Ali Abdaal's book Feel Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You, published in 2023, addresses a question concerning how to ensure long-term productivity.
Abdaal, a physician by profession, opens his book by sharing his story, which began. At the same time, he was a young doctor in the emergency room, and how he quickly understood that diligence and hard work alone are not enough. This realization eventually led to a career change and to spreading ideas that he believes can truly make us more productive, and in doing so - as the book's title suggests - also feel better about ourselves.
The organizing principle relies on positive psychology and its effects on us and Abdaal's perception that feeling good leads to success, not the other way around (we don't feel good long-term just because we succeeded).
The book is structured in three clusters:
Energizing ourselves
Removing barriers
Long-term sustainability
It seems that everyone can learn something from this book to improve their productivity. The book is worth reading to fully understand the action methods and translate the ideas into action and success.
Energizing ourselves
Three main tools help people create the energies that promote productivity: Play, Personal Power, and People:
Play
Participating in enjoyable and relaxing activities recharges us. Play allows us to deal more effectively with a world characterized by tensions. It enables us to take on different roles, activate our imagination, and have pleasant experiences.
How to play?
Ideas:
Characters: Occasionally adopt different roles (collector, storyteller, researcher, creator, etc.) while performing routine tasks, naturally according to the task's nature and what could be relevant and fun.
Curiosity: Develop a curious trait and behavior regarding our activities.
Humor: Search for opportunities to laugh more within and alongside work.
Reminder note: Attach a Post-it note to your workstation reminding you to look for tools that create fun, such as playing pleasant music that makes you happy.
Process focus: Focusing on the process rather than the product gives us more opportunities to enjoy the journey. Focus on the process.
Safe environment: Creating a safe environment that allows for failures and positioning them as experiences and learning opportunities will lead to more enjoyment and less tension in the work.
Personal Power
Personal power is the inner strength that allows us to push forward repeatedly.
How to promote it?
Ideas:
Self-belief: Belief in our ability to succeed; this belief can be developed and is not an "innate trait."
Support from the immediate environment: The people around us can help strengthen our capability and self-belief. This reinforcement can be active or come as a personal example—if they can do it, so can you.
Action: Taking action gives us a sense of control over the situation, thus strengthening our power.
Being inexperienced: Inexperienced people have lower expectations for success and, therefore, to some extent, are more free to experiment, fall, try again, and succeed, thereby building our capabilities and power. The self-perception present in everything we face, a new perspective, allows us to approach it without fear, even if we don't succeed, and will help build our self-belief.
Teaching others: When we learn or act and teach others a particular skill, we strengthen our ability and self-belief in this context and in general.
Taking responsibility: Research shows that taking responsibility for any area strengthens people's feelings about their power to act. Even when it is not possible, take responsibility for your state of mind.
Choice: Think of it as "I choose to do" rather than "I have to do."
People
The people around us are a significant factor affecting our mood and feelings.
Here are several ideas on how to ensure we're surrounded by people who will charge us with energy:
Teamwork: A way of thinking where task division reflects mutual consideration; everyone feels success is shared.
Synchronicity: A high level of synchronization causes everyone to want to support each other.
Supporting others: When we give - we receive no less; regular and random acts of kindness and generosity.
Asking for help: Asking others for help. Often, beyond receiving help, it improves others' feelings toward you.
Rich communication: Abundant communication with others.
Positive discourse: More discourse about the positive and less about the negative. Sensitive and empathetic communication of negative news.
Honesty: Being open-hearted with others.
Removing barriers
Sometimes, filling ourselves with energy and a smile is not enough. To succeed in moving forward, we need to remove internal barriers. Abdaal addresses a problem that many experience: procrastination when initiating tasks. He suggests three main recommendations to deal with this barrier: seek clarity, find sources of courage, and start.
Seek Clarity
A sense of uncertainty creates fog. Therefore, seeking clarity in a situation can remove the barrier that prevents us from starting.
Seeking clarity is a way of understanding the source of the apprehensive feeling surrounding us. Abdaal suggests acting in several steps:
High-level perception:
Understanding how to progress at a high level by answering three key questions:
What deeper meaning do you want to serve?
What is the end state you want to reach?
What are the key tasks to perform?
5 WHYS Questions:
Understand the root cause of the lack of clarity using the 5 WHYS method, which asks why (five levels deep).
The "What" Questions:
Define what needs to be done to succeed in moving forward against the root causes holding you back above.
Setting NICE goals:
Near Term
Input Based (not outcome-based)
Controllable
Energizing
Imagine what success will look like.
Set times for execution as part of your calendar or about other tasks you're performing.
Find Courage
Understand that postponement can stem from concern or fear, not a lack of talent or ability. Acknowledge your worries; awareness is an important coping tool.
Reduce fears, for example, by asking yourself whether failure will matter only in ten minutes, ten weeks, or even years ahead.
Start small; every small beginning will give a sense of courage.
Find a way to cope with fears that cannot be eliminated.
Start
The initial energy to start an activity is enormous. Once you start - it's easier to continue.
Ideas that can help:
Reduce environmental friction: Follow the known method (see the Heath brothers' book SWITCH >> and Thaler's book Nudge >>). Know how to integrate the new task into your routinely performing functions. Make the new task the default, not a decision to be made.
Reduce emotional friction: Commit to working on the task for only 5 minutes each time. This will reduce emotional friction and, in any case, help you get into the work effectively.
Practicality: Define precise tasks you will do; define the next step each time.
Progress: Measure the progress following the investments you've begun to make.
Partner: Look for a partner with whom you can act in parallel or talk about the activity.
Forgive yourself: Forgive yourself when you fail to dedicate the time; don't decide to give up entirely.
Celebrate: Don't focus on small failures; celebrate victories and successes, no matter how small.
Long-term sustainability
Sometimes, you're in the flow and productive, but your productivity gradually diminishes. What should you do?
Maintaining Productivity
Sometimes, we feel burned out. How do we prevent burnout and manage to maintain productivity over time?
Here are some ideas on how to maintain productivity:
Do less: Conserve your energy and do less to succeed more. Don't commit to every dream you have; prioritize what to handle at any given time.
Learn to say no: Don't answer every request positively. If it's not worth doing - don't do it.
Avoid distractions: Learn to resist factors that distract us from the task.
Manage multiple tasks: A single task can be draining, and switching between many tasks can cause a lack of focus and a loss of performance ability. Find a reasonable balance that suits you, according to your personality and the nature of the functions.
Take breaks: Take breaks during the workday. Find time to do nothing. Put the breaks in your calendar to ensure they happen.
Positive distraction: Sometimes procrastination can be a positive distraction, allowing us to "let things sink in," rest to gain new energy, or reduce barriers that diminish with time. Know how to contain these, too, without going to either extreme.
Recharge Yourself
Recharge yourself by:
Take on projects where you emphasize your abilities, have freedom of action, and feel comfortable.
Ensure you have enjoyable hobbies; dedicate time to them, but don't turn hobbies into work.
Enjoy nature. Nature has a calming effect that recharges batteries.
Go for a walk, even in the middle or end of the day.
Do activities that don't require mental effort (yes - even television).
Allow your mind to wander.
Do nothing.
Tune Yourself
Receive from the environment, not just from yourself. Combine external motivation factors with your internal motivation factors. Align tasks and methods of action with behaviors and tasks related to something important to you.
Ideas:
Short term:
Incorporate tasks related to life dimensions into your routine:
Your health: body, mind, soul
Your relationships: friends, partnership, family
Your work: meaning, money, growth.
Start small. Monitor activity to ensure execution.
Medium-term:
Plan where to invest in all life dimensions mentioned above.
Once a year, stop, examine progress, and celebrate successes.
Long term:
Think about long-term meaning, and draw energy from there to charge the medium and short term.
Summary
Productivity is a more complex idea than diligence and hard work; it isn't primarily a product of self-discipline and persistence. Listening to ourselves, feeling good about ourselves, and helping ourselves start and persist will take us much further. Many ideas were presented in the book, but these are just ideas. Everyone must listen to themselves, recognize what suits them, and find their toolkit to help them. It's recommended to rely on the principles presented; of course, it's OK to use any idea raised. And it's OK not to.
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