ritual is the last piece
of your day, and effectively finishes it. These are the last few things that you
do before you fall asleep, and are designed to set you up for a great night of
sleep.
Unlike morning rituals, all the components within an evening ritual are
interchangeable there is no recommended order of steps (except sleep,
which is the last step). Lets take a closer look at each of them.
EVENING RITUAL COMPONENTS

SOCIAL CLEARING
This is a fancy way of saying check your email, your Facebook, your phone,
your twitter and anything else that people use to communicate with you, and
then turn them off or put them on silent. Consider it the last time youll be
checking all these devices for the day. If you use an alarm to wake up in the
morning, now is the time to set it.
GOALS, OUTCOMES AND REVIEW
It is basically checking your daily outcomes against what you had planned
in the morning, and doing some quick analysis. It provides a closure to the
productive aspects of your day.
You should also plan your outcomes for the next day (tomorrow) and if you
have one, add relevant items to your accomplishment list.
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We have a more in-depth look at this here.
STRAY THOUGHTS
Grab a notebook and write down everything thats leftover on your mind
essentially, clear your thoughts in preparation for sleep. We personally find
that physical pen and paper works better than typing into a computer or
tablet.
EAT SOMETHING LIGHT
Eating something light (like nuts and yoghurt) seems to help with energy levels
in the morning. Youll have to experiment with this one it works differently
with different people.
BATHROOM
A hot (or cold) bath or shower as one of your last activities during the day
helps calm you down and puts you in the right frame of mind for relaxing and
sleeping. The important thing here is a drop in core body temperature, not so
much if the water is hot or cold.
VISUALIZATION EXERCISES
You can either do visualization exercises before going to sleep, or as youre

going to sleep (i.e., after lights out). The options for visualization exercise
are endless: you can do breakdowns of your business or life, your goals, your
outcomes, you can picture your best self, you can picture your self sleeping
and so on. Anywhere from 5-30 minutes is fine, depending on what youre
comfortable with.
LIGHT STRETCHING
Some light stretching before sleep tricks your body into thinking that its
already relaxed and resting.
READ FICTION
Remember when you were a kid and you used to read or have someone
read to you before going to sleep? Its little wonder that children tend to
sleep really well. Nothing disconnects you better than going off to the
fictional world of your choice and leaving all the thoughts, ideas, worries and
responsibilities of the real world behind. 15-30 minutes should be more than
enough.
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Note: this means reading. No TV. No video games. No web browsing. And dont
read anything that overstimulates you either. Doing this reading on your tablet
is fine.
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SLEEP
If youve done everything above, sleep should come pretty naturally at the end
of your evening ritual.
EXAMPLE EVENING RITUAL
Heres an example order for an evening ritual, assembled from the components
above:
1. Shower.
2. Eat something light while doing social clearing.
3. Review goals and outcomes, set for tomorrow.
4. Light stretching.
5. Read fiction for 15 minutes.
6. Write down any last-minute stray thoughts.
7. Sleep lights out, do visualization as falling asleep.
COMMON QUESTIONS AND ISSUES
IM STILL HAVING TROUBLE SETTLING DOWN AT THE END OF THE DAY. ANY TIPS?
Dont stop moving morning to night. The more you do during the day, the
more energy you expend and the more youll have a natural tendency to fall
asleep at the end of the day. If you can fit in some daily or regular exercise,
thats even better.
WHAT ABOUT SLEEP ITSELF?
Give yourself enough time to sleep. For most people, this is about 7 to 9
hours. Any less and youre really damaging your daytime productivity (no
matter what the sleephackers say). More is usually better than less, and realize
that if youre slightly hyperactive, youll need more sleep than other people.
Check out our product on Better Sleep for more information on how to get
more and higher quality sleep.
WHAT ABOUT SLEEPING IN ON WEEKENDS?
Its fine to sleep in on weekends. Mostly because we dont get enough sleep
during the week, and sleep debt is cumulative. Use your weekends to pay it
off. Remember that nobodys sleeping schedule is perfect, its all give-and-
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take.
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ACTION STEPS FOR EVENING RITUALS
1. Take the components above and assemble your own evening ritual. It will
likely somewhat follow what you do naturally already.
2. Take this checklist and put it on your bedstand or somewhere you can
see it before you go to sleep.
3. Allow plenty of time for your evening ritual usually 30-60 minutes
before sleep is about right.
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IN CLOSING
Weve now looked at your morning, daily and evening rituals the 3
sequences that help to define and structure your day for optimal productivity.
We strongly suggest starting with the example frameworks weve provided for
each ritual, and doing your own fine-tuning over time for the best results.
Remember, it takes approximately 30 days for a ritual to really stick and to
see the full benefits from it. That may seem like a long time, but in reality, you
are already doing some form of morning, daily or evening ritual every day,
so the effort required is minimal (while the potential for productivity gains is
immense).
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Chapter 05: Clear to

Neutral
Chapter 05: Clear to Neutral

THE ONE HABIT THAT STOPS YOU FROM
PROCRASTINATING
We often procrastinate because there is this one hidden thing holding us

back. It is this one thing that makes you procrastinate and most people are
not even aware what this is, but if you eliminate it you can say goodbye to
procrastination forever.
FRICTION
A lot of times we procrastinate because we have to jump through a lot of

hurdles before we can do the thing we actually want to do. For example, lets
say you need to prepare dinner. So you need your dishes, cutlery, pots and
pans. But what if they are still in the sink from the time you used them for
lunch? That means before you can actually start cooking, you need to wash
them first.
YUCK.
To put it in other words, before you can do your main activity (cooking), you
have to do all these others things (cleaning) before you can get to your main
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activity. Can you see how that friction, washing the dishes, can prevent you
from preparing dinner? Can you see how you might procrastinate on cooking?
If you make it hard for yourself to get started, thats when you will most likely
procrastinate.
Imagine you finished some work at your desk and you went out for lunch.
Lunch time is over and you need to go back to do some other work at your
desk. Do you really want to go work at your desk when you see its such a
mess?
Now imagine you actually cleaned your desk and now you need to do some
work on your computer. Do you easily get distracted when your desktop looks
something like this?
Hold on, I need to write an important document without getting distracted...
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All these little starting points where you have friction are very common. When
you encounter one after the other, it can be very demotivating to get work
done. You have to do a lot of other things, before you do what you really need
to do. Or you do get work done but you get easily distracted. Now this is a
problem.but there is a solution to this.
CLEAR TO NEUTRAL
Now this is where, as we at Asian Efficiency like to call it, the habit of Clearing
To Neutral (CTN) comes in. The main idea behind CTN is that you set yourself
up for success. What that means is that any time you finish your activity, you
do a little routine where you set it up so that the next time you start there is
no friction. In other words, you set up your environment for next time.
Our friend Eben Pagan uses the analogy of cleaning a grill. In restaurants,
the process of cleaning the grill is very important. It ensures the grill will last
longer, the food will taste better, and you prevent any bacteria from growing.
Before the restaurant closes, the cooks always clean the grill so the next day
when they come in it is ready for use.
This is exactly the idea behind Clearing To Neutral and how you need to set
yourself up. The reason we call it CTN is because whenever you finish an
activity, you need to move everything so everything is in neutral position.
When something is neutral, it is stale and you can do anything you want to it.
Now this is why the habit of clearing to neutral is so important: it prevents
you from procrastinating in the future. By making sure you clean up your
environment and toolkit, you ensure that the next time you need to use them
there will be no friction at all. In other words, you make it easy for your future
self to get started.
So you might think: So, what you are basically saying is that you need to
be clean and tidy. Yes and no. Obviously that helps, but you need to take it
one step further. See CTN as a post-activity habit. After you have done your
main activity, do your post-activity work (clear to neutral). This means you set
everything up so it is ready for the next time.
In the earlier examples, how could you apply the habit of clearing to neutral?
When you finished cooking for lunch, you wash your dishes right away.
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That messy desk? When you finish the paperwork, you clear your desk. That
desktop with all those windows open? Whenever you finish your task, clear to
neutral by closing all the windows so you only see your desktop background.
MORE EXAMPLES
The clear to neutral habit can be applied in many different areas of your life.
While the examples earlier are very common, so are these:
Getting enough sleep: energize yourself so you set yourself up for the
next day.
Close relationship loops: do you have unresolved issues with people,
especially people you see on a regular basis? Close them so there is
absolutely no friction when you two need to work together.
Clear your desk: whenever you finish a task or you call it a day, clear your
desk.
Wash your dishes as soon you finish eating: dont let dishes linger around
for too long. The longer it is in the sink, the dirtier it will get.
Close all programs: as you as you finish your work on your computer,
close all windows so you only see your desktop background.
Post-morning ritual: whenever you finish your morning ritual, set
everything up for the next morning.
Note: this applies on a larger scale too, like in clearing the small tasks on your
to-do list. Sometimes the simple presence of these 2-5 minute tasks is enough
to make you procrastinate on doing bigger and more important things.
The concept of clear to neutral can be applied to any rituals or habits you
have. By mere definition of the word habit, you do something repeatedly.
See if you can add a clear to neutral action in your current habits, so the next
time you start your ritual or do your habit, you do it without any friction. Your
future self will be thankful for the extra one or two minutes you spent clearing
to neutral. I know this sounds too simple. Maybe it is too simple. But those
extra one or two minutes of clearing to neutral can make a HUGE difference
to your productivity. Just imagine how different your life might be when you
barely procrastinate...
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ACTION STEPS
1. Make a list of your current habits.
2. See if you can add a clear to neutral action at the end of each habit.
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Chapter 06: Eat That

Frog
Chapter 06: Eat That Frog

DO YOUR MOST IMPORTANT TASKS IN THE
MORNING
One of my favorite books on productivity is Eat That Frog (review) by self-help

guru Brian Tracy. The main idea behind the book is that if you do your most
important task (MIT) first thing in the morning, the rest of the day is going to
be easy in comparison. In the book, Brian Tracy calls it eating your frog and
he got that from the saying, If the first thing you do each morning is to eat a
live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that that is
probably the worst thing that is going to happen to you all day long!
Your frog is the most important task. Once you get that out of the way, the
other tasks are going to be easy to finish. Plus you set the tone for the rest of
the day that work will get done. Now he mentions it in the context of beating
procrastination. I like that approach a lot, and many, many people have
used this method with success. By doing the task that you will most likely
procrastinate on first, it is relatively simple to do the other tasks because they
arent as bad in comparison to that task you first did.
But I want to take this method to the next level by saying that the first thing
you should be working on, is the task that will get you closer to achieving your
big goal.
Brian Tracy briefly mentions this in the book, but from my experience, the
concept is better geared towards achieving goals than simply trying to beat
procrastination.
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THE HABIT OF MOST IMPORTANT TASKS FIRST
It is a very simple habit, but extremely powerful if done every day. By working
on your biggest opportunity first every single day, it is inevitable that you will
achieve the success you desire. Especially if you can commit your focus and
energy on your most important tasks, you will get success a lot faster than you
might imagine.
This is a habit that a lot of successful people have and a common theme among
people we consider successful. It is easier for most people to get work done in
the morning for several reasons:
You have the most energy in that period of time (especially if you have
had a good night of sleep).
There are few or no distractions.
You are more focused.
By making it the first thing you do every day, you also take away the pressure
of having to complete it later in the day. It can be every stressful when you
realize at the end of the day that you still have to do X, Y and Z. Thus by
completing them in the morning, especially when you have the energy and
focus, you will prevent that stress on yourself.
The problem most people have with frog eating is identifying what they
should be working on. To get that handled, you should get started on goal
setting. If you work in an office environment, ask your manager or boss what
your main focus should be.
We define productivity as the time you spend on working towards your
goals. Thus in order to be productive, you have to actively spend time on
working towards whatever you want to achieve in the future.
You can also look at it this way: you want the highest return on investment
on your focus, energy, and work. By getting the most leverage at the most
productive time of the day, on your most important tasks, you are being the
definition of productive.
I DONT HAVE TIME IN THE MORNING!
I understand this dilemma. You wake up every day at 7 and you show up at
work at 9. Where are you supposed to find time to work on your personal
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projects?
Simple: you wake up earlier.
Plenty of people have done this with success including those of us at
Asian Efficiency. Even waking up just one hour earlier can get you very far.
Remember, compounding results eventually add up to be a lot over time. Like
Einstein said, the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.
When you wake up earlier and work on your most important tasks, you can
achieve your big (and scary) goals faster than you can you imagine.
The key to waking up early is figuring our your sleeping schedule. How many
hours of sleep do you need? Schedule your bedtime around that time as
we have detailed in Better Sleep. Lets say right now you go to bed around
midnight, wake up at 7 and show up at work a 9. Try to wake up at 6 without
compromising the hours of sleep you need, which means you need to be in
bed by 11pm.
TRANSITION TO OFFICE LIFE
The idea of frog eating can of course, also be applied at your job and in the
office. As soon as you walk into work, start working on your most important
tasks first. This isnt just for your personal life. Even if you have eaten the frog
of your personal projects, it is now time to do the same thing for your work.
I used to have a 10-6 office job, and I would wake up every day at 6am to
start working on my personal projects. From my experience I would be too
tired at the end of the day to work on personal projects (plus often I had
social obligations), so I made a commitment to work on those in the morning.
It was one of the best decisions Ive ever made and I hope you will make the
same one.
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My frog eating schedule for personal and office job
I would wake up at 6am, have a quick breakfast and then work on my personal
goals till about 7:30am. Between 9-11am I would work on my biggest
opportunities within my office role.
In the morning I would go to the gym because I wanted to get in shape and
when I got back I would work on some personal projects, like Asian Efficiency
and other projects. By the time I showed up at work, I had already felt like Id
done a great deal of work. The trend would be set forth by making sure I did
the frog eating for my role at the office, so the first two hours I would focus
on my biggest opportunities.
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ACTION STEPS
Here is how you can use this technique right now.
1. Write down a list of tasks you are going to do tomorrow that will get
you closer to your goals (do it for your personal life first and repeat later
for your job). You can ask yourself these questions:
What are my highest value activities?
What can I and only I do that if done well will make a real difference?
What is the most valuable use of my time right now?
2. The answer to the last question is your biggest frog. That will be the first
task you are going to do tomorrow.
3. Set yourself for the next day for completing that task. Plan how you are
going to complete that task tomorrow morning. Get all the necessary
tools ready and in place.
For some that means getting up earlier or getting in the office earlier. Do
it if you think that will increase the likelihood of having no distractions so
you can focus on your most important tasks.
4. At the end of your work day, repeat step #1. Every single (work)day.
It takes less than 5 minutes to do the above steps every day, but it can
dramatically change your life.
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Chapter 07: Beat

Procrastination
Chapter 07: Beating Procrastination

BEATING PROCRASTINATION
One of the more common complaints of the modern day is how do I

stop procrastinating?. It seems that the influx of modern luxuries and
conveniences has turned us into a society of people who have a really hard
time doing work. I would argue that its partially that, but its also partially
that our work today, especially knowledge work, is so far removed from
tangible real-world results and consequences that it takes more willpower to
get ourselves to do it.
Were going to introduce here 2 simple techniques for short-circuiting
procrastination, and one more nuanced technique for reducing the occurrence
of procrastination in your life. The 2 techniques are Solar Flaring and the
Timeboxing, which can be used together quite effectively. Hero Mode is the
longer-term solution which requires you to do a bit of tracking to get set up,
but once you know your Hero Mode hours, procrastination becomes a thing
of the past.
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HERO MODE: PRODUCTIVITY SUPER POWERS
In the real world, people cannot perform at their best 24/7. We are not
machines that can systematically perform at the same rate we are human.
We go through emotions, have moods, and there are many other factors that
affect our productivity. The way to reach peak performance is by listening to
your body and creating a schedule based on your bodys state. When you do
this thats when your productivity super powers come alive and when you
play, as we call it, at Hero Mode.
BODY RHYTHMS 101
Before we delve into how you can get to the level of Hero Mode (we got the
name from our friend Kevin Pearn), you first have to understand a couple
of concepts about your bodys natural rhythms. As you know, everyone has
24 hours each day, but our bodies also go through a 24 hour cycle each day
called a circadian rhythm (your internal clock). This is where the body sleeps,
releases hormones, processes food, etc. Pretty much anything your body does
on a daily basis. If you ever had jet lag and woken up at times when youre
supposed to be asleep at your new location, thats your circadian rhythm
doing its own thing.
Whereas once a day your body goes through a circadian rhythm, your body
also goes through multiple cycles called an ultradian rhythm. Every 90 to
120 minutes or so your body goes through an ultradian rhythm. This is what
causes you to have different periods of alertness and drowsiness throughout
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the day. Each ultradian cycle starts off with alertness but after 90 minutes or
so, this starts to fade away and your body wants to rest and take a break. This
is when you start to get hungry, you yawn, youre most likely to procrastinate,
you find it difficult to concentrate and you want to stretch your body. This is
also around this time when you are most likely to make mistakes.
Why am I telling you all this? The ebbs and flows of energy we experience
throughout the day are directly tied to your ultradian rhythms. We are not
machines that can perform at full capacity 24/7. We can focus for a period of
time, but then we also need to take a break and eat before we can go back to
engage at whatever we want to do. Expert Ernest Rossi explains it very nicely
here why adhering to your natural bodys rhythm is so important:
The basic idea is that every hour and a half or so you need to take a rest break
if you dont you may be well on your way to the Ultradian Stress Syndrome: you
get tired and lose your mental focus, you tend to make mistakes, get irritable
and have accidents. If you continue to ignore your need to take a break you can
experience more and more stress until you actually get sick.
PLAYING AT HERO MODE
The key to high level performance and peak productivity is to align your work
with your ultradian rhythms. That is when you play at Hero Mode. This is
when you are so focused with the work in front of that you forget what time
it is and youre in the zone. We all have had these Hero Mode moments, and
Im confident that those happened during times of the day when you were
naturally alert or focused.
The great thing is, you can reach this state consistently by aligning your most
important tasks with the times of the day when your body is ready for the
heavy lifting.
It is important to know your own periods of when you are most alert and
when youre most dull, because this lets you plan properly. When you align
your most important tasks with the times of the day when you are most alert,
you will get more work done and do it more effectively.
We can go against our own natural rhythms, but this requires a lot of
willpower and releases stress hormones something that should be only used
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at in emergencies or life-or-death situations. Rather than going against the
current, go with the flow. In other words, organize your day based on your
ultradian rhythms.
For example, a lot of people are the most alert in the morning. If you are one
of those people, like yours truly, you should plan your day so that your highest
priority tasks are scheduled in the morning. In the afternoon is typically when
your bodys circadian and ultradian cycles reach their lowest point. This when
youre most likely to be drowsy and low on energy. Like we say in Better Sleep,
we are hardwired to take a nap around that time.
Now that you know the importance of your own rhythms, its time to start
planning your perfect day. The first thing you need to do is to identify your
most productive hours in a day. In other words, what times of the day are you
most creative, focused, or alert.
BUILD YOUR PERFECT SCHEDULE
After you have identified the periods of the day when youre most alert
and focused, its time to build your perfect schedule. If you remember, the
previous chapter talked about a habit called Eating Your Frog, where you
tackle your most important task as the first thing every day. Now lets take
that to the next level.
When you start your day and have prioritized which tasks you want to do that
day (however you like), arrange your schedule so your most important tasks
are scheduled during your Hero Mode hours. On the flip side, also put your
low value tasks at times when youre not that focused or energized.
When you reach the end of your cycle, thats when you need to take a break.
Look for signs around the 90 minute mark when you start to feel like doing
something else or when you just arent as focused anymore. You dont have to
adhere rigidly to 90 or 120 minutes, but look for cues around that time when
you arent as focused. Thats when you know youre reaching the end of your
ultradian cycle and once youre reaching that point, we highly suggest you do
one of the following things:
Clear to Neutral.
Hydrate yourself with a glass of water (or two).
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Have a small meal of around 300 calories (avoid stuffing yourself with a
lot of carbohydrates, they make you feel lazy and bloated).
Disengage from your workplace. Go somewhere else so your brain
changes frequency to a different environment so you disengage from
your work.
Then go back to your workplace and play at Hero Mode again.
The alignment of your highest value tasks during the times of the day when you
are the most alert, energized, or creative, is really a game-changer for a lot of
people. You may already do this naturally to some extent, but Im confident you
can do it even better and step it up a notch. If you are someone who flames out
fast and you maybe just have one or two periods of hero mode moments in a
day, the first thing you want to look at is the following points:
Are you getting enough sleep?
Are you eating (just) enough food and drinking enough water?
Do you exercise? Regular exercise will increase your effectiveness but
also the number of Hero Mode moments you have in a day.
AN EXAMPLE FROM THANHS LIFE
This is a graph where you can see Thanhs ultradian rhythms. This is from Thanhs time tracking
data.
To give you an idea of how to apply Hero Mode, heres an example from
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Thanhs own data. The graph above shows you when Thanhs body is naturally
most alert. As you can see, Thanh is a gent of extremes; hes most alert in
the morning and late at night. Thats when youll see him play at hero mode.
The times in between hes mediocre. Sure, he can do multiplications like 3.5
* 3.5 in his head, but anything between 3pm and 6pm really shouldnt be
focused work. The graph below is annotated for when he is bringing out his
productivity super powers.
The peaks show you when Thanh plays at hero mode and the valleys is when he does low-value
things or have breaks.
Thanh usually wakes up at 7am and then does his morning ritual. After his
morning ritual, thats when hell start doing his most important task of the
day (which he planned the night before). After lunch at around noon, he
will hammer out one more big task (so he has completed three major tasks
already, see the peaks) and then hes taking it easy. He knows that in the
afternoon he will have a hard time focusing for long periods, so that is the
time when he will work on his low energy or low value tasks of the day. When
dinner time hits, hes had his dessert, and a little bit of relaxing, and thats
when he usually feels like doing focused work again. At around 11pm he will
go to bed and then a new cycle begins.
ACTION STEPS FOR IMPLEMENTING HERO MODE

1. Build your perfect schedule based on your bodys natural peak times.
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2. Schedule your highest value activities for when you play at Hero Mode.
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SOLAR FLARING TO OVERCOME
PROCRASTINATION
There are two, out of many, ways you can overcome procrastination. You can
jump right into the task, or you can ease yourself into it. The first method
requires commitment and willpower to do, but there will be times when you
will be lacking them. Thats when easing yourself into work can help you beat
procrastination and thats what we call Solar Flaring at Asian Efficiency.
Solar Flaring is a simple concept for beating procrastination. It is a term coined
by a couple of our friends, Jim and Nick, and the idea is:
Start off with something very small and an easy thing to do,
and use that forward momentum to get more work done.
Why did they call it solar flaring? Well, for one, they like to give names to
concepts that are related to astronomical phenomena. Second, a solar flare
is a sudden burst of energy on the surface of the Sun. They start off really
small but turn into massive explosions. With the same concept in mind, you
can apply this to beating procrastination. You start off with something small,
perhaps you do something for five minutes, and before you know it, you go
from laziness to work mode.
This concept is so simple, but devastatingly effective. You are essentially
tricking yourself into work mode and you can apply this to any type of work
or task that youre procrastinating on.
All you have to do is to say to yourself that youre going to do something for
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only a couple minutes. How hard is that? In reality, even when you are lazy
and you are procrastinating, doing something for only a couple minutes is
pretty easy to do. It is just another creative way to overcome procrastination.
REAL WORLD APPLICATION
It is not complicated to trick yourself into doing a small task. A simple way
to do this is through positive self-talk using the word just. The implication
of the word just says to yourself that you will not do anything more than
what you just told yourself. Saying to yourself, I will just. is all you need to
do to get yourself started. Here are a couple examples how you can use solar
flaring.
EXERCISING
Just put your iPod on and play some of your favorite exercise music.
Just change into your gym clothes.
Just 5 minutes on the cardio machine.
E-MAIL
Just write out the senders email address, subject line, and a couple bullet
points of things you want to write.
Just clear 2 emails only.
Just check up on emails you have to follow up on soon.
CLEANING LIVING ROOM
Just put the cups and dishes in the sink.

Just put the litter in the bin.
Just put the trash near the door on the way out.
WRITING
Just create the Word document and save it into the right folder.
Just write the outline of the document.
Just write the introductory paragraph.
CAVEAT
While solar flaring is a great way to get yourself into the zone for getting work
done, it can also be used in a negative way. For example, just do this (insert
any excess activity) can turn into hours of wasted time. Just playing that
game on the PS3 can turn into hours of gaming. Or just going out for one hour
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for a drink with friends can turn into long hours deep into the night resulting
in a hangover the next day. We have all been guilty of those. So be cautious
how you use solar flaring.
ACTION STEPS FOR USING SOLAR FLARING

The next time you feel like procrastinating, keep the solar flaring technique in
mind. Just do one small thing and before you know it, you are getting a lot of
work done.
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TIMEBOXING
Timeboxing is one of the more popular techniques for beating procrastination.

It is incredibly useful for getting things going, and can be used in conjunction
with Solar Flaring which you just learned about.
Note: The 25-minute variation of timeboxing is popularly known as the
Pomodoro Technique.
The basic premise of timeboxing is to firewall your attention for a small
amount of time and mentally recharge after each interval of work. By
completing small chunks of work, you will build momentum so that you will
feel more productive which in itself leads to getting more work done. This
productivity tip works great for people who have to work at a desk, but with
some adjustment you can also use it in different settings.
Timeboxing at its simplest, is about managing tasks in 25 minute intervals. All
you need is a timer for this technique to work. Here are the steps:
1. Identify what the task at hand is.
2. Set your timer to 25 minutes.
3. Work on the task until the timebox is over.
4. Take a 5 minute break.
5. For every four timeboxes, take a longer break (15-30 minutes).
By completing each timebox, you will feel more productive. 25 minutes is not
too long and not too short to feel like you are working towards completing
a task. By completing a timebox, you feel more productive and happier, and
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build momentum that will help you get even more things done. Its really that
simple. Lets take a look at each step and see how it all ties together.
STEP 1: IDENTIFY WHAT THE TASK AT HAND IS
The first step is identifying which task(s) you want to complete. If you are
using a to-do list or task manager, go through your items and decide which
tasks you want to complete. If you are not using a to-do list, grab a piece
of paper and a pen. Write down all the tasks you want to complete today.
Seriously, write them down.
A good idea is to prioritize your to-do list. Ask yourself, What are my 3 most
important tasks? List them in that order. This is an important tactic to always
tackle your most important tasks first as we discussed in the Eat That Frog
chapter.
STEP 2: SET YOUR TIMER TO 25 MINUTES
The next thing you need is a timer. You can use an egg or physical time or a
digital timer on your computer. It doesnt really matter which one you use.
Here are some links to timer software you can use:
Vitamin-R (Mac)
Focus Booster (Mac/Windows/Linux/web)
STEP 3: WORK ON THE TASK UNTIL THE TIMEBOX IS OVER
Now that you have your list of tasks and a timer, it is time to start working on
your tasks. Start your timer (make sure its set to 25 minutes) and then start
working on your task. As you are working, dont focus on the timer. Use your
attention for the task in front of you.
Here are some important guidelines behind timeboxing:
You can only work at the task at hand. No other tasks are allowed during
your timebox.
When your timebox ends, you stop right away. Even if you think you only
need a few more minutes, stop.
When you didnt finish your work in a timebox, move it to your next
timebox session.
When you finish your tasks before the deadline, dont stop. Review your
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completed work till the timer ends. Always finish the 25 minutes.
STEP 4: TAKE A 5 MINUTE BREAK
Once your timebox has ended, you take a 5 minute break. It is important that
you disengage from work for a little bit to mentally recharge. This is really
important, especially for people with short attention spans. Some things
you can do on your little breaks are stretching, refilling your drink or using
the bathroom. Getting away from your desk is a good idea because it makes
disengaging a lot easier (not to mention the health benefits). Once your 5
minute break is over, either move on to the next task or finish your previous
task.
STEP 5: FOR EVERY FOUR TIMEBOXES TAKE A LONGER BREAK
This step is really important. Make sure that every 4 timeboxes (so after 4 *
(25+5) = 2 hours) you take a longer break. Do something else that is totally
unrelated to your task. A good idea is to get something to eat to fuel yourself.
Some things we like to do are to take a little walk, or to have a meal.
CAVEATS
Timeboxing is not a solution for everyone nor for every task. Its a great
technique for people who work in office settings and sit behind a desk a lot.
People with short attention spans love this technique. However, we wouldnt
advise using this for running errands or for people who do work that require
long sessions of focus (e.g., coding).
It is a great way to beat procrastination at the start of your day. If you begin
your day right, it is much easier to get things done later in the day. Some
people use Timeboxing to get started and once they have that momentum
going, they just free flow the rest of the day. Use this technique to your own
liking, because in the end, all that matters is that you are getting work done.
COMBINE WITH SOLAR FLARING
Combining timeboxing with Solar Flaring is simply a matter of telling yourself

Ill just do one timebox and then starting it. Then your momentum gets
going, and your productivity will skyrocket.
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TIMEBOXING TECHNIQUE ACTION STEPS
Getting started with something is usually the largest hurdle for most people.
First, implementing timeboxing requires that you are organized with your
tasks, or youre at least enough to know what you need to be working on.
We highly recommend you use a to-do list manager. It does not have to be
a software program, pen and paper work fine too (covered in the chapter on
Simple Task Management). The next step is to get yourself a timer and start
working on your tasks.
Once you are comfortable with the 25-minute rhythm of a basic timebox,
you can experiment with longer work-rest intervals, like 50 minutes work-10
minutes rest.
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BEATING PROCRASTINATION ACTION STEPS
This chapter should have provided you with 2 very simple and effective ways
to beat procrastination: Solar Flaring, and Timeboxing. Start with these as
a base, and then start collecting your data for Hero Mode. Once you have
that in place too youll be unstoppable when it come to self-generating the
momentum needed to destroy procrastination and get things done.
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Chapter 09: Going

Paperless
Chapter 09: Going Paperless

THE SIMPLE GUIDE TO GOING PAPERLESS
We have noticed a trend in the number of people that go paperless the

journey of getting rid of as much paper as you can and substituting it with
digital copies. Going paperless is one of the best things you do it will save
you paper, money and a lot of time. The transition might seem daunting but
its actually fairly easy. Ill share a story how I accidentally went paperless and
how I got rid of my favorite magazines and substituted them for digital copies.
I hope that this will inspire you to considering going paperless too.
GOING PAPERLESS WITH YOUR SMARTPHONE AND EVERNOTE
A couple years ago, the lease on my apartment was about to end and I didnt
have any plans to renew it. Instead, I decided to live in Europe and Asia for
a couple of years and then return to LA. As I was cleaning my apartment, I
realized I needed to keep all these important paper documents (tax papers,
bank statements, transcripts, etc) but I had no physical space to store them.
I had to figure out a way to keep these documents, but I didnt want to bring
them with me. Plus I needed to have all my important documents easily
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accessible while I was abroad. What to do?
iPhone and Evernote to the rescue!
Out of necessity I found a cheap and quick solution to my problem: I used my
iPhone to scan all the documents and Evernote as my storage medium. This is
a great solution when you dont have access to any scanner but you still want/
need to keep paper documents in digital format. There are many advantages for
going paperless and having everything stored in digital format:
No papers to store and carry around
No more clutter around the room
Save money
Going green and saving the environment
Access anywhere, anytime
This is especially useful for people who travel a lot and need to be able to
access their documents on-the-go (like yours truly). The great thing about
using Evernote as storage medium is that it has the ability to read text in
scanned documents. This is huge and what made me choose it over using
Dropbox or Google Docs. While I love both Dropbox and Google docs, you
cant search for text within scanned images. Evernote supports OCR scanning
so it can recognize text within images and makes it accessible for search. If
you have a premium Evernote account, it can also search within PDF files for
you.
Disclaimer: I will recommend that using a full fledge desktop scanner, or a
mobile scanner such as the Fujitsu Scansnap, is a better alternative than the
iPhone. Its more accurate and will give you higher resolution copies. Its also
much easier and faster, but the big advantage of your iPhone is that you can
do it anywhere and you dont have to buy extra equipment. This chapter will
show you how can do all this with the iPhone. If youre an Android user, we
recommend CamScanner.
In this chapter I will use Evernote (free account will do, although I have
premium) and an iPhone. For the iPhone, you need to purchase the app
JotNot Scanner Pro because it will act as our scanner. You can buy it for $0.99
in the App store.
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Note: technically you can use the built-in scanner that comes with the
Evernote app on iOS or Android. Its a great feature but if you also want to
scan documents and store them outside Evernote, then having a separate
app is necessary. On the iOS, Ive tried different apps like Docscanner and
Scanner Pro. These are also great apps but they use PDF as primary format,
which make them not searchable within Evernote unless you have the premium
account. Although I think Scanner Pro is the best app (most features and very
customizable), JotNot is easier to use, cheaper, and natively stores files in image
formats which make them searchable in Evernote.
Since Evernote is supported on all major platforms (OS X, Windows, iOS and
Android) you will be able to access your information anywhere, anytime and
with any device. Whats not to like about that?
SETUP IPHONE AND EVERNOTE
Assuming you have created an Evernote account (free account is good

enough), the first thing you need to do is create a new notebook called
Documents. Heres how you do it (my screenshots show the Mac OS X
version, it looks a little different on Windows).
1. Go to File > New Notebook (or press Shift+Command+N).
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Create a new notebook in Evernote
2. Name your notebook Documents.

In this chapter I will be using the following a printed document as illustration.
This is the first page of a book summary I made on The 22 Immutable Laws of
Marketing (which is a great book). I took a picture of it below with my iPhone:
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One page out of a book summary of The 22 Immutable

Laws of Marketing
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WORKFLOW
Now that you have a foundation set up, its time to get into the actual
workflow. Its really simple going paperless with your iPhone and Evernote.
1. First start up Jot Not Scanner.
Start JotNot Scanner Pro on your iPhone
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2. Youll be greeted by this screen:
Welcome screen of JotNot Scanner Pro on

iPhone
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3. Tap on the gear icon, select Evernote and link your Evernote account.
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4. After filling in your Evernote username and password, its time to scan some
documents. There are two ways to go about it; you either take a picture or use
a picture from your camera roll. In this chapter Ill use a picture of my camera
roll; its the one you saw earlier. It really doesnt matter if you take a picture or
use one from your camera roll. What does matter is how you take the picture.
When you take a picture, the best way is by standing in a room with plenty of
(sun)light and hold your camera perpendicular to the paper.
5. In the next screen you can now drag the corners of the image to ensure
that only the paper gets scanned. Most of the time you can skip this but
occasionally you will have to adjust the corners. Then tap on Process in the
top right corner.
Dragging corners on JotNot Scanner Pro

on iPhone
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6. Youre almost done. You get a preview to see how your scan turned out. The
next step is to upload it to Evernote by tapping on the arrow at the bottom.
JotNot Scanner Pro preview screen on iPhone
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7. Now select your Evernote account, pick which pages you want to store
(usually all of them), fill in a title, select the Documents notebook and youre
all set.
Share to Evernote
Using a Desktop Scanner: if youre using a Desktop scanner, you will want
to use the scanning application that comes with the scanner this is usually
provided by the manufacturer (Canon, Epson, HP etc) and varies from scanner
to scanner. Mac users can also use Image Capture which comes bundled with
OS X. This software will usually let you output to a .jpg or .pdf format, both
which are fine for dragging-and-dropping straight into Evernote.
Done! You now have gone paperless with your iPhone and Evernote!
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All this will make searching and accessing your documents so much easier and
faster. Plus you can access them anywhere, anytime with your iPhone. Follow
the same steps for all your documents and you will have now a secure backup
and easily accessible digital filing system.
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GOING PAPERLESS WITH YOUR MAGAZINES
Now that youre set up with your new paperless workflow, its time to take the
next step with your magazines. If you like reading magazines like I do, the next
step is to switch from paper magazines to digital magazines.
When I was a teenager I was hooked on the weekly edition of The Economist.
As the years went by and I started to subscribe to more magazines, my
resentment towards magazines also grew. I loved consuming interesting
content but my room would be cluttered with all these magazines and I hated
it. It would grow into a love/hate relationship on one hand I loved reading
but on the other hand I hated the clutter.
So I searched for a solution. As I shifted towards a paperless lifestyle, I found
the perfect solution for this Zinio.
Zinio is an online service where you can subscribe to all major magazines and
read them on your phone, desktop or tablet. Reading magazines on your tablet
is one of the best things you can do if youre interested in going paperless
with your magazines. You just download their app, login and it will download
all the magazines youre subscribed to.
As I started to use Zinio I discovered other hidden advantages of this services.
Some of the main advantages of Zinio include:
No more paper magazines cluttered in my apartment (yay!)
All major magazines are available (even from other countries)
Discover more magazines you might be interested in that you wouldnt
know about otherwise (with their huge selection there is something for
everyone)
Cheaper prices (you save a lot of money compared to retail prices)
Easy billing management (all in one place)
You can buy backlogs of magazines (great for specialized and niche
magazines)
Available on iOS, Android and desktop
Save the environment (going green)
Having your billing centralized is a big plus for me. When I had paper
subscriptions I would never know when I had to renew or how much it would
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be, but with Zinio I can just login and have an overview of when my renewal
date is and for how much.
READING EXPERIENCE
Heres how Zinio looks on an iPad
The Zinio app makes the reading experience fantastic especially on an

iPad. Its better than reading a regular PDF where you just swipe pages. You
have interactive links so its easy to browse around. You just tap and youll
instantly be on the right page. Also, at the bottom of your screen you can see
thumbnails of pages that make it very easy to browse.
MY SUBSCRIPTIONS
If youre curious what I read, heres a list of my subscriptions:

Macworld
Harvard Business Review
The Economist
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Forbes
Smart Money
Travel + Leisure
Esquire
Mens Fitness
As you can see, I read a lot. Unlike most books, you dont have to read
everything in a magazine. Its easy to skip around and you just read whatever
you feel like. This is perfect for reading on a plane, train and those times in the
bathroom (admit it, I know you do too!)
Note: if youre looking for books, check our list of recommended books.
GETTING ZINIO
If you want to start going digital and paperless with your magazine
subscriptions, I highly recommend Zinio. Ive tried iBooks, Newsstand and
Amazon but their selection is not as good as Zinios. The fact that the prices
are cheaper on Zinio is a plus (although I would have paid full price just for the
convenience) and another reason to make the leap.
Click here to sign up for Zinio.
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ACTION STEPS
This chapter showed you how you can go paperless with just your iPhone and
Evernote. The process of going paperless is not as difficult as it might seem
and you dont compromise anything. On the contrary, you will be much more
effective managing your documents and files. Plus, if you go paperless with
your magazines too youll have less clutter in your life.
Heres what to do next:
1. Sign up for Evernote.
2. Start scanning papers with your smartphone or scanner.
3. Import them into Evernote.
4. Transition from paper magazines to digital magazines by using Zinio.
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Chapter 10:
Organizing Your
Files, Folders and
Documents
Chapter 10: Files, Folders and Documents

ORGANIZING YOUR FILES, FOLDERS AND
DOCUMENTS
One of the simplest and most overlooked aspects of being organized is getting
your computer files organized. Its something thats easy to take for granted,
especially when you forget that most people dont use their computers like us
crazy systems-people do. Lets look at some good practices for keeping your
files and documents neat, in folders and easy searchable and accessible.
The idea of organizing files and documents goes back to the good-old-days of
filing cabinets and paper. Hopefully, the last chapter on Going Paperless has
started putting you in the mindset of making everything digital.
The advantage of the original paper-based cabinets was that you really had
to think about where to put documents so that they could be easily located
when they were needed. With computers, we have somewhat lost this artform and exchanged it for an all-in-one search function instead.
Our personal test for organization is this: you should be able to find the
majority of your documents without using Spotlight or Windows Search. If
you cant, youve got some housecleaning to do.
Note: well be talking about folders and directories on your hard disk in
this chapter. You could easily replicate the directory structures into a filing
application like DevonThink, or wiki/notebook-style applications like Evernote
and VoodooPad.
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Well do our best to cover both OS X and Windows in this chapter. For the
most part, the user directory structure is the same as is where you should
store your files.
SOME SIMPLE RULES
Lets start with some simple rules for managing your files and folders.
1. DONT PUT FILES ON THE DESKTOP
Your desktop is supposed to be clean and display that gorgeous highresolution wallpaper youve got going on. It should contain your trash/recycle
bin, and thats about it.
On very rare exceptions youre allowed to put a text file or two on your
desktop if youre referring to it regularly and dont need to file it just yet.
2. LIMIT FOLDER CREATION
When youre creating folders, think minimal. Most files and documents can fit
somewhere in your hierarchy if youve done a good job of initially mapping it
out.
In general, only create new folders (especially top-level folders in /documents)
if you find yourself repeatedly coming back to save similar files in the same
place, only to find that it doesnt exist yet.
3. GET USED TO THINKING IN HIERARCHIES
Thinking in hierarchies is a learned skill. It takes time to get used to. If you
want to manage your files and documents effectively, youll have to learn it.
To borrow a bit of pop-psychology, there are 3 main things you have to know:
chunking up, chunking down, and chunking sideways.
Start with the assumption that everything fits into a category or hierarchy of
similar things. For example, lets take Apple products.
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Chunking Down, Up and Sideways with Apple Products
At the top, we have a category that encompasses all Apple products.

Now lets chunk down (move down one hierarchy level). Now we have
multiple categories: portable computers, desktop computers, mobile devices,
music devices, software.
Lets chunk down again into mobile devices you have the iPhone and the
iPad. But if we chunk up from the iPhone, we can see that it could fit into
both categories of mobile devices and music devices. This is entirely
possible with most real-world hierarchies things can fit in more than one
place.
Now what if we chunk sideways from the iPhone? We end up with an iPad.
Chunking sideways describes moving amongst the members of an existing
hierarchical level.
Applied to your files and documents, the general rule is that they should
always sit with other files of the same, equivalent hierarchical level. For
example, application installers can sit in the same folder. Dated to-do lists can
sit in the same folder. Personal letters to friends can sit in the same folder.
PDF scans of receipts by month can sit in the same folder.
4. /ARCHIVE IS YOUR FRIEND
One thing weve adopted at Asian Efficiency is the idea of having a /archive
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folder within a lot of our folders.
We have hundreds of folders related to posts for our site. Each content piece
gets its own folder for holding images, research, text and media related to
that content piece. When you have a couple of hundred or so of these, it gets
hard to find what youre currently working on. So our solution has been that
whenever a post or content piece goes live, we move the related folder into
/archive. This way, all the pieces were currently working on can be easily
found, and any older pieces that we want to refer to down the line can also be
found be going into /archive.
DROPBOX
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of directory organization, I want to give a

mention to Dropbox.
It is an absolutely amazing tool for backing up your documents and using
them between different devices and computers. Its also great for sharing
documents with others.
If you use Dropbox and have a paid account with storage (highly
recommended), whatever directory structures we mention below can sit
directly in your /Dropbox folder rather than your /Documents folder. Well
clarify below as necessary.
DOCUMENTS
Lets take a look at your personal documents.

Regardless of if you use Windows or Mac, you will likely use the /username/
Documents folder on your computer to hold your personal documents.
If you happen to do both work and personal tasks on your computer (like a lot
of people do today), then you should really create two folders to separate out
your personal and business items.
If youre using Dropbox, it looks like this:
/Dropbox/Business
/Dropbox/Documents
If youre not using Dropbox, you can similarly do:
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/Documents/Business
/Documents/Personal
You could also do:
/Business
/Documents
With both folders sitting directly under /username as long as you pick one
method and stick to it, it will work.
If youre interested, at Asian Efficiency our team shares a Dropbox folder for
most of our files, so we each have:
/Dropbox/Asian Efficiency
/Dropbox/Documents
Now how you actually divide up your personal documents is largely a matter
of how you mentally divide up your life. A very basic split would be: health,
finances, relationships. These would then have subfolders, for example:
/Documents/health/dentist
/Documents/health/doctor
/Documents/finances/insurance
/Documents/finances/Chase
You could also do a more granular split, like:
/Documents/finances
/Documents/social
/Documents/play
/Documents/mind
/Documents/health
The general rule to follow is to pick a folder structure that matches how you
mentally organize things. If youve already implemented the chapter on Simple
Task Management, its not a bad idea to mimic the structure that you use for
that just dont go about creating a /today or /inbox folder. Remember that
files and documents are supposed to be for permanent storage with files not
moving around too often, as opposed to fleeting items like tasks.
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As an example, heres the split of documents that Aaron uses:
/bills All regular bills, dated with company names and year/month.
/book summaries Book summaries, subfolders for type (business,
health etc)
/fashion Notes, documents and media related to fashion and style.
/finances Subfolders for banks, countries, types (insurance vs banking
vs investments), financial planning stuff.
/health Subfolders for dentist, doctor, gym, insurance, physical therapy,
test results.
/housing By city.
/identity documents Scans of commonly used identity documents, like
passports, drivers licenses etc.
/life management Documents related to goals, stories, motivation.
/personal Various letters and documents (sorted into subfolders), notes
on hobbies (e.g., board game tactics), miscellany.
/processes and scripts Various scripts or directions for things that I
commonly do. Think of them as recipes for things that are not food.
/receipts All receipts scanned and named with date and vendor.
/recipes Kitchen recipes in text files.
/roadmaps Roadmaps for goals, system maps for areas of life.
/profile photos Some profile photos for uploading to various social
media sites etc.
/TED TED notes.
/travel By year and destination. Includes itineraries, confirmation
printouts etc.
BUSINESS DOCUMENTS
Similar to your personal documents, your business documents and how

they are organized will largely depend on your occupation, company and job
position.
If you are in a large corporate-sized outfit, you will likely be working from a
shared drive, in which case the directory structure will usually be pretty good,
and will usually be pre-set, so you dont have to worry about it too much.
If you decide to store some documents locally or if youre not working from a
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shared drive, it largely comes down to what you do.
For example, say youre a business analyst doing project work. Your directory
structure likely looks something like this:
/project name 1
/project name 2
/project name 3
/todo lists
/archive
Each project would then have subfolders related to logical units of
organization, like the type of working being done, stakeholders or who youre
reporting to.
/todo lists is for holding your text-based todo lists, and /archive is where you
would move your completed projects when theyre done.
In contrast, say youre an online marketer working from your laptop on the
beaches of Bali. You may have something more like this set up:
/finances
/legal
/marketing
/products
/projects
/planning
/systems
/technology
This is actually pretty similar to what we have set up at Asian Efficiency.
How you organize your business-related directories basically comes down to
how you decide to divide up your business or job into logical units. An easy
way to do this is to grab a sheet of paper or a whiteboard, and map out your
company/enterprise in details, based on what it is you do day-to-day. Then
group related activities into logical groupings think of it as an organization
chart for your job/company, minus the positions.
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FOLDER OVERVIEW
The last part of directory organization that we want to cover is what files
should go where on your computer.
DESKTOP
As mentioned before, your desktop is a place to display cool wallpaper. It

is NOT a place to store random files, documents and anything you cant be
bothered filing away somewhere.
If youre on a Mac, your screen captures appear here as do your disk drives.
If youre on Windows, you may wish to keep a small (emphasis on small) of
shortcuts to programs you use regularly, as Windows is lacking a Dock.
DOCK / START MENU
For Mac, put apps that you use on a daily basis in your Dock. This is not
necessarily the ones that appear by default in OS X.
You can also space out your Dock using any number of Dock-adjusting
applications. We personally use Cocktail (it also does some system
maintenance stuff).
For Windows, feel free to bunch your different applications into folders by
category (say productivity, office, system etc), or you could just leave it
the click-and-type search functionality within the Windows 7 start menu is
actually quite solid.
HARD DRIVE VS USER FOLDER
Its important to make a distinction between your hard drive, which is systemwide and applicable to all users, and your user folder.
In the case of Mac, your drive by default is /Macintosh HD and for Windows it
will be C:\. You should only keep files here if you have a single-user computer,
or if you want all users on your computer to have access to them.
In general, keep your documents and files in a subdirectory within your user
directory (/Users/username on Mac and C:\Users\username on Windows)
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USER FOLDER
Both Windows and OS X have a user folder system so everything below

applies to both (except maybe Applications). We dont personally use
Windows all that much, so there may be some variation there.
The user folder looks something like /Users/aaron, and contains multiple other
folders:
Applications: this should be empty unless you have user-specific apps.
The places link in your Finder window usually links to /Macintosh HD/
Applications.
Desktop: see above.
Documents: by default, this is where your documents will go. Various
applications (particularly those by Microsoft and Adobe) also like to
create various folders here.
Downloads: Downloads is usually where various browsers save files for
you. Think of this as your inbox for incoming files files should start
here, but they should not stay here. You may want to create a small
folder structure here of to differentiate various types of files, e.g., /apps
for application packages/installers and /system for storing your Windows
drivers.
Dropbox: if youre using Dropbox, treat this folder the same as your
documents folder. The thing to remember is that some of your Dropbox
folders will be shared with other people if you set them up that way,
and having a lot of them can clutter up your document tree. We suggest
creating a Documents folder within your /Dropbox folder for your
personal documents and starting your personal document hierarchy
there.
Movies: iMovie may create some files here.
Music: iTunes and Garageband may create some files here. This is likely
where you also store your music files.
Pictures: iPhoto will store you library here by default.
Public: Use this folder to share files with other users on your computer.
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BUT WHERE DOES THIS GO?
Occasionally you have a file that can fit in multiple folders or is about 2
different topics. For example, a scan of a receipt from your gym could really fit
in /health/gym or /receipts. The question you want to ask yourself is this:
Where would I naturally look if I had to find this again?

The answer to that is then where you file that particular document. Remember
this system is for you, not for general public use. It is designed to make your
files, folders and documents easy to find when you need them there are no
extra points for technical perfection here!
BROWSING VS SEARCHING
There is a big difference between browsing and searching.

If you say, work in a library and have to catalog hundreds of thousands
of items, then yes, you need a tagging or keyword system that allows for
searching. For the purposes of your personal documents however, this should
really not be necessary.
If you feel like you absolutely need a tagging or keyword system you can
definitely design one but then you have to consistently maintain it, make
sure that you dont create duplicate tags or keywords and so on. And were
aiming for simplicity here, so the less maintenance the system requires, the
better.
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ACTION STEPS
We hope youve picked up some ideas from this chapter that will help you
better organize your documents and files. As long as you follow the rules in
the beginning and set up an effective hierarchy, file and directory organization
is a breeze.
Here are your action steps:
1. Sign up for a Dropbox account if you dont already have one.
2. Decide on how you will separate your business and personal documents,
a /Documents/Business and /Documents/Personal or as /Business /
Documents.
3. Write down a basic split of your personal documents. You can use your
existing folder structures or examples of documents you will be storing
to help with this. You should have a list of high-level folders at the
completion of this step.
4. Create the folders.
5. Move your existing files into those folders. Create new folders if
necessary and if you come across files that dont fit properly into the split
defined in Step 3.
6. Repeat Steps 3-5 with your business documents.
7. Keep the simple rules outlined at the beginning of the chapter and
the principles provided in the Folder Overview section in mind as you
continue to use your newly organized folder and directory structure.
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Chapter 11: Time

Tracking
Chapter 11: Time Tracking

BASICS OF TIME TRACKING
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it. Lord Kelvin
There is a precept that what you can measure, you can improve. And with the
abundance of tracking technology available to us today, it can be easy to be
overwhelmed by the number of things you have to keep track of.
Weve talked about managing your schedule, your email, your tasks and your
days, and the last thing we want is for you to have to track and manage yet
another aspect of your busy life.
With that in mind, there is only one metric that truly matters when it comes to
productivity: your time.
TIME IS THE ONLY METRIC THAT MATTERS
Time is the one resource that everyone has the same amount of. And so, how
you decide to and how you actually spend it is of vital importance and should
be of significant interest to you. You get 24 drops of time each day. Do you
want to waste, spend, drink or invest them?
WHY TRACK TIME?
It should be said upfront that the only real reason why you should track your
time, is that if you can measure it, you can improve on it. Is it absolutely
necessary to track your time to become super-productive? No. Will doing
it make you significantly more productive? Absolutely. Weve placed this
chapter near the end of the book because it is an advanced topic and worth
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implementing if and when you have covered all prior chapters.
TRACKING TOOLS
There are a multitude of time tracking applications available on the market.

The underlying system by which you track time is exactly the same regardless
of which application you decide to use. Understanding the structure of how
you go about tracking time is far more important than any one application.
Whatever solution you use, we recommend tracking on your phone, as you
likely have it with you all the time, therefore can easily switch between
different activities.
We recommend using:
ATimeLogger (iOS): our personal favorite for tracking time on an iPhone.
Toggl (cross-platform): the app that started us on this strange path of
time tracking, available on Android, iPhone, desktop and web flavors.
The guide below will assume that you are able to download and install the
application yourself. First we are going to cover how to set up the underlying
structure of your time tracking (what categories you will track), then show you
how to set up each of the recommended application alternatives, show you
how to actually use the system and lastly, how to review/analyze the data you
collect.
STRUCTURING YOUR TIME TRACKING
The first thing you want to do is work out what it is you want to track and
measure.
This is highly personal. It will largely depend on how you structure your
personal projects, your work, your task manager and your life in general.
Below is a standard and simplified template that you can take and expand on.
As an example:
Reading & Learning.
Eating.
Work.
Downtime.
Time Wasters.
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Life Management.
Neutral.
Personal Projects.
Sleep.
Social.
Travel.
Lets look at each of these in detail.
READING & LEARNING
This is any time spent reading, taking notes, watching educational videos or in
general, absorbing information of any sort.
EATING
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, supper, afternoon tea, snacks, coffee breaks,
etc.
If you are a smoker I would put cigarette breaks in here or under Time
Wasters if you want the extra motivation to quit.
WORK
This is time spent in the office or working on office projects. Some people
have very distinct individual items based on mental contexts for this (e.g.,
writer, blogger, coder), but if you work a 9-5 you can lump it all together under
work.
DOWNTIME
Downtime describes any time that you spend doing recovery activities. This
can include things like watching TV, or getting your daily dose of Facebook/
Twitter. You may find that you dont need a downtime category at all,
especially if what you do here is covered by other categories.
TIME WASTERS
Any time that is not productive (remember, we define productivity as time

spent directed towards your goals). As a personal example, for me, this is
largely activities that I want to do less of, and doing anything that I shouldnt
have to do (unexpected things that crop up and have to be taken care of).
LIFE MANAGEMENT
You should only allow four items in here: your morning ritual, your evening
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ritual, your daily actions and any time spent organizing your schedule/task
manager or doing reviews.
NEUTRAL
Things you have to do every day that are not inherently productive but more
along the lines of essential. For example, using the bathroom, taking a shower
or doing your laundry (though we could argue that one under Excess too).
PERSONAL PROJECTS
Any time spent towards personal projects. This can range from planning a
vacation to handling financial affairs.
SLEEP
Self explanatory: Sleep and naps. When you nap, start the timer. Stop it when
you wake up. Same goes for sleep. Once you have enough data, you can
optimize your sleep.
SOCIAL
Any time purposely set aside for spending with family or friends falls into
this category. Not unplanned time (which should fall under Excess), but
purposefully-assigned blocks of time for socializing with other human beings.
Examples: dinner with friends, dates, time with children.
A NOTE ON SUB-CATEGORIES
It should be noted that the above categories are a template and starting point
for your own categories. Depending on your time tracking application, you
can set a deeper level of granularity with additional categories or even subcategories.
For example, Social time can be further divided into Friends, Family and
Dates/Partner.
Or Downtime can be divided into specific activities, like TV, Facebook/Social,
Video Games, Just Relaxing etc.
There are no right or wrong categories to choose from make them specific
to your situation and what you do. Feel free to use the above as starting
guidelines and then adapt to make them relevant for you.
WHAT ABOUT THAT TIME I
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Sometimes an activity will have more than one productive purpose. For
example, having dinner with friends could fall under Eating or Social in
the setup above. As to which you assign the activity is largely a matter of
preference and what you want to track. Personally, I would want to optimize
the amount of time I spend eating, so if Im eating alone it falls under eating.
If Im out with friends and catching up and socializing, it falls under social.
There are also other activities that will encompass a range of other activities. For
example, when you go on vacation or when youre spending time with friends.
The two options here are to either:
1. Change item every time an activity switches, which can be annoying.
2. Create a large activity item that encompasses the smaller activities. On a
night out with friends we may: 1) get drinks, 2) go to a lounge, 3) spend
time in a taxi, 4) spend time at a fine drinking establishment, 5) eat food
on the way home. I would classify this as just going out and file it under
Social. As youll see when we discuss how to use the collected metrics to
optimize your time, the actual individual line items dont matter as much.
On occasion you will come across Time Wasters or necessary evils in life.
Visiting a doctor, helping a family member out in an emergency, needing to
deal with your taxes etc How you classify these is really dependent on what
you want to do with these activities.
Our opinion is this: if it is an activity that has arisen out of someone else
doing something (i.e., you didnt create the circumstances intentionally), file
it under Time Wasters. Why? Because then you become motivated to find a
permanent solution to the problem, and to make sure it never occurs again.
Now if it is something that you have to do (e.g., file taxes) that should be
considered that a Personal Project and logged accordingly.
Now we will show you the how to part of time tracking by using
aTimeLogger 2, Toggl and Microsoft Excel.
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SETTING UP TIME TRACKING: ATIMELOGGER 2 (IPHONE)
ATimeLogger 2 is a simple and effective time tracker for iOS.
When you open aTimeLogger 2 for the first time, you are greeted with this
screen.
We suggest that you turn groups on. This will let you use subcategories for
time tracking e.g., splitting out Facebook, friends, family etc for Social time.
Go to Settings (the last button that looks like 3 dots) > Settings > Advanced
and turn Groups to On.
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Youll also want to turn the activity status change warning off. Under the same
settings screen, select Warnings and turn the Activity status change option
off:
Youll also want to set the minimum activity duration to None. From the
same settings screen, go to Activities and select the Min. activity duration
option and set it to none.
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If you tap on the third icon over (it looks like a list), you get this screen:
Even though you may use some of these categories, the first thing we
recommend is deleting all the existing categories. This is done by tapping on
the category, tapping on edit, then hitting delete.
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You will now have a blank Activity Type screen.
Start inputting your categories. You do this by selecting the plus button:
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Then select group and create all your top-level categories first.
Groups are differentiated by a little numeric tag in the top-right corner of the
group:
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You then want to go into the group by tapping on it, and selected the Items
+ button and creating subcategories (Activity Types):
Note that in aTimeLogger 2 you cannot log a group, you can only log an
Activity Type so if you need a generic category, say Sleep you may
want to make than an Activity Type rather than a group, or in the case of say
Eating, you may want to create an Activity Type within the Eating group
called General Eating.
You can actually have groups within groups but we dont recommend it.
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Continue to set up all your categories and subcategories until you are done.
You then want to rearrange the order of categories and subcategories for easy
tap access on the main logging screen.
For Groups, you do this is the Activity Type screen, by tapping the top-left
button and rearranging:
For Activity Type (subcategories), you must go into each group and do the
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same there under the items list.
And thats all there is to setting up aTimeLogger 2!
SETTING UP TIME TRACKING: TOGGL (ANDROID, MOBILE WEB)
Toggl is an application that was introduced to us by some friends of ours, who

used it for measuring billable hours and project work. Weve since repurposed
it for a more personal use.
The setup and application is incredibly simple. You open an account:
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Sign up for an account
You then set up your projects (categories) under Projects:
Found under Projects. Set up projects as you see fit.
And thats it. Youll set up subcategories as individual activities in each

project via the mobile application.
Toggl has applications for iOS and the Android platform (you dont need to use
their web application).
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SETTING UP TIME TRACKING THE MANUAL WAY: MICROSOFT EXCEL
OK, so you dont want to use an application... 1) Reconsider, 2) Heres an
alternative.
Start an Excel spreadsheet with five columns:
1. Item.
2. Category.
3. Start time.
4. End time.
5. Total time.
And throughout the day, log your items, categories, start and end times. The
downside of this approach is that you have to calculate the time you spend on
each item manually later on (or use some Excel formula wizardry included
below), but it is an application-free alternative.
In fact, we have some templates for you to download. They are included in the
package that contained this document, in the /time-tracking folder.
There are two versions an Excel version for when youre at your computer,
and an PDF version if you want to print it out and write things down manually.
REAL WORLD TIME TRACKING (OR, HOW TO ACTUALLY TRACK

TIME)
Time Tracking is mostly used in business environments or by freelance
workers to bill by the minute (or hour). You start the clock when you begin
working, and you stop it when youre done. To track your personal time, things
work a little differently.
When you track your personal time, you want to be running a timer all the
time. Yes, thats right. ALL THE TIME. Every minute, of every day, for however
long you decide to continue measuring your time you will have a timer
running.
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Now heres how it works.
1. You start your day with an activity. If youve implemented the ideas in
this book, then it will be your Morning Ritual.
2. Say you then eat breakfast you would then switch to that.
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3. When you then start doing your most important task for the day (likely
work), switch to that.
4. And this continues on for the rest of the day. Every activity change
warrants a switch.
Most time tracking applications will allow for multiple activities to be tracked
at the same time. This may be useful in a business context, but for your
personal time tracking, you only want to track one thing at a time. Very simply,
you should NOT be multitasking, and tracking one activity at a time helps
enforce this. And also means that you know exactly where every minute of
each hour in your day is going.
A NOTE ABOUT TOGGL
Toggl doesnt use sub-categories the way the other applications do it uses
item names within projects. Think of the projects as categories, and item
names as sub-categories. So if you have an activity that happens multiple
times a day (e.g., using the bathroom), start the time, stop it when that activity
stops, and if you do it again that same day, come back to it and continue the
same timer.
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The subcategory goes in the What are you working on section of each item
in Toggl.
The category is selected in the Project section of each item in Toggl.
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EXTRACTING YOUR DATA: ATIMELOGGER 2
Extracting your data from aTimeLogger is simple.
You go to Settings, then Reports.
You select a date range (usually by week, month or 3 months), then tap on
Create Report.
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You can then use the Export button to export this as a CSV or HTML file and
email it to yourself or store it to iCloud documents.
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EXTRACTING YOUR DATA: TOGGL
Extracting your data from Toggl is best done through their web interface.
Log in, then navigate to Reports > Summary. Select a date range and youll be
presented with something that looks a bit like this:
You can then use the Export button to extract this data in CSV format.
REVIEWING YOUR DATA REGULARLY
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We recommend that you review your time data on a weekly basis. Daily is too
much, and weekly is sufficient to make adjustments to your day-to-day.
Its usually easier to view as summary of your data within your tracking
application (aTimeLogger 2 or Toggl), but if youre handy with Excel you can
use the exported CSV files too.
Either way, take a look at the raw minutes and hours that you have spent in
each category and ask yourself: should the time I spend in this category go up
or down for next week?
Its really that simple.
This is your life and its ending one minute at

a time. Tyler Durden, Fight Club
ANALYZING AND USING YOUR DATA TO MAKE CHANGES
Going one level deeper from just reviewing your data, is analyzing it and using
it to make your life more productive.
Time tracking data by itself is not that complicated. It basically tells you
over this period of time, I spent so-and-so hours and minutes doing X, and
so-and-so hours and minutes doing Y. The logical follow-up to this should
be hmmm, Im spending too little time on X and too much time on Y, or
something similar.
While everyones data will be different, once you have your own time tracking
data you should consider:
1. Doing an analysis of averages, seeing roughly how many hours you spend
working each week.
2. Ask what activities you actually spend more time on than working each
week (>40 hours).
3. Calling yourself out on BS. Do you spend 5+ hours a week watching TV?
Playing video games? Partying? Know what is draining your time, factor
in the recovery time and make adjustments.
4. See how much you actually stick to your schedule (if you have one).
5. Rework your schedule. Just like your finances, know where youre
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spending too much, too little, and what youre willing to spend time on
(or not).
6. Create time. Yes, it sounds ridiculous. But knowing exactly how much
time you spend on different things each week lets you know where to
subtract time spent, and how to allocate it productively instead.
7. Working out where your most productive hours are (see Hero Mode).
A lot of interesting things happen when you start tracking your time. Youll
start to realize how much time is wasted on non-meaningful activities like
refreshing your Facebook feed or replying to chain emails. Youll start to
notice how much time you actually spend standing in queues and lines, or
waiting for people to show up to appointments. Overall, it will make you more
aware of your time, how much of it actually gets lost to what seem like notime-needed activities and how much of it you productively use. And this in
turn, makes your more productive.
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ACTION STEPS
1. Decide that youre going to start tracking your time, for say 3 consecutive
months.
2. Decide on what categories and sub-categories you will pick, and know
what sort of activities fall into each.
3. Set up your chosen application with all the categories.
4. Start tracking your time.
5. Review your time on a weekly basis and make adjustments to spend less
or more time in each category as a result.
6. After 3 months, analyze your aggregate data and ask the hard questions.
This is the time to make significant adjustments to your schedule or
lifestyle to make yourself more productive.
7. Rinse and repeat.
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Chapter 12:
Putting It Together
(Case Study)
Chapter 12: Putting it Together (Case Study)

PUTTING IT TOGETHER
You have learned about a lot of different productivity concepts, techniques

and ideas over the course of this book. Now its time to show you have to fit
them all together, and how to make them work for you.
We originally wrote the below case study as part of some consulting work
we did for small business owners people with way too many things to do,
and too little time to do it in. Time-saving concepts often sound great on
paper, but we found that making them survive contact with the real world is
something different. The simple fact is that most people are too busy doing
other things to have time to work on their productivity. Weve adapted the
case study to make it applicable to a broader audience, and it should show
you how to put together everything you have learned in this book. It answers
the ever-important question of:
How do I increase my productivity and efficiency without

creating major disruptions in the other parts of my life?
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PRINCIPLES OF PRODUCTIVITY
The general principles of productivity are the same, whether applied to an

individual or a company. Lets look at how some of what youve learned fits
together with everything else.
TOUCH IT ONCE
The touch it onceconcept is the notion that each piece of paper, each activity,
email or task should only have to be handled once. Realistically, twice if you
have to assign it to someone or if you need to file it for actioning later. But the
concept still holds. The simplest application is this: avoid filing things for later
into an overflowing physical in-tray. Deal with them as they arise, and either:
1. Do it.
2. File it away for actioning at a specific time.
3. Delegate them to someone on the team.
NO APPOINTMENTS (NO MEETINGS, ONLY WORKSHOPS)
Appointments are the bane of your existence. Whenever possible, try not to
set appointments it is much more effective to be working on what you feel
like working on (or what is the most important) than to be jammed up in set
appointment times and meetings. Of course, in the real world, there will be
set times when you have to be at a certain place or on a certain call and
theres not very much you can do about that. What you can do, is try to avoid
committing to regularly-scheduled appointments (like meeting) and treating
appointments as extraordinary events in your calendar.
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In a business setting, dont hold meetings. Meetings are the biggest time
wasters in the business world. The allure of a meeting is that it feels like
youre getting work done when really, its just a big session of brouhaha.
You discuss ideas, draw pretty flowcharts and walk away with everyone
informed and some meeting minutes that no one ever looks at again.
Instead, hold workshops. Workshops are essentially super-powered meetings.
They start on time. They have a specific purpose in mind (create a solution
for claiming unpaid invoices), and they have a time limit. Its fine if the
solution isnt completed by the end time. You can always schedule another
workshop.
If you absolutely must have regularly-scheduled traditional-style meetings,
borrow a page from military field command hold them standing up. Youll
waste a lot less time.
NO MULTITASKING
This should be obvious, but people ignore this principle all the time.
Multitasking is doing two or more things at once, or within close chronological
proximity (i.e., within a few minutes of each other). A really common example
is typing a document, chatting someone over Skype, and then answering
the phone when it rings. Or compiling a spreadsheet, then stopping when
someone appears at your door.
Killing multitasking completely will yield unheard-of productivity increases
everywhere. At a personal level, youll get all the different parts of your life
squared away effortlessly and all of a sudden have all this unexplained free
time.
In a business, the productivity gains are similar. Even if you have walk-in
clients, its worth asking people to wait (for a reasonable amount of time). It
makes your time seem more valuable (because it is), and it allows you to take
what youre currently working on, tidy it up and clear to neutral, so that you
can easily restart it at a later time, and then talk to the client.
EAT THAT FROG
We talked about this in the Eat That Frog chapter. A quick reminder: do your
most important task first, especially if its the one you really dont want to
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do. This could be running an errand or working out. At work, this could be
accounting, reviewing legal papers, or firing that one employee whos causing
trouble. Do it first, and the rest of your day/week/month will be much better.
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UPTIME, DOWNTIME, FULL ENGAGEMENT
When youre at work, youre in uptime. You are fully engaged in what you
are doing. With the exception of real-life emergencies, you do not break this
state. You keep at it, and you keep on working.
When youre off work, youre in downtime (normally). Do your best not to
think about work, or to take work calls. Really try to engage in your time off
its recharging your concentration and motivation and self-control levels,
which youll need at optimum for when youre back in the office.
NO NEWS MEDIA AT WORK
This is a pet peeve of mine. I hate absolutely hate when people forward
non-work-related emails to my work address. Like pictures of the royal
wedding. Like pictures of cute kittens. Like pictures of (insert todays internet
meme here). Your work time is your work time its not time to be reading the
paper, Cosmo/GQ or looking at YouTube videos. Thats all for downtime (and
even then, we would suggestminimizingthe presence of news media in your
personal life too).
You should be able to work out the exceptions like if youre in publishing,
you have to read certain periodicals and blogs. Business people should also
read their industrys trade periodical.
HEALTH AND FITNESS
If theres one thing that will increase the productivity levels more than you
thought possible, its your health and fitness (if you run a business, this applies
to everyone on your team too).
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Simply put:
Happy + Healthy = Productive
If no one around you is into health and fitness, you must lead by example. This
doesnt have to be complicated some exercise or physical activity suited to
your age and physical condition, a proper diet and some rituals to put it all
together.
For business, think of other high-performance organizations, like sports teams
or the military. They spend most of their time training and practicing for a
game or operation. In the business world, you have to do the same the game
or mission is your work, that is when you perform. And one of the largest
factors for success is your health and fitness.
Also, remember to get at least 6 hours of sleep a day. Preferably 8. If youre
having trouble with this, we have a foundation-level product called Better
Sleep that can help you out.
RITUALS
Weve talked extensively about rituals already.

Your morning ritual, your evening ritual and what you do during the day all
come together to either keep you in peak productivity or to offset you from it.
One additional ritual to pay attention to is the habit of Clearing to Neutral,
especially when you are leaving work. Essentially, you want to review what
you completed during the day, plan what youre going to do the next day, and
lay out all the materials and resources that you will need for a running start
the next morning.
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EMAIL MANAGEMENT
The chapter on Simple Email Management contains everything you need to

know about managing email in your personal and professional life.
However, we recognize that email solutions are often not one-size-fits-all, so
here are some additional ideas to help for when you get overwhelming amounts
of email (e.g., you use email to manage a business team, or you just get a lot of
email in general):
Separate personal and business email accounts. This should be obvious.
Check email twice a day once at noon, and once before you finish up
work for the day. If you dont think this is enough, put in 2 more checks
at even intervals (for example, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, 4pm).
Dont leave Outlook/Apple Mail open during the day. Close it when
youre not using it. Turn off any new mail notifications or reminders.
Any incoming email should either:
Be replied to or actioned if it will take less than 2 minutes.
Filed if it doesnt require actioning or follow up.
Left in the inbox for later, if it involves someone having to get back
to you on something, or if its something that will take more than 2
minutes to action.
Youll notice that the last point is a slight deviation from what we talked
about in the email management chapter. If you can implement Inbox Zero and
make it work for, you, that is great. But we also recognize that a lot of people
190

struggle with the idea of an empty inbox (theyre used to using their inbox
as a holding folder), so this slight variation accommodates for that while still
helping you stay on top of email.
INSTANT MESSAGING
If you use IM (Skype, iMessage, AIM) for work, create a separate account
where the contact list is entirely work related. Or, use a dedicated business
solution like HipChat. You can leave the application running, but set it to NOT
notify you when you have an incoming message. This is usually the Do Not
Disturb or Busy status.
Treat IM like email deal with it in batches, at specific times.
THE PHONE
Put your cell phone/mobile on silent, but within visual range.

If you work in an office, never take phone calls immediately train a
receptionist to take messages, and set aside time to return calls in batches.
DOOR POLICY AND INTERRUPTIONS
Regardless of if you work in an office or from home, enforce a no open door

policy. People (or team members or family members) who want to see you
should make an appointment. There is nothing worse than trying to solve
the crisis-of-the-day than trying to solve the crisis-of-the-day while being
constantly interrupted by someone wandering in to ask questions that they
could look up on Google.
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The only time anyone should interrupt you is in an emergency if the building
is on fire, and even then, only if you need to evacuate.
GETTING WORK DONE
In concert with a closed door policy, create your own interruption-free time
by using timeblocks/timeboxes. This is essentially an appointment you make
with yourself, where you work on one specific task or project.
This is what a timebox looks like
The Pomodoro Technique is perfect to use in concert with timeboxes. Set it

for a 50 minute work period with a 10 minute break, where you physically get
out of your computer and move around. Whether its wandering over to the
kitchen to get some water, or popping downstairs for some fresh air, you must
leave your desk during the break.
TASK MANAGEMENT
The chapter on Simple Task Management should have provided you with an
outline of how to manage your tasks simply and effectively. As a refresher:
What you do is create a simple task list on paper or in a Word document,
which then carries forward day-to-day.
From this list, pick the 3 most important things for the day, do a quick
analysis of which is a priority, and do that first. At the end of the day, carry
all remaining tasks to the next day. Any information or notes should be at the
bottom of the list.
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PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
Technology (in particular, ubiquitous personal technology) should be

approached with the mindset of what makes me more productive, not what
is the latest and coolest.
For business technology, we suggest thinking developing world: what is the
simplest, most reliable and cheapest solution that works. As an example, yes,
online storage and redundant RAID arrays are nice and fancy, but a $100 USB
hard disk works just as well for file backups.
Also, some advice from one of our mentors: if it costs you less than $500 and
makes you more productive, buy it.
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IMPLEMENTATION AND ACTION STEPS
Everything that youve read in this chapter is not hard to implement. The
hardest will be the principles and mindsets at the beginning. Everything else,
is something you can do right away how you handle your email, turning off
your IM client during the day, timeboxing your day.
The thing about habits is the more you do them, the easier they become.
It will be difficult at first, but the payoff from implementing more efficient
practices is far greater in the mid-to-long term.
These are things that can be taught to people around you, be they friends,
family, employees or team members. And the best way of teaching is through
leading by example show them how you are effective, and they will naturally
follow.
If youre reading this youre already ahead of 95% of people when it comes
to productivity and if youve made it this far, youre likely quite determined
and disciplined to become more productive. And really, thats all you need to
implement this!
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In Closing
In Closing
IN CLOSING
Congratulations on making it all the way through the Asian Efficiency Primer.
When we were compiling this Primer our aim was to be comprehensive,
and touch on all the main topics that sit under the personal productivity
umbrella, rather than going deep on just one area (e.g., task management),
which is what most introductory books on productivity try to do.
As you implement the ideas in this Primer, youll discover that you will develop
rock-solid foundations in personal productivity. There is more than enough
contained in what you have learned to help make you more productive almost
right away, and also enough to help you find your own nuances and ways of
doing things over time.
A common question is: where to next?
As weve mentioned, with a solid foundation, the rest is about gaining insight
into specific topics (like email or procrastination) and developing techniques
and methodologies that are custom-tailored to your personality and life.
We usually recommend that once people have gone through the Primer, they
should continue with the Productivity Blueprint, which does a deep dive into
procrastination, focus, distractions and email management.
All the best with your productivity!
- The Asian Efficiency Team

Hong Kong SAR
196
In Closing
197
Glossary
Glossary
2-minute rule: if the task can be completed within 2 minutes, do it right away.
Otherwise, organize it and work on it another time.
Areas of responsibility: a top-level grouping of goals, tasks and outcomes.
Clear to neutral: the habit of resetting your environment so its ready for use
for next time.
Dropbox: a popular online storage service.
Eat that frog: the habit of working on your most important task first thing in
the morning. Derived from the book Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy.
Evernote: a popular note taking program.
Getting Things Done: a productivity methodology by David Allen Co.
Hero mode: working on your most important tasks when your body is the
most energetic and your mind is the most focused.
Inbox zero: the habit of getting your inbox to zero before you finish your day.
Mind mapping: a way of visually taking notes and capturing information
surrounding one core concept.
Most important task: your task that has highest leverage/value that you must
complete that day.
Multitasking: doing multiple things at the same time: a habit we discourage.
Next action: the next available step to move a project forward.
Personal technology: the use of technology to make your life simpler, easier
and more productive.
Pomodoro Technique: time-boxing technique that works in 25 minutes
chunks.
Ritual: deliberate set of actions in sequence.
Solar flaring: the idea of building small momentum to push yourself forward to
complete a task.
Sex transmutation: channeling your sexual desires and thoughts into physical
199
Glossary
expression for a greater purpose.
Zinio: an online service that allows you to subscribe to your favorite
magazines.
200
About Asian
Efficiency
About Asian Efficiency

ABOUT ASIAN EFFICIENCY
Asian Efficiency stands for simplicity and action. We give people the ability
to control their lives, to handle their daily information bombardment and to
juggle it alongside things to do, commitments, responsibilities and a busy
schedule - all in a seamless manner.
Our mission is to make the world a better and more efficient place.
We produce and publish high-quality ideas and solutions to help you become
a better, faster and more efficient high-achiever. We believe in experimenting
with the limits of human potential, in intelligently using new personal
technologies and about keeping things simple - and efficient.
Everyone at Asian Efficiency lives and breathes personal development and
growth, and is passionate about helping others become the best they can be.
We are also productivity nerds, Apple enthusiasts and generally love working
out how to do things better. One day we would like to see Asian Efficiency
make an impact on the global productivity index, and by buying this primer,
youve helped contribute a bit towards that - thank you.
You can find out more about Asian Efficiency at:
www.asianefficiency.com - our company blog where we talk about the
latest (and best) productivity tips and tricks.
store.asianefficiency.com - our company store, where you can purchase
our products. We highly value all our customers - so expect lots of
goodies your way very soon!
twitter.com/asianefficiency - our Twitter account where we give away
daily tips about productivity, and we generally get to know our followers.
If you want to get in touch with us for any reason (testimonials are nice!), send
an email to: support@asianefficiency.com or log into our Customer Area at
customer.asianefficiency.com.
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ASIAN EFFICIENCY PRIMER

Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management . . . . . . 14

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management . . . . . . . 29

Chapter 03: Calendar and To-do List . . . . . . . . 65

Chapter 04: Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Chapter 05: Clear to Neutral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Chapter 06: Eat That Frog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Chapter 07: Beat Procrastination . . . . . . . . . . 111

Chapter 09: Going Paperless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Chapter 10: Organizing Your Files, Folders and

Chapter 11: Time Tracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Chapter 12: Putting It Together (Case Study) 183

Chapter 01: Simple

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Managing your email has become an important part of modern knowledge

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Each time you process your email

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Go to Settings Gear > Settings (top right corner)

2. Click on the Labels tab.

Click on the Labels tab to create the labels / folders.

Create the labels/ folders in Gmail.

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Some typical emails that belong in the Reply folder:

Removing a label from an email in Gmail

PURPOSE WAITING FOLDER

Typical emails that go in the Waiting folder:

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Email Management Workflow Diagram

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Email Management Workflow Diagram (Advanced)

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

SEPARATING EMAIL FROM TO-DO LISTS

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Chapter 01: Simple Email Management

Chapter 02: Simple

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Task Management is a simple productivity concept but one that is often

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

A task is an actionable item that needs to be done now, or at a later date.

WHY TASK MANAGEMENT

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

THE 2-MINUTE RULE

Heres the 2-minute rule from Getting Things Done:

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

PEN AND PAPER TASK MANAGEMENT

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Text Task List Day 01

Chapter 02: Simple Task Management

Text Task List Day 02