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I Read 107 Productivity Books. Here's What Actually Works.

2023-08-04 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali, Ali Abdaal (channel) · recording, 18:31 · watch on YouTube

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

Ali distils the productivity books he has read into a nine-step framework: set goals over three time horizons, break them into weekly inputs, time-block an ideal week, set one daily priority, get started, stay focused, make the work feel good, recharge energy and reflect weekly and quarterly; efficiency, leverage, delegation, GTD and a second brain are add-ons.

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: nine steps distilled from productivity books

  • ★★★ Ali distils the dozens of productivity books and the research he has read into a nine-step framework that he says moves the needle on productivity. — 00:00:00

00:00:24 — Step one: set your goals over three time horizons

  • ★★ For Ali, productivity is using our time intentionally and effectively to work towards the things that matter to us, so those things must first be defined. — 00:00:29

    “productivity is about using our time intentionally and effectively to work towards the things that matter to us”

  • ★★★ Ali sets goals over three time horizons: the long term (what you want written on your gravestone), the medium term of three to five years, and the short term. — 00:00:58

  • ★★ Ali says you need no perfect clarity about your goals, which will change over time, but knowing roughly where you want to be lets you start moving, as a moving ship is easier to steer. — 00:00:58
  • ★ The three goal-setting time horizons are the final chapter of Ali's book Feel-Good Productivity. — 00:01:41 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ For the short-term horizon Ali uses the 12-month celebration: in each area of life (work, health, relationships) ask what you want to be celebrating 12 months from now. — 00:01:41
  • ★★ If you are not clear on what you are working towards, Ali advises sitting down and journaling for just 20 minutes to think about it. — 00:02:10

00:02:35 — Step two: break goals down into weekly inputs

  • ★★★ Ali turns each goal into weekly inputs: to build muscle, weight training three times a week with progressive overload; to write a first book, 10 hours a week of writing. — 00:03:08
  • ★★ Ali does not believe in breaking a goal down into a task list of every step it takes, because that becomes far too complicated. — 00:03:08

00:03:53 — Step three: create time blocks with the ideal week technique

  • ★★★ Ali's favourite way to make time for weekly inputs is the ideal week technique: a new Google Calendar called your ideal week with events for waking, sleeping, lunch, work, friends, family and date night. — 00:04:02
  • ★★ In the ideal week Ali starts with blocks for the things you have to do, then adds blocks for the things you want to do. — 00:04:02
  • ★★★ If the calendar has no room for the time blocks a goal needs, for example for someone working two jobs with a family, Ali says to reconsider whether the goal is realistic. — 00:04:31 · time-blocking
  • ★★ Ali thinks of time blocks as containers: the first step to making time for something is to create the container, which effort then fills. — 00:05:01 · time-blocking
  • ★★ While writing Feel-Good Productivity, Ali kept three-hour containers from 9 to 12 every weekday morning except Wednesdays, the team meetings day, for book writing. — 00:05:01 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:05:30 — Step four: plan your day around one most important thing

  • ★★ Ali calls Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky very good; it describes the daily highlight, asking what today's highlight is going to be. — 00:05:30 · daily highlight
  • ★★ Ali lists similar daily questions: The One Thing by Gary Keller asks the one thing to get done today, Harvard Business Review the most important task (MIT), Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog the tricky task you have been putting off. — 00:05:59
  • ★★★ Ali says many productivity books converge on one piece of wisdom: every day ask what the most important thing to get done is, then make time for it in your calendar. — 00:05:59 · daily highlight
  • ★★ Ali's favourite framing of the daily question is "what is today's adventure going to be?", which finds the most important task and also makes the day feel more enjoyable. — 00:06:28 · daily adventure
  • ★★★ The philosophy of feel-good productivity, Ali says, is that if you make your work feel good you become more productive by default, with more energy and creativity and less stress. — 00:06:28 · feel-good productivity (concept), Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:07:06 — Step five: get started, procrastination and the Unblock method

  • ★★ Ali says he still struggles with procrastination: on the day of filming this video he spent three and a half hours of a 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. filming block on walks, coffees, the toilet and chats. — 00:07:26
  • ★★ Ali admires people disciplined enough to go to the gym whatever they feel, notes that motivation waxes and wanes, and prefers what he calls the Unblock method. — 00:08:08 · Unblock method
  • ★★★ Ali's Unblock method identifies the emotional hurdles holding you back from a task you meant to do, names the emotion, tries to reduce and overcome it, and acts in the face of it. — 00:08:50 · Unblock method, Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali says that in the end you generally just need to get started on the task, because getting started is much harder than keeping going. — 00:08:50

00:09:13 — Step six: stay focused

  • ★★★ Ali's sixth step is simply to stay focused on what you said you would do: no distractions, no multitasking, no task switching. — 00:09:19
  • ★★ Ali cites evidence he saw recently that the average worker wastes 28% of the day through task switching and distraction: three years in ten, a decade over a 40-year career. (hedged) — 00:09:19
  • ★★ To stay focused Ali suggests turning the phone off, putting it across the room or face down, turning on a focus mode on the computer, and wearing headphones in a coffee shop or coworking space. — 00:09:48
  • ★★ For people who struggle with focus, Ali points to Deep Work by Cal Newport, a whole book on how to focus. — 00:09:48 · Cal Newport

  • ★★★ Ali's book Feel-Good Productivity argues that the secret to productivity is not discipline but joy: work that generates positive emotions makes us more energised. — 00:10:18 · Feel-Good Productivity (book), feel-good productivity (concept)

    “the secret to productivity is not discipline, it's joy.”

00:10:29 — Step seven: make it feel good

  • ★★ To make his work feel good, Ali plays The Lord of the Rings music in the background, sometimes works in a coffee shop as an adventure, and lowers the seriousness so the stakes feel lower. — 00:10:47
  • ★★ Ali recommends co-working to make work more fun, such as London Writers' Salon's Writers' Hour: daily Zoom sessions with a couple of hundred people, short motivation at the start and end. — 00:11:16 · Zoom
  • ★★ To avoid burning out, Ali advises taking appropriate breaks that conserve energy during the workday and recharge it after, such as walking meetings instead of sitting at a desk. — 00:11:45

00:11:48 — Step eight: recharge your energy

  • ★★ Ali suggests a break of five to 15 minutes every hour: get a coffee, chat to people, do some stretches. — 00:12:14

  • ★★★ Ali says time is a finite resource but energy is renewable: we can renew it during and after the workday by doing things that genuinely recharge us. — 00:12:14

    “even though time is a finite resource, energy is a renewable resource.”

  • ★★★ Ali suggests a two-sided list: what genuinely recharges your energy, and what you find yourself doing when drained, to nudge yourself towards the first. — 00:12:14 · energisers and drainers

  • ★★ Walks, the gym, reading and playing guitar recharge Ali; when drained he ends up scrolling TikTok, Instagram and Twitter or watching random YouTube videos, which do not recharge him. — 00:12:58 · TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube

00:13:35 — Sponsor read for Brilliant

  • ★★ Ali says going for a walk, though it may be the last thing you want, generates far more energy than slumping on the sofa scrolling TikTok. — 00:13:35 · TikTok
  • ★★ Ali attributes much of his success to learning to code when he was quite young: it changes how you see the world and the problems you can build solutions for, and every business he has built in the last 15 years, this YouTube channel included, is downstream of it. — 00:15:06 · YouTube
  • ★★ Ali's daily reflection asks how the day went, whether you did your daily highlight and to what extent you followed your intentions. — 00:15:35 · daily highlight
  • ★★★ Ali calls a weekly review super helpful: reflect on last week's (week of 24 July 2023) top wins, biggest challenges and learning points, and the top three things to get done next week (week of 7 August 2023). — 00:15:35

00:15:41 — Step nine: reflect daily, weekly and quarterly

  • ★★★ Ali recommends a quarterly review: every three months check the goals sheet and ask whether these are still the goals you want, since people set annual goals and never revisit them. — 00:16:04
  • ★★ Ali says that while people think productivity is a grind, thinkers, philosophers and psychologists have found that meaning and fulfilment come from pursuing goals that feel meaningful. — 00:16:33

00:17:03 — Optional extras and the main thing; sign-off

  • ★ As an optional efficiency extra, Ali lists learning keyboard shortcuts, typing faster and using apps that make things slightly more efficient. — 00:17:03 · keyboard navigation
  • ★ As a second optional extra, Ali suggests adding systems for leverage, such as AI tools that leverage your own inputs. — 00:17:03
  • ★★ Ali says you can delegate things to people if you have enough money, and a business owner absolutely should. — 00:17:32
  • ★★ Further extras: capture open loops into a task system, as in David Allen's Getting Things Done, and build a personal knowledge management system, as in Building a Second Brain by Ali's friend Tiago Forte. — 00:17:32 · Tiago Forte
  • ★★★ Ali calls the other productivity techniques add-ons to the main thing: figure out where you want to go, make time for it, do it consistently for a long time, and reflect on whether to change direction. — 00:18:01

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Feel-Good Productivity (book) · feel-good productivity (concept)

Also: People: Brian Tracy · Cal Newport · David Allen · Gary Keller · Jake Knapp · John Zeratsky · Tiago Forte

Works: Building a Second Brain · Deep Work (book) · Eat That Frog · Getting Things Done · Make Time · The Lord of the Rings · The One Thing

Organizations: Harvard Business Review · Instagram · London Writers' Salon · TikTok · Twitter · YouTube

Concepts: 12-month celebration · daily adventure · daily highlight · energisers and drainers · gravestone technique · keyboard navigation · leverage · personal knowledge management · SMART goals · time-blocking · Trident calendar system · Unblock method · weekly review

Products: Google Calendar · Writers' Hour · Zoom

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