How I Manage My Time - 10 Time Management Tips

The speaker introduces the first principle: we absolutely own all of our time. This realization was life-changing, stemming from a fortune cookie-like wisdom stating that at any moment, you're doing what you most want to be doing. The speaker provides personal examples like spending six hours playing World of Warcraft and filming videos, emphasizing that even with bosses or parents, you fundamentally control your own time. The key insight is reframing 'I don't have time' to 'I'm choosing not to make time,' which is empowering because it acknowledges that if something isn't getting done, it's simply not a priority rather than a genuine lack of time.

The second principle comes from Derek Sivers' book 'Hell Yeah or No' and addresses how to handle opportunities. When starting out with few opportunities, saying yes to most things makes sense, but once inbound requests exceed available time, the strategy must change. The maxim becomes binary: something is either a 'hell yes' or it's a no - there's no middle ground. The speaker admits struggling with this, often filling his calendar with 'kind of all right' commitments that he later regrets. The practical application is learning to be comfortable saying no to opportunities that don't excite you, reserving time only for things that generate genuine enthusiasm.

Tips three and four focus on daily task management through the 'daily highlight' concept from the book 'Make Time' by Jake Knapp and John Zaratsky, and using physical to-do lists. The daily highlight means selecting one thing that must get done each day - the most urgent, satisfying, or fun task. This prevents drowning in endless to-do lists and ensures consistent progress. The speaker uses Analog by Ugmonk, a physical system with notecards and a wooden holder, for daily tasks. The principle 'your brain is for having ideas, not holding them' emphasizes writing everything down to prevent things from slipping through cracks. Even when working as a doctor, the speaker uses physical lists because crossing items off provides satisfaction that apps cannot replicate.

Principles five and six cover time blocking and leveraging Parkinson's Law, which states that work expands to fill the time allocated to it. While Elon Musk reportedly time-blocks everything, the speaker only schedules the daily highlight into the calendar to avoid over-managing productivity. This ensures the most important task always gets done while remaining flexible. Parkinson's Law is applied through artificial deadlines - if you allocate all day for a YouTube video, it takes all day; allocate one hour, and it gets done in one hour. The speaker provides an example of creating a YouTube course with no real deadline but setting an artificial one for next weekend and blocking calendar time, which ensures completion. Without deadlines and schedules, optional projects never get finished.

Tips seven and eight address protecting personal time and strategic delegation. As an entrepreneur with flexible schedules, the speaker's calendar filled with Zoom calls until establishing protected morning time (roughly 4 hours) completely free from obligations. This allows for deep work on projects like book writing, business planning, or simply playing World of Warcraft when needed. For delegation, the speaker challenges the assumption that you can't afford it by calculating your time's dollar value - initially set at $20-25/hour. Any task you dislike that can be outsourced for less than that value should be delegated. Examples include hiring a cleaner and using Upwork or Fiverr to hire freelancers in the Philippines, Bangladesh, or India for tasks like data entry at $7/hour, freeing time for higher-value activities. This principle applies regardless of circumstances.

The final two principles cover automating scheduling and choosing satisfaction with accomplishments. Calendly eliminates the time-wasting back-and-forth of scheduling across time zones by letting people book directly into your calendar - initially feeling like a power move but actually appreciated by recipients who save 20 minutes of their lives. The speaker even uses it to catch up with friends, resulting in more connections in recent months than three years of WhatsApp scheduling. The tenth principle addresses productivity nerds' tendency toward chronic dissatisfaction at day's end, always feeling they could have done more. The speaker learned to choose satisfaction with completed work - filming one video instead of five is fine because beating yourself up doesn't change the work done, it only makes you feel bad. Choosing to feel good about time management is entirely within your control.