Feel Good Productivity is a very recent but already hugely popular book in the productivity space, written by Ali Abdaal, an immensely popular ex-doctor turned productivity guru, YouTuber, Podcaster, and now the author of this New York Times bestseller. While studying medicine at Cambridge University, Ali started creating videos to help people pass the BMAT medical admissions exams. Since then, his YouTube channel has grown to over 5.7 million subscribers, with numerous productivity, business, finance, and life improvement videos. In this article, I share 10 lessons learned from “Feel Good Productivity – How to Do More of What Matters to You” by Ali Abdaal.
Note: This article contains affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you choose to click through and make a purchase via the linked website. For more information see the Affiliate Disclaimer.
Content of the article
- Why this review of the book Feel Good Productivity
- Who is the book Feel Good Productivity for
- 10 lessons learned from Feel Good Productivity
Why this review of the book Feel Good Productivity
Have you noticed that when you ask someone how they are, they often say “busy”. Have you noticed that when someone asks you how you are, you probably say “busy” quite often? Being busy seems to have become more and more of a glorified lifestyle. But being busy is not the same as being productive, nor is it the same as being effective or efficient, and certainly not automatically the same as being happy.
I think everyone has had the feeling once, twice, or even more in their personal and professional lives of running around on a treadmill and not knowing why, for what purpose, and whether it brings joy, sadness, or exhaustion.
Feel Good Productivity is a guide that offers us tools to give a different twist to how we can look at sometimes unavoidably boring, annoying, and long-winded work and transform this into enjoyable and also satisfying work. Feel Good Productivity also gives us insight into how we can better deal with the prevention of procrastination and gives us insight into the different underlying causes of burnout and how to avoid them or how to get out of them again.
An important change in our lives in the journey from child to adult is that a large part of the important factor of Play disappears and shifts in increasing obligations and responsibilities. But Play is an important component to make and keep these obligations and responsibilities bearable and even pleasant. Play and childish curiosity are a lost force that must be found again to be more productive and happy in what we do as an adult.
“Life is stressful. Play makes it fun.”
Ali Abdaal
You can find Ali Abdaal’s “Feel Good Productivity – How to Do More of What Matters to You” by clicking on the image below or by using the below link (affiliate link):
Go to Ali Abdaal’s book “Feel Good Productivity”
Who is the book Feel Good Productivity for
This book is about mind switching, about looking differently at your personal and professional life and how to deal with your current and future mindset, your current and future way of doing things, and how to give priority at making a normal and maybe stressful life playful again.
In his book, Ali Abdaal says the following about Feel Good Productivity:
“Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.”
So this book is all about the mindset switch that your physical and mental well-being is the foundation for achieving great things and not the other way around.
Feel Good Productivity is a book that will appeal to many professionals who are actively looking to improve their productivity without compromising their mental and physical well-being. It is aimed at people who want to move away from the ad hoc way in which their busy productive lives have taken shape and are looking for a structured way to be productive based on a happiness foundation so that productivity can be enjoyable. The book is an anti-movement of the mentality that to achieve the highest you have to suffer to get there. First of all, you don’t always have to achieve the highest to feel good; secondly, you can achieve higher output and quality without suffering and just by enjoying the process. From extrinsic to intrinsic motivation to do or achieve something is an important mind shift. Intrinsic motivation brings us more joy and brings us more easily to our goal or the desired result.
Feel Good Productivity is for anyone who has a great sense of responsibility and wants to achieve goals, but would like to do and achieve this in a lighter, more enjoyable, more fulfilling way than they have done so far. From stress and frustration to fun and play via Power, Play, and People. The book is also about recognizing signals of burnout, which
The book also discusses recognizing signals and underlying reasons that can lead to burnout and how to deal with them. This topic is close to my heart because I have already missed the signals twice in the last years, and misunderstood what was wrong with me, resulting in real issues. But I have worked hard to understand the signals better, to reorganize my professional life, and to come out of it as a happier and stronger person.
Ali mentions three reasons for burnout. Overexertion burnout: you are doing too much work, Depletion burnout: you are not taking deep rest to recharge energy for mind, body, and spirit, and Misalignment burnout: you are doing things that do not bring you joy or meaning.
10 lessons learned from Feel Good Productivity
There are different ways to review a book. My preferred way is to see in what way the book has an impact on me. So, I like to find some lessons learned from each book I read. Below are my 10 favorite lessons learned from the book “Feel Good Productivity – How to Do More of What Matters to You” by Ali Abdaal and my reasons why.
“Life is stressful. Play makes it fun.”
Ali Abdaal
Judging from the title of the book, this quote is perhaps the most summarizing and sums up the entire book in just a few words. To feel good, happy, proud, and fine and to continue to feel good, it is important to not only deal with the stressful side of adult life and see it as a given and inevitable. Life has stressful elements for everyone. For some more than for others and also more structurally for some than for others. But when we became adults, life also took something away from us that could have been an important counterforce to better cope with the stress: Play. In our earliest years, our parents, grandparents, carers and teachers, and society as a whole, love that we play and have a playful mind and spirit as children. But as we grow into young adults and eventually enter our adult lives, our parents, teachers, society and the world have taught us with increasing pressure that when we grow older, we have to stop playing and take life seriously. But that could be a big mistake. We need an element of Play to be able to continue to see life as an adventure. Play helps us to want to keep trying things, without constantly considering possible consequences and perhaps an outcome that is not economically valuable, but that has brought us a lot of pleasure. Let us try to get the element of Play back into our lives and let us look at the world around us through the eyes of a child, who is still open-minded and curious. This will probably help to create a counterbalance to the stressful life that many of us know.
“Enjoy the Process, Not the Outcome”
Ali Abdaal
I am someone who likes to play board games. I am also someone who does not care at all about winning a game. I enjoy the flow of the game, the interaction with others, and the surprises during the game. I also really like photography, especially landscape photography. Although I am happy if I have been able to take one or two high-quality photos during a holiday or a photo trip that are good enough to hang on the wall, it is the process of planning, preparation, walking, composition, lighting choices, and the right moment of exposure that makes photography fun. Enjoying the process instead of the final result, I can hold for myself against many more activities. I advise you also concerning your activities to focus less on an optimal outcome, but to focus more on the journey, and to enjoy everything you encounter along the way.
“If they can, you can too”
Ali Abdaal
When we talk about the process of learning, there are multiple ways to approach it. In a formal educational concept, learning is synonymous with the teacher-student concept, or the sorcerer-apprentice relationship. Learning formally is something that happens between an educated person and a student, probably in a formal teaching setting. And although I enjoyed my formal university education, I must also admit that in this modern age of YouTube, blogs, online courses, etc., other successful concepts of learning have also emerged, such as studying role models who have already done what you want to achieve, or have gone through the same struggles and can protect you from pitfalls and teach you what works and what doesn’t. Seeing someone do what you want to do gives you the feeling that there are regular people like you who can achieve the results you want to achieve, so gives you the confidence that you can learn the same relatively easily. Do you learn your new programming skills better from a university teacher or someone who has been in the software development business for years and shares their knowledge through accessible videos? I wanted, for example, to learn how to self-publish my first book, and I succeeded by watching a lot of YouTube videos from creators who had just gone before me in the same process. With people who feel from an interest or skill point of view close to you and with whom you feel a certain connection without even knowing them, you are more likely to get the feeling that if they can, you can too.
And don’t forget, if you can, they can too. It works both ways, so you learn from someone and someone else can learn from what you learned.
“You don’t need to be a guru, You can just be a guide.”
Ali Abdaal
When I started my first website RealLinuxUser.com years ago, I already had to work through a lot of insecurities, and self-doubt in my head about my capabilities to go public with my words. I had the idea I had to be an expert first before I was legitimate enough to teach others. There were quite a few bumps in the road that made me doubt and stopped me from starting the website earlier. Then I realized that all my technical struggles, my research and everything I learned during my journey to switch from macOS to Linux could also be of added value to other beginning Linux users. My ideas for articles did not have to be perfect before I could write and publish them. Good enough and helpful enough could already be of added value to the readers of my website. Besides, I noticed that I learned faster from writing down my own experiences, but also from the reactions and questions that I received from my readers based on my articles. Looking back, I could have started my website much earlier and I would have allowed myself to make mistakes, my first articles would have had to be less perfect without feeling guilty and I could have seen all aspects of writing as a learning process. When I later came up with the idea to write a book on the same subject, I had much less anxiety and self-doubt and I just started writing. Because if you never start, you will never grow and get better. This has a strong connection with Ali’s following quote.
“Make a start. You won’t need to get perfect for a long time yet.”
Ali Abdaal
People postpone their plans and dreams because they think they are not good enough yet. But you will improve faster if you just start and learn from overcoming obstacles, your mistakes, and your experiences. I am currently writing my second book about Linux. And my first draft version of my next book does not have to be perfect, because it is precisely a draft to be able to improve it further. Nobody writes a perfect book the first time. But that first draft is an important step to achieve a great end result. And that is why it is so important to just start because starting is the beginning of a period in which you can grow. Without a start, there is also no room yet for growth and improvement, the ingredients to eventually arrive at a very good or perhaps even perfect end result. So do not let fear be a blockage to start, but use the start and the period that follows to slowly let your fear slide away.
“When we can’t take ownership of the situation, we can still take ownership of the process.”
Ali Abdaal
We all have to deal with things that we don’t like doing, that we don’t find very interesting, that we’re not very good at, or in which we have to deal with people who we don’t like. Sometimes it is not possible to avoid certain situations or to control the situation. But even if a situation seems difficult to grasp and malleable because the situation is beyond our control, or because the expected result is fixed, there are very often ways to think of or alternative routes that make the road to that result or how you can deal with the situation much more enjoyable. Some people automate certain tedious tasks, and in doing so, they enjoy the automation itself and are still able to cope with the tedious task. Some of us hate long-winded meetings where we are of less importance to the result but are still expected to attend. What if you use the parts during the meeting where you are not really needed to objectively analyze the way such meetings are planned and executed and maybe come up with suggestions for improvement? You may find this process of analysis and making suggestions for improvement so enjoyable that such meetings suddenly become less boring or even interesting. You have introduced an element of Play for yourself here. There are countless examples where you can give the situation a different twist, make it more interesting, and perhaps even improve it, by taking ownership of the process.
“structure gives you more freedom, not less”
Ali Abdaal
In my work, I often notice how many people are struggling with their daily work because of a lack of proper organization of their work and without proper support of their activities. Of course, we are all a little different and we all benefit from different mindsets and approaches, but I am convinced that structuring our activities benefits us all. Structuring our thoughts, current and upcoming activities, information, and knowledge can make a lot of room for more important things, like space in your calendar, space in your available time, and space in your head. One of my favorite quotes related to this point is:
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them”
David Allen
I try to bring structure into my productive life through, among other things, the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology by David Allen, and Building A Second Brain (BASB) by Tiago Forte.
According to David Allen, GTD is based on “Five clear steps that apply order to chaos” (Capture, Clarify, Organize, Reflect, Engage), which can help to go from idea to result.
The BASB methodology goes further and is a personal knowledge management system designed to set up a dynamic and interrelated administration of notes of everything you need and want to remember in such a way that it simplifies your current and future creative and productive life, and frees your first brain from overload, overwhelm and anxieties. BASB is based on 4 basic steps: Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express.
Read more in my article “How BASB, GTD, and Scrum help me to manage my productive life“.
“You can focus on the small losses. Or you can celebrate the small wins.”
Ali Abdaal
As humans, we are often good at looking at everything that goes wrong, especially if we are the cause of it ourselves. By focusing on all the mistakes we have made, or even simpler on everything we wanted to do today but couldn’t, we lose sight of the small wins. Years ago, as a manager, I had a team member who struggled with this enormously. She would figuratively beat herself up if she didn’t achieve her goals for the day and she had a hard time letting go of that. We then discussed an approach together where at the end of each workday she wrote down 5 successful points, no matter how small they were. By paying more attention to what also went well, everything that didn’t work out or had to be postponed got less attention and the focus shifted more to the positive aspects of a day’s work. Enjoy what you have achieved, because you really do beautiful things every day that also deserve some positive attention.
“Breaks aren’t a special treat. They’re an absolute necessity.”
Ali Abdaal
Very often we forget as humans that we are not robots that can continue indefinitely at the same level of effort and attention and that our body and mind cannot do without regular and structured rest. A friend of mine sometimes says that a power nap works wonders and that he can then take on the world again. I also know that feeling myself sometimes, that closing your eyes for 5 minutes can help enormously to get through the rest of the day. But unfortunately, I have already experienced twice in person that there are situations in which a power nap is no longer enough and that neglecting yourself can lead to serious burnout and depression. A good night’s sleep, structurally letting go of your productive efforts, mindfulness, meditation in whatever form, but especially a structured sleeping pattern, is of great importance for your feel good productivity in the long term, but especially for your feel good life.
“By doing less today, you can do more of what matters to you tomorrow.”
Ali Abdaal
Do you also know that feeling, that you want to use your time productively every day and that you always need to deliver some productive progress? And what happens then if you don’t succeed one day, and you find out at the end of the day that you have been procrastinating and that you have not delivered any added value… probably an enormous sense of guilt and self-criticism. If you are driven, you may also know this feeling, but the book teaches us not to beat ourselves up because when we occasionally miss a productive day. If you would rather play games, binge-watch a bit, or do whatever is not directly related to your productivity for a day or some hours, just do it, without feeling guilty. You absolutely need these kinds of moments of doing a little less or doing nothing useful at all as well. The great thing about this is that you will probably be much more productive the next day than you could imagine, precisely because of a necessary break from your daily productivity.
Final words
These were my 10 favorite quotes from Ali Abdaal’s book Feel Good Productivity, and my reasoning for why I chose those quotes. I found Feel Good Productivity to be a refreshing book that presents a serious subject in a light-hearted way. The book shares personal experiences in combination with scientific evidence. It provides insight into how you can look at your productive life differently, how you can recognize disturbing signals, and how you can give an alternative meaning to a path already taken, or choose a different path. Ali is a very enthusiastic speaker as a YouTuber and this same vibe is reflected in his book. Despite his often playful enthusiasm, it is clear how passionate Ali is about the subject of Productivity, how much experience he has, how much knowledge he has, and how he knows how to share this with us in an accessible way. Feel Good Productivity is a must-read in the Productivity space.
