My Simple Productivity System

so you know over the past decade i've become somewhat of a productivity guru and in that time i've realized that the true power of productivity comes through hacks like drinking all my water for the week in a two-minute period on monday and consolidating all my phone calls to a 15 minute window hey mom i'm really sorry to hear about grandpa but i gotta go and slow dripping my caffeine intake over the day using coffee enemas and in this video i want to walk you through my never-before-seen 18-step productivity system designed for maximum efficiency so you can make the most of your day it only takes three hours every morning so let's get started god damn it okay all right guys for real i do want to talk about productivity today specifically the productivity system i use to keep my life both my personal and my work life organized it's what i've been using since i started my youtube channel and i realized that with so many projects going on i needed a way to stay organized prioritize sort and track tasks catch track and write down my ideas schedule events and meetings stay on top of project deadlines as well as to store and organize my digital files so to do all this and to set up a productivity system for yourself you need four main tools a notebook a calendar a to-do list and a way to store and organize all of your files now this is something that i figured out through trial and error but it's also something that thomas frank has been teaching for a very long time and it wasn't until i took his course and learned a little bit about how he integrates everything into one cohesive system that i started to think about it in terms of a system and so had to thomas frank for all the amazing tips and advice he's given me over the years when it comes to productivity if you haven't checked out his channel i'll leave a link down in the description below you know there's a lot of people that swear and die by specific tools and apps and i found some that work for me that are really simple that aren't too bulky that give me everything i need and nothing i don't and so i'm going to show the things that work for me but to be honest it really doesn't matter if you use notion if you use evernote or apple nodes it doesn't matter as much as you figure out a system a way to organize all of this stuff to get all those benefits that i just described to figure out what works for you to figure out a system that doesn't slow you down that allows you to just get right to work and so that's the main thing i want you to get out of this yes these tools might work for you but if not i'm sure you can find others that work just as well let's get into it all right so let's start with note taking i use apple notes to write and organize all my business ideas youtube videos course content newsletters and social media captions so i don't ever remember choosing apple notes in a way apple nodes kind of chose me just because of how simple and easy it was i used to use text edit i've tried evernote for one reason or another these just weren't working for me and so apple notes became my go-to place for doing all those things that i just mentioned and so i'm going to dive in right now and actually show you my notes how it's organized and structured in here so let's pop in as you can see i've got it organized into a few different folders and i've numbered it just so then they're in the order in which i use them most often and so notes up top at the very top this is like just the main notes folder that you can't get rid of and so i use this as just my catch off or a lot of quick notes things that i might need off the cuff if say i'm on a phone call or if it just doesn't fit tightly into any one of these other folders i've created and so you know i've got notes like right here this is a birthday cake that i ordered for nat's birthday and just gave me all the information that i needed quick notes about maybe hiring people um just figuring out what the hell is going on in our life with our visas and all that and so that's fun and so that's what i use this folder for the videos folder is my most used folder this one is what i use for every youtube video that i make and so what i typically do is i'll name and these are literally ideas that i have here about potential videos that i might make in the future but i usually title it with the title of what i think the video might be as you can see with this video here that i just recently released the youtube channel i ended up calling it the real truth about chasing your dreams and at some point along in the process i come up with alternate titles and so that's a little peek at my process there i go i'm like a perfectionist if you might not know already and so i'll just go through and write down every possible title option that would best suit this video that won't be clickbait that will be accurate to the video i'm trying to describe but also interesting enough that somebody might want to click on it and so that takes a lot of work and then the rest of the video i flesh out below that and so this is where all of my videos are stored where the ideas are first captured on my phone and then fleshed out further on the on the computer i've got a folder specifically for my newsletters so i have a newsletter that i release every week if you want to sign up for that and this is where this would go i think this is the newsletter that's going out this week we'll find out once i get to my calendar we can check that out slow growth is my slow growth it's a business that i started last year and so these are all business ideas maybe notes for meetings that i've got coming up i'm actually going to be blurring out some of these here because i'm realizing now that these are actually business ideas and so you know like i could show you some of the video ideas i have coming up because i don't think they're crazy top secret but you know when it comes to business ideas i'm gonna keep that under wraps but that's where i might jot down any of those ideas uh social this is uh social content um i also have checklists so checklists are something that it's not a to-do list it's something that i will use more than one time and so uh you know at the top here it's a pre-interview checklist back before covet and when i did actual interviews i would have this checklist handy just that way whenever i did an interview with somebody i can copy and paste this at the top of my questions but this is a checklist to make sure that i don't i'm not a dummy and i remember all the things that i need to do from checking my shutter the iso these are all just the camera settings because sometimes you can forget to say match the color on both cameras and then the color temperature is a little bit off and it ends up becoming a pain in the ass when you're editing it down the road and then also tips for guests cursing okay interview will be conversational it's okay if you need to stop and start over and so on and so forth i find that having something like this accessible in my notes easy to go i can just copy and paste and use it many many times in the future finally we have my personal that's just like personal important information that i need to remember travel information all that stuff and then i have an archive folder as well and so when i know i do not need something anymore a specific note but there may be a time that i want to search for it or or access that information again in the future say it's a video that's been published i'm like all right i don't want that cluttering up my videos folder even though i do have 282 video ideas here clearly i don't always archive them but by just throwing them down in that archive folder that helps me to stay organized and helps to make sure that some of these folders don't get cluttered and i can find exactly what i need and so as you can see here simplicity is absolutely key but the simplicity comes through the fact that i set up that folder structure to begin with that i created that archive folder that i can throw things down when i no longer need them and also using an app that can sync across my phone as well as my desktop most of my ideas come to me when i'm on the road when i'm traveling right before i get to sleep and so being able to jot them down without pulling out a notebook or without going to my desktop and opening that up you want to make it as easy as possible because whether you're a business owner or you've got a full-time job ideas often drive our progress and what we create and so we need those ideas before we can bring them to life and having a system to take them down at any time is really important again really simple but it works for me let's get to the next one so i use google calendar to schedule events and meetings to keep track of project deadlines to plan out my content and to schedule all the things in my personal life alright so let's dive in here and i will show you my google calendar specifically what the next 30 days of my life look like and how i'm organizing everything you'll probably notice two things right from the get-go one there's not a whole lot going on i try to keep my calendar as empty and clean as possible and two it's color-coded and there are multiple sub-calendars that help me to organize everything in the right place and to really look at this and get a bird's eye view of what my month looks like like so let's dive in all right so first i'll just explain these different calendars that i use so this is my main calendar and this is what i use for both my personal and work tasks these are specific things that are happening in my life this all hands meeting this is a meeting that i have every week with my company it's a really big company guys um we're expanding rapidly it's just two people i just have one employee and that's it we do hire freelancers but this is just a way for my brother who's my employee and myself to get on the same page every week with everything that we're doing and so that's recurring we just changed it now to be starting on wednesday wednesday's going forward other meetings pop right into the calendar as you know my one habit this year is my reading habit and so i've got these little reminders start book seven start book eight start book nine this is that so then i have an extra reminder in my environment to to keep me committed to my goal of reading two books every month for the entire year and if you're wondering it's actually going pretty good i am just about to finish book number six and so i'm just about right on on track i was a little bit behind there but i i yeah i just picked up this new book that i have been just flying through and so um yeah just one other one little helpful tipperoo what is my life integrations here that's um whenever i do um work with a brand for a youtube video those it's important for me to make sure that i don't forget and lose track of that and so as you can see this video happens to be brought to you by squarespace i'm going to talk about them in a minute my newsletters again i mentioned that this is a piece of content here and so i have for every newsletter i do i've got it planned out exactly what i'm going to creating slow growth these are primarily my deadlines for courses and other stuff that i'm making for slow growth digital products and and whatnot and so i've got an animation scope deadline that is a deadline for me to put together all of the animations and illustrations that i need for our next course uh the yellow right here is just the youtube videos my simple productivity system that's literally the one we're making right now and then videos down here now i mentioned this in my last video when i talked about anxiety that i have been slowing down quite a bit and so what often happens is i will have a video like this say how to become a minimalist and i'm like i'm getting busy and i'll just move it like these are not like and then obviously i would i would throw that one somewhere and then i would just like i can't do that can't do that and then i would just throw them to the side and then usually have a big collection of things i didn't do because i'm maybe a little bit too ambitious with the stuff that i think i'm going to be able to do know what's a fixed deadline and what's a soft deadline and when you can move something and when you probably shouldn't i think it's really hard to find that balance and it's something that i'm still working on and i'm not perfect at and so know that if you find yourself um not getting as much done as you thought you were going to that's totally normal now i'm forgetting where all this stuff was going i think that goes here okay and again you can see that there's not a lot of stuff scheduled and that's because i like to spend most of my time shooting and making videos and now that could be youtube videos social content or course content um but that's just that's what i love to do the most and so if you see days that have nothing here that's that's what i'm doing i'm working on videos and so i don't have to schedule that into my day i'll show you on my to-do list how i track those but the fact that i have these big pillars in terms of my simple productivity system i know those are my deadlines for my videos that's when i have to finish them and so that helps me to keep track to know what i'm working on and then my to-do list is where i will then break that down into smaller more manageable pieces if you remember i did do a video about tracking every single minute of my day for three months and so i got really really into my calendar and literally scheduling everything from the morning until the night and that was a fun experiment and also it's great if you're trying to create an alibi if you need one that's a great way to do it is just keep a really thorough calendar but i found that it was just distracting me from my work at this point now i find it not to be as helpful it's not making me any happier it's not making me any more productive i gotta work on my sound effects so before we go any further before we go to my to-do list big shocker here this video is brought to you by my friends at squarespace i've been partnering with squarespace all year because i use them for almost every website i've created over the past few years it's so easy to get started it's really helpful for building an audience and building a brand for yourself and if you're trying to build a website from scratch a hundred percent i'd recommend squarespace so there are three main reasons that i use squarespace first their website builder is super intuitive and easy to use you can select a range of beautiful templates plug in your info and publish your site in no time i can easily add all my calls to action my social media accounts as well as my email signup form and i can buy domains and set up my g suite email accounts directly with squarespace perhaps the best thing about using squarespace is that i don't have to worry about getting things set up the techno aspects getting my email account synced and as a creative that's so important because you just want to get to work do the work that you love and share it with the world and squarespace helps you do just that go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.comella to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain alright so let's hop back in and i'm going to show you my to-do list you've seen this before in past videos that i've done but i want to show you a little bit more some of the additional features and also some of the mindsets that i use to make sure that i get things done so let's hop in all right so great thing about to do yes it's simple and it also allows me to just see the next few days i mean i don't really want to see any more than that when it comes to the specific tasks that i'm doing and so being able to to see what i did yesterday and then have a plan for the next four days has been really helpful for me to maintain my focus one thing that i do that i've been doing for so long but maybe didn't even realize it is um i put everything in the form of an action i think i got this from david allen's getting things done system creating an action item for everything so film productivity video getting specific about what that action is shoot thumbnail for productivity video double check charges on credit card i don't know if that's the best action item double check but it helps to motivate me to actually take that action and i try to keep my tasks to three to five items no more when you start to get to 10 15 items in a day you're really losing track of what's really important that's not to say i don't have those days i certainly do um and often times it's just one day filled up with all of those 10 to 15 tasks that i've been putting off forever as things can tend to build up with a to-do list you know one other piece of advice again might have been david allen might have been somebody else that i got this from but making sure that you break things down into as many possible pieces as you can you know and it really depends upon how many times you've done a specific task before and so for me making a youtube video i can break that down into write film edit upload and that's all i really need to do but if you yourself have never made a youtube video before you might have to break this down into 10 or 15 different tasks because it is so complicated and it's so easy to overlook the important steps required to make a youtube video and so brainstorm write video create shot lists breaking down each scene that you need to shoot in your video i think those are some helpful things especially if a task or project is particularly complicated you'll need to break it down even further now if i can't get something done then i just move it along to the next day if i can get something done i will check it off now one additional aspect of this to-do list which which i've never shown before down here are additional lists and so i might have a list for my groceries here uh and this is where they'll add up over the course of a week although we just went grocery shopping so i don't need that a reading list anybody that i respect recommends a book or if an author i love writes a new book i pop it right down here and i put it on my list and that helps to make sure that i always have something to go to especially with a year like this year when i really want to build that reading habit i want to always have something in my back pocket that i could read future stuff uh these are all the things that usually were up here and then i'm like i just don't have time for this right now so i'll throw it down here write four founder features that's just a social post for slow growth setting up 401ks uh just little notes and reminders to myself and over here things these are like digital tools and physical products that have been recommended to me i think this is maybe like just my minimalist practice at work here if i hear about something great i don't instantly just go run out and buy it i'll add it to my things list and then i'll see if i need it in the future you know this right here the tim moore slim grinder that's a grinder that somebody recommended to me that was uh he was on my email newsletter he showed me a message and said hey matt you're using a shitty grinder use a better grinder i looked into it i'm like ah yeah but i have this grinder and it like it works fine i don't think i want it but i don't want to forget because in the future if i do need a grinder or if i change my mind and decide i'm going to get it then i know exactly where to find it right down here in my things list and so that's pretty much my to-do list and that's how i keep all my tasks organized for the week moving along and last but not least we have my file management system so how i organize all of my documents and files and photos and media and all that fun stuff and so let's dive in here i use google drive and i use something called backup and sync and so that's how i have a google folder google drive folder right here with all my sub folders that help me to store everything right there on my desktop but it's also available and immediately backed up onto the cloud and so i've got organized into business documents here um and then just documents documents so these are just like my personal documents from apar apartment leases literally every apartment that i've ever lived at i've stored all the leases right here in case i ever need them and sometimes surprisingly you do end up needing those in the future backup of all my apple notes let's see green card documents health insurance all that documentation house hunt parking tickets oh my god yeah every year since 2015 everything has its place finances these are more like personal finance related from the yearly donations we make every year to investments in 401ks medical taxes utilities and vehicles so basically like when i buy a car or any major purchase a camera it usually comes with some form of documentation i'm not talking the user manual but like the the registration all that stuff the proof of purchase i'll take photos of that and store everything digitally because i just don't want all that paperwork lying around and so that's where i store all that media i actually don't use this that much if there's any folder in here that i really don't use it's this one because i tend to store everything on my hard drives because my video files are so freaking big but this is every once in a while i pop in here to store stuff and this folder here is probably the most useful and something that you might be able to implement on your own apart from all these other folders that you might want to build to organize all your files i i like having a this week folder and so these are all the things that i might share in a particular week usually on social media but sometimes with you know if i'm just sharing it with family and friends and so this is from a video that i did on anxiety and so i have like a few different options like this is my um this is my instagram story this is an instagram story with text like i didn't know if i wanted it with or without text so i have both thrown in there this is the actual post um these are a bunch of photos that and i took in the blue mountains from a recent trip and so i was just kind of sharing these whenever i felt like it uh just for fun and so there's still a bunch that i haven't shared in there so i'm just keeping it in this week folder um this is a this is embarrassing um i don't know if it is embarrassing it's actually kind of amazing these three sneeze files this is not something that i shared on social yet i probably will though i found this old video of my dad sneezing and just my dad is the loudest sneezer in the world you might have a sneezer like this in your family and so he sneezed let me see here we go this is the sneeze he's doing it on purpose so that was uh that was the sneeze that i found just obnoxious right like nobody needs to sneeze that loud he's doing it on purpose as you heard my brothers say in that video and so then i decided um i'm going to turn this into a beat and so uh that's what i did this past weekend this is the b i'll i'll play it for you guys because it's quite a work of art i'm actually really proud of it [Music] here we go yeah so that's the beat uh there it's that's pretty good i had a productive weekend um i just got to get gambino to to send me his bars he needed a few you know little number on it and uh pop that in there share with you guys later um anyway here's some other like photos and but you get the idea basically when i have this folder i can find these files and i can share them to social or i can send them to my family in our group chat and that's how i you know just have this rolling folder and then when i'm done with it i simply delete everything boom but i'm not done with it yet and that's how i organize my digital files and so that right there is my productivity system that's how i organize my life i hope this helped you guys out a bit if i have any advice for you it would be to start small to set up those systems in advance make sure that you create those folders and that structure uh and adapt and change as your life changes i think that's the one big problem that most of us get into is that we think that our lives are always going to be the same or we'll always name the same kind of folders and the same tools that we used five years ago will continue to work today and sometimes that changes you know when it came to my digital storage using google drive that was something that i just started using really a year or two ago so don't worry if these things change but if something's working if it's not getting in your way then i don't see a reason for you to change it and so get started good luck with your productivity goals and i'll see you guys next time [Music] ah [Music]

Channel: Matt D'Avella

Views: 520,798

Rating: 4.9582758 out of 5

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Id: BtiQvhQF8IA

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021