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Deep Dive with Ali AbdaalHow To Make 2024 Your Most Productive Year Yet
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125 min read · 25,454 words- 0:00 – 2:12
Intro
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So I've stolen your seat, and here it is.
- AAAli Abdaal
Here it is. Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
What was your experience of writing it like?
- AAAli Abdaal
I think it was sort of like a marathon-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... in the sense of it's not like pure joy every step of the way. Often, I was approaching it with a lot of seriousness and a lot of heaviness. I was like, "Oh my God, it's a book." In those moments, I had to sort of... Other people had to remind me that actually it's just a book.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Amazing.
- AAAli Abdaal
This is a bit of a different episode because I am in the guest seat, and I'm being interviewed by Dr. Julie Smith, who's a clinical psychologist and the author of the bestselling book Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? And so this is Julie interviewing me about the book.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
How did it all begin?
- AAAli Abdaal
So to me, feel-good productivity became this sort of like holistic philosophy. Productivity is actually more about being creative and thinking broader than it is about just, like, efficiently cranking out more and more widgets. So-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So I can eat chocolate all the way through my writing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Absolutely.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. We're gonna be talking about the principles of feel-good productivity. We're gonna be talking about the energize principle, the unblock principle, the sustain principle. We talk about the different ways that we can incorporate feeling good into more of our work so that we can ultimately do more of what matters to us in a way that's enjoyable and sustainable and feels meaningful, preferably without burning out. I think success without recognizing the fact that the journey is ultimately what matters tends to be pretty hollow for most people, and so from fairly early on, I was always in the mindset of like, "Okay. The journey is actually more important than the destination."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Improve your productivity and, and be the best that you can be but also kind of enjoy the ride-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... a bit better.
- AAAli Abdaal
Absolutely. There's no point in being productive if the ride is miserable. [laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
It's like...
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Exactly. I love it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, by the way, in case you have not yet heard, my book is about to come out. It's called Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You, and it's a book that I've been working on for the last three years. And it's being published at the end of December 2023, but pre-orders are actually available. And I know people don't like pre-ordering the book, but if you do pre-order the book and you email me your receipt, you will get completely free access to a live exclusive event that I'm hosting in the first weekend of January of 2024, and this is a live online workshop all about annual planning, goal setting, and reflection. And so I'm gonna be facilitating a group with hopefully hundreds of people from all around the world, and we're gonna be going through how to figure out what to do with our life and how to turn that into goals for the year and how to build systems and how to be consistent with stuff and how to make sure that we are enjoying the journey along the way. That is purely
- 2:12 – 14:30
The philosophy behind Feel-Good Productivity
- AAAli Abdaal
exclusively available for people who pre-order the book as a thank you for our little community. So if you wanna check it out, you can check out the book. You can maybe consider pre-ordering it. The link will be down in the video description.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So I've stolen your seat, and here it is.
- AAAli Abdaal
Here it is. Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
The final piece.
- AAAli Abdaal
That's the one.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
How does it feel looking at it in the flesh?
- AAAli Abdaal
It fe- it feels pretty good. Like, I've... Sort of, we've, we've just done the interview with you on this, which has come out, like, many months ago, uh, or was done many months ago, depending on when people are listening to this. And kind of seeing it alongside your book makes it feel, like, real.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I'm like, "This is clearly a real book that's, like, doing really well," and I'm like, "Okay, we can, you know?"
- JSDr. Julie Smith
They can sit side by side.
- AAAli Abdaal
They can sit side by side on the same table.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Good vibes.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Even though this one is actually fake 'cause we are recording this, um, at a time-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
... where we actually don't have the complete printed version. So we have a random book inside this. One Step Too Far by Lisa Gardner.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
This is just, like, holding up, holding up the cover. Um, but by the time people are watching or listening to this, it will be, it will be available, and so it's... Feels, feel- it feels kind scary. I don't know if you had that when you, when you released a book.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Uh, yeah, hugely. I mean, uh, do you... At this point, you know, it's sort of... It's gonna leap out into the world.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
What, what's the feelings that... There's a bit of scariness, bit- bit of sort of fear.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
What, what else is there?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. It's a feeling of, a feeling of anticipation because it's-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... like there's been a lot of build-up, and like the last three years of my life have been, like, it's been a project that's always been, always been there. And so I, I've al- I felt this, like, overwhelming sense of guilt when I'm doing other things to be like, "Oh, I should be working on the book," but, like, there's all this stuff happening in the business and all this stuff that I wanna do. So now that it's finally done, it feels like a big relief. But also, like, I don't know. Part of me is like, um, you know... There's that, that Zen Buddhism parable or something which is that, like, you know, where an, an archer kind of does all- does everything they can, and then, and then when they release, they stop thinking about it because it's like at that point it's out of your hands.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yes. Idea. Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So it's kind of like, you know, it's out of my hands-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- 14:30 – 18:54
Hustle culture
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Um, how about the sort of, uh, you know, the industry so far? Because I feel like, uh, you know, I've followed your work for a long time, and as someone who sort of steered away from the more like sort of hustle culture productivity where you just, you know, you just get up at 5:00, and you just, you know, don't go to sleep or you-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... you know, you grind and grind and grind because that's what we do, and it's all for, you know, this thing called success.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Your content from the very beginning was different to that, wasn't it? So it was, it was always this way. It w- that you always had that sort of recognition of life is a bit more than that.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
J- just succeeding for succeeding's sake. We need to look a bit deeper into that.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So what's-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... your take on the kind of the hustle culture and the, the sort of productivity industry generally?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Uh, that, uh, that's a great question. So I think I... S- sometimes when people come across my YouTube channel and they don't watch the videos, they'll kind of badge me as like a toxic productivity kind of guy because it's like, oh, they'll see videos on how to manage your time and how to be more effective and stuff. And to me, that's always been like, like, to me, productivity is about using, using our time intentionally, effectively, and sustainably, like working towards the things that truly matter to us. And part of the reason, like we n- we almost never use the word success in the book, 'cause I don't really like the word, the word success, because for a lot of people, success is tied up in kind of traditional prestige or what other people will think.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And the experiences that I had working as a doctor, like from the first year of medical school onwards, anytime I'd meet a doctor and would get on with them, I would ask them, "Hey, you know, how much are you enjoying your job? Like, if you won the lottery, would you still keep doing it?" and stuff. And so often there were these, these like really high achievers who had gone through high school and medical school and everything and gotten to this success who sort of felt like, "Ugh, I kind of, like, I wish I'd had more of a life. I had all these hobbies when I was younger, and then I let them all go because work got in the way." And so I think success without recognizing the fact that the journey is ultimately what matters-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... tends to be pretty hollow for most people. Um, and so from fairly early on, I was always in the mindset of like, okay, the journey is actually more important than the destination. Yes, when your book hits the bestseller list, as yours does, you feel like that flash of like, yeah. But if the process of getting there was like a grind and didn't feel good, and you didn't take care of your physical and mental health and maintain your relationships along the way, a lot of people say that, like, the success is not worth the pain if it means your life becomes out of balance.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So I'm, I've always been about just trying to, trying to make sure life stays in balance, trying to enjoy the journey as well as aim towards some sort of destination.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And what was the journey like to, you know, create this book and write it? What was your experience of writing it like? Was it painful?
- AAAli Abdaal
It was-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
How was your-
- AAAli Abdaal
I, yeah, I, I think it was sort of like a marathon-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... in the sense of it's not like pure joy every step of the way, but like it's a fun experience overall. I'm glad I did it overall.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I think I've taken a lot of lessons away from writing this book that I will then apply to future books to make the process of writing feel, feel more good. 'Cause even though like I, I found myself in a lot of instances where I was writing about feel-good productivity and I wasn't applying the same principles to the process of writing the book. And sometimes it would take like my editor or my, you know, or agent or the, or my writing coach to be like, "Hey, Ali, it sound, you know, it sounds like, you know, at this point you could use the strategy that you mentioned in chapter two of like sincere rather than serious." Like, often I was, I was approaching it with a lot of seriousness and a lot of heaviness. I was like, "Oh my God, it's a book. A book is a big deal with a big B and a big D." And it's like, oh my God, like all of the imposter syndrome got in the way, all of the fears around why would anyone care what I have to say? What the hell do I know? And in those moments I had to sort of... Other people had to remind me that actually It's just a book. Who cares? Like, you know, we can approach it with sincerity rather than seriousness and-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... approach it in the spirit of play rather than the spirit of, like, grind and hustle. And so now that I've done it once, even, even though I literally write and research about this stuff, I, I still have to remind myself, 'cause it's just so easy for the mind to pop into serious heavy mode, especially when working on something that you feel-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... is like... You know, I'm, I'm comfortable making YouTube videos and podcasts. I'm a lot less comfortable writing a book 'cause it's the first time I did it.
- 18:54 – 23:22
The process of writing the book
- AAAli Abdaal
that I had to deal with along the way.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And, and it's interesting because y- you know, the, there is that sense of when you're writing a book that you feel that need to sort of, um, do something extra special with language or y- you know, dress it up to sort of warrant a book.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And, and yet, all the people that follow you and love your content, I think, well, from my experience anyway, love it because of how you communicate already and how down-to-earth it is and how, you know, you'll read all these kind of com- complex books and make it really easy to understand and, and lay it out on the table as it is, and, um, which is a, a skill and a talent in itself, isn't it, sort of being able to translate that for people in a way that's engaging and entertaining?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So d- did-- were you able to kinda just give it your voice in the end and speak as if you're just, we're just chatting across the table?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. I think in the end. Uh, throu- throughou- throughout the journey of, of writing the book, there were periods where it was very voicey in my voice, and there were other periods where, especially when I was leaning on research, 'cause I, I wanted it-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... to be science-backed. I didn't just want it to be a book from my own personal experience.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so especially when trying to talk about the science, I found myself kind of in academic writing mode. You know, "In this study done by blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah." It's, it's sort of like how you'd write an academic essay, but not how you'd write an engaging book. And so those bits were the ones that we did a lot of editing on to be like, "Okay, how do we tell the story of this research study in a more engaging way? How do we lead with some sort of story?" Um, but I think overall it's n- it's in a place now where I was re- proof- proofreading it the other day, and I was like, "Huh, this is actually not bad. This is, this is reasonable." Because I guess you would know, when you're writing a book you're so in it-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... that when you take a month away and you read it, and you read it back, you're like, "Okay, yeah. Yeah, this seems legit." Like...
- JSDr. Julie Smith
That's a pretty good response, isn't it?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. [laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
When that tendency is probably to be really critical-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... 'cause it's your own work. It's a, it's a promising kinda thought process to have when you're reading it back, isn't it?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. [laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
How did, how was your kind of process of writing? So did you sort of lock yourself away and be alone for periods of time or, you know, integrate kind of team members and chat and explore ideas? How did it, how did it work?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. So there was a lot of different methods. I, I tried, like, every method under the sun over the last three years, 'cause I was like, "There must be a, there must be a method."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, the thing, the one thing that got me to actually bang out the first draft, 'cause as you know the first draft is the hardest part, was it was, I think about two years ago? Two years ago or last year, at some point. I can't remember. Uh, 2021 maybe. I don't know. At some point we did, like, a team retreat to this big, uh, Airbnb in Wales, and the whole team was there. There was, like, like, loads of bedrooms, swimming pool, everything like that, and my job was every single day I need to write one chapter.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so over the course of, like, six days, I wrote six chapters, and it was just, like, the only thing I had to do that, that entire day. And the team was around doing their stuff and, like-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... you know, it would be 10:00 PM, and I'd be just finishing off the chapter and then going down to the swimming pool to, like, hang out with the team and throw, like, the ball around and stuff.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Amazing.
- AAAli Abdaal
So there was something about just having that one thing to do that day-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- 23:22 – 33:49
An outline of the book
- AAAli Abdaal
this chapter first.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And, and are the chapters quite short? How is it kinda set out? Are the chapters kinda short and easy to consume, or is it, is it a prog- do you sort of progress through it and-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... how does it work?
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, so we've got nine chapters, uh, so three parts of the book. Part one is energize, part two is unblock, and part three is sustain-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay
- AAAli Abdaal
... which are, like, the three different segments of elements of Feel-Good Productivity. And each, each chapter has three, like, top level strategies, and each strategy has, like, two experiments that we're calling it, like, practical ways that people can apply the insights into their life. And so overall we've got nine chapters, 27 strategies, and 54 actionable experiments, which feels like a lot. Um, but in the first draft it was about twice as many, um, [coughs] in that each chapter had about 18 action points until the editor was like-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay
- AAAli Abdaal
... "Guys, I, I know you wanna throw the kitchen sink at this because, like, you wanna add more value, but, like, come on. No one's gonna read it. Like, it becomes-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... overwhelming if people have 18 action points in every single chapter."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So we then did loads of cutting, got rid of anything that was, that we didn't think, "Okay, this is really good," and we were left with 54, still quite a lot.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
But across the nine chapters, across the different elements of productivity, it feels a little bit, a little bit more reasonable.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay, so you kind of, you can sort of progress through and do the little action points and sounds like a good idea that it's kind of trimmed down so... 'Cause it's difficult, isn't it, to work through, uh, you know, a book and, um... But I'm really interested in the three sections.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
You said energize-
- AAAli Abdaal
Unblock-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... unblock
- AAAli Abdaal
... and sustain.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And so we kinda talked a little about, about the energize and, and the energy is really that main kind of driver.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
What's the unblock?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, okay, so the, the energize section is basic- basically the idea is that there's three energizers. If we can apply these three things into our work, it'll feel good, it'll generate energy, it'll make us more productive, and those three are the first three chapters: play, power, and people. Then the second bit of the book is basically about overcoming, overcoming procrastination and distraction, which are things that loads of people struggle with, where even when you've made your work energizing, we still have a tendency as humans to procrastinate from it. And so the reason it's called unblock is because there's, like, a few different methods to dealing with procrastination, um, in the productivity literature. There's, there's the motivation method, which is that, oh, you know, you just gotta be motivated enough. If you're, if you're not doing the thing, it's 'cause you're just not motivated enough. You gotta want it so much that, like, it's so, it's so worth it.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, and the issue with that, obviously, is that motivation waxes and wanes. It's not, it's not always there all the time. Then there's, y- you know, a lot of people will invoke the narrative of discipline. They're like, "Okay, no, screw motivation. What you need is discipline." And I've, d- I've definitely made videos about this in the past before my thinking got a bit more sophisticated. And with discipline, it's like, okay, cool, you know, the reason you're procrastinating is because you don't have enough discipline or enough willpower, and you should therefore work on that as a muscle. And again, I think discipline has its uses, but, like, living a life where the, the things that matter to you, you're having to discipline yourself into doing-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... is just a bit grim. Um, it's not a very enjoyable way, way to be. And so the analogy that I sort of came up with after doing so much research into productivity, into procrastination, and interviewing a bunch of people on this podcast about procrastination is the unblock method. So the, the analogy we talk about in, in the second part is imagine you have to go to a friend's house for dinner, but for some reason it feels really painful to walk there, like there's something wrong with your shoes. So the motivation method is like, screw it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna battle through the pain because, like, I want it so much. That's fine. Uh, the discipline method is like, screw it, I'm gonna battle through the pain because I've made a commitment to be there, and I'm a disciplined person, and I don't n- you know, I don't go back on my word, and I will do the thing. The unblock method would be like, hang on, why is walking to my friend's house so painful? Let me have a look in my, inside my shoe. Oh, there's a pebble inside my shoe.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- 33:49 – 36:46
Is Feel-Good Productivity for you?
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Who, who is the book for, do you think? Who, who are you sort of hoping to send it out into the world to?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. So we were trying to figure this out, um, 'cause, you know, when, when you're writing and marketing and stuff, everyone says you should figure out your ideal ou- ideal audience or the, you know, the per- the one person that you're talking to. But I think for a book like this, it's not really that there is one person. It's not like targeted at like, I don't know, a 17-year-old student or like a 23-year-old entrepreneur or-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... wh- whatever the thing might be. It's just that it's... I, I'm hoping that anyone who wants to be product- who wants to be more productive.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
It's, it's, it's not, it's not really a book for people who are like, have, who have no goals and have no desire to have any goals. It's, it's for people who are goal-oriented. They want to go after certain things that are meaningful to them.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Whether it's in work or in health or in relationships with family or anything like that, a lot of us have these goals. And for people who want to work towards those goals, but in a way that doesn't require sacrificing their own, like, physical and mental health.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, essentially, yeah, like how, how... People who want to do more of the things that matter to them, but who want that process to be enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable as well.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So people like me, basically, and I hope there are, you know... If, if the content is anything to go by, I've been sort of sharing this kind of philosophy for the last few years on the YouTube channel, and people seem to really vibe with it.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
So I'm hoping that people will vibe with the book as well.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And, and there's, you know, very few people that don't want to do more of what matters most to them. And, and I guess with modern life as well, it pulls us, so many of us, away from the things that we feel matter, doesn't it? It feels like we have to spend a lot of our time doing things that we don't care about-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... just to be able to, you know, keep a roof over our heads-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... or feed our families and that kind of thing. And then whatever time we have left is the stuff we care about. Um, so it feels like this is a sort of for everyone book.
- AAAli Abdaal
I think so, yeah. It's a... If, it feels a bit grandiose to say it's for everyone, but like-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
... you know, we kind of wrote it with that in mind-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... that we want ev- anyone to be able to take something away from this. And then, like, we, we worked quite hard to make sure that the... or try our best to make the examples as wide-ranging as possible.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
'Cause, you know, my experience is being a medical student, working as a doctor, and being a YouTuber. These are fairly unusual things in the grand scheme of things. Like most people are not doctors and/or YouTubers and/or entrepreneurs. Um, but I think the methods of Feel-Good Productivity and kind of the science behind it is applicable to basically anyone.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so it's not just people who are like, who have control over their own time and who are entrepreneurs who can apply Feel-Good Productivity. I think it's anyone, even if you have a normal day job that you-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... don't really like. That's kind of really what the first three chapters are about. Like with everything that we do, there is a way to make it feel better.
- 36:46 – 44:10
How to make life more enjoyable
- JSDr. Julie Smith
strategies for sort of, you know, searching for the joy or the pleasure in what is otherwise a kind of job you hate or that kind of thing?
- AAAli Abdaal
[coughs] Yeah, absolutely. So the first three, three chapters, play, power, and people. I think from, from all the work I've done on this, uh, those are really the three main levers that make work feel good. So we've got, you know, one specific strategy in play, for example, is, um, you know, in, in video games, they've got the concept of side quests. Like, you've got the main storyline, but then you've got these optional things that you can do on the side.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And side quests add a lot of variety to a game because it lets you explore your curiosity. Similarly, if you're, let's say you're working in a job that you don't, that you don't enjoy, the worst thing you can do in that context is to sort of disengage, 'cause it's to be like, "Oh, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna quiet quit. I'm just gonna do the bare minimum. I just, I just need to get through the day."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
"I just need the clock to hit 5:00, 'cause then I can go home and do what I, what I truly enjoy." 'Cause now you're living, like, eight hours of your day, like, as a zombie, where you're just clock-watching until the end of the day. Um, approaching that with a little bit more of a spirit of play, like what can I find in my work to treat as a bit of a side quest? Can I explore my curiosity-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... to this new area? I had a friend who was working as a psychiatry trainee who, you know, as a, as a doctor, who was just kind of interested in, like, why is the hospital's NHS computer system so crap? And every doctor has that thought, but no one does anything about it, just like, "Well, I guess it's just the NHS." But she decided to go to the IT people and, like, go into the basement where they, [laughs] where they dwell, and, like, talk to them and be like, "Hey, what's going on here?" And turns out that actually there's all sorts of interesting things where, like, the IT people want to speak to the doctors, but they don't want to disturb them, and the doctors are always busy, so they can't talk to the IT people, and so the systems end up being kind of weirdly designed. And so single-handedly, she found a side quest for herself. She found a way to make her day job, which she wasn't really enjoying at the time, feel way more enjoyable, because now she's got this little project, and she's also made the environment where she works just, like, objectively better for her colleagues and for her patients because now IT is speaking more to the doctors. And so there's little things like that where finding a side quest can help you get more enjoyment out of even a really, really, really crappy job. Um-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
That's, that's so good. Do you know, I, I feel like I almost might have done that once in my life where I, um, when I was doing my A levels, I worked in a supermarket.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And it was just y- almost one of the diff- most difficult jobs I've done, partly because of just the, the monotony of some of the jobs and the boredom and stuff like that. And I remember, um, in between, on those sort of quieter days where you might have five or 10 minutes between customers and you would just be expected to kind of sit there, and it was back in the days when you used to have... When you used to pay by card, you would have a little bit of paper that put through-
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... and you would pull out your receipt. So I'd get those little bits of paper, and I would, like, speed write mini poems and... or, like, little kind of anecdotes and things like that in between customer- to see what I could come up with in, before somebody else walked along kind of thing. And, um, and those sorts of things made the day really move along. But also, I was then challenging myself, and I was quite enjoying myself in between, but just in whatever little way I could within the restrictions of that job.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Um, but I guess it's that, isn't it? It's finding something little in your day that you can kind of inject a little bit of joy or pleasure-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... or... Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Absolutely.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
And basically anyone can do that in basically any job.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Like, even, even in, even, even amongst medics, yes, there are some days where you're, it's literally nonstop.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
But generally, those days are quite fun.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
It's like people tend to be more disengaged when there's days where it's kind of quiet, it's kind of boring, you're just sort of scrolling on your phone. In those days in particular, if you can find, like, you know, writing poetry on the, on the receipts or-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... that sort of stuff.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, one of, one of the other strategies we talk about in the play chapter is, uh, trying to find... Sort of trying to create a challenge for yourself. So it's like, if you imagine, if you're, if you imagine playing, I don't know, tennis against a three-year-old, it's not gonna be, it's not, it's not gonna be particularly fun because you're just gonna trounce them. Similarly, if you imagine playing tennis against Roger Federer, it's probably not gonna be very fun because he's gonna just destroy you.
- 44:10 – 48:37
Being a teacher
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So did you feel like you had, you know... Well, do you even d- do you call yourself a teacher these days? Do you feel like you're a teacher?
- AAAli Abdaal
Internally, yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Like, I don't really think of myself as a YouTuber or as a writer or as a whatever, entrepreneur. I think of myself more as a teacher.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
'Cause that's always been the thing that's brought me the most, like meaning and joy. Um, I, I, I w- I think it was like 2019 or something, I was sort of like a year into my job as a doctor, and I was feeling a bit like, "Okay, you know, I'm not sure this is really right for me." I was fee- I was, I was feeling, um, what I now know is misalignment burnout.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Where you're sort of doing a thing, but like... And you're doing well at the thing, but you... There's, there's something a bit off and I feel a bit like, "Ugh, I'm not, I'm not really sure this is that fulfilling." And so I went on the internet and read a bunch of books around like how to figure out what to do with your life, which is a question that we all struggle with. Um, and one of the exercises that I came across, um, is this, uh, gravestone technique, where you ask yourself, "What would I want written on my gravestone?" And you extend that to be like, "What would I want people to say at my funeral?" Um, and I realized that the thing that I want written on my gravestone was, is some combination of good father, good husband, and inspirational teacher. And like that was the thing. I was like, "Oh, that's the thing." And I spent a long time reflecting about this and realized that for me, the most in, the most joy and meaning that I got out of working in medicine was when I had a medical student with me who I could like teach as we were going-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... through the patients and seeing stuff and quizzing them on the drugs, and that was just so much fun. Whereas doing the day-to-day job normally, there are some doctors who just love interacting with patients and love like helping people and saving lives in that sense. For me, I enjoyed that bit, but I enjoyed the teaching a lot more, and I realized I'd rather be a medical educator than a medical practitioner, and that was a big like, whoa moment for me. 'Cause I'd al- I'd als- that helped me realize that actually from the age of 13 onwards, I was always doing teaching here and there. I was helping students at school with their exams, doing private tutoring, and I really enjoyed that stuff. And so that was a big realization that helped me realize that actually I don't think practicing medicine full-time is for me. I wanna be more of a teacher and f- find a way to continue to grow and learn cool stuff myself, apply it to my life, and then find a way to share it and teach it with others.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And that's really what the book is and what the videos are and what the podcast is. It's like I get to interview people and learn cool stuff from them and then share that in, in videos and, and through the book.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And is that how the idea of putting all the, you know, the stuff from the videos into the book and it... Or does it, does it filter in stuff from the videos that you've talked about before?
- AAAli Abdaal
Um-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Or is it all brand new?
- AAAli Abdaal
A lot of it is brand new, annoyingly. It's like I wish there was more from the videos-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
... because it would've been less work. [laughs] But, um, initially when I started writing it, I was thinking, "Oh, how hard can it be? I've already made like a dozen videos on productivity, if not more. Like I, I can type really fast. I can just bang the book out in like a month." And then I got about 10,000 words in, in terms of like-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
... the stuff I already had at the top, had off the top of my head. I was like, "I've run out of content," like, "I need to do more research." And then I dove into the research, and that was when like reading the books and the research papers and stuff that like all of the dots started to connect.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And, you know, people kept on saying that like, "Why don't you make videos about this stuff as you're writing the book?" But it was, yeah, it f- it, it felt kind of weird because the book was like such a, an individual project and different from the videos. I think for future books I would like the videos to be a bit more overlapping with the content of the book because it will just reduce the amount of work. But there's a lot of... Almo- almost everything in the book is new, and I haven't talked about it in videos before.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah. Yeah. So it's all fresh and brand new.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And does it kind of take-
- AAAli Abdaal
Sort of, yeah. [laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs] So does it all take, um... You know, this idea of kind of being a teacher and then bringing out the book, does that give you an, an idea of where you wanna take things in the future through like the videos or...?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Yeah, I think it just comes down, down to that, being like the... I've, I've realized that the thing that brings me the most joy is learning and growing myself, and then sharing that learning and growth with other people.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I'm fairly agnostic as to the medium or the format. So YouTube video is a format, Instagram Reel is a format, like podcast is a format, books are a format, and formats come and go. I think books are around to stay 'cause they've been around for a long time.
- 48:37 – 57:50
Beating procrastination
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And I, and I wanna go back to the idea of procrastination 'cause I feel like this is such a huge subject, and everybody struggles with it, right? I don't know anyone who- Well, I think if they say they don't-
- AAAli Abdaal
[laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... they're probably lying. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Um, so I wonder if we can go back to the kind of the procrastination section-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... of the book. And of- we talked a bit earlier about how procrastination is sort of often underlied by sort of fear-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... or other emotions around the thing that you're supposed to be doing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Can you give us a bit more of an insight into that?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, sure. Um, so yeah, chapters four, five, and six were about beating procrastination. Chapter four is, um, get clarity, 'cause clarity-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay
- AAAli Abdaal
... is like a big, like, the first major hurdle. Chapter five is courage, which is all about, like, the emotions, and fear being the main one. And then chap- chapter six is get started. So if I just bookend the, the stuff about the emotions, initially we've got clarity, where a lot of people will be like, "Okay, I'm procrastinating from exercise." And if you think, think about it, it's like they don't really have any clarity on what exercise even means. If someone's a beginner to exercise, it'd be like, the, there's all sorts of, like, stuff, where it's like, you know, at one point I was t- I was d- I was trying to take up running, and I was like, "Cool, I'm just gonna take up running." I didn't, I didn't know what that meant. Like, how, how often am I running? Like, where am I going? Do I need any s- special kind of shoes? Like, what app do I use on my phone to track the runs? I know people do that. Should I wear the Apple Watch? There's, there's basic questions where, like, a runner might just be like, "Look, man, just wear any shoes and just go out for a run." But as someone who hadn't experienced what running was as, like, an exercise activity, I just didn't have clarity on it, which meant I procrastinated for, like, a whole three months at being like, "Oh, at some point I'll get around to this running thing," 'cause I didn't know exactly what it was.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so the first step in be- in beating procrastination is actually getting clarity on why you want to do the thing-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... what the thing actually is, and, like, when and where you're going to do the thing. 'Cause even just that, like, even just committing to a time and a place and putting the thing in your calendar, I think solves, like, half the procrastination within, like, a few seconds.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
So it's like, "I'm gonna go to the gym at some point," that's never gonna happen. But it's like, "I'm gonna go to the gym every Monday at 5:00 PM," it's way more likely to happen than, than the, than the alternative. And so the next thing is, like, okay, let's say the thing is now in your calendar. Like, in, in someone's case it might be, I don't know, working on this presentation, for example. It's like, I've been procrastinating from this presentation for such a long time at work, and I finally put it in my calendar. I know what I need to do, and then it gets to 3:00 PM on the Monday, or whenever you put, put it in the calendar, and then there's something that, like, holds you back-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... and you feel ugh, eh, there's like a-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
A resistance. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
A resistance, exactly. That resistance. And that resistance is usually some kind of emotion, and the most common emotion is, is fear. Like-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... fear tends to be the thing at the root of most procrastination. The other one is self-doubt, because self-doubt is sort of a subset of fear, because you're afraid of the thing being judged by someone else, and that's when we have to, I guess, you know, from your background as, you know, from your, from your background in therapy, a lot of strategies around, uh, naming the emotion, uh, telling ourselves a different story about the emotion to reduce the impact it ha- it has on us, and fundamentally acting in the face of that emotion anyway if we recognize the emotion is never truly gonna go away.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
There's a, the, there's a fun study where they, they called it the Batman Effect, um, where they got a bunch of kids, and they got them to do some, some sort of activity, some sort of game. And then, and so half the kids were, they were just told to do the, the, the activity, but the other half of the kids, they were told to imagine that they were a, like, superhero that they vibed with, like Batman or Dora the Explorer or whatever.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
And they found that the group who pretended they were someone else, who acted as if they were Batman or Dora the Explorer, performed better at the exercise and felt better as a result of doing it than the group that had, that had no instructions. And so Adele, for example, has spoken about how back in the day she was, she had loads of stage fright when she was-
- 57:50 – 1:02:33
The amygdala hijack
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And what's the amygdala hijack?
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh. [laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
I wanna know-
- AAAli Abdaal
The amygdala hijack.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. So the amygdala, as, as you would know, is the part of the brain, the threat detector part of the brain. Obviously there's more nuance than that, but, like, to simplify things. Um, and people who have defects in their amygdala feel less fear or sometimes even no fear. Now, fear is a really valuable emotion because it stops you from getting run over by a truck when you're in the middle of the road. Um, and so people without an amygdala just don't have that sort of fear response. But the amygdala is very responsive to social threats. So back in the day, obviously if there's a lion around the corner, the amygdala's, like, firing and you've got the fight or flight response. But also back in the day in our caveman eras, uh, in our caveman era, uh, sort of being ostracized from the social group was a real, like, "Oh my God, your survival is at stake," because if you get kicked out of the tribe you're gonna get eaten by the lion.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And, and sort of the amygdala hijack is kind of what research, re- researchers call it when, um, we, when our amygdala is overactive in social situations today that are not, like, where our survival is not actually at stake.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So doing a public speech, like working on a presentation and delivering that for the first time. Any area where we feel like the risk of judgment or kind of, uh, what will other people think of us? Will they think me ridiculous to have the audacity to make a TikTok? All, all, all that kind of stuff, the amygdala starts to be in, in hyperactive mode, which causes the fight or flight response, which causes us to feel very stressed. When we feel stressed, it's like negative feelings, we contract, we're less creative, we're less productive, we're less energized. Everything starts to feel very heavy. And so a lot of getting over procrastination is recognizing that, "Oh, okay. The reason I'm finding it so hard to get started with my book is because I'm worried about the, the judgment, the threat of judgment from other people. Cool. This is my brain trying to protect me. This is my amygdala trying to protect me 'cause it's worried I'm gonna be ostracized from the group. Thank you brain for giving me the survival signal, but I can choose to ignore that because actually-"
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
"... you know, I'm in a, in an environment where I'm not actually worried about lions and tigers and stuff."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So it still gets to kind of voice its, um, its opinions on stuff, but it doesn't get to sit in the driving seat sort of thing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Ideally, yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
You're still choosing to go forward, but the-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... the voice of fear is there.
- AAAli Abdaal
Exactly, yeah. That's a, that's a nice way of describing it-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay
- AAAli Abdaal
... the voice of fear. Uh, so the amygdala-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
... is basically the voice of fear.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And the voice of fear stops so many people from going after their dreams because they're afraid of whatever.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And recognizing, yeah, you know, the brain is designed to protect us. Um, but actually protecting us is generally not in our best interests when it comes to achieving our dreams or going after-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... the future that we want. This episode is sponsored by Kajabi, and they've actually got something really valuable for all of our Deep Dive listeners. Now, if you haven't heard of Kajabi, it's basically a platform that helps creators diversify their revenue with courses and membership sites and communities and podcasts and coaching tools. So it's one of the best places for creators and entrepreneurs to build a sustainable business. We started using Kajabi earlier this year, and as soon as we started using it, we were like, "Oh my God, why haven't we been using this product for the last three years?" It's got everything you'd possibly need for running an online course or hosting an online community or building an online coaching business, and it essentially makes it really easy to run your entire online business. From payments to marketing tools to analytics, Kajabi has everything that we creators need all in one place. And actually, you don't necessarily need a huge audience to generate a sustainable income. A creator on Kajabi can, for example, make $100,000 by converting just 350 customers a year, depending on your price points. And in fact, there are creators on the platform that are making millions of dollars every year with fewer than 100,000 followers across their social media platforms. We've been using Kajabi to host all of our online courses since the start of 2023, from our $1 Part-Time YouTuber Foundations to help people start off on their YouTube journey, all the way up to our $5,000 package for the Part-Time YouTuber Accelerator, which gives you access to me and my team. And Kajabi does not take any cut of what you earn. Creators keep and own everything. The way Kajabi makes money is through the monthly subscription fee, and even though we generate, like, literally millions of dollars every year from Kajabi, we're still only paying them a couple of hundred dollars a year. And actually, in their lifetime, Kajabi have paid out over six billion dollars to creators. That's billion with a B, and over 1,000 creators have become millionaires through products on the platform. Now, back in May 2023, I did a keynote at a Kajabi In Real Life, Kajabi Heroes event in Austin, Texas. And in that keynote, I talked about the exact steps that I used to grow my business from zero to over two and a half million dollars per year from course revenue alone. Now, people paid for the pretty expensive tickets to watch this keynote at the Kajabi Hero Live event. But as an exclusive deal for Deep Dive listeners, Kajabi have very kindly offered to provide the recording of that keynote completely for free to anyone who listens to this podcast. So if you're interested in getting completely free access to that keynote, just head over to kajabi.com/ali. That's kajabi.com/A-L-I, and that'll be linked in the show notes and the video description as well. And you just enter your email address, and then you will get the recording of that keynote completely for free, whether or not you ever become a Kajabi customer. So thank you so much to Kajabi for sponsoring this episode.
- 1:02:33 – 1:10:07
The importance of play
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So World of... I mean, it's interesting because y- you, you often talk about World of Warcraft and your, yeah, like, your love for the game and stuff in your content.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Um, but it comes up in the book, right? And you kind of managed to [laughs] thread it in-
- AAAli Abdaal
[laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... and make it useful. Can you remember where?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. So in the chapter about play, um, we talk about, we talk about World of Warcraft. So [laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
I, I try to, I try to shoehorn a reference o- of... I, I try to shoehorn a reference to World of Warcraft in just 'cause it's a bit more fun.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, so I, I used to be absolutely addicted to this game. Um, I played for around, like, 185 days, like, nonstop, like, in total like, 185 times 24 hours across, like, a three-year period. And like, which o- on average was about three and a half hours per day between the age of 14 and 17, which is a lot of time. I'm like, "Damn, how did I possibly do s- play video games for three and a half hours a day?" Um, but World of Warcraft is very addictive because obvi- it's, like, one of the most addictive games ever made, and, uh, what you do is, like, you have a little character, like, I'm Sephiroth the Warlock, and, like, you go and kill things, and then you get gear, and then you do quests, and you kill more things, and you get better w- wands and robes and stuff. Um, and one of the things... You know, the, the, there's a few interesting lessons we can take from video game design to apply to our own productivity. One of them is the power of the experience bar, 'cause it's like every time you do something, you feel as if you're, you're gaining some experience points.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And then you're leveling up, and you get this, like, ding, and it's like it goes wee, and, and you, and you learn a new skill. Um, and this is where things like, uh, tracking a word count if you're a writer or if you're-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... a student doing an essay or something is really helpful 'cause you can literally see the progress bar, and seeing progress happen is a big part of what gives us the momentum to contin- continue the thing, 'cause otherwise stuff can be quite boring if you don't see progress. If you do-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah, we need to see our progress, don't we?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And then the other thing as well is, um, just the fact that you can play a different character, and we kind of talked about this in the context of the Batman effect, but it also applies to play. So, um, there was this, I think it was a psychologist or psychiatrist many years ago who, um, founded the US's, uh, the, the United States National Institute for Play, it's, like, doing research on, like, play and how it relates to humans and what we can learn about ourselves based on how we play. And he did these things called play histories where he interviewed, like, 5,000 people from all walks of life, like, you know, people with normal jobs, Nobel Prize winners, Olympic athletes, people in prison. He just interviewed loads of people, and he asked them lo- lots of detailed questions about how they played when they were younger, and he got these 5,000 different play histories. And he came up with this basically, like, eight different play personalities, eight different archetypes of what people enjoyed when they're, when they were playing. So, like, for someone it might be, like, the storyteller. This is someone who really enjoyed telling stories and, like, drama and theater and this sort of stuff. Uh, there's the jester, someone who, like, really enjoyed pranks and jokes and stuff. There's the director. You know, these are the kids who al- enjoyed organizing their fellow play, you know, their, their fellow friends and, like, organizing a play and all this stuff. There's, like, eight different ones of these, and one of the things that we can take away from this is that, A, understanding what our own play personality is, and, you know, there's some exercises in the book to figure that out. But B, if we want to approach our work more in the spirit of play, we can choose to adopt a different personality when we're doing stuff. So for example, let's say I'm like... You know, it's like in World of Warcraft, you're choosing a character. So you're kind of choosing which character you want to approach the work with. So let's say I'm doing a, you know, presentation at work, and I'm thinking, "Okay, this presentation's really boring, but I'm gonna adopt the storyteller archetype, and I'm gonna figure out, cool, if I were the storyteller, and, you know, these are the characteristics of the storyteller, how might I incorporate that into my work?"
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, might I try and tell a story? Might I figure out, like, a nice three-part structure for my PowerPoint? Might I find a way to incorporate humor into it? A bunch of questions that I- If you're not thinking about it, you wouldn't by default think to incorporate into a boring work presentation. But a boring work presentation can become quite fun if you sort of choose a different character from these eight play personalities. And it's just another way of... It's like we, we as adults are really bad at playing.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
'Cause, like, when we're kids, we play all the time, and then we get sc- we get the spirit of play squashed out of us as we go through school and exams and grading, and you gotta do well to go to college, you gotta go to college to get a good job. And it's like, it's, it's almost a given that, like, part of growing up is stopping to play. There's a nice, I think it's a nice quote. I think it's from George Bernard Shaw, which is that, "We, we don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so a lot of this t- this first chapter, the play chapter, is about helping us as adults realize, okay, what are the things that we can actually incorporate to make our work feel more playful?
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
'Cause it's something that we're not in the practice of doing.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And I really like that idea that you can kinda take the different personalities and, and choose to adopt one for a day-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... or for a week or f- in a certain setting. 'Cause, you know, lots of these sort of different personality tests and, uh, that happen often in the workplace and stuff, and a lot of people will answer saying, "Well, I'm like that some of the time, but actually I'm like that one an- another certain time or in a different circumstance." And-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- 1:10:07 – 1:17:24
The different types of burnout
- JSDr. Julie Smith
I'm, I'm aware that we went through the kind of different types of burnout when you interviewed me-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... in our episode, but do you want to kind of talk through the three of those-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... for this one? 'Cause I think they're really crucial, aren't they? Burnout's not just burnout.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. I think there's like different, different types of burnout. Um, so the way that we split it up in the book is that there's overexertion burnout, which is when you try to pack too much into one day, and then you get to the end of the day or, like, somewhere during the day, and you feel like you just don't have any energy anymore. There's depletion burnout, which is where you've been sort of more over the, over the long term, your energy levels have gotten so, so low to the point that they're basically depleted, and that's a result of not taking enough breaks and not recharging. And then there's misalignment burnout, which is, I think we talked about earlier, where you're working towards something, but it feels a bit off because it's not quite in line with your own values.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so again, in each of these chapters, we've got exercises for how to, you know, s- the science-backed way to actually recharge your energy or, like, how to figure out what your own values are so you can be, so you can work in alignment with them.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, and just as a quick kind of practical thing for anyone who doesn't want to read the book, um, one of the interesting things about recharging is that there are things that we do when we're drained of energy, and then there are things that recharge our energy, and there's generally not much overlap between the two things. So when I feel drained of energy, I would be tempted to scroll TikTok or browse Instagram or scroll to, scroll Twitter or X or, or whatever they've renamed it to. I would be tempted to just watch random YouTube videos and just like lie on the sofa, like on my phone. But if I think about when was the last time I actually felt recharged by doing that? Basically never. Like, you know, scrolling TikTok tends not to be a particularly recharging experience. Whereas if I make a list of things that actually recharge my energy, it would be like going for a walk or like doing 10 minutes of stretches following along to a YouTube video or playing the guitar or reading a book or something a little bit more creative.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I think what's interesting about that is that if we think of, if we w- if, if, if we feel drained of energy, the things that it takes to recharge our energy do require a little bit of effort. It's like going for a walk is not just like-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... sitting on your phone and scrolling TikTok, but it's way better for us if we go for a walk than if we scroll TikTok on our phone. And so I was just doing a lot of research into that sort of side of things to figure out what are the science-backed strategies for- Yeah, recharging our energy so that we reduce the risk of burnout
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So it's not even necessarily doing what you feel like doing, it's doing what you know will create the feelings that you want to have in a minute.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yes, exactly. 'Cause w- what we feel like doing is often the easiest thing.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And obviously these social media platforms are designed to maybe be as addictive as possible, the notification's there, it's so easy to hop on and start watching a TikTok or start watching a video.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, but generally if it, when it comes to avoiding burnout, you know, spending more time on social media is not the way to avoid burnout. [laughs]
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
I mean, less time on social media and more time doing things that actually re- recharge your energy-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... tends to be a way better option.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
I often talk to people about sort of the in-between moments as well, 'cause often it's quite a small thing, isn't it, that we have that tendency to, especially in burnout, but it's usually because there's so much going on, and when there is so much going on, you fill every little moment.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So if you've got, you know, 15-minute gap between meetings, you'll probably check your emails-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... and you haven't got enough time to respond to any of them, so you're just, just adding to your stress by, "Oh, here's another thing for my to-do list. Here's another thing-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- 1:17:24 – 1:25:16
My new goal setting technique
- JSDr. Julie Smith
you kind of, you, uh, shifted from the kind of, you know, the old-school SMART goals stuff and have come up with something new that's bigger and better.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Can you talk me through?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. I won- I wo- I won't say bigger and better. I think it's a d- a different approach to goal setting.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
So one way of setting goals is to be, to be SMART about them. Specific-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... measurable, uh, you know, assignable or achievable depending on which acronym you, relevant, time-bound.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, SMART goals are all well and good, but, um, in particular if someone is a beginner to a thing or is struggling with a thing, SMART goals tend to be less effective.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, like for example, if, if you get someone who's kind of going to the gym for the first time and trying to, trying to build muscle, them setting a SMART goal of I wanna hit X percent body fat by Y date as evidenced by my DEXA scan which will show me, like, th- that would be a SMART goal because it's very measurable, it's specific-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... it's time-bound. But it's actually kind of demotivating for the person because they're, like, a complete beginner, and generally if we're struggling with a thing, um, having a more loose goal is- A bit better. Um, and the, the acronym that I, that I've come up with for this is NICE goals, N-I-C-E.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
So N for near term, I for input-based, C for controllable, and E for energizing. So near term, input-based, controllable, and energizing. So let's say, I don't know, if we, we take writing a book, for example. Near term is what can I do this week, just like within this week. I'm, I don-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay
- AAAli Abdaal
... I'm not worried about the deadline, just what can I do this week? Input-based is what are the inputs. Um, so, uh, input-based goals rather than outcome-based goals. So n- so less that I will write 10,000 words, um, but more the- more that I will write for 20 minutes, 'cause that's an input that's controllable. It's within my control.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
I will write for four hours a day, generally outside of most people's control because life gets in the way. But like a small near-term input-based goal that's E energizing based on power play and people generally gets us over that hurdle initially. And then once you have a certain level of expertise in a field, at that point, setting a smart goal, an ambitious goal, a specific goal-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... works quite nicely. But in the early days, I think again, it come, it comes down to lowering the bar and reducing the mental friction towards doing the thing, which generally comes from choosing a goal that's entirely within your control, being vague about it. E- even now for me at the gym, I don't really have any smart goals. I'm just like, "I wanna go gym three times a week. I'm gonna lift, lift sensible weights with compound lifts and roughly aim for progressive overload, like lifting more than I did the last time." A bodybuilder wouldn't be having goals like that, 'cause that's just dumb, 'cause that's just too basic. A bodybuilder would have specific goals. But I'm not a bodybuilder. Like, I'm just trying to get to a certain level and [laughs] no more beyond that. So the NICE goal is a way more energizing and effective way for me to hit the gym-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... than to set a very specific goal.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
I love that because it, it's so great for, for things that are really overwhelming as well, isn't it? So we'll of- I, I'll often talk to people about sort of, you know, I don't know, the idea of like climbing a mountain. That if you look up at the, you know, what would be the outcome, that peak of the mountain where you want to get, it's gonna feel over- like an overwhelming amount of work-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... and you're gonna question your ability to do it. So I would often ask people to sort of draw their horizons in-
- AAAli Abdaal
Nice
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... which is kind of like that near th- like just-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- 1:25:16 – 1:29:26
The Reitoff Principle
- JSDr. Julie Smith
this. Is it the Reitoff Principle?
- AAAli Abdaal
[laughs] Yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
What's that? Is that the right way to say it?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Oh, this is just a, another thing that I was having fun with. Um, I kind of realized, you know, what, at one point I would, I would get home from work and I'd be... I, I'd, I'd think, "Okay, cool. I should, I should, I should edit the video because it's enjoyable and stuff." But there would be some days where I would just flop on the sofa and I'd say to my housemate, I'd say, "Molly, like, I should probably edit a video right now, but I don't f- don't feel I have the energy." And then-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Because you are human.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, yeah.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
You are human. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
There were, there were a few days where that happened. And sometimes Molly would be like, "Ali, well, why don't you just write, uh, write the rest of the day off?" And I was like, "Okay, I could have a write-off day," like write off. And I was like, "Huh, sounds more interesting if it sounds like a German philosopher or something."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
So I, I just, I just sent like an email to my e- to my email list, you know, spelling it R-E-I-T-O-F-F, like the Reitoff Principle. And I kind of sent the email as a bit of a joke. It t- it took me like 10 minutes to write, but loads of people replied being like, "Oh my God, this is actually really helpful," like, when we name something-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... uh, especially if you name it something that's kind of funny, that sounds kinda legit if you don't know the backstory, it just makes it feel better. It's like, "Okay, okay, cool. It's the Reitoff Principle, and so it's a write-off day today. It's like a thing. Rather than I'm just being lazy, it's like I'm actively choosing to, to, to write the day off." [laughs] So-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... managed to put that in the book.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
So it's an active choice-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... to some- so it's okay to have the... You know, it's not the no-days-off kind of principle. It's the it's okay to respond to your needs-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... and write it off occasionally.
- AAAli Abdaal
Absolutely.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
But you're actively choosing that and making an informed choice about it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Like, I find there are some weekends these days where I'm like, "Oh, you know, I only filmed two videos this week. I g- I guess I could've, I guess I should film a video on Saturday." It's like, "I'm not really feeling it." And then I'll spend the whole day just sort of in this stupor where I'm, like, feeling guilty 'cause I sh- quote "should" be filming this video. And if I had just written the day off, be like, "No, today's an active day of rest," great.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Now the choice is removed from me. Now I don't need to worry that, like, I haven't done the thing that I was supposed to do, and I can actually enjoy myself and do things that are recharging.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Whereas when I'm in that mode where it's like I n- kind of feel guilty about not doing the thing even though I should be doing the thing, I'll end up scrolling TikTok [laughs] which is not-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... which is, which isn't really a good use of anyone's time.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
And so you kind of distract yourself without realizing it-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- 1:29:26 – 1:43:30
How to find joy in your daily life
- JSDr. Julie Smith
now, but, you know, losing, losing that sense of play or-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... I, I think it's not unusual for adults to, especially adults with lots of responsibilities, to almost lose that sense of, what is it I enjoy?
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
I do everything for everybody else, and, you know, working and doing the thing, you know, for my boss. What do I enjoy? How, how do we kind of recenter ourselves with that and, and pull in and work out what we love the most or what's gonna bring pleasure?
- AAAli Abdaal
That is a very good question that I actually don't have the answer to. [laughs] Wh- what do you think? Like, you're... I guess you talk to these-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
I guess-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... I guess something that you already do, isn't it-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... is you try lots of stuff. Like, you're not afraid to go, "Do you know what? I'm gonna try singing lessons," or, "I'm gonna-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... learn the guitar"-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- JSDr. Julie Smith
... or, "I'm gonna try and, you know, do this weights thing in the gym," or, "I'm gonna..."
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. I guess I can, I can speak to what, what works for me. Like, I, I find it hard to... One of the challenges with w- with, with writing this book is that a lot of people who read it will be parents, and I'm not a parent, so I don't really know what it's like to have kids.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so I'm, I'm mindful that I don't want to come across as like, you know, a productivity bro being like, "Hey, parents, this is how you can figure out how to find joy in your life." So it's like-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... I, I can share the things that, that work for me, and it is, as you said, like- I think everyone has, everyone has things that it would be cool to do.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
So like at the start of the year or like, you know, I, I, I do a sort of mini quarterly review every three months, um, where I'm just like, "What would be interesting to try? What would be cool to do? Um, oh, you know, I've always wanted to do kite surfing. Let's add that to the list." So I, I keep like a, a bucket list of, of things that I'm interested in trying. And so on that list was, uh, singing lessons, uh, recording an album of original songs, learning how to write music, uh, glamping, learning how to surf. It's like, you know, doing acro yoga, which is like acrobatic version of yoga-
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... even though I suck at both.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
[laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
It's like all of these things are on the bucket list. And so I will often, I think often like when, when I'm doing these reviews and figuring out, huh, let me actually just like realign on what do I actually wanna do? I look through the bucket list and be like, "Oh yeah, I guess, I guess I could try acro yoga. Like let me see if there's any acro yoga classes around, and I'll find a time that works and, and make it happen."
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, and so I think it is... I- From, from what I've heard, it's, it's, it is too easy to get into that mode of just being service, service, service all the time.
- JSDr. Julie Smith
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And y- you know, one, one concept I've been thinking about recently is like the difference between happiness and meaning, and often people say that meaning comes from service. Like if, like being, being a parent I've heard feels very meaningful be- because you're like in service to your children, even though according to studies that you get a dip in your day-to-day levels of happiness because life is more stressful and there's more stuff to do and you have less spare time. Um, but then the happiness component tends to be when we have filled our own buckets first, so health, wealth, love, growth, joy, those sorts of things. And so those are the f- the, the five sort of buckets I think for myself: health, wealth, love, growth, joy. Like, and in just in my head, I'll just like do a little aud- a mini audit of like, okay, how do I feel my life is out of zero to 10 on each of these five categories, um, where 10 is it couldn't possibly be any better and zero is it couldn't possibly be any worse. Um, and I was doing this last night when I was lying in bed, like unable to sleep, and I realized that the joy category actually is about three out of 10. And I realized that in the publication of this book and all this kind of stuff, I had, I had forgotten to take the time to really think, "Huh, am I doing something that's just purely for, for the joy of doing it-
Episode duration: 1:43:30
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Transcript of episode NtONtZm9K-U
