The Art of Manliness - The Feel-Good Method of Productivity

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.400 When we think about getting more done, we tend to think about working harder,

00:00:15.160 exerting more willpower and buckling down. We tend to think of doing things that are unpleasant,

00:00:19.660 but that we deem worth it for the productivity boost they offer. But what if the key to greater

00:00:24.100 productivity ran the other way around? And the easier and more enjoyable you made your work,

00:00:28.240 the more of it you get done. That's the premise of Ali Abdaal's new book, Feel Good Productivity.

00:00:33.720 In addition to being a new author, Ali is a doctor, a YouTuber, and the world's most

00:00:38.020 followed productivity expert. Today on the show, Ali unpacks the three prongs of his feel-good

00:00:42.380 approach to productivity, energize, unblock, and sustain. We talk about how to inject your work

00:00:47.620 with more play, flip the confidence switch, find joy in increasing your power, harness relational

00:00:52.840 energy, and use the 10-10-10 rule for overcoming hesitation and taking action. We also discuss

00:00:58.320 why smart goals aren't always effective and what's a better alternative, why you might want to put a

00:01:02.960 five-minute hourglass on your desk, the three types of burnout, and how to overcome each, and much more.

00:01:08.360 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash feelgoodproductivity.

00:01:12.380 All right. Ali Abdaal, welcome to the show.

00:01:26.480 Thank you so much for having me. This feels like a full circle moment because I've been literally

00:01:29.800 following your blog for over 10 years and listening to various episodes of the podcast as well. So

00:01:34.340 it's super cool that I can be here with you today.

00:01:36.380 Well, thanks for the longtime support and reading us. I really appreciate that.

00:01:39.540 So you've got a new book out called Feel Good Productivity, and we're going to talk about that

00:01:44.060 today. But you have an interesting background because you started off your career as a medical

00:01:49.900 doctor, but now you're a productivity expert and a YouTuber. How did that happen? Because I think

00:01:55.340 it'll tell us a lot about your approach to productivity.

00:02:00.120 Yeah. So around the time that I discovered the Art of Manliness blog was when I got into medical school.

00:02:05.200 So I was at Cambridge University in the UK, which is a pretty good medical school.

00:02:09.540 And it was pretty hard and pretty overwhelming. And in my first year, I was drowning. I always got

00:02:15.760 through school by being smart naturally and didn't really have to work too hard. But as soon as I got

00:02:20.040 into medical school, suddenly it was like being hit in the face with a baseball bat repeatedly with the

00:02:25.840 amount of work there was. And for the first year, what I tried to do was kind of grit my teeth and

00:02:30.920 grind through it and stuff. And I remember after a while, just sort of feeling pretty depressed and

00:02:35.220 pretty burned out from it. And I'd heard that university is supposed to be the best time of

00:02:39.820 your life. So what the hell was I doing? Just working so hard and not really getting any results.

00:02:44.700 And then it was weird because in my second year, we had one lecture in psychology that completely

00:02:50.340 changed my life. And that was a lecture about effective study techniques. And my mind was blown.

00:02:56.820 And I was like, Oh my God, why have I never heard this before? Suddenly, I realized that all of the

00:03:02.060 crap that I'd been doing and just working harder was totally ineffective. And if I had just had the

00:03:07.620 right strategies, these like handful of things that make studying for exams way more fun and more

00:03:12.600 effective, I would have been way better. And so from that point on, for the next five years of

00:03:17.300 med school, I applied all these strategies and stuff. And that meant I was able to get decent grades

00:03:22.100 while also having loads of spare time on the side, purely because I found a productivity method

00:03:26.540 for medical school. And that was when I launched a business. It was when I started my YouTube channel

00:03:30.380 and people kept asking me for study tips and kept asking me how I was so productive.

00:03:34.640 And so what started off as, you know, medical student with a bit of a small business on the side

00:03:39.420 morphed into a bigger business, morphed into a YouTube channel. And now here we are like 10 years on

00:03:44.780 from medical school where my YouTube channel is, I think, hitting 5 million subscribers today. And people

00:03:49.720 have asked me to write a book about productivity, which is kind of weird.

00:03:53.420 Well, I think it's really interesting because I think a lot of people have experienced what you

00:03:56.220 experienced. They get a new job or they're in university and they think, I got to get more

00:04:00.560 done. I got to get more productive. And like you, they typically focus on ways to cram more in

00:04:06.560 to their day by employing, you know, organizational hacks, or they try to figure out how can I will

00:04:12.800 myself and create motivation so I can do the thing, even though I don't want to do the thing,

00:04:17.060 and I'm tired. But your approach is called feel good productivity. What do you mean by

00:04:22.580 feel good productivity?

00:04:25.060 Yeah, so feel good productivity is a pretty, pretty simple underlying message, which is that

00:04:29.920 when we find a way to make our work feel good, we just automatically become productive,

00:04:35.540 we become more productive, we become more creative, we become less stressed. And we have more energy to

00:04:40.180 give to our work, but also to give to the other important areas of our life. And I think this is

00:04:45.020 something that is really, really underrated. No one talks about this. Everyone these days is

00:04:49.240 talking about how you've got to be disciplined, you've got to grind, you've got to grit, you've

00:04:52.480 got to hustle, you've got to wake up at 5am and you know, go for the run, even when you don't feel

00:04:56.080 like it. And sure, you know, discipline does have its place. But I think relying on discipline and hard

00:05:02.640 work as a long term strategy is a recipe for complete burnout. And it's actually not the way that

00:05:08.100 the most productive people are. You know, generally, if we think of when we're in flow states,

00:05:12.620 when we're doing our best work, it's not when we're struggling with it, or it's not when we're

00:05:16.400 grinding with it. It's when we have found our way into that flow state where the thing that we're

00:05:20.400 doing feels weirdly enjoyable. And so that's the whole philosophy. And the whole book is basically

00:05:25.840 a bunch of it's like a practical how to guide on how to actually make your work feel more good.

00:05:30.500 No, I'm really a big believer in that, too. Because like you, early on when I was in law school,

00:05:35.440 and early on when I started my business, I was really big on discipline and self discipline and

00:05:40.640 grit. And like you said, I think there's a place for that. And I'm glad I went through that stage

00:05:45.220 in my development as a man. But as I've gotten older, I realized that stuff can only get you so

00:05:52.400 far at a certain point, you have to figure out how you can actually enjoy the process. And there's

00:05:58.320 some great quotes, as I've been thinking about this idea, and we've written about this on the site

00:06:02.960 before, you come across these quotes of other thinkers who have figured this out, too, is that you have

00:06:07.780 to figure out how to feel good about what you do if you want to get more done. There's a quote from

00:06:12.940 a guy named Richard J. Foster, wrote a book called The Celebration of Discipline. He said,

00:06:18.300 I'm inclined to think that the joy is the motor, the thing that keeps everything else going. Without

00:06:24.140 joyous celebration to infuse the disciplines, we will sooner or later abandon them. Joy produces energy.

00:06:30.640 Joy makes us strong. And as we'll hear in a bit, that's what you talk about. It's all about

00:06:34.980 finding joy in what you do. Oh, man, what a great quote. I wish I had put that in the book. But that's

00:06:40.000 the first time I'm hearing it. I'm like, oh, my God, that's literally the thesis of the book.

00:06:43.260 Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about how we can infuse more joy into our work so that instead of feeling

00:06:48.120 like a slog, it's light, it's easy, and we want to do more of it. You break down, there's like three

00:06:53.680 different ways we can do this. You first want to energize yourself, you want to unblock and then

00:06:58.760 sustain. So let's dig into this energized aspect. And this is all about generating those feel-good

00:07:04.120 emotions that will help drive your productivity. And one way to do that is to inject a sense of play

00:07:10.920 into your work. And you write about how seriousness can be a real downer on our productivity. Why is

00:07:17.560 that? Yeah. So I think the first thing to say is that like, you know, the way we inject joy into

00:07:22.880 our work is firstly, by just thinking about it. I think when we generally think like, how do I be

00:07:30.080 more productive? The first thought that comes to mind is not how do I make this more fun? But that

00:07:35.040 really should be the first thought that comes to our mind. How would I actually make this thing more

00:07:38.760 fun? And play is one of the most underrated productivity strategies out there. And there

00:07:44.720 are so many successful people like Nobel Prize winners and entrepreneurs and athletes, you know,

00:07:49.660 like the quote you said, who have landed on the conclusion that, wait a minute, if you find a way to

00:07:54.220 approach your work in the spirit of play, you're going to automatically be more productive and more

00:07:58.420 creative, but you'll also have way more fun along the way. And one of my favorite quotes about this

00:08:02.740 is from the philosopher Alan Watts. And he wasn't talking about it in the context of productivity,

00:08:07.800 just in the context of life. And what he said is that we should all be a little bit less serious

00:08:13.460 and a little bit more sincere. And I love that framing. Like, you know, we've all played board games

00:08:19.500 or games with people who take it too seriously. That's not very fun. Like there are too much of a

00:08:24.420 stickler for the rules and they're kind of draining to be around because they're just taking it too

00:08:28.200 seriously. But we also don't want to play with people who are completely uncaring either,

00:08:32.580 because that's just, that's just kind of boring playing with someone who just, who doesn't really

00:08:36.540 give a shit. We want to play with someone who's playing sincerely because they're giving it their

00:08:41.680 all. They're fully engaged, but they recognize that it's just a game at the end of the day.

00:08:45.240 And they're approaching it with a certain lightness and ease. And, you know, one of the phrases from

00:08:49.480 Zen Buddhism is, you know, that Alan Watts talks about is the angels fly because they take themselves

00:08:54.260 lightly. And I think we all have this tendency to take, to put so much seriousness into our work,

00:08:59.240 to think it's so terribly important that we really struggle to approach it with lightness.

00:09:05.640 And I really found this when, when I was working as a doctor and, you know, in my medical student

00:09:09.060 days, when I'd be assisting in, in surgery, in life-saving operations, you know, there'd be a

00:09:14.600 mother and a baby bleeding out. There'd be like open heart surgery. It's like the full gamut of

00:09:18.480 suffering where, you know, these are, this is literally life and death on the line.

00:09:23.780 But even in these circumstances, the best surgeons that I worked with, the ones who were the most

00:09:29.320 respected, who got the best results, were the ones who at the same time as dealing with this

00:09:33.280 life-threatening emergency, they approached it with a sense of lightness, a sense of sincerity

00:09:38.400 rather than seriousness. They would have background music. They would crack jokes every now and then.

00:09:42.580 They would create an environment that made everyone in the room, the medical students,

00:09:46.840 the nurses, the physician assistants, like everyone in the room felt comfortable in that

00:09:51.600 environment. And that meant they felt comfortable to raise issues if issues arose. Whereas the

00:09:56.220 environments that, you know, the less good surgeons create where it's very serious. Now everyone is

00:10:01.020 drained of energy. People don't like it. It's a very high pressure environment and people don't feel

00:10:05.320 like they can bring up concerns, which is what leads to terrible things happening. Like people having

00:10:09.440 the wrong leg amputated because people didn't feel like they could tell the surgeon, hey man, I think

00:10:14.260 you're operating on the wrong leg. So that's to say that even when life and death is on the line,

00:10:18.920 which it probably isn't for most of the work, we can always approach it with a little bit more

00:10:22.360 lightness, a little bit more sincerity rather than seriousness.

00:10:25.080 No, that quote, angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. That's GK Chesterton.

00:10:29.720 He said that. And then he had this great, an extended quote after that, kind of goes what we were

00:10:33.800 saying. He was saying, one settles down, and he put that into quotation marks, into a sort of selfish

00:10:39.140 seriousness. But one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A man falls into a brown 0.99

00:10:45.060 study. He reaches up to a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. So he was talking about you had

00:10:50.200 to be light to take things lightly. You're so good at picking up these quotes. I have never come

00:10:54.580 across that one either. My goodness. I should do more research for these books. But I love that idea

00:10:58.480 of be sincere, not serious, because it allows you, if you have serious work, like if you're a doctor

00:11:04.040 who's doing really life or death stuff, or if you're, I don't know, you're a police officer or

00:11:10.380 I mean, something like that. Like, I like that idea of being sincere, not taking it too seriously. I

00:11:14.920 really like that approach. So what have you found? What are some tactics you have found in order to

00:11:19.240 inject a bit more playfulness, a bit more lightness, a bit more sincerity into your work?

00:11:25.160 Yeah. So the first one is fairly simple, and anyone can do this right now. The thing that I found

00:11:30.580 moved the needle for me quite a lot was, I would stick a post-it note onto my computer monitor.

00:11:35.400 And that post-it note would read, what would this look like if it were fun? And it's sort of a

00:11:40.760 variant of, you know, Tim Ferriss likes to ask the question, what would this look like if it were easy?

00:11:44.540 Which I think is a great question as well. But I've sort of rephrased that to what would this look

00:11:48.440 like if it were fun? And usually, whenever we're in the midst of something that feels a bit draining,

00:11:54.300 that feels a bit stressful, if we just pause and ask ourselves that simple question, what would this

00:11:58.460 look like if it were fun? You know, answers will come to mind. It's like, maybe I could put on some

00:12:02.960 background music. Maybe I could stretch my legs a little bit more. Maybe I could, I don't know,

00:12:06.900 go to sit on the sofa instead of at my desk. Maybe I could go to the local coffee shop.

00:12:10.720 There are lots of ways that we can come up with to make whatever we're doing just that little bit

00:12:14.500 more fun. But again, it just tends not to be the thing we think about, because no one ever tells us

00:12:18.980 that the secret to productivity is enjoyment and play. And so we just don't think about it.

00:12:23.480 And so I try to add these little reminders like post-it notes. And at one point, I even had an

00:12:27.860 alarm on my phone, where the title of the alarm was find the fun, which is a quote from Mary

00:12:33.300 Poppins. In every job to be done, there is an element of fun, find the fun and snap, the job's a

00:12:38.880 game. So I would have had this like find the fun reminder on my alarm on my phone that would go off

00:12:43.780 a few times a day. Just as a little reminder that in every single thing that we do, we can always

00:12:47.720 find the fun in it. And also another tactic, lower the stakes in whatever you're doing. I think a lot

00:12:52.640 of times people get really serious about what they do, because they think, oh my gosh, if I don't get

00:12:56.200 this right, my life's over. I remember being in law school and thinking, oh, if I don't get an A

00:13:01.760 on this exam, I'm going to end up, you know, not being able to get a job. But that's not the case.

00:13:07.740 Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. When I was doing the research for the book,

00:13:11.680 there were some really cool studies they did on rats. You know, rats normally like play with each

00:13:16.400 other. And you know, you can measure how often they're playing by how much they're like biting each

00:13:20.580 other's neck and all that fun stuff. And then they would put rats under stress by either putting

00:13:25.900 them in a little like enclosed mesh type thing, or by injecting them with adrenaline and cortisol,

00:13:31.260 which are stress hormones. And they would look at the effect this had on their play behavior.

00:13:35.320 And unsurprisingly, whenever the rats were stressed, or when they were injected with these

00:13:39.060 stress hormones, the play behavior massively fell. And it took a while to come back to normal and all

00:13:44.020 that kind of stuff. And I think this is a really cool illustration of what we all know to be true,

00:13:47.620 which is that when the stakes are high, and when we're stressed, it's very difficult to play.

00:13:52.140 Like when Roger Federer is defending his title at Wimbledon, he's probably not playing,

00:13:57.860 because the stakes are too high. And I think the problem is that a lot of us approach our work

00:14:03.000 as if we are Roger Federer defending our Wimbledon championship title, even though the stakes are

00:14:07.180 really not that high. And even though there's really no need to approach it with such seriousness.

00:14:11.560 So lowering the bar, lowering the stakes, making it feel like less of a big deal is often one of the

00:14:16.300 ways that we can make anything feel a little bit more playful.

00:14:19.040 Okay, so inject some play to energize ourselves. Another way we can energize ourselves,

00:14:23.800 get those feel-good emotions going so we can get that motor going, is increase our sense of power.

00:14:30.380 What do you mean by power? Because that can be a loaded word for some people.

00:14:34.300 Yeah, I think power is a bit of a loaded word because it conjures up images of dictators and all

00:14:39.020 that kind of stuff and having power over other people. But this isn't about having power over

00:14:43.040 others. It's about feeling power within yourself or feeling empowered. Probably should have been

00:14:48.320 called empowered, but like three Ps, play power people. You know, it's a bit more alliterative.

00:14:52.860 And we know from the research that when we feel empowered, it drives intrinsic motivation.

00:14:59.520 Intrinsic motivation, as the listeners might know, is the form of motivation where we are doing the

00:15:03.840 thing for the sake of doing the thing, rather than for some sort of external reward that we're going to

00:15:08.460 get out of it. So power is essentially two things. It's taking responsibility, and it's improving or

00:15:15.700 leveling up, as I like to call it. So taking responsibility, I think a lot of us have this weird

00:15:20.500 notion that, you know, we kind of think of our energy levels as if it's a battery. And throughout

00:15:24.940 the day, the more things we do, the more that battery gets depleted. And so often, if people are

00:15:29.800 like feeling drained of their work, they'll do the wrong thing, which is to disengage even more.

00:15:34.800 They'll take less responsibility, they'll be more passive in their work. But as anyone who's had

00:15:40.540 that experience knows, it's like, there's nothing more draining than being passive in your approach

00:15:44.500 to work. If you're just sitting there passively waiting for the time to go and looking at the

00:15:47.880 clock, that's going to drain your energy more than anything else. But if you can find a way to

00:15:51.880 approach it with a sense of power by taking responsibility and ownership for the things that

00:15:55.880 are under your control, then that engagement generates energy and makes it feel good. Even though it's

00:16:02.460 counterintuitive, because it takes energy, it takes an input of energy to really take ownership

00:16:07.000 of something, but it generates a lot more energy out of it. And so one example of this was, you know,

00:16:12.580 when I was working as a doctor, I was fairly junior. And so I didn't have any control over what I was

00:16:17.460 doing specifically, because I had to do what I was told, I had to write the discharge letters or type

00:16:21.480 up the notes or whatever the thing was. But I had a lot of control over how I did it. And there were some

00:16:26.660 days where I'd approach it being like, I'm just going to do the basics, I'm just going to follow

00:16:29.520 instructions. And those were the days where I had zero energy at the end of the day. But there

00:16:33.760 were other days where I decided, you know what, I'm going to take responsibility, I'm going to try

00:16:37.040 and go a little bit above and beyond, I'm going to be the one to follow up the patient's blood results,

00:16:40.740 I'm going to find a slightly better way to do the notes, I'm going to format the template for the

00:16:44.440 notes so that it's a bit easier to read. Little things like that were ways in which I took control

00:16:48.940 over the things that I had control over. And on those days, I feel super energized, I'd feel great,

00:16:54.060 I feel joyful at work, and I'd get home feeling way more energized than I did at the start.

00:16:57.740 So that's like the power of taking responsibility over the things that you can control.

00:17:02.080 Right. So exercise your agency. There's actually a great quote from Nietzsche about joy and power.

00:17:06.820 Yeah, he says, joy is the feeling of power increasing. I love that. I think that's what

00:17:11.840 it is. Whenever you feel like you have, you're able to get things done in your life, you feel like you

00:17:16.600 can do more. And so I love the idea. You see a lot of self-development authors talk about this. Start

00:17:21.640 small, exercise your agency in that circle of influence. That's Stephen Covey there.

00:17:27.740 Even if it's really small, as you do that, you will see that your capacity to get things done

00:17:32.820 in the world might be bigger than you think. And then you can start increasing slowly that

00:17:36.760 circle of influence and doing more and more. Yeah, that's so true. One of the big things that

00:17:41.880 I talk about in the book is the idea of leveling up. We love hearing stories and seeing stories of

00:17:47.260 people who are leveling up, whether it's Anakin Skywalker starting off as a kid in Tatooine and

00:17:52.380 suddenly he's improving and he's leveling up and his power is growing. And then he becomes

00:17:57.020 the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy or whatever the thing is. We love those sorts of stories where

00:18:01.440 the hero starts off small and they don't know very much, but they improve over time.

00:18:05.580 And so similarly, if we can find a way to apply that to ourselves, the single best thing I ever

00:18:10.100 did to make working out feel good was to start tracking my numbers on an app. And so now every

00:18:15.320 time I work out, I feel like I'm improving because progressive overload, which is something you've

00:18:18.740 written and talked about a lot. When I see the numbers going up, that feels really good. It

00:18:22.640 feels powerful. Similarly, when I was writing the book, tracking my word count every day helped me

00:18:27.420 feel this sense of progress. And feeling a sense of progress is another huge thing that makes us feel

00:18:32.160 more power and therefore makes us feel more joy and energy in whatever we're doing.

00:18:36.320 Okay, so own your work, take ownership, track your progress. That'll help you see that you're

00:18:40.580 actually are getting better. And then you also talk about sometimes you got to flip on the

00:18:44.300 confidence switch. What do you mean by that?

00:18:46.360 Yeah, so I think, you know, the third big component of power is this feeling of, you

00:18:51.520 know, the psychologists call it self efficacy, but you can basically call it confidence, the

00:18:56.520 feeling that you can, in fact, do the thing that is being asked of you or do the thing

00:18:59.980 that you have to do. And the thing with confidence is that, you know, one way of looking at confidence

00:19:04.960 is that you've got to practice something a lot of times to become confident at the thing.

00:19:09.040 And that's certainly one way to approach it. But another way to approach it, which I came

00:19:12.660 across when I used to work as a close up magician at parties at university. And that was really

00:19:19.040 terrifying. It's like, you know, I'd be dressed up in my tuxedo with my card tricks in my pockets

00:19:23.200 and stuff. And I'd have to literally walk up to groups of university students at a party

00:19:27.780 and interrupt their conversation and say, Hey, I'm the magician. Do you want to see a magic

00:19:32.060 trick? That's really freaking scary. And one of my mentors in magic taught me this idea of the

00:19:37.700 confidence switch where he basically said, there is no difference between real confidence

00:19:43.140 and fake confidence. And so if you are not feeling confident in any moment, just imagine

00:19:48.700 turning a switch and imagine as if you are confident, imagine playing the part of someone

00:19:53.300 who is confident. And there's something weird about that. You know, it's like when you do that

00:19:57.180 and you just act as if you are someone who is confident, that generally comes across to other

00:20:02.140 people as if you are confident. And now you get over that hurdle and you go up to the group

00:20:06.040 and you do the magic trick and you laugh and you hopefully get the trick right and don't make a

00:20:09.020 fool of yourself. But I found that when I would do that trick, it would get me out of my head.

00:20:12.940 It would get me into this mode of being like an actor almost. And that would, again, it would feel

00:20:17.040 powerful. It would feel good. And that's what allowed me to get in the reps of approaching these

00:20:20.900 groups where previously I was absolutely paralyzed by the thought of interrupting people's

00:20:26.000 conversation. Well, you talk about this in the book and there's been psychological research done

00:20:30.640 about this, the alter ego effect, creating an alter ego for yourself where basically it's like Bruce

00:20:38.340 Wayne and Batman. You have to have a Batman version of yourself that you can put on and allow it gives

00:20:43.340 you that confidence to do what you need to do. Yeah, absolutely. There's a really cool, like a clever,

00:20:50.240 clever study that they called the Batman effect because it was about exactly this. They got a group of

00:20:54.720 kids and they split them up into a few different groups. And, you know, the kids had to do some

00:20:59.420 kind of task. And one of the groups, they asked to imagine as if they were their favorite movie

00:21:06.500 character or cartoon character like Batman or Dora the Explorer. And then the other groups that were

00:21:10.980 asked to imagine different things and stuff. And they found that the group who imagined themselves

00:21:14.680 as Batman or Dora or whatever their character was, they performed better on the task. They felt better

00:21:19.500 about it and they were more confident. And so the researchers called this the Batman effect. It's what

00:21:23.720 happens when you step into the alter ego of someone else. And it could be fictional. It could

00:21:27.980 be real. So, you know, Kobe Bryant used to have his black Mamba alter ego. Adele used to have an

00:21:33.560 alter ego called Sasha Carter. Beyonce used to have one called Sasha Fierce. There's been a bunch of

00:21:38.180 people through time who have realized that actually stepping into an alter ego helps you get out of

00:21:42.200 your head, helps you lose some of the fear that you have around whatever the thing you're struggling

00:21:46.520 with is. And, you know, I use this in my life now because I'm wearing fake glasses at the moment

00:21:51.440 because I've had laser eye surgery. I don't actually need to wear glasses, but I wear them

00:21:54.480 because they help me imagine myself as young Professor X from the X-Men series. And I kind

00:22:00.760 of think of myself as a, you know, like a young university professor just sharing insights.

00:22:05.540 And it's not about me then. It's about serving my students and putting on my fake glasses as

00:22:09.880 a bit of a prop that helps me step into that alter ego.

00:22:12.660 Okay, I love that. So increase your power, exercise your agency, own what you have control over,

00:22:17.300 increase your skills. You talk about that and then flip that confidence switch. Just pretend

00:22:21.980 like you have that confidence that can help you get the ball rolling. Another thing you talk about

00:22:26.360 that energizes us is people. What role do other people play in us feeling good so we can get things

00:22:32.600 done? Yeah, so we're all social creatures, right? And we've all had that feeling of there are some

00:22:37.900 people that you hang out with who you're hanging out with them and afterwards you feel super drained.

00:22:42.260 But then we all also have other people in our lives where you hang out with them and then

00:22:47.040 you leave the interaction feeling more energized. And psychologists call this relational energy.

00:22:54.440 And they've actually studied it in organizations and they've created these energy maps where they

00:22:59.740 go around and they ask everyone to rate like who is an energizer and who's a drainer. And they create

00:23:05.140 these maps and to see like who are the key people in the organization who are the ones who are energizing

00:23:09.020 everyone else. And they look at the data and they find that actually these energizers, these people,

00:23:14.180 they are more productive, they're more creative, they are liked more by their peers, they get paid

00:23:19.640 more, they get promotions quicker. Everyone wants to work with them, everyone loves them because they

00:23:23.900 bring the energy. And so the thing to take away from that is A, we should all aim to become energizers

00:23:29.260 ourselves. So one thing that you might want to ask yourself if you're listening to this is,

00:23:34.600 to what extent am I an energizer to the people around me? Do I respond when they say something in an

00:23:39.940 energizing way? Because if you do, then you're probably giving them energy. But if you don't, you're

00:23:44.320 probably draining the energy and that is going to be a bad recipe for your professional development

00:23:48.100 and for your life. But I think the other thing we can take away from that is just the power of

00:23:51.760 surrounding ourselves with people who lift us up. And so that's why, you know, right now I'm sitting

00:23:56.240 in a WeWork. I like going to co-working spaces because there's something about being around other

00:24:00.380 people that gives me a lot of energy. Whereas for me, just sitting in my room or sitting in a hotel room or

00:24:04.440 whatever in the office by myself feels kind of draining and kind of depressing. So I do whatever

00:24:08.500 I can to get myself around other people. And during the pandemic, that was actually through

00:24:12.760 Zoom co-working sessions. There's this like writer's group that meets four times a day and

00:24:18.280 you know, you'd get together with a couple of hundred writers around the world. It's completely

00:24:21.840 free. It's called London Writers Salon and anyone can join. And that was how I made progress in the

00:24:27.140 book during the pandemic because it felt weirdly energizing being even just on Zoom with other

00:24:32.440 people doing the same thing. Well, related to this idea of being part of a group to help

00:24:37.280 energize yourself, you had this idea called the comrade mindset. What do you mean by the comrade

00:24:41.000 mindset? Yeah. So the comrade mindset is sort of distinct from the competitor mindset. I think

00:24:46.340 there's sort of two ways to approach thinking about like colleagues. And we definitely had this in

00:24:51.620 medical school. There were some people who approached medical school as if they were competing against

00:24:55.560 other people. They approached it as if it was a zero-sum game. There was a guy I knew who would take

00:25:00.620 out multiple copies of the same book from the library so that other students couldn't get their

00:25:04.420 hands on it. That's a very competitor mindset. And that is a really draining way to live because

00:25:09.300 no one has fun over the long term if they feel as if they're competing with a lot of people. It

00:25:14.420 takes a lot of energy and a lot of stress to do that. Whereas the alternative is the comrade

00:25:18.060 mindset. It's imagining as if you're working with everyone. Everyone is part of your team.

00:25:22.800 This is how relationships thrive. You imagine yourselves as teammates striving together for the

00:25:27.500 common good. The comrade mindset is you imagine you and your colleagues as teammates rather than

00:25:31.620 competitors. And so you try your best to help them out. You share resources. When I was in medical

00:25:36.200 school, I discovered the power of this and I made a shared Google Drive where we would all put our own

00:25:40.100 essays so that we would all benefit from everyone else's notes as well. I know some students, you know,

00:25:45.140 they form a little group and when they're in a lecture, they create a shared Google Doc. So they take

00:25:49.800 lecture notes all together. And if someone's struggling with something, they'll put a little

00:25:53.700 question mark and someone else will fill it in. That's all thinking as if you're a comrade with

00:25:57.980 these other people. And A, it makes work much more energizing and much more enjoyable. But B,

00:26:02.800 it also creates the sorts of relationships, the positive some relationships that just benefit the

00:26:06.860 rest of your life as well. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:26:13.340 And now back to the show. Okay, so that's energized. So we got to inject some more play,

00:26:18.400 increase our sense of power, and surround ourselves with people that energize us. Let's move to this

00:26:23.460 unblock idea. And this is all about unblocking the things that keep us from doing what we want to do.

00:26:29.960 In your experience, in your research, what are the biggest causes of us not wanting to get things

00:26:36.460 done? Yeah, so procrastination, this feeling, no distraction, this feeling of not wanting to get

00:26:41.600 things done. Broadly, I think it boils down to three things. And those three things are uncertainty,

00:26:46.920 fear, and inertia. And if we can tackle those three things, uncertainty, fear, and inertia,

00:26:54.860 that really moved the needle in terms of helping us get things done. The first one that often comes

00:26:59.160 up is just uncertainty. Like, we've all heard people say, hey, you know, this year, I'm going to get fit,

00:27:04.260 or I'm going to get healthy. But what does get fit or get healthy even mean? Like, it's very,

00:27:09.020 very unclear. And when something is uncertain, when something is unclear, there is a lot of cognitive,

00:27:15.860 like brainpower that we're having to put in to even figure out what we're trying to do in the first

00:27:19.940 place. It's like if I'm trying to go to the gym without a plan. You know, it's hard enough to get

00:27:24.540 myself to the gym, let alone if I go there without a plan. Now I spend ages just on my phone trying

00:27:28.880 to figure out, okay, what am I actually going to do? And then it's like I get demotivated, and then I

00:27:32.140 don't want to work out. Whereas, if I just have a bit of clarity, if I understand when am I going to

00:27:38.380 the gym, and what specifically am I going to do when I get there, that makes it much more likely that

00:27:44.680 I'll actually hit the gym and do the work. I think the same thing applies to our work. If it's like,

00:27:49.720 if you know you have to work on this PowerPoint presentation, or the sales pitch, or this landing

00:27:53.000 page, or whatever thing might be, and you know exactly what you have to do, and when you're going

00:27:57.180 to do it, that solves a lot of problems. But I think there's a lot of, you know, people have this,

00:28:02.440 like if your boss tells you to do something that you don't quite understand exactly what they want,

00:28:06.940 or why they want it, that is a recipe for procrastination and for not getting the thing done.

00:28:10.800 Now, I've seen this idea of uncertainty stopping. I've seen it in my own life, but also seen the

00:28:16.480 lives of people who read Art of Manliness. So, over the years, we put all this content on how to do

00:28:21.500 things, like how to get more fit, how to start whatever. And we often get emails from people's

00:28:26.120 like, okay, this is all, this is great. I want to do that, but I don't know how to get started.

00:28:30.240 Like, what do I do? And so, that's one of the reasons why we created The Strenuous Life,

00:28:33.960 which is this online platform that we created. And we created, you know, basically,

00:28:36.940 we created Man Scouts. There's 50 different badges based around 50 different skills we've

00:28:40.720 written about on Art of Manliness. But basically, the goal of these badges is, okay, let's say you

00:28:45.660 want to get into camping, right? Well, here's the requirements. Just do these things. And the

00:28:51.520 things, you're not going to become an expert by doing these things, but the goal of them is like,

00:28:56.220 okay, just get started. You don't know what to do. Here's what to do. And hopefully, by getting

00:29:01.020 started, you'll kind of create a flywheel of action. So, you'll just keep doing it and maybe start

00:29:06.780 digging deeper on your own. But yeah, just telling people, like, here's basic things to do.

00:29:11.860 It's amazing how much that can do to help people get going with them, with their goals.

00:29:16.480 Yeah, absolutely. This is something that, so I've, for the last few years, I've been coaching people

00:29:20.720 and teaching a course on how to grow on YouTube, because people kept on asking me that. So, I made

00:29:25.200 a course about it. And, you know, it's, we've had several thousand students so far. And

00:29:29.640 the single biggest thing that holds people back is this fear of getting started. And there's sort of two

00:29:35.180 things that come into that. There is fear and there's also inertia. So, the fear component is,

00:29:40.060 I am afraid of what other people will think of me. I'm afraid of judgment. I'm afraid of rejection.

00:29:45.180 I'm afraid I won't be good enough. And so, that's like a huge emotional hurdle that everyone has to

00:29:50.900 overcome whenever getting started with something. But then there's the inertia component as well of

00:29:55.280 just actually getting started and doing the thing. And I love what you said about the camping stuff.

00:29:59.280 Like, you know, people overthink this stuff so much. Often, all it takes is to just get started.

00:30:03.700 And once you get started, and you lower the stakes, you can increase your standards over time.

00:30:08.720 But trying to be perfect from day one is just a recipe for continuing to procrastinate and just

00:30:13.600 never do the thing that you actually want to do. Well, going back to this idea of trying to reduce

00:30:17.580 uncertainty. So, one of the common self-help, self-improvement tips out there, if you're

00:30:22.880 feeling uncertain about what you want to do or how to accomplish it, you're supposed to create

00:30:27.100 SMART goals. I think we all know what SMART goals are at this point. But you actually say SMART goals,

00:30:31.100 not as not that effective, you actually encourage what are called nice goals. What are nice goals?

00:30:37.760 Yeah, so SMART goals are good if you are already succeeding at something, you know, but a lot of

00:30:44.120 the time when we're struggling to do something, it's because we're a beginner in that particular

00:30:48.180 thing. And so, setting a very specific, measurable, you know, ambitious type goal tends to demotivate

00:30:56.080 us rather than motivate us. And so, after reading a bunch of research papers about this, I found this

00:31:02.020 acronym NICE, N-I-C-E, which is near-term, input-based, controllable, and energizing.

00:31:08.660 So, near-term, it's not like, what do I want to do in a year? It's, what do I want to do this week?

00:31:13.520 Input-based is, what are the inputs? So, if you're being a YouTuber, for example, it's like,

00:31:18.920 I am just going to make one video a week. That's an input that I can control. Or,

00:31:22.540 I'm just going to write a thousand words. Or, I'm just going to write for 20 minutes.

00:31:26.040 Rather than, I'm going to hit 100 subscribers. Or, I'm going to get this amount of revenue.

00:31:31.080 Which leads to point number three is, you want them to be things that are controllable.

00:31:34.500 Generally, inputs are in your control. And, you want them to be realistic and easy.

00:31:38.800 So, when I first started my YouTube channel, I was not thinking, let me set a SMART goal of

00:31:42.340 hitting a million subscribers in two years. I was thinking, I just want to make one video a week.

00:31:46.740 And, if I make one video a week, I'll be happy. And, the E is energizing. So, we've talked about

00:31:51.420 the three energizers. But, we want to find a way to make the process enjoyable.

00:31:54.860 So, that we're more likely to stick to it. And then, once you become good at actually

00:31:58.840 building the habit of, let's say, going to the gym or making YouTube videos,

00:32:01.700 at that point, setting SMART goals becomes helpful where you're like,

00:32:04.220 all right, I'm going to increase my deadlift by 20 pounds in the next two weeks.

00:32:07.240 Or, whatever the thing might be. But, that is really unhelpful for a beginner because it tends

00:32:10.720 to overwhelm them.

00:32:12.280 No, I love that idea of nice goals. I know a lot of people, it's the new year. So,

00:32:15.920 a common goal that people are going to have is lose weight. And, some people might have a lot of

00:32:19.500 weight to lose. And, they're saying, I want to lose 70 pounds. And, they might create a SMART

00:32:23.040 goal around that. But, as you said, that can be overwhelming. So, I really like this nice idea.

00:32:26.540 So, near-term goal you could create is like, this month, I'm going to exercise, I don't know,

00:32:31.700 we can say like five days a week. So, that's near-term, input-based. So, you're just focusing

00:32:36.400 on, okay, I'm going to train for 30 minutes a day. You have control over that. And, then,

00:32:41.360 the other part is you have to find, do something you enjoy doing. We've had this one behavioral

00:32:45.260 scientist on the show, Michelle Seeger. She's written a lot about this,

00:32:48.580 about exercise. The key to exercise and being consistent with it is just finding something

00:32:53.980 you like doing. So, if the thing you like to do is Ultimate Frisbee, then like, play Ultimate

00:32:59.320 Frisbee. You don't have to do CrossFit because you see some fitness influencer doing that. Like,

00:33:04.640 if you don't like CrossFit, you're not going to stick with CrossFit.

00:33:07.860 Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. When I give this advice to people, one critique I sometimes hear is,

00:33:12.660 yeah, like, you know, when it comes to work, it's like, yeah, but I can't just quit my job and do what I

00:33:16.540 find fun. Twitch, I'd say, well, okay, sure. But, there's plenty of things you can do to find the

00:33:22.720 fun in what you're currently doing. And, if you've tried all those things, and it's still absolutely

00:33:26.860 miserable, then maybe you should just quit your job. But, first, try the different things that can

00:33:31.280 make work feel more energizing and enjoyable. This idea of reducing fear, you have a cool tactic

00:33:36.760 called the 10-10-10 rule. What is that, and how can it reduce fear?

00:33:42.060 Yeah, so this is a pretty easy one. It's like, a lot of the time, fear is about the fear of what

00:33:47.620 other people will think of us. So, you know, as people might know, the brain is a survival machine.

00:33:53.400 It's designed to detect threats. It's got this negativity bias, which is why it's so much easier

00:33:58.320 to find problems than it is to find things that you're grateful for. Because the brain is literally

00:34:01.740 designed to find the problems, so that we can overcome them and, like, not die. And so, we're

00:34:07.340 very attuned to our social status in the social hierarchy. Because back in the caveman days, you

00:34:14.620 know, the theory goes, if your social status got reduced, if you got ostracized from the group,

00:34:21.180 you would then be out on your own, and you'd get mauled by a lion or a tiger or something, and then you

00:34:25.120 would die. And so, part of survival is to be very aware of what other people are thinking about us.

00:34:30.280 The problem is, we're no longer living in caveman times, thankfully. And if someone else

00:34:35.460 disapproves of us, or doesn't like us for whatever reason, or judges us negatively for something we've

00:34:40.080 done, it's not actually going to kill us. It's not actually going to impact our survival. But our brain

00:34:44.320 thinks it's going to impact our survival. And that is a big part of the fear that stops a lot of us from

00:34:49.220 putting ourselves out there, or writing a post, or making a YouTube video, or doing a presentation,

00:34:53.700 or whatever the thing might be. So, the 10-10-10 rule is like a little thing I like to tell myself,

00:34:58.100 which is, will this matter in 10 minutes? Will this matter in 10 weeks? Will this matter in 10

00:35:03.340 years? And you know, some things, it's like, if I make a fool of myself in a presentation,

00:35:07.540 maybe 10 minutes from now, I'll still be a bit embarrassed. But 10 weeks later, will anyone

00:35:11.420 remember? 10 years later, will I even remember? Probably not. So, I find that as a nice little

00:35:16.200 hack whenever I find myself worried about what other people will think, or fearful in some way.

00:35:21.340 So, you talked about the block of inertia. What are some tactics you've used to overcome

00:35:25.160 inertia? So, we talked about one, it's just lowering the stakes, having a specific easy

00:35:29.660 thing you can do, can go a long way. What are some other things you've found?

00:35:34.200 Yeah. So, lowering the friction is a big one. It's like, you know, James Clear talks about this

00:35:37.700 in Atomic Habits. If you want to make more of a habit of playing the guitar, then put it next to

00:35:41.980 your desk, put it next to your couch, put it next to wherever you happen to be. So, that is very easy

00:35:45.940 for you to just pick up the guitar and start playing. So, that's lowering the friction to it.

00:35:49.340 The other one, I think this is where discipline or willpower comes in. You know, once you've got

00:35:54.440 clarity, once you've combated uncertainty, and once you've, you know, addressed some of the fears

00:35:58.560 that are holding you back, at some point, you do just have to do the thing. This is where applying

00:36:03.860 a dose of discipline or a dose of willpower is really helpful. And my favorite strategy for doing

00:36:07.900 this is called the five-minute rule. And so, back when I used to have a desk before I went traveling

00:36:12.820 around the world, which is what I'm doing right now, I used to have a five-minute hourglass on my desk at all

00:36:17.600 times. And whenever I would find myself not wanting to get something done or procrastinating,

00:36:22.780 I would tell myself, I'm just going to do this thing for five minutes. And I would turn the

00:36:26.740 hourglass over because it was a five-minute hourglass. And I would say, I'm just going to do it for as

00:36:30.440 long as it takes the time to run out. And usually, you know, as with Newton's Law of Inertia, once you

00:36:34.860 get started with something, it's a lot easier to keep going. So, just doing the thing for five minutes

00:36:39.600 is really good. Another, you know, practical thing anyone can apply is if you're ever struggling

00:36:43.400 with procrastination, put on the song Bohemian Rhapsody, because that's exactly five

00:36:47.520 minutes long on Spotify. And so, you can just tell yourself that for the duration of this song,

00:36:52.180 I'm just going to do the thing. And at the end of it, you know, if you don't want to continue with

00:36:55.480 it, that's totally fine. But you might find more often than not, that actually, you've just gotten

00:37:00.480 rid of procrastination and you've just now started doing the thing. And now that you've started,

00:37:03.760 it's a lot easier to keep going. Going back to this idea of friction to overcome inertia,

00:37:08.220 there's a sociologist by the name of Kurt Lewin. He wrote stuff back in the 30s. But he had this idea

00:37:15.120 that behavior change happens within what he calls like a life field, a life bubble. And in this life

00:37:22.580 field, there are two things acting on whether that behavior change is going to happen. There's driving

00:37:27.760 forces. So, it's like the motivation that's causing you to actually engage in the behavior change. And

00:37:33.640 then there's restraining forces. So, things that are preventing you from engaging that behavior change.

00:37:39.320 So, it could be your social environment, emotions you're experiencing, you know, you're sad,

00:37:43.600 you're hungry or whatever. But one of the big insights from Lewin's research and his thought

00:37:49.040 is that oftentimes when we think about behavior change, we think about increasing the driving

00:37:53.700 forces in our lives. Like, how can I get more motivated? How can I increase my willpower?

00:37:59.040 Daniel Kahneman was heavily influenced by Kurt Lewin. And he said, a better question to ask is you got

00:38:05.120 to focus on the restraining forces. And so, instead of asking, how can I make myself do this thing?

00:38:11.340 Right? How can I increase the driving forces? It's better to ask, why am I not doing this thing

00:38:16.280 already? And so, asking that question will help you figure out what are those restraining forces

00:38:21.100 in your life? And then you can focus on that. And that might be the thing. If you just take that

00:38:25.120 thing, that restraining force out, that might be the key that unlocks everything.

00:38:29.440 So, let's talk about, we've talked about unblock. What about this idea of sustain? And this is all

00:38:36.360 about how to keep the good things going that we've started in our life. And one thing that can throw a

00:38:42.340 wrench into us keeping going these good things is burnout. And I think when we talk about burnout,

00:38:48.840 we typically talk about it as this one monolithic thing. But you argue that there's actually three

00:38:55.300 different types of burnout. So, what are those three kinds of burnout? Yeah. So, again, just from

00:38:59.720 doing a bunch of reading into the research behind burnout, me and my team sort of realized that

00:39:03.680 there's these three different types that you can target in different ways. And so, the first one we

00:39:09.060 call over-exertion burnout. Then we've got depletion burnout. And then there's misalignment burnout.

00:39:16.060 So, over-exertion burnout is what it sounds like. It's where you're over-exerting yourself. You are

00:39:21.280 just simply trying to do too much stuff. And so, the solution to that is to, you know, as Oliver

00:39:27.680 Berkman tries to say in 4,000 weeks, which is a really good book, A, just try and say no to more

00:39:32.780 things. Try and do fewer things. Because the more shit you have on your plate, the more stuff you have

00:39:37.780 to do, obviously, the easier it will be to feel overwhelmed and burnt out. And a lot of us are living

00:39:44.520 life doing a lot of the urgent things, but very few of the important things. Because the urgent

00:39:51.920 things are very rarely important, and the important things are very rarely urgent. But if we spend all

00:39:56.760 our time just focusing on the urgent and putting out fires, we actually, A, don't get much meaningful

00:40:02.000 stuff done. But also, it really feels like we're overexerting ourselves. We're not taking enough

00:40:06.940 breaks. And that's really a recipe for burnout.

00:40:09.280 What's another type of burnout?

00:40:10.980 Yeah, so burnout type number two would be depletion burnout. And so, this is where you've been working

00:40:17.240 for a more extended period of time, and you've just run out of energy, and you haven't had a chance

00:40:21.700 to recharge that energy. And so, the trick here is to find ways to replenish your energy in ways that

00:40:27.300 actually do that. And one thing I like to encourage people to do is think about what are the things

00:40:32.920 that you do when you find yourself feeling drained or feeling tired. It's probably like scrolling

00:40:39.080 social media or like watching Netflix or like lying on the couch, just browsing your phone or whatever.

00:40:43.780 But then if you ask yourself, what are the things that actually replenish my energy? It's generally a

00:40:49.100 pretty different list. Usually, the things that replenish our energy are going out for a walk,

00:40:54.440 going into nature, doing creative activities of any sort, doing something that increases our

00:40:59.460 power, feeling like we're making progress in something that's unrelated to work.

00:41:02.860 All these things replenish our energy. But it feels somewhat counterintuitive, because

00:41:07.280 you have to put in some energy to get to that replenishing effect. And often, what we do is

00:41:13.280 we just end up defaulting to whatever the easiest thing is, which is Netflix or social media and stuff.

00:41:18.140 And so, really, the whole thing about combating depletion burnout is to recognize

00:41:21.160 when you need to recharge your energy and doing appropriate things to recharge that.

00:41:25.820 Yeah, and you have an acronym to figure out what constitutes a recharging activity. And it's

00:41:31.560 calm. So, the C is for being competent at the activity. The A is for having autonomy. The L

00:41:39.340 is that you feel liberated. And M is for mellow. So, what's an example of a calm activity?

00:41:46.960 Yeah, so calm activity would be something like painting. So, the C would be competent. So, 0.94

00:41:51.900 if I feel like when I'm painting, I'm getting better at the art of painting slowly over time,

00:41:56.540 that's going to recharge my energy. That feels really good. You know, ties into that stuff around

00:42:00.060 power that we talked about that drives intrinsic motivation. A for autonomy. No one is telling me

00:42:04.560 what to paint. I'm not working on a commission. That would make it not recharging. But I'm just

00:42:08.600 painting whatever I feel like. Liberty or liberation. The painting has to be different

00:42:13.320 from what I do for work. So, you know, like musicians who are professional musicians tend

00:42:18.440 not to find music relaxing anymore because they've made it their work. They tend to find creative

00:42:23.420 hobbies like painting, which are very different from what their work is. So, they feel liberated from it.

00:42:27.880 And then M for mellow, the stakes can't be too high. It can't be something like,

00:42:32.300 you know, you've got a deadline for a competition, an art competition. And so,

00:42:34.920 you're painting to meet the deadline. That's not really a mellow state to be.

00:42:38.700 A mellow state to be is more like, I'm just painting for fun. I'm painting because I enjoy it.

00:42:42.660 I'm painting because I want to do it. And so, thinking about activities from this calm framework,

00:42:46.980 some people find helpful as a way of figuring out, will this thing really recharge me? Or is it just,

00:42:51.120 you know, something that I'm doing past the time?

00:42:52.600 Yeah. So, one thing you have to worry about with, let's say you find a calm activity that

00:42:57.160 checks all these boxes. There's always a temptation to start sharing this stuff on social

00:43:01.240 media. And it turns your calm hobby into a job where you no longer like it. So, you got to be

00:43:08.640 careful. Because I get the impulse because you want to share it. Like, it brings you joy. You want

00:43:13.160 to share this with others. But I've seen that happen with people where they fall into the trap of,

00:43:16.840 oh my gosh, it has a following. I can make money on this. And it's no longer a source of joy. It

00:43:22.380 actually becomes a stressor. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, you know, similar to this idea of

00:43:28.880 trying to monetize your passions. Sure, it's all well and good to monetize your passions. But if you

00:43:33.760 start relying on that money that they bring in or start to attach in any way to it, it will stop

00:43:38.380 becoming a passion. And, you know, back when my YouTube channel was a side hustle, I actually enjoyed

00:43:43.600 making videos a lot more than I did when it became my full-time job. Even though being a YouTuber,

00:43:48.560 it seems like living the dream. Everything starts to feel like work eventually. And so, you have to

00:43:53.140 start finding much more creative ways of finding fulfillment and enjoyment in it. Whereas if it's a

00:43:57.840 hobby and you're not reliant on the money from it, or you're not making money at all or not sharing

00:44:01.540 it at all, then it's a lot more likely to be recharging for you. Then another thing with this idea of

00:44:06.060 recharging, sometimes you just got to do nothing. And you recount this story when you were in medical

00:44:11.040 school, you're on one of those grueling tours in the hospital and the hospital was packed and

00:44:15.920 you just decided, I'm not going to take a break. I'm going to work through this. I'm going to show

00:44:21.540 my grit. I'm going to show how dedicated I am. But then you actually had a senior doctor pull you

00:44:27.340 aside and say, dude, why aren't you taking your break? And you were like, well, you know, there's so

00:44:32.920 much to do. You know, there's so much I need to get done. And the doctor basically told you, you can't

00:44:38.420 afford not to take a break. You need to take a break.

00:44:42.420 Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really cool. It's like within emergency departments, which is literally,

00:44:47.200 again, you're dealing with life and death. But even so, and especially so, every four hours,

00:44:52.060 you have to take a half an hour break. It's like legally mandated to the point that like every

00:44:55.860 senior doctor has to be looking out for who's not taking a break, who's taking a break.

00:44:59.400 Because, you know, when you don't take breaks, you're more likely to make a mistake. Bad things are

00:45:04.320 more likely to happen. You're not going to be on your best form. You're not going to be good vibes

00:45:07.460 around the patient at the very least. And so in those breaks, you know, sure, you can try and go

00:45:12.100 for a walk, do something relaxing or whatever. But actually, sometimes what it takes is to just sit

00:45:15.800 on the couch and just do nothing and just try and relax for that half an hour, maybe with a cup of

00:45:20.720 tea. And that is sometimes what we need to relax. I think, again, there's a risk of over-optimizing

00:45:28.820 relaxation where it's like, oh, you know, I'm only going to do this thing because it like is

00:45:33.160 technically recharging my energy. It's like, okay, that, you know, that's fine. But there is

00:45:38.420 absolutely time to just do nothing at all. And doing nothing at all is sometimes exactly what

00:45:42.600 we need. Let's talk about this third type of burnout, misalignment burnout. How can we counter

00:45:46.880 that? Yeah. So this is, I think, an underrated type of burnout because people tend not to think

00:45:52.240 about it. People tend to think about burnout as like, oh, I don't have any energy. But actually,

00:45:55.940 if we're doing something consistently that is not aligned with where we actually want

00:46:01.160 to go, then that will really start to drain our energy after a while. And we'll start to

00:46:05.900 get one of the key symptoms of burnout, which is the sense of meaninglessness, purposelessness,

00:46:10.260 the sense of, oh, you know, I've got this job, I'm doing this thing, but like, I don't really

00:46:14.140 know why I'm doing it. Like, what's the point? And I've had that kind of feeling with my business

00:46:18.540 and my YouTube channel at various times over the last seven years. And I've, you know, in doing

00:46:22.560 the research for this book, I recognized that, oh, wait, this is actually a symptom of burnout.

00:46:26.280 This is one of the classic symptoms of burnout, in particular in men. There's a bit of a gender 1.00

00:46:30.220 split here. Like women tend to experience more like the emotional exhaustion, sort of my energy 1.00

00:46:35.960 is depleted type of burnout. Whereas for men, a lot of the times burnout manifests as this feeling

00:46:41.200 of purposelessness or meaninglessness when it comes to your work. And so what we do about this is

00:46:46.000 that, and, you know, I think this kind of gets a bit heavy, which is why I put it into the book

00:46:50.720 rather than at the start, is that it's really useful to try at least to figure out vaguely

00:46:55.480 where you want to be going in life. Like what, what would you like your life to amount to?

00:47:00.940 Because if you've got a North Star, if you've got this destination that you're slowly working

00:47:05.220 towards, then you can make sure that whatever you're doing is aligned with that destination.

00:47:10.620 But I think a lot of people don't either don't think about this, or they do think about this,

00:47:14.420 and the stuff they're doing is just not aligned with that at all. And so in the book,

00:47:18.200 I talk about a couple of strategies that I found super helpful for this. One of them is kind of

00:47:22.320 heavy, but it's just the idea of imagining what would you want written about you when you're dead?

00:47:27.420 What would you want your obituary to say? And so I wrote mine out a few months ago,

00:47:30.960 because I like doing this exercise every year or so. And something like that, where you just fast

00:47:35.800 forward to the end of your life, and you're thinking, hmm, what would I want people to say

00:47:38.980 about me? What would I want my friends and family to say about me? What kind of person would I like

00:47:42.740 to be? And then what sort of achievements would I like to have had? What sort of impact would I have

00:47:46.780 like to have on the world? That is one very good way of breaking through the limitations of

00:47:52.400 the here and now of like just being short term focused, and just really thinking big thinking

00:47:56.860 about the long term. And if we can do that a couple of times, then we can generally find

00:48:00.660 that, okay, that's kind of the direction I want to head with my life. Cool, let me make sure what

00:48:05.640 I'm doing is aligned with that. David Brooks, he in his one of his books, he talks about the difference

00:48:11.520 between eulogy virtues and resume virtues. And he talks about most of the time, men really focus

00:48:17.340 on the resume virtues. So this is like the skills, the attributes you need to advance your career

00:48:23.580 and make more money. But he said, really, the thing that gives us meaning is focusing on those

00:48:28.080 eulogy virtues. Like what are the things you want people to say about you at your eulogy? And it's

00:48:33.700 probably not, oh, he was, he's able to crank out, you know, 34% more productivity and increase profit

00:48:40.940 margins by, you know, 2%. No, you want people to say, oh, he was such a great guy. He was a great

00:48:47.600 dad, great husband, a great friend. He gave back to the community. You always made your day, you know,

00:48:54.140 whatever. I mean, that's the stuff that's really going to bring you the most joy and satisfaction.

00:48:59.320 Yeah, absolutely. I've started reading that book. I think it's the road to character.

00:49:03.360 The road to character. Right. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good.

00:49:06.740 And you also talk about in this alignment idea, you know, overcoming misalignment,

00:49:11.020 burnout is you got to focus on the long term, but then also don't neglect the midterm. And then also

00:49:15.640 the short term, you can create different meaning goals for you on different levels to guide you to

00:49:20.840 that long term meaning. Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite exercises to do, and I do that every few months is

00:49:27.000 the wheel of life, which is like this coaching exercise where you basically split up your life

00:49:31.340 into a bunch of different sections. And you just rate on a scale of zero to 10, how satisfied do you

00:49:36.540 feel in that area of your life? Or how aligned do you feel with where you're actually trying to go in

00:49:40.600 that area of your life? So in health, it might be physical, mental, spiritual. In work, it might be

00:49:46.280 kind of career, money and growth. And, you know, you can do relationships, which is romance, family and

00:49:51.400 friends. And anyone listening to this, if you just Google wheel of life, you'll find a bunch of

00:49:55.220 different examples. And you can just rate yourself on these things and ask yourself, you know, how aligned

00:49:59.980 do I feel in these different areas of my life? And generally, most of us find that we are misaligned

00:50:05.680 or not satisfied in one or more areas. And that means that we can figure out, okay, cool. That's an area

00:50:11.940 I'm not aligned in. What is something I could do that would take me one step closer to where I actually

00:50:16.120 want to be in that particular area? And then, you know, sometimes what I like to do, and I do this

00:50:22.420 again, I do this every year, is what follows from that is you can figure out what are your goals for

00:50:27.760 the year based on that? Or what are your goals for the next three months? So, you know, the new year

00:50:31.660 is coming up. And so the way I think about this is in terms of a 12-month celebration, 12 months from

00:50:36.920 now, what would I like to be celebrating in this particular area? So for me, you know, I did this

00:50:43.440 exercise a couple months ago. I rated my physical health pretty low because I was traveling and not

00:50:47.300 making time to work out and stuff. And so my goal for 2024 is, I want to get into the best shape of

00:50:52.200 my life. And I know to do that, I need to hit the gym three or four times a week, need to get my

00:50:56.240 protein, progressive overload, all that fun stuff. I've got a fitness coach. But that is a goal that

00:51:01.100 I was able to set because I recognized, hang on, this physical health area of my life is out of

00:51:05.820 alignment. And that's a problem. So let's just do something to solve that particular problem.

00:51:10.440 So I love this conversation, because I think the overarching theme is just,

00:51:14.200 how can you make the stuff you do more enjoyable? Because if you can do that,

00:51:19.780 you'll be more likely to do those things. So Ali, where can people go to learn more about

00:51:24.600 the book and your work? Yeah, well, firstly, thank you so much for having me. This has been

00:51:27.840 wonderful. If you guys want to hear more about the book, you can check out feelgoodproductivity.com.

00:51:32.080 That's the website that has all the links. And it's also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble,

00:51:35.740 everywhere you normally get books. Fantastic. Ali Abdul, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:51:40.160 Thank you so much, man. My guest here is Ali Abdul. He's the author of the book,

00:51:43.780 Feel Good Productivity. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:51:47.540 You can find more information about his work at his website, feelgoodproductivity.com.

00:51:51.220 Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash feelgoodproductivity,

00:51:54.640 where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:52:04.480 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:52:08.420 at artofmanliess.com, where you find our podcast archives. And while you're there,

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00:52:33.980 it's Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:52:41.980 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - January 01, 2024

The Feel-Good Method of Productivity

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