Transcription
How can you be so productive that it feels illegal, almost like cheating? The major mistake the majority of people make, and I made this as well when I was stuck in the productivity rabbit hole, is we get confused with being busy and being productive. You see, being productive has a sense of clarity, vision, efficiency, focus, and also measuring progress. And if you're not able to do those four things, you're not being productive. Being busy doesn't mean you're productive.
In this video, I'm going to go through six things that I've personally learned through experience, through just learning from other successful people, on how to be as productive as possible and actually reach your desired outcome. I'm out of breath already. Where's my? Where's the fan?
Before I go into those six different things that you can do to be more productive, there's four things that you need to be absolutely clear on before you can actually touch any of these six things in order for it to make sense.
Now, the first thing is having clarity, knowing what you want to achieve and why. And the why being super important because that's going to be your underlying motivating factor to pushing you to keep going, right? It's going to keep you in line. It's going to keep you disciplined. For example, if you want to lose 10 kg, you know where you want to go. You know what you want to do. The question is, why do you want to do it? Do you want to feel better about your body? Do you want to just feel healthier? Do you want to enjoy playing sports for longer? Is it to do with your health? Like, whatever it may be, you could have multiple whys. Just have clarity.
Now, the second thing is focus. Directing your time and energy into tasks that have the biggest impact. And I always say, do the biggest impact tasks first thing in the morning because that's when you probably have the most energy and have the most time, but we'll get into that later into the video.
And then number three is finding the most efficient way possible to do the task. Just because you spend more time on something, or just because you worked harder at something, doesn't mean that you're doing it better than someone that's done it faster. It's almost like going into a test and someone's finished the test in 30 minutes and you did it in, you did it in an hour. Thinking that you spent 30 minutes longer than them means that you're going to get better results is not always the case. They probably just went through the paper efficiently. They had certain systems and processes that they follow to work out the questions or the answers to the questions, which allowed them to finish 30 minutes faster than you.
And the fourth thing you need is a way to measure progress. If you're unable to measure how much you're actually progressing, then there's no point. This could be something simple as a journal, to be honest with you, or just mental notes.
Now, let's actually tap into the six things that make you more productive. I do it, successful people do it.
So, the first thing is having a planner. And this could be a physical planner, which I did buy one of those. That just didn't personally work for me. I ended up with Google Calendar. And on my phone, I actually have a widget of Google Calendar. I don't know if you guys can see that. It's at the top. So, I know what I need to do pretty much every hour of the day unless I've got free time. And I'm not perfect. I don't plan absolutely everything, but there's certain things that I do plan. For example, I have recurring days when I go to the gym, and I like to go to the gym around midday. Cool. I have certain days where I take like client calls, and that gets filled up like Monday, Tuesday. I don't know how much you guys can actually see that. So, I know when I have a call, I know what I'm doing after the call, what I'm doing before the call. And the best thing to do if you're trying to be as productive as possible is the night before, go on your calendar and think, okay, what needs to be done tomorrow and which order does it need to be done in?
Now, the second thing, which links into point number one, limit the amount of things you actually do. Depending on what position you're in right now will depend on how much you can actually do. If you work a 9 to 5, chances are you ain't going to have a whole bunch of time to do a whole bunch of nothing, right? So, you need to have three priority tasks. You need to have three priority tasks maximum, and ideally, I would limit it probably to two because three could be pushing it.
Now, the first one needs to be the thing that needs to be done. And when I say it needs to be done, it's like if you don't do it today, something bad's going to happen. Do that thing first. Or even if it cannot be done today, you do it first. So, you knock out progress on it. Let's say it's going to take 10 hours to complete in general, spend the first two hours of the day or the first three hours of the day working on it, and then knock out the other two tasks that you may have. And sometimes you may not even have three tasks to do, which is completely fine. Don't feel the need to do something just because you have nothing to do. Again, that's just you making yourself busy. So, it looks like you're productive, looks like you're working hard, and it looks like you're going to get some sort of result. But if you're doing a bunch of nothing, why would you be rewarded for it?
And the third thing I do as well as combining Google Calendar and setting out my three priority tasks is I put my phone away. Let's say I need to edit a video, right? And this video needs to be done. It's a high priority task. I'm probably going to try and do it first thing in the morning, or I'm going to set aside time later in my day, which I'm going to make time on Google Calendar for. And I'm going to put my phone away. I'm going to lock my phone in a box, or I'm going to put it in the living room, or I'm going to put it under this cushion in the living room, and I'm going to go back to my office and do the work. I didn't originally do this, but it actually, it's it's so useful. Like, it's unbelievably useful. There's, and I've noticed it because I've done work with my phone next to me and I've done work with my phone away from me, and the amount of times where I'm thinking, what can I do to this video to spice it up, or I'm waiting for something to render, or something to load, or something to download so I could put it inside of the video. I check my phone. When I check my phone, I go on Instagram and I swipe. I go on TikTok and I scroll. Before I know it, I've spent five minutes. And if I do that every five minutes, I've basically lost like half an hour every hour. Whereas if I just put my phone away, I've got nothing to do and I literally just wait. And the thing is, the download, the export, the rendering doesn't take as long. And this could be with anything. You could be thinking of content ideas and you're procrastinating, so you pick up your phone. Just put the phone away. Like, Mom was right, bro. It, it is the damn phone.
And number four is waking up earlier. Now, I know a lot of people probably gaslight themselves into thinking, you know, I work better at night. And hey, some people do. Apparently, it's a fact. Some people are literally night owls. Some people are early risers. It is what it is. But I urge you, please just try and wake up earlier. The thing with waking up early, and I read it in Destiny, is discipline. I think her name was James Morris. She's a she's an author now. She was a single mom of two, working hard to provide for her kids, but she wanted to become an author. But she had no energy later on in the day because she had to pick up her kids and then cook food and then they had loads of requests, and she had to work when the kids were at school. And when she woke up, she had to get the kids ready to go to school. So, she had no energy, no time. And a lot of people would be like, "Well, that's my dream done. You know, I've got nothing else I could do. I'm just going to live out my life and just take it as it comes." But she was super determined. So, she started waking up an hour, hour and a half, two hours earlier, and she would spend those one to two hours writing. And every single day she would do that because when you wake up earlier, there's no one there to distract you. Pretty much everyone's asleep. If you've ever woken up early to go to the gym, and if your gym's 24 hours and you wake up at 5:00 AM and go to the gym, you'll see no one there. Some people may like, if you go to a health club and they open at 6:00 or something like that, there's some people already waiting to go inside. But if you go to a just normal standard gym and you go early, everyone's asleep. If you go on the roads early, everyone's asleep. There's no one to distract you. You can get the workout in, no one's going to call you. No one's going to text you. So, if you want to get some editing done, no one's going to call you. No one's going to text you. If you want to work on your own business, no one's going to call you. No one's going to text you. You literally, it's the best time to be productive. And then she went on to be an amazing author. Is it a Nobel Prize that she went on to win? Can't remember, but apparently she's an amazing author. That book was actually really decent. I probably should finish it off as well.
And number five, if you are trying to be productive, you need to journal. And it sounds, it sounds weird. As a guy, I wasn't one to journal. Like I was just like, journaling, like, ain't that for girls? Like, you know what I mean? But what I realized is as I'm journaling, I used to have some, like, I have some prompts. Like, I've got a journal that prompts me, and it goes, "What's the best thing about today?" or "What's the, what did I achieve today?" And without them prompting me those questions, I would just think, "Man, I ain't done nothing today." Then I think back and I'm like, "Oh, well, you know, the little stuff counts too. Like, maybe I edited this video, or maybe I got this little win for a client, or maybe I got this win for myself, or maybe I did do something today that I never really would have thought of without me writing it down." And writing it down just makes it more real for me. And that is literally a way of tracking your progress. You could literally close a deal, right? But something bad could happen later on, and that could distract you from the fact that you had a major win today. That you closed a deal that you probably maybe you don't close many, and things are turning around, but now you're focused on the negative because that's just human nature to focus more on the negative than the positive. So, journaling, like, keeps you in a positive mindset, keeps you going, tracks your progress, and it just encourages you to do more. Let's say you're on your weight loss journey. You lost two pounds. You might have even forgot because you weigh yourself in the morning, you know.
And the sixth productivity hack, and I don't want you guys to take this lightly, as I was in the rabbit hole of productivity, give yourself time to rest. Touch grass. Whether that's go outside and going for a walk, maybe that's just relaxing and playing games, like playing FIFA, playing Clash Royale, or playing, or just watching Game of Thrones or watching TV. It's okay to do that. Just don't let that consume you, you know? Like, if you want to watch two episodes of Game of Thrones, that's fine. If you want to play some FIFA, that's fine. Make sure you get your work done first. Make sure you hit out those priority tasks, and then reward yourself with something. Like, if you just lock yourself in, it's almost like when people are dieting, they take the diet so serious. They go two weeks super hard, and then they rebound. They're like, "Damn, I ain't had like a dessert in ages." Then they have the dessert, then they feel guilty, and they just keep having more and more, and then they fall off the diet. It's the same if you lock into work, but then you completely ignore, let's say, playing games or just having fun or just doing something to reward yourself, you then think, ah, you, you, you eventually crack. And once you crack and you go back to doing what you was doing, you're like, "Damn, I love this." And you keep doing it, and it spirals, and it goes out of control. Whereas, if you just literally put in your Google Calendar, you can play PlayStation from 7 to 9:00 PM, 7 to 10. Then after that, go to bed. That's fine. Give yourself time to rest, recover, and you're ready to go hard the next day. Plus, it's something to look forward to, right? After you've done what you needed to do, you have something to look forward to. So, that's also another thing that prompts me in my journal. "What did I enjoy most about today?"
That's pretty much the end of the video, guys. Can't lie, walking has absolutely knackered me out. I ain't even been walking that long either.