In this video I'm going to be sharing

some tips for time management.

Now this is a question that people have been asking me about

for the last several years.

They see that I'm a full time doctor, if you didn't know,

I've got this YouTube channel, I run my own business,

I like to sing songs and play guitar,

and I like to give the impression

that I've got a vibrant social life as well.

And people often email me or Instagram DM me or whatever

asking, "How do you manage your time, how are you able

"to do so much stuff, how are you so cool?"

So in this video I'm going to be attempting

to address these queries by talking

about some principals, some tactics, and some tools

that I've personally found helpful to allow me

to do all this extra stuff with my time.

And speaking of time, this video is kindly sponsored

by ExpressVPN, the fastest virtual private network provider

in the world, and I'll talk a little bit more

about them at the end of the video.

So the most important thing that really changed the game

for me in terms of time management was recognising

that my time was fully and 100% in my control.

Like back in the day, I used to be tempted

to use the phrase "I don't have time,"

when, you know, talking about going to the gym.

I kind of realised over time that actually

I am fully in control of my own time,

and at any given moment, I am doing

what I most want to be doing.

It's never the case the I don't have time to go to the gym,

it's always the case that going to the gym

is currently not a priority in my life.

So yeah, subtle mindset shift,

and that's principle number one for time management

that I've personally found really helpful in my life.

Principle number two is something called

the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule

you might have come across.

The general idea is that for most things in life actually,

about 80% of the results come from

about 20% of the input.

So think Marie Kondo, the whole minimalist, tidy living,

minimalist home, all that stuff, has this thing

that only 20% of your possessions are bringing you 80%

of value, and actually this applies to so many other things.

Especially when it comes to effective studying,

often when it comes to exams that we take

at school and university, 80% of the marks

are going to be coming from 20% of the content.

Like if you really understand that 20% of content,

you can figure out how to get the 80% of marks.

And sort of by extension, I realised that this applies

to learning new skills as well.

I taught myself how to play the guitar and the piano

a few years ago, by following YouTube tutorials

and using Justin Guitar and all that stuff.

At the start, I thought that learning piano and guitar

would be hard, but it's really not.

If you want to get to a reasonable standard on guitar,

if you wanna be able to play the guitar while singing along,

all you have to do basically learn four chords,

and those four chords let you play the vast majority

of pop songs in the world, and you can just

move the capo up and down to change the key.

And that kind of changes the game because anyone

can learn four chords on the guitar,

you just need to buy a guitar for about 30 pounds

from a secondhand shop like I did one day,

teach yourself the chords using Justin Guitar,

practise for about two weeks or month,

and suddenly you are at the level

where you could literally stand on stage, play these chords,

and sing whatever song you want.

Prior to learning guitar, I kind of had it in my head

that you know, this is like a really hard thing,

but when I started to learn it,

I kept this 80/20 principle in mind,

I kept saying to myself, okay no, this is actually easier

than it seems, I'm going to focus on the 20% of things,

of chords, that's actually gonna result in 80%

of the songs that I can play.

So I think this applies all the way across the board

with things like piano, digital artistry, graphic design,

coding, photography, video editing, YouTube.

All of the things that I've taught myself over the years,

from the outside looking in it seems like,

oh my God, how do you do all this stuff?

But actually when you really get down to it,

and try to teach yourself this stuff,

you realise that it's not as hard as it initially appears,

and you can focus on the 20% to get the 80%.

But yeah, that's principle number two.

And principle number three is something called

Parkinson's Law, and Parkinson's Law states

that work expands to fill the time that we allocate to it.

And we've all probably had this feeling

where when we've got a deadline coming up the next day

or the day after, we get so much more work done,

whereas if we've got an assignment that's in

for two months from now, we're just gonna procrastinate

and put it off until like the week before

or the night before.

I think Parkinson's Law applies to almost everything in life

as well, you can always be a bit more efficient

by giving yourself less time to do something

and more time almost never, in my experience,

leads to a better result.

So this is kind of the case of getting over the idea

of perfectionism and just churning stuff out

and recognising that if you give yourself a short amount

of time to do it, then things just work out.

Okay so those were three broad, overarching principles

of time management, let's now talk about some tactics

for time management, and tactics are kind of drilling

down a bit more into rules that we can follow,

stuff like that.

The first one is the two minute rule,

and I came across this in a really good book called

"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity"

by a chap called David Allen.

This is like the world's most famous book about productivity

and in it he introduces the two minute rule,

which is the idea that if you have a task

that is gonna take you less than two minutes,

you should just do it now rather than put it off.

Everyday I come across tasks that I know

will take me less than two minutes,

and for the most part I try and get them done

there and then so that they're not kind of,

in my mind or on my to-do list or languishing,

like there's a mug behind the camera over there,

it will take me less than two minutes

just to pick it up after I film this video,

and stick it in the sink, and that will just

make my workspace a little bit more neater.

So yeah, two minute rule applies to everything.

If something's gonna take less than two minutes,

just do it now.

The second tactic is called batching,

and I first came across this in Tim Ferriss' amazing book

"The 4-Hour Workweek," which is the single book

that's most changed my life,

and that is a book all about, kind of, productivity

and efficiency and maximising time management and stuff.

So if you are interested in this sort of topic,

you should definitely read "The 4-Hour Workweek"

if you haven't already.

But in the book he talks about this idea of batching.

It's pretty intuitive, it's like, let's say,

throughout the week you get lots of emails

that you have to reply to, it makes sense

to do that all at the same time

rather than taking five minutes out sort of here and there,

every hour of the day to reply to emails.

And I find that batching all these similar tasks together

really helps because I'm not then context switching,

it's not like I'm working on a video

and suddenly I'm replying to an email,

it's like I'm working on a video

and when I make the time, I'm gonna reply

to these 16 emails that I have to reply to.

Equally the same thing applies to filming videos.

Part of the reason why I'm able to put out

at least one video a week is because I sit down

and batch film them, so today I'm going to be filming

like six videos and then I'll edit them over the course

of the week or send them off to my editor,

'cause I now have an editor now which is very exciting.

And finally the third tactic is my personal rule

for watching TV, which is that I'm not allowed to watch TV

if I'm watching TV on my own, and actually

in the last two years I think the only TV I've watched

on my own, like sitting on my own,

is one episode of "Game of Thrones,"

'cause no one came around to watch it with me that day,

one episode of "Chernobyl" 'cause I was interested

'cause everyone was talking about it,

and I watched a season of "You" on Netflix

when I was on a flight, I think that's allowed

when you're on an aeroplane.

But for the last three or four years of my life

while I was at university, I made the rule for myself

that I'm just not allowed to watch TV if I'm on my own.

TV is fine, in my opinion, as a social activity,

but I've found that if I was just sitting there

watching TV on my own, I'd just end up wasting

so much time, and thinking back

for the last four or five years,

I'm really glad that I spent that time

doing other things instead, like making my websites,

I was falling in love with making my business,

or just hanging out with friends

or making this YouTube channel.

I don't feel that I've missed out

by not having seen "The Office,"

or by not having watched "Breaking Bad" for a second time,

or by not having watched "Friends" for a third time.

You know, I don't lose anything by not watching TV

on my own, but I gain a lot of spare time.

And there's all these stats like the average American

spends three hours a day watching TV,

all this sort of stuff, and I find that

with a lot of my friends, and you know,

this is no judgement to them, if this is what they wanna do,

that's absolutely fine, but I find that

with a lot of people, the default activity

when you get home from school or when you get home from work

is to put on Netflix and watch something.

And if that's intentionally what you want to be doing

and what you're aiming for and what makes you happy,

then by all means that's absolutely fine,

what I'm saying is that for me, I don't lose anything

in my life by not watching Netflix

I don't even have a Netflix account,

but I gain a hell of a lot of time,

and I think personally my life is much more fulfilled

and interesting because I've used that time

to do other things rather than watch TV.

So yeah, that's my rule for watching TV.

Let me know what you think in the comments,

usually it is quite controversial

when I mention it to friends, people are always like,

"Oh what's wrong with relaxing and stuff?"

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with relaxing,

I'm not saying you have to hustle all the time,

I'm saying is that if you're gonna ask me

what my tips are for time management

and how I'm able to do so much stuff,

I think a big part of that reason is

I just don't spend any time watching TV.

And so having talked about three principles

and three tactics, and I want to talk about three tools

that I find helpful in term of time management.

The first and most important one is an app for the Mac

called Alfred, and I think there are equivalent apps

for Windows if you're one of those people

that sadly uses Windows.

And Alfred is incredible because it basically

lets you do anything on your Mac, just using the keyboard.