right so life is a bit weird it's a
never-ending tapestry of hundreds of
small decisions that we make each day
and these small decisions add up to
create our experience of life the
problem is that because there's so many
of them we can get caught up in anxiety
and stress trying to optimize each one
and worry about choosing the best option
each time now one solution to this
problem of decision fatigue is to use
mental models or rules or principles to
help simplify our decision making and so
in this video i'm going to go over 10 of
the rules that i try to live by each day
to make my life more organized and to
help filter through the noise all right
rule number one is the three c's and
that's consume create and connect now
these are broadly the three main things
that i use tech for and so
every day when i see in the news and
like on the verge and other kind of
youtube channels that oh there's this
fancy new tech product i think about the
three c's and think about is this
product going to add value to my life
either in terms of consumption like will
it make it easier or more pleasurable to
consume the things i want to consume
this is why buying a kindle is great
because it makes reading books much
easier secondly could this new thing
make it easier for me to create stuff
which is why i don't know buying a new
laptop that has a nicer keyboard like a
nicer keyboard a mechanical keyboard
always a nicer way to create things or
thirdly is it going to help me connect
to people a little bit better so like
should i really upgrade from the iphone
10 to the iphone 12 would it really help
me connect with my friends a little bit
better and then if we have a take on the
three c's i decide cool i probably want
this piece of tech in my life but if we
don't i think okay this piece of tech is
probably going to be a waste of time and
i'm not going to buy it rule number two
is that i always want to invest in
things that take me from zero to one
rather than one to one point one and
what i mean here is that like
zero to one like if you if you go from
not having a phone to having a phone
that's a zero to one difference whereas
if you go from the iphone 8 to the
iphone 10 that's not zero to one that's
like one to one point zero five it's
like a very incremental upgrade versus a
completely novel upgrade this is usually
why people ask me you know what what
piece of tech would you buy for like
under 500 or things like that i usually
recommend getting an actual camera
because the difference between not
having an actual camera to having an
actual camera is a big difference
because it means you suddenly start to
take more and more photos and those
photos are really nice and high quality
and i'm really glad i bought a camera
when i was at university because now i
have these incredibly high quality
photos of my friends of my experience in
med school that just doesn't compare to
what you can get from a smartphone even
though phone cameras are pretty good
these days and so i'm always on the
lookout for these zero to one kind of
improvements going from not having a
kindle to having a kindle going from not
having a laptop too having a laptop
rather than thinking about oh i need to
always have the best thing each time and
make incremental upgrades all right rule
number three is hell yeah or no which is
a great time management tip by my friend
derek sivers and the title of this book
hello no it's very good would recommend
link in the video description and i'll
cut to derek talking about this we tend
to say yes to too many things
and because of this we're spread too
thin
we're so busy doing average things that
we don't have time for the occasional
great thing
so instead i propose raising the bar as
high as you can
so that if you're feeling anything less
than oh hell yeah that would be amazing
then just say no by doing this you will
miss out on many good things
but that's okay because your time will
be quite empty
so then by saying no to the merely good
things you'll have the time and the
energy and the space in your life to
throw yourself in entirely
when that occasional great thing comes
up now this is a lesson that i need to
remind myself of every day and i still
do a terrible job of following it
because my calendar is just full of
obligations that i said yes to because
it was like oh this thing seems seems
reasonable why not someone's asking me
for this i'll just say yes to it whereas
i'm trying really hard to switch more to
her unless i have a hell yeah response
to this thing it's gonna be a no and
i'll say to the person look i'm really
sorry life's really busy right now i
can't commit to this but i i really
really suck at this but i'm trying to
get better at it all right next we have
rule number four and we'll cut to casey
neistat talking about this last week i
talked about that voltaire quote
perfection is the enemy of good and what
that means is you can never let your
desire for perfection
prevent you from
finishing something that's good because
to finish something even imperfectly is
to learn from it and then you can move
on
and get closer to perfection honestly
this thing about perfection is like the
biggest issue that's holding so many
people back uh holds me back as well in
in lots of ways but especially when when
i teach my course the part-time youtuber
academy we've taught like a thousand
plus students now to start and grow
their youtube channels and like 80 of
them plus have suffered from this
perfection thing where it's like oh i
have to get the perfect camera set up i
have to get the lights out i have to get
a perfect microphone otherwise i'm not
gonna upload a video and the thing i
always try and tell them is that no you
can't let perfect be the enemy of good
just upload the goddamn video because if
you upload the video and just do more
and more and more of it you'll learn
from that and eventually you'll be able
to move towards perfection and like good
enough or whatever whereas if you have
that requirement from the get-go that
this thing has to be perfect it has to
be i don't know a viral video or
whatever you're just never ever going to
make anything and this is advice i often
need to tell to myself when it comes to
writing my book in my mind i'm thinking
oh this needs to be a new york times
bestseller therefore every word i write
has to be perfection and that just stops
me from doing any writing at all and so
when i stop thinking about that and
instead think you know what i'm just
going to get something messy on the page
and i'll worry about it later that's the
that's the time when i actually make
progress in writing all right rule
number five is one that i still follow
to this day which is that i am not
allowed to watch tv unless it's with
other people now this is one very very
simple rule slash mental model slash
principle that i've had in my life since
my university days and it has sort of
freed up so much of my time to do other
things that i've gotten value out of and
i sometimes think you know i i've missed
out on a few tv shows because i don't do
the thing of watching tv in my spare
time by myself then i think well i'm
really glad i missed out on those tv
shows because i was able to do better
things things that i enjoyed more of
things that i personally found more
meaningful now for you if you find a lot
of meaning and joy and fulfillment from
watching tv by yourself that's totally
cool you do you uh for me personally i
realize that i don't get a lot of
meaning joy fulfillment out of watching
tv by myself i get a lot of joy out of
watching tv with other people it becomes
a social activity but watching a tv show
by myself just a bit dead i'd rather i
don't know hang out with friends or play
something on the piano or learn
something on the guitar or read a book
or play on the playstation uh you know
i'm cool with playing playstation these
days but just that that one rule i still
have it as a rule not allowed to watch
tv by myself and it just frees up so
much time in my life to do other things
rule number six is the go first rule and
this rule states that everyone in the
world is friendly but you have to go
first and i think about this whenever
i'm in a new situation where you know
i'm surrounded by strangers i need to
talk to people i always think you know
that that anxiety within me of like oh i
don't know a fear of rejection the fear
of being weird the fear of like oh i
don't want to be the first person to say
hello because what if they think i'm
weird and stuff and i was reminding
myself no the go first rule is that
everyone is friendly but you always have
to go first in 100 of situations where
i've taken that first step in saying
hello to someone or like trying to start
some banter or like asking someone out
in 100 of cases i've been glad that i've
done the thing it hasn't always worked
out well um but i've always been glad
that i've done the thing and so now i
try and live by this go first principle
all right rule number seven is the
pareto principle and now let's hear from
tim ferriss i apply the 80 20 principle
to everything and the 80 20 principle in
brief means that 20 of your actions or
inputs or products or services will
create 80 of what you want whatever that
happens to be so
if i have 10 products
and those 10 products are taking up
all of my time working 100 hour weeks so
let's say 100 products that are creating
100 hour weeks chances are if i did an
analysis i'd find out that 20 of those
products are producing 90 of my profits
which means hypothetically i could cut
out 80 of my products just get rid of
them pull the trigger get rid of them
make 90 of what i'm making now and work
20 hours a week instead of 100 hours a
week
i do that for everything again this is
something i think about a lot as well
like what are the 20 of things that are
leading to 80 of the outcomes and i
applied this rule the other day i read
marie condos the life-changing magic of
tidying up and decided to minimilify my
wardrobe and realized of course that i
actually only really wear 20 of the
stuff in my wardrobe and so i just
donated the other 80
i had like 24 keyboards in the house and
i realized i used two of them so i
donated the other 22 keyboards to a
charity shop so just doing this sort of
80 20 analysis and everything in life
rule number eight is the write-off
principle um now this is a rule that i
came up with for myself and it's
basically a way of helping me feel less
guilty about like taking time off
because now i've got a rule and it's
like okay this is going to be a
write-off day i'm going to write the day
off and then i can relax and like play
ratchet and clank on the playstation or
just vegetate or order some like crappy
takeaway i can do all of that stuff
guilt-free
and on the few occasions that i do this
i do this like maybe two or three days a
month i always feel that like yes i've
got that reset now and i also
often feel that okay this day was fun
but i actually won't want to do this
every day i wouldn't want every day to
be a video games and eating crappy food
day because i get a lot of value and joy
and fulfillment out of like the work and
doing youtube videos and running the
business and all this sort of stuff
and so having those few days in the
month where i just completely vegetate
and turn off uh helps me
be more productive in the rest of the
time but you know it also adds to my
kind of fulfillment and joy and meaning
that i get out of life rule number nine
is journey before destination something
i always talk about it's a quote from
brandon sanderson's amazing series the
stormlight archive one of the ideals of
the night's radiant is life before death
strength before weakness a journey
before destination and i really always
think about journey before destination
like
basically
with basically everything in life it
just is about the journey it's not about
the destination like setting a goal the
goal of i don't know writing a book the
goal of hitting a bestseller is the goal
of starting a youtube channel the goal
of hitting subscriber count the goal of
getting six-pack abs it's not actually
about the destination like the goal is
kind of irrelevant if you hit the goal
it's like great i hit the goal you
celebrate for five seconds and then you
move on moving on to the next thing
whereas it's actually all about the
journey because the journey is where we
spend 100 of our time and so
my whole thing is that every single day
i'll try my best to enjoy the journey
rather than being fixated on the
destination i think having a destination
is important because without a
destination without like a goal to point
towards it's hard to like set off on a
journey when you don't know where you're
going but once you know where you're
going at that point you can forget about
the goal forget about the destination
and just focus on the journey it's the
climb remember to have fun remember to
enjoy yourself remember to enjoy every
day on its own merit because the journey
is all that we have wow i really sound
like one of those fortune fortune cookie
type things but yeah genuinely like
genuinely life-changing principle and
journey before destination all right
rule number 10 is a line from a book by
marie forleo hey mom
how do you know how to do so many
different things that you've never done
before but nobody's showing you how to
do it
and she put down her screwdriver she
cocked her head to the side and she
looked at me and she said ray what are
you talking about it's no big deal
nothing in life is that complicated if
you roll up your sleeves you get in
there and you do it
everything is figure out
and i was like
whoa
that phrase was cool
and it washed over me and it planted a
seed in my soul that i swear to you has
been the most powerful driving force in
my life ever since nothing in life is
that complicated everything is figure
out that's just like a really nice way
of living life and i often get questions
on instagram from he'll be like oh how
do you play the guitar on piano and how
are you so cool how do you do all this
kind of stuff how are you so handsome
how are you so charismatic etc etc and i
should just you know just have a snippet
being like you know nothing in life is
that complicated everything is
figureoutable anytime i see someone
doing something that looks really cool i
think whoa how could he possibly do that
and then sometimes i ask them they're
like oh yeah it's easy i just did a b c
d and e i'm like oh okay that actually
doesn't seem too bad any field that we
don't have experience in feels like a
black box like learning how to code what
the hell is learning how to code it
feels like a black box until you
actually
spend five minutes opening the black box
and you realize oh it's actually not too
bad i can learn html css et cetera et
cetera and now i've got a road map to
learning how to code and it wasn't as
complicated as i thought it was i've
actually figured it out okay so those
were 10 mental models i live by there
are actually 13 in total and the other
three are in the extended edition of
this video which is available on nebula
if you haven't heard nebula is a
streaming platform that's built by me
and a bunch of my other creative friends
and on nebula we post ad-free versions
of all our videos and extended editions
of videos and bonus content that
wouldn't necessarily work on youtube and
we can post stuff on nebula without
really worrying about the youtube
algorithm and so in the extended version
of this video which is available in
nebula this little thing gets taken out
and it's replaced with another three
mental models and i've got a ton of
other exclusive content on nebula like
my workflow series where i deep dive
into how i use some of my favorite apps
like notion and rome and my deep dive
snippets series which is like bite-sized
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the next video bye