This post is not specifically related to martial or strategic topics, but rather to a simple technique I’ve been employing to be a little more productive than I had been previously.

There’s an expression in Japanese asameshi-mae (朝飯前), which literally means “morning-rice-before”: “before breakfast”. This phrase is used to mean something very easy; it’s analogous to the English idiom “a piece of cake”. I’ve reinterpreted this phrase, as a kind of directive: every day, I try to make it a rule to get at least one thing accomplished before breakfast. Today, for example, I composed this post.

Food is a powerful motivator for me, and unless I have had a very large meal relatively late the night before, I wake up hungry. Continue reading →