Stop Wasting Time - 5 Time Management Skills to Master

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Stop Wasting Time - 5 Time Management Skills to Master

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Transcript
00:00Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
00:01If you're new here, my name is Ali.
00:02I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur
00:04and I'm the author of Feel Good Productivity,
00:06which is a book about how to be productive
00:07in a way that actually feels good.
00:08And this is the third video in a three part video series
00:11about how to manage your time outside of your nine to five.
00:14In video number one, we talked about the five mindsets
00:17that it's useful to have when it comes to managing your time.
00:19And in video number two,
00:20we talked about the five time drains,
00:22things that if you can eliminate from your life,
00:23you're gonna free up gallons and gallons of more time.
00:25And in this final video in the series,
00:27we're gonna be talking about the five key skills
00:29that it's really useful to develop
00:31or to work on developing
00:32that will massively improve your time management abilities
00:34and therefore just free up your time
00:36and your energy and your attention
00:37to focus on what's truly important in your life.
00:39Skill number one is the skill of prioritization.
00:42Now, one of the most common things I hear from people
00:44who have nine to fives, whether they're jobs
00:45or whether they're students,
00:46is I don't have time to do X.
00:48And X might be take care of my health,
00:50spend time with my family,
00:51start a YouTube channel, start my business.
00:53It might be any of those things,
00:54but there's this common narrative of I don't have the time.
00:56And one of the key breakthroughs
00:57in my own ability to manage my time
00:59came when I stopped using the phrase, I don't have time.
01:02In fact, I think no one should ever use the phrase,
01:04I don't have time,
01:04because it's never that we don't have the time.
01:06It's always that the thing that we are trying to do
01:08is not enough of a priority.
01:09Like you might right now feel like,
01:11oh, you know, I really wanna learn Japanese,
01:12but I don't have the time.
01:13Okay, but if someone put a gun to your head
01:15and your family's head and said,
01:15you had to make the time to study Japanese for an hour a day,
01:18you'd find the time, right?
01:19You know, it's just a matter of priorities.
01:21It's not that we don't have the time,
01:22it's just that it's not yet a priority.
01:24And that is actually totally okay.
01:25I'm not saying, in fact,
01:26the whole point of the series
01:27is not so you can squeeze more stuff into your time,
01:29it's that you can do more of the things
01:30that are truly important to you.
01:31So it's really all about prioritization.
01:33What are the things that are actually meaningful
01:35for you to do outside of your nine to five,
01:36and even within your nine to five?
01:37And therefore, how do you make the time to do those things?
01:39All right, so let's talk about some practical ways
01:41for getting better at the skill of prioritization.
01:43Firstly, it's really, really helpful to have some goals.
01:45When you have goals,
01:46then you kind of have a sense of where you wanna go
01:48in your work and also outside of your work.
01:49And therefore, your priorities
01:51and the things that you're spending your time on
01:53are sort of reverse engineered based on what the goals are.
01:55If, for example, like me,
01:56your goal is to be financially free
01:58and to have, I don't know,
01:59a few thousand dollars a month in passive income,
02:00that's a clear goal.
02:02And it leads to a very different set of priorities
02:04compared to if your goal is to, I don't know,
02:06learn Japanese and become fluent within two years.
02:08That leads to a very different set of activities.
02:09So knowing what you actually want to do
02:11and turning it into goals
02:13is ridiculously important for this.
02:14And we actually have a whole three part video series
02:16on the channel, it'll be linked down below.
02:17It's all about how to figure out what you actually want
02:19and turn it into tangible goals.
02:21But once you've got the goals,
02:22how do you then prioritize the actions
02:24that are gonna help you get to those goals?
02:25And that is where a few different methods come in.
02:27The first one, and I think the easiest one to implement
02:29is something that I call the daily adventure.
02:31At the start of every day, I will ask myself,
02:33what is today's adventure going to be?
02:35Now, basically what I'm asking myself here is,
02:36today, what is the single most important thing
02:39that I wanna get done?
02:40And sometimes this is work related,
02:41but often it's life related.
02:42And I phrase it as an adventure
02:43because the whole philosophy of feel-good productivity
02:45is that we're more productive and more effective
02:46and more creative and less stressed
02:47when we can find a way to make our work feel good.
02:49And just framing it as an adventure
02:51encourages us to find the fun
02:52in the thing that we're trying to do.
02:54So for example, back when I had a real nine to five job,
02:56my daily adventure in those contexts would have been,
02:58cool, I'm gonna go to work during the day,
02:59but then I'm gonna spend two hours
03:01editing my YouTube video in the evening.
03:03And then once I figured out what the adventure is,
03:04the next step is to just put a time block
03:06for that adventure in the calendar.
03:08Again, I'm always amazed when I do talks and stuff
03:10and people ask me about time management,
03:12how few people consistently put time blocks
03:14for stuff that's important to them in their calendar.
03:16The other tool I find really helpful for prioritization
03:18is in the morning, when I ask myself,
03:20what's my daily adventure?
03:21I also ask myself, what side quests
03:23am I gonna work on today?
03:24And usually I like to have like one or two,
03:26usually in health or relationships
03:27because my adventure is usually work related.
03:28And so a side quest might be, for example,
03:30to call my grandma or to go to the gym
03:32or to get my 10,000 steps in.
03:33And again, I will do my best wherever possible
03:35to time block that in the calendar
03:36because if it's not on the calendar,
03:37it's not gonna get done.
03:38And then the third thing that you can really do
03:40to boost your skill of prioritization
03:41is to conduct a weekly review.
03:43Now, basically this involves spending 20 minutes every week,
03:46reflecting on how your previous week went
03:48and then creating a set of priorities for the next week.
03:50Now, if you're interested,
03:51I actually run completely free weekly review workshops
03:53every single week.
03:54It's on Sundays at like 4 p.m. UK time these days.
03:56I'll put a link down below if you wanna join.
03:57We usually have a few hundred people there
03:59and I take you through a facilitated weekly review.
04:01It's good for me
04:02because then I actually do my weekly review
04:03and people who attend the sessions love it as well
04:05because it makes them do their weekly reviews.
04:07But that'll be linked down below
04:08if you wanna check it out.
04:08Now, when it comes to the skill
04:09of time management and productivity,
04:10there is so much more I could say.
04:12I've literally written a whole book about it
04:13that is sort of outside the scope of this video.
04:15But if you're interested in finding out more,
04:16you should definitely check out my classes
04:18over on Skillshare
04:19who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
04:20Skillshare is the largest online learning community
04:23with thousands of classes led by industry professionals
04:26across film and media and editing and productivity
04:28and freelance and design and so much more.
04:30And I've personally been teaching on Skillshare since 2019.
04:33And I've got 10 classes that are currently on Skillshare,
04:35three of which are themed around the idea of productivity.
04:37One of them is about the pilot, the plane and the engineer.
04:39One of them is about the tools of productivity.
04:41And one of them is about productivity
04:43specifically for creators.
04:44So if you've got a nine to five, for example,
04:45but you also wanna start a creative side hustle on the side,
04:48then you should definitely check out those classes.
04:49But with all these different classes
04:50and so much choice over in Skillshare,
04:52it can sometimes be difficult knowing where to start,
04:54which is why there are these various learning paths.
04:56So when it comes to productivity,
04:57I've got my own productivity learning path,
04:59which you can just sort of take the classes in order
05:01and they will teach you the principles of productivity
05:02in an order that makes sense.
05:03And I've also got a really good learning path
05:05all about growing a creative business,
05:07which has six classes and over seven hours of content in it.
05:09It focuses on brainstorming your business,
05:11building a strategy, defining your brand and audience
05:13and marketing yourself online.
05:14It's super comprehensive
05:15and I wish I'd had something like this
05:17when I first got started with my own creative journey
05:19because I was just making up a lot of stuff as I went along
05:21and making so many mistakes along the way.
05:22If you're interested in checking out
05:23any of my classes on productivity
05:25or anything else that Skillshare has to offer,
05:26then do please check out the link in the video description.
05:28And the first 500 people to use that link
05:30will get a completely free one month trial to Skillshare.
05:32And during that time,
05:33you can watch any or all of these classes
05:35to your heart's content.
05:36So thank you so much Skillshare for sponsoring this video
05:38and let's get back to it.
05:39All right, skill number two to get way better at
05:40if you wanna maximise your ability to manage your time
05:42is time blocking.
05:43We alluded to this in skill number one,
05:44basically just being able to put blocks of time
05:47in your calendar for everything that's important to you.
05:49This is a ridiculously valuable skill.
05:51People who work jobs that rely on a calendar
05:53often will develop the skill in their day job,
05:54but even then we often tend to use calendar blocking
05:57just within our work and not within our life.
05:58But actually the skill of just creating blocks of time
06:00in our calendar for what's important to us
06:02is a ridiculously valuable skill for anything we do,
06:04whether it's in our health or our relationships
06:06or even in our relaxation time.
06:07Now there's three different levels
06:08when it comes to time blocking.
06:09Level one is when you have a calendar
06:10and you just put blocks of time for like doctor's appointments
06:13or remember to file the taxes,
06:15you know, little things like that.
06:16Hopefully everyone watching this video
06:17is at least at level one
06:18because if you're trying to remember
06:19that stuff in your head,
06:21your brain is not a place to store information like that.
06:23It's a place to have creative insights
06:24and thoughts and feelings and all of that fun stuff,
06:27not a place to store having to remember
06:29when your doctor's appointment is.
06:31But then level two of calendar blocking
06:32is when you graduate from just blocking
06:34specific appointments in your calendar
06:35to now blocking everything in your calendar
06:37on a day-to-day basis.
06:38So for example, when I had a nine to five
06:40and still to this day,
06:41because calendar blocking is a ridiculously useful skill,
06:43I would block out all of the times I had to go to work.
06:45I would block out the commute to work
06:46because then I know what time I need to wake up.
06:48I would block out the commute back from work
06:49because then I know what time I'm gonna get home.
06:51I would block out the time
06:52where I intend to be editing a video.
06:53I'd block out the time
06:54where I was intending to go to the gym,
06:56either before or after work.
06:57And anytime I'd get an invitation
06:58for anything even vaguely social related,
07:00it would go in the calendar.
07:01If I was planning to visit my mom on the weekend,
07:03it would be in the calendar
07:04because now when I look at my calendar,
07:05I have a map of what my time looks like.
07:07And then I can make sure
07:08that the stuff I'm actually doing
07:09with that time is intentional.
07:10Now, whenever I mentioned time blocking,
07:12there are always people that think,
07:13well, this sounds like a terrible way to live life
07:15because where's the freedom, where's the joy?
07:17And I would say that it actually increases freedom
07:19and increases joy
07:20because firstly, when you time block everything,
07:22it helps you know with certainty that, okay,
07:24at least I've made time for the most important things
07:26like my health, my work, and my relationships.
07:28And it also means you then see
07:29where are the free blocks of time
07:30that you can actually intentionally relax
07:32and use for joy and use for other hobbies
07:34or things that you're interested in.
07:35And if we don't do the time blocking stuff,
07:37it becomes very easy to just default
07:39to scrolling TikTok or scrolling Instagram.
07:40And most people wouldn't say that that's a recipe
07:42for a relaxing life or a life well-lived.
07:44So I'm massively bullish on this.
07:45Again, you know, anything in my videos,
07:48this is not life advice.
07:49Like I'm not trying to tell you what to do.
07:50I'm just saying what's worked for me
07:51and what other people have found useful.
07:53So think of it as an experiment.
07:54Experiment with time blocking for a week or two or three
07:56and see how it feels for you.
07:57See how it feels to block out a time in your calendar
07:59to read or to play the guitar or to learn Japanese
08:01or to call your grandma or whatever the thing might be
08:03and see if it doesn't improve your abilities
08:05of time management.
08:06It massively works for me.
08:06It works for most people who I coach through the process.
08:08And I think it can work for you as well.
08:10There is in fact a third level of time blocking
08:12and that is something called the ideal week.
08:13That's also a really cool time management tactic.
08:15We're not gonna talk about it in this video
08:16because that I've explained in detail
08:18in my Trident method video for managing my time.
08:20That'll be linked up there and down there
08:21if you wanna check it out.
08:22All righty, skill number three
08:23that's really important to develop
08:24if we wanna get better at time management
08:25is the skill of focus.
08:27Now, when I poll my audience in surveys
08:29and in talks that I give in real life,
08:30one of the most common things that people struggle with
08:32is focus.
08:33Just actually sitting down and doing the thing
08:36and not getting distracted from the phone
08:38or the notifications or social media or anything else.
08:40And like with almost everything in life,
08:41focus is a skill that can be honed and learned and developed.
08:44And sometimes I'll do Q and A's and stuff
08:46and people will be asking me like,
08:47have you got any tips for focusing?
08:48I feel like I really struggle to focus.
08:49I will often ask them,
08:50okay, you feel like you're struggling
08:52with the skill of focus.
08:53What have you tried to improve your focus?
08:55And they're like, I don't know,
08:57I just sort of really struggle with it.
08:58Okay, have you read any books about it?
09:00Have you read Deep Work by Cal Newport?
09:01Or the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
09:03who was a psychologist who discovered the concept of flow.
09:05Or the Art of Focus, which is a new book by Dan Coe.
09:07Have you tried reading anything about the topic?
09:09Have you tried listening to podcasts about it?
09:10And like most people who struggle with focus,
09:12which is basically everyone,
09:13haven't actively tried to develop the ability to focus.
09:15So firstly, if you want to develop the ability of focus,
09:17firstly, I'd recommend reading those books about it.
09:19Secondly, you should totally sign up
09:20to my completely free Focus Crash Course.
09:22Just go to focuscrashcourse.com.
09:23This is a seven day email course
09:25where every day I'll email you a bunch of principles
09:27and strategies and tools
09:28that you can use to improve your focus.
09:29But really all of this stuff basically comes down
09:31to the core principle of single tasking.
09:34It is not about trying to do multiple things at once.
09:36We all focus best when we're just doing one thing at a time.
09:39And once we've done that thing, then we do something else.
09:41And there's data apparently from McKinsey & Company
09:43that workers in the US lose 25 to 27% of their work days
09:47to multitasking and to distractions.
09:49And if you imagine that's like in a career,
09:51which might be 40 years long,
09:52you're losing a whole decade to distractions
09:54and the ability to just not focus.
09:56And the solution to a lot of this stuff is single tasking,
09:58but you can read a lot more about it in these books
10:00because it's kind of outside the scope of this video.
10:02But if you guys are interested, leave a comment down below,
10:03and we can absolutely do a three part video series
10:05on the art and science of actually how to focus
10:07and get things done.
10:08Okay, so what does focus have to do with managing your time?
10:10Well, focus has everything to do with managing your time
10:12because it's focus at work during your nine to five
10:14and also focus outside of work.
10:15So if you can focus during your nine to five,
10:17you'll end up getting a lot more done in that time.
10:19And hopefully then your work will not bleed
10:21into the evenings and the weekends.
10:23I found this when I was working as a doctor
10:24and also when I was a medical student.
10:25When I gained the ability to focus
10:26and actually get through my studies during the workday,
10:28it meant I didn't have to study so hard in the evenings
10:30because I was able to focus
10:31and to do the work during the workday.
10:33It meant that I wasn't spending weekends and evenings
10:35having to update my portfolio
10:37or having to worry about publications
10:39because a lot of that stuff
10:39was stuff I could get done during the workday
10:41thanks to my ability to focus.
10:42The other thing as well is that outside of the workday,
10:44the ability to focus means that
10:46when you intend to do something,
10:47when you set a block of time in your calendar
10:49to, for example, play the guitar
10:51or to, for example, go to the gym,
10:52when you're doing the thing,
10:53you're actually just doing the thing.
10:55You're focusing on that one task
10:56that you have intended to do.
10:57Whereas the default for most people is like,
10:59you know, you might start, I don't know,
11:01maybe you've intended to watch a show on Netflix
11:02or something, but you like start watching the show
11:04and then you're like, then your brain disengages
11:06and you go to TikTok, then you go to Instagram,
11:07then you go to Twitter, then you check the phrase
11:08and you continue watching the show.
11:10And it doesn't end up being a particularly relaxing
11:12or energizing experience, even though it might've been
11:14had we actually just been able to sit there
11:15and focus on the thing that we were trying to do.
11:17And that brings us on nicely to skill number four,
11:19which is follow-through.
11:21Follow-through is the skill of actually doing
11:23what you say you're going to do.
11:26Oh my goodness.
11:27This is such a rare skill to find amongst people.
11:29It's a surprisingly rare skill in the workplace
11:32from the various managers and leaders I've spoken to.
11:34Now, what's the relevance of this to,
11:35let's say you've got a nine to five
11:36and you're struggling to manage your time outside of that.
11:38Well, the skill is that if, for example,
11:40you have time blocked certain things,
11:40let's say you've decided you want to hit the gym
11:42three times a week, because that's really important for you
11:44to hit your health goals, to live a life that you love.
11:46And you've time blocked it, you know, after work,
11:47before work, after work.
11:48Now it's this case of like,
11:50you have said you're going to go to the gym
11:51between let's say five and 6 p.m.
11:53on a Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
11:54And now 5 p.m. rolls around on a Monday
11:56and you're just wrapping up work
11:57and now you could go to the gym,
11:59but dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot,
12:00you start to procrastinate.
12:01You start to say, oh no, it's kind of cold outside.
12:03Oh no, I don't really want to do that.
12:05I know it's in the calendar.
12:06I know I've said I would do it.
12:07I know I've told myself I would do it.
12:08I know it's important for me to do the thing,
12:10but something happens and you get derailed
12:12and you start scrolling TikTok or Instagram instead
12:14because you don't really want to do the thing
12:16that you said you would do.
12:17This is terrible when it comes to time management
12:18because the whole philosophy of time management
12:19is kind of based around this idea of intentionality
12:22and then time blocking.
12:23Be intentional about what you want to do
12:24and then put time for it in the calendar.
12:26And then when it comes round to the thing,
12:27actually do the thing.
12:28And I've got a whole method for combating procrastination
12:30that's in the middle three chapters of my book.
12:32It's called the unblock method.
12:33It's about getting clarity, getting courage,
12:35and then getting started.
12:36Clarity is to overcome the blocker of uncertainty.
12:38We don't quite know exactly what we're doing.
12:40Courage is to overcome the blocker of fear
12:41because usually fear holds us back
12:43from actually doing stuff,
12:44especially if it involves discomfort in some way.
12:46And then the blocker of inertia,
12:48which is where it just takes a little bit of a push,
12:50a little bit of a dose of discipline, dare I say,
12:52to just get started with the task.
12:54Again, this is a whole thing, how to beat procrastination,
12:56as sort of somewhat outside the scope of this video,
12:58but I'll link a video up there and down here
12:59of a previous video I've done about procrastination.
13:02And if you haven't yet read my book
13:03or listened to the audio book,
13:04you may wanna check it out.
13:05But the other really good strategy
13:06when it comes to actually developing
13:07the skill of follow-through is finding accountability.
13:10If, for example, you have an accountability buddy,
13:12if you've got a friend that you go to the gym with,
13:14if you maybe get a personal trainer,
13:15if you maybe have a group of friends
13:17that you make this pact with each other
13:18that you're all gonna do this specific thing,
13:20you're all gonna, I don't know,
13:21publish a video a week on your YouTube channel,
13:22or you're all gonna study for an hour a day for your exam.
13:25If you can create those sorts of structures in your life
13:27that give you accountability,
13:29it means you're a lot less reliant
13:30on your own willpower, motivation, discipline,
13:32whatever you wanna use.
13:34You're a lot less reliant on that coming purely from within,
13:35and you're tapping into the power of the people around you.
13:37This also works for public commitments, for example.
13:39Like for me, you know, for the last six plus years,
13:41six years, I've been writing a weekly email newsletter.
13:44It's called Sunday Snippets.
13:45You can check it out, alibdahl.com slash Sunday.
13:46For every email, I write a newsletter
13:48and I send it to my fans, subscribers, followers,
13:50whatever word you wanna use.
13:50But I've made that weekly commitment,
13:52and therefore I do it every week.
13:53And I've done it pretty much every Sunday
13:54for the last six years.
13:55And that was pretty cool.
13:56I have intended to do a thing,
13:57and then I've done the thing.
13:58And there were certainly times when I had a nine to five,
14:00you know, I'd be finished up with a shift on a Sunday night,
14:02I'd get home at 11 p.m., I'd start falling asleep,
14:05and then I'd remember, oh crap, it's Sunday.
14:07I haven't written my email yet.
14:08And I'd get up, I'd get myself out of bed,
14:10I'd grab the iPad, and in bed, I'd sort of bang it out,
14:12and be like, oh guys, really sorry.
14:14And it would take me 20 minutes to write it,
14:15and then I would send it.
14:16And I would send it because I made that public commitment.
14:18I had the accountability of like these
14:20sort of email subscribers.
14:21And even though no one really cares,
14:23no one would have cared if I skipped a week, I cared.
14:25And it would have been so easy for me to skip a week,
14:27and then another one, and then another one, and another one.
14:29But I managed to stay broadly consistent
14:31with writing my Sunday snippets email.
14:33Every single week, every Sunday, for six years,
14:34for three of them, I had a full-time job.
14:36Four of them, actually.
14:37And I was able to do that because of the accountability.
14:39So my question for you would be,
14:40with that thing that you're struggling with,
14:41whatever it is, what is an accountability mechanism
14:44you can add to it to make it much easier for yourself
14:46to follow through and to do the thing
14:47that you say you were going to do?
14:49All right, the final skill to develop
14:50to get really good at time management
14:52is actually the skill of energizing your work.
14:54What I mean by this is that
14:55as you get good at time management,
14:56you'll realize that often time
14:58is not actually the bottleneck.
14:59The bottleneck is energy.
15:01Like when I had a nine-to-five job,
15:02it wasn't really nine-to-five,
15:02it was more like seven till eight, or seven till six.
15:05But when I had a real job,
15:06for the first few months of the job,
15:07I was actually pretty miserable
15:08because I'd get home from work
15:09and I would feel completely drained.
15:11I would feel as if I don't have the energy
15:13to do the things I actually want to do.
15:14Sure, I can be as intentional as I like
15:16about all this stuff and time block it.
15:17I mean, I was good at time management.
15:18I just didn't have the energy.
15:19And it took me a little while.
15:21It was a Christmas day where I kind of,
15:22it all came to a head.
15:23But I realized over time
15:24that I could choose to approach my work
15:27in a way that made it much more energizing.
15:29There are three strategies for that.
15:30The three Ps, play, power, and people.
15:33Now, this is the entire philosophy of my book,
15:35Feel Good Productivity.
15:36I've written literally a whole book
15:37about how to make your work into a source of energy.
15:39And if you're interested in hearing more about this,
15:41you should check out this video over here,
15:42which kind of talks about my struggle
15:44when I had a nine-to-five, when I had a real job,
15:46with this whole energy stuff
15:47and the solution that I found to the problem
15:50and how I incorporated these three Ps,
15:51play, power, and people to make my work feel good
15:54and to turn it into a source of energy.
15:55So that is a video that's gonna be right here.
15:56Thank you so much for watching.
15:57I hope you enjoyed the series
15:58and I'll see you in the next video.
15:58Bye-bye.