In this motivational YouTube video, entrepreneur Evan Carmichael outlines seven practical strategies that enable smart people to work fewer hours while achieving greater results. He begins by emphasizing the importance of a well‑crafted schedule and a quarterly audit to ensure daily actions align with big goals such as gaining a million YouTube subscribers. He then advocates batching similar tasks—dedicating whole days to filming, writing, or public‑facing activities—to maintain focus and energy. Carmichael stresses the value of building a team, even hiring part‑time help, so founders can concentrate on their genius‑level strengths. Guest John Sonmez adds a fourth tip: decide exactly what you will accomplish before touching the keyboard to avoid mindless browsing. The fifth tip is eliminating low‑value activities, illustrated by Carmichael’s decision to stop sending unnecessary meeting minutes. The sixth tip is automating repetitive processes, with a concrete example of using TubeBuddy to bulk‑edit end‑screens on thousands of YouTube videos. Finally, Carmichael urges viewers to do work they love, arguing that passion drives speed, creativity, and quality. He closes by inviting audience interaction, thanking a fan for supporting his book, and reinforcing his core belief that entrepreneurs can change the world.
Chapters
Hello, Believe Nation! I'm Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all the major problems of the world. So to help you on your journey today, I'm going to talk about the 7 ways smart people work less and get more done. Number 1 is create a schedule. Successful people, for the most part, have a schedule. When you have a schedule and you know what you're going to get done that day, it's easier to stick with it and plan your big things out. So what's really important, what I find really helpful, is once a quarter I do a big audit of my life, of my business. Where am I spending my time? Where am I getting the most value from? Do my actions map to the big things that I'm trying to create for myself? And so if my big goal is I want to get a million subscribers on YouTube, as an example, It's one of my goals. How do I do that, and are my actions mapping to that consistently? So once a week I have YouTube day. I'm researching, I'm trying to better understand the algorithm, I'm trying to update my thumbnails and titles, trying to research new story ideas, new potential videos that we can put out. And so I'm constantly adjusting my schedule to map to achieving those big goals. So if you know what you're gonna do, you wake up every day with a schedule that is on point and helping guide you towards your big picture, you're much more likely to to get it done. Number 2 is batch similar tasks together. This one really saved my life. It saved so much time out of my schedule. Or anything that you're doing multiple times per day, do once per day. Multiple times per week, do once per week. Multiple times per month, do once per month. The more you can do that, the more success you'll have at getting more stuff done. So as an example, for making these YouTube videos, I will make most of the videos once a month. So I come in here, it's a Wednesday afternoon when I'm filming, and we'll spend the whole day making YouTube videos, and I'll batch them out for the entire month. We'll film between 60 and 80 different videos in one sitting, all day long, because one, I'm in the mindset, I'm in the mode, we don't have to worry about setup, takedown. Also, me being able to be comfortable in front of the camera, share my story, have energy. All of that stuff really works, where if you're switching between tasks constantly, it's easy to fall off. You know, if you're in writing mode— I remember being in writing mode for my book, and I'm writing and researching, kind of introvert mode, don't want to talk to anybody— to then prepare for a call that's coming up, you know, that half hour to an hour before the call, I'm not being as productive. I'm researching who that person is, I'm getting nervous about the call and what's happening. And so I find it really hard to switch between tasks. If I'm going to do an, like, introvert creative writing day, I spend the whole day doing that. Wednesdays I make my YouTube videos. Thursday is my public-facing day, so I'll do interviews and podcasts and radio shows and, you know, guest appearances on other people's YouTube channels and phone calls and meetings. I'm in my extrovert mode, and I'll put my hoodie on and I go from one meeting to the next to the next to next next, back to back to back to back to back. And it really helps me stay in that same energy and get more stuff done. And so batch similar tasks together to help you be more productive. Number 3 is bring on a team. You cannot do everything on your own as an entrepreneur. At the start, I get it, maybe yes, you're trying to do everything because you don't have the resources yet to build, but as soon as you can afford it, or as soon as you can think of how you can bring other people on board, it's so worth it because you have genius-level talent at something, and yet usually that's the thing that you're so great at, you're only spending 10% of your time on, and 90% is spent on all the other stuff that's involved in running the business. The more you can get rid of those things and give them to other people who love doing it, even if it's hiring somebody for 1 hour a day, which is what I did with my first hire in my business, it alleviates some of the pressure to allow you to focus on what you are great at. If you want to go far, you have to go with a team. So start looking at who is around you that you can bring on board to take some of those tasks off your plate so you could focus on what you are genius-level talent at.
Hey, I'm John Sonmez from Simple Programmer channel. Tip number 4 is know exactly what you're going to do before you sit down or you let your fingers touch the keyboard. This is one of those things that I have found has really helped me to be more productive because if I just put my fingers on the keyboard, if I just sit down, and type at my computer, I'll instantly type in there facebook.com or gmail.com. Always before I start anything, before I go to the computer, before I open up my laptop, I think to myself and I say, "What am I trying to accomplish? What am I trying to do?" By doing that, it stops me from wasting a lot of time. Just a little bit of 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there that you spend browsing the internet or doing something or distracting yourself can lead to a lot of procrastination and can prevent you from getting things done. Quick tip to remember, just remember before you sit down to do any work, before you do anything, know exactly what it is that you're supposed to do and then when you unlock your computer or put your fingers on the keyboard or you sit down in your chair, that's what you start doing and you don't just go to some social media site. All right.
Number 5 is eliminate. I mentioned at the top how I love doing a quarterly audit of my schedule, it's so So, so, so, so important because you'll often find things that you should not be doing anymore. So as an example, I have a mastermind group and I used to keep minutes of every meeting. I thought that was the professional thing to do. I thought I was adding a lot of value. I'd keep track of what everybody was doing, what they said they were going to do, and report back and send them the email every month after the meeting and say, "Hey, here's what we talked about. Here are the minute notes." One month I got too busy and I wasn't able to get it out. And what happened was nothing. Nobody cared. And so the next month, as a test, I didn't send the minute notes out again either. And nobody cared, nobody emailed me, nobody called me, nobody wrote to me, nobody asked where they were. So here I was doing this service that I thought was really valuable, it was a quality value add for my customers, and nobody actually cared about it. And so ever since then I stopped doing minute notes. There are things that you are doing in your day-to-day calendar, in your day-to-day schedule that you may think is adding value but really isn't. And if you can eliminate those, take that chunk of time out of your schedule, then you can focus on higher priority tasks. Number 6 is automate. So after I've eliminated all the stuff that I don't need to do, the next thing I look at before bringing on a team is actually automating. If there's anything that I do on a consistent basis using a computer, if it's over and over and over repetitive tasks, I immediately start to think, how can I automate this? How can I find a software tool to help me do this? Or how can I hire somebody to build a program for me to solve this problem? So as an example, using YouTube, there's a great tool called TubeBuddy that I'm the highest paying member of. I've upgraded my account twice to pay them extra money. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but I love them because they allow you to automate a lot of your YouTube processes. So as an example, YouTube added a new feature called end screens where you can, in the last 20 seconds of your video, add some new features in to link to other videos, subscribe to your newsletter, subscribe to your channel, all that fun stuff. But I already had 3,000 videos that didn't have these end screens, and going in one by one by one by one would cause a real problem. So TubeBuddy had that program, and whatever I'm paying them, $80 a month or $100 a month or $50 a month, whatever it is, makes so much sense because I can update 3,000 videos at a time. And so always look to eliminate first, automate next, before you move on to bringing somebody on board. And number 7 is do work that you love. You are way more productive, you are way more creative, you create much better output when you're doing work that you love. If you are doing the work that you look down and it's 8 in the morning, you look up and it's suddenly 1 o'clock in the afternoon, you look back down, you look back up, it's 6 o'clock at night. When you're doing work that you love, you're gonna have a much better output than when you're doing work that you hate. You know that work that you hate. You struggle through it, you try to find ways to avoid it, you force yourself to do it, but it's not gonna be very good, and it takes way, way, way longer than somebody who loves it. And it's not just about skill. Somebody who loves it might be better skilled, they can get it done faster, but if you had equal skill level, they'll still get it done faster because they love the process. When you love it, you want to spend time doing it, and it goes much quicker than if you don't love it and it feels like a chore. So those are the 7 ways that smart people work less and get more done. I'd love to know which one did you guys like the most? What are you going to immediately apply maybe to your life or your business after watching this video? Did I miss an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add in as well? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Jelena Ostrowska. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. And the fun interview we did on your YouTube channel as well. I really, really appreciate the support and I'm glad you like the book. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.
