Summary How I Schedule With Neuroscience: Trick Your Brain to Work - YouTube (Youtube) www.youtube.com
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Speaker 0 You've seen this a thousand times before. Everyone has, from building pyramids to stepping on the moon, painting chapel, started to delivering Christmas presents, all of these are just an execution of some sort of to do test and as simple as they seen on the upside, to do this or have hidden ways that they affect our brain. They can make us love or hate work, anxious. Calm, productive, or daisy all depending on how to and when we set them up. If you also have known at some point exactly what you need to do, but still didn't do it you might have into 1 of these planning traps.
Speaker 0 As a medical student through reading books, studies and my own personal experience, I've discovered that the simple to do this can affect not just our procrastination, but also our intelligence, memory, flow, and actual work performance. If you want to see how I scientifically schedule all of the tasks of a full time job, university, and life. I'll jump straight. The way that I schedule at the moment, is a 6 plus 1 day peak. Let me explain.
Speaker 0 This is based on the concept I pour graham of the maker versus 9 schedule, which is absolutely incredible, So the manager, Planned Stay in 1 hour slots where he can have a meeting here, sign something off there, travel somewhere else. So all he needs to do in order to organize something or lift something is just find an empty slot and put it there. Things can move around easily, they're absolutely fine the maker is the person who actually does the task. And the way that they ideally would schedule things is in half a, or in 1 day increments. Now, we are both managers and makers for different tasks.
Speaker 0 When it comes to life admin answering someone paying something, doing laundry, going to the shops. These are manager tasks in the sense that they are very discreet. They have a start and a finish and they can very often be shuffled around the way that we need them to. But we are also makers when we are studying or when we are working or when we are completing a project We are working in this broader timescale scales and the issue with mixing these with 1 another is that they destroy part. If you have a maker day where you are studying or working and you suddenly put a manager task in the middle of that day, you are...
Speaker 0 Really really damaging your chances of getting into flow and doing good work. The way that I get around this is that 6 days a week, I try to almost do none of my 2 do list. Tasks and I only work on my projects. And 1 day a week, I have a manager day, where I'm happy to be interrupted, I can do callbacks. I can answer messages, and emails, I can pay stuff.
Speaker 0 I can organize my life admin because these are those discrete things that can move around as shown by study by Can in 2012. We are really bad at estimating how long things will take. And even when told to think of the worst case scenario, academics, always consistently underestimated how long things would eventually take. So even though I think answering 1 email will just take me 2 minutes, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it's viral into something takes over my whole day, and I end up in this loop of just being constantly unhappy. The anxiety of kind of having done something, but also having technically procrastinate because it wasn't the right thing.
Speaker 0 Is something that I used to be so familiar with. So now I try to be as strict as possible with this because I know in the worst case scenario, it would have to be a 6 day rate for me to get back to someone or to do something, which doesn't tend to be a complete disaster. Of course, this is sometimes unavoidable. I would just recommend doing those admin tasks as your last thing in the day. So hopefully, it doesn't ruin your flow.
Speaker 0 Otherwise. And this 2 do list that I have everywhere, I just add and add and add to it and I don't touch it until it's my 2 do list day. I can get through things. The other benefit of this is that in the 6 days a week, most of the time, I have no to do this because I have 1 or 2 projects to do where that day only, and I can just focus on those and work very intuitively, which is the best way things work for me. With this peace of mind that I'll get to things next week or in a few days, and I can just write them and keep them there.
Speaker 0 Next thing I want to tackle is how using a to do list effectively after the right time can actually improve our intelligence and make us better at doing tasks. The reason this works is because of our working memory. So We have 3 types of memory. Working, This is our intelligence, what we use to process things. Our long term memory.
Speaker 0 This is our experiences history, puerto theorem. And also we have external memory. These are photographs to do list, anything that we write or that we leave in someone else's mind to remember. Our brain works, in a bit of a strange way, if we external something, for example, taking a photo of it or if we write it down somewhere, we are less likely to remember this because and this is rooted in transactional memory theory, we are sending a signal to our brain that this is an external memory, Now, this is bad because we're more likely to forget things, but it's also great because it frees up a lot of our memory space. Miller in 19 50 so found that our breaking memory or our intelligence can hold 7 plus minus 2 items at any given time.
Speaker 0 So it can be very easily overwhelm, and therefore, reducing the amount of items here or the cognitive load now working memory means that we will just perform better task. We will appear and feel a lot smarter. The impact of this distraction is huge. Imagine you are trying to study something, and you suddenly remember like you forgot to pay rent yesterday, and that also you have to take up the laundry in the washing machine. 2 things alone can potentially take up 30 percent of your current focus and attention.
Speaker 0 And therefore, you're left with a lot less to work with. If you're someone like me, there is a million intrusive thoughts I have all day about things that I forgotten and these can significantly impact. My work. So the best thing to do in this case is to external it immediately and to have a very low friction, very easy access to Do this where you can dump every single intrusive thoughts and task that comes to your mind immediately. I personally use the notes app on my phone and also I have a really big a free paper note notepad under my keyboard.
Speaker 0 And whenever something comes to mind when I'm working, I'll just write it down and keep working on my task, uninterrupted. Leaving these things to linger in our mind is really bad for our work performance and anxiety and as Cal Newport said, your mind in other words is released from its to keep track of these obligations at every. By the way, if you want all the resources and the generating prompts in this video. Will have a completely free notion template that summarizes it below in the description. So if you want to get the information without having to re rewatch me all over again.
Speaker 0 You can download it. I'm going to tackle procrastination head on because even though it can have a very specific plan of what I need to do, It very often happens that I don't end up following through with it. And Believe 1 of the biggest barriers towards effective work and that leads to procrastination is bad prioritizing. It's completely understandable that on any given day as an adult, we probably have 200 things we need to do. And it's really, really hard to try to process what's actually the best thing that you should do, which might not be a very straightforward answer.
Speaker 0 So this issue of prioritization can lead us in a complete free state where we procrastinate and do nothing or we pick something that we really well know that we shouldn't be doing and is not the best use of our time. So if we are in the state, The best thing that I have ever found for the cases that I am stuck, I am overwhelmed, I have too many tasks to do and or very specifically, I know that there is something that I've been procrastinating on for days or weeks or months that I know I absolutely must do, but I can feel in my soul, I'm not gonna do it today. I can tell that I'm ready to procrastinate on it This is the best thing to do. Grab a pen and paper, and I'm a typo, not a writer, but I write because it's so much more powerful. And start to write exactly how you are feeling in regarding to this tasks full on journal, and this is incredible honestly 4 sentences, 5 sentences, sometimes I can completely unblock the pressure of what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 0 So write what the task I'm supposed to do is. Start writing out what is the reason that you don't want to do? What are you afraid of? What are you trying to avoid? What do you think you need?
Speaker 0 And right until and swear for me. It's happened every single time, I have this huge kind of like impulse, I know what the to do list is. And I'll start 123 opposed to my other to do less, where I usually, like, do circles that I tick. In this case, this writing out and these restructuring and hearing yourself say out loud, rather than like, passively trying to ignore the feelings in your mind, what you are exactly thinking can then lead to a very reasonable organized structure do that will prioritize things right for you. And try to keep this 2 few items.
Speaker 0 I usually do 3 max, and then I try to tackle them on the spot. Honestly, it is the biggest source of free and quick motivation that I have ever found to just write a few sentences and be like. I know what I need to do. This needs to be done, I've convinced myself and I'll start it immediately. In the book in comfortable, na A addresses when he explains that it's essential to think of our schedules as an evolving experiment that needs to be red tract rather than something that you just set in stone and need to follow through, and especially when you're stuck, when this hasn't been working for a while, try this tip because it really helps to rock things.
Speaker 0 If you're anxious about the task or to do list, it's probably badly prioritize and do some writing peace about it if you can. Next is a very specific tip on how to literally write things in order to make them more likely for you to do them and just slack procrastinate. Beyond bad prioritizing. Being too big with a task can also make you less likely you want to do it. I fall into this trap a lot where I'll just write something in shorthand and be like Youtube stuff today.
Speaker 0 And then the day comes and I want to do everything apart from that. So the best thing to do here is to really specify what you're supposed to do. So instead of saying reply to emails in inbox on your to do list, writing, get back to sam with the time for a call, Hopefully, you can see immediately that the second 1 is something that you're like, Yep. Want to do this. I want to get this done.
Speaker 0 So I use the same thing for my work for writing essays for doing studying tasks, anything. I don't say make epi tit presentation. I'm like find the differences between Bro group at epi epi tighter So this is something very specific and it's much more likely that I want to do. Matter Todd and Lip k in 2010 found that a lower perceived complexity of a task. Makes us much more likely to do it.
Speaker 0 And we're making things more complex for ourselves when we glance at them by keeping them very big and having to do all this breakdown in our mind. By writing something really specifically, it increases the likelihood of are followed through and feeling that's actually an easier thing to do for our brain. So writing things out as though you're giving the task to someone else so they need a bit more detail versus you're doing it yourself. Next, That would encourage everyone to have. Some sort of separate to do list, which is like a dream test, it's for projects, not specific admin tasks that are very low pressure.
Speaker 0 Things that we don't expect to actually take off and which have no deadline. The reason for this existing is simply because of the say, secondary effect, which is basically our brains to tend to stay occupied by a task until it is completed, So by writing it down on the, we're kind of opening up the task. So our subconscious will start working on it really really slowly. In the background for weeks days or months. It just started it, so we can come up with more creative solutions on how to do this when we actually want to bring it on our daily to do test or weekly to do this and start tackling it properly.
Speaker 0 It's this really soft way to be kind to yourself and it used to not taking everything off, but also to kind of utilize some of that cl work and subconscious work in order to be better and enjoy the things that we do more off And lastly if you want to add something to should do less, that is fun and potentially it can make you really decent money, I would very much recommend video editing. And it's something I feel like I'm going to be talking about forever. Skillshare very kindly are sponsoring this video. And over there is my... Favorite course of all time on video editing, Ali Dell, crash course on final cut pro.
Speaker 0 Editing has completely very changed my life. It is such a fun such an easy skill to learn, and this is the cast that I used and the early cast that I've ever watched on how to do it. If you made it to this part of the video and you're kind of like me, where you think you might want to be creative, but you've never really monetized it before. And let me potentially gone for a completely stem career. This is a great great thing to try.
Speaker 0 It's really fun to learn. The Gentleman and Serotonin hits are built into the structure itself because every time you kind of complete a task and you can do something else. It's just like this excitement of being able to do so much more. And although you absolutely did not ask me for this recommendation, it's a really, really good way to make money. I know tens and tens of Youtubers and every single 1 of us struggles with, finding good editors or finding editors to work with, I currently need, do not have an editor for this exact reason.
Speaker 0 This is the cast I use if you can use it to edit like me, let me know, but also just use it for your favorite creator whoever they are out there because they're very likely to give you a trial at go. I have a personal link from skillshare, which will give the first 1000 people to click on it. A 1 month free access as opposed to the other 2 week, I think that you get naturally. So that's a good kind of buffer to get you really good on this task and going back to it and see what you can change. If you do decide to reach out to someone and really really go through it.
Speaker 0 Yeah. I mean, I I didn't ask for it, but that is why piece of advice for today, I hope in any shape or form that this video was useful at all, you do have the thing download below If you like to. But otherwise, you so much for standing this time with me. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Be kind yourself and others and don't believe everything you think.
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