How to Enjoy Doing Hard Things (ft. Ali Abdaal)
Summary
TLDRIn this insightful conversation, Mark Manson interviews Ali Abdaal, a former medical doctor turned YouTuber and author of the book "Feel Good Productivity". They delve into the misconceptions around productivity, emphasizing that it's not just about hard work and suffering but can also be about creativity and enjoyment. Ali shares his journey from practicing medicine to finding success and fulfillment on YouTube, highlighting the importance of making work feel good and the power of experimenting with different approaches to life and work. The discussion also touches on the impact of societal expectations on personal goals and the value of seeking genuine happiness and balance.
Takeaways
- 🎯 Redefining productivity to include enjoyment and intentionality, rather than just efficiency.
- 💡 The importance of emotions in productivity and how emotional resistance can hinder progress.
- 🕹️ Balancing work with leisure and finding ways to make work feel less like a chore.
- 🚀 The concept of 'escape velocity' in entrepreneurship and the need for initial hard work to achieve long-term success.
- 🧠 The role of creativity in both learning and productivity, especially in fields like medicine.
- 🔄 The idea of reframing failure as a form of experimentation and data gathering.
- 🤹♂️ Incorporating fun and games into productivity systems to increase motivation and engagement.
- 📈 The impact of tracking progress and setting achievable goals for a sense of accomplishment.
- 🧩 Finding the right 'chess moves' for maximizing productivity and success.
- 🎮 Using personal stories and experiences to illustrate the principles of 'Feel Good Productivity'.
- 💼 The power of seeking forgiveness rather than permission and adding personal touches to work.
Q & A
What misconception does Ali Abdaal address about productivity?
-Ali Abdaal addresses the misconception that productivity is solely about hustle, grind, and working long hours. He proposes a more holistic view where productivity is about using time intentionally, effectively, and enjoyably.
How does Ali define 'Feel Good Productivity'?
-Ali defines 'Feel Good Productivity' as the practice of making productivity enjoyable. It involves using time well in a way that aligns with one's values and goals, and doing so in a manner that feels good and is sustainable.
What is the significance of emotions in productivity according to the discussion?
-Emotions play a fundamental role in productivity. The resistance or motivation to do a task often stems from one's emotional state. If a task feels good and brings positive emotions, it's more likely to be done productively and consistently.
What does Ali suggest about the relationship between work hours and productivity?
-Ali suggests that working more hours does not necessarily equate to higher productivity. He shares his realization that quality output is more important than quantity, and that beyond a certain point, the output diminishes in quality, making longer hours counterproductive.
How does Ali use his medical background to inform his approach to productivity?
-Ali uses his medical background to inform his approach to productivity by applying the concept of teaching and making complex information understandable. He also uses mnemonics and categorization techniques to make memorization more creative and fun, which he applies to his YouTube content creation.
What is the 'optimal number of distractions' according to the study mentioned in the transcript?
-The study mentioned suggests that there is an optimal number of distractions, represented by an N-shaped graph, where some amount of task-switching is actually beneficial for productivity. This contradicts the traditional view that one must focus exclusively on a single task at a time.
How does Ali approach the concept of 'failure' in the context of productivity?
-Ali approaches the concept of 'failure' as a part of the learning process or as data gathering in the context of productivity. He encourages reframing failure as an experiment, where even unsuccessful attempts provide valuable information for future attempts.
What is the importance of finding the right 'chess moves' in productivity?
-Finding the right 'chess moves' in productivity refers to making strategic decisions that can significantly impact one's success. It's about recognizing opportunities and making choices that can leverage one's efforts, rather than simply working harder.
How does Ali relate the concept of 'feeling good' to productivity?
-Ali relates the concept of 'feeling good' to productivity by suggesting that if one finds their work enjoyable and fulfilling, they are more likely to be productive. He emphasizes the importance of aligning one's work with their values and interests to maintain motivation and joy in the process.
What advice does Ali give to students regarding rote memorization?
-Ali advises students to find creative ways to make rote memorization more enjoyable. He suggests using mnemonics, visual associations, and categorization techniques to transform the process into a more engaging and memorable experience.
How does the conversation between Mark and Ali challenge the traditional narrative of success?
-The conversation challenges the traditional narrative of success that often involves long hours, suffering, and sacrifice. Instead, Mark and Ali discuss the possibility of achieving success while maintaining a balanced and enjoyable life, emphasizing the importance of personal fulfillment and happiness.
Outlines
🌟 The Misunderstood Concept of Productivity
The paragraph discusses the common misconceptions about productivity, emphasizing that it's not just about hard work and long hours. The conversation with Ali Abdaal, a successful YouTuber and author, highlights the importance of making work enjoyable and the impact of emotions on productivity. Ali shares his journey from being a medical doctor to a content creator, stressing the value of creativity and the need to redefine productivity in a more holistic and enjoyable manner.
💡 The Role of Emotions in Productivity
This section delves into the significant role of emotions in productivity. It explains how emotional resistance or anxiety often prevents people from taking the right actions, and how the traditional approach of productivity advice often overlooks this emotional aspect. The conversation suggests that understanding and addressing emotions can be a key component in improving productivity and achieving goals.
🎮 Balancing Work and Leisure for Optimal Productivity
The paragraph explores the idea of balancing work with leisure activities, such as playing video games, as a way to enhance productivity. It argues that setting aside time for enjoyable activities can make one more productive in the long run. The discussion also touches on the concept of diminishing returns and the importance of recognizing when to take a break or engage in a different task to maintain high levels of productivity.
📚 Applying Productivity Principles to All Aspects of Life
This section emphasizes the application of productivity principles beyond work, including relationships and personal growth. It discusses the importance of intentional and effective use of time in all areas of life. The conversation also highlights the fallacy of suffering and sacrifice as a prerequisite for success, and the need to shift the focus towards making all aspects of life more enjoyable and productive.
🚫 Overcoming the Fear of Failure and Embracing Experimentation
The paragraph discusses the fear of failure and how it can hinder productivity. It suggests reframing failure as a form of experimentation and data gathering, which can lead to personal growth and improved outcomes. The conversation includes personal anecdotes and experiences that demonstrate the value of embracing failure as a learning opportunity and the importance of running experiments to find what works best in one's life and work.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Productivity
💡Hustle Culture
💡Emotional Resistance
💡Intentional Time Use
💡Optimal Distractions
💡Compounding Returns
💡Emotional Systems
💡Life Audit
💡CrossFit
💡Work-Life Balance
Highlights
The conversation discusses the misconception that productivity is solely about hard work and suffering, and instead proposes a more holistic and enjoyable approach to productivity.
Ali Abdaal, a former medical doctor turned YouTuber and author, shares his insights on making productivity fun and enjoyable, rather than just focusing on hard work and suffering.
The idea that productivity can be redefined as using time intentionally, effectively, and enjoyably is introduced, challenging the traditional narrative of productivity.
Ali explains how he transitioned from practicing medicine to running a successful YouTube channel by making his work enjoyable and incorporating creativity.
The conversation emphasizes the importance of not working more hours just for the sake of it, and instead focusing on the quality and enjoyment of the work done.
Ali shares his personal journey of realizing that making his work fun was the key to his success, rather than just hard work and suffering.
The discussion highlights the idea that emotions are a fundamental part of productivity, and that addressing emotional resistance can improve productivity.
Ali talks about his book 'Feel Good Productivity' and how it addresses the emotional aspect of productivity, offering a new perspective on achieving success.
The conversation explores the concept of finding joy in work and how it can lead to greater productivity and success, rather than just grinding and suffering.
Ali and Mark discuss the importance of not taking work too seriously and finding ways to make even the most challenging tasks enjoyable.
The podcast episode encourages listeners to rethink conventional productivity myths and discover a path to genuine happiness and balance through their work.
Ali shares his experience of experimenting with different aspects of his work and life, such as working part-time as a doctor and full-time as a YouTuber.
The conversation touches on the idea that success doesn't necessarily mean working more hours, but rather finding the right balance and approach to work.
Ali and Mark discuss the importance of tracking progress and setting achievable goals to make work more enjoyable and productive.
The episode wraps up with a call to action for listeners to leave a rating or review for the podcast, and offers a free '2024 Life Audit' for those who do.
Transcripts
- If you're like me,
you've probably had periods in your life
where you romanticized working brutally long hours
while surviving the intense suffering that comes with it.
For me, it was starting my first business.
I distinctly remember falling asleep
with my laptop on my stomach
only to wake up six hours later
and immediately get back to work where I left off.
In a world that glorifies hustle culture
and emphasizes the grind,
it's easy to make the assumption
that hard work must fundamentally suck.
It's not supposed to be fun, we're told,
after all, if it was easy,
then everybody would fucking do it.
But what if it didn't have to suck?
What if it wasn't painful?
What if it was actually kind of fun?
Today I'm talking to Ali Abdaal,
a former medical doctor turned YouTuber
and author of the new book "Feel Good Productivity".
Ali graduated near the top of his class at Cambridge
and went into practicing medicine full-time in his 20s.
When he realized something both dumb and profound
that it wasn't very fun.
So Ali decided to make it fun.
And as a part of making it fun,
he created a YouTube channel
to share some of his ideas around making it fun.
Today he has more than 5 million subscribers
and runs one of the largest educational channels
in the entire world.
Ali has achieved incredible success
in two of life's most intensely demanding
and challenging domains.
Yet he claims that his success stems less from his hard work
and willingness to suffer and more from his creativity
and ability to make even the most intense drudgery fun.
In this episode,
we're gonna talk about how productivity
got its bad reputation,
how most of the so-called productivity advice
actually makes it worse.
We'll discuss why working more hours
isn't always more productive,
and how sometimes the most useful thing you can do
is not work at all.
We'll hear Ali explain
why the optimal number of distractions is actually not zero
and how he chooses goals in his life
to make failure impossible.
We'll also learn
how the biggest thing holding most people back
is that they actually take their work too seriously.
This episode is more than just a conversation.
It's a journey into rethinking
how we view work, time, and our lives.
It's about breaking down the barriers
of conventional productivity myths
and discovering a path that leads
to genuine happiness and balance.
But before we dive into the conversation,
I have a small request.
If you're tuning in today, please take a moment
to leave a rating or a review for the podcast.
Your support helps us grow
and bring more content like this,
along with more incredible guests like Ali.
Plus, as a token of appreciation,
if you send me a screenshot of your review of this podcast,
you'll receive my exclusive "2024 Life Audit" for free
just in time for the new year.
The "Life Audit" takes you step by step through a process
that I've personally used for over 10 years now
to zero in on the most important values in my life.
So I know exactly
what I wanna give a fuck about in the new year
and what I don't.
You can learn more by going to markmanson.net/audit,
A-U-D-I-T.
You just submit the screenshot of the review
and we will automatically verify and send the PDF to you.
Now, the Audit will show you what goals are worth pursuing,
and this episode will help you make
that pursuit more enjoyable,
thus increasing your chances of success.
So, without further ado, let's fucking get into it.
- [Announcer] Bro, do you even podcast?
Like, bro.
This is "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" podcast
with your host Mark Manson.
(upbeat rock music)
- What do you think is the biggest thing most people
misunderstand about productivity?
- I think one of the big misconceptions about productivity
is that it's about a hustle, it's about grind,
it's about work, work, work.
You know, people sometimes are like, oh,
but like, don't you wanna be unproductive some of the time
and things, I was like.
And I guess it's somewhat semantic
because if people are defining productivity
as efficiency of getting work done, then okay,
I can see that.
I think I choose to define productivity
in a much more holistic sense.
To me, productivity is using your time
in a way that's intentional and effective
and enjoyable, ideally. (chuckles)
- [Mark] Yeah.
- And so to me, like for example, this evening,
I have an evening of alone time
where I'm gonna play "Baldur's Gate 3" on my MacBook
and I might even go and get,
pick up a gaming laptop for myself
because I've been salivating over
the Razer Blade 16 inch
and there's a store in LA that has it in stock.
And so I like to, that to me is productivity.
It's using my time intentionally and effectively.
'cause I'm playing on hard difficulty
and enjoyably 'cause it's gonna be fun.
And having that one evening a week where I play video games
to me is like, that's a dream.
That's what I've been trying to optimize for my whole life
and my 13-year-old self would be
having a field day if he knew that
this is where I've ended up where I can play video games.
That to me is also productivity.
And I think if we expand out the definition,
then we can start applying the principles of productivity.
Like the stuff that you and I talk about,
the stuff that Tim Ferriss talks about.
You can start applying the principles of productivity
to anything in life.
So I love optimizing my relationship
and like using principles of productivity
in my relationship.
It's like, how do we do this in a way
that's more intentional and effective and enjoyable?
And reading books about what makes relationships work
and regular rituals and check-ins and routines.
And we have a notion page for like our relationship reviews
and have done for the last two and a bit years.
That is applying productivity
to real life rather than just to work.
And so, I think people almost focus down too much
on just the work thing or the how do I get better grades
and not enough on, hang on,
I'm learning a set of skills here.
Let me just make my life better.
- I feel like people,
there's a tendency to fetishize suffering and sacrifice.
We tend to love hearing other people's stories
of all the shit you went through, how much you struggled,
all the setbacks you overcame.
Like that's very entertaining
when it happens to other people.
And we really admire that.
And so I think we kind of romanticize that in ourselves
and we think to do something great,
you have to struggle and suffer immensely and be miserable
and (laughs) force yourself
through all sorts of awful shit.
So what I love about this is
it's the first productivity book I've come across
that treats emotions as one of the fundamental systems
within an overall productivity framework.
And this is something that, like,
I would try to write this for years.
I would try to explain to people
that any sort of productivity problem
is fundamentally an emotional problem.
- Yep.
- Like, the reason, if you're not doing something,
it's because you don't feel like doing it.
It's not, there's no, it's not a software issue.
It's not like a lack of
tools or it's not 'cause you didn't get up early enough.
It's because there's some sort of emotional resistance
or anxiety that's preventing you
from taking the right actions
or modifying the behaviors you need to modify.
People don't like hearing that.
They like hearing, they want the tool,
they want the the system.
They want the morning routine.
Why do you think that is?
- Yeah, I think the emotional piece is so,
like I remember the first time I really came across
that idea was reading Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art."
And he calls it the Resistance with the capital R.
- Yeah.
- And like when I read that book,
it just sort of hit me like a ton of bricks.
I was like, oh my fucking God.
Like this is the thing.
Like he's just describing in like this whole book
exactly what I feel when I procrastinate.
It's this resistance.
And what it took for me to kinda get over that
was a recognition that the resistance
is an internal emotional thing
and almost treating myself like a system.
Whereas I think when it comes to kind of like,
even hearing you say that right now,
talking about emotions,
like the part of me that was reading
Lifehacker back in the day is thinking, oh, come on.
Emotions, like- - Yeah.
- What bullshit is this?
- Get over it. (laughs) - Right? Come on. (laughs)
And so many people I speak to
there's that thing of if I could just find the right tool,
if I could just find the right technique,
then I wouldn't procrastinate so much.
Or if I could just find the right meds
for my ADHD or whatever the thing is,
it seems to go in waves
in terms of what people think the magic bullet is,
but fundamentally it just comes down to this thing of
you're unproductive 'cause you don't feel like
doing the thing.
No one ever struggles with procrastination
watching Netflix or hanging out with friends.
- Yeah. - That's not a thing.
We struggle with procrastination when it comes to
writing that blog post or like studying for that exam,
or like doing that slightly boring,
annoying PowerPoint at work that we don't really want to,
or like asking our manager for a raise,
the stuff that feels, we feel that resistance.
And so part of the, part of my goal with the book
was to try and figure out, okay, cool,
we know that's a thing,
so therefore, what are the tools that we can use
to kind of treat emotions as something important?
Treat them sincerely
rather than thinking of it as like, oh, I'm just a pussy
because I'm not like grinding like David Goggins does
or whatever the narratives sometimes are.
- I think it also kinda taps into,
so, I think the big epiphany for me that I had,
and I think I had it writing my second book.
So my attitude in my first book was very much,
bro, you gotta fucking grind.
You gotta suffer.
You did nine hours yesterday, let's do 10 today.
Let's finish two chapters this month.
And I noticed that it started to backfire
that essentially I would get
four really, really good high quality hours out of myself
and then every hour past that would be low quality
or it would be a very mediocre output.
And then I realized that when you're writing a book,
mediocre output is actually worse than no output
because you have to go back
and either heavily edit and revise it,
which is just adding work for yourself
or you have to make a bunch of very difficult decisions
of whether to cut it, delete it, and so on.
So, I had this weird realization probably way too late
that at least in the context of book writing,
four really effective hours was actually more productive
than 10 moderately effective hours.
- Yeah.
- And when that unlocked for myself,
I started wondering where else that applied in my life.
Where else in my life am I,
is that the production curve actually,
not only is there diminishing returns,
but it's actually turning negative at a certain point.
- I totally vibe with this.
I think I am always on the lookout for areas of my life
that have that diminishing return, sort of,
kind of where the curve goes down afterwards.
I'm also always on the lookout for areas
where there's kind of compounding returns-
- Yeah. - Like for example.
But things like starting a YouTube channel,
the difference between making one video a week
and making two videos a week
is actually, it's a step change.
'Cause if you're able to do two videos a week,
you have twice as many chances for one of them to pick up.
And generally putting twice as much effort
into a single video does not,
again, depending on the channel, doesn't yield as much value
as putting that effort into two different videos.
And so, there comes a point where maybe
it takes you 20 hours a week to do one video,
but like you could do 30, 30 hours to get two videos
and actually that extra 10 hours then unlocks
an extra step change in output,
which then improves your odds at succeeding in the thing
rather than diminishes your odds at succeeding on the thing.
And so, I think there are some areas of life
where we have the diminishing returns
and others where we have the compounding,
but I think there are far more
where we have the diminishing than the compounding.
- Yeah. (laughs) - It's like, yeah.
And like balance is good.
It's like all writers fundamental,
like ultimately arrive at the four hour number as well.
- Sure. - I've yet to meet a writer
who say, who writes any more than four hours.
- Yeah, right?
- Or has done it for a long time
who has landed on number more than four.
It seems to be a thing.
- Yeah.
Well, I think there have been a lot of studies too on
just your average worker laborer.
It's the vast majority of their productivity
comes in the first four or five hours.
When they do studies on how much people get done
in like the corporate world,
hours five through eight, it's not much. (laughs)
- And then even the first four hours are like
filled with multitasking and distractions
and like, oh, grabbing a coffee with someone here and there.
And yeah, the whole day goes by
and I have these days where the whole day will go by
and I'd be like, I've written maybe 300 words
and I was aiming for a thousand today.
I'm like, how did I write 300 words in eight hours?
Like, what the hell?
Like, how did this happen?
And it turns out because well,
distractions and lack of focus,
and all the things that everyone struggles with.
- Do you think the optimal number of distractions is zero?
Do you think this concept that we're talking about
of how, like, having that day
to just play video games like let your brain wander.
Does that also apply on a micro basis
with say, checking your phone?
- Yeah.
We found a really cool study about this that's in the book
and weirdly, there's a graph
and it's sort of like an N-shaped graph.
There was a study, I think it was,
they got people to solve a Sudoku
and also to like in a different tab, do some other puzzle,
and also in a different tab do some other puzzle.
And they looked at like,
they were allowed to switch between the puzzles.
And they found that there was actually a sweet spot
that like some amount of switching between tasks
is actually good for you
rather than the traditional narrative,
which is that you must focus on one thing at a time
and exclusively that one thing at a time.
And so, there does seem to be
some kind of optimal number.
So, this is why like,
if I'm working on something
and someone will come along and talk to me,
I don't really let it faze me.
I think of these as welcome distractions in a way.
If I get a notification of like,
some news site that I wasn't really,
I didn't really care about and that derails me,
that to me is an unwelcome distraction.
- Yeah.
- The one thing I used to do at university
is prop my door open at all times
with a little shoe, door stopper thingy.
And so if a friend would come by
and disturb me and distract me for a few minutes,
that to me is a great thing.
Like, the point of university is to hang out with friends,
not really to study and maybe I was marginally
less efficient and less productive.
- Yeah. - But like those,
those like hallway conversations sometimes led to hangouts,
led to plans, led to interesting things.
Like that's kinda the point of life.
So I'm all about trying to find ways to leave the door open
or like work in a communal area
or something that allows surface area for serendipity
when it comes to interactions with people.
- Interesting.
Yeah, I used to be one of those people
who was a little bit religious.
I went through a phase, I should say of maybe three years
that I was very religious about those blocker apps
that like block out social media and news sites
and all the riffraff that you try to avoid
on a day-to-day basis.
And I guess, I don't know, a year or two ago,
I just kinda came to a conclusion that it was
to the core premise of your book,
it was, I was feeling bad.
I was almost like over invested
in being hyperproductive all the time.
And so, at some point I just turned them all off
and I'm like, well, I'll turn them on
if it's ever a problem.
And 90% of the time it's not really a problem.
- What you said there really resonates with me
because I'll change it if it's a problem.
- Yeah.
- Like I think that's like just a pretty chill way
to approach life.
That's like, I'll change it if it's a problem.
- So you've achieved two things
that are very difficult to do.
You've become a doctor
and you've become a successful YouTuber.
Those are also two completely different things.
One is a very creative entrepreneurial pursuit.
One is a very traditional,
bury your head in the books,
memorize a million things.
What are the skills that crossover between those two things?
- Two things.
Number one is an ability to stick with it for long enough
and number two is I think the ability to teach.
- Okay.
- One of the things that medical applicants often say
in their interviews is that,
when they're ask, "Why do you wanna be a doctor?"
There's a phrase "A doctor is a teacher."
Like you're trying to break things down,
you're trying to understand things,
you're trying to explain to patients,
but you're also trying to explain them to your colleagues.
You're trying to, running them by a senior.
You're trying to break some things down
in an explainable way.
You're also kind of teaching the people,
the juniors below you.
It's a very teachingy type thing.
And so, I think that's a skillset
that I've had for most of my life.
I would always be the guy helping kids out
with their homework.
And I did private tutoring when I was younger
as a way of making money off the internet,
being a medical student, being a doctor.
I would always try my best
to teach the people who are younger than me.
And when my YouTube channel started,
it wasn't an educational channel.
I actually started making musical song covers
and I wanted to be the next Kurt Schneider and Boyce Avenue
and these sort of YouTube cover artists that would
sing covers of popular songs.
So the first like five or six videos are still there
and it's those sorts of videos.
Like no one cared.
I have no musical talent.
Some of my friends were good at singing.
I was like, yeah, I'm gonna learn to play the guitar.
I'm gonna be a big YouTuber.
But it was only when I started actually using the fact
that I was pretty good at teaching
and making educational videos
that things started to take off.
And so I think like fundamentally,
like, I don't think I would've been successful
as a Mr. Beast or as an Airrack or as a Ryan Trahan,
or someone who's making
more entertainmenty, inspiringy type content.
But I managed to do well by being like, right guys,
today we're gonna talk about five ways
to do well in your BMAP medical school entrance exam.
Boom.
(Mark laughs) It was what I knew.
So that I think was a big part of overlap.
But I think the other thing that both medical school
and being a YouTuber teach you
is the ability to just stick with it for long enough.
Like medical school in the UK is six years
where for the first three years, at least in Cambridge,
you don't see any patients.
So you have no, like, real world contact with real people.
You're just in the books learning the science,
memorizing tedious pathways and stuff.
And again, finding a way to make it fun
was the real hack for me even when I was in medical school.
Similarly, YouTube, most channels don't succeed
unless you consistently make videos
every week for like two years.
And then at that point you start benefiting
from the compounding
and then you become an overnight success and all that stuff.
- Sure.
- And I think that is...
The skill of faith and patience,
faith that something good will happen
and patience to stick at it long enough to make it happen.
And honestly, I think it all comes back down
to feel good productivity.
If you find a way to make your work feel good,
you are more likely to be patient with it for two years.
If it doesn't feel good, you're like, fuck, why's my view?
Why isn't my YouTube channel blowing up after a month?
And obviously that's not gonna work.
- It also helps solve that conundrum of
how do you know when to stick with it
and how do you know when to quit and give up,
and stop chasing a pipe dream.
And it's, if you love it,
then who cares, right? - Exactly, yeah.
It's fun doing it for intrinsic reasons
rather than extrinsic reasons. - Totally.
- A reason, you're doing it for the sake of the thing itself
rather than the outcome that you're getting from the thing.
- Yeah.
- That's why I loved what you said
to me over lunch the other day
that like, if it's not fun, I'm not gonna do it.
And I was like, yes.
(both laughs)
That is a great place to be
once you're already successful.
- Oh, absolutely.
Until you're successful
I think the reframing is
I need to find a way to make it fun,
otherwise I'm not gonna do it.
- Yeah.
Well, you know what's funny about me
is I think I had that early in my career
and I think it's a big reason of why I became successful
because I was always just very,
I was very similar to you.
I was very uncompromising about
what I would write, the way I would write it,
the particular tone or style,
the subjects I would address.
And I think part of what kinda fucked me up
after "Subtle Art" became so popular was
just very big impressive corporation's,
name brands, celebrities,
all these people started interacting with me
and wanting to do projects with me.
And I didn't feel that liberty to, I was like, oh man,
I'm doing a feature film with Universal Pictures.
Like I can't fuck this up, you know?
Like I can't say these things.
And I think I lost touch with that for a number of years.
And as your book correctly points out, I got burnt out
'cause that's what happens
when you stop having fun with something.
If you're not completely aligned
with why you're doing something, you lose the joy
and you lose the momentum
that keeps you going through the hard times.
I wanna ask you really quick,
while we're talking about medicine versus YouTube,
how is the production function different
between creative work
and say kind of rote memorization, studying science,
learning?
- All of it is creative work.
- All of it. - This is another thing
that students always get wrong.
Like this is my biggest piece of advice
for a lot of students.
Like sometimes you do have to rote memorize
like the Krebs cycle.
- Yeah.
- And one way to do that is to just continue
to drill it again and again.
The other way of doing it is to create a mnemonic
or something fun, or like a cool way of thinking about it.
And I, so actually before starting medical school,
I read loads of books about memory
and the like world champion memory,
people who like memorize decks of cards
and 18,000 digits of pi and all that shit.
- Yeah.
- And basically all of them were like, yeah,
you just need to create a really strong association,
like a strong visual association in your mind.
And the more absurd that association is,
the more likely you are to learn the thing.
And so even now,
like when me and my medic friends get together,
we'll like joke about the ways
that we used to memorize things.
Like, ah, isoniazid gives you peripheral neuropathy
'cause isoniazid, the drug, sounds kinda like ISIS
and ISIS famously chop your hands off if you do bad things.
So it's like, imagine like (Mark laughs)
peripheral neuropathy is like isoniazid.
Or like, I don't know, ethambutol sort of
makes your wee orange because etham has the word ham in it.
And if you think ham, it's sort of like pink
and pink is sort like orange.
So it's like you get like orange wee.
And that was how me and most of my friends
got through the rote memorization of medical school,
which is a highly creative task.
- Yeah.
- Or like making cool mnemonics
to like memorize all 12 cranial nerves.
Like, there's various rude versions of them.
It's like on they traveled and found various
something and horcruxes.
It's like gives you all the nerves of the face and stuff.
It's like, shit like that that makes it fun,
it's a creative act.
Finding a way to, another kinda tip,
if any student's listening to this to categorize things.
Hematology is like the study of the blood,
it's like a huge field.
But like if you look at all 100 conditions in hematology,
you can basically categorize them into three things.
Like great, that simplifies it.
Now within those three things,
you've got categories for like four things.
And like the textbooks won't tell you this
'cause they're sorted in fucking
alphabetical order for no reason.
(Mark laughs)
So you just have to like, look at the shit
and be like, okay,
what's the sensible categorization of this?
Oh great.
There's like anemia, there's malignant heme,
and there's like a non-malignant heme, great.
Those are the three categories,
bang, bang, bang, three structures.
And it's also creative and also fun.
And now when I speak to medical students,
the ones who are like,
"Oh man, medical school's such a grind.
But once I be a doctor, it's gonna be fun."
I'm always like, oh, we need to talk
because if you're finding medical school a grind
where going into the hospital is optional,
you are not gonna find being a doctor fun
where suddenly going into work is no longer optional.
And I will always try and encourage students,
find a way to make whatever you're studying feel good,
find a way to make it fun because that is an attitude
that will help you learn the thing better
and also make me and you less stressed,
and also make you enjoy life more.
- Yeah. - I'm just like massively.
- It's remarkable that you still (finger snaps)
have to recall all that stuff
10 years later. - It's the visual
metaphors and imagery.
- The fun thing for me
I find it in my own life particularly useful
around fitness and health
because like most people I think
I found fitness to be just a fucking bummer. (laughs)
- I'm struggling with this right now.
Like, help me figure this out.
- Yeah, so it's the thing that unlocked it
and I'm not a huge CrossFitter,
but I, I visited a couple CrossFit classes
and it completely, I mean, it's like
the first section of your book
could basically just be kind of a guide
to like why CrossFit works.
Because they gamify everything.
They put you in teams and they track scores
and help you try to best get new PRs
and do all this stuff.
And it was the first time
my associations with fitness and working out,
it was always just this drudgery.
It was like, oh, well yeah, I'm doing this today
because I don't wanna fucking die when I'm 60.
All the stuff that you read about
or I wanna lose 10 pounds before summer.
And it never felt good.
It was never fun.
It felt like an obligation.
It felt like a chore.
It felt like a lot of it was shame-driven
or judgment-driven.
And then I went to some of those CrossFit classes
and I had the hardest workouts of my life.
Like, I was literally laying on the floor.
(Ali snickers) You know?
Like world swirling above me, barely remaining conscious.
And I'm like giggling with how much fun I had.
And it was such an epiphany to me of just like,
turn it into a game,
turn it into a little competition with yourself,
invite friends over.
Like, I used to be so rigid and structured
about like a workout program, right?
Like I'd go, I'd go online and find like this,
oh, this is the workout program
that's gonna help you build 10 pounds of muscle
in the next three months.
And I'm like, oh man, I gotta do this.
I gotta like show up every day.
And again, back to that point of
I used to think you had to hit every workout
exactly the way it's listed
at exactly the day that you're supposed to do it.
And I realized like, if you miss a day
or if you have to push it back a day,
or maybe a friend is coming into town
and he's got a workout program, you're gonna do it together.
Or maybe like, he likes to run,
so maybe I go running with him
instead of my workout that day.
It keeps it fun and interesting and novel
and that keeps the motivation going.
It keeps the excitement going.
Tracking was another huge unlock for me.
I never tracked my workouts in the past.
I was just kinda, again,
I would download some list off the internet
and just like follow it to a T like a fucking robot.
And when I got a tracking app
and I started putting in all my lifts and all my weights
and how many reps I did of everything.
And every single week when I open up that app,
when I start my workout, I'm like, okay,
last week I did three sets of eight at this weight.
Today I'm gonna try to do three sets of nine
and see if I can do it.
And that just, that little bit of competition with myself
gets me through that set,
gets me excited about it.
When I hit it, it feels good.
Yeah, it's been incredibly profound.
And it's, again, it's one of those fucking obvious things
like and I hate shit like this
because it's when you have to take your own medicine,
like it's the advice that you've written about for years
and you never applied in your own life.
But it's been really transformative the past couple years,
for sure.
- That's so I've been struggling with motivation
or consistency on the fitness front for literally years.
And it was, again, when I was reading the audiobook
for this a few months ago, I was like.
(Mark laughs)
My god, like literally,
I have not thought about applying this principle to fitness.
- Yeah.
- And just like find a way to make it feel good.
And if you've tried all the things and it doesn't,
then like change it up and try something else.
- Yes.
- So I've been thinking in the back of my mind,
I really wanna try CrossFit
because there's so many examples from CrossFit of like
how they used all these strategies and stuff.
- Yes.
- And I've yet to try CrossFit.
- I didn't stick with CrossFit.
I actually found CrossFit too intense,
which a lot of people run into that issue
and a lot of people get injured and things like.
Like what I noticed when I was doing CrossFit
is I would go so hard that I would feel exhausted
for the next 48 hours and it actually dampen my energy
'cause I was overexerting.
So in many ways it's almost like the problem with CrossFit
is it's too effective.
It like gets you going too hard.
It is such a worthwhile experience
just to go experience the community.
The community's amazing.
People are, they're so positive there.
Like it's very, doesn't matter.
Like there'll be a dude next to you who's lifting 400 pounds
and you're like struggling to get the bar off the ground
and people are cheering for you
just as hard as they're cheering for that guy.
There's like no judgment.
Everybody's super positive so. - Oh, nice.
- Thumbs up, CrossFit.
- Yeah, I would absolutely check it out.
- So, this is something that comes up a lot
with my readers and fans, and I'm curious,
it just occurred to me that there might be an analog
in the productivity world as well.
But like, I've actually, over the years
I've come to the conclusion that
in kind of the self-help personal development space,
there's actually secretly
two separate categories that are going on.
And I think a lot of people get them mixed up,
which is the first one is advice
that takes you from bad to okay, right?
So it's like, if you're depressed,
here's some things you can do to like
help you not be so depressed.
But then there's also advice
that takes you from okay to great.
If you're just kind of a normal person
going about their life,
but you wanna do something really amazing and special,
here are four things that you can try
to like make your life way more effective.
And I find there's so much confusion in my world
and readers and people who follow other people
in this space,
they see the bad to okay advice
and they mistake it for okay to great advice.
They'll be like, oh, well that's obvious.
Like, everybody knows that.
I'm like, well, yeah, it's not meant for you,
it's meant for the guy who can't get off the couch
or it's okay to great advice,
but it's misconstrued by people being like
well, that's not gonna help me
get over my crippling anxiety.
Like I can't even do this or that.
- Nice. - I wonder if there's
an analog in the productivity space
because a lot of what we're talking about is mitigation.
It's almost like mitigating unproductivity
rather than maximizing productivity.
- Yeah. - It's like making sure
you're not falling below 80%
rather than killing yourself trying to get to 99%.
- Oh, I really like this.
I've not thought of it in this way,
but that, I think there are definitely analogs.
One thing that comes to mind is like bad to okay
is often about the basic obvious things
and often about the hardware,
like sleep, exercise, nutrition.
- Totally.
- If you're depressed, just like
people have done the studies on this.
Sleeping eight hours a night,
doing some exercise every single day,
having some social contact and like, about it. (laughs)
And like eating well is like-
- That solves like 80% of it. - Gets you more-
- It solves 80% of it.
The other 20% is like whatever.
So for someone who's depressed worrying about
maximizing their typing speed or keyboard shortcuts
or bashing and all that shit that we'd have to talk about,
like, it's kinda meaningless.
But to go from okay to great,
you still have to have the basics done
because the basics will derail you immediately.
- Yeah. - Like you can have the best
productivity hacks in the world,
but if you're sleeping three hours a night,
obviously it's not gonna work.
And so you have to do the basics well,
the basic fundamentals, the boring fundamentals,
and then you can start adding stuff on top of that.
But recognizing that, like, I think,
like that point you made at the start,
like the people with billion dollar businesses
are not really working that much harder
than the people with million dollar businesses.
Even though there's a huge difference
between billion and a million.
They're just doing different, playing different chess moves.
Yeah.
And so, going from, I think going from okay to great
is often about finding the right chess moves
rather than really about working harder.
Because if you have the basic fundamentals
and you're operating at 80%,
and you find an area of the market
where your business will just a 100X by default,
by virtue of being in that market,
like trying to sell to people with money
rather than trying to sell to broke students.
You could do the same amount of work
and still play video games and still have a great life,
but also make tons and tons of money.
- Yeah.
- And so those are now the stories that I look for
and I enjoy.
I don't really vibe with stories of like, oh my God,
I struggled so much and I suffered so much.
I love the stories when someone's like, you know what,
I was working on this for a few years, it was really fun.
I had a really balanced life,
spent time with my friends and family,
played some video games
and also the thing was successful.
- Yeah. - I love that shit.
I'm like, great.
That is the person we should aspire to be
rather than Muhammad Ali is like,
"I suffered every day for 10 years
and it was worth it to become a champion."
It's like most of us I don't think wanna suffer for 10 years
just to become a a champion.
- Have you read the new Elon Musk book?
- I have not.
It's on my Audible at the moment.
- Oh man. It is a wild ride.
It is an absolute wild ride.
He is everything you expect times 10.
But it's funny because he is totally that person.
I was actually surprised
how few takeaways there are from the book
because I don't think what he does is reproducible at all.
Or if you tried to reproduce it,
you would make yourself so miserable
that I'm not sure you would even wanna do that.
Like, he is that guy who is
18 hours a day on the factory floor
screaming at people.
- Yeah.
- Like involving himself in every little decision
and it, you could see,
he's like not a happy person. (laughs)
- Yeah, he describes entrepreneurship
as like chewing glass or something.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- And I've never felt like
entrepreneurship is chewing glass,
but obviously I'm not trying to get people on Mars.
I'm just trying to build a-
- (laughs) You're just making YouTube videos.
- I'm making bloody YouTube videos,
trying to build a lifestyle business,
trying to make time to play video games,
hang out, hang out with people in LA.
(Mark chuckles)
And so, yeah.
Different strands of entrepreneurship.
One gets you to Mars,
the other one gets you a couple of YouTube videos.
(both laughs)
But one leads to what I would describe,
you know, I'd recommend entrepreneurship
for a lot of people.
Elon Musk would not recommend
his branch of entrepreneurship for almost anyone.
- No and he actively doesn't actually.
There's a great moment in the book where, I don't know,
he goes through like some crazy drama at SpaceX,
loses his mind,
and then immediately has to get on a plane
and fly to Asia for like some big conference.
And he gets there and it's a room full of founders
and business owners who are there to hear him speak.
And the first question is,
"This is a room full of 2,000 people
who are inspired by you and who wanna learn from you.
Like what is the best piece of advice
that you can give us to be as effective as you are?"
And he just looks at him and says, "Don't."
It's like you don't wanna go through what I go through.
(laughs)
And by that point in the book,
you've read enough of the book that you're like,
yeah, don't, don't.
(laughs) Don't do it.
- I do wonder though, this like,
when I interview people on my pod,
I always ask the question of like,
once someone is post-success,
they're always preaching work-life balance.
- Yeah.
- But I wonder, I always wonder like,
could they have achieved that level of success
while also having work-life balance?
Or is it a phase that everyone has to go through
where there is always a phase of grindiness or whatever
and then on the other end
you stop preaching work-life balance?
- I don't think so.
Rich people they go through 10 years
of grind, failure, suffering, struggle,
come out the other end, balance their lives,
become very healthy and happy,
and then turn around and tell everybody else
that they should be balanced, healthy, and happy.
And it depends what you're trying to do, right?
Like I think if you are in a more conventional career path,
I think there's a lot to be said
maybe about work-life balance.
If you are doing something entrepreneurial
there seems to be an escape velocity phenomenon
where you need an immense amount of force and pressure
to get off the ground and to get into orbit.
And then once you're in orbit,
you can kinda ease off a little bit.
I don't know if you can escape that though.
- Yeah.
So my way of squaring this conundrum was to
and I think I recognize this fairly on, fairly early on,
which is why the book is called "Feel Good Productivity"
is to be like, okay, I need to do lots of work
to make my business successful and be financially free.
Great, let me find a way to make that work feel really good.
And I'd get home from work when I was working in my day job
and I would look forward to editing a video.
And on days where I didn't look forward to editing a video,
I would find a way to make editing the video.
I would, the stuff I talk about in the book,
like play, power, people,
find a way to do it in a slightly different way.
Find a way to level up the transition or the animation.
So random shit like that I found as a way
to make, almost convince myself that editing a video
for four hours in the evening was actually more enjoyable
than watching Netflix for four hours in the evening.
And I would have friends being like,
"Look Ali, you know, you're working too hard and shit."
And so, I used to be addicted to "World of Warcraft"
back in the day. - Yeah.
And so I went back into well, got a gaming pc
'cause I was like, okay, I can afford it now,
bought a gaming PC, played some well.
And I'd find myself more drained
at the end of a gaming session
than I would by the end of an editing session
because I found a way to make the process so enjoyable.
And from all the research,
interviewing a bunch of people and reading a lot
in preparation for writing the book,
a lot of successful people seem to land
at the thing of like,
the way to do something consistently
is to find a way to make it feel good.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- And if the thing gives you energy,
then you kind of want to do it.
You don't just wanna scroll TikTok,
which is not a thing that really energizes anyone.
- Yeah.
So let's talk specifically
about what constitutes feeling good.
Because my fucked up head
as soon as I see "Feel Good Productivity,"
I'm like, oh, cocaine.
Of course.
I'm gonna get a ton done. (laughs)
Like where is that line
between feeling good about the work you're doing
and distraction or indulgence?
- I think if the thing is feeling good
and moving you in the direction
of the work you wanna be doing, then great.
If the thing is feeling good
and moving you away from the work you wanna be doing,
then that's not so good.
Or feeling good but moving you away from it
in terms of like the rest of your life.
- There's like a sustainability aspect.
- Yeah, there's absolutely.
And so the final three chapters of the book
are all about sustainability.
Broadly anything that feels good,
that moves you towards your goal is a good thing.
I am a big believer of small little tweaks.
Like Tim Ferriss asked that question,
"What would this look like if it were easy?"
And I think that's a great question.
I ask myself that a lot.
I ask myself a slightly different question,
what would this look like if it were fun?
Like what does a more fun version of a podcast look like?
What does a fun version of editing look like?
What does a fun version of writing discharge summaries
look like when you're a junior doctor?
And asking myself that question is like,
what does it look like if it were fun?
while I'm writing my discharge letter,
let me add a few jokes here and there.
It's gonna be a real life human reading
this letter on the other end.
Let me just say something nice about this patient's cat
because it's just kinda funny
and like, doctors don't do that
'cause it's too straight-laced and too boring.
It's like, it's gonna make the writing a little bit nicer.
Let me use my creativity a bit
when writing this patient's like discharge summary.
Little tweaks like that move me in the direction
that I want to go.
I finished this discharge summary
but just make the process more fun.
So it's not a case of doing cocaine and writing it,
it's a case of like adding a few jokes about
the fact that this patient has been very disappointed
because Chelsea lost the game recently
or whatever the thing might be.
- Yeah.
- It's just like lame, lame dad jokes
that make things more fun sometimes.
- I feel like a lot of people find that difficult perhaps
because they worry about doing something differently.
They worry what other people are gonna think.
If I comment on somebody's cat on the discharge form,
what if they don't like that?
What if they complain to my supervisor?
What if the other doctors look at me weird?
How does that factor into this?
- (laughs) Yeah.
I think people just overindex way too much on thinking.
There's just too much seriousness.
(Mark laughs) Way too much seriousness.
- Like there's that quote from Alan Watts,
"Don't be serious, be sincere."
And it's like, the way I think of it
is I imagine myself in that position.
If I were a GP, general practitioner,
reading a discharge summary
and someone made a comment about the cat,
I'd have a little chocolate,
it would make my day because everything else I've read,
it's just been boring as fuck.
- Yeah.
- I used to give this advice to students
when you're studying for exams.
If you're writing essays,
you just wanna imagine the poor examiner.
They're having to like, empathy for the examiner.
They're having to read 500 of these
shitty pieces of writing.
- Yeah.
- Give them something to chuckle about.
They're gonna give you the top grade immediately
because you've just made their life a little bit better.
You know, you have nice handwriting,
maybe you use a little pink highlighter or something
just to make it a little bit more pleasant.
I think people over index on this way too much.
I'm also a strong believer in seeking forgiveness
rather than permission.
So I started incorporating jokes into my discharge letters
and the only comment I ever got was actually
a written compliment from a GP
who emailed the hospital staffing department being like,
can I just say this is the best
discharge summary I've ever seen.
And that was a commendation on my CV.
(Mark laughs)
That was sick.
But you know, there were times where I also,
I made a video and I was a bit too blase about data security
and the way that I spoke about patient data and stuff.
And so someone complained to the hospital
and I was like, ah, okay, let's not do that again.
So most things are not,
it's not like they're gonna fire me immediately.
They're gonna be like, hey man,
be a bit less blase about data security.
And I'm like, yes, that's a very good point.
I should have been less blase about it.
So usually these things are not that like life or death-
- Yeah. - Or not that like important,
but we treat them with such importance.
I think also when giving presentations at work,
people are boring as fuck when giving presentations at work.
But the most effective presentations
are the ones that start
with a bit of a joke. - Of course.
- Take it a bit less seriously.
- Of course. - Lightens everything up,
gets the energy and the mood going.
Whereas when you see someone who's like so timid
and so like, I have to be professional,
just sucks the joy out of it.
- Yeah.
- And everyone wants more energy in their life.
- It's funny because the classic
caring too much what other people think,
I think not only does it kill fun,
it attacks that issue that we started off with,
which is knowing what to optimize for in the first place.
I personally interact with a lot of readers
and listeners that they feel very lost in life.
Like they don't know
what they should be pursuing in the first place.
And when you really drill down deep,
it's because they've spent their entire life
trying to please the people around them.
You know, it's like mom and dad wanted me to be a lawyer
so I went to law school.
And then I got a job at this firm
and they wanted me to take on these sorts of cases.
So I took on these sorts of cases
and then I needed to move into a bigger apartment.
So I had to work on this team
but I don't like the people on the team.
And next thing you know, they have an entire life
that has been structured around
other people's wants and desires.
And not only are they not addressing
their own wants and desires,
so they're out of touch with
what they should be optimizing for.
They've never actually taken that time to experiment
and discover who themselves are
so they don't even know what they like.
Like they know they don't like being a lawyer
but they don't know what they would like otherwise.
And so again, it's this really deep intersection
between emotions and productivity, optimization,
achieving goals, whatever you wanna call it.
It's such a cliche thing to say like,
oh, stop worrying about what other people think.
It's as the years go on,
I'm consistently surprised and impressed
at how deeply this affects people
and kinda fucks everything up for them.
- That's so true.
Yeah, as you were saying that, I was kinda thinking like,
that's definitely the experience
that I've seen from other people
and I was wondering why
I personally didn't have that so much.
And I think all of it can be basically traced down
to Tim Ferriss, basically. (both laughs)
Ever since I discovered the freaking "4-Hour Workweek"
and realized the life that's possible,
the whole like new rich thing,
the whole like, wait a minute.
Think about what you actually want from your life
rather than following the script
and assuming when you retire at 65
with osteoarthritis in both of your knees,
you'll suddenly be happy
sipping cocktails in a beach in Thailand.
One, One of the core insights from it,
which is not like a highlight,
it's not one of the top level highlights
that people normally say.
It's just the idea of running experiments
and testing hypotheses.
Like I was just signing up to go to med school for six years
and then training for 10 years
for the sake of being a consultant when I was 40.
And I hadn't really considered that path
beyond like two days of work experience
and the fact that everyone I knew was a doctor.
And so, after reading "The 4-Hour Workweek,"
I started asking people
who were 10 years ahead of me in their careers,
are you happy?
What are you up to?
Like would you change anything?
My favorite question, if you won the lottery,
how would you spend your time?
- [Mark] Yeah.
- Would you still do medicine?
And then half of the people would say
they would leave immediately.
- Wow.
- One guy even said he'd leave
in the middle of the operation.
- Oh my God.
(both laughs)
Good luck. (laughs)
- He was like, yeah, my dream is to coach
my son's like football team 'cause he loved football.
There this is soccer. - Yeah.
- And the other half of the people said
they would continue medicine but they'd go part-time.
I've never met anyone
who enjoys working at hours a week as a doctor.
It's just not fun.
- Yeah. - I've met people who enjoy
working 30 hours a week as a doctor,
maybe even 40, but not 80.
80, like doing anything for 80 hours a week is just not fun.
And I would always ask those people, it's like,
okay, well what's stopping you from going part-time?
And it would always be money.
Well, I've got a mortgage with kids,
like bills and all that shit.
And so "The 4-Hour Workweek" gave me that language,
gave me that like mindset shift to be like, oh fuck,
if money is the problem
and the people 10 years ahead of me in their career
are not having fun,
I need a way to make money.
- And so, I think that's such a really great takeaway,
the find people 10 years ahead of you on your current path
and ask them how they feel,
what their current problems are,
what their regrets are, or what anything they would change.
Like it's one of those things that is
once you hear it said is so obvious
but I've never heard anybody talk about that before.
- I think that has, that attitude of experimentation
has pervaded every aspect of my life.
Like we've got 54 actionable tips in this book,
all of them are framed as experiments
because it's like the idea is try this experiment,
see if it works.
Once my YouTube channel has started to make money,
my hypothesis was always,
Hey, I'll be a part-time doctor and a part-time YouTuber.
I've named my course the Part-Time YouTuber Academy.
It was all about, I still really enjoy medicine,
it's still really fun.
Wanna be a part-time doctor.
And then I kind of realized, wait a minute,
before I sign up to a eight-year residency program
and try and go part-time,
let me just experiment with a few extra shifts
to see what it's like being a part-time doctor.
And for about two weeks I did extra shifts
in the emergency department.
This was when I wasn't working
so I would do like two days a week or something.
And every 10 minutes I was thinking, why am I here?
What am I doing right now?
The dingy emergency department, there's no natural light.
I could be in a really nice WeWork right now
with my team making YouTube videos.
That's so much more fun.
Why am I here?
And after two weeks of this I realized, hang on,
I've just tried out this experiment,
this part-time doctor, part-time, YouTuber life.
I've realized fuck this. (chuckles)
- Yeah. (laughs)
- It's so much more fun being a full-time YouTuber.
- Yeah. - Oh my goodness.
Wow, that two week experiment
has now changed the course of my life
because now I'm not worrying about
applying to the US for a residency program
and spending three years preparing for the exams and stuff.
But if I hadn't run the experiment,
I would've thought, well, of course,
theoretically being a part-time doctor's one
because these doctors I've spoken to say it's reasonable
and it's good to call myself Dr. Ali Abdaal,
and have the title of the book and all that shit.
But I ran the experiment and I was like, nope, not for me.
Ran the other experiment of what's it like
being a full-time YouTuber?
That's really fun.
Ran the experiment of what's it like
to have a team of 20 people not fun.
(Mark laughs)
More fun having a team of 10,
10 is a good number, 10 to 12.
That was really fun and it continues to be really fun.
And even now it's like everything in life,
I almost treat like an experiment.
I said to my team this morning,
we had like an all hands team meeting.
The experiment we're trying for the next three months is,
what does it look like
if I only make a video when I feel like it
rather than on a schedule?
Don't know, let's see what happens.
Let's run it as an experiment.
We'll see.
Best case scenario, experiment works out
and I realize I've got more joy in my life.
Worst case scenario experiment doesn't work out.
I get more data.
It's not really a failure, it's just an experimental,
it's an experiment.
Even a failure is useful data.
And then I can inform the way I live my life.
Experiments around like, huh, I wonder if it would be fun
to, I don't know, try running every day.
Try that for a couple weeks, see what happens.
I just, I'm just all about experimenting with life
and over time, landing on a nice place.
But even then, like the place we land
where we feel happy and fulfilled as we grow older,
people say, the things that brought you happiness
and fulfillment when you were younger
don't necessarily do it again.
And so, all of life is basically this sort of
running bunch of different experiments,
having fun along the way
and sort of meandering your way to some sort of,
sort of fulfillment or something like that.
- Something, yeah. Yeah.
The framing of it, the framing of life as experimentation
is I think is incredibly powerful as well
because it removes the stigma of failure.
There's no such thing as failure,
there's only information, right?
It's like, okay, we ran an experiment.
I tried working overtime for a month as an experiment to see
and it didn't go well.
So that's information that's,
it removes the mindset that you have
to succeed at everything you try
or that everything has to go well all the time.
It's the only metric of success is simply feedback.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- There's a story that I talk about in the book.
There's a YouTuber called Mark Rober
who used to work at NASA, then worked at Apple
and now he's like a science educator on YouTube,
and he ran a really fun experiment.
He created like a coding challenge for his,
like, for 50,000 of his audience,
and he split them up into two groups.
And the idea was this challenge
would help you learn how to code.
And it was some sort of like robot maze
and you had to sort of program the robot
to like go around the maze or something
on this online interface.
And the ingenious thing for this was
that this was not a solvable problem.
Like you couldn't actually solve it.
- [Mark] Yeah.
- So he was just seeing like, how much would people try?
And so he split the 50,000 people into two groups.
For half of them if they hit execute on the code
and it didn't work, it said,
"You have failed. Please try again."
But for the other half of the people it said,
"You have failed.
You've lost five points.
You now have 195 points.
Please try again."
These points were totally meaningless,
completely arbitrary.
But one group started with 200 fake points
and the other group got told nothing.
And the group who got told they lost five points,
tried less than half as many attempts
at solving this coding puzzle.
- Really? - And the crew
that didn't say anything at all.
And this whole experiment was a ruse.
It wasn't intended to teach people how to code.
It was intended to see how do people feel about failure.
And when you're told you've lost five points,
even though it's totally meaningless
and it does not mean anything and it's not money,
it's completely irrelevant,
you still try half, (chuckles)
less than half the number of times
as someone who wasn't told that at all.
And so his whole message,
he has a TED Talk about this
is all about how do we reframe failure?
And I think the way we reframe failure, as you said,
is experimentation where even failure is data gathering.
- Yeah.
Well, Ali, the book is "Feel Good Productivity."
Go buy it everywhere.
- There's a quote from you on the front.
- It's- - Thank you, by the way
for offering that quote- - Has my name on the quote.
- And yeah, I'm actually reading the thing.
- Dude, it's a great book, man.
You did a great job with it.
And it's, I've been very passionate about this idea
of an emotional,
emotions as part of the overall productivity system.
It's something that I've tried to write about at times.
Productivity's not really my wheelhouse.
So it's like it never really quite landed
or I never like wrote it in a way
that I felt good about it.
As soon as I started reading this,
I got like two, three chapters in.
I'm like, all right. - Nice.
- Yeah, this is it.
- Nice. - He's got it.
Like this is the productivity book that we've all needed.
- Lovely.
We'll clip that. Put it as a testimonial.
- Yeah, there you go. - Want some paid ads on it.
(both laughs)
- You can put a second line
with my name on it on the book, so.
Ali, it's been a pleasure, man.
- Thank you so much. - Thanks for coming on.
♪ Beat me black and blue ♪
♪ Every wound will shape me ♪
♪ Every scar will build my throne ♪
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