- Hey, what is goin' on guys?
So do you ever feel like there's just no point
to reading productivity and self-improvement articles.
I mean, you pull it up, you read it
or scan through it.
You get vaguely motivated for 10 minutes or so,
but after that, it really does nothing to change your life,
and all these articles, even though they purport
to be really, really helpful,
don't actually seem to be helping.
Well, that's what I wanna talk about today.
I wanna talk about how to actually use the productivity tips
and the self-improvement advice that you read.
And to start out, I want to share one of my favorite quotes
in the world, which comes from Derek Sivers
who is a writer and who is also
the guy who founded CDBaby.com
and subsequently sold it for millions of dollars
about 20 years ago.
The quote goes like this, "If more information
"was the answer then we'd all be billionaires
"with perfect abs."
And I think that today this quote
is more poignant than it's ever been,
because we now have unprecedented access to information
and more specifically self-improvement advice.
50 years ago people probably had the odd copy
of How to Win Friends and Influence People
sittin' on their bookshelves,
but now in less than 30 seconds
you can bombard your eyes with more productivity tips
and life hacks than you can handle.
And literally right now someone's probably
publishing another one of those articles
about 47 Habits that will Make 2019 Your Best Year Ever.
And don't forget that number 18
will literally blow your mind.
But again, if you're like most people
you probably scan through that article
and then proceed to do absolutely nothing with it.
I remember a time back in college
when a teacher of mine was lamenting
a very similar problem in one of my classes.
He said, "If I have a hundred students in this room
"probably only 75 are actually going
"to pay attention to what I'm saying.
"And of those 75 people, probably 20 of them
"will remember what I said after the test is over,
"and of that group, maybe one or two
"will actually apply it over the long-term."
The fact of the matter is very few people
actually use the information that they intake.
And the problem is exacerbated on the internet,
because there's just so much of it going around.
There's so much to take in and you can feel
absolutely overwhelmed when you read
these kinds of articles or watch these kinds of videos.
So that begs the question.
How do you make sure that you are among
that group of one or two people
who actually applies the information
and makes meaningful improvements in your life?
Today I wanna share a process
that can help you do that.
So here's how to actually use the productivity tips
that you find on channels like mine
or anywhere else on the internet.
Step number one, find the one problem or goal
that you wanna solve above all others and prioritize it.
As the author Greg McKeown talks about
in his excellent book,
Essentialism, a true priority is singular.
You need to make a decision here,
and note that decision originally
comes from a Latin word meaning, to cut off.
You need to pick one path right now and cut off the others.
Now, note that this isn't a permanent choice.
You can change your priorities later.
And it also doesn't mean that you can't
be working on more than one thing at once.
But to make notably progress quickly,
you wanna know ahead of time, which one is most important.
Otherwise, you're gonna run into that all too common
part of the day where you have very little time
or energy left over, but you still have
to read and meditate,
(person screaming)
and exercise and practice guitar as well.
And then you don't really know which one to cut.
So by setting a priority and by knowing the answer
to that question of which one is most important
beforehand, you're gonna save yourself a lot of time
and a lot of dead ends.
All right, so once you've decided on your priority,
it's now time to go out and try to find resources
or tutorials and guides that can
help you make that goal a reality.
And if you're a beginner it can be a really good idea
to go out and find somebody else's tutorial,
or somebody else's tips and follow them exactly.
But if they don't work,
then you don't wanna reject them outright.
Instead you wanna distill down their basic concepts
and then try to use those concepts in a way
that works for you to adapt them.
So, for example, let's say that I tell you
that I get up every morning really early
and I read for an hour.
And you wanna do the same,
but you have class or work really early in the morning
and you just can't make that work with your sleep schedule.
Well realize that the point here,
is that I'm carving out a specific time in the day
where no one can interrupt me,
where I can actually make that reading happen,
not that I'm doing it in the morning.
So how could you work with your own schedule,
in your own constraints to gain that same benefit?
Maybe instead of in the morning
you read after lunch, or after school.
The specific way that I'm implementing the technique
often isn't the point.
So you look a little bit deeper and find the logic
behind why I'm doing what I'm doing,
and then adapt it your own specific situation.
Case in point, the third step of my process
has a specific prescribed number in it.
Because I think a really great way to build a habit
and to actually put a productivity technique into action
is to do a 30-day challenge around it.
To do this, you wanna find a way to break your goal down
into measurable steps, and then take
at least one of those steps every single day for 30 days.
And while you do this, you also wanna keep track
of your progress on a calendar or habit-tracking app,
or whatever else works for you.
I've had some great results doing challenges like this.
For one, on Instagram last year,
I did a challenge called CIG30DAY,
where I made sure to do some intense exercise
every single day for 30 days and put it on Instagram.
And doing that helped me get back into the habit
of doing intense exercise on a daily basis,
which I'd fallen out of at the time.
And for another example, that actually tweaks
the concept a little bit, a couple of years ago
I gave myself a three-month reading challenge
where everyday for three months
I had to read 25 pages of a nonfiction book.
I could not fail, otherwise,
I'd have to pay my best friend, Martin,
$100.00 and I didn't.
And it also helped me to build
a really strong reading habit going forward.
Now I do wanna give you a couple of tips
for doing this successfully.
First it can be a really good idea
to decide beforehand what part of the day
you're going to practice your habit
or take the steps you decided to take.
When you decide beforehand, when you make a plan,
like I'm gonna do it in the morning,
or I'm gonna do it before bed,
then you often find that your motivation
to do it is a lot higher.
There's a concrete plan up in your head.
Secondly, at least in the beginning,
make your steps small and input based,
meaning that they can be accomplished
with just an input of time or effort
instead of a specific outcome.
So, for example, if your goal is to write a novel,
then a beginning step that's probably gonna be
pretty difficult to accomplish each day
is write an entire chapter.
But something that's definitely doable,
is write 100 words or even 500 words.
That brings us to the fourth step in the process
which is this, don't wait for the perfect time to start.
Instead, just get started now.
Even if there's a constraint, just start now.
Realize that the time at which you get the idea
or the motivation to do something is the time
where you're gonna be the most excited to get started.
So even if you're going on vacation in two days from now
or you have a bunch of homework to do,
if you can carve out the time
to do those beginning steps, then start right now.
Take advantage of that initial motivation
and the novelty factor
that you're experiencing in the moment.
Also, right in the beginning find a way
to keep yourself accountable.
Again you can mark things off on a calendar.
You can use a habit-tracking app
or you can even keep a journal.
And if you need an extra push,
it can be a really good idea to ask somebody
who cares about you, maybe a friend or your parents
or even a teacher, to be an accountability partner,
to at least review your entries
or ask you from time to time how you're doin'.
Finally, have a way to review your progress yourself.
And remember the 30-day challenge
or any similar commitment device isn't the goal in itself.
It's just a device to help you build the habits
and actually make progress,
but there should be a larger overarching goal,
something that you want to eventually achieve.
So at regular intervals, sit down and review your progress.
Ask yourself is doing what I'm doing now,
even if it's been working really well for 30 days,
is it actually getting me any closer to my goal?
If I've been writing 500 words a day,
do these 500 words even matter?
Do I need to shift gears now and actually
start editing what I've written down,
or should I keep forging ahead.
And even if things are going well,
you should still continue to write down
your progress at regular intervals.
Because by doing this, you're going to get a record
of your successes which can help to motivate you
on any particularly difficult days in the future
or on the next time your read a productivity tips article
that makes you wanna switch gears
and go do something entirely different.
And by successfully avoiding that temptation
and keeping your motivation levels high through
these reviews you will continue
to actually make progress on your goals.
So like I mentioned earlier in the video,
one of the methods that I've used to actually spur action
is the 30-day challenge.
Things like my 30-day challenge exercise challenge,
or my reading challenge.
These types of challenges are a great way
to get started on something, to stay motivated
and to see significant progress
in a relatively short amount of time.
And if you wanna learn how to set yourself up
for success with this particular type of challenge
then you might wanna go watch through
Rich Armstrong's course, on Skillshare,
called The Perfect 100 Day Project.
In it he teaches you how to intelligently
pick the right challenge, how to structure it,
and how to give yourself
the best chance of sticking with it the entire time.
Plus, since Rich's course is on Skillshare,
taking it, means you'll also have access
to more than 28,000 other courses, many of which
can help you make progress on your individual goals.
If you're trying to improve your web development skills,
there's a course for that.
If you wanna learn how to make great YouTube videos,
there are courses for that too.
And if you just wanna learn how to get organized
and stay on top of things,
well I made a course for you all about that,
which has already been taken by almost 20,000 people.
A premium membership on Skillshare gets
you unlimited access to an entire library of courses
and it's really affordable as well,
as their annual subscription is less than 10 bucks a month.
And if you would like to give it a try first
you can use the link in the description down below
to get a two-month unlimited trial for free.
Big thanks goes out to Skillshare as always
for sponsoring this video and being
a big supporter of my channel
and thank you for watching as well.
Hopefully this video in particular was helpful.
Hopefully it helps you to cut through all the clutter
and actually start making some progress,
and if you enjoyed it, definitely hit that like button
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you can check that out right over here.
Thanks again for watching
and I will see you in the next video.