- All right,
so, the truth about productivity
is that it's not really about the apps,
it's not really about having a perfect system
or about being disciplined
or motivated more than anyone else.
Those things do help
but what I've realized over the last few months
is that there is actually a hidden secret
to productivity and fulfillment.
So grab a cup of tea and we can talk about it.
As you may or may not know
I am in the middle of writing a book
and it's a book about productivity.
And so I've been thinking a lot over the last few months
about like, what does productivity actually mean to me?
And the main insight that I've realized
is that productivity, to be honest
isn't really about getting more things done,
it's mostly about learning joy the journey
because when we're having fun,
we're doing the things that we're doing
then productivity kind of just takes care of itself.
And this is kind of obvious, right?
Like, you know, when we're doing stuff that we enjoy
when we're hanging out with friends or watching Netflix
or playing video games,
we're never worried about our productivity,
we're never worried about motivation.
We never say
I need to be motivated to watch this next episode
of Netflix or to play "War Zone" with the boys.
We only really need motivation
in inverted commas for the things
that are like short-term painful for long-term gain.
And we as humans, we are absolutely terrible
at motivating ourselves to do things
in service to our future selves
because we're all obsessed with instant gratification.
And so the conundrum that we're dealing with
is how do we make ourselves do things
that are short-term painful in service to our future selves?
How do we make ourselves?
How do we motivate ourselves to be productive,
to sit down and learn to code,
or to do our homework assignment
or to work on that side project
after we've come home from a hard day of work
because we know we wanna be entrepreneurs
at the end of the day?
And there's broadly two ways of answering this question:
The first one is something that I call
the Muhammad Ali method.
This is called the Muhammad Ali method
because Muhammad Ali famous boxer,
has this famous quote where he said something like,
"I hated every minute of training,
"but I said don't quit.
"Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."
And my middle is amazing
everyone loves him and all that stuff obviously.
But I think this approach
to work as like work equals suffering
that's an approach that I'm not really a fan of
and maybe that's what you need
if you wanna become like, you know,
world heavyweight boxing champion
or if you wanna win gold at the Olympics.
But you know, if I think about what I want from my life
it's not to be the best in the world at anything,
it's not to win a gold medal
or a Nobel prize or to be a boxing champion,
the thing that I want from my life,
which I think is true for a lot of us
is that I wanna live a nice balanced life
where I'm having fun,
working on things that I enjoy,
doing things that contribute a bit to the world
and not really being overly concerned
with like trying to be the best
or trying to compete with other people.
And so I think the problem
with this Muhammad Ali approach to life
i.e this work equals suffering approach to life
is that it kind of glorifies the hustle
and glorifies the grind that you need to suffer,
this needs to be painful and if it's painful,
it's because you're doing it right
and if you're not doing it
it's because you can't stand the pain.
And obviously that's a huge oversimplification
and I'm sure his stance on this is actually more nuanced.
But when I think of like my own life over the last 15 years
and how I do things like YouTube channel, entrepreneurship,
medical school, being a doctor podcast,
all this stuff that people messaged me about
none of it feels like suffering.
None of it feels like a grind.
None of it feels like work.
None if it feels like a hustle.
And so one of my housemates says,
"It's 11 o'clock at night,
"like, why are you still working?"
It's always a bit surprising
'cause it really doesn't like,
genuinely doesn't feel like work because it's actually fun.
And that begs the question that well, okay,
how do we actually enjoy the things that we're doing?
I'm glad you asked because
there's, again, two broad ways of tackling this.
The first one is the one that like
books and stuff will tell you,
which is that find your passion
and do the things that you enjoy.
That's like one way of doing it.
The problem with that type of thinking
the whole find your passion and do what you enjoy
is that a lots of us don't know what our passion is.
It's like, you know, I don't know what my passion is.
What am I passionate about
who knows?
Secondly, the things I'm passionate about,
like I dunno playing "World of Warcraft"
and trying to play songs on the guitar.
I'm never gonna be able to make a living
at playing "World of Warcraft"
or playing all the songs on the guitar.
And if I tried, I'd be like, you know what?
I'm gonna become one of those 0.01%
of single song writers who make it big in the world.
You know, the deck is stacked against me,
the odds are stacked against me.
And the third problem with this whole narrative
of find your passion and do what you love
and all that kind of crap is that it doesn't recognize
that we do often have to do things that we don't wanna do.
Like unless you're born with a silver spoon up your behind
you probably don't have the freedom to just quit your job
and follow your passion.
Your put your passion is art, great.
Don't worry about working
just become an artist full time.
Most of us don't have that level of privilege
where we can just quit our jobs and follow our passion.
And so when we're trying to answer this question
of how do we enjoy the journey,
how do we have fun?
That approach of like pick the fun things to work on,
I don't think that works for most people.
I think there is a second approach
and that's the one that I've been using
most of my life.
The second approach is actually instead of
doing the things you enjoy
learning to enjoy the things that you're doing,
and this approach is great
because it doesn't rely on any level of privilege,
it doesn't rely on your external circumstances.
All it relies on
is like using a few mindset shifts
and using a few like environmental tricks
and using a few tips and techniques and hacks
to make ourselves or rather to encourage ourselves
to enjoy more of the things that we're doing.
And so genuinely, that's the true secret of productivity
if you can learn to enjoy the journey,
if you can learn to have fun journey before destination
then productivity takes care of itself.
And so I wanna share five or so techniques
that I found really helpful in my life
over the last 10 years
that helped me enjoy the journey a little bit more.
Tip number one, and I've just spilled some tea,
so as I wipe the tea, take tip number one
is a mindset shift.
And that's just having the mindset
that the thing that we're doing or the work
or whatever you wanna call it is gonna be fun.
This is like absolutely game-changing;
anytime I've had a situation in my life
where I felt stressed or I felt unmotivated
or I felt like, ugh, I'm not being productive enough,
usually it's because I forgot to have fun.
And there's a great phrase
that the philosopher Alan Watts used
which is about approaching things sincerely
versus approaching things seriously.
And I often find myself approaching things too seriously,
like, you know, it's no fun playing a game
with someone who's taking it too seriously.
And so when I remember to have fun
I switched to approaching things sincerely
like I'm still gonna give it my all
but I'm gonna recognize that this is a game
and I'm gonna try and enjoy myself while I'm doing it.
In fact, I even have a post-it note
attached to my computer monitor at all times
that says this is going to be fun.
And anytime I find my, you know,
I just, I'm looking around and I catch a glimpse
of that post-it note, this is gonna be fun.
I just remind myself, oh yeah, this is gonna be fun.
This is fine.
This is all good.
I don't need to feel that work is suffering,
I can just treat it as a game and have fun along the way.
Tip number two is all about turning things into a game.
Now, this used to be a very popular
like corporate speak thing back in the day
I think about 10 years ago,
gamification, is all about gamification.
And if you gamified you workplace
then the employees would be more motivated
and more productive.
And so the word gamification,
a lot of people now like vom a little bit in their mouth
when they hear it
because it just sounds so, you know,
it harks back to that era.
But I think gamification
is actually like absolutely game changing.
So for example, when I was going through medical school
in my first year of med school, I really, really struggled
because I had the mindset of this is supposed to be hard.
And I just didn't have the thought
like I could treat this as a game,
but in my second year of medical school
I started treating things more as a game.
And so when I would make my revision timetables
I'd kind of write down all the subjects I need just to know
and then I would color code them
based on how well I knew them.
And so they would all start off as red
and then as I got better at them, they'd go yellow,
and then they go green.
And just that kind of color coding
helped me think of it more as a game.
And so when I'd be studying,
I'd be looking forward to testing myself with active recall
and then I'd be looking forward
to that box on my Google sheet turning green,
and just that added element of a game of finding the process
made it so much more fun to study
and it also helped me get a first class degree
in my second year exams,
which I hadn't done in my first year
when I thought things were gonna be really, really hard.
Tip number three for making stuff more fun
is to bring others on board,
is to do things with your friends.
Again, I've got a story for med school about this.
So in my fifth year of med school,
I had a project that I was doing
that involves analyzing data from like 2000 patient records
and manually going through them
on the electronic patient record system
in order to like tease out some things around,
you know what medication they were on
and what their results of an ultrasound scan were,
the details are kind of irrelevant.
The point is this was a lot of mind numbingly,
boring dull grunt work, having to go through a spreadsheet.
And it didn't really require any like special knowledge
on my part other than a cursory knowledge of medicine
to know what sort of things I was looking for.
And so I tried doing like a few dozens of patients
by myself and realize that this is the worst thing ever,
I'm so unproductive, I'm so unmotivated
I can't be bothered to do this thing
I wanna realize I could do
is I could bring friends on board.
So I had some friends who I had like five friends
in the year below, and I recruited them into this project.
I said to them, "All right, guys
"we've got these 2000 patients to get through.
"We'll split the workload up five ways.
"So we do 400 patients each or 300 patients each,"
or whatever it was.
"And then we'll all get our names
"on the paper that we ultimately try and publish
"out of this thing."
And so in one evening we just managed to get this done.
We went to the medical school library
sat in the computer room, the five, six of us.
We ordered pizza.
We had a bit of takeaway.
We had donuts from the hospital canteen,
and we just banged out these, this work over the space
of about four hours and genuinely was quite fun.
We had music in the background
it was good times all around.
And so we go through all 2,000 patients
we wrote on the paper, it got published,
so we got our names on a publication
and that paper even ended up getting presented
at a conference in Singapore,
where I flew with some other friends
and we presented it there
and it was really cool.
And all that happened,
I think if I'd been doing it myself
if I hadn't just taken that extra step
to get other people on board,
this project wouldn't have happened
and I wouldn't have had so many CV points
and I wouldn't have had a free trip to Singapore.
And so the general tip here is that like think about
whatever you're doing,
think about how you can do it with other people.
You know, when I was in med school, again,
studying for exams, but with friends around me
it just made everything much more fun.
And there are all sorts of aspects of our lives
in which we can apply this principle.
Tip number four is to actually really think
about setting the appropriate stage
for our productivity in service of this thing of like
we wanna be trying to have more fun.
And so for me, I often think about like the tools
and the environment around me as making something more fun.
So for example, if I have a nice little teapot it's in blue
blue is my favorite color, and this coral mug
this is kind of nice.
I've got my MacBook here.
I've got a little sleeve on it, case thing,
this whole aesthetic makes me really enjoy
for example, if I was studying for an exam
or if I was kind of working on a video script.
Sitting on here, it would be quite fun.
I'm quite enjoying making this video
because you know I've got this stuff around me,
I've got my little fake plants.
The environment around me is like I've designed in a way
that appeals to my personal aesthetic sensibilities
and therefore, whatever I do in this environment
automatically becomes more fun.
This is the same principle behind why
I like to have a fancy-ass desk set up
and you don't even need to have a fancy-ass desk
set up for this 'cause when I was in med school
and I was broken, I had no money,
I still put in time and effort to thinking, okay,
how do I arrange my books and my laptop on my desk?
And like add this little plant.
How do I arrange it in a way that makes me feel good inside?
Because when it comes to studying for my exams
if I'm in my room and I'm on my desk, I'm doing it,
I just have more fun when the environment is more aesthetic
and more nice.
Other things around this is working with music.
I have a "Study With Me" playlist on Spotify
that has instrumental music
from like the "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter"
and "Pirates of the Caribbean" and the "Marvel" stuff.
I wanna have that playing on the speakers
or through my headphones, it makes the work more fun.
And yes, according to the evidence,
studying with music working with music
does reduce focus very, very slightly
because it interferes with some aspects of like,
short term memory processing but that's fine.
I don't care.
I would rather have a bit more fun by listening to music
then squeeze out a little bit of extra productivity
by working in complete silence.
And so the tip here is that if you're worried
about your productivity or about motivation or whatever
just think about the environment that you're in
and ask yourself, does it like,
is that an environment that appeals to your aesthetics
is it conducive towards having fun?
Because if it's conducive
to enjoying the process, enjoying the journey,
then you'll automatically magically become more productive.
And tip number five is kind of if we're thinking ahead,
like we can get to a point we're very good
at talking ourselves and tricking ourselves into having fun,
we're doing the things that we're doing,
you know, bringing friends on board,
changing the environment,
the mindset and like a load of other things
that I haven't talked about in this video.
But we've got to ask ourselves at some point
are we actually even working on the right things?
Because if you have a job that feels ultimately meaningless
then there's only so much hacking that you can do
to make yourself enjoy it.
But the fact that it's ultimately meaningless
will come back to bite you and you'll be unfulfilled
because the job is ultimately meaningless.
And this question of meaning is like a really important part
of productivity because you know, there's very little point
in driving a hundred miles per hour
if you find yourself driving in the wrong direction.
There's another metaphor I like which is that
there's no point climbing up a ladder
if the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
And so the question becomes
how do we find the things that are meaningful to us
that feel worth pursuing?
Honestly, I don't have the answers
but there are lots of exercises that I found really helpful
for thinking about the question
around how do we figure out what's meaningful to us?
And I talk about quite a lot of these in my online classes
around productivity that are hosted on Skillshare
who are very kindly sponsoring this video
at the moment I've got four classes
related to the idea of productivity
meaning fulfillment, enjoyment, all of that sort of stuff.
And if you wanna access them
you can hit the link in the video description
and the first thousand people to do that
you'll get 30% off the Annual Skillshare Premium Membership.
Even if you've already used up your Skillshare free trial
you can still use this.
And other than all my classes on Skillshare
there's also thousands and thousands of more classes
on creativity and cooking
and interior design and all sorts of cool stuff.
But the ones that you should definitely check out first
are mine.
So three of them are on productivity,
one of them is quite recent
it's specifically on productivity for creators.
It talks about my secrets to productivity
for doing things like this YouTube channel.
And I've even got a one hour class
that we recorded through Skillshare live,
where I was giving I think three exercises
for how I personally find things that are meaningful
and fulfilling to me.
Again, I'm not saying I have the answers for this,
but like these exercises genuinely helped me
to make sure that the stuff I'm working on
feels like it has a purpose
and that also contributes to my productivity
and enjoyment of life in a nice way.
So hit the link in the video description
to get 30% off the Annual Skillshare Premium Membership.
And thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
And if you liked this video,
you might like to check out the video over here,
which is all about how I'm figuring out
what to do with my life
and how I'm trying to find ways to do stuff
that's meaningful and fulfilling.
So thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye-bye.