I WAS WRONG - The Real Secret of Productivity (2)
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.
