The secret key to increase your productivity - Ali Abdaal - Secret Leaders: Summary & Transcript

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Podcast Summary: Secret Leaders - The Secret Key to Increase Your Productivity with Ali Abdaal

Episode Overview In this episode of Secret Leaders, hosts Dan Murray-Serter and Chris Donnelly speak with Ali Abdaal, a YouTuber, doctor, author, and entrepreneur. Ali shares his unique approach to productivity, emphasizing that incorporating fun into work can lead to higher efficiency and satisfaction. This episode delves into Ali’s philosophy of productivity, the science behind motivation, and practical strategies for making work feel more enjoyable.

Key Themes

The Core Philosophy of Productivity
Fun vs. Discipline: Ali suggests that many misconceptions surround productivity, primarily the belief that discipline is essential. Instead, he argues that finding joy in work is crucial for sustained productivity.
Three Ps: Ali introduces the concept of incorporating Play, Power, and People into tasks to make them more enjoyable:
Play: Engage with tasks in a playful manner, reducing the seriousness often associated with work.
Power: Connect tasks to personal values and outcomes to foster a sense of control and motivation.
People: Collaborate with others to create a supportive and fun working environment.

Science of Motivation
Ali discusses different types of motivation:
Intrinsic Motivation: Doing something for enjoyment or personal satisfaction.
Extrinsic Motivation: Driven by external rewards or pressures.
Identified Motivation: Recognizing the importance of an outcome, even when the task isn't enjoyable.
Introjected Motivation: Feeling guilt or obligation that doesn’t lead to lasting productivity.

Practical Tips for Enhancing Enjoyment in Work
Reframe Tasks: Approach boring tasks with a mindset of making them more enjoyable.
Delegate and Optimize: Identify what tasks can be delegated to free up time for more engaging activities.
Set Up Reward Systems: Create visible markers of progress, such as color-coding tasks as they are completed.

Discussion Highlights

Work Culture and Environment

Psychological Safety: Creating a work environment where individuals feel safe to express themselves and make mistakes leads to better outcomes and creativity.
Fun in Seriousness: Ali shares insights from his medical experience highlighting how lightness in serious environments can enhance performance and reduce errors.

Career Transitions

Ali advises against quitting a job to pursue a passion without ensuring financial stability first. Instead, he encourages side hustles to build a foundation before making significant career changes.

The Infinite Game

Ali reflects on the idea of viewing business as an infinite game where the goal isn’t just to succeed but to continue playing and adapting.

Key Takeaways

Productivity isn’t just about discipline; it’s about finding joy in the process.
Incorporating fun into work can significantly enhance motivation and efficiency.
Recognizing the types of motivation can help individuals identify strategies to maintain productivity.
Collaboration and a supportive environment can make mundane tasks enjoyable and foster a sense of community.

Conclusion In this enlightening conversation, Ali Abdaal provides a fresh perspective on productivity, advocating for a balance between work and enjoyment. His strategies are not only applicable to entrepreneurs but can also resonate with anyone looking to enhance their daily productivity and find more satisfaction in their work.

--- *This summary captures the essence of the podcast episode while providing insights into the main themes discussed.*

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Transcript

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0:00When I find that my team is stressed, Our business is making YouTube videos for goodness sake. Let's take a step back. This is not life and death. I did not leave the NHS for this. With so many opportunities and limited time, we often ask ourselves, how can we get it all done? Or maybe we shouldn't even try. One of the big things we get wrong about productivity is... Lots of people have suggested ways to be more productive. From Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog, Cal Newport's Deep Work and Oliver Berkman's 4 ,000 weeks, there are plenty of answers out there. But Ali Abdaal has another idea. There are three Ps, play, power and people, that we can incorporate into anything we're doing, no matter how grim or boring or dull the thing might be.

0:45We can always incorporate these three Ps into our work to just make it a little bit more fun. He says finding ways to actually enjoy what you're doing isn't just a nice bonus, it's the key to real productivity. team. Ali is an author, YouTuber, doctor and founder of a business that's really just about him. In this episode, Ali explains how adding more play can make the hard stuff easier. He'll talk about why delegation is so important, how to nail a career change and the different ways to stay motivated. Motivation is temporary, but there are in fact different forms of motivation. Oh yeah, you know, there are four different types of motivation.

1:22And I was like, hold the fuck up. I swear there's only two. So if you want to get more done without burning out, Ali has some ideas to help make work feel a little bit more like play. You know, the more we talk, the more I realize that Ali has this sort of je ne sais quoi that other entrepreneurs really miss. You know, we're sometimes so in it. We're so deep in the detail. We really struggle to sort of zoom out and remember that all of this is kind of in service of enjoying the life that we have. A productive life ultimately should be measured by how good we're feeling whilst we're doing it and how in flow we are for it.

2:02Ali actually probably represents, out of all the entrepreneurs I've met, the person who thinks about this equation the most. The person that is constantly challenging himself to come up with ways to scale his content, his business, his team, his everything. Everything about what he does in his life whilst feeling good and enjoying it without actually compromising any of the revenue goals that any good entrepreneur has. He's on his target to 10 million this year. He'll probably get there. And in reality, for a bootstrap business founder, that is a sensational result. And he'll have done it by thinking constantly, how can I make this fun?

2:41How can I enjoy what I'm doing? And that inspires me all the time to think about how not to just sit with my stress and being busy just enjoy what I'm doing and realize I need to connect it up to a higher purpose. So anyway, I've been hugely inspired by my conversations with Ali. I hope you are too. He's a great original thinker. So here you go. Here's Ali Abdaal on Secret Leaders. I hope you enjoy it.

3:07We're here to talk about productivity. Sick. Tell me a little bit about what you think we've got wrong about productivity. Yeah. So I think one of the big things we get wrong about productivity is we think, basically it's this whole like discipline thing. Like, you know, if you want to do something, you've got to like work hard, you've got to grind, you've got to wake up at 4am and do the thing even when you don't feel like it. I think discipline is a bit of a scam personally. I think it's like a very nice thing that appeals to, you know, a certain generation of like young men. And, you know, people like David Goggins and stuff are promoting this discipline narrative, which is great because it works for them.

3:43But I always found in my life, like I would hear all the discipline stuff and it wouldn't really vibe with me. And I would just, you know, I would just feel bad that like, oh, maybe I'm just not disciplined enough. And I don't seem to have the discipline to be able to grind and do shit that I actually don't want to do. So ultimately what I realized, you know, through experimentation in my own life, and also through doing a bunch of research for the book, is that the secret to productivity isn't, isn't discipline. It's actually joy. It's finding a way to feel good about the work that you're doing or whatever else you're doing.

4:12Because when you're having fun and when you're when you feel like the thing you're doing is enjoyable and energizing then you don't need to worry about discipline your productivity kind of takes care of itself interesting it's quite similar to this was like a spiritual belief like digging around in that you know i'm i'm currently reading the artist way you read that oh yeah julia cameron that's great so it's a sort of similar similar sort of vibe in terms of uh there's a process right and there's a process of sort of uh unearthing that uh you know that creativity and i'm wondering you know you're saying everything we've got about productivity, the narrative in general is wrong, right?

4:47You know, if you're waiting for motivation, it's never going to come. It's just about process, getting into discipline. What would the process therefore be about getting out of those bad behaviors that we have in society around productivity and into better ones? Yeah, absolutely. So I think there's like a few different levels that we can take this at. I like to start with a level of like people's day to day. You know, Simon Sinek would say you should start with why and all that kind of stuff. But usually like starting with why and finding your purpose and meaning and mission, all that stuff is important.

5:17But for most normal people, that's not the thing that they particularly like if someone suddenly decides that, oh, my mission is to do thing X, and therefore I have to quit my job. You know, if you're born with a trust fund, then you can just quit your job and follow your passion. So I'm not about that approach. My approach and my process is basically take whatever you're doing right now, and just find a way to make it 10 % more enjoyable and 10 % more energizing. And to that end, there are three Ps, play, power, and people that we can incorporate into anything we're doing, no matter how grim or boring or dull the thing might be.

5:50We can always incorporate these three Ps into our work to just make it a little bit more fun. And what the research shows is that if you can feel good about the work or anything else you're doing, you're more likely to be productive, you're more likely to be creative, you're less stressed, and you also end up with more energy to give to the other important areas of your life. So three Ps, play, power people. Take me through the three Ps. Like, do you have a little process for each? Like, how am I? How would I integrate any of those Ps into my life? Give me a practical example. Absolutely. Yeah.

6:17So in the book, there's like a whole, like six experiments and three strategies for each one. But the main thing for play, and play is, I think, the most underrated productivity technique out there. And probably the one that people think is bollocks. Yeah. Because everyone thinks that productivity is so aligned generally with work. Work people think is serious. And And certainly where we align and where we've talked about a lot, you know, is actually having fun at work and it just being an enjoyable endeavor to be entrepreneurs. But people just take things very seriously. And in the business world, people are very serious.

6:47And we're not very serious people, either of us. So I think that's the part where people generally misalign is thinking that if it's fun, you're probably not a real business person. Yeah, this is one of the experiments in the book. there's a quote from Alan Watts, the philosopher who you'll be familiar with, given your bookshelf, where he says, essentially, don't be serious, be sincere. And a lot of effort, a lot of energy is wasted on just being too serious about stuff. And Bertrand Russell, the philosopher also said, you know, one of the primary plagues that plagues our society is the fact that we just ascribe way too much importance to our work.

7:28And what I found when doing a bunch of research into play is that play basically happens when two things are true. Number one, you have high engagement. And number two, you have low stakes. So if for example, Roger Federer is defending his Wimbledon title, he's got high engagement, but the stakes are very high. So he's not particularly feeling playful in that in that environment, because the stakes are just too high. Whereas in most of our jobs, in most of our work, we imagine as if the stakes are higher than they actually are. And we just need to sort of dial down that dial of importance and seriousness to get to a point where we can be engaged, but still treat it with a bit of distance, treat it in the spirit of play.

8:03Like, you know, we're all only on this earth for like a short time. What's the use in being so serious about this stuff? And what I realized is, you know, I spent a bunch of time in working, working in hospitals and operating theaters and stuff, even when. I hope you thought those were important. I thought those were important. Yeah. But even when life and death is on the line, like the best surgeons were the ones who created an atmosphere of lightness in the operating theater. They'd have background music on. They'd have like take that and Robbie Williams and start playing the background. If there was like a super serious bit of the operation that was absolutely critical, they would say, hey, can we turn on the music, please?

8:37Five minutes later, resume the music. And a bunch of research in hospitals as well around kind of what are the things that cause mistakes to happen in surgery. a lot of it is around when the atmosphere is so serious and so tense that the juniors and the nurses don't feel able to speak up they don't they feel like hang on where you know this surgeon's operating on the wrong leg but like oh no he's probably right he probably knows what he's doing perhaps i've got it wrong and then the patient gets the wrong leg amputated which is like very bad um or a patient gets administered a drug that they actually they're actually allergic to and the physician associate recognizes this but doesn't want to speak up because it's just too serious.

9:15Whereas the surgeons who can create this atmosphere of lightness and ease, even in the midst of life and death, that tends to be where real performance and creativity and productivity, dare I say, tends to shine. They have this amazing, have you read Black Box Thinking before? I haven't read it, no. Matthew Syed. So it's a great book. It's about, well, so black boxes in planes, right? And so the idea is that in the, it's about failure, essentially, and how we deal with failure and how you communicate it. And it has this great example in the airline industry, you have black boxes. If a plane goes down, not only is there evidence of all the things that happen, but then everyone talks about it.

9:50Everyone learns like these are all the reasons and all the things that went wrong leading up to the core decisions in that moment that the pilot felt. And how do we make sure that doesn't happen next time? Versus in especially America, but in general health systems, healthcare systems have the exact opposite. You make a mistake as a doctor, you're on the line, you can be sued and therefore the entire system is set up absolutely around perfection and no admission of failure whatsoever and the idea that someone below you can tell you that you're doing something wrong is also like highly precarious because it could impact their career it can impact your career and so everyone's just terrified of doing it which is why actually there's tons of mistakes that still happen people do sadly die from innocuous things one of our guests um and I'm sure you know him as well, Mo Gordat, you know, his son died from a simple procedure, a small mistake.

10:40And that stuff literally happens when you're scared to be honest about what people are doing. So it's interesting, it's not just, you know, how do you make things more productive? It's actually how do you create safer, better work cultures in general? Yeah. And like this thing around psychological safety, emotional safety, creating these sorts of environments of safety in the workplace really allows creativity to flourish as well. Like if managers and leaders and stuff care about the bottom line and it's, you know, sometimes I've heard people say, well, I don't want my employees having fun at work.

11:12It's like, bruv, your employees having fun at work means they're more likely to be creative. And most of us, you know, most of the value is found in the creativity of the team rather than in just sort of trying to be more efficient and just churning out more and more widgets. I can't remember who said this quote, but I came across it. sounds like a naval but see if you know it cannot overstate the absolute unimportance of almost everything oh yeah that's a good one it's so good good it's so good because it does help reframe that most things that happen in your life are not important a handful of things are and a handful of things are like you said you know you should take that thing seriously you should put lots of effort in but the rest of it if you treat everything with the same level of importance you'll end up is burnt out anyway.

11:57You won't have any energy or fuel left to be productive, creative or have fun. Have you read the blog post of the subtle art of not being a fuck, of not giving a fuck? No, I read the book. Yeah. So it started off as a blog post in like 2015 or something. And when Mark Manson put out that blog post, I've been following him for a while. I saw the email, I saw the title, the subtle art of not giving a fuck. And it's like the most entertaining blog post I've ever read in my life. And then that blog post went viral, which is how he got the book deal for the book. But that's basically the argument of the whole thing.

12:24Like we all give way too many fucks about things. And if we just gave fewer fucks, we can save our fucks for the things that actually matter, the few things that are actually important, not everything else that isn't. Yeah, that's it. Like, how do you actually find the balance between what matters and what doesn't matter? Have you found a process for that? Other than recognizing that almost everything is relatively unimportant? No. One thing I often say to my team, I think, because I've, you know, I worked as a doctor for two years, and then I did the entrepreneur thing. when I find that my team is stressed, like our business is making YouTube videos, for goodness sake.

13:00You know, I sometimes say, guys, let's take a step back. This is not life and death. We're not in the emergency room. I did not leave the NHS for this. And just that sense of perspective, because otherwise it's so easy to get like wrapped up in our own worlds, in our own heads. And all I have to do is think back to working in the emergency department where people are literally bleeding out and dying in the middle of COVID. And like, there's very few staff around because everyone's off. I'm like, okay, yeah, we're making YouTube videos and releasing online courses and doing podcasts every now and then.

13:27Who cares if a guest can't cancel last minute? Great, we can all just grab a coffee. Like life is good. We don't need to worry about it. It's fascinating, isn't it? Because it's kind of like, you do want to employ people who think the work is important and they take their job seriously, but you don't want people who take the whole thing so seriously, if that makes sense. You want them to care about their work, but not care so much that they lose perspective. Yeah, I think that's why I like the Alan Watts quote, where he's like, don't be serious, be sincere. So if, for example, you're playing a board game you don't want to play with someone who's too serious because they're a stickler for the rules and they forget that it's a game but you also don't want to play with someone who's completely half-arsed because that's just not fun it's like they're not really trying it's like oh come on man you want to play with someone who's sincere who's sincerely putting in their best effort to try and win but who also has that perspective of hey at the end of the day it's just a game who cares and i think if we can just take that mentality and apply it to all of our jobs obviously except if you're an aerobin pilot or life and death then I think everyone will be more productive more creative and less stressed speaking of Alan Watts quotes I'll butcher it a bit but relevant which is you know he talks about life how we're all so serious in our lives and we're trying to get from school into university and from university into medical profession and then from junior doctor into main doctor etc and how everything is like got to complete the next thing complete the next thing complete the next thing there's actually the wrong way to look at it because life is a dance and dancers don't really have a start middle end they just flow they just go as you wish there's no rhyme or reason and a good dance and a bad dance fine line between them they're just a dance they just flow and that's much better for life and i just like i love that um equation to it yeah just while we're training alan wadds quotes he's got another another really good one around how uh like he's got one analogy which is life is like a dance and his other one is that life is like a musical performance.

15:18The point is not the climax. The point is not the destination. Because if it were, the best composers would be the ones who create the most climaxes. Or the point is not to get through it faster and faster. Because if it were, then, you know, the best musicians would be the ones who can play faster and faster and faster. The point of a musical performance is to enjoy the musical performance, not to get to the climax. And so similarly with life, the point is to enjoy life, not to be so fixated on trying to do the faster and go faster and faster on the hamster wheel. Yeah. And so how to know that you're literally living your best life right now.

15:50That's the one power of now. Okay. So you talked about being a doctor for a few years and then moving into entrepreneurship and YouTube, et cetera. You probably get this question a lot, but bear with me. How do you make a great career change like that? And how do you make it work? Yeah. So I have a theory, which is that, So a lot of people ask me, it's like, should I quit my job to follow my passion? My answer is always, no, don't do that. First, make money from your passion first and figure out a way to support yourself financially. And then you can think about quitting your job further down the line.

16:23I think weirdly, so for the first three years of my YouTube channel and for the five years before that, that I was running a business in medical school, I was either a full-time medical student or I was working full-time as a doctor. and what that meant was I only really had 10 to 20 spare hours a week to be able to do businessy type stuff and therefore I was really focused and really like I really prioritized the things that actually moved the needle whereas when I quit my job and became a full-time YouTuber suddenly my video output actually ground to a halt because now I was like screwing around faffing around sort of doing lots of things that didn't actually move the needle and move me towards my goals and it's that the whole thing with Parkinson's law work expands to fill the time that you that you allocate to it.

17:06So like the week after I took a break from medicine, I was like, oh, I've got all the time in the world. I just need to film two videos this week. And I didn't film any videos that week because every day I'd get up, I'd go on the computer, I'd screw around on YouTube and, you know, browsing Instagram stuff. And I've got loads of time to film this video. We'll get to 9pm and I'd be like, well, you know, the light's gone now. So I guess I'll film it tomorrow. And that happened again and again and again. Whereas when I had a full-time job, I was forced to, you know, wake up an hour early so that I could bang out the video.

17:32I was forced to find the 80-20 of, you know, what is the minimum viable level of editing I can give to a video before putting it out there. I was forced to just reduce my own perfectionism and reduce like the impact of Parkinson's law and all of this stuff. And that was how the YouTube channel grew and how the business grew. And so when people say I want to quit my job to follow my passion, it's like I generally recommend don't do that. Find a way to monetize the passion first. Do it on the side. Do it in weekends and evenings while you still have an income coming in. and then once you get to a point where you're making a grand, two grand, three grand a month, then you can consider quitting your job.

18:05Nice. How many people do you speak to who have just done this completely wrong and how do you help them take a U-turn on that? I actually speak to very few people who are in that position because like I think a lot of times the fear of making a career change is a lot greater in imagination than in reality as Mark Twain would say or something. Yeah. Like I know almost no one who has made a career change who has regretted making the career change. But I know tons and tons of people who have been thinking about making a career change for years, and have not yet made their career change because they are scared of all of the things that could potentially go wrong.

18:39So I do think that as much as you know, it's good to have a bit of a safety blanket, it's good to have find a way to make money, not tied to your job. Like, the risk of doing a career changes is a lot lower than most people think. Because let's say I've got a job earning 50 grand a year. And I think, oh, but I really want to do this new industry instead or start a business. It's easy to think of that as a 50 grand risk, but it's actually not because the risk is like, maybe my current job is paying 50 grand and maybe that was quite hard to get into. But if I've got a 50K job, I could probably fairly easily walk into a 40K job, for example, like it won't be too hard.

19:14And actually, you know, there's a lot of studies that show when you quit your job, if you apply to a new one, you tend to get a salary increase rather than salary decrease. So really the only risk of quitting my job is the few months where I don't have a paycheck going on. And if everything goes wrong, I could just always get another job. And so it's a 10 grand risk rather than a 50 grand risk. So I think a lot of people like overthink the risks of this sort of thing without realizing that actually the risks aren't that bad. You can always make a change and you can always build a business on weekends and evenings rather than having to go at it full time.

19:43Okay. You've made it in a very competitive industry being YouTube creator. Why do you think you've made it versus others? Yeah, so this is, I think there's a few things. Firstly, I have now been doing it for seven years. I have been publishing at least one video every week for the last seven years, almost without fail. Yeah, and overnight success. Overnight success, exactly. And, you know, about 5 ,000 something students have gone through my YouTuber Academy course. These are students who pay several thousand dollars to take a course where I'm literally guiding them through the process. We have a whole support team holding their hand through the process.

20:16and still of the 5 000 students that we've had 50 of them don't even submit their first video they don't like life gets in the way they're like overthinking the perfectionism paralysis they're like people love to pay for things yeah um that they think they're going to do and that tends to fill fill the need weirdly yeah we don't even do the thing but paying for it so like half the people don't even make the first video we you know it's like a six-week course and so we find that the the number the percentage of people who submit video six is about 11 so So already, it's like people have signed up to this thing with the best will in the world.

20:51And 90 % of them don't even make it beyond video number five. Then, you know, the stats like podcasts, like sort of like 90 % of podcasts don't make it past episode three. 99 % don't make it don't make it past episode 20. So literally just by doing it for a few months consistently, you're already in the top 1%. So I think the main thing that stops people from succeeding on YouTube or any of these content mediums is just giving up way too soon. And not realizing that it takes years to see any kind of meaningful results. I think that's one thing. But I think another is I like almost from day one, I was treating YouTube as a business.

21:22I'd spent like five, six years running a business before then I'd written a few, I read a few business books. And so I kind of had the perspective of YouTube for me is not a hobby. It's like if I wanted to have fun, I'd play the guitar, I'd hang out with my friends. Like the goal is for this to become something. And therefore, how can I apply the principles of business to growing a YouTube channel? How can I think about my target audience and my value proposition. How can I actively think about who are the competitors out there? You know, if I was starting a restaurant, I wouldn't just decide to start a restaurant because I enjoyed cooking.

21:51I would, I would recognize that starting a restaurant and making it profitable is very different to being a good chef. I'd be figuring out like, what's the footfall of other restaurants in the area? What, what are the competitors? Like what other Italian, Indian, Lebanese restaurants are there in the area? What's their profitability? How can I differentiate myself in the market? And I'd be thinking about that quite a lot. So I was doing that with YouTube almost from day one. um the the danger with that again so most people don't get most people are not consistent enough to see any meaningful results but another thing that holds a lot of people back is that they overthink and they don't act so the way i think of it is like you can overthink and analyze the business and stuff all you want but it must be on the foundation of publishing at least one video a week at least in the sort of educational youtube talking head kind of mode so consistency thinking about it like a business and a healthy dose of luck.

22:40You know, I started YouTube at the right time. I started in 2017. Everyone was saying YouTube was saturated in 2017. People were telling Tim Ferriss that podcasting was saturated in 2014. Like every platform always seems saturated, but there always seems to be room for people to carve out their own niche, especially if you can commit to doing it for a very long time. And how do you think about audience? Like, how do you know who you're trying to go after with building an audience on YouTube? Does it sort of just magically happen? Or are there like ways that you can preach and teach others to find their people?

23:13Yeah, so it's sort of a conversation between like, the creator in the market. And so the way we think about this is, as the creator, you want to be thinking about who are the groups of people that I am part of or that I resonate with. So for example, it wouldn't make sense for me to try and make videos for parents because I'm not a parent. Like that's just completely pointless. But you know, I'm, I could make videos for medical students. I could make videos for amateur magicians. I could make videos for junior doctors. I could make videos for people in their twenties. There's a bunch of groups that I have, that I'm part of that could be my target audience.

23:53The other way of thinking about it is could my target audience just be me, but a few years ago, I think that tends to be how a lot of educational YouTubers find, find their audience. It's like, what are the things I've learned in the last five years? And great, how can I teach those to people who are five years younger than me? So in my case, it was initially how to study for exams, how to get into med school, then it became how to be productive, then it became how to start a business. And as I've grown older, kind of my audience is, my sense of my audience has always been, it's somewhat, it is a dude in the UK, who is a few years younger than me.

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24:25And as they say, in I think 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, the target is not the market. You know, Apple's products are targeted at creative professionals. But just because they're targeted at creative professionals doesn't mean you have to be a creative professional to buy an Apple product. Most people that buy Nike shoes are not in fact professional athletes, even though that's what they're going for. So even though I'm going for, you know, a dude in their mid 20s, trying to start a business, trying to do a side hustle, trying to be more productive. Actually, what that means is, if I can specifically speak to that person, then the sorts of people that would resonate with my stuff is a lot bigger than that person.

24:57yeah i love that so you're kind of thinking who i i guess it's similar to a business it's like one one way of coming up with business ideas is thinking who are the groups that i would like to be serving like who would who would be exciting to serve uh preferably um which of those people actually have money and then let's figure out what problems they have and what problems i can solve and it's exactly the same thing with a youtuber who are the groups i'd be excited to serve what are their problems and then how can i make videos solving those problems how have you learned in your process of YouTubing in general, how have you thought about productivity in relation to growing your business, creating videos, creating a productive, joyful process for yourself?

25:35Like, how has that kind of journey changed?

25:40Yeah, so I think in the early days, for me, the goal was, I just need to make one video a week. And in the early days of the process, I was doing something completely new, I knew nothing about editing or filming or lighting and all of this sort of stuff. And I was in medical school and my friends were around and stuff. And I'd be kind of making the videos and just focusing on that goal of making one video a week. That to me was productivity. How do I just make this one video a week? Eventually the goal of just making one video a week stopped being fun because everything stops being fun after a while.

26:07But I recognized because I was sort of kind of simmering on this philosophy of like, hey, for some reason, whenever I make things feel good, I seem to do better at them, whether it was exams in medical school or anything else I was doing. So I tried to actively find ways to make the process more enjoyable. So then I would be like, okay, in this video, I'm going to try this new editing trick or that new editing trick. Then I realized, ooh, YouTube is kind of like a business. And so I was like, ooh, how can I systemize the production of this? How can I 80-20 things? And that also made it more fun.

26:34So at each stage of the process, the thing that I was focused on was recognizing that if I focus on a goal that's outside of my control, I'm going to burn out and I'm not going to do the thing. But if I focus on a goal that's within my control and make the process of achieving that goal actually enjoyable, that's the thing that's going to keep on going. That's going to keep me going. And I also heard a really good phrase, and I think applies to so many things, not just YouTube, which is that your first 100 videos are going to be absolutely garbage. So the goal is to get through those first 100 videos and then worry about things later.

27:08So I started in 2017. And I said, okay, cool. I'm in my final year of med school. I'm going to make 100 videos while I'm in med school so that when I graduate and become a doctor, at that point, I will actually be good at making videos. I speak to so many people who are like, oh man, you know, my channel's not growing. I'm only on a few hundred subscribers. I look at the channel and they've made like four videos. I'm like, bro, it took me 52 videos to get my first thousand subscribers, another 50 to get the next 10 ,000 and so on. It's like, it grows exponentially over time, but you've got to keep in mind that this is the long-term game.

27:38And I think increasingly people are starting YouTube channels and podcasts and stuff in the hope of making money. And as you'll know, it's really hard to grow a podcast really hard to make money from a podcast yeah it's really hard to grow a youtube channel yeah we've learned that yeah it's so hard to do there's so many more efficient ways of making money yeah uh and so really it has to be about enjoying the process yeah um simon sinek talks about the infinite game i've heard you talk about the infinite game it's genius uh talk to us a little bit about the infinite game yeah so and there's a book find out in infinite games i haven't read it i've read the first page of it where the guy scott that's fine give us all your expertise use from that first page?

28:13From the first page, basically what he says is that there are two types of game in life, games in life. There are finite games and infinite games. Finite games are played with the intention of winning and infinite games are played with the intention of continuing to play the game. So when you're playing football, for example, you know, it's got an end, it's got a score, the goal is to win. But when you're hanging out with your friends or when you're having dinner with your spouse, hopefully the intention is not to win the interaction. Hopefully the intention is to keep the relationship healthy and flowing and fun so that you can continue to do the thing.

28:41Now, for me, when it comes to business, and certainly like with my YouTube channel and writing books and stuff, I try my best to view that as an infinite game, where there is no real goal. I mean, there is a goal, but like, the point is not to win. The point isn't for the book to hit the New York Times Versella list, or the point isn't for the YouTube channel to hit a particular subscriber count. The point is, I've built a business and a life where I can do what I want, have cool conversations, people learn stuff and share it online and make decent money doing it that is sick let's keep that the infinite game and let's focus on making the process durable and sustainable so that i can keep continuing to play the game and you know again there's parallels in the world of business um more businesses die through indigestion than through starvation as someone famous once said i don't know who it was it might have been peter brocker it was robbie williams robbie williams love it and so that one was gary barlow actually and so when you're trying to take on too much stuff and like do more and more things.

29:37There's something, something Mr. B stuff and talks about, which is that YouTubers will get big and then they'll think, Oh, I'm big on YouTube. Therefore, let me do all these other things. And then the channel will suffer. And they'll realize that everything else that they've done has also suffered because the channel was the main thing. And so again, in the business world, the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing, the main thing for me is being able to learn cool stuff and share it online in the format of books and podcasts and videos. And so that is the goal. That's the infinite game that I'm trying to go for, which means that I'm not that weathered by the ups and downs of the algorithm or the ups and downs of the channel, because the only goal is to just continue playing the game.

30:12If everything gets boring, otherwise, you know, no longer product, you're not finding that joy, you can't therefore be really productive, and after a while, everything's boring. How does that sit with you still being a YouTuber, with the infinite game being teaching people forever, etc like how do you deal with those two conflicting emotions yeah i used to worry about this so um back when i wasn't in a relationship i would ask people like hey you know you're married and and or have been in a long-term relationship for like more than a few years like don't you get bored of the same person because it's like surely if you're just talking to the same person and having dinner with them 10 000 times surely gets boring after a while and i asked this to one of my friends who was at that point married and he was like well do you get bored of your friends?

31:02I was like, no, not really. He was like, why don't you get bored of your friends? I was like, I don't know, because it's like the same people that you hang out with. But like, we're always growing, we're always doing different things, trying to find ways to make it make it fun. We're not just playing the same board game again, and again, again, which might be a bit boring, we're sort of changing things up. And I think it's the same thing with YouTube or work. It's like, yeah, for me, if I were still making the same videos I was making seven years ago, I'd be pretty bored. But a huge part of how I've been able to sustain this for such a long time is constantly asking myself, how do I make this process actually enjoyable?

31:36So make like, it would be more efficient for growth of the YouTube channel if I only talked about productivity, especially or, you know, even better if I only talked about how to make money online, because those videos do really well. And they have good like revenues and good sponsorship rates and stuff. But I know that it would bore me to only make videos about productivity or only make videos about making money, which is why these days I make occasional chatty videos and I do vlogs and I do videos about relationships and I read this spirituality book let me do a video about that even though it's not optimized for the algorithm it's still optimized for fun and there's a great quote I came across from a video game designer who said something like left to their own devices gamers will optimize the fun out of the game they're playing you know when I was playing World of Warcraft back in the day I'd be sort of trying to optimize everything min max my character, so much grinding and stuff.

32:24And you realize I've turned this into a job. I've optimized the fun out of it. And so why have I done that? The point is to play the game. And so I think with business and with YouTube and with all this stuff, it's easy to focus on the growth and the optimization, but we don't want to optimize the fun out of everything. So how do you make like productivity, I guess, how do you communicate productivity across the team? So one of the things that I think is interesting, and we talked about this recently, so if you don't mind, I'll share. You've just gone remote. Or not just, but you're in the few months of remote.

33:01That's because you want to do what you want to do. At the end of the day, you're the talent and you don't want to be stuck bored and you want to explore life and etc, etc. And you want to do this fucking video on spirituality and I read this one on relationships but you've got a team. You've got to pay their salaries. and so how do you map out this idea of Ali needs to make things productive so that he can stay really engaged etc as the creator and the CEO and those things are really important but they also might be misaligned with the growth of the channel and therefore the employees and their career opportunities etc do you consciously think about those things downstream do you communicate them with their team have I just created a revelation you're like oh fuck I should have thought this through where we are with this?

33:48Yeah, great question. I think about this all the time, because I realized very long ago when I first started hiring team members like five years ago, that my enjoyment of the process was like the primary thing. And if I stopped enjoying the process of making videos, it just wouldn't happen. Now, my enjoyment of the process, as you pointed out, sometimes might mean that the channel doesn't grow as fast. And so if the business is reliant on the channel growing fast, or the channel getting views, that is a really stressful business to run because now these things are out of alignments. Like the business needs one thing, but my enjoyment needs something else.

34:23So the way that we've kind of gone about this over the last few years and something we're really continuing in 2024 is really figuring out how do we make the business survive and thrive without me having to continually churn up more videos. So, you know, we did 5 million revenue last year. We're going for like, maybe like eight this year. I, you know, I really want to get to 10 million because I think it would just be fun. And in the past, the only route I saw to 10 million revenue was me just churning out more and more videos. I've realized over time through speaking to entrepreneurs and having chats with you and listening to a bunch of podcasts and reading books that, oh, there are actually multiple routes to the goal of 10 million revenue.

34:58And one of those paths is Ali makes way more sponsored YouTube videos. But there are like loads and loads of other paths. And finding people who have been on those paths and exploring them, you know, we could do software, we could do B2B, we could do like corporate learning and development, we could do a high ticket offer with fulfillment that's decorrelated from my own time. There's all these options out there now that I did not really appreciate before. So actually, after this, you know, after we have lunch, I'm heading towards a to a three hour like product brainstorming session with a friend of mine, who's a third time founder, and we're going to try and figure out ways like cool productivity software to build, we've already started doing that.

35:34Can we create products and assets that do not rely on me that are maybe even not like Ali Abdel branded so that I can use my YouTube channel as a marketing asset for lead gen but I don't have to just continue to continually churn out videos in order to grow the business we started running paid ads a few months ago and we've seen like you know every week we're returning our return on ad expenses our return on ad spend is somewhere between 2.5 and 30x which is just super cool we had a Black Friday promotion for our YouTuber course. We did like 500k in revenue in those three days, Black Friday to Cyber Monday.

36:06And all of them were through ConvertKit email automations that our marketing guy set up ahead of time. And so while he was on his honeymoon in the Maldives, and while I was on a beach in Mexico, all of these automations were working behind the scenes. I didn't have to make a single YouTube video for it. And we generated 500k in revenue thanks to these email automations and segmentations and stuff. That was sick. I was like, oh my God, Like we can make money in a way that's decorrelated from me making more YouTube videos. So this is something we think about a lot. And that is a perfect example of productivity in action, right?

36:37Like fundamentally, you've set up a system, a process with your team and created two joyful moments where the person who set it up and you are benefiting with joy of something that's happening behind the scenes. Yeah, it was super cool. The other framework that I've started using a lot, I was going to put this in the book, but then the editor cut it out because it was getting too complicated is the GPS framework. So goal, plan and system. And I think a lot of productivity is about just getting the stuff right. The goal, where are we trying to go? What's the destination? The plan, what is the path to getting there?

37:10What are the three to five big chess moves that we need to do to get to the goal? And system, how do we ensure that every day and every week we're sticking to the plan? And then you just review and assess and stuff. And with that, with a clear goal, a clear plan and a clear system for sticking to the plan. There is very little that can really go wrong if you just do that repeatedly over time. And this is what I've realized, again, taking advice from the world of business. I used to be anti-goal setting because I used to be like, oh, well, I don't want to be wedded to this thing. And like, I don't want to be disappointed if I don't hit the goal.

37:42I've realized that I can set a goal and also choose to not be disappointed if we don't hit it. But like all businesses function based on annual goals and quarterly goals and okay ours and you've got like marriage okay ours and that's like super cool and i now realize oh my god when you know where you're going and you know where you're like and you know the path to getting there it's so much easier to do whereas in the past i used to sort of just sort of be scrambling and sort of making shit up as i went along well i think part of that as well if you have a team which you do right and i think this is one of the things where because you're a youtuber because you're a creator people assume you might be a solo printer right um but you have a team And so when you do have a team, you know, productivity really is about alignment.

38:21Does everyone understand where you're going? And are they working towards the same goals? And where that stuff isn't clear, you suddenly get a lot of really busy, unproductive work. Unproductive because it produces fuck all that matters towards the goal. But everyone's super busy. Yeah. And in many ways, actively counterproductive. Because I've had lots of times in the past where my vision has been like very shaky. and so one of our team members has made like four months of progress on a thing and then i have decided to u-turn and like we're not doing that thing anymore and initially i was like well you know i'm still playing the salary like why do they care if it's four months wasted effort but they really care that they spent four months working on this thing and it seems like wasted effort because i was uh i was listening to re-listening to the seven habits of highly effective people like yesterday absolutely sick yeah um and he just threw out a phrase like i I didn't really get this the first time around, but it was something like, treat your employees as volunteers, because you can buy their back, but you can't buy their heart and their mind.

39:17And their enthusiasm comes from their heart, and their creativity comes from their mind. And I was like, whoa, fuck, that's good. Treat your employees as volunteers. So I literally updated my kind of daily journaling prompt to ask the question, how can I show my team appreciation today? Brackets, remember they're volunteers. And so the mistake that I made is not recognizing that if someone has put in four months of work into a project and it gets canceled, that actually really affects their soul and their heart on an emotional level to feel as if their work has been wasted, even though I was technically paying them for the time.

39:50And so it has been actively counterproductive for me to be so shaky on my vision. And now I spend a lot of my time as the leader of the business thinking, basically thinking, where are we actually trying to go? And a few years ago, if someone had told me that, oh, you know, the only job of the leader of the business really is to sort of set the direction i'd have been like bloody hell that sounds easy like well so they're just chilling the rest of the time and everyone's doing all the work and it's like yeah kind of but it takes a lot of like thought and journaling and talking to people and figuring things out to set the direction um one analogy i've been using with angus who's my general manager slash ceo is like we're sort of on a ship and angus is the captain of the ship but i'm like the madman up there at the top of on the sails with a little telescope being like there's an island over there that i think that's our path to 10 million in revenue and then there'll be treasure yeah there'll be treasure and then once i'm really sure that that's where we want to go then the captain can like mobilize the troops to get there but if i'm like looking around and i'm not sure and i'm like oh we could do this or this or this or this now everyone's floundering and the ship comes to a standstill which is interesting because the thing that is missing in that analogy almost is the level of trust that has to be earned from angus and the rest of the team that Ali is actually working on that important thing.

41:05Because that's quite an invisible thing, right? And that's one of the problems you get as CEO is, I'm working on the vision and everyone's like... So you're getting a massage. You're getting on podcasts, you're doing this, you're hanging out with that person, you're reading these books, mate. It looks like luxury life, you're not doing anything. But I'm actually, I'm filling up my brain with all the right inputs to have the clear thinking required to make the right decision, right? And as Shane Parrish said, who came on our podcast, everything's actually just about positioning. Anyone looks like a genius if they position themselves well enough for the right opportunity to come.

41:41And that can only sort of come if you clear the decks, get the inputs, and then say, we're going in that direction. And then you can be exceptionally productive working towards the right path. Let's actually focus on productivity for entrepreneurs. how does your general entrepreneur that you view yeah right so the ones that you see in your life um how do they become more productive what is it that we need to know to uncover your secret your magic uh one thing that i in the this is not an original idea by any means but the way i think of it is when it comes to tasks there are two types of tasks there are quests and there are errands I like the terminology because video games and stuff.

42:24I think Cal Newport calls it there is deep work and then there is shallow work or something. I don't even know what he uses. You know, that kind of thing. So for me, a quest is something that takes at least one focus block to get done. So writing the copy for a landing page would be a quest because it would take at least a few focus sessions to do that. A focus session can be anything from 20 minutes to 45 minutes, you know, something like that. Whereas errands are anything that takes less than one focus session to do. I think one of the big levels up level ups for my productivity as an entrepreneur has been recognizing that I should have distinct blocks for quests and distinct blocks for errands.

43:00But crucially, I must have at least one quest block before I do any errands. Because it tends to be the quests, the stuff that the meaty stuff that takes at least one focused block, if not more to do, that tends to be the stuff that moves us forward as entrepreneurs. Whereas the task, the errands tends to be just stuff that keeps us afloat. Things like I don't replying to this person or sending that email or sorting out the sort of sorting out the accounts with this sort of thing. It's really that deep work block, this focus quest block that makes us make progress. And whenever I have started the day with errands, because there's always errands, always like a zillion Slack messages when you wake up in the morning, you're like, oh, shit, okay, cool.

43:35I should do all this stuff. You can spend the whole day spinning your wheels and just sort of keeping the ship afloat by paddling very hard and not actually moving anywhere. whereas I find that if I do at least half an hour to one hour at least ideally four five six but you know stuff often comes up as long as I have that 30 to 60 minutes where I've made focused progress on the thing that's most important for me to do then everything else kind of takes care of itself two counter um processes that you're familiar with we talked about the artist way so in the artist way she talks about morning pages and um I can't remember who else said this like maybe you can if I start saying it there's something about like you know a funnel you've got loads of shit and you just need to clean it all out and then you start to get like the good stuff coming through and that's essentially the same process she's talking about with morning pages which is if you haven't read it it's just wake up and write down three pages of whatever comes to your mind and the idea is you're just clearing out your head it doesn't matter if it's good it doesn't matter if it's nothing it doesn't matter if it's just the same word over and over again or I've got nothing to say I've got nothing to say I've got nothing to say just do it and the idea there is you're you're you're suddenly in a more creative place to work other concept and i've used this one myself a lot is brian tracy's eat that frog which is you get the most difficult most horrible task that you is going to get in your way because procrastination is probably the enemy of productivity and so how do you make sure you don't procrastinate all day everyone's a big procrastinator i'm a big procrastinator even though people think i'm like super efficient we all do it so eat that frog is a very good process the idea there obviously being that if the worst thing you have to do today is eat a frog then just get it done first thing so what's your frog just get it done it's the first thing today so those are two famous frameworks they're kind of the opposite of the framework that you're suggesting which is just get the thing that i'd love to do the most the most important task just get that done first um first part of this is how many of those frameworks can you like fit in to like make your own and second is what i really want to know what does a really productive day look like for you so what is the ideal day so actually i use all three frameworks excellent i was hoping you'd say that so take us through a really productive day for me a really productive day is like i've done the gym in the morning i have eaten my protein shake or whatever the thing is ideally before doing any small tasks or any errands.

46:04I've carved out 30 to 60 minutes to make focused progress on my one main goal. These days, my one main goal is to launch Productivity Lab, which is a sort of peloton for productivity that we're trying to create, like a membership type thing. Last year, all of it was around writing the book. So I try and spend the first couple of hours of every day focusing on book writing, and then spend the rest of the day in meetings or in calls or in like just hanging out with people or doing the CEO vision stuff, just hanging around doing nothing. That's a pretty productive day. And what I like about your description of a productive day, and this I think is a difficult thing for a lot of entrepreneurs, actually sounds like about four hours of real work.

46:46Productive work, so to speak. Yeah. In fact, it's often a lot less. It's like two hours. I was being generous. Yeah. Two hours of real work. And then, you know, like I don't consider doing a podcast real work because it's just kind of fun. I don't consider like a business meeting or like a brainstorm session, like real work, because it's just sort of fun. But usually if I can get in just two hours of focused work on like my main thing that I need to work on, whether it's vision or whether it's this project, whatever it is, that's ridiculously productive. So what about other tips for entrepreneurs that don't have the same freedom you have?

47:17And the reason I say that is you've designed the system really well with a lot of emotional maturity and a lot of practicality about your topic, the way your system works, etc. What about for entrepreneurs that are currently in a more traditional setup, right? They just, they are the CEO. They've got loads of things to do. They've got teams. They haven't quite managed to communicate yet that this is what productivity on steroids looks like. How would you coach them through actually getting to this place?

47:50When I've been in this position, when I found myself coaching entrepreneurs like this in the past. One thing that's been really helpful is the delegate elevate matrix from Traction by Gina Wickman. Basically, just like make a list of all the things that you're really good at, and you love doing, and a list of everything else. And then let's figure out how to delegate the everything else. Like that is a as a matter of urgency. And usually, I when I sit down with entrepreneurs, and we make this list, they realize, oh, the things I enjoy are product and vision and strategy and I don't know, doing podcasts and everything else that's on my plate, I don't actually enjoy.

48:27So then we try and circle as many of those things as we can and turn it into a job description so that they can hire someone for it. Because usually entrepreneurs have the ability to hire people to take stuff off their plate. That's step one, that frees up a lot of time. Step two is really defining the goal, the plan and the system. I think one thing I often come back to with entrepreneurs, and I've stolen this from all the various business coaching sessions that I've had, is like bring it back to vision, mission, values initially, then turn it into 10-year picture, three-year picture, one-year goals.

49:02And at that point, we have so much clarity to be like, okay, we've got the 12-month goals for the business. Usually entrepreneurs pick too many 12-month goals for the business. And then it's about paring them down to like the absolute essentials. And then thinking, okay, what needs to be done in the next 90 days to get us to the 12-month goal? And therefore, what is the thing that the entrepreneur in particular needs to be focused on. The other thing I find that a lot of entrepreneurs do is they operate in parallel rather than in series. Like, so it's like circuits in physics. It's like a series circuit is where, you know, the current goes through the bulbs one at a time.

49:34And a parallel circuit is the current splits into four and goes through all four bulbs at the same time. The issue with parallel processing is that it seems very productive. It seems like, oh, I'll do an hour of this, an hour of this, an hour of this, an hour of this, and then I'll make a little bit of progress in all these four different areas. But over time, that will add up to lots of, you know, that will add up to loads of progress. But usually it doesn't work like that. You would think it works like that. But in practice, picking one thing and focusing on just that one thing until it's done and then picking the next thing and then the next and then the next.

50:04Operating in series, sequentially, I've always found, at least for me and a lot of the entrepreneurs that I speak to, is way more effective than trying to operate multiple things in parallel. So when writing the book, for example, you know, busy entrepreneur will think, all right, cool. Every day, I'm going to make an hour of progress on my book, and then I'm going to get to my meetings, and I'm going to get to this and this and this and that. And if that is the if that's your lot in life, and you literally have no control over that, then okay, you kind of have to go for that. But wherever possible, if you can find a way to be like, you know what, this week, I'm not going to turn up to any of my meetings, because I trust my team to take care of that.

50:34And I'm just going to focus on the book. And I'm just going to make 50 ,000 words of progress in that one week. I think, you know, James Clear has done a great job of like, you know, this whole stuff around consistency. But I also think there is something to be said for intensity. Short periods of intensity, working on a project, focused effort, one at a time, tends to move the needle way more than a little bit of consistency on a lot of different things all over the long term. So that's the stuff I kind of find myself coaching entrepreneurs about. I feel a bit... Naval says the same thing, right?

51:04He talks about working like a lion. Oh, yeah. He says, you know, people have this all wrong, you know, and they say, I can't remember the other animal that he says most people suggest it to. But a lion will just lie in the savannah all day, all week, doing absolutely nothing. When it's time to make the kill, intensity. Energy has got to feed the whole family. So, you know, they look lazy as hell, but actually they're conserving energy and it's probably the most productive killer in the animal kingdom. Yeah. I read on LinkedIn from everyone on LinkedIn and all the memes I see every day that turns out motivation is bollocks and it's all about discipline.

51:41but you're here telling me that every single genius on LinkedIn is probably wrong. So tell me a little bit about motivation instead of discipline. Yeah. Okay. So I think discipline is important, but like it gets to way too much credit. Discipline is useful in small doses. Like, you know, when it, in the morning, you know, I wake up at 7.30 and I'm like, oh, I really don't want to go to the gym today. It takes a bit of discipline and a bit of, I don't want to let my personal trainer, of janeet down for me to get in the car and go to the gym. That's like a small dose of discipline. But then when I'm there, it's not discipline that's getting me through the workout.

52:16It's the personal trainer. And the fact that if I'm working out on my own, I try and find a way to make it fun. I enjoy the process. I'm listening to an audio book or like, like battle music from Lord of the Rings to feel more epic and doing a workout that I enjoy. I think discipline is good for getting started. Enjoyment is good for sustaining a particular thing. But I think also people are like, you know, motivation is, you know, motivation is a myth. Motivation is temporary. And yes, it's true that like motivation is temporary, but there are in fact different forms of motivation. Most people are familiar with two forms.

52:46So extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic being, I'm motivated to do this because I'm getting paid or I'm getting a reward or I'm avoiding a punishment. Intrinsic, I'm motivated to do this because it's fun. This is sort of what I'm getting at with the gym. It's like, if you can make it fun, you're intrinsically motivated to do it. Intrinsic motivation, way better, much more longer lasting. the problem is intrinsic motivation always wanes over time as well so motivation is a bit of like what like what like waxes and wanes even when you're finding something fun there are still times where it's not going to be fun all the time where the intrinsic motivation dips and so what do you do when the intrinsic motivation dips you can use the language of discipline you can be like well i'm going to do this thing anyway um which works for some people and doesn't work for others but there are actually two more forms of motivation there's introjected motivation and identified motivation.

53:35And these are both forms of extrinsic motivation. And when we normally think extrinsic motivation is bad, intrinsic motivation is good, but it's a little bit more complicated than that, in that there are multiple types of extrinsic motivation. So we've got fully external motivation. Hey, Dan, let's do this podcast because you're going to get paid for it. Fully external. You've got introjected motivation, which is, you know, I will feel really guilty and I will punish myself if I don't do this thing. This is like the negative self-talk that I've heard from a lot of students. You know, for example, like, oh, if I don't study for this exam, I'm going to be so disappointed in myself.

54:10I'll be such a failure. Like, I'm going to let my family down, et cetera, et cetera. That is a very negative form of motivation that tends not to last. But then you have another form of external motivation, which is identified motivation, where it's like, you know what? I don't feel intrinsically motivated to go to the gym right now because it's not going to be fun. But I personally and authentically really value the outcome. I value the outcome of a healthy mind and a healthy body. And therefore, I'm going to go to the gym. So I'm not doing it purely intrinsically because it's fun, because eventually that stops being fun.

54:41I'm doing it because I really, really, really value the outcome. And if you can remind yourself of the outcome that you're going for, and kind of have a sense of where you are right now, that mental contrasting really helps you boost your motivation or discipline or whatever you want to call it to get to the gym even when it stops being fun amazing i'd never heard of these yeah man it's good shit i hadn't either until i did the research for the book and i came across this interjection i was like whoa that's really cool was it like when you're writing a book like this just out of interest you're trying to obviously be productive and you're aware that everything you're writing is gonna probably get poo-pooed by the editor at some point and then you come across something unique like that is that an amazing feeling where you're like I haven't read this in all the other books yet.

55:24Yeah, it was fantastic. I actually did read it in a book initially, but it was a book written by a psychology professor. The book is not going to be mainstream. No one's going to know about it. And so I found this story in this random book that this guy, Ken Sheldon, wrote around this Pacific Crest Trail, which is like the super intense like hiking trail in America. And he talked in this book, which was weirdly about free will. He just threw out that, oh yeah, you know, there are four different types of motivation. And I was like, hold the fuck up. I swear there's only two. And he went, oh, he's like, yeah, there's extrinsic, there's interjected, there's identified, and then there's intrinsic.

55:55I was like, fuck. So then I was like, immediately, I was listening to it on Audible, bought it on Kindle so that I could go to the end and look at the references, find all the papers this guy's ever written, bring them into Zotero, my reference manager, read everything this guy, Ken Sheldon, has published in the last 40 years to try and find this insight. And I found the paper where he was telling the story. And I was like, yes, this is that final piece of the puzzle that I needed for the final chapter of the book. It was so nice. I love that feeling. Okay. So we talk about discipline, we talk about motivation.

56:22How do you actually get up and go? How do you actually want to go to work on a day-to-day basis? So it goes a little bit further than that, right? That's feeling good. Yeah. Yeah. So the thing is like, we all have to do things that we don't want to do sometimes. We all have to do things that are a little bit boring, a little bit dull. As entrepreneurs, it's a lot easier to delegate those things than as an employee. so my first protocol is that if you're an entrepreneur listening or watching or watching this you actually have the power to delegate things so use that power because most employees don't um but let's say for whatever reason there are things that you don't enjoy doing that you have to do you know i don't particularly enjoy look reviewing our finances every month but the fact that i own the business means i probably should review the finances every month it's take me half an hour to go through the pnl to understand what everything is to double click on things log into freaking quickbooks and hope for the best etc etc this is where the first three chapters of the book coming play power and people how can i approach it in the spirit of play how can i create a sense of power while i'm doing this and how can i bring other people into the process play power and people now we talked about play you know one of one way to do that is to sort of take it less seriously the other way to do that and this is actually a wallpaper i have on my phone is by asking yourself the question what would this look like if it were fun and i used to have this as a post-it note before i went traveling on my computer monitor what would this look like if it were fun.

57:41So let's say I need to review my financial accounts for the next 30 minutes. What would that look like if it were fun? If I had a gun to my head and I had to make it 10 % more fun, what would I do? Well, I mean, the gun to the head is a start. Yeah, exactly. That'll make it fun. Yeah. Well, what would I do? Well, I probably wouldn't sit in my office and hunched over on my laptop to do it. You know what? I've got to review these accounts. I don't need to be in the office. Why don't I just go to the coffee shop downstairs? Why don't I get a latte from Gail's? Because obviously I'm an entrepreneur and living in an upwardly socially mobile area.

58:11Get my little latte from Gales, get a little cookie as well, because why not? That'll make it fun. You know what? While I'm there, instead of doing this in silence, why don't I put on my headphones and listen to some music? You know what? What would make me, what would make this feel like an adventure? I think the Lord of the Rings soundtrack would be really cool. That would make this fun. That would make me feel as if I'm in Helm's Deep or some shit, like trying to go get, trying to get through these accounts. How can I experience a sense of progress? This is a big part of power. Part of the reason why video games are so addictive is because you can see your leveling up bar going up and you feel like, yeah, I'm making progress.

58:42I'm leveling up. This is a big part of why writers track their word count because they can see the number going up. So what is the equivalent for my writer's word count for these accounts? Maybe, I don't know, every time I have, I used to do this at university, every time I reviewed a line in the accounts, why don't I just color code that line of the spreadsheet green so that I can just feel the green going up. And then, you know, there's something weird about that where, you know, it's like the joy we get ticking things off a to-do list. Sometimes people will just put a task on they've already done just to be able to take it off.

59:12It's a real sort of sense of like dopamine release and feeling like you're making progress. Cool. How can I make progress more visible? That's power. Another component of power is how can I connect this to helping someone in some way? And so if I can really just convince myself that the reason I'm doing these accounts is not because I have to, but because I get to, I choose to, I'm blessed to, oh my goodness, how incredible is this that I have this sort of business where every month, all I have to do is spend 30 minutes looking at the accounts and I can see how much money we've made. That's fucking incredible.

59:39And I can see how, you know, we're paying all these salaries to the team. But the good part of that is that we're supporting their families. That's really good. It's like, if you can genuinely convince yourself of these things, which you can, because it's not that hard to convince yourself because it's true, that gives you that sense of power, gives you that sense of purpose in what you're doing. And then finally, P, people, how can I bring other people into this? One thing I enjoy doing is - Like the barista, the person who made you a cookie. Yeah, that kind of thing. Exactly. You'd be like, hey, do you want to help see my financial accounts it might be a bit of a dick move yeah um they do not but one one thing i really enjoy is arranging like co-working sessions with friends like if it's a saturday and i've got like a few hours to kill in between like a lunch and a dinner or whatever yeah we did one in king's cross together oh yeah we did it's like i'll just message a couple people who i know are in london and be like hey i'm chilling at the paddington we work um i can get you all in who wants to come and work for a few hours and friends will come over so actually last saturday initially it was just me and I was working on a landing page for one of our products in WeWork in Paddington.

1:00:37But I messaged a few friends and then it ended up being a party with like six of us there. And we were playing some music and we had the whole place to ourselves because no one was around and playing some table tennis. So there are always ways to also try and get people into the thing that you are doing. So play power in people, the three Ps that make anything, however boring, however dull, more energizing. But obviously as an entrepreneur, try and delegate the stuff you don't enjoy. I love it. I think the thing that's really interesting just on that exact point as well coming back to productivity productivity is about the output of the thing you're trying to do not necessarily a quantity so people hear this they're like um so you went to we work in paddington to do some work on a landing page and then you invited a bunch of mates and you ate food danced and played ping pong so did you do the fucking thing or not yeah finish the landing page exactly i was doing a bunch of random ass errands that i was putting off because i couldn't be asked to do them but having six friends there in a we work well actually you know what i might as well book these flights i might as well look at the accounts i might as well do this yeah these are these are the surprising things that actually do happen when you're enjoying the stuff around because uh you're kind of trying to wait for the right insight and the right creative moment to strike and those things are all triggered better when you're in a good mood when you're around people you love yeah absolutely all right final question actually so ali firstly thank you congratulations on publishing your first book thank you um slightly more private but because on your friend and I know this stuff.

1:01:59You sort of didn't have a goal of having it as New York Times bestseller, but you sort of did really have that goal and had to deal with the, what's it like internally with my ego getting damaged if it doesn't get there? And then obviously it did. How did it feel genuinely to have got there? And are you over it already? Are you able to sustain the joy of having such a great accomplishment? Yeah, honestly, it felt like a major relief. It was one of those goals, you know, hitting the New York Times list where I knew it was possible, but we just had to work really hard to get there. And those are the sorts of goals that are kind of annoying because you just know you have to put in a lot of work.

1:02:35And so it was down to the wire. Like the week before, we did not have a shot of hitting the list because we didn't have enough pre-orders. But on the week of all of the marketing came together, like the podcasts I'd done ahead of time all batched, the stars aligned and we just made it onto the list. So that was cool. That was a major relief. So you weren't like a lion. Yeah, to an extent. Yeah, we really focused on that week of launch. But what's interesting about it, and I knew this would happen because I'd spoken to like Ryan Holiday and Mark Manson and stuff, who've hit the list many times, is that I knew the joy would fade very quickly.

1:03:08And I don't think I've even upgraded my like social media bios to say New York Times bestselling author. And now when I find myself like in before this was published, I was thinking, oh, it'd be so good to be able to say in videos, hey, friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Ali. I'm a doctor to an entrepreneur, the author of the New York Times bestseller, Feel Good Productive. I'm making videos and I don't even say New York Times bestseller because it just feels a bit like, yeah, cool. We did the thing. And it weirdly feels like nothing. And I think it's the same thing with, it's like what everyone says when you accomplish a goal, like the glow of the celebration lasts maybe a day or two, and then you go back to your previous date.

1:03:49And I knew that this would happen because I'd read a lot about this. I knew that this phenomenon was going to be a thing. And I knew that whether or not we hit the list, I wouldn't care a few days later. And so we hit the list. It was great. Thank you to everyone who supported the book. But it now feels like nothing. Other than like, cool, that box has been ticked. So now I can chill a little bit more. So for real productivity, enjoy the process. Yeah, it's all about enjoying the process. And at various points in the book writing journey, I'd forgotten that. And it took my editor or my book coach or whatever to be like, Holly, I think we should take our own advice here and treat this process a little bit less seriously a little bit more sincerely a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more lightness and ease and yeah focus on the things within our control and i'd be like that's a really good point good advice let's make sure that's in the book awesome okay and also if you're keen here and you're listening don't just buy the book but my cat is giving you a gloving review outside oh that's your cat time to let her in that was the baby ali thanks so much for coming to our new secret leader studio It's been a pleasure and I'll see you soon.

1:04:51Thanks for having me, man. This is so sick. Good luck with the rest of the pod. Thanks. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Of course. I'm going to listen to your Matt Lerner episode like on the Uber to Central London. Good man. Comments. Leave some comments.

1:05:05If you enjoyed this episode and found it useful, please write us a review and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. It makes a real difference. And we genuinely love reading what you think. We read every single review. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter, and we'll be back next week with more lessons for entrepreneurs and leaders. See you next time.

From the publisher

What if the secret to getting more done, is having more fun?
In this episode we speak with Ali Abdaal - YouTuber, doctor, author and Founder who has built a business around his own personal brand. Ali shares his approach to being more productive by simply making work feel like play.
Ali explains the science behind why we're more motivated when something feels like a game rather than a chore. He provides practical tips for turning boring tasks into engaging challenges by reframing them with an element of fun. From optimising habits to delegating effectively, Ali covers strategies to inject more enjoyment into your daily grind.
Whether you're an entrepreneur hitting a career milestone or just looking to get more done without burning out, Ali's perspective offers a refreshing way to tackle your responsibilities with more energy and less stress.
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The secret key to increase your productivity - Ali Abdaal

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