How I Manage My Time - 8 Tips that Changed My Life

come on all right it's been 3 years

since I started making YouTube videos alongside my full-time job in Tech and for the first year I would literally wake up feeling anxious because I thought there was just no way I could get everything done in the 16 hours I was awake but I've picked up a few tricks since then so in this video I'm sharing the eight time management tips that actually help me get done starting with number one create a God's

eye view sounds grandio but hear me out if you're into self-improvement you probably have a budget tracker by recording your expenses and income every month you can track how key metrics like your spending and net worth change over time this holistic God ey view of my personal finances is easy to access I keep it bookmarked in my browser provides a clear snapshot of my financial situation and most importantly helps me spot issues and potential problems the same benefits carry over to the workplace and my side hustle at work I literally have a bookmarks folder with links to dashboards and spreadsheets that track the performance of my projects this could be something as simple as using the suif function to automatically update a total number whenever the underlying data set is refreshed I review this once a week and if there's a problem I know exactly where to look so the idea is by investing a bit of time up front to create a God's eye view for an area of your life you enjoy massive Time Savings in the long term because you don't need to redo the manual calculations each time there's no need to over complicate this if you're trying to lose weight your God's eye view is the Apple Health app create a reminder to weigh yourself first every morning review the app every week and hopefully you're trending towards the right direction time

management tip number two taking the box if you've come across the checklist Manifesto essentialism or Matt dll's video on the topic you probably know how experts in every industry from doctors to Pilots to CEOs rely on the stupidly simple technique of creating checklists to save time and drastically reduce errors and although Matt is technically correct when he concludes that as I found out there could really be a checklist for anything here are the three checklists I've incorporated into my life that have made the most impact first as part of my morning routine I click this new day button in my notion daily planner to generate the six non-negotiable tasks that set me up for success for the rest of the day I'll link the full video down below if you want the template for example many viewers are surprised I'm still replying to comments on videos I made 2 years ago and that's because I literally do not allow myself to move on to the next task until I reply to my followers in the workplace I have a plan for upcoming week calendar block on Monday mornings with a checklist reminding me to confirm all meetings for that week review status of ongoing projects write my weekly Snippets so on and so forth and for every single video I've uploaded onto this YouTube channel this is the 145th video I followed a checklist to ensure my viewers you guys enjoy consistent and hopefully high quality content if you're still not convinced start doing this for something you care about if you like traveling create a checklist for packing it just takes all the guesswork out of the equation and makes it extremely hard for you to forget something by the way this video is not sponsored but it is supported by those of you who subscribe to my paid productivity newsletter on Google apps Link in the description to

learn more tip number three is something I call the anti-mcdonald's Habit this is a direct reference to the McDonald's habit Ali abdall and Matthew dicks popularized in which they say take advantage of any spare time you have if you're waiting for someone in McDonald's for 7 minutes that's 7 Minutes worth of work you could be doing now I love Ali he's a friend please don't HTE me if you're watching this Ali on the team but according to Andrew huberman 99% of people need a 2 to 5 minute transition period between tasks for Optimal Performance so my personal caveat to the McDonald's habit is to make a distinction between High brain intensive tasks like creative or deep work and low Focus tasks like processing email and responding to messages for example when I have backtack meetings and one ends 5 to 10 minutes early I'm definitely not going to work on a high stake strategy presentation only to lose my train of thought when the next meeting begins but emails and messages are sufficiently unimportant that I'm okay if I get distracted halfway through speaking of

email the inbox zero workflow has been the biggest game changer for my productivity and that of many others it's the golden standard for inbox management and the workflow itself was popularized by ex googler and author of make Time Jake naap you basically follow a set of rules or a checklist if you will when processing email start with the oldest emails and work your way up for emails where action can be taken within 2 minutes deal with them immediately and archive them for emails where action requires more than 2 minutes add a follow-up label for emails where the action is delegated to someone else but you are still responsible for the outcome add a waiting label for emails you need to refer back to time and time again add a reference label all other emails can and should be archived this workflow ensures you never forget about an important email and clears your inbox of distracting emails you have already dealt with I have tutorials for both Gmail and Outlook so check those out after time management tip number

five is the atomic 8020 rule a quick search on the best morning routine will have you believe that you need to wake up at 600 work out stretch cold shower meditate walk 10,000 steps plan your day journal and you have to get all that done by 615 to be productive no what I actually found to work is to combine the 8020 rule which states 80% of the results come from 20% of the inputs with the key takeaway from Atomic habits which is one small change the 20% done over a long period of time equals massive impact in practice this means I first set an upper time limit to my morning routine 45 minutes maximum time block to my calendar then I trial an error a combination of habits I can consistently stick to for me that combination is a 10-minute stretch because physical health is my top priority a normal skincare routine to look sexy for you guys reviewing quotes and vocabulary I saved on readwise and planning my day on notion by the same logic I stopped stressing about finding the best app or tool for example I want to keep up with the latest developments in Ai and I'm much more likely to achieve that goal by consistently reading one AI focused newsletter instead of subscribing to 10 and end up not reading any of them because it's overwhelming in short identify the 20% that matters the most to you and find ways to stick with that for a long period of time

management tip number six prompt with intention there is no doubt that Chach BT and Google bard have massive potential to help us save time and be more productive but they can also be overwhelming and inefficient if you don't identify relevant use cases that apply to you imagine two scenarios in scenario a I tell you can now use bar to help you book flights hotels search for YouTube videos and access docs and drive which is all True by the way in scenario B I tell you that by typing at gmail you can ask bar to summarize all unread emails for you every morning which scenario are you more likely to take action on probably scenario B because it's specific and relevant so instead of getting overwhelmed by post like top 100 chat BT promps and use these 50 AI tools to 10 extra productivity I recommend following these three simple steps first identify one to three repetitive tasks at work that take up a disproportionate amount of your time second create prompts for those tasks specifically by either taking an existing prompt from a repository like github's prompts library and making edits or watch my 8-minute video on how to master prompting once you find a prompt that outputs consistently highquality results save it within a prompt database and reuse as needed to share some examples at work I have prompts that help me write weekly Snippets interpret Financial reports and generate smart questions to ask during coffee chats you can check out my chat gbt for productivity video for all use cases for my YouTube videos I have a prompt that turns my video script into a written blog post this was complete Game Changer and for my personal life chat helps me come up with pickup lines for I mean um cooking recipes chat helps me with cooking recipes time management tip number seven

the recovery forecast many of you might not know this but as a side effect of growing up in Hong Kong I enjoy going out and clubbing with friends productively of course and now that I'm over 30 hangovers have become a real problem so if I know I'm going out on a Friday night I would literally time block a recovery slot on Saturday morning from 9:00 to 12 and as stupid as this sounds being intentional about this has really helped with my weekly time management specifically this means I would be forced to move tasks I had originally planned for that morning and if I see I have a non negotiable commitment I would be way less likely to fall victim to fomo fear of missing out and i' just stay in for the night Pro tip I found the benefits apply to traveling as well by blocking off time for commuting and recovering from jet lag I never overcommit to activities on travel days time management technique

number eight capture and organize here's something that happens to me all the time as I'm commuting home from work I'm brainstorming ideas from my next video then suddenly I receive an email from my boss and a coffee chat request from a colleague instead of trying to process all these inputs immediately since I might forget about the other two I would first capture all three tasks within my to-do app and when I'm home and on a laptop I would then organize those tasks into their respective locations I add the video idea into my notion database I process the email according to the inbox zero workflow and I create an event on calendar for the coffee chat if you want to learn more about this extremely simple yet underrated time management tip check out the full workflow here see you on the next video in the meantime have a great one