Very recently I have received an email asking a very interesting question. First of all, I would like to thank the sender, Pankaj, who had taken the time and sent me the email. It is always a pleasure getting to know my reader.

The following is the email Pankaj sent me. “I want to know how exactly to say NO to people. My work is almost always overloaded, but even so, when other people come to me asking for help with his work, I can never say no. I always try to help others but in this way I am always taken negative.”

Well Pankaj, this is what you should do.

1) Identify why exactly that you cannot say NO

To tell you the truth, this is the most difficult steps of all but it is also the most important. Let me list a few reasons why a person cannot say NO.

• He is a very polite person
• He dislikes confrontation
• He tries his very best to meet people expectation
• He is afraid that people may not like him

Believe me there are hundreds more reason why some people cannot say NO. These four are in my opinion, the most popular reasons. Identify the reason why you cannot say NO. Close your eyes and go deep into your heart to find this out. Once you have identified the reason, everything else will be easy.

For example, let say that you dislike confrontation. You prefer to work harmoniously with everyone even to the extent that you have to do other’s work. Then you can draw your own plan on how to slowly learn the art of confrontation.

If you want to shoot an apple with an arrow, you must first know the direction to shoot. If not there are infinite numbers of direction to shoot and thus infinite numbers of failure.

2) Practice with smaller things

Still using the previous example, let say that you know that you cannot say NO because you dislike confrontation. You must then draft your own plan to be more comfortable with confrontation. Draft a small program like disagreeing with your friends about a trivia topic. An example is like why you hate the Harry Potter when everyone else adore him. That should keep the ball rolling.

Keep in mind that you are training yourself to disagree with people. The more trivia the issue the better you will be able to develop the confident to disagree. Do not start with a heavy issue like religion etc.

3) Not Important Tray

Buy a document tray and label it as “NOT Important”. Remember to capitalize the word “NOT”. Anytime a person ask you to do a job, and you still cannot say NO, just ask the person to put the work inside that tray. Make sure the person see the label and tell him that you will only help with his work once all your work is done. Even then you may not be able to help. Leave it to him to decide whether he still want your help or not.

4) Give yourself 10% allowance

If you have 60 minutes of work, always give yourself a mandatory rest of 6 minutes. That 6 minutes must not be spent in doing your work or others’. You must spend that 6 minutes to do your favorite things like replying emails to friends, chatting etc.

When you give yourself this allowance, you will subconsciously teach yourself the value of your free time. Exactly the opposite of what a lot of people believe, having allocated free time in the midst of your never-ending work will really help you appreciate the time. After a while, you will find it easier to just say NO to people since you have earned that free time with blood and sweat.

5) Create red tape

Red tape basically means the requirement and procedure that need to be followed to get things done. It is almost always a trivia task like submitting a cover letter, filling up forms, waiting for the form to be approved before you are given another form.

Why not do exactly the same to people asking you to do their job. Get them to fill up a form and submit the form to your superior. If your superior approve the form, then you will have to do the job. If not, you can just walk away. You can say that you are having a lot of trouble with your superior since you are not able to meet deadline. I sincerely believe they will not bother you anymore.

6) Give them a taste of their own medicine

If your colleague give you a work to do, you can take it but in about 5 minutes, walk to his desk and give him your work for him to do. It doesn’t need to be 5 minutes but the sooner the better since they will remember that they had just give you the work. If he can’t help you with your work, just return his work to him.

It’s basically another way to say NO

7) Teach him to fish

You know the saying. “Give a man a fish and you will feed him for the day, Teach the man how to fish and you will be feeding him for the rest of his life.”

Some people may ask you to help because you are so good at what you do. Maybe your English grammar is excellent, or you are very good with software etc. The best way to handle this kind of situation is to actually spend time coaching them on how to do their job. You may not get paid for this but there are so many other benefit that you can reap.

• He will be so grateful to you and he will definitely return the favor one day
• You will be seen as someone who like to help people grow
• You can get them off your back forever

/end

I must stress that helping out people is a very good thing. But in this article, I am assuming that the people asking for help are abusing this kindness. They are still asking others to help with their work when they should be able to do it just fine.

- I Wonder -
Do you have any other tricks to help Pankaj say NO to his colleague?

———- Personal Note ————
I once went to the immigration office with a colleague. My colleague were in front of me when We were queuing up to get the number. He got the number 100 and I who was immediately after him got the number 105. (Of course I can’t really remember the number but I know that there were gaps between my colleague’s number and mine.)

That is step number 4 and 5 mixed together.

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I talked to one of my colleague this morning. To make things easier, let’s call him Peter. Peter is an acting manager to an estate here but he’s going to retire next year. I actually asked him whether he will apply for extension and maybe then he will be confirmed as a manager. He simply answered “No, I don’t need the “Manager” title to become successful. I am already successful by my own definition.”

That simple sentence had left me speechless (For a few seconds of course).

I then continued to ask him what he meant by that. He spent the next 30 minutes telling me how he had managed to send his son and daughter to do medicine. He told me how hard it was for him to find almost $100K to ensure his children get the best from him.

Truly inspiring.

However this entry is not about the sacrifice made by parents for their children.

It is about how the word “Success” is defined differently from one person to another. Some may consider becoming a manager is a success. Another will consider bringing up successful children as their success.

Personally, I think Peter’s ultimate success is when he had figured out his personal definition of success. He defined the word success for him to strive. He knows that money and ranks are not success (at least not to him). That is why he didn’t bother to ask for extension and strive for that “Manager” title.

I find this very interesting. Don’t you?

If I can ask you one question, what’s your definition of success?

Peter did give me one tip to help me answer that question. If you answer “Becoming a millionaire” as your definition of success, and you have made it as a millionaire, can you still smile and say “my life is complete” knowing that today is your last day of your life.

———— Personal Note ————-
Let say the world has a king. He is so powerful that nobody can disagree with him. Everybody is so afraid of him, the world is at peace.

The king’s barber.

Photo Credit – Nattu

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Basically, the idea is to allocate a portion of your paycheck to be saved elsewhere before you even settle your pay-or-die bills. The concept is created simply because saving if not forced, is an impossible thing to do. I know it is kind of harsh, but it is the truth. You can see the proof from my bank account (which of course I will not disclose here).

Forget about my bank account. Just look at yours. Did you manage to save money if you didn’t save it immediately after you get your paycheck?

Amazingly the concept is just as useful to be applied to other things in life.

1) Peace of mind.
Everytime you have a moment of peace from work, or crying children etc, just take some time to finish off your book. Do not fill up that moment with anything else. Do what you want to do first.

2) Achievement.
Everytime you do a great job, give yourself a pat and say “Nicely done [insert name here]“. Do this before you start congratulating others.

3) Career.
Everytime you are overwhelmed with mountains of work, some yours and some are others’, you should always finish up your work first before helping out others. There’s no point in being a jobless angel.

4) Student life
If you are given the responsibility to be the president of your student council, but your grade are heavily affected by it, you should resign from the post and start focusing on your study. That is paying yourself first too.

/end list

It is always a noble thing to be selfless and to always think of others before yourself. But a line must be drawn simply because if you are taking care of others your entire life, who is actually taking care of you.

Remember the safety briefing given by the flight attendant everytime you board an aeroplane. You must first use the gas mask before you help your child. The reason is because nobody else will take care of your child if you had already fainted.

- I Wonder -
Do you pay yourself first?

——- Personal Note ——–
When it comes to loved ones, all rules go out the window. People no longer care for themselves when their loved ones are at risk. Would you agree?

Photo Credit – Allner_s

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It was the year 2001. I was doing my internship at the time with a petrochemical company. I remember this year very fondly because this is the year I make one of the biggest mistake in my life.

Please bear with me as I explain some details about the mistakes. You see, being a student, my computer was my life. I had files about everything saved in my PC. This includes notes, assignments, projects, personal pictures, diaries etc. In short, the last 5 years of my life were well documented in that PC.

One fine day, I mistakenly formatted the PC and I lost everything in seconds.

(This is where I pause for about 2 minutes regretting that I don’t have backup)

They say the last person to laugh usually have backups. Therefore compiled below are some suggestion on how you can start to backup your life based on what I’ve learnt.

1) Invest in an external drive.

The price for an external drive is now very cheap. You can get 1GB of space for about $0.30. Just imagine buying a permanent storage for thousands of documents for a few dollars only. Isn’t that a bargain?

2) Use Gmail

Gmail is personally the best webmail ever created. At the time this is written, Gmail is offering around 7GB plus of space for you to use. You can upload all your files there without ever worrying of running out of space. The best thing about Gmail is that the search engine is so advanced, you can find any documents in just seconds.

I have actually compiled a list of phone numbers, addresses and URLs in my Gmail. This way, I know that I can always get that information as long as I’m connected to the internet.

3) Get an actual note book

It will never hurt to actually own a few books to jot down important details such as phone number, addresses etc. You never know when suddenly you are cut off from technology with nothing but your book.

4) Scan your notes / documents

If you want to retype all your notes into your computer, it will take you another 10 years of your life just to do that. It is better if you can scan your notes or if you don’t have a scanner, take snap shots of your notes using your digital camera or camera phone.

You are in the same time decluttering too.

5) Use software to backup your phone

I formatted my cellphone on a regular basis. I prefer to have a short list of contact number in my phone book. This way I can immediately find a friend’s number fast. But, I have no worry because I always backup the data on my phone into my PC

I’m using this software – (MyPhoneExplorer) to help me back up my data. So far, I am impressed. Try it.

6) Memorize 3 phone numbers

But what will happen if you don’t have your cellphone or laptop or your notebook and you are lost somewhere in the city. Who will you call? More importantly do you know the number to call?

I suggest that you memorize 3 phone numbers of your closest friends or family. Remember it by hard. Who knows, this may be the one thing that will save your life some day.

7) List down important dates throughout the year

You know that book you keep your details in (Point 3)? I prefer to call it VIB (Very Important Book). All you need to do is to list down important dates throughout the year in the book. It may be your anniversary date, or your doctor’s annual appointment. One year is a very long time, and my guess is that people can sometime forget an important date easily within that period of time.

8] Take pictures of your life daily

If you browse my computer now, you will notice around 3000 pictures saved in it. They are not just a picture of me with a scenery. In fact, I snapped a lot of pictures ranging from flowers, bugs, scenery, events to the unrecognizable. They may not mean anything to other people, but they are very important pieces of my life that brings back a lot more memories.

Seriously one of the best investment I ever made – A camera phone.

9) Write a biography of you

Just think about it. Do you know anyone in the whole world that will write a biography about you. I don’t think so, unless you are a very famous person.

Here’s a project. Why don’t you start writing your own biography. Let it be a small project you do once in every week. It is not for sale of course. Believe me, it will be one of your VIBs during your golden days.

10) Impart wisdom to your children

What better way to back up your life other than seeing your son/daughter to learn everything about life from you. They will be a better version of you.

This is for me, the best way for you to back up your life. Teach your children all the good things you know about life. Impart your wisdom to them so it will guide them throughout their life. Just imagine, an exact replica of you who possess your wisdom and your best quality.

In a way, this is the only way a person can live forever.

- I wonder -
Are there any other way that I may have missed to backup your life?

———– Personal Note ———–
One of the worst case scenario that I sometime picture in my head is an amnesia incident. What if suddenly you forget everything even your name? What will you do? That’s would be the worst kind of formatting accident ever.

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The Story

Once there was a school with quite a unique problem. The girls at the school were beginning to use lipstick and like everyone else who just started a thing, there were lipstick prints all over the mirrors of the school bathroom.

This however was a problem to the janitor since he would have to clean the mirror every single day.

One day he reported the problem to the school principal and she immediately called up all the students to the bathroom (of course in groups). She then explained that the lip prints were causing problem to the janitor who worked very hard to keep the school clean.

She even asked the janitor to demonstrate how difficult it was to clean the lips prints. The janitor took out a long handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

/end story

As you can probably notice, the solution is so simple and effective, it is amazing why we can’t come up with it in the first place.

So how can we come up with an amazingly effective solution to other daily problems in our life?

I don’t know about you, but when dealing with people, I personally believe that any solution can be very effective provided we can tap into the people’s emotion.

Let’s look at the story for example. The janitor use the toilet water to induce the feeling of disgust in the students and in the end, he manage to solve the problem completely.

How I Apply It In Real Life

I’m having the same problem here in my mill. A lot of my workers prefer not to wear the safety helmet during working. Of course they will be wearing them when I’m around but I really don’t think they are wearing it during night time etc.

So what I did is to gather a lot of pictures from the internet on accidents that happened to people who did not wear their safety helmet. There are pictures of dead people with their head slice into two, iron rod penetrating the skull etc. Seriously, they are the kind of pictures you wouldn’t want to show your children or you will have to pay for their therapy for years.

Immediately after I show these pictures, almost everyone wear the safety helmet (day and night). I’m really hoping that the pictures can stir the fear inside the workers. It worked! Problem solved!

- I wonder -
How else can we use emotion to solve problems?

——– Personal Note ———-
You must not confuse this with emotional blackmail. Emotional blackmail is a method used to get what you want but via dirtier means. For example, using guilt to make your relatives become slave of the house or by using jealousy to ruin a marriage etc.

Like all other great tools, in the right hand, it will become a blessing. But in the wrong hand, it will become a disaster.

Photo Credit – Katie Tegtmeyer

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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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One of the biggest fear for anyone attending a job interview is the fear of not knowing the answer to a question. I’ve been there and I can safely say that nobody is exempted from it. If you think about it, it’s a perfectly normal thing. There is no way a person can know everything there is to know about a topic.

However, don’t you think you will have undergone a perfect interview session if you know the answer to every single question? Don’t you think that will make you memorable and in the end hired?

Now would you believe me if I tell you that there is actually a trick to accomplish exactly that?

The Trick

The trick to actually know the answer to every questions in an interview is to give your interviewer a list of questions to ask you (Not literally of course). Allow me to elaborate.

Let say you are an expert in gearbox maintenance and you are attending an interview for an engineering position. Be sure to drop some hint in your answers that you are directly involved in gearbox maintenance. The interview conversation below will show you how.

Interviewer : What are your past experience?

You : Bla Bla Bla

/end example

As you can see, by hinting that you are involved in gearbox maintenance, the interviewer will usually make use of the topic as their next question. Of course being an expert you will be able to answer the question effortlessly.

Once you know this, any interview will be a walk in the park. However, you may want to first read a few ground rules of using the trick.

Rule 1 : Be very subtle with the hinting

Do not end every answer with the word “Gearbox”. The interviewer will start noticing the effort and it will not end well. If your first 2 attempts fail, try other topics that you are good at.

Rule 2 : Never show off your expertise

A friend of mine had actually memorized one whole book about Machinery Act and he boasted about it in the interview. As a result, the interviewer asked him question from other books and he failed.

Rule 3 : Do not give all the details

If for example, the interviewer asked you about “Gearbox”, don’t explain to him from A to Z. Be smart with your explanation and leave out interesting topics hanging for him to ask. A person who can answer every question asked is more memorable than a person who can answer only one question in the interview.

Rule 4 : Prepare a few real life stories

Everyone loves a story and if you play your cards right, the interviewer will want to hear more from you. They will then start asking the related question about it. That’s an extra point for you.

Rule 5 : Ask questions

Try to shoot some questions to the interviewer related to your expertise. You may know the answer but still ask away. It will convert the whole process from an interview to a mini discussion. Believe me, it will help reduce the stress and more importantly you will be memorable to the interviewer.

The best topic to be discussed is the topic you know best.

- I wonder –
Any other tips to subtly highlight your strength in an interview?

———- Personal Note ————
I just came back from my first semester of Palm Oil Milling Diploma in MPOB. There are 23 lectures compressed in 7 days. To make things even more interesting, the examination for this first semester will be held on 11th May. Wish me luck!

Photo Credit – DIDEO

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Summary – Picture a black dot in your mind. Nobody notices the white background.

How many of you would have agreed with me that positive thinking is just one of the most difficult thing to do?

There are tons of books on positive thinking. Each and every one of them is describing the benefits of positive thinking with great details. Some even come with real life examples. No worries, I’m not going to relist the benefits here. If you are interested, feel free though to read about my other thoughts on positive thinking here.

• Understanding Positive Thinking Once & For All
• The Ultimate Secrets of Positive Thinking

Despite the wonderful benefits of thinking positively, why are we still find it hard to apply it in our life? If for example, you are retrenched from your job, and your girlfriend broke up with you, all at the same time. Will you be able to smile and still think positively? You can do it but it will require your strongest willpower just to create that glimpse of smile.

My Theory On Why It’s That Difficult

I personally believe that we have been trained to make positive thinking difficult since we were children.

Remember when we first learnt the ABCs? We were first taught the 26 alphabets and when we were able to read, we were asked to focus on the 26 alphabets on the books and nothing else. We were never encouraged to describe the white color of the page, and we were usually scolded if we use the book for things other than reading. Do you know that books can be used as cartoon animator? or an emergency fan?

For the record, I have no objection with the methodology of teaching. Children at that age can easily be distracted and allowing them to play with books without any serious attempt to make them read can lead to a sudden jump in illiteracy worldwide.

Unfortunately, the methodoly had indirectly make us more close minded. A book will always be a book to us.

An Accident Is NOT Just An Accident

This is how it affect us now. Take a car accident for example. For most of us, a car accident is just a car accident. While in fact it is so much more than that.

• It is a reminder for you to be more careful next time.
• It is a chance for you to finally learn how to claim for insurance.
• It is a boost in confidence in driving if you manage to avoid the accident.
• It is an experience that you can boast to your grandchildren.
• It’s your chance to practice your emergency response skills like evasive driving.
• You may have saved someone’s life.
• You can finally learn the true value of life.

In short, we just need to learn how to see a book as something else besides for reading. Isn’t that what positive thinking really is? Looking at things from a different and positive view.

- I Wonder -
What else can you do with your books?

———— Summary ———–
It was night time and I was at a boarding school. My friend and I was beginning to get bored with our studying. There he was, another friend who was actually sleeping on the table. Being bored, my friend and I started to stack up books on his chest. It must be around 10 books altogether when he woke up and started mumbling at us.

He must be very sleepy since he believed that we were doing an experiment to determine the maximum force needed to be applied on the chest before a sleeping man wakes up. At least that’s what we told him. Good times.

Photo Credit – JustReenie

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This Is Me A Few Years Ago

My name is Banji and I am an information addict. (This is the part where you say – “Hi Banji!”)

I used to read every words in the book and tried to get as much wisdom from it as possible. I would then take notes and sometime try my best to memorize what I just read.

In the past, I even took note from watching the Discovery Channel so I can quote them later.

Why Doing Everything Twice Can Be A Problem

Clearly this is NOT the way to go. If I continue taking note from the books I read, I will spend half of my life rewriting all the books I read. It is very likely that I will never even read the notes. It’s just like buying a DVD with the intention of rewatching it when you have free time, in the end, the DVD is just collecting dust somewhere in your room.

In short, some people (myself included) really like to do everything twice or thrice. If we read a book, we will reread it a couple more time to make sure we don’t miss anything. If we like a movie, we will rewatch it again and again just to enjoy it. However this is not a very productive habit.

You may now ask “So what’s the problem?”.

If you think about it, there shouldn’t be any problem. You will be able to memorize a whole novel or an encyclopaedia (Who reads encyclopaedia anyway?) or you will be able to enjoy your favorite movies instead of all the rubbish on other channels,

The truth is, you are actually depleting your most valuable resource pointlessly – Time.

An average human is estimated to live up to 70 years. Just imagine spending 70 years rereading the same 10 books or watching the same 10 movies Don’t you think it is a waste of your time? In that 70 years you should be able to finish at least 1200 books (if you read 2 books monthly since age 20).

Why can’t we do everything just one time and still get the benefit of people redoing it a thousand times?

The following tips may help you to do just that.

1) Remember the 10

When you read a book, make it a point to list down 10 lessons you can extract from it. For example, if you read this article, just try to remember the 3 points listed here. After you finish reading it, repeat that 3 points in your mind and you don’t need to reread this article ever again.

Of course if you are reading a motivational book, try to memorize 10 points from what you have just read. If you found your 10 points but you are still on page 20, stop reading for the day. Continue reading tomorrow for another 10 points.

Another example is when you are reading a novel. Try to visualize all the key events in the story. Once you reached that 10 points, you can stop reading for the day. Repeat the story in your mind based on the 10 key events and continue reading the novel tomorrow.

You get the picture.

2) Forbid yourself from redoing what’s done

This is usually the hardest part. It’s very hard to keep your hand off from rereading what you have read yesterday. Just remember that you don’t have the time to redo everything in your life. Be slightly firm with this.

Even if you forget the story or the 10 points from yesterday, just continue reading. Believe me, the memory will resurface and when it does, it will be even harder to forget it later.

3) Have faith in your mind

Do you know that our brain is one of the most amazing things in the world. Studies have been done on the mind for thousands of years and we still barely scratch the surface of its true potential.

There’s a case featured on Discovery Channel not long ago about a woman who fall down a cliff and broke her knee. She was alone in the forest and she should not be able to survive without any help. Somehow, her subconcious mind realized that if she was in pain, there’s no way she would be able to get help, so the brain had stopped the pain neural system from sending pain messages to the brain. She didn’t feel any pain at all. In the end, she manage to walk for miles and get help even with her broken knee. Amazing!

I’m sorry I can’t put a reference link to the story, but it really is a true story.

In short, what ever you want, your mind will make it happen. Never underestimate what it capable of doing. Once you have memorize the 10 points, it will be stored permanently in your brain. Believe in this. You just need to know how to retrieve it effectively. I will elaborate on this in the future.

- I wonder -
How many of us reread a book more than twice?

———— Personal Note ————
I have in my collection about 100 VCDs and DVDs of movies. My real intention when I first bought them is to rewatch the movies whenever I have nothing to do. It has been a few years after I bought my first VCD – “Hollow Man”, and I can safely say that I rewatch only about 1% of them.

When I think about it, I have bought a lot of things based on the intention to reuse it over and over but I usually will only use it once.

Photo Credit – Demi Brooke

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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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