- Right, so when I think about
the stuff that I wanna get done
or be productive or being organised,
there is a concept that's often in mind,
and that is the concept of strategic laziness.
Now, for the last, I don't know, 100 to 200 years
in the world of work.
There's this idea of almost the Protestant work ethic,
this idea that we have to work hard
and we have to work for our keep.
And then, we enjoy the fruits of our labour.
And I think when I think back to my life in the past,
I very much thought that the stuff that I had to get done
had to be hard,
it had to look and feel like hard work.
But over the last few years,
I've kinda realised that being strategically lazy
is actually a better way forward.
And there's a quote that's apparently from Bill Gates,
where he says that,
"If I wanna get something done,
I will always find a lazy person to do it,
because they'll find an easy way to get it done."
And that's really what my idea of strategic laziness
is getting at.
How do we find ways
to make the stuff that we're doing easier,
so that we can kind of do it more easily,
and more lazily and it has to be less of a heavy lift?
Broadly, the way I think about the system
of strategic laziness is in three parts,
which conveniently spelt R-A-D,
that is Reduce, Automate and Delegate.
All right, let's start with the R, which stands for Reduce.
i.e. How do we spend less time on the stuff
that we actually have to do?
And the first point here
is that we can just decide to not to do things.
So, for example, when I was at med school,
I took on a tonne of projects.
And there's this time
where I'm studying for exams in the morning,
working on this medical tech app in the afternoon,
trying to hang out with friends in the evening,
and then doing some YouTube stuff at nighttime.
And I realised that my to-do list
was so overloaded with stuff
that I just didn't really have time to do the stuff
that I actually wanted to do.
And I didn't really have any margin in my day.
And I realised that I'd been chasing
all these different projects for the sake of CD points,
because I was interested in getting into plastic surgery,
which is very competitive.
And there was a very scary moment where I was like,
"Oh my God,"
if I just get rid of one or two of these projects,
if I just back out from them,
then that would free up my life to do the stuff
that I actually care about.
And I was trying to balance,
do I wanna be a quitter
or do I actually wanna do the things I want?
And eventually I decided after
many weeks of soul searching thinking,
"Do I really wanna be working on this stuff?"
I decided actually I'm gonna back out of these projects
that I said yes to earlier on.
And it was painful for about a day.
And I felt really bad sending the message.
And I'm chatting to the people I was working with saying,
"Hey guys, this has been a lot of fun,
but I need to back out of these projects."
But it was really, really, really good.
It was really good for me,
because then I could focus on the stuff that I wanted to.
And it was actually good for the team as well,
because now they didn't have me onboard
where I was sort of half-assing it,
'cause I wasn't actually very interested in the thing.
And so these days,
if my to-do list is overflowing with stuff,
I often think back to those times
where I just deleted things from my to-do list
and I backed out of projects.
And I realised that it's actually okay, it's totally okay,
a, to say no to stuff upfront.
This is something I'm very bad at
I'm trying to get better at it,
and I wish I were better at saying no to things upfront,
but it's also totally okay.
Once you've said yes to something,
you are allowed to change your mind at a later date,
you can withdraw consent as it were.
And so, I often look through my products list now
and I think, "Do I really actually want to be doing
all of the things on this list?"
And often whenever I do that, once every few weeks,
if I'm feeling overwhelmed with stuff, I realise,
"Oh," I actually don't really wanna do that project.
And then I think, "Okay,"
I need to pluck up the courage to send a message
to the person saying, "I actually don't wanna do this.
This is not a priority anymore.
I'm really sorry.
All the best," that kinda thing.
And I've always been glad for it in the long run.
Point number 2 in the reduce camp
is to try and feed two birds with one scone, as they say.
So I spend a lot of time when I'm on the toilet.
I just scroll through Twitter usually.
And this is generally a huge time waste.
But then a couple of years ago,
I took this online course run by my friend Tiago Forte
called Building a Second Brain.
And almost overnight,
I realised that my addiction of scrolling through Twitter
while I was on the toilet or in bed,
or waiting for a bus or anything like that.
I actually could use that because Twitter isn't just a place
of scrolling through random stuff.
It's also a place of finding interesting ideas
and engaging with them.
And I realised that because I wanted to be a writer
and I was making these YouTube videos,
a lot of the ideas that I got
whilst scrolling through Twitter,
I could then save into my notes
and then I could expand on them in the future.
And so, this is another form of strategic laziness
whereby the thing that we're doing for one reason,
i.e. Having fun, scrolling through Twitter
can also have multiple benefits.
And now I search through my life
for all of the other different ways
in which I can feed two birds with one scone.
Finally, in the reduce camp, we have the idea of batching.
This is something I first came across in
"The 4-Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss,
but it's a pretty standard productivity concept.
Basically, we wanna to batch similar tasks together.
And so, back in the day, when I was making YouTube videos,
I would film one video at a time, get everything set up,
film the video, put everything away,
and then repeat that process kind of ad nauseum.
These days, we have one filming day, every week,
where on Thursdays,
I just filmed two or three and sometimes even four videos,
because it takes so long
to get the lights and the camera set up.
It takes so long to get my face looking reasonable
and me shaving and dressing somewhat reasonably well
that I might as well film more than one video
when that's happening.
And so, batching in terms of making YouTube videos
in terms of answering emails, in terms of doing admin,
in terms of opening my physical mail,
there are so many areas of our lives
in which batching is useful, washing the dishes,
doing the laundry,
letting the dishes pile up for a week at a time,
and then doing them all in one go.
My housemate absolutely hates it,
but hey, anything for productivity, am I right?
All right, moving on to the A component of our RAD system,
A stands for Automate.
And this is basically about figuring out different ways
in which we can use machines,
use computers and use the internet
to automate aspects of our lives.
The first one comes in the role of generating income,
trying to make passive income
is a form of strategic laziness,
because the problem with active income
is that we're trading our time for our money,
and trading time for money
is generally suboptimal because well,
it takes work
and we're trying to be strategically lazy here.
Whereas the alternative way of approaching it
is to think about building products and building stuff.
Because if you build something, if you make a YouTube video,
or if you write a book
or if you make a digital product or whatever,
make an online course,
you can then do the work in building it once,
and then you can sell it multiple times to multiple people
without having to put in any extra work.
And so now, when I'm thinking of new lines of revenue
to add to the business, other things to do in my life,
I'm always thinking,
"Okay, what is the kinda strategically lazy way
to approach this thing so that I can build it once
and then I can sell multiple times?"
Automation, isn't just about building stuff to make money,
it's also about building systems that can help streamline
and improve our lives in a strategically lazy fashion.
And so, what I'd like to do is that whenever I find myself
doing something more than once,
like making a YouTube video of something
I'll do more than once, or for example,
opening certain files on my computer on my Mac
is something I do more than once,
I always try and figure out a system
or an automation of some sort to make this stuff easier.
And so, with YouTube, for example,
we've got this whole checklist of things
that need to be done for a given YouTube video.
And theoretically we follow the checklist.
It's a concept that Atul Gawande famously talks about
in his book, "The Checklist Manifesto".
And certainly anytime I've been doing assisting
in a surgery at work,
there was always this checklist system that we go through
just to make sure everything is getting done.
It's also really useful having a defined system
for doing things like managing a to-do list
and managing email and all that kinda stuff.
I've done a video about my LAZI Productivity System
linked somewhere over there that expands on this,
and I'm also working on a productivity course
that's gonna expand on this in much more detail,
and it's gonna show you exactly how I build my system
for managing a to-do list and managing email
and managing my files and all that fun stuff.
It's coming out in August of 2021, probably.
And there'll be a link to join the waiting list,
and mailing list, if you wanna get more information
in the video description.
And thirdly, the other way of automating stuff
in a strategically lazy fashion
is to use apps and tech to again,
automate tedious things.
So for example, the text expansion feature
in iOS and Mac OS is incredible
because anytime I need to type my email address in,
I just use one of these little snippets,
I type in Exclamation mark E,
and my email gets automatically filled in.
I've got this for links to my YouTube gear page as well.
People often comment being like,
"Hey, what YouTube gear do you use?"
I can just type an Exclamation mark Gear
and it gives them a link to the appropriate page.
So just figuring out little things like that
to automate otherwise tedious activities.
And again, the principle I use here
is that if I'm ever doing something more than once,
and I know that I'll need to do it more than once,
then taking a little bit of time
to build an automation for it
often pays dividends and time saved in the long run.
Finally, let's talk about D which stands for Delegation.
And delegation is one of the ultimate forms
of strategic laziness,
because we actually don't have to do everything ourselves.
Now when it comes to delegation and outsourcing
people often feel that,
"Oh, this is something only if you're a rich
can you delegate and outsource stuff,"
but actually that's not true.
We all delegate and outsource things on a daily basis.
Whenever you go to a restaurant, whenever you go to a cafe,
you are delegating the preparation of food
to the chef in the restaurant.
Whenever you go to the doctor,
you are delegating the advice and management of your health,
kind of to that professional.
And if we move beyond the idea of delegation
being only a thing for the rich,
then we can find other aspects in our lives
where delegating stuff appropriately
actually does make a lot of sense.
The first step for this that I find
is to figure out the dollar value of our own time.
Now how much is my time actually worth to me?
And so, if I'm then doing something that I don't enjoy,
that I could delegate for less than that amount,
then I absolutely should delegate it.
So for example, for me, my dollar hour might be,
I don't know, $25 an hour.
I would value my time at $25 an hour.
If I don't really enjoy cleaning the house
or doing the laundry or doing ironing,
but it takes me a few hours each week to do that,
I can then delegate that,
I can hire a cleaner or a laundry or an ironing,
or even someone to do all three.
And if they're being paid $20 an hour,
then I am delegating appropriately because my time,
in my opinion is worth a little bit more than that.
Crucially, what I'm not saying is that my time
is actually worth more than the other person's time.
What I'm saying is that for me,
the dollar value of my time is higher than
they're gonna charge for doing that service,
which hopefully they enjoy as well.
And therefore, I would rather use my own time
on things that I enjoy
rather than spending time on something that I don't enjoy,
that I could delegate to someone else.
The other really interesting form of delegation
that ties into this idea of strategic laziness
is actually finding coaches and teachers for stuff.
So for example, for the last 10 years,
I've been more sort of myself trying to hit the gym.
I've had a gym membership.
I go twice a week
and I hadn't really made very much progress at all,
but it was in the last year, around this time last year
that I got a personal trainer
and now I have personal trainer sessions two days a week
and that's actually fantastic.
His name's Dan, he's wonderful.
I'll put his Instagram in the video description
if you wanna check it out,
but it's great, because now I have delegated
the management of me getting henched to Dan.
And it's strategically lazy,
because I can pay him whatever amount per hour
and I can go to his place,
he's got a nice gym and it's more fun,
because it's nice having someone there.
I don't have to worry about setting up the weights
and all that kinda stuff.
I don't have to worry about tracking the numbers.
I don't have to worry about my form,
because Dan is there to help me through the whole process.
And that is in a way, a really good form of delegation
because yes, we can almost do it ourselves,
and my mom often says,
"Hey, why do you have a personal trainer?
Can't you just go to the gym by yourself?"
And I'm like, "Yes, I could theoretically,
but I know that I'm not disciplined enough
and I don't enjoy crucially,
I don't enjoy going to the gym enough by myself
to actually make this a habit."
And therefore, I'm delegating this thing in my life,
which I think is quite important because I value my health
in some capacity.
And I think building muscle mass is a good thing.
It's correlated with all these positive health outcomes.
I am kinda delegating that to my personal trainer Dan
so that I'm more likely to actually do it.
And this is another way of being strategically lazy.
And so, if you've got something in your life
that you think is actually a priority
and you have some amount of disposable income
that I think often investing in a coach or a trainer
or a teacher in that thing
is one of the most valuable things that we can do
and has generally a very high return on investment.
And speaking of things
that are a great return on investment,
one of my favourites is actually Brilliant,
who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
And Brilliant is an incredible online platform for courses
in maths, science and computer science.
The courses are engaging and interactive and informative
and crucially they're quite fun as well.
And so, for a very small monthly or annual fee,
you can delegate the process of getting smarter
to something like Brilliant,
where you can do the courses on there and it's really good.
The ones that I've personally enjoyed the most
are the computer science series.
When I was applying to med school,
I was kind of torn between,
do I go for medicine or do I go for computer science?
I went from medicine in the end and it was a great decision,
but I always felt a little bit like,
"Ugh, I wish I knew more computer science-y stuff."
And so, Brilliant's courses on algorithms
and on cryptocurrencies and how all that kinda stuff works
along with their courses on Python,
I've taken those personally
and those have actually been genuinely really good
and helped me expand my knowledge
of the field of computer science in a fun,
engaging, interactive kinda way.
If that sounds good
and you also wanna level up your smartness,
then head over to brilliant.org/ali
or hit the link in the video description
and the first 200 people to hit that link
will get 20% off the annual premium subscription.
So thank you Brilliant for sponsoring this video.
And thank you for watching.
If you'd like to know more
specifically about how I organise my life,
check out this video over here,
which is about my L-A-Z-I, my LAZI Productivity System,
and you can join the mailing list
for my upcoming productivity course
in the video description.
Thanks so much for watching, have a lovely day
and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.