Welcome to the first day of the Asian Efficiency Automation Challenge. At AE we believe that you shouldn’t have to sacrifice your health, family, and things that matter to you to get things done. You should be able to get the important things done in the time you have.
This 5-day Automation Challenge was inspired by all the amazing benefits automation has brought to the AE team and clients we’ve worked with. We’ve seen first-hand how automating repetitive tasks can free up 5-8 hours a week. That’s valuable time that we and our clients use to spend time with family, read more books, and enjoy life to the fullest.
But automation can be a scary topic. Most people think you need coding skills or be technical to automate something. That might be true in 2012, but nowadays it’s really simple and nobody has shown you how to do it.
That’s what led us to start this 5-day Automation Challenge. We want to show you how simple and powerful automation is. Throughout the challenge, you’ll invest 10 minutes each day to set up a simple automation and immediately benefit the time-savings from it (with no coding or tech skills required). If you’ve never automated anything before, then you’re going to love this challenge. For those who have attempted to automate tasks but haven’t made it stick yet, we’ll show you a few cool automations that are easy and will save you time right away.
By the end of this 5-day Automation Challenge, you will have automated at least one task and saved yourself an hour of work. That means for the next year, you’ll save yourself at least 52 hours (if not more). That’s not bad for investing 10 minutes a day for the next 5 days, right?
Prizes
To motivate you more, we’re going to give away prizes for people who join the challenge. These prizes include:
- The Oura Ring (1x) – the best fitness and sleep tracker on the market. It’s better than an Apple Watch, Fitbit and other trackers we’ve tried. ($299 value)
- Apple AirPods (1x) – once you go AirPods, you will never go back to wires. A favorite gadget amongst all AE staff. ($159)
- Atomic Habits (3x) – one of our favorite (audio)books on habits. You can choose whether you want the audiobook or hardcover ($20 value).
How do you win? By completing the challenge every day and you’ll have to submit proof on the last day that you successfully did it (we ship internationally). We’ll randomly pick the winners by September 9. More details on that later.
Are you in? Let’s dive right in!
Your First Challenge
Your challenge for today is easy. Below is a video that will show you built-in automation features on your Windows and Mac. 99% of people don’t know these features exist but when you use just one of them, you can save yourself tons of time.
For today’s challenge, just watch the video (that’s part of our upcoming Automation Academy course). You don’t have to watch the whole video – just watch the section that’s relevant to you. So if you’re a Mac user, start at 0:55 and watch that 10-minute segment. If you’re a Windows user, start at 12:48 and watch your 10-minute segment.
(And if you use both Windows and Mac, watching it from start to finish will be the best use of your time today.)
The video includes chapter markers (the three bars in the bottom right corner of the video) so you can easily jump around. To summarize:
Mac users: start at 0:55 (Mac Automation)
Windows users: start at 12:48 (Windows Automation)
The following days during this challenge will build upon the foundation of this video. We’ll implement some of the automations that are shown in this video in day 2, 3 and 4. So be sure to watch the video or the rest of the challenge won’t make much sense!
Let us know in the comments below that you’ve watched the video! Ready…set…go!
Update: Day 2 of the challenge is now live.