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Hi Reader!

I am SO happy to say that The Strategic Edge is officially back.

Before we get into it, here's a couple of quick updates to get you up to speed:

1. Revealing the new format

In my last email, I asked for your advice on your preferred format for The Strategic Edge moving forward.

I won't lie, I was NOT expecting the results.

Over 70% of you said you'd prefer to deep dive format, over the weekly 5.

Based on this feedback, each newsletter will continue to explore in-depth, actionable ideas on one topic related to productivity, business, high performance, or personal growth.

The goal? To help you live a healthy, wealthy, high performing life in less time.

But, I may throw in a monthly roundup of my top 5 resources, lessons, insights and thoughts every now and then.

I'm always looking for your advice on topics to explore, so feel free to reply to this email and let me know what you think!

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2. Revealing the new frequency

This newsletter is written by a busy person, specifically designed for busy people, particularly current or aspiring entrepreneurs and career climbers.

In light of this, I'm focused on delivering you maximum value every newsletter, focusing on quality over quantity.

So, you can expect this newsletter at least fortnightly - sometimes weekly if I'm really on top of my game.

The Backstory

As a kid, I was obsessed with reading.

From the age of 8-12, my parents would catch me under the doona hours past my bedtime completed engrossed in Rainbow Magic or Enid Blyton books.

Then suddenly, high school came, I was forced to read books I had absolutely no interest in, and my love for reading vanished.

For 7 years I didn’t pick up another book outside of what I was assigned.

I filled my spare time with my phone, sports, or shopping trips, and replaced my reading with watching - videos, movies, TV shows, you name it.

This is one of my biggest regrets.

In a world with endless short form, even long form content, books have never been more powerful.

Why? To write a book, you have to be obsessed. A complete enthusiast on whatever you’re writing about.

One 500 page book combines:

• 2+ years of dedicated effort
• 5+ years of experience
• 1000+ ideas, concepts and experiences

Into a streamlined format you can read in a few days.

Nothing else allows you to get into someone’s head and understand their thinking in the same way.

I’ve read over 300 books in the past few years.

Of them all, these are the 5 most life changing productivity-related ones.

They’ve have helped me stay sane while living such a busy life, and have had an extremely powerful role in shaping my habits, routines and productivity practices.

Finding the time to read used to feel impossibly hard for me, so I’ve also included my 3 top tips to read more as a busy person at the end of this newsletter.

The Breakdown

1. Make Time (by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky)

Pick and choose from 87 different strategies to save time, beat distraction and focus on what matters most.

This book centres around 4 simple steps:

1. Highlight: Choose a daily highlight (I’ve written more about daily highlights in this newsletter)
2. Laser: Control distractions to take back your focus and time
3. Energise: Create healthy habits and routines that energise your body and brain (you can read more about my 7 daily habits for limitless energy here)
4. Reflect: Take some time at the end of each day to review the strategies you implemented, and make changes to keep improving.

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How it changed my life:

The biggest thing I took away from this book was the ‘daily highlights’ strategy.

I now go into every single day with 1-3 ‘daily highlights’.

Setting these top priorities mean I finish every day having done something meaningful, regardless of what life throws at me.

Purchase the book on Amazon (Kindle, Audible or hardcopy) here.

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2. Getting Things Done (by David Allen)

Learn how to create your own personal productivity system to stop the mental overload and create clarity.

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

This book outlines David Allen’s 5-step life management system:

1. Capture: get everything out of your head and onto paper
2. Clarify: get clear on what each item means, and what to do with it (do it, plan it, file it, or trash it)
3. Organise: put each item in the right list to keep all your ideas and tasks organised
4. Reflect: review your lists when you need them, and do a weekly reset to get clear and get current
5. Engage: actually do the tasks

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How it changed my life:

I have always been someone who loves being on the go. The downside to this, was that before this book, my mind was on 24/7.

GTD introduced me to the concept of a second brain and initiated my entire productivity system (my Notion Digital Home Base) I now use to organise my life.

An essential for any busy girl.

Purchase the book on Amazon (Kindle, Audible or hardcopy) here.

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3. Essentialism (by Greg McKeown)

Go from busy to productive by doing less, but better. Learn to focus on pursuing ‘the right thing, in the right way, at the right time’.

Essentialism challenges the idea of ‘busywork’. It encourages us to regain control over our choices to channel our time, energy and effort into the goals and activities that truly matter, instead of letting others choose for us.

The book takes you through the three-step process to achieve the disciplined pursuit of less:

1. Explore: essentialists take the time to try and evaluate a broad range of options in the beginning. It may sound contradictory, but this gives you the opportunity to find the few pursuits that matter most, and not second guess your decision.
2. Eliminate: essentialists eliminate the non-essentials, to create time to focus on the essential. McKeown gives practical tips to take back the power to choose what you do and don’t do (there’s even a section on how to say no!)
3. Execute: finally, essentialists create a system and remove obstacles to make execution as easy as possible.

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How it changed my life:

As a multipassionate girly, I’ve tried to do it all, and completely burnt out in the process.

And an ex-people pleaser, I’ve tried to be everything for everyone, and ended up living life on other people’s terms.

Although none of the ideas in the book are mindblowing, they don’t have to be.

Essentialism challenged me in a way that no other book had. It forced me to sit down, stop trying to be and do it all, and understand what really matters and where I can make the biggest contribution.

Purchase the book on Amazon (Kindle, Audible or hardcopy) here.

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4. High Performance Habits (by Brendon Burchard)

Understand the 6 research-backed habits to create extraordinary success in your life, relationships and career.

Brendon Burchard conducted one of the biggest studies on high performers in over 190 countries, and found six common habits:

1. Seeking clarity: become aware of yourself and your purpose to create focus and direction in everything you do
2. Generating energy: become mentally and physically fit and develop a positive attitude to show up as your best in work, life and relationships
3. Raising necessity: increase your motivation by raising the stakes and finding an external reason that drives you to achieve
4. Increasing productivity: spend your time, energy and attention on the things that matter most and avoid the deadline trap to actually make progress towards your goals
5. Developing influence: work hard to establish deep connections, create genuine relationships and help others on your way to the top
6. Demonstrating courage: develop the courage to take risks, overcome fear and handle uncertainty with confidence

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How it changed my life:

Any ambitious girl will know, it’s so so easy to get swept away in your goals and neglect the other parts of your life

This book reminded me that high performance is about not only work achievements, but rather creating a meaningful life as a whole.

Even as someone familiar with the concepts, the way they were presented using science, experiments and so many powerful questions for reflection has made this one of my favourite reads of all time.

Purchase the book on Amazon (Kindle, Audible or hardcopy) here.

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5. The 12 Week Year (by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington)

Achieve more in 12 weeks than most people do in 12 months with this goal-setting and achievement system.

The 12 week year is a concept built on 8 foundations for success:

3 core principles:

1. Accountability: taking full ownership for your actions and results, regardless of your circumstances
2. Commitment: doing whatever it takes to keep the promises you make to yourself and others
3. Greatness in the moment: fully immersing yourself in the present and deciding to do what’s needed, even when you don’t feel like it

And 5 disciplines:

1. Having a clear life vision that inspires and excites you
2. Breaking your big vision into a concrete plan with priorities, goals and action steps
3. Staying on track by using tools and systems that control the process
4. Measuring and reviewing your progress to make informed decisions and changes that continue moving you towards your goals
5. Using your time effectively to achieve your goals even when life gets busy

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How it changed my life:

I used to set new years resolutions, only to give up on them after 3 months.

This book inspired the 90-day goal setting system I used to grow my YouTube to 10k subscribers in 3 months, save $100k, top my uni classes and jobs I never could've imaged getting.

It’s heavily inspired what I teach in my own goal setting methods (which I shared in part 3 of this video).

Purchase the book on Amazon (Kindle, Audible or hardcopy) here.

Final Thoughts

As I was writing this, I realised there was a bit of an issue.

I'm recommending books that will help save you time and manage your busy life.

But... you won't learn these things until you read the books, so how are you supposed to find the time to read them in the first place?

To solve this, I thought I'd finish off this newsletter with my 3 top tips to read more as a busy person.

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1. Invest in an Audible membership

If you want to read more, but just don’t have the time, audiobooks are 100% the way to go.

I have made my way through so many books:

• On a walk
• At the gym
• Meal prepping
• Driving to work

Audible is without a doubt one of the best investments I make each month to use my time smarter and continuously pursue personal growth.

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2. Instil daily rituals

Turn reading into a habit by making it part of your everyday life:

• Read in small pockets of time
• Read for 10 minutes before bed
• Build a Notion database to keep track of all the books you have and want to read (this is included in the Notion Digital Home Base)

The easy thing to do is to fill these periods scrolling on Instagram - it’s become a habit.

I started by actively deciding to spend these times reading instead of scrolling.

It took a few weeks, but eventually it become something that I just do.

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3. Use platforms like Shortform

I’ve been using Shortform for about 6 months now, and there’s two reasons I love it.

First, it reduces the weight of my decisions.

Reading an entire book is a big investment. I want to make sure that whatever I choose to read is relevant, and worth it.

In reality, many books leave you with a few key points, hidden among hundreds of pages of fluff.

So, what I typically do, is first listen to the Shortform summary. From here, I decide:

1. Whether the book and key ideas actually interest me
2. Whether I want more context and understanding around the main points

This means I won't invest 5-10 hours into a book that doesn’t teach me something or make my life better.

The other way I use Shortform is to revisit books.

I used to take notes like a crazy person whenever I read, but I found this often took away the enjoyment of reading.

I genuinely love reading so much more now because I can allow myself to just take in the book, knowing I can look back to the main points later on in a summarised form.

You can access a free trial of Shortform, and a 20% discount for your annual subscription through my link here (this also helps to support me and this newsletter).

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What are your thoughts?

• Have you read any of these books?
• What would you add to this list?
• And of course, what other newsletter topics would you love to hear?

My DMs and inbox are always open if you want to have a chat!

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Here's to another week becoming the best version of you.

Tayla

Looking for more resources?

You'll find all my Notion templates, courses and other free resources here.

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• ​Share The Strategic Edge directly with another busy or ambitious person in your life through
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