8 Simple Habits That Save Me 20+ Hours a Week

2023-07-31 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Ali Abdaal (channel) · recording, 20:28 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Goals, purpose and life design) · mode: List of tips or lessons · tags: Feel-Good Productivity thesis, His own products discussed, His medical past, Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book, His own numbers, Family, Sponsor segment present

Ali gives eight time-management habits that he says save him about 20 hours a week: calendar blocking up to an ideal week, making work feel good, a daily adventure with side quests, focus, rapid action, self-experiments, alignment with goals and delegation.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Introduction: time as the most valuable non-renewable resource

★★ Ali calls time our single most valuable non-renewable resource: we can always make more money, but we can never make more time. — 00:00:00 · time management · first in: 2023-04-24, How I Manage My Time - The Trident Calendar System

“We can always make more money, but we can never make more time.”

00:00:29 — The calendar habit: levels of calendar use, from appointments to the ideal week

★ When he started medical school Ali did not use a calendar, only looking at his timetable, and kept forgetting his lectures and supervisions. — 00:00:29
★★★ Ali's level two of calendar use, where most of the gains are: intentionally schedule things into your calendar, even appointments with yourself. — 00:00:58 · time-blocking
★★ Scheduling appointments with yourself separates planning how to spend your time from doing it; Ali likens this to the pilot, who decides where the plane goes, and the plane, which executes. — 00:01:27
★★ At the start of the day or the end of the week, Ali time-blocks his following week, deciding where the gym blocks and filming blocks go. — 00:01:27 · time-blocking
★★★ Ali recommends the ideal week method: create a new Google Calendar called your ideal week and block out what an ideal ordinary week of your life looks like, from work and the gym to friends and family. — 00:02:26
★★★ Someone's ideal week shows their intentions and their actual calendar shows their reality; Ali says managing time effectively is bridging the gap between what we intend to do and what we actually do. — 00:02:55

00:03:24 — The feel-good productivity habit: making work energising

★★★ Ali's feel-good productivity habit, the core thesis of his new book Feel-Good Productivity: find a way to make your work generate energy rather than drain it. — 00:03:24 · Feel-Good Productivity (book), feel-good productivity (concept)
★★ Ali says that what we think of as a time management problem is often an energy management problem. — 00:03:46 · energisers and drainers, time management
★★ Ali says there is a great deal of evidence that feeling good, generating positive emotions, is what generates energy, which is why his book is called Feel-Good Productivity. — 00:04:16 · Feel-Good Productivity (book), feel-good productivity (concept)
★★★ Ali thinks of time management and calendar blocking as creating the container of the day, and of energy as filling that container with what he actually wants to do. — 00:04:16 · time-blocking, time management
★★ Ali advises asking what separates an energising piece of work from a draining one, and whether you can bring the energisers into the work itself. — 00:04:45 · energisers and drainers

00:05:14 — Sponsor read for Morning Brew

00:06:13 — The adventure habit: today's adventure and up to three side quests

★★★ Ali's adventure habit: at the start of every day ask what the most important task to get done today is, and limit it to one thing. — 00:06:13 · daily adventure
★★ Ali dislikes thinking in terms of tasks, which make him feel like someone's slave, so he phrases the day's most important task as "what is today's adventure going to be?" — 00:06:42 · daily adventure
★★ The first chapter of Feel-Good Productivity is called Play: it argues that framing work in the language of play brings out positive emotion, even when the work is really boring. — 00:07:11 · Feel-Good Productivity (book), play, power, people
★★ Level two of Ali's adventure habit adds up to three optional side quests for the day, which he splits into work, health and relationships for balance. — 00:07:40 · daily adventure
★★ On days Ali sets his daily adventure and side quests his time management is supercharged; when he rushes into something without ten minutes over a coffee to think, he squanders his time. — 00:08:10 · daily adventure, time management

00:08:37 — The focus habit: interruptions, welcome distractions and tuning out the rest

★★ Ali cites a study he came across in Harvard Business Review finding that employees waste on average around 22 to 28% of their workday on distractions, mainly through task switching. — 00:08:40
★★ Extrapolating that single study, Ali reckons interruptions cost about three months a year and a whole decade over a 40-year career. (hedged) — 00:09:10
★★ Ali calls being able to focus without interruptions an absolute superpower and a massive lever for saving time. — 00:09:10 · deep work (concept)
★★ Some interruptions are welcome distractions, Ali says: at university he always left his door open, as he would rather a friend interrupted his work; the point of university is the friends and social experiences, with work a side effect. — 00:09:39
★★ Ali passes on what parents have emailed him: if your child interrupts your work wanting to play, play with them, because at some point they will stop wanting to and you will regret it. — 00:10:08
★★ To tune out unwelcome distractions while filming, Ali keeps his phone in his pocket on a focus mode and turns off all notifications on his computer. — 00:10:08 · Slack
★★ While writing his book, Ali often worked in a coffee shop so that his team would not interrupt him. — 00:10:08 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
★★ Ali cites a quote from Alex Hormozi to the effect that intelligence is how quickly you can change your behaviour given new information. — 00:10:46

00:11:04 — The rapid action habit: acting quickly on new information

★★ Ali's rapid action habit: act quickly on new information; it can go too far, but most people stay stuck in what they have always done and take ages to act on something new. — 00:11:15
★★ After interviewing Ryder Carroll, inventor of the bullet journal method, on his podcast, Ali felt inspired to bullet journal more intentionally and acted on it at once, which he says saved him a lot of time. — 00:11:45
★★ By the forgetting curve, Ali says, an idea from a podcast or book that you do not act on soon, or capture into a to-do list you actually follow, is forgotten and the learning wasted. — 00:12:14

00:12:43 — The experimental habit: experiments that feel good instead of discipline

★★★ Ali's experimental habit: treat a new productivity strategy, such as the ideal week, as an experiment on yourself for a week or two and see how it feels. — 00:13:12 · experimental mindset
★★ Ali says he still struggles with ignoring his emotions and is seeing a therapist to work out how to connect more with his feelings. — 00:13:12
★★★ Ali dislikes the narratives of discipline, grit, determination and persistence: he understands intellectually why they make sense, but they do not feel good. — 00:13:42
★★ To make the gym feel good, Ali experiments with his workouts: low reps with high weight, CrossFit, which he is trying, and yoga classes. — 00:14:11
★★★ Asked how he stays consistent with YouTube or a business, Ali answers: find a way to make it feel good; forcing yourself with discipline every time will not work unless you are David Goggins. (hedged) — 00:14:40

00:15:24 — The alignment habit: yearly and quarterly goals and the weekly review

★★ Ali's alignment habit: reflect fairly regularly on what you want and where you are heading, since driving fast in a misaligned direction, like ending up in Oxford instead of Cambridge, wastes time. — 00:15:36 · London, Cambridge
★★★ Ali sets yearly goals to create a direction and reviews them every quarter with his CEO coach, or you can with a friend, deciding whether each is still wanted and what to do in the next three months. — 00:16:08
★★ In his weekly review Ali looks ahead to the next two weeks and revisits his goals to check they are still aligned with his priorities, which he calls the important step. — 00:16:38
★ Ali keeps his quarterly goals in a single Google Doc bookmarked in Chrome and looks at it during his weekly review. — 00:16:38
★★ In his weekly review Ali chooses his top three outcomes for the upcoming week, asking what three things would make it a great week, and then schedules time in his calendar to work towards them. — 00:16:38
★★ To align actions with priorities you need no 50-year plan, Ali says: just ask what one to three things you want to do in the next three months in health, work and relationships. — 00:17:36

00:17:51 — The delegation habit: hourly rate, a cleaner and two books on delegation

★★★ Ali thinks of delegation in terms of his hourly rate: work out what your time is worth per hour, then delegate anything you hate doing that costs less than that. — 00:18:05 · money buys back time
★★ When he worked as a doctor, Ali's hourly rate was about £14, so an hour spent returning a cheap Amazon item at the post office was not worth it. (hedged) — 00:18:05 · Amazon
★★ Ali's business benefits far more when he only does what he loves, what gives him energy and what he is really good at. — 00:18:47
★★ If you have some disposable income and a reasonably middle-to-high-paying job, Ali says you can probably afford to hire a cleaner. (hedged) — 00:18:47
★★ A cleaner comes to Ali's house for two hours every week, so neither he nor his brother and his wife have to clean, at about £17 an hour. (hedged) — 00:18:47 · Taimur Abdaal
★★ Ali says you can trade between time and money: going to a restaurant delegates the cooking to the chef, and seeing a doctor delegates managing your health. — 00:19:37
★★ On delegation in personal life and work, Ali recommends Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell and The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. — 00:19:37 · The E-Myth

00:20:06 — Sign-off and pointer to the Trident method video

In the description and comments

★ Ali says the eight habits in this video save him around 20 hours a week. — video description
★ Ali Abdaal (channel): The channel replies that the ideas in this video are in Feel-Good Productivity, though the book has a very different structure. — creator comment · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

Threads in this video

restate · How much is your time worth? — Ali calls time our single most valuable non-renewable resource: we can always make more money, but we can never make more time. (00:00:00)
refine · How much is your time worth? — Ali thinks of delegation in terms of his hourly rate: work out what your time is worth per hour, then delegate anything you hate doing that costs less than that. (00:18:05)
restate · Should you time-block your calendar? — Ali's level two of calendar use, where most of the gains are: intentionally schedule things into your calendar, even appointments with yourself. (00:00:58)
refine · Should you time-block your calendar? — Ali thinks of time management and calendar blocking as creating the container of the day, and of energy as filling that container with what he actually wants to do. (00:04:16)
restate · How should you plan your week? — Ali recommends the ideal week method: create a new Google Calendar called your ideal week and block out what an ideal ordinary week of your life looks like, from work and the gym to friends and family. (00:02:26)
refine · How should you plan your week? — Someone's ideal week shows their intentions and their actual calendar shows their reality; Ali says managing time effectively is bridging the gap between what we intend to do and what we actually do. (00:02:55)
restate · Should productivity be about efficiency or about enjoying the work? — Ali's feel-good productivity habit, the core thesis of his new book Feel-Good Productivity: find a way to make your work generate energy rather than drain it. (00:03:24)
refine · Should productivity be about efficiency or about enjoying the work? — Ali says there is a great deal of evidence that feeling good, generating positive emotions, is what generates energy, which is why his book is called Feel-Good Productivity. (00:04:16)
restate · How do you have more energy during the day? — Ali says that what we think of as a time management problem is often an energy management problem. (00:03:46)
refine · How do you have more energy during the day? — Ali advises asking what separates an energising piece of work from a draining one, and whether you can bring the energisers into the work itself. (00:04:45)
restate · How should you plan your day? — Ali's adventure habit: at the start of every day ask what the most important task to get done today is, and limit it to one thing. (00:06:13)
refine · How should you plan your day? — Level two of Ali's adventure habit adds up to three optional side quests for the day, which he splits into work, health and relationships for balance. (00:07:40)
restate · How do you improve your focus? — Ali calls being able to focus without interruptions an absolute superpower and a massive lever for saving time. (00:09:10)
refine · How do you improve your focus? — To tune out unwelcome distractions while filming, Ali keeps his phone in his pocket on a focus mode and turns off all notifications on his computer. (00:10:08)
restate · How do you make the most of university? — Some interruptions are welcome distractions, Ali says: at university he always left his door open, as he would rather a friend interrupted his work; the point of university is the friends and social experiences, with work a side effect. (00:09:39)
refine · How do you remember what you read? — By the forgetting curve, Ali says, an idea from a podcast or book that you do not act on soon, or capture into a to-do list you actually follow, is forgotten and the learning wasted. (00:12:14)
refine · Which productivity system should you use to organise your life? — Ali's experimental habit: treat a new productivity strategy, such as the ideal week, as an experiment on yourself for a week or two and see how it feels. (00:13:12)
restate · Do you need motivation or discipline to get things done? — Ali dislikes the narratives of discipline, grit, determination and persistence: he understands intellectually why they make sense, but they do not feel good. (00:13:42)
refine · Do you need motivation or discipline to get things done? — Asked how he stays consistent with YouTube or a business, Ali answers: find a way to make it feel good; forcing yourself with discipline every time will not work unless you are David Goggins. (00:14:40)
refine · How do you exercise consistently and get in shape? — To make the gym feel good, Ali experiments with his workouts: low reps with high weight, CrossFit, which he is trying, and yoga classes. (00:14:11)
restate · Should you set goals, and how? — Ali sets yearly goals to create a direction and reviews them every quarter with his CEO coach, or you can with a friend, deciding whether each is still wanted and what to do in the next three months. (00:16:08)
refine · Should you set goals, and how? — To align actions with priorities you need no 50-year plan, Ali says: just ask what one to three things you want to do in the next three months in health, work and relationships. (00:17:36)
restate · Should you pay someone to do your chores? — If you have some disposable income and a reasonably middle-to-high-paying job, Ali says you can probably afford to hire a cleaner. (00:18:47)
restate · How do you delegate work to the people on your team? — Ali's business benefits far more when he only does what he loves, what gives him energy and what he is really good at. (00:18:47)
refine · How do you delegate work to the people on your team? — On delegation in personal life and work, Ali recommends Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell and The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. (00:19:37)
restate · Is lack of time a real reason not to do something? — Ali says that what we think of as a time management problem is often an energy management problem. (00:03:46)
milestone · Ali works with his CEO coach Eric Partaker (2022) — Ali sets yearly goals to create a direction and reviews them every quarter with his CEO coach, or you can with a friend, deciding whether each is still wanted and what to do in the next three months. (00:16:08)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Ali works with his CEO coach Eric Partaker (2022) — running; last: milestone, 2023-12-22

Mentioned

Central: daily adventure · experimental mindset · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · feel-good productivity (concept) · money buys back time · time management · time-blocking · Trident calendar system

Also: People: Alex Hormozi · Ali Abdaal's grandmother · Dan Martell · David Goggins · Eric Partaker · Michael Gerber · Ryder Carroll · Taimur Abdaal · Tintin

Works: Buy Back Your Time · The Bullet Journal Method · The E-Myth

Organizations: Amazon · Harvard Business Review

Concepts: bullet journal · deep work (concept) · energisers and drainers · forgetting curve · pilot, plane and engineer · play, power, people · weekly review · welcome distractions

Places: Cambridge · London · Oxford

Products: Google Calendar · Google Chrome · Google Docs · Slack

Also centred on Trident calendar system: How I Manage My Time - The Trident Calendar System · I spent $50,000 on a business coach so you don’t have to · How to Make Next Year The Best Year of Your Life

Replies to

refers to · How I Manage My Time - The Trident Calendar System

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