Transcription
Hey guys, my name is Ali aluli. I am a postdoctoral fellow and a systems engineer at the NASA J.P.L. and in this video, I'm going to explain to you my ADHD memory system. Basically, a system I have built that helps me remember everything. Not only that, it helps me remember things and take action on them and turn my dreams into reality.
And this same system is what helped me get my dream job at NASA, helped me graduate a PhD at only 26 years old, helped me grow my first engineering YouTube channel to around 30,000 subscribers, and it helped me also just achieve a lot of cool things in life. Um, and what I really want to go ahead and do is explain the system to you.
But before I explain the system, I want us to agree on two things, okay? Because when I talk to a lot of my entrepreneur friends, or a lot of my friends who have not studied physics or engineering, uh, there are two things that they really seem to not understand. Um, first is that, uh, for every action, there's a reaction, right? Newton's law. This is very, very common sense, but common sense is not common practice. Uh, a lot of videos I see on YouTube are of people, a lot of them are like Law of Attraction gurus, manifestation gurus. God bless them. I know they're well-intentioned. Like they will tell you that just kind of sit down and imagine things and kind of think about what you want, and you will attract things to your life. Like you will, like things will just kind of magically come and sit on your lap. Now, obviously, these videos get millions of views, tens of more views than this video will ever get because it's so nice, right? Like who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't want to just sit down, close your eyes, and imagine things and things come sit in your lap?
Now, if you studied physics, uh, or if you've like been on this planet long enough and and you've thought deeply about things, uh, that's not how it works. Like obviously manifestation works. Manifestation is intention plus action. You need to take action. Uh, you need to go and acquire things from the world. And I'll prove it to you. If you have a job right now, uh, you went and filled out an application, you applied for that job, you talked to someone, you did something, you took some action that created a bend in the universe, right? And that got you the results. That's one thing we should agree on is that action causes reaction. And if you have a desired reaction or result in life, such as growing your business, uh, attracting a great partner, having great relationships, traveling the world, being in great shape, you're going to have to take the right actions, right? So action is inevitable. There's no other way around it. It's going to require work, right?
Now, the second, second thing I want us to agree on is that ideas in and of themselves are meaningless, right? The only thing that makes ideas worth something is your ability to bring them into the real world, right? And I was actually reading, uh, uh, a new biography and there was a story about Tesla and and, uh, um, I'm sorry, not Tesla, it was a story about PayPal, Elon Musk's second company, which he founded with Peter Thiel. And, uh, there were a lot of fights between Elon and and Peter, and and and there's another guy, his name was Len, I think, and there's like a bunch of people just fighting and disagreeing on things. And that kind of delayed them for a whole year from writing the software for the product. And Peter Thiel, I think it was said in the book, well, like, we got so lucky because even though our idea was was brilliant, but because no, no one else was building something similar to us, no one else was competing with us, we we got really lucky and we got away with it. And and even though despite our delays, we went ahead and we succeeded. So even though you have a great idea right now, there's a good chance that someone else has the idea. And if you're super, super, super lucky like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and whatnot, uh, you may not have a competitor right now, but soon enough, you will. If you wait too long, you will. So again, that's point number two is that whatever idea you have in your head, you, you could have a dollar idea in your head, you could be the next Elon Musk, but unless you take action and implement that idea in the real world, that idea is meaningless.
With these two things in mind, let me go ahead and explain what this system is. So the system is called C.A.S.S. Uh, it's compromised of, it's composed of four different things: First is Capture, Actionized, Start, Schedule. And I'm going to give you examples of how I actually use this. Uh, this is not just going to be a theoretical lecture. I'm going to actually show you how, how to use this. Uh, but basically, the, the idea is that, um, the, the first step, Start, uh, starts with Capture, right? And Capture is basically you grabbing the idea from the air. And obviously, when I say the air, it's really your brain. So your brain is a popcorn machine, right? It's just popping a lot of ideas, especially if you're someone with ADHD or higher up on the ADHD spectrum. I have ADHD myself. I was diagnosed when I was 26 years old. Uh, I'm 27 now. So ever since I learned this stuff, it's been, has been crazy. I was unaware of it. And, um, when you're higher up on the ADHD spectrum, what happens is your brain, you just have more thoughts on average. Your brain is like a popcorn machine, just one idea, one idea after the other. Um, and unless you capture these ideas, unless you write them down somewhere, unless you document them somewhere, they're going to keep going on, right? Like because you first need to capture it, reason with it, and then decide whether you want to implement it or not.
Now, here, what I have is there are two mediums in which you can capture your ideas. There's digital mediums and there's physical medium. A physical medium is something very simple. Could be like a notebook, like pen and paper, uh, or like something you write with physically, or writing on your wall. Uh, I write on my wall sometimes. I know people think I'm I'm crazy for that. Um, but like, basically, you're writing, uh, something in the physical world in the hope of remembering it. For example, something like a little notes or like a sticky note or like something that you can write with. That's a physical system for capturing ideas. Or another one is digital, whether it could be the phone app, uh, uh, the Notes app on your phone, or it could be something like this, like the stickies I have over here. Um, so some type of medium, uh, in which you can capture the ideas digitally, right? That's step number one. Is whenever you have an idea in mind, you can, uh, oh my God, this plugin is so annoying. Um, I was testing it out, someone recommended to me. I'm going to get rid of it. But, um, so whenever, whenever you have something in mind that is worth capturing an idea, you basically capture it, right? Now, a very simple example of that is basically going and saying like, oh, um, um, maybe I just came up with an idea for a YouTube ad. Add and I say, oh, add hook, maybe what I just said, like, if your brain is a popcorn machine, um, or like, maybe I say, oh, I forgot to text Evan. Evan, my friend. Maybe text Evan back. Make Loom for Evan about software. Like, just whatever ideas that come into my mind. Oh, maybe I should, uh, change landing page button color or something like that. Obviously, you should not waste your time on something like that if you know a thing or two on business. Uh, but so the idea is that the idea comes to you, and you immediately write it down somewhere. And the nice thing about this sticky right here is it's just available to you at all times. Whenever I have my computer open, I just like dump ideas over here. I dump, I dump, I dump ideas and I just kind of write them. And a lot of people do that. A lot of people take notes and they're quite good at taking notes. But where most people go wrong is they, they, they don't take the second step in the process, right? So in the system, C.A.S.S., first is Capture. Second one is Actionized. So you need to Actionize those ideas. And what I mean by that is, uh, that's a, that's a verb that I invented. I'm pretty confident that it does exist in the English, uh, language. And I mean, English is not my first language anyway, so I can, I can do things like that. But basically, you take whatever is in here and then you turn it into an action, right? Like, for example, in this case, I wrote an idea like I came up with an idea for an ad hook and I say, oh, if your brain is a popcorn machine, um, most people will have these ideas just sitting there, but you have to turn it into an action, right? You have to turn it into something that you can act upon and implement. Again, because based on the two principles we discussed, if you don't turn the idea into an action and if you don't act, your idea is worthless. It's just going to sit in your, in your notes or in your brain or whatever. So what I usually do is instead of, I go, I go through my notes. Let's say at the end of every single night, I do something called my evening protocol. Uh, it's a very short, simple evening routine. Contrary to popular belief, like routines are actually very, very important. Anyone who tells you, screw routines, uh, probably have routines themselves. They just like don't know it or they're, I don't know, like they're trying to sell a different message. But, um, I'm going to go ahead and turn this idea into an action. Uh, oh, add hook, uh, uh, and if your brain is a popcorn machine, I'm going to go and rewrite this as, um, make an ad, well, or or record, let's say, YouTube video ad with the title, "Your Brain is a Popcorn Machine." What will also require me to do is make an outline for the ad body, CTA, etcetera, for example. And then let's say, for example, uh, like I want to say, um, okay, so I'm going to record the ad. I'm going to make an outline with the ad. And then maybe also like go on YouTube and see if similar ads exist. Now, what I've done is I've created three different actions. So what I'm doing is I'm taking my idea that came to my head, and now I can, I have actions. And, and then the same thing, like text Evan back, that's already an action. Make Loom for Evan, that's already an action. Change landing page is already an action. Here, before this video, I wrote, "People want longer videos, examples, go in detail." That's because my previous video was very, very short, and a lot of people in the comments, which thank you guys who who did that, said, nope, go in more detail, tell more stories, provide more information. So now I can, I'm, I can take that and I can say, um, add more detail and go in depth in next video, right? That's an action, right? So basically, the idea is whatever you capture in terms of ideas, you always want to turn it into an action, right? Because again, it's the action that causes the reaction, and the reaction is the results that you desire in life, right?
Now, that's step number two. Step number three and four are counterintuitive, right? Most people will say, okay, now that I have singled out some actions and I am ready to schedule them, I'm going to opt, I'm going to, uh, I'm going to text Evan tomorrow. I'm going to text, I'm going to change my landing page color later on this week. And if that was the case, then we would have these reversed, right? We would have schedule and then start, right? We would schedule something and then we would go ahead and start it. But that's not the case over here. And there's a very good reason for that. Uh, one thing about me that I think also compared to a lot of other people I see, uh, the reason I get things done with speed is I have an opt-out, not an opt-in system when it comes to doing work. And what I mean by that is whenever I identify a task worth doing, doesn't really matter the time. I mean, it's like it's 3:18 a.m. as of the time I'm recording this. What I do is I basically tell myself, how are my energy levels right now? Are they good? Am I tired? Am I exhausted? Or am I okay? Uh, what's stopping me from doing it now, right? Like I'm not going to sit here and schedule it. Uh, I'm going to, okay, fine, we're going to start, folks. I'm not going to sit here and schedule it. Okay, I'm going to uninstall this thing after the video. But I'm basically, I'm not going to sit here and, uh, this is kind of a little tangent, but this one thing I I hate about like a lot of productivity softwares is I like to keep it simple. I like to keep it old school. Sometimes friends recommend things to me, I test them out and I'm like, okay, you know what, this works, this doesn't work. But then quickly, like turns into something super, super annoying. But anyway, experiments are good. Try things out. But what usually wins is keep it simple, keep keep things old school. Anyway, so what I was doing is I was explaining how scheduling and starting happen in reverse, okay? So you need to basically start and then schedule. And what I mean by that is you have to opt out of the task. You have to ask yourself, what is stopping me from recording the YouTube video ad right now? Why can't I do it now? And if there's a very strong and compelling reason, then you say, okay, why can't I do it in one hour? Why can't I do it in two hours? Why can't I do it in the morning? And this right here is a like 10x speed multiplier because this is not how most people think about their work. Most people will say, oh, I got to make a Loom for Evan to do the software thing. Why can't I do it now? What's more important right now, right? And this is a very big prioritization hack that most people don't implement. And I think it's crazy because it's so simple yet so powerful. What do a lot of people do? A lot of people spend time on Instagram. A lot of a lot of people schedule something and say, okay, tomorrow at 6 p.m., I'm going to go do, I don't know, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to write my new video sales letter from my website, right? And because they have said, okay, between now and 6 p.m., I'm going to do it, I'm going to go do my day job or I'm going to go pick up the kids from school or I'm going to go do something like that. But the problem is, now you have a 15, 20, 30 minute gap somewhere in the day. And because you've scheduled the thing at 6 o'clock, you're just going to go on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or whatever your favorite social media app is, or you're just going to sit there and and waste time. You're not going to do anything. Versus if you have the mindset of, I'm going to do this thing now. Oh, I can't now. I'll do it in one hour. Why can't I do it in an hour? Okay, I, in my case, let's say I don't know, I'm tired, I need to sleep. Okay, what time am I waking up? 8:00? Okay, um, why can't I record it at 8:00? Okay, 8:00, I'm going to be groggy, I'm going to be tired, sleepy. I need to take a shower. I need to, okay, how about 8:30? Okay, not 8:30, I 9. I need to go. Okay, I need to go to work. Why? What time do I come back from work? 5:00? Okay, am I going to be hungry at 5:00? Um, why can't I record it at 5:00? And basically, like, you keep drilling your brain and annoying the out of your brain in a very loving way until you get the thing done, right? And again, this is very, very powerful because most people don't do this. Most people are like, oh, I'm just going to wait until this time, arbitrary time in the day to do do it. And then basically, only if you can't start it now, then you schedule it. And again, you schedule it while having this start thing in mind. Okay, again, very, very, very powerful way to think about productivity, okay?
So this is basically how I would do it on my computer. I want to also give you a very quick example of how I would do it on my phone. This is my phone right here. It's sitting in this really nice box that reminds me to not use it when I'm doing things that are important. So basically, this is my iPhone. Um, and basically, just like how I had a sticky note in here, the way my phone is set up, I have this Notes app right here. And when I click on the Notes app, it's basically brings me to my notes. And I have all these notes written, uh, from a few days ago, uh, that I haven't had the time to go through them. So basically, what I'm going to do is right after I'm done recording this video, I'm going to sit down and go through these notes and see what I can actionize, what I cannot actionize. And if I still have the energy, I'm going to go ahead and take take action on them. And if I'm like, genuinely feeling exhausted, tired, like I'm like, I know that mathematically it's going to be far less efficient for me to try to do the thing rather than just get some sleep and wake up and do it in the morning, only then am I going to schedule to wake up and do it in the morning, right? And because I do that, I'm going to be way faster than a lot of people out there in the arena.
Um, but yeah, anyway, this is pretty much the system. It's called C.A.S.S. I really encourage that you implement it. If you're not taking notes already, start taking them, especially someone with ADHD. Uh, and if you're not actionizing ideas into actions, try to do it immediately. If you can't do it immediately, only then schedule it. And schedule it like very soon, right? Do not give yourself an excuse and keep drilling and asking yourself why you would start or not start something, okay? Uh, if you found this useful, I have put another, I've made another video somewhere that should show up over here on my complete productivity system and how you can actually double your productivity using a very similar ADHD method. Uh, so, um, yeah, go ahead and check it out. If you're new to the channel, drop a comment and say hi. But go and watch this video, you're going to love it. Peace, love.