About Episode
In this episode I speak with Zack Sexton, a content creator for Asian Efficiency. We discuss ways to improve your e-mail workflow, task management and task management software, how to “eat your frog,” and ways to establish morning or evening rituals to enhance your productivity, thus making your life less stressful. This is a must-listen for anyone feeling overwhelmed by their to-do lists.
Episode Highlights
- “Inbox Zero” and managing e-mail more effectively
- “Eating That Frog,” i.e. how to tackle your largest task of the day first
- “Solar Flaring,” a technique to develop new habits and get things done
- The science behind why multi-tasking just doesn’t work
- Why we should turn off ALL notifications on ALL of our devices
- Task management software and systems
- Morning and evening rituals
Useful Links
Transcript
Zack Arnold: Well, I’m here today with Zack Sexton. He is a content producer at Asian Efficiency, which is a pretty awesome website that I discovered recently about making our lives more productive. He is responsible for writing new articles, emails, and premium content. He also creates how-to videos and presents Asian Efficient webinars. He’s a teacher, meditator, skier, and non-recovering business, caffeine and productivity junkie-all of which I can relate to-with an appetite for new experiences and a drive to broaden his understanding of the world. Nothing gives him more pleasure than showing people the useful tools and techniques that he has personally crash-tested. So, Zack, I’m super excited to have you on the show today. Thank you.
Zack Sexton: I am super excited to be here, Zack.
Zack Arnold: Cool. Well,
Zack Sexton: Honor to be with a fellow ZACKer.
Zack Arnold: I know we’re going to get along well because it’s it’s not a terribly common spelling. But what it does is it avoids all the Zach’s. I don’t know if you ever got that when you were a kid, but I was always called Zack. Drove me crazy because I used to be ZACK and I changed
Zack Sexton: It. I made that personal choice too when I was young. I was like, no, K makes sense. I’m I’m going with it. Then you you and
Zack Arnold: I looks like our productivity brothers from another mother. So what I want to let the audience know before we jump right in and start geeking out on productivity is if you’re finding the show for the first time and you’re thinking to yourself, what does Asian efficiency and productivity have to do with fitness? My definition of fitness is much broader than just doing push-ups, pull-ups, and doing cardio. I believe that fitness is a really well-rounded approach that includes fitness and exercise, and includes diet, and it includes wellness. And a big part of wellness is stress management. And what I found is that being unproductive and being disorganized and trying to multitask just completely creates horrible levels of chronic stress and raises your cortisol. And what I’m trying to do is share tips and tricks across all spectrums to be able to help you just feel better, have more energy, and be more productive. And this site has completely transformed the way that I organize my day and the way that I handle email, and it’s really made a big difference, and it’s part of the reason that I’m able to juggle a full time job, 60 hours a week on a TV show, and be the director and producer of a documentary that I’m trying to get out into the world and run fitness in post. I wouldn’t be able to do that if I weren’t immensely productive and organized. And a lot of my tips come from these guys, so I just want to jump right in. The first question I’m going to ask you before we start going through some of the specifics is: Tell me the worst mistake that people make on a regular basis, and then come to you and say, “How the heck do I fix this?
Zack Sexton: Well, the the worst mistake. I think people that come to Asian efficiency, or or by the time they they they email us, they they know how to overcome this mistake, so they’re not they’re not quite there yet. But the worst mistake that most people have that that aren’t Asian efficiency readers necessarily is that they try to just keep everything in their head. And so this was something that I had. And actually, when you when you mentioned cortisol levels and stress and all that stuff, it was it was a couple years ago when I first kind of started going down the productivity rabbit hole, and it was through a book. I just randomly I was I was not happy with where I was at with my career and kind of my life, and I was always feeling stressed and and overwhelmed, and and you know I I almost thought something was was wrong with my brain because it just seemed like I wasn’t able to cut it in the work world in the information age, and thought I might have had ADHD. And what I found is that really my problem was I was just trying to keep everything in my head. And so I read this book called Getting Things Done by David Allen. Couldn’t recommend it more. And it showed a system on how to collect, organize, review, and do all the stuff that you need to get done. And and you know it’s not the end all be all system, but I started using it and implementing in my life, and it it just made a massive difference. So I I feel like our purpose purpose is pretty aligned. Is that we’re just helping trying to help people live you know happier lives, lives where they feel better, lives where they’re where they’re not stressed. Lives where they’re where they’re able to focus a little bit more, and I feel like both organization and productivity and time management, as well as as fitness and nutrition and diet, are those are all things that will that will give you that type of life that you’re you’re looking to live.
Zack Arnold: Right, and you just segued right into my next point, which is that before we get into all these amazing apps and tips and just these guidelines that you you guys lay out on the site, one thing that I think is really important to note is that you can have all of the best apps on the planet and you can be the best email manager on the planet, but if you’re not efficient from a health perspective, if you’re not eating well and you’re not exercising, you’re not going to have the energy to implement any of these strategies. So for me, the number one productivity hack is taking care of your health first and then hitting this stuff. Because if I’d found your site a year or two ago, it would have been pointless, and I wouldn’t have had the energy to be like, “Oh my God, how do I implement the steps of Inbox Zero? I’m just too tired. But now that I. Have I have all this extra energy and I feel great and I’m thinking I have all these things I want to do now I just need to figure out how do I get organized and achieve them so that to me is the number one productivity hack and then that takes us to all the things that you guys offer so I want to make sure that I kind of hit that point which you had mentioned as well but having just talked about inbox zero I think that to me, the number one 800 pound gorilla that just was managing my life and manages a lot of people’s lives that I know is email. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the email management systems that you have that are brilliant and have changed the way that I do everything.
Zack Sexton: So email is is a communication tool. When you’re when you’re in your inbox, you’re not being productive, and our definition of productivity is consistently taking action on your goals. So, like you said, it’s not the latest app. It’s not you know the the greatest technique. It’s just being able to consistently take action on your goals. And we find that when you’re in your inbox, you’re not really doing that. So, some advice for getting out of your inbox. One of them would be email templates, and you can do this if you use Gmail. There’s a a thing called canned responses, and you have to go into your settings and and allow canned responses. But once you do that, you can start finding emails that you write on a on a more consistent basis. It doesn’t have to be the exact email, but just kind of a theme. Like you know, if somebody if you work for a company and somebody calls in with a certain complaint that’s quite common and you know the solution to it, you can just write a really well written email that doesn’t have any comma errors and and is is empathetic and has all those things that you would want in that sort of communication, and then you never have to write that email again. And if you’re a Mac user, an application that that we use all the time is called Text Expander. And on the site, actually about a month ago, a new writer for us wrote this huge, like 4000 word dissertation, is what with like five or six videos on how to just completely use Text Expander. And what text expander does is it’s sort of like that canned response, except for you can do it everywhere. And so you you take a what’s called a snippet, which is two or three little keystrokes, and it expands out into a huge paragraph or or a sentence or whatever you want to say. And actually, I use it for words that I I misspell sometimes, so I haven’t used it for sincerely, comma. You know, that’s something I write all the time. But also bigger, bigger emails. And I was just showing you how you know a more efficient, a more Asian efficient way you could book your guest is by templating some of these emails out. So that’s one way. the The next, the next tip we really harp on is is to not use your your email inbox as a task manager.
Zack Arnold: Oh my God! Just to interrupt you, that is the number one issue that I had. Is I would always say, “Well, if it’s in my inbox, that means that I still have to do something. So I leave it there. And anybody that’s listening is like, “Well, he never responds to my emails. That’s why. And if you’ve noticed that I started responding to your emails in a more timely manner, you can thank these guys.
Zack Sexton: Awesome! I’m glad it’s helping everybody out. Yeah, and so what we’d suggest is when you open an email, you do something with it, and and this is the rule that we we call touch it once. And so you open an email, and then you’ve got to decide what you do you’re going to do with it. Either you know it’s something that all you needed to do is read it, you know, then just archive it. You don’t need to to keep it for reference. And if you do and use you know a tool like Gmail or something like that, usually the search function will help you find it. But if it’s reference material, go ahead and and find a place where you keep that reference material. And so this could be Evernote or Google Drive or even just your hard drive if you organize that well with with you know a hierarchy of folders, or if it’s a task and so somebody’s asking you to do something, somebody’s requesting something of you. If it takes less than two minutes, go ahead and just do it. So somebody asks you a quick question on on fitness and posts, and you can just you know respond really quickly of two minutes. You’ll be able to respond a lot quicker if you have a bunch of text expander snippets. But just go ahead and do it. If it’s going to take longer than two minutes, then we suggest that you take whatever task it is and pull it and store it in a separate task manager. So there’s a lot of different task managers out there, and so this this goes with that same getting things done idea of getting things out of your brain and into and written down into a place that you know you can reference when you need it. And so at Asian Efficiency, we use OmniFocus. Again, it’s a Mac only tool. Before I joined the team, I used a a task manager called Trello, which I still really enjoy. It’s it’s a free one that you can get online, and it’s very very visual based. If you’re a visual based person, you can even just use you know pen and paper. And so there’s all kinds of task managers out there. You can there’s a million ones on on the App Store and iTunes, and and a lot of a lot of really good ones online. And so what I’d suggest is just play around with a few, find the ones. Really fits you, and store that information there. So you know you’ve got a task that comes into your email. You store it there, and then you archive that email. And and then when you get to your task manager, then you can do that task that was delegated. That allows you to get to your inbox a lot, get through your inbox a lot quicker. So it allows you to zero your inbox, which is to have that inbox not have anything in it. And when you zeroed your inbox, it doesn’t mean you know you don’t you don’t have anything to do. It means that you’ve organized it into either your task manager or or resources. And the quicker you can get through your inbox, the better because you don’t know if email one has the most important task in it, or email 23 and if you’re working on some not important task on on email 234, and you’re missing that email 23 with the really the most important thing you need to do, you are are not using you’re not prioritizing your task very well. So that is sort of the workflow in a system. Just touch it once. Always decide what you’re going to do with any email and any time you open it, and and start to be a little bit ruthless too. Just like archive, archive, archive. If it’s if it’s something that that you really don’t need to hold on to, that’s a problem that some people have. Is is is like, well, you know, I I might want to read this later. Then store it at a place where you might where you can read things later. You know, there’s Pocket or or Evernote, or you could just put in your task manager if you want to if you want to read it later. So that would be some email advice for you.
Zack Arnold: Sure, yeah, and I can I can tell you that the the worst mistake that I made, and this is how I managed my email for just about a decade, and I look back at and I want to shoot myself in the face now, but what I did, I didn’t even move things from my inbox. My inbox until basically until I found your website a few months ago. I think my inbox had like 19,000 emails in it, and all I did was I managed it with colored labels, and I would label like with a flag. I just used Apple Mail. I have all my different accounts coming into Apple Mail, and I would flag it like red was reply and orange was for this project and that project and I never got anything done ever and I had no idea who to respond to I would open my email and I would just want to pull my hair out and I’m like I I I don’t know what to do now right and I really found that just having a system like you said where your inbox is not a to do list that changed my life, and I’m like, all right. Now, as soon as the email comes in, I either put it into some of the folders you recommended, like a reply folder or a waiting folder. Like I have a review folder because I’m probably subscribed to like 20-five or 30 different wellness newsletters just to keep up on all the different health information and good articles that I share, and I’ll put it in a review folder, so I’m not sitting there and just constantly reading newsletters all day. But the other thing I want to really touch on that was this was kind of like the holy grail of figuring out email, which is avoiding the the Pavlovian idea of the the rat pellet that is the dinging of a new email. So talk to me not only about organizing, but about checking your email because that to me is even more profound than the organizational system.
Zack Sexton: Cool. Yeah, there’s so many there’s so many tactics. I always forget about all of them, and they’re they’re not that hard to implement. I love how you say it too. It’s like when I realized it, I was like, oh my gosh, this is so much better. And the idea is to so so you’re not going to use your inbox as a task manager. You’re not going to live in your inbox too. You’re not going to keep it open all day. And and what we suggest is actually only answering email a handful times a day. So depending on your load, you might need to do this two or three times a day. And and we suggest probably not spending any more than 25 minutes in there and trying really trying to get get it to zero, and if you use the tactics that I I just was talking about, that shouldn’t be a problem. The issue, though, is that we find it very hard to only go into your inbox one or two or three times a day and just really focus on clearing all that email out because of the dings and the buzzes and the badges and all of those other things that remind us, hey, you just got another email. Hey, there’s something new to distract you. You know what you’re working on probably is hard. You should you should pay attention to me. You know, and what we suggest is is an idea of getting rid of all of those push notifications. And so those push notifications are like if you ever have that little red dot that says how many unread emails you get, that’s a push notification. The vibration, that’s a push notification. The the ding, anything that let lets you know that that it’s trying to remind you to get back into your inbox. We suggest taking off, and actually, with a lot of applications, we would suggest getting rid of the push notifications because they’re just there to pull you away and pull your focus away from from what you should be concentrating on, which is you know hopefully you’ve you’ve you’ve got some important tasks that you’re you’re working towards towards getting done. And if you you’re constantly distracted, two things happen. First, it’s going to take a lot longer to do, and also the quality of work is is going to go down because you need that focus time to really. Do your best work, and and even even recent studies have shown that every time you do get distracted, it takes 10 to 11 minutes to get your brain back into the state that it was before. And so, if you’re getting distracted every 10 minutes, you’re never fully optimizing your your brain because you’re just constantly switching from task to task to task, and all of that takes energy, and and your brain only has so much of it. The thing what we love about fitness is that it allows you to have a little bit more energy to do more of what you want to do. But it’s still your every day when you wake up, you’ve got a full tank of of energy and willpower, and every decision you make and everything you do takes a little bit out of that. So if you’re using your energy on unimportant things like you know the latest newsletter that came out, and I’m glad you said that you you put those filters up too because that’s that’s another way is to filter out a little bit of the noise. And and on the same way, I I subscribe to a lot of different email lists because I I’m in a in an industry and I want to read what other people are writing, and and it’s useful for me. But I don’t want that to be in the midst of all of my other email communications that that would be more task related or or project related. So
Zack Arnold: Right, and I can say that when I decided to just turn everything off, and when I say off, I mean the only way somebody can get a hold of me immediately where I hear a noise and say, “Ooh, I must respond” is a phone call or a text message, and there aren’t a lot of people that have my phone number. Yeah, so I know that if my phone rings, it’s probably my mom or my wife or somebody I’m working with. Like that’s something that I do need to respond to right away, and I need to focus my attention on. But I turned off all alerts. I get zero alerts on my phone. I have my email closed, and that has made such a tremendous difference. Just on two things: number one, my stress level, and number two, on my focus level. Because now I can just take an hour, get into a scene, and cut it, and not have these constant distractions every two minutes. As I’m sure that you know, there are actual studies that show that every time you hear that little ding on your phone, whether it’s email or Facebook or whatever, it actually gives you a tiny dopamine hit in your brain and becomes addictive. So it’s really scary to decide that you’re not going to check an email when it arrives, because most people think, “Well, I need to respond within five minutes, and I was the same way, and it was stressing me out that I wasn’t responding to something and giving them a response within 10 minutes. And that first couple of days is really, really hard. Where you say I am not going to open my email; it’s going to be shut. I’m not going to check it until 2p.m or whatever time you choose. That’s scary because you’re actually addicted to constantly being notified about your email, but what I suggest is just try it for one day and see if your world doesn’t explode, your house doesn’t spontaneously combust, and you don’t get fired from your job. If none of those things happen, then guess what? You’re okay, and the world will continue to revolve. And then try it again, and that’s what I did. And now, just the mere thought of having my email open during the day just horrifies me because I’m so much more productive. The one thing that I have done, and this is something that I figured out myself, and I know I’m not the first person on the planet to invent this idea, but what I do is I have multiple email addresses based on my quote unquote identity for the time. So I’m a you know an editor on a TV show. There’s me as a friend. There’s me as a director of a you know a documentary. There’s me as the person running Fitness and Post. Every single one of those has a different email address. So what I can do is I can turn all of my addresses offline so they’re not checking. But if I’m at work and I’m dealing with producers that I may have to do an edit session within an hour. That email I have on, so I know that if that dings, all right. Well, that’s something I do need to pay attention to, and it’s important. But if my buddy says, “Hey, what are you doing this Friday? I’m not going to get that alert. So I organize based on who I am at the time. So if I’m sitting in front of my computer and I’m Zack Fitness and Post, that’s the only email address that I’m getting dings for, so that’s a technique that I use that I find to be really helpful.
Zack Sexton: That is wicked smart. That might need to be an article. I really like that idea, and I agree with what you said. I think some people need to have a little bit of guts sometimes to to put it away and realize that it really is an addiction. I and I have read similar studies that that talk about that dopamine hit that you get from it’s sort of like a lottery. You never know what’s going to be in there, and so that’s exciting. You’re just like, well, it could be a really good email or a really funny email, or and so because you don’t know what you’re going to get, the brain gets a rush from going and and checking on it. It literally is like playing the lottery. But other people might not necessarily be in the in the same position as you, Zack. As as can turn off all of the the emails. So I think your idea of having specific emails is great. I have experimented with using an application called If Then Then Then That, and I taught this to some of my my clients when I. Before I joined Asian Efficiency, who are like, no way I can do this, Zack. I might, you know, if this person emails me and I don’t respond right away, I’m in hot water. Like, it really is important that I I’m tied to that. And my first suggestion would be just trying to convince the people that in your life that hey, if you really need to get important something to me, and it’s really important. It’s really an emergency. Yeah, give me a call, send me a text. That’s the best way. However, if you know it’s your boss and you can’t be saying, “Hey, you know, I’m not checking emails anymore, boss. Why don’t you send me a text? Might not play out so well. And so what I did is I set up an if then then that if a specific email got sent to your inbox, then a buzz notification would come on your phone, and I’m forgetting the name right now. But I know there’s another application out there that also does that, and I’ll I’ll be sure to figure it out and email it to you so you can you can put it in the show notes. Yeah, but there’s an easier there’s an easier way to set it up that I just learned about. I haven’t gone and experimented with it. If then then that will take a few steps, and you might not trust it right away. So, so I’ll find that, and that that can help some people get out from under the the constant barrage of of notifications by having strategic people. So there’s probably only three or four people in your life where, like, if their email comes in, the world could come to a halt if you don’t answer it right away. Well, maybe maybe in their eyes, but that that’s how you can still avoid that barrage and still be responsive to the people who need need you to be responsive,
Zack Arnold: Right? And I know another another idea that some people use, and I think this is an idea popularized by Tim Ferriss, is you can actually write an auto responder or have a signature at the bottom of your email, just kindly reminding people, “Hey, I only have my email open a couple of times a day, so if this is urgent, here’s a better way to get a hold of me. And I’ve gotten emails from people that say that, and it doesn’t turn me off. And I actually think, “Oh, well, that’s kind of a good idea. Maybe I should try that. So I think that that idea scares a lot of people, but I really I find that it’s it’s not as scary as it seems, and if more people did it, then maybe more people would catch on, and we just wouldn’t be so attached to the crack cocaine that is email.
Zack Sexton: Yeah, and and I I think a lot of people understand that, and I would suggest if if you’re gonna dramatically change your email habits, rather than just adding it into a byline, is to is to talk to people first. Like, hey, look, you know, I feel like I’m not really getting the things that I need to get done done, and I feel like part of the problem is email, and so I will be experimenting, and you know, just call it an experiment with with checking it only at 9o’clock and 4o’clock And so if you if you send me something at 10 o’clock and you don’t get a response right away. That’s why. So I think part of it too is is people’s expectations, and if you manage their expectations well, either in a byline or or by actually talking to them in person, that will help a little bit. And as far as bylines or adding something to your signature, another tool out there that I like is a is a site just called Five Sentences, and it’s spelled like Five Sentences, but it’s instead of .com, it’s .es. So it’s real clever. But if you Google it, you’ll find that there’s a you can add that hyperlink to your byline and explain why you maybe are writing shorter emails. And so that’s another strategy to get out of your inbox: is not write such large emails, and this is a problem that I always struggled with because you know I wanted to come off as smart and well, and so I would kind of agonize over over an email and try to make it all perfect. But the five sentences explains, hey, email is a tool. We’re trying to get to the point. We’re trying to trying to communicate, and so it explains like, okay, here’s why I’m only writing a few sentences, and here’s why. Maybe I’ll put a little bit more bullets into my email because that it gets the point across, and it saves both of us time. And so that that could be something else that that you add
Zack Arnold: To it. Right. Okay. Well, these are some really really great strategies for managing email and also doing some task management. I want to switch a little bit, and I want to talk about kind of two things concurrently because I think these two go together, and that is the idea of morning rituals and the concept of swallowing your frog. So explain to people what the what the heck that means.
Zack Sexton: Well, if you if you can swallow it whole, that’s great. We we sometimes call it eat that frog, which is a little little different, you know. Sometimes it takes a couple bites, but not not too different. And that that idea comes from Brian Tracy, who’s a kind of a more famous writer. He’s he’s got a book of that name, Eat That Frog, and he actually got that quote from Mark Twain, who said, “If you’ve got to eat a frog during the day, eat it first thing in the morning. And if you have to eat two frogs, eat the biggest, ugliest one first. And what he meant by that is to try to do your hardest task first, or your most difficult task, or the task that you know you’re going to avoid at the end of the day. And that’s why actually. I think exercise is such a good thing to do in the morning because one, it’ll it’ll give you energy and it’ll give you that momentum to go to the rest of the day. But also, at the end of the day, exercise is you know it’s difficult. You you’ve got to if if you’re doing it right, you’re expending a lot of energy, and it’s harder to do at the end of the day when when your willpower reserves are drained. And so that’s what eating your frog is: is doing your most important task first, and then your second question. It was two part. I can’t remember.
Zack Arnold: Yeah. So the the second question, which kind of leads right into that, is the idea of morning rituals, because this is something that
Zack Sexton: Oh yeah,
Zack Arnold: I’ve really kind of had to reteach myself as well, because I was the opposite. I would look at all the things that I had to do during the day. Once I got organized, looking at emails I have to respond to, bills I need to pay, you know, things I need to do, email newsletters I need to send, whatever it is. And I would do all the dit dit stuff and be like, I just want to get all the tiny little crap out of the way. And then the day would go by, and I’m still doing little crap, and I’m like, oh my god! I still have to write this giant blog post, or I still need to edit this, or whatever. And it just you basically are just sucking up all your decision making, you know, currency because making decisions requires a specific amount of energy, and you only have so much. So I’ve really found that I have to just quantify the decisions I’m making, and make sure that the important ones are happening when I actually have the energy to do them.
Zack Sexton: Yeah, and you know the way you said it, it sounds so logical. It’s like, oh, let’s get the little things out of the way so I can focus on the big things later. But by the time all those little little things that that really aren’t as important get done, you don’t get that important thing done. And so it’s, I think it’s Stephen Covey who’s saying, you know, get the big rocks in first, and then get all the little pebbles in in later. You know, those can fit around it, but make sure you have those big rocks every day and every week and every month and year, and in order to move your life forward. And so if if you’re always just doing the small stuff, you’re never gonna get to that big stuff. So the idea too for for a morning ritual, and and actually, I feel like it’s nice to book in the days that you’ve got your morning ritual and you’ve got your evening ritual. But if you are only gonna do one, or if you’re only gonna start to implement one of the two, I would definitely recommend a morning routine because that’s that’s the time of day where, where again, like we’ve been saying, you’re the freshest, and a lot of times it’s for me. I’ve got a set routine, and it’s geared towards getting me in the right mindset. It’s geared towards sharpening my saw and making sure that I I’m I’m still maintaining my ability to to produce work by by taking care of myself, so my morning routine looks like I wake up and I drink water, lots of it the night before. So that kind of comes into my nightly routine. I I put a pitcher of of water and squeeze a lemon into it, and so I just drink that almost that whole pitcher first thing. Then I brew some coffee, and I the last month or so, my girlfriend and I have been experimenting with bulletproof coffee, which we found that we really like. Which is just coffee that we’ve added some some butter and
Zack Arnold: MCT oil. Trust me, MCT oil. You’re talking to to a bulletproof coffee advocate and expert. I’ve been I’ve been sharing bulletproof coffee with my audience for months. So anybody that’s listened to me knows all about
Zack Sexton: It. I had a feeling that’s why I wasn’t too worried about not remembering. Yeah. So we just actually we just got the bottle of it before we were just using using butter, but actually it’s great and it’s it’s sort of made it so I I take my my breakfast a little bit later. So I haven’t I haven’t even had breakfast yet, but I plan on having it probably when I get off the call with you. Then another thing that I do is it may sound weird and and not important, but I make my bed, and making your bed is is just one of those things. There’s there’s a few habits out there that are that are called keystone habits. That if you if you do one, it it actually affects other areas of your life. And exercise is by far the biggest keystone habit you can have. If you exercise, you’ll be more productive. You’ll be better with your finances for some reason, and you’ll you’ll be nicer. You’ll be more patient with people, and so that’s the biggest one. But but making your bed is actually another one, and it it just gives you a sense of control. So if your whole world falls apart, you still made your bed, you know. So and and for me, I work from home, so I can see my unmade bed, and so that that there’s probably another reason behind that. Then I I always do that most important task first, and for me, it’s writing because it takes a lot of brain power. It takes takes a lot of effort for me. Writing has never come easily, although it’s a practice that I’m trying to improve on, so I always do a couple pomodoras or time boxes of writing, and and what that is is a 25 minute, and sometimes I use a 50 minute, and I set a timer and I write, and so I’ve got a writing application that I use, and I just get in there and I I write and I write and write, and when the timer goes off, I. Take a little bit of a break, grab probably another or heat up some some more bulletproof proof coffee, and take a five or 10 minute break, and then I come back to it and I do it one more time, and that helps because it it breaks down the task. So if I have some big article that I’m trying to write, you know, like 4000 words or something like that, that can seem a little overwhelming. But if I just have to write for the next 20-five minutes. That’s not a big deal, and those breaks in there also help with that with that energy management we’re talking about because you’re not just trying to do a slog straight through five hours. You you can’t maintain your focus, and if if you do maintain your focus, you’re going to be just drained after that. And so that’s that’s a technique that I use, and that’s that’s kind of what my morning routine looks like, and for anybody, I would suggest doing something to to wake yourself up, to keep you fresh, to organize your day, and to do and to make sure you have some sort of prioritization that you’re getting the most important task first. And that’s part of my morning routine: is that I I get up and I and I write first thing. And another another piece of that is is meditation, and if if that’s something that I don’t know how much your audience knows about that, I’ve been I’ve found it very very helpful in my life as far as keeping my focus. It’s actually been found that you’re you’re half the time your mind is wandering, which is crazy. So 50% of the time that I’ve been talking right now, you’re probably thinking about something else, and and it’s completely normal. And what meditation does is it allows you to notice when your mind is water wandering and bring it back. And it does this just through you know you can do simple breathing exercises or anything like that.
Zack Sexton: But if you know if you start to notice when your mind is wandering a little bit more often, then you have a little bit more control, and then you have the ability to direct your focus where you want it and stay in the present moment. And that has a lot of other benefits on top of getting more stuff done. But that definitely is one of the benefits: is getting a little bit more done.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I mean, the meditation is a huge part of of my life in general, and something that I’ve been learning about and practicing pretty much since I was about 12 years old because I studied martial arts starting at 12, and meditation was a big part of it. And I’ve you know studied qigong and studied yoga. I cannot emphasize that enough. We spent an entire two weeks in our challenge groups going through meditation and even learning how to breathe properly because people really the vast majority of them don’t even understand how to breathe properly to make sure to have focus and energy, and we’re all you know shallow breathers. But when you learn you know deep abdomen breathing, you can just get a lot more focus, a lot more energy, and that’s all something we talk about. And there, I also have a podcast about meditation. I have a podcast about yoga, so I can link to those in the show notes. But going back to morning rituals, I’m going to play the devil’s advocate for a second, and by the devil’s advocate, I mean me, because I’ve never been a morning person, and that has changed a lot. But I can’t wake up in the morning and eat my frog because my frog is two little children that need breakfast and need to get change, and I need to make their lunch, and then I get in the car, and I’m stuck in the car for an hour, and then bam, I’m in the thick of it at my office, and I don’t have any time to myself for 12 hours, and I’m a night person, and I’ve had to shift this ever since having kids. But I was always the most productive at night. I really didn’t get a whole lot done until about eight or 9o’clock at night, and then from like nine to one, I was a machine, and like most of my success up until five years ago came during the night hours, and I know that there are a lot of people in my industry that kind of function on the same circadian rhythm. So give me some alternatives if you have kids and you just don’t have a morning to get anything done other than take care of your kids. What are some alternatives in that situation?
Zack Sexton: Some alternatives to that would be go to bed earlier. No, I’m. I agree. There, there are different differences in in people’s circadian rhythm. Night owls actually are a fair degree of the minority. Not saying you’re not one of them, but it’s it’s a it’s a very small percentage of the population that actually does function better. But it’s it’s a genuine part of the society, and so what I would say is, whatever time you are are gonna be at your best is to like at that beginning is is to try to prioritize and and do those things that that are most important. One way that’s that’s very helpful in doing this, and this is is what my evening routine looks like, but maybe this might be your morning routine if you just want to flip flop it. Is I decide what those tasks are the night before, and so the night before I decide, okay, I want to get this, this, and that done. And before I, I was putting it on on my computer, and whenever I open up my computer, there’s a lot of things that can that can distract me. And so, a recent one that I’ve habit I’ve I’ve gotten in is writing those three things that I want to get done that day. Those three most important tasks on my whiteboard that is beside me. Another tactic that I’ve heard is if you’re. It sounds like a lot of people in in post production would be working on their on their computer quite a bit is. You can write down those tasks that you want to get done, put it on your keyboard or close your laptop, put it on top of your laptop, and actually have something in the physical world. So when you are at that point where it’s like, okay, this is my time, frogs are going to be eaten. What are those frogs? You don’t even have to think about it. You don’t have to hesitate. You know exactly what you want to do, and that’s what I I would suggest. So whatever time of day you’re doing it, I would suggest knowing ahead of ahead of time and having that game plan. The reason that I like to do it the night before and then wake up the next morning and do it is that it seems like when you sleep, your mind is still going. And a lot of times, if I know that I’m going to be writing a specific article on something or creating a certain video on on another thing, then when I write that down and I go to bed, neurons fire, and I wake up the next morning, and it seems like I’ve made some new connections, and I’m better able to do that task. But I’m sure the opposite can happen. You know, you’re you’re at the end of your your long night slog. You write, okay, I’m like these three things. If I get them done next shift, it’ll be awesome. You go to bed. Same thing can happen. You just find find that next time. Otherwise, there are alternatives to trying to to change your schedule. If you’re if you’re in that night owl and you’re trying to get out of that funk, there is a book that was just recommended to me. And again, I do not remember the name right now, so I’ll make sure to email you that book, as well as the the email tool, so you can get it in the show notes. There is ways of shifting your circadian rhythm, and and somebody actually just mailed me the book that I’m plan on reading. So
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I actually just listened to a podcast from my my favorite health and wellness resource online. It’s a guy named Ben Greenfield, and he does an entire podcast about how to use different spectrums of light to change your circadian rhythms, and how to become a morning person or become a night person if you have to say if your you know work shift changes or whatever, and just ways that over the course of three to five days you can actually change your biological rhythms using different spectrums of light. So I’ll put a link to that as well.
Zack Sexton: Also, a on your computer, if if you’re trying to to keep with their circadian rhythm, a really nice application. It’s free as well. It’s called Flux.
Zack Arnold: Oh yeah, I’ve I’ve yes, I’m a big supporter of this. I tell everybody in my groups, and I’ve posted about this multiple times. I cannot live without it. But yeah, I’m sorry I interrupted you because I’m so excited about this tiny free app. But I’ll let you you talk about what it is for those that haven’t heard of
Zack Sexton: It. Oh yeah, so Flux, you sound like a bigger evangelist than me, but I I like it. I’ve I’ve found it, and and what it does is it matches the time of day, and it even matches to your place in the world. So if you’re in one time zone, it actually knows that and recognizes it, and and it changes the color, the hue of your screen to match the sun rising and setting, and and it’s I love it at night, and I don’t even change it if if let’s say my girlfriend and I are watching a little Netflix before we go to bed, and it’s still it it makes it more dim, and even though maybe the picture doesn’t look as it should, I still like it because it’s making it so that blue light that comes from your computer screen isn’t tricking your brain into thinking that it’s daytime and it should be active, and it allows you to to fall asleep a little bit more easily.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. It’s basically just emitting the red light spectrum from your computer screen, which is telling your brain and your body it is time to wind down and go to sleep, and I mean I’m I’m literally in front of my computer all of my waking hours. I’m staring at a screen other than when I’m in the car. I’m staring at a screen all day long, and usually about eight 8o’clock and it’s a little bit earlier now that the time is changing. But my screen just slowly starts to dim and get redder and redder and redder, and it calms me down. And obviously, and I’ve said this on the show before. If you’re a color correctionist, it’s probably not going to be for you because you’re not going to be able to do proper color correction. But it’s it’s totally free. It’s easy to install, and it’s just absolutely amazing for just helping you fall asleep better. But on the note of falling asleep better, I want to go back to something you just talked about, which is the idea of journaling things that need to be done the next day, because this is not only a productivity hack, but that’s also a way to improve the quality of your sleep. And there’s plenty of science to back this up. But if you’re one of those constant worriers that will put your head on the pillow and then stare at the ceiling for an hour because you’re just constantly trying to put together your to-do list for the next day and make sure you don’t forget anything. If you do this this ritual the night before of figuring out what needs to be done the next day, you’re going to sleep a lot better and you’re going to sleep deeper because you have the confidence that you’ve taken care of everything or that you know what needs to be taken care of the next day. So you just pass out, and this is a really good way to get better sleep, which in turn will make you healthier and make you even more productive. So it’s kind of a it’s a cycle that will just you know snowball and make you more productive.
Zack Sexton: Yeah, it’s again. I think this is probably what we felt a few years ago. Is that cycle can go another way. And the big thing that helped me is not only knowing what I was going to do the next day, but just knowing that I had. Task that I I needed to do or any project that I needed to do, I knew where it was and I knew where I was at with it. And so that’s with the with the getting things done method that I mentioned at the at the top of this of this talk is that’s what that’s the first step you do is you do a brain dump. And so if you’re having trouble falling asleep, you might just want to do a brain dump. It might take you an hour or so to do, but anything that’s on your mind, you just write it down, and that way you know it’s it’s in there. You don’t have to worry about it. It’s no longer on your mind, and and the reason for that, and actually it’s the same reason why you can’t fall asleep if you you feel like you’ve got a lot of things to do, but you’re not sure exactly what they are. The next day is called the the Zuckerneck effect, and that was found in the early 1900s by a Soviet psychologist. And what it is is when we have an incomplete task, our brain will continue to remind us multiple times about that incomplete task because we we don’t like to have those, and and that that incomplete task is called an open loop, and there’s basically only two ways to close that open loop, and one way is to is to do it, is to actually finish that task that that you would started and have finished. The other way is to write it down in a trusted place that that you know you can reference, and it’s it’s really interesting how they figured this out is that there was waitresses at the restaurant where this this psychologist went to, and she noticed that the waitress could remember in detail huge orders like 10 people, you know, 60 beers, and I don’t know whatever that they. She remembered the the exact order, but as soon as as she laid the ticket down, as soon as she put the check down. It was it was like it was it was blank. She forgot it. She she dumped it from their not their mind, and that’s how they figured out that oh okay when when a task is incompleted, it’s has a stronger sense in the memory than is if it’s done or if it’s put away, and so that’s that’s a big reason why your your mind might be running is because you’re a little uncertain and you really can’t trust your system and you really can’t trust your mind to remember the things when you need to remember them and an additional additional thing you know and on on top of sleep too these interruptions can happen at other unideal times so you’re in the middle of editing some video, and then you think about this other project that you have going on, and then your focus isn’t really where it needs to be, and you’re not you’re not giving all your all to the the current project that’s that’s right in front of you.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that all that I mean that all definitely makes makes a lot of sense. The one thing that I want to transition to now, I’m kind of going back to something that you talked about a little bit earlier, but it’s a concept that I’ve been looking into recently. I’ve been into learning more about habit forming because the big thing that’s happening with my challenge groups is people that have not exercised at all or haven’t done it for a decade, and they’ve had really poor diets and they’re very sedentary. It’s all that inertia that they have of not being able to get started, and it’s a. I’ve been reading a lot about habit forming and how you can ditch bad habits and how you can create new habits, and I’ve kind of been calling it baby steps. But you have a, you guys have a much better way of looking at and a much cooler name too, and that’s the idea of of solar flaring. So, what is solar flaring, and how can that help me to get to the gym every day, or help me exercise, or eat a better diet without feeling overwhelmed by transforming my entire life?
Zack Sexton: Yeah. So, it is one of our better names. We’re proud of it. And so, a solar flare is like what a real solar flare is, is a cosmic event, and it starts with a few electrons. And these electrons are can be found in the sun or or any other star really in the in the universe. And these electrons start bumping around and hit a bit of plasma, and that plasma that they hit starts causing a chain reaction. And that chain reaction eventually becomes so large that an explosion, a solar flare, comes off of the sun or any of the other stars, and it’s equivalent to I think 160 billion tons of TNT exploding in one little spot. And so, what solar flaring is? We’re trying to get you to do the same thing. So instead of moving little electrons, we’re trying to get you to take small little actions that will eventually lead to you being just an unstoppable huge explosion of a force. And though we found that the the best way to start taking those small little actions is with a little bit of positive self talk, and that positive self talk is a few words, and those few words are “I will just, you know, “I will just put on my gym clothes” would be a great one. I will just get in the car to to go to the gym. I will just walk around the block, and those those small things generally lead to larger action, and it’s that. Reason for that Zykernak effect. It’s like, well, you know, I got my gym clothes on. Might as well go. You know, or I’m I’m on my way to the gym. Might as well just do a good workout because I’m already here. And so that’s what solar flurry allows you to do. Is allows you to take tasks that even anything that that seems a little bit daunting or overwhelming and just breaks it down and gives you an out too, and if you complete that, I will just you know, and and you still really really don’t want to do that workout, then then all right, you still had a successful outcome, and you don’t need to feel bad about it. But you know, we found that nine times, and out of 10, maybe even 99 times out of 100 you’ll go ahead and complete that thing that you you started to solar flare on anyway. So that yeah, that’s that’s solar planning. I think it works really well for changing habits. I’ve been I’ve been doing some deep dives on habit routines as well, and some other ideas are are habit stacking. And I got this idea from James Clear of JamesClear.com, and he talks about there there’s there’s lots of habits are are actually not one thing. They they come in three parts, and the first part is the the trigger or the cue. The second part is the routine. So that’s that’s the actual like if if it’s exercising, exercising is the routine, and then the final part of the habit is the reward. And so the reward for people who have been exercising for a while is those endorphins that we we know we’re gonna get that we’re that we’re looking after. However, if you don’t have a reward necessarily already associated with it, you might you might trick yourself into giving it a reward. So maybe you do a workout and then you get a healthy Shakeology or something like that that you like the taste of, and what you can do is is take that cue. So you what you really want is the routine. You want healthy routines, but you can take the cue and find another cue that you already have. So maybe that’s why maybe a morning routine might be good. So every time you start to brew some coffee. That is your cue to just drop and give me 20, you know, and and do 20 push-ups. So you can, you can, and that’s called habit stacking. So you take the the trigger and you find another trigger that you already have in your environment, and and you have them all over the place. I mean, you hop in the car, you don’t even think about it. You just buckle your seatbelt.
Zack Sexton: And so if you can find one of those moments where you already have a habit, and then just stack another habit on top of it. That could be a really helpful technique to to changing the momentum of of other other bad habits. And and also you can you can take old habits that you’ve had and just rejigger them into into into better habits. So if you always had the habit of coming home and and watching TV or something when you when you got home you can change that so you you come home and you take that cue of sitting in front of the the TV and you change it to walking downstairs and going into your own personal gym or or whatever it may be
Zack Arnold: Right and I can this is something that I’ve implemented I I actually was kind of implementing it without knowing that I was before I started reading about it and officially diving into habit forming. But that was one thing that I did. I mean, you literally just nailed the the biggest habit that I had, which is that I would get home at the end of the day, I would throw my stuff down, and then I would sit in front of the TV and I would watch TV for two or three hours, and I would eat in front of the TV. That was my evening ritual, and that is immensely unhealthy. Especially eating after seven or 8o’clock will just lead to nothing but weight gain, and it’s it’s it’s really not good for you. And I said, you know what? I’m just going to replace the watching TV with just putting on my gym clothes. You know, because I work out at home. I don’t go to the gym. I just have a little room that you know everybody knows that I do all my my Beachbody routines, my P 90x and T 25 and all that stuff. I love that stuff because it doesn’t require me to get into a car and go to a gym and go to the locker room. Like I did that for a couple of years, and it just was completely inefficient based on the you know topic of our conversation. It wasted so much time that I didn’t have. So I said I’m going to try it at home, and that was the start of it, and I can say that there have been a couple of times you said like 99 times out of 100 you know, you’ll end up doing your task. I can remember maybe two times that I sat in my room where I exercise and I was wearing my gym clothes and I just didn’t do it because I’m like I am just too tired and I just wouldn’t do it. But every other time, and we’re talking about over the course of the last five years, I ended up doing something. I may not have finished a workout because I was just too exhausted or I wasn’t feeling it, but I at least did something. And that always ends up happening, where you walk in the room, you have your gym clothes on, you’re like, “All right, might as well just pop in the DVD. Like, let me just look at the menu. I’ll just get through the menu, and then I’m gonna go watch TV, and then you click on the menu. All right, well, I’ll watch the warm up. Then you do the warm up, and five minutes in, you’re like, “Oh, I feel pretty good. I’m going to start doing it. And then 20 minutes in, you’re like, “I feel awesome, you know. But but there have been
Zack Sexton: Solar flared the bejesus out of that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Zack Arnold: But but there have been a couple of times where I can just remember sitting against the wall, thinking, “Nope, just.” Doing it, I’m done. I’ve succeeded. I put my gym clothes on, and now it’s time to watch TV. But it’s it’s very rare, so it’s a technique that really, really does work, and I highly recommend. And something that I’m going to start implementing in my challenge groups is you know rather than saying, “All right, I’m going to throw out all the bad food, and I’m going to exercise six days a week, and blahdy blahdy blah, like I mean, you want to solar flare it even more? Just say you’re going to walk to your closet and put your gym clothes on your bed, and you’re done, and you succeeded. All right, first task succeeded. Like if studies prove that if you just do that for a week in a row, you just say, “I’m just going to go to my closet. I’m going to take out my clothes and put them on my bed, and if I do that, I’ve succeeded in my task for the day. That’s going to become a habit that you don’t think about. Then you take the next step and you put them on. Try that for a couple of days. You start to build in these habits where all of a sudden you’re walking to your closet and you don’t even remember why, because that’s something that’s in your subconscious. So it’s a really, really powerful tool to trick yourself into getting things done.
Zack Sexton: Nice, and and you mentioned a really good point there, and that’s a lot of times is environmental cues, and for habits and for anything else that you’re trying to do, a lot of times what we do and what our brain does, because it’s trying to conserve energy, it’s it’s kind of a energy miser, and it’ll do the easiest task. So if you make the easiest thing to do, putting on your gym clothes like they’re laid out for you right in the morning. Then your brain’s going to default to whatever the easiest task is. Versus if you make it hard, let’s say you know if you really wanted to get a little crazy and you could just unplug your TV, put it in the closet. You know, next time you want to watch TV, you you got a sports game or whatever movie that you want to watch, you can pull out your TV and plug it in. But because of that huge friction that you’ve put in the way of just plopping down in front of the couch and and flicking through the channels, that’s that’s going to change your habit. Or or even you know you can change the arrangement of your of your living room so not every single couch is just focused only on the television. And and so changing your environment is definitely another way where you can instigate those cues that will then give you the routines that you want, and then the eventual rewards, which is you know a healthy body with and an awesome life, you know. So
Zack Arnold: Well, that that’s a brand new one for me. And if this were a video podcast, you would have just seen the giant light bulb light up over my head because that’s brilliant. Like the idea of trying to eliminate a habit by making it harder-that’s great. Like had I known something like that two, three years ago, I would have just unplugged the TV. Like it’s it’s a 16-inch flat screen, so I’m probably not going to move it. But even if it were just unplugged, I might have been like, I don’t I don’t feel like going behind the dresser and plugging it in. Like, I mean, I can think of ways that that already applies to me. Where, for example, I have a laptop, but then I have like my large editing system that’s an iMac. And there are sometimes where it’s near the end of the day, and you kind of have that urge, like, “I just I need to check Facebook one more time, or I need to make sure I’ve done this. But if the computer’s not on, and I have to wait two minutes for it to start up and I have to log in. I’m like, ah, never mind. I’ll do it tomorrow. But if it were on and I just had to click a button and it were in front of me, I probably would have done it. So that’s actually a really good productivity hack that I’d never thought was a hack.
Zack Sexton: Yeah, actually, I just thought of a little bit of a better, more reasonable one. Most fancy flat screen TVs like you have, they don’t even have buttons on them anymore. You have to use the remote. So just go ahead and put the remote in another room, or put it in a drawer, or something like that.
Zack Arnold: Or if you have kids, you could never find the remote anyway.
Zack Sexton: Yeah. So you’re
Zack Arnold: Like, and and that’s the problem. Is that like in order to just watch TV in our living room, we have the TV, we have the AV receiver, we have the cable box, and none of them have buttons on them anymore. So you like you used to feel lazy when you’re like, “Where’s the remote? You’re like, “Oh, never mind. I’ll just go turn it on. I can’t watch TV without my remote because I have all these macros programmed to make sure it’s on the right input, and this is hooked up to that, and this is set to this. Like, I can’t get to those settings with just the buttons on the actual hardware, so without the remote, I cannot watch television. So that’s actually a really good hack to just say I’m going to put it, you know, downstairs or you know, put it in the garage or something. And just knowing, like you said, having to to choose the harder decision and say, well, I have to walk downstairs and go into my closet and get the remote. That can have monumental changes in your productivity, but more importantly, your health too. If you’re trying to get rid of a bad, unhealthy habit, so I’m really excited about that one. That’s a good one.
Zack Sexton: You you might be able to do the same just off the top of my head with with food. So it’s like, okay, I really like this certain type of cookie, but I don’t want to be just mowing down on it every day. So you know, put it on a shelf in your garage or something like that. So you really have to think about it before you you you take take part in that that activity.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve read studies saying that you can organize your fridge in such a way to either enhance the healthy choices or decrease the healthy choices because whatever it is that’s at eye level is what you’re most likely. To eat, so if you have all the junk at eye level and you have all the fruits and vegetables in like some bottom drawer, you’re not going to reach for them. But if you’re putting the healthy stuff at eye level, you’re more likely to grab it because you see it first and and it triggers something. So just changing the arrangement and making it you know 1/10 of 1% easier to get to that can have monumental changes in your health.
Zack Sexton: Nice, nice. Yeah, and and here let’s let’s go back to making things easier with a evening or morning routine. If the night before you you put yourself make yourself a salad and put it in Tupperware, and then you could just grab it before you go to work, that’s easier than than walking down the street and going to you know Cadoba or McDonald’s or or some other less healthy healthy option because you already have it there, so just kind of making those things easier to do is yeah. There’s there’s all sorts of things you can do with the environment. It seems like
Zack Arnold: Yeah, I mean, I’m I’m feeling like we are literally just getting warmed up and just getting started, which tells me that we’re gonna have to we’re gonna have to have a part two of this podcast because I have a list of 100 things that we could talk about because I could geek out on this all day. However, that would not be efficient because our appointment was only till 915 and I have a job to get to, and I know that you’ve got plenty of other things to get to as well. So we’ll we’ll cut this interview off today. But I definitely want to have you back again soon because I think this is going to be super helpful for my listeners, and frankly, being totally selfish, this is just going to be helpful to me. So I just want to do this again, just to make my life easier. But yeah, this has been really, really awesome. I really hope that people find it helpful. I greatly appreciate you being here, and for those that are listening, if you want to get all the show notes about the things that we talked about, I’ll put in the show notes the information he sends me about the book and the email management system. Just go to fitnessimpost.com/ 23 because this is episode 23 So I really really appreciate you coming on the show, Zack, and I guarantee I’m going to be having you back again soon. So thank you.
Zack Sexton: Well, great, thanks. Yeah, it’s been it’s been a lot of fun geeking out in the morning. I love talking about this stuff, and I’ll also have to have you on our podcast. So we’re at Asian Efficiency. We’re starting up a podcast called the the Productivity Show by Asian Efficiency, and I am one of the hosts of it, and it’ll be launching january 1. So definitely, energy and exercise and health is a huge, huge part of productivity, and it helps you take more action on your goals and just have a better life. So you will be an invaluable resource to me. Yeah,
Zack Arnold: I’m I’m excited about that podcast. It’ll definitely be in my regular rotation. And before we go, I want to make sure that you have a chance to just plug the site and tell us how people can find out more about what you guys are doing and how to find you.
Zack Sexton: Oh, great! So my name is Zachary Sexton, and and if you wanted to just contact me directly, my my Twitter account is at zw sexton, and I also have zackary sexton.com where you can get a hold of me that way. But as far as Asian efficiency and looking to get more productive and creating more systems in your life, so you can take more action around your goals, just go to Asianeficiency.com, and you should find find everything that you need there.
Zack Arnold: Yeah, and there’s a ton of free resources. They have you know like these premium packages where they basically the idea, from what I can tell, is that you guys have just compiled years and years of blog posts and tips and tricks. And there’s so much of it that if somebody just wants to do one thing, you’re really good about organizing it into a nice, neat little package. But if you just want to go and look around, there’s so much free information. It’s like ridiculous.
Zack Sexton: Thanks. Also, I forgot to mention at Asianeficiency.com. If you guys are on Twitter, Marie, who runs that, just got named the best productivity Twitter to follow. So she’s always putting out a lot of our articles, a lot of articles from a lot of our different friends, and just different videos and images that are inspirational or productivity related, or just tips and things like that. So you can follow us at Asian Efficiency as well on on the Twitters.
Zack Arnold: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with me. I I cannot express how much fun this was. We’ll definitely be doing it again many times soon. So thank you, sir.
Zack Sexton: All right, thank you, Zack.
Episode Credits
This episode was edited by Kristin Martin, and the show was executive produced by Kanen Flowers. We are a member of the THAT STUDIO podcast network.
The music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Dorian Cheah from his brilliant album ARA.