5 Essential Tips for Long Lasting Productivity

Arshian

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Transcript

00:00All right, so the truth about productivity

00:03is that it's not really about the apps.

00:05It's not really about having a perfect system

00:07or about being disciplined or motivated

00:09more than anyone else.

00:10Those things do help,

00:10but what I've realized over the last few months

00:12is that there is actually a hidden secret

00:15to productivity and fulfillment.

00:16So grab a cup of tea and we can talk about it.

00:19As you may or may not know,

00:21I am in the middle of writing a book

00:23and it's a book about productivity.

00:24And so I've been thinking a lot over the last few months

00:26about like, what does productivity actually mean to me?

00:29And the main insight that I've realized

00:30is that productivity, to be honest,

00:33isn't really about getting more things done.

00:35It's mostly about learning to enjoy the journey

00:38because when we're having fun

00:39with doing the things that we're doing,

00:41then productivity kind of just takes care of itself.

00:43And this is kind of obvious, right?

00:45Like, you know, when we're doing stuff that we enjoy,

00:46when we're hanging out with friends

00:47or watching Netflix or playing video games,

00:50we're never worried about our productivity.

00:51We're never worried about motivation.

00:52We never say, I need to be motivated

00:54to watch this next episode of Netflix

00:56or to play Warzone with the boys.

00:58We only really need motivation, in inverted commas,

01:00for the things that are like short-term painful

01:03for long-term gain.

01:04And we as humans, we are absolutely terrible

01:06at motivating ourselves to do things

01:08in service to our future selves

01:10because we're all obsessed with instant gratification.

01:12And so the conundrum that we're dealing with

01:13is how do we make ourselves do things

01:16that are short-term painful in service to our future selves?

01:19How do we make ourselves,

01:20how do we motivate ourselves to be productive,

01:23to sit down and learn to code

01:24or to do our homework assignment

01:25or to work on that side project

01:28after we've come home from a hard day of work

01:29because we know we wanna be entrepreneurs

01:30at the end of the day?

01:31And there's broadly two ways of answering this question.

01:33The first one is something

01:34that I call the Muhammad Ali method.

01:37This is called the Muhammad Ali method

01:38because Muhammad Ali, famous boxer,

01:40has this famous quote where he said something like,

01:42I hated every minute of training, but I said,

01:45don't quit, suffer now,

01:47and live the rest of your life as a champion.

01:49And Muhammad Ali is amazing.

01:50Everyone loves him and all that stuff, obviously.

01:52But I think this approach to work

01:55as work equals suffering,

01:58that's an approach that I'm not really a fan of.

02:00And maybe that's what you need

02:01if you wanna become a world heavyweight boxing champion

02:04or if you wanna win gold at the Olympics.

02:06But if I think about what I want for my life,

02:09it's not to be the best in the world at anything.

02:11It's not to win a gold medal or a Nobel Prize

02:13or to be a boxing champion.

02:15The thing that I want for my life,

02:16which I think is true for a lot of us,

02:18is that I wanna live a nice, balanced life

02:20where I'm having fun, working on things that I enjoy,

02:22doing things that contribute a bit to the world,

02:24and not really being overly concerned

02:26with trying to be the best

02:27or trying to compete with other people.

02:29And so I think the problem

02:30with this Muhammad Ali approach to life,

02:31i.e. this work equals suffering approach to life,

02:34is that it kind of glorifies the hustle

02:36and it glorifies the grind that you need to suffer.

02:38This needs to be painful.

02:39And if it's painful, it's because you're doing it right.

02:41And if you're not doing it,

02:42it's because you can't stand the pain.

02:43And obviously that's a huge oversimplification,

02:45and I'm sure his stance on this is actually more nuanced.

02:47But when I think of my own life over the last 15 years

02:51and how I do things like YouTube channel,

02:53entrepreneurship, medical school, being a doctor, podcast,

02:55all this stuff that people message me about,

02:57none of it feels like suffering.

02:59None of it feels like a grind.

03:00None of it feels like work.

03:01None of it feels like a hustle.

03:02And so when my housemate says,

03:04it's 11 o'clock at night, why are you still working?

03:06It's always a bit surprising

03:07because it really doesn't,

03:08genuinely doesn't feel like work because it's actually fun.

03:11And that begs the question that, well, okay,

03:12how do we actually enjoy the things that we're doing?

03:15I'm glad you asked because there's, again,

03:16two broad ways of tackling this.

03:18The first one is the one that books and stuff will tell you,

03:21which is that find your passion

03:23and do the things that you enjoy.

03:25That's like one way of doing it.

03:27The problem with that type of thinking,

03:28the whole find your passion and do what you enjoy,

03:30is that A, lots of us don't know what our passion is.

03:33It's like, you know, I don't know what my passion is.

03:35What am I passionate about?

03:36Who knows?

03:37Secondly, the things I'm passionate about,

03:39like, I don't know, playing World of Warcraft

03:40and trying to play songs on the guitar,

03:42I'm never gonna be able to make a living

03:44at playing World of Warcraft

03:45or playing songs on the guitar.

03:46And if I tried, I'd be like, you know what?

03:48I'm gonna become one of those 0.01% of single songwriters

03:51who make it big in the world.

03:52You know, the deck is stacked against me,

03:55the odds are stacked against me.

03:56And the third problem with this whole narrative

03:57of find your passion and do what you love

03:59and all that kind of crap,

04:00is that it doesn't recognise that we do often have to do

04:03things that we don't wanna do.

04:04Like, unless you're born with a silver spoon up your behind,

04:07you probably don't have the freedom to just quit your job

04:10and follow your passion.

04:12Your passion is art, great, don't worry about working,

04:14just become an artist full time.

04:16Most of us don't have that level of privilege

04:18where we can just quit our jobs and follow our passion.

04:20And so when we're trying to answer this question

04:21of how do we enjoy the journey, how do we have fun,

04:24that approach of like, pick the fun things to work on,

04:27I don't think that works for most people.

04:29I think there is a second approach,

04:30and that's the one that I've been using most of my life.

04:33The second approach is actually,

04:35instead of doing the things you enjoy,

04:38learning to enjoy the things that you're doing.

04:40And this approach is great

04:41because it doesn't rely on any level of privilege,

04:43it doesn't rely on your external circumstances,

04:45all it relies on is like using a few mindset shifts

04:49and using a few like environmental tricks

04:51and using a few tips and techniques and hacks

04:53to make ourselves, or rather to encourage ourselves

04:56to enjoy more of the things that we're doing.

04:58And so genuinely, that's the true secret of productivity.

05:00If you can learn to enjoy the journey,

05:01if you can learn to have fun, journey before destination,

05:03then productivity takes care of itself.

05:05And so I wanna share five or so techniques

05:10that I found really helpful in my life

05:11over the last 10 years

05:13that helped me enjoy the journey a little bit more.

05:16Tip number one, and I've just spilled some tea.

05:18So as I wipe the tea, tip number one is a mindset shift.

05:21And that's just having the mindset

05:23that the thing that we're doing or the work

05:25or whatever we wanna call it is gonna be fun.

05:27This is like absolutely game-changing.

05:30Anytime I've had a situation in my life

05:32where I felt stressed or I felt unmotivated

05:34or I felt like, oh, I'm not being productive enough,

05:37usually it's because I forgot to have fun.

05:39And there's a great phrase

05:40that the, I think philosopher Alan Watts used,

05:42which is about approaching things sincerely

05:45versus approaching things seriously.

05:48And I often find myself approaching things too seriously.

05:50Like, you know, it's no fun playing a game

05:52with someone who's taking it too seriously.

05:54And so when I remember to have fun,

05:56I switch to approaching things sincerely,

05:58like I'm still gonna give it my all,

05:59but I'm gonna recognise that this is a game

06:01and I'm gonna try and enjoy myself while I'm doing it.

06:03In fact, I even have a Post-it note

06:04attached to my computer monitor at all times

06:06that says, this is going to be fun.

06:08And anytime I find my, you know,

06:09I just, I'm looking around

06:10and I catch a glimpse of that Post-it note,

06:12this is gonna be fun.

06:13I just remind myself, oh yeah, this is gonna be fun.

06:15This is fine, this is all good.

06:18I don't need to feel that work is suffering.

06:20I can just treat it as a game and have fun along the way.

06:22Tip number two is all about turning things into a game.

06:26Now this used to be a very popular like corporate

06:29speak thing back in the day, I think like 10 years ago,

06:31gamification, it was all about gamification.

06:33And if you gamified the workplace,

06:35then the employees would be more motivated

06:37and more productive.

06:39And so the word gamification,

06:41a lot of people now like vom a little bit in their mouths

06:43when they hear it, because it just sounds so,

06:45you know, it hogs back to that era.

06:47But I think gamification is actually like

06:49absolutely game changing.

06:50So for example, when I was going through medical school,

06:52in my first year of med school, I really, really struggled

06:55because I had the mindset of this is supposed to be hard.

06:57And I didn't, I just didn't have the thought

07:01like I could treat this as a game.

07:02But in my second year of medical school,

07:03I started treating things more as a game.

07:05And so when I would make my revision timetables,

07:08I'd kind of write down all the subjects I needed to know.

07:10And then I would color code them

07:11based on how well I knew them.

07:13And so they would all start off as red

07:16and then as I got better at them,

07:16they'd go yellow and then they go green.

07:18And just that kind of color coding

07:20helped me think of it more as a game.

07:22And so when I'd be studying,

07:23I'd be looking forward to testing myself with active recall.

07:26And then I'd be looking forward to that box

07:28on my Google sheet turning green.

07:30And just that added element of gamifying the process

07:34made it so much more fun to study.

07:36And it also helped me get a first class degree

07:38in my second year exams,

07:39which I hadn't done in my first year

07:41when I thought things were gonna be really, really hard.

07:42Tip number three for making stuff more fun

07:44is to bring others on board,

07:46is to do things with your friends.

07:47Again, I've got a story from med school about this.

07:49So in my fifth year of med school,

07:51I had a project that I was doing

07:52that involved analyzing data from like 2000 patient records

07:56and manually going through them

07:57on the electronic patient record system

07:59in order to like tease out some things around,

08:02you know, what medication they were on

08:04and what their results of an ultrasound scan were.

08:06The details are kind of irrelevant.

08:08The point is this was a lot of mind numbingly boring,

08:10dull grunt work having to go through a spreadsheet.

08:13And it didn't really require any,

08:15any like special knowledge on my part

08:16other than a cursory knowledge of medicine

08:18to know what sort of things I was looking for.

08:19And so I tried doing like a few dozens of patients

08:22by myself and realised that this is the worst thing ever.

08:24I'm so unproductive, I'm so unmotivated.

08:26I can't be bothered to do this thing.

08:27And what I realised I could do

08:28is I could bring friends on board.

08:30So I had some friends who,

08:31I had like five friends in the year below

08:33and I recruited them into this project.

08:35I said to them, all right guys,

08:36we've got these 2000 patients to get through.

08:38We'll split the workload up five ways.

08:40So we do 400 patients each

08:41or 300 patients each or whatever it was.

08:43And then we'll all get our names on the paper

08:46that we ultimately try and publish out of this thing.

08:48And so in one evening, we just managed to get this done.

08:50We went to the medical school library,

08:52sat in the computer room, the five, six of us,

08:54we ordered pizza, we had a bit of takeaway,

08:56we had donuts from the hospital canteen

08:58and we just banged out these like, you know,

09:00this work over the space of about four hours.

09:02And genuinely it was quite fun.

09:03We had music in the background,

09:05it was good times all around.

09:06And so we go through all 2000 patients,

09:07we wrote out the paper, it got published.

09:09So we got our names on a publication

09:10and that paper even ended up getting presented

09:12at a conference in Singapore

09:13where I flew with some other friends

09:14and we presented it there and it was really cool.

09:16And all that happened.

09:18I think if I'd been doing it myself,

09:19if I hadn't just taken that extra step

09:21to get other people on board,

09:22this project wouldn't have happened

09:23and I wouldn't have had so many CV points

09:25and I wouldn't have had a free trip to Singapore.

09:26And so the general tip here is that like,

09:28think about whatever you're doing,

09:29think about how you can do it with other people.

09:31You know, when I was in med school again,

09:32studying for exams, but with friends around me

09:34just made everything much, much more fun.

09:36And there are all sorts of aspects of our lives

09:38in which we can apply this principle.

09:39Tip number four is to actually really think

09:41about setting the appropriate stage for our productivity

09:44in service of this thing of like,

09:46we wanna be trying to have more fun.

09:48And so for me, I often think about like the tools

09:50and the environment around me as making something more fun.

09:53So for example, if I have a nice little teapot,

09:55it's in blue, blue is my favourite colour

09:57and this coral mug, this is kind of nice.

09:59I've got my MacBook here,

10:00I've got a little sleeve on it, case thing.

10:02This whole aesthetic makes me really enjoy,

10:05for example, if I was studying for an exam

10:07or if I was kind of working on a video script,

10:09sitting on here, it would be quite fun.

10:11I'm quite enjoying making this video because, you know,

10:14I've got this stuff around me,

10:14I've got my little fake plant.

10:16The environment around me is like I've designed

10:19in a way that appeals to my personal aesthetic sensibilities

10:22and therefore, whatever I do in this environment

10:24automatically becomes more fun.

10:25This is the same principle behind why I like

10:27to have a fancy ass desk set up.

10:28And you don't even need to have a fancy ass desk set up

10:30for this, because when I was in med school

10:32and I was broke and I had no money,

10:33I still put in time and effort to thinking,

10:35okay, how do I arrange my books and my laptop on my desk

10:39and like, you know, add this little plant?

10:40How do I arrange it in a way that makes me feel good inside?

10:43Because when it comes to studying for my exams,

10:45if I'm in my room and I'm on my desk, I'm doing it,

10:47I just have more fun when the environment

10:49is more aesthetic and more nice.

10:50Other things around this is working with music.

10:52I have a study with me playlist on Spotify

10:54that has instrumental music from like the Lord of the Rings

10:56and Harry Potter and Prides of the Caribbean

10:58and the Marvel stuff.

10:59And when I have that playing on the speakers

11:01or through my headphones, it makes the work more fun.

11:04And yes, according to the evidence,

11:05studying with music or working with music

11:07does reduce focus very, very slightly

11:08because it interferes with some aspects of like,

11:10you know, short-term memory processing, but that's fine.

11:13I don't care.

11:14I would rather have a bit more fun by listening to music

11:16than squeeze out a little bit of extra productivity

11:18by working in complete silence.

11:19And so the tip here is that if you're worried

11:21about your productivity or about motivation or whatever,

11:23just think about the environment that you're in

11:25and ask yourself, does it like,

11:27is that an environment that appeals to your aesthetics?

11:29Is it conducive towards having fun?

11:31Because if it's conducive to enjoying the process,

11:34enjoying the journey,

11:35then you'll automatically magically become more productive.

11:37And tip number five is kind of, if we're thinking ahead,

11:39like, you know, we can get to a point

11:42where we're very good at talking ourselves

11:45and tricking ourselves into having fun

11:46with doing the things that we're doing.

11:47You know, bringing friends on board,

11:49changing up the environment, the mindset,

11:50and like a load of other things

11:52that I haven't talked about in this video.

11:53But we've got to ask ourselves at some point,

11:55are we actually even working on the right things?

11:58Because if you have a job that feels ultimately meaningless,

12:01then there's only so much hacking that you can do

12:03to make yourself enjoy it.

12:04But the fact that it's ultimately meaningless

12:06will come back to bite you and you'll be unfulfilled

12:09because the job is ultimately meaningless.

12:11And this question of meaning

12:11is like a really important part of productivity

12:13because, you know, there's very little point

12:15in driving 100 miles per hour

12:17if you find yourself driving in the wrong direction.

12:19There's another metaphor I like,

12:20which is that there's no point climbing up a ladder

12:23if the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

12:25And so the question becomes,

12:26how do we find the things that are meaningful to us

12:28that feel worth pursuing?

12:30Honestly, I don't have the answers,

12:31but there are lots of exercises

12:33that I found really helpful

12:34for thinking about the question

12:35around how do we figure out what's meaningful to us.

12:37And I talk about quite a lot of these

12:38in my online classes around productivity

12:40that are hosted on Skillshare,

12:41who are very kindly sponsoring this video.

12:43At the moment, I've got four classes

12:44related to the idea of productivity,

12:46meaning, fulfilment, enjoyment,

12:47all of that sort of stuff.

12:48And if you wanna access them,

12:49you can hit the link in the video description

12:51and the first 1,000 people to do that,

12:53you'll get 30% off

12:54the annual Skillshare premium membership.

12:56Even if you've already used up your Skillshare free trial,

12:59you can still use this.

13:00And other than all of my classes on Skillshare,

13:03there's also thousands and thousands of more classes

13:04on creativity and cooking and interior design

13:07and all sorts of cool stuff.

13:08But the ones that you should definitely

13:08check out first are mine.

13:09So three of them are around productivity.

13:11One of them is quite recent.

13:12It's specifically on productivity for creators.

13:14It talks about my secrets to productivity

13:16for doing things like this YouTube channel.

13:18And I've even got a one-hour class

13:19that we recorded through Skillshare Live,

13:22where I was giving, I think, three exercises

13:25for how I personally find things

13:27that are meaningful and fulfilling to me.

13:28Again, I'm not saying I have the answers for this,

13:30but these exercises genuinely helped me

13:32make sure that the stuff I'm working on

13:33feels like it has a purpose.

13:34And that also contributes to my productivity

13:37and enjoyment of life in a nice way.

13:38So hit the link in the video description

13:40to get 30% off the annual Skillshare premium membership.

13:42And thank you, Skillshare, for sponsoring this video.

13:44And if you liked this video,

13:45you might like to check out the video over here,

13:46which is all about how I'm figuring out

13:48what to do with my life

13:49and how I'm trying to find ways to do stuff

13:51that's meaningful and fulfilling.

13:52So thank you so much for watching

13:53and I'll see you in the next video.

13:54Bye-bye.

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