The Top 5 Traits Of The Super Productive - Ali Abdaal

Ali abdal welcome to the show thank you so much for having me this is going to be fun and we've got your little your little drinks over here which we can sip on throughout the episode and we've got your mechanical keyboard in front of us as well I feel like we we're doing a lot of chilling here we've got my book the keyboard your GS it's kind of nice because we're also working with the same company to put this stuff together it's just it's it's cool that there is this sort of Creator collaboration stuff going on now with physical products I think so I like the fact you know having something that is my own that I spent so much time building is so nice so that's brand new right now when we're recording this this tropical ice which is the white one isn't out so this is going to be first taste test for you it is ambient as well so crack that open what does ambient mean warm it's warm rather than chill so have a crack of that and see what you think oh it's very nice that's a it cheers cheers yeah this is my favorite flavor it's like a it's a white Monster killer yeah it was weird so um when I tried this one for the first time I was in LA and I didn't have much sleep for like two nights cuz I had to I had like a 8 a.m. meeting with my team the next day and late nights and stuff cuz like hanging out with people in LA and I cracked up in one of these I I went to the local we workor had one of these and I genuinely felt so focused and my team were literally commenting but yeah my team would commenting you're like how you have you got so much done cuz I was just like Y and I'm not sure if it was Placebo but like I just if it works if it works it works so your new book feel good productivity everyone needs to go and buy that right now I know you've spent an awful lot of time working on it for a long time yeah why does feeling good have anything to do with productivity they're two words that don't usually go together they don't usually um but there is a large amount of evidence that suggests that they very much do go together so one of the theories have you have you come have you come across this the broaden and build Theory no so this is the idea um you know there's a psychologist called Barbara Frederickson who in 2001 came up with this Theory um it was based on studies that showed that if you get people into a lab and get them to do tasks of creativity and then you split them into two groups and you give one group a candy bar or something and you give the other group nothing for some reason the group who gets a candy bar comes up with more Creative Solutions to whatever problem that they're trying to solve and so the theory was okay there's something about you know priming someone with positive emotions that affects our creativity and then they did you know one one of the theories around this is back in caveman times if for example someone was experiencing positive emotions that's usually a sign of safety things are pretty chill things are good and so when the cavemen are experiencing POS emotions when they're feeling good they are more inclined to go out and explore so they're going to see what's in that cave over there what's in that Forest over there let me build my friendships and stuff and so bar uh you know Professor uh Barbara Frederickson came up with this Theory called broaden and build which is that when you feel good when you experience positive emotions it broadens the amount of actions that are available to you and it builds resources like social connections and actual physical resources and stuff whereas the converse negative emotions if caveman human is feeling negative emotions it's like [ __ ] I'm stressed there is a tiger on the horizon I need to I I I I have a very small range of options to choose from fight fly freeze and I have to act within that range and and so the idea is that feeling good makes us more creative more productive less stressed and boosts our energy levels and there's so many studies that that back all this up and conversely negative emotions have the opposite effect so very few people can be creative and can perform productively when they are feeling negative emotions what is the link between creativity and productivity cuz those two things don't necessarily sound synonymous to me in fact some of the most creative people that I know like my housemate Zach are really really unproductive the executive function and openness seem to be basically opposite ends of the same Spectrum how are you squaring this circle of creativity and productivity yeah so for me productivity I'm I'm defining as doing whatever matters to you uh in a way that's intentional and effective and you know ideally enjoyable as well so for some people you know if you are an artist then creativity is productivity um and the studies that they do don't on this stuff don't use the word productivity they use the word performance and so however you define performance like studies in the workplace performance is judged by evaluations from your manager if you're a writer performance is judged by word count if you're a in in Creative tasks performance is judged by how creative you were so I kind of smuggle the two concepts in together because I actually think there is not that much of a difference between creativity and productivity depending on you know for example if you're if if you're an accountant then Creative Accounting is probably unproductive because it's not what you're trying to do but if you're a knowledge worker if you're a writer if you're a YouTuber whatever creativity is productivity because it's literally what you're trying to do and there's often I guess uh Power law multipliers available where you come up with a solution that means that you can be more efficient which requires you to probably be creative ahead of that it's like if you come up with a creative solution to a productivity problem exactly yeah and I think in in the world today like especially people listening to this most people do not have jobs where the goal is to just crank out more widgets per hour there is you know hosi talks about this you know the people who are billionaires are not working any harder than you and me they're just playing different chess moves yeah and often you know finding the right chess move to play means that you can get a 10x outcome without working anywhere near as hard as someone who's trying to work 10 times harder that was the Shan Puri Insight his is a bit more controversial where he says hard work is massively overrated but the lesson is that it's more important about what you work on rather than how hard you work because the correct decision if you say that work done equals time times intensity yeah but that's only within Effectiveness yeah right like work done is time times intensity but you can get different outcomes based on how much you leverage so all right you and me have been friends for a long time you've spent years writing this book and even longer building up your Corpus of productivity stuff on your YouTube channel given that you've written about about productivity why is it not filled with Pomodoro Technique and time blocking and how to build a good notion template why is it not just a a tools guide what why is it more feely yeah so initially when I started writing this it was more of a toolsy type thing because you know as a productivity bro I love learning about the tools and the templates and stuff but I realized that in my own life the thing that has made me most productive you know people would always ask how were you able to build a YouTube channel in the business while working as a doctor and you know that's all demanding and stuff and really this it was never because I had a magical to-do list and when people look at my phone they're like oh actually it's it just looks like everyone else's it's a bit of a mess my to-do list is always overflowing it was never really about that it was about the fact that I found I consistently found ways to make whatever I was doing feel good I found ways to make whatever I was doing energizing and enjoyable and it wasn't always like that so when I started off working as a junior doctor in the NHS conditions were pretty bad and they still are and I had this sort of grindy mentality where I was I was feeling drained every every day at work wasn't enjoying it but my view was H you know you just got to struggle through this because everyone says the first two years are the hardest and as long as you struggle for long enough then on the other side of that whatever that thing is in in my case it was once I become a specialist then once I become a consultant once I hit some arbitrary Milestone then my life will be chill but then I would speak to people who were at those milestones and their lives were not chill either they were also having a pretty terrible time at work and this sort of made me realize wa wait a minute I'm trying to juggle this full-time job and build my YouTube channel my business on the side I don't have any energy to do this I do actually have time in the evenings cuz I was only working 60 hours a week and there's like another 50 hours to play with but I just didn't have the energy and it was when I started to actively find ways to make medicine my day job feel more energizing and enjoyable that was what really unlocked the energy to focus on my YouTube channel and I spoken to you about this sometimes where you managed to hit the gym way more consistently than I do and you also managed to record podcast way more consistently than I do like at a stupid rate of like three or four or five per week but I suspect you don't need to grind it doesn't feel like a grind to you it feels like play I suspect it feels good I've had to do things to make it feel more like play so especially when it comes to training one of the things that I've had to do is get a coach so for a very long time I trained on my own very hard and that was great but I'm 35 now and I've been training for a decade and a bit and I just can't push myself as hard in the gym on my own as I used to when I'm training with one of my boys I can if I'm training in a class I can if I've got my coach with me I can but on my own I can't and I was like all right well this seems to be a change in my motivation setup so I need to account for it so I got a coach so I'm training with my trainer three times a week I'm training in a class twice a week and I'm training with one of my boys once a week that's a six day week split wow um the same goes for recording the podcast if I was a YouTuber like you it would be really difficult because I find sitting down writing a script getting in front of the camera all of that quite hard the accountability I work very well with accountability and also working in groups or working at least with someone the podcast is always with someone so I guess I've learned one of the quirks of me which is that although I work well in solitude I'm most accountable when there is someone waiting for it the same reason if I was my journaling for myself compliance is 50% but my newslet compliance weekly is 100% right thousand words a week for three years now right nice every single week without without stop rupturing Achilles it's holiday I'm in Guatemala I'm getting my Visa whatever like always done wrote it on the plane from Peterson to the UK and uploaded it on Plain Wi-Fi two days ago right because I know that if I don't do it people are going to notice so I've realized that that is a motivation for me um training is on the feel-good side the other stuff is a little bit more stick than carrot I suppose or at least it's motivator rather than encourager um but yeah finding the quirks of you and then reverse engineering an environment that allows you to tweak the very specific knobs and levers that trigger your motivation that's I don't think that that's you being a the David goggin inside of you might say you should just do this because you want like you should do hard things and blah blah blah it's like well yeah but you can do hard things in an easier way yeah and that's what that is absolutely so so there there's two things I I would say to that so firstly that's that's an amazing example uh the third chapter of this book is all about people and there is just stupid amounts of evidence that says that the way that we when whenever we work in a way that involves other people it's just it's more energizing it's more enjoyable it's more motivating this is why people benefit from accountability Buddies the way I used to do it was at University I found that if I was grinding away on my own I'd be pretty miserable I I'd be effective because you know I can I can I can use I can employ discipline and willpower to force myself to sit there on my own and do my do my work but if I go to the library with five other friends we're all doing our work was it pom sock that you used to do yeah the Pomodoro Society we were like we would do pomodoros together we would do 25 minutes of work we were all in different subjects studying different things and then 5 minutes of break and there's something about doing it with friends that just made the whole thing way more enjoyable way more energizing and it meant that I had energy in the evenings to I don't know like hang out with friends or like work on my websites back in the day and I think this is something that people don't think about enough there is this idea that like oh I focus better when I'm on my own it's like okay you focus better when you when you're on your own and there are very there are some small number of people that are just totally chill about that they never struggle with procrastination they never struggle with distraction they're just able to grind it grind it out on their own if you're that person and you also having fun then great this advice is not for you but for the rest of us for most of us we you humans are social creatures we benefit from the energy of the people around us so finding a way to do anything with other people makes you way more effective and generally makes it way more fun as well yeah it's it's a delicate balance I remember I went to an office for the first time in a long time uh toward the back end of covid and was reminded I I always used to think look at how distracted I get when I sit at the computer and that 5 minutes on YouTube or that 10 minutes scrolling Instagram or whatever like you see it from the front row seat but I went into an office and saw one person go anybody want a coffee and then they go oh yeah yeah have we got any of that blonde roast left it's like no we haven't we need to get some in oh okay what about those Vietnamese World biscuit and you realize that someone asking the whole room if they want a coffee or not just sapped 3 minutes out of everybody and 3 minutes isn't much but that's 40 times a day right that's just always happening over and over and over again so yeah I think um the balance between not being around people and not working with people so that they distract you but also realizing that it's a motivating force is important all right so people important having accountability buddies also important where's power what's that what's that come into yeah Power chapter two so power is one of the key factors that drives intrinsic motivation or internal motivation uh so for listeners who might not be familiar there's broadly two types of motivation there's extrinsic and intrinsic so extrinsic motivation is when you are doing something because of the external reward you're going to get as a result or to avoid some sort of punishment so um kind of doing a thing because working a job for the money is extrinsic motivation intrinsic motivation is when you're doing it for its own sake there is something about the process that's either enjoyable or that feels meaningful to you and therefore you're doing it for internal reasons for your own reasons and basically all the evidence shows that in internal or intrinsic motivation is way more powerful and durable than extrinsic motivation and in fact the more extrinsic motivation you have even if you are intrinsically motiv at to to do something extrinsic motivators often crowd out intrinsic motivators how so it's unclear but I I guess anecdotally from my life I've I've really seen this so back when my YouTube channel was a side hustle I was intrinsically motivated to make to make videos and it would be fun and I'd be you know sharing my message and making videos and was I was having a great time but weirdly as soon as sponsors starting started paying lots of money for those videos and now all of a sudden there's a deadline on the video and there is like a large amount of money attached to it you would think that oh my God I could make $20,000 by just filming this YouTube video would make it way more fun I get to do what I was doing before plus $220,000 but what it actually feels like is H this thing was once fun but now I've got a deadline and now I've got a boss and now I've got an Overlord you turned your love into a labor exactly and this is one of the problems with monetizing your hobbies in that I my my view is that if you monetize your hobbies um for pocket money that's really fun back when I was magician I used to go around universitya doing magic tricks and balls and [ __ ] I was paid £100 here and there that's fun I'm not I'm not relying on the1 100 P to live but if I had to be a professional magician where I was relying on that income to live now all of a sudden magic stops being fun and you hear musicians struggle with this all the time like you know Ed Sheran used to enjoy music and now it's become work and he cannot relax like in the evenings he has to paint because he has to find a creative Outlet to recharge his energies because music is now work so part of the problem you know I'm I'm a big fan of monetizing your passions and like fighting a way to make a living out of it but there is this sort of Fine Line in that the motivation can sometimes become extrinsic um rather than intrinsic but coming back to power power is this idea of autonomy and competence if you feel like you have autonomy control responsibility over the things that you're doing and you feel like you are actually good at the things you are doing that leads to this feeling of empowerment this feeling of power which is a huge factor of intrinsic motivation how can people make themselves feel more autonomous a lot of people have got some sort of accountability of some kind that they need to be reporting to what's the solution so there's like a spectrum of uh of autonomy um you can basically be you can basically have control over three things you can have control over the outcome you can have control over the process and you can have control over the mindset outcome process and mindset so a lot of people don't have control over the outcome like when I was a doctor I didn't have control over the outcome I had to do what I was told I couldn't just choose that I can now as an entrepreneur and stuff but like you know most people are not when a patient comes in to see you and instead of diagnosing them paint with them or something yeah like I'm not allowed to do that so I I have to do the things that I'm told also I was Junior I had to doal with the senior one all this kind of stuff but even when you don't have control over over what you're doing you have enormous control over how you're doing it and so what I realized you know the the first few months where I was working as a doctor I made the mistake of thinking the way to conserve my energy is by doing the bare minimum I made the mistake of thinking you know what I'm just going to do I'm just going to do what I'm told I'm going to grind out out these couple of years and let me just make sure I I get home with enough energy to film my YouTube videos but weirdly approaching anything with that level of half lastness really drains our energy it is not fun looking at the watch is not fun it's not a fun way to go through your workday when you're like okay I'm just going to do what I'm told right I'm just going to do it I'm just going to I'm just going to grind it out and kind of the realization for me was was weirdly on weekends on weekend shifts I felt weirdly more energized afterwards which is kind of weird because weekend shifts as a doctor are like more busy because there's fewer there's fewer staff there's more patients more emergencies [ __ ] is going on but I felt weirdly energized and I realized it's because on weekend shifts I was taking responsibility and I was taking more ownership of the things that I was doing the way I was approaching my patients was thinking [ __ ] the bug kind of ends with me because I don't want to ring up the consultant so I'm going to I'm going to chase with these blood results I'm going to call Radiology I'm going to do the things and so I was working harder but because I had I felt like I owned the process of what I was doing suddenly I had more energy and work became more fun and the shift absolutely flew by to the point that I was like swapping with colleagues to be like hey can I work a weekend because I was like it's so much more fun working on a weekend and what about mindset mindset is there's really really good blog post by Seth Goden uh that I've read years ago that I I still think think back to which is there is an enormous difference between I have to do this and I get to do this and whenever we find ourselves thinking H I have to do X we can always do a reframe in our minds I choose to do X I get to do x i I am blessed to be able to do X and even just that like this is my single biggest practical takeaway for anyone listening to this the next time you feel like H I have to do something just change it up in your head you don't actually have to do anything everything is a choice sure there are consequences to all choices and all that crap but fundamentally you are choosing to do it and if you take that ownership and switch it around in the mind the mind is a powerful device the mind can the the way we think about something profoundly changes the way our physiology responds to it the way our body reacts um there's a there there's a cool there's a cool way that sociologists measure life satisfaction I think we were talking about this on the ifs stage um for for people unfamiliar so one way of measuring life satisfaction is by giving someone a survey and being like how satisfied are you with your life but then you know people are self not self-aware they don't really know what what's going on but the other way that sociologists do it is they have a little pager or I think it's an app these days and they ping you a few times a day and they ask you one question they ask you if you could would you choose to fast forward the experience that you're currently having to get to the end of it so for example if you're at work would you choose to fast forward to the end of your workday if you're on a flight would you choose to fast forward to the to the end of flight if you're I don't know putting your kids to bed would you choose to fast forward that so that they're already asleep and they look at What proportion of your day would you choose to fast forward and what they find is that like you know the people who would choose to fast forward a large proportion of their day uh you know that's a that is a an indicator that actually you're not that satisfied with life because you would rather not experience a big chunk of your time than experience seems like a great definition and so what I've learned to do is I I ask myself this question a lot if I ever find myself like waiting in line for something or I don't know I'm in an Uber and I'm like I just want to get to my destination or whatever the thing might be or or even doing work that I I don't quite enjoy I think what I fast for with this and if the answer is ever yes I know that there is a mindset shift I need to make because I know that someone you know if eot tol was in that position he would be able to freaking enjoy the process so why can't I and I find switching from a half to to I get to is incredible for making me feel more like I I have autonomy therefore I have power therefore I feel good so much comes back to gratitude man it's like it's so giving an answer that people already feel like they know is way less pioneering and and and like revelatory but yeah gratitude just seems to be such a solution it's it's a prophylactic against life not being the way that you want it to yeah switching the it's also a treatment yes yeah true like five minutes of gratitude journaling has the same impact as doubling your income in terms of Happiness levels wow and so honestly just being more grateful and being like yeah what a time to be alive what is that phrase from Kurt vona which is something to the something to the effect of as you go through life remind yourself on multiple occasions if this isn't nice I don't know what is nval uh if you won't if you can't be happy with a coffee you won't be happy on a yard um yeah just and I I like the fact that you know you're thinking about how can we find in the mundane how can we find ways to not only take control from a a performance perspective where I know that if I switch this mindset I will be happier but also it's actually the way that you enjoy your life like moment to moment forgetting the outcome that you're going to get on the other side of this from a productivity perspective and as a side effect you'll also be more productive but kind of and the point of the book really is that what I'm hoping people will do is that they will read it because they want to be more productive but what they will find as a result of the because most of the research in here is really from positive psychology rather than from I don't know organizational performance design and stuff because what what I found through doing all this research is yes I'm more productive when I feel good but also I am just happier and more satisfied life and I feel good and that is actually an inherent good so the goal is not actually to get more done the goal is to generally be more satisfied and fulfilled with life well ultimately the reason I think that people want to be more productive is that they presume on the other side of their increased productivity would be a life that they're going to enjoy more I'm going to have more fun I'm going to be more satisfied I'm going to be happier okay well there is a shortcut to get there which is just be happier in the moment do the things that maximize happiness now and then the productivity can either come along for the ride or not so funny man that you know you you set off to try and write this thing and begin this journey of productivity as a a solution first off to being at Uni and being a med student and then being a doctor and then being a doctor with a business and then being a doctor with multiple businesses and what you ended up doing was almost completely throwing productivity out the window and realizing that it's just one of multiple different triggers and levers that you can pull to get satisfied with life yeah and that emotions are like the Baseline of this whole thing I think earlier on in my productivity broess I really uh underappreciated the importance of emotions CU I was pretty un I still to to this day pretty un self-aware of my own emotions and like what was going on yeah me too but it was when I got punched in the face with this like working freaking 60 hours week in the NHS where people are dying and where I'm potentially responsible for some people dying and like oh if you make a mistake like you think about it all night I was like oh [ __ ] you know all the stoicism has has not prepared me for this onslaught of negative emotions yeah and the solution to that was finding a way to make to make everything feel good okay what about play play is the first chapter uh play I think is really fun so um there's a lot of Nobel Prize winners who attribute their success to the idea of play um the guys that invented graphine uh Richard feeman who invented the atomic bomb well who helped with the atomic bomb and then won a Nobel Prize you know Richard feeman at one point was feeling totally burnt out in his career he was a physics Professor he was like he got all the accolades he ticked all the boxes but he did not enjoy physics he he felt burned out by it and there's this really cool story in his in in his autobiography where he talks about how at the Cornell University cafeteria a student was chucking a plate up up in the air and finman noticed that the Cornell logo was like rotating at a slightly different rate than like the center of the plate or some [ __ ] like that and he was like wait a minute why is the logo on the out of the plate rotating differently to the inside of the plate and he was like uh I don't really care you know I'm you know I'm I'm the professor I've invented the atomic bomb this is not this is not this is not significant but then he kind of reminded himself that actually why did I used to enjoy physics I used to enjoy physics because I treated it like play I did things just for the fun of them and so he set out to model the equations of how this bloody plate would rotate and his colleagues were like dude what the hell are you doing you're supposed to be the great Professor Richard fman and you're like writing equations about a freaking wobbling plate and he would respond with I'm just doing it for the fun of it there is no there is no use in it whatsoever and actually what happened is that a he developed his love of physics back again he cured his burnout and he ended up the the wobbling of that plate ended up leading to the equations that helped him win the Nobel Prize who's Alberto Lopez Alberto Lopez is this uh climbing uh he was one of the Olympic climbers and rock climbing in the Olympics is is an interesting sport because if you watch on TV you find that they're all they all look really happy which is in sharp contrast to like the sprinters who look like really stressed they're focused on this one goal and like whereas rock climbers seem seem to be having a laugh having a joke even though they're competing in the Olympics and competing against each other they're like kind of pointing The Roots out to each other and they seem quite happy about the whole thing and rock climbing was how uh mihi chicks at mihi who discovered the concept of flow back in the 1970s um you know this idea of Flow State he noticed that you know rock climbers get into this weird Flow State where they feel like they're fully engaged but this but but they view the stakes as being as being low and that combination of full engagement with sufficiently low stakes is what creates that feeling of play and can often what create and and often what creates that feeling of flow and so this gets at the idea of like how do we experience more play in our work and in our lives one of the big answers is to just lower the stakes so for example Roger fedra when he's playing The Wimbledon final especially when he's defending his title he probably is not not feeling that playful about it because the stakes are too high it's really serious the stakes are too high whereas you know most of us are not in that kind of situation a lot of the time and most of us when it comes to our work if we can find a way to just dial down the seriousness approach it with a bit more sincerity as alen WS would say d you know lower the stakes lower the bar think of it not as this is a big thing I'm trying to do but instead think of it as I'm just having fun here that is often how people perform way better and feel more playful about their work from a tactical perspective how do you feel less serious about your work especially if you care about it if you're the sort of person that can listen to me and you waffle on for a couple of hours about productivity you probably care about the outcomes that you're getting in your life which means that you might apply due or undue pressure to the outcomes that you're going to get yeah how can someone tactically lower the stakes okay good question I have uh three strategies number one is to there's a great phrase from Alan wats he he he calls his he calls it sincere not serious um no one wants to play a board game with someone who's too serious about it it's just not fun like they take you know stickler for the rules it kind of drains everyone's energy but you also don't want to play a board game with someone who's completely uncaring because it's like well what's the fun in that like they're not even trying you want to play with someone who plays sincerely and so I think that phrase itself sincere not serious if we find ourselves feeling a bit stressed feeling like the the the stakes are too high often that's where procrastination and distraction kicks in where we're like there's this emotional hurdle of like this this thing is writing a book is like a hard thing it's a book and a book is a big deal that's where we find ourselves getting distracted and looking for the dope mean hit on Tik Tok or whatever the thing might be thinking let me just genuinely approach this with sincerity rather than seriousness is tactic number one that I find super helpful tactic number two is by you know at the start of each day I ask myself one simple question and that question is what is today's adventure going to be now this speaks to the idea you know it's a fairly common principle in Psych in Psychology and performance research that making a plan at the start of the day is a very useful thing to do some people do it the night before most people do it in the morning if you can figure out what is your most important task you know Brant Tracy calls it eat that frog what's the one thing that if you got that thing done today today would be a win the adventure question is basically that but framed in the in the language of Adventure because if you think of anything as an adventure you can ask yourself the question what would this look like if it were fun this is so similar to Tim F's question of what would it look like if it were easy but I reframe it I have a posted note on my computer monitor what would this look like if it were fun because if you frame something as an adventure and just genuinely ask yourself how can I make this fun you'll the mind will inevitably come up with loads of different ways to make this fun um so that's another tangible thing what would this look like look like if it were fun for me personally what I found is that everything becomes more fun when I have background music preferably from like Lord of the Rings concerning Hobbits the Shire theme tune that kind of the fact that you have a girlf friend continues to amaze me mate turning hobit Lord of the Rings when I was so when when uh when when I had all these realizations right feel field good productivity I realized part of why working in working in a doctor's office is a bit Grim is because the environment is just it's not nice it's like the NHS doesn't have much money I got this 20 quid Bluetooth speaker from Amazon I attached it to the light on the ceiling and I would just play movie soundtracks while I was writing my discharge letters and initially the Consultants would come and be like what the hell's going on here but then they would be like oh I get it yeah it's Harry Potter it's Lord of the Ring parts of the Caribbean they would recognize some of the songs you know a bit of I don't know hand Zimmer every every now and then and even just having music in the background makes it feel more playful just makes it more fun and so what I'm trying to do here is encourage people we can all like yes not everything has to be fun all the time that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is we can always find ways to make everything we're doing just a little bit more fun approach it with a little bit more play and yes that means we'll we'll be more productive but that's also not the point the point is we'll just feel better about life yeah it's I'd love to get you to sit down with hosi uh at some point maybe over the next year I'll I'll manage to get a round table between us for dinner or something because Alex seems to deprioritize he finds fun in in the grind um but it's his uh like executive function and grind muscle is so hypertrophy that he's just prepared to continue to smash that lever um but I would be interested to know what would happen if you took a an inventory of his or anot of his particular productivity work setup and said hey why don't we try like giving you a window or why don't we try like this or that or the other I'd be very interested to know just how robust whether there's people for whom this doesn't uh apply quite so much something tells me that we need to be careful taking uh Global advice from people that are absolute outliers within their performance it seems like this is a much more like Normy middle of the bell curve solu you know what I mean like you know LS and LS of the people that we know that are outliers would still benefit from this uh I think this this is where you know I've I've I've listened to your interview with David Goggins I've read both listen to both his books they're great I love I love the guy but David goggin's thing I think is like he he's an outlier there where everything is about discipline you know he was telling that story about how Goggins woke up at 3:00 in the morning and just genuinely going for a run because that's the sort of guy he is and what I worry about is that normal people who are not David Goggins will then think oh [ __ ] I'm just not disciplined enough I just need to get more discipline I just need to grind harder I just need to wake up earlier and all that all that stuff and for a very small subset of people that works but for most people you know human psychology is not geared towards continuing to push yourself and you know wake up at 3:00 in the morning just so you can go for a run and continue to cause pain to your like gogin freaking runs Iron Man's with broken legs human psychology is not geared for that and it is literally trying to it's it's like trying to play Life on hard mode and I think I love the message that David gogin shares but it's also not realistic for for a lot of people like a lot of us broadly if you ask people why they do what they do they they do the things that feel good no one struggles with discipline or motivation to watch Netflix or to play video games or to hang out with friends because it just freaking feels good you probably don't struggle with discipline and motivation to do podcasts because it feels good to you correct I most of the time don't struggle with discipline or motivation to make YouTube videos or to write because it feels good to me I actually do struggle with podcasts especially over zoom and I find that drains my energy and which is why I'm less motivated by that I struggle with the gym because I've yet to find a way to make it feel good consistently especially while traveling we do the things that feel good and so if we care about work we can find ways of making whatever matters to us feel good well you can more robust wave yeah you could imagine feeling good as a a force multiplier to your discipline like that you have this tank of it and you can get either one mile per gallon or 100 miles per gallon based on are you driving uphill I.E not enjoying it or are you driving downhill I.E this is enjoyable to me absolutely I think this is where discipline comes so this is how I Square this idea of discipline because I I do value discipline I think with any task I it's it's exactly this hill analogy that that you're talking about that I think of it if you if you enjoy the process it feels like going downhill if you don't enjoy the process it feels like going uphill going uphill obviously requires you to exert will exert Willow and discipline over the long term but the the key thing is before anything there's a bit of a hump even before something that feels good there's a bit of a hump like for you going to the gym feels good but still a bit of a hump to actually just get there because maybe you're feeling a bit tired waking up on the morning yep exactly it's always cold I got to wait for the Uber and as long as we are employing discipline to just get over the hump that is a great use of discipline because that is very sustainable like just using discipline in small doses to get started with a thing that you want to do but to use discipline and willpower to keep going with a thing that you want to do oh that's so draining that's so taxing yeah we definitely need to be careful and dude I you know I've contributed to this I've sat down and nodded at David Goggins and hosi and Joo as they've said things that are similar to this but we do need to be careful about the heroic narrative that discipline in face of misery and suffering gives right because it is a heroic narrative and there will be days when life comes and smashes you in the face and when you need to have built up that discipline muscle sufficiently but finding the balance between that not being so at Fe that it can't be deployed but you're not using it unnecessarily when there is a simpler more enjoyable route toward achieving the outcome that you want is is very very difficult and it can't be synthesized into do hard things even when or especially when you don't feel like it right like it's I can't Hamer this into a meme yeah um but it is it's holding two relatively conflicting views in your mind at the same time discipline is important and I should continue to use it so it doesn't evaporate and I should use discipline as little as possible in my day-to-day Life by trying to design the things that I do to be as enjoyable as possible so that discipline is not something I rely on it just happens easily and naturally to me absolutely I think there's you know I'd be I'd be interested to get horos take on this but one thing that he said that really struck with me is when I was 20 I wanted to be a millionaire when I was a millionaire I wanted to be 20 yeah and you know I'm a millionaire now and I actually don't want to be 20 because I feel like I enjoyed the process C of getting there and I would love to live my life not wanting to go back because actually I have just enjoyed every step of the journey probably means I'm not going to be as successful as hos is financially but I depends on what the criteria of success is BR depends absolutely depends on what the criteria of success is I'm sure Alex would have a more neon take on this but obviously I I get that you know it's a nice quote it's a nice sound bite I I do Vibe with the sentiment behind it but I think enjoying the journey while also striving towards whatever goals you have is literally the point yeah I what are you optimizing for is just such a great question uh my newsletter a couple of weeks ago I had Morgan howel on the show and the guy is just [ __ ] phenomenal right this quote that I've been playing with for a long time from spolski hubman shared it dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness it is about the happiness of pursuit oh nice so much of life and enjoyment is about the anticipation of things coming in fact the anticipation is often actually more enjoyable than the experience itself Tim Ferris used to book weekl long holidays years and years in advance so that he could get as much enjoyment out of the anticipation as he could this put a new perspective on it's not the journey it's the destination there actually is no destination each arrival at the destination simply marks the beginning of another journey toward the next destination Morgan hous told me on the show the other week he planned this big holiday with his family for a long time they've got kids they finally did it after booking time off from collaborative fund and from his writing and wife and children and travel and all the rest of it he arrives at this hotel and on the first night that he arrives there steps out onto the balcony if this place he's been planning for ages the first thought in his mind was it' be so good if we came back here next year like this place would be so good to come back to next year so literally during the experience of the destination he was artificially creating another Journey already I I had a really I had I had a really Stark realization of this in a really trivial way recently um one of the okay uh there's a few a few different re so what one the questions I think about a lot is what would I do if money were no object and if money were No Object how would I change how I spend my time and one of the things that I often land on is I'd actually probably play more video games you know I really enjoyed video games when I was a kid I'd love to you know have a bit more time to to play video games and I was mentioning this to to my team who who were traveling with me and they were like yeah but you don't play video games that much like what's what's what's going on there but I spend a lot of time anticipating the joy of playing video games and I I get so much joy out of like you know what I I want to buy the highest end gaming laptop imaginable it is it the razor blade 18inch or the Alienware 18inch I can afford that now cuz you know I've got I've got merch guys buy my book please yeah yeah yeah um but in the past I was salivating over like a £5,000 gaming PC and the anticipation of six months of doing the research and watching the videos was so joyful and then I got it I was like I mean I'm never going to turn this thing on because I actually have more more fun in my work so there's something profound like even now know that if I buy this laptop I actually won't use the enjoy going to stop the enjoyment goes away I'm like okay well I I guess I go to play video games now but the anticipation of like I could buy it whenever I want is is a thing I'm holding on to because it's just free happiness points for literally zero cost yeah well that Tim Ferris hack of bucking holidays years and years in advance so good you know there was a a study done on a I think it was British clubbers so the same way that they pinged people's phones in your earlier example asking what's your level would you fast forward this one was how happy are you you'd think throughout the entirety of the day leading up to the night out then the night out you know it might be 12 midnight before they're so drunk they can't remember anything but just as the DJ starts to really ramp the setup and the lights are going and the bottle service is in or whatever it might be but it wasn't the time that they had the most fun throughout the entirety of their day and night of a night out was when they were getting ready together in the house it was in anticipation of the event it was not the event itself and just continuing to remind myself dopamine is not about the happiness it's not about the pursuit of happiness it's about the happiness of pursuit right like you have to find enjoyment in the journey because there is no destination every single time that you reach a destination it's just the way marker of the next Journey that you're going to do and even in the sort of people often say that like oh you know you shifted the goal poost when you got there but you actually become a totally different person on route to the destination like if someone is trying to I don't know make money on the side and they're like oh my God like if if if only I could make $2,000 a month of of of passive income that would completely change my life it's like yeah it would but by the time you get to ,500 a month $1,500 a month of passive income you have become a fundamentally different person you have a new set of skills you have a new set of hopes beliefs expectations you have way more self-confidence and now suddenly 2K doesn't seem like much you're like hm 10K I know people have 10K month passive income and by the time you get you're like well you know that's not 100K yeah and the gold post keeps on shifting and actually I don't think there is anything wrong with that we just need to recognize it for what it is and recognize that as you say fundamentally the journey is the destination yeah so all right what about seek Clarity why is Clarity important Clarity so the first third of the book is about how do we find ways to energize us and make things feel more enjoyable so play power in people uh the second third is about how do we beat procrastination and there are basically Three core blockers that cause us to procrastinate from stuff uncertainty fear and inertia and so seeking Clarity is really about that first step if if someone has the goal of I want to get fit what the hell does that mean like they're going to procrastinate on that for their entire life because they have no idea what get fit actually means like who who knows how do you break that down students if they have the goal of light onon us revised for my chemistry exam it's like okay but what does that mean are you reading a textbook are you doing some practice papers like there's a lot of mental cognitive friction involved in trying to figure out what the hell you're actually trying to do and the point around Clarity is that if you're ever struggling with procrastination just ask yourself am I actually clear on what I need to do here am I clear on why I'm doing it and am I clear on when I'm going to do it what why and when and if we can just get clear on those three things that will cure procrastination for the vast majority of people what's a goal why is that a goal and okay cool what's the next action and when and you know when am I going to do it which is why I'm so bullish on just putting a thing in the calendar cuz once once it's in the calendar at least then you have sorted the clarity point and now if you're still procrastinating from it now there's probably some emotional issues that we have to deal with but like at least let's just get in the calendar and Define what the task actually is so that's the first step from a tactical perspective for you absolutely yeah it's it's got to be in the calendar I think one of the best time management strategies I've ever found is something called the ideal week where you know a lot of people say that they don't have time they have never ending to-do list um the ideal week is basically where you create a blank Google Calendar you call it your ideal week and you just block out what does your ideal week look like when would you like to wake up when would you like to sleep when are your gym times when when are your date nights when are you at work and you realize by by doing this that a you have more time than you realize and also you have less time than you realize because if you wanted to do those 18 projects on your to-do list and someone listening to this is probably uh you know prodct somewhat productivity minded wants to get a lot of things done at a very high level you realize there are simply not enough hours in the day and that's okay that means you can now eliminate the things that really don't matter in focus of the things that really do um and so so the ideal week is a way of figuring out do I actually have a manageable number of things on my plate and once you do putting them in your actual calendar is a way of making sure you've made the time for the thing have you thought about how people can learn to say no more effectively yeah we've got some stuff in the book around this this is something I I I really struggle with I love Derek Civ thing of hell yeah or no if it's not a hell yeah then it's then it's a no I love the idea of never saying yes uh over the phone or in person and always being like that's Daniel carman's thing right it is yeah he never says yes over the phone let me check my calendar and get back to you I love to offload things to be like you know what let me just check with my team because they manage my calendar because then I'm not the bad guy in saying no to the thing um do you think you're a people pleaser absolutely yeah me too it's so bad dude yeah it's so bad I've only just realized this recently I I started doing therapy for the first time properly in person in Austin the lady that I've started working with worked with a friend who was way way way more of a bastard than I am and I figured if she can deal with his [ __ ] she can definitely deal with my [ __ ] so he was the canary and the co mine and uh yeah I just I don't know I think I think I probably if I'd done enough self assessment I would have realized that I was a people pleaser but um it I think it felt a bit emasculating to realize it felt like I don't know cued or agreeable or feminine or something that I just didn't like the idea of and there's still a lot with me of a vestigal like um compensatory mechanisms from feeling weak in school uh from being fragile and bullied and stuff in school so I I don't want to show that like new the vulnerabilities that I already have I'm happy to accept but new ones well no no no no no no cuz that's just another piece on the pile of you might be a fragile weak piece of [ __ ] right um but this was a new one and it stared me in the face for long enough during sessions where I was like right okay I can't I can't [ __ ] I can't escape this I hate telling people bad news I hate disappointing people I somehow managed to find a way to be able to blame myself for something which was evidently somebody else's fault let's say that someone in the team messes up and gets something wrong and it was completely on them I feel bad about telling them that they did something bad because it's going to make them feel bad and I don't want them to feel bad even though it was their [ __ ] fault y i what you mean mate I have exactly the same like how how how are you dealing with this any tips um a couple other things that have helped a lot for me uh the big Productions that I've done in person are uh sufficiently high stakes that they've pushed the boundary of what I'm prepared to expect from people uh so for instance we did what's seven episodes in three days in London a couple of weeks ago I need the guys to be on the ball for that and I also need to be able to get people to do things that I can't do like if I'm hungry and I need a sandwich I need to shout yo can someone get me a sandwich like that previously would have been like who the [ __ ] am I to ask for a sandwich what is this like oh can you come and feed me grapes and fan me with a leaf but like just formative experiences where you need to make commands and demands of other people that's one another one has been um more of a realization that the standards that you hold yourself to are the minimum standard that you should hold everybody else to as well right like I know that I work hard for all that there's a current trend on the internet of uh laying all of My Success at the feet of either love island or the way that I look given that this is yeah I I did a trigonometry episode and they decided to call it uh like the truth about confidence and um it triggered some people on the internet yeah which was hilarious uh given especially given the fact that this is a podcast which is bigger on audio literally where my face doesn't exist than on YouTube where it does anyway yeah but your YouTube Banner is like you doing that that's true but that's that's not on Spotify it's just my [ __ ] head anyway um that Insight around I know that I work really really hard I know that the standards that I hold myself to are very high so saying okay I should expect other people to at least be in the same universe as me shouldn't be something that you feel guilty about it's like look if the guy that's at one component within a team whether you're the top of the tree or you know at the bottom of the tree it doesn't matter but if you're working hard you can quite happily expect other people to be like hey I did it my stuff was done on time right so setting an example I think as a people pleaser is is good if you're a people pleaser who also doesn't work hard that's going to be a tough Circle to square because you're not going to be able to set an example and to say hey I did it my stuff was done on time right um helping other people understand why you're doing it so as a good example there was a couple of a couple of times where Dean had bucked to go away at like bad times of the year uh not through any fault of his own and then we started to apply a lot more work to him and I was like hey dude um me and Chase got us stuff done you didn't get your stuff done right like this is this is just fact and he was like man I I I do not want to be the bottleneck I'll fix it I was like ah that was a nice way to get past it so using yourself not in a like mate I've already got my you know not sort of making people feel belittled but starting 10 toes forward in like I am doing my things everybody else needs to follow along behind that that seems to be a good a good route too but it's hard man the people pleasing thing for me is like I find it hard to uh upset people on the podcast I find it hard to tell people in my personal life things that they don't want to hear all of the you you it looks like it's resonating with your soul 100% yeah this is literally a I'm I'm I'm in the midst of some like family drama that's literally a result of me wanting to you know if someone is upset with me then my default is like [ __ ] let me try and do whatever I can to fix it and not hey you're in the wrong yeah I'm not supposed to [ __ ] apologize for this yeah yeah it's it's rough man I've got um do Robert Glover No More Mr nicey I love that book I've read it I read it every few years and I would keep highlighting the [ __ ] out of it and doing the exercise I've got him coming on in January um so yeah I'm looking forward to speaking to him maybe he'll be the answer but I as with most things man you know you become aware of something about yourself that you're maybe not that happy with and then you obsess about it and you think oh my God this is like one of the defining characteristics of my pathology as a human and then you realize oh no this is just one ingredient in the entire meal of the things that are wrong with me um but yeah I it's also okay because people love you for who you are of all of the different maladies and stuff that you could have being a people pleaser isn't the worst but I do think that it'll be interesting for me need to check in in a couple of years time and be like hey how's the people pleasing thing going um you definitely get you know you look at older people and they're a bit more grumpy sometimes uh and they seem to be less people pleasy so maybe it's just going to come along for the ride as a byproduct of getting older I don't know uh one point on the on the therapy thing so um our mutual friend Bill Perkins when we were hung up with him in y in Austin when I when we tried to teach you to wake s yeah that that was a real fail uh I don't know I think if I do it the second time around the muscle memory will Ki will in but I I was I was asking him you know cuz obviously I love die with zero made a video about it etc etc I loved your interview with him by the way that actually that interview with him was a direct result of why I'm currently like digital n adding around the world W because before that interview I was like oh I'll just rent a home base in London and be based in London after that interview I was like I need to freaking go for it like kids and blah blah blah yeah I me the only reason that he came on the podcast is because of your video about him oh no way I learned about the book from your YouTube channel brought bill on the show Bill smashed it bill then changed your digital Nomad thing and as a part of your digital Nomad thing you came to Austin where I introduced you to Bill Perkins and then when we were in Austin and on his freaking boat I asked him what are the biggest Roi purchases of his life and he said hands down couples's therapy relationship coach and so I've now started couple like literally the following week I started working with a couple therapists I I SL relationships coach it has been absolutely phenomenally gamechanging I cannot recommend it highly enough to literally anyone if you're in a relationship then doing relationship coaching with someone who's a professional who has experienced the full gamut of all of the [ __ ] the couples talk about and struggle with is just incredibly helpful what's it done for you why is it so useful it's really useful because it's given me tools to have conversations that I just didn't really have before I think there are some people who are really there are some couples who are just amazing at communication by default very few like most couples do not say oh my God we communicate so much like we're just so good at communication literally every couple says like yeah man relationships are hard communication's the main thing and so one of those things is like you know it's going to sound potentially simple but um listening out for the listening out for the needs behind what the other person is feeling like if the other person is upset with anything or sad or angry or frustrated or hurt any of these emotions there is always a core need that they have that is not being met and instead of kind of talking at the level of is the fridge door left open or closed or is are we going here or there it's like what's the core need does she have oh she has a need for feeling empowered when it comes to decision- making ah okay so now that we know what the need is and then usually if if you describe a need to someone they're like yeah that's it like I have a need for fairness and contribution in the relationship and when we kind of landed on that on those two needs I was that really yeah that's literally it like those two needs explain a lot of my behaviors in relationships and outside of relationships without the other person's perspective presumably you would just get caught up at what the problems are at the top not what the subtext is that sits below exactly and this is where I think you know I I would say my IQ is reasonable but my EQ is probably lower than I would like it to be so the thing I thing I'm working on and so when my girlfriend and I would have issues around like I don't know planning a trip I would get caught up in the level of like okay but you know I've got my book coming out and you know it's important for me that we go to La to do this podcast or you know all this sort of stuff but when I realize that she has a need to feel empowered in decision- making I'm like oh I can just get her involved in the decision making about this where do you want to go I'll find a podcast that's in that c yeah but also like hey let's approach this as a team as a conversation rather than me doing all the working in my head and coming so this is another big realization if someone were to say to me if my partner were to say to me Ali you know for the next 3 months I've got everything planned don't you worry about it like just come along for the ride and you know you know life's going to be great we're going to go southeast Asia I would think thank the Lord that's incredible I love that someone else is making the making the decisions here I can focus on my work which is the thing I care about life is good whereas for my girlfriend that same Arrangement makes her feel disempowered and is therefore terrible and so a lot of the coup therapy and relationship coaching is recognizing that the patterns of thought that we think are so natural to us are absolutely not necessarily natural for the other person and just understanding that it's like oh okay you have a need for connection and that is solved by having a a cuddle in the morning for a minute great that's easy enough or like you know hugging when we greet each other it's not a thing that I would that in the calendar not yet cuddle cuddle cuddle in the morning one minute it's in the habit tracker right okay um so it's just been super super helpful in that and on on that front just as as a way of us being better at communicating would recommend what about sustaining so you know what we've spoken about finding a way to make things more enjoyable overcoming procrastination but but then doing this along a long period of time you know the next 10 20 30 40 Years of your working life your creative life is what really matters I think I I heard you say on a podcast recently um the reason that you'd been successful was a combination of a tiny little bit of talent mostly look and good timing with consistency pretty much yeah yeah this is the thing so anyone can be who who super productive or super disciplined for a short amount of time January yeah January like the first two weeks of January very few of us can actually sustain that unless we really put effort into what does consistency and sustainable sustainability look like um and one of my favorite Morgan how Morgan hle quotes is I'm not going to do anything unless I can do it forever and that's a really good way of thinking about it um and so I kind of boil it down to three things three tools that help combat burnout and that lead to more sustainability and productivity let conserve recharge and align and of these three strategies tackles a different aspect of burnout so broadly three three three different types of burnout there is uh overexertion burnout you're just trying to do too much [ __ ] depletion burnout where your energy levels are Solo and you're not giving yourself the chance to replenish your energy levels and then misalignment burnout which is sometimes the hardest one to deal with which is where everything seems to be going well but actually what the actions you are taking in the here and now are not aligned with the future that you actually intrinsically want for yourself maybe maybe it's something other people are expecting of you or whatever the thing might be and so those three things really stop stuff from being sustainable conserve how do we do that conserve is basically about recognizing that a we need to limit the amount of things that we're doing because one of one of the issues with to-do lists is that uh they are infinite and you can always keep adding stuff to a to-do list and so a lot of people who want to be high performers and productivity Bros and stuff will just keep adding things to their to their to-do list and think you know what i' I've got to juggle all these balls in the air but one of the things I love about Oliver burkman's Philosophy from 4,000 weeks is there is simply too much [ __ ] to do and you will never have enough time for any of it for for all of it therefore you have to make some sacrifices um the way I I personally do this is you know this ideal week method if it doesn't fit in the ideal week I don't have time for it um but also something that I call the energy Investment Portfolio which is basically I have a Long bucket list in a sort of can band board but you can do it however you want I have a Long bucket list of things I would like to do and then I have a very short list of the three to five things I'm actually putting I'm actually investing energy into right now and so back in the day I made the mistake in lockdown of like yeah I've got so much time I'm going to have guitar lessons and singing lessons and piano lessons and art lessons because I want to learn all this stuff let me try and learn some Japanese on the side just doing too much stuff um making focused progress in a few in a few small D in a few small some small number of things is way more effective than trying to you know make a thousand uh one mod of progress in a thousand different directions so a big part of conserve is actually just this this thing of learning to say no and getting things off our plate um I really like a strategy uh that's called the uh the six week trap which is if you imagine yourself someone's asking you to do a thing it's more than six weeks out you look at your calendar more than six weeks out it's pretty chill right the calendar is looking pretty blank oh glorious yeah I'm around I can totally do that thing and obviously the time rolls around the Calendar's gotten full up again you're completely overwhelmed and you're like [ __ ] [ __ ] I shouldn't have said yes to that thing if you wouldn't do it tomorrow don't say yes for in 6 months time exactly um and so conserve is really a about kind of limiting the number of things that we're doing and B also kind of on a micro level actually just focusing on one thing at a time this is again classic stuff that everyone knows but you know the idea of um kind of switching costs and attention residues switching between multiple tasks means you're just less efficient at each of them and you're draining you're you're wasting a lot of by not being by not doing things one at a time um and so the the basic stuff that people know but like you know I found myself I was reading the audiobook for this a couple couple weeks ago and it was really the third the final three chapters where I was like oh my God I need to take my own advice cuz I was feeling overwhelmed I had too much stuff on my calendar I felt all of it was important but it really wasn't and as I was narrating the audiobook for those chapters I was I was like okay action point there action point there let me actually do this it's strange I mean even just that Insight that the guy who wrote the book doesn't always necessarily take the advice that he wrote down I think is is good for people to know it's important for people to know because one of the problems that some people that listen to this podcast tell me about is I hear all of these great strategies and I get overwhelmed with how many of the different things there are that I could do that I could apply to my own life and it seems like everybody else has got their [ __ ] together it's like look let me promise you I've been around some of the most famous successful High status people on the planet and it's idiots all the way up y right it's people who do not know what they're doing they haven't gotten everyone is trying their best and failing that's the one I was listening to uh Mark Manson's interview with Morgan hell yesterday on a run because part of my thing is like I I want to do 30 minutes of exercise each day and one of the things that Mark said was you know once he became rich and had all these problems around like status and money and things like that you know boohoo he read his book and he realized oh [ __ ] all of the principles in the subtle I'm not giving a [ __ ] apply to this exact situation that I'm currently in I just didn't realize it and so took his own advice so the book that made him famous and successful contained in it the answers to the problems of his Fame and success exactly and he didn't realize that until like a couple of years after suffering through the suffering suffering through the problems of the application of stuff the application of these ideas of everything that we go through this is why I love uh Tim Ferris idea the good [ __ ] sticks it's like the most robust way I think to get over Guild of your external brain Evernote not being perfectly optimized or you know your [ __ ] ebbing house forgetting curve anky space repetition thing not reminding you of all of the quotes that you want to like look if there's something from one podcast a week or one book per month that you can't stop thinking about that's the thing right that is the thing it's self- selected for it like mimetic Evolution inside of your own mind that's the thing that you need to work on what can you not stop telling people about screen recording it sending it in group chats it's written on a post it not like that's the thing the good [ __ ] will stick and everything else can fall away again this is like um it's like Feelgood productivity it's like feel resonance uh like uh progression yeah right what is the thing that you can't stop thinking about that's the thing that you can focus on because it's the easiest thing for you to not not stop thinking about yeah I think this point around like you know there's in in this book initially there was twice as long and there were twice as many strategies and our editor was like bro we need to cut them down and even now there are nine chapters you know 54 actionable experiments that people can apply in their life but you know the whole thing that I'm trying to get across in this book is that the goal is not to apply all 54 at once the goal is to apply them one at a time and see see what Vibes see what problem you are having in your life right now I mean you know there's no such thing as a problem but like what situation you're trying to deal with what is a strategy that might help try it out for yourself does it work does it not cool either way it's an experiment you've gained data and you can see how to make it work work for you for some people you know they realize the way to be consistent at the gym is to do it first thing in the morning for some people they do realize it's in the afternoon for some people it's an accountability bodyy for some people it's doing CrossFit for some people it's tracking their workouts using an app it's different things for different people but the point is as long as you are finding the things that work for you and not trying to overload your brain by doing all of them at once that is kind of this path of continuous and never never ending Improvement recharge recharge um there's a fun experiment that I I I like to ask people when they say that they're struggling or like burned out or anything like that which is what are the things you find yourself doing when you are drained of energy and then separately what are the things that actually recharge your energy your energy so for example when I find myself drained of energy I will default to scrolling on Twitter or Instagram or whatever randomly opening YouTube for no reason randomly refreshing my YouTube analy it's like okay but what are the things that actually recharge my energy do any of those things have I ever left a scrolling session from Tik Tok feeling whoa wow feel so refreshed absolutely not I don't think any I don't know anyone who's left a scrolling session on Tik Tok feeling feeling really refreshed again I'm not saying Tik Tok is bad but like you know broadly I'm I'm in favor of people doing the things in doing things intentionally if for you scrolling Instagram and watching cooking videos or whatever the thing is in fact recharges your energy then great you are in the very small minority of people for most of us it does not and so part of recharging is to recognize that hey I care about my energy levels my energy levels affect my entire life because when we are feeling high energy we feel happier more fulfilled more productive sure so let me actually just do the things and incorporate things into my life that genuinely recharge my energy unfortunately this is the basic [ __ ] sleeping well doing some exercise having a app spending some time in nature creative hobbies are very recharging um you know this is why painting is a great hobby that a lot of people land on as being a thing knitting crocheting any anything like that that like gives us that feeling that we are making progress that we have autonomy low stakes low stakes yeah you're not trying to monetize it too much like all of that stuff it's important to have creative Hobbies generally recharges your energy way more than watching Netflix or scrolling Tik Tok so there's a a vicious cycle here I came up with this idea of productivity Purgatory I think I told you about this before but productivity Purgatory is when the things that you do to enjoy life and recharge are only done in order to facilitate your productivity when you stop doing them right so you don't go for a walk in nature because you want to enjoy your time in nature you do it because you once listen to an Andrew hubman podcast that said 15 minutes of sunlight in the improves your dopaminergic response which means that you can be 5% more productive that day right productivity Purgatory describes an environment in which nothing that you do is not for productivity and it's dangerous right and this is something it's like recharge is both a productivity strategy but also a life piece of advice right you need to do things that are not just the thing that involves work even if you absolutely love work you can't keep doing it your work will benefit from this but it can't be in service of the work or else you end up in productivity Purgatory uh this is the thing like you been rereading the power of now and it's just it's just some such a good advice you know do the thing for the sake of the thing itself the way that I'm trying to apply this is in the shower each morning because in the shower is like a clear place where if you know like I look forward to Mondays I love hanging out with my team and like doing the work stuff and I sometimes find myself thinking oh I just want to get to the end of the shower so that I can like get get involved with the team I'm like no what the [ __ ] am I doing like I'm having a hot shower the present moment is literally all there is and I just need to remind myself okay I'm having a shower to have a shower not so that I can then do my hair and stuff and film that next video I'm going for a walk to Simply go for a walk not so that I can actually get my steps in while also consuming the audiobook at three times speed yeah and that is a again it it comes back to this idea of holding holding seemingly conflicting ideas in mind at the same time one idea which is that you know the happiness of pursuit it's like pursuing stuff feels very dope and energic but also enjoying the present moment and focusing on it is a very contented place to be yeah so there's George Mack has this idea of dopamine George and serotonin George oh yeah and he says I want to spend as much time in serotonin George as I can dopamine George looks after himself like dopamine George is a cocaine addict serotonin George is a quiet guitar player and spending more time in saraton now there's a third one that I want to start talking about with him soon uh which is ctis all George uh and ctis all George is somewhere between like he's even further down the line than dopamine George is it's frantic it's like kind of like tense and and uncomfortable but yeah man you know a lot of the people oxytocin George oxto cuddling true I guess that's on the other side of seroni George but yeah man you know everyone spends way too much time in dopamine whoever they are you know it's using the power of progression and targets and achievement and money and extrinsic motivation and all of that sort of stuff and even intrinsic motivation of oh wow I got better at that thing like that's fantastic but how many hours this year did you spend lying underneath a tree like that's a good metric for uh serotonin Ali or serotonin Chris or serotonin George yeah I think this is why why also also why I love the you know honestly the main thing that I I've taken away from writing this book is just the title feel good productivity because there it's seemingly contradictory because productivity is always about Pursuit and feeling good is about enjoying the moment and both of those things are okay and we just you know if we're doing both we are really really winning working towards of of fulfilling life enjoying the dopamine and also enjoying the cotoni along the way we spoke about this on stage in front of maybe a thousand people in Brighton a couple of months ago and you kind of uh reveal the end of the book which is what a lot of people might have thought would have been at the start of it which is to do with what are you actually working on like what are the goals that you're choosing to do why put that at the end of of the book yeah so initially when I did the first draft of the book the first chapter was about figuring out your direction in life cuz my my whole idea was like look productivity fine but there's no point in driving 100 miles in a particular direction if you find out it was the wrong direction to drive in and so a big part of productivity is really asking yourself the question of what are the things I'm working on and why am I working on them but it was a bit heavy for chapter one and I didn't want the conclusion to be hey I I don't enjoy my job therefore Al telling me the only thing I can do is quit my job and follow my passion like that's that's not the that's not the vibe It's the Final Chapter because and it's called align because it's about aligning your actions in the here and now with where you actually want to go and it's a final chapter because even if you're not there yet you know most people listening to this are probably probably don't have the level of autonomy and freedom that you and I do having grinded at this [ __ ] while enjoying the process for a very long time you prob if you have a day job and you don't enjoy the day job the solution is not the Sol the the way to get to feel good productivity is not too simp quit the quit the day job is to try all the other things first find a way to approach it with play and power get a find a way to get people involved make sure you're not procrastinating make sure you're doing the right things to recharge your energy once you have done all of those things if you are still feeling that you know my the things I'm doing don't feel aligned I still I'm getting this misalignment burnout at that point it's now time for us to start thinking about the big questions so one strategy I really enjoy that I think is super helpful for everyone to do is to just write their own obit I did this a couple months ago it was pretty eye opening and and is this idea that Steven cvy talks about as well begin with the end in mind there is something about imagining yourself on your deathbed surrounded by loved ones and imagining what would they say at my funeral what are they saying around me what would my obituary read that really helps get rid of the [ __ ] of like what doesn't matter and helps us focus on what really does which is often relationships rather than work so that's one useful strategy um he always answered his emails on time and he was really great at keeping the notion template up to date no and he drove 7% returns for our hedge fund every year it's like no one no one gives a [ __ ] it's like you know he was humble he enjoyed spending time with people around him he energized the people around him he was always there for us he was supportive he was kind he was warm Darren Brown and his book happy which is about stoicism has a really good idea that I I often come back to which is we think people want impressive but actually what they want is just warm and warmth is way more important than impressiveness and in like networking events when when meeting people it's like people will often try and present some sort of I'm impressive because XYZ but actually a lot of people just want want warmth um and so beginning with the end in mind thinking what would I want people to say on my deathbed what would I want written on my gravestone can be a really helpful way of thinking is the way that I'm currently living aligned with what I would like that to be one of the things that I've always struggled with and I felt you know I came up through through the trenches of productivity you know seven or eight years ago because I was adamant that the solution there's more there because I was adamant that the solution was uh if only I had a perfectly designed notion template all of my problems would go away and one of the tools that's often in there is begin with the end in mind you know uh start with a uh 25 year long outcome broken down into fiveyear like marathons broken down into onee metag gos broken down into 90-day Sprints broken down into daily actions broken down into micro disciplines right okay fantastic like I understand I understand why that sort of stuff works 25e goals 5ye goals one year goals one year goal is just about is on the very very brink of what I can do I'm so bad at long-term planning I'm so bad at knowing what I want to do over the long term and it used to I I I appreciate the fact that you say um not putting the goals thing at the beginning was a strategy done to try and help people get moving because there's easier steps that you can go along that path because I'm very much that sort of a person a lot of the uh strategy planning and goal like productivity planning systems that I came across I fell at the first hurdle because that goal setting thing for me just really really struggled to resonate what is better about the obituary solution I suppose is it's not about what are the outcomes that you want it's about what is the feeling and the sense that you want to have left behind it's not saying what's your net worth going to be at age 80 uh how many YouTube videos who will you have created what is the sort of setup of the company that you want it's much more viby yeah right exactly it's all about the vibe I think I also tried the whole like figure out a 50-year plan and break it down into five-year chunks method and I was just like come on like my life is so different now than it was even two or three years ago like there's no way in hell I could even vaguely begin to predict what what the future looks like but the way I found to square this is to recognize that the further out we go the fuzzier the destination becomes but that's okay because the point of the destination is to give us a direction it's not actually the destination itself and you can check in and continue to readjust absolutely yeah but I mean the vibe is very unlikely to change right I want people to feel understood seen warm less fearful like comfortable in my presence I want I want to leave the world in a better place than I arrived at it uh in a way that is enlightening and hopefully not too serious like okay and that's the same across my friends my family the people that I talk to on the internet all of that stuff all right none of those things really have any none of it comes to bear on the business organization that I have or the revenue or the videos or any of that sort of stuff or you know it's do I arrive on time for dinner with my friends right do I have enough respect for my friends that I'm going to make sure that I set off early and arrive on time it's like little decisions like that those are really what I think ultim timately you're going to define the kind of memories that you leave behind yeah I I also Vibe with what you said around ye uh one-year plans well one- year plan is also the the longest time Horizon that I can feasibly plan in and even then you know the way the way I think of it is in each different domain of life and there are like nine of them three in health work and relationships you split the pie however you want in in each of those different domains what am I celebrating 12 months from now so in my work life around like learning you know i' I'd love to celebrate actually becoming really really good at understanding the the longevity stuff been wanting to do it for a while it's like cool I'd like to celebrate that in my romantic life you know I'd like to celebrate getting married cool easy in my friendships I'd like to celebrate the fact that every quarter we went on like a little lad's road trip okay cool now those are my those are my goals and now I can employ all my productivity strategies of like you know putting in the ideal week making sure I've got time writing it down on my projects list to just remind myself that this this is a thing that I actually care about because otherwise we get caught up in the day-to-day of life and we forget that oh yeah I was meant I did intend to organize a trip with my friends every few months haven't done that in a while you know I've got a spare half an hour now why don't I just do some research on Airbnb just those little reminders is where I think productivity strategies are super super helpful but becoming obsessed with the systems um then kind of detracts from everything else in life well it's turning the bar stool upside down right productivity is there to facilitate the outcomes that you want to you want to achieve and those should be Downstream from the vibe and the sort of life that you want right it shouldn't be I'm going to employ productivity strategies and allow the vibe of my life to occur out of those they don't it doesn't grow out of the productivity strategies so this is going to be out December 26 that's right in the US December 28th worldwide okay uh this episode's going to drop like December 19th so people can go and pre- buy it now on Amazon Ali abdal Feelgood productivity what's this keyboard oh this keyboard This is a tech brand called light mode that we are in the process of launching it will have launched by the time this is out hell yeah um we're trying to do like productivity desk accessories stuff in your bag all that kind of stuff but not aimed at Gamers aimed at like people who like the Apple aesthetic a little bit who want things to be a little bit more light and free and playful and stuff so this is our mechanical keyboard how long have you been working on that M this is like like two-year long process to try and find the perfect click and the perfect switch and the perfect amount of lube Lube to put on the keys and the perfect weight of the metal plate and all that I think about Lube research actually that is one of the first places that I go to yeah man uh so people can check that out if they want if if you're interested in a clacky sounding mechanical keyboard that light mode.com light mode.com exactly hell yeah allly I appreciate you uh I look forward to seeing how this book gets on you you know that you're going to smash it it's like it's very much needed I think and given that we're about to go into the new year and people are going to be thinking right I need to get my S together new year new me new productivity strategy there's the book yeah hopefully it's helpful for some people H yeah and good luck with your drink as well it's super nice thank my one if you enjoyed that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe