---
title: '5 Easy Time Hacks to Stop Wasting Time as a Streamer!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=PkwtFHGMzWc'
video_id: 'PkwtFHGMzWc'
date: 2026-08-12
duration_sec: 831
---

# 5 Easy Time Hacks to Stop Wasting Time as a Streamer!

> Source: [5 Easy Time Hacks to Stop Wasting Time as a Streamer!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=PkwtFHGMzWc)

## Summary

Barry Eps, a cryptographer turned content creator, shares five time management lessons that helped him go from occasional uploads to posting weekly without sacrificing sleep or family time. He emphasizes practical techniques like writing things down, time blocking, and using Parkinson's Law to boost productivity.

### Key Points

- **Introduction** [00:02] — Barry introduces himself as a cryptographer turned content creator and Twitch partner, aiming to help 10,000 people grow their channels.
- **Sponsor: Nexus Clips** [00:27] — Nexus Clips is a tool that automatically analyzes streams to select the best moments for short-form content, saving time for creators.
- **Lesson 1: Write Everything Down** [01:23] — The paradox of productivity: being overwhelmed by options leads to doing nothing or low-impact tasks. Solution: write everything down to clear mental space.
- **Tools: To-Do List and Calendar** [02:19] — Use a to-do list and calendar to store tasks and ideas. Write down anything that takes longer than 5 minutes or requires concentrated work.
- **Lesson 2: Time Blocking** [04:07] — Time blocking involves scheduling specific tasks in your calendar to ensure you have dedicated time for them. Protect these slots from interruptions.
- **Lesson 3: Daily Quests** [07:35] — Gamification: start each day by picking one 'daily quest'—a single focus task that moves the needle most. Schedule 1-2 hours for it.
- **Lesson 4: Parkinson's Law** [08:33] — Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill the time available. Set shorter deadlines to create urgency and momentum.
- **Lesson 5: The 5-Minute Rule** [10:53] — The 5-minute rule: commit to doing a task for just five minutes to overcome the initial resistance to starting.
- **Bonus Tip: Take a Day Off** [12:51] — Bonus tip: If you can't get started, take a deliberate day off to recharge your battery.

## Transcript

channels, post weekly on YouTube, and still have time for gaming, family, and sleep. Today, I will tell you the five time management lessons that explain how I do all this. And no, it's not get up at 5:00 a.m. If you're new here, my name
is Barry Eps. I'm a cryptographer turned content creator and Twitch partner looking to help 10,000 people grow their channels the right way. But before we start, if you are struggling to make time to make short form content, then
let me help you with Nexus Clips, who are kindly sponsoring this video. Are you struggling to make short form content out of your amazing streaming content? Then this is the game changer for you. And the best thing, it won't
cost you any extra time. Nexus Clips automatically analyzes all your streams algorithms to select the best moments for your short form content. Then with only a few clicks, you can go from raw
clip to a fully edited short with a title card, subtitles, really everything you need to have it ready to post to YouTube, Tik Tok, and Instagram. Create shorts every week that please the algorithm and get seen by potential
viewers to grow your stream easily and automatically with Nexus Clips. Create in the description. Thank you, Nexus Clips, for sponsoring this video. The first lesson is something I learned while I was doing my masters in maths.
And if you take away nothing else from this video, if this is the only point you watch, then you're already setting massive steps forward. So, hear me out. Sometimes you can be overwhelmed by all the things you can do that you can't
pick what you should do. That's the paradox of productivity. And when that happens, you are often stuck doing things that you can quickly takeick off and that have very little actual impact or you end up doing nothing at all. And
that is because your brain is so busy juggling all these different tasks that it can't think clearly. In the epic words of Thiago Forte, the author of this book, Building a Second Brain, your brain is for having ideas, not for
storing them. So the first thing you have to do is to find a place where you can store all your ideas, projects, and tasks so that they have a place to live that is not your brain. You only need two tools to unlock your time. A to-do
list and a calendar. That's it. Your to-do list could be as simple as a stack of post-its or a notebook and as complicated as using an app like To-Doist or Asana. Whichever way you choose, here's what you're going to do.
Whenever you have an idea for a video or stream, write it down. Use that to build up an idea bank so that if you are ever stuck for inspiration, you can just go through your stack of post-it notes, pick one, and there's your stream ready
for the week. If you see something that needs doing, write it down. Anything that takes longer than 5 minutes or anything that you need to do while you are doing concentrated work needs to be written down and planned for later. Fix
your microphone settings? Write it down. Need to write a new video for YouTube? Write it down. Grab dinner from the shop. Write it down. By writing it down, you remove it from your brain, which frees up space so you don't have to feel
as overwhelmed when you do have time to do something for your channel. And here's why that matters even more than you might think. When you write something down, you're not just clearing mental space. You're clarifying
intention. You go from vague thoughts like, "I should do something about my channel." to concrete, actionable steps. To me, it was that shift in mental space that allowed me to go from occasional YouTube videos when I had the time to
making them practically every single week. Oh, and by the way, let me know in the comments below which one of these you are already doing or if this is all new to you. There's only one problem with this. You do need time to do the
tasks on your to-do list. And that is where your calendar comes in. Honestly, use any calendar you like as long as it has a built-in daily. The one I use is Google calendar. What you are going to use your calendar for is creating
intentional time. Time in which you choose to work on your channel. And I'm going to make this as easy as possible for you. First, planning your sleep time, including the time that you use to prepare for sleep. For me, that's 11:00
p.m. to 6:00 p.m. daily. Then add in any work or school that you have. I work from 8:00 to 5:00 from Monday to Friday, including the commute from home to work and back. Now, put in all your fixed time, hobbies, family time, streams,
that sort of thing. I stream five times a week on the MathMan EU channel and twice a week on the Content Delta channel, so I'm adding those as well. exactly where you have time each day to work on your content. And for some of
you, that might not be much, but I have the weekends. So, since I know that I need to create a video every weekend, I'm going to block off both Saturday and Sunday morning for video creation time. I also need to be able to think of new
ideas for videos, thumbnails, titles. So, I'm going to put those from 7 to 8 those are the days that my wife takes our kid to the daycare. So, I have some extra time. This concept of time blocking makes sure that I don't only
know what I need to do, but also when I plan to do it. Doing this makes it much easier for you to complete your tasks because you've already decided what you are going to do, which reduces your decision fatigue, but also makes it
easier to do the thing you plan because it's on the calendar. I'm supposed to do it right now. And while you're at it, be very protective of the time you make for content creation each week. If you can avoid it, do not schedule anything in
those time slots. Go work in a quiet place, put headphones on, and ignore the world as much as you can. Crucial for you as a creator to have protected time in which everyone knows not to disturb you because that will allow you to get
into the flow and just get your work done without needing to constantly switch your attention between tasks. I even do this at my work. When someone wants to have a meeting with me and I can control the calendar for that
meeting a little bit, I will always make sure to put all those meetings at the end of the day. The first meeting is from 4:00 to 5:00, the second meeting from 3 to 4 and so on and so on. That way I can guarantee that the first thing
in the morning I have my full energy and loads of focus to do the things that distracted by meetings throughout the day. It doesn't matter who you listen to. Ali Abdal, Alex Hormosi, Thomas Frank, or me. We all swear by the
concept of protected time, although what we call it might differ. Let's have There is some time left over in the evenings, but I'm going to leave those open for now. And that is because I like to start every day by sitting down and
to start every day by sitting down and gifying my day. Gamification is a great way to get yourself invested in what you do. And I do that with something I learned from the book Make Time by Jake Knap and John Zeratsky. One of the ways
that games keep you going is by always giving you something to do. And they do that by offering you quests. Once you run out of quests in one place, they will usually give you a breadcrumb quest to go to the next place, which will then
be filled with more quests. What Jake and Jay-Z say is that you can use that brain hack that games use to improve your productivity and get more things done. Before you start your day, every morning, you make a list of all the
things you want or need to do that day. Then you pick one and only one as your focus for the day, your daily quest. Now look at your calendar and pick a time slot of 1 to two hours and set your daily quest in that time slot. This way,
even if the rest of the day is in shambles, you have one thing you guaranteed can work on during that day. What is important in this mindset is if you do nothing except your daily quest that day, then it is still a successful
day. So, pick the thing that is most important and that will move the needle of your channel the most. And in the famous words of Shia above, just do it. And if you want to push a little further, you can also set a bonus quest.
And the beauty of the bonus quest is that it's not something you need to do. It has to be something you want to do. Call your grandma, learn to play the guitar, make a new channel point redemption, whatever you want for the
bonus quest. It is a valid option. Okay, that means we are moving on to tip number four. And this one was lifechanging for me and it's called Parkinson's law. This was discovered by Sirill Northcot
Parkinson and was initially written as a sarcastic essay commenting on civil something curious during his time working there. As the bureaucracies grew in size, they also became less efficient. Even when there was less work
to do, more people were hired, and more meetings were held, more time was wasted. What he had seen in the civil service was seen again and again in all sorts of businesses, governments, and even with students. And it's all rooted
in behavioral psychology. No matter if you're running a Twitch channel, writing a book, or just trying to clean your room, Parkinson's law says that work expands to fit the time available for its completion. I used to say that I had
to make one video every two weeks. And often that meant I spent a few hours on finding the right idea, a few hours on the title and thumbnail, and then a week on writing the video, changing the phrasing multiple times until I finally
had it perfect. Then I had to rush to record it and get it to my editor. But since I gave myself 2 weeks for it, that meant it took me 2 weeks to create a video. When I learned about Parkinson's law in March last year, I decided I was
going to make a new video every single week instead. And since April last year, I have made a video practically every single week with a few weeks off where I was away for work. Nowadays, I tell myself, you have 3 hours to write this
video. Suddenly, I can focus, stop overthinking, and just get it done. Plus, I think my videos have actually gotten a lot better since then, which is a double bonus. The time limit creates urgency, and urgency creates momentum.
That's Parkinson's law in action. So, here's how you use it to your advantage. Set shorter deadlines. Not unrealistic ones, but just tight enough that you have to stay focused. Give yourself 30 minutes to plan your next video idea, 45
minutes to edit your thumbnail, or 20 minutes to clean up your studio and desk. Then, stick to the time limit, even if it's not perfect. Done is better than perfect. But that will be a topic for another time. When you start working
this way, you'll be shocked at how much you can get done and how little time you actually need. Okay, let's take a step back because all these tips are great. But what if you ever have one of those days where you just don't feel it? Those
days where it's too warm outside, bed is too cozy, and the sirens call of games and procrastination sinks as an alluring harmony in your ear. Well, that's where tip number five comes in. The fiveinut rule. We all have those days where we
know we have something that has to be done by the end of the day, but it's just so hard to get started. You're not alone. The same thing happens to me. Often, these are things that we don't want to do, but have to do, like taxes.
That's because in that moment, you are lacking activation energy. Think of it like a diesel train. When a train is at a complete stop, it takes a ton of force to get it moving, even just a few inches. You lean into it, pushing with
everything that you got, and at first nothing happened. But what if you keep pushing? Eventually, it will start to roll. And once it's rolling, even slowly, it gets easier and easier to move until suddenly it flies down the
tracks. And now it's harder to stop than it was to start. And to get the need for that sort of activation energy down, I use the 5-minute rule, which is super simple. If you're struggling to do what you need to do, just agree with
yourself. Go do it for five minutes. And almost every time, 5 minutes turns into almost every time, 5 minutes turns into 15 and 15 into 30. Because once you're moving, the task stops feeling so impossible. But even if you do stop
after 5 minutes, that's still a win. You took action, you lowered the resistance, and you sparked the fire. So, next time you're stuck avoiding your stream or putting off editing, try this. Set a timer. Start for 5 minutes, then decide.
out. So, I'm going to give you guys a bonus tip. What if you don't have to have it done today and you just can't get your rear into gear to make content or do things that matter? Then you need to be able to make the conscious
decision to step back. Make the decision to take a write off day and don't intend to do any work. Only do what you want to do, even if that is gaming, reading, working, or just sleeping. Use that time to recharge your battery and then come
back to the task the day after. But what if you have a to-do list? You have time blocked in your calendar. You're using Parkinson's law, the 5-minute rule, but you just can't get yourself to do what you need to do. What if you lack the
motivation to push yourself? Well, then this video is for you. You'll be surprised that most creators don't even understand what motivation really is and how they can do more every single week. And as always, stream better, stream