My 3 personal favorite productivity mentors and how to get the best of them.

Thomas Frank, Matt D'avela, and Nathaniel Drew are my go-to productivity mentors and I created my productivity structure from their videos, here is how…

Intro about mentors

One of the best ways to get knowledge and avoid failures in your life is to get a mentor. Moreover, a mentor is someone that sees potential in you and teaches you, not only knowledge, but also wisdom and encouragement that they got from their experiences. 

It's awesome to have a mentor that you can talk to and that can encourage you personally through your life, it can be your father, a boss, or even a friend that you look up to. 

Even better (and I've never experienced this but I'm looking to do it) you can go ahead and shadow a single successful person that you admire in a specific field you aspire to be in, get to be close to them somehow, maybe being an assistant or just befriending them, and learn all you can.

There is a lot to talk about mentors, and I might create a post about it in a new section called "Try it with me", but today I want to talk about the mentors that you get online. 

Seneca, the greek philosopher, writes in one of his letters "Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval. Be always pointing him out to yourself either as your guardian or as your model."

And yes, you can find this models and mentors online too. If you do it right.

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I had to start with this intro because if you go and look for productivity in google or youtube you'll find something over 500K answers and on Youtube I'm sure you'll get thousands of channels and videos, and we can easily wander away from our goal.

For example, you know that you need a productivity structure so you look for "how to create my to-do list". You find a nice video from my boy Thomas Frank but in the recommendations at the end you find an interesting ted talk, then you jump to a guy you don't even know but has great content, and so on until you get lost in the depths of youtube and you even forgot what you were looking for. 

Say it with me "We must focus", even on this. 

To begin with, looking at several options, reading tons of papers, hearing different people on the same topic is not productive at all. Quit that. 

Find a few options and make a bit of research on your 3 best channels or people. Find out what type of content they share, how they share their knowledge, and check if their way resonates with you. Pick a maximum of 3 people on the topic and go from there. 

There are a few great guys that they talk about productivity and they have also millions of subscribers that I actually never watch because I don't feel in tune with them. Ali Abdaal is another great productivity guy but it just doesn't resonate with me because of his approach and ways to explain.

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So, having said that, here are my 3 personal productivity mentors, why I love their content, and how I get the best of them.

THOMAS FRANK:

This guy is a machine. Here is a part of his bio that I really like:

"whether you're in high school, college, university, or the real world I'll help you to be more productive. That includes study tips to help you learn faster and ace your exams, advice on destroying procrastination, reading and note-taking strategies, and more."

Concise, great tool picker, list and goal oriented and practical as hell! This guy gives so much knowledge in each video. He also has different projects going on like his podcast, his blog and his music and I love the fact that he talks about different topics too like investments, health and even music.

You can actually start procrastinating more and more if you keep watching all his videos so remember:

* Know what you're looking for and limit yourself to 1 to 2 videos about the them . 

* Try to watch videos only from one guy at a time by searching correctly e.g. Search- "Best digital tools for productivity thomas frank"

* Be a master of execution. Apply what you learned, even before the end of the video. 

MATT D'AVELLA

When I'm reasearching in Youtube for an specific theme, I don't go and look for it video by video, I search one of my guys and go right to the "playlists", so I don't swiftly watch any content, but look for a short and organize collection, like a crash course, that can teach me a bit deeper into the theme. Matt D'Avella has great playlists with very well made content.

His bio is also great "Matt D’Avella is a Netflix filmmaker, YouTuber & entrepreneur that explores things like minimalism, productivity, and habits" I love his videos because you can see the great work of a filmmaker, how he writes his scripts and try to explain things in his own point of view. 

He touches a lot about minimalism and habits and shows it in his videos in a smooth manner. His 30 day habits challenge playlists is, not only for entertainment but to learn how are those experiences in real life and for us to learn which habit suit us better. 

His videos sometimes are not straight to the point, like Thomas, but each of them share a piece of a great life style that, if you resonate with, you can enjoy and learn from each second of the video. And also remember:

* Try to set a little bit of time in the day to watch and analyse his playlists, one playlist at a time.

* Have a notebook or write notes in your computer about some tips in each video that you'd like to do yourself.

* Be selective, not everything that has worked for him might work for you. 

NATHANIEL DREW

Sometimes you have to stay away from the massess and look for something that gives you goosebumps and vibrates at the same frecuency as you. 

Nathaniel Drew is another natural and talented film artist that shares his advice in productivity, traveling, and even learning languages, through some beautiful and original video and he gives the extra mile talking about mental clarity by means of philosophy and show us the best of this messy but amazing world. 

I love his takes on productivity and, almost like Matt, he takes some challenges to practice important habits and copy routines from great people. He has some videos with practical lessons to organize your day, start your journal or the best way to learn a language. But usually, his best videos are the hard themes he ponder like "how to avoid a life you regret", "I've struggle with happiness...", "for people feeling behind in life". 

Some tips to watch this amazing guy:

* Remember to do one thing at a time, focus on the task at hand 

* Productivity is not the solution to everything, take your time watch some videos that help you be a better person and just enjoy that time of self-reflection

* Pause some videos and take the time to ask yourself this important questions and write down your answers.

Well, this tips are actually for every video that you want to watch and learn from, remember to stick with just a few guys, no more than 3, that you like and make them your mentors by incorporating their teachings to your daily routine and looking up to them to become the improved version of yourself. Check this 3 amazing guys out but look a bit further and find the ones that resonate the most with you.

Let me know who are the best productivity masters for you!