And what I've learned is that 99% of these things are junk.

I think I've found the cheapest things that actually make a difference.

The benefit of these things are no need for motivation.

You'll be able to develop a plan.

You'll be able to use your brain's natural abilities in a good way, and you'll have fun the whole time.

Here's your wishlist for your next $252.

Number one is graph paper.

Graph paper is game changing, and I've been using it for the past two years.

This is what professional engineers, architects, consultants, many other people that have, you know, fancy jobs throughout the world use, because it's organized and concise.

And why do we need to be organized and concise even on our scratch paper?

Well, because if you're not organized and concise in your scratch paper, number one, you'll easier or more easily make mistakes.

And number two is you can lose track of the information, like when you want to go back to it.

So key advantages are math, structure, data representation, and of course, organization.

And graph paper will cost you like $8 for a big pack.

Okay, buy number two is Uber to a coffee shop and buy a coffee there.

And that'll take about $15 out of your budget.

If you can commit two to three hours a day of deep work to your side project for an entire year, your life will be changed, I promise.

What I do when I really want to get something done or when I really feel like I need to start accomplishing things is every other day, I'll walk, bike, take an Uber, drive to a coffee shop, buy a coffee, a black coffee when it's cold, an iced latte if it's kind of warmer outside, and just sit there and do work for two to three hours.

The peer pressure of the people around you, the simplicity of only having this one laptop in front of you, that really helps you just like get to work.

So I'll sit in a corner, open my MacBook Air, pop in my AirPods Pro, turn on noise cancelling mode, play a classical playlist, open up my website or Word document or whatever I'm working on for that day, have the coffee on one side and just get to work.

So I kind of hinted at it a little bit, but the next four buys that I'm going to recommend really combine well with this coffee shop maneuver.

Okay, buy number three is a Spotify subscription and noise cancelling headphones.

I think Spotify subscription is $11 a month and you can get these pretty good Anker noise cancelling headphones for $44.

Again, no one's sponsoring this video.

There might be an affiliate link kind of mixed throughout for some of these items, but none of these companies have sponsored me ever.

Buy number four, which is going to cost you about $10, is a simplistic focus timer that you get on your computer.

And this is called focus timer.

And what I usually do is 50 minutes of work, 10 minutes of break, 50 minutes of work, and then a 30 minute break.

You can also do 25 minutes, five minute break, 25 minutes, five minute break, 25 minutes, five minute break, 25 minutes, 30 minute break.

And those are Pomodoro sessions.

Both equal about 100 minutes of work and 40 minutes of break.

And why I picked this timer is because it's ugly, it's kind of hard to use, and it's only on the Mac.

So this means I'm not going to be looking at my phone.

I'm only going to be starting the timer on my computer and it has really no fanciness to it.

So when it's over, it gives me this awful beeping sound.

And when it's time to start again, it gives me a nice bell.

Okay, buy number five is the most expensive buy and it's a piece of software for your

Mac and it's called the Things app.

So this is my favorite to-do tracker that keeps track of every single thing that pops into my head throughout the day.

I think at one point I had 330 to-do's on the list and I'll tell you what I do with those to-do's right now.

So my life organization really revolves around this app.

This app, notes, post-its, and a journal.

So every year what I'll do, first things first, is I'll figure out my yearly priorities and goals.

And then what I'll do is I'll figure out how am I going to break down those goals into monthly goals and weekly goals.

And then before every week, I'll figure out what I'm going to do for each day.

And before the next day, I'll figure out what I'm going to do on a little post-it note.

And what might happen during the day or during the week or whenever is an idea might randomly pop into my head for a YouTube idea or a piece of content.

And I have this iPhone 15 with a nice action button and all I do is my action button is just the to-do app.

So when I hit the action button, it'll come up with, okay, you can type in this to-do.

And then I'll usually hit the bottom voice thing and I'll say, make the next super awesome cool YouTube video because you're a super awesome cool dude.

And then I'll just close my phone, go on to the next thing.

And then on Sunday, which is usually my day off when I do nothing, I'll actually plan my next week.

So what I'll do is I'll go through all my to-dos that I've created through the week and organize those onto my notes section on my computer.

And I'll show you quickly kind of what my notes section on my computer might look like.

But basically I have it organized into projects, areas, resources, and archives.

I think this is dealing from, I think it's called Para or something like that.

And then my projects, I only have three projects that I'm working on at one time.

So it might be this company, it might be something else I'm working on, and it might be a startup or something like that.

Areas, you know, these are big areas of like life or business or personal health or finances or relationships.

Resources, you can see each thing is something that's kind of more higher or a priority on the to-do list.

Okay, so I've taken those to-dos, I've put them into my notes, or I've just done anything that I need to do on those to-dos really quickly.

And then I go on to my next week.

And for every week, I usually plan out a big goal or two for every single day.

So Monday I have a goal, Tuesday I have a goal, Wednesday I have a goal.

And then the day before, kind of that nighttime, maybe around six or seven o'clock for Tuesday, for example, if today's Monday, I'll say, okay, I want to do my big goal, I need to do the laundry, I need to go to the dentist appointment, X, Y, Z, so I know what I'm doing.

And importantly, I'm also, this is kind of a next level, I'm time boxing what I'm going to do.

So, you know, I usually wake up around 530.

So from 530 to 630, I'll, you know, have breakfast number one, go for a walk, shower, meditate, and then start my deep work session number one from like 730 to nine.

And then maybe I'll hop right into another one.

So nine to 1130, or nine to 1030, I'll do another deep work section.

So I'll briefly talk about what I might outline my day to be.

So for example, we're using this kind of coffee shop combination thing.

I might wake up at 530, 530 to 630, I'll have my first breakfast, go for a walk, meditate, shower, change.

And then from seven to 930 or 10, I'll do my coffee shop kind of deep work session.

And then I'll come home, have second breakfast, maybe go for another walk, do a little bit of exercise, sit by the pool, read, whatever.

Around 12 o'clock, I'll have lunch.

And then maybe one o'clock, I'll enter into my next kind of deep work session, maybe one to 230 or three or something like that.

Then from three to 430, I'll usually go to the gym, eat dinner around five.

And then at around six to eight o'clock, I'll kind of do pretty much nothing.

Maybe family time, maybe read, maybe go for another walk, catch up on things I missed during the day, but usually low effort activities.

And then I'll read and shower and go to bed around eight, 830.

Okay, by number six, and this costs you about $1, and this is post-it notes.

And I use post-it notes for two main things.

Number one, reminding myself, like for example, on my computer, I have a post-it note that says, be a human and don't complain.

I also have one on my bookshelf that says, read more.

The other but more effective use of my post-it notes is what I just talked about.

So again, every night I'll plan out my day by time boxing it with a post-it note.

So when I start my day, I'll be like, okay, number one, I'm doing this, two, this, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And of course, you don't stick to it always 100%.

I don't stick to it 100% of the time, but it's just nice to have it laid out there.

So you can just get to work on whatever you want to get to work on right away.

Okay, buy number seven, and this is a lecterm, I think that's how you say, notebook for $27 and a Muji pen for $3.

So I've tried seven notebook brands, 13 pen brands, and this is really the best combination

I've found.

I encourage you to try a bunch and see what you like, but these are the ones I like.

And notebooks have changed my life.

They really have.

I think I'm going to make a whole nother video on like notebooks and how to use them and how to get the most out of them.

But I usually always have three to five notebooks that are running at the same time.

One is a notebook for my weekly planning.

So I said on Sunday, I'll plan out my daily goals, or like some YouTube content planning or kind of miscellaneous stuff.

Number two is like usually a big idea journal.

So this is my journal that I'm going to have, you know, what are the big plans I want to do?

What are all the pieces of content I'm going to publish in the next year or something like that?

What are the next big projects I want to work on?

Stuff like that.

Number three is a personal journal.

And I think that's pretty self-explanatory.

Number four is a project.

Number five is a project.

So again, I'll have those first three always going.

What's really nice is to have a dedicated journal to a project.

So for example, my podcast, I had a journal that was just for the podcast.

For other little businesses I'm working on, I'll have a journal just for those.

Okay, number eight is a smart light, which is going to cost you $13 and a smart home, which is going to cost you, I think there's an Amazon one for $17.

So why do we want one of these?

Well, evidence shows certain wavelengths of light, certain intensities, certain colors affect the way you sleep, when you wake up, you think, all these kinds of things.

I have a bunch of other videos on this, but really in the morning, you want really bright light hitting your face.

Usually the light in your house or somewhere isn't enough, so you actually need to walk outside to get that intensity and duration of light to really jumpstart your circadian rhythm.

But at nighttime, what you can do is start to switch all the lights to kind of a more reddish orangey hue and decrease the intensity.

It's also really nice when I'm like reading at a chair or something like that to be able to adjust the intensity.

And then when I go to bed, I'll just tell Alexa like good night and it'll turn all my lights off.

You can also set the lights to go on or off when you leave the house or come back to the house or set them for certain times of the day.

By number nine is a whiteboard.

I have two massive whiteboards in my office and I love them really just for writing out things.

But here are some things you can do.

You can do line mapping, you can do a SWOT analysis, you can do posted note organization, you can do pros cons, you can do a fishbone diagram, you can do storyboarding, you can do a flow chart.

Really anything you saw on Silicon Valley is actually a pretty good thing to do with a whiteboard.

And I remember I watched a video of Dan Mace talking about how he made his videos for Mr.

Beast and he just has whiteboards everywhere and I really love that.

So I copied that.

So the final buy is a yoga mat and this will run you about ten bucks.

And the reason this is such a huge impact on your productivity right is a sedentary lifestyle is not only hugely detrimental for your physical health but also for your mental health.

At every Pomodoro break I'll usually go for a walk, stand up, use the yoga mat and do some weird stretches or something like that.

Just get moving.

And I also love yoga and you can use that yoga mat to do yoga.

Bam, that's that super Zach Haile productivity tip you expect and want from Zach.

That is right.

You must be productive.

Come on.

Get to work.

I'll hit you again.

What is that?

Oh, you want it again?

Oh, you.

Just stop waiting.

Oh my god.

It's too much.

Okay.

Okay.

The to-do list.

I'm getting a to-do.

I swear.

It's here.

It's here.

The to-do list.

My goals.

I don't know.

Okay.

But that is it.

Thank you so much for watching.

These really did have an impact on my life.

So I hope they help you.

I will see you on the next one.

Give me your top goals for the year.

2025.

It is coming quickly.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.

Bam.