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Why working when burnt out costs you millions

2026-03-15 · Short · Ali · recording, 2:08 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Productivity and time (also: Health, sleep and habits) · mode: Answering questions · tags: Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Family, His own products discussed

Answering a viewer stuck after burnout, Ali gives two simple tips: take a real break, a day or more off with a strict rule against anything that looks like work, and sleep early, lights out by 10 p.m. so sleep scores stay at 100.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Tip one: take a break, with a strict no-work rule for the day off

  • ★★★ When burnt out, Ali takes a day off on which he may do nothing that looks like work: his test is whether someone else would say it looks like work, because he can convince himself that enjoyable work does not count. — 00:00:00 · burnout
  • ★ Ali says he has still never seen his book Feel-Good Productivity in a bookshop himself, although many people send him pictures of it there. — 00:00:00 · Feel-Good Productivity (book)
  • ★★ On his days off Ali listens to Brandon Sanderson's fantasy audiobooks, reads Harry Potter fan fiction, walks, or listens to podcasts that are not about work, which he finds hard since most of his podcasts are. — 00:00:39 · Brandon Sanderson, Harry Potter (book series)

00:01:09 — Tip two: aim for 100 sleep scores, lights out by 10 p.m.

  • ★★ Against burnout Ali advises taking more than a day off if you can, ideally a week or at least a weekend, and when he feels burnt out he makes a rule that he may not work on weekends. — 00:01:09 · burnout
  • ★★★ Ali's second tip against burnout is to aim for 100 sleep scores: he tracks sleep with a Whoop, but an Apple Watch, a phone or simply aiming for nine hours a night will do, and good sleep solves much burnout. — 00:01:09 · burnout, Apple Watch
  • ★★ Whenever he feels burnt out, Ali sets himself a rule of going to bed early, with lights out by 10 p.m. — 00:01:09
  • ★ Ali treats the 10 p.m. bedtime as a KPI, a key performance indicator, and tells his wife Izzy they have a KPI that night. — 00:01:38 · Izzy Sealey
  • ★★ Ali says that when his sleep scores are consistently 100%, he feels far less burnt out and stressed than when they are 90 or 80%. — 00:01:38

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: burnout

Also: Apple Watch · Brandon Sanderson · fan fiction · Feel-Good Productivity (book) · Izzy Sealey · Whoop

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