 To build and grow a successful business, there are a lot of things you need to do, a lot of tasks, but rest assured that not all of those tasks need to be done by you. And my guess is that if you are watching this video, you are interested in being more productive, which means that you are more conscientious than the average person, which means you tend to carry a lot on your shoulders. So you probably have a lot more on your to-do list than you actually need to do. So let me describe to you a system that can help you do this. Now the system is called EADA, eliminate, automate, delegate, appreciate. But before we use the system, the way we get to it is by asking if a particular task or project meets three criteria of whether or not it deserves to use the system. So the criteria for any task that you look at, if you pull up your to-do list and start looking at each task, if any task says you can't answer all three questions in the affirmative, then we need to go to the system. So the first question is, do you really enjoy doing it? That's a very simple one. If you don't enjoy doing it, then that's a no. If you do enjoy doing it, yes. Okay. Second question is, do you really want to become an expert at doing it? Equally important question, just because you enjoy doing something, there are many possible tasks in your business that you could enjoy. There are more things you could enjoy doing than you have time for. So the second question is, therefore, well, of all the things you could enjoy doing, which ones do you want to become an expert at? Which ones do you want to become really good and skilled and fast and excellent at doing? So that's the first question. First question for any task is enjoyment. Second question for any task is expertise. And the third question for any task, if you enjoy doing it and you want to become an expert at doing it, now the question is, is the effect worthwhile compared to other things you could enjoy doing and be an expert at? So for example, let's say that I publish a new book every year basically now is my rhythm. I publish or republish a new book. And one of the tasks for book publishing is doing a book cover image. Do I enjoy doing it? No. I probably could find a way to enjoy it if I enjoy the design. Number two, do I want to become an expert at doing it? No. I don't want to become an expert at designing book covers because I only need to do it once a year. You see what I mean? Right? Third one, is the effect worthwhile? Yes, the effect is worthwhile for sure because a book, everyone judges a book by its cover, right? Most people do anyway. So it doesn't pass all three tests, which means I need to go to the EDA system that I'm going to teach you now, EADA. Eliminate, automate, delegate, appreciate. Okay. So if any task or project on your to-do list doesn't pass all three checks of enjoyment, expertise, and effect, then we move that task into our EDA processing system. And so the EDA goes like this. E stands for eliminate. Eliminate. Okay. The thing is, if you really check in with your inner source of well-being, I believe there is an infinite source of well-being within us, whether you call that God or consciousness or your heart or higher self, however you want to call it, there is an inner source of well-being. And if life is about connecting with the inner source of well-being and not about doing many, many little things, that's not really the purpose of life. Yeah, the purpose of life, I think, I believe, if I can share my idea with you, yes, it is to connect with the inner source of well-being as we bring that presence out into the world as we do things, right? But that presence can be brought out doing many different things, and we have too many things we need to do. So, what we think we need to do. Remember I said, well, maybe you agree with me that you are more conscientious probably than the average human being on the planet, which means you think you have to do a lot of things when you don't really have to do so many things. Like really, if you really, again, check in with your inner source of well-being, you may realize, wow, there's really very little you need to do in this life to be fine. There is to be okay and to be, yeah, to continue in the world, there's actually very little you need to do compared to all the things on your to-do list. So, practice eliminating items from your to-do list, because there's too many of them. So, you just got to delete them, okay? And if you, and by every time you delete a to-do item, you are practicing the all important ability, skill of simplifying. Simplifying is such an important life skill that you need to keep practicing, especially in our world of overwhelm of things to do, things to read, things to watch, okay? So, eliminate, eliminate more than you think you need to. Now, if you can't bear deleting an idea or a task because you're like, well, what if I need it later? Which is one of the worst questions you can ask yourself for. That's like the anti-simplifying question, is what if I need it later? It's a terrible question because, and bringing back to what I believe is the purpose of life and let me know if you agree or disagree, which is that, you know, to connect, to bring out the inner source of well-being, the infinite source of well-being within us, above us, below us, however you want to say it, into the world through our actions, then basically, if that's, if there is a higher source of guidance within us or above us or whatever, if there's a higher source of guidance, do you not trust that guidance? Of course, you trust that guidance. Don't you trust that guidance will bring something back to your attention if you really need it? Of course it will. If something actually needs your attention according to higher guidance or life guidance or God, then it'll be brought back to your attention, trust me, no problem, okay? Whether it's somebody else will mention it to you again, they go, oh, that's right, I had forgotten about that, then you'll put it back in your to-do list or somehow life will bring you a life lesson that reminds you of that thing. And so it's like, relax, you don't, don't stop asking what if I need this later, delete it, get rid of it. If it's, if it's really needed, it'll come back and that'll allow you to live a much more composed life anyway. So eliminate, get rid of it and if you, if you really can't bear to get rid of it, here's what you do. You put it as into your someday maybe list. And using a to-do list software I use to-do list, TODO, IST, I simply remove the due date so that it's a no-date item. It's not, it's non-dated, maybe it's in a category of some kind, like a particular category like marketing or operations or whatever, but there's no date. And that means that if and when I have extra time to look at my marketing or my operations or whatever, then I might, and I've done everything that's due for today and for next week, then I'll go into my no-date items, my someday maybe items. And like I said, if it's really mad important, you know, come back to your attention. Okay. All right. So eliminate is the first level of, of, okay, if I don't, if it doesn't pass enjoyment, expertise and effect tests, let me eliminate it. Okay. If you possibly can, go for it. If you can't eliminate it and you can't no-date it because it's really that important, then it should move to the next level, which is to automate it. Automate it. Using software such as Zapier, I use Zapier. I have several zaps running. It's called Zapier because each one of their little software things, the automations you set up is called a Zap. And anyway, so check out Zapier. I think I'm going to be teaching a course about that at some point, how I use Zapier, but Zapier is wonderful. It really eliminated my need to have an ongoing assistant or several assistants because it can do a lot of different things with automation with software automatically. I mean, one simple example that a lot of you already use is some kind of scheduling software, like I use acuity scheduling. And so instead of going back and forth with someone, oh, when, when can we meet? I just send them my acuity scheduling calendar and then they book a time that, that makes, that makes sense for them. And then reminder emails are all automated. So it's, this is why I'm able to run a very successful self-employed business without any assistance and doing everything on my own with a lot of balance and joyful productivity because of automation, because of software. Okay, so automate is the second one. And, and you might say, gosh, you know, this is worth, worth it for me to mention software and artificial intelligence and robots are getting smarter and more capable by the day. And, you know, there is often a concern among humanity that, oh my God, they're going to take all of our jobs. And it's true. I, the way it's going, it's looking like software and robots are going to take a lot of the human jobs in the, in the next 10, 20, 30 years. But I still rest assured. I mean, I'm sure there's going to be an excellent software business coach if there isn't already one marketing coach, marketing teacher like me, productivity teacher. By the time you watch this in, you know, 2030, 2040, I'm sure there's already a very, very smart AI that can, you know, for a fraction of the money that you pay a human, you know, ongoing, we coach you on business and marketing and productivity based on what it understands and what you need and where you are at. Yeah, I'm sure my, my current job, it's going to be eliminated in 10, 20 years. But here's the thing, coming back to the deeper purpose of life. If the deeper purpose of life is to bring essentially love and light into the world through our actions and through our beingness, then that's really the highest work that we do, right? The highest work that we do isn't to make another spreadsheet or to send another email or to, or to even tell, tell a client the same thing we tell 50 other clients, because that can be automated. If we're saying the same thing to multiple people, right, eventually that task of saying that exact same thing to multiple people will be automated, because it can be. And so it's whether you automate it or one of your niche mates, somebody who does exact same thing, you automate it and therefore makes it cheaper, it's going to happen. So therefore, let's not worry about automation and artificial intelligence, knowing that whenever something gets automated away, some robots take our job, our task, it just means we are being called to a deeper work or higher work that robots cannot do yet. Robots don't have at this time. Robots don't have that spark of divinity within them. One could argue philosophically that maybe they do, but human beings certainly are much more able to bring love and light into any conversation, into any situation. And that's really the best use of our creativity. It's like, how can I bring more love and light? However you define that, love and light includes delight. It includes care. It includes empathy. It includes mindfulness. It includes lots of things that currently human beings are way better at than software and AI. And so it's like, whenever AI takes one of our tasks away, wonderful, that frees up our time and energy to figure out from our humanity, from our human spirit, how to bring more love and light into our remaining tasks so that we truly bring more value. Because eventually, people are going to be paying you to say the exact same thing to them that you're saying to 50 other clients. That's not valuable. What's valuable is for you to say something different to each client every single time based on your human sense of what they need and who they are and your intuitive and intuitive. And you might even say psychic sense of who they are because the psychic ability and intuitability is within every one of us. And that's something that AI and robots don't have yet, although with their pattern recognition, you could say they're becoming psychic. But anyway, yeah, so anytime something's automated, we are called to a deeper, deeper type of work. So that's automation. So if you can't eliminate the task and you can't automate it, then the next thing to do, the next question to ask is, can you delegate it? Can you delegate outsource this task to somebody, some other human to do? Because you couldn't automate it. There's no software you could find to do it. Or maybe you don't know how to automate it because you don't know how to be zappier yet. But anyway, delegation is the next possibility, the next recommendation. And I used to have assistants. I've had many assistants in the course of my 12 years of business. And eventually, I realized that everything they did, I could automate. But there are still a few things that I delegate. So for example, like I mentioned, graphic design for a new book cover, again, it's not something that I want to become great at. I'm slow at it. And so it's easier for me to just pay somebody $150 or $100 or whatever to create one for me, or however much it ends up being. Now, I do have some tips on outsourcing, which instead of describing it to you, I'm going to point you to the blog post that's associated with this video. And whether it's above or below this video, you'll find the description of the video. And inside there, there's a blog post that will bring you to my notes for outsourcing. And one more thing I need to say is what I recommend to you and the tips for outsourcing is two websites. One is Fiverr, I use that whenever I need an assistant, I go there first. And the other website is Upwork, Fiverr is much cheaper, usually F-I-B-E-R-R. So I usually go there first. And you can get somebody easily, easily for somebody good, somebody who is good for $10 an hour on Fiverr, doing all kinds of things, whether it's something technical, graphic design related, software related, you know, creating a spreadsheet for you, doing proofread, whatever, whatever you need to do, audio editing, video editing, $10 an hour, $20 an hour, upwards of $30 an hour, but even $10 an hour, you can find really good people in like the Philippines or Pakistan or Bangladesh or India, other places where the standard of living is cheaper. And so the cost of living is cheaper. So, you know, one thing that I get asked sometimes is, oh, is it ethical? Is it ethical to pay somebody $10 an hour, you know, to do this thing for me? And like, okay, well, let's think about this here. Do you, I actually looked this up. Do you know how much a software engineer gets paid in Pakistan and in the Philippines? I looked this up. I just looked this up actually about two weeks ago. Currently, as of this recording, a software engineer gets paid. Let me actually double check on this here. So, and I apologize for the delay here. I'm looking this up. Yes, a software engineer in the Philippines or Pakistan, they earn about $6 to $8 an hour, $6 an hour to $8 an hour, U.S. dollars per hour. A software engineer in corporate Pakistan or corporate Philippines earn $6 to $8 U.S. dollars per hour. Now, do you think they would rather work for themselves and have that freedom and flexibility to choose the tasks that they do and to be able to grow their work and to be more flexible if they were able to replace that income? Probably most otherwise, they wouldn't be on Fiverr. They wouldn't be putting their service on Fiverr if they didn't want to do that. So they're like, please, I wish that I had enough clients from this to replace my corporate income so that I can stay at home and work with and be with my family or whatever. So it's like, think about this. If you pay $10 an hour, is it going to make more of a positive difference in someone's life if they lived in Pakistan or if they've lived in California? Someone in California is not even going to want to take your $10 an hour. That's like a latte here. You see what I mean? So if you have $10 an hour to pay because you're a self-employed person probably and your budget is not super high, if you pay someone in Pakistan or Philippines, you are changing their life because they're like, oh my God, now if this person is willing to hire me for three hours a week even, $30 a week, I could do three hours of work for them, software engineer, technical stuff, whatever it is. That makes so much of a difference to their life than someone in the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, who for $10 an hour is like, well, not even minimum wage in certain European countries. So think about where your money is making the most impact as a global citizen. All right, so that's delegate. We talked about eliminate. We talked about automate. We talked about delegate. And if you can't eliminate something because it's really that important, if you can't automate it because you don't know how, if you can't delegate it because you don't have the budget, then finally the last thing you have to do if it's that important for you to do is to appreciate the task. That's the last letter of EADA, eliminate, automate, delegate, appreciate. That's it. The last thing, that's the only thing left. If it's really something for you to do is that important, you can't eliminate it, automate, delegate, then you can simply, then you must, then you, the only thing left is to appreciate it. Appreciate it. What do I mean by this? What I mean is this? Any task on earth, anything that you must do in this life, if it's truly for you to do anything, whether it's bookkeeping, whether it's graphic design, whether it's sending in this email, whether it's cleaning your toilet, whether it, whatever, anything that is really for you to do in this lifetime, there is absolutely the opportunity to appreciate that task. Anything. I don't care. Are you talking about doing your taxes? Most people, most of us don't like to do it, right? But still, even that, even the most onerous task that is for you to do is, if it's for you to do, that means, in my opinion, by definition, there's an opportunity to appreciate it. Otherwise, it would not be for you to do. And to appreciate it means you need to, again, tap into your inner source of well-being, which is a practice that I do multiple times an hour. I've talked about this before. If you Google energy reboot, give it a try. Google it. Energy reboot. And you'll find my, my practice that I do multiple times every hour during my workday that allows me to reconnect again and to appreciate again the task that is in front of me. So I hope this is helpful. Remember, you probably are doing too many things or thinking you have to do too many things. So look at your task list. Look at your to-do list. And even if you spend just 10 minutes once a week, that's all I'm asking of you. Try this out. 10 minutes once a week and look at your to-do list. And for each item, however, whatever you can do in those 10 minutes, look at each item, okay? And say, do I really enjoy it? Do I really want to become an expert at it? Is it really effective, worthwhile? Effect, third E is effective. Is it really effective? The effect of it is really worthwhile compared to anything else I can do. If it's truly all three, then I keep doing the thing. If it's not any of those three, then let me go to my Eda system, eliminate, automate, delegate, appreciate. Just do that for 10 minutes a week. And you might, in that 10 minutes, you might be able to run this system through for like two or three tasks. But that'll be, that'll help you to kind of fine-tune, calibrate your mindfulness about what is really worth keeping on your to-do list versus what is worth handing off to somebody else, some software, or getting rid of it entirely. Okay, so go for it. Give it a try. I look forward to any reflections you want to share below or any comments. I can try to do a quick answer. And with that, I wish you well. Those of you who don't know who I am, I am George Cao. That's KAO, Authentic Business Coach. I love talking about how do we grow a meaningful self-employment that allows us to be really balanced in our work, rest, play, our life. So if you enjoyed this, I look forward to seeing you in another video. I wish you well. Take care.