- This video is sponsored by Notion,
which is now completely free for personal use.
Check it out, I have a link in the description down below.
(groovy music)
In 1997, history was made in the world of chess
when IBM's Deep Blue super computer finally beat
world champion chess player Gary Kasparov
for the first time.
This moment has often been cited as the death nail
for the superiority of human intelligence,
and the rise of the machines.
But if you look at the highest levels of play
in the world of chess now, they aren't dominated
solely by computers.
Instead, as is detailed in David Epstein's book "Range",
which I highly recommend, by the way,
there's a form of chess called advanced chess,
or sometimes freestyle chess,
where teams of humans and computers
pool their collective resources
to play at a higher level
than the computers can achieve on their own.
These teams are called centaur teams,
and in a tournament that was described in the book,
a team consisting of two people,
who were both not Grandmasters,
and three normal chess computers beat Hydra,
which at the time was the top chess-playing super computer.
These centaur teams are essentially the result
of an admission that both our human minds
and the computers that we use have their weaknesses,
and that when you develop a symbiotic relationship,
where both bring their strengths to the table
and play off each other,
you get the best possible combination.
On one hand, the computers are able to memorize
and store millions of possible board states
and analyze nearly every move that a player can make
given one of those board states, but on the other hand,
humans have a unique ability to think creatively,
to think outside of the box,
and to make unorthodox strategies
using the tactics provided by these computers,
and this combination, this realization
that man and machine, or rather we and our tools
work best in tandem
is key to learning how to think strategically,
which itself is one part of
being overall a productive and effective person.
In the past, I've talked about the idea
that you have a planning mode and a robot mode,
where the robot mode executes on the plans
laid by the planning mode, and if you want to be productive
with your robot mode, you have to learn how to work faster,
how to stay focused for longer,
how to be more efficient with your moves.
But just as important is the effectiveness
of the planning mode, the plans you make.
The strategies you set into motion
need to be effective at moving you towards your goals,
and I wanna talk about one specific aspect
of strategic thinking in this video,
which is the act of looking ahead,
of being a forward thinker.
If you can anticipate what's going to happen
in the future, and either position yourself
to take advantage of that, or position yourself
to sidestep as many of the consequences
that say a negative event would bring,
then you overall become more effective.
And one specific technique that is often used
in strategic planning, in forward thinking
is called the what-if analysis,
and this is what I'm hoping you'll be able to use
in your own life after you watch this video.
Essentially, a what-if analysis
is a mechanism for asking the question what if.
What if I did this, what if I did that?
What if I took one certain specific type of action,
what would happen?
A what-if analysis asks this question
and then uses the available data
to get the most accurate potential answer possible.
Now these what-if analyses can be incredibly complex,
going all the way up to the Monte Carlo simulations
that are run at data science companies
and huge businesses, where they'll run
hundreds of thousands, even millions
of different simulated scenarios to get an answer
that is as close to the truth as they can.
But they can also be a lot simpler,
and a lot more applicable to your own life,
and I wanna give you a couple examples.
So my favorite example here
comes from back when I was in college.
I had a roommate who was in computer engineering
for two years, and after a couple of years,
it got to the point where he was realizing
he really didn't wanna be in that major.
He wanted to switch, but he was scared to do it
because he was afraid that switching majors
would put him far behind where he was.
He was kind of giving in to that sunk cost fallacy,
feeling like all of this effort he'd already put in
was going to be worthless if he switched his major.
Well as it turns out, our university has this tool
called a Degree Audit Report,
where you can essentially see how far you are along
in your chosen major, in your chosen degree
with all the classes you've taken so far.
But our university had what was called
a What-if Degree Audit Tool as well,
where you could choose any major they offered
and see where you would be
if you were to switch to that major.
And the funny thing is when he ran a what-if degree audit
for the major he wanted to switch to,
turns out he was actually further into that major
than into his own major.
So by switching, he put himself ahead a little bit,
but he was only able to do that
because he was able to use data,
to ask a question and get an accurate answer
by running a what-if analysis.
For another example,
let's ask some questions about your money,
such as how much house could you afford right now?
What price of house would you be able to buy right now,
or what could you do with your money if you got a raise?
What would you do with your money
if you lost your job, or had to take a pay-cut right now?
These questions can bring a lot of anxiety,
especially when you don't feel like you have the ability
to get the answer.
So what if you had a tool
where you could input your income,
input your expenses, and then see exactly how much money
was left over at the end of the month
after it goes through some calculations?
Well, this is what I actually do every single month.
I've built this kind of a tool for myself
so I can input those numbers,
and then I can run these what-if scenarios.
What if I made more money?
What if I maybe wanted to hire somebody else?
Could I afford to hire that person,
or would I be in the red at the end of the month
when I looked at my leftover column?
For housing, I've actually built myself
a housing calculator, where I can put any purchase price,
and I can see what my estimated monthly cost
of ownership would be.
I can then compare that against my rent,
I can put that into the expenses column,
and I can see, is there money left over
at the end of the month given that purchase price?
Or do I need to save up a bit more?
Do I need to make more money?
Asking these questions and then inputting numbers
into this budget modeler spreadsheet that I have built
represents that combination
between the strengths of our tools
and the strengths of our own minds.
I'm able to run this what-if scenario
and get a fairly accurate picture
because the spreadsheet has the ability
to be insanely detail-oriented.
It can hold all these numbers at once.
It can perform all of these calculations,
but I am able to make the strategic plans
to think big picture, and combining this tool and this tool,
I'm able to make better decisions.
So hopefully this overview has given you at least one tool
for making more strategic decisions in your future,
and with regards to the specific budget modeler,
this seriously does help me make really,
really good decisions with my money.
It helps me sidestep potential problems
I could get myself into in the future,
so I'm gonna have a templated version
linked in the description down below.
You can make a copy of it,
you can input your own numbers,
make whatever changes you want to it,
and hopefully you find it as helpful as I do.
Of course, running a business
requires a lot more than just simple budget planning,
which is why I use a lot of other tools as well,
ranging from analytics platforms
to specialized research tools,
but the place where I do the majority
of my planning is Notion.
For just one example, I have this database
where I plan all the videos, podcasts,
and other content that we produce,
and this lets us know when things are going live,
what stage they're at,
and lots of other really useful information,
and because it's built on Notion's really powerful
templating system, every time I generate
a new video project,
it automatically gives me a place to write my script,
which lets me easily add formatting
and comments from my editor,
along with automatic checklists
for every stage of the video production process
and a few other cool things.
So if you're looking for a way to manage your work
more effectively, you should give Notion a try too,
especially if you're working on a team.
That's because Notion has powerful collaboration features
that let you work on documents together in real time,
share files, and even create Wikis
that keep everyone on the same page
and let you document complex processes.
In fact, that's one of my main use cases.
I am methodically building this Wiki for my company
that documents processes and shows everyone
how to do things step-by-step,
but the best part is that Notion's personal plan
is now completely free.
No trial, no block limits.
If you're using it on your own,
it is now 100% free, and if you wanna bring in a team,
you could always upgrade to their team plan at any time.
So click the link in the description down below
and give Notion a try.
As always, thank you so much for watching.
If you enjoyed this video, hit that Like button,
show the YouTube algorithm what's up,
and if you haven't subscribed to this channel yet,
you may wanna do so by clicking right there
or smashing your face into your phone screen
if you are watching this on your phone.
Another good place to smash your face
would be over here, where you're gonna find
a couple of other videos that you can check out
if you still have some time to watch some videos,
and you're not on YouTube
distracting yourself/procrastinating,
but of course, if you wanna do that,
go ahead and do that, because as always,
I'm not your dad.