How to USE Productivity Advice (Instead of Just Consuming It)

- Hey, what is goin' on guys?

So do you ever feel like there's just no point

to reading productivity and self-improvement articles.

I mean, you pull it up, you read it

or scan through it.

You get vaguely motivated for 10 minutes or so,

but after that, it really does nothing to change your life,

and all these articles, even though they purport

to be really, really helpful,

don't actually seem to be helping.

Well, that's what I wanna talk about today.

I wanna talk about how to actually use the productivity tips

and the self-improvement advice that you read.

And to start out, I want to share one of my favorite quotes

in the world, which comes from Derek Sivers

who is a writer and who is also

the guy who founded CDBaby.com

and subsequently sold it for millions of dollars

about 20 years ago.

The quote goes like this, "If more information

"was the answer then we'd all be billionaires

"with perfect abs."

And I think that today this quote

is more poignant than it's ever been,

because we now have unprecedented access to information

and more specifically self-improvement advice.

50 years ago people probably had the odd copy

of How to Win Friends and Influence People

sittin' on their bookshelves,

but now in less than 30 seconds

you can bombard your eyes with more productivity tips

and life hacks than you can handle.

And literally right now someone's probably

publishing another one of those articles

about 47 Habits that will Make 2019 Your Best Year Ever.

And don't forget that number 18

will literally blow your mind.

But again, if you're like most people

you probably scan through that article

and then proceed to do absolutely nothing with it.

I remember a time back in college

when a teacher of mine was lamenting

a very similar problem in one of my classes.

He said, "If I have a hundred students in this room

"probably only 75 are actually going

"to pay attention to what I'm saying.

"And of those 75 people, probably 20 of them

"will remember what I said after the test is over,

"and of that group, maybe one or two

"will actually apply it over the long-term."

The fact of the matter is very few people

actually use the information that they intake.

And the problem is exacerbated on the internet,

because there's just so much of it going around.

There's so much to take in and you can feel

absolutely overwhelmed when you read

these kinds of articles or watch these kinds of videos.

So that begs the question.

How do you make sure that you are among

that group of one or two people

who actually applies the information

and makes meaningful improvements in your life?

Today I wanna share a process

that can help you do that.

So here's how to actually use the productivity tips

that you find on channels like mine

or anywhere else on the internet.

Step number one, find the one problem or goal

that you wanna solve above all others and prioritize it.

As the author Greg McKeown talks about

in his excellent book,

Essentialism, a true priority is singular.

You need to make a decision here,

and note that decision originally

comes from a Latin word meaning, to cut off.

You need to pick one path right now and cut off the others.

Now, note that this isn't a permanent choice.

You can change your priorities later.

And it also doesn't mean that you can't

be working on more than one thing at once.

But to make notably progress quickly,

you wanna know ahead of time, which one is most important.

Otherwise, you're gonna run into that all too common

part of the day where you have very little time

or energy left over, but you still have

to read and meditate,

(person screaming)

and exercise and practice guitar as well.

And then you don't really know which one to cut.

So by setting a priority and by knowing the answer

to that question of which one is most important

beforehand, you're gonna save yourself a lot of time

and a lot of dead ends.

All right, so once you've decided on your priority,

it's now time to go out and try to find resources

or tutorials and guides that can

help you make that goal a reality.

And if you're a beginner it can be a really good idea

to go out and find somebody else's tutorial,

or somebody else's tips and follow them exactly.

But if they don't work,

then you don't wanna reject them outright.

Instead you wanna distill down their basic concepts

and then try to use those concepts in a way

that works for you to adapt them.

So, for example, let's say that I tell you

that I get up every morning really early

and I read for an hour.

And you wanna do the same,

but you have class or work really early in the morning

and you just can't make that work with your sleep schedule.

Well realize that the point here,

is that I'm carving out a specific time in the day

where no one can interrupt me,

where I can actually make that reading happen,

not that I'm doing it in the morning.

So how could you work with your own schedule,

in your own constraints to gain that same benefit?

Maybe instead of in the morning

you read after lunch, or after school.

The specific way that I'm implementing the technique

often isn't the point.

So you look a little bit deeper and find the logic

behind why I'm doing what I'm doing,

and then adapt it your own specific situation.

Case in point, the third step of my process

has a specific prescribed number in it.

Because I think a really great way to build a habit

and to actually put a productivity technique into action

is to do a 30-day challenge around it.

To do this, you wanna find a way to break your goal down

into measurable steps, and then take

at least one of those steps every single day for 30 days.

And while you do this, you also wanna keep track

of your progress on a calendar or habit-tracking app,

or whatever else works for you.

I've had some great results doing challenges like this.

For one, on Instagram last year,

I did a challenge called CIG30DAY,

where I made sure to do some intense exercise

every single day for 30 days and put it on Instagram.

And doing that helped me get back into the habit

of doing intense exercise on a daily basis,

which I'd fallen out of at the time.

And for another example, that actually tweaks

the concept a little bit, a couple of years ago

I gave myself a three-month reading challenge

where everyday for three months

I had to read 25 pages of a nonfiction book.

I could not fail, otherwise,

I'd have to pay my best friend, Martin,

$100.00 and I didn't.

And it also helped me to build

a really strong reading habit going forward.

Now I do wanna give you a couple of tips

for doing this successfully.

First it can be a really good idea

to decide beforehand what part of the day

you're going to practice your habit

or take the steps you decided to take.

When you decide beforehand, when you make a plan,

like I'm gonna do it in the morning,

or I'm gonna do it before bed,

then you often find that your motivation

to do it is a lot higher.

There's a concrete plan up in your head.

Secondly, at least in the beginning,

make your steps small and input based,

meaning that they can be accomplished

with just an input of time or effort

instead of a specific outcome.

So, for example, if your goal is to write a novel,

then a beginning step that's probably gonna be

pretty difficult to accomplish each day

is write an entire chapter.

But something that's definitely doable,

is write 100 words or even 500 words.

That brings us to the fourth step in the process

which is this, don't wait for the perfect time to start.

Instead, just get started now.

Even if there's a constraint, just start now.

Realize that the time at which you get the idea

or the motivation to do something is the time

where you're gonna be the most excited to get started.

So even if you're going on vacation in two days from now

or you have a bunch of homework to do,

if you can carve out the time

to do those beginning steps, then start right now.

Take advantage of that initial motivation

and the novelty factor

that you're experiencing in the moment.

Also, right in the beginning find a way

to keep yourself accountable.

Again you can mark things off on a calendar.

You can use a habit-tracking app

or you can even keep a journal.

And if you need an extra push,

it can be a really good idea to ask somebody

who cares about you, maybe a friend or your parents

or even a teacher, to be an accountability partner,

to at least review your entries

or ask you from time to time how you're doin'.

Finally, have a way to review your progress yourself.

And remember the 30-day challenge

or any similar commitment device isn't the goal in itself.

It's just a device to help you build the habits

and actually make progress,

but there should be a larger overarching goal,

something that you want to eventually achieve.

So at regular intervals, sit down and review your progress.

Ask yourself is doing what I'm doing now,

even if it's been working really well for 30 days,

is it actually getting me any closer to my goal?

If I've been writing 500 words a day,

do these 500 words even matter?

Do I need to shift gears now and actually

start editing what I've written down,

or should I keep forging ahead.

And even if things are going well,

you should still continue to write down

your progress at regular intervals.

Because by doing this, you're going to get a record

of your successes which can help to motivate you

on any particularly difficult days in the future

or on the next time your read a productivity tips article

that makes you wanna switch gears

and go do something entirely different.

And by successfully avoiding that temptation

and keeping your motivation levels high through

these reviews you will continue

to actually make progress on your goals.

So like I mentioned earlier in the video,

one of the methods that I've used to actually spur action

is the 30-day challenge.

Things like my 30-day challenge exercise challenge,

or my reading challenge.

These types of challenges are a great way

to get started on something, to stay motivated

and to see significant progress

in a relatively short amount of time.

And if you wanna learn how to set yourself up

for success with this particular type of challenge

then you might wanna go watch through

Rich Armstrong's course, on Skillshare,

called The Perfect 100 Day Project.

In it he teaches you how to intelligently

pick the right challenge, how to structure it,

and how to give yourself

the best chance of sticking with it the entire time.

Plus, since Rich's course is on Skillshare,

taking it, means you'll also have access

to more than 28,000 other courses, many of which

can help you make progress on your individual goals.

If you're trying to improve your web development skills,

there's a course for that.

If you wanna learn how to make great YouTube videos,

there are courses for that too.

And if you just wanna learn how to get organized

and stay on top of things,

well I made a course for you all about that,

which has already been taken by almost 20,000 people.

A premium membership on Skillshare gets

you unlimited access to an entire library of courses

and it's really affordable as well,

as their annual subscription is less than 10 bucks a month.

And if you would like to give it a try first

you can use the link in the description down below

to get a two-month unlimited trial for free.

Big thanks goes out to Skillshare as always

for sponsoring this video and being

a big supporter of my channel

and thank you for watching as well.

Hopefully this video in particular was helpful.

Hopefully it helps you to cut through all the clutter

and actually start making some progress,

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Thanks again for watching

and I will see you in the next video.