watching fun fun function today I would
like to talk about some things that I’ve
been doing lately that have helped me in
staying productive for my project I have
been defining a clear outcome we desire
behind that outcome and then habitually
over and over using the outcome to
generate the next task who I am in the
process of moving to a new apartment so
everything is hell around me what you
see here behind me it looks normal
except two boxes but literally
everything else in the apartment is hell
its leader inboxes are in complete
disarray my recording setup is a mess
and doing screen cause it’s super hard
everything is just too messy right now
but that’s ok it’s ok I’m not going to
lie there’s going to be a distinct lack
of coding in the coming weeks I am going
to be talking about software software
subject ha and today I’m going to talk
about how I manage my projects because I
am particularly happy with how well it’s
working at the moment so currently I am
on organizing my project with one
document per project they are all text
documents and they all share one trait
they have a sentence with a specific
format at the top here is an example of
one such sentence book flight to
Amsterdam in order to attend VidCon
because I want to become a better
youtuber the template for this sentence
is divided into three parts
the next task the outcome and the desire
and I’m going to go through them one by
one
let’s talk about outcome first that’s
the attend VidCon part in this example
the outcome is what we want to achieve
it’s an outcome there’s nothing special
about it really attend VidCon but as
very subtle but important detail is that
it must be falsifiable and what I mean
by that is that I should
easily be able to tell if I have
achieved it or not I should be able to
ask have I been at VidCon yet no okay
then I need to do more things in order
to make progress an example of a badly
formed outcome would be something like
learn functional programming that’s a
bad waveform outcome because I’m not
able to falsify it
I cannot clearly determine if I have
achieved it or not such a goal would be
better to reframe as something like you
know publish an article on medium
explaining monads but that’s basically
it it’s just an outcome that is clearly
falsifiable on the other hand the desire
is your reason behind working towards
the outcome in the example it’s last
part become a better youtuber it’s
basically the answer to the question why
are you working on this why are you not
playing Xbox or working on something
else or having a beer with your friends
or spending time with your kids so or
whatever why is this task so important
that you are delaying gratification or
or other tasks for it what is it that
makes this particular outcome more
important writing out a desire might
seem a bit superfluous at first but it’s
very important to define it because it
challenges the validity of the outcome
and it also motivates you often we are
asked to do tasks that actually don’t
make sense for us to do and since we all
have very limited time on this earth we
need to be pretty judicious in our
filtering asking seriously why you are
trying to achieve a given outcome is a
great sanity check for example if it’s a
task at work you might ask yourself does
this task actually further my career or
am I just blindly reacting to urgency
maybe it is better for both you and the
company to say no to this task and work
on something else
it also helps massively with motivation
if you can clearly articulate
the reason why you are doing something I
talked a little bit about this in last
week’s video but basically formulating a
clear why activates the locus of control
in your brain which in turn makes you
feel a lot more motivated and then we
have the next task in the example that
is the first part it’s the book my
flight to Amsterdam it’s the next small
task that I have selected to do in order
to make progress towards the desired
outcome I think it’s important that the
next task is something that you can do
in less than a day if I’m not confident
that I can pull it off in a day I try to
break it down a little bit more
sometimes when it’s really scary or
boring tasks you know like taxes or are
making emotionally hard phone calls then
I find that if I don’t break them down
into really small parts I I just tend
not to do them of just procrastinate for
example this particular example booking
a flight to Amsterdam finding that on
procrastinating on that so we’re going
to break it down further research
flights to Amsterdam on VidCon date
that’s even smaller and more clearer and
more narrow but what about the old next
path the one we just replaced well
sometimes I have a backlog section in
the project document but in practice
I’ve honestly found that it’s very often
a waste to keep a backlog I found that
for even pretty complicated projects it
is perfectly enough to just have a very
clearly articulated outcome and then
using that outcome to constantly
generate the next task until you have
achieved the outcome whenever I try to
do plans and backdrops and stuff I tend
to get stuck in the planning process and
spend a lot of time on it instead of
actually making progress towards the
outcome and that’s it that’s how I
organize my projects a sentence for each
project that describes a
variable outcome my desire that drives
that outcome and the small next task
that I picked to make progress towards
that outcome what about you
how do you stay productive what has
worked well for you these last few
months please like a comment down below
and share your experience with me and
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