hundreds of advertising campaigns product promotions things like this always promise me you know listen Zach if you use our thing we're going to 10 times your productivity you're going to change the world you'll make a million dollars blah blah blah blah blah and what I've learned is that 99% of these things are junk I think I found the cheapest things that actually make a difference the benefit of these things are no need for motivation you'll be able to develop a plan you'll be able to use your brain's natural abilities in a good way and you'll
have fun the whole time so here's your wish list for your next $252 number one is graph paper graph paper is gamechanging and I've been using it for the past 2 years this is what Professional Engineers Architects Consultants many other people that have you know fancy jobs throughout the world use because it's organized and concise and why do we need to be organized and concise even on our scratch paper well because if you're not organized and concise in your scratch paper number one you'll easier or more easily make mistakes and number two is you can
lose track of the information like when you want to go back to it so key advantages are math structure data representation and of course organization and graph paper will cost you like $8 for a big pack okay buy number two is Uber to a coffee shop and buy a coffee there and that'll take about $15 out of your budget if you can commit two to three hours a day of deep work to your side project for an entire year your life will be changed I I promise what I do when I really want to get
something done or when I really feel like I need to start accomplishing things is every other day I'll walk bike take an Uber drive to a coffee shop buy a coffee a black coffee when it's cold an ice latte if it's kind of warmer outside and just sit there and do work for 2 to 3 hours the peer pressure of the people around you the Simplicity of only having this one laptop in front of you that really helps you just like get to work so I'll sit in a Corner open my MacBook Air pop in
my airpods Pro turn on noise cancelling mode play a classical playlist open up my website or Word document or whatever I'm working on for that day have the coffee on one side and just get to work so I kind of hinted at it a little bit but the next four buys that I'm going to recommend really combine well with this uh coffee shop [Music] maneuver okay buy number three is a Spotify subscription and noise cancelling headphones I think Spotify subscription is $1 a month and you can get these pretty good encher noise cancelling headphones for
$44 again no one's sponsoring this video there might be an affiliate link kind of mixed throughout for some of these items but none of these companies have sponsored me ever buy number four which is going to cost you about $10 is a simplistic Focus timer that you get on your computer and this is called Focus timer and what I usually do is 50 minutes of work 10 minutes of break 50 minutes of work and then a 30- minute break you can also do 25 minutes 5 minute break 25 minutes 5 minute break 25 minutes 5
minute break 25 minutes 30 minute break and those are Pomodoro sessions both equal about 100 minutes of work and 40 minutes of break and why I pick this timer is because it's ugly it's kind of hard to use and it's only on the Mac so this means I'm not going to be looking at my phone I'm only going to be starting the timer on my computer and it has really no fanciness to it so when it's over it gives me this awful beeping sound and when it's start time to start again it gives me a
nice spell okay buy number five is the most expensive buy and it's a piece of software for your Mac and it's called the things app so this is my favorite to-do tracker that keeps track of every single thing that pops into my head throughout the day I think at one point I had 330 to-dos on the list um and I'll tell you what I do with those to-dos right now so my life organization really revolves around this app uh this app Notes Post-it in a journal so every year what I'll do first things first um
is I'll figure out my yearly priorities and goals and then what I'll do is I'll figure out how am I going to break down those goals into monthly goals and weekly goals and then before every week I'll you know figure out what I'm going to do for each day and before the next day I'll figure out what I'm going to do on a little Post-It note and what might happen during the day or during the week or whenever is an idea might randomly pop into my head for a YouTube idea or a piece of content
and I have this iPhone 15 with the nice action button and all I do is my action button is just the to-do app so when I hit the action button it'll come up with okay you can type in this Todo and then I'll usually hit the bottom voice thing and I'll say make the next super awesome cool YouTube video because you're a super awesome cool dude and then I'll just close my phone go on to the next thing and then on Sunday which is usually my day off when I do nothing I'll actually plan my
next week so what I'll do is I'll go through all my to-dos that I've created through the week and organize those onto my notes section on my computer and I'll show you quickly kind of what my notes section on my computer might look like but basically I it organized into projects areas resources and archives I think this is stealing from par I think it's called par or something like that um and then my projects I only have three projects that I'm working on at one time so it might be this company it might be something
else I'm working on and it might be a startup or something like that uh areas you know these are Big areas of like life or business or personal health or finances or relationships uh resources you can see each thing as something that's kind of more higher or priority on the to-do list okay I've taken those to-dos I've put them into my notes or I've just done anything that I need to do on those to-dos really quickly and then I go into my next week and for every week I usually plan out a big goal or
two for every single day so Monday I have a goal Tuesday I have a goal Wednesday I have a goal and then the day before kind of that night time maybe around 6 or 7 o'clock for Tuesday for example if today's Monday I'll say Okay I want to do my big goal I need to do the laundry I need to go to the dentist appointment XYZ so I know what I'm doing and importantly I'm also this is kind of a Next Level I'm time boxing what I'm going to do so you know I usually wake
up around 5:30 so from 5:30 to 6:30 I'll you know have breakfast number one go for a walk uh shower meditate um and then start my deep work session number one from like 7:30 to 9:00 and then maybe I'll hop right into another one so 9 to 11:30 or 9:00 to 10:30 I'll do another deep work section so I'll briefly talk about what I might outline my day to be so for example we're using this kind of coffee shop combination thing I might wake up at 5:30 5 :30 to 6:30 I'll have my first breakfast
go for a walk meditate shower change um and then from 7 to 9:30 or 10: I'll do my coffee shop kind of deep work session and then I'll come home have second breakfast maybe go for another walk do a little bit of exercise sit by the pool read whatever around 12:00 I'll have lunch and then maybe 1:00 I'll enter into my next kind of deep work session maybe 1: to 2:30 or 3: or something like that then from 3:00 to 4:30 I'll usually go to the gym e dinner around 5: and then at around 6:00
to 8:00 I'll kind of do pretty much nothing maybe family time maybe read maybe go for another walk um catch up on things I miss during the day but usually low effort activities and then I'll read and uh shower and go to bed around 8 8:30 okay buy number six and this cost you about $1 and this is Post-it notes and I use Post-it notes for two main things number one reminding myself like for example on my computer I have a posted not note that says be a human and don't complain um I also have
one on my bookshelf that says read more uh the other but more effective use of my Post-It notes is what I just talked about so again every night I'll plan out my day by time boxing it um with a Post-It note so when I start my day I'll be like okay number one I'm doing this two this blah blah blah blah and of course you don't stick to it always 100% I don't stick to it 100% of the time but it's just nice to have it laid out there so you can just get to work
on whatever you want to get to work on right away okay Buy number seven and this is a Le term I think that's how you say notebook for $27 and a Muji pen for $3 so I've tried seven notebook Brands 13 pen Brands and this is really the best combination I found I encourage you to try a bunch and see what you like but these are the ones I like and notebooks have changed my life they really have uh I think I'm going to make a whole another video on like notebooks and how to use
them and how to get the most out of them but I usually always have three to five notebooks that are running at the same time one is a notebook for my week planning so I said on Sunday I'll plan out my daily goals or like some YouTube content planning or kind of miscellaneous stuff number two is like usually a big idea Journal so this is my journal that I'm going to have you know what are the big plans I want to do what are all the pieces of content I'm going to publish in the next
year or something like that what are the next big projects I want to work on stuff like that number three is a personal journal and I think that's pretty self-explanatory uh number four is a project and number five is a project so again I'll have those first three always going what's really nice nice is to have a dedicated journal to a project so for example my podcast I had a journal that was just for the podcast um for other little businesses I'm working on I'll have a journal just for those okay number eight is a
smart light which is going to cost you $13 and a smart home which is going to cost you I think there's an Amazon one for $17 so why do we want one of these well evidence shows certain wavelengths of light certain intensity certain colors affect the way you sleep you wake up you think all these kind of things I have a bunch of other videos on this but really in the morning you want really bright light hitting your face usually the light in your house or somewhere isn't enough so you actually need to walk outside
to get that intensity and duration of light to really jump start your circadian rhythm but at night time what you can do is start to switch all the lights to kind of a more reddish orangey Hue and decrease the intensity it's also really nice when I'm like reading at a chair or something like that to be able to adjust the intensity and then when I go to bed I'll just tell Alexa like good night and it'll turn all my lights off you can also set the lights to go on or off when you leave the
house house or come back to the house or set them for certain times of the day Buy number nine is a whiteboard I have two massive whiteboards in my office and I love them really just for writing out things but here are some things you can do you can do mind mapping you can do a swad analysis you can do Post-It note organization you can do Pros cons you can do a fishbone diagram you can do storyboarding you can do a flowchart really anything you saw on Silicon Valley is actually a pretty good thing to
do with the Whiteboard and I remember I watched a video of Dan mace talking about how he made his videos for Mr Beast and he just has whiteboards everywhere and I really love that so I copied that so the final buy is a yoga mat and this will run you about 10 bucks and the reason this is such a huge impact on your productivity right is a sedentary lifestyle is not only hugely detrimental for your physical health but also for your mental health and every Pomodoro break I'll usually go for a walk stand up use
the yoga mat and do some weird stretches or something like that just get moving and I also love yoga and you can use that yoga mat to do yoga bam that's that super Zack highly productivity tip you expect and want from Zack that is right you must be productive come on get to work I hit you again what is that oh you want it again oh just stop wait oh my God it's too much okay okay the to-do list I'm getting a to-do where is I swear it's here it's here the to-do list my 82
my goals I don't know okay but that is it thank you so much for watching these really did have an impact on my life so I hope they help you I will see you on the next [Music] one give me your top goals for the year 2025 it just coming quickly by
