ERIC KIM

Efficient.

Efficient — to do, make or accomplish with less effort, force and resources.

Efficio

Efficiency isn’t about answering more emails faster than the other guy. Nor is it creating more widgets and doing more than the other guy. Efficiency is about getting rid of the superfluous, getting rid of distractions, and getting rid of waste.

Shorter yet more intense

For example in praise of kettlebell workouts:

Increase the intensity of the workout, but decrease the duration.

For example, a good workout is doing max-reps kettlebell one armed swings until you cannot do anymore (until failure).

Hot and cold

Perhaps in terms of health, best to expose yourself to extreme weather conditions for very short periods of time. For example when I walk to the park really quickly, I’ll just go in a tshirt (in the winter), and do my workout as efficiently as possible (muscle up, then max reps dips) and max rep chin-ups (on the bar or the rings), then quickly walk back home. The whole workout takes me probably 5 minutes. This is efficient.

The best way to travel or go on a vacation

Better to have a short but very intense and entertaining vacation than a prolonged (boring) one. We recall the extreme high (and low) points of a vacation more than the duration. For example, better to go on an extremely interesting 3 day vacation (with tons of extreme adventure) than a really boring 3 month vacation.

Perhaps we can also extend this concept to life in general:

Better to live a very short yet insanely epic life (Alexander the great) than a long yet boring life (the life of a typical office worker, or perhaps modern computer programmer).

Extreme activity, extreme recovery

Perhaps the best way to be more efficient with work:

During the day, increase the intensity of your activity but at night … increase the intensity of your relaxation and recovery.

At night, abstain from work. Extreme rest and recovery, extreme hot baths followed by extreme cold shower. Or an insanely hot shower followed by a extremely cold shower. Refusal to use your phone, or use social media or watch stimulating media at night.

Productivity by KIM