My Simple Productivity System (for normal people)!

this is ali abdullah's second brain first let's start with capture so capture is about getting it outside of your brain social media the world and into some trusted single place where you can start to work with it what are the different ways that you you capture information okay and then i'd go through and be like yes yes yes no cut yeah yep yep yep cool that's we just went through all four steps of code what hey friends welcome back to the channel all jokes aside regular viewers know i have huge respect for tiago ali and thomas but their ultimate productivity systems can't be intimidating for the everyday person so in this video i'll be sharing a simple two-step process that'll get you 80 of a benefit with just 20 of the effort i also share a lot of real-world examples so you can see how i use this productivity workflow to manage a full-time job in tech while creating videos part time let's get started in a nutshell step one i literally capture all my ideas and tasks related to my work and my personal life into an app called todoist then when i sit down in front of a laptop where there's a keyboard buy step two organize all those ideas and tasks into their corresponding locations google workspace calendar notion let's quickly break this down step one capture if you clicked on this video you're probably familiar with david allen's famous quote your brain is for having ideas not holding them so you should do whatever you can to minimize the friction between point a having the idea in your head and point b writing that idea down i want to emphasize the app itself does not matter i use a free version of todoist because it has a very responsive widget i literally just click the plus icon on my home screen and i can input the id or task in less than 10 seconds and that's all i use todoist for as a counter example i've tried using thomas frank's notion template to capture tasks but the loading animation and having to fill in one or two property fields added too much friction and that decreased my motivation to write things down on to a simple example i'm on my way to work and a colleague messages me with a link to a document for me to review i can't really focus during the commute so i add review email copy and reply to jane in todoist and get back to browsing something actually important like memes another example as i'm about to leave for work i receive a message reminding me of a colleague's birthday on friday i immediately bring up todoist type in buy birthday present for michelle today and add another task bring present to office on friday after buying the present today i check out the task and thanks to todoist natural language processing feature it will remind me on friday to bring the present to the office for michelle pro tip you should always start your quick capture with an action verb this way you won't be left with something ambiguous like present not a present it's the present so on a typical day when i wake up my to-do is starts off with recurring tasks and reminders i've input previously then throughout the day new action items and ideas are added which brings us to step two organize the biggest pro tip here is from thiago forte the wrong way to organize information is by where you found it the right way is to organize by the location you will use that information jumping right into a simple example for some reason i'm super creative when i'm at the gym like working out at the gym not hanging out there for for no reason in between sets of 800 kilograms i would have ideas on new marketing campaigns to run at work advice i need for my manager and content ideas for youtube i capture all that in todoist finish the workout and when i'm back on my laptop i add the marketing campaign idea in our team's weekly meeting agenda email my manager with the problems i'm facing and include new video ideas in my content pipeline page in notion as you can see to make step 2 work well you first need to identify suitable locations then organized to those locations i like to do this step on a laptop rather than on my phone because i just type so much faster on a keyboard and navigation on the desktop app is usually much easier another example i'm in a car and i come across a video editing tutorial i save the link in todoist and when i get home i add it to the post production section of my video page in notion because i want to watch it right before i start editing where it is the most useful on to a more advanced example at the government tax bureau place i was told to apply for a tax refund in eight months by submitting three documents the moment i was told i opened up todoist added the date and the documents required when i got home i saved that information in a notion page and while that isn't wrong i'm probably going to forget about it in 8 months so in addition to this record i block off a time slot on my calendar for eight months later add the three documents i need to prepare beforehand and link the notion page within the description in this instance it's fine to keep a record within notion but my calendar is a place where that information will be used since my calendar basically tells me where to be and when funny story a friend of mine uh missed the deadline and lost out on quite a bit of tax refund so that's like a real life consequence not exactly funny story but i got to say i told you so so you know silver linings anyways at this point you can probably see how this process plays out throughout the day right capture capture capture organize capture capture capture organize capture capture nobody expects the spanish inquisition no but you get the point right pro tip it's fine to skip the calendar and leave tasks that are not time specific within todoist for example it doesn't matter when i take my probiotics every day it doesn't matter when i physically hand the present over to michelle as long as i do it before i leave the office the second those are done though i check them off and allow my brain to forget all about them the next example relates to inbox management because email plays such a huge role in our lives specifically how the snooze feature within gmail is so underutilized when you receive an email requiring you to take action more than a week from now for example you need to present in next month's team meeting you should snooze that email until the monday of that week when it is the most relevant in a way when the email arrives in your inbox that's like the capture step and the snooze feature is the organized to location step if that makes sense i have an entire video teaching you step by step how to achieve inbox zero so i'll link that down below in summary capture all ideas and tasks in as frictionless a way as possible then organize those in locations where that information will be used once you're comfortable with these two steps check out thiago forte's second brain video because capturing organized is actually part of his four-step process capture organized distill and express code see you on the next video in the meantime have a great one

Channel: Jeff Su

Views: 1,298,215

Keywords: My Simple Productivity System (for normal people), productivity system everyone can use, productivity for the everyday person, simple and effective productivity workflow, capture and organize your ideas and thoughts, minimal effort maximum productivity

Id: 7M6bIeVbCqA

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022