#719 - Ali Abdaal - How To Stop Procrastinating For Good

22:12Absolutely. So funny man, you know, you set off to try and write this thing and begin this journey of productivity as a solution first off to being a union, 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 broenus.

22:44I really Underappreciated the importance of emotions because that was pretty uns I mean I started to do this day pretty I was really unsure of what was going on. But it was when I got punched in the face with this working for 60 hours a week in the NHS where people are dying and where I'm potentially responsible for some people dying and like, if you make a mistake, like you think about it all night, I was like, oh shit, you know, all the stoicism has not prepared me for this onslaught of negative emotions. And the solution to that was finding a way to make everything feel good. Okay, what about play?

23:17Play is the first chapter. Play I think is really fun. So there's a lot of Nobel Prize winners who attribute their success to the idea of play. The guys that invented graphene, Richard Feynman, who invented the atomic bomb, who helped with the atomic bomb and then won a Nobel Prize. Richard Feynman, 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 felt burned out by it. And this is really cool story in his autobiography where he talks about how at the Cornell University cafeteria.

23:50A student was chucking a plate up in the air and fine -manoticed that the Cornell logo was like rotating at a slightly different rate than like the center of the plate or some, or 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, ah, I don't really care, you know? I'm the professor, I invented the atomic bomb, this is not significant. But then he kind of reminded himself that, actually, why did I use to enjoy physics? I used to enjoy physics because I treated it like play. I did things just for the fun of them.

24:19And so he set out to model the equations of how this bloody plate would rotate. And his colleagues, well, like, dude, what the hell are you doing? You're supposed to be the great professor Richard Feynman and you're like writing equations about a frickin' wobbling plate. And he would respond with, I'm just doing it for the fun of it. 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 wobbling of that plate ended up leading to the equations that helped him win the Nobel Prize. Who's Alberto Lopez?

24:47I'll put it low pecs is this climbing. He was one of the Olympic climbers and rock climbing in the Olympics 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 they're like, where's rock climbers 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 Mihai Chik sent Mihai who discovered the concept of flow back in the 1970s, the idea of flow state.

25:25He noticed that rock climbers get into a weird flow state where they feel like they're fully engaged 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 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 in our lives. One of the big answers is just lower the stakes. So for example, Roger Federer, when he's playing the Wimbledon final, especially when he's defending his title, he probably is not feeling that playful about it because the stakes are too high.

25:59Serious. It's really serious. The stakes are too high. Whereas 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 Alan Watts would say, lower the stakes, lower the bar, think of it not as, this is a big thing I'm trying to do. Just 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.

26:32If 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 un -due pressure to the outcomes that you're going to get. How can someone tactically lower the stakes? Okay, good question. I have three strategies. Number one is to... There's a great phrase from Alan Watts. He calls it sincere, not serious. 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, stick it for the rules, it kind of drains everyone's energy.

27:05But 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 to play sincerely. And so I think that phrase itself, since you're not serious, if we find ourselves feeling a bit stressed, feeling like the stakes are too high, often that's where procrastination and distraction kicks in where it's like, oh, there's this emotional hurdle of like, oh, this thing is writing a book is like a hard thing because it's a book and a book is a big deal. That's where we find ourselves getting distracted and looking for the dopamine hit on TikTok or whatever the thing might be.

27:34Thinking, let me just genuinely approach this with sincerity rather than seriousness, is tactic number one that I find super helpful. Attack number two is by, you know, 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 psychology and performance research that making a plan at the start of the day is a very useful thing to do. Some people do the night. Before most people do it in the morning, if you can figure out what is your most important task in a brand -tracy call to eat that frog, what's the one thing that if you got that thing done today today would be a win?

28:11The adventure question is basically that, but framed 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 Ferriss's question of what would it look like if it were easy, but I reframe it, I literally have a post -it 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? The mind will inevitably come up with loads of different ways to make this fun.

28:41So that's another tangible thing. What would this look like? I 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 girlfriend continues to amaze me. Me. Turning off its Lord of the Rings. When I had all these realizations, I felt like I felt like I had a productivity. I realized part of working in a doctor's office is a bit grim, because the environment is just, it's not nice. It's like the NHS doesn't have much money.

29:16I got this 20 -quit Bluetooth speaker from Amazon. I attached it to the light on the ceiling and I would just play movie soundtracks while that I was writing my discharge letters. And initially, the consultants would come in 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, Hans Zimmer, 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.

29:48That'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. I've approached it with a little bit more play. And yes, that means we'll be more productive, but that's also not the point. The point is, we'll just feel better about life. Yeah, I'd love to get you to sit down with Hallmosey. At some point, maybe over the next year, I'll manage to get a round table between us for dinner or something, because Alex seems to deprioritize. He finds fun in the grind, but his executive function and grind muscle is so hypertrophy that he's just prepared to continue to smash that lever.

30:24But I would be interested to know what would happen if you took an inventory of his or an MOT 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 apply quite so much. Something tells me that But we need to be careful taking global advice from people that are absolutely outliers within their performance. It seems like this is a much more like normy middle of the balker of robust like solution. You know what I mean?

30:59Like you know, lots and lots of the people that we know that are outliers would still benefit from this. Yeah. I think this is where, you know, I've listened to your interview with David Goggins. I've read both, listened to both his books. They're great. I love the guy. But David Goggins' thing, I think, is like he's an outlier there. where everything is about discipline. You know, he been was telling that story about how Goggins work up at three 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 fuck, I'm just not disciplined enough.

31:33I just need to get more discipline. I just need to grind harder. I just need to wake up earlier and 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 three o 'clock in the morning and just see if you can go for a run and continue to cause pain to us. Like Goggins freaking runs Iron Man with broken legs. Human psychology is not geared for that. And it's literally trying to play life on hard mode. And I think I love the message that David Goggins shares, but it's also not realistic for a lot of people.

32:05Like a lot of us, broadly, if you ask people why they do what they do, they do the things that feel good. No one struggles with discipline or motivation to watch Netflix or to play video games to hang out with friends because it just for it can feel 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 in which it's why I'm less motivated by that.

32:33I 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 see, yeah, you could imagine feeling good as a Force multiplier to your discipline like that you have this tank of it and you can get either one mile per gallon or a hundred miles per gallon based on Are you driving uphill? Are you not enjoying it? Or are you driving downhill? I eat this is enjoyable to me Absolutely. I think this is where discipline comes so this is how I square the side of discipline because I do value discipline.

33:08I think With any task It's exactly this hill analogy that you're talking about that I think of it. 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 power and discipline over the long term. But 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 a morning? Yep.

33:38Exactly. It's always cold. don't get away from the Uber. And as long as we are employing discipline to just go over the hump, that is a great use of discipline because that is very sustainable. Like just using discipline and small doses to get started with a thing that you want to do. But to use discipline and well power 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. Dude, you know, I've contributed to this. I've sat down and nodded at David Goggins and Homozi and Jocco as they've said things that are similar to there's, but we do need to be careful about the heroic narrative that discipline in face of misery and suffering, Gibbs, right?

34:11Because 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 atrophy 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 very, very difficult. And it can't be synthesized into do hard things, even when you, or especially when you don't feel like it, right? Like it's, I can't hamza this into a meme. Yeah. But it is. It's holding two relatively conflicting views in your mind at the same time.

34:50Discipline 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 interested to get Homozi's 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.

35:21And, you know, I'm a millionaire now and I actually don't want to be 20 because I feel like I enjoyed the process 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 mean I'm not going to be as successful as Tomozius financially. But I mean, I depend on what the criteria of success is. Depends, absolutely depends on what the criteria of success is. I'm sure Alex will have a more neon steak on this, but obviously I get that, you know, it's a nice quote, it's a nice sound bite. 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.

35:57Yeah, what are you optimizing for? It's just such a great question. My newsletter a couple of weeks ago, I had Morgan Hauser on the show and the guy's just fucking phenomenal, right? This quote that I've been playing with for a long time from Sapolsky, Heubenmann 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 week -long holidays years and years in advance so that he could get as much enjoyment out of the anticipation as he could.

36:32This put you 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 Housel 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 funding 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, that he steps out onto the balcony if this place has been planning for ages.

37:01The first thought in his mind was, it would 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 had a really stark realization of this in a really trivial way recently. One of the... Okay, there's a few different reasons. One of 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? One of the things that I often land on is I'd actually probably play more video games.

37:39I really enjoyed video games when I was kid. I'd love to have a bit more time to play video games. I was mentioning this to my team who were traveling with me. And they were like, yeah, but you don't play video games that much. Like, what's going on there? But I spend a lot of time anticipating the joy of playing video games. And I get so much joy out of like, you know what? I want to buy the highest end gaming laptop imaginable. Is it the Razer Blade 18 inch or the Alienware 18 inch? I can afford that now because I've got merch guys by my book, please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in the past, I was salivating over like a 5 ,000 pound gaming PC.

38:14And the anticipation of six months of doing the research and watching the videos was so joyful. And then I got it and was like, I mean, I'm never going to turn this thing on because I actually have more fun in my work. So there's something profound about, like, even now I know that if I buy this laptop, I actually won't use it. Or the enjoyment's going to stop. Or the enjoyment goes away and like, okay, well, I guess I got to play video games now. But the anticipation of like, I could buy it whenever I want, is a thing I'm holding onto. Because it's just free happiness points for literally zero costs.

38:41Yeah. Well, that Tim Ferris hack of booking holidays, years and years in advance. So good. You know, there was a study done on, 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 of, oh, 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, But 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 set up and the lights are going and the bottle services in or whatever it might be.

39:13But 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 goalpost when you got there.

39:49But 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 only I could make $2 ,000 a month of passive income, that would completely change my life. It's like, yeah, it would. But by the time you get a $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, believes, expectations, you have way more self -confidence. And now suddenly 2K doesn't seem like much. You're like, 10K. I know people are 10K months passive income.

40:22And by the time you get there, you're like, well, that's not 100K. And the goal post keeps 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? Charities. 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. The second third is about how do we beat procrastination. And there are basically three core blockers that cause us to procrastinate from stuff.

40:54Uncertainty, fear, and inertia. And so seeking clarity is really about that first step. If someone has the goal of, I wanna get fit, what the hell does that mean? Like they're gonna procrastinate on that for their entire life because they have no idea what get fit actually means. Like who knows how do you break that down? Students, if they have the goal of, like, I want to revise for my chemistry exam. It's like, okay, 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.

41:25and 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, you know, when I'm going to do it, which is why I'm so bullish on just putting a thing in the calendar. Because once it's in the calendar, at least then you have sorted the clarity point.

41:56And 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. Yeah. 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've never running to do list. 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?

42:26When would you like to wake up? When would you like to sleep? When are your gym times? When are your date nights? When are you at work? And you realize 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 a, you know, product somewhat productivity minded wants to get a lot of things done at very high level realize there are simply not enough hours in the day. And that's okay. Now eliminate the things that really don't matter in focus of the things that really do.

42:55And 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? We've got some stuff in the book writers. This is something I really struggle with. I love Derek's ever thing of hell yeah or no, if it's an all hell yeah, then it's an no. I love the idea of never saying yes over the phone or in person and always being like, that's Daniel Carneman's thing, right? It is, yeah, he never says yes over the phone.

43:26Let 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 and saying no to the thing. Do you think you're a people, please? Absolutely. Yeah, me too. It's so bad. Oh really? Yeah, it's so bad. I've only just realized this recently. 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 is way, way, way more of a bastard than I am. And I figured if she can deal with his shit, she can definitely deal with my shit.

43:54So he was the canary in the coal mine. And yeah, I just, I don't know. I think I probably, if I'd done enough self -assessment, I would have realized that was a people pleaser. But I think it felt a bit emasculating to realize it felt like I'd know cooked 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 vestigial like compensatory mechanisms from feeling weak in school, from being fragile and bullied and stuff in school. So 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, because that's just another piece on the pile of you might be a fragile weak piece of shit, right?

44:37But this was a new one, and it stared me in the face for long enough during sessions. Whereas I was like, okay, I can't fucking, 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 fucking fault.

45:04I mean, mate, I have exactly the same. Like, how are you dealing with this? Any tips? A couple of the things that have helped a lot for me, the big productions that I've done in person are sufficiently high stakes that they've pushed the boundary of what I'm prepared to expect from people. So for instance, we did 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 to sandwich, I need to shout, you know, can someone get me a sandwich? Like that previously would have been like, who the fuck am I to ask for a sandwich?

45:44What is this? Like, do 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 more of a realization that the standards that you hold yourself to are the minimum standards that you should hold everybody else too as well, right? Like, I know that I work hard. For all that there's a current trend on the internet of laying all of my success at the feet of either love Ireland or the way that I look, given that this is... I did a trigonometry episode and they decided to call it like the truth about confidence and it triggered some people on the internet, which was hilarious.

46:25Especially given the fact that this is a podcast which is bigger on audio, literally where my face doesn't exist than on YouTube. I read does anyway. How about you, YouTube banner is like you doing that. That's true, but that's not on Spotify. It's my fucking head. Anyway, that insight around,

46:45I know that I work really, really hard. I know that the standard 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 a 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 good. If you're a people pleaser who also doesn't work hard, that's going to be a tough circle to square.

47:21Because 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? Helping other people understand why you're doing it. So as a good example, there was a couple of times where Dean had booked to go away, like bad times of the, 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, me and Chase got us stuff done. You didn't get your stuff done, right? Like this is just fact. And he was like, man, I do not want to be the bottleneck. I'll fix it. And I was like, ah, that was a nice way to get past it.

47:59So 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 to, but it's hard, man. The people pleasing thing for me is like, I find it hard to 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, it looks like it's resonating with your soul. Made 100%. Yeah, this is literally a, I mean, 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, shit, let me try and do whatever I can to fix it.

48:43Not, hey, you're in the wrong. Yeah, I'm not supposed to fucking apologize for this. Yeah, it's rough, man. I've got Dr. Robert Glover. No more, Mr. Ice Guy. I love that book. I've read it every few years, and I always keep highlighting the shit out of it and doing the exercise. I've got him coming on in January. So yeah, I'm looking forward to speaking to him. Maybe he'll be the answer, but as with most things, man, 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.

49:15And then you realize, oh no, this is just one ingredient in the entire meal of the things that are wrong with me. But yeah, I'm also okay because people love you for you. I've 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 to check in in a couple of years time and be like, hey, how's the people pleasing thing going? You definitely get, you know, you look at older people and they're a bit more grumpy sometimes 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.

49:45One point on the on the therapy thing. So our mutual friend Bill Perkins, when we were hung out with him in Austin. When we tried to teach you to wake surf, that was a real fail. I don't know. I think if I do at the second time around, the muscle memory will click, we'll take it in. But I was asking him, you know, because obviously I love Diwad Zero, I made a video about it, etc, etc. I loved your interview with him by the way. But actually that interview with him was the direct result of why I'm currently like digital nomadding around the world. Because before that interview, I was like, I was like, oh, I'll just rent a homey's in London and be based in London.

50:14After that interview, I was like, I need to freaking go for it. Like, it was the last time. I experienced it. Yeah. I mean, the only reason that you 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 there's 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 sat hands down.

50:40Couple of therapy. relationship coach. And so I have now started a couple, like literally the following week I started working with a couple of therapists I, I, such relationships coach. It has been absolutely phenomenally game changing. 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's experienced the full gamut of all of the shit the couples talk about and struggle with. It's 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.

51:15I think there are some people who are really, there are some couples who are just amazing a 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 is the main thing. And so one of those things is like, you know, it's going to sound potentially simple, but 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.

51:52And instead of kind of talking at the level of, is the fridge door left open or closed or is, well, are we going here or there? It's like, what's the core need? Does she, 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 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 those two needs, that was that really, yeah. That's literally it. like those two needs explain a lot of my behaviors in relationships and outside of relationships.

52:29Without 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. And this is where I think, you know, I would say my IQ is reasonable, but my EQ is probably lower than I would like it to be. So the thing I think 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 it's important for me that we go to LA to do this podcast or 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.

53:04Why do you want to go? I'll find a podcast that's in that system. 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, I'll eat, you know, for the next three months, I've got everything planned. Don't you worry about it. Just come along for the ride and 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 decisions here. I can focus on my work, which is how life is good.

53:35Whereas for my girlfriend, that same arrangement makes her feel disempowered and is therefore terrible. And so a lot of the couple's 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 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 wouldn't have seen in the calendar. Not yet.

54:05A cuddle cuddle in the morning. It's in the habit tracker. Right, okay. So it's just been super, super helpful in that, and on that front, just as a way of us being better at communicating. We'd recommend. What about sustaining? So, you know, what we've spoken about finding a way to make things more enjoyable, overcoming procrastination, 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 heard you say on a podcast recently, the reason that you'd been successful was a combination of a tiny little bit of talent, mostly luck and good timing with consistency.

54:44Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, this is the thing. So anyone can be 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 sustainability look like. One of my favorite Morgan Housen Co. and Morgan Housel quotes is, I'm not going to do anything unless I can do it forever. That's a really good way of thinking about it. And so we kind of board it down to three things, three tools that help combat burnout and let lead to more sustainability and productivity, and conserve recharge and align.

55:24And each of these three strategies tackles a different aspect of burnout. So broadly, three different types of burnout, there is overexertion burnout, you're just trying to do too much it. Depletion burnout, where your energy levels are solo and you're not giving yourself the chance to replenish your energy levels and then misalignment burn out, which is sometimes the hardest one to deal with, which is where everything seems to be going well, but actually what the actions you're taking in the here and now are not aligned with the future that you actually intrinsically want for yourself. Maybe it's something other people are expecting of you or whatever the thing might be.

55:58And so those three things really stop stuff from being sustainable. can serve. How do we do that? Conserv is basically about recognizing that A, we need to limit the amount of things that we're doing because one of the issues with to -do lists is that 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 -do list and think, you know what, I've got to jog all these balls in the air. But one of the things I love about all of a bulk of the philosophy from 4 ,000 weeks is there is simply too much it to do and you will never have enough time for any of it for all of it.

56:36Therefore, you have to make some sacrifices. The way I personally do this is this ideal week method, if it doesn't fit in the ideal week, I don't have time for it. But also something that I call the energy investment portfolio, which is basically I have a long bucket list in a sort of can ban 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 am actually putting I'm actually investing energy in two right now. And so back in the day, I made the mistake and locked down of like, yeah, I've got so much time.

57:04I'm gonna have guitar lessons and singing lessons and piano lessons and art lessons because I want to learn all this stuff. I mean, try and learn some Japanese on the side. Just doing too much stuff. Making focus progress in a few, in a few smaller, in a few small, some small number of things is way more effective than trying to, you know, make a thousand, one mile of progress in a thousand different directions. So a big part of conservatism is actually just this thing of learning to say no. And getting things off our plate. I really like the strategy that's called 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.

57:42Look at your calendar. More than six weeks out, it's pretty chill, right? The calendar's 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. and you're completely overwhelmed, and you're like, fuck, I shouldn't have said yes to that. If you wouldn't do it tomorrow, don't say yes for in six months time. Exactly. And so, conserve is really a about kind of limiting the number of things that we're doing. And be also kind of on a micro level, actually just focusing on one thing at a time. This is again, the classic stuff that everyone knows, but the idea of kind of switching costs and attention residues, switching between multiple tasks means you are just less efficient at each of them.

58:22and you're wasting a lot of energy by not doing things one at a time. And so the basic stuff that people know, but like, you know, I was reading the Ooty book for this a couple of weeks ago, and it was really the final three chapters where I was like, oh my god, I need to take my own advice. Because 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 Ooty book for those chapters, I was like, okay, action point there, action point there, and I'm going to actually do this. So 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 good for people to know.

59:03It'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 shit 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 its idiots all the way up. It's people who do not know what they're doing. They haven't gotten. Everyone is trying their best and failing.

59:33That's the one. I was listening to Mark Manson's interview with Morgan Hauser yesterday on a run because part of my thing is like, I want to do it 30 minutes of exercise each day. One of the things that Mark said was once he became rich and had all these problems around likes, daters and money and things like that. You know, boohoo. He read his book and he realized, oh shit, all of the principles in the subtle art of not giving a fuck 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 famous success.

1:00:04Exactly. And he didn't realize that until like a couple of years after suffering through the suffering. Yeah, the application of stuff, the application of these ideas of everything that we go through. This is why I love Tim Ferriss' idea, the good shit sticks. It's like the most robust way, I think, to get over the guilt of your external brain ever not being perfectly optimized or, you know, your fucking ebbing house, forgetting curve, anky, space for repetition thing, not reminding you of all of the quotes that you want to... So, look, if there's something Starting from one podcast a week or one book per month that you can't stop thinking about, that's the thing.

1:00:46That is the thing. It's self -selected for it. 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, sending it in group chats, it's written on a post, it's not like, that's the thing. The good shit will stick and everything else can fall away. Again, this is like, it's like, feel good productivity. It's like feel resonance, like progression. Yeah, right. What is the thing that you can't stop thinking about? That's the thing that you can focus on. It's the easiest thing for you to not stop thinking about.

1:01:16Yeah. I think this point around, like, you know, in this book, initially, there was twice at 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 nothing to the problem, but like what situation you're trying to deal with What is this tragedy that might help try it out for yourself?

1:01:49Does 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 for you For some people, you know, they realize the way to be consistent as a gem is to do it first thing in the morning Some people they do realize this in the afternoon for some people it's an accountability buddy for some people are 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 -ending improvement.

1:02:18Recharge. Recharge. There's a fun experiment that 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? Oh yeah, 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 a reason, randomly refreshing on YouTube analysts. It's like, okay. But what are the things that actually recharge my energy?

1:02:49Do any of those things? Have I ever left a scrolling session from TikTok feeling, whoa, wow, I feel so refreshed. Absolutely not. I don't know anyone who's left a scrolling session on TikTok feeling really refreshed. Again, I'm not saying TikTok is bad, but broadly, I'm in favor of people doing things intentionally. If for you scrolling Instagram and watching cooking videos, well, 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.

1:03:21My 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 shit. Sleeping well, doing some exercise, having a nap, spending some time in nature. Creative hobbies are very recharging. You know, this is why painting is a great hobby that a lot of people land on as being a thing, knitting, cross -sitting, anything like that, that like gives us that feeling that we are making progress, that we have autonomy, These are low steaks, low steaks.

1:03:53Yeah, you're not trying to monetize it too much. Like all of that stuff, it's important to have creative hobbies. Generally, recharge is your energy way more than watching Netflix or scrolling TikTok. So there's 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. So you don't go for a walk in nature because you want to enjoy your time in nature. you do it because you want to listen to an Andrew Huberman podcast that said 15 minutes of sunlight in the eyes improves your dopamine ergic response, which means that you can be 5 % more productive that day.

1:04:29Productivity, purgatory describes an environment in which nothing that you do is not for productivity. And it's dangerous. And this is something, it's like recharge is both a productivity strategy, but also a life piece of advice. 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. This is the thing. Like, I've been rereading the power of now. And it's just such a good advice. You know, do the thing for the sake of the thing itself.

1:05:05The 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'll sometimes find myself thinking, oh, I just want to get to the end of the shower so that I can get involved with the team. I'm like, no, what the fuck 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 the next video.

1:05:33I'm going for a walk, too 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 comes back to this idea of 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 dopaminergic, 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 won't spend as much time in serotonin George as I can.

1:06:10Dopamine George looks after himself. like dopamine George is a cocaine addict. Serotonin George is a quiet guitar player and spending more time in serotonin. Now there's a third one that I want to start talking about with him soon, which is cortisol George. And cortisol George is somewhere between, like he's even further down the line than dopamine George is. It's frantic, it's kind of like tense and uncomfortable. But yeah, man, you know, a lot of the people that say to us in George, oxytocylacicoddling. True, I guess that's on the other side of serotonin George. But yeah, man, you know, everyone spends way too much time in dopamine whoever they are.

1:06:44Yeah. 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, 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 serotonin, Ali or serotonin chris or serotonin George. I think this is why I love the, you know, the, honestly, the main thing that I take on, I've taken away from writing this book, is just the title, Feel Good Productivity. Because 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.

1:07:28And we just, you know, if we're doing both, we are really, really winning, working towards a fulfilling life, enjoying the dopamine, and also enjoying the serotonin 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 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? What are the goals that you're choosing to do? Why put that at the end 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 Because my, my, my idea was like, like productivity fine, but there's no point in driving 100 miles in a particular direction.

1:08:08If 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 don't enjoy my job. Therefore, Ali Bell is telling me the only thing I can do is quit my job and follow my passion. Like, that's, that's not, that's not the vibe. It's the final chapter because, and it's called a line 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 granted the shit.

1:08:44Well, I don't drink the process for a very long time. If you have a day job and you don't enjoy the day job, the solution is not the way to get to feel good productivity is not too simply quit the day job. is to try all the other things first. Find a way to approach it with play and power, get a way to get people involved to make sure you're not procrastinating, make sure you're doing the right thing to recharge your energy. Once you have done all of those things, if you are still feeling that, you know, the things I'm doing don't feel aligned, I'm just getting this misalignment burnout. At that point, it's now time for us to start thinking about the big questions.

1:09:15So one strategy I really enjoy, that I think is super helpful for everyone to do, is to just write their own obituary. I did this a couple months ago. It was pretty eye -opening. And is this idea that Stephen Covey 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 bullshit 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 He always answered his emails on time and he was really great at keeping the notion template up to date.

1:09:57No, man, he drove 7 % returns for our hedge fund every year. It's like, no, no one gives a shit. 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 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 networking events when meeting people, it's like people often try and present some sort of, I'm impressive because XYZ.

1:10:34And actually, a lot of people just want warmth. 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 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, if only I had a perfectly designed notion template, all of my problems would go away.

1:11:06And one of the tools that's often in there is begin with the end of mind, you know, start with a 25 year long outcome broken down into five year, like marathons broken down into to one year, Maddie goals, broken down in the 90 day sprints, broken down in the daily actions, broken down in the micro disciplines. Right, okay, fantastic. Like I understand, and I understand why that sort of stuff works. 25 year goals, five year goals, one year goals. One year goals 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.

1:11:41And it used to, I appreciate the fact that you say, 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 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.

1:12:17It's not saying what's your net worth going to be at age 80, how many YouTube videos will you have created? What is the sort of setup of the company that you want? It's much more vibey. 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 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.

1:12:56It's not actually the destination itself. And you can check in and continue to readjust. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the vibe is very unlikely to change, right? I want people to feel

1:13:09understood, seen, warm, less fearful, comfortable in my presence. I want to leave the world in a better place than I arrived at it 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 talked 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 this 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?

1:13:49It's like little decisions like that. Those are really what I think ultimately are going to define the kind of memories that you leave behind. Yeah. I also vibe with what you said around one of your plans. One of your plans is also the longest time horizon that I can feasibly plan in. And even then, 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 spell the pie however you want. 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'd love to celebrate actually becoming pretty good at understanding the longevity stuff, been wanting to do it for a while.

1:14:31It'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, or a Lads Road trip. Okay, cool. Now, 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 to my project list, to just remind myself that 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.

1:14:58Yeah, I was meant, I did intend to organize a trip with my friends every few months. I 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 then kind of detracts from everything else in life. It's turning the bar stool upside down, right? Productivity is there to facilitate the outcomes that you want to achieve. And those should be downstream from the vibe and the sort of life that you want, right?

1:15:27It 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. Yeah, so this is going to be out December 26th That's right in the US December 28th worldwide. Okay. Uh this episode's gonna drop like December 19th So people can go and pre -buy it now on Amazon Ali Abdahl feel good 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. How are you? We're trying to do productivity, desk accessories, stuff in your bag, all that kind of stuff, but not aimed at gamers, aimed at 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.

1:16:11So this is our mechanical keyboard. How long have you been working on that? Mate, this is like a blade two year long process to try and find the perfect click and the perfect switch and the perfect amount of loop to put on the keys. Okay. And the perfect weight of the metal plate and all of that. When I think of you, I think about loop research, actually, that is the first place. places that I go to. Yeah, man. So people can check that out if you're interested in a clacky sounding mechanical keyboard. What is that? Light mode .com? Light mode .com. Exactly. Hell yeah. Ali, I appreciate you. I look forward to seeing how this book gets on.

1:16:40You know that you're going to smash it. 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 myself together, New Year, New May, New Productivity Strategy. That's the book. Yeah. Hopefully it's helpful for some people. Hell yeah. and good luck with your drink as well. It's super nice. Thank you. Thank you for my one.