3 Habits That (Actually) Changed My Life

I wasn't building any specific skills. I was just  kind of building little sandcastles everywhere that crumbled after the project ended, so I  decided I need to change this. Three years ago, I felt drained.

I felt like I was wasting time  doing all of this work, but it wasn't building up to anything, and the closest people were drifting  from me because we weren't really interested in the same things anymore, and it was hard to be who  I am around them. So, entered Co where everything was put to a pause, and I tried a bunch of  habits, and three of them changed all three of the problems. They were really easy to implement and  effortless to apply now that I've been doing for three-plus years.

So I wanted to share with you  the three habits that really changed my life. The first one is how to build input-output loops.  What I realized early on in my career was I was a good employee.

People would give me things to  do, and I did as I was told. I think I did them pretty well, but, you know, at the end of the  year, I don't have any groundbreaking insight. I didn't have any unique contributions that  other people couldn't do.

I wasn't building any specific skills. I was just kind of building  little sandcastles everywhere that crumbled after the project ended. So I decided I need to change  this.

I'm going to build a loop, an input-output loop. So, what that means is I have my inputs,  and that feeds directly into an output that I do, but with the output, I am going to seek more  input, and that's going to the next output. So, everything links together, and I'm spiraling up  and learning and building up on something.

For example, when I was working at YouTube, part  of the job was to learn the latest YouTube algorithm changes, and then you run workshops or  meetings with big YouTube channels so, you know, you can help them grow. And most people stop  there, right? Input is the training, and the output is the workshop that you run.

So, you know,  easy, you finish, and you do something else. But, of course, I was building my loop, so I'm not  going to end there. What I would do is okay, I learned the material, I run the workshop, and  at the workshop, I want to gain more input.

So, I talk to the big YouTubers, find out how they  hack the algorithm. They think about this 24/7, so a lot of them had really unique insights  that were not covered on the YouTube training material. So, for example, one of the YouTubers  said, oh, since YouTube introduced chapters, what I would do is make my chapter titles SEO  optimized so actually I get more traffic from Google search.

So, whenever you know, you  search on Google for a question, they will give you YouTube video suggestions. So, her  videos started to show up there, and I thought, fascinating, not at all covered by the YouTube  training material. And so, I would take that, and I reach out to the Google search team, you ask  them, oh, you know, when how do you think about surfacing YouTube channels, and they would tell  me even a bit more based, and I could reply, and I could discuss because I had some information from  the YouTubers.

Based on what I've learned there, then I could do more outputs. When I'm talking  to other YouTubers now, I can say, you know, there's an interesting hack that you can do, or I  can whenever I'm doing cross-functional meetings, there's unique insights that I can provide,  and no one else knows about. And, of course, as an output, I run my own YouTube channel, so  I experiment with my own channel.

All of this is building on top of each other. Over time, you  build a reputation for yourself that you have information asymmetry. This is a huge competitive  advantage in our information world.

They know that when I come to Vicki, she has some unique insights  that somehow other people don't have, and that is building the input-output loop. And even if you  say, okay, I work, I can't really do that, you know, it sounds too complicated. You can do that  with the content that you consume.

We all consume a lot of content. So, I decided well if I'm I  have this much input, I need some sort of outlet. I need some sort of output to actually cement  in what I'm learning.

So, I'm writing, creating YouTube videos, and just that process itself is  you're doing more than 99% of the people. And once you do that, right, you leave comments, I talk to  my writer friends, you know, they talk about this, I get random inbound emails saying, oh, I saw  this article you did is exactly what I'm doing with my business. Can we discuss this?

So, I get  so much more input just by putting something out, and based on those discussions, then I can improve  my videos. I think of new ways to do my videos, new topics. So, it really is a virtuous cycle,  and this virtuous cycle gets me ahead of most of my peers who are still building sand.

How to have better conversations. This came about when I realized one of my closest  childhood friends kept on cutting me off in our conversation. I remember this one instance which  made me realize I need to change.

I was telling her about my favorite book, how PR can change your  life. It's so witty. The author, Alan de Botton, he had such clear observations, and he put into  words what I was feeling but never had the words for.

It's a weird mix of self-help and literary  review of this French author which I studied when I was in Paris. It was just mind-blowing, and I  was gushing about the book, and my friend said, oh yeah, um, so I'm actually thinking of going to  Paris this summer. Where should I stay?

And she completely cut me off. She wasn't listening, you  know. Clearly, my TED Talk was of zero interest to her, and that's when I realized even if someone is  a close friend, one, they won't be interested in everything that I'm interested in, and two, even  if they were, they shouldn't be there listening to me ramble about something.

So, instead of  calling her, hey, you know, she's just a friend who never listens to me, I decided I needed to  change and have better conversations, and there were three things I did to change the quality of  my life and the quality of my conversations. The first thing was finding a group of people who  cared about the same things as I do. You know, I want to talk about philosophy.

I want to talk  about how the world works. I want to talk about frameworks. I want to talk about ideas from books  and, you know, have a discussion about them, and people in real life, a lot of them were interested  in this.

So, I thought okay, let me 80/20 this and find the right people.