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The 5 Key Principles of Productivity

2020-10-21 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 10:36 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Lesson from a book, His own products discussed, Sponsor segment present

In a lesson from his new Skillshare productivity class, Ali walks through the five steps of David Allen's Getting Things Done (capture, clarify, organise, reflect and engage), calls it the book that most changed his productivity, and sets the homework of writing down everything on your mind.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Five principles promised; the new Skillshare productivity class and its free trial

  • ★★ This video is one of the 25 lessons of Ali's brand-new Skillshare class on productivity, which looks at David Allen's book Getting Things Done. — 00:00:00 · Skillshare classes

00:01:36 — Getting Things Done: why read it, horizontal and vertical order, the five steps

  • ★★★ Ali recommends reading David Allen's Getting Things Done, the single book that has most transformed his own productivity. — 00:01:36
  • ★★ Getting Things Done (GTD) gives a system for organising all of life's commitments, which we otherwise store in our heads until we are frazzled and overwhelmed. — 00:02:34
  • ★★ GTD keeps commitments tidy horizontally, with coherence across every area of life, and vertically, getting things done within each project or area towards its goals. — 00:03:03
  • ★★★ Getting Things Done is a five-step process: capture, clarify, organise, reflect and engage. — 00:03:33

00:03:51 — Step one, capture: the mind is for having ideas, not storing them

  • ★★★ Step one of GTD, capture: many of us feel overwhelmed and stressed because we use our brain as a to-do list, so any open loop on our mind should be written down and put somewhere. — 00:04:02
  • ★★ Ali, completely obsessed with capture, thinks writing an idea down the instant he has it is the single most important thing that has made him more productive and less stressed. — 00:04:02
  • ★★ Ali usually captures in the Things app on his iPhone, puts video ideas in Notion and uses Drafts when driving; he says it does not really matter which app you use. — 00:04:31 · Things 3, Notion, Drafts
  • ★ Ali refuses to keep anything he needs to remember in his head, since he does not trust his brain to remember anything, and always writes it down. — 00:05:00
  • ★★ Citing David Allen, Ali says a big part of why we are stressed and overwhelmed by all we have to do is that we have no centralised, trustworthy system. — 00:05:00

00:05:50 — Step two, clarify: a defined next action instead of "website redesign"

  • ★★★ Every single thing in your life should be captured into an external system, an app or paper: with 100% coverage you can trust the system rather than relying on system plus brain. — 00:05:50
  • ★★★ Step two of GTD, clarify: procrastination and lack of productivity often come from not having a clearly defined next step, and we are notoriously bad at clarifying what each to-do means. — 00:06:16
  • ★★ To clarify, convert to-dos into action words: "website redesign" becomes a first step of developing a mood board on Pinterest and a second of creating a mock-up in Sketch. — 00:06:42

00:07:10 — Steps three to five: organise, reflect, engage; read the book

  • ★★ Step three of GTD, organise: put things where they belong, such as reference material in the right folder in Evernote or Notion (Ali uses Notion), and sort to-dos into projects and areas, then by priority. — 00:07:10 · Evernote, Notion
  • ★★ Step four of GTD, reflect or review, is where weekly and monthly reviews come in. — 00:07:40
  • ★★ Step five of GTD, engage, is actually doing the work: with everything in the system and nothing kept in your head, you choose the things that will make you most effective. — 00:08:09
  • ★★ Ali says he will make many more videos about Getting Things Done and a further Skillshare class about it. — 00:08:09 · Skillshare classes
  • ★★ Discovering Getting Things Done has been the single biggest change to Ali's productivity; he first read the book in his first or second year of university. (hedged) — 00:08:09

00:08:55 — Homework: write down everything on your mind

  • ★★★ Ali's homework: the single biggest thing you can do right now is write down, on paper or in a to-do or notes app, every single thing that is on your mind. — 00:08:55
  • ★★ Writing down everything on their mind, most people will have between 30 and 100 items, Ali says. — 00:09:24
  • ★★ Even though he is obsessed with capture, whenever Ali writes everything down he finds many open loops weighing on his mind, and getting them into his system brings a sense of relief. — 00:09:24

00:10:04 — The rest of the class on Skillshare; the productivity equation video

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Getting Things Done · quick capture

Also: People: David Allen

Projects: Skillshare classes

Concepts: pilot, plane and engineer · productivity equation · weekly review

Products: Apple Notes · Drafts · Evernote · Notion · Sketch · Things 3

Also centred on quick capture: Study with Me + Anki Flashcard Method - Ali Abdaal

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