- We have talked a lot about habits on this channel
from the formation of good study habits
to building a morning routine, to even building the habit
of waking up early in the morning.
But there's a theme with a lot of what we've talked about
around the topic of habits
and it's that we've talked mostly about daily habits,
things that you should do every single day.
The thing is though, there are definitely still other things
you should be doing on a somewhat regular basis
but that aren't really feasibly done on a daily basis
so what are those things?
Well, that's what I wanna cover in this week's video
in which we'll be going over eight things
that you should be doing at least once a week.
Now to be clear, everything on this list
doesn't have to be done exactly once a week.
You don't need to be tracking it on a calendar
but I think once a week is a good rough estimate
to start with because all these things are very good
to be doing on at least a regular basis.
And the first thing that I wanna start with here
is something that will improve your social life
and make your friends
and the people that care about you happier as well
and it's to text or call somebody
that you haven't talked to in a while at least once a week.
A lot of the people that we've spent time with in the past
or even family members
just don't hear from us as much anymore
because we kinda fall
into our established routines and patterns
and we talk to the same people almost every single day.
And I think this is part of the reason
why a lot of people feel so lonely
or they don't feel as acknowledged as they once were
back when we lived in big communities.
So if you can build the habit of at least
trying to think of somebody
you haven't talked to in quite a while
and sending them something,
it could be even just a nonsense text
to acknowledge them and let them know
you're thinking about them,
they're gonna be a lot happier
and they're gonna remember that you care about them.
I think this is something that's very important to do.
Weekly habit number two is to do an all-out workout.
Something that leaves you sweating at the end of it
and sore the next day.
Now for people who are really active like me
and like some people out there
who are probably even more active than me,
this might mean every single workout
but a lot of people who are quote unquote "active"
kinda go to the gym and they go through the motions.
And if you do this, this might keep you healthy to a degree
but it won't make you progress,
it won't make you actually push the boundaries
of your physical fitness.
So at least once a week, push yourself,
do something that's really, really challenging
and that leaves you sore.
And remember that this doesn't have to be
just sprinting on the treadmill
or going to the gym and lifting weights
until your arms wanna fall off, this could be something fun.
For me, going and doing an all-out workout
might mean going to the arcade
and playing Dance Dance Revolution on doubles mode
or it might mean going to the rock climbing gym
and trying a route
that I haven't been able to do in the past.
And even if I'm not able to complete that route,
even if I had to throw myself at it
again and again and again, I'm gonna make progress,
I'm gonna come away sore and I'm gonna be able to do it
a little bit better the next time I come in.
Habit number three is to go
and review your productivity system, your task manager,
your calendar, your note-taking system,
anything of the sort and clear up any entropy.
Now entropy is a term in science
that generally means chaos or descent into chaos
as things spread out and become more complicated.
And I love using this term for productivity systems
because they seem to trend towards the exact same state.
As due dates pile up, as things get entered in,
as things get kinda messy, it can become disorganized
and the problem is it eventually becomes
a poor representation
of what actually needs to be done in your life.
And the poorer that representation gets,
the less your mind trusts it
and the more you start relying on your own memory
which of course is faulty.
So at least once a week,
possibly on the review day at the beginning of the week,
go through your systems
and make sure everything is cleaned up,
make sure you get rid of that entropy
and bring things back into a state of order,
that way you are trusting your system
and you're actually using it.
Habit number four is to do
a quick financial health check-up at least once a week.
Now you don't have to go look
at your entire financial life every single week,
you don't have to look at every single mutual fund,
bank statement, everything like that
but it's at least smart to log into your bank accounts,
make sure the balance is what you think it should be,
log into your credit cards,
make sure you don't see any transactions on there
that you don't recognize
and just generally check over the state of things.
And at least if you live in the U.S.
there are some tools out there
that can make this quicker and easier.
The one I use is called Personal Capital
but there's one out there called Mint
that's very, very similar
and these basically bring in your bank feeds,
your investment fund feeds, your credit card feeds,
and they will just basically give you a snapshot
of your entire financial life,
all the transactions that have been made
and the balances of each account.
Now you might think this process is a little bit boring
but if you're like me, if you're not the kind of person
who does hardcore budgeting, you're not the kind of person
who records every transaction when you buy something,
you at least need to stay on top of your financial health,
you need to know where you are on a regular basis.
Of course, if you are the kind of person
who wants to learn how to keep a budget
or you wanna learn how to record your transactions,
my friend Martin and I actually did
a whole podcast episode on budgeting
and you can click the link in the description down below
to listen to that later on if that's interesting to you.
Habit number five is to plan and lead some sort
of high-density fun activity with another person.
And this is on the list because a lot of us
tend to get into ruts with our friends
and these aren't depressive ruts, there aren't sad ruts,
but we tend to get into patterns of behavior
where we do sort of the same
kind of fun things all the time.
Maybe we play video games together,
maybe we go to the movies together.
And this is all well and good,
this is interaction with friends
but it's not high-density fun,
it's not the kind of fun that actually builds memories.
And the thing is that when we get older,
a lot of people slide into patterns of behavior
that causes them to fail to plan things,
it causes them to not be the leader, not take initiative
to plan really cool things.
So I'm gonna make the suggestion that you become the leader,
you become the kind of person who plans these things.
And if you're doing this once a week
or around the same kind of time interval,
then you're gonna be making a regular improvement
in the lives of your friends and in your own life as well.
Habit number six is to create something at least once a week
that's not done out of obligation.
And the reason I put that qualify on there
is that a lot of students or people that have creative jobs
are creating things on a weekly or daily basis
but a lot of times it's because they were assigned
or that other people are expecting them to do that.
And while that kind of work
can still be creatively fulfilling,
it's not the same as just exploring something on your own,
doing something purely for you own enjoyment.
So in my case, creating YouTube videos
doesn't really fit the criteria here.
Yes, I do get fulfillment out of it,
I really enjoy doing it but I am doing it as my job
and at this point, I've been doing it for long enough
that there's an audience expectation for me to do it.
So I wanna have something else on the side as well.
And for me, at least right now, that's playing guitar
almost every night, I make up something new on my guitar
and that is really fulfilling to me
that actually improves my life.
So whether or not you have a job
that's creative or artistic,
or whether or not you're on a program in your school
that lets you do things that are creative,
have something on the side at least once a week
that kinda feeds that curiosity,
that lets you explore on your own purely just for you.
Habit number seven is to do something once a week
completely alone.
Now a lot of you might think
that you already do a lot of things alone,
in that case this tip may not be for you
but for a lot of people,
they spend most their time around other people
whether it'd be roommates or a significant other or friends,
and when you do this,
you don't get a whole lot of time to just think,
to be with your own thoughts
or to explore something purely
because only you want to explore it.
When you're constantly spending time
with a significant other or with friends,
there's a lot of compromise involved.
But if you take at least a little bit of time
every single week to do something purely
because you wanna do it alone,
then you continue to be your own person,
you continue to generate your own thoughts
and you generate your own stories
that you can then take to your interactions with friends
or with a girlfriend or a boyfriend and tell to them.
Finally, habit number eight is to improve
some existing process in your life at least once a week
even if it is by the tiniest of margins.
And I've put this idea on the list
because I'm an ardent believer in the principle
that there is always a better way to do something.
This is one of the driving principles
that I try to live by and honestly,
this isn't a once a week thing for me,
I'm always on the lookout for things that I can improve
that I do every single day
because I think there's always some little tweak
or change to my processes that I can make
that will make things more efficient or make them easier
or even make them more fun to do.
For instance, one of the big regular tasks in my life
is editing these videos
or at least working with an editor to get them done,
and part of the planning process for doing an edit
is creating a list of what's called B-roll,
basically everything that goes
on top of this talking head layer,
all the pictures, all the animations,
all this stock footage, all that kind of stuff.
And for quite a while, I've used this really powerful tool
called Notion to create a spreadsheet
that helps us to filter and organize all this B-roll
which helps us to batch the creation of it,
batch the gathering of it,
and do all kinds of really cool stuff.
And for probably 10 or 20 weeks,
we used the exact same setup to do this.
But then last week I had an idea,
I actually added a new check box
to our B-roll spreadsheet called Premiere.
And the reason I did this
is that we do about half of our B-roll editing
in a program called Adobe Premiere
which is for video editing
and we do the other half in a program called After Effects
which is where we do
all of the motion graphics and animations.
And before I added this check box,
the only way we would sort the B-roll list
was by timestamps.
So when it came time to actually bring all the B-roll
into the video and place it,
we would have to go line by line down that spreadsheet
and make a decision for every single item,
does this go on Premiere or does this go on After Effects?
But by adding the check box,
we were able to create a filter
so we could only show the items that go on Premiere
or only show the items that go into After Effects.
So that basically just removed the decision
for every single piece of B-roll.
Now admittedly, this is a pretty small change
to our workflow but it's a change that removes mental work,
that removes a decision every single time
we wanna place a picture
or a piece of footage or an animation,
and that happens a lot.
Additionally, that is just one small change
over many that have been made over the years
and as with anything, if you make small changes over time,
eventually they accumulate
and the results can be pretty big.
And actually that's been one of the driving principles
ever since I started this YouTube channel
about four years ago.
Every single time I make a video,
I'm looking for at least one tiny element
in my workflow or in the way that I light things
or in the way that I speak to this camera
that I can improve so over time the entire product improves.
So start trying to be a little bit more observant
in the way that you work or even in the way
that you commute to work
or in the things that you do at home
like the way that you cook or do your laundry
because if you can start making
small improvements in any of these areas,
you're gonna start seeing greater results.
To give you just one more example,
if you've been watching my channel for any length of time,
you probably know that I haven't done a video
sitting on this set in this chair for quite a while.
And if I show you some footage
from the last time I did a video like this,
you'll probably notice that the lighting
and the color grading doesn't look nearly as good.
And that's because since then,
I've worked hard every single week
to make sure I'm lighting my shots just a little bit better
and doing my color grading just a little bit better as well
and the improvements at least to my eyes
have been substantial.
And if you're somebody who also wants to make videos someday
or if you have your own YouTube channel,
then you probably know how important lighting is as well
and how difficult it can be.
Now for me, there's been a lot
of trial and error and experimentation
and of course I am still not perfect at it
especially when it comes to lighting shots
that aren't done in this room.
But luckily there are experts out there
who can help you learn these skills much more quickly
such as Jordy Vandeput who has an entire curse
on lighting for video over on Skillshare.
Throughout his course, you learn the fundamentals
of how to properly light a shot,
how to deal with background lighting,
how to deal with colors and lighting
and if you are a video creator,
you might wanna check out some of his other courses
such as this course on how to edit video
with Adobe Premiere Pro which is the software
that I actually use to edit these videos.
And beyond that, you're also gonna find
over 25,000 courses in Skillshare's library
all built from the ground up to help creatives
enhance their skills, boost their curiosity,
and improve their career prospects as well.
Within that library, you're gonna find courses
on graphic design, on music production,
on business and marketing, on storytelling,
and all their courses have a focus on active learning,
featuring projects
that you can sink your teeth into immediately
and a discussion section where you can get feedback
and ask questions with both the teacher
and other students as well.
And the best part is, if you are one of the first 500 people
to click the link in the description down below and sign up,
you're gonna get two free unlimited months
of learning on Skillshare.
So click that link, sign up and start learning today
because you can learn a lot in two months.
Big thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video
and as always, huge thanks to you guys for watching.
Hopefully you found this video useful
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Thanks for watching and I will see you in next week's video.