- All right.
So over the past 10 years,
I have read basically all of the books
around productivity and time management.
And in that time, there are 10 things
that I still use in my life, genuinely use
to help make my time management more efficient.
Let's talk about them in this video.
Tip number one is that we absolutely own all of our time.
Now, this is like a big one.
When I first had this realization, my life genuinely changed
because I used to think I don't have time to do stuff.
And I don't know where I read it,
but I came across this like,
probably like a fortune cookie somewhere
which said something like
at any given moment you are doing
what you most want to be doing.
And that was a very empowering thing for me
because I was obviously in native empowerment
and it helped me realize
that my time is entirely within my control.
Like right now I'm filming this video
because I want to be.
Earlier today, I spent six hours playing "World of Warcraft"
because that's what I wanted to do.
I could not have said I don't have the time
to work out today,
instead, it was a case of I'm actively choosing not
to make the time to work out today.
And so when it comes to time management
like step one is always to recognize
that we are always in control of our own time.
Yes. You might have a boss.
Yes, you might have parents telling you what to do
but fundamentally you are in control of your own time
and you can choose to do whatever you want with that time.
If you don't have the time to do something,
that something it's just not a priority,
which is fine but don't pretend
like the reason you're not doing it
is 'cause you genuinely don't have the time.
Point number two is the title of this book
by Derek Sivers "Hell Yeah Or No What's Worth Doing."
Now, the vibe here, "Hell Yeah Or No"
it kind of says it all in the title
that when we're young
and we don't have very many opportunities in our lives,
we should probably say yes to the majority of things
that are coming our way.
But as soon as we get to a point
where we're starting to get more inbound leads
than we have time available,
we start operating with a hell yes or no maxim.
And the idea there is something
is either a hell yes or it's a no.
And so if I get an email from someone saying,
"Hey, do you wanna do this thing?"
And I'm thinking, maybe it sounds kind of all right
then my default position is gonna be no.
If I get an email from someone saying,
"Hey, do you wanna do this thing?
And I'm like, "Hell yeah."
Then I'm gonna do the thing.
And I'm trying to get better
at using this principle in my life.
Because even now my calendar is full
of a lot of things where I'm like, oh yeah, kind of
rather than hell yeah, too.
And now it was regret doing it when it comes down.
So hell yeah or no,
just like learning to be okay with saying no to stuff
is another really important principle of time management.
Thirdly, there's a tip I picked up from this book
called "Make Time" by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.
And this tip is called the daily highlight.
This is like deviously simple.
Basically, the idea is that every day we decide this thing,
this one thing is gonna be my highlight of the day.
This is the only thing I need to get done today.
And on the days where I set a daily highlight
and I try and do this every day,
I always get the thing done.
And I'm always really happy at the end of the day.
But if I have a day where I don't set my daily highlight
then I kind of drown in my to-do list
and I have this just image in my head of like,
oh yeah, I need to do this and this and this and that.
And it's a lot harder to get stuff done.
Whereas on days where I have the daily highlight,
I have that just one thing that I'm focusing on,
this is the most urgent or the most satisfying
or the most fun thing I have to do today.
And then it just really helps with my time management.
Tip number four for time management is to use a to-do list.
And these days are use a physical to-do list
with this analog by Ugmonk.
It's very nice.
And it's like, you get these like note cards
and then you'd get this like wooden thing.
And you're like put the note card in the thing
and it looks like this.
And that means like every morning,
once I figured out what my daily highlight is,
I make a list of the other stuff that I have to do that day.
And I shove it on a list and then I tick them off
and cross them off with physical pen
as I go throughout my day.
It doesn't really matter what system you use
for it to-do list.
But again, there's a general principle of productivity
which is that our brain is for having ideas
not for holding them and a big part
of why we let stuff slip through the cracks
when it comes to managing our time
and managing our productivity
is 'cause we haven't written them down.
And so anytime I need to do something,
I write it down into an app.
These days I use Roam.
But then when I figured out my daily to-do list,
it's all based on this analog system by Ugmonk
which is very nice.
And it's kind of cool having a physical to-do list
in front of me that I can cross things off of it
and it just feels nice.
And yeah, even at work, when I'm working as a doctor
I use physical to-do lists to manage my patient list,
to manage my list of tasks.
There's something incredibly satisfying
about crossing something off,
which you just don't get when you use an app.
Principle number five for time management
is the concept of time blocking.
Apparently, this is something
that Elon Musk does all the time.
And basically the idea there
is any time we need to do something,
we put a block for it in our calendar.
So I don't like doing this for absolutely everything
because I'm a bit of a waste man.
And I think the more time I spend
managing my productivity system,
the less time I spend actually getting stuff done.
And then it's just all completely pointless.
But the one thing that I always schedule into my calendar
at the start of the day is my daily highlight.
So if I've decided my daily highlight
is filming this video
usually, well, I'll try my best to schedule it
into my calendar at the time
when I know I'm gonna film the video.
If my daily highlight is call my grandma,
I will literally scroll schedule it into my calendar.
If my daily highlight is make changes to my website,
I will schedule it at like for a block in my calendar.
And that's like really nice and reassuring
because it means that that one thing
that I've decided is really, really important
is always gonna get done
because it's always on the schedule.
And then if I need to move it around,
I'll move it around if something comes up
but at least it's there on the schedule by default.
And this thing where you combine the daily highlight
with time-blocking in the calendar
is just incredibly useful.
Everyone always kind of thinks that like,
oh, but only one thing a day?
Don't you have to do more than that.
And yeah, you do kind of have to do more
than that in most of our lives.
But imagine if every single day for the next year
you could actually do the one thing,
the one most important thing to do that day,
you'd make a hell of a lot of progress
over the course of the year.
And it would just be absolutely game changing.
Principle number six is related to something
called Parkinson's Law,
which is that work expands to fill the time
that we allocate to it.
So if I have to film a YouTube video in a day
and I give myself the whole day to film that YouTube video,
inevitably, it's gonna take all day
to film the YouTube video.
Whereas, if I only give myself half an hour
or an hour to film the YouTube video
and I fill my day up with other things,
then inevitably I get the video done
in that small amount of time.
And so the actionable advice here
is to leverage artificial deadlines,
even when it's something like filming a new course.
Like I'm working on a course for YouTube for beginners
where I kinda filming, took you to everything
about my YouTube video production process.
And this doesn't really have a deadline.
Like I could literally do it whenever I want.
I don't have to do it.
It's purely optional project
but I've set myself the goal that, okay, you know what?
I'm gonna film all of this course next weekend.
And I've blocked out time in my calendar next weekend
to film the course.
And that's an artificial deadline
which means the course is gonna get done.
Whereas if I just had it in my mind
or in my to do list without a deadline, without a schedule,
it would just inevitably never, ever get done.
Point number seven is one I've started applying recently
and that is having protected time.
When you were an entrepreneur
and you were like working for yourself
and all that kind of stuff,
you end up basically being able to set
whatever schedule you want
but like, if you're like, man
and you're like making connections and making friends
with people all around the internet,
you get to a point where your day is filled
with lots and lots of Zoom calls.
And I realized that for me,
I need to keep my mornings completely free
of any obligations or any Zoom calls.
And this has been an absolute game changer
because in the morning
that means I can wake up whenever I want.
Usually it's half past eight these days.
And it means that for a solid like four hours at least
I've got uninterrupted time where I can do whatever I want.
So these days I'm working on writing my book.
And so the morning is my protected time for writing.
But even on days where I'm not working on the book
it's just genuinely so nice to have that
like timestamp where I can think about the business
or plan some more videos
or do the things that help move me forward
in my work career.
And sometimes if I'm not really feeling it,
I'll just decide, you know what?
I'm gonna use this protected time
to play "World of Warcraft" or to just kind of relax
and read a book on the sofa.
So if you're interested
in better ways to managing your time,
I would recommend figuring out
what your protected time is gonna be,
time that is just for you and you alone
or "World of Warcraft" and not for anyone else
where no one is allowed to book something in your schedule.
All right, principle number eight is delegation.
Now this one is a little bit weird
because normally when you say the word delegate,
people imagine that,
"Oh, well I can't afford to delegate something.
I don't have enough money to delegate to hire someone."
And sure, that's probably true
but the way that I think of it,
even when the YouTube channel wasn't successful
was like, what is actually the dollar value of my time?
How much is my time actually worth?
And when it came to running my business,
I decided that, okay, my time is worth 20 pounds an hour
or $25 an hour.
And that means that anything I'm doing
that I don't enjoy, that I can outsource to someone,
that I can delegate for less than $25 an hour
I absolutely should do that.
And that principle of delegation
has encouraged me to get a cleaner
which has been great because now we have someone
who comes in to clean the house every other week
which means I don't have to do it myself.
And back in the day when I was building my businesses
from the ground up,
and there was lots of things that needed to be done,
like data entry or things like that.
I was able to delegate those to freelancers
in like the Philippines or in Bangladesh or in India
through upwork.com or fiverr.com
and like paying them like $7 an hour
is an amazing like wage for someone,
for work in the Philippines.
But it was fantastic for me because it freed up my time
to do things that were adding more value to the business
and to my life than doing data entry, for example.
And so whatever your circumstances are,
I'd encourage you to think about
what is the dollar value of your time.
And potentially if you want,
can you delegate stuff that's cheaper than that
to other people potentially.
Tip number nine for time management
is to try and automate scheduling as much as possible.
Now that we're in the world of like Zoom calls
and like chatting to people over the internet
basically every day, I found I was wasting a lot of time
in scheduling back and forth where it'd be like,
"Hey, I wanna talk to you,
but like, are you free this time,
Pacific time, this time, Eastern time
this time, British Standard time," all this kind of stuff.
And we'd go back and forth with emails
for like a solid 10 days before anything would get done.
But then I discovered an app called Calendly,
and Calendly is great.
It's free for like the free version.
I pay for the pro version these days.
It's not sponsoring this video
or anything like that unfortunately.
Calendly if watching this, let me know.
But the idea behind Calendly
is you conditionally send someone a link
and it has like all of your availability
and they can just book a slot in your calendar.
Now this feels a little bit weird to do.
Initially, it feels like a bit of a power move that,
"Hey, book a slot on my calendar."
But anytime I get the Calendly link from someone I'm like,
"Oh my God, I'm so grateful."
Because this has literally saved me 20 minutes of my life ,
time that I'm never gonna get back
and not having to worry about scheduling
back and forth emails.
Even sometimes these days when it comes to
like catching up with friends,
I just send them a calendar link
and I'm like, "Look, so hey man, I'm really sorry.
But like here's the Calendly link.
I know we're never gonna talk
because the schedules are never gonna align.
But if there's a time that works for you
click on this link."
And he books a time and we have cool.
And it's nice.
'Cause I've caught up with so many more friends
in the last few months through using Calendly links
than I did in the last like three years
of having to schedule back and forth with WhatsApp messages.
And finally, principle number 10 for time management.
And this is something I've only recently
started to appreciate, which is that like
when you're like a productivity nerd
and you're interested in like efficiency
and getting more done.
It's very easy for us to get to the end of the day
and to just feel chronically dissatisfied
with what we've accomplished.
Like at the end of the day, it's like,
"Oh, well, I filmed one video today
but I could have filmed five videos.
What's wrong with me? Such a waste man."
And kind of internally beating ourselves up about this.
But one thing I've started to kind of tell myself recently
is that I can choose to be satisfied at the end of the day.
At the end of this day, I'll have filmed this video.
I was planning to film three more videos,
but I didn't get around to doing those.
That's fine. I filmed one.
I can choose to be satisfied
with what I've done and that's all good.
And like, it doesn't change how much work I've done
by me beating myself up about it.
It just makes me feel bad.
And therefore, I can choose to feel good
with how I've managed my time.
If you're interested in more strategies
on how to manage your time,
I actually have three whole online courses
themed around productivity and time management
that are hosted on Skillshare.
No, they're not sponsoring this video,
but if you hit the link in the video description,
there'll be a link that gives you a free trial to Skillshare
where you can check out my three classes on productivity.
One of them is about the fundamentals of productivity.
One of them is about the productivity equation
which is my personal mental model for productivity.
And the third one is one that I've released very recently
like last week around productivity for creators
and how we manage our time doing this
like creative high side hustle entrepreneur type stuff.
So check that out with the links in the video description.
And if you want more tips for time management
and general productivity,
you should check out my book review
and summary of the book "Make Time"
which is one of my favorite productivity books of all time.
And that will be linked right over there.
So thank you so much for watching.
Have a great day and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye, bye