- 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
