Table of Contents
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CGP Grey
CGP Grey is a YouTuber and Redditor who produces edutainment videos. He doesnāt really have a focus and, in fact, for most of his career he didnāt really know what his style was.
Personal Evaluation
I called him a āRedditorā deliberately because he is a very stereotypical one. He uses Reddit (and liked it a lot) and he lines up with them politically/philosophically.
Politically he is obviously left-wing, though itās the ācentristā or āneutralā brand that you often see.
Besides his political leanings, he is also what would now be termed a ātech broā: someone enthusiastic about the latest technology but actually surprisingly technically illiterate. As in, he primarily works with Apple products, writes his scripts and whatnot in ObsidianA) and he drives a Tesla. Heās also concerned about automation and AI.
Oh, yeah, the death stuff. CGP Grey is irrationally terrified of death. I say āirrationallyā because it very much is so. He is obsessed with the idea of becoming immortal and believes that accepting the fact death comes for all is the stupid decision.
Heās missing the fact that even if he were to become immortal, heād still have to face death one day, because he isnāt being made invincible.
Besides all that, I actually think his videos are fine. Theyāre entertaining (which is most important) at least when he isnāt being a redditor. The Tiffany video (the other one) is probably his best.
Productivity System & Themes
This section may require a re-write.
One thing Iād like to focus on is his productivity systems. Like boyinaband, CGP Grey has trouble with productivity and finds it necessary to create a structure to help him be productive.
Iām focused on this because I also have similar productivity issues but, for reasons, I think Iām better at fixing the problem than either of them are.
Greyās system is advertised most in a handful of videos. Iāll find links to them (and edit this part) later, but they all basically cover the same idea.
Grey believes that instead of setting specific goals (as New Year resolutions for example), you should establish a theme and then operate within it. I donāt necessarily have an issue with this, so letās move on.
His productivity system is explained in the video where he advertises his own journal: āThe Theme System Journalā. I wonāt go over the exact details (Iāll link the video later anyway), but it became very obvious to me why Greyās productivity system is failing.
The system that he uses relies on circles. Each circle is split in half. You fill in one half if you do the bare minimum for that specific task and you fill in the whole circle for performing extra credit. Grey set laughably small minimums for many of the tasks (including āsend one message to one personā) and explained that he has trouble sticking to even that.
A tip for those who have similar productivity issues: if you find yourself failing to stick to the system, then thereās usually something wrong with the system instead of you, so you need to modify it.
The reason why Grey is having trouble sticking to the tasks is that heās setting a minimum instead of a maximum. The brain doesnāt see āoh, thatās only 1 message, thatās no big dealā but instead āthat is 1+ messages, oh no!ā and will procrastinate on that basis alone.
In my own system (also imperfect, so Iām not sharing it) I set a maximum time allowed for a given task. Such as ā1 hour maxā or ā30 minutes maxā. The brain doesnāt see ādo at least 1 hourā but instead ādo no more than 1 hourā which is significantly more approachable. In fact, I found that Iād often use up all of that time. This was also the single-most useful thing I ever implemented, because I went from not regularly coding (for example) to spending 1 hour every day coding.
This approach also means that doing the bare minimum already counts. You donāt have to explicitly define a bare minimum (and, in fact, you shouldnāt) because your brain will unconsciously figure that out for you.
I think that anyone trying to use Greyās system will inevitably fail to stick to it as well (unless you already posses a lot of self-discipline).
The other issue is that a physical journal functions very well as a reminder, until it fades into the background. Which it will. There are also numerous tricks you can play on yourself to avoid doing whatever is written inside itā¦like hiding it under your desk, or under a pillow.
The other productivity-related products he provides are also mostly a waste of time and money. The sidekick notebook was supposedly tested with thousands of users, yet not a single one of them possessed a graphic tablet. That means that a user like me (who has a graphic tablet in front of the keyboard 24/7) cannot comfortably use it at all. Though itās not surprising that such a user fell thru the cracks.
Though I donāt think itās completely awful, and it is making me think about how to improve my own productivity.
Also, just to be clear, this appears adjacent to āhustle cultureā and while it may appear that Iām also adjacent to it, Iām not. Itās just that I happen to use the same words as them because they describe very similar concepts.
Trivilinks
- Channel link. (To be added later.)
- I decided to release the article in its current form becauseā¦why not? Iām not 100% on all of the stuff written here, but I think itās mostly fine.