In this video, we're gonna go over 10 cheap purchases that have improved my quality of life.

Let's get into it.

Coming in at number 10 on the list, we have a physical alarm clock.

And this is really cool because before I had one of these, I used to use my phone as an alarm clock and I'd have the phone on my bedside table,

but inevitably it would mean that I would spend hours and hours scrolling through Twitter, browsing Instagram and attempting to reply to messages to Hinge at night when I should have been sleeping.

But ever since I got one of these,

I now have the physical alarm clock on my bedside table which means I can have the phone across the room away from my bed or even in the kitchen on charge if I really need to get up on morning.

And so for a relatively cheap investment of like between five and 20 quids depending on how fancy the alarm clock is,

you can massively improve your quality of sleep if you get one of these.

Coming in at number nine, we have the trusty electric toothbrush.

Now the only thing that you need to have in an electric toothbrush if you have one, is it needs to have a 30 second timer.

So the cool thing about this one is that you go...

and then every 30 seconds it does like a...

and it tells you when 30 seconds are up and it tells you when two minutes are up.

So you can spend 30 seconds on each quadrant of the mouth, and then you know when you've been brushing for two minutes.

I've been using this for the past year now, and I noticed a massive improvement in like the whiteness of my smile.

And my brother even commented on it when we were recording our podcast, he was like,

"Oh, your teeth look very white."

And I said, it's cause I've been using one of these timed toothbrushes and he bought one immediately.

So you can get one of these for like 20 quid, 30 quid.

Just find the one that has the 30 second timer on it. It's absolutely fantastic.

Coming in at number eight, we have the trusty ukulele.

Now I started learning the ukulele when I was in my second year of medical school.

And really it was the first instrument that I learned and I learned by following YouTube tutorials. I just really liked the idea of playing the guitar.

But the ukulele seemed was it was a lot cheaper 'cause I got it for like 15 quid off Amazon.

It was a lot cheaper and it seems a lot easier to get started with a ukulele.

And within like 10 minutes you can learn to play the basic chords.

And then if you practice around five or ten minutes a day, for about a week or two,

you get to a point where you can like play songs on the ukulele and you can like sing along, and it's really fun.

And the ukulele was really my gateway drug into the world of music.

Super easy to learn; would highly recommend.

I'll link to a cheap version on Amazon in the video description.

You can basically get the cheapest one; learn how to play that.

And then if you want you can upgrade to a slightly fancier one, but yeah, 15 pounds for my basic first ukulele, it was pretty awesome.

And it got me into the world of music.

At number six on the list, we have my absolute favorite writing pad of all time.

This is the Pukka pad.

Like I've tried zillions and zillions of like A4 writing pads over the years.

And I always keep coming back to the Pukka pad because it's like the quality of the paper,

and the quality of the vibes and the feel and the look and the general spiritual essence that it puts out.

It's just like second to none.

I quite like the basic Pukka pad originals.

I filled out many of these in med school.

Now I'm using the Pukka pad project version which has the same quality of paper but it's got these like dividers because now I've got more money I can afford like slightly better stationary.

And so this is how I've been kind of planning the book that I'm writing.

And it's just really nice having like an A4 pad sitting on my desk at all times.

And I've got pens right, sort of within, within an arm's reach.

And so if I ever need to write anything down, this there's just something nice about being able to scribble it on an A4 Pukka pad rather than have to write it in an app.

So highly recommend these.

These are fantastic, the best pads I've ever used in my life.

At number six on the list we have a trilogy of books by Austin Kleon. All of these are fantastic.

They're really good. They're very inspirational.

And I have them -

I have like physical copies of all three on my desk at all times as part of my desk set up.

In particular, as you guys know Show Your Work was the book that most changed my life because it encouraged me to write online.

A video over there if you want to check that out.

Steal Like An Artist is all about stealing ideas, like an artist.

And it talks about the general idea that nothing is original.

We don't need to worry about having original ideas.

We can steal like artists and get ideas from different sources.

And there's a nice quote at the start on the Nothing Is Original chapter that says,

"The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something original, nine times out of ten, they just don't know the references or the original sources involved."

So this is really cool.

And then his third book Keep Going is all about how to stay creative through the good times and the bad.

And so it's like a really nice like it's very cheap by buying all these books.

It takes like 20 minutes to read each of them.

And I've sort of, these are very well thumbed through.

So anytime I'm having a bit of a creative rut or I'm in a bit of a slump, I just pick up one of them.

They always live on my desk and I just grab one.

I open it to a random page and I always find inspiration.

So thank you, Austin for that.

Links to all those books down in the video description.

Ringing in it at number five we have the water bottle.

I have a water bottle on my desk now at all times and just having it on my desk and having it be a slightly nice one that kind of goes with the white vibe of the rest of my desk.

It's just been amazing because now I drink so much more water and drinking water as they say is good for you.

And I've noticed that on days where I drink more water, I feel less fat.

I feel less bloated.

And my skin feels like it's glowing.

Not sure how much of that is placebo, but yeah, we were taught in medical school that you should drink two liters of water a day.

Thanks to having a water bottle on my desk, this is now what I do.

At number four we have the trusty deck of cards.

I basically had a deck of cards on my desk close to hand for the last almost ten years of my life.

I got into doing close-up magic in 2011 after watching a chap called Michael Vincent on Penn and Teller Fool Us,

and initially close to magic started off as a way of trying to increase my sexual market value amongst my peers at school.

But then when I go to university and reinvented myself as not a massive nerd, I decided to continue with my close-up magic.

And I used to perform at the balls and parties and events around the university and I used to get paid for it.

And that was pretty good because back in the day, I wasn't making that much money as I not doing this YouTube channel.

So, you know, being paid to walk around parties, dressed up in a tuxedo and going up to groups of people being like, "Hey, do you want to see a magic trick?"

That was, that was my jam back in the day.

And even now, like I always have a deck of cards on me because if I ever need something to do with my hands, then I just do some flourishes with a deck of cards because otherwise, the devil makes work for idle hands.

Coming in at number three we have the Amazon Kindle.

You can get these quite cheap.

It's probably the most expensive item on the list but like the cheapest Amazon Kindles is sometimes like 50 or $60.

You can get it super cheap.

Honestly, the Kindle is like one of the physical items that's like most impacted my life because getting a Kindle just gives you the ability to read infinitely more books than you would otherwise.

These days any time I get a book recommendation, I just buy it on Kindle immediately and I can start reading it there and then.

It's just absolutely amazing.

I've been using a Kindle basically every day since 2008 or whenever the first Kindle came out.

And yeah, it's just so good.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I have a video over there that talks more about why everyone should get an Amazon Kindle.

This one is the Kindle Oasis.

It's a little bit fancy.

You probably don't need the Oasis.

You could just go for the Kindle Paper White, or to be honest you could just go for the box standard Kindle depending on how much money you want to save.

And I read this every night before bed.

It's what I do.

When I get into bed, I tape my mouth shut after doing my skincare routine.

And then I just read on the Kindle until I fall asleep.

So huge, huge, huge impact on my quality of life with a fairly cheap, fairly small device.

Moving on to number two, we have this, this is a doorstop.

I probably got the most bang for my buck out of this purchase than anything else in my life.

Because when I was at university, I always used to have a doorstop and it would always pop my door open.

These days probably not so relevant if you're, you know in COVID times in the pandemic,

but once the world stops ending, highly recommend a doorstop for absolutely everyone,

'cause if you're at university or if you have an office or if you're at home, whatever, mostly at university,

propping your door open is like the best thing ever because you want to cultivate this persona where your friends who walk or walking by feel that it's okay to interrupt you while you're working.

Because like, if I look back on my university experience, I don't at all, remember those nights where I was like,

"Oh, I've got to work a little bit harder to get like an extra 1% on this essay."

But because I was the sort of person who people would feel comfortable interrupting in the middle of work,

like those interruptions and those like welcome distractions have turned into friendships that are still lasting today.

And so if you're the sort of person who props the door open with a doorstop at university or wherever you are, then it's just generally good vibes all around.

And finally at the top of this list, one purchase that has immeasurably improved my quality of life is a subscription to Skillshare, who were very kindly sponsoring this video.

If you guys haven't heard by now Skillshare is an incredible online platform with thousands of online classes, from all sorts of topics.

If you're one of the first 1000 people to hit the link in the video description, you're going to get 40% off the Skillshare annual premium subscription.

And that means you can watch the eight different online classes that I've got on Skillshare.

Two of them are about studying for exams.

Two of them are on productivity.

One of them is around how to be happier with lessons from stoicism.

And I've got another one which is themed around productivity for creators, which is coming out in a few weeks time.

After your free trial is up, the the annual subscription to Skillshare is less than $10 a month.

That is an absolute no brainer for all of the value that you get.

Plus you should watch all of my classes on Skillshare because I think they're pretty good and they've had pretty solid reviews.

So if that sounds up your street and you want to be more productive or you want to study better for your exams,

or you just want to live a happier life with lessons from stoicism, then hit the link in the video description and sign up to Skillshare

And then your life too can be immeasurably improved as mine has been over the years of having a Skillshare subscription.

So those were ten relatively cheap purchases that have improved my quality of life.

If you're interested in finding more ways to improve your life then check out this very short playlist of life lessons that I've learned over the last two years.

There's two videos in that playlist; they each have about 20 lessons in them.

And people have said that these these lessons have also improved their lives.

So thank you so much for watching, have a lovely day, and I'll see you in the next video, bye-bye.