[MUSIC PLAYING] MATT BRITTIN: Welcome
to Talks at Google. My name is Matt Brittin. And today, I'm really excited. We have a doctor, an
entrepreneur, a magician, and the world's most-followed
productivity expert. And it's just one person who
combines all those roles. He studied medicine at the
University of Cambridge, qualified as a doctor in the
UK National Health Service. He worked during COVID. He's always been fascinated
by productivity, though, and the challenges of
juggling everything in life, which I suspect we
are all familiar with, too. And he launched
a YouTube channel in 2017, which has become
incredibly popular, sharing his advice and tips. He's got over 7
million followers across platforms
around the world, and he's reached hundreds
of millions of people with his material. And in December 2023,
he published this book, which I read on
a plane recently, and I took copious notes,
"Feel-Good Productivity," which quickly became a "New
York Times" and "Sunday Times" Best Seller. And one of my favorite
productivity tips is, if you're stuck, and you've
got a big task ahead of you, just get started. So shall we do that? Please welcome Ali Abdaal. Ali. [APPLAUSE] Thank you so much. Welcome. Welcome to Talks at Google. ALI ABDAAL: Thank you. MATT BRITTIN: Have a seat. So you are now an author. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah, weird. MATT BRITTIN: How does it feel? ALI ABDAAL: It feels
really bizarre. Because it's like I've been
a YouTuber for seven years. And that was my prime identity. I mean, well, firstly, my prime
identity was being a doctor. And then, at some
point, it shifted. When people would ask, what
do you do, I would say, oh, I guess I'm a
YouTuber, which is still kind of a weird thing-- kind of. And now, it's being
an author and seeing the book-- and the fact that
you even read it and took notes is very flattering. It's really, really cool. Everyone should be a YouTuber. MATT BRITTIN: Fantastic. Well, congratulations
on the book. And I guess what
I liked about this is it starts with defining
what productivity is-- "How to Do More of
What Matters to You." That's the subtitle. So let's just start to unpack
your whole philosophy here. And for me, anyway, it seems
to hinge on that definition. So take us through how we
should think about productivity. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. So I think, back in
the day, productivity was a lot about
output per unit time, like how many widgets
can you crank out in a certain amount of time, and
how can you be more efficient. And we landed on this idea of
efficiency being the key thing. But increasingly, as
the world's changed-- all of us are knowledge
workers, in various degrees-- it's a lot less about just being
able to crank out the widgets and a lot more about
making sure you're actually rowing in the right direction. Because you can
be very efficient, just driving in completely
the wrong direction. So for me, a big part
of productivity is, How do we use our time in
a way that's intentional, that's effective, and that's
actually enjoyable, as well? And that's kind of what
this whole philosophy of feel-good
productivity stems from. There's a bunch of
really cool research that shows that when you're
feeling good about the work that you're doing, when
you're experiencing positive emotions, when
you're enjoying it, that boosts your creativity. It boosts your productivity. It reduces your stress levels. And it just, generally,
makes your life better. And so the book started off
as a bit of an exploration for, What would it look like
if all of the work that we did actually felt good? And turns out, there's a bunch
of research backing that up. And that's what
the book is about. MATT BRITTIN: So I'd love to
start to go further into that and, particularly, how
you get energy for things. So there's, obviously,
things we all love doing, and we could spend
all our time doing, whether it's watching YouTube
videos or cooking or whatever. But some of the time,
in any life, in any job, there's stuff that you,
maybe, don't have energy for. And in some lives and
jobs, some of that stuff is quite a lot of life or job. So how do you
address those things? ALI ABDAAL: Yeah, absolutely. So we all have to do things that
we don't enjoy some of the time. The question is, How do we get
ourselves to actually enjoy-- how do we get ourselves to
enjoy even those things? And there's, basically,
three core principles. And there's a story of a guy
who I interviewed for the book. And his name is Matthew. And he used to
work at McDonald's. He used to work in a
McDonald's drive-through. And he really applied
these three principles to make working at the
McDonald's drive-through more enjoyable and more energizing. So the first principle is play. And that's the first
chapter of the book. How can we approach our work
more in the spirit of play? So what Matthew did, he was
working in the drive-through, and he realized it
was really boring. He was like, OK, how do I
make this feel more like play? So what he would do
is that, every day, he would decide it's a
different sauce day that day. So Monday was
barbecue sauce day. MATT BRITTIN:
Different sauce day? ALI ABDAAL: Different sauce. So Monday is barbecue sauce day. Tuesday is sweet and sour sauce. Wednesday is curry
sauce-- whatever. And his mission, when he was
manning the drive-through, was to upsell the customers
on that particular sauce, specifically, that
particular sauce. So they would
place their orders. Would you like fries with
that, blah, blah, blah. And would you like
barbecue sauce with that? The people are like,
that's a bit weird. It's not the script. It's not the SOP,
all that stuff. And he would-- and
then if they said, yes, he would upsell
them the barbecue sauce and try and get them to buy two. If they said no, he would
try and convince them. The barbecue sauce
is really tasty. It's low-calorie, as
well, blah, blah, blah. And by doing so, he managed to
apply this principle of play, added a bit of an arbitrary
challenge to his day job. It made the
customer's life better because now they had a more
interesting interaction. It made his life better
because he was having more fun. And it actually improved the
profits of the McDonald's franchise place that
he was working at, so his manager loved him. And then he ended up
getting promoted to manager fairly shortly thereafter. So one of the key
principles is play. And the question I like to ask
myself a lot-- and I, actually, have this as my
phone wallpaper-- is whenever I'm
struggling with a task, whenever it feels draining or
I'm doing a frickin' tax return or trying to figure out how do
I kind of connect up the YouTube API to our Google Sheet thing
and it's just [MUMBLES]---- [LAUGHTER] --I'm always like, What would
this look like if it were fun? What would this look
like if it were fun? If it were fun, I probably
wouldn't be on my desk at home in my bedroom, hunched
over my laptop like this. I'd probably take my laptop and
go down to a local coffee shop. I live in Marylebone right now. It's very nice. There's cafes. And I can just go to a
cafe, order a nice latte. Or in the case of you guys, you
get free coffee and free food. So you can just go to the
cafe and have a free coffee. You don't have to pay for it. What would it look
like if it were fun? And that has been a
central guiding question to a lot of my thinking
on productivity is just, whenever
I'm doing something, how can I find a way to just
incorporate that spirit of play a little bit more. So play is one of
the three energizers. MATT BRITTIN: It's a
brilliant thought, actually. And you also talk about things
like adopting a character and finding an
adventure as other-- they're quite playful ways
of bringing energy to a task. Maybe tell us a bit more about
those kind of techniques, too. They're really fascinating. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. So it sounds kind of weird, but
one of the classic productivity strategies is, at
the start of the day, you decide what is your
most important task. What's the one thing that, if
you just did that one thing today, then it would be a win? I started doing
this in med school, and I found it very effective. And I realized,
instead of calling it a most important task, if I
just called it an adventure and just made it more fun. And so now I have as my
morning journaling prompt-- there's an app I
use called Day One, and it just gives me
this morning template-- and the question is, What's
today's adventure going to be? And so, today's adventure is
doing this talk at Google, which already is fun and
just frickin' insane, and I'm super
flattered to be here. But that's today's adventure. Tomorrow's adventure is
making slides for a course that I'm working on. But framing it as an
adventure makes it more fun. In our team, we use OKRs. I suspect you guys might
be familiar with that. [LAUGHTER] But we don't call them
Objectives and Key Results. We actually call them quests. It's like, What's the quest for
the quarter, quarterly quests? And there's something about
using that terminology. Everyone on the team, it's
like, grow YouTube subscriber count to 6.5 million by 2024. It's kind of a boring
way of describing it. The way, for example-- our goal was to try and get
loads of preorders for the book. We titled that quest
Operation Banger. The goal is to get the
book to be a banger-- Operation Banger. And now the whole team is
oriented around the idea of Operation Banger. It's just more fun. One of our goals
for this year is to systemize the whole business. And so we've called it-- I think it's-- I think it's called
Operation Systemize the Shit Out of Everything. That sort of thing, even just
giving a silly name to an OKR, weirdly, makes the
mind approach it in more of that spirit of fun,
more of that spirit of play. And it makes
everyone on the team feel good and, hopefully,
be more productive, as well. MATT BRITTIN: And you had
a great quote, actually, from a fictional series about
medicine, "Grey's Anatomy," where you were talking
about, don't be serious, but be sincere. And the character says before
quite tough operations, it's a beautiful
day to save lives. Let's have some fun. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah, it's so true. So a big part of why I applied
to med school is because I enjoyed "Grey's Anatomy." And I thought this was just
going to be a fictional thing. But actually, when I started
assisting in operations in operating theaters
and stuff, there's this real sense that
the best surgeons are the ones who create
an atmosphere of lightness and ease, even in the
midst of life and death. So people are often
like, well, easy for you to have fun at work. You're a YouTuber,
blah, blah, blah. But even in life-- thank you. Even in life-and-death
situations, there is value in creating
an environment of lightness and ease. So the surgeons will play
upbeat background music, and they'll crack jokes
every now and then. And the scrub nurse
and the anesthetist will be wearing a scrub cap that
has rainbows and unicorns on it and stuff. Because they realize,
actually, that when an environment is very serious,
people's energy contracts. The juniors feel afraid to
say something like, hey, man, I think we're operating
on the wrong leg. It's like, you
wouldn't say that, or I think we've just given
a drug that they're actually allergic to. If it's a very
serious environment, juniors don't feel able
to say that sort of stuff. And that is how a lot of
mistakes happen in surgery. And so they realized, if
you make it more chill, lighten the mood a bit-- play
some music and get everyone to introduce themselves
at the start, the surgeon isn't
this imposing figure-- everyone actually
performs better. And you literally save lives
because you reduce the incidence of critical errors. So even in life-and-death
situations, we can always approach it
with sincerity rather than seriousness. And there's a nice quote from
the philosopher Alan Watts where it's like, if you
approach things very seriously, it's all very heavy. And imagine playing a
board game with someone. No one wants to
play with someone who takes it too seriously. It's just like-- MATT BRITTIN: We've
all got those friends. ALI ABDAAL: We've all
got those friends. MATT BRITTIN: Or relatives. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. They're a stickler
for the rules. They're like, well, you
can't, technically, pass Go if you use a community--
all of that stuff. But we also don't want to
play a game with someone who's just completely half-assed
about the whole thing because that's just boring. It's like, we want to play with
someone who plays sincerely. It's like, they're
putting in their all, but they recognize, at the end
of the day, it's just a game. And so in the process
of writing this book, whenever I do something
that feels high-stakes, and I start to
clam up and think-- imposter syndrome
gets in the way, procrastination
gets in the way-- I try and take a step
back and think, Am I being too serious about this? How can I just dial down
the seriousness and just more lightness and ease,
more of a sense of play? MATT BRITTIN: So I didn't
have "Grey's Anatomy," but I remember a quote
from a 1970s "Doctor Who." It may have been lifted
from somewhere else, which is, I'm serious about what I do
but not about the way I do it. And I like that
attitude, as well. ALI ABDAAL: Ooh, That's nice. That's very nice, yeah. MATT BRITTIN: So
I've got a long scarf that I wear when I do stuff. But you mentioned
"Grey's Anatomy." I did want to go to
your personal journey and where the interest
in this came from. And in the book, you're quite
candid about a few times where you found things really tough. It was getting on top of
you, and you were frustrated. You felt like it should be
amazing, and you were finding it really difficult.
Can you tell us a little bit about
what that was like and what that's driven
you to do, subsequently? Quite often, it's the
adversity that shapes us, so I was interested in that. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. So when I first started work
as a doctor-- in theory, med school should prepare
you for life as a doctor. In reality, med school
does not prepare you for life as a doctor. And so you get thrown
in on the deep end. The first Wednesday
of August is actually known as Black
Wednesday because it's when you see an
increase in death rates because that is the day that
all of the new graduates start working on the wards. And you can see this
blip in the stats. So don't go to hospital on
the first Wednesday of August, if you can avoid it. That's the changeover
day, Black Wednesday. But for the first few months
of my life as a doctor, I was like, oh. When you're in med school,
going into the hospital, it's kind of optional. Going into lectures,
it's optional. When you're at
university, it's optional. When you start a job, going
into work is no longer optional. What the hell? You have to wake up. You have to commute to work. You have to go there. You're there all day,
and you commute back. And by the time you've
eaten and washed yourself, it's time to sleep again and
redo the same cycle again and again. And so I was getting
quite drained and quite burned out in
the first few months. And I would speak to other
doctors who were ahead of me in their careers. And they would say, oh,
it's just part of the grind. Once you achieve n plus
one level in the hierarchy, at that next rung, at that next
rung, that's when life chills. MATT BRITTIN: Jam
tomorrow, yeah. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. And all of the
doctors I spoke to, they all also seemed
pretty miserable. [LAUGHTER] But then I realized
a weird thing. So there was this one
random Christmas Day shift. That was the first time I
did a manual evacuation. Anyone know what a
manual evacuation-- MATT BRITTIN: Doesn't
sound like fun. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. A manual evacuation is
where you, basically, put a finger into
someone's rectum, and you scoop out the
poo because they're very constipated. And you've tried giving
them laxatives and stuff, but it's so impacted that
it's just not going to work. And so I arrived in the
hospital that morning. It was like Christmas Day
because I didn't manage to get Christmas Day off. And the nurse says to me,
hey, I've got a job for you. It's going to be a
manual evacuation. And I was like-- and I said to the
nurse, can't the nurses do a manual evacuation? And she was like, well,
I could but, I'm not-- in the UK, the
certification laws means that nurses
aren't allowed to do it, so doctors have to do it. And I was like, but I've
never done it before. And she was like, that's OK. I can teach you how. [LAUGHTER] I, actually, also found
a video on YouTube that talked about the process. It didn't use real people. It used a mannequin
because, otherwise, it would get demonetized, I'm sure. MATT BRITTIN: It would
violate our terms of service. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah, exactly. A real violation. MATT BRITTIN: So that is the
very definition of a shitty job. [LAUGHTER] Sorry. That was too obvious. ALI ABDAAL: That was very good. Yeah, so that morning,
it really was. And it was kind of weird. So it was a very busy day. It was a Christmas Day. All my friends were
off, but I was working. But weirdly, when I got
to the end of the day, when I got back home, I
felt weirdly energized. And initially, I was a bit sus. Because I'm like, was
it a manual evacuation that, weirdly, energized me? [LAUGHTER] And so I was like, OK. It's just one data
point, whatever. And then I kept an eye on this. And for the next few
months, I noted when-- most of the days, I'd
get home from work feeling super, super
drained and feeling like, oh, I don't have the energy
to edit another video. Because I was trying to build
my YouTube channel on the side. But some days, I'd
get home from work, and I'd feel weirdly energized. And I was like, what
were those days? And weirdly, those
days were the weekends. For some reason, when I was
working a weekend shift, I felt weirdly energized
at the end of the day. Those days were also,
randomly, Wednesday afternoons. And I realized that the thing
on weekends and on Wednesday afternoons is on
Wednesday afternoons, the senior doctors
are away on training. And so I was on the
wards by myself. On the weekend, there's
more work to do, there's more emergencies, and
there's fewer staff around. So I was there more by myself. And I realized that,
on the weekends, I was just automatically
taking more responsibility for the patients under my care. On a normal weekday shift, I
was kind of like, well, I'm the bottom of the rung. I'm the admin monkey. I'm just doing the boring stuff. And that was the whole
narrative the junior doctors say to ourselves. But on weekends,
when the consultant would ask, What's Mrs.
Jones' potassium level, I would know what it is because
the buck stopped with me. I had to know what the
potassium level was. And I found that when I
took more ownership, when I took more responsibility
for the patients, I was more energized. And it's this weird thing that
this sense of energy we get-- I think the way we
think about energy, it's like you start the
day off with full energy. And then over the day, over the
work day, your energy depletes. And then you get home from work,
and then your family and friends are left with the
dregs of your energy. But that's not, actually,
how energy works. People who enjoy working
out get that sense of you put in the work
into working out, but it actually
re-energizes you somehow. And so, similarly,
taking more ownership, taking more
responsibility at work, yes, you're working
harder, but you're also gaining more energy from it. And so I realized
this on the weekends and started applying it
to the weekdays, as well. Because I realized I could just
choose to take responsibility. I didn't have to wait
until the weekend shift. And that relates to the second
P, the second energizer, which is Power. When we feel a sense
of power, a sense of empowerment in whatever
we're doing, that massively boosts our energy, and it
boosts our intrinsic motivation. MATT BRITTIN: So play and
power are ways of boosting-- and I think your
self-observation there is really important, isn't
it, like what is it gives you, personally, energy? And I guess the other
thing you mentioned, the third P, which is People,
tell us a bit about people. How would you think about
energy in that context? ALI ABDAAL: Absolutely. So three Ps-- Play,
Power, and People. If there's just one thing
you take away from this, it's like any time you're
struggling with something, just think, how can I
incorporate play, power, and people into this? So we've all had
that feeling of there are certain people
that you hang out with, and you feel very energized
after that interaction. Unfortunately, there
are also certain people you hang out with, and
you feel very drained after that interaction. Sometimes, those are
known as energy vampires. And there's some
interesting research I came across when writing
that chapter about people, which is that-- they've done studies
in organizations where they do this energy map. And they ask employees to map
out who they interact with and who their manager is and
who their boss is and stuff and who is an energizing
influence, on average, and who is a draining
influence, on average. And they ask hundreds of
people this in the company. And you get a very
clear map that there are certain people who
are profoundly energizing and certain people who
are profoundly draining. And then you correlate
these energy ratings with the supervisor ratings,
the manager ratings, the salary, how often they're likely
to get promotions. And you find that the
people who are energizing perform way better on
all possible metrics. People like them more. People want to work
with them more. They get promotions. They get paid more. All of the good
things happen when you're an energizing influence. So one takeaway from that
is, I like to ask myself, Am I being an
energizing influence on the people around me? Or am I being a draining
influence on the people around me? So that's one takeaway. The other takeaway is
that, generally, stuff is just more fun when you do
it with people around you, when you can find a way to
incorporate people into it. So I realized this
in med school. Studying for medical
school exams, where you're having to memorize
loads of pointless stuff, is not very fun when you're
doing it on your own. But if you go to
the local library-- the Emmanuel College Library
was where me and my friends would go. I would invite friends
from different colleges, and we would sit
around the same table, and we would use the
Pomodoro Technique together-- 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes
of break, 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of break. And we had a little code
name, a code for ourselves, that we would-- [KNOCKS]---- knock twice on the
table when a Pom was going to start. And we would knock once
when a Pom was going to end. And we'd knock twice
after the 5-minute break. And we made a WhatsApp group
called the Pomodoro Society to-- and we're still in touch,
to this day, 12 years later. PomSoc is what it ended
up being shortened as. And I found this when
writing the book. It was in the middle
of the pandemic. I didn't really have the
ability to see friends. But there was this Zoom
co-working group called London Writers' Salon, where you can
just hop on a Zoom call with a few hundred-- MATT BRITTIN: We've
have a fan here. ALI ABDAAL: We've got a fan
of London Writers' Salon. A few hundred writers
from all around the world. And it's just a
one-hour session. And you do 5 minutes of
chit-chat at the start, 50 minutes of work, and
5 minutes of conclusion at the end. And it was weirdly energizing. It's like, even when I'm on
a Zoom call, or a Google Meet call, shall I say, with people
from all around the world virtually, it still feels
more fun to do the work. So how can we incorporate
more of a sense of people into the work that we're doing? MATT BRITTIN: I
think, also-- as I was reading that,
I was reflecting about the role of managers. And I remember this vividly. When I first became a
manager, some time ago now, you feel like you've got to be
productive by managing people, having lots of meetings. But actually, what you need
to do is show up with energy. And it's much better if you've
taken a bit of time off, or you've worked out,
and then you're really energized in the next meeting. Because that permeates everyone. Because we can't always
be on all the time. And I think that
kind of approach, to amplify energy
through an organization, is something I notice
quite a lot, as well. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah, absolutely. One thing I try and
tell myself, whenever I'm on a call with
anyone in my team, is I need to, basically,
fake being high energy for the first few minutes. Because no one can really
tell the difference between real energy
and fake energy. And we can always put it on
for, at least, a minute or two. But it just starts the meeting
off on a really nice way. And it helps lift
everyone's mood, whereas on days where I forget
to do this, and I'm like, hey guys, how's
it going, it just drags down the mood
of the whole thing, and I become a drainer,
which is not good. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah. Well, fake it to make it is
something that's definitely true, isn't it? If you smile, then
people will smile, just through mirror reflexes. And, actually, everyone
becomes immediately happier. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. So good. MATT BRITTIN: It's really cool. So I want to come to audience
questions in a minute. And I know you've got
a number, particularly, to get some top tips or quick
hacks that people can do. So as you get ready
for that, I just wanted to turn to the second
section of the book, which I thought was brilliant,
which is about all the ways that we are blocked
in being productive, all the stuff that
gets in the way. Tell us a bit about that. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. So one of the big issues
that people in my audience struggle with, and whenever I
do talks, is procrastination. You've got this important
thing that you need to do. And you're just putting
it off and putting it off and putting it off. And then it starts to feel
a bit grim, all that stuff. One way people talk about
this is that if you're struggling with procrastination,
then you're just not disciplined enough. But I don't really like this
whole discipline as a narrative. It's a bit too
self-flagellating. It's like, oh, I
lack discipline, and therefore, I'm unable to
get this boring thing done. It's like, no. The thing is boring. We all struggle to
do boring things. Whenever we do surveys to
our 5-million-plus audience, everyone struggles
with procrastination. Everyone here-- you guys
are high-flying Googlers, but I suspect most people
struggle with procrastination. It's not because you have
a discipline problem. Usually, it's because
there's one or two things that are blocking
you from starting the task. So one big realization
from the research-- and I interviewed a bunch
of professors who specialize in studying
procrastination, weirdly-- and their whole shtick is
that procrastination is a problem with getting started. If you can just get
started with the task-- as you mentioned at the
start of the thing-- if you can just get started
for 5 minutes or 2 minutes or 3 minutes, you're a lot more
likely to keep on going. This is like Newton's
law of inertia in action. If you're at rest, it's a
lot easier to stay at rest. But just with a
little bit of motion, it's a lot easier to
keep going in motion. So one hack I had on my desk
was a 5-minute hourglass. I just found one off of Amazon. It's just a nice blue color
because I like the blue color scheme. I just had this
5-minute hourglass. And whenever I'd sit down,
and I'd be screwing around on YouTube instead of doing
the work that I was supposed to be doing, I would just turn
the hourglass over and just tell myself, I'm only going
to do this for 5 minutes. And before I knew it,
time would have passed. The hourglass would
have been long gone. And I've made a
start on that task. But often, that initial hump,
that initial activation energy, that inertia, is the
thing that blocks us from getting started on a task. And so the 5-minute rule is
a helpful way of getting past that. MATT BRITTIN: So I'm going to
go to the first of our questions that have been upvoted here. But then I'd love
to invite questions at the mic in the
room, as well, which builds on that,
which is, What is your favorite low-effort,
high-impact productivity hack, something anyone could implement
today to see a noticeable boost? ALI ABDAAL: Oh, that's easy. That's the one that
I have on my phone. What would this look
like if it were fun? And then people are
always like, oh, but not everything can be fun. It's like, OK, fine. Not everything can
be fun all the time. But if you ask
yourself genuinely, This next thing I'm about
to do, how could I just make it 10% more enjoyable? That's a great question. It's like, OK, well, I could
put on some background music. I could go to the local cafe. I could just go and sit in the
co-working space with my friends around. I could, I don't know,
track my progress so it feels like-- write
everything on my to-do list, and then tick things off if
I have to do a load of admin. Because that feels good. I could do a little timer with
myself where I set a 15-minute timer, and my goal is to try
and beat the clock and just get through as much admin
in 15 minutes as I can. There's all sorts
of creative ways to make anything we do just
a tad bit more enjoyable. MATT BRITTIN: And
that's interesting. Because none of those things
relate to the task itself. They're all related to just
making it gamified or whatever around it. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah, exactly. If we're having
fun, productivity takes care of itself. And so I think that is a
high-impact, very low-effort way of just making yourself
more productive. MATT BRITTIN: And another
question here, this is from Anastasia,
that says, What's a common piece of
productivity advice that you completely
disagree with, and why? ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. I really disagree with all
the stuff around discipline-- to be more productive, you
should be more disciplined. OK, so the way I think of this
is that if you imagine a hill, and you imagine
your task is you're rolling the boulder, rolling
a boulder up the hill, now if you're trying to
roll a boulder up a hill, discipline is like you're
having to force it. It's really high effort. You're having to keep on
rolling the boulder and stuff. And you listen to some David
Goggins, and he tells you, you've got to be
more disciplined. And you keep rolling the
boulder and all of this. And then you get the boulder
at the top of the hill. And it just sort of comes
crumbling back down again. Because you've not
enjoyed the task itself. The way I, instead,
try and flip it around is that, how do we terraform the
hill so that it actually just goes downhill instead? How do I just make it feel
like the task is downhill rather than uphill? Now, there's always a
little dose of discipline you might need to
just get started. There's always a little bit of a
hump before the hill goes down. But with just a little dose
of discipline, we can-- with a little dose of discipline
and then actually enjoying the process-- enjoying the process
is what makes the hill feel like
it's going downhill, whereas if you're having
to use discipline, I think you're just shooting
yourself in the foot because you haven't yet found
a way to make the process fun or enjoyable. I realized I didn't
particularly enjoy working out when I'm there on my
own without listening to anything and without a
personal trainer or an exercise class. So I'm having to use discipline
every time I'm at the gym. But I realized that, OK, well,
if I go to an exercise class, it's more fun. If I get a personal
trainer, it's more fun. If I even track my
workouts and start feeling like it's
more of a game, and I've got to make the numbers
go up, it feels a bit more fun. If I'm listening to a
podcast, it's more fun. If I'm listening to Disney
songs, it's more fun. And now, I only need discipline
to get myself to the gym. I don't need discipline
to keep myself at the gym. So I think we should use
discipline in very small doses. And relying on discipline
is a recipe for burnout. MATT BRITTIN: Oh,
that's fantastic. What a great idea. Thank you very much for that. Yeah, do come to the microphone. So please, if you come to the
mic here-- would you mind-- and then other
people can hear you. Do come up. Yeah, thank you very much. And form an orderly
queue, if you wish. We just got a bunch of people
watching remotely, as well. Thank you so much. Please, go ahead. AUDIENCE: Hi. This is a follow-up from what
you were just talking about now. So you say that
discipline is not key. But what happens when
motivation runs out? Because at the beginning of a
task or a project or a goal, you're super motivated
to do something you love, even if it's something
that you enjoy doing. But then the motivation goes. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah. How do you sustain
the motivation? ALI ABDAAL: Oh, yeah. This is big. MATT BRITTIN: Great question. ALI ABDAAL: So I
agree that discipline is important in small doses. So there's something called
the motivation spectrum. I talk about this in the
final chapter of the book, in case anyone wants to flick. There's a little diagram. You guys might be
familiar with the idea of intrinsic and
extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is when
you do a thing because you want to do the thing. We are mostly intrinsically
motivated to watch YouTube videos, for example, or watch
a movie, or play a video game, all that stuff. You're intrinsically motivated. Extrinsic motivation
is when you're doing the thing because of the
money, or to avoid a punishment, or because you want
to get the grade. You're doing it for
an external reason. Now, intrinsic motivation
is like the motivation you have at the
start of a project, like, yeah, it's
going to be fun. It's the high energy,
all that kind of stuff. But as you pointed out,
intrinsic motivation always disappears. It is not a lasting
form of motivation. So what do we do? Now, intrinsic/extrinsic doesn't
actually tell the whole story. There are two other
forms of motivation here. It's all in the book, in
case you want a reference. But there is a
form of motivation called introjected
motivation, which is the motivation of
self-flagellation. And so that is also a
bad form of motivation because you're just
beating yourself up. And a lot of us overachievers
have the tendency to do that to ourselves. But then there is,
actually, a good form of extrinsic motivation. And that's identified
motivation. And identified motivation
is when you're like, you know, I might not be
enjoying being at the gym right now, but I vibe with
the identity of someone who values my health and
who values my fitness and who values longevity. And that goal is a goal
that I have intrinsically-- I've personally decided for
myself is important to me. It's not a goal that anyone
else has thrust on me. I have decided to
identify with the goal of being a healthy person. And therefore, even though
the gym is not fun right now, I'm still going to push
through this workout, try and enjoy the process,
because I intrinsically value the outcome. So it's like, when
intrinsic motivation wanes, we want to try and harness
this identified motivation. Sometimes, that looks
like discipline, where you just do
have to tell yourself, OK, bro, we just gotta do it. But sometimes what it looks
like is reminding yourself of the why behind why
you're doing the thing. And there's a bunch
of research that shows if you just remind
yourself of the why, the end goal, the real result, the
value you're trying to get to, it makes it a lot easier
to continue doing the task. MATT BRITTIN: Oh,
that's really powerful. And it's a bit of
self-talk, isn't it? I have a thing where
I'm pushing myself really hard on a cardio
machine, maybe a rowing machine. And I say to myself,
you work for me. I'm having my mind
talk to my body. Don't scream at me that
you've got to stop. I'm just telling
you, you work for me. And I find that actually
helps me, bizarrely. Maybe that's just me. ALI ABDAAL: No, no, no. MATT BRITTIN: But
it's self-talk. ALI ABDAAL: There
is, actually, a study that they've done about this. I think it was on
cycling machines. And they got people to
do cycling machines. And they split the group
up into two halves. For one of the groups, they
told them to tell themselves-- I can't remember what it was,
but it was something neutral. But then, for the
other group, they told themselves to literally
just repeat in their heads, you got this, you can do it,
we've got this, we can do it. And they found a
measurable improvement in the performance of the group
that was just being positive and had positive self-talk. They called it the positive
self-talk intervention, which is a bit of a mouthful. But just actually telling
yourself-- the stories we tell ourselves
form a huge part of the reality
that we experience and the way we feel
motivated and productive. And just being a bit
nicer to ourselves, often, is another fairly
low-effort, high-impact way to boost our productivity. MATT BRITTIN: Brilliant. Thank you. We could go on
about this for ages. But there are more questions. Sir, go ahead. ALI ABDAAL: Well, thank you
so much, Ali, for coming. I guess my question--
you've talked a lot about the aspect of play. And you just were talking
about motivation, as well. What are your
thoughts on reward? Sometimes, it could be like, oh,
let's go through this workout, or let's do my taxes, and
I'll eat ice cream at night or something like that. So what are your thoughts? MATT BRITTIN: Rewards. ALI ABDAAL: Rewards. Rewards are an interesting one. I think rewards are useful
in very small doses, but they can be a
double-edged sword. Because if you rely on rewards
to get you to do something, you train your
brain to be doing it for the sake of
extrinsic motivation. This is why-- I'm not a parent yet, but
I've been reading books about parenting, just in
preparation, because why not? [LAUGHTER] MATT BRITTIN: That's
genuinely productivity. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah,
productive parenting. So it's super-interesting stuff. It's like if you reward a child
with a cookie or even praise, in many ways, as a
result of doing a thing, they then start to only do the
thing if they get the praise rather than being intrinsically
motivated to do the thing. And so a lot of the
research on this says that you should praise kids
for effort rather than outcomes or effort rather than grades. So I think about this a lot. It's like, I don't want to
get into the habit of telling myself, oh, if I go to the
gym, then I will reward myself with a cookie
afterwards or whatever. It's fine some of the
time, but we shouldn't be relying on it, ideally. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Next question, please. AUDIENCE: Thanks a lot. And really like the channel. Really like the
Pikachu socks, as well. ALI ABDAAL: Oh, thank you. AUDIENCE: My question is
actually quite simple, which is, How do you
have fun while you're under time pressure? And, specifically, I
have a big deadline coming up two weeks from now. It's for my studies. I'm doing part-time studies. And I started doing it
because I genuinely enjoy it. I really want to learn this. But I have this deadline. And it's so, so much pressure
right now to get that done. It's hard to still have fun. So how do you deal with
fun under time pressure? ALI ABDAAL: Nice. That's a great question. So I had this when I came to
the deadline for the book. And I said this to my editor. I was like, I've
got the deadline. It feels really high pressure. And my editor was like, isn't
the title of the book "Feel-Good Productivity"? Isn't your whole shtick to
find a way to make it fun? Are you, maybe, taking
this too seriously? And I was like, you're right. I am taking this too seriously. And I realized, for me,
a book is a big deal. It's like a book. It gets published. It's got the frickin'
Penguin logo on it. Penguin is a real company
that my family in Pakistan have heard of. Shit, this is a big deal. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. People are going
to read the book. What if people
don't read the book? People are going
to leave reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads. And oh, my god. So much pressure. And just my editor saying,
are you taking this a bit too seriously, made
me realize I am just taking this too seriously. It is just a frickin' book,
at the end of the day. Who cares? The book's going to come out. It's going to be fine. Who cares? Weirdly, I find that lowering
the bar and embracing mediocrity is the way forward. There's a great author
called Cal Newport that some of you guys
might be familiar with. He wrote a book called
"Deep Work" and, recently, "Slow Productivity," which
is really a good book. I interviewed him on my pod. And I was asking him for
writing advice because he's written a bunch of books. And he's a computer
science professor and has all these things that
he has to do on deadlines. And he told me a
great piece of advice. He said, you know,
Ali, whenever I'm working on a book, or an
assignment, or a task, or a paper, or
anything, I tell myself, this one just needs
to be reasonable. The next one's going to be good. This one just needs
to be reasonable. And so I found, for myself, when
I shifted the bar from the book needs to be good to this book
just needs to be reasonable, it helped me do it. When I make YouTube
videos now, it's like-- in the early days
of being a YouTuber, no one's watching your stuff. No one cares. When you've got 5
million subscribers, suddenly you're like, the views. There's, potentially,
500,000 people watching this. You start thinking about
your view-subscriber ratios. You're like, oh, my god. Am I falling off? Am I going to be a has-been? All of that sort of stuff. It's just a lot of
pressure, whereas I have a mantra that I read to
myself before filming a YouTube video, which basically
says, I don't care about the
performance of this video. I only care that this video
could potentially provide value to at least one person. And when I lower the bar
of filming a YouTube video or giving a talk to all
this needs to do is just, potentially, help one person--
not even definitely help, because I can't control that,
but even potentially help one person-- it just makes it feel
way less of a heavy lift. And then I get it done. And then sometimes,
the video does well. Thank you, YouTube algorithm. MATT BRITTIN: I think
that point, though, about lowering the stakes
is so important, isn't it? Because when we're stressed, we
know from psychological research that we actually
become less capable, and it's harder to function. So finding ways to
lower the stakes allows you to be more human. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah--
embracing mediocrity. I think it's just
the way forward. MATT BRITTIN: I'm not
sure I like that title. Doesn't sound motivated to me. I need to work on that. Next question, please. AUDIENCE: Hi. I have a bit of a
specific question. Do you have any tips for people
whose productivity is hindered by context switching, for
example, people that suffer from ADD or other types of-- MATT BRITTIN: Yeah,
so context switching. And if you suffer from
ADD, or feel in that mode, how do you deal with that? ALI ABDAAL: I don't
want to pretend to have all the
answers here because I don't think I suffer with ADD
or any of this sort of stuff. But there is loads
of research that says that context switching
is just bad for everyone. MATT BRITTIN: That's chopping
and changing between tasks. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah, exactly. You're doing some
emails for five minutes, then you're doing
this presentation, and then you're hopping on
a Slack message or whatever, and then back to this thing,
and back to this thing. And there's this idea called
attention residue, which is that any time you switch
tasks, part of your brain is still on the previous one. And so you're using less
brainpower on the task you're actually trying to do. There's two things to do here. Number one is, if you have
control over your calendar, then try and set it up so
that you're doing decent chunk blocks of deep work. The way I think of it is there's
only, really, two types of task. There are focus tasks, and
then there are admin tasks. Pretty much everything can
fall into those categories. A focus task requires
me to sit down and focus for at least 25 minutes. An admin task requires me
to do the thing, probably, less than 25 minutes. So all of my admin
tasks, I try and batch, stick into my to-do list. And then I put a calendar block
that I call my admin party. Again, just naming it a party
makes it feel more fun, weirdly. I give it a little-- on Google Calendar, I give it
a little celebration hat emoji. It's admin party. I go to a coffee shop,
time myself 45 minutes, bash through my admin. But I try and have uninterrupted
blocks of time for deep work. That's nice if you have
control over your own calendar. If you don't have control
over your own calendar, there's a great strategy
from the research, which is that you, essentially,
want to create a ready-to-resume plan. So let's say I am, I don't
know, working on a Google Slide deck or whatever. And then I'm having to do this
10-minute meeting and then having to go back
to the slide deck. Essentially, before
switching tasks, I just want to make a plan for
when I come back to the task, What am I going to do? And they find that if you just
make a 30-second plan for what you intend to do when
you resume the task, that reduces the negative
effect of this attention residue by an absolutely huge margin. So making a little 30-second
plan before switching tasks is, I find, super helpful. MATT BRITTIN: Just while
you're on that point, before we go to
the next question, I think you mentioned
in the book, and it's something I'm
definitely aware of, as well, that the
night-before plan is often a really helpful thing. So not I'm going to do my
steps tomorrow or whatever but, actually, I'm going to
do them tomorrow between 11:00 and 12:00 or whatever. That makes a huge difference. ALI ABDAAL: It makes a
huge difference, yeah. And actually, we've
got a question here, What do you see as the best
Google product for productivity? Honestly, it's probably
Google Calendar. Literally, just putting
a block in your calendar for when you do the thing makes
you infinitely more likely to do the thing. And occasionally, if I'm
doing a Q&A or something, and someone asks, oh, I'm really
struggling with procrastination on whatever the thing is,
I'm like, OK, have you put it in your calendar? And they're like, no. I'm like, Do you want
put it in your calendar? And they're like,
yeah, I guess so. I'm like, How
about we do it now? Do you want to
get out your phone and just put it
on your calendar? When are we going to do it? And they're like, oh, I guess
I could do it today at 4:00 PM or tomorrow at 11:00. I'm like, great. And do you want to just add
me to the calendar invite, just so it's going to be
a bit of accountability? And they're like, sure. And then they get
the thing done. It's just putting a
block in the calendar is a mind-blowing
productivity hack. MATT BRITTIN: I'm
totally with you. When my kids were really young-- I have kids, so I can tell
you more than the book can-- [LAUGHTER] ALI ABDAAL: Nice. MATT BRITTIN: --I
was really determined to make sure I took them
to school regularly. And I decided the way to do
that was put it in my calendar and treat it like the most
important external meeting of the week. And it might have to move, but
it was always going to happen. And that made a huge
difference to me. And now I do that with--
they don't care about me now. But I now do that with working
out and other things, as well. So I'm with you on that one. Thank you. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. I do it for date
nights, as well. I do it for times
to visit my mom. Because if it's not
in the calendar, it's not going to get done. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah,
those sort of things. Yeah. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you. AUDIENCE: I absolutely
love the book. ALI ABDAAL: Thank you. AUDIENCE: As someone with
ADHD, I found it really useful, especially the experiments
and the idea of experimenting and stuff. What was the most interesting
experiment to you, the one that surprised you the most when
you were doing them yourself? ALI ABDAAL: Ooh, nice question. So this idea of
thinking in experiments is something that's
throughout the book, which is that productivity is
a very personal thing. I make videos about productivity
and all this sort of stuff. But I can't really tell
you what to do because it's so personal for everyone. But the way that I read all
of these self-help books, including my own, is
I'm just taking from it a series of experiments. And I'm just going to try an
experiment out in my life. And I'm going to see
if it works for me. And if it does, great. I have a new strategy. And if it doesn't,
that's also fine. Let's move on to the next one. So for me, one of the
most surprising things was the unreasonable power of-- essentially, the unreasonable
power of a leveling-up meter. And so if you're
playing video games-- I was into "World of
Warcraft" back in the day. I'm currently playing "Horizon:
Forbidden West" on the PS5. It's sick. But as you kill the
monsters and stuff, your experience bar goes up. And then, at a certain
point, you level up, and then you get
some new skills. And then experience
bar goes down, and the experience bar goes up. And video game designers are
incredibly smart because they really optimize for, How do we
get people to continue playing these frickin' video games? And the level-up
bar is something that makes playing video
games very addictive. Because you get this
sensation of making progress. And so I found this in a
bunch of research papers. I was like, OK, let
me try this out. And every day, when I
was working on the book, I started tracking
my word count. So I would track how
many words I've written and how many minutes
of focus minutes I was actually
focusing on the book. A, that was interesting
because it helped me realize, damn, I'm really not
actually working as much as I thought I was. But B, it started to turn
it into a bit of a game. And so now something-- I use an app called Toggl,
which is quite good, just to track my time, generally. And then it feels kind of fun. It's like when I have 7
minutes here or there, instead of screwing around on
YouTube for those 7 minutes, I'll be like, 7 minutes
is a good amount of time. I can make progress on this
writing thing, or on this email that I'm writing, or on this
slide that I'm working on, or whatever the thing is. And I've found that tracking
my word count with the book was unreasonably effective
in helping me actually stay productive with it. MATT BRITTIN: That's brilliant. And one of the things
you write about and you cover in your videos,
as well, brilliantly, I think, is this idea of being a
productivity scientist and always experimenting. Because I often read
these kinds of books. And you're like,
oh, my god, there's 73 different frameworks
I need to apply. Otherwise, I'm going to fail. And I think what
you do here is you give us permission to just
try a couple of things and see what works. And that's, obviously, in
line with your philosophy. But that idea of
constantly experimenting makes a ton of sense. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. And it's a very personal
thing for everyone. Each person has a different
productivity system that work for them. We all have different
circumstances. If you have kids, a productivity
system that works for me might not work for you,
all that sort of stuff. But it's thinking in experiments I think, also, thinking in
experiments, in our team, we often use the
terminology of experiments as another way of
lowering the bar. It'll be like, writing a
book is just an experiment. MATT BRITTIN: Yeah. And it doesn't matter
if that bit fails. That's the other thing,
taking the stress level down. ALI ABDAAL: Absolutely, yeah. MATT BRITTIN: Fantastic. Thank you. Next question. AUDIENCE: Hi, Ali. Thanks for being here. One of your courses on
Skillshare helped me publish my first-ever succesful-- MATT BRITTIN: Wow,
that's an endorsement. AUDIENCE: --YouTube video. ALI ABDAAL: Oh, congratulations. Wonderful. AUDIENCE: Yeah. Thanks for everything. So the question I have is,
Based on your experience, what is the mistake
that corporations are making in terms of
getting their employees to be productive? MATT BRITTIN: Oh,
that's a great question. So companies. [LAUGHTER] OK, be careful
what you say here. [LAUGHTER] Because one of us is
going to get fired. [LAUGHTER] ALI ABDAAL: What's a
mistake corporations-- I don't want to pretend to have
the answers here because I've never really had a real job. I guess working in
the NHS is a real job. Maybe that counts. So if I think back to the
NHS, what's a mistake? OK, I think one mistake
that I hear from students of mine and stuff who
have jobs at corporations is that, essentially,
they're trying to do too many things at once. This is the whole thesis
of Cal Newport's book, "Slow Productivity," which
is really good, which is, basically, just reduce the
number of things you're actually having to do. Because it's like if
you're working on-- let's say you have to
get four projects done in the next quarter. You could do all
four in parallel, or you could do them
one at a time in series. But the problem is every time
you take on a new project, you have this
communication overhead that gets added per project, or
communicating about the project, organizing a meeting about the
project, updating the OKR thing about the project each week, and
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. MATT BRITTIN: Work about work. ALI ABDAAL: Work
about work-- exactly. And so if you try and do the
four projects in parallel, you end up having three days
a week of your time taken up with updating people
about the four projects that you have in parallel,
whereas if you're just like, hang on, say to
your manager, bruv, I want to do this one
at a time, please, and sequencing series,
rather than parallel, that massively reduces the
communication overhead that's required. And it applies in our team. We've only got 20 people. But still, every time we
take on a new project, it just adds enormous
communication overheads. So just working on
fewer things at a time lets you accomplish more
and be more productive. And also, people just generally
enjoy doing single-task focus. Flow state, all of that stuff,
helps people feel energized-- MATT BRITTIN: Yeah, I
think it's a great answer. ALI ABDAAL: --rather than
having to work on multiple. MATT BRITTIN: It
occurs to me that there are lots of assumptions
we make about what's required of us at work
that aren't necessarily anything that anybody
has ever told you to do. And what if, in your calendar,
everybody had, by default, admin playtime or whatever you
call it, and adventure time, and, actually, if you
started from that presumption rather than-- I think the temptation is
always just to cram it full, back to back, with stuff? And I think a lot of us saw
that in the pandemic, that kind of fatigue that came from
not being smart about how we were managing our time. Great. Thank you very much. Let's take another question. AUDIENCE: Thanks. Hey, Ali. Thanks for coming. My question is burnout related. So sometimes, I reach a point
where my stress level reduces the quality level of my work. And if I keep going, I
can feel quality dropping. So my question is, How
do I maintain consistency when I feel that
quality level dropping and also maintain the
quality at the same time? ALI ABDAAL: Yeah,
this is really hard. I think the solution is to
not feel stressed about it. Because the feeling of
stress is the thing that causes the burnout
and the thing that causes the quality
of the thing to drop. And obviously, there are going
to be times in our life-- if we're launching a new
product, and it's crunch time, and it's the 48 hours
before, yeah, acute stress in those moments is fine. Stress becomes
very, very, very bad for your health when it
becomes chronic stress, when it becomes stress over
a longer period of time. And so how do we
deal with stress? It's going to be the basic
stuff-- taking breaks, recharging every 45 minutes. Walking in nature,
weirdly, being around trees and
greenery and stuff, has a measurable effect
on people's stress levels. There's this thing called
the undoing hypothesis, which is that they've done studies
where they bring people in a room, and
they tell everyone, you guys are about to
give a public speech to everyone in the audience. And then that spikes
everyone's stress levels. And you can measure their
sweat levels and the heart rate and breathing rate and stuff. And then, for one
of the groups, they show them a normal
movie, a movie clip. And then, for the
other group, they show them a very
positive-emotion, good-vibey movie clip. And they find that
the group that's primed to feel positive
emotions, their stress levels reduce, and their
sweat levels reduce, and the heart rate reduces. And you can actually measure
the physiological impact of that sort of
feel-good movie clip. And so how do you manage
stress is a very, very, very broad question. But for me, what I find
is when I'm feeling stressed, again,
lowering the bar, taking things a little
bit less seriously. Because at the end of the day,
most things are not that deep. Most of us do our work
in front of a laptop. We're not in the
business of saving lives. And even when people are in
the business of saving lives, they also benefit from just
trying to lighten the mood just a little bit. So to me, that's the ultimate. MATT BRITTIN: Take a break. Take a walk. Get outside. ALI ABDAAL: That's the thing. MATT BRITTIN: But you
also mentioned burnout. And that is a bit more specific. And I think you've
encountered this. You've shared that in your
writing and so on, as well. So that often takes somebody
else to say, hang on a minute. What's going on here? Can you just share
a bit on that topic? ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. So whenever I've had periods of
burnout, or close to burnout, I often haven't
recognized them in myself. But it's been friends
or family or my mum who's pointed out and been like,
hey, you look really tired. You look really down. What's going on? And I'm like, oh, shit. Yeah, you're right. That's probably about right. And essentially, a lot of
burnout comes down to feeling like you're having
to do a thing, but you don't have the
resources-- the time, the energy-- to do this thing
to a high standard. And again, in acute
moments, that's fine. But if it happens over a
very long period of time, that becomes a problem. In my case, I'm an entrepreneur. I run my own business. I can simply choose to cut
projects from the list. If one of my team members
were to come to me and say they're
feeling burned out, I would be saying, OK, cool. Let's cut some projects
from your list for now. We can always do those later. And we can always find a way to
reduce the demands on you right now. Because, actually, there's
very few things that are really going to move the needle. So let's focus on those things,
get them to a high standard, and then, yeah. MATT BRITTIN: I think
one thing I've found is that if you feel swamped,
sitting down with somebody-- anybody, actually-- and
just talking through what's on your list really helps you
to figure out where you can drop or delay or deprioritize. And it's one of the
things I encourage our teams to do, as well. But anyway, thank you very
much for that question. We'll take a couple
more questions, and then we'll be
close to the close. Here we go. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hey, Ali. ALI ABDAAL: Hey. AUDIENCE: My question
is, How do you feel about the weight
of responsibility now that you are this
productivity scientist/expert? And do you think this niche,
or box, that you and the team have placed around you,
around being this productivity scientist/expert, is
actually a really good thing? MATT BRITTIN: Oh, have you
constrained yourself now? Is that what you're saying? AUDIENCE: Well, slightly. The productivity lab. ALI ABDAAL: Slightly, yeah. Yeah, so there's two
ways I think about it. Number one is that I
never actually think of myself as a
productivity expert, even though that's what
it says on the book. The publisher decided to
put that in, rather than me. I also don't-- there's a phrase
that one of my writing coaches came up with, or told
to me, a few years ago, which is that you don't
have to be a guru. You can simply be a guide. And so the way I think of
myself is not that I actually know what I'm talking about. It's that, hey, I'm a fellow
traveler along the path, same as everyone else. I enjoy reading books
about this stuff and reading papers about it. And here are some
things I've discovered that have worked for me. Maybe they'll work
for you, as well. And so that framing takes a
lot of the pressure off me for feeling like I
have to be the expert. Coming to here, doing a talk at
Google, is kind of a big deal and framed as a
productivity expert. It's like, what the hell do I
know about what you guys do? Well, the stuff that
you guys do is sick. And I don't know how to do
anything related to engineering or anything like that. But that's OK. Because I'm not
here to be a guru. I'm just here to
share some experiments that have worked for
me and that, maybe, might work for other people. So that massively helps. I think, for me,
the other thing is I think of productivity as
being a lens rather than a box, in some ways. So to me, productivity is
just about using your time in a way that's intentional,
effective, and enjoyable. And so productivity can
apply to relationships. Productivity can
apply to health. Productivity can apply
to parenting, or work, or all of this sort of stuff. So really,
productivity is a lens through which I
view life, which is, How can I use my time better? And I think that's a nice lens
that I don't feel particularly constrains me at all. AUDIENCE: It's quite
a big lens, as well. ALI ABDAAL: Yeah. And very broad, encompassing. MATT BRITTIN: Keeps
you expansive. Thank you. OK, we've got two more in
the queue for questions. Let's try and take those
a little bit more quickly, and we'll end on time. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Thanks
for coming, Ali. Love your YouTube
channel, by the way. ALI ABDAAL: Thank you. AUDIENCE: So I have a question
around attention and how attention is the new
currency, so to speak. So but in a world
wherein you can't really eliminate all your
distractions-- you can mute your notifications
or change types that you use or
whatnot-- but how do you increase your attention span
so that you can actually work on something for a
prolonged period of time? For example, when I'm
trying to read a book, but I get distracted by
something on my phone, even though it's a
ghost ping or something. It's not even buzzing. How do you increase
attention span when there are so
many distractions, not just on the work side
but on your personal side? And I think that lends itself
to you doing more focused work. But how do you increase
that common, I guess-- MATT BRITTIN: I
see lots of people nodding in response
to that-- attention in a world of distraction. How do you do that? ALI ABDAAL: I would recommend
Cal Newport's book, "Deep Work" about this, which is all
about this whole thing. But broadly, I
have two thoughts. Number one is,
basically, no one can focus for more than 45 minutes. So if you're trying to focus
for more than 45 minutes, you're fighting a losing
battle, not going to happen. So I think that's just
useful to say up front. Because I meet a
lot of people who think that they are
defective because they can't focus for three hours. Bruv, no one can focus for three
hours, so don't worry about it. 45 minutes is pretty
much the upper limit. One study said 52 minutes,
but OK, fine, whatevs. Fine-- that kind of thing. So then the question
becomes, OK, how do I train my ability to
focus for merely 45 minutes? As you've said, there's
all the common stuff-- turning off distractions,
turning off notifications, putting your phone
in a different room. One of the issues with the whole
TikTokification of the world is that when you attention
switch so frequently between things, you actually
atrophy the muscle of focus. And so if I were
actively trying to train that muscle, what
I would be doing is, if I was reading
a book, I would force myself to sit there
and just read the book. And I'd have my phone
in a different room so that I can block out
any unwelcome distractions. The thing to keep
in mind, though, is that not all distractions
are created equal. I've heard from
parents that when the kid comes knocking on
the door to tell you a story, you actually want to stop work
so that you can talk to the kid. Because the kid's only going
to want to hang out with you for a certain period of time. When I was at university
and a friend would come-- I'd keep my door open so
that, if a friend walked by, we'd just be able to have
a bit of a chit-chat. That, to me, is a
welcome distraction. The point of uni is not to
get a slightly better grade but the friendships
you make along the way. So if it's welcome
distractions, embrace the welcome distractions. If they're unwelcome, put the
phone in a different room. Train the ability to focus. And think of 45 minutes as
the absolute upper limit. MATT BRITTIN: Thank you. Great. Final question. AUDIENCE: Wow, no pressure. [LAUGHTER] MATT BRITTIN: Yeah,
there's no pressure. It's just an
experimental question. ALI ABDAAL: It's going
to be mediocre anyway. MATT BRITTIN: We're
learning together. The answer is going
to be mediocre. [LAUGHTER] No, it's not. It's not. There's no pressure now. Say what you like. AUDIENCE: Hi, Ali. So thank you so much for the
productivity tips-- really love them. I had a question on
the earlier point that you mentioned
about how there are certain people that
you talk to that leave you with a high energy. And then there
are certain people that might not be as energetic. And so my question is, What
are some characteristics, or some traits, that you've
seen in high-energy folks? And the reason that
I ask this question is that I also relate with
your point on that you only need to be energetic
for, like, 5 minutes at the start of the meeting. And I really use that trick when
I'm going up on stage or just before an event, just to
say, hey, how's it going, stuff like that, and just
to create that sort of vibe and energy in an event. But in a meeting,
it's more serious. You're talking
about serious stuff. You're talking about
things like that. So how do you put
that energy there? ALI ABDAAL: Nice. Great question. I hope the answer
will be not mediocre. Actually, it probably will be. So Tintin is one
of my team members who's sitting at the front. And Tintin is a very
high-energy guy. And he doesn't know it, but
I, sort of, studied Tintin because I'm like-- [LAUGHTER] --what does he do that makes
him an energizing presence to everyone around him? And I've boiled it
down to a few things. One of them is a
tip that Tintin gave me, which is whenever
you're greeting someone, be overenthusiastic in your
greeting of that someone. Like Tintin, oh, my goodness. It's so good to see you. Thank you so much for coming. It's a bit weird. But the other person
just really likes it, and it's just really nice. It makes everyone feel good. So enthusiastic greetings
are super, super helpful. I think, also, one
thing that I realized through being a YouTuber is that
the camera removes 2 to 3 points of energy and charisma. So when I'm speaking to
a camera, for example, the camera is right here. I'm alone in my bedroom. And I'm like, hey, friends,
welcome back to the channel. If you're new here,
my name is Ali. I'm a doctor based in Cambridge. And today, we're going to talk
about blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, oh, I sound
like a fricking lunatic. If someone were to see
me, they'd be like, why are you shouting? But it comes across not
shouty to the camera because the camera removes
2 to 3 points of energy. So I keep this in
mind in Zoom meetings, as well, that the camera
removes 2 to 3 points of energy. And so one of the things
that energizing people do is that they simply
speak louder. Anyone can do this. You just speak a
little bit louder. And over time, you
train your ability to speak a little bit louder. And that, generally, makes you
a way more energizing influence in almost every area of life. And then the third
thing that Tintin does is that he's very
gracious with compliments, just saying something
nice to someone. And saying something
nice to someone, again, costs you nothing,
even in a serious meeting or a sincere meeting or
whatever, is always appreciated. People feel really
good about it. I used to really struggle
with this to the point-- so I was about six months
into dating my now fiancée. And she said, you know, you
very rarely compliment me. And I was like, really? And she was like, yeah. You almost never say that I look
beautiful or this sort of stuff. And I was like, yeah, but I
don't want to be weird about it. I don't want to say
you look beautiful. That's just
objectifying you, right, and all of this sort of stuff. And she was like, no,
I'd really like it if you told me I was
beautiful, if you said some nice things to me. And I realized that I was
so worried about coming across as insincerely
nice that I didn't even hit the baseline of a nice
level of being nice to someone. So now, the way I think about
it is if my goal is to-- if I'm aiming for
so nice to the point that people think it's
insincere, given my personality, I'll probably get
to the baseline. So those three things-- speaking
louder, enthusiastic greetings, and just saying nice
things to people, I think, makes someone automatically
way more energizing. MATT BRITTIN: (LOUDLY)
Well, everybody, can we just say what an
amazing talk it's been. And I knew he was
going to be brilliant. But he's delivered more than
we could ever have expected. He's good looking. He's funny. He's got loads of insights. He's given us the
chance to destress. Can I ask you to join me in
riotous applause for Ali? [APPLAUSE] ALI ABDAAL: Thank you so much. [MUSIC PLAYING]
