A Simple Way to Organize Your Life

Summary

The video offers practical tips on how to organize life effectively, breaking it down into three key steps. First, externalize thoughts by writing them down using pen and paper, which helps create mental clarity. Second, prioritize tasks by understanding that time and attention are limited resources, and use methods like the Eisenhower Matrix to focus on what truly matters. Lastly, create a 3-month timeline to manage goals and projects, ensuring steady progress. The speaker emphasizes the value of analog tools and meaningful reflection through conversation and visualization.

Takeaways

• 📝 Writing or drawing ideas out helps organize thoughts better than keeping them in your head.
• 🖊️ Analog methods, like using pen and paper, are preferred over digital tools for the initial organization process.
• 💡 Distractions from digital devices make it hard to stay focused, so going old-school with physical tools is beneficial.
• 🔥 The first step of organizing can be chaotic, but it’s important to embrace this and refine ideas over time.
• 🎨 Visualizing concepts like failures through sketches can help clarify thoughts and feelings.
• ⏳ Time and attention are limited resources, and prioritizing tasks based on their importance is key.
• 🧠 The Eisenhower Matrix is a helpful tool for sorting tasks by urgency and importance, though personal conversations can also aid in prioritization.
• 🔄 Refining and redrawing ideas multiple times brings greater clarity and focus over time.
• 📅 Organizing plans within a 3-month timeframe is manageable and allows for measurable progress.
• 🌈 Timelines or mood boards help visualize projects and goals, making them easier to track and work toward over time.

Q & A

What is the main purpose of the video?

The main purpose of the video is to share a method for organizing one's life and ideas more clearly, which involves three steps: offloading ideas, prioritizing tasks, and laying out a timeline.

Why does the speaker emphasize the importance of seeing what they are organizing?

The speaker emphasizes the importance of seeing what they are organizing because it creates a mental space between oneself and the ideas in one's head, which helps in gaining clarity and avoiding disorganization.

What does the speaker suggest as the best tool for offloading ideas?

The speaker suggests using a pen and paper as the best tool for offloading ideas, as they believe in the power of analog methods over digital ones for this initial stage of organization.

How does the speaker describe the feeling of offloading ideas through drawing or writing?

The speaker describes the feeling of offloading ideas as exciting, comparing it to the scene in 'Ratatouille' where Remy sees fireworks when tasting flavors, indicating a sense of creativity and discovery.

What is the significance of the term 'fireworks' in the context of the video?

The term 'fireworks' signifies the burst of ideas and the excitement of seeing them flow out of one's head and onto paper, symbolizing the creative process of idea generation.

Why does the speaker advocate for analog methods over digital for capturing ideas?

The speaker advocates for analog methods because they provide a tactile experience that digital tools lack, and they believe it helps in avoiding distractions and allows for a more focused organization of thoughts.

What is the second step in the speaker's method for organizing life and ideas?

The second step is prioritization, which involves deciding what tasks or ideas are important and urgent, and which ones are not, using concepts like the Eisenhower Matrix.

How does the speaker approach the prioritization of tasks and ideas?

The speaker approaches prioritization by considering the limited resources of time and attention, and by discussing ideas with others to gain outside perspectives and refine their own priorities.

What time frame does the speaker find most manageable for planning and organizing?

The speaker finds a three-month time frame most manageable for planning and organizing, as it allows for measurable progress and clear goal setting without being overwhelming.

How does the speaker visualize their plans and projects over the three-month period?

The speaker visualizes their plans and projects by creating a hand-drawn timeline that helps them see the order and timing of different projects and tasks, often separating them with vertical access for clarity.

What alternative method does the speaker suggest if a timeline doesn't work for someone?

If a timeline doesn't work for someone, the speaker suggests using a mood board as an alternative method to visualize and organize their goals and projects over a three-month period.

Outlines

00:00

📝 Organizing Ideas through Visualization

The speaker discusses the importance of visualizing ideas to organize one's life. Writing or drawing out thoughts is crucial for mental clarity, and they strongly advocate for analog tools like pen and paper over digital methods. They emphasize how the physical act of writing aids in focus and creativity while avoiding digital distractions. They compare the process of idea generation to fireworks, like a chaotic but exciting experience that brings greater clarity over time through revision and refinement.

05:00

🗣️ The Power of Conversations for Prioritization

In this section, the speaker highlights the importance of prioritizing time and attention, two limited resources. They mention various methods for prioritization, including the Eisenhower Matrix, but emphasize their personal favorite: conversation. By discussing ideas with trusted individuals who offer honest feedback, they gain clarity from external perspectives. Conversations help them recognize their limitations and focus on realistic goals, ensuring that priorities align with their core values and capabilities.

📅 The Three-Month Timeline Strategy

The speaker shares their method for long-term planning, focusing on a three-month timeline. They find that this period offers a balanced scope for achieving measurable progress without becoming overwhelming. Using a hand-drawn timeline, they organize their goals and projects, visually separating tasks and utilizing tools like color coding to enhance clarity. They encourage flexibility, as plans often shift, but emphasize the importance of setting specific goals within this manageable timeframe for continuous growth.

🎯 Recap of the Three-Step Process

This paragraph summarizes the three steps discussed in the video. First, externalizing thoughts is essential to gaining clarity. Next, prioritizing tasks helps focus attention and effort on what truly matters. Finally, organizing these priorities on a timeline ensures a structured approach to sets of three-month goals. The speaker reaffirms the flexibility of the process and suggests alternatives like mood boards for those who prefer other visual methods. The overall process empowers individuals to plan their lives intentionally.

🎓 Skillshare Sponsorship and Class Promotion

The speaker concludes by promoting their Skillshare classes. They emphasize the importance of intentional documentation and the value of capturing personal experiences for growth. They briefly introduce two courses—one on documenting life meaningfully and another on developing a creative voice online. Additionally, they mention a free trial offer for the first 1,000 people to sign up for Skillshare Premium, encouraging viewers to explore other interesting classes on the platform.

Keywords

💡Organize

Organizing refers to the process of structuring one's thoughts, tasks, or life to achieve clarity and focus. In the video, the speaker emphasizes the importance of seeing what you're organizing, whether by writing or drawing, to create mental space and externalize ideas. This helps avoid mental clutter and fosters a clearer understanding of priorities.

💡Fireworks

Fireworks symbolizes the exciting burst of ideas that occur when thoughts flow freely from the mind onto paper. The speaker compares this to the feeling in the movie 'Ratatouille' where flavors create fireworks, highlighting how liberating it is to externalize chaotic thoughts without judgment or structure.

💡Pen and paper

The speaker advocates for using traditional pen and paper as a superior method for capturing and organizing thoughts. This analog method is preferred over digital tools because it provides tactile feedback and avoids the distractions of technology, making it easier to focus and fully engage with the ideas.

💡Externalize

To externalize means to take internal thoughts or ideas and express them in a visible or physical form. In the video, the speaker stresses the importance of externalizing thoughts by writing or drawing them out to better understand and process them, which is a key step in organizing life.

💡Prioritization

Prioritization involves determining what tasks or goals should take precedence based on their importance and urgency. The speaker highlights that time and attention are limited resources, making prioritization essential for managing life effectively. Examples such as the Eisenhower Matrix are mentioned to demonstrate different approaches to prioritizing tasks.

💡Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix is a prioritization tool that categorizes tasks based on their importance and urgency. Popularized by former President Eisenhower, this method helps individuals focus on what truly matters by distinguishing between tasks that are important and those that are merely urgent. The speaker mentions it as one way to organize priorities.

💡Distraction

Distraction refers to anything that diverts attention away from the main task or goal. The speaker warns against the distractions inherent in digital devices, such as notifications, which can derail focus. He advocates using analog tools like pen and paper to minimize these distractions during the organizational process.

💡Timeline

A timeline is a visual representation of when tasks, projects, or events will occur over a set period. In the video, the speaker recommends creating a hand-drawn timeline to organize projects over a three-month span. This provides clarity on the sequence of events and ensures that priorities are spread out over a manageable time frame.

💡Mood board

A mood board is a visual tool that helps capture ideas, themes, or goals in a more abstract or creative way. The speaker suggests using mood boards as an alternative to timelines for those who prefer a more visual and less structured approach to organizing their ideas for the coming months.

💡Skillshare

Skillshare is an online learning platform offering courses on a variety of topics. The speaker mentions that Skillshare is sponsoring the video and shares his own class on 'Intentional Documentation,' which teaches how to capture life experiences in meaningful ways. This ties into the video’s theme of organizing and prioritizing ideas to enhance personal growth.

Highlights

The importance of creating space between yourself and your thoughts by writing or drawing them out.

The author's preference for using notepads and analog methods over digital for idea organization.

The tactile experience of using pen and paper is emphasized as crucial for idea organization.

The recommendation to avoid digital distractions and use old-school methods for idea capture.

The 'fireworks' stage of idea organization, where thoughts flow freely without expectations.

The value of externalizing ideas and the challenge of visualizing them.

The necessity of prioritization due to limited time and attention.

The Eisenhower Matrix as a method for prioritizing tasks.

The author's preference for conversation as a tool for prioritization.

The significance of having honest conversations to set realistic goals.

The three-month timeline as a manageable and effective period for planning and goal setting.

The process of transcribing chaotic notes into a structured timeline for clarity.

The use of vertical access and color coding for better project organization on a timeline.

The author's belief in the importance of getting ideas out of the head first before prioritizing.

The suggestion to use mood boards as an alternative to timelines for visual organization.

The video's sponsorship by Skillshare and the author's new class on intentional documentation.

The offer for the first 1,000 people to get a free trial of Skillshare premium membership.

Transcripts

i would imagine considering you clicked

on this video that you're looking for a

way to organize your life

maybe get a clear idea of the way

forward i'm going to share with you how

i do it

it's easy to get lost in the weeds but

fortunately i found that with a few

simple practices

i can see my life and what i need to do

a lot more clearly i'm gonna split this

up into three parts

step one fireworks to organize my life

i have found that i must see what i'm

organizing

it is amazing to me how few people

actually do this

there's truly nothing like creating the

space between yourself

and what is going on in your head by

writing or drawing it out

i am asking you in a sense to channel

your inner da vinci

i love using notepads to organize my

ideas you can use a journal

or software if you prefer that the

important thing is to keep all these

ideas in one place

as being disorganized in where you

offload these ideas can

potentially lead you to losing them if

you're familiar with my videos the next

thing i'm going to say is not going to

surprise you at all

i'm a strong believer in analog which

means

a pen and paper and not anything digital

not at this stage at least

there isn't a productivity app or piece

of software in existence that comes

anywhere close to the power of the pen

and paper in my opinion

i just love how it feels i love

offloading and organizing my ideas in a

tactile

way

i know i'm such a weirdo about this but

it's the sounds it's the feeling

something about physically doing this is

really really important to me i'll leave

a link in the description to what i use

but these are

basic notepads and any notepad or

notebook will do there is another thing

to think about which is that whenever

you're on your phone or your computer

you're always two clicks away from a

distraction

it's not your fault if you had a

brilliant idea and go to your phone to

write it down

and end up distracted by a notification

that leads you to watching a video

of a dog petting a cat that actually

exists

anyway that is done by design do

yourself a favor

and put it all away and try going old

school for once

i think it's worth it i really do so why

am i calling this first stage

fireworks you know that scene in

ratatouille where remy

sees fireworks when he tastes the

flavors of different foods

this is kind of how i feel when there's

a flow of ideas out of my head and

through my hand

i've always found that feeling very

exciting and i would just say to drop

the expectations

it's normal not to feel clear about what

your future holds there's a lot going on

in all of our lives and in the world

today in my experience this first stage

is really quite chaotic and that's

totally fine

i think it's better to embrace that than

to fight against it order will come

later

and if ever i'm unhappy with how i'm

laying out my thoughts and ideas i can

always

redraw and rewrite them out i think

refinements are totally fine

and i will often do that and each time

brings greater clarity

the point here is that there is great

power in seeing what is going on in your

head and not just thinking those

thoughts

so oftentimes it's to do's it's doubts

it's

questions that i have i'm often

wrestling with ideas or themes or

concepts

and i regularly give myself the

challenge of visualizing

these things as in coming up with a

visual that i can draw out

that pairs up with that thought or idea

or concept

so for example failure this is something

i did recently on

no backup plan i found myself thinking

about failure quite a bit

and so i took the time to draw out

my thoughts on this i had something of a

visual

along a timeline that i thought would be

nice to see

and i went through this process i think

i drew it out maybe four times

and each time i iteratively brought more

clarity to

what i had in my head but of course at

first it just had to come out because i

wasn't sure where it was going to take

me there's a skill that i see people

seriously lack it is the ability

the capacity to externalize their ideas

and this is the place to start step two

prioritization

i talk a lot about two resources that

we all have a limited amount of and that

we all must confront and deal with in

our own ways and those two resources are

time and attention and having limits on

these two resources

requires us to prioritize you can't do

it all i wish i had a thousand lives

that i would have the time

to do all the things that i want to do

to create all the things that i want to

create

but i don't i have this life and so the

next best thing

is to make the most of it

there are a whole variety of different

ways that you can go about prioritizing

and for example an idea that i recently

came across

is what is known as the eisenhower

matrix popularized by the ex-president

eisenhower who would lay out the things

he

had to do in his life in terms of

important

and not important and urgent and not

urgent

this is great what matters more than the

system itself whether you use

a matrix like this or not is this kind

of thinking

this sort of distinguishing between what

needs to get done

and what doesn't necessarily need to get

done my favorite way of doing this

believe it or not

is actually through conversation i think

conversation is underrated

in many ways and i find that i walk away

with

a tremendous amount of value when i

bounce off ideas

of course ultimately i'm the one that

makes the decisions on

what is important to me and where i

place my time and energy but it doesn't

hurt to have

certain outside perspectives i have

found for example that i have a tendency

to be

pretty unrealistic about what i can

accomplish in a certain span of time

so it's helpful to have people that

bring you back to earth there's a lot

that i could say on this topic

but what i found is the most valuable

people to bounce your ideas off of are

people that you respect

people that believe in you but that are

also willing to tell you the truth

and not be yes yes men step three the

timeline

what i have found throughout my own

experimentation in organizing

myself and my life and my thoughts is

that i cannot see clearly

beyond three months from now actually i

think the magic number is more like

two two and a half months but three

months remains a very round

number that i like to work with it's a

manageable chunk of time

to work with it's a quarter of a year 90

days a lot

can happen in 90 days but at the same

time it's not too much to handle

i feel like in the span of 90 days you

can see

measurable progress even if it's just a

tiny amount

i've done videos on how i organize

myself both on a shorter

and longer time frame and i'll link to

both of those down below

but for now we're going to focus on

three months what i do is i transcribe

a lot of my notes and crazy scribbling

and chaotic messiness from step one

with a deeper understanding of what i

need to prioritize from step two

on a hand-drawn timeline that i

create for myself and it's helpful for

me to see when certain projects are

happening

and what comes first and what comes

after and

seeing it all laid out often i'll

separate different kinds of projects

that i'm working on

with the vertical access which helps me

see them more clearly you know you can

color code this you can do whatever you

want now again

there's a lot of ways that you can

actually go about doing this it doesn't

have to be

a literal timeline years ago i would

create

mood boards for myself based on a

similar concept of what i wanted to

focus on in the coming three months

things absolutely never pan out a

hundred percent as we planned them to

but i have found that on a three-month

time frame you can

consciously work towards specific goals

that you create for yourself and that's

basically how i do it

so to recap it's extremely important to

get your ideas

out of your head first to write them

down to scribble them out to list them

to draw them doesn't matter get them out

of your head and make that a skill of

yours where you're not editing

you're not preventing this from

happening you're just

going for it it's hard to have a clarity

on what you need to prioritize when you

don't even know what you're prioritizing

for example

and that's the second step prioritizing

and finally i lay out these to-do's

these projects these ideas

across a timeline what are the things

that i want to be focusing on

over the next three months and if a

timeline doesn't work for you

a mood board or something along those

lines is an alternative it's another way

to approach this

that's how i do it i hope this helps

this video is sponsored by skillshare i

have a new class on there by the way

that i just released it's my second one

after seeing the

incredibly positive reaction to the

first class i decided to make another

one and i made this class on what i call

intentional documentation how to capture

your life

in a way that brings meaning to the

things that you do it's about

intentionally channeling your attention

and creating things that have great

personal meaning to you i break down

four methods to go about doing this

that are accessible to anybody even if

you are just starting out the other

class

the skillshare original is on creativity

and how to develop your voice online so

they kind of complement each other

and that isn't an accident the first 1

000 people to use the link in my

description will get a free trial of

skillshare premium membership a

year-long membership comes out to less

than 10

a month so check it out and i'd love to

know by the way

if you do if you find it helpful and

interesting i feel like i've built

my entire career on the intentional

capture of my experiences so

it only made sense to make a class on it

plus there are a ton of really

interesting classes on there as well

so it might be interesting to explore

what they have to offer thank you to

skillshare for sponsoring this video

and thank you for watching i'll see you

soon