Busy but not seeing results? This book will change your life.

Are you trying day after day but still not making progress? I know this feeling all too well. I remember days when I would do like 10 million things, but by the end of it I still wouldn't feel satisfied because I didn't see enough results. By definition, this likely means we're not being effective. Effective means capable of producing a result. So after reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I now understand why this book is an international bestseller and one of the classic self-improvement books that I believe every single person should read as soon as possible. However, I know it's hard to read as busy students when you're already reading textbooks and you want to relax over the summer. So today I'm going to make it easy for you to learn The Seven Habits from the book with this video so by the end you can transform your life by being more effective than ever. Let's go! My junior year in high school, I took AP Environmental Science where the teacher was notoriously bad because he wouldn't teach us anything to prepare for the actual AP test at the end of the school year. So a bunch of the other students in my classroom would be complaining sitting around every class when the teacher wasn't there like, we're not taking the exam, we're gonna fail, this teacher sucks, I'm not learning a single thing. Basically, I also got sucked in complaining with the rest of the students just feeling so helpless in this situation. We were being the opposite of tip number one which is to be proactive. Be proactive means to take control of the situation and what you can control instead of dwelling on the things outside of your control because that does not help you. So I fortunately turned this situation around where I decided that you know what I have to still take this AP Environmental Science test and I'm still gonna get a five no matter what. So I was proactive and I googled the AP Environmental Science book on Amazon and I asked my mom, hey can you buy this for me? Easy to convince the Asian parents to buy something when it's for school right? And that was a weird one. I studied that by my own choice, my own will and discipline 20 minutes almost every single night before going to bed. And guess what? I was one of the two people who took that Environmental Science test and I was the only one who got a five. If you continually use the habit of being proactive, you will become so so unstoppable because with each time that you're taking things into control, you gain the confidence to tackle the next problem that comes your way. That when there's another issue like a bad teacher or a mean student that you're like, hey I have myself and I can control these certain things to still get what I want. I see some of you out there saying that social media is addicting and using language as if you're completely helpless to the situation. Yes, social media is designed to be addicting but that's out of your control right? Have you done all the things within your control yet? Unless you've tried every single thing where you can be proactive in first, then don't complain. You will then see dramatic improvements in your own happiness and productivity. Take a time machine and go forward in time. Imagine it's the day of your funeral and your ghost is attending this funeral and you see your casket there and you see your loved ones and friends around your casket. Sounds morbid I know but bear with me. What kinds of things do you want them to be saying about you? Do you want them to be saying he was an amazing brother and friend or she was incredibly hard-working and passionate? I love the things that she was doing every day and how happy and positive she was to be around. You want them to be saying good things right? So habit number two is begin with the end in mind. When you have the end in mind, every single action you're doing right now you can consider whether that is contributing to the end you want. If you want to be known as someone who is dedicated and always tries their best then what actions are you doing in this very moment that will contribute to people being able to say that about you? And before you make a decision, perhaps between your phone and taking a walk with your family, you can ask yourself what will this result get me in the end and what will the other result get me in the end? Life is an accumulation of our choices. We are what we continually do. Excellence is not an act but it's a habit. At the end of the summer, at the end of each semester, at the end of each day, what do you want to know about yourself? What would other people say about you at the end? What are the most important things to you? Most people would say health and their family and friends and to do well in the things that matter like gaining skills that will make you live the best life possible. But most people are also choosing the things that don't matter day after day, placing them in higher priority than the things that they actually say are number one. So are you treating the things that are number one priority to you as if they are actually number one? That's why habit number three is put first things first. For tasks that we want to do, there is a quadrant where in one of the corners there is going to be urgent and non-important tasks. There's also going to be urgent and important tasks. There's going to be important non-urgent tasks and non-important non-urgent tasks. We spend a lot of our time in just the urgent sections. But where we can be the most effective and move the needle the most is in the quadrant of important and not urgent. Your friends, family, and your health don't seem like urgent things in the moment because we might be young and we can take all these things for granted. But if we don't continually put them first, they're gonna slip away from us and by the time we know it, we have been prioritizing all the wrong things and we're gonna feel very regretful. So take some time to reflect and ask yourself what's really important to me and am I showing that that's important to me? Do you feel in competition with other people? I've heard stories of schools where all the people there, all the students are sneaky and untrustworthy because they feel so competitive and no one will share what they did last weekend and no one will share what extracurriculars or competitions they're doing and no one will say whether that test was hard or easy or try to help other people in any way. To me, as someone who loves helping each other, that feels so sucky because you can't learn from them and they can't learn from you and you can't improve together. So habit number four would be the way that I like to think too is think, win, win. Caltech is notoriously one of the hardest, hardest, hardest universities and programs in the world. I can't even tell you how hard it is, man. I barely made it out alive, but I actually enjoyed a lot and ended up getting a 4.0. The biggest contribution to me thriving at Caltech was thinking, win, win. Because when I was busy with basketball one day and had an away game, my chemical engineering friends would help me with a problem set the next day. And one day when my friends would get sick, then I would help them with their problem set the next day. This way, we're all mutually benefiting each other and everyone is happy. There are no feelings of ill will. It's extremely collaborative and just a happier environment where everyone can thrive and survive the academics together. In high school, I would be in the same math class with some upperclassmen and they would tell me what classes they recommend for next year. So that's a win for me. And then when they needed help on a piece of homework or a question that I would help them. So that's a win for them. And everyone just lives a much better life and succeeds in school together. So think about ways in your life where you can have win-wins with other people. Many of you have commented that you have difficulty making strong friendships or it's hard to know which people to be close with. And I think that Stephen Covey and I both agree that to make genuine connections that will last you a lifetime and have healthier relationships in general, you should do habit number five, which is seek first to understand, then to be understood. It's natural to be self-preserving and always be thinking of how to make someone else understand you. And we love sharing about ourselves naturally, but what's actually a better habit is in conversation to really listen to the other person and ask them more questions and try and understand them first before responding about yourself. I really love doing this because then you become so genuinely fascinated in other people's experiences and you can form much deeper relationships when you learn more about each other. Perhaps in some of your difficult friendship situations, you might be misreading someone. So the more you listen and try to understand someone first, that can also benefit yourself in turn. This also applies to when you try to do a task because when you try to do something, how are you going to do it if you don't even know how? For a specific test or a homework assignment, you need to follow the instructions. So you have to read everything carefully and understand it fully before jumping in. I can't tell you how many comments there are on this video saying that my math solution is wrong simply because the people want to be understood before they actually try to understand the actual problem. So when you're doing a homework assignment or a math problem, no matter how much you try and justify yourself, if you did not understand the problem statement correctly, you're going to get it wrong. So what is the point in that? For me as someone who has held jobs like internships and consulting as my first full-time job, I see that even adults post college are not good at following instructions. Like they will make a resume wrong and it's just a pain for recruiters and it's hard for you to get a job if you do that. So that's why I apply this habit also to following instructions and having more attention to detail. You can never go wrong by gaining awareness and becoming a googling god before you do something. What does 2 plus 2 equal? Yes, it's a trick question. Sometimes 2 plus 2 equals 4. Wouldn't it be great if we could turn 2 plus 2 into 5? This is habit number 6, which is synergize. Synergize is also some corporate lingo, but it means when the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. For example, I played varsity basketball. If every single person on the five-person team was just going after the ball themselves and trying to shoot whenever they have a chance to increase their own points that they score, do you think the team would perform very well? Do you think they would win many games? No, because the team has to work together and their results will be way better than if they had tried on their own separately. It's incredibly visible in sports, like I just said, in basketball and in volleyball. When you go out and watch the play, like the bomb set hit, and you see them, you're like, wow, that's some great synergy. It just looks amazing when things come together and all complement each other to make it an amazing play and eventually winning point after point. So what activity can you do with other people that will make the result way better and more fun than if you did it separately? Imagine a man or woman trying to saw a tree. He or she is struggling so hard. Okay, let's just call him John. John is struggling so hard to saw down this tree, like back and forth and oh man, it's just not coming down. So someone comes by, let's call him Bob. Bob goes, hey John, your saw is pretty dull. Why don't you go sharpen it? Wouldn't that make it easier to saw the tree? And John goes, no, no way. I'm too busy sawing. If I go sharpen the saw, that's going to take too much time. I actually already said the habit, but habit number seven is sharpen the saw. How many times have you said the excuse? I don't have time for this. I don't have time to work out 20 minutes a day. I can't take five minutes a day organizing my desk. And for me, my bad habit is that I get so many photos and files and I'm just like, I don't have time to organize it. But guess what? Who are we hurting? Ourselves. Because when we don't continually maintain things that need maintenance, at the end, it's going to be way more work than if we had just done the maintenance in the middle or done the preparation beforehand. Just like John with that tree he's trying to saw down. If he spent some time just sharpening his saw, then he can much more easily saw down the tree. And not to mention, he could probably saw down five more trees after that because his saw is nice and sharp. That's why on this channel, I always emphasize you having to take care of your health and putting your both physical, mental health, and well-being first. And to enjoy life and have fun while you're working hard on things like school. Because your body and your brain are the tools that are accomplishing the things you want to accomplish. So if they're not in a good state and a well-oiled machine, then you're going to break down eventually. I realized that me consistently doing habit number seven is why I actually have not burned out before. With the amount of work I do, you would think that I burn out. But it's like my body automatically tells me, no, you have to sleep eight hours a night. I will not sacrifice my sleep. So think about it. What are ways that you can be sharpening the saw? If something is hard for you right now, consider whether there are things related to that that can make this task easier. When you ask how to increase your focus and attention span, what can we do? Well, maybe for 10 to 15 minutes a day, we can stimulate our brain in a good way. But instead, we just think, oh, I don't have time for that. I only have time for five TikToks. And so we let our brain just melt away. We just sit and let it happen because we think we don't have the time or energy to do that. So instead, be proactive. Oh, see how this all synergizes together to become win-wins. And sharpen the saw. Be proactive and sharpen the saw. See what things you can be doing each day that are good for your assets, which is your brain and your body and your relationships. The things that matter. Put first things first. You see how number seven really, really compiles everything together. That's also why I really enjoyed this book, because the advice that Stephen Covey gives is not just siloed like tips one, two, three, four, five. He connects everything together because all the advice we receive, they complement each other where an improvement in one can make the other one better. And that's why on my channel, it's about getting A's the cool way, because that's the holistic way where you can have a great life and get straight A's at the same time. Holistically achieving multiple things you want in your life comes when you link advice together and make connections. Sharpening the saw doesn't only mean helping your body, but it also means to train your mindset like a muscle. That's why all the videos on my channel will be helpful to you in reframing your mindset, no matter what time of the year it is. So even if it's summer, feel free to watch that study video I made. I try to make them entertaining too. And you can also gain motivation by watching a video like this one. Viewers say that this video was life-changing for a reason. It's because it helps you be motivated no matter what you want to be productive in. Give me a big thumbs up, make sure to subscribe, and let me know if you like this type of book summary video. I'm thinking of making more videos for my favorite self-improvement books, and my favorites are actually all linked in the description box, so you can check them out. The description box includes a link to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and books like this one, The Daily Stoic, which I am reading right now. Great job, A-Team! A tip is that you can share my video with your friends, where then if you all value the same things together, it's much easier to improve. Until next time, peace!