How to get everything you want this year

Thomas Frank
26 Jan 202420:53

Summary

TLDRThe speaker shares a detailed process for setting effective goals and priorities for the year. He discusses assessing what you truly want across life domains, identifying required actions and projects, building supportive habits and systems, and even cutting unnecessary activities. The process involves answering key questions to yield clarity on priorities and generate focused to-do lists. The speaker aims to provide an actionable framework for achieving aims by directing limited time and energy towards what matters most.

Takeaways

  • πŸ˜€ Having too many priorities leads to lack of focus and unfinished tasks
  • πŸ“ Writing down your goals and wants helps clarify what's important
  • πŸ”Ž Identifying common actions across goals can reveal priorities
  • πŸ—“ Breaking down projects into actions creates a next tasks list
  • πŸ‘₯ Systems of accountability like teams keep you committed
  • ❌ Cutting out less important tasks makes room for priorities
  • πŸ“ˆ Setting up the right environment promotes good habits
  • πŸ€” Pausing beneficial activities may be needed to focus
  • ✏️ Capturing ideas and knowledge enables creativity
  • 🎯 Aligning business goals with delivering value builds trust

Q & A

  • What problem did Thomas realize he had towards the end of last year?

    -Thomas realized he was trying to do too many things and fill too many roles in his work and personal life. This led to starting many projects he couldn't finish and working too many hours.

  • What exercise did Thomas do over the holiday break to gain clarity?

    -Thomas did a planning exercise where he wrote out things he wanted across 6 categories of his life to understand what to prioritize. This helped him gain clarity on his goals.

  • What is the concept of low pressure that Thomas talks about?

    -The more goals and concerns someone has, the more their time and energy gets spread thinly across them. This is 'low pressure'. Setting fewer, more focused priorities creates 'high pressure' to achieve them.

  • What are the 6 categories Thomas suggests for identifying wants?

    -The 6 categories are: personal growth, business/career/finance, leadership and community, health, relationships, and fun/daily experience.

  • What sub-question did Thomas ask about his goals?

    -For each goal, Thomas asked himself if achieving it results in a daily experience he likes. This ensures the goals actually align with his desires.

  • What are the differences between an action and a project?

    -An action is a well-defined next step while a project is bigger and more ambiguous. Projects need to be broken into actions and prioritized by identifying the very next action.

  • What are two ways to build accountability systems?

    -Environmental changes to make habits easier and creating reliance on others through teams or coaches.

  • What was the thing Thomas realized he may need to cut out?

    -Thomas realized coding and programming, despite enjoying it, may need to be cut to make time for higher priority leadership and content creation goals.

  • What are the three lists created from this exercise?

    -1) Next actions 2) Systems building actions 3) Cutting actions - things to remove or pause

  • What app is Thomas building related to the video?

    -Thomas is building an app called Flylighter focused on easy idea and knowledge capture to boost creativity and problem-solving.

Outlines

00:00

πŸ˜… Realizing I was overwhelmed and doing too much

The author realized he was overworked, doing too many things without focus. This led to unfinished projects and overwork. Over the holidays he did an exercise to get clarity on his priorities for the coming year.

05:02

😊 Clarifying what I actually want and mapping out how to achieve it

The first step is listing what you want across life categories. Also consider if daily life with the goal achieved is desirable. Then map actions to achieve each goal. Identify any common actions across goals and prioritize those.

10:02

πŸ“ Creating three lists of action items from my goals

Break down goals into projects and actions. Create an "ignorance list" for questions on unknowns. Define systems and habits needed to regularly work towards goals. Consider what to cut out to focus only on priority goals.

15:03

🚫 Admitting programming is not my priority this year

As much as the author enjoys programming, it does not contribute to his main goals this year. He has to "put it on pause" so he can focus energy on leadership, content creation, and other priorities.

20:06

🀝 Thanking Skillshare and introducing Flylighter

The author thanks Skillshare for sponsoring and partnering for years. He also introduces Flylighter, a new tool his team is building for idea and knowledge capture, funded through content without outside investors.

Mindmap

Keywords

πŸ’‘clarity

Clarity refers to having a clear understanding and focus regarding one's goals and priorities. The video emphasizes gaining clarity on what you actually want to achieve in order to focus your limited time and resources. Clarity is contrasted with trying to juggle too many goals and tasks at once, leading to lack of progress. Examples of gaining clarity include the planning exercise to identify core wants and needs.

πŸ’‘prioritization

Prioritization means identifying the most important goals and tasks to focus on. It goes hand-in-hand with clarity, as you prioritize based on what you determine matters most. The video talks about prioritizing across life categories and shrinking your concerns down to what you wrote in the first question.

πŸ’‘productivity

Productivity refers to effectively using time and resources to accomplish meaningful work. The concept of "low pressure productivity" is introduced to illustrate spreading yourself too thin versus focusing for impact. Building a productivity system is recommended to execute on priorities.

πŸ’‘goal-setting

Goal-setting involves defining specific, measurable goals and breaking down the steps to achieve them. The video guides you to set goals, tie them to daily experience, ask how to achieve them, and break bigger goals into projects.

πŸ’‘execution

Execution refers to taking action to accomplish goals set previously. While clarity and planning are important first steps, execution completes the cycle to attain desired outcomes. The video distinguishes between setting goals and building systems to ensure regular effort.

πŸ’‘habit formation

Forming positive habits supports consistency in executing on goals. The video advises making environmental changes and establishing accountability systems to reinforce habits.

πŸ’‘product development

The video references building software products, including the example of Flylighter. It ties sponsors and content back to funding product development vs taking investor money.

πŸ’‘delegation

Delegation means handing off tasks and responsibilities to others instead of trying to do everything yourself. Forming a dedicated content team is provided as an example of effective delegation.

πŸ’‘trade-offs

Trade-offs imply giving up one thing for another. The difficult trade-off example is programming versus higher business priorities that ultimately matter more.

πŸ’‘idea capture

Idea capture means easily recording ideas when they occur to enable creativity. Flylighter is positioned as an idea capture and knowledge tool to collect dots that can connect.

Highlights

I realized I was trying to do the work of like three different people and I didn't have a lot of clarity.

I started a whole lot of things that didn't end up getting finished. And I was working way too much.

This process is about solving a problem I call low pressure when it comes to your productivity.

What do you want? Define six categories to guide my thinking and ensure I'm trying to prioritize across my entire life.

Do you like your average daily experience if you achieve the goal you're setting out to achieve?

If actions will push the needle in multiple areas of your life that you truly care about, those are actions you should probably prioritize.

Next actions list - obvious next steps for goals. Systems list - build habits and accountability. Cutting list - eliminate non-priorities.

Best accountability is having other people relying on you - a team, coach, or accountability partner.

Put beneficial but non-priority activities on pause so you can focus on what you really want.

Get clarity on what you want, break it into projects and actions, cut out distractions. Execute with a productivity system.

Flylighter app aims to capture ideas and knowledge frictionlessly to help you make more creative connections.

Channel sponsors allow us to fund building tools like Flylighter without outside investment.

I've built a dedicated content team to rely on me so I stay accountable to my own content goals.

Moving to Minneapolis could help multiple goals - more family time, help mom, bigger yard.

I don't actually prioritize skiing based on my actions, so I shouldn't make it a priority goal.

Transcripts

play00:00

At some point near the end of last year, I realized that I had a problem.

play00:03

I was trying to do way too many things with my days.

play00:06

I was working on multiple software development projects, I was doing CEO things in my company,

play00:10

I was working on videos for both this channel and my second channel, doing product design

play00:14

tasks.

play00:15

Basically, I was trying to do the work of like three different people and I didn't have

play00:18

a lot of clarity, which had two negative knock-on effects that you might be familiar with.

play00:22

Number one, I started a whole lot of things that didn't end up getting finished.

play00:26

And number two, I was working way too much.

play00:28

I was often in the office until 8 p.m., my wife was wondering where I was, I was skipping

play00:31

workouts, I knew something needed to change.

play00:34

So over the holiday break, I took a morning and sat down and did a planning exercise to

play00:38

get clarity on what I actually wanted from the coming year and what I was going to do

play00:43

to get it.

play00:44

And that exercise, which really started out as just kind of a free-writing exercise, turned

play00:48

into something so useful that I had to make a video and share it with you, because I think

play00:51

a lot of other people deal with this problem of doing too many things.

play00:55

So in this video, as the title says, we're going to talk about how to get everything

play00:58

you want this year, or at least how to get clarity on the things you actually want and

play01:03

on what you need to do to get those things.

play01:05

This will be a process of answering six key questions that we're going to go through in

play01:08

this video, which at the end should leave you with three distinct to-do lists or lists

play01:12

of action items.

play01:13

And a bit later, you're going to understand why in this case, three is actually better

play01:17

than one.

play01:18

But more holistically, this process is also about solving a problem that I like to call

play01:21

low pressure when it comes to your productivity.

play01:24

Consider for a second this CO2 canister.

play01:26

There is so much gas packed into this small form factor that it's under extremely high

play01:31

pressure.

play01:32

And with that high pressure, we can do useful things, like pumping up a bike tire really

play01:36

quickly.

play01:37

Even the air that you and I are breathing right now is under a fair bit of pressure,

play01:40

both due to gravity and all the other air stacked on top of it.

play01:43

And because of that pressure, we can breathe it, we can live in it.

play01:46

But if you were to get into a rocket and go all the way to the upper level of the atmosphere

play01:49

and then step outside, you wouldn't be able to breathe the air at all, or at least it

play01:53

would be very, very tough because there's such low air pressure up there that all the

play01:57

gas molecules in the atmosphere are so thinly spread apart.

play02:01

So pressure is often what makes things useful.

play02:04

And I think about this in terms of our productivity and our prioritization all the time.

play02:08

If we think about all of our goals, all the concerns in our lives as a sphere, the bigger

play02:13

that sphere is, the more we're trying to do at any given moment, then the more our limited

play02:17

resources, our time, our attention, and our energy get spread thinly and the less effective

play02:22

they are.

play02:23

And all of an exercise like this is to take those limited resources and put them into

play02:26

a smaller form factor, to put them under higher pressure and point them at a smaller but mightier

play02:32

list of priorities and goals.

play02:34

So the first part of this process, the first question to ask yourself is deceptively simple.

play02:39

What do you want?

play02:40

So this is where I started the exercise for myself.

play02:41

I went to a coffee shop, I opened up a blank page in Notion, no fancy templates or worksheets

play02:46

needed, and I simply started writing out the things that I wanted.

play02:49

And to guide my thinking, I defined six different categories to kind of ensure that I was trying

play02:53

to prioritize across my entire life as well as my business.

play02:57

So you can use these categories if you want, maybe I missed some, but the ones that I defined

play03:01

are number one, personal growth, number two, business, career, and finance, kind of lumped

play03:05

all those into one category, number three, leadership and community, number four, health,

play03:10

number five, relationships, and number six, a category for fun and daily experience.

play03:15

And throughout these six different categories, I just started listing out things that I want.

play03:18

I'll put some of them on screen right now.

play03:19

I'm not gonna go through every single thing I listed, so we won't be here for an hour,

play03:23

but a few of them are do 20 pull-ups, get back to my 1,000 pound powerlifting total,

play03:28

spend more time with my mom and my brother, develop my team's leadership capabilities

play03:32

and help their career growth as well.

play03:34

And then for the new startup we're building, Flylighter, I set a kind of holistic goal

play03:38

to have people that I respect come and tell me that they're using the app and enjoying

play03:42

it without prompting.

play03:43

I thought that was a good proxy metric for both product excellence as well as distribution

play03:47

and getting the word out about this tool that we're building.

play03:50

Now as I was writing this list, I had another sort of sub-question in the back of my mind,

play03:54

which is if I achieve this goal, what does my average daily experience look like and

play03:59

do I actually like that experience?

play04:02

And I've learned to ask myself this question when I'm setting goals or trying to prioritize

play04:06

because in the past, I've often prioritized things that actually don't really matter

play04:11

to my daily experience, don't really help the world, but are more just things that I

play04:15

would sort of like to happen and I think I would look cool if they happened or I'm sort

play04:20

of idealistically thinking about them.

play04:21

So for example, since I live in Denver, one of the things I've always added to my goal

play04:26

list every year prior to this year was to go skiing more often.

play04:30

I live in Denver after all.

play04:31

I'm an athletic person.

play04:32

I like skiing.

play04:33

I should be doing it every week, right?

play04:35

But when I look back and observe my average daily experience over the last years, even

play04:39

when I had free time during the ski season, I didn't go skiing.

play04:43

Instead, I lifted weights.

play04:44

I went for long walks.

play04:45

I played video games with my friends.

play04:46

I played guitar.

play04:47

I made music.

play04:48

I did a whole lot of stuff that wasn't skiing.

play04:51

So I kind of came to realize that I like the idea of myself as a frequent skier, but it's

play04:55

not something that I really prioritized.

play04:57

When I looked at my actions, when I looked at my history, it wasn't something that happened.

play05:01

So when thinking about how to get everything I want, I had to think about, again, how am

play05:06

I going to prioritize, how am I going to allocate my limited resources, and if I tried to allocate

play05:12

something I didn't really care about, I was just going to be muddying the waters and,

play05:15

again, inflating that sphere and creating that problem of low pressure again.

play05:19

So I think this is a useful question for you to ask yourself as well.

play05:22

Do you like your average daily experience if you achieve the goal that you're setting

play05:26

out to achieve?

play05:27

So once you've answered that question, once you have your sort of pared-down list of wants

play05:31

or goals, the next question to ask for each of them is, how do I get it?

play05:34

And that is exactly what I did.

play05:36

I just entered down from each of those little list items, indented in, and started listing

play05:39

out the things I knew I would need to do for each of them.

play05:42

And I think for the rest of this video, I'm going to pick at least one of the goals from

play05:45

my list and use it as an example for how to go through this thinking process for each

play05:49

question.

play05:50

So for this one, we'll pick the goal of getting to 20 pull-ups in one set.

play05:54

For that, I know I can do at least two things.

play05:56

Number one, when I'm doing my sets of daily pull-ups throughout the day, when I just get

play05:59

up from my desk and do some random pull-ups, I can jump down from the bar after I max out,

play06:04

rest about 10 or 20 seconds, and then try to get at least a couple more reps.

play06:08

This is basically going to be challenging my body a little bit more and training it for

play06:12

that higher number of reps versus the plateau that I'm sort of stuck at right now.

play06:17

Another thing I know I can do is add weight to the pull-ups when I'm in my actual workout

play06:21

sessions.

play06:22

Now, I'm not sure if those alone are going to get me to 20 pull-ups.

play06:24

There might be other things I need to do.

play06:26

There might be questions I need to ask, but I do know those two actions are at least going

play06:30

to get me moving in the right direction.

play06:32

Question number three in this process is to ask yourself, are there any common actions

play06:38

across different goals you have?

play06:41

I came to realize that this was a really important question when I noticed that there was a frankly

play06:44

quite scary action underneath several of my different goals.

play06:48

Underneath, spend more time with my family, help my mom financially, and also have a bigger

play06:54

yard for my dog to run around.

play06:56

Yes, I'm now one of those millennials getting a house specifically for my dog.

play07:00

I realized that moving to a different city, specifically Minneapolis, would be an action

play07:05

that would put us in the right direction.

play07:06

I started talking with my wife, and her goals were in alignment with that as well.

play07:10

Even though that is a super scary goal and it has a lot of trade-offs and a lot of unknowns,

play07:15

we do like it here in Denver.

play07:16

There is a lot of good stuff here.

play07:18

Seeing that underneath multiple different goals and understanding that in the first

play07:22

part of the process, I had identified those as the things I wanted the most started to

play07:27

make me realize that's probably an action that is worth taking or at least worth really

play07:32

seriously considering because it's not just in service of one goal, it's in service of

play07:37

many.

play07:38

If you have actions that are similar, if you have actions that are going to push the needle

play07:41

in multiple areas of your life that you truly care about, those are actions that you should

play07:45

probably prioritize.

play07:46

I would recommend bolding those actions in your list if you're writing this out and following

play07:50

along with me.

play07:51

That brings us to the final three questions in our list, which are going to create those

play07:54

three lists of action items that I talked about in the beginning of this video.

play07:58

The first question to ask is which of these items on my action list is actually a project.

play08:03

If you've ever read Getting Things Done or you've heard about David Allen's work, he

play08:07

often talks about how an action is something that has an obvious next step.

play08:11

If I have a check and my action is go cash this check at the bank, I obviously know what

play08:16

to do.

play08:17

I need to go to the bank, I need to talk to the teller, get it cashed, that's clear.

play08:20

If I have something big and scary or ambiguous like maybe move to Minneapolis, that's not

play08:25

an action, that's a project.

play08:27

That is something that I need to break down into a series of actions and then define a

play08:31

very next action.

play08:32

For each of the items on your list, ask yourself is this an action or is it a project?

play08:37

If it's a project, you'll want to do two different things.

play08:39

First, start breaking it down into smaller actions that you know you need to do and try

play08:44

to identify the first one that you should do right away.

play08:47

Secondly, create what I like to call an ignorance list.

play08:50

For almost every project that I start, there's a whole bunch of stuff I don't know how to

play08:54

do.

play08:55

That doesn't actually worry me.

play08:56

In fact, that often indicates the project is worthwhile and is going to result in some

play09:00

growth.

play09:01

Right now, I'm reading Seth Godin's new book, The Song of Significance.

play09:04

One of the stories he tells in that book is about a guy who built a carpet manufacturing

play09:08

company back in the 1970s.

play09:10

They became one of the market leaders and realized that manufacturing carpet is actually

play09:15

incredibly environmentally destructive.

play09:18

One day, the CEO got with his leadership team and said, "I don't know how to do this, but

play09:22

we're going to become a carbon neutral carpet company.

play09:25

This is the challenge I'm giving you.

play09:26

Go figure out how to do it."

play09:28

That is an example of a project that is worthwhile.

play09:30

They actually achieved it and they had to start out by asking questions.

play09:35

If you've got a project and there are things you don't know how to do in that project,

play09:40

create an ignorance list.

play09:41

Create a list of questions and people that you could go ask or resources you could consult,

play09:45

and that's going to give you some more actions, questions you can go out and ask and research

play09:49

for your action list.

play09:51

Once you've finished answering this question, you're going to have the first of our three

play09:54

lists, which is your next actions list.

play09:57

This is a list of either one-time actions that will immediately help you achieve a goal,

play10:01

probably a small one, or a list of next actions for the projects that make up what you need

play10:07

to do for your larger goals.

play10:09

With that, we can move on to our fifth question, which is, "What are the systems you need to

play10:12

build and habits you need to adopt to ensure that you are putting daily or at least regular

play10:17

effort into these goals that you have identified as priorities?"

play10:21

When it comes to building these systems, I have two little subcategories to think about

play10:26

here.

play10:27

First, what are the environmental changes you can make that are going to make it easier

play10:30

to adopt better habits?

play10:32

Second, what are the systems of accountability you can put into place that are going to hold

play10:36

your feet to the fire?

play10:37

Again, taking some examples from my own goal list with the pull-up goal, a very, very easy

play10:42

environmental change that I actually already made but is a good example nonetheless, is

play10:46

putting the squat rack right next to my desk in this very studio.

play10:50

That way, when I want to take a break, I can get it from my computer, I can go do a bunch

play10:53

of pull-ups, or I can do some other exercises, and I'm getting exercise throughout the day,

play10:57

and I'm getting closer to my goal of doing 20 pull-ups.

play11:00

Likewise, with another one of my goals, play more guitar.

play11:03

I've got a guitar right back there.

play11:05

I have another one right next to my desk.

play11:06

I have one in the living room of my house.

play11:09

And because they're just sitting out all the time, I pick them up and I play them multiple

play11:12

times a day.

play11:14

And as a result, I'm playing more guitar and I'm getting a lot better very, very quickly.

play11:18

But sometimes those environmental changes aren't enough on their own, and that is where

play11:21

systems of accountability come in.

play11:23

Now, there's a lot of ways that you can sort of hold your feet to the fire.

play11:26

There are habit tracking apps.

play11:27

There are more hardcore apps like Beeminder that will actually charge you money if you

play11:31

don't do what you said you were going to do.

play11:33

But I think, and I talked about in a video about the five levels of self-discipline,

play11:38

the best way to sort of hold yourself accountable is to have other people that are relying on

play11:43

you, to either work as a team or to get a coach or an accountability partner.

play11:46

Basically, if there's another person that I know is expecting me to do something, I

play11:51

am much more likely to do it.

play11:53

One example would be my lifting coach.

play11:55

He sends me programming and expects me to get my workouts done and send video footage

play11:59

of my final sets.

play12:00

So I make sure I get those done.

play12:01

But a more important example, which pertains to one of my goals this year, is my team that

play12:06

is helping me with content.

play12:08

So a huge goal I have this year, like I mentioned earlier in the video, is for people that I

play12:11

respect to start using the app that my team and I are building, Flylighter, and to tell

play12:16

me without prompting that they love it.

play12:18

And there are a couple of different sub-goals we are going to have to achieve to make that

play12:21

happen.

play12:22

Number one, we're going to have to make an excellent product, but we're also going to

play12:25

have to up our distribution game.

play12:27

So to do that, we need to publish more videos on this channel and we need to make sure they're

play12:30

good as well.

play12:31

And to do that, I have built an entire dedicated content team in my company before everyone

play12:36

was kind of wearing a lot of hats and they were sort of switching roles all the time.

play12:39

At this point, there are people in my company who are entirely dedicated to content, which

play12:44

means that they are relying on me to do what I said I'm going to do on time so that way

play12:50

they have the time they need to say, edit the videos or write the videos or research

play12:54

or do whatever it is that they need to do.

play12:56

That means there's a system of accountability that isn't just an app or a habit tracker

play12:59

or a calendar, but it's a real person depending on me to get their work done and that will

play13:04

ensure that I will get my work done.

play13:06

So think about that idea when you're trying to build systems of accountability for your

play13:09

own goals.

play13:10

Who are the people who are dependent upon you?

play13:13

Can you align your goals with other people's goals?

play13:15

Can you join a team or can you at least get an accountability partner or a coach or somebody

play13:19

who's going to hold your feet to the fire?

play13:22

And once you've answered that question and also answered the questions of environmental

play13:25

design, you're going to have our second list, your systems of building actions, the actions

play13:30

you need to take to either change your environment or add systems of accountability to keep yourself

play13:36

in line.

play13:37

And finally, we have perhaps the least fun question here.

play13:40

What are the things that you might need to cut out of your life or at least put on pause

play13:43

so you can shrink that area of concern down to only the items you listed in the first

play13:48

question, so you can create that area of higher pressure.

play13:51

Now there are some low hanging fruit here for sure.

play13:53

Bad habits for one, if you're say staying up way too late watching Netflix at night

play13:57

and it's affecting your sleep or you're trying to get up earlier and read books every morning

play14:00

like I am, you might want to cut out one of those Netflix episodes you're watching every

play14:04

night and that's going to be a pretty easy decision to make.

play14:06

But a harder decision to make is going to be cutting out things that you see as beneficial,

play14:11

maybe that are even fun, but that weren't on the initial list.

play14:15

And I have a perfect example for that.

play14:17

It's one that I don't really want to admit to myself, but it's programming.

play14:20

The last video I made was all about how I learned how to code last year and I made some

play14:24

really cool stuff last year, but when I sat down and I listed out all the things that

play14:28

I truly cared about, all the things that I wanted for myself, for my family, for my company

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this year, me programming is not going to move the needle in a positive direction for

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any of them.

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Now me actually acting as CEO, me helping to develop the talents and the abilities of

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the people who are working for me, me making content, all those actions will have a beneficial

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impact, but me sitting around programming, it's not going to do it.

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And I hate admitting that to myself because I like programming, but it wasn't on the list

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and I didn't even write program more as like a fun goal.

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I wanted to sing, I wanted to play guitar, I wanted to play magic with my friends.

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I didn't want to program.

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So what I've started to realize is that programming is something that I'm going to have to put

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on pause if I want to shrink that area of concern, create higher pressure and actually

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achieve the things that I want to get done.

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And I'm admitting that to myself in this video for you because there's probably something

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in your life that you know is beneficial to a degree, but it's sort of taking your time

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and attention and energy away from the things you know are actually higher priority and

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that you want more.

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Now the good news here is that for items like this that are not actually bad habits, you

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don't have to commit to cutting them out of your life forever.

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You just have to put them on pause.

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If you truly care about the stuff that's on your list, the stuff that you wrote down in

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the first question in this exercise, you would put those things on pause.

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And then later on, you can always reevaluate.

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You can ask yourself, do I now want to add this into my life?

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Have I achieved some of these goals and created space for myself to add this back in?

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Do I now care about this a bit more?

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You can always reevaluate.

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But for the time being, you need to figure out what you're going to commit to for at

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least the next few months, I think.

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And at the end of this question, you're going to have your third and final list, which is

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your list of cutting actions.

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Actions you need to take to cut out the bad habits and to put the non-prioritized activities

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and habits on pause so you can truly focus on the things that you said you care about.

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So that, my friends, is how to get everything you want this year, how to get clarity on

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what it is you actually want, how to break that down from projects in the next actions,

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and how to figure out what you might need to cut out of your life to make time for the

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things that truly do matter.

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Now, the entire point of this exercise and this video was to help you get clarity and

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direction at a bird's eye level, to understand what you really want and need to do this year,

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or maybe even within the next few months.

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And if you also have your more in the trenches productivity figured out, you wake up every

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single day knowing exactly what you need to do, then you're good to start executing.

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But if you're the kind of person who often wakes up and is not sure what you're supposed

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to do in the next hour, or you're not sure how to plan your day, then you probably should

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invest a bit of time into also building what I like to call a productivity system.

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This is basically an external collection of tools or external system that gives you clarity

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on what you're supposed to be doing next, and also gives you a trusted place to put

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anything that comes into your life that you shouldn't be storing up in your head, ideas,

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tasks, events, all that kind of stuff.

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And if you want to learn how to build a great productivity system, I have an entire course

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that you can take over on Skillshare who have kindly sponsored this video.

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This is a one hour meaty course that will show you exactly how to set up your productivity

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system with a calendar, a to-do list, a note taking system, and a system of file organization,

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and make all these pieces of your productivity system work in harmony.

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And Skillshare actually launched a really cool new feature this year called Learning

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Paths, and that class is actually in a new productivity learning path along with four

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other classes, one of which I'm super excited about because it's all about automation.

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So if you want to know how to get from point A to point B, if you want, again, more guidance

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on getting a specific outcome, their learning paths feature, and in particular, that productivity

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learning path with my course in it is a great place to start.

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If you're one of the first 500 people to join Skillshare using my link in the description

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down below, you're even going to get a one month free trial of Skillshare which will

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basically let you take at least my class if you can get through an hour of material within

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one month for free, and I know that you can.

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Plus, after you go through that learning path, Skillshare has thousands of other classes.

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They are the largest online learning community for creatives, and they've got classes not

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just in productivity but also in filmmaking, in graphic design, in animation, video editing,

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even building and setting up and running a freelance business.

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So they have something for pretty much everyone who wants to boost their creative skills,

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maybe even make money through their creative talents.

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So once again, you can use that link in the description down below, be one of the first

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500 to do so, and you're going to get that one month free trial and also help to support

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my content.

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Thanks, as always, to Skillshare, not just for sponsoring this video but for seriously

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being a long-term partner on this channel.

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I think I've been working with them since 2017, and being able to work with a trusted

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partner for now seven years is truly awesome.

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So I want to thank them for that.

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I want to thank you for watching this video all the way to the end, and also if you choose

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to support my sponsors, thank you for that as well.

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I want to end this video with a bit of a note on productivity systems, and in particular,

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something that we will be adding to your productivity system if you want to use it in the future.

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And that's an app we're building called Flylighter, which is all about both idea capture and also

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knowledge capture.

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We want to build a suite of tools that helps you to capture any of your ideas frictionlessly

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but also helps you to capture knowledge and resources you come across on the web.

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And I am obsessed with idea capture.

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It's the entire reason that I started building this over a year ago, because I think the

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easier it is for you to capture your ideas and the knowledge you come across, the more

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dots you're collecting, as Steve Jobs would have put it.

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And the more dots you collect, the more dots you're able to connect, the more creative

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insights you can have, the more problems you can solve.

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And when you have tools that allow you to collect those dots more easily, you're going

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to do it more often, and you're going to have more of those creative insights.

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That's the entire point of what we're trying to build with Flylighter.

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And now that I've got talented developers on my team, designers, people who are working

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on this tool, the sponsors that we work with on this channel and the content that we make

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isn't meant just to fund the channel itself, but it's also helping to fund the tools we're

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building without us having to go out and take VC money, without us having to take on the

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different incentives that investors might have.

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We can focus entirely on building a great tool for you, listening to customer feedback,

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and also when we launch later this year, having a more powerful free tier than we otherwise

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would be able to have.

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We kind of have this whole entire business now with a content arm, the Notion arm over

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on Thomas Frank Explains, and now with our SaaS with Flylighter, we have that tool that

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we're building as well.

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So just wanted to give you a little bit of insight into some of the business decisions

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that me and my team are making this year, give you a little teaser of Flylighter and

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hopefully build some excitement for that as well.

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Once again, thank you so much for watching this video.

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I hope you found it helpful.

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I've got a couple more videos right there and right there that can help to boost your

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productivity even more, and I will see you in the next one.