Transcripts
1. Intro: Albert Einstein once spoke
about the relativity of time. He did not have today's
state of technology in mind. How fascinating that
it's now for everyone to experience firsthand how
relative time really is. All you have to do is to boost your digital efficiency
and see what happens. My name is David. I'm an
online academy manager for a video
communication company. Besides this full time job, I study philosophy in the European context and run two Youtube channels
about knowledge, work, and well philosophy. I love creative writing
and making short films, experimenting with
all kinds of media, and all the new ways to create
these days, all digitally. Now, since having kids, I've had to learn how to
fit by many passions. My day job, my side Hustle, and my studies into a significantly smaller
window of time. Because my biggest
and favorite role right now is being a father. And it was only thanks
to this chal***ge that I discovered the full potential
of digital efficiency. In this class, I teach
you how to efficiently batch tasks to what I
call weekly up keeps. It's a habit forming method that not only frees up my time, it also provides a
working environment that lets me be more
focused and creative. First, we need to talk
about the four pillars of not only digital efficiency,
but digital literacy. Even if these
basics are ignored, it can cost you a lot
of time and energy. But the main part of
this class is dedicated to the weekly upkeep for
each day of the week. We will unveil some ideas on how to work more efficiently
in the digital realm. The core skill that I'm teaching is good old
batching of tasks. However, this class is aimed
at content creators and creative knowledge
workers who benefit greatly from a fresh
approach to batching tasks. For us, a clutter free digital
environment is critical. To be more creative and productive and get the
right things done, things like the
skill check glass. I'm excited to see
what you will do with the time these lessons are
meant to free up for you. Remember, time is the most valuable nonrenewable
resource we have, so make it count.
2. Class Project: Hello and welcome to this class. I'm so glad that you
are on board for some information packed and
hopefully insightful lessons. I will do my best so that you consider this time
well invested. So without further ado, let's go as a class project. We take your work week, all four to six days of it, and schedule a few tasks. What the heck is in this
class supposed to save time instead of imposing more
to do? That's true. In the long run, I chose this
project because I like how small things can bring big changes if you
apply them, right? We are talking about
certain types of tasks that drain your digital efficiency
if not approached properly, because at some point
they end up in chaos. Basically, they are digital
housekeeping tasks. You know? Chores of some kind, unpopular with many
for being part of never ending, ever
boring processes. The chal***ge now is twofold. To turn process related tasks into a project to prevent chaos, and thus to increase your
digital efficiency in the long run and to somehow
make chores more attractive. I want to train you
into wanting to do your weekly upkeeps
for the sake of your digital workflows and
your mental well being. To get started,
take a blank page, be it a sheet of paper
or a digital canvas, and divide it into
four to six areas, depending on how many
work days your week has. So each area represents
a day of your week. We will fill them
first with notes, eventually with
mindfully badged Todos along with checklists. As a handy resource for
this class project. You will find some worksheets below in the projects
and resources tab. My mission is to sharpen
your awareness of which types of tasks
qualify for batching as weekly up keeps by
showing you how I've integrated some into my
everyday life and workflow. Along with these examples, I'll give you tips and tools you can use to do it yourself, to set you in motion. That's my goal because
once you start moving, everything else becomes easier. Now, what's your goal? Efficiency is about
freeing up time. And it's totally okay
to want just that, and no more to free
time to simply be. But digital efficiency,
as discussed here, will only really
kick in when it's applied with creative
projects in mind. So before you start,
you might want to think about what it is that you
want to make time for. As creators, such as content creators and
knowledge workers, we learn to be very
results driven. We always have an idea
of what still needs to be done to get even
better results. However, sometimes
in all the hustle, we forget what we
actually wanted to do. Reflect, if you're just running in a digital hamster wheel, what are you actually
spending your time on? Don't just make time for the next few items
on your to do list. Such lists are always
longer than life. Instead, think
about the projects you are putting off for later. I would love this class to be the opportunity
where you finally succeed in freeing
up the time you need to make your creative
dreams come true. That's a lot. That being said, I encourage you to complete this class project step by step as you go
through this course. Each lesson covers
practical skills, real life examples, and
actionable exercises. Follow along, try new things, and see what sticks.
3. Basics 1 | Use Your Digits: Going digital alone is obviously a huge step forward in
terms of efficiency. Just think about what
you're doing right now. Asynchronous distance learning. Instead of signing up for a
class in some local facility, waiting for the date to
arrive, going there, and then being trained at the pace that suits
all participants. That still might be
a great experience, no doubt, but just not
the most efficient. Now let's take your digital
approach one step further. According to Austin Leon, the cartoonist Linda
Berry has this saying. In the digital age, don't forget to use your digits. Austin, an artist
himself adds your hands are the original digital
devices, use them. What Barry and
Clean mean though, is not only to work
digitally but to pursue some craft with
your hands off screen. However, this idea,
use your digits, can also be applied to
digital efficiency. Because a conscious trained use of your own digits reduces the friction and makes
you feel more at home when working in
digital environments. Therefore, this
lesson will cover the efficient use of your
hands in the digital space. Focusing on touch typing
gestures and hot keys. There are some habits
that speed up the way you work many times over
without any extra effort. In terms of digital efficiency, touch typing is one such habit. Touch typing, or
ten finger typing, means using all ten of your digits when typing
at the keyboard. The great thing about
it is that it's one of those activities that doesn't
take any mental energy. It works through long
term muscle memory. Once learned, touch typing
becomes second nature to you. So how to learn or improve this skill efficiently
as a child? When I started writing my
stories on my mom's typewriter, my two index fingers were eagerly searching for
each and every letter. So my mom quickly suggested, boy, you better
learn touch typing. And I'm still grateful
for that advice. The way I learned it though, seemed
extremely inefficient. I went to a course of 60 lessons spread over
almost half a year. I think I got my driver
license faster today. There are much
better ways to learn touch typing without
even leaving the house. What I recommend is so often to first consult
the search engine, ask how to learn touch typing. You'll find websites
like Typing Club or Touch Typing Study
that teach you this awesome skill for
free and at your own pace. Better practice 15 minutes a day rather than 1 hour a week. If you do it like this, you
should be able to touch type fluently within two to three
months, probably less. Doing the math, that is about the time that it took me
to learn it inefficiently, but it's way more comfortable. You may not be saving time, but you'll save
yourself some energy. It will be a few more
years before I can give my own kids the advice
to learn touch typing. By then the way we learn it
will have changed again. I guess even today
you can just ask a GPT powered chat
bot to teach you if you prefer to interact with
a kind of personal trainer. If you've already mastered
touch typing, then congress. Another great thing
about this skill is that it can be
measurably improved. In other words, what
is your typing speed, as in words per minute? To measure and improve that, there are websites as well
such as ten fast fingers. These are especially appealing for people who like a bit of competition for inspiration and more tips and tools
for typing nerds. I recommend Ali Abdul's videos on his impressive typing speed. They are linked below. Just as efficient as touch
typing are shortcuts. In other words, the less
you have to use the mouse, the more efficiently you will
move in the digital space. But since every app today
comes with dozens of hot keys and mobile devices
with quite a few gestures, you have to consider which
ones are worth learning. My tip. Each of your
devices comes with an operating system that
you have to work with. Plus, you usually use a favorite browser to
access the Internet. Therefore, you should
definitely learn some hot keys and gestures
for these two components, operating system and browser, to make your daily life easier for more on the
most important hot keys. Check out the class guide in the Projects and Resource tab. If you want to really push
it, you can of course, use apps that expand the range of hot keys
for your system, such as Alfred for Mac, or Power Toys for
Windows As a Mac user. I also find the app
out tab quite handy. Which not only lets
me easily switch between different programs
but program Windows. If we look at the big picture, it's worth noting that the principle behind
learning shortcuts will not change the more we
communicate with the help of AI or move around
in virtual worlds. New devices and technologies
always come with their own vocabulary and shortcuts that are
worth learning. Just imagine improving
your typing speed by 20 words per minute. Considering all the hours that you spent typing day by day, I find it impressive
how something so small can have
such a big impact. If you like, feel free to
share your words per minute in the discussion section or as a screenshot in
the projects page. I might do so too.
Also, learning a few frequently used
hot keys for your OS, your browser, or
your favorite apps can increase your
digital efficiency. Before you move on
to the next lesson, write down as to do to find a website through which you
want to learn touch typing. We'll process the note later, then practice
regularly and acquire the skill Considering
the, again, impact that touch typing
has on your daily work, at least if you write a lot, there's hardly any other skill that is more worth practicing. Plus it's fairly quick
and easy. Go for it.
4. Basics 2 | Lock Your Keys: Content creators, other
digital creatives and knowledge workers tend to have many accounts and tons of data. For us, a secure handling of passwords and files can
save a lot of time, trouble, and money, and it doesn't take much to
manage them well. Mainly you need a password
manager and backups. These two components
are for those who work professionally in the digital space
and today's age. Both of these should be
pillars of digital literacy in private use as well.
Let's show them in action. This lesson will
be on passwords, the next will be on
files for my passwords. I once came up with clever
systems that allowed me to remember a wide range of
seemingly very secure passwords, only to some day forget my
most precious one mind this, your head is the worst place to store important
information over time. I once simply forgot
my password to a Word file that contained my
diary from over ten years, never got it back. Still sad. The truth is, if you
can remember many of your passwords,
they ain't good. Instead, you really only
need to memorize one, called your master
password or MP, which is the key to
your password manager. Just by using this one tool, you are probably ten times
more secure than most people. Speaking of most people, the notion that you have to
change your passwords on a regular basis still
seems very common. But this approach is
no longer up to date. You can keep your passwords
just mentioning it here, so you can ask some
chatbot about it later in terms of
digital efficiency. Anyway, this is good news. There are a bunch of great
password managers out there. As part of a team, I use one password which
works totally fine. Personally, I use and
recommend Bit Warden. It's free in its basic version. It's open source
if you prefer to trust a community
rather than a company, and it fits nicely into
my digital workflow. Here's how I got my
password manager installed on all my devices plus the
web browser extension. Now wherever I want to
log in, Bit Warden, once unlocked, fills in my
data with a click or hot key. Depending on the device, Bit warden itself can
be accessed via Pin, fingerprint, or even
face recognition. No typing necessary. If I now want to create
a new account somewhere, a strong password is generated in the password
manager, copy paste. No mental effort needed. I don't even try to remember
it and couldn't anyway, since for a password
to be strong, more important than anything is the ***gth for the
master password. A randomly generated
passphrase works best with one or some
numbers inserted. You want it to be a
phrase that you can easily remember despite
a proper ***gth. Still don't keep this
key only in your head, but also store it in at least two or three safe
places in the real world. As a node without context, having a password
manager is like a must have and the new norm, at least for somewhat
tech savvy people. But at some point more
security conflicts with efficiency two factor
authentication for example. It's always advisable, no doubt, but it also adds friction
to your workflow. It's the whole idea behind it. A useful feature in
this regard is one that every good password manager
has built in these days. It's the function
to generate time based one time passwords
OTP that would usually an authenticator
app such as Authy would do just directly within
the manager in bit warden. This feature is available
once you've signed up for the very affordable premium
subscription saving OTP in your password manager saves you having to reach for
your cell phone every time. But as this again
reduces friction, it also reduces security. You want instead to add a touch more security to your
password management. Then create an additional
E mail address exclusively for logging into your password manager instead of using the one you use
for everything else. Lastly, a good tip for slowly adding new passwords to
your password manager is to use the browser
plugin or browser extension that also comes with every good
password manager. These days, I would not
recommend, by the way, use the password manager that is built into your web browser. Among other things,
you might not have this browser installed
on all devices. In a nutshell, proper
password management frees up headspace and
gives you peace of mind. Take it, even though this might be a barely noticeable change, it will give you more mental
capacity for other things. Best of all, it
doesn't even cost much time and money to set
up a password manager. There's really no excuse. Right after finishing
this class, set up bit warden
or take an hour to research which password
manager suits you, install it and start
adding your accounts. This doesn't have to
happen in one big sweep, but can be done step by step. And with that, you've
taken care of it. In terms of efficiency, it's better to protect your digital assets than
to risk losing them due to security breaches or memory gaps up next and on the same
note, file management. A tremendously time consuming activity if you tackle
it the wrong way. But there are a few
simple guidelines that can make your
digital life easier.
5. Basics 3 | Manage Your Files: The tricky thing about
being efficient with the digital files is
that it is so easy to get lost either in the chaos slowly piling up on your hard rise because
you just don't care. Or in the all too
elaborate folder labyrinth that you spend countless hours figuring out one way or another by wasting time or
risking data loss, you are making poor
use of your resources. As with passwords, both
total ignorance and excessive inventiveness
are out of place when it comes to dealing
with files efficiently. All you want without
having to think about it every
single time is this. Always know where to put a file, how to find it again, and never ever lose
it in between. For content creators,
other digital creatives, and also for most
knowledge workers, lots of our effort
ends up in files. We have p***ty of them
and depend on them. Therefore, we need a
structure and a routine to keep the upper hand without
getting lost in details. That's what this
lesson will cover. The goal is to give some
ideas and examples for you to adopt or adapt to manage
your files more efficiently. Suppose it's a super busy day. I just took some photos and videos with the camera,
some with my phone. I have to scan these
documents and download e mail attachments and a
few files I found online. Oh, and of course, I create some new files myself
every single day. Lots of stuff ends up
in my digital space. Here are a few things
I try to consider. I want one central place for
my files instead of having them scattered around on different devices or
different locations, like some here in my
studio and some at home. That's why my files
usually don't end up on the local storage
of my devices. But in the cloud of a
provider that I trust, in my case, that straw box, the most widely used one
would be Google Drive. Now to throw all the files into one Cloud folder
would be madness. We need some folder
structure within the Cloud. When it comes to creating
such a structure, it's best to proceed bottom
up instead of top down. Top down would mean coming up with a structure
from scratch, which in the worst
case would end up in empty folders that
are simply not needed. Bottom up means I look at
all the files that I have, and in doing so, I think of
categories they might fit in. Instead of blindly
making categories up. Of course, I didn't create
my structure in a weekend, but monitored my
use of files over years and ended up with a structure that
works for me now, but still might change. That's why I won't explain
it in detail here, but in the class
guide that you can find under projects
and resources, so I can update it
from time to time. Anyway, these folders allow
me to quickly distribute all incoming files for those that don't seem
to fit in right away, there's a folder serving as
a temporary storage also because simply sorting files sometimes bothers the workflow. No matter in which
folder my files end up, they all still need maintenance. But we get to that later. Let's keep it simple to
find files efficiently. Don't even bother digging
into your folder structure. Use search instead,
for quite a while. Now, search doesn't
only depend on file names and deliberately
added metadata, but also scans the
contents of your files, be it a PDF or increasingly
images or videos as well. Make use of it as a
reminder of less than one. I recommend find out how you can use hot keys to
search for a file or folder using the keyboard alone without even touching
the mouse or touch bed. In addition, since AI
tools found their way onto our personal devices such as
Microsoft Copilot or Rewind, some of us still have to make
the mind shift to perceive AI as the powerful personal
assistant it can be, searching for files
is one of these tasks that really shouldn't take up much of your time
as a human anymore. Again, don't think
too much about the perfect folder
structure or file naming, but let search and AI help
you to work more efficiently. More important than how
you sort your files in detail is that you
secure them from loss. Many cloud providers
offer features such as versioning or file recovery
to help prevent data loss. Nevertheless, it's
still advisable to follow a good old practice, the 321 back Up Rule. The 321 back Up Rule is a simple but effective
strategy for backing up data. It states that you should
have at least three copies of your data stored on two
different storage media. One copy stored off site. This ensures that
in the event of a system failure or
natural disaster, you will still have
access to your data. Now the rule is simple, but it's not always
easy to implement. As for my cloud, I can save all cloud files on a local
drive as well and have this device backed up to an external hard drive in case of a Mac via time
machine, for example. This way I have three copies on two different storage media, internal and
external hard drive, and one copy is off
site in the cloud. However, as a content creator, my volume of files exceeds
the size of my cloud. I need an extended archive to offload dozens of terabytes. Again, instead of multiple
external hard drives, I prefer one central location. For me that's a
disk station from Zenologyaitre those two places. Then what about having
one central place? Well, because I can access
both my Dropbox and my disk station from like
any device wherever I am. As long as there's an
internet connection, I'm good to go. Effectively, I have
centralized access, but having three copies
of dozens of terabytes, one of them off site, is not only technically
tricky, but also costly. Setting up a good storage and back up system for
large amounts of data is a project that should be planned and
budgeted for early on. I'm pointing this out because I, myself have lost a lot of
time due to this issue. Don't be like me.
Plan ahead pro tip. Don't mess with fi***ames. Be aware that some
files may be linked to others and that such
links may be lost. If you carelessly change fi***ames once the
damage is done, it can be very time consuming or impossible to restore
the previous state. For my thoughts on file naming conventions and best practices, also see the PDF
under resources. For such file naming
and similar errors, I highly recommend using
a backup function, like just mentioned,
time machine, which makes a snapshot of your digital environment
every hour, for example. Then you can literally
travel back in time to an earlier
state of your system. In many cases, this is
much more efficient than troubleshooting in
the present last tip, even though a creator like Casey Neistat may
boast about never, ever deleting any files, he can afford it, I would advise being a bit
more selective. You don't have to
save everything just because it's digital and
doesn't gather dust. There are files that lose their relevance and just
end up as data garbage. Try to save only what is worth saving for
your future self or what might be worth saving in view of your future
work and projects. For efficiency sake, get your
files in one central place. Settle for a simple
folder structure, stick to it, and back things up. These are the key takeaways
from this lesson. We have only touched
on the topic of routines for file management, because we will go into
that in more depth later. While password management
is something that can be set up and then
used fairly quickly, file management requires
more maintenance. This is where some tasks lie that make good
weekly upkeeps. Therefore, make a
note or post it with the keyword files on it and place it somewhere
on your week. Just as a reminder, for
later in the next lessons, we will finally get down to the nitty gritty, see you soon.
6. Basics 4 | Mind Your Habits: That things we do on a daily basis have a massive
impact on us is obvious. Whether we eat fast food every day or go for
a run every day, or read an hour,
or play the piano, or practice dancing
every single day. That shapes who we are. It affects our
bodies, our mindset, our skills, and ultimately
our whole nature. For me, getting up early, taking notes and reading were three things that
changed my life a lot. I deliberately tried
to acquire them as daily habits years ago to
finally finish my first novel. As a result, I discovered
entirely new areas of interest. I was able to finish that novel. But afterwards I began
studying philosophy. Instead of writing a sequel, a turn of events that I consider a good
thing I should add, my newly acquired habits led
me down an unexpected path. But in retrospect, just the
one that I was looking for, Once you realize the powerful
leverage of daily habits, it's tempting to try out several at once to become healthier, fitter, more literate, musical, a better dancer, all
within two years. But that's not how it works. As days are short
and life is busy, I think it's true that
you can accomplish almost anything but not
everything because, well, life is short too. Na val Raca puts it this way. You can get almost anything
you want out of life as long as it's one thing and you want it far more
than anything else. I find this notion very
convincing For me. My one thing is to build digital assets and lessons for creative knowledge workers, enabling them to
focus on their thing. To that end, I work and
share my work digitally, hence my interest in
digital efficiency. Now, what is your one thing
or small batch of things? The more clear your idea of your one thing or a
few things really is, the more useful you can
arrange your weekly up keeps. After all, it's
crucial which tasks are worth badging
and getting done. In other words, what you
certainly don't want is to be very efficient with things that you might as well not do at all. Ask yourself what you
want to do things for. Write yourself a mission
statement. One sentence. Begin with an actionable
word I want to build, to create, explore,
to teach, to study. To write, you get the Gust. Weekly upkeeps are basically
daily habits just with rotating contents that require different activities Day by day, it's about badging tasks according to specific
work contexts. But each badge is different that makes it so difficult to
establish them as habits. Habits, as we know,
are formed by a loop. There is a or trigger
that kicks off a craving, followed by a response or
routine that leads to a reward. In this case, we'll start
with the answer or routine. It's our weekly upkeep that we want to complete every day. Now we have to build a habit loop around it
to get the habit effect. That sounds artificial, but it's nothing
different from what is done in advertising to sell a product by linking
it to habits. A powerful book on this topic is The Power of Habit
by Charles Darick. An example I set up my weekly up keeps in a digital task manager. So every day I see one weekly upkeep popping
up on my devices. That is my cue which
triggers my craving. Whether you can relate or not, what I crave is to have all to do checked off at
the end of the day. Therefore, what
motivates me to do a weekly upkeep on
a daily basis is the small reward of hitting the check box so that
the task disappears. This works for habit building,
but it could be better. A protip would be to connect
the daily habit built around the weekly upkeep to
a bodily sensation. A craving is much
stronger when it is linked to our
senses and urges. An idea would be to allow yourself a treat of your choice, such as chocolate or coffee. But only once you've
done your upkeep. Of course, place a
cue to that treat, clearly visible to you
in your workspace. Summing up if needed, take some time to
get clear about your one thing or
a few things or your mission that
you want to become more efficient for
following along. This will give you a
clue as to which of your tasks are worth
batching in the first place. But since these will be different kinds of
tasks every day, it's hard to make
a habit out of it. What you need is
not only a clue, but also a cue. Think about what craving
you are responsive to, so you can use it later to place such a cue and build a habit
around your weekly upkeep. This is a difficult one I know, but give it a try,
it's worth it. In the next lesson,
we will finally take a closer look
at an example. For a weekly upkeep, it's about going paper less.
7. Upkeep 1 | Digitize: An important prerequisite
to digital work in general is that things
are available digitally. We still live in
a time when a lot of information comes
in paper form. Now, even if it doesn't
look like it here in my studio with all the good
old paper books behind me, the office part of my work
takes place without paper. I also try to scan all
private documents or documents related to
creative projects as much as possible. This lesson is about how
to efficiently digitize everything that comes in paper
form on a regular basis. The goal of this
lesson is to set up a recurring task in our
work week that is dedicated to digitizing and to make your workplace entirely
paper free in the long run. In other words, everything
you need should be at hand in your
digital environment. Honestly, going paper less is a no brainer for people like you and me who work digitally. What keeps many, and maybe
you too, from doing this, is the difficulty
of getting started when you've still got so
many folders, you know, like big heavy paper folders, that it seems like it would take forever to digitize them. But don't let that
scare you off. All you need is a good
routine. Here's mine. For me, the bridge between the analog world and the
digital space is this place right there under my
window where I have three trays for storing
paper stuff at the top, notes, be it in notepads. On post, its beer mats, napkins. What I write down with pen and paper ends up in this
tray to be processed. That is being transferred
to my knowledge base. Next tray, paper, mail that is connected to any tasks
that I still have to do. Third tray documents, postcards or photos that
need to be digitized. So each of these trays comes
with a different tasks that require different ways of
working to process nodes. For example, you
need to be focused and creative to process mail. You may need to make a
phone call and communicate. Therefore, to take care of all three trays in one
go is just cumbersome. Instead, it's best to tackle
each tray separately. For Mondays, I've chosen the
easiest tray to process, number three, digitize, that's what the weekly
up keeper is called. That pops up on my devices and my ca***dar every Monday
until I check it off. The simple recurring tasks, I use Google tasks as it integrates well
with Google Ca***dar. But other task managers
like Microsoft to do or to do is
work just as well. To demonstrate, I
take all the paper from the tray and
provide good lightning. When scanning with a phone, the shadow often
gets in the way. Therefore, I recommend a
music stand like this one. It's not only great as a standing desk for
working on a laptop, but also for placing documents to scan for proper contrast, I use black cardboard
as a background. Once positioned like this, I can quickly and easily
scan all documents. I do this with a Dropbox
mobile app and save all scans to the folder that serves as my
temporary drop zone. I use Dropbox for
scanning because it works well with the Dropbox
as a cloud service. But Google Drive also
has a scan function, which actually is a bit better. It usually takes me
less than 5 minutes to scan all the documents
that accumulate in a week. And I don't do it just for me, but for the whole family. With paperwork, for my
partner and two kids as well. Still, it's usually
only 5 minutes. Right here lies the
opportunity for all procrastinators who are afraid of the
difficult beginning. You don't have to
take a week off and spend days digitizing
your old documents. Just add 5 minutes every week and scan some
old stuff as well. Sure. With a few
minutes every week, progress is slow, but
you get the idea. It's better to
spend a little time regularly than several
days at a time. That's how I digitized all my documents from
three decades of life. When I'm done scanning, after five to ten or
15 minutes at max, I throw the paperwork away. If it is very rarely really important
documents, I keep them. Of course, these
are so few in total that everything fits
into one slim folder, everything else goes
into the trash. If you have sensitive
documents or noisy neighbors, I recommend a shredder at best with GDPR compliant
shredding modes. Good to know. Next step. Now in the digital space, I open up the temporary folder where all the scans end
up and rename them. Therefore, I put the most search relevant keyword
in the final name and otherwise, keep it short. You should avoid
special characters, but everything else
is a matter of taste. Don't dwell too
long on the naming, it's not that important. Lastly, I move the scans from my drop zone to
where they belong. For example, either into my
own documents and there into the current year folder or into the family documents and there
into the person's folder. With tools like Alfred for Mac, you can do the moving
of files with hot keys. With a little practice, this
is much more efficient. Tech tip. In the scan apps, you can usually select
whether the files should be captured in
black and white or color. Whenever possible,
choose black and white for a smaller file size. Even such detail contributes to efficiency in
digital workflows. That's it for Monday. Short and sweet.
Speaking of sweet, digitizing is one of those enjoyable tasks that
require little concentration, especially for many
knowledge workers. These are rare opportunities. Use them and make it a bit fun. Listen to music or a
podcast while you're on it. Spice up the boring routines
with some pleasant rituals. Recaps, digitize
your paperwork step by step, week by week. To do so, use an app you
like and make a habit of naming and sorting the
documents you scan right away. This is how you achieve and
maintain a paperless office. Think about which of
your weekdays would be a good fit for
digitizing documents and make a note of it. You can change your plan later on if you don't
already have one, set up a permanent place to collect all your documents
to be digitized. Okay. Then. This was probably the most simple of the weekly upkeeps
we are dealing with. The next lesson will be about organizing files weekly
and efficiently.
8. Upkeep 2 | Organize: The previous lesson was
about the bridge between the analog world and
the digital space. This lesson is about the bridge between the digital
space as such, including the worldwide web and your own system
within this space. This system consists of
a hardware environment, a software set up, and your files and folders. A digital system is
like a living organism, not static, but in motion. Now, just as a living
organism needs a certain balance and inner structure in
order to survive, you must not let your
personal digital system drown in chaos. This lesson is
about how to handle the flood of files that try to pour into your system every week and how to organize
it efficiently. The goal is to create a
central entry point for our digital system for
this weekly upkeep. There is a simple and a
sophisticated version. Remember, it's not about adopting each of
these upkeeps as is, but to use the key ideas to
boost your own efficiency. After all, we work in
different ways with the different files in
highly customized systems. Here is a glimpse into
mine on Tuesdays when my weekly up keep called organize shows up
on my ca***dar. My work begins in my drop zone. That is, as you might remember, the folder that serves as a temporary repository
for downloads, scans, and such, right in
my cloud, in my Dropbox. It doesn't matter if I'm
sitting at my Mac or my laptop. I could even do it mobile, but that's a bit fiddly. The first step now is to
move all the files from the drop zone into my system and to delete
what I don't need anymore. If you do this once a week, this is an act of a few minutes. Again, you can use hot
key helpers like Alfred, to make moving
files even faster. And if you take care of
your scans on Monday, they are already sorted away into folders like
documents and family. So what's left anyway? In my case, all kinds of files
end up in the drop zone. Images, audio and video files, articles, books,
instructions as PDFs. Where to put all this stuff. A common impulse would be to let most of them disappear
into project folders. But I advise another way, because this is a great
opportunity to build your personal library
of digital assets. Digital assets are files
that can be used and re, used for a variety of purposes. Instead of moving
images, for example, from the drop zone to the project I initially
needed them for. In most cases, I moved
them to the Images folder inside my Dropbox and then
there to a Process folder. The further processing
then happens in a designated file manager
for digital images. Lightroom is one such
file management software. Adobe also offers Bridge as an asset management program
for any types of files. Personally, I haven't
unfortunately found my way to bridge yet, never got comfortable
with the user interface. But I would recommend trying out different file
management programs as they can be very helpful
using light room. For example, all my files
live in one big catalog. I put every image from process
to its final location. In most cases, the files are simply sorted
chronologically. Light room then lets me further organize images and
videos by creating collections and tags related to current projects
or future ones. That is the key takeaway
for this lesson. For all the files you organize, consider in which
context could you reuse these files again and ensure you make
them searchable, or link them so that
your future self will find them when time
comes this way. To give another example, your video footage for
project A can still serve as B roll footage
for projects X, Y. These examples don't
seem relevant for most, since only content
creators have that many visuals,
right? Think again. Everyone has a ton of footage these days
in their pockets. Even for me, it wasn't until I became a father that
I realized how much I'm neglecting my personal
images and videos for future projects
like photo albums or nicely edited family videos. The inner barrier to engage in such or other creative
projects is very high when we feel like we are starting from
scratch every time. But we don't, No project
comes out of nowhere. Most of the time we've collected a lot of material
over the years, we've just never organized
it with foresight, taking into account our
most persistent interests or long term plans, doing this a little bit
each week can work wonders. One last tip, Include your
phone in this routine. Automatic backups every
day or every second even, are no big deal
for mobile phones. But make sure that
this back up doesn't just live somewhere
on foreign servers. Keep control over your files, transfer them into your system. Dropbox makes it easy with
the camera uploads function, but other Cloud programs offer similar features, just use them. The most important
insight is that it's not about ever
being finished. Digitizing was one thing. At some point, you are done with all the years of paperwork
you've collected, and then there is usually only a little new stuff
to scan each week. Organizing files,
on the other hand, feels like swimming
against the tide. The chaos is only
slightly reduced. At least that's my experience
and my advice would be to make your peace with
it without surrendering. If you can manage one folder as a repository for all
incoming new files, empty this one folder weekly, deleting everything you
don't need anymore and transferring everything
else into your system, then that's already a win. Try to organize less by
today's project folders but more with tomorrow's
project ideas in mind. If you are someone
who hoards a lot on the desktop or in the
local downloads folder, move all this stuff into
your new drop zone. Of course, you can call
it whatever you want. It helps to put this folder
in a cloud to collect files, scans, downloads, et
cetera from all devices. Change the settings
of your web browser to automatically
save downloads and email attachments
into this new folder for your plan of
weekly up keeps. Make a note with the reminder, organize and put it on one of the three days
left in your week. We'll come back to it later. Especially for this task
of organizing files, it's important to keep an eye on all your current and
possible future projects. How to keep such an overview. That's what the next lesson
is about. See you soon.
9. Upkeep 3 | Update: David Al***, the inventor of the famous Getting
Things Done method, says that all you need to
organize are lists and folders. That's right. When
it comes to keeping track of everything,
lists are essential. Now, Al*** recommends to update all your lists as part
of a weekly review, usually at the end of the week. This, however,
doesn't work for me, as there are just too
many lists to maintain. That's why I decided
to make taking care of my lists a weekly
upkeep of its own. In this lesson, I show you how to keep track of
everything that's going on in your life and work
by using lists in a smart, digital, and efficient way. The goal is to demonstrate
which kinds of lists are worth keeping and to give you a jump
start on setting up your own lists and
routine to maintain them. When you start using
lists more consciously, suddenly you see
them everywhere. It's not an overstatement
to say that I have literally
hundreds of lists, most of them short of
course, for each contact. Top lists of all kinds to do lists for all
kinds of contexts. Check lists for example, and I'm sure so do most people. Except that many keep their
lists only in their head. As mentioned in the lesson
on password management, that is a terrible place to
store important information. If you think that lists
are not critical, then listen up and
see for yourself. Let's say it's Wednesday as a weekly up,
keep for this day. Task lists pops
up on my devices. Now, those hundreds
of lists that I mentioned are of different
categories and importance, and of course not
all of them need my regular attention to
see all relevant lists. At one glance, I recommend
keeping a master list. A master list is a meta list, that is a list of lists. You can also call
it a dashboard. The tool I use to maintain
my master list and other lists is the same as
for my notes and writings. I use the knowledge
base app Obsidian, which is free for personal use and available for most devices. It's convenient to have lists
and nodes in one place, but there are many alternative
apps to do that job, such as one node and
notion, for example. Again, it's worth
playing around a bit to find an app you
really like that makes taking care
of your weekly app keeps much more
enjoyable to manage. Lists in Obsidian,
there's a plug in called a data view,
which is also free. Like Obsidian itself,
it's based on markdown. Using it is not as intuitive
as many other tools, at least in the beginning. I won't go into detail
here about how it works, but we'll stay in
the reading view where everything looks
neat and pretty. We see different sections for my contacts, journal
library projects. And to do lastly, a link to my bucket list, but I only check in there
every once in a while. All these lists displayed
in my master list are limited and only show
me a few items each. It's important to
note that as always, I only take a few
minutes for this upkeep and don't aim to
update all my lists. The overview helps me to notice the most urgent
things to update, like my current
projects or tasks. But otherwise, I
sometimes update this or update that
according to my mood. Obsidian, by the way, also serves as my contact
relationship manager. So every Wednesday, I add
notes to a few contacts to get back to them sometime soon with the help
of another plug in. These contacts are
then displayed in the sidebar so I can
keep an eye on them. For my library, I only see items that I most
recently added in here. I might add some meta
data, a few thoughts, or a personal rating for a book or series
I just finished. If I give a movie a
very high rating, it might show up in my list of top sci fi movies or top
movies from the 2020s. This helps me later
to quickly find works that I want to refer
to in my creative work. For example, as you can see, the need for or usage of lists
is extremely individual. And your master
list will contain different sections to emphasize different aspects of
your life and work. But hopefully you can see how a more mindful use of lists
contributes to efficiency. Because it allows
you to stay aware of things that are
otherwise easily lost, either in your head or in
the digital waste land. Often enough, the things we list today are
forgotten tomorrow. Keeping track of
your lists is about keeping commitments
not only with others, but with your future self for
whom you create your lists. Speaking of lists, a pro
type use check lists. It's no coincidence that
whenever things are really important for
flights or surgeries, for example, check
lists come into play. Now even if your digital work might not be a matter
of life and death, a proper use of check lists can save
you time and trouble. And that's what
efficiency is all about. The takeaway is that lists are a powerful tool for digital organization
overview and efficiency. We have only
scratched the surface here what lists can be used for. You probably already have
more lists than you can think of to be more efficient and to really keep track and
stay ahead of things. The simple trick is to
dedicate some time, once a week, to the
maintenance of your lists. So find an application
you like to create your master list of all things
you want to keep track of. Such as tasks you
want to do soon, like learning, touch typing, make your to do
note from earlier. An item in your to do soon list. Your master list can also link to lists in other tools as well. But it helps to have a
centralized overview in one single place. The same applies to notes. That is what the next
lesson is about.
10. Upkeep 4 | Process: One of the most important
pieces of advice that I can give is to
write things down. It helps you to get a clear
head and a piece of mind. You will forget less and have more mental capacity
for creative thinking. What this advice
comes down to is a more intentional and systematic
approach to no taking. It's something that we all
do in our everyday lives. But for a profession like
content creation, knowledge, work, and more, no taking
is a secret superpower. The first step towards a more
systematic, and by the way, efficient approach to
no taking is to have a solid set of note taking tools as part of your
every day carry. The second step is to process the notes that you
captured on the fly. Many call them fleeting notes. I like quick notes better On a regular basis, say seven days. Otherwise, quick notes tend
to get forgotten or lost, even though some
precious thoughts might have gone into them. This lesson covers why it's
so important to process notes into a central
digital place called a knowledge base. And I'll demonstrate
how I go about it. My goal is that
after this lesson, at the latest, you will start taking notes every single day. That you will process them
efficiently every week. Let's get started.
My everyday carry includes all the items
you see right here. And all these things are
for capturing notes. First, old fashioned but
essential pen and paper. Even for people who
mainly work digitally, there are situations in which screens are
just out of place. However, of course,
my smartphone is also a note taking tool. So is my reader in which I take notes while reading.
Very convenient. Most of my note taking tools fit in the pockets of my pants. When I enter my studio, I put all these note taking
tools and with them, all the notes I've captured in the top of my three
trays under my window. You might remember from the
lesson about digitizing. This place is my bridge between the analog world and
the digital space. In this upper tray, there are even a few old note
pads from school, which I still process into
my system from time to time, just as I did with scanning all my old documents back then. This brings us to a common
problem with notes. At school we learn how
to use grammar and math, but not how to handle notes. It's just something you do like eating and walking.
So why bother? How much better can you get? You just write things
down here and there. Recall it now and
then for an exam. And that's all. For most,
this is not a problem. But for content creators, other digital creatives or
knowledge workers or students, even a lot is lost if you
take notes like this. Just an example. I once
made a video about Ludwig Feuerbach
critique of religion for my German Youtube channel
full of edutainment videos. I knew that this
topic was currently part of final exams at school. So I did research,
wrote a script, and shot the video
a few weeks later. While processing some old
notes from my own school days. I noticed that I, myself already had
this topic in school. If I had my notes digitized
and in my knowledge base, I would have remembered. Which would have given me
a better starting point for my script without
going further into detail here by storing notes in decentralized
locations and letting them fade into oblivion. Creative work often
feels like we are starting from
scratch, but in fact, we could build on
existing experience and knowledge if we only
made it more available. An excel***t read on
this topic is how to take smart notes
by Zucker Hans. Now, in practice,
how do you process nodes in a consistent smart way? You have to distinguish between note taking and note making. The tools shown so far serve
to quickly capture notes, that is, note taking. But to make your quick notes part of your ongoing
creative work. What you need is a
knowledge base app. There are quite a few
of such apps out there. I worked with Rome
research for some months, but ultimately settled
with Obsidian. But what I demonstrate
here, anyway, you can do with many
apps On Thursdays, a recurring task called Nodes is scheduled
in my weekly upkeep. The digital notification
on my device is my cue. The routine for me
starts not only by grabbing everything
from the top tray now, but also pulling a
coffee along with it. By combining my physical
craving for the caffeine rush, with getting my
weekly upkeeps done, I reinforce doing
these as a habit. Like any upkeep, this task
comes with a short checklist. First, Sana, Google, keep
paper and then recorder. Those are the only places
I keep quick notes. The upkeep is to work
through all these and either discard notes because
they no longer matter, or to process them into
my knowledge base. In here, there is no
single procedure as to where the notes are
put within this base. It's not the location
that matters, but rather the links
to other notes. What does that look like? Let's take some
notes from Google. Keep my main app for capturing
quick notes digitally. I only use Sana with
a specific team. In keep, I collect, for example, newspaper clippings or
audio recordings of ideas or observations on fun
things. My kids do that. I want to remember
where to put these, since quick notes digitally always come with dates
attached to them. I often transfer them into my
daily notes for that date. I've transferred the
note, I link it. This is where the advantage of knowledge based apps
come into play. For example, if I have a quick note on the
topic of habits, I link it to related concept or thoughts to which I've
already written something. When I later work on these
concepts or thoughts, again, I will see the link maybe to a note I took a year
ago at breakfast. The more relevant
links you create, the more accessible you
keep your knowledge. Many notes you don't want
to put in your daily notes, but to save as separate
notes for this, it's worth considering
what makes a good note for me, it's this. A good note should have a
distinctive informative, fire name and title,
some metadata, plus a concise description
of the content and the context of why you
want to keep this note. It should include links to
thoughts and projects you are currently working on or plan
to work on in the future. To make sure my process notes
include all these aspects, I create a default template that helps me to make every
note a good note. My tip is to even create different templates for
different types of notes, such as notes on books, movies, or contacts for example. This lets you easily include more relevant meta data
and makes working with notes much more efficient for short descriptions of
common terms or topics. It's great to just use GPT Obsidian as in
other apps as well. I can access GPT through a
plug in simply via hot key. I write for example,
what are habits? Press the hot key, and GPT
spits out an answer of two or three sentences
that give me additional inspiration on what this topic could be linked to. One last tip. When choosing
a knowledge based app, pick one that lets you store
your notes as local files on your own device rather
than in a cloud on foreign servers or
even behind a pay wall. Notes are far too important
to your every day work to leave the control over the
files in someone else's hands. The key takeaways
are always have not taking tools
with you as part of your every day
carry and get into the habit of processing your quick notes
on a weekly basis. For this, set up a
knowledge base as your central place for keeping all your notes and
writings over time. If you don't already have it, consciously look for note taking tools that you
really enjoy to use. Down to pens that you really
like to hold in your hand, instead of any giveaway pen that easily breaks or apps
that crash all the time. Because tools you don't like end up being tools
you don't use, notes are a very
personal matter, only meant for you
and your future self. Just as all weekly up
keeps we've discussed so far are very
personal in nature. The next lesson will be about directly interacting
with other people. How to deal efficiently with mails, messages, and comments.
11. Upkeep 5 | Respond: It's no secret that digital efficiency in
terms of communication, requires a certain
amount of self control. The biggest lever to save
time and energy is not to constantly check your inboxes when habit or a
notification pushes for it. But to do this more mindfully, at maximum two to three times a day for a few minutes each. Do that and you are already
more efficient than most. The second well known
wisdom is to empty your inbox or inboxes
on a weekly basis. But this is easier
said than done. One reason for this
is that many lack an overview of all their
inboxes in the first place. This lesson is about how to efficiently keep track and empty all your inboxes once a week without getting
stressed out. That's the goal. Here we go. The first step is to make a
list of all your inboxes. It's not just about
your e mails, private and professional, but also about incoming messages. For example, via Discord, Facebook, linked in
Twitter, Whatsapp, whatever you use, if
you are a creator, also list all the platforms where comments are
left on your posts. I end up with about 20 inboxes. Now, before we get into
how not to forget inboxes, it's important to not
get caught up in them. Delete as many apps as possible from your phone that
contain an inbox. These apps usually belong to the category of infinity pools. That's what Zeratsky and
Knap call apps that, in addition to messages
and notifications, usually come with an endless
feed for Doom scrolling. The best tip from their book, make time is to use
your phone more intentionally instead of letting the apps and their
algorithms use you. We've seen that a phone
can serve well as a scanner or for capturing
images and notes. A phone is great
for voice messaging and not to forget making calls. But it also causes to constantly check all
sorts of inboxes. Intuitively, you might
think it's a good thing to answer some comments or
messages during the day, according to David Al***'s
famous two minute rule. If it can be done in that time, get it done right away. Right? This may make
sense for people who get rather few messages overall or for very popular influences. But in between, be
aware that you are only accelerating the hamster wheel in which you're
hustling yourself. Another great tip also
mentioned in make time is to answer your mails and messages as slowly as you
can get away with. There is some truth to it. As quick answers get
prompt responses, which then again
expect quick answers. That's why I leave
even quite a few two minute replies
unanswered until Friday, when my weekly up keep
is called response. This task contains checking all my inboxes and
emptying them. Within 20 to 30 minutes, I can find all
relevant inboxes at a glance in a folder in the
bookmarks bar of my browser. There I have linked the
exact path to every inbox. So not linked in as a
bookmark for example, but Linkedin.com
slash messaging. So I can jump to the inbox without getting
distracted by any feed. Some inboxes are
redirected to others, so I don't even have to open
each inbox individually. For example, I get an
e mail notification about comments on my blog. So once you've created
your list of inboxes, redirected some and put the
others in a bookmark folder, which is basically a checklist. No inbox should be forgotten so much for keeping
track of all inboxes. Now, how to efficiently
work your way through them? First of all,
what's important is the underestimated
art of ignorance. We get so much more mails, and messages and comments then back in the
old days that we have to be selective about what to respond
to in the first place. If no question is asked and
no response is expected, maybe just leave it alone. As for newsletters
filling up inboxes, I would recommend people who enjoy reading them
to unsubscribe, then to re, subscribe with
their reader's address. The Readwise reader,
for example, has this feature which
is just great of course. This is also a inbox that
you want to check regularly, but not for responding, mind you, but for reading. As for responding,
there is hardly a more time saving
method than saying no. This might sound harsh, but especially when
you get a lot of requests from random
people on the Internet, you should just say no
as often as possible. A good rule of thumb is that
if it's not a clear yes, it's a clear no, even
with friends and family, it can be very wise to say no more often in a polite
manner of course, but saying no is so hard. I know. Fortunately, today we have very capable assistance, a good use of some AI
tools that emerged since Che GBT is the quick answering of mails, messages,
and comments. Just let the AI read it, define what you want. For example, reject a
request and have it generate something for you that you can then
still customize. If you want tips for communication
you want to engage in, be clear and think ahead. Provide answers to probable
follow up questions right away to avoid needless
back and forth. Also, be bold and make your own suggestions instead of always asking the
other person first. This not only saves time, but it gives you more control
about how things are going. Last, tip, archive stuff. This is the only way you
will get your inboxes actually empty whenever
the function is available. Archive what it doesn't need, a response or what you've
already responded to. If you want to respond later, make it a task in your
ca***dar or on one of your lists that you review
on a regular basis. But archive the
mails and messages. This should really
be used more often. Takeaways, keep track
of all your inboxes, redirect less important ones
to more important ones, and use AI and archiving. Most importantly,
since it also applies to direct communication
in real time, try to be clear and
confident in your responses. This contributes to
your efficiency in that it saves you some
digital correspondence. This was a lot of
input, but overall, it's less effort than it seems if you do it
on a regular basis. Therefore, set up a weekly
upkeep for your responses. The last and most
important recurring to do is a weekly review. More on this in the next lesson.
12. Upkeep 6 | Review: This class was
aimed at outlining some recurring badged tasks and demonstrating by
personal example how they can be implemented. I call them weekly up keeps
from Monday to Friday. Now we have reached the end
of the week and this class, it's nearing its
close as well still. I can't leave you like this
without the last two lessons, everything would fall apart. Establishing all these
routines ain't easy. Going paperless or
getting organized. Setting up your lists and
knowledge bases and gaining control over your
inboxes. That's a lot. For starters, the key is to do a bit of current
day's business and a bit of tweaking your overall system within
each of your upkeep sessions. That's how to increase your digital efficiency
week by week. However, there are two
obstacles in this process. First, it's important
not to despair, because you might miss
the progress you'll make. Secondly, in the
chaotic everyday life, your weekly up keeps are
sometimes left undone. This is where the
weekly review comes in. The goal of this lesson is to show you how to do such a review and why it is the main pillar
of getting things done. Getting things done, or a GT D, as you remember, is the method
that David Al*** promotes. He also popularized the
idea of a weekly review. Some of the things
I talked about in the past lessons as
individual up keeps, such as updating your
lists should actually, at least according to Al***, be part of your weekly review. This is where I don't agree
with them when you perceive the digital space less as a source of distraction
and information overload, but as an ocean of opportunities that
you enjoy to explore. A significant amount
of your work and play takes place in
the digital space. As a result, this
digital space of yours, just as your apartment, needs more housekeeping than
just one to 2 hours a week, hence the need for
weekly upkeep. As I said at the
beginning of this class, part of my chal***ge is to make a digital chores
more attractive. I hope I have fulfilled
this chal***ge by demonstrating how such chores can be approached
more efficiently, turned into habits, and be tackled with smart
tips and tools. Now before we get to
the weekly review, let's review our class project. If you've followed
along your plan of weekly upkeep already has
some notes attached to it, reading, digitize and organize, which you have already
placed on certain days. Maybe you have
already gone ahead yourself and filled up
your week plan like this. Plus you can add
those check lists in here that outline the weekly
upkeeps in more detail. The weekly review
is best moved to the very end or beginning
of your work week. This one should
even be scheduled, you know, with a set time. You really want to
take this appointment seriously as an important check in for your personal
development. And that's it, like this
or somewhat similar is how our plan of weekly
upkeeps might look like. As I said, feel free to
apply the ideas discussed to different tasks and design the week according
to your needs. But before you transfer it
into your task manager, it would be great if you
would take a picture of your plan and share it with
us in the project section. This might increase
your motivation to actually implement the plan. Alternatively, feel free to
upload a picture showing what you did with the time you gained by taking this class. I'm looking forward to it. And with that, back
to the weekly review. The reason why it
is so important is that it helps you to see
your path more clearly. By reviewing your week, you get a sense of
why some things went well and others
didn't do this. Over time, you will see
patterns, recovering hurdles, that you recognize only through your reviews or hidden interests that turn out to be constants in your life and thus should play a part in your
decision making. Hence, the need for
a weekly review. Here is how I go about it. For me, Saturday is
the ideal day for it. That's when the
corresponding task shows up on my devices
and in my ca***dar. I usually take time for my
review 9-10 in the morning. Then I make myself comfortable, turn on some music and open
obsidian, my knowledge base. Within Obsidian, you can set
up predefined workspaces. I have one for my
weekly reviews that spits my screen into two areas. On the right side,
I'll do my review. I open it by clicking on
the week in the ca***dar. That's a plug in for Obsidian. This then loads a template that I've once set up with another
plug in, all for free. And it really sounds more
complicated than it is. You can, of course,
do such a review with any other app that
lets you take notes. However, whether you work with Obsidian or another software, I highly recommend making a template for your
weekly review. Here's a look at my template. It consists of mainly broad
questions right up front. What happened? To be honest, I could hardly answer
this purely from memory. Time flies by so terribly fast. Therefore, I open my daily notes from this week on
the other side, day by day, using a hot key to switch from
one day to the next. Of course, my daily notes don't tell me everything
that happened, but it helps me a lot
to refresh my memory. That's actually what
I would recommend you to do as the very first step, not of this lesson,
but in general. Take daily notes,
write things down. The mundane, the
unusual, small moments, feelings, thoughts, it
all goes by so quickly. The best effect of a
weekly review is that it often lifts my spirits at
the end of a regular week. When I'm tired or I feel like I haven't experienced
or accomplished much, all I have to do is to go
through my daily notes and compile the best of
it in my weekly review. Then I can see at a glance that all in all it was
actually a good time. Sure. With one to 2 hours, a weekly review can be time
consuming and there might be days or weekends when you just don't have
that time to spare. But instead of skipping your
weekly review entirely, just do a short version of it. One way to approach this
is called plus minus. Next, the idea behind it is attributed to
Anne Laura Le Can. The concept is simple. Plus stands for what
went well this week. Minus for what did
not go so well. And next for what's
up next week, write two to four bullet points for each area and you're done. Integrated this idea into
my own weekly review, basically as the core
of the whole thing. After all, these are
some good questions to generate key takeaways. Every week I'm doing a second short version
of a weekly review just for my day
job so I can give a quick status update
at Monday's meeting. Fun fact, after I told my
team about this habit, they quickly incorporated it. Today plus minus. Next is a regular talking
point in this meeting, Everyone uses it to reflect how things
are going for them. To check whether
your weekly up keeps are actually improving your digital efficiency
or whether you are otherwise progressing
with your projects. Weekly review is essential. Use a template to
do it and get into the habit of taking
notes on a daily basis. This makes it super easy to review your week and
keep track of things, or to simply lift your
spirits for the weekend. While the weekly
upkeeps are meant to be more flexible for
your weekly review, it's best to pick a set
time and maybe even a set place to do it to
really make it a habit, think of it as an
appointment with yourself. At best, the last
appointment of your week, only after that weekend
has truly arrived, then it's time to energize more on this in the next lesson.
13. Bonus | Energize: Fun fact, most countries in the world start their
week on Monday. Germany is one of them. For as long as I can remember, my week started on Monday. But for most people
in the world, the week starts on Sunday. For Canadians, for example, if you are like me
from a Monday country, I recommend a mind shift, begin your week on Sunday. For those who are used to it, it may be no big deal. But when all of a
sudden the start of your week doesn't fall in line with the beginning of
everyone's work week. That's a way more
relaxed beginning, even though it's just
mentally though, of course, you can set your digital
ca***dars so that Sunday is actually the
first day of your week. Try it out, thank me later. Well, what to do on a Sunday? This little bonus lesson covers the counterpart to
Digital efficiency. That is the non
digital recharging of your physical and
mental resources. You see what many people who are passionate about
digital efficiency also have in common is an unhealthy amount
of screen time. The goal of this lesson
is to get you out. Usually I hate starting the day without a plan
of what's to be done, unless and surprisingly enough, my brain falls for
the silly trick plan is to have no plan. Wow, but that's merely the idea. In reality, I would
still end up in front of some digital device because
of the screen junkie I am. That's why the actual non
plan reads more like this. The plan is to stay off
screen. That's step one. Increase your digital efficiency by taking digital breaks. Okay. Next, do whatever
energizes you. Yes. If you can't come
up with something, you need it all the more
to think about this, it's best to go outside. Never trust the thought
that occurs to you indoors is what Friedrich
Nietzsche wrote, the German philosopher was, books were practically drafted
during walks in the woods. Take it to heart, and don't just sit down on the next
best park bench, but get moving and
fresh air and sunlight. That's step two. Now you have all
the best conditions to listen to your inner voice. What places people activities give you energy instead
of sucking it out of you? Step three is go
to these places, meet these people, avoid energy. Vampires use this
day of the week to do the things that
feel like living to you. How's that related to
digital efficiency? It isn't, that's the point. It's important to remember
that we are not machines yet and that we need a change
of pace every now and then. All the tips and routines
presented in this class, I myself don't follow
them religiously. Often enough projects
grow so big or urgent that I skip my up keeps,
and that's not a problem, especially if you are
usually good with your up keeps because slacking then in times of crunch means
that there isn't a huge pile of doom getting bigger and bigger
in the background. It's the best part
of the system. By having my processes streamlined thanks to my
almost weekly up keeps, I can pour all the
more creative energy into the projects
that matter to me. Then again, you can only give as much energy as
you have within you. Therefore energize If
your key takeaway from this bonus lesson is that you really need to get
off the screen then, yeah, you heard me right. But wait, Please take
the time to leave a review to let me know if
this class has helped you. If no, what can I do better? If yes, which insights
are most relevant to you? I will summarize
some highlights. And the one thing I'd want
you to take away from this class in the next and
final video. See you there.
14. Outro: Here we are, congrats on
completing the class, be it that you rushed
through it in one session, highly efficient
at 1.5 time speed, or that you took your time to implement the learnings
on the side day by day, that the second way might
be more efficient in the long run has hopefully
become clear by now. Let's recap three
things I want to highlight once more
to make it stick. First, digital efficiency
requires some digital literacy. The basic security
measures, for example, like backups of your files or proper management of
your passwords can save you so much more time than you will ever gain by
working efficiently. And not only time,
but also tears. Never underestimate
the power of habits. Often our focus lies on trying
to get rid of bad habits. Instead, there is all the more potential in gaining
new and good habits. Wanting to become more efficient is a great opportunity to do so. Take this chance and get into the habit of efficient
ways of working. Find cues and rewards
for your new routines. One of the best
habits you can get into is write things down. If you're not big on typing, then use the text to speech feature that so many
apps have these days. Capture moments with tools
for quick note taking. Record memories
with daily notes. Write down lists and reviews of your weeks
to keep track and to document your journey
your future self will. Thank you for it. One more thing that I really want
you to take away from the lessons is that in order to boost your
overall efficiency, taking small steps instead of big leaps will get you
further in the long run. Far too often efficiency
is simply confused with acceleration with
stepping on the gas. But it's much more
important to move forward with a clear vision
and sufficient energy. That's why the weekly up keeps should never
be a burden to you, but rather small and
welcome pit stops in which you can enhance your set up
and workflow day by day, week by week, and that's it. Don't forget to upload your
projects and leave a review. If you want to stay up to
date about future classes, you can follow me here
or elsewhere online. Don't be shy to mail or message me if you
want to get in touch. Skillshare users
have a special place in my heart and in my inbox. I will answer with pleasure. And personally, just,
maybe not super fast now. Take care, take notes, and take time to energize. Thanks for letting me share
my experiences with you. I hope you had a great time and I'll catch you on
the flip side, bye.
David Johann Lensing, Creating Edutainment
