- We have talked a lot
about habits on this channel from the formation of good study habits to building a morning routine,
to even building the habit of waking up early in the morning. But there's a theme with a
lot of what we've talked about around the topic of habits and it's that we've talked
mostly about daily habits, things that you should
do every single day. The thing is though, there are
definitely still other things you should be doing on
a somewhat regular basis but that aren't really
feasibly done on a daily basis so what are those things? Well, that's what I wanna
cover in this week's video in which we'll be going over eight things that you should be doing
at least once a week. Now to be clear, everything on this list doesn't have to be done
exactly once a week. You don't need to be
tracking it on a calendar but I think once a week
is a good rough estimate to start with because all
these things are very good to be doing on at least a regular basis. And the first thing that
I wanna start with here is something that will
improve your social life and make your friends and the people that care
about you happier as well and it's to text or call somebody that you haven't talked to in
a while at least once a week. A lot of the people that we've
spent time with in the past or even family members just don't hear from us as much anymore because we kinda fall into our established routines and patterns and we talk to the same people
almost every single day. And I think this is part of the reason why a lot of people feel so lonely or they don't feel as
acknowledged as they once were back when we lived in big communities. So if you can build the habit of at least trying to think of somebody you haven't talked to in quite a while and sending them something, it could be even just a nonsense text to acknowledge them and let them know you're thinking about them, they're gonna be a lot happier and they're gonna remember
that you care about them. I think this is something
that's very important to do. Weekly habit number two is
to do an all-out workout. Something that leaves you
sweating at the end of it and sore the next day. Now for people who are
really active like me and like some people out there who are probably even more active than me, this might mean every single workout but a lot of people who
are quote unquote "active" kinda go to the gym and
they go through the motions. And if you do this, this might
keep you healthy to a degree but it won't make you progress, it won't make you actually
push the boundaries of your physical fitness. So at least once a week, push yourself, do something that's
really, really challenging and that leaves you sore. And remember that this doesn't have to be just sprinting on the treadmill or going to the gym and lifting weights until your arms wanna fall off,
this could be something fun. For me, going and doing an all-out workout might mean going to the arcade and playing Dance Dance
Revolution on doubles mode or it might mean going
to the rock climbing gym and trying a route that I haven't been
able to do in the past. And even if I'm not able
to complete that route, even if I had to throw myself at it again and again and again,
I'm gonna make progress, I'm gonna come away sore and
I'm gonna be able to do it a little bit better the
next time I come in. Habit number three is to go and review your productivity
system, your task manager, your calendar, your note-taking system, anything of the sort and
clear up any entropy. Now entropy is a term in science that generally means chaos
or descent into chaos as things spread out and
become more complicated. And I love using this term
for productivity systems because they seem to trend
towards the exact same state. As due dates pile up, as
things get entered in, as things get kinda messy,
it can become disorganized and the problem is it eventually becomes a poor representation of what actually needs
to be done in your life. And the poorer that representation gets, the less your mind trusts it and the more you start
relying on your own memory which of course is faulty. So at least once a week, possibly on the review day
at the beginning of the week, go through your systems and make sure everything is cleaned up, make sure you get rid of that entropy and bring things back
into a state of order, that way you are trusting your system and you're actually using it. Habit number four is to do a quick financial health
check-up at least once a week. Now you don't have to go look at your entire financial
life every single week, you don't have to look at
every single mutual fund, bank statement, everything like that but it's at least smart to
log into your bank accounts, make sure the balance is
what you think it should be, log into your credit cards, make sure you don't see
any transactions on there that you don't recognize and just generally check
over the state of things. And at least if you live in the U.S. there are some tools out there that can make this quicker and easier. The one I use is called Personal Capital but there's one out there called Mint that's very, very similar and these basically
bring in your bank feeds, your investment fund feeds,
your credit card feeds, and they will just basically
give you a snapshot of your entire financial life, all the transactions that have been made and the balances of each account. Now you might think this
process is a little bit boring but if you're like me, if
you're not the kind of person who does hardcore budgeting,
you're not the kind of person who records every transaction
when you buy something, you at least need to stay on
top of your financial health, you need to know where you
are on a regular basis. Of course, if you are the kind of person who wants to learn how to keep a budget or you wanna learn how to
record your transactions, my friend Martin and I actually did a whole podcast episode on budgeting and you can click the link
in the description down below to listen to that later on
if that's interesting to you. Habit number five is to
plan and lead some sort of high-density fun activity
with another person. And this is on the list
because a lot of us tend to get into ruts with our friends and these aren't depressive
ruts, there aren't sad ruts, but we tend to get into
patterns of behavior where we do sort of the same kind of fun things all the time. Maybe we play video games together, maybe we go to the movies together. And this is all well and good, this is interaction with friends but it's not high-density fun, it's not the kind of fun that
actually builds memories. And the thing is that when we get older, a lot of people slide
into patterns of behavior that causes them to fail to plan things, it causes them to not be the
leader, not take initiative to plan really cool things. So I'm gonna make the suggestion
that you become the leader, you become the kind of person
who plans these things. And if you're doing this once a week or around the same kind of time interval, then you're gonna be making
a regular improvement in the lives of your friends
and in your own life as well. Habit number six is to create
something at least once a week that's not done out of obligation. And the reason I put that qualify on there is that a lot of students or
people that have creative jobs are creating things on
a weekly or daily basis but a lot of times it's
because they were assigned or that other people are
expecting them to do that. And while that kind of work can still be creatively fulfilling, it's not the same as just
exploring something on your own, doing something purely
for you own enjoyment. So in my case, creating YouTube videos doesn't really fit the criteria here. Yes, I do get fulfillment out of it, I really enjoy doing it
but I am doing it as my job and at this point, I've been
doing it for long enough that there's an audience
expectation for me to do it. So I wanna have something
else on the side as well. And for me, at least right
now, that's playing guitar almost every night, I make
up something new on my guitar and that is really fulfilling to me that actually improves my life. So whether or not you have a job that's creative or artistic, or whether or not you're
on a program in your school that lets you do things that are creative, have something on the
side at least once a week that kinda feeds that curiosity, that lets you explore on
your own purely just for you. Habit number seven is to
do something once a week completely alone. Now a lot of you might think that you already do a lot of things alone, in that case this tip may not be for you but for a lot of people, they spend most their
time around other people whether it'd be roommates or a
significant other or friends, and when you do this, you don't get a whole lot
of time to just think, to be with your own thoughts or to explore something purely because only you want to explore it. When you're constantly spending time with a significant other or with friends, there's a lot of compromise involved. But if you take at least
a little bit of time every single week to do something purely because you wanna do it alone, then you continue to be your own person, you continue to generate your own thoughts and you generate your own stories that you can then take to
your interactions with friends or with a girlfriend or a
boyfriend and tell to them. Finally, habit number eight is to improve some existing process in your
life at least once a week even if it is by the tiniest of margins. And I've put this idea on the list because I'm an ardent
believer in the principle that there is always a
better way to do something. This is one of the driving principles that I try to live by and honestly, this isn't a once a week thing for me, I'm always on the lookout
for things that I can improve that I do every single day because I think there's
always some little tweak or change to my processes that I can make that will make things more
efficient or make them easier or even make them more fun to do. For instance, one of the
big regular tasks in my life is editing these videos or at least working with
an editor to get them done, and part of the planning
process for doing an edit is creating a list of
what's called B-roll, basically everything that goes on top of this talking head layer, all the pictures, all the animations, all this stock footage,
all that kind of stuff. And for quite a while, I've
used this really powerful tool called Notion to create a spreadsheet that helps us to filter and
organize all this B-roll which helps us to batch
the creation of it, batch the gathering of it, and do all kinds of really cool stuff. And for probably 10 or 20 weeks, we used the exact same setup to do this. But then last week I had an idea, I actually added a new check box to our B-roll spreadsheet called Premiere. And the reason I did this is that we do about half
of our B-roll editing in a program called Adobe Premiere which is for video editing and we do the other half in a
program called After Effects which is where we do all of the motion graphics and animations. And before I added this check box, the only way we would sort the B-roll list was by timestamps. So when it came time to
actually bring all the B-roll into the video and place it, we would have to go line by
line down that spreadsheet and make a decision for every single item, does this go on Premiere or
does this go on After Effects? But by adding the check box, we were able to create a filter so we could only show the
items that go on Premiere or only show the items
that go into After Effects. So that basically just
removed the decision for every single piece of B-roll. Now admittedly, this is
a pretty small change to our workflow but it's a
change that removes mental work, that removes a decision every single time we wanna place a picture or a piece of footage or an animation, and that happens a lot. Additionally, that is
just one small change over many that have
been made over the years and as with anything, if you
make small changes over time, eventually they accumulate and the results can be pretty big. And actually that's been one
of the driving principles ever since I started this YouTube channel about four years ago. Every single time I make a video, I'm looking for at least one tiny element in my workflow or in the
way that I light things or in the way that I speak to this camera that I can improve so over time
the entire product improves. So start trying to be a
little bit more observant in the way that you
work or even in the way that you commute to work or in the things that you do at home like the way that you
cook or do your laundry because if you can start making small improvements in any of these areas, you're gonna start seeing greater results. To give you just one more example, if you've been watching my
channel for any length of time, you probably know that
I haven't done a video sitting on this set in this
chair for quite a while. And if I show you some footage from the last time I
did a video like this, you'll probably notice that the lighting and the color grading
doesn't look nearly as good. And that's because since then, I've worked hard every single week to make sure I'm lighting my
shots just a little bit better and doing my color grading just
a little bit better as well and the improvements at least to my eyes have been substantial. And if you're somebody who also
wants to make videos someday or if you have your own YouTube channel, then you probably know how
important lighting is as well and how difficult it can be. Now for me, there's been a lot of trial and error and experimentation and of course I am still not perfect at it especially when it comes to lighting shots that aren't done in this room. But luckily there are experts out there who can help you learn these
skills much more quickly such as Jordy Vandeput
who has an entire curse on lighting for video over on Skillshare. Throughout his course,
you learn the fundamentals of how to properly light a shot, how to deal with background lighting, how to deal with colors and lighting and if you are a video creator, you might wanna check out
some of his other courses such as this course on how to edit video with Adobe Premiere Pro
which is the software that I actually use to edit these videos. And beyond that, you're also gonna find over 25,000 courses in
Skillshare's library all built from the ground
up to help creatives enhance their skills,
boost their curiosity, and improve their career
prospects as well. Within that library,
you're gonna find courses on graphic design, on music production, on business and marketing,
on storytelling, and all their courses have
a focus on active learning, featuring projects that you can sink your
teeth into immediately and a discussion section
where you can get feedback and ask questions with both the teacher and other students as well. And the best part is, if you
are one of the first 500 people to click the link in the
description down below and sign up, you're gonna get two free unlimited months of learning on Skillshare. So click that link, sign
up and start learning today because you can learn a lot in two months. Big thanks to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video and as always, huge thanks
to you guys for watching. Hopefully you found this video useful and if you did, definitely give it a like to support this channel. You can also subscribe right there if you wanna get new videos every single week on this channel or click right over there to
get a free copy of my book on how to earn better grades. You can also follow me on
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or smashing your face into your phone screen, that works too. Thanks for watching and I will
see you in next week's video.
