7 Truths That Will Change Your Approach To Productivity

Ali Abdaal 0:00 Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive, the podcast where it's my immense pleasure to sit down with entrepreneurs, creators, authors, and other inspiring people, and we find out how they got to where they are, and the strategies and tools we can learn from them to help build a life that we love. Now, this episode is a little bit different because we're going over seven unconventional truths that will help you level up your productivity, and these are taken from a diverse range of episodes that I've done with various people who are specialists in productivity, authors and academics and entrepreneurs. And I hope that by listening to these seven different tips, there might be at least one thing that you can take away as an experiment to try and apply to your own life.

Ali Abdaal 0:32 So without further ado, here we are.

Tiago Forte 0:34 I think of productivity as a phase.

Ali Abdaal 0:35 A phase.

Tiago Forte 0:36 It's a phase, phase in someone's life.

Ali Abdaal 0:38 Okay.

Tiago Forte 0:39 There is a, a phase in your life, or it could recur, so there could be different phases, where you have to think about productivity, and then there's other phases where you think about creativity. I really see productivity and creativity as two sides to the same coin. Uh, and where I learned about this was from my dad. My dad is one of the most creative people I've ever met. Wildly imaginative, creative. But how does that creativity make it out into the world is productivity. So he has these, these very systematic approaches and routines and rules that he uses from, you know, the time of day that he paints from this time to this time, to how long he's gonna spend on each stage of a painting, to the way that he takes notes. And so I see this kinda like pendulum, productivity, creativity, productivity, creativity. And if you go too far on, on either end of the spectrum, you start hitting diminishing returns and you start to get stuck, right? Like, like on both sides. You can get so fixated on productivity, y- your work starts to become formulaic, it starts to become very boring, and it's time to, to kinda go to the other end of the spectrum, creativity. But then you can go too far in creativity. That's when you get too precious. You get too, "Oh, no, that's my art. It has to be this certain way." And you know, you talk to someone six months later, "What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm working on my, my one painting for the last six months." That also doesn't work. You're not... Y- you're getting stuck. You're getting, you're getting sort of locked up in your own preciousness. And so I, I really see them as this kind of alternating back and forth pendulum.

Ali Abdaal 2:03 Nice. Yeah, I had, I had a bit of a thought as, as you were saying that, and I think I've, I've never really thought of the two as being, being separate. I gue- I, I guess, you know, given that a bunch of videos I make happen to be vaguely themed around productivity-

Tiago Forte 2:16 Mm

Ali Abdaal 2:16 ... when people ask me, "Oh, what is productivity to you?"

Tiago Forte 2:18 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 2:18 I kind of take a step back, I broaden it out, and I say, "Oh, productivity is just using your time intentionally."

Tiago Forte 2:23 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:24 Um, which then makes it a more like gentle definition that you can apply-

Tiago Forte 2:27 Mm

Ali Abdaal 2:27 ... to your personal life-

Tiago Forte 2:27 Mm

Ali Abdaal 2:27 ... to your work life.

Tiago Forte 2:28 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 2:28 And who doesn't want to use their time more intentionally?

Tiago Forte 2:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:30 But there's something about the word productivity that feels a bit more like, ugh. It, it, it feels very worky-

Tiago Forte 2:36 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:37 ... and very much like I'm generating economic output for my employer and this is a bad thing.

Tiago Forte 2:41 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:41 Um, any, any thoughts on that?

Tiago Forte 2:43 Yeah, a couple things. Um, so productivity is like efficiency. Efficiency is sort of a synonym, right? What is efficiency? If you, again, if you go back to manufacturing, it's simply minimizing waste is how I think of it.

Ali Abdaal 2:56 Mm.

Tiago Forte 2:56 Which is one of the most important things in life. Like when people say productivity doesn't matter, I go, "Does it not matter that you not waste your time?" You know? Does it not matter that you waste your attention? Does it not matter that you waste your ideas? Does it not matter that you waste your potential? Like isn't that w- like almost what life is about?

Ali Abdaal 3:16 Mm.

Tiago Forte 3:17 And it's easy to lose sight of that if you think of efficiency, but I j- I really just think about it as minimizing waste. Uh, and then the other thing I was gonna say, oh, think about other uses of the word productivity. A productive conversation. Would you say a productive conversation is, is, you know, not i- is, uh, is anti-human or is not benevolent or is kind of removing the humanity? No. I want all my... The most intimate conversation with my wife, I still want to be productive. That doesn't mean it's not a good conversation.

Ali Abdaal 3:44 Yeah.

Tiago Forte 3:45 Um, or alternatively, think of a productive ecosystem. Productive ecosystem. The forest is a productive ecosystem, not because we went in and clearcut everything and built a parking lot, but because there is value being created, right? And you could say economic value, but I just think of there's plants being grown, there's animals that are surviving, there's evolution that's happening, there's families, animals and humans, that are being raised from the sustenance of the forest.

Ali Abdaal 4:11 Mm.

Tiago Forte 4:11 So I kinda like to, to use the word productivity because it confronts people. That's what I like.

Ali Abdaal 4:16 Oof. Yeah.

Tiago Forte 4:16 I want people to be confronted.

Ali Abdaal 4:18 Okay.

Tiago Forte 4:18 Because the same thing that has you kinda be triggered by productivity, if you follow that thread, you're gonna get to an incorrect assumption, a limiting belief, a blind spot that is going to limit you in life and in your career.

Ali Abdaal 4:32 Oh.

Tiago Forte 4:32 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:32 That is beautiful. I can feel my kind of mindset changing about that because I've also been like, yeah, I agree, productivity is a bit of a dirty word, so let- let's not use that word. Let's call it intentionality or something like that. But I like how you're just like, "Yep, productivity is a good thing." One of the lines that I l- I was listening to the audiobook and w- y- and you said, "Sometimes

Ali Abdaal 4:51 productivity can be self-care."

Grace Beverley 4:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:53 And I was like, "Ooh, that's interesting." What's, what's going on with that? [laughs]

Grace Beverley 4:56 So I think that's one of the, like one of the main triggers for the book was actually the fact that like people would be like, "Oh, self-care. Relax." And I'd be like, actually, sometimes self-care is meeting that deadline that you're currently not on track to meet, but actually respecting your future self and your goals-

Ali Abdaal 5:12 Mm-hmm

Grace Beverley 5:13 ... is getting the [laughs] fuck up and doing the work that you need to do for that. And like we cannot market self-care as always like doing nothing. Sometimes self-care is working harder because you're currently not working in line with what you want to make happen.

Ali Abdaal 5:27 Mm.

Grace Beverley 5:28 And I think that, again, the internet hates that because it's like it doesn't fit into this idea of like wellbeing versus productivity. It's the a- actual understanding of the fact that both the one and the other. Like d- self-care isn't always running a bath. If you're running a bath and you're about to miss three deadlines and that's your paycheck for the week, self-care is not running a bath.

Ali Abdaal 5:50 Mm. Yeah.

Grace Beverley 5:51 I refuse to believe that self-care is running a bath. So that was a lot of the stuff in the book is around how to action actual self-care and like how to know at what point something will be self-care and some, um, it w- versus self-sabotage or any of these things to create a life that revolves around, you know, your boundaries and where you need to be more productive and where you probably need to stop being so harsh on yourself.

Ali Abdaal 6:14 What are your, uh, two different types of doing nothing?

Grace Beverley 6:17 Yeah. So-

Ali Abdaal 6:17 'Cause I thought that was, uh, super interesting, like the distinction. And I, I had one of those over the weekend. It, it was a Saturday. No, no one else in the house. I was like, "Right, I'm gonna make all this book progress," and I made zero book progress-

Grace Beverley 6:26 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 6:26 ... just browsed YouTube all day. And I was listening to the audiobook last night. I was like, "Oh, if I had this terminology of, of like fuck it nothing, I would've called it. I would've just like written the day off."

Grace Beverley 6:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:35 But I didn't and so I felt guilty for the whole day.

Grace Beverley 6:37 Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:37 And it was like, ugh, nightmare.

Grace Beverley 6:38 So-

Ali Abdaal 6:38 Yeah. [laughs]

Grace Beverley 6:39 So I think that's really, really important, and I think that when we're taught so much how to work, and we're not taught that well how to, uh, take time and know when we're probably a little bit burnt out and all of these different things, that actually if we took rests we would be much better tomorrow. The idea of planned nothing and fuck it nothing are the fact that actually I believe-

Ali Abdaal 6:57 Yeah

Grace Beverley 6:57 ... wholeheartedly in time management. [laughs] I believe that time management is stress management. For some people, you're gonna be very like type A and it's gonna be like, of course you're, you're time managing. Like, of course at the beginning of your week, you know what your whole week looks like and all of this. Other people are gonna be like, "No, I won't know till the day." I do believe, though, that if you want to fit a certain amount of things in, you have to be good at time management, and you have to do your 10,000 hours and make yourself good at time management. You don't have to want to, fine. But do... I think that it's really important to also give a bit of tough love and be like, "If you want to do X, Y, and Z, you have to pla- it's not gonna happen without you planning it." So whether that's starting to go to the gym, whether that's starting a new side hustle or a new hobby or any of those things. If you're not planning those things in, in the same way as if you don't plan in the gym or, you know, if you don't put your doctor's appointment in your diary, it's not gonna happen. So the idea of like planned nothing and fuck it nothing is when you're looking at your week plan and you're doing all your day plan and you're doing your plan for yourself, I think it's really important to have enough planned nothing in there. And I don't think we do that because planning nothing s- again, seems quite oxymoronic. It doesn't make sense. But knowing your boundaries and getting to know how you're most productive and how you're happier, uh, happiest is really, really important, and that all comes then into your time management. So for me, for example, I know that from a Monday to Thursday, so weekdays, I'm probably going to want to do something two nights and do nothing two nights. And that's my limit usually. So like this week I've had something every single night. And I hate it. I feel dead. I've started every day feeling like an absolute zombie. I don't have any thinking time. I don't have ta- time to stare at the ceiling. Like I don't... You know, I'm not able to kind of process things in the same way, and so I get anxious about things, and I get stressed, and I don't feel like I- I'm my best self. The way we mitigate that is by understanding those boundaries. And for me, usually if I look at next week, for example, and I've got something in on Wednesday and Thursday, and someone says, "Are you free on Tuesday?" I'm not. I'm actually not free on Tuesday. It might look [laughs] if you looked at my diary like I'm free, but I'm not. These are my non-negotiables, and this is how I m- manage myself to be able to be my best self for my goals, whether those are personal life, whether those are work. Fuck it nothing is understanding that we can plan as much as we want. We can operate by those rules. We can... You know, I can know that I'm going out Wednesday and Thursday next week for dinner, and I can know that I'm doing Tues- uh, Monday and Tuesday in, and then whatever at the weekend. I've got it all planned. And I can get to Wednesday, and I can be like, "I actually, I actually either don't want to have or I can't, or I'm feeling really burnt out, or my mental health isn't there," or any of those things. And understanding that we can plan for absolutely everything, and we can't plan for the fact that we're human.

Ali Abdaal 9:45 Mm.

Grace Beverley 9:45 And so fuck it nothing is essentially being able to be like, "Fuck it. [laughs] Not doing that." And I think important distinction, again, is like you get a real dopamine hit when you think you had to do something and then you don't have to do something. So you have-

Ali Abdaal 9:58 Yeah

Grace Beverley 9:58 ... a plan with some- someone, [laughs] and then you, you cancel that plan. You get that dopamine hit. But then also you can get into the habit of doing that because you think you need that, and actually what you needed was to push yourself out there and go out to dinner and have a good laugh with someone you haven't caught up with in a while.

Ali Abdaal 10:13 Yeah.

Grace Beverley 10:13 But it feels like a chore when you're at the end of that day and you're like, "Uh, that's the last thing I wanna do." So I think understanding as well the boundaries of fuck it nothing too are really important. But I do think that if we don't have fuck it nothing, say your Saturday night where you were going to make a huge amount of progress with the book, and you decide not to. What you really needed in that time was fuck it nothing. You needed to be like, "Fuck it, I'm doing absolutely nothing." Instead, you probably sat on the sofa being like, "I'm meant to be doing something."

Ali Abdaal 10:43 Mm.

Grace Beverley 10:44 And then felt probably... You probably didn't get the benefit of doing nothing-

Ali Abdaal 10:48 [laughs]

Grace Beverley 10:48 ... and you didn't get the benefit of doing work. And so I think understanding our human limits and our boundaries and being able to just say, "I'm not going to do that, and I know I'm not gonna do that, and I'm okay with not doing that," is one of the most important things you can do for your productivity-

Ali Abdaal 11:02 Mm

Grace Beverley 11:02 ... and your time management and your self-care.

Ali Abdaal 11:04 What is slow productivity broadly?

Cal Newport 11:08 So yeah. So if we don't have... Like, here's the issue with knowledge work in general. The issue we've been grappling with in the last 20 minutes, like what does productivity even mean, right? And it, and so then it just becomes this weird catch-all or boogeyman. So I have this thought of like, why don't we actually positively come out and come up with a definition that we like, a definition that's human, a definition that, that melds well with our human instincts and the way our brain is actually wired, that's centered around producing meaningful and valuable things, but in a way that's very sustainable, in a way that's very satisfying. So, so instead of just pushing back against the boogeyman productivity, like let's put in place an alternative. And, and the alternative I've been working on is called slow productivity. And like the slow food movement or these other movements, I've, I've, I've gone back and pulled from these sort of existing cultures of knowledge workers that have been around for centuries, in some cases millennia, that had the privilege and space to kinda figure out, what's the best way to work with your mind? You know, what works, what doesn't? And figuring out can we have a widely applicable definition of productivity comes out of it. And so slow productivity has three principles to it. Do fewer things, working at a natural pace, obsessing over quality. Like, those three things, approaching knowledge work with those three principles realigns the efforts with, uh, our humanity, the way we're wired. I can give you a, a neuroscience argument for it. I can give you a psychological argument for it. I can give you a philosophical argument for those three things. It all... On all three of those levels, orienting knowledge work around that is meaningful, satisfying. You can produce things of great value. It can be very productive for companies, and it can be very satisfying for individuals. So I'm, I'm sort of putting together my pitch of what, what target of productivity should people who make a living using their brains, what i- what should they be going for beyond just, you know, get after it, have your to-dos organized?

Ali Abdaal 12:56 Yeah.

Cal Newport 12:56 I don't know.

Ali Abdaal 12:57 What's, what's the philosophical argument? [laughs]

Cal Newport 13:00 Well, I... There's, uh... Like, we can go back to Aristotle if we need to, right? There, there's this, the, what, what is the, the theology of, of human existence? Well, what's the one thing we have that other creatures don't is we have these brains that can sit and think and create things. Um, a- and there's, there's a, there's a, there's an argument towards the, the, the production of things of value and meaning and, and sort of giving things the time they require, craftsmanship. That there, there's a real philosophical foundation to the human value that's, that's extracted from actually, like, doing things of, of, of value, of impact with your mind. And a lot of that gets sapped away when you're just answering emails all day, uh, or, or just hustling to get after it. You could go all the way back to neuro... I mean, this is the, the thing I'm working on now is I, I've, I've gone back heavily to do a deep into the mainly social anthropological research to do a deep history of work. For 300,000 years, what was work for humans? Because that's a long enough time span that our brain evolved, right? To, to match this definition of work and, and, you know, surprise, surprise, when you go back and look through this deep literature, you see not doing too many things. Sees a variation in pace and intensity. A lot of your time being the application of hard-won skills. Like, that's exactly what comes up. That's what we did for 300,000 years. So there, there's also this almost, like, psychology, anthropological, even neuroscientific argument for not being overloaded, varying your intensity in various ways, and spending more of your time, like, applying hard-won skills, like what we expect work to be.

Ali Abdaal 14:32 Do you... Have you stumbled across any kind of, um, Dunbar number for number of active projects that one should have at a given time? [laughs] Like, when you say fewer things-

Cal Newport 14:42 I mean, it's-

Ali Abdaal 14:43 ... how few are we talking?

Cal Newport 14:45 Well, yeah, I mean, I, uh... So there, there's two different timescales. I mean, at the scale of, like, what you're working on right now, it's one, right? So, like, in the... What, what we cannot do, what our brain cannot do is concurrently, during, like, the afternoon, go back and forth between three different things. It's just the way our planning motivation loop works. Like, we have one thing in our working memory. We build this internal model that pulls episodic memories out of the hippocampus. We use that to try to predict what we should do next. That system cannot handle more than one thing. So we cannot be thinking about making decisions on or making progress on more than one thing at a time. And I don't mean, like, literally at the time, like, over a couple hours even. Like, work on one thing till you're done, move on to the other thing. Our brain cannot go back and forth. It's why email, like, going back and forth between your email just crushes us psychologically. Uh, you know, a recent podcast episode I talked about task freeze, where you see, like, 15 things you need to do and you just stop. It's because you literally, the planning motivational center of your brain can't make plans for 15 things at the same time. It neurologically can't do that, so your motivation system just freezes up, right? So at a time, one thing. In terms of, like, ongoing projects, I'm a big believer in, like, pull-based methodology, where there's, like, two or three things you're, two or three things you're working on. When something finishes, you can pull something else in, you know? And I actually think this is how companies should organize work. Software developers already do this, but I think we should do this more broadly in knowledge work, where, yeah, there's a lot of work the company needs to do. Don't just distribute that to everyone's plate and everyone has 20 things that they have to kind of figure out what to do with. They should just be working on a couple things, and they can pull in new things once they, once it's ready. And the problem, why you need... Why I think this is important and why I think it's killer to have a lot of things on your plate, even if you're not working on them at the exact same time, is that there's something called an overhead tax that every project that you have committed to generates. It, it's a overhead of administrative work that you have to do even if you're not actively working on the project. It's emails you have to send, uh, meetings, planning meetings, standing meetings you have to have, and, and just cognitive load of knowing it's there. So that builds up. So if you have 15 projects on your plate, you're paying overhead tax on 15 projects, and that tax takes up your time. And before you know it, most of your time and mental energy is going to the maintenance of the ongoing projects and almost nothing gets done, and then you fall farther behind, and then the, the, you... And more projects build up and the tax gets worse. I call it the overhead spiral. It's a terrible state to be in. So there, there's a real cost to having too many things on your plate, even if you're very careful about, "This morning I'm just working on this, and then in the afternoon I'm just working on that, and on Tuesdays I work on this." Once you get past a certain level, it's a problem. And I think, again, it's something companies get wrong. They just say, "Let's distribute the task informally to everyone. We'll have everything live on people's individual plates, and they can just figure out what to work on and whatnot." Uh, and the overhead tax kills them. Like, a much better system is this all sits in a holding tank, and when I'm ready for the next thing, I pull it in. But until it leaves that holding tank, I'm paying no overhead tax on it. It's not actually in, it's not actually in my view. So I honestly think, like, three active projects at a time is best. And obviously when you're working on something, you're only working on that one thing.

Ali Abdaal 17:55 Yeah. This is actually something, like, as of last week we have now started doing in our, in our team and it's... I'm so surprised it's taken so long to get to this because we were in that model of, "Oh, there's all these things we could do. Let's just, like, distribute them." But now we're like, "Oh, actually, let's do the thing that software people do and actually make a..." I mean, we, we have, like, a bucket list of, we would love to, to have, have my website contain book summaries of every book I've ever read. We'd love to make, think about a Patreon. We'd love to think about making our own keyboard. We'd love to think about making our own bag. We'd love to think about this enormous list of things, but not right now. Like, for the next six weeks [laughs] we're just focusing on these things. Good. And then six weeks later we can reassess the bucket list and see, okay, whether we actually wanna put things onto it. And that model has just- Uh, basically it's, like within half an hour, freed up a lot of cognitive ov- overload from people being like, "Oh, actually this is not a priority right now, so therefore I'm not gonna think about it until our next six-week sprint planning," or whatever that looks like.

Cal Newport 18:47 Yep. Yep, that's 100% right, by the way.

Ali Abdaal 18:49 Mm.

Cal Newport 18:49 That's what everyone should be doing. I, I have a chapter about this in the new book I, I wrote a couple weeks ago. Everyone should be doing that, but mainly only software people do. [laughs] And it's such a, uh, it's such a, it's, it's such a, such an unnecessary, unforced-

Ali Abdaal 19:02 Mm

Cal Newport 19:02 ... source of stress and overhead. I mean, just like this is what I think happened, by the way, with the Zoom apocalypse. So I don't know if you heard this from your listeners. I definitely was getting this feedback-

Ali Abdaal 19:12 Mm-hmm

Cal Newport 19:12 ... that during 2021 when everyone, we were, everyone was remote, knowledge workers were remote, people got to these sort of absurd states where, like all they were doing was Zoom eight hours a day. They're like, "Wait, there's no work left?" Like, it became absurd. It was like a Kafka play or something like this, like some sort of like meta commentary on, on the absurdity of, of work and bureaucracy or something like that. But I, what this was, I think, was like a really clear example of the overhead tax spiraling out of control because when, when people went remote, it increased the amount of tasks on their plate by like 20% all of a sudden because you had to figure out how to run whatever you do remote. So it generated new work, right? To figure out how do we make the transition? And switching over to, uh, video is, there's, uh, efficiencies that, that's lost. So there's a lot of efficiencies in person where, where I can grab you at the end of a meeting and be like, "Wait, wait, hold on. Like, what are we doing about this client coming tomorrow?" And we, we can go back and forth for three minutes and figure it out. When I can't do that anymore, we're left saying like, "We should have a Zoom meeting-

Ali Abdaal 20:11 Yeah

Cal Newport 20:12 ... to talk about the client." But what's the smallest interval on your calendar? 30 minutes. And so now five minutes becomes 30 minutes. So I think the, the, the Zoom apocalypse that happened in like the summer of 2020 was making the phenomenon of overhead tax unavoidably visible. Like it, it's like, look, we, we, we upped these things by about 20%, and soon all time went away for working. All time went away for working. And it showed how, how perilous, like how, how much we, we, we pushed that tax up almost to the limit. Like before the pandemic, we must have already been spending so much of our time just talking about work because when it got 20% worse, we couldn't ignore it anymore because people were writing me and saying, "I don't know when to go to the bathroom," 'cause it's back to back to back to back to back for seven hours of, you know, Zoom. Like it got so absurd that people were like, "Okay, obviously this, this can't be right."

Ali Abdaal 20:58 No, it's like-

Cal Newport 20:58 But we were like right below that for years and years.

Ali Abdaal 21:00 Yeah.

Cal Newport 21:00 So I think it's a huge phenomenon and, and we really should spend more time thinking about it.

Ali Abdaal 21:04 Yeah. This episode of Deep Dive is very kindly sponsored by Hostinger. Now, if you're looking to start a business or develop some kind of brand, then you're probably gonna need a website. And if you've ever wanted to set up a website but you're not sure where to start, then Hostinger has everything you need. Hostinger is a top global website hosting service with servers all around the world. It's fast and it's reliable, and it's got over two million users, and it's becoming one of the fastest growing web hosting services out there. Now, I personally really love Hostinger because it is so easy to use and it's fantastic for me and fantastic for my team because we don't have to deal with too much faff and too much setup. And if you're new to website design, they've also got everything you need to build your website rather than just to host it. And recently they've added a really cool AI website builder, which lets you build a sort of professional looking website, or at least the first draft of it, in literally seconds. It is super easy to use. There is a drag and drop editor that lets you customize stuff, and you don't need to have any coding or like CSS, HTML knowledge at all. Hostinger comes to less than $3 a month, and that includes a free domain name as well, so it's super affordable. And if you use the link in the video description, so hostinger.com/aliabdaal, and on the checkout page you type in Ali Abdaal in all caps, then that will give you 10% off your plan as well. So thank you so much again, Hostinger, for sponsoring this podcast. This episode of Deep Dive is very kindly sponsored by Snipd. Now, Snipd is an amazing app that's absolutely gonna revolutionize the way you listen to podcasts. I've been using it for the last two months, and it's become my absolute favorite way to listen to podcasts. Because the cool thing about Snipd is that it's not just a podcast player. What it does is allow you to create snips of each podcast that you listen to, where if you hear something that particularly vibes with you, all you need to do is tap your headphones and the app will save it. And then it's like r- this ridiculously fancy AI transcription type feature that will listen to the last like minute of the podcast. It will figure out what's being said, and it will create a little snippet or a little snip where it will summarize and it will give you like the notes from exactly what was said. And then you can click edit on it and you can like set the start point and the end point. It's basically like being able to highlight a podcast as if you were reading a book. Now, this is really helpful if you want to remember the kinds of things that you hear in podcasts, and it's also really helpful if, like me, you are some sort of content creator and you benefit from sharing your insights with other people, which even if you're not a content creator, is just a nice thing to do generally. And the other cool thing about the Snips feature is that you can see where other people have snipped a particular podcast. And so, you know, we all have way too many podcasts to listen to these days, but you can browse through and you can see, ooh, that episode of Deep Dive was snipped 4,000 times, and that one was only snipped 2,000 times. So you know what? Let me prioritize listening to the one with 4,000 snips because more people have highlighted it. And then you can even browse through the highlights. So if you haven't got time to listen to the whole podcast, you can go through the various snips and you can decide, is this podcast worth you listening to? And because it's a powerful AI tool, it also generates transcripts and chapters for basically every podcast, which means even if the podcaster hasn't like created those chapters already, they'll automatically create them using the AI features. And so you can, again, skip around in podcasts to the various bits that might interest you the most. And actually, it turns out that Deep Dive listeners already love using Snipd because we are actually the fifth most popular podcast on the Snipd platform. So if you wanna give it a go and you wanna level up your ability to listen to podcasts and take notes at the same time, then head over to snipd.com/deepdive. That's S-N-I-P-D. S-N-I-P-D, like snip with a D on the end of it. snipd.com/deepdive, and that link is gonna be in the show notes and also in the video description if it's easier for you to click on it. And if you sign up via that link or that URL in the next month, then you will get a completely free 30-day trial of Snipd, and then you can try it out for the entire 30 days and you can take all these notes and you can see if it vibes with you. So thank you so much, Snipd, for sponsoring this episode.

Ali Abdaal 24:21 One of the things that really resonated with me was the way you described the rocks analogy.

Cal Newport 24:24 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 24:25 I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that.

Cal Newport 24:26 Oh, yeah, yeah. Talking of stereotypical bad time management. I mean, okay, I feel like, a caveat, one or two people have explained to me since the book came out ways in which it's possible to interpret this parallel, parable that are

Oliver Burkeman 24:39 That are not so ridiculous. But in case anyone doesn't know about it, the, in various different versions, but it's like the teacher or somebody, like, brings in a jar of... Should I go through this whole thing, or is this so well-known that this is a waste of, uh, valuable-

Ali Abdaal 24:54 I think it's worth going through

Oliver Burkeman 24:55 ... digital footage

Ali Abdaal 24:56 I'm not sure it's that... I, it, it's, it's well-known to pe- to people like you and me. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 25:00 Okay. Just very quickly-

Ali Abdaal 25:01 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 25:01 ... and you can decide whether to use it or not. A teacher brings a glass jar into a classroom with, um, some large rocks, some pebbles, and some sand, and challenges the students to fit all of this into the glass jar. And then the students, 'cause they're apparently, like, really dumb, s- start putting the, the sand in first, and the pebbles in first, then they find the big rocks won't fit. So the teacher says, "No, no, no, let me show you how to do it." And he says, "So you put the big rocks in first, then you can fit the pebbles, and then pour the sand in, and it all fits." And the idea is, um, if the big rocks are your major priorities in life, you've gotta make time for those, and you can make time for those. And if you do make time for those, then everything else you can fit in around the edges.

Ali Abdaal 25:40 Mm-hmm.

Oliver Burkeman 25:40 But if you don't put those first, you'll never get round to them at all. And I don't think that's a completely meritless point.

Ali Abdaal 25:47 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 25:47 I just want to say that-

Ali Abdaal 25:47 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 25:48 ... right now so that, you know, the estate of Stephen Covey doesn't-

Ali Abdaal 25:51 No. Might [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 25:51 ... come and, uh, sue me.

Ali Abdaal 25:53 That's easy for libel or slander. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 25:55 But the experiment is plainly rigged, right? It's set up... The, the, the professor, the teacher, has only brought as many big rocks in as he knows can ultimately, with the right configuration, be made to fit. And I think that extending this metaphor, the, the, the problem most of us have with time management these days, the main one, it, it's not necessarily that we're bad at prioritizing. It's just that there are too many big rocks-

Ali Abdaal 26:19 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 26:19 ... to fit in the jar. In other words, there are too many things that totally legitimately have a claim on your time. Too many people in your life, business opportunities, demands from the boss. Whatever you're setting it, whatever your situation is, like, there are just too many things that legitimately you could use your time on than you have the time and stamina-

Ali Abdaal 26:38 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 26:39 ... available for. So the nature of the hard choice involved is different. It's not just like, "How am I going to organize my day?" It's like, "What am I going to neglect because I'm... And what, what important things am I going to neglect because I am definitely gonna be neglecting some important things?"

Ali Abdaal 26:53 Yeah. Like, so as I was listening to the book, it, it really gave me a lot of reassurance, [laughs] um, because again, as a productivity guru, I feel like I should have my life in order.

Oliver Burkeman 27:03 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 27:04 And you know, when the WhatsApp messages pile up to like, you know, 100 plus, I'm like, "Oh my God, relationships are the most important thing in life. I'm letting people down by not replying to them." And then I spend hours replying to all the people, and then responding to WhatsApp messages, uh, generates more WhatsApp messages, [laughs] similarly to responding to emails-

Oliver Burkeman 27:21 Yep

Ali Abdaal 27:21 ... it just generates more emails.

Oliver Burkeman 27:23 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 27:23 Um, and you know, at the same time, I care about the work stuff. I care about like, I don't know, some sort of impact. I care about spending time with my family. And it's like in the past, part of me was just like, "You know what? I just really suck at keeping in touch with friends, and that's okay." And another part of me was like, "No, that shouldn't be okay. Like, you know, I should use my productivity powers to, like, actually focus on the thing that's important, like keeping in touch with friends." How, how do you, I guess, knowing that, for example, there are too many rocks to fit in the jar-

Oliver Burkeman 27:46 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 27:46 ... how do, how does one go about sol- solving this problem?

Oliver Burkeman 27:50 Well, I think, so the sort of, I think the f- most important point there is that, like, in a certain sense, you can't, and that's the really important point.

Ali Abdaal 27:58 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 27:58 And this is not a despairing message. I think it's a really empowering and sort of thrilling message in a way.

Ali Abdaal 28:04 Yep. [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 28:04 But like if the, if the challenge, and like I f- I, I so like vibe with what you're saying there about feeling that there must be a solution-

Ali Abdaal 28:13 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 28:13 ... and that all these things really matter. They do really matter. You don't need to persuade yourself that actually some of them don't matter. Just to get really sort of existential about it, I think there is some kind of urge motivating that, and it's almost universal to want to find a cheat code for life-

Ali Abdaal 28:29 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 28:29 ... or find a sort of, you know, a caveat in the contract of being-

Ali Abdaal 28:32 No, quite

Oliver Burkeman 28:33 ... of being human. And, and to get on top of everything or in command of your time in a way, in a certain way that is just not actually available to us as finite creatures, 'cause we have this fundamental mismatch between our capacity to think of infinite possibilities and feel infinite obligations and our abil- our finite material, you know-

Ali Abdaal 28:54 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 28:54 ... short lives and, and limited time. So this is like the vague part, and we can totally talk about, like, more specific and practical things.

Ali Abdaal 29:01 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 29:02 But the, but I think there's something really powerful in just seeing, oh, this isn't a problem to be solved. This is just the way things are.

Ali Abdaal 29:09 Yeah.

Oliver Burkeman 29:09 At the end of life, there will be lots and lots of things you didn't get round to doing that, that totally were legit-

Ali Abdaal 29:15 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 29:15 ... that would've been good things to do. But that was because you were doing other thing, hopefully, things that were, that were good things to do. And you can sort of relax into the discomfort of that a little bit. You can sort of, you can feel the anxiety or anyway-

Ali Abdaal 29:27 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 29:27 ... it leads to anxiety in me that comes from thinking like, "Well, you mean I'm never going to get to this point in my life where I have no problems?"

Ali Abdaal 29:34 [laughs]

Oliver Burkeman 29:35 Or feel no... No, it's like, no, you're not. That, and that would be ridiculous, and you wouldn't want to get there actually. But it's a separate discussion. Um, you can sort of factor in, like price in to your, to your approach to life that there are going to be good relationships that you don't, uh, nurture, interesting opportunities that you don't pursue, great books that you don't get to, to read. It's like once that's c- if something like that is completely a given, it stops being stressful. Like, we don't beat ourselves up for not being able to, like, jump a mile in the air because nobody expects that in the first place-

Ali Abdaal 30:04 Yeah

Oliver Burkeman 30:04 ... of human beings. And it's the sa- it should be the same for this kind of stuff. And once you sort of let this whole fantastical edifice crash to the ground and you're just standing in the rubble, you can be like, "Okay, now, I've got this many hours today. What would be the most meaningful, exciting, high impact things to do?" And it's like, it's, it's hard, and I don't want to imply that I've, like, totally solved this-

Ali Abdaal 30:27 Mm

Oliver Burkeman 30:28 ... this, this, this issue either, but like I think that is the way forward.

Ali Abdaal 30:32 What sort of tools were you using to stay productive before it coalesced into the method?

Ryder Carroll 30:37 Everything. I was, like, a hopeless early adopter. It's like a new app, I'd be on it immediately. And Sometimes it helped me here or sometimes it helped me there, but it's, it's, it's... I don't know. Um, I mean, you name it, I probably used the app-

Ali Abdaal 30:51 Yeah. [laughs]

Ryder Carroll 30:51 ... I used the system, I used all of it. And what's funny is that I learned so much more after I started sharing, like, BuJo work, right? People are like, "Oh, have you heard of David Allen?" I'm like, "No, I hadn't. I probably should have at some point" But, like, all these great thinkers in the space, and I'm like, "Okay, what do they say about this stuff?" And it's been really exciting for me because I'm as much of a student of all this stuff as I am a teacher.

Ali Abdaal 31:16 Mm.

Ryder Carroll 31:18 And so yeah, I continue to use stuff all the time. You know, [laughs] like I, I love this stuff.

Ali Abdaal 31:22 Yeah.

Ryder Carroll 31:22 It's fun. It's like, okay, how do I make more... How do I make better use of my time?

Ali Abdaal 31:27 And so what were the dots that connected for you to result in the, oh, this is, this is the pen and paper-based method that I have found the most, most helpful?

Ryder Carroll 31:36 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 31:36 Like, having, having tried these, like, thousand different things.

Ryder Carroll 31:38 Um, okay, so there are a couple things there. One is it's not done, which is the fun part, right? Like, here are the... Here's the minimum viable product. That's kind of what I share with people. Like, here are the fewest amount of tools I've found to be successful over the longest period of time. Try them on for size and see-

Ali Abdaal 31:57 Sure

Ryder Carroll 31:57 ... if they work for you. Um, I think that I never intended on sharing this, so maybe we can approach it from that angle. What happened was that people always saw me sitting down with a notebook, especially in the, uh, as somebody that's a digital native and working in digital design, people are like, "You always have a notebook. What are you doing in there?"

Ali Abdaal 32:15 Mm-hmm.

Ryder Carroll 32:15 I'm like, "Well, thinking." [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 32:17 Mm.

Ryder Carroll 32:17 "That's what I'm doing. I'm trying to figure out stuff, drawing, whatever."

Ali Abdaal 32:20 Yeah.

Ryder Carroll 32:20 "It's a canvas." And then people would be like, "Well, so how would you deal with this problem?" Or, "How would you deal with this problem?" Or, "How would you organize this?" And I would show them, like, one piece of the methodology or at that time just what I was doing, and I found over and over again that no matter what their background was, it would be useful, especially for people who only did things online. And I was like, huh, maybe I should share some of this stuff. Um, and that's kind of what ended up incentivizing me to coalesce everything to share it. And so I stripped everything out but the most helpful tools that had... the things that had worked over the longest period of time. And a lot of that's just about writing down your thoughts. That's the core of it. Like, in bullet journal you write down three things, the things you have to do, the things that you experience, and the things you don't want to forget, and then you come back to those things in regular intervals. That's the greatly diminished, uh, version of bullet journaling. It's writing things down and reading what you wrote and trying to connect the dots over time.

Ali Abdaal 33:24 So those three, three, those three things were writing down what you have to do.

Ryder Carroll 33:27 Tasks, events, and notes.

Ali Abdaal 33:29 Tasks, events, and notes. Okay. Yeah, I guess that's kind of what mine looks like as well. But, but because, so I guess you must get this a lot, but I, like, I, I first... I mean, I'd, I'd heard of the, the, the method like years ago on some random productivity blog or something. Always thought, oh, interesting, like, hmm, I'll file that info later to try at some point. And then, um, my friend Matt D'Avella did a video recently where he tried bullet journaling, and I was like, oh, okay, interesting. Like, it's not too artsy fartsy like I, I sort of imagined it would be.

Ryder Carroll 34:00 [laughs] Sure.

Ali Abdaal 34:01 And then I started watching a few other videos about it, and I was like, ooh, this actually is really helpful. Like, I, I need a way to look at my year for the whole year because I've got a thing, like the problem with Google Calendar is that, like, it's... forces you to think very zoomed in, and if you try and zoom out, like suddenly you can't see anything at all because now it's just little dots on a, on a thing. And I was like, oh, this, this like future logs thing seems great. Oh, like month at a glance. Yeah, I'd, I'd love... That'd be really helpful just being able to see my calendar at a glance and figure out, like, you know, where, where do I have blocks in my calendar where I should probably take some time off and go on holiday or something. And oh, you know, this daily thing of like actually figuring out what your most important task is for the day or what, what tasks you have to do. I was sort of doing a version of that.

Ryder Carroll 34:40 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 34:40 And so we, we released our own like stationery line, which where it's like every day is a page, and it asks you three things you're grateful for. It asks you what's your most important task and the sort of the might-to-do list-

Ryder Carroll 34:51 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 34:51 ... things that you might, you might want to do with like a little brain dump area. Um, and I was like, oh, I'm also... I'm, I'm already kind of using this, this sort of most important task method. Let's, let's try this bullet journal thing. And then I came across the book, and I listened to the book on Audible, and I think that might have been a mistake because it was, it was like hard to imagine what was going on-

Ryder Carroll 35:10 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 35:10 ... when just listening to it on Audible. And so I think that that's one of the tricky things about this ca- ca- because I guess it's... it is somewhat visual. But I guess like with, with that caveat in mind, so, like, what are the, like, the core principles-

Ryder Carroll 35:24 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 35:24 ... I guess, of, of the method? Um, and obviously people... Well, we'll put links to the, the book, which I recommend not getting on Audible-

Ryder Carroll 35:29 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 35:30 ... because then you can, you can, you can see what's going on when you get it on Kindle or in, or in real life. [laughs]

Ryder Carroll 35:34 It, it really helps to see what's being talked about-

Ali Abdaal 35:37 Yeah

Ryder Carroll 35:37 ... for sure. Um, okay.

Ali Abdaal 35:43 Tasks, events, notes.

Ryder Carroll 35:44 Task- tasks, events, and notes. So I'm trying to think of a way to have a non-visual-

Ali Abdaal 35:49 Yeah

Ryder Carroll 35:49 ... version of describing this. I, I think the best way to think about it is writing down your thoughts in a really distilled way. So a lot of people know how powerful journaling can be, right? They hear about all the mental health benefits that it can have, and I very much encourage long-form journaling.

Ali Abdaal 36:11 Yeah.

Ryder Carroll 36:11 But it takes a lot of time.

Ali Abdaal 36:12 Yeah.

Ryder Carroll 36:12 Right? And a lot of people see it only as an emotional thing, right? It's like I, I journal when I'm confused or when I'm sad or when I'm angry, and that can be helpful. And then you have bulleted, bullet lists, which essentially are for very specific things. This is what I have to buy. You know, the- these are my goals. These are all these things. So bullet journaling kind of combines the best of both worlds, where it helps you organize your thoughts as bulleted lists. That's one component. There's two parts of the bullet journal method, the system and the practice. The pra- the system is how you organize information, and then the practice is more about what you do with what you write down. I like to say that, you know, writing down, writing things down is only the beginning. So you write down the things that you experience, so your events, the things that you don't want to forget, which are your notes, and then, uh, your tasks, things that are actionable, right?

Ali Abdaal 37:00 Hmm. Okay.

Ryder Carroll 37:02 And-

Ali Abdaal 37:02 Sorry, please

Ryder Carroll 37:02 ... go ahead. And each one of those has a different icon in front of it. So as you're writing things down, you're also categorizing your thoughts in real time. And the only way to make that sustainable is figure out a way to write down less, right? You're really trying to focus on what really matters, and that is part of the practice, right? You're listening to somebody and you're like, it focuses... It helps you become an active listener, right? It's like, what about this is the takeaway specifically? So you're starting to think about what's being said in a very different way, 'cause, like, hearing and listening are two very [laughs] different things. So it's like, okay, what about this is important? And then using your own words to capture it, and that process as well, like, using your own words helps you retain it better and helps you f- make it more personal, all these things, and you're doing this throughout the day. So information that's coming from the outside being filtered through your brain and then being added to your bullet journal. So that's, like, a big part of it, capturing things. You record. So the bullet journal method works in a cycle, which is record, reflect, refine, and respond, and those are, like, the four steps. So you record by writing things down. Then you reflect on the things that you wrote down and try to come up with insights and different takeaways, and then you take action accordingly, right? That's essentially what you're trying to do. The bullet journal creates both a framework for you to organize your information, but also how to think about your information and then make all that insight actionable. That's the big part. Like, what do you do with what you learn?

Ali Abdaal 38:36 By the way, in case you haven't heard, my brand-new book, Feel-Good Productivity, is now out. It is available everywhere books are sold, and it's actually hit The New York Times and also The Sunday Times bestseller list. So thank you to everyone who's already got a copy of the book. If you've read the book already, I would love a review on Amazon, and if you haven't yet checked it out, you may like to check it out. It's available in physical format and also e-book and also audiobook everywhere books are sold. There's

Ali Abdaal 38:59 a great story that you tell in your new book, Someday Is Today, um, about, um, I think you had a lunch with someone and they were a few minutes late, like seven minutes late or something.

Matthew Dicks 39:09 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 39:09 Uh, I wonder if you can, you can tell that story, 'cause that-

Matthew Dicks 39:11 Yes

Ali Abdaal 39:11 ... that's one that's really, really stuck with me. [laughs]

Matthew Dicks 39:14 So I always am willing to give fledgling writers 30 minutes of my time if they will meet me in the place that I happen to be. And I was in McDonald's that day, which is actually one of my favorite places to meet writers at some. I like the sort of tearing away of all of what people see as writing, which is, you know, I need to be at a coffee shop with smooth jazz and a cappuccino. I like to put them at a plastic table with a lot of noise and, and Diet Coke. So she met me at the McDonald's, and she was late. And so when she sat down, I said, "Tell me what you plan, what you're doing." And she started describing this book, you know. And, and it sounded interesting. Like, I was like, "This sounds like a good project," but I just waited for my moment. And then eventually I said, as I always say to writers, I say, "So how much have you written?" And so often, almost always, the answer is, "Oh, well, I haven't started writing anything yet." And I s- Then I said to her, I said, "Well, you were seven minutes late today." And she said, "I'm sor-," you know, she be- "I'm so sorry." I'm like, "No, no, no. My point was not that you were seven minutes late and I was upset. My point was I used the seven minutes that you were late to write some sentences." You know, I turned my computer, I said, "This is what I wrote in the seven minutes that you were late." Right? She was a person who believed she could only write in a two-hour block, that her ideal writing time was, like, 10 to 12, you know, that she needed to be in a certain place, in a t- certain mind frame, which is so often every creative person's belief, that they only work under certain circumstances ideally. So I reminded her that during World War I, there were men in trenches wearing gas masks, artillery exploding over their heads, and they were scribbling in little books, in journals, hoping that if they survived this battle and the many battles that were to come, someday they might publish something. So thank goodness that the writers of the 1910s did not require Starbucks smooth jazz and two-hour quiet blocks of time for them to get their work done, because that's just not a reality, especially if you actually wanna make a thing. If you want to do something like a vegetable garden in your backyard or write a book or create a YouTube channel, if you actually wanna do it, you should want to be doing it whenever it's possible. So I, I tell all of the creative people of the world, 10 minutes is precious to you. It doesn't mean in 10 minutes I can write a chapter, but, you know, in 10 minutes I can reread the last three paragraphs I wrote earlier today and see if they're okay and clean them up a little bit, or I can write five good new sentences. So it's just the idea that people, they just assume they need these ideal situations in order to create something lovely. You know? Whereas, like, Van Gogh was, like, mentally unstable and unmedicated and produced some of the greatest work in the world, you know? But had he been living in 2022, people might have said, "Well, let's get control of some of your mental illness first. Let's experiment with some medication before we get you painting." Right? Like, it's always this idea that everything has to be right before we launch, and that's not true. We should just launch. We launch now. We're not the space program. We're not putting people into orbit where we have to be careful. We just have to take steps forward. And, um, as is the case with most people, she really wasn't invested in writing. She was invested in the idea of having written or in the idea that I can quit my job and write from 10 to 12 every day and then have lunch with my friends, and that is the writer's life, which is, as you well know, not the writer's life.

Ali Abdaal 42:47 Nice. Um, yeah. I, I think back to that bit of your book whenever I feel like, oh, you know, I sh- I sh- you know, I should probably do some book stuff right now, but You know, uh, I've on- I've only got 23 minutes until, you know, until this thing that I have to do, and like, oh, you know, I could go down, I could get a coffee, get a biscuit, just like lounge around a bit. I, I can't get anything done in 23 minutes. I need, I need hours and hours, you know, with my [laughs] with my flat whites in my hand [laughs] and like my Lord of the Rings in my, in my background music to get into the zone. Uh, but I, I love the way you put that, of like, in the seven minutes, I wrote some sentences. And I'm just thinking, like, if I... I, I sh- I should just have that approach. 'Cause, like, when I was, you know, uh, when I was, when I was working as a doctor, um, and trying to do the YouTube thing on the side, I would use those seven minutes blocks of time here and there to write stuff for videos. Like, if I'd be on the toilet, instead of scrolling Twitter on my phone, I'd be on Notion typing out some stuff for a video.

Matthew Dicks 43:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 43:43 Or if I'm waiting eight minutes for a patient's blood results to arrive and there's no one else in the waiting room and there's nothing for me to do, it's like, great, let's open up Notion on the Windows computers in front of me and just, like, type out a few notes for a video. And so many people in my, in my academy ask like, "Oh, but like, I've got a, I've got a job. Like, how do you, how do you do YouTube alongside the job?" I'm always like, "Look, man, like [laughs] there are very few jobs where you don't have small, small amounts of time here and there where you nor- which you normally waste scrolling on your phone, where if you wanted to, and if you really cared about this thing, I'm not saying you have to, but if you did, uh, you could potentially spend that time opening up Apple Notes and just drafting a few bullet points for, for your next video." And I think I've got that approach to YouTube, but I really don't have the approach to the book, because for the book, I've convi- I've talked myself into believing the bullshit that, like, I need to, I need to have four hours and, like, the appropriate coffee cup and all that crap.

Matthew Dicks 44:29 Yeah. Well, I wrote my fifth novel, almost all of it in faculty meetings while teaching. Now, admittedly-

Ali Abdaal 44:36 [laughs]

Matthew Dicks 44:36 ... it's a book of lists. It's a novel written by an obsessive list maker, so the book is told, or the story is told through list after list after list after list. But I wrote almost all of those lists in those moments of a faculty meeting when something was being said that was irrelevant to me, which was an enormous number of minutes in those faculty meetings. Or I always arrive five minutes early, and I use those five minutes, and as things are wrapping up or we have a raffle at the end of it, because that's gonna make us happy, I'd just be writing lists. And the beauty of that was I didn't even n- need to write on a computer. I could have a Post-it note that I'm writing a list on, and that can later be transferred into the computer. I wrote a whole book during meetings, and you know, I always remind people, a book is probably about 5,000 sentences. So like incrementalism, right? Pile up 5,000 sentences and you have a book. I can't guarantee that's gonna be a good book. De- that depends on you and your effort and skill and experience, but it's 5,000 sentences, and if I write seven sentences here, I am a lot closer to 5,000 than I was a minute ago. I really believe that that seven-sentence step forward is a significant one, especially because I know I'll do that 23 times today. I'll take 23 moments in my day to write somewhere between one and 50 sentences, and if I just keep doing that, you know, that is why I have a pile of books. You know, it's... A- and you know I'm a schoolteacher. You know, I am a wedding DJ. I have a consulting business. I'm launching another business. I, I do a... I'm a minister. I officiate weddings. I'm a substitute minister at churches, even though-

Ali Abdaal 46:13 [laughs]

Matthew Dicks 46:13 ... I really don't have a lot of faith in God. I do all these things, and people... The reason I wrote my book was because people would ask me, "How do you do all that you do?" And I would always say, "Well, if you give me 12 hours, I'll sit down with you and I'll go through your whole life and I'll help you out." And no one wants to do that, so the book was the answer to that question. Um, but yeah, same thing with writing as with everything else. People get very precious over how a creative person works or how creativity works, whether that creativity is writing a book, painting a painting, or figuring out how are you gonna, you know, lay out your vegetable garden. Or my son, right? He's a fish- he's taken up fishing this summer. He loves it. He's obsessed with fishing. And, you know, he had his tackle box, and he bought all this gear, and I said, "All right. When you gonna set it up?" And he said, "Right now." And I said, "Well, you gotta go to bed in 10 minutes." And he goes, "I can get some of it done in 10 minutes, Dad." And I was like, damn, he is right.

Ali Abdaal 47:07 [laughs]

Matthew Dicks 47:07 Like, I was gonna tell him, "Don't start setting up your tackle box now. Wait for the morning," but he was like, "No, I'll get some of it done. I got 10 minutes before you're gonna make me brush my teeth." That's exactly the attitude you have to have.

Ali Abdaal 47:18 I've

Ali Abdaal 47:19 been obsessed with productivity for quite a while. Um, I found that when I was at, when I was at university going through medical school and trying to build my first business on the side, I realized that I had to find ways to become more productive and ways to work harder and work smarter and learn how to study efficiently and stuff so that I could have the time to do the things that I wanted to do. But then... And so that worked throughout university, but then when I started working full-time as a doctor, um, that was, like, a step up in terms of like, oh, you know, I didn't think I had free time at university. Now I really don't have free time. [laughs]

Matthew Dicks 47:48 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 47:49 'Cause, like, at university, even m- even medical school, going into the hospital is kind of optional. You wake up in the morning and you're like, "Don't know if I feel like going in today." Um, or, "Yeah, I'll go in for a few hours. I'll leave at lunchtime and then do my own, like, self-study."

Matthew Dicks 48:02 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 48:02 But when you have a job, that, you know, that's just... that's unfeasible. Like, you have to show up. And so all of a sudden, like, 10 to 12 hours of every single day were just being blocked up by work, and I was trying to grow the YouTube channel on the side. And I had lots of periods of where I felt pretty overwhelmed and pretty stressed by the demands of work, plus the demands of the YouTube channel. And so that was when I was like, "Okay, I need to change my approach to productivity." That's where this idea of sort of feeling good, like positive emotions and stuff landed, 'cause I didn't really want to be in a position where every day felt like a grind, 'cause I was in that mode for a while. I was like, "Okay, what if being productive and, like, doing the things I wanted to do didn't have to come at the expense of my, like, physical and mental health? What if I actually could feel good while also being productive?" And then I went on this whole, like, research rabbit hole and found that actually feeling good is one of the keys to productivity, and actually, the more positive emotion we feel in our work, the more productive we become, but also the more energy we have to give to the other important things in our life. And so to me, feel-good productivity became this sort of like holistic philosophy That I s- you know, I, I, I use every day when, like, whenever I'm doing something and it feels bad or I feel blocked or I feel like kind of the, the negative emotion's getting in the way. I remi- I sort of remind myself that, okay, no, there are ways to make any situation feel better and the way- ways to experience the positive emotion in everything. And it just means that I can float through life... Well, float through life. I, it, it means I can go through life feeling better about the work that I'm doing while also being pretty, pretty effective at the work.

Speaker 49:26 And h- and, and it's interesting I guess because you have both types of experience. So, you know, when you were working as a doctor in a hospital where when you're dealing with people who are really unwell or really highly stressful situations, it must be really hard to find the pleasure in that kind of work, uh, in comparison to, you know, a YouTube life and-

Ali Abdaal 49:49 Yeah

Speaker 49:49 ... and where you can kind of choose your hours a bit more or do things that you're interested in. So were they quite different challenges?

Ali Abdaal 49:55 Yeah. So th- this is the thing. So when I first started, started working, I found it very, like, stressful and sort of these high, high-stress situations. And most of the doctors around me also had that approach where it was like there was this sense of like, uh, kind of tension and stress in the air. But not everyone was like that. And I had a few seniors who I really looked up to who were just like... They were really good doctors, but they were, they were also happy. They were like, they had a smile on their face. They would crack jokes. And it kind of helped me realize that actually there is another way, like, a- approaching work as if it was, it was really stressful was actually a choice that I was making. And so I did also make a concerted effort in my day job to enjoy the day-to-day a little bit more, and kind of modeling the doctors that I'd seen who would have smiles on their face and stuff. Started... It g- it sounds weird, but approaching it with more lightness and ease, almost as if I was playing a game kind of.

Speaker 50:46 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 50:47 Um, it's not playing a game in the sense of, you know, people's lives are at stake. But there was a, a line from Grey's Anatomy that I, I often thought about, which is when, uh, Derek Shepherd, the neurosurgeon, when he starts his operation, he says... He puts the music on and he says to his h- and he says to his team, "It's a beautiful day to save lives. Let's have some fun." And obviously, you know, that's a fictional, fictional drama, but there's something about that that even when you're doing neurosurgery, even when it's just like, like, life and death is in the balance, it can still be a beautiful day to save lives. You can still have fun along the way. And so much of that I found is a choice that we make ourselves rather than s- a ch- rather than a thing that's foisted upon us by the environment.

Speaker 51:21 Yeah. And I guess with any job, however difficult or kind of emotionally taxing it is, there's always something to be grateful for or something to find in it that we feel thankful for or find even the slightest pleasure in-

Ali Abdaal 51:38 Yeah

Speaker 51:38 ... I guess.

Ali Abdaal 51:39 Yeah. I think, I think gratitude is a, is a really major part of this. Um, the other one is, uh, you know, this is the first chapter of the book, is the idea of approach- approaching work in the spirit of play, where, yes, even w- even when the thing is really stressful, you can still choose to approach it in the spirit of play. And, you know, there's so many stories of Nobel Prize winners who found, you know, the key to their productivity and the key to their creativity was kind of treating it with a little less seriousness-

Speaker 52:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 52:07 ... and heaviness that we tend to approach work with, even when it's heavy and serious, like working in medicine or being a therapist and things, and just choosing to approach it with a little bit more lightness and ease.

Speaker 52:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:17 So I tried to-

Speaker 52:18 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 52:18 ... kind of im- I, I tried to do that when I was in the day job, and especially now running this business and having a team and stuff. Again, a lot of people I know, a lot of business I know is, a, a lot of business owners I know are pretty stressed 'cause of the demands of running a business and managing payroll and having all these people dependent on you. But at the same time, it's, it's a bit of a game. It's approaching it in the spirit of play.

Speaker 52:39 Yeah. Yeah. That... The, the, the idea that, that joy is the most kind of import- important factor when it comes to being productive, is that at the core of this whole thing? So it's, so it's sort of that's where you start?

Ali Abdaal 52:54 Yeah, sort of. Um, so the, the scientific basis for this is a theory called the broaden-and-build theory. Um, so there's this researcher in the early 2000 called Barbara Fredrickson who kind of coined this theory to basically explain the fact that when we experience positive emotions, it boosts our performance in almost everything. It boosts our creativity, and it lowers our stress. And, you know, her theory v- very loosely is like if you imagine back in caveman days, 'cause we're still operating with caveman brains. Back in the caveman days, if, if life is good, if you're feeling positive emotions, it means that you're not in danger of being eaten by a lion, the group is surviving, life is good, and so you're more open to exploring, and you go out into your environment and you forage for new stuff, and you see, you see if you can make some new alliances. Whereas when you experience a negative emotion like fear or stress or anxiety, it's like, "Uh-oh, my life's in danger. A lion could be around the corner." And you, your entire being contracts, and you go tunnel vision for survival. And when you're in that survival mode, it's a very high-stress state because the body is literally kind of trying to survive. Whereas when you're in that kind of broaden stage, it's like broad... it broadens your repertoire of things that you can do, and it builds, like, resources, like alliances and, like, creativity and things like that. Um, and so that was, like, a thing that I came across in my research, um, where I felt that, that was really the key. And so if we can experience positive emotions, joy in our work, it just has all of these benefits. It generates more energy for us, and often for a lot of us, time isn't necessarily the limiting factor. Energy is the limiting factor. But, you know, when you, when you experience joy and positivity in your work, you end up with boundless energy, and you-- as a side effect, you become more productive in your work. But then outside of work, you also have way more energy to give to the other important things in your life.

Speaker 54:41 Yeah. And it's interesting because you-- there's, um, [lips smack] a sort of literature around, literature around that idea, but in young children. So sort of that, you know, if you have a, a young toddler, for example, and they, they are in a kind of threat mode, and they'll feel anxious, and they'll go to their mother to feel safe. And then once they s- you know, they get that reassurance, and they feel safe, or they- You receive a positive emotion or experience a positive emotion from an interaction with that mother. They'll then go out and take more risks and, and dive into whatever the situation is and play with other children. All they needed was to feel safe and to have a sort of positive emotion, and then they're ready to go out again and, and ex- So does it sort of help with risk-taking and trying new things, or creativity is all kind of-

Ali Abdaal 55:24 Yeah

Speaker 55:24 ... linked up?

Ali Abdaal 55:25 Absolutely. No, I think that's a great, that's a great example with the, with the kids. I wish I'd thought to put that in the book-

Speaker 55:29 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 55:30 ... 'cause that's, that's, like, absolutely perfect. Um-

Speaker 55:31 Can we add it? Can we? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 55:33 Yeah. [laughs] We'll do some edits to the book. Um, no, it's like, yeah, there's just so much evidence. And so the, there was a, the, the first study that really tested this, I think it was from, like, from, like, the 1980s. There's this thing called, uh, I think it's called the matchbox puzzle or so- w- w- what's to that effect, where you give... You know, they get people in a, in a lab, and they give them, like, a matchbox and a candle and, like, some, like, thumbtacks. Those are things that you-

Speaker 55:56 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 55:57 ... pins, put, put stuff on the wall. And, you know, the challenge is find a way to get the candle, to light the candle but without any w- any wax dripping onto the floor or something to that effect. And this is, like, a classic test of creativity because people who are more creative in that moment will discover the solution where people who are less creative won't. And they found that if you prime people with positive emotions, like giving them a Malteaser or something just before they do the thing, they're, like, way more likely to solve the puzzle through creativity.

Speaker 56:23 Amazing.

Ali Abdaal 56:24 And so it was that study that was in, I think, in the 1980s that sort of helped spawn this wave of research into how even for adults, positive emotions do make us more creative.

Speaker 56:33 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 56:34 And increasingly in the world that we live in, w- where most people watching or listening to this are probably knowledge workers or students of some sort, productivity is actually more about being creative and thinking broader than it is about just, like, efficiently cranking out more and more widgets. And so-

Speaker 56:49 So I can eat chocolate all the way through my writing.

Ali Abdaal 56:51 Absolutely, yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 56:53 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 56:53 That's the one. That-

Speaker 56:53 It's gonna help me with my creativity.

Ali Abdaal 56:54 Absolutely, yeah. More, the more we feel good, the more productive we are.

Speaker 56:57 That's a great piece of research.

Ali Abdaal 56:59 So I hope this video has given you a little bit of a different perspective on productivity. With all this advice, we do wanna take it with a little bit of a pinch of salt because no one really knows what they're talking about, including me. I've written a book about productivity. The way I think of it, it's, uh, is that it's all about experimentation. Different things are gonna work for different people, so if you found an idea that has resonated with you in this video or this episode, wherever you happen to be watching or listening to this, then I hope you'll experiment with it. You'll apply it to your own life, and you'll see if it works for you. If it does, amazing. And if not, then that's also okay. It gives you an interesting data point. So thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.