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

by Ali Abdaal

An approach that focused on my wellbeing first, and used that wellbeing to drive my focus and motivation second. An approach I would come to refer to as feel-good productivity.

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

It showed that when we’re in a positive mood, we tend to consider a broader range of actions, be more open to new experiences, and better integrate the information we receive. In other words, feeling good boosts our creativity – and our productivity.

According to the broaden-and-build theory, positive emotions ‘broaden’ our awareness and ‘build’ our cognitive and social resources. Broaden refers to the immediate effect of positive emotions: when we’re feeling good, our minds open up, we take in more information, and we see more possibilities around us.

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.

Second, feeling good reduces our stress.

This is the ‘undoing hypothesis’: that positive emotions can ‘undo’ the effects of stress and other negative emotions. If stress is the problem, then feeling good might just be the solution.

Because third, feeling good enriches your life.

Does success, as we’re often told, make us happier – or could it be the other way round?

Put simply: success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.

Feel-good productivity is a simple method. But it changes everything. It shows that if you’ve ever felt underwater, you don’t have to settle for staying afloat. You can learn how to swim. Let’s dive in.

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.

CREATE AN ADVENTURE

Choose Your Character

Rather, it means identifying the type of play that most resonates with who you are, so you can choose a type of player to embody.

Reflect on which of these characters you identify with most, and try to approach your work as if you are that character.

Embrace Your Curiosity

their neurological activity was quite different when they were asked a question they were curious about: they seemed to receive a hit of dopamine. Dopamine is one of our feel-good hormones, and it also activates the part of the brain responsible for learning and forming memories. So for the study participants, engaging with their curiosity made them feel good – and they in turn became better at retaining information.

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

Csikszentmihalyi argued that if we can learn to focus on the process, rather than the outcome, we’re substantially more likely to enjoy a task.

But what if you find yourself in altogether more mundane, or even unpleasant, situations? Arguably, this is where the power of focusing on the process becomes even more powerful. Because with a little creative thinking, you can find joy in any process, however mundane it might seem.

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. And we can start to do that by reappraising how we think about failure.

that success isn’t down to how often you fail. It’s about how you frame your failures. In a talk where he shared the findings of this experiment, Rober asks: ‘If we could just frame our learning process so that we weren’t so concerned with failure, how much more could we learn? How much more could we succeed?’ Rober knew that getting a computer programme to work invariably requires a process of trying, failing and trying again. These supposed failures are not really failures, they’re ‘data points’ that we need to figure out how to succeed.

wouldn’t be a ‘failure’ or a ‘waste of time’; it’d just be another data point to help you realise that that’s not what you want.

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

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

If you were approaching a difficult project at work sincerely rather than seriously, you might focus on the process of completing each task, rather than becoming fixated on the end result. You might also seek out the input and collaboration of others, rather than trying to tackle the project on your own. By doing these things, you may find that it’s easier to approach it in the spirit of play, and that you’re better able to stay focused and motivated throughout.

personal empowerment: the sense that your job is in your control, your life is in your hands, and that decisions about your future are yours alone. This power isn’t something that we exert on others; it’s something we feel, the energy that makes us want to shout from the rooftops: ‘I can do it!’

Power is our second energiser; a crucial ingredient in feeling good and being productive. And best of all, it’s not something you seize from others – it’s something you create for yourself.

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

that self-efficacy is easy to teach. After decades of research, he concluded that confidence isn’t something you’re born with; it’s something you learn.

a few simple tools that can have a transformative impact on self-efficacy. Take the power of verbal persuasion.

that the things you say often become the things you believe.

‘What would it look like if I were really confident at this? What would it look like if I approached this task feeling confident that I could do it?’

the ‘vicarious mastery experience’. This is when you witness or hear about someone else’s performance related to a task that you’re going to undertake yourself. You see other people’s examples, and it boosts your confidence.

Bandura argued that being surrounded by other people who show persistence and effort in overcoming challenges can increase our own feelings of self-efficacy because they demonstrate to us that these challenges can be overcome. In the words of Bandura, ‘Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers’ beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed.’

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enactive mastery experiences. Enactive mastery is the flipside of the vicarious mastery we’ve just encountered. According to Bandura, an enactive mastery experience refers to the process of learning through doing. Learning through doing is one of the most powerful forces in human psychology. It’s the second key strategy if we’re to build our sense of power. Why? 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.

One Zen concept that came up time and again in Jackson’s coaching practices was the Japanese word shoshin, which roughly translates as ‘beginner’s mind’. Shoshin refers to a state of mind in which we approach every task and situation with the curiosity, openness and humility of a beginner.

The protégé effect hints at another way we can boost the number of learning experiences in our lives. As the philosopher Seneca said, Qui docet discit – ‘He who teaches learns’. And once you understand the power of the protégé effect, it becomes surprisingly easy to take on the role of ‘teacher’ in almost any role.

In layperson’s terms, that’s a sense of ownership.

Deci and Ryan argued that when people feel they have power over their own actions, they’re much more likely to be intrinsically motivated to engage in them.

There’s a lesson here for us all. There’s almost always a way for us to own the process of a task, even when the outcome has been determined by someone else.

There’s an extraordinary power to be gained by doing it your way. Even in the most disempowering circumstances.

You can do the same. ‘Have to’ is coercive language that makes you feel powerless. ‘Choose to’ is autonomy-affirming language that makes you feel powerful.

‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’

He noticed that all the most innovative and ground-breaking musicians of his time were not working in isolation; they were part of a larger scene of artists, producers and fans who were all pushing each other to explore new sounds and ideas.

As Walton concluded, ‘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 tells us something powerful about how to create a sense of teamwork. When we work in synchrony with other people, we tend to be more productive. Synchronicity makes us want to help others. And it makes us want to help ourselves.

Even though we’re all working on different things, working in tandem with others has huge effects on my ability to focus, and helps me feel better too.