How to Actually Stick to Your Schedule (2 Simple Rules)

Summary

Highlights

• Learn the secret to sticking with your schedule effortlessly by avoiding common mistakes like over-scheduling! 🔍
• Discover why you should double your estimated time for each task to achieve scheduling success! 🕒
• Understand the importance of choosing where to cut losses instead of trying to do everything and failing! 🎯
• Find out how learning efficiently can drastically reduce the time you spend on studying. 📖
• Create a schedule that accommodates life's surprises and keeps you on track consistently. 🎢

Key Takeaways

• Over-scheduling your day is a recipe for disaster. Give yourself breathing room to handle unexpected events! 📅
• Always double your time estimates for tasks. It's better to finish early than to constantly play catch up. ⏳
• Admit when it's not possible to finish everything and decide on your losses proactively. Better to lose a battle than the whole war! 🏆
• Learning how to learn can save you countless hours of ineffective studying. Invest in your skills! 📚
• A realistic schedule is key to being productive and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. ⚖️

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Time Management Issues The chapter focuses on common misconceptions about time management, emphasizing that incorrect scheduling can worsen time management problems. It highlights that despite using tools like apps and time blocking, individuals can still struggle with feeling overwhelmed and falling behind. The chapter suggests that the act of trying to catch up may, paradoxically, contribute to falling further behind.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Common Mistakes in Scheduling In the chapter titled 'Common Mistakes in Scheduling,' the author discusses the widespread issue of poor time management among students and professionals. Many struggle to adhere to their schedules due to a few common errors. By identifying and correcting these typical mistakes, individuals can gain better control over their time and energy, leading to increased confidence and preparedness for unexpected events. The chapter promises practical advice for effectively following a personal schedule.
• 03:00 - 06:00: The Principle of Avoiding Over-Scheduling This chapter discusses the principle of avoiding over-scheduling, using an example of a schedule sent by a student named Phillip. Phillip, an accountant exploring a career change to machine learning, struggles to balance work and study due to over-scheduling. The chapter highlights the common issue of trying to manage multiple commitments and the feeling of falling behind and compromising on both work and education.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Picking Your Losses in Scheduling The chapter "Picking Your Losses in Scheduling" discusses the challenges individuals face in adhering to strict schedules, even when they are meticulously organized with time blocks and color coding. The narrator shares an anecdote about someone who rarely follows their schedule consistently for more than a few days. The chapter hints at common scheduling pitfalls and humorously mentions an accountant named Philip as an example of someone facing these scheduling difficulties.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Making Realistic Plans and Adjustments The chapter titled 'Making Realistic Plans and Adjustments' discusses the concept of scheduling and the pitfalls of over-scheduling. The narrator humorously mentions that being an accountant might be considered boring but emphasizes its practicality. They reflect on a past attempt to organize their time in a highly structured manner, inspired by Elon Musk's approach of breaking down the schedule into 5-minute intervals. This, however, was found to be overwhelming and unsustainable, highlighting the issue of over-scheduling, which the chapter aims to address.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Case Study: Phillip's Transformation The chapter discusses the pitfalls of over-scheduling in daily life through Phillip's experience. It highlights how trying to accomplish too many tasks in a single day is unrealistic and counterproductive. Over-scheduling leaves little room for unexpected events, which inevitably occur, causing stress and a constant need to rearrange plans. This stress and the need to frequently reorganize not only burden individuals but also waste time. The chapter emphasizes the importance of creating a schedule with flexibility and the ability to adapt to the unexpected.
• 15:00 - 17:30: Conclusion and Final Thoughts In the final chapter titled "Conclusion and Final Thoughts," the speaker discusses the importance of proper scheduling and the potential pitfalls of a tight schedule. He uses an example of a person who schedules time for lectures from 5:00 to 6:30 but often struggles to adhere to this due to working late. This situation illustrates the risks of a tightly packed schedule, where missing just one session can disrupt plans for the entire week, highlighting the need for flexibility and contingency planning in time management. The speaker concludes with a reminder of the importance of balancing commitments and ensuring there is room for adjustments when unexpected events occur.

How to Actually Stick to Your Schedule (2 Simple Rules) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 if you can't follow your schedule there's a good chance you've misunderstood a crucial perspective on time management in fact what most people don't realize is that creating schedules in the wrong way can actually make your time management worse you can have the perfect app everything time blocked pomodora every waking moment of your day and still be falling behind feeling overwhelmed always busy but never on top of your work and in fact trying to catch up can sometimes make you fall behind even more which is countering to but
• 00:30 - 01:00 you're not alone it's very very common every week I will see hundreds of students and professionals that struggle with their time management that are never able to stick with their schedules and almost all of them are just making the same two or three core mistakes but once you fix these two or three mistakes you will feel much more in control over your time and your energy and you'll feel much more confident to be able to handle when unexpected things pop up so here is how you should actually follow your schedule I'm going to use a
• 01:00 - 01:30 schedule here that a student sent me uh previously as an example have a look at this and see if you can spot where the problems are the schedule was sent to me by Phillip uh who is an accountant they' have been interested in learning about machine learning as well they looking at doing a career change but they were really struggling to balance work and study at the same time they always felt like they were falling behind they always felt like they were trying to balance work and study but compromising on both of them and he said that he re
• 01:30 - 02:00 even though it's super organized here it's time blocks and like everything's colorcoded nicely he said that it was very very rare for him to actually be able to follow a schedule and get everything done for more than 2 or 3 days at a time and actually if your schedule looks like this and you came to me with those problems that to me is a red flag so let me break this down and show you what I'm seeing here the first mistake which I think should be obvious to probably most of you is that Philip chose to be an accountant I'm kidding
• 02:00 - 02:30 relax an accountant is a great profession if you like to be boring I'm joking chill out there's nothing wrong with being boring okay so the first thing seriously is uh just the schedule in itself is very very pecked it's organized and it's meticulous but I made this video a while ago on how I tried to schedule my time like Elon Musk apparently did in these like 5 minute intervals very overwhelming very unsustainable here's the issue with this this is called over scheduling and over scheduling is basically when they are
• 02:30 - 03:00 too many things that you're trying to get done in a single day and it's no longer realistic if you overschedule you will not be productive for very long here's the reason over scheduling has very little wiggle room there's no margin for error which means when unexpected things pop up and they will because that's life we have to then reschedule and reorganize everything and so not only does this create a lot more stress and burden because we're constantly having to reorganize and replan but it wastes a lot of time so
• 03:00 - 03:30 for example if you look at this schedule you can see that he's got this uh block here for looking at lectures 5: to 6:30 now one of the things that he told me is that sometimes he's working late so he doesn't actually have time to get through the lectures here but he still schedules it at this place which is a risky move but if he's not able to cover his lectures that means all the other things in his schedule for really the whole week need to get shifted out because it's all so tight there's no wiggle room and so one of the most
• 03:30 - 04:00 important principles whenever you're doing any scheduling is that you have to have a wide margin of error and for beginners I honestly recommend estimating a task to take double the time that you initially expected to take worst case scenario it actually takes that long and now it's going according to your plans best case scenario you finish faster and now you've got more free time that you can use to get more things done or maybe relax or whatever you want to do but when you don't do
• 04:00 - 04:30 that and when you're just over scheduling it makes it almost impossible to really plan and every day you will feel like you are just trying to catch up because probably every day there are little things that are throwing your schedule into disarray and you are legitimately having to reorganize and micromanage all of your existing tasks even if you're really good at micromanaging and adapting it's not ideal because that takes you out of deep flow and focused work one of the big principles about deep flow is that you
• 04:30 - 05:00 want to do your planning up front so that throughout the day you can focus on just executing and getting it done but if after every task you're now having to re-evaluate what the next task you need to do is that's going to actually reduce your efficiency by a pretty considerable amount because you're never really able to stay in flow now when I tell people to schedule less and to overestimate the time things are going to take inevitably it means they're not able to fit everything that they wanted to do during
• 05:00 - 05:30 that day and so they say okay but Justin I've got so much I need to do what am I meant to do with this it doesn't matter it doesn't matter over scheduling creates a fantasy world here's the thing you're already falling behind this schedule is going to make you fall behind a schedule is not some magical device like a like a Death Note of of scheduling where uh you write it down and just because it's been written down like it's executed on by some kind of
• 05:30 - 06:00 divine power just because you wrote it down doesn't mean anything if you've got an exam coming up in in 2 weeks and you've got 3 years worth of material to study in the next 2 weeks that's just not realistic it's not possible and it is crucial that we don't trick ourselves into thinking that we can execute at a certain Pace at a certain speed with a certain level of rigor without making any errors like this mythical version of
• 06:00 - 06:30 ourselves you know that's able to just like perform at our Peak a level we've never experienced before it's not realistic or responsible to assume we can do that we have to know when we are going to lose and this is incredibly incredibly important if you can't win the game you can at least plan to win the championship and to do that you have to pick your losses which Phillip did not do and this is the other mistake
• 06:30 - 07:00 that most people are making is that they're not actively deciding where and when they are going to lose because losing doesn't feel good we want to get everything done I totally understand that it doesn't mean it's going to happen something is going to give and it's better to be in control of what is being sacrificed rather than being forced to sacrifice everything so even though it doesn't feel good to pick your losses it's still necessary and it's
• 07:00 - 07:30 better to plan for the worst and hope for the best than to be left falling behind having to frantically and suddenly now repan for how you're going to recover from it so when I told all this to Phillip he was very reluctant to change his ways he was afraid of that loss again which I can completely understand but again still necessary and I know this because I've had so many people with the exact same issues with the exact same reservations and when
• 07:30 - 08:00 they don't fix it it doesn't change every time every month they are just continually falling further and further behind but when they start scheduling this way yes it doesn't feel good for the short term but eventually they're able to make up for it because now their plans are realistic these are certain principles that I talk about uh in a lot of my other videos by the way I've got a fully comprehensive program teaching you these Frameworks and strategies for time management Focus management and learning skills when I can study.com I go through
• 08:00 - 08:30 principles like this all the way from the basic to more advanced fleshing out all the mistakes that I personally made so that hopefully you don't have to so if you're interested in building a self-management system for yourself that actually really works then you can learn a little bit more at ien study.com I'll put a link in the description so now what's the change that philli made that made him much more confident with his time management if you have a look at the schedule again you might notice something I didn't notice it at first it's the fact that he spends a lot of time in a single week just reviewing his
• 08:30 - 09:00 notes you can see he's got a lecture here he's consolidating his notes he's got a lecture here he's consolidating his notes and then he's reviewing those same notes again here and here and then he's also reviewing the same notes again here so in a single week he's having to review his notes like three or four times because he feels like that's the only way that he can get it into his head and remember it and understand it you can see he's also supplementing that
• 09:00 - 09:30 with uh flash cards opportunistically uh throughout the day as well so look good on him for being so proactive with his studying for him the main issue is that he is spending a lot of time on learning because of the fact that he does not know how to learn during the lectures themselves which is causing him to forget so much and now he's just compensating for it so his loss that he picked was his study time he chose to sacrifice about three 3 hours of
• 09:30 - 10:00 studying per week and reinvest that time on learning how to learn during lectures more effectively so now 2 months on from working on this he's in a much better position because he's caught up and he's better off than he was before because he fundamentally doesn't need to spend so much time studying anymore and so those 3 hours a week he sacrificed short term have been made up for in the efficiency games long term and that that that gain is going to last for him for life it's not an easy decision it wasn't easy for
• 10:00 - 10:30 philli but it's about putting yourself in a position where you are in control of what happens rather than playing defense and simply reacting to what happens I hope this helps thanks for watching and I'll see you next time