I Changed 5 Things About My Day. Everything Compounded.

0:00 A year ago, my days looked full.

0:02 I was busy from 7:00 a.m.

0:03 to 10 p.m.

0:04 emails, calls, filming, admin, research.

0:06 But when I actually looked at what I built at the end of each month,

0:10 it did not match the effort.

0:12 And I spent nearly a decade in banking working like that.

0:15 And I thought that's just what hard work looked like.

0:19 Then I made five tiny changes.

0:21 None of them were revolutionary.

0:23 None of them required an app or a course or a 5:00 a.m.

0:26 alarm.

0:27 together they completely changed how I spend my days

0:30 and that changed how quickly everything else started compounding.

0:34 Let me start with the one

0:35 that felt the most counterintuitive especially as someone

0:39 who makes content for a living and that is I stopped consuming so much content.

0:44 Not completely.

0:44 I just put a hard cap on it.

0:47 And that one change gave me back more time

0:49 and focus than any productivity system I've ever tried.

0:52 My mornings used to start with reading the financial news,

0:55 watching other creators videos,

0:57 podcasts in the background whilst I was doing something else.

0:59 And I justify it all by telling myself I was staying informed.

1:02 By the time I actually sat down to do work,

1:05 my best, most focused energy was already gone.

1:08 And my head was full of other people's ideas.

1:10 So I changed one thing.

1:12 The input into my brain now has windows of time.

1:16 There are specific times in my day where I'll read,

1:19 where I'll watch, where I'll catch up.

1:21 And it's only after I've done my own work.

1:24 So, no listening to new podcasts first thing in the morning unless it's directly

1:27 tied to the work that I'm about to do or motivates me to get started.

1:30 No watching new YouTube videos before I filmed my own because after a while,

1:35 consuming more advice becomes a substitute

1:38 for acting on the advice you already have.

1:40 It feels productive, but then the day goes past and nothing actually moves.

1:45 That was the trap I was in for a very long time.

1:48 every extra hour of input was just delaying the one thing

1:51 that would actually change my position which is doing the work.

1:54 And what made it even harder to break was that this habit felt productive.

1:58 It was ingrained from my banking days where the first

2:00 hour of every morning was just news, markets, updates.

2:03 So stopping that felt wrong.

2:05 But the moment I did stop, my mornings became more focused.

2:08 I was finishing more by 10:00 a.m.

2:10 than I used to by lunch.

2:11 And I suddenly had time I didn't even realize I was losing.

2:15 But then I had to figure out what to do with that extra time.

2:17 And that's where the second change comes in.

2:19 And it is embarrassingly simple.

2:22 I call it the single priority.

2:24 You've probably done this before and it was my default for a very long time.

2:27 I'd sit down in the morning.

2:28 I'd write down everything I need to do

2:30 and I'd skip straight past the one that actually mattered.

2:34 I'll do it after lunch, I'd tell myself.

2:35 And then lunch would come and I'd find five smaller things to tick off first.

2:39 And weeks later, that same task was still there.

2:42 But that was the one task that usually

2:45 was more valuable than everything else combined.

2:47 Then I came across something called the Ivy Lee method.

2:50 And that is when it clicked.

2:52 Back in 1918, a consultant named Ivy Lee was

2:55 asked by Charles Schwab how to get more done.

2:57 His advice, super simple.

2:59 Write down six important tasks,

3:00 rank them in order of importance, start with number one,

3:04 and don't move on to the next task until that task is finished.

3:08 That was it.

3:09 A few months later, Schwab paid him 25,000 for that advice,

3:13 which is nearly half a million in today's money.

3:16 So, I took this and I stripped it down even further.

3:18 Not six tasks, just one.

3:20 I call it the single priority.

3:21 Every day, before I even open up my emails, I write down one thing.

3:24 If that one thing gets done today, that day counts.

3:27 Today, it was script and film this YouTube video.

3:29 Every single day, it either has a priority or it doesn't.

3:32 The list of things will always exist.

3:34 But always ask yourself,

3:35 what's one thing that will actually move my life forward,

3:38 that will actually make a difference if I do it or not?

3:40 That's not done by an accident.

3:41 That is done by serious intention.

3:43 The third change was arguably the hardest one for me on the list.

3:47 And I call it the ugly first draft.

3:49 I spent nearly a decade and in banking, especially early on my career,

3:52 nothing leaves your desk until it's been

3:54 reviewed four times until it's been spellch checked,

3:57 sense checked, approved by a senior, then approved by their senior.

4:00 Polish was the entire job.

4:02 So when I left banking and started building my own thing,

4:05 I bought that same standard with me and it

4:07 nearly killed the whole thing before I started.

4:10 I spent entire days on things that never went anywhere.

4:14 I would rewrite an email four times before I sent it.

4:17 I'd delay a video for one more edit pass before it went out.

4:20 I'll sit on an idea for months because I hadn't accounted for every variable.

4:24 And the days I worked the hardest were

4:27 usually the days that nothing actually went out.

4:29 And the worst part is perfectionism.

4:31 It doesn't look like procrastination.

4:33 It looks like effort.

4:34 It looks like care.

4:34 It looks like you have high standards,

4:36 which is why most people don't even realize that they're stuck in it.

4:40 From the outside, you look productive.

4:42 You look thorough.

4:43 But really, nothing is moving.

4:46 And the founder of LinkedIn, he has this line that I think about a lot.

4:49 He says, "If you're not embarrassed by the first version of what you build,

4:53 you launched it too late." The whole point of version one isn't that it's good.

4:57 It's that it exists.

4:59 Because once it exists, you can learn from it.

5:01 You can hear what real people actually using it think.

5:04 You can fix it.

5:04 But until it exists, you've got nothing.

5:07 You're just polishing something that nobody has seen based

5:10 on your interpretation of what's good and what's not.

5:13 So then I changed the default.

5:15 My first YouTube video was extremely rough.

5:17 The lighting was off.

5:18 I wasn't happy with the way I was saying or explaining certain sentences.

5:21 I was mixing up my words.

5:22 It took 4 hours to record a 5-minute video.

5:25 But I uploaded it anyway because at some point I realized

5:28 that another week of editing wasn't going to change my life.

5:31 But publishing, putting it out there might.

5:35 And the only reason why any of my videos since got better

5:37 is because that that first one existed for me to learn from.

5:40 And now I apply a similar concept to a lot of areas in my life,

5:43 including something that I'll talk about later

5:45 on that might lose me some credibility.

5:46 But my point is, if you think about it,

5:48 what's the one project that you've been polishing

5:51 for 3 months that nobody has even seen yet?

5:54 And then ask yourself, would it be more valuable if you just got

5:57 it out and refined it whilst it was live?

6:00 Because the thing you actually get out and ship is

6:03 the only thing that you can get other people to react to.

6:06 And well and truly, you learn by doing.

6:08 The fourth change is what I call close the loop.

6:11 And this one completely changed the amount of mental

6:13 space that I had because what I used to do

6:16 was say yes to almost everything in the moment

6:19 and then figure out how to say no later on.

6:21 So someone would invite me somewhere that I knew

6:23 I didn't really want to go to, I'll say, "Oh,

6:24 let me check and come back to you." If

6:26 there was a partnership opportunity that I knew wasn't right,

6:28 I'll say, "Oh, let me circle back." And at the time, that felt polite.

6:33 It felt thoughtful.

6:34 It felt like the nice thing to do.

6:35 But what I eventually realized is that every maybe stays open in your mind.

6:41 And open loops, they're exhausting because now instead

6:44 of an uncomfortable conversation that lasts 2 minutes,

6:46 you carry that decision around for a week or so.

6:49 you think about it randomly in the shower or whilst you're working or before

6:52 bed and or you forget about it and leave the other person hanging.

6:55 And neither of those is kind on the other

6:58 person either because now they're managing uncertainty, too.

7:01 The most respectful thing you could do to someone

7:03 is be really direct and just say no.

7:06 Say, "I'll get back to you next week."

7:08 I really do believe being direct and letting

7:10 someone down is nicer than blurring the lines

7:13 and not letting them know where they stand.

7:15 So now I've changed the default.

7:16 There's no, "I'll get back to you next week." It's a very

7:18 clear answer sent as soon as I see the message or the email.

7:22 And weirdly, it made me respect my own time

7:24 more because five pending may don't look stressful on paper,

7:28 but mentally it can feel heavy.

7:30 You feel overwhelmed without really knowing why.

7:32 And protecting your time isn't just

7:35 about productivity and what you do physically.

7:37 It's also about closing mental tabs, too.

7:39 And the next one, which might make me lose some credibility as an accountant,

7:42 and that is I don't track every purchase.

7:44 I don't budget weekly.

7:45 I don't have a spreadsheet open judging me in the background 24/7.

7:49 I just look at my money once a month for 20 minutes.

7:52 That is it.

7:53 I call it the 20inut audit.

7:55 And I know how that might sound from someone who spent years in finance.

7:58 But what I realized is there are really

7:59 only two ways most people relate to money.

8:02 Either they obsess over it.

8:03 They check their accounts every morning.

8:05 They track every coffee.

8:06 They react to every market dip like it's personal.

8:08 Or they completely avoid it and they don't open their bank app for weeks.

8:12 They're not sure what accounts they have.

8:14 They leave the financial decisions piling up in the background.

8:17 Both camps probably think that their version is better,

8:20 but they're both spending constant mental

8:22 energy on money without necessarily improving it.

8:26 And you might think the person who's

8:27 meticulous about their finances is improving it.

8:29 But actually, there's a study that found that people who check their finances

8:32 too frequently tend to make worse

8:35 long-term decisions because every small fluctuation, it feels really urgent.

8:39 The more often you look at it, the more often you react.

8:42 So now what I do once a month, one evening,

8:45 20 minutes, that's how much I spend looking at that month's finances.

8:48 And if you're someone who is really looking to get

8:50 out of debt or you're really looking to save more money,

8:53 I highly, highly recommend using a manual tracker for this.

8:56 The exact one that I used when I was

8:58 trying to fast track my savings, I've linked below.

9:01 It's completely free.

9:02 You can also grab it on nicer.me/Tracker.

9:05 It comes with a video description on exactly

9:07 how to use each of the columns and also

9:09 the most common mistakes people make when using

9:12 a tracker and how you can avoid them.

9:14 So the question for you is are you checking your money too much

9:17 or not enough because both are likely costing you not financially but mentally.

9:22 Your money doesn't need constant attention.

9:24 It just needs the right kind of attention.

9:27 And that is it.

9:28 Those are five changes.

9:29 But there is one system I haven't shown you yet,

9:31 and it's the actual financial framework that makes

9:34 all of this compound into real money.

9:36 And that's in this video you see right here.

9:38 Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you