Building a Productivity System: Essential Components for Life Management

A productivity system helps one efficiently do meaningful tasks, reducing brain strain, using tools like calendar, email management, to-do lists, and file management.

### Building a Personal Productivity System with Three Layers
* 🗓 A productivity system helps us efficiently do meaningful tasks, **reducing stress** and allowing our brain to **focus on what it does best**.
* 📅 The "**Ron**" layer, or the foundational level of the system, consists of a **calendar, email management, a to-do list, and file management**.
* 📧 For email management, adopt the "**One Touch to Inbox Zero**" approach and **unsubscribe from unnecessary emails**.
* 📝 Use a to-do list app like Todoist with **100% coverage** to avoid the stress of **remembering incomplete tasks**.
* 📂 Implement a **cloud storage system** like Google Drive for **easy access to files**.
* 📚 The "**Hermione**" layer, an optional addition for avid readers, focuses on **capturing insights** from books and other media.
* 📖 Use the Kindle app for **reading and highlighting books**, and an app like Instapaper for **saving articles to read later**.
* 📬 Subscribe to newsletters like Morning Brew to **discover interesting content to read**.
* 📝 Use **Readwise** to collect highlights from various sources in one place, and a note-taking app like **Apple Notes** to capture ideas.
* 🧙 The "Dumbledore" layer involves building a **"second brain" for creativity and making connections** using a system like Tiago Forte's **"Building a Second Brain."**
* 📚 Building a second brain acts as a thought partner and **enhances creativity** by leveraging the captured information.

In this video, we are talking about how to build a productivity system, and the first question to start with is why do you, in fact, need a productivity system. And really, the main reason is so that we can do the stuff that we want to do. We can do things that are meaningful to us in an efficient way without wasting our time, and so that we're less stressed out doing it because then we don't have to rely on our brain to do things that it's not designed to do. And we can almost think of this as like a bit of a Venn diagram where we've got the brain and we've got our system, and broadly we can categorize tasks into one of three things. So type one tasks are things that our brain itself does best. These are things like creativity and enjoyment and relaxing and living in the present moment and all that fun stuff connecting with other people all of this stuff totally cool if our brain does the thing then we've got type 2 types of thing.

which is stuff that like we often use our brain for, but that our productivity system or some kind of system can probably do a little bit more efficiently. For example, things like keeping on top of tasks, keeping on top of calendars, keeping on top of emails. Having to use our brain to remember all of that stuff is really taxing and quite stressful, especially if you have a lot of stuff to be doing. And then thirdly, there is the type 3 stuff, the stuff that we definitely should be using some kind of system for. This generally involves kind of remembering information that is not directly connected to the things we actually care about. So, for example, memorizing phone numbers is a bit of a waste of time in a way. Memorizing a lot of people's birthdays, a bit of a waste of time. You can just outsource that to a system like a calendar. And so, really, the idea of a productivity system is well, productivity is using our time intentionally and effectively. And so, the point of having a system for it is so

that our brain doesn't have to do so much work. So anyway, in this video, we're going to talk about kind of three different layers of a productivity system that you can choose to build if you feel that it helps you with your life. It certainly helps with mine, and we're going to split that into layer 1, which is Ron, layer 2, which is Hermione, and layer 3, which is Dumbledore. So, the Ron layer, i.e., layer one of the system, is all about keeping your life in order. And there are really four things, four different components that you need in a productivity system, in my humble opinion, to kind of get to a place where your life is reasonably in order. Let the feast begin. The first one is a calendar. Now, it is amazing how many people I know who don't live their lives based on a calendar and who are trying to remember in their own heads all of the information for events that they need to attend. A friend invites you for a birthday party two weeks from now. Oh

it's cool. It's fine. I won't write it down. I will just try and remember. Oh, I've gotta have dinner with my mum next week. It's fine. I'm just gonna remember. Like, our brain is so bad at remembering these things. And one of the quotes that I always come back to is from David Allen, who is one of the world's biggest productivity gurus, who says that your brain is for having ideas, not for storing them. And one of the principles of productivity that I always come back to, and I have done over the last five years, is that my brain is a dumbass. I want my brain to not have to remember things that it doesn't need to. So feel free to use a physical calendar if you really want to, but basically everyone in the world these days uses some kind of digital calendar, usually some kind of app on your phone. Apple Calendar is good, Google Calendar is good. There are a bunch of different third-party alternatives. The one I personally use is Fantastical. This is, for example, what my

fantastic. Health looks like earlier today breakfast with Osama and Sharina dashoom same page meeting with Angus table read for this video podcast q&a for the podcast video filming video filming and then I'm going to Cambridge for some talks this evening. I have an orthodontist appointment tomorrow. I've got this whole retreat thing that I'm going to in the evening. And basically for the last several years, I have been running my life based on my calendar, and this is amazing. This like takes an enormous amount of stress off my shoulders because if something is not in the calendar, then it doesn't exist. Like as soon as a friend says to me, Hey, do you want to do this thing on this date? I'll look at my calendar and be like, Let me have a look. Yep. And I'll just add it there, there and then so that I'm not trying to remember like what was that thing that like Catherine invited me to, etc., etc. So a calendar is

really good for remembering stuff that you need to do, but it's also really good for actively intentionally blocking out time for the things that you actually want to do. So for example, for me, I know that every morning I want to block out three hours to work on my book. And so there's a block chain in my calendar. And then I know that, Oh, okay, cool, when I get to the morning at nine o'clock, this is the thing that I'm doing. I block out time for exercise, I block out times for sports events, for social events. Friday nights, I want to host a dinner, therefore, I'll block that time out in my calendar. And then the third and final really good reason to use a calendar is that you can then use automatic scheduling apps like Calendly, or TinyCal, or SavvyCal, or any of these others. And what that does is it generates a link, and that link connects to your calendar. And then if you want to arrange a meeting with someone or a Zoom call with someone you met on the

internet or even a hangout with friends. You could, if you wanted to, save the whole back and forth of scheduling, especially if it's with email, especially if it's a work thing, by just sending them a calendar link. And then they'd be able to kind of book a time in your calendar. Now, I use this a lot for kind of booking interviews for book research and all this kind of stuff. And it's just super, super helpful, and it saves a lot of time. And again, means that my own brain doesn't have to kind of do the work in arranging all these things. All right, the next thing every productivity system needs at the wrong level is some kind of system for email management. Most of us use something like Gmail. That's totally fine. You can use an app like Apple Mail. I use an app called Superhuman, which is very good, but it's expensive. You have to pay for it, but it's pretty solid. Now, there's an approach to email that I really like from my friend Thiago Forte, who is again

productivity expert. And it's called One Touch to Inbox Zero. And basically, the idea behind this method is that every email touches your inbox only once. If it's something that requires a calendar event, then it goes into your calendar, and then you archive the email. If it's a to-do, if it's something that needs action, it goes into your task manager. More on that in a minute. And then you archive the email. If it's information that you need to reference at some point, you put it into a note-taking app. And if it's an article or something that you might want to read, it goes into your Read It Later app. And we'll talk much more about those further in the video. There's a few general tips that apply to emails as well, which again are completely game-changing for productivity if you haven't done them already. The first one is to just unsubscribe from all these random emails like Amazon or like sales or like shops and like all of this stuff is pretty unnecessary. We don't want to treat our

inbox is like kind of this place where any kind of marketer from any kind of company can just spam stuff into it. One thing that you can actually do, and this is what I do, is that I've created a smart filter in Gmail which searches the content of every email for the word unsubscribe. Now, if the word unsubscribe is in an email, it is probably not an important email because no real person is going to email you with the word unsubscribe in their thing. Whereas if you're getting like a marketing communication or a newsletter or whatever and it has the word unsubscribe in it, you can just automatically make it skip your inbox so it doesn't kind of clog up the inbox. The other thing you should do is that ideally only have one place to deal with all your email. So, for example, when I was at university, I forwarded all my university email to my personal Gmail and also all my personal Gmail to my personal Gmail because Gmail has just way better features than whatever Hermes app that Cambridge University was using.

but really, the main point is that we want to avoid using our inbox, our email inbox, as a place to find articles to read, or even worse, using our email inbox as a to-do list, which brings us on to component number three of a decent productivity system, and that is to have some kind of to-do list. Now, again, David Allen's advice from Getting Things Done comes in here: your brain is for having ideas, not for holding them, and if you don't write something down in a to-do list, your brain is very unlikely to remember the thing. You could do this on pen and paper if you really want to. I sometimes do, like my daily planner. I use my essentially productivity part-time productivity notebook, and in that, I ask myself one question, which is: what is the most important thing I need to do today? That's my daily highlight, and every day, I try and fill the end to be like, Okay, today, the single most important thing I want to do is X, and then I have my to-do list. This is just

stuff that I might do later in the day. And I like calling it a might-do list because it just takes a little bit of the pressure off me. And it means I don't have to stress too much if I don't get all those things done. So that tends to be what I do on a kind of day-by-day basis when I figure out what am I doing for the day. But the actual app that I use to track all of the other stuff is Todoist. I've tried a bunch of different apps over the years. So essentially what I do is that if I need to add a task to my to-do list, then usually I'll input it on my phone or on my MacBook if I happen to be on my MacBook. And you'll see on my iPhone that I've literally got Todoist as like one of the primary things in my dock. So if I do think of anything at all, anytime a task pops into my mind, I think, okay, this is not gonna happen until I write it down. And I just open up Todo.

list and I write down whatever the task is. So, for example, I know right now I need to find a bow tie from Cambridge. Great. Cool. Now that's written down. Now I will get to it at some point. Similarly, I use this for shopping lists. I use it for any thank you emails I need to send. As soon as anything pops into mind, it just goes straight into the to-do list app, either on my phone or on my MacBook. And then, whenever I've got some time where I feel like, you know what, I'm gonna batch go through my to-do list because I've got half an hour and nothing better to do, then I'll just go through and just bang, bang. I'll delete the ones that are no longer relevant, like, oh, should I get all plant smoothies? Probably maybe not. Screw it. Doesn't need to go. I'll just take that off or delete it. But for something I actually need to do, it's great because then I can batch and do these things like I need to send a bunch of thank you.

emails, and so I've just batched them all into Todoist, knowing that at some point I'll get around to sending all these emails in one go. Something I like to do is sort of got this someday maybe list for like, you know, work stuff, someday maybe it's like personal stuff. These are things I'd like to do at some point: rollerblading, archery, hunting, glamping, mountain biking, treehouse clamping retreat, all these different things. Like when I have an idea for something cool, I just chuck it into the someday maybe list. This is, again, a tip from David Allen. And that means that I know at some point when it comes to planning my next holiday, I'll just be able to look at that and think, you know what, the idea of kite surfing sounds pretty cool. Let me google and figure out where I can potentially go kite surfing. Now, at this point, the mistake that the vast majority of people seem to make with their to-do list, at least from all the people that I've coached in productivity, is actually

not having 100% coverage. So, for example, if you have a to-do list and it only covers 90% of your things, rather than 100%, you're going to get into one of these problems. I can't remember what I've forgotten. So, like, the point of the to-do list is so that you don't forget things. But if 10% of things are in your brain, you won't know what that 10% is. And so you're always going to be stressed, thinking, I know my to-do list has most of the things I need to do, but it doesn't have all the things I need to do. Therefore, I still need to remember in my brain to do stuff. And then it just adds this sort of low, low-level tension and stress to every single thing that we do in life. Anyway, final thing in our wrong level of productivity system is some kind of file management system. Again, this is like super basic stuff, but again, there are so many people who have literally coached in productivity who don't have a decent file management.

system generally what you want is some kind of cloud storage. Now, the one that I use, even though I'm an Apple fanboy for absolutely everything, I still use Google Drive as my cloud storage system of choice. I've got my personal Google Drive, and I've got the business Google Drive, and I've got the folders on my Mac. So, for example, I can look in my Drive, I can look at all of my business stuff, all of my med school stuff. Let's look at pre-clinical medicine. Let's look at first here. These are all the notes that I had in first year across all my different subjects. Let's look at home. That's physiology essays, examples, documents, all of this stuff. It is all in my Google Drive. And my whole life is basically on Google Drive: photos, memories, files, all of the things on Google Drive. So that if I ever lose my computer, if my hard disk discover goes, if it ever gets stolen, if I want to upgrade computers, it's so easy. I know every single thing is on Google Drive.

and these days, like searching functions and these things, are so good that if I know that I need to find a certain file, I'll just search my Google Drive for it because I know it's probably in there somewhere. All right, so that was the wrong layer of the productivity system for essential life management. The four components that, in my humble opinion, every single person needs to survive in this world that we live in so that your brain is not super super stressed out trying to remember all these random details. The next layer up of the productivity system is an optional extra, and this is for people that consume a lot of books. Honestly, don't you two read? And this is where the Hermione level of the productivity system comes in. Basically, the idea here is that it's a layer above. It's like additional modules that you can add to your basic productivity system if you want. If you consume a lot of media, media meaning books or audiobooks or podcasts or videos or anything like that that you might want to remember later. This layer

of the productivity system is about taking notes. It's about capturing information that resonates with us from the stuff that we consume. And again, this is for people who, you know, if you've had that feeling where you read all these things or you listen to all these things and you have all these insights but you don't write them down. And then like two months later, you've forgotten what you read in that book that potentially changed your life. That's the point of this level of the productivity system. And here we have another four modules of the system. So the first one is the Kindle app. Yes, there are other ways to read. There's Apple Books and stuff, but like to be honest, I've tested them all and I found the Kindle app to be by far the best one. You don't even need to have a physical Kindle, although that's one of the most life-changing products, I do recommend. Yeah, the Kindle app is absolutely sick. I tend to read most things on ebook format rather than physical book format, but it's not just

reading that I can do on the Kindle app. It is also highlighting and highlighting on the Kindle lab just is an absolute breeze. And what I can do is that once I've read a book, I can always look at my highlights in the Kindle notebook. And then if I need to revisit things that I learned from a book or a quote from a paranormal romance book that I particularly enjoyed, I can just open up my highlights and I can see everything that's previously resonated with me. Alright, so that was the Kindle app. Next, we have a read-it-later app. Now the one that I've been using for the last several years is called Instapaper. It's free and essentially the point of Instapaper is that anytime you're reading something or you want to read an article on the internet, if you don't want to read it there and then on your phone or on your browser, you can just share it into something like Instapaper and then it will just show up on your

list. And now again, when I have a spare moment, if I'm commuting, if I'm on a tube or whatever, I'll just open up Instapaper, usually on my phone, and I'll just flick through some of the articles in Instapaper. And I'll be like, Oh, okay, cool, this one looks interesting. 'Improving Ourselves to Death.' This is a bit of a critique about self-help. And I can look through that article, I can highlight stuff as well. It's all very handy, and it's just a great way of separating the reading of articles from coming across the articles. Because often I find that, you know, if I'm on the toilet for like three minutes and I'm scrolling through Twitter and I come across an interesting article, if I read it there and then, it might take 10 minutes, and then I'm on the toilet for three hours. And that's not very good. Or if I'm in the middle of something and someone recommends an article, I know I want to read it at some point, but I know

i don't want to read it there. And then i'll just send it straight to Instapaper and trust that at some point, i will get around to reading that article. And again, this separation from separation of things. Like if i'm trying to focus on something that i genuinely care about, but then i get derailed by an article recommendation and go down this Wikipedia rabbit hole, trying to figure out all these conspiracy theories. That ends up actually taking time away from the thing that i actually care about and kind of stopping me from being productive and being intentional with how i'm spending my time. And because time is our most valuable non-renewable resource, it's the only thing we can't make more of. It's like it always felt a bit like, Oh, I know I've carved out this time to work on this thing that's important to me, but I've just been stolen away by being distracted by this article, Instapaper, or something like that. Completely solves that problem. Now when it comes to

actually finding articles and interesting things to read that will level up your life, and like things you actually care about. People always ask me like, how do you find stuff to read? And for me, it's because I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters. And one of the main ones that I read every single day is called Morning Brew, who are very kindly sponsoring this video. Now, Morning Brew is a completely free daily email newsletter that lands in your inbox every morning, or in your read it later app if you've set up a forwarding rule, which is what I've done. Basically, it gets you up to speed on what's happening in the world of tech, finance, and business. And if you care about those three things like I do, then it's just a fantastic newsletter. And it's also completely free, so you might as well sign up. It takes most people around five minutes to go through it and catch up to date with the news. Usually, I skim through in about two and a half minutes flat while I'm waiting for my

morning coffee to brew, and if there's any interesting articles from that, I'll send those articles directly to my read-it-later app as well. And then, usually, read them later on in the day on the toilet. And that means every day I'm up to date on these things that I care about like tech and finance and business and a lot of those topics then generate interesting content ideas that I can talk about in the podcast or in YouTube videos or anything else or just generally keeping up to date with interesting things in the world. It's also great because it gives you interesting and in-depth coverage around weird things like Elon Musk, how he's financing his Twitter buy, or like the recent crypto crash which is massively affected by encrypted portfolio. But I've got the information from Morning Brew because I trust them as a legit non-fake news source. And all it is is take out a few minutes out of my day to read these interesting articles rather than be keeping up to date with the whole 24

hours news cycle. So yeah, if you're interested in tech, finance, business, any of that kind of stuff, then you might as well subscribe to this newsletter. It is completely free. They don't charge a single penny for it. Completely free. Check out the link in the video description, and it'll help support the channel as well. So thank you so much Morning Brew for sponsoring this video and for making my personal life much better. Alright, component 3 of the hermione layer is an app called Readwise. I'll put an affiliate link down below. They're not sponsoring this video, but if you click the link, you'll get an extra two-month trial rather than just a one-month trial, and I'll get a bit of a kickback if you sign up. I've been recommending Readwise for the last like three years now. Readwise is incredible. It's like this little hub that takes in details. Like, it takes in your Kindle highlights and your Instapaper highlights and a few other sources, and it puts them all in one place. And it

means you can then export those highlights to apps like Notion or Roam more on those in layer three and it's really handy because now all of this stuff gets automated anytime i see a passage in Kindle or an instant paper that resonates with me where i think oh i want to save this passage all i have to do is highlight it and i trust i just trust that Readwise will behind the scenes sort it all out again before Readwise existed before we had this kind of thing what we'd have to do is if you found a passage that resonated with you you'd have to write it down you have to highlight it you'd have to store it somewhere you have to figure out where you're trying to store it it becomes a real faff and again coming back to a point what is the point of a productivity system people always ask it's to get [ __ ] off of your own brain like i now don't need to remember all these things because the system is

remembering it for me, and then I trust that the system will resurface it as and when I need to access those highlights again. And then finally, the fourth component of this sort of system is some sort of capture app for notes. Now again, I've tried a bunch of systems over the years, but actually the one that I've come back to most often is actually Apple Notes. And essentially, anytime I need to remember something, for example, if I'm taking a note while I'm on the toilet, or if I'm on the train and listening to an audiobook and I want to take notes on something, I'll just open up Apple Notes and I'll write it down. And I'll trust that if I need to resurface that thing sometime further down the line, it will always be in my Apple Notes, and it will always be something that I could potentially search for. At this point, honestly, I've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of notes in my Apple Notes, and then I just trust that they're there, like I know I don't need to worry about doing.

stuff with them as soon as they come in. I don't need to worry about an elaborate system for this. What I care about is having the minimum viable level of organization, the minimum viable level of systems and structure to again reduce my own strain, reduce my own stress. People often ask like, Oh, how do you seem to not burn out? How do you manage? Like honestly, having a decent system is a massive cure for burnout because you just trust the system. You trust the system to do stuff. You don't have to again have that low level of anxiety running in your actual brain. All right, so that was the Hermione layer of the productivity system. And now the final layer that, if you want to layer on top of that, you can if you really want to, is the Dumbledore layer, which relates to a concept called building a second brain. You might have heard me talk about building a second brain before. It is a book, it is a system, it's a course written and done by my friend Thiago Forte, and it's like a

pretty game-changing productivity system because the idea like level one. The run the wrong layer level, whatever you want to call it, was about just being able to organize our life and kind of get by. Level two was about capturing insights from all the stuff that we read and consume. Level three, this Dumbledore level, is all about making connections and, in a way, using our productivity system for creativity rather than just for storage. And in a way, if you can actually build your own second brain, this ends up acting as a thought partner for you. I've been using this system since like mid-2019. Now it's been three years, and I've found so many ways in which, particularly for writing my book but also for creating content and for writing newsletters and for doing podcasts, the information I've captured into my second brain using an app called Rome, the one I use these days, although I might switch to Obsidian more on that later, but capturing all this information into an app called Rome Research means that it just sort of resurfaces and if

you want to find out more about this Dumbledore level then check out this video over here, which is my book club episode all about breaking down the C-O-D-E component of the building a second brain system, and that will give you a step-by-step guide on how to apply it in your own life. So thank you so much for watching, check out this video over here, and I'll see in the next one.

How to Build Your Ultimate Productivity System

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Building a Productivity System: The Key Components

A productivity system is essential for efficiently managing tasks and reducing stress.

It involves using the brain for creativity and outsourcing other tasks to a system.

The system is categorized into three types of tasks: those best for the brain, those that can be done more efficiently by a system, and those that definitely require a system.

The key components of a productivity system include a calendar for organizing events, a digital tool for task management, and a note-taking system for storing information.

The Power of Calendar Management for Productivity

Using a calendar helps in organizing and remembering tasks and events, as well as in prioritizing and scheduling important activities.

Automatic scheduling apps like Calendly and TinyCal can save time and effort by eliminating the back and forth of scheduling.

The "One Touch to Inbox Zero" email management method, advocated by productivity expert Thiago Forte, emphasizes handling each email only once by either scheduling it, turning it into a task, archiving it, or saving it for later reference.

Managing Your Email Inbox and To-Do Lists Effectively

Creating a smart filter in Gmail to automatically skip marketing emails with the word "unsubscribe" can help declutter your inbox.

Forwarding all emails to one primary email account and using a to-do list app like Todoist can help prioritize tasks and improve productivity.

Utilizing the "might-do" list approach can help reduce stress and easily manage and batch process tasks.

Maximizing Productivity: A Guide to Effective Task and File Management

Batching emails in Todoist helps in efficient email management and sending.

Creating a "someday maybe" list for both work and personal activities allows for future planning and exploration.

A reliable file management system, such as Google Drive, provides easy access to all documents and files, reducing the stress of potential data loss.

The productivity system focuses on capturing and revisiting valuable information from consumed content to avoid forgetting insights.

The Kindle app is recommended for reading, highlighting, and easily revisiting book highlights, while the Instapaper app is suggested for saving and reading online articles at a later, more convenient time.

These tools aim to separate the discovery of content from the act of reading, allowing for more efficient consumption of information.

The Impact of Morning Brew Newsletter on Staying Informed

Instapaper helps avoid distractions and stay focused on important tasks.

Subscribing to Morning Brew's newsletter provides quick and free updates on tech, finance, and business news.

The newsletter's in-depth coverage offers trustworthy information, saving time and keeping readers informed.

Recommendations for Tech and Business Enthusiasts

Consider subscribing to the free Morning Brew newsletter for the latest in tech, finance, and business news.

Readwise is a valuable app for consolidating and organizing highlights from Kindle, Instapaper, and other sources, making it a powerful tool for productivity.

Apple Notes serves as a reliable app for capturing and storing notes on the go, making it easy to revisit them whenever needed.

Building an Effective Productivity System

Having a minimum viable level of organization and structure is crucial for reducing stress and preventing burnout.

The "Dumbledore layer" of the productivity system focuses on building a second brain, which involves capturing insights and making connections to enhance creativity.

Using tools like Rome Research or Obsidian can help in implementing this advanced level of the productivity system.