if you've hit a roadblock in life if you're in a ride if you are right now just realizing that it's already August and oh my God where did the year go first off same and second off I think it would be very easy for me to sit here and tell you about all the good things that have happened this year yeah could be helpful but it could also be super alienating if you have had a rough year so far that is the last thing you want to hear and I don't know given the economy given
the state of the world given the fact that life is topsy turvy at the best of times I think it might be more comforting if I talk you through all of the things that I have been failing at all righty this video me doing the opposite my seven worst productivity habits to make you feel better about yourself so lately I been letting the following things sit untouched for weeks emails messages admin if you've written to me in like the past forever I have not written back mountains of garage junk and weird drawer stuff but not
in the garage or drawer I've covered most surfaces in my house with random tools and art supplies also untouched to like 45 halfback projects all of the books at Al on my bedside table and this Channel and my feelings about this will become clear towards the end of the video cuz there's a bit more to it next up I'd like to walk you through my current morning routine firstly I wake up anytime between 4:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. that's not a joke uh here's me this morning oh God I look terrible but this is literally
this morning whereas yesterday it was like 9 W no alarm no consistency no idea why I'm like this next I immediately drink a strong coffee and have a bunch of meds and within 10 minutes of stum stumbling out of bed I have mindlessly unlocked my phone specifically what I do here is use my dumb morning brain to respond to all of these little chest notifications to play the worst moves that you've ever seen in your life then my daughter wakes up life is good we eat breakfast we draw we play for a while then my
wife usually wakes up we hang out this repeats for like a long time I should say sucks only for productivity this is beautiful next I think about work but instead I clean I just decide that this is a more important thing as I do this I make sure to oscillate back and forth with the unlocking of my phone and then I search for absolutely anything that could derail me when I find nothing I reluctantly start work like 4 hours later now on that note of excessive phone use in chess we have number three I've been
filling my brain with podcasts and all of my spare time with a lot of Chess like so much I don't know what's gotten into me man something just switched in my brain and I decided that this is all I care about anyway the equation looks something like this so my phone has basically become a fancy chess and podcast machine and my brain uh it's a not so fancy monkey machine these two together means that I have been a Grandmaster of nothing and the only big numbers that I'm hitting at the moment is screen time yuck
yuck all right what's next on this self roast is it working by the way I might not be he might just be like dude stop so as of late I've been defaulting to the backwards parade so the Paro principle sometimes known as the 8020 rule states that 80% of your results typically comes from 20% of your efforts the idea is that you udit everything that you do and then just select for the small impactful things and do more of those so you get more of the result that's the idea right here's how I've been doing
it I have just been on autopilot when I'm on autopilot it's nothing but 80 down to 20 here's some examples writing the small task with big results would be me just churning out words the shitty first drafts but instead I find myself sinking hours into agonizing over word choice videos I really just need a solid idea I need a shock good I need a well paced edit and I need to upload but instead I get caught up in sound effects archival footage fonts and unique Graphics money I really should spend more time just I don't
know understanding how like Tax Works and stuff but instead I find myself wasting energy being Pennywise and dollar dumb of course while all of this is going on a fun little mental h I avoid my goals by convincing myself that in action is preparation this is a real big brain move so you start with a metaphor of pulling back the arrow which is a very healthy symbol for Preparation you've got to go backwards in order to go forwards but then you can flate this whole concept to justify why you are moving further and further and
further and further and further from your goal you're just preparing just a little bit more prep and I'm going to sore right wrong by the way if that wasn't [Music] clear all right speaking of G Pro here's procrastination here we have the CEO of thinking Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours and you will be glad and well at anything I never said that but I have definitely got my 10,000 hours in procrastination and let me tell you when you are procrastinating at this level it's all about rebranding baby so procrastination as we all know is about having
something that you have to do and then avoiding it just kind of ignoring it but eventually you run into the problem that it still exists so if you really want to avoid something avoid calling it what it really is just give it a new label here is some things that I've been doing avoiding human interaction no I've been going monk mode cleaning to avoid work no this is work I need a clean space to get a clean head space actually watching 4 hours of YouTube This is actually research and falling down the content hole and
just melting into the couch I believe you'll find that is now called selfcare yes it makes me feel worse about myself but Counterpoint I'm lying down if you want to know how you can fate better in your life here we have something that I am calling the flakes Gambit so let's say you're looking at an open day and you come across the decision do I want to work out or do I want to work here's what you do so first step one choose an option just any option doesn't matter I'm going to work out two
now un choose that option so now you got no options all right three lose an hour somehow four get stuck in decision limbo ideally stressed and five just repeat just keep doing that over and over and over again until it's already August damn and coming in at number seven the big boss of the bad things that I've been doing a lot lately that I wish I wasn't Advanced self sabotage so I break this into actions thoughts and beliefs so my self-sabotage I'll use this channel for an example what I do is I build momentum and
then just completely disappear as soon as things look like they're going good I got to kill it why well I don't know because when it comes to thoughts I just stick my head in the sand part of self- sabotage is going off habit impulse autopilot so this roughly represents my thought process finally we get to beliefs and this is like the really upsetting stuff when you really break it down but essentially I've just been emotionally equating success with catastrophe all of my goals in life for a whole bunch of reasons I've started to associate with
punishment and man it's gotten to the point where enough is enough and I need to flip that script hence this video but we'll get there very soon essentially the thought looks like this if I get too big the added exposure will make me an easy target for um uh something something bad something real bad and that is how I've been doing it but here's the thing I was up to O in my alphabet superet and I was thinking about the word opposite and I was like well what is the opposite of a video about improving
your life a video about all the things in your life that are going wrong but that question what if I did the opposite started to take on another meaning you come to a roadblock in life and you know you've been trying one thing what if I just flip the script you know that quote a problem well defined is a problem half solved literally as I was making this video which was just going to be the negative after labeling all of the things that I have failed at I realized that I had actually made a scaffold
for change because those seven things that were holding me back once I really spelled them out they just turned into seven ways forward all right one start small but you have to start since beginning of this video I've been writing back to all of them I've even started clearing stuff up and I've finally put away some art supplies and some tools Half Bake projects I've decided which ones are staying which ones are going and this channel hey hello two keep what's working ditch what sucks my morning routine sucks but only for productivity and what I
realized is that I actually love my morning routine but I only really love this h I only love the half that involves my daughter and my wife and us all hanging out all of the problems are me problems they're all things that I do that I personally control and essentially it boils down to avoidance and distraction which brings us to three if you're driven by obsessions don't fight it use it I fill my brain with podcast in my spare time with a lot of Chess so I've decided to use chess as a reward my love
for it should be used and uh I've decided to use podcasts only when I'm drawing for the book four find people that you love to see win and hold each other accountable next up this is probably the clearest opposite me defaulting to the backwards par and probably the easiest one cuz I think most people default to doing the not important stuff but in order to solve this me and a couple of friends have decided that we are going to hold each other accountable just like a weekly checking to make sure that we all did the
thing that we were meant to do cuz I think so many habits you know you look for a hack you look for the shortcut that's going to make everything easier but turns out it is just doing it a lot and often five start before you're ready convincing myself that in action is preparation to do the opposite of this I just flip these two terms and realize that preparation is in action it's not you you get me six don't lie to yourself this is all about not rebranding so I think it's admitting to myself that I
have been avoiding human interaction I have been cleaning to avoid work I have been watching 4 hours of YouTube and I have been falling down the content hole and that felt scarier to me before I said it out loud just then but saying it out loud is I don't know it's a big part of it isn't it and seven the only way is through and this brings us to Advanced self sabotage build momentum then disappear so doing the opposite of this is building momentum and then sticking around and that's the commitment that I want to
make now so where I think I will finish this is with a book that my daughter loves um my daughter who painted my beautiful nails and it's a book that you probably know you know the be hunt book We're Going on a Bear Hunt we're going to catch a big one what a beautiful day we're not scared anyway they get to all of these little road blocks you know like a forest a grass mud a blizzard it's a very interesting terrain where they live and each time this family comes to a Crossroads they say well
we can't go over it we can't go under it oh no we've got to go through it and uh that's where I'm at all right have a beautiful day catch you
