A Step By Step Guide To ACTUALLY Be Productive (that anyone can use)

if you can get these six things right there is no way you won't end up more successful more productive and most importantly living a healthy life full of positive emotions and relationships I'm going to take everything I've learned over my 2-year productivity and Peak Performance journey and condense it into one six-step framework that I would follow if I was starting from scratch step one is to create Clarity there's a few common productivity themes that everyone seems to gravitate towards we all want to know how to be more disciplined and motivated the best way to plan our days and weeks and how to eliminate distractions and stop procrastination almost everyone skips over the first step the most important step Clarity we could work all day have the best focus and master all the time management techniques but if we're going in the wrong direction then we will never be productive when I first started uni I had no idea what I wanted to do I decided to study engineering and I spent a year year and a half slaving away for a degree that I didn't want that would just lead to a job that I didn't want eventually I took myself into the future and I realized the engineering lifestyle really wasn't the lifestyle that I wanted for myself so $118,000 And1 and 1 half years later I switched to a new degree I started using my time energy money and attention to build a life I actually wanted not just doing a degree for the prestige or because it was conventionally successful ful I'm now studying business with a major that I actually care about and a job that I could see myself doing in the future so if I was creating Clarity for the very first time I would focus on doing four specific things I would uncover my mission and vision what I really wanted to do with my life and the impact that I wanted to have I would evaluate my current life and look at how it compares to the life that I want where are the gaps between what I'm doing now and where I want to end up then I would set effective goals that would actually bridge this Gap and then break those goals down into small daily action steps having this big Vision that you're working towards gives you a sense of purpose as you go into each day going through this process is the whole reason that I started this YouTube channel because I knew that in the future I wanted to have an audience that I could have an impact on creating Clarity gives you the power to use all of these productivity tools that we'll go through to make real positive change in your life not just to be more productive now we're clear on where we want to go and how we're going to get there we have to sort our current lives out enough so that we can actually take those steps this is where building life systems comes in now we can split Our Lives into two different buckets bucket one is our maintenance bucket and this is where most of our time and energy is spent working so we can pay our bills cooking so we can eat doing the washing so we can wear clean clothes and working out every day so we can stay healthy all of these tasks are things that just maintain our lives as they are right now the second bucket is growth and this is what makes us feel like we're moving forwards in our lives reading to gain more knowledge starting that hobby to experience more joy taking that course to increase our earning potential or working on our side hustle to create the freedom that we desire these are all things that we do now to create a better life for our future selves here's the issue for most of us the maintenance bucket takes up so much of our time and energy that we just don't have any chance to get to the growth bucket we don't fail at our goals because we're undisciplined or lazy we're just so busy getting through each day that it feels like we have no choice but to focus on the maintenance bucket all of our goals and intentions just keep getting pushed to the do later pile which never ends up getting done this is the struggle that I faced for so long I wanted to do things for my future self I knew that I had to work now for future gain but it feels so hard to do things for your future self when you're struggling to stay above water in your current life this is where I started developing life systems life systems are things like morning and evening routines pre-work and shutdown routines and weekly and monthly routines but they are so much more than just routines we can use these things to automate the maintenance bucket so we actually have the time and energy to do things in our growth bucket so if I was starting from scratch I would aim to create extremely simple but effective life systems for all of those areas that I just mentioned if I look at my weekly reset routine this involves things like cleaning and washing grocery shopping meal prepping reflecting on my week and my progress towards my goals and planning for my next week so now instead of spending time cooking and cleaning each night in the maintenance bucket I can use that time to work on my side hustle which is in my growth bucket instead of spending ages deciding what to do each day I can use that energy to to actually do the work but I think the best thing about life systems is that they make everything feel so much simpler instead of feeling like you have a million little tiny habits to do every day or every morning like exercising taking vitamins having a cold shower meditating you can group them all into one single routine that just chunks everything together and makes you feel like you have less on your plate this has freed up so much time and energy for my growth bucket so I know that now I actually have the chance to make progress towards my goals each day so we have our direction we freed up some time and energy to actually head in that direction next we want to eliminate some of the overhead stress by organizing our lives we consume so much information every day we have so many tasks and deadlines and appointments to stay on top of but most of us have no way of managing this so we end up keeping everything in our heads this makes us forget things it makes us feel like if we switch off for just 1 minute then everything will fall apart and honestly we can never fully focus on the present or the task that we're doing because some little portion of our mind is always dedicated to thinking about these little tasks it's one of these things that you don't really notice because we've liveed this way for so long but life feels really hard when your mind is constantly on and subconscious stress becomes normal so if I had no systems in place I would do two things to help manage this pressure and and take back mental space to work towards my goals the first thing I would do is to create a space to organize my life now you can buy or create a notion template for this or use another task management system or you can start extremely simple grab your notes up and make three pages one brain dump page one master task list page and one reference list page and then you'll combine these three pages with your calendar this will give you everything you need to right notes store ideas and keep track of dates the second thing that I would do is to create a system that brings this space to life I would not fall into the same trap that I did when I was first starting this spending so much time organizing and perfecting the system that one I didn't even do my tasks and two I didn't even follow through on the systems because they were too complicated instead I would create a simple system that doesn't take hours to organize doesn't make me dread organizing it and guarantee that I can actually trust the system that I've created there is nothing worse than going to the effort of making this space only to not use it because you're not sure whether things are up to date I have done an entire video on how I use brain dumping and notion to organize my life and create more mental space if you want to learn more you can look at that video and if you want to use notion to create your own space then you can take my notion 101 course that's free that will give you a starting point to work from I will put the links to both of those in the description below the fourth thing that I would do is to make my health easy our life systems and organization has saved some energy but to be productive we also have to generate energy our mental and physical health seem to be the biggest things that get pushed aside in favor of our work I think that deep down most of us know how important our health is you don't need me to tell you we know we should be eating healthy foods we know that we should be exercising every day we know we should be doing things for our mental health and getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night and every time we do these things we feel incredible we have more energy we're more productive we can focus better and we feel more motivated but it's so hard to stay consistent because doing all of these things eating well exercising getting the sleep we need looking after our mental health they all take time and effort it's easier to stay in bed than it is to get up and work out it's easier to order Uber Eats after a long day than it is to cook a whole meal and it's easy to tell yourself that meditation or journaling or reflection isn't important when you have a million other tasks that seem to be pressing down on you doing what is good for us is so much harder than doing what is easy for us and I think this is why so many people stay consistent for a few weeks and then Fall Off Track when life gets busy I experienced all of this and here is what I have learned if you want to be someone who prioritizes is their health and well-being if you want the productivity benefits that come from this the energy the alertness the better quality of life the ability to do things with the ones that you love then you have to make Health a natural part of your everyday life you don't wake up every day and decide whether to take a shower get dressed or check your phone you just do it your health needs to follow the same principle and to do this you have to make it easy it needs to become something that eventually you won't even have to think about so to do this I would focus on four main things first nutrition how can you design your routines to make eating well easy it could be meal prepping or keeping healthy food nearby maybe it's listening to a podcast once a week to educate yourself on what healthy eating actually looks like and what you can do when you're eating out or you haven't prepared lunch the second is exercise how can you design your routines to make daily exercise easy could you walk to work or start a weekly PT session or find a way to fit it in as part of your daily morning routine the third is sleep how can you design your routines to make getting good sleep easy a few suggestions that I have used are setting an alarm to start my night routine because otherwise I just forget about the fact that it takes an hour to get ready for bed and my bedtime slowly moves later and later some other things are putting your phone across the room each night so it doesn't tempt you and making sure that you eat breakfast outside or get a morning walk so that you get morning sunlight which then makes your sleep better and the final one is mental health how can you design your routines to make cultivating a positive mindset easy this could be things like daily gratitude or it could be holding yourself accountable using weekly therapy sessions even finding ways to reduce your contact with the people and the things that drain your energy and put you in a negative mindset now I know this might sound like a lot but go back to point number two that we spoke about find a way to add these habits into your life systems your morning routine evening routine weekly reset routine if you can do this and they won't feel like they take so much effort they will eventually become something that you just do your health is your most valuable asset you can have everything else in the world but if you don't have your health then in the end you have nothing it's not just important for your performance and productivity it really is essential to live a long happy and fulfilling life step number five is to find your Peak Performance Time by by this point you will have a clear path to create your ideal life life systems that create more time and energy for this growth life Organization for mental Clarity and less subconscious stress and an easy way to generate more energy in your everyday life we have the path we have the time we have the mental Clarity and we have the energy now we have to actually do the work so the next step is finding a way to make doing the work easier and more effective I swear there is nothing worse than setting aside the time to get something done only to sit there 2 hours later having done absolutely nothing because when this happens we can't blame our lack of time anymore it's just our distraction procrastination and our brains refusing to cooperate there are a million different strategies that we could use to improve our focus and I was sitting down trying to work out which one would be the most impactful which one has made the biggest difference for me that I would use if I was starting from scratch what what I came to is finding your Peak Performance times the times where your concentration and your energy are the highest 18 months ago I would have seen my focus and energy as this straight line that stayed consistent throughout the whole day I would sit down and try and write an essay or do some work on my side hustle at 600 p. m. after using my brain all day at work and wonder why I could never get anything done and it just felt so hard what I now know is that our energy and our Focus flu ues every minute of every day and we can use this to our advantage I normally have three main Peak Performance times throughout the day it tends to be 6:00 a.

m. 9:00 a. m.

and 400 p. m. sometimes if I'm lucky so when I'm working a 9 to 5 job it means that the really deep needle moving work on my side hustle has to come at 6:00 a.

m. and then the Deep work for my job can come at 9:00 a. m.

and 400 p. m. of course you can't just work for 3 hours a day and these aren't the only times you can get really productive work done but what I have found is that it just makes it a lot easier and honestly if you can find 60 Minutes 2 to three times a day at your Peak Performance times there is no way that you will not be living a completely different life 1 year or even 6 months from now achieving your goals takes a lot less time than you think when you actually give yourself the chance to fully focused step six is to set your boundaries now there is one thing that we haven't addressed yet and that is what to do about the endless requests that are getting thrown at us we can perfectly plan our days organize our lives boost our energy and work more productively but none of that will help if we fill all our time and energy with everyone else's priorities if you can relate it's not your fault it can be really hard to say no especially if you've spent your whole life saying yes not wanting to let other people down wanting to help and not wanting to be seen as rude this is where setting boundaries become so helpful you're basically setting rules or guidelines that help you to decide what to say yes or no to in advance if you have a boundary that you stop work at 6:00 p.

m. every night then you won't automatically say yes every time your boss or your client asks you to work past 6:00 p. m.