The Productivity Show

How often do you find yourself saying "I can't deal with this right now... I'll figure it out later" or you just avoid decisions altogether? For busy professionals, it's extremely common, and the culprit is usually decision fatigue — the more decisions you make in a short period of time, the poorer quality your decisions become and the less willing you are to make them. We've all been there. In th...

If you've worked in a decently-sized organization, there's a good chance that you are, have, or will at some point use Microsoft Outlook. It's everywhere. The problem is, most of us just start using it, and don't spend any time making it work FOR us. In this episode, we're going to share 5 - ok, more like 8 or 9, Outlook tips that have made us more productive and let us get back to doing our work...

Welcome to The Productivity Show, a podcast by Asian Efficiency, to help you maximize your productivity so you can get the important things done without having to sacrifice your health, family and things that matter to you. We've helped tens of thousands of people save time, be happier, and become more productive. Today I'm joined by Chris Reynolds, the founder of the Business Method podcast and G...

How do you prioritize your projects? How do you know which project to work on first and ignore everything else? It's not as simple as it sounds. Today we're going to show you how we prioritize projects at Asian Efficiency using a tool called the ICE Matrix. It's what we use for our annual goals and quarterly goals to figure out what the most important project is to focus on. You can apply this on...

Have you ever been working on a work or personal project and you realize you've made massive amounts of progress? It feels like the time just flew by, and instead of feeling drained after, you feel awesome and energized. In this episode, we're going to talk about how to get into a state of Flow, and we'll give you 5 tools you can use to get there yourself. Thanks to Indeed for supporting The Produ...

Being productive at home can be a challenge when you don't have the right tools. By "tools", we are talking about your physical gear - things like desks, chairs, technology, AND digital tools - things like desktop & mobile apps. Like any job, we think the tools you use can make working from home easier and more productive, and in this episode we are going to share 8 physical and digital tools that...

In this episode I am super-excited to introduce Tim Stringer to the Productivity Show. Tim is a professionally-trained coach, productivity expert, and an accomplished yoga and meditation teacher. He's the founder of Technically Simple and Learn OmniFocus. As you can imagine, we cover a wide range of topics like how to best use a task manager for personal tasks, professional tasks, and team project...

If you've tried David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology, you've probably run into this scenario: You start doing your Weekly Review, and then you miss one, and then you miss another one, and before you know it, things are starting to slip. It doesn't have to be that way — in this episode, we are going to talk about doing an effective and efficient Weekly Review, and we are going to talk abou...

Today I'm joined by Tiago Forte, founder of Forte Labs and the creator of Building A Second Brain. It's a system he developed for organizing ideas and information to help people become more productive and creative. If you're a knowledge worker and want to be more efficient and organized, then you're going to love today's episode. We're also going to host a live webinar together on the topic of Bui...

GTD or "Getting Things Done" is a productivity system that has been a lifesaver for us going back to the mid-2000s. As we've talked to members of the community and podcast listeners over the years, we've found that there are certain things that almost everyone does when they're just starting out, and most of the time they cause problems later. We don't want that to be you! So we're going to go thr...

Had the pandemic put you behind on your goals? Maybe you've completely abandoned your goals altogether when life got too crazy. Given what has been going on in the world this year, you might be thinking "Goals? Those went out the window in March" — we get it. But there's still half a year to go and so much left for you to accomplish! In this episode we are going to share best practices around goal...

Have you ever noticed that at the end of a long web conferencing call like on Zoom or Teams, you feel way more drained than if it was an in-person meeting? The term for this is "Zoom Fatigue", and even if you use another tool like Microsoft Teams or Skype, it's a real thing and a lot of us are feeling it these days. In this episode, we're going to share with you 5 tips to beat Zoom Fatigue and sti...

Your calendar is your most important productivity tool. It represents so much — what your commitments are, what your opportunities are, and what is going on in your life and your work. In fact, we'd even say that your calendar is the true reflection of your priorities. It represents what you ACTUALLY spend your time on, not what you WISH you spend your time on. Your calendar can be a force for goo...

Today I'm joined by Jen Shultz, founder of The Non-Nine-to-Five where she helps people transition from a full-time career to starting an online business. She has helped many people over the years and still manages to do everything herself without any staff which to me is crazy. So I asked how she's able to be productive, run a business, help clients and live a normal life. We also dove deep into t...

At the start of the year or quarter you made a goal which sounded fantastic. You were all in. Now? Maybe you're not so sure. How do you know whether the goal you THOUGHT was a good idea truly is a goal worth pursuing for the rest of the year? In this episode, we're going to share 3 ways you can take a look at your goals and decide whether they're goals you should still go after. Maybe they are, an...

We all know that you can't buy your way to productivity. The biggest factor to you becoming more productive is for you to have focus and to execute as consistently as possible. HOWEVER, applying the right tool, app, book, or course can make things go faster, run more smoothly, or can just make things more enjoyable. In this episode, we are going to cover 10 of our favorite purchases over the past...

If you're listening to this podcast, we're going to bet that you've had some sort of productivity challenge in your life. Maybe you found yourself repeating the same negative habits. Maybe you haven't adapted as well to a new situation than you'd like, or maybe distractions get the better of you and you get to the end of the day and don't feel like you've accomplished anything. Well, even though w...

Do you find yourself with scattered thoughts, not sure what to work on at the start of your day, or do you go to bed with thoughts, tasks, and ideas swirling around in your head? One of the most underrated but powerful productivity techniques is to journal. It's something that anyone can do, and it is so easy to get started. However, there is a difference between just jotting down thoughts and jou...

This is Episode 300 of The Productivity Show, and we thought we'd celebrate by turning the show over to you! This is our first Q&A episode of the show, and we invited listeners of the podcast, readers of the Asian Efficiency blog, and our followers on Social media to ask us anything. There are questions about productivity, behind the scenes questions about the podcast, our setups, and a whole lot...

There is a lot of information out there about working from home, but most of it is little hacks and tips and tricks. Those are definitely useful, but they ignore the mental and physical side of being stuck at home. We always say that happy people are productive people, and that theory has never been tested more than right now while so many people are stuck at home trying to get things done. In thi...

The perfect storm has finally happened. Many of us are working from home whether we want to be or not, and if that wasn't complicated enough, if we have family members, they're stuck at home too! If you are working from home with kids, you'll know how hard it is to get your work done AND keep them from going feral AND keep them from playing video games or watching Youtube 12 hours a day. If you DO...

Recently a lot of people transitioned to work from home and feel out of their element. They're finding it harder to focus and get things done. They don't have the right tools, they have their kids at home, a partner around them 24/7 and they're going crazy staying inside the whole time! Don't worry, anyone can productively work from home with a few tips and strategies and that's what's we'll share...

Recently, we did a survey of the Asian Efficiency audience and did a check-in: we asked what kind of impact the global pandemic we're going through is having. As we suspected, a *lot* of us are struggling. Even if you and your family are healthy, and even if you're used to working from home, there's a lot of change going on right now, and change can be extremely disruptive. The good news is that i...

Let's talk about failure. It is easy to be productive when everything is going well, but what happens when you have a setback? Even a small failure can be discouraging and get you in a rut. What can you do to get yourself to be productive again? We're going to share 3 strategies for how to bounce back from failure and share examples of how we've done it ourselves. Thanks to Blinkist for supporting...

The first quarter of the year is done — how are you doing on your yearly goals? Are you on track? Are you behind? Have you dropped some goals and added any new ones? Have you even _made_ any goals for the year? In this episode, we will be reviewing the goals we made on the podcast at the beginning of the year, and most importantly — we will share some tips and things we've learned about keeping an...