Book Summary — Feel Good Productivity

In the book Feel-Good Productivity, Ali Abdaal, explores the connection between feeling good and productivity. Ali suggests that when we feel good about our work, we are more creative, more productivity and more energetic. Ali rejects the idea that just “grinding it out” is an effective long term strategy for productivity, and that it is more effective to focus on feeling good as a mechanism to unlock increased productivity.

Lets dive into the top take aways of the book….

Treat Work as Play

When we are doing something that feels truly playful it is easy to be engaged, to care about the details, to have a growth mentality and to be energized. In order to picture this, just imagine a little kid playing with their Legos. The kid does not need to finish some task… they are just enjoying the process. They are playing… not working.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have jobs that are as fun as playing with Legos. There are deadlines, hard to work with people, money on the line and all sorts of other factors that can make work feel like a grind.

We will probably never feel as playful at work as the child feels while playing with their Legos, but Ali suggests a handful of useful tricks we can use to make work feel a little bit more playful. By making our work feel a little bit more playful, we can unlock some of the engagement, creativity, growth mentality and energy that comes along for the ride.

• Pick Your Character: Try imagining yourself as some character that you admire. Maybe if you are afraid of public speaking, you imagine yourself as some public speaker that you admire. The idea here is to make a game out of pretending to be some character. Just like its fun to pick out a character to play in a video game, it can make work more enjoyable to imagine yourself as some character you are putting on.
• Seriousness if Overrated / Lower the Stakes: There are some serious and important moments at work, but the fact is most of the time things are not nearly as serious as we build them up to be in our minds, and people are nearly never judging us as much as we expect them to be. A trick you can use to put into perspective how serious something actually is, is to ask yourself, “Will this thing matter in 5 minutes? What about in 5 weeks? What about in 5 years?” By asking yourself this question, you will get honest with yourself about how important/serious something really is. By being serious less often and lowering the stakes, we enable ourselves to be more playful with our work and we become more open to trying things out even if we might fail.
• Pick Your Side Adventure: Picking some side adventure for your workday, can help add some playfulness to your day. A side adventure is anything that adds a bit of excitement and novelty to your day. Maybe your side adventure is working from a new coffee shop, or reading some blog posts related to your work but that are not strictly required or getting coffee with a coworker. A side adventure breaks you out of the typical grind and gives you a boost of excitement.

Personal Takeaways

• Every morning, I start my workday by doing some deliberate practice of something that is related to my job, but is not strictly a required task. Framing this as a fun side adventure, where I get to explore something outside of my daily required tasks, helps make work feel a bit more playful.
• I can get serious about my work, and worry about how people view my performance. But by consistently reminding myself that people really are not watching me nearly as much as I expect and by reminding myself that the stakes are almost always lower than what I build them up to be — I can help myself to reduce the seriousness with which I approach work.
• System operations, is a part of my job that I have historically not been very good at. I tend to enjoy building new things more than maintaining existing systems. But system operations are a very important part of being successful in my role and I do need to get better at them. One way I am trying to improve at system operations and make it a bit more fun for myself, is by pretending to be the type of person that really gets into operational excellence. Even though it sounds like a cheap mental trick, pretending to step into this role actually does change the framing enough around this type of work to make it more playful.

The Power of Confidence

Being confident about a task makes you enjoy it more, and increases the chances that you will be successful at it.

Ali cites a study in which a group of people, that did not enjoy exercising, were divided into two groups and made to exercise. At the end of the workout one group was told that they performed in the top 20% for their age, while the other group was told nothing. In fact there was no real difference between the groups’ performance, they were both very much average. But a week later when the groups returned back for a second workout, the group that had been told they were in the top 20% performed better on their workout and reported higher levels of enjoyment. The conclusion of the study, was that confidence improves enjoyment of a task and performance on the task.

The neat part of this, is that the confidence does not even need to be well founded. Ali, cites other studies that illustrated that if people can trick themselves into being confident by hyping themselves up, they can actually increase how confident they feel and get the associated performance and mood boosts.

Another interesting bit about confidence, is that our confidence can be increased by seeing others do something. Once we see others accomplish something, we understand it to be possible and that increases our confidence that we could also achieve the same. The classic example here is related to the world record mile time. Before Roger Bannister ran a sub-four minute mile at the 1952 Olympics, it was thought to be impossible to run a mile in under four minutes. But after he did it, a bunch of other people quickly also broke this boundary as well. Human’s did not suddenly evolve to be better runners overnight, but instead the psychological blocker was overcome by seeing someone else achieve this amazing time. A takeaway here, is that by surrounding yourself by accomplished people (or evening consuming content from accomplished people) you can increase your perception of what is possible and use that as a lever to make yourself more confident.

Personal Takeaways

• Even though I might look pretty goofy doing it, I have started to hype myself up in workout classes by looking at my self in the mirror and bobbing my head to the music. For me the act of enjoying music during a workout, is something that only people that are confident in their physical abilities do. So by doing this, I trick my brain into being a bit more confident during the workout. I have actually noticed I do perform better and enjoy my workout more when I do this.
• At work I have identified a few folks that I consider truly great software engineers that I can learn from. I make an effort to work closely with them an observe how they are able to achieve what seems incredible to me. By surrounding myself with these people, I raise the bar for what I consider possible for myself to achieve.

Work with People, Not Against Them

When we feel like our coworkers are truly teammates working towards a common goal, rather than adversaries, we enjoy our work more and we are more productive.

One way we can foster a sense of team, is to actually ask for help more often. By asking for help in an earnest and non-transactional way, we are letting someone know that we value what they have to offer. That makes them feel good and it enables us to learn something new. There is a classic story of Benjamin Franklin using this bit of human psychology to win over a political rival by asking to borrow a book. That is right! Benjamin Franklin, won over his political rival not by offering them a book but by asking to borrow one of their books. Benjamin Franklin did not offer some transactional exchange and the request was not manufactured, he just genuinely wanted the help of his rival in regards to getting a book he was interested in. The result was the rival lent him the book, and they ended up being able to work more effectively together.

People get a boost by helping others, as long as the help is asked for in an honest and non-transactional way. It is somewhat unintuitive, but you will be more effective at building a sense of team by asking for help without strings attached, then by asking for help conditioned on you providing an equal favor in return.

The take away here is to ask for help more often, do some with honest intent and without offering anything in return. On the flip-side, make sure to also be a team player by being willing help others when they ask you for it.

Personal Connection

I have tried to apply this principle at work by being less shy about asking for help. Specifically, I have been setting up meetings with various domain experts on the team to understand their area of expertise better. I have found that during these meetings I learn a lot, folks are happy to share about their area of expertise and the meeting does indeed foster a greater sense of team.

Actually Recharge

Ali suggests a very interesting exercise to understand the things that actually help us recharge. He suggests that we make two lists, the first list contains the things you do when you feel depleted of energy. This first list is likely to contain things like — “eat carbs,” “watch tv,” “go on Instagram” etc…. Then he suggests you make a second list of the things that recharge you. This list is very likely to not have much overlap with the first list. If we are honest with ourselves about the things that give us energy, they are much more likely to be things like — “go to the gym,” “take a walk,” “cook some healthy meal” etc…

It is very tempting after a long hard day to “rest” by doing the thing that feels desirable. But the things that feel desirable when we are tired are generally actually not the things that give us energy. In fact after laying on the couch, eating fast food and watching TV for a few hours — I am likely to be even more tired then when I started.

Perhaps, it is a bit unfortunate, but the fact is most things that actually recharge our battery take a little bit of initial energy to get started (e.g. going to the gym takes some energy whereas scrolling Instagram for hours does not, but it is actually going to the gym that is going to be more effective at recharging our battery).

This does not mean that we should never just lay down on the couch and watching TV, but it does mean that we should be thoughtful about how we want to recharge ourselves. Just doing the thing that feels nice when we are tired, likely will not actually recharge us.

Personal Connection

Reminding myself of this has been a boon to my ability to consistently go to the gym after work. Often after work I am tried, I want to go home and chill out. But remembering that going to the gym is going to be more effective at recharging my batteries, then watching TV will be, helps me get into the gym.