Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You

by Ali Abdaal

‘If the treatment isn’t working, question the diagnosis.’

By adding a side quest to your day, you create space for curiosity, exploration and playfulness – and could discover something amazing and totally unexpected along the way.

‘What would this look like if it were fun?’ has now become a guiding question in my life. And it’s surprisingly easy to draw upon. Think of a task that you don’t want to do right now, and ask what would it look like if it were fun? Could you do it in a different way? Could you add music, or a sense of humour, or get creative? What if you set out to do the task with friends, or promised yourself a treat at the end of the process? Is there a way to make this draining process a little more enjoyable?

According to the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced ‘chick-sent-me-hi’), the biggest difference between climbing and, say, football, is that most climbers are completely immersed in the process (climbing the wall) rather than the end result (winning the game). The pioneer of the study of ‘flow’ – that state in which we’re so immersed in a task that the rest of the world seems to melt away – Csikszentmihalyi first developed his theories while watching climbers in the Alps as a teenager. Csikszentmihalyi argued that if we can we learn to focus on the process, rather than the outcome, we’re substantially more likely to enjoy a task.

No failure is ever just a failure. It’s an invitation to try something new.