00:00I worked 100 hours a week for over 4 years, and it seriously did suck, but it did get easier week by week once I learned how to manage my time and tasks properly
00:11In this video, I'm going to tell you how I used to schedule, the problems that started causing, and then how I schedule now
00:17At the end of the video, I'll also give you a summary of all the main changes that I made so you can go and apply those yourself
00:22If you're new to this channel, welcome
00:23I'm Dr
00:25Justin Sun
00:27I'm a learning researcher, learning coach, and Head of Learning at I Can Study
00:28I'm also a former medical doctor
00:30For the last decade, I have worked with tens of thousands of people around the world to help them learn more efficiently
00:35Now, before we jump into it, I'd really..
00:37I appreciate it if you give this video a like
00:38It really helps with the algorithm
00:40So, for some background information, I didn't work 100 hours a week because I thought it was cool
00:44To be honest, I just had a lot of things I was interested in, and I probably still do have an extreme personality, as I talked about in some of my other videos
00:55In my first year of university, trying to get into medical school, I was studying 120 hours a week, sometimes even more, mostly because I was just really inefficient at learning
01:04Fast forward, that's kind of the reason why I do what I do now
01:05You definitely don't need to be studying 120 hours a week to enter medical school unless you have no idea what you're doing
01:14Like me, when I entered medical school, I wasn't
01:17I studied as much, maybe around 30 hours a week, but then I started tutoring, and I was doing that for between 20 to 40 hours per week
01:23I was really involved in university club committee events and organizing conferences, so that was like another 10 to 15 hours per week
01:31It's also the time of my life when I was starting to get really into reading, through learning science research, and getting deeper into my teaching
01:38That's when I did my adult learning and teaching certification, which was like another 10 hours a week
01:44Eventually, I ended up setting up a nonprofit organization here in New Zealand, mentoring students from lower socio-economic positions and teaching them some of the skills I picked up over the years
02:09During that period of my life, I was managing a nonprofit, starting a new business, tutoring full-time, studying for medical school, attending University Club events—all simultaneously
02:11Then, when I started working as a doctor, it was even worse because I was doing 60-hour rosters
02:13In that period of my life, early 20s, it was just like a lifestyle for me
02:15If you ask any of my university friends, they'll tell you that I was always busy
02:18But doing all of that is what made me feel really energized
02:22So, you know, it's kind of, if you love what you're doing, then time flies
02:27Now, just so no one misunderstands me, I want to make a couple of things really, really clear
02:31First of all, I wasn't doing 100 hours a week consistently every single week
02:37During those years, I would do probably between 80 to 100 hours a week
02:42Uh, and I did take some time off, like when I went on holiday for, you know, a couple of weeks
02:49I tried not to work so much, and there would have been some weeks in there where I did, you know, less than 30 or 40 hours
02:54Secondly, I am incredibly privileged
02:57In fact, a lot of what I've achieved is because I am privileged
02:59I don't come from a really well-off family; my parents are immigrants and are just trying to make ends meet
03:06But I was well supported
03:09I didn't have any stresses at home
03:13My parents and loved ones supported me through that
03:15I didn't have a lot of other responsibilities, and I didn't have any dependents, so I was able to just focus on..
03:21I myself, I know that that is something that a lot of people aren't able to do
03:25So in that way, I was very lucky
03:27Now, having worked with so many people that do have all these other things going on, I know how much more challenging it can be
03:34And if you're one of those people, in that type of situation, and you're watching this video, then I think the advice that I'll give you will help you as well
03:42 Thirdly, and this is important, I do not recommend working and studying as much as I did
03:51It is not a better or a cooler way to live
03:55It was just my personal decision, and I just wanted to do more things
04:00I think in today's culture, it is incredibly admirable to say no
04:04I don't want to buy into the whole hustle mentality and just..
04:09To what you really want for yourself
04:11If you don't want to be that busy, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that
04:17Just because you're not working and studying so much that you pee blood, it doesn't make you a more inferior person
04:24This is a video for people who want to do more and do all of those things and are struggling to fit it all in
04:33I'm just sharing some of the things that I learned that made it easier to balance and not fall behind
04:37Okay, so how did I schedule and why did it not work out? At the start, I used to schedule using a physical notebook
04:45In fact, this physical notebook—I rummaged through my cupboard and found the actual notebook that I was using to schedule and track my tasks back when I was like 17 or 18 years old, and I used..
04:57To have these very ambitious to-do lists, and it used to just look like this—fairly straightforward to-do list
05:02I just crossed things off when I got them done
05:04I was also very, very strict with myself, partly because I was so sleep-deprived and emotionally fragile
05:13I started writing really abusive things to myself in my to-do list
05:19Yes, I know, like I already mentioned this
05:21I had a very extreme personality, but I would say, you know, like I would call myself, like I would actually insult myself in my own to-do list
05:30I’d tell myself, imagine if you fail
05:33And, um, yeah, so anyway, it was really, really bad, actually very abusive sort of things
05:39And then eventually, I started doing some basic, kind of, really, really… Basic daily scheduling, and you can see this is kind of what it looked like—just like, you know, writing down each day and then what I was going to do that day
05:53At some point, I must have discovered the concept of time blocking, where you just block out periods of time in your day to do certain tasks
05:58You can see that I attempted to do these sorts of time blocks just on paper like that
06:05I mean, you can see it's essentially just like a calendar with times blocked out to study different things
06:11That was how I managed my time and my tasks during the first year of those 80-100 hour weeks
06:17To make sure I finished everything, I would sacrifice sleep, which is why I slept very, very little, and if it wasn't already..
06:27Clear: do not do that if you need to be writing abusive things to yourself in a to-do list and reminding yourself what would happen if you fail, and uh, just sacrificing sleep every single day
06:42There is something wrong with the methods that you're using, and please realize that earlier than I did
06:48So, in summary, what I was doing is I was using a physical schedule, I was being very strict and not giving myself any room for error, and I was compromising sleep to get everything done
07:00Every single one of these behaviors is problematic
07:05First of all, using a physical notebook to schedule and manage my tasks—this is probably the most minor point of them all, but I would never really go back to doing it that way now, by using a physical schedule, but..
07:16Then also having lots of tasks to do made it very difficult to adjust my plan if things went a little bit wrong
07:23For example, yes, I could just literally open it up and scribble things out and rewrite my plan, but it just takes too long, I couldn't be bothered, and it just increases that friction
07:33So, it makes me less likely to make these small adjustments and stay on top of new circumstances, situations, or priorities that arise
07:41As a principle that I always follow now, I always assume things will not go as planned
07:48Think about this: in any given week, there is a pretty good chance that something unexpected will happen
07:57Now, we don’t know what that unexpected thing is yet because it’s unexpected, but we can say that..
08:02Something will happen, and just because we don't know what it is doesn't mean we can't plan for something
08:11To make it easier to do these little adjustments, I now use a digital calendar
08:15Over the years, I have experimented with a lot of different apps, and personally, I just use Google Calendar now
08:20It works very well for me, and I'll show you exactly how I block out my time and make my schedule
08:28At the end of this video, the second thing I used to do was set these really, really strict schedules with no room for error, followed by compromising sleep to try to get everything done
08:38This is where the real problem begins, as this really screwed me over, and I would even say that by scheduling this way, it just eviscerated any chance and hope for..
08:52To stay on top of things and not fall behind, see, by having such a strict schedule, I had no time to like this video, but also it made it impossible to plan
09:04Let me explain
09:09Firstly, I need to address the elephant in the room: do not sacrifice sleep
09:15Sacrificing sleep is really not a good option, trust me, as someone who has sacrificed much more sleep than I should have
09:24Please learn from my mistakes
09:32Sometimes, it is genuinely worthwhile to sacrifice sleep to get more done, but if you're having to do this consistently, that is not going to be sustainable, it is dangerous, and it is counterproductive
09:41Sleep is incredibly important for your brain's health; research even suggests that sleep deprivation leads to dementia and Alzheimer's
09:47But if..
09:49You're like how I was sacrificing sleep all the time
09:52You probably don't really care about being healthy; you just want to be productive
09:56So, to you, I will say it is very counterproductive
09:59Sleep is necessary for memory consolidation; it's what actually helps you use and retain the information that you learn during the day
10:10Spending so many hours studying that you don't sleep is like spending all day trying to fill a bucket and then just before you go to sleep, you drill a hole in the bottom of it
10:18Sleep is also incredibly important for cognitive performance
10:22So, when you're sleep-deprived, you are a slower, less focused version of yourself
10:27So now, not only do you have a hole in the bottom of your bucket, you have to fill that bucket during..
10:33The day with only your feet, and you normally don't even realize how impaired you are
10:38When I was really sleep-deprived, I thought I was at my, like, 70-80% of my peak
10:44Years later, when I actually recovered from all that sleep debt, looking back on it now, I was probably only at 30%
10:52But at the time, I just had no idea that that's how bad it was
10:58You also can't really train yourself to sleep less
11:00There's been a lot of research over the years around different sleep timings, and the research consistently trends towards the idea that you have to get a continuous 7 to 9 hours of sleep to function properly, and very, very few people can do with less than that
11:18I personally need 8 1/2 to 9 hours of sleep per night, which is on the higher side
11:23It took me some years to accept that the only thing that really seems to reduce your sleep requirement is actually age
11:29When people get older, they do require less sleep, but we're talking about when you're in your 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s—you maybe can do with less sleep
11:37Based on my YouTube demographics, I'm guessing that that's not going to be you for 99.9% of the audience
11:44So, when I had a really strict schedule and compromised on sleep, this is what would happen: I would have all of these things that I needed to get done, and then I would put all of it into my schedule
11:54By the end of the day, I would get it all done because I took no rest, and I didn't sleep
12:03That combination meant that I had no break, and I burned out
12:10I actually became depressed
12:17I was depressed for 10, 11 months, and it took me around 2 or 3 years to really fully recover from the physical and emotional burden of having just pushed myself so hard and being so sleep-deprived for so long
12:24Again, I seriously do not recommend any of the stuff that I did back then
12:29And yes, before you leave that comment, I know I'm an idiot
12:34So, if we don't compromise on sleep, which is a smart thing to do, then this is what would happen: we'd have this huge list of things to do, and then we put them on the schedule, but because we need to sleep, we wouldn't get it all done
12:47So, how do we win? It seems on one hand, we either compromise on sleep and lose, or on the other hand, we don't get everything done and we lose
12:59The trick here is to pick your losses
13:03It is true
13:07You're going to lose in one way, but sometimes we have to lose the game to win the championship
13:13If we lose on sleep, we lose on a lot of things
13:16It's like winning the game, but then your whole team is hospitalized afterward
13:22If we lose on not getting everything done that day, we can still recover from that
13:29At the beginning, I said that having strict schedules and compromising on sleep makes it impossible to plan
13:36This is the reason your schedule does not matter; it's what you do that matters
13:43If every day you schedule more than you can achieve, and then every day you don't accomplish that, the day you scheduled versus the day you live are different
13:54Different
13:57This is incredibly important
13:59It's probably one of the most important lessons
14:02Around time management: in this video, to start improving your time management, you have to know how you're truly spending your time, not how you wish you could spend your time
14:12Here's what I did that made things much easier: I stopped scheduling as much
14:18Instead, I just set myself these big daily goals and general time blocks for when I'd get things done, like in the morning for studying, then in the afternoon for work, and then in the evening for club activities—something like that
14:32Then, I switched to time tracking instead, so I just simply measured how long I was spending on each of my tasks
14:40At the end of every week, I would look at what my days really looked like
14:44After doing this for around 3 or 4 weeks, here's what I realized: number
14:49One, it's very difficult to predict the time it takes to complete a task
14:54Sometimes I would finish in half the amount of time I thought it would take; other times it would take two or three times longer
15:00Over the years, I've gotten better at estimating time, but even now, after years of being attentive to this, I still under- or overestimate by a margin of around 25%
15:06That's a big margin
15:12Number two, overestimating how long something takes is not a big problem
15:19When you underestimate and it takes longer than you expected, it makes it difficult because now you have to go back, rearrange your tasks and priorities, and reschedule things
15:29It actually switches you out of the flow of the day, and it makes you spend more..
15:33Time and effort and attention on shuffling things around, and also, it places more stress on you as well
15:39If you overestimate and you finish earlier than you expected, well, now you've just got more free time that you can use however you want
15:45What I found was that trying to be ambitious with how long a task would take me was not actually worth it, to squeeze out an extra 30 minutes or even a couple of hours of extra productivity
15:58It ended up being much better to plan for the worst and save a few of the smaller tasks if I did manage to finish some things earlier, and I had an unexpected gap
16:09And, number three, flow is the most important thing of all
16:16The amount of time it took for me to get stuff done varied wildly depending on what I was doing
16:22Before or after that task, or what time of day it was, for example, I realized that I was actually really effective in the morning, which surprised me because I am not really a morning person
16:35I also realized that it usually took me longer to do tasks at night, which again was surprising because I always felt really productive at night when there were no distractions
16:47But after being really aware of my time and my tasks, I realized that I was actually making more errors and I was slower, so the same task would take me around 10 to 20% less time if I just did it during the morning
17:03I could get that same level of focus and distraction-free environment just by putting on some headphones and removing the distractions from my surroundings
17:08I also..
17:13I realized that my efficiency goes up just before lunch, just before dinner, and just before a workout or an appointment
17:17I think this was simply because I have more urgency, because I know that there's something coming up imminently
17:23This realization was really important because it made me start thinking about tasks not in isolation as just things that I block out on a calendar, but rather sequences of tasks that I change throughout the day to keep me in optimal flow
17:37This is something that I've paid a lot of attention to over the last few years, and it's probably the biggest technique that I use on a daily basis
17:46Most days, I actually don't really have to worry about a lot of other things, as long as I create a chain of events
17:52Tasks that keep me in flow
17:55I'm generally pretty productive now, but it does take some time and reflection to figure out what type of flow and sequence makes you most productive and what’s optimal for you
18:05So you're going to have to do a little bit of trial and error to figure that one out
18:08 Putting all of these things together, here is how I schedule now
18:11Thankfully, I don’t do 100-hour weeks very often anymore, but I still think I’m a pretty busy person, and this method of scheduling works more than good enough for me
18:19I find it very easy, very sustainable, and most importantly, it actually allows me to enjoy life, which is important, by the way
18:29 So, number one: I use Google Calendar, as you can see here, and before I go in and just start randomly adding..
18:35Random tasks in here
18:36I'm going to take a step back and pick my losses
18:39This is about prioritizing; it's genuinely more important than time management because it dictates what you're doing during that time
18:49If you want to learn a little bit more about time management versus task management, then you can check out this video here
18:55What I'm going to do during this step is really figure out what my top one or two biggest priorities are—what are the things that, if I were to get them done, would contribute the most to helping the future version of me? What would the future version of me be the most thankful for if I were to do it today? And then, everything else is actually just centered around doing the one or two biggest priorities
19:17So, for..
19:19For example, let's say that the most important thing for me to do is to review these five lectures
19:23The question is then, where do I put it? So, this is Step number three, which is creating generous time blocks while keeping the flow and sequence in mind
19:36I know I tend to do well with concentrated cognitive effort work in the morning, and studying and reviewing lectures seem like they should take a lot of cognitive effort, so therefore, I'm going to schedule that in the morning
19:48Let's make a time block here
19:50I don't like waking up too early, and there we go, I've added my time block
20:00Now, here you can see that I've scheduled it between 9:00 a.m
20:02to 12:30 p.m., which is three and a half hours
20:06I know that reviewing five lectures should take..
20:10I estimate that I spend around 2 hours, so I'm overestimating the amount of time by about 30%
20:13I used to overestimate by around 50%, but nowadays I'm pretty happy with 30%
20:18If you're just starting, begin by being more generous and wider in your estimates when you do your time tracking
20:25This way, you'll get an idea of how big your margin of error is for how long you think something will take versus how long it actually does
20:32Now, let's say that my second biggest priority for the day is to film an amazing YouTube video where I deliver great content for free
20:39Okay, well, let's do that in the afternoon, and I'm pretty comfortable with some margin of error, thinking it'll take me a couple of hours
20:57So, I'll block that out in the afternoon
20:58Now we've got our one to two biggest priorities for the day
21:00Priorities blocked out during the day, and everything else needs to fit around this
21:04Remember, these are the things that you absolutely have to get done
21:08These are the things that your future self would be most thankful for, so that's the reason why we make this the centerpiece, and everything else fits around it
21:17We're now going to add our second and third tier priority tasks onto this schedule, and it doesn't really matter so much what is third most important versus fourth most important versus fifth most important
21:31What matters more is the type of task, how long it's going to take, and how it's going to influence our flow during the day
21:38So, let's say the next items that I need to get done are designing a workshop and making..
21:43Some lesson resources
21:47I want to catch up with some members of my team on a project that I'm working on, and I want to fit in a workout during the day
21:52Well, I know that urgency is going to help me focus a little bit, and I can see that there is some time before dinner after I've done my YouTube recording
21:58I usually have dinner around 6:00 p.m., and it takes me about an hour, so I'm just going to block that out of my calendar first
22:05The workshop design will probably take me around 2 hours, so overestimating, I need at least 3 hours, which means there isn't enough time to do it after my YouTube recording
22:15Now, if I was not as good of a scheduler — like I was 10 years ago — I would just be like, yeah, I can get it done, be really ambitious, and try to fit that in
22:24Before dinner, but not anymore because I know that that's just not going to be worth it
22:28So, what I'll do is schedule my workout during these two hours instead, because that's enough time for me, and it works out because it's during the day
22:35I'll be relatively energized, and I can eat straight afterwards
22:39It works out well for catching up with my team members about their projects, which will only take around 30 minutes, and I can probably do that right after lunch, just before I start my YouTube recording
22:51That means I’ll need to make sure I finish in time as well to get onto my recording
22:54So, I just schedule that team catch-up and my workshop design after dinner and during the evening
23:03I know that I'm a..
23:06A little bit slower, and I'm not able to concentrate quite as sharply, but designing a workshop is fine
23:10I mean, I've done hundreds of those before; I can do it pretty effortlessly, and it should be easy enough to do
23:17After that, I'll schedule in some break time for myself to give me a good incentive to finish everything during the day
23:26I'm going to give myself an hour of playing games on my PS5 at the end of the day, and scheduling a break time is something to look forward to
23:34I would recommend doing that as well, because you're going to need it
23:37So again, you may as well make your schedule realistically reflect your day
23:41Also, I know someone is going to ask me in the comments, so I'll just tell you right now—the game I'm playing
23:47It's called Sea of Stars, and so just like that, I've made my schedule
23:49Yes, it is from 9:00 a.m
23:52till 1:00 p.m
23:54And again, like I said, this is the type of schedule you would have if you just work all day and you don't have anything else to do
24:01Obviously, if there were other things, then you have to fit that into your schedule
24:05If you've got lectures, if you've got appointments, if you've got family or social commitments, like those are important as well
24:14Okay, maybe lectures are less so, but family and social commitments are also important, so you’ve got to make sure that you block out your time
24:21But the principles are the same: you start with your biggest priorities, you block them out, and your second and third-tier priorities fit in around them
24:25And really focusing on trying to maximize that flow while overestimating the amount of time that everything's going to take
24:32This process that I've just gone through with you right now, I will do this probably for two to three days at a time, but then every day I'll also just make some minor adjustments based on new things that arise
24:43 And so, a common question that might arise is, well, what do I do about the things that I didn't have a chance to schedule? I need to get them done anyway, where do they fit in? And that is where prioritization comes in
24:55Remember what I said before: just because you've scheduled it in doesn't mean that you're going to get it done, and in that situation, you lose
25:03Anyway, at least this way, you get to control where..
25:09Your losses are, and make a plan for how you can recover from them
25:12Scheduling realistically with room for error shows you the true roadmap of how you can reach your goal
25:20If you find that scheduling this way means that you're constantly having to drop tasks and not get them done, what this tells me is not that you need to fit more into your schedule to ambitiously try to make it work, but that you need to work on your methods to become more efficient
25:39At the end of the day, if you schedule too ambitiously, you might be able to pull it off every once in a while, but probably not consistently, and you probably already know that
25:46What's important is that we control and pick our losses so that we can figure out a plan to win
25:53Championship, for example, if you find that you're not able to study as much as you wanted to during a day, then you might need to improve your learning efficiency to be able to fit more in
26:04And if you don't know how to be a more efficient learner, then you should be scheduling maybe 20 or 30 minutes a day just to learn how to learn more efficiently
26:12By doing this, yes, you're losing out on the 20 or 30 minutes a day that you spent on learning to learn, but over a month, that might lead you to improve your overall learning efficiency by 20%, which is not uncommon
26:25That means that a month from now, that version of you who's 20% more efficient can fit more in a day and actually start catching up
26:34So, when I think about my schedule now, if I can't fit..
26:36Everything that I need to get done goes into my schedule by following these principles
26:40I know that the solution is to look at my methods and find a way to increase my efficiency
26:47If I don't know how to increase my efficiency, what I need to do is allocate time to learn to become more efficient over time
26:53I, as a person, become more capable and more efficient, whereas if I spend all of my time just trying to keep up without analyzing my losses and improving myself, then I know that eventually I'm just going to fall behind because the future version of me is no better than the current version of me
27:11If you want to start improving your time management, task management, or learning efficiency but you don't know where to start, then check out this
27:17Playlist that we've created for you, where we cover the most important core principles that you need to follow
27:23If you like this video, please subscribe so you don't miss my next one
27:26Thank you for watching
27:26I'll see you next time.