5 Essential Tips for Long-Lasting Productivity

Key Takeaways

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 to enjoy the journey because when we're having fun with 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 warzone 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 want to be entrepreneurs at the end of the day and there's broadly two ways of answering this question uh 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 muhammad ali 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 want to become like you know world heavyweight boxing champion or if you want to win 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 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 want to 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 ie this work equal 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 all this stuff that people message me about none of it feels like suffering none of it feels like a grind none of it feels like work none of it feels like a hustle and so when my housemate says you know it's 11 o'clock at night like why are you still working it's always a bit surprising because 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 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 lot 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 don't know playing world of warcraft and trying to play songs on the guitar i'm never going to be able to make a living at playing world of warcraft or playing songs on songs on the guitar and if i tried be like you know what i'm going to become one of those 0.01 percent of singer-songwriters who make it big in the world you know the 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 want to 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 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 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 want to 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 said wipe the tea 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 we want to call it is going to 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 oh i'm not being productive enough usually it's because i forgot to have fun and there's a great phrase that the i think 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 going to give it my all but i'm going to recognize that this is a game and i'm going to 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 going to be fun i just remind myself oh yeah this is going to be fun this is fine this is all good i don't need to 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 like 10 years ago gamification it was all about gamification and if you gamified the 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 mouths when they hear it because it just sounds so you know it hogs back to that 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 didn't 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 needed to know and then i would color code them based on how well i knew them and so they would 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 gamifying 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 going to be really really hard tip number three for making stuff more fun is to bring others on board to do it do things with your friends again i've got a story from med school about this so in my fifth year of med school i had a project that i was doing that involved analyzing data from like 2 000 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 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 realized that this is the worst thing ever i'm so unproductive and so unmotivated i can't be bothered to do this thing and what i realized 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 2 000 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 like you know 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 2000 patients we wrote out the paper it got published so we got our names on the 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 just made everything much 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 want to 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's 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 the stuff around me i've got my little fake plant 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 setup and you don't even need to have a fancy ass desk setup for this because when i was in med school and i was broke and 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 you know 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 prides of the caribbean and the marvel stuff and when i 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 or working with music does reduce focus very very slightly because it interferes with some aspects of like you know short-term memory processing but that's fine i don't care i would rather have a bit more fun by listening to music than 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 does 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 you know we can get to a point where 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 up 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 100 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 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 want to access them you can hit the link in the video description and the first thousand people to do that you'll get thirty percent 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 of 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 of mine so three of them around productivity one of them is quite recent it's specifically on productivity for creators it talks about the 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 uh 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 help me 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 like 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