5 Best Subreddits To Learn From

If you love learning, consider Reddit.

There’s so much information out there that it can be difficult to decide where to look.

I believe the best place to learn and grow is on Reddit. Yes, there’s controversy. Yes, it’s not always accurate.

But when it comes to learning stories and gaining perspectives, you won’t find a better place than Reddit.

Here are my 5 best subreddits I love going to every day to learn and grow.

Let’s dive in.

1: r/AskReddit

The r/askreddit subreddit is the place to ask and answer thought-provoking questions.

You’ll get a mixture of topics ranging from serious down to comedy.

Example: “People who haven’t pooped in 2019 yet, why are you still holding on to last year’s sh*t?”

If you love learning and gaining insights from people all over the world, r/AskReddit is the place to go.

2: r/SmallBusiness

The r/smallbusiness subreddit is great for those who own a small business.

As a business owner, there is too much to learn and it helps to go to a community that provides guidance and help.

I’ve found this subreddit in particular very helpful, with topics ranging from sales and marketing down to how to manage taxes and LLC formation.

If you have a small business or planning to start one, consider this r/SmallBusiness.

3: r/PersonalFinance

The r/personalfinance subreddit is great for those who need to boost their personal finance knowledge.

When I started my career, I struggled to understand 401ks, Roth IRAs, and other best money-saving tips.

So when I found this subreddit, I immediately found a sense of relief.

This subreddit also jumpstarted my FIRE (Financial Independence / Retire Early) mindset (more below).

If you struggle with money or just need a community to learn best practices, consider r/PersonalFinance.

4: r/FinancialIndependence

The r/financialindependence (FIRE) subreddit is great for those who are serious or are considering living life on their own terms.

What do I mean?

When I found this subreddit back in 2016, I was struggling with why I felt apathy toward my job and career.

I realized it was because I could be working for the REST of my life…

So I set out to understand what I needed to do to stop that from happening.

More importantly, to live life on my own terms and not be tied to a corporate job forever.

I came across this subreddit, and it forever changed my perspectives. I was taught early on that you graduate from college, enter the workforce, build a “career”, and that’s that.

Never did I ask myself, “How much do I REALLY need to live? What is that number I need to achieve to NEVER be tied to another job ever again?”

Through FIRE, I learned that number (it was MUCH small than I thought).

I also learned how to make money in different ways, how to cut unnecessary expenses, how to negotiate for things like salary and expenses, and so on.

If you’re on a similar path to financial independence and freedom, consider r/FinancialIndependence.

5: r/Space

The r/space subreddit is a subreddit dedicated to all things space.

From astronomy to space exploration, this subreddit has everything you need to learn about space.

Whether you are a beginner looking to learn more about the universe, an experienced space enthusiast, or someone that’s curious about those bright shiny objects out in the sky, this subreddit is the perfect place for you.

Ever since I watched Interstellar, I couldn’t stop thinking about the stars, galaxies, black holes, and the cosmos.

If you’re curious too, I highly recommend r/space.

P.s. I am STOKED for the James Webb telescope! You can follow along here.

What are your favorites?

Learning and growing are tough when there is so much information out there.

But I believe the cornerstone to learning comes best when it’s with a community.

That’s where Reddit fits in.

What are your thoughts?

What are your favorite subreddits?

Let me know!

How to create your 2022 goals

2022 is here.

365 days have passed.

It’s time to set some goals.

Instead of New Year Resolutions, focus on themes.

These themes should be so powerful that you innately tackle your goals every day without having to think.

You may be thinking, “What does that even mean AND how do I create my goals as you mentioned?”

Let’s jump right in.

Create Goals tied to Themes

Every new year, we create resolutions.

Some include losing weight, sleeping earlier, lifting more, etc.

The issue with this is there are no powerful motivators for us to start.

What do I mean?

Let’s start with losing weight.

How much weight do you want to lose?
How will will you lose the weight?
How often will you do the thing to lose weight?
WHY do you want to lose weight?
Is the reason powerful and strong enough that you do the thing every day/week to lose weight?

These questions are important.

Ultimately, you need themes.

Themes are things that characterize and personify who you are.

Repeat – who YOU are.

Not what anyone else thinks.

Some examples include:

Lose weight live a healthier lifestyle and be there for my kids
Lose weight to improve overall health and reduce trips to the doctor’s office
Lose weight to be more active and have a sharper mind

So instead of creating goals that are vague and bland, focus on themes.

How to create theme-based goals

First, to achieve any goal you have to have a system and process in place.

For example, I use Notion to create my goals.

Then I create a Clickup weekly recurring task to review and analyze my goals.

I do this every week, no questions asked.

Here is my current 2022 goals:

On top are my themes; below are my goals.

When creating your themes, think about what’s most important to you.

What truly matters to you.

For me, being healthy and passing down my heritage to my family is important.

Once you’ve created your goals, review and assess.

Review your goals

This is straightforward.

Review your goals frequently.

Set up a recurring task to review your goals.

I like to deep dive every month for an hour.

I also track my time using Toggl, which provides me with monthly reports to see if I’m doing the things that get me closer to my goals.

It’s important to complete this step; otherwise, December rolls around and another year of not achieving your goals.

None of us want that.

So review frequently, ask the hard questions, and embrace the wins.

Parting Thoughts

Create goals tied to themes.

Make these themes powerful and specific to you.

In some sense, these goals should make you angry.

Why?

Because you’ll be more likely to tackle them.

For me, being healthy is incredibly important because I want to be able to play with my family.

If I don’t take care of my body, I can’t do this.

And it makes me angry.

So I hope this helped you.

Let me know your thoughts and what your 2022 goals are.

#embracethegrind

I have a confession to make…

I’m an Appsumo LTD addict ?

Seriously, I check every week (sometimes daily) for the latest and greatest tech deals to either optimize my business or to keep *in case* I need it the future.

And for a one time payment, it’s crazy not to buy a code or two.

That beats paying monthly any day of the week.

I bought Publer a couple months ago, and it’s been one of my favorite tools for automating my social media postings.

The best part? They’re constantly updating it, making it better and better. Recently, they added an image library so I don’t have to jump onto pexels to find stock images (thank you!).

I’m planning to do some reviews on the deals I’ve bought, so be on the lookout.

Oh, and also, their marketing of the deals are spot on with their webinars and email campaigns ?

Noah Kagan, founder of Appsumo, has created something special here.

Also, check out his youtube channel – it’s one of the best I’ve come across when it comes to business and entrepreneurship tips. He also has a weekly office hours series tht I highly recommend watching. More to share on this soon.

Anyways, just wanted to share my quick confession!

Top 5 favorite tools I use to manage my businesses and my life

Table Of Contents

The start of my journey
ClickUp
Notion
Draw.io
Xmind
FutureMe
Final Thoughts

The start of my journey

When I quit my job in 2017, I was really lost and unsure where I wanted to go or who I wanted to become.

But one thing was sure – I wanted to do something that I loved and that was going to be on my own terms.

You can read the full story here on why I left my job and turned down an offer with Amazon.

Since then, I’ve launched two businesses; in the process of writing a memoir; joined many amazing communities like Indie Hackers, CollabX, and No Code Founders to name a few; and currently launching a newsletter with a twist (more to come on this).

However, in order to manage all of this I leverage a set of tools and systems that I love.

Below are my top 5 favorite tools I use to manage my businesses and my life in no particular order.

ClickUp

ClickUp is by far the best tool I’ve ever used. It’s transformed the way I keep track of everything that goes on in my crazy life. That + the GTD framework is a godsend.

Seriously, no other app has come close when it comes to keeping me on track with my tasks, due dates, projects and anniversaries (for the wife ?).

ClickUp has essentially everything you could ask for in a task management / project management tool. Tasks, projects, folders, reporting, goals, docs, you name it and they got it.

Oh, and best of all, it’s free!

If you’re interested in a more detailed post on how to use and set up ClickUp, you can check out my post here.

Before ClickUp, I tried Trello and despite loving it at the time, it was just too limited (I’m a list view kind of guy). Here’s a sample of my dashboard below:

So thank you ClickUp! Highly recommend this tool to manage your business and your life.

Notion

Notion is another awesome tool that I’m getting a better grasp of every day that I use it. And so far, I love it!

It’s similar to ClickUp, but it manages more like a document manager/note taker/database tracker.

Think of it as your second brain.

Have bookmarks you want to save? Maybe books you want to reference quotes from? Want to build a Sales CRM?

You can do all of that and more in Notion. Plus, with their unlimited free plan there’s no excuse to not try it out.

Here’s an example database I created to track my readings and articles:

There’s so much you can do in Notion. Definitely recommend checking it out. At worst, you hate it and cancel.

Draw.io

Draw.io is next on the list of my favorite tools.

Coming up in Corporate Finance, workflows and processes were everything. So naturally, my brain works as such.

Entering the world of entrepreneurship as a first-time founder, I needed a simple tool to help me map out workflows and processes to:

track sales pipelines
manage email marketing funnels
determine any possible bottlenecks in service delivery
understand my business systems as a whole
organizational structure

Here’s an example sales workflow we have for our business, A4E:

Draw.io has come through time and time again. For a free tool (yes, free ?), it’s incredibly powerful what it can do.

Another tool I highly recommend checking out.

Xmind

If you’re into mind mapping like me where thoughts and ideas can easily get scattered, check out Xmind.

This tool is incredibly easy to use for mind mapping and is, you guess it, free!

Mind maps are, in a nutshell, a way to visually organize information. Rather than writing information down, you draw it.

Here’s an example mind map I created on why I want to pursue entrepreneurship:

I highly recommend checking out Xmind for mind mapping. Amazing tool, simple to use, and a great way to structure yourself.

FutureMe

This is not business related, but I love FutureMe!

When I quit my job in 2017, to be completely honest I was scared. I had no idea if I made the right choice, if I had screwed myself and more.

But when I came across FutureMe – a free tool to write yourself a letter into the future – I knew I needed it.

Fast forward almost 3 years later, I still write letters. I write every quarter and forward it to at least a year later to be received.

It has been incredibly powerful as a tool. I get to be brutally honest with myself, what I’m proud of, my failures, my family and more.

Here’s a letter I wrote to myself one year before my son was born:

It’s powerful to see these letters when they arrive, and it reminds me why I do what I do everyday.

Give it a try – maybe it’ll help you too.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it – my top 5 favorite tools.

These are the 5 tools I use every day or as frequently as possible (FutureMe is every quarter).

These tools help me improve my well-being, develop my business skills, be a better parent/husband, and so much more.

I honestly don’t know if I would have even made it this far without these tools. I’m really thankful tools like these exist and can only hope more people see them.

If you have the time and are willing to share, let me know what your favorite tools are. Agree or disagree with my list? Let me know!

Till next time!

How I manage email for myself and my business

Email can be both good and frustratingly painful.

Why you might ask? Because it’s constantly in the back (or front) of our minds.

Smartphone vibrates. Immediately, you reach for your phone and wonder, “Hmm who emailed me?”

That happens to me constantly.

Rather than have email control me, I decided a couple years ago I would control it.

How I used to approach email

In my previous life before operating and founding A4E, I was a Corporate Finance leader. I managed a team, and I was supporting a number of business partners that relied on my financial expertise.

Because of the nature of my role, I was “on call” 24-7 via email.

Least that’s what I told myself.

For almost a decade, I would respond to 100s of emails everyday so that I could make my business partners happy.

It was exhausting, and I would spend upwards of 2-3 hours per day just emailing. That didn’t include the deliverables I still had on my plate to compolete.

It felt endless.

How taking a sabbatical changed my views on email

After reading “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck” during my backpacking trip to Southeast Asia, I decided no more.

No more wasting away my time, my freedom, my life.

I decided I would control the situation with email, and not allow it to control me. Here is how I approach emailing today:

Check email twice per day at set intervals
Tag important emails as high priority to follow-up
If an email is important that requires a detailed response, create a task in Clickup with a reminder
Any junk or spam gets blocked immediately (out of sight, out of mind)
All other irrelevant emails goes to trash

Since changing my habits, I’ve found myself much happier and with more time to spend with my family.

I’m not constantly on my phone or laptop checking for new emails. Don’t get me wrong though, email is important. But it shouldn’t be something we’re glued to.

My favorite tools when it comes to email and being productive

I’m a huge fan of leveraging systems to build structure and good habits. Everything from email, my calendar down to my daily cleaning has a structure that keeps me productive and happy.

Here are just some of the few tools I use to keep my emails structured and in order:

Inbox Pause: free email pause tool that lets people know you’re only checking email at specific intervals (life saver)
Clickup: free tool to push emails into tasks, time tracking, and much more
Toggl: Time tracking for everything
HubSpot: email tracking, leads, and much more
FutureMe: not so much a tool for email, but a great way to email yourself in the future with positive messages (absolutely love this tool and free too)

With these tools, I can free up my time to do other things such as go to the gym, spend time with my family and work on my personal projects.

Leverage Gmail to your advantage

When it comes to Gmail and email systems, I highly recommend creating automatic filters for incoming email and assigning labels.

For example: When a QuickBooks reporting email is sent to me, immediately create a filter for all incoming emails as “Accounting”. This exercise takes no more than 1 minute and is forever categorized.

It doesn’t have to be complex, but it should be structured enough so that when you have questions you can quickly leverage your labels in the Gmail search function.

Here’s an example below that I use for labeling:

Another thing I leverage heavily is saving emails as pdf documents into a stored drive (shown below). Really helpful for when you need to save receipts, documents and more for future reference.

Final thoughts

As much as I love email, it’s a tool that should be leveraged to make your life easier and happier, not more stressful.

Hate those pesky coupon emails but still want them? Create a separate email handle for just those emails, and leave your personal email to friends and family.

Then leverage a tool like Windows Mail, an email aggregator, to see all your accounts in one place.

I’ve found these systems to be really helpful and has made my life much easier.

Overcoming fear and doubt is a lifelong pursuit

“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
— Les Brown

I found this quote almost 3 years ago, and it has remained one of my favorites up until this day. Something about it is just so poignant and so deeply true.

When I read this quote, I wondered “Am I living the life I want? Is this all there is to it?”

What a scary, yet brutally honest question to ask yourself.

We’re probably more similar than you think

Your life may have been like mine. My parents were first-generation Koreans who immigrated to the US from South Korea. They had no money, no extended family and couldn’t speak the English language.

All these factors led to a recipe for disaster. We may not be aware of it, but everyday people out there are constantly in fear and doubt. Check out Reddit under the depression subreddit. I lurk often because I can relate.

How tragedies change you

When I was in high school, my mother passed away when I was 16. I was frustrated, angry and depressed. I felt that there was no hope.

Then in college, I lost my father in a tragic car accident. At this point, I doubted life was worth living. I had no extended family, no one to lean on, and suddenly found myself homeless.

But deep down, I didn’t want my father’s death to be in vain. I had this burning desire in me to make him and my mother proud. I set my sights on achieving that by shifting gears and studying my ass off.

Small steps and changes in habits that helped me refocus

After what had happened, I decided to take action. Although I was scared and unsure, I knew that doing nothing would lead to nothing. I just had to move.

So day by day, I wrote in my scheduler, created detailed gameplans of what I was going to study, mapped out steps I needed to take to get a job and so on. I repeated this week in and week out.

As I continued this process, I felt more confident. The results were showing: landed my first 4.0 semester in my 2nd semester of college, landed my first internship and met a handful of mentors to help me.

I also learned how to “learn”. What I mean is, I stopped memorizing stuff. This shift changed me, and I started to take interest in what I was learning. I was excited. I felt like for the first time I enjoyed what I was doing, that I became curious.

Fear will always be there. So what will you do?

All my life I lived in fear. It was the result of my upbringing, my parents, the bullies. All of it.

When I joined the wrestling team and started taking boxing lessons, I felt less fearful. I learned that the worst thing that can happen was I got beat up a bit.

I took those lessons from wrestling and boxing, and applied it to my studies, my business, my relationships.

I refused to let fear control me.

When I competed for the first time in MMA, I felt a level of calm I never felt before in that cage. I realized, fear is just a conception of our mind. We picture fear to be this giant, ugly, scary thing–but it’s not.

All these experiences have led me to live a life of enduring challenges, learning new things, and never saying no to opportunities. Admittedly, when I was working in corporate finance, I became complacent. And it was terrible.

What are you waiting for?

We all wait for the “right” opportunities. We hope that a million bucks lands in our lap, or our bosses will promote us out of nowhere. The reality is, it doesn’t work that way.

Fear and doubt will always be there. It will be there till the day we die.

We have to control our own destiny. We have to take action, and we need to execute. We need to chase our dreams and chase things we are passionate about.

It’s not until then we get to see the world of endless possibilities.

Before I end this post, I want to share a Les Brown motivation video that I still watch to this day because it is so powerful. I hope it impacts you as much as it has for me. Enjoy!

Have No Fear by Les Brown

3 simple steps to being more productive in your life

“I’ll get to it next time.”

“Why are they so much better than me?”

“I really need to read some books.”

“This time, I’ll really save some money!”

Guessing you’ve probably said this at one point, right? I have…for years. ?

But it’s human nature for us to push things back—some fault lies on us, some because we have higher priorities. Either way, it happens and you shouldn’t feel guilty and stop.

So, here are 5 simple steps on being more productive in life and helping live a life that fulfills your goals.

Step #1: Prioritize your goals

First step, you’ll need to prioritize your goals. What makes you happy, sad, excited, depressed, and so on.

Surprisingly, we don’t spend enough time on ourselves to ask why we do what we do. Rather, we’ve been trained to do as we’re told.

In your job, you have a manager and that manager gives you tasks. They pay you in exchange for your services.

Well, it’s really easy to prioritize this because we’re getting paid. The hard thing is to do the stuff when no one is looking around, while you’re at home and when there’s no immediate incentive.

So, prioritize your goals by taking the following actions:

List out a matrix in a word document with the columns:
- What makes me happy
- What makes me sad
- What would I regret if I didn’t do this
You’ll need a system to track and measure your goals
- I recommend Clickup—a free productivity tool to track your goals, tasks, and so much more
- You can learn more about how to set up your board in my last post here.
Add your goals to Clickup using their Goals function to remind you of your goals.

Step #2: Create your productivity schedule

It’s not enough to write a bunch of goals and tasks; you’ll need to also create your schedule to become more productive.

The way to achieve this is review your goals and prepare a plan (doesn’t have to be detailed) on how you want to achieve those goals for the year.

Most of us struggle to achieve goals because we’re either exhausted, don’t see immediate results or things change. Whatever the reasons may be, creating a schedule like that of on a calendar can remind you why you’re doing what you’re doing.

In my case, it’s learning Mandarin Chinese. My wife and my in-laws are Chinese, but I’m Korean. Rather saying I’m not going to learn, I made it a priority to learn so that I can communicate effectively with my in-laws.

Because listing Mandarin Chinese as a priority, punching it in in Clickup and creating a schedule, my Chinese has improved dramatically.

Now when I speak to my in-laws, the communications are much more effective. 有意思!

Step #3: Track and measure your productivity

Now that we’ve covered steps #1 and #2, it’s time to track and measure to ensure we’re being productive and achieving our goals.

Otherwise, we go back to bad habits, lose sight of what’s important and fall back into our slump.

Well guess what, we ain’t letting that happen. ☺

To measure yourself, I recommend a tool called Toggl—a simple time tracking app that has a beautiful interface with charts, tags and more.

Within Toggl, you can create clients and projects to associate with your goals and projects. This could include things like reading, working out, building a side hustle, etc.

Whatever it may be, you can create in Toggl. Here’s an example from me tracking my reading below:

Create a new client

Create new project called “Reading”

Track your performance

March was a rough month given the whole coronavirus. ?

To recap everything

To recap, you’ll need 3 steps in order to achieving productivity and living the life you want. Here it is below:

Prioritize your goals
Create your productivity calendar
Track and measure your productivity

That’s it.

By listing out everything and really questioning why you want what you want, you’ll have a much better understanding of your goals and priorities. It gives purpose and a reason to work on your goals.

But remember, goals are hard. Life is hard.

But if you set out to live a life you want to live, you’ll be happier, more productive and more satisfied in the long run.

As always, feel free to reach out if you have questions. Enjoy and stay safe!