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How I Organize My Life - The "LAZI" Productivity System

2021-05-05 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 9:55 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Tools, apps and tech) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Sponsor segment present

Ali walks through his "LAZI" productivity system: Lash (a calendar for time blocks, invites and protected deep-work time), Agenda (a might-do list topped by a daily highlight), Zettelkasten (personal notes and a morning dump in Roam Research) and Inventory (files in Google Drive, an archive in Evernote).

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Intro: the lazy productivity system behind everything he juggles

  • ★★ Ali uses his lazy productivity system to juggle being a doctor, a YouTuber, an entrepreneur and a podcaster. — 00:00:00

00:00:25 — L for lash: the calendar, time blocks, calendar invites and protected deep-work blocks

  • ★★★ Ali thinks most productivity systems of effective people boil down to using a calendar properly; if you struggle with productivity and do not use a calendar, you are probably doing it wrong. — 00:00:29 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Ali time-blocks: anything he wants to do gets a block in his calendar, from filming a video to dinner with friends and phone calls, and he sometimes even blocks relaxation time to remind himself to do it. — 00:00:58 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Ali lives his life by calendar invites: when a friend invites him to something, he creates a calendar event and emails them an invite, because what is not in his calendar does not happen. — 00:01:13 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Ali advises using the calendar to set out protected blocks of time for deep work. — 00:01:27 · deep work (concept), time-blocking
  • ★★ Every morning from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Ali has a protected block for writing his book, when his creative juices flow best; writing the book is the most important thing he could be doing with his time. — 00:01:35 · deep work (concept)
  • ★★ Ali's preferred calendar app on iOS devices is Fantastical, which is a bit expensive; Google Calendar is a very good free alternative. — 00:01:56

00:02:09 — A for agenda: a might-do list with one daily highlight, on Ugmonk's Analog paper system

  • ★★ Ali dislikes the traditional way of managing a to-do list: ticking off tasks makes him feel he has a boss, and he has a deep desire never to have one. — 00:02:26

  • ★★★ Instead of a to-do list Ali keeps a "might-do list" of things he can do if he wants to, not things he has to do; that distinction makes him feel in control of the list. — 00:02:40

    “instead of a to-do list, I have a might-do list”

  • ★★★ The one thing Ali must do each day is his daily highlight, the day's most important task at the top of his list; the rest of the might-do list is optional. — 00:02:58 · daily highlight

  • ★★ Ali prefers paper for most of his to-do lists and recommends Ugmonk's Analog system, a bit overpriced but very nice, which keeps the list in front of him every day. — 00:03:14
  • ★ Zettelkasten, German for slip box, is a note-taking and knowledge management system popularised by Niklas Luhmann. — 00:03:40

00:03:44 — Z for Zettelkasten: Luhmann's slip box, Roam Research, the morning dump and Readwise

  • ★★ Niklas Luhmann wrote 70 books and over 400 articles in his life and had around 90,000 notes in his Zettelkasten slip box. — 00:03:56
  • ★ Ali thinks Luhmann kept his slip box in the 1800s or so, on slips of paper index cards; Ali's own Zettelkasten method is updated for the 21st century. (hedged) — 00:04:05
  • ★★ Ali uses Roam Research for his personal note-taking and Notion mostly for team-related things and keeping track of projects. — 00:04:13 · Roam Research, Notion
  • ★★ Whenever Ali reads a book or an article or listens to a podcast, he tries to write a few notes about it in his own words in a series of Zettelkasten notes. — 00:04:25
  • ★★ Every morning Ali does what he calls the morning dump: he starts a new note in Roam Research and writes down whatever is on his mind. — 00:04:40 · Roam Research
  • ★★ Morning pages are three handwritten pages of free writing each morning; Ali cannot be bothered to write three pages by hand, so his morning dump is a more permissive version: just write down whatever is on your mind. — 00:05:05
  • ★★ The morning dump helps Ali because things build up in his mind; while doing it he notices what he should or might do and writes it on his physical to-do list. — 00:05:23
  • ★★ Readwise automatically syncs Ali's highlights, mostly from Kindle but also from the podcast app Airr and from Instapaper, straight into Roam Research. — 00:05:38 · Readwise, Roam Research, Kindle, Instapaper

00:05:53 — Nebula, the Roam Research charity course and the CuriosityStream sponsor read

  • ★ Ali finds Roam Research a little complicated to use. — 00:05:53 · Roam Research
  • ★★ Ali's in-depth tutorial series on exactly how he uses Roam Research is on Nebula, where it need not worry about being too niche for the YouTube algorithm. — 00:05:53 · Roam Research, Nebula
  • ★★ A few months earlier Ali taught a weekend online course on Roam Research to more than a hundred people over two or three hours; all proceeds, about $8,000, went to the Against Malaria Foundation, and the recording is on Nebula. — 00:06:22 · Roam Research, Nebula

00:07:47 — I for inventory: Google Drive for files and Evernote as an archive

  • ★★ Ali uses Google Drive for absolutely all his files and almost never stores files on his Mac, so he can reach them from any device: MacBook, Mac mini, iPad, a friend's laptop or the Microsoft Surface laptop he has been trying. — 00:07:50 · Google Drive, MacBook, Mac mini, iPad
  • ★★ If you do not use a file backup system such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or iCloud Drive, Ali says you should; he has tried them all and prefers Google Drive. — 00:08:14 · Google Drive
  • ★★ Evernote is a bit old-fashioned, Ali says, but still very good as an archive: any letter or anything he needs to save goes straight into it. — 00:08:25 · Evernote
  • ★★ Ali is applying for mortgages and gathering bank statements, tax returns and Companies House documents, and is glad he has photographed such papers into Evernote for the last ten years. — 00:08:48 · Evernote
  • ★★ Evernote's optical character recognition search is really good, Ali says: typing "corporation tax" finds every letter he has received about corporation tax. — 00:09:00 · Evernote
  • ★★ Ali does not like putting things in folders: he snaps a photo, puts it into Evernote and relies on the search to find it when he needs it. — 00:09:17 · Evernote

00:09:30 — Recap of the four parts and sign-off

  • ★★★ Ali's lazy (LAZI) productivity system has four parts: the lash (his calendar), the agenda (his to-do list), the Zettelkasten (his notes) and the inventory (files and archive). — 00:09:30

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: daily highlight · Evernote · Google Drive · LAZI productivity system · might-do list · morning dump · Roam Research · time-blocking · Zettelkasten

Also: People: Luhmann

Projects: Workflow series

Organizations: Against Malaria Foundation · Nebula · Ugmonk

Concepts: deep work (concept) · morning pages

Products: Airr · Dropbox · Fantastical · iCloud · Instapaper · iPad · Kindle · Mac mini · MacBook · Microsoft Surface · Notion · OneDrive · Readwise · Ugmonk Analog

Also centred on Zettelkasten: How I Remember Everything I Read

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