Transcription
Many of us think that productivity is all about discipline, determination, working harder, and making sacrifices in many different areas of our lives. We stay up all night working. We spend less time with our family and friends. We're always stressed and feel burnt out.
But this is unsustainable, unfulfilling, and it's not what productivity actually looks like. So today, I'm going to summarize a book called Feelgood Productivity by Ali Abdaal, who wanted to find out what the world would look like if all the work we did felt good.
The book is packed with practical tips, and one of the simplest tips was to ask yourself, "What would this look like if it was fun?" So I asked myself, "How could I make creating this video fun?" The first thing that came to mind was, "Wouldn't it be awesome if I could summarize this book with Ali himself?" So I reached out, and he said yes.
In this video, we're summarizing Feelgood Productivity with the author. Let the fun begin!
With Ali himself. Hello, how's it going? My name is Ali. I'm a doctor turned YouTuber, entrepreneur, and author. Hence, this video.
Now, back in the day, the only productivity system I knew was discipline. It was all about working hard. It was all about being more efficient. And, in fairness, that system did get me through med school, and it also helped me build a six-figure business while I was studying. But then, after graduation, when I started working full-time as a junior doctor, everything started to sort of fall apart because there was a lot of work. I was exhausted all the time. The job started to feel kind of depressing. And the more I told myself that I just need to be more disciplined, I just need to work harder, I just need to be more efficient, the more drained and exhausted I was feeling.
And so I started to question this narrative that I'd heard a lot, which is that you just got to grind it out, and you got to use discipline, you got to get through. And through the research that I did, I stumbled upon the philosophy that I came to call Feelgood Productivity. Basically, the core idea is that there is a lot of research that shows that if you can find a way to make your work more enjoyable, i.e., to generate more positive emotions, to feel more good, you end up more productive, more creative, less stressed, and you also have more energy to give to the other important areas of your life.
And so this book, which is my first book that took me three and a half years to research and write and came out last year, this book is basically how to do that. How do you actually find enjoyment and joy and energy in your work? And really, how can you do more of the things that really matter to you, but without burning out, and in a way that's actually enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable? I hope you enjoy this book summary of Feelgood Productivity.
It turns out that feeling good doesn't just end with feeling good. It actually changes the way we think and behave. According to research, when we feel good, three things happen. One, first, feeling good boosts our mental energy. As a result, we become more productive, meaning we get more done, and this makes us feel good again. So, feeling good creates this never-ending upward positive cycle. Second, feeling good makes us feel less stressed. And third, we enrich our lives. We always think we feel good only when we succeed, but the truth is, it's the other way around. Feel good first, then success will follow.
Now, the question I'm sure you're asking is, how do I become more productive in a way that feels good? You need to understand these three key points. First, you need to energize yourself, meaning you need to know how to generate positive emotions in the first place. And there are three ways to help with this: play, power, and people. Second, you need to unblock yourself from emotional blockers that lead to procrastination. And third, you need to sustain Feelgood Productivity so you don't get burned out. So, three keys: energize, unblock, sustain. Let's look at each of these in detail.
Part One: Energize
Number One: Play. How can we approach our work and life with a sense of play? As children, this was easy. Yet, when we reach adulthood, play only feels like an incredibly distant memory. But what if I told you that a guy working in a McDonald's drive-thru found a way to make his mundane job more fun? To no one's surprise, making the same old hamburger and fries day in, day out was pretty boring for Matthew Dicks. In fact, Matthew hated it. So he decided to see if he could find joy not only in the outcome of his work, like getting paid, but also in the process of taking orders, flipping hamburgers, and giving people fries.
Instead, he started upselling sauces on different days of the week. Monday was barbecue sauce day. Tuesday was sweet and sour day. Wednesday was mayonnaise day, and so on. So on Mondays, he'd give a mini sales pitch for barbecue sauce to each order. He tried to convince customers that it was super tasty and paired perfectly with a Big Mac, or he'd tell them they were really missing out if they didn't buy it. And this made a huge difference to Matthew's job. He'd found a way to turn something incredibly tedious into a fun challenge, simply by focusing on the process instead of the outcome. And if he can do it, then it's possible for every single one of us to make our work just 10% more enjoyable. You just need to ask yourself one key question: "What would this look like if it were fun?"
Ali calls this the magic Post-it note experiment because he originally wrote this question down on a Post-it note and stuck it to his computer monitor. It just needs to be written somewhere so you can remind yourself of it every single day. These nine words are incredibly powerful, and there's always a way to apply them. If you're studying, could you put on some background music? If you've got a lot of emails and admin work to get through, could you go and get it done in a local cafe? Could you work with friends? Track your progress by ticking off tasks on a to-do list, or set a timer and try to beat the clock? There are loads of ways to make things more fun. You'll always come up with some pretty good answers to the question, and most importantly, when we are having fun and feeling good, we know that productivity takes care of itself.
Number Two: Power. This is the second energizer of Feelgood Productivity. Power means personal empowerment. It's something we feel, the energy that makes us shout from the rooftops, "I can do it!" Back when Ali was a student at university, he used to work as a walk-around magician at balls and parties, wearing a smart tuxedo and a big smile on his face, even though deep down he was terrified. But he'd flipped the confidence switch, and it turns out that this is an incredibly effective way to feel more empowered. So let's see how this works.
A study done at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign recruited 28 female students who didn't exercise very often, and they all had to cycle on a stationary bike while their heart rate and V02 max was measured. V02 max is a measurement of how much oxygen your body can absorb and use during exercise. After they'd all done it, the researchers split the students into two groups. Group A was the high confidence group, and they were told that they were a lot fitter than other women of a similar age and fitness level. Group B was the low confidence group, and they were told the opposite: they were pretty unfit compared to other women of a similar age and fitness level.
Now, the very tricky thing about this experiment was that these groups didn't actually mean anything at all. In fact, the students had been put into these two groups totally at random. So the high confidence group wasn't actually the fittest; they were just tricked into believing it. And the low confidence group wasn't actually unfit at exercise; again, they just received false feedback. So then, three days later, the students came back for another exercise session, and the results were really interesting. Those in the high confidence group enjoyed the exercise a lot more than the low confidence group, and this was especially true when the exercise was challenging. It didn't matter what their actual fitness level was. Instead, it was more to do with how they felt about their ability.
And this is what we call self-efficacy, which you can broadly think of as your self-confidence. This study, together with others, tells us that feeling good about our ability to complete a task makes us feel good when we're doing it and helps us do it better. And your self-efficacy isn't fixed; it's something you can learn and develop over time. And you can even be your own cheerleader. When you tell yourself motivating things like, "You've got this," "You're doing well," "You can push through this." These words are incredibly powerful, and this is what Ali means by flipping the confidence switch. You have to challenge yourself to act in a way as if you're confident, even if it feels far from the truth.
So when you don't feel good enough or something feels really difficult, ask yourself these two questions: "What would it look like if I were really confident at this?" and "What if I approached this task feeling confident that I could do it?" These questions help you visualize yourself as someone who's confident. They help you overcome self-doubt, and it's exactly how Ali turned himself from an amateur magician into a professional in just one night at university. Instead of feeling scared about interrupting conversations, he'd visualize himself introducing himself easily. Instead of worrying about stumbling over his words, he'd think back to all the times he'd rehearsed his performance. And instead of overthinking his magic trick, he'd take a deep breath and remind himself that he was a confident and competent magician. You'd be incredibly surprised at how much of a difference this switch can make.
Number Three: People. So, the third energizer is people. As humans, we're all social creatures, even the most introverted amongst us. Our social interactions have a huge effect on how we feel. Some people you interact with leave you feeling energized, filled with optimism, and ready to take on the world. Whereas others drain you and leave you feeling completely exhausted. These are the energy vampires. So, what's important here is to find more ways to work with energizing people around you.
When Ali was writing this very book, he often attended what he called writers' hour sessions. These are free online Zoom calls hosted by the London Writers' Salon every weekday where people spend 50 minutes writing alongside each other, and Ali found them to be incredibly useful. In fact, there are many reasons why working with energizing people is beneficial. One, when you're working in synchronicity with others, it massively boosts your productivity, focus, and energy, and you don't even need to be working on the same thing. Two, it makes the task more fun, so it sprinkles in that element of play that we talked about before. Three, thinking about the people you're working alongside as your team helps you channel a comrade mindset over a competitor mindset, so you work together instead of against each other. And four, it makes you want to help both yourself and others.
So, as he attended more of these writers' hour sessions, he started to get to know other people a bit more, and they started leaning on each other for support. And when you help other people, your brain releases this big wave of a chemical called oxytocin, which makes you feel really good, and sometimes for up to days afterwards. This "helper's high" works in reverse too. Ali explains that asking for help, when done right, makes the person that helps you also feel good. This is called the Ben Franklin effect. Why? Well, because Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, once had a rival, and this rival really didn't like Benjamin. He was saying lots of bad stuff about Benjamin to stop him winning the reelection in Pennsylvania in 1737. But despite this, Benjamin did something very surprising. He wrote a letter to his rival asking to borrow a rare book from his library, and to his surprise, the book was granted. Afterwards, he then returned the book with a thank you note, and from that point onwards, their relationship began to improve. In fact, they became great friends.
Asking for someone's help makes them think better of us because our feelings change to match the action we've taken. So, the key takeaway here is that asking for help from someone is a gift to them, not a burden, as we so often think. And here's a three-step process to put this into practice. Number one, always remember that people are more willing to help than you think. Number two, try to ask for help in person instead of virtually, if you can. And number three, ask for help using the right language. Don't use negative phrases like, "I feel bad for asking you this." Try not to make it transactional by saying, "If you help me, I'll do this for you." And instead, emphasize the positive reasons why you admire that person and their help. So you could say something like, "I saw your work on X, Y, and Z, and it really had an impact on me. I would love to hear how you did A, B, and C." So give it a try next time and see what effect it has on both you and the people around you.
Now that we've explored the three energizers of Feelgood Productivity: play, power, and people, it's important to understand how we can unblock ourselves from procrastination, because no matter how much play, power, and people we welcome into our lives, sometimes these forces just aren't enough.
Part Two: Unblock
I'm sure many of us struggle with procrastination at least from time to time. We put things off and off and off, and we think that the solution is motivation or discipline. But this isn't actually true. The psychology professor Joseph Ferrari says to tell the chronic procrastinator to "just do it" would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, "Cheer up." The solution to procrastination is the unblock method. This is where you tackle the problem head-on instead of just covering it up with a Band-Aid using motivation and discipline. And you need to understand why you're feeling bad about doing something in the first place.
So, these emotional blockers come in three forms: uncertainty, fear, and inertia. Here's how you can identify and overcome each of these blockers.
The first blocker is uncertainty. Uncertainty arises when you're unsure about what to do or how to approach a task. This confusion can lead to procrastination because your brain resists tasks that seem vague or unclear. Here are a few practical tips:
Number one: Seek clarity. Start by asking yourself, "What exactly do I need to achieve?" Break down your goals into clear, actionable steps. For example, instead of saying, "I want to start a business," you could say, "I need to research three competitors this week."
Number two: Use implementation intentions. This is a simple formula: "If situation, then action." For example, "If it's 9:00 a.m., then I will start writing for 30 minutes." This removes decision-making fatigue and creates a habit loop.
Now, let us talk about the second blocker: fear. Fear often stops us from taking action because we're worried about failure, judgment, or even success. Recognizing and addressing these fears is key to moving forward. Here are a few practical tips:
Number one: The 10/10/10 rule. When fear clouds your judgment, ask, "How will this decision affect me in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years?" For example, if you're afraid of publishing a YouTube video, consider: In 10 minutes, I'll feel nervous. In 10 months, I might gain subscribers. In 10 years, my YouTube channel could be the foundation of my business.
Number two: Label your emotions. Instead of ignoring your fears, identify them. For example, say to yourself, "I'm afraid of being criticized for my work." Simply naming your fear reduces its power because it shifts your focus from the emotion to the action you can take.
Number three: Adopt the Batman effect. This technique involves imagining what your role model or superhero, like Batman, would do in your situation. For example, ask yourself, "What would a confident person like Oprah or Elon Musk do if they faced this challenge?" This mental shift can help you act with greater courage and confidence.
Finally, the third blocker: inertia. This blocker is the most common. It takes us back to Newton's first law of motion, first published in 1687. The law states that "any object at rest stays at rest, while an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by an external imbalance balanced force." And it can be applied to not only physics but also productivity. It takes us a lot more energy to get going than it does to keep going. So, when you're doing nothing, it's much easier to keep doing nothing. Whereas when you're working, it's easier to carry on working. And this is inertia at its finest. Here are five tips to overcome inertia:
Number one: Optimize your environment. Make it easier to start tasks by eliminating obstacles. For example, if you want to work out in the morning, lay out your gym clothes the night before. If you're planning to write, keep your workspace tidy and tools ready.
Number two: Use the 5-minute rule. Commit to working on a task for just 5 minutes. Most of the time, you'll want to keep going once you've started. If not, you've still made progress.
Number three: Define the next action. Pinpoint the smallest, concrete step to get started. If you're avoiding a run, just put on your running shoes. If you're procrastinating on emails, simply open your inbox.
Number four: Track your progress. Keep a visual log of your achievements to see how far you've come. A checklist or journal works great for this.
Number five: Be kind to yourself. Celebrate small wins instead of focusing on what you didn't do. For example, "I didn't clean the house, but I did tidy my desk." Let's let go of the guilt and focus on the progress.
All right, to recap Part Two: Unblock. You need to understand as humans, we sometimes procrastinate. There are three emotional blockers that lead us to procrastination: uncertainty, fear, and inertia. Uncertainty happens because we don't know what to do or how to start. To overcome this, ask yourself, "What exactly do I need to achieve?" Fear is when we're afraid of failure and judgment. One of the strategies to overcome this is to put yourself in someone else's shoes and ask, "How would Elon Musk handle this?" And finally, inertia. It takes a lot more energy to start something than it does to keep going. The trick is to prepare it beforehand. For example, if you want to exercise, lay out your gym clothes the night before.
Part Three: Sustain
All right, now the final and biggest obstacle to productivity is burnout. If we want Feelgood Productivity to last, we need to learn how to avoid reaching burnout. There are three types of burnout:
Number one: Overexertion burnout. This happens when you're doing too much for too long without enough rest or recovery. It's often caused by overworking or neglecting basic self-care. For example, imagine a business owner who works hard Monday to Friday but can't get everything done, so he ends up working through the weekend. Because he didn't rest, he's less productive during the week, which forces him to work the next weekend to catch up. This creates a vicious cycle that keeps repeating and eventually leads to burnout.
Number two: Depletion burnout. This occurs when your energy reserves are completely drained, leaving you unable to enjoy or even start tasks, even those you typically like. It often happens when you're so focused on work that you skip the things that help you recharge, like meeting friends, going for a walk, or enjoying your hobbies. Over time, it leaves you feeling empty and unmotivated.
Number three: Misalignment burnout. This happens when what you're doing every day doesn't match what really matters to you. This can leave you feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. For example, someone might have a high-paying job, but if it clashes with their values, like wanting to be creative or helping others, this can lead to burnout.
Okay, now that we've covered three types of burnout: overexertion, depletion, and misalignment, Ali offers three strategies to avoid them. These strategies are: one, conserve; two, recharge; three, align. Let's start with the first one: conserve.
This strategy is about preserving your energy for the tasks that matter most. Here is how to apply it:
Set boundaries. Learn to say no to commitments and meetings that don't align with your goals.
Automate and delegate. Outsource or automate repetitive tasks where possible.
Batch tasks. Group similar activities together to reduce the energy spent on context switching.
Define your priorities. Follow the 80/20 rule: focus on the 20% of tasks that yield 80% of the results.
Second strategy: recharge. Recharging ensures that you're not just working efficiently, but also maintaining your energy and enthusiasm over time. Here are some tips for it:
Engage in active rest. Instead of passive activity like binge-watching TV, choose activities that stimulate your mind or body positively, such as a brisk walk, yoga, or learning a new skill.
Set a regular sleep schedule.
Create non-negotiable recharge time. Dedicate time each day for activities that bring you joy, hobbies, or spending time with loved ones.
Practice gratitude. Reflecting on things you're grateful for can help you recharge emotionally.
Schedule breaks. Use techniques like the Pomodoro Technique to work in focused intervals, like 25 minutes, followed by short breaks.
Finally, the third strategy is: align. This strategy focuses on ensuring that your daily actions resonate with your long-term goals and personal values. To find out what truly matters, one of the methods Ali recommends is called The Wheel of Life. This helps you reflect on what you value most across nine different domains of your life.
First, draw a circle and slice it into nine segments. Around the edges, write down the major areas of your life. There are three for health: body, mind, and soul. Three for work: mission, money, and growth. And there are three for relationships: family, romance, and friends. But you can make these categories entirely your own if you want.
Once you've drawn this all out, rate how aligned you feel in each of these nine different areas by asking yourself, "To what extent do I feel like my current actions are aligned with my personal values?" And then color the segment accordingly. So, if you feel totally fulfilled, color it in entirely. But if you feel completely unfulfilled, leave it blank.
When Ali first did this exercise in medical school, his poorest areas were romance, body, and mission. So this inspired him to start going on dates, working out, and even filming his first ever YouTube video, because it made him think more seriously about starting his own business.
All right, to recap Part Three. There are three types of burnout: overexertion burnout is when you push yourself too hard without enough rest. Depletion burnout is when your energy is drained, leaving you feeling unmotivated, even for things you usually enjoy. Misalignment burnout is when what you're doing doesn't align with your personal goals and values. Then Ali shares three strategies to overcome these burnouts, which are: conserve, recharge, and align.
All right, we've learned so, so much about how to put the principles of Feelgood Productivity into practice. Finally, I would also like to thank Ali and his team for their cooperation in creating this video. I'm sure you already know Ali's channel and his book review series. In case you haven't seen it, check out the playlist you see on your screen. Thanks for watching.