This is the breakdown of my entire productivity system (step by step)

(again, this post is not for all as it is super practical & I am only doing what works for me - just wanted to share my best lessons & strategies after countless hours of research & experimentation

It's also pretty long so feel free to Save this post to read later if you're commuting or don't have much time to read it all now.

And so, this is my entire productivity system - enjoy!

✅ Purpose

Firstly, if there’s nothing else you get from this post: all the best productivity strategies & tips in the world will mean nothing if you don’t even know what you’re doing all of these for.

Whether you call it crafting your life vision, your purpose etc, the massive game-changer was being clear of my exciting life goals, the exact things I wanted to achieve in the next 5-10 years time. 

These goals didn’t have to be perfect, but simply aspirations that would keep me excited and motivated to move forward.

Quick note: Financial Freedom is not a specific goal for this exercise - it’s vague and doesnt mean much. Instead, ask yourself what do you want to make the money for?

Next, I asked myself three important questions to become even more centred & grounded:

👉Breaking down approximately how much I needed to generate each month to achieve the above - this becomes an actual NUMBER that I can move towards

👉What's the TIMELINE I plan to achieve it by. That’s because while I can have the same exact goal as someone else, having a different timeline (e.g. 1 year vs 5 years vs 10 years) would mean extremely different levels of action, effort & speed. 

For example, I am willing to give myself a longer timeline because I actually want to enjoy my lifestyle instead of “hustling” all the time - aka a true lifestyle business.

👉Am I actually committed to putting in the time & effort to achieve my goals? 

This required a deep reflection to ensure that I am not writing those goals just because “it sounded good”, but because I truly wanted it.

Once I got clear of the above, I’d put it on my phone where I can see my goals every day - they act as constant reminders about what I am working so hard for.

(btw, if you want to gain extreme clarity over all of the above, I am conducting a workshop later this month to go through all of these, just #me if you’re interested for more details)

I also review the above about once every year to make sure I am on track and/or to refine my goals further too. 

✅ Priorities

Something that helped me for the past decade was setting 90-day goals instead of simply yearly ones. More specifically, I set 12 week goals, and have a 13th one for my 3R process (more details below).

The problem for simply setting yearly goals for me is that I always tell myself I have a long time to achieve it aka no urgency, it doesnt take into account changes throughout of the year, and just seems so far away.

How I get clear of priorities is I review my entire life in 4 areas - Health, Wealth, Relationships, & Self. I identify what I’ve done the best at, and what are my biggest areas of improvement.

From there, i set my top 3-5 biggest priorities based on what I feel I need to focus on the msot for the quarter, whether is it to work on my relationship, build up cash flow, upgrade client systems, etc 

Note it doesn’t mean I ignore areas that are NOT my core priorities. I'll just practice baseline habits to maintain my current level of growth.

✅Planning

Now that I have gotten clear of my priorities, I can now set more concrete goals & action plans to get there.

Goals are just more specific targets of my priorities - what do I want to achieve for each priority that will make my quarter an amazing one? 

For more intangible goals like relationships, wellness etc, I employ a mix of self & peer ratings. 

Action plans can be a mix of one-time massive actions (e.g. join a gym) or recurring actions, whether daily, weekly, etc (e.g. 3 cardio sessions/week). 

After I identify the most important activities/actions that will help me achieve my goals - I'll either directly schedule it on my calendar, or add it to my to-do list (more details below).

Next, I’ll also start planning what I call my Perfect Typical Week. Here’s a quick breakdown of what it consists of:

👉Defining my DAILY themes for the Week

In short, whether is it for my business or side hustle previously, I’ll plan out a specific focus for a particular period for each day of the week. 

For example when it comes to business: Mondays for Content, Tuesdays for systems, Wednesdays for client delivery, etc.

If you’re a 9-5, you can do it for your night activity too (from ~6pm-12am). For example, Monday nights for investments, Tuesdays & Wednesdays for side hustle, Thursdays for meetings, Friday for date nights, etc.

👉Designing my Regularly Scheduled Activities:

This simply means to schedule in advance important activities to be done regularly. Examples include daily exercise, weekly reflections, monthly investment check-ins, quarterly recharge, etc.

I like scheduling these high-priority activities in advance because I don’t have to waste much time planning for them throughout the week. 

✅Process

On the calendar, there are a few non-negotiables that I add to my calendar. They are as follows:

👉Morning Routine. I try not to take too much time for this as I’d like to get straight to work once I wake up:

- Wake Up, super quick stretch & drink water (5 mins)

- Wash Up + Cold Shower (5 mins)

- Make Coffee + quick visualisation of my goals & calendar (5 mins)

It’s not perfect all the time, but I do my best here. 

Two quick tips that helped me be consistent: 

1) Alarms (phone or not) to be placed AWAY from your bed &

2) Not checking my phone in the first 30 mins upon waking up

👉 Shut Down. This is when you are finished with your day’s work and are ready to transition to more relaxing night activities. 

Doing this will allow you to remove work-related stresses in the evening and be able to relax more peacefully & intentionally.

This does not mean after shutting down, you need to stop all work - it just means you are ready to shift your frame of mind from the day’s work to your focus for the evening/night (e.g. spending time with friends, working on a side hustle, reading, etc.)

My Personal Shutdown Routine (~6pm before dinner/exercise):

- Deep Breathing (5 mins)

- Review my Day via Journalling/Tracking (5 mins)

- Plan for the Next Day via my Daily Highlights - all my best clients do this (5 mins)

I do these even if I am working or conducting calls at night just so I can rest in the evenings too. 

👉 Night Routine. Out of the 3, mastering this is the most difficult, but most important routine to implement in my opinion.

The duration & types of activities for this period are highly dependent on your preferences - so do test them out and see what works best for you!

My Personal Night Routine:

- Bathe & Wash Up (10 mins)

- Bodycare (10 mins)

- Stretching (10 mins)

- Catch Up with Loved One (10-15 mins)

- Prepare to Sleep (5 mins)

Something that really helped me was what I call the 10-3-2-1-0 strategy (learnt from Brendon Burchard):

🌑10 hours before bed: No more stimulants, like caffeine. 

🌑3 hours before bed: No more food, alcohol, and other beverages other than water. (Water only)

🌑 2 hours before bed: No more work - shut off all work-related electronics. 

🌑1 hour before bed: No more electronics - all phones, TV, computers are turned off. 

🌑0: You will hit snooze ZERO times the following morning. 

What helped me become consistent was setting an alarm to sound off about 15 minutes before my night routine begins.

Also, using night filters for my home/electronics works well too (e.g. F.lux for Mac, iPhone night mode, Twilight for Android, Orange lights, etc.).

👉To Do List. If your current system works for you, keep to it - I don’t think mine is perfect but it has been working for me for a long time. 

(btw, I use ToDoist, but other apps like Notion works too)

What I do first is to create 3-5 core categories I’ll want to focus on, for example: Business, Career, Investments, Content, Personal/Miscellaneous (for everyday errands, personal commitments like health, etc.), etc.

Next, I create relevant sub-headings that are the same for all categories:

📝 Default Queue: to add whatever tasks throughout the day

📝 Key Activities: these are simply the key action steps that will help you to achieve your goals for that category. 3-5 maximum - you can create “smaller” activities as a sub-task here too

📝Scheduled: Shift any tasks you have scheduled in the calendar here. Remember, if it’s important enough to you, you’ll want to schedule it on your calendar.

📝 Future Ideas: these are for tasks that you realise are not a Priority for this quarter, but you’ll wish to revisit it down the road. Wonderful for brain dumps. 

📝Other Category-Specific Headings: this will be up to your discretion based on what areas of focus you’re looking for. 

For example, I have areas like Sales, Marketing, Operations for my Business Category, & my Personal Category also has Investments, Health, Relationships too. 

👉 Review & Decide my Daily Highlights each Day: one of the biggest gamechangers for me but just takes about 5-7 minutes every day. 

All you need to do is to decide what is your “Daily Highlight(s)” every day, aka what are the top 3 things that must happen for it to be a meaningful & fulfilling day

(this concept was first coined in the book “Work Rules” - feel free to check it out)

Every night, I’ll review my day to see if I’ve completed my Daily Highlight(s), and to ask myself why or why not. 

Next, I’ll decide my Daily Highlight(s) via looking at my task management app, 

I simply write them down somewhere I can see easily throughout the day (now I send it to my team chat & my clients share it with our community group each day).

Here are the specific questions I ask each day:

🔥 Did you accomplish all your daily highlights? (Yes/No)

🔥Why or Why Not? (e.g. Had uninterrupted work, procrastinated, urgent tasks came up, etc.)

🔥Top 3 Daily Highlights for the next day (What will have to happen to make the day a great one?)

✅Perform

This concept has been the biggest game-changer for me for sustainable high performance & preventing burnout.  Even the most successful athletes, richest CEOs, or smartest academics all practice this. 

In short, I do this thing called the 3R process - Review, Recharge, Relaunch.

👉Review. I look back on what I have done & identify the areas I acknowledge myself for doing well and identify my biggest areas of improvement. I also make it a point to reflect if there were any lessons I made as well - this is also when I can seek feedback from others too.

👉Recharge - which can be done in 3 ways:

- Physically. This has got to do with resting your body (e.g. with sleep, fasts, having body massages, stretches, etc.)

- Emotionally. This is about having fun & enjoyment in what you do (e.g. watching Netflix, hanging out with friends, going on trips, etc.)

- Mentally. This is about clearing the Mind which is especially important in the age of information & stimulation overload (e.g. social media detox, meditation, etc.)

(some have Spiritual recharge which works too!)

 👉Relaunch. In short, this is about setting Intention for what’s ahead - be it Goal Setting, Visualising, etc.

Many of you might be asking by now, how often do I practice the 3Rs? The answer is All the time. 

⏱Hourly (or more): Deep Breathing, Meditation, Cold Showers, Visualisation, etc.

⏱Daily: Shut Down Routine, Night Routine (as below)

⏱Weekly: Social Media Detox, Dates, Social Gatherings, Planning & Reviewing for the Week, etc.

⏱Monthly: Massage, Monthly Reviews, Full Day Out, etc.

⏱Quarterly: Staycations/Holidays, Learning Retreats, Priority/Goal Setting, etc.

And there you go! 

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HOWEVER, while all the above sounds great & exciting...

But what happens if there are days these activities are already on my calendar, but I just don’t get it done - be it due to procrastination, handling last minute activities, being “lazy” & “unmotivated”, etc?

Well because this post is super long already…I’ll share about it another day haha. I have a system for that too.

For now, let me know if you found value from this post k! :) 

#masterimplementers

P.S. Later this month, I’ll be offering a workshop on how to make your first $10K - including my complete playbook, scripts, templates, case studies, etc.

As a bonus, I’ll also be personally helping you to set up your personal productivity system - one that is tailored exactly to your preferences & situation for maximum output with less time, stress & effort.

People used to pay >$997 to join, but for a limited time, it’ll cost $50 only - just #me & I’ll send you the details.