3 Steps To Make Hard Work Feel Like Netflix

Summary

In the video, "3 Steps To Make Hard Work Feel Like Netflix," the creator shares a method to transform arduous tasks into engaging and effortless activities by entering a state of flow, typically associated with leisure activities like Netflix and gaming. The key to redirecting this flow towards productive tasks is to become a "time accountant." This involves pre-allocating your time with a structured color-coded system, tracking time spent daily, and assessing it against an ideal time portfolio. By doing so, one can significantly boost productivity and eliminate time-wasting activities.

Highlights

• Transform hard tasks to feel like watching Netflix. 📺
• Effortless flow state can apply to productive work. 🚀
• Pre-allocate time like budgeting finances. 💰
• Color-code activities for easy tracking. 🎨
• Review your daily time usage like a bank statement. 📊
• Aim for 50% time on 10x tasks, eliminate junk time. 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Effortless focus can transform your toughest tasks. 🌟
• Enter a flow state to achieve more without feeling drained. 🧘‍♂️
• Become a 'time accountant' of your life for productivity. ⏰
• Pre-allocate and color-code your activities for clarity. 🎨
• Track your time to identify patterns and eliminate waste. 📈
• An ideal time portfolio maximizes productivity and recovery. 💪
• Minimal initial effort in tracking time yields high returns. 💼

Overview

Imagine a world where tackling your hardest tasks feels as effortless as binging your favorite Netflix series. According to Outperform, this isn't just a dream—it's possible through a psychological state known as 'flow.' By understanding this state, which makes us lose track of time while engaging in activities like gaming or watching shows, you can apply the same effortless focus to your work and achieve significant productivity.

Outperform emphasizes the importance of becoming a "time accountant." This involves meticulously planning and categorizing your time, much like budgeting financial resources. By dividing your time into categories such as work, relationships, and leisure, and tracking it with color codes, you gain clarity over your daily activities. The use of calendar tools and dedicated apps helps in visualizing and optimizing this process.

The ultimate goal, as highlighted in the video, is to allocate the majority of your time (50%) on high-impact (10x) tasks, minimize junk activities, and use the rest for essential low-impact tasks and recovery. With diligent time tracking and reviewing, you can reshape your daily habits to enhance productivity and aim for an ideal balance that supports both professional goals and personal well-being.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Effortless Focus The chapter introduces the concept of making difficult tasks feel as effortless as engaging activities like watching Netflix or playing video games. It highlights that scientific methods exist to achieve this effortless state, which the author has used to significantly grow their channel and help clients increase productivity. The focus is on transforming tough work into enjoyable and exciting activities by understanding the effortless state induced by media like video games, social media, and streaming services.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Understanding Flow State The chapter 'Understanding Flow State' explains the concept of flow as a psychological state where an individual's prefrontal cortex becomes less active. This lessened activity makes a person lose track of time and space, allowing them to become fully immersed in their current activity. Although this state facilitates focus and engagement, it can also lead to a misjudgment of time spent on tasks, as the conscious tracking of time is diminished. The discussion also points out how this underestimation of time occurs, highlighting the ease with which people can become absorbed in activities without realizing the passage of time.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Effortless Focus on Work Effortless Focus on Work explores the concept of achieving a state of flow that, while seemingly effortless, can be mentally exhausting if applied to the wrong activities. It highlights the potential waste of brainpower when this focus is misdirected but also offers hope. If someone can effortlessly engage with activities like binge-watching Netflix, scrolling through social media, or playing video games, the same focus can be redirected towards more productive work. The mechanism behind this focused state is universal and can be harnessed for beneficial purposes.
• 02:00 - 03:30: Time Accounting The chapter 'Time Accounting' discusses the concept of directing one's focus and capabilities towards more meaningful and productive activities. It emphasizes that people are inherently capable of solving complex problems and that the same effortlessness they apply to hobbies or less meaningful tasks can be channeled into work and projects that matter. The text provides examples of musicians, entrepreneurs, and chess players who dedicate their time and effort towards perfecting their skills in their respective fields. The underlying message is to redirect our natural abilities from unproductive tasks to those that contribute positively to our personal and professional growth.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Pre-allocating and Categorizing Time The chapter discusses the importance of pre-allocating and categorizing time to align with one's life goals. It emphasizes the need to actively create the life you desire rather than passively consuming content, like binge-watching Netflix. The chapter encourages readers to adopt a state of productive activities by being conscious of time management and avoiding the feeling of wasted time. It introduces the concept of becoming a 'time accountant' by drawing parallels with financial management, highlighting that careful time allocation prevents wastage, similar to how budgeting prevents financial ruin.
• 05:30 - 09:00: Tracking and Reviewing Time The chapter discusses the concept of tracking and reviewing time, using the analogy of how money is tracked and managed. It highlights that unlike money, time does not have a clear, automatic record, making it easier to overlook how it's spent. People are instinctively cautious with money because they can clearly see their balances and expenditure, which prompts them to question the value of their purchases and cut unnecessary spending. However, the same cautious approach is often not applied to time because there's no similar automatic tracking system for it.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Analyzing and Optimizing Time Allocation The chapter discusses the importance of tracking and optimizing how we allocate our time. It draws a parallel between time and money, suggesting that just as financial spending can lead to debt, unmonitored time usage can lead to 'time debt.' The chapter highlights that while people often develop intricate investment strategies for money, they rarely apply similar thoughtfulness to how they spend their time.

3 Steps To Make Hard Work Feel Like Netflix Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Imagine having your hardest task feel as effortless as binge watching Netflix. Well, science shows there's actually a simple way you can achieve this. And it's the same method I use to grow my channel past 100,000 subscribers and constantly help my clients double their productivity. So, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to transform the toughest work into something as easy, exciting, and enjoyable as your favorite show. First, we have to understand how we can do activities like watching Netflix, scroll social media, and play video games for hours without breaking a sweat. What they all have in common is that they put you in a state where things feels effortless. Video games in particular
• 00:30 - 01:00 will put you in a state psychologist call flow. In flow state, your prefrontal cortex, responsible for tracking time, planning, and making conscious decisions becomes less active. This causes you to lose track of time and space and allows you to effortlessly immerse yourself in the activity you're doing. This is why it's so easy to waste so much time because in the moment, you don't actually feel like you're losing time. It's only afterwards once you consciously catch yourself that you realize how much time you wasted. This explains why it's so easy for us to grossly underestimate how much time we actually spend on certain activities. But here is another critical fact.
• 01:00 - 01:30 Although this state feels effortless, it's still mentally taxing. When you spend hours in flow doing the wrong activities, you're not only evaporating your precious time, you're also draining your brain power. Now, here's the good news. If you can effortlessly binge watch Netflix for hours, rapidly make hundreds of decisions scrolling through social media, or solve complex problems playing video games all day, and you absolutely have the capability to apply that same effortless focus to your work. The underlying mechanism is exactly the same. Think about it. Video games often
• 01:30 - 02:00 present problems as complex, if not more complex, than the task you face at work. If you can solve those problems effortlessly, you can tackle your real life challenges, too. You're already capable. You're just currently directing your powerful ability toward the wrong activities. And we've all seen examples of individuals who successfully channel this state into meaningful work. Musicians who stay up all night perfecting their songs, entrepreneurs and professionals who immerse themselves deeply in their projects, working all day, and chess players who engage in intense matches for hours. It's time to stop directing your effortless focus toward activities that don't move you
• 02:00 - 02:30 closer to the life you truly want. Instead of binge watching Netflix, it's time to start binge creating the life you desire. But how exactly do you start applying this state toward productive activities? Let me show you that in the next step. Remember how I mentioned that you don't actually feel like you're wasting time in the moment? And it's only afterward when you see how much time has passed that you realize how much you've lost. The first step directly addresses that issue, becoming a time accountant of your life. But what exactly does that mean? Well, let's consider how we handle something else valuable, our money. The main reason most people don't go broke every week is
• 02:30 - 03:00 because money is automatically tracked. Even if you ignore your bank balance, there's still a clear record of every dollar spent. When your account hits zero, you simply can't spend more. Sure, some people use credit and go into debt, but eventually that debt shows up clearly in your statements. It's impossible to ignore. That's precisely why we're careful about not wasting money on useless things. Before spending, we instinctively ask ourselves, is this worth buying? And if we realize we spent money on something pointless, we quickly cut it out. But with our time, we don't think same way. This is because there's no automatic
• 03:00 - 03:30 tracking or immediate feedback. showing you that you over spent your day. You can easily blow 5 hours on Netflix or Instagram without realizing how costly it is until after the fact. If time was automatically tracked like money, we will be doing the equivalent of being into massive debt. You can also say that we are in fact in massive time debt. Not only are most of us in massive time debt, we also don't put much thought into our time portfolio. With money, we create sophisticated investment portfolio strategies and carefully think of return on investments. Yet, when it comes to time, something far more
• 03:30 - 04:00 valuable. we stop thinking about it strategically. You might have your money portfolio all planned out, but what about your time portfolio? Every second, minute, and hour of your day is an investment. Why invest it on activities with negative ROIs instead of activities yielding positive ROIs? The first of them is to build awareness of how you actually spend your minutes. Just like how companies hire accounting companies to meticulously track your money, you have to be a time accountant for yourself and track your time. Just like how business budget their money for the future, you want to budget your time allocation for the future. By clearly
• 04:00 - 04:30 tracking and budgeting your time allocation, you'll gain better control over what your future self does. By doing this, you'll be better able to apply that effortless flow state into productive and meaningful activities and skillfully avoid directing it into unproductive activities. So, how exactly do you become your own time account and start allocating your time more wisely? Let me walk you through exactly how to do that next. There are three simple steps to becoming your own time account. Let's start with the first one. First, you'll want to pre-allocate your time, meaning you plan out your activities before they actually happen. Think of it
• 04:30 - 05:00 like how companies budget their finances ahead of time. By planning ahead, you make things much easier and clearer down the road. To make this even more effective, categorize and color code your activities clearly. Here's the system I recommend. First, work and business. Second, active recovery like gym, walks, ice bath, meditation, etc. Third, relationships, which includes time spent with family and friends. Fourth, junk time, which are activities that are a complete waste of time, like mindlessly scrolling social media. And the last one, off time, any other unnecessary activities like
• 05:00 - 05:30 transportation and errands. For work, I recommend dividing it into three more subcategories. First, 10x task or deep work. These are the most high lever tasks that will yield you the most results in the long term for your business or profession. Second, 2x task or admin. These are admin tasks that you need to do to keep up with your work or business. And lastly, zero task. These are tasks that don't move you forward in your business or work and aren't really necessary either. In other words, these are just productive procrastination and can even be minus 1x task. You can subcategorize the other main categories
• 05:30 - 06:00 too, but these work categories are the most critical task. Now, start planning your upcoming week directly in your calendar. Schedule your activities and color code them according to the categories we just discussed. Quick tip. If you run out of colors in your calendar app, you can use emojis to differentiate between the categories with the same colors. for tasks you repeatedly do or want to establish as habits. Set them as recurring events. This makes your future planning faster and easier. Do your weekly planning at a time and place where you're calm, relaxed, and clear-headed. By doing so, you're essentially outsourcing decisions
• 06:00 - 06:30 from your future self who might feel emotional, tired, or irrational to your best self right now, who's calm and rational. Personally, I prefer doing this every Sunday. It sets me up for a focused, productive, and intentional week ahead. Next, you want to track your time, but there's a specific way to do this effectively. When I first started, I tried to track my time throughout my day. This never stopped. It felt disruptive, as if I was constantly starting and stopping. Imagine playing a football match and pausing every 5 minutes to write down exactly what happened. It would completely ruin your momentum and make it impossible to
• 06:30 - 07:00 immerse yourself in the game. This is what it felt like when I tried to time and track everything in the moment. Instead, you play the entire match first, and afterward, you review and analyze your performance. Tracking your time is exactly the same. Instead of stopping to track every single activity in the moment, you should track after the fact. Here's how you do it practically. At the end of your workday, or alternatively at the end of your entire day, pull out your calendar and take a few minutes to reflect and track how you actually spend your time. Now, you might be thinking, "How will I remember everything I did?" Good
• 07:00 - 07:30 question. This is why we pre-allocated our time earlier. Because if you already plan and scheduled your activities ahead of time, recalling how you spent your time becomes much easier. Simply look at your pre-planned schedule and adjust each activity accordingly. Maybe one activity took longer than expected, another one was shorter, or perhaps you skipped something entirely. It's now also easier to recall and fill in activities that happened between your prefilled activities. Fill it down to the 15-minute level detail. Very first time you do this, don't judge yourself too harshly. The goal here isn't to immediately fix everything. It's simply
• 07:30 - 08:00 to get an accurate assessment of how you're currently investing your time. Think of it like checking your bank statement. Before you can prove your finances, you first need a clear picture of your current spending habits. Similarly, before optimizing your time, you need clarity on how you're actually spending it right now. Do this for a week or even a month, and then you'll be ready to analyze your patterns. With the color coding system I showed you earlier, you'll clearly see exactly where your time went and how you can start investing it better. I personally like to use Notion Calendar. And if you're really serious, you can also use another tool called Clockify, which is a time tracker app that visualizes and
• 08:00 - 08:30 calculate how you actually spend your time. Oh, and if you like my content so far and want it faster, more frequent, and free, you can join my newsletter that is linked in the description below. So, how exactly do you analyze and assess your tracked time? Think about it in terms of the categories we created earlier. The key question you want to ask yourself is, what's my ideal time allocation or time portfolio? This can vary from person to person, but for most of my viewers, you want an ideal allocation that maximize productivity and recovery. That allocation will look like this. You want to hold 50% on 10x task. We really want to spend as much
• 08:30 - 09:00 time as possible on the 10X task because it's our highest leveraged task. Then you want to spend 20% on the 2X task. These are the admin stuff that you need to do to keep your work or business going. The remaining 30% are spent on active recovery, relationships, and necessary off time with really the ultimate goal to recharge you so you can quickly return to those high lever 10x tasks. Lastly, we want 0% for junk time. Now, this will naturally slip in, but our ultimate goal is to aim for 0%. You don't want to waste any time. After tracking your time consistently, you'll clearly see how your actual time
• 09:00 - 09:30 allocation matches up with your ideal allocation. Just like checking your bank statement helps you identify and cut unnecessary spending, reviewing your track time helps you trim away time wasters and invest more into activities with the highest returns. Now, you might be thinking, doesn't tracking and analyzing my time take a lot of effort? Great question. Let's say you spend just 10 minutes each day tracking and reviewing your time. That's about 1 hour per week. But what if that 1 hour investment helps you reclaim just 5 hours each week for mindless or unproductive activities? And what if it
• 09:30 - 10:00 increases your overall productivity by even just 5%. That's already more than a 5x return on your time investment. In other words, you're getting back far more time and productivity than you're putting in. And here's some good news. It's only a little more effort at the beginning. After you've done this for a few weeks, the process becomes a lot faster and easier. Time is the single most important variable of life because life is simply made up of time. How you spend your time is how you live your life. Spend your time wisely. Don't waste it. Without tracking your time, you can unknowingly waste these precious
• 10:00 - 10:30 moments. With time tracking, you expose the harsh truth of how you spend your time and your life. So the next time you catch yourself mindlessly binge watching a show, remember, you have the capability to apply that same effortless focus to the activities that truly move you toward your goals and the life you really want. You now know the three steps that can make your hardest work feel like watching a Netflix show. If you want to take it a step further and know the seven habits I implemented to save me over 20 hours each week, watch this video over here.