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5 Essential Tips for Long-Lasting Productivity

2021-05-21 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 13:57 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Feel-Good Productivity thesis, His medical past, Aimed at students, Sponsor segment present

While writing his book on productivity, Ali argues that its hidden secret is learning to enjoy the journey: instead of the "Muhammad Ali method" of work as suffering or "find your passion", he learns to enjoy what he does, with five tips: expect fun, turn work into a game, bring friends on board, set an aesthetic stage, and check you are working on the right things.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — The hidden secret of productivity: enjoying the journey, against the Muhammad Ali method and "find your passion"

  • ★★ Ali is in the middle of writing a book about productivity, and has spent the last few months thinking about what productivity actually means to him. — 00:00:00

  • ★★★ Ali's main insight while writing his book: productivity is not really about getting more done but about learning to enjoy the journey; when we have fun, productivity takes care of itself. — 00:00:30 · feel-good productivity (concept)

    “productivity, to be honest, isn't really about getting more things done. It's mostly about learning to enjoy the journey.”

  • ★★ Nobody needs motivation to watch Netflix or play Warzone, Ali says; we need it only for things that are short-term painful for long-term gain, and humans are terrible at doing things for their future selves because of instant gratification. — 00:00:30 · Netflix

  • ★★★ Ali calls work as suffering "the Muhammad Ali method", after the boxer's quote about hating every minute of training but suffering now to live as a champion, and says he is not a fan of it. — 00:01:11

    “The first one is something that I call the Muhammad Ali method.”

  • ★★ Ali's problem with the Muhammad Ali method, the work-equals-suffering approach to life, is that it glorifies the hustle and the grind and the idea that you need to suffer. — 00:02:15

  • ★★ Ali does not want to be the best in the world at anything; he wants a balanced life of having fun, working on things he enjoys and contributing a bit to the world, without competing with others. — 00:02:15
  • ★★ Over the last 15 years none of Ali's YouTube channel, entrepreneurship, medical school, work as a doctor or podcast has felt like suffering or work; when his housemate asks why he is working at 11 at night, it is because it is fun. — 00:02:44
  • ★★ Ali's first problem with the advice to find your passion and do what you enjoy is that many people do not know what their passion is. — 00:03:14
  • ★★ Ali's second problem with "find your passion": the things he is passionate about, playing World of Warcraft and songs on the guitar, are things he could never make a living at. — 00:03:37 · World of Warcraft
  • ★★ Ali's third problem with "find your passion": most people lack the privilege to quit their jobs and follow it, so picking only the fun things to work on does not work for most people. — 00:04:07

  • ★★★ Ali's approach, used most of his life: instead of doing the things you enjoy, learn to enjoy the things you are doing; it needs no privilege, and he calls it the true secret of productivity: journey before destination. — 00:04:33 · journey before destination, feel-good productivity (concept)

    “instead of doing the things you enjoy, learning to enjoy the things that you're doing”

00:05:06 — Shift your mindset

  • ★★★ Ali's first tip is a mindset shift: expect the work to be fun; whenever he has felt stressed, unmotivated or unproductive, it was usually because he forgot to have fun. — 00:05:06
  • ★★ Using a phrase he thinks the philosopher Alan Watts used, Ali switches from approaching things seriously to approaching them sincerely: still giving it his all, but treating it as a game and enjoying himself. — 00:05:06

  • ★★ Ali keeps a post-it note on his computer monitor at all times that says "this is going to be fun", to remind himself that work need not be suffering. — 00:05:47

    “this is going to be fun”

00:06:09 — Turn things into a game

  • ★★★ Ali's second tip is to turn things into a game: though the word gamification now makes people cringe, he thinks gamification is absolutely game-changing. — 00:06:45
  • ★★ In his first year of medical school Ali struggled, thinking it was supposed to be hard; in his second year he treated it as a game, listing every subject in his revision timetable and colour-coding each by how well he knew it. — 00:06:45
  • ★★ Looking forward to testing himself with active recall and to each box of his Google Sheet turning from red through yellow to green made studying more fun for Ali and helped him get a first in his second-year exams. — 00:07:14 · active recall, Google Sheets

00:07:43 — Bring others on board

  • ★★ In his fifth year of medical school Ali had a research project analysing about 2,000 patient records by hand on the electronic patient record system, mind-numbingly boring work he found himself unmotivated to do alone. — 00:07:43
  • ★★ Ali recruited friends from the year below to his patient-records project; the five or six of them did it in one evening of about four hours in the medical school library's computer room, with pizza, takeaway and donuts, and it was quite fun. — 00:08:44
  • ★★ After Ali and his friends got through all 2,000 patient records, they wrote the paper, it was published with their names on it, and it was presented at a conference in Singapore, where Ali flew with friends. — 00:08:44 · Singapore
  • ★★ Had Ali not brought other people on board, the patient-records project would not have happened, and he would not have had so many CV points or a free trip to Singapore. — 00:09:13 · Singapore
  • ★★★ Ali's third tip is to bring others on board: think about whatever you are doing and how you can do it with other people. — 00:09:13
  • ★★ At medical school, studying for exams with friends around him made everything much more fun for Ali. — 00:09:13

00:09:42 — Set the appropriate stage

  • ★ Ali films with a blue teapot (blue is his favourite colour), a coral mug and his MacBook in a sleeve around him, things whose look makes him enjoy studying or writing a video script. — 00:09:42 · MacBook
  • ★★★ Ali's fourth tip is to set the stage: design your tools and environment to appeal to your personal aesthetic sensibilities, so that whatever you do there automatically becomes more fun. — 00:10:09
  • ★★ A fancy desk setup is not needed, Ali says: when he was broke at medical school he still put time into arranging his books and laptop on his desk. — 00:10:09
  • ★★ Ali's Study With Me playlist on Spotify holds instrumental music from The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean and Marvel; playing it makes his work more fun. — 00:10:38 · Spotify, Harry Potter (book series)
  • ★★ Ali says the evidence shows that studying or working with music reduces focus very slightly, because it interferes with aspects of short-term memory processing. — 00:10:38
  • ★★ Ali would rather have a bit more fun listening to music than squeeze out a little extra productivity by working in complete silence. — 00:11:08

00:11:41 — Decide if you're working on the right things

  • ★★★ Ali's fifth tip is to ask whether you are working on the right things at all: with a job that feels ultimately meaningless, there is only so much hacking you can do to enjoy it. — 00:11:41
  • ★★ Ali calls meaning a really important part of productivity: there is little point driving at 100 miles per hour in the wrong direction, or climbing a ladder leaning against the wrong wall. — 00:12:07
  • ★ Ali says he does not have the answers to how to find things that are meaningful and worth pursuing, but has found many exercises helpful for thinking about it. (unsure) — 00:12:07

00:12:36 — Skillshare sponsor read and sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: feel-good productivity (concept) · gamification · Muhammad Ali method

Also: People: Alan Watts · Muhammad Ali

Works: Harry Potter (book series) · Pirates of the Caribbean · The Lord of the Rings

Organizations: Marvel · Netflix

Concepts: active recall · journey before destination · sincerity versus seriousness

Places: Singapore

Products: Call of Duty: Warzone · Google Sheets · MacBook · Spotify · World of Warcraft

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