How To Be Productive While Working From Home | Tips from Ramit Sethi

Oh, I forgot my points.

Okay, I'm gonna go.

Oh, I'm looking at you.

Okay. Yeah, look at me.

Okay. Yes, here we are. First night of Ramit's Fireside Chat. And yes, indeed, I do have a fire that I started myself. I haven't started fire since I was 7 years old. I'm very proud of what I accomplished since my days in the Cub Scouts. Tonight, we are. Oh, I'm Ramit Sethi, CEO of I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. And tonight and every night until this is over, I'm gonna be here and I'm gonna talk about something that I want to teach. And I love talking about money, business, careers, and psychology. And before we start, we have a ritual. It's called taking our hand sanitizer and cleaning our hands with it. Now, listen, people, I don't know how far this thing spreads, and I don't know if it spreads through my phone, but everybody get your hand sanitizer out, and let's give ourselves a nice little clean. Also, this is all we have left. So I'm sorry to my wife, Cass, my beautiful videographer. Tonight, this is all we got. So by the however long this takes, we might be to the end by this. Second of all, let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is my slides. Okay, these slides are horrible. These are the worst slides. I don't have Netflix money. Okay, so Netflix, you want to come and sponsor this? Send me a dm. But what we are going to talk about tonight is my schedule. I've been working from home for about 20 years, and I want to talk to you about my schedule before coronavirus. And I want to talk to you about how it's changed. And by the way, the reason that I'm doing these nightly sessions is that a lot of us are stuck at home. And we have. First of all, a lot of us are nervous, overwhelmed, anxious. And I've been seeing thousands of DMs from people. Because I asked you, if I were to do something like this, do you want me to do it? And what should I talk about? And I got a crazy amount of DMs, so a lot of us are sitting at home, not sure what's going to happen, anxious. And I figured, I'm here, I'm in the same situation as all of us. And the way that I can help is that I know how to teach, and I know money, business, psychology, and careers. So if I can come on here for 15 or 20 minutes every night and we can do this together, Maybe you bring your kids, maybe you bring your friends, maybe you tag people. That's time well spent for me. So I'm going to be here as long as we are here. And I'm going to do this every single night. All right? So I appreciate you guys coming and what I want to do is give you a quick presentation that I want to answer whatever questions you've got for me. One second here. I just want to take a look at some technical difficulties. Let's just make sure this is working correctly. Oh, it is working. Oh my God, there's a lot of people.

This is very meta right now.

Wow, look at this Inception. Okay, I can't listen to myself. Alright, so first off, let's talk about schedules. How many people here are working from home for the first time and how many people here have a calendar or a schedule that has been completely disrupted in the last 72 hours? I think a lot of us. I know that late last week after I wrote the piece that I published on how panic is bad, but overreaction is good, I told Cass I think things are not going to go well and I think we should get out of the city. And so we did. And that's why you see me in front of a fireplace as opposed to our regular Manhattan high rise shit. This fire is not doing well. Alright, hey, any Eagle Scouts? Don't write me. I know I didn't build the fire correctly, but hopefully by the end I'll build a new routine. So my old schedule used to be this is just like as of last week, I would wake up around six, I would have a very leisurely morning until about nine. My creative work would happen in the morning. So writing and any kind of creation that I was doing would be happening in the morning. Around noon meetings would start that would be calls project management, that kind of thing. And around 4:30 or 5, I would wrap up. 5:30, I would go to the gym. That was my usual schedule. I'd be asleep by around 10. So now my schedule is I wake up at 7. So about an hour later I still have a leisurely morning. Most of my creative work happens in the morning and calls happen later. Today was the first day I went to workout and like it wasn't the best workout, but it was the workout that I could get. So my suggestion on point number one is accept, change things, things have changed. Okay, but focus out, figure out what works for you. Now why in my schedule I'm sleeping a little more, I'm watching like at least an hour more of TV per day. I'm on social media. More like, that's okay. Things are crazy right now. It's okay to stretch a little bit and loosen up on my very usually rigorous schedule. But I also know that there are a few things that are important to me, and so I want to make sure that I figure those out. And if I can't do what I normally do, do a substitute. For example, working out. I can't go to an awesome gym right now. So I'm working out with these, like, rinky dink kettlebells. And I'm trying to find home workouts from my trainer, Chris Colson. And I'm also trying to find workouts from my other friend, Steve Kam at Nerd Fitness. And I'm just experimenting and, like, it's not great, but I want to make sure that I'm keeping the rhythm up. So that's point one, accept change, but figure out what works. Now, if you need to wake up an hour later, fine. If you need to watch a little bit more mindless reality tv, fine. But pick those things that are important to you and find a way to fit them in. That's number one. The next thing is building new routines. Okay, so I want to talk about this. I got an email from someone who said, I want to know about building your routines. Because I've heard so many people say that if I just had time, I would learn a language, I would read Shakespeare, I would do all this stuff. And now that I have time, I'm not doing any of it. How many people here feel that? How many people? It's completely normal. And if you ask any retiree, they'll tell you, oh, I had a long litany of things I was going to do when I retired. Now my day consists of, you know, going to Perkins to eat brunch and then going for a walk. And that's a good day. Now, that's fine for some people, but what I would say is, even though there are things going on outside that we can't control, I always want to focus on the things that I can control. So I have a couple of suggestions and things that I'm doing. New routines. If you only focus on what's going on around you, you're gonna drive yourself insane. I mean, turn on the news, watch Twitter, do any of this stuff. It's gonna drive you insane every single minute. The stock market going up and down, mostly down. I prefer. Yes, acknowledge that. Oh, my God, look at this thing. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I haven't had a Bug. Oh, my God. You know what? The show must go on. Carry on, my friend. Herbert, the what is it a cricket? I don't even know what it is. I don't.

I think it's a cricket.

You know what? Never before has the talent been so tested, but the show. Oh, my God. Must go on this bug. All right, so where was I? I'm getting so scared.

Herbert's walking away now. It's all good.

Herbert's walking towards the stove. Just stay away from my computer, man. As long as you stay away from that. Oh, he's okay. All right. I guess it's not the best showtime. Used to talk about this thing they can't even see. All right, so new routines, easy to get. Just whipsawed by what's going on in the news. But if you don't focus on what, what is going to happen when we are finally out of this, you're going to look back on this time and say, oh, my God. Like, I don't remember it. It was a buzz. It was horrible. A lot of bad things happened, but it was just. It's gone. And so I would suggest some new routines, because when you are building new routines, then it's going to be less likely that you're sitting and getting whipsawed by the news. So I have a couple of suggestions. First, one, for learning a new routine for learning. If you were going to build a new routine for learning, what would it be? How many people here have talked about, I want to learn a new language one day. Maybe that day is today. Maybe you join some language program, do it online, start learning today. Imagine coming out of this in however many weeks it is and saying, oh, my God. I actually look back on that time and I learned something for myself. So sign up for an online class, learn a new language, whatever it may be that you want to do it. I'm going to be looking for online classes myself, and I also teach them. The second thing is build a new routine for relationships. Can't go out to bars right now. Can't see your family and friends like we used to. What can you do? I'll tell you what Cas and I are doing. We are texting and FaceTiming our family a lot. Next up, we want to get a bunch of friends together on Zoom. Almost like a house party, but virtual. We never would have done this before because it's weird, but now we don't care that it's weird. This is what we need to do for our routine for relationships. And the third thing is just to do something you've always wanted to do. And it could be something as simple as taking pride in the simple. Do you know that I grew up and my mom taught us every day how to make our beds? And one day I was like, how do I become the best bed maker in the world? I started searching. There's a YouTube video online about how Four Seasons, the luxury hotel chain, makes their beds so perfectly every day. So just think about that. There is beauty in simplicity. Making coffee, making your bed, whatever it may be. Think about one routine just for you. And I think overall, the key here is to accept what's going on outside, but to remember that we can only focus on what we can control. And my dream would be that you look back on this and you say, despite everything happened outside, I focused on what I could do as opposed to. I look back on that time and I don't remember. It was all a blur. Okay, so that's number two, which is build new routines. Man, these slides are just killing it. Okay. And the final one I want to say, and then we want to do some questions, is.

I don't know where he went.

Oh, that's the worst. We don't even know where this is probably going to end up in our pillow tonight. All right, so the third one is to serve someone else. I believe that every single person has something we can do to help someone else. That's why I'm here right now. Right. I can't go outside. I don't have any experience in biotech or developing vaccines. I'm useless out there. I can barely start a fire. This fire is dying. It's been like 12 minutes. But what I can do is share the knowledge that I've learned about money, business, careers, and psychology. Right. And this is. This is as low budget as it gets. But I bet each and every one of us can help someone. When I was a kid, my mom used to take us to old folks homes and we would play piano for them. Okay. Like, that's it. I think it was honestly just so she had something for us to do. But we started to learn about service. What if you called up an elderly care or nursing home in your neighborhood and said, can I talk to someone there for 15 minutes? Do you think someone would be there and would be welcoming to a call? Yes. Could you tutor a kid online on Skype? Yes. In English? Yes. There's so many ways that we can help people. And there's right now there's a lot of elderly people who can't even get groceries. So I would say every one of us has something that we can do right now to help other people. That would be something that I would build into our schedule again. That's why I'm here tonight and every night until this is over. And I'm gonna keep doing this. So that is my third point on schedules. Serve someone else now with that. That's pretty much the end of today's presentation. I'm gonna take questions before I do. Tomorrow. I'm gonna be talking about what to do tomorrow. I'm gonna be talking about what to do with your money during coronavirus. And oh my God, if you saw the stock market today, it's one of the worst days, I believe, since 87. Just terrible day. We're going to be talking about what to do with your money the day after that. Wednesday, same place, same time, Better fire. We're going to be talking about. Why don't they listen to me? How do you convince your parents and your friends to take coronavirus seriously?

What time is that at?

That's 8:30pm Eastern every night. Unless I change the time. It's the first time I'm doing this. So let's take questions. What questions do we have from you about schedules? Do not ask me about Roth iras today. I'm going to kill you if you ask me about that. I'm not here to talk about that. That's tomorrow, Tuesday. Tonight, let's talk about schedules. What questions do you have? Some of you are working from home for the first time. Some of you. I know exactly what you do. You're lying to your boss. Oh, my video doesn't work. Oh, my video works. I know this lie. It happened to me when I rolled out video at my company. Turn on your video. So if you have questions, now's the time to ask. Let's take a look at what questions we have. Okay? Are you going to ask someone to help you start the fire tomorrow night? This is the number one question. I have a master's degree and I have a million readers a month. And that's the question I'm getting. Wow, this is really, really, really a ride. Okay, how do we do these questions?

You see, there's a lot.

How do you keep yourself off social media if that's part of your business? I don't. I like it. So. But you can time box it if you want. You can say, you know, 20 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at night, whatever you want. But I don't try to oppose it. I like. I like reality tv. I like waking up and scrolling Instagram, so I do it. But I also make sure that my most important things are scheduled so those don't get missed. It's classic IWT philosophy. Instead of worrying about how to cut back on things, make sure you are hitting your numbers by saving, investing, earning, and then do whatever you want with the rest. Are you a morning person? If so, why does that work for you? Well, first of all, we've seen from research that people can change if they're a morning person. You send people out camping for seven days who could never wake up in the morning. Guess what? They wake up. So if you want, you can change. Yes. There's also some research on circadian rhythms, et cetera, but what they have found is that you do have the ability to change. So number one, stop describing yourself as a morning person or not. If you choose to, you can change it. And right now is an awesome time. I talked about building new routines. It's almost like going to a new school. You get to create your own identity all over again. So if that's what you want, start today. And that's the reason that I'm talking about schedules and calendars first out of all the things we're going to talk about together. Because if you get your schedule right right now, no matter how long we're here, two weeks, four weeks, eight weeks, even longer, you're going to have some structure. You're going to be able to build something that you love. If you don't, it's waking up every day, it's just eating whatever's in front of us. It's watching tv, it's feeling miserable, it's. And at the end we look back and we said that was horrible. And I don't want that. I want us to, despite what's going on outside, to focus on what we can control. Okay, what percentage of the day do you devote to work and what to self care? That's an interesting question. I don't think about it in terms of. I don't think anybody thinks about it in terms of percentages, but I think I understand what you're asking. So self, self care for me is a leisurely morning. Right. I don't want to be rushed in the morning. Self care for me is working out. Self care for me is being able to text friends whenever we have the chance to and like maybe making coffee. I think that self care, like people traditionally think about, like massages and things might not be happening right now, but also to me this is self care, like somebody Said to me, oh, my God, they DM me, oh, Ramit, you're gonna get tired. That in a while. What if we're here for months? I was like, you think this is tiring? But to me, this gives me energy. That's why I think whether it's serving someone or building a routine just for you, you got to find something that's gonna give you energy during these times. Okay, let's see here. Interdependent schedule with significant other, or should you each go solo and reconvene at the end of the day? I think that's up to you. I do think that having some time together, whether it be, you know, we've heard from couples who cuddle in the morning, that's their time. We've heard from other couples, they eat dinner together. That's something that Cass and I have been doing or work out together. Like, today we did it. But, you know, most days we actually work out separately. So I would say whatever that time is that's meaningful to you, but if you didn't do it before, now could be a beautiful time. Whether you say to your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, you know what? I really want to start this new routine of us eating dinner together. Would you be open to that? I mean, what are they going to say? They're not going anywhere. So that's a great question and a great routine to start with, your partner. Working from home kills my productivity because I get distracted in my super cozy home. How many people feel this? I mean, it's a pretty cozy place. Our place in Manhattan. I wouldn't say it's cozy. I prefer it to look like a Japanese monastery, personally. But that's just my taste and the taste of anyone who has good taste. I mean, what can I say? So, first of all, that's a story you tell yourself. That is a story you tell yourself that your super cozy home doesn't allow you to stay productive. Of course it does. You can find a place, you can carve it out. It could be on your dining room table. It probably implies dressing up. By the way, my wife at next level wardrobe talks about how to dress for working from home. And it also probably implies setting some boundaries. If you have a partner or friends or even kids who live with you, it's like, this is time that I need to be working. So that's a story you tell yourself. I have dozens of employees that work from home around the country. We have taught the skills of working from home. You know, they're available during work hours. We have all team calls. Monday, 11:30 Eastern. We have certain set calls and we also honor people's time zones. So those are things that I think you can build into your skill set if you need. But just remember, change your identity, change your behavior. Let's see. Do you have any favorite productivity apps? I think productivity apps are highly overrated. Just like personal finance apps, I have basically none. I use a calendar, I have email. I do have one luxury. I have an assistant. And if you guys are interested, I have a whole program on delegate and done. But that is not about apps. Productivity is not about apps. It's about psychology and it's about boundaries. It's deciding what's important to you and building the systems into your life. Apps are irrelevant. Yes. A reminder, five minutes before. Fine. But don't focus on apps. No magical app is going to save you. It's about getting clear here and here and then finding the systems to support you. Last question, last question. What are you.

Look at this fire, by the way. Heating up.

I like this advice. Waking up and scrolling. Don't start the day that way. So I'm getting productivity advice from. From a random person on my Instagram feed. And I just wanna talk about this for one second. So whether it be money, people telling you don't spend money on lattes, whether it be someone telling me not to scroll on Instagram, I want you to remember, you create your rich life. And my rich life breaks all the morning rules. I don't have a morning routine. I don't meditate, I don't have an app. I turn over and first thing I do is scroll to Instagram. And yet I love it. And yet I am productive. Why? Because I have figured out what works for me and I'm unapologetic. And that's what I would encourage you to do, especially now. So remember these key things. You get the chance to reinvent yourself right now, and as much bad stuff as is happening outside, and I think it will get worse, unfortunately, what we can do, and the reason that I'm here, is that we can only control. We can only control what we focus on. We can only focus on what we can control. So I'm hoping, as much as possible, that things get better outside. But right now, here we're talking, you and me. And so whether I scroll on Instagram or you make coffee later in the day, do what works for you, accept that things have changed, figure out the important thing and prioritize it. That's all I've got for tonight. Two things I want you to do number one, send me a dm. Tell me what I can do to make this better. We'll work on the setting, we'll work on the fire and all that stuff. But this is our first time. I want to give a big shout out to Cass at next level wardrobe. Let's give her a round of applause for her great camera work. Seriously, she helped with the slides.

That's my handwriting. Okay, So I need to take a course on handwriting.

I was like, cass, I don't know if you want to commit to doing this every night. I just got be doing this for a long time. This is me. These are Cassie slides. Send me a DM and tell me what I can do better. I want to know. And I'm going to be doing these every night. So if you have ideas of things you want me to cover, just DM me. The second thing you can do is tell your friends. I want new people to come here. And we're going to talk about money. Tomorrow, Wednesday, we're going to talk about how to convince your frustratingly stubborn parents who aren't listening to take this seriously. I'm going to show you some ways of doing that. But we're going to keep doing this tonight and every night until this ends. So thank you very much for coming. I will see you tomorrow night.