If you're new here, my name is Ali.

I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and the author of this book, Feel Good Productivity, which is about how to do more of what matters to you.

And this is the second video in our three-part series about how to manage your time outside of your nine to five.

Now in episode one of the series, we talked about the five mindset shifts that really help when it comes to time management.

But in this video, we're gonna be talking about the five biggest drains in time.

If you can eliminate these five things from your life or at least reduce the amount of hold they have over you, I promise it will free up hours and hours of your time every week.

And then you'll be able to use that time on whatever is most meaningful to you.

While working full-time as a doctor, I built my YouTube channel to over a million subscribers.

I ended up building a business to like a million dollars in revenue.

I was able to get financial freedom.

I wrote a book while trying to run a business on the side.

And so really for me, getting good at the skill of time management is a hugely important part of living a meaningful and happy and fulfilling life.

Alrighty, time drain number one is social media.

This is an absolute classic.

We all waste tons and tons of time on random scrolling and random watching of YouTube videos without any real purpose behind it.

Now, if your social media use is intentional, then great, you're living your best life.

But with most of us, and certainly for me back in the day, and still a little bit to this day, our social media usage is not that intentional.

The whole point of these social media companies, like the reason they pay hundreds, if not thousands of engineers to like work on these social media apps is so that they can hijack our attention and so they can get us on this hamster wheel, slot machine dopamine thing of just feeling as if we have to constantly check TikTok or Instagram or Twitter or whatever the thing is.

And because all of these platforms are now algorithmic rather than chronological, you will never be up to date.

You will never catch up with the newsfeed because there's always more that these algorithms are feeding us.

Now there's a bunch of different practical strategies that we can use to stop the scrolling hijack.

The first one is back when I was trying to break my social media addiction, I installed a free app called OneSec.

And basically that artificially added a loading screen to all of my social media apps.

So I'd open Twitter and then it would be like, nope, you gotta wait five seconds.

And do you still wanna open Twitter?

And it would give me a link to Kindle and Audible, which were the apps that I selected as like, I wanted to give me these apps which are generally more intentional.

And that really helped break the cycle of scrolling because when it takes five fricking seconds to open Twitter, you then realize, oh, hang on, in that time, do I actually want to open Twitter or not?

And then most of the time I would choose not to open Twitter.

The other thing I personally found super helpful is to just remove all social media apps from any of my iPhone home screens.

So in order for me to now open Instagram, I have to swipe down, physically type in Instagram, and then click on the thing, which is just a level of friction where my fingers haven't yet developed the muscle memory to like do the thing.

Whereas, you know, back when it was on my home screen, it would just be swipe, swipe, swipe, Instagram, cool, done, and before I knew it, I'm scrolling the newsfeed, even though I never intended to.

Screen time limits on phones are another really good one.

There's also a really good app called Opal that a few friends of mine have found real value in where it physically stops you from accessing those apps.

People sometimes log out of the apps, they uninstall the apps.

Also, this might be a bit of a hot take, but genuinely, I think these social media companies have ran a massive psyop that has convinced us that we need to scroll social media in order to relax.

I've heard so many people say this, like, oh, you know, scrolling TikTok for two hours before bed really helped me relax.

Really?

I'm pretty sure.

I've never seen any study that confirms that TikTok is anything other than a stimulant and like reduces the quality of your sleep.

Humanity did not evolve to be constantly scrolling and getting that dopamine hit as a form of relaxation.

Sure, I appreciate that we all need ways to relax, but generally, there are ways to relax that are actually relaxing rather than scrolling social media apps.

What I would recommend you do, like with all of the tips, like with anything on my channel really, is consider these experiments that you might wanna try in your own life.

Try the experiment of deleting all the apps from your phone.

Try the experiment of installing OneSec.

If you try these experiments out, you'll find that some of them will work for you, some of them might not, but you're sort of treating yourself like a system to see like, what are the inputs and tweaks I can make to the system that will stop me as a robot from actually habitually checking TikTok and just randomly scrolling and wasting all my time.

Now, if you're looking for something to do with all of this free time that you've gained from hopefully applying some of the concepts in this video series, then you might like to check out Brilliant, who are very kindly sponsoring this video.

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I've been using Brilliant for the last four years and they've been a big supporter of this channel.

And Brilliant are amazing because they've got literally thousands of lessons all the way from basic to advanced topics in these areas and every single month they add new lessons as well.

Recently, they've added a new course all about how large language models work, which has been super interesting for me to understand a little bit more of the ins and outs of how chat GPT operates.

Now, my personal favourite courses on Brilliant are actually the computer science ones because as you may know, I went to medical school, but before applying, I was sort of torn between medicine and computer science and I went for medicine in the end, which I don't regret, but there was always part of me that sort of really wanted to explore more about the world of computer science.

But since graduating, I've been able to do that thanks to Brilliant.

They also have a really good course called Thinking in Code, which sort of teaches you how to problem solve in a way that like a coder or a developer would.

And it kind of relates to some of the stuff we're talking about in this series around treating yourself like a system.

By thinking in code, you can actually get a lot better at your own time management and procrastination as well.

Brilliant customises their content paths to suit whatever skill level you're at.

So you'll definitely find something for you whether you're a complete beginner or you're a professional quantum computing programmer.

If any of this sounds up your street, then head over to brilliant.org forward slash AlibDhaal and that will give you a 30 day free trial.

And if you're one of the first 200 people to hit that link, which is also in the video description, then you will get 20% off the annual premium subscription.

So thank you so much Brilliant for sponsoring this video and let's get back to it.

Time drain number two is the news.

Because if it's something that's really big that's happening in the world, then chances are you'll just end up being at least vaguely informed about it.

But for most things, the news cycle is designed for entertainment and for clicks and for views and eyeballs rather than for actually informing us about current events.

You know, it's important to be a civic citizen.

It's important to be informed about what's going on in the world.

But again, like with all things, reading the news should be intentional rather than reactionary or default.

So an intentional way of reading the news is, sometimes I will think, you know what, I feel like reading the news right now and I'll open up The Economist and read the world in brief.

Or I'm thinking, hey, there is this big thing happening in the world right now.

I really wanna find out more about this specific thing.

Then I will do a session where I go out and actively seek more information about the thing.

What I stopped doing, what I used to do back in the day, which would waste so much time, is habitually checking the news every day.

Oh, by the way, quick thing.

Outside of the field of time management, one major thing that a lot of people seem to struggle with is focus, like actually doing the thing without getting distracted, which is why I've created a completely free seven-day focus course.

And you can find that at focuscrashcourse.com.

It is completely free and it's seven days of emails where every day I'll send you an email with some principles, strategies, and tools that you can use to improve your ability to focus, which pairs nicely with all this time management stuff we're talking about as well.

All right, time drain number three is TV.

Again, this one is gonna be a controversial take.

For the record, nothing in this video is meant to be construed as life advice.

I'm not telling you what to do.

I'm not telling you how to live your life.

You can do whatever the hell you want, but I'm just sharing what are some things that I've found helpful for me because people will often ask me, hey Ollie, how did you have the time to build a business and become financially free and make all this money and stuff while you had a full-time job?

And people don't like it when I tell them, you know what, I cut out TV from my life.

Since my first year of medical school, I set a rule for myself and I've still stuck with that rule, which is that I am not allowed to watch TV on my own.

When I was in high school, I used to watch a lot of TV on my own.

I would watch like three hours of TV every single fricking day.

And it amazes me how much of my time I squandered when I was younger.

But since university started and I realised, actually I wanted to juggle loads of things.

I wanted to socialise, I wanted to see friends, wanted to try new hobbies and sports, also build a business on the side, which was later a YouTube channel, while getting through med school and doing reasonably well in the exams.

And then when I started working as a doctor, I realised watching TV on my own is just a total time drain and a total time sink.

And there was no reason to do it.

In my first year of uni, I decided to do an experiment where I wouldn't watch TV on my own.

And I made it a point to check in with myself every few months to see, to what extent do I miss the time spent watching TV?

And I realised I didn't miss it at all.

I realised that instead of using that time watching TV, I could use that time to try and learn Japanese or to try and work on some websites or to try and spend more time with my friends, or even just to study a bit more efficiently by doing flashcards throughout the year.

I used to watch Game of Thrones.

All right, today is Game of Thrones finale day.

We've got the setup.

But I would organise a Game of Thrones social nights in my room every week when Game of Thrones was happening.

It would be a big social event.

It would be super fun.

That was like the one TV show that I watched like in the last 10 years.

But just not watching TV on my own has been the single rule that has freed up by far the most time of anything else I've done in my life.

And if you're potentially interested in freeing up your time to be able to do more of the things that really matter to you, it's something you might consider trying as an experiment.

All right, drain number four is chores.

This one is gonna get even more spicy.

The way I think about chores is that there are all these things that we have to do in order to maintain our life, like cooking and cleaning and laundry and admin and returning parcels and things like that.

If you enjoy doing those things, and for you, spending that time cleaning or cooking or doing the laundry or whatever is intentional and effective and enjoyable, then great, keep on doing those things.

For me, I don't enjoy doing any of those things.

And I recognised at a certain point that most of these were chores that could be either deleted or automated or delegated.

Now, this was a lot harder for me to do when I was a student and I wasn't making any money at all.

But when I started working as a doctor and suddenly unlocked the ability to do locum shifts, which are extra shifts, I was like, huh, okay, so my hourly rate is now 40 pounds an hour.

I could always do an extra hour of work and make 40 pounds an hour.

Cool, I don't really enjoy cleaning.

Cleaning takes two hours a week.

Could I hire a cleaner?

I realised, yeah, I could hire a cleaner who would rock up every two weeks, would clean for two hours.

That cleaner would charge I think 30 pounds for the two hours every other week.

I was like, damn, so I'm able to spend 60 pounds a month and my house is just clean by default.

I don't need to think about it.

Whoa, that's cool.

I've traded an hour and a half of my own time doing work, which I enjoyed for four hours of not having to clean where someone else is doing that work where they're much better at it than me.

And also I'm contributing to the economy and stuff.

So in that context, I decided that it was time to outsource cleaning.

If your hourly rate is zero, for example, then it's very hard for you to delegate particular chores.

And I think this is just a really important point.

Like money and time are actually interchangeable and we can actually use money to buy back time.

And when I discovered this, it just blew my fricking mind because now time management doesn't just become about how can I be more disciplined or how can I time block more stuff in my calendar?

It also becomes how can I strategically and intentionally deploy my resources, which I now have because I have a job with income coming in to buy back my time.

It's like I'm trading a less valuable resource, money for a more valuable resource, time, because as we talked about, we can never get back the time that we've used, but we can always make more money further down the line.

But the other way of thinking about this is how much is that extra time worth to you?

What could you do with that extra two hours?

How much is it worth to you to be able to spend those two hours with your kids?

How much is it worth for you to be able to spend those two hours going for a walk in nature or reading a book instead or making progress on one of your hobbies rather than cleaning the house if you don't enjoy it?

I'm saying try it as an experiment.

Try hiring a cleaner once or twice, see how it feels.

If it works for you, amazing.

If it doesn't, hey, it's just an experiment.

At least you've gotten data out of it.

And finally, time drain number five is squandering the spare minutes.