If you're going to try inbox infinity, it can help to set a permanent out-of-office responder that lets people know what to expect from you.Should they expect a response from you at all? If so, when? Is there someone else they should contact if they have a specific inquiry? Maybe if you get the same question over and over again, your out-of-office responder could include the answers to some frequently asked questions so you can be more productive without getting bogged down in emails.

Set an out-of-office responder

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to just ignore their inbox, especially in a professional capacity. But for a personal inbox, it may be an easier sell.

Try this with a personal email inbox first

It's really up to you to determine the strength of your approach. Maybe you still check your email once a day. Maybe it's once a week. But the goal is to be less beholden to responding to emails and more focused on other aspects of life.

You can still check your inbox

Unread emails can be a source of anxiety for a lot of people. So instead of trying to read, filter or delete everything in your inbox, what if you just ignored it?In this episode, New York Times technology reporter Taylor Lorenz shares how spending less time on email and changing the way she thought about online communication has increased her productivity and given her back hours of time.

productivity

Productivity

Most of the email in your inbox isn't useful. Instead of managing it, try ignoring it

Did you know your habits are a series of automatic solutions that solve the problems and stresses you face regularly?What happens when we form habits is that our brain has reasoned out a way to solve an issue or resolve a problem it encountered. When our brain picks up new activity or senses a new and unusual situation, it tries to understand how to work around it to get the desired results.

Good Habits Are Solutions

What registers in our minds are cues that keep us away from repeatedly thinking up new solutions for recurring issues/problems.We save our brains the work of going through that process; a neurological pathway has been created that safely moves us through the process till the desired state of peace and stability is attained. Our brains create a rule; if this, then that...

Habits Create Pathways

A habit is a memory of steps you took to solve a problem, this memory replays everytime a similar problem arises. Habits actually help build freedom, because our brains know how to handle a situation. Keep brain space free to handle other tasks and activities...lol

Habits Give Us Freedom

I learned to measure growth based on my daily habits.

James Clear presents strategies to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that help lead to an improved life.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

books

Books

The #1 New York Times bestseller. Over 10 million copies sold! Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving--every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results. If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Here, you'll get a proven system that can take you to new heights. Clear is known for his ability to distill complex topics into simple behaviors that can be easily applied to daily life and work. Here, he draws on the most proven ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience to create an easy-to-understand guide for making good habits inevitable and bad habits impossible. Along the way, readers will be inspired and entertained with true stories from Olympic gold medalists, award-winning artists, business leaders, life-saving physicians, and star comedians who have used the science of small habits to master their craft and vault to the top of their field. Learn how to: <ul><li>make time for new habits (even when life gets crazy);</li></ul><ul><li>overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;</li></ul><ul><li>design your environment to make success easier;</li></ul><ul><li>get back on track when you fall off course;</li></ul>...and much more. Atomic Habits will reshape the way you think about progress and success, and give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits--whether you are a team looking to win a championship, an organization hoping to redefine an industry, or simply an individual who wishes to quit smoking, lose weight, reduce stress, or achieve any other goal.

James Clear is the author of "Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones" He writes about habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement at jamesclear.com. His website receives millions of visitors each month and hundreds of thousands subscribe to his popular email newsletter.His work has appeared in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Time, and on CBS This Morning. He is a regular speaker at Fortune 500 companies and his work is used by teams in the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Learn more at jamesclear.com

James Clear

Atomic Habits

Understanding a subject is like having a mental model of that subject in your mind. And when you understand something, it is easier to retain it.

Understanding

Active recall is when you're testing youself. <ul><li>Testing yourself is part of the learning process.</li><li>At the end of every paragraphs, stop and ask yourself, “What are the key concepts from what I just read?”</li></ul>

Active Recall

Studies found that hand written notes are better than typed written notes. <ul><li>Handwriting takes more time which leads you to only writing the most important things. </li><li>Cornell Note-taking System: one side is for questions and the other side is for the actual notes (the answer to the question). </li></ul>Know what works for you. If you think typing is best for you, then learn how to take note effectively using that system.

Note-taking 

Understanding where a topic fits in the wider picture. Ali Abdaal, a doctor and a YouTuber, likes to say, “Don't miss the forest from the trees.”What this phrase means is that don't get too focused on a certain topic without understanding where it fits in the overall view. See it in the bird's eye view rather than in the worm's eye view to comprehend it better.

Scoping The Subject 

Feynman technique: being able to explain something or teach to a friend or to a 5-year-old what you've just learned. After learning a topic, ask yourself:<ul><li>Does this makes sense?</li><li>Could I explain it to a 5-year-old? </li></ul>Tips:<ol><li>Use simple words in explaining </li><li>Drill down to the essence or be direct to the point </li></ol>

Feynman Technique 

These ideas came from a skillshare class I recently took titled “How to Study for Exams - An Evidence-Based Masterclass” by Ali Abdaal. The class were divided into 3 sections namely 1) Understanding, 2) Remembering, and 3) Focusing. In this quick deepstash idea, I will try to summarize or simplify the 1st section: Understanding.

education

Learning & Education

How to Understand What You're Trying to Learn to Retain More

Workflow documentation is the roadmap to completing essential tasks at your organization. When done correctly, this documentation can be handed off to another individual at your organization, and they can complete the task completely independently.
Rather than a static guide, workflow documentation is a living, breathing record that allows you to track your progress and improve your processes. While software can help you create workflow documentation, you can use anything from a checklist to a whiteboard to make this record.

What Is Workflow Documentation?

<ul>
<li>It helps optimize processes: You can’t improve upon what you can’t even see. </li>
<li>It ensures accountability: Without workflow documentation, anytime there’s a blocker, it’s a challenge to find out who or what caused it.</li>
<li>It takes the confusion out of employee onboarding.</li>
<li>It eases merger or acquisition transitions. Workflow documentation is a tangible and intangible benefit to the buyer, and therefore, the seller.</li>
<li>It helps scale your business: For a business that wants to grow in a scalable manner, not only do the processes and workflows need to be documented, but they need to be systemized and automated.</li>
<li>It safeguards organizational knowledge: When an employee leaves your organization, what happens to the unique processes and systems they developed over the years?</li>
</ul>

Why Is Workflow Documentation Important?

<ul>
<li>Step 1: Define desired outcomes: Once you’ve defined your team’s desired outcomes, you have a better idea of the workflows that need to be documented, and you’re ready for step two.</li>
<li>Step 2: Carry out and capture every step of your current workflows: Now it’s time to perform your workflows in real-time and record each step as you go. </li>
<li>Step 3: Analyze ways to streamline and automate: The more you automate your workflow, the more time and energy you give back to your team so they can do more meaningful work.</li>
<li>Step 4: Continue to test and refine: Workflow documentation can and should change as your business grows and you better optimize your processes.</li>
</ul>

The Steps To Document Workflow

Workflow documentation doesn’t just ensure your organization doesn’t fall apart in a crisis—it helps it thrive in good times and bad.

business

Business

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Why Your Team Should Invest Time In Workflow Documentation

There are normal people, who <a href="https://www.raptitude.com/2013/10/6-helpful-reminders-for-the-overwhelmed-person/">get overwhelmed</a> on those occasions when they have more obligations to fulfill than time in which to fulfill them. Procrastinators are constantly overwhelmed because even when we do have time, we don’t make use of it until we no longer have enough of it. If you're one, you'd understand the being late for everything, undone lists for months and missing appointments.

I Procrastinate

Consider your "stuff" as individual happenings that are best treated individually. Ignore all the others while you target to get started on at least one of those To-Do tasks.  The distinction between stuff and things is important. Once you’re treating each obligation as separate from the whole bundle of “stuff”, you can see that they each have a very predictable life cycle. Recognizing each problem’s separateness brings it from the realm of the abstract and endless to that of the concrete and temporary.

Ignore Your Stuff

The problem starts when you know what you need to do, but don't. The anxiety, shame and fear lie between the knowing and the doing. Nothing else happens in this phase except your suffering and aging, we can call this the Unproductive Phase.  At some point, often spurred by a crisis of some kind, you start to do the thing. Here's where the anxiety usually spikes — you are entering the Productive Phase, where failure, embarrassment, and the discovery of your own incompetence go from being future-dwelling specters to real-time dangers. That’s why procrastinators avoid ever getting to this part.

Life Cycle of a Thing

The anxiety from the Productive Phase, soon drown as you begin to realize that the task is pretty doable, is finite and consists of small, ordinary actions like Googling, reading, and sketching.  Your sense of capability swells and the fear recedes. This phase takes less and less willpower and courage as it goes on until the task is in your past, and the life cycle ends.When you extend the Unproductive phase, the anxiety continues to rise. Deadlines whoosh by, making it more and more absurd and embarrassing that you haven’t acted yet, which only paralyzes you further.

Receding Fear of Tasks

A Serious Procrastinator might experience the overlapping fear from many sources and begin to see them as a single problem: I suck at life. This makes it harder for them to do any task with longer Unproductive Phases and increased anxiety with a daring crisis to force them to act. Such a person is almost helpless until they know to treat each of those lines as a single, predictable course of events. Ultimately there’s no other way to deal with them. To tend to one we must ignore the rest while we do so.

Hell Zone

It is to end the Counterproductive phase as soon as possible. This end is always a concrete, bodily action, often taken with some trepidation: opening up the word processor, dialing a phone number, or getting out a piece of paper so you can sketch up a plan.

The smart thing to do is obvious

Many or most procrastinators are pessimists, habitually overestimating the difficulty of what they are avoiding. They think doing it is the hard part. But not doing it is much harder.  The odd task that turns out unexpectedly hard doesn’t change anything — the counterproductive phase will always be counterproductive, and the anxiety will always shrink with action. The moment you start acting on something, you are at the beginning of the end of the anxiety associated with that thing.

Beginning of the End

When you halt your work on a given thing due to fear or aversion, you are re-entering the nonproductive phase. Physical action ceases, and pointless rumination begins. Anxiety will rise until you enter the Productive Phase again. This is a good reason not to switch tasks unnecessarily. Push one thing at least until it is coasting, if not finished. The moment you start avoiding action again, the process restarts.

Halt the Pointless Rumination

The rising anxiety associated with a particular thing comes from a misapprehension of what it will actually be like to do the work.  The anxiety associated with the work is made of abstract, big-picture emotional concerns, about reputation, legacy, anxiety for the future, self-esteem, comparisons to others — worries about who you are, rather than what you’re doing. Once you enter the productive phase you enter the world of the concrete and finite, putting your related existential despair on the backburner. You can’t see an obligation for what it actually is until you’re doing it.

Moving to the Other Side

The critical point is always where you enter the productive phase, and this is accomplished by starting alone. Finishing is only a matter of starting from where you are, as many times as you have to, until it’s done.  Most of the resistance and stress is piled up on the boundary between the phases, and so once you’ve started it’s mostly behind you. You finish a thing by starting it until it’s done.

Finish it by Starting

I have a special sympathy for sufferers of a particular human problem, and I get more emails about it than just about any other topic. There are normal people, who get overwhelmed on those occasions when they have more obligations […]

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

How to Get Yourself to Do Things

Many artists and creative professionals find themselves feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, and even paralyzed when they cannot meet their work’s mental and physical demands. Stress is a natural part of life, but it can also be detrimental to your health and creativity if not appropriately managed. In this blog post, I will discuss how stress impacts our mental state and our creativity levels and share some tips on managing stress so you can continue being productive despite it.

Artists and stress

Stress is all around us every day. Getting caught in traffic, rush hour, dealing with difficult customers at work, screaming children, barking dogs, and demanding bosses; are examples of chronic stress. The stress we experience as creative artists would be considered a combination of chronic and acute stress because we are constantly dealing with deadlines, mental blocks, and other stressors that threaten our creativity levels. But on top of those self-imposed stressors, a creative professional may also have to deal with high levels of uncertainty in a competitive field.

Two types of stress

Stress can cause mental disorders because it impacts the neurotransmitters responsible for relaying messages between the brain and other body parts. For example, serotonin is a neurotransmitter that regulates moods, and cortisol is known as the stress hormone. When we experience prolonged periods of high levels of these hormones in our system, they can disrupt mental health.

Mental health and stress

Physical health is also negatively impacted by stress. According to the Harvard Medical School, Chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and obesity are all associated with unusually high stress levels in the body leading to adverse health consequences.

Physical health and stress

The psychological side effects of too little stress might also be harmful to us as creative professionals. It’s vital to understand that stress isn’t always negative. <a class="idea-content-link" href="https://news.berkeley.edu/2013/04/16/researchers-find-out-why-some-stress-is-good-for-you/">Research shows </a>

Good stress

<ol><li>Eat Healthy and Exercise Regularly</li><li>Spend Time with Family Members & Close Friends</li><li>Practice Yoga</li><li>Mindfulness Activities</li><li>Belly Breathing Technique for Stress Reduction</li><li>Avoid Excessive Alcohol or Substance Use</li><li>Affirmations and Positive Self Talk</li><li>Laugh More</li><li>Get Plenty of Sleep</li><li>Keep a Gratitude List</li></ol>

Ways to de-stress

The right amount of stress can improve performance and health and is especially beneficial for improving brain function. Too much or too little will have negative consequences on both your mood and physical well-being, so you need to find your “sweet spot.” So, what do you need to manage stress as a creative professional?

Find your sweet spot

"Finding ways to cope with stress and avoid overwhelm is an individual journey and, luckily, there’s no shortage of research-backed strategies available. Try them out and see which ones help you lower stress while also remaining activated and creatively productive."

Dana P. Rowe

Many artists and creative professionals feel overwhelmed and paralyzed when they cannot meet their work’s mental and physical demands.

mentalhealth

Mental Health

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

creativity

Creativity

Managing Stress and Making Art

All of us have experienced creativity in some form or another. Like when you come up with new ideas, invent something innovative, develop an original plan – the list goes on and on. There are many books about how creativity is defined and how to teach people creative thinking skills, so I’m certainly not going to try and cover everything here. Having a few creative techniques at your disposal will make the creative process easier and hopefully get the creative juices flowing! This article shares 11 ways to get inspired.

What is creativity?

In 1985 Edward DeBono wrote a book which unveiled a problem-solving model consisting of six mindsets. The six hats represent different perspectives and have been identified by their colors: Blue Hat for rational, White Hat for logical, Yellow hat for positive, Red hat for emotional, Black Hat for negative thinking, and Green hat for positive. You can wear the six different colored hats to try on a different perspective. Each hat gives you access to information that is usually blocked by other perspectives and allows your mind multiple entry points in solving problems...

Six Thinking Hats Technique

Yep, you read that right. Take a minute and get unfocused. As the saying goes, “the best ideas come to us when we’re not even trying.” <a class="idea-content-link" href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797618820626">Research studies </a>show that those so-called eureka moments often happen for writers and physicists alike during non-optimal states or when their mind is wandering. A simple way to open your mind and increase creativity is by staring at an object and allowing your eyes (and mind) to soften focus. Doing so will often help unlock solutions that might not occur if we were in a state of hyper-focused attention on one detail or idea at the expense of others.

Stop being so focused

Sometimes, it can be hard to deal with negative emotions, but here’s something to try next time you’re feeling down or grumpy: get creative. The creative process has been proven to help people get out of a bad mood because they focus their minds entirely on solving an issue or problem. Exercising your creative skills can help you forget whatever it was that made you upset in the first place. <a class="idea-content-link" href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.687">Research has found </a>that positive and negative emotional states can actually boost creativity.

Get emotional

A mind map is a great way to come up with ideas and boost creativity. You can think of it as an informal brainstorming session that helps you gather your thoughts without worrying about being categorized or organized later. It’s an excellent tool for making connections between ideas, developing one’s intuition, and boosting creative thinking. Mind mapping is ideal for recording your wildest and craziest ideas without stopping to be critical or self-edit. You can always critique later on and generate new ideas by “piggybacking” your original ideas.

Mind map

According to Stanford researchers, walking helps with creativity and also improves sleep quality. The study found that when participants were given two hours of mild activity throughout the day, including taking a walk in between lunch and dinner, they experienced increased cognitive function compared to those who remained seated for the entire period. Taking a meditative stroll outside is one of the most effective techniques to develop new ideas or solutions. Getting present in nature is therapeutic and inspirational.

Take a walk

It’s pretty much common knowledge that meditation is not only restorative and encourages healthy brain function, but the contribution it made to my own creativity makes it a “must mention” here. You are the best judge of how you should meditate to improve your own creative thinking. Your body and mind will tell you, but remember that even five minutes can help you feel more centered and open-minded.

Meditate

It is common for job advertisements to mention the importance of curiosity, passion, and inquisitiveness. Employers want employees who have a thirst for knowledge; they are looking for innovative thinking skills or people who can think outside the box. What sources of information should you explore fully before starting the idea generation phase? Are you curious about all aspects or just some things? Is there a “something more” that you’re not considering here?”

Stay curious

"Successful people with a growth mindset have an optimistic approach to challenges instead of those who see them as insurmountable obstacles; these individuals also try new things more often and let go of old ideas more quickly than their less successful counterparts."

One of the most widespread misconceptions about creativity is that it's only for artists. In fact, creativity can be applied to any aspect of life.

Science-Based Tips to Boost Your Creativity

Arguably, time management is all life is. Yet the modern discipline known as time management—like its hipper cousin, productivity—is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooking all your dinners for the week in one big batch on Sundays.

Consider all the technology intended to help us gain the upper hand over time: by any sane logic, in a world with dishwashers, microwaves, and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant, thanks to all the hours freed up. But this is nobody’s actual experience. Instead, life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient.

The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead—and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.

The paradox of limitation

It means organizing your days with the understanding that you definitely won’t have time for everything you want to do, or that other people want you to do—and so, at the very least, you can stop beating yourself up for failing. <ul><li>Since hard choices are unavoidable, what matters is learning to make them consciously, deciding what to focus on and what to neglect, rather than letting them get made by default.</li><li>And it also means standing firm in the face of the “fear of missing out,” because you come to realize that missing out on something—indeed, on almost everything—is basically guaranteed.</li></ul>

A limit-embracing attitude to time

I’m not suggesting our troubles with time are somehow all in the mind, or that a simple change of outlook will cause them all to vanish. Time pressure comes largely from forces outside ourselves: from a cutthroat economy; from the loss of the social safety nets and family networks that used to help ease the burdens of work and childcare; and from the sexist expectation that women must excel in their careers while assuming most of the responsibilities at home. None of that will be solved by self-help alone.

Acquire a reputation for doing your work at amazing speed, and you’ll be given more of it.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian Parkinson wrote in 1955.And it doesn’t apply only to work. It applies to everything that needs doing.

Parkinson’s law

Rendering yourself more efficient—either by implementing various productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder —won’t generally result in the feeling of having “enough time,” because,the demands will increase to offset any benefits. Far from getting things done, you’ll be creating new things to do.For example: it’s not simply that you never get through your email; it’s that the process of “getting through your email” actually generates more email.

The efficiency trap

The modern world provides an endless supply of things that seem worth doing, and so there arises an inevitable and unbridgeable gap between what you’d ideally like to do and what you actually can do.The internet makes this all much more difficult because it promises to help you make better use of your time, while simultaneously exposing you to vastly more potential uses for your time—so that the very tool you’re using to get the most out of life makes you feel as though you’re missing out on even more of it.

The bottomless bucket list

The point isn’t to eradicate procrastination but to choose more wisely what you’re going to procrastinate on, in order to focus on what matters most. The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.<ul><li>The good procrastinator accepts the fact that you can’t get everything done, then decides as wisely as possible what tasks to focus on and what to neglect. </li><li>The bad procrastinator finds himself paralyzed; here, procrastination is a strategy of emotional avoidance.</li></ul>

Procrastination of some kind is inevitable

We tend to think of it merely as a matter of not being particularly interested in whatever it is we’re doing, but in fact, it’s an intense reaction to the uncomfortable reality of confronting your limited control.You’re obliged to deal with how your experience is unfolding at this moment, to resign yourself to the reality that this is it. No wonder we seek out distractions online, where it feels as though no limits apply.

Why boredom seems  aggressively unpleasant

It states that any task you’re planning to tackle will always take longer than you expect.In other words, even if you know that a given project is likely to overrun, and you adjust your schedule accordingly, it’ll just overrun your new estimated finishing time, too. It follows from this that the standard advice about planning—to give yourself twice as long as you think you’ll need—could actually make matters worse.

Hofstadter’s law

The truth is that it’s impossible to become so efficient and organized that you could respond to a limitless number of incoming demands. It’s usually equally impossible to spend what feels like “enough time” on your work and with your children, and on socializing, traveling, or engaging in political activism. But there’s a deceptive feeling of comfort in believing that you’re in the process of constructing such a life, which is due to come into being any day now.

There's never "enough time"

<ul><li>Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity. It’s better to begin from the assumption that tough choices are inevitable and to focus on making them consciously and well.</li><li>Focus on one big project at a time and see it to completion before moving on to what’s next.</li><li>Decide in advance what to fail at. You’ll inevitably end up underachieving at something, simply because your time and energy are finite.</li><li>Focus on what you’ve already completed, not just on what’s left to complete.</li><li>Consciously pick your battles in charity, activism, and politics.</li><li>Embrace boring and single-purpose technology; choose devices with only one purpose, such as the Kindle e-reader.</li><li>Seek out novelty in the mundane. Pay more attention to every moment, however mundane.</li><li>When presented with a challenging or boring moment, try deliberately adopting an attitude of curiosity.</li><li>Whenever a generous impulse arises in your mind—to give money, check in on a friend, send an email praising someone’s work—act on the impulse right away, rather than putting it off until later.</li><li>Practice being ok with doing nothing.</li></ul>

Ten tools for embracing
your finitude

Time is our biggest worry: there is too little of it. The award-winning, renowned Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman offers a lively, entertaining philosophical guide to time and time management, setting aside superficial efficiency solutions in favour of reckoning with and finding joy in the finitude of human life. The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks. Nobody needs telling there isn't enough time. We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless struggle against distraction; and we're deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and "lifehacks" to optimize our days. But such techniques often just end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks. Drawing on the insights of ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with "getting everything done," he introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we've come to think about time aren't inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we've made, as individuals and as a society--and that we could do things differently.

timemanagement

Time Management

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER   “This is the most important book ever written about time management.”  —Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of WorkLife What if you stopped trying to do everything, so that you could finally get around to what counts? We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks. Four Thousand Weeks is an uplifting, engrossing and deeply realistic exploration of the challenge. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' it introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count.

Oliver Burkeman

Four Thousand Weeks

Tasks . Schedules . Reminders These will definitely make you productive. But they are quite rigid. Sometimes you just don't wanna follow them. And that's why your day might need fluidity!

Rigid Productivity

After following the rigid productive methods for a long time , a person gains confidence in their routine.With this confidence you can make productivity fluid.Here's how you do it-<ol><li>Focus hours:Choose the most productive hours of your day. Each day you will work with focus in these hours. These hours are fixed in your routines </li><li>Long term goals:Next choose the long term goals you are working towards. Maybe you want to meditate or draw. These activity can occur at any time of the day other than the focus hours.</li></ol>

Fluid Productivity

<ul><li>Focus hours: 5am-7am , 5pm-7pm (These hours will remain the same everyday)</li><li>Long Term Goals: Yoga for half hour, writing for half hour. (These activities can occur at any time other than focus hours. You might do writing in the evening one day or in the morning the other day.)</li><li>Finally the rest free time can be used for self care like hygene, or maybe playing games or watching YouTube.</li></ul>

An Example Of Fluid Productivity

This will give you a freedom of choosing your sleep time everyday, it will let you adapt your schedule if any random work pops up.On the other hand, if you have not devoloped self control then it might not be too advantageous to you.Conclusion:If you have confidence in your self-control but do want to provide yourself some freedom of what you do on a daily basis , then try this system.

Pros And Cons Of Fluid Productivity

Productivity is often rigid. But can it be fluid?

Utkarsh Mishra on Oct 26

Massive success is possible only through massive action, that's not true. It's the tiny improvements (hard to notice), that create incredible change. The Math?1% better every day for a year will compound to nearly 38 times better.1% worse every day for over a  year will bring you close to zero! Your habits can compound against you - stress or negative self-talk. Or compound for you - knowledge, productivity, skills and relationships.

Massive Action vs 1% Improvement

When we start something, we expect linear progress, but it's always a gradual unnoticeable small change.  James Clear calls the chase before the 'Breakthrough' as the "Valley of Disappointment", after which the compounding outcomes are seen. This needs Patience.

The Truth About Progress

"Forget about Goals, Focus on Systems instead" Goal - Result of what you want to accomplishSystem - Processes that lead to results Set SMART goals, but you could also succeed with just focusing on Systems.

Goals vs Systems

What if you have only Goals, and no Systems?<ol><li>Win/Lose - Successful and unsuccessful people share the same goals.</li><li>Momentary Change - Achieving a goal changes your life only for a moment.</li><li>Either/ Or Conflict - Either you can achieve the goal and succeed, or you don't and are a failure. </li><li>Goal vs Long Term Progress - What do you do after achieving the goal, your motivation mostly ends right after it's achieved. And you'll slip back to your old routines. </li></ol>

Problem With Goals

Atomic habits are small routines and behaviors that accumulate to produce incremental positive outcomes over time. Big breakthroughs get more attention that small improvements, but what matters are the daily decisions and actions we take.

System of Atomic Habits

Just as atoms are the building blocks of molecules, atomic habits are the building blocks of remarkable results.

Understanding the 0.1% efforts could be so much more in the long run, learn how through Atomic Habits.

Atomic Habits can help you improve every day, no matter what your goals are. As one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, James Clear reveals practical strategies that will help you form good habits, break bad ones, and master tiny behaviors that lead to big changes. If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. Instead, the issue is with your system. There is a reason bad habits repeat themselves over and over again, it's not that you are not willing to change, but that you have the wrong system for changing. “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems” - James Clear I’m a huge fan of this book, and as soon as I read it I knew it was going to make a big difference in my life, so I couldn’t wait to make a video on this book and share my ideas. Here is a link to James Clear’s website, where I found he uploads a tonne of useful posts on motivation, habit formation and human psychology. https://jamesclear.com/ If you liked this summary and you want to go deeper into Atomic Habits, here is a link to the book (Nothing Beats the book!) 📕Atomic Habits by James Clear - https://amzn.to/2Yk6ulK If you are more into Audiobooks, here is a link to that. You can get this audiobook for free if you sign up for a free Audible trial with the link below. 🎧Grab Atomic Habits audiobook on an Audible trial with 2 free books - https://amzn.to/3A5r32l 🗎If you want to help out my channel, please consider grabbing the PDF mindmap and illustrations I made to go along with this summary - https://escapingordinary.gumroad.com/ Lessons you will learn from reading Atomic Habits • How to make time for new habits ; • How to overcome a lack of motivation and willpower; • How to design your environment to make success easier; • How to get back on track if your habits break down • How to overcome the plateau of latent potential ★★★ TIMESTAMPS ★★★ 00:00 Introduction 01:32 Atomic Habits 07:15 Law 1 - Make it Obvious 11:06 Law 2 - Make it Attractive 15:38 Law 3 - Make it Easy 18:13 Law 4 - Make it Satisfying 21:35 How I personally use this book Here are some of the other summaries and non fiction book recommendations you can find on this channel The Laws of Human Nature (Detailed Summary) -https://youtu.be/uhWzVdGmX2w The 7 Habits of Highly Effective people (Detailed Summary) https://youtu.be/A-LJ6wvk7Cw The Four Agreements (Detailed Summary) https://youtu.be/gpwuq5wOvwI Limitless by Jim Kwik (Detailed Summary) https://youtu.be/naEkf_As9kU Rich Dad Poor Dad | (Detailed Summary) https://youtu.be/eDa1U9qJKxo Here is another good summary of this book by Ali Abdaal - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT7tQzmGRLA Thankyou for watching this animated summary of Atomic Habits. Please Subscribe :)

Atomic Habits can help you improve every day, no matter what your goals are. As one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, James Clear reveals practical strategies that will help you form good habits, break bad ones, and master tiny behaviors that lead to big changes.

If you're having trouble changing your habits, the problem isn't you. Instead, the issue is with your system. There is a reason bad habits repeat themselves over and over again, it's not that you are not willing to change, but that you have the wrong system for changing.
 
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems” - James Clear 

I’m a huge fan of this book, and as soon as I read it I knew it was going to make a big difference in my life, so I couldn’t wait to make a video on this book and share my ideas.

Here is a link to James Clear’s website, where I found he uploads a tonne of useful posts on motivation, habit formation and human psychology.

https://jamesclear.com/


If you liked this summary and you want to go deeper into Atomic Habits, here is a link to the book (Nothing Beats the book!)

📕Atomic Habits by James Clear - https://amzn.to/2Yk6ulK

If you are more into Audiobooks, here is a link to that. You can get this audiobook for free if you sign up for a free Audible trial with the link below. 

🎧Grab Atomic Habits audiobook on an Audible trial with 2 free books - https://amzn.to/3A5r32l


🗎If you want to help out my channel, please consider grabbing the PDF mindmap and illustrations I made to go along with this summary - https://escapingordinary.gumroad.com/

Lessons you will learn from reading Atomic Habits
  •  How to make time for new habits ;
  •  How to overcome a lack of motivation and willpower;
  •  How to design your environment to make success easier;
  •  How to get back on track if your habits break down
  •  How to overcome the plateau of latent potential
  

★★★ TIMESTAMPS ★★★
00:00 Introduction
01:32 Atomic Habits 
07:15 Law 1 - Make it Obvious
11:06 Law 2 - Make it Attractive
15:38 Law 3 - Make it Easy
18:13 Law 4 - Make it Satisfying
21:35 How I personally use this book



Here are some of the other summaries and non fiction book recommendations you can find on this channel 

The Laws of Human Nature (Detailed Summary) -https://youtu.be/uhWzVdGmX2w

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective people (Detailed Summary) https://youtu.be/A-LJ6wvk7Cw
 
The Four Agreements (Detailed Summary) https://youtu.be/gpwuq5wOvwI
 
Limitless by Jim Kwik (Detailed Summary) https://youtu.be/naEkf_As9kU

Rich Dad Poor Dad | (Detailed Summary)  https://youtu.be/eDa1U9qJKxo

Here is another good summary of this book by Ali Abdaal - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT7tQzmGRLA
 

Thankyou for watching this animated summary of Atomic Habits. Please Subscribe :)

I like to bring great books and ideas to life in a visual way.  I love reading and listening to books, so I want to share with others books and Authors I recommend.

My mission for this channel is to get people (especially younger folk)  enthusiastic about picking up books more often and  mindlessly scrolling through TikTok, IG etc. less often. 

FAQ
What do you use to make the videos?

I use everything Adobe, but the main programs I use are
-Illustrator
-After Effects
-Audition
-Premier Pro
-Photoshop (but not often) 

Why are you so slow with your content?

Everything you see in the video was put together by myself, and they take a longggg time, from reading the book, doing voiceovers, making illustrations, editing etc. I currently have a FT job, but I hope in the future I can go PT and create content more often :) 






Escaping Ordinary (B.C Marx) 

How to become 37.78 times better at anything | Atomic Habits summary (by James Clear)

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