first day of changing my life
From my childhood, I always been a very success-oriented person. When I was in high school, due to some financial and family issues, I was very depressed, and I started to not take care of my mental health and school life. But one day, when I was randomly scrolling on YouTube, I discovered one of my favorite YouTuber's videos about productivity. After watching the video, I was mesmerized. I never thought about being productive before. Since English is not my mother tongue, I didn't even know the meaning of productivity. I thought, yes, this is the thing that can get me out of my depressive mode. All I need is to be more productive in my life.
It doesn't take me long to get literally hooked by the productivity world. The more I discovered, the more I consumed. I started to optimize my morning routines, nighttime routines, makeup routines, and basically everything you can ever imagine. In the beginning, it was all fun. I was mesmerized, seeing myself grow day by day and become more and more efficient.
The tasks that required to take 2x amount of time started to take only x amount of time. But since I had the extra x amount of time that I saved, you know, being productive, I started to fill my calendar more and more to achieve more. I woke up insanely early and worked like a robot for the day. Everything that was taking me away from my job made me angry. When something that is not scheduled in my calendar pops up, the only thing that I was thinking was, how dare they?
Even the small talk that I was doing with my family during my five-minute Pomodoro breaks started to bother me. I thought to myself I could do some push-ups and squats right now to use this time effectively. I know it sounds insanely toxic, but the funny thing about us humans is that we usually don't realize when we are in an unhealthy situation. It's easier to see it from the outside.
Before going to bed, I was worried about tomorrow's schedule. My family told me that I pushed myself too much, but I felt nothing. Some people work much longer hours than me and are more successful. The mindset that I had started to take control over my life. I continued like this for a couple of months until I hit my burnout. I never believed in burnouts until I experienced it. I always thought it's a privilege to have, just something that weak people have—all these toxic thoughts around my head.
But listening to your mental health is the most important thing. When you're in a dark place, no matter the brightness of the sun, you can't feel it. I was lucky enough that from my insane work schedule, I had money and freedom to take a little break, so I decided to bring my family on a fancy vacation. I mean, yes, during the vacation, I was still posting two times a week on YouTube because that's how I make money, and I needed it. Consistency and all that stuff are important on YouTube, so you know, back in the day, now I realize it.
But even on my little break, I was actually working. You know, during this fancy vacation, I decided to not think about YouTube algorithm, money, or productivity. It was one of the best locations that I had. It was a fantastic location; the sea was nice, the pools were nice, the food was amazing, and all that stuff. When I look back, an expensive vacation was not the thing I needed. It was a mental break from productivity and my toxic work ethics.
It was the me time—me, myself, and I—only for me. I reflected on my feelings and thoughts to understand the problem and identify and solve it. It took me months of dedication to get out of the wrath and find my inner peace. Am I the best version of myself? Absolutely not. But are we going to become the best versions of ourselves? Absolutely yes!
Are you guys ready to start the self-growth series? Because I'm ready as f. Welcome to the first episode of the self-growth series by Judy Ohama. One of the principles that I knew but never knew how to implement in my life was the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule.
It basically means only a few things are responsible for the vast results we see around us. It's all about finding the 20 that makes a difference. But when I say that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the actions, it doesn't make any sense, right? Put simply, the 80/20 thinking for effective time usage is all about brainstorming creative ways to leverage time.
Approximately eighty percent of our results indeed come from twenty percent of the time put in. Ask the most productive people, and they will tell you they aren't productive 24 hours a day. There are specific times when each of us is highly productive. If you don't know your most productive times yet, the simple exercise that I'm going to explain will help you find it.
Think about the last time you felt really productive. Go over at least two more productive days too. This is just so that the conclusion you arrive at can be certain to work predictably. After identifying at least three productive days in the past, the next step is to find why and when you were productive on those days. Did you work at night? In the early hours of the day? What happened the day before that could have contributed to your productivity? How did you handle distractions on those days?
Document your thoughts. Use these points as pointers to your productivity. So basically, reflect on your most productive days and figure out what you did differently, then do it again the next day. Productivity is all about experimenting and collecting data and knowing how to use them. You know, collecting data is crucial in our current lifestyle—in our era.
For example, when we talk about being productive, this is a very simple thing. But the thing that you do is basically collect data, analyze it, and come up with an outcome, then use that outcome in order to be more productive, right? This is also a thing that I use for my YouTube channel. I looked at YouTube analytics. I analyze the data, understand it, and I come up with conclusions that I implement on my channel.
Understanding the importance of data is really important, but when we don't know what data actually is and how to use it, we're actually missing a lot of opportunities. In order to learn that, and in order to implement it in your life and become more efficient and aware of the things that are going on in your life, I want to introduce you guys to today's sponsor—DataCamp.
DataCamp is an online learning service where you can learn data skills that you possibly need at your own pace. There are more than 350 courses that you can choose from. You can even learn programming languages such as Python, SQL, or even data science with no coding involved. Even if you don't know where to start, you can take DataCamp's free assessments and get personalized learning recommendations.
When I was in high school, I remember I wanted to learn coding so that I could do part-time jobs, you know, maybe building a website or creating an app, making my own pocket money. I looked for online courses. There are so many, but firstly they were not really well-structured and I was an absolute newbie.
There weren't so many courses that I could take. But the great thing about DataCamp is that it basically is suitable from absolute newbies to even pros. There are many different types of levels, and it makes things much easier for you to understand with step-by-step guides. That was the thing that I needed back in the day, but I couldn't find it, and I couldn't learn programming. I wish I knew DataCamp back in the day.
I think it's such a nice way to start the new year, new journey, our new series while learning something that will be beneficial for you. Unlock new career options and become data fluent today. Use my link in the description below and check out the first chapter of any DataCamp online course for free. Thank you, DataCamp, for sponsoring this video.
So basically, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., I was editing our newest episode of our podcast, mainly seconds apart. If you haven't watched it, I recommend you to watch it because it's just like a really chill, fun, nice podcast that we do with two of my friends, Izzy and Matt. I love them so much! While editing the podcast, it just gave me joy, and it made me so happy. I just love our podcast!
Yeah, make sure that you listen to it. I have to start studying because if you don't know, I got accepted into Italian med school and it's about to start. The thing is, I'm gonna start from the second semester, so it means that I have to catch up with the first semester. There's just a lot that I need to study, and in a week my med school is starting.
So for like one semester, I only have five days, which I probably need to study quite intensely. But also today I need to make three videos in order to catch up on my schedule. We'll see how it goes. Hi guys, how are you guys doing? I hope you guys are doing fine because I'm doing pretty okay.
So it's currently 3 p.m. I woke up at 12:30. I was planning to wake up around like 8 a.m. or like maybe 7:30-ish because I had a very important meeting at 8 a.m. But guess who couldn't wake up? Me. The reason behind that is that I had a huge inspiration last night from Pinterest. So in 2022, I'm planning to become a very cool Instagrammer, and I've been learning quite a lot about Instagram these days about color patterns, color theories, and the analytics and you know, all these things about Instagram algorithm and all that stuff.
Because I do believe that in order to be successful in social media, you really need to study that. I think you really need to do that. And at 4 a.m., because of this thing, which is an iPad mini that I got yesterday, it is so easy for me to output my ideas, and I love this. I'm in love with this. I made quite a lot of notes, like breaking down what makes this post good, or for example, like this thumbnail. I found this girl's thumbnail, and I basically, as you can see, broke it down—like what I like about it and the size of it.
The compactness of this thing really made me fall in love with the iPad mini, and because of this, I was awake till like 4 a.m. I was doing these creative stuff on my iPad, laying in my bed. It's not a good thing to do, but I was doing it anyways, and I couldn't sleep—just like a bombardment of ideas and thoughts and all that stuff. I couldn't wake up for my meeting. Fortunately, they were kind enough to reschedule the whole meeting, so I'm fine.
But you should wake up for your meetings—that's what I'm gonna say. Look at this aesthetic. I think I will make a video about this—how I use my iPad mini for uni, for idea generation, and all that stuff. But this is so good. Anyways, I'm not sponsored by Apple or something; I wish I was.