The Danger Of Obsessing Over Productivity - Anna Codrea-Rado

1. 0:00 – 0:22

   Intro

   1. ACAnna Codrea-Rado0:00

      It is possible to really like what you do and really like your job, but also know that maybe you work a bit too much, and maybe it's time to think about letting go of this obsession with work or productivity or whatever. (wind blows)

   2. CWChris Williamson0:16

      Anna Codrea-Rado, welcome to the show.

   3. ACAnna Codrea-Rado0:19

      Thanks so much for having me.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:20

      You were just telling me

2. 0:22 – 11:16

   Anti-productivity Week

   1. CWChris Williamson0:22

      that you have de-optimized your week, the anti-productivity week.

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado0:29

      Yeah, I have. Uh, so normally, I'm all for any productivity hack. Um, I'm signed up to Pomodoro technique-ing, bullet journaling, calendar blocking, making sure I've got a really solid morning routine. Um, but I thought as an experiment, I would see what, what would happen if I threw all of that out and basically did the opposite of what I would normally do and actively try to de-optimize my week. Um, it's been super interesting because it's really shown to me the stuff that does really work and also the stuff that is kind of a waste of time. Um, and the biggest takeaway for me, or the biggest surprise, the biggest thing I was not expecting to happen is I had so much more spontaneity in my week, and so many things happened that I don't think would've ha- would, would have otherwise happened had I been just bumbling about doing my normal, very rigid stuff. Um, so, for example, on Wednesday morning, I woke up, and in the absence of normally going about my kind of set list of things that I do in the morning, I was like, "Oh, what should I do?" And I thought, "You know what? I've been really wanting to go to the..." there's a new leisure center that's opened where I live, and they do yoga classes. And I was like, "You know what? I'm just, I'm gonna go and try one." And there's a library right next door, so I'm gonna work from the library, which is something that I never do. I just, I'm always in my home office. Um, so I went, went to the yoga class. Okay, the yoga class itself, not that great, but still, it, you know, it's good to move your body first thing in the morning. Um, but then in the library-

   3. CWChris Williamson2:10

      Ah.

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado2:10

      ... I found a copy of my own book, which I was just really not expecting, because I live in a small town. Um, the library's really tiny, and there, it's mainly kind of just kids books. But they had a really small section on jobs, and I think it was called Jobs and Business. And there, I found my book on the shelf, which was just so joyful and something that just gave me this kind of boost that I didn't even know that I needed. And it's, it's honestly something I just, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have had that... It's, you know, one of those sort of small moments of enjoyment in my week that I just otherwise wouldn't have had, because I normally am so rigid and so kind of must be focused on getting as much out of my day as possible. Um, so yeah, it was, it's been great. It's been really, really interesting.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:59

      There's a tension between serendipity and productivity, right? The, the fact that we do try and control our days. We try and make them predictable. We try and find out, "Okay, what works?" But this is the essence of productivity. I'm going to do a bunch of different things to try and get something out of my day. And over time, the things that seem to help me get more out of my day are things that I'm going to repeat to do. But as you said, you know, if you're time-blocking, the, the, the opportunity for you to go to the new library. You go, "Well, I haven't been to a library and worked effectively before. Why am I gonna go and try and do that now?" And the same thing happens. I'm out here in New York, so my entire schedule is upside down. So for me, everything that I do is brand new, and there's so many more opportunities for serendipity. I went to a, a sports bar last night to watch some basketball game, and this rapper that was sat next... Didn't know he was a rapper. This dude from Barcelona sat next to me that's a rapper, starts telling me about his tour. That's a cool story that I've got. So there is this tension, oddly, between sort of living life and, and having variable, high-intensity, enjoyable serendipitous moments and drilling productivity and continuing to iterate on the stuff that you know works.

   6. ACAnna Codrea-Rado4:13

      100%. Um, I was thinking about that just today. And it's interesting you're describing it as serendipity and productivity, and I think that's totally true, but I think for me, what I've realized is somewhere along the line, I confused productivity with creativity. And they are, they're not the same thing. And similarly, productivity is a thing that you can measure. It's quantifiable. It's about, as you say, being the most eff- doing, doing something in the most efficient or the, the quickest way possible. Whereas more often than not, with creativity, you don't know how long something's going to take. You don't... There is no clear end destination. Um, the way I've kind of been thinking about it is, it's the difference between when you... You, you know, you, you take a walk. It's kind of how... You can take a walk in different ways. So you can walk to the local post office in order to get your steps in for that day and then also run that errand and tick that off your list. Or you can just take a walk for no reason and just walk aimlessly around either a new area. You know, maybe you're visiting New York or wherever it might be, or just your own area and your own neighborhood, and just take a walk for no reason and then come across some amazing discovery or kind of just, and just have that enjoyment, just have that experience of exploration. Um, that's kind of how I've been thinking about the two. And it is a tension, because at least for me, I am someone who... I actually like order, and I like planning and scheduling. It... I enjoy putting things on my calendar. Um, but too much of it, as I have realized through this experiment, does really hinder my creativity. Um, and equally, I don't think I could... You know, I think... I'm, I'm a freelancer, so in theory, I could be a digital nomad and travel the world and, you know, have serend- serendipitous moments every day. But I know myself, and I know that I would feel very overwhelmed by that. Um, and actually, I used to live in New York, and I... It was, it was a very overwhelming city for me to be in. Um, that kind of constant not knowing of, "How long am I gonna be here for?" Or what's... You know, "What chaos is this next day going to bring?" It's too much. So there is something about... There is a kind of Goldilocks element to both productivity and creativity, of...... you don't, you know... We s- we're not robots. We can't... There is a limit to how much we can optimize ourselves. And then, for me at least, my goal with productivity is, is to enable my creativity. And so I think that's, for me, where this tension really plays up and where it comes in. And just making sure, or at least what I've become really aware of at the moment, is finding that balance where I'm getting the most out of th- of the hacks that do work, but not kind of co-opting my ability to actually be creative.

   7. CWChris Williamson7:01

      What were the hacks that your unproductive week told you were the most effective ones?

   8. ACAnna Codrea-Rado7:07

      So, anything where I'm making a decision, batch- batching my decision-making I think works for me, or- or- or also kind of just batch tasking. And so what I did is, I- I kind of applied this... I de-optimized everything, so including the stuff outside of work. So not just the things I actually did in my working hours, but also outside. Okay, h- so this is a, this is kind of a dumb example, but one that for me really kind of came up. Um, I started putting courgettes, or as Americans call them, zucchinis, in my porridge in the morning. And-

   9. CWChris Williamson7:41

      Why?

   10. ACAnna Codrea-Rado7:42

       ... uh, because it... I wanted to get more greens into my diet.

   11. CWChris Williamson7:47

       In porridge?

   12. ACAnna Codrea-Rado7:47

       I actually also re- Yeah, so you, honestly you can't taste it. I actually like courgettes, so I'm fine with it. But honestly, you c-

   13. CWChris Williamson7:53

       In porridge?

   14. ACAnna Codrea-Rado7:53

       Yeah, you grate it in.

   15. CWChris Williamson7:54

       Ana, are you okay?

   16. ACAnna Codrea-Rado7:55

       I am.

   17. CWChris Williamson7:56

       (laughs)

   18. ACAnna Codrea-Rado7:56

       And it is, it's a great way to get more vitamins, and you honestly can't taste it.

   19. CWChris Williamson8:00

       Dear Lord.

   20. ACAnna Codrea-Rado8:01

       Um, uh, but anyway, so... And like I said, I actually like the taste of courgettes, so it's fine. But you cannot taste it. Anyway, so you've got to grate that in. Like, I'm not chopping up... You have to, like, grate it. So, at some point, I realized, what is a lot more efficient is if, at the beginning of the week, I just stick my courgette in the blender, and like zap it up, put it in a, um, Tupperware, and then just put a couple of spoonfuls in every morning. This week, I was grating the stupid courgette every single morning. What happened? By the end of the week, there's n- there's a half-used courgette in the fridge that is c- I'm j- I couldn't. This morning, I looked at it, and I was like, "Yeah, you know what? I'm not putting the courgette into the stupid porridge." Um, forget it. And it's also, frustratingly, a waste of a courgette, because now that's going in- in the bin. Anyway, um, but I think also the decision (laughs) ... The decisions as well. So, stuff like, normally I would sit down at the beginning of the week and work out a meal plan for the rest of the week so that it doesn't come to the end of the day, and then my partner and I have that very frustrating conversation of, "What's for dinner tonight? I don't know, I need to think about it." Um, all of that is ha- all of that is done in one go. Um, so those were things that really kind of stood out for me, um, as things that actually do help. Um, and it's interesting because calendar blocking is something that I thought used to really work for me. But what I've come to realize is that it's just about having a v- a very vague plan of action. So on the days where I was kind of just going from project to project and not, not... Without any direction, I found that quite stressful and quite overwhelming. Um, and I really did miss having just a skeleton list of things that, you know... In the morning, I'm going to focus on this. In the afternoon, I'm going to focus on that. But what I didn't miss is having, "Between 11:00 and 1:30, I'm going to work on this very specific task." Um, so yeah, that was, that was really interesting for me. But yeah, like I said, it was the, um... I do think the dec- decision fatigue, at least for me, is very real. And if you can front-load those decisions and just kind of deal with them in a batch, um, or- or any... Put the, all sort of the courgette out, s- courgette out in one go, anything that you can do in one go, that, for me, does really work.

   21. CWChris Williamson10:13

       Yeah, th- that, that's been one of the biggest things that I've been able to stick to. My- my ability to s-... I swim in these circles. I'm friends with A- Ali Abdaal, and we talk about the fact that I'm ridiculously inefficient even though I know what I should be doing. But the things that I have managed to stick to, that have stayed with me, is batching. So, uh, every day on a Wednesday is all of the podcasts need to be done, planning for the advertisers, blah, blah, blah. Um, once a week, I- I do my emails once a week. Things that'll take sub-30 seconds will just get an email response immediately, as in when they come through. All of the long things, scheduling in guests, dealing with... Whatever it is for work, stuff like that. I just do that on usually a Friday, Thursday or a Friday. Also, doing emails on a Friday is good because it means that you don't get a response until the Monday, so you don't end up having this constant back and forth. A lot of people say, "Oh, well, if you just schedule the email until when you've finished your emails, then your replies will have come through after you've finished inbox zero." Yeah, but just do it at a time when no one else is working and it's absolutely sweet. So, um, yeah, batching, batching's a-

3. 11:16 – 22:53

   Engendering Creativity

   1. CWChris Williamson11:16

      a big one. Going back to the creativity conversation, do you think then that creativity can be hacked at all?

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado11:23

      Absolutely not. Um, I- I actually wrote about this a couple of years ago, and the title is Creativity Can't Be Hacked. Um, because you- you need- you need that- those messy and uncomfortable parts... They have to exist. I mean, a- again, I suppose, kind of to take this back a step, um, what do we mean when we say, "Can creativity be hacked?" Like, uh, are we talking about, can we find a shortcut to do creativity faster? Can we avoid the discomfort that comes with creativity? Can we generate ideas, uh, you know, exponentially? Can we make more ideas in a shorter amount of time? If that's what we mean by hacking creativity, I think no, because I think that discomfort is a critical part of the creative process. Um, because, uh, I just think that's- that's kind of how- how it just works. I sort of... When I'm writing something... So my, you know, my creativity is mainly around writing. And the way I think about it is, I'm writing something and then I inevitably get to this point in the process where...... I've lost in- all faith in the essay or the article, or the book, or whatever it might be, and just think, "That's it. This thing is... Uh, uh, I'm screwed." Like, there's, this has all fallen apart. There's no way forward. And then somehow, and I don't even actually really know how, I move something around, I step back from it, stuff happens that I can't explain, and suddenly it works, and the thing has somehow magically come together. And the only way I, what I, what I liken it to is moving house. So whenever you move house, there will always come a point where you are sat on the floor, either in tears or very nearly in-

   3. CWChris Williamson13:17

      Crying, weeping, yeah.

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado13:17

      ... crying, looking at all of your stuff and all of your boxes and thinking, "There is no way that that stuff is gonna fit in those boxes," also in time for the movers to come. Um, and then somehow you've turned around, you put a few things somewhere, and done that Tetris with, um, the packing, and it's all packed, and it's done, and that always happens. And you, you, there's no way... I've never had a moving experience in the same way that I've never had a, a proper creative experience where that discomfort hasn't existed. It just kind of a fact, fact of it. Um, I do think there are things you can do to give yourself a better chance and, um, improve your experience or increase the likelihood of creativity being able to happen.

   5. CWChris Williamson14:11

      To sort of engender a creative atmosphere?

   6. ACAnna Codrea-Rado14:14

      Exactly. But I don't think you can shortcut your way out of the uncomfortable and messy parts of creativity.

   7. CWChris Williamson14:22

      Do you think that... Uh, I would definitely say that this is the case, that when I try to hack my way through creativity, that it actually works adversarially to the creative process as well? I'm trying to come up with something, so if I try and, uh, binaural beats and, right, well, I'm gonna list, uh, uh, YouTube, um, and episode titles is a good example of this. I need to come up with a compelling title that's going to tell people what this episode's about, and it's also gonna have to be eye-catching. But it can't be too clickbaity, but it can't be... Whatever, whatever, right? So there's all these parameters running around. And if I was to say, "Right, okay, so I'm gonna write the first thing that comes to mind, then I'm gonna iterate on that 10 times, then I'm gonna do whatever, whatever." Like, no, just go for a walk and think about it, and listen to some music or something, and you'll come back, and you end up having it. So in a weird way, creativity gets hacked with anti... It, it can be hacked, but it's the hacks that we think of as hacks usually are the opposite of the things that we do to get creativity.

   8. ACAnna Codrea-Rado15:19

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson15:19

      You know, just leave, listen to some music, go to the gym and think about whatever it is that you're doing.

   10. ACAnna Codrea-Rado15:26

       Uh, and also what I would add to that is, it's never the same thing. So maybe you're trying to figure out the headline for your episode or whatever you might be doing, and you went off and had a shower and it came to you in the shower. That doesn't mean that next time you're trying to come up with the episode title, if you take a shower, the answer's gonna come to you in the shower.

   11. CWChris Williamson15:48

       Yes.

   12. ACAnna Codrea-Rado15:48

       You might need to do something else, and sometimes you might have to do 20 things until you finally work it out. And sometimes it, you know, it, that's the other part of it, that hack kind of implies that there is this blueprint, and that if someone, if I di-... Either if I did it before or if this thing worked for someone else, then it's gonna work for me. Um, this piece that I wrote about it, um, this piece, uh, where I kind of explored this and which I wrote about how I don't think it can be hacked, I, um, I spoke to a bunch of people for it. And I heard from this one guy who was like, "Yeah, I read somewhere," probably on Reddit, "that, um, if, if you have more blood to your head, you're more creative." So he hung, he hung off the side of his sofa so that he... The blood would rush to his head. And all that happened is that he, is that he got a headache, you know? There was kind of... Because it... You know, maybe someone lay down once with their head upside down and had the idea for the next greatest book. That doesn't mean it's gonna necessarily work for you. And I do think that we do have this, um, urge to... If someone else has done this, particularly someone, quote-unquote, "successful" has done something, that if we too could just replicate what they did, then we'll be golden too.

   13. CWChris Williamson17:02

       That's what everyone's trying to do, right? That's why, that's why Ali Abdaal's got two and a half million YouTube subs, you know? People look at his content and they go, "Oh, wow. If I watched his video about typing at 240 words per minute, I can type at... Maybe I will get closer toward doing that." Or Pomodoro Technique or Atomic Habits or whatever it might be, right? This is what people are doing. They're trying to model off of other successful people who have managed to get the outcomes they want from a process which they've explained which this person's now going to begin to try and do. But with creativity, it is so infuriatingly pedestrian and counter and kind of its own animal, and yet th- the harder that you push... That being said, I'm pretty creative. If I have a bad meditation session-

   14. ACAnna Codrea-Rado17:46

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson17:46

       ... it's almost always because I've had a good creative session when I should've been thinking about my breath.

   16. ACAnna Codrea-Rado17:51

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson17:51

       And, um, one of my friends, Johnny, very frequently, he has a notepad and pen next to where he meditates because that's how many ideas he has when he's meditating, which obviously isn't the purpose of the meditation.

   18. ACAnna Codrea-Rado18:03

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson18:04

       But it, it sort of, when it comes, it comes, I suppose. He also has, and this was a life hack that we featured a little while ago, um, have you seen waterproof paper and pencils?

   20. ACAnna Codrea-Rado18:14

       I've heard about them. I'm pretty sure I heard about them from Ali-

   21. CWChris Williamson18:16

       Yeah.

   22. ACAnna Codrea-Rado18:17

       ... as well.

   23. CWChris Williamson18:17

       So they... Yeah, they're Love Notes, they're called, or you can get them on Amazon. And they're meant for... (laughs) I think they're meant for leaving cute messages to your other half in the shower, and it's like a little notepad, and you can tear 'em off and throw it away. And the pencils were... And it is pretty spectacular that you... This paper and this pencil writes and then it gets wet and nothing happens. Uh, but Johnny uses that because he, he says that he has at least 50% of his ideas while he's showering, um, so he's just got-... got that done. So, okay, so if you can't hack creativity, what are the things ... Let's say that you've got a day where you need to be as creative as possible, what are the sort of things that you're going to try and do to engender that environment?

   24. ACAnna Codrea-Rado18:57

       I think, again, it really varies. It kind of varies on the (smacks lips) how critical that creative, the n- that need to be creative is. So, as someone who- whose job relies on ideas and being creative, something that I try to separate out are the pro- the creative projects that I'm doing for money and the ones that pay my bills, and then the ones that I keep back and do for myself. Um, and I think one of the things that I do is just trying to find a bit of balance to have space to do both of those things. Um, I mean, I do sometimes... I will sometimes sit and try to come up with ideas, but what I, what I tend to do is I also have a place just on my phone in, in the, um, notes app, um, where I'm constantly writing down kernels of ideas. And then I do sometimes do just development. Like, I'll c- I'll carve out a couple of hours and I'll go through this list, a lot of it is garbage, um, and just take those ideas and actually try to develop them. And I'll kind of, I'll start by, um, (smacks lips) Googling the idea, has anyone else writ- written anything about this? Maybe pull people on Twitter, see if they've got anything interesting to say. Um, I do a lot of reading. So as a writer, for me, a big ... the other half of the writing process is reading. I will just go down so many rabbit holes and just read stuff. Um, sometimes also do that on YouTube as well, and just watch, watch a bunch of YouTube videos. Um, I, I do find for me, it is kind of ... if I'm actively trying to be creative, it is quite a doing process. Um, I will also just sit and ... This actually just happens a lot more infrequently than it should, but I will just sit and try to write something. Basically, I think what's really interesting is that sometimes something will have, will have worked and we will just try to keep replicating it and it just, it doesn't.

   25. CWChris Williamson20:59

       Mm-hmm.

   26. ACAnna Codrea-Rado20:59

       Um, it like, we can't get there again. Um, but yeah-

   27. CWChris Williamson21:03

       Yeah.

   28. ACAnna Codrea-Rado21:03

       ... I don't know, it's, um, (smacks lips) it's so hard to pinpoint exactly what I'm doing because I only realize something has worked after it has, after I've actually had the idea or after I've actually done something that has been, had a, has actually kind of made, has had a creative output, if that makes sense.

   29. CWChris Williamson21:25

       Definitely having a list each week is a really cool idea. So the newsletter that I write each week, I need to come up with three things that I've learned. And I learn tons of things, but if I didn't ever look for them, if I wasn't ever writing them down, then it would be really, really difficult. And then it means that when it comes to writing the newsletter at the end of the week, I've got ten things to choose from that I could have as the body of it, as this tweet, and this article, and this conversation I had with a friend, and this story from whatever might have happened. So yeah, I think purposefully looking for, um, little inspirations of creativity, 'cause g- th- that's kind of how creativity is, right? Creativity isn't a big process, it's the genesis of the process. The process is the work that you do after the creativity. You know, b- tons of books, almost all of the sort of popular science, uh, pop psych stuff is a, a c- a core concept fleshed out into 80,000 words. So, (clears throat) finding, finding those little bits of inspiration, that's exactly what you're looking for. And I think spreading that across the week, just k- kind of grazing on little tidbits of creativity, that seems to, th- that definitely makes it easier for me. It also means that your research period is going to be much more simple because it's, "Okay, I'm looking at this." As opposed to looking for something and then looking at whatever it is. So I think that's good. Um, the, the article that got me onto your work, which I absolutely love and I wrote a, a newsletter about was productivity dysmorphia. So can you take me through that?

4. 22:53 – 30:06

   Productivity Dysmorphia

   1. CWChris Williamson22:53

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado22:53

      Yeah. Um, so this is a term I made up to refer to when you can't see your own success, where there is a disconnect between feeling success b- t- well, between being successful and feeling successful. So, I have kind of felt this for quite a long time, and it really manifested most recently, which is what finally spurred me to write this article, when my first book came out. So my book came out, I became a published author, and yet I really struggled to identify as an author, and also to accept that my book was real. I mean, obviously I know it's real, but to accept that it was a real achievement, so people would say how proud I must be of myself. And I was, but I couldn't, I was not feeling as enthusiastic and as proud as these people were kind of projecting onto me. And what w- that, all that was going on in my head was, "Yeah, but the book came out in lockdown, so I didn't get a proper book launch. And it's not, um, in a, it wasn't, at the time, it wasn't in a bookshop because, well, because literally books were not being stocked in any bookshop. Um, and also it's non-fiction. It's not a novel, so that doesn't count." Uh, and as I say these things, I realize how ridiculous it is, but these were the things that were going on in my head. Just all of these things I was telling myself to diminish the achievement. And, um, it's not the first time it's happened, it's happened before. The other time, the other big time that I remember it happening was, um, I had a, um-... I wrote a story for the New York Times, and it made it onto its front page. Um, and in kind of as far as journalists go, getting a front page byline, byline on the, in the New York Times is kind of, like, it's really up there. It's, that, that was always, that, that kind of achievement was something that I didn't even ever think would be possible. I ha- didn't even have it on the list. Like, book has always been on the list, but that sort of thing wasn't even on the list 'cause I just didn't think it was gonna happen. And same thing, "Oh, it doesn't count because it was a co-byline. There was another reporter's name on it, and it wasn't supposed to be on the front page, but some other st..." You know, all of this stuff that I kind of just told myself to just diminish the achievement. Um, and I, um, again, do what I do as a journalist. I ask other people if they've experienced this and then take it to academics and experts to see, see their take on it. When I tweeted out asking people if they've also had this disconnect of, um, not being able to see their own achievements, I was absolutely inundated with replies, and really interestingly, from such a wide range of people. Um, I've heard, you know, I heard from women, from men, from other authors, but also from sex workers, from people in all fields, in so many kind of, across all industries. Okay, fine. Fair enough. Of course, it's Twitter, so it's still, you know, take that, um, with a grain of salt. But was overwhelmed by how many people related to this. Um, and then, yeah, so then I went off and spoke to a bunch of experts, and the way I, the way I sort of think about productivity dysmorphia is that productivity is the thing that spurs us to try and achieve something, but productivity dysmorphia robs us from our ability to savor the fruits of that achievement. Um, and I kind of found that it, it sits somewhere between anxiety, burnout, and imposter syndrome. Um, it's not, it's a bit of all of them, but not quite fully one of them. Uh, the, the big, the thing that people kind of came back and said first and foremost was, "This is just straight-up imposter syndrome." And for me, the difference is, why I don't think it's imposter syndrome, um, is that, whilst I really relate to imposter syndrome and have it in some aspects of my life, at least as far as work is concerned, I don't have this fear of getting found out. I'm actually quite confident in my ab- my work abilities. Um, I know that I'm good at my job. I know that I'm a good reporter. I know that I'm a good writer. I don't have this fear. The kind of hallmark of imposter syndrome is getting found out to be fraudulent. Um, and I, I don't have that, at least not in a work context. I have it in other areas of my life, but not in a work context. Um, so that, for me, is why imposter syndrome never quite fully... It just didn't quite ring true for me. Um, and kind of same with burnout because, yes, I've experienced burnout, but I've also had this thing happen to me when I've not been burned out. So, um, that's kind of where I landed, and it's been really interesting. It's been, um, loads of people seem to have taken interest in this term. Um, it's kind of taken on a life of its own. Um, but it's been really f- it's been great to sort of start having all these conversations and kind of connect with people and find out that they also experience this.

   3. CWChris Williamson28:16

      The way that I see it, imposter syndrome is forward-looking. Productivity dysmorphia is backward-looking.

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado28:22

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:23

      So, imposter syndrome, for the most part, like, it, it is the persistent lack of belief in your ability to get the work done, despite the fact that you have continued to get the work done in all of your... That's the retrospective. Productivity dysmorphia is, in it, uh, by its very nature, "I have done some work, but I, I coulda, woulda, shoulda done more, higher." This is, you, you tarnish it and, and, and, and sort of downgrade any of the achievements. There's two elements to it that I think... I, I can't remember whether you went into this in the, uh, in, in the article. What you've used as examples are large projects which you have got to, and then something's happened which has been great, uh, and you've downplayed the, uh, how much that should be celebrated or how much that resonates with you and how sort of virtuous you feel your... Like, the, the line between your efforts and the outcomes that you got. I also think that there's another element of this which is o- on a smaller scale and on a daily basis, which is simply, "I did a lot of work today, but I should have done more." That's another element of it, which isn't quite the same, I don't think, 'cause it's not necessarily about tarnishing the, um, grandeur of the outcome. This one is more to do with, um, lack of volume or feelings of, of, um, inefficiency. So for instance, the, I haven't been in an office for a very long time. Uh, and I work from home, or sometimes I go out and work in coffee shops but quite rarely. And, um, you see your own inefficiencies from a front row seat. You see every time the cold turkey pops up and blocks you from accessing that website that you said that you weren't going to use, or the YouTube rabbit hole that you go down that you promised yourself that you wouldn't have done, or the lunch that you said was gonna take 20 minutes and took 40 or... You see all of these things, right?

5. 30:06 – 37:34

   Working in an Office

   1. CWChris Williamson30:06

      And, uh, you think, "Oh God," y- you know, "I, I should be doing more. Ali Abdaal would be doing more." And then I went into an office to go and record a podcast, uh, a year ago, something like that. And there were all of these people, fucking sat around doing nothing. I'm like, "Oh shit, I forgot just how inefficient people in an office actually are." And that really was, uh, it reminded me, look, you, you probably are still wildly inefficient, and you probably do need to spend less time on YouTube. However, it's, the work that you've done to get yourself to this stage is really, really good. Um, so yeah. Did you look at or, or do you see this sort of bifurcation that I'm talking about here? One being tarnishing large achievements, the other being, uh, an inability to accept that you have done work today. Congratulations, Ana. Pat yourself on the back.

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado31:00

      100%. I mean, part of what we're talking about here, and this is why I did mention that I do think anxiety plays a role in this is, because what we're talking about here is a feeling of not being good enough, um, that, you know, "I've not done enough. This achievement isn't big enough, or even if it is, I'm still gonna dimish- diminish it." That's, that's a feel- that is, that, that's about these feelings of inadequacy, basically, and they can happen on small and large scales. Um, as to the point about, um, people who work in offices, um, versus self-employed people, that rings really, really true for me because honestly my whole productivity journey or this whole interest in productivity culture only came about after I started working for myself. And it came about because I realized how... actually there were so many things I was doing when I worked in an office that just were not working, uh, that were just really inefficient or... I mean, I, I knew this at the time. I always used to... I, I would stand on the subway platform in New York and I would think to myself, "How dumb it is that we have evolved so far, and yet we have concluded that the best thing to do is for all of us to get up and go in the same direction every day with everyone else, and then come back at the same time going in the opposite direction with everyone else. Why can't we stagger, you know, the time that we need, need to be in the office?"

   3. CWChris Williamson32:31

      Mm-hmm.

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado32:32

      And I would mention this to people and they would say, "Well, that's just the way it is," and like, you know, "What would be the alternative?" And we had a pandemic and we saw what the alternative could be. But anyway, um, this whole journey really was very much triggered by me starting to work for myself. And I do think on a really basic level, it starts from the fact that I am now fundamentally paid for my output rather than my input. So when you work in an office, of course, of course you have to actually do your job, and if you don't, eventually you will get fired, but there is a lot that you can get away with because you are being paid to have your bum on the seat, whereas I am being paid to deliver something. My editors really don't care how and when I write the article.

   5. CWChris Williamson33:18

      If it takes you five minutes or five hours.

   6. ACAnna Codrea-Rado33:20

      Yeah. They don't care how long it takes, they don't care where I am, they don't care how I do it, they just want the article. When I worked in-house, when I had a full-time job, although I do hate that term because I do have a full-time job now, but when I had an office job, when I was employed for an employer, my bum had to be on the seat. And the first time I ever got in serious trouble at work was because I basically left work a few hours early on a Friday afternoon when there was... because there was no work to be done, because the company was going through a, um, a restructure and there was literally no work to be done. And I got in so much trouble and I remember saying, "But there was nothing to be..." Like, there was, you know, there was nothing for me to do. And I was told, "You are paid to be here between the hours of," whatever, "9:00 and 6:00." Um, and things probably have evolved since then. This was when I was 22.

   7. CWChris Williamson34:18

      I'm, I'm not convinced that they will have evolved.

   8. ACAnna Codrea-Rado34:20

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson34:20

      I, I, I think that a big part of the way that office work works is that it's a signal to the rest of the crew that if you're suffering, I'm here suffering with you as well. So I've been a club promoter for a long time and a big part of our job, I don't need to be on the front door of a nightclub. The boys that I have that work for me, the managers, they understand inside out how to run that front door. They understand how to run the front door, not as well as me, but, that'd be difficult, but they understand how to run it nearly as well as I do. So I don't need to be there. Why am I there? I'm there as a signal to the guy that manages the nightclub to say, "Me, dickhead promoter guy, I am here freezing my tits off on the front door of this nightclub at 1:00 AM in the middle of Newcastle's winter with you as well because you're here." Big chunk of it is just signaling.

   10. ACAnna Codrea-Rado35:16

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson35:16

       And the same thing goes for the people that are in the office. "Well, maybe you finished your work early because you were more efficient or something like that, but we're a team here. There's some sort of tribal mentality, and if such and such is lagging and still has graph to do Friday at 3:00 PM, Anna you still need to be in the office despite the fact that you've completed yours because we're a unit."

   12. ACAnna Codrea-Rado35:40

       (sighs) Yeah. And it sucks for that person who is just more efficient, um, and-

   13. CWChris Williamson35:46

       You're actually, uh, you've, you're genuinely disincentivized from being efficient.

   14. ACAnna Codrea-Rado35:51

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. Exactly.

   15. CWChris Williamson35:51

       If doing, if doing more work more intensely and more efficiently results in you just being given more work or having big lulls of time where you don't do work, 'cause those are the only two things that are gonna happen. You either sit about and do nothing after you've finished your work or you are given more work to do. And if you're not remunerated for that with either free time or more money, you're actively disincentivized from being productive.

   16. ACAnna Codrea-Rado36:15

       100%. I mean, it just makes me think of that episode of Friends when Ross is unemployed because he screamed at his boss and Joey's teaching him how to be better at being unemployed and s- make... stretching out a task, stretching out the tasks of the week over, of the day over the week so he had only five things to do and he's like, "That's... you do that over the course of the week. You don't do that, all of that on a Monday morning." Um, it was funny because that's how people, that's how the office works. Uh, but yeah, that, that has always been my experience. You know, I've, I remember asking also to work from home one day a week to write because funnily enough it's a lot easier to write in quiet (laughs) , um, and was told, "No, you can't because there are other members of the team who can't be trusted to work from home." So rather than sort that problem out, it's easier to punish the person who we know is a good worker and will just...... figure out a way to do it, in a- in-

   17. CWChris Williamson37:12

       The, the, the optimizing for the worst common denominator, for the least-

   18. ACAnna Codrea-Rado37:17

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson37:17

       ... effective. Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, the remote work revolution was way, way, way overdue, I think, and, you know, a lot of bad things came out of the pandemic. But that's one of the definite advantages. Talking about the problems of work,

6. 37:34 – 48:02

   The Anti-work Movement

   1. CWChris Williamson37:34

      you did a big deep dive into the Anti-Work subreddit, didn't you?

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado37:38

      Yep.

   3. CWChris Williamson37:38

      What's, what is that for the people who aren't familiar with it?

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado37:41

      So, um, the Anti-Work subreddit is a, it was the large, it was the fastest growing Reddit from last year. And, um, it's been around for a really long time but really blew up during the pandemic. And it's basically a forum for people to talk about these pretty radical ideas of completely abolishing work. Um, and it really blew up because, um, particularly in America, there were, there was this kind of wave of people who were super frustrated with their working conditions, particularly in the service sectors, and, uh, they texted their bosses to say that they quit, so they quit over text. And then they took screenshots of these texts and they put it on the Anti-Work, uh, subreddit, and those went viral, and the whole thing, um, the whole thing blew up. And now it's got, I think it's pushing at two million subscribers. Um, what was really fascinating, so I spent a couple of months reporting on this, what was really fascinating is this idea of anti-work, uh, as in anti-work a- as a kind of political or f- or sort of political philosophy, I suppose, um, is, it, it, it's not... It kind of... It's not new, but it's, and it's not that old, but it's not new either. Um, and it has its roots in quite far left ideologies, so Marxism, anarchism, and even kind of you could really get in the weeds of it, kind of like post-anarchism and all of this kind of stuff. Um, it's quite heavily tied to the idea of, um, there being no state. So, to kinda take this back a step, when we s- say, like, "Abolish work," we think, "Well, how on earth that's gonna, how is that gonna work? If we don't work, how are we gonna make money?" The point is to think about what would a society that is not centered around money and not centered around us having to, quote, unquote, "earn a living" and exchange our labor for money, what would that look like? So it's not about ending work within the current system that we know it, but it's kind of... I mean, really this is about dismantling the whole system of capitalism. Um, e- e- everything-

   5. CWChris Williamson39:55

      Everything. That's everything now.

   6. ACAnna Codrea-Rado39:56

      ... everything, yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson39:56

      E- any, any social movement-

   8. ACAnna Codrea-Rado39:58

      (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson39:58

      ... sneaks Marxism or communism in through the back door.

   10. ACAnna Codrea-Rado40:02

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson40:02

       There's these people that thought that they were-

   12. ACAnna Codrea-Rado40:03

       This is right w-

   13. CWChris Williamson40:03

       ... just leaving a job. They just thought they were leaving their job-

   14. ACAnna Codrea-Rado40:05

       (laughs) Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson40:05

       ... and texting their boss and s- telling him that they weren't gonna come in to work later on. And then, three months later, Marxism.

   16. ACAnna Codrea-Rado40:12

       Yeah, and what's been really interesting is that there has been... So when I was reporting on the story, and this has kind of got, I think it's got worse, um, in the group since, and there's been, there's actually been quite a lot of drama since I wrote the piece, um, that I'm not actually fully up-to-date on. But, um, so it's... Like any big movement, particularly one that starts online and starts to, starts to kind of, um, move and spill into the real world, there's a lot of teething problems. 'Cause it's really easy to say behind a computer screen, you know, "Let's dismantle capitalism," and, "Let's do this and do that." It's a lot harder to actually then turn that into actual action. Um, but, so, to your point, there was quite a split in the group. So there were the people, the kind of, let's call them sort of the, um, the OG Anti-Work, kind of the, um, longtime members who, they're all about these kind of quite extreme lefty views. Um, and then there are the people who've moved in since the pandemic who basically realized, "Yeah, work sucks and I hate it, um, and I need a place to vent about it, but fundamentally, I, I want to improve work, and I want to exist within the system, but I just want it to be better."

   17. CWChris Williamson41:25

       Mm.

   18. ACAnna Codrea-Rado41:25

       Um, and I, and to me that was what the really interesting tension is. Because when you f- when you, when you realize the system is broken or isn't working, what do you do? Do you find a way to exist within it? Or do you try to overturn it and change it? And I d- I think that's something that, um, so many of us kind of do feel that tension, because, um... It's really interesting, you know, uh, I've seen a lot of critique in general, there's kind of this trend in internet writing at the moment, of pointing out that there are people who have pointed to the failures of capitalism but they themselves aren't doing enough to tear down the system. I don't n- it's not possible for any one individual to tear down the system. I mean, what does that even actually look like in practice? Um, and I think so many of us are just thinking about, "Well, you know what? There are so many things that I don't like about this, but also I'm not sure that I see what the alternative would look like. I'm not sure that, you know, I'm not a Marxist, I'm not a cap- I'm not a anarchist, I'm not a whatever, I'm, you know..." None of these labels quite seem to fit quite right, and none of the kind of ideology or theories seem to look quite right either. Um, and so really, I mean, the actual heart of the original point of the forum was just to debate and talk, and then be- then there became this pressure of now there are so many people and there's so much media interest, and suddenly it became this pressure of this i- this group somehow, which is just a bunch of regular people talking on the internet, is somehow now supposed to come up with all of the answers for everything that's wrong with our society. Um, so it's been really, really interesting and really, really kind of fascinating to watch unfold. Um, and I've just had some really-... great conversations with so many of the people who are members, um, and then also kind of, um, lots of academics as well, because there is, sort of, there's a dotted line to another movement which is called post-work, which is very much more in the academic space, and that is also deals in this idea of critiquing work as we know it and, um, thinking about what, what some alternatives might look like. Um, and to my mind, I just think, "You know what? Even if it's something like, even if it's like, you know what? Some of these ideas are a bit too radical for me or a bit too lefty," or whatever it might be, there's still so much in there that is actually really, um, really worth engaging with. And to a large extent, this idea of work and how it doesn't work is actually something that cuts right across the political spectrum, because actually, there are people who, they, they, you know, might be on the complete opposite side of, um, uh, yeah, of the political scale, who still also are sat in offices and really hating their jobs. (laughs) Um, yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson44:15

       Lots of people are disgruntled with their work. It's not just a, a phenomenon from people on the left.

   20. ACAnna Codrea-Rado44:20

       Exactly.

   21. CWChris Williamson44:21

       Was, was getting exposed to this one of the reasons that you've decided to try and do less work this year?

   22. ACAnna Codrea-Rado44:27

       It definitely was, uh, one of the contributing factors. Um, although I'm not, I'm also, uh, so I, I wrote, I've wrote a piece recently about how my goal for this year is to, is to do less. And, um, I think there's also, I'm not the first person who's kind of come up with that idea either. Sort of since I've seen that piece, I've seen lots of other people also kind of express similar, similar feelings. And, um, a lot of people have kind of misunderstood what anti-work is about, and people kind of think that it is more about just being fed up with work and they're sort of, they're not aware of these really radical roots. Um, but doing all of that work and kind of thinking about it, and particularly reading some of the more, um, the more measured texts and speaking to some of the kind of really well-researched academics, and realizing actually how deep this problem of work goes, that definitely was a contributing factor.

   23. CWChris Williamson45:24

       Mm-hmm.

   24. ACAnna Codrea-Rado45:24

       But, I mean there, there's obviously no way for me to AV test this, but I think I probably would've landed there on my own anyway because, you know, I really believe that writers, they write what they need to read. It's kind of how you teach what you need to learn. And there is a reason why I was attracted to that anti-work story. And so whether or not I would've written it, um, I think I probably would've still landed in this place of just reevaluating my own relationship with my work, my productivity, and my ambition, and, and all of these things. Um, but it definitely, I guess it kind of gave me the permission to do it, sort of knowing that there are these sort of, there's this sprawling online community of people who are taking this even more seriously than I am (laughs) . Um, that, I think helped.

   25. CWChris Williamson46:15

       There's a quote from one of your articles where you said, "I've managed to unearth a series of contradictions in myself. Chief among them is that I'd very much like to work less than I currently do, and indeed it's within my power to do so, but I still don't." And that tension, again, between the fact that... Uh, a- actually, something else here. I think that there's broadly two types of people that are really, really focused on productivity. One of them are the camp that I think both me and you fall into, which is, we take pleasure from doing things well, doing things productively, doing things efficiently, uh, getting work done. Um, we genuinely do. However, we also see that there's another element of life that we're probably missing out on, that we know that life would be better and that we are built for spending more time in nature, for spending more time away from our screens, for spending less time being worried about the next achievement, whatever it might be. The other side are, uh, I would put Ali into this camp. I have a bunch of other buddies as well, who don't, who don't really seem... Douglas Murray is a good example of this, who's a writer. Um, he simply won't stop, and he simply has no desire to stop either. The idea of a balanced life, to him, ju- it doesn't, it's not something that factors into his life. He, he sees his life as a balanced life working all the time, and then picking up his, his, um, free elements, his, uh, spare time wherever he can. And I think that there's broadly two of those, and I think that the tension, as well, with what you're talking about here only really applies to those of us that have a bit of a desire for something else outside of it. Because if all that you want to do is send it, every single day, sat in front of your desk, then c- crack on. Um,

7. 48:02 – 1:01:06

   Deriving Satisfaction from Work

   1. CWChris Williamson48:03

      "I've managed to unearth a series of contradictions. Chief among them is that I'd m- like to do less work than I currently do, and indeed it's within my power, but I still don't." Why do you think that contradiction's there?

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado48:15

      (sighs) If I think, I think if I knew why it was there, I would be able to, uh, solve this problem and kind of be at peace with it.

   3. CWChris Williamson48:23

      Well, can I, can I give you a, a potential reason why I think it might be there?

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado48:26

      Please do.

   5. CWChris Williamson48:27

      Yeah. So I think that, I think that you in- you obviously derive satisfaction from doing your work, and that you know the grind and iterating on the things that you do are gonna continue to get you success. Changing that is a bad idea, because you have found a successful solution. Letting go of that, I think, is just primarily the problem. I think that the difficulty comes from not doing something which you know brings you success, and I think it's, the urgent will always get in the way of the important-

   6. ACAnna Codrea-Rado49:02

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson49:02

      ... in the same way as the, um, how would you say? The dopamine system will always overtake the serotonin system. You're always going to chase a goal ahead from finding peace and pleasure, because you know that the goal is i-... it, it feels more urgent. It feels more-

   8. ACAnna Codrea-Rado49:19

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson49:20

      ... immediate. Or at least that's my explanation for why I feel that way.

   10. ACAnna Codrea-Rado49:23

       Yeah. I think that does make sense to me. I think that's definitely, if not all of it, a really big part of it, because that's the thing is that, as you said, like, I am someone who likes work. I like what I do. Um, you know, I, I feel so blessed that I get to do stuff like this and call it my job. Um, and that for the large part, I don't really have to answer to anyone. Of course, you know, like, you know, I've, I still have to be polite and I've got clients and I've got deadlines and I've got stuff, but I really am the kind of, like, master of my own destiny and, and I really do think I've got the greatest job in the world. Um, but then also I, I do know there is so much more to life than work. Um, and also there's this weird thing at the moment where it's suddenly really unfashionable to be, you know... Hustling is not... it's not fashionable, at least not in the sort of circles that I'm swimming in. Um, you know, the girlboss is dead (laughs) , um, and all of this kind of stuff. So, there's, there's that going on. But then there's also, you know... This has really been amplified, at least for me, with the pandemic because during the pandemic, there was nothing else to do. I was not baking banana bread. I was working on my book. I was working because that is, was something I enjoyed doing and pretty much the only thing I could do. Um-

   11. CWChris Williamson50:48

       All competition for working had been removed. Yeah.

   12. ACAnna Codrea-Rado50:51

       Exactly. Um, so it is, it is a, it's a really tough one. It's kind of almost, it's almost like I sometimes have these conversations where I kind of... I do think there are people who just view jobs as jobs, just as paychecks, um, and they're not necessarily interested in careers and they're just interested in exchanging their labor for money basically so they can do stuff outside of work. Um, I'm, I'm just not one of those people. And sometimes I do have days where I wish I was, where I could take my worse, like, work less seriously, where I could ke-, where I could teach myself to care less about my work, but I just can't. Um, so yeah, there's all of that kind of swilling around. Um, I think it also, for me, what... Moving... I, so I've, I've always been a journalist my whole career and I've written about lots of different things over the course of my career. Um, and I'm in this space at the moment where I'm writing and thinking a lot about productivity and work and careers and stuff like that. And it does sometimes, this kind of meta element of my job, I think also can, makes this maybe sometimes a bit worse.

   13. CWChris Williamson51:55

       It seeps into everything that you do, you know. If you're chilling out by reading Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, but then you've also got a podcast with him, but then you're also gonna write an article on it, but then would I have read this book had I not been well?

   14. ACAnna Codrea-Rado52:09

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson52:09

       Yeah, because it's a pretty good book. And then you start to go, "Well, hang on, hang on. Have I, have I managed to, have I got, like, Stockholm syndrome to my own job here?"

   16. ACAnna Codrea-Rado52:16

       (laughs) Exactly.

   17. CWChris Williamson52:16

       Where does the line between what I do for fun and what I do for work, where does that finish? Well, I get to do something that I love for, for work. Well, actually, how much would I love it if this wasn't my work? Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, just over and over again.

   18. ACAnna Codrea-Rado52:29

       You know what's really interesting as you say that? It makes me think about... So, the la- the j- the actual, the last time I had a, um, a, a, an in-house, a staff job, um, I was a music journalist. And covering the type of music that at the time I absolutely loved, um, I still have not recovered from how much that ruined my enjoyment of music. Um, and I don't have that anymore. You know, to your point, because I read Oliver Burkeman's book, I interviewed him for my podcast, and, um, I loved reading his book in my free time. I gifted that book to my dad. I've spoken about that at length with my friends, recommend it to people. It's a joy for me to talk about that. And it was... had a positive impact on me, reading that book. Um, I don't know what happened to the music, to the love of music though, but having a job in that space destroyed that love for me. And even now, I don't really... I don't listen to new music anymore. Um, I'm just... I live in... I mean, I listen to music. I'm not a total freak. Um, but I, I kind of live in this bubble of, I just prefer to listen to stuff I already know. Um, I have no idea what's going on in those kind of spaces anymore. Again, partly-

   19. CWChris Williamson53:48

       I've, I've said for, I've, I've said for ages that if there's one way to turn a love into a labor, it's to commercialize it.

   20. ACAnna Codrea-Rado53:56

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson53:56

       As soon as you do what you do for fun for work, the, the game has changed. And that's a price that I think far more people need to pay, I, I need to realize that they're going to pay. I did this video a while ago about ten reasons why you shouldn't work for yourself and it was all of the bad things about being self-employed. The fact that you're both the taskmaster, you're the, the organ grinder and the monkey, you never know when you're done, holidays aren't holidays, you don't get sick pay, you can't get a, a house because you need three years of SA302s, blah, blah, blah. All of these things, right? All of this stuff that happens, that comes through. And you can turn the thing that you think, "Well, I, I... If I did my passion for work, then my job would be the thing that I love." Yes, it would. But you are also going to turn your passion into a job.

   22. ACAnna Codrea-Rado54:42

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson54:42

       That doesn't mean that your job is going to be your passion. It's the other way around. And there will be times... Inevitably, if you want to be good at the thing that you're going to do, you're gonna have to work hard, which means that you're going to have to get your nose to the grindstone, stay up late, get up early, battle through creativity blocks, so on and so forth. And that removes a lot of the joy that you find. One of the reasons that you enjoy doing the things that you do is because they're easy and free and, and liberating and they don't feel like they have the time pressure of whatever job it is that you do at the moment. You start to change that and put the same dynamic that you're trying to escape over the thing that you now do to escape, there's only one outcome from that.

   24. ACAnna Codrea-Rado55:23

       ... also wonder about whether you do something, whether you turn that passion into a job and you do it for someone else, or whether you do it for yourself. I totally hear you on the, um, reasons not to be freelance. Um, I've written a whole book about freelancing, and if there is one piece of advice I could give-

   25. CWChris Williamson55:41

       What's the book called?

   26. ACAnna Codrea-Rado55:42

       It's called You're The Business. Um, it's this one right here, this lovely blue one. Um, and if there's one piece of advice, when people ask me, "Should I go freelance?" I say to them, "Are you being pushed into freelancing or are you being pulled towards it?" Because more often than not, people are being pushed into it because they don't like their current job situation. In which case, don't freelance, just get another job. Um, all of that being said, I do wonder if doing your passion but for someone else also plays a role in it. Because I was a music journalist for, um, working on staff at a, um, a really intense publication where there were sort of impossible parameters. And eventually that publication got shut down and I got ma- made redundant, and that's how I ended up freelancing, which was the best thing that ever happened to my career, but sucked at the time. Um, and I think that had a role to play because it was still, it was still the thing I loved, but not on my own terms. And I, I think also, to be honest, I think probably it was relevant that it was the music industry, and I think I saw a side to it that I was n- not expecting and was seeing it up, you know, seeing how the sausage is made is kind of a recipe for going vegetarian. Um, so that might have been a part of it as well. Um, but yeah, I think this kind of idea of find a job you love and you won't work a day in your life is one of the biggest lies (laughs) that, uh, we have been told. Um, and this idea of, "Oh, if you can just find your passion, um, your job won't be a job." It, it's, it's just bullshit.

   27. CWChris Williamson57:23

       There's a quote from Tim Cook at an all-hands Apple meeting that he did, and he takes questions from the, uh, staff. And someone had asked something to do with the same thing, uh, they say if you find something that you love, you'll never work a day in your life. Tim Cook thought about it for a moment and he said, "Yeah, they, people do say if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life. At Apple, I've found that to not be true at all." He said, "You will work harder at this thing than you ever had before, but the tools will feel light in your hands." And I'm like, "That's cool. That's a cool way to put it." But you need to know that there's a price that you pay for this. This isn't going to be your passion anymore. This is going to be a business built around something that you cared about. And you don't know where that's going to go. I, uh, it's an unfortunate red pill to drop on people, but you genuinely don't know if commercializing your passion is going to destroy your passion for it and not be a commercial success. That's genuinely a risk. You know, um, what it's like? It's like you and that girl that you live next door to and you went to school with for ages and ages, and you never we- she was in relationships and you were in relationships and you never went out, and you think, "Right, okay, if we decide to do this, we sacrifice the potential for our friendship for a relationship which isn't guaranteed to succeed." That's kind of how I see it.

   28. ACAnna Codrea-Rado58:40

       Yeah. It's so true. That's, uh, yeah, that's exactly what it's like. Um, and there, it kind of comes back to what we were saying in the very beginning, that there's no blue, there's no blueprint. You're not gonna know if something's gonna work until you try it. And just because it worked for someone doesn't mean that it's gonna work for you. Just because there is, there's a content creator out there, or YouTuber or w- whoever, or writer who's turned their passion into their career and they've made it work and they talk about how brilliant it is, that doesn't mean that that's gonna be the same thing for you. Um, and I don't know, it's, it's tough. It's also, I think it comes back to how, at least when I was going through school and university, we weren't taught about thinking about careers in terms of how they fit into our lives. We were just taught, "You must get a job." And the end goal is job, which back then was in an office. Um, and here is a menu of types of jobs you can do, and you can do these stupid aptitude tests that always tell you that you're gonna be a teacher. Um, and then they, you know, they roll in the, like, the lawyers and the accountants and all of these people in these professional fields to show you what the options are. Um, but they don't talk about, okay, if you want to be in the creative field, this is what your life might look like. Or if you're thinking about living a certain kind of life, how is your job gonna fit into it? And all of these things, and we just, we're not taught about that, even though we center our whole world, our whole society, our whole lives around work. When we're taught about careers, we're not taught about how they fit in in relation to the rest of our life. Um, but h- I mean, I do feel somewhat optimistic that some of this stuff is starting to change. Um, and at least from my experience, you know, I'm being asked to come into universities and, um, even kind of, um, uh, like community, um, centers and stuff like that, to talk to young people about freelancing. And I, I never had those kinds of talks when I was, um, when I was those young, tho- that age. It was, it was just like, "These are these rigid types of jobs that you're gonna be able to do." Um, and I do think that young people are kind of thinking differently about this stuff, so, um, I'm semi-hopeful.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:01:02

       One thing to consider, uh, I'm aware that I put a bit of a damp squib

8. 1:01:06 – 1:09:05

   Finding Balance

   1. CWChris Williamson1:01:06

      on everyone's dreams of monetizing their passion. One other thing to consider is if you hate what you're doing at the moment, you're not, you're not giving anything up. Now, if you don't enjoy the relationship you're in, the place that you live, the job that you do, you're literally risking nothing. Then what's the worst that happens? You get into another jo- uh, you try and m- make a go of it, and you, uh, it fails, and then you go back into a job that you don't like? Uh, do you mean like the one that you have now?... that the very least, you've closed that open loop of constantly obsessing over whether or not that's going to be the thing. And then maybe you find out it was never the thing in the first place, and you can now think about-

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:01:43

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:01:44

      ... start thinking about what the actual thing is going to be. Um, g- going back to the, uh, the, um, beyond work discussion. That's beyond burger, isn't it? That's moving past meat.

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:01:55

      (laughs) Anti-work.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:01:56

      Anti-work.

   6. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:01:56

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson1:01:57

      Um, going back to that, how do you counteract your desire to constantly get things done with productivity, given the fact that you like getting things done, you take value in it, but also you have this other, th- this vision of knowing that not everything you do should be in the service of work? How do you know if you're working hard enough? How do you give yourself a break when you've finished working? How do you counteract this desire to constantly get stuff done?

   8. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:02:23

      Well, so first of all, I want to say, to kinda connect these two things that we've just been talking about, is, I think it's really important for people to be, to realize, and something that has been transformative for myself to kind of grapple with, is that it is possible to choo- to hold two conflicting thoughts in your head and for both of them to be true, and that they can exist at the same time. And so for example, it is possible to really like what you do and really like your job, but also know that maybe you work a bit too much, and maybe it's time to kind of think about letting go of this obsession with work or productivity or whatever. Um, I wish I would've come up with this, but unfortunately, I can't take credit for it. Um, there is an essay in the New York Times which som- it's got something... The headline is something, something to the effect of, "You can be anti-work and have a dream job at the same time." Um, and I think that's very true. I think you can, um, be really critical of the way we work, of our, um, working environment, or even maybe go so far as the whole system, um, but also love your job. Um, because that's kind of, that's kind of how I feel. Um-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:03:32

      Did you s- d- sorry. Did you hear there was a story about second-wave feminism, uh, and the woman separatist movement in the '70s? Do you know what this is?

   10. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:03:41

       No.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:03:41

       Big group of women decided that the patriarchy was causing a lot of problems for them, and the solution was to completely recount men. So you had straight women becoming either, uh, celibate or elected, elective lesbians in a desperate attempt to try and sort of stick their middle finger up at the patriarchy. And it's kind of what you're talking about here, that, uh, the binary choice that people see with regards to work is, "If I think that there are problems with the current system of work, I therefore either need to be unemployed or hate my job."

   12. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:04:12

       Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's so much more nuanced than that. It's possible to hold opposing views and then be true at the same time. And I think that actually, in answer to the f- actual question you asked me, that to me is a really key element of all of this. Because once you can accept that, and once you can, you know, validate your feelings basically, um, things become a lot easier from there. So if you just remind yourself of those things, then when you do need to take a break, you kind of, you can, you can give yourself a break basically. Um, I mean, for me, one of the... I mean, this is obviously not practical for everyone to do, but for me one of the big things is that I actually moved out the city. So, um, I used to live in London, and, um, I moved out. And there's a sl- slower pace of life around me. And slowly, slowly, that is filtering to me as well. It's got this kind of trickle-down effect of when I live somewhere that's more chilled, I become more chilled. Um, I kind of also make this, say this in a kind of joking way to people when they ask me about, you know, how to get better at having breaks when you're freelance. Um, I tell them to get a dog, because the dog needs to, the dog needs a walk, and the dog is gonna force you to get out, and the dog is going to force you into nature and, um, just make you have a bit of division between your working life and your free life. So it's kind of stuff like that. It is kind of, um, you know, like I said, I'm not saying that the only way to do these things is to either move to the countryside-

   13. CWChris Williamson1:05:59

       Countryside and get a dog.

   14. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:05:59

       ... or to, or, or (laughs) get a dog. But the point is you kind of have to take some quite intentional, and not necessarily drastic action, but intentional action. Um, if you're serious about, um, about doing these things, you actually have to put the work in. It's, it's I guess, I guess it's kind of not dissimilar to, uh, th- this big idea that James Clear talks about, which is that, um, the, the identi- the identity, uh, uh, habit... If you want to form a habit, you need to film- form an identity around it. So okay, I wanna be a person who works less, so think to myself at 5:00 PM, "What would a person who worked less do at this point?" Would they continue to send emails or do whatever, or would they maybe close their laptop and go for a walk? Um, it's that kinda thing. It's sort of thinking... Like I said, it's being intentional about this stuff. Um, and yeah, for me, it was actually taking some quite drastic, um, changes and making some quite drastic changes in my lifestyle.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:06:58

       Mm. Yeah, it's, uh, it's a really interesting tension, I think, sort of playing with all of these different things, definitely getting yourself into the environment where you are around things that are happening that you want to do. So for instance, I actually f- found not the opposite, but kind of a little bit the opposite, that the pace of life in Newcastle is too slow for me.

   16. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:07:21

       Mm.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:07:21

       So going to Austin where it's super social, there's things happening all the time, there's events on, everybody's training or going shooting or going South by Southwest or w- some sort of meditation retreat, there's always things to do. So again, th- you know...... I'm in a house surrounded by the type of food that I want to eat, I'm in a city surrounded by the type of activities that I want to do. It's very difficult to do the sort of thing that you want to do if there's no one around you doing it. So, yeah, I think im- b- basically environment design, but just on a, a, an entire sort of lifestyle scale, socially, what are the sort of people that you're around doing? Yeah, that's, um... It'll be interesting, it'll be interesting to see what happens, the progress of remote work, this increasing dissatisfaction with living for work.

   18. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:08:12

       Mm.

   19. CWChris Williamson1:08:12

       Um, I think for some people, um, the realization that you can get to your freedom number, whatever you feel like in terms of your annual income, and then stopping, as opposed to being the boss bitch or the Gary V hustle and grind guy. And this is something I, I, I really need to read a little bit more about it, but it's something I'm really passionate about. Saying, look, if you have a low level of materialism, if you can be optimally happy at 100 grand a year, you have a competitive advantage over people who can't get to that level of happiness until they hit 10 mil. Like, that, that is genuinely the same as having a fast metabolism. Look, that person needs to be on 1,800 calories a day-

   20. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:08:55

       Mm.

   21. CWChris Williamson1:08:55

       ... in order to cut. You can cut on 2,400 calories. You can do less work and get the same outcome that you want. But culture at the moment, it's

9. 1:09:05 – 1:17:22

   Psychology of Wealth

   1. CWChris Williamson1:09:05

      so uncool to talk about, "Rest when you're done." You know? "Rest when you're done." Or, "You, you don't need to push yourself beyond where you need to go." I think in the micro that makes a ton of sense. You want to be competitive. You want to get as much out of yourself as you can. But when it comes to doing things that are in service of other things, like working in service of money or working in service of freedom, I, I don't think that that's true. I think that you get yourself to the stage where you're comfortable and then you start to lean further and further and further into, "What would I do with my time if I had as much time as I could?" And that's Morgan Housel's Psychology of Money says, "Having wealth is the ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, and no one can tell you otherwise." That's it. So, yeah, I'm hoping-

   2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:09:52

      I-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:09:52

      ... this philosophy actually comes out a little bit more, just san Marxism.

   4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:09:58

      (laughs) Yeah, I mean, that, that's always the sticking point, right? Is that, um-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:10:03

      Bloody Marxist.

   6. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:10:04

      (laughs) Um, I mean, there's so much to kind of unpack there. It's really interesting. So, a couple of things I'll just say quickly is, first of all, um, you know, I want to be a person who just only is intrinsically motivated, and I have my own definition of success, and I wanna tune out everything else. But I can't, you know? I do also like being able to... I don't... I want to be able to go to the party and say, "Oh, you know, I do, I, I do X," and people instantly understand what that is. It's quite t- tedious and quite frustrating when you go somewhere and you're talking to someone and you're explaining to them that you've got this newsletter and it's got, you know, 15,000 subscribers or whatever, um, and they're just looking at you. A- and that, you know, like, "I'm, I, I, um, I have a, I have a membership on my newsletter, a subscription thing. Like, I actually make money directly through the newsletter." And people eye, people eyes are kind of either glazing over or they just can't compute and they, they don't understand what it is. And it's, um... I do sometimes have those moments where I wish I could just say, you know, "I'm a lawyer," or, "I am a journalist who has a staff job at the New York Times," or whatever, um, because actually having those traditional external markers of success is just easier to talk about. Um, so it would be... I would be lying if I said that I've got this whole thing licked and that I do my own thing and I don't care what anyone thinks and all of that, because of, of course I do. I'm human. Um, so there's kind of that element to it, and then there's another element to it, which is specifically on the money side, and as you say, kind of talking about wealth, is that so many of us don't know, because again, it's not something that was, you know, financial literacy and kind of even sort of financial education is something that is just not taught as standard in schools. And even just this kind of understanding the difference between wealth and income, and that your salary, how much you're paid as a salary, isn't actually... That, that's not... That's obviously a part of, but it's not the whole indicator of your wealth. And yet all of these kind of con- concepts between, you know, the difference between net well- net worth and, um, income, and all of these things is just stuff that not enough of us talk about or know about. Um, and so when we're thinking of... When we talk about building wealth, there's this kind of, like, it's y- it's not okay to say that, that, you know, "I'm out here trying to build my wealth," because that just, it, what people hear is, "I'm out here just trying to make as much money as possible and I just, I'm, I just want to be rich." Um, and that has, you know, has its own kind of, it has a certain qu- it has a, it has a negative connotation. Um, but actually wealth building can be, um... It can be really powerful. Um-

   7. CWChris Williamson1:13:09

      It's freedom building.

   8. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:13:10

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:13:10

      Wealth building is freedom building.

   10. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:13:12

       Yeah. So, it's... it's one of those things that it's... there's not enough nuance to the conversation around these things, and it's hard to kind of have the conversation around these things. Um, again, going back to this anti-work thing, um, one of the rules in the forum is you just cannot talk about CEOs because, um...... more so from this kind of original core group of people, um, again, because it's rooted in, um, Marxism and anarchism, there is this fundamental belief that any CEO is still, um, profiting off the labor of the workers, and so therefore, it's just not possible for them. You know, there's no such thing as bene- benevolent cap-

   11. CWChris Williamson1:14:01

       Irredeemable.

   12. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:14:03

       Yeah. And there's no such thing as bene- benevolent capitalism. Um, which is, I can s- I totally see where that view comes from. Um, and you know, what, what we're talking about in that respect is on m- such a massive level. But when we're talking about kind of, you know, CEOs of tiny companies or CEOs of companies of one, um, building wealth and redistributing it, that's, you know, it's possible. It's something that I kind of, I even think about just on my own, for my, just like in my own little world is, um, so when I work with other creatives, when I collaborate on projects, increasingly I'm trying to do so on a profit-sharing basis rather than paying ano- if I'm working with another freelancer, increasingly I try to avoid just paying them a flat fee and just share the profit, because that, to me, sounds, seems fairer. Um, and wouldn't it be great if that worked on a, on a macro level? Um, I doubt that me doing that is going to (laughs) is going to influence that. But at least in my own little orbit, that's something that, that's my little action. So this is just a really long-winded s- way of saying that, um, when, there is a big element to all of the productivity discussion which centers around wealth and, and money, and not enough of that is talked about, and it's a really important conversation to have and a really big part of it, because to a large extent, the more resources you have and the, um, the wealthier you are, the more productive you can be, um, because just for simple reasons of you can either outsource stuff or you're not worrying about that financial burden. Um, one of your earlier questions when you were asking me, you know, kind of like how to, how do you, you know, about being more creative, um, something that I think there is a direct correlation between is when my finances are in a good place, I feel, I, I c- I get more done. I can f- I feel more creative, I feel more productive, because I'm not, I don't have that, there's no worry at the back of my head of like, "Oh my God, how am I g- You know, I need to come up with an idea so that I can, um, pay my bills." Um, you know, you, that heat gets taken off. Um, so anyway, that's a very potted kind of, um, take on it. But I do think there's a really big chunk of this productivity conversation that directly relates to money.

   13. CWChris Williamson1:16:39

       I agree. I think that, uh, the, how would you say, negative view of wealth acquisition isn't really helping anybody. Um, what the Beyond Burger work crowd want to do is they want people to be able to live the sort of life that they want, uh, unencumbered from, uh, the vicissitudes of doing work. But they don't realize that you can actually achieve that through work. And y- y- there will inevitably be a little bit of, um, resentment towards the people that do. You know, if you're able to find your freedom number by going freelance or by working within a company and doing whatever, investing smartly, uh, th- that's the same outcome. You've managed to get the same outcome.

10. 1:17:22 – 1:18:25

    Where to Find Anna

    1. CWChris Williamson1:17:22

       But anyway, uh, people need to go and subscribe to your Substack. Your newsletter's dope. I really like it. It's at the intersection of all of the things that bounce around inside of my head to do with modern prod- productivity and stuff like that. Where should people go if they want to sign up to that or check out the other things that you do?

    2. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:17:37

       Um, so my Substack is at, um, it's such a long, I've got such a long name because I have a long, long, my name is long, but it's anacodgerato.substack.com. But the best place people can find me is on Twitter. It's @anacod and, um, everything basically is linked from there. So but there is no other Ana Codgerato in the world. So if you google me, you'll find all my stuff.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:18:03

       Nice. Thanks, Ana.

    4. ACAnna Codrea-Rado1:18:05

       Thanks very much. This has been great.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:18:06

       What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.

Episode duration: 1:18:25