 Today I'm going to use a simple formula that I used as a student and now as a doctor to help me stop procrastinating and give. Hey everyone, welcome to the channel. My name is Lux. I'm a doctor who loves giving tips on making your life as a student a little bit easier. That includes things on studying, productivity, so you name it. So if you're new here, consider subscribing to either the YouTube channel or our podcast. Today I want to show you a simple strategy that I use as a physician right now as a student to help overcome procrastination and finally start getting some results in my life. It's the same strategy that I use to work as a full-time physician, but also find the time and the motivation to work on other personal projects that includes the YouTube channel, my website, writing books, and other things such as like training for a marathon. And as a full disclaimer, I by no means am immune to procrastination myself. I still have my own stretches of days where I'm just slacking. I just like any student or high performer, I have my high goals, but I find myself in these phases where instead of moving forward, I'm a little embarrassed by the time that I'm spending on social media, watching TV, and playing video games on my Xbox. And while in the moment those activities sound fun and are entertaining, eventually I get to a point where you likely have been as well, where you find your plate is full of things that should have been done yesterday and now you start to stress out. That's exactly why I've created this formula to help me always kind of get little wins and move the needle forward. So the first step of the simple formula is to create what I call a minimum goal. Now naturally we have lofty goals and we're motivated. It's very easy to get to work and move towards them. But even a little bit of a deviation in our focus and our energy is going to make it very unlikely that we'll be able to accomplish those goals. But on the flip side, a minimum goal would be something that's a small win, something that's a little bit ridiculous of how easy it would be for you to accomplish. But as you accumulate these small wins, over time you're headed in the right direction. So as a quick example, let's say you're prepping for an exam. Today's Monday and your exam is a week from today. A common goal for many students may be to finish through all the lectures reviewed by this week. So by the time the weekend comes around, all you have to do is review. And while that may sound nice and optimal, it doesn't always happen. So to avoid going into your weekend stressed and freaking out about the exam, instead you can use minimum goals to help create a minimum standard of what you want to accomplish by the time Saturday or Sunday roll around. So using the same example, if your optimal or ambitious goal was to go through all of your lectures by Saturday morning, your minimum goal, your small win could be getting through 60% of your lectures. And it may seem like a huge deviation from the optimal goal that you wanted, which is going through all of your lectures. But remember that the worst case scenario is you going into Saturday morning, not having done any review. So 60% is a huge win compared to that. And a simple test to ask yourself of a minimum goal is truly a minimum goal is go ahead and ask yourself how easy would it be for me to accomplish it. If I was aiming to go ahead and do all of my lectures by Saturday, and then instead told myself I only need to do 60% of it, I could easily say I can do that. That's a good test of saying this is a good small win to aim for. And the next part of this formula is to go ahead and break your minimum week goal into minimum daily goals and essentially ask yourself, what's the smallest I am willing to get done today to be considered a win? So using our example, you can say, well, to get through 60% of my lectures, I may only have to go through a lecture and a half every single day. My ambitious goal may have been to do three lectures every day, but that's a little bit overwhelming. And if I had a day where I was slacking off, I'm already three lectures behind a lecture and a half I can do. And basically what we're doing here is we're taking advantage of something called the progress principle. Progress principle basically says that you can have a higher chance of having longer runs of productivity every time you kind of add to your currency of small wins. So basically the more small wins that we have, the more work that we do, we start to feel more motivated, aren't going to be more likely to be productive through the rest of the week. And that momentum continues for the next one and the next one. Ultimately, you find yourself at a different level completely from somebody a month ago and several years ago. If I looked at myself as a medical student initially at that time, I was like, I'm getting so much done. I'm writing blog posts. I'm working on my studying. I feel really productive. But now if I look at myself today, I'm probably doing three to four times of what I was doing back then, but it's probably half the amount of stress. And this just comes with this simple approach where every single day I have a small kind of win that I'm aiming to achieve. That's kind of a little ridiculous. If I get to it, I don't feel overly accomplished, but it's always moving the needle forward for me. If you're in a situation where it's been a while since you've had a small win, try this approach out and see if you can get past that procrastination over time. Now, in addition to creating a minimum goal for your week and your days, I have another part of this formula that's going to help you kind of get the most done at your most optimal times. Before we get into that part of the strategy, if you are enjoying the video and episode this far, go ahead and hit that like button. It supports the channel and also lets me know that you guys enjoy this kind of part. Now, the second part of this anti-procrastination system is to find your most valuable times of day to work. Now, all of us have a particular part of the day where our energy is at a high point for a lot of us. It may be in the mornings or at the nights, depending on, you know, if you're a night owl or not, but it's important to map out energy level throughout the day so you can find out your optimal time to work. And once you're able to identify your optimal time, you want to try to find your activity that's paired with your minimum goals at these times. So we're going to our lecture example. You know, if I'm a morning person, I'm going to try my best to accomplish my minimum goal, my small win in the morning at the optimal time versus trying to do it in the evenings where our motivation isn't actually low. For some students, that's a little bit difficult because maybe you are a morning person, but you still have to go to lecture and attend your other classes. So it's a little bit hard to work on a review for a test if your most optimal hours are taken by other forms of obligation. So if you're in this kind of situation, one of the tips I would recommend is to go ahead and try to stack it with an activity you really enjoy. So for example, let's just say an afternoon is not the most ideal time for you to work for me. My energy is pretty low, but it is an optimal time for me to do another activity that I enjoy. For example, for a workout or watching an episode on Netflix or just something that is able to keep me relaxed. So a simple strategy that you could use here is to go ahead and try to pair your activity for your small win for that day with that activity that you really enjoy. So if you're not a morning person, but that's the time that you could get some work done, maybe you enjoy getting a morning run or a morning yoga session in, and then you can go ahead and do your lecture in a half review after that. Or in the afternoons, if you're somebody who needs a little bit more breaks and just kind of natural forms of distraction, maybe you go to YouTube to watch videos just like this one, you could go ahead and watch a video, then pair it with your study and then have a reward at the very end where you go ahead and watch more YouTube videos to keep yourself entertained. This is a very natural way to put something that kind of seems a little bit forced and something that seems already enjoyable. But using this approach, guys, of having small wins every day, every week, as well as trying to place them at the most optimal times for you is going to be able to help you overcome that procrastination, but get into that. So if you enjoy these kinds of videos, make sure you let it be known in the comment section down below and ask me any questions you have about being a student, being more productive, studying better, you name it, I'll be happy to help you there. And before you leave, make sure you hit that like button and subscribe button and consider supporting and joining the community. And before we close out for the video, if you want more productivity tips in the below, I'll go ahead and link playlists that we have on our channel, as well as add a little mini course that we have on the website that is all designed to teach you how to become more productive over one simple weekend using techniques just like this one. But thank you guys so much for watching this video to making it to the end. I really appreciate your support. I appreciate you guys being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.