- A great man once said
that time is an illusion, lunchtime, doubly so, but despite the apparently elusory nature of these two things, time can certainly seem like
something that's tangible and like something that is constantly slipping through our fingers, not least of which because of the fact that we tend to waste so much of it. Yes, it seems that most of us are perpetually rocked by at
least a little bit of guilt over the amount of time we
spend scrolling through Netflix, or browsing the dankest of memes, or just refreshing Instagram to see how many likes we got on that latest post in the last 30 seconds. Though, it also bears mentioning the amount of time we tend to waste on things that don't seem
to produce as much guilt, things seem justified like
taking on too many commitments, and having an overly busy schedule where we're stretched thin, stressed out, and producing low
quality work as a result. As Francis Crick once said, a busy life is a waste of life. What I wanna do with this video is take a broad view of time management and give you five useful tips for managing your time more effectively whether you already know you're wasting it because you're a couch potato, or whether you, like me to be honest, have simply diluted yourself into thinking you're already managing it pretty well because of how busy you are. Let's get into it. (upbeat electronic music) The first tip that I've
got for your guys today is to try using a time tracking tool. I recently did a video on
apps that force you to work, which listed several different
options in this category so I'm not gonna restate them all, but what I do wanna do here is give you a little bit of a deeper look at one that I'm gonna recommend you at least give a try and that is Toggle. Unlike automatic time
trackers like Rescue Time that just log the time
you spend in each app or program on your computer and then give you a report at the end of the week, Toggle is a manual time
tracker which means you actually go into their dashboard and record the time you spend on each task throughout the day. The reason that I recommend at least giving this tool a try is that tracking your time manually
makes you think harder about it and you start to realize more accurately how you spend your time on a daily basis and that let's you make
changes going forward. Within Toggle's dashboard, you're gonna find two different modes, manual mode and timer mode. With manual mode, you can record the amount of time you spent on each task after the fact, but what I'm gonna recommend
you use instead is timer mode. This is a real-time method where you hit a start and stop button so you can be timing your work
as you actually do it. This has a couple of key benefits. First, it's more accurate since you are tracking time in real-time. You don't have to go back after the fact and try to remember how many hours and minutes you put into
each task, and secondly, and more importantly, you'll be less likely to
waste time or switch tasks because you'll subconsciously want your time log to accurately
reflect what you actually did. Long-term manual time tracking like eating a bowl of nails in the
morning is not for everyone. You might find that after
you do it for a week or two, you kinda wanna move on and just not worry about it
anymore and that's fine, but I do think that doing
it for a week or two as an experiment is very useful because it gives you a more accurate picture of how you're using your time and it'll make you think a little bit more deliberately about how you're
gonna use it in the future. (upbeat electronic music) Tip number two is to get
clear on your priorities and to do this very deliberately, maybe even sit down and
do it on a piece of paper or write it in your journal because when you aren't clear on your priorities and what they represent on your schedule, it can be very easy to take
on too many commitments and to become that overly busy person. I think prioritizing can be a
topic for a video all its own, but I do wanna give you
a couple of questions that I ask myself whenever I'm trying to nail down what my personal priorities are and whether a new commitment is worth it. Number one, to ask a very in
the details type of question. What does my schedule look
like without this on it? Answering this means taking a hard look at my current list of commitments, my schedule, how much free time I have, and whether or not I'd be willing to give something up to take
on this new commitment or not. In addition to that question, I also like to ask a more birds
eye view question which is, when I'm on my death bed,
will I regret not doing this? This is the question that actually got me to finally start
taking singing lessons. This could be a question that would also be useful for getting over your fear to start doing things, but as a time management question, it can also be very useful because it helps you to prioritize things from a bird's eye view, from
a life values perspective. If you wanna be really clear on your priorities and on your values
and on what you're doing, it may also be useful to have a written record of what
you're doing at the moment and to update it quite frequently. I actually do this. If you go over to my website,
collegeinfogeek.com/now, you can see what I'm doing and what my priorities at
least should be ideally. (upbeat electronic music) Tip number three is to learn how to batch your tasks effectively, and batching basically just means taking a bunch of your tasks,
bundling them together, and knocking them all out in one session. When you do this, you free up lots of time for more intense projects later on, or if you're me, probably
playing more Beat Saber, but more importantly, batching lets you take
advantage of economies of scale. When you decide to do a bunch
of tasks in one big batch, you eliminate a lot of the setup costs that you would have to deal with if you did them all individually. In terms of tasks that make
good candidates for batching, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest number one, any and all errands. If it's a low energy task and you have to leave the house to do it, go ahead and take care of all those in one big batch in one afternoon. Number two, tasks that
require a low mental energy and that are done at home
so cleaning things up, organizing papers, fighting that ninja that's hiding in your closet, clearing out your email
box, all that kind of stuff. Number three, any kind of small tasks that surround your main work. For an example here, every single time that
I have to make a video, I need to create a project over in Notion with a sponsor tag and a publishing date, and I also have to create a
research document in Evernote. These are little tasks that could be done individually when
I start the project, or I could come up with
10 video topics in a row and do all of these
things in one big batch. One little tidbit before we move on, if you're already using Todoist
or a similar task manager, you may wanna start using
their labels feature as it can be very helpful
for batching since across all of your projects, you can apply labels
that correspond to say your energy levels like
low or medium or high, or the location at which
a task has to be performed like home or work or an errand, and then when you have time for a batch, you can look at the label that's most relevant to you right now and
see what there is to be done. (upbeat electronic music) Next up, we have to talk about how to get better at saying no. This is an integral
skill in time management, especially for people who are overly busy. Those of us who are
perpetually overcommitted seem to be the kind of people who just can't say no to new opportunities, whether there are people coming to us because they want something
from us, they want our help, or whether it's something that just seems really cool that we want to do. Either way, we have to learn how to say no if we wanna be able to prioritize the things that are actually important and give them the time that they deserve. How exactly do you get to the
point where you can say no? There are definitely tactics, there are ways to
gracefully let people down, there are ways to sort of push off things that you might wanna do for yourself, but I think the first thing you have to do is just become mentally
okay with saying no and this can be hard. A lot of times saying no feels like letting an opportunity slip
through your fingers forever like you're only gonna get one shot because this opportunity
only comes once in a lifetime like having the ability to seamlessly integrate Eminem lyrics
into a video script, which I didn't say no to. Remember that every time you
say yes to an opportunity, you are incurring an opportunity cost because the act of saying yes to one thing means you are implicitly
saying no to something else. You have a limited amount of
time, energy, and attention and you can't devote it to everything. This can be a useful way
to reframe your thinking. Remember that every
single decision you make incurs an opportunity cost. That brings us to the question of how to properly let people
down if you have to say no because there is a graceful way to do it and then there is an
abrasive way to do it. You could just yell no and why would you ever ask me to do that in their face, but you could also do it a
little bit more tactfully and here's an example of
how I personally do it. One type of opportunity that I have deliberately chosen to say no to for the most part is public speaking. This is something that I do like doing. It definitely can advance my career, but I've realized that if I travel, if I speak, if I take time to write talks, I can't make as many videos and I can't do the other things
that are valuable to me. Nine times out of 10, when somebody reaches out to me wanting me to go speak at their
school or their event, I have to say no. My priorities dictate it, but I try to say it in a way that respects the fact that
they even reached out to me that says that I'm
honored that they did so and that tells them I have
other commitments right now. I'm not saying no because
I don't want to do it. I do, but I have other priorities
that I have to respect. You could also take it one step further by trying to anticipate their next step and then trying to help out with that. If somebody comes to
you with an opportunity and you have to say no, it's likely that they're gonna have to go to somebody else or look
elsewhere for a solution since you can't provide it. If you have anything that
you could do quickly, again, that doesn't interfere with your priorities or take too much time, then anticipating that need of
theirs and trying to fill it is going to help them
along in their process, but it's also going to make
this interaction a positive one even though you had to say no. To go back to my previous example, if I get a speaking request
and I have to say no to it, I'm going to do so gracefully, I'm going to inform them as to why, but I might also follow that up with a recommendation that
they contact my friend Chris Bailey over to Life Productivity because I happen to know that
he does take speaking gigs, he's really good at it, and his area of expertise
is pretty similar to mine. Even though I had to say no, I might've been able to
provide them with a solution. This practice, the practice of anticipating the needs of the other person when you say no or anticipating the next
step in the conversation is a very, very useful life skill to build so don't think of it just
as a time management tip, think of it as a life tip in general. (upbeat electronic music) We have arrived at what is possibly my personal favorite time management tip which is to use the pressure
created by deadlines to your advantage. A few years ago, I had to learn the hard way
just how useful deadlines are and how terrible for your productivity a lack of them can be. Back in my junior year of college
during the first semester, I was incredibly busy. I had so many commitments. I was in RA, I had a second part-time job, I had classes, I had clubs. Basically I had very little time to work on my side project, which was my site College Info Geek. The second semester of
that year rolls around and I have the bright idea to quit basically everything except my classes and devote the rest of my free
time to working on the blog and I thought that this would give me so much more time and
energy to get articles done that I would basically triple
my productivity overnight, but instead, I spent most of that semester playing Marvel vs. Capcom Three, getting very few articles written, and generally wasting a bunch of time. That experience taught
me a very valuable lesson which is that we need
structure, we need deadlines, we need a little bit of a
framework to operate within. Otherwise, we just don't do anything. We tend to take the path
of least resistance. There may be some rare souls out there who are so passionate about every single element of what they do that they need absolutely no structure,
no deadlines, no nothing. They just get up and work like
a mad man every single day, but I'm not one of those people. I love the work I do, but I don't love every
single element of it and I'm prone to procrastination
unless I have a deadline. It's like the ex-Navy Seal Jocko Willink always likes to say, discipline equals freedom. When you have a little bit of discipline, when you have a little bit of structure, you're able to operate within that, there are fewer decisions to make, and you have a little bit of time pressure with which to get your work done. That actually gives you
more free time overall. If you work for yourself or your student who has a lot of free time, a lot of kind of flexibility
with your homework, I would encourage you
to set some deadlines. Maybe make some mini goals within your task management system. Give yourself a little
bit of time pressure. Speaking of deadlines, one unspoken deadline that
I do wanna remind you about is the unknown amount of time before somebody else out there goes and grabs the domain name that you are eventually going to want for yourself. That is why as soon as you possibly can, I would suggest you go over to Hover and get your domain name. If you've been following
College Info Geek for awhile, especially some of our career content, you'll know that one of the most important things you can do for advancing your career
and making connections is building an online
presence for yourself. One of the most integral
parts of doing that is securing a professional
domain name for yourself. This allows you to
create a personal website where you can have a portfolio and also link out to your
other social profiles. I was unfortunately born
just a little bit too late to get the domain that
I really would've wanted which would've been thomasfrank.com, but I was at least early
enough to get thomasjfrank.com which is just about as good and which I used to create a portfolio website that I share with recruiters and freelance clients in college. If you don't wanna miss out on your chance to get the best possible professional domain name
for your online presence, then head over to Hover and get it today. Hover is the best place on the internet to get yourself a domain name, not least of which because they have over 400 domain extensions to choose from ranging from .com and
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email address like mine, which is thomas@collegeinfogeek.com, and you can also use their connect feature to easily hook that domain
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description down below, you can get 10% off of
your first domain purchase so head on over there, get your domain, and show your support for this channel. Big thanks to Hover for
sponsoring this video and being a big supporter
of the work that I do here. Of course guys, thank you
as always for watching. If you enjoyed this video
and you found it useful, then definitely hit that like button, and you could also
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