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My Toxic Relationship With Productivity

2021-03-24 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 20:08 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own products discussed, His own numbers

Over a cup of tea Ali describes a three-week productivity slump he calls a toxic relationship with productivity, traces it to outcome dependence, ignoring his emotional state and an overbooked calendar, and lists his fixes: input goals, a calendar link with no meetings before 2 p.m., attention to his feelings and choosing to be satisfied with the day's work.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — My toxic relationship: three weeks of not wanting to film, resented mornings, revenge bedtime procrastination and daily dissatisfaction

  • ★★★ For about three weeks Ali was in a productivity slump: every time he filmed a video he could not be bothered, and each one was an uphill battle. — 00:00:28
  • ★★ Ali says he has hammered into himself that consistency is the most important thing, with the fear all YouTubers share that taking a break would make the algorithm turn on him. (overstated) — 00:00:28
  • ★★★ Ali says the secret of his productivity for some 15 years has been that he broadly enjoys about 90% of everything he does; only the first 10%, getting started, takes pushing. — 00:01:15
  • ★★ During the slump Ali resented the art lessons, workouts, calls and team meetings he had himself booked into his mornings weeks earlier to get himself out of bed. — 00:02:12
  • ★★ In the slump Ali fell into revenge bedtime procrastination, scrolling Instagram and Twitter for no reason until one, two or even three in the morning. — 00:02:41 · Instagram, Twitter
  • ★★ Ali's housemate Sheen told him that revenge bedtime procrastination is when you feel you lack control over your day, so at night, the one part you control, your brain refuses to go to bed. — 00:02:41 · Sheen
  • ★★ Each day of the slump ended in chronic dissatisfaction: Ali felt he had filmed one video when he should have filmed three, shot eight thumbnails and recorded four course videos. — 00:03:26
  • ★★ Ali's dissatisfaction stacked up over two or three weeks that passed in a haze; looking back at his calendar, he does not remember what he did in them. — 00:03:51
  • ★★ Ali, who says he has never really experienced burnout, wonders whether his slump was burnout. (hedged) — 00:04:16

00:04:42 — What caused the issues: outcome dependence, ignoring his emotional state, a calendar way too busy

  • ★★★ The biggest cause of his slump, Ali says, was outcome dependence: being fixated on outcomes outside his control. — 00:04:45
  • ★★★ Ali normally sets input goals rather than output goals: no target views or subscribers, which are outside his control, but, for example, two videos a week, which is within it. — 00:04:45
  • ★★ Around the start of January 2021 Ali's channel dropped from three videos a week to two, and he decided every video now had to be a banger. (hedged) — 00:04:45
  • ★★ YouTube Studio rates a video "10 out of 10" when it is the weakest of the channel's previous 10 videos; Ali says every YouTuber he has spoken to despairs at seeing it. — 00:05:26
  • ★★ Wanting every video to be a banger made Ali obsessed with YouTube analytics, for example wanting to lift a thumbnail click-through rate of 9.8 to 13 by shooting new thumbnails. — 00:05:55
  • ★★ For about three and a half years on YouTube Ali broadly did not care how a video performed once it was out. — 00:06:29
  • ★★ Ali is reading John McPhee's Draft No. 4, on the writing process, which he says is helping him learn how to write. — 00:06:29
  • ★★★ Ali has a book deal and is writing a book. — 00:06:58
  • ★★★ Ali sees two goals for his book: writing the best book he can and is proud of, an input goal, or hitting the New York Times bestseller list, which he calls a dumb, arbitrary goal outside his control. — 00:06:58
  • ★★ Fixated on the New York Times bestseller list, Ali thought everything he wrote for his book was total junk and hated himself as he wrote. — 00:07:26
  • ★★★ The second cause of his slump, Ali says, is that he does not pay enough attention to his emotional state: if he does not feel like doing something, he often pushes through anyway. — 00:07:26
  • ★★ Ali's channel has put out about 350 videos, on average two-point-something a week since June 2017. (hedged) — 00:07:56
  • ★★ If you are a complete "waste man" who would play World of Warcraft all day, Ali says, you have to ignore your emotional state and do the hard thing, like going for a run or studying, even if you do not feel like it. — 00:08:40 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★★ Being broadly not a waste man, Ali thinks he, like many high-achieving friends, swings too far the other way, doing things whether or not he feels like it. (hedged) — 00:09:04
  • ★★ Ali says a video on overcoming procrastination, about tackling the resistance, is coming out later this week (week of 22 March 2021) or next week (week of 29 March 2021). — 00:09:46
  • ★★★ A big part of Ali's near-burnout, he says, was ignoring his emotional state and pushing through even when he did not feel like it. — 00:09:46

  • ★★★ Ali says it is okay to take a break sometimes: if he does not feel like filming, even with a sponsor deadline, he can ask the sponsor to delay the video by a few days, and they are normally nice about it. — 00:10:20

    “it's okay to take a break sometimes”

  • ★★★ The third cause of Ali's slump was that his calendar was way too busy. — 00:10:42

  • ★★ After discovering Calendly a couple of months ago, Ali sent his booking link to many of the people who email him, until some days had a different Zoom call every half hour from 9.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. — 00:10:42 · Zoom
  • ★★ The live sessions of Ali's Part-Time YouTuber Academy have been running for the last six weeks. — 00:11:40 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Because book writing and YouTube are creative work, Ali has realised he needs a lot of time blocked out to make a video or write. (hedged) — 00:12:09
  • ★★ Ali had assumed he could film a 20-minute video in half an hour, but it often takes him three hours to get into the mood to film. — 00:12:35
  • ★★★ Ali had no margin in his schedule: empty gaps to sit and think, to absorb a meeting that overruns, or to have lunch. — 00:12:35

00:13:41 — Solutions he has found helpful: no outcome goals, an emptier calendar, noticing his feelings, World of Warcraft, choosing to be satisfied

  • ★★★ Though Ali would really like his book to be a New York Times bestseller, he squashes the thought: given the choice, he would choose writing a book he is proud of and likes. — 00:13:50
  • ★★ Ali has been making more sit-down chat videos over tea, which he prefers to heavily produced list videos such as "18 ways to be productive" that take a lot of effort. — 00:14:19
  • ★★★ Ali tells himself he does not really care how his chat videos perform: people will watch them or not, and he need not fixate on YouTube Studio's numbers. — 00:14:19
  • ★★ Ali's assistant Elizabeth, who has her own YouTube channel, keeps asking him why he says yes to so many people; he calls himself a chronic nice guy. — 00:14:48
  • ★★★ Ali changed his calendar link so no one can book a meeting with him before 2 p.m., leaving mornings free for creative work and an hour for lunch, with only two or three calls between 2 and 6 p.m. — 00:14:48

  • ★★★ Ali calls his booking-link limit a system solution to a people problem: he is too keen to say yes, but the link itself does not let him overbook himself. — 00:15:37

    “a system solution to a people problem”

  • ★★ As you get more famous you get too much inbound, Ali says; spending his working day on meetings would make no sense, because people follow him for the videos he makes time to make. — 00:16:02

  • ★★ Friends of Ali's who are productivity nerds told him a therapist really helped them, even without mental health issues, by making them address their emotional state. — 00:16:41 · Mental health
  • ★★★ Ali is trying to be more aware of his emotional state, asking himself how he feels and whether to give in to his feelings, without viewing that as a bad thing. — 00:16:41
  • ★★ Ali did not feel like filming this video until his housemate talked him into it; as with most things, most of the friction and activation energy is in getting started, and then it is fun. — 00:17:10
  • ★★ Ali has resumed playing World of Warcraft in a 30-day challenge of playing video games, streaming almost every day on Twitch. — 00:17:10 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★★ Ali says that at the end of the day he can simply choose to be satisfied with what he has done, an idea from a blog post by his friend Neel Nanda. — 00:17:37 · choose to be satisfied
  • ★★ Productivity types, Ali says, always find fault: too little sleep, a poor day at work, an unproductive side hustle, not present enough with family, too late to bed, and the cycle continues. — 00:17:37
  • ★★★ Calling the day good or beating himself up does not change how much work Ali did; the story he tells himself afterwards does not change reality and only makes him feel bad. — 00:18:21 · choose to be satisfied
  • ★★ Choosing to be satisfied with his day's work lets Ali play World of Warcraft while streaming on Twitch guilt-free instead of hating himself. — 00:18:50 · World of Warcraft

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: burnout · choose to be satisfied · process goals

Also: People: Elizabeth · John McPhee · Neel Nanda · Sheen

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Draft No. 4

Organizations: Instagram · Twitch · Twitter

Concepts: Mental health · resistance · revenge bedtime procrastination

Products: Calendly · World of Warcraft · YouTube Studio · Zoom

Also centred on process goals: How I Gained 1 MILLION Subscribers · How to Beat Procrastination

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