My Toxic Relationship With Productivity - Ali Abdaal
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If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
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How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
dailymotion.com/arshian
How to guarantee you regret your life:https : //dai.ly/x93180y
My honest advice to a perfectionist:https : //dai.ly/x9319i4
My honest advice to someone who’s doing too much : https://dai.ly/x9319ty
My honest advice to someone who feels behind in life : https://dai.ly/x931a78
My honest advice to someone who wants financial freedom : https://dai.ly/x931ex2
If I Wanted to Be a Millionaire Before 30, I'd Do This : https://dai.ly/x931gzm
The Best Book I've Ever Read about Making Money : https://dai.ly/x931j9y
How to Go From $0 to $10,000 a Month in 4 Steps : https://dai.ly/x931kb6
How to Make $10,000 Month Writing Online : https://dai.ly/x931l42
How to 10x Your Income The 4 Ladders of Wealth : https://dai.ly/x931ldm
Why You Feel Lost in Life by Ali Abdaal : https://dai.ly/x933252
How to Figure Out What You Really Want in Life : https://dai.ly/x933hm8
How to Change your Life in a Year - 3 Simple Ideas : https://dai.ly/x933u78
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hey friends, welcome back to the channel.
00:01This is gonna be a bit of a chit-chat rambly video
00:03where I talk about my feelings with a cup of chamomile tea.
00:07So if you wanna grab a tea, we can have a bit of a chat.
00:09And I wanna talk about my toxic relationship
00:12with productivity.
00:13This is something I very recently realized
00:16and it was a real shock to me as well
00:18as I'm sure it is for you guys watching this
00:20if you've kind of been following the channel
00:22for any length of time.
00:23The way it happened was a few weeks ago,
00:25I started feeling like I was in this like real
00:28kind of productivity slump.
00:30In that, when it came to like filming videos
00:33for a period of about three weeks,
00:36every time I filmed a video,
00:37I just sort of, I really couldn't be bothered
00:39and I was just like,
00:40oh, do I really have to film this video?
00:41But because I have like, you know,
00:45hammered the mantra into my heart
00:47that consistency is like the most important thing in life
00:49and this fear when you're a YouTuber
00:52that all YouTubers have that, you know,
00:54I can't possibly take a break from YouTube
00:56because if I do,
00:57then the algorithm is gonna be mean to me
00:59and everyone's gonna stop following my channel
01:00and then my career is gonna go downhill
01:02and then I'm gonna have to end up being a doctor again.
01:04That thought process was on steroids basically
01:06for this period of three weeks
01:07and every time I filmed a video,
01:08it was like a real,
01:09yeah, it was like an uphill battle every time.
01:11And the way I usually approach this stuff,
01:13it's that like, you know,
01:15not everything has to be fun 100% of the time.
01:18There are times where we do have to push through
01:20and do stuff,
01:21but generally, the secret to my productivity
01:24for the last, I don't know, 15 years of my life
01:26has been that everything I do, I broadly enjoy
01:28and like 90% of it I enjoy
01:30and maybe if I have to push through the final 10%
01:32or usually the first 10% in terms of getting started,
01:34that's just the bit that takes a bit of pushing.
01:36But in this period of three weeks,
01:38it was like every aspect of these videos
01:40needed that like, you know, uphill push
01:42and it really wasn't a nice feeling to do something
01:44that I was actively not enjoying,
01:46but doing it because I felt like I had to
01:49because of the algorithm, for example.
01:50And then on top of not really enjoying
01:51filming videos anymore, which is unusual for me,
01:54I also had this like, in the mornings,
01:56I would often have like a call, a phone call
01:58or like an art lesson or a workout scheduled
02:00at like nine or 10 o'clock in the morning
02:02and I'd sort of wake up bleary eyed, you know,
02:04I'd set my alarm for 8.30 and then I'd kind of sleep again
02:07and then like three minutes before the call,
02:08I'd wake up, I'd hop on the call,
02:10I'd like, you know, pretend to be bright and alert
02:13and like awake and stuff,
02:14but I had this like seething resentment inside of me
02:16that, oh, why do I have to, you know?
02:17It's weird in a way because it's not like anyone
02:20was forcing me to do this.
02:21I am completely in control of my own schedule
02:23and I had chosen to book in art lessons and workouts
02:27and these phone calls and chats about my book
02:29and team meetings, all this stuff in the mornings,
02:31thinking, you know, a few weeks prior that,
02:33oh, this will be good, this will get me out of bed.
02:35And then when it came to that,
02:36it was this feeling of like, like hating my former self
02:39for booking in these things in the morning.
02:42And again, that's unusual
02:43because I've like never really had that feeling before.
02:45And then after a few days of this,
02:46I'd also do that thing,
02:48which apparently there's a word for it.
02:50It's called revenge bedtime procrastination,
02:52where this thing that we have where you're like,
02:55you know it's past your bedtime,
02:57but you don't wanna go to bed
02:59and you just like continue to procrastinate.
03:01And so I was like spending tons of time
03:02just scrolling through Instagram and Twitter
03:04just for absolutely no reason until one o'clock, two o'clock,
03:07sometimes even three o'clock in the morning.
03:08And later, my housemate, Sheen, told me
03:09that this is called revenge bedtime procrastination,
03:12which is a phenomenon whereby you feel like
03:15you don't have control over the rest of your day.
03:17And so the only bit of your day
03:18that you do have control over, i.e. nighttime,
03:20that's when your brain suddenly decides,
03:21you know, I'm the boss.
03:22I'm not gonna go to bed.
03:23And you end up screwing yourself for the next day.
03:25And then the final piece of the quartet, as it were,
03:27was this like, every day I would have this chronic feeling
03:30of dissatisfaction at the end of the day,
03:32being like, oh, I didn't do enough today.
03:34I woke up too late, or that meeting wasn't productive enough
03:38or I only filmed one video
03:40when I should have filmed three videos
03:41and I should have shot eight thumbnails
03:42and I should have done four videos for my course,
03:44but I ended up only doing one thing.
03:45And I'm not really a stranger
03:46to this feeling of dissatisfaction.
03:48This is often how I feel,
03:50but it's like, I don't,
03:51it's rare for me to feel it multiple days in a row.
03:54And there was this period of two or three weeks
03:56where it was just sort of stacking up.
03:58I sort of feel like that time passed in a bit of a haze
04:01and that I don't really remember
04:03what I actually did in those days.
04:05I look back on my calendar from a few weeks ago
04:08in that period of three weeks and I just think,
04:10damn, I just don't remember any of this.
04:11I just don't really remember it happening.
04:13And that is also a little bit of a scary feeling.
04:15And so all of this stuff,
04:17maybe it's burnout.
04:18I've never really experienced burnout before.
04:20I don't really know what that's supposed to mean,
04:21but maybe that's what that feeling is like
04:23where you feel like you just can't be bothered
04:25to do anything and like the work
04:26that you're having to doing is like a real struggle.
04:29Maybe that's what burnout is.
04:30But I was like psychoanalyzing myself earlier
04:34and I came up with a few different reasons
04:36as to why this was happening.
04:38And then once I discovered the reasons
04:39behind why it was happening,
04:40I found some solutions to it.
04:41So let's talk about those.
04:42And the biggest reason is outcome dependence.
04:46I was fixated to certain outcomes
04:49that were outside of my control.
04:50Now, this is normally something
04:52that I very much rail against.
04:54I don't believe in setting output goals.
04:57I.e., I don't believe in,
04:58like if I make a video,
04:59I don't believe in the concept
05:01of having a kind of view count.
05:03Like, oh, I really want this video
05:04to hit this many views
05:05or I really wanna hit this many subscribers
05:07because that's just dumb
05:08because that stuff is outside of my control.
05:09In almost every aspect of my life,
05:11I set input goals instead.
05:12Like I'm just gonna make two videos a week
05:14because that's entirely within my control
05:15and my team's control.
05:16But a few weeks ago,
05:17I think it was like right about the start of January,
05:20January, 2021,
05:21we dropped down from three videos a week
05:22to two videos a week.
05:24And because of that drop down,
05:25I was thinking, oh, okay, cool.
05:26So now we're doing fewer videos.
05:28Therefore, all of these videos
05:30need to be absolute bangers.
05:31And I kind of had that in my mind
05:32that I want every video to be a banger.
05:34And on YouTube,
05:34when you want every video to be a banger,
05:36like there is only so far
05:39that particular thought process can go
05:41because maybe you get a banger
05:42and you're lucky
05:43or maybe you get another banger
05:44and you're lucky.
05:45And then you get a video
05:46as YouTube studio shows you,
05:47which is like 10 out of 10 on the analytics.
05:4910 out of 10,
05:50meaning that in your previous 10 videos,
05:52it's the 10th worst performer.
05:54And so that's a real feeling of like,
05:56oh my God.
05:57And basically every YouTuber I've ever spoken to
05:58has this feeling
05:59when they see a 10 out of 10 on YouTube studio
06:02being like, oh my God,
06:03my life is over.
06:04Like, what's the point?
06:04My YouTube channel is going down the drain.
06:06I think it was because for some reason
06:07I set this intention in my head
06:08that, hey, I wanna make banger videos every time.
06:10And that intention made me fixated
06:13on the outcome of the video.
06:14Like how well is the video performing?
06:15So then I was becoming like obsessed
06:17with the YouTube analytics
06:18and thinking, oh my God,
06:19this video has only got a thumbnail click-through rate
06:20of like 9.8%.
06:21We need to get it up to 13%.
06:23Let's change the thumbnails.
06:24Let's go and shoot a load of thumbnails.
06:25And essentially this loop
06:26of trying to optimise the numbers.
06:29Whereas for the last like three and a half years on YouTube,
06:31I have broadly not really cared about the numbers.
06:33Like I couldn't care less
06:34once a video comes out how it performs.
06:36Generally, I try and operate like that.
06:38And so that outcome dependence
06:39on the YouTube channel was one thing.
06:41And then like alongside,
06:43I had a lot of outcome dependence
06:45on sort of writing the book that I'm working on.
06:47And I actually have this book here
06:48by a draft number four, John McPhee
06:50on the writing process,
06:51which is helping me learn how to write.
06:52But I'll put a video up there
06:54that talks about how I feel I've wasted
06:56the last six months of my life
06:57in terms of writing the book.
06:59And that stuff was happening around the same time
07:01whereby, you know, just for a bit of background,
07:03I've got a book deal and I'm writing a book.
07:05There's sort of two goals
07:06that I could have when writing the book.
07:07One of them is I wanna write the best book I can.
07:10And I wanna write something I'm proud of,
07:11which is very much an input goal,
07:12which is very much up my street
07:13and the sort of goal that I normally have.
07:14But then there's the external goal,
07:16which is that I really want this book
07:17to hit the New York Times bestseller list.
07:19And it's such a dumb, stupid, arbitrary goal to have
07:21because it's completely outside of my control.
07:23And it's just stupid.
07:26But for some reason, I kind of fixated on that
07:29as a goal that I wanted to reach for.
07:31And so when I was writing the book,
07:32anytime I'd write something, I'd be thinking,
07:33oh my God, this is total junk.
07:35This is not very good.
07:36And I sort of be hating myself
07:37as I was trying to write,
07:38knowing that my work wasn't very good at all.
07:40And really overall, that entire problem
07:42was just around setting outcome goals
07:44rather than input goals.
07:46The second cause of this kind of toxic relationship
07:48with productivity that I discovered
07:50is that I often do this,
07:51is like I don't pay enough attention to my emotional state.
07:54And what I mean by that is that
07:56often if I don't feel like doing something,
07:59I will do it anyway and like push through the pain
08:01and like, you know, I'm gonna do it anyway.
08:03Especially when it comes to making videos,
08:05like, you know, I think we've put out like 350 videos
08:08or something on this channel so far.
08:09It's been on average two point something videos a week
08:11since June of 2017.
08:14And to get to that level of consistency,
08:15well, hopefully keeping the quality up,
08:17to get to that level of consistency,
08:19it's not like every time I sit down to film a video,
08:22I'm like, ooh, I'm really looking forward
08:23to filming this video.
08:24In fact, for the most part,
08:26I have to kind of force myself to get started.
08:28And then once I get started with filming,
08:30it's actually quite fun
08:31because I love the sound of my own voice
08:32and it's quite fun talking to a camera in a way.
08:34But I think there's a sweet spot
08:36when it comes to this thing.
08:38If you're a complete waste man
08:40and you spend your entire life playing World of Warcraft,
08:43for example, more on that later.
08:44If you're a complete waste man,
08:45then there is a level at which you have to tell yourself,
08:48I am gonna do something even if I don't feel like it.
08:51I'm gonna get off the sofa,
08:52get off my chair playing World of Warcraft
08:53and I'm gonna go for a run even if I don't feel like it.
08:57I'm gonna study for my exams even if I don't feel like it.
08:59I'm gonna ignore my emotional state
09:01which wants me to just sit and play World of Warcraft
09:03and I'm going to do the thing
09:05that is better for my long-term future.
09:07I'm gonna do the hard thing that I know I should do.
09:09And that, like if you're a total waste man,
09:11it makes sense that, you know,
09:12often you should disregard your emotional state
09:14because it's actively not serving you.
09:16But I think given that I'm broadly not a waste man,
09:20I think I probably swing too far in the opposite direction.
09:23And I have a lot of friends
09:24who are sort of traditionally high achievers
09:26who are also in this boat
09:28whereby we will often do things
09:30whether or not we feel like it
09:31because we know it's a good thing to do.
09:33But just sort of take that
09:34to the point of extremism almost
09:36where even if I've had like, you know,
09:38I'm in a bit of a slump and my emotional state
09:40is a bit like, oh, I'm not really feeling inspired to write
09:42or I'm not really feeling inspired to make a video,
09:44I'll think, you know what?
09:45No, you have to be a professional.
09:46And actually we've got a video coming out later this week
09:49or next week about overcoming procrastination
09:52that is all about like tackling this thing
09:54of the resistance that we have.
09:55But I think a big part of, at least for me,
09:57this kind of verge of burnout,
10:00if we wanna call it burnout,
10:01a big part of this was just ignoring my emotional state
10:04and pushing through and doing stuff
10:07even though I wasn't feeling like it.
10:09And obviously, you know, these are like two extremes
10:11and there is some kind of sweet spot
10:13which I'm trying to get closer to,
10:14which is something along the lines that,
10:16yes, there are some occasions
10:18in which we do have to force ourselves to do stuff,
10:20but it's also okay to take a break.
10:22This is a very roundabout way of saying
10:24it's okay to take a break sometimes.
10:26And if I am feeling like, you know,
10:28I don't feel like filming a video this evening,
10:30even if there's a sponsor video deadline coming up,
10:32I could just email the sponsor and be like,
10:33hey guys, wasn't really feeling it,
10:35wasn't really inspired,
10:36can we delay this video by a few days?
10:38And they're normally like, they're so nice.
10:39They'd be like, yeah, sure, take your time,
10:40do whatever you want.
10:41Basically, it's okay to take a break,
10:43but I think I had in my head
10:45that I had to be productive at all times,
10:47regardless of how I was feeling.
10:49And that I think contributed to this weird relationship
10:51that I have with productivity.
10:52And thirdly, I think a big contributor
10:54was just the fact that my calendar was way too busy.
10:56A few, I think a couple of months ago,
10:58I discovered Calendly,
10:59this app that lets you like send a link to someone
11:01and they can book a time on your calendar.
11:03And so anytime people would email me,
11:05like I get sort of hundreds of emails each day.
11:07And often there are some very interesting opportunities,
11:09people running startups,
11:10or people doing interesting YouTubers type things
11:13or creative things or just wanting to have a chat.
11:14And there was a period of a few weeks
11:16where I was very trigger happy with my Calendly link.
11:18I would just be like, if someone would be like,
11:19hey, can I pick your brain about X?
11:21I'd be like, you know what, this might be fun.
11:23Sure, here's a Calendly link,
11:24book a time wherever you want
11:25and I'll rock up on a Zoom call.
11:27Or if someone would email, be like,
11:28hey, I'm running the startup
11:29and I'd love to get your thoughts on something
11:30and maybe you can help marketing.
11:31I mean, sure, book a time on the calendar.
11:33And I ended up with like a ridiculously packed calendar
11:36where like every half an hour
11:38from like 9.30 in the morning until like 6 p.m. some days,
11:42I would just have a different Zoom call.
11:44And this would be sort of amongst sort of live sessions
11:48of my part-time YouTuber Academy,
11:49which has been running for the last six weeks.
11:50It would be alongside coaching sessions
11:53and workouts and art lessons.
11:54And there were so many days
11:55where I was like having lunch on a Zoom call,
11:58being like, look, I'm really sorry.
11:59I've been in back-to-back Zoom calls
12:01for the last five hours.
12:02I'm gonna stay in back-to-back Zoom calls
12:03for the next six hours.
12:04Do you mind if I eat on the Zoom call?
12:06My housemate, she would often be like,
12:07why the hell don't you take a break to eat dinner?
12:10Like, what's the point of you being on a Zoom call?
12:11Is that hour really gonna make a difference?
12:14But because I'd been so trigger happy with my Calendly link,
12:16I felt bad and cancelling on these people
12:18and just had a ridiculously packed calendar,
12:21which is good.
12:22Well, it feels very first-world problem-y,
12:24but I think given that book writing and YouTubing
12:28and most of the stuff I do on the internet
12:29is quite a creative art,
12:31I've realised that I probably do need
12:33a lot of time blocked out to actually make a video
12:36and to actually write something.
12:38Because in my head, I was thinking,
12:40well, if the video's 20 minutes long,
12:42it should only take half an hour to film
12:44because I'm a professional.
12:45I've been doing this for four years
12:46and so I can set the camera up.
12:48I've eliminated friction in my life.
12:49I can film in half an hour.
12:51And I just didn't take account of the fact
12:53that I am a wasteman sometimes when it comes to this stuff.
12:56And often, it takes me three hours
12:58to get into the mood to then film a video.
13:00I just didn't really count that.
13:02I sort of assumed that I was better
13:04at this productivity thing than I actually was.
13:06And that meant that I overbooked my calendar.
13:09I basically had no margin built into my schedule.
13:13Margin being sort of gaps, like empty gaps,
13:15where you can just sit down and think,
13:17or if something runs over, overruns,
13:19then you can fill it in the gap.
13:21Or if you wanna have lunch,
13:22you actually have a gap for that.
13:24And so all of these different things, I think,
13:27were what contributed to this overall feeling of like,
13:30you know, oh, I CBA, I can't be bothered
13:33to do any of this YouTube stuff.
13:35Can't be bothered with the book, it's too much effort.
13:36Oh, the goal is too hard, this is never gonna happen.
13:38I'm a terrible writer, I'm a terrible YouTuber.
13:40People are gonna unfollow me, blah, blah, blah.
13:41But thankfully, in the last couple of weeks,
13:43this has improved because having figured out
13:45what the problems were,
13:46I've now sort of actively started
13:48to address those problems.
13:50So firstly, I have made it a point
13:51to not set output goals, outcome goals, rather.
13:54And so even though in the back of my mind,
13:56I do really want this book
13:57to be a New York Times bestseller,
13:58that's anytime I have that thought,
14:00I try and squash it away and think instead,
14:02no, if I had to choose between that
14:04and writing a book I'm proud of and that I like,
14:06I would definitely choose writing a book
14:08that I'm proud of and that I like.
14:09And even for videos like this on YouTube,
14:11like you might've noticed past few weeks,
14:13I've been doing more of these sit down
14:15and have a chat with a cup of tea type videos.
14:17I really like doing these videos
14:18because I can just sort of speak from the heart.
14:19I can talk about my feelings.
14:21It feels like the camera is in a way a sort of therapist.
14:23And it's always nice reading the comments.
14:26And I actually prefer doing these sorts
14:27of sit down chatty videos than a very well produced,
14:31here are the 18 ways to be productive type video,
14:33which takes a lot of actual effort to put together
14:36and a lot of like mental effort to, you know,
14:38bring myself to sit down and make,
14:40which is why partly I've been doing more of these videos.
14:42And what I'm telling myself is,
14:44I actually don't really care how these perform.
14:45If people wanna watch them, they'll watch them.
14:47If they don't, they don't.
14:48People will find something to do with their time regardless.
14:50I don't need to be fixated on what that number is telling me
14:52on YouTube studio, on the YouTube analytics.
14:54Secondly, I now have a much emptier calendar,
14:56which is great.
14:57I have modified my calendar links
14:58and I have now like my assistant Elizabeth,
15:01who has her own YouTube channel, link below.
15:02Elizabeth keeps on telling me like,
15:04why the hell are you saying yes to so many people?
15:06Because I feel like I'm a chronic nice guy
15:09in that if someone emails me or messages me,
15:11or especially if like a friend intros me
15:13to someone else who they know and they ask for a meeting,
15:16I often just say yes to it.
15:18And it was this thing of saying yes to too many things
15:20and booking them in the calendar way too often.
15:22That meant the calendar was overloaded.
15:24So now I've changed my calendar link.
15:26So like no one is allowed to book meetings with me
15:28before two o'clock in the afternoon,
15:30which gives me the whole morning basically free
15:31to do creative stuff.
15:32And then an hour for lunch.
15:34And then I can have calls from like two till like 6 p.m.
15:37But I'm only allowed to have like two or three calls
15:39each day.
15:40And so it's like a system solution to a people problem.
15:44My people problem is that I'm too keen
15:45to say yes to things.
15:47But now the link itself does not let me overbook myself.
15:51And so if you've been emailing me
15:52in the last couple of weeks
15:53and you haven't had a response
15:54or haven't got a meeting arranged with me,
15:57apologies, but it had to be done.
15:59I was just trying to say yes to too many things.
16:01It's weird.
16:02Cause like when you start off doing stuff on the internet,
16:03you think like anytime you get a comment,
16:05anytime you get an email, you're like, oh my God,
16:06someone's like watching my stuff.
16:07Someone wants to talk to me.
16:08Hell yes, I'll give you like an hour of my time.
16:11But then as you become more and more famous,
16:15then you start getting way too much inbound
16:17and there are literally not enough hours in the day
16:19to actually be able to say yes
16:21to all the things you want to say yes to.
16:23And even if there were,
16:24it wouldn't make sense to use up kind of 18 hours
16:27of my working day to just have meetings with people.
16:30Because the reason people follow me in the first place
16:31is because I make the time to make videos.
16:33And without that like empty blocks of time in my calendar,
16:37I don't think I would be serving my long-term interests
16:40or overall the long-term interests of my audience,
16:42which feels a bit grandiose, but oh well.
16:44Thirdly, I have found that I'm trying to become
16:46a bit more aware of what my emotional state is
16:48at any given moment.
16:49I've spoken to a few friends who are sort of like me,
16:52i.e. weird productivity nerds.
16:54And they've said that getting a therapist
16:55has really, really helped
16:56because even though they don't have mental health issues
16:59per se, it's still helpful to be able to speak to someone
17:02that just encourages you and in a way forces you
17:05to actually address what your emotional state is
17:07around stuff.
17:08And so I'm trying to get more okay with asking myself,
17:10how do I feel right now?
17:12And therefore, do I really want to do this thing
17:16that I know I should do
17:16or should I just kind of give into my feelings
17:18but not viewing that as a bad thing?
17:20So still a work in progress.
17:22I wasn't really feeling like filming this video right now,
17:24but my housemate talked me into doing it
17:25and I'm kind of glad I'm doing it now
17:27because it's like most of these things,
17:28like most of the friction,
17:29most of the activation energy is just in getting started.
17:32And once you get started, it's actually quite fun.
17:33Fourthly, I've actually resumed playing World of Warcraft.
17:36I'm actually doing a 30-day challenge
17:39where I play video games for 30 days.
17:41So I won't say too much about that,
17:42but I've been streaming basically every day on Twitch.
17:45If you want to follow me, twitch.tv slash Ali Abdaal,
17:46that's been fun.
17:47And finally, the thing that I've realised
17:49that I really should get better at doing
17:51is that basically at the end of the day,
17:53I can just choose to be satisfied with what I've done.
17:56There was a great blog post that I read.
17:57My friend, Neil Nanda, who featured on our podcast once,
18:00I'll put a link to the video below.
18:01Yeah, he's got a great blog post that talks about this.
18:03Just that as productivity type people,
18:05like we always think, you know,
18:06you wake up in the morning thinking,
18:07oh, I didn't get enough sleep.
18:08And then, you know, you get back from work
18:10or from school or whatever
18:11and think, oh, I didn't perform well enough at work.
18:13And then, you do your side hustle.
18:14You're like, oh, I could have been more productive
18:15in the side hustle.
18:16If you have a family, you're like, oh, damn,
18:17I wasn't present enough with my kids or my housemate
18:19and all that kind of crap.
18:20And then, at the end of the day,
18:21you go to bed thinking, oh, my God,
18:22I've gone to bed too late
18:23and I'm gonna get not enough sleep.
18:24And then, the whole cycle is gonna continue.
18:26And a real big part of it
18:27is just in choosing to be satisfied with the thing.
18:30So what I realised I can do is at the end of the day,
18:33I could just think to myself, you know what?
18:35Today's been a good day of work.
18:36I could think that, or I could beat myself up.
18:38I could think, oh, my God,
18:39I've been so unproductive today.
18:40What is life?
18:40I'm such a waste man.
18:41But either way, it doesn't change the fact
18:43that I've done a certain amount of work.
18:44I filmed one video.
18:45I shot a thumbnail.
18:46I did a thing for my YouTuber Academy.
18:47The story I tell myself about it after the fact
18:50does not change the actual reality.
18:52All it does is make me feel bad about myself
18:54when I tell myself I'm a waste man
18:55and it's 10 p.m. but I haven't done enough work for the day.
18:58Therefore, I should be doing something productive
18:59rather than, I don't know,
19:00playing World of Warcraft or something.
19:01So what I'm trying to do is trying to tell myself
19:03that it's okay to choose to be satisfied
19:06with what I've done at the end of the day
19:07because ultimately it doesn't really change anything.
19:10All it does is make me feel better about my life.
19:12And then I can play World of Warcraft
19:14while streaming on Twitch and do it guilt-free
19:16rather than hating myself every step of the way
19:18as I level up my protection paladin.
19:20And so that is my toxic relationship with productivity.
19:23It's still a work in progress.
19:24It's been a while since I've been in a relationship
19:26with anyone or anything.
19:27So it's kind of novel in a way,
19:29but it's not the sort of relationship with productivity
19:31that I would like.
19:32And I'm, you know,
19:33she and I are working together to improve things.
19:36If you got to this point in the video,
19:37I'd love for you to leave a clover emoji in the comments.
19:39I'm always very curious to see
19:40how many people reached at the end of this video.
19:42If you haven't subscribed to the channel,
19:43you definitely should.
19:44And if you enjoyed this sort of video,
19:45we'll put a little playlist over here
19:46with more chit-chat, rambly type videos over a cup of tea
19:50if you're into that sort of thing.
19:51Thank you so much for watching.
19:51Really appreciate you guys
19:52for actually watching these videos.
19:53Like it's genuinely nice having like people
19:56who have my back as like a therapist on camera.
20:00So thanks for that.
20:01If you have any tips on how to solve this problem,
20:02let me know.
20:03Click the links over there
20:04and we'll see you in the next video.
20:05Good night.