The danger of a distracted life

Summary

In this video, the creator uses the metaphor of a cluttered kitchen drawer to discuss the importance of simplifying life by identifying and prioritizing what's truly important. The script outlines a three-step process: listing important and unimportant things, eliminating or minimizing the latter, and focusing on commitments. It encourages viewers to create space for meaningful activities by decluttering both physical and mental spaces, aiming for a more content and efficient lifestyle.

Takeaways

• 🗂️ The metaphor of a cluttered kitchen drawer represents a life stuffed with too many things, leading to difficulty in finding what's important.
• 🧐 The first step to simplifying life is identifying what's truly important, which can be challenging due to the complexity of personal values and passions.
• 📝 It's crucial to create a list of important things, which might include passions, relationships, and personal well-being, to guide life decisions.
• ❌ Recognize and list unimportant things that can be eliminated from daily life to reduce unnecessary complexity and distractions.
• 🤔 Evaluate commitments and responsibilities to determine which are essential and which might be reduced or delegated.
• 🏡 Cleaning and organizing physical spaces, like living areas and digital devices, can reflect and support the simplification of life.
• 📉 Minimize activities that are not important but difficult to eliminate completely, such as limiting time spent on social media or watching TV.
• 🚫 Learn to say no to new commitments that do not align with the important things in life, to protect and prioritize personal time and energy.
• ⏰ Establish routines that incorporate the important activities identified, ensuring they become a regular part of life.
• 🌟 The process of simplifying life is gradual and requires consistent effort to eliminate, minimize, and replace unimportant activities with meaningful ones.

Q & A

What is the main metaphor used in the video script to describe a cluttered life?

The main metaphor used is a kitchen drawer that is stuffed with various items, representing the over-stuffed and cluttered nature of the speaker's life.

What are the two rules for simplifying life mentioned in the script?

The two rules are: 1) Figure out what's important, and 2) Eliminate everything else.

How many categories does the speaker suggest organizing one's activities into for the purpose of life simplification?

The speaker suggests organizing activities into three categories: important things, unimportant things, and commitments.

What is the first step the speaker recommends when trying to identify important things in life?

The first step is to list out four to five important things, which is described as the hardest task because it requires introspection on what truly matters in one's life.

What example does the speaker provide for unimportant things that they have eliminated from their life?

The speaker mentions having a fancy car, being super involved with Twitter and Instagram, and staying up late drinking with friends on weekends as examples of unimportant things they have eliminated.

What advice does the speaker give for dealing with commitments that are hard to eliminate?

The speaker suggests critically thinking about each commitment, evaluating its importance, and considering how it aligns with life goals, and if necessary, reducing or renegotiating those commitments.

According to the script, what famous quote does the speaker use to emphasize the importance of simplification?

The speaker uses the quote by Henry David Thoreau, 'Our lives are frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.'

What strategy does the speaker propose for adding important things back into one's life after decluttering?

The speaker proposes carefully selecting one important thing from the list and finding a time slot, at least once a week or preferably daily, to incorporate this activity into the routine.

What is the speaker's approach to minimizing unimportant things that cannot be eliminated?

The speaker suggests setting limits on the time or resources spent on these activities, such as limiting TV and video games to an hour a day or reducing social media use to one hour on Sundays.

How does the speaker recommend protecting the newly found free time after eliminating and minimizing unimportant activities?

The speaker recommends being a strong defender of one's time, learning to say no to additional commitments, and being mindful of not adding back in unimportant things.

Outlines

00:00

🗂️ Organizing Life's 'Drawer': Prioritizing What's Important

The speaker begins by likening their messy kitchen drawer to their life, filled with various items that make it hard to find what's essential. They reflect on how this clutter mirrors their life's overcommitment, leading to a loss of functionality and happiness. The speaker suggests that simplifying life involves two key rules: identifying what's important and eliminating everything else. They propose categorizing activities into 'important,' 'unimportant,' and 'commitments' to better understand and declutter one's life.

05:02

🏡 Streamlining Life: Eliminating and Minimizing Non-Essentials

The speaker delves into the process of decluttering by first identifying and eliminating unimportant aspects of life. They emphasize the importance of making consistent small changes for lasting impact. The speaker suggests evaluating work commitments and personal habits, aiming to reduce or restructure them to create more free time. They also discuss strategies for minimizing unavoidable activities and the importance of learning to say 'no' to protect newfound time and mental space.

10:03

🌳 Embracing Simplicity: Filling Life with Meaningful Activities

In the final paragraph, the speaker focuses on how to utilize the time and space created by eliminating and minimizing non-essentials. They encourage viewers to reintroduce meaningful activities into their lives, using the newly available time. The speaker shares a personal example of replacing late-night outings with early morning nature hikes, which has significantly improved their well-being. They conclude by emphasizing the profound impact of this lifestyle change, urging viewers to continually simplify and prioritize what truly matters.

Keywords

💡Simplify

Simplify refers to the process of making things less complex or easier to understand. In the context of the video, it is a core concept for achieving a more organized and meaningful life by focusing on what truly matters. The speaker uses the metaphor of a cluttered kitchen drawer to illustrate the chaos of a life filled with too many unimportant things, suggesting that simplifying one's life can lead to greater clarity and happiness. For instance, the speaker advises viewers to categorize their activities into 'important,' 'unimportant,' and 'commitments' to identify what can be simplified or eliminated.

💡Eliminate

Eliminate, in this video, means to remove or get rid of things that are not essential or do not contribute to one's well-being. The speaker emphasizes the importance of eliminating unimportant activities or possessions to make room for what truly matters. For example, the speaker suggests eliminating the habit of staying up late on weekends to create time for more fulfilling activities like hiking in nature.

💡Commitments

Commitments are obligations or things that one feels they must do, often due to external expectations or personal responsibilities. The video discusses evaluating and potentially reducing these commitments to simplify one's life. The speaker encourages viewers to critically assess their commitments, such as work tasks or social engagements, and consider if they align with their life's priorities.

💡Important Things

Important Things are the core values, passions, or activities that hold significant meaning for an individual and contribute to their overall well-being and happiness. The video script encourages viewers to identify these important things to focus their time and energy on them. The speaker lists 'medicine, YouTube, exploration, family, and health' as examples of their own important things, which serve as a guide for viewers to create their own list.

💡Unimportant Things

Unimportant Things are those that do not significantly contribute to one's happiness or life goals and can be reduced or eliminated to simplify life. The speaker provides a personal list of unimportant things, such as having a fancy car or being heavily involved in social media, to demonstrate how identifying and letting go of these can lead to a more streamlined and meaningful existence.

💡Metaphor

A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn't literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison. In the video, the speaker uses the metaphor of a cluttered kitchen drawer to represent a life filled with too many unnecessary things, which can make it difficult to find or focus on what's truly important.

💡Minimize

Minimize, in the context of the video, means to reduce the impact or frequency of certain activities or possessions that cannot be entirely eliminated but are not essential to one's well-being. The speaker suggests minimizing the time spent on activities like watching TV or using social media, which can free up time for more important pursuits.

💡Productivity

Productivity refers to the efficiency of an individual's work or the rate at which they produce desired results. The video indirectly addresses productivity by suggesting that by simplifying and focusing on important tasks, one can become more productive in their work and personal life. The speaker mentions working from home as an example of a change that could potentially increase productivity by aligning work habits with personal preferences.

💡Freedom

Freedom, in this video, symbolizes the state of having the autonomy to choose how one spends their time and the mental space to pursue what is truly important. The speaker argues that by simplifying and eliminating unimportant commitments and distractions, one can achieve a sense of freedom that allows for a more fulfilling life.

💡Time Management

Time Management is the process of planning and controlling how much time is spent on specific activities to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. The video emphasizes the importance of time management by encouraging viewers to critically evaluate how they spend their time and to prioritize activities that align with their important things.

Highlights

The metaphor of a cluttered kitchen drawer represents an overstuffed life.

Two rules for simplifying life: identify what's important and eliminate everything else.

Categorize activities into important, unimportant, and commitments.

Listing four to five important things in life is a challenging but crucial task.

Passion, family, health, and personal growth are examples of important life aspects.

Unimportant things can be specific; examples include material possessions and superficial engagements.

Commitments are necessary tasks that can't be avoided, such as family responsibilities or work.

Critically evaluate each commitment and unimportant activity for its alignment with life goals.

Eliminate unimportant activities by setting clear actions, like reducing possessions or social media use.

Minimize unavoidable activities by setting limits, such as restricting screen time.

Learn to say no to new unimportant commitments to maintain simplified life.

Cleaning physical spaces and digital devices can also contribute to a simplified life.

Establishing routines can help in maintaining order and focus in daily life.

Use the new free time to incorporate one of the important activities identified earlier.

The process of simplifying life is gradual and requires consistent effort.

Adding important activities, like nature hikes, can significantly improve life satisfaction.

The video emphasizes the profound impact of simplifying and focusing on what truly matters.

The speaker shares personal experiences and the positive changes brought by life simplification.

Transcripts

Have you ever had a drawer

where just like everything goes into?

For me, that's my kitchen drawer.

But the annoying thing is before I go out,

usually I need to take things out of that drawer

but the drawer is like in absolute mess.

My keys, wallet, random post-it notes, exploded pens,

passports, IDs, things that I've never seen before

in my entire life are just in that drawer.

And because the drawer is so stuffed,

I can never find the important things

I need to get out of there.

I should really clean up my drawer,

I should really simplify it.

Now, if you can't tell what I'm tryna do here,

I'm tryna get a little bit fancy and create a metaphor.

The drawer is like my life, stuffed with tons

of different things.

Now, initially, I was okay with my kitchen drawer,

you know, being too packed, too full,

I could root around there for a while

and eventually get the stuff out I needed to.

However, eventually the drawer was unusable,

it was so stuffed, I couldn't even close it anymore

and I couldn't find anything I needed.

And the same thing happened to my life.

My life was over stuffed, I put in too many things,

I took on too many commitments,

and eventually I just couldn't live normally.

Sometimes we need to take action,

we need to clean the drawer, we need to simplify our lives.

Why do we keep stuffing things in there anyway?

In this video, I'll tell you how to clean up that drawer

because we all have one and how to simplify your life.

(gentle music)

So, in reality, there are really only two rules

for simplifying your life.

The first rule is, figure out what's important,

and the second rule is, eliminate everything else.

That's it, game set, the game's over,

federalism won again, and thanks for watching this video,

you know, I'll see you in the next one,

go figure out your life.

(suspenseful music)

But no, no.

In reality, these things are much harder to figure out.

So what I wanted to try and do with this video

is give you some tips, give you some starting points

on how you can identify the important things

and start to eliminate the other things.

Let's get into it.

(gentle music)

So the whole basis of my video,

the whole basis of this strategy will revolve around

putting everything you do into one of three categories.

The first category is important things,

the second category is unimportant things,

and the third category is commitments,

those are things that we have to do.

So let's start about talking about the first thing

and this is the hardest thing to talk about,

the important things.

So the first thing I would do

is list out four to five important things,

and this is really, really extremely hard to do

because I'm asking the big question,

what is important in your life?

What are the main focuses of your life?

So some things you could fail

with those four to five things are your passion.

And this is again, a really hard question,

what do you like to do?

Do you like art?

Do you like being in the hospital?

Do you like teaching?

Do you like flying airplanes?

Figure out what your passion is.

Now, I still don't really know what my passion is,

part of me says I want to be a doctor,

part of me says I wanna be a super duper YouTuber,

but part of me also says I wanna leave all of it

and go try living in Italy for a year

or something like that.

So I don't really know what my passion is,

so I just listed medicine, YouTube, exploration,

family, and health, those are my four to five

important things.

Other things that might be important to me

are time to myself, friendships, nature, reading,

those are important things.

But again, don't take from my list,

create your own list of important things

and these shouldn't be the little things like, you know,

I like to sleep in on a Sunday or something like that,

these should be the big important things

and that's why this is the hardest task of the whole video.

Okay, number two, we're getting easier here,

list out 10 unimportant things.

This should be pretty easy

and this you can get a little bit specific if you want to.

So for example, my list is having a fancy car,

being super involved with Twitter and Instagram,

drinking and staying up super late

with my friends on the weekends, having lots of clothes,

watching TV or movies, being the best workout designer,

being the best video researcher,

being the best chef in the world,

but I realize those things aren't super important to me

so eventually I can just offload those tasks to other people

so I have more time to do the important things.

So number three, we're filling that third category

is the commitments, evaluate the things

that you absolutely have to do.

There are certain things that we really all need to do,

this can be family, kids, religion,

health things we need to do, school things we need to do,

and we just usually can't get out of them.

So now you should have a massive list of things to do,

you have a list under the important things,

you've a list under the unimportant things,

and you have a list under the essential things

or the things you have to do.

So what I would start to do now is start to critically think

about every single thing in the unimportant list

and every single thing in the commitment list.

Seriously, look at each line and say,

how important is this thing?

How does this line up with where I want to be in life?

What would happen if I stopped doing it?

How would me stopping doing that look like?

Are these things adding complexity to my life unnecessarily?

Sometimes I find myself resorting back

to these unimportant things,

the things that I don't wanna fill my life with

like playing video games or watching TV

or buying fancy clothes on the internet.

But I would probably be happier if, you know,

I went for a long hike in nature

or got dinner with one of my good friends.

Okay, so now we have a great general sense

of what's in our life, now we're gonna get to the good part,

eliminating stuff.

(gentle music)

Henry David Thoreau said,

"our lives are frittered away by detail.

Simplify, simplify."

I want you to remember that small changes made consistently

are much more likely to stick and much more likely

to have a big impact than large changes made carelessly.

So, remember, we have those three categories of things

that we just listed out, let's start by cutting things

or figuring out how we would cut things

from our commitments, from our work,

from the things we have to do.

So let's use work as an example,

what are your commitments at work?

What are things that you absolutely have to do?

Can you reduce those?

What would that reduction in work or commitments look like?

How would you make this reduction

look desirable to your employer?

Maybe you work from home a couple days a week,

but importantly, you show your employer

that you're actually more productive at home

than you are at work.

Figure out what benefit you provide to the company

and see how you can maximize that benefit to the company

while still maximizing your own personal time.

Tim Ferriss from "The 4-Hour Workweek" says,

"don't underestimate how much your company needs you.

Perform well and ask for what you want.

If you don't get it over time, leave.

It's too big a world to spend most of our lives

in a cubicle."

Try and find something in these have to-do lists

where you can pull back a little bit from,

where you can reduce your commitments.

Remember, we're trying to create more free time

because eventually we're gonna be filling that free time

with the important things.

So next, let's look at the unimportant things

and see what we can eliminate.

Now, these are usually easier to eliminate

but less impactful to eliminate;

staying up late and drinking on the weekends,

I simply just don't do that anymore

I eliminated it.

Having lots of clothes and tons of things in my closet,

well, I found out a year ago

as you can probably tell from my videos,

I wear the same clothes kind of around 90% of the times,

so I threw out about 80% of my stuff.

All in all, go through that unimportant list

and next to it write an arrow that says eliminate

and then write another arrow that says exactly

how you're going to eliminate it.

So for example, with all my clothes that I had,

I said, okay, I can eliminate this, how am I gonna do it?

Well, just get rid of, throw away,

or donate 80% of the stuff I don't wear,

that was it.

Okay, so we've eliminated as much as we can

but sometimes we just can't eliminate things

it feels really tough almost impossible to eliminate things.

For example, TV and video games seem kinda just sticking

into my life and I just can't eliminate them.

You know, I like to watch an episode of TV

before I go to bed, I like to watch an episode of TV

when I'm eating lunch, and on the weekend,

I like to play one or two games of Apex.

I also like to go on Twitter and Instagram,

I feel like I also kinda need to, because, you know,

I'm a social media kind of person.

So, what I do instead is I minimize those things

as much as possible, and that's the next step,

minimize what you can't eliminate.

So, remember, you still have that list

of unimportant things and commitments

and we've hopefully eliminated a couple of those things.

Now, you still probably have a bunch of things

on those lists, we wanna see what we can minimize.

For example, for me, TV and video games

have been tough to eliminate

so now I just limit myself to an hour a day

and that means if on one day I watch three hours of TV,

that means for the next six days

I can only watch four hours of TV or play four hours

of video games total.

For Instagram and Twitter,

I only log on to scroll for one hour on the weekend

on Sundays, for the rest of the week,

I use a tip that I stole from Thomas Frank,

and really that's just to log out

of every one of those things

because the activation energy to log into those things

makes it more likely that you won't actually start

using those things again.

Okay, number three is make sure you don't add in

unimportant things, right?

We've worked so hard to eliminate and minimize things,

don't add in unimportant things, learn to say no.

So, as you enter this new found mental and time nirvana,

you will notice people and things

try to break you out of it.

Again, you'll notice people are trying to pull you away

from these things, not because this is a new thing,

because this is happening all the time

but because you are more keenly aware

of your time and your commitments,

you're aware when people are trying to take you out

of this newfound freedom, this newfound mental space,

you are hopefully becoming more aware

of your most valuable asset, your time.

So it would help, and it's helped me a lot to say no more,

you're not tired, you're not sick,

you don't have something you have to do,

don't lie to these people, just tell them the truth.

You must be a strong defender of your time

because no one else will.

Okay, now we've cut out tons of things,

let's cut even a little bit more.

Clean out your living space,

that includes clothes, clutter, everything.

Usually you can throw away 80% of everything.

Remove all junk food from the house,

remove all junk drinks from the house,

clean up your computer, clean up your phone,

pay attention to morning and night routines,

if you don't have a morning and nighttime routine, get one.

Have a place for everything in the house.

Also, when buying things, use the rule

of removing negatives as opposed to adding positives.

So when you wanna go buy something new,

try to only buy something new if it removes a negative

as opposed to adding a positive.

Okay, we've done tons of work here,

we've identified the unimportant things,

the important things, and our commitments.

We've eliminated our unimportant things or commitments

and we've minimized our unimportant things or commitments

and we've maximized our new found free time.

Well, what do we do with this new found free time?

Well, guess what?

We add in the important things,

we add in the important things to you.

(gentle music)

Now, carefully go to that list of important things

and pick one thing that you want to add in

with this new found time.

And make sure this is a worthwhile thing.

Find a time at least once a week,

preferably once a day where you could add in

this new important thing because hopefully,

you should have freed up enough time

to at least have an extra bout of time during the week.

And then just try that out for maybe a week, two weeks,

and see how it feels to have less things to do

and have more of the important things to do in your life.

So what does this look like?

Well, remember, this is a really slow process.

One of my unimportant things was going out,

staying up really late on the weekends

and drinking with my friends out late,

so what I found myself having

when I wasn't doing those things is I would be awake

early on Saturday and Sunday, and I would also feel good

early in the morning on Saturday and Sunday.

So then I looked to my important list,

what was important to me, and I saw, okay,

getting in nature is something that's pretty important

to me, so now with this new found free time

on Saturday and Sunday mornings,

I slotted in maybe on Saturday or Sunday

a like two or three-hour nature hike with a friend.

It has become one of my favorite things to do

and I make sure to do it like

at least once a month when the weather's kinda normal.

It really is awesome, one of my friends will meet me

at my apartment early in the morning,

I'll turn my phone off, put it in my backpack,

we'll go drive to location, hike for two hours

or three hours, see the sunrise, come back,

go home, and just, you know, live the rest of our weekend.

But it's had such a great impact on me,

I can't figure out why I wasn't doing this sooner.

And that's the general theme of what I'm doing now,

I'm eliminating things or minimizing things

that are unimportant to me

or work or life commitments that are unimportant to me

and slowly slotting in more and more things

that are important to me.

And I think that's the most important sentence

of my entire video.

I think that's one of the most important sentences

that I've ever said to you guys because

it's had such a profound impact on me.

And again, I'll say it again,

remove as many unimportant things from your life as you can

and then add in as many as the important things as you can.

It sounds really simple, but when you start to do this,

you'll be amazed at just how much happy you are

and how much better of a life you have.

Keep simplifying, minimizing, and eliminating

until the only things left in your life

are the things that are important to you

or the things that you absolutely have to do.

Simplify your life until that drawer is tidy

so you can come home, put things in it, close the door,

and then later, open it up and find out exactly

what you need from that drawer and get it out easily.

I honestly think this is probably one of the most

important videos I'll ever make

but it will probably be honestly like a less popular video

just because I'm not talking about, you know, X, Y, Z,

tips to have a more productive life

or something like that, but I just wanted to make this video

because it's had such a profound impact on me.

If I help maybe just one or two of you guys

live a happier kind of better life,

that's good enough for me.

Well, I hope this video is helpful

and if you've enjoyed this kinda more unusual post from me,

unusual video for me, you might enjoy my newsletter.

And in this weekly newsletter, which I send out

every Sunday, I include something interesting

that I learned during that week

and I dive a little deeper into touchy feely topics

as well as talking about actionable tips

that I've started implementing to improve my life.

Like for example, in my most recent newsletter,

I talked about my favorite morning and evening routine

that I'm doing right now every single day

because it's just so awesome.

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that I read of the week, the favorite thing

I watched of the week, and my favorite thing

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So if you're interested in getting that newsletter

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But that is it, thank you so much for watching

and I will see you on the next one.