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A Productive Week in My Life

2024-06-11 (said on 2024-04-14 — implied: date said in the video; uploaded 58 days later) · Vlog or day in the life · Ali, Tintin · recording, 25:42 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Relationships and personal life (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness, YouTube, writing online and creators, Business and entrepreneurship, Health, sleep and habits, Productivity and time) · mode: Reflection and life update · tags: His own products discussed, Lesson from a book, His medical past

On the second vlog of his team's retreat in Turkey, Ali links the upper limit of Gay Hendricks's The Big Leap to his worry about launching Productivity Lab, marks six years of his Sunday Snippets newsletter, plans to outsource his health after a review with his CEO coach, passes on Bill Perkins's advice on a relationship therapist and on celebrating wins, and explains how he times and tracks his focus hours.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Sunday morning of the Turkey team retreat at a coffee shop

  • ★ Ali's team is still on its team retreat in Turkey; Sunday is a non-work day there. — 00:00:00

00:00:39 — The Big Leap and the upper limit; Ali's worry about the launch; Tintin relates

  • ★★ Ali has started reading The Big Leap, recommended by a friend, and finds it good so far. — 00:00:39
  • ★★ Gay Hendricks (quoted): In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks calls the problem that sabotages success, defined holistically rather than financially, the upper limit: a glass ceiling people cannot break through. — 00:01:09
  • ★★ Gay Hendricks (quoted): Gay Hendricks's reason for the upper limit: people are comfortable with only a certain amount of positive emotion, so when life gets too good they sabotage themselves, for example by starting to worry. — 00:01:34
  • ★★ The night before, Ali felt uncertain and a little stressed about his business: his team is launching a new product, Productivity Lab, without knowing how it will go, and his YouTube channel has fewer views this month (June 2024) than last. — 00:02:32
  • ★★ Seen from the outside, Ali says, the launch of Productivity Lab will be fine: the product will be good, and if not, his team will fix it. — 00:03:07
  • ★★ Ali wonders whether he too has an upper limit of feeling good, even though he is the feel-good productivity guy. (hedged) — 00:03:36 · feel-good productivity (concept)
  • ★★ Tintin says January and February were stressful at work, helping Ali film on the newly introduced filming days; having freed up his time over the past month or two, he finds busyness feels like the default and more comfortable, while having more time and headspace feels almost uncomfortable. — 00:03:36

00:04:39 — Sunday Snippets anniversary: the journal entry of 14 April 2018

  • ★★★ Ali's journal for Saturday 14 April 2018: his friend Charlotte Johnson came over to prepare for their medical school exams, he edited his April favourites video, and he had decided to start an email newsletter. — 00:04:39 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★★ Six years after deciding to start it, Ali's email newsletter Sunday Snippets has run ever since, with an issue roughly every week. — 00:05:08 · Sunday Snippets

00:05:39 — Traitors, part 1

00:07:14 — Writing Sunday Snippets at the last minute

  • ★★ Ali always leaves writing Sunday Snippets to the last minute and thinks he has written most issues after 10 p.m. on the Sunday. (hedged) — 00:07:14 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★ Ali spent most of the day on the structure of an upcoming course, the Life Productivity System, a cohort he will run as part of Productivity Lab, simplifying it on Miro and FigJam boards. — 00:07:44

00:07:51 — Day 4: structuring the Life Productivity System course for Productivity Lab

  • ★★ Ali had a Zoom call with his CEO coach Eric Partaker: a quarterly review of the quarter's wins, challenges and lessons, with action points for the next quarter. — 00:08:30 · Zoom

00:08:46 — Call with CEO coach Eric Partaker: personal trainer, money as a tool, relationship coach, celebrating wins

  • ★★ One action point from Ali's review with Eric Partaker is to work out a system for his health and put it on autopilot with Irem, his executive assistant. — 00:08:58
  • ★★ Over the previous three months Ali found a personal trainer unreasonably effective: with Junaid at Fitness First in St Albans, four morning sessions a week, he got into the best shape of his life. — 00:09:27
  • ★★ Since moving to London and being between gyms, unsure how long he would stay, Ali has not signed up with another personal trainer. — 00:09:27 · London
  • ★★ Eric Partaker (quoted): Ali's CEO coach Eric Partaker says a CEO with enough money should just hire a personal trainer: there is no reason not to invest money to outsource that part of life. — 00:09:57
  • ★★ For nutrition Ali will work out his macros with his fitness coach Dan Go, and his assistant Irem will organise a meal delivery service with the right macros. — 00:09:57
  • ★★★ A key lesson Ali has learned from very successful entrepreneurs: money can be deployed to improve areas of life without the brain work, as when someone who wants to get better at tennis hires a coach instead of figuring it out from YouTube. — 00:10:38
  • ★★ Some people enjoy making their own workout plans, Ali says, but he is not one of them: the less he has to think about his health, the better. — 00:10:38
  • ★★ For over a year Ali and his partner have met a couples therapist, Thomas, every few weeks for 90 minutes; even when nothing is going wrong, he finds the regular touch point really helpful. — 00:11:13
  • ★★ Bill Perkins (quoted): Bill Perkins, author of Die With Zero, whom Ali met in Austin the year before, advised him to get a relationship therapist as soon as he enters a relationship and meet them regularly. — 00:11:13
  • ★★ Bill Perkins (quoted): Bill Perkins's second piece of advice, which Ali has not yet quite taken: celebrate whenever possible and throw a party for each business win, since entrepreneurs seldom celebrate their wins. — 00:11:42
  • ★★ When his assistant Irem said they should throw a party for his coming 30th birthday, Ali at first could not be bothered, then remembered Bill Perkins's advice and agreed. — 00:12:11

00:13:11 — Traitors, part 2

00:13:41 — Day 5: the straight-to-work experiment, tracking focus time, changing location, GPS

  • ★★ Thinking in terms of experiments is a big part of Ali's philosophy of life productivity. — 00:13:41 · experimental mindset
  • ★★ Ali's current experiment, which he used to do when preparing for medical school exams: on waking he makes a coffee and goes straight to work, with no shower, morning routine or teeth brushing. — 00:14:19
  • ★★ Whenever Ali goes straight to work on waking, he feels really focused and gets a lot done. — 00:14:19
  • ★★★ Ali times his focus by playing a three-hour YouTube background-music video, such as Bag End music from The Lord of the Rings, and pausing it whenever he stops or gets distracted, so it works as a focus timer. — 00:15:01 · The Lord of the Rings
  • ★★★ Ali finds simply tracking the number of focus minutes, hours or blocks unreasonably effective: what gets measured gets managed, and the number stops him lying to himself about how productive he was. — 00:15:41
  • ★★★ Ali says three to five focus hours a day is really the maximum, and many people swear by four: three to five focus blocks is a win, the upper limit of what is reasonable. — 00:16:10
  • ★★ Ali finds changing location makes work feel more like an adventure and more fun, and helps boost creativity. — 00:16:47
  • ★★★ When Ali is not doing something he wants to do, or an area of life feels out of line, thinking GPS (goal, plan, system) helps him find where the problem is and what he can do about it. — 00:17:15 · GPS: goal, plan, system

00:17:48 — Jam session

00:20:38 — Final dinner speeches

00:21:18 — Traitors, part 3

00:23:06 — Reflection exercise: a reflection, a learning and a compliment

  • ★★ Ali likes how sincerely everyone on his team is trying, and mostly succeeding, to be the CEO of their own platform. — 00:24:00
  • ★ Ali compliments Amber as a phenomenal singer, having heard her sing in person for the first time. — 00:24:29

00:25:10 — Goodbyes

In the description and comments

  • ★ Ali's team has AI dubbing enabled on many of his videos; viewers who get French can switch back to English, the real Ali. — creator comment

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Sunday Snippets · The Big Leap · upper limit

Also: People: Addy · Alison · Amber · Bill Perkins · Charlotte (friend, mentioned from 2017) · Dan Go · Eric Partaker · Inez · Irem · Jakub · Junaid · Michael Dell · Saf · Tintin

Projects: Productivity Lab

Works: Die With Zero · The Lord of the Rings

Organizations: Fitness First

Concepts: experimental mindset · feel-good productivity (concept) · GPS: goal, plan, system

Places: Austin · London · St Albans · Turkey

Products: FigJam · Miro · Zoom

Only in the description or credits: Gay Hendricks

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