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How to Build Your Ultimate Productivity System

2022-07-14 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 18:16 · watch on YouTube

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

Ali lays out a productivity system in three optional layers named after Harry Potter characters: Ron keeps your life in order (calendar, email, to-do list, files), Hermione captures what you read and hear (Kindle app, Instapaper, Readwise, Apple Notes), and Dumbledore turns it into a second brain for making connections.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Why you need a productivity system: three types of task and three layers (Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore)

  • ★★★ The main reason for a productivity system, Ali says, is to do what is meaningful to us efficiently and with less stress, without relying on the brain for things it is not designed to do. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali sorts tasks into types: the brain does best at creativity, enjoyment, relaxing and connecting with people, while keeping on top of tasks, calendars and emails is taxing and a system can do it more efficiently. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ The third type of task, remembering information not connected to what we care about, such as phone numbers or many people's birthdays, should definitely be outsourced to a system such as a calendar, Ali says. — 00:00:58

  • ★★ Ali defines productivity as using our time intentionally and effectively; the point of a system for it is that the brain does not have to do so much work. — 00:00:58

    “productivity is using our time intentionally and effectively”

  • ★★★ Ali splits a productivity system into three layers you can choose to build if they help you: layer one, Ron; layer two, Hermione; layer three, Dumbledore; the system certainly helps his own life. — 00:01:27

  • ★★★ The Ron layer, layer one, is about keeping your life in order; in Ali's view it needs four components to get your life reasonably in order. — 00:01:27

00:01:37 — Ron layer, component one: the calendar

  • ★★ The first component is a calendar: Ali finds it amazing how many people he knows do not live by a calendar and try to remember all their events in their own heads. — 00:01:52

  • ★★ One principle of productivity Ali has come back to for five years is that his brain is a dumbass: he wants it not to have to remember things it does not need to. — 00:02:22

    “my brain is a dumbass”

  • ★★ A physical calendar is fine, Ali says, but almost everyone uses a digital calendar app; Apple Calendar and Google Calendar are good, and he personally uses Fantastical. — 00:02:22

  • ★ Ali's calendar for the filming day shows breakfast with Usama and Shireen at Dishoom and a same-page meeting with Angus. — 00:02:22 · Angus
  • ★★★ For several years Ali has run his life from his calendar, which takes an enormous amount of stress off him: if something is not in the calendar, it does not exist. — 00:02:51
  • ★★ Ali also uses his calendar to block out time for what he wants to do: three hours every morning for his book, plus exercise, sports, social events and a dinner he hosts on Friday nights. — 00:03:20
  • ★★ A third reason to use a calendar is automatic scheduling apps such as Calendly or SavvyCal: a link to your calendar lets people book a time and saves the back-and-forth of scheduling. — 00:03:49
  • ★★ Ali uses a scheduling link a lot to book interviews for his book research, which saves him a lot of time. — 00:03:49

00:04:18 — Ron layer, component two: email

  • ★★ For email, Gmail or an app like Apple Mail is fine, Ali says; he uses Superhuman, which is very good and pretty solid but expensive. — 00:04:18

  • ★★★ Ali likes his friend Tiago Forte's approach to email, One Touch to Inbox Zero: every email touches your inbox only once. — 00:04:18 · Tiago Forte

    “every email touches your inbox only once”

  • ★★ Under One Touch to Inbox Zero, an email needing a calendar event goes into the calendar, an action into the task manager, reference information into a note-taking app and an article into a read-it-later app, and the email is archived. — 00:04:48

  • ★★ Ali's first general email tip is to unsubscribe from all the random marketing and shop emails, which are pretty unnecessary. — 00:04:48
  • ★★ Ali has a Gmail smart filter that finds the word "unsubscribe" in any email and makes it skip the inbox, since no real person writes that word and such emails are probably not important. — 00:05:17
  • ★★ Ali advises having only one place to deal with all your email: at university he forwarded his Cambridge University email to his personal Gmail, which had far better features. — 00:05:46 · University of Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali says to avoid using your email inbox as a place to find articles to read, or, even worse, as a to-do list. — 00:05:46

00:06:12 — Ron layer, component three: the to-do list

  • ★★ For the to-do list Ali relays David Allen's advice from Getting Things Done: your brain is for having ideas, not for holding them, and it is very unlikely to remember what you do not write down. — 00:06:15
  • ★★ Ali sometimes plans on paper: in his Part-Time Productivity Planner he asks one question each day, what the most important thing to do today is, his daily highlight. — 00:06:15 · daily highlight
  • ★★ Calling his list of other things for the day a might-do list takes a little pressure off Ali, so he does not stress if he does not get them all done. — 00:06:45
  • ★★ Having tried many apps over the years, Ali tracks all his other tasks in Todoist. — 00:06:45
  • ★★ Whenever a task pops into his mind, Ali writes it into Todoist at once, knowing it will not happen until it is written down; he uses it for shopping lists and thank-you emails too. — 00:07:14
  • ★★ When he has half an hour free, Ali batch-processes his to-do list, deleting tasks that are no longer relevant and doing similar ones, such as thank-you emails, in one go. — 00:07:14
  • ★★ Following a tip from David Allen, Ali keeps someday/maybe lists for work and personal ideas, such as rollerblading, archery or glamping, and looks at them when planning his next holiday. — 00:07:55

  • ★★★ The mistake most people Ali has coached make with to-do lists is not having 100% coverage: if 10% of things stay in your head you cannot know which, and that adds low-level tension and stress to everything. — 00:08:29

    “not having 100% coverage”

00:09:06 — Ron layer, component four: file management

  • ★★ For file management Ali says you want cloud storage; though an Apple fanboy for everything else, he uses Google Drive. — 00:09:15 · Google Drive
  • ★★ Ali's whole life is on Google Drive, from his medical school notes to photos, so losing, breaking or upgrading a computer is easy. — 00:09:44 · Google Drive

00:10:23 — Hermione layer: capturing new information; the Kindle app

  • ★★ The next layer, Hermione, is an optional extra for people who consume a lot of media, such as books, audiobooks, podcasts or videos, that they may want to remember later. — 00:10:23
  • ★★ The Hermione layer is about capturing what resonates from what you consume, so that two months later you have not forgotten the insights of a book that might have changed your life. — 00:10:52
  • ★★ Having tested the reading apps, including Apple Books, Ali finds the Kindle app by far the best. — 00:10:52 · Kindle
  • ★★ Ali reads most things as ebooks; highlighting in the Kindle app is a breeze, and his highlights stay in the Kindle notebook to revisit. — 00:11:21 · Kindle

00:11:47 — Read-it-later app: Instapaper

  • ★★ Ali's read-it-later app for several years has been Instapaper, which is free: any article you do not want to read there and then can be shared into it for later. — 00:11:50
  • ★★ A read-it-later app such as Instapaper is a great way of separating reading articles from coming across them, Ali says. — 00:12:20
  • ★★ Getting derailed by a recommended article into Wikipedia rabbit holes, Ali says, takes time away from the thing he actually cares about. — 00:12:49 · Wikipedia
  • ★★ Ali calls time our most valuable non-renewable resource, the only thing we cannot make more of. — 00:12:49 · first in: 2021-06-13, 8 Surprising Habits That Made Me A Millionaire

00:13:18 — Sponsor read: Morning Brew

  • ★★ Ali says the recent crypto crash has massively affected his own crypto portfolio. — 00:14:16

00:14:46 — Readwise

  • ★★ Ali has recommended Readwise for about three years: a hub that takes in Kindle highlights, Instapaper highlights and a few other sources and gathers them. — 00:14:46 · Readwise, Kindle
  • ★★ Readwise can export highlights to apps like Notion or Roam Research and automates saving: Ali only highlights a passage in Kindle or Instapaper and trusts Readwise to sort it out. — 00:15:15 · Readwise, Notion, Roam Research, Kindle

00:15:44 — Capture app: Apple Notes; a decent system as a cure for burnout

  • ★★ For the fourth Hermione component, a capture app for notes, Ali has tried many systems but comes back most often to Apple Notes. — 00:15:44
  • ★★ Ali has hundreds of notes in Apple Notes and trusts they are there, without needing to do anything with them as they come in. — 00:16:13

  • ★★★ What Ali cares about is the minimum viable level of organisation, systems and structure needed to reduce his own strain, not an elaborate system. — 00:16:13

    “the minimum viable level of organization”

  • ★★★ Asked how he seems not to burn out, Ali says a decent system is a massive cure for burnout: you trust it and lose the low-level anxiety running in your brain. — 00:16:42

  • ★★ The Dumbledore layer is Building a Second Brain, a book, system and course by Ali's friend Tiago Forte. — 00:16:42 · Tiago Forte, second brain

00:16:57 — Dumbledore layer: Building a Second Brain

  • ★★★ The Dumbledore level is about making connections, using the productivity system for creativity rather than just storage; a second brain ends up acting as a thought partner. — 00:17:12 · second brain
  • ★★★ After three years with a second brain, which helps him write his book, content, newsletters and podcasts, Ali captures it in Roam Research these days, though he might switch to Obsidian. — 00:17:41 · Roam Research, second brain

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Asked whether productivity systems over-engineer life, Ali answers that productivity is just using his time intentionally and effectively, and building a system that is not required is a waste of time. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked why he uses both a calendar and Todoist, Ali says the calendar is for day-to-day appointments and commitments, Todoist for the never-ending list of things he wants to do. — creator comment
  • ★★ Asked how often he schedules time for his to-dos, Ali says rarely: he schedules time only for important things, so smaller to-dos often fall by the wayside. — creator comment
  • ★★ Ali has stopped using Notion for collecting personal notes but still uses it a lot for business. — creator comment · Notion
  • ★★ Asked which podcast app he recommends, Ali says he is trying out Snipd. — creator comment
  • ★ Asked how many of his viewers are teenagers, Ali says that apparently 4% are aged 13 to 17 and 30% are 18 to 24. (hedged) — creator comment
  • ★ Asked which app to use for investing in stocks and index funds, Ali says it depends on your country and that he uses Vanguard Investor. — creator comment
  • ★ Asked whether to delete Ali's own newsletter because it contains the word unsubscribe, Ali says not to delete it but to archive it and read it later so it does not clog up the inbox. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Apple Notes · Google Drive · Instapaper · Kindle · Readwise · second brain · Todoist

Also: People: Angus · David Allen · Shireen · Tiago Forte · Usama

Works: Building a Second Brain · Getting Things Done

Organizations: University of Cambridge · Wikipedia

Concepts: daily highlight · might-do list · One Touch to Inbox Zero · someday/maybe list

Characters: Albus Dumbledore · Hermione Granger · Ron Weasley

Products: Apple Books · Apple Calendar · Apple Mail · Calendly · Fantastical · Gmail · Google Calendar · Notion · Obsidian · Part-Time Productivity Planner · Roam Research · SavvyCal · Superhuman

Only in the description or credits: Snipd · Vanguard

Also centred on Apple Notes: Why I Spent $28,402 on Apple Products This Year · My Complete Productivity System · How to Organise your Life - Building a Second Brain

Also centred on Instapaper: The 5 Magical Apps That Changed My Life · My Favourite iPad Productivity Apps

Also centred on Todoist: All the Apps I Use in a Day · My Complete Productivity System

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