How I Leave Work at 5PM Every Single Day

90,000 hours. That's how much just the average person will spend at work over their lifetime. That's a staggering third of your life. And with another third of your life spent sleeping, you really only have that final third to do everything else. But it's no longer just the traditional 9 to 5 anymore. The average workday has increased to a daunting 8.4 hours. And for many, it doesn't even end there. Once I graduated college and entered the workforce, I quickly realized that I was going to be in the office a lot. I was going to be with the same people inside a cubicle for extended hours beyond 8pm, the lunch that isn't paid, the commute there and back that could take up to 1 to 2 hours each way. And it was just miserable to me. And after those first few jobs, I just made a promise to myself that I would not put myself in a position where I had to work past 5pm. That remaining third of my life that I had for me wasn't going to be taken up by having to do more work, but being able to do things that I actually enjoyed and having the energy to actually do them. It dawned on me that the key to not having to work these late night hours in the office wasn't about working harder or faster, but just working smarter. Figuring out how I could be as proficient as possible during those 8 hours so I had the rest of the day for myself. And this took me a few years to optimize, but I finally got there. Not only has my job performance improved, but all this time saved has allowed me to just do things that actually bring me a lot of joy, like make YouTube videos, or just unwind, or spend time with my girlfriend, or just, I don't know, be in the bathroom for a little bit longer. I've basically found a way to just not hate that 9 to 5 work environment, because I'm actually in control of my day. So in this video, I'll share with you guys the exact strategies that I use so I never have to work past 5pm and I still am able to get everything else done. And by the end of this video, you'll be able to adopt these same strategies so you can actually reclaim a little bit more time in your life for you. Alright, so the first thing I do is I analyze my time meticulously. For me, it's not about clocking in or out, but it's about understanding where every minute of the workday is going and being spent. I saw that on average, only 30% of our time at work is actually being used for productivity. Why are people averaging 8.4 hours a day if they only are productive 30% of that time? Think about it, how often do you find yourself caught up by non-essential tasks or just being interrupted throughout the day? Maybe you spend hours on pointless meetings like there have just been emails, or you get sucked into the black hole of social media whenever you need a break. But by taking a closer look and identifying all those inefficiencies, you can work towards fixing them and eliminating them in order to get more work done in less time. So what I did, and you can do too, is keep a daily log of all the activities you do throughout the week. Once you have a clear picture of how you spend all that time, evaluate it. Are there any patterns that stand out? Are you spending too much time on low-priority tasks that come at the expense of bigger projects? Are there any reoccurring distractions that just hinder your performance? My colleagues were telling me to get a TV for my office, and I thought it was a great idea until I realized that, yeah, I would not get anything done. What I found works best for me is to batch similar tasks together to minimize content switching and just closing my door, and just be more comfortable delegating tasks or finding ways to automate systems that can actually do the work for me. This has allowed me to free up more time to focus on really important things that actually take up a lot of my day. The key here is just to be pretentious and proactive about how you're spending your time. Next is prioritizing tasks effectively. I used to start my workday with a lengthy to-do list, just filled with tasks of various importance and urgency. I would just go straight down the list item by item, and as the day went on, I started to realize that I wasn't getting many of those checked off. It's that frustration of feeling busy but not productive. It was a trap that I fell into, and I'm sure many of you guys too, where I just felt defeated in that all my action items are just never going to get checked off. The thing is, not all tasks are created equal. Some are very crucial to your success and if you're going to have a job, and others are a lot more meaningless than they may appear. The key here is to distinguish which ones actually are the crucial ones and which ones aren't, and then prioritizing the ones that are. So, what I do is I identify the top three to five most important tasks that I have to do that day that are going to have the most long-term benefit for my success. These are your top dogs, the absolutely must-complete-before-you-leave-work tasks, and then you focus all of your energy and all of your time just completing those. I don't allow myself to get interrupted by minor distractions. I just go really laser-focused on that, and that's why I said earlier where delegating is really important, because yeah, obviously there's going to be minor tasks that you need to do, but finding a way to automate it or having someone else do it is crucial. It's so easy to get caught up in that trap of trying to do everything yourself, but in reality, you only have so much time in the day, and it's going to allow you to be so much more strategic about how you spend your day instead of just allowing everything to come your way happen to you. The next strategy is to use analog tools. I know a lot of people enjoy living in the 21st century using digital notepads or using software like Notion, but I prefer the industrial revolution. I go with a piece of paper. Having ADHD, it's incredibly easy to get distracted to anything that's just connected to the internet. When I'm sitting at my desk and I'm trying to work and I suddenly get all these notifications on my phone, it's really challenging to not look at them. You just check it quickly and go back to work, and before you know it, you've spent 30 minutes playing Wordle. By using paper lists or paper schedules, I'm putting up a barrier between me and that digital world, so it's just me and that piece of paper. There's something about just writing things down that just helps anchor my thoughts, and it just feels good to write. They also provide a tangible sense of progress and accomplishment, where I just feel good about just physically crossing things out on my shortlist or on my calendar and just knowing that I am getting closer to leaving for the day. Also, when you want to change or rearrange things, it's just so much easier to pick it up and look at it and cross things out and write, instead of just having to click a bunch of things to open up an app. I do a new one of these every single day. I'll likely do another video where I talk about how exactly I break everything up, but yeah, go with paper. Another key strategy here is just setting time limits. I hate being a perfectionist, because I feel like everything I do, I have to get it as good as I possibly can, and I'll go back and I'll make a million edits, and then I'll find something an hour later that I did wrong, and I'll go back, and it just sucks up so much time. But by giving myself a deadline where I have to complete this task by a certain period of time, or else I stop where I'm at and go on to the next one, has allowed me to avoid that. When you know you only have a limited amount of time, you're less bogged down by having to be a perfectionist, and you're just more focused on just getting it done. And it also prevents burnout, where I'm not finding myself dedicating my entire day on one thing. I personally prefer the Pomodoro technique when I do this. And the premise is simple. It's taking short, focused bursts of energy for 25-minute intervals where you are just focused in on that project, and then you take a five-minute break. After the clock goes off, I get up, I walk around, I release some of that ADHD energy, I just kind of recharge and refocus, and then I go back in for another lap. I kind of frame it in my mind where it's the first quarter in a football game, so you go one quarter, two quarter, and then I just take a break, and then I go back in. And I reward myself. If I get it all done, I can go and I can get a smoothie or something. I don't know, but it's just getting to that end of the game. It's challenging trying to find ways to make a legal work seem entertaining, but just incorporating those prizes at the end of it just is, it's something. Now let's talk about triaging these tasks. You know, it's late in the day, and you're getting ready to go home, and then you get something in your inbox that demands that you stay late, and you just get so overwhelmed because you have something planned, and clearly this happens a lot. And the only way that I've survived this onslaught without having to sacrifice my sanity is by using triage tasks. Basically, this is about making strategic decisions about how to allocate your time and energy depending on the urgency of that task, identifying if it's something that actually has to get done today, and if it is, trying to rearrange your shortlist to find ways to prioritize it. This is especially important late in the day because it helps prevent you from feeling overwhelmed by just all the sheer amount of work. You can evaluate and reprioritize your shortlist without losing your ----, and to reassure that you're prioritizing your attention on the most important thing besides getting it done, which is to get the hell out of there. And on days where emails are just absolutely out of control, I'll use a Pomodoro session where I'll go through, I'll look at all the emails, and I'll prioritize them based on do it now or do it later, and I'll break it up and then put it on my shortlist as needed. By doing this, you can begin to set boundaries so you know when it's time to leave for the day and just being committed to doing that. Like I said, I have that established firm cutoff of 5pm, so no matter what I've done for the day, I let it go. I leave work at work, and when I go home, that's me time. And if a truly fulfilling work-life balance does exist in that world of 9-5 office jobs, I truly think this is the best way to do it. Of course, there's going to be circumstances where you have to stay past 5pm, but this overall has allowed me to just for the majority of the time not have to let it get there. I hope this video was super helpful in that it at least gave you hope in knowing that you can still have a functional life while working a 9-5. If it has, please give this video a thumbs up, and consider subscribing if you haven't either. I make new videos every week, and I hope you go back and watch them because someone's gotta. I'm gonna go enjoy the rest of my day. I'll see you guys later.