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The Best Productivity Hacks of All Time

2021-09-08 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 14:40 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Health, sleep and habits, Books and reading, Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

Ali ranks popular productivity techniques on a tier list: S for focusing on systems, the daily highlight, listening at speed multiples and, at the very top, enjoying the journey; A for delegation and time blocking; B for the five-minute rule; C for Pomodoro, batching, to-do lists, deadlines and goals; D for the two-minute rule, the two-day rule, colour coding and the Eisenhower matrix.

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 tier list and its ranks, from S (life-changing) to F (utter junk)

00:00:50 — The Pomodoro technique

  • ★★ Ali used the Pomodoro technique at university, but he often felt he was just getting into the swing of things at the 25-minute mark, so stopping for a break interrupted his flow state. — 00:00:58 · Pomodoro technique
  • ★★ Ali ranks the Pomodoro technique C on his productivity tier list: on work he enjoys, about 40 or 45 minutes is his ideal time to get into the flow state. — 00:01:27 · Pomodoro technique
  • ★★ From Naval Ravikant, Ali takes the aspirational hourly rate: work out what your time is worth to you in dollars, then delegate what you do not enjoy when it costs less than that rate. — 00:01:27 · money buys back time
  • ★ Ali calls Tim Ferriss's The 4-Hour Workweek, which discusses delegation a lot, one of the books that has most changed his life. — 00:01:27 · Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

00:01:37 — Delegation and the aspirational hourly rate

  • ★★★ Ali ranks delegation A, an essential tip, and recommends at least trying to value your time at a dollar amount as a useful thought exercise. — 00:01:57 · money buys back time

00:02:13 — The two-minute rule

  • ★★ Ali calls the two-minute rule from David Allen's Getting Things Done (do a task under two minutes right away) really useful but ranks it D because he rarely applies it, leaving emails and WhatsApp messages unanswered. — 00:02:24
  • ★★ Matt D'Avella (quoted): Matt D'Avella's two-day rule, which Ali reads out: never take more than one day in a row off some kind of workout, be it the gym, a jog or a hike. — 00:02:54 · Matt D'Avella

00:02:58 — Matt D'Avella's two-day rule

  • ★★ The two-day rule did not quite work for Ali; what helped him was an accountability buddy in a personal trainer, with whom he worked out two or three times a week, so he ranks the rule D. — 00:03:52
  • ★★★ Ali rates time blocking, blocking out time for a task or project in the calendar, A: an absolutely essential tip. — 00:03:52 · time-blocking

00:04:05 — Time blocking

  • ★★ Ali says his productivity basically doubled overnight on the day he started using a calendar. — 00:04:21 · time-blocking
  • ★★ An empty gap in Ali's calendar leaves him paralysed by all the things he could do; a calendar slot with a defined task tells him what to do and gives him a default option. — 00:04:21 · time-blocking
  • ★ Ali says Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Cal Newport also use time blocking and have written and talked extensively about it. — 00:04:51 · time-blocking
  • ★★ When Ali struggles to start a big task, he turns over a five-minute hourglass on his desk in Cambridge and convinces himself he will only do it for five minutes, which works really well. — 00:04:51

00:05:00 — The five-minute rule

  • ★★ Ali ranks the five-minute rule B: procrastination is generally a failure to get started, and once started, momentum, as in Newton's first law, carries us through. — 00:05:20

00:05:49 — Systems rather than goals

  • ★★★ Ali gives focusing on systems rather than goals, an idea of Atomic Habits author James Clear, his S (life-changing) rank: when he fixates on a goal, the thing generally does not get done. — 00:05:49 · James Clear, Atomic Habits
  • ★★ Everyone in sport wants to do well and every Olympian wants gold, Ali says, so having the goal is not enough: what matters is the system that gets you there. — 00:06:18

00:06:44 — The daily highlight

  • ★★★ Ali ranks the daily highlight S and calls it the single most useful productivity tip he has come across: each day decide the one thing you want to get done, then make sure you do it. — 00:06:47 · daily highlight
  • ★★ A daily highlight can be productive, like completing a chapter of his book proposal, or not work at all, like hanging out with friends or calling his grandma. — 00:06:47 · daily highlight, Ali Abdaal's grandmother
  • ★★ Ali finds batching, an idea Tim Ferriss discusses in The 4-Hour Workweek, pretty good but not massively life-changing: he films four videos in a single day and then has the other three days off, and ranks it C. — 00:07:17 · Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

00:07:20 — Batching

  • ★★ Ali ranks colour-coding the calendar by category, which his friend Noah Kagan uses a lot, D, because he does not use it himself. — 00:07:46

00:07:50 — Colour coding

00:08:10 — To-do lists and the might-do list

  • ★★ Ali ranks to-do lists C: apart from his daily highlight, everything goes on a might-do list he ticks off only if he feels like it, and with the most important thing done each day he need not worry about the rest. — 00:08:15 · daily highlight

00:08:44 — Listening and watching at speed multiples

  • ★★★ Ali ranks listening and watching at speed multiples S, 100% life-changing: he generally hears Audible audiobooks at double speed, sometimes watches TV alone at double or triple speed, and enjoys both more at 2x than at 1x. — 00:08:44

00:09:27 — Audible sponsor read

00:10:52 — Deadlines

  • ★★ Seth Godin (quoted): Seth Godin writes in a blog post that deadlines work because they focus the mind and create urgency, as an external lever, while dessert needs no external force: it is something you get to do. — 00:11:11 · identified motivation
  • ★★ Ali ranks deadlines C: effective in some circumstances, but he prefers to think of work as "get to" rather than "have to" and wants a life that does not rely on deadlines, doing what he enjoys. — 00:11:11 · identified motivation

00:11:52 — The Eisenhower matrix

  • ★★ Ali calls the Eisenhower matrix, sorting tasks by importance and urgency, fantastic but ranks it D: he uses it only subconsciously, asking whether a task is important and finding time for it if it is. — 00:11:57

00:12:26 — Goals

  • ★★★ Ali, who says he keeps changing his mind about goals, rates setting goals C these days: useful in some areas of life, but he is more about systems and the journey than the destination. — 00:12:26 · journey before destination
  • ★★ Ali does have some goals but prefers input goals to output goals: goals entirely within his control. — 00:12:56

  • ★★★ Ali puts enjoying the journey at the very top of the tier list as the ultimate productivity hack: when we have fun doing what we need or want to do, productivity takes care of itself. — 00:12:56 · feel-good productivity (concept)

    “enjoying the journey is the ultimate productivity hack”

00:13:05 — Enjoying the journey, the ultimate productivity hack

  • ★★ If we make the journey of what we have to do more fun, such as writing a book, going to work or studying for exams, Ali says productivity takes care of itself and the other techniques go out the window. — 00:13:25 · feel-good productivity (concept)

00:13:54 — The final tier list and sign-off

  • ★★ Ali recommends trying the techniques in his S and A tiers (systems, the daily highlight, speed listening, enjoying the journey, delegation and time blocking) rather than following all of them. — 00:13:54 · time-blocking, daily highlight

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: daily highlight · feel-good productivity (concept) · Pomodoro technique · speed listening · systems vs goals · time-blocking

Also: People: Ali Abdaal's grandmother · Bill Gates · Cal Newport · David Allen · Elon Musk · James Clear · Matt D'Avella · Naval Ravikant · Noah Kagan · Seth Godin · Tim Ferriss

Works: Atomic Habits · Getting Things Done · The 4-Hour Workweek

Concepts: accountability buddy · batching · Eisenhower matrix · five-minute rule · Flow state · identified motivation · journey before destination · might-do list · money buys back time · process goals · two-day rule · two-minute rule

Also centred on speed listening: 20 Lessons that Improved My Life

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