Best EDC and Productivity Gifts

Hi everyone, my name is Matt, and welcome to the Bullet Journal Guy 2020 Gift Guide. I have a ton of fun things for the bullet journal-ist in your life, or if you want to get something a little special, a little extra for yourself. It's 2020, you deserve it. As Tom Haverford and Donna say in Parks and Rec, 2020 is definitely a year to treat yourself. So, treat yourself this year. I'm going to show you a bunch of different things that you can get that you're really going to like, going to enjoy, going to improve your productivity, your focus, your Bullet Journal practice. Highly recommend all these things. I've tried them all out myself, and I'm excited to share them with you now. Now the first set of gifts that we're going to focus on are the things that I think a good Bullet Journalist would really be interested in. And first and foremost, you have to check out the new Bullet Journal Edition 2 notebook. See my complete review right up here and linked in the description below. I am so impressed with what Ryder, the Bullet Journal team, the Leuchtturm1917 team did in redesigning this journal from the ground up. So many things that I was doing manually are now automatic and kind of built into the journal, and it just looks, looks so nice. So definitely check this out. Now, if you want something that is a little bit more of a pocket notebook, I for years have been a fan of Field Notes notebooks. My favorite series, or my favorite release over the past year, is the Group 11. They are dot grid, they're gold foil on the edges. I highly recommend them. And then also, just because I love being outside, I love the parks, their National Park Edition is lovely and beautiful as well. This is Grand Teton. But they have, I think, 12, maybe 15 parks in those different series. So definitely check these out. The other thing to check out— I'm not a big pen guy personally. I love using the Pentel EnerGel 0.7, but the— if you do like fancy pens, I do really like the Baron Fig Squire series. This is the one that was made in collaboration with James Clear for the release of Atomic Habits along with the Clear Habit Journal. The other thing that I've been using for years are Blackwing Palomino pencils. They are big, bold, smooth writing instruments. I use them to take all of my book notes, and if I'm just like sketching or getting an idea out really quickly that, you know, I might want to erase or make edits to, but It smells nice. It writes so well. I also got the Blackwing pencil sharpener. I've used a bunch of cheap ones before, but this one is made out of machined, you know, metal, and it just, it feels really good. It's steady and sharpens really well. The other thing that I like to use it for is, you know, it just works really well as a pencil stand as well. So I just have these two sitting on my desk at all times. Transitioning into the EDC, like everyday carry, uh, options— while I'm not carrying things many places anymore, um, I do like to keep things organized in the office. And a great way to do this is the Brown Buffalo Stormproof quarter pen pouch. And I really, I mean, it is made of like literal stormproof material. I throw all of my extra pens, pencils, markers, even like an additional pencil sharpener always in here. And you could spill like a gallon of coffee or, you know, drink of choice on this thing. It has AquaGuard seal zippers. Nothing's getting in this bad boy. So I really like it, even if it's just keeping things organized in the house. Let's talk about a couple other EDC, everyday carry tool organization options and gifts. One that I have really, really enjoyed this year is the Peak Design Tech Pouch. I really like how it has this like accordion style opening, I can fit a ton of stuff. And I can fit a ton of stuff in here with different cables, cords, really easy to keep everything organized. And again, even though I'm not really going anywhere, I'm not really going to coffee shops or anything like that, so I don't, I don't need to like use this to carry things from place to place, but it is really nice even just at home. I keep like my main cords and cables in here if I'm not using them. So that way I know if I need something, I just go right to this tech pouch or over to this Porter Pen pouch. And those are the things that I like know I have everything here. Another thing from Baron Fig that I have loved having, and I'm going to show you more of an overhead shot of this, is their Guardian Pro case. So it's just a zippered case for their Confidant notebook. This is the one that I'm using right now, like literally. Before I get into this new Bullet Journal, I'm still going through this nice orange one they released for fall. And it has a place in here for a Squire pen. I keep the Baron Fig Strategist note cards here for when I'm doing my durable note-taking. I also have the, like, Baron Fig pocket. I wouldn't put this in my pocket personally. A little, little sharp. 6-inch ruler. All of it slides in here. I could put a phone in here. If I wanted as well. The other thing, like, from a Confidant standpoint, one of the things that I don't like about it as much, but I get it's part of their aesthetic, is like the fabric cover. Especially like having two young boys, or just, you know, having young kids in general, this notebook, before I put it in the Guardian Case, would always like get stuff spilled on it, or like food would be left on it, or just crumbs, or like, you know, things. Laundry detergent. You saw my, the unfortunate incident with that. But when I have it all zipped up in the Guardian case here, I know that it's going to be safe. I can keep like some core tools with it and not have to worry about it at all. The last thing to tell you about from an everyday carry perspective is this Brown Buffalo backpack, day pack that I've been using. I'm not, you know, to be honest, I'm not even 100% sure if this one's still available because I'll say that this backpack is not their like $400 backpack. Okay, so this is actually no longer available. I'm sorry to get you excited, but the Brown Buffalo makes great stuff. The other type of backpack that if you were looking for something as an everyday carry, I'm just going to say check out Chase Reeves' channel. He will not steer you wrong. I'll also link to like his most recent everyday carry, like tech or personal day packs. So that's actually going to be my recommendation in terms of like getting a bag as a gift, except speaking of Chase, this is the Pakt, P-A-K-T, Pakt backpack or the back Pakt that Chase, along with Pakt, made over the past couple of years. I'm going to do a complete review on this. I actually kind of have it on the editing floor, but this is my favorite travel backpack, one-bag travel that I have ever used. And I've used it for a couple of trips over the last few months, and I just have to say it's better than any other one-bag travel, and I've used a bunch of them. The care that Chase put into this and the pack team and the attention to detail is so good. So be on the lookout for my full review of this, but I can just say highly recommend and you should definitely check it out. I have 3 more things that I recommend you checking out when it comes to productivity, time management, time tracking. Or just focusing your attention on a single day specifically. The first thing that a lot of you will recognize is the Time Timer. It's a cool, like, analog visual timer that, especially if you're able to, like, disconnect and really focus on the time that you're spending on a given task, is going to move the dial around and you can see how much time you have. It's really good, especially if you like the Pomodoro Technique, which would be like 25 minutes of work and then a 5-minute break, or if you want to do the double Doro, as I call it, is to do 50 minutes with a 10-minute break. That tends to be what I do a lot of times. Another tool that I'm going to talk a little bit more about is the Timeular Dice or the Timeular Die, and it's a cool analog-digital connected tool. For time tracking. And basically what you do is it has 8 sides on it, and on each side you write an activity or an area of focus that you're spending time on. And so when it's time for me to make a YouTube video, like I'm doing right now, I set the YouTube side up and it starts to track in the app the amount of time that I'm spending on YouTube. And then when I switch to like, okay, It's time to record a podcast, which I'm going to do next. Then I flip it on to the podcast side and it starts to automatically track that I'm spending time on the podcast. And so I really like this because of the combination of kind of tactical analog. I can actually see it right there while still connecting through Bluetooth with an app that I can start to understand and measure the time that I'm on these specific activities or areas. The third and final, like, kind of productivity tool that I recommend is the Analog note card system from my friend Jeff Sheldon. Now, I did an entire review on Analog cards that you can watch up here. I'll also put in the description below. But I saw the early version of Analog, and basically what you would do with it is The majority of the system is based on these today cards. Now, Jeff doesn't do as much like bullet journaling or as much analog planning as I and probably we do, but what he does that I really, I really have appreciated, and I think more people should do this, is even if you use a digital planner, like he does a lot of his work I think in like Trello, Dropbox Paper, you know, just that's how he manages a lot of his team and his time and his tasks, and that makes sense because he has to do a lot of collaborating. But when it comes to like, okay, this is everything that I have online that I have digitally in, you know, whatever tool I'm using to plan. When it comes down to like, this is what I have to do today, he takes out a single card that just has at the top today, and he writes down the 3, 4, 5, whatever tasks that he wants to get done today. So that way he still like has his whole second brain, you know, in a productivity app., but when it comes to like, I need to stay focused today on these tasks, that way he just writes them down on the note card. He doesn't have to keep going back and possibly getting distracted by other things that might naturally come up when it comes to using any kind of digital tool. Thank you so much for watching this 2020 gift guide video. It's coming out a little bit later than I intended to, but I got really sick last week. I'm feeling fine now. I've fully recovered, but That's why it's a little later. Hopefully you still find some things that you can order either on Amazon. There's going to be links to everything below. And you know, if you are getting someone a nice gift or maybe a little something for yourself, most reasonable people will understand that there may be shipping delays or things that go a little slower when it comes to the holiday season. So there are links to all of these things below. Uh, some of them do have like an affiliate referral, but just a couple, and I'll just state that. Because that's important to do. But let me know if there are any of these things that you're interested in or excited about or seem useful to you, or something that maybe you're considering that I didn't list at all. There's certainly a lot of great gifts out there, and you can share some ideas in the comments as well. Thank you so much for watching. Make sure that you like and subscribe to this video and to this channel. December, January are the biggest months for productivity, for planning, for getting things going, for building new habits. I'm gonna have a new podcast coming out in a couple of weeks, so just make sure that you are subscribed to my email list, that you are subscribed to this channel so that you don't miss a thing and I can help you plan and prepare effectively for 2021. Thanks so much, everyone. I'll see you in the next video.