Effective Learning Strategies & Productivity Hacks — Tactics in a Tesla with Thomas Frank #Best Education Page #Online Earning

- What's up?

We're back in the Tesla.

And you know our good friend, Thomas Frank,

is gonna be joining us today.

I don't know where he is,

and you know usually we have a call, and I pick him up.

But I can't even get him on the phone.

If only I could just snap my fingers and he would be here.

(snaps) Whoa. - The heck?

- Dude, okay. - Dude, warn me

before you're going to do that.

- Yeah, my bad.

The magic's kind of off right now, but

good to see you.

You need some practice,

good to see you as well, man. - Thanks for being here.

Let's go on a drive.

- Alright, let's do it.

Thomas Frank in the house. - Safety first.

- Yeah, safety first.

I learned that from Dora the Explorer.

I did, yeah.

I also learned no swiping.

- (laughs) Swiper, no swiping.

- A very important lesson. (laughs)

- Yeah, but man, I'm glad you're here,

'cause we've a lot to talk about.

Actually we talked last week on the podcast.

So make sure you check out the podcast

if you haven't seen it yet, where Thomas comes on.

We talk about his story,

about how we started with a website

called College Info Geek, which is crushing it right now.

He helps a lot of students in college do better in college.

But now you've grown to so much more than that.

You still have that, obviously.

But the YouTube channel,

how many YouTube subscribers do you have now?

- Somewhere over a million. (laughs)

- It's insane man. - 1,080,000,

something like that.

- Did you ever think you'd get there?

- No, not at all.

When I started YouTube, I thought 10,000

would be a really great pie-in-the-sky goal.

- Now you have a million.

- (laughs) Yeah, now I have a million.

It's kind of crazy how when you hit a certain milestone,

the next one is the one that seems crazy and impossible.

- So what's the next one? - And just keeps going up.

I guess because ten million seems ridiculous,

especially for a self-improvement channel.

None have done it.

And also because subscribers are so much less important,

I think less about subscribers these days

and more about other things.

So I guess right now, like the milestone

in terms of business growth that I'm thinking about,

is more in terms of website traffic

and also Instagram presence.

- Ah, interesting.

- Hitting 100k on Instagram, is like,

kind of like, the next social media goal.

- So what are you at now?

- 24,000 I think.

- Okay. - Or right around there.

- Sweet, so follow Thomas on Instagram.

Also follow his channel, too, you can see it right now.

And what kind of videos do you have there,

just so everybody knows?

- So for the most part I help students

become better students,

but a lot of the topics end up being applicable

to other people, because they are productivity

and self-development topics.

So things like how to learn more efficiently,

how to take better notes,

how to read books and actually remember

what you read in those books,

and health topics, like how to get better sleep.

Did a lot of sleep videos, actually.

Not a whole lot on like food and things like that.

- Yeah, well,

we're gonna talk about that. - General productivity.

We're gonna talk about that right now, so--

- Okay.

- Everybody watching this likely has something

that they want to work toward,

and they're trying to be productive.

They might be busy, just like a person in college, so--

- Yeah.

- What's a tip that you might have for somebody

who's trying to be more productive?

Where do you even start with that, really?

- I think the biggest thing is to start small.

So one of the one of my favorite lessons

I learned early on in college,

came from this book called The Motivation Hacker

by this guy he's a quantified-self dude out in California.

And he tried to do all these crazy habits all at once,

and kind of documented his journey

and talked about what he learned.

And he had this concept in the book he talked about

called success spirals,

where you have to start very small

when you're wanting to build a habit,

and then you kind of spiral up and you add more difficulty,

or you add more habits over time.

- Mm-hmm.

Because you're sort of leveling up.

And then if you fall off you need to start small again.

You can't start immediately where you were.

So what I see, and most people who start following me

and asking me, you know, how do I become more productive?

They want to do all these things all at once.

Start getting up at 5:00 in the morning,

they want to start journaling,

wanna start meditating,

start reading, you know, a book a week.

All, this kind of stuff.

And you can't do it immediately.

So the biggest thing for me is to find something

that speaks to you, and start with that.

And make sure you can get it really solid.

So start with one?

- Yep. - And then start small.

What do you mean by start small?

- It could be, so say you want to start

doing pull-ups every day,

start by doing one pull-up a day,

or start by just making yourself go to the gym.

And just getting there, that's you know,

that's the accomplishment for you.

- Yeah.

- And then start moving forward.

Because a lot of people, they see,

like a recommended program from a pro online,

and they'll say, okay, I'm gonna do that every single day

because that's what I need to do.

And I just realized that this windshield goes all the way up

and I have to comment on it, it's ridiculous.

(both laugh)

But when you haven't spiraled up,

like Nick says you can't stick with that kind of a program,

unless you're some sort of a ridiculous discipline robot.

(laughs) So you want to start smaller, and then eventually

you can stick to that kind of a big program.

- Do you have an example of a habit that you've done,

that you've spiraled up on?

- Yeah, so I guess my whole morning routine

is a good example of being able

to add things to it over time.

But with pull-ups, you know,

I bought a door frame pull-up bar,

to one reduce the friction

and make sure I could do it more often,

but two, then start doing more and more every single day.

I would start with like five a day,

and now I probably do 20 or 30 a day.

Not in one set, but... (laughs)

- Oh, I was gonna say, like geez man, that's great.

- No, I think I'm up to fifteen in one set with chins,

and then twelve in one set with pull-ups.

- And how long did it take you to get that?

- I don't know. (laughs)

I didn't really track it.

So for that kind of a habit, I just thought,

alright, the bar's in the door.

So it's kind of like an if-then statement.

A program, if I go into the office

I do five or six pull-ups,

or if I want to take a break from work,

I just go over do some pull-ups.

- That's cool. - So, I would have

to go back into my Amazon history

to see when I bought that thing.

It was probably four months ago, maybe?

- It kind of reminds me of a,

so Steve Kamb from Nerd Fitness.

- Yeah.

- He wanted to learn how to play,

I think was the violin or guitar,

or one of the string instruments.

- Violin sounds right for Steve.

- (laughs) And he set it like in the hallway,

where that he passed every single day,

so he could just always be reminded that it was there.

- Mm-hmm.

- And I think it's kind of similar,

with what you just said with the pull-up bar.

It's just like triggering,

that you do it right then and there

when you see it every time.

Then it just becomes like a natural thing you do.

- Yeah, well, there's this book

called The Happiness Advantage by guy named Shawn Achor,

and it contains one of my favorite principles

about habit-building,

which is what he calls the twenty second rule.

So, the whole idea is if you want to build a good habit ,

make sure it takes less than 20 seconds to start doing it.

So Steve's example is great.

Have the violin, right in the living room,

every time you pass it, it's just right there.

You can pick it up and play it.

I do the same thing with my guitar.

So I went out, and I bought a really nice guitar, recently.

But it's nice, and I live in a dry climate,

so I have to keep it in the case,

all the time, with a humidifier.

And that makes it kind of a pain to take out and play it.

So I keep my cheap guitar, so I can have it out

in the living room all the time.

- I see. - I end up playing

that guitar, probably 75% of the time.

But that guitar ensures I play every single day.

- Just because it's out.

- Yep, and that's why I've gotten as good as I have.

- Yeah, and you are good.

- We were just jamming earlier.

- (laughs) Yeah, thank you. - He's really good.

- You're getting pretty good too.

- Thanks. - Hey, how long

have you been playing, like a few weeks?

- Just a few weeks. - Yeah.

- But I'm practicing like every other day,

or right, a couple hours a day.

- I think if you're playing a couple hours a day,

you're actually practicing more than I do.

- And the one thing that I learned,

about guitar specifically, was you know,

just for me I wanted to be encouraged to play all the time.

And my instructor from podcasts,

from guitarlessonspodcast.com,

he said just get a really good guitar

that you will always want to play and pick up.

- Yeah.

- And I got the one from Back to the Future,

and so I'm really excited to play it all the time.

- Nice, so you actually have a teacher?

- Yeah. - Sweet.

- Yeah, his name's Lee Anderson, he's really cool.

- That's cool, I've been thinking about

getting a teacher at some point.

- So yeah, so you're just self-taught, which is crazy.

Now, you read a lot of books.

- Yes. - And you reference them

all the time in your videos, which is great.

And I think a habit that a lot of us want to create

is that reading books habit.

- Mm-hmm.

- What are the best strategies for,

A, selecting we'll start with that,

selecting the right books to read.

'Cause, I think book reading is great,

but you know you can waste a lot of time reading books

that don't actually matter.

- Yeah, well, I think this video is going out,

did you say this video is going out after

our podcast episode? - After our podcast,

so like in July, in summer. - Okay, so,

by this time, I'll have a video on my channel called

something or along the lines of

how to choose the books you read,

or how to avoid reading mediocre books.

So that's like a whole answer on this question.

But, a couple of the ways that I do it:

Number one, have friends who read,

so you know people like you. - Uh-huh.

- And then, just ask them,

what are the best books you've read?

I like to follow authors that I like on Goodreads.

A lot of authors are active on Goodreads,

so they'll review books that they liked.

Some people who I know have book summary

or book notes pages on their sites.

Derek Sivers and Matt Eliason are two people

who come to mind. - Mm-hmm.

- They have really good, not only notes,

but ratings and their thoughts on books.

So, that's helpful.

I also think,it's not healthy to be overly concerned,

though, with the best books.

Because, number one, you're basically

relying on other people's opinions.

But, number two, a book may not be amazing

for some people, but it might,

because of your particular circumstances

or your particular goals, it might send you along a path

that ends up being very rewarding for you,

and that might not have happened for somebody else.

And like we were talking about earlier,

don't finish bad books.

If you find out that the book you chose

is really not worth it, then put it down.

Your time is worth more than the books.

- It's hard to put down book though.

Because once you start it, you kind of feel like

you have to finish it.

- Yeah, I think we believe that

because we see all these people on the internet

who say they read a book a week,

or they got this Goodreads profile

with a thousand finished books,

or, you know, we've been taught to finish what we start.

But, the end goal of a book isn't to turn the last page.

I mean, that really doesn't do anything for you.

The end goal of the book is to get something out of it

or to enjoy the process of reading it.

So if a book is doing neither of those things for you,

you know barring the whole advice to stick things out

because they may be worth it in the long run,

if something is just not worth your time

then it's not worth your time.

- Why do it, right? - Yeah.

- So, let's say you grab a book that is useful for you.

How do you make sure you apply

what you actually read in that book?

Instead of just, what most people do, is they close it

and then they move on to the next book.

- Yeah, number one, it's good to take notes or summarize.

So, my favorite way of taking notes

is to sort of read the chapter

and then either jot down notes in a bullet list

or just a summary into Evernote.

- So you don't write notes as you're reading?

- Nope. - How come?

- Because, I find

that it just slows down my reading process.

So, with some books I'll use, like, those book flags

or highlighter and maybe highlight certain sections

or make a mark in the margin.

But I don't like to pause and take notes.

I like like to, kind of, immerse myself.

- Makes sense.

- The other thing is, I also listen to a lot of audiobooks.

A huge commitment of mine

is to have a lot of physical activity,

so when some days I can't sit down to read,

but I always listen to an audiobook.

So, I'll either summarize

or with Audibly, you could pause

and you can put a note in the app, which is kind of nice.

- And then--

- I think it's again, it comes down to starting small,

selecting something from the book

that speaks to you more than everything else

and trying to implement that.

And then maybe not starting another book immediately.

One thing I realized a few years ago,

is, I was listening to your podcast,

listening to Fizzle,

listening to all these business podcasts,

and it was like the shiny object syndrome, you know.

You listen to Todd Tressler

talking about doing a website audit,

and then you listen to Benny Lewis

talking about writing books.

- Right. - And you listen

to somebody talking about making a YouTube channel,

and you'll find yourself pulled

in all these different directions.

You'll put a day's worth of work into launching a podcast

because that's what you heard on the latest episode

just to listen to the next SPI

and be like, oh, I have to do this now.

So, sometimes I think it's useful

to put yourself on a low-information diet

just so you give yourself time to implement

and practice the thing you've selected for now.

- I think a lot of people fear missing out

on the new piece of content that comes out.

- Yeah. - You know,

I remember with the YouTube channel, for example,

I was coming out five days a week for a while.

- Mm-hmm. - Kinda like,

get it going again, and I had a couple people

emailing me, saying, Pat, I can't keep up.

I just feel very overwhelmed now.

And I'm like, you don't have to watch all the videos.

- Yeah, not at all.

- People feel like that with podcasts, videos, blogs.

- Mm-hmm. - How do we

break away from that fear

of missing out on the next thing

that could be the big game-changing article

or podcast episode that we listen to?

- I guess you, just have to realize,

that if you are always doing that, then you always miss out.

Because nothing takes zero investment.

Nothing is easy, you just have to commit to something.

And yeah, you are gonna miss out on certain things.

But, every single choice we make is, by definition,

a choice to miss out on many, many other things.

- Mm-hmm. - You know?

And, I tell people, like I'm running a business here.

So, I don't think you need to use every single thing

I put out there,

but a publication schedule is very useful for me,

and we're putting out ideas into the world.

- Yeah. - You know?

Only 1% of your audience is probably going to

actually go and use the thing that a given video gives them.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, you can't just put one video out there

and call it a day.

- I heard about this thing recently.

So, you know there's FOMO, right?

Fear of missing out? - Mm-hmm.

- F-O-M-O?

I heard of JOMO, J-O-M-O, the joy of missing.

- Ah, okay.

- And being very happy about the fact

that you are making a decision

to not dive into that new thing that comes out.

- Yeah. - And I like that

kind of framework, being proud of the fact

that you are saying no to things.

- Yeah, it's like the essentialist mindset.

- Yeah, JOMO. - Yep, mm-hmm.

I like the essentialism book, as well.

I'm guessing you've read that one,

or maybe you've read The One Thing,

which is a similar book? - Yeah, they both

kind of go together.

- One of the insights, I like most from that book,

is when he talks about the fact

that the essentialist actually explores more

than the average person,

because they want to take time to try lots of things,

sample lots of things, so they can figure out

what actually does resonate with them.

- Right. - But once they do,

then they go hard on that one thing.

So maybe that's useful for some people.

There's kind of like an exploration phase,

and then once you selected something

that seems to resonate with you,

then it's the focus phase. - Mm-hmm.

In that book, also, they have you

rank the things you do in your life.

- Oh, yeah. - You have from one to 10,

one being like, why am I even doing this?

It's easy to get rid of.

10 being I have to do this,

this is something that's essential in my life.

- Mm-hmm. - But it's the

sevens, eights, and nines in your life that,

or the six, sevens, and eights, really,

that are the ones that you should be saying no to,

or putting aside. - Mm-hmm.

- But it's the ones that we hang on to.

Do you, is it kind of the same advice related to books,

related to how to say no to the six, sevens and eights

so you can dive into the nines and tens?

- Yeah, have you heard of the,

I think this is apocryphal, but there's this story

about Warren Buffett and his private pilot.

So his private pilot is basically asking Warren Buffett

for life advice and he's saying,

I have so many things I want to do,

how do I focus on one or a few,

so I can be truly great at them?

- Mm-hmm.

So in the story. Warren says,

I want you to go home

and write down your top 25 goals in life.

So he goes home and he does that, comes back the next day.

He says, alright, got the list.

And Warren says, alright, next thing I want you to do

is go and circle the top five.

So he circles the top five and he comes back

and he says, I think I'm getting it now,

these top five are the ones that I need to focus on the most

and then the 20 others are things

I can do every once in a while

but they're not as important.

- Mm-hmm.

- And Warren says, no those 20

are the avoid-at-all-costs goals now.

Because they are the ones

that are going to pull your focus away

from the ones that really matter the most.

Anything else, you don't have a whole lot of interest in,

so it's not a threat.

- Mm-hmm.

And that's something that I try to live by.

I'm not very good at it, but...

- What are your what are your five circles?

- (laughing) That's a very good question.

Become a musician is one.

Let's see here, this is the tough one for me, actually.

And I think this has been my biggest area of struggle

in the recent past, because there's so many things

I want to do. - Mm-hmm.

- You , I've been skateboarding again,

and getting back into figure skating,

getting back into guitar.

- Figure skating, for real?

- Yeah. - No way.

- I started that in 2016.

- How tall are you?

6'2", so 6'5" on skates. (laughs)

- That's crazy.

- Yeah, it's fun, and my girlfriend's

doing it with me now, too.

- That's awesome.

- I want to have her take lessons,

so we can do, like, ice dancing together,

which would be pretty fun. - Mm-hmm.

- Business-wise, I've got a another book idea

that I'm working on, and then a website redesign,

and hiring an editor, so I think those

are my top business goals at the moment.

But then there's always the content machine

that you must feed. (laughs)

- Right, and then maybe one or two examples

of the other 20, that you would love to do,

but you know you need to say no to them, right now.

- So it's tough, 'cause there's there's a lot

of other things, like improving the podcast.

I would love to do that, you know?

And there are things that I'm currently doing,

or I'm planning to do, that will improve the podcast.

So, I guess by this philosophy,

I should probably cut those and I'm not sure if I will.

- Hmm.

- Though, there are other things

that I probably will end up cutting,

like buying better cameras for the podcast

to make it like 2% better,

or buying new set props

or wanting to build a new set entirely for my videos.

- Yeah.

- Actually, it's something I do want to do,

but I'm not gonna do it.

(both laughing)

Yeah, there's a lot of things like that.

- I really like that advice from Warren Buffett.

And you often source a lot of inspiration

from a lot of other big leaders and names out there,

like Elon Musk, Ben Franklin.

You've done some really popular videos about that.

And since we're in a Tesla, I think it's right

that we talk about Elon Musk a little bit.

(Thomas laughs)

What are some--

- Yeah. - Elon Musk related

productivity hacks that we could learn and pick up from him?

- I want to talk about the one

that people were giving me crap about on Twitter.

- Okay.

- (laughing) So there were all these articles

out there awhile ago that said

Elon Musk schedules his day in five minute increments,

like basically time boxes, and Bill Gates does this as well.

So I made a video on it, and it was basically like

I wanted to make a video on time-boxing.

- Yeah. - The whole idea

of pre-planning what you're gonna do in time increments,

so you can be more efficient. - Mm-hmm.

- And then, I think a week ago,

somebody tweeted out another article

someone else had written about this

and Elon replied, saying, I don't do the five minute thing.

- Oh yeah. - You know,

that you have to have time for creative work.

So then a bunch of people were sending that tweet to me

and everything, saying, you were wrong.

If I had five minutes with Elon,

I would love for him to elaborate

on how he schedules his day,

because I would imagine,

that it is scheduled out, to some degree,

but that he is creating long blocks of time

for engineering and design work.

- Mm-hmm.

- You know, I hope people didn't think

that he actually has five minute tasks, one after another,

like a hundred in a day, on his schedule.

I'm imagining, there's just, like,

a meeting that's scheduled now,

and then there's a four-hour block--

- Yeah. - Of design work scheduled.

But it is scheduled, because I feel like,

when you schedule your time,

even when it's for creative work,

you tend to work better.

- Mm-hmm.

- There's that whole idea of you can't schedule creativity.

You actually can, because when you schedule creativity,

you get into a habit, and you become disciplined,

and that's when good work happens.

It won't happen every single day, but--

- So time blocking-- - Yeah.

- Is an essential strategy for productivity.

- I think it's very useful.

For some people it's not.

And one thing I've learned about productivity,

is it's a very individual thing.

So there are the universal things,

like get enough sleep and eat good food.

- And we'll talk about that while we eat,

sleep and stuff.

- There we go.

- We'll talk about that in a minute.

- But for some people, time-boxing works very well.

For some people, it doesn't.

I think part of my channel and part of the work I do

is just giving people ideas

to try out and see if that resonates with them.

- Mm-hmm. - Some people

work really well with a messy area

and some people really need

to have a super clean area to work.

So, I'm very aware that not everything I say

is going to apply to every single person out there.

- Yeah, I think the key is to just be open

to what the options are and try things

until you find something that works for you.

- Yeah, my kind of motto

is there's always a better way to do it,

and what is the best way to do this?

And, if you can just become the kind of person

who is constantly asking that, constantly figuring out,

what is the solution to this problem?

Or, what's a way I can improve this process?

- Right. - Then you're gonna succeed,

regardless of whether or not you work the same way

that I do or the Elon Musk does or that Ben Franklin did.

Doing the breakdowns of those people

is just a cool way of showing off,

like, here's how this successful person

worked in their life.

- Awesome, wanna grab some food?

- Yeah, let's do it.

- Cool.

Cool, having some coffee.

- Cheers. - Cheers.

Now, let's talk about sleep a little bit.

You mentioned it earlier,

and how important that is. - Mm-hmm.

- You know, for years, I've only

been getting five to six hours of sleep, ever since college.

- Really?

- And I've been okay.

- Okay. - I thought

I was one of those lucky people who could survive,

and I was surviving, off of five to six hours of sleep.

- Yeah.

- I worked really hard to maximize my sleep.

Reading books, like Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stephenson,

studying it, and I feel like it's been good.

But now that I'm 35, I feel like

it's starting to catch up to me.

- Is it catching up with you?

- It is a little bit, and I gotta be honest,

like I enjoy my seven to eight hours of sleep.

- Okay, it caught up with me earlier.

- Yeah? - Yep.

I used to be able to do six, five hours a night.

I remember my internship, when I was 19 years old.

That was when I started to go real hard on the blog.

- Yeah. - So I would

work 10-hour days, come home,

stay up till 1:00 a.m. working,

and get like four or five hours.

- I feel it now. - I did that

for a whole summer.

- Oh my gosh. - Yeah, I can't do it.

- And I used to ball, basketball, 4 a.m. in the morning.

If I do that now, the rest of my day is screwed.

- When you go to bed?

- 10:00 or 11:00.

- Okay, so yeah, that'll be five, six hours.

- Yeah. - If you went to bed at 9:00,

do you think you'd get up at 4:00 and--

- I could do that, but then,

I feel like there's like, I would miss out on a lot

of what happens at night. - Hmm.

- So you're not a devotee of the Jocko Willink method.

- No.

- 4:30?

Well, he's always like,

nothing good ever happens at night anyway.

But, you're hanging out with your family at night, you know.

- Yeah, that's the time for me and April,

now the kids are down, to like just finally

have some time to chat, and we, you know,

watch movie or something,

or get stuff done around the house.

So, I know sleep is an interesting thing to me.

You've studied it a lot.

You recommend a lot of things.

How can we get better sleep?

- Number one, is prioritize it.

I think everyone, especially people

who think they're entrepreneurs,

or I guess, you know, are entrepreneurs,

think that they're the exception,

and they'll listen to Bulletproof executive

or whatever saying, oh,

if you just eat butter in your coffee,

you can sleep for five hours and be just fine.

- Yeah. - But, you know, you feel it.

And for a lot of the times you're deluding yourself.

So, number one, you just gotta prioritize it.

And I think the biggest pitfall, for people like me,

and maybe people like you,

is being very hardcore about the wake-up time,

but not disciplined about the go-to-bed.

- Yeah.

- So, it's like I wake up at 6.

Which means I should go to bed at 10:30.

But, I'm going to bed at 11:30 tonight.

I'm still waking up at 6.

- Yeah, it's true. - You know.

- You're absolutely right.

I also know that you get into,

and you do a lot of research with your videos,

which I appreciate a lot,

and you dive into a lot of the science

and stuff behind that.

Any science-related things that we can understand

related to sleep, and why it's so important,

or why we should prioritize that?

- Yeah, so I guess the the top science-related thing

that I've talked about with sleep is the sleep cycle.

When you sleep, you go through several different stages

of brain activity, starting with a very light sleep,

where you could be easily roused.

Then you move into a deeper sleep,

where if you were to be roused,

you would feel like a truck hit you, basically.

- Yeah.

- And then, from there, you move into REM sleep,

which is where dreams happen

and where a lot of memories are consolidated,

all kinds of stuff like that.

So, if you're gonna wake up, you want to be woken up

at the end of a sleep cycle.

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