All right, so according to my publishers, I am the world's most followed productivity expert.
And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm totally obsessed with finding what are the small habits I can apply to my life to save me a lot of time.
And so I have gone through and basically racked my brain and my calendar and my life for what are like all of the different things that I do.
That take me less than about a minute every time I do them but that overall save me a ton of time every single week.
Habit number one.
The first thing I do every morning when I get to my desk is I ask myself one very simple question.
What is today's adventure going to be?
What this is getting at is what is the most important thing I need to get done?
And this is super helpful because if you do it, it will force you to prioritize like the one thing that you really want to get done today.
And secondly, framing it as an adventure rather than as a task encourages you to approach it in a spirit of play which, we know from the research, improves our productivity and our creativity and our wellbeing.
Once you have identified your most important task, you take 10 seconds to stick it in the calendar.
If it's not in the calendar, it does not get done.
And this is by far one of the most powerful productivity habits out of all of the ones out there.
It's just deciding what is the most important thing for you to focus on and then actually creating a block of time and sticking it in your calendar where you're gonna do it.
Habit number three is when that block of time comes around, you don't just procrastinate, you instead start a focus timer.
However you do it when you have a visible timer.
There is something magical about that that keeps you on task and stops you from wasting time doing random stuff that does not matter.
Tiny habit number four is, when you are working on anything, put your phone face down and turn off notifications.
Bonus points if you even put your phone in a different room where you cannot see it, because there is even some evidence according to the science around this that like even just having your phone in the same room Like it creates like a sense of anxiety of like what's happening on the phone.
What's happening on the phone.
So the more you can get rid of the phone from your working environment, the more time you will save.
Tiny habit number five is that I have my phone on do not disturb at all times.
You can set people who are exceptions to the do not disturb rule.
So for me, if my wife is calling me, it goes through.
If my mom or grandma or brother or sister-in-law calling me, it goes through.
But if there's almost any other notification from anything else, it will not go through the do not disturb mode.
Again, this is magical and time-saving because every time you get distracted, there is this thing called attention residue that makes it way harder for you to get back on task.
And so you just might as well have your phone on do not disturb or some kind of focus mode where notifications have been gotten rid of at all times.
Tiny habit number five is to block all of your most offending apps at night after 9 p.m.
There's just no need for it.
We all waste a huge huge, huge amount of time scrolling Instagram, browsing TikTok, even watching YouTube videos, maybe even this one after 9pm, when we really should be getting to bed.
What this does is that it wastes hours and hours and hours in our life in aggregate, because we end up scrolling at night for way longer than we should.
That ends up destroying our sleep, which ends up reducing our energy levels the next day, which ends up bleeding into reduced productivity and everything else that we do.
And the more you are using the damn phone at night.
I found, at least for me and I'm sure probably for you as well the less productive you are and the more time you're just randomly squandering on social media algorithms.
Tiny habit number seven is to not have your phone anywhere near you when you are in bed.
For me, the only thing I'm allowed to touch after 9 p.m. is my Kindle.
So I have my Kindle on my bedside table and I'm usually charging my phone across the room.
My wife is even more productive than I am, and so she even charges her phone in a totally different room, so that the phone doesn't even enter the bedroom.
That is like how you do it on advanced mode.
Habit number eight is to learn the keyboard shortcuts for everything that you do on your computer.
It amazes me how much time people waste when they are clicking around with the mouse where, if you're using something like Excel or something like Notion or something like Google Docs or something like Slack, like whatever the apps that you use most often are taking less than a minute to learn the keyboard shortcuts for the stuff that you do regularly on those apps is game-changing because it massively adds up over time.
Next up, again related to keyboard shortcuts.
You should never be using your mouse to open anything on your computer.
You can always do it with the keyboard.
Mac has a built-in spotlight functionality.
On Windows, you use the Windows logo key and type in what you want.
My favorite app is the app Alfred.
All of these apps.
Basically, let you do stuff on your computer using the keyboard, because anytime you reach for your mouse, you are being slow and you are wasting seconds, which is why all of the pros who are really fast at using a computer will almost always navigate with keyboard shortcuts or using the keyboard.
So taking a minute to learn those will save you small amounts of time each time, but that really, really really adds up over years of using a computer.
On a related note, you can set up text expansion functionality.
There's an app called Text Expander.
Alfred has that functionality.
It's a functionality built into your iPhone if you go on the keyboard settings and text replacement.
So this is really helpful for things that you type in a lot.
So, for example, I have a text expansion shortcut for my email and for my address and for my phone number and anything where, if I have to fill out a form and I find myself typing in anything more than once, like my company's VAT number,
I don't wanna go and try and figure out what that thing is or just type it out manually.
I'll just put in a keyboard shortcut like exclamation mark EM, and then that boom text expands to fill my email address.
Next up, we have voice over typing.
Generally, most people are faster at speaking than they are at typing.
I'm a very fast typist.
I type at around 156 words per minute, but I still speak way faster than that.
And so using dictation tools to talk to my computer and talk to AI tools is way quicker and saves way more time than typing things out.
The app that i use for this when i'm on the go is called voicepal.
Again, it's an app that my team and i have built for this purpose.
You hit record on your phone and you walk around and then you say whatever you want and it asks you follow-up questions.
This is how i do all of my writing, and like first drafting or like coming up with ideas.
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And now let's get back to it.
Next up, we have the capture habit.
Now, the habit here is from David Allen's book Getting Things Done, which is basically whenever you think of anything you need to do, you just write it down somewhere.
You capture it into some kind of to-do list, some kind of task management system.
The one that I use is on my iPhone and it's called Things 3, and I have the widget on my iPhone.
So if I ever need to capture anything at all, I just hit the plus icon and then boom, I can type out whatever I need to buy milk from 7-Eleven, save it and then boom, it is done.
That takes like five seconds to do.
And it means I'm not relying on my brain to hold different tasks I need to do.
It all just goes into the system.
When you're not having to spend brain space like remembering what you were meant to do, it drastically improves your life.
It like reduces your stress levels.
It means you're not constantly worrying about, like you know, do I have something that I've forgotten, that I kind of need to do?
The only problem is I can't remember what I've forgotten, and therefore saves you a ton of time and additional stress every single week.
Next up, this is a fun one.
I found enormous value in using WhatsApp lists to organize my different friends and like business associates and family and contacts, because my WhatsApp is an absolute cesspit of just like zillions and zillions and zillions of messages.
And so this is what it looks like.
I use emoji.
So I have the heart emoji for family members.
I've got two unreads there.
I have Hong Kong emoji for sort of my real life friends in Hong Kong.
I've got the UK emoji for my friends in the UK.
I've got this smiley money icon emoji for all of like my friends, like my creator and entrepreneur friends, who I wanna priority reply to.
I have this little sparkle emoji for people in my team because our business is called Sparkle Studios.
And then the final one is LBA, which stands for Lifestyle Business Academy, which is sort of my online business school.
And so I'm part of a bunch of WhatsApp groups for that, where we help people out with stuff.
And so that's like the final one over there.
Now this is amazing because immediately I can see that like okay, I just need to go through and just reply to two three two, four and four messages, or just like read those to make sure there's no action needed from me.
But if you look at my WhatsApp, there's actually like 294 unreads.
Now of those, only about eight of them are things I actually wanna reply to.
The other 286 are messages I don't need to reply to.
Now, before I had these lists, I would have this constant anxiety around like it has something urgent.
Come through the WhatsApp that I haven't seen, that I haven't replied to, et cetera, et cetera.
But now that I've got lists for everyone who is important, it means I'm a lot less likely to feel stressed about this and also I'm less likely to miss important things.
All right, the next habit is listening to things at speed multiples.
This is something that I've gotten a lot of hate over the years on, like Reddit and other places like that.
I can't believe Ali Abdaal listens to audio books at double speed.
It's like bro.
These days, everyone watches YouTube videos at like speed multiples, like Instagram and TikTok.
Literally, you can watch them at like speed multiples.
You could even, if you really wanted, to watch TV shows and movies and anime at double speed if you really wanted to.
But there is a lot of value, especially when you're trying to absorb information, And especially when that information is for exploration rather than exploitation, like you're sort of just getting the feel for a new topic.
Start with 1.5 and then you go 1.6 and then 1.7, 1.8, 1.9.
And over time you can actually train your listening speed to be able to understand and retain stuff at two times speed 25, even three or 35x speed.
And that saves you so much time, especially if you have to or you want to do a lot of reading or listening for your job or your business or your life.
It is game changing.
Next up, we have the habit of double dipping.
Wherever possible, I like to try and do sort of multi-modality multitasking.
Now, multitasking doesn't really work when you're trying to do two things, two of the same kind of thing, at once.
Like if you're trying to do some deep work and then you also reply to some Slack messages and then you also reply to some emails.
All of those are sort of like the same kind of thing.
But if it's multi-modality multitasking, like for example, listening to an audio book while you are driving to work or while you're commuting to work.
That's how I saved loads and loads of time, because I got a lot of my business knowledge from listening to podcasts and audio books at speed multiples while I was driving to and from work back when I had a real job.
Whenever you can double dip and you can do kind of more than one thing at once with different modalities, that is a thing that ends up saving you a lot of time, because you're just able to do more in less time.
One specific example of double dipping that I love is walking Zoom calls, which saves a ton of time.
So every day I'm trying to get 10,000 steps.
On average, it takes about 10 minutes per thousand steps for most people.
So 10,000 steps requires you to walk for 100 minutes.
Now, most days I have at least 100 minutes worth of Zoom calls.
And so wherever possible, I will try and take those walking rather than being at my computer.
This is game changing, because then I'm getting sunlight and walking outside is nice and I'm feeling good and I'm more creative.
And also I'm able to get the steps in, which saves me tons and tons of time in my week.
On that note, another thing that really helps is just getting a walking treadmill standing desk.
Again, when I'm doing non-filming days and I'm doing lots of meetings and stuff, I will set up a walking pad treadmill underneath my desk and I'll be getting in my steps while I'm doing work.
And if you walk at like three kilometers per hour, four kilometers per hour, you can be getting in like thousands of steps every hour and you almost don't even notice it.
This is something I do when I'm gaming on my computer as well.
I'll often like stand up on the standing desk and, like you know, be walking on the desk while playing Hogwarts, Legacy or World of Warcraft, or whatever the thing might be.
Next up is using recurring calendar blocks for important events.
So my wife and I have a date night once a week, every Sunday evening, and that is a recurring block in the calendar.
She's on the calendar invite.
I'm on the calendar invite.
It repeats every single week.
And this is amazing.
And it saves so much time in previously where we're having to sort of coordinate with each other to get a date night.
So recurring calendar events save you a bunch of time in like logistical coordination.
For example, i have recurring calendar events for my gym sessions with my personal trainers, recurring calendar events for like lessons with my tennis coach, recurring calendar events for events with my team.
You know, that's the thing that most people are most used to, because you probably have like a team meeting at the same day and at the same time every week.
But you can apply that same philosophy to your personal life as well, which saves a bunch of time that would otherwise be spent on coordination.
Speaking of date nights, another thing I like to do, given that I'm in charge of organizing our date nights, is to batch my organizing for date nights.
So there's a general productivity principle called batching, where you sort of do similar tasks altogether, so that you're not like context switching.
And so if I'm booking a restaurant for a date night for like Sunday, then while I'm there once I've done that, I might as well book a second one for next Sunday.
And then I might as well book a third for the Sunday after that.
And I might as well book a fourth for the Sunday after that.
My wife fricking loves this because she likes the idea of, like me, having stuff planned rather than stuff just happening at the last minute.
So then she's super happy.
And then I'm happy because I managed to make my wife happy in a very productive way by batching the booking of the date nights in one like session.
Next up, I found it enormously helpful to schedule in stuff at eight o'clock in the morning.
So three times a week, I have a tennis lesson at eight o'clock in the morning.
Why is eight o'clock in the morning an amazing time?
Well, it's an amazing time because if you wanna do something at eight, you kind of have to get up at like 730 or beforehand.
And forcing yourself to get up at 730 or beforehand is great because it forces you to have an early night.
What you don't want is like if you have a late night one time because you haven't followed habit number three and you've taken your phone into bed and you're watching random YouTube videos at three in the morning, you feel absolutely grim the next day, and then you don't wanna feel grim for the following days, and so you then end up sleeping earlier.
And, in general, if you wanna be more productive, if you wanna get more stuff done, going to bed earlier and waking up earlier is an enormous hack compared to going to bed later and waking up later.
Next up, we have the fun habit of hiring a cleaner.
I have been doing this for absolutely years because I'm a strong believer that if there is stuff that you don't enjoy doing and it is possible for you to outsource that thing for less money than your own personal hourly rate is in terms of how much money you make with your job or with your business, then you should totally outsource that thing.
And so I've had a cleaner ever since I graduated university, which was like seven years ago.
And initially that was a part-time cleaner who would come in like a few hours every two weeks.
And me and my housemate would split the cost of that because she also hated cleaning.
And so that was just easy enough.
So that saved us a good amount of time.
But now that we're here in Hong Kong we're hiring like a full-time domestic helper is actually fairly affordable.
We now have someone full-time who takes care of all the household chores.
And that again, just saves us an enormous amount of time every single week.
And then to add further to the privilege check, One thing that is also helpful which is why I put this at the end is hiring an executive assistant.
So there is a service that we use called Athena.
You just go on their website and it takes less than a minute to fill out an application.
Athena then suggests some executive assistants that match your profile.
And so I have an executive assistant who handles my emails and my calendars and any ad hoc tasks that I need doing.
Obviously, this is a thing.
You need to have some money and probably be a business owner for this to make sense for you.
But if you do have a business, if you are a business owner and you do not yet have an executive assistant or a personal assistant or a virtual assistant, I could not recommend it highly enough.
And then the final bonus habit that I would love to talk to you about is actually finding a way to enjoy the things that you are doing.
This is the core thesis of my book feel good productivity how to do more of what matters to you, which is that when you find a way to enjoy whatever task or project you are working on, it makes you more productive, it makes you more creative, it makes you less stressed and it also gives you more energy to give to the other important areas of your life.
And if you are interested in learning more about the science and the philosophy behind this, i have a video over here which is actually the first chapter of my book.
That is sort of like the introductory material, And we've taken the audio book and we've animated it with some sick animation.
So you should totally check out that video right over there if you want to learn how feeling good is actually the ultimate secret to productivity.
So thank you so much for watching.
I will see you in that video.
Bye bye.
