This video is brought to you by Brilliant. The topic of organizing my workday has been on
my list for a while now. With just moving into a new studio and totally changing my schedule,
I realized that this is the perfect time to reflect and share with you how I plan
my day - from my process to the apps and tools. Being able to work from home has given me the
freedom of starting off my day as early as my son goes to kindergarten, and that is the time
when I combine my first coffee time with my physical notebook,
which I use to write down 3 to 5 things I want to do that day. It used to be 5 to 7,
but that was killing me honestly, so 3 to 5 is reasonable. Now, I do that first and as
early as possible, while I am still not threatened by distractions.
The point is not to fail this list. You'll most likely end up not being able to complete some
of the tasks, but with each day, you can learn and optimize that list so that you can actually
manage to complete it. I used to torture myself when I couldn't cross off everything from the
list, even for things out of my hands - like the courier not delivering a package for a video that
I had planned to work on that day. As I accepted and learned to optimize the list to match the
expectations, I began to feel more confident each day. I started to introduce extra items every now
and then to complete when possible...and that's different. There is nothing more
satisfying than being able to scratch off the last thing off the list in the evening.
Now, I usually use a small physical notebook to write down my daily chores (as I
sometimes call them), and I do it on paper for a few reasons. First of all, writing on paper has
more weight. It feels more significant, believe it or not, plus how am I going to experience the
satisfaction of crossing things off if it's not on paper? Also, it is on paper because it's not
time or date-specific. The items I write down don't always have to be work-related, by the way.
Personal things like working out or doing stuff around the house count too. Whenever there are
time and date-specific obligations that I need to worry about, they go in my reminders app.
Now, I try to create my lists in the order that I will complete the items, where I try to put
the most difficult task or the most worrisome one as number one. For example, the script for
this very video was the first task on my list this past Monday since this is something that
I find very challenging and essential to focus on. It is okay if I don't prioritize the list,
but I still try to start with the critical task at hand as early as possible and move on from there.
Before executing whatever is written down on my notebook, I do my daily digital and
workspace clean-up. My place needs to look as tidy as possible for me to concentrate
and not find reasons to distract myself with stuff like cleaning when procrastination
hits me. That usually involves putting everything into its dedicated place.
The reward is a coffee afterward, which could be the first or second one for the day. While sipping
the black gold, I move on to digital clean-up, which in most cases revolves around deleting
temp files from my desktop and downloads folder. My entire digital life is on iCloud. Typically,
whatever is on the desktop or in my downloads folder is temporary. However, I need to be
careful and move the things that I want to keep to the respective folders before emptying the trash.
If you are interested, I have a dedicated video on how I use iCloud to free myself from computer
backups and the limits of computer storage which I'll make sure to list in the description below.
Everything YouTube-related, like the scripts, ideas, shot lists, and so forth, goes in Notion.
This is the software that I prefer to use to organize the channel content calendar. Now,
I will be doing my Notion overview and how I use it very soon. If you are interested and
are not subscribed to the channel, click the bell icon to get notified. So after I write
down everything in my notebook and clean up the space, I turn to Notion. Depending on the day,
I will either start working on a new script, jot down a new video idea, or simply start putting
together a list of shots for my next video. I write everything in Notion, including the entire
script. Still, before I consider them ready to shoot, I run them through Grammarly to make sure
my English skills have not failed me miserably. Note that I don't use a Calendar at all because
I hate pretty much all calendar apps, and I use email in moderation, so to speak.
While on the topic of email, I was a terrible email junkie in the past when
I was juggling between 13 emails and constant bombardment of things that were pretty much
always urgent, but now email is really low in my priority. I see it no different than
any other communication platform. As such, the robotic habit of constantly refreshing my email
client is no more, and I tend to check my emails as the last thing that I want to do for a day.
This, of course, was an intentional and lengthy process and achievement to do, but honestly,
I've never been happier. One way I was able to accomplish this email balance was through an
app called Hey. The person and company behind Hey are Jason Fried and the team that had also built
Basecamp. Hey is not just an app but a full email service that does one thing no other email service
provides - it prioritizes you, the user, myself as the one who decides what I want to receive
and what I want to allow to bother or distract me. It is one of the few apps that, by default, have
all notifications turned off unless I explicitly wish to be notified about something or someone.
The way I've set up Hey is that I've forwarded all my other emails to it, and I only reply
from Hey when necessary. Thanks to the built-in screener tool and all the other clever features,
I've managed to almost unchain myself from the emails of the past, achieving total
quietness. It's a marvelous tool that I can spend an entire video on, but I'll stop here for now.
Alright, now let's talk about the cutest app that looks more like a game called Focus Plant.
When I want to focus on a task like writing a script or coming up with creative ideas,
I tend to use this little app to help me stay on track and not overextend myself to a point
where I would push everything further in time. If you are a fan of the Pomodoro technique that is
very popular now, even though it was developed in the 80s, you might like this little app.
It's a focusing app that basically plants trees and helps you clean the environment by creating
greenery. However, you make vegetation through water drops that you can only cultivate by
focusing for a specific time frame, like 25 minutes. Setting up a timer to focus and flipping
the phone over to preserve battery, the app serves as your Pomodoro timer while also accumulating
water droplets that you can later use to plant and grow stuff. It's a gamification technique to help
people be less distracted, and it's fun for my new attempts to try and free up some of my time
for reading and gaming. Of course, there are other apps and more traditional solutions,
yet I am sticking with this one for now. While researching, browsing, and
losing myself in various idea distractions, like purchasing some lights for the new space, I rely
on MacOS's default QuickNotes feature. In my MacOS Monterey introduction video, I talked about
the new Notes feature, which I have used a lot lately. Similar to iPadOS 15, dragging the mouse
to the bottom right corner of the screen summons a quick note that expands to a small window for easy
and quick access. I use quick notes as my daily misc stuff dropping place where I can dump links,
quotes from a website, images, and much more stuff going through my head during the day. Highlighting
stuff in Safari has been something that I've been missing for a long time. Since I am not much of a
quotes hoarder, I never felt like paying a monthly fee for e decent save-for-later highlighting app,
so quick notes does the job for me perfectly. Now, whenever Focus Plant reminds me to take a
break, and I am still in that focused, dialed-in state of mind, I tend to open Brilliant and smash
a few quizzes or embark on a new course, like the one I am currently taking, which is called
"Physics of the Everyday". This interactive course investigates everyday physics like ax throwing,
the real reason for the yearly cycle of seasons, or simply how a refrigerator works.
No, it is not making cold air injected into the food compartment because that requires a lot
of energy. Like this course, Brilliant provides other great interactive courses with storytelling,
code-writing, interactive challenges, and problems to solve, helping you learn to think
like a physicist. To support the channel and sign up for free, go to brilliant.org/ThisIsE/,
and BTW, the first 200 people to upgrade with this link will also get 20% off the
annual Premium subscription, which is what I use. Thank you, Brilliant, for sponsoring this video.
As I've mentioned earlier, when I am in my early process of tidying the place up, throughout the
day, I often accumulate various documents on physical paper that I need to keep track of,
like account invoices. This is when I use my iCloud system and the built-in scanner option
within the Files app on the iPhone. Any receipt or document that needs to stay I scan and put in
the respective folder on iCloud. It is effortless and, after so many years, still that satisfying
not having to own one of those big document scanners of the past. With iOS and MacOS's new
Live Text feature, things are even more fun and useful because I can easily copy any text from any
scan or image and use that to integrate within a document or simply refer to and paste in an email.
I'll link to my updated How To playlist to find content like my home productivity monitor guide
and my productivity system. If you have any questions, please list them in the
comment section below or ping me on Twitter. As always, it's been an absolute pleasure!
This is E Over & Out