0:07

Welcome to the Talks at Google Podcast,

0:09

where great minds meet. I'm

0:12

Matthew, bringing you this week's episode

0:14

with author Ali Abdaal. Talks

0:17

at Google brings the world's

0:19

most influential thinkers, creators, makers,

0:22

and doers all to one place.

0:25

Every episode is taken from a video that

0:28

can be seen at

0:30

youtube.com/talks at Google. Productivity

0:34

expert, entrepreneur, creator, and best-selling

0:36

author Ali Abdaal visits Google

0:38

to discuss his book, Feel

0:40

Good Productivity, how to do

0:42

more of what matters to

0:44

you. We

0:46

often think that productivity is all about

0:48

hard work and that the road to

0:51

success is lined with endless frustration and

0:53

toil. But what

0:55

if there's another way? In

0:57

this book, Ali reveals how the

1:00

science of feel-good productivity can transform

1:02

your life. He

1:04

introduces the three hidden energizers

1:06

that underpin enjoyable productivity, the

1:09

three blockers that we must

1:11

overcome to beat procrastination, and

1:14

the three sustainers that prevent burnout

1:16

and help us achieve lasting fulfillment.

1:19

Ali Abdaal started his creator

1:21

journey in 2017 and has

1:24

since amassed a following of over

1:26

7 million people across various platforms

1:29

and newsletters and leads a

1:31

company with over 15 employees. While

1:35

working as a doctor in the

1:37

UK's National Health Service, Ali started

1:39

to document his journey towards living

1:41

a healthier, happier, more productive life

1:43

on his YouTube channel and other

1:45

social media platforms. To

1:48

date, Ali's evidence-based videos,

1:50

podcasts, and articles sharing insights

1:52

into the human mind have

1:54

reached hundreds of millions of

1:56

people all around the world.

2:00

moderated by Matt Britton. Here

2:02

is Ali Abdaal. Feel

2:04

good, productivity. Welcome

2:12

to Talks at Google. My name's Matt

2:14

Britton. And today, I'm really excited. We

2:16

have a doctor, an entrepreneur, a

2:18

magician, and the world's most followed

2:20

productivity expert. And it's just one

2:22

person who combines all those roles.

2:24

He studied medicine at the University

2:26

of Cambridge, qualified as a doctor

2:28

in the UK National Health Service.

2:31

He worked during COVID. He's always

2:33

been fascinated by productivity, though, and

2:35

the challenges of juggling everything in

2:37

life, which I suspect we're all

2:39

familiar with, too. And he launched

2:41

a YouTube channel in 2017, which

2:43

has become incredibly popular, sharing

2:46

his advice and tips. He's

2:48

got over 7 million followers across

2:50

platforms around the world. And

2:53

he's reached hundreds of millions of people with his

2:55

material. And in December, 2023, he published this book,

2:59

which I read on a plane recently.

3:01

And I took copious notes,

3:03

Feel Good, Productivity, which

3:06

quickly became a New York Times and

3:08

Sunday Times bestseller. And one of my

3:10

favorite productivity tips is if you're

3:12

stuck and you've got a big task ahead of

3:14

you, just get started. So shall we

3:16

do that? Please welcome

3:18

Ali Abdaal. Ali. Thank

3:26

you so much. Welcome. Welcome to Talks at

3:29

Google. Thank you. Have a seat. So you're

3:31

now an author. Yeah. It

3:34

feels really bizarre, because I've been a YouTuber for

3:36

seven years, and that was my prime identity. I

3:39

mean, well, firstly, my prime identity was being a

3:41

doctor. And then at some point, it shifted. When

3:43

people would ask, what do you do, I'd say,

3:45

oh, I guess I'm a YouTuber, which

3:47

is still kind of a weird thing. And

3:51

now it's like being an author and seeing the book.

3:53

And the fact that you even read it and took

3:55

notes, it's very flattering. It's really, really

3:57

cool. Everyone should be a YouTuber.

4:00

Well, congratulations on the book. And I guess what

4:02

I liked about this is

4:04

it starts with defining

4:07

what productivity is, how

4:09

to do more of what matters to you.

4:11

That's the subtitle. So let's just start to

4:13

unpack your whole philosophy here. For me, anyway,

4:15

it seems to hinge on that definition. So

4:17

take us through how we should think about

4:20

productivity. Yeah. So I think back in the

4:22

day, productivity was a lot about kind of

4:24

output per unit time. Like how many widgets

4:26

can you crank out in a certain amount

4:28

of time? How can you be

4:30

more efficient? And we sort of landed on this idea

4:32

of efficiency being the key thing. But

4:35

increasingly, as the world changed, all

4:38

of us are knowledge workers in various degrees, it's

4:41

a lot less about just being able to

4:43

crank out the widgets and a lot more

4:45

about making sure you're actually kind of rowing

4:47

in the right direction. Because you can be

4:49

very efficient just driving in

4:52

completely the wrong direction. So

4:54

for me, a big part of productivity is how

4:57

do we use our time in a way that's intentional, that's

4:59

effective, and that's actually enjoyable as well. And

5:02

that's kind of what this whole philosophy of feel

5:05

good productivity stems from. There's a bunch of really

5:07

cool research that shows that when you're feeling good

5:09

about the work that you're doing, when you're experiencing

5:11

positive emotions, when you're enjoying it, that boosts your

5:13

creativity, it boosts your productivity, it reduces your stress

5:16

levels, and it just generally makes your life better.

5:18

And so the book started off as a bit of

5:21

an exploration for what would it look

5:23

like if all of the work that we did actually

5:25

felt good. And turns

5:27

out there's a bunch of research backing that

5:29

up, and that's what the book is about.

5:31

So I'd love to start to go further

5:33

into that, particularly how you get energy for

5:35

things. So there's obviously things we all love

5:37

doing, and we could spend all our time

5:40

doing, whether it's watching YouTube videos or cooking

5:42

or whatever. But some of the time in

5:44

any life, in any job, there's stuff that

5:46

you maybe don't have energy for.

5:49

And in some lives and jobs, some of that stuff

5:51

is quite a lot of the life of a job.

5:53

So how do you address those things? Yeah,

5:55

absolutely. So we all have to do things that we

5:57

don't enjoy some of the time. is,

6:00

how do we get ourselves to actually enjoy it? How do

6:02

we get ourselves to enjoy even those things? And

6:05

there's basically three core principles. And there's the

6:07

story of a guy who

6:09

I interviewed for the book. And his name is

6:11

Matthew. And he used to work at

6:14

McDonald's. He used to work in a McDonald's drive-through. And

6:17

he really applied these three principles to

6:19

make working at the McDonald's drive-through more enjoyable

6:22

and more energizing. So the

6:24

first principle is play. And that's the first chapter

6:26

of the book. How can we approach our work

6:29

more in the spirit of play? So

6:31

what Matthew did, he was working in the

6:33

drive-through. And he realized it was really boring.

6:35

He was like, how do I make this feel more like play? So

6:38

what he would do is that every day,

6:40

he would decide it's a different

6:42

source day that day. So

6:44

Monday was barbecue sauce. Different source. So Monday's

6:46

barbecue sauce day. Tuesday is like sweet and

6:49

sour sauce. Wednesday's curry sauce, whatever. And

6:51

his mission when he was manning the drive-through

6:53

was to upsell the customers on that particular

6:55

sauce. So

6:58

you know, plays are orders. Would you like fries with that? Blah,

7:00

blah, blah. And would you like barbecue sauce with that? That'd

7:03

be a bit weird. It's not the script.

7:05

It's not the SOP. All

7:08

that stuff. And then if they said yes, he would upsell

7:10

them the barbecue sauce and try and get them to bite

7:12

too. If they said

7:14

no, he would try and convince them. The barbecue

7:16

sauce is really tasty. It's like, look at it

7:18

as well. Blah, blah, blah. And

7:20

by doing so, he managed to apply

7:22

this principle of play, added

7:24

a bit of an arbitrary challenge to his day

7:26

job. It made the customers like

7:29

better because now they had a more interesting interaction. It

7:31

made his life better because he was having more fun.

7:33

And it actually improved the profits of the McDonald's franchise

7:35

place that he was working at. So his manager loved

7:37

him. And then he ended up getting promoted to manager

7:40

fairly shortly thereafter. So one

7:43

of the key principles is play. And

7:45

a question I like to ask myself a lot, I actually have this

7:47

as my phone wallpaper, is whenever I'm

7:50

struggling with a task, whenever it feels draining, or I'm

7:52

like doing a freaking tax return or trying to figure

7:54

out like, how do I kind

7:56

of connect up the YouTube API to a Google Sheet

7:58

thing? And it's just, it's amazing. I'm like, okay. I'm

8:02

always like, what would this

8:04

look like if it were

8:06

fun? What would this look like

8:08

if it were fun? If it were fun, I

8:11

probably wouldn't be on my desk at home in my bedroom hunched

8:13

over my laptop like this. I'd probably

8:16

take my laptop and go down to a local coffee shop. I

8:18

live in Marleybone right now. It's very nice. It's like cafes.

8:20

I could just go to a cafe, order a nice latte.

8:23

Or in the case of you guys, you get free coffee and

8:25

free food. You can just go into the cafe and have a

8:27

free coffee. You don't have to pay for it. What

8:30

would it look like if it were fun? That has

8:32

been a central guiding question to a lot

8:35

of my thinking on productivity. It's just like, whenever

8:38

I'm doing something, how can I find a way

8:40

to just incorporate that spirit of play a little

8:42

bit more? So play is one of the three

8:44

energizers. It's a brilliant thought actually. You

8:46

also talk about things like adopting

8:49

a character and finding an

8:51

adventure. They're quite

8:53

playful ways of bringing energy to a task. Can

8:56

you tell us a bit more about those kind

8:58

of techniques? Yeah. It sounds

9:00

kind of weird, but one of the classic productivity

9:02

strategies is, at the start of the day, you

9:04

decide what is your most important task. What's the

9:06

one thing that if you just did that one

9:08

thing today, then it would be a win. I

9:13

started doing this in med school and I found it

9:15

very effective. But I realized, instead

9:18

of calling it a most important task, if I

9:20

just called it an adventure, it

9:22

just made it more fun. So

9:24

now I have my morning

9:26

journaling prompt. There's an app I use called Day One

9:28

and it just gives me this morning template. The

9:31

question is, what's today's adventure going to be? So

9:33

today's adventure is doing the talk at Google, which

9:35

already is fun and just frickin' insane and I'm

9:37

super flattered to be here. But that's today's adventure. Tomorrow's

9:40

adventure is making slides for a course that I'm working

9:42

on, but framing it as an adventure makes

9:44

it more fun. In our team, we

9:47

use OKRs. I suspect you guys might be familiar

9:49

with that. But

9:52

we don't call them objective and key results. We

9:54

actually call them quests. What's

9:57

the quest for the quarter? Quarterly quests. And

10:00

there's something about using that terminology. Everyone on the

10:02

team, it's like, grow a YouTube subscriber count to

10:05

6.5 million by 2024. It's

10:07

like, it's kind of a boring way

10:09

of describing it. The

10:12

way, for example, our goal was to

10:14

try and get loads of pre-orders for the book. We

10:16

called it, we titled

10:18

that quest Operation Banger. The

10:21

goal is to get the book to be a banger. Operation

10:23

Banger. And now the whole team is oriented around the

10:25

idea of Operation Banger. It's just more fun. One

10:28

of our goals for this year is to systemize the whole business. And

10:31

so we called it, I think it's like, I

10:33

think it's called Operation Systemize the Shit

10:36

Out of Everything. You know, that sort

10:38

of thing, even just like giving a

10:40

silly name to an OKR, makes, weirdly

10:43

makes the mind approach it in more

10:45

of that spirit of fun, more of that spirit of play.

10:47

And it makes everyone on the team feel good and hopefully

10:49

be more productive as well. And you had

10:51

a great quote actually from a fictional series about

10:53

medicine, Grey's Anatomy, where you

10:56

were talking about like, don't be serious, but

10:58

be sincere. And the character says before, quite

11:01

tough operations, it's a beautiful day to

11:03

save lives. Let's have some fun. Yeah.

11:06

It's so true. So a big part of why I applied

11:08

to med school, because I enjoyed Grey's Anatomy. And

11:11

I thought this was just going to be like a

11:13

fictional thing. But actually, when I started assisting in operations

11:16

and operating theaters and stuff, there's

11:18

this real sense that the best surgeons

11:20

are the ones who create an atmosphere

11:22

of lightness and ease, even

11:25

in the midst of life and death. So people

11:27

are often like, well, easy for you to have

11:29

fun at work. You're a YouTuber, blah, blah, blah.

11:31

But even in life and death situations, there

11:35

is value in creating an environment of lightness

11:38

and ease. So the surgeons will play upbeat

11:40

background music. And they'll crack

11:42

jokes every now and then. And the scrub nurse

11:44

and the anesthetist will be wearing a scrub cap

11:46

that has rainbows and unicorns on it and stuff,

11:49

because they realize actually that when an environment

11:51

is very serious, people's

11:53

energy sort of contracts. So

11:55

the juniors feel afraid to say something like, hey, man,

11:57

I think we're operating on the wrong leg. It's like.

12:00

You wouldn't say that, or I

12:02

think we've just given a drug that they're actually allergic to.

12:05

If it's a very serious environment, juniors

12:07

don't feel able to say that sort of stuff. And that is

12:09

how a lot of mistakes happen in surgery. And

12:11

so they realized, if you make it more chill, lighten

12:14

the mood a bit, play some music, and get

12:16

everyone to introduce themselves at the start, the surgeon

12:18

isn't this imposing figure. Everyone actually

12:20

performs better. And you literally save lives, because you

12:22

reduce the incidence of critical errors. So even in

12:25

life and death situations, we can always approach it

12:27

with sincerity rather than seriousness.

12:30

And this is a nice quote from

12:32

the philosopher Alan Watts, where it's like,

12:35

if you approach things very seriously, it's all very heavy.

12:38

And imagine playing a board

12:40

game with someone. No one wants to play with someone

12:42

who takes it too seriously. It's just like, it's amazing.

12:44

We've all got those friends. We've all got those friends.

12:47

All relatives, yeah. They're a stickler for the rules. They're

12:49

like, well, you can't technically pass go if you use

12:51

a community card. All of that stuff. But

12:54

we also don't want to play a game with someone

12:56

who's just completely half-assed about the whole thing. Because

12:59

that's just boring. It's like, we want to play with

13:01

someone who plays sincerely. It's like, they're putting

13:03

in their all. But they recognize at the end of the day, it's just

13:05

a game. And so in the process

13:07

of writing this book, whenever I do something that feels

13:09

high stakes, and I start to sort

13:11

of climb up and think, if post-it syndrome gets in the way,

13:14

procrastination gets in the way, I try

13:16

and take a step back and think, am

13:19

I being too serious about this? How can I just

13:21

dial down the seriousness and just sort of more lightness

13:23

and ease, more of a sense of play? So I

13:25

didn't have Grey's Anatomy, but I remember a quote from

13:27

a 1970s doctor who, and it may have been lifted

13:29

from somewhere else, which is, I'm serious about what I

13:31

do, but not about the way I do it. And

13:34

I like that attitude as well. Oh, that's

13:36

nice. So I've got a long scarf that I wear when I do

13:38

stuff. But

13:40

you mentioned Grey's Anatomy. I did want to go

13:42

to your personal journey and where the interest in

13:44

this came from. And in the book, you're quite

13:46

candid about a few times where you found things

13:48

really tough. It was getting on top of

13:50

you, and you were frustrated. You felt like you should be

13:53

amazing, and you were finding it really difficult. And you sort

13:55

of tell us a little bit about what

13:57

that was like and what that was like. revenue

14:00

to do subsequently. Quite often it's the adversity that

14:02

sort of shapes us. I was interested in that.

14:04

Yeah. So when I first started work as a

14:07

doctor, you know, in theory, med school should

14:09

prepare you for life as a doctor. In reality, med school does

14:11

not prepare you for life as a doctor. And

14:13

so you kind of get thrown in on the deep end.

14:17

The first Wednesday of August is actually known as

14:19

a Black Wednesday because it's when you see an

14:21

increase in death rates because that is the day

14:23

that all of the new graduates start working on

14:25

the wards. And you can see this

14:27

blip in the stats. So don't go to hospital

14:29

on the first Wednesday of August, if you can

14:31

avoid it. That's the changeover day at Black Wednesday.

14:35

But for the first few months of

14:37

my life as a doctor, I was like, oh, you

14:39

know, when you're in med school, going

14:42

into the hospital, it's kind of optional,

14:44

right? Going into lectures is optional. When you're

14:46

at university, it's optional. When you start

14:48

a job, going into work is no longer optional. What the

14:50

hell? You have to wake

14:52

up. You have to commute to work. You have to

14:54

go there. You're there all day. Commute back. By the

14:56

time you've eaten and washed yourself, it's

14:58

time to sleep again and redo the same cycle

15:00

again and again. And

15:03

so I was getting quite drained and sort of quite burned

15:05

out in the first few months. And I

15:07

would speak to other doctors who were ahead of me in their

15:10

careers. And they would say, oh, it's just part of the grind.

15:12

Once you achieve N plus one level

15:14

in the hierarchy, add that next

15:16

rung. Add that next rung. That's when life comes

15:18

tomorrow. And

15:22

all of the doctors I spoke to, they all also

15:24

seemed pretty miserable. But

15:28

then I kind of realized a weird

15:30

thing. So there was this one, like,

15:32

random Christmas day shift. That

15:35

was the first time I did a manual evacuation.

15:37

Anyone know what a manual evacuation is? It sounds

15:40

like fun. Yeah, a manual evacuation is where you

15:42

basically put a finger into someone's

15:44

rectum and you scoop out

15:46

the poo because they're very constipated and you've tried

15:48

giving them laxatives and stuff. But it's so impacted

15:50

that it's just not going to work. And

15:53

so I arrived in the hospital

15:55

that morning. It was like Christmas day because I didn't manage

15:57

to get Christmas day off. And the nurse said to me,

15:59

hey. I've got a

16:01

job for you, manual evacuation. And

16:06

I said to the nurse, can't the nurses do

16:08

manual evacuation? And she was

16:10

like, well, I could, but I'm not. In

16:13

the UK, the certification laws means that nurses aren't allowed to

16:15

do it, so doctors have to do it. I

16:17

was like, but I've never done it before. And she was like, that's okay, I

16:19

can teach you how. I actually

16:23

also found a video on YouTube that talked about

16:25

the process. It didn't use real people.

16:27

It used like a mannequin because otherwise it would get demonetized,

16:29

I'm sure. It violates

16:31

our sentence. Exactly, a real violation.

16:34

So that is the very definition of

16:36

a shitty job. That

16:39

was very good. That

16:42

morning it really was. It was kind of weird. It was

16:44

a very busy day. It was a Christmas day. All

16:46

my friends were off, but I was working. But weirdly, when

16:48

I got to the end of the day, when I got

16:50

back home, I felt weirdly energized. Initially

16:52

I was like a

16:54

bit sus because I was like, was it a manual

16:57

evacuation that weirdly energized me? And

17:01

so I was like, okay, it's just one day to point whatever. And

17:03

then I kind of kept an eye on this. And for the next

17:05

few months, I kind of noted when most

17:07

of the days I'd get home from work, feeling like super, super

17:09

drained and feeling like, oh, I don't have the energy to edit

17:12

another video, even kind of trying to build my YouTube channel on

17:14

the site. But some days I'd get home

17:16

from work and I'd feel weirdly energized. I

17:18

was like, what were those days? And

17:20

weirdly, those days were the weekends. For

17:23

some reason, when I was working a weekend shift, I felt

17:25

weirdly energized at the end of the day. Those

17:28

days were also randomly like Wednesday afternoons. And

17:31

I realized that the thing on weekends and

17:33

on Wednesday afternoons is on Wednesday afternoons, the

17:35

senior doctors are away on training. And so

17:37

I was kind of on the wards by

17:39

myself. On a weekend, there's more work to

17:41

do. There's more emergencies. And there's fewer staff

17:43

around. So I was there more by myself.

17:46

And I realized that on the weekends, I

17:48

was just automatically taking more responsibility for

17:50

the patients under my care. On

17:53

a normal weekday shift, I was kind of like, well, I'm

17:55

the bottom of the rung. I'm the admin monkey. I'm

17:57

just doing the boring stuff. And that

17:59

was like the whole now. narrative that

18:01

junior doctors say to ourselves. But

18:05

on weekends, when the consultant would ask,

18:07

what's Mrs. Jones' potassium level, I would know what it

18:09

is, because no one else in the box up with

18:11

me, I had to know what the potassium level was.

18:14

And I found that when I took more ownership, when I

18:16

took more responsibility for the patients, I

18:18

was more energized. And it's this weird thing

18:20

that this sense of energy we get,

18:23

I think the way we think about energy, it's like you start

18:25

the day off with full energy, and then over the day, over

18:27

the work day, your energy depletes, and then you get home from

18:29

work, and then your family and friends are left with the dregs

18:31

of your energy. But

18:34

that's not actually how energy works. People

18:37

who enjoy working out get

18:39

that sense of like, you put in the work into

18:41

working out, but it actually re-energizes you somehow. And

18:44

so similarly, taking more ownership, taking more

18:46

responsibility at work, yes,

18:49

you're working harder, but you're also gaining more energy

18:51

from it. And so I realized this

18:53

on the weekends and started applying it to weekdays as well,

18:55

because I realized I could just choose to take responsibility. We

18:58

didn't have to wait until the weekend shift. And

19:00

that kind of relates to the second P, the second energizer,

19:03

which is power. When we feel a sense

19:05

of power, a sense of empowerment in whatever we're doing, that

19:07

massively boosts our energy and it boosts our intrinsic

19:09

motivation. So play and

19:12

power and ways of boosting. And I think

19:14

your self-observation there is really important,

19:16

isn't it? What is it gives you personally

19:19

energy? And I guess the other thing you mentioned, the

19:21

third P, which is people. Tell

19:23

us a bit about people. Yeah.

19:26

How do you think about energy in that context? Absolutely.

19:28

So three P's, play, power, and people. There's just one thing

19:30

you take away from this. It's like any time you're struggling

19:33

with something, just think, how can

19:35

I incorporate play, power, and people into this? So

19:38

we've all had that feeling of there are certain people

19:40

that you hang out with and you feel very energized

19:42

after that interaction. Unfortunately, there are also

19:44

certain people you hang out with. You feel very drained

19:46

after that interaction. Sometimes

19:48

those are known as energy vampires. And

19:51

there was some interesting research I

19:53

came across when writing that chapter about

19:56

people, which is that they've done

19:58

studies in organizations. where they do this

20:01

sort of energy map. And they

20:03

ask employees to map

20:06

out who they interact with, and who their manager is, and who their

20:08

boss is, and stuff. And who is

20:10

an energizing influence on average, and who is a draining

20:12

influence on average? And they ask hundreds of people this

20:14

in the company. And you get a

20:17

very clear map that there are certain people

20:19

who are profoundly energizing, and certain people who

20:21

are profoundly draining. And

20:23

then you correlate these energy ratings with

20:26

the supervisor ratings, the manager ratings, the salary, how

20:28

often they're likely to get promotions. And you

20:30

find that the people who are energizing perform

20:33

way better on all possible metrics. People like them more.

20:35

People want to work with them more. They get promotions.

20:37

They get paid more. All of the good things happen

20:39

when you are an energizing influence. So

20:41

one takeaway from that is, I like to ask

20:43

myself, am I

20:45

being an energizing influence on the people around me, or am I

20:47

being a draining influence on the people around me? So

20:50

that's one takeaway. The other takeaway is that

20:52

generally, stuff is just more fun when you do

20:54

it with people around you, when

20:56

you can find a way to incorporate people into it. So

20:59

I realized this in medical school. Studying for medical school exams,

21:01

where you're having to memorize loads of pointless stuff, is

21:03

not very fun when you're doing it on your own. If

21:06

you go to the local library, the Emmanuel College Library was

21:08

where me and my friends would go. I would invite friends

21:10

from different colleges, and we would sit around the same table,

21:12

and we would use the Pomodoro technique together. 25

21:15

minutes of work, five minutes of break. 25 minutes

21:17

of work, five minutes of break. And we had a

21:20

little codename, a code for ourselves, that we would knock

21:22

twice on the table when a pom was going to

21:24

start, and we would knock once when a pom was

21:26

going to end, and we'd knock twice after the five

21:28

minute break. And we

21:31

made a WhatsApp group called the Pomodoro Society. And

21:35

we're still in touch to this day, 12 years later. PomSock

21:38

is what ended up being shortened

21:40

as. And

21:42

I found this when writing the book, it was in the

21:44

middle of the pandemic. I didn't really have the ability to

21:46

see friends. But there was this Zoom

21:48

co-working group called London Writer Salon, where you can

21:50

just hop on a Zoom call with a few

21:53

hundred. We've got a fan here. We've got a fan

21:55

of London Writer Salon. A few hundred writers from all

21:57

around the world. And it's just like a one

21:59

hour session. and you do five minutes of chit chat at

22:01

the start, 50 minutes of work and five minutes

22:03

of conclusion at the end. And

22:05

it was weirdly energizing. It's like even when I'm on a Zoom call,

22:08

or a Google Meet call, shall I say, with

22:11

people from all around the world, virtually, it still feels

22:13

more fun to do the work. So how can we

22:15

incorporate more of a sense of people into the work

22:17

that we're doing? I think also, as I was reading

22:20

that, I was reflecting about the

22:22

role of managers. And I remember this vividly when

22:24

I first became a manager some time ago now.

22:27

You feel like you've got to be productive by managing people

22:29

having lots of meetings, but actually what you need to do

22:31

is show up with energy. And it's

22:34

much better if you've taken a bit of time

22:36

off or you've worked out, and then you're really

22:38

energizing the next meeting because that sort of permeates

22:41

everyone. Because we can't always be sort of on all the

22:43

time. And I think that kind of approach

22:45

to amplify energy through an organization is something I

22:47

notice quite a lot. Yeah, absolutely. One thing I

22:50

try and tell myself whenever I'm on a call

22:52

with anyone on my team, is I

22:55

need to basically fake being high energy for the first

22:57

few minutes. Because no one can really

22:59

tell the difference between real energy and

23:01

fake energy. And we can always put it on for

23:03

at least a minute or two. But it just starts

23:05

the meeting off on a really nice way and

23:08

helps everyone, helps lift everyone's mood.

23:10

Whereas on days where I forget

23:13

to do this and I'm like, hey guys, how's it going? And

23:16

it just sort of drags down the mood

23:18

of the whole thing and I become a drainer, which is not good.

23:21

Yeah, well, fake it to make it is

23:23

something that's definitely true, isn't it? If you

23:25

smile, then people will smile just through mirror

23:27

reflexes. And actually everyone becomes immediately happier. Yeah.

23:30

That's really cool. So I want to come to audience

23:32

questions in a minute. I know you've got a

23:34

number, particularly to get some top tips on quick hacks

23:36

that people can do. So as

23:39

you get ready for that, I just wanted to turn

23:41

to sort of the second section of the book, which

23:43

I thought was brilliant, which is about all the ways

23:45

that we are blocked in being productive. All the stuff

23:47

that gets in the way. Tell us a bit about

23:50

that. Yeah, so one of the

23:52

big issues that people in my audience struggle

23:54

with and whenever they talk is procrastination. You've

23:56

got this important thing that you need to do. And

23:59

you just. putting it off and putting it off and putting

24:01

it off and then like it starts to feel a bit grim,

24:03

all that stuff. One

24:06

way people talk about this is that like if

24:08

you're struggling with procrastination, then you're just not disciplined

24:10

enough. But I don't really like

24:13

this whole like discipline as a narrative. It's

24:17

a bit too like self-flagellating.

24:20

It's like, oh, I lack discipline and therefore I'm

24:22

unable to get this boring thing done. It's like

24:24

no, like the thing is boring. We all struggle

24:26

to do boring things. Whenever we do surveys to

24:28

our like five million plus audience, everyone struggles with

24:31

procrastination. Everyone here, you know,

24:33

you guys are high-flying Googlers, but I suspect

24:35

most people struggle with procrastination. It's

24:37

not because you have a discipline problem. Usually

24:39

it's because there's like one or two things that are blocking you from

24:41

starting the task. So one big realization

24:43

from the research, and I interviewed a bunch of professors

24:46

who specialize in studying procrastination, weirdly, and

24:49

their whole shtick is that procrastination is

24:51

a problem with getting started. If

24:54

you can just get started with the task, as you mentioned at

24:56

the start of the thing, if you can just get started for

24:58

five minutes or two minutes or three minutes, you're

25:01

a lot more likely to keep on going. This is

25:03

like Newton's law of inertia in action. Like if you're

25:05

at rest, it's a lot easier to stay at rest.

25:07

But with a little bit of motion, it's a lot

25:09

easier to keep going in motion. So

25:11

one hack I had

25:14

on my desk was like a five-minute hourglass. I

25:16

just found one off of Amazon, just like a

25:18

nice blue color because I like the blue color scheme.

25:20

I just had this five-minute hourglass, and whenever I sit

25:22

down and I'd be screwing around

25:25

on YouTube, instead of doing the

25:27

work that I was supposed to be doing, I would just

25:29

turn the hourglass over and just tell myself, I'm

25:31

only gonna do this for five minutes. Before

25:34

I knew it, like time would have passed, the hourglass would

25:36

have been long gone, and I've made a start on that

25:38

task. But often that

25:40

sort of initial hump, that initial activation

25:42

energy, that inertia is the thing

25:44

that blocks us from getting started on the task. And so

25:47

the five-minute rule is a helpful way of getting

25:49

past that. So I'm going to go to the

25:51

first of our questions that have been upvoted here, but then I'd

25:53

love to invite questions at the mic in the room as well,

25:56

which builds on that, which is what is your

25:58

favorite low effort, high impact, product? activity hack,

26:00

something anyone could implement today

26:02

to see a noticeable boost.

26:05

Oh, that's easy. That's the one that I have on my phone. What would this

26:07

look like if it were fun? And

26:11

then people are always like, oh, but not everything can be

26:13

fun. It's like, OK, fine. Not everything can be fun all

26:15

the time. But if you ask yourself

26:17

genuinely, this next thing I'm about to do, how

26:20

could I just make it 10% more enjoyable? That's

26:24

a great question. It's like, OK, well, I

26:26

could put on some background music. I could go to the

26:28

local cafe. I could just go and

26:30

sit in the co-working space where my friends are around.

26:33

I could, I don't know, track

26:35

my progress. So it feels like I write everything on my to-do

26:37

list, and then I take things off if I have to do

26:39

a load of admin, because that feels good. I

26:42

could do a little timer with myself, where

26:44

I set a 15-minute timer. And my goal is to try

26:46

and beat the clock and just get through

26:48

as much admin in 15 minutes as I can. There's all

26:50

sorts of creative ways to make anything we do just simple.

26:52

And that's interesting, because none of those things relate to

26:54

the task itself. They're all related to just

26:57

making it gamified or

26:59

whatever around it. Yeah, exactly. If we're having fun,

27:01

productivity takes care of itself. And so I

27:03

think that is a high-impact, very

27:05

low-effort way of just making

27:08

yourself more productive. And another

27:10

question here. This is from Anastasia

27:13

that says, what's a common piece

27:15

of productivity advice that you completely

27:17

disagree with, and why? Yeah.

27:22

I really disagree with all the stuff around discipline.

27:25

To be more productive, you should be more disciplined. So

27:28

the way I think of this is that if

27:30

you imagine a hill, and you imagine your

27:32

task is like you're rolling the boulder. Rolling

27:34

a boulder up the hill. Now, if

27:38

you're trying to roll a boulder up a

27:40

hill, and discipline is like you're having to

27:42

force it each day, it's really high effort.

27:45

You're having to keep on rolling the boulder

27:47

and stuff. You

27:49

listen to some David Goggins, and he tells you, you've got to

27:51

be more disciplined. And you keep rolling the boulder, and all of

27:53

this. And

27:55

then you get the boulder hit the top of the hill, and

27:57

it just sort of comes crumbling back. down

28:00

again because you've not enjoyed

28:02

the task itself. The

28:05

way I instead try and flip it around is that

28:08

how do we kind of terraform the hill so that

28:10

it actually just goes downhill instead? How

28:13

do I just make it feel like the task is downhill rather than

28:15

uphill? Now there's always a little

28:18

dose of discipline you might need to just get started. There's

28:20

always a little bit of a hump before the hill goes

28:22

down. But with just a little

28:24

dose of discipline, we can – with

28:26

a little dose of discipline and then actually enjoying

28:29

the process. Enjoying the process is what makes the

28:31

hill feel like it's going downhill. Whereas if

28:33

you're having to use discipline, I think

28:35

you're just sort of shooting yourself in the foot because you haven't yet

28:38

found a way to make the process enjoyable.

28:41

I realized I didn't particularly enjoy working out when I'm

28:43

there on my own without listening to anything and without

28:45

like a personal trainer or an exercise class. So I'm

28:47

having to use discipline every time I'm at the gym.

28:50

But I realized that, okay, well, if I go to an

28:52

exercise class, it's more fun. If I get a personal trainer,

28:54

it's more fun. If I even track my workouts and start

28:56

feeling like it's more of a game and I've got to

28:58

make the numbers go up, it feels a bit more fun.

29:00

If I'm listening to a podcast, it's more fun. If I'm

29:02

listening to Disney songs, it's more fun. And

29:05

now I only need discipline to get myself to

29:07

the gym. I don't need discipline to keep myself at the gym.

29:10

So I think we should use discipline in very

29:12

small doses and relying on discipline is the recipe

29:14

for that. Ah, fantastic. What a

29:16

great idea. Thank you very much for that. Yeah,

29:18

do come to the microphone. So

29:20

please go – if you come to the mic here, would you mind,

29:22

and then other people can hear you? Do

29:25

come up. Yeah, thank you very much. And then, form an orderly

29:27

queue, if you wish. We just

29:29

got a bunch of people watching remotely as well. Thank

29:31

you so much. Please go ahead. Hi.

29:35

So you say that discipline

29:38

is not key. But

29:40

what happens when motivation runs

29:42

out? Because at the beginning of a task or a project

29:44

or a goal, you're super motivated

29:46

to do something you love,

29:48

even if it's something that you enjoy doing, but then

29:50

the motivation goes. So, yeah. Yeah.

29:53

How do you sustain motivation? Yeah, this is big. So

29:58

I agree that discipline is important in small doses. So,

30:01

okay, so there's something called the motivation spectrum. I talk about

30:03

this in the final chapter of the book in case anyone

30:05

wants to flick this like a little diagram. You

30:08

guys might be familiar with the idea of intrinsic

30:10

and extrinsic motivation. Like intrinsic motivation is when you

30:12

do a thing because you want to do the

30:14

thing. We are mostly intrinsically

30:16

motivated to watch YouTube videos, for example,

30:18

or watch a movie

30:21

or play a video game, you know, all that stuff. You're intrinsically motivated.

30:24

Extrinsic motivation is when you're doing the thing because

30:26

of the money or to avoid the punishment or because

30:28

you want to get the grade. You're doing it for

30:31

an external reason. Now,

30:33

intrinsic motivation is like the motivation you have at the start of the

30:35

project. Like, yeah, it's going to be fun. It's like the high energy,

30:37

all that kind of stuff. But as you

30:40

pointed out, intrinsic motivation always disappears.

30:42

It is not, it's not a lasting form of motivation.

30:46

So what do we do? Now, intrinsic

30:48

extrinsic doesn't actually tell the whole story. There

30:50

are two other forms of motivation here. They're

30:53

all in the book in case you want to

30:55

reference, but like there is a form of motivation

30:58

called introjected motivation, which is the motivation of self-flagellation.

31:03

And then and so that is also a bad

31:05

form of motivation because you're just sort of beating

31:07

yourself up and a lot of us overachievers have

31:09

the tendency to do that to ourselves. But

31:12

then there is actually a good form of

31:14

extrinsic motivation and that's identified motivation. And

31:16

identified motivation is when you're like, you

31:19

know, I might not

31:21

be enjoying being at the gym right now, but

31:23

I vibe

31:26

with the identity of someone who values

31:28

my health and who values my fitness

31:30

and who values longevity. And that

31:33

goal is a goal that I have intrinsically I've sort

31:35

of personally decided for myself is important to me. It's

31:37

not a goal that anyone else has thrust on me.

31:40

I have decided to identify with the goal of being a

31:42

healthy person. And therefore, even though the gym is

31:44

not fun right now, I'm

31:47

still going to I'm still going

31:49

to push through this workout, try and enjoy

31:51

the process because I value the I intrinsically

31:54

value the outcome. So

31:56

it's like when intrinsic motivation wanes, we

31:59

want to try and harness this identified

32:01

motivation. Sometimes that looks like

32:03

discipline, where you do have to tell yourself,

32:05

okay, bro, we just gotta do it. But

32:08

sometimes what it looks like is reminding yourself of

32:10

the why behind why you're doing the thing. And

32:13

there's a bunch of research that shows if you just remind yourself

32:15

of the why, the end goal, the real result, the value you're

32:17

trying to get to, it makes it a

32:19

lot easier to continue doing the thing. That's really powerful, and

32:21

it's a bit of self-talk, isn't it? I have a thing

32:23

where I'm pushing myself really hard on a cardio machine, maybe

32:26

a rowing machine, and I say

32:28

to myself, you work for me. I'm

32:30

having my mind talk to my body. Don't

32:32

scream at me that you gotta stop. I'm just telling

32:34

you, you work for me. And I find that actually

32:36

helps me, bizarrely. Maybe that's just me.

32:38

I'm not gonna find myself for self-talk. There

32:41

is actually a study that they've done about this. It was, I think

32:44

it was on cycling machines. And they

32:46

got people to do cycling machines, and

32:49

they split the group up into two halves. For

32:51

one of the groups, they told them to tell

32:54

themselves, I can't remember what it was,

32:56

but it was something neutral. But then for the other group, they

32:58

told themselves to literally just repeat in their heads, you've got this,

33:00

you can do it. We've got this, we can do it. And

33:03

they found a measurable improvement in the performance of

33:06

the group that was just being positive, had positive

33:08

self-talk. They called it the positive self-talk intervention, which

33:10

is a bit of a mouthful. But

33:13

just actually telling yourself, the stories we tell

33:15

ourselves form a huge part of the reality

33:17

that we experience and the way we feel

33:19

motivated and productive. And just being a

33:21

bit nicer to ourselves often is another

33:24

fairly low effort, high impact

33:26

way to boost productivity. Brilliant, thank you. You could go

33:29

on about this for ages, but there are more questions.

33:31

Sir, go ahead. Thank you so much, Ali, for coming.

33:34

I guess my question, you've talked a lot about the

33:36

aspect of play and you just, we were talking about

33:38

motivation as well. What are your thoughts on reward? Sometimes

33:41

it could be like, oh, let's go through

33:43

this workout or let's do my taxes and

33:45

I eat ice cream at night. Or something

33:47

like that. So what are your thoughts? Rewards.

33:50

Rewards are an interesting one. I think rewards

33:52

are useful in very small doses, but they

33:54

can be a double-edged sword. Because if you

33:57

rely on rewards to get you to do something, you

33:59

train your way. your brain to

34:03

be doing it for the sake of extrinsic motivation. I'm

34:10

not a parent yet, but I've been reading books about

34:12

parenting just in preparation, because why not? That's

34:16

genuinely productivity. Productive

34:18

parenting. Yeah, so

34:20

it's super interesting stuff. If you

34:22

reward a child with a cookie or even

34:25

praise in many ways as a result of

34:27

doing a thing, they then start to

34:29

only do the thing if they get the praise, rather

34:32

than being intrinsically motivated to do the thing. And

34:34

so the research on this says that you should

34:37

praise kids for effort rather than outcomes, or

34:40

effort rather than grades. So I think about this

34:42

a lot. I don't want to get into the

34:44

habit of telling myself, oh, if I

34:46

go to the gym, then I will reward myself

34:48

with a cookie afterwards or whatever. It's

34:51

fine some of the time, but we shouldn't be relying

34:54

on it, ideally. Thank you. Thank you.

34:56

Next question, please. Thanks

34:58

a lot. And I really like the channel. I

35:00

really like the Pikachu socks as well. No, thank

35:02

you. My question is actually

35:04

quite simple, which is, how do you

35:07

have fun while you're under time

35:09

pressure? And specifically, I have a big deadline coming up

35:11

two weeks from now. It's for

35:13

my studies. I'm doing part-time studies. And

35:16

I started doing it because I genuinely enjoy it.

35:18

I really want to learn this, but I have

35:20

this deadline. And it's so, so much pressure right

35:23

now to get that done. It's hard to still

35:25

have fun. So how do you deal with fun

35:27

under time pressure? Nice. That's a great question. So

35:30

I had this when I came to the deadline for the book. And

35:34

I said this to my editor. I was like, you

35:36

know, I've got the deadline. It feels really high pressure.

35:40

And my editor was like, isn't the

35:42

title of the book feel good productivity? Isn't your whole shtick

35:45

to find a way to make it fun? Are you

35:47

maybe taking this too seriously? And I was like, you're

35:49

right. I'm taking this too seriously. So

35:52

I realized for me, a book is

35:54

like a big deal. It's like a book.

35:56

It gets published. It's got the freaking Penguin logo on

35:58

it. Penguin is like a r- real company that my

36:00

family in Pakistan have heard of. Shit, this is

36:02

a big deal. And oh my goodness,

36:05

people are going to read the book. What

36:07

if people don't read the book? People are going to

36:09

leave reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads and like, oh

36:11

my god, so much pressure. And it kind

36:15

of made, just my editor saying, are you

36:17

taking this a bit too seriously, made me

36:19

realize. I am just taking this too

36:21

seriously. It is just a frickin' book at the end

36:23

of the day. Who cares? It's

36:27

going to come out. It's going to be fine. Weirdly,

36:31

I find that lowering the bar and

36:34

embracing mediocrity is like

36:36

the way forward. There's

36:41

a great author called Cal Newport that some of you guys might

36:43

be familiar with. He wrote a book called Deep Work and recently

36:45

Slow Productivity, which is a really good book. I

36:48

interviewed him on my pod, and I was asking him for writing

36:50

advice, because he's written a bunch of books. And he's like a

36:52

computer science professor and has all these things that he has to

36:54

do on deadlines. And he told

36:56

me a great piece of advice. He said, you know,

36:58

Ollie, whenever I'm working on a book or an assignment

37:00

or a task or a paper or anything, I tell

37:02

myself, this one just needs to be

37:05

reasonable. The next one's going to be good. This

37:08

one just needs to be reasonable. And so I found

37:10

for myself, when I shifted the bar from the book

37:12

needs to be good to

37:14

this book just needs to be reasonable, it

37:17

helped me do it. When I make YouTube videos

37:19

now, it's like, in the early days of being a

37:22

YouTuber, no one's watching your stuff. No one cares. When

37:24

you've got five million subscribers, suddenly you're views

37:27

is like potentially 500,000 people are watching this,

37:29

you start thinking about your view subscriber ratios, you're

37:31

like, oh my god, am I falling off? Am

37:34

I going to be a has-been? All of

37:36

that sort of stuff, it's a lot of pressure. Whereas

37:40

I have a mantra that I read to myself before

37:42

filming a YouTube video, which basically says, I

37:44

don't care about the performance of this video. I

37:47

only care that this video could potentially

37:49

provide value to at least one person.

37:52

And when I lower the bar of filming a YouTube video

37:55

or giving a talk to it, all this needs to do

37:57

is just potentially help one person. Not even definitely help, because

37:59

I can't complain. control that, but even potentially help one

38:01

person. It just

38:03

makes it feel way less of a heavy lift,

38:06

and then I get it done, and then sometimes the

38:08

video does well. Thank you, YouTube algorithm. I

38:10

think that point, though, about lowering the stakes

38:12

is so important, isn't it? Because when we're

38:14

stressed, we know from psychological research that we

38:16

actually become less capable, and

38:19

it's harder to function. So finding

38:21

ways to lower the stakes allows you, kind of,

38:23

to be more human. Yeah, embracing mediocrity. I think

38:25

it's just the way forward. I'm not sure I

38:27

like that side. Yeah. That's what it's

38:30

about. I need to work on that. Next question, please.

38:32

Hi. I have a bit of a

38:34

specific question. Do

38:37

you have any tips for people whose

38:39

productivity it tenders by context switching, for

38:41

example, like people that suffer from ADD

38:43

or other types of? Yeah,

38:46

so context switching, and if you suffer from ADD

38:48

or feel in that mode, how do you deal

38:50

with that? Yeah. I

38:52

don't want to pretend to have all the answers here, because I don't

38:54

think I suffer with ADD or any of this sort of stuff. But

38:57

there is loads of research that says that context switching

38:59

is just bad for everyone. That's

39:02

dropping and changing between tasks. Yeah, exactly. You're doing some

39:04

emails for five minutes, then you're doing this presentation, and

39:06

then you're hopping on a Slack message or whatever, and

39:09

then back to this thing and back to this thing.

39:11

And this is an idea called attention residue, which

39:13

is that any time you switch tasks, part

39:15

of your brain is still on the previous

39:17

one. And so you're

39:21

using less brain power on the task you're actually trying to

39:23

do. There's kind of two things

39:26

to do here. Number one is, if you have control over

39:28

your calendar, then try and set it

39:30

up so that you're doing decent

39:32

chunk blocks of deep work. The

39:35

way I think of it is like, there's only really two

39:38

types of task. There are kind

39:40

of focus tasks, and then there are admin tasks. Pretty

39:43

much everything can fall into those categories. A focus task requires

39:45

me to sit down and focus for at least 25 minutes.

39:48

An admin task requires me to do the thing

39:51

probably less than 25 minutes. So all of

39:53

my admin tasks I try and batch, stick it in my

39:55

to-do list, and then I put a calendar block that

39:57

I call my admin party. Again, just naming it.

40:00

The party makes it feel more fun, weirdly. I give it

40:02

a little like on Google Calendar, I give it a

40:04

little like celebration hats emoji. I go

40:06

to admin party, I go to a coffee shop, tie myself

40:08

45 minutes back through my admin, but I try and have

40:10

uninterrupted blocks of time for debug. That's

40:12

nice if you have control over your own calendar.

40:14

If you don't have control over your own calendar,

40:16

there's a great strategy from the research,

40:18

which is that you essentially wanna

40:21

create a ready to resume plan. So

40:23

let's say I am, I don't know, working on a

40:26

Google slide deck or whatever, and then I'm

40:28

having to do this 10 minute meeting

40:30

and then having to go back to the slide deck. Essentially

40:33

before switching tasks, I just wanna make a plan

40:35

for when I come back to the task, what

40:37

am I gonna do? And they

40:39

find that if you just make a 30 second plan for

40:42

what you intend to do when you resume the

40:45

task, that reduces the negative effect of this attention

40:47

residue by an absolutely huge margin.

40:50

So making a little 30 second plan before switching tasks

40:52

is, I find, super helpful. Just while you're on that

40:54

point before we go to the next question, I think

40:56

you mentioned in the book, something I definitely wear as

40:58

well, that sort of the night before plan is often

41:00

a really helpful thing. So not I'm gonna do my

41:02

steps tomorrow or whatever, but actually I'm gonna do them

41:04

tomorrow between 11 and 12. Or

41:07

whatever, that makes a huge difference. Makes a huge difference, yeah.

41:09

Actually, we've got a question here. What do you see as

41:11

the best Google product for productivity? Honestly,

41:13

it's probably Google Calendar. Literally

41:15

just like putting a block in your calendar for when

41:17

you do the thing makes you infinitely more likely to

41:19

do the thing. And

41:23

occasionally if I'm doing like a Q&A or something and someone

41:25

asks, oh, I'm really struggling with procrastination on whatever the thing

41:27

is, I'm like, okay,

41:29

have you put it in your calendar? And

41:31

they're like, no. I'm like, do you wanna put it

41:33

in your calendar? And they're like, yeah, I

41:35

guess so. I'm like, how about we do it now? Do

41:37

you wanna get our phone and just put it on your calendar? Like,

41:40

when are we gonna do it? And they're like, oh, I guess

41:42

I could do it today at 4 p.m. or tomorrow at 11.

41:44

I'm like, great. And do you want us to add me to

41:46

the calendar invite just so you can be a bit of accountability?

41:48

And they're like, sure. And then you

41:50

get the thing done. It's just putting a block in

41:52

the calendar is mind blowing productivity hack. I'm totally with

41:55

you. When my kids were really young, I have kids.

41:57

I can tell you more than the book can. I

42:02

was really determined to make sure I took them

42:04

to school regularly and I decided the way to

42:06

do that was put it in my calendar and

42:08

treat it like the most important external meeting of

42:10

the week. And it might have to

42:12

move but it was always going to happen and that made

42:15

a huge difference to me and now I do that with

42:17

they don't care about me now but you know working out

42:19

and other things as well. So I'm with you on that

42:21

one. Thank you. Yeah I do it for date nights

42:23

as well. I do it for times to visit my mum because if it's not in

42:25

the calendar it's not going to get done. Yeah absolutely

42:28

brilliant thank you. I absolutely loved

42:30

the book. As someone going to the PhD

42:32

I found it really useful especially the experiments

42:34

and the idea of experimenting with stuff. What

42:37

was the most interesting experiment to you like the

42:39

one that surprised you the most when you were

42:41

doing all these stuff? Oh nice

42:43

question. So this idea of thinking

42:45

and experiments is something that's like throughout the book which

42:48

is that you know productivity is a very personal thing.

42:51

I make videos about productivity and all this sort of stuff but like

42:54

I can't really tell you what to do because it's so

42:56

personal for everyone. The way

42:58

that I read all of these self-help books

43:00

including my own is I'm just taking from

43:03

it a series of experiments and I'm just going to

43:05

try and experiment out in my life and I'm going to see if it

43:07

works for me and if it does great I have a new strategy and

43:09

if it doesn't that's also fine. Let's move on to the next one. So

43:12

for me one of the most surprising things was

43:15

the unreasonable power of the

43:18

essentially the

43:21

unreasonable power of a leveling up

43:23

meter. And so like if you're

43:25

playing video games you know I was into World of Warcraft back in

43:27

the day. Currently playing Horizon Forbidden West

43:30

on the PS5 it's sick but like

43:32

as you kill the monsters and stuff you like level

43:34

your experience bar goes up and then at a certain

43:36

point you level up and then you get some new

43:38

skills and then experience bar goes down because experience bar

43:40

goes up. And video

43:42

game designers are incredibly smart because they really

43:44

optimize for how do we get people to

43:46

continue playing these freaking video games. And

43:50

the level up bar is something that it

43:52

makes playing video games very addictive because you

43:54

get the sensation of making progress. And

43:57

so I found this in a

43:59

bunch of research papers also. I was like, OK, let

44:01

me try this out. And every

44:03

day when I was working on the book, I started tracking my word

44:05

count. So I would

44:07

track how many words I've written and how many minutes of

44:09

like focused minutes I was actually focusing on the book. A,

44:12

that was interesting because it had me help me realize,

44:14

damn, I'm really not actually working as much as I

44:16

thought I was. But

44:18

B, it started to turn it into a bit of a game.

44:21

And so now something I use an app called toggle, which

44:23

is quite good, just to track my time generally. And

44:26

then it feels kind of fun. It's like when I have seven minutes here or

44:28

there, instead of screwing around on YouTube for

44:30

the seven minutes, I'll be like, you know, seven

44:33

minutes is a good amount of time. I can make progress on this

44:35

writing thing or on this email that I'm writing or on the slide

44:37

that I'm working on, whatever the thing is. And

44:39

I found that tracking my word count with the book was unreasonably

44:43

effective in helping me actually stay productive

44:45

with it. That's brilliant. And

44:47

one of the things you write about, and you cover

44:49

in your videos as well, brilliant, I think, is this

44:51

idea of being a productivity scientist and always experimenting. And

44:54

I often read these kinds of books, and you're like,

44:56

oh my god, there's 73 different frameworks I need to

44:58

apply, otherwise I'm going to fail. And I think what

45:00

you do here is you give us permission to

45:03

just try a couple of things and see what

45:05

works. And that's obviously in line with your philosophy,

45:08

but that idea of constantly experimenting makes

45:10

a ton of sense. Yeah, and it's

45:12

a very personal thing for everyone. Each person has

45:14

a different productivity system that works for them. We

45:16

all have different circumstances. If you have kids, a

45:19

productivity system that works for me

45:21

might not work for you, all that sort of stuff. But

45:24

just thinking in experiments. I think also thinking

45:26

in experiments, in our team, we

45:29

often use the terminology of experiments as

45:31

another way of lowering the bar. Be like,

45:33

writing a book is just an experiment. Yeah, and

45:35

it doesn't matter if that bit fails. That's the

45:38

other thing, taking the scratch level down. Absolutely, yeah.

45:40

Fantastic. Thank you. Next question. Hi, Ali. Thanks

45:42

for being here. One

45:44

of your courses on Skillshare

45:46

helped me publish my first

45:48

ever successful YouTube video. Oh,

45:52

fantastic. Thanks. Thanks for everything. So

45:54

the question I have is, based

45:56

on your experience, what is the

45:58

mistake that corporations are making in

46:01

terms of getting their employees to be

46:03

productive? Oh, that's

46:05

a great question. Companies. OK,

46:08

be careful what you say here. Because

46:12

one of us is going to get fired. Mistake

46:16

corporations. I don't want to

46:18

pretend to have the answers here, because I've never really had a real job. I

46:21

guess working in the NHS is a real job. Maybe that counts.

46:25

So if I think back to the NHS, what's

46:28

a mistake? I

46:30

think one mistake that I

46:32

hear from students of

46:35

mine and stuff who have jobs at corporations

46:39

is that essentially

46:42

they're trying to do too many things at

46:44

once. This

46:46

is kind of the whole thesis of Cal Newport's book,

46:48

Slow Productivity, which is really good. Which is

46:50

basically just that reduce the number of things you're

46:52

actually having to do. Because it's like, if

46:55

you're working on, let's say you have

46:57

to get four projects done in the next quarter. You

46:59

could do all four in parallel, or you could do

47:01

them one at a time in series. But

47:04

the problem is, every time you take on a new project, you

47:06

have this communication overhead that

47:09

gets added per project. Or like communicating about the

47:11

project, organizing a meeting about the project, updating the

47:13

OKR thing about the project each week, and blah,

47:16

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Work about work. Work

47:18

about work, exactly. And so if

47:20

you try and do the four projects in parallel, you end

47:22

up having three days a week of your time taken up

47:24

with updating people about the four projects that you have in

47:27

parallel. Whereas if you just be like, hang on, say to

47:29

your manager, bruv, I want to do

47:31

this one at a time, please. And

47:33

sequencing, series, rather than parallel,

47:36

that massively reduces the communication

47:38

overhead that's required. And I

47:40

hear it applies on our team. We've only got 20

47:42

people. But still, every time we

47:44

take on a new project, it just adds

47:46

enormous communication overheads. So just working on fewer

47:48

things at a time lets you accomplish more

47:50

and be more productive. And also, people just

47:53

generally enjoy doing single task focus. Flow

47:55

state, all of that stuff helps people feel energized.

47:58

I think it's great. I dig. It occurs

48:00

to me that there are lots of assumptions

48:02

we make about what's required of us at

48:04

work that aren't necessarily anything that anybody's ever

48:06

told you to do. And what if in

48:08

your calendar, everybody had by default, admin playtime

48:11

or whatever you call it, and adventure time.

48:13

And actually, if you started from that presumption,

48:15

rather than I think the temptation is always

48:17

just to cram it for back to back

48:19

with stuff. And I think a lot of

48:21

us saw that in the pandemic, that kind

48:23

of fatigue that came from not being smart

48:25

about how we were managing our

48:28

time. Great. Thank you very much.

48:30

Let's take another question. Hey, Ali,

48:32

come in. My question is

48:34

kind of burnout related. So

48:37

sometimes I reach a point where my

48:39

stress level reduces the quality level of

48:42

my work. And if I keep

48:44

going, I can feel quality drop in. So

48:46

my question is, how do I

48:48

maintain consistency when I feel that

48:51

quality level drop in and also

48:54

maintain the quality at the same time? Yeah,

48:57

this is really hard. I think the solution is to not

48:59

feel stressed about it. Because

49:02

the feeling of stress is the thing that causes the

49:04

burnout and the thing that causes the quality of the

49:06

thing to drop. And

49:09

obviously, there are going to be times in our life, if we're launching

49:11

a new product and it's like crunch time, and it's like the 48 hours

49:13

before, yeah. Acute

49:16

stress in those moments is fine. Stress

49:19

becomes very, very, very bad for your health when it becomes

49:21

chronic stress, when it becomes stress over a longer period of

49:23

time. And so how do

49:26

we deal with stress? It's going to be

49:28

the basic stuff, taking breaks, recharging every 45 minutes. Walking

49:32

in nature weirdly, like being around trees and

49:34

greenery and stuff, has a measurable effect on

49:36

people's stress levels. There's

49:39

this thing called the undoing hypothesis, which

49:41

is that they've done studies where they bring

49:43

people in a room and they tell everyone, you guys are

49:46

about to give a public speech to

49:48

everyone in the audience. And then that spikes everyone's stress levels.

49:50

And you can measure their sweat levels and

49:52

their heart rate and breathing rate and stuff. And

49:55

then for one of the groups, they show them like

49:57

a normal movie and then a movie clip. for

50:00

the other group, they show them a very positive

50:02

emotion, good vibey movie clip. And they find that

50:04

the group that's primed to feel positive emotions, their

50:06

stress levels reduce and their sweat levels reduce and

50:09

their heart rate reduces, and you can actually measure

50:11

the physiological impact of that sort of feel good

50:14

movie clip. And

50:16

so, I mean, how do you

50:18

manage stress is like a very, very, very broad question.

50:20

But for me, what I find is when I'm feeling

50:22

stressed, again, lowering the bar, taking things a

50:24

little bit less seriously because at the end of the day, it's not that,

50:27

most things are not that deep. You know, most of us

50:29

do our work in front of a laptop. You

50:31

know, we're not in the business of saving lives. And even when

50:33

people are in the business of saving lives, they

50:35

also benefit from just trying to lighten the mood

50:38

just a little bit. So to me, that's the

50:40

ultimate. Take a break, take a walk, get outside.

50:43

You also mentioned burnout, and there's a bit more

50:45

specific, and I think you've encountered this, you've shared

50:47

that in your writing and so on as well.

50:49

So that often takes somebody else to say, hang

50:52

on a minute, what's going on here? Can you

50:54

just show a bit on that

50:56

topic? Yeah. So whenever I've

50:58

had periods of burnout or close to burnout, I often

51:00

haven't recognized them in myself, but it's been friends or

51:02

family or my mum who's pointed out, be like, hey,

51:05

you look really tired, you look really down, what's going

51:07

on? I'm like, oh, shit, yeah, you're right. That's

51:11

probably about right. And I

51:14

mean, essentially, a lot

51:16

of burnout comes down to sort of feeling

51:18

like you're having to do a thing, but

51:21

you don't have the resources, like the time,

51:23

the energy to do this thing to a

51:25

high standard. And again, in

51:27

acute moments, that's fine. But if it happens over a very

51:29

long period of time, that becomes a problem. In

51:33

my case, I'm an entrepreneur, I run my own business, I

51:35

can simply choose to cut projects from the list. If

51:39

one of my team members were to come to me

51:41

and say they're feeling burned out, I would be saying,

51:43

okay, cool, let's cut some projects from your list for

51:45

now. We can always do those later. And we can

51:47

always find a way to reduce the demands on you

51:49

right now, because actually, there's very

51:51

few things that are really going to move the needle. So let's focus

51:53

on those things, get them to a high standard. I

51:56

think one thing I've found is that if you

51:58

feel swamped, sitting down with somebody anybody actually

52:00

and just talking through what's on your list really

52:02

helps you to sort of figure out where you

52:05

can drop or delay or deprioritize and

52:07

it's one of the things I encourage our teams to do

52:09

as well but anyway thank you very much for that question.

52:11

Take a couple more questions and then we'll be close to

52:13

the close. Here we go. Thank you. Hey Ali.

52:17

My question is how do you feel about

52:19

the weight of responsibility now that

52:21

you are this kind of like

52:23

productivity scientist expert and

52:25

do you think this kind of like niche

52:27

or box that you and the team have

52:29

kind of placed around you around being this

52:32

productivity scientist expert is actually like a really

52:34

good thing? Hmm. Have you constrained

52:36

yourself now? Is that what you're saying? Well slightly.

52:38

Yeah. The productivity lab. Slightly, yeah. Yeah

52:42

so there's sort of two ways I think

52:44

about it. Number one is that I

52:47

never actually think of myself as a productivity

52:49

expert even though that's what it says in the book. The

52:53

publisher decided to put that in rather than me. I

52:57

also don't, you know, there's a

52:59

phrase that one of

53:01

my one of my writing coaches came up with or told

53:03

to me a few years ago which is that be like

53:05

you don't have to be a guru you can simply be

53:07

a guide and so the way I

53:09

think of myself is not that I actually know what I'm talking

53:12

about it's that like hey I'm a fellow

53:14

traveler along the path the same as everyone else I

53:16

enjoy reading books about this stuff and reading papers about it and

53:19

here are some things I've discovered that have worked for me maybe

53:21

they'll work for you as well and

53:23

so that framing takes a lot

53:25

of the pressure off me for feeling like I have to be

53:27

the expert you know coming to here doing a talk

53:29

at Google is kind of a big deal and framed as a productivity expert

53:31

it's like what the hell do I know about like well you guys do

53:33

well you know this stuff that you guys do sick and

53:36

like I don't know how to do any anything related

53:38

to engineering anything like that but that's okay

53:40

because I'm not here to be a guru I'm just here

53:42

to share some experiments that have sort of worked for me and

53:44

that maybe maybe might work for other people so that

53:47

massively helps I

53:49

think for me the other thing is I think

53:53

of productivity as being a lens rather than

53:55

a box in some way so like to

53:57

me productivity is just about using your time

54:00

in a way that's intentional, effective, and enjoyable. And

54:03

so productivity can apply to relationships.

54:06

Productivity can apply to health. Productivity can apply to parenting,

54:08

or work, or all this sort of stuff. So

54:11

really, productivity is a lens through which I view life,

54:13

which is how can I use my time better? And

54:15

I think that's a nice lens that I don't feel

54:17

particularly constrains me at all. It's quite a big lens

54:19

as well. Yeah, very broad, encompassing. It keeps you expansive,

54:22

thank you. Okay, we've got two more

54:24

in the queue for questions. Let's try and

54:26

take those a little bit more quickly, and we'll end on

54:28

time, thank you. Thanks for coming, Ali. Love

54:31

your YouTube channel, by the way. Thank you. So

54:33

I have a question around attention, and how attention is

54:35

a new currency, so to speak, right? But in

54:37

a world wherein you can't really eliminate all your

54:39

distractions, like you can mute your notifications or change

54:41

types that you use or whatnot, but how do

54:43

you increase your attention span so that you can

54:45

actually work on something for a prolonged period of

54:47

time? Like for example, when I'm trying to read

54:49

a book, but I get distracted by something on

54:51

my phone, even though it's like a

54:53

ghost ping or something, right? Like, yeah, it's not even

54:55

buzzing. But how do you increase your attention span when

54:59

there are so many distractions, not just on the work side,

55:01

on your personal side? I

55:03

think that lends itself to you doing

55:05

more focused work, but how do you increase that

55:08

common, I guess? See lots of people nodding in

55:10

response to that. Attention in a world of distraction,

55:12

how do you do that? I

55:15

would recommend Cal Newport's book, Deep Work, about this, which

55:17

is all about this whole thing. But broadly, I have

55:20

two thoughts. Number one is basically no one can focus for

55:22

more than 45 minutes. So if you're trying to focus for

55:25

more than 45 minutes, and

55:27

you're fighting a losing battle, it's gonna happen. So

55:29

I think that's just useful to say up front, because

55:32

I meet a lot of people who think that they are

55:34

defective because they can't focus for three hours. Or no one

55:36

can focus for three hours. Don't worry about it. 45

55:39

minutes is pretty much the upper limit. One

55:41

study said 52 minutes, but okay, fine, whatever. Fine,

55:44

that kind of thing. So

55:46

then the question becomes, okay, how

55:48

do I train my ability to focus

55:50

for merely 45 minutes? As

55:54

you said, there's all the common stuff turning

55:56

off distractions, turning off notifications, putting your phone

55:58

in a different room. One

56:00

of the issues with the whole

56:02

tic-tockification of the world is

56:05

that when you

56:07

attention switch so frequently between things,

56:09

you actually atrophy the muscle of

56:11

focus. So if

56:14

I were actively trying to train that muscle, what I would

56:16

be doing is if I was reading a book, I

56:18

would force myself to sit there and just read the book, and I'd have

56:20

my phone in a different room so

56:23

that I can block out any unwelcome distractions. The

56:26

thing to keep in mind though is that not all distractions are

56:28

created equal. I've

56:31

heard from parents that when the kid comes knocking

56:33

on the door to tell you a story, you

56:35

actually want to stop work so

56:37

that you can talk to the kid because the kid's only going

56:39

to want to hang out with you for a certain period of time. When

56:42

I was at university and a friend would come,

56:44

I'd keep my door open so that if a friend walked by, we'd

56:46

just be able to have a bit of a chitchat. That

56:48

to me is a welcome distraction. The point of uni is

56:50

not to get a slightly better grade, but to the friendships

56:52

you make along the way. So if

56:55

it's welcome distractions, embrace the welcome distractions.

56:57

If they're unwelcome, put

56:59

a phone in a different room, train the ability to focus,

57:01

and think of 45 minutes at the upper half of the

57:04

limit. Thank you. Great. Final

57:07

question. Wow, no pressure. Yeah, there's no pressure.

57:09

It's an experimental question. It's going to be mediocre anyway. We're

57:11

learning together. The answer's going to be mediocre. No, it's

57:13

not. There's no pressure now. Say what

57:15

you like. Hi, Ali. So thank

57:17

you so much for the productivity tips. I really love them.

57:19

I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. Hi, Ali. So

57:22

thank you so much for the productivity tips. I really love them. I

57:25

had a question on the earlier point that you

57:27

mentioned about how there are certain people that you

57:29

talk to that leave you with a high energy,

57:31

and then there are certain people that might not

57:34

be as energetic. And so my question is, what

57:36

are some characteristics or some traits that you've seen

57:39

in high energy folks? And

57:41

the reason that I asked this question is that I also relate

57:43

with your point on that you only need to be energetic for

57:45

like five minutes at the start of the meeting. And

57:48

I'd really use that trick when I'm going up

57:50

on stage or talking like just before an event

57:52

just to say like, hey, how's it going? Stuff

57:55

like that. And just to create that sort of

57:57

vibe energy in an event. But in a meeting, it's

57:59

more so. serious, you're talking about serious stuff, you're talking

58:01

about things like that. So how do

58:04

you put that energy there? Nice.

58:06

Great question. I hope

58:08

the answer will be not mediocre. So

58:11

Tintin is one of my team members who's sitting at

58:13

the front. And Tintin is a very high energy guy.

58:15

And he doesn't know it, but I sort of study

58:18

Tintin because I'm like, what does he do that makes

58:20

him an

58:23

energizing presence to everyone around him? And

58:25

I've kind of bordered down to a few things. One of them

58:27

is a tip that Tintin gave me, which is whenever you're greeting

58:29

someone, be over enthusiastic in your

58:32

greeting of that someone. Like, Tintin, oh

58:34

my goodness, it's so good to see you. Thank you so much for

58:36

coming. It's a bit

58:38

weird. But the other person just really likes it.

58:40

And it's just really nice. It makes everyone feel

58:42

good. So enthusiastic greetings

58:44

are super, super helpful. I

58:46

think also one thing that I realized through

58:48

being a YouTuber is that the camera removes

58:51

two to three points of energy and charisma.

58:54

So when I'm speaking to a camera, for

58:56

example, the camera's like right here. I'm alone

58:58

in my bedroom. And I'm like, hey,

59:00

friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is

59:02

Ali. I'm a doctor based in Cambridge. And today we're going to talk

59:04

about blah, blah, blah, blah. I sound like

59:06

a frickin' lunatic. If someone were to see me, they'd be

59:08

like, why are you shouting? But

59:11

it comes across not shouty to the camera because

59:13

the camera removes two to three points of energy. So

59:15

I keep this in mind in Zoom meetings as well, that

59:18

the camera removes two to three points of energy. And

59:20

so one of the things that energizing people do is

59:22

that they simply speak louder. Anyone

59:24

can do this. You just speak a little

59:26

bit louder. And over time, you train your

59:28

ability to speak a little bit louder. And

59:30

that generally makes you a way more energizing

59:32

influence in almost every area

59:34

of life. And then

59:37

the third thing that Tintin does is that he's

59:40

very gracious with compliments, just like

59:42

saying something nice to someone. And saying

59:44

something nice to someone, again, costs you

59:46

nothing, even in a

59:48

serious meeting or a sincere meeting or whatever, is

59:51

always appreciated. People feel really good about it.

59:54

I used to really struggle with this to

59:57

the point of it. So I will.

1:00:00

I was about six months into dating my

1:00:02

now fiance and she said, you

1:00:04

know, you very rarely compliment me. And I

1:00:06

was like, really? And she

1:00:08

was like, yeah, you almost never say that, you know,

1:00:10

I look beautiful or, you know, all this sort of

1:00:12

stuff. And I was like, yeah, but I don't want

1:00:14

to be weird about it. Like, I don't want to say you look

1:00:16

beautiful. Like that's just like objectifying you, right? And all this sort of

1:00:18

stuff. And she was like, no, I'd really like it if you, if

1:00:20

you told me I was beautiful, if you said some nice things to

1:00:23

me. And I realized that I

1:00:25

was so worried about coming across

1:00:27

as insincerely nice

1:00:30

that I didn't even hit the baseline

1:00:32

of like a nice level of like being

1:00:35

nice to someone. So now kind of the

1:00:37

way I think about it is if

1:00:40

my goal is to is

1:00:43

that if I'm aiming for so

1:00:45

nice to the point that people think it's insincere, even

1:00:47

my personality, I'll probably get to the baseline.

1:00:51

So those three things, speaking louder, enthusiastic greetings. And

1:00:53

just saying nice things to people, I think make

1:00:55

someone automatically way more energizing. Well,

1:00:57

everybody, can we just say what an amazing talk it's

1:01:00

been. And I knew he was

1:01:02

going to be brilliant, but he's delivered more

1:01:04

than we could ever have expected. He's

1:01:06

good looking. He's funny. He's got loads

1:01:09

of insight. He's given us the chance to de-stress.

1:01:11

Can I ask you to join me in riotous

1:01:13

applause for Ali? Thanks

1:01:15

for listening. To

1:01:23

discover more amazing content, you can

1:01:25

always find us online at youtube.com/

1:01:28

talks at Google or

1:01:30

via our Twitter handle at talks

1:01:32

at Google.