- This video is sponsored by Brilliant. Do, delay, delegate, and delete. These are the classic four
D's of time management, which have been described in countless different
productivity books and articles. And together, they help you
answer one big question, how should I deal with all the tasks that I'm supposed to do? Most of us have too many things to do. Our to-do lists are a mile long. We're stressed out, and half the time, we don't even know where to start. And this, this is the problem that a decision-making
framework can help you to solve. And the four D's form one
of those such frameworks. But today, I would like to
submit for your consideration, improved version of that framework. One that adds a fifth element, automate. Now, to be fair, you could consider this to be a subtype delegate, since you are technically
delegating to a robot. But I prefer to give it its
own equal position in the list, so that we can form our own
shiny, new productivity term, "The DDADD method." So let me level with
you here for a second. We productivity gurus, we live and die by the arbitrary acronyms
and methods that we coin. In fact, entire careers have been built off of this practice. GTD, The Pomodoro Technique, 80/20, they are the bedrock
upon which we're built. ♪ 6-Figure book deals ♪ - So let's make a deal, you and I. Will you begrudge me, my
shiny new productivity term, let me get my... ♪ 6-Figure book deals ♪ - And in return, I will
not share with everyone your secret, shameful Harry
Potter fan fiction, Derek. So let's get started and
let's start with, do. The domain of weddings, Shia LaBeouf, and extinct birds if
you say it twice fast. In the context of decision-making,
do, really means do now. So how do you know if you
should do something right now? Well, the answer is simple. Ask yourself these two questions. Number one, is the task at
hand both urgent and important? And number two, can you do
it in under two minutes? If the answer to at least one
of those questions is yes, then yes do it right now. So answering that first
question is kind of obvious. Your palace is on fire, it's 11:58 PM and the term
paper is due in two minutes, the president has been
kidnapped by ninjas. These are all tasks that would be found in the first quadrant of the
classic Eisenhower Matrix, which is used by project
managers to prioritize tasks based on their urgency
and on their importance. When a task falls into the
fire and ninjas quadrant, it should probably be done right now. The second question refers
to the 2-minute rule that David Allen describes in his book, "Getting Things Done". If you can do a task
in two minutes or less, then it as well, should be done right now. Now like the 20-second
rule that I've talked about in other videos, the two
minutes here is really just kind of an arbitrary marker. Yet another pithy term that
sticks well in the mind and helps business authors bag those... ♪ 6-Figure book deals ♪ - In general, even if it's
a little over two minutes, if you can do it quickly, do
it now, otherwise delay it. To remix a line from "Toy Story", delaying is really just
procrastinating with style. And the key to delaying
a task strategically instead of merely
procrastinating, is to first get very specific about the
details of your deferment. The what, the when, and the how. And then secondly, you
wanna get those details into an external system that you trust. So what I wanna do here,
is share two big tips for improving the way
you use your to-do lists. First, create an inbox for yourself. So an inbox is a place where
you can quickly dump tasks, wherever they come up
and wherever you are. It should be a low
friction way to get things into your system that you can
access at a moment's notice. Key point, low friction, here. Secondly, have a specific time
for processing that inbox. And this is the part that
most people tend to skip, which is why their to-do lists so often fall victim to entropy. And another term that
I'm gonna use in my... ♪ 6-figure book deals ♪ - Basically, entropy means chaos. When people don't process their inboxes, they become a mile long and eventually they become this chaotic mess
that people no longer trust. And then they start trusting their brains. When you take time every single day or at least each week
to process your inbox, your system remains
something that you can trust. Next up, we have automate,
which is objectively the coolest step since
it does involve robots. For millennia, humans have used tools to conquer their environment
and shape it to their will. Now, in most cases, these tools have simply made the work
that they were already doing, a little bit faster or
a little bit easier. But then, somewhere along the line, we started building these Rube
Goldberg-esque contractions that in some cases did
the work entirely for us. So the line between automation
and mere optimization gets pretty blurry pretty fast. Did the ox-drawn plow merely optimize work once done by hoeing, by humans. Or was the man driving that ox forward one of the world's first
automation engineers? And if so, what was his
stack overflow ranking? Anyway, wherever you place that line doesn't matter so much,
as long as you understand that you can use tools
to do things faster. And if you can approach a repeated process with a creative systems-based mindset, then you'll start to see
opportunities for automating, at least some of the pieces of it. One method for doing this
is called templatization. This involves basically boxing pieces of a project up into a master template which you can then copy
for each new project, instead of making each
of those little pieces over and over and over
again in a rogue process. For a very, very simple example here, let's look at just a slice of the editing process for this video. To stay organized when we make a video, we have folders for the
footage that we shoot. That I'm shooting right
now, for the project files, for music, for sound effects, for images, basically every different type of media. Now for each video, I could
manually create these folders, which I used to do, or I
could simply make a folder called Template, that already
contains all these folders. Then I can just duplicate that folder and rename it for every
new video that we make. Another method is called
a Process Automation, which basically means building a robot to do the job for you. - I made lots of robots in my day. - You might use robots to build cars, to cook a chicken by slapping it. - In terms of chicken integrity, this chicken's looking pretty good. We're up another degree Celsius, let's go! - Or to automate tedious
processes on your computer. And tools like Zapier,
Integromat, and IFTTT, are all great places to start exploring if you're interested in that last option. Though, they won't cook chickens for you. Of course, process automation has existed for quite a lot longer than robots have, just under a different
moniker, delegation. Now, honestly, if I wanna break into the area of business
writing where the real money is, then I should probably flesh this section out more than any of the others. I should also throw around terms like management theory, agile
framework, no bathroom breaks. After all, it is the managers who call the shots in most companies. Which means that it's the
managers who hire business authors to come speak at their corporate retreats and spout motivational
platitudes for $50,000. One can dream. Now, if you're watching this video, my guess is that you don't count yourself amongst the ranks of these people, and you don't know how to dress
for their cocktail parties. You may also think that
delegation is not a strategy for you, but that's probably not true. Let's consider for a moment the simplest and cheapest way to
delegate any task there is. Could you trick your little
brother into doing it, and will he take payment and
leftover Halloween candy? Even if he decides to
demand cold, hard cash, it still might be worth taking that deal. And to know for sure, you first need to understand
the value of your time. Like money, time is a resource. Whenever you choose to do something, you incur an opportunity cost. You are losing the
opportunity to do literally anything else that you could
have done with that time, you are giving something up. So one easy way to value
your time, to understand this trade-off, is to take
the amount that you make, and figure out your per hour rate. So for example, if you make $60,000 a year and you work an average
of 1800 hours a year, which is the average here in the US, then your per hour rate is roughly $33. Now, this is an incredibly
oversimplified way of valuing your time. There's a lot of other
factors we can include here. But for simplicity's sake,
we're doing it this way because it's at least a
good way to help yourself be more open to delegation
that would make sense. For instance, if your
per hour rate is $33, and you can pay someone
to mow your lawn for $30. Then doing so makes sense, unless you're somebody that
really likes mowing lawns. The bottom line is that you
should start at least thinking of your time as a valuable resource, one that is at least as
valuable as your money. And honestly, probably more. Do that, and you're gonna
start opening your mind up to more delegation opportunities. But you're also gonna realize that some of the tasks on your plate
just aren't worth your time, or the money that you would
spend delegating them. And these are the tasks that
you should simply delete. But how do you know whether
or not it's a good idea to snap a task out of
existence instead of doing it? Well, when faced with this question, I like to remind myself of
the any-benefit approach that Cal Newport discusses
in his book, "Deep Work". As he explains in the book, people will often add
new tools, new products, and especially new social
networks into their lives, if they provide literally any
benefit, no matter how small. And in doing so, these people fail to consider the
cost of these additions. In the case of social networks, it's more wasted time
scrolling through feeds, more cognitive switching penalties
that make you less productive. So Newport advocates rejecting
this any-benefit approach. Instead, scrutinizing any new product or social network or tool,
to determine its net benefit. And I think that we need to consider this when we're adding things
to our to-do lists as well. I know that I'm guilty of adding tasks. Really, nilly, tiny little things that I just think have to be done. And then when I scrutinize
these things later on, I often realized that I was wrong, they really didn't matter. What I try to do now is
consider the opportunity cost, like we just talked about in the delegation section, of each task. I ask myself, "What could I do instead?" And as it turns out, I usually
have quite a few options that are either more enjoyable,
or they're higher value. By thinking about these alternatives, it becomes a lot easier to just say no to all these little tiny tasks that really at the end of the day, don't matter. So that in a nutshell is the DDADD method. Now, if you are an agent of a big book publisher,
I will take one... ♪ 6-Figure book deal ♪ - Please, and thank you. For everyone else, here's a quick summary of the process reversed, so that it fits into a nice, neat flow chart. For any task that you are faced with, ask yourself, number one,
"Does it even need to be done?" Number two, "Do I need
to be the one to do it?" Number three, "Can I automate it?" And number four, "Do I need to do it now?" Out of the five steps in the DDADD method, perhaps the most rewarding and yet the hardest to
master is, automation. At its core, automation is
really just problem solving. Can you take a problem and creatively figure out how to solve it by building a system instead
of by doing it manually? Peter Parker, brilliant but lazy, right. And this is a fundamental
skill that is sought after in pretty much every industry today, it is often crucial in hiring decisions. And luckily it's also something that you can learn through practice. And one great resource for
learning this skill is Brilliant, which is a learning library that actually kills two birds with one stone. The library of more
than 60 in-depth courses teaches you math, science,
and computer science skills. Like how to build a search engine or how to figure out
probabilities, while also building your universally
applicable problem solving skills. This is because
Brilliant's entire approach to learning is based on
active problem solving. So when you're working
through their courses, you're not just passively learning like you often do in
school, you are doing. So, if you'd like to try
out Brilliant for yourself, you can actually start learning for free, by going over to
brilliant.org/thomasfrank, or by clicking the link in
the description down below. And if you're one of the first
200 people to use that link and sign up, you're also going to get 20% off your annual premium subscription. And you'll be helping
to support this channel by supporting the sponsors who support me. That was a lot of instances
of the word support, maybe I should automate that. But seriously, if you do
choose to support my sponsors, thank you so much, you're
really helping the channel out. But also, if you made it
to the end of this video, thank you for putting up
with all my stupid jokes and thank you for watching
my videos, seriously. I really appreciate you, hopefully you found something
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