- This video is sponsored by Brilliant.
Do, delay, delegate, and delete.
These are the classic four D's of time management,
which have been described
in countless different productivity books and articles.
And together, they help you answer one big question,
how should I deal with all the tasks
that I'm supposed to do?
Most of us have too many things to do.
Our to-do lists are a mile long.
We're stressed out, and half the time,
we don't even know where to start.
And this, this is the problem
that a decision-making framework can help you to solve.
And the four D's form one of those such frameworks.
But today, I would like to submit for your consideration,
improved version of that framework.
One that adds a fifth element, automate.
Now, to be fair, you could consider this
to be a subtype delegate,
since you are technically delegating to a robot.
But I prefer to give it its own equal position in the list,
so that we can form our own shiny, new productivity term,
"The DDADD method."
So let me level with you here for a second.
We productivity gurus, we live and die
by the arbitrary acronyms and methods that we coin.
In fact, entire careers
have been built off of this practice.
GTD, The Pomodoro Technique, 80/20,
they are the bedrock upon which we're built.
♪ 6-Figure book deals ♪
- So let's make a deal, you and I.
Will you begrudge me, my shiny new productivity term,
let me get my...
♪ 6-Figure book deals ♪
- And in return, I will not share with everyone
your secret, shameful Harry Potter fan fiction, Derek.
So let's get started and let's start with, do.
The domain of weddings, Shia LaBeouf,
and extinct birds if you say it twice fast.
In the context of decision-making, do, really means do now.
So how do you know if you should do something right now?
Well, the answer is simple.
Ask yourself these two questions.
Number one, is the task at hand both urgent and important?
And number two, can you do it in under two minutes?
If the answer to at least one of those questions is yes,
then yes do it right now.
So answering that first question is kind of obvious.
Your palace is on fire,
it's 11:58 PM and the term paper is due in two minutes,
the president has been kidnapped by ninjas.
These are all tasks that would be found
in the first quadrant of the classic Eisenhower Matrix,
which is used by project managers to prioritize tasks
based on their urgency and on their importance.
When a task falls into the fire and ninjas quadrant,
it should probably be done right now.
The second question refers to the 2-minute rule
that David Allen describes in his book,
"Getting Things Done".
If you can do a task in two minutes or less,
then it as well, should be done right now.
Now like the 20-second rule that I've talked about
in other videos, the two minutes here is really
just kind of an arbitrary marker.
Yet another pithy term that sticks well in the mind
and helps business authors bag those...
♪ 6-Figure book deals ♪
- In general, even if it's a little over two minutes,
if you can do it quickly, do it now, otherwise delay it.
To remix a line from "Toy Story",
delaying is really just procrastinating with style.
And the key to delaying a task strategically
instead of merely procrastinating, is to first
get very specific about the details of your deferment.
The what, the when, and the how.
And then secondly, you wanna get those details
into an external system that you trust.
So what I wanna do here, is share two big tips
for improving the way you use your to-do lists.
First, create an inbox for yourself.
So an inbox is a place where you can quickly dump tasks,
wherever they come up and wherever you are.
It should be a low friction way to get things
into your system that you can access at a moment's notice.
Key point, low friction, here.
Secondly, have a specific time for processing that inbox.
And this is the part that most people tend to skip,
which is why their to-do lists
so often fall victim to entropy.
And another term that I'm gonna use in my...
♪ 6-figure book deals ♪
- Basically, entropy means chaos.
When people don't process their inboxes,
they become a mile long and eventually
they become this chaotic mess that people no longer trust.
And then they start trusting their brains.
When you take time every single day
or at least each week to process your inbox,
your system remains something that you can trust.
Next up, we have automate, which is objectively
the coolest step since it does involve robots.
For millennia, humans have used tools
to conquer their environment and shape it to their will.
Now, in most cases, these tools
have simply made the work that they were already doing,
a little bit faster or a little bit easier.
But then, somewhere along the line,
we started building these Rube Goldberg-esque contractions
that in some cases did the work entirely for us.
So the line between automation and mere optimization
gets pretty blurry pretty fast.
Did the ox-drawn plow merely optimize
work once done by hoeing, by humans.
Or was the man driving that ox forward
one of the world's first automation engineers?
And if so, what was his stack overflow ranking?
Anyway, wherever you place that line
doesn't matter so much, as long as you understand
that you can use tools to do things faster.
And if you can approach a repeated process
with a creative systems-based mindset,
then you'll start to see opportunities for automating,
at least some of the pieces of it.
One method for doing this is called templatization.
This involves basically boxing pieces
of a project up into a master template
which you can then copy for each new project,
instead of making each of those little pieces
over and over and over again in a rogue process.
For a very, very simple example here,
let's look at just a slice
of the editing process for this video.
To stay organized when we make a video,
we have folders for the footage that we shoot.
That I'm shooting right now, for the project files,
for music, for sound effects, for images,
basically every different type of media.
Now for each video, I could manually create these folders,
which I used to do, or I could simply make a folder
called Template, that already contains all these folders.
Then I can just duplicate that folder
and rename it for every new video that we make.
Another method is called a Process Automation,
which basically means building a robot
to do the job for you.
- I made lots of robots in my day.
- You might use robots to build cars,
to cook a chicken by slapping it.
- In terms of chicken integrity,
this chicken's looking pretty good.
We're up another degree Celsius, let's go!
- Or to automate tedious processes on your computer.
And tools like Zapier, Integromat, and IFTTT,
are all great places to start exploring
if you're interested in that last option.
Though, they won't cook chickens for you.
Of course, process automation has existed
for quite a lot longer than robots have,
just under a different moniker, delegation.
Now, honestly, if I wanna break
into the area of business writing where the real money is,
then I should probably flesh this section
out more than any of the others.
I should also throw around terms like
management theory, agile framework, no bathroom breaks.
After all, it is the managers
who call the shots in most companies.
Which means that it's the managers who hire business authors
to come speak at their corporate retreats
and spout motivational platitudes for $50,000.
One can dream.
Now, if you're watching this video,
my guess is that you don't count yourself
amongst the ranks of these people,
and you don't know how to dress for their cocktail parties.
You may also think that delegation is not a strategy
for you, but that's probably not true.
Let's consider for a moment the simplest
and cheapest way to delegate any task there is.
Could you trick your little brother into doing it,
and will he take payment and leftover Halloween candy?
Even if he decides to demand cold, hard cash,
it still might be worth taking that deal.
And to know for sure,
you first need to understand the value of your time.
Like money, time is a resource.
Whenever you choose to do something,
you incur an opportunity cost.
You are losing the opportunity to do literally
anything else that you could have done with that time,
you are giving something up.
So one easy way to value your time, to understand
this trade-off, is to take the amount that you make,
and figure out your per hour rate.
So for example,
if you make $60,000 a year
and you work an average of 1800 hours a year,
which is the average here in the US,
then your per hour rate is roughly $33.
Now, this is an incredibly oversimplified way
of valuing your time.
There's a lot of other factors we can include here.
But for simplicity's sake, we're doing it this way
because it's at least a good way to help yourself
be more open to delegation that would make sense.
For instance, if your per hour rate is $33,
and you can pay someone to mow your lawn for $30.
Then doing so makes sense,
unless you're somebody that really likes mowing lawns.
The bottom line is that you should start at least thinking
of your time as a valuable resource,
one that is at least as valuable as your money.
And honestly, probably more.
Do that, and you're gonna start opening your mind
up to more delegation opportunities.
But you're also gonna realize that some
of the tasks on your plate just aren't worth your time,
or the money that you would spend delegating them.
And these are the tasks that you should simply delete.
But how do you know whether or not it's a good idea
to snap a task out of existence instead of doing it?
Well, when faced with this question,
I like to remind myself of the any-benefit approach
that Cal Newport discusses in his book, "Deep Work".
As he explains in the book,
people will often add new tools, new products,
and especially new social networks into their lives,
if they provide literally any benefit, no matter how small.
And in doing so, these people
fail to consider the cost of these additions.
In the case of social networks,
it's more wasted time scrolling through feeds, more
cognitive switching penalties that make you less productive.
So Newport advocates rejecting this any-benefit approach.
Instead, scrutinizing any new product
or social network or tool, to determine its net benefit.
And I think that we need to consider this
when we're adding things to our to-do lists as well.
I know that I'm guilty of adding tasks.
Really, nilly, tiny little things
that I just think have to be done.
And then when I scrutinize these things later on,
I often realized that I was wrong,
they really didn't matter.
What I try to do now is consider the opportunity cost,
like we just talked about
in the delegation section, of each task.
I ask myself, "What could I do instead?"
And as it turns out, I usually have quite a few options
that are either more enjoyable, or they're higher value.
By thinking about these alternatives,
it becomes a lot easier to just say no
to all these little tiny tasks that really
at the end of the day, don't matter.
So that in a nutshell is the DDADD method.
Now, if you are an agent
of a big book publisher, I will take one...
♪ 6-Figure book deal ♪
- Please, and thank you.
For everyone else, here's a quick summary
of the process reversed, so that it fits
into a nice, neat flow chart.
For any task that you are faced with,
ask yourself, number one, "Does it even need to be done?"
Number two, "Do I need to be the one to do it?"
Number three, "Can I automate it?"
And number four, "Do I need to do it now?"
Out of the five steps in the DDADD method,
perhaps the most rewarding
and yet the hardest to master is, automation.
At its core, automation is really just problem solving.
Can you take a problem
and creatively figure out how to solve it
by building a system instead of by doing it manually?
Peter Parker, brilliant but lazy, right.
And this is a fundamental skill that is sought
after in pretty much every industry today,
it is often crucial in hiring decisions.
And luckily it's also something
that you can learn through practice.
And one great resource for learning this skill is Brilliant,
which is a learning library that actually
kills two birds with one stone.
The library of more than 60 in-depth courses
teaches you math, science, and computer science skills.
Like how to build a search engine
or how to figure out probabilities, while also
building your universally applicable problem solving skills.
This is because Brilliant's entire approach
to learning is based on active problem solving.
So when you're working through their courses,
you're not just passively learning
like you often do in school, you are doing.
So, if you'd like to try out Brilliant for yourself,
you can actually start learning for free,
by going over to brilliant.org/thomasfrank,
or by clicking the link in the description down below.
And if you're one of the first 200 people to use that link
and sign up, you're also going to get 20%
off your annual premium subscription.
And you'll be helping to support this channel
by supporting the sponsors who support me.
That was a lot of instances of the word support,
maybe I should automate that.
But seriously, if you do choose to support my sponsors,
thank you so much, you're really helping the channel out.
But also, if you made it to the end of this video,
thank you for putting up with all my stupid jokes
and thank you for watching my videos, seriously.
I really appreciate you,
hopefully you found something useful in this video.
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So if you don't wanna do any of that stuff,
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