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

by Ali Abdaal

A Muhammad Ali quote came up a lot: ‘I hated every minute of training, but I said, “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”’

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

It suggested that feeling good doesn’t just end with feeling good. It actually changes our patterns of thought and behaviour.

feeling good boosts our creativity – and our productivity.

Positive emotions are the fuel that drives the engine of human flourishing.

Step one is feeling better. Step two is doing more of what matters to us.

Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.

Play is our first energiser. Life is stressful. Play makes it fun. If we can integrate the spirit of play into our lives, we’ll feel better – and do more too.

Curiosity doesn’t simply make our lives more enjoyable. It also allows us to focus longer.

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.

by emphasising the joy that comes not from the outcome, but the process itself.

All this hints at our final ingredient of play. For play to flourish, we don’t just need to seek out adventure and find fun. We also need to try and create an environment that’s low-stakes and that fosters relaxation.

success isn’t down to how often you fail. It’s about how you frame your failures.

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

try asking yourself, ‘How can I approach this with a little less seriousness, and a little more sincerity?’

Feeling confident about our ability to complete a task makes us feel good when we’re doing it, and helps us do it better.

Believing you can is the first step to making sure you actually can.

confidence isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you learn.

Bandura was fond of pointing out a simple truth about self-efficacy: that the things you say often become the things you believe. As such, the very act of hearing small positive interventions, like ‘You can do it!’ or ‘Nearly there!’, can have a remarkable effect on our self-confidence levels.

‘flipping the confidence switch’; in other words, challenging yourself to behave as if you’re confident in your task, even if you’re not.

‘What would it look like if I were really confident at this?’

‘Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers’ beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed.’

enactive mastery experience refers to the process of learning through doing.

Because the more we do something, the greater our sense of control. We learn. We level up our skills. Our confidence grows. And we empower ourselves.

Shoshin refers to a state of mind in which we approach every task and situation with the curiosity, openness and humility of a beginner.

shoshin can help us approach challenges with a greater sense of curiosity, humility and resilience – and help us to learn.

Qui docet discit – ‘He who teaches learns’.

According to self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation is substantially more powerful than extrinsic motivation. Lasting motivation comes from within.

With this mindset shift – from ‘have to’ to ‘choose to’ – I walked into the patient’s bay with a spring in my step and a smile on my face, ready to help insert the line.

chose to wake up early yesterday’; ‘I chose to eat instant noodles for lunch’; ‘I chose to wake up on my second alarm and move on with my day.’ The other half of the participants were instead asked to just write about three things they did the previous day: ‘I ate breakfast’; ‘I went shopping’; ‘I went to the gym.’ Once

The trick is to deliberately think about the people you’re working alongside as part of your team.

‘Simply feeling as if you’re part of a team of people working on a task makes people more motivated as they take on challenges.’ When the going gets tough, it’s better to have friends to lean on than enemies to lord it over.

It suggests that when we ask someone for help, it’s likely to make them think better of us

So how can we learn to ask for help – in a way that warms people to us, rather than alienates them? Well, there are a few ways. First, we need to get over our reluctance to ask.

Instead, emphasise the positive reasons for why you’re going to that specific person for advice: ‘I saw your work on X, Y, Z and it really had an impact on me. I would love to hear how you did A, B,

When framed correctly, asking for help makes the person you’re asking feel as good as the help makes you feel. If you want to harness the power of the Benjamin Franklin effect, you should do everything you can to ask without any sense of a quid pro quo.

‘When you want to succeed as badly as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.’

The unblock method encourages us to understand why we’re feeling bad about work in the first place.

We’ll learn that usually, procrastination is caused by negative feelings – the inverse of the feel-good energisers we encountered

‘uncertainty paralysis’. It happens when we become overwhelmed by the unknowns or the complexity of a situation, leading to an inability to act. This paralysis prevents us from making progress on tasks, projects or decisions.

we don’t know why we’re embarking on any given project, it’s near impossible to get on with actually doing it.

‘why’ was clear, and that made it possible to work out an alternative ‘

‘What is the purpose behind this?’ And I build my to-do list from there.

You need to remind yourself of this big ‘why’ every day and every hour.

My twist on Toyoda’s method is to use the five whys not only to explain mistakes, but to determine whether a task is worth doing in the first place. Whenever somebody in my team suggests we embark on a new project, I ask ‘why’ five times.

Near-term: Near-term goals ensure that we’re concentrating on the immediate steps we need to take along our journey.

Input-based: Input-based goals emphasise the process, rather than some distant, abstract end-goal.

Controllable: We want to focus on goals that are within our control.

Energising: We’ve already discussed plenty of principles and strategies for making our projects, tasks and chores more energising. Is there a way to integrate play, power and people into the goals you set yourself?

create a trigger: ‘When I get home from work, I will call my mum.’