It was long waiting ever since I wanted to try to buy a book on Amazon.com, and yes, I did it two days ago. It is cheaper than Malaysia and you don’t have to wait for few months to half a year for the new release book (I mean non-fiction, all those fiction book will normally release at the same day, yap, it is odd).

I bought the Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, it is a business book talking about how to being remarkable in your business. I will talk about the book next time. I have to read it first (still on the way to me).

Buying book on Amazon.com is easy, it gives you several option to buy the book, including an option called 1-click. yap, 1 click, click the button then you will completed your check out and paid for your book, but don’t use this option, because you won’t have a chance to review and confirm your order, everything will be don’t in 1 click, fast enough but I don’t like it.

As you can see the picture above, it gives you a very detailed information about your order including shipping estimate, delivery estimate, shipping address, Item Ordered and so. I am not showing it all, some are personal data. I choose the cheap shipping option, so it took around a month for the delivery but it is still worth to wait, lot more cheaper if I travel to KL and buy the book from Kinokuniya. I don’t even go Popular or MPH to buy this kind of book just because they don’t really have much book. Popular is more like a stationary store and MPH is more like a magazine store. They got many books, but most of them are fiction and some unknown book. I don’t like it.

1 thing I like the most is the reminder, if you bought a book on Amazon.com, everytime you browse back to the book you have bought, it will show you the reminder to remind at which date you purchased the item. Books.com.tw has this function too but you will only see it after you add the book to your shopping cart. Not that nice compare to Amazon.com.

That’s it, good experience and I will definitely buy books on Amazon.com again, until then, let’s wait till I got my book.

This post will be short, very short. I am here to say -

Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Valentine Day!

In my previous post, I talked about The book I have read – The Power of Less, it is a book teaches you how to simplify your life and improve your productivity. A really great book, because I am following what Leo Babauta teaches me in the book now.

What I have changed? Not much, but it is impressive to me. From the book, Leo teaches us to break our goal down into manageable task and focus on single task at a time. You know what? This really work, I am able to complete more task in a day and increase my efficiency. I can now complete my important task before 12p.m everyday, and I can relax and do some others task then.

Also, I created some new habits, and a morning + evening routine, I wake up at 6a.m everyday,  do some exercise, bath & brush my teeth, choose my three most important tasks of the day, read news, and read books, and all these done before 8a.m,  then I start to do my three most important tasks, mostly 2/3 are related to my work. As I said, I manage to complete all of these three before 12p.m most of the time. Then I started my evening routine at 6p.m to 7p.m, I will review my day, do some exercise, bath and read news again. This mean I will do no more task today and start to relax the rest of the day.

One more thing is I got a minimalist desk now. I clean up everything on my desk the second day when I finished the book, when I writing this post, I only have my macbook, a note, and a bottle of water on my desk. This really help me to focus on what I have to do, really focus.

By following The Power of Less, I am now living a healthy life, a simplify life and better work environment, and I am still improving in order to make me more productive!

Yesterday morning, I gave me a mini goal which is to read 56 articles and 1 book, so what I will write in this post is actually the result.

RESULT = I FAIL (not too far from achieving this goal)

First, let me give you a brief about what and why I am doing this.

Why 56 articles and what type of article?

I am shame about this, 56 is not a special number or a limit only for this goal. It was the article I have bookmarked for a very long time and the list keep growing every single day, so in order to be able to read all the article, I have to read it today, else it would be a huge list and I will be like spend time reading a book.

All these articles include a wide range of content, article about design, web, news, gossip, inspiration, copywriting, internet marketing, interview, history and tutorial. There are something I need to know, something I need to learn, and something I enjoy reading for.

Why plus 3 more?

Some of the articles link to another article, I only do further reading when the original article is excellent written and there are still something I need to find out, to clear my doubt.

There are good and bad article in these 56 articles, I filtered 6 bad one and bookmarked 5 again which I am going to read again next week. This happened very often because I did not read the full article when I bookmark it, I just scan through some point, and see whether I feel interest in the story or may be the writing.

1 Books -  The Power of Less by Leo Babauta

The time I was writing this post is 11.46pm yesterday, and I was fail to accomplish this goal, I have only read 84/170 pages of this book. Probably because I spent too much time hanging out with friend, which is the biggest distraction I have now. Friend asked to go night market while I was reading this book, and I was totally forgot about my mini goal and said “sure, no problem”. I realized what I am suppose to do once I back to home and it was too late.

The book is great, Leo Babauta the auther of this book teaches you how to increase your productivity and efficiency by working simply, which enable you to do less, be more effective, get more done and simplify your life. Lots of note are taken and I read some of the paragraph twice to make sure I fully understand the concept, so it took me twice the time I normally use in a book.

No excuse, I fail, but I would rather said 70% accomplishment.

70% accomplishment, why?

Two reason + 1:

1. I have read all the article + 3 more extra.
2. I have read almost half of the book.

and the last reason is that I have learn a lot, and I don’t want to be too harsh to myself. I have never done this before and I am really getting this work this time, and I know I will be better next time!