Secrets Of A Productivity Freak

Technopreneur Melvin Yuan’s obsession with self-optimisation doesn’t stem from Silicon Valley’s biohacking brinkmanship or the need to tame a busy schedule, but from a desire to maximise potential and contribution to others and communities, he tells Grace Tay

- Grace Tay

It’s a digital nomad’s stone stack of sorts: MacBook at the base, a mobile phone, notebook and small leather pencil case centred atop. It’s Melvin Yuan’s desktop arrangement when off work – his mobile phone deliberately out of sight under the navy-blue notebook, so he can focus on a conversation he’s having, such as ours when we meet up at Straits Clan.

The technopreneur, who recently returned to Singapore from a yearlong sabbatical spent in Melbourne, is now working “in stealth mode” on his next start-up. Technically, the 42-year-old could be enjoying an early retirement following the 2013 acquisition of indoor positioning systems company YFind Technologies, which he co-founded, by an American company, and pickings from past business and investments. “But I don’t have enough to start a micronation – a concept I’m fascinated by – and to do everything I want to do or build everything I want to build, so that keeps me motivated to stay on in business.”

The self-professed geek is also a “productivity freak – I’ve been reading books on productivity and self-development since I was 12, when my dad bought me Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I know that chronological time is finite. People say time is money. I say time is life. Time is more valuable than money, and because of that, I made time one of my most important fields of study.”