YouTube Superstar Ali Abdaal on Productivity and Essentialism (PT 2)

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1:51Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:42Hey, it's Ryan. I'll get right into it because we're bringing you part two of my interview with the one and only Ali Abdaal, trained at Cambridge University to become a doctor. just a guy who loves reading, who loves learning, who loves systems. And he started making YouTube videos on the side and somehow became one of the world's most followed productivity experts. And he's been working on this book for a long time. I met him when he was just thinking about doing it. And so now to see it out in the world, that's pretty awesome. You can check out Feel Good Productivity, how to do more of what matters to you.

3:17He came all the way out from England to do an interview at the Painted Porch. I think it went great. I think you'll like it. You can And follow him, Ali Abdaal, everywhere on all the major platforms. Check out his YouTube channel if you're looking for a good subscribe. And grab Feel Good productivity as well.

3:44Yeah, my YouTube channel is essentially an exploration of the stuff I'm interested in. And I've recently started to become interested in relationships in terms of reading books about how to have a healthier, happier relationship. And I hope that when I become a dad and continue making videos, then I'll be like, yeah, reading all these parenting books and like making a video every couple of months to be like, right, I've just read the unconditional parenting alpha cards. Good shit. 10 takeaways. That sort of stuff. I found, I guess, similar to you kind of writing Daily Stoic through me trying to make a video or two every week for six plus years.

4:16all personal development adjacent, those lessons seep into your subconscious in a way that like they really wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, yeah. Seneca says we learn as we teach. And so if you as a person who writes self-help books or makes YouTube videos or has pockets or whatever, if you're thinking I'm really smart and I am telling you everything that I know, not only is that egotistical, but it actually continues to inflate and puff up the ego. Right. But if instead you see it as like, I am trying to figure things out and I am explaining what I am learning as I am learning it. Yeah. You are learning it and other people are learning it and you're creating this feedback loop in which you're both learning at the same time.

5:07And by having to articulate it and explain it and distill it, you are understanding it better than if you were just learning it for yourself yeah yeah there's a book i'm reading at the moment called uh notes from a fellow traveler by derren brown he's a magician yeah yeah he's really into stoicism oh he's he is his book happy is very good basically all about stoicism um but i really like the title of that book notes from a fellow traveler he's sort of a book written for other magicians um but that framing like a fellow traveler i really like that because he's not trying to be a guru he's not saying i've got the answer he's just like hey i'm in this business just as you are and here are some notes and i just love that framing of it it just takes takes all the pressure off reduces the seriousness makes it feel more like play all of the good things yeah someone who's just a little bit further along the path in some ways or struggling with their own things and you're and you're sort of channeling that and trying to make it accessible and practical to other people what is what are some like i really like this list of the the parenting some things do you have any on relationships in general like uh like the romantic relationship with your wife and things what are some things that you guys do that maybe you've discovered through reading and stuff well i always say that the number one so i've been with my wife now for 17 years we we met when we were in college and um we uh we met at a college party we got married almost 10 years ago eight years this year nine years so it's been a long time so it's uh and we basically been married that whole time uh in that we always had a very sort of involved like serious relationship as opposed to just we've known each other a long time um and so people sometimes ask what the secret to like oh you know lasting that long is and i I usually say that the secret is to not break up.

7:00That's the secret. That's the number one secret is to just not break up. Because I'm joking, but I'm also not joking, right? Like I think just as a productivity system or a business or a lifestyle, it's about picking a thing and then sticking with that thing, right? Through the ups and downs of what life inevitably brings you. And I find, you know, obviously we got together before online dating was really even a thing, but then dating apps. And like, I noticed that a lot of my friends struggle because it's easy to break up and it's easy to find another person. Do you know what I mean? Like essentially an unlimited amount of other fish in the sea exists.

7:50and if you conceive of that it makes it very hard to do what a relationship requires you know what i mean which is sacrifice which is struggle which is putting up with shit you know so it's hard it's like it's really hard it's hard uh so i i profess to have no no secrets other than don't quit i mean it's it's amazing how in in all these different spheres like you know the stuff you were talking about with kids presence patience rooting without conditions judgments expectations being repair and not being perfect all of that stuff applies to every other aspect of life as well like work too well even the kids stuff applies to yourself right because we all have sort of we all have this inner child that needs work right that's stuck somewhere not fully developed and one of the beautiful things about having kids is the way that it allows you to reparent yourself because you suddenly fully understand what a six-year-old is going through or a nine-year-old is going through or a nine-month-old is going through and you can see more clearly now the things that you didn't get that maybe you needed or the ways that how everyone used to do things was insufficient.

9:15Maybe just for you specifically, or maybe just as a practice, it was terrible. And you can kind of see, oh, okay, I can't go back in time and fix that, but I can do things differently here. And I can also empathize, connect with an earlier version of myself that needed those things too. And that by giving that thing to someone else, you're also partly healing yourself. That's great stuff. You're in pretty good shape. What are some of the secrets to staying in good shape as you've been a parent? I profess to have no secrets there either other than I try to run, swim, or bike every day. I just try to do some hard, strenuous physical activity every day.

10:07And if there is a health benefit to that, I consider it a bonus on top of the two real benefits that having an exercise practice gives you. One, you are literally practicing having a practice. Like every day I go for a run. the default is that i do the thing and every time i do the thing i am building the muscle of doing the thing and being the kind of person that does what i say i'm going to do yeah like it's not fun to do it it can hurt to do it but i get up off the couch and i do the thing that i say i'm going to do and the second benefit of having a physical practice is that it's usually getting the mind moving in some way.

11:00And so, you know, there's no screens, there's no multitasking. You're just in that headspace. So like I have the flow state every day from the physical activity and the days when i don't have it nothing else is as works as well do you do any weight training yeah i try to lift weights like i don't know a couple times a week i feel like i've seen some b-roll of you in like the backyard yeah like kettlebells or i have like a squat rack i do some stuff not as in the pandemic i got more into it than i do now. The important thing for me is I run, swim, or bike. I do some form of cardio exercise for a long period of time.

11:49And if I can get the other stuff in, sure. Changing gears a bit. I was re-listening to the conversation we had three years ago in the car on the way here. And one of the things you said in that has actually stayed with me for the last three years. It was something to the effect of, you know, you've got all these friends who are in real estate and sometimes you're like, huh, maybe I should get into real estate. And then you realize all your friends want to be self-help book writers and you're like, huh, I've got a pretty good gig. I wonder if you can just sort of like riff on that for a second.

12:19Seneca had this word euthymia, which he defines as tranquility. He says tranquility is the sense of the path that you are on and not being distracted by the paths that crisscross yours. is especially from those who are hopelessly lost, which I think is very beautiful and true. Sometimes you find like when you're running, you know, someone will pass you and you go, are they faster than me? They could have started eight seconds ago and you could be five miles in or they could be stronger than you. They could be doing steroids. You know, like the idea that you're comparing yourself to this person when you don't know when they started and you don't know where they're finished, finishing is madness.

13:09Right. And life is like that. Like we're all running our own races and you've got to have a sense of the race that you are running and what victory or success in that race is to you. So I think that's like the number one life lesson and something I remember learning and running around this track in college. And I would sometimes catch myself picking up my pace to keep up with someone else. And then they would stop. And I'm like, I just gassed myself. You know, now I have to cut the run short because I was competing with this person. And I have no idea what their goals are, what they're doing. I know nothing about them other than someone competition, you know, and it sucks you in.

13:52So I think that's a really important lesson that I've learned from the physical practice over the years. but one of the things about jealousy or these are envy that sort of competitive urge that we feel in other parts of our lives is that we don't spend a lot of time thinking about who that other person is what their life is like uh and what they want you know marcus really says like these the people whose approval you crave. He says, take a minute to think about who they really are and see what that does to the approval you want from them. You just go, oh, this person has this. I want to be like them, or I want to be accepted into that group.

14:38I want to be in this club. And you're not really thinking about who those people are, what they do, whether it's working for them. And I've had this surreal sort of experience pertaining to that where you meet people and you think they have it all. And then, you know, you're jealous of them. And then it turns out they're jealous of you. Right. Like you, you. Jealousy almost always takes for granted what you have because it's, you know, eyeing what someone else has. and there's usually an ignorance of what is it actually like to be that other person. And yeah, I found it's funny. You meet these billionaires or whatever, and what do they actually want to do?

15:25They want to write books. They have all the money in the world, and what are they trying to spend the money on? They're trying to spend it on having the thing that I get to do. And so I try to remind myself of that and count myself as lucky to get to do this. do you feel that sense of comparison or do you slash did you ever feel that sense of comparison when it comes to uh bestseller lists and book sales numbers and james clear's got this many five-star reviews on amazon and i've only got this many you know that whole shebang well that's why it's important to understand what race you're running right so um i remember i was at a conference in Canada.

16:05I don't remember. I was at some conference and James, who was then, he had this popular newsletter. I sort of vaguely knew his work. We talked a couple of times. I was doing a panel or a session on publishing and he came and he asked for a bunch of advice, but he was just generally, if I remember correctly, quite skeptical about why anyone would traditionally publish or publish a book at all. He's like, why would I do this? I have this huge email newsletter. Why wouldn't I just write stuff on the internet? And I said, look, people have read books for thousands of years. It's a medium that has a certain cultural significance and books are actually a great way to deliver ideas.

16:45But there I was, a person who'd published a few successful books at that point. And I'm condescendingly telling this internet writer why publishing should be something that he considers. And then a couple years later, he puts out a book and that one book has sold more than all of my books combined and then some. So, you know, the one reaction to that would just be jealousy, scorn, like you could, that could make you feel shitty. And I think there are times in my life when maybe that would have made me feel shitty. But first off, I like James. Second, I think he's a great good book. And third, I don't know how many I'm counting now, but whatever.

17:33There is no universe in which that book selling more or less copies affects my life in any negative or positive way. Yeah. Right. Like, so that book could sell a hundred million copies. They're not, it's not coming out of my pocket. Right. So more power to them. Right. And so I've tried to remind myself of that, but then what I've, you have to do when you realize you're running your own race is you have to go, James is writing a book about habits, which is for everyone. I'm writing about an obscure school of ancient philosophy, which I would like to be for everyone, but by definition is probably going to be for fewer people.

18:14And that is a choice that I made willingly. I can write about whatever I want. I could have written about whatever I want. I chose this thing or this thing chose me because it's the right thing for me. And you have to be able to go, ah, right. This is where I'm supposed to be. I made a series of choices and for better or for worse, those choices made some outcomes possible and some outcomes not possible. Like I remember I spoke to these high ranking officers in the Navy once a couple of years ago, and I was talking about ego or something and i said you know like if you got into this for like money and recognition and fame you fucked up like you shouldn't have joined the navy like you joined this because there were certain parts of it that lit you up that were meaningful to you that you thought were the right fit for you you chose classical music not pop music yeah right And by nature of making that choice, some outcomes are possible and some outcomes are not possible.

19:22And you have to accept that. And the worst thing you can do is make those choices which are objective and sort of unbeatable. And then work really hard and expect things that are in contradiction of that choice. Do you know what I mean? Like if you're a classical musician and you go, my goal is to be the best classical musician I can be and to push the boundaries of the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, then you can succeed. If you go, I'm putting out this album and I hope it debuts at number one on the billboard charts, you know, you're almost surely going to be severely disappointed because you've chosen something that is a smaller pool.

20:07You know, maybe you have a higher floor, but a lower ceiling. That's the nature of the choice that you made. And being honest with yourself about that is really, really important, at least for happiness.

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21:28That's A-U-R-A frames dot com, promo code STOIC. This deal is exclusive to listeners, and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. terms and conditions apply. I got an amazing night's sleep last night. One, because my six-year-old fell asleep in the car at like six o 'clock and he transferred him from the car seat to the bed and it stuck, which is just magic. So he's in bed way earlier than normal. But I sleep really well every night because I have a 8 Sleep Pod 5 Ultra, which is 8 Sleep's best product. I've used 8 Sleep for many years now.

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22:57The best part is you still get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it. But I know you will. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in Better Sleep, shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at eightsleep.com slash dailystoic. Do you ever meet writers who you feel have sort of this unhealthy relationship with comparison? Or are most of the people you hang out with fairly enlightened? No, no, I mean, definitely there's people that are sort of driven by how much they sell or how much money they make or whatever. But again, if that's why you got into books, you fucked up.

23:35You know what I mean? Like if you got into writing books for money and fame and power, you're an idiot. Like there's, that's not even, that's like, that's probably the worst of all the different genres of entertainment or show business. You pick the worst one. And like for that, if that's what you're optimizing for, you pick the worst one.

24:03So to expect, like the Stoics say, don't expect figs in winter. That's like the essence of happiness is to not expect figs in winter. There's a time when you can get figs and it's not winter. So, you know, you can be successful writing books. You can make a good amount of money. You can make more money than you need, but are you going to rival the fortune of Warren Buffett? No. You know, so to expect otherwise is probably silly. It's not even probably silly. It's stupid. It's stupid. And it's not fair. It's not fair to you or to the people around you, right? Because you are feeling aggrieved that you didn't get something that it was not possible ever to get.

24:53so my book is coming out in at the end of december so i'm not sure when this is going to be aired but end of december uh any advice it's the first one um you've been through this a lot yeah um so i always tell people when they finish a book that you have completed the first of two marathons and you you finish this first marathon and you think you know you stagger how's to finish and and you think they're someone grabs you by the hand and you think that they're going to take you over to like the metal stand and instead they're just leading you over to the starting line of the second marathon which is now marketing and selling the book talking about it and getting it into people's hands yeah and so understanding that these are two equally important races um i think is really really important and not enough people do that they just write something and then they just expect or assume that the world owes them success, which it doesn't.

25:55People are busy. People have a lot going on. There's not only all the books that are coming out, but there's literally everything that has ever been published for all of human history up until this point. And a lot of it is very good. And most people haven't even gotten to a fraction of that. So the idea that your thing is going to jump in front of that line is inherently presumptuous, if not delusional. And so it takes a lot of work to break through. The obstacle is away when it came out. First off, I said to myself, I'm writing a book about ancient philosophy. Most people are not interested in ancient philosophy.

26:38so it's already an uphill battle and then i said to myself i read a lot how many books do i read the week they come out or the month they come out or the year they come out and i read way more than most people how many books have i pre-ordered ever in my life maybe one or two so the idea that this thing is going to come out of the gates as a hit is stupid you know it's going to take a long time so first off you try to make something that doesn't need doesn't have an expiration date on it that's number one number two seeing it as a marathon and not a sprint it's really really important so the obstacles away came out in may of 2014 i started writing it in 2012 so it took two years came out it sold three four thousand copies its first week it got skunked on the new york times bestseller list yeah like it should it probably sold enough to hit the what was then the extended list there was 20 spots on the advice how to then and it didn't and it certainly sold enough to hit the wall street journal hardcover business list and uh someone at my publisher had decided to list it as a like a different like it didn't qualify for that list like they categorized they checked the box categorizing something different didn't hit it yeah so So it did not hit any bestseller list until September of 2019.

28:22Wow. Nice. At which point it had sold close to a million copies. So again, we think of what a bestseller is. We forget that bestseller lists are categorized by the week. So a book that sells 10 ,000 copies in one week will hit a bestseller list for that week, almost certainly. but a book that sells 1000 copies a week for a year so five times as many copies but almost certainly not make any bestseller list which would you rather have um and so it's about setting yourself up to last and it's about not quitting on it nice um And the Obstacles Way sells, most years sells more copies than it did the previous year, which is pretty rare in publishing.

29:17But every single week that comes out, that it is out, how many copies it sold in its first week becomes less and less important. Right? And unless you are not successful, that will be true for your project. Right? Like every week, the percentage of how you did at the beginning becomes more and more meaningless. It becomes more and more meaningless. But that's very hard to think about when it is 100 % of the weeks that you have been out, right?

29:53Takes time. And realizing that the thing I've tried to say to myself is to people who have never heard of you, you are new. So I'll almost certainly have an email in my inbox when I get done from this from someone and say, I just read your book, The Obstacle is the Way, that is approaching its 10 year anniversary. Yeah. Right. And so to them, it's a brand new book. And it's a brand new book to them because they're a junior in high school. Yeah. you know and they were eight when it came out yeah you know um and so you know that's what sort of lasting can do um and to and to yeah to to sort of be be patient with is the main it's the main thing one of the ways that we we have a telegram group for our podcast and we said we were gonna interview you and we had like loads of people asking other questions there's one comment from one guy that I felt a bit salty about.

30:55He was like, Ryan Holiday says the same stuff on every podcast he's interviewed on. And I was like, hmm. Because I say the same stuff on every podcast I'm interviewed on. It's kind of like a thing you have to do. And I found that it was less a comment on you and more like I started thinking, fuck, I've made the same video so many times. I've been talking about productivity for like six plus years now. I've basically been saying the same stuff, but each month we get like 100 ,000 new subscribers. It's clearly new to someone. Yeah, there's some main character energy in people who don't realize that most people are consuming this thing for the first time and hearing about this person for the first time.

31:43So, you know, as a creator, there's a little bit of narcissism in that you go like, everyone's following everything that I do. And in fact, not only does most people not know that you exist, even the people that know you exist and are fans, you're like 500th on their list of priorities. Like I think about my favorite bands, my favorite authors, like how closely am I following their life? Like not at all. I'm the main character energy in my own life. So realizing that like that self-consciousness can actually hold you back as a creator because you're like, people will get mad that I just talked about this two videos ago.

32:20And actually they didn't see two videos ago, so you're not. But the other product of this is, the other part I would say to that person that's a little tricky is it's like, dude, it's not my fault. Like I can only answer the questions that I'm being asked. And I tend to get asked the same questions a lot, right? What is this? So like I would love to be, I would love to have a totally new and unique conversation every time. And I definitely feel like there are ones where I'm like, that was interesting to me for a change. I didn't feel like I was sort of, you know, uh, giving the same song and dance, but a lot of people are just asking the same questions because they're introducing you to their audience or they want to get the basics.

33:02Do you know what I mean? So it's, it can be weird. Do you ever get bored writing about stoicism? Um, not really. Uh, because one of the ideas from the Greeks is this idea that we don't step in the same river twice because the river changes and you change. And so, I mean, I've been doing the Daily Stoking email every day for seven years and I've probably used some of the same quotes hundreds of times at this point, but it feels new to me every time I do it because what I'm trying to say or the way into the idea is different. and I know the audience is different and I know what's happening in the world is different.

33:49So it certainly keeps me, it feels fresh to me because life is fresh.

33:59But when I am bored, I just write about whatever I want. You know, like it isn't the only thing that I do. And so when I feel like writing something, I write that thing. Yeah, because people sometimes ask me that, you know, aren't you bored of talking about productivity? I'm like, honestly, not really. Like I'm bored of, I guess, making videos that are like top 10 productivity tools, but I do very little of that these days. And I think productivity is, you know, really just about using our time well, which covers basically everything in personal development. And so even if I'm writing about relationships or making a video about health, I would count that as productivity.

34:38Yeah. But, but also, you know, productivity to you when you were in medical school is different than what productivity is to you now as you are not in medicine. It's different to you when you had one employee. It's different to you when you had 10. What you're going through and where you're applying it is fundamentally different. So even if you're talking about the same ideas, you have a larger sense of it. You have a larger set of experiences to draw from. And so even if it is the same, it's better and different because it's based on more. Nice. Why do you think people are so interested in passive income?

35:20I'm really interested in passive income. Does it exist? I think it does. So there's this whole dream. I'm not sure if Tim Ferriss used the phrase in 4-Hour Workweek or if it was a thing afterwards. But I remember reading that book when I was like 17 and just about to apply to medical school. and my mind just absolutely blew wide open at the thought that i could be making money while i slept and just that thing of like you know was always always in the back of my mind and now we know it's another one of those things that anytime we make a video on youtube uh with the with the phrase passive income in it we know it's going to do well because people love the idea of of doing a thing and then it's making money without needing your additional input i think kind of like books books are a source of passive income yeah well intellectual property exactly yeah you know you wrote the obstacle is the way 10 years ago and it's now been making you passive income ever since um i've certainly found in our business um the stuff that i i get so much satisfaction out of seeing like a stripe notification that someone bought a course i filmed three years ago and i've made 149 from it and way less satisfaction making way more money on a sponsored video there's something about it being an asset that is spinning off i guess free money that is like really nice.

36:39And also, I guess it really appeals to other people. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I was talking to an internet marketer person that I knew, and let's say he was saying the email subject line, follow a strategy to make$1 ,000 a month or to make thousands of dollars a month would actually perform worse than say, this strategy helps me make$1 ,444.17 per month. He was saying the specificity of it, even if it was total nonsense resonated resonated with people more um and i always wondered what there's something naive is not the wrong right word maybe unsophisticated is a nicer way to say about the idea that you if you just do all this stuff at some point you won't have to do anything do you know what i mean because that's not really how life works in my experience yeah Yeah.

37:36No, it's not really how life works. Nor is it how you would actually, nor is it how the life works for most of the people that you admire. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like people who do stuff that you're like, that's cool. I want to be like that are not people who own a series of vending machines that passively make money while they sleep. Do you know what I mean? They're people who are actively engaged in what they do. Yeah, I guess. um so i've i've i've kind of gone back and forth on this whole passive income thing um we still make videos about passive income and i always do a whole like 20 minutes of philosophizing at the start to be like okay here's how money works money's an exchange of value blah blah blah blah blah blah blah um but i find that like if i think back to myself back when i was in medical school the thought of being able to if i if someone gave me a vending machine business and it was making 3 000 a month i'm like whoa i never need to work a day in my life now now i can now i can do what i really want to do and just that being able to cover the basics through some sort of automated income stream even if it's not like greatness or anything even if it's just like i don't know automated vending machines selling coke cans or like a t-shirt business or whatever the thing is i think that is that is still very appealing because then it's like cool the bases are now covered, I can now spend my time doing the things that I actually want to do.

39:02I get that. Yeah. I thought about it that way earlier in my career. I mean, first of all, I had a job as I was becoming a writer, which allowed me to make certain creative decisions that maybe if I was a starving artist, I wouldn't have had the luxury of being able to turn things down or doing things a certain way or having as much time. But then, yeah, I thought I was like, I don't have a trust fund, but if I have sort of income streams other than like the creative work that I do, it's like I gave myself a trust fund. And now I have a certain amount of freedom or independence that I wouldn't if I was living and dying by how.

39:49Yeah, single paycheck. Yes. or till I burned through the book advance or whatever it was. The world is full of tours. But you don't choose a Toyota truck to follow the beaten path. You choose it to find the places in between. The detours, where each adventure pulls you toward the next. And wrong turns to now right. so why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour toyota trucks look if you're listening to this podcast you've probably heard of hello fresh right they're the number one meal kit in america they make home cooking easier with chef crafted recipes and fresh ingredients delivered straight to your door this fall they're serving up even more to love it's not the hello fresh you remember it's even better hello fresh is bigger they've doubled their menu.

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41:56Yeah, I feel like there, and anytime I make one of these money themed videos, there are always some comments that say, oh, I can't believe you're so obsessed with money. Like stop talking about money all the time. I'm like, oh, this guy's such a, so greedy and stuff. But I'm always like, no, like having, having more than one stream of income is genuinely life-changing. yeah like the fact that i had money coming in from my youtube channel and my business meant that i could leave my day job or at least go part-time on it to focus on the thing that actually brought me joy and fulfillment being able to have an extra stream of income is what allows parents to spend more time with their kids sure it's like one of the most worthwhile things in the world to have if you care about personal freedom and fulfillment and stuff um and so So I feel a bit distasteful of the phrase passive income, but I almost view it as a bit of a Trojan horse into teaching people that, hey, the way you actually make money is by creating X amount of value and capturing Y percent of it.

42:53Now just figure out a way that you can do that that's not correlated with your time. Generally, by creating something that's like media or code or basically those two things. Yeah, or investments. Or money itself, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People talk about like, you know, I want to earn like fuck you money. But really you could just have enough to be like, eh, you know, or like, I don't need to. Or, you know, just enough that it can kind of help you swing you one way or another as you're thinking about making a decision. Do you know what I mean? Whereas if your livelihood is dependent on this thing entirely.

43:31It's really hard to. I think about like, I mean, obviously you're not American, but in America, the fact that for most people, their health insurance is tied up. Yeah, that's so unfair. Especially as a country that celebrates entrepreneurialism and risk taking. Yeah. It seems like the most basic thing in the world that you would want to separate those two things. So people could take bigger risks and bet on themselves. And like, you shouldn't think I could literally die if I leave my job. That's madness to me. But being able to go, hey, actually, I'm going to see where this thing takes me. And I know I'm not going to starve.

44:17Like, I know that I have this thing. Maybe it's not covering my full expenses. You know what I mean? Like, I have these things that allow me. Like when I did The Obstacles of the Way, my publisher offered me about half of what I'd gotten paid for my first book. So if I didn't have my day job, I probably, I don't know if I would have said yes. But I wasn't indifferent to money, but I was able to go, I really don't care what the amount is. What I care about is, are you going to publish this book? Because if you are, then I'm going to go all in on this thing. Do you know what I mean? And so having, I do see how that gives you, gives you a certain amount of freedom of movement.

45:01Yeah. I think like, even like even in the UK, so obviously like health insurance, your health insurance is not tied to your employment and the national health service is very good. But even then people still act as if quitting their job means that they're going to die. Yes. And I'll often speak to people who, you know, like, you know, back in the day I was a bit concerned that, oh, if I leave medicine, will people think, oh, fuck you, I don't want to listen to your content anymore. But it's actually kind of the opposite that's happened. People are like, oh man, you got out of the system. You like, I don't know, something about the matrix and stuff.

45:34So people keep asking me for advice around quitting their job all the time. They're like, yeah, I really want to leave my job and do this thing. I'm like, great, what's stopping you? They're like, oh, but like, you know, the paycheck. And I'm like, okay, are you on the poverty line where like this paycheck is actually meaningful? There is a difference between survival and not. They're like, nope. Have you got any dependents? Nope. These are all people in their 20s that have a safety net from their parents and yet still the thought i might quote fall behind yeah and like fall behind my friends who are then getting that promotion at mckinsey or whatever the thing might be is preventing people from making a decision that is very unlikely to regret so i try and like nudge that as much as possible well i i got so lucky when i dropped out of college since i i've talked about this before but when i went in there i was like i'm here to drop out of college and they were like what you know uh they're like just fill out this form you take out you're you're just taking an indefinite leave of absence you can come back whenever you want there were some consequences like i i remember i was signing i signed something and it was like your scholarship may not be here when you're back as an adult now i realize they probably just would have given it to me again but like so there it wasn't totally without cost but there was the idea that like i thought it was this permanent irrevocable lifestyle decision when in fact it was a pause and you think hey i'm gonna leave this to go do this i'm gonna go give this a try i'm gonna open this coffee shop and you think you can never go back yeah and of course you can go back if you're in the hospital for a year would you be sitting there going i can never go back to my job no you would know there's gonna it's gonna be an adjustment period i might have some ketchup i have to you know there's but you just go get another job like that's how life works right and but especially when you're younger you don't have the experience it feels like the shift or the transition or the quitting can never be undone and only by the time you realize that the stakes were so much lower than you thought they were yeah yeah i find the the tim ferris fear setting exercise to be just really helpful actually the worst case scenario yeah what's the worst case and it's like, okay, what does it look like?

47:42How could you mitigate against it? Let's say the worst case does happen. What can you do to come back to where you currently are or at least someplace that's good enough? I think I've done that like three or four times in my life at the sort of crux of making a big decision. And I've always been like, oh, this is really helpful. Yeah. The worst case is never as bad as we think it is. And recovering from the worst case is also never as hard as we initially think it's going to be. Yeah, I remember when I was thinking of dropping out, I was talking to this person and he was telling me I should do it.

48:07And I go, you know, what happens if it doesn't work out? you know and he was like when i was in college he's like i got mono or something he had he got something and he he spent a year recovering yeah and he's like do you know how many times this has come up in my life that it took me five years to graduate from college zero times nobody knows nobody even does the math you started college at this date you got your first like nobody knows it just it as more time goes by it just all gone like you spent your time in college now you're not in college no one's like oh but what about that year between your sophomore and your junior year what was that about it never comes up and his point was like if i take this risk and it doesn't work out i just go back and it takes you four years to graduate five years whatever it's it's a it's a rounding error in the big scheme of things there's a good i think it's the thing that jeff Bezos says um which is like you know he's talking about the kind of the game of entrepreneurship and he's sort of likening it to a baseball match and he's like normally in a baseball match you can either hit one to four runs or whatever the number is I don't know anything about baseball but he's like in entrepreneurship you can take a swing but like the upside of the swing is infinite yes and so if you take enough swings you can actually get an outcome that way outperforms what you could have done if you were doing the job thing sure for example um and I think the you know i i wish more people would appreciate the asymmetry of the upside that you get from taking a risk and doing your own thing potentially right so you you you understand and you articulate the downside which is less than you think and then it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that the upside could literally be incomprehensible like when jeff bezos starts amazon he has some idea that it could be successful.

50:01But it would have been literally impossible to conceive of what it became because it didn't exist yet. And when I left, I had this sense that I wanted to be a writer. And I knew that I thought leaving got me closer, a better chance of being that writer than staying. And maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but like the writing that I ended up doing and the level at which I ended up doing it would have been if i thought that's what i was doing i should have been certified you know what i mean like i would have been a sign of a mental illness like there's any sense that this is how it was going to go yeah you know what i mean so you're just taking it step by step yeah i think the other big thing that i found really helpful was you know back in jeff's day we where there were very few examples of what does entrepreneurship look like like these days no one like people don't have that excuse anymore like if someone is even entertaining the thought of being a writer there are a zillion interviews with professional writers out there sure someone's been entrepreneur there are a zillion interviews with entrepreneurs where they're literally talking about how much money they're making yeah similarly for youtube and stuff um and so surrounding i think an information diet is a really important part of this yes like even just watching videos reading books and listening to podcasts from people who are doing the thing that you think you want to do helps you realize that oh that's fairly normal they've just been doing it for a while and yeah that's what the outcome could look like yeah like look if you're no one no one goes it must be impossible to be an accountant how does someone become an accountant right because you accountants are everywhere right although you know if you grew up in the inner city and your parents didn't work and you never had it might actually seem utterly unattainable and impossible to become that thing and the reality is it's not people do it every fucking day and that's not to say it's easy but it is possible it's very possible and if you steep yourself in how possible it is and surround yourself not physically but intellectually with people who have done it you figure out how it can be done and we talk a lot these days about like nepo babies and nepotism i think so much of that is if your mom was a famous actress, sure, that gives you advantages and introductions and you're in this sort of milieu that's beneficial.

52:23But also that doesn't seem impossible or impractical because your mom is doing it. She's not that great. Do you know what I mean? She's like, you know, you're just like, people do this. It is a job. You see how it works. It's deconstructed and demystified for you in a way that allows you to go to give yourself that self-assignment like i could do that yeah it was the same for me with the medicine stuff like i didn't have any in any official advantage getting into med school but my both my parents are doctors all of my friends as parents are doctors basically everyone i knew growing up was a doctor yeah and so like it doesn't seem that hard people become doctors people become doctors and then you know it was only when i started applying to med school and stuff where some people, oh my, oh my God, you're applying to med.

53:11Wow. That's so hard. Is it? Like everyone I know is a doctor. Like it's not that big a deal. I think it's that same concept applied to, yeah, anything. So people will probably be listening to this towards the end of the year where they start thinking of habits and resolutions. If someone's like, I want to be more productive next year, what would you tell them? if someone wants to be more productive next year all right i've got well three three things number one is actually just figure out or at least make a rough first draft of where do you actually want to go like sure you can be more productive by cranking up more words per day or whatever but like if you're not trying to be a writer don't have a vague sense of what productivity is not a goal.

54:00Exactly. Yes. Productivity is like a sort of an effectiveness measurement en route to a particular goal. And if you don't have that goal, then optimizing for productivity is completely pointless. Yeah. So I think step one is to figure out what the goal is. You know, some people don't like the word goal. The most helpful exercise I've ever found for this is something called the Odyssey Plan from the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and this other guy who's like some Stanford professors. And basically the idea is that you imagine your life three to five years in the future. If you continue to down your current path and you write out what it would look like, then you go back to back to day one, back to today.

54:38And you imagine your life three to five years from now, if you had to take a completely different path, and then you go back and then you imagine your life three to five years from now, if you had to take a completely different path, but money was no object and you didn't care about what people thought of you. And that just gives you sort of this divergent thinking that most people just never do. And I personally enjoy like doing that exercise every year and then converting it into a, okay, what does my 12 month celebration look like? 12 months from now, what would I like to be celebrating in the different realms of life, health, work, relationships, joy?

55:12Those are the four that I like personally. And now I've got some goals written down and there's so much evidence that says that people who write down goals, people who have goals are way more productive than people who don't. And people who write them down are even way more productive than people who don't write them down. So step one, figure out what your goals are and just write them down. Step two, I find it super helpful to just convert all of those goals into what is the action I have to take each week. So if you're, for example, trying to write a book, it might be a daily action of writing for two hours a day or a thousand words or whatever the thing might be.

55:40In my case, I'm trying to get fit. And so weight training three times, three times a week is the habit or the system I'm trying to develop. um and then number three is putting all those things in the calendar and then if they're in the calendar and you can turn you and you can make yourself the sort of person that does what's in the calendar honestly that is like 95 of all of all of the world's productivity advice condensed into three things figure out where you want to go turn it into and figure out how you're going to get there and then just put it in the calendar and do the thing when it comes around with a fresh year coming, what would you recommend people stop doing?

56:18Like what's a, what's like a, a destructive habit that you would say to get rid of? A really big one that holds everyone back is overthinking. So much research from this book around procrastination was realizing that procrastination is primarily an emotional problem. There is some sort of kind of fear of looking bad, fear of failure, self-doubt. The mind starts to weave all these stories about how we're not good enough to do this particular thing. And I've interviewed a couple of professors in procrastination who've done all the research about this. And their whole thing is like, you've just got to find a way to cut through the bullshit that the mind will present to you and just make a start on the thing.

57:04And often procrastination is a problem with getting started because once we get started, the inertia means that we'll just continue going. It's way harder to... Right. Objects in motion tend to continue. Exactly. Newton's first law. We talk about that in chapter four of the book. So recognizing that has really helped me recognize that when the mind is getting in the way, the best thing I can do is just get started with the thing. And then the mind has a habit of just sort of getting out of the way. But if people can stop overthinking and stop letting this fear of self-doubt and failure and stuff get in the way, getting in the way of living their best life, I would love that.

57:36I would love for that to happen. All right. Last question. What's something you feel like the Stoics can teach person who wants feel good productivity? Yeah, I think the main one I always come back to is the dichotomy of control. Epictetus is it? Yeah. You know, there are some things that are within our control and there are other things that are not within our control. And any amount of worrying about the things that are not within our control is usually worried that it's wasted. And I think a big part of feel good productivity is find a way to control the things that you can control. A huge part of what drives intrinsic motivation is the sense of autonomy, sense of control, the sense we have power over what we're doing.

58:15And some people are like, well, you know, I don't have any control over what my boss tells me to do. It's like, okay, you might not have control over the specific thing you have to do, but you might have control over how you choose to approach it. You have control over the process. Can you find a way to make it more interesting? Can you find a way to speed it up? Can you find a way to slow it down? Can you find a way to add music in the background to make it more interesting? There is always control that we can take in basically every situation, even in situations where we feel like we have none.

58:40And there's that quote from Viktor Frankl where he's in Auschwitz and is sort of surrounded by, you know, the German concentration camps and everything. And even in that scenario where he and his fellow inmates have no control over anything at all, at least they retain control over their own mind and over how they choose to approach the situation. So even in the most extreme of situations, we can find the things that we can control and we can focus on controlling those. And I think that's such a nice idea from stoicism that I always come back to. No, that's very well said. My productivity advice from the stoics would be a question.

59:12Mark Shrew says you have to ask yourself every moment, is this essential? He says, because most of what we do and say is not essential. And he says, when you eliminate the inessential, you get the double benefit of doing the essential things better. And so when I think about how I'm able to do what I do, there's the things that I don't do, that I've stopped doing or that I have delegated someone to do or that I have brought on a team to scale being able to do. and when you get rid of the wasted movements or the wasted thoughts or you stop chasing the things that don't matter or move the needle you find that actually i mean it takes a lot of energy to be great at something but it's less than people think you know what i mean like i think maybe someone would assume that like a writer writes 10 hours a day but it's like two you know what i mean Um, you think that, you know, an athlete is practicing and lifting weights and training all the time, but, you know, they're also taking long naps during the day and, you know, and they, and they built a lifestyle where someone's cooking for them and the team takes them from place to like, they've also eliminated so much of what is inessential that just concentrated bursts of the essential thing allows them to be best in the world at what they do.

1:00:38Absolutely. And yeah, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all your advice and tips and stuff over the last three plus years of this book coming together. Well, the book is great. I don't think it's going to crush. Fingers crossed, but that's not a thing I can control, so I'm not going to think too hard about it. But it already did crush. The way to think about it is that it already did crush and that it exists. It exists. And I'm proud of it. That would be more satisfying if this was the actual book. The hardback. This is the advanced reader copy that we've sent away. They're deliberately very flaccid, unfortunately.

1:01:07but it doesn't have the satisfying crud of a, or thought of a, of a hardcover, but it exists. And so literally every person that reads it, even if that's seven people and three of them are related to you, it's all extra. It's all nice. Sweet, man. Well, thanks. Thank you.

1:01:42thanks so much for listening if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on itunes that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show we appreciate it i'll see you next episode

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