Americans spend way too much time on email, and it’s breaking our creative flow and making us less productive. In this episode, we talk about the reasons why this is, and how you can break the cycle and spend more time out of your inbox taking action on the things that really matter.

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Cheat Sheet

Why the corporate email culture is so unhealthy

The amazing results people have been getting from our inbox zero challenge

The real reasons people spend so much time in email (and how you change your mindset to escape your email)

How to create more time to spend doing work that actually adds value to your business

Why email often functions as a to-do list that other people can write on and how you can change this so you can be more intentional about your work

The unconscious (and unproductive) behavior patterns that people fall in to when it comes to email

How email breaks your flow and what you can do to stop your focus train from being derailed

Thanh’s personal email horror stories

How you can get people to communicate with you over email on your terms

Links

The Escape Your Email registration page

The Simple Guide to Managing Your Email with the Asian Efficiency Email Workflow

The Willpower Instinct

TPS38: I Know Kung Fu w/ Patrick Hart

Boomerang for Gmail

Become More Productive with the Pomodoro Technique

The Best Way to Handle Email on Your Mobile Device (Thanh's article)

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Movement energizes us and makes us more productive and efficient, and yet most knowledge workers spend eight hours or more sitting at a desk every day. Zack Arnold sits at a desk too, but he’s become an expert in building habits of movement into his daily life. On this episode, we talk about little tweaks to get more movement while at work, which will increase your productivity.

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Cheat Sheet

How sitting all day is killing your productivity (and how regular movement during the workday can actually make you more creative)

Why movement is vital for having energy

The number of steps you need every day to maintain good energy (it's probably more than you think)

The difference between movement and exercise

How to quantify your activity and track your progress

The productivity benefits from making your office setup inefficient by forcing you to move more

How to effectively implement a time blocking habit (especially if you've failed at this before)

Breathing exercises you can do right now to increase productivity

A sneak preview of Zack Arnold's content in the Asian Efficiency Dojo

Links

Optimize Yourself (use promo code ASIAN to save 25%)

AE Dojo

Fitness in Post podcast

Fitness in Post Ep31: Managing Stress with Heart Rate Variability

Go Far movie

TPS17: Fitness w/ Zack Arnold

TPS41: Go Far w/ Zack Arnold

TPS23: Optimization, Automation, and Outsourcing with Ari Meisel

BJ Fogg

Atul Gawande's TED Talk

Book, tool, ritual

Book: The Checklist Manifesto | The Art of Less Doing

Tool: Trello | FitBit | Heart-Rate Variability monitor

Ritual: Knockout 60 seconds of pushups while you are waiting for your water to warmup for your shower in the morning.

Connect with Zack Arnold

@EmpireEditor

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Michael Hyatt is a NY Times best selling author, speaker, and former CEO (and chairman) of Thomas Nelson Publishers. He’s on the podcast to discuss the true goal of productivity, how to find your focus, and making room for activities that truly matter.

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Cheat Sheet

Michael's journey to becoming a productivity expert

The real purpose of productivity (why productivity is a means to an end and not the goal itself)

How to create margin for the things that really matter

How to use the Freedom Compass to achieve your goals and live a fulfilling life

How to get out of the drudgery zone and eliminate the activities you don’t want to do

Tips for automating the tasks that you don't really want to be doing

How to develop a template mindset to save time

The importance of creating a daily game that you can win

How you can personally create a blueprint for a productive day

Freedom Compass

Links

FreeToFocus.com

MichaelHyatt.com

Getting Things Done

TPS102: Essentialism w/ Greg McKeown

TextExpander

Hazel

Nozbe

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Book, tool, ritual

Book: Deep Work by Cal Newport

Tool: Workflowy

Ritual: Ritual for speaking - going through notes and saying the speech out loud the night before. In the morning, exercise and affirmations.

Connect with Michael Hyatt

@MichaelHyatt

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Eric Zimmer is the host of the award-winning podcast The One You Feed. Through hundreds of interviews, Eric has learned a lot about healthy habits, mindfulness, and sustainable behavior change. We chat about changing environments, habits, and feeding your “good wolf.”

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Cheat Sheet

The true meaning of the parable behind Eric's podcast, "The One You Feed"

What Eric personally does to feed his "good wolf"

Why meditation is so important to Eric and the difference it has made in his own life

How the stimulus --> response cycle works and how you can use it to spin the stories you tell yourself so they are more positive

Eric’s personal journey of recovery and how it led him to where he is today

The importance of community and the environment you live in

How to make environmental tweaks to help establish positive habits and achieve your goals

The effective way to figure out for yourself what is really important

Why happiness isn’t something out there in the future (and how you can achieve it in your own life starting now)

Links

OneYouFeed.net

The One You Feed Episodes (Zack's Recommendations)

Eric's Story

Norman Rosenthal

James R Doty

Russell Simmons

TPS92: No More Underpants w/ Steve Kamb

TPS102: Essentialism w/ Greg McKeown

Man's Search for Meaning

Headspace app

The Willpower Instinct

Receive Escape Your Email Updates

Book, tool, ritual

Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Tool: Calendly, Evernote, TextExpander

Ritual: A morning routine

Connect with Eric Zimmer

@OneYouFeed

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John Johnson, PhD is an expert in reading and understanding data and statistics. He talks with Zack about how to become a discerning consumer of data, now that we can track personal data as well. Listen in to learn how to ask questions about data, using data to forecast, and when to not pay attention to data.

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Cheat Sheet

What econometrics is all about and how it can be used to find the truth of what the data is really telling you

How to communicate data-driven observations to people who don’t like statistics

Dr. Johnson's experience as an expert witness

Why the idea of the quantified self is important (but only if you know what datapoint to consider)

How to be discerning when looking at data and find the real meaning

Why "cherrypicking" is rampant among data analysis and what you can do to spot this

How to ask effective questions when you are presented with data

The hidden danger in looking for patterns in everything you see

How forecasting works and why it's important

The benefits from applying an information diet

Links

Everydata book

Dr. Johnson's website

Edgeworth Economics

Fooled by Randomness

Receive Escape Your Email Updates

Book, tool, ritual

Book: The Last Lecture

Tool: Rewire app (Android)

Ritual: Going to the gym

Connect with John Johnson, PhD

@Everydata

Sponsor

Freshbooks.com/productivity

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If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Sticher, Overcast, PocketCast or your favorite podcast player. It’s easy, you’ll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure. You can also leave a review! Here's how.

Ramit Sethi, the New York Times bestselling author of the book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, has changed the lives of many by questioning the mainstream narrative of how you should do things. In this episode we explore why people make goals and don’t follow through on them, and how you can avoid the same fate. Ramit also answers some questions about how he built his business and what habits he has developed for his own life.

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Cheat Sheet

Why money is an important (but small) part of your life and how to make sure it is assigned the proper role

The psychological reasons why we set out for certain objectives and then don’t follow through

Why you should focus on behavior and how to let your attitude follow

How to narrow the scope of success in order to change behavior

How to build a productivity system that works for you

Why taking time to think is so important (and the huge benefits it's had on Ramit's business)

How to build and keep intrinsic motivation to make your habits stick

Why you shouldn’t be afraid to change habits

The importance of making a system for systems

Why so many people experience FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and how you can overcome this

The system Ramit created for his health and eating habits and how you can apply it to your own life

The two things you can use to identify what is really important to people

How we live our lives according to an invisible script (and how to change this into a narrative for a life we actually want)

The life lessons Ramit picked up from starting his business

Links

Ramit's Ultimate Guide to Habits

15 Little Life Experiments that Will Change Your Life

Growthlab's Ultimate Guide to Working From Home

TPS58: Getting Things Done w/ David Allen

BJ Fogg

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness 

TPS102: Essentialism w/ Greg McKeown

Charles Duhigg

Jay Abraham

Collegetopia.co

Receive Escape Your Email Updates

Book, tool, ritual

Book: Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got

Tool: Gmail shortcuts

Ritual: Working out

Connect with Ramit Sethi

@Ramit

Sponsor

Freshbooks.com/productivity

For a 30 day free trial, be sure to enter the word 'productivity' in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Sticher, Overcast, PocketCast or your favorite podcast player. It’s easy, you’ll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure. You can also leave a review! Here's how.

Zack and Mike go in-depth on some new workflows that the Asian Efficiency team has been developing regarding our most time-intensive task: email. Email often takes a huge chunk out of your day, and we’re here to fix that. Learn how you can ruthlessly process your inbox to move on with your tasks and increase your productivity.

Get Podcast UpdatesDo you want to get an email with shownotes each time a podcast goes live? Then let us know where to send these updates.

Cheat Sheet

A recap of the original AE email workflow and why it needed to be updated

Startling statistics about how much time people actually spend dealing with email and how you can escape your inbox

How to effectively use triggers to make sure you see emails at the right time

How you can achieve (and keep) inbox zero

One simple trick which can make your inbox processing MUCH simpler

Why you should always archive messages after you process them

The real reasons why you NEED a task manager when processing email

Criteria to use when trying to decide if you should send emails into the reference folder

When to delegate actions from emails you receive instead of doing the task yourself

Links

Inbox Zero challenge

Simple Guide to Managing Email

Getting Things Done

Todoist

Inside Omnifocus: Email

Omnifocus

Remember the Milk

Trello

Dispatch

Polymail

SaneBox

Advanced AE Email Workflow

Receive Escape Your Email Updates

Sponsor

Freshbooks.com/productivity

For a 30 day free trial, be sure to enter the word 'productivity' in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Sticher, Overcast, PocketCast or your favorite podcast player. It’s easy, you’ll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure. You can also leave a review! Here's how.

In Part 2 of our conversation with Stephen Warley, we dive deeper into life skills that matter for the self-employed and freelancers. We talk about the need for continued education, how to align all of your daily habits towards your purpose, reframing your mindset around working hours and how much money you really need to make.

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Cheat Sheet

The importance of figuring out what makes you productive instead of just copying someone else

Why you need to keep learning and how it can help you advance your career

The real reason why people get stuck between who they are supposed to be and who they want to be (and how to overcome this)

How to effectively organize your time when you suddenly become your own boss

Tips to help you understand your larger life purpose

The benefit of surrounding yourself with people who are doing what you want to do

Why you should pick one thing to change at a time and not five

How to find your peak performance period to maximize your productivity during the day

Why you don’t actually need to work 8 hours a day

The benefits that come from reframing your mindset on your ideas surrounding work

Why embracing discomfort will help you learn more effectively

Links

Part 1: TPS103 Life Skills That Matter w/ Stephen Warley

LifeSkillsThatMatter.com

TPS92: No More Underpants w/ Steve Kamb of Nerdfitness

TPS Episodes on Habits/Rituals:

TPS84: Differences Between Habits and Rituals

TPS55: Building Habits Through Coaching w/ Tony Stubblebine

TPS54: Rituals over Habits

TPS26: Habits, Visualization, and Finding Your Why

TPS25: Rituals, Habits, and Achieving Your Goals

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work

Hours seem to have become bit off in my energy management graph. The big dip for me was during the afternoon from 1 to 4pm (vs 7am to 9am).

Workflowy

Ryan Holiday

A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

Challenge

Use the Lifestyle Calculator and see how much you actually need to make to live the life that you want.

Connect with Stephen Warley

@StephenWarley

Sponsor

Freshbooks.com/productivity

For a 30 day free trial, be sure to enter the word 'productivity' in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Sticher, Overcast, PocketCast or your favorite podcast player. It’s easy, you’ll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure. You can also leave a review! Here's how.

Stephen Warley has been self-employed for more than a decade, and he’s on the show to talk about life skills that matter for the new nature of work. As more and more people change jobs every 3-5 years or become self-employed, skills like self-awareness, building community, and continued education become fundamental to our success in life and business.

Get Podcast UpdatesDo you want to get an email with shownotes each time a podcast goes live? Then let us know where to send these updates.

Cheat Sheet

Why being intentional with everything that you do is so important and how you can start doing this today

Why self-reflection is so important whenever you feel stuck

The real reasons why more and more people are becoming self-employed (and how you can make that transition for yourself)

Why doing experiments with your work is so important and how it facilitates learning

Steps you can use personally to help you get unstuck

How writing everyday helps you create self-awareness

The benefits of surrounding yourself with like-minded people

The correct way to do a "mental purge"

Tips for practicing self-awareness

Links

10 Life Skills That Matter

World Domination Summit

Unstuckable podcast

TPS20: Getting Unstuck w/ Stephen Warley

TPS102: Essentialism w/ Greg McKeown

Number One Self-Awareness Habit

TPS5: Deron Bos

Lifestyle Calculator

What is Self-Awareness?

Challenge

Tell Your Story this week. Tell as many people as you can what you want to do, not what you think they want to hear.

Connect with Stephen Warley

@StephenWarley

Sponsor

Freshbooks.com/productivity

For a 30 day free trial, be sure to enter the word 'productivity' in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Sticher, Overcast, PocketCast or your favorite podcast player. It’s easy, you’ll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure. You can also leave a review! Here's how.

Greg McKeown is the author of Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. He is on the podcast to discuss how to figure out what is essential to you, how to create your vision for your life, and why being bored is important. Listen in for tools to remove obstacles and get the essential things done.

Get Podcast UpdatesDo you want to get an email with shownotes each time a podcast goes live? Then let us know where to send these updates.

Cheat Sheet

Why creating space is so important in your essentialism journey

The key tenets of the essentialist lifestyle and how you can use them to live a life of purpose

How being an essentialist is not just about saying "no" but about finding space to decide what's essential

Things you can do to make sure you are working on the correct problems

Ways to figure out how you can best use your time and energy to solve these essential problems

How to explore and discover what is truly essential for you

Why being bored can actually be a good thing

How the Asian Efficiency team sets quarterly goals to make sure our goals are the right goals

How you can make sure you are working on the right things

The benefits of very long-term thinking and why you should create an 100-year vision

How essentialism is a life view and not just another tool

How to remove obstacles to execution

Links

GregMcKeown.com

Fitness in Post podcast interview w/ Greg

TPS90: Become a Minimalist w/ Joshua Becker

TPS88: Deep Work w/ Cal Newport

Scaling Up by Verne Harnish

TPS100: Celebrating Your Wins

TPS101: Lean Thinking w/ Paul Akers

Book, tool, ritual

Book: The Catastrophe of Success by Tennessee Williams (essay)

Tool: Daily journaling

Ritual: Choose six things to accomplish each day - three professional and three personal. At the end of the day, celebrate the progress you’ve made, and write down six things for tomorrow.

Connect with Greg McKeown

@GregoryMcKeown

Sponsor

Freshbooks.com/productivity

For a 30 day free trial, be sure to enter the word 'productivity' in the "How Did You Hear About Us?" section

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Sticher, Overcast, PocketCast or your favorite podcast player. It’s easy, you’ll get new episodes automatically, and it also helps the show gain exposure. You can also leave a review! Here's how.