The Rise of the Integrated Man

RISE OF THE INTEGRATED MAN The Success Method that Cannot Fail

GEORGE TAM

Copyright Š 2009, George Tam All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The information, views, opinions and visuals expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not reflect those of the publisher. The publisher disclaims any liabilities or responsibilities whatsoever for any damages, libel or liabilities arising directly or indirectly from the contents of this publication. . The author and publisher disclaim any direct or indirect liabilities or warranties arising from the use of information contained in this report. The reader should seek the advice of a competent professional where appropriate.

A copy of this publication can be found in the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 9781921681042 (pbk.)

Published by Book Pal www.bookpal.com.au

About the Author The author holds a business degree and is a qualified CPA/ Chartered Accountant. He is also a certified financial planner and a professional member of the Australian Computer Society.

He has worked in a number of industries and in countries spanning Australia and Asia. He is currently a business consultant and an entrepreneur.

In his spare time he practices meditation, koh wushu, and chi kung.

He can be contacted on his weblog, www.theintegratedbiz.com or through www.bookpal.com.au

“Why is this book essential for you to read at your first opportunity?

It will change the way you look at work and how you think about making money.

It will help you plot your step-by-step escape from the 9-to-5 rat race and allow you to join the rich – people with more time and money to enjoy life.

“I wish I knew about this years ago; I could have saved myself years of hard work with little results to show” - Rebecca K. “The world is a changed place. Most of us haven’t even realized it yet. The Integrated Man is on the rise and will change our idea of work, the way we think, and the way we make money.”

- Patrick Harvey CEO, AAIC Ltd I have been working at a job and struggling most of my life and wonder why life was so difficult. I have attended dozens of get rich seminars with no results. Now I understand what is missing and know how I can achieve my goals with certainty.

– Patrik Whyte Tan CEO, Whyte Advertising “Anyone who doesn't take what this book has to offer and evolve into an Integrated Man is going to become extinct like the dinosaur.

– Thadeus Makukutu GM, BookPal PL

Preface This book is different. It is about the rise of a new kind of man – the Integrated Man. In here is shown a method to make you into an Integrated Man or Woman. It gets you right down to doing the few things you should be doing to get what you most want in your life – be it money, career success, or happiness. The approach is unique in that it offers a way to actually do it; a system that can be repeatedly used again and again in getting what you want. It is not just about positive thinking, feel-good and repeat-to-yourself affirmations.

The Integrated Man demands action and gets results.

The technology developed in this book is a culmination of over 35 years of actual experiences in the frontlines of business, research on successful people, people who have failed, and a study of the ancient teachings. Though these, an in-depth analysis and an evolution of a system have been devised to help people achieve their goals in the shortest, most practical way.

A shortcut to success is offered here – but it is not a super shortcut. A lot of thinking and some work needs to be done in this system. But believe me, the sitting and thinking will be the hardest part; not the actual doing.

Many people think that jumping in and working your guts out is the sure way to success and wealth. Others think that by thinking positive to attract wealth and success will do the trick. But to be honest, my associates and I have attended a

dozen of these seminars and read umpteen think-positive type books on the subject matter ‌. But funny enough, I have not met one person who really acted on the teachings and found big success. Now, I’m not saying that these seminars, books, etc. are not good. They are good. Perhaps the gap needs to be breached. There should be a systematic way to use the classroom-type learning and actually apply it to our real-life situations.

So, this is where the Integrated Man comes in.

Contents The Secret of Why You’re Not Rich - Yet .....................................1 It’s Time to Re-engineer Man!........................................................4 The 100-year Fallacy ........................................................................8 Hyper-Jump to Succeed ................................................................13 How Do You Work? ......................................................................19 The Many-Layered Mind .............................................................26 The Mind-Jump..............................................................................36 The Bottleneck Theory ..................................................................49 Focus on Tasks That Get Results .................................................56 Analyzing Your 80/20 Activities..................................................63 Take One Day In Your Life ..........................................................71 Thought-Movements Revealed ...................................................77 Be a Living Tornado! .....................................................................83 The Integration Method ................................................................88 Setting Up Your Tornado .............................................................93 Using the Integration Method for Success .................................98 Some Key Points ..........................................................................104 Launching a Project or Business ................................................112 Power Notes .................................................................................121 How to Create Your Algorithm of Success ..............................125 Create Your Own Success ..........................................................136 Tools for the Integrated Man .....................................................139

Chapter 1 The Secret of Why You’re Not Rich - Yet Many of us have been brought up with the traditional mind conditioning by parents, elders, and teachers that we must study hard, get into university, graduate, and get a secure job so we can make lots of money. I don’t know why or how this myth came about and why it is still being perpetrated today.

We should know better by now.

Studying hard to secure a job – yes, because that’s what education is for: to train you to work for somebody else. But to get a secure job – it does not exist anymore because the world has changed. Studying hard to get rich – well, I have yet to meet someone who got rich on a salary.

Companies are being taken-over, merged, re-structured, chapter 11’d at a faster rate than before. Ordinary working people are being retrenched and made redundant at a faster rate than before, especially in times of recession.

People have asked me if I am advocating that kids drop out of school if they want to be successful and rich. No, I am not advocating anything. I am just stating an observation. I have no quick answers to the quest for wealth – after all, it is only a state of mind. You will understand this better by the end of this book.

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If you check with friends who have worked for a number of years in various industries, they will most probably agree that they have to keep working harder and pushing themselves to go faster just to stay in the same spot. The insistent pounding change in technology, management fads, and globalization are keeping the corporate survivors on their toes at all times. Working harder and longer hours (including weekends) cannot provide the solution to your financial security problems anymore.

Wealth is the answer to financial insecurity and financial worries. You can either become involved in business and investment for big returns, or be a better employee and hope to get to the top and prosper. But before we get to wealth we must firstly have a way of working without killing ourselves and have a system of working towards our goals.

There must be a way to handle all the mounting piles of work and pressures of today’s world (and tomorrow’s). There must be a method and an approach that can help people get work done and still give them time to be themselves, and allow us to be happy.

How do you be happy? For a quick indication of the way, take a look at children at play. They are totally absorbed in playing and are spontaneous in their joy. They do not stop to think of other problems, etc., nor do they control their laughter. They just do what they do naturally and go with the flow.

Study the sages and the great teachers. They were always at peace and did what they did with joy and compassion. Yet, in their seemingly simple ways, they have changed the world.

This book is a result of many years of working in the world of commerce, researching the latest self-improvement 2

and management fads, and attending numerous selfimprovement courses. Personally, I did not get rich from all these activities, but I did help make some of my employers richer. Only when I changed my method of approach and my state of mind did I find success.

Paradoxically, the answers to modern man’s problems can be found in the oldest of teachings - ancient texts like the IChing, the Tao (the way of nature), meditation, and various philosophies from the martial arts texts.

By understanding the laws that operate in our lives and breaking the most complex things into simple grains of sand, we can evolve a method whereby answers can be easily found.

Using the Tornado Method you will find that one by one, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle will start to fit together. You will begin to see how the precious grains of ancient wisdom passed down by the sages can be blended with modern management methods and complement each other.

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Chapter 2 It’s Time to Re-engineer Man! The advancements that mankind has made in technology and industry over the past century has been quite dazzling, considering the short span of time he has been on this planet.

Let us zoom in on mankind’s progress starting from the turn of the last century. The beginning of the 1900’s saw the ongoing push of the industrial revolution with the car replacing the horse carriage. Then World War I came and the demands of war gave rise to developments in mass production and weapons technology. When the war was over, focus was redirected into industrial re-development with the help of the know-how discovered during the war effort.

The post-world war I economy recovered quite rapidly. In fact, the recovery pushed the stock markets of that time to phenomenal heights. This climb continued until 1929 when the great crash suddenly brought about major collapses to the world markets.

After the crash of ’29 most of the countries around the world went through a period of recession and economic hardships. However, this period did not last long as the world was again shaken by another major event – World War II. This War was another catalyst that gave rise to further jumps in technological advancements and changes despite the great human losses and sufferings.

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When the war was over in 1945, the rebuilding of the devastated countries again took top priority. The massive war machinery created during the war was adapted for peacetime needs of the populace. A period of relative post-war peace and material wealth ensued; and mankind saw the greatest period of growth of material wealth ever built on this earth.

In the early 80’s, the advent of the microcomputer made a huge impact on our way of life. Computing power was brought to the home and the individual. This was followed shortly by the emergence of the Internet. These two events have very possibly changed the way mankind will live hereafter.

Great material wealth that used to take a lifetime or a couple of generations to build are now being created practically overnight.

People are getting wealthy at a faster pace and a younger age (E.g.: Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Jerry Yang, some movie stars, sportsmen, singers, etc.). It took about 10 years for Bill Gates to make $1billion. It took Michael Dell about 5 years.

How long will it take today’s new entrepreneur to make his billion today? Keep your eyes and ears opened as the world moves out of this recession and lookout for the thousands of new wealthy entrepreneurs coming up from all walks of life. Not just from the western world, but from all over the world!

However, for the rest of the people who do not get wealthy, and this is a huge majority, the story is going to be different. Let me explain: The technological advances since the PC and the Internet have been so rapid and have generated so many changes in 5

society that mankind is finding itself on the brink of losing control. And the alarming thing about these changes is that they are growing at an accelerating pace.

We can see that all these changes and advancements have been made mainly for the benefit of the Corporation and the Investor, not so much the Individual. The chase for more and more material goods and services has pulled ordinary man into an ever-deepening spiral of debt and job slavery. This spiral is spinning faster all the time and humans are constantly trying

to

play

catch-up

with

all

the

new

business

developments and new technologies.

You are at risk of losing your job, and your future is uncertain.

Only the rich and the smart will get rich and richer. The rest will be slave-employees.

Why is this so? What happened to all those technological and management advancements that promised to give us humans more leisure time and less work? Well, one of the answers can be found by observing that the progress made so far has been mostly concentrated on getting better material results (better production, better quality, better profits, etc.). These are all aimed at firstly, serving the needs of the Corporation, the CEO and the Investors. Serving the employee (you) and looking after his lifelong welfare are not amongst the top priorities, sad to say.

For you to succeed in this new century, you need to revolutionize the way you think. You have to make a ‘technological’ jump in your mind. This jump is essential for you to catch up with the computers and machines that have

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run way ahead. Your mind needs to leverage on the technological advances to propel you forward.

In short, the human mind has to undergo a ‘technological’ revolution of its own. It needs to be re-engineered: (a) Internally (the way it thinks), and (b) Externally (using a method or system) This will allow people to deal with the increasing pace and pressures of the modern workplace, and yet, still allow mankind to keep its human-ness and stay sane.

This book will show you how to ‘re-engineer’ your mind using a simple method which can be applied to your job, your hobby, and your life. You will find yourself enjoying life and success from a shift in the way you approach things with the Tornado Method.

Now, please read on.

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Chapter 3 The 100-year Fallacy In today’s world many old ‘truths’ or paradigms do not apply anymore. We used to believe the earth was flat. Now we believe it is round. What if I told you the earth is neither flat nor round, but whatever shape you want to believe it to be?

We are living in times of ever-changing uncertainty. We seem to be running into more chaos and turmoil in our daily lives and work situations. As biological creatures, we are illprepared for such rapid changes. We don’t evolve as fast as machines.

Many people still think that the way to overcome this new uncertainty would be to get more ‘formal’ education and qualifications. If everybody is doing this and getting more degrees and MBAs, then is not everyone back to square one?

Seems like it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place.

The Grilled Fish Story There is this story about a village in the mountains where a man came and set up store to sell grilled fish. Now, this village was up in the highlands where people seldom saw fish, let alone eat fish. So, the grilled fish store soon became a hit and 8

people had to queue up to get a seat. Business was fantastic and the man made some serious money.

Soon, a few villagers got the same idea and went to the seaside fish market in the lowlands and got supplies to open up their own grilled fish stores. They too, started to make some serious money.

Not long after, some fathers told their sons to stop wasting time helping on the farms and go and open their own grilled fish stores instead.

“Look, who-and-who’s son has opened a grilled fish store and made good money. Imagine how rich he will be by the time he retires! My son is smart, so he must open a store, too” And more stores opened up in the village.

Of course, with more stores came competition. The owners then applied the old wisdom from their elders and worked longer hours, lowered the price of grilled fish, and looked for cheaper supplies of fish.

Meanwhile, more stores opened up in the meantime.

Not long after, a few stores started closing down as they lost customers to their competitors and could not make a profit.

Then some elders got a brilliant idea. “Let’s send our sons to the town center to the school there. There are many clever teachers there and our sons will learn to be clever and can help us make more money from our grilled fish stores when they return!”

So more and more of the sons went and came back with certificates after their studies (nobody questioned how a teacher who has never run a grilled-fish business can teach their sons how to be rich from doing grilled-fish business).

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Some of the sons got funding from their parents to open new grilled fish stores, some took over the family stores, and some were employed as managers - for the store owners felt that they must be so smart and can run the business better.

By this time you might have guessed that despite all that, many stores were going bust and closing down. Yet the villagers kept saving up and sending their sons to school for their certificates and telling them to work harder.

The truth, as you realize, was that the village was only so big, and could only sustain only a handful of grilled fish stores at any one time. So, naturally, only the best and most competitive few stores could survive. The rest will struggle all they want and still fail.

Why am I telling such a simple story with such a predictable ending?

The question should be – isn’t this what is going on in our world today? There are only that many big corporations in a country and only one CEO position for each one.

Iisn’t there an oversupply of graduates fighting for a small number of top paying jobs? In your life, wouldn’t it be easier to start your own business instead of ‘killing’ hundreds of your colleagues (and probably be ‘killed’ instead) for the one CEO post available?

A Worn Out Cliché “Work harder, and put in more hours of sweat; and you will succeed.” is another piece of cliché we still hear. Well, this piece of advice can still apply if you are in the right niche and working in your own business. Take for example, if you are in the business of making horse carriages. Working harder and 10

longer is not likely to get you anywhere because Technology has taken over in the form of the car.

Think of the people and children working in those sweat shops in third world countries making clothes, shoes, etc. They work more than 12 hours a day for a meager pay. Would even working 24 hours a day make them rich and successful?

Now, ask this same question of yourself.

In the past couple of decades we have seen increasingly more collapses of big-name corporations and trillions of dollars used to bail some of them out. By the way, you the taxpayer is going to pay for it. Even whole industries that were supposed to be firmly entrenched for the future have been shaken (note the massive fall of telecommunications and insurance giants, energy corporations, dot.coms, and even notable banks).

Events happening in another part of the world today would probably affect your life and your job no matter where you are, for we are all now part of the happening global village. The tragic part of this is that those who have been, or will be victims of job cuts are ill-equipped to do other jobs.

Most of us have only been trained to do limited-scope, deadend, departmentalized jobs in the companies that we are employed in. For example, someone with in-depth experience and loyalty in the airline industry for the last 20 years who has been retrenched would be deemed quite unsuitable in the retail industry or the finance industry.

Strangely enough, with each downsizing, restructure, or merger, the share price of the companies concerned usually go up for the shareholders and investors. Unless you belong to these groups, you do not stand to gain, and your mental and financial well-being is at stake.

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The advent of the Internet only some years ago is already making rapid and sweeping changes to the way business and work is being done. Businesses are becoming more online and pressure is even greater for humans to work and respond at the speed of a click. The full impact of the Net is not clear yet, but we can be sure that our lives will not be the same again.

And we have not mentioned the many other emerging technologies (mobile phone, iphones, Web 2.0) that can be expected to impact our lives too.

However, however, this does not need to be scary for you.

In fact the very technologies that have been making humans redundant are the very same ones that are creating great opportunities and power for the individual: YOU. One may ask why, with all the modern management techniques and computerized planning and budgets, why do many companies still fail to achieve their goals?

In looking for an answer, it would be useful to observe that the modern systems fall short of encompassing all the components that propel an organization. They miss out on the human factor. It is the people in an organization who make it possible for the organization to realize and attain its plans.

Without the human element, the organization is but an empty structure.

We next ask what is it that moves the person? The mind.

But what moves the mind? Thoughts.

Yes, thoughts, those intangible and ephemeral entities that, in the final analysis, power the organization and the individual. As we go along we will forge the link between thoughts and how they drives your achievements as an employee or as an entrepreneur, whichever you may be now.

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Chapter 4 Hyper-Jump to Succeed You cannot cross a ditch by jumping halfway first, then, jumping the other half. You either take a whole leap or nothing.

There is not much we can do as individuals to change the world or stop technology from advancing. That is too much of a tall order. But if we cannot change the world, we can change ourselves. The solution is actually within us, and we need look no further.

Actually, to effect changes in a corporation or even a country, we only have to make the changes to ourselves. If each of us makes a change to ourselves, then the whole organization or country will change. After all, an organization or country is no more than the aggregate of all the aims and efforts of the individuals working in it.

Let us each be responsible only for ourselves, and the world will take care of itself.

The first step in making a change to ourselves is to change what is inside our ‘black-box’. It is here that all thoughts, ideas, attitudes and habits originate. It is here that all the programming takes place that determines our actions now,

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and in the future. Hence, the first step is to change the way our mind thinks and works.

Changes in our mind can be effected in two ways: incremental or quantum. Incremental change involves step-bystep evolvement. For example, in the old days people thought of building better ships to speed up the transportation of people and goods around the world. Wooden boats with manpowered oars were replaced by larger boats with sails. Then metal ships with steam power took over as a faster means of transport. Later, diesel engines were introduced to improve the speed of ships. All these incremental improvements worked on vessels that used water as a medium.

Then came a quantum jump – the airplane. This was a different type of vessel and made use of a completely different medium. The airplane did not involve incremental thinking in improving on existing water transport technology. It was a technological jump.

So, can you guess what the next jump in transportation advancement will be and what medium it will use? If you can, you’re bound to be super rich.

It took a totally different kind of thinking and approach to move away from water to the air. The people involved had to remove the mental blocks about flying and bring together different theories, technology and put them together to come up with something completely new – the flying machine. This required creative and focused thinking and invention of new machinery; and finally, integrating them into an airplane.

Just like the invention of the airplane; when you can bring together all the elements that is required to make you a success – you become a completely new Integrated Man.

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In this techno-age our human mind cannot afford to take just incremental improvements to keep up. The shortest distance between two points is no longer a straight line, but a quantum jump.

This book will bring you into a new world where you can train your mind to attune with your natural abilities to achieve the most in the shortest time.

We humans are capable of thinking of and conceiving things that never existed before and convert our thoughts into reality. We can create complex designs in our mind and concretize them into the material world (eg. space rockets, skyscrapers, etc.). This is one of the great wonders that our human brain is capable of.

Yet we are failing in our workplace because most of us work only on incremental improvements. This alone, cannot keep up with the pace of change in the world. Those who survive the workplace usually do so at a heavy price to their health and family relationships. The increase in stress-related health problems and marriage-cum-family breakdowns today are a testimony to that.

Today’s workplace does not give you much leeway to take your time to work in the way your brain was conditioned for. We were educated in increments and that is how we work.

You just have to work with whatever is thrown to you during your daily routine and clear it out of the way as fast as you can to meet the deadlines. Or work longer hours to get things done.

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MAN vs MACHINE: A Losing Battle By comparison to man, a machine is designed for a specific purpose and can perform a task or a computation many, many times faster than any human. A machine is employed to execute a certain function at any one time. It is not expected to do anything else. It just does what it is designed for and does it well. It does not think, so it cannot be distracted from its purpose. Humans, on the other hand, do not work this way. It is no wonder we are losing out in this world where machines and computers are making us mentally impotent!

Why does a machine perform a task so fast and so well, and yet a human with a brain more advanced than the best computer ever built loses out?

There may be many arguments and factors that different academics may put forth to explain this. But for you and me, the simple truth is that a machine is dedicated to, and focused on its task at any one time, e.g. welding a joint or sewing a piece of cloth. The machine allows nothing to get in its way, nor can it be distracted while it is doing its job. It is there, and it is just hammering away at its task, and nothing else.

Switch off the power and the machine sits still and does absolutely nothing. Not even think. Now, try telling an ordinary human to switch off his mind.

Today’s workplace requires humans to work like machines. Yet still they are being pressured to take on more work and perform them with machine-like efficiency. So, how do you work like a machine, and yet at the same time feel like a human? Or remain human at the end of the day?

You have to do more with less - and at a faster pace.

There is no way you can cope if all you are thinking of is to try to work harder and stay back in the office longer, 16

whether you are an employee or an entrepreneur. Chances are that you will burn out. By the way, don’t forget that spare parts for humans are much harder to come by than parts for machines when it comes to repairs.

Remember how the skilled craftsmen who earned a livelihood at repairing horse carriages and making horseshoes at the turn of the 20th century? Looking back now with hindsight it is easy to see that no matter how excellent they were at their jobs, they were still doomed for extinction. This was because technology was taking over in the form of the mass-produced motor car.

At this turn of another new century, you are also facing the same risks too. Technology is rapidly changing and forcing certain jobs and skills into extinction. The demands of modern business are such that our skills become outdated as soon as we upgrade them. So, you study for more degrees, MBA, etc. and then find that they are still not enough to move you up to the top.

Odds are that you will become a casualty of change. Plus, very possibly, with a stress-related heart attack thrown in as a bonus.

Man vs Machine. The score to date – Man is fast losing the battle.

There is no room for gradual incremental improvement and evolution of your work approach and methods. You no longer have the time or luxury to evolve into the new work environment. Like crossing the proverbial ditch, you do not cross halfway first, and then cross the other half. It’s a quantum leap or nothing.

You need a quantum jump.

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Man may be losing the battle, but there is still a war to be won. Re-arm yourself before you jump back into the fray again!

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Chapter 5 How Do You Work?

Unless people change the way they approach work, they will stay forever trapped in a vicious cycle of unfinished tasks in this fast-paced world.

The trend in the reorganizing and trimming of today’s corporations is forcing the average employee to take on more work than ever before. The poor chap is fast running out of ideas on how to handle them all within the working hours given. The poor guy just struggles on and gets more frustrated because he knows he is getting nowhere. Do you see yourself in this chap?

At this speed of change and with the need to absorb more information, we must find a way for the human mind to handle all these complexities without the brain burning out like an overstrained motor. Man has to change the way he handles information and also the way he handles work. He has to make the mental jump from disparate and disorganized thought flows into a focused and integrated stream.

Let me explain.

Modern man has to work like a specialized machine, and yet integrate his disparate thinking to move all the separate pieces as a concerted whole. This is like a maestro conducting an orchestra. He focuses on the individual pieces of 19

instruments and yet, he has the whole orchestra under his control at the same time.

This is the advantage that a human has over a machine or computer – man is capable of focusing on a single task at a time, and yet he can be fully aware and in control of the whole process at the same time.

But before we see how you can get to this stage of being the maestro of your life, we shall first study how an average person typically works.

A Typical Employee: John Mundane Take a typical workday for John Mundane, a typical office employee. He starts his day by dragging himself out of bed, gets dressed, eats a hurried breakfast, and rushes out to join the morning traffic. When he arrives at the office he makes himself the usual cup of coffee and browses through his personal emails as he slowly takes his sips. Then, just as a sense of guilt hits him that he is using a wee bit too much of company time on this activity, he starts his work.

He begins his workday by checking his in-tray for any new work coming in, and also ruffles through some paperwork left over from the day before. As John sieves through the pile of documents to sort out which ones to attack first, he remembers that he has to call Martin from Sales Department to confirm the informal meeting/drinking session after work tomorrow.

He picks up his phone and dials Martin’s number. After ten minutes of niceties and office gossip with Martin, he hangs up and stares back at his in-tray.

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‘Where was I?’ John asks himself as he tries to get back into his flow of work.

He then picks up an incoming letter from an irate top-ten customer who wants to know why a consignment quantity has been short-delivered. He makes a call to the delivery section and talks for about 15 minutes in an attempt to trace the error.

Then he proceeds to write a memo to Accounting to have the records amended.

Next, he realizes that he had better draft a letter of explanation and apology to the customer immediately before a major complaint goes to top management. He pushes aside the in-tray that he has been looking into and starts to compose the letter.

As he writes the letter, Mary from the Personnel Department knocks on his door to ask him about the update of some personnel forms that were due for submission two days ago.

“Oh, I’ve just got them completed. Wait a sec. I’ll dig them out and get my manager to sign them right now,” answers John.

John rushes next door to his boss’ office to get the documents signed. He returns. As he hands the pile of papers over, he takes the opportunity to ask Mary about the approval for the new training program for his department. Another twenty minutes passes by before the conversation ends. John is happy as he feels that he has won himself a training session outside of the country. And that is as good as an overseas trip.

Oh! Back to the drawing board.

“Now, what was I doing before that last interruption?”

John asks himself as he settles back to the work at hand. He glances into the in-tray and starts to pick up the first document 21

on top of the pile. It is a memo from his manager to do a summary of the month’s sales for a presentation at the management meeting tomorrow.

“Oh bother! More reports. I wonder if those guys at the top really read all the reports we take so much pain to do,” mumbles John to himself.

As he gathers his thoughts the phone rings and John, with conditioned reflexes, jumps to pick up the receiver. The call is from his old classmate, Phil, a semi-retired broker who regularly calls up for some chit-chat and stock market rumors.

They chat for about half an hour before the phone is put down.

“Better start on the report right now or I’m going to get real flak from the boss if I don’t give it to him first thing in the morning,” John reminds himself.

So everything gets shoved aside while John gets cracking on the report.

As he is halfway through the report, the boss’ secretary informs him that there will be a quick meeting after lunch to discuss the problems of late deliveries and what can be done about the situation. John knows from past experience that ‘quick’ meetings in his company would normally mean two hours or thereabouts.

Sensing that he will not have enough time to complete his report in normal office time, John picks up the phone to let his wife know that he will have to work late, and that the dinner outing with the in-laws tonight has to be postponed (with a secret sense of relief).

At noon, he asks a colleague to bring him back some lunch as he stayed back to in the office to prepare the files for the afternoon’s meeting.

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The meeting goes as expected. There is no adherence to the agenda and discussions veer off the main topic. Everyone gets to say his and her two-cents worth.

By the end of the day, John packs up with a sense of not having finished what he should have accomplished for that day. He stacks his unfinished paperwork into his growing intray and retrieves the sales files to prepare his sales report at home. He then takes off for home and a cold dinner alone.

And the days repeat themselves in a seemingly endless vicious cycle of unfinished tasks.

A Never-Ending Cycle You can easily see that John is getting trapped in a neverending cycle of trying to catch up all the time if this work habit continues. Also, you can be sure that he is so caught up with his day-to-day little crises at work he has no time to sit back and re-look at where his career is going. Or whether he is going to have one at all; despite the hard work and family sacrifices.

Consider this: Is your working and family lifestyle similar to John’s to some extent or other? Do you feel unaccomplished and sense that you could have done more with your workdays?

Also, consider that for all that grind and extra working hours John is headed unknowingly for disaster.

Notice that the letter of reply to the irate customer is forgotten as it was swept underneath that continuously growing pile of paper in the tray when Mary from Personnel interrupted. Chances are that after a few days, the (now) very, very irate customer will complain to the CEO, who will in turn 23

look for the manager whose department caused this uncalledfor complaint. Naturally, John’s boss will in turn pass the buck and point at John for the blame for he (John) was the one handling the complaint.

Guess what? John’s career will now go down by one big point.

What about John’s wife and kids who have to make sacrifices all these years and cannot understand why he makes promises and appointments only to cancel them later. Surely, his bosses can understand that time after work is family time?

His family relationship now drops by another big point too.

And this accumulates over the years…

Millions of people around the world today are caught up in this vicious cycle of work and stress and finding no way out.

Yet, all this is not our fault.

The way our education and workplace are structured do not allow us to effectively handle the ever-growing work mass and the changing information age. We are trying to force the microcomputer and the Internet onto a workplace mentality that has hardly evolved since the industrial revolution! No wonder, the amount of work and pressure has increased at a cost to human health.

This analogy applies to you whether you are an office worker, blue-collar worker, student, or businessman.

How Does it Affect the Company?

If we take John Mundane’s example and apply it to the majority of employees in an organization (which is not unreasonable) we can see how the whole organization can be affected adversely. People not working at their optimum 24

potential are bottlenecks to the efficient functioning of a company.

A company is only as effective as its bottlenecks allow it to be.

On the other hand, if all the individual employees are trained to work at their peak capacity consistently, the company would indeed take a quantum jump, too! It will be truly a new millennium organization.

So in solving the problem of the Individual, we will also make a quantum improvement to the organization as well.

This is good news for both the employee and the business owner indeed.

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Chapter 6 The Many-Layered Mind You cannot do anything about what is past. Neither can you know the future. So, the only way to determine your destiny is to be mindful of what you are doing now.

For a person to succeed in what he wants to do in life, career or business he must be first define his goals. Then he must have a plan to direct him towards his goals. This plan can be broken down into finer steps that he may adhere to. The plan may be detailed down into months and weeks and spelt out in his diary/planner. And then, he tries his damnest to follow the schedule. So far, this is what we gather from books on selfimprovement and time management.

Similarly, organizations have budgets, strategic plans, sales targets, etc. to guide the company to move in the direction of the planned objectives. These plans and guidelines may be further broken down into departmental budgets, sectional budgets, etc. Moving further down, the employee involved is given performance goals and told what he has to achieve for the year. The rest is up to the poor employee.

It is well known that the best plans and budgets laid down by the best companies with the best MBA brains often do not work. Neither does most of the personal resolutions, think-positive courses and make-money seminars.

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It is not that they are not good. They are good. What has been missing all along in the above approaches is the final breakdown into the most basic and important unit – the individual mind.

The mind must capture all the thoughts, ideas, plans, process steps and systems in its inner universe (the intangible creation) before manifesting them through action in the outer universe (the tangible part). From the integration of both inner and outer universes great success can be achieved. Hence, the rise of the Integrated Man. In all the planning approaches used by companies to date, NO practical emphasis is given to the individual employee, and he is just expected to deliver the results at the end of the month, quarter, or year. In all this goal setting, the single most important element – the human mind – and the role it plays in an organization has been largely ignored.

People forget that it is the mind that has to drive the person to do the job; and in turn, the job drives the company’s achievement.

All the personal and organizational plans evolved so far are external systems for the achievement of goals. What we need in addition to this is a complementary internal system which, when used together, engulfs the whole matrix and steer all tasks toward the main goals effectively.

The internal system is what goes on inside the mind of the person carrying out the activities involved. Going down one step further we find the most basic manifestation of the mind – thoughts. Thoughts arise in the mind and prompt the mind into action. The mind is in turn interlinked with the body. The body acts on commands from the mind. The body, in turn, needs to draw energy to drive the tasks needed to be done.

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This thought/mind/body/energy link makes up what we call the Integrated Man. This is important to bear in mind. The mind and body have to work in unison as an integrated unit to direct the person effectively. A sick mind cannot move a body properly. Neither can a sick body respond to the commands of the mind properly.

A mind/body unit links with other mind/body units to drive the larger collective unit, which we call the organization.

At this level the organizational link is complete. Any failure or weakness in this chain will weaken the whole organization.

The Secret Behind Failure This is the secret behind the reason why individuals and organizations often fail to achieve their goals. In most instances, the sales plans are in place. The budgets are in place.

The machines are in place. The people are in place. But nothing happens. Why? More often than not, the most important working unit is not ready – the individual mind. Let me explain.

It is commonsense that a company’s management would not attempt to set a target to manufacture and sell 5 million units of products when the factory capacity is only 3 million units. To produce these 5 million units, management knows that the factory would have to be re-tooled and production lines increased, etc.

Yet, management would set higher goals for employees and not consider re-equipping them or providing the means for them to achieve the new targets. Management easily forgets that humans are the most important basic assets behind any organization in its search for ever better bottom-line 28

results. Often lip service is paid to the clichĂŠd statement that, “People are our most valuable Assetâ€?.

In this book we will provide the tools and means for this most important asset. What we are going to do in this chapter is to take a shift in the way we use our mind. With this knowledge we can change the way we think, and a new way of doing our work will be possible.

Every action we do or every plan we make starts off in the mind. And what control the mind are thoughts. In other words, thoughts form the force behind every human volition or act. We humans are mind/body machines. The mind and body work as a single unit, despite the centuries of scientists trying to break this whole into separate parts for study and analysis.

Understanding this is the first secret to unlocking the chains and freeing our mind for the quantum jump.

Our mind is capable of the most intriguing thoughts and imagination. Yet we have so little control over our mind.

Whether we are working, drinking, or just sitting down, our mind is running all over the place; thinking of the past, the future, and of things we would like to do rather than of what we are doing now. Even in our sleep our mind wanders off into thoughts and dreams.

Try This Mind Test If you have any doubts about how little you can control your mind, just try this test: Close your eyes and think about nothing for just 1 minute. Or simply try not to think of a pink elephant for 1 minute.

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Maybe this is what scientists mean when they say we hardly use even 10% of our total brain capacity. Our mind is too busy jumping elsewhere and everywhere that we have hardly 10% of it left to be used for the present moment!

To draw an analogy, the way the modern human mind works is close to what we call in computerese the ‘timesharing’ mode. This means that there is a central processor (the brain) connected to various user terminals (thoughts) that run different programs at the same time. The central processor runs through each of the terminals in turn and processes their needs in small packets at a time. Each of the users is given a time-slice by the central processor. But because the central processor works so fast, in milliseconds, each user thinks he/she is the sole user of the system.

In truth, the human mind is actually running through many thoughts in rapid succession in the background, even though it is working on a main idea at a time. But because the mind jumps from thought to thought at such hyper speeds, we often think that we are working on one main thought during that period.

Also, the mind can go into ‘distributed processing’ mode.

That is, instead of staying on the main thought, the mind goes off on a tangent as one thought gives rise to another, and another, and so on. Sometimes the thought chain can go around a long way before we come back to the original thought. An example of this is when we are daydreaming or thinking to ourselves while taking a drive.

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COMPUTER TIME-SHARING

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THE HUMAN THOUGHT CHAIN

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The mind is capable of at least 3 main types of processes: associative thinking concentrated thinking concentrated awareness Associative thinking is the usual mode our mind works in. An example is when we are idle or when we are taking a long walk alone, our mind just goes into free associative thinking mode and one thought leads to another. This mode is useful for coming up with new ideas. Useful applications of associative

thinking

is

found

in

mind-mapping

(first

introduced by Tony Buzan) and brainstorming.

Concentration thinking is when the mind is so absorbed in an object or thought that we are not aware of anything else around us, sometimes not even ourselves. Only the object of concentration is present and the mind is totally absorbed in it.

Many geniuses often go into this mode; and so can you.

Concentrated Awareness this type of thinking that is more like being totally focused on what you are doing at that moment, but at the same time you have full awareness of the momentary changes in your mind and your environment.

Every moment is different from the next. If we are aware that this moment-to-moment change is happening all the time, and still stay totally centered when we are performing a task, then our focus can be more effective than a machine’s.

A close example of this mode of concentrated awareness is when a competing tennis player is in the crucial moment of a match point. He sometimes shifts into a ‘concentrated 33

awareness’ mind mode. The mind/body/energy becomes one unit and no other thoughts intrude. He has total mental focus and clarity and he is fully aware that he is ‘here and now’ doing the act. Time seems to shift to another dimension during that crucial instant. His moves flow smoothly into one another without the apparent need to think. This is made possible through past training and mental conditioning.

Other sportsmen like gymnasts, divers, and geniuses also access this ‘zone’ for peak performance.

This mode is hardly used and often poorly developed in modern man. This is why re-training of the mind in conjunction with physical training to access this mode is crucial for success in sports, studies or work.

Take This Test How often have you been focused and fully aware of all the tiny moments involved in a simple motion like reaching your hand out for a glass of water: grasping it, lifting it to your mouth, tipping the glass and sipping the water? What does it taste like? What is each and every taste sensation? What are your thoughts and feelings while doing it? Are other thoughts intruding, too?

Try it a few times very slowly and you will be surprised at how much your mind has missed out because you have not taken the effort to catch the moment-to-moment changes.

Do you sometimes lose your temper at someone or something to find out later that you regretted your actions and wished that you had not lost your temper? The next time you lose your temper, try observing your mind. You will find 2 ‘minds’ operating at the same time. One is the mind that has

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lost its temper and going on a tirade, and the other is the ‘mind’ watching the first mind losing its cool.

You should prepare your mind to be alert for such ‘slips’ before you begin on any activity of peak performance. This is important because success or failure is dependent on the thoughts we cultivate in our heads.

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Chapter 7 The Mind-Jump Thought energy, once created, cannot be destroyed. Thus you may create a universe with thought alone.

The shortest cut to achieving your ‘mind jump’ is now revealed to you. The technique is given to you straight and without fluff or mysterious language. Many have gone through the long and hard way of training in ‘wushu’, meditation and mystical studies to achieve the mind-body integration stated here. You can now choose to get it the easy way. Follow carefully the techniques given and you will be on your way to successfully harnessing the full power of your mind. Without practicing the mind-body exercise in this chapter, all else that follows would not be as effective.

1. Mental Recharge This is an essential point that has been grossly overlooked.

Many people through years of habit try to downplay the importance of having enough sleep. They fool themselves that they are different from others in that they require less than the normal hours of sleep to perform at top capacity. Get real.

Evolution does not happen overnight. Humans and animals 36

need to get a minimum number of sleep hours to function at peak capacity. This has been so for thousands of years, and is not likely to change in your lifetime.

If you do not have enough sleep you will always be working below your maximum capacity, whether you realize it or not. It has been scientifically proven that people without sufficient sleep accumulate what is known as ‘sleep debt’. In the long term, sleep debt can lead to many physical and mental illnesses. Over time, your under-par performance will tell on you. You won’t inspire your colleagues or subordinates.

Neither will you look like top material to your peers if you look unfocused and tired most of the time.

If you are one of those habitual late sleepers and early wakers, you may have been working below capacity for many years without realizing it. So, start giving yourself the maximum advantage by changing your sleep patterns to the one nature has designed for you. Most people need between 6.5–8 hours of sleep (there are some rare individuals who can do with less than 6 hours, but as mentioned, these are rare). If you are tired during the day, take a short nap and let your mind re-adjust and clear itself; much like an overused tape being cleared of fuzziness. Some notable people who were known to take short naps regularly during the day were John F. Kennedy, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein.

2. The Dynamic Stretch Have you ever wondered about the strength and speed of animals? We know about the amazing strength of the bears and apes, and the speed of cheetahs and lions. But do we see 37

them training for strength with weights? Or train for speed by jogging and sprinting around tracks? No, besides their natural endowments, animals do not train. How do they become so fast and strong with no special training? In fact, animals in the wild sleep most of the time after eating but do not become flabby.

Notice how animals often stretch and twist their bodies about after sleeping or after a period of inactivity? This is their exercise. It is a form of dynamic stretching and tension. The only time they exert great strength and speed is during the hunt or fight. They hardly ever exert themselves at other times.

Long ago, the ancient sages and monks observed such exercise activities in animals and devised similar exercises to keep themselves fit during the long periods of meditation and studies. Hence, names like the ‘Five Animal Frolics’ of Shaolin martial arts, Qigong, and styles like the Crane, Praying Mantis, Monkey ,etc. evolved from observing animals in their natural habitats.

So, in order to keep your muscles and body in shape if you do not like sweaty exercise, we recommend “Dynamic Stretching.”

Dynamic Stretching is simple and can be done anywhere, whether standing, sitting, or lying down. You have done it as a matter of instinct. You yawn when you are tired; stretch your arms and legs with tensed muscles after sitting or lying down too long. Sometimes you even do some spinal twists and bends when your back aches.

Let’s start off with some arm and leg stretching. You can do this while sitting, lying or standing. Then, do some turning of your wrists, shoulders, neck, hips, and ankles. Go round and round a few times clockwise and anti-clockwise. End with 38

a few spinal twists, bend back and bend over to touch your toes.

Do your moves gently. Tense your muscles and tendons when you stretch or twist, and then relax them when you withdraw.

Breathe deeply and naturally throughout the routines.

Do these exercises a few times a day or when you feel tired. This will get your body aligned and alert.

3. Clear the Mental Clutter The first thing you do when you arrive at your workplace is to clear away the mental clutter and calm the mind. This is the best time of the day to get aligned and focused on your goals for the rest of the day.

The mind training exercise that follows next is important.

But before you start the exercise, ask yourself if there is any important matter that may be forgotten if you do not make a note of it. Quickly jot this down on your ‘Action Card’ as a reminder before you begin the mental training. You can now settle down and commence on the exercise with peace of mind.

(We shall be touching on the Action Card in a later chapter).

A quick way to clear your mind of all the mental chatter and aimlessness is to sit with your back straight and have both feet touching the floor, shoulder-width apart. Sit straight and do not lean on any support. Your head should be held as if a string is attached to your crown and holding it up. If you sit on the front half of your chair your back will not touch the backrest, and you will assume a naturally upright posture. In fact, it is a good habit to maintain this sitting position when

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doing work because this will keep your spine in the correct alignment.

Now, relax your gaze or half-close your eyes and rest the tip of your tongue gently against the front palette of your mouth.

4. A Special Kind of Mind-Body Readiness To prepare for the mental exercise, you will need first to relax your body. Take a deep breath slowly and mentally tell yourself to r–e–l–a–x.

You shall start by loosening all the

muscles in your body from the top of your crown to the tip of your toes.

From the top of your head, feel your muscles relax. Take your time to allow the tensions to melt away from your crown, your forehead, down to your eyes, face, and throat. From the throat take the gentle flow of relaxation down to your shoulders, arms, forearms and down to your fingertips.

Next, relax your upper back and your chest. See, how even now your breathing is beginning to become slow and unhurried. As you move slowly down to your stomach, lower abdomen and lower back, and then to your pelvis, your whole body feels lighter and lighter.

From your pelvis feel your hip joints relax. Next flow the relaxation to your thighs, knees, calves, ankles, and all the way to the tip of your toes. Feel the tensions disappearing as you move down each area of your body. And feel how soft and light too your mind has become. ¾ After a few practice rounds, you can dispense with the above detailed steps and just sweep your mind down 40

from head to toes mentally; telling the various parts of the body to relax as you sweep along.

Do not get too relaxed that you want to fall asleep! This is not the right relaxation. You should be relaxed enough not to feel unnecessary strain, but your mind and body must be alert.

This is akin to the relaxed-readiness of a cat crouching on all fours in a motionless state; calm and ready to pounce on its prey.

It is only when the body is free from unnecessary tension and is alert that fluidity in body response is possible. Likewise, only when the mind is relaxed and free from inner chatter can mental clarity and sharpness be achieved.

For a person to become efficient, the mind and body need to work as one integrated operating unit. To work as one operating unit, the body and mind both have to be relaxed at the same time. This may seem like a paradox as most people would work themselves up to a tense frenzy when confronted with pressure and work demands. But this is where mastering the secret of the tornado comes in. You may appear from the outside to be moving with speed and alacrity, but on the inside you are calm and ever-ready to pounce.

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(Front and Side view of the proper sitting position for peak performance )

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5. Attaining the Peak Zone When you have relaxed from head to toe, slowly take ten (10) easy, gentle deep breaths through your nose; inhaling down to your abdomen and exhaling through your nose. Both inhalation and exhalation are done as gently as you can without feeling uncomfortable. Do not, however, force or control your breathing.

Initially, you should do more than 10 counts. In fact do as many as you can manage. Practice daily at home until you get the hang of it. The more you do, the faster your progress will be.

Focus your mind on your abdomen rising and falling as you breathe. Observe your breathing like a third person watching the breath, with no passion nor analysis. Note the air streaming smoothly into the bottom of your lungs, and note the changeover as you stop inhaling and start to exhale. Do the same when you changeover from exhaling to inhaling. Keep your mind focused on every movement of the breath.

Notice the intruding thoughts that will inevitably run around in your mind as you do your breathing. Just recognize them as pieces of random thoughts that come and go all the time. They have nothing to do with you and your breathing at this moment.

Let those thoughts pass away one by one like clouds in the sky, and eventually no more thoughts will arise. Now, you have attained the peak zone.

Thoughts arise in the mind involuntarily all the time. If you are not aware of this, it is easy for your mind to attach to an arising thought that will then carry you into a series of other associated thoughts. When you allow that to happen, 43

you lose track of what you are doing at the present moment and lose efficiency.

Every time a thought arises in your mind, be alert and know that you are starting to be drawn away from your awareness of your breathing into the new thought. The fact that you recognize with objectivity that a thought has arisen will usually cause the thought to disappear on its own accord.

If a thought persists, just tell yourself that it is none of your business and gently bring your attention back to your breathing. Keep doing this and soon your thoughts will drop off one by one.

Continue to concentrate totally on your gentle breathing.

Your breathing will fill up your mental fuel tank with calm energy. This will help you overcome your inner mental bottlenecks and clear your mental tape so you may focus on the work at hand.

Training the mind to follow each and every movement of your breath may seem too simple an exercise to be of much significance. But just try doing it and you will realize how difficult it is to follow the breath without your mind running.

If you can follow every sequence of your breathing cycle for the 10-count without being distracted even once, you are well on your way to success.

At no time in your practice must you use force. Allow everything to flow freely and naturally. Every time you find your mind wandering simply bring it back gently to re-focus on the easy flow of your breath. With sufficient proper practice, you will be able to clear your mind of its ceaseless chatter quickly, allowing calm and clarity to set in. When you can keep your mind calm and crystal clear it will possess

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powerful one-pointed concentration to propel you towards your goal.

On completion of the tenth breathing cycle open your eyes very slowly. Snap your left index finger and your left thumb softly. This is your ‘trigger’. Now, tell yourself mentally that you have just entered your ‘peak zone’ of mental awareness and peak energy.

Time seems to slow down for you, and your mind and body are at one with the work on hand. Time, Mind and Body merge into each other and become inseparable. You have entered a relaxed, concentrated mind state with heightened awareness where you just feel that you can breeze through work with calmness and clarity of purpose.

This zone of peak awareness was discovered centuries ago by the ancient mystics and martial arts masters of the East. In recent times it has been rediscovered and has been highlighted in sports and research journals. There is no magic or steadfast ritual to achieving this peak zone. It is just a state of mind/body/time that we are capable of tuning into. Just tell yourself that you have entered this zone and let it be.

Do not make any analysis or question whether you are in the ‘inner void’ or not. Just keep practicing regularly and after some time, you will know the feeling of being there. By then you will be able to automatically get into this mind/body zone on demand by just ‘triggering’ yourself to.

Use this technique during your daily work routine whenever you feel pressured or angry. This is a powerful tool.

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Once you are in this zone, you will naturally zero in on only one task at a time. Your mind and body move and think as one in Time and Space. You are in the present moment and present space. All thoughts of the past and future no longer exist. You are right here in the present fully attending to what is required of you.

6. The Trigger The ‘trigger’ action of softly snapping your left index finger and left thumb is important to bring your mind back into the present and into the Zone immediately. Anytime you feel that you are losing concentration and you are no longer focused on the task at hand, just close your eyes lightly and activate the ‘trigger’. The trigger action should be done gently and with presence of mind.

The idea here is to condition the mind using the ‘trigger’ as a signal to bring it back instantly into the present moment in time and space.

Over time, you will be able to bring your mind back to the present task just by mental will, and you may have less need for the trigger action.

You may remember the days back in school when the teacher was talking about a boring subject and your mind would wander off into daydreams. A sudden clap of the hands or a slamming of books on the table by the teacher would bring you back immediately to the present with a jolt. That was another form of a trigger.

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7. Mind Fuel Throughout the day come back to this slow, deep breathing every time you feel tired or stressed to recharge your mental fuel tank. This is especially so at times of the day when you feel agitated or pressured. The more stressed you are, the more you must check and slow down your breathing. When the breath is relaxed, the body and mind will follow suit.

You need gentle deep breaths to bring oxygen into your body and fuel your brain.

Snap and trigger yourself into the zone before you start on a new task, or after every interruption or break.

As pointed out earlier, regularly take a self-check to bring your mind back where you are and what you are doing to unify your mind/body unit.

Now that the mind/body training part is through, we shall go on next to see what the blockages are to your life and work – the bottlenecks – and help you overcome them.

Summary Of Mind Training Steps 1. The sleep factor – make sure you get enough sleep.

2. Dynamic Stretching exercises.

3. Posture – sit on the front half of your chair in a natural upright position. Relax your gaze. Place the tip of your tongue gently against the front palette (roof) of your mouth.

4. Relaxation - take a deep breath and start relaxing your body from the crown of your head to the tip of your toes. .

5. Breathing - take 10 easy slow breaths and focus totally on the moment-to-moment sequence of your breathing.

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6. Trigger – softly snap your left index finger and thumb to take yourself into the ‘peak zone’.

7. Recharge your mind whenever you are stressed or tired by repeating the breathing exercise.

Never Revealed Before Like the Tao that the old masters speak of, this void is the inner space where all thoughts originate and convert into energy.

And this focused energy can manifest itself into one thousand and one things in the outer, physical universe.

It is this void, this special space that things can be created and manifested. Without a void, there will be no emptiness or space for thought creation to occupy as it comes into existence.

Ideas and solutions are created in a flash when there is a void.

It is like quantum science – a jump from nothing to something.

Remember the times you have been trying to solve a problem or come up with an idea for something? However, it was often when you were meditating or doing something unrelated but relaxing (listening to music, having a shower, driving, etc.) when the solution or idea pops up from your subconscious mind. These then are the moments of insight or ‘eureka!’ as it is commonly known.

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Chapter 8 The Bottleneck Theory The usefulness of a bottleneck is in restricting the flow of liquid. But notice how often we create unnecessary bottlenecks to restrict the flow of success in our lives.

You are only as capable and efficient as your bottlenecks allow you to be. Have you noticed how useful the bottleneck is to the bottle? It slows down and regulates the flow of liquid out of the bottle so we do not spill and waste the liquid. Yet, on the reverse side, this principle can be a disadvantage when applied to your flow of success.

While commuting to and from work have you noticed how a 3-lane traffic route can run quite smoothly even though traffic is heavy? Notice that as long as the vehicles move in an orderly manner, the traffic will flow easily with no problems.

However, all it takes for the traffic to come to an almost screeching halt is when one of the lanes is closed off because of an accident or a vehicle breakdown. When the three lanes try to squeeze into two, a jam occurs.

Next, take the case of a very strong weight-lifter. He may have the muscles and strength to carry the heaviest weight and win an Olympic gold medal any day. But the day that only a small part of his body does not function properly (eg. a

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sprained ankle or wrist) is the day he is not going to win any medals at all.

Now, take the example of a factory. In a factory, the process of manufacturing is broken down into different sections and different machine groups. The materials go in a smooth physical flow from the start of the process to the end of the production line. To operate efficiently, this process must move consistently and smoothly without interruptions or stoppages along the entire line. Any breakdown in the production flow would cause the materials-in-process to jam up in front of the breakdown point. At the same time, the later part of the production process after the breakdown point will be left empty, as there will be no materials for the rest of the process.

These are the bottlenecks to the smooth flow of any system. In your life and work these bottlenecks cause massive jams to your productivity and output. Since the people working in an organization comprise the basic units or links that determine the strength of the company, a weak employee will eventually affect the performance of his department and eventually, the company.

Do a self-check to see that you are not a bottleneck in your own organization.

Look at the diagrams on the next page and see how the bottleneck theory comes into play in our daily lives, and how effective a bottleneck is in taking the productivity and direction out of our lives. And it is an insidious monster, too. If you are not aware of it each time a bottleneck arises, it can easily derail you without your realizing it until it is too late.

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THE BOTTLENECK THEORY AT WORK

(‘X’ marks the bottleneck occurrence)

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Remember, any system is only as efficient and productive as its bottleneck. Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, you are only as strong as your bottlenecks.

So, identify the bottlenecks in your life and you have discovered your own maximum efficiency and capability levels. Remove your bottlenecks and you raise your productivity by a big jump.

It is important to identify areas of bottlenecks in your life and work systematically to overcome them. Applying the Bottleneck Theory to your own life and work, ask yourself what your bottlenecks are.

For most people, the major bottlenecks that jam up their success path and mess up their careers would be: Lack of planning Lack of attention to details Interruptions Reworking (due to above factors) Procrastination Idle daydreaming Lack of self-discipline Lack of confidence in oneself Inertia Too much time spent on trivial tasks Illness How do we overcome our bottlenecks and get a boost in our lives? Well, we have to firstly go back to the root of our problems and also the source of our powers: the mind.

The cause of our bottlenecks has its source in the mind. As described earlier, our mind is a very undisciplined entity. It is 52

not able to focus on one thought for long before it jumps to another. Hence, we find our attention shifting all the time. It is the nature of the undisciplined mind to run all over.

For example, as you are reading this chapter now, the thought may come to you ‘to watch TV’ or ‘to take a nap’.

Brush that thought aside by re-focusing on this book. By not giving in to the whims and fancies of your mind, you are training your mind to be stronger against distractions or aversions. The more often you succeed in doing this, the stronger your will-power becomes.

Often when confronted with a task that we find aversion to (or that we dislike), we would sometimes procrastinate; feel irritated, or make excuses to put it off for as long as we can. Or we simply give up doing it. The mind is dictated by past experiences and conditioning to have aversions to things it does not like and to cling to things that it likes. So when it dislikes the work to be done, it tries to escape by running back to thoughts and things that give it pleasure.

An Example Let us take a look at the case of a work problem arising in the human resource area of a company. The manager knows that a problem staff is difficult to handle and he dislikes a confrontation with this person (his mind finds it an aversion).

He justifies to himself that the issue is not important enough for him to attend to, and he delegates the problem to a subordinate knowing that the subordinate may not be equipped to handle the situation. Later, when things go wrong the manager starts to finger the blame at the subordinate and everyone else but himself.

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A manager’s job is to manage. He should have confronted the problem at the start and not allow a weaker staff to handle it. He has failed to overcome his bottleneck.

We have to take responsibility and recognize our personal bottlenecks and realize that they are blocking our smooth flow towards success. If we cannot eliminate them, we must at least know how to control and redirect them. We are only able to do this if we understand how the mind works.

Once we have this understanding, we can overcome our weaknesses by becoming more conscious of our mental tendencies and by not giving in to mental weaknesses which will only enslave us.

People are generally lazy or fearful when it comes to disciplined thinking. This is because we seldom if ever specifically train our minds for it. It is difficult to focus on one thought and follow it through in a clear, logical manner when the mind is running elsewhere most of the time.

As mentioned, the untrained mind runs to easier and more pleasant thoughts when it is confronted with tasks that it dislikes. Hence, procrastination, excuses, and forgetfulness set in. It becomes a habit after a while if we allow the mind to keep running away every time we are faced with unpleasant situations.

This is where the mind training practice described earlier in Chapter 4 comes in. You must be constantly aware of what you are doing and catch a bottleneck as and when it manifests in the mind. The fact that you can catch it, and are aware of a bottleneck-thought the moment it arises, means that you can prevent the state of mind that follows it (eg. anger, annoyance, displeasure, etc.).

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Once you catch a bottleneck-thought arising when you have a problem, you should stop it from growing and let it pass away like a cloud in the sky. Then you are able to prevent further adverse feelings and negative thoughts from coming up as a consequence of that first thought. You can then trigger back your ‘peak zone’ to handle your work with equanimity and clarity of purpose.

When confronted with a task that you usually do not take a liking to, you should not let aversion arise. Turn your full attention instead to the task at hand and ‘just do it’. The unpleasant thoughts will disappear. Concentrate fully in mind and body on whatever you do and you will be in the moment.

And when you are in the moment, there is no room in your mind for any thought of aversion. The job just gets done.

In your daily activities when a distracting thought arises, the important thing is to recognize it the moment the thought arises in your mind while you are doing a task. The moment you become aware of it as such and quickly bring your full attention back to the task at hand, the distracting thought will disappear of its own accord.

If the same thought persists in returning to distract you, it means that you are not giving the task at hand your focused attention. Focus relentlessly on what you are doing and the distracting thought will go away. It is just like a friend who will eventually stop dropping by if you persist in refusing to entertain him.

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Chapter 9 Focus on Tasks That Get Results If you have three tasks to do, it is better to have only one done with excellence than to have all three done with mediocrity.

In today’s world, bosses and investors are looking for fast and measurable results: Quarterly profit performance, quarterly share price increases, monthly increase in sales, etc. come first.

To stand a head above the others you have to produce noticeable and measurable results that also appear to be driving the business of your company. It is, therefore, important to place your priority and your focus on things that show results that can be noticed by management. In other words, look at the work areas that matter to the job that you are paid for. If the job done is not easily visible then at least make it measurable.

Next, expand on these vital job areas so that your performance stands out. This may seem hard, but in fact if you were to look deeper you will find that only 20% of the work you do actually contribute towards 80% of the results. Your job then is to find the key 20%. This may be a simple rule and often forgotten. But it will serve you well to revise and remember this rule.

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Pareto and the 80/20 Rule Sometime back in the 1890’s, an Italian economist by the name of Vilfredo Pareto made a discovery that had great impact on management and technology thinkers ever since. His ‘rule’ has been proven to withstand the test of time. Even as we enter the computer age, this rule still applies and has even helped to keep costs low in software technology.

Pareto’s discovery was actually quite simple in essence.

He was making a study of the patterns of wealth and income in 19th Century England and found that wealth and income always went to a minority of the population. On conducting further studies, he discovered that this followed a consistent ratio of 80% of the wealth going to only 20% of the population.

More significantly, Pareto also discovered that this skewness or imbalance in the distribution of wealth applied to different periods of time, and also, to different countries in Europe as well.

Since then scientists, technologists, and experts in other disciplines have found this imbalance in distribution ratios to exist in the universe in general. The key point was not that everything followed an 80/20 precise mathematical rule, but rather, that a minority of causes consistently contributed to a majority of the effects.

Even though this 80/20 Rule has been known by many for some time, its profound application to the many facets of our lives and the understanding of its usage have not been fully appreciated and recognized by many people.

Let us take a look at how the 80/20 Rule permeates the important aspects of our lives:

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You spend around 80% of the time socializing and communicating with 20% of the total people that you know.

The top 20% of your customers make up 80% of your total sales.

The top 20% of your products constitute 80% of your total sales.

20% of the people in an organization do 80% of the productive work.

20% of the routines and features of a computer program are utilized 80% of the time by users. This has led to greater efficiency in memory usage and design of computer chips.

20% of the carpets in any office or home get 80% of the wear and tear.

Note this: 20% of your efforts at work contribute to 80% of the results that the company wants from you – whether you are employee or owner.

Hence, in general, 20% of the causes are responsible for 80% of the consequences of everything in life. With this recognition of the 80/20 Rule in mind, you should have little problem in charting your own life success.

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80/20 Helps to Unearth Sources of Problems The use of the 80/20 Rule also is invaluable in helping you see through the superficial symptoms and go right down to the root causes of your problems or shortfalls.

Often when

managers or employees are faced with a problem, there is the tendency to address the symptoms and attack them accordingly. They then assume that the problem is solved, until one day when the problem blows up or resurfaces in another channel.

If we look deeper, we often see that the remedies taken in many problem areas of business and life would only help ease the symptoms and not solve the root causes of the problems.

Take for example, the recent Subprime Housing loans crisis. It was plastered with bonds and other financial instruments and passed on to other banks and countries until the problem exploded and caused a recession. The subsequent action taken by the US leaders to print and borrow money out of this recession is another band-aid approach that will cause further problems down the road.

This is like giving painkillers to someone who is in pain.

The painkillers basically mask the pain but the source of pain still remains. Administering ‘painkillers’ only serves to ease the symptoms of problems, not the root causes. To be effective, we must look for the source of the pain and remove it.

Breakthrough Thinking Let us look at some examples to examine how this habit of just looking at the ‘symptom’ rather than the ‘source’ to solve problems has quietly infiltrated our lives and rendered us incapable of achieving breakthrough thinking. Do not blame 59

yourself if you find that you are like most people who think around the surface of a problem rather than going down to its source. The main causes of this are due to our implicit trust in technology, and the failure of our modern education system to cultivate correct thinking.

Examples abound in the real world: Problem: Delivery Delays A trading company was receiving increasing numbers of complaints about delays in delivery to customers.

Action Taken: The management employed a new Warehouse Manager and put him on top of the present Warehouse Supervisor. This new manager then employed one more driver and additional 2 store assistants. He also purchased a new delivery van.

Consequences: Internal politicking stemming from jealousies resulted. The extra personnel only served to complicate the operations of the warehouse even more. Despite the increase in overhead costs, the results were not better.

80/20 Analysis: Looking for the vital 20% of possible causes for the delays and mistakes, it was found that the main source of the problems arose from the misplacement of Delivery Orders (DO) from the Sales Personnel that were supposed to be forwarded to the warehouse. The Sales staff did not put all the DO’s in a proper tray for transfer, and sometimes they were misplaced or lost.

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The new store assistants compounded the problem by packing outgoing goods with the wrong specifications from the stores.

The manager failed to have the goods checked to ensure the correct goods were loaded before they were sent out.

80/20 Action: It was recommended that a simple ‘transfer tray’ be dedicated for Delivery Orders from the sales office to warehouse. A copy of all DO’s transferred was kept for daily checks to confirm that the warehouse had received and processed the deliveries.

In addition, all outgoing items from warehouse were to be verified and signed by the Supervisor before loading onto the truck.

Results: With minimal change to the system, most of the problems with delays and wrong specifications were erased. The unnecessary expense on employing a new manager and staff could have been avoided, and the politicking and low morale problems would not have arisen. It was as simple as that.

Problem: Forgetfulness How many times have you had your superior or customer asking you to do something for him, but because you were caught up in some other work, you promised that you would do it later. Since you were not mindful of the request at the time it was made, you forgot all about it. This later created embarrassment and you found that you had to make lame excuses. If this is happening often enough in your life, you are losing a lot of points on your credibility and reliability scale.

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80/20 Action: The small act of just making a small reminder note in your Action Card for later reference can make a big difference to your image as a trustworthy and reliable person. This is one of the 20% tasks that contribute to the 80% of your image.

In the later chapters, we will show you how to identify your 80/20 activities and how problems in management, production, and problem analysis can be tackled by 80/20 thinking.

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Chapter 10 Analysing Your 80/20 Activities One must always plan and prepare early for the battle. Knowing the specific time and the specific place to attack the enemy will bring victory. — SUN TZU, Art of War How do you identify what your key activities are for success?

Remember, the Pareto Principle says that 20% of the work you do will give 80% of the results. The balance of the work you do will contribute only a small portion of your achievements. So, it is important to target the important 20% of work that counts.

This may sound easy, but people keep losing focus and relapse into doing the 80% things from time to time.

This does not mean that you only concentrate all your time on the 20% of tasks and forget about the rest. While the Pareto Principle indicates that you should put the bulk of your time and effort on the important 20% of tasks, the balance of less important tasks should still be done with your remaining resources of time and effort. This way, you still cover 100% of what you need to do to succeed and capture everything that is relevant to your purpose.

The activities that we undertake in our daily lives can be classified in a two-dimensional grid that ranges from Important-Urgent to the Not Important-Not Urgent. By using 63

this grid in the next page to sort and re-classify your work tasks, you will start to see what tasks make up the key 20% of your work that bring in 80% of results. As you fine-tune this grid, your whole work picture will start to take shape.

Note that the tasks in the top left sector labeled as A activities are usually attended to as top priority. This is then followed by the tasks in sector B. But if you analyze this further, you will realize that in fact what is urgent is not always important to your work purpose. For example an emergency like a leaking pipe in the stairway demands immediate attention. But strictly speaking, unless the leak threatens to flood the building, it is not important to your career progress.

B activities are not urgent but they are of great importance in growing your business and your career. However, very 64

often we are so caught up with C activities that we overlook or have little time left to attend to the B tasks. This is the cause of many disasters.

Worse still, many people are so used to working on D sector activities through habit that they overlook many of the tasks in the B and C. In fact you will find most of your key 80/20 activities coming from the B sector, followed by the A sector. You should spend most of your working time and effort on these two sectors. Look at the diagram on the next page that illustrates how an effective executive would plan and allocate his work contribution.

It is important to be able to differentiate the Urgent activities from the important activities. Important activities make up the bulk of your key activities that bring performance and results to your work efforts.

Urgent but unimportant activities do not necessarily contribute to your key activities. Very often they mask your vital 20% key activities like the painkiller tablet masking the source of pain. And if you are not aware of this, it can easily bog you down without you knowing until it is too late. For example, a superior dropping by to ask you to help check some of his report data before a meeting may have urgency, but is not important from your point of view. The phone ringing may cause urgency for you to drop what you are doing. But it may not be important. A small fire in the wastepaper basket calls for urgent attention to be put out, but it is not important to the measurement of your career.

Referring to the 80/20 Chart shown, we can see that with most people the work that are given priority attention are those in the sector A. Every piece of work will be attacked with 65

frenzy until it is completed. And in this real world where Murphy’s

Law

still

reigns,

more

emergencies

and

interruptions will arise meanwhile to push those less urgent matters (B and C) further back. In time, these shortcomings will build up into a tidal wave that may drown you – or worse still, become a crisis calling for the attention of top management or shareholders.

In the history of corporate failures it has often been the small details overlooked or hidden that accumulated over time to make a big bang and crash. Remember the Enron, World Crossing, and some of the spectacular corporate crashes? It was the details that the CEOs could not answer and the analysts overlooked which allowed things to deteriorate and collapse.

The Tornado Method does not leave small details unattended. It captures everything that is related to driving your business purpose and drives them on towards your success goals.

Identifying your 80/20 Focus It is important for you to analyze and identify the key 20% of work tasks that are important to your job, career, and business.

This is an important step to knowing what areas you have to focus and allocate more time on first. Only then can you take on the other tasks that are less important in the evaluation of your performance.

Remember,

take

on

those

duties

whereby

your

performance is measured, i.e.: noticed and measured by management in the monthly, quarterly, and annual reports.

Doing less than this will get you nowhere, as you will always be seen to be lacking in something that makes you stand out.

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If you are running your own business, follow the same principles and direct your mind to those activities that matter to the success of your business.

Areas to be looked at include: x

If you are in Sales, focus 80% effort on your top 20% of customers and try to get them to commend your good work to your management. If you have not made top sales for any month yet, make sure you concentrate your efforts to achieve that at least one month in the year. Then keep your award certificate in your rĂŠsumĂŠ.

x

If you are in Production, make sure you at least get an award for best output or best worker for a month in the year. Try to make some suggestions to management for some improvements in your work area, no matter how small it may be at first. You will be remembered.

x

If you are in Accounting, do not just sweat yourself out pushing paper. Do not make reports that no one reads or uses. If you are stuck with this kind of work, then be creative. Add a simple summary, chart, and short analysis on the cover page of the report or improve on its presentation. Top managers always find summary analyses and ratio trends useful for their ongoing reference.

x

If you are a Manager, you know what the company budget and targets are. If you find that you are not likely to achieve all the targets, then focus on those you know

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you can achieve, and do them well. It is better to be outstanding one or two things than to be just so-so in all.

x

Take a look around your company and observe some examples of the 80/20 Principle at work. This exercise will help you focus on the key factors that may have been overlooked and guide you to the right actions which can bring about results fast. By identifying the 80/20 key factors, you already have half the problems solved, and are on your way to greater heights.

80/20 thinking can often help to uncover the source of problems in your work and at the workplace. It helps in problem solving by aiding in the questioning of the source of problems and the identification of solutions.

Is Coming in Second Place Good Enough?

It has been emphasized earlier that it is better to do one thing excellently rather than do three with mediocrity. Remember, in the real world of business there are no prizes for coming in second. It is better to excel in one thing and be mediocre in the rest than to be a runner-up in everything. To illustrate, try to answer the following questions: x

Who was the first man on the moon? Who was the second?

x

Who was the first president of America? Who was the second?

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x

Which is the largest company in the world? Which is the second?

x

Who was the first man to conquer Mt. Everest? Who was the second?

x

Who is the richest man in the world? Who is the second?

The moral of the story here is that you must try to be the best in your area of work or specialty. It does not matter even if you only do the filing work in your office. Be the best and the most efficient in filing, and soon you will be noticed.

By now you should understand why it is important to focus on your 80/20 tasks to make an impact somewhere in your organization or industry. Being second in anything seldom register in anybody’s mind.

Use 80/20 Analysis to Plan The real reason for people failing to plan is because they are too lazy to take the effort to think and put their thoughts down on a piece of paper and arrange them in a logical manner. This kind of Disciplined Thinking is difficult. Many people choose the easy way out. These are the very same people who have many brilliant thoughts and ideas, but often fade away in life without any of the useful ideas coming into fruition.

The act of putting down your ideas and plans in writing unleashes a certain power of its own. Ideas and plans originate in the form of thoughts. When these thoughts are transferred into writing, they initiate more associated thoughts which gather power on their own. Eventually, all these go to create the momentum that transforms ideas and plans into action and 69

reality. Combine this with the recommended mind training and the Tornado Plan system, and your road to success is sealed.

Now, do a 80/20 Chart of your work or business purpose.

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Chapter 11 Take One Day In Your Life Everything in the universe if left unattended, will tend toward atrophy.

We shall start off by analysing the work you do in a typical day of a typical week. Reflect on an average day at work and the types of tasks you carry out during that day. Do not worry if you find it hard to define what a typical day is, and what you do exactly during such a day as this is not of key importance. Just give your best guesstimate. We will be making some adjustments and refinements as we go along.

Let us list down our work activities for that typical day. It may not be as long and as tedious as you think for you will likely find that a substantial amount of the time is spent on work activities that have little relevance to your career objectives.

An Example As a guide for comparison, we shall analyse John Mundane’s activities for a typical day at work. This is based on the earlier description of his day in Chapter 3. Using the format set out on the next page as a guide, you can also list out a normal workday in your current job in a similar way.

Please get a blank sheet of paper and do it now.

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ANALYSIS OF A DAY’S WORK

am 8.30 – 8.45

Checked through in-tray for work left over from previous day.

8.45 – 9.00

Wrote reply letter to customer negotiating quantity discounts.

9.00 – 9.10 9.10 – 10.00

Read letters from suppliers.

Called Mike of warehouse to discuss stock reorders.

10.00 – 10.10

Back to checking the in-tray.

10.10 – 11.00

Summoned

by

Accounting

dept

to

explain some fuzzy data in the monthly sales 11.00 – 11.30

Asked to check overtime forms for subordinates

and

summarize

hours

claimed 11.30 – 1.00pm

Completed

the

overdue

summary report for the boss.

1.00 – 1.30

Shortened his lunch break.

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monthly

pm 1.30 – 1.50

Telephoned supplier to discuss next week’s

delivery

schedule

to

the

warehouse.

1.50 – 3.00

Mary of Personnel drop in for impromptu meeting

on

the

overseas

training

program.

3.00 – 3.30

Old classmate rang up for a chat and the latest news.

3.30 – 4.30

Salesman from RV Corp dropped in for new orders and chit-chat.

4.30 – 5.00

Process through the documents and matters still outstanding for the day.

5.00 – 5.15

Pack up for home with the feeling of another unaccomplished day.

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Overdue Work x

Weekly Goods Delivery analysis report for the boss.

x

Plan overtime schedule for subordinates as part of cost control exercise.

x

Call the Bank to establish a letter of credit for next week’s incoming supplies.

x

Call new supplier to arrange meeting for terms negotiations.

x

Clear off the stack of documents piling up on the in-tray.

Work Still Unfinished

x

Reply letter to irate customer to apologize for delay in delivery.

x

Send note to accounting department to issue Credit Note for customer who cancelled order no. 1077.

x

Verify assistant’s work before submitting to the Dept Head.

What will likely happen is that over time, some of the unfinished work will have to be completed by other staff, or the need for them will be obsolete by the time John tackles them. (Let us hope that the need for John will not be obsolete too.)

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Like the national debt, all these small failures will accumulate over the months and could cause a big blowup one day. Even if no major crisis arises, you can be sure that the management will be scoring John’s performance on the lower end of the scale. When the time does come for ‘rationalizing’ or cutting manpower, the low scorers will usually be among the first ones to be chopped.

Now, take some time to do a similar list of work overdue/unfinished for yourself; things you should have done but haven’t. Be honest and critical with yourself, for no one else is going to look at your list except you.

In John’s case, he is always too caught up in matters that prevent him from paying attention to important details. Often, he delegates his work to his subordinates, as he is told in many books that this is the most effective way to get work done. But because he is always too tangled in work that is considered ‘high priority’, John often fails to even check through the work done by his subordinates for mistakes (E.g.:. cross-totaling, omissions, and factual errors).

The danger in this is that a mistake overlooked in an assistant’s report can spell disaster for John, as he is finally responsible for work done by his subordinates. And there should not be anyone more concerned about this than John himself.

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Compare Your List with John’s Would both John’s and your list be similar in that they are both full of work uncompleted, followed by a list of work yet to be done, and probably some even overlooked or forgotten?

Next, take a look at the way the tasks are done. They are carried out in a haphazard manner in that John reacts to whatever or whoever comes along and allows interruptions to distract him from what he is doing. In other words, he is driven by circumstances and those little crises that crop up during the day. He is not in control. Are you?

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Chapter 12 Thought-Movements Revealed When you are doing a task, let your mind be present in the moment.

Be there. Do not be in the past or future. Be here and now.

As mentioned earlier, the successful encroachment of machine over the domain of man lies in the machine’s ability to focus on one movement at a time without any distraction or diversion. Also, in modern manufacturing, machines are arranged in a systematic layout, which gives a logical and efficient flow to the whole production process.

Similarly, computers are also designed based on a logical circuit flow. Yet, by virtue of this design, millions of computations per second are made possible.

We can now see that not only are machines focused on one specialized movement at a time, but they are organized in a systematic manner to give overall efficiency to the flow of work. The industrial revolution was founded on this principle.

Henry Ford was the pioneer who refined and applied the principle of work specialization to the production line and made a quantum leap in productivity and cost reduction that made the car affordable to the ordinary citizen.

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The Mind-Body Machine This same principle can be applied to the way we work in order to achieve machine-like efficiency. This has the effect of vastly increasing our productivity and allows us to achieve a whole lot more in a very short time. In order to do this, we must be able to concentrate on our activities so that our actions are totally focused like a machine’s.

The mind and body should be totally focused on the act of performing a task from moment to moment and nothing else.

The body, at the same time, only executes the precise movement(s) dictated by the mind without any hesitation or superfluous actions. The body has no superfluous actions because the mind has no superfluous thoughts.

Yet, at the same time, our mind is fully here and now and is aware of the flow of the beginning, the middle and the end, of the whole task. In other words, we never lose sight of the overall organized picture that makes up the workday.

The mind conditioning exercise that we learned earlier trains us to attend to the present moment. If we apply the same principle in our daily activities, we can attain our goals with ease.

How to Apply Instant Zen Take the example of pouring a glass of water and putting it to our mouth to drink. It only takes half a minute to complete.

But in actual fact, the process involves many thoughtmovements which only a trained mind can catch. The untrained mind sees it as one blur. Try to catch every motion and every time you take a drink and see how many moments and feelings your mind can catch.

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The objective here is train our mind to be fully aware of what is involved in doing a task – for its whole duration – before we let our mind go on to a new task. Just like the tennis champion: he catches the flow of the ball and follows through with a reply stroke before he allows his mind to shift focus to the opponent.

But very often when we are doing an act that we consider trivial such as the act of drinking a glass of water we fail to pay attention. Half the time we are not even aware of ourselves doing it. Our mind is more likely to be somewhere else while our body is performing the action. And this is how accidents can happen too. Sometimes a split-second slip in our attention is all it takes.

However, if we maintain a heightened level of awareness during the whole duration of performing a task, we can be assured of the success of a task. And only when we are in the habit of being in the present and attending to the present as it progresses into the minute, hour, day, week, month, year, can we be assured of success in life.

When we divide our work tasks into different areas of specialization, we are in principle working with machine-like efficiency. For example, when we group the writing of reports, email, or meeting minutes as a specialized movement called ‘writing’, we are utilizing the same specialized skill of writing despite the differences in subject matter.

Or when we plan for the day, or for a project, the same mental skills of ‘planning’ are employed.

You may have experienced occasions when you were writing a story or report. The more you wrote, the more the ideas kept flowing. Even though initially you were having some difficulty with your writing but because you stuck with 79

it, the momentum of writing seemed to clear the blockages and you were in the ‘zone’. As the ideas continued to flow, you felt fired up and the ease and joy that came with the writing were spontaneous. At the end of the writing session, you were actually surprised at how fluid and easy your writing task had been. In fact, you actually enjoyed it because of the peak state of mind you attained during the process.

This is what happens when you concentrate on one skill or a particular type of task hard and long enough. The mental concentration that is built up gathers tremendous power and momentum.

Herein lies the secret of accomplishing tasks with machine-like efficiency. And if we can leverage this skill with the use of computer technology, we are effectively creating a powerful work and business tornado that is irresistible.

Capturing Your Thought-Movements Once we can break down our daily tasks into separate individual movements and concentrate on them during an allotted time, we are on our way to creating a tornado that will sweep us through the day with great momentum and ease. To be able to break down our work into separate individual thought-movements

in

order

to

achieve

machine-like

efficiency, we must know what these ‘movements’ are.

For most of us, thought-movements in our work life would not encompass more than half a dozen or so of distinct activities: 1. Reading 2. Writing (Letters/Memos) 3. Discussions and Meetings 4. Phone calls 80

5. Sorting and Filing 6. Planning-Analysing 7. Operational Tasks 8. Interruptions The terms ‘movement type’ and ‘thought-movement’ may be used interchangeably throughout the later chapters for ease of reading.

When we work without defining our thought-movements and jump from one thought to another (as is always the case) while our body is still on the original task, we not only lose efficiency but mental down-time as well.

Down-time in a production line is when the machinery is re-adjusted for a new batch run. It takes time to make the adjustment and meanwhile the flow of production is held up.

In the case of humans, down-time is the time required for the mind to readjust and realign its thoughts to do a new task or to get back to where it was before an interruption. This causes delays because the interruption throws the mind off its chain of focus and it loses its flow.

Down-time

is

significantly

reduced

and

may

be

eliminated altogether with training. We can easily turn on and off to Interruptions with training. This is the advantage we humans have over machines, but do not make full use of.

Why

are

‘interruptions’

included

as

a

separate

movement? Wouldn’t it be better to have it deleted and done away with? Well, in the real world, interruptions to our workflow are a fact of life and are unavoidable. Even machines get interruptions in the form of breakdowns, running out of fuel, jams, etc.

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Sometimes, interruptions can be urgent or important enough to warrant immediate attention. Most times they are minor annoyances. But even small, nitty-gritty details that have relevance to your job should be included and followed through.

Do not overlook minor but relevant details. Very often it is the small, tedious details that are overlooked which can create big disasters.

Take for example: the lax follow-through on procedures led to the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl; A lack of internal checks at Barings Bank caused it to collapse from the derivatives disaster; Pepsi was considered too small and insignificant (an interruption?) to bother with when it was offered for sale to Coca-Cola in the early 1900’s.

The key is to develop a positive mental attitude towards interruptions. Instead of viewing them as an obstruction, view them as a possible opportunity. Ask yourself, “What can I do to change this into an advantage?�

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Chapter 13 Be a Living Tornado!

Tao is a whirling emptiness, yet when used it cannot be exhausted.

Out of this very emptiness arose all things in existence.

- TAO TE CHING Everyone knows the devastating power of a tornado. Nothing stands in its way. And nothing can stop a tornado in its path.

Yet, what is a tornado? It is nothing more than just whirling air that is focused and concentrated around a point. When it is not in that concentrated form, it is just empty air.

Same thing applies to a person. When a person is unfocused and not concentrated on his work he is no more than stale air floating aimlessly. However, when he gathers all his mental forces together, directs them, and concentrates them on the work at hand he becomes a living tornado. A tornado that is potentially more powerful than the one found in nature.

This is because the human mind is capable of great synergies when focused, and the energy generated by this focused and concentrated mind is about the most powerful force created in this universe.

“Isn’t the power of a tornado destructive?” some may ask.

Well, a tornado by itself is neither good nor evil. It just is. It is nature. If a tornado can do devastating damage – imagine what constructive good it can produce if its power can be 83

harnessed. Similarly, think of what you will achieve if you can harness the power of the potential tornado in your mind.

Now, we shall see how we can get the power of the tornado in our mind to work for us. In the previous chapter we explored the logic of organizing work activities into different movement types. We will now re-look at all the activities that comprise a typical working day to sort out our thoughtmovement types.

Let us revisit John’s typical day as described earlier in Chapter 11. Analysing his individual thought-movement types, we will get the breakdown as shown in the following page.

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JOHN’S DAY ARRANGED INTO THOUGHT-MOVEMENTS Movement Type

Activity

Time

am/pm

Read docs in In-tray

8.30-8.45

am

Read letters from suppliers

9.00-9.10

am

Back to reading In-tray

10.0010.10

am

WRITING

Wrote letter to customer

8.45-9.00

am

9.10-10.00

am

PHONECALLS

Telephoned Mike in warehouse Telephones supplier

1.30-1.50

pm

Old classmate rang to chit-chat

3.00-3.30

pm

Completed overdue monthly report

11.30-1.00

pm

Made explanations to Accounting Dept Impromptu meeting with Mary Discussion with salesman from RV Corp.

10.1011.00 1.50-3.00

am

3.30-4.30

pm

Checked overtime sheets

11.0011.30 4.30-5.15

am

READING

REPORTS

MEETINGS

OPERATIONS

Process documents still outstanding

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pm

pm

All the activities are re-arranged according to the movement types listed in the left column. You will find that the times spent on the various movement types are not in chronological sequence.

Unlike a modern factory that process one specialized task before passing on to the next machinery for the next task in a smooth, efficient manner, John’s tasks are haphazard and does not follow a logical flow.

When you start analyzing John’s actual work movements you can see how inefficient and ineffective his work performance is. Note the different times that a thoughtmovement type is repeated at different times of the day. For example, telephone calls are made at different times of the day as and when the thought comes to mind. Instead, all telephone calls should be made in a time track allocated for ‘phonecalls’.

John’s task movements are not organized in relation to time. His work is dictated by happenstance and he just reacts to the situation arising, jumping from one type of movement to another as the day goes along.

Isn’t this like the way most people handle their workday?

It is not hard to see how disorganized the average person’s life is.

To understand the impact of this better, let’s take the analogy of an automobile factory. Imagine that the workers make whatever body or engine part that comes into the manager’s mind throughout the day. If cars were made the same way that the undisciplined mind works, it would be the perfect recipe for disaster.

Just suppose the factory starts the day with metal sheets that form the car body. The sheets are painted before being sent to the body moulds that shape the sheets into car bodies.

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The paint is not even dry yet! Next, the doors and windows are fitted. Then, the doors will have to be taken out to put the seats in. After this, the body is opened up again to fit the engine inside. Oops! We can’t fit the engine without the chassis to hold it to the car. So, out the engine comes again. And so it goes.

Henry Ford would have a right royal fit in his grave!

From this illustration you can see what happens when a factory does not plan its assembly line and have specialization of tasks.

We do not make cars this way, yet why do we work this way?

Most people carry on working in this disorganized way for most of their lives without realizing it. No wonder, most people do not get anywhere, nor do they get the best they can out of their limited working lifespan.

Next, we are going to explore the system of working that gives the best results.

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Chapter 14 The Integration Method Outside, around the periphery, the force of the tornado is awesome.

But here in the center, it is calm.

Let us now re-design John’s workday according to our concept of specialized thought-movements. We are going to reorganize his work on a powerful tool called the Tornado Planner Sheet.

Look at the layout of the Tornado Planner sheet on the next page. This shows the initial arrangement of John’s typical workday organized according to the integration concept.

With this method you can see that once John organizes his work according to his thought-movement types aligned with their own time slots, he can breeze through the day and still have room for more throughput. When the movement calls for writing, he only concentrates on writing and nothing else. All this is done within the time track allowed.

Then he goes on to the next movement type, e.g. reading, and only reads the documents in his in-tray during the time track allotted. He does not stop and make a telephone call or have a chat with his colleague during the time track for reading. Each task or activity has its own time slot.

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Using this approach anyone can move efficiently throughout the day, like a modern-day factory designed along specialization of tasks and logical flows.

Even interruptions and impromptu visits and chit-chats have their own time and place in the Tornado Method! This is because some interruptions are actually part of the work and life process and have their own importance.

Now that John’s work has been re-organized in the Planner sheet for the day, we can see how much unnecessary time have been previously wasted on tasks that actually require less time to complete. For example, by looking at the Planner, we can see how John squanders precious time on chatting and gossiping with his old friend – 30 minutes. This can be kept down to 10 minutes, and still allow him to keep his relationship with the friend.

Work is now compressed and moves faster through specialization of thought-movements.

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Also, with the Tornado Planner, one can fit in more productive work into the day as more time is now available to conquer those “pending” or “overdue” tasks as well.

The Integration Method And Goal Setting Modern personal goal-setting requires you to have an objective in mind. With this, you then plan the steps that you need to take in the coming weeks or months to progressively take you to that goal.

Similarly, for a modern day company, the management will usually set 3 or 5-year goals. These are then broken down into annual budgets. From the annual budgets the monthly budget is drawn for each department or cost-center.

Sometimes weekly targets will be constructed to support the monthly budgets e.g. weekly sales targets, weekly production targets.

So far, so good for the company. However, what is missing here is the detailed breakdown of work for each individual in the company. The employee is not given the tools to plan for the particular work required of them for each month, each week, each day, each hour, and each quarter hour of the day.

One might wonder why the need to break down the individual’s work to such a refined level as each quarter-hour of the day. Yes, the breakdown into this most basic level is important if humans are to achieve exponential results. Do not forget that machines are programmed to work in fractions of a second. But the human mind is capable of even thinking in milliseconds by nature.

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For The Entrepreneur Under the Tornado Method this breakdown of thoughtmovements can be used to plan business campaigns months in advance. The plan can then be broken down into each and every step that needs to be taken in alignment with the time given. This way, every task you do is powering the whole towards your goals without wastage.

With the Tornado Method you already know that every task you are doing during a time-track is taking you one step nearer to your goal. This is because the method provides you with the means to manage and integrate the micro-level activities with your overall macro plan as shown in the preceding chart. Once you have your plan in place, you do not need to worry about the future or past anymore. You only need to be in the present.

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Chapter 15 Setting Up Your Tornado Often, before we start to look at a problem, our minds have already placed limitations on us that we are not even aware of. This is because we have been conditioned to think in set ways.

The stage is now ready for you to set up your very own tornado that can integrate and drive your success purpose.

You should have an idea of what your goals are, and what you want to achieve in the coming week, month or year.

To make our exercise easier here, let’s assume you know what your goals are and you are working towards them. We shall start off by having a look at what you do in a normal week at y our work. Take some time to reflect on the duties and tasks that you perform at work over a typical week. Do not worry if you cannot recall in fine details all of your activities and the time spent on them. Estimates will do for a start.

Remember that the Integration Method is a dynamic process. It is not static like other systems because it adjusts to your changing needs as you will be evolving and improving as you go along.

The Method helps you to simplify your life and career to a handful of simple movements. Too often we humans make

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things more difficult and complicated than they should be.

Why? As mentioned, one of the reasons is that it is in the nature of the unruly mind to run around non-stop. It does not sit still even for a minute, but continues to run all over even when we are asleep (are your dreams coherent?). We do not train our mind to stop and really look at what is at hand. So, when confronted with a problem, even a simple one, our mind clamors all over for a complicated solution instead of looking for a simple one. Often the best solution is staring us in the face, but we miss it because we are somewhere else in the vastness of our mind.

As well, we are subconsciously conditioned by our education and habits to look for solutions that are necessary complicated. Otherwise we will not look so ‘smart’. Often too, we may try to solve a problem by attacking the symptom instead of the source.

We have to re-condition ourselves if we want to succeed in our work and to solve problems effectively. The process of change has to start from inside our minds. If the change does not come from within, it is not a real change and therefore will not withstand the test of time. And as we master this process, the external change will automatically follow as a reflection of the change in the source – the mind.

Next we are going to give you the tools to apply this mind training in a systematic manner.

Step 1 Try drawing up a Tornado Planner Sheet for yourself now. A sample blank sheet is attached at the Appendix for you to copy and use.

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Classify your own thought-movement types that are peculiar to your nature of work. Remember, these are separate, definable work motions that you go through in your daily work. More examples are given that you may identify and use:

– Reading

- emails

– Planning

- Accounting

– Meetings & Discussions

- Reports

– Phone calls

- Planning

– Operations

- Internet Surfing

-

- Follow Ups

Interruptions

Of course, depending on the nature of your work or success objectives, you may have other different thought-movement. eg. If you are in the bakery business you may have specializations in ingredients preparation, cutting, baking, decoration, experimenting (new recipes), etc.

Your Turn - Remember to just put down close estimates of your special thought-movement and time required where you cannot figure out the exact details. After a short while you will understand your work and your goals better and be able to fine tune.

Step 2 With the above step completed, have a look at your worksheet and take some time to answer the questions below:

x

What are the 80/20 activities that support your work and success objectives?

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x

Do you invest more time and put more emphasis on the

x

20% of activities that give you 80% of the results that you want?

x

Look at your ‘interruption’ activities. How much time and attention do you give to them? Do you usually react to them as they come along or do you take charge and manage them?

You can now analyze the above questions in relation to your work. At this point too you should also do some adjustments to the amount of time you should devote to the activities that are important to your objectives.

Most people are so caught up with the day-to-day rush that they do not take time out to look at whether they are giving enough attention to their own 80/20 activities, which are vital to their career or business. They expend too much time and effort on matters that have no direct relation to their work success.

As stated earlier, interruptions can be a major bottleneck to the smooth flow of our work. It is not possible to cut off all interruptions, nor may it be totally desirable. For example, you may not want to shoo off a big customer who drops in suddenly for a visit. But you can spend less time on people who drop in to gossip.

You can limit interruptions and manage them by reducing the time you invest in them. For example, you can also decrease the time you spend on phone calls for non-productive purposes. It is better to include more people and more calls than to waste too much time on one or two calls. This way, you 96

can cover a wider network of people and keep in touch with all those that count.

Step 3 Weekly and Daily planning – You should do your planning for the week on the weekend before. This will give you time to review the week that has just passed while your memory is still fresh, and help you plan for the coming week.

You can then add more tasks into your Planner as the days come along.

Planning involves thinking, and this is a separate activity on its own. Do not act on thoughts that come randomly and be distracted into doing tasks that are not allocated for the time groove you are in. If a thought is important, put the thought down onto your Tornado Planner under the right movement type and act on it during the appropriate time-slot.

After a couple of weeks you should be able to fine-tune your plan for more effectiveness and productivity. If your job changes or you get promoted (which is most likely), you should adjust your Planner according to the new work requirements.

Keep a clear mind and just do the required movements in the respective time slots. After a while you will get into the habit and the momentum will drive you on further. And because your mind is calm and focused on the movement at hand you will be like the eye of the tornado – calm in the center, while everything around you gets spun faster and faster towards your goals. You are now a fully Integrated Man.

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Chapter 16 Using the Integration Method for Success There are many paths up to the top of the mountain.

Why not take the easiest one?

A person would normally organize his day according to what he thinks are the priorities for the day. He would then put aside what he deems to be the less important tasks for later; or delegate them. This way, the traditionalists think, would enable a person to maximize his work output within the time given.

But does it really? Remember Murphy’s Law? Essentially, the Law says that what can possibly go wrong will go wrong.

And if you are old enough to read this book, your experience will tell you that this is more often the case than not. Sometime in your life you must have delegated work to someone else, thinking that your job was over, only to find that the other fellow did not do a proper job. And the result was a disastrous boomerang.

In the new age of super-computers and worldwide instant communication you cannot afford to make forgetful blunders or overlook things relevant to your success. Any mistake or blunder will go around faster and magnify itself out of 98

proportion in no time. Look at what is going on with computerized stock trading and foreign exchange dealing and you can see how fast the effects of a panic decision can impact the market place.

Some of your less important tasks just cannot be ignored and put aside for days for they may still be urgent, although not top priority. They still require your immediate attention.

Examples of such instances are when a request is suddenly made by your CEO for some information for the media; or processing a deadline repayment for a major bank loan; or a request by a top-10 customer for an impromptu discussion; etc.

What usually happens under this kind of approach is that the lower priority (but still in your 80/20) work gets pushed back later and later. Sometimes they are even overlooked or forgotten as the new project takes up all the attention. In time, the build-up of ignored tasks will gather momentum and become a crisis. That is the origin of the ‘management by crisis’ approach.

How The Integration Method Works

By Capitalizing on Mind Training The Integration Method, unlike other approaches, recognizes and acknowledges the mind as the basic force behind the pursuits of an individual or an organization. Without the mind to prompt the individual, the body is just a force that is directionless. Yet when the mind is integrated with the Body, a synergy is produced and a third force is created that is exponential in power.

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We have seen earlier how the undisciplined mind works.

It is not in control. It is at the mercy of thoughts or mental states that arise one after another. As a result, its attention keeps shifting and it cannot concentrate on one object or task for long. The mood of the shifting mind also changes in accordance to the mental states that comes and goes Unless we recognize the changing nature of the mind, we are often affected by agitation or negative thoughts that derail us without understanding why.

But by using the mind training method here, we can change all these. When we apply this training to our daily life, we are able to stay focused in the moment. Our mental powers are at their peak. We can focus fully on the task at hand and we methodically know what is required to be done. We know how to catch and stop negative thoughts and mental distractions the moment they come up. Thoughts that are not connected to what we are doing are easily pushed away or discarded.

We only focus on what needs to be done with each changing moment. And we breeze through our work with the momentum produced by this full mental focus and clarity of purpose.

The importance of cultivating our mind is obvious if we look closely at some of our bad work habits which many of us are probably unaware of. One of the bad habits that we are guilty of is that quite often before we actually get started in our work, we would be doing a whole host of little things unrelated to the task at hand.

Why? The simple reason is because for most of us our mind is not disciplined. We may dislike doing a particular

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type of work. So we follow our mind around rather than grab control and let our mind follow us.

Work usually means stress in this fast-paced world, and most of us have an aversion to stress. This is where the paradox lies – we have an aversion to stress, but an aversion is also a form of stress!

A fair amount of time is frittered away because of this failure to get started on our work quickly. Even when we do get started, we have to overcome inertia, which is again another time-waster. Inertia comes about because of our inability to bring our thoughts together and redirect them with one-pointedness to what we should be doing.

It is important that we know our mind and how to deal with our shortcomings if we want to succeed in life. By practicing the mind training exercise diligently and extending the practice to your daily life, you will acquire the mental powers to overcome your weaknesses and excel in whatever you want to do.

By attacking your work head-on without hesitation, you are in effect saving a lot of time. When you attain onepointedness in mental focus, you work with a momentum that powers you through your day.

The beauty of this method is that you only need to be here to take care of the now and you would have taken care of your future.

By Removing Bottlenecks With the Integrated approach, you are required to first of all, ask yourself what the bottlenecks are that block the smooth flow of your work. You will not be able to reach new heights in 101

performance if you do not bother to find out what your own bottlenecks are and remove them.

The mind training exercise, if practiced regularly and applied to daily activities, will break most of the mental and emotional bottlenecks that have been obstructing your path to success. The Remaining bottlenecks which are due to inadequacies in our way of working may be removed by the use of the Tornado Sheets.

By Identifying and Concentrating on 80/20 Activities The Integration method requires you to identify the 80/20 key tasks that directly support your success goals. With the 80/20 Activity Sheet you would find out what activities are important to drive your business or career, and what are not relevant. As such, nothing that plays a part in your success purpose is overlooked – everything is continually seized and processed as you go through the planned movements of the day.

By

Compressing

Work

Into

Specialized

Thought-

Movements Specialized Thought-Movements allow you to deal effectively with all your work tasks and compress the time taken to complete them. By specializing on one type of movement skill (eg. reading, writing, meeting,) during a certain time slot, your inertia is broken and work momentum is naturally generated.

You are in effect transforming yourself into a human tornado! You can now s-w-o-o-s-h through your workday and yet stay calm at your center.

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You will soon find that work is no longer stressful and you actually enjoy working in the zone when you are integrated with the flow of your inner and outer selves.

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Chapter 17 Some Key Points A gang of ten men cannot move a stubborn buffalo. But a little boy who knows can move it by a noose through its nostrils.

As with learning any new skill, the use of the Integration Method may initially cause some confusion. This is only natural. It is a process of understanding as well as improving the way our mind works. As our inner and external training becomes increasingly refined, the tornado within takes on a defined form and assumes more power.

In the following paragraphs a list of key points, and questions and answers are given to guide the new user in adapting to the Tornado Plan system.

Key Points x

When incoming documents or emails require separate movements (eg. drafting a formal letter, making a phonecall, etc.), read them first and then sort the documents into their separate movement folders for further action during their time-tracks. If it’s an email, note the action to be taken into its proper movement track.

Make a folder for each movement type and place them on your desk. This way, every task is carried out and nothing

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is missed out. If it’s an email, note the action to be taken into its proper movement track in the Planner sheet. x

Operational activities are for those tasks that are not high in priority but must still get done in order to carry on the business. With the Planner, you can reduce interruptions as people will soon get to know when the best times to interrupt you are (eg. ‘Meetings’ time slot).

x

Put your Tornado Planner sheet on the top of your desk or pin it up on the wall beside you where it can be easily seen by you and people who drop by your work area. It will serve as a reminder to prod you on through the day and let your colleagues and friends know about your plan.

Soon they will know which are the times to drop in on you. And they know that they will have your full attention too because you have set aside that time track for them.

Their admiration and respect for you will grow as they begin to see you as a more organized and integrated individual.

x

You may delegate some of your work if need be, but you must still set aside time to check on your subordinates’ work. If you assign work, make sure it is not one of the top 20% of your key career tasks. Also, ensure that there is feedback to you. Allocate a time track for ‘Follow Ups’ and use this to review the delegated work and take corrective measures before they get lost and out of control.

Follow ups can also be carried out under the ‘Operations’ time-track, if you like.

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Many executives are so immersed in their work that they fail to set aside time periods to follow up and check on subordinates’ work. Sometimes crises can arise from this oversight and the executive has to take final responsibility and the consequences himself. How often do you see in the news that certain CEOs had to take responsibility for their corporations’ disasters even though they were not totally aware of their subordinates’ failure to carry out delegated tasks? x

If you are away from your desk, always carry an ‘Action Card’ or your electronic personal organizer with you in your pocket and note down any useful thoughts that come into mind. This will help you catch ideas and recall things to be done later. Do not let good ideas slip away just because you do not have a habit of jotting them down.

Forgetfulness is the main contributor to the graveyard of good ideas gone to waste. Ideas are important to your success. Record them and transfer them onto your Tornado Planner for further action. This small step alone can boost your productivity and value by a leap.

Similarly when ideas come while you are working at your desk, note them down in the respective time track on your Tornado Planner and act on them as you come to that time track. Do not act impulsively on whatever comes into your head and be distracted off the track. Be aware of random thoughts controlling you.

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(Example of an Action Card in action. The list is checked off as each task is completed or transferred onto the Planner )

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QUESTIONS AND INSIGHTS Here are some questions that may arise in the minds of the first-time practitioners of the Integration Method. Some powerful insights are added here, so please read carefully:

(a) What if you have not completed all the movements listed in the time-track allocated and time is up?

Once the time-track for a movement type is up, do not continue and encroach onto the next time-track. If there are still uncompleted tasks, move them to the next slot for the relevant movement type. For example, when your time-track is up for phone calls, do not make any more calls but move on to the next time-track (e.g. for writing). You should only continue with your outstanding phone calls when you come to the next track for phone calls.

In some instances you may find that having more than one time-track in a day for a movement type like ‘Phonecalls’ and ‘Reading’ may be more effective than having only one long time slot for it. For example, you may have one time track in the morning to make phone calls and another one after lunch.

(b) What if you have completed all the tasks allotted for a time-track early, with time to spare?

Grab the time gained and move on to the next time-track. Do not stop, keep moving. You may find this becoming a regular occurrence because you are becoming more productive.

This is one of the signs that you are improving and the tornado inside is building up. Over time, you may wish to adjust your

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Planner again to suit your new working style and efficiency.

Do so. You are moving on to new heights.

(c) What about the mind training exercise, do I still have to do it once I have had a few weeks of practice with the method?

The mind training is essential and is part and parcel of becoming an Integrated Man. Without it the tornado will lose its force. Continuous awareness of what you are doing and concentration on the task at hand is important. If your mind strays (which will be quite often in the beginning) take note of your breathing and tell yourself to come back to your inner void and focus on what is at hand. Use the ‘trigger’ if you find it necessary.

As you make progress in your mind training, your concentration and mental clarity will naturally improve and you will find increasing ease in focusing and staying focused on whatever you do. In other words, the mental power that determines your success in life strengthens as your mind training advances.

The mind training exercise cannot be abandoned or neglected.

It should also be part of your daily life.

Again, it should be stressed here that force should never be applied at any stage in the mind training exercise nor should you try too hard. Using force or trying too hard will only create tension which has the opposite effect. Relax, watch your breath, and calm will follow.

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(d) What other benefits do I reap from practicing the mind exercise?

Mind training gives many benefits that include attaining an efficient state, a wholesome awareness, and a peak zone of mind/body connectedness. A person with a trained mind can focus and direct his concentration to the task at hand and keep it there till completion.

He is also capable of disciplined, penetrating thinking that is required to solve problems.

INSIGHT INTO POSITIVE THINKING Another benefit which the practitioner will find is the growing ability to catch and intercept negative and unproductive thoughts that arise involuntarily throughout the day. The importance of this can be understood in the context of ‘positive thinking’. We have heard or read about positive thinking and how it can help improve our lives. Like many people, you have probably tried it and find that it works for a short while before you lapse back to your old thinking and attitudes.

The main reason for this is that thoughts, whether positive or negative, materialize in the mind all the time. They are quite independent of our will, and like bubbles in a pot of boiling water, they manifest and disappear randomly.

Thoughts of a similar nature have the tendency to group together just as birds of the same feathers flock together. As long as you can catch and recognize a negative thought at the moment it appears and not allow it to get a foothold in your mind, you will not be drawn into the maze of associated negative thoughts that follow. Do not dwell on a negative thought; let it pass by like a whiff of smoke.

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Allow your mind to attach only to positive thoughts. This way, only the positive thoughts have a chance to attach and reinforce themselves through your conscious effort. Just as we strengthen our muscles through repeated exercise, repeating or dwelling on positive thoughts gives them power. This is the essence of ‘positive thinking’.

As you progress you will develop a keener awareness of your own mind – of the thoughts and feelings that come and go and how they constitute the driving force of your mind. If you do not know your thoughts and how they drive you, you will always stay slave to your whimsical mind. The mind training exercise helps you understand yourself and your mind better as you discover your own weaknesses and strengths. Through this understanding and perseverance in mind training, you will learn to be become the master of your own mind.

As with learning (or re-learning) anything new, this requires practice and time. Faithfully and consistently use this mind training methods with the tools introduced, and you will attain success faster than you could imagine. Not only will you find success at work or business but you will also discover that all areas of your life benefit from this.

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Chapter 18 Launching a Project or Business How do you eat an elephant? A bite at a time.

By now you know that planning is the key thought-movement that directs your workday, your work-week, and your workyear. With proper planning you can just take care of today and what you are doing now, and you will have taken care of the whole year. There is no need for further worries.

As described earlier, it is important to plan your activities to make sure you do not miss any of the key 80/20 tasks as well as all the other less important tasks relevant to your success goals. This is because together they direct you to your goals and any missing part will mean an unaccomplished goal.

For your daily and weekly work tasks you will fill in the Tornado Planner sheet as you do your planning. Important thoughts that crop up during the day should also be recorded in your Planner for action.

Starting a business is also similar to launching a project; which may be quite complex and involve many separate tasks and persons. How can you fit them into a time-track?

Now let’s say you want to start your own business with a new product launch. This project would involve planning, reading,

writing

letters,

meetings,

reports,

phonecalls,

promoting, etc., and can take weeks or months to complete.

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People often mistakenly treat a project as top priority and work on it until it is finished, to the exclusion of other job duties. A project will very likely take days or months to complete and comprise many thought-movements. If you spend days on the project alone, you would be ignoring other tasks that have importance in their own time-tracks. This is a very common mistake among many people who spend days on a ‘priority’ project thinking that they are attending to all the important work.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or an

employee, there are other important tasks to attend to even if a new launch is of key importance. That is where you delegate some tasks while attend to a few yourself in your own timetrack.

What is needed is a project map which helps you plan all the individual tasks to be done at various times and by the various people involved. These tasks are then broken up into their individual movement types and embodied in the Tornado Planner sheet.

We will now introduce the T-Project Map which is designed for analysing a project as a series of separate movements. This is an aid to disciplined and organized thinking.

The T-Project Map shown on the following page is used by to plan a project and integrate all its movements. The project involves a launch campaign for a new product called ‘Popping Soap’ at an exhibition venue.

1. In planning a project, it would be wise at the start to include a ‘Planning’ time-track to think and note down on a piece of paper all the steps you think would be required to make it a successful one. You can use mindmapping 113

during this planning phase to help you (if you want to find out more about mindmapping you can go to Google and search these words to get more instructions on how to use them).

2. You would then put the tasks on the T-Project Map in the logical order that you think they should be carried out in.

3. The check boxes are then ticked as the tasks are transferred to the Planner sheet. When the tasks are completed on the due dates, they are also ticked as ‘done’.

From the diagrams shown, you can see how the tasks for the

Popping

Soap

Project

have

been

specifically

transferred onto the Planner.

At the same time, other daily matters requiring your attention can be put onto the Planner as well. Nothing that is 80/20 to your workday is thus missed out.

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4. How about that? You have already included all that is to be done into your Tornado’s orbit even before you start the day. Nothing that is relevant to your project and other work duties is left out or is overlooked.

In some instances a task would take up more than one time-track span. An example would be writing a long report. In a case like this, you would spread the task over a few time-tracks for ‘Reports’ that may cover up to a few days. But always ensure that the task is completed by the due date as planned.

5. Your T-Project Map should also list the name of the person responsible for each task and its expected date of completion. For those tasks that are delegated, it would be important to follow up on their progress before the due date. You can do this by noting down on the T-Project Map under the ‘Follow-up Notes’ column the days you should check up on the progress of their work. These follow-up days will then be copied onto the ‘Follow-up’ time-tracks on your Planner sheet.

With this system the whole project with all the necessary tasks and follow-ups are planned out in advance and closely

monitored

thereby

ensuring

the

successful

completion of the project.

A blank T-Project Map can be found in the Appendix for you to practice launching your projects or your business.

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Year-At-Glance Calendar The daily and weekly planner will guide you every day with full purpose along the right direction into the future. With the Tornado Method you know that every task devoured is already bringing you closer to your goals.

To be able to see the whole macrocosmic picture you should always have a Year-At-Glance calendar on your wall or in your planner diary. Important dates, events and deadlines are marked on this calendar. An occasional glance at this calendar will help you see the whole picture for the year and enable you to schedule projects, meetings, key events, etc. more effectively.

The danger that people who do not use such a calendar is liable to face is that they may make commitments without giving enough time and thought to the overall key events in the year. This can result in the person discovering later to his dismay that the commitment he has made to a major event would be clashing with another key event. x

For a manager, this ‘Calendar’ will allow him to see the patterns of important meetings, reports, project deadlines, etc. It also helps in his planning of key 80/20 activities, subordinates’ workflow, travels, projects, and integrate his daily/weekly Tornado Plan efficiently with the whole year in mind.

x

For a sales person, the ‘Calendar’ will help him to plan visits and calls to cover all the 80/20 customers and potential customers under his care. He can plan to put in extra time for these key 20% customers. Just by glancing through the calendar he will know whether he has planned adequately to include all the important customers during the year.

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The Year-at-Glance Calendar should mark each day of the year. Space should be provided under each day for writing down key events as shown in the illustration.

- The Tornado Planner and key tools are on the table, ever-ready for use.

- Folders for Movement types are lined up at the front of the desk for processing during their time-tracks.

- Year-at-Glance calendar is on the wall for quick reference.

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Chapter 19 Power Notes Our greatest achievements throughout the ages have been preserved for posterity by the mere act of writing. On the other hand, many of our greatest monuments have been lost through time.

It is important to take down important points and make notes during meetings and daily discussions with people; for they are often the source of ideas and solutions. Quite often, our mind is so engrossed with thoughts of work and other problems that we do not ‘hear’ many of the things said during a dialogue session. On occasions, we get bored with long meeting sessions so much so that we subconsciously turn off and find escape through our own mental ramblings. During these times, our mind drifts in and out of the discussions without us even being aware of it.

The purpose of the mind training exercise is to develop your awareness so that you can consciously bring your attention back into focus each time your mind starts to wander. When we work we apply the same principle of keeping our awareness fully on whatever we are doing. This chapter highlights the importance of making useful notes to reinforce this habit.

The act of writing down short, crisp notes on points of relevance during a meeting or discussion is an exercise in 121

bringing your mind into focus on what is being said, and serves as a reminder for you to act on later. Also, when you make short notes during a discussion session, the other parties become naturally more positive towards you.

Why? Because it gives people the impression and feeling that what they say is being valued by you because you are paying attention and writing their views down.

It is not uncommon that during meetings and discussions we get new ideas and useful thoughts triggered by our interaction with other minds. These are the aha! moments of our lives. They should not be allowed to be forgotten and gone to waste.

The useful way to take notes is to have a complementing column on the same sheet for you to make your own observations and ideas that emerge during a session. Have a look through the sample Power Notes sheet and see an example of how it is used. The left column is for you to take notes of pertinent points being discussed, whereas the right, smaller column is for you to record your own power thoughts and ideas that crop up from the dialogue.

Note the star and tick symbols at the bottom of the diagram. The star symbol is for you to use to highlight important points for consideration later. The tick symbol represents actions for you to transfer to your Tornado Planner sheet to be done in the right time-tracks.

Take a look at the example diagram provided. Imagine you are doing sales with a customer here. A discussion with a customer on pricing of new orders for their new branch may prompt you to check out on opportunities in that new location.

You would be smart to make a note to remind yourself to do

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an investigation into this for potential new customers. So, a note is made in the adjoining ‘Power Thoughts’ column.

Next, while discussing the need to make fortnightly deliveries to the new location, an idea may strike you to work on the possibility of piggybacking your goods on the customer’s own trucks instead of delivering them yourself.

This would save trucking costs and allow you to offer a more competitive price to the customer.

As you can see, ideas often branch out into more new ones much like the way plants grow given the right conditions.

When ideas are recorded and pondered on, they run deep in the currents of your subconscious mind. Especially when there is an intention to make something out of these ideas, this somehow empowers the subconscious mind to connect with associated thoughts to create new opportunities for you.

Do not underestimate the power of taking down notes of ideas for your success in life may depend on it.

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The Hidden Chapter How to Create Your Algorithm of Success The first thing to understand about money at its basic microcosmic level is that money is blind and has no conscience. It does not follow any morals, religious guidelines, racial makeup or ethics. It is just a medium of expression of human desires, greed, goals and achievements.

Once you can understand this, then the next level you will see is that like any medium (eg. energy, water, air), money only follows certain rules and laws that are unique to itself.

This is why businesses that follow a certain set of algorithms or codes will succeed and others who don’t, will not.

You have seen small startup businesses like Microsoft, Google, McDonalds, Ikea, and some Fortune 500 companies grow from strength to strength. On the other hand, are you also aware that there are organizations on the darker of business are doing extremely well too? These are the illegal drug trade, the illegal casino, human trafficking, and wildlife trafficking. Now we do not condone illegal businesses at all. it is easy enough to make money morally without taking on the unnecessary risks of illegal businesses.

But what we observe in reality from empirical evidence is that money has no morals or conscience. Like energy or water, 125

it flows in a path of least-resistance according to a set of natural laws. If you can grasp all these laws and bring them together into an Integrated Code of Wealth – you can use this code and use them again and again to keep making money and creating wealth.

How can you discover the secret algorithm of making money so that you can simply just keep repeating it to gain massive wealth?

Discover the Secret Algorithm for Massive Wealth To gain some insights into working out what the wealth algorithm is, let us look at some simpler real-life examples.

Take bestselling novel writing for example; Why is it that authors like Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code), JK Rowling, Agatha Christie are so successful and majority of authors live on meager wages and love of writing?

Well, if we go down to the microcosmic level of how bestselling novels are written, we can start to see that they all follow a certain algorithm or method. The novels may have different story lines and characters, but the basic formulae used are the same! And since the using the same algorithm is proven to produce bestsellers, it is quite easy to come up with new sequels or stories that are based on the same algorithm.

Dan Brown’s novels are usually based on some historical or scientific fact or mystery. He starts the story with a murder and the main character’s job is to solve the clues surrounding the murder. The plot and scenes moves on a faster and faster pace until the climax. At the end, the answer is provided and it usually has a twist with the most unlikely suspect being the perpetrator; or the solution has been there all the time; staring at our faces.

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Agatha Christie is the world’s most published author, with over a billion books in print. Her stories are based on murder and figuring out who-done- it. She follows a tight algorithm that is used in novel after novel; and each one is a bestseller. She also starts her story with a murder and the plot moves faster and faster until it ends with a climax – the guilty one is the most unsuspected. She uses nine or more characters in each novel to mesmerize her readers’ minds into submission and they go into a trance-like state. The readers then ‘let go’ and just follow the novel till the end. Hence, her novels are known to be ‘unputdownable’. To find out more about this amazing author and learn how to figure out book writing algorithms you can go to www.publishingcollege.com and make writing and self-publishing into your own startup business. That’s where I got help to get this book published, too.

OK, now let us look at what algorithms successful businesses use. Successful businesses do not come into existence as big multinationals overnight. They are usually created as a brainchild of one person. They start of small with the spark of an idea; and with a formula that works, they grow from strength to strength to become multinationals.

Many of the big companies owe their success through their founders’ discovery of certain sets of algorithms which they have been able to repeat over and over easily to grow massively all over the world.

Take McDonalds, for example, they have developed an algorithm whereby their hamburgers and fries are always precisely cooked the same way. They also look and taste the same in all their outlets around the world (it may not taste good, but it is consistent). They also focus on the best real 127

estate to plunk their outlets in every city, in every country they are in. They have a standard system of cooking their burgers, serving their customers and designing their outlets. Hence, they have a winning algorithm which they apply over and over again to tens of thousands of outlets around the globe.

Microsoft focuses on creating operating system for PCs. They have a system of developing upgrades of their software and just about everyone who uses a microcomputer in any place on earth uses the same operating system. They do it once and keep repeating (copying the same software) it over and over millions of times to the customers. Easy money, huh?

Can you figure out the success algorithm used by Walmart, Nike, Ikea, and Coca Cola? Take some time to relook at some of the successful businesses around you and try to figure their algorithm for success. This will give you some insights into the secret of great wealth.

The Success Criteria All successful algorithms in business meet the following criteria: 9 Is there a recurring market for the product?

9 Does your product give gratification or significance to the customer using it?

9 Is the business copy-able?

9 Do you have a system to ensure that the business process can run without you?

9 Do you have great customer service to make them keep coming back?

As mentioned before, money is blind and has no morals. It flows according to its own path of least resistance. As long as a 128

business, whatever it is, meets these criteria, money will flow to it.

We’ll take a look at Nike and see how it fits the success criteria above. x

Sports shoes are a must-have for people who play sports and they wear out faster than other type of shoes. Also, Nike comes up with new models regularly. Thus creating demand for new models and making customers junk their old pair.

x

The brand name and the regular endorsements by sport stars give the buyers of Nike a sense of being part of the in-crowd and identification with the sports personalities.

x

Nike creates one shoe model and copies them by the millions in China and cheap labor countries, and sells them around the world.

x

The company has an excellent business system that allows their shoes to be distributed all over the world. Their products are sold without Nike management having to be in all Nike stores all over the world.

x

The stores are decorated to give customers a feel of being associated with the brand and the sports stars. Wearing a pair of the latest Nike is a statement that others take notice of.

What about other businesses that are not so mainstream, can it work too? Take for instance, the Casino business:

x

They have a great product that fulfils a deep-seated need and which gives instant gratification to the customer.

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x x

x

The business model is copy-able, whether to another city or to the internet.

They have great systems; IT, games, human resources, and such to make the experience memorable to customers. The whole system can run without the owners being there to operate it.

And, if you’re a high roller, they have knock-yoursocks-off customer service to make you want to go back for more.

Now take a look at your passion or proposed business idea. So, as long as your idea can meet the criteria above, you will succeed and money will find its path of least resistance and flow to you. Do not worry if at first look you find that your business idea or passion do not seem to meet the success criteria. With some creative thinking you can twitch and adjust your business to fit them.

Just about any business can make you rich as long as you fit it to the law of money.

The Spark of Business Remember the lessons learnt in the mind training exercise?

Well, after some time you will be able to observe your own breathing longer and go deeper into your inner universe. It is in a special place in there that everything is calm and empty that the brainchild of great ideas and inventions are sparked off.

When you arrive at this void in your mind, there is emptiness and space where fresh energy can flow in to ignite of new ideas and things.

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This may sound a bit mystical at this stage, but it is not.

With a bit of practice, all of us can find this inner universe in our minds where new creation begins.

x

In the Tao Te Ching, it was mentioned that at the beginning, there was emptiness. But out of this emptiness there arose something; and this something gave rise to a thousand and one things.

x

The ancient book of Genesis mentioned that in the beginning there was darkness and no form. Then the Creator’s voice (a spark of energy?) announced, “Let there be light!” … and the whole universe took form and was created.

x

The grand masters of the inner martial arts (like Tai Chi, etc.) taught that to overcome your enemy you must lure his energy into the void, whereby it becomes neutral; and from there you are free to launch whatever counter-attacks you want.

So, in order to create something, there must first be a void; a space for that creation to fill. Otherwise, if there is no space, there is no place for creation to come into being.

Once a creative thought is sparked in your inner void, it can then be manifested in the outer world by the universal forces working with your directed actions.

So, that is why it is important to train your mind and be able to trigger the state where you can access this powerful void and create things in your microcosmic universe first.

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Whatever is created in the microcosmic is reflected in the macrocosmic, resulting in your goals becoming a physical reality.

In the ordinary person, the mind is so full of running thoughts and occupied with problems, there is just no space for solutions to pop up into existence. Like the old Tao saying, “You have to first empty your cup, then only can fresh tea be added.”

Hence, it is in this void, this special space that things can be created and manifested. Without a void, there will be no space to create anything. This is your inner void of creation, where ideas and solutions arise in a flash and await to manifest themselves in the physical universe.

Do you remember the times you have tried and tried hard to solve a problem or come up with an idea? You found that the harder you try, the more a solution evaded you. Then, when you gave up trying and relaxed to do some other activity like bathing, meditation or listening to music, an answer suddenly ‘pops’ up in your mind. These are the moments when you ‘let go’ and solutions are created in your inner void.

We sometimes call them the moments of insight or genius, or ‘eureka!’

Creating Your Algorithm of Success

Now we shall see how all the knowledge learnt here can be put into an algorithm to create success consistently; time and time again.

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Remember, creation in your inner void is powerful and whether good or bad, can be manifested in our physical world easily. So, be mindful and aware what you wish for.

1. Practice going into your inner void and create your goals there. Then, let it be and your subconscious mind will attract the right things and circumstances to you.

2. When ideas come to you, list them down for later analysis.

If your goal is business or money success, ensure that the ideas fit the success criteria for business as stated earlier in this chapter.

3. Now is the time to manifest the idea created. List out the steps needed to bring your idea into fruition in the real world. You can make a list or mindmap the process on a piece of paper.

For example, if I wanted to write a book and start up my own business as a self-publisher, I would firstly need to have a good idea of what I want to write about. I will go into my inner void and create the idea and what the book will entail.

Next, I mindmap my book ideas and create my table of contents before I start writing. This mindmap should capture the whole writing/publishing process from the beginning to the end.

4. Next the process is transferred onto a T-Project Map which lists all the tasks that are required to be done and in which chronological order.

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In writing this book, I needed to work out whom to delegate the related tasks like typesetting, book cover design, printing, marketing and distribution of my book. My main goal is to write and I don’t know much about the rest of the publishing business. But I still had to capture all the relevant tasks for this project, otherwise my book will never be published.

I then use a T-Project Map to list down what I need to do and what other tasks needed to be delegated to others (in this case I used a simple shortcut - I used www.bookpal.com.au to handle all the other publishing services for me. Hence, I was able to publish my book in record time).

5. The tasks in the T-Project Map are then transferred into my Tornado Planner sheets to ensure that they are done in the right order. Nothing is missed out.

In my case, I transferred the thought-movements need to be done from the T-Project Map into my Tornado Planner sheets and just happily enjoyed my writing and other followup tasks in their time-tracks.

6.

Use the other tools (Power Notes, Action Lists, etc) when necessary to help you achieve your goals.

7. Now that your business project is manifested and achieved, you just follow the success algorithm you have created and simply repeat it for more successes!

Sure enough, my book project was done smoothly and in record time. And as a business, I keep repeating my self-

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publishing algorithm over and over to repeat my publishing success in this business.

This success method can be applied to any business that you create in your inner void and manifest as per the steps given here.

So, if you want to really succeed in your career, business or life you have just been given the most powerful tools to do it naturally and easily.

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Chapter 20 Create Your Own Success It is the mind that creates our reality. Mind creates the world according to its thoughts. What are your thoughts today?

In this book we have revealed the source of success for humans and businesses. We have also solved the puzzle that has befuddled many for a long time: Where is the source of creation of ideas and inventions?

We have also delved deeper to study the origin of the force that prompts our mind–thoughts. The secret of the ‘inner void’ and how it sparks all human creation has been revealed.

The method given recognizes that the untrained mind by itself is restless, aimless and unfocused. It is subject to random thoughts that either pushes the person forward if he is lucky, or distracts the person from his objectives. Random thoughts do not possess sufficient energy to drive a person consistently and success always eludes the undisciplined mind.

A person only has to take charge of his thoughts and be in the present moment when performing a task in order to direct his mind/body unit effectively. Few of us have acquired this mental habit, which is why most of us have so much difficulty in our work and life. But we can change all that by training the mind first, and then using the tools provided to focus our energies step-by-step to success.

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The Integrated Method offers man the chance to work less while producing more. The beauty of this system is that you need not take on the whole burden of your goals for the future all at once. All you have to do is take on the present moment and let the momentum carry you there.

The whole approach enables man to move in a focused and organized orbit, undistracted in the moment, and knowing with full conviction that each though and movement is moving him closer to his goals. With this technology, the normal person thus becomes a totally Integrated Man with the driving force of a tornado!

Imagine if you own a company that got all its employees onto this method. When every individual in an organization is driving towards his work goals like an Integrated Man, the organization takes a huge jump forward. You and co-workers are each like a human tornado sweeping everything in your paths. The sum of all the individual ‘tornados’ would indeed build up the power of the company exponentially into a super tornado!

It is hoped that as more and more people see the benefits of the concepts postulated in this book and utilize the methods proposed, the human tornados thus created will not only transform themselves and their workplace, but also the world as a natural progression.

The principles of the method may be used by people in all walks of life. Whether you are a businessman, professional, tradesman, or student, you will benefit from using it.

Start today. Turn yourself into an Integrated Man or Integrated Woman!

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Appendix Tools for the Integrated Man

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