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

by Ali Abdaal

‘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.

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.

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.

oxytocin, known as the ‘love’ hormone, is associated with social bonding, trust and relationship-building, which enhances our capacity to connect with others, boosts our mood and, in turn, impacts our productivity. All this means that these feel-good hormones are the starting point of a virtuous cycle.

Individuals who frequently experience positive emotions aren’t just more sociable, optimistic and creative. They also accomplish more. These people bring an infectious energy to their environment, proving more likely to enjoy fulfilling relationships, get higher salaries and truly shine in their professional lives. Those who cultivate positive emotions at work morph into better problem-solvers, planners, creative thinkers and resilient

It introduces the three ‘energisers’ that underpin positive emotions – play, power and people – and explains how to integrate them into your daily life.

three different types of burnout – overexertion burnout, depletion burnout and misalignment burnout. And I’ll explain how we can harness three simple ‘sustainers’ – conserve, recharge and align – to make us feel better not just for days and weeks, but for months and years.

It was pretty easy doing nothing,

the key to true productivity, partly because it provides a sense of psychological relief. As one recent study put it: ‘the psychological function of play is to restore the physically and mentally fatigued individual through participation in activity which is pleasurable and relaxing.’

This is a mistake. Because adventure, it turns out, is the first major ingredient of play – and perhaps of happiness.

Their conclusion: an adventurous life holds the key to unlocking positive emotions. So, the first way to harness

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

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

‘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?’

‘What would it look like if I were really confident at this?’ Just by asking yourself the question, you’ll visualise yourself confidently approaching the task at hand. The switch has been flipped.

I’ve found that my sense of confidence increases substantially when I read books, listen to podcasts or watch videos with stories of people succeeding in the areas in which I want to feel more empowered.

Zen encourages individuals to look inward and discover their own path to understanding the nature of reality. It was, according to Jackson, integral to every success he ever had.

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

Older siblings take on the role of teacher or mentor to their siblings: older siblings (like me) often help their

younger siblings (like my brother) with homework, answer their questions about the world, and share their own experiences and insights, however dubious.

And if you’re concerned that you’re not ‘qualified’ enough to teach someone else, it’s worth remembering that the people we learn from best are often the ones who are just a step ahead of us in the journey. So anyone can become a teacher.

They encouraged readers to see motivation falling on a spectrum, with ‘extrinsic’ at one end and ‘intrinsic’ at the other. Intrinsic motivation comes from the inside: driven by self-fulfilment, curiosity and a genuine desire to learn. Extrinsic motivation comes from the outside: driven by pay-rises, material rewards and social approval.

Lasting motivation comes from within.

can have disastrous consequences for our physical and mental health.

But often we have more agency than we realise – if not over the whole situation, then over parts of it. We have control even when we don’t know it.

And I could decide to think about it another way. ‘I choose to do this,’ I could tell myself. ‘I get to do this.’ Or even, ‘I’m blessed to do this.’

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.

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.

And telling people to simply ‘feel more motivated’ isn’t just unhelpful, it’s potentially harmful, contributing to the sense of paralysis that caused procrastination in the first place.

We’ll learn that usually, procrastination is caused by negative feelings – the inverse of the feel-good energisers we encountered in Part 1. When negative feelings like confusion, fear and inertia stand in our way, we put things off. This