Transcripts
1. Introduction: Your time is limited. Each moment you
have is precious. How much time do you have left? And what does this have
to do with productivity? Your life is on the time. And how much time we
have. No one knows. Being productive is about
squeezing as much as you can out of the moments in
time that is given to us. If you can achieve this, then you can spend more
time with your loved ones. You can start all those jobs on your bucket list or you can just daydream with a
truly peaceful mine. Hi, my name is Adi Kumar. I'm a neurosurgeon, educator and content creator working in the NHS for decades worth of experience and if performed
over a thousand operations, adults and children in
the same time period, I've said a couple of
prolific records I've completed nationally
in Brazilian jujitsu. Yes, I used to have some hair. I've published a couple of
scientific papers that have license to practice surgery
in the UK and also the USA. I've also set up a
YouTube channel which has recently been featured
in the local media. And most importantly, I become a father to
two young girls. Now I don't tell you all
this to inflate my own ego, to show that I know how
to get things done. If you follow the
principles in this class, you will do as the saying goes, give them a fish
and eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he
will be fed for a lifetime. This class won't give
you a few hacks that will save you a minute
here for a minute there, we'll teach you the
principles which will allow you to develop
your own system, to plan, execute, and reflect on your goals
and priorities. What we'll cover
is metacognition, hot and cold thinking to
overcome procrastination, how to plan your week
and also your day. How to capture the
vast amounts of information that
bombard us each day. And most importantly, how to reflect on your day and week. So you can constantly
home and improve your own productivity system
for your class project, you're going to share in
the group below how you implemented some of
the techniques and principles that I've
told you worked, what you struggled with
an I will give you personalized feedback so you can continually improve with time. You are here because you
want to achieve more, to be more, to have
more free time, to get the most out of the time that has
been given to you. I am so excited to teach this
class if just one person is able to achieve their life goals using the principles
that I have taught, then my job is done. Let's go.
2. Class Overview : So welcome to the class. Thanks for making it past the intro. And this lesson is specifically aimed at giving you a broad overview of the class and the principles that we'll cover. And the main reason for that is I want you to get the most out of this as possible. Not just to watch your video and not change your habits or behaviors, but really get the most from this. Please get engaged with the projects I'll talk about in a second. Because it will make the most use of the time when you as productive as possible. And for years, I would plan everything and make all these lists and might stumble across them in books years later with things I'd like to achieve with the seminal away, save amount of money publishing or number of papers. And it would be really embarrassing because I would have achieved maybe one or two of them most. And it was really just getting by in my surgical training and my life outside of work, but not really thriving, procrastinate VOIP. And things would just take off my energy cognitively to get them. Why realized was I was as law of motion or they refer to as full-frame things down and get this dopamine hair. Yeah, I'm going to achieve that. Happened not much action. And the action part is almost as important or maybe more important than the motion path. And we'll talk about that. And you do need to have goals. One of my favorite philosophers, Seneca, would say, no wind blows in the favor of a ship without direction. So you need to have a direction that you're going in. Then once you have that need to execute and have a system, makes it easy for you. And it wasn't until I learned about metacognition or thinking about thinking to this become much easier. And I realize I need to make the environment in which I work is favorable for me. It's execute the job at hand as possible. And the big shift in my thinking was the person I'm planning to do these tasks, which is me in the future. I'm going to assume that he is lazy. I'm going to assume he's very tired. I'm going to assume he's very unmotivated to do this task. And I'm going to make it as easy as possible for that person to get this done. And once I did this, this mole change just vastly increased the amount of scope. I manage to get them. And the class is going to be split into specific parts. There's going to be the part about planning. We'll talk about how to plan your week. And today, we're going to talk about executing that plan in that will think, talking about hot and cold thinking and the decision matrix to help you triage or prioritize work as it comes in because what's going to continue to commend? It's an upper static as nice as that would be. And it reflects, I'll give you a template for you to reflect on your day, to reflect on your week. And so you can self-assess and improve with time. And in the way that you work. I've chosen these principles because they really loved me to thrive at work and home. My work is extremely unpredictable. I've just come back off paternity leave for a few weeks ago. I wanted to work in as soon as I was driving and someone called me and said Are some of that brain hemorrhage can just go to the operating room, deal with it. So I went and did that and scream back-ends of things. And then you come back into work and go see several patients and in Planet or operation. And that wasn't how the day was supposed to go to those points with my feet apart, a coffee chat with people, and then you'll see patients. The environment is constantly changing and you need to have a clear mind to be able to deal with the new information coming in. And a scheme for you to capture information as it comes. So cover all this in the torques that come. And the main side effects of all these principles is unhappier. I have a common line. And as a side effect really, which is the main aim of this class, is a much more productive, despite me having more responsibility for my patients and much more responsibility for human family. I've got two kids and two of the moment. And becoming more productive. As evidenced by this class. Big shout out to my wife because without her, this class will get recovered. So what you'll need for the class, need append a paper, an open-mind, and the willingness to feel a little bit uncomfortable. I don't want you just to passively watch these videos and then feel great. And assume that something will automatically change. If you want to change yourself and you're thinking, you'll need to write things down. Think about the projects that we're going to talk about. Gauge in the forum, share your insights. And I want you to feel a little bit uncomfortable and strange as that sounds. That feeling of internal discomfort is a surrogate for change within the way that you're thinking. And that's what we're aiming for. Different thinking, different habits, and different actions. So in the next lesson I'll come up with a experiment. It's based upon research looking at scans in the hospital. We will be looking at these scans. We're looking at some paintings. And the experiment itself will give you a flavor for what metacognition is. Look under the hood of your own thinking, so to speak. And, and I'm excited for you to join us in the next class.
3. Metacognition : So welcome, Let's get stuck into the next lesson. And this class is actually just going to be interactive. The video itself is the project. In a way small, I don't know at the end. But we're gonna do a quick quiz. Don't worry, attributed difficult. And the quiz itself is going to be played for us to reflect on afterwards and talk a little bit about metacognition or thinking about thinking. If you're not familiar with what this means, hopefully by the end, you'll have a bit more of the adjusters actually is. And then we'll continue to think about this and talk about it as a theme through the next projects. So without further ado, let's get started. So starting the quiz, I'm going to show you three paintings. And I'm going to ask you two questions. What's the painting and who painted it? Fairly straightforward. So pen and paper or the ready? And we can begin, feel free to pause the video. I think I'm going too fast. So first one is lovely lady smiling at us, hopefully, relatively familiar. So questions are, what's the name of the painting and who painted it? Next one, slightly more abstract. This is turning into an adolescent. Again, who's the artist who painted it? It's a nice psychology behind this painting. I do quite like it. And find a picture. Who is this lady? What's the name of the painting? And who painted it? All of the tiles that this artist would give to a painting that they're just straits point. And that's the end the quizzes. So what did you get for the first painting you may have written? It's Mona Lisa, painted by the another dimension. Which case you can give yourself two ticks. Next one. And we'll get a Salvador Dali, the persistence of memory or the melting clocks picture people like to call it talking about the subjectivity of time unbelief. But again, it's not an adolescent. And last one. Love this lady and her story and everything about our Frida Kahlo actually name at all freedom. And the title is very literal. Self portrait with a thorn necklace and a hummingbird, which you can see at the bottom. So, how did you get home? What did you yet our objects and what does this have to do with being productive? And what does it have to do? A problematical admission. So anything unusual about this picture? There's a gorilla and background wise he put real in the background. Is he wasting my time? No, he's not. We'll see in this picture, there are also progress in the background just hanging out in the mountains and back. And there's one on Frida Kahlo's had that you may or may not have seen. Research will show that about 80 percent of you didn't see that, so don't worry about that right down below if you saw it. And we can say you're in the 20 percent, you are pretty observant. But this is from a study done in radiology where they showed consultant radiologists who are trained to look at pictures, scans of loans and said try and find if these up and cancer and the ball pitcher and gorilla in that and 80 percent of them density. And this all won't counsel, but they didn't see the gorilla. And this slide shows that the purple dots are actually where the doctors looked. And even if they looked directly at the gorilla, some of those doctors didn't say that they saw or at least looked at it, but they didn't perceive it as the difference between seeing and perceiving and they didn't perceive something we should, they look straight out? And this has to do with a psychological phenomenon called inattentional blindness, which is salient, unexpected piece of information arises and you do not perceive it because you engaged in at the task. I gave you two different questions. I was kinda motoring along the background on purpose for you to concentrate on the quiz. And even if you look to that gorilla, which some of you did, some of you just didn't write down girl or offsets the front, what's not on this screen. And some parts were inattentional blindness is, and there's another thing called satisfaction of search. And that is when we find something, what we're looking for, the brain kind of switches offsite done. Next, open my phone and do something else. Where actually in medicine when I was trained to look at scans. Once we found one abnormality, say for a patient with a brain hemorrhage and you find the aneurism, the radiologists to say right, we found one, Let's find the next one. And that is to negate the deleterious effects of this cognitive feature satisfaction of search. And if you're wondering why this as a gorilla and why they use a grid or in the original study. You can YouTube gorilla basketball and all become clear. So what's the point of this and how does it help with the more productive. I've just shown you, hopefully that you're thinking as fallible. You may have seen a gorilla. You didn't actually register it in your brain. And hopefully you're relatively comfortable and more rested in a nice environment where you shouldn't have things distracting you. And so your mind is fallible. And that's okay. In some ways it's completely amazing. But once you realize that file ability, you can incorporate that within the plans you're going to make and how you're going to actually execute them in the future. And that's going to be a theme throughout the rest of the lessons. And so this class was really the projects in itself. Another project just as carry with you this question. On a day-to-day basis, ask yourself, what am I not seeing? So an example might be if someone asked me to do something or work and go, Yeah, sure. I'll do that. If I step back and actually think that means I'm not doing something else, it's known as opportunity cost, but that's not, that's not seeing. Another thing may be asking yourself the question. What happens if I don't do something? And he sampled might be if I don't change my behaviors, what's going to happen? Probably on the same outcomes. And if you don't change your behaviors are some ways you might not be as productive. So there's kind of a question with the self. Reflect a little bit on what you may have learned from the shore experiment and write your insights in the group below. And for a bonus, if you really want to see how far this takes you in somebody with compression, get a pen and paper. Write down. What am I not seeing before you go to bed and sleep on the bedside table and in the morning, right? What comes into your head? Dreams, insights, anything useful or surprising, share it in the group low. And I'll see you in the next class where we're going to talk about how to plan.
4. Hot and Cold and Thinking: Hi, class For, I hope you gained some useful insights from the experiment we did into metacognition. And in this case, we're going to talk a little bit more about psychology and talk about hot versus cold thinking. So this will be useful in the scheme of this whole class and all the lessons we talk about because it will increase the chance of view executing all the things that you're going to go on to plan by using some psychology. And I've come up with myself. So what we're talking about, so hot thinking. This is akin to what Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast. Thinking Slow. If you haven't read it, very much, encourage you to do so, would call system one. System one is essentially it's intuitive and it's emotional. Ultimately, it's very energy efficient. An example would be when you have to judge the distance between two objects, you do automatically. You don't have to explain what strategy it just happens. So that's system one thinking. The other side of the coin is what we call cold thinking why gone and configured. So you can see I got a a level where you actually did. So this is called ticket. And this would be akin to what they located with calls System 2. So this system is much slower. It's deliberative, logical. Here, it's energy taxing. And you are able to delay gratification whether you are using this system. So what does this have to do with productivity? But I want you to think that these two systems are two different people. So hardcore thinking versus cold thinking. And one of them is, you know, so thinking is, you know, you are resting, your relaxed, your motivated. Otherwise you will be watching this video on skillshare is a little bit different. So this is your future, is the poor soul who's going to have to execute all the things that you're not really impossible, but you will be feeling different when it's time to actually do these things versus two, when you find these things, this person is type, might be they're hungry, maybe less motivated. In psychology, research clearly shows that if you're tired or hungry or thirsty, you are much more likely to be impulsive and favor short-term gains over long-term gains. I saw when you thinking about the person that's going to have to do these things that you're planning to do and wish to achieve. I want you to think that they're different people. I know it sounds quite odd, but current you listen to this video is not the same as future. You, you'd be in a different environment. You'll have different amounts of energy, different amounts of stress, unpredictable things that really happening. And what you need to do it. With that in mind. Make the environment in which you are going to execute the things that you're planning as favorable as possible for you to be successful. And we'll go into this more in the planning section of your weekend day. But an example would be, one of your jobs is you need to get a Gothic still emptied. Put any jobs list. Well, you might be really tiny looking at it like I don't really want to do this now, got stuff to do. But if you write down next to get cal fixed, pick up phone, call garbage, this is the number, maybe put it in an app. So that's all an interest payment at a certain time. All you need to do is what is called the gauge pressure load. It's much more likely that you'll achieve what you're pointing to. Do this relatively minor example in the second example than the first example. So summarize, in this class, hop thinking, when you may be more tired, less motivated, more impulsive, probably you in the future at some point versus cold thinking. As you now listening to Skillshare, planning, optimistic, rested, full of energy. And I want you to think that they're different people. And so the project for this class is think of a time where you didn't achieve something that you may be points to do. Think, why didn't you achieve that? What happened? And second to that, think what could have done to make it more likely that I would have achieved my wanted to achieve. So I hope you enjoy the class project, again, sharing the group. Feel free to ask any questions. I'll respond. And I'll see you in the next class where we'll talk about how to plan your week from a 168 our perspective.
5. 168 hours - Plan Your Week : Hi, and welcome to the next lesson. In this lesson, we are going to become more concrete and become a more pragmatic and talk about how to plan out a week from a 168, our perspective. And a lot of the ideas we'll talk about came from this excellent book, 168 hours, by Laura of Andy com. And if you are the principles of time management, I talk about, I encourage you to pick this book up. And so first action for this lesson is to get a pen and paper. And I want you to sit down couple of timeout, write down all the jobs that you have floating around in your head are all things you want to get done in the next day and week. And I want you to keep writing until you feel a sense of ease. And if you're like, okay, maybe I've got everything down on this paper that I need to achieve. When you have a sensation of above relax, probably means you've offloaded everything or most things that you need to get them. And at this point, have a look at a piece of paper. You may have five things on the list, may have 50 things on the list. When I did this, I had about 40 jobs or things that are going around in my head. And I want you to split them into two groups. The first group of jobs are set down, jobs, sit on, jobs, tend to have a couple of steps in them. And they may probably will take five minutes, 10 minutes plus. And you need to sit down in a specific location to get them done. An example for me would be I need to sit down in a clinic to see patients. I counted up from home, or I need to sit down at the computer system, the hospital to access records to review. So those are my set on jobs. The other jobs jobs. Jobs can be done anywhere. And these usually take five minutes or less type of thing you can usually do on your phone. Call, people, cancel subscriptions. So you carve out for it's a multi at these things can be done anywhere when you're commuting or if you went for a coffee. And so you've got all your jobs and I would like you to split into the two different groups. While she now is how I plan my week from a 160 day our perspective and distribute these set down versus animal jobs. So this is a very basic sheets on a Mac book on numbers and shows you how much of a IT caveman I am. I'll go Monday to Sunday seven times by 24 blocks on the left gives you a 168 hours. This is how I plan my week. So I am sleeping until five. I wake up early because that's what I can get things done with this whole family. I'm going to lift some weights and then have to also I don't have to get to wake up my daughter. And I guarantee finance theory. Work starts at eight and we're ordering to do someone's see in clinic a gap in time, which is great, I'll talk about in a minute. But sit down with the police or police If you from Glasgow and another break in time, then approximate and also their bath time we seem bedtime routine, sit down with my wife, wrote while prepare for the next day, hopefully get into bed by 10 ish Tuesday and waking up early again. I'm recording this class. I get to how breakfast with my daughter. She's actually probably going to be the nicest part of the day. And to work again, no gap clinic, particularly for some 30 cases on their bedtime routine, prepare and get some sleep. And this repeats throughout the week. You can see there's a few gaps here. A change in structure slightly on Wednesday have a lot of multi-disciplinary team meetings and other connect. On Thursday, I'm going to be operating all day. It's probably going to overwhelm Friday, I'm operand all day. And then at the weekend, unusually for me, I'm going to go to algebra and meet up with some friends and seen since the summer, stay over and come back the next day and scheduled time. Cinahl mobile, I talk about some projects we have for the next year and prepare for the week. So looking at this, if we go through my totals in my a 168 hours, I'm going to be asleep hopefully for 50 hours. Depends on the kids. I'm going to exercise with three I'm going to look after freedom while the store for about 17 hours, worked for about 42 hours, probably more and better prepare for the next term be for seven hours ago, about 11 hours of social activities kinda commute for about five hours. That's not specifically captured in the spreadsheet by the platform experience. And I'm going to record this class hopefully for four hours as well. So adding all those things up, I had gives us a total of a 141 hours. So a hundred and sixty eight hundred forty one is 27. When did 27 hours go? It's like a whole day of time I haven't captured. And that is great. And somewhere it's only the target. Why is it great? It's great because I know in my professional, things are definitely going to come up at work in an unpredictable fashion. And I'm going to have the tree arch the information and it's going to have a bit of a cushion because I've got gaps in my day for it to expand into. And we'll talk about lights on and execute how to treat our action items. It's also great because in the short term personally I am overly optimistic from y can achieve. And I know from my experience on reflecting on, why don't I'm under optimistic in what I can achieve in the long-term. So I have these little gaps here and there, and that allow me to just have a bit of a cushion. And sometimes it's really nice when the day goes as planned and nothing pops up. And you've actually got everything done. I've got this hour-long block that I can just sit down and watch TV and just show up with my wife and relax because you also do that too sometimes. And so that's how I called my week out into a 168 hour blocks. If you look over to the side here, I've got my anywhere jobs. So those might sit down jobs or have specific times to get them done on days. My anywhere jobs. I've got some stuff to update on the logbook on line. I've got monitoring study to do. We've got to replacing emails is a few patients in the hospitals I need to check upon appeal to arrange a meeting with management. And I've got to get the oven fits because it's broken. So these anywhere jobs, I put first action item next to them and we'll talk about our first action items in the next lesson on how to plan your day. And this is how I called my week. And I'll put a link or a template in the class for you to use, but it's relatively simple to make it very simple spreadsheet like I have. So an overview. And the aim of this lesson is for you to free up some cognitive space by planning your week into sit down jobs and anyway jobs. And by doing that, you're going to free up a bit more RAM for you to process what's going on. And the nice side effect I found is that you can actually focus in class a more deep worked on once you have confidence in the planning system you've got in place. And so the project for this lesson is twofold. The first part of the project is for you to capture how you're spending your time. When I did this, I just wrote it down with a piece of paper in our own blocks. But you can use an app like cocker phi if you like. And I want you to capture how you actually spend your time for a week. Because believe you me, you don't spend it. How do you think you spend at the cold thinking you is not the hot thinking you and life happens, so pines change. So I wanted to capture how you spend your time. And once you do that for week, just add up the numbers and see if there's any surprises. Do you actually watch 15 hours of TV you want before you watched five? Do you spend three hours commuting when he thought you spend one hour commuting. There's little bits that you may or may not capture. And then talk about cooking, cleaning, looking after yourself, those things are going to fall into those gaps. I thought about what I'd like you to capture your time and reflect on, are there any surprises? And are you spending your time efficiently or you're not spending your time efficiently? And in the next lesson, we'll talk about how to plan your day. Move into the next phase of the overall class about how to execute. Things are going to become a bit more concrete and granular and get down to getting things done. So I'll see you in the next class.
6. Plan Your Day : Hello and welcome to the next lesson. And the last lesson we talked about how to plan your week. And the project was to capture your time and see how you're spending your time in a perspective for a 168 hours. And this class we're going to talk about how to plan your day and how to start to execute the things you want to get done. So how I plan my day is very basic. A pen and a piece of card or paper, man. And that's just the way I like to do things. But if you prefer to do things on a phone, that's great. But there's something about writing something down, crossing off and also shredding this piece of paper and throw it. At the end of the day, there's quite cathartic in a way. And so in the morning, I sat down and I look at my plan for the day and do a couple of things. I write down in my journal which have here with nice inscription, my initials on a Christmas present for my wife. And then this couple things written down every day. One day, we didn't dream about it. It's just something I like to do. And then there's three things. One is, what's the thing I really don't want to do today, but I need to get done. Dye gets written down as so-called thing in philosophy of waking up and swallowing a toad. Know ANSYS all told, once you get it done, everything else in the rest of the day is a lot easier. So I write that down, write down something that I'm grateful for because there's always something to be grateful for and it makes you feel good. And then something I'm excited to do that day. Because if you're not excited about what you're doing, should do something else and you should be excited about what you're doing. And so I wake up and do that. And then I write down the order of my day. We used to do this in individual hour blocks on a piece of card. And now I just have the rough schema of the day, which is basically a copy of my Sit down jobs that I've written on my spreadsheet, put out a piece of card that can carry around me. So I can just look when the world's going bonkers around me at work, I can just look, okay, this is what the flow of the day should be and what I'm going to try and achieve. On the other side of the piece of paper, I write down some anyway jobs taken from my spreadsheets. And the next thing I want to tell you is so simple that you may disregarded. Books is so powerful. So because something simple, it doesn't mean it's not going to be effective, and it doesn't mean it can't be powerful. So for your anywhere jobs, I'll give you an example of what I used to do and what I do now. I used to write things down like salt car or bookend motif, which I imagine a lot of you do on your to-do list as well. And then I'll come around to do that. And I wouldn't do it. For what reason? Because I had to look at that and then I had to make some decisions. I had to decide with garden will take my car to when am I gonna do this phone call? I can't remember my registration plates. Remember when my amortize Jew had to do all these decisions, just get our job done. What I do now is for my anywhere items, I put a next physical action next to it. You probably noticed on my spreadsheet from the last lesson. And this is great because cold thinking MY can solve these things are so change book covering OT to it's an animal job. So that's the time is going to get done. When I have a break in time, I'm going to write down the telephone number of the carriage. If I don't remember my vehicle registration or making a piece paper on my phone. And I'm gonna look and see when my motifs juice. I know when I can poke it in because they won't have the salt I want probably. And then when I went for a coffee in the hospital, let me list out. Okay. All I have to do next physical action says pick up phone, dial this number. I don't have to do any thinking. I don't have to expend any energy. I just have to execute what? Cold thinking MY has attributed to hot thinking me. And this makes things so much easier. If you have a first physical action for one of your jobs, sit down job, earn anywhere job, or you have to do. You don't need to think. You've already decided. You just sit down or stand up anywhere and do that first physical action. Once you instigate that piece of momentum, it will continue and you're much more likely to get this job done. So the project for this class is relatively simple. And I want you to take a piece of paper or use an app on your phone and take your week plan for the next day and turn it into a day plan. If you like, you can do morning assessment like I do write down the thing you don't want to get done, but really get done and do that first because it's all downhill from that. Everything's a lot easier. And after that, I'd like you to copy of week plan for the day down into blocks. So that's how it is going to flow and write some anyway jobs down. And for your NMR jobs, I want you to write next to it in a separate column. First, physical action and trial that out for the next couple of days and see how your gown. And in the next lesson, we're going to talk a bit more about executes and how to deal with incoming information. Because there's always incoming information on how to judge things coming in and prioritize things to either urgent, not urgent, or important, or not important. And I'll see you in the next lesson.
7. Triage System - Four Quadrants : Hi, welcome to the next lesson and our productivity principles class. And in the last lessons, we talked about how to take your plan from a week to a day, and how to increase the chances of you getting what you planned by using the principle of the first action item. Now, in the intro of this course, if you remember, I said that you are in an environment that is constantly distracting you, which is true. And that occurs every 40 to 50 seconds thereabouts. And if you want to be able to, again improve your chances of executing what you planned, need to have a tree up system to cipher or the information that's coming to you and be able to prioritize them in some way and really helps you decide do I need to stop I'm doing now or can I do What deal with this thing later? So what we're going to talk about is the four-quadrant system. And it splits tasks into those that are urgent, not urgent, and those are important or not important. So I use this principle to give a lecture quite recently to some neurosurgeon at the start of their career. And and I'll show you why I said to them and afterwards, we'll use a real-world, more concrete example because my work is quite niche. And to give you an example how to use this system with software pops up in day-to-day life. So this is a Time Management Matrix playing form. You can see we've got something urgent or non-urgent. And some things urgent if it requires immediate attention. And, and is often associated with the achievement of someone else's goals, but not always. And you see got important and not important. Something's important when it helps you progress towards achieving your goals. These can be personal or they can be professional. Something's not important if it's not going to help with your immediate goals or priorities for that day. So you've got urgent, usually time-critical associated with someone else's goals, but not always. And important, something that is going to further your progression to achieving what you'd like to achieve. So an example, if I was on a work on called looking after emergencies, cover an area of about 3 million people and a 10-year-old injury and needs an operation. That's version because it's time critical. It's aligned with the patient holds off. And it's lined with my goals. It's important. So it's urgent and important because I'm at work to look after people. Something that's important but no edge. And is a person, a young person whose wealth has a headache but has a scar, shows a large brain tumor. It's not urgent because nothing's going to happen if often happens right now, nothing deleterious. But it is very important because we need to start to make plans, but what to do about that? So that's important. But it's not urgent right now. Spike goes into box to any call me saying they've got an elderly patient with a small doublet on their head scan who's otherwise well. And this is really important and urgent for them to have an Ansible what to do. Because in the UK there is a, there was a time period that patients from R to stay in AD before they have to leave. And so it's really agent for the department to decide whether the patient should go. But in my scheme of things, if I'm looking after the child with a head injury, needs an operation and this is not important right now. And so that searching for someone else, someone else's priorities, but not important for me. So that goes into group three. And the last group safe is weekend, and my phone is constantly reading and a family's asking some questions that could be answered during the week by someone else, then that's not urgent for me right now and it's so important for my goals of looking after the child with a head injury or a young person with a brain tumor. So if you think of these in terms of boxes or in trays, the first thing tray should always be empty. If things are urgent and important, then you deal with them. Now, you make a decision and Eclair it. So that's the trays always empty. In the second group, 4x2 is actually probably the most important. You need to give it them and most majority of your thoughts and make plans and decide what to do. And the third group you can deal with if you don't have anything else in the other two groups going on. And the fourth group can be delegated or it can be disregarded for something we'll talk about later. And interestingly, you really want to give the group two are actually the most of your thought. They're the ones where you need to do here called Thinking, decide what to do on the steps. When will you execute what falls into this box? Because usually if you don't look after the group two things then at group one. And become an urgent problem because you didn't deal with them properly. So that's my example. Two, surgeons and training, which I appreciate is quite extreme. So let's do a, an example which is going to be real world. And we all have a house that we need to look after or flats and my family that we help or help look after. So I'm going to give some examples, but just much more day-to-day. But they still hadn't things, this important things. And apply our system as an example. So go ha, four boxes here. Urgent, not urgent, important, not important. And say couple always ago with my wife who is very heavily pregnant, the boiler broke. And that's me thinking that's quite a comparison to what we're speaking about earlier. But if the boilers broke, you are heating nearly two-year-old baby as well, come out baths, can have showers. So it's actually urgent because it needs or hell, now, it was on Fridays or and and it's important because it's important we look after my family. And so we can put that into box1. And similarly at the same time, this book that we're door really likes, which is a music book, was broken. And so she's very upset and that makes me upset. And so it's not something that he decided but was quite important because she likes to play that book and dance around the house. So I had to decide what poetry is needed was a wrong with effects. So it's not urgent, but important to me. Similarly, I got something in the post saying please register for postal voting by this date and reply this and do x, y, zed, and you know, that's urgent for someone else. Do you want to vote or I don't have to solve this out right now. So that would fall into box three, urgent and not important right now. And then also some very recently when my new Baby Doe was asleep, was carrying around and someone knocks on the door, wanted to do a survey. And in this give me things. Don't wake the baby up. And that's not urgent. Doesn't need doing now. And to me, it's not important in the scheme of Michaels. And so once you've got your incoming information into the schema, you can then decide which box during into what you do. So if something is urgent and important, you do have you do it now. You saw out it's the inbox straight there should have stuff command and then get anti straightway. It should always be empty. So that's box one, box two. And you need to decide. So this is where you go back to coal thinking says, My daughter's music books broken and need to decide what's wrong with that. I need to get the parts of facts that you decide to just buy a new one or is it just the patron is placed and when will I do have I'm going to put it in my planning and in future. You can deal with them. Things that fall into box three. These are you can delegate them. So I don't have to do now either someone else can do it. In this case instance, I can just decide, okay, I'm gonna do this in next week at some point or next weekend as it can be delegated. And the thing that's falls into box for the person who's knocking at the door when I'm traveling my baby to sleep, to do a survey that's going to get disregarded. So box1, you do it and do it, man. Box 2, you decide it's called that thought. And then you plan box three. You say, OK, can this be delegated? And if so, to who and when in box for you disregard it. So I hope that was useful schema for you to prioritize incoming work because the environment we live in is constantly speeding up. And you will constantly have information coming in that you have to decide. Does this need to do now? Does it need doing later? Doesn't need doing at all. And so we've covered the four-quadrant system to prioritize your work. And the project for this class would be to draw down a similar table and just post it somewhere on your desk at work. If you have a desk. And when e-mails, command and phone calls happen in people not come your door. And you can just look at it and say, okay, where does our fair and maybe scribbled them down and then decide you need to do it now is in box one. Can it be decided upon or thought about in box 2 can be delegated someone else in box 3. What can you just disregard it if it falls into the box for? So I want you to write this down, pop it in your workspace, ether own work or both, and use it to start triaging information. Eventually, for myself, this became an unconscious process after using it for so long. And now I do this for most things coming into me pretty much intuitively, um, but still in the background that I have, that cognitive framework for me to decide how urgent is this job and how important is it. So engaging the projects, right? Any comments in the group class down below? And then the next cost, I'm going to talk about how to capture incoming information using various apps that I use and outs make sure that you are fully confident in your planning system. So that you know when information comes in and you put it somewhere else, you're going to look at it again in the future and then complete the cycle of parking and executing.
8. Capture System : Hi, welcome to the next lesson in productivity class. In the last class, we talked about how to prioritize jumps as they come into us using the full table system with urgent versus not urgent and important versus not important. And once you've got familiar with and you can quite easily prioritize work into due to decide upon, to delegate or in this regard, then you need to capture all that information that's coming in, put into a system that's basically acts as your second memory. And this is important because your working memory can only hold quite a small number of pieces of information. And, and if you overload that system, then you find it difficult to focus on whatever project you're actually working on at the time and make it less likely that you'll achieve a good chunk of deep work to be ultimately as productive as you can in that time period. The next three apps, I'm going to talk about the three that I use as many of these. And I found that incorporating these three apps into my workflow with my capture system and has really allowed me to free up a lot of cognitive space to focus on them. What I've got a hand. And so there's three apps and more is to do us. To do this is a very well thought-out up that goes to the template of a to-do list essentially. But were then to SU current and prioritize drugs is urchin, which is relates all sorts of items before you can put in different categories, categories of jobs like family, work, home, ideas, projects. And you can also schedule a time for you to do the job, will be reminded about it. Eight. And really nice part of it is that you can also share in a group with an equal projects if you're going to work or congruent with the people and things. So the way I used to do it is I was working for the day and in a clinic. And I got a call from a secretary saying this patient you've operated on isn't feeling very well. And so I couldn't deal with it right. Thereby needed to deal with that day. This is open to us making work urgency high for the details, any safe. That's the how of my working memory. I can go back to focusing on the patients in the clinic and an all be reminded later in the days of just done without straightway came into my system. It's not super urgent, but it's definitely important geology lab into my capture system and that's how I dealt with that. The second one that I use is notion. Notions, a desktop app, which I use to set back and do my weekly or nearly reviewing. And it's really nice free form application where you can essentially make whatever you want and people have made websites using it. And I'll show you a bit more about how I use Notion in the next few lessons about daily review and weekly review. But essentially it's a very nice places. Stores had plates and keep track of big projects and need multiple sets. And to build your ideas and use really the core, the IOUs to have confidence that my system is going to work actually overall, I do my weekly review and then I use is pocket. And I get sent lots of links, interesting operations or just interesting stuff from my friends. And I'm like, I'd like to look at, at some point, I don't want to fall into the trap of something interesting culprit upon your phone. And then you editorial referred for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and forgot where you've spent the last chunk of your time. So I do is allows me to just wipe book or my photo and something interesting sets me, said it's a pocket. And then when I have one of those gaps and time which you will now realize you have for me a 168 or exercise, because I want my phone. Oh yeah, this was interesting and I will look it up while waiting for my coffee or do we have got microbial groups there and I'd say 70 percent medicines. What solution? Interesting stuff. And so those are the three humps are used to capture information. While do now is show you a workflow system that's been adapted from David Allen's excellent book. Again, things really recommend you to check this out if you really want to geek out on productivity principles. And I'll show you this and I'll explain to you how I integrate these three apps into this workflow system. So this is essentially an algorithm that I run first off in my head, obviously similar to the four by four quadrant system, it may be useful feature print this out, save on your phone and to start to get familiar with it. And so it starts with notes, ideas. For me, it's phone calls or emails or their inputs coming in. These clients, your inbox, we should just speak as either your inbox on your computer or you have x, which is your brain. You need to decide what is it and use the tree I-System that I've talked about. Or urgent versus non-urgent, important versus not important, decide what the next action is. So some things that are on no actions, it may fall into a group that's not urgent or important. I actually decided. I don't know if you put a trash, you can think of I schedule it for to be looked at later into the US Army calendar. And you create a reference file in your email system and just leave it then comeback effect. It turns out to be important. If it's actionable, what's the next action? So he talks about next physical step previously on next physical, unscheduled grown. You may realize that there's actually multiple steps to get through this project. And so you might put into your project part of seduce or make folder on Notion projects in their insights right, on the different steps that you need to get through projects on the way. After that, this is a great one as well that I've picked up from get things done. If your job, it takes two minutes or less. Duncan introduced a notion and it was at its pocket. It's around a piece of paper, just do it. And then it takes two minutes. It's not worth the time of saving it. The 30 seconds a minute, It's aids. Just do it now and then and I probably half my jobs less by just doing two jobs as soon as they occur. So that's a really simple but really powerful productivity tool to actually minimize the model than luxury items you bought annulus. So two minutes or less, just do it. If not any point you system. So you've gone through your tree arch and you realize that actually it's something that's important but not urgent. So you can defer it to think about maybe on a weekly review. You might realize it's urgent to someone else, but it's maxing out according to you. And you can delegate it to someone else. So you can delegate that. And once you've captured your jobs that you think need for you to decide upon, then you can put it into your system Task Manager via putting into Notion, put onto your calendar on your work desktop or phone, or resides you on to do it. So to summarize it in this class, we've talked about some apps to do, notion and an pocket to capture incoming items. We've looked through a workflow system in which you can incorporate those apps. The main idea of this is to open up your working memory to focus on the task at hand. So the project for this class is to save this workflow which I'll put in the class group, cheap phone or your desktop, and check out the three apps I mentioned, there's some really good skill share classes for to-do list and notion. Maybe some of the popular, but I'm just yet and start to incorporate the workflow into how you prioritize jobs and so making the system and also incorporate those absence of the way that you feel most comfortable to make sure that you are capturing all the information that's coming in. And that you'll be confident that you will be reviewing this later on. The main way that I found to be confident or comfortable with these systems, actually find an app that you enjoy to use. So if you don't quite like something about Notion and there's other similar outside there. You can search on YouTube. And once you find something you like because it's natural to you, then stick with that one and incorporate into your system and a net cost of search terms. One is the end of our Skillshare class and we will talk about how to do your daily review and your weekly.
9. Daily Review : So in the last lesson, we looked at how to use three apps to do this notion and pockets to capture information that's coming into us and to incorporate those into a workflow system. And that will free up lot of cognitive space for us and allow us to focus on what we're doing. That's fine. And we turning now from the execute section of the class to the Reflect section. And the reflex action is probably the most important. And the reason for that is, it's all well and good. Capture all this information. Don't reflect and review what you're capturing. There's almost no point in having a solid system in place. And so it's the safety and bottom of everything that you can have confidence in. How busy things are getting, how many action items you're capturing in your system, you will set out at some point and review them and then put an NC or weakly a 160, our plan for the next week. And then this completes the cycle of capturing information, tree arginine, reviewing it, and then plugging it into the next week. And this is how I basically run my life and make sure I stay on top of things both work and at home, which are both equally important to me. So what I'm going to show you is my daily review template in this class, which I do want notion. And the next class we'll talk about the weekly review, which is the most important of the two review sessions. And so I'll show you. So this is my Notion. I'm using NOT Ireland and sign up for free. This is great. These are all the different folders of curated. And I looked up through these, my weekly review. I just keep on top of things and make your own towns like projects that you might want to be. Keeping an eye on many tables within those who feel lousy. My JD review, I have a morning review and nighttime review. And actually like to write these down in my book because quite enjoying the process of writing and doing it at the start the day, in the end of the day, kinda bookends everything. And it's a nice practice. This nice writing's done sometimes. So if we look at morning review, I tried out, what did I dream? And you don't have to do this. But personally I feel like I get some insights every so often from what I dreamt about. Sometimes solve some problems that are going on day-to-day basis. And the answer comes to me when I wake up as I thought about before, or my excited about. If you're excited about something in the day, then he find stuff to be excited about because it's important or migrate P24. And because there's always something to be grateful for from, you know, how coffee tastes in the morning to the fact that you have a house, the sleepin. And then I look at my action items from my 168 hour templates and write them down on my card. These are the things I'm going to get through today in terms of my sit on jobs and buy anyway, drops. So that's what I do morning and in the nighttime it's been more involved by actually enjoy, actually more. So I look back on Monday, there must be at least three things that went well today. And the highest important because back home the day and say, Okay, this is what went well, I achieved when I started while and if you've a few growing y-direction personal Nansen, and it makes you more likely to carry on with this system. If you write down three months or three months ago, what did I learn from? It could be a breakthrough, the idea, it can be a realization that has 160 our assessment. And I spend 15 hours a week watching TV. And I also get annoyed, they're not learning a language or instrument or you can trade. Those are both round and that could be a breakthrough realization or idea for you. So plus y for in mind Wednesday or breakthrough ideas section. Thanks this book I've done better. And how can I apply this to more? And this one's actually made really big difference knee and feeling the anger improve. And if you have any feelings of Ohad into the world today, slide of guilt, then you know that, okay, I realized there and this is what going to do tomorrow. And I realized that if I eat loads for breakfast and my energy in the evening crashes, as well as skip breakfast, which isn't there I used to do. And I increase my energy. But it was something about writing down that made it much more likely that catheter It's more and realized that plan. And one story where the item, this is a little memory and let's write our own. Just makes me smile. By 90% of the time, it has to do with my family. And usually by others lawyer who's done something bonkers and that makes me laugh. So I write something down that as a memory. And at the integral also a request for the subconscious to sleep on. And again, require a lot of weight into this. But you may want to do this is Rayleigh line. Before I go brush my teeth in robo-advisor. This is why I like my subconscious to think about. And sometimes though it could some interesting thoughts or solutions to problems that doesn't always work. But that's how I do my daily review project for this class, is for you to learn daily review. I'll put my sand play in the group below. I'd like you to either use an app like Notion is looking at everyday in the morning. It's iCloud save as a journal entry. Or you can use a pen to paper like I do against writings are on and on it's morning review and think about where you're excited for the day and what you're grateful for. And also your night-time view that she's really went reflecting practices article and what did you do? Well, what were your three wins? What did you learn today? What will you do better tomorrow? And what do you want to remember from today? Because it's going to pass quickly before you know it. A lot of your life will be gone. Why you want to be able to remember those highlights? Like you go a sense if for the first time, unless you tell it which was my memory from the other day. And so hopefully that was useful. And in the last class, we're gonna talk about the week review.
10. Weekly Review : Hi, and congratulations on making it to the final lesson in our productivity class. This may be the most important lesson, and that's why we've said that for the end. And it's how to do your weekly review. And in the last class I showed you my Notion sheets on how I do my daily review, writing down in the morning. What excited for, grateful for. And they're going through my 160, our sheet, write down the actions for that day. And then in the nighttime, we do a review or a fights on our big three wins. What could I improve on? What did I learn? And maybe something for your subconscious to work on when you sleep. And the next class, and this class will be a weekly review. And we're going to look at what is quite a detailed structure, I'll be honest, but it's what I like to use. Again, it's from get things done. And by David Allen, excellent productivity book. And this is the review that I do on my quiet sustained the week usually or someday, but depends upon work scheduled. Week day sometimes if I'm working on the weekend and I block out about an hour to do this weekly review. And it is the kind of foundation of the whole productivity system I've outlined for you. So let's work through it and then we'll talk about our final projects at the end. So back on my Notion page and go down to my weekly review. And the first section of the weekly review is get clear. And but before we actually go into that, the first part of the weekly review is to plan the weekly review. And it's going to get love it matter, using our productivity principles to facilitate our productivity system. And what I'd like you to do when you're carving out you're a 168 hours in a week is to schedule in a sit-down job in a time and a place. And that is going to be your weekly review. And even want you to put your first physical action item which might be making coffee and open laptop. It send a living room at a certain point on Sunday. And then you don't have to think about it. And it's going to make it much more likely for you to actually do a weekly review because it's not important. And so as I said a little bit matter using coal thinking you tell about hot thinking you to do your weekly review and start the cycle all over again. So first step, this is get clear. So you want to clear out, I go through my by pull out pieces of paper that I might have got from the tax man or things that I need to do from work. I go through my action inbox, which is my to-do list, and see what's urgent in my different categories of family home work, ideas and projects. And I don't really use cards because to do my weekly review anyway, I clear my card at the end of the day and move it to the next day if there's anything further to do or capture on to do this. And I like to clean the house actually, which is a bit strange, but if I have a clear office to work in that it's much more peaceful for me, but that's just me probably been about OCD. Inbox Zero is a big thing and my inbox is always 0 for work and at home, It's a whole separate class. But I would really recommend having a Inbox Zero principle because it's just a lot easier to psi for him prioritize e-mails that come in from this dot whole 1000 emails saying if you're looking you in the face, TEA had somewhat touched on this before, but if there's stuff that's been bothering me or week, I'll just write it down. Any ideas that have come up, any big projects that have come up and just empty my head of all those things floating around so I can calm down a bit. And then we're gonna get current. So here we're going to review are actually less, which is to do this for me. I marked off as I go through, but I go through my week and say Today, achieve what I wanted to achieve. Why didn't I did have a overshoot? How much I think I can actually get done. And did I use my time well, and then go through my past calendar in detail for remaining action items and things that didn't manage to get done. I'm gonna move it into my next a 160 hour week plan so they don't fall through the gaps. Going to look at my calendar, that's actually my work calendar to see when I'm seeing patients and what thirds is in clinics I have. And look at my end waiting for lists. So a lot of the time I'll delegate jobs to other people and I'll keep a level folder on Notion. You can actually see it here, which is just to keep it there in the background and every soft and just prompt them say, Oh, hey, joining me this week to talk about that thing that you said you get done in a week or two. And just to keep the momentum going. After that review and larger projects outcome list, see how a conference. Is coming on. My big goals are coming along. Project was for me to record this Skillshare class, see how I'm getting on with that. And, and then see that for at least each item, there's a current next action item. So you don't want your big projects just to be big project, say organized conference. You want it to be organized conference on within the range of guest speakers and within that say, email. So and so in America, so that's the next action item that you can prioritize into there next week. It's making it more likely that you'll actually do it. And I go through any bits and pieces that I've said in a pocket which would project plans or support material. And then actually, I do my finances every week. I just keep on top of things because there's only things coming in and out in the bank account. And so I put that in my weekly review. And then I haven't bit fun at the end, it's important to be creative and we'll have big dreams that we want to achieve. And it's, I think important for us not forget that those are possible. So I've got a, a bucket list here, Ideas page. And they got things like, you know, and go to France for a month with my wife and go to the wine country or had helped my family. And you have somewhere. All these bucket list idea is that you might have. So I go through those and make myself smile and think, maybe I'll actually be a step closer to it soon. And, and finding new ideas in there as well. And then I said yourself, what did I do? Well this week, give myself apartment back because it probably got through a lot of work. And it's important for you to feel good about how you are getting, about what you want to achieve because it makes you more likely to keep the momentum going. And then sit out, how am I feeling? There's a bad week was stressful, week was a great week was this one. But last week, so ever had. And just look at things from a why does frame and think about the trajectory of your productivity system. A short version of that would be go through e-mails, look at your calendar, look at your capture items, Desktop Downloads. So to do as pocket notion, look at the notes and then put your tasks and for next week. And so that's how I do my weekly review. So the project for this class is for you to decide and you're a 160. Our plan, Wednesday, quiet, steady week. Schedule some time to sit down with the first action item. And that is going to be whatever you think. Book or a coffee and settled living room at noon on Sunday to do your weekly review because it's that important. And I want you to work through the checklist template, which I will supply, supply in the group here. And then I want you to think, you know, how do I feel after taking all the information, I need to revisit some of those classes. And do I feel about that? And L is my mind a lot calmer. Now I have a whole system to capture or these items in to make sure I'm ultimately productive. And I'll say, well done for making it through this class. If you're wondering if all this system works on up that I've actually recorded and uploaded this whole series of lessons is attributable to this province of the SI system. As I said at the beginning, I've got two children under two and work a fairly hectic jump. And using the system, I managed to make this class. So if you have any doubts if it works or not, it does if you're watching us and so well done. And give yourself a pat on the back. And I'll talk a little bit about psychology and the best side effects for me of using this productivity principles in our conclusion.
11. Conclusion : Hi, Welcome to the conclusion of this productivity principles class. I'd like to start by saying, congratulations, well done for making it to the end. And I now would like to just recap on the over-arching outcome of this productivity principles. And if we go back to the beginning, you may remember in the intro, I referred to this concept of a unlined like water. A mind like water comes again from David Allen's book, things done, but ultimately has its roots in philosophy. Well, i'm, I make more water means is when the surface of a pond is very turbulent, it's difficult to see through it and to see what's going on. When it's very still and calm, it simply reflects what goes over the surface and things become very clear. And this is why hope your mind becomes like. A mind-like water also refers to the response to a stimulus. If a small pebble in a pond, small ripples, goes back to calm. Big rock is thrown in, big splash, but then report and goes back to calm. Why am I talking about this? Well, the aim of this Skillshare class has been for you to become more productive using the principles I've given to you from my life. And the side effect of using these principles, I personally think is better than the increased productivity and efficiency. The side-effects for me is I haven't much common lined. I have a line which I think is one step closer to becoming a line like water. And my day-to-day life is a much less stressful and I just enjoy life a lot more by using this productivity principles I've outlined to you. So although the aim of the class and probably the reason you clicked on it was you wanted to be more productive with your time and efficient. I hope by implementing what I've taught you, you will also have the very welcome side effects of having a common mind and a mind like water. So I wish you all the best for the future. I hope this is useful and I plan to make small classes to give you my perspective of life as a neurosurgeon or the best.
Adi Kumar, Neurosurgeon, Teacher, Dad
