How to Build Your Ultimate Productivity System

Arshian
Arshian
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How to Build Your Ultimate Productivity System

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Transcript
00:00In this video we are talking about how to build a productivity system and the first question to
00:03start with is why do you in fact need a productivity system? And really the main reason is so that we
00:08can do the stuff that we want to do, we can do things that are meaningful to us in an efficient
00:11way without wasting our time, and so that we're less stressed out doing it because then we don't
00:15have to rely on our brain to do things that it's not designed to do. And we can almost think of
00:18this as like a bit of a Venn diagram where we've got the brain and we've got our system. And broadly
00:22we can categorize tasks into one of three things. So type one tasks are things that our brain itself
00:27does best. This is things like creativity and enjoyment and relaxing and living in the present
00:32moment and all that fun stuff, connecting with other people, all of this stuff totally cool if
00:36our brain does the thing. Then we've got type two types of thing which is stuff that like we often
00:40use our brain for but that our productivity system or some kind of system can probably do a little
00:45bit more efficiently. For example things like keeping on top of tasks, keeping on top of
00:49calendars, keeping on top of emails, having to use our brain to remember all of that stuff is
00:53really taxing and quite stressful especially if you have a lot of stuff to be doing. And then
00:56thirdly there is the type three stuff, the stuff that we definitely should be using some kind of
01:00system for. This generally involves kind of remembering information that is not directly
01:05connected to the things we actually care about. So for example memorizing phone numbers is a bit
01:09of a waste of time. In a way memorizing a lot of people's birthdays is a bit of a waste of time.
01:13You can just outsource that to a system like a calendar. And so really the idea of a productivity
01:16system is well productivity is using our time intentionally and effectively and so the point
01:20of having a system for it is so that our brain doesn't have to do so much work. So anyway in
01:24this video we're going to talk about kind of three different layers of a productivity system
01:28that you can choose to build if you feel that it helps you with your life. It certainly helps with
01:31mine and we're going to split that into layer one which is Ron, layer two which is Hermione and layer
01:36three which is Dumbledore. So the Ron layer i.e layer one of the system is all about keeping your
01:42life in order and there are really four things, four different components that you need in a
01:46productivity system in my humble opinion to kind of get to a place where your life is reasonably
01:50in order. The first one is a calendar. Now it is amazing how many people I know who don't live
01:58their lives based on a calendar and who are trying to remember in their own heads all of the
02:02information for like events that they need to attend. A friend invites you for a birthday party
02:05two weeks from now. Oh it's cool, it's fine, I won't write it down, I will just try and remember.
02:08Oh I've got to have dinner with my mum next week. It's fine I'm just gonna remember. Like our brain
02:12is so bad at remembering these things and one of the quotes that I always come back to is from David
02:16Allen who is one of the world's biggest productivity gurus who says that your brain is for
02:20having ideas not for storing them. And one of the principles of productivity that I always come back
02:24to and I have done over the last five years is that my brain is a dumbass. I want my brain to
02:28not have to remember things that it doesn't need to. So feel free to use a physical calendar if you
02:32really want to but basically everyone in the world these days uses some kind of digital calendar,
02:36usually some kind of app on your phone. Apple calendar is good, Google calendar is good, there
02:40are a bunch of different third-party alternatives. The one I personally use is Fantastical. This is
02:44for example what my Fantastical looks like. Earlier today, breakfast with Osama and Shireen
02:48at Dishoom, same page meeting with Angus, table read for this video, podcast Q&A for the podcast,
02:54video filming, video filming and then I'm going to Cambridge for some talks this evening. I have
02:58an orthodontist appointment tomorrow, I've got this whole retreat thing that I'm going to in the
03:01evening and basically for the last several years I have been running my life based on my calendar.
03:06And this is amazing, this like takes an enormous amount of stress off my shoulders because if
03:09something is not in the calendar then it doesn't exist. Like as soon as a friend says to me, hey
03:13do you want to do this thing on this date? I look at my calendar and be like let me have a look,
03:16yep and I'll just add it there, there and then so that I'm not trying to remember like what was
03:20that thing that like Catherine invite me to etc etc. So a calendar is really good for remembering
03:24stuff that you need to do but it's also really good for actively intentionally blocking out time
03:28for the things that you actually want to do. So for example for me I know that every morning I
03:32want to block out three hours to work on my book and so those are blocked out in my calendar and
03:35then I know that oh okay cool when I get to the morning at nine o'clock this is the thing that
03:39I'm doing. I block out times for exercise, I block out times for sports event, for social events, Friday
03:43nights I want to host a dinner therefore I'll block that time out in my calendar. And then the third
03:46and final really good reason to use a calendar is that you can then use automatic scheduling apps
03:50like Calendly or TinyCal or SavvyCal or any of these others and what that does is it generates
03:54a link and that link connects to your calendar and then if you want to arrange a meeting with
03:58someone or a zoom call with someone you met on the internet or even a hangout with friends
04:01you could if you wanted to save the whole back and forth of scheduling especially if it's with
04:05email especially if it's a work thing by just sending them a Calendly link and then they'd be
04:08able to kind of book a time in your calendar. Now I use this a lot for kind of booking interviews for
04:12book research and all this kind of stuff and it's just super super helpful and it saves a lot of
04:15time and again means that my own brain doesn't have to kind of do the work in arranging all these
04:21things. All right the next thing every productivity system needs at the run level is some kind of
04:24system for email management. Most of us use something like gmail that's totally fine you can
04:28use an app like apple mail. I use an app called superhuman which is very good but it's expensive
04:32you have to pay for it but it's it's pretty solid. Now there's an approach to email that I really
04:35like from my friend Tiago Forte who is again productivity expert and it's called one touch to
04:40inbox zero and basically the idea behind this method is that every email touches your inbox
04:44only once. If it's something that requires a calendar event then it goes into your calendar
04:48and then you archive the email. If it's a to-do if it's something that needs action it goes into
04:52your task manager more on that in a minute and then you archive the email. If it's information
04:56that you need to reference at some point you put it into a note-taking app and if it's an article
05:00or something that you might want to read it goes into your read it later app and we'll talk much
05:03more about those further in the video. There's a few general tips that apply to emails as well
05:06which again are completely game-changing for productivity if you haven't done them already.
05:09The first one is to just unsubscribe from all these random emails like amazon or like sales
05:13or like shops and like all of this stuff is pretty unnecessary. We don't want to treat our inbox like
05:18kind of this place where any kind of marketer from any kind of company can just spam stuff into it.
05:22One thing that you can actually do and this is what I do is that I've created a smart filter in
05:26gmail which searches the content of every email for the word unsubscribe. Now if the word unsubscribe
05:31is in an email it is probably not an important email because no one no real person is going to
05:36email you with the word unsubscribe in their thing whereas if you're getting like a marketing
05:40communication or a newsletter or whatever and it has the word unsubscribe in it you can just
05:43automatically make it skip your inbox so it doesn't kind of clog up the inbox. The other
05:46thing you should do is that ideally only have one place to deal with all your email so for example
05:50when I was at university I forwarded all my university email to my personal gmail and also
05:54all my personal gmail to my personal gmail because gmail has just way better features than whatever
05:58Hermes app that Cambridge University was using but really the main point is that we want to avoid
06:02using our inbox our email inbox as a place to find articles to read or even worse using our email
06:08inbox as a to-do list which brings us on to component number three of a decent productivity
06:12system and that is to have some kind of to-do list. Now again David Allen's advice from getting
06:16things done comes in here your brain is for having ideas not for holding them and if you don't write
06:20something down in a to-do list your brain is very unlikely to remember the thing. You could do this
06:24on pen and paper if you really want to I sometimes do like my daily planner I use my essentially
06:29productivity part-time productivity notebook and in that I ask myself one question which is what is
06:33the most important thing I need to do today that's my daily highlight and every every day I try and
06:37fill the end to be like hey today the single most important thing I want to do is x and then I have
06:41a might-do list this is just stuff that I might do later in the day and I like calling it a might-do
06:45list because it just takes a little bit of the pressure off me and it means I don't have to
06:48stress too much if I don't get all those things done so that tends to be what I do on a kind of
06:52day-by-day basis when I figure out what am I doing for the day but the actual app that I use to track
06:56all of the other stuff is Todoist I've tried a bunch of different apps over the years so essentially
07:00what I do is that if I need to add a task to my to-do list then usually I'll input it on my phone
07:05or on my macbook if I happen to be on my macbook and you'll see on my iphone that I've literally
07:09got Todoist as like one of the primary things in my dock so if I do think of anything at all
07:14anytime a task pops into my mind I think okay this is not going to happen until I write it down
07:18and I just open up to-do list and I write down whatever the task is so for example I know right
07:22now I need to find bow tie from Cambridge flat cool now that's written down now I will get to
07:29it at some point similarly I use this for shopping lists I use it for any thank you emails I need to
07:33send as soon as anything pops into mind it just goes straight into the to-do list app either on
07:37my phone or on my macbook and then whenever I've got some time where I feel like you know what I'm
07:41going to batch go through my to-do list because I've got half an hour and nothing better to do
07:44then I'll just go through and just bang bang bang I'll delete the ones that are no longer relevant
07:48like oh should I get all plant smoothies probably maybe not screw it doesn't need to go I'll just
07:52take that off or delete it but for something I actually need to do it's great because then I can
07:56batch do these things like I need to send a bunch of thank you emails and so I've just
07:59batched them all into todoist knowing that at some point I'll get around to sending all these
08:03emails in one go something I like to do is sort of got this someday maybe list for like you know
08:07work stuff someday maybe list like personal stuff these are things I'd like to do at some point
08:11rollerblading archery hunting glamping mountain biking treehouse glamping retreat all these
08:15different things like when I have an idea for something cool I just chuck it into the someday
08:19maybe list this is again a tip from David Allen and that means that I know at some point when it
08:23comes to planning my next holiday I'll just be able to look at that and think you know what
08:26the idea of kite surfing sounds pretty cool let me google and figure out where I can potentially go
08:29kite surfing now at this point the mistake that the vast majority of people seem to make with
08:33their to-do lists at least from all the people that I've coached in productivity is actually
08:36not having 100% coverage so for example if you have a to-do list and it only covers 90% of your
08:42things rather than 100% you're going to get into one of these problems I can't remember what I've
08:46forgotten so like the point of the to-do list is so that you don't forget things but if 10% of
08:50things are in your brain you won't know what that 10% is and so you're always going to be stressed
08:54thinking oh I know my to-do list has most of the things I need to do but it doesn't have all the
08:58things I need to do therefore I still need to remember my brain to do stuff and then it just
09:01adds this sort of low low level tension and stress to every single thing that we do in life anyway
09:07final thing in our Ron level of productivity system is some kind of file management system
09:11again this is like super basic stuff but again there are so many people who have literally coached
09:15in productivity who don't have a decent file management system generally what you want is
09:19some kind of cloud storage now the one that I use even though I'm an apple fanboy for absolutely
09:23everything I still use google drive as my cloud storage system of choice I've got my personal
09:28google drive and I've got the business google drive and I've got the folders on my mac so for
09:32example I can look in my drive I can look at all of my business stuff all of my med school stuff
09:36let's look at pre-clinical medicine let's look at first year these are all the notes that I had
09:40in first year across all my different subjects let's look at home that's physiology essays
09:44examples documents all of this stuff it is all in my google drive and I you know my whole life is
09:50basically on google drive photos memories files all of the things on google drive so that if I
09:56ever lose my computer if my hard disk ever goes if it ever gets stolen if I want to upgrade computers
10:00it's so easy I know every single thing is on google drive and these days like searching functions and
10:05these things are so good that if I know that I need to find a certain file I'll just search my
10:09google drive for it because I know it's probably in there somewhere all right so that was the wrong
10:13layer of the productivity system for essential life management the four components that in my
10:17humble opinion every single person needs to survive in this world that we live in so that
10:21your brain is not super super stressed out trying to remember all these random details the next
10:25layer up of the productivity system is an optional extra and this is for people that consume a lot
10:29of books honestly don't you two read and this is where the hermione level of the productivity system
10:34comes in and basically the idea here is that it's a layer above it's like additional modules that you
10:39can add to your basic productivity system if you want if you consume a lot of media media meaning
10:44books or audiobooks or podcasts or videos or anything like that that you might want to remember
10:49later this layer of the productivity system is about taking notes it's about capturing information
10:54that resonates with us from the stuff that we consume and again this is for people who you know
10:58if you've had that feeling where you read all these things or you listen to all these things and
11:01you have all these insights but you don't write them down and then like two months later you've
11:04forgotten what you read in that book that potentially changed your life that's the point
11:08of this level of the productivity system and here we have another four modules of the system so the
11:12first one is the kindle app yes there are other ways to read there's apple books and stuff but
11:16like to be honest i've tested them all and i found the kindle app to be by far the best one
11:20you don't even need to have a physical kindle although that's one of the most life-changing
11:23products i do recommend yeah the kindle app is absolutely sick i tend to read most things on
11:27ebook format rather than physical book format but it's not just reading that i can do in the kindle
11:31app it is also highlighting and highlighting the kindle app is an absolute breeze and what i can
11:34do is that once i've read a book i can always look at my highlights in the kindle notebook and
11:38then if i need to revisit things that i learned from a book or a quote from a paranormal romance
11:42book that i particularly enjoyed i can just open up my highlights and i can see everything that's
11:46previously resonated with me all right so that was the kindle app next we have a read it later
11:50app now the one that i've been using for the last several years is called instapaper it's free
11:55and essentially the point of instapaper is that anytime you're reading something or you want to
11:58read an article on the internet if you don't want to read it there and then on your phone or on your
12:02browser you can just share it into something like instapaper and then it will just show up on your
12:07list and now again when i have a spare moment if i'm commuting if i'm on a tube or whatever i'll
12:11just open up instapaper usually on my phone and i'll just flick through some of the articles in
12:15instapaper and i'll be like oh okay cool this one looks interesting i'm improving ourselves to death
12:19this is a bit of a critique about self-help and i can look through that article i can highlight
12:22stuff as well it's all very handy and it's just a great way of separating the reading of articles
12:27from coming across the articles because often i find that you know if i'm on the toilet for like
12:31three minutes and i'm scrolling through twitter and i come across an interesting article if i read
12:34it there and then it might take 10 minutes and then i'm on the toilet for three hours and that's
12:38not very good or if i'm in the middle of something and someone recommends an article i know i want to
12:41read it at some point but i know i don't want to read it there and then i'll just send it straight
12:45to instapaper and trust that at some point i will get around to reading that article and again this
12:49separation from separation of things like if i'm trying to focus on something that i genuinely care
12:53about but then i get i get derailed by an article recommendation and go down this wikipedia rabbit
12:57holes trying to figure out all these conspiracy theories that ends up actually taking time away
13:01from the thing that i actually care about and kind of stopping me from kind of being productive and
13:05being intentional with how i'm spending my time and because time is our most valuable non-renewable
13:08resource it's the only thing we can't make more of it's like it always felt a bit like oh i know
13:13i've carved out this time to work on this thing that's important to me but i've just been stolen
13:18away by being distracted by this article instapaper or something like that completely solves that
13:22problem now when it comes to actually finding articles and interesting things to read that
13:26will level up your life and like things you actually care about people always ask me like
13:29how do you find stuff to read and for me it's because i subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters
13:33and one of the main ones that i read every single day is called morning brew who are very kindly
13:36sponsoring this video now morning brew is a completely free daily email newsletter that
13:40lands in your inbox every morning or in your read it later app if you've set up a forwarding rule
13:44which is what i've done basically it gets you up to speed on what's happening in the world of tech
13:48and finance and business and if you care about those three things like i do then it's just a
13:51fantastic newsletter and it's also completely free so you might as well sign up it takes most people
13:55around five minutes to go through it and catch up to date with the news usually i skim through it
13:58in about two and a half minutes flat while i'm waiting for my morning coffee to brew and if
14:01there's any interesting articles from that i'll send those articles directly to my read it later
14:05app as well and then usually read them later on in the day on the toilet and that means every day
14:09i'm up to date on these things that i care about like tech and finance and business and a lot of
14:12those topics then generate interesting content ideas that i can talk about in the podcast or
14:15in youtube videos or anything else or just generally keeping up to date with interesting
14:19things in the world it's also great because it gives you interesting and in-depth coverage around
14:22weird things like elon musk how he's financing his twitter buy or like the recent crypto crash
14:26which is massively affected by a crypto portfolio but i've gotten the information from morning brew
14:30because i trust them as a legit non-fake news source and all it is is take out a few minutes
14:35out of my day to read these interesting articles rather than be keeping up to date with the whole
14:3824 hours news cycle so yeah if you're interested in tech finance business any of that kind of stuff
14:42then you might as well subscribe to this newsletter it is completely free they don't
14:45charge a single penny for it completely free check check out the link in the video description
14:48and it'll help support the channel as well so thank you so much morning brew for sponsoring
14:51this video and for making my personal life much better all right component three of the hamani
14:55layer is an app called readwise i'll put an affiliate link down below they're not sponsoring
14:58this video but if you click the link you'll get an extra two month trial rather than just a one
15:02month trial and i'll get a bit of a kickback if you sign up i've been recommending readwise for
15:05the last like three years now readwise is incredible it's like this little hub that
15:09takes in details like it takes in your kindle highlights and your instapaper highlights and a
15:13few other sources and it puts them all in one place and it means you can then export those
15:18highlights to apps like notion or roam more on those in layer 3 and it's really handy because
15:22now all of this stuff gets automated anytime i see a passage in kindle or an instapaper that
15:26resonates with me where i think oh i want to save this passage all i have to do is highlight it and
15:31i trust i just trust that readwise will behind the scenes sort it all out again before readwise
15:35existed before we had this kind of thing what we'd have to do is if you found a passage that
15:38resonated with you you'd have to write it down you have to highlight you'd have to store it
15:41somewhere you have to figure out where you're trying to store it it becomes a real faff and
15:44again coming back to a point what is the point of a productivity system people always ask it's
15:48to get shit off of your own brain like i now don't need to remember all these things because the
15:52system is remembering it for me and then i trust that the system will resurface it as and when i
15:57need to access those highlights again and then finally the fourth component of this sort of
16:01system is some sort of capture app for notes now again i've tried a bunch of systems over the years
16:05but actually the one that i've come back to most often is actually apple notes and essentially any
16:08time i need to remember something for example if i'm taking a note while i'm on the toilet or if
16:13i'm on the train and listening to an audiobook and i want to take notes on something i'll just
16:16open up apple notes and i'll write it down and i'll trust that if i need to resurface that thing
16:20sometime further down the line it will always be in my apple notes and it will always be something
16:24that i could potentially search for at this point honestly i've got hundreds and hundreds and
16:27hundreds of notes in my apple notes and then i just trust that they're there like i know i don't
16:30need to worry about doing stuff with them as soon as they come in i don't need to worry about an
16:34elaborate system for this what i care about is having the minimum viable level of organization
16:38the minimum viable level of systems and structure to again reduce my own strain reduce my own stress
16:44you can often ask like oh how do you seem to not burn out how do you manage like honestly like
16:47having a decent system is a massive cure for burnout because you just trust the system you
16:51trust the system to do stuff you don't have to again have that low level of anxiety running in
16:55your actual brain all right so that was the hermione layer of the productivity system and
16:58now the final layer that if you want to layer on top of that you can if you really want to
17:03is the dumbledore layer which relates to a concept called building a second brain you might have
17:07heard me talk about building a second brain before it is a book it is a system it's a course
17:10written and done by my friend tiago forte and it's like a pretty game-changing productivity
17:14system because the idea like level one the ron the ron layer level whatever you want to call it
17:19was about just being able to organize our life and kind of get by level two was about capturing
17:24insights from all the stuff that we read and consume and level three this dumbledore level
17:28is all about making connections and in a way using our productivity system for creativity
17:32rather than just for storage and in a way if you can actually build your own second brain this
17:36ends up acting as a thought partner for you i've been using this system since like mid 2019 now
17:41it's been three years and i've found so many ways in which particularly for writing my book but also
17:45for creating content and for writing newsletters and for doing podcasts the information i've
17:49captured into my second brain using an app called rome it's the one i use these days although i
17:52might switch to obsidian more on that later but capturing all this information into an app called
17:56rome research means that it just sort of resurfaces and if you want to find out more about this
17:59dumbledore level then check out this video over here which is my book club episode all about
18:03breaking down the code component of the building a second brain system and that will give you a
18:07step-by-step guide on how to apply it in your own life so thank you so much for watching
18:10check out this video over here and i'll see you in the next one bye