Hey there!

Thanks for checking out the Weekly Learning Roundup. These bite-sized, weekly posts are designed to give you a quick hit of interesting learnings and articles I came across this week.

This week I’m including more content from Tim Ferriss’s blog. Specifically it’s worth checking out the“Productivity” Tricks for the Neurotic, Manic-Depressive, and Crazy (Like Me). I love his 8-step morning ritual. In particular, we should all be asking ourselves these two questions as we look at our daily to-do list:

“If this were the only thing I accomplished today, would I be satisfied with my day?”

“Will moving this forward make all the other to-do’s unimportant or easier to knock off later?”

I find the first question extremely powerful. In fact, I use a tool called Momentum to set my ONE goal for the day. When I reflect on my day, being able to cross that goal out makes it feel like a successful day for me. You can see more on how I use Momentum as I’ve blogged about it in the past.

Enjoy this week’s tips and links! Drop me a note at the end if there was anything that stuck out for you. Have a great week.

Favourite links from the week:

“Productivity” Tricks for the Neurotic, Manic-Depressive, and Crazy (Like Me) (Tim Ferriss)

Why Millennials Would Take a $7,600 Pay Cut For a New Job (Fortune)

How I Built a #1-Ranked Podcast With 60M+ Downloads (Tim Ferriss)

Productivity tip of the week:

Optimize-Automate-Outsource

It’s been almost a year since I read the book Less Doing More Living by Ari Meisel. Last May, I also had the pleasure of attending his conference in New York City and learned a lot about the keys to personal and professional productivity. One of the key ideas behind Ari’s methodology is to optimize, automate, and outsource what you’re doing. What this essentially means is that for any routine or task you repeatedly need to complete you start by trying to optimize how efficiently you try to get it done, automate it if you have the necessary tools, and outsource it if you just need someone else to take care of it.

Let’s take running errands for household goods for it. Optimizing it might mean creating a standard shopping list you review at the end of every month – toilet paper, paper towels, sponges, baby wipes, etc. Automating it might mean that you set a reminder in a tool like Evernote to have the note pop up automatically at the end of the month or using IFTTT to send you an email with the list. Finally, outsourcing might mean using a service like Amazon Subscribe and Save to have Amazon do it all for you.

The key here is that you develop a process for the task. That’s why starting with optimize is so important. By figuring out ways to optimize the task first, you develop a better understanding of what the process looks like. From there, you can decide whether to automate it or outsource it – depending on what the task looks like. Note that you don’t need to automate or outsource every single task. Maybe optimizing the task is way more than enough. Stick to this process and you’ll find yourself doing less and living more.

 

Books, documentaries, or podcasts I’m enjoying:

The Wealthy Barber Returns by Dave Chilton

For those in Canada, it’s tax season and a good time to reflect on your personal finance strategy. I feel like I have a good handle of my personal finances but it’s always good to get further perspective by reading a book. I’d heard a lot about The Wealthy Barber so I picked up the sequel to the book. (I must admit that I haven’t read the original The Wealthy Barber.)

I love personal finance books in general and this one was great. Yes, it advocates better savings habits; yes, it advocates the “pay-yourself-first methodology”; yes, it advocates a low-cost diversified portfolio. In essence nothing I haven’t heard before. But just reading the book reminded me of the importance of leveraging time (i.e. compounding) as my biggest asset. It’s a fun, fast read that has pushed me to double the amount I’m saving. If you live in Canada, this is a great pickup since the content is highly focused on the savings and investment vehicle available here. You’d probably want to start with some base understanding of personal finance first though. For that, I recommend the book Millionaire Teacher by Andrew Hallam.

A quote that’s inspiring me:

“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” —Fred Rogers

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As always, thank you to those that liked, re-tweeted, or commented on my Tweets. See you on next week’s round up!