How To Make 2024 Your Most Productive Year Yet
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By the way, in case you haven't heard, my brand new book, Feel Good Productivity, is now out. It is available everywhere books are sold. And it's actually hit the New York Times and also the Sunday Times bestseller list. So thank you to everyone who's already got a copy of the book. If you've read the book already, I would love a review on Amazon. And if you haven't yet checked it out, you may like to check it out. It's available in physical format and also ebook and also audiobook everywhere books are sold.

So I've stolen your seat and here it is. Here it is, yeah. What was your experience of writing it like? I think it was sort of like a marathon 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. Amazing. 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. How did it all begin? So to me, Feel Good Productivity became this sort of like holistic philosophy. Productivity is actually more about being creative and engaging.

thinking broader than it is about just like efficiently cranking out more and more widgets. So I can eat chocolate all the way through when writing. Absolutely, yeah. We're going to be talking about the principles of feel-good productivity. We're going to 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. Improve your productivity and be the best that you can be, but also kind of enjoy the ride a bit better. Absolutely. Because what's the point of being productive if the ride is miserable? Yeah, exactly. I love it. So I've stolen your seat and...

Here it is. Here it is. Yeah. The final piece. That's the one. How does it feel looking at it in the flesh? It feels pretty good. Like I sort of, we've, we've just done the interview with you on this, which has come out like many months ago or was done many months ago, depending on when people listening to this and kind of seeing it alongside your book makes it feel like real. And I'm like, this is clearly a real book that's like doing really well. And I'm like, okay, we can,

They can sit side by side. They can sit side by side on the same table, good vibes. Even though this one is actually fake because we are recording this at a time 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. This is just like holding up the cover. But by the time people are watching or listening to this, it will be available. And so that's...

It feels kind of scary. I don't know if you had that when you released the book. Yeah, hugely. I mean, do you... At this point, you know, it's sort of... It's going to leap out into the world. What's the feelings that... There's a bit of scariness, a bit of sort of fear. Yeah. What else is there? Yeah, it's a feeling of...

A feeling of anticipation because it's like there's been a lot of buildup 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 I've 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 want to 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, you know, there's that Zen Buddhism parable or something, which is that like,

you know, when an archer kind of does, 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. It's kind of like, you know, it's out of my hands at this point. The arrows in the sky. The arrows in the sky. People will either like it or they won't. Yeah. And,

Yeah. Like either way, I will still continue to learn stuff, make videos and write. Yeah. Whatever happens. Yeah. So it almost doesn't really matter what happens. Exactly. And you've kind of, you put lots in there, haven't you? And I guess you've done so much, like you said, it's been a long time coming. You've done loads of research all the way along to kind of put loads in there. Yeah. But I wonder if, I think lots of people, myself included, will be interested in almost the beginning of the story. So

why you landed on working on productivity and how that sort of came about for you because that's been...

sort of fascination for you through the YouTube thing and how did it all begin? Yeah so I've been obsessed with productivity for quite a while. I found that when I was at university going through medical school and trying to build my first business on the side I realized that I had to find ways to become more productive and ways to work harder and work smarter and learn how to study efficiently and stuff so that I could have the time to do the things that I wanted to do.

But then, and so that worked throughout university. But then when I started working full time as a doctor, that was like a step up in terms of like, oh, you know, I didn't think I had free time at university. Now I really don't have free time. Because like at university, even even medical school,

Going into the hospital is kind of optional. You wake up in the morning and you're like, I don't know if I feel like going in today. Or yeah, I'll go in for a few hours. I'll leave at lunchtime and then do my own like self-study. When you have a job that, you know, that's just, that's unfeasible. Like you have to show up. And so all of a sudden, like 10 to 12 hours of every single day were just being blocked up by work. And I was trying to grow the YouTube channel on the side. And I had lots of periods of where I felt pretty overwhelmed and pretty stressed by the demands of work plus the demands of the YouTube channel.

And so that was when I was like, okay, I need to change my approach to productivity. That's where this idea of sort of feeling good, like positive emotions and stuff landed. Because I didn't really want to be in a position where every day felt like a grind because I was in that mode for a while. I was like, okay, what if...

being productive and like doing the things I wanted to do didn't have to come at the expense of my like physical and mental health. What if I actually could feel good while also being productive? And then I went on this whole like research rabbit hole and found that actually feeling good is one of the keys to productivity. And actually the more positive emotion we feel in our work, the more productive we become, but also the more energy we have to give to the other important things in our life. And so to me, feel good productivity became this sort of like holistic philosophy that

That I, you know, I use every day when I whenever I'm doing something and it feels bad or I feel blocked or I feel like kind of the negative emotions getting in the way. I remember I sort of remind myself that, OK, no, there are ways to make any situation feel better and the way ways to experience the positive emotion and everything. And it just means that I can float through life. It means I can go through life.

feeling better about the work that I'm doing while also being pretty effective at the work. And it's interesting, I guess, because you have both types of experience. So, you know, when you were working as a doctor in hospital where when you're dealing with people who are really unwell or really highly stressful situations, it must be really hard to find...

the pleasure in that kind of work in comparison to, you know, a YouTube life and where you can kind of choose your hours a bit more or do things that you're interested in. So were they quite different challenges? Yeah, this is the thing. So when I first started working, I found it very like stressful and sort of these high stress situations. And most of the doctors around me also had that approach where it was like, there was this sense of like, kind of

and stress in the air. But not everyone was like that. And I had a few seniors who I really looked up to who were just like, they were really good doctors, but they were also happy. They were like, they had a smile on their face. They would crack jokes. And it kind of helped me realize that actually there is another way. Like,

approaching work as if it was really stressful was actually a choice that I was making. And so I did also make a concerted effort in my day job to enjoy the day-to-day a little bit more and kind of modeling the doctors that I'd seen who would have smiles on their face and stuff. It sounds weird, but approaching it with more lightness and ease, almost as if I was playing a game, kind of. Mm.

And it's not playing a game in the sense of, you know, people's lives are at stake. But there was a line from Grey's Anatomy that I often thought about, which is when Derek Shepard, the neurosurgeon, when he starts his operation, he says, he puts the music on and he says to his team, it's a beautiful day to save lives. Let's have some fun.

And obviously, you know, that's a fictional drama. But there's something about that, that even when you're doing neurosurgery, even when it's just like life and death is in the balance, it can still be a beautiful day to save lives. You can still have fun along the way. And so much of that I found is a choice that we make ourselves rather than a thing that's foisted upon us by the environment. Yeah. And I guess with any job, however difficult or kind of emotionally taxing is, there's always something to...

be grateful for or something to find in it that we feel thankful for or find even the slightest pleasure in? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I think gratitude is a really major part of this. The other one is, you know, this is the first chapter of the book, is the idea of approaching work in the spirit of play, where, yes, even when the thing is really stressful, you can still choose to approach it in the spirit of play.

And, you know, there's so many stories of Nobel Prize winners who found, you know, the key to their productivity and the key to their creativity was kind of treating it with a little less seriousness and heaviness that we tend to approach work with. Even when it's heavy and serious, like working in medicine or being a therapist and things, just choosing to approach it with a little bit more lightness and ease. So I tried to kind of, I tried to do that when I was in the day job and especially now running this business and having a team and stuff.

Again, a lot of people, a lot of business owners I know are pretty stressed because of the demands of running a business and managing payroll and having all these people dependent on you. But at the same time, it's a bit of a game. They're approaching it in the spirit of play. Yeah, yeah. The idea that joy is the most kind of important factor when it comes to being productive, is that at the core of this whole thing? So it's sort of that's where you start?

Yeah, sort of. So the scientific basis for this is a theory called the broaden and build theory. So there's this researcher in the early 2000s called Barbara Fredrickson, who kind of coined this theory to basically explain the fact that when we experience positive emotions, it boosts our performance in almost everything. It boosts our creativity and it lowers our stress. And

Her theory, very loosely, is like if you imagine back in caveman days, because we're still operating with caveman brains, back in the caveman days, if life is good, if you're feeling positive emotions, it means that you're not in danger of being eaten by a lion, the group is surviving, life is good. And so you're more open to exploring and you go out into your environment and you forage for new stuff and you see if you can make some new alliances.

Whereas when you experience negative emotion like fear or stress or anxiety, it's like, oh, my life's in danger. A lion could be around the corner and you your entire being contracts and you go tunnel vision for survival. And when you're in that survival mode, it's a very high stress state because the body is literally kind of trying to survive. Whereas when you're in that kind of broadened stage, it's like broad. It broadens your repertoire of things that you can do. And it builds like resources, like alliances and like creativity and things like that.

And so that was like a thing that I came across in my research where I felt that that was really the key. And so if we can experience positive emotions, joy in our work, it just has all of these benefits. It generates more energy for us. And often for a lot of us, time isn't necessarily the limiting factor. Energy is the limiting factor. But, you know, when you when you experience joy and positivity in your work, you end up with boundless energy and you as a side effect, you become more productive in your work.

But then outside of work, you also have way more energy to give to the other important things in your life. Yeah. And it's interesting because there's sort of literature around that idea, but in young children. So sort of that, you know, if you have a young toddler, for example, and they are in a kind of threat mode and they'll feel anxious and they'll go to their mother to feel safe. And then once they, you know, they get that reassurance and they feel safe or they...

you receive a positive emotion or experience a positive emotion from an interaction with that mother, they'll then go out and take more risks and dive into whatever the situation is and play with other children. All they needed was to feel safe and to have a sort of positive emotion and then they're ready to go out again and experience. So does it sort of help with risk-taking and trying new things or creativity is all kind of linked up? Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that's a great example with the kids.

I wish I thought to put that in the book because that's absolutely perfect. Can we edit? We'll do some edits to the book. No, it's like, yeah, there's just so much evidence. So there was a, the first study that really tested this, I think it was from like the 1980s. There's this thing called, I think it's called the matchbox puzzle. What's to that effect? Where you give, you know, they get people in a lab and they give them like a matchbox and a candle and,

some like thumbtacks those are things that you yeah pins put stuff in the wall and you know the challenge is find a way to get the candle to light the candle but without any any wax dripping onto the floor or something to that effect

And this is like a classic test of creativity because people who are more creative in that moment will discover the solution where people who are less creative won't. And they found that if you prime people with positive emotions, like giving them a Malteser or something just before they do the thing, they're like way more likely to solve the puzzle through creativity. Amazing. And so it was that study that was in, I think in the 1980s, that sort of helped spawn this wave of research into how even for adults, positive emotions do make us more creative. And increasingly in the world that we live in,

where most people watching or listening to this are probably knowledge workers or students of some sort. Productivity is actually more about being creative and thinking broader than it is about just like efficiently cranking out more and more widgets.

So I can eat chocolate all the way through when writing. Absolutely, yeah. That's the one. It's going to help me with my creativity. Absolutely, yeah. The more we feel good, the more productive we are. That's a great piece of research. How about the sort of, you know, the industry so far? Because I feel like, you know, I've followed your work for a long time and

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 five o'clock and you just, you know, don't go to sleep or, 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. Your content from the very beginning was different to that, wasn't it? So it was always this way that you always had that sort of recognition of success.

Life is a bit more than that, just succeeding for succeeding's sake. We need to look a bit deeper into that. So what's your take on the kind of the hustle culture and the sort of productivity industry generally? Yeah, that's a great question. So I think 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 almost never use the word success in the book, because I don't really like the word success. Because for a lot of people, success is tied up in kind of traditional prestige or what other people will think.

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 and.

who sort of felt like, "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 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. 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. Yeah. 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. 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?

It was, yeah, I think it was sort of like a marathon 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. 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 more good. Because even though like I found myself in a lot of instances where I

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 my writing coach to be like, hey, Ali, it's, 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 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 though I literally write and research about this stuff, I still have to remind myself because it's just so easy for the mind to pop into serious heavy mode, especially when working on something that you feel is like,

you know, I'm comfortable making YouTube videos and podcasts. I'm a lot less comfortable writing a book because it's the first time I did it. And so there was all these emotions that I had to deal with along the way. And it's interesting because, you know, there is that sense of when you're writing a book that you feel that need to sort of do something extra special with language or, you know, dress it up to sort of warrant a book. And yet all the people that follow you and love your content

I think, well, from my experience, I 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 complex books and make it really easy to understand and lay it out on the table as it is. Which is...

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. Yeah. So were you able to kind of just give it your voice in the end and speak as if you're just, we're just chatting across the table? Yeah, I think in the end, throughout the journey of writing the book, there were periods where it was very voicey in my voice and there are other periods where, especially

especially when I was leaning on research because I wanted it to be science-backed. I didn't just want it to be a book from my own personal experience. And so especially when trying to talk about the science, I found myself kind of in academic writing mode. You know, this study done by blah, blah, blah. 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?

But I think overall it's in a place now where I was proofreading it the other day and I was like, huh, this is actually not bad. This is reasonable. Because I guess you would know when you're writing a book, you're so in it that when you take a month away and you read it back, you're like, okay, yeah, yeah, this seems legit. It's a pretty good response, isn't it, when that tendency is probably to be really critical because it's your own work. It's a promising kind of thought process to have when you're reading it back. Yeah.

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 work? Yeah, so there was a lot of different methods. I tried like every method under the sun over the last three years because I was like, there must be a method. The one thing that got me to actually bang out the first draft, because 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. 2021, maybe. I don't know. At some point we did like a team retreat to this big Airbnb in Wales and the whole team was there. There was like loads of bedrooms, swimming pool, everything like that. And my job was every single day I need to write one chapter.

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, you know, it would be 10 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 board around and stuff. So there was something about just having that one thing to do that day that really helped kind of move the needle.

But also with the first draft, I think a big part of it was recognizing that it's going to be fast. It's going to be bad. It's going to be wrong. But that's fine. It's just a first draft. Nice. And it's like with YouTube videos, I now know, and as you'll know with the short form content as well, it feels really, it feels like it's an absolute shit show when you're filming the thing because of all the different takes and all the pauses and the stops and the internal feelings and all that stuff. But then when it gets edited, the end result is, oh, you know, it's actually pretty reasonable because...

They've taken like 60 minutes of footage, turned it into a 12 minute video with like some nice background music, some good animations. Yeah.

And now I've experienced that process when it comes to the book. I'll be a lot less concerned about the crappiness of a first draft for future ones because I know the magic of editing. And actually a lot of the value has come from the editing. So it's just getting something on the paper to then edit rather than it having to be perfect as it's typed out. Yeah. And I think when I was in the mode of trying to get it perfect as I was typing it out, that was again, that seriousness of like, and that seriousness felt like a real blocker that made it less fun. That also made me like write fewer words.

Whereas when I sort of went back, a bit more lightness, a bit more ease in the spirit of play, sort of having like Lord of the Rings music in the background while I'm just sort of typing it all in thinking, yep, no, this sucks, but that's fine. We'll just keep going. We'll just keep going. And at the end, like,

Some of it was fairly reasonable even from the first draft. And if you've got a swimming pool there to get into, that's a kind of good driver to just get the words down, right? So you can go and play. In that case, it was like, cool, I want to go play with a gang. I don't need to finish this chapter first. And are the chapters quite short? How is it kind of set out? Are the chapters kind of short and easy to consume or is it a progress? Do you sort of progress through it? Yeah. How does it work?

How does it work? So we've got nine chapters. So three parts of the book. Part one is energize. Part two is unblock. And part three is sustain, which are like the three different segments of elements of field of productivity. And 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. And

Which feels like a lot. But in the first draft, it was about twice as many. In that each chapter had about 18 action points until the editor was like, guys...

I know you want to throw the kitchen sink at this because like you want to add more value, but like, come on, no one's going to read it. Like it becomes overwhelming if people have 18 action points in every single chapter. Yeah. 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 is still quite a lot. But across the nine chapters, across the different elements of productivity, it feels a little bit more reasonable. Okay. So you kind of, you can...

sort of progress through and do the little action points. And it sounds like a good idea that it's kind of trimmed down. Because it's difficult, isn't it, to work through a book? But I'm really interested in the three sections. You said energize. Unblock. Unblock. And sustain. And so we kind of talked a little bit about the energize and the energy is...

really that main kind of driver yeah what's the unblock yeah okay so the the energize section is 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 got to be motivated enough. If you're, if you're not doing the thing, it's because you're just not motivated enough. You got to want it so much that like, it's so, it's so worth it. Um,

And the issue with that, obviously, is that motivation waxes and wanes. It's not always there all the time. Then there's, you know, a lot of people will invoke the narrative of discipline. They're like, okay, now screw motivation. What do you need? Discipline. And 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 things that matter to you, you're having to discipline yourself into doing just a bit grim. It's not a very enjoyable 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 analogy we talk about 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 going to battle through the pain because like I want it so much. That's fine. The discipline method is like, screw it. I'm going to battle through the pain because I've made a commitment to be there and I'm a disciplined person and I don't, 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 inside my shoe. Oh, there's a pebble inside my shoe. That explains it. Let's just remove the pebble and now I can be on my merry way. I love it. And I think that applies to procrastination so much because procrastination is fundamentally an emotional issue. There's like three in particular, like major emotional blockers to procrastination. And if we can recognize them for what they are, shine light on them,

then it allows us to remove the pebbles so that it feels less of a grind rather than kind of having to go through the barriers using motivation or discipline. So that's what the unblock method is. That's so true, isn't it? I guess a lot of people look at procrastination with so much judgment and they judge themselves for it as if they're getting something wrong or they're not good enough. And actually when we turn towards it with a bit of curiosity, you pretty quickly get to see,

what was causing it in the first place and what the block is so that you can like say get the stone and pull it out and go on your merry way that's the one amazing and like we're all so wired to avoid pain and seek out pleasure but yeah avoid pain more so than seeking out pleasure yeah and so that's a big component of why procrastination is such a pervasive thing because you're doing you're faced with a task but there's something about that that feels aversive or feels painful and

And until like a deadline is invoked and until it's like, oh crap, like the pain of not doing the thing is greater than the pain of doing the thing. That's what prompts us to act. But again, that's a very stressful way to be. And, you know, if we can target procrastination at its source and figure out what are the blockers, it just, again, makes life way easier when we're actually doing the things that matter to us. Yeah. Incredible. And then what's the last step?

What did we have? We had energize. So energize generates energy, makes you more productive. Unblock helps you unblock the things that can drain your energy and can make work feel bad. That can stop you from procrastinating. And then part three is sustain. So it's like at this point, we've talked about how to add more joy and vibes to your work through the three energizers. We've talked about how to beat procrastination by using the three unblockers.

At this point, the only thing that's left is to make sure that our productivity is actually sustainable over the long term. And so part three is really about burnout. And there's three different types of burnout, as we talk about, and the three different chapters tackle the three different types of burnout. Okay, yeah, because that's, in some ways, one of the biggest...

problems, isn't it? And lots of people can find a way to generate that early energy or blast through some procrastination with a sort of burst of motivation. But when you ask about whether it can be sustained, most people, like it's the New Year's resolution thing, isn't it? Most of them are given up by February or whatever it is. So this feels like a really crucial part to the book. Yeah.

I think so, yeah. I think making the thing sustainable is such an important part of productivity. I think that's another area in which the sort of hustle culture productivity bros, who in fairness I think are a bit caricatured in some content out there, but...

that's less of a thing in that traditional hustle culture kind of vibe. Oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead or like, you know, your twenties are for grinding and then you can always relax later on when you have kids. Like, lol, most parents I know don't relax once they have kids and it becomes even more of a, even more of a struggle. Um, so,

So, yeah, I think finding a way to make our productivity sustainable, taking appropriate breaks and rest and recharging. And it sounds obvious and it sounds boring. But, you know, through the research, you know, I uncovered a few like interesting things around how to recharge effectively that I didn't I didn't know before writing the book. And I was like, oh, this is fun. I can share this with with with the readers of the book.

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Because, you know, when you're writing and marketing and stuff, everyone says you should figure out your ideal audience or 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 whatever the thing might be.

It's just that it's, I'm hoping that anyone who wants to be productive, who wants to be more productive, it's not really a book for people who are like, who have no goals and have no desire to have any goals. It's for people who are goal oriented. They want to go after certain things that are meaningful to them, whether it's in work or in health or in relationships or 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. 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. So I'm hoping that people will vibe with the book as well. And there's, you know, very few people that don't want to do more of what matters most to them. 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 just to be able to, you know, keep a roof over our heads or feed our families and that kind of thing. And then whatever time we have left is the stuff we care about. So it feels like this is a sort of for everyone book. I think so, yeah. It feels a bit grandiose to say it's for everyone, but like, you know, we kind of wrote it with that in mind, that we want anyone to be able to take something away from this. And then like,

um we we worked quite hard to make sure that the or try our best to make the examples as wide-ranging as possible because 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. 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 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. And if we, and I speak to a lot of people who don't enjoy their jobs, but who are approaching it in a kind of disempowered way,

you know, I hate my job, but there's nothing I can do about it because I hate my boss. It's like, we actually have a lot more power in these situations than we think. And that's what basically all of chapter two is about as well. So what are the kind of, you know, are there some specific 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? Yeah, absolutely. So the first three chapters, play, power, and people, I think from all the work I've done on this, 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 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. Yeah. And side quests add a lot of variety to a game because it lets you explore your curiosity. Yeah.

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 because it's to be like, oh, I'm just going to, I'm going to quiet quit. I'm just going to do the bare minimum. I just, I just need to get through the day. I just need the clock to hit five o'clock because then I can go home and do what I, what I truly enjoy. Because 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. 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 to this new area? I had a friend who was working as a psychiatry trainee who, you know, 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 dwell and like talk to them and be like, hey, what's going on here? And it 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.

That's so good. You know, I feel like I almost might have done that once in my life where I, when I was doing my A-levels, I worked in a supermarket and it was just almost one of the most difficult jobs I've done, partly because of just the monotony of some of the jobs and the boredom and stuff like that. And I remember 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, we used to pay by card, you would have a little bit of paper that put through and fill 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 customers 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. 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 or... Yeah. Absolutely. And...

Basically anyone can do that in basically any job. Like even amongst medics, yes, there are some days where it's literally nonstop. But generally those days are quite fun. 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 receipts or that sort of stuff. One of the other strategies we talk about in the play chapter is trying to find, sort of trying to create a challenge for yourself.

Because it's like, if you imagine playing, I don't know, tennis against a three-year-old, it's not going to be particularly fun because you're just going to trounce them. Similarly, if you imagine playing tennis against Roger Federer, it's probably not going to be very fun because he's going to destroy you. And so for anything to be enjoyable, there's got to be a certain level of challenge. Now, the challenge, obviously, is like, if you are working somewhere where there isn't a challenge in what you're doing, what do you do then? So we've got the story of this guy called Matthew, who is actually an author who

back in the day used to work at McDonald's and used to work at the McDonald's drive-thru. And he was like, you know, this is really boring. I'm working like 12 hours a day at the McDonald's drive-thru. So the way he created a challenge for himself was he would try and upsell the customers on a different source every day.

So he'd be like, you know, someone would be like, you know, would you like fries with that? They'd be like, yeah, sure. And then he would be like, and would you like any barbecue sauce with that? And they'd be like, no, I'm good. And he would be like, oh no, but like, you know, it's, it's, it's really good. Like, you know, I'd really recommend it. And they'd be like, no, you know, I think I'm fine. I think I'm fine with ketchup. He'd be like, really? Are you sure? Cause the last customer said that, and then they were really happy with the barbecue sauce.

And they'll be like, okay, fine, I'll take the barbecue. It's sort of a bit of fun. The customer is not really expecting it, but it just kind of lightens up their day a bit. For Matthew working at the drive-thru, he's playing a little game with himself to see how many barbecue sauces he can upsell. His manager's happy because he's increasing the revenue of the drive-thru. And there's little things, little challenges that you can add to whatever job you're doing to just make it more fun by default, which makes it feel good, which makes it more productive, which makes you more energized, which is good for everything in life. I really like that because I think

In reality, most people have a job that they didn't dream of or wouldn't choose if they could choose any job in the world, right? They're just, they're trying to feed their families and keep a roof over their heads and this is where they've landed. And rather than that kind of, you've got to leave your job and feel the risk and create, you know, your own company and all of these things that in reality are not

really far from where most people are able to to get to um because of life's limitations um actually it doesn't mean then you've got to just endure hardship and and awfulness if you hate your job you can you can work on improving what is even if you have you know ambitions of of doing other things that's not the only way yeah absolutely i think the

I'm not a huge fan of the whole like, oh, find what you love and then like quit your job and make a business out of the thing. Because as you said, it's actually not attainable for most people right now. And I think, you know, I'm all for people quitting their jobs if they're fundamentally, you know, disengaged and find it meaningless work. But there's a lot we can do before we get to that point in terms of incorporating power playing people, in terms of like finding a way to make the work feel good. There's so much we can do before we get to a point of like, okay, I must quit my job. Yeah.

The way I think of it, it's like if you're considering quitting your job because you hate it and you have, you know, to the best of your ability, made a reasonable effort and made or made a pretty reasonable effort to make the job more enjoyable. If at that point it's still miserable, then it's probably worthwhile leaving. Obviously, it's harder for some people than for others to be able to do that, depending on like dependence and all this all this stuff.

But I think there's so much power that we have over our own experience of our work. And it's easy to feel disempowered and disengaged just because our manager sucks or we're not getting the recognition that we'd like. We have a lot of power in those contexts. It's really nice that it then can apply to everybody, no matter what your ambitions or the circumstances you're dealing with. It's kind of pretty universal, isn't it? That these are kind of strategies that you can use, whatever your circumstance is, to...

improve your productivity and be the best that you can be but also kind of enjoy the ride yeah a bit better absolutely because what's the point of being productive if the ride is miserable yeah exactly so did you feel like you had you know well do you even do you call yourself a teacher these days do you feel like you're a teacher internally yeah okay 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 because that's always been the thing that's brought me the most like meaning and joy and

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, I'm not sure this is really right for me. I was feeling what I now know is misalignment burnout, where you're sort of doing a thing, but like, and you're doing well at the thing, but there's something a bit off and I feel a bit like, 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. And one of the exercises that I came across is this 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? And I realized that the thing that I want written on my gravestone 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 joy and meaning that I got out of working in medicine was when I had a medical student with me who I could teach as we were going 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 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. Because that helped me realize that actually from the age of 13 onwards, I was always doing teaching here and there, always 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 want to be more of a teacher and 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.

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 videos and through the book. And is that how the idea of putting all this, you know, the stuff from the videos into the book? Does it filter in stuff from the videos? Yes.

that you've talked about before? Or is it all brand new? A lot of it is brand new, annoyingly. It's like, I wish there was more from the videos because it would have been less work. But 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 can type pretty 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 the stuff I already 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. Yeah. 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, it felt kind of weird because the book was like such a, an individual project and different from the videos. Yeah.

I think for future books, I would like the videos to be a bit more overlapping with the content in the book because it will just reduce the amount of work. But there's a lot of, almost everything in the book is new and I haven't talked about it in videos before. Yeah, yeah. So it's all fresh and brand new. Yeah. And does it kind of take, so does it all take, you know, this idea of kind of being a teacher and then bringing out the book, does that give you an idea of where you want to take things in the future through like the videos or? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it just comes down to that being like the, 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. And I'm fairly agnostic as to the medium or the format. So YouTube videos are format. Instagram reels is a format like podcast is a format. Books are a format, but,

and formats come and go. I think books are around to stay because they've been around for a long time. I don't imagine that when I'm 55, I'll be saying, hey, what's up guys, into a YouTube video. But I do like the idea of continuing to write books, continuing to teach people in real life. And I guess we'll just adapt to platforms as they come out. Yeah, yeah. And I

I want to go back to the idea of procrastination because 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, they're probably lying. So I wonder if we can go back to the kind of the procrastination section of the book. And we talked a bit earlier about how procrastination is sort of

often underlied by sort of fear or other emotions around the thing that you're supposed to be doing. Can you give us a bit more of an insight into that? Yeah, sure. So yeah, chapters four, five and six were about beating procrastination. Chapter four is get clarity because clarity 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 chapter six is get started.

So if I just bookend 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 about it, it's like they don't really have any clarity on what exercise even means. If someone's a beginner to exercise, there's all sorts of like stuff where it's like,

you know, at one point I was, I was, I was trying to take up running. I was like, cool. I'm just going to 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 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 waters? 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

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. I didn't know exactly what it was. Yeah. And so the first step in being procrastination is actually getting clarity on why you want to do the thing, what the thing actually is and like when and where you're going to do the thing. Because even just that, like even just committing to a time and a place and putting the thing in your calendar is,

I think solves like half the procrastination within like a few seconds. So it's like, I'm going to go to the gym at some point. That's never going to happen. And it's like, I'm going to go to the gym every Monday at 5 p.m. It's way more likely to happen than the alternative. And so the next thing is like, okay, let's say the thing is now in your calendar. Like 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 p.m. on the Monday or whenever you put it in the calendar. And then there's something that like holds you back and you feel like, ugh. There's like a... A resistance. A resistance, exactly. That resistance. And that resistance is usually some kind of emotion. And the most common emotion is fear. Like 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 in therapy, a lot of strategies around naming the emotion, telling ourselves a different story about the emotion to reduce the impact it has on us. And fundamentally acting in the face of that emotion anyway, if we recognize the emotion is never truly going to go away. There's a fun study where they called it the Batman effect, where they got a bunch of kids

And they got them to do some sort of activity, some sort of game. And then, so half the kids, they were just told to do the activity. But the other half of the kids, they were told to imagine that they were a superhero that they vibed with, like Batman or Dora the Explorer or whatever. 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 no instructions. Okay.

And so Adele, for example, has spoken about how back in the day she had loads of stage fright when she was first getting her singing career off the ground. And so she would adopt this alter ego, you know, this woman called Sasha Carter, who was like a mixture of two different singers. And she'd be like, okay, when I'm on stage, I'm going to be Sasha Carter. I'm not going to be Adele. I'm going to be this version of me. And that was the thing that allowed her to overcome a stage fright and, like, do the thing. And so, yeah, this is one of the strategies in the book, trying to figure out what is that Batman for you? What is that alter ego? Mm.

Like for me, when I do public speaking, I imagine myself not as me because I'm like, oh, all the emotions get in the way. I imagine myself as young Charles Xavier from the X-Men series. Because he's cool. It's like an X-Men first class series. He's like a cool guy, nice accent, good looking. This is before he goes into the wheelchair. I'm like, cool. I'm just imagining myself as young Charles Xavier. And I'm just here to teach and I'm here to share. And I'm going to have a smile on my face and I'm going to enjoy it.

And it means that I can get over that initial hurdle, which would otherwise stop me from filming a video or from going on stage. Yeah. And there's something quite freeing in that, isn't there? I remember actually as a kid being super shy and kind of introvert, but really enjoyed doing theatre work. And there was something about the freedom of pretending to be someone else for a minute and that you can kind of be as silly as you like because it's not you. And yeah, so I don't know, there's something in that, isn't there, about this idea of kind of being able to...

take on the persona of an ideal or a role model or an image of something that just allows you to kind of leave behind the insecurities. Maybe that's when people are attaching their own kind of self-worth to something that then becomes a block that kind of paralyzes them from making the decision to start or something. Yeah, I found this with the book quite a lot. Like I realized that a lot of what caused my procrastination from writing was

the fear of like, oh, this needs to be good. It was like the bar was too high. So you had procrastination from writing? A lot. Yeah. Did you as well when you were? Oh, for sure. For sure. I've already talked to you about my tendency to kind of buy animal or look for animals to buy. Extreme ways to procrastinate. But how did you, so you used the Batman technique for writing? A little bit. Yeah. I sort of came across that a little bit later. I was like, damn, I wish I'd come across this sooner. Yeah.

Um, the way I did it for the book is, is sort of just trying to lower the bar as much as possible. Okay. To recognize that like, okay, I feel like, I feel like every word I write needs to be this good, but actually what if it doesn't? What if, what if it just needs to, what if it just needs to exist? I just need to get it onto the page. Yeah. Um, the aim is not to write a good book. The aim is to write something and then we'll worry about the good later on. Yeah. Um, and when I was, I interviewed Cal Newport, who's written a bunch of these books over the last, last couple of decades. Um,

And he said the thing he tells himself, he's written like five or six books at this point. The thing he tells himself for every book is this one just needs to be reasonable. The next one is going to be good. And he's been kind of sustaining that momentum by just this one just needs to be reasonable. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of value in, I think in the modern world, we're told that like quality matters and like quality is really important. But actually having a bar for quality when you're a beginner at the thing, it just holds you back. It's like, you know, if someone wants their very first YouTube video, a very first TikTok, a very first book to be

to be a masterpiece. They're just never going to do it. Yeah. And if you lower the bar, it's like the lower the bar is, the easier it is to get started. Yeah. And often when it comes to procrastination, getting started is the hardest part. You know, the law of inertia. Once you start moving, it becomes easier to continue going. Yeah. And so really all of these strategies are around just getting over the hurdle.

doing the thing five minutes. And then usually at that point we start to get into flow. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess if you were doing, I don't know, any kind of, you know, if you're learning piano or jujitsu or whatever it is, you would never expect yourself to do the advanced stuff first, right? In that first session, it's just do something and it's starting something in motion. And actually in my writing, I find that

Once I get over that morning emotional rollercoaster of just putting a few words on the page, the rest comes easier. It's like starting is that you kind of, if you can just get momentum, the momentum can carry you for a little while. Yeah. Whereas if you're kind of stuck.

um, it's really hard to just push into movement. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's, that's one of the major realizations that I've had around procrastination. That is like momentum is so important. I realized like for, for you, for filming YouTube videos, what I do now is I, I hit record and I just kind of start somewhere and I start like two minutes in, I start recording. It's like, Oh, the first point is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because I just

In the past, I would hit record and then I'd be overthinking the hook of the video because the hook is so important. It's like the first 30 seconds. It's like, you know, 60% of people might click off in the first 30 seconds. And now again, there's all this pressure on the first 30 seconds, which means like,

oh, it's such a heavy lift to do the first 30 seconds of a video. So now I just start the video with point number one, which is 30 seconds into the video. And then at the end, once I finish the video and I'm like, oh, just film for half an hour. Great. Now I'm in, I've got the momentum. Now it's way easier to say, hey friends, welcome back to the channel. Today we're talking about blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And to do the hook.

Okay. It's almost like when you're writing something, the introduction is the hardest part. And so a lot of people will save the introduction for the end because it's easier to start somewhere in the middle. Yeah. So you can start wherever you like and as long as you get started. And what's the amygdala hijack? Oh, the amygdala hijack. Yeah. So the amygdala, 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. And people who have defects in their amygdala

feel less fear or sometimes even no fear. 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. 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 is like firing and you've got the fight or flight response.

But also back in the day in our caveman eras, in our caveman era, 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 going to get eaten by the lion. And...

And sort of the amygdala hijack is kind of what researchers call it when we, when our amygdala is overactive in social situations today that are not like where our survival is not actually at stake. 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 what will other people think of us? Will they think me ridiculous to have the audacity to make a TikTok or all that kind of stuff? The amygdala starts to be 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 because it's worried i'm going to be ostracized from the group thank you brain for giving me the survival signal but i can choose to ignore that because actually yeah you know i'm in an environment where i'm not actually worried about lions and tigers and stuff so it still gets to kind of voice its um

It's opinions on stuff, but it doesn't get to sit in the driving seat sort of thing. Ideally, yeah. You're still choosing to go forward, but the voice of fear is there. Exactly, yeah. That's a nice way of describing the voice of fear. So the amygdala is basically the voice of fear, and the voice of fear stops so many people from going after their dreams because they're afraid of whatever. Yeah. And recognizing, yeah, you know, the brain is designed to protect us, but actually protecting us is generally not in our best interest when it comes to achieving our dreams or going after the future that we want.

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So World of... I mean, it's interesting because you often talk about World of Warcraft and your love for the game and stuff in your content. But it comes up in the book, right? And you kind of managed to thread it in and make it useful. Can you remember where? Yeah. So in the chapter about play, you talk about...

We're talking about World of Warcraft. I try to shoehorn a reference to World of Warcraft in just because it's a bit more fun. So I used to be absolutely addicted to this game. I played for around like 185 days, like nonstop, like in total, like 185 times 24 hours across like a three-year period, which 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 this?

Play video games for three and a half hours a day. But World of Warcraft is very addictive because it's like one of the most addictive games ever made. And what you do is like you have a little character like 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 wands and robes and stuff.

And one of the things, you know, 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. Because every time you do something, you feel as if you're gaining some experience points. And then you're leveling up and you get this like ding. And it's like it goes and you learn a new skill. And this is where things like tracking a word count, if you're a writer or if you're a student doing an essay or something, is really helpful because you can literally see the progress bar.

And seeing progress happen is a big part of what gives us the momentum to continue the thing. Because otherwise stuff can be quite boring if you don't see progress. Yeah, we need to see your progress, don't we? Yeah. And then the other thing as well is 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 there was this...

I think it was a psychologist or psychiatrist many years ago who founded the US's, 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 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 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.

There's the jester, someone who really enjoyed pranks and jokes and stuff. There's the director. These are the kids who enjoyed organizing their fellow friends and organizing a play and all this stuff. There's 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 exercise 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 presentation at work and I'm thinking, okay, this presentation is really boring, but I'm going to adopt the storyteller archetype. And I'm going to figure out, cool, if I were the storyteller and these are the characteristics of the storyteller, how might I incorporate that into my work?

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? Which are questions that 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 as adults are really bad at playing. It's like when we're kids, we play all the time and then we get the spirit of play squashed out of us as we go through school and exams and grading and you've got to do well to go to college, you've got to go to college, you've got to get a job. And it's like it's almost a given that like part of growing up is stopping to play. I think it's a nice quote. I think it's from George Bonanchor, which is that we don't stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing. Yeah.

And so a lot of 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? Because it's something that we're not in the practice of doing. And I really like that idea that you can kind of take the different personalities and choose to adopt one for a day or for a week or in a certain setting. Because, you know, lots of these sort of different personality tests 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 another set of the time. We're in a different circumstance. And you kind of realize that you are a bit of all of them depending on the circumstance. And so you get this sense of you're not stuck in one. You're not one type of person. You can choose to adopt a different path.

side of yourself or a different role in a certain situation that would help you to enjoy it and to or to find it more fulfilling or to get the most out of it yeah is it kind of yeah absolutely um

And so that's, you've got exercises in there. You can kind of choose which, or you can work out which. Yeah. Figure out your play personality, figure out which one you want to, you want to go for. So again, like the, the objective was just to try and give, you know, when I read a book, I like to find actionable stuff from it. It's all well and good reading, but it's like, I think reading and learning without any action is just, you know, entertainment. And so yeah,

you know, I'm hoping of the 54 different experiments in the book, like people will find at least one or two that they can vibe with. And the reason we're calling them experiments is that not all 54 are going to work, work for everyone. They are somewhat context specific and like some people will find it easier to apply some than others. But, um, you know, the idea is that they're experiments in that you try them, you apply them to your work, see how it feels, see if it makes a difference. If it does, then great. You can continue doing that. If not, that's okay. You can move on to another one. Yeah. And,

It's almost like taking a bit of a scientific approach to our own productivity, but our own psychology as well. Figuring out, okay, you know, I'm a unique individual. Let me figure out what are the strategies that work for me that help me feel more positive emotion when it comes to my work. Yeah. So that I can enjoy the journey a bit more. And I think that's a good way to be. So in your experience, do you have certain favorites that you use a lot personally? Yeah.

Yeah, I really vibe with a lot of the play stuff. Like I think for me, just trying my best to approach work in the spirit of play is one of the ultimate hacks for making it feel more energizing. Thankfully, I'm now at a point where there's very few things that I do that I don't enjoy. And so it was play initially when it came to doing the hard stuff.

These days, it's a lot of the stuff in part three, sustain. Because as you would know, in this sort of content creator career where you're writing books and doing the videos and all this kind of stuff, there's always more things you could be doing, especially once you get some level of success. The amount of inbound that comes your way is just completely absurd in a good way. But it also means that there are just way too many opportunities. And so it can be easy to just say yes to everything and then run the risk of burning out because actually it's not sustainable. So I think a lot about kind of

overexertion burnout and depletion burnout and misalignment burnout and how do I make sure that like this career that I've been lucky enough to get into is something that I can sustain for a very long time. I'm aware that we went through the kind of different types of burnout when you interviewed me in our episode but do you want to kind of talk through the three of those? Yeah. Because I think they're really crucial aren't they? Burnout's not just burnout. Yeah I think there's like different different types of burnout um

So the way that we split 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 long term. Your energy levels have gotten 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 anymore.

And so again, in each of these chapters, we've got exercises for how to, you know, 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. And just as a quick kind of practical thing for anyone who doesn't want to read the book, 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 Twitter, or X, or whatever they've renamed it to. I would be tempted to just watch random YouTube videos and just lie on the sofa on my phone. But if I think about when was the last time I actually felt recharged by doing that? Basically never. 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 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. And I think what's interesting about that is that if we think of, if we, 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 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.

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. Yes, exactly. Because what we feel like doing is often the easiest thing. And obviously these social media platforms are designed to maybe be as addictive as possible. The notifications there, it's so easy to hop on and start watching a TikTok or start watching a video. Yeah.

But generally, when it comes to avoiding burnout, you know, spending more time on social media is not the way to avoid burnout. Less time on social media and more time doing things that actually recharge your energy tends to be a way better. I often talk to people about sort of the in-between moments as well, because often it's quite a small thing, isn't it? That we have that tendency to, especially in burnout, it's usually because there's so much going on. And when there is so much going on, you fill every little moment. So if you've got, you know, 15 minute gap between meetings, you'll probably check your emails and...

You haven't got enough time to respond to any of them. So you're just adding to your stress by, oh, here's another thing for my to-do list. Here's another thing for my to-do list. Rather than if you took 10 of those 15 minutes and stood outside in the sunshine or even got into your car, reclined the seat and just kind of closed your eyes for 10 minutes so that you're outside of the office and really kind of deep relaxation. Yeah.

That would be a totally different response physiologically than checking email. Yeah, absolutely. But I think, you know, for some reason it feels like unproductive to just go for a walk or just like sit there. It feels productive to check our email. But actually, as you said, if you're not going to action it, like you're just adding stress levels. How do you do that during the day though? Because I guess people probably have, okay, it's Ali Abdaal. He's like productivity superhero. I bet every minute of the day is filled with something, you know.

What is it like really for you? Do you take breaks? Do you, you know, practice what you preach in that sense and kind of step outside or? Yeah, one of the things that every team member who we've ever had has kind of said was like, oh, I thought Ollie would be way more productive than he actually is. Because they'll see me taking a lot of breaks. In my breaks, it's like in between filming a video or in between doing something. If I have an extra seven minutes, I'm going to be able to do it.

I won't check my email. I will grab the guitar and stop playing and singing along and just sort of walk around the house or around the office and annoy everyone with my singing. But that to me is enormously recharging. And someone on the team is like, wait, what? He's just singing. What the hell's going on there? Or I'll whack out the yoga mat and do five minutes of stretching and stuff. And then people will be like, oh, that's a bit weird.

But then they'll be like, oh, that makes sense, actually. Like, we've just been sitting down all day. Let's, like, do some hip flex stretches. Yeah. So I do try and actively incorporate a lot of that stuff during, like, into my day. Yeah. Do they join in or do they just sort of watch you as a few? Sometimes they do. I'm often like, guys, come on, you know, you need some stretches. Like, what's he doing? They tend not to join in with the singing because they feel, like, shy or something. But, yeah. Yeah.

You can imagine that in the office with everybody joining in. I love it. We've got a piano in the office, you know, play some songs. Like Amber who's behind us is incredible at singing, but she never gets involved because I don't know.

Fear or anxiety or like it's a bit weird to sing in the workplace, but I love it. I think it's very recharging. Okay. So, I mean, that's good to kind of squash some of those misconceptions that people might hold, but it's just like super productivity all the time. Actually, you're much more about sustaining because you, you know, clearly have a high level of productivity given everything that you run and, you know, it's a big deal, but that you've managed to really make that sustainable thing

despite because I guess probably the pressure is on you more than most to be super productive right and to kind of live that but to to put in the sustainability stuff must challenge that sometimes do you feel guilty ever taking a break honestly not really like so sometimes if it's like uh you know there's like a book deadline or something and like rowing the editors but like oh you know can we really get these changes through then I feel a bit guilty but then I think you know what why am I feeling guilty like

It's a day late. Who cares if it's a day late? Like it's completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. He would probably disagree, but like, I feel like, you know what? I'm just going to go for a walk down Hyde Park and I'll sit in the cafe and I'll do it then. Yeah. It's a bit more fun, bit of a change of scenery. Change of scenery and adding variety is another big, big thing that can help a lot of people with this sort of stuff. But there's also a cool study that there was this software company a few years ago, like 20 years, like 10, 20 years ago, who did a study trying to figure out like the work habits of the most productive people in the workplace and,

And they sort of time tracked about like a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand different employees. And they found that the most productive ones on average were every hour, 17 minutes was a break. So it's like 43 minutes of work to 17 minutes a break was the most productive worker. And the people who had more work and fewer breaks were less productive. And so I think that's kind of nice. It's like 25% of the time they're just chilling. And so I feel like that's a good thing.

that's a good uh a good sort of cadence that's kind of true isn't it because if you sit at the desk for a long time you're not you're not working efficiently necessarily you're kind of zoning out or you're but you're just parrying on through because you feel like you need to sit there and keep going when actually you're not being that productive anyway absolutely i also know that 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 yeah i won't say bigger and better i think it's a different approach to goal setting so one way of setting goals is to be to be smart about them specific measurable you know assignable or achievable depending on which acronym you had relevant time bound 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 um like for example if a

If you get someone who's kind of going to the gym for the first time and trying to build muscle, them setting a smart goal of, I want to hit X percent body fat by Y date as evidenced by my DEXA scan, which will show me, that would be a smart goal because it's very measurable. It's specific. 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, having a more loose goal is...

A bit better. And the acronym that I've come up with for this is NICE goals, N-I-C-E. 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 take writing a book, for example, near term is what can I do this week? Just like within this week. I'm not worried about the deadline. What can I do this week? Input based is what are the inputs? So input based goals rather than outcome based goals. So less that...

I will write 10,000 words. But more of the more that I will write for 20 minutes because that's an input that's controllable. It's within my control. 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 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, whatever.

works quite nicely. But in the early days, I think, again, 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. Even now for me at the gym, I don't really have any smart goals. I'm just like, I want to go to the gym three times a week. I'm going to 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 because that's just dumb because 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 no more beyond that. So the nice goal is a way more energizing and effective way for me to hit the gym than to set a very specific goal. I love that because it's so great for the things that are really overwhelming as well, isn't it? So 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 going to feel like an overwhelming amount of work and you're going to question your ability to do it. So I would often ask people to sort of draw their horizons in, kind of like that near thing, like just focus on this week or today. And then rather than, like you say, the outcome at the top is,

and reward yourself for the effort put in and that input stuff. So yeah, I love that kind of input-based stuff. And often when we're talking with like students and stuff about, you know, exams and exam results and that you get so much more out of school and university and the education system from learning about what you're willing to put into something and your sort of input. So if you, you know, you reward yourself or you get a sense of, you know,

I don't know, your sense of self from how much you're willing to put into something and the effort that you've put in, regardless of what that final outcome or result was. Even though that's important because it kind of helps you to get through certain doors. But, you know, if you are willing to really give your all, then it's...

you've got that and you you've got evidence of how hard you're willing to work towards something yeah absolutely like um in in the early days of my youtube channel as well people would often ask me like oh how did how did you say stay consistent when you weren't getting any views and stuff it's like you know it took me like six months and 52 videos to get my first thousand subscribers um while i was kind of making two videos a week while doing medical school and you know the thing i really like

Even at the time, I realized that I cannot set a goal for this. Because if I set a goal, I'm going to be disappointed. And it's just pointless. So my only goal was I'm just going to make one or two videos a week. At least one. At least one video a week. And it's an input. It's like, I can make the videos. It's in my control. It's energizing because making videos is fun. I found a way to make it fun. It's very near term. It's not aiming for a subscriber count. It's not aiming for views or revenue. Yeah. Yeah.

And so even now with my YouTube channel, I try very hard to not set outcome metric goals that are outside of my control. Try and focus on, you know, I just want to show up and make a video sharing something that I think is interesting that could help at least one person. The bar is low. That means I've been able to make a video one or two times a week for the last six years without really stopping because the bar is low. And the channel grows and the bar is low. Whereas if the bar is higher, I have a lot of friends who are like, I have to hit a million views for this upload. Otherwise the sponsors will pull out or otherwise it's not worth it.

And they're the ones that burn out because it's really hard to peg yourself to an outcome that is actually fundamentally outside of your control. And you say the bar is low, but actually, you know, you were working as a doctor at the time as well, weren't you? So how did you make it fun given that you'd probably done a, I don't know, a 12-hour shift beforehand and, you know, could have just, you know, watched Netflix and gone to bed?

How did you make it fun enough to get yourself to do that? Yeah, that was a big challenge. I really used to, I found a way to make editing videos really enjoyable. And a lot of the principles are the ones in the book, finding a way to add variety to it, finding a way to kind of level up my skills each time and make sure that each video had something that was slightly different than the previous one. And that meant that when I would get home from work,

I would actually prefer to edit a video for two hours than watch Netflix for two hours because editing a video was quite energizing. I'd get up from the desk feeling like, yeah, I feel like I've done something good here. There's an acronym I talk about in one of the final chapters called CALM, C-A-L-M. Yeah. Which is like the sorts of activities that recharge our energy effectively.

So C for competence, A for autonomy, L for liberty and M for mellow. A bit of a shoehorned acronym because it was based on the study, but the study had like a boring acronym. I was like, how do I thesaurus this to make it interesting? And calm activities are the ones that tend to recharge our energy. So competence where we feel as if we are getting better at doing thing. Autonomy where we feel like we have control. Liberty, i.e. it's like we, it's sort of detached from the thing that we are doing for work generally. And mellow is like,

Like the stakes are low. It's pretty chill. Like there's no like deadline. Those are the things that tend to feel creatively recharging. And so for me coming home and editing videos, I felt competent because I was getting better. I had autonomy because I could do what I wanted. It felt creative. It was sort of very different to my day job working as a doctor editing videos that it felt like a good distinction. And it was mellow in that I would have to have some like relaxing music in the background and

I'd be fairly chill about it. And that meant that actually I preferred editing videos to watching Netflix. And that's a great place to be if you're trying to grow a YouTube channel. But if I...

If I hated editing videos and it was a real struggle every time, then it would have been really hard to keep that consistency up. Yeah. Because if stuff doesn't feel good, it feels like you're going uphill and running a boulder up the hill. And again, that takes a lot of discipline, a lot of willpower. I don't have a lot of discipline and a lot of willpower, but I've managed to make videos every week for six years because I found a way to make it feel good. You've heard that people, you didn't, you don't have willpower, but you managed to make a video a week for six years. Yeah. Incredible. It's a feel good thing. Yeah.

And tell me about this. Is it the write-off principle? What's that? Is that the right way to say it? Yeah. Oh, this is just another thing that I was having fun with. I kind of realized, you know, at one point I would get home from work and I'd be, I'd think, okay, cool, 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 feel I have the energy. Because you are human. Yeah, yeah. There were a few days where that happened. And sometimes Molly would be like, Ale, why don't you just 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. So I just sent an email to my email list, spelling it R-E-I-T-O-F-F, like the write-off principle.

And I kind of sent the email as a bit of a joke. 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, especially if you name it something that's kind of funny, that sounds kind of legit if you don't know the backstory, it just makes it feel better. It's like, okay, cool. It's the write-off principle. 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 write the day off. Yeah.

So it's an active choice. So it's okay to have that, you know, it's not the no days off kind of principle. It's okay to respond to your needs and write it off occasionally, but you're actively choosing that and making an informed choice about it. 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 guess I should film a video on Saturday. It's like, I'm really feeling it. And then I'll spend the whole day just sort of in the stupor where I'm like,

feeling guilty because I should be filming this video. And if I had just written the day off, I'd be like, no, today's an active day of rest.

great 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 yeah whereas when I'm in that mode where it's like I kind of feel guilty about not doing the thing even though I should be doing the thing I'll end up scrolling TikTok which is not which isn't really a good use of anyone's time and so you kind of distract yourself without realizing it and then don't do it anyway are there days though when you you have to sort of push through and you have to just get it done when you don't feel like it how do you do that

I try and avoid those days at all costs. I try and avoid getting to a situation where that happens. It does happen, especially with book deadlines, especially with sponsored. Like whenever there's an external deadline that has some level of kind of pressure to it, then I think, okay, cool. I need, like, for example, like proofreading the book. It was like, okay, I need to get this done by like tomorrow morning. I don't have the option. Therefore, given that I know I have to get it done,

can I just, can I find a way to make it feel good anyway? Yeah. And so in that context, like last week I was, I was proofreading the physical kind of manuscript of the book. I was like, you know what? It would be more fun if I just went to a coffee shop. So I went and just packed my bag, went to a coffee shop, put my headphones in, went for a little walk around Hyde Park, went to the cafe at the bottom of Hyde Park. I was just proofreading the book there.

uh just more fun it was like okay finding a way to make it feel good within the context of having to do the thing okay so i don't like having to do things but like you know we all have to do things we don't like sometimes so doing the thing that you don't necessarily want to do but adding in little moments of joy or little things that can just improve the moment yeah so that it's easier to get through yeah and i found that like a self-soothing self-soothing exactly so when i was working in

in medicine I would take a little Bluetooth speaker in my bag at all times and when I'd be in the doctor's office on my own writing discharge letters for hours at a time I would just attach the Bluetooth speaker to like the ceiling light or something and I would just play some like Harry Potter or Pirates of the Caribbean in the background and it would just make it so much more fun it's just amazing how much extra joy you can get by just having like an epic movie soundtrack in the background while writing discharge letters

So there's little strategies like that to just make the thing that I had to do just feel better. Yeah. Made me more productive, more energized, more creative, less stressed. Life was good. And I actually enjoyed working as a doctor, unlike a lot of people that I know. And so what would you say to people that, you know, you just said about the sort of, the quote about sort of, you know, getting to adulthood and I can't remember the exact words now, but, you know, losing that sense of play or, I think it's not unusual for adults to, especially adults with lots of responsibilities to,

to almost lose that sense of what is it I enjoy? I do everything for everybody else and working and doing the thing for my boss. What do I enjoy? How do we kind of recenter ourselves with that and pull in and work out what we love the most or what's going to bring pleasure?

That is a very good question that I actually don't have the answer to. What do you think? Like you're, I guess you talk to... I guess something that you already do, isn't it, is you try lots of stuff. Like you're not afraid to go, do you know what, I'm going to try singing lessons or I'm going to learn the guitar or I'm going to try and, you know, do this weights thing in the gym or I'm going to... Yeah, I guess I can speak to what works for me. I find it hard to...

One of the challenges 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. And so 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, I can share the things 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. So like at the start of the year or like, you know, I do a sort of mini quarterly review every three months where I'm just like, what would be interesting to try? What would be cool to do?

Oh, you know, I've always wanted to do kite surfing. Let's add that to the list. So I keep like a bucket list of things that I'm interested in trying. And so on that list was singing lessons, recording an album of original songs, learning how to write music, glamping, learning how to surf. It's like, you know, doing acro yoga, which is like acrobatic version of yoga, even though I suck at both. All of these things are on the bucket list. And so I will often, like when I'm doing these reviews and figuring out, huh,

let me actually just like realign on what do I actually want to do? I look through the bucket list and be like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess I could try acroyoga. Like, let me see if there's any acroyoga classes around and I'll find a time that works and make it happen. And so I think it is 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. And you know, one, one concept I've been thinking about recently is like the difference between happiness and meaning is

And often people say that meaning comes from service. Like being a parent, I've heard feels very meaningful because you're like in service to your children, even though according to studies, 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. 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 five sort of buckets I think for myself, health, wealth, love, growth, joy, like happiness.

And just in my head, I'll just do a little mini audit of like, okay, how do I feel my life is out from zero to 10 in each of these five categories? Where 10 is it couldn't possibly be any better and zero is it couldn't possibly be any worse. 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 forgotten to take the time to really think, huh,

Am I doing something that's just purely for the joy of doing it, that doesn't have economic output attached to it, that's not in service to someone else? And I realized, I actually haven't done that in a while. I haven't played any video games in a while. I haven't just like dabbled with playing the guitar for a while because it's like I've always had things to do. So the fact that I recognize this means that I can kind of rebalance. And one thing I'm actively thinking about this week is how can I incorporate a little bit more joy into what I'm doing so that it's not just work and it's not just kind of...

dinner with family dinner with like this stuff that I'm just doing for my own sake yeah so I find that to be quite it's interesting because I think being a parent I think this really does resonate actually that um

I think the thing with parents is you feel like you have no control over your time because you have very little control over your time because you have to be present. So you can't sort of just pop out and join a club or that kind of thing. And so you kind of feel restricted in that sense. But something I noticed recently myself actually is often you feel as a parent that you're always –

There's so many practical duties that you can get really wrapped up in those. And so, you know, you've got to get them places and get them dressed and, you know, pick them up and do these things and move them to the next thing. And so you're constantly doing, doing, doing and focusing on that.

And just recently, I mean, I was telling you earlier just recently, my daughter and I went on like a mummy daughter date where it was just us. We left all the boys at home and we just went out to the cinema together and had some dinner. And it was the first time in...

probably way too long that I've actually stopped to just enjoy my time with one of my children. I mean, I've got three children, so it's always chaos, right? It's just always someone's trying to speak, someone needs something, someone's on the low, you know, and so it felt really quite poignant to just stop and like you say, do something just because we might enjoy it.

And that we might connect and have that time together. And that really got me thinking, as you were kind of talking about play and injecting it into different experiences that, you know, how can I find this in all of the moments when I was supposed to be doing all the mom stuff, you know, like, you know, getting them all in the car and, you know, and I think because life is fast, right?

We forget that, you know, different things can be a little game or it can be a more joyful moment than it is. You don't have to just get it done. You could find a way to sort of enjoy the process a little bit more. And we sometimes do this game with my son where instead of like battle him to get dressed,

We do a game where you kind of like throw each item of clothing at him and then he has to like get it on really quickly and then we throw the next one and he gets the next one. And it's so much more fun when I actually make the, you know, time to do it and take those extra few moments that it takes.

We both smile, we both giggle a little bit. And for that, you know, five or 10 minutes, we've enjoyed ourselves so much more than we would have done. So it felt less of a chore and it felt a little bit more like quality time, even though it just had to get done. So I think, you know, I think these principles do apply. It's not as if we're kind of, it's completely separate. I think it does apply.

It's just more tricky. You have to kind of think of it in a slightly different way, don't you? That we might have less control over our time because there are dependents there. You can't just sort of go off. But it doesn't mean you can't find ways to... And, you know, you've only got to give kids half a chance and they'll find a way to inject fun into something anyway. I mean, you've got your sort of balls of creativity there ready to go, right? So...

Often the things that they'll find fun are the rules that you have to crack down. No, we're not going to throw our food across the kitchen or something like that. But there's potential there, isn't there, to really improve all of that? Yeah, that's a really nice way of thinking about it. I think in a lot of work there's things that we have to do

But actually by taking just a little bit more effort to do it in a more fun way, the returns of that are like way greater than the energy that was put into it. Yeah. So like you throwing the clothes to the kid across the room probably requires a little bit more effort and energy than you would have done by default. Yeah. But it does make it feel more energizing and enjoyable and fun. And you probably leave that situation more recharged.

than if you had just, if it had been a battle to try and get him to put the clothes on. Yeah. And again, it's sort of making that choice about not what I feel like doing now. Cause you know, first thing in the morning, do you feel like starting again? Not really, you know, but, but actually afterwards you get the improvement in how you feel from it. So you feel a bit happier and you're smiling and you're a bit more energized. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think this applies, applies a lot to work and actually any, any area of life as well. Like,

you know, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, even just like thinking, like I do find myself thinking whenever I'm doing something that I feel like, I think, no, like just a millisecond to think, how can I make this fun? Yeah. And it might just be something really simple, like skipping with the laundry basket to the kitchen while whistling. Just something basic like that. Yeah. And it's like, just makes it more fun. It's like now it turns it into a bit more of a joy than a chore. Yeah. Yeah. Blasting your favorite music while you're doing a boring job. Yeah. Yeah. Can really kind of just shift a moment and,

But it's in quite a significant way. You know, you've only got to put on, if you choose your music carefully that you know lifts your mood, for example, that can be a really distinct shift in your mood state or your emotion state if you choose your music carefully. And then it bleeds into everything else that you do for the next few hours that I find anyway. Yeah. Like if I wake up in the morning like, oh, I've got to get the clothes out of the dryer. It's like I've got to fold it. Yeah.

Then it's like I'll start work with more of a sense of heaviness. Yeah. Whereas if I wake up in the morning, I'm like, oh, I've got clothes in the dryer. Cool. Let me put the AirPods in. Let me listen to a podcast while I'm doing it. Let me listen to. Yeah. Let me sing a song while doing it. So wake up my housemate and all this stuff.

then when I sit down to work and I'm like I'm just automatically in a more creative mood yeah and it's just these little tweaks that we can make throughout our day that help and imagine then if you've if you've made that sort of emotional shift for yourself by injecting a bit of joy and pleasure you then probably you know when a colleague walks into the room or when your partner comes home you probably respond better to them right and then they probably respond better back to you and you've got this like ricochet of just sort of

Little bits of joy sparking across the place. And sort of, there are also good ways to fake this, you know, or to systemize this almost. So one of our team members, Tintin, told me a really good strategy, which is that he realized that

If you just set a rule for yourself that every time you greet someone, you're going to do it with warmth and effusiveness. Okay. And it's just like a rule. So it's like, I found myself like that day when he told me, you know, the team members would come to the house and I'd be like, I'd open the door and be like, Angus, it's so good to see you. How's it going? Which is just like, you know, my default would be like, oh, hey man, just a bit like more chill, more boring. But yeah, you know, just being actively effusive in that moment lifts my mood, lifts their mood. Everyone loves it when you greet them with like an effusive greeting. Yeah.

And it just makes everyone's life that little bit better for literally zero cost. And so finding those sorts of moments. Yeah, enthusiasm kind of bounces back to you, doesn't it? When you offer it out to people, it gives them permission to brighten up their response back to you. And often people are a bit kind of shy with each other, aren't they? And very sort of cold. And then as soon as someone opens up,

It makes other people feel less vulnerable to do the same. So everybody becomes a little bit more bouncy, a little bit more adventurous. Yeah, I found this used to happen when I was working in the day job in that whenever I'd walk past the nurse's office, I would poke my head in and be like, I'd offer them a cup of tea.

I'd just be like, hey, anyone fancy a cup of tea? And initially people were like, oh, no, it's all right. They'd be polite about it. I'd be like, no, are you sure? I'm going to make one for myself. It's not that much more effort. I make a really good cup of tea. Kind of like the whole upselling the barbecue sauce. And they'd be like, oh, all right, then why not? Then it sort of became this thing where it would just add a little bit of joy to everyone's day. I'd have a gap between patients. I'd be like, make myself a cup of tea, make one for the nurses. I knew how the different nurses took their tea. Sometimes it would just

make a cup of tea without the masking. If I saw that like Julie was, she was one of our head nurses. Uh, Julie was like deep in paperwork. I'd be like,

I'm just going to make Julie a cup of tea. And I'd make the cup of tea secretly. I'd be like, Julie, this is for you. And she would be like, oh, Ali, you're so wonderful. And it was just like, it's made her day. It's made mine. We all feel good. And all it cost was, you know, me spending 10 seconds extra making her a cup of tea. Yeah. And that's where I think sometimes with this stuff, often we're looking for something that's really complex, that we have to pay for, that requires discipline. And you must be, you know,

joker or someone to make it work. And it really isn't. It's lots of these like little micro moments, isn't it? Because I bet that didn't only improve the moment between you and Julie, but it probably each time sort of cumulatively improved your relationship as well. It builds up a connection and those kinds of things. And

And the better connections you have in your job, probably the better you feel when you get there because you're surrounded in people you trust and enjoy being with. But it has to kind of snowball. It doesn't have to start really small and then build up. So something that could feel insignificant, why bother? Actually, it doesn't stop there. It will keep going. Yeah. During the COVID lockdown, our hospital cafeteria was doing a special thing where they were selling scones for like 20p.

um they would bake loads of scones instead of a 20p so there were about like six nurses on the ward um any given time and so when i'd go to lunch i would bring back six scones and it would cost me one pound twenty but it was a such a high roi because for that one pound twenty i've treated everyone to scones they're like oh my god it's like they know it wasn't free so they know i paid for them they also know it's 20p but it's just the gesture of the fact that i thought uh buy scones for the for the nurses and they feel happy i'd feel happy it's like

You know, one of the things we talked about in chapter three, which is about people, is the helper's high that you get when you feel as if you've helped someone, even if it's in a really small way. The helper's high makes them feel good, makes you feel good, makes everything feel more energized and enjoyable. And that's another core part of, you know, the feel good productivity philosophy. Incredible. Is there anything else you want me to cover? No, I think that's a good place to end things. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you.

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