as a minimalist I've found that less is always better and I've applied this to almost everything in my life I've simplified my food and just eat one meal a day this saves an insane amount of time with cooking and also sitting down and eating the average shower is 12 minutes long that's 4 380 minutes a year I've cut that back to showering just once a week and that saves me 3756 minutes a year actually this would be gross and I am not this extreme and honestly I don't even love the word productivity because it always
lands on trying to do more and for me at least the goal is not always trying to do more it's to cut everything out that is non-essential so I can focus all my time money and energy on the things that are truly important to me like finding a hat because now my hair is wet I really gotta stop doing intros like that foreign for me I've found kind of some rules of minimalism that have really helped me accomplish way more by doing way less so these are those rules batching a lot of times in order
to feel productive we'll just switch from task to task it gives us like this feeling of accomplishment or maybe you're just like me and have ADHD squirrel but whatever the reason doing that is not effective and I found out that kind of the hard way over the past couple years where I was checking email like constantly throughout the day getting texts and phone calls constantly throughout the day and really from a few different places I discovered this idea of batching and it has increased my productivity immensely well stop wasting my time this is pretty much
just the idea of picking a few times either throughout the day or throughout the week to accomplish similar tasks and really put them all together so if maybe you have half a dozen phone calls that you need to get done this week schedule them all half an hour apart in one morning so you get them all out of the way at once and you're not breaking up your day every day throughout the week by having a phone call you'll find it's a lot more efficient the same thing with email I went from checking it constantly
to try to check it just twice a day which is so much more efficient and plus when I sit down and do it I have to answer all them and don't just look at it and then think about it all day and then have to sit down another time and actually deal with it but actually sitting down having a dedicated time dealing with it all and then not worrying about it honestly it's so much less stressful the one year rule this is simply the question I'm asking will I regret what I'm either doing or not
doing a year from now when I look back at the decisions I made a year from now to not really pick up guitar as much I wish that I had started that habit last year honestly but if I started now in a year from now I can actually be pretty decent at guitar foreign [Music] but this applies to so many different things in our lives are you going to regret not starting that business not doing that new thing not pursuing that thing that is super exciting to you well it might not pay right away and
you look at going to the gym as you go to the gym once and you probably will notice almost zero difference but if you do that consistently once or twice a week for a year you will feel drastically different than if you don't go to the gym at all so instead of looking at the micro take a step back and look at what could your life look like a year from now if you start a habit or stop a different habit that is consuming a lot of time and just really kind of sucking your life
away always have a second brain when I have a big project going on I just tend to forget especially when it's a big a little bit more of complex problem that's why I love this idea of having a second brain which is pretty much just like a digital place where you can organize any aspect of your life really but especially projects that you have going on so that you don't need to remember everything it doesn't all have to live in your mind and that really frees up your mind to focus on things and you can
create tasks and as you guys know I've been using the sponsor of this video millinote as my kind of second brain when I have bigger projects going on Milano is a tool for organizing your creative projects it's kind of like having one of those giant cork boards where there's all the pictures and the strings going from one thing to another but it's digital and doesn't look as confusing Milano is really a place to collect and organize all of your thoughts and ideas put together checklists of anything you need to get done they visualize and gather
inspiration and really just set a visual direction for a project for me I use this when I have bigger video projects going on right now I'm shooting like a commercial for somebody and it's a little bit of a more complex project so I created a board for it this one's specifically tailored to what I'm doing right now we've got a to-do list thumbnail ideas research topics notes descriptions got my shot list over here with just some different visuals that I'm looking at I've also kind of got this mind map going on of different areas that
I want to cover inside of this video and how they kind of Link together but you can make boards on pretty much anything if you look at all these templates they have a project plan a mood board a creative brief weekly plan and just so many others depending on if you're a agency you're doing design work you're illustrating interior design logos marketing mood boards photography podcasting startup students pretty much any creative project you're working on millinote can help you with that and the best part of this is Milano is available for free with no time
limit so sign up with the link down in the description to start your next creative project now I'm gonna head out [Music] the 50 rule we all know people who think that they can get somewhere a lot faster than they actually can and because of that they're always late they're always stressed about different projects at work they just take on too much stuff because they're kind of optimistic which is a good thing but not really in a good way so this rule kind of states that if you're going somewhere just plan on it taking you
know 15 minutes longer or maybe even 50 percent longer there is a saying when I used to do construction that it's going to take 50 longer than you think and cost 50 more than you think which if you've ever done like a big rehab project or anything that that's mostly true so really just try to build in a buffer because things always take longer than you think they're going to and if you plan on that you won't get stressed if it's not a hell yeah then it's a no you can drown in good opportunities there's
so many different things that we can do with our time and as you become more successful in any field you'll have more opportunities that sound mildly interesting there'll be a trip that sounds pretty cool so you know maybe you might do that or people will invite you to things that sound no that sounds pretty fun you'll go to buy something yeah I'll probably wear this it's pretty nice it could be starting a business a job opportunity there are so many different things that sound good and maybe they are good opportunities but in order to have
the focus and the time to spend on that thing that is the amazing 100 once in a lifetime life-changing opportunity you have to say no to all those other things that are good but they're not great so if it's not 100 hell yeah then it's a no Perfection is the enemy of done this is one of the most common things that I think I struggle with and a lot of people struggle with is they'll never start or or especially finish different things because they have to be perfect before you start your YouTube channel you have
to have the perfect name you have to have your banner you have to have 15 different videos done there's so many different things that stop you from actually pressing publish from starting your business from accomplishing things whether it's a small thing or a big thing sometimes done is better than perfect and it's more important to just continually make progress so don't try to be perfect do hard things first so I have a tendency to do anything besides the most important thing first when I have a video deadline that I need to get done I'll check
email I'll check Instagram I'll write a script for a different video I'll do anything besides the most important thing and this is kind of like a self-defense mechanism I think that tries to keep us from failure but without failure there's really no progress that's where I've learned like most everything I've learned is from being stupid and messing up on different things so I've started following this rule that in the morning the first thing I have to do before I can do anything else that is on my to-do list is that most important thing that if
I get this done I will feel like my day is success I'll know that I accomplished something and once you've done that hard thing once you've climbed that mountain going down and finishing the rest like really feels easy to get into the flow which really just comes down to trying to avoid being interrupted oh my goodness look how long my hair is look at that look at that should I grow it out again and go back to this no no for me I've found that I am honestly most productive when I'm not in my normal
situation so when I really want to focus I will shut off my phone turn off my Wi-Fi or at least just shut down any sites that are draining my time and become unavailable for a little bit so that I can focus during the summer I'll come out here and I'll sit at this picnic table and honestly in like an hour of uninterrupted time I can do like four hours worth of work where I'll go to a coffee shop I'll just mix it up and go somewhere else get out of the place that has all the
triggers that has your phone and your family members and the TV and the refrigerator and whatever the things are that distract you and really just have short dedicated times where you can really get a lot done it's been life-changing for me if you enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you next week [Music]
