A local news article that caught my eye this week:

Alibaba’s TMall platform in Thailand just sold 80,000 or 200 tonnes of Monthong Durians.

Yes, quite unbelievably, the stinky fruit sold out in just 60 seconds, bought by Chinese customers.

Like most outsiders to Asia, rival Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is probably wondering how anybody could a fruit that smells like vomit and tastes like onion custard.

Jeff Bezos is a smart guy, and he has a knack of front-running trends, but maybe he just doesn’t get “Durian”.

When you’re not based in Asia, it’s hard to actually sense the scale of change. (that’s one of the main reasons why savvy entrepreneurs are moving from The West to the East in 2018)

• Who could have foreseen that China would account for 42% of global e-commerce today when just 10 years ago China accounted for less than 1%?
• Alibaba now enjoys more web traffic than Amazon, and is one of the top 10 sites in the world (data via Simon Kemp).

Well, Durian Schmurian you might say…

But it’s not just Durian. These stinky fruit are just the beginning…

THE BIGGEST GROWTH STORY OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The biggest growth story of The Asian Century will be A2A: Asia to Asia trade. (more on the A2A market here)

• Asia is a $27 trillion economy, 50% bigger than the US and the EU.
• Within a 5 hour flight you can access 3.5 billion customers, or half the world’s population.

It’s no wonder that today, Asia does more trade with itself than the rest of the world.

• By 2030, 2/3 of the middle classes will be living in Asia, a combined value of $36 trillion, or twice the size of the US economy today.
• China has replaced the U.S. as the number one trading partner for most nations in Asia, and it’s companies like Alibaba at the forefront of this shift.

If the $36 TrillionAsian middle class source their goods and services from Asia, The West stands to lose out on the biggest growth story of the 21st Century.

And it’s already happening…

HOW ASIA IS WINNING THE A2A MARKET

Jack Ma and his team aren’t just sitting on billions of dollars of cash enjoying the ride, Alibaba is consolidating its position as a global leader in both e-commerce and innovation:

• Starting with that Durian deal — Alibaba just inked a three-year deal on durian sales with Thailand government, a trade which highlights the growing importance of A2A trade
• Alibaba is core to A2A connectivity: Alibaba plans to invest $320 million in Thailand. A core component of their strategy is investing in a new digital free-trade zone in Thailand.
• Alibaba has a lot of data on Asia! Where Facebook is being publicly excoriated for data breaches, Alibaba is collecting billions of records with impunity. Ethical or not, this level of access to Big Data gives Alibaba a massive competitive advantage. Listen to Jame Dibiasio from DigFin talk about this on our podcast here.
• Alibaba is at the forefront of “The New Retail”. Big Data leads to insight and insight leads to a better customer experience. Listen to this podcast with Ashley Galina Dudarenok to understand more on how Alibaba is redefining the retail experience.
• Alibaba is leading Asia’s shift towards independence. One of the most interesting developments to come out of China is Alibaba’s DAMO Academy, its global research and development program with US$15 billion in funding. Alibaba is developing an neural network chip for image analysis and machine learning. The news comes amid calls for China to accelerate its ongoing campaign to gain self-reliance in key technology, especially semiconductors, following a U.S. ban on companies selling equipment to Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp.

Ask me 10 years ago and I’d have said Nike, Amazon and BMW.

They were going to be real winners of the A2A market … but today when you look at Alibaba, it’s a very different story.

Within 5–10 years, Chinese players Alibaba and Tencent will become so dominant in Asia, The West will struggle to get a look in.

We haven’t even talked about TenCent and Pony Ma yet — more on that here with John Artman. And without doubt, there will be many more entrepreneurs like them as they blaze trails for Asia to follow.

The Financial Times recently reiterated this warning:

“Take note of Asia’s world-class businesses of be left behind” (The Financial Times)

5 WAYS TO GET UP TO SPEED ON THE RISE OF ALIBABA AND THE A2A MARKET

Many still think of Asia’s as the West’s warehouse — cheap knockoffs and garments. But history is a cycle not a line. America’s dominance will give way to China in the same way Britain yielded to the US in 1915.

The difference today is the velocity and scale of The Asian Century.

Asia is overtaking the West faster than Alibaba can shift 200 tonnes of Durian.

So, it’s time to get up to speed:

1. BOOK: Read Ashley Galina Dudarenok’s book: “Unlocking the World’s Largest E-market: A Guide To Selling on Chinese Social Media”
2. ARTICLE: Read Simon Kemp’s data-rise article Alibaba finally overtakes Amazon in the race for ecommerce supremacy.
3. PODCAST: If you want to go deeper on the data points, Simon and I indulge the stats on our Digital Lives Asia podcast episode: As Asian brands go global, are they ready for prime time?
4. PODCAST: Listen to this 101 on E-Commerce in China with Frank Lavin of Export Now
5. PODCAST: Listen to my Asia Matters Podcast where I document the rise of The Asian Century

THANK YOU FOR READING MY ARTICLE

Are you seeing a rise in A2A trade in your industry? Who do you think is winning this market?

Please share your likes, thoughts and comments below.

Graham Brown (Asia Tech Podcast — www.ATP.show)

When I sat down with my co-host of the AsiaTechPodcast, Michael Waitze, this week to work out our roadshow itinerary for our Asia Tech Podcast tour of startup cities in Asia we soon realised:

• there are just too many exciting places in Asia and not enough time!

So, we had to take some tough decisions and cut down our radio show tour of the most exciting startup ecosystems to 6 cities in 4 weeks.

Whatever we decide as a tour itinerary, there are going to be cities, startups, coworking spaces that we miss out — but that gives us an excuse for a follow up tour, right?

So here are the 6 cities we are bringing the Asia Tech Podcast roadshow to in the months of September & October:

1. Fukuoka Japan
2. Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam
3. Yangon Myanmar
4. Bangkok Thailand
5. Jakarta Indonesia
6. Singapore

For each city we want to get real street-level intel of what’s going on in the startup scene:

• Visit the best coworking spaces and feature them in our podcast
• Interview and talk to startup founders and investors for our podcast
• Talk to local government facilitators

1. Fukuoka Japan

Population: 1.54 million

Average internet speed: 70 MBps (source)

Fukuoka has set itself out as startup hub for Japan. With startup visas available, cheaper living than Tokyo and local government support, we’re seeing founders opt for Fukuoka over other cities in Japan. Is all the recent media coverage of Fukuoka for real or is it just hype? We’re heading to Kyushu in August to find out.

• Japanese founders choosing Fukuoka over Japan
• Can Fukuoka live up to its tech hype?

2. Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam

Population: 8.43 million

Average internet speed: 10 MBps (source)

As one of Asia’s fastest growing economies, Vietnam carries the weight of expectations. A hub of manufacturing and dropshipping operations, Ho Chi Minh has a vast supply of young talented developers and designers. But, we all know that skills alone do not make a great startup scene. What’s the startup culture like?

• A look at tech startups in Vietnam’s “silicon valley”
• Is Vietnam’s startup ecosystem Asia’s “next big thing”?

3. Yangon Myanmar

Population: 5.21 million

Average internet speed: 1 MBps (source)

Whatever could be said about fast emerging economies in Asia, has been said about Myanmar. From the “next Thailand” to the “next Tiger”, Myanmar’s ascent to public prominence has been driven by the rapid adoption of mobile technology and internet, a young progressive population and a flood of foreign money. Is Yangon overhyped or is the startup buzz there real? We’re heading to Myanmar in September to find out.

• Meet the next generation of Myanmar’s startup entrepreneurs
• Is Myanmar’s startup scene Asia’s hottest?

4. Bangkok Thailand

Population: 8.28 million

Average internet speed: 40 MBps (source)

Not only listed as the hottest capital in the world weather-wise, Bangkok could also be the hottest city in the world startup-wise. While we haven’t had any big exits yet, Thailand is a hotbed of startup talent — from local founders opting to do their own thing outside of their family businesses to a growing population of location independent entrepreneurs and digital nomads.

• Navigating Bangkok’s growing startup ecosystem
• Bangkok claims #1 spot for Asian startups

5. Jakarta Indonesia

Population: 9.61 million

Average internet speed: 8 MBps (source)

With one of the youngest and largest populations in the world, Jakarta has all the demographic ingredients to make a great startup capital — but does it deliver? Jakarta has always struggled with infrastructure compared to its more developed neighbors but perhaps this is the stuff that yields innovative solutions (like GoJek) that can take on bigger markets abroad. We’re heading to Jakarta in September to find out more about the Indonesian startup scene.

• How Fintech is driving change in Indonesia’s startup scene
• Founder claims Indonesia is “3 years ahead” of Thai startup scene

6. Singapore

Population: 5.61 million

Average internet speed: 108 MBps (source)

The jewel in the Asian startup crown, Singapore, bills itself as the complete package. This startup city has everything from fintech accelerators to coworking spaces on every corner. But, is there too much money and not enough hustle in Singapore to generate real cutting edge startups that can thrive outside of its borders in less forgiving markets abroad?

• Singapore overtakes Silicon Valley to take world #1 spot for startup talent
• Only half of Singapore’s startups are making any money

Now… Over to You Asia

• If you liked this article, hit that LIKE button so others can disover it
• Where are the “must see” places to visit in these cities?
• Who are the must-interview startups & connectors in your local startup ecosystem that we need to talk to?
• Which Asian cities are missing from this list? (we’ll try add them to round 2)
• I’m sure many of my assumptions about these cities will be challenged when we visit them, so it’s going to be exciting to learn something new. Any info I’ve shared that you want to correct or add to — add a comment.
• More details of our tour here: http://www.AsiaTechPodcast.com/Tour (we’ll publish our dates first on the newsletter so get on that for exclusive access to our itinerary before we go public).

If you get the critical “Keystone Habits” right, everything else falls into place.

Keystone Habits are often small innocuous tasks that propagate positively through your day creating momentum that leads to bigger wins.

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.”

— that’s the advice of Naval Admiral William McRaven.

It’s also a Keystone Habit in the morning routine of Tim Ferriss (author of the 4 Hour Work Week).

Keystone Habits are the foundation of a good day.

Tim Ferriss, Jerry Seinfeld, Maya Angelou, Charles Duigg, John Grisham and Stephen King are just some of the many successful people who practise them…

The Keystone Habits of 5 Successful People

• Stephen King, the world’s best selling author, woke up at 6am and wrote 10 pages of words every day, whether he wanted to or not. Even if the writing was crap! That was King’s Keystone Habit.
• John Grisham (author of The Firm and Rainmaker etc) did the same as detailed in my earlier post about Self-Automation.
• Maya Angelou started work at 7am and finished at 2pm every day
• Benjamin Franklin would ask himself “What good have I done today?” at 9pm without fail every day
• Jerry Seinfeld has a whole productivity method named after him built on habits that free up his mind for creativity

Keystone Habits are the bedrock of success

Now making your bed in the morning isn’t going to set the world alight, but there is a science behind this habit worth knowing.

Keystone Habits are one habit that carries more weight than others.

A Keystone Habit is a habit that triggers a cascade of other habits.

Often it’s a simple innocuous act like making the bed first thing in the morning. Getting that right builds momentum through the day.

Motivation vs Momentum

A Keystone Habit is like the first domino in a sequence.

Making your bed is a Keystone Habit.

So is exercise…

Charles Duigg, author of “The Power of Habit” describes exercise as a Keystone Habit:

“Typically, people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.” — Charles Duhigg

Why Habits > Motivation

Instead of habit, some people focus on motivation to get stuff done…

Brian Tracy, author of “Eat that Frog!” argues for this approach.

He says you should start with your biggest baddest task for the day and deal with that first.

I’ve tried this approach and for me it doesn’t work.

The reason?

Momentum.

Everything is much easier with momentum.

What I’ve found is that motivation is far less important than having good habits every day. You need a lot of motivation to tackle big tasks the Brian Tracy way.

When I completed the Ironman triathlon, it was based on daily habits of training, not feeling motivated every day to get out and put in the long hours.

Motivation comes and goes but with good Keystone Habits you can turn out results even when you’re not feeling the love for what you do.

Imagine a pile of washing sitting on your bedroom floor. No, it’s not a pile, it’s a mountain! And, like any mountain, you don’t set out to conquer the summit or nothing. You set waypoints.

Focus on one small step forward rather than one big mountain to climb

The Brian Tracy approach tells us to conquer the mountain of washing before you do anything else.

The human brain isn’t that easy to tame. That’s like one massive domino to topple! It’s much easier in these situations to do one small thing because the distance between ZERO and ONE is massive.

Just fold one t-shirt and put it away.

First domino…

I bet before you know it you’ve completed half the pile of washing. You then think to yourself,

“Well I’m halfway through so I might as well finish it all now.”

That small initial push of momentum is enough to get you to complete the whole task.

Keystone habits work like that.

They are the QUICK WINs that start our day that can cascade down to many other bigger wins in the hours that follow.

My Experiments with Keystone Habits

In my experiments with Keystone Habits I’ve found a few things that work and others that don’t.

I’ve been experimenting with improving my habits over the last 15–20 years ever since I read Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”

Here’s what really works for me now. Not all of these will work for you, take what works and leave what doesn’t:

STARTUP ROUTINE:

• I have a “Start Up” ritual before I open my laptop computer in the morning that involves a) tidying my desk and b) reading my notepad that’s open from the night before … see next point
• When I open my computer, rather than go straight to Facebook or check emails I open the Trello board I use for that day showing me my goals + tasks

SHUTDOWN ROUTINE:

• At the end of every day, I take out a paper notepad and write down the 3 things I want to achieve tomorrow. This is a vital Keystone Habit that keeps the momentum moving across days. The worst situation is where you wake up wondering “What do I do today?” This is kind of a self-automation habit that I talked about earlier.

QUICK WINS in the AM:

• e.g. make the bed in the morning

QUICK WINS in the PM:

• I put out the clothes I’m going to wear tomorrow (again a form of Self-Automation)
• I prepare my breakfast for tomorrow

How to Implement Better Habits

I’ve documented a whole bunch of daily habits and routines in my book chapter “How to complete an Ironman on the wrong side of 40”.

Here are some easy tools to use now:

• A notepad and pen — yes there is something powerful about writing stuff down that can’t be found in making a note on Evernote or Google Docs.
• http://www.trello.com — for documenting my goals and tasks for the day. Evernote and Google Docs work just fine too.

What I recommend is you start small:

• start with one small Keystone Habit in the morning and use that as the momentum to create a better morning routine
• don’t overwhelm yourself with lots of new behaviors to start with, your brain will rebel and the system will fail
• master habits first before you turn to technology. It’s too easy to look to these tools and apps as the answer to your problem when they are merely a bonus, not the solution itself
• don’t beat yourself up when it’s not working. This is natural. Instead of getting frustrated, try a different Keystone Habit or routine until you find one that works

Get More Productivity Tips

P.S: Interested in learning more about productivity habits, tools and routines to make you more creative?

Join my productivity newsletter and I’ll share with you my lessons learned in regular podcasts, webinars and exclusive articles.

“I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.” — President Barack Obama

If you automate the small things in life (like choosing what you wear), you can focus on the bigger ones.

In this post I’m going to talk about:

• the challenge of staying productive during the day
• why outsourcing doesn’t cut it and…
• how I’m getting results with Self-Automation bots for creative tasks.

So, let’s start with wearing the same clothes every day… like these people:

• Steve Jobs
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Einstein
• President Obama
• Carrie Donovan (editor of Vogue)
• Simon Cowell

These are just some of the expansive list of successful people who wear the same thing every day.

What’s going on?

The Science behind wearing the same clothes every day

There’s a good reason for the strange behavior of successful people.

When challenged during an audience Q&A why he wears the same gray t-shirt every day, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg said…

“I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community.”

President Obama only had 2 suit colors in his closet — gray or navy blue.

Of this he said,

“I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”

Even small tasks cost us in willpower

You might not think it’s a big deal to choose your t-shirt in the morning but do that 100 or 1000 times and you start to get tired.

Even small tasks like checking social media or driving to work can take up 1000s of decision energy units…

• Scientists have found that the average person person makes about 180 decisions per minute while driving.

When you get tired, you capitulate and end up staring at pictures of cats on Facebook.

“No matter how rational and high-minded you try to be, you can’t make decision after decision without paying a biological price.” — John Tierney (New York Times)

It’s called Decision Fatigue.

Many Small Decisions -> Decision Fatigue -> Low Productivity

So, what’s the answer?

Enter Self-Automation

Self-Automation…

Self-Automation isn’t about turning your life into a machine.

Self-Automation isn’t about setting up a bot to send you an alert every morning to tell you if it’s going to rain or not… that’s low value that doesn’t free up space to make a high value decision.

Your ability to make a decision is what makes you more valuable than a machine.

Self-Automation is where the robot or bot takes over the low value tasks within a chain of events leaving you to focus on the high value ones.

Doubling down on what matters

Think of it as allowing you to “double down” on the high value stuff:

• For example, a machine couldn’t create an engaging Youtube video. A human has to decide to do that.
• But, a machine can automate all the crap that goes with creating a Youtube video that makes it harder for the human.
• There is a lot of low value stuff that gets in the way of the high value content like selecting tags for the video.

While you might think choosing tags are no big deal, it’s like Barack Obama’s suits again — one more decision that slows you down.

You see, all our decisions get considered equally. High value ones have to fight with low value ones regardless of their impact on our work.

Double down on the high value decision-making, automate the rest.

But, can’t you hire a VA in the Philippines to do all that…?

Why Self-Automation beats Outsourcing

“Never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash. How’s that for incentive to be effective and efficient?” — Tim Ferriss (The 4 Hour Work Week)

Self-Automation is far more effective than outsourcing because when you Outsource you still have to make low value decisions:

• You have to decide to outsource in the first place
• You have to contact your VA
• You have to assign the task to a VA and pay for it
• You have to wait for the results
• You have to quality check the results etc

Sure, all these tasks may take up 1 or 2 hours maximum, but it’s Barack Obama’s suit again…

With Self-Automation just press a button.

Self-Automation is like designing a “best practises” for a particular task that you would outsource to a V.A (virtual assistant). But, rather than get the VA to do it, you get a robot (see my tools below) to look after it.

Examples of Self-Automation

I’ve found that self-automation has 2 key benefits:

1) I get a heck of a lot more done without as much distraction. My head is clearer and I guess that makes me happier in the long run.

2) I’m able to create a lot more higher quality content — like producing these podcast episodes. Instead of messing around with crafting tweets I’m able to produce content that lasts, content that makes a difference.

In building my own lifestyle business over the last 5 years and writing and researching productivity, routines and Deep Work for my book, I’ve tested 100s if not 1000s of different apps, tools and tactics.

I’ll share the tools and techniques I use for Self-Automation to beat Decision Fatigue below.

For now, here are some examples of how I’m using it to become more effective and more creative:

Self Automation with Rituals

• My Startup Ritual
• My Shutdown Ritual

Self Automation Using Bots

• Every time I produce a podcast file for my Lifestyle Entrepreneur Podcast, the automation bot takes the file and initiates a chain of events that include uploading to Youtube, assigning descriptions, tags, titles etc; then uploading to Wordpress and doing the same including formatting the post according to my best practises; then pushing the information to Buffer and my social media channels with the right excerpts, titles etc.

I explain my bot below…

What does my Self-Automation Bot do?

This is an example Zap that I built to automate the creation of my podcast. Of course, true to Self-Automation a human (me) still has to record the podcast.

Podcast Self-Automation Bot:

• Watches a Dropbox folder called “podcast”
• If a new file is added, initiates the bot sequence
• When found, goes to my Trello account to find note that matches file
• Splits up the Trello note into title, tags, summary components
• Uploads Youtube video and assigns components
• Goes back to my Wordpress blog and creates a new post
• Lays out post according to my best practises and fills with components
• Fetches the Video link from Youtube and adds to post
• Calls on Post Snippets plugin to add specific call to action & iTunes boxes in my post
• Publishes post
• Goes to Buffer and assigns the post to Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook with the right formatting where required (e.g. excerpt, title components, tags etc)
• Adds a note on Trello to tell me “all done, please check my work!”

NOTE: I used to have a step in this sequence where I’d send the video to a manual transcription service (REV) that would transcribe my work for $1 a minute. That’s pretty cool especially when Zapier can take the deliverable from REV and add it to your post automatically!

It’s a 20+ step bot on Zapier. There’s a lot going on, I explain how some of this works in my latest podcast: LEP#3 Decision Fatigue

Tools used

Here are the tools you’ll need to build a Self-Automation bot like the one I just described:

An automation bot

• http://www.zapier.com (the best as it’s multi-step)

A note software to store information

• http://www.trello.com
• http:www.evernote.com

Social media scheduler

• http://www.bufferapp.com (not necessary but helps with checking your work and testing)

Wordpress plugins that automate repetitive tasks

• Post Snippets
• Shortcodes Ultimate

So, what’s the result?

I can record a podcast at 8am and have the post, Youtube video, social media done by 8:45.

Self-Automation has freed up my time to post this article on Medium today.

This is just one of about 30 bots I’m using to Self-Automate. It’s all work-in-progress.

It’s not perfect, but I’m getting better.

You can learn more about this subject and my experiments below (sign up to my newsletter for regular updates on this subject of productivity and entrepreneurship.)

My Ongoing Adventure in Self-Automation

I’m sharing my experiments, lessons learned and hacks in my book “How to Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur.”

Let me know what works for you in Self-Automation in the comments.

I look forward to interacting with you there and seeing you on my newsletter soon!

P.S: I recommend this section: How to Get More Done in Less Time as a starter.

P.P.S: You can read the book online free if you join my weekly newsletter for Lifestyle Entrepreneurs.