Transcription
There are seven levels of productivity, and the faster you figure out which one you fall into and how to get to the next one, the faster you can achieve your dreams. That's because we live in a physics-based world where action equals reaction. So, if you have a desired reaction in life, such as results in business or in any area of life, you need to take the right action, and you need to do it consistently. AKA, you need to be more productive.
So, I'm currently sitting at level six right now as the time I'm recording this video. I'm going to talk to you about how I got here, and then I'm going to help you figure out which level you're in and how you can get to at least level six, to where I am now. The reason I say at level six is because, as of the time of recording this, I got my PhD when I was 26 years old. I'm running two businesses. I got my dream job at NASA. I'm currently a post-doctoral fellow. I've been at Jet Propulsion Lab. I'm working on laser communications. I'm also managing another project relating to terahertz communications, just basically satellites talking to each other really fast. But on top of that, I have two businesses that are running part-time, and each one of these, one of these businesses has nine employees, the other one has three employees. But I still have time to play soccer. I still have time to hang out with my friends and family, and I get to do a lot of things for fun. I read a lot. I was just out in a restaurant here in Downtown LA.
So, my definition of productivity is not just cramming in as much work as possible and getting as much done as possible. No, my definition of productivity is just knowing what you want in life, being able to allocate the right things to be able to do, and be able to sit down and do the work consistently, effortlessly, and then still having time to do the things that you do enjoy, such that you don't burn out. We're going to cover that over here in the levels above.
The very first level I'm going to start with is something called task aware. Now, if you're at level one, that means you are aware of your to-do list. You basically have some type of to-do list, or you have somewhere written some type of idea, things that you need to do. If you don't even have a to-do list, or you don't even have like anything written down at all, or you have no idea what you're doing, then you're at level zero. Nothing's wrong with that. It's okay. Do not judge yourself. But the very first thing you need to do is write down things you've got to do somewhere. This could be on a simple piece of paper. This could be on a to-do list software. Some people use Notion, although I personally do not like Notion. I think many people spend too much time customizing their Notion template rather than actually doing any meaningful work. So, as long as you're task aware, meaning you're aware of your to-do list, you're writing it down somewhere, that is usually pretty good to just give you an awareness of things that you need to do. A lot of people hang out here in level one. That's why this thing has the largest percentage out of all these categories.
Now, the downside is that just having things written down does not necessarily mean you're going to get them done. We're going to talk about that in level two. And just because you have things down, and even if you do get them done, it does not mean you're working on the right thing. That's why I was saying earlier that a lot of things I've accomplished are not really just the result of hard work. They're a result of prioritization and working on the hard thing. But don't worry, we're going to talk about that in later levels.
Now, once you go ahead and unlock level one, then you're good. Then you move on to level two, which means you are time aware. So now you start asking another question, which is, instead of just, "What do I need to do?" you start asking, "When am I going to do it?" Now, this is especially relevant if you're someone higher up on the ADHD spectrum, meaning if you're someone that struggles with being time blind and distractible, also known as ADHD. Which, by the way, is a really stupid name. I think ADHD should be called executive dysfunction and dopamine dysregulation disorder because really, it's about the executive function that's not working in your brain, and your brain not managing dopamine properly. You either have very little dopamine, and you cannot start any task, or you have too much dopamine, and you hyperfocus sometimes on the wrong thing. And both of these things can be detrimental. So, you need to figure out pretty early on where you fall over here, especially if you're higher up on the ADHD spectrum. Then you are likely someone who is very, very, very time blind, meaning you're lacking time awareness. So, if you're someone who has ADHD, you definitely need to have the calendar in your face at all times. You need to have a clock or a watch that you're wearing all the time. You need to have time in your face at all times. That's because your internal circuitry is fried. You cannot sense time accurately. You cannot predict the future accurately. And this is why a lot of people who have ADHD are usually very smart, very intelligent, but they are not people who accomplish a lot of things. They usually waste their lives because they are not time aware. So, if you're someone who has ADHD, please, please, please fix the time awareness problem as much as possible and learn how to use your calendar. I would say just ditch your to-do list altogether and go straight to the calendar because the calendar is going to force you to think in terms of bounded terms, like, "When am I actually going to do it?" Like the difference between people who don't have ADHD and people who do have ADHD. People who don't have ADHD ask, "When should I do this?" People who have ADHD, their brain does not ask "when." The word "when" just does not exist in your brain. So, you need to artificially induce it using the calendar. Anyway, enough preaching about the calendar. If you're level two, you're time aware. Try to at least learn how to use the calendar, and then you're going to move on to the next level.
So, level three means you're self-aware. So now, not only can you write things down, and you actually ask "when, when, when" you're going to do these things, and hopefully, by asking "when," you're able to actually sit down and do them. That's also known as an implementation intention. Now, at level three, you're self-aware. You're asking, "What do I really, really want?" And you'd be shocked. Most people who are doing things and scheduling to do them, this is like the majority of the adult population, they're stuck at level two. So, well, level one is the non-productive adult population. Level two is the productive adult population. Most of them don't even know themselves or don't even know what they want, or have not even asked the question, "What do I want? What do I want in life? What do I want in business? What do I want in a partner?" Most people just kind of go by like default heuristics, like you're like, "Oh, this business makes money, so I'm going to start a marketing agency." Or like, "Oh, this girl is pretty good looking and she's good enough, even though there's like four red flags. I don't even know what red flags are, so I'm just going to marry her." Unfortunately, that's how a lot of society functions. And again, this is not judging or disrespecting by any means. Like, I get it. A lot of people, like, I'm fortunate enough to have received education and resources and opportunities and awareness and circumstances and traumas that made me open up my eyes to the world very early on. Unfortunately, people who are not exposed to that level of life in general end up in this kind of lack of self-awareness.
Now, self-awareness is extremely important. Without self-awareness, you literally cannot set meaningful goals. You cannot figure out what you want to do with your life because you're not asking, "What do I want? Like, what do I really want deep down?" It's another reason why you may self-sabotage very frequently because you're not self-aware of what you want really deep down in your heart, emotionally. Like, you may have some type of logical intellectual goal, but then you have another emotional goal that's under the surface that you're not aware of. And until you take that logical goal and marry it with the emotional goal, well, then only then can you truly, truly, truly figure out what you need to do.
Now, once you go ahead and figure out what you really, really want to do with your life, you become self-aware. Then you've got to be consistent. Consistent means you know what you want in life. You know how to use your calendar. You know how to write down things that you need to do. And then you just don't do them once a week or twice a week. You do it regularly, and you do it consistently. Now, this is the thing that a lot of people have struggled with again, especially people high up on the ADHD spectrum. Like, they may know what they need to do. They may know themselves very well. They may even try to use the calendar and stick to it, but they cannot stick to it. Well, this also has to do with other things. Has to do with routines. Has to do with structure. Has to do with like building extra things in your life. By the way, if you're an entrepreneur high up on the ADHD spectrum, I'll put a link in the description for a program where I go into a lot more depth into this, where there's some handholding that helps you build this. There's also a community of over 1600 ADHD entrepreneurs. So again, if you're an entrepreneur with ADHD, go ahead and check the description. If that's not you, then please don't.
But anyway, moving on to level five, inflow. Once you achieve consistency and you're able to do things repeatedly, which again requires structures, routines. Actually, before I move on, I need to give you an example. I have a morning protocol and I have an evening protocol. Meaning, every single morning when I wake up, I do the exact same thing. Every single morning. I know, terrifying. It may sound boring, but here's the trick: you've got to make it something you enjoy doing. The reason people don't stick to routines is their routines suck. If you tell yourself, "I've got to wake up and do 100 push-ups," and you're not in the mood to do them when you wake up, well, no wonder. Not even David Goggins wants to do 100 push-ups. Well, you've got to make the routine something stickable. What I usually do, I roll out of bed, I drink some water, and I make myself a cup of iced coffee with heavy cream. I call it "ice cream coffee." And yes, I don't care. Andrew Huberman says you should not drink coffee for the first like hour and a half of the day. I don't care. I drink it the first minutes of the day. I don't care. It's just what I want, and it's what I enjoy, and it's what makes me look forward to doing it in the morning. And guess what? Because of that, because I look forward to the taste of the coffee with the cream, I wake up early. You know, I'm not usually a morning person. I'm usually more on the night owl side. But because I have a lot of teams that I run, I need to wake up a bit earlier to manage my teams and make sure everyone is doing well, everything's going great. So, guess what? I look forward to the morning because I have a great morning routine where I just wake up, I drink my ice cream coffee, I have a lot of time to myself, I get a lot of work done in the morning, and then I take what I call my "Patrick Bateman shower." Patrick Bateman shower. I don't know if you've seen the movie, but this dude would like, I don't know, take a, I don't know, 20-minute shower where he's just like, I don't know, putting like all sorts of stuff in his hair and his face. I don't go that extreme. I just use a regular face wash and shampoo, but I like the idea of sitting in the hot water for a little bit, and then I go and I switch to cold. Last minute, I switch to one minute cold, and then I get started with my day. I do this before every single meeting, every single day. So, every single day I wake up, I do my coffee and whatnot, which I really enjoy. I sit down and I do a lot of uninterrupted work, which I enjoy. And then I go take my what I call Patrick Bateman shower, which I really, really enjoy. And then guess what? By the time I have my first meeting and I've started the day, I have a morning routine that I've enjoyed and I really, really stick to. Same thing in the evening. I have an evening routine where basically every single night I do the exact same thing. Again, excuse me, I review what I've done, what not. I play some video games. I play video games for like maybe 30 minutes or like an hour, just to kind of wind down, relax, whatnot. And then I think about what I want to do tomorrow. I plan a bunch of things. I use my calendar to do them because I'm an ADHD and I'm time blind. And if I don't do that, then I'm really, really screwed. And then I just go ahead and I send it. And then I wake up and I do the same thing over and over and again. Obviously, sometimes on Friday nights I don't do that. Sometimes on a Saturday I don't do that. Once in a while on a Wednesday night, on a Tuesday night, I'll break my routines. I'll stay up really late playing video games. I'll go hang out with a friend when I really shouldn't, when I should probably be doing my work. Once in a while, things break. Guess what? I am a human who cares. I am getting my work done in the long term, and that's all that matters. Perfectionism is the enemy of consistency.
And anyway, once you have achieved these four things, you're honestly already, like, if you're just able to get to level four, which is consistent, this alone is like the dream of many, many, many people. But if you're greedy like me, then you want even more. And level five is your inflow. And what I mean by inflow is that now you've optimized knowing what to work on so well and leaning in on your strengths so well that you're just in flow like almost all the time. You're able to easily get into like a deep focused state, a hyperfocused state, especially if you're an ADHD, and you're able to just kind of sit down and do the work in a way that is enjoyable. So, the difference between levels four and level five is the factor of joy and fun. Like, you could be doing all these four things in a type of job or a business that sucks or that you hate. But for level five, in order for you to really be in flow, like you have to really enjoy what you do. And the way you enjoy what you do, there's two definitions. The one by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow, he says the level of difficulty must, like, like, there's kind of, there's kind of like a diagram of like how easy or how difficult the task is, and how, and what your skill level is at matching that difficulty. And you ideally want them to match each other. So, for example, if I'm sitting down, I'm doing something that's very, very difficult, but I also, I'm very skilled at that thing, that's going to be flow state. That's going to be amazing. That's why video games can be very addicting. Other things can be very addicting. And yeah, that's how you enter flow is you ideally work on things that only you enjoy. How do you do that? You build a team. You build a team that works on things that you yourself do not enjoy, such that they do the things you don't enjoy, and you do the things that you do enjoy. However, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, there's going to be a lot of things you don't enjoy that are very, very critical that you're going to force yourself to enjoy. Example, I am not a huge fan of marketing or advertising. It's not something I enjoy. I'm an engineer. I'm a systems engineer. I like to solve problems and just make things happen. Well, guess what? I have to sit down and think about how to make a YouTube video. I have to sit down and think about how to make ads because if I don't do that, my business stops running, and no one cares about ads as much as I do. No one cares about my own business as much as I do. And hence, by definition, I am probably one of, I am, I have to be the marketer of the business. Even though I have a head of marketing, he is amazing. His name is Thomas. He is exceptional. He is talented. But Thomas and I have to work together. If I leave Thomas on his own for too long, I think the business does not do very well. Versus when we work together, I have to be the person who does things. Now, even though this is something I do not inherently enjoy, I have learned to enjoy. I have forced myself to learn how to enjoy this thing because it is important. And as I get better and better at it, and as I get better and better at making paid ads, I start enjoying them more and more. And now I've reached the state where I reach flow state working on ads, thinking about hooks, thinking about all the things I need to do. So, it is possible to certain things that you don't enjoy and things that you do enjoy. However, most of the time, the ideal case is that you find the things that only you enjoy, and you outsource the things that you do not enjoy, unless they are critical.
Which brings us to level six, which is where I believe I am at right now. Is like, I genuinely feel like I'm at a stage where productivity, or like getting work done, feels effortless. And this is crazy because only a few years ago, when my ADHD was at its worst, and I was like struggling with procrastination, I was struggling with all sorts of things. I could not stick to a schedule. I could not finish tasks. I was stuck in my PhD. I could not finish my thesis. I was like, like in a very dark place a few years ago. And I was like, I was like probably at level zero. You know, now that I'm then, now I'm at level six, it's kind of crazy to look back because productivity like genuinely, genuinely feels effortless. Like anything, like, like it used to be, "Oh, can I do this? Can I not do it?" Like, now I don't even ask these questions in my head. Now I'm like, "Okay, if something is worth doing and it's important enough, it gets done." Like, there's just not even, there's no question. Like, I don't even think about it. I don't even think about like, "Do I like it?" It just, it just gets done. I don't, I really don't think about it. And it truly, truly, truly feels effortless. Now, obviously, once in a while, there is something like I don't want to do, or I do get the urge to procrastinate or whatnot. But I just, I don't know. I've built like such strong mental models that that doesn't really happen. And then I have such great teams where we meet, I meet with my teams, and we do like live problem-solving. And I don't know, it's just something that like really, really does not happen anymore. So, I really hope for you to get to level six because once you get to level six, then it's, it's truly not even about like, like what to work on or like, or or or how hard you work or what to work on, what not. Like, level six is just all about like patience and time. Like, you have literally maxed out your decision-making ability such that you are working on the right thing, and you have maxed out your execution skills so that you get anything done that you think is worth doing. And you're almost like squeezing almost every minute out of the day, obviously while factoring in activities like spending time with friends, playing video games, things like that. If I don't do these things, then I burn out, crash and burn, and I hate myself. And I don't want to do that. And I really like to enjoy life. I don't want to only work on my business or work on YouTube or or only work on engineering problem-solving. I like to have a diverse life, or experience a lot of things. But I've, I've honestly reached the stage where I think I'm maxed out. And now it's just a matter of like time. It's just a matter of patience. Like my goals, they're going to probably take me a few more months to achieve. And that's like, there's nothing I could do to help them be achieved more. Like I've kind of maxed out the level, you know?
Which honestly, that would bring me to level seven, which is something I still have not personally achieved. Which is like, how do you take a goal that takes three years and get it done in like two days? I haven't reached that. I've reached the level where like what takes people usually a year or six months, I do in six weeks. I'm just so good at figuring out like how to build roadmaps and how to get what you want really, really fast. I've not figured out how to like do it. I've not figured out how to take a six-month goal and do it in like two days. I can do it in six weeks, but I can't do it in like two days or like one day. I think that would truly be level seven. I have not reached that. If I reached that, then I will, I will let you guys know what that feels like. If you have reached that yourself, please leave a comment. I'd be really curious on how you do it.
But anyway, this kind of just like a really rough outline of like what I call the seven levels of productivity, where like as time goes by, effort really goes down, and you just kind of seem to just do the work naturally. So, again, to summarize, if you're stuck at level one, then use like the, you're using a to-do list, but you're not doing it. Then I would suggest you start using a calendar. I start suggest you start using reminders. You start being more aware of time, just by literally taking your to-do list and asking, "When am I going to do this?" If it's urgent, do it right now. If you can't do it now, then you have to opt out and then you schedule it and do it later. Just doing that will move you to level two. Once you're at level two, and you're time aware, and you're being productive, just ask yourself like, "What do I truly, truly want in life? Am I actually working on the right things?" Then you're going to get here. Once you're self-aware, you know what you want, you know what actions are necessary, and you know when you should sit down and do it, then you want to achieve consistency. And the way you achieve consistency is just by building routines and structures. Right? Ideally, a morning routine and an evening routine that you follow religiously six days a week. That's at least what works for me. That's what works for all 1500 of my clients. Like, it's just, there's just no other way around it. Then, once you do that, then you want to achieve flow state as much as possible. The way to do that is you try to outsource the things that you don't want to work on, and only work on the things that are truly important or interesting to you. Once you achieve that level, you skip the idea of interest altogether, and you just go into like, like what I call effortless, where like, if something needs to get done, it gets done, independent of whether I like it, don't like it, blah. Like, you just complete. Level six is like a whole new game where you're just like, "All right, this needs to get done. Let's get it done and just do it." You know? And that's just, that's just that just becomes who you are. Like, you kind of change internally. Level six, level seven, I have not reached yet, so I cannot tell you exactly what that looks like. But if I were to do that, I'll probably make a video about it and let you know.
So anyway, yeah, if you enjoyed this video, please like it and leave a comment. Tell me what you think. Tell me what level you're in now. What actions are you going to take? What, what are things that you have learned from this video? And again, if you're an entrepreneur higher up on the ADHD spectrum looking to scale your business and you think you are your own bottleneck, I'll put a link below for my community where you can come scale your business and hang out with me. That being said, I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace. Love.