How To Organize Your Life - The START System

So maybe you're a busy student who wants to feel ahead of your studying and your schoolwork, or you're a busy professional who has a lot of projects to manage, or just in general you're someone who has a lot of tasks and you want to start feeling ahead of things and not behind things. So in this video I'm going to show you a simple task management system. The only thing you need is a calendar, a calendar of your choice, a google calendar, physical calendar, planner, whatever you want to use, so that you can feel ahead of things like you're getting your tasks managed, but it's simple so you don't have to worry about you know 10 different productivity apps and all these different things. It's just one simple system so that you could get started. So this is the start system and what it does is it fills in the gaps that are left behind by to-do lists and just putting events on a calendar. So a lot of people, I would say most people, have what's called a silent to-do list, which is where you think of a thing you need to do, like I need to call my mom on her birthday, and you just keep reminding yourself, oh don't forget tomorrow's her birthday, oh don't forget I gotta call her, and it's just this silent to-do list and you keep reminding yourself, and so it's clogging up your brain when you should be using it for creativity or just fun things that you want to think about and not tasks. And then finally what a lot of people do is they might use a calendar but they just put events on it, like they might say mom's birthday, Friday, essay due, Saturday, and it's all just kind of these events, but all of those have some holes because there's a lot more actually two things than just that. So this start system fills in the holes that those leave behind. So anytime I have a task or I'm confronted with a project, like do I want to plan a murder mystery party or you have an essay to write or even simple things that are not that complex, like you just need to get a card in the mail for someone's birthday. This is the system that I use and in teaching there was a system that we used called AMF which stood for Awkward Mechanical Fluid. So whenever you start doing something new, at first you're kind of awkward and then you get to a mechanical phase like you think with cooking, okay we use the recipe, we don't deviate from the recipe, we're very mechanical. This is kind of what we're doing here and then you get to the fluid stage where like in the cooking example you can make your own recipes, you can leave out ingredients, you know you know what rules you can break. So this is really just the starting point. It's kind of a mechanical thing and this is this is the system that's helped me when I was juggling teaching and YouTube at the same time and then when I went just full-time doing YouTube. So it's been really helpful this task management system. So the system that I think about anything that I come into contact with, any tasks that I'm going to have to do, whether big project, small project, it happens very quickly in my mind. It usually just takes five seconds and I'm just thinking through these things and then I'm writing it down. But at the beginning it might take a little bit more, might be a little bit more mechanical at first. So the first step anytime I'm confronting with a project is to specify what the goal is, what is the project. So the first step is to specify what is the outcome and this is usually a noun. Like you want to have an essay written, essay is a noun, or maybe it's your mom's birthday, like the event. So that is what you need to specify at first. So in this example maybe I'll just use a college essay. So you have an essay, that's the noun. The second step is to split it into its tasks and this is something that a lot of people do not do. So you don't want to just stop at the noun and put that on the calendar, but you need to actually split it into the verbs, what are all the different actions you're going to have to do. Even with simple things like putting a card in the mail, it's you got to go to the, you know, maybe you go to the store, you got to buy the card, you need to write the card, you get the stamps, you don't have the stamp, put it in the mail. So even really simple things. Actually you typically have quite a few tasks and you can pick how specific you would like to get. I think if you're just getting into it you might want to lean into the more specific side. So that step you're going to split it into the tasks, the verbs that you're going to do. So let's just say for the purpose of this video that it's a relatively short essay, it's just maybe a one-page little thing, it's hardly an essay at all. So maybe I just need to research and pick the topic, maybe that'll take me an hour, maybe I want a rough draft, that'll take an hour, and then edit and it'll take an hour. Just kind of a short little blurb for a class let's say. If it was a more complicated essay it would be more complicated than this. Now the third step is what a lot of people will do improperly. So this is one where you need to have some self-awareness to know how good of a judge of time are you. Because the third step is to assess how long each of these steps will take. Now I would say it's always a good idea to plan in buffer. Even if you're a great judge of time you're not going to ever lose out by having too much like free time that you've planned in for yourself. Now if you're a pretty bad judge of time, like if you're routinely getting in getting things in late, you might want to double how long you think some of this takes. So it takes some self-awareness. But let's say I'm a good judge of time I'll say it's going to take an hour for each of these let's say. Probably less than that maybe it'll only take half an hour because it's a short paper but I want to plan in buffer for myself. So I'm going to say it's going to be an hour for each of these. So what a lot of people might do when they get to this step is they might just go ahead and start putting things on the calendar. Okay put in research, then draft, then edit. But especially for more complex things you need to start with the end in mind. When is the due date? And work your way back from there. So especially for long-range goals like a goal that might take a year or you're starting a business, I always start with the end in mind and plan backward. So this R stands for rewind. From the end in mind go back and plan your goal. So let's say in this case I've kind of procrastinated and it's due in two days. So it would have been nice if it was due in three days and I could go back but at this point maybe I procrastinated and didn't have time. So if I start with the end in mind I can see oh I'm going to need to start cramming somewhere. So the question is do I want to do more work this day or this day? Because me personally I like to have a little buffer I might plan more here. So I might have a research session and a drafting session later in the day and then an editing session. So we've started with the end in mind, the due date is here, and then we're going back. So then the final step this is where your calendar comes in at the beginning of the video I said you needed. So what I like to do is I put the verbs on the calendar for the day that I'm going to do them. Now especially for long-range plans like let's say I'm writing an extensive research paper that has to do with three months from now or I've got some big research project. I put those things on the monthly spread and the monthly spread I call my monthly messy dashboard because this is where I put my plans but plans do change. So if I've got friends they want to hang out I put it here. It's kind of my brain dump location anytime I get something this is kind of my inbox. Then every week I usually do Sunday evening let's say I will transfer everything that was on that week. You know some things maybe got crossed off some things got canceled you know this got all messy it's got a lot of stuff on it. Then I'll turn the page and every Sunday then I'll get a little bit more specific with the time blocking and I don't typically time block any more than 60 percent. But this gets filled up with a bunch of verbs so this is integrating a calendar with a to-do list to make sure things get done. So I don't just put events on here I don't put essay due or mom birthday what I would put on the calendar would be things like buy card write card things like that a bunch of verbs. So the t stands for time you're assigning it to time. Now in reality what I wanted to do was just kind of explain my thinking but in reality this really just takes five seconds especially I'm just in the habit of doing this. So now anytime I have something to do I just go to my monthly spread and I write down those tasks because most things are relatively easy like mailing a card and so I just write those things down. This is especially useful to think of the process in this way when I'm planning something relatively large like a murder mystery party. So I chunk my way backward okay I want the party's gonna be on this day so I need the invitations out this way and that's where the rewind really becomes important the more tasks more irons in the fire there are the more plates you're juggling. So this is a way to manage your tasks and get organized but I do know that just a well-laid plan isn't actually going to actually make sure that you execute you need some discipline you need to actually get the thing done. So I have another video that talks about making discipline effortless so that you can go from not just a well-organized plan but to actually getting the thing done. So check out this video if you're interested in that topic.