There are 1,440 minutes in each day. On average, 383 of those minutes are spent sleeping.
Now I don’t know about you, but most of the remaining 1,057 minutes are spent:
- Eating & drinking
- Shopping
- Working the day job (almost half of what remains!)
- Cooking for the famalam
- Cleaning (people, clothes, & house!)
- Spending time with family
- Studying
- Exercising (Yeah right, hahaha)
- Gardening & DIY
- Watching TV
Not a lot of minutes to be distributed round all the things. If you are a parent, like myself, then you probably look back and think “what the heck did I even do with all my free time before kids?”
At the end of each day, when all of our tasks, chores and responsibilities are complete, you may be left with a handful of minutes to yourself, but probably very little energy.
Certainly not enough to get that 15th wind of enthusiasm to then start creating videos for your YouTube channel. So you put it off until tomorrow, if not tomorrow then DEFINITELY the weekend, and if not this weekend, then probably next….
’til you don’t.
Instead you fall back on that much needed 30 mins starting mindlessly at Netflix.
The Solution To Becoming A Time Magician
I have read tonnes of books on productivity, listened to 100’s of podcasts and read as many blog posts and articles.
There are so many techniques out there. Some are relevant and practical, some only work if you live in a fantasy land where you are the only thing that matters.
I tend to find the simpler and more practical solutions are the most effective (and certainly not the more mystical woo woo stuff out there).
Which is why I logged into Amazon and bought this little white digital cube (other colours are available).
Now this little beauty may look like some cheap tat manufactured for pennies in the far east (and that’s exactly what it is). However it does give hope and respite to even the busiest of creators. Those of you that are struggling to balance all the important things in life PLUS follow your dreams and build a content empire on YouTube.
Let me explain.
The Power Of The Cube Timer
Time is the all-levelling factor when it comes to many things in life, we all only have so much of it, and no one gets any more minutes each day. It’s a level playing field. So it’s vital that we manage it effectively.
This little gadget is simple.
You can either manually set a countdown timer, or you can rotate it to the pre-set timings i.e 30 or 60 mins. When you flip the timer over, it will begin counting down. At the end of the allotted time an alarm will sound. It’s small, light, looks nice enough and is about as basic as it could be.
So how does that help the busy AF creator juggling a demanding boss, homework from that night class, and the 3 kids that all have different after school activities and won’t eat the same meal.
It enables you to employ a simple Pomodoro technique to your content creation.
What’s The Pomodoro Technique & How Does It Help Me?
This topic is probably a post in itself, but my take on pomodoro is that its about allocating short periods of time where I can get into a state of flow and create content.
The article you are reading now is an example of this as I’m writing this on my lunch break on a typically manic Tuesday.
I could go and stick the TV on for an hour whilst I gorge on corned beef sandwiches, or I can get the timer out, apply this method, and achieve something. The momentum you get from just creating content is why this is one of my favourite digital productivity hack for busy content creators.
Here’s my interpretation of Pomodoro and a few steps to consider in order to get this to work for you:
- Decide beforehand what you want to achieve. I use an app called Notion for my content planning. I break my videos (and blog posts) down into different stages (Research, scripting, recording, editing). That way I can open my planner and know what needs doing and what I have in the pipeline. For this example, I had drafted a title for this Medium post last week, I knew I would need 30–60 mins to complete it.
- Consider when you are going to do this or act on impulse if you get a time opportunity. I realised from my schedule this morning, that I would get a full lunch break, so took the mental decision that I would defer my actual lunch (ham pitta in case you care) until the end.
- Set your timer, I would recommend 30 mins, but even if you have 10 mins spare its better than nothing.
- Work on the task (until timer goes off). I would recommend removing anything distracting like your phone, closing email etc. You can go full distraction free psycho if you like and deploy chrome plugins and parental controls to prevent all internet access. Up to you.
- When the timer sounds, you can take a break for 5–10 mins. Walk around, get a drink, then return to your desk for a second stint. Or you can finish. To complete this article I added an extra 15 minutes.
There’s probably far more to it than that, but I find that using the timer and technique is really beneficial to my productivity.
The cube itself is a visual reminder that I’ve got work to do and better consider doing it!
It also surprises me how much I can achieve when I really focus and ignore the distractions. Later on, when it comes to 10pm and the kids are still messing around and not going to sleep, I will have that little sense of satisfaction that today, I did a thing.
So this cheap little plastic gadget leads me to being more productive, a feeling of control, and the end result is that fulfilment you get knowing that you achieved something.
Granted the work you do could be absolutely garbage. I’m acutely aware that this may be the worst article you read on Medium this week in terms of structure, grammar, spelling… But to me its still a forward step. A published piece of content that is more likely to encourage my next piece too. As ultimately, content creation on any platform, is reliant on momentum.
I hope you liked this digital productivity hack for busy content creators, I would love to know if this technique works for you, let me know.
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