Calvin Higgins: And welcome back to Choice Men, everybody. I'm Calvin Higgins and as you can see I have no co-host. ⁓ Sam was unable to make it today, which is, you know, he's got he's got good good projects going on. Very good. ⁓ so yeah, Sam was not able to be here and I'm going on vacation next week, and so I figured you know what, we might as well try to get some kind of content in. So you're gonna see this week me be by myself. You're also probably gonna see next week me by myself. ⁓ but then you should be back to the regular content when when Sam is back and ready to go. So again, this podcast is gonna be a little bit weird because Just me, so enjoy. ⁓ so what are we talking about today? Well, we me and Sam obviously we had mentioned in one of our last episodes that we were going to do a student summer series, the Choice Men Student Summer Series. And that entails a couple of things, but that mostly entails talking about how students can maximize their summer. So the first episode that we did was All about how not to waste your summer. And I think that's a great episode. I think we could do a whole series about how not to waste your summer. But instead, I thought, why don't we go ahead and try a little bit more of a practical approach and we'll talk about some some different specifics within that. So today, which is fitting, the title of this episode is All by Myself. Now obviously that's funny because I am all by myself, but it also is The title because what we're going to talk about today is how to work by yourself, how to be productive by yourself, how to self-manage, and what are some tips and practical use cases of you know of that. So, you know, during the summertime, nobody's telling you what to do. Generally, I mean, obviously your parents might have projects for you, but for the most part, you know, you're gonna be you know, at home and you need to fill your time and maybe you have some tasks that your parents have asked you to do, but it's up to you when you're gonna get them done, how quickly. and that can be that can be challenging. So who is this for? Well, again, it's for mostly students, but I think it's applicable for everybody. Like I can still apply these things and I'm not really a student anymore. ⁓ because it's more how to be productive. ⁓ even when you're working by yourself. Some people work better with a group of people. Some people actually really do thrive already working by themselves. Like me and my dad are a great example of the polar opposites. My dad works way better by himself because that's just how it goes. ⁓ he he's more geared towards that. I'm more geared towards working with other people. However, I do like working by myself as long as I've put in the proper guardrails, the proper I've taken the proper precautions to make it where it's easy for me to be productive. So, you know, what what's the first big big tip, big idea? I think the first big idea is to make a list. Now, what does that mean? You know, but Calvin, you know that I see all these productivity things out there and like all these different notebooks and things I could use to track it. And like, yes, all those exist. That's correct. And some of those could be useful, some of them might not be useful, but I would say start with a sticky note. Start with a sticky note, and if you got three things to do that day, jot down those three things. So during the summertime, obviously it's not homework, but in the summer, let's say you need to read your Bible, you need to mow the lawn, and you need to wash your dad's car. Write those down. Write those three things down and then try to check that list off. Now, some people like a checklist, some people don't like a checklist. I get like obviously you can like a checklist, you can not like a checklist, that's up to you. But writing the stuff you need to do down, whether you're checking it off or you're just going through it. Is actually very useful. It's very useful to be able to see the progress and to know what you have to do instead of just trying to hold on to it all mentally. Even though you could hold on to those three things mentally. I'm sure you're capable of that. I still think that it's a helpful motivating piece to see it written down because it's kind of like some accountability. You write that down, that means previous you, prior you, a few hours ago said, This is what I need to do. And then if you don't do that, that's you a few hours later going, I don't care what this guy had to say. Instead, you write it down, you complete those things, you feel good about that because then, you know, you you said, here's what I'm going to do. You made that promise to yourself, and then you completed it. So you can start with just a sticky note writing those things down. If you want to go a little bit further, if it's a big sticky note, you can break down those three things into smaller tasks. So, you know, if it's if you need to read your Bible, then break down reading your Bible a little bit more. So in at 8 o'clock in the morning, I'm gonna read my Bible for 30 minutes. Okay, so you put down that little time block. So from 8 to 8:30, I'm gonna read my Bible. Then from 9 to 10:45, I'm gonna mow the line. And you write that down. And then for washing the car, maybe you need to do a little prep work. So maybe you need to go get the soapy bucket ready. So you say, Go get soapy water at I don't know, 12. And then at 12:15. Start washing the car. And then at one o'clock, dry the car. So like you can get as detailed as you want to, but it's at that point it's a little harder to follow. So, you know, you can allot times to that. You can break that down into smaller tasks. So like if it's clean your room and you that's your job for the whole day, is you're gonna clean your room. You're gonna get it back to tip top shape. Okay, at 10 a.m. I'm gonna start, and I'm gonna start by making my bed. And then at ten fifteen. I'm going to start pulling all my clothes and drawers out of my dresser, put that on the bed, start organizing them, start folding them, putting those away. Then at 11 15, I'm going to organize my bookcases. So you pull the books off, you start putting them back up in the correct order. Things like that, right? So you can break each idea, each concept, each big task down into smaller ideas. So like the genus and the species. ⁓ There are lots of tools. You can put it in a phone app. You can put it on a three by five card. You can put it on your iPad. You could write it on if you guys have a whiteboard, right? So you can write it pretty much anywhere. You could write it on your hand if your parents let you write things on your hand. You could try that. ⁓ But write it down. Like write it somewhere, put it down, and then then you don't then you don't have to remember it. So If that's a problem for you, if what you say to your parents a lot is, ⁓ I forgot. Well, first of all, being forgetful is not being respectful. So that's you are you are sinning if you're forgetting consistently over and over. You're not making it a big deal. So if your parents ask you, hey, clean your room, and you go, I I forgot to clean my room. Okay, well, that's your problem. So write it down. Write down that you're going to clean your room and then clean your room. ⁓ So again, that's that's tip number one. Write things down. Tip number two. Now this one is gonna seem a little bit like it might not make sense right away. Because why would it? I'm doing a solo podcast. I don't have somebody here to tell me if it works or not. So number two is get accountability. now this can be anybody. This could be your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your grandma, your grandpa. Your friend. You're I mean, it it really could be anybody. and you might be wondering, get accountability, but doesn't that mean I'm not working by myself then? No. You're still doing all your stuff by yourself, but you're getting the accountability from somebody else who could ask you, Hey, did you get that thing done? You know? It's and the very the smallest form of accountability is to write it down because that's self-accountability, and I think that works. But you know, for a long for I actually can't remember how long that was, but for a while I was trying to do a thing where I copied this guy named Jocko. Jocko wakes up at he's a ex-Navy SEAL. He wakes up at like 4:30 in the morning and he always takes a picture of his watch or his phone or whatever to show what time it is. And I was having problems waking up. I mean, I still have problems waking up, but at that time I was like, all right, here's how we're gonna attack this. I'm going to wake up, I'm gonna take a picture, and I'm gonna post it on Twitter. Now here's the thing. I had like twenty people following me on Twitter at that point. I think maybe I have like twenty two now. ⁓ so not not very many, but it was a it was like I'm putting this out in the public as accountability. Like, hey, I was supposed to wake up at five this morning and I woke up at six fifteen. Well that hurts a little bit that I have to put that on social media. So you can you could try that, but I think for the most part, you know, say, hey dad, I'm going to you know, 'cause this is the thing, you're gonna take initiative, take responsibility. So if you're like, hey dad, I am gonna mow the lawn today and I'm gonna wash all the cars today, I need you to hold me account accountable to that. Okay. Dad says, Great. Sounds like an awesome idea, son. Thank you for doing that. Go great. You run off, you start playing video games. I don't know. And your dad comes out and is like, hey, what what are you doing here? You're not thought you were gonna clean, thought you're gonna clean the ⁓ you know, clean the cars, mow the lawn. Well, yeah, I don't know. See, this is the thing. Your dad is there now as your accountability partner saying, Well, you need to do that. So you can still take the initiative. That's still the solo work. You come up with what you need to do, you come up with the list of things, and then you tell your dad, you tell your mom, hey mom, I am gonna Clean the kitchen today. And then you clean the kitchen, your mom doesn't have to hassle you or anything. Or if you're not cleaning the kitchen and your mom sees that, then she can be hey, I thought you were going to clean the kitchen. And then that's holding you accountable to your list. So make the list, get accountability. Those are the first two. The third tip is to set timers. Now this one. You really don't understand how powerful setting timers is until until you've set timers. And I know this for a fact because I've done this. So there's the there's this big I there's this idea, there's this trend, but it works. And the trend is to set a timer for twenty five minutes, work on your task for twenty five minutes, and then take a break for five minutes, do something, run around, you know, do something else for five minutes, then come back, set the twenty five minute timer again and keep going. And you just do that your whole day. You know why that works? Is because all of a sudden now everything's a competition inside of your head. So inside of your head, you're going, I have twenty-five minutes to get this entire project done. ⁓ no. Instead of going, ⁓ I mean, I'll get it done today. No, no, no. It's like I have to get this done in 25 minutes. You're not gonna get it done in the first 25 minute timer, most likely. So like if it's a three hour thing, you're gonna set a lot of twenty-five minute timers, but you're gonna come back motivated every time because you're trying to beat the clock. And beating the clock at twenty-five minutes is easier than setting like a three hour timer. And being like, ⁓ eventually I'll get to it. 25 minute timer applies the pressure on you immediately to, you know, work hard, get your stuff done. and that I think that's a great I think that's a great system. So maybe it's on you don't need it could be more than twenty five minutes for sure. But it doesn't need to be more than twenty-five minutes. So it could be thirty, it could be fifteen, it could be twenty. You pick a timer, but set the timer and then work. And give yourself those little breaks in between those timers because that'll kind of refresh your brain a little bit, give you a second, and then you come back and you get you get locked in again. And I mean, I think that works great for for lots of things. now a couple of extra ones that I'm thinking about right now that I don't necessarily have written down, but Another great thing is if you're ⁓ so like secondary students, for instance, if you have a phone, the phone is a distraction. So you want to try to eliminate as many distractions as possible. Now, maybe you need your phone to get the stuff that you need to get done done. Okay, fine. so how can you eliminate tools? Well, you could delete all your social media, you could delete all the email apps and everything that notifies you about things, but you know. There there's a reason that like phones exist is cause you still like there are times where having those things is still good. So it's not like getting rid of them permanently would be bad, but it's also not that getting rid of those permanently is gonna fix anything either, because you may end up needing those later. So ⁓ a helpful thing you could potentially consider is a brick. Now a brick, it's it's a brand. The brand is called brick, and it's a little it's a little device, or it's I mean It's a device, but it's not actually a device. It's a little tiny gray brick, and you can put it on your refrigerator, anywhere that's magnetic, you can put it, or you can just lay it on the table. And when you tap your phone to it, you can set up in their app all the apps that it blocks. The only way to get access to those apps once you've bricked your phone is you have to physically walk over to the phone or walk the phone over to the brick and tap it on it. This is supposed to help trigger your brain to go, wait, do I actually want to do all that work to scroll reels again? Or do I actually am I just being am I just being lazy and do I actually want that? Probably not. So then you end up going back to work. ⁓ I would say that has worked very well for me. I think that's the best productivity thing in the world that I have tried so far is the brick. It's a little pricey. It's like fifty bucks, but I think you like the more the more bricks you buy, so like if you get them for the family, you can end up saving some money. my mom got them for a couple different people for Christmas. Fantastic. ⁓ that's awesome. Another thing you try for on the timer thing, it's called a pomadero timer. I think I said that wrong. but it's built into it for it to be twenty-five minutes on, five minutes off. Twenty-five minutes on, five minutes off. and there are a couple different brands that do that. There are some apps also that you can use for that. But again, the brick, you can try bricking your phone. That eliminates a lot of distractions. So you would just pick all the apps that you know you go to for the dopamine hit. ⁓ and you just put those as things that get bricked, and then they're bricked. And again, I think all those things combined equal a pretty solid productivity thing. ⁓ like a productivity setup. Another thing you can try is you know, some people really care. Like if you have a desk, let's say, because also all of this ends up working for homework too. But in terms of the summer getting your work done, ⁓ if you're doing stuff at a desk or in your room, like you're building stuff or you're doing art or whatever, a great a great thing For you to practice is to just have your room or wherever you're working be clean. Be clean and smell good. Those things help you be more productive. If it's all cluttered, it feels like you can't really start doing the work. And so then you end up distracting yourself by getting on your phone or going somewhere else or doing something, you know, doing other things that's not your work. So, you know, just clean your desk. If it if you're doing stuff at your desk, clean your desk up, organize it, make it look pretty. some people can work more in an unorganized system. Like there are those kind of people, but it's still good practice to have your stuff relatively cleaned up, relatively organized. And the last one I'd recommend is parents, but students, you can hold yourself to this, is don't wear pajamas for the whole day. So if you were to take the same day, you got the same amount of tasks, same everything. And you have a day where you wear pajamas the whole day, or you have a day where you actually get up and you put clothes on every morning, like when you go to school, because we have a uniform. One of those is definitely going to help you a lot more. And it is definitely not wearing pajamas. Wearing pajamas keeps you in the state of like, I'll get to it eventually. I'll get to putting on clothes eventually. I'll get to mowing the lawn eventually. No, put your clothes on. And again, it's you don't need to have a summer uniform, but like throw some shorts on, throw a shirt on. Put a hat on and go go do your stuff. So hopefully all those tips are helpful. There are they've been helpful to me at least to practice those things in my life. So Sam's not here, but I am a dad. And so I'm gonna give you some dad advice. Dads, you should be a great accountability partner for your kids. And you should also be able to show your kids that you have accountability somewhere somewhere outside of yourself. So That could look like whatever, right? but you know, it's really it's a really good idea to be present enough for your kids where they could be like, hey, you know who'd be a good accountability partner is my dad. Right? Boys and girls, being able to have a dad who can be their accountability partner, that's awesome. But you can also lead by example by showing your kids that you have accountability. You're being held accountable in your various parts of life. So Again. From the top. In fact, I'll even go, I'll even go to the top of my stuff. Make a list, get accountability, set a timer, brick your phone if the budget allows to get that. ⁓ clean your space up, make the space you're working in nice and organized and clean. Don't wear pajamas. And dads, be good accountability partners. That's it for this episode of Choice Man, everybody. Thank you for listening and we'll catch you guys next time. Peace.