How I Manage My Time - The System That Changed My Life

2022-08-19 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Ali Abdaal (channel) · recording, 16:21 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Sponsor segment present, Lesson from a book, Feel-Good Productivity thesis

Ali presents his energy investment portfolio, a Notion board of a bucket list, active investments, passive income and completed projects, and argues that the active column should be capped at about five projects, plus or minus two, because time and energy are finite.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Overwhelm: the problem is not time but energy

★★★ Ali says his trouble with time management is not a lack of time, since he could make the time, but a lack of energy. — 00:00:29 · time management
★★ One answer to a lack of energy, Ali says, is to make the things you do more energising, which is in a way the thesis of the book he is writing. — 00:00:29 · energisers and drainers, Feel-Good Productivity (book)
★★ For the book he is writing, Ali has been researching scientific papers on what gives us energy. — 00:00:29 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
★★ Ali says he will definitely make more videos on the core idea of his book, making the things you do more energising. — 00:00:29 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:00:58 — The energy investment portfolio in Notion: bucket list, active investments, passive income, completed

★★★ Ali calls his energy investment portfolio a glorified to-do list or projects list, and says framing it this way helps him manage his energy. — 00:00:58 · energy investment portfolio
★ Ali keeps his energy investment portfolio in Notion, but says the system can be built in any app or with pen and paper. — 00:00:58 · energy investment portfolio, Notion
★★ Ali's energy investment portfolio has three columns, the middle one split in two: a bucket list of everything he thinks he wants to do, then his projects in progress, split into active investments and passive income. — 00:01:27 · energy investment portfolio
★ Ali's bucket list includes Mandarin, glamping, mountain biking, wakeboarding, scuba diving, kite surfing, bungee jumping, parkour, motorbiking, street hypnosis, a tree-house stay, learning to cook, a USA road trip in a van, archery, acro yoga, a surfing trip to Bristol (as heard) and Japanese. — 00:01:27
★★ One of Ali's two active personal investments is organising two singing lessons a week, because he really wants to get better at singing and loves musical theatre singers. — 00:01:56
★★ Ali's other active personal investment is making sure he records an episode of Not Overthinking, the podcast with his brother, every week. — 00:02:26 · Not Overthinking, Taimur Abdaal
★★ Going to the gym three times a week is in Ali's passive-income column: it was an active investment until he got a personal trainer, and now it runs on autopilot. — 00:02:26
★★ The passive-income column of Ali's energy investment portfolio holds projects that run on autopilot or that someone else is taking care of. — 00:02:26 · energy investment portfolio, passive income
★★ In Ali's energy investment portfolio, investing energy is more about headspace than about the physical calories spent on the work. — 00:02:55 · energy investment portfolio
★★ Ali has partly delegated finding a new place to live, perhaps a live-work space or a commercial building he can also live in, to Angus, so it sits in his passive column until there are places to view. — 00:03:24 · Angus

00:03:53 — Capping the active investments: five plus or minus two, a Dunbar number for active projects

★★★ The core idea of Ali's energy investment portfolio is that the active investment column must be capped at a certain number. — 00:03:53 · energy investment portfolio
★★ Sometime last year (2021) Ali had eight active projects, which he found too much to handle: he felt overwhelm and burnout. — 00:04:22
★★★ When Ali feels he can't be bothered to do a project more than once or twice in a row and it becomes a pattern, he takes it as a sign he is probably taking on too many projects. — 00:04:22
★★ Ali has found that the fewer projects he has in his active investment column, the happier he is and the more attention he can give them. — 00:04:52
★★ Ali says the business books and the podcasts with CEOs, billionaires and startup founders he has taken in all basically say to limit your number of projects in progress. — 00:04:52
★★ Learning Mandarin is back on Ali's bucket list, and guitar, piano, music theory and art lessons are things he wants to do some day but not in this season of life, because they would lead to overwhelm and burnout. — 00:04:52
★★★ Ali thinks the number of active projects varies by person but, from talking to everyone he knows over several months, is basically five plus or minus two, somewhere between three and seven. — 00:05:21

“I think the number is basically five plus or minus two.”
★★ Ali says studies of working memory, in which people memorise strings of numbers, find that people can generally hold five plus or minus two chunks of information. — 00:05:50
★★ With more than seven projects on the go Ali feels completely scattered and close to burning out, while fewer feels much more manageable. — 00:05:50

00:06:46 — Why an investment portfolio: compounding projects, one-off trips, something to look forward to

★★ Like the Dunbar number for close relationships, Ali thinks we have a Dunbar number for active projects: five plus or minus two. — 00:06:46

“I think we have a Dunbar number for active projects.”
★★ Ali calls it an energy investment portfolio because, as money goes into assets that compound, such as the stock market, Bitcoin or real estate, energy can go into projects that compound, such as skills and habits. — 00:06:46 · energy investment portfolio
★★ Trips and other one-off projects give no compounding returns, Ali says, like buying a property, doing it up and selling it, but they are still investments with a one-off return. — 00:07:15
★★ Organising three holidays at once is too overwhelming for Ali, so he puts organising one big thing, such as a trip, in his active investment column at a time. — 00:07:44
★ Ali's next trip is a wakeboarding trip to Bali. — 00:08:14
★★ Treating trip organising as one slot in his active investments has made Ali take many more trips over the last few months than before. — 00:09:08
★★ Ali recalls his school English teacher's saying that the secret to happiness is to have something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. — 00:09:08
★★ Ali says he will talk more about "someone to love", part of the secret to happiness, in a later video. — 00:09:37

00:09:45 — Skillshare sponsor read and his new Notion class

00:11:14 — No SMART goals: deliberately vague projects, complexity kills enjoyment

★★★ Ali has never really vibed with SMART-style goal setting: he prefers a very rough idea of the broad projects he is working on and why, without a complex system that takes the joy out of them. — 00:11:34
★★ Ali finds his friend August Bradley's way of connecting every project to a wider goal in Notion inspiring, but having tried it, he finds complexity in a system reduces his creativity, productivity and enjoyment of life. — 00:12:03 · Notion

00:12:32 — Doing too much; progress this week; monitoring energy

★★ For ambitious people, Ali says, the risk is not doing too little but doing too much. — 00:12:32
★★★ Ali has found that the fewer projects he has in active investments, generally fewer than five and ideally fewer than three, the less likely he is to burn out and the more he enjoys the journey sustainably. — 00:12:32
★★★ For each active project Ali asks only what progress he can make on it this week (week of 15 August 2022), not this month (August 2022) or quarter. — 00:13:02
★★★ Ali has tried breaking projects into long lists of steps, but found writing down the steps was its own exercise in procrastination, after which he lost interest in the project. — 00:13:02
★★ Taking a project a day or a week at a time and thinking only of the next action makes Ali far more progress than worrying about the whole list of steps. — 00:13:41
★★★ Ali finds it super helpful to monitor his own energy levels around his projects and to notice when a project is draining his energy. — 00:13:41 · energisers and drainers
★★ When Ali was having art lessons three days a week, he found they were draining his energy rather than energising him. — 00:13:41

00:14:19 — Embracing finitude: Four Thousand Weeks and unanswered WhatsApp messages

★★ When a project drains him, Ali either moves it back to the bucket list, deletes it because he no longer cares about it, or finds a way to make it more fun and energising. — 00:14:19
★★★ The meta point of Ali's approach, from Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: time and energy are finite, and we cannot do all the things. — 00:14:19
★★ Ali calls the productivity-guru narrative that you can have it all if you are efficient with your time a bit old; he does not think he ever peddled it, though people took him for a machine. — 00:14:48
★★ What clicked for Ali in reading Four Thousand Weeks and interviewing Oliver Burkeman on his podcast was embracing finitude: accepting that we cannot do it all. — 00:15:17
★★ Ali says he sucks at replying to WhatsApp messages and will never reply to all his friends; rather than feel bad, he accepts that some friends go without a reply. — 00:15:17 · WhatsApp
★★ Ali calls Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use It the most philosophical take on time management and productivity he has read in recent years. — 00:15:47 · time management

In the description and comments

★★ Ali Abdaal (channel): Asked how long to wait between active recall sessions, the channel says it is not sure: a lot of it is picking an arbitrary interval that feels good and seeing how it goes. (unsure) — creator comment · active recall, spaced repetition

Threads in this video

refine · Should you manage your time or your attention? — Ali says his trouble with time management is not a lack of time, since he could make the time, but a lack of energy. (00:00:29)
restate · Is lack of time a real reason not to do something? — Ali says his trouble with time management is not a lack of time, since he could make the time, but a lack of energy. (00:00:29)
restate · Should productivity be about efficiency or about enjoying the work? — One answer to a lack of energy, Ali says, is to make the things you do more energising, which is in a way the thesis of the book he is writing. (00:00:29)
milestone · Ali's first book, which a publisher asked him to write (2020) — For the book he is writing, Ali has been researching scientific papers on what gives us energy. (00:00:29)
promised · Ali promises more videos on the core idea of his book, making the things you do more energising (2022) — Ali says he will definitely make more videos on the core idea of his book, making the things you do more energising. (00:00:29)
refine · Should you run your work from a to-do list? — Ali calls his energy investment portfolio a glorified to-do list or projects list, and says framing it this way helps him manage his energy. (00:00:58)
restate · How do you exercise consistently and get in shape? — Going to the gym three times a week is in Ali's passive-income column: it was an active investment until he got a personal trainer, and now it runs on autopilot. (00:02:26)
refine · How do you avoid burnout? — When Ali feels he can't be bothered to do a project more than once or twice in a row and it becomes a pattern, he takes it as a sign he is probably taking on too many projects. (00:04:22)
first on record · How many projects should you work on at once? — Ali thinks the number of active projects varies by person but, from talking to everyone he knows over several months, is basically five plus or minus two, somewhere between three and seven. (00:05:21)
refine · How do you become happier? — Ali recalls his school English teacher's saying that the secret to happiness is to have something to do, someone to love and something to look forward to. (00:09:08)
promised · Ali promises a later video on "someone to love", part of his English teacher's secret to happiness (2022) — Ali says he will talk more about "someone to love", part of the secret to happiness, in a later video. (00:09:37)
milestone · Ali says he is going to work on his own Skillshare classes, taking a deep dive into how he makes his videos: filming, editing and post-production. — Ali has around a dozen Skillshare classes; his brand-new one, just filmed, is on how to use Notion for beginners. (00:10:06)
restate · Should you set goals, and how? — Ali has never really vibed with SMART-style goal setting: he prefers a very rough idea of the broad projects he is working on and why, without a complex system that takes the joy out of them. (00:11:34)
restate · Which productivity system should you use to organise your life? — Ali finds his friend August Bradley's way of connecting every project to a wider goal in Notion inspiring, but having tried it, he finds complexity in a system reduces his creativity, productivity and enjoyment of life. (00:12:03)
refine · How many projects should you work on at once? — Ali has found that the fewer projects he has in active investments, generally fewer than five and ideally fewer than three, the less likely he is to burn out and the more he enjoys the journey sustainably. (00:12:32)
refine · How should you plan your week? — For each active project Ali asks only what progress he can make on it this week (week of 15 August 2022), not this month (August 2022) or quarter. (00:13:02)
refine · How do you beat procrastination? — Ali has tried breaking projects into long lists of steps, but found writing down the steps was its own exercise in procrastination, after which he lost interest in the project. (00:13:02)
refine · Should you plan things out first or just start? — Taking a project a day or a week at a time and thinking only of the next action makes Ali far more progress than worrying about the whole list of steps. (00:13:41)
refine · How do you have more energy during the day? — Ali finds it super helpful to monitor his own energy levels around his projects and to notice when a project is draining his energy. (00:13:41)
looked back · Ali learns to draw concept art (2021) — When Ali was having art lessons three days a week, he found they were draining his energy rather than energising him. (00:13:41)
refine · Should productivity be about efficiency or about enjoying the work? — When a project drains him, Ali either moves it back to the bucket list, deletes it because he no longer cares about it, or finds a way to make it more fun and energising. (00:14:19)
restate · How do you decide which work to prioritise? — The meta point of Ali's approach, from Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks: time and energy are finite, and we cannot do all the things. (00:14:19)
refine · How do you decide which work to prioritise? — Ali says he sucks at replying to WhatsApp messages and will never reply to all his friends; rather than feel bad, he accepts that some friends go without a reply. (00:15:17)
restate · Should you cram or study a little every day? — Asked how long to wait between active recall sessions, the channel says it is not sure: a lot of it is picking an arbitrary interval that feels good and seeing how it goes. (creator comment)
milestone · Not Overthinking, Ali and Taimur's podcast (2019) — Ali's other active personal investment is making sure he records an episode of Not Overthinking, the podcast with his brother, every week. (00:02:26)