How To Stop Procrastinating For Good - Ali Abdaal - #719

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Ali Abdaal. He's a YouTuber, podcaster, entrepreneur, and an author. What would life be like if you didn't get so easily distracted? If you actually did the things you wanted to do with your productive hours, rather than what you were distracted by. Ali has spent an entire career deconstructing the keys to productivity, and today we get to go through some of the most important ones. Expect to learn what feeling good has to do with productivity. Ali's core foundation to what makes someone productive, what determines whether a content creator will succeed or fail, the biases running your life that you might not be aware of, why procrastination happens and how to overcome it, whether you need a big plan to succeed in life, and much more. This is me finally being back in Austin, Texas, after being on tour for four and a half weeks around the UK, Ireland, Dubai, Canada and the US. And I go back to the UK next week for Christmas, but for everyone that came out to see me at the live shows, thank you so much. It's been crazy and very life-changing and surreal and flattering and all the rest of the things. We're kind of winding up toward the end of the year. I've got lessons from 2023 thing coming up. We've got a Christmas special with the boys, one and a half million subscriber Q&A, and then we are getting ready for just the most insane couple of months at the start of 24 So thank you to everyone who has supported me over the last couple of months. Next year is just gonna be so wild. I can't wait for it. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ali Abdaal.
Ali Abdaal, welcome to the show.

**Ali Abdaal** (1:56)
Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be fun. And we've got your little drinks over here, which we can sip on throughout the episode.

**Chris Williamson** (2:01)
And we've got your mechanical keyboard in front of us as well.

**Ali Abdaal** (2:04)
I feel like we're doing a lot of shilling here. We've got my book, the keyboard, your drinks. Yeah, this is kind of nice because we're also working with the same company to put this stuff together. It's cool that there is this sort of creator collaboration-y stuff going on now with physical products.

**Chris Williamson** (2:18)
I think so. I like the fact, having something that is my own that I spent so much time building is so nice. So that's the brand new, right now when we're recording this, this Tropicalize, which is the white one, isn't out. So this is going to be first taste test for you. It is ambient as well. So crack that open.

**Ali Abdaal** (2:31)
What does ambient mean? Warm.

**Chris Williamson** (2:33)
It's warm rather than chilled. So have a crack at that and see what you think. Oh, it's very nice.

**Ali Abdaal** (2:43)
Cheers.

**Chris Williamson** (2:44)
Cheers. Yeah, this is my favorite flavor. It's like a, it's a white monster killer.

**Ali Abdaal** (2:51)
Yeah, it was weird.
So when I tried this one for the first time, I was in LA and I didn't have much sleep for like two nights cause I had to, I had like an 8 a.m. meeting with my team the next day and late nights and stuff. Cause like hanging out with people in LA. And I cracked open one of these. I went to the local WeWork, had one of these and I genuinely felt so focused. And my team were literally commenting. Well, yeah, my team were commenting. You're like, how have you, have you got so much done? Cause I was just like, and I'm not sure if it was placebo, but like, I would just, you know.

**Chris Williamson** (3:18)
If it works, it works. So your new book, Feel Good Productivity, everyone needs to go and buy that right now. I know you've spent an awful lot of time working on it for a long time. Why does feeling good have anything to do with productivity? That's two words that don't usually go together.

**Ali Abdaal** (3:32)
They don't usually, but there is a large amount of evidence that suggests that they very much do go together. So one of the theories, have you come across this, the broaden and build theory?

**Chris Williamson** (3:42)
No.

**Ali Abdaal** (3:42)
So this is the idea. There's a psychologist called Barbara Fredricksen who in 2001 came up with this theory. It was based on studies that showed that if you get people into a lab and get them to do tasks of creativity and then you split them into two groups and you give one group a candy bar or something and you give the other group nothing. For some reason, the group who gets the candy bar comes up with more creative solutions to whatever problem that they're trying to solve. And so the theory was, okay, there's something about priming someone with positive emotions that affects our creativity. And then they did, one of the theories around this is back in caveman times, if, for example, someone was experiencing positive emotions, that's usually a sign of safety. Things are pretty chill, things are good. And so when the cavemen are experiencing positive emotions when they're feeling good, they are more inclined to go out and explore. So they're going to see what's in that cave over there, what's in that forest over there. Let me build my friendships and stuff. And so, you know, Professor Barbara Fredrickson came up with this theory called broaden and build, which is that when you feel good, when you experience positive emotions, it broadens the amount of actions that are available to you. And it builds resources, like social connections and actual physical resources and stuff. Whereas the converse, negative emotions, if caveman human is feeling negative emotions, it's like, shit, I'm stressed. There is a tiger on the horizon. I need to, I have a very small range of options to choose from, fight, fly, freeze. And I have to act within that range.