Feel-Good Productivity, by Ali Abdaal

This Book is For:

*Lifelong learners and students who want to implement a sustainable, science-backed system for beating procrastination and staying on top of their course work, without falling back on self-destructive habits or substances that blunt their potential in the long term.

*Creatives at all levels seeking methods and strategies for increasing their output and staying focused in a world of constant distractions, without dulling their artistic sensitivities or relying on motivation or discipline to carry them through.

*Business owners and professionals looking to find a more balanced approach to life and work that has them feeling more energized and effective, while consistently achieving and becoming more at the same time.

*Anyone who wants to beat procrastination forever by utilizing battle-tested and laboratory-tested techniques for reducing stress, gaining clarity on what really matters, and living a life of meaning, alignment, and purpose.

Summary:

"Feel-good productivity is a simple method. But it changes everything. It shows that if you've ever felt underwater, you don't have to settle for staying afloat. You can learn how to swim."

-Ali Abdaal, Feel-Good Productivity

The definition of productivity has gone through a reimagining in recent years, and so have the best methods and mindsets necessary to achieve it. Nowadays, productivity doesn't mean crossing off as many tasks as possible, regardless of their actual importance or meaning, all while desperately wishing you were somewhere else.

Today, I think of productivity as doing exactly what you intend to do, when you intend to do it, and as long as you're doing that, you're perfectly productive. Even if it's your intention to recharge by taking the night off. In this book, Ali Abdaal, a former medical doctor and the world's most-followed productivity expert, takes issue with the idea that productivity has to be about discipline and drudgery at all. It can be about joy.

Feel-Good Productivity is based on the idea that we'll get more done by making work feel good, instead of dragging ourselves through it, regardless of how we feel. The approach Ali lays out in the book is supported by a litany of scientific studies, empirical observation, and personal experimentation, and it's laid out in an extremely practical way, featuring 54 "productivity experiments" you can conduct on your own to put these insights into action.

The book also contains overwhelming psychological and neuroscientific evidence for why positive emotions fuel success, and how feeling good in your work can boost your energy, soothe your stress, and improve your life.

I'd never try to claim that discipline doesn't matter at all, or that it can't be extraordinarily valuable in a wide variety of situations, but what I love about Feel-Good Productivity is that Ali doesn't make it a matter of "discipline or nothing." Success and fulfillment is possible without constant pain and suffering, and for the majority of the work that most of us do each day, it's probably more joy that would help us out the most.

Work isn't always going to feel good. Sometimes you do have to suffer (at least temporarily) for what you want in this life. But it's far from the only way there is to succeed, and Ali's book is the perfect counterbalance to that claim. Discipline shouldn't be the default; it should be that extra gear that you drop into occasionally when you really need to dig deep.

With all that in mind, Feel-Good Productivity is split into three sections:

Energize

In the first section, we're introduced to the three hidden "energizers" that enable enjoyable productivity, and they are Play, Power, and People.

Ali charges out of the gate, where he recounts the stories of six different Nobel Prize winners who attribute their success to Play, including Richard Feynman, Alexander Fleming, and Donna Strickland. Play provided these luminaries with a sense of psychological relief, restoring their formidable mental powers through participation in activities that were pleasurable and relaxing.

The second energizer, Power, refers to a sense of personal empowerment, not power over others. It's not something you take from other people, it's something you give to yourself. It's that sense of, "My life is completely up to me, and I alone am responsible for my success, satisfaction, and peace." For lack of a better word, it's a powerful mindset to adopt, one that's shared by high-performers in diverse fields all over the globe.

The third energizer, People, is all about social connections. It's about helping others, and being helped in return. As it turns out, if you surround yourself with people who inspire, support, encourage, and energize you, you'll not only get a lot more done, but you'll enjoy yourself a lot more at the same time.

Unblock

The second part of Feel-Good Productivity addresses the three "blockers" we must overcome if we want to beat procrastination. They include Uncertainty, Fear, and Inertia, and by removing these barriers a whole new future of increased productivity and life satisfaction opens up before you.

The first blocker becomes a problem when we become overwhelmed by the unknowns or the complexity of the work ahead, leading us to do nothing instead. But we can fight back against this uncertainty using a variety of methods introduced by Ali here, including commander's intent, NICE goals, time-blocking, and more, all of which is discussed below.

The second blocker, fear, has a number of viable solutions, but understandably it's a real issue faced by many people as they stare down their dreams, goals, and projects. Understanding fear and utilizing various techniques to combat it can work wonders, and that's Ali's project in this chapter.

The third blocker, inertia, is a real productivity-killer, although it can be overcome with some startlingly simple solutions. Starting small, reducing friction (both environmental and emotional), and enlisting additional support are all ways that it can be beaten, and again, we'll get into all of that below.

Sustain

The final section of the book focuses on maintaining not just productivity over the long term, but also alignment and purpose, both critical components of a life well-lived. It addresses three different types of burnout, and Ali delivers several high-impact strategies to deal with each and every one of them.

I devote an entire section to the three types of burnout below, so I won't go into too much detail here. But they are overexertion burnout, which occurs when you push yourself too hard for too long, depletion burnout, where your energy reserves remain low for long periods of time without devoting enough time to recovery, and misalignment burnout - possibly the worst of all - which occurs when your daily actions aren't aligned with your core values.

Taken together, here you have an incredible array of practical, workable strategies - most of which you can implement immediately to improve the quality of your life from Day One. You'll probably start to notice positive changes before you even finish reading the book!

Personally, I consider a book worth reading if I come away with even just one life-changing idea, and Feel-Good Productivity is packed with a ton of them. I took pages and pages (and pages) of excellent notes, which I'm sharing with you here in this breakdown, along with a selection of Key Ideas, including the five-minute rule, the tension between "goals" and "systems," time-blocking, environmental engineering, and many more.

It's all backed by solid scientific research, as I've said, including something known as the "broaden-and-build" theory, according to which positive emotions broaden our perception and build up our cognitive resources in all kinds of beneficial ways.

What happens when we prioritize positive emotions in our life and work is that we put into motion this virtuous cycle of productivity, whereby feeling good causes us to become more energized, which allows us to become more productive, which leads us to accomplishing what we set out to do and feeling great about that, at which point the cycle repeats and we find ourselves steadily constructing a life of meaning, purpose, fun, and excitement that is literally a joy to live. In that way, we build a life for ourselves, instead of merely existing.

Simply put: “Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.”

Key Ideas:

#1: You've Got It All Backwards!

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

This is the fundamental idea from which everything else in this book flows. We've become so accustomed to believing that reaching success is a seemingly endless slog, achieved only through drudgery and discipline, that we've lost sight of the fact that the journey toward success can actually feel good. It even should feel good, especially if we want to get there faster.

There's another book Ali references called The Happiness Track, by Emma Seppala, one I read back in 2018 and that supports this idea. She writes that it’s not necessary to sacrifice happiness in the short term in order to gain it in the long term, and that positive mental states help you reason more effectively, learn faster, and think more creatively.

This coheres with the Broaden-and-Build Theory, first developed by Barbara Frederickson and also explained by Ali in Feel-Good Productivity, which suggests that positive emotions like joy, love, and curiosity expand our thinking and behavior, encouraging creativity, exploration, and connection.

Over time, these positive emotions create upward spirals, "virtuous cycles" in other words, where the resources we build lead to even more opportunities for positive experiences and success, in a process that just keeps getting better and better.

This being the way life works is great news for us, because we don't need to wait to feel good. We can feel that way now, knowing that it'll even help us achieve the success we're looking for in the future. You feel good first, then you succeed, then you feel even better because you're succeeding, which leads you onward and upward to help you achieve even more. The winners keep winning, and the good times don't have to end.

#2: What to Say When You Talk to Yourself

“The things you say often become the things you believe.”

An astounding number of the key ideas in Feel-Good Productivity apply to so much more than just "getting stuff done." Personally, I view a person's self-talk - and really, their entire relationship to themselves - as one of the most critical areas of life to get right, and that's why I hammer on the following idea so consistently.

One of the most important things in life is that you must never, ever, ever lie to yourself or let yourself down. You must speak the truth to yourself at all times, you must support yourself at all times, and you must uphold the promises you make to yourself at all times. Because the truth of the matter is that regardless of who's around, there is always at least one person listening to everything you say and watching everything you do. That person is you, and that's a tremendous responsibility.

Research suggests that most people have up to 70,000 thoughts each day. However, most of these are fleeting impressions, with the periods of focused mental activity on a single idea or concept before the brain shifts to a new one being closer to 6,200. Going with the number 70,000, which can include self-talk and rumination, if the number of positive thoughts outnumber the negative ones even just 35,001 to 34,999, that means you're winning the battle for your mind.

If you can get the percentage of positive thoughts going through your mind up to 51%, then 52%, then 55%, then 60%...you're well on the way to shifting your entire worldview, your entire orientation to life itself, and that's a contest you MUST win each and every day.

I've always felt very strongly about this, and it pains me greatly when I see and hear people berating themselves for their perceived inadequacies, shortcomings, or failures. Acknowledging them is healthy and necessary, but dwelling on them is definitely not.

You have to - and I mean have to, have to - be on your own side; you have to treat yourself like a really good friend would, like someone you wanted to see happy and healthy and successful. That begins with how you talk to yourself and what kinds of thoughts you let slip past your mental defenses.

Protect the border of your consciousness at all costs. Defend your mind from negative intruders. Never break a promise to yourself, never let yourself down, and always keep moving forward. No matter what.

#3: Accumulating Reference Experiences

“I’ve found that my sense of confidence increases substantially when I read books, listen to podcasts, or watch videos with stories of people succeeding in the areas in which I want to feel more empowered."

Ali refers to these as "vicarious mastery experiences," and they're a powerful tool for personal transformation. What you're doing here, essentially, is stacking up evidence that the success you seek is possible. You'll know it's possible because you're seeing other people doing it, and eventually, you'll have a solid database of "reference experiences" you can draw on from your own experience.

It was Tony Robbins who first introduced me to the idea of reference experiences, and how they work in my own life is that, whenever I'm faced with a new challenge or difficulty, I can look back on all the times I've succeeded at something, and draw strength from that - the very strength I need to succeed in the current moment.

I've found that the original reference experiences don't even have to be from the same field as the area I'm using them to succeed in! For example, whenever I have to give a speech or presentation in public, I can look back on the time when I won my last heavyweight boxing fight by unanimous decision, in front of hundreds of people as the main event of the evening.

That overwhelmingly positive experience is lodged forever in my consciousness, supported by the sights, sounds, and emotions I've associated with that event. I can then borrow that confidence, vitality, and life-force to help me blast through my current challenge.

There are other key moments in my life that I'll look back on during certain situations, but the point is that you've experienced success before too, and you can go back there anytime you want, even if only in your mind.

You've been there before, and so have other people. Success is possible for us as human beings, and if you haven't achieved it yourself, there's likely someone else out there who has. All you have to do is borrow confidence and capability from them. All you need is an opening: a fleeting, flickering thought that occurs in your mind as you're watching them succeed that quietly says, "I could do that."

#4: Beginning with the End in Mind

“Previously, when I embarked on a project my instinct was to immediately press ahead, planning every step - without ever really thinking about my desired end-state.

But this level of obsessive planning can prove an obstacle. I would get so bogged down in ticking off specific tasks that I would lose track of what the ultimate point was.

So now, before embarking on a new project, I ask myself the first commander's intent question: 'What is the purpose behind this?' And I build my to-do list from there."

In Stephen R. Covey's classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit #2 is to "Begin with the End in Mind." This involves working backward from a desired result and asking, "How did I end up here? What steps did I take? How do I move forward from where I am right now?"

Ali Abdaal builds on this idea by bringing in the concept of "commander's intent," which is basically the practice of explaining to soldiers on the ground the ultimate purpose of the operation, so that they keep the end in mind, while remaining flexible on the details of how they get there.

For example, your goal might be to become a full-time creator like Ali and I. There are a number of ways to do this, and obviously they all involve increasing your monthly revenue. You can start a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a paid mastermind, etc. There are literally dozens of monetization options, but whichever one(s) you choose are going to serve the ultimate purpose of going full-time with your creative passions. That's your commander's intent.

Even though your ultimate goal is to become a full-time creator, you can find yourself getting so caught up in scripting videos and organizing your shot lists and editing vlogs you forget that you're not even enjoying making YouTube videos! In that case, you'd likely be much more fulfilled as a text-based creator writing a paid newsletter or something, but you've forgotten to ask the commander's intent question, so you end up trying to force yourself to be productive on YouTube.

When you're up to your neck in alligators, it's easy to forget that your original purpose was to drain the swamp, but you can always get back on track by asking yourself great questions. "What is the purpose behind this?" is one of them. It reveals that even though methods and tactics can and will change, a strategy will carry you through to the end.

#5: Getting to Mount Olympus

“You need to remind yourself of this big 'why' every day and every hour. Every email you send, every meeting you hold, every chat over a coffee - in ways small and large, they should take you a little closer to realizing that ultimate purpose."

Socrates was widely recognized as being the wisest man in Ancient Greece (because, he said, he knew that he knew nothing), and one of my favorite stories about him is when someone asked him how to get to Mount Olympus.

Mount Olympus being the home of the gods, you could say that the questioner wanted to know how to become more godlike, more worthy of entrance to a place of such grandeur and excellence. Socrates being Socrates, he answered that the best way to get there was to make sure every step you take is in that direction!

I love that answer, because it points to how every action we take in life is either a +1 or a -1, something that's taking us closer to our goals, or further away from them. Whenever we choose a +1 action, such as making a sales call, publishing a YouTube video, applying to that job, etc., we're doing something positive for ourselves that will take us that much closer to our own version of Mount Olympus.

What Ali's getting at in the quote above is how we need to gently remind ourselves over and over again each day why we're doing this particular thing and not some other thing. We have to keep this greater purpose in mind at all times, constantly asking ourselves, "Is this taking me to Mount Olympus or not?"

Speaking for myself, on my best days, I measure every single thing I'm doing against the importance of my ultimate goal. I ask myself, "Is this more important than my goal?" Usually, the answer is no. So ask yourself, "Will this get me closer to Mount Olympus? Will this contribute to the accomplishment of my highest and grandest aspirations? Is this a +1 or a -1?"

#6: N-I-C-E Goals

"My preferred method doesn't involve fixating on an external outcome or destination, but instead emphasizes the feel-good journey. It's based on what I call NICE goals:

Near-Term: Near-term goals ensure that we're concentrating on the immediate steps we need to take along our journey. They help us avoid being overwhelmed by the bigger picture. I find that a daily or weekly objective is the most helpful time horizon.

Input-Based: Input-based goals emphasize the process, rather than some distant, abstract end-goal. Whereas an out-put based goal would home in on the end result - 'Lose 5kg by the end of the year,' 'Hit the bestseller list with my book' - an input-based goal would focus on what we can do in the here and now - 'Go for a ten-minute walk every day,' Write 100 words each morning for my novel.'

Controllable: We want to focus on goals that are within our control. 'Spend eight hours a day on my novel' probably isn't something you can actually do, since many external factors would have to come together for such an input to be possible. Setting a more genuinely controllable goal (like allocating twenty minutes per day to the task) is far more realistic.

Energizing: We've already discussed plenty of principles and strategies for making our projects tasks, and chores more energizing. Is there a way to integrate play, power, and people into the goals you set yourself?

You might even want to use a SMART goal for your long-term objective, but a NICE goal for the here and now."

#7: Goals vs. Systems

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

-James Clear

There's another book recommendation I have for you, and it's How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams. The author is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and while I wouldn't necessarily suggest that it's a book you need to rush out and buy right now, Adams did open my eyes to the vital importance of systems.

For the purposes of our discussion here, I'll define a "system" as any collection of processes, routines, or structures in place designed to produce consistent results over time. Most importantly, while you can never "achieve" a system, per se, you can successfully implement a system every single day. This is different than having a goal, where, by definition, you've "failed" every single day your goal hasn't been achieved yet. This is no way to live!

For example, losing 10lbs is a goal. Eating nutritious food every day and working out at the gym 3x per week is a system. Gaining 10,000 YouTube subscribers is a goal. Publishing three videos per week, doing competitor research, and scripting out your videos ahead of time is a system.

Systems will bring you closer to your goal every day (even if your progress isn't immediately obvious), whereas goals too often remain simply wishes. With systems, you're successful every day that you run the system, making you feel good in the process, and giving you confidence that you're the kind of person who's capable of taking consistent action without giving up, all while making it more likely that you'll reach your goal sooner rather than later.

#8: Going Fast vs. Going Far

“Starting something alone is infinitely more difficult than starting it together. When we find a partner to hold us accountable, we're much more likely to overcome inertia."

There's an African proverb I quite like which states that, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

In the context of finding support for our projects and goals by joining up with accountability partners, we trade some freedom and autonomy ("I can just go to the gym whenever I want") for increased support ("I'll be at your place at 5PM so we can make sure we both go to the gym today"), but in the end, we can in fact go much further by going together.

One of the researchers Ali Abdaal credits in the book, Albert Bandura, goes on to state that the benefits to us individually can go even deeper:

“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."

This applies to so much more than sticking to a fitness regimen. Being part of a study group that meets regularly can show you that there are people out there willing and able to devote large amounts of time, effort, and focus to achieve their academic goals - and that you're just as capable as they are.

Sure, you can study at "convenient" times without being a member of a study group. You can go to the gym "whenever you feel like it" if you don't have a workout partner. But without support, it's also easier not to go, not to study, and you can find yourself going nowhere fast.

#9: Environmental Engineering

“The trick is to tweak your environment to make the thing you want to make a start on the most obvious, default decision. And, in turn, to make the things you don't want to do the more difficult decision."

This is perhaps one of the most important ideas in the entire book, and I don't say that lightly. Everything in your environment is subtly (and not-so-subtly) influencing you all the time, and identifying the ways in which this is the case is one of the highest-leverage activities you can explore.

For our purposes, "environment" encompasses everything from the people you spend time with, the shows you watch, the books you read, the music you listen to, the neighborhood you live in, etc. It's everything, and there's nothing within your environment that doesn't have an effect on you, for better or worse.

It's almost like there's a kind of "cultural gravity" either lifting you up or pulling you down. Certain elevating influences - like great books and great friends - are bringing out the best in you, and other, more damaging influences - the news, gossip, doomscrolling on TikTok - are just bringing you down. They're certainly not bringing you any benefit, so why do they remain in your life? I mean, you're trying to fly with the eagles, but you're down there scratching with the turkeys!

The quote above refers to engineering your environment to make your habits easier or harder to engage in (and more on that later), but environmental engineering in general is one of the most important factors in whether you succeed or fail - in whether you live a productive life (in every sense of that term). Again, I don't say that lightly.

So take intentional action to set up your life in a way that's going to serve you! In a way that's going to support your highest aims! Yes, remove distractions. That's a massive part of it. But it goes deeper than that. It's about removing everything from your mental, physical, and social environments that leave you feeling apathetic and uninspired, and that don't serve a productive purpose.

#10: Think Like a Productivity Scientist

“With an experimental mindset, a date that doesn't lead to a second one or a friendship that doesn't blossom wouldn't be a failure; it'd just be another data point to help you understand your compatibility. No failure is ever just a failure. It's an invitation to try something new."

This is one of the most refreshing approaches to productivity (to life!) that I've seen in a while, and it involves seeing everything as an experiment, not simply in black/white, pass/fail terms.

The slightly imperfect productivity system that you actually use is always going to be superior to the completely and totally perfectly optimized productivity system you don't use, and every system will evolve over time. It's a process of constant iteration, and I would never have developed the productivity system I have now if I had tried to set up everything perfectly right from the very beginning.

Each addition and improvement to your own productivity system is going to be an iteration of what came before, and every "failure" is really just a data point directing you toward what might work, and what you might want to try next. No failure is a total failure, either. You can virtually always take something from an experiment that "failed" and use it in your next iteration or your next experiment.

I'd also add that you should record what works and what doesn't work so that you know what to improve on and what to ditch completely. Every scientist worthy of the name records the results of their experiments, and doing so is absolutely critical if you want to extract maximum value from every attempt.

#11: The Best Way to Learn Anything

“Learning through doing is one of the most powerful forces in human psychology. It's the second key strategy if we're to build our sense of power. Why? Because the more we do something, the greater our sense of control. We learn. We level up our skills. Our confidence grows. And we empower ourselves."

The best way to learn something ourselves is to teach it to someone else. It's a form of "learning through doing" called the Protege Effect, whereby we strengthen our own understanding of a subject in the process of passing it on to others.

Before you can successfully transmit your knowledge to someone else, you have to make sure that you understand it yourself, which naturally occurs when you're forced to express that information in a way that others will be able to digest.

In the same way that writing can clarify to yourself what you actually think, teaching someone else clarifies what you actually know. And if, as it usually happens, your understanding is partially incomplete in some critical areas, awareness of those areas surfaces when you try to teach someone what you know and can't quite do it.

There's another great book I can recommend if you want to take your studying and reading comprehension skills to the next level, and you can access my complete breakdown of that book here.

#12: Gurus vs. Guides

“And if you’re concerned that you're not 'qualified' enough to teach someone else, it's worth remembering that the people we learn from best are often the ones who are just a step ahead of us in the journey. So anyone can become a teacher. You don't need to be a guru. You can just be a guide."

At this point, you'd never go to Bill Gates and ask him to teach you how to build a website - he's simply too advanced. When he was just starting out in his career, sure, I mean he built plenty of websites, knew how to code, etc. Nowadays, however, you're much better off seeking guidance from someone just a few steps ahead of you, not someone who's miles ahead of you like he is.

Abdaal makes an important point above when he points out that you can be perfectly well-suited to teach someone else, regardless of whether you're an expert or not. In fact, it may be better that you're not an expert, because they suffer from something called the "curse of knowledge," which means that they tend to forget what it felt like to be a beginner. They forget what it's like not to know.

So instead of being a "guru" that knows everything, can dictate the correct path forward at all times, etc., you'd step into the role of a guide, someone who's traveling the path of knowledge with them; someone who's slightly further ahead, sure, and able to "see around a few corners" that they simply couldn't at this stage, but not some infallible expert who could never be questioned.

For example, in my private community, I take on the role of a guide when it comes to helping educational content creators attract attention, monetize their knowledge, and go full-time pursuing their creative passions. I don't pretend to have all the answers. I'm a guide: always testing, experimenting, and assisting - never "commanding" the group members to take my word as law.

What this all means for you is that to teach someone else, you don't need to be some world-class expert, and you certainly don't need a bunch of letters after your name. What you do need, however, is the intellectual humility to become a guide, and the desire to become an expert - or at least to improve and level up your skills over time. As long as you never stop learning, you'll never stop being able to teach.

#13: Implementation Intentions

“If you don’t know when you’re doing something, chances are you won’t do it.”

Implementation intentions are your secret weapon in the ongoing fight again procrastination. They can be explained simply and easily, and in a basic sense they involve specifying exactly when, where, and under what circumstances a desired action is going to take place. Expressed logically, you could say:

“The best formula for implementation intentions is a conditional statement: 'If X happens, then I will Y.'"

For example, "If it's Wednesday morning and my alarm goes off, then it's time to do an hour of deep work on my thesis." Or, "If it's 10PM, then I'm going to put my phone in the other room and read a physical book before falling asleep." There are innumerable examples you could give of implementation intentions, but they all serve to take the guesswork and "bargaining" out of your decision-making.

Much of the value of implementation intentions comes from this reduction of "decision fatigue." The cognitive load of having to remember all these habits and routines is reduced, and, at the allotted time, you simply get down to work:

“When we intentionally set an 'if...then...' statement for ourselves to follow, we're strengthening our mental representation of the situation in advance.

When the trigger happens, it's hard to overlook it. You've already made it part of the mental model you use to navigate a situation. The result is remarkable. You no longer need to think about when you'll do it. You just do it."

#14: Discipline Equals Freedom

“I’ve learned the hard way that if you don't put the things you want to do into your calendar, they won't happen.

I've often wondered why people are so resistant to making full use of a calendar. I guess people feel a little resistance to the idea of structuring your day to such an extent. Writing 'Go to the gym' or 'Write my novel for an hour' might seem too rigid and too structured for things we don't think of as 'work.'

But the truth is, structure gives you more freedom, not less.

By carving out specific chunks of time for different activities, you're ensuring that you have time for everything that's important to you: work, hobbies, relaxation, relationships.

You're not just reacting to whatever comes up or gets thrown at you during the day. Instead, you're designing your life according to your priorities."

I've written about the above idea in this book breakdown, but if you find yourself resistant to the idea of adhering to a strict schedule, I'd invite you to recognize that doing so is not so much a restriction of your freedom, as it is the gateway to greater freedom. I'll briefly restate the basic argument here.

Following a workout and meal plan may look like you're making a massive sacrifice - and you are making a sacrifice - but it's one that offers you greater freedom in the future. By working out today, eating healthy foods today, and getting a great night's sleep tonight, you're giving yourself the freedom of staying healthy and active well into old age, of having enough energy to play with your grandchildren for hours without getting tired, etc.

It's exactly the same with entering your commitments into the calendar and sticking to them. You're "sacrificing" some of the false freedom you'd gain by being able to make last-minute changes in how you spend your time, but like Ali says, you're gaining the real freedom to build a life around your highest priorities.

#15: Newton's First Law of Productivity

“As Newton recognized, it takes way more energy to get started than it does to keep going. When you're doing nothing, it's easy to carry on doing nothing. And when you're working, it's much easier to carry on working. When you feel like you've tried everything to properly motivate yourself but you're still procrastinating, you need one final boost to get started."

Isaac Newton could easily have been a productivity scientist, but luckily for all of us here in the 21st century, he chose to study physics instead! Here, read this, from Ali in Feel-Good Productivity:

“The law of inertia applies just as much to productivity as it does to physics.”

I'm not going to regurgitate the points already made by Ali in the quotes above, but in my own life and work, I've proven the truth of this idea over and over again. Getting started really is the hardest part. The easiest thing in the world is to keep doing what you're doing now, whether that's working, playing, or wasting time.

The key really is to just get started, and before too long - before you know it, even - you'll act your way into feeling like it. More on this in the next Key Idea, but once you actually get started, you'll usually see that sticking with it is the easiest thing in the world. Once caught in the task's "gravity," virtually all you can do is keep going.

#16: The Five-Minute Rule

“The five-minute rule is a simple but powerful technique that encourages you to commit to working on a task for just five minutes.

The idea behind this rule is that taking the first step is often the most challenging part of any task. During those five minutes, you focus solely on the thing you're avoiding, giving it your full attention. Once the five minutes are up, you can decide whether to continue working or to take a break. In my experience, the five-minute rule is weirdly effective.

Usually, imagining yourself doing the thing that you're procrastinating from for only five minutes isn't as horrible as really committing to it. Especially when, in our heads, that commitment feels like 'doing that thing for the rest of my life.' Around 80 percent of the time, after those five minutes are up I keep going."

The five-minute rule is one of my go-to productivity tactics and I use it almost literally every single day of my life. It's that effective. Starting really is the hardest part, like I said above, and once you blow past that initial inertia, there's not much you can't continue doing for longer.

In my own case, what I used to do when it comes to working out (and I still would do this if I needed to, although nowadays it rarely comes up) is tell myself that the only thing I had to do was put my gym clothes on, or pack them, etc. That's literally it. If I did that, I wouldn't have to take the next step. But of course I usually did take the next step.

Once I had my gym clothes on, I told myself that the only thing I had to do was get in the car. I didn't have to drive anywhere - I didn't even have to start the car! All I had to do was get in. Then, once I was in the car, I'd tell myself that the only thing I had to do was drive to the gym. I didn't even have to go inside! Just drive to the gym, and sit in the parking lot if I wanted to. You can probably sense where this is going...

By the end of it, through a series of miniscule mini-victories, I found myself in the gym changing room, with my workout clothes on, headphones in, basically ready to go. Now, importantly, I still told myself that I could go home if I really wanted to. And I meant it! Ali's right when he says that you do actually have to allow yourself to stop at any time. Trying to "trick" your brain into going ahead with it 100% of the time dilutes the effectiveness of this exercise.

But I've been successful with this tactic about 85-90% of the time when it comes to working out, and probably 80% of the time when it comes to starting a work project that I was procrastinating on. Starting is the hardest part! I'm tellin' ya!

#17: Something vs. Nothing

“The best antidote to doing nothing is simply to do something. You can take action by first defining your next step and then tracking your progress, so you're surrounded by tangible evidence that you're moving towards your goals."

If you're an overthinker like me, you can probably point to times when you've had so much to do, when your to-do list was sooo long, that you simply didn't know where to start. My recommendation? Ali's recommendation? Start anywhere!

Do something, rather than nothing. You can course correct along the way. If you get started (or even finish) and realize that it wasn't actually your highest priority, that's fine. You'll know for next time. But you will have completed something. You will have stacked up undeniable evidence that you are a finisher - evidence that you mean business and that you get stuff done.

#18: What Gets Measured Gets Managed

“Tracking your progress provides you with tangible evidence that you're moving towards your goals. I see my word count creeping up word by word, and know that I'm ever closer to having a finished manuscript. This sense of progress has helped me keep my momentum up and made me more committed to keeping going. It's a motivation boost like none other."

I'm a big believer in the benefits of tracking your key metrics (in various areas of life), but it can easily become a form of procrastination itself. I'm a list-maker by nature, and I have lists for everything. But so many times I'll make up a to-do list, then divide it into priorities, then assign an estimated time of completion to each item, etc., only to realize that I haven't actually started on any of the tasks!

So tracking is one of those things that can be exceptionally valuable, but it can also be a big trap. You don't want to spend hours organizing your reading list, or making up a beautiful table of your word count by day and by month, etc...and then not do any reading or writing!

Ali's right though: tracking your progress can be incredibly motivating, and that's one reason why I've been keeping track of every book I've read since 2014. I'm up over 1,300+ books now at the time of writing, and every time I add a new book to the list I experience a fresh surge of motivation to head back to my library, pick up the next one, and dive right in. I do the same thing in a multitude of different areas, such as my finances, fitness, and more.

There are additional benefits too. Tracking your progress (and your key metrics) lets you see where you're doing well, and where you might need to make a few adjustments. It'll help you see what's working and what's not, and it'll also remind you to celebrate your victories as you keep stacking up wins and writing them down. Not everybody is motivated in the same way, of course, and if you find it demotivating to do things like track the number of books you've read - don't do it!

The last thing I'll mention here is that you can (and perhaps should) track both process and outcome goals. The difference is that the process goals are ones you can control, and the outcome goals are ones that you can only influence.

For example, a process goal is to write 1,000 words per day, or publish a YouTube video per week, etc. An outcome goal would be to hit the NYT bestseller list, reach 1,000,000 YouTube subscribers, etc.

Some of my own process goals are to publish a certain number of posts on social media, publish a certain number of newsletters per week, and connect with a certain number of my engaged leads each day. My outcome goals include things like reach specific follower counts, subscriber counts, number of sales, etc. One I can control, and the other I can only influence, but I make sure to track both.

#19: Your Three MITs

“Each morning, simply choose three actions for the day ahead that will move you a tiny step closer to where you want to be in a year's time."

The original root word priority was meant to signify only one important thing. It comes from the Latin, prioritas, meaning "first in rank" or "precedence." Interestingly enough, even though it first appeared in English in the 1400s, the plural form, priorities only started showing up in common usage in the 1900s!

Unsurprisingly, it most often showed up in business contexts, when people basically forgot the original meaning and started acting as though they could have multiple "most important things" at once, conveniently ignoring the literal impossibility of this being true!

Latin root words might bore you to death, but the philosophy major in me feels the need to bring them up because, by definition, you can only have one priority at a time. If you must - as in, absolutely have to - go against hundreds of years of English usage and eons of sage wisdom, I'd recommend setting a maximum of three priorities each day. These are your MITs, or your "Most Important Tasks."

I would do this the night before, but doing it in the morning works too. Setting your priority (uggh, or priorities) the night before allows your subconscious mind to get to work making sense of them while you sleep, and many times you'll wake up with fresh insights on how best to attack them. Thomas Edison is widely quoted as saying that you should never go to bed without giving an instruction to your subconscious mind, and setting your MITs the night before counts in this regard.

You decide on your MITs by looking at where you want to be in a year's time and working backwards from there. For example, if you want to finish writing a book in a year's time, your six-month goal could be to have a first draft written, your 3-month goal could be to have a detailed plot outline prepared, and your 1-month goal could be to have all of your initial research completed.

Knowing that this is where you want to be a month from now, your daily MITs could be selecting 3 people you wish to interview for your book, 10 books on the subject you wish to read, and a rough outline of various character sketches or plot points. Then tomorrow, your MITs could be getting each person's contact information, buying or borrowing each book, and sitting down for an hour to begin mapping things out. Repeat until you've hit your Month One goal, and keep repeating until the entire project is completed.

#20: The Three Kinds of Burnout

"By allowing yourself to occasionally hit the pause button and step away from the constant pressure, you create space for growth and creativity. By doing less today, you can do more of what matters tomorrow."

There are three different kinds of burnout, and all three of them are deadly to the human spirit. The first kind that Ali identifies is called Overexertion Burnout, which is simply caused by trying to do too much.

Overexertion Burnout is likely to strike when you try to fit 48 hours of work in 24 hours a day for too many days in a row, and the solution is simply to do less:

"Stop yourself from overcommitting. Limit the list of projects you're working on and get comfortable with saying 'no.' Ask yourself: If I had to pick only one project to put all my energy into, what would that be?'"

Depletion Burnouts happen when you've gone too long without prioritizing rest and recovery. You've been redlining your brain and body for so long that they're desperate for you to take an extended break and get back to normal.

You have to rest in a way that feels right to you, and that fills you with energy, instead of the way most people do it, which involves wasting away in front of some screen, engaging in a pale imitation of recovery. Doomscrolling is not resting. Spending time in nature can be a fantastic way to rest in a way that gives you energy, as can simply doing nothing at all - without guilt!

The third kind of burnout is more malignant, and Ali refers to it as Misalignment Burnout. It's where your daily life doesn't match up with your highest ambitions, or with your most authentic sense of self. Misalignment Burnout results from your daily life looking vastly different than how you thought it would look when you were younger - where you're sleepwalking through the day, trying only to make it to a tomorrow that looks exactly the same as today. This is no way to live.

Fortunately, you don't have to live this way! You don't have to sell everything you own right now and book a one-way flight to Southeast Asia to start a new life, either. When you notice that your life has shifted out of alignment (and usually it's a feeling, an intuition), you can take steps toward getting into alignment right now.

First of all, thinking ahead and visualizing your desired future - your far, far future - and working backward from there is a great way to get started. If you're 25 years old now, what do you want to have done by the time you're 75? When you're 125?

Living that long might seem like an impossibility right now, but remember, we're talking about 100 years of medical progress taking place between now and then. If I were you (no matter how old you are), I'd start getting used to the idea that you could live for a very, very long time!

You don't even have to start thinking that far into the future if you want to get started living a life of greater purpose and alignment. Just think of what you want to have happen in the next 12 months, and ask yourself what that means for how you spend your time today, or this week.

Work backwards from the end, and every day, identify three actions you can take that might bring you a little bit closer to where you want to find yourself 100 years from now. Remember: the time is going to pass anyway, so you may as well use it to live the life you've always imagined. In one sense, you have time...except you really don't. As they say, the days are long, but the years are short.

#21: We Make the Path by Walking

"By sketching out the paths ahead, you can work out which one you really want to take."

No one wins a race they don't want to be in. And it's funny: most people don't seem to realize this, but even if you win the rat race...you're still a rat! People forget that they can just do stuff! While I have your attention, though, always remember: you are under no obligation to live the kind of life that anybody else expects of you.

The reality of lifestyle design, however, is that life moves fast, and you can end up in a life you don't want so much faster than you expect. I know, because it almost happened to me - several times! Like the proverbial frog boiling in water, the temperature was climbing higher and higher and I just sat there watching it happen, without taking massive action to "get out of the pot," so to speak.

Experimentation is the key to avoiding ending up in a life that you don't want. You can't live your life over again, but you can ask other people who have lived theirs for their wisdom and advice. So experiment by asking people who have lived all sorts of lives how they feel about their choices and what they might have done differently - or what they're sooo glad they did.

Reading biographies and memoirs works too, since you may not be able to ask these people directly, as in the case of public figures or, well, dead people. Their most powerful lessons and profound wisdom is all laid out, right there on the page, and spending 10 hours with the right biography can save you 10 years of traveling down a path that would never have been truly yours.

Reading books, asking questions, and experimenting with different lifestyles and paths can help you see around corners, as you start to get a better sense of what you love, what you're drawn to, and what you want your one and only life to be about. It can also help you identify potential regrets, which is the first step toward staving them off.

Naval Ravikant said that the only test of intelligence is whether or not you get what you want out of life, and he's right. You can just do stuff, and you don't have to conform to anyone else's expectations of how your one and only life will unfold.

You're not going to have all the answers right out of the gate, and that's perfectly okay. No one does! We make the path by walking, and more of our path is revealed as we travel along. What you absolutely do not want, however, is to spend your entire life walking in one direction, only to wind up at a dead end.

#22: How to Tell If You're on the Wrong Path

“The journey to alignment is not one with a clear end-goal. It's a never-ending process. As we navigate the laboratory of our lives, we must be willing to embrace experimentation - and to learn as we go."

The depth psychologist Carl Jung once said that if the path in front of you is clearly defined, it's a clear sign that you're on someone else's. And the existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said that life can only be understood looking backward, but must be lived forward.

Taken together, what this means is that you, as a productivity scientist (and a student of life) must check in with yourself (often), and ask yourself honestly whether you still want to be on the path you're on currently. Because a lot of the time, the answer is no, and yet most people still do nothing.

If you don't want to be on your current path anymore, get on another one! And if you don't know which one that might be, experiment until you find it! There's literally nothing more important you could do with your one and only life than to discover what you should do with it in the first place.

There are as many good lives available as there are people to live them, and the odds of your path looking exactly the same as those advertised to you on TV are vanishingly small.

Life is long enough that you don't have to worry about one failure (or ten) defining you forever. But life is also short! You have time, but you don't have endless time. And whatever time you do have is constantly slipping away from you. Most people can't handle that kind of existential pressure, so they take the easy way out (which is really the hard way in the end) and do nothing.

All that being said, once you've found your path - or at least once you're directionally correct about what you want to spend your life doing - that's the time to dig in and give this life everything you've got. Like Ali says in the quote above, this is a never-ending process of experimentation and questioning. The only final answer is death. While you're alive, however, all you're armed with is questions.

Book Notes:

“The secret to productivity isn’t discipline. It’s joy.”

“If you can make your work feel good, then productivity takes care of itself.”

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

-Dr. Barclay

“Slowly, and then all at once, I started to doubt all the productivity advice I had absorbed. Did success really require suffering? What was 'success' anyway? Was suffering even sustainable? Did it make sense that feeling overwhelmed would be good for getting things done? Did I have to trade my health and happiness for, well, anything?

It would take me a few months. But I was stumbling my way to a revelation: that everything I'd been told about success was wrong. I couldn't hustle my way to becoming a good doctor. Working harder wasn't going to bring me happiness. And there was another path to fulfillment: one that wasn't lined with constant anxiety, sleepless nights, and a concerning dependence on caffeine.

I didn't have all the answers, not by a long shot. But for the first time, I could make out the beginnings of an alternative approach. An approach that didn't hinge on exhaustingly hard work, but on understanding what made hard work feel better. An approach that focused on my well-being first, and used that wellbeing to drive my focus and motivation second. An approach I would come to refer to as feel-good productivity."

“Feynman was not alone. To my knowledge, at least six Nobel Prize winners attribute their success to play.

James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA in the 1950s, described the generative process they used to come up with the structure as 'constructing a set of molecular models and beginning to play.'

Alexander Fleming, the scientist who discovered the antibiotic penicillin, once described his job as 'playing with microbes.' Donna Strickland, the 2018 Nobel laureate in Physics, described her career as 'getting play with high-intensity lasers.'

Konstantin Novoselov, who shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for helping discover graphene, put it most simply: 'If you try to win the Nobel, you won't,' he reflected. 'The way we were working really was quite playful.'"

“As a fourteen-year-old, there’s nothing more exciting than killing monsters and going on quests (actually, as an adult that still sounds pretty appealing)."

“The study showed that people were a whopping 30 percent more likely to recall a fact they found interesting, rather than a fact they found boring. But what was perhaps more surprising was what was going on in people's brains at the point that they recalled these facts.

When they were given a brain scan, their neurological activity was quite different when they were asked a question they were curious about: they seemed to receive a hit of dopamine.

Dopamine is one of our feel-good hormones, and it also activates the part of the brain responsible for learning and forming memories. So for the study participants, engaging with their curiosity made them feel good - and they in turn became better at retaining information."

“And if you were approaching writing a book sincerely rather than seriously, you might decide to throw a detailed homage to World of Warcraft into the very first chapter - illustrating to your future readers that even when creating something as significant as your first book, you can treat the process with levity.

By doing so, you'd hopefully help the text create a sense of fun, even while holding forth on the science of productivity. You might end up able to stress less and play more."

The Vicarious Mastery Experience: “This is when you witness or hear about someone else's performance related to a task that you're going to undertake yourself. You see other people's examples, and it boosts your confidence."

“And in my new life as a writer, I find that watching, listening to, and even conducting interviews with successful authors does more to boost my own feelings of 'I can do this' than almost anything else."

“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."

“People are more eager to help than you think. We have by now repeatedly seen how energizing it can be to make others smile, to teach, and to mentor. Even so, a lot of us underestimate how willing other people are to help us. According to the academics Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns, people tend to underestimate the likelihood that other people will agree to help us by up to 50 percent."

“Asking for help in-person was approximately thirty-four times more effective.”

“We’re much more likely to underestimate how much communication we need to do than overestimate it."

"When you think you've communicated plenty, you almost certainly haven't."

"The one thing you can be certain of is that some plans won't go according to plan. So you need to plan for that too. As General Eisenhower said, 'No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one.'"

"Time is always already running out."

-Oliver Burkeman

"Think of time blocking as a budget for your time."

"The key is to create a balance that works for you - your ideal week reflecting your priorities, ambitions, and personal circumstances.

You might never actually stick to your ideal week; that's what I mean when I say it's 'ideal.' Inevitably, things will come up that blow you off track - and that's okay.

Time blocking isn't about creating a rigid schedule that stresses you out; it's about providing structure and ensuring there's dedicated time for what matters most to you. Once you have that, the fog of uncertainty will be that bit clearer."

“But what we’re afraid others will notice about us - our mistakes, small missteps, our worst qualities - aren't typically what we notice in others. When we look at ourselves, these things seem a lot bigger and more important than they really are."

“In 2016, researchers combined 138 studies consisting of almost 20,000 participants to conduct a meta-analysis of its effects. They found that tracking progress, whether through writing down progress goals (like whether you completed the training sessions you aimed to do) or writing down output goals (like your 5km time), dramatically increases your chances of actually attaining that goal."

“Tracking your progress helps you identify any areas where you may be falling behind, or where you need to make adjustments. By monitoring your progress, you can identify patterns, habits, or obstacles that may be hindering your progress."

“Life is better with friends around.”

"Humans are social creatures, and we're desperate not to let one another down. If you might skip a gym session when you're the only person involved, it's much harder to skip when your friend is outside your apartment early in the morning looking irately at their watch."

“I find that the best accountability buddies meet five criteria: being disciplined (they must stick to what you've agreed to), challenging (they know what it means to help you move on to the next level), patient (they don't jump to conclusions or rush you into making decisions), supportive (they're there with words of encouragement), and constructive (they must know how to give you honest feedback and constructive criticism)."

"Wohl realized that his students' damaging cycle of productivity was caused by them beating themselves up. Whenever they failed to study, they would spend days telling themselves they were bad students. And this shame made them even less likely to study in the future."

"I forgive myself, now I can study."

“Procrastination isn’t something we can always control. Forgiving ourselves is something we can. You can focus on the small losses. Or you can celebrate the small wins. By accepting and forgiving our inevitable tendency to procrastinate - and celebrating the little victories instead - we can begin to conquer its hold over us."

“It’s so tempting to think, 'Six weeks from now, my schedule is going to be totally clear, so I'll definitely have time and energy to do this thing.' You won't. In six weeks, your life is going to be just as busy as it is today. If you wouldn't say yes to something happening tomorrow, you shouldn't say yes to it in a month or more."

“Within every day, you need time for a break. And more time than you might imagine. In fact, the people who seem to get the most done are often those who've turned doing nothing for large chunks of time into a fine art.

In one study, the software company Draugiem Group set out to find out how much time people spent on various tasks and how it related to each worker's productivity. The workers who were most productive were not the ones who chained themselves to their desks. Nor were they the ones who gave themselves a healthy-sounding five-minute break every hour.

The most productive workers gave themselves an almost unbelievable amount of time off: a work-to-break ratio of fifty-two minutes of work to seventeen minutes of rest."

"Nature replenishes our cognitive abilities and boosts our energy."

"If you're looking for a simple and easy way to immediately feel rejuvenated, just try taking a walk - no time limit, no distance to reach, no place in particular to go. If you can, take your stroll through a park, or a forest, or just a particularly verdant street. If you want, bring a friend.

It may not be the four hours that Thoreau recommended, but even a ten-minute stroll down the block during your break might be enough to change your day - and your life - for the better."

“Ultimately, it's only be continually evaluation what works for you that you'll work out how to feel better in the long run. Productivity is an evolving field, and you're evolving too. There's still so much to discover.

Yet as you apply these principles to your life, you'll uncover the insights, strategies, and techniques that work best for you. They may well be more useful than mine, especially because they came from within you.

So enjoy the process. And as you go, remember that this process isn't about striving for perfection. It's about strategically stumbling your way to what works. Learning from your failures and celebrating your successes. Transforming your work from a drain on your resources to a source of energy.

It's a difficult mindset to adopt. But when you've adopted it, everything changes. If you can tap into what makes you feel most energized and alive, you can get anywhere. And you can enjoy the journey too."

"But of course, none of this would have been possible without the love and support from my family. My grandmother Nani, who taught me the English language and infused me with a passion for learning, deserves a special mention. Your inspiration, love, and endless encouragement have been pillars on which much of my life stands.

Last but certainly not least, my mother, Mimi: a single parent who uprooted her life multiple times to give Taimur and me an exceptional education. Your sacrifices, work ethic, and boundless love are the undercurrents of everything I do."

Important Insights from Related Books:

Make Time, by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky:

Against all the forces conspiring to steal your focus and attention, this book provides 87 strategies you can use to fight back. Not only that, but you'll also learn a 4-step strategy for reclaiming your time and energy so you can direct it toward what really matters.

Sample Quotes from the Book:

“Infinity Pools are apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content. If you can pull to refresh, it's an Infinity Pool. If it streams, it's an Infinity Pool. This always-available, always-new entertainment is your reward for the exhaustion of constant busyness."

“When you schedule something, you're making a commitment to yourself, sending yourself a tiny message that says: 'I'm going to do this.'"

“Product designers like us have spent decades removing barriers to make these products as easy to access as possible. The key to getting into Laser mode and focusing on your Highlight is to bring those barriers back."

Read the Full Breakdown: Make Time, by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

Million Dollar Habits, by Brian Tracy:

In this book, personal development legend Brian Tracy teaches you how to establish winning habits that will lead inevitably to the success and fulfillment you desire, while helping you actualize the potential you may never have known you had.

Sample Quotes from the Book:

“You are where you are and what you are because of yourself. Everything you are today – or ever will be in the future – is up to you. Your life today is the sum total of your choices, decisions, and actions up to this point.

You can create your own future by changing your behaviors. You can make new choices and decisions that are more consistent with the person you want to be and the things you want to accomplish with your life.”

“You came into this world with more talents and abilities than you could ever use. You could not exhaust your full potential if you lived 100 lifetimes.

Your amazing brain has 100 billion cells, each of which is connected to as many as 20,000 other neurons. The possible combinations and permutations of ideas, thoughts, and insights you can generate are equivalent to the number one followed by eight pages of zeroes. According to brain expert Tony Buzan, the number of thoughts you can think is greater than all the molecules in the known universe.

This means that whatever you have accomplished in your life to this date is only a small fraction of what you are truly capable of achieving.”

“Make developing new habits a regular part of your life. Always be working on developing a new habit that can help you. One new habit per month will amount to 12 new habits each year, or 60 new, life-enhancing habits every five years.

At that rate, your life would change so profoundly that you would become a whole new person, in a very positive way, in a very short period of time.”

Read the Full Breakdown: Million Dollar Habits, by Brian Tracy

No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, by Dan S. Kennedy:

In this book, the eccentric entrepreneur Dan S. Kennedy shares the extreme time management strategies he uses personally to run his multimillion-dollar company while successfully safeguarding his schedule and his sanity.

Sample Quotes from the Book:

“There’s a reason why you can’t find a wall clock in a casino to save your life - those folks stealing your money do not want you to be aware of the passing of time.

And that tells you something useful right there: you want to be very aware, all the time, of the passing of time. It is to your advantage to be very conscious of the passage and usage of minutes and hours.”

“It is very important that you have a CLOSED Door Policy. You need some times when everybody knows - because of the closed door, red light, stuffed purple dragon in the hallway, whatever - that you are 100% uninterruptable. And if you want to sit in there and take a nap, you go right ahead. It’s none of their damned business.”

“When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp. And, having been up to my neck in alligator-filled swamp water more often than I like to remember, I know just how tough it is to keep at least one eye fixed firmly on your list of goals. But that’s EVERYTHING.”

Read the Full Breakdown: No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, by Dan S. Kennedy

Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari:

You haven't lost your ability to focus - it was stolen from you. In this book, you'll learn about the 12 contributing factors to declining attention spans across the world, who and what is behind them, and how you can reclaim your mind.

Sample Quotes from the Book:

“The truth is that you are living in a system that is pouring acid on your attention every day, and then you are being told to blame yourself and to fiddle with your own habits while the world's attention burns."

“Imagine you bought a plant and you wanted to help it grow. What would you do? You would make sure certain things were present: sunlight, and water, and soil with the right nutrients. And you would protect it from the things that could damage or kill it: you would plant it far from the trampling feet of other people, and from pests and diseases. Your ability to develop deep focus is, I have come to believe, like a plant.

To grow and flourish to its full potential, your focus needs certain things to be present: play for children and flow states for adults, to read books, to discover meaningful activities that you want to focus on, to have space to let your mind wander so you can make sense of your life, to exercise, to sleep properly, to eat nutritious food that makes it possible for you to develop a healthy brain, and to have a sense of safety.

And there are certain things you need to protect your attention from, because they will sicken or stunt it: too much speed, too much switching, too many stimuli, intrusive technology designed to hack and hook you, stress, exhaustion, processed food pumped with dyes that amp you up, polluted air.

For a long time, we took our attention for granted, as if it was a cactus that would grow in even the most dessicated climate. Now we know it's more like an orchid, a plant that requires great care or it will wither."

“With this image in mind, I now had a sense of what a movement to reclaim our attention might look like. I would start with three big, bold goals.

One: ban surveillance capitalism, because people who are being hacked and deliberately hooked can't focus.

Two: introduce a four-day week, because people who are chronically exhausted can't pay attention.

Three: rebuild childhood around letting kids play freely - in their neighborhoods and at school - because children who are imprisoned in their homes won't be able to develop a healthy ability to pay attention.

If we achieve these goals, the ability of people to pay attention would, over time, dramatically improve."

Read the Full Breakdown: Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari

The View from the Opposition:

No one's ideas are beyond questioning. In this section, I argue the case for the opposition and raise some points you might wish to evaluate for yourself while reading this book.

#1: Productivity Veterans May Find It Basic

None of these opposing viewpoints should stop you from reading the book, but I'll start by point out that if you've read more than, say, 50 productivity books, much of the information presented in Feel-Good Productivity will likely be familiar to you.

Again, this isn't to say it's not still a fantastic use of your time! I've read hundreds of business/productivity/time management books and I still came away with pages and pages of excellent notes from this one.

Some people even try to claim that you can get the same information from Ali's YouTube videos, but that's not a fair criticism at all. I'd rather have all of his best productivity advice and practical experiments all in one place, between these two covers, than sift through hundreds of YouTube videos in an effort to save myself a few dollars and a few hours of reading.

Not only that, but when it comes to things skill acquisition and personal development, we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.

Even if you've heard of time-blocking before, or you've seen Ali talking about the "five-minute rule" before, refresh your memory and enrich your understanding by reading Feel-Good Productivity.

An attitude of "Beginner Mind" - that of being a perpetual student - will serve you so well, and a profound commitment to lifelong learning will serve up the intellectual humility you'll need to get the most out of this book (and every book).

#2: The Joy of Discipline

I couldn't let you finish this breakdown without making the case for self-discipline as well. At least some measure of self-discipline, as it can be enormously valuable on some occasions, for specific people.

Discipline is necessary sometimes, because you're not always going to feel great about what has to be done. And yet...you're going to have to do it anyway. Feeling good is wonderful, but just as you can't have light without dark, or north without south, joy and discipline support each other's existence.

Not only that, but you can feel good about yourself by employing discipline. Doing hard things sends powerful, positive messages to your brain, reminding you of just how strong you really are, and how deep your reserves of discipline and willpower really go. Discipline can feel good, and building up your personal power in this way can make you feel great.

If you think that achieving great things is just going to be one non-stop thrill ride that only goes up, you're not going to be prepared for the reality of sustained peak performance. But regardless of whether you use "positive" joy or "negative" discipline, both of them keep you on the path. And staying on the path - no matter what life throws your way - feels pretty damn good.

#3: Your Definite Chief Aim

There's a fantastic book I want to recommend here called The Miracle of a Definite Chief Aim, by Mitch Horowitz. The terminology comes from Napoleon Hill's book, Think and Grow Rich (another classic I recommend highly), and it refers to a grand aim - some ultimate purpose you devote your life to, that gives your life meaning and direction and informs your major life decisions.

Personally, my Definite Chief Aim (DCA) is to read 10,000 books. At the time of writing, I've read more than 1,300 books, and having that DCA in front of me constantly reminds me of what I'm moving towards. It helps me orient my life around what matters to me, and so I wanted to make you aware of this approach here.

Ali Abdaal speaks about "NICE" goals and "SMART" goals in the book - and both of those approaches have immense value as well! They're not necessarily incompatible with each other. All three strategies have their place, but selecting a DCA is the most powerful tool I've come across to give meaning and purpose to your entire existence. My DCA represents the organizing principle of my entire life, with reading being the most important thing I do all day.

Again, use whatever works for you! Use one of them, all of them, none of them - whatever. It's completely up to you! But my suggestion is to give them a try, experiment with them, and settle on whatever feels right. One thing I will "insist" on, however, is that you track your goals, which is virtually the only way you'll be able to tell if you're making progress, how much, and whether you need to switch up your strategy based on new information.

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

Questions to Stimulate Your Thinking:

The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life. That's also how you get the absolute most out of any book that you decide to read:

You ask great questions the whole time - as though the book was on trial for its life.

Here in this section are a few questions that can help guide and stimulate your thinking, but try to come up with your own additional questions, especially if you decide to read this book the whole way through...

#1: "If I'm going to spend at least (approximately) 40 years working, wouldn't it serve me well to find out whether it's possible to make my working hours more enjoyable? More effortless? More joyful?"

#2: “How confident do I actually need to feel to get started with this?” 

#3: “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?"

#4: “What would this look like if it were fun?”

#5: "It's one week later, and I haven't actually started the task I intended to start. What are the top three reasons why I didn't get around to it? What can I do to help mitigate the risk of those top three reasons derailing me?"

#6: "Who can I ask for help in sticking to this commitment?"

#7: "Where is the lesson in this failure and where is the benefit?"

#8: "Will this matter in 10 minutes? Will this matter in 10 weeks? Will this matter in 10 years?"

#9: "Is there any sense in trying to be more productive at work, without uncovering the ultimate purpose toward which I'm exerting so much effort in the first place?"

#10: "If most of my assumptions about productivity could turn out to be incorrect, what else could I be wrong about? What haven't I even considered yet? What else is worth a second look?"

"Judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers."

-Voltaire

Action Steps:

So you've finished reading. What do you do now?

Reading for pleasure is great, and I wholeheartedly support it. However, I am intensely practical when I'm reading for a particular purpose. I want a result. I want to take what I've learned and apply it to my one and only life to make it better!

Because that's really what the Great Books all say. They all say: "You must change your life!" So here, below, are some suggestions for how you can apply the wisdom found in this breakdown to improve your actual life.

Please commit to taking massive action on this immediately! Acting on what you've learned here today will also help you solidify it in your long-term memory. So there's a double benefit! Let's begin...

#1: Embark on a Side Quest

Feel-Good Productivity contains 54 experiments that you can conduct for yourself to see which ones add the most to your life and workflow. I'm not going to just regurgitate them all here, though; rather, I'll go in order, and go deeper into the ones I thought were the best and/or most impactful. Starting with side quests!

Curiosity's great for lots of things, on top of simply making our lives more enjoyable - it also helps us focus longer and remember things better. Building opportunities for adventure into your life can be a fantastic way to let in some more curiosity, so side quests (referring to optional missions in video games that don't necessarily affect the main story of the game, but are fun for the player) allow us to explore alternative pathways in our real lives too.

For Ali, it's leaving the office to spend a few hours in a local coffee shop, or playing around with new software that could help him with his current problem, for example. Myself, I love to explore local used bookstores, or allow myself to go down random YouTube rabbit holes, learning more about something I never even knew existed when I woke up that morning.

For you, it could be anything! So pick something! Take anything that's completely (or at least mostly) unrelated to your work or your to-do list and just spend some time exploring, adventuring, or wandering. You could even do extended side quests where you try a new local restaurant every week for a year, or something like that. Your only limit is your own fertile imagination.

#2: The Magic Post-It Note

Ali keeps a Post-it note on his computer monitor with the words: "What would this look like if it were fun?" I actually do something similar, except with dozens of phrases and questions that I keep in various places and make sure to review and remind myself of throughout the day.

You don't have to go that far, but Ali's Post-it note reminds him to find the fun in everything he's doing, and to lighten up a bit! Even if the task itself isn't inherently enjoyable. In his case, he either adds music, adds humor, does the task in a different way, or otherwise gets creative with it.

You don't even have to use the same question as Ali does, although I've adopted that one for myself too. Among the other questions I ask myself are, "What would this look like if it were easy?" There's also, "What if I'm overcomplicating this?" And, "What's the fastest, simplest thing I can do to get started?" Again, the only limit is your imagination, and when you ask yourself new questions, you also begin to think in new, more productive (and fulfilling) ways.

#3: Own the Process

The details of each and every task we perform may not always be up to us, but the process itself usually can be, and studies show that work satisfaction rises quickly as employees are granted (or claim) more autonomy over their work and take ownership of how they do things.

No matter what your job, career, or vocation, you can use this fact to your advantage by injecting your own personality and character into whatever it is that you do. If you're a salesperson, for example, the outcome you're going for is unlikely to change (selling your company's products/services), but you can control parts of the process by altering your sales script, if you have one, or delivering hand-written thank you notes to new customers, experimenting with a new lead generation channel, etc. Examples abound.

So the next time you're at work, try to come up with three ways you can take ownership of the process of what you do, thereby increasing your own job satisfaction, your results, and perhaps even your compensation too.

#4: Own Your Mindset

This next one involves taking ownership of your circumstances as well, by reframing your obligations into blessings. You can turn "I have to" into "I get to," and you'll be a lot happier for it!

In Ali's case, he made this mindset shift after being asked to stay late one night while working at the hospital to put an intravenous (IV) line into a patient. He was almost out the door at the end of his shift, and honestly kind of resented being asked to do this, until he realized that the patient was a woman who was twelve weeks pregnant and would likely be made to feel much better by having this done. It would help the baby too. So Ali turned "I have to" into "I get to," and realized that he was indeed blessed to be in a position to be knowledgeable enough to use his medical training to help this woman and her baby.

In my own case, I don't necessarily save lives and hook up life-giving IVs to pregnant women, but I do spend my entire day sharing the wisdom and knowledge trapped inside the greatest books ever written, inspiring hundreds of thousands of people every day to pick up a book. That's pretty damn special! I get to do that, and making that mindset shift is indeed quite powerful.

What about you? What do you get to do? Even if you're just not that excited about heading out for a run, think about all the people confined to hospital beds all over the world who would love nothing more than to head out for a run one more time. You get to do this. And that mindset shift is everything.

#5: Set Implementation Intentions

Implementation intentions take advantage of the fact that if you decide beforehand when and where you're going to do something, you're much more likely to do it. They're conditional statements, taking the form of "If X happens, then I will do Y," and they can be instrumental in helping you maintain consistency on your way to prodigious productivity!

Some examples of implementation intentions you can try include, "When I come home, I will immediately practice the guitar for 30 minutes." Or, "When I arrive at the office, I will immediately begin working on my highest-priority task." Or, "Before turning off the light when I go to sleep, I will list three things that I'm grateful for." Come up with your own implementation intentions that are relevant to you and your goals, and you'll make effortless progress toward them every time you follow through!

#6: Practice Time-Blocking

The best productivity tool isn't some app, or ancient breathing technique, or anything like that...it's your calendar. Time-blocking is the practice of adding non-negotiable tasks to your calendar, and committing to them as though they were an important appointment you had scheduled with someone else. Except in this case, you're the important person, and the unbreakable appointment is with yourself so that you can achieve what's truly important to you in life.

People are often strangely resistant to using a calendar, thinking it somehow restricts their freedom and introduces stifling rigidity into their day, but in reality, it does the opposite. As we've discussed before, discipline equals freedom. So take a look at what's most important to you - what you absolutely, categorically refuse to skip each week - and put it in your calendar. Then, crucially, keep this vitally important appointment with yourself no matter what.

In the book, Ali goes further and introduces three levels of time-blocking. The first being for individual tasks, the second level being time-blocking your entire day (exercise, family time, intense work, etc.), with the third level being time-blocking your ideal week. You can work up to this level, but at its core, it means scheduling everything that's most important to you first, and then scheduling everything else around that. I've been doing this personally for years and years and can't recommend the practice highly enough.

#7: Reduce Environmental Friction

Our environments have a profound impact on the choices we ultimately make, as every parent knows who has a child who always seems to get into trouble at school. When they discover who their child has been spending time with, well, suddenly everything starts to make sense.

The same is true for our physical environment, and as adults, we have the power to make changes to our environment that result in desirable behavior becoming easier to practice, and harmful behavior becoming harder to practice.

If you've decided that you want to read more books, for example, one of the simplest, most effective things you can do is to place a book or two that you want to read in an area you often frequent, such as your living room or on your desk.

If your books are hidden away in a box in the attic or something, your environment is automatically working against you, and it's very unlikely that you're going to go to the extra effort of digging them out and reading more.

The reverse is also true, and you can partially eliminate bad habits by making them harder to engage in. An example of this would be throwing out all your junk food, or removing the batteries from your TV remote. Within any environment you find yourself in, the path of least resistance is usually the one you will take, and so it's up to you to make the obvious choice the healthiest choice.

#8: Define the Next Action Step

This is one of the most helpful experiments in the entire book, at least for me. I've actually been doing this long before I read Feel-Good Productivity, and it's been a mainstay in my productivity armory. I use it when I'm creating my YouTube videos, I use it when I'm working on building my business, and yes, I even use it when I write these book breakdowns.

The stronger the resistance you feel to getting started on a major project, the smaller the next action step needs to be for you to manage that first step. It can be almost ludicrously small, too. For example, when I'm recording YouTube videos, the smallest step forward could be to go downstairs and turn on my studio lights. Or even just open the Google doc where I keep my video scripts. That's literally it.

Whenever you find yourself procrastinating on something, break it down into the smallest possible actions, and then simply take the first step. That's all you have to focus on right now - not the whole entire giant project looming over you.

Get out your guitar case; put your laptop on the desk and open it; put your gym clothes in your gym bag. Then, once you've done that, take the next smallest action. Before you know it, you'll have practiced for a half hour, written 1,000 words, and run 5 miles on the treadmill. For me, writing this paragraph was my very next action step! Guess what my next one is!

#9: Find an Accountability Partner

Finding an accountability partner helps us stick to our plans and goals by drawing on our sense of social obligation to overcome inertia. Ali puts the idea in a humorous way when he points out that it's a lot easier to skip a workout when going by yourself, than it would be if you had a friend waiting outside your door at 6PM irately looking at their watch!

I'm a big believer in the power of accountability partners, having organized my private community, The Competitive Advantage, around this very idea. Succeeding is a lot more fun when you do it with friends, and no one is self-made. Absolutely no one. We all need each other, and it can be an extraordinarily powerful motivator to have dozens of people all in one place, each rooting for your success.

You don't have to join a special community to get the benefit of greater accountability in your life, though. It can be very simple and straightforward, and the first step is to find someone who has similar goals as you do. They're more likely to know the specific pains and challenges you'll face along the path, and they'll also be more uniquely suited to help you overcome them.

Second, define your "accountability culture." Ali's advice here is as follows:

“I find that the best accountability buddies meet five criteria: being disciplined (they must stick to what you've agreed to), challenging (they know what it means to help you move on to the next level), patient (they don't jump to conclusions or rush you into making decisions), supportive (they're there with words of encouragement), and constructive (they must know how to give you honest feedback and constructive criticism)."

Third, hammer out the actual process with your accountability buddy. How are they going to hold you accountable? What specifically are they going to do, and when? What will the day-to-day (or month-to-month) process actually look like?

#10: The Energy Investment Portfolio

The first step toward managing your time is to figure out where it's going in the first place, and the first step toward resisting overcommitment is to figure out where your energy is going now. It's a limited resource, and by maintaining an "energy investment portfolio" you can start to manage it more effectively.

Creating an energy investment portfolio involves making two lists: List A is a list of all your dreams, hopes, and ambitions. This list is more future-oriented, containing items that you'd like to get to at some point, but that aren't necessarily a pressing priority right now. Say, writing a book, or founding a nonprofit. List B is where you take stock of where you're investing your energy currently, which, for Ali means this week.

The former list can be as long as you want, but the latter should ideally be limited to around five or so. Honestly, if you have even less time than most people because of child-rearing responsibilities, etc., you can keep it to just one!

For myself, List B would include things like reading books, working out, publishing YouTube videos, etc. List A would have things like spending the winter in Greece, following along on tour with Lamb of God or As I Lay Dying, etc. They're things I'd absolutely love to do at some point, but because my time and energy is limited, they're just not a priority right now.

For this Action Step, build an energy investment portfolio yourself around what's most important to you at this stage of your life, and do exactly what the term implies: invest resources in these activities; prioritize them, and ruthlessly eliminate anything else that's not going to result in a meaningful return on your investment. Everyone has limits to their time and energy. An energy investment portfolio can help you visualize that truth, and build an incredible life around it.

#11: The Odyssey Plan

Long before Tim Ferriss came along, there was Bill Burnett, a lecturer at Stanford University and the author of Designing Your Life, a book which features a revelatory exercise called the "odyssey plan."

The very simple question Bill asks in that book is, "What do you want your life to look like in five years' time?" Pretty run-of-the-mill question, sure! But the magic shows up in the way he asks you to think about your answer.

Burnett invited readers and students to answer the question in three different ways, which I'll ask you to do here in this Action Step:

• Your Current Path: “What will my life look like five years from now if I continue on the same path?"
• Your Alternative Path: “What will my life look like five years from now if I took a completely different path?"
• Your Radical Path: “What will my life look like in five years if I took a completely different path, one where money, social obligations, and what people would think, were irrelevant?"

Now those are much more interesting questions! So? What do you think? The point isn't to set your next five years in stone, irrevocably committing to one (and only one) course of action no matter what. It's merely to get you thinking of the possibilities. Because as they like to say nowadays...you can just do stuff!

#12: The Wheel of Life

The whole point of the wheel of life (pictured below) is to define success for ourselves. You can substitute other segments for the originals, but in the book, the wheel is divided into three sections, which are again divided into three parts.

There are three sections for Health (Body, Mind, and Soul), three for Work (Mission, Money, and Growth), and three for Relationships (Family, Romance, and Friends). Then what you do is you rate how aligned you feel in each area of your life. Are you living in accordance with your biggest priorities and highest values right now? Next, color or fill in that segment accordingly.

The question Ali recommends asking in this case is, "To what extent do I feel like my current actions are aligned with my personal priorities?" Having this visually laid out for you makes it a lot easier to see, at a glance, if there are any obvious areas where you can make some necessary corrections.

#13: The 12-Month Celebration

The 12-month celebration takes the self-knowledge you've acquired from the wheel of life and brings it into your day-to-day.

The extremely simple explanation here is that this exercise involves imagining you're having dinner with a close friend 12 months from now, and you're telling them about all of the astounding progress you've made in the last 12 months.

How did you do it? What concrete steps did you take in the last 12 months that made it all possible? What do you want to be able to tell your (hopefully not hypothetical) friend 12 months from now during dinner?

What this does is make the insights you've gained from the previous exercise more concrete, and it gives you more clarity on what you actually need to do. If, 12 months from now you've lost 45lbs., scaled your business to six figures, and gone on six dates with people you might wish to someday marry, how did you make it all happen? What were the steps?

The only thing left to do once you've arrived at these answers is to take immediate, meaningful action in the real world so that, in 12 months, you have an absolutely incredible story to tell over dinner!

#14: The Three Alignment Quests

I'm more than a little bit strange in that I literally have a 100-year plan for my life - on top of a 10-year plan, a 5-year plan, a yearly plan, a monthly plan, etc. What can I say? I'm a list-maker. I make lists! But for most people, short-term targets feel much easier to reach than long-term ones, and I'm definitely one of them!

Enter: Alignment Quests. What you do is that, each morning, you choose three actions for today that will move you that much closer to where you want to be a year from now. That's it.

They'll feel much more achievable than some distant goal to "run a marathon next year" or something, which isn't exactly a project you can "complete" today. You can go for a run today, though. You can do some marathon research on a running forum today, though. You get the idea.

What Ali does is take one thing from each of the three areas of health, work, and relationships, and chooses to focus on those for the day. For him, it could be: go to the gym, make progress on writing his book, and call his grandma.

For you, it could be: buy healthy food at the grocery store, talk to your boss about what you'd have to do to get a raise, and ask one person out on a date. Your 10-year plan could be to get married, for example, but you can't achieve that goal in a single day. I mean, you could...but again, you know what I mean!

Breaking these larger core values into actionable steps helps you actually do something to start living them. Immediately.

#15: Conduct Alignment Experiments

Lastly, we're going to get you thinking like a productivity scientist and get you dreaming up hypotheses and experiments to help you turn your ideal life into a material reality. Test! Test! Test! Run experiments! Follow the data!

In Ali's words, "alignment experiments" can help you test theories about what might bring you closer to alignment in your day-to-day decision-making. The process involves three steps.

First, you're going to identify an area of your life that you want to improve, whether that be your work, health, relationships, or something else. Follow your greatest dissatisfaction, and let it determine the area in which you want to make meaningful, intentional progress first before you tackle anything else.

Second, start thinking like a scientist and develop a hypothesis, a guess about what one thing - one independent variable - that, if you changed or altered it in some way, would make the greatest possible improvement in that problem area. What effect do you think it would have on your current situation? Could taking on more responsibility at work lead to a faster promotion? What about taking an additional certification? Or speaking up more often in meetings?

Third, and most crucially, you study the results and keep track of the effects. Take action on your hypothesis and see what difference, if any, it makes to your situation. Does it make things better or worse? Is it showing signs of being likely to work? What might you have to change about your approach for next time?

What's also important here is not trying to change everything all at once. Radical forward movement can seem like a good idea, but if you make dozens of changes to every area of your life at once, it makes it extremely difficult to see what's actually working, and what may be working against you. Or what's simply not making any meaningful difference at all.

The scientific process never ends, by the way, and it's the same with your journey toward alignment. You can make all the 5-year plans you want, but as you keep moving forward through time, you'll notice that more of the path will be revealed, and brand new avenues for experimentation, exploration, and discovery will become available to you.

"The path to success is to take massive, determined action."

-Tony Robbins

About the Author:

Ali Abdaal is a doctor, entrepreneur, amateur magician, and the world's most-followed productivity expert, who became intrigued by the science of productivity while juggling the demands of medical training at Cambridge University with building his business.

While working as a doctor in the UK's National Health Service, Ali started to document his journey towards living a healthier, happier, more productive life online. In the years since, Ali’s evidence-based videos, podcasts and articles about the human mind have reached hundreds of millions of people all around the world. 

In 2021, Ali took a break from his medical practice to focus full-time on his work popularizing the science of human flourishing and high performance. Here in his first book, he reveals everything he has learnt from a decade studying the secrets of feeling better and achieving more.

Additional Resources:

Ali-Abdaal.com | Main Website

Ali Abdaal on YouTube | Main Channel

Feel-Good Productivity.com | Official Website

Part-Time YouTuber Academy | Online Course

This Book on Amazon:

Feel-Good Productivity, by Ali Abdaal

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Million Dollar Habits, by Brian Tracy

No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, by Dan S. Kennedy

Stolen Focus, by Johann Hari

The Essential Wooden, by John Wooden and Steve Jamison

The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation, by Michael Matthews