Should productivity be about efficiency or about enjoying the work?
What productivity is for and whether it should feel hard or good; hustle and toxic productivity.
Axis: maximise efficiency and output … make the work feel good; enjoyment is efficiency
Concept: feel-good productivity (concept)
Answers by date: 5 records in 5 sources, newest first; the answers above are the current ones. The advice was refined (2018, 2024), never reversed, in these records.
| date | who | answer | source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-23 | Ali | Ali says his research found one secret to productivity, making your work feel good: positive emotions about anything you do create energy and make you more productive, more creative and less stressed. | Positive emotions create energy ⚡️ 00:00:00 |
| 2024-05-16 | Ali | Ali phrases the daily highlight as "what's today's adventure going to be": to be productive you have to enjoy the process, and reframing a task as an adventure makes that more likely. | The Simplest and Most Important Productivity Tip 😉 00:00:00 |
| 2020-06-10 (said on 2020-06-01, implied) | Ali | To people who ask when he makes time to relax, Ali says he finds taking notes on articles he read long ago fun and relaxing, so it does not really feel like work. | Music, Reading and Note-Taking - Productive Day in the Life 00:07:29 |
| 2018-05-07 | Ali | Ali advises making yourself enjoy what you study by taking an interest in it: as his mum would say, the more you learn about a topic, the more interest and enjoyment grow. | Live Q&A + Hangout - Bank Holiday vibes - Ali Abdaal, Cambridge medical student 00:43:19 |
| 2018-04-18 | Ali | Ali likes revision days to be fairly chill: a leisurely pace with bursts of active recall and spaced repetition, without being overly concerned with 100% productivity. | Study With Me + 10 Productivity / Revision Tips - Cambridge University medical student VLOG #31 00:00:00 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).