this video is dedicated to getting you to stop watching this video listen I'm going to get straight to the point you are a productivity genius already your problem is just with getting started but instead of getting started you keep opening up social media and watching more YouTube videos or endless scrolling on Instagram trying to get your latest fix of bro culture hustle core or clean girl intentional living Perfection it's all the same poison you are addicted to free advice that is why in this video I am giving you some practical advice to come unstuck from
the social media rabbit hole and start focusing on what matters to you so the first thing that you want to do to help yourself come unstuck from the productivity loophole that we find ourselves in is to stop accepting free advice advice on how you should live your life is literally everywhere so much of it is productivity advice or optimal living advice as well we should be organizing our to-do list this way way we should be making nighttime mocktails to improve our sleep we should be gachha we should be taking someone's productivity master class we should
be listening to this podcast it's literally everywhere and free advice is not something that just exists on our social media and then we can ignore it it is mental clutter all these reals that I'm scrolling by the Snippets that I'm reading the clips that I'm seeing are mental clutter informing me of how I should be living my life and sort of taking up space in my brain and I want to visual Iz this with you by showing you that it is not just mental clutter but also literal clutter so I house free advice in a
couple of different places number one is in my saved folders I think you know the feeling you're scrolling through Instagram and you see a Creator you like or you see something that you think is profound and you go into this little three dots and you just save it and then it's saved in your collection somewhere all social media platforms have this YouTube the favorites playlist is really where where this gets me me um on that platform but if you so if you go to your saved list you can see this is my saved list right
here it is so unorganized it just has all posts and then audio my saved folder is where productivity tips and fashion ideas go to die I will save them carve out mental space for them in my brain and then really build in a debt to them that I never needed to by saving them and thinking I will actually come back to them later I won't you can see just from this screenshot there that there are so many of these that are related to like Optimal living so an alab doll clip skin care relaxation this is
about a to-do list this is about helping people in crisis this is about changing your life in 5 minutes this one is about finding peace there's a few that are about like fashion or home decor ideas because I'm interested in home decor right now but realistically I am never going to come back into this and be like oh let me just find my home decor ones and I can browse those I don't have the kind of patience to come back in in here and sift through all of these so when I save them I'm just
building in a debt to myself so that's the first way that it is literal clutter when you are consuming your productivity advice online saving things but just never looking at them communicates to your brain that you have all these open Loops but none of them are ever going to be closed because you reasonably can't come in here and act upon any one of these reels unless you have a really thorough rigorous process for cleaning out your saved folder so you're just creating open Loops in your head promising oh Siri no no no no no no
so you're just creating open Loops in your head by doing this these are items that are never going to be checked off it's just mental clutter another way that I experience this literal clutter is in my photos app so my photos app is also a place where productivity ideas and fashion tips and books I plan to read go to die uh you can see just from this is just my most recent photos I have some pictures of me and my cat I obviously have some pictures of friends but a lot of these are just screenshots
of things that I thought were good ideas so I have screenshots of books this is a book that I totally would love to read that I've just screenshotted someone talking about on social media and and stored in my photos folder as if I'm ever going to go back to my photos folder and like really pick out something to read I can tell you for a fact most of these screenshots of books just live perpetually in my photos folder I never even add them to a TBR I don't have a good routine for cleaning out my
photos folder so this just stays there and honestly I'm kind of frustrated that I would need some kind of great r to clean out my photos folder or to clean out my saved folder on Instagram because by adding things to the these places you are just creating future work for yourself by screenshotting this quote to my photos folder I am adding so much mental weight for when I eventually come back to this photo whether it's a minute later or a year later I have to remember what context this was in I see the Instagram UI
so I have to remember that it's Instagram I have to read through the entire thing and I have to remember why I screenshotted it for something like a quote that's pretty obvious but for something like this which is just an outfit that I liked that someone was wearing why did I screenshot that did I like the overalls do I want to copy the look do I like the idea of her copying outfit ideas from Friends what about this was interesting to me I just don't remember oh I'm being delivered coffee amazing what all of this
scrolling through Instagram saving screenshotting going back calling deleting remembering where I was at the time is serving to do is to make me procrastinate on the things I already know I should be doing so you are using free advice to procrastinate on doing what you know should be done to achieve your goals or to live the life you want to live now I know that you know what needs to be done next I know this because I am you we have watched all the productivity videos that tell us exactly how to take action I showed
you my saved folder you know I know what to do I know you know what to do but we keep opening up Instagram or YouTube to find another productivity video because watching that productiv it video feels productive but it isn't it's actually just consuming more media and I get it productivity advice is really fun to consume and is very helpful when you are stuck in a rut with your productivity but it's super important to start recognizing when you have had too much and learn to step away when you need a break trust me your favorite
creators will be here when you get back one thing I've been working on as I move away from being all productivity all the time is redesigning my home interior design has always mystified me so this week I'm checking out Emily Henderson's course style your space creative tips and techniques for interior design Emily is a professional home stylist and her course is getting me to think about what my style actually is she's getting me to think for myself about how to implement what I like into my space learning how to create something fun and unique to
me has been so awesome I took her style quiz that's part of the course and it was so accurate to me I got somewhere between 70s and Scandinavian which feels just like the perfect marriage of color and simplicity honestly I've always found home cor to be a little bit intimidating but this course breaks it down into simple attainable skills from color palettes to Vintage finds to developing your style confidence it's all right there I found this course on skillshare who are also kindly sponsoring today's video regular viewers of this channel already know that I absolutely
adore skillshare they have tons of courses on photography illustration creativity everything under the sun that you could possibly want to start a new creative hobby or goal in your life if you're interested in learning something skillshare has you covered and once I'm done with Emily's course skillshare has an entire learning path dedicated to DIY interior design that makes it super easy to level up my skills so check out this course along with thousands of others by clicking the link in my description box below the first 500 of you to click that link will get a
one Monon free trial of skillshare thank you to skillshare again for sponsoring and let's get back to the video now with that said I'm about to give you some free advice on how to break out of this cycle first you want to find a healthy way to deal with social media I promise if if you are watching this video you are not experiencing productivity burnout from reading too many books okay maybe it is because you're reading too many books but it's probably because you are on YouTube Instagram Tik Tok endlessly scrolling until darkness is literally
upon you it is hard to cut socials out of our life permanently especially if this is one of the main ways that you connect with friends in real life but we can make them a little bit less toxic places for us to be first you can unfollow everyone on social media who is a productivity Guru and only follow the people you actually know now I have recently done a huge calling of who I follow on Instagram I'm going to do one for YouTube as well but mostly I'm on Instagram as a social media like a
personal social media platform so this video may feel like it's all about Instagram but it really isn't it's about productivity culture RIT large across social media but I will say Instagram does have this nice feature where you can come to your following page who you follow and see the profiles that you have least interacted with so I'm going to click into this and there are I already see people I can unfollow here so for example Harmony nice she was an influencer on YouTube for a while like a long time several years ago there I don't
really need to be following her anymore um I don't really look for her updates I don't like she posts fine content I think she's like a great person but I'm it's just not stuff I'm interested in anymore so I can go into following unfollow boom done that's one piece of clutter removed from my social media feed because I don't know her in person and she's an influencer who's like not giving me not influencing me in any particular way that I am consciously enjoying so you can go through your following in either one of the pre-built
ways that Instagram has for you or just on your own and just start to call people out that are not either people you know or people who are giving you like really critical information that you actually look forward to and actually will take action on secondly you can set some boundaries around the times and dates that you are allowed to go on on social media so I currently use this app called opal I use the free version but there is a pro version that I intend to start using at some point because I think it
is that good essentially it is a social media app that blocks your social media use and what happens is if I select block I can select a duration I can select the apps I want blocked and I can select the difficulty so timeout is the difficulty the highest difficulty you can go on the free version and time out makes it so that each time you try to open your one of your blocked apps so for in my case Instagram and YouTube each time I try to open one of those blocks blocked apps it will um
make me wait a longer period of time so my first break they call them will take me like it'll make me wait 15 seconds and then it will go to 90 seconds and then it will keep climbing so that each time I'm disincentivized even further to go into the app deep focus is like absolutely cannot be changed your session is locked those apps are blocked um but again that's for pro and I just haven't upgraded to Pro I like the free version just as well um but I probably will upgrade to Pro at some point
this is not sponsored by the way I'm not being sponsored by opal I just really like their product if something like this if something like opal doesn't seem like it would work for you you can also try to set boundaries around like when I am with my friends I don't go on social media when I'm with my partner Tim when we're spending quality time together I am barely on social media like not even to post stories during that time because it's so important to us that we spend really quality time together so stacking social media
use or disuse onto an existing habit like that can make it a bit easier for us to set rules as well if you don't want to use or cannot use an app like opal if you want any further tips on how to stop social media use let me know down in the comments I do have a bunch of ideas about how to stop using your phone as much for example right now I'm currently in the process of turning my smartphone into a dumb phone which is why it looks like this so if you want want
a video on that let me know down in the comments and I would be more than happy to have one for you but I want to stop talking about the phone for a second and start talking about the next thing that you can do to stop accepting free advice and to start living the life that you want and that is to make sure you are taking care of the basics I say this all the time but I really mean it are you fed are you watered are you clean have you seen the sun today and
have you talked to a friend recently these are the basic things that are going to light you up and make you feel like a person and make it feel like you C can be a little bit more free from productivity culture you're less dependent on those productivity culture things I don't know how many of you have seen this little chart before but essentially it is a good maximum to remember the basic structure of this is if you feel X then do y so if you feel like everyone hates you sleep if you feel like you
hate everyone eat if you feel like you hate yourself shower if you feel like everyone hates every everyone go outside and nowhere in this chart will you see go on the internet go to social media because it's operating under a logic that I think is extremely true which is that most of our dissatisfaction anger confusion and anxiety can be resolved when we take care of our most basic needs sleep eating cleaning going outside engaging with the world I especially like this one because going outside will enable you to do things like see the sun which
is really powerful and also engage with other people right other people are so important to our well-being other real people not other people on the internet we are our best selves when we feel a baseline level of happiness and contentment and we cannot access happiness until we are out of survival mode so if your brain is being triggered or if you aren't taking care of yourself your body is literally unable to achieve its Highest Potential if you don't do all of these things you cannot be productive whether or not you already know how to be
productive or you are still trying to find it in a YouTube video somewhere your body would much rather be fed watered cleaned and have seen the sun today than to be told it just needs to try harder or use a new system or gacha or whatever if you're chronically tired or stressed it's time to address the basic self-care and see what is missing in terms of these sort of things lastly you need to define success for yourself so much of the productivity advice out there relies on an implied definition of success that is about money
status or power that is why you need to start outlining in great detail what success means to you when you start a project note the desired outcome when you wake up during the day choose one task instead of the 5 million you feel like you should be doing and when you sit down to plan your life make sure you are focusing on what is really meaningful maybe success for you really is a killer body and a million in the bank or maybe it is just that you get up and shower every day and eat all
three meals we all have different needs and if you don't define success for yourself it is so much easier to get sucked into somebody else 's idea of what your life should be if you still feel like you're having trouble getting started on your goals you might like this video right here next to my head on leaving armchair productivity behind in 2024 and actually focusing on what matters to you or you might like to click out of YouTube and get started on something more meaningful I don't blame you thanks for watching
