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How to Achieve More While Working Less

2024-01-16 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 17:27 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Feel-Good Productivity thesis, His own products discussed, Evidence-based framing, His medical past

In the animated introduction to his book Feel-Good Productivity, Ali tells how, drowning as a newly qualified junior doctor alone on a ward on Christmas Day, he stopped trusting work-harder advice, and argues from Alice Isen's candle experiment, Barbara Fredrickson's broaden and build theory and undoing hypothesis, and a 2005 review of 225 papers that feeling good leads to success.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — How I discovered feel-good productivity: Christmas Day alone on a hospital ward

  • ★★★ As a newly qualified junior doctor, having forgotten three weeks earlier to fill out a form requesting the holidays off, Ali managed a hospital ward alone on Christmas Day; his consultant hung up with "Merry Christmas, Ali. Try not to kill anyone." — 00:00:00
  • ★ On that Christmas Day on the ward, the first emergency came within minutes: a man in his 50s who had collapsed from a severe cardiac arrest. — 00:00:21
  • ★★ Until he became a doctor, Ali's strategy whenever the going got tough was to work harder: it got him into medical school, a handful of academic publications and a business launched while studying; discipline was the only productivity system he knew. — 00:01:06
  • ★★★ In his first months as a doctor Ali felt he was drowning: even working late into the night he could not see enough patients or finish his paperwork, he found the job utterly depressing, stopped sleeping, and friendships and family faded. — 00:01:31
  • ★★ When he dropped a tray of medical supplies on that Christmas Day, Ali realised he had to figure things out or his dream of becoming a surgeon would slip through his fingers. — 00:02:04
  • ★★ In his first year at medical school Ali became obsessed with productivity, making notes on hundreds of articles, blog posts and videos; all the gurus stressed hard slog, and a Muhammad Ali quote came up a lot. — 00:02:22
  • ★★ Muhammad Ali (quoted): Muhammad Ali said he hated every minute of training but told himself not to quit: suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. — 00:02:41 · first in: 2021-05-21, 5 Essential Tips for Long-Lasting Productivity
  • ★★ Resolving to just do more, Ali stayed on the ward until midnight and recited Muhammad Ali's line to himself in his toilet breaks, but it made no difference to how fast he got through his paperwork. — 00:02:41

  • ★★ At the end of his hardest day, Ali remembered his old tutor Dr Barclay's words, "if the treatment isn't working, question the diagnosis", and began to doubt all the productivity advice he had absorbed. — 00:03:09

    “If the treatment isn't working, question the diagnosis.”

  • ★★★ Over a few months as a junior doctor, Ali came to see that everything he had been told about success was wrong: he could not hustle his way to becoming a good doctor, and working harder would not bring him happiness. — 00:03:09

  • ★★★ Ali defines feel-good productivity as an approach that puts well-being first and uses that well-being to drive focus and motivation second. — 00:03:38 · feel-good productivity (concept), Feel-Good Productivity (book)

    “an approach that focused on my well-being first and used that well-being to drive my focus and motivation second”

00:04:05 — The surprising secrets of feel-good productivity: the candle problem and Alice Isen's experiment

  • ★ Ali's obsession with productivity at medical school led him to add an extra year to earn a psychology degree. — 00:04:05
  • ★★ The candle problem, a classic test of creative thinking first developed by Karl Duncker and published posthumously in 1945, asks people to fix a candle to a corkboard with matches and a box of thumbtacks; the best solution uses the box as a candle holder. — 00:04:05
  • ★★★ In the late 1970s psychologist Alice Isen gave one group of volunteers a small bag of candy before the candle problem; those whose moods were subtly improved by the gift were significantly more successful in solving it. — 00:05:09
  • ★★★ Ali's takeaway from Alice Isen's experiment: feeling good does not just end with feeling good; in a positive mood we consider a broader range of actions, are more open to new experiences and integrate information better, so feeling good boosts creativity and productivity. — 00:05:34

00:06:26 — The broaden and build theory

  • ★★ Barbara Fredrickson, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leading figure in positive psychology, proposed the broaden and build theory of positive emotions in the late 1990s. — 00:06:26
  • ★★★ In the broaden and build theory, broaden is the immediate effect of positive emotions, opening our minds to more information and possibilities; build is the long-term reservoir of resources such as resilience, creativity, problem-solving, social connections and physical health; together they make an upward spiral. — 00:06:50

  • ★★ Positive emotions, Ali says, are not fleeting feelings without consequence but integral to how we think, relate and flourish: "the fuel that drives the engine of human flourishing". — 00:07:16

    “positive emotions are the fuel that drives the engine of human flourishing”

  • ★★ For years Ali thought hustling harder would get him what he wanted; Barbara Fredrickson's theory showed him another way: step one is feeling better, step two is doing more of what matters to us. — 00:07:42

00:07:46 — Why feel-good productivity works: energy, stress and success

  • ★★ The first reason feel-good productivity works, Ali says, is that feeling good boosts energy: a non-physical energy, called emotional, mental or motivational energy, zest or vitality, that makes us focused, inspired and motivated, and whose source is feeling good. — 00:08:10 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ Ali names four feel-good hormones bound up with positive emotions: endorphins, serotonin, dopamine (linked with motivation and pleasure) and oxytocin (social bonding and trust), all of which help us accomplish more. — 00:09:05
  • ★★ Ali describes a virtuous cycle: when we feel good we generate energy, which boosts productivity, which brings feelings of achievement that make us feel good again. — 00:09:33
  • ★★ The second reason is that feeling good reduces stress: negative emotions release stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, and their continuous activation can even raise the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. — 00:10:02
  • ★★★ In Barbara Fredrickson's test of the undoing hypothesis, people stressed by having one minute to prepare a filmed public speech then watched one of four films; those who saw mildly positive films returned to baseline heart rate and blood pressure significantly faster, those who saw a sad film slowest. — 00:10:56
  • ★★ By the undoing hypothesis, positive emotions can undo the effects of stress and other negative emotions, so if stress is the problem, Ali says, feeling good might just be the solution. — 00:11:47
  • ★★★ In 2005 a team of psychologists reviewed 225 published papers with data from over 275,000 people and found that individuals who frequently feel positive emotions accomplish more: better relationships, higher salaries, less stress and higher evaluations from superiors. — 00:11:47

  • ★★★ Ali sums up the evidence: success does not lead to feeling good; feeling good leads to success. — 00:12:40 · feel-good productivity (concept)

    “success doesn't lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.”

00:13:07 — How feel-good productivity changed his shifts, his channel and his life

  • ★★ When Ali let go of his obsession with discipline and focused on making work feel good, his junior-doctor shifts got easier and his mood improved; months later an elderly patient told him he was the first doctor in there who had smiled all week. — 00:13:10
  • ★★ On the YouTube channel where he had posted study tips and technology reviews for a few years, Ali began sharing practical insights from psychology and neuroscience, using himself as the guinea pig. — 00:14:04
  • ★★ As his idea that success need not be tied to suffering gained traction, Ali says, viewers emailed him that by applying his strategies students aced their exams, business owners doubled their income and parents balanced work and family better. — 00:14:04
  • ★★★ Following the principles he was learning about, Ali realised he wanted to take a break from medicine to pursue something new, and that was when he knew he had to write Feel-Good Productivity. — 00:14:33 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★★ Ali says Feel-Good Productivity is not another system to get more done at any cost but is about doing more of what matters to you and learning what you love and what really motivates you. — 00:14:33 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)

00:14:47 — How to use this book: three parts, ideas and experiments

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Barbara Fredrickson · broaden and build theory · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · feel-good productivity (concept)

Also: People: Alice Isen · Dr Barclay · Karl Duncker · Muhammad Ali

Organizations: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Concepts: burnout · candle problem · cardiovascular disease · dopamine · experimental mindset · Intercalated degree · Muhammad Ali method · play, power, people · positive psychology · Unblock method · undoing hypothesis

Also centred on broaden and build theory: 3.5 Years And It’s Finally Ready… · Why negative emotions are so destructive 😨

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