Hello everyone, welcome back to the YouTube channel
It is Francesco here today. I'm joined by Ali Abdaal and we are going to be diving into todoist
So ali maybe introduce yourself to the Keep productive community that don't already know you of course
Hello, Keep Productive community. My name is Ali. I'm a doctor. I'm working and living in Cambridge in the UK and
Francesco and I became acquainted about a year ago when we did our little collab video and we've become
Friends since then so it's very exciting to be on here. So
I'm a doctor by day
and then in the evenings, I have a YouTube channel where I make videos about productivity and study tips for students and life as
As a doctor and all that sort of stuff
yeah, we I mean we got a
Was it delivery you ordered it some in Italian paninis last night? Oh, yeah
Remember, I ordered some delivery last night as well. I was getting super lazy
Yeah, they don't have it where I am. So it's a bit of a pain and
That's terrible. Yeah, I know small, but I guess I have to cook. Yeah, I know
And today we're going to be diving into alleys to do is to count and we were talking a little bit before that it wasn't
Ali doesn't use it necessarily for a
Lot like to do is quite aggressively
but he uses it as a way to sort of manage with simple tasks and and
Maybe you can share us a little bit insight on how you use to do this right now and and how it compares to like
Larger project management that you do in ocean. Yeah, I mean so this is your tourist account
So so maybe take us through this sort of the the left-hand panel the the projects that you sort of
Have set up before you die the center the sort of tasks and how you manage them
Yeah, so I've I've sort of not really done a kind of on a per project basis
I more treat this sidebar as areas of my life. So life business education work
Someday maybe and then this is kind of like a shared to do it that I have with my editor
Yeah, I'm not sure this is how you supposed to use to do it
This is how sort of works for me. I'd be curious about your thoughts. Like well, what stuff do you have on the sidebar?
Uh, I think I mainly just have like I've got like home work shopping and review
Okay. So yeah, that's not too bad
Yeah, it's it's I get it's pretty similar to yours to some extent because it's like I can see there. You've got like life
It's like so I could general sort of stuff is yeah. Yeah and
And then do so when it comes to like to this you manage
Some of your like video editing stuff and there do you say like edit video or film video and start listing them?
Hmm, not really all the video editing stuff. I kind of manage in notion because it's always
important but not urgent and if I do have a like a deadline for a sponsored video coming up
It's always just like forefront of my mind anyway, so I don't really need to write it down somewhere that artists
But I have to do this evening
Sometimes I put it down and to do is just so I can take it off which is quite satisfying but I don't routinely use
It for that
Yeah, that's a that's a good thing to bring up. It's like do you find that it's you get sort of more
like dopamine when you add something to do duis and you do a
Notion because notions not really got unless you said I'd like a nice filter a tick off system
Yeah, I've sort of set up a filter for a notion for the video stuff, but I do
I do generally get like a dopamine hit from taking something off and into the rest. Yeah, definitely and
and so how long have you been using the application for roughly I
Think a few months now I was using things three for about a year or two when I'm just just kind of casually
but then I thought a few months ago that I might just switch to do is just cuz you know when you're in this
Productivity app space you might as well try try out different happen
Yeah
and it's always kind of fun trying out a new app and seeing if it actually
Changes anything or whether it's just trying a new app for the sake of it
Plus I like the fact that to do
it is more cross-platform than things is and I get a lot of comments on my videos being like are you too much of an
Apple fanboy some of us in India 450 pounds of things. That was like, okay. Yeah fair enough
Why don't I try something a bit cheaper and a bit more cross-platform for once?
Yeah, definitely and and do so. So what does that day look like him to do is do you sort of manage the
stuff you do like
Sort of like I guess daily stuff. Like do you have any recurring tasks? Yeah, that's a recurring carska finding quite useful
So within the business one, we've got this published podcast and published email newsletter. That is a every Sunday thing
mmm, and so yeah
That's true because every Sunday because that's when I published my email newsletter own published a podcast episode male book to Sofia
So this is someone who won a little giveaway that I was doing many many months ago
And I still need to mail her this physical book
But it's just I never ever go to the post office during working hours on a weekday
And so it's been in this task has been there for the last I don't know
Absolutely ages. I don't if I can see one at first I don't on September 22nd 2019
Yeah, so you how long I've been procrastinating from this task of meeting the book to sit here?
I did try doing the David Allen thing of adding contacts. I think so labeled town
so in theory if I'm going to town then I
Don't know what's happened in theory. If I was going to tell then I'll be like, okay
This is what I have to do in town
Yeah, but I've never really I I don't think I used to do it enough for this to be particularly useful
I also had like a label for iPods of things that I could do and what I've heard things that I had to do at
home
stuff like that using these smart filters
But again, I think that's more for if you're actually using todoist for a lot of things
Whereas I use it fairly minimalistic lis
So even got these recurring events and then within life I have like a recurring event to call my grandma every every other day
And then just kind of reminds me that I should probably call my grandma
Yeah, and or to the plants every week, so that's another one. Yeah, I'll go with you
so sort of like a quite a nice little
reminders application at the same time as being just sort of planning with your editor and also
coordinating
Smaller activities and I had a question like this. Obviously you work like
You know as a doctor like in the field
Like how do you like if somebody like gives you tasks to do at your workplace?
How do you manage your tasks said you just newspaper?
Because I guess you can't might add it to someone like to do it's because of data protection and etc. Yeah, exactly. So I
Normally use paper because it's easy enough to just grab a sheet of paper and printer and then have that as you like a sheet
For the day or so often when patients come in they get like this
you'll get like this whole like
bunch of sticker printouts so you can just kind of grab a sticker from and stick it on your sheet to know which patient you're
Referring to so often I'll use paper for that
but
Sometimes if I'm feeling particularly high-tech, then I'll use good notes on my iPad
And the reason I use the good notes instead of notability is because I use notability for everything else and that's sync to iCloud
whereas good notes I only use for
Patient data, even that's not really patient data. It's like yeah
bed be for
chase CT scan
You know that identifiable in any way but still I don't want to sing to the cloud and all that kind of stuff
So I use good notes local stories if I'm using my iPad for it
But otherwise pen and paper just just works pretty nicely and taking things off and I use something called the the DASH
Plus productivity system. I don't if you come across that for us know that sounds really advanced
So I'll show you what it kind of looks like by sort of drawing stuff, so assuming this is my sheet of paper
Yeah, excuse the mouse essentially any task starts off with a dash
So chase CT scan or whatever you would write the task then when you've done it
it becomes a plus so dash plus but
The nice thing about doing it in terms of dashes is that you can convert the dashes to other things
So if someone else is doing it, then it becomes a forward. So it's as if I forward it on to someone
So that's five hazard off to one of my colleagues then I'll know that
Okay
So the blood is being chased by my friend James or whatever and then if it turned into a back arrow
That means it's been pushed back till tomorrow
So if I've been meaning to call a patient and have him picked up then I will
Put a little back arrow to show that I've pushed it back until tomorrow
yeah, and then if it's just like a random a random piece of information, then doesn't need actioning it becomes a triangle so
You know a little bit of patient information there if it's in triangle format
And if there's just an idea of something then you do one of these little light bulbs
which
Sort of Converse everything starts over the - and then it becomes different things depending on what you do with that that information
Oh, well, that's pretty cool. So and this is like online or like on an app
No, this is just on paper really so they how did they go about teaching you that is it like a formalized process?
Oh, no, I came across it on some article on some productivity blog. Oh, that's
Like years and years ago and I was like, oh this would work perfectly for managing money to do it
My to-do list on the end, I would dr
Young is yeah. That's weird
that looks really good actually because it's like it's quite a simple process and I think if you taught somebody that and like you've just
Taught me that now I'd probably be able to understand it, which is pretty cool. Yeah
Oh, I should I should make a video on it. That's a good idea
Yeah, do one more way so so so for example if I'm chasing for example a full blood count
Which is a type of blood test
Yeah
and I would turn this - into a square and we're means I have requested the blood on the system a
Line through it. It means the Bloods been taken
Half shading means the Bloods in the lab and we've got or we were awaiting a result or something like that
And then a full shading means we have acted on the result and nothing needs to be done anymore
So it's like as the day is progressing these boxes become more and more shaded in so
It's like a chest x-ray or something screaming isn't requested it line means, you know
It's going to happen
I'll say means it's been done and full shade means I've looked at it and I've acted on whatever needs to be acted on
That's a really cool like offline way to manage your productivity. I've never seen that before
What blog was this? I?
Think it might have been life hacker. It might have been something out. I don't know idea. It was years and years ago
That's really cool. It's a
There to do it should implement this in there there
And I had a question for you as well like do you ever see yourself
Dropping todoist entirely for the likes of notion if you built some sort of task management
Like smaller system like this and they added procuring tasks. I'm not sure
Possibly I quite like the idea of having everything in one place
But I also like your idea of having different apps for different things
so I
Put out a video a few I think last week about all the different apps to use on my iPad and I have like seven
Different note-taking apps that I actually use for different use cases and people commenting me like, dude
Why'd you need seven different note-taking apps and I was I was kind of thinking that you don't really but you know
For for the different areas of my life. It's just kind of nice. Yeah, I mean go very distinct apps for them
So like, you know, I know that there's nothing to do with my job that's ever going to be in notion of notability
Those are only ever going to be in good notes because of the local storage
I know that all of my hand right hand written note. That's where notability
I know that all of my kind of long-term stuff is in Evernote another all my product management stuff is a notion
I know that kind of current scripts videos are in drafts
I know that email newsletters are as sort of in Ulysses and then upload it to my he might use this platform
So, I don't know I could conceivably drop to the list at some point
I was even thinking the other day that I might drop it and try it back to things again. Just just for fun
Yeah, I don't know
I think when when you're into apps and stuff just quite it's as close
Fermenting with them as long as the general productivity principles are sound and I don't think the app really makes that much of a difference
yes, it's a bit like the sort of giving a crap tennis racket to
Roger Federer somehow that
Use it still pretty well
But like at the same time, you're also sort of a tech review at the same time
So you need to keep on top of them and you've got two full time jobs, so, you know, lots of different news cases there
That was brilliant. Like I I learn not just about you to do is also about like that system. That was really cool
So what we'll do next is we'll dive into notion. So if you want to see Ally's notion
Stay tuned and that'll be another video. But Ally where can everyone find you after this video?
Oh, well, my main hub is my youtube channel
You can just search for my name allium doll or type in any variation of doctor and Ally Aoi
I've got a website that has my email newsletters Sunday snippets where I send thoughts and links every Sunday
So that's a tally of Elcom and my brother and I have a podcast that you need to come on at some point Francesca
It's good not overthinking
So that's at not overthinking calm or you can search for not overthinking of any podcast app of your choice lovely lovely
Um, I didn't even congratulate you you passed half a mil right on YouTube. Oh, yeah. Yeah
Yeah forgot about it. I
mean to be honest, I've
Ever since like I'm and I'm sure you can relate ever since like 5000 subscribers
The number hasn't really made any difference to my life. It's just yeah as a number at this point
It's really hard to conceive of that that make people yeah kind of a nice round number is a lot of people
But that's a good thing
Ali thanks for coming on and we'll dive over and talk about notion now say bye happy. Thanks for having me excited talk line motion