Like to recommend one of my favorite write Tim Ferris from 4 hours work week
If you like you life being productivity yet wanna avoid the toxic hustle culture with 24/7 needed on your email and social media. I highly recommend following this guy. So after many books writing and a successful podcast, he is also constantly traveling and entrepreneur business.
Main take away of this clip is that he say, if you like to start something or business, create your own category, stay lean and small intentionally and do work that is irreplaceable. Focus on your 1000 true fan base using 80/20 principle to eliminate those clients that contribute little to your bottom line. Lastly, stay focus on your purpose and do not lose sight of why you start something.
The effective executive by Peter f. Drucker. Doing something well doesn’t make it important. Dont screw yourself by doing a lot of unimportant efficiently and quickly.
80/20 principle known as pareto’s law Richard. How to focus your time nurturing the Low maintain eye high yield customer and drop the bulk of exhausting but mean little to your bottom line.
Vagabonding by Rolf potts about materialism and what is less is more philosophy when you lose sight on your purpose.
Easily differentiated product that you can explain it simply. Focus on 1000 true fans with clear and measurable objectives with check in weekly, monthly or quarterly or monthly to stay on track of your performance. You are going to be better than those 90% who went in planning to fail. As they fail to plan.
One of the best skills my ex boss taught me was how he managed to achieve so much with so little. He has a 3 killer skill that I love to share with you. Art of delegation, art of mesmerising email and art of convincing.
Today I share his Art of mesmerising email in 7C method.
Clear and unambiguous
Any email should contain 3 important portion. Background, purpose and rationale (optional) with a call to action.
Concise and straight forward
If things can be said in 1 sentence, do not make it into 3. Less is more. Remove all redundancy and keep your email short.
Consistent and keep to it
Do not sit on the fence while being ask for opinion. State your opinion only if you mean to keep to it. This will enforce confidence to your superior.
Your content, tonality and body language should stay as consistent too.
Correct and avoid mistake
Always check your content to make sure you are impressing your thoughts correctly before you send the email.
Coherent with chronological flow
Make sure your email has a flow that is logical. Use cause and effect use numbering sequence as much as possible.
Complete with a call to action
Make sure all minimal details are provided. Like time, place, people and all other information are included and concluded. Use 5 “W” method.
Courteous and polite
Never be rude even if you have to be direct. No one can reject a smiling person. Try to praise and show gratitude even you are going to provide a constructive feedback.
If there are one things I learn from my ex boss. That will be the art of writing an irresistible email. With that, this will be my ultimate guide for reference. It’s always better to slow down and write then to rush through a shabby email.
Relax, this is not an ultimate guide on journaling, which you are required to sit back and relax with a cuppa. This is just my "pen for thoughts moment" from my long missing in action from blogsphere. (bare with my lingo)
Ever since I shamelessly call myself a blogger when I started my blog in 2003. (Intentionally no-link follow back). I in fact had been constantly blogging from 2003 - 2014 and reduce to lesser frequency till 2019 and stopped. I started a blog with the intention to improve my English although it didn't help in an obvious way since I still writing poorly now, but it did also gave me fair share of benefit.
Blogging since 2003 till 2019 and RIP, in the memories
Over the years, it gave me a time to slow down to reflect while writing. You know you need to think first right, if you are writing with an audience in mind.
This helps me in being more empathy to other's feeling.
Being more grateful to life and find gratitude in my social happenings
Improve memory by reciting verse and quotes
Save me time by showing people the post instead of me having to repeat the same old story over and over again
Provide social proof to things that I had said because apparently I cannot be setting the lies up from so many years ago right?
Best of all, it also taught me many skills from self learning design as last time I love to play around with template and blogskin.
Skills I picked up and not limited to, writing / branding / web design / SEO / marketing / html / love for life long learning and reading since I constantly hope to increase readership. Amid I fell short in gaining audience at all.
My blog had close to zero followers.
I am impress for myself too for still blogging for a good 16 years. And then suddenly in 2019. I completely given up as you know blogging takes up too much time and the content I wrote are those everyday story. Being a Hikikomori as what Japanese call it and Chinese they this as 废青。
Hikikomori are people who isolate themselves in their home, cutting themselves off intentionally from society and becoming for all intents and purposes a hermit.
Hikikomori: Why Are So Many Japanese Staying At Home?
But since moving from blogspot to wordpress, with the new mobile app from wordpress to allow blogging even during commuting, there is not reason not to use this platform as an "idea dump".
I am a big believer of decluttering, recently made popular by 断舍离, the Japanese author that always speak about "sparking joy". The power of decluttering idea out from my mind improve workplace productivity.
I keeping it short this time.
Nutshell is that I am returning to blogging, I mean journaling. Blogging is so yesteryear lingo. Now I shamelessly call myself a journalist / columnist / writer. This term is "in" recently.
I just throwing out there about the 2 journaling method that I had been practicing recently and hopes this can helps people to start benefit from daily reflect since Singapore is rolling back to social distancing again.
5 minutes Journal
5 minutes journal : To improve focus, and begin the day with gratitude and positivity. Also reduce stress by pre determining what work as "enough" (prevent overworking) and best of all, it takes only 5 minutes at most.
Being busy may not mean it is productive, and being productive don't necessary mean it is effective. Work is done when a force causes an object to move.
It doesn't matter how hard you punch when you are missing the target and it doesn't matter how fast you run if you are heading in the wrong direction.
garynbc
Bullet Journal
Bullet Journal : Give me a reason to always carry some paper around to avoid the shiny new toy syndrome. I agree it is too complexed system but I always just selective pick a right concept within a system and implement so that it is suitable for me.
Concept that suit me : Pen down the tasks for the day on a piece of paper. (Require paper to work, no digitalization of eNotes). You cancel off all task completed for the day and have to rewrite those that is undone to next day on fresh piece of paper. If you follow this strictly, it will enable you to question if the task is worth re writing everyday if you are procrastinating on purpose for so many days.
Hope this 2 journaling inspire you to start sharing the same habit as me. Enjoy the 1% compounding effect of starting atomic habits
