– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

[Music]

couldn't we all just be a little bit

more productive whether you feel like

you've got a pretty good grasp on your

days or your life's a complete mess most

of us could probably use a little

sharpening up when it comes to mastering

productivity at the turn of the

Industrial Revolution productivity meant

squeezing as much economic growth out of

his few resources as possible from

agriculture to fashion to masonry and

journalism industries found ways to

incorporate new technologies machinery

and systems to increase profits and

succeed in business it was about doing

more with less

and while the tools and systems have

changed since the invention of the

cotton gin in 1794 the basic concept

still applies but today as millions of

people are turning towards a freelance

career increased productivity doesn't

just mean more profits for your employer

it could be more downtime with family

leisure activities and time spent on

passion projects the fuel productive is

a beautiful thing it's what you might

call a good tired the moment when you

slide back from your desk at the end of

the day turn down your computer put down

your pen knowing that you gave

everything you had to that day you got

[ __ ] done what I say is I focus on

helping people become more capable

that's Thomas Frank you might know him

from his popular YouTube channel or

podcast and that encompasses

productivity content whether it be like

getting down and dirty with the systems

or talking more holistically about

things like habits of mindset basically

anything that kind of sets you up for

being able to better achieve your goals

in life what does it take to be truly

productive today from the small things

we do to the larger systems we create

how can we make the most of our days and

what won't productivity get you how can

we find fulfilment in our work without

turning into automated robots at in a

moment but first this video is sponsored

by Squarespace every website I've built

in the past five years has been with

Squarespace I'll talk more about why I

love them at the end of this video and

how I'm able to create simple and

effective websites really fast is there

like a tool or a hack or something that

you do when it comes to productivity

that has helped you the most or that's

the most memorable for you yeah it's

probably downloading information

be a little port in the back of my head

did you get that at Staples yes yes

staples experimental matrix yeah it's

really good yeah so the biggest thing

for me I think is not letting me be the

deciding factor and what I get done

because I think the more freedom you

have the more self-discipline you

require to actually take yourself off of

the path of least resistance and even if

you care a lot about the overall mission

you might not always care about the

individual piece that you are working on

so sometimes it'll be hey you know keep

me accountable I'll say as my girlfriend

or to my best friend like I'm gonna get

this done by this date so at the IKEA

cabinet planner for research you're

disgusting or I'll use a tool like

beeminder which will literally charging

money if you don't blog habits or if you

do log habits depending on how you set

it up or you know even have it acai just

check-in my habits every single day so I

get that little streak to encounter

going up I use external systems to put

training wheels on the teeter peterey

bike that is my mind yeah we love we

love talking about these like kind of

the little things that we do like the

little tactics that might help us or

give us a little bit of an advantage but

I know that recently you just created a

course around how to develop

productivity systems yeah and that to me

is really interesting because that's

just this the entire system it's the

bird's eye view of how things are made

in your life talk me through some of the

most important aspects of it from maybe

a to-do list or a task list to the

calendar so overall philosophy here what

I consider the main missions of a

productivity system to be our number one

to make sure nothing ever slipped

through the cracks to sort of give you

that peace of mind you know everything

going on your life you know cuz people

when they when they feel like everything

is chaos then that brings a lot of

stress like am I am I forgetting

something right now can I relax right

now or is there something that I should

be doing if you know everything's going

on then you have more control

and then the other part of it is

bringing in a little bit of that

external control over your own

self-discipline so for me the components

are a to-do list a calendar and then a

note-taking system of some sort and

there's a few meta ones so I often bring

in the way that you process email into

this and they also bring in the way that

you store your files both digitally and

physically what I usually say is like a

good starting point is I really like to

do it and I know you use to do which is

possibly even simpler I like to do this

because again it's simple you can sort

of divide your life up into different

little buckets so I can have a project

for say every class on the mat if I'm a

student where I could have a project for

grocery shopping I could have a project

for like this UX design I'm working on

and that can all be separate and I can

sort of plan things out step by step

within a little individualized list but

then you can also have a day like today

next seven days maybe even next Tullius

list so you can see at a glance

everything in your life that's coming up

same thing with calendar you see what's

coming up in your life and for me the

split is are you going to it are you

doing at a specific time well then

that's a calendar event is it just do at

a specific time but you could work on it

whenever that's a to-do list or a task

manager so if somebody feels like right

now their life is completely

disorganized and their productivity

system is basically non-existent what

steps should they take to go about doing

it like what's the most important like

set up a to-do list calendar I mean it's

are there any of these that are the most

important to follow along with or does

the whole system need to be intact I

would never go as far as to say you need

to get the entire system up and running

right now because that's overwhelming

where is the biggest source of your

stress coming from right now is it the

fact that I really just don't know all

that I have to do is the fact that I

keep missing events is it the fact that

I do not know where my files are and I

keep like losing important documents I

keep you know not being able to turn

homework in because I can't find it

what's the thing that's sort of like

screaming out this needs to be fixed

right now focus in on that and then just

work on building that part of the system

first like make a little bastion of

safety and then sort of spread out from

there

and I good

start is just bring up a document or

grab a piece of paper and just write out

everything that is stressing you out in

our quest to increase productivity there

are things that will inevitably get in

our way

and steer us off-track from social media

to video games there are an endless

amount of things that compete with our

attention and beg us to procrastinate we

each pick our own poison when it comes

to distractions but one aspect of

digital work that's impossible for most

people to ignore is email email is a

source of stress because there are

obligations I mean it's an evil Hydra

you cut off one head to take its place

yeah the one thing I tell people is if

you're sitting with a inbox full of like

4,000 messages that's the same as an

inbox with zero messages in it because

you're going to look at it get

overwhelmed and close it right so you

know take an hour go through the first

like four or five pages and star what

you know you need to reply therefore

you're creating like a little second

inbox for yourself and then everything

else just our guide it yeah my friend

Josh Milburn he recently went on

vacation and said hey guys during

vacation I'm gonna be going away but

then when I come back I'm gonna declare

email bankruptcy and then or kyv all of

my emails and I was like that's

brilliant I never thought to do that but

if you think about it when you come back

from a vacation you have hundreds of

emails or I mean depending on like how

busy you are or what kind of work that

you do if you have even 50 emails to

respond to that could be an entire day

the first day that you get back to work

and if you set the precedent beforehand

if you let people know hey this is

what's gonna happen if it's important

enough they'll email you back after you

get back yeah well I think another thing

people have to realize is like people

thrive on their expectations and their

expectations are set by previous

behavior so if you're the kind of person

who everyone knows for applies to an

email like within a day then now that

pressure is on you people expect a you

know snappy response from you and when

they don't get it you violated their

expectations and I think about the Salah

the violation of expectations is

probably the thing that makes people

angry in the world because it is taking

them out of order and throwing them into

chaos in some way you know it's a threat

to the way they live so if you can

manage expectations by maybe being the

person who just doesn't reply to every

email and you don't reply super super

quickly then no one cares

and that's a load off your plate

mentally once we've built a solid

productivity system implemented all the

various ways we can incentivize

ourselves to work ignore distractions

and tame the Beast of email we still

need to understand that there's a limit

to what we can do when we constantly

seek to produce more work to create more

profit it's easy to end up with less and

less time sure our hours are productive

but are we truly making enough time for

ourselves and for our families paying

the bills is great but is our life

defined solely by work or are we finding

the right balance for our physical and

mental health

we were talking recently about some

burnout that you faced it's it's kind of

the other side of productivity where

it's like you can only be so productive

you can only get so much work done yeah

when do you know when to start taking

some things off your plate I pushed

myself past the burnout point for too

long and when I really knew that it was

an issue was when my girlfriend said I

don't like how negatively you're talking

about your work every time you say you

want to make a video and it's more like

I've to make a video you're doing too

much and I realized oh yeah if I'm

projecting a negative sentiment about my

mission in life essentially to the

person I love the most

that's clearly a sign of burnout so

that's when I had to take it very

seriously a lot of times I think we get

into this habit of thing saying if I

make this decision that's forever

that's my content forever it's you know

if I if I switch to one video this month

and take a couple weeks off then

everything's gonna fall apart

and the other thing is once you hit upon

something that works it often seems like

that's the only thing you can do forever

and if you stop doing that you're dead

you're gonna be in the gutter and your

whole life will crumble around you and

everyone will point and laugh and it's

funny like if you give yourself just a

little bit of space what I found is the

creativity starts to come back all these

things start flooding in once you give

yourself space to breathe should we

shake hands I think so oh thank you it's

a lot of fun that much for doing it

absolutely cool all right we can just

get up and walk off the frame

cool music plays yeah you know how it

works as you guys know I like to keep

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and I'll see you next time

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
productivity /ˌprɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/ C1	noun - the state or quality of being productive; efficiency in producing goods or services
productive /prəˈdʌktɪv/ B2	adjective - producing or able to produce large amounts of goods, crops, or other commodities
system /ˈsɪstəm/ B1	noun - a set of connected things or devices that operate together
habit /ˈhæbɪt/ B1	noun - a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up
goal /ɡəʊl/ B1	noun - the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result
focus /ˈfəʊkəs/ B2	verb - to pay particular attention to noun - the center of interest or activity
stress /strɛs/ B2	noun - pressure or tension exerted on a material object or a person
burnout /ˈbɜːrnaʊt/ C1	noun - the state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress
calendar /ˈkælɪndə(r)/ A2	noun - a system for dividing time into days, weeks, and months
email /ˈiːmeɪl/ A2	noun - a system for sending messages from one computer to another electronically
task /tɑːsk/ B1	noun - a piece of work to be done or undertaken
project /ˈprɒdʒekt/ B1	noun - an individual or collaborative enterprise that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim
discipline /ˈdɪsɪplɪn/ B2	noun - the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behavior
freedom /ˈfriːdəm/ B1	noun - the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants
downtime /ˈdaʊntaɪm/ C1	noun - a time when a machine or system is not working
profit /ˈprɒfɪt/ B1	noun - a financial benefit that is realized when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses
mission /ˈmɪʃən/ B2	noun - an important assignment carried out for political, religious, or commercial purposes
distraction /dɪˈstrækʃən/ B2	noun - a thing that prevents someone from having their attention on something else
procrastinate /prəʊˈkræstɪneɪt/ C1	verb - to delay or postpone action; put off doing something