My Complete Productivity System
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My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life : https://dai.ly/x931a78
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If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
The Best Book I've Ever Read about Making Money : https://dai.ly/x931j9y
How to Go From $0 to $10,000 a Month in 4 Steps : https://dai.ly/x931kb6
How to Make $10,000 Month Writing Online : https://dai.ly/x931l42
How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm
Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252
How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8
How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
dailymotion.com/arshian
How to guarantee you regret your life:https : //dai.ly/x93180y
My honest advice to a perfectionist:https : //dai.ly/x9319i4
My honest advice to someone who’s doing too much : https://dai.ly/x9319ty
My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life : https://dai.ly/x931a78
My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom : https://dai.ly/x931ex2
If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
The Best Book I've Ever Read about Making Money : https://dai.ly/x931j9y
How to Go From $0 to $10,000 a Month in 4 Steps : https://dai.ly/x931kb6
How to Make $10,000 Month Writing Online : https://dai.ly/x931l42
How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm
Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252
How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8
How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
00:01If you're new here, my name is Ali,
00:02and on this channel, we explore the evidence-based
00:04strategies and tools that can help us
00:05along our shared journey of living healthier,
00:07happier, more productive lives.
00:09And this is my complete productivity system
00:10split into the six categories of coordinate,
00:13communicate, consume, capture, create,
00:15and other miscellaneous stuff.
00:17All right, let's start with module one, coordinate.
00:19And I think any productivity system
00:20basically needs three things,
00:21at least in the coordinate department.
00:23Firstly, we need some kind of calendar
00:25for managing our schedule.
00:25Secondly, we need some kind of project management system
00:28for managing our tasks and our lists and our projects.
00:30And thirdly, we need some kind of file management system.
00:32So firstly, the app that I use for my calendar needs
00:34is Fantastical.
00:35I've been using that for the last five years.
00:36It's absolutely sick.
00:37It is Mac only, but it connects to Google Calendar
00:40and Apple Calendar and Outlook Calendar.
00:41Basically, all the calendars connect to Fantastical.
00:44And it's kind of the same as most other calendar apps.
00:46It just looks really pretty,
00:47and it has a few natural language processing features
00:49that make it really handy.
00:50For example, if I wanna create a new calendar event,
00:52I can just type into the box on my phone
00:54or on my Mac or on my iPad,
00:5515th of April, three to 5 p.m.,
00:56something happening at whatever location,
00:58and it will figure out based on what I've written
01:00what time it is, what date it is, what the location is,
01:03and it will automatically add that to my calendar,
01:05which is just super handy.
01:06And the way I manage my life is that
01:07if something is not on the calendar,
01:08it basically doesn't exist.
01:09And so I don't have to spend any mental strain worrying
01:12or wondering about what I'm doing next
01:13because it's literally just on the calendar.
01:15Next, when it comes to file management,
01:16I use Google Drive for everything.
01:17I'm very entrenched in the Apple ecosystem,
01:19but I don't use iCloud Drive very much.
01:21I use Google Drive and have been using it
01:22for the last 10 plus years.
01:24And for personal stuff,
01:24I use my own personal Google Drive account.
01:26I think it has two terabytes of storage.
01:27And for business stuff, we use Google Workspace
01:29or G Suite or whatever it's called these days,
01:31which has unlimited storage.
01:32And you can see here,
01:33we've actually used 20.3 terabytes of Google Drive storage
01:36as a team so far, which is pretty insane.
01:38And it's awesome that this is all kind of included
01:40for unlimited storage with Google Workspace.
01:42That's pretty insane.
01:43Thirdly, when it comes to project management,
01:44I actually use two different apps for this.
01:46I use Todoist as my own personal task management,
01:49which I use basically for myself and with my assistant, Dan.
01:52I really like Todoist.
01:52I've dabbled with so many other to-do list apps
01:54over the years, and the thing I like about Todoist
01:57is that it's very simple.
01:57It's fairly cheap.
01:58I think the free version,
01:59if you don't wanna use it with a team, is actually free.
02:00It's completely cross-platform,
02:02so it's available on Windows and iPhone
02:03and all of the other things as well.
02:04And it's got some pretty good sharing features as well.
02:06So if I wanna delegate stuff to Dan,
02:08I can just make a little project called Dan,
02:10share it with him,
02:10and then that's all the things that I want Dan
02:12to hopefully try and sort out for me
02:13so that I don't have to sort them out myself.
02:15It's also a nice way for me to track my someday,
02:17maybe bucket list type thing for personal and work stuff.
02:19So rollerblading, archery, hunting, glamping,
02:22mountain biking, wakeboarding.
02:23These are all things that I wanna organize,
02:24group trips, group holidays for at some point or other,
02:27and I track them all in Todoist.
02:28So that's what I use for personal task
02:30and project management.
02:31But for my personal daily stuff,
02:33I actually use an analog method
02:34with my own part-time productivity planner
02:36from the stationery brand
02:37that I've created called Essentially.
02:38And so some days,
02:39if I don't really know what I'm doing for the day,
02:40or I feel like my to-do list is getting overwhelming,
02:42I will open up the part-time productivity planner
02:44and I will figure out what is my most important task,
02:46what's the one thing I need to get done today,
02:48and then what is everything else on the my to-do list?
02:50This is stuff that I might get along to if I feel like it.
02:52I don't use it every day.
02:53I use it some days when I need to,
02:55and that's why it's called
02:56the part-time productivity planner.
02:57It doesn't really have any dates on it.
02:58And that's one of the things I've realized
02:59about living in this world of productivity
03:00and refining my productivity system
03:02over the last five years,
03:03that a system that forces you to conform
03:06to it very rigidly,
03:07at least for me,
03:08is not a system that will work out for me.
03:10So a lot of these apps,
03:11I don't use them every day.
03:12I don't use them religiously.
03:13And I find that that level of flexibility and freedom
03:15lets me use the apps and the tools when I need to.
03:18But if I don't need to,
03:19then the apps and tools get out of my way
03:20and I can actually do the thing that I want to do,
03:22which is being intentional and effective
03:24with how I spend my time.
03:25So it's Todoist and the planner
03:26for personal projects and stuff.
03:27But when it comes to team project management,
03:29I use Notion.
03:30Notion is the app that we use for all of our projects
03:32across the whole team of 18 people that we have now,
03:35which is pretty insane.
03:36And I'm gonna do a whole other video
03:36where I break down our entire Notion setup
03:38because it's pretty next level.
03:39But here is, for example,
03:40our content production engine,
03:42which tracks all the videos that we're making
03:43across the YouTube channel,
03:44the second channel,
03:45the third channel that we're working on,
03:46the deep dive podcast.
03:47And all the different people in our team
03:49have their own personalized views
03:50for the content production engine.
03:51So they can just hit a single page
03:53and they can see exactly
03:54what they're supposed to be working on
03:55in terms of research or thumbnails or whatever.
03:56And I can put all the ideas I have for upcoming videos
03:58or stuff for the book or stuff for podcast episodes.
04:00And it's all very full featured.
04:02But really the key to using Notion well
04:04is to start off with a very simple system
04:05and then build it up over time if you need to.
04:07Let's move on now to module two of the productivity system.
04:09And that is communicate.
04:11Now, obviously communication with our friends and family
04:13and relatives and team,
04:14all of this is an important part of living a good life
04:16and also an important part of being productive.
04:18And so there's a few different apps that I use
04:20to make this process as seamless as possible.
04:22One of my new favourite additions to the productivity system
04:24is something called texts.com.
04:26Now, texts.com is amazing because it's a web interface
04:28that combines multiple different messaging apps.
04:30So I have it combining my WhatsApp, my iMessage,
04:33my Twitter DMs and my Telegram.
04:34And it's got a bunch of features that really help
04:36with getting to inbox zero when it comes to messages.
04:38I almost never get to inbox zero when it comes to messages.
04:40I'm so bad at replying to messages.
04:42I have kind of dozens, if not potentially 100 unread messages
04:45from the last like two weeks
04:46that I need to reply to at some point.
04:48But when I get time to reply to things,
04:49then texts makes it super easy to do
04:51and I can bash through a large amount of things
04:52on my computer.
04:53So mostly I use texts for personal communication,
04:55but we use Slack for team communication.
04:57Slack is great.
04:58We have a channel for announcements, for general,
04:59for idea suggestions, the water cooler,
05:01book, courses, email, podcast, the part-time brand,
05:03social media, website, YouTube, hiring leadership team,
05:05et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
05:06There's so much stuff that we have going on in Slack.
05:08So Slack is for internal team communication.
05:10And then we also use Discord as a community platform
05:13for students of our part-time YouTuber Academy.
05:15And also we are in the process of setting up a new Discord
05:18for just anyone who wants to join
05:21the Alibaba community or whatever we're gonna call it.
05:23At the moment, we're calling it the friend zone
05:25because it's like, hey friends, it's like the friend zone.
05:27This is a free Discord server.
05:28We're like literally in the process of building it up.
05:30I think it's ready.
05:31So if you hit the link in the video description,
05:32you can join the Discord server
05:33if you're interested in something like that.
05:34Yeah, we've got a general chat channel,
05:36a book club channel, a playlist, a rating your setup.
05:38And I'm gonna be doing these sort of everyday
05:41co-working sessions on Discord where I share my music
05:43and then I can use those focus sessions
05:45to make progress on my book.
05:46So if you wanna join the friend zone community,
05:48hit the link down in the video description.
05:49It's completely free.
05:50It's always gonna be free.
05:51It's just a fun little thing that we're trying out
05:53and we're gonna see what it's like.
05:54And then the app that I use for email is in fact Superhuman.
05:57And I've been using Superhuman since I think 2018 or 2019.
06:00Honestly, it's pretty expensive.
06:01It's $30 a month.
06:03It's useful if you get large amounts of email
06:04and need to blitz through it at like rapid speed
06:07because it does help me get through my inbox
06:09a lot faster than I used to before.
06:10But it's probably a little bit excessive for most people
06:12and you can absolutely get free email apps
06:14that do exactly the same thing.
06:15And so I have my multiple Gmail
06:16and Google Workspace accounts connected to Superhuman
06:19so that I can use it on my laptop,
06:21I can use it on my phone,
06:22I can use it on my iPad and get through email faster
06:23if I decide that that's what I need to do in a given moment.
06:25And then the final app in the communication category
06:27is in fact Loom.
06:28Now Loom is a really great way
06:29of screen recording your screen
06:31and like sharing camera and audio and stuff.
06:34And me and the team, we use Loom to, for example,
06:37send messages to one another.
06:38If someone is doing a presentation,
06:39rather than doing it on a meeting on Zoom
06:41where everyone has to waste time and do the meeting,
06:43they'll just record a Loom of the meeting
06:44and then we can all watch it at 2X speed
06:46so that we can be up to speed on what's going on
06:48in a very efficient fashion.
06:49Some weeks at the end of the week,
06:50I also do like a little weekly update
06:52for the team internally and I record that on Loom
06:54because it's so much easier for me
06:55to just speak to a camera or speak to my phone
06:57or speak to whatever,
06:58than it is for me to write out
06:59a kind of word for word update.
07:00Okay, so that was coordinate and communicate.
07:03Let's now move on to module three
07:04of the productivity system and that is consume.
07:07Now for a lot of us,
07:07consumption is probably not gonna be part of productivity,
07:09although to be honest,
07:10my personal definition of productivity
07:12is that productivity is about using our time
07:14intentionally and effectively.
07:15And if we wanna consume things like books or podcasts
07:17or audiobooks or even scrolling through social media,
07:19there are more productive,
07:21i.e. intentional and effective ways of doing that
07:23than others.
07:23So let's just take these one at a time.
07:25The app that I use for podcasts these days is Castro.
07:27I've experimented with so many different podcast apps
07:29over the years, Aero.io, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast,
07:33but the one that I landed on was Castro
07:35and that's the one that I use every day.
07:36The app that I use for reading PDFs is PDF Expert.
07:38Again, dabbled with so many of them over the years.
07:40That's the best app I found for reading PDFs on my Mac.
07:42I would say I spend a lot of time watching videos
07:44and obviously I watch those videos on YouTube,
07:46but I tend to watch them at 2X speed on my phone
07:48or if I'm watching on my Mac,
07:49I will often watch videos at two times speed,
07:51potentially even sometimes higher instead
07:52because often YouTubers take ages to get to the point.
07:55And there's various extensions for Chrome and Safari.
07:57I use Safari mostly,
07:57so I use this video speed controller extension for Safari
08:00that helps me speed up videos.
08:01In terms of reading, I do most of my reading on Kindle.
08:03Although if I have like a random PDF or an EPUB
08:05that doesn't play nicely with Kindle,
08:07I'll read it in iBooks.
08:08And the nice thing about Kindle and iBooks
08:10is that it syncs across all the platforms.
08:12I have two Kindles, like physical Kindle devices,
08:14one that's always on my bedside table
08:16and one that's always in my travel bag.
08:17So I'm never without a Kindle wherever I'm going.
08:19Or if I'm feeling particularly productive,
08:20if I'm in an Uber or on public transport or anything,
08:22I will use the Kindle app on my iPhone
08:24and I can read books on the Kindle that way.
08:25And the Kindle app on Mac itself is also surprisingly good.
08:28And that's what I do if I need to blitz through a book
08:30for research for the book that I'm writing.
08:31The app that I use to read articles is Instapaper.
08:33And Instapaper is nice because I can save articles
08:36to my read it later list from whatever device I am.
08:39Again, Instapaper is cross-platform.
08:40It's got a Mac app, it's got an iPhone app.
08:42And that means if I come across an article on the internet
08:43and I don't have time to read it there and then,
08:46I can just chuck it into Instapaper.
08:48And then when I've got a moment, if I'm on the toilet
08:50or if I'm sitting on a bus or whatever,
08:52I can just open up my Instapaper
08:53and read through the articles that I've saved on there.
08:55Instapaper also has a really good highlight feature,
08:57which I'll talk more about in the capture section.
08:59So stay tuned for that.
09:00And finally, the app that I use for all my audio books
09:02is in fact Audible.
09:03No, they're not sponsoring this video.
09:04I wish they were,
09:05but you can go to audible.com to get like a free trial
09:08or something anyway.
09:08It's just amazing.
09:09I discovered Audible in like 2017
09:11and I use Audible for lots and lots and lots of time
09:14each week for a lot of non-fiction,
09:16but also for a lot of fantasy fiction as well.
09:18Brandon Sanderson books are a personal favorite of mine.
09:20And if you wanna build your own productivity system,
09:22I think consume is like a useful part of that.
09:25If you're a content creator,
09:26consuming is really important
09:27because it's important to be able to save ideas,
09:29more on that in the capture section.
09:30But if for example, you read a lot of books
09:31or a lot of articles or follow a lot of blogs,
09:33or for example, listen to a lot of podcasts or audio books,
09:35it's always useful to experiment
09:37with a few different apps in those genres
09:38because you might find an app like Castro for podcasts
09:41or Audible for audio books
09:42that just makes the consumption experience
09:44a lot more effective, a lot more intentional.
09:46And that ties nicely into our definition of productivity.
09:49And the final app I use fairly regularly
09:50in the consume section is Shortform.
09:52And I use Shortform for reading book summaries.
09:54And Shortform have a web app,
09:56like a website that I use on my Mac,
09:57but they also have an iOS app that I use on my iPhone.
09:59And like, it's genuinely good.
10:00They're not even sponsoring this video,
10:01but I'll stick an affiliate link in the video description
10:03if you wanna check it out.
10:04There's a free trial, blah, blah, blah.
10:04And Shortform is great.
10:05It's like by far the best book summary feature app
10:09I have ever found.
10:10I tried using Blinkist for like a year,
10:13but I always found that their book summaries
10:14were very surface level.
10:15Whereas the really cool thing about Shortform
10:17is that the summaries are very in-depth.
10:19You get a one-pager summary,
10:20which is Blinkist style of the book that you wanna read,
10:23but then you get detailed chapter summaries.
10:25And the even cooler thing about Shortform
10:26is that when they give you a summary of a book,
10:28they won't just give you the summary of the book.
10:30They also have these little short form snippets
10:32or whatever they call it,
10:33where they bring in insights from other books.
10:35And they say, this is an idea
10:36that someone, this person talked about in that book.
10:38And then you can see a summary of that book.
10:40Or they'll say, hey, this is controversial
10:42because that evidence has actually been disproven
10:44in this book that you're reading a summary of.
10:45And you can read more about that here
10:46and the link to some kind of blog
10:47or some kind of book or some kind of book summary.
10:49So yeah, the really cool thing about Shortform
10:50is that it's a more in-depth version of book summaries.
10:52And I feel like I get so much more value
10:54out of reading a Shortform summary
10:55than any other service I've ever found.
10:57But if you wanna check it out,
10:58link to the video description, not sponsored,
10:59but it is an affiliate link.
11:00So shortform.com slash Ali,
11:01if you wanna help support the channel, et cetera.
11:03All right, so we've talked about consume.
11:04Let's now move on to module four, which is capture.
11:06Now the point of capture
11:07is how do we capture quick thoughts on the fly?
11:11How do we capture things
11:12from the stuff that we have consumed?
11:14This is important if you are a content creator.
11:16It's also really important if you're a writer
11:17because if you can build your own note-taking system,
11:19your own personal knowledge management system,
11:21it makes it so much easier to then create works of,
11:25you know, creative works,
11:25whether you're a writer or a YouTuber or a blogger
11:27or a podcaster or an artist of any kind of sort,
11:29we all need various systems for capture in our lives.
11:32Now, broadly within capture,
11:33I've got two separate ways of capturing things.
11:35I have manual systems for things
11:36that need capturing manually,
11:37and I've got automated systems
11:38for things that can be captured automatically.
11:41So let's start with the automatic variety.
11:42And the key app that I use here is an app, again,
11:45I've been using for several years now,
11:47and it's called Readwise.
11:48Now, Readwise is amazing
11:49because it synchronizes with Kindle,
11:51with Instapaper, with a few different podcast apps.
11:53It synchronizes with iBooks.
11:54And essentially, anytime you highlight something
11:56on any of these different things,
11:57it all syncs it to your Readwise database.
11:59Now, the basic feature of Readwise
12:01is that Readwise will send you an email every day
12:02with five random highlights.
12:04So this is a great way of revisiting stuff
12:05that you might've highlighted from books a few years ago.
12:08And now you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting.
12:09I like seeing my Readwise email every now and then.
12:11But the other cool feature of Readwise
12:12is that it can actually export automatically
12:14to apps like Notion and Roam
12:16and various others along the way.
12:17And so if you're like me and you're a content creator,
12:19or you're trying to build
12:20like a automated note-taking system
12:22for taking insights from the stuff that you've consumed,
12:25you can just chuck them directly
12:26into your note-taking app of choice.
12:28Back in the day, I used to use Roam Research.
12:29I'm still kind of trying to figure out
12:31my perfect note-taking app,
12:32because as I've realized over the last few months
12:34of trying to write my book,
12:36actually, the workflow you need for a note-taking app
12:38for writing a book has more requirements
12:40than the workflow for making YouTube videos, for example.
12:42And so I've actually started using Apple Notes
12:45mostly on that front,
12:45but I'll tell you more about that in the Create section.
12:47And so, for example,
12:48you can see here the Readwise to Notion integration,
12:51and this shows all of my highlights from various books,
12:53and 372 of them so far.
12:56And it does books, it does podcasts, it does articles,
12:58it does tweets even.
12:59So this is really good.
13:00If you wanna check out Readwise,
13:00I'll stick an affiliate link down in the video description,
13:02and that will actually give you a two-month free trial,
13:05where it's normally a one-month free trial,
13:06so you get some value out of it.
13:07And you can see if the app adds any value to your life.
13:09All right, so we've talked about automated capture.
13:11Let's now talk about manual capture,
13:12and there is still a requirement
13:14for manual capture, annoyingly.
13:15For example, it's really hard to take notes from audiobooks.
13:18So if I need to take notes from audiobooks,
13:19I will just open up Apple Notes.
13:21That is my app of choice when capturing stuff.
13:23So, for example, I have this Book Notes folder,
13:25where generally, if I'm listening to an audiobook,
13:27I will take notes on this as we go along.
13:29You know, Coaching Habit, really good book recently.
13:30What Money Can't Buy?
13:31It's for an individual.
13:3212 and a Half by Gary Vaynerchuk, et cetera, et cetera.
13:34And if I'm listening to an audiobook,
13:35if I'm at the gym or if I'm walking around
13:37and I find an interesting point,
13:38I will literally just pause the audiobook.
13:40I'll often screenshot the timestamp
13:42so I can come back to it.
13:43Realistically, I never come back to it.
13:44But then I'll just write a few notes on Apple Notes
13:46of what I'm thinking at the time.
13:47And this is just, I wish someone had an automated way
13:51of capturing actual notes from audiobooks.
13:53That would be game-changing.
13:53I also use manual capture
13:55when it comes to capturing ideas from podcasts.
13:57Now, there is an automated way of doing this,
13:58and that's based on an app called Air.io.
14:01And Air.io links nicely into Readwise.
14:03And I used that for a few months,
14:06I think about a year or two ago.
14:07Actually, for about six months.
14:08But any time I use Air, I just find it's a bit too buggy.
14:12And I think the app's still in beta.
14:14But similarly with podcasts,
14:15if I come across a podcast
14:16and I wanna take some notes on it,
14:17I'll just open up the podcast notes folder on my Apple Notes
14:20and I'll take notes from it there,
14:21unless it's going directly into the book,
14:23in which case it goes directly into my Google Doc.
14:24There's a few other apps that I use for manual capture
14:26as part of the productivity system.
14:28The journaling app that I use
14:29and I have been using since 2016 is called Day One.
14:32And Day One is amazing.
14:33It's a beautifully designed app.
14:34I use it on my Mac, use it on the iPad,
14:36use it on the iPhone.
14:36And it is also available on Android, as far as I know.
14:39And that's great because that's what I use
14:40for my daily-ish journaling.
14:41Although, like I said, I don't do this stuff daily.
14:43I do it like every few days when I remember,
14:47but I think that's way better than nothing.
14:48And I don't like rigidly sticking
14:50to like a daily routine, basically.
14:52And then the app that I use to track my workouts at the gym,
14:55which I'm including in the capture section
14:56because it's like capturing data, is Strong.
14:58Strong is really good.
14:59It basically lets you create custom workouts
15:00and then it tells you what weight you lifted last time
15:02and how many reps.
15:03So if you're like me and you make shit up
15:05when you go to the gym, which is gonna change
15:07because I'm doing a fitness journey at some point soon.
15:09But when I make stuff up,
15:10it at least means that I know what I lifted last time.
15:12And so I can just lift a little bit heavier than that,
15:14you know, incorporating progressive overload
15:16into this thing of trying to live a healthier life
15:18and being a little bit more hench.
15:20All right, let's move on to module five
15:21of the productivity system.
15:22And that is the Create module.
15:24Now, broadly, there's two forms of things that I create.
15:26There is the text-based stuff
15:28and then there is the media-based stuff.
15:30So in terms of text-based stuff,
15:31it's a simple combination of Google Docs
15:34for book-related things,
15:35Notion for any video-related things,
15:36because that's what we use
15:37for project management within the team,
15:39and Apple Notes for most other
15:41like quick note-taking here and there.
15:43I've even been using Apple Notes a lot for book notes
15:45and for book research.
15:46And it's just so easy using Apple Notes.
15:48I have dabbled with all of the other note-taking apps
15:50under the sun.
15:51I've dabbled with Notion and Roam and Evernote
15:53and Obsidian and RemNote and SimpleNote and all this stuff.
15:56And I've just found over time
15:58that Simple is just better for me.
16:00Maybe your mileage may vary.
16:02Maybe I don't have the perfect system
16:03for Roam research just yet.
16:05But I just find myself using Apple Notes
16:06for most of my note-taking needs.
16:08In fact, a lot of the book chapters I've been working on,
16:10I've actually written the first draft in Apple Notes
16:12because there's something about writing in Apple Notes
16:14that just feels less high pressure
16:16than writing in Notion or writing in Google Docs.
16:18And then when it comes to the media apps for presentations,
16:20I tend to use Keynote,
16:21although I'll occasionally use Google Slides as well.
16:23In terms of photos and graphics and thumbnails and stuff,
16:25I tend to use three apps.
16:26I use Apple Photos to manage my photo library.
16:28I use Lightroom, Adobe Lightroom,
16:30if I need to make kind of tweaks to photos
16:32because it's more powerful than Apple Photos is.
16:34And I use Photoshop if I need to do anything fancy
16:36when it comes to image manipulation
16:38to create thumbnails, for example.
16:39Then when it comes to web design and that kind of thing,
16:41I use Figma.
16:42And Figma was how I designed my personal website.
16:44And it's how I mock up thumbnails.
16:45And it's how I do mock-ups for like logos and web designs
16:48and Instagram carousels and the other kind of stuff
16:50that I do on a sort of design-y side.
16:52And then on the video side.
16:53So I use an app called ScreenFlow,
16:55which I'm currently using to record my screen.
16:57That's a Mac app that lets you record a screen.
16:58I use a nice little utility called Recut,
17:00which helps get rid of pauses
17:02from things like videos and podcasts.
17:03I use an app called Descript
17:04when it comes to editing things like a Word document.
17:06So for example, when editing a podcast,
17:08we'll import it into Descript
17:09and we'll be able to just edit it
17:10as if it were a Word document there, which is quite handy.
17:13And for video editing, since 2017,
17:14I've been using Final Cut Pro on the Mac to do video editing.
17:18And this is probably a good time to tell you
17:19that I have my very own online class
17:21about how to edit videos from beginner to pro YouTuber
17:24using Final Cut.
17:25And it's all available completely for free on Skillshare
17:26who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
17:28I'm sure you must've heard by now.
17:29I talk about Skillshare all the time.
17:30I have like 10, 11, 12 classes on Skillshare.
17:33So if you hit the link in the video description
17:34and you sign up for a one month free trial of Skillshare,
17:37for that month, you can watch all of my classes,
17:39including my four hour long class
17:41on how to edit videos in Final Cut Pro.
17:43I've also got three whole classes around productivity.
17:45So if you're watching this video
17:46about the productivity system,
17:47you might like to check those out.
17:48One of them is about productivity for creators.
17:50And it's about the specific productivity tools
17:52and hacks and stuff that I use
17:53to be able to kind of be a content creator
17:55in a productive fashion.
17:56And then the other two are more about
17:57the general principles and strategies
17:59in the world of productivity.
18:00So this video that you're watching right now
18:02is very much based on the tools and the apps,
18:05but the classes on Skillshare are very much based
18:06on the principles and strategies
18:08that you can apply to your life,
18:09no matter what stage of life you're at.
18:10So if any of that sounds up your street,
18:12then do hit the link in the video description.
18:13And the first thousand people to click that link
18:15will get a free one month trial of Skillshare.
18:18Skillshare is incredible.
18:19They sponsor the videos.
18:20I've been teaching on Skillshare for the last, since 2019.
18:22I use Skillshare all the time.
18:23If I wanna learn something, it's just absolutely sick.
18:26So thank you so much Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
18:28And finally, let's move on to module six,
18:30which is miscellaneous slash utilities slash other things
18:32that didn't fit neatly into the other five Cs.
18:34And one of the main apps I use for this
18:36is an app called Alfred.
18:37And Alfred is the first app I ever install
18:39when I get a new Mac.
18:40And when I'm using a friend's Mac
18:41and they don't have Alfred,
18:42I feel the pain of not having Alfred.
18:44Alfred is basically like the Mac spotlight search
18:46on steroids.
18:47So you can search for, you can search the web,
18:49you can search Amazon, you can search for files and folders
18:51and basically anything.
18:52And it just sort of makes my speed at doing stuff
18:56on a computer about three times faster
18:57than clicking on finder, clicking on things,
18:59clicking on a folder or clicking on the dock,
19:01clicking on Safari and going on a URL.
19:03I can just put it into Alfred and it's so quick.
19:05Secondly, I use an app called rise.io,
19:07which I've been using since November, 2021, I believe.
19:11And rise.io is great because it's an automatic time tracker.
19:15And so for example, it can tell me on a weekly or a daily
19:17or a monthly basis,
19:18what proportion of time I'm spending on various things.
19:21So for example, last week,
19:22allegedly I worked for 36 hours
19:24of which eight hours was on Zoom,
19:25four hours was documenting,
19:27four hours in-person meeting, three hours writing.
19:29It takes a few seconds for it to figure out
19:31like what category different apps are in,
19:33but it's actually been genuinely useful for me
19:35to figure out where the hell my time is going.
19:36And then there's a few other Mac utilities that I use.
19:39So for example, there's an app called Moom
19:40that lets me kind of move windows
19:42from one bit of the screen to the other bit of the screen,
19:43which is kind of helpful.
19:44And I also use a combination of Dashlane
19:46and 1Password for password management,
19:48along with a little bit of iCloud Keychain.
19:50We use 1Password for team stuff
19:51and Dashlane for personal stuff.
19:52All right, so those were
19:53the six different modules of the system.
19:54And one thing that I didn't talk about in depth
19:56was the capture and the automated capture module.
19:58That is explored in much, much, much more detail
20:00in this video over here,
20:01which is about this combination of five apps
20:03that's genuinely changed the way
20:04that I approach content creation
20:06and therefore has changed my life.
20:07So click that video over there if you wanna check it out.
20:09Thank you so much for watching
20:10and I'll see you in the next video.
20:10Bye-bye.