- I don't know if you've ever noticed this,
but it seems like the more things that you have to do,
the harder it is to do pretty much anything.
Like you have this long list of tasks and responsibilities
that seems to be growing longer and longer and longer.
And as it grows in size,
you also kind of get paralyzed and intimidated by it.
Even just thinking about the list
gives you a mini panic attack.
And as you mentally go through this list,
you think to yourself, man, I don't really need to do
any of these things like right now.
I can probably get away with playing
a little bit of video games, a little bit of Apex
because nothing's due right this second.
And the thing is, you're probably right.
Most things on that list,
you don't need to do right this second.
But the problem is the longer this list gets,
the more it subconsciously affects your wellbeing
and pretty much every aspect of your life.
You're not able to fall asleep as fast as you once did.
Maybe it's graduated into full blown insomnia.
Maybe you're plagued with anxious thoughts,
like how the hell am I gonna get all this stuff done?
What if I don't get any of it done?
Will I be living on the streets?
Maybe your entire life has been played by the fact
that you can never seem to just sit down and do work ever.
You always have a large backlog of things
that you need to do, and you are always treading water.
Maybe you've looked around at your friends and coworkers
and wondered how come other people seem
to be actually able to do stuff?
Is there something wrong with me?
So I'm making this video because those sorts of feelings
are what has punctuated my life since birth.
I know what it's like to always have something due
or overdue constantly.
And it's one of the worst feelings in the world.
When you're stressed about this monumental to-do list
that you have,
it's even difficult to enjoy social outings
because subconsciously you know
that you really shouldn't be there.
You should be tackling this list of responsibilities.
It's like a knife in your back that's slowly being twisted
as you fake laugh at the jokes that people make around you.
It's not fun.
Luckily though, I've managed to turn myself
into a relatively productive human being
who can actually tackle the mountain of stuff
without feeling completely overwhelmed.
So in this video, I wanna share with you guys
my main strategy for tackling that mountain of stuff
that we have to do
and actually gain some traction in our lives.
So what's going on here?
How do we end up in this situation?
So usually the reason why we end up
with a mountain of things that we need to do,
that we feel overwhelmed by
is because naturally life presents itself with tasks
and responsibilities that we have to do.
There's no getting around that.
And these tasks need to either be done immediately
or sometime in the not too distant future.
If the task isn't utterly urgent,
what we tend to do is put it on our backlog of things.
It's this list that I'm talking about.
We say, oh, we don't have to deal with it right now.
Let's just put it on our to-do list
and we will tackle it sometime in the future.
But this in itself is super problematic
because almost everything in life doesn't need
to be tackled right this second.
Very few things are immediately urgent
and require our absolute attention right this second.
Which means that 99% of every task that we get,
we put on our backlog.
And since life just naturally dishes out
these responsibilities,
we can almost form a graph
that shows that as time passes along,
more and more tasks and responsibilities start to accrue.
There's also another graph that's happening simultaneously
that says the more and more tasks that we have to do,
the more stress we feel.
And there's another graph that goes,
the more stressed out we are about our current situation,
the more unpleasant the thought
of dealing with that situation becomes.
We have two more left.
The more unpleasant the thought of doing anything
about our situation becomes,
the more likely we are to escape
from doing anything about it.
And finally, the more likely we are to escape
from doing anything about it,
the less likely we are to actually do anything about it.
Basically the more time goes on without dealing
with our situation,
the less likely we are to deal with it anyways.
And it just becomes this horrible feedback loop.
So right about now you're thinking, oh,
his solution is probably to just do the things
before they accrue.
Do tasks right away, as soon as you get them.
And that's actually a great idea,
but that's not what this video is about.
That's what my mom would always tell me
and she's actually right.
You should just do tasks pretty much immediately
after getting them.
Don't let shit build up basically,
but that doesn't really help us if we're already
in hot water.
If we're already absolutely drowning in things
that we have to do in life and we need to get out of it.
And that's where I propose my golden rule,
do less, not more.
And you might be thinking to yourself right now,
wow, that's a cute quote, Joey,
you should put that on a poster.
Unfortunately, that doesn't make any sense.
Well, here's the thing,
it doesn't really make much sense,
but neither do we as humans.
We didn't get into this situation if we made sense,
if we followed perfect logic.
If we followed perfect logic,
we would just do things as they came to us.
We would finish off whatever tasks came up onto our desk
onto our lap like Santa Claus.
We got to this situation because we're highly emotional
and impulsive.
When we're in emotional distress,
we don't respond well to logical arguments.
We respond well to momentum and feelings
of perceived progress.
So what we should do is take advantage of this fact
and leverage our main weakness and turn it into a strength.
Every single day, we have at least one task
that we know we need to do.
And if we were to do that thing,
all other tasks would be made easier or unnecessary.
We need to find out what this task is in our lives.
And we need to focus our entire being on completing
this one thing.
And we need to pretend that nothing else exists.
And with this extra focus, this unified focus,
we will be able to complete this thing in record time.
Once this one thing is completed,
then we will feel motivated and energized
to tackle more things in our lives.
We will actually feel excited to keep that momentum going,
but it's impossible to gain that momentum,
if we don't tackle that one thing
and finish it every single day.
And I'm pretty sure all of us can relate
to this exact same situation.
I'm pretty sure we've all engaged in escapism,
avoiding that one thing that we have to do,
and we escape an escape and escape until the pressure builds
and builds and builds, maybe a deadline is approaching
and then we just snap out of it.
We kind of go into survival mode
and we just tackle that thing from start to finish
and we're done.
And we are so incredibly relieved and inspired by the fact
that we did that thing that we think to ourselves,
holy smokes, why don't I just go do more things
in my life?
That felt amazing.
And that's the exact emotion that we're trying to tap into.
It's that feeling of having completed a very important thing
and then leveraging that momentum to tackle more things.
And I think we can only get to that point,
if we kind of put the blinders on
and forget about literally everything else on our list.
We use our emotional compass to figure out which thing has
the most emotional resistance.
What thing are we avoiding the most?
That is likely to be not guaranteed to be,
the most important thing that you have to do
in any given day.
For me, as I've talked about in other videos,
that thing is writing.
Writing by far has the most emotional resistance for me.
I don't really like doing it, but once I have done it,
then I have content to work with.
I have something to film, I have something to edit
and I have something to upload.
Writing is kind of the backbone of my entire YouTube career.
It's the most important thing
that I can do in any given day.
As long as I continue writing,
I can continue YouTubing.
Maybe your life is really consistent like mine,
or maybe it's super turbulent
and that one thing will change on a daily or weekly basis.
You now take what I'm saying
and apply it directly to your life and your needs.
Right now, you probably have something
that you know you need to do,
and you're really resisting doing it.
Maybe you've been resisting it for a long time.
That's your one thing, do not worry about anything else,
complete that thing.
And once you complete that thing,
the answer and the motivation and energy,
you need to complete everything else will be provided
for you in droves.
Putting the blinders on and forgetting every other task,
except the one thing also adds clarity to the overwhelm.
It brings order to the chaos.
Our brain can stop bird shotting everywhere
and thinking about a million things at once
and getting super worried, just calm your brain down,
focus on completing the one thing.
Take everything that you need to do and write it down.
Write down every task that you can think of
onto a piece of paper and try to identify
the most important thing that you need to do.
And then what I want you to do is circle that one thing
and scribble out everything else.
Don't worry about anything else,
give yourself a mental vacation from everything else.
Do that one thing.
It's the only thing that exists.
And whether you are excited to do it or not,
it doesn't matter, submit to it.
Submit to just doing it, starting it, completing it,
not a big deal, do it.
'Cause if you have to do it anyways,
there's no point in getting all emotionally worked up
about it.
You just have mental clarity.
You submit to the fact that you have to do it.
You do it without resistance,
you do it without hyping yourself up
and once you complete it, you'll feel calmly empowered
to restore more order into your life.
This video was inspired by The One Thing by Gary Keller.
So if what I said really resonated with you,
and you want to take it a step further
and dive a little deeper into this concept,
then I highly recommend checking out the audio book version
using today's video sponsor Audible,
because that's exactly how I read the book.
I've said it so many times,
these days I consume so many more audio books
than I read physical books.
And that's because listening to audio books is just so easy.
You can be going for a walk, you can be driving somewhere.
You can be exercising, cleaning your kitchen,
it doesn't really matter it's found time.
You can be listening to an audio book and getting smarter
while you're doing the things that you do anyways,
on a day-to-day basis.
It's kind of a no brainer.
And for those of you who don't know,
Audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment
and audio books ranging from bestsellers
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whatever you're into it's probably on Audible.
Every single month they give you one credit,
which you can spend on any audio book of your choice,
regardless of price.
And you get to keep that audio book forever.
If you ever cancel your subscription for any reason,
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You can start listening right now with a free 30 day trial.
Just click the link in the description below,
go to audible.com/betterideas.
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So if you're thinking about grabbing an audible subscription
now is the perfect time to do it.
Just click my link in the description below,
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If you liked this video, make sure you actually hit like,
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oh, this was a good video and it's worth people's time.
And then my bald head gets shoved into people's homepages
helping them out, which also helps me out.
So it's kind of a win-win for everybody involved.
And if you're lurking here and this is the thousandth time
you've seen my face consider subscribing
and also checking out the second channel
where we do more Q&A stuff.
It's a little more casual, a little bit more mimi
and we dive into just, I dunno, fun, chill,
laid back content.
Other than that, thank you so much for watching
and we'll catch you in the next video.
(upbeat music)
That was good.
Have you ever noticed that the more things you need to...
(beep) it, I'm gonna just do it.
I'm uploading this shit.