I have a full-time job, one on one mentoring five design students, making YouTube videos and podcasts every week, reading 50 books each year, and I just wrote a book in 3 months. By the way, I have a 4-year-old to take care of and don't get me started on the housework, cooking, and all sort of those other things. I think I'm productive, but recently, I just found a tip that can fundamentally improve my productivity to a brand new level. What's that? Let's talk about this on BearTalk!
It's not just one tip, but three. I've learned these tips during the different stages of my life, and recently I just realised that I could combine them, and the magic happened. So please stay to the end of this video so that you will get all the juice from it. Let's start with the first one: it's about your phone.
First, don't touch your phone first thing in the morning.
I used to default to checking my phone immediately when I woke up in the morning. Most of the time, I also scroll before I sleep. It was so natural to grab my phone, see what happened last night, and check any comments on my social media posts, new emails, etc. Without noticing, I could easily spend 30 mins, or even an hour on my phone, before I get up! As a mobile product designer, I know it's not our fault. Those apps are designed to attract our attention and forge the habit of browsing on and on. You can hardly win that war. So how to fight a battle you can't win? Easy! Just keep away from it. Every evening, before I sleep, I will put my phone somewhere I can't reach: e.g. another room. And the following day, when I wake up, I will do something else rather than check my phone. By doing this, I keep the same sleeping pattern, but I have 30-60 more mins every day to spend on anything. Checking my phone too often makes me stressed, so I feel happier every day by avoiding checking it first thing in the morning. That's a bonus!
Second, Invest the first hour for yourself
Now we have some extra time in the morning, what would you do with it? That leads us to the second tip: invest the first hour every day for yourself. You might hear of the grid of emergency and importance. If we use urgency and importance to measure what we need to do or want to do, the most valuable things are not urgent but important. It might be learning a new skill to improve your performance at work, doing more exercise to keep you healthy and happy or reading more books. Everyone has those things. Find them, and spend the extra time you've got in the morning to do them. Please don't jump to work with that time; use it for yourself. Learn, read, exercise, and do those important but not urgent things first.
Third, start the day by writing.
Julia Cameron, the author of Artist's Way, introduced a simple practice to discover our innate creativity in her multi-million bestseller book. In short, it's writing. She suggested getting a period, say, three months, to write three pages every morning. So, I'm exploring writing every morning for three reasons: I found that writing communication is so essential for a professional, and it was underestimated. Also, English is not my native language; I'll need more practise to make it better as a powerful tool. And the third, as a content creator, it's a way to keep me thinking about new ideas and getting them to form in a more tangible format. But this is only for me, you might have something else you want to do, and you can prioritise it.
Let's wrap up, the three tips to make you a productive master in the long run:
Don't check your phone first thing in the morning.
Invest the first hour of a day for yourself.
Start the day by writing.
Let me know how it works for you in the comments below. I also shared other productive tips on this channel. Check this if you are interested. If you haven't subscribed to this channel, please hit the button below. Thanks for watching. Let's talk again in another BearTalk video!