lunchtime, doubly so,

but despite the apparently elusory

nature of these two things,

time can certainly seem like something that's tangible

and like something that is constantly

slipping through our fingers,

not least of which because of the fact

that we tend to waste so much of it.

Yes, it seems that most of us are

perpetually rocked by at least a little bit of guilt

over the amount of time we spend scrolling through Netflix,

or browsing the dankest of memes,

or just refreshing Instagram to see

how many likes we got on that latest post

in the last 30 seconds.

Though, it also bears mentioning the

amount of time we tend to waste on

things that don't seem to produce as much guilt,

things seem justified like taking on too many commitments,

and having an overly busy schedule

where we're stretched thin, stressed out,

and producing low quality work as a result.

As Francis Crick once said,

a busy life is a waste of life.

What I wanna do with this video is

take a broad view of time management

and give you five useful tips for

managing your time more effectively

whether you already know you're wasting it

because you're a couch potato,

or whether you, like me to be honest,

have simply diluted yourself into thinking

you're already managing it pretty well

because of how busy you are.

Let's get into it.

(upbeat electronic music)

The first tip that I've got for your guys today

is to try using a time tracking tool.

I recently did a video on apps that force you to work,

which listed several different options in this category

so I'm not gonna restate them all,

but what I do wanna do here is

give you a little bit of a deeper look

at one that I'm gonna recommend you

at least give a try and that is Toggle.

Unlike automatic time trackers like Rescue Time

that just log the time you spend in each app

or program on your computer and then

give you a report at the end of the week,

Toggle is a manual time tracker which means

you actually go into their dashboard

and record the time you spend on each task

throughout the day.

The reason that I recommend at least

giving this tool a try is that

tracking your time manually makes you think harder about it

and you start to realize more accurately

how you spend your time on a daily basis

and that let's you make changes going forward.

Within Toggle's dashboard,

you're gonna find two different modes,

manual mode and timer mode.

With manual mode,

you can record the amount of time

you spent on each task after the fact,

but what I'm gonna recommend you use instead is timer mode.

This is a real-time method where you

hit a start and stop button so you

can be timing your work as you actually do it.

This has a couple of key benefits.

First, it's more accurate since you are

tracking time in real-time.

You don't have to go back after the fact

and try to remember how many hours

and minutes you put into each task, and secondly,

and more importantly,

you'll be less likely to waste time or switch tasks

because you'll subconsciously want your

time log to accurately reflect what you actually did.

Long-term manual time tracking like

eating a bowl of nails in the morning is not for everyone.

You might find that after you do it for a week or two,

you kinda wanna move on and just

not worry about it anymore and that's fine,

but I do think that doing it for a week or two

as an experiment is very useful because

it gives you a more accurate picture

of how you're using your time and

it'll make you think a little bit more

deliberately about how you're gonna use it in the future.

(upbeat electronic music)

Tip number two is to get clear on your priorities

and to do this very deliberately,

maybe even sit down and do it on a piece of paper

or write it in your journal because

when you aren't clear on your priorities

and what they represent on your schedule,

it can be very easy to take on too many commitments

and to become that overly busy person.

I think prioritizing can be a topic for a video all its own,

but I do wanna give you a couple of questions

that I ask myself whenever I'm trying to

nail down what my personal priorities are

and whether a new commitment is worth it.

Number one, to ask a very in the details type of question.

What does my schedule look like without this on it?

Answering this means taking a hard look

at my current list of commitments,

my schedule, how much free time I have,

and whether or not I'd be willing

to give something up to take on this new commitment or not.

In addition to that question,

I also like to ask a more birds eye view question which is,

when I'm on my death bed, will I regret not doing this?

This is the question that actually

got me to finally start taking singing lessons.

This could be a question that would

also be useful for getting over your

fear to start doing things,

but as a time management question,

it can also be very useful because

it helps you to prioritize things

from a bird's eye view, from a life values perspective.

If you wanna be really clear on your

priorities and on your values and on what you're doing,

it may also be useful to have a

written record of what you're doing at the moment

and to update it quite frequently.

I actually do this.

If you go over to my website, collegeinfogeek.com/now,

you can see what I'm doing and

what my priorities at least should be ideally.

(upbeat electronic music)

Tip number three is to learn how to

batch your tasks effectively,

and batching basically just means

taking a bunch of your tasks, bundling them together,

and knocking them all out in one session.

When you do this, you free up lots of time

for more intense projects later on,

or if you're me, probably playing more Beat Saber,

but more importantly,

batching lets you take advantage of economies of scale.

When you decide to do a bunch of tasks in one big batch,

you eliminate a lot of the setup costs

that you would have to deal with

if you did them all individually.

In terms of tasks that make good candidates for batching,

I'm gonna go ahead and suggest number one,

any and all errands.

If it's a low energy task and you

have to leave the house to do it,

go ahead and take care of all those in

one big batch in one afternoon.

Number two, tasks that require a low mental energy

and that are done at home so cleaning things up,

organizing papers, fighting that ninja

that's hiding in your closet,

clearing out your email box, all that kind of stuff.

Number three, any kind of small tasks

that surround your main work.

For an example here,

every single time that I have to make a video,

I need to create a project over in Notion

with a sponsor tag and a publishing date,

and I also have to create a research document in Evernote.

These are little tasks that could be

done individually when I start the project,

or I could come up with 10 video topics in a row

and do all of these things in one big batch.

One little tidbit before we move on,

if you're already using Todoist or a similar task manager,

you may wanna start using their labels feature

as it can be very helpful for batching since

across all of your projects,

you can apply labels that correspond to say

your energy levels like low or medium or high,

or the location at which a task has to be performed

like home or work or an errand,

and then when you have time for a batch,

you can look at the label that's most

relevant to you right now and see what there is to be done.

(upbeat electronic music)

Next up, we have to talk about how to

get better at saying no.

This is an integral skill in time management,

especially for people who are overly busy.

Those of us who are perpetually overcommitted

seem to be the kind of people who

just can't say no to new opportunities,

whether there are people coming to us

because they want something from us, they want our help,

or whether it's something that just

seems really cool that we want to do.

Either way, we have to learn how to say no

if we wanna be able to prioritize

the things that are actually important

and give them the time that they deserve.

How exactly do you get to the point where you can say no?

There are definitely tactics,

there are ways to gracefully let people down,

there are ways to sort of push off things

that you might wanna do for yourself,

but I think the first thing you have to do

is just become mentally okay with saying no

and this can be hard.

A lot of times saying no feels like

letting an opportunity slip through your fingers forever

like you're only gonna get one shot

because this opportunity only comes once in a lifetime

like having the ability to seamlessly

integrate Eminem lyrics into a video script,

which I didn't say no to.

Remember that every time you say yes to an opportunity,

you are incurring an opportunity cost

because the act of saying yes to one thing

means you are implicitly saying no to something else.

You have a limited amount of time, energy, and attention

and you can't devote it to everything.

This can be a useful way to reframe your thinking.

Remember that every single decision you make

incurs an opportunity cost.

That brings us to the question of

how to properly let people down if you have to say no

because there is a graceful way to do it

and then there is an abrasive way to do it.

You could just yell no and why would

you ever ask me to do that in their face,

but you could also do it a little bit more tactfully

and here's an example of how I personally do it.

One type of opportunity that I have

deliberately chosen to say no to

for the most part is public speaking.

This is something that I do like doing.

It definitely can advance my career,

but I've realized that if I travel,

if I speak, if I take time to write talks,

I can't make as many videos and I

can't do the other things that are valuable to me.

Nine times out of 10,

when somebody reaches out to me wanting me

to go speak at their school or their event,

I have to say no.

My priorities dictate it,

but I try to say it in a way that