Ali Abdaal's Productivity Secrets | All The Hacks Podcast

00:00:00.000 | Thomas Frank is this huge YouTuber, two and a half million

00:00:02.160 | subscribers, the way he motivated himself to publish

00:00:05.120 | videos in the early days of his channel, when no one was

00:00:07.120 | watching was an app called a beeminder, which is an automatic

00:00:10.760 | thing where it would it like connects to your YouTube RSS

00:00:13.880 | feed. And if you don't publish a video every week, it will take

00:00:17.160 | $30 out of your debit card or out of your bank account just

00:00:19.920 | completely automatically. And that was how he made himself

00:00:23.800 | accountable. He's like, Well, I've got to publish a video

00:00:25.360 | every week. Otherwise, I'm losing $30. Now, depending on

00:00:29.080 | who you are $30 might not seem like enough money, but it needs

00:00:31.760 | to be enough money to sting. So one thing that I've actually

00:00:34.120 | tried in the past is giving my housemate 1000 pounds and

00:00:38.840 | saying, if I don't do this thing, you get to keep the

00:00:41.160 | 1000 pounds. And that just worked magically for me to do

00:00:44.360 | absolutely anything. I don't like using it all the time. I'd

00:00:46.680 | much rather use all these other nicer methods. But that is a

00:00:49.360 | failsafe. If I'm ever really struggling to do a thing that I

00:00:52.120 | know I have to do, like write 1000 pounds transfer the money

00:00:54.960 | and they can always give it back to me once once I've done the

00:00:56.960 | thing. Hello, and welcome to another episode of all the hacks

00:01:00.120 | show about upgrading your life, money and travel. I'm Chris

00:01:02.880 | Hutchins. I'm excited you're here today. So imagine this,

00:01:05.880 | you're a smart kid, your family prioritizes education, you study

00:01:09.400 | hard and you decide you want to become a doctor. You ace your

00:01:12.200 | exams, you're admitted to one of the top medical schools in the

00:01:14.680 | world, you complete the program and you start work. And then a

00:01:17.960 | few years later, you decide to leave it all behind to focus on

00:01:20.880 | something else. At first glance, many of you might think that's

00:01:23.760 | crazy. But it's exactly what my guest today, Ali Abdaal did. He

00:01:27.800 | left the practice of medicine a few years ago to focus on his

00:01:30.880 | exploding and growing YouTube channel and the businesses

00:01:33.880 | surround it, which now has more than 3 million subscribers. On

00:01:38.120 | it. He talks about everything from productivity to study

00:01:40.640 | skills to making an impact and so much more. If that's not

00:01:44.400 | enough, he has two podcasts has two courses, a blog and a

00:01:47.520 | newsletter. I've consumed so much of Ali's content that I'm

00:01:50.400 | a such a huge fan of his work. So I'm really excited to talk

00:01:53.520 | about everything from how he got the courage to quit a successful

00:01:56.640 | career to double down on his passion and build a business

00:01:59.160 | around it. A lesson I might need in the near future. I also want

00:02:02.600 | to spend a good part of the conversation digging into the

00:02:04.640 | strategies, the tools, the hacks he uses to live a happier,

00:02:08.080 | healthier and more productive life. He's a true expert here.

00:02:11.480 | He's dialed in when it comes to productivity, reading

00:02:14.040 | efficiently, the tech and the tools he uses and a lot more.

00:02:17.400 | This is going to be a really great conversation. I also want

00:02:20.320 | to get his take on a few things I'm thinking about doing with

00:02:22.240 | all the hacks. And because I know he believes in having a

00:02:25.120 | lasting impact in the world. I want to hear how he thinks we

00:02:27.680 | can all work towards doing that right.

00:02:29.280 | Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.

00:02:37.080 | Thank you so much for having me. That's an incredible intro.

00:02:40.160 | You've really done your homework. And I'm just like,

00:02:41.920 | wow, that sounds really cool when you put it that way.

00:02:44.120 | Yeah, I mean, I'm excited. So I want to start off and just talk

00:02:47.440 | about your passion for teaching. You said that being able to

00:02:50.360 | teach more through your YouTube channel, your podcast, your

00:02:53.120 | courses, and have an impact that way is a big reason you step

00:02:56.480 | back for medicine. But it must have been a tough decision. So

00:03:00.280 | what can you share about that process that might help anyone,

00:03:03.040 | myself included, figure out what it takes to step away and take

00:03:07.600 | a big bet on yourself?

00:03:08.680 | Yeah, okay. So a few things come to mind in no particular order.

00:03:13.320 | Basically, I was always trying to figure out what the hell do I

00:03:17.000 | actually want to do with my life. And after, after a couple

00:03:20.960 | years in medicine, after kind of going through med school, I

00:03:23.160 | always kind of knew I wanted to have some level of, you know,

00:03:26.280 | streams of passive income, financial independence,

00:03:28.560 | discovered the fire movement through Tim Ferriss's interview

00:03:32.240 | with Mr. Money Mustache and got straight into that. I remember I

00:03:35.200 | was on my general practice placement when I discovered it.

00:03:37.680 | And I was just like, I need to get through my patients as soon

00:03:41.040 | as possible. So I can just read more articles on Mr. Money

00:03:43.600 | Mustache. But ever since I discovered the four hour work

00:03:47.000 | week at the age of 17, just before going into med school, I

00:03:50.120 | knew that like medicine is cool, but it's not the it's not the

00:03:52.960 | only thing I want to be doing with my life seems a bit, you

00:03:55.400 | know, not very anti fragile to just be reliant on a single

00:03:59.320 | source of income. So throughout my whole time in med school, I

00:04:02.400 | always kind of knew that I wanted to dabble with like,

00:04:05.080 | maybe making a startup, maybe being interested in tech,

00:04:08.080 | because I was I knew how to code and stuff, and started a couple

00:04:10.560 | of businesses along the way. But really, like, as the YouTube

00:04:13.880 | channel started to become successful, and I really started

00:04:17.960 | to think, Okay, what do I actually want to do with my

00:04:19.480 | life, there were a couple of exercises that I discovered on

00:04:23.320 | the internet and various blogs that I found useful. The first

00:04:26.940 | one was, it didn't have a name, but like, I'm calling it the

00:04:29.960 | gravestone technique, which is figuring out like, when you die,

00:04:33.240 | what do you want to be written on your gravestone? And me, I

00:04:38.000 | thought about it, and I realized some combination of good father,

00:04:41.280 | good husband, and inspirational teacher. And I was like, Oh,

00:04:45.160 | interesting. I guess that is probably Yeah, you know, if I,

00:04:48.600 | if I died, and like people thought of me as an

00:04:50.640 | inspirational teacher, alongside being a good father, a good

00:04:52.920 | husband, you're my family, that would be a life well lived. And

00:04:57.240 | I was like, Okay, cool. And then there's this other exercise I

00:05:00.160 | tried that a friend of mine who's like this business coach

00:05:02.960 | ran past me when I was like, Hey, man, Simon, like, what to

00:05:06.000 | do with my life? He was like, try this exercise. And it's

00:05:09.240 | called the ideal ordinary week, where you fast forward your

00:05:12.200 | Google Calendar five years, you hope that you don't have any

00:05:15.280 | recurring events that are still there. And you basically block

00:05:19.360 | out what does your ideal ordinary week look like? And so

00:05:23.040 | it's like, where are your time for deep work? Where's lunch?

00:05:25.320 | Where's hanging out with friends? Where's playing

00:05:26.640 | squash? Where's video games? Where's reading? I went through

00:05:29.360 | that, through that, and I looked at it, I was like, Oh, damn,

00:05:32.120 | like, there's not even a single half day here, where in my ideal

00:05:35.640 | ordinary week, I am in a hospital treating patients. And

00:05:40.280 | so those two, those two data points together, and it made me

00:05:43.480 | think, Hmm, do I read like, if I could design a life, however I

00:05:47.640 | wanted, in theory, would I choose to spend time in a

00:05:51.120 | hospital, treating patients and saving lives? The answer was

00:05:54.320 | like, I think it's great for a lot of people, but it really

00:05:56.880 | wasn't for me. And I then looked back through my time in med

00:06:01.000 | school and being a doctor, and I realized that I much and much

00:06:04.320 | preferred teaching medical students than actually doing

00:06:07.440 | medicine. And on days where I would have medical students with

00:06:09.960 | me, those would be the great days, because I'd be like, Yeah,

00:06:12.120 | we can learn stuff. Let's do shit together. And days where I

00:06:14.400 | didn't, I'd be like, Oh, yes, I've got to deal with patients

00:06:16.360 | myself. Sounds really bad to say, but that gave me a big

00:06:19.360 | signal that maybe the thing, maybe my quote calling, maybe

00:06:22.720 | the thing that I'm supposed to be doing is something to do with

00:06:25.200 | teaching rather than something to do with medicine. And so that

00:06:28.000 | was the I guess the, the philosophy behind what like led

00:06:33.120 | to me ultimately stepping back from the profession.

00:06:35.320 | Yeah. So maybe one thing that an exercise that I just came up

00:06:38.440 | with thinking about your process is to look back at what you're

00:06:41.200 | doing and your job and what are the parts of it where you really

00:06:43.680 | get fulfilled. So for you, it was teaching within that role to

00:06:47.560 | younger students, like maybe there's something there. I

00:06:50.800 | interviewed Cal Newport last month, and he talked about, you

00:06:53.720 | know, trying to figure out the life you want, and then work

00:06:56.520 | backwards towards make it plan, make it happen. You know, he

00:06:58.720 | calls it lifestyle centric career planning. So is that

00:07:02.560 | something that you think, you know, kind of came naturally? Or

00:07:05.920 | is that another version of this five year calendar?

00:07:09.000 | Yeah, I think it is. I was recently on a binge rereading of

00:07:12.880 | Cal's blog posts from like 2008 to 2012. I came across this kind

00:07:17.560 | of lifestyle centric career planning. And I was like, damn,

00:07:20.160 | this is basically what I did. I just didn't realize that Cal

00:07:23.840 | Newport had already said it about 10 years ago. And I

00:07:26.560 | should have just read his blog post because it would have saved

00:07:28.080 | me a lot of time. But I've I've now seen that play out in a lot

00:07:33.120 | of decisions I'm making with this business as well. It's like

00:07:35.680 | instead of thinking, I've got this thing, what do I do with

00:07:37.960 | it? It's more like, okay, what is the actual lifestyle that I

00:07:40.120 | want? And how do I then reverse engineer the stuff that I'm

00:07:43.640 | doing today to optimize for that particular lifestyle?

00:07:46.320 | And when it came to, you know, paying the bills, right? I a lot

00:07:51.120 | of times I see people encourage others, maybe not themselves to

00:07:55.000 | say, Oh, take a bet on yourself now take a bet on yourself now.

00:07:57.720 | And people often might be default more towards waiting

00:08:00.880 | till their side business is so big that it's like an obvious

00:08:03.600 | decision. Is there a point where you think people should actually

00:08:07.080 | maybe wait a little longer or, you know, take the leap a little

00:08:10.280 | earlier? Or what? What have you kind of reflecting what you did?

00:08:13.240 | Think now?

00:08:14.160 | Yeah, so for me, I waited on the till the side business was like

00:08:19.000 | ridiculously huge before making the leap. But I was also in a

00:08:23.600 | career where like, after two years of working as a doctor,

00:08:26.360 | there's a very natural career break where a lot of people take

00:08:29.240 | time out. And then it makes a lot of sense to take time out at

00:08:32.600 | that point. Whereas I've got a bunch of friends who are in

00:08:35.080 | careers where it never makes sense to take time out, because

00:08:37.240 | you're always going to be worried about the gap in the

00:08:38.880 | resume and stuff. And especially my friends in management

00:08:42.320 | consulting, it's always like, Oh, the next, the next promotion,

00:08:45.520 | the next round of bonuses is when I will do the thing. And

00:08:48.160 | they never end up doing the thing because it's not like a

00:08:49.960 | hard stop of like, two years later, you're out of a job. And

00:08:53.400 | now you have to reapply for the next round of residency

00:08:55.520 | specialty training or whatever. So I kind of think I had it easy

00:08:58.400 | in that the decision was made for me in that a the business

00:09:00.680 | became ridiculously successful. And B, I already had this career

00:09:03.600 | gap that I was going to take. I think if I had my time again, or

00:09:07.440 | if I were advising someone, and they were young, and actually I

00:09:10.760 | very much vibe with the Gary V approach of like, when you're

00:09:13.440 | young and unencumbered, that's when taking risks, you know, the

00:09:18.040 | whole asymmetrical upside thing, that if you start a business,

00:09:21.000 | and it pays off, you are then sorted for life. Whereas, you

00:09:24.880 | know, you lose out on an extra few 10s of 1000s of dollars

00:09:28.040 | worth of earnings. And unless you really, really, really need

00:09:30.560 | that money for you and your family to survive. I think kind

00:09:33.280 | of being young and unencumbered is a great time to take risks.

00:09:37.080 | You knew you wanted to teach, right? You talked about how you

00:09:40.440 | got fulfillment from that. It's not clear to me that if you were

00:09:43.600 | thinking, what am I going to take a bet on? What is it going

00:09:45.280 | to be that you knew what it would become ultimately? Is

00:09:49.040 | there are there things you learned along the way that

00:09:51.560 | helped you kind of figure out how to take, okay, I love

00:09:54.640 | teaching, and turn that into, I want a YouTube channel I want I

00:10:00.240 | here's what I actually want to teach about, you know, here the

00:10:03.400 | different mediums, whether it's a newsletter, a blog, like, how

00:10:06.200 | do you how do you go down that path? I think for some people,

00:10:09.160 | for me, it was, there's this thing I was passionate about, I

00:10:12.880 | would say most of my friends almost all knew that one day I

00:10:15.840 | would be talking about, you know, optimization of life and

00:10:18.960 | travel and money and all this stuff. Everyone else knew that

00:10:21.440 | but for me, I was like, maybe I should start a podcast. And at

00:10:24.560 | first, the podcast was actually going to be about parenting

00:10:26.640 | because I was about to have my first child and I was like,

00:10:29.320 | trying to dial in everything. And then slowly, I was like,

00:10:32.960 | well, maybe I don't love the parenting thing as much as the

00:10:35.520 | broader topic. But it was not natural, right? Like 10 years

00:10:39.200 | ago, people probably could have better predicted I would be

00:10:41.560 | doing this than I could have done it myself.

00:10:43.400 | Yeah, I think it's kind of similar for me, it sort of felt

00:10:45.680 | like just one step in front of another. So when I was 18 years

00:10:50.240 | old, and in the summer, in the summer holidays, just before

00:10:53.720 | going to med school, I had saved up about 1000 pounds, so like

00:10:58.240 | $1200 through private tutoring here and there for three years

00:11:02.120 | and years to get a MacBook, I was like, I'm gonna get a

00:11:04.400 | MacBook for the first time in my life, I'm going to join the

00:11:06.240 | Apple ecosystem, Apple products are super expensive, but now I

00:11:08.760 | can finally afford it. And instead of buying the base

00:11:11.680 | model MacBook Air from the Apple Store, in 2012, I decided I was

00:11:15.600 | going to go on Craigslist and find one that was more specked

00:11:19.200 | out. I found some guy we met up at the station, he handed me

00:11:22.080 | this laptop, I forked over 1000 pounds in cash. And turned out

00:11:25.760 | he'd actually sold me like a four year old defunct model of

00:11:29.160 | a MacBook Air. And because I was an idiot, I kind of took his

00:11:32.240 | word for it. And I didn't I was I just sort of didn't I kind of

00:11:36.000 | ignored all the red flags that were that were there. And I was

00:11:39.000 | like, Oh my god, I've lost all this money. It's like I spent a

00:11:41.360 | month trying to get it back and trying to try and geolocate his

00:11:43.880 | tweets to see where is he? Where can I serve him papers to take

00:11:46.480 | him to small claims court and like, sue him and stuff. And

00:11:49.720 | eventually my mom was like, you know what, screw this guy,

00:11:51.560 | you're about to start university. And she just bought

00:11:53.640 | me a new MacBook. And she was like, you know, just forget

00:11:55.440 | about this guy, which was very nice of her. But at that point,

00:11:59.360 | I opened up an Evernote document, and I still got it

00:12:02.640 | from like, August of 2012, where I said, Okay, I need to make

00:12:05.640 | money. What are the things I'm good at? And what are the things

00:12:07.920 | I enjoy doing? And on the on the list of things I was good at, I

00:12:10.960 | put teaching, I put web design, and I put, I did well in med

00:12:16.400 | school admissions exams. And I was like, sick, how do I make a

00:12:19.760 | business that involves teaching web design and med school

00:12:22.240 | entrance exams? Huh? Why don't I make a business that teaches

00:12:25.480 | courses, or med school entrance exams? And why don't I make a

00:12:28.640 | website that like markets this nationally, and undercut all the

00:12:32.040 | other competitors and make a website that just looks more pro

00:12:34.680 | than anyone else's on the market, because, you know, I

00:12:37.160 | could do that. And that was how my first kind of successful

00:12:40.400 | business started when I was at university. And then really,

00:12:44.840 | five years later, I'd sort of gotten a bit bored of that

00:12:47.160 | business. But I was reading a lot about SEO and content

00:12:51.080 | marketing. And I was like, content marketing is a thing. No

00:12:54.200 | one is really making high quality YouTube videos, teaching

00:12:57.240 | medical school admissions. So if I make videos on YouTube,

00:13:00.280 | teaching med school admissions and teaching people how to get

00:13:02.040 | a med school in the UK, maybe some of them will convert and buy

00:13:05.000 | my course or sign up to my email list. And it was like, you

00:13:06.760 | know, this sort of content marketing funnel thing that I

00:13:09.000 | had a very unsophisticated knowledge of at the time. And

00:13:12.280 | that was how the YouTube channel got started. So connecting the

00:13:15.320 | dots looking back, it feels like Yes, of course, I was going to

00:13:17.480 | do something in teaching because I've been teaching from like the

00:13:19.120 | age of seven, my job when I was 13, was involved, involved

00:13:22.520 | private tutoring, I was always teaching medical students. And

00:13:24.920 | people were always asking me to explain stuff, whether it was

00:13:27.440 | medical stuff, or like website stuff, or like productivity

00:13:30.440 | stuff. But it was really just sort of putting one step in

00:13:33.560 | front of another and putting things together that ultimately

00:13:36.000 | led me to this point where, I guess, I guess we're here

00:13:38.560 | chatting.

00:13:38.960 | But I mean, it wasn't an overnight success, right? You

00:13:41.160 | mentioned when you left your medical career, career, the

00:13:45.640 | channel had grown big enough that it was, you know, an easier

00:13:48.600 | decision. But you know, there are people who have successful

00:13:51.680 | followings, they start a YouTube channel, they start a podcast

00:13:54.080 | and overnight success. If I recall, you started with like

00:13:57.960 | zero followers, zero views, zero anything, and had to build it

00:14:01.640 | up. How did you stay motivated? I know that's a grueling

00:14:04.760 | process.

00:14:05.440 | So yeah, I started with zero followers. I mean, I think I had

00:14:08.240 | about 37 subscribers on YouTube, just because I had a YouTube

00:14:10.920 | account from like 2008. So it's like 37 subscribers. Yes. The

00:14:16.720 | way I stayed motivated was, I think, in general, I only set

00:14:23.720 | goals that are within my control. And so the goal that I

00:14:26.240 | set for my YouTube channel was like, I think this, I think this

00:14:29.920 | has potential, I think maybe this could go somewhere. But the

00:14:32.440 | only thing I'm going to think about is I just need to make one

00:14:35.560 | or two videos every week. And I'm not going to care about the

00:14:38.120 | numbers. And maybe a year from now, if I can hit, I don't know,

00:14:42.520 | a few 1000 subscribers, that would be that would be

00:14:45.000 | incredible. I looked, did a bit of market research, I was like,

00:14:48.360 | Oh, there's that person over there who's making medical

00:14:50.440 | content. And I think I can make better videos than she can. And

00:14:53.000 | she's on 4000 subscribers. So maybe if things go really well,

00:14:55.800 | I can get 4000 subscribers. But really, the goal was just one

00:14:58.800 | foot in front of the other, how do I just make sure I bang out a

00:15:01.120 | video or two every week. And by just staying true to that

00:15:05.760 | particular thing, and not being overly wedded to outcomes that

00:15:08.920 | are outside of my control, like how many views are getting or

00:15:11.160 | how many subscribers or revenue. That's how I stayed motivated to

00:15:15.480 | do it. And along the way, just found ways to make it

00:15:18.040 | interesting for myself, I get to learn editing, I get to try this

00:15:20.520 | new transition and get to try this new thing. And let me try

00:15:22.680 | and explain this in a little bit of a different way. The goals

00:15:25.600 | that are within my control exclusively and finding a way to

00:15:28.480 | keep the process fun for myself.

00:15:29.920 | Did you ever find that a video maybe did well on a topic, but

00:15:34.360 | maybe you weren't that excited about that topic and have to

00:15:36.640 | balance like what's personally exciting to you, to what's

00:15:40.800 | working and growing for your business or your brand and, you

00:15:44.360 | know, have to pick?

00:15:45.240 | Yeah, so in the early days, that was not really a consideration

00:15:48.800 | because like, I didn't have any videos that did well. I was just

00:15:53.800 | like, cool, let's just keep going. These videos, I mean, the

00:15:55.960 | videos are doing okay, like people are viewing them, people

00:15:58.160 | are commenting, this is kind of nice, even got recognized in the

00:16:00.960 | street one time. And I was like, Oh my god, I've made it. That

00:16:03.040 | was when I had like 2000 subscribers. But it's, it's been

00:16:07.000 | really more of a thing that I've had to figure out now. Because

00:16:10.160 | now we're at a point where, you know, the channels been is five

00:16:12.560 | years old. I kind of know that if I do a video about personal

00:16:16.600 | finance, about like passive income about how I make however

00:16:19.760 | many million a year, it's going to get loads of views. And I

00:16:22.680 | know I enjoy talking about those topics. But I know that, you

00:16:27.920 | know, I often think to myself, like, okay, if we took money out

00:16:31.520 | of the equation, and if we took status out of the equation, and

00:16:34.320 | if we took the sort of the need to accumulate more and more out

00:16:37.320 | of the equation completely, what would I be doing with my time?

00:16:40.200 | What is the YouTube channel that I would want? And I always think

00:16:42.960 | Yeah, I still I still make YouTube videos, because I like

00:16:45.160 | teaching and YouTube videos of teaching at scale. And I get to

00:16:47.360 | learn cool shit and teach it to people, which is nice. But do I

00:16:51.720 | really want a channel where all the only videos I make are about

00:16:54.080 | finance or crypto because that's currently doing well? No, I want

00:16:57.320 | a channel where I can hit record and talk about anything, whether

00:16:59.840 | it's, oh my god, guys, check out Chris's podcast, it's sick, or

00:17:02.640 | like, I just read this book, it's incredible. And here's a

00:17:04.320 | summary, or here is why I use this pen pocket knife to unbox

00:17:08.280 | my parcels, like, I want to have, in my mind, I'm thinking,

00:17:12.120 | I want to have the YouTube channel that I wish Tim Ferriss

00:17:15.320 | would have, where I would just lap up anything that he posts on

00:17:19.160 | YouTube and just be like, Tim, man, I just want you to make two

00:17:21.200 | videos a week where you talk about whatever's on your mind,

00:17:23.000 | and I would just watch it. And I'm like, Okay, let me have that

00:17:26.800 | kind of channel that I know I'd want to watch.

00:17:28.480 | Yeah. And is that the future of where the channel is going?

00:17:31.480 | I think so. I think my dream is where the channel is, I can make

00:17:36.280 | videos about whatever I want. And the team that I've built

00:17:38.920 | around me takes care of everything else, like the money

00:17:41.960 | side of the equation, the figuring out the funnels,

00:17:44.520 | figuring out the products, and figuring out a way to make this

00:17:47.200 | whole thing sustainable for the long term.

00:17:49.160 | So I don't know if this is going to be a topic that, you know,

00:17:52.240 | fits in line with that future channel or not. But a lot of the

00:17:55.640 | top content you've made is about productivity, getting more done

00:17:58.440 | optimizing your time. It's something I'm really passionate

00:18:01.000 | about, you know, you have this great ultimate guide to

00:18:03.280 | productivity, I'll link it to the show notes, we don't need to

00:18:05.640 | cover everything. But I would love to run through some of the

00:18:08.640 | core components you think are important to someone just

00:18:11.240 | starting to say, Okay, how do I really dial in my productivity?

00:18:14.680 | And we might go a little deeper on a few things along the way.

00:18:17.520 | Yeah. So like, where do you where do you start with someone

00:18:22.280 | saying, Okay, is there an inventory someone should take?

00:18:24.880 | Like, what's the first step? Because some people might

00:18:26.840 | already be at the 201 level, the 101 level? How do you get get

00:18:31.000 | people in the door thinking about productivity?

00:18:32.760 | Yeah, so I've got a bunch of different like, on like

00:18:37.080 | disorganized thoughts about this. But actually, I did a

00:18:41.440 | podcast interview with my productivity coach or

00:18:45.000 | performance coach. His name is Chris box earlier today. And he

00:18:49.560 | has a quiz on his website. It's completely free. It's called the

00:18:52.760 | performance assessment. It's on like forcing function.com

00:18:55.960 | forward slash assessment. And that's a quiz that I took two

00:18:58.960 | years ago. And it basically asks you questions like, do you have

00:19:03.480 | a vision for your life? And do you have goals? And do you look

00:19:05.600 | at those goals? And do you do weekly reviews? And in the

00:19:07.880 | morning? And do you check your email first thing? Or do you

00:19:10.560 | have like a hard stop? Do you have a bedtime routine? Do you

00:19:12.760 | have a morning routine? And based on the answers to those

00:19:15.360 | questions, it basically says, Okay, here are all of the things

00:19:18.680 | you could be doing to increase your productivity, but start

00:19:21.040 | with this one. And it basically orders all of the evidence based

00:19:26.280 | productivity tips in order of how needle moving they actually

00:19:29.560 | are. And I think that quiz would be a I've been recommending it

00:19:33.880 | today to everyone on my team being like, guys, take this

00:19:35.680 | quiz, because it's actually really good. Always, like

00:19:38.480 | whenever I take it, it always helps me realize, oh, you know,

00:19:41.720 | I'm not doing weekly reviews, I should probably do a weekly

00:19:43.440 | review, because it's a thing that is really, really helpful.

00:19:45.800 | That would be where I would start. And I kind of wish I make

00:19:50.840 | made something like that. But in the meantime, I think that's the

00:19:53.800 | best resource that I can point people to,

00:19:55.120 | you know, obviously, I haven't taken this quiz, I probably will

00:19:57.640 | do it as soon as we wrap up, I'll put the link to the show

00:19:59.480 | notes. Let's run through a few aspects of productivity that I

00:20:03.240 | think I'll focus on ones that I'm more most interested in,

00:20:06.240 | which is just not wasting time, procrastinating, pushing things

00:20:10.680 | off, getting distracted. What are your suggestions there? I

00:20:14.800 | know, this was an interview, I was really excited to prepare

00:20:17.400 | for yet somehow, even though there was a hard start, you

00:20:21.160 | know, last night, I found myself going down a rabbit hole of

00:20:23.840 | something that was less time sensitive, but definitely

00:20:27.200 | interesting. Help me out.

00:20:29.160 | Yeah, the whole thing about procrastination. I'm in the

00:20:34.240 | process of writing three book chapters on this for my book. So

00:20:37.760 | I've had the whole procrastination thing in my

00:20:40.200 | mind and in my headspace for the last few weeks. Essentially, I

00:20:43.800 | think the first step is to appreciate the difference

00:20:48.000 | between procrastination and prioritization. Because I'm a

00:20:52.120 | big believer of the, you know, a lot of people will say that

00:20:54.200 | they don't have time to do something. I know that you

00:20:56.720 | want like that, because you're, you're in this optimization

00:20:58.920 | space. But when people say, Oh, I don't have time to do x, you

00:21:01.560 | know, I want to learn Japanese, but I don't have time. I always

00:21:04.960 | think, you know, if, if I'm in the mode of giving unsolicited

00:21:08.000 | advice, or if they're asking me for advice, I'd be like, okay,

00:21:11.880 | do you do not have time, like genuinely? Or is it just not a

00:21:14.600 | priority? And you have people like, No, I don't, I don't, I

00:21:18.400 | don't feel like I have the time. I work full time. I've got kids,

00:21:20.760 | I've got to put them to bed. I'm like, Okay, fair enough. I'm

00:21:23.000 | gonna time that. Basically, what that means is it's not a

00:21:25.840 | priority. When I say something like, okay, if I if I gave you a

00:21:29.080 | million dollars, every time you did 20 minutes of Japanese

00:21:31.520 | practice, would you do the 20 minutes of Japanese practice?

00:21:33.640 | Oh, hell, yeah. Okay, cool. So you've you're consciously deep

00:21:37.920 | prioritizing Japanese, because there are other more important

00:21:40.000 | things in your life. And that's totally fine. That doesn't mean

00:21:42.160 | you're procrastinating from this thing. So there's no need to beat

00:21:43.960 | yourself up about it just means it's not a priority in your

00:21:45.960 | life. And then people are okay, cool, that's fine. But But I

00:21:51.040 | have this thing that is a priority in my life. And then

00:21:53.160 | that takes us down an interesting conversation of

00:21:55.920 | like, how do we actually prioritize things that we say

00:21:59.040 | are a priority? I feel like I wonder if you're like this as

00:22:03.200 | well. I feel like it's easy to give advice. And then we just

00:22:05.600 | don't take our own advice. So when it comes to book writing,

00:22:08.240 | for example, literally last week, my editor and I had a

00:22:10.760 | call. And I was like, Yeah, she was like, how's progress on the

00:22:13.760 | book this week? And I was like, Oh, you know, stuff came up. Oh,

00:22:18.000 | you know, this happened, and that happened. And this

00:22:19.600 | happened. And she was like, Okay, you know, it's, she was

00:22:22.840 | super nice about it. But she was like, you know, it sounds like

00:22:24.680 | this book is supposed to be a priority in your life. Is it

00:22:27.600 | actually? I was like, yeah, it is. It definitely is. It's my

00:22:30.000 | number one priority. And she was like, Okay, so then why aren't

00:22:32.720 | you prioritizing it? And I was like, Damn, you're right,

00:22:35.840 | Rachel. And then we figured out strategies to help me

00:22:39.600 | prioritize that and actually make time for it. And happy to

00:22:42.560 | go over the strategies. But those have really helped. And

00:22:44.240 | in the last week, I've been able to make so much more progress

00:22:46.360 | than I did in the last month.

00:22:47.720 | Yeah, let's get into it. I know. The number one thing that is

00:22:51.680 | like my biggest satisfaction when I get an email from a

00:22:54.360 | listener is like, I took all these notes of tactics

00:22:57.080 | listening to this episode. So let's get into all of them.

00:22:59.680 | Basically, three part way to approach this equation.

00:23:03.760 | Essentially, let's start with the problem. I think my gambit

00:23:09.520 | here, my opening gambit is going to be that procrastination is

00:23:12.120 | not a problem with doing the work. procrastination is a

00:23:14.640 | problem with starting the work. Because usually once you've

00:23:17.120 | gotten started with something, it's generally easy enough to

00:23:19.920 | keep on going. You know, Newton's first law, the law of

00:23:22.200 | inertia, it takes energy to get the flywheel going. But once

00:23:25.120 | it's going, it's like, oh, you know, you're, you're into the

00:23:27.160 | swing of things, you're enjoying the thing that you're doing,

00:23:28.960 | you're getting energy from it. And it's, it's usually not so

00:23:31.160 | bad. Does that broadly vibe with your experience of kind of

00:23:34.600 | procrastinating as well?

00:23:35.440 | Yeah, I think it's probably two part, it's hard to get started.

00:23:39.920 | And then it's hard to avoid the shiny objects that pop in front

00:23:44.160 | of you like an email or a news, some alert or something. So I

00:23:48.520 | think it's those those two are big for me.

00:23:50.600 | Yes, exactly. Yeah. So the way I think of them is I separate out

00:23:54.280 | procrastination, which is the getting started problem from

00:23:56.520 | distraction, which is the how do I focus once I've already gotten

00:23:59.400 | started. The distraction stuff is all fairly, fairly simple is

00:24:03.680 | like turn off notifications. Great hack I discovered the

00:24:06.520 | other day, option and clicking on a Mac on your time in the

00:24:11.120 | corner, automatically puts your Mac into do not disturb mode,

00:24:14.400 | which automatically silences all notifications except the ones

00:24:17.880 | that you let through from a loved one or something like

00:24:19.840 | that. So I've been using that a lot this last week. And now I

00:24:22.440 | just don't see my notifications until I go to the toilet to take

00:24:25.200 | a break. I'm like, Oh, hello. I'm so glad I missed all the

00:24:27.840 | notifications, because they would have just completely taken

00:24:29.720 | me out of flow and gotten me very distracted. But just for

00:24:34.360 | the procrastination stuff, and we can talk about distraction in

00:24:37.160 | in a sec. If we if we accept that procrastination is

00:24:41.320 | ultimately a problem with getting started. And that's the

00:24:43.000 | thing that we're trying to optimize for is like, okay, what

00:24:45.120 | are the barriers that stop us from getting started with

00:24:47.200 | something? I think broadly, there's three things there. And

00:24:51.000 | I call them I like to give things names in my mind, the fog

00:24:54.920 | of obscurity, the bridge of anxiety, and the hump of

00:24:59.160 | inertia. Probably to come up with better names, I sort of

00:25:02.440 | have a bit of a diagram in my head. The fog of obscurity is

00:25:06.640 | where you know, you want to do a thing. But you don't, you

00:25:09.760 | actually don't know specifically what you need to do, or when

00:25:12.520 | you're going to do it, or where you're going to do it, or how

00:25:14.320 | you're going to do it. And then you're just like, Oh, you know,

00:25:16.560 | there's this thing, it's like, I need to I need to start start

00:25:19.480 | that podcast. But like, if you don't know what that first step

00:25:22.600 | is, or what the next step is, it's just so hard to even even

00:25:25.320 | think about getting started, because now there's this

00:25:26.960 | enormous, like mental barrier, that's stopping us from like,

00:25:30.720 | actually moving forward in this thing. And so the solution to

00:25:34.600 | that one is basically just make a very, very concrete plan. And

00:25:37.400 | what I like to do is separate like the planning of a thing

00:25:40.080 | from the doing of a thing, because very easy to make a

00:25:42.280 | plan, right? If, if, for example, I need to work out, it's

00:25:48.000 | very easy for me to procrastinate when I don't have

00:25:49.640 | a plan. I don't know, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't

00:25:51.680 | know why I'm working out. But if I was talking to someone right

00:25:55.720 | now, and they were to be like, Alright, what's your plan for

00:25:57.400 | the workout? I'd be like, I can make a plan. It's not that hard

00:26:00.080 | making a plan. You know what, I'll do it tonight. 7pm. Yeah,

00:26:03.040 | I'll go to the gym that's in my building. And I'll do you know,

00:26:06.600 | let me bring up Reddit fitness and find a workout plan. And it

00:26:10.280 | has taken me two minutes to make a plan. But now, I'm far more

00:26:14.000 | likely to actually go and do the thing I either work out, because

00:26:17.120 | I've got a slot in my calendar for it. And I know what I'm

00:26:18.960 | doing. I think it's really just about those two things finding a

00:26:21.280 | slot in the calendar, and then actually knowing what to do. And

00:26:24.480 | that is broadly how you tackle tackle the fog of obscurity. You

00:26:29.040 | with me so far? Any thoughts?

00:26:30.040 | Yeah, yeah. No, no, I'm here. Yes.

00:26:33.720 | Nice. And then, you know, there are there are other things we

00:26:39.080 | can do with this. If I'm coaching someone or this, you

00:26:41.760 | know, this is the method that whenever I, you know, this chap

00:26:44.560 | Chris, this productivity coach that I had, it was always like,

00:26:47.680 | Okay, so for me, at the time, I wanted to take I wanted to get

00:26:51.040 | good at art. I was thinking, You know what, I want to take so

00:26:53.360 | take some art lessons, because why not? It was like, Okay,

00:26:55.720 | what's the next step? Okay, I guess, find an art teacher. It

00:27:00.600 | was like, Okay, how are you going to do that? I was like,

00:27:02.600 | Okay, um, post on Instagram and be like, Hey, anyone want to

00:27:06.520 | teach me art and also like, just do a Google search for art

00:27:09.480 | teachers in Cambridge. It was like, cool. When are you going

00:27:11.880 | to do that? I was like, shit. Okay. I guess I've got a 15

00:27:15.200 | minutes like my calendar two hours from now. It was like,

00:27:17.720 | cool. Put it in the calendar. And I was like, cool. And it

00:27:20.200 | was like, Okay, nice. Now you've now you've got a slot in your

00:27:23.040 | calendar. Fast forward. This time next week, you and I are

00:27:26.640 | chatting, and you have not found an art teacher. What are the top

00:27:29.880 | three reasons why you've not found an art teacher? And I was

00:27:32.520 | like, Okay, okay, fine. I guess, maybe something came up. And I

00:27:38.400 | was super busy. Maybe I looked on Google, and I couldn't find

00:27:41.280 | anyone in the first two results. And so I gave up. Maybe no one

00:27:44.280 | replied to my Instagram thing. And it was like, Okay, cool.

00:27:46.520 | That's fine. How might you mitigate against each of those

00:27:49.160 | risks? I was like, Okay, maybe I mean, I can just like look at

00:27:52.360 | 10 Google results rather than five, I can maybe post on

00:27:54.640 | Twitter as well. Now Instagram, it's like you're coming up with

00:27:56.880 | strategies ahead of time, knowing that I am a dumbass, and

00:28:02.400 | my brain is going to encourage me to procrastinate from this

00:28:04.840 | thing. But if I try and nudge myself in the direction of kind

00:28:08.520 | of doing the thing that I know I want to do, I get art lessons,

00:28:11.120 | I'm far more likely to actually do the thing. And so just

00:28:14.240 | working through this loop a single time. The final question

00:28:17.040 | there is like, what is the action you can take right now

00:28:20.680 | that will almost guarantee that you'll actually do this thing

00:28:23.360 | when it comes when it comes to the thing? When it comes when it

00:28:26.400 | comes to the time? I was like, Okay, you know what, while I'm

00:28:29.400 | here, I'll just type out the message I'm going to post on my

00:28:31.360 | Instagram story. So I literally opened up all notes, I typed

00:28:33.760 | out, hey, guys looking for an art teacher. Anyone want to

00:28:36.440 | teach me art over zoom. And then when it came to two hours later,

00:28:40.280 | I just copied and pasted that onto Instagram. And now I found

00:28:42.720 | an art teacher. And just through that one action, I've been

00:28:45.160 | procrastinating from taking art lessons for three years at that

00:28:47.800 | point. And all it took was a conversation with a guy who had

00:28:51.360 | paid a lot of money to ask me a basic question of what are you

00:28:54.280 | doing? When are you doing it? And just give him just like

00:28:57.760 | giving me this framework to think about decision making

00:29:00.680 | here. And I took art lessons for about six months. And it was

00:29:02.800 | super fun.

00:29:03.240 | Okay, so that's that's getting past the first start. I can't

00:29:07.640 | remember. So it was fog of obscurity, something and then a

00:29:09.840 | hump.

00:29:10.200 | Yeah, exactly. Okay, cool. So fog of obscurity is the first

00:29:14.080 | one. You know, you've gotten over the fog of obscurity when

00:29:17.160 | you have a when the thing that you're trying to do, you've got

00:29:20.400 | it in the calendar, and you know what you're doing. So that's all

00:29:22.840 | you need. At that point, you have enough clarity on the task

00:29:25.200 | to be able to make progress on it. But if you don't have those

00:29:27.280 | two crucial points, and everything else is kind of goes

00:29:28.960 | out the window, basically getting clarity on what you're

00:29:30.840 | doing, and when you're doing it is like just the magical

00:29:32.800 | solution to that. And you don't need to pay a performance coach

00:29:35.520 | large amounts of money to encourage you to basically do

00:29:38.440 | that. The next one is what I like to call the bridge of

00:29:41.920 | anxiety. And this is where we appreciate that a lot of

00:29:46.880 | procrastination doesn't come from not having the time to do

00:29:49.880 | something. It comes from actually like our emotions that

00:29:52.640 | get in our way. And there's a researcher called Tim Pitchell,

00:29:55.880 | who has a great book, I think it's called the procrastination

00:30:00.640 | puzzle, which is basically all about the emotional side of

00:30:04.240 | procrastination. And he researches this and talks about

00:30:06.360 | all the all the different emotional barriers that get in

00:30:08.600 | our way. And so for example, if you know, the example I use a

00:30:13.120 | lot is people who procrastinate from starting a YouTube channel,

00:30:15.840 | for example, and it's like, yeah, I know that I've got my

00:30:18.520 | time slot. And I know, I just need to film this video, because

00:30:20.520 | I've taken Ali Abdaal's course on YouTube, whatever, I know, I

00:30:22.800 | just need to film the video. But you're in the time slot, and

00:30:25.720 | there's something that's stopping you something that's

00:30:27.080 | holding you back from doing this thing, which you claim to want,

00:30:29.360 | actually, it's like, what's going on there. And there's this

00:30:34.640 | thing in the world of meditational mindfulness called

00:30:37.720 | the RAIN method. Have you come across this? No. So the RAIN

00:30:41.400 | method, Tara Brock talks about this quite a lot, I think is

00:30:44.680 | invented like 20 years ago by some other meditation

00:30:46.760 | practitioner. Basically, the idea is that anytime an emotion

00:30:49.920 | is getting in our way, we want to follow the RAIN method. So

00:30:52.320 | R A I N. So R is recognize. So recognize that what what the

00:30:57.800 | feeling is, it's getting in the way in the case of, I'm

00:31:00.120 | struggling to start my YouTube channel, I'm struggling to post

00:31:01.880 | that video, it's probably some kind of fear, or rather some

00:31:05.960 | kind of anxiety, because I'm going to cite Brene Brown's

00:31:08.880 | Atlas of the heart, which defines fear as like, when

00:31:13.280 | you're when when there is a threat to your survival right

00:31:15.840 | now, and anxiety as there is a potential threat to your

00:31:19.560 | survival at some point in the future, maybe. And so no one

00:31:23.560 | ever procrastinates from running away from a lion. But we

00:31:26.000 | procrastinate from public speaking, we procrastinate from

00:31:28.160 | starting the podcast from writing a blog from putting

00:31:30.160 | ourselves out there in some way, because we perceive there is a

00:31:32.560 | potential threat to our survival, i.e. our social status

00:31:36.360 | within our group, at some point, maybe in the future. And just

00:31:39.440 | recognizing that as a thing that like, yeah, I don't want this

00:31:41.800 | video to go out because I'm afraid of what people will think

00:31:43.960 | of me. Okay, cool. We've recognized the emotion that's

00:31:46.440 | getting in our way. And we have a for allow, which is basically

00:31:51.720 | that, that's totally fine. I don't need to moralize. I don't

00:31:54.800 | need to beat myself up for having this emotion. But yeah,

00:31:57.600 | you know, I have, I have a fear that people are gonna look down

00:32:00.400 | on me if I started a TikTok page. Because I feel that people

00:32:04.400 | are going to judge me and I feel that that's going to be really

00:32:06.000 | bad for my social standing in my group. And that's, that's

00:32:08.040 | totally okay. I'm human. Then we have I, which is investigate,

00:32:12.440 | which is like getting curious. Oh, I wonder where this feeling

00:32:14.920 | is coming from? Why do I feel like if I started a YouTube

00:32:17.920 | channel, or if I started a podcast, or if I started talking

00:32:20.080 | about airline point hacking on my on a podcast, that suddenly

00:32:23.960 | it would be a big, it would be a bad thing. I wonder what's going

00:32:26.960 | on there. And that's where you just sort of take a few minutes

00:32:29.160 | to explore your feelings around that around that thing. And then

00:32:33.200 | n stands for either nurture or non identification depending on

00:32:37.760 | who you ask. And basically what that means is just this

00:32:39.880 | appreciation in the world of meditation and mindfulness that

00:32:42.320 | we are not our feelings, just because I have the feeling of

00:32:45.760 | fear does not mean I am that that thing and does not mean

00:32:49.720 | necessarily that I need to let that hold me back. And this idea

00:32:53.160 | that like, the way you feel about something actually doesn't

00:32:57.120 | really have any bearing on whether you do the thing or not.

00:32:59.080 | I might not feel like going to work in the morning, but I'm

00:33:01.360 | going to go to work anyway, I might not feel like brushing my

00:33:03.360 | teeth, because I can't be bothered, but I'm going to brush

00:33:05.400 | my teeth anyway. Similarly, just because I feel the fear of

00:33:08.960 | starting my podcast and talking about airline point hacking,

00:33:11.160 | that doesn't necessarily mean like I have to identify with

00:33:13.680 | that I can choose to act in spite of that fear. And so

00:33:17.760 | that's where we kind of go a little bit like emotional and a

00:33:20.440 | little bit like trying to figure out and I've got a bunch of sort

00:33:24.880 | of more specific things, but I think that's the general kind of

00:33:27.360 | RAIN method for dealing with any kind of emotion that gets in our

00:33:29.480 | way.

00:33:29.760 | Okay. I'm practically thinking about a few ways that I would

00:33:33.600 | have used this. I feel like the one place where I get stuck is

00:33:36.320 | like, Oh, I'm trying to get a specific person to come on the

00:33:39.040 | show. And what's the email say? When do I send it? And then I

00:33:42.560 | end up just sending the thing that I drafted like two weeks

00:33:44.840 | ago. And now I'm just like, I just waited two weeks to do the

00:33:47.200 | thing I was already going to do. And so I'm trying to struggle

00:33:50.840 | with because it's not writing it. I've even written the email.

00:33:53.160 | It's like trying to figure out is there a more optimal way to

00:33:55.840 | do something? Maybe I can find a friend who knows the person and

00:33:59.080 | that would be better. So I should hold off and but I don't

00:34:03.280 | think even doing it precludes you from from finding another

00:34:06.120 | path if it doesn't work. So I think I just need to like, zone

00:34:09.480 | in on why I'm not doing it.

00:34:11.160 | No, exactly. Yeah, I think that's interesting. I think

00:34:13.800 | that there's another point here. Again, it's fresh in my mind,

00:34:19.240 | because me and Chris were talking about this. So Chris,

00:34:21.880 | this productivity coach who I interviewed is a professional

00:34:24.000 | poker player. And I was kind of asking, we were talking about

00:34:28.920 | kind of lessons he's learned from the world of poker that

00:34:31.040 | apply to life. There's a concept that apparently people who play

00:34:33.960 | poker use, which is the idea of expected value, which you and

00:34:37.800 | some listeners might be familiar with, basically, you know, the

00:34:41.160 | magnitude of the outcome you want, like how good is this

00:34:43.480 | thing? Will this thing make me $100? Cool. And then multiplied

00:34:47.040 | by the probability of the thing happening. So if I've got a 50%

00:34:49.920 | chance of making $100, the expected value of every time I

00:34:53.400 | flip the coin is $50, for example, and expected value poker

00:34:58.440 | players shortened to Evie, because people like these sorts

00:35:02.080 | of acronyms. And whenever poker players are making decisions,

00:35:05.080 | they're like, oh, it's either a plus Evie or a minus Evie

00:35:07.800 | decision, that is the expected value positive? Or is it is it

00:35:11.880 | negative? And what they what they mean there is that if this

00:35:15.040 | if I did this decision every time, would it would I expect to

00:35:18.440 | come out on top? Or would I expect to not come out on top?

00:35:21.040 | Now, in the case of you're sending an email, that sounds

00:35:24.400 | like a pretty plus Evie decision. Because like, if you

00:35:26.520 | were to send 100 emails, maybe a handful of people reply to you,

00:35:31.680 | but it's not like there's any real downside. And so thinking

00:35:34.800 | and thinking of decisions in terms of rather than being

00:35:37.840 | wedded to the specific outcome of this decision that I really

00:35:40.360 | want this person, how do I reach out to them? I remember the

00:35:44.520 | email you sent me, you're like, Yeah, I was kind of

00:35:46.160 | procrastinating a bit. I was kind of

00:35:47.400 | I just, I just owned the email. I was like, that's kind of funny.

00:35:51.680 | Because, because I have that same feeling. I'm always like,

00:35:54.040 | Oh, maybe I couldn't possibly just cold email someone I I've

00:35:57.360 | got to, I've got to find some kind of way of like, damning

00:36:00.280 | them on Twitter in some way and getting just so much work is

00:36:02.440 | still like, it's plus Evie. Like, sending a cold email is

00:36:06.240 | always a plus Evie decision, because there's literally no

00:36:08.200 | downside to it.

00:36:08.800 | And chances are, if someone didn't respond to the email,

00:36:11.320 | they either didn't want to talk to you or didn't see it. So if

00:36:14.280 | you reach out to them through some other channel, if they

00:36:16.720 | didn't see it, maybe it'll work. If they didn't want to talk to

00:36:18.920 | they probably won't respond there either. So like, I don't

00:36:21.560 | know, I'm, I'm coaching myself through this conversation. Okay,

00:36:25.400 | let's, let's hit the last one.

00:36:26.840 | The last one is the hump of inertia. And that is this

00:36:30.480 | recognition that like, for whatever we're struggling with,

00:36:32.840 | whatever we're struggling to get started with, there's always a

00:36:34.920 | little bit of a push of energy that we need to get started with

00:36:37.480 | the thing. Now, the question is, like, how do we how do we get

00:36:41.000 | there? Like, once we've got the clarity on the thing, once we've

00:36:43.400 | tried to figure out what our emotions are getting in the way,

00:36:45.680 | at some point, some some stuff is just kind of boring, and you

00:36:48.400 | just kind of have to do it. So like, how do you not yourself to

00:36:50.600 | just get started? At this point, you know, some people would say

00:36:53.680 | that motivation is a thing. And so like, you got to motivate

00:36:55.720 | yourself to do it, you got to like really want it, you got to

00:36:57.840 | want it so much that you can't breathe, or whatever these

00:37:00.040 | motivational videos say. And that's fine. But like, there's a

00:37:03.640 | great book by Jeff Hayden called the motivation myth, which

00:37:06.360 | basically argues that like motivation is a bit of a myth.

00:37:08.520 | Like, we don't summon up the motivation magically to do a

00:37:11.520 | thing, we do the thing. And by seeing a small success, that

00:37:15.640 | then helps us summon the motivation to continue to do the

00:37:19.040 | thing. And so really, motivation doesn't lead to action, action

00:37:22.640 | leads to motivation. And so understanding that, I think was

00:37:25.720 | a big, big unlock for me that like, really, just because I

00:37:29.280 | don't feel like doing something doesn't actually stop me from

00:37:31.960 | doing a thing. And therefore, I can just do it. And sometimes

00:37:37.680 | that works, where I just tell myself that, like, I could just

00:37:40.720 | get out of bed right now, even though I don't feel like it.

00:37:42.560 | That's like the motivation approach. And you've got like

00:37:46.640 | the discipline approach, the willpower approach, the David

00:37:48.680 | Goggins approach of like, well, if you're not doing it, at that

00:37:51.120 | point, you're just soft, you just got to, you know, use the

00:37:53.280 | willpower, you got to use grit, determination, discipline to

00:37:55.560 | kind of push through and do the thing. That's fine as well, that

00:37:59.520 | works. The thing that I personally like to do is I like

00:38:03.000 | to tell myself, I'm just going to do the thing for two minutes,

00:38:06.160 | and then I'm going to stop doing the thing. So I've got a couple

00:38:08.720 | of songs on my Spotify playlist, which are like two minutes long,

00:38:10.880 | like instrumental songs. I just like I, if I, yeah, I'll just

00:38:14.680 | like put on one of the songs, I'll be like, I'm just gonna do

00:38:16.360 | this thing until the end of the song. And usually the song, the

00:38:19.040 | song ends, the next one plays on shuffle. And I don't even

00:38:21.200 | realize that I've just continued doing the thing. Occasionally, I

00:38:23.720 | just do it for two minutes, and then I stop. And I think, cool,

00:38:25.640 | that's fine. It's not my day. But I say 90% of the time, as

00:38:28.280 | long as I can just talk myself into doing it for two minutes,

00:38:30.600 | then I'm, I'm unlikely to stop doing it. Because once I've got

00:38:34.640 | into the swing of things, it's a lot easier to get started. And I

00:38:37.600 | guess my kind of final kind of point on this is, if all else

00:38:41.040 | fails, something that will never fail is genuinely actually

00:38:44.360 | putting money on the line. So I know, you know, my friend Thomas

00:38:47.000 | Frank is this huge YouTuber, two and a half million subscribers,

00:38:49.560 | the way he motivated himself to publish videos in the early days

00:38:53.000 | of his channel, when no one was watching was an app called

00:38:55.520 | Beeminder, which is an automatic thing where it like connects to

00:38:59.520 | your YouTube RSS feed. And if you don't publish a video every

00:39:02.880 | week, it will take $30 out of your debit card or out of your

00:39:05.960 | bank account just completely automatically. And that was how

00:39:09.680 | he made himself accountable. He's like, well, I've got to

00:39:11.600 | publish a video every week. Otherwise, I'm losing $30. Now,

00:39:15.160 | depending on who you are $30 might not seem like enough

00:39:17.600 | money, but it needs to be enough money to sting. So one thing

00:39:20.440 | that I've actually tried in the past is giving my housemate 1000

00:39:25.000 | pounds and saying, if I don't do this thing, you get to keep the

00:39:27.920 | 1000 pounds. And that has just worked magically for me to do

00:39:31.120 | absolutely anything. I don't like using it all the time, I'd

00:39:33.440 | much rather use all these other nicer methods. But that is a

00:39:36.120 | failsafe. If I'm ever really struggling to do a thing that I

00:39:38.840 | know I have to do, like write 1000 pounds transfer the money

00:39:41.720 | and they can always give it back to me once once I've done the

00:39:43.680 | thing. It probably depends on the circumstance. I was, I was

00:39:46.920 | running today with our daughter in a stroller, which, by the

00:39:50.760 | way, for anyone who doesn't have kids, once you start running

00:39:53.200 | with a child, you're like, I'm now a horrible runner. Like I've

00:39:56.360 | taken like 10 steps back, because, you know, I'm now

00:39:59.520 | pushing this this stroller and you just can't run as fast. I

00:40:03.080 | use the Goggins approach, which is like, am I really going to

00:40:05.680 | tell myself that I can't just make it to the you know, the

00:40:08.240 | end of this neighborhood, like if I really, I really can't do

00:40:11.720 | that, like, that works really well. But I don't think that

00:40:14.280 | works as well when you're like sitting down at your desk to

00:40:16.640 | complete a task. So having all the tools is probably pretty

00:40:20.240 | helpful. But you mentioned a few apps in the conversation, you

00:40:24.160 | mentioned you put notes in Apple Notes, you mentioned the this

00:40:27.240 | beeminder, I'm curious, right before we started, I was just,

00:40:30.200 | you know, doing some quick last minute research went to Twitter,

00:40:32.800 | you posted this 24 apps that you use, I don't need to go through

00:40:35.960 | all 24. But I'm curious how you process information and where

00:40:41.080 | you put it. So let's just like not go down. What do you use for

00:40:44.720 | reading audiobooks? Oh, yeah, all those things. But like, what

00:40:47.080 | what is the the main stack for processing email or a new

00:40:51.640 | newsletter or something you find that you want to read later?

00:40:54.400 | Because I find that a lot of the distraction that comes is like,

00:40:57.640 | oh, there's a thing I want to read it. Oh, this thing popped

00:40:59.920 | up. How do I stay on top of it all?

00:41:01.760 | The app that I used to use until about three months ago was

00:41:04.760 | Instapaper. Unsurprisingly, it's great. Anytime I'd see a link,

00:41:08.000 | I'd either share it to Instapaper or right click save

00:41:10.440 | to Instapaper or open the article in Chrome and just save

00:41:13.160 | to Instapaper and just forget about it. So that's been that

00:41:16.520 | installing that app was just frickin game changing because I

00:41:19.120 | was also getting always so distracted down these rabbit

00:41:21.240 | holes of these interesting articles. But then I saved them

00:41:25.240 | to Instapaper. And I just go through them when I was like on

00:41:27.320 | a train or on a bus or on the toilet or something like that.

00:41:30.120 | And the nice thing is, as I was, as I would follow links, you can

00:41:33.000 | click on a link. And you can just save that link to

00:41:34.880 | Instapaper as well. So as I'd go through binge reading someone's

00:41:38.120 | blog, I'd be saving all these articles, and then I've got this

00:41:40.320 | whole list of articles, and it gets rid of the ads, and it

00:41:42.320 | formats it really nicely. Recently, I've started using an

00:41:45.880 | app called reader by the guys who make readwise. I'm not sure

00:41:48.800 | if you're familiar with that. So readwise is sick readwise.io

00:41:52.920 | readwise.io/ali for extended trial and affiliate link.

00:41:56.880 | Readwise is basically an app that connects to your Kindle

00:42:00.800 | account, and imports everything you've ever highlighted. And

00:42:04.120 | every day it sends you an email with five of your highlights.

00:42:06.040 | And that's kind of cool. It means you can revisit stuff

00:42:09.080 | that you've highlighted in books on Kindle. But they've also now

00:42:12.000 | got this feature where they import all of your highlights

00:42:14.880 | from Instapaper and from pocket and from these other read it

00:42:17.200 | later type apps. So every morning, if you want, you can

00:42:20.400 | subscribe to the email where you get a digest of five random

00:42:23.720 | things you've highlighted at some point in a previous life.

00:42:25.960 | And often I'll see things that are highlighted five years ago

00:42:29.080 | when I read this book, and surprisingly, this highlight

00:42:31.680 | came to me at a reasonable time. And that helps me keep ideas

00:42:34.880 | that I've highlighted in the past, fresh on top of mind. But

00:42:38.320 | the guys who make readwise I'm kind of mates with them, we kind

00:42:41.000 | of became internet friends, and I had one of them on the

00:42:42.720 | podcast, we became internet friends through me just loving

00:42:46.520 | the app. And there they've built this new app called reader,

00:42:50.320 | which is in beta, and it's coming out like either August,

00:42:53.040 | August or September. And it's basically like superhuman, but

00:42:56.240 | for articles and books and PDFs. And well, it's not books,

00:42:59.760 | articles and PDFs and things that you want to read. And it's

00:43:02.720 | amazing. So that this reader app in beta, I've got the test

00:43:06.000 | flight version on iOS is currently how I consume

00:43:08.360 | everything. I just save everything to it. It's great.

00:43:11.360 | It's got like a Chrome highlighter, it means that any

00:43:13.400 | anytime I'm reading anything, whether it's a PDF or a blog

00:43:15.840 | post or an article or a tweet thread, just go straight into

00:43:17.960 | reader. And it means I can deal with it at a later date rather

00:43:20.680 | than it distracting me from whatever I'm doing in the

00:43:22.680 | moment. Yeah, this superhuman for is like a sucker hook for

00:43:26.520 | me, right? I for anyone not listening, I think I've talked

00:43:29.200 | about superhuman in the past. I never thought I looked at my

00:43:32.400 | email, and I had all these invitations. So superhuman is

00:43:34.680 | this new replacement email interface there for Gmail. And

00:43:39.200 | I'm like, gosh, I had a schedule a call schedule a call like for

00:43:42.400 | every they make you schedule a call to get to know the product

00:43:44.880 | before you sign up, because it costs I think about $20 a month,

00:43:47.960 | all the hacks.com slash superhuman affiliate link on my

00:43:50.840 | side for a free trial. But I never did it because I never

00:43:56.880 | wanted to take the plunge because I was like, really, I'm

00:43:58.640 | gonna pay for email like this is crazy. And then finally, I was

00:44:01.280 | like, okay, I'm just gonna try it because I do a lot of email.

00:44:04.280 | And there was one feature I needed. And Gmail didn't have

00:44:07.600 | it. And the feature, which is probably not important to that

00:44:10.360 | many people is I was wanted to look at emails I'd gotten from

00:44:13.720 | listeners and people and see all the other emails they've sent.

00:44:17.040 | And Gmail has this feature, but it doesn't work if you have

00:44:19.760 | aliases. So for my Gmail, I send from my personal email, my work

00:44:24.120 | email, all this stuff. Gmail only works if that email came to

00:44:27.560 | or from the core Gmail account. And superhuman did the other

00:44:30.960 | thing. And so what I wanted to be able to do is know if we've

00:44:33.800 | talked about something in the past and all that. So I was

00:44:37.160 | like, I'm gonna try it out. And now it's like, magical, right,

00:44:41.200 | like setting up different snippets to auto send things to

00:44:43.760 | it's just like changed everything. So when you say this

00:44:46.120 | is like superhuman for this, I'm like, where's the link, I want

00:44:48.840 | to install it, I'm going to pay for it. It's great.

00:44:50.640 | Yeah, I can hook you up with beta access. If you'd like, I

00:44:53.960 | can do an email intro to the guys. I think you'd really like

00:44:56.200 | it. Yeah, that'd be great. What are there other apps like that

00:44:59.240 | that have kind of changed your change your productivity stack

00:45:03.120 | make you operate more efficiently that, you know, are

00:45:05.960 | not the obvious?

00:45:06.920 | Yeah, I mean, I've tried dozens, if not hundreds over the years.

00:45:09.680 | Part of being a I guess productivity YouTuber is that

00:45:12.360 | there's an incentive for me to try out every app on the market

00:45:14.600 | and maybe decide if I want if I want to use it. We use notion

00:45:18.440 | for organizing basically everything in our business, all

00:45:22.400 | of our content production for YouTube videos, and for podcasts

00:45:25.440 | and for Twitter threads and for everything. I've recently

00:45:29.520 | started using mirror mi ro, which is this interactive

00:45:33.200 | whiteboarding software just gives you a blank canvas where

00:45:35.480 | you can put post notes. And that's really useful for like

00:45:37.960 | brainstorming and whiteboarding ideas for my book or for courses

00:45:40.640 | that we're working on. Honestly, like having tried like dozens of

00:45:44.360 | these apps, I just tend to default to Apple Notes, if I

00:45:46.680 | want to write something down, it goes into Apple Notes. And I

00:45:49.600 | don't think too hard about it. So having tried

00:45:52.760 | Do you use anything for task management?

00:45:56.520 | Yeah, so I, I use to do list, but it's kind of annoying, kind

00:46:02.640 | of annoying. And so we're moving to notion because I delegate a

00:46:05.880 | lot of things to my assistant times two. So to do it is kind

00:46:10.480 | of annoying for that. So we're actually switching to notion for

00:46:12.720 | task management.

00:46:13.920 | But for someone who doesn't have an assistant, do you think so I

00:46:17.200 | use notion for a lot, right? We have one notion, that's

00:46:19.840 | everything related to all the hacks. I have another notion,

00:46:22.160 | that's everything for our family, like all the red, we're

00:46:24.880 | planning a trip, where do we put the notes for it? Where do I log

00:46:27.400 | the flights? What are we looking at? You know, for our daughter,

00:46:30.000 | what is the baby registry? What do we need to go by? What is the

00:46:32.760 | schedule of doctor's appointments, all this stuff. So

00:46:37.000 | I'm a huge fan, but I find that getting information in and out

00:46:40.600 | of it is more like a project than like a quick, oh, I got to

00:46:44.080 | do this thing. Throwing it into notion isn't the easiest. So how

00:46:49.120 | do you make that easy? Or is it just, you know, it's not easy,

00:46:52.200 | but it makes your life better. So you do it.

00:46:53.760 | Yeah. So I think my favorite task manager for iOS is things

00:46:57.880 | three, just so nice. The only problem is that it just it just

00:47:01.720 | doesn't work if you if you delegate things or if you have a

00:47:03.600 | team. So but if I was purely solo things three all the way,

00:47:07.680 | Todoist is a good cross platform alternative. It's free. It's on

00:47:11.360 | iOS, it's on Android, it's on Windows, etc. But also, I think

00:47:13.880 | anyone listening to this, like, if you have a job, you could

00:47:16.600 | probably like, honestly, I think everyone should have a part time

00:47:20.120 | personal assistant. And that's an absolutely life changing

00:47:23.000 | productivity hack.

00:47:23.760 | So I do not have one. And I've struggled in the past. And like,

00:47:27.440 | five years ago, we I tried. What kinds of things do you have this

00:47:31.200 | person do? And do you ever get too caught up in, I want to make

00:47:35.440 | sure that they're doing them the exact way I would do them. And

00:47:37.400 | then it ends up taking more time,

00:47:38.840 | basically, everything that I don't want to do myself. So a

00:47:42.920 | lot of emails like the, so my assistant, Dan is remote, but

00:47:48.080 | he's based in the UK. So we've met in real life, which I think

00:47:50.160 | I think is like, really useful. A lot of people try and hire a VA

00:47:54.480 | in the Philippines for $5 an hour, and then they're surprised

00:47:56.720 | when it doesn't work. But like, if you have the ability to hire

00:47:59.200 | someone that you can potentially work with in real life, some of

00:48:02.000 | the time, or at least meet in person, it's like, just really

00:48:05.880 | nice. But anyway, Dan basically goes through all my emails, he

00:48:08.440 | deals with all my scheduling, things like scheduling this

00:48:11.840 | podcast, for example, I have basically outsourced the

00:48:14.800 | management of my calendar to Dan. So he deals with it. And it

00:48:18.720 | means that as emails come in and stuff, I I'm actually not the

00:48:21.480 | first person to see an email, I'll see the superhuman

00:48:23.960 | notification on my phone. And if it's something like really

00:48:25.640 | interesting, or really urgent, then I'll reply to it there. And

00:48:27.520 | then, yes, scheduling and emails is a bit is a big one. But just

00:48:31.560 | like beyond that, there's a lot of random admin tasks in life.

00:48:35.520 | Like, for example, I knew I wanted to get a cleaner for the

00:48:37.880 | house, kind of a bit of a first world problem. But like, I don't

00:48:41.880 | want to be the one calling up random cleaning agencies in

00:48:44.160 | London and trying to find a cleaner who can like be there at

00:48:46.680 | the same time that I want and like, do some of the ironing and

00:48:50.000 | like change the sheets and like, so I just said, Hey, Dan, can

00:48:52.960 | you find me a cleaner for the house? I'm basically if they can

00:48:55.480 | come in on a weekday morning and like do all the things including

00:48:58.160 | ironing, that's what I want. It was like, cool, I'll call

00:49:00.240 | around, I'll ring a few agencies, and he found someone

00:49:02.200 | and now we've got a cleaner. Things like, I remember when I

00:49:06.360 | first got an assistant, I was just sort of like, hang around

00:49:08.640 | to be like, huh, what are all the things I could delegate? I

00:49:11.560 | was like, you know, I wanted to learn how to play the ukulele. I

00:49:14.080 | was I said, I said her name was Elizabeth at the time. I said,

00:49:16.920 | Hey, Elizabeth, can you find me a ukulele for under like 200

00:49:20.080 | pounds, and just find some reviews and just order it. And

00:49:22.880 | she was like, cool. The next day, you clearly arrived at my

00:49:25.280 | house. And it's like, I, I'd been procrastinating from again,

00:49:28.680 | playing the ukulele for like two years, because all it would have

00:49:30.560 | taken was me for me to sit down and spend five minutes searching

00:49:32.800 | on the internet for what's the best ukulele for a certain

00:49:34.920 | budget. But it's in a way so much easier to be able to say

00:49:38.040 | that to an assistant or to a voice note that you can then

00:49:40.400 | send to an assistant. Right now, Dan is hunting for a new

00:49:44.600 | property that we're moving into. We're trying to move studio

00:49:47.000 | spaces, ringing up estate agents and dealing with like booking

00:49:50.640 | viewings and arranging viewings. Dan is doing all of that. And

00:49:53.280 | he's just getting them to send us WhatsApp videos, so that I

00:49:55.400 | can spend my time doing things that I actually want to be

00:49:57.000 | doing, like talking to you on this podcast, or like making

00:49:59.000 | videos or like writing or things other than dealing with the

00:50:02.240 | hours and hours of admin it takes to book viewings for a

00:50:04.600 | property in a market where properties are moving fast. So

00:50:07.480 | almost anything, within reason can be outsourced to an

00:50:10.400 | assistant.

00:50:10.800 | Have you ever have you done a blog post or a video on how to

00:50:14.000 | use an assistant and all the tasks you could use for them?

00:50:15.920 | No, we're working on it. I have this course idea in my mind that

00:50:19.720 | we've sort of fleshed out, it's going to be called something

00:50:21.480 | like the life changing magic of a personal assistant. And I want

00:50:24.640 | to make videos and blog posts and tweets and all of this stuff

00:50:26.840 | about it at some point soon.

00:50:28.240 | And for someone who hasn't gone down the path of how how much

00:50:33.120 | this could cost, like, you know, you mentioned, you could go to

00:50:36.320 | the Philippines, it's super cheap, like where you don't need

00:50:39.200 | someone full time, right? This is something you can kind of

00:50:41.280 | start at a pretty low cost and add a lot of scale.

00:50:44.040 | Yeah, I've been telling all my friends four hours a week will

00:50:46.400 | completely change your life. And if you can find someone for

00:50:48.640 | like, you know, someone local here in the UK, 15 pounds an

00:50:52.840 | hour, so that's like $20 an hour, or four hours, that's like

00:50:56.520 | $80 a week. And people are always like, Oh, that's, that's

00:50:59.920 | like $320 a month. That's so expensive. I ask, okay, like,

00:51:04.280 | this is not for students who are broke. It's for people who have

00:51:07.280 | real jobs. It's like a, what's your actual hourly rate? Like

00:51:10.800 | you're doing the whole Naval thing of like, what is what is

00:51:13.040 | what is your actual hourly rate? Should you really be the one to

00:51:15.600 | do this thing that you don't want to do? But also, the other

00:51:17.840 | way of thinking of it is like, if you could free up four hours

00:51:20.360 | of your time to, for example, spend with your family, how much

00:51:23.200 | would that be worth to you over the long term? It's like, okay,

00:51:25.360 | it probably probably worth more than $20. Right? So now that

00:51:28.560 | that gives you an idea of how much it would potentially be

00:51:32.280 | worth hiring an assistant for. I'm so bullish on the part time

00:51:35.960 | personal assistant thing. I think I think it's great.

00:51:37.400 | I got this email from someone this morning. I'm going to

00:51:41.360 | butcher the name, but Lee Aaron, and they were like, Hey, can you

00:51:44.160 | do an episode on family life? And they've talked about it a

00:51:46.400 | little but like, I have no time. Like, how do I maximize my time?

00:51:49.880 | So this is a great example to the Aaron who wrote in something

00:51:53.880 | to consider to buy back some time. And I'm a big fan of

00:51:56.600 | buying time, like to the extent that you can find a person to

00:51:59.480 | do a thing that you don't want to do, or not that you don't

00:52:01.920 | want to do. I used to love cooking. And before kids

00:52:05.880 | cooking was like in lieu of sitting on the couch doing

00:52:08.400 | nothing. And that trade off was good. Now cooking might be in

00:52:11.560 | lieu of spending time with your kids or working or doing these

00:52:15.320 | other things because you just have less time. And so, you

00:52:17.960 | know, it's not that I don't like it, it's that I now have

00:52:20.160 | different priorities, because there are more things on my

00:52:22.400 | plate. And so whatever's at the bottom of that list, I find that

00:52:25.920 | we often are doing those things, even though we might not

00:52:29.160 | actually prioritize them because they have to happen. But to the

00:52:32.360 | extent you can hire someone to cook or to clean or to do

00:52:35.200 | whatever task it is on your list, it sounds like I need to

00:52:38.560 | test out one of these VA services or find someone. I keep

00:52:43.560 | procrastinating, I keep procrastinating, I got to make

00:52:45.560 | it I got to, I got to get get something very clear of what I'm

00:52:48.440 | going to do next and get it in motion.

00:52:50.520 | I mean, so Chris, the the next question I would ask you is,

00:52:53.360 | okay, when are you gonna find a VA?

00:52:56.040 | I'm gonna if I'm being honest, right, I'm gonna right now I

00:52:59.520 | have like a couple tables. So this is a great segue. But

00:53:02.720 | before I want to hit one thing, and then I want to jump to what

00:53:06.120 | I think will be a great way to answer this. But you mentioned,

00:53:09.480 | you know, you read a lot, you save notes from Kindle, you find

00:53:12.080 | them all over the place. I've seen that you write a bunch

00:53:14.640 | about reading effectively and efficiently. And so I want to

00:53:16.600 | wrap up the the productivity thing with what you're doing

00:53:19.120 | there. Because I have a lot of books, I enjoy reading them, but

00:53:22.360 | I don't think I'm doing it right. And I know that sounds

00:53:24.800 | so ridiculous. Like I know how to read the words on the page.

00:53:27.400 | But I feel like if you've written posts, and made videos

00:53:31.560 | about reading effectively and efficiently, I'm confident that

00:53:35.040 | there's a way I can do it better.

00:53:36.200 | So do you read on physical book or Kindle? Or what's your?

00:53:39.880 | To be honest, I, I, a lot of times get the ebook. And then I

00:53:45.840 | but I sometimes really prefer the physical book, but I could

00:53:48.440 | do both. I'm not like wedded to one or the other. But I am not

00:53:51.840 | good at audiobooks, despite being great at podcasts. I don't

00:53:55.400 | know, I feel like whenever I'm listening to an audiobook,

00:53:58.040 | sometimes I get distracted. And then I realized, Oh, I missed

00:54:02.280 | the last five minutes. And if I try to not be distracted, and I

00:54:06.160 | just like lie in bed to listen, then I find that, you know, I

00:54:08.840 | might fall asleep or something.

00:54:09.680 | Yeah, sure. No, I know. I know what you mean. I guess, another

00:54:14.120 | question I would ask, and maybe you can answer like what your

00:54:16.400 | listeners would be thinking about this is like, why do you

00:54:19.720 | want to read more effectively? Like, what's, what's the point?

00:54:22.080 | retention, you know, I, like, I read a lot of things. And I

00:54:26.040 | learned these fascinating things, especially when I'm

00:54:27.680 | reading books that people I'm interviewing have written, I

00:54:30.760 | want to remember those things, not just for five minutes, you

00:54:32.960 | know, not just for the day, I want to process them. And then,

00:54:36.440 | you know, to the extent they're a way to read, I don't know,

00:54:40.640 | faster or more efficiently, like that there's kind of like

00:54:43.560 | efficiently, maybe effectively, it's like effectively, I retain

00:54:45.840 | the information efficiently, it just happens faster.

00:54:47.960 | Yeah, sure. Have you come across building a second brain?

00:54:50.360 | So I'm going back and forth with Tiago, who will come on the show

00:54:55.720 | a little later this year.

00:54:57.000 | Amazing. Yeah. That's the I mean, I took his course in like

00:55:00.680 | 2019 2020, something like that. And that introduced me to a lot

00:55:05.200 | of ideas around kind of retention of stuff and taking

00:55:09.480 | information and doing useful things with it. It's a fairly

00:55:13.360 | expensive course, but the book covers all of the things and the

00:55:16.080 | book is like, you know, the price of a book, it's recently

00:55:18.360 | come out. But broadly, I think the easy hack, we're all about

00:55:22.280 | hacks here for remembering stuff is to basically use readwise, I

00:55:28.800 | have yet to find an app that is better than readwise at this,

00:55:31.360 | which if you're highlighting things on Kindle, it

00:55:34.360 | automatically files them. It also has like an app where you

00:55:37.840 | can literally scan the text of a book as you're reading it, if

00:55:40.600 | you want a thing, and it will OCR recognize the characters, and

00:55:44.920 | we'll recognize what book it's from. And we'll just categorize

00:55:48.480 | it automatically. And then just the by virtue of reading that

00:55:51.440 | email every day of like five highlights five things that have

00:55:53.880 | resonated enough with you for you to want to highlight that I

00:55:56.880 | found that to be genuinely the single biggest thing that has

00:55:59.400 | changed the game in terms of my retention of ideas. And people

00:56:03.160 | was like, Oh, you know, when you're on podcasts, how are you

00:56:05.040 | able to cite all these sources and these books and quotes and

00:56:07.440 | stuff? I don't think I look at the readwise email. Once in a

00:56:10.560 | while, I just kind of resurfaces the quotes. That's like, I think

00:56:14.840 | the basic level that does most of the good stuff to make sure

00:56:17.720 | I got that if you scan the page of a physical book, like I mean,

00:56:21.560 | Apple now has this live text, right? You could just copy and

00:56:24.560 | paste the text, but this actually knows what book it is.

00:56:26.920 | And we'll actually store that information also.

00:56:28.960 | I think so. I think there may be an intermediate step where like

00:56:33.400 | it connects to your Amazon account, and it therefore knows

00:56:35.600 | what book you own. And sometimes you have to like type in the

00:56:38.840 | name of the title or something. But like, yeah, it's pretty,

00:56:43.160 | it's pretty magical when it works. There is an intermediate

00:56:45.640 | step when that particular thing doesn't work. Okay. So that

00:56:50.040 | would be how I do the whole retention thing broadly. I mean,

00:56:53.400 | the actual way of retaining anything is to find a way to use

00:56:56.160 | that information in your day to day life, maybe to create a

00:56:59.280 | piece of content or something or other based around that. So if a

00:57:02.680 | book really, really resonates with me, I've got loads of

00:57:04.720 | highlights for it, I will try and write a book summary or write

00:57:07.480 | like a tweet thread summary of a book or make a video about the

00:57:10.520 | book or interview the author of the book and talk to them about

00:57:13.200 | the book, just some kind of output that creates this

00:57:16.560 | tangible thing, which is a reason to actually bother

00:57:21.480 | retaining the stuff. Because it's all well and good saying

00:57:23.720 | that, like, oh, like, I have this all the time, like, oh, I

00:57:25.840 | really want to, like, remember what's in this book. But if I'm

00:57:29.440 | not creating anything from it, it's, it's going to be hard

00:57:32.920 | beyond looking at my readwise email every day. So for me, it's

00:57:36.720 | easy, because I do videos about books. And that helps me helps

00:57:40.000 | me remember a lot of the things. Readwise also synchronizes to

00:57:43.720 | notion. And so I've got a notion page that has literally

00:57:45.800 | everything I've ever highlighted in my life on Kindle or

00:57:48.000 | Instapaper or reader or pocket or any other app I've used to

00:57:50.480 | read books or read articles. And so if I ever need ideas for

00:57:53.520 | videos, I'll just look through my highlights and be like, cool,

00:57:55.720 | that's a cool idea. That's from that book. All right, cool.

00:57:58.080 | Let's piece things together and turn it into a video.

00:58:01.040 | Yeah, Nick Gray was on the show a couple weeks ago, and talked

00:58:05.160 | about friends newsletters. So I'd say if you need a way to

00:58:08.040 | take the interesting content you're consuming, I can promise

00:58:10.880 | you that it's most people at least I do from your newsletter

00:58:14.160 | find interesting. Oh, here's this app I checked out. Here's

00:58:16.440 | this book I read, here's this thing I found. And so he

00:58:19.520 | proposed that everyone start a friends newsletter, that's just

00:58:21.920 | you know, send your emails, friends an email, whether it's

00:58:24.360 | weekly, monthly, quarterly. And I feel like that would be a

00:58:27.360 | great place to put this stuff and reinforce it, which will

00:58:30.440 | help you remember it. So nice. There's there's one tip from

00:58:33.160 | that episode. I always try to wrap these conversations up with

00:58:37.640 | asking people love to travel and listen to the show. And they

00:58:40.920 | always say, you know, I started doing this thing where I ask

00:58:43.120 | everyone I interview, to pick a city they know, well, I'm, you

00:58:46.920 | know, maybe London for you, and give people a suggestion of

00:58:49.720 | where to go, where would you recommend someone who hasn't

00:58:51.960 | been to London, or if there's another city, you know, better,

00:58:54.800 | go for a meal, have a drink and something unusual to do that.

00:58:59.360 | That isn't the obvious. Nice. So I would actually go for

00:59:03.800 | Cambridge. So I spent nine years in Cambridge, which is just an

00:59:07.160 | hour north of London. That's where I went to university where

00:59:10.000 | I worked as a doctor and where I spent a year of pandemic kind of

00:59:12.240 | grew my YouTube channel. The nice thing to do in Cambridge is

00:59:15.960 | go punting, you get these little boats, you sort of get this rod

00:59:19.440 | and you sort of pull yourself along the river with a rod. And

00:59:21.720 | it's super nice when the weather is good. And then there's this

00:59:24.360 | restaurant, this cafe called Fitz Billy's, which does a really

00:59:27.360 | good afternoon tea. You can have tea with scones and jam and

00:59:31.120 | clotted cream. And it's very nice British type thing. And

00:59:34.560 | you like punt along the river. And then you have your tea and

00:59:36.840 | scones and Fitz Billy's. And it's a great vibe. Fantastic day

00:59:40.200 | out with the family.

00:59:40.840 | That's exactly what I'm looking for. Okay, last thing, where

00:59:45.160 | where should people find everything you're working on

00:59:47.520 | online?

00:59:48.560 | Yeah, so probably my website, Ali Abdaal.com or my YouTube

00:59:52.080 | channel. If you just search Ali Abdaal or Ali or something on

00:59:55.120 | YouTube. It'll it'll come up.

00:59:57.520 | Awesome. I'll link to all that. And we got a lot of links from

01:00:00.360 | this episode in the show notes. Thank you so much for being

01:00:02.520 | here. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a

01:00:04.280 | pleasure.

01:00:05.080 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai

01:00:06.080 | Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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