0:00

By. The way in case you haven't heard my brand

0:02

new book feel good. Productivity is now out. It

0:04

is available everywhere bucks assault and it's actually hit

0:06

the New York Times at also the Sunday Times

0:08

bestseller list. So thank you to everyone who's already

0:10

got a copy of the book. If you read

0:12

the book already I would love a real on

0:14

Amazon and if you haven't yet checked it out

0:16

you may lead to check it out debatable in

0:18

physical format and also he in also audiobook everywhere

0:20

books are sold. A friend's welcome

0:22

back to Deep Dive The Podcast: What's my men's

0:24

pleasure to sit down with entrepreneurs, creators, authors, and

0:27

other inspiring people. We find out how they got

0:29

to where they are and strategies and tools we

0:31

can learn from them to help build a life

0:33

that we love. And this episode is a little

0:35

bit different because we're going over seven unconventional truths

0:37

that will help you level up your productivity. and

0:39

these are taken from a diverse range of episodes

0:41

that I've done with various people who are specialists

0:43

in productivity, authors and academics and entrepreneurs. and I

0:46

hope that by listening to the seven different tips,

0:48

the might be at least one thing that you

0:50

can take away as an experiment. Try and. Apply

0:52

to your own life. So without further ado,

0:54

here we are. I. Think of productivity

0:56

is a face. It's a

0:58

face it phase in someone's life. Okay,

1:00

there is a a phase in your

1:03

life or it could work. So there

1:05

could be different phases where you have

1:07

to thing about productivity and then there's

1:09

other phases where you think about creativity.

1:11

I really seek productivity and creativity has

1:13

two sides to the same coin I

1:15

were learn about. This was from my

1:17

dad. My dad is one I'm most

1:19

creative people I've ever met. Wildly imaginative,

1:21

creative. but how does that creativity make

1:24

it out into the world is productivity.

1:26

So he has these these very systematic.

1:28

Approaches and routines and rules that he uses

1:30

From you know, the time of day that

1:32

he paints from this time to this time,

1:34

to how long he's going to spend on

1:37

each stage of a painting, to the whether

1:39

he takes notes and so I see this

1:41

kind of like pendulum productivity, creativity, productivity, creativity,

1:43

and if you go too far on either

1:46

end of the spectrum, You. Start

1:48

hitting diminishing returns and you start to get stuck.

1:50

right? Like like on both sides you can

1:52

get so fixated on productivity, your work starts

1:54

to become formulaic, starts to become very boring,

1:57

and it's time to to kind of go

1:59

to the. other end of the spectrum, creativity. But

2:01

then you can go too far in creativity. That's when

2:03

you get too precious. You get

2:05

too, oh no, this is my art, it has

2:07

to be the certain way. And you know, you

2:09

talk to someone six months later, what are you

2:11

doing? Oh, I'm working on my one painting for

2:13

the last six months. That also doesn't work. You're

2:15

not, you're getting stuck,

2:18

you're getting sort of locked up in your

2:20

own preciousness. And so I really

2:22

see them as this kind of alternating back and

2:24

forth pendulum. Nice. Yeah, I had a bit of

2:26

thought as you were saying that, and I think

2:29

I've never really thought of the two as

2:31

being being separate. I guess, you

2:33

know, given that a bunch of videos I make happen

2:36

to be made you seemed around productivity. When

2:38

people ask me, Oh, what is productivity to you? I

2:40

kind of take a step back, I broaden it out

2:42

and I say, Oh, productivity, just using your time intentionally.

2:45

Yeah. Which then makes it

2:47

a more like gentle definition that you can apply to

2:49

your personal life, to your work life, and who doesn't

2:51

want to use the time more intentionally. Yeah. But there's

2:53

something about the word productivity that feels a bit more

2:56

like it feels very worky.

2:58

Yeah. And very much like I'm generating economic

3:00

output from my employer. And this is a

3:02

bad thing. Yeah. Any thoughts on that? Yeah,

3:04

a couple things. So

3:07

productivity is like efficiency, efficiency is sort

3:09

of a synonym, right? What

3:11

is efficiency? If you again, if you

3:13

go back to manufacturing, it's simply minimizing

3:16

waste. So I think of it, which

3:18

is one of the most important things in

3:20

life. Like when people say productivity doesn't matter,

3:22

I go, does it not matter that you

3:24

not waste your time? You

3:26

know, does it not matter that you waste

3:29

your attention? Does it not matter that you

3:31

waste your ideas? Does it not matter that

3:33

you waste your potential? Like isn't

3:36

that like almost what life is about?

3:38

And it's easy to lose sight of that if you think

3:40

of efficiency, but I really just think about it as minimizing

3:43

waste. And then the other thing

3:45

I was gonna say, Oh, think about other uses

3:47

of the word productivity, a productive conversation. Would

3:49

you say a productive conversation is, is,

3:52

you know, not is, is anti human

3:55

or is not benevolent or is kind

3:58

of removing the humanity? No, I I

4:00

want all my, the most intimate conversation with my

4:02

wife, I still want to be productive. That doesn't

4:04

mean it's not a good conversation. Or

4:07

alternatively, think of a productive ecosystem. Productive

4:10

ecosystem, the forest is a productive ecosystem, not

4:12

because we went in and clear-cut everything and

4:14

built a parking lot, but because there is

4:16

value being created, right? And you could say

4:19

economic value, but I just think of there's

4:22

plants being grown, there's animals

4:24

that are surviving, there's evolution

4:27

that's happening, there's families, animals,

4:29

and humans that are being raised from the

4:31

sustenance of the forest. So I

4:33

kind of like to use the word productivity because it

4:36

confronts people. That's what I like. I

4:38

want people to be confronted. Because

4:40

the same thing that has you kind of be triggered

4:42

by productivity, if you follow that

4:45

thread, you're going to get to an incorrect

4:48

assumption, a limiting belief, a blind spot

4:50

that is going to limit you in life

4:52

and in your career. Oh, that

4:54

is beautiful. I can feel my kind of mindset

4:56

changing about that because I've also been like, yeah,

4:58

I agree, productivity is a bit of a dirty

5:01

word. Let's not use that word. Let's

5:03

call it intentionality or something like that. But I like

5:05

how you're just like, yeah, productivity is

5:07

a good thing. One of the

5:10

lines that I was listening to the audiobook

5:12

and you said, sometimes productivity can be self-care.

5:14

Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's interesting.

5:17

What's going on with that? So I think

5:19

that's one of the main triggers for

5:21

the book was actually the fact that

5:23

people would be like, oh, self-care, relax.

5:25

And I'd be like, actually, sometimes self-care

5:27

is meeting that deadline that you're currently

5:29

not on track to meet, but actually

5:32

respecting your future self and your goals

5:35

is getting the fuck up and doing

5:37

the work that you need to do for that. And

5:40

like, we cannot market self-care as always

5:42

like doing nothing. Sometimes self-care is working

5:44

harder because you're currently not working in

5:46

line with what you want to make

5:48

happen. And I think that, again,

5:51

the internet hates that because it's like it

5:54

doesn't fit into this idea

5:57

of like well-being versus productivity.

6:01

The. Actual understanding of the fact

6:03

that. Both. The one of the other

6:05

like a self care is and always running about

6:07

asked if you're running a boss and you're about

6:09

to miss three deadlines and that's your paycheck for

6:11

the week. So care is not running about abuse

6:13

early that sell cards on a about. So that

6:15

was. A lot of the stuff

6:17

in the book is around two action, actual

6:19

self care and like how to know at

6:21

what point something will be self care and

6:24

some and a bus a self sabotage or

6:26

any of the things to create a life

6:28

that revolves around you know your boundaries and

6:30

where you need to be more productive and

6:33

where you probably need to. Sobbing so often

6:35

yourself? What a Euro. Two different types of

6:37

doing nothing? yeah glad super interesting. like to

6:39

distinction of the I had one of those over

6:41

the weekend away with the Saturday the know

6:43

north in the health of like broken ankle

6:45

is but progress and I mean zero but productive

6:47

bra suitable dates and I was listening to the

6:50

audiobook last Niles like I for had the

6:52

terminology of of like fucking nothing I would

6:54

have caught it, I would have just really have

6:56

a off but I didn't mince. I feel

6:58

guilty for the whole day as well by

7:00

myself. Yeah. So I think as really

7:02

really important and I think that when we

7:04

talk so much out of luck and when

7:06

taught that well how to us take time

7:08

and know when we're probably a little bit

7:10

been through and all of these different things

7:12

that I see if we took rest will

7:14

be much better tomorrow. The idea of plan

7:16

something and socket nothing are the fact that

7:18

I see I believe wholeheartedly in time management

7:20

since I believe that time management a stress

7:23

management. Some people you're going to be very

7:25

like Taipei and it's gonna be like. Of

7:27

course you your time managing like of course at the

7:29

beginning of your week you know what? your. Whole week

7:31

looks like north s other people are going to be

7:33

like no I won't know till the day. I do

7:35

believe though that if you want to sit a certain

7:37

amount of thing then you have to be good at

7:39

time I spent in you have to do you ten

7:41

thousand hours and make yourself at a time. Management. You.

7:44

To us want to. Fine. but due

7:46

to i think that it's really important to or

7:48

second bit of tough love and be like if

7:50

you want to do x y and that's you

7:52

have to plan it's not gonna happen without you

7:55

planning at so whether that's something to go to

7:57

the gym whether that's selling a new side hustle

7:59

or new hobby or any of those things, if

8:01

you're not planning those things in, in the

8:04

same way as if you don't plan in the gym or,

8:06

you know, if you don't put your doctor's appointment in

8:08

your diary, it's not going to happen. So

8:11

the idea of like plan nothing and fuck it nothing

8:13

is when you're looking at your week plan

8:15

and you're doing all your day plan and you're

8:17

doing your plans yourself, I think it's really important

8:19

to have enough plans nothing in there. And I

8:21

don't think we do that because planning nothing, again,

8:24

seems quite oxymoronic. It doesn't make sense.

8:27

But knowing your boundaries and getting

8:29

to know how you're most productive

8:31

and how you're happier, the happiest

8:34

is really, really important. And that all comes then into

8:36

your time management. So for me, for example, I know

8:38

that from a Monday to Thursday, so weekdays, I'm

8:41

probably going to want to do something

8:43

two nights and do

8:45

missing two nights. And that's

8:48

my limit usually. So like this week,

8:50

I've had something every single night. And

8:53

I hate it, I feel dead. I've started every day feeling

8:55

like an absolute zombie. I don't have any thinking time. I

8:57

don't have time to stare at the ceiling. Like I don't,

9:00

you know, I'm not able to kind of process things in

9:02

the same way. And so I get anxious about things and

9:04

I get stressed and I don't feel like I'm

9:06

my best self. The way we

9:09

mitigate that is by understanding those boundaries.

9:11

And for me, usually, if I look at

9:14

next week, for example, and I've got something in on

9:16

Wednesday and Thursday, and someone sends you free on Tuesday,

9:18

I'm not I'm actually not free on Tuesday, it

9:21

might look you look at my diary like I'm

9:23

free, but I'm not these are my non

9:25

negotiable. And this is how I manage myself

9:27

to be able to be my best self

9:29

for my goals, whether those are personal life,

9:31

whether those are work, fuck

9:34

it, nothing is understanding

9:37

that we can plan as much as

9:39

we want. We can operate

9:41

by those rules, we can, you know, I

9:44

can know that I'm going out Wednesday and

9:46

Thursday next week for dinner. And I can

9:48

know that I'm doing Tuesday, Monday and Tuesday in

9:50

and then whatever the weekend I've got it all

9:52

planned. And I can get to Wednesday. And

9:55

I can be like, I actually I actually either

9:57

don't want to or I can't. or

10:00

I'm feeling really burnt out, or my mental health isn't

10:02

there or any of those things. And understanding that we

10:04

can plan for absolutely everything and we can't plan for

10:06

the fact that we're human. And so fuck it, nothing

10:08

is essentially being able to be like, fuck it, not

10:11

doing that. And I think important distinction

10:13

again, is like you get a real dopamine

10:15

hit when you think you had to do

10:17

something and then you don't have to do

10:19

something. So you have a plan with someone,

10:22

and then you cancel that plan, you get that

10:24

dopamine hit. But then also, you can get into

10:27

the habit of doing that because you think you

10:29

need that. And actually what you needed was to

10:31

push yourself out there and go out to dinner and have

10:33

a good laugh with someone you haven't caught up with in

10:35

a while. But it feels like a chore when you're at

10:37

the end of that day and you're like, that's the last

10:40

thing I want to do. So I think understanding as well,

10:42

the boundaries of fuck it, nothing too are really important. But

10:44

I do think that if we don't have fuck it, nothing,

10:47

say you're Saturday night, where you were going to

10:49

make a huge amount of progress with the book,

10:53

and you decide not to what you really

10:55

needed in that time was fuck it, nothing. You

10:57

needed to be like, fuck it, I'm doing

10:59

absolutely nothing. Instead,

11:02

you probably sat on the sofa being like,

11:04

I meant to be doing something and then

11:06

felt probably you probably didn't get

11:08

the benefit of doing nothing. And you didn't get the

11:10

benefit of doing work. And so I

11:12

think understanding our human limits and our boundaries and

11:14

being able to just say, I'm not going to

11:16

do that. And I know I'm not going to

11:18

do that. And I'm okay with not doing that

11:21

is one of the most important things you can

11:23

do for your productivity and your time management and

11:25

your self care. What

11:27

is slow productivity? Probably.

11:30

So yeah, so if we don't have

11:32

a here's the issue with knowledge work in general, the

11:35

issue we've been grappling with in the last 20

11:37

minutes, like what is productivity even mean? Right?

11:39

And so then it just becomes this weird catchall or

11:41

boogeyman. So I have this thought of like, why

11:44

don't we actually positively come out and come up

11:46

with a definition that we'd like a

11:48

definition that's human, A definition

11:51

that that melds well with our human instincts

11:53

in the way our brain is actually wired,

11:55

that's centered around producing meaningful and valuable things,

11:57

but in a way that's very sustainable. The

12:00

first offline so so set of just

12:02

pushing back against the bogeyman. Productivity like

12:04

was. Put. In Place Not Hearted

12:06

If and in the alternative I've been working

12:09

on is called slow Productivity And like the

12:11

Slow Food movement or these other movements I've

12:13

I've I've gone back and pulled from the

12:15

sort of existing cultures of knowledge workers to

12:17

the been around for centuries, in some cases

12:20

millennia that had the privilege and space the

12:22

kind of figure out what's the best way

12:24

to work with your mind. You.

12:26

Know what works, what doesn't and figured out

12:28

to we have a widely applicable definition of

12:30

productivity comes out of it and so slow.

12:32

Productivity has three principles to it's do fewer

12:34

things. Working. Out a

12:36

natural pace. Obsessing over quality.

12:40

A Those three things approaching knowledge.

12:42

Work with those three principles. Realize.

12:45

The efforts with our humanity, the way we're wired.

12:48

I can give you a a narrow science argument

12:50

for it. I can give you a psychological argument

12:52

for it. I can give you a philosophical argument

12:54

for those three things. It all. and all three

12:56

of those levels. Or.

12:58

Eating knowledge work around that is meaningful. Sas

13:00

find you can produce things a great value.

13:02

It can be very productive for companies that

13:04

can be very satisfying for individual so on

13:07

and start putting together my piece of what

13:09

what target of productivity Some people who make

13:11

a living using their brains? What it? what

13:13

should they be going for? Beyond just you

13:15

know. Get. After have your

13:17

to do is organize I don't know. What's.

13:19

What's a philosophical arguments? well others are like

13:21

We go back to Aristotle of we need

13:24

to write there's there's this does What was

13:26

the the to the algae of of human

13:28

existence? What was the one thing we have

13:30

another creature stone as we have these brains

13:32

that can sit and think and create things.

13:35

And just there's there's a there's an

13:37

argument towards the that the production of

13:40

things of value and meaning and and

13:42

sort of giving things the time they

13:44

require craftsmanship that there's there's a real

13:47

philosophical foundation to the human value didst

13:49

it's extracted from actually doing. things have

13:51

have a value of impact with your

13:54

mind and a lotta get socked away

13:56

when you're just entered emails all day

13:58

as are just hustling. it after it. You

14:01

could go all the way back to neuro.

14:03

I mean, this is the thing I'm working

14:05

on now is I've gone back heavily to

14:08

do a deep into the mainly social anthropological

14:10

research, do a deep history of work for

14:13

300,000 years. What

14:16

was work for humans? Because that's a long

14:18

enough time span that our brain evolved,

14:21

right? To match this definition of

14:23

work. And surprise, surprise when you

14:25

go back and look through this deep

14:27

literature, you see not doing too

14:29

many things. Sees a variation

14:31

in pace and intensity. A lot

14:34

of your time being the application of hard-won skills. Like that's

14:36

exactly what comes up. That's what we did for 300,000 years.

14:39

So there's also this almost like

14:41

psychology, anthropological, even neuro scientific argument

14:43

for not being

14:45

overloaded, varying your intensity in

14:47

various ways, and spending

14:49

more of your time like applying hard-won skills like

14:51

what we expect work to be. Do you

14:55

have you stumbled across any kind of

14:58

Dunbar number for number of active projects that

15:00

one should have at a given time? Like

15:02

when you say fewer things, how few are

15:05

we talking? Well,

15:07

yeah, I mean, I so there's two different timescales. I

15:09

mean, at the scale of like what you're working on

15:11

right now is one, right? So like in

15:13

the what we cannot do,

15:16

what our brain cannot do is

15:19

concurrently during like the afternoon,

15:21

go back and forth between three different things. It

15:24

just the way our planning motivation loop works. Like

15:26

we have one thing in our working memory, we

15:28

build this internal model that pulls episodic memories out

15:31

of the hippocampus, we use that to try to

15:33

predict what we should do next. That system cannot

15:35

handle more than one thing. So we cannot be

15:37

thinking about making decisions on or making progress on

15:39

more than one thing at a time. And I

15:41

don't mean like literally at the time, like over

15:45

a couple hours even like work

15:47

on one thing till you're done, move on

15:49

to the other thing. Our brain cannot go

15:51

back and forth. It's why email like going

15:53

back and forth between your email just crushes

15:55

us psychologically. You know, a recent

15:57

podcast episode I talked about path freeze. you

16:00

see like 15 things you need to do and you just

16:02

stop, it's because you literally, the

16:04

planning motivational center of your brain can't make

16:06

plans for 15 things at the same time.

16:08

It neurologically can't do that. So your motivation

16:10

system just freezes up, right?

16:13

So at a time, one thing, in terms

16:15

of like ongoing projects, I'm

16:17

a big believer in like pole-based

16:19

methodology where there's like two or three things

16:21

you're, two or three things you're working on. When

16:24

something finishes, you can pull something else in. You

16:27

know? And I actually think this is

16:29

how companies should organize work. Software developers already do

16:31

this, but I think we should do this more broadly

16:33

in knowledge work where, yeah, there's a lot of work

16:35

the company needs to do. Don't just distribute that to

16:37

everyone's plate. And everyone has 20 things that they have

16:40

to kind of figure out what to do with. They

16:43

should just be working on a couple things and they can

16:45

pull in new things once it's ready. And

16:47

the problem, why you need, why I think this is important

16:49

and why I think it's killer to have a lot of things

16:51

on your plate, even if you're not working on them at the

16:53

exact same time, is that there's something

16:55

called an overhead tax that every project

16:58

that you have committed to generates. It's

17:00

a overhead of administrative work that you have to

17:02

do even if you're not actively working on the

17:04

project. It's emails you have to send, meetings,

17:07

planning meetings, standing meetings you have to have,

17:10

and just cognitive load of knowing it's there.

17:13

So that builds up. So

17:15

if you have 15 projects on your plate,

17:17

you're paying overhead tax on 15 projects and

17:19

that tax takes up your time. And

17:21

before you know it, most of your time

17:24

and mental energy is going to the maintenance of

17:26

the ongoing projects and almost nothing

17:28

gets done. And then you fall farther behind and then the

17:30

more projects build up and the tax gets worse. I call

17:32

it the overhead spiral. It's a terrible state to be in.

17:35

So there's a real cost to having too many

17:37

things on your plate. Even if you're very careful

17:39

about this morning, I'm just working on

17:41

this. And then in the afternoon, I'm just

17:43

working on that. And on Tuesdays, I work on this. Once you

17:45

get past a certain level, it's a problem. And I think, again,

17:47

if something companies get wrong, they just say,

17:49

let's distribute the task informally to everyone, we'll have

17:51

everything live on people's individual plates and they can

17:54

just figure out what to work on and whatnot.

17:57

And the overhead tax kills them. A much better

17:59

system is this. Six and holding tank.

18:02

And. When I'm ready for the next thing I

18:04

poet and but until it leaves that holding take

18:06

home pay no overhead tax on it. It's not

18:08

actually, and it's not actually my views. I also

18:10

think like three actor projects at a time is

18:12

fast and. Obviously, when you're working on something,

18:14

you're only work on that one thing. He

18:17

has his etti something like as of last week

18:19

we have now started doing in our in our team

18:21

and it's I'm so surprised has taken so long to

18:23

get to this because we were in that model of

18:25

oh it does all the things we could deal assist

18:28

like disobey them but now. We're. Like

18:30

Alex the let's do the thing that software people

18:32

do and actually make her. I mean we have

18:34

like a bucket. this stuff we would love to

18:36

to have have my website contained but some rather

18:38

than Bocanegra we've love to make. think about a

18:40

picture on, would love to think about making on

18:43

keyboard with something about make on bad luck. think

18:45

about this enormous of thing but know right now

18:47

like for the next six weeks we're just focusing

18:49

on the thing good and then six weeks later

18:51

we can reset the bucket list of the okay

18:53

whether we actually want to put things on threats

18:55

and that model has ah basically as life within

18:57

half an hour freed up a lot of cognitive.

19:00

Overload from people being like oh, actually this

19:02

is not a party right now Said different.

19:04

Not gonna think about it until on next

19:06

six weeks sprint planning. Go whenever Dallas like.

19:09

It as hundred percent right. By the way,

19:11

that's what everyone should be do. I have

19:13

a chapter about this new book I wrote

19:16

couple weeks ago. Everyone should be doing that,

19:18

but mainly only sulfur people do suspended such

19:20

as such as it's such an. Such.

19:22

An unnecessary unforced source

19:24

of stress and overhead

19:27

went. To see this is

19:29

what I think happened by the way with

19:31

the Zoom apocalypse so I don't have you

19:33

heard this from your listeners identity was getting

19:35

this feedback the during Twenty Twenty One when

19:37

everyone we were everyone's remote knowledge workers were

19:39

people got to the sort of absurd states

19:41

were like all they were doing was. Zoom.

19:45

eight hours a day don't like waiters know work

19:47

let's like it became of serves like a kafka

19:49

player something like this like some sort of like

19:51

met a commentary on on the absurdity of of

19:53

work and bureaucracy or something like that but i

19:55

at what this was i think was like a

19:57

really clear example of the overhead tax filing

20:00

out of control because when people went remote, it

20:02

increased the amount of task on their plate by

20:04

like 20% all of a sudden because you had

20:06

to figure out how to run whatever you do

20:08

remote. So it generated new work, right?

20:10

To figure out how do we make the transition? And

20:13

switching over to video

20:17

is there's efficiencies that's lost.

20:19

So there's a lot of efficiencies in person where

20:21

I can grab you at the end of a

20:23

meeting and be like, wait, wait, hold on. Like,

20:25

what are we doing about this client coming tomorrow?

20:27

We go back and forth for three minutes and

20:29

figure it out. When I can't do that anymore,

20:32

we're left saying like, we should have a Zoom

20:34

media to talk about the client. But what's the

20:36

smallest interval on your calendar? 30 minutes. And so

20:38

now five minutes becomes 30 minutes. So I think

20:41

the Zoom apocalypse that happened in like the

20:44

summer of 2020 was making the phenomenon of

20:48

overhead tax unavoidably visible. Like

20:51

it's like, look, we up these things by

20:53

about 20% and soon all time

20:55

went away for working. And it showed

20:57

how perilous, like how much we pushed that

21:01

tax up almost to the limit. Like before the pandemic, we

21:03

must have already been spending so much of our time just

21:06

talking about work because when it got 20% worse, we couldn't

21:08

ignore it anymore because people were

21:10

writing me and saying, I don't know when to go to the bathroom. It's

21:13

back to back to back to back to back for seven

21:15

hours of Zoom. Like I got so absurd that people

21:17

were like, okay, obviously this can't be right. But

21:19

we were like right below that for years and

21:21

years. So I think it's a huge phenomenon. And

21:23

we really should spend more time thinking about it.

21:26

Yeah. This episode of Deep Dive

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thank you so much, Snipped for sponsoring this episode. One

24:43

of the things that really resonated with me was the

24:45

way you described the rocks analogy. I wonder

24:47

if you can talk a little bit about that. Oh yeah,

24:49

yeah, talking of stereotypical bad time management. I

24:51

mean, okay, I

24:53

feel like a caveat, one or two people

24:55

have explained to me since the book came

24:57

out ways in which it's possible to interpret

24:59

this parallel parable that are

25:01

not so ridiculous, but in

25:04

case anyone doesn't know about it, in

25:07

various different versions, but it's like the teacher

25:09

or somebody like brings in a jar of,

25:12

should I go through this whole thing? Is this so

25:14

well known that this is a waste of valuable? I

25:16

think it's worth going through. I'm not sure it's that.

25:19

It's well known to people like you. Just

25:22

very quickly, I wasn't using it enough. A

25:24

teacher brings a glass jar into a classroom

25:26

with some large rocks, some pebbles

25:29

and some sand and challenges the students

25:31

to fit all of this into the

25:33

glass jar and then the students, because

25:35

they're apparently like really dumb, start

25:37

putting the sand in first and the pebbles in first

25:39

and they find the big rocks won't fit. So the

25:42

teacher says, no, no, no, let me show you how

25:44

to do it. And he says, you put the big

25:46

rocks in first, then you can fit the pebbles and

25:48

then pour the sand in and it all fits. And

25:50

the idea is if

25:52

the big rocks are your major priorities in life,

25:54

you've got to make time for

25:56

those and you can make time for those. And if you

25:58

do make time for those, then

26:00

everything else you can fit in around the edges, but

26:03

if you don't put those first, you'll never get around

26:05

to them at all. And I

26:07

don't think that's a completely meritless point. I just

26:09

want to say that right now, so that the

26:11

estate of Stephen Covey doesn't come in there.

26:14

Excuse me. Like Steve Duber,

26:16

libelous mother. But the

26:19

experiment is plainly rigged, right? It's set

26:21

up, the professor, the teacher, has only

26:23

brought as many big rocks

26:25

in as he knows can ultimately, with

26:27

the right configuration, be made to fit.

26:29

And I think that extending

26:32

this metaphor, that the problem that

26:34

most of us have with time management these days, the

26:36

main one, it's not necessarily

26:38

that we're bad at prioritizing. It's just that there are too many

26:40

big rocks to fit in the jar. In other words, there are

26:42

too many things that totally legitimately

26:44

have a claim on your time. Too

26:47

many people in your life, business

26:49

opportunities, demands from the boss,

26:51

whatever you're setting it, whatever your situation

26:54

is. Like there are just too many

26:56

things that legitimately you could

26:58

use your time on than you have the

27:00

time and stamina available for. So the nature

27:02

of the hard choice involved is different. It's

27:04

not just like, how am I

27:06

going to organize my day? It's like, what

27:08

am I going to neglect? Because I'm, and what important

27:11

things am I going to neglect? Because I am definitely

27:13

going to be neglecting some important things. Yeah, like as

27:15

I was listening to the book, it

27:17

really gave me a lot of reassurance. Because

27:21

again, as a productivity guru, I feel

27:24

like I should have my life in order. And

27:26

when the WhatsApp messages pile up to

27:28

100 plus, I'm like,

27:30

oh my God, relationships are the most important

27:32

thing in life. I'm letting people down by not replying to

27:35

them. And then I spend hours

27:37

replying to all the people. And then responding

27:39

to WhatsApp messages generates more

27:41

WhatsApp messages, similarly to responding to emails, just

27:43

generates more emails. And

27:46

at the same time, I care about the work stuff. I care

27:48

about, I don't know, some sort of impact. I care about spending

27:50

time with my family. And it's like, in the past, part of

27:52

me was just like, you know what, I just really suck at keeping

27:55

in touch with friends and that's okay. And then another part of me

27:57

was like, no, that shouldn't be okay. I

27:59

should use my penicillin. creativity powers to actually focus on the

28:01

thing that's important, like keeping in touch with friends. How

28:04

do you, I guess, knowing that, for example, there are

28:06

too many rocks to fit in the jar, how

28:09

does one go about solving this

28:11

problem? Well, I think

28:14

the most important point there is that

28:16

in a certain sense, you can't, and

28:18

that's the really important point, and this

28:21

is not a despairing message. I think

28:23

it's a really empowering and thrilling message

28:25

in a way. But if

28:27

the challenge, and I saw

28:30

a vibe with what you're saying there

28:32

about feeling that there must

28:34

be a solution and that all these things really

28:36

matter, they do really matter. You don't need to

28:39

persuade yourself that actually some of them don't matter,

28:41

just to get really sort of existential about it.

28:43

I think there is some kind of urge motivating

28:45

that, and it's almost universal, to want to find

28:49

a cheat code for life or

28:52

find a caveat in the contract of

28:54

being human. To

28:57

get on top of everything or in command

28:59

of your time in a way, in a

29:01

certain way, that is just not actually available

29:04

to us as finite creatures. Because we

29:06

have this fundamental mismatch between our capacity

29:08

to think of infinite possibilities

29:11

and feel infinite obligations and

29:14

our finite material short

29:17

lives and limited time.

29:19

So this is like the vague part, and we can totally

29:21

talk about more specific and practical things. But

29:24

I think there's something really powerful in just

29:26

seeing, oh, this isn't a problem

29:28

to be solved. This is just the way things are.

29:30

At the end of life, there will be lots and

29:32

lots of things you didn't get around to doing that

29:35

totally were legit, that there would have been good things

29:37

to do. But that was because you were doing other

29:39

things, hopefully, things that were good things

29:42

to do. And you can sort of relax into

29:44

the discomfort of that a little bit. You can sort of, you

29:46

can feel the anxiety, or anyway,

29:48

it leads to anxiety in me, that

29:51

comes from thinking, well, you mean

29:53

I'm never going to get to this point in my life where I

29:55

have no problems? Or feel, no, it's like,

29:57

no, you're not. And that would be ridiculous, and you wouldn't

29:59

want to. to get there actually, but it's a separate discussion.

30:02

You can sort of factor in, like price

30:05

in to your approach to life that there

30:07

are going to be good relationships that you

30:09

don't nurture, interesting opportunities

30:11

that you don't pursue, great books

30:14

that you don't get to read.

30:17

Once that's, if something like that is completely a

30:19

given, it stops being stressful. We don't beat ourselves up

30:21

for not being able to like jump a mile

30:23

in the air because nobody expects that in the

30:25

first place of human beings. And

30:27

it should be the same for this kind of stuff. And

30:30

once you sort of let this

30:32

whole fantastical edifice crash to the

30:34

ground and you're just standing in

30:36

the rubble, you can be like, okay,

30:38

now I've got this

30:40

many hours today. What would be the

30:42

most meaningful, exciting, high-impact things

30:44

to do? And it's like, it's

30:47

hard and I don't want to imply that I've like totally solved this

30:51

issue either, but I think that is the way forward. What

30:54

sort of tools were you using to

30:56

stay productive before it coalesced into the

30:58

method? That's the right thing. I

31:01

was like a hopeless early adopter. It's like a

31:03

new app. I'd be on it immediately. And sometimes

31:06

it helped me here or sometimes it helped me

31:08

there, but it's, I don't know. I

31:11

mean, you name it, I probably use the

31:14

app. I use the system. I used all

31:16

of it. And what's funny is that I

31:18

learned so much more after I started sharing

31:20

like Boudreaux work, right? People were like,

31:22

oh, have you heard of David Allen? I'm like, no,

31:24

I hadn't. I probably should have at some point, but

31:26

like all these great thinkers in

31:28

the space. And I'm like, okay, what do they

31:31

say about this stuff? And it's

31:33

been really exciting for me because I'm as

31:35

much of a student of all this stuff

31:37

as I am a teacher. And so

31:40

yeah, I continue to use stuff all the time.

31:42

You know, like I love this stuff. It's fun.

31:44

It's like, okay, how do I make more, how

31:47

do I make better use of my time? And

31:49

so what were the dots that connected for you

31:52

to result in that, oh, this is, this is

31:54

the pen and paper based methods that I have

31:56

found the most, most helpful. I haven't, I haven't

31:58

tried these like thousand different. things. Okay,

32:01

so there are a couple things

32:03

there. One is it's not done, which

32:06

is the fun part, right? Like

32:08

here are the, here's the

32:10

minimum viable product. That's kind of what I share

32:12

with people. Like you're the fewest amount of tools

32:15

I found to be successful over the longest period

32:17

of time. Try them on for size and see

32:19

if they work for you. I think

32:23

that I never intended on sharing

32:25

this. So maybe we can approach it from that

32:27

angle. What happened was that people always saw me

32:29

sitting down with a notebook, especially in the assembly

32:32

that's a digital native and working in digital design. People are

32:34

like, you always have a notebook. What are you doing in

32:36

there? I'm like, well, thinking

32:39

that's what I'm doing. I'm trying to figure out stuff,

32:41

drawing, whatever, canvas. And

32:44

then people would be like, well, so how would you

32:46

deal with this problem? Or how would you deal with this

32:48

problem? Or how would you organize this? And I would

32:50

show them like one piece of the methodology or at

32:52

that time, just what I was doing. And I

32:55

found over and over again that no matter

32:57

what their background was, it would be useful,

32:59

especially for people who only did things online. And

33:02

I was like, huh, maybe I should share some of this

33:04

stuff. And that's

33:07

kind of what ended up incentivizing

33:09

me to coalesce everything

33:12

to share it. And so I

33:14

stripped everything out but the most

33:16

helpful tools that had the things that had

33:18

worked over the longest period of time. And

33:20

a lot of that's just about writing

33:23

down your thoughts. That's the core of it. Like

33:25

in bullet journal, you write down three things, the

33:27

things you have to do, the things that you

33:29

experience and the things you don't want to forget.

33:32

And then you come back to

33:34

those things in regular intervals. That's

33:36

the greatly diminished version

33:39

of bullet journaling. It's writing

33:41

things down and reading what you wrote and trying to

33:43

connect the dots over time. So those

33:46

three, three, those three things were writing

33:48

down what you have to do. Tasks,

33:50

events and notes. Tasks, events and notes.

33:54

Okay, yeah, I guess that's kind of what mine looks like as well. Because

33:57

so, I guess you

33:59

must get... this a lot but I like I first

34:02

I mean I'd heard of the method like years

34:04

ago on some random productivity blog or something I

34:06

always thought interesting like hmm I'll file that in

34:09

for later to try at some point and

34:11

then my friend Matt D'Avella did a

34:13

video recently where he tried bullet journaling I was

34:16

like oh okay interesting

34:18

like it's not too

34:20

artsy-fartsy like I sort of imagined it would be

34:22

and then I started watching a few other videos about

34:24

it I was like oh this actually

34:26

is really helpful like I

34:28

need a way to look at my year for

34:30

the whole year because I've got a thing like the problem with

34:32

Google Calendar is that like it forces

34:35

you to think very zoomed in and if you try

34:37

and zoom out like something you can't see anything at

34:39

all because now it's just a little dot on a

34:41

thing and this is like future logs things things great

34:44

oh like months at a glance yeah I'd love that I'll be

34:46

really helpful just being able to see my calendar at glance and

34:48

figure out like you know where where do

34:50

I have blocks in my calendar where I should probably take

34:52

some time off and go on holiday or something and oh

34:55

you know this daily thing of like actually figuring out what

34:57

your most important task is for the day or

35:00

what tasks you have to do I was sort

35:02

of doing a version of that and so I

35:04

we we released our own like stationary line which

35:06

where it's like every day is a page and

35:08

it asks you three things are grateful

35:10

for and I'll see what's your most important task and the

35:12

sort of the might-to-do list things that you might you might

35:14

want to do with like a little brain dump area I'm

35:17

also I'm already kind of using this this

35:19

sort of most important task method let's let's

35:21

try this bullet journal thing and

35:23

then I came across the book and

35:25

I listened to the book on audible and I

35:27

think that might have been a mistake because it

35:30

was like hard to imagine what was going on

35:32

when just listening to it on audible and

35:34

so I think that that's one of the tricky things about

35:37

this because I guess it's it is somewhat

35:39

visual but I guess like with with

35:41

that caveat in mind so like what

35:43

are the like the core principles I guess

35:46

of the methods and obviously

35:48

people will put links to the book which I recommend

35:50

not getting on audible because then you can see what's

35:52

going on when you get it on Kindle

35:54

or in real life it

35:56

really helps to see what's being talked about

35:59

for sure Okay. Tasks,

36:05

events, notes. Tasks, events, and notes.

36:07

So I'm trying to think of a way

36:09

to have a non-visual version

36:11

of describing this. I think the best way to

36:14

think about it is writing

36:16

down your thoughts in a really

36:18

distilled way. So a lot

36:21

of people know how powerful

36:23

journaling can be, right? They hear

36:25

about all the mental health

36:27

benefits that it can have. And I very

36:30

much encourage long-form journaling. But

36:33

it takes a lot of time. Right. And

36:35

a lot of people see it only as an emotional thing,

36:38

right? It's like I journal when I'm confused or when I'm

36:40

sad or when I'm angry. And that can be helpful. And

36:43

then you have bulleted lists, which essentially are

36:45

for very specific things. This is what I

36:47

have to buy. These

36:49

are my goals. These are all these things. So

36:51

bulleted journaling kind of combines the best of both

36:53

worlds, where it helps you

36:56

organize your thoughts as bulleted lists. That's

36:58

one component. There's two parts of

37:00

the bullet journal method, the system and the practice.

37:03

The system is how you organize information. And

37:06

then the practice is more about what you do

37:08

with what you write down. I like to say

37:10

that writing things down is only the beginning. So

37:13

you write down the things that you experience. So

37:15

your events, the things that you don't want

37:17

to forget, which are your notes, and then your

37:20

tasks, things that are actionable. Right?

37:23

Okay. Sorry, please. Go

37:25

ahead. Go's has a different icon

37:27

in front of it. So as

37:29

you're writing things down, you're also

37:31

categorizing your thoughts in real time.

37:35

And the only way to make that sustainable is

37:37

figure out a way to write

37:39

down less. Right? You're really

37:41

trying to focus on what really matters. And that is

37:44

part of the practice, right? You've listened to somebody and

37:46

you're like, it focuses, it

37:48

helps you become an active listener.

37:51

Right? It's like, what about this

37:53

is the takeaway specifically? So you're starting to think

37:56

about what's being said in a very different way,

37:58

because hearing and listening are two. very different

38:00

things. So it's like, what about this is

38:02

important? And then using your

38:04

own words to capture it and that process

38:07

as well, like using your own words helps

38:09

you retain it better and helps you make

38:12

it more personal, all these things. And you're doing this throughout

38:14

the day. So information that's coming from

38:16

the outside being filtered to your brain and then being

38:19

added to your bullet journal. So that's like a

38:21

big part of it capturing things. And

38:24

you record. So the bullet journal method works

38:26

in a cycle, which is record, reflect,

38:29

refine and respond. And

38:31

those are like the four steps. So you record

38:33

by writing things down. Then

38:35

you reflect on the things that you wrote

38:37

down and try to come up with insights

38:40

and different takeaways. And then you take

38:43

action accordingly, right? That's

38:45

essentially what you're trying to do. The bullet journal

38:47

creates both a framework

38:49

for you to organize your information, but also

38:51

how to think about your information and then

38:53

make all that insight actionable. That's the big

38:56

part. Like what do you do with what

38:58

you learn? There's a great story that

39:00

you tell in your new book

39:02

some days today about, I think

39:04

you had a lunch with someone and they were a few minutes

39:06

late, like seven minutes late or something. I wonder

39:09

if you can tell that story because that's one that's

39:11

really, really stuck with me. So

39:14

I always am willing to give fledgling writers 30

39:16

minutes of my time if they will meet me

39:18

in the place that I happen to be. And

39:20

I was in McDonald's that day, which is actually

39:22

one of my favorite places to meet writers. I

39:25

like the sort of tearing away

39:27

of all of what people see as writing, which

39:29

is, you know, I need to be in a

39:31

coffee shop with smooth jazz and a cappuccino. I

39:34

like to put them at a plastic table with

39:37

a lot of noise and and Diet

39:39

Coke. So she met

39:41

me at the McDonald's and she was late. And

39:43

so when she sat down, I said, tell me

39:45

what you're playing, what you doing? And she started describing

39:47

this book, you know, and it sounded

39:50

interesting. Like I was like, this sounds like a good project,

39:52

but I just waited for my moment. And

39:54

then eventually I said, as I always say to writers, I

39:56

say, so how much have you written? And

39:59

so often. almost always the answer is, oh,

40:01

well, I haven't started writing anything yet. And

40:04

then I said to her, I said, well, you were seven minutes

40:06

late today. And she said, I'm sorry, you know,

40:09

she, I'm so sorry. I'm like, no, no, my point was not

40:11

that you were seven minutes late, and I was upset. My

40:13

point was, I used the seven minutes that

40:15

you were late to write some

40:17

sentences. You know, I turned my computer, I

40:19

said, this is what I wrote in the

40:21

seven minutes that you were late, right? She

40:23

was a person who believed she could only

40:25

write in a two hour block, that her

40:27

ideal writing time was like 10 to 12,

40:29

you know, that she needed to be

40:32

in a certain place and a

40:34

certain mind frame, which is so

40:36

often every creative person's belief that

40:38

they only work under certain circumstances,

40:40

ideally. So I reminded her that

40:43

during World War One, there were

40:45

men in trenches wearing gas masks, artillery

40:47

exploding over their heads. And they

40:50

were scribbling in little books in journals,

40:52

hoping that if they survive this battle and

40:54

the many battles that were to come, someday

40:56

they might publish something. So thank goodness that

40:59

the writers of the

41:01

1910s did not require Starbucks smooth

41:03

jazz, and two hour quiet blocks

41:05

of time for them to get

41:07

their work done. Because that's just

41:10

not a reality, especially if

41:12

you actually want to make a thing. If

41:14

you want to do something like a vegetable

41:16

garden in your backyard, or write a book,

41:18

or create a YouTube channel, if you actually

41:20

want to do it, you

41:23

should want to be doing it whenever it's

41:25

possible. So I tell

41:27

all of the creative people of the world,

41:29

10 minutes is precious to you.

41:31

It doesn't mean in 10 minutes, I can write

41:33

a chapter, but you know, in

41:36

10 minutes, I can reread the last three paragraphs

41:38

I wrote earlier today, and see if they're okay

41:40

and clean them up a little bit, or I

41:42

can write five good new sentences. So

41:46

it's just the idea that people,

41:49

they just assume they need

41:51

these ideal situations in

41:53

order to create something lovely.

41:57

You know, whereas like, Van

41:59

Gogh. was like

42:01

mentally unstable and unmedicated and produced

42:03

some of the greatest work in

42:05

the world. But had

42:07

he been living in 2022, people might have said,

42:10

well, let's get control of some of

42:12

your mental illness first. Let's experiment with

42:14

some medication before we get you painting.

42:17

Like it's always this idea that everything has to be

42:19

right before we launch. And that's not true. We should

42:21

just launch. We launch now. We're not the

42:23

space program. We're not putting people into orbit

42:26

where we have to be careful. We just have to take

42:28

steps forward. And as is the case

42:30

with most people, she really wasn't invested in

42:32

writing. She was invested in the idea of

42:34

having written or in the idea

42:37

that I can quit my job and write from

42:39

10 to 12 every day and then have lunch with my

42:41

friends. And that is the writer's life, which is, as

42:43

you well know, not the writer's life. Nice.

42:49

Yeah, I think

42:51

back to that bit of your book, whenever

42:53

I feel like, oh, you know, I

42:55

should probably do some book stuff right now. But I've

42:58

only got 23 minutes until this thing that

43:00

I have to do. And like, oh, you

43:04

know, I could go down. I could get a coffee,

43:06

get a biscuit, just like lounge around a bit. I

43:08

can't get anything done in 23 minutes. I

43:10

need hours and hours, you know, with my

43:12

flat whites in my hat, like my

43:15

Lord of the Rings and my background

43:17

music to get into the zone. But

43:20

I love the way you put that of like,

43:22

in the seven minutes, I wrote some sentences. I'm

43:24

just thinking that I should just have that approach.

43:27

Because like when I

43:29

was working as a doctor and

43:31

trying to do the YouTube thing on the side, I would use

43:33

those seven minutes blocks of time here and there to write

43:36

stuff for videos. Like if I'd be

43:38

on the toilet, instead of scrolling Twitter on my phone, I'd

43:41

be on Notion typing out some stuff for a video. Or

43:43

if I'm waiting eight minutes for a patient's blood results to arrive

43:45

and there's no one else in the waiting room and there's nothing

43:47

for me to do, it's like, great, let's open

43:49

up Notion on the Windows computers in front of me and type

43:52

out a few notes for a video. And

43:54

so many people in my academy asked like, oh,

43:56

but like, I've got a job, like how do

43:58

you do YouTube alongside the job? job. I'm

44:00

always like, like, man, like, there are

44:02

very few jobs where you don't have small, small amounts of

44:05

time here and there where you know what you normally waste

44:07

scrolling on your phone, where if you wanted to,

44:09

and if you really cared about this thing, I'm not saying you have to,

44:11

but if you did, you could potentially spend that

44:13

time opening up Apple Notes and just drafting a few bullet

44:15

points for your next video. And I think I've got that

44:17

approach to YouTube, but I really don't have the approach to

44:19

the book because for the book, I've convinced

44:22

I've talked myself into believing the bullshit that like,

44:24

I need to I need to have four hours

44:26

and like the appropriate coffee cup and all that

44:28

crap. Yeah. Well, I wrote

44:30

my fifth novel, almost all

44:32

of it in faculty meetings while

44:35

teaching. Now, admittedly, it's

44:37

a book of lists. It's a novel written

44:39

by an obsessive list maker. So the book

44:41

is told or the story is told to

44:43

list after list after list after list. But

44:46

I wrote almost all of those lists

44:49

in those moments of a faculty meeting when

44:52

something was being said that was irrelevant to

44:54

me, which was an enormous number of minutes

44:56

in those faculty meetings. Or I

44:58

always arrive five minutes early and I use those

45:00

five minutes. And as things

45:03

are wrapping up or we have a raffle at the

45:05

end of it because that's going to make us happy,

45:07

I'd just be writing lists. And the beauty of that

45:09

was I didn't even need to write on a computer. I

45:11

could have a post-it note that I'm writing a list on

45:13

and that can later be transferred into the computer. I

45:16

wrote a whole book during meetings and,

45:18

you know, I always remind people a

45:20

book is probably about 5,000 sentences. So

45:23

like incrementalism, I write,

45:25

pile up 5,000 sentences and you have a book.

45:27

I can't guarantee that's going to be a good

45:29

book. That depends on you and your effort and

45:31

skill and experience. But

45:34

it's 5,000 sentences. And if I write seven sentences

45:36

here, I am a lot closer to 5,000 than

45:39

I was a minute ago. I really believe that

45:41

that seven sentence step forward is

45:43

a significant one, especially because I know

45:46

I'll do that 23 times today. I'll

45:48

take 23 cents

45:50

in my day to write somewhere between one

45:52

and 50 sentences. And if I just keep

45:54

doing that, you know, that is

45:57

why I have a pile of

45:59

books. And you know, I'm

46:01

a school teacher, you know, I am

46:03

a wedding DJ. I have a consulting

46:05

business. I'm launching another business. I

46:08

do, I'm a minister. I officiate weddings. I'm

46:10

a substitute minister at churches, even though I

46:12

really don't have a lot of faith in

46:14

God. I do all these things and people,

46:16

the reason I wrote my book was because people would ask

46:18

me, how do you do all that you do? And

46:21

I would always say, well, if you give me 12

46:23

hours, I'll sit down with you and I'll go through your whole life and

46:25

I'll help you out. And no one wants to do that. So the book

46:28

was the answer to that question. Um, but

46:30

yeah, same thing with writing is with everything

46:32

else, people get very precious over

46:34

how a creative person works or

46:37

how creativity works, whether that creativity

46:39

is writing a book, painting a

46:41

painting, or figuring out how

46:43

are you gonna, you know, lay out your

46:46

vegetable garden or my son, right? He's

46:48

a fish. He's taken up fishing this summer. He

46:50

loves it. He's obsessed with fishing. And

46:52

you know, he had his tackle box and

46:55

he bought all this gear and I said, all right, when

46:57

you're going to set it up? And he said right now.

46:59

And I said, well, you got to go to bed in

47:01

10 minutes. And he goes, I can get

47:03

some of it done in 10 minutes, dad. And I was like,

47:06

damn, he is right. Like I was going to tell

47:08

him, don't start setting up your tackle box now. Wait for

47:10

the morning. But he was like, no, I'll get some

47:12

of it done. I got 10 minutes before you're going

47:14

to make me brush my teeth. That's

47:16

exactly the attitude you have to have. I've

47:19

been obsessed with productivity for quite a while. Um, I

47:21

found that when I was at, when I was at university going through medical

47:23

school and trying to build my first business on the side, I

47:26

realized that I had to find ways to

47:28

become more productive and ways to

47:30

work harder and work smarter and learn how to study efficiently

47:33

and stuff so that I could have the time to do

47:35

the things that I wanted to do. But

47:37

then university,

47:39

but then when I started working for Thomas, um, that was

47:43

like a step up in terms of like, Oh, you

47:45

know, I didn't think I had free time at university. Now I

47:47

really don't have free time. Cause

47:49

like at university, even even in medical school, going

47:52

into the hospital is kind of optional. You wake up in the morning

47:55

and you're like, tell if I feel like going in today. Um,

47:57

or yeah, I'll go in for a few hours. I'll leave

47:59

it. lunch time and then do my own like,

48:02

when you have a job, that's just

48:04

that's unfeasible, like you have to show up. And so

48:06

all of a sudden, like 10 to 12 hours of

48:08

every single day, which is being blocked up by work.

48:10

And I was trying to grow the YouTube channel on

48:13

the side. And I had

48:15

lots of periods of where I felt

48:17

pretty overwhelmed and pretty stressed by the demand of work

48:20

plus the demand of the YouTube channel. And

48:22

so that was when I was like, Okay, I need to

48:24

change my approach to productivity. That's where the idea of sort

48:26

of feeling good, like positive emotions and stuff landed. Because I

48:28

didn't really want to be in a position where every day

48:31

felt like a green, because I wasn't that mode for a

48:33

while. I was like, Okay, what if

48:36

being productive and like doing the things I wanted to

48:38

do didn't have to come at the expense of my like,

48:40

physical and mental health? What if I

48:42

actually could feel good while also being productive. And

48:45

then I went on this whole like research rabbit hole and

48:47

found that actually feeling good is one of the keys to

48:49

productivity. And actually, the more positive emotion we feel in our

48:51

work, the more productive we become, but also the

48:53

more energy we have to give to the other important things in our

48:55

life. And so to me,

48:57

feel good productivity became this sort of

49:00

like holistic philosophy that I, you know,

49:02

I use every day when I whenever I'm

49:04

doing something, and it feels bad, or

49:06

I feel blocked, or I feel like kind of the negative

49:08

emotions getting in the way. I remember

49:10

I sort of remind myself that, okay, no,

49:12

there are ways to make any situation feel

49:15

better and the way waste experience, the positive emotion

49:17

and everything. And it just means that I

49:19

can flow through life. Well, I'll flip through it

49:21

means I can go through life feeling better

49:23

about the work that I'm doing while also being pretty

49:25

pretty effective at work. And

49:27

it's interesting, I guess, because you have both

49:30

types of experience. So, you know, when

49:32

you were working as a doctor in

49:34

hospital, where, when you're

49:36

dealing with people who are really

49:38

unwell, or really highly stressful situations,

49:40

it must be really hard to

49:42

find the pleasure in that kind of work

49:45

in comparison to, you know, a

49:48

YouTube life and where you can kind of choose

49:50

your hours a bit more or do things that

49:52

you're interested in. So were there

49:54

quite different challenges? Yeah, this

49:57

is the thing. So when I first started started

49:59

working, I I found it very stressful

50:01

in these high stress situations. And

50:04

most of the doctors around me also had

50:06

that approach where there was this sense of

50:08

tension and stress in the air.

50:12

But not everyone was like that. And I had a few seniors who

50:14

I really looked up to who were just like, they

50:16

were really good doctors, but they were also happy. They

50:18

had a smile on their face, they would crack jokes.

50:21

And it kind of helped me realize that actually there is another way. Approaching

50:26

work as if it was really stressful was actually a

50:28

choice that I was making. And

50:30

so I did also make a concerted effort in my

50:32

day job to enjoy the day-to-day a little bit more

50:35

and kind of modeling the doctors that I've seen who would

50:37

have smiles on their face and stuff. So

50:41

it sounds weird, but approaching it with more lightness

50:43

and ease, almost to this I was

50:45

playing a game. Kind of. I

50:47

was not playing a game in the sense of, people's lives

50:49

are at stake. But there was a line from Grey's Anatomy

50:51

that I was on thought about, which is when Derek

50:54

Shepherd, the neurosurgeon, when he started his operation,

50:56

he says, he puts the music on and he

50:58

says to his team, it's

51:00

a beautiful day to save lives, let's have some fun. And

51:03

obviously, that's a fictional drama, but there's something

51:05

about that that even when you're doing neurosurgery,

51:07

even when it's just like life and death

51:09

is in the balance, it can still

51:11

be a beautiful day to save lives. You can still have fun along the

51:14

way. And so much of that I found is

51:16

a choice that we make ourselves rather than a thing that's

51:19

foisted upon us by the environment. Yeah,

51:21

and I guess with any

51:23

job, however difficult or kind

51:25

of emotionally taxing there's

51:28

always something to be

51:30

grateful for or something to

51:32

find in it that we feel

51:35

thankful for or find even the

51:37

slightest pleasure in, I guess. Yeah,

51:39

I think gratitude is a really major part of

51:41

this. The other

51:44

one is, this is the first chapter of

51:46

the book, is the idea of approaching work

51:48

in the spirit of play, where

51:51

yes, even when the thing is really stressful, you can still

51:53

choose to approach it in the spirit of play. And

51:56

there's so many stories of Nobel Prize

51:58

winners who found... the

52:00

key to their productivity and the key to their

52:02

creativity was kind of

52:05

treating it with a little less seriousness and

52:07

heaviness that we tend to approach work with. Even

52:10

when it's heavy and serious like working in medicine

52:12

or being a therapist and things, just

52:15

choosing to approach it with a little bit more lightness and ease. So

52:18

I tried to do that

52:20

when I was in the day job and especially

52:22

now running this business and having a team

52:24

and stuff. Again, a lot of

52:26

people, a lot of business owners I

52:28

know are pretty stressed because of the demands of running

52:31

a business and managing payroll and having all these people

52:33

depend on you. But at the same

52:35

time, it's a bit of a

52:37

game, approaching it in

52:39

the spirit of play. Yeah.

52:41

The idea that joy is the

52:43

most important factor when it comes

52:45

to being productive is that

52:49

at the core of this whole thing. So that's where you start?

52:52

Yeah, sort of. So

52:55

the scientific basis for this is a theory

52:57

called the broaden and build theory. So

53:00

there's this researcher in the early 2000s

53:02

called Barbara Fredrickson who kind

53:05

of coined this theory to basically

53:07

explain the fact that when

53:10

we experience positive emotions, it

53:13

boosts our performance in almost everything. It boosts our

53:15

creativity and it lowers our stress. And her

53:19

theory very loosely is like if

53:21

you imagine back in caveman days, because we're still operating

53:23

with caveman reigns, back in the caveman days, if

53:26

life is good, if you're feeling positive emotions, it

53:28

means that you're not in danger of being eaten

53:30

by a lion, the group is surviving, life is

53:32

good. And so you're more open to exploring

53:34

and you go out into your environment and you forage

53:36

the new stuff and you see if you can make

53:38

some new alliances. Whereas when

53:40

you experience negative emotion like fear or stress

53:43

or anxiety, it's like, oh, my life's in

53:45

danger. A lion could be around the corner.

53:47

And you your entire being contracts and you

53:49

go tunnel vision for survival. And

53:51

when you're in that survival mode, it's a very high stress

53:53

state because the body is literally kind of trying to survive.

53:56

Whereas when you're in that kind of broadened state, it's

53:58

like broadens repertoire of things

54:00

that you can do and it builds

54:03

like resources like alliances and like creativity

54:05

and things like that and

54:07

so that was like a thing that I came

54:10

across in my research where

54:12

I felt that that was

54:14

really the key and so if we can

54:16

experience positive emotions joy in our work

54:19

it just has all of these benefits it generates more

54:21

energy for us and often for a lot

54:23

of us time isn't necessarily the limiting

54:25

factor energy is the limiting factor but

54:28

you know when you when

54:30

you experience joy and positivity in your work you

54:33

end up with boundless energy and you as

54:35

a side effect you become more productive in your work but

54:37

then outside of work you also have way more energy to give to the

54:39

other important things in your life. Yeah

54:41

and it's interesting because you there's

54:44

some sort of literature around that

54:47

idea but in young children so sort of

54:49

that you know if you have a young

54:51

toddler for example and they they are

54:54

in a kind of threat mode and they're so anxious

54:56

and they'll go to their mother to feel safe and

54:58

then once they you know they get that reassurance and

55:00

they feel safe or they receive

55:02

a positive emotion or experience positive emotion from an

55:04

interaction with that mother they'll then go out and

55:07

take more risks and and dive into whatever the

55:09

situation is and play with other children all

55:11

they needed was to feel safe and

55:13

to have a sort of positive emotion and

55:16

then they're ready to go out again and an

55:18

experience so does it sort of help

55:20

with risk-taking and trying new things or

55:22

creativity is all kind of linked

55:25

up. Yeah absolutely no I think that's a great that's a

55:27

great example with the with the kids I wish I thought

55:29

to put that in the book because that's absolutely perfect. Come

55:31

get it.

55:34

We'll do the best. There's just

55:36

so much evidence and so there was the

55:38

first study that really tested this I think was from like the 1980s

55:42

there's this thing called I think it's called

55:44

the Matchbox puzzle. What's

55:46

that effect? Where you give you know to get

55:49

people in a lab and they give them like

55:51

a matchbox and a candle and like

55:54

some like thumbtacks those are things that you

55:57

pins put stuff in the wall and

55:59

you know the challenges, find a way to

56:01

get the candle, to light the candle,

56:03

but without any wax dripping

56:05

onto the floor or something to that effect. This

56:08

is like a classic test of creativity because people who

56:11

are more creative in that moment will discover

56:13

the solution where people who are less creative won't. And

56:15

they found that if you prime people with positive

56:18

emotions, like giving them a Malteser or something just

56:20

before they do the thing, they're way more likely

56:22

to solve the puzzle through creativity. Amazing. And

56:25

so it was that study that was in, I think in

56:27

the 1980s that sort of helped spawn this wave of research

56:29

into how even for adults, positive

56:31

emotions do make us more creative.

56:34

And increasingly in the world that we live

56:36

in, where most people watching or listening to

56:38

this are probably knowledge workers or students of some

56:40

sort, productivity is actually

56:42

more about being creative and thinking

56:45

broader than it is about just like efficiently

56:47

cranking up more and more widgets. So

56:49

I can eat chocolate all the way through my writing. Absolutely,

56:52

yeah. That's the one. It's going to help me with

56:54

my creativity. Absolutely, yeah. The more we feel good, the

56:56

more productive we are. I had a great view of the

56:58

research. Thank

57:27

you.