I WAS WRONG - The Real Secret of Productivity (1)
- 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
