I have unofficially taken a very long leave from blogging. It’s been 3 months since I last wrote an entry. And to tell you the truth, it’s like torture thinking about my unupdated blog.

I have actually been transfered to Sabah and there are a lot of things I need to do for the past 3 months; pending jobs to be finished, examination to study, new mill to familiarize.

If there’s anything I can learn from all the experience is that “When life gives you 1000 things to do, prioritize”. These are a few tips to be better at prioritizing that I’ve learnt the hard way.

1) Check with your religion first

This is actually a no brainer. But when you are in doubt on what to do, check with your religion. What are the priorities in your religion. Religion in my opinion, is a handbook to living your life. It should be able to solve every question you asked.

Even for an atheist, I still believe that their principles and attitude towards life will be their religion. Stick to that and you know you will do fine.

2) 80/20 Pareto Rule

I’ve said it before and I’m going to say it again, this rule rocks! For the benefit of those who are not familiar with it, let me try to explain the whole idea. According to Pareto, if you have 100 workers in your company, rest assured that there are 20 of them that can do 80% of the job. Once we have identified these 20 workers, you can actually sack the remaining 80 workers and still manage to get 80% of your business done.

The same goes to your daily job. Identify the 20% of the job that if you finish it, you can smilingly go back home knowing that you have finished the vital jobs of your day.

3) Review Review Review

I repeated the word “Review” three times (four times if include this one) because it is the best word to help you manage your life. Our priorities change with time. Immediately when we wake up, our most important priority is to brush our teeth. Once we do that, we have to review our task and identify the next most important priority. In this specific example, the next most important thing is to put on a suit and go to work.

This Reviewing process can sometimes be just as fun as playing an adventure type computer game, where you finish one task after another.

4) Most Important Task

For some, finishing off one task after another can be very exhausting. I personally believe this tool, which is called “Most Important Task” or MIT for short, is the best way to go for you guys. Before you go to sleep tonight, identify the 3 most important tasks that you want to be done tomorrow. When you wake up tomorrow, focus all your energy to get these 3 done at all cost. Once they are done, treat yourself with an ice cream or a walk on the beach. You know very well you deserve it.

Of course, there’s no point if you identify your 3 most important tasks of the day as eat, sleep and watch television.

5) Categorize your goals

This is another great tools that you can use to ensure that all your goals are met. First, categorize all your goals into three groups.

Group 1 – Life goals

• You have to put all your life goals here. These are the goals that if met you will be satisfied with your life. Typical examples of life goals are live longer, travel around the world, become famous worldwide etc.

Group 2 – 10 years goals

• 10 years goals are goals that must be met within 10 years. Some examples of such goals are like becoming a manager, lose 100 lb of weight etc.

Group 3 – Now goals

• The Now goals are goals that can be achieved now if we start working on it. An example is like this blog post I’m working on. If I do it now, I will finish it today.

Once you have identified your goals’ categories, try to work on each category of goals in one day. You could for example, aim to save $50 and put it in your travel-around-the-world fund, jog for 30 minutes and finish your blog post in 1 hour.

You might not notice it, but you have basically achieved your three most important goals in just 1.5 hours today. Isn’t that great?

Conclusion

Prioritizing has always been the challenge to productivity. I guess that is why God only gives us two hands. It is to remind us that there are just so much we can do, so we have to choose what we want to do wisely.

- I wonder -
Any other techniques to prioritize better that you can share?

——— Personal Note ————
My first priority will always be family. However, there are times when something else come up and it’s so urgent that it requires my fullest attention and thus I can only see the family a few hours in a day.

Luckily I am blessed with an understanding wife. Thank you dear. I can’t imagine going through all this without you.

Photo Credit – Redvers

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However do you know that To-Do list can be further improved to maximize productivity? Here are 7 tricks I personally implement that you might find useful.

1) Write this sentence at the top of your To-Do list

“It is never about how many left, it is about how many accomplished”

How many times have you been so happy that you have completed a lot of the tasks listed, but by the time you are about to celebrate, another set of tasks occupy the list. If your focus everyday is to clear that list, you will be frustrated everyday.

That is why it is always better to focus on the number of tasks completed instead of number of tasks left on the list. Believe me, it will make a lot of difference in our motivation level once our perception on the concept of a To-Do list changed.

2) Keep a record (The Done List)

Based on the same philosophy, I would recommend you to keep a record of the tasks completed. Make another list if you can – The Done list. Any tasks you have written off from your To-Do list, put them in this list. This list will serve as a reminder to you that you can be productive if you want. It will also help boost that declining motivation almost immediately.

If motivation is not a problem to you, at least take pride in your work. You deserve it.

3) Set points and its corresponding rewards

This tip is actually one of my favorites. I put points to all my tasks on the To-Do list. The most urgent tasks will be given 10 points, while the less important ones will be given 5 points. The tasks which are not important are given 0 points. Yes, Zero. I will tell you why shortly.

I will then set a target and its corresponding rewards. For example, if I ever reached 5000 points, I will treat myself with a one day leave. Of course you can make this more interesting by allowing further accumulation of the points. It’s your rule.

The reason I give the least important task a zero is because I have experimented before by giving it 1 points. I end up avoiding doing all the urgent tasks and just focus on these trivia tasks. That itself is an example of a To-Do list went wrong.

4) Make it ugly

I have a friend who actually decorate her To-Do list. She actually writes with such beautiful handwriting on a beautiful piece of paper. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the kind of paper I used to write love letter on. But that’s another story. In the end, her To-Do list is not getting any shorter and she is more stressful than ever.

I have nothing against beautifully written work. But for a To-Do list, I would recommend you to write with your worst handwriting ever (Of course it must be readable too). The whole purpose of a To-Do list is to cross the items off. By making it ugly, you are subconciously pushing yourself to finish the tasks as soon as possible. Who would want to have an ugly written list unchanged for a year?

5) Use paper with lines

I once used a whiteboard as my To-Do list. It was a bad idea. Since there was no lines to separate the tasks, I often just squeezed the new task in between the existing tasks. By the end of the day, the whiteboard was filled with incomprehensible words.

Use paper with lines for your To-Do list. Nothing is more frustrating that a board full of tasks but you can’t read it.

6) Make the list short

Now that you are using paper with lines, why not limit your To-Do list further by having only 10 tasks on each paper. It is very tempting to have a very long list. But the truth is, a short list is better in term of efficiency and simplicity. Here are a few additional reasons why a short list is always better.

• Easy to scan through anytime.

• Highlight the most important task immediately.

• More satisfying when you write off a task.

• Having completed one paper of tasks will give you an extra boost of motivation.

• You are always eager to free up some space on your paper by completing the task.

A suggestion, go through your To-Do list and find tasks that can be delegated. Write that off. Now find other tasks that can just be eliminated. You should by now have reduced the length of your To-Do list by half. Congratulation!

7) Take three tasks out (Literally)

Remember your To-Do list with ten tasks? Now tear the top three tasks and immediately complete the tasks. Instead of crossing off tasks after you complete it, you are now doing it the other way around. If three tasks is too much, you can always choose just the one. It will help if the tasks torn are your most important tasks of the day.

There is only one rule to this technique. You must complete the task by all means. Once you allow yourself to procrastinate or rewrite the tasks again tomorrow, it will immediately become a habit. You don’t want that.

/end list

Conclusion

There are so many ways you can improve your To-Do list, but it will not work if you don’t understand the fundamental of a To-Do list. A To-Do list is meant to help you prioritize which tasks are more important. The list will also be useless if you avoid completing all the tasks.

- I Wonder -
Any other tricks you might want to share with the rest of the readers?

———– Personal Note ————-
My first computer got infected by virus almost monthly. I could put up with a virus that shows funny message once in a while, but this virus slowed my computer to a near halt. As a result, I formatted my computer every month. Fortunately, I had prepared a To-Do list on the steps to be taken immediately after a computer format. The list contained what softwares to install, what were the settings etc. Ah the good times.

Photo Credit – Purpleslog

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Summary – Remember & Be Super Productive.

Pop quiz

There is a guy who loves productivity tips. He reads every single tips on all productivity blogs and half of the time he is one of the most productive person on the planet.

The question is – What happened to another half of his time?

Procrastination? Nah.. He must have memorized all the tricks to overcome procrastination. Fall sick? Maybe but nobody can be productive when they are sick, so that excuse is acceptable.

The Real Answer

He simply forgets to be productive.

You may not notice it, but forgetfulness is one of the hidden enemy of productivity. Just look at our annual resolution. It’s almost the end of the year now, ask yourself, how many have actually been fulfilled? There will usually be a lot of resolution left unfulfilled. For some they have totally forgotten that they even have one.

Another example to illustrate how forgetfulness is productivity number 1 killer is handling our finance. We have read all there is to know about financial management such as how to save that emergency money, how to avoid impulsive buying etc but usually when we really want something, we will just buy it. This can only happen if we forget the whole idea of financial management. The worse case scenario would be when we deliberately forget all the tips.

How To Be Reminded Of Things & Goals

The only way we can overcome forgetfulness is simply to remind ourselves all the time. Listed below are a few simple ways to actually do that.

1) Make use of screensaver. Why on earth are we displaying piping lines as our screensaver. What good will that do. Put up encouraging words such as “It’s been at least 5 minutes since you do anything, do something now!!”

2) Constantly edit your wallpaper by listing down your priorities. I need to have pictures as my wallpaper. So what I did is to edit the pictures using Gimp to list down my top 5 goals in life (Beautifully written of course)

3) Set alarm for your work. After a while you will need to have a break. What I would recommend you to do is to set an alarm on your computer to ensure you will be able to get back to work promptly.

I suggest an online alarm clock – Kukuklok.com. You can set what kind of alarm noise you want from cockerel, classic clock, electronic and slayer guitar. Make sure you max out the volume of your speaker. That should work. If not, your spouse will threaten you to start working just to make the noise stop.

The simpler way is of course to set up the alarm on your cellphone.

4) Install ReminderFox extension to your Firefox. This is especially for those who use Firefox as their browser. You can install this extension (ReminderFox)and organize how you want to be reminded.

5) Paste reminders on the wall. I remember a scene from the movie – Hollow Man where the scientist had pasted a note reminding him to get back to work on the ceiling. Whenever he is getting sleepy or is lying on the bed, he will immediately see that note. I’m not sure whether he gets back to work after that or just ignore the reminder. But still, it’s one of the most efficient way to remind yourself.

Some other interesting places to paste the note is in your wallet, at the steering wheel of your car or on top of your television. The rule is to place it at the most viewed place throughout the day.

6) Use unwritten reminder. Pasting notes to remind ourselves is a great idea but when you have a few thousand things to remember, your house may not need the new repainting (It will be covered with that small notes pasted on the wall)

What you should try to do is to associate the things you see everyday to your list of things to remember. For example, I will always be reminded to check whether I’m out of gas whenever I come across a gas station while driving.

Try this with everything else. The best things you can do is to associate seeing money with saving. Imagine, seeing money and you immediately save it. You will be rich.

7) Ask a friend to remind you. Ask for help from your friends to remind you of your goals. For example, make it a habit to bring your friend when you go shopping. This friend is assigned to deter you from buying. Maybe by telling you it’s too expensive or it looks ugly on you.

If you have such friends, sticking to your budget or resolution will be easier. If you do have such friends, cherish them well.

- I wonder -
Any other ideas on how to be reminded of things or your goals?

———- Personal Note ———–
When I was 16 years old, I wrote my goals on the inside of my wardrobe. One of the goals include being a master in martial art. Of course, my fellow friends found out about my goals and they made fun of the goals. That in a way had deterred me partially from pursuing my goals.

Lesson learnt – ditch those friends.

Photo Credit – Mhatma

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Summary – How Parkinson’s Law helps you get things done.

I’ve learnt about Parkinson’s Law way back when I was a student. Back then it was just like any other things that came out from my lecturer’s mouth – Incomprehensible meaningless words. There’s nothing wrong with him or his lectures, it’s just me. I’ve learnt my lesson though.

Parkinson’s Law if used correctly, will ensure that any work that need to be done WILL be done. If the deadline is 1 hour, you will finish it in 65 minutes top. Interested?

Parkinson’s Law – The What

Parkinson’s Law says that – Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

It basically means that if you are supposed to write a 10 pages report and you set the deadline to be 2 days. It will most probably be finished in 2 days. According to Parkinson, the work will expand itself to adjust to the deadline you have set. You will start feeling the need for a more thorough research about the topic, maybe an interview or a good time spent googling. The simple 10 pages work has now expand itself to fill up the vacancy in the 2 days period.

Now that is an example of a really motivated and productive guy. Imagine what will happen to a person whose nickname is The Laziest Person On The Planet. He will start surfing the internet, watching television in the name of research, take few long nap to refresh his mind from God knows what. In the end, the 10 pages report will still only be finished after the 2 days deadline (even though based on the attitude, it will be very unlikely)

Exactly after 2 days, both of them (productive guy and lazy guy) will claim that the work done is very hard and it requires the full 2 days just to finish it.

Now this is where it become interesting. Try assigning the same work to another guy and set the deadline to be only 1 day. I can guarantee you that the work will still be finished by the deadline with almost no difference in quality (Of course we are comparing between two productive guys)

The Unspoken Law of Parkinson’s Law

1) Know the limits of low and high.
You cannot finish writing a 10 pages report in 10 minutes. That is stretching the law and you will only end up more frustrated, tense and most probably become another statistic of hypertension cases.

Experiment with the law. Let say you manage to finish the report in 2 days. Bravo! now let’s try 1.5 days. Do this until you know for certain what’s your low and high limit to Parkinson’s Law

2) Keep track.
This is actually covered in point number 1, but I think it is so important that it deserve a number too. Always keep track when you are doing the experiment. It will be a waste of time when you have done all the experiment to get your optimized deadline data but forget all about it in a year or two. Keep a book, and record everything until you can have the following conversation with your client

Client – Can you optimize the SEO of my blog for me?
You – Not a problem.
Client – When can I expect it to be finished?
You – 47 minutes.

3) Buy a timer
Now why do we need a timer when we are this motivated? The reason is because there is an unmotivated section of your mind which is equally strong, and usually it is so much smarter than your motivated section.

When you are doing your work, your unmotivated section of your mind will start to sabotage the process. Typical example is when you start to forget how much time you still have before the deadline. This is where the timer comes in. Set the sound of the timer to be as refreshingly painful as possible.

A no brainer but really, why we bother come up with a deadline if we have no idea where we are at anytime.

4) Answer to someone.
Find yourself a few friends to help you. Give them the authority to check on your progress. Now imagine that they are THE boss. I’m very sure that the work will be finished in no time. It always work for me (But with real boss)

Email them the details of your work. Maybe ask them to call you after every one hour and you must report how many pages have been done. Of course you will need to reimburse the call charges later.

The only problem with this is when the boss apprently is the laziest person in the group. You know what to do right? Fire your boss. This is the only time in your life you will be able to do this

5) Know other forms of work expansion
You set the deadline for two days, and you finish it in one. By right you have proven Parkinson wrong and that the work is not expanding. However the work does expand but this time it will be in other forms such as anxiety (wondering what if the report is rejected), or no satisfaction (You feel like starting over) or tense (arghhh)

By knowing this fact, you can save yourself a lot of therapy session in the future.

And by knowing all the 5 unspoken laws, you are finally ready to experience the full benefit of Parkinson’s Law. In another word.. your work is guaranteed done.

- I wonder -
Care to share your techniques to get things done?

———— Personal Note —————
The previous 1 week has been a very hectic week for me. VIPs were visitting the mill and you know that number infinity people keep talking about. I have that exact number of works need to be done

That was when I remembered this technique. Now the number of balance work I need to do is roughly infinity minus a few hundres.

Photo Credit – laffy4k

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If you are reading this, I’m very sure that you and I have the same common goal. We want to achieve more in our life. There’s only one problem though.

There are so many goals to achieve, better career, relationship, attitude, etc that sometimes they are very hard to keep track. Most of the time, we will end up spending more time on only a few areas like career and hobbies while totally neglecting other area like relationship etc.

Trying to maintain a balance between all our goals is really a headache. Planning them is known to even cause nausea and migraine. That is why I come up with this – The most productive one hour in your life.

Basically, it is a one hour schedule where you will set the things to do which will cover all the important aspect of our life. There is only one rule to this tool – You must do every single thing listed. Every single thing.

Let’s start shall we?

Preparation

• Switch off your handphone.
• Switch on your computer and connect to the internet
• Grab today’s newspaper and a timer

The Super One Hour starts now.

1) Knowledge – Read headline of newspaper (5 min)
Read the newspaper. For some this may already be a routine, but for another it is very hard to really sit down and read. For the latter, try reading the headline only. It will save you time. Make sure you know everything that is happening in your country, and ultimately in the world.

Extra mini things you can do :

• Read English newspaper to improve your English.
• Start with the half of the comic page and end with another half. Hopefully it will start your day with a smile and the news will be less depressing.
• Try to give out comments while you read. It will make remembering the details easier. For example “Ah, Malaysia has a chance at a Gold Medal. What’s his name again?”

2) Relationship – Give your loved ones a call (5 min)
Pick up the phone and call your spouse. Even if she is at work, call her. Ask her about her day and try to give a message to her that you appreciate her. You don’t need to be direct and say “I appreciate you”. Nobody says it like that. Say it without actually say it. Maybe you can say “Looks like you are busy, I’ll help later with the dishes.” After you’re done, swith off the phone. there should not be any distraction for the remaining task in this Super One Hour.

Extra mini things you can do :

• Spark the fire. Try to figure out what actually about you that she finds attractive. Use that considerably. If she finds you funnily charming. Be funnily charming.
• Help her with her stress. Don’t add to it.
• A classic snail mail once in a while is always romantic. Try it, she will like it.

3) Finance – Count how much money you actually have now (5 min)
Go get your bank account book, all of them, and start adding up all your savings and cash. Now ask yourself, “is that enough to cover your lifestyle for 6 months if you are suddenly fired from your job?”. This exercise will in a way make us realize our level of financial security.

If you say no to the question (which is usually the case), immediately write on a piece of paper how much more you need and paste it on the wall. From now on, everytime you deposit some money, deduct it from the amount you just wrote. Make it so that you can see how you progress to save that money.

Extra mini things you can do :

• Educate your family that financial planning is everybody’s responsibility (with an extra staring at the one who spends the most)
• Set up a contest to see who can save the most. The winner will win a month of no housechore. That will be irresistable even for me.

4) Social – Email a friend (5 min)
Login to your email account, and choose one friend that you haven’t email for some time. Send him an email saying hi. You can also send out messages to him/her by other means such as facebook, IM and so on.

Extra mini things you can do :

• Schedule to meet your friends at a coffee shop. Never meet your friend with an ulterior motive. One friend had invited me for a drink one day, and I happily went. Apparently he was trying to sell me an insurance policy. Spoilt my evening.
• Set up a text file containing all the details of your friend. You don’t want to be asking the same friend what he’s doing for a living 5 times, do you?

5) Declutter – Cut everything by 10% (5 min)
Choose one item today. It can be anything from your wardrobe or RSS Feed or email. If for example you choose your wardrobe, go through all your clothes, and if you have a total of 100 clothes, decide immediately which 10 are you going to give away. Maybe you can give the clothes to your brothers/sisters.

The idea of decluttering is to reduce or eliminate those that you don’t really need. If you have 3 chairs in your room and you only need one. why not move the 2 chairs to another room.

Extra mini things you can do :

• Look at your room. What is the one eye sore that can be removed. Remove that item for the day.
• Set up a specific place for everything. Place keys at a designated place. So whenever you are in a hurry and you want to look for your keys, you will know exactly where to find it.

6) Career – Sit down and plan your career. (5 min)
One thing about our career or work, is that after a while, everything will look like a routine thing. You wake up in the morning, and suddenly you are in your robot mode. Working that routine without ever thinking on how to advance in your career.

In this Super One Hour, sit down and plan your career. Think what can you do now that will result in a promotion or a raise. Personally for me, if I want to get promoted and noticed by the top management, I will have to pass First Grade Steam Engineer Certificate. Now that I know this, I should plan what exactly I’m going to do to pass that certificate.

Extra mini things you can do :

• Try looking for another job. Go for interview, even if you are not really planning to change your career. At least your interview skill will improve.
• Be more visible to the top management. If you don’t know how to sell yourself, people may not notice all your effort even if you are the best worker ever.

7) Health – Jog (25 min)
Put on your jogging shoes and start jogging for 20 minutes. I once read that in order for the body to start burning fat, you must be running at least 20 minutes. Any shorter than that, you are just warming up. Spend the last 5 minutes to cool down.

Jogging / exercising is also known to have a destressing effect. After all the work you have done before, you will definitely going to need this.

Extra mini thing you can do :

• Try to remember the news you read just now
• Plan your next Super One Hour while running. Which of your friend will you email next, or which life goals are you going to work on.

8] Spiriuality – Meditate (5 min)
You should by now all sweaty and tired. Sit down and meditate for 5 minutes. Just do the most basic meditation. Sit down, close your eyes, focus on your breathing in and out and think of nothing else. Forget everything you have done before, and try to taste the inhaling and exhaling breath you take.

Extra mini things you can do :

• There shouldn’t be anything else you should do in a meditation.

/end list

Conclusion – You can use my version of Super One Hour. But I recommend that you come up with your own version. One that has your sets of goals and things to do. Maybe you prefer swimming to jogging, or yoga to meditation.

The idea can also be expanded to maybe Super One Day or Super One Week. The possibilities are endless. Enjoy!

- I Wonder -
What other things you would advise one to put in the Super One Hour

Photo Credit – Fabiola Medeiros

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We’ve all heard that procrastination is the one enemy of productivity. In fact I myself have written a few articles on combatting procrastination.

• Procrastinator United
• Mathematical Formula to Motivate You Finish Up Work
• 5 Sure Way To A Stronger Willpower

However, procrastination is not all that bad. There are a few unique cases that we should consider procrastination as an option. In most of the case, it is by far the best option.

Allow me to name a few of those cases where procrastination should be practised.

1) Procrastinate Spending Money
Another word for spending money is of course shopping. Just procrastinate it all together. Everytime you have the urge to do shopping just for the sake of killing time. Procrastinate it. Just say “I will do this later, not now”. If that doesn’t work, repeat this “You hear me?? LATER!!”

But first you must know the difference between fundamental things and leasure things. You don’t want to mix the two, if not you will buy that extra pair of pants when you are actually going to buy some food.

2) Procrastinate Agreeing to Unbelievably Good Deals
How often you have just received your paycheck when suddenly a well dressed man approaches you offering the best massage chair in the world. The way he describes the amazing feature of the massage chair is so convincing that you are preparing to surrender all your money to him smilingly.

No offense to all the sales person reading, salesman are really good at this. You are not even thinking of a chair when you walk out of the bank, but suddenly you just can’t stop thinking about the deal.

Rule of thumb when approached by sales person, if you don’t need it 5 minutes ago, you probably don’t need it now. Procrastinate the decision to sometime later in the future.

3) Procrastinate Deciding On Non-Urgent Matter
Non urgent matter are decision that need to be made but you still have time to think about it. For examples, the name of your future children, or where to invest your hard earned money.

You don’t need to decide now. You still have a lot of time to think of a good name or doing research on your investment option. Yes, you may be a little late, but you are giving yourself the chance to be better equipped.

Please notice the keyword “Equipped”. There’s no point of procrastinating decision making, if you just end up NOT any wiser on the subject.

4) Procrastinate Unstable Emotion
How to procrastinate your emotion? Not easy, that much I can tell you, but not impossible.

When you are depressed, just say this out loud. “I can’t do this now. I’ll have to suck it up and deal with this emotion later”. Difficult to do? believe me it is doable. I personally am always stressed out at work, but when I get home. I just postpone the stress to tomorrow, when I can actually do something about it.

Why bother panicking about work not finished when you are at home. There’s no way you can finish your work at home since the work is at the office. So worry about it tomorrow.

You think this is difficult? Wait till you read no 5. Oh wait, here it is.

5) Procrastinate “Procrastination Activity”
When you are supposed to clean up the house, and you think about doing it later. What do you end up doing?

This is procrastination activity. Things like watching television, playing games or taking unnecessary nap. How about procrastinating this as a change? Number 4 doesn’t seem so difficult now, does it?

Conclusion - Just like anything else, procrastination on the 5 items listed above will be easier to do if you make a conscious decision to do it later. Say it out loud that you are not going to do this now.

Happy procrastinating!

- I wonder -
Is there any other unique cases that I might have missed?

Photo credit – McPig

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I’m sure you are familiar with Gmail. Almost everyone I know uses it. That should say something about the service. Personally I find Gmail is the best solution to handling your email. It’s really one of the most organized and productivity minded solution designed.

Now what if I tell you that we can assimilate this concept into our way of thinking? Yes, putting a Gmail in your mind.

The mind really is a remarkable thing. We can only guess what it’s true pontetial will be and I’m very sure that it will still be a long way to go before we fully understand it. The problem is never about the mind, but how we interface with it. Imagine we are using a super computer and the only OS available is the DOS (some of you may not even familiar with the OS), it will be such a loss.

The same thing with this experiment I’m proposing. By applying some of the concept in Gmail to our way of thinking, hopefully we will be more organized and productivity minded.

Let’s get started shall we?

1) Gmail has always been in Beta version
I registered with Gmail quite a long time ago, and I remember that it was in its Beta version then. Many years later, for some reason, it is still in Beta version.

Let’s put a Beta sticker to our mind. Let it be official that the work on our mind is always in Beta version. There will always be things to improved. In my opinion, just the acknowledgment that our mind is a work in progress will help a lot. Of course we must be checking consistently on how to improve our mind.

2) Premium location of “Compose Mail” and “Inbox”
Just underneath the Gmail logo is the link to Compose Mail and Inbox. The link is not buried down the page or disguised in complicated flash button. That’s because an email is only about two things – sending and receiving email.

Figure out what are you about? If you are all into money making, than that is what you should put there in your mind. Limit the items to only two.

3) Report Spam Button
Almost all emails have this. Whenever spam emails received, it will automatically be flagged as spam and put in the spam folder. Sometime a few misses and you will have to report the email as spam manually.

Install a Report Spam button in your mind. If at anytime a negative thought comes to mind, immediately flag it as “Negative Thought”. Do this consciously as if you are actually clicking the button in your mind. If you think Gmail is smart to learn from your action, wait till you see what your mind is capable of.

4) Delete Protocol
You must notice that in order for you to completely delete an email, you will have to delete it two times, one in the inbox and another in the trash folder. The philosophy is, it is better to have millions of rubbish emails building up than to lose that one very very important email from your VIP.

The mind work at a more complex level, but the same philosophy applies. If you want to forget something, you will have to do some extra work. It is never as easy as clicking a button and hope it goes away.

I actually put up an entry on how to forget and move on specifically dedicated to a friend who wish to do just that. Please have a read if you are interested.

5) Emails in reply is grouped together
This is one of the differentiating feature of Gmail. And even though it takes me some getting use to, I find it very helpful. Previously I sometimes get an email from a long lost friend and I just can’t figure out what he is referring to as I can’t see my sent email to him. By grouping the emails in reply together, conversation and email make more sense and easy to track.

Interconnecting one point to another is exactly the basis of our brain. We do our thinking this way. We think of one thing for example cars, then you remember to send your car for maintenance, maybe after that you think of what else you want to do now that you are in the town, maybe shopping, which reminds you of the wife who love shopping.

Amazingly that you think of cars first before the wife I write more about this in this article – How to Improve Your Memory Using Spongebob

/end list

There are so many more features of Gmail that we can integrate in our mind. For example, the labels, Star, Search and the increasing free space etc. But I’m going to leave it to you guys to figure it out.

- I wonder -
Appreciate if you continue adding what else about Gmail that can be used in the comment section.

———— Personal Note ————-
I am always fascinated with the true potential of the mind. Maybe influenced by a lot of tv series, I sometimes wonder if maybe those psychic things like telekinesis and telepathy can really be done. What do you think?

Photo Credit – Rovlls

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The life of a student has always been like a tug war between being motivated and plain lazy. I know. I’ve been there. Some time, we become so motivated, we even seek for extra work just to enhance our learning. Another time, there are no motivational speech in the world that will make us wake up from that comfy bed.

When that laziness attacks and you have so many things to do, what would you do?

These are a few tricks that I tried as my last resort to get things done. Most of the time they worked. Try them and tell me how it goes.

1) Read standing up
Sometimes I have trouble waking up when I read my notes. So what I did was reading the notes while standing up. If you can walk that would be even more effective to combat those drowsiness. However I found out that my concentration deteriorates even faster walking.

2) One page at a time
This is my last resort to almost anything. If I have to read 20 pages of notes, I will force myself to read 1 page. That’s it. I promise myself that after that 1 page is done and I fully understand or memorize the page, I can stop studying altogether.

Usually by the time I understand the subject, I will be more in the studying mode and thus page 2

3) Report your failure to other people
This also should be used as the super last resort. Make yourself accountable. Not to anyone but to your parent. I know.. it may sound very childish reporting yourself to your parent but believe me it work.

All you need to do is to write an email (if your parent read email of course) reporting every assignment need to be done, and notes to be studied. And each day, you should HONESTLY write a progress email detailing your progress. If you didn’t touch anything on the subject, confess to your parent and give reason why.

If the shame of not doing anything didn’t move you to finish your work, I don’t know what will.

4) Bet with your lecturer
How about if you prepare one letter signed by you and give that letter to your lecturer when you started the semester.

Put it in writing that everytime you are unable to deliver your assignment in time, you will wash his car FOC. The lecturer will definitely make use of this offer. He will look for your assignment first everytime. And you will feel more driven to do your assignment.

5) Red card of wealth
This is a system I created just to give me an extra push with money. However, being a student I don’t have money. Not much anyway. So what I did is creating about 20 red cards per month. I put value to the card at about $10 per card. So if by the end of the month I still have 20 cards, that is like an extra $200 in my pocket.

Whenever I want to push myself to work, I will just warn myself that 1 card will be burnt down (literally burnt) if I didn’t do the work.

Where will the money come from, my current salary of course. Once I start working, I am entitled to spend the red cards guilt free

6) When motivated, do extra
There will be times when you just super motivated for no apparent reason. How? Still a mystery to me. What I did when I’m in that state is to do extra work. Maybe study those subject not yet covered by lecturers, do past year questions etc.

Why I do this? Because there will be times when I’m just super lazy and all the above will not change it. By doing extra work when I’m motivated, I will feel less guilty being lazy sometime later.

- I wonder -
What do you do as your last resort to get things done?

——– Personal Note ———
I still have a few more techniques, but a bit abstract to describe here. Maybe next time

Now that I work, I actually still practise some of the methods. I honestly give report to my manager on what I have done and what I still don’t do. He may not even care, but I am so ashame to report on task not completed, I usually will finish them all. Well most of them anyway

Photo Credit – Orangeacid

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Are you familiar with the term “Bottleneck“. Basically, the word comes from the actual bottleneck. Referring to the image above, the bottom part of a bottle is always bigger than the bottleneck. In short, if I flip the bottle upside down, the water flow coming out will be controlled by the bottleneck. The smaller the bottleneck, the slower it will be for the bottle to be emptied.

Debottlenecking is one of the basic process of engineering. For example, imagine a road with three lanes. Somehow it is noticed that there is always a traffic jam when the three lanes merge into two lanes. The merging point now will be the bottleneck. And if the engineers ever want to solve the traffic jam problem, this is where they should tackle first.

Now apply debottlenecking process in our life.

Example 1 : You are having problems with debt. You are paying monthly, but with your credit card at hand, the debt is still increasing. In this specific case, credit card is the bottleneck. Not only it is slowing your debt reduction program, it is actually making the debt grow. So once you have identified the bottleneck, you can eliminate it by maybe cutting the card into two and stop using it altogether.

Example 2 : Try debottlenecking in studying. Figure out what is slowing the process. Maybe studying in front of a computer with the internet on is taking most of your time. Then you should know what to do to make the studying process more efficient. You must disconnect.

Conclusion – One very important rule about debottlenecking a process is that you must only handle one bottleneck at a time. Studying for example has a lot of problems. You may be distracted by the internet, or maybe you have a family problem stuck in your mind. Even if there is hundred of problems, just choose one that is affecting you the most. Tackle that first and you will see the improvement. I guarantee that.

I’m not sure about you, but I find that by imagining the problem I’m having as a bottleneck motivates me to settle it. When I know that something I did is affecting the efficiency of the whole process, I just imagine it as the bottleneck. Immediately I just want to eliminate it because I know there’s no other way to empty a bottle faster.

- I wonder -
What is the bottleneck in your life?

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Willpower – OK you need to wake up now
Lazybone – What? now? I still want to see the ending of the dream.
Willpower – But you are going to be late.
Lazybone – Will you please just shut up?
Willpower – erk OK

/end conversation

Of course the conversation is made up. But have you ever had similar experience? Where the problem with your productivity is not due to procrastination but because of your weak willpower.

Some may call it discipline, but the fact is the stronger your willpower, the more likely you will be able to finish up your work and do what’s necessary. So how do you strengthen this willpower to withstand any temptation that may come?

Let him win the small battle
Willpower is really just a part of us, just like our muscle. If we didn’t do any exercises, it will become weaker. Period. However if we immediately start with intense exercise after a long rest, it will not be stronger, it will be painful instead. So start small.

Exercise your willpower by letting him win some easy round.

1) It’s never easy. Before anything, we need to establish that it’s never easy to overcome temptation or procrastination. It’s not impossible though. Once you understand this, you will know that it will take a lot of effort to win the war. And that itself will strengthen your willpower tremendously.

2) 1 minute timer. Set your timer in your cellphone for 1 minute to rest during working. Enjoy that 1 minute and when it’s up, straight away continue working. This will be his first victory.

3) You’re the boss. How about saying this exact word everytime you sense your willpower is about to be defeated. Just imagine he’s really the boss of you.

Some may not like being bossed around, but who else would be a better boss if not the best part of you – willpower

4) Start the tough war. It’s easier to let willpower win when we really enjoy what he is asking us to do. For example, eating ice cream. For a start this may be a good idea, just to let him win a few round.

But we will need to step up a bit by start winning some tougher rounds. Maybe you don’t want to go to work or washing your car. Win this. And your willpower will immediately be stronger.

5) Never negotiate. Temptation being a temptation, is tricky with words. They know exactly how to manipulate you into letting them win. Try not to negotiate. An example of negotiating is “Ok, I will wash the dishes, but afterward I’m going to play PS2 for the entire night”. You see what they’re doing?

This kind of winning will never strengthen your willpower. It will only make it worse.

- I wonder -
Any other methods to strengthen our willpower?

———- Personal Note ———–
I always have fancy dream usually in the last hour of my sleep. The kind of dream that you will want to know how it ends. The most recent is how I survive being flown away by a major tornado

Photo Credit – doughkeeney

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