Ali Abdaal: The Productivity Expert on Eradicating Your Procrastination

Really ask yourself what do you actually want from life my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur mostly people who are high performers don't consider it a grind they are genuinely enjoying the things that they do if we are doing anything just for the money it completely sucks all the joy out of it I need to take a step back and think would you like to fast forward what you're currently doing especially if it's work At least a third of your life you would rather not experience than experience what can we talk about that

means that people are still doing this this has been the single best strategy that I've ever found and basically the idea here is that whenever you're faced with a choice if it's not a hell freaking yes I would love to do this it has to be a no what are the top tips you would give us doing the things that matter to you but in a way that's Enjoyable meaningful and sustainable what is today's adventure going to [Music] be well Ali welcome to high performance thank you we normally start with what is high performance I'd

like to start by asking you what is Feelgood productivity so to me Feelgood productivity is the same as high performance which is at least my definition is doing the things that matter to you but in a way that's Enjoyable meaningful and sustainable and if we can kind of get that in there then you know partly why it's Feelgood productivity is because we all we all want to be productive but we also want to feel good along the way and one thing that I don't like is the this idea that like productivity is about grind and

hustle and you know there's that quote from muh Muhammad Ali which is like you got to you know I suffered through training for 10 years and it was Worth it to become a champion but I think that like you know it works for some people but most of us don't want to suffer for 10 years just so we can lift some trophy at the end of it uh we want to kind of work on what's meaningful to us but we want to do it in a way that it's actually enjoyable that actually feels good because

what's the point of productivity if you're going to be miserable at the end of it so what's the first question our listeners should ask Themselves if they want to be more productive but actually it is a grind it is a struggle it is a challenge they do feel constantly overworked undervalued and underloved what's the first place we begin on this journey so I think the first question is what are the things within my control that I can do to make my work a little bit more enjoyable you know we all have to do things that

we don't like to do we all have jobs where even if you like your job there's going To be aspect of it that you don't like you know we're all busy there's there's lots of stuff going on but I think what I found through writing the book and through kind of diving into the evidence around productivity and performance and creativity and all this stuff if you can find a way to make whatever you're doing feel just a little bit better experience more positive emotions in it like make it more fun make it more enjoyable it

boosts your productivity it boosts your Creativity it reduces your stress levels and it massively energizes you as well which means not only do you perform better in your work but you also have more energy to give to the other important areas of your life like your family or your hobbies or your side hustle how does it energize you so there's this idea of so you know that feeling we we all have that feeling where there's certain people we hang out with and you leave that conversation Feeling energized right but then there are other people that

you hang out with and you leave that conversation feeling drained and there's some weird kind of energy thing going on it's not like glucose or like you know chemical energy but there's some sort of you know psychologists call it like zest or Vigor or energetic arousal there's all these words for this sort of intangible energy that we feel when we're doing something we love or hanging out with people that Energize us and if we can find a way to get that sort of energy out of our work which we do by feeling good about it

by having fun by into the Flow State the stuff that you guys WR about in your book as well if we can do that it it means that you can genuinely get to the end of the workday feeling energized rather than feeling drained and because for a lot of us we've got families for families that we come home to it's often a shame when our families get the get The dregs of our energy because we've given all that energy at work and because we feel so drained by the end of it after the commute we

get home and now it's like you've got these like you're you're you're running on fumes but if you can make your work energizing by trying to make it fun make it making it enjoyable and that's kind of what the book is about you can come home with more energy sometimes than even when he started even when he started the day With and that I think is like the thing to Aspire to so when I was reading the book and I really enjoyed it Ali but before I read it I came thinking about the the car

Anora book of in pursuit of slow that really spokes me when I read it a few years ago cuz I cuz I often feel my life is fonetic at times where it's one task to the other to and one demand layer on the next and car's book reminded me of sometimes just slowing down a little bit and remembering to to Smell the roses along the way can be really powerful yeah so I was thinking do we need another book about going faster being busier and being more productive I think the thing that I wanted to

get across when writing when writing the book and this is why it's kind of Feelgood productivity rather than I don't know maximum productivity or or something like that is that firstly it's not just about productivity it's also about the satisfaction and Enjoyment that we get out of life but also you know having listened to a bunch of your episodes and interviewed a bunch of high performers on my podcast as well mostly people who are high performers don't consider it a grind they are genuinely enjoying the things that they do and they're getting into that amazing

Flow State where the time just sort of goes by and they don't even realize the time is going by and they're operating in this mode where what looks like work To other people feels like play to them and you know there are so many stories of Nobel Prize winners as well you know we've got a story in the book about Richard man who you know helped build the atomic bomb and then was a physics Professor super young and he ended up getting really burned out and what he realized was if he approached physics with a

spirit of play trying to treat it with a little bit more playfulness that cured his burnout and helped him find The equations that helped him win the win the Nobel Prize so I actually think that you know it's not just about going slow but it's actually you know go slow to go fast if you actually want to be more productive then approaching your work with the spirit of play is a way of being more productive but it's also a way of just feeling better about your whole life and there's some great examples and great stories

in your book I love the fact that Mark Manson who's Been on our podcast described it as a much needed antidote to hustle culture I'd like to know why and how you came up with this antidote to to hustle culture like Were You There Were you the unhappy overworked overstressed doctor and that's where all this came from pretty much yeah so throughout medical school um the the great thing about University is that you know going into the hospital is optional but when you start working all of a Sudden you hit with this ton of Briggs

where you realize that it's it's not an option anymore like you you know I kind just decide in a given morning that I don't feel like going in uh I have to go in anyway obviously and for the first few months when I was working as a junior doctor you know Medical School hadn't really prepared me for it cuz you learn stuff but you don't really know what it's like to actually have a job and I was working you know 45 to 60 Hours a week and on the side my YouTube channel was just sort

of taking off in my business and so I was trying to juggle all these different things things and I ended up feeling pretty miserable in those first first few months and I would speak to my colleagues and they would be like oh that's just you know welcome to the NHS this is just what life is like but then I'd speak to my you know my friends doing consulting or law and they were also all feeling the Same thing that like I guess this is just what being an adult is like you just you know you

you know you've just got a grind um but back when I was in at University I was obsessed with how to find efficient ways of studying for exams cuz I realized that if I could study more efficiently it would just free up my time to do more interesting things and so I found a bunch of like psychology studies that explained how to study for your exams I applied those and Now I had all this free time and so I used those same skills because I you know I did I did one of my extra degrees

in Psychology I was like okay I'm just going to find some papers to be like how do you actually be more productive and initially I was trying to free up more time because I wanted to work on my YouTube channel and like actually have a social life but but then I kind of found this idea that if you can find a way to experience positive emotions in your Work through play Power people progress purpose kind of these different things that drive in internal motivation as you guys talk about in your book as well then it

just transforms the way you experience work and so almost from the get-go as soon as I kind of discovered this I realized hang on yes I don't have a choice about whether I turn up to work and I'm a junior doctor so I have to do what I'm told but I actually have an enormous amount of choice in how I Approach it so before I discovered this I thought that and I think this is a mistake a lot of people make that I'm feeling drained when I get home from work therefore the solution is to

work less hard it's to kind of Coast a little bit it's to sort of do the bare minimum it's to sort of just do what I'm told let the senior doctors take all the responsibility I'm just a junior I'm just going to do my job but actually approaching approaching life and work With that sort of kind of coasting attitude is actually really draining on our energy levels you would think it would leave you with more energy because you're expending less effort but actually it really drains us to be constantly watching the clock to be like

there's something about this this sort of intangible sort of energy where when we're engaging with something it weirdly generates energy so it's somewhat counterintuitive but the more effort you Put into something the more energy you'll get out of it and you know we see this with our Hobbies all the time like if you're really devoted to something and you're I don't know playing the piano or like working on a painting or whatever the thing might be hanging out with your friends hanging out with your kids you leave that that interaction feeling more energized and this

is kind of this idea of the flow state if you can get into that flow state it Generates energy and so I realized that when working as a doctor a huge part of my energy levels were based on how I approached it rather than on what was going on around me I think you've got something really useful to share with our listeners here that for many of them seem to go into the same pattern that that you experienced at school you told work hard get good grades get good grades you get a good job and

we often do that get the job and then feel Disillusioned of sh is this what I've I've invested in your case 8 years at med school to arrive here so what advice would you give to anyone listening to this that that that is finding themselves having played the game of working hard getting the good grades getting the job and then feeling disillusioned what's the first step you'd advise them to take so I think the first step is I would say do whatever you can that's in your control to make The things that you're doing feel

more feel more worthwhile and there's a there's a specific way of thinking about this um so when sociologists do studies on measuring people's like life satisfaction and happiness and stuff one way of doing it is by giving people surveys to be like how how happy are you but there's another method which is I think more interesting and that is where they give you like a little pager or I think these days it's like an app on Your phone and randomly throughout the day they'll ask you a question on this on this app and the question

will be would you like to fast forward what you're currently doing so they they look at what What proportion of someone's life would they want to fast forward and so for example even though I enjoyed working as a doctor if you gave me the option to fast forward the work day to the end of the work day so I could go home and do what I really loved I would Take that option most of the time that's not a fun place to be because that means especially if it's work at least eight hours of your

life every single at least a third of your life you would rather not experience than experience which sociologists would say means that you're more likely to be depressed more likely to feel unfulfilled more likely to feel like life is not worth living because you would choose to fast forward it and so I Think the first step and this is a question I always ask myself if I ever have that feeling that H I would choose to fast forward this moment then I need to take a step back and think okay maybe I'm stuck in this

job for now but what can I do right now to at least try and enjoy the process and I think this is something that anyone can apply how can I approach this with a little bit more playfulness how can I approach this with a little less Seriousness how can I just dial down the importance that I put on my work you we all think our jobs we all think our jobs are incredibly important but actually this feeling of importance and this feeling of seriousness leads us to feel stressed and feel like everything we're doing is

such high stakes and you know most jobs the stakes are not actually that high even in surgery in brain surgery and heart surgery the way they approach it is by having music in the Background by tell having a bit of a laugh a bit of a joke because even surgeons that are dealing with with life and death recognize that if you take it a little less seriously you actually perform better but I love the idea that the way that we do stuff without us doing anything else our brain and our body start releasing serotonin endorphins

and when you said that in the book I was like man I know the exact things that I do that made me feel like That and I had no idea why doing this podcast for example made me feel like I was plugged into the electricity Mains yeah whereas my former job being a sports host used to make me feel like that but no longer gave me that thrill which is why I now do this and not that yeah it's worth thinking about isn't it yeah and I think that's a really good point that this thing

that gives you energy can absolutely change over time so I think you know I speak to a lot of Young people who are doing their first one two or three jobs and there's almost a sense of like H the the thing I'm doing now is the thing I'll be doing for forever and that's not true at all you know you guys have had multiple different careers I've had I guess multiple different careers um you know the world is changing such that we are very rarely in the same job for like our entire life and so

you can find ways to approach whatever you're doing right now With that sense of Engagement with that sense of play with that sense of taking responsibility um but you can also find ways to then get out of it if you realize it's not what you want to do so would you tell us then how we do find our energizers yeah absolutely so there are three big ones conveniently they all start with a with a letter P so there is play there's power and there's people and this actually overlaps a lot of the stuff with a

lot of the stuff you guys Talk about in your book um a lot of these are based around this idea of internal motivation where the reason you are doing something is for the sake of the thing itself not because of some reward you're going to get so the reason we're doing this podcast is for its own sake because we enjoy having conversations and we'd like the fact that our message can be shared with people yes there is is like you know it's probably going to get some sponsor Revenue for this and I'm hoping to drive

Book Sales but like fundamentally I'm enjoying this conversation and I hope you guys are as well and so we have internal motivation on that note one question I I often ask myself is what would I do if money were No Object because money is the prime external motivator if we are doing anything just for the money or primarily for the money it completely sucks all the joy out of it and I really noticed this when you Know back in med school and when I was working as a doctor my my YouTube channel was a side

hustle I was just doing it for fun and then it started to make money but as soon as I started making videos thinking oh I should make that video because I'm getting a lot of sponsorship money it just took all the it took all the energy took all the fun took all the joy away from it because all the research shows that when you're motivated by something external it Actually crowds out even the internal reasons for doing it so these days I have really have to convince myself that when I'm making a video I'm not

doing it for the money even though the money is there in the background I just try not to think about it and focus on enjoying the process being fully engaged and focusing on the idea of service how can I make sure that what I'm doing is in service to someone else um and so that those ideas of play power and people Feed into this thing of making anything more energizing so tell us Ali because I like that logic but I'm interested in how how do you incorporate that so that every time you make a video

you remind yourself of the sense of service and the sense of fun so that you don't get caught up in the in the routine of just doing it yeah that's a great question um it's kind of embarrassing but I actually have a list of uh a list of mantras or affirmations that I read out to myself Before I film a video oh okay something that I've long struggled with where you know and I think anyone you know even if you're not a YouTuber listening to this you can probably relate to this where you probably have

some kind of work where you see on your calendar and you're like you know you get that feeling of oh God okay I I I guess I've just got to do this you're probably going to get drained at the end of it and so I'm obsessed with trying to find Any way possible to get rid of that uh kind of feeling around videos so when it comes when it comes to my little uh YouTube videos the thing I tell myself is I am not concerned about the performance of this video all I'm trying to do

is share a message that I think would be helpful to at least one person at least one person and this is an idea that I talk about towards the middle of the book around combating procrastination you know one of the big Parts of why we procrastinate is because the thing that we're trying to do feels like a big deal it's like I I really noticed this I don't know if you guys did as well with with writing a book cuz a book is a big deal right like it feels like a big deal it feels

you know we're going to get a publisher and it's going to be printed and there's something about a printed thing that makes it very different to a Google doc and so i' procrastinate so much and what we find If we look at the evidence around procrastination is that if you lower the bar just make it easier on yourself approaching YouTube videos and approaching my work is about lowering the bar it's about thinking this video is not I'm I'm I'm not aiming for this video to get a million views I'm aiming for it to help at

least one person and that is something that's broadly under my control I'm aiming to enjoy the process while I'm doing it it's under my Control and I actually think this applies to literally anything the more we raise the bar for ourselves for some Olympic athletes yes raising the bar is how how they get to high performance but if if we're not at that level yet and we are struggling with procrastination like we all do even Olympic athletes in some areas of their life they struggle with procrastination the more you're struggling the more you Want to

lower the bar just to make it super easy to get started really interesting and I'm I'm really Keen to talk about this um this idea of unblocking the things that are holding us back because I am the king of procrastination we didn't quite complete the conversation about finding your energizers the three PS we know what they are now what were they again play power and people right so play power on people before we move on would you just Complete that for us so that for people listening to this they're like right I'm going to find

my energizers play power on people but what do we what do we ask ourselves what do we do together okay so play let's start with play essentially play happens when we are highly engaged with something but also when the stakes are low so this is the idea of kind of making it feel sincere rather than serious this is something that Al the philosopher Alan Wats used to talk about love that phrase in you go on explain more on that so so imagine you're playing I don't know a board game with friends or something like no

one wants to play with someone who takes it too seriously it's a bit of a drain they're like obsessed with the rules it's like you know it just kind of sucks sucks the fun out of it but you also don't want to play a board game with someone who's completely half-ass cuz that's no fun either it's like They're like oh whatever it's just a game it's like no come on man like you know you you want someone who approaches a board game sincerely but not seriously and that is how we that one of the ways

we get this feeling of play in our work so whatever the work is whether you're doing a presentation or I don't know making a YouTube video or in my case writing discharged letters as a doctor whatever the thing might be instead of thinking this is serious think this is Sincere and I'm going to give my my attention to this um there's another practical thing that I do every day which is at the start of the day it's generally useful to ask yourself what's your number one priority um because if you just got that number one

thing done for the day it would it would be a win and this is wildely validated and load of studies all the productivity books talk about this ask yourself what's your what's your most important task every Morning but the way that I rephrase this is I basically ask myself that question but what I say is what is today's adventure going to be and it sounds corny and it sounds cliche but even just framing something as an adventure just changes the way that we feel about it and this is the the amazing power of the Mind

the mind can tell us all these negative things about ourselves like you know you're worthless and you know this is not going to work and why why would You bother doing that and we're so good at listening to our mind when it tells us negative things but the mind is so powerful if we just tell ourselves today's adventure is going to be doing this presentation today's adventure is going to be updating my CV because I haven't done that in a while even just thinking like that changes the way we feel about it makes us approach

it more in the spirit of play because you shared a brilliant bit of research in your book Around those people that are told that they're in the Fest 5% and those people that are told they're in the unfit is 5% and the difference that makes on how much they enjoy working k out yeah absolutely so a huge part of how we feel about stuff is based on the self-belief that we have about it and so as you mentioned you know they've done these studies where they split up groups into into two people they get them

to exercise on a bike or something and then Randomly they'll split them up completely unrelated to their performance and for half of them they'll say you were really good you performed like way above the average and the other half they'll just tell them oh you know it's such a shame you performed way below average and there's actually no difference between their performance and then they'll bring him back like a week later and see how hard they're trying and how much they enjoy the exercise and Maybe unsurprisingly but I think it's interesting anyway the group that's

told that they were good at the thing that oh well done you know you performed above average they they do perform better the next time around and they also feel better about it and so this speaks to that thing of like if you tell kids that they you know that they're underperforming or they're not very good then that's a self-fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy and it doesn't Just apply to kids it applies to adults as well so a huge part of how we approach our work is getting that sense that we're actually confident and we're actually

good at the thing um and I think we get that from you know positive feedback from other people but we can also tell that to ourselves so there's another really cool study that we talked about in in the chapter around power where you know again they split these you know they're like getting people Into an exercise lab and split them into two groups one group they're told you know just keep cycling or whatever the thing is and the other group they tell them when you feel like you want to slow down just tell yourself something

motivational tell yourself I got this you know I'm good at this I'm going to power through and again they find a huge difference just by telling yourself I've got this I'm going to power through it boosts your performance and it also Boosts your enjoyment that it's weird it's like you get these like motivational quote [ __ ] type things all the time and we're like oh what just some random motivational motivational quotes are really really helpful there's a really interesting concept on on the third P bit on on on the people we surround ourselves with

and there's an idea from organizational psychology refer you refer to relational energy and you write about it really brilliantly Would you tell us a little bit around the importance of of why we of who we choose to surround ourselves with how that can lead to us being more productive yeah know it's it's ridiculously important so it's like that idea that I mentioned earlier around you know there are some people that energize us and some people that drain us now we've all had this experience but organizational psychologist decided to actually study this in a big you

know a Couple of big corporations and what they asked everyone to do was like rate how energizing or draining their colleagues were and they used all of this data to create a sort of energy map and they looked at who were the people that are consistently energizing people and who are the people that are consistently draining everyone and they found that the people who were doing the energizing they were better liked they performed better they were more productive they Got paid better they had higher evaluations from all their peers everyone wanted to work with them

but the people that were draining consistently no one wanted to work with them they were less liked they were less productive however you measure their performance they had lower ratings with their managers and so what these organizational psychologists said is like a you should try and become one of these energizing people yeah B you Should try and surround yourself with other people that lift you up rather than bring you down bring you down and there's a bit that I'm going to Nick shamelessly Al from your book where you talk about the four different types of

people you can surround yourself with from cheerleader Charlie would you tell us about it absolutely yeah so this is a um this was from a study that they did where they tried to figure out okay you know we all know that there are some People that are energizing and some people that are draining what's really the difference between them and how do you become the sort of person that lifts people up and they found this basically down to two things it's like when you're responding to others either it's passive or active and then either it's

constructive or destructive so the absolute worst place to be is active destructive so if you give me some good news oh you know my book's coming out And I'm like well you know that means that you're going to not have any time to spend with me right like you know that's act I'm actively responding to you but in a very destructive way there's no way that sort of person is energizing to be around and if you find yourself being that person then you know it's not it's not a particular good way to live life um

the the best place we want to be is active constructive oh my God that's incredible I'm so happy for You you know it must feel amazing I know how how hard you worked on this book can you tell me more about it like you know how was the publishing process we want to be around people like that they respond actively and they respond constructively they lift our energy if you have someone that is active destructive if you have an active destructive in your life do you speak to them and say look the way that you

respond is really unhelpful for me do You just not call them and hope that slowly things fizzle out between you and they're no longer part of your life like what's the way for people that are listening to this thinking God I'm married to an active destructive I work with an active destructive my best friend is an active destructive what did they do so there's kind of two things you can do number one is you could cut off the relationship but obviously that's you know if if they're a distant Relative or a distant friend okay great

you don't need to talk to them but if there's someone that you have to see every day you know Kim Scott has a great book called radical cander which is all about you know how do we actually be candid with the people around us and how do we have that conversation in a way that allows us to give people feedback on how they're making us feel and there's a book I'm rereading at the moment called nonviolent communication Which gives a really good framework for this how to have these difficult conversations it's a nonviolent communication it's

it's it's a book written by this guy I think his name is Michael Rosenberg and he specializes in Conflict Management but this guy specializes in that sort of thing and he's broken it down into a framework uh which has like four steps so observation feeling need and request so if you know for example we Were trying to I'm just making this up but if we were trying to give feedback to one of an active destructive person we would start with an observation hey you know Johnny uh I noticed that when I shared news about my

you know latest promotion at work you responded with an eye roll and said you know you know does that mean I'm not going to spend any time with you so that's the observation we're just trying to explain the facts then we've got the feeling and the need And so the way that this guy says you talk about feelings is I felt X because I needed why and I didn't you know and that didn't and that didn't happen so it's not I felt hurt because you were a [ __ ] to me cuz that's kind of

attacking the other person and like no one no one ever hears that instead it would feel you know I felt a little hurt by that because I would love to feel accepted and empowered in this relationship and I got the sense that That's not what happened so I felt X because I had had the need of Y you make it about you not about them exactly yeah because if you make it about them they're going to read it as criticism yeah and then they'll just come back at you and then you're in a row right

anytime someone feels they' being criticized in any any domain of Life they will respond defensively it's the only thing they can do either either they submit or they get defensive and Neither of those are options that we really want and the final one is request Johnny you know would you be willing to respond in a more active constructive way next time I give you in next time I share news with you perhaps I don't know asking me more about it in in an enthusiastic way brilliant and it's it sounds so simple and like saying it

out loud sounds a bit cliche but observation feeling need request this is the method that this guy uses in all sorts of Conflict situation with like the most extreme polariz polarizing people coming together CU there's two other groups on that and I think what what your full box model that you shared is really good is because we often hear the world in binary terms you're on the bus you're off boss you're an Energizer you're an energy sapper but there are other positions that people can take that I think is that offers us more insight into

the subtlety and Nuance of life Would you tell us around those two other boxes yeah so you know the ACT active and passive is a spectrum and constructive and destructive as a spectrum so the other two boxes would be passive constructive and passive destructive so this is where you know passive basically meaning you know if you say I got a promotion at work they'll be like oh cool I'm that nice yeah yeah that was nice it's like it's fairly passive response it's not it's Not adding to the conversation it's not building on it um and

so you can do that in a constructive way like oh that's nice or you can do it in a destructive way which is like roll your eyes be like oh cool in a in a sort of sarcastic tone and this is where you know a lot of people like I I took some improv comedy workshops when I was at University because I was I was reading books about like you know I wanted to reinvent myself at Uni wanted to be more Charismatic and stuff everyone recommended take some improv classes when I was when I was

reading books about it so I took some improv classes and one of the main things you learned like the main thing you learn in an improv is this idea of yes and anytime someone says something in an improv class you respond with yes and you build on it you never say no like if someone says like oh and the sun is shining and it's shining pink you don't say no it's Not pink it's blue because that's draining the energy of the group and it's destroying the vibe you're creating you say if someone says the sun

is shining and it's pink you said yes and it's actually got rainbows coming out of it like you're taking what they say you're agreeing and you're building on top of it what if you disagree with what they've said though even in an improv class in an improv class you you you just go for it you you yes and it anyway Um but in real life if someone says something and you're like I don't agree but should we bring the negative should we go no I think you're wrong like it's good to say that sometimes I

think so I think there are some occasions in life where so anytime we respond negatively it's going to drain the other person's energy if it's an issue that we really care about like you know if I don't know your partner is saying I really want to go here and you really don't want to go There then you know there's a way of having that conversation in a way that says actually I'm not oh it's you know I like that you suggested that you know for me personally I was hoping we could instead do something like

this you know that sort of stuff um but it just depends on if you want to be an Energizer in the situation which you don't have to be but if you want to then generally approaching it in a constructive fashion is better than kind Of directly disagreeing with someone that's not to say we can never disagree with people obviously we have to disagree with people sometimes but we have to also recognize that disagreeing with someone uh generally reduces the energy of the conversation right I think this is so helpful you know once people have heard

what we've spoken about so far and they've thought right actually productivity can be great it doesn't have to be toxic and all this hustle Culture people talk about but I also know that a few weeks after I've listened to this episode The procrastination is going to come because it is something that I have lived with and struggled with my whole life and beat myself up about all the time you know the play Hamilton when he talks about there's a million things I haven't done I'd love to talk to you please about how we can unblock

yeah absolutely um So procrastination is something that literally everyone struggles with um you know I've read the studies on this I've interviewed professors who specialize in procrastination who've like published papers for decades on it I think the thing to say before all of that is um you know you guys are fan of Oliver burkman's book 4,000 weeks as well I I love that book one of The Great insights from that book is that there is just simply too much to do And the recognition that we will never get around to all of it um you

know I I loved your interview with with Shane parish as well recently where he he was saying that yeah you know if you've got 10 priorities you're probably going to feel pretty overwhelmed because no one can get on with having 10 10 priorities and so one of the big things that I like to do like I call it the energy Investment Portfolio um it's basically like a onein one out system of the Things that I'm I'm allowed to work on because I like having rules for myself because if I have too much stuff that I'm

working on I'll end up feeling overwhelmed and even though I've done I've written a book about productivity there's actually very little I can do if I just have too much on my plate and so I kind I have a sort of um bucket list and then I have a list of the things I'm actively working on my active Investments what's the bucket list the Bucket list is all the things that I would like to do if I had if I had unlimited time and then but then there's a much smaller list of things I'm actually

doing and I try and limit I try and limit that thing to somewhere between three and seven items CU that's like the limit of human memory of we can hold somewhere between three and seven things usually five is about is about the average in our brain at any given time and so if for example my goal is to I don't know go to the gym three or four times a week that's one of the things on that list that's not a thing that I can just do randomly I'll I'll go gym when I have time

yeah CU I've I've got to make the time um if one of those things is you know in lockdown I made the mistake of trying to take guitar lessons singing lessons and piano lessons and art lessons because I was like I've got all the time in the world lock down and it was just too much and I was approaching Each of these lessons thinking oh God I don't want to do an art lesson again I realized I should just delete three of them and only focus on one at a time so there's profound value in

you know as Shane parish and Oliver burkman say just like getting rid of like the the nice to haves and focusing on what are the actual Essentials and then if we do happen to have an extra spare couple of hours in our day which most of us probably don't then we can Look on the nice to have list you move stuff from your bucket list across to youro list if you like but it's a onein one out system so I I I tell myself I'm not allowed to put anything on my to-do list unless I

also remove something from it do you have big like you know you're publicizing your a book at the moment would promote my book would that be something that's on that list or does it need to be um like tighter than that does it need to be more specific than That no so for me promote my book is one of the so there there are only two work rated things that I have on my list one of them is promote the book I going on podcasts and stuff the other one is make more YouTube videos those

are the only two things and so I've said to my team that like anything that I'm that's on my calendar that is not one of those two things has to go off the calendar because those are the two big priorities and really making videos promotes the Book promoting the book make helps promote the videos how often would you review this Alle I look at it about once a month or anytime I feel overwhelmed because usually when I'm feeling overwhelmed it is a sign that my to-do list just has too much stuff on it and I

really ask myself how much of this is actually essential and sometimes there are periods of life where everything is essential um but most more often than not we you know Especially people who listen to a podcast called high performance we like to take on too much stuff cuz we want to do all of the things to a really high standard we don't want to be like ah you know I want to say no to that thing and be like that seems cool I want to say yes to that thing um but there's a couple of

strategies that I found I found helpful so this this tool I bring up here one of them is something from a writer called Derek cers which is hell Yeah or no so whenever you come whenever you're faced with a choice if it's not a hell freaking yes I would love to do this it has to be a no yeah and the problem that we all have is that like we'll see something we'll be like yeah that seems kind of cool but the thing that kills you is when sort of death by thousand paper cuts when

you say yes to the things that are maybe a seven out of 10 enthusiasm or even worse when you're like you know if you look at the Calendar 6 weeks out you're like oh that's a lot of empty space in the calendar six weeks out yeah I can say yes to that giving that talk even though H you know and then this is good for you you know I know talking to you Daman I know he's just the king of busy busy yeah like so I struggle saying no so this is your tip I struggle

with it as well I I find it so hard I sometimes have to like offload it to my team or I have to be like I I have to give myself 24 hours window to cuz if someone asks me something this the Temptation is to say yes cuz I'm a people pleaser and I want it be nice I want to do the thing and it would it would be fun but sometimes I say oh sorry sorry let me check my calendar and I'll get back to you or let me check yeah like Shane Paris said

to us um you know he had a colleague who would never say yes on the phone yeah Daniel conman he was in his apartment and Daniel said yep okay well I can't say yes cuz I'm on the phone then he said why are you not saying yes he's like because I need the thinking time I once work with a CEO who said to me whatever the request is for your time just ask yourself if they weren't asking for in six 12 or eight months time and they're asking for today would you say yes so in

other words if that request is for now or tonight or tomorrow is it a yes or a no and if it's a no then it should still be a no because very Quickly that six months y turns into oh I've got to do that thing tomorrow that I said yes to six months ago yeah and what was the second one the second one is a strategy called the ideal week so this has been the single best strategy that I've ever found for curing over wh and basically the idea here is that um you create a

blank Google Calendar and you call it your ideal week and you just block out what does your ideal ordinary week look like what time are you waking Up what time you going to sleep what time you picking up the kids what time you going to work when you're at work roughly what are the broad things you're doing like you know are you on Zoom calls all day are you on deep work when you get home like how how often do you want to have a date night how often do you want to hang out with

your friends how often do you want to I don't know play F side football and you put all those into your ideal week And then you see what happens normally what people realize is two things number one they realize I actually physically do not have the time to do all the things I would like to do and they also realize therefore oh I need to I need to do some prioritizing and the great thing about the the terrible thing about a to-do list is that it's not constrained by anything you can just keep adding stuff

to a to-do list but you can't keep on adding Stuff to a calendar cuz we all have the 168 hours that there are in a week and we're going to sleep for I don't know however many of them so there's like 112 hours left to play with if you have a job that's at least 40 to 60 hours gone if you have kids that's at least 30 hours gone if you want to have date nights that's another three hour and before you realize it you look at your this ideal Week calendar and you realize oh

crap I only really have one evening a Week where I can do something which means if you want to take art lessons and singing lessons and do that talk and do that project at work and take part in that committee and join the you know parent teacher Advisory board for the school you just physically don't have the time for it so the this is so helpful for me because whenever I want to take on something new which is some kind of recurring commitment like a regular Zoom call or a regular meeting Or a regular lesson

whatever the thing might be it has to go in the ideal Week calendar and if there's not space for it either it doesn't happen or something else has to go and this is helpful you know because effectively your self-employed right you're in that beautiful position of choosing do I want to do this or not yeah this still works for people that know that for 8 10 12 hours a day they will be doing a job yeah exactly they so around those times They should still be doing this and within the job probably they can absolutely

so this was one of the things that I really realized when when I had had a full-time job because working as a doctor it's not like regular it's like every week is a different kind of shift pattern some weeks you're working 9 to 5 some weeks you're working like 400 p.m. to midnight some weeks you're working like 4:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. you know there's all sorts of weird stuff and I Would just make sure to block out all of those in the calendar ahead of time as soon as we got a Rota it would

just go straight in the calendar and then I'd be able to see okay cool I know it is a priority for me to work on my YouTube channel on the side and I know it's a priority to see my mom at least once a week you know when am I going to do those things you know my mom lives in St Orbin I was in Cambridge so was like an hour's Drive okay cool I've got to build That into the calendar and I would plan this out sometimes weeks ahead of time and that doesn't mean

things can't change if anything you know if there's an emergency at work and suddenly you have to stay an extra four hours you know that's life yeah but at least the intention is there and you know again coming back to this idea of feel good productivity and high performance as long as we are doing the things that matter to us In a way that's intentional and effective and sustainable like even just knowing that I would like to spend one evening a week with my mom or I'd like to have a date night a week helps

us move more towards that future that that we're trying to build for ourselves I I still don't see where this links to this elimination of procrastination ah good point so we haven't yet got to on procrastination because you mentioned that you felt overwhelmed with all the Stuff you had to do that's right yeah so I guess step one is to really eliminate the things that are actually you know uh the non-essentials Y and now for the things that are Essentials where we're still struggling with procrastination like let's say you've decided it's a major priority for

you to write your next book and you know that that's going to require at least two hours a day of writing time there's sort of three things that hold us back Generally when it comes to procrastination there's are uncertainty fear and inertia and usually in that order so uncertainty is the first one uncertainty is where like you know you have to do a thing but you don't really know what you're trying to do it's a bit vaguely defined you don't really know when or where you're going to do it you maybe you don't even know

why exactly you're doing it so something that's very Uncertain is uh I should probably get fit what you know what the hell does that mean does that mean I'm trying to go to the gym three times a week does that mean I'm trying to go for a run is it just about calories and calories what does get fit mean so many people procrastinate on getting fit because they have get fit as a thing in the mind and no one can pass that you know students struggle with this as well it's like I've got a revice

for chemistry It's like even that is very uncertain what does revice for chemistry mean does it mean I'm doing a practice paper does it mean opening the textbook does it mean watching a YouTube video and having to do that thinking you know when it comes down to it is a massive thing that holds everyone back because having to think and do something at the same time is just like it's really hard most people can't can't manage it and so step one is to really Define what are you Actually trying to do why are you trying

to do it what is the thing and crucially when are you going to do it and this is where putting it in the calendar is the single most important step a lot of people who have normal jobs will be living their work life with a calendar because that's where the meetings go in and the calendar invite and the zoom links and all that stuff but there's a real unlock to be had when we also use a calendar for our outside Of work lives for example putting date night in the calendar putting the kids doctor appointment

in the calendar like whatever the thing putting filming a YouTube video in the calendar whatever that might be if it's in the calendar and we look at our calendar every day which most professionals do we know that at least we have carved out that container of time to do the thing so that's step one carve out the container of time any questions on that or should We go on step two perfect good makes sense to me cool so let's say we use this example of I don't know you someone someone listening to this wants to

write a book it's a bit of a project they've always wanted to write a novel or something and they've never been able to find the time but now they're like cool I have blocked out in my calendar an appointment with myself just like I would at work from I don't know 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. every morning before I Go to work I'm going to do do some writing on my make some progress with whatever my book project is and I I would normally suggest doing something like try to write 200 words a day something

really obvious something that's very trackable so yeah this was something that just leapt in my head so CU I can think of the thing that I'm not doing that I need to do so when I get this time to myself that I've a lotted let's say it's a two-hour slot on Tuesday between 1 and three before I begin that do I need to set myself what does success look like in this next two hours it's really helpful yeah spend spending the first like two or three minutes of anything asking yourself what do I actually want

to do here is is stupidly helpful I think a mistake a lot of us make and I I I do this a lot myself is that we'll see a thing on the calendar and we'll just dive straight into it but actually if we just spent Even 30 seconds thinking hm what am I actually trying to do here it would kind of narrow our focus it would help us see okay that's the thing and and the mind is the mind is very good at like uh following instructions and getting to a goal if if we see

what the goal is then it's it's easy enough for us to be like okay cool that's the goal I'm trying to work towards but if we don't know what the goal is then we start to Meander around we start to get distracted and This is why a lot of writers in particular track their word counts you know they're like I'm going to do 300 words today I'm going to do 500 Words thousand words because it's is really obvious and there's all these apps that let you track your word count you can do it Microsoft Word

and stuff as well and so one thing I often advise people and I tried tried to do this myself is what is your equivalent of the writer's word count is it for example number of slides In the present I'm going to try and do at least 10 slides in the presentation is it like number of minutes of the workout anytime we can track something we get the sense of program and a sense of progress is also one of those things that drives internal and intrinsic motivation it feels really fun it feels like yeah I'm making

progress so what is that equivalent for you what is the equivalent of the writer's word count yeah good really helpful so at This point we've got the thing in our calendar and you sat down to do the thing and it's maybe that 1 to 3 one 1 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. slot and you've asked yourself okay what am I'm actually trying to do and you're like okay cool I'm going to write write this next chapter often a thing that holds people back then is one of the thing that blocks people is fear fear and

anxiety where you know this is where it's like H but you know I'm trying to Write this book but what right do I have to write this book um who's going to read it anyway uh what's the point oh God everything I'm writing oh you know I read I read high performance and it's such a good book but like every you know every time I try and write something it just sounds [ __ ] in comparison I'm like uh and we get the self-doubt we get the fear we get the sabotage the mind is basically

a survival machine and one of the main things it's trying to protect Us from is social disapproval yeah Theory being back in caveman days we were all in these little little tribes and if you got if you were if you were ostra ostracized from the group if the group didn't like you you would be out out on your own and left defend for yourself and you'd probably get mored by a lion or something like that so genuinely keeping keeping the people around us happy and not drawing attention to ourselves in a negative way Is like

you know part of the brain called the amigdala the amigdala is like trying really hard to keep us safe the amigdala doesn't realize that like Society has evolved Advanced beyond that point where if a friend laughs at you because you had the audacity to write a book it's not the end of the world it doesn't mean you're going to die but but the Mind thinks that we're going to die and so there is so much fear and anxiety caught up in anything that involves Putting ourselves out there in some kind of way and that's another

thing that leads to a lot of procrastination I think you have a textbook example of someone that can teach us around this topic because we hear from a lot of listeners that often it's the fear that inhibits them taking the step towards where they want to be and as somebody that has pursued a medical career to to the level where you're a practicing doctor and then you choose to walk away From it that takes a lot of courage to do that you must have confronted faar yourself yeah so there's a there's actually I I haven't

thought of it in this context but there's actually a three a three-part method I talk in the book about how to confront fear and if I think about it I I I did all three of those things when it came to this decision to leave my leave my day job so step step number one is to name the fear to shine a spotlight on it and figure Out what what's actually what's actually going on here and so when I was making the decision to take a break from medicine or leave medicine I was like okay

what am I actually scared of and I realized the thing that I was scared of was two things number one if my YouTube channel doesn't work then I will go back to medicine and people will laugh at me for having failed so that's a fear of failure and there was another part of me that was Like if I leave medicine I can no longer call myself a doctor online and calling myself a doctor is good for my business and my brand and stuff I was like is there anything else no those are the two fears

I'm afraid of failure if this doesn't work out people laugh at me and I'm afraid that people will stop following my stuff or people will think less of me because I'm I'm not a doctor anymore so even just naming those fears Is super super helpful because most people don't even get to that point where they're just like oh I'm procrastinating from this thing but shining a spotlight on a thing usually reveals it for what it is for for what it is Step number two is to try and reduce that fear as much as possible so

you know there's something that Tim Ferris uses called The Fear setting exercise I do this at least once a year so if anyone wants to Google fear Setting exercise there's just a bunch of questions that will come up on Tim Ferris is blog post where you really just sit down and you ask yourself okay what is the worst case scenario what would I do if the worst case scenario happened what can I do to mitigate the risk of the worst case scenario happened and how will I make sure I'm okay even if the worst does

happen and so in my case with leaving medicine you know people I'm I'm I'm afraid that people Will laugh at me if I go back to Medicine cool worst case scenario they'll laugh at me how long will they laugh at me for 10 minutes you know most people are too obsessed with themselves and like they're not all thinking about me like no one is thinking about me you know we we're all there's this thing called the spotlight effect in Psychology where we all walk around thinking like a spotlight is being trained on us and everyone

is analyzing All our every action and so any kind of mistake we make any kind of faua we make if we tell a joke that doesn't land it'll you know we'll think about that for hours if not days afterwards but actually everyone's worried about their own stuff you know I'm worried [ __ ] did I spill coffee on my shirt this morning you're worried being like damn I haven't got the high performance log on my lul lemon top you know we're all thinking about our own stuff we're all thinking About what we have to do

no one really cares and I find this mindset of no one cares to be enormously liberating yeah and that was the thing that helped me start my YouTube channel in the first place so we we we we do we do what we can to name the fear to sort of reduce it recognize that no one cares ask our these questions but then the third step is that we need to act in the face of fear often people describe this as courage courage is not the absence of Fear it's it's acting even though you are scared

and there's one technique that a bunch of people use that I I really like that I that I use myself called the alter ego effect or the Batman method in in one study uh the Batman method is is a more fun way of describing it so essentially the these psychologists they got a bunch of kids together and they split them up into a few groups and they ask them all to work on this like solving this puzzle type Thing and for some of the kids they were like you know just solve the puzzle for another

group of kids they were like solve the puz puzzle but think about something fun while you're doing it but for the third group what they said well solve the puzzle but imagine you are your favorite cartoon character like Dora the Explorer or Batman and they called the study the Batman effect because they found that the kids who thought who who who thought of Themselves as their favorite cartoon characters they smashed it in their performance on the task they enjoyed it more they were more creative they were more productive all of the good things because they

got out of their own heads and into this Batman or Dora the Explorer Al ego and there have been so many athletes and and famous people throughout the years have done this so Kobe Bryant had his utra ego of the black member yeah um Beyonce had Sasha Fierce Adele had an amalgamation of like Sasha Fierce and this country singer called someone Carter was Sasha Carter so like when in in the early days of Adele's career when she was struggling with Stage Fright she would go out on stage and she would pretend that she is not

Adele she is in fact Sasha C this like legendary country singer who's like amazingly you know confident and fearless so the thing that I do for this and the way I kind of got Over this doctor thing is I is is a bit grandio but I imagine myself as young Charles Xavier from the X-Men series like Professor X cuz he's really cool he like teaches people and he's just a nice guy all around and I'm like oh you know I I would like to be the guy that can teach people stuff and so these glasses

are actually fake cuz I had laser eye surgery but when I put the glasses on that's like my thing of like I'm in that mode of being of being the teacher and It's not about me it's about trying to be of service to the audience when I'm in my normal mode you know I'm in that I'm in my head I'm in like was worrying about what people think of me all all the usual crap when I put the glasses on I'm like no my goal here is to teach and to try and help people as

much as I can and there is something around like a physical prop you know some people wear a hat some people put on a different and that's the sort of thing that actually Is so easy for people to deride isn't it but actually when you show that vulnerability I think that's also really powerful because people are doing it and it's kind of interesting isn't it how you just taking yourself out of your own head it makes the difference so this is so good for people to hear because it it helps with the uncertainty it helps

with the fear what about if you're not uncertain and you're not fearful and you're kind of fine and you're happy but Like inertia is just your everyday thing what do we do for those people yeah so inosa is in many ways the hardest one to deal with because you know uncertainty and fear have have some pretty strong action points um the thing with inura is that you know even if you've got the thing in your calendar you're sitting down to write you've overcome the fear and like you know exactly what you have to do just

taking that first step is often really really hard and you know There's a concept in uh in physics and chemistry called activation energy which is that any reaction any chemical reaction needs an an input of energy to get started and once you put the input of energy in then then it's you know Happy Days the the the reaction will continue to happen um and so what we need to do is try and figure out how how do we make it easy to get over that hump that hump of activation energy that hump of procrastination where

we have to put A little bit of energy in so one way is to reduce the friction as much as possible so if for example I want to practice the guitar more often having the guitar like next to my desk is really sensible whereas if the guitar was in the cupboard and I had to walk all the way to my bedroom and to cover open like that's basically never going to happen and so there's little tweaks we can make to our environment to make it easier for us to get started with the Things we want

to do in medical school I would sometimes I'd have my textbooks on the Shelf oppos like away from me I would never open them but I just put them on the floor next to my desk and it was it looked a bit non- athetic but at least you know I could just reach down and grab them and even just reducing the friction that little bit helps us do the things that we actually want to do um you know similarly if for example you are trying to not use your phone in bed Because it's using your

phone in bed is a Bad Thing putting your charger across the room is enough to not use your phone in bed usually because you're like no one's going to walk across the room to use their phone when they're already in bed and especially if the alarm is there and you have to get out of B to you put the to turn the alarm turn the alarm off so we can use this principle of environment design to reduce the friction for the things we want to do And increase the friction for the things that we don't

want to do it's really good that's step one and step two I think this is this is where the idea of discipline comes in so I don't like the word discipline and I don't like the whole like you got to be more disciplined and like the reason you're failing at life is because you're not disciplined enough like disciplin is discipline is when we use the limited resource of willpower to do a thing I think you guys talked about this with Shane parish as well willpower is a finite resource we don't have unlimited willpower we lose

willpower during the day it's way harder to say no to pizza slice for dinner than it is for breakfast because we just have less willpower it's harder to work out in the evening than it is in the morning because you just have have less willpower which is why i' I've watched so many YouTube videos about this trying To trying to motivate myself to work out literally everyone's like if you do it first thing in the morning you'll at least be consistent with it and so the the way I think of discipline is that discipline is

fine to get over the hump sometimes you do just need to give yourself a bit of a nudge to get started for Just 2 minutes or 5 minutes yeah yeah and I call this the the five minute rule you just do the thing for 5 minutes and at the end of the 5 minutes you can Decide do you want to stop or do you want to continue and most of the time for most things especially if we've done the energizers play power and people once we get started with a thing we've started enjoying it it's

a good vibe we're going to continue going with it fact back when I had a desk at at the moment I'm traveling so I don't have this anymore but I used to have a 5 minute hourglass my desk it was like three quid off of Amazon and I would Just turn The Hourglass and that would be my cue to I'm just going to do the thing for 5 minutes and then before I knew it The Hourglass was gone I'm I'm in the flow I'm doing the thing and that was another sort of prop that helped

me get over the inertia might Nick that to get my kids to tidy of the room yeah but again just you just need to tidy room for five minutes not not keep it as vague as tidy your room because that like you say is that's like getting fit It's it's uncertain into it whereas tidy your room for five minutes gives him a structure of focus to be able to do it and especially if you can you know this something that James Clear talks about in atomic habits especially if you can attach tidy your room for

5 minutes to something else that you're doing um so like if straight after brushing your teeth you will tidy your room for 2 minutes or or even 1 minute or even 5 minutes whatever the thing might be that Sort of that habit stacking means that hopefully your kids have already built the habit of brushing their teeth I suspect and so they can attach Tiding the room to a habit that they've already built and that makes it more likely to happen really good I think that we need to have a conversation and your book ends in

this way and it ends it brilliantly when you talk about how we can sustain this I'd love to end before we move on To our quick five questions with some key learnings for people so that you know you listen to this in January you feel energized you feel ready you write all your things down you you know you like it's easy in January because it's January but what can we talk about that means that come may people are still doing this stuff yeah so the final three chapters of the book are all about sustaining and

it's exactly this question how do we do these things that That matter to us but in a way that's actually sustainable because anyone can do something like anyone can go to the gym in January for like a week or two and then most people don't because there was something about the process that became unsustainable now there's sort of three different types of I guess three different types of burnout that we talk about in the book because often when something is unsustainable we Feel like we either don't have the time or we don't have the energy

so when it comes to time the the ideal week is the ultimate thing if if it's in the ideal week it can happen if it's not if you're trying to go gym eight times a week and you've struggled your entire life to go to the gym even once a week is basically not going to happen and we want to try and lower the bar and not set ourselves up to fail and the way I I kind of think of it is taking small steps in the Direction we want is way better than taking a huge

stride and then going off the bandwagon completing yeah and so the final three chapters of the book are basically about you know conserving energy during the day taking appropriate breaks you know at the end of the day and taking vacations and weekends and stuff stuff and then finally making sure that what we're doing is aligned with where we actually want to go what I find helpful to think about is that it's Totally okay to have different seasons of life you know in this season of my life right now I am traveling the world and I'm

making YouTube videos and I'm basically just doing those things and trying to keep my kind of various relationships up in the air at the previous stage season of my life four hours a day plus was focused on writing a book and that meant that other things had to give in the next season of my life when I settle down and have some Kids I'll probably turn down the YouTube video upload schedule or maybe not make videos at all or maybe not do the podcast at all like whatever the thing might be finding a way to

really figure out what are the priorities and I think it a lot of it comes back to that ideal week if there's time in the ideal week it'll happen and if there's not then physically I don't have I don't have the time to do it but another big thing is You know making sure that we take breaks appropriately and we were in two minds about whether to include this in the book because it seemed kind of obvious that obviously you should take breaks then we looked at a bunch of studies around this and found that

there's actually some interesting counterintuitive things around taking breaks uh that that might be helpful one thing is and and and here's an exercise that any anyone can do so have a think About what are the things that you find yourself doing when you feel drained of energy what do you tend to do when you're drained of energy for me it's like sleep huh like I'm a little I'm a kip man have a kip okay that's pretty good afterno nap what about you uh take the dog for a long walk solid you guys are very good

at this well what most people would say is scroll Tik Tok browse Instagram go on Twitter watch Netflix go on my phone scroll aimlessly Just lie on the sofa yeah so there's like one list of things that you do when you're drained but then there's usually for most people a different list for what are the things that actually give them energy so having an app probably gives you energy taking the dog for a walk probably gives you energy going for a workout probably gives you energy going for a run will give you energy playing the

guitar will give you energy and for a lot of people those those Lists are very different like when I'm drained I end up on Tik Tok but does Tik Tok actually energize me absolutely the hell not like in what world do Tik Tok energize anyone but does reading does reading a fiction F fantasy fiction Audi book or fantasy fiction book energize me or does going for a walk energize me yeah and so a lot of the thing around kind of taking effect of breaks is recognizing hey let me actually do the things that I know

Will energize me rather than the things that I just find myself doing by default and so this practical things for this like I removed all social media apps from my home screen of my phone so if I want to get them I have to like scroll down and like type them in there's a really good app called one sec have you guys come across this no course it's like it's it's a free app it's on iPhone and Android uh basically it what it does is that anytime you open Instagram YouTube Twitter Facebook Tik Tok any

any social media app it artificially increases the load time of the app and it says take a deep breath and again and after about 3 seconds it asks do you actually want to open this app and if so it gives you the button to open Instagram but usually in those like one two or 3 seconds you're like huh I just found myself opening Instagram even though that's not really what I want to do and often that one one one or Two seconds is all we need to remind ourselves that actually you know what this is

not what I want to be doing right now I'm interested in sort of exploring a little bit further um the issue of burnout because I've I've suffered from it and and it's something that I still try and battle with about burnout and last October Jake and I introduced um uh your publisher your book book and you s recorded a YouTube video cuz you Couldn't be there and I remember looking at it thinking [ __ ] hell your life looks exhaused because you gave us a clue as to the amount of different activities that you do

now meeting you has sort of challenged that idea that you seems to have a far better balance on it yeah and I'm interested on what are the top tips you would give us to be able to recognize burnout when it's coming close how to stop it and how to a void it for future I think a big part of Understanding burnout is to recognize what are the signs and symptoms so there's usually two different ways that burnout presents um and there's a bit of a gender split here so like guys tend to be more one

than the than than the other but the the two ways burnout presents is it's either a sense of exhaustion and like emotional exhaustion or it's a sense of feeling like the things that you're doing are meaningless like H you know what's the point of going to my day Job like what's the point of doing these YouTube videos or writing this like whatever the work thing might be for me I've recognized that I very rarely get emotionally exhausted but I will I will often feel like hm I'm not sure this video has any point to it

and I'll recognize that feeling of meaninglessness as uhoh that is one of the core of things of burnout especially for dudes and so I need I need to do something about that because that's not A feeling that I want to just ignore because if I ignore it I'm going to get deeper into that hole and then it's going to take way longer to get out of it and it's not going to be fun so whenever I have that feeling of like this feels a bit meaningless unless I'm like cool let's take a step back and

there's broadly three three kinds of burnout that we sort of we looked at all the evidence for this and sort of bordered down to these three things that People can take tangible action on the first one is overexertion we've talked about this point enough so often so much in this conversation around simply just trying to do too many things and if you're trying to do too many things it's basically recipe for Burnout there is basically nothing you can do about it other than delete those things off your to-do list or delegate them to someone else

now if you have three personal assist assistant and a private chef and A nanny and a housekeeper you know those sorts of people can generally do more things because they have people working for them most people are not in that position and so the only thing that we can genely do in that position is to just get rid of stuff from our to-do list that is a way of combating overexertion burnout um then we have depletion burnout where the way that we're approaching our stuff is that when our Energy getting depleted and it's staying that

way and this is where taking breaks and you know even going for a 5 minute walk in nature during the middle of the day if you can if you live near a park like going for a little run or a little walk in the park so there's something around nature that's interesting there's something about creative recharging like generally the things you know if you're taking a break from work and you're and you're doing something creative that's Like not related to your work that often brings people a lot of energy um there was an interview with

Ed shiran that I watched which was which was great and he was like he said that back in the day music was his creative recharging outlet but now music is his job so he's not he can't do that as recharging anymore and so he's taken up painting cuz painting is so different to music he's not trying to monetize it he's not trying to sell his paintings and stuff so I think Taylor Swift paints as well like there's a bunch of like famous musicians who have all landed on painting as being the thing that recharges the

energy because it's just so different from from the day job Darren Brown paints as well like there's so many cool people that paint to recharge themselves so part of overcoming depletion burnout is recognizing when are my energy energy levels going down and what are the ACT what are actually the things that Replenish them yeah taking the dog for work painting something whatever the thing might be really helpful and the final one is uh misalignment to burnout now this is the trickiest one because this is like a thing that creeps on us over time when we

when the things that we are doing are not aligned with what we what actually lights us up and what feels meaningful to us and this is where like you know you can apply all the strategies in the burg You can make work as energizing as possible you can beat the procrastination you can take the breaks but if the thing that you are doing for work fundamentally is misaligned with what you actually want to be doing then we're going to have a problem and it's only a matter of time before you start feeling that sense of

meaningless and purp because literally the thing that you're doing is to you feels meaningless and Purposeless and so a big part of this is for people to and you know this is getting bit a bit heavy which is why we put this at the final chapter of the book really ask yourself what do you actually want from Life One activity I did the other day was to write out my own obituary where there's some evidence that this is actually really helpful because you you think to yourself what would I want my obituary to say um

actually Shane Parish Talked about this with you guys he said when you're 90 and you're in a coma your family is around you what would you want your family to be saying about you and are you living life in alignment with what that 90-year-old would want and all of this stuff is about really like it's it's so easy for us to get so caught up in the day-to-day because it's like we're driving with the and and all we can see is just like what's in front of us in the headlights and by doing that We

can often end up in a place where where wait a minute how how did I end up here and I've spoken to a lot of people in jobs that they don't like where they've like been doing it for a long time and you know then I was waiting for the bonus and now I'm like 45 and I'm like uh I don't I don't know I don't know where my life went and that is whenever I hear stories like that I find it really scary because yeah damn you know we only have one life and all

that Like you know I would really like to do whatever I can to help nudge my life trajectory to a direction that I actually want it to be um and so a big part of this is figuring out like begin with the end in mind like what would I want people to say when I'm dying cool how can a reverse engineer that to maybe what my I don't know where I see my life going in the next 5 years again we don't need to be wedded to these it's just pencil sketching it out Yeah and

therefore what do I want to be doing now and if you don't mind then Al would you tell us what you did WR in your own obituary so this is what I wrote up for my obituary this was like a month ago when I when I did this exercise I I do it every year or so when I I just randomly decided to do it last month Ali abdal was one of the world's greatest teachers he inspired and educated Millions all around the world to build a life they truly love he Holistically combined disciplines from

science to philosophy to create an integrated system of living themed around mind body heart and soul which resonated with his loyal following of tens of millions of people all around the world in his personal life Ali exemplified and lived his philosophy he was disarmingly intelligent yet always humble and never made you feel less than when you talked to him you really felt like he were the most important person In the world that he was relating to you in mind heart and soul had the same time he didn't take himself too seriously he knew his work

could be Heavy but he approached it with a lightness and ease that made it accessible and that inspired people to believe they could change their lives too throughout all the success he had flying around the world sharing his message Ali's priority was always his family he remained closely connected to his wife his Children and his grandchildren up until the moment of his death he died peacefully in their idilic family home surrounded by loved ones we all mourned him but his message lives on inside all of us us and inspires us to live an integrated connected

and productive life brilliant and you shouldn't feel cringe and feel anxious or nervous yeah absolutely thank you because I think um you know if anyone hears that and goes what was that all about like They've missed the point like that that's basically the perfect way to end this conversation because that's what it's all about you know we have 4,000 weeks on this Earth all that is left when we talk about Legacy is the way we made other people feel and what I loved about that it wasn't allly died in his huge mansion his Ferrari is

going to be donated to his children and his huge bank balance he's going to live on like it wasn't about the finances it wasn't About the things that you achieved everything there was about how you made people feel and I think that you are never going to get it wrong if what really matters to you is how you make other people feel because actually people will not remember with the best one in the world the specific things that you said or the things that you did but people will remember how you made them feel and

how can it ever be a bad thing to have that plan For your life um and I I applaud you for writing it and then for sharing on here thank you so much thank you that would I appreciate that that's made you feel vulnerable but it was a privilege thank you thank you thank you for letting me share that we finished with our quick far questions the three non-negotiables that you and the people around you should buy into it's going to sound so so cliche but sleep exercise and good uh good food basically I actually

had Foundations honestly I I was in so I was in uh I was in Morocco last week for a team Retreat because now our team is remote we get together every every three months and I I I've been feeling this burnout when it came to filming filming YouTube videos for the last month I was like uh I don't want to film these videos what's the point it's like who cares book promo anyway whatever blah blah blah and it it was weird like there was one day where I just felt really Energized I was like I

want to film some videos and I was thinking about it afterwards and my team was was asking what was it about today that made you film like four videos in a day when you've not filmed in like a month I was like well I had 8 and 1 half hours of sleep for the last two nights I did 20 minutes of yoga in the morning because one of our team members is a yoga instructor and I've been having meat and veg in Morocco because they have a Fairly healthy diet like God damn it sleeping exercising

and eating well has led to a point where I've just banged out videos even though I haven't been able to for a month so I'm trying to make those non-negotiables what advice would you give to a teenag Al just starting out I'll say two things number one focus on enjoying the journey uh because you only get this time once and you can achieve all that you want to achieve while having fun along the way As long as you put your mind your mind to it the other thing I would say is take more photos I

think I I started taking photos properly when I was like at University in in medical school and now sort of 10 years on I see these photos come up on like my iPhone all the time like on this day where i'm just like oh that's that was cool what is your biggest strength what's your greatest weakness oh I think my biggest strength Is my ability to kind of break break things down like I used to do a lot of teaching when I was younger a lot of teaching when I was in med school and people

would always say that I'm a good teacher I always be like oh I didn't I didn't really Vibe with that very much because I just thought it was I just thought everyone was cuz it's not that hard to just break things down and over time I've realized that actually this is this is quite a quite a useful skill and Kind of The more I've lent into that like on the YouTube channel and the book The More I guess worldly success I've had as well which is which is kind of nice I think my biggest weakness

is that I think it's something around EQ I think my IQ is pretty good but I think my EQ is pretty low in the grand scheme of things at least when I think about kind of the ways in which I sometimes interact with my girlfriend the ways in which I sometimes interact with my mom And I know you guys have I I I enjoyed your chapter about EQ in in high performance uh about being more important than IQ and that is really something I've learned over the years now I'm managing my team where all of

the problems are people problems and what it takes to get through those problems is the ability to understand people's feelings and recognize that actually the way that we operate in in terms of feelings is very different to Just a sort of logical or rational kind of kind of way of thinking which is why I'm for example reading nonviolent communication and reading books like radical cander because it's like a thing that I really want to improve cuz I recognized like oh damn you know I see people in my life who are like really good really high

EQ and they're really good at understanding the emotions and feelings of other people and like knowing what the right things to say are To encourage and comfort someone and I think that to me is is a weakness right now that I'm trying to I'm trying to improve that if you could go back to one moment of your life what would it be and why there was a moment when I was I just finished my a levels and it was the summer holidays before starting University and and I had I'd been doing like kind of private

tutoring for like GCC and a level kids for like two years and I'd saved up ,000 I was going to buy Myself a Macbook my first Apple product couldn't afford them before then cuz I was like Apple products are overpriced but then I suddenly had £1,000 in my wallet I was like I'm going to buy an Apple product and I made the mistake of finding a dude on gum tree who was going to sell me a Macbook and I went to Paddington Station to meet up with him I handed over £1,000 in cash and he

gave me a Macbook and I was like great and it was only on the train ride home back to South end that I realized I that the thing that he gave me was like a 4-year-old model it didn't really work he scratched out the serial number so it was clearly like a stolen product I checked it up on the Apple website and they were like Yep this product is no longer valid and then I tried contacting him and tried like being like then I found that he was you know had scammed other people as well

I was like you I was 18 my entire life savings were out The window because I'd been working for this stuff for two years and I got scammed on this MacBook and my mom very kindly was like you know what stop trying to pursue this guy cuz I was trying to like geolocate his tweets to figure out where he is to try and serve him papers for small claims cool and I was you know was taking up a lot of a lot of heads space and so my mom very kindly was just like you know

what I'll just buy you a laptop don't worry about It like you know it's your first year of med school starting focus on that but I I remember thinking at the time that like damn you know I need to find a way to recoup this thousand pound and I remember thinking at the time that like I want I want to turn this negative into a positive and I made a list at the time around how can I make how can I make back this ,000 and I wrote down okay what am I good at I

think I'm good at teaching I did well in the med school Exams I know how to make websites I thought what if I build a business that helps people get into medical school by teaching them how to do well in this exam and I build a website around it and that business it continues to run to this day it paid for my medical school degree because I was making money in Med med school that business directly led to my YouTube channel which directly led to the book which directly has led to me Being here with

you guys and so I'd want to go back to that moment to sort of almost relive it appreciate that this was such a profound negative in my life I me you obviously the grand scheme thing is not is it's it's it's not that deep but you know for a kid at the time two years of life savings lost and I'd want to experience that moment again to feel that sense of I want to turn this into a positive because I think that moment gave me a Lot of drive and ambition for the next like 10

plus years brilliant um a great story and a great reminder that yes if that guy hadn't scammed you you might not be sitting here today right so thank you Matthew there you go when bad things happen who knows if they're bad or not uh final question um what is your one Golden Rule for living a high performance life if I won the Euro Millions the way that I spend my time would not Change and I think that is I am like 95% of the way there there there's a few things that I still do like

sponsorships and stuff just for the money if I'm being honest but most other things I've kind of oriented my life in a way that if I won the Euro Millions it really wouldn't change anything about how I live and I would like I'm trying to move towards 100% as much as possible brilliant I thank you so much for this conversation I think the stand out for me is that it's it's one thing for people to come in and share lessons and learnings and um psychological research and stuff that they've picked up over the years it's

something very different for someone to come in and be actually really vulnerable and really marry those things up with their true life experiences um and I think you've managed to offer us both and I think the fact that you're able to do that makes the work that You're doing far more impactful for people thank you so much this has been wonderful