🛥️ Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You by Ali Abdaal - Book Notes

December 21, 2024 • 8 min read

Goodreads: Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You

⛰ What It’s About

This book explores healthy and practical ways to boost productivity by offering actionable ideas and tips anyone can try. What I liked is that at the end of each chapter, there is a summary. Additionally, the book frames its suggestions as experiments, encouraging one to try them out.

Since I follow Ali Abdaal’s YouTube channel, I recognized many of the ideas he shared in the book.

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

• “Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.”
• “FiletOfFish1066 had realized that he might not have ownership over what he did as he had to do what his boss said. But he chose to take ownership over how he did it.”
• “The ‘Benjamin Franklin effect’ suggests that when we ask someone for help, it’s likely to make them think better of us. It’s the flip side of the transformative effects of helping others: we can ask others to help us, which will help them feel better, too.”

🧠 Thoughts

Overall, the book offers insightful and practical advice. The book is easy to read, but the true value lies in sitting down to complete the exercises and reflect on the outcomes.

There are a few takeaways that resonated with me, and I’m excited to share them. If you’re curious, I’ve included a list of all my highlights at the very end of this review. Let’s dive in:

“🗓️  If you don’t know when you’re doing something, chances are you won’t do it. If you decide beforehand when you’re going to do something, you’re much more likely to do it.”

• 🌀 When you’ve got a large degree of choice in what you could be doing with your time, it makes it a lot harder to commit to something in a given time slot.

Sharing this in two different ways and hopefully I will remember it.

I often face this challenge, especially with working out. Working from home makes it hard to close my laptop and head to the gym, even when my backpack is packed and ready. However, having a specific workout plan or a bigger goal—like training for a triathlon—makes it much easier to follow through. Moving forward, I want to set a weekly schedule to avoid skipping workouts or going too late when it’s crowded and cuts into dinner time.

• 🙌 Don’t be Serious. Be sincere.

“If you were approaching a job interview sincerely rather than seriously, then instead of becoming overly nervous and stressed about the outcome, you might focus on being present and engaged. You might also try to connect with the interviewer on a more personal level, rather than simply trying to impress them with your credentials.“

Approaching things with sincerity brings ease and authenticity. It feels natural and freeing, and I want to embrace this mindset.

• 🐕 What would it look like if I were really confident at this? What would it look like if I approached this task feeling confident that I could do it?

This is a powerful question to ask yourself. Though I’d add that it’s okay to not always feel confident—forcing it might backfire in some cases. That said, you should see me now park my scooter backward perfectly in the spot — almost straight!

• 💯 When we can’t take ownership of the situation, we can still take ownership of the process.

We won’t always work on projects that excite us, but doing a great job regardless and focusing on the process is within our control, right?

This reminds me of an article I read years ago: : “You are not the work you do; you are the person you are”.

• ⚽ “working in parallel” and “working together”

How does Barça succeed time after time? The players’ commitment to the team. Even without star players, they stay united and keep winning, like when they claimed the Champions League without their captain Alexia.

I wish this mentality was more common, but I understand it’s challenging, especially in cultures that value individual recognition over teamwork.

• 🤺 Getting to know our fears is the first step towards overcoming them.

Ask yourself: What am I afraid of?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve done this exercise—thinking through lots of worst-case scenarios and getting a deeper understanding of my fears. What I realized is that I had often magnified them in my head.

• 🛵 As Newton recognized, it takes way more energy to get started than it does to keep going.

Starting is always the hardest part. Once you begin, it gets easier to keep going.

• The more you write code, the easier it is to write code.
• The easier it is to write code, the more you write code.

🔬The Odyssey Plan

Whenever I do this exercise — or even thinking about these paths — has a huge impact. Highly recommend it!

• Your Current Path: What will your life look like in five years if you stay the course?
• Your Alternative Path: What if you pursued a completely different direction?
• Your Radical Path: Imagine a future without constraints like money or social obligations and write about that.

📒 Raw highlights / notes

Part 1 Energize

Chapter 1 - Play

Embrace curiosity: when people were curious about something, they remembered the details better.

‘What would this look like if it were fun?’ Asking this question could greatly affect your mood when completing a task, especially the more mundane ones you keep postponing.

Don’t Be Serious. Be Sincere

If you were approaching a job interview sincerely rather than seriously, then instead of becoming overly nervous and stressed about the outcome, you might focus on being present and engaged. You might also try to connect with the interviewer on a more personal level, rather than simply trying to impress them with your credentials.

In the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, Dr Derek Shepherd, the handsome neurosurgeon played by Patrick Dempsey, has a ritual at the start of each of his operations. He greets the team, puts some energising music on in the background and says, ‘It’s a beautiful day to save lives. Let’s have some fun.’

Chapter 2 -Power

• confidence isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you learn.
• the things you say often become the things you believe.

This study shows that simply by becoming your own hype team you can dramatically impact your own productivity.

‘What would it look like if I were really confident at this? What would it look like if I approached this task feeling confident that I could do it?’

Bandura argued that being surrounded by other people who show persistence and effort in overcoming challenges can increase our own feelings of self-efficacy because they demonstrate to us that these challenges can be overcome. In the words of Bandura, ‘Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers’ beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed.’

Find people who are going through the same challenges as you and spend time with them – or find other ways to hear their stories. By immersing yourself in vicarious success, you’ll be building a powerful story in your own mind: that if they can, you can too.

When we can’t take ownership of the situation, we can still take ownership of the process.

FiletOfFish1066 had realised that he might not have ownership over what he did as he had to do what his boss said. But he chose to take ownership over how he did it.

Chapter 3 - People

This subtle difference – between ‘working in parallel’ and ‘working together’ – might seem small. But it hints at the first tool we can use to harness the energising effects of people.

👀 This concept is today known as the ‘Benjamin Franklin effect’. It suggests that when we ask someone for help, it’s likely to make them think better of us. It’s the flipside of the transformative effects of helping others: we can ask others to help us, which will help them feel better, too.

‘I saw your work on X, Y, Z and it really had an impact on me. I would love to hear how you did A, B, C.’ By emphasising the positive aspects of the person you admire, they’ll think you genuinely value their opinion – and be more likely to help you.

‘Here’s what I think. Can you hear me out or help me out? We can do it together.’

🗣️ when you think you’ve communicated too much, you probably haven’t communicated enough. Is there a piece of information you’re hoarding that might just make someone else’s week?

Part 2 Unblock

Chapter 4 - Seek Clarity

Why? →If we don’t know why we’re embarking on any given project, it’s near impossible to get on with actually doing it.

Auftragstaktik → point of the mission:

• The purpose behind the operation
• The end state that the commander was aiming for
• The key tasks that the commander felt should be taken to accomplish the objective

💡 ‘What is the purpose behind this?’ And I build my to-do list from there.

The 5 whys: use the five whys not only to explain mistakes, but to determine whether a task is worth doing in the first place.

Nice goals

You might know what your ultimate ‘why’ is; but without a clear end-goal, you’ll struggle to work out how to get there.

Near-term: Near-term goals ensure that we’re concentrating on the immediate steps we need to take along our journey. (daily or weekly objective) i

Input-based: emphasise the process, rather than some distant, abstract end-goal. An input-based goal would focus on what we can do in the here and now – ‘Go for a ten-minute walk everyday’, ‘Write 100 words each morning for my novel’.

Controllable: Setting a more genuinely controllable goal (like allocating twenty minutes per day to the task) is far more realistic.

Energising: Is there a way to integrate play, power and people into the goals you set yourself?

❗The Crystal Ball Method

By running through what could go wrong in your head, you dramatically reduce the likelihood that it actually will.

The process of imagining that an event has already occurred – increases our ability to identify why things will go right (or wrong) by 30 per cent.

1. Imagine it’s one week later, and you haven’t actually started the task you intended to. What are the top three reasons why you didn’t get to it?
2. What can you do to help mitigate the risk of those top three reasons derailing you?
3. Who can you ask for help in sticking to this commitment?
4. What action can you take right now that will help increase the odds that you’ll actually do the task?

🗓️  If you don’t know when you’re doing something, chances are you won’t do it. If you decide beforehand when you’re going to do something, you’re much more likely to do it. If you don’t put the things you want to do into your calendar, they won’t happen.

Chapter 5 - Find Courage

Getting to know our fears is the first step towards overcoming them.

❓ ‘What am I afraid of?’ Our core vulnerabilities and insecurities are often at the heart of procrastination.

👀  If we believe our ability is higher than the standard needed, then we’re confident. If we believe our ability is lower than the standard needed, then we’re doubtful.

Chapter 6 - Get started

As Newton recognised, it takes way more energy to get started than it does to keep going.

You can take action by first defining your next step and then tracking your progress

Part 3 Sustain

Chapter 7 Conserve

❗When you’re burned out, you feel overwhelmed and undermotivated.

🏀 Unexpectedly, LeBron James offered me my first hint as to how to overcome my sense of fatigue. Overexertion burnouts, I realised, come from the negative emotions that arise when we do too much, too fast. We accept more work than we can do, and fail to take the breaks in our working day that we require. We sprint all the time.

Do less, so that you can unlock more.

The solution? Follow LeBron’s lead. Conserve your energy. Do less, so that you can unlock more.

The Energy Investment Portfolio

💃 When you’ve got a large degree of choice in what you could be doing with your time, it makes it a lot harder to commit to something in a given time slot.

💡 Every time you’re presented with a request for a few weeks’ time, think: ‘Would I be excited about this commitment if it was happening tomorrow? Or am I only thinking about saying “yes” to it because it’s easier to make it a problem for my future self?’

Chapter 8 Recharge

2 list of things you do to recharge:

The Reitoff principle is the idea that we should grant ourselves permission to write off a day and intentionally step away from achieving anything.

Chapter 9 Align

🔬The Odyssey Plan

Your Current Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you continued down your current path.

Your Alternative Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you took a completely different path.

Your Radical Path: Write out, in detail, what your life would look like five years from now if you took a completely different path, where money, social obligations and what people would think, were irrelevant.

The Wheel of Life

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