In this article, I am going to teach you how to make your Gmail inbox the central hub of your Internet experience. Plus give you some more time saving automation tips including:

• Setting goals with Google
• Get Google to send you a to-do list every day like clockwork
• Filter your email like a pro (and labelling)
• How to sign up for services and avoid email spam
• Using easy-to-create scripts that work at any computer to save you tonnes of time
• Centralizing your notes in a place where they’re easy to recall (free!)
• Minimize Facebook/Twitter time and still get what you want in a way that suits you
• Moving your documents digitally into “the cloud”
• Execute simple emails to update Twitter/Facebook
• Upload videos and save notes from anywhere with email access (including your phone)

Setting Goals

Before this month I set goals on paper using the system I raved about in a previous article. I feel paper is equipment heavy and not flexible enough. Google can change appointments without looking messy. In my paper calendar, I’d write a goal, then change my mind and not have enough space to write a new one.

I was using a paper system because I felt I couldn’t handle working online because of distractions so I knew I had to face this challenge. You won’t see “Google Goals” being released any time but you can combine Google’s existing products to take care of all of your needs in a way that is free, flexible and bends to suit you.

For some, moving from paper to digital can make things more complicated but it doesn’t have to be the case. This system involves a bit of work upfront but after a week you will be plain sailing.

The first thing is to decide what goal to set yourself and identify a habit to get you there. If you want to start your own business writing online, you could install the habit of writing 1000 words per day. Now let Google do all the organizing for you.

If you don’t have a Google account yet, sign up for free here and get used to Google Calendar and Google Mail. If you prefer another email service then you can sign up for a Google account, and set Gmail to automatically forward your mail to your main account. You can set it up so all of your email addresses receives and sends email from this account.

Open Google Calendar and create a new calendar called “Routines”. On tomorrows date enter write 50 words. Then the day after than enter write 100 words and so on for the next 20 days increasing by 50 words per day. When you get to day 20 you will be at 1000 words and for the 10 days after that you will be solidifying the habit you’ve created. Enter into the calendar 1000 words per day on these last 10 days. Many days you will find yourself writing over your minimum but as long as you hit the minimum everything will be fine.

Now here’s the brilliant part. Go to the “My Calendars” on the left and click the arrow next to the calendar your habits are on and then click “Notifications”. Check the email box next to “Daily Agenda” near the bottom and click “Save”. From now on, every day you will get a reminder in your email inbox at 5am of what is in your Habits calendar for the day. You can change your calendar appointments any time before that email is sent and it will get updated.

If you want to be reminded that an event is coming up, you can set a reminder. Create a new event or click an old one to edit it and on the right under options, you can add an email reminder to appear at a time before the event determined by you.

If you want to set a new routine in your life I recommend you start on the first of the month. Go to Google Calendar and create an appointment on the first of the next month in your Routines calendar. If you want to get up at 5am, write that in the calendar and select when if it needs to be done at a specific time.

Now click “repeat”, scroll to “daily”. Check “until” and then click the last day of the calendar month. Return to your calendar and it should have a new appointment repeated daily for the next month. Now sync that calendar to Gmail like we did above, and it will remind you every day. Try not to focus on any other major goals during this time to maximise your focus and chance of success.

Gmail is so flexible that you can sync just one calendar or all of them. Here’s my current calendar setup:

To Do List (Blue) – Tasks that I’ve decided are priority for today.
Routines (Red) – Habits I’ve developed and am in the process of developing. eg. Raw food diet, daily exercise, wake at 5am. I create a single event, set it to repeat daily for the next month and if it goes well, the rest of the year.
What else is happening today (Turquoise) – Things that aren’t important enough to get on the To Do List but that I may do when it’s finished.

I mention the colours because in the email I can tell by colour what is most important.

All that’s in my morning inbox is my schedule for the day. The rest is sorted into folders to be processed after my tasks are complete. It might take a while to get to this point of just one email, but there’s no rush. Spam needs to be deleted and emails need to be filed correctly over time as they come in.

You can sometimes leave emails that are marked too. If you see something in ‘Paypal’, you might know it is a receipt for a payment and doesn’t need processing. Here’s what my email inbox looks like most mornings.

(Click to enlarge. It will open in a new window)

We sometimes get email from people who haven’t contacted us before and that’s not sortable, is it? If you want to give your email to someone who you meet on a night out but don’t want it messing up your clean inbox there is a work around. You’d usually write something like JohnSmith@gmail.com. Iif you change it to JohnSmith+3@gmail.com then the email will still get to your inbox. Anything you put after the ‘+’ sign and before the @ will be OK. Then go to Filters in Gmail, set a filter for all email with the words “Johnsmith+3@gmail.com” to go to a label called Socializing.

Sometimes you sign up for sites for access but don’t want any emails from them. They might send spam or pass on your data to someone else who does. Use this technique again to sign up with an email address like “JohnSmith+nottoday@gmail.com” and set a filter for all mail to that address to be deleted.



About Habits

Habits can get you anything you want in life. Success is repeated action in the right direction. It will feel all so natural after just 30 days. It’s June 1st today, and this would be a perfect opportunity as it has exactly 30 days. If you stick to this simple effective technique and let the system work for you, I promise you will find success.

Then, install a habit next month of improving your writing in a little way by 1% each day. A month from now your writing will be 34% better. Little daily changes are big overall changes. You won’t need extreme willpower because there is no time where you really have to push your comfort zone. You start small and build. Brick by brick.

I’ve used this to get paid writing posts. I set the goal of applying for 3 every day and got 4 within 2 weeks. I figured if I applied for 150 positions in a month, someone has to hire me! This system is magical in that failure is not possible. If you change your daily habits you can achieve anything.

I also used this to eat a 100% Raw Food Diet. I never thought I could at the start but now it felt like the most natural thing in the world. That’s the power of 30 days. It taught me a lot about the nature of mind. It tells you something is absolutely impossible and 30 days later you are living that impossible reality. That’s the power of a limiting belief.



Gmail Task List

Gmail has a simple yet great task tool in the left column of Gmail which can be opened to a full screen. When I get the to do list email each morning, I immediately put the list on the task list with the hardest task at the top of the list. This way, I’m always rewarded with an easier task.



Google Labs

Google Labs has great little features to help you in Gmail. Go to Gmail > Settings (top right) > Labs and browse. I use the “Send and Archive” button which allows you to send and archive an email in one click when it’s been sent and also use the “Undo Send” which allows you to undo sending a message up to 20 seconds afterwards. This is a real lifesaver! Other options include the hilarious “Mail Goggles” which makes you solve simple maths problems before you can send an email to make you think twice.



Gmail Shortcuts

Google has installed shortcuts for many of their programs which save you tonnes of time if you use their products daily. You can print off or just browse here:

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Google Reader
• Google Search Shortcuts
• Youtube/Google Video – uses the same as Google Search Shortcuts. Great for finding specific videos

For Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Reader you can view the shortcuts by pressing “?” and then pressing “Esc” to remove it. Gmail Labs also has a feature to allow you to create your own shortcuts.



AutoHotKeys Scripts

Whilst we’re on the subject of shortcuts, let me introduce you to free program AutoHotKeys ( (about / download / quick start tutorial / forums). It’s a free tool which allows you to create keyboard shortcuts to simplify common tasks. It has many uses to save time. Don’t be put off by the way, I’ve never programmed a line of code in my life and found it simple to use.

I use it to do things like:

• pen regularly visited websites
• access my music
• shut down my computer in one second

I’ve set it up so the useless key between ‘Alt Gr ‘and ‘Ctrl’ is set up to minimize all windows and maximize once pressed again. It removes the need for clutter on my desktop as I can just link to them all.

The best thing is that you can download a .exe file of the script you have created and email it to yourself in Gmail (or upload to Google Docs storage) and run it from any Windows machine with email access. The Google Docs storage is 1GB total and 250MB maximum for a single file. It can be found here and is a great replacement for your USB stick.

If you get confused about what the shortcuts are, I’d recommend creating a desktop background with them on so you see them regularly. Also, use each one with a letter that makes sense. You might want to use “Windows Key and D” to open Google Docs. I’ve added the basics of my AutoHotKeys script here which you can use as a basis or add to your own script.



What about Google having all my data?

I don’t feel scared that Google or Facebook will abuse my data to a level that will bother me. The whole uproad about Facebook recently only affected me because I wanted to lower the amount that I used Facebook anyways rather than that I cared about my data. But I realise others are a lot more private than me. If anything absolutely major did come up I’m sure I would find out and there are many alternatives. You could go from

Google’s Picasa –> Flickr
Google Docs –> Zoho
Facebook Video –> Youtube/Vimeo – I’d actually start with Youtube for uploading videos for business OR personal video. Facebook video is terrible.
Facebook Status Updates —> Twitter only

I just like how clean and efficient Google is and expect to use them for a long time.



How to stop wasting time on Twitter/Facebook

There’s a couple of free tools that I use that are fantastic for this. The first one is TweetByMail (free). Staying with the theme of controlling everything from Gmail, it allows me to send emails to update my Twitter. I’ve used Facebook’s SelectiveTwitter application to automatically send my Tweets to Facebook whenever I end them with the hashtag #fb. This way I don’t have to visit the site where we will procrastinate.

The next one is my personal favourite and is called NutShellMail (free)

(Click to enlarge. It will open in a new window)

You can set up NutShellMail to land in your inbox before you wake just like the task list. It gives you a highly customizable email which tells you all about what’s gone on in the last 24 hours on your social networking pages. It works with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace. It helps you to get rid of those annoying messages when someone comments on your wall or likes your status. You might think you will miss out on big social events but people will get hold of you another way.

You can stop Twitter sending you annoying update every time someone follows me through Twitter notification settings.

Since running this site, I like to update my followers on Twitter/Facebook but don’t want to have to log in 3-4 times to send them. This is where SocialOomph (free) comes in. It lets you send updates to Twitter at precise times. I tend to schedule 3 in the morning to publish at something like 9am, midday and 7pm, People still get updates from me and I don’t even have to be there.

Another great feature of SocialOomph if you’re running a business account is that it can send a message to new followers automatically to forward them to your site or tell them about yourself.



Google Docs

I use Google Docs to digitize nearly all text documents. I only have music stored on one computer. Google has mountains of space for my needs on Docs and odds are they have enough for you too. I store things like PDFs and scanned documents in my Skydrive account (free) because it has more space.

The filling system they have is great. You can add a bookmark-like star to important items, put items into folders and use the inbuilt search feature to find old or related articles. I store things like my goals list, ideas for posts and the posts themselves before they’re published. It automatically saves your post as you’re writing it and I’ve never had a situation where I was writing something and I lost it completely because my Internet cut off.

If you’re a fan of GTD (Getting Things Done) or similar systems, you can integrate Google Docs. If you have an “@My Boss” list for things you have to ask your boss about for example, you can create a document called @Boss and bring it up on your smart-phone via Google’s free docs application and update or read it there and then.

Docs also integrates with the book reading system that I recently blogged about.The basic principle is that you take notes on your books, upload these to Google Docs and only keep a few really high quality high books but you can read more here.



Uploading via Email

Sites that you can upload to via email include:

• Facebook Photo/Video
• Flickr Photos
• A WordPress blog where you store notes. You can store notes here whenever you get one via email which is great for those great ideas you get on the move (more on that later).
• Youtube Videos

If you add the email address to your Gmail contacts then you just start typing something like “Facebook upload” and it will come up. You don’t have to memorize the address. To add a contact, click “Contact” on the left in Gmail and above “My Contacts” click the “+” sign next to the little man and enter details.



Automating Reminders

For some things, you want to be reminded when they become available like videos of your latest shows etc – FeedMyInbox (free) is fantastic for this. You simply find the RSS Feed URL of the site you want the updates for and FeedMyInbox will automatically send you a link when the feed is updated. I use this for watching Family Guy (RSS feed link).

If you watch lots of videos on-line, the best quality ones tend to be Megavideo. They have a 72 minutes daily limit but this can be worked around. Make sure you’re using Firefox browser and download the Illimitux Add-on and follow on screen instructions.



Collecting Notes

I used to track my calorie intake on blogspot sites daily so I could see how far I’ve come and make improvements along the way. Now I send my emails to a site where I tag them in the email and they are automatically organised into tagged sections for recall later.

I email what I’ve eaten and the total calorie amount daily to my WordPress site and write [tags calories] at the bottom and if the tag hasn’t been created yet, it is created new on the site. All I have to do to get all the calorie posts is go to the site, click the tag and they’re all listed in chronological order.

This could be used with workouts or simply to collect interesting links online. The only tough thing is remembering the tags to use but if you make them simple you’ll be fine. I picked a minimal theme called Sandbox. It’ s easy to navigate and has the tags displayed under each post. Make sure when you are registering your blog to enable the option to not allow Search Engines access to your website if there is confidential information on there. To create your own WordPress site, click here (free).



A Great Side Benefit

I love looking on Google Calendar over the past few months and being able to see how far I have come in terms of personal development. The times when I couldn’t get up at a regular time and slept all day keep me humble but also confident that I can do anything if I put my mind to it. It’s like a vision board for you except it’s looking back rather than forwards for motivation.



The Final Goal

You’ll get to a point where your email is extremely efficient. You set goals online, you have all of your documents/pictures/videos in “the cloud” (stored online) and your Twitter/Faceboo is minimized to what you want. Your email in-box is your processing centre for everything on-line and is constantly updated with everything you want, want to add and you’re free to change at any time.

I recommend blocking out a few spare hours to upload everything from your calendar to Google Calendar and then throwing away your old one so you are not tempted to go back to it. Upload the documents you currently have on your computer to Google Docs. If it makes you feel comfortable then back them up to your desktop using Google Gears too.

It works for me, now – this is all that’s important. In the future I may have a lot more possessions but for now I will minimize what I own. If it doesn’t work for you, don’t let people tell you that you have to get rid of things because you’re plugging into a certain mindset or whatever. Some people are comfortable with more possessions. I still think that most people can get rid of 20% of their possessions and be happier for it though.



Why Are You Minimizing?

I am minimizing possessions for detachment from things and to get rid of distractions. If all I had in my bedroom was a laptop and a table, I’d be forced into productivity and there would be no distractions to take my mind away. It’s for the feeling that I am free. That I am not held to judgement by the things I own. By owning little but being genuine I will attract people of a similar level. It speaks to peoples spirits, not their minds. In one swoop, I will get rid of lots of possible negative future friends in my life.

I differ from the main view on one major point. Many minimalists just concentrate on getting rid of their external junk. This can lead you to detachment but real change has to come from the inside. You have to consciously face and dis-empower your attachments. The inner detachment will lead to the outer one but the outer one not necessarily to the inner one. Once I feel I get back to a level where I feel unattached to objects, I may slowly add things back into my life. Only time will tell.

I’ve become a lot more conscious recently and after dropping so many inner attachments the outer objects feel dead and non essential to me now and having things like this in your environment feels wrong.



My Inspiration

My main inspiration is nature. Nature is the ultimate minimalist. It takes a human mind to create complexity. Everything gets used in nature. A gorilla eats a banana, throws it on the ground and its soaked back into the Earth to be re-used as nutrients for trees or maybe to make the ground more fertile for seeds. No waste, no non-essentials. Nature will take over our possessions one day when they break down or we die so would you rather mke the choice conscious instead of accepting the default?



How I Did It

The first thing is to make a list of your temporary possessions. Things like toiletries, washing machines, cutlery don’t count unless they’ve been hanging around for months unused. Now make a list of everything that you have in your possession. If you have hundreds of things already, you should get rid of some of them before this as compiling a list that large would take forever.

Now, get rid of are the most obvious things. Clothes that are too big, too small, have stains on them or are simply not you anymore. After that things like money boxes and little presents and cuddly toys that you have had for years doing nothing are the best to go. Only get rid of a maximum of 10% of your things here.

After this first batch, I’d say take pictures of everything you own. Now you can slowly go through each thing getting rid of things that you will not need that are on your “maybe” list. You could set a 30-day trial of getting rid of 2 or 3 items per day for a month. If you are not looking at becoming a traveller in the next few weeks, what’s the rush?

Setting a limit of 1 or 2 items each day if you have 200 items now could whittle them down to 140 within a month and you’d feel comfortable about it. If you get rid of things too quickly you’ll be too far out of your comfort zone. By all means go on a purge. But or those things you feel an emotional attachment towards it is better to rid yourself of slowly. They were accumulated slowly after all.

Money is the ultimate value. With lots of money, you an afford to own very little but have access to it things whenever you want them. You can pick up a t-shirt for £5 for example.

With emotionally attached items you may want to consider just taking a picture of them (or scanning then if they’re letters/birthday cards) so you can keep the memory but ditch the physical thing.

Find friends willing to swap with your unwanted possessions with thing they have that you really want. This is especially useful for luxury items that you want rid of. I plan to get rid of my bicycle and bench watch and expect to get some good deals for these in exchange for really useful items.

About this time you may want to start telling people about your new minimalist view. This will shock a lot of people and some of them will think it is selfish that you turn away birthday gifts etc. It reminds me of some advice: “When talking to a fool, make sure the other person isn’t doing the same thing”. When they bring up resistance, don’t get drawn in, rise above.

If they insist on a gift say you will only take certain things. Make your own list but a sample may include:

• Money
• Donations to a charity in my name
• Extremely Useful Things

Questions To Ask When Minimizing

• Should I save for next season (winter/summer)? - Yes, but only keep minimum clothes. If you’re expecting to grow or get smaller over the next few months then get rid of what you can and save the bare essentials that fit your physical body and style.
• Ask myself, is there a free alternative to what I’m doing that is just as effective? - I realise that I don’t really need the weights that I have at the moment (dumbbells/barbells/JML Bar) because they are so light that I could get just as effective a workout using my body weight and tabata intervals (pushups/pullups/situps/elevated push-ups). It would also mean I could workout anywhere.
• If I had to, how could I get by without this item? – This is a very powerful question. Ask your mind the right question and wait. It usually finds a really creative answer. I asked this about clothes and got the answer that I could figure out how often I clean them so I always have fresh ones but do not own too many items. I will test this for a month soon.
• Ask myself. could I just get rid of this because its used so irregularly that I’d be better off just buying/borrowing one when I need one? – Examples include – a football pump, a full suit that never gets used.

Minimalism is a Journey

Minimalism is the internal and external minimization of unnecessary things. It’s like happiness in a way that it’s not a destination that you reach, it’s a journey and a state of mind that you hold in the present. You won’t wake up one day a minimalist when yesterday you were not. You consciously decide to bring it into your life and things will come and go. Underneath, you stay unattached, simple and minimal. That’s the basis of it.



Treasured Memories

There is attachment in life and then there is the beautiful feeling you get whenever you remember someone or something. Having one or two little possessions that remind you of great people who’ve passed away or brilliant times in your life is not a bad thing and I’d go as far as to recommend it. It brings your spirit up when you think of them and is a positive influence.



The List

Here’s the list of the 86 things that I currently own.

Books x 20

Casual Shirts (12)
11 x short sleeved
1 x long sleeved

Smart Shirts x 1

Pants/Shorts (10)
Jeans x 4
Running Shorts x 2
Smart Black Pants x 1
Running Pants x 1
Pyjama Pants x 1
Long Johns x 1

Other Clothes (2)

2 x full suit

Exercise Equipment (6)

1 x set of small dumbbells
1 x set of big dumbbells/barbells
2 x football
1 x BMX bike
1 x JML pushup bar

Computer/Electronics (5)

Laptop x 1
SD Card x 1
USB Stick x 1
1 x ipod shuffle
Mobile/Charger x 1

Shoes (5)

Steel Toe Cap Boots x 1
Snow Boots x 1
Brown Smart Loafers x 1
1 x flip flops
1 x plimsolls

Jackets/Jumpers (5)

2 x jumper
2 x hoody
1 x winter jacket

Misc. (20)

1 x set of bike keys
1 x drawstring bag
1 x stanley knife
1 x cycle oil
1 x broken pair of glasses
1 x england flag
1 x lever arch file
1 x ear plugs
1 x wallet
1 x bench watch
1 x bench money box
1 x diary
1 x stack of paper
1 x set of keys for relatives house
1 x nhs donor card
1 x current account card
1 x pen
1 x money box
1 x plastic wallet with essential documents
1 x library card

I would still estimate that I don’t need or regularly use 50% of this stuff so lots of this will be going over the next month. I aim to get some more clothes, replace old ones, reduce exercise equipment and get out in nature to exercise and experience the elements.

I will be keeping an updated list of my posessions called “Everything I own” over here. I’ll update it regularly when I get rid of things or add a new thing and keep the old list so that we can track the minimalist progress.



Will Minimalism Work For You?

Like it or not we all live in a society that is largely consumption based. We eat too much food, consume too much information and you sometimes feel like you’re drowning in a sea of “things”. Minimalism will work for you if you feel lost in stuff, if you lack concentration in your life and if you are an experimenter who likes to try things out for themselves.

It’s like I always say though. My system works for ME. Don’t feel that you have to use the whole system, just pick and choose what resonates with you and what doesn’t. If it works for you then great, if not then I apologize for wasting your time .

When you’re finished eating, taking the food straight to the outdoor bin gets it off your plate (couldn’t resist) and it’s gone. A great idea is to get rid of your bin from your kitchen which forces you into the habit. You will always have a really clean looking house for when people come around and there will be no lingering smells or overflowing bins.

If I’m going downstairs, I take my paper bin every time, and just nip outside to empty it. It takes literally 10 seconds and keeps my house fresh and neat. This habit works well with a Raw Food Diet which I adopted and blogged about recently.You don’t have to spend forever cleaning dishes because fruit and veg doesn’t stick to the plates like meat. You eat, put the foods in the outdoor bins, rinse your plate and you’re done.

You also start to condition a mental habit which is “I’ll get things done now so they don’t grow into something huge I can’t handle”. This skill will naturally transfer to other areas of your life like your finances, health and relationships. Action will become your first response.



2. Enjoying Washing The Dishes

I genuinely enjoy washing the dishes. I love the warmth and the little rainbows inside the bubbles and the calm centred moment it offers me. Experience the vibrant colours of life. Stroke your face with a hot towel, feel the sharpness of the wind on your skin or the sun on your neck, watch a Dad teaching his son to ride a bike on the local park.

There is beauty in these things. They get you out of thought and in to experiencing this moment. The media industry imprints a view of life upon us to only be really happy in the big moments – weddings, job raises, the birth of a child etc. If this is true then are we due to experience at best average happiness for 99% of our life?

99% of life is small moments and to not appreciate them is a dis-service to yourself and everyone else. An unhappy you is useless to everyone. What sounds, sights and smells can you appreciate right now around you if you chose to? Enjoy your little slice of perfection.



3. Spice Up Dull Tasks

Every day I have to eat 100g of Brazil Nuts as part of my diet, it gets boring quickly. I do things like go for a walk and eat them or spread them throughout the day or eat them with Watermelon or an Orange. If your mind is focused on another task when you perform something boring then the task will get done but you won’t have to suffer through it.

You could listen to music whilst cleaning, return phone calls whilst riding your bike or make plans for tomorrow in your head when you’re sat in a boring meeting. There’s opportunities everywhere once you start looking around and you are only limited by your creativity.



4. Consciously Slow

The “super fast” side of personal development is mostly bogus. People who tell you productivity is about speed usually aren’t productive themselves. They tend to do lots of things but none of the right things and so the slower turtle wins the race. Do you agree with me here? Look at them in their eyes – are they deeply satisfied running about their lives? Do they have the complete lifestyle that you want or do you have a more suitable role model in mind?

I’m enjoying the ride and don’t plan on arriving early. I want to soak up all the experience life has to offer. Change happens in an instant but it takes time to manifest in the physical world so you might as well get comfortable and enjoy the journey. A great way is through slower movement.

Whenever your body is moving fast so is your mind. Consciously slowing down your body will immediately affect your mind and simplify your thoughts creating the space to get out of your thoughts and into experiencing this moment. Not to mention how sexy slow moving people look .



5. Read One Book At A Time

Do you have lots of books strewn around with folded corners and bookmarked pages left half read? Until recently, have about 5 or 6 on the go at any one time. You don’t get much out of books like that. So I developed a system for it. I created a complimentary flowchart diagram to simplify it for you too. It’s based around taking notes on books, digitizing the notes and only keeping in the long term a core selection of under 10 books.

Reading one book at a time increases your consciousness about what you’re reading. You have to finish the book before moving onto the next one so this will force you to pick better quality books so you don’t have to suffer through terrible ones.



6. Plastic Fantastic

Have you ever wondered if you could just never use cash and get by? I do 99% of the time. Places like bars have a minimum price of £2.50 ($5) to use plastic but just buy your friends drink and get them to give the to buy you the next one. We are creative enough to get around this. No coins feels great. My pockets now just hold my cash card, my house key and one pen. Simples!



7. One Pen

I use one pen, and it has my name on it. People know its mine and it’s always with me. Doing this will make sure that you never have that feeling on the phone or when you pat all your pockets looking for those darn elusive pens! Plus, it looks great when you’re always prepared with a pen.



8. Paperize Your Productivity

When it comes to staying organized I stick with good ol’ pen and paper. It’s so easy to get drawn in on-line to the latest shiniest new application and we start to forget the original purpose is to be productive. With pen and paper its easy. There’s no adverts to distract you, you just write your goals and they stay there. If in doubt, write it out.



9. Stop Talking So Much

We have two ears and one mouth. Is God having a little joke with us here? Some say he’s showing us to listen twice as much as we talk. Talking uses a lot of energy. Do you ever find that people who talk a lot are trying so hard to connect with the other person but the other person just wants someone to listen! It doesn’t work. By doubling your listening in conversations, you will connect much deeper, appear profound and save yourself lots of energy.



10. Pay off Lots At Once On Smaller Bills

If you have a small monthly bill then consider opening a new account and depositing 6 months worth of payments and setting up a direct debit. You decide what a small amount is. This unloads the hassle from your mind and allows you to concentrate on other areas of your life safe in the knowledge that this one is sorted for the medium term. Simply remind yourself to restart payments by writing a reminder in your diary a couple of weeks in advance.



11. Always See An Opportunity to grow

Develop a certainty that every event and person in life is there to make me grow. If someone is annoying you, you can grow from it. It’s an opportunity to develop your humility, patience, unconditional love and even humour. It could be the push that you need to find a new group of friends or an opportunity to show your partner your moral strength. There is always an opportunity for growth.

Can doing yard work for an elderly relative be framed as a chance to catch up and get some exercise? Could you frame working at a dull job for a while as disciplining yourself to be persistent for when you finally quit and work for yourself? Can’t your annoying boss be a lesson is laughing at yourself and humility?



12. Benefit From Social Networking Without Wasting Time

I use a site called “SocialOomph“ (The free option) and Twitters Official Facebook Application (Always Free). Combined, they can save you lots of time with social networking. The Facebook/Twitter Application lets you update Facebook via Twitter. I set it up so every Tweet appears immediately on my Facebook, reaching all of my online friends in one swoop. The coolest bit about this is that SocialOomph allows you to schedule Tweets.

You set a Tweet now, and it appears at a time of your choosing. In the morning I might write 3 statuses that are published at 9am, 2pm and 9pm. You can update your friends on how your day has been without ever having to visit the tempting Facebook interface and let it post for you. I give myself a timed 30 minutes in the morning on Facebook and that’s it for the day. It’s so efficient and I heartily recommend it. It spares you energy and lots of time to pour into other areas of your life that excite you more.

I wanted access to the information from my books but didn’t want them in my home as they take up space and re-reading books for information is inefficient. So, I created my own system . It’s minimalistic, flexible and fills my needs.

This system will suit you if:

• You want more physical space
• You enjoy minimizing your possessions
• You have books lying about unfinished
• You never want to re-read a book again
• You want to digitize as much of your paper as you can
• You want an organized system for new books that you buy
• You feel that sorting your books into a system would give you mental clarity
• You want to extract the best lessons from a book and convert them into real life lessons

THE FIRST PURGE

The first step is to put all the books you have now into the system. When they’re in the system we can learn how to deal with new books.


Collect Your Books

Next, put aside a few hours to process all of your books. Maybe a day at the weekend or an evening. Collect them all together and get them in front of you on the floor.


Elimination

Get rid of all the books that you don’t want to read even if you’ve already started them. Also get rid of books that you have read and don’t want to come back to in the future. Don’t feel obliged to finish a book that bores the life out of you. You can give them away. Give to needy friends, sell on-line or give them to your local library and loan them out if you need them back.


Select Your Keepers

Are there some books that you just know that you’ll want to keep with you even after you’ve read them and taken notes on them?. Be strict here. Would notes do really and it’s just an emotional attachment?

I recommend setting a permanent limit on the number of books you can keep. You don’t have to max out that limit now. It’s like an overdraft, it’s just for emergencies. I chose a limit of five, but only have four in the list now. This is your “Keepers List”.

The “Keepers List” books are there for you to dip into whenever you want. These are the only books that will stay with you for the long term. You can change them but it may require sacrificing another book.


Separation

On paper or preferably a computer create three lists:

1. The ‘Keepers List’
2. Books you want to take notes on immediately without a re-read to decide if they’re good enough (called the “Notes List“)
3. Books to read/re-read before deciding whether they’re worth taking notes on – called the (“Reading List“)

Learn To Speed Read

Before you start processing the books I would seriously recommend learning to speed read so that you can scan a book before deciding whether it should progress to the “Notes List”.  A book I own and would recommend is The Speed Reading Book by Tony Buzan. Speed Reading is a set of simple techniques for reading at significantly faster speeds than normal. Imagine reading every book in a quarter of the usual time. I’d say you’d easily half your reading time compared to reading the book in a normal way, very easily.

The Three Stages

Stage 1 – What To Read Next?  (Reading Stage)

Is there a topic/book that you want to dive into right now that really gets you pumped? Or even one that you would love to collate notes on to get a view of the bigger picture? Or just simply to get them out of the way and off your mind? If so, put these books at the top of your “Reading List“. Pick one and start speed reading it straight away. If it’s good enough it will go to the ‘Notes List’ Stage. If not, you can get rid of it.

Minimize the books that you bring into your life during this purging period. Don’t buy and ask others not to give you any. If they do, then they simply go to the bottom of the ‘Reading List’ so that you can process the ones that you already have.


Stage 2 -Take Notes (Notes Stage)

If you decided that the book was good enough to take notes on, it progresses to this stage. Go back through it this time at a slower rate, taking notes as you go along in a way that will make it easy for you to quickly relearn in the future.

Go through the books that we decided before were in your ‘Notes List’ before progressing with books on the ‘Reading List’.

Go out there and apply what you learn and this is what I call your ‘Studying Book’. Study it you until you’ve achieved a level you’re happy with. Taking notes on personal development books is only good as a backup, their needs to be action. There’s no rush to get through the list. This is why I recommend being so picky with your reading books.


Stage 3 – Is it A Keeper? (Keepers Stage)

At this stage you can decide whether the book qualifies to be added to your ‘Keeper List’. Most wont but maybe one book per year will change on it. Most books can just have the lessons drawn out of them. If it’s not good enough to be a Keeper then learn from it, take notes and get rid of it.

Here’s a simplified flowchart diagram of the  system and three stages.

(click to maximise. It will open in a new window and can be printed with my permission.)


Digitizing

If you’re digitizing your notes then I recommend you use Google Docs. It has every feature you could want plus more. It has highlighting, folders, remote access, can be accessed off-line and from anywhere with an internet connection and is totally free.  The best feature is that it has a search function to separate notes into genres so they’re easier to find. Applying this system over years could give you a lot of notes after all.


Topic Notes

You’ll get to a point where you have made notes on several books in one area. You will start seeing patterns and want to keep note of them. I recommend keeping an editable document that combines ALL of the notes on this topic condensed further than the original ones. You will learn more and more as you go along and eventually have everything that you have learned on a topic on one page. You can add to this with information you read on-line, hear about from other people or learn through personal experience.


Once All Is Done

It’ll feel great once you’ve got this up and running. You’ll have something that lets you know exactly what will happen with books once they come into your life and you’ll have access to the information without the bulk. They will be processed efficiently and you will have peace of mind knowing that all the information is being dealt with.


Notes

1. I’d recommend getting several books on one area and taking notes on them all.
2. Go To Philosophers Notes for a wide range of notes on Personal Development (Text and Audio) to save you time. If you have a personal development book already then you could go to the site and use some of the notes there. I’d always recommend buying a book rather than just reading notes about it because you might pick up a gem that someone else missed. They might be detailed enough for you or at least a great starting point. Another idea is to do an internet search for Book Title Notes eg. The Power Of Now Notes.
3. You can use this system for exam revision but with taking more detailed notes. The section on topic notes applied especially here.
4. The system is suited at factual books but could as easily apply to lessons that you’ve learned from fiction books too. If you read a Harry Potter book (crap example!!!) and it fired off some creative ideas then you’re still learning something and should jot it down and then implement it.
5. I have no fears about digitizing my notes. I’ve been doing it for years and I’ve never had a problem. If you are nervous that you will lose the notes then you can always back them up to an external harddrive. Documents hardly take up any space at all.
6. Getting all the notes on a specific area in front of you allows you to get a great zoomed out view of the greater underlying principles at hand. You can’t get experiences like this from just reading them one after another as you’re too focused on the shallower concepts.
7. Work the system to your own needs. You don’t need to do everything I’ve set out here. Be creative and do what suits you, that’s how I developed this system.
8. You could do this with audio programs and documentaries. I’ve listened to so many audio programs over the years and sometimes they’re great to re-listen to just for motivation but why not extract the information and move them on?
9. If time goes by and you don’t want to read a book any more just get rid of it. Life’s too short.
10. It might be a bit messy at first as you go through books on unrelated areas but in the future you can buy several books on one area and condense the notes for future use and it will allow you to get deeper into a topic than jumping between different areas.
11. (For those of you interested, my Keepers at the moment are

• Personal Development for Smart People - Steve Pavlina
• Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu
• The Power Of Now - Eckhart Tolle
• Stillness Speaks - Eckhart Tolle

My only productivity tool this year is My Pocket-Sized Diary. It offers a cruel 3 squared inches of writing space per day. I picked it up in December at my local WHSmiths store.

New productivity tools are often excuses for not finishing something on your to do list. A new tool gives you a quick lift while you check out its features but leave you unfulfilled when you have unfinished tasks at the end of the day.

Haven’t you ever felt you’re just doing things just to avoid completing what you know you should? Don’t get me wrong, there is some great productivity pr0n out there but for overhauling your life you’ll get it done by going simple from the start and building slowly.

Why So Small?

I picked a small diary on purpose. The bigger ones tempt me to fill the days with unimportant tasks and information. The writing area is so tiny that I just have space for the most important tasks and the other ones don’t get recorded and tend to solve themselves.

I Can Carry It And Tick Off Each Task – It’s like a PDA except it cost me $5. It doesn’t need charging, there’s no monthly subscription and I can sleep well at night knowing I’m going to achieve my goals.

It’s Pocket-Sized – If I’m with friends arranging something I’ll take it in my pocket with a pen to write down details. If I get an invite for a night out and I don’t know if I want to go yet, it goes in the “Notes” section in the back.

People Can Relate – People can relate to someone who pulls out a diary in public. It’s nice, simple and anyone could have one. Being around people who use intelligent words that you don’t understand or pull out a shiny new phone makes you feel inferior.

A year from now you could have totally changed your life around with this simple system. Telling friends that you started off with just a $5 diary will be a great Zero-To-Hero story.

Simplicity and Selectiveness : A Productivity System

I used to buy into the idea that a system that captures everything was the pinnacle of productivity but for 99% of people it’s over the top. Define the important, capture it, do it and let the rest slide. Be selective and let your pocket-sized diary be your calm, centred productivity heaven. The essential tasks get recorded there and you are fulfilled when you are done.

You will never be fulfilled if you have an endless to do list. I’ve tried it, but you’re welcome to find out by yourself. Fulfilment is found in accomplishing worthy goals and rewarding progress along the way.

Decline Invitations - If you don’t set guidelines on your time, others will. Decline invitations to do things you secretly don’t want to. Nobody can do this for you. If people get angry, it’s their issue to deal with. Be polite, and move on.

How To Set Goals

My aim for 2010 is to start a new habit each month which I will continue with after that month. I have a great section in the front for this and I hear that Jerry Seinfeld followed a similar system.

I have a couple of lines underneath to write what I want to accomplish that month and each day I circle the day if I’ve done it. For January for example I wrote “Up 9am daily, 200 hits to blog”. Simple and actionable.

It keeps you motivated to see you’ve gone 8 days in a row. It feels incredible to have a one page analysis of all your tasks from this year and see how far you’ve come. It’d be a nice gift to your kids one day.

I go by the idea that habits form goals. What you do daily, you become good at. By setting goals across different areas in this year I am going to totally transform myself in 12 months.

So far, this system has allowed me to…

• Wake at 9am daily
• Give up Alcohol
• Write for 1 hour daily
• Meditate for 30 minutes daily (highly recommended)
• Visualize daily
• Write 30 blog comments each day

And in the next few months I will adopt the habits of …

• Daily Exercise
• Going Vegan
• Earn a full-time income on-line
• Waking at 5am
• Ruthlessly minimizing computer time
• Moving into my own place
• Giving up TV for a month
• Socializing 3 times per week
• Setting an automated plan to pay debt

Once you’ve been doing it for a month you’ll start to see the magic. You will know for yourself that you can do anything if you keep it simple. It’s just a matter of time.

I set myself monthly goals in the same section. The goal for February is “250 daily hits on my blog or 100 daily visitors“. If I set a goal at the start of the month. On the 14th of the month I decide whether or not I’m on target to achieve it. If not, I double the workload, if I’m on course, there is no need to.

You can try the same productivity systems and fail again or you can use this system, build slowly, and have success guaranteed.

People will tell you to give them $29.95 for an “insider secret” but real secret is that there isn’t one. This brainless system IS changing my life this year. How do you feel about joining me?

Efficiency can be stripped down to two basic ideas:

• Minimising your time
• Maximising your output

Eliminate or pass it on

The first technique you should use before any of the others is eliminating unnecessary tasks. If they’re not realted to your goals, remove them. If they are but you shouldn’t be the one doing them, pass them on ASAP. Don’t become a human bucket for people to fill with tasks they could complete.

Pareto Principle

Regularly spoke about in the blogosphere, this theory created by an Italian Economist states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your tasks, so you should identify these tasks and eliminate the rest for time efficiency. This is a universal principle and really helps minimise time input and maximise output. 90/20 is a guestimate and it could easily be 90/10 or other similar ratios.

You can use this just to multiply efficiency rather than time. You do this by finding the 20% of tasks that give 80% of the outcome and then eliminating the lower 80% of tasks. Then you repeat the top 20% of tasks to fill the time you would have took doing the wasteful lower 80%.

Pareto can be used universally, areas may include:

• Dieting – Identify the foods that contribute most towards your health and goals, get rid of the rest and eat these more often.
• Socialising – If you visit several social clubs and go out with work colleagues each week then identify what you want from these social outings, cut of the lower 80% and maximise the results.
• Gym Workout – Identify which exercises are most time efficient and give you the results that you aim for, cutting the rest. A 40 minute jog may be a lot less efficient than a 30 minute slow workout using just your body weight.
• Budgeting – apart from the essential needs, which products that you buy or magazines that you subscribe to create value in your life?

Parkinsons Law

This law states that the task that you set expands to fill the time available for it. An obvious example is a school deadline for homework, you may have 5 days until you hand it in, but you’re still sweating ’til midnight the night before:-). That’s all fair and well but how do we get around this? Because we are aware of this, we can set ourselves self-inflicted mini-deadlines that we should tell ourselves are the actual deadlines even though they’re not.

This makes sure that everything is done on time and that you have no last minute cramming sessions about a deadline that you forgot. Again using the coursework example, you could even use this principle to set mini deadlines within mini deadlines, like write first draft by Tuesday, edit on Thursday, hand in final version on Friday.

Areas where you could apply this include:

• Homework assignments – Set deadlines in half the time the assignment is due for and make it a habit to get them in on time.
• Christmas/Birthday gifts – Even though they say Christmas gets earlier every year, it can creep up on you too, make it a deal to get all presents bought by say December 7th, avoiding the crowds and being efficient in the process.
• Emails – Got alot of emails to be sent out, give yourself an hour a day and see how efficient you become.

Ways you can maximise output

• Automation of processes – Including blog posting, maybe laundry, buy a dishwasher if you haven’t got one. My motto is “If a computer can do as good a job as me, then my time is better spent elsewhere”.
• Get up early – You literally get more hours to your life this way and set up a consistent sleeping pattern in accordance with nature and will have more energy.

Owning time

I dislike the phrase “I don’t have time”. I’m always tempted to respond with a knowing smile. Nobody can claim ownership of time, it’s the way you mould yourself around time that matters. You have to get as much done in as little time as possible, this is my personal definition for effectiveness. Everyone gets 24 hours/day.

Effectiveness before efficiency

Cultivating efficiency is all fine and dandy but don’t lose sight of the main goal, to find a purpose in life and follow it, this would be known as effective. Efficiency is always second place to Effectiveness. Concentrate more on creating value rather than just saving time. This is similar to saving pennies rather than creating pounds. This will also help you escape a belief in scarce resources.

Measuring metrics is essential to success in all areas of life, its the way to measure objective success in reality. Otherwise the progress that you think that you’re having externally could be completely imagined.

Measuring metrics gives you a history to look over, motivating you towards your goals and showing that effort over time will give you gradual success, or alternatively, it can be used to show that you either need to change your tactics if the success levels are not to your standard.You can set goals based upon metrics, then alter course as you go along trying to acheive them.

Attack from all angles

Use your intuition too – “Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.” – David Borenstein (Polish Artist)

Areas where you can use metrics