Get out of jail free card

GET OUT OF #JAIL FREE CARD an EBOOK by MARK WHITE


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The Last To-Do List in Your Life:

Inbox Zero ..............................................................................................................

Stop Working at 5 PM ...........................................................................................

Post-It Notes and To-Do Lists ..............................................................................

No more GTD Tips & Tools ...................................................................................

What to Do on Fridays at 5 PM? ..........................................................................

Open a Separate Mail Account for Associates ...................................................

What Do You Want In Your Life? ..........................................................................

Information Poisoning ..........................................................................................

Waking Up Early ..................................................................................................

Delegate or Die ....................................................................................................

No Phone Calls ....................................................................................................

Make Your Own System of Rules for Your Team ..............................................

IM Meetings are Poisinous .................................................................................

Do Not Turn on Your Computer on Sundays ....................................................

Facebook, Youtube and Favorite Sites ..............................................................

Why Should You Not Check Your Email in the Morning? ................................

One Minute Work .................................................................................................

Truth and Control .................................................................................................

Your Lunch is Getting Cold .................................................................................

Free Saturday .......................................................................................................

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Inbox Zero(Day 1, Monday)

Inbox Zero can be best described as the power of simple changeresulting in enormous productivity. The techniques in this book will ease you into the idea that changing your established habits canabsolutely change your life.

Like many hard working individuals, you probably wake up todozens—perhaps even hundreds of unread emails. Here’s a simple way to tame the unruly inbox:

Your first step will be to archive all of your unread emails.

Lost already? Time to head to Google for a simple search. First enter the name of your mail program followed by “inbox zero.”

Ex: Outlook Inbox Zero. (No Quotations)

Follow the simple instructions, and that’s it! You’ll have a completely empty inbox.

Remember this simple principle: Always keep your inbox empty.

Protip: This is also a goodbye from IT related organizationtechniques. No more. Tomorrow we are starting with acompletely natural organization.

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Stop Working at 5 PM (Day 2, Tuesday)

You should know when to stop. Otherwise your life will turn into Groundhog Day, repeating the same monotonous scene over and over again. You work long hours deep into the night, because you didn’tfinish the job during the day. You sleep till noon because you worked the previous night. You work on Saturday and Sunday, seven days in a row, and by Monday you’re exhausted! There has to be a moment where you step back, lift your fingers from the keyboard andcompletely unplug.

Nobody failed over one lost hour. Neither will you, or the company you work for, nor your clients. STOP. Turn off everything and finish fortoday. No matter if you’re reading this at noon or at midnight.Tomorrow, make sure you finish all of your work by 5 PM.

Even if you start working at 4, stop at 5. Make a deal with yourself and stick to it. This is an essential step.

In the upcoming days you will notice something strange. All your jobs will be completed by 5 PM, and you’ll find yourself sitting at your desk at 4:45, with all the applications shut down, just counting down the minutes until you can leave.

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Post-It Notes and To-Do Lists(Day 3, Wednesday)

Even though it’s only been two days, these are tremendous changes in your life and you will probably feel a counter-effect now – The need to systematize everything and organize it by to-do lists.

First and foremost, forget about all those convenient to-do programs you have on your computer, and just use simple post-it notes. You can even take a walk now to a paper store and buy some colorful papers.

During the next couple of days start jotting down notes on them. There aren’t any tips or tricks here on how to manage your to-do lists, because their purpose is something else entirely. You will actually be using them as a solution for your anxiety caused by changes in your life.

As you struggle with your anxiety in the upcoming days, their usage will vary. Slowly you’ll see a change in how you utilize them. While you may have filled every inch with tasks and details—as the days go by you’ll see an increase in empty space, until their usage is completely eliminated or cut down to a natural minimum.

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No more GTD Tips & Tools(Day 4, Thursday)

When it comes to finding ways to organize your life, it can sometimes seem like you’re making things twice as complicated as you meant to make them uncomplicated. Between to-do lists, devices, new programs and systems—organizing has become an obssession—and moredevestatatingly, it has become your jail.

It can feel as though you’ve given up everything, only to find yourself right back to where you were.

This will be the last to-do list in your life and the last book you will ever read about it. You are banned from visiting sites like Lifehacker, which are nothing but information drugs for people who are obsessed with organization.

As for the tools, realize that it’s not about the tools. It’s about you. There is no need to change your email client. Email has existed for 30 years now and it works great.

It’s you that needs to change.

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What to Do on Fridays at 5 PM?(Day 5, Friday)

With 25% of the work behind us, this is a milestone! It’s Friday evening and you’ve turned everything off. Having never quite been in thissituation before—you now have absolutely no idea what to do with yourself.

If you are not in this this situation, there are two possible reasons:

You have a life.1.

You haven’t been sticking to the principles we’ve been arranging 2.

for the past few days, so let’s start over. See you next Friday!

Back to those of you who have no life.

What to do now? Just about anything. That is, anything but turning your computer back on. Take a walk, go to a pub, or if you’re not into that, just lie down in bed or in the bathtub and let the thoughts come rushing in. Relaxation may not come immediately, but the act ofenjoying yourself is something that just sort of sneaks up on you.

Thinking about what you want in your life is the first step to creating a happier one. You will understand that you haven’t been able to see your own life from the computer screen.

Remember that the purpose of a job is to finance life.

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Open a Separate Mail Account forAssociates(Day 6, Saturday)

I’ll explain later why this is so important. Just listen to me for now. Open a new email account that nobody will know about, besides your closest associates. Don’t have any associates? Consider it time to get some.

Protip: Mail services with integrated chat options are extremely beneficial. Try Google’s Gmail with Gtalk.

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What Do You Want In Your Life?(Day 7, Sunday)

Sunday is a day for visionaries and its a day to respond to the question,”What do you want to do in your life?“ This is the mostimportant question you will ever ask yourself and only 1% of people have the answer to it. That 1% are the people who know what they want.

Even though it’s the most important question in life, I have left it for the seventh day. Because it’s the day when you rest from creating, and it’s the time to question yourself: in what direction do you want to be head, and with whom? Time to examine yourself, but also yourenvironment, partners, associates, company, industry.

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Information Poisoning(Day 8, Monday)

There’s no better day for dealing with bunch of useless information than Monday.

Two years ago, when I moved to my new apartment I didn’t bring my TV. And I haven’t watched television since. I don’t read newspapers because every day they have the same news that will be expired by the next day. And somehow I am always up to date.

Of course, some of you will think about Facebook, Twitter and RSS.Unlike the mainstream media, these are channels with personalized information, an therefore should be more relevant to us. But in fact, they are equaly (if not even more) useless, irrelevant and downgrading as mainstream media!

We all know how well diets end up, so I wouldn’t call this aninformation diet, but rather an exercise in completely breaking free from poisonous information.

You will determine the boundaries/limits of the diet by yourself, once you take control over your life.

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Waking Up Early(Day 9, Tuesday)

Forget about all those natural alarms, clock settings, REM cycles and everything else we’ve been fed up waking at the “right“ time. The real question is why do we even wake up early?

When do you not get up early? You allow yourself to sleep longer on the weekends. Why? Because you don’t have much to do on the weekends. You should get up early for one reason – to finish early, that is, to finish work by 5 PM.

If it’s possible for you to sleep till noon, begin working at 1 PM and be done by 5 PM. I don’t see anything wrong with sleeping till noon. There’s no need for getting up early.

On the other hand, if your must work 8 hours every day, then you will have to wake up early.

Just remember how you had to do the same thing in high school.

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Delegate or Die(Day 10, Wednesday)

You’ve worked hard and made something. Now it’s time that others work for you. Transfer your assignments to others.

This opens a whole new chapter on managing and working withpeople. Try avoiding a trap on the way: “I’ll do it by myself, I know best.“ Some of the next principles will help you set up some clear rules for delegating. I also recommend you read the book “E-mythRevisited“, so you can get a bigger picture about this kind of work.

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No Phone Calls(Day 11, Thursday)

I am not the type of person who uses the phone a lot. I’ve learned very early to transfer complete business related communication to email. Written trace of a correspondence is much more practical, because you can keep track of who said what and when. Tools like Basecamp just brought it up to a higher level.

Still, it’s amazing how many people don’t know how to use the phone. You should make things clear at the beginning. Let your clients know that the company policy is that all phone calls are billed the same way as your regular working hours. And they are free to chit-chat during working hours with you, but the bill will be delivered eventually.

Protip: As for the business phone after working hours? The best idea would be to turn it off.

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Make Your Own System of Rules forYour Team(Day 12, Friday)

Once they start calling you for the slightest details, your employees can become an even worse pain than your clients.

Unlike clients who somewhat respect business ethics and call you in decent hours, your employees may have developed the habit of calling you in the middle of the night. Special cases are remote employees who work from home without fixed hours, and can forget about company working hours.

You should make a written manual about communications at work. Who is responsible for what, and who reports to whom. List all known problems that may come up during work hours in that manual. Also consider making a system for documentation for more unknownproblems, so you can keep track of them and their solutions.

Prevent it: You usually create this manual when you get irritated by something—like an employee giving you a call at anunfortunate hour, when you finally have a social life!

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IM Meetings are Poisinous (Day 13, Saturday)

Meetings are poisonous, we know that. We avoid them as much aswe can!

What about instant messengers? They take us by surprise, but luckily on the internet you can use the invisible mode to steer clear ofdistracting conversation. An even better solution is to completely turn off all of your active messengers.

Remember, separate email accounts for associates that you opened, from day 6? Told you we would need it later! You can use Gmail’smessenger if and when you wish to invite and talk to some of yourassociates.

IM meetings should be treated as any other meetings. Try to avoid them and switch all your communications to email. When it’snecessary, arrange a meeting by email, at least one day earlier, with specified duration, starting time and end time.

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Do Not Turn on Your Computer onSundays(Day 14, Sunday)

I know. The last fourteen days have been grueling! Today is Sunday, a day for rest. Today is also our second milestone. If everything wentaccording to plan, you should be sick of computers, work and the internet. You should want to go out in nature, with people, animals or yourself. Far away from gadgets and their radiation...

Congratulations!

Protip: If it’s raining outside today, do not, by any means, start your computer. It’s called a book.

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Facebook, Youtube and Favorite Sites(Day 15, Monday)

You’ve noticed that during all these days no one has banned you from visiting your favorite sites, like Facebook or Youtube. I’ve let things take it’s own natural course so you would (un)intentionally decrease their usage to a level that it entertains you a little during the day, which is it’s main purpose.

If I had restricted you from these sites and showed you how to block them, you would eventually have them replaced with some other sites. There’s no point in blocking the entire Internet. Although it’s good thing to occasionally unplug your modem.

Your relationship with these sites shows how well you actually control the situation and how well you can manage your life.

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Why Should You Not Check Your Email in the Morning?(Day 16, Tuesday)It took me long time to get this, but eventually everything fell into place. I remember when I stopped drinking coffee in the morning. With coffee I stopped wandering around news and entertainment sites. But my mail checking routine remained constant. Working from home, where the office is between bedroom and the bathroom, checking mail was more important than brushing my teeth in the morning.

Then I realized that it was because of bad news. I don’t like receiving (bad) news about work after 5 PM, because I want to rest and fall asleep peacefully. Same thing goes for the morning. You can judge a day by it’s morning. Email is like Pandora’s Box. We let our curiosity take a hold of us, opening us up to bad news that can ruin our day.

Not everything is about bad news. Every day you have certainresponsibilities which you transfer to the next day. Morning is the best time to clear these things, and to have a clear picture in your head which enables you to judge better and to think more creatively about your work.

When that part is done, email can be checked. I, for example, have a break every morning between 11 PM and 12 PM when I deal with things from yesterday and plan the next day. I check my email once I get back from that break.

Once you master this, it will be logical for you to check your email only two times a day. In the morning and at the end of working hours.

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One Minute Work(Day 17, Wednesday)

I’ve learned this from my friend, Istok. There isn’t a task that can be done in one minute. Changing a single letter on a website costs an hour of work. This is where you make a point. All the money in the world isn’t enough if you’re being played 24 hours a day. This is exactly what happens in situations when someone is using you.

Be aware and don’t be scammed!

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Truth and Control(Day 18, Thursday)

You don’t get ahead by pushing yourself to finish a project a day, a week or a month early. Your body keeps note of every hour overtime, and at some point, it delivers the bill.

When it comes to not being able to meet deadlines, the best approach is to always tell the truth. Control the situation. You can either take over your job, or it can take over you.

Continue to ask yourself: Is everything under control? If not, slow down, back up and remember that exhausting yourself won’t help you or your clients.

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Your Lunch is Getting Cold(Day 19, Friday)

Ever have those days where you make yourself some lunch, go back to the desk, and then forget to eat it?

You know what they say in Latin soap operas – Basta! You should know when to stop!

Your lunch is getting cold and you’re hungry.

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Free Saturday(Day 20, Saturday)

The taste of freedom.

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Bonus Chapter: Even Less

Four Times a Week• – This is the most famous alternative to Henry Ford and his eight hours, five day a week work system. Beware of the trap! Even though you work five days a week still finish up exactly at 5 PM and don’t work longer than 8h a day!

One Day a Week• - My friend Simon from England works only one day a week. The rest of the days he doesn’t work at all, and he doesn’t even think about starting anything. Instead he hangs around at a local pub and watches sports matches.

Four Hours a Week • – Tim Ferris’s system.

Four Months on a Boat • – My friend Sanjin from Croatia spends his whole summer by cruising around on a boat. He works over his laptop and cell phone, for months not stepping on the land, yet alone in an office.

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