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If you were reading a book last night instead of watching the Super Bowl Half-Time show, from what I heard, you didn’t miss much!

Sounds like it was pretty terrible. But…I’m glad the Eagles won, because it turns out that their superstar wide-receiver, A.J. Brown, is one of us! He’s a reader!

In fact, he was seen reading Inner Excellence, by Jim Murphy, on the sidelines of one of his recent playoff games, causing it to absolutely BLOW UP on Amazon, rising 53,000,000% in the rankings and hitting Number 1 Bestseller status within...12 HOURS! 

In one of my latest YouTube videos, I share a few of my best notes + takeaways from Inner Excellence, have AJ explain in his own words what that book meant to him and why he read it, and then I also say just a few words about how astoundingly awesome it is that NFL players are making books cool again.

Anyway, if you enjoy this video and/or find it interesting, please consider subscribing to my channel and sharing the video with a friend. Thanks!

In this issue of The Reading Life, though, we’ve got my full, free breakdown of Feel-Good Productivity, by Ali Abdaal.

Ali is the world’s most-followed productivity expert, and his first book is a radical reimagining of productivity, and specifically the idea that it has to be all about drudgery and pain. It doesn’t. Productivity can be fun, and virtually effortless (at least most of the time), and he’s got the science-backed, empirically-validated evidence to prove it.

As you can see, I went all-out writing this breakdown for you, and I truly believe it can be of enormous value to you, no matter whether you’re a student, a working professional, a full-time creator like me, or you simply want to find (and create) more time for what’s most important to you in life.

Here in this newsletter, I’ve pulled out a few samples from each section, but like I said, the full breakdown is completely free, and you can read it right here. Happy reading!

📚 Passion Struck, by John R. Miles - This is an incredible leadership book, by one of the most impressive people I’m honored to call a friend. I’ve honestly lost track of how many awards this book has won, but it deserves every one of them, and by reading it, you’ll not only begin living a more intentional, purpose-driven life, you’ll also inspire many others to do the same.

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This Book is For:

*Lifelong learners and students who want to implement a sustainable, science-backed system for beating procrastination and staying on top of their course work, without falling back on self-destructive habits or substances that blunt their potential in the long term.

*Creatives at all levels seeking methods and strategies for increasing their output and staying focused in a world of constant distractions, without dulling their artistic sensitivities or relying on motivation or discipline to carry them through.

*Business owners and professionals looking to find a more balanced approach to life and work that has them feeling more energized and effective, while consistently achieving and becoming more at the same time.

*Anyone who wants to beat procrastination forever by utilizing battle-tested and laboratory-tested techniques for reducing stress, gaining clarity on what really matters, and living a life of meaning, alignment, and purpose.

Summary:

The definition of productivity has gone through a reimagining in recent years, and so have the best methods and mindsets necessary to achieve it.

Nowadays, productivity doesn't mean crossing off as many tasks as possible, regardless of their actual importance or meaning, all while desperately wishing you were somewhere else.

Today, I think of productivity as doing exactly what you intend to do, when you intend to do it, and as long as you're doing that, you're perfectly productive. Even if it's your intention to recharge by taking the night off.

In this book, Ali Abdaal, a former medical doctor and the world's most-followed productivity expert, takes issue with the idea that productivity has to be about discipline and drudgery at all. It can be about joy.

Feel-Good Productivity is based on the idea that we'll get more done by making work feel good, instead of dragging ourselves through it, regardless of how we feel.

The approach Ali lays out in the book is supported by a litany of scientific studies, empirical observation, and personal experimentation, and it's laid out in an extremely practical way, featuring 54 "productivity experiments" you can conduct on your own to put these insights into action.

The book also contains overwhelming psychological and neuroscientific evidence for why positive emotions fuel success, and how feeling good in your work can boost your energy, soothe your stress, and improve your life.

I'd never try to claim that discipline doesn't matter at all, or that it can't be extraordinarily valuable in a wide variety of situations, but what I love about Feel-Good Productivity is that Ali doesn't make it a matter of "discipline or nothing."

Success and fulfillment is possible without constant pain and suffering, and for the majority of the work that most of us do each day, it's probably more joy that would help us out the most.

Work isn't always going to feel good. Sometimes you do have to suffer (at least temporarily) for what you want in this life. But it's far from the only way there is to succeed, and Ali's book is the perfect counterbalance to that claim.

Discipline shouldn't be the default; it should be that extra gear that you drop into occasionally when you really need to dig deep.

With all that in mind, Feel-Good Productivity is split into three sections:

Energize

In the first section, we're introduced to the three hidden "energizers" that enable enjoyable productivity, and they are Play, Power, and People.

Ali charges out of the gate, where he recounts the stories of six different Nobel Prize winners who attribute their success to Play, including Richard Feynman, Alexander Fleming, and Donna Strickland. Play provided these luminaries with a sense of psychological relief, restoring their formidable mental powers through participation in activities that were pleasurable and relaxing.

The second energizer, Power, refers to a sense of personal empowerment, not power over others. It's not something you take from other people, it's something you give to yourself.

It's that sense of, "My life is completely up to me, and I alone am responsible for my success, satisfaction, and peace." For lack of a better word, it's a powerful mindset to adopt, one that's shared by high-performers in diverse fields all over the globe.

The third energizer, People, is all about social connections. It's about helping others, and being helped in return. As it turns out, if you surround yourself with people who inspire, support, encourage, and energize you, you'll not only get a lot more done, but you'll enjoy yourself a lot more at the same time.

Unblock

The second part of Feel-Good Productivity addresses the three "blockers" we must overcome if we want to beat procrastination. They include Uncertainty, Fear, and Inertia, and by removing these barriers a whole new future of increased productivity and life satisfaction opens up before you.

The first blocker becomes a problem when we become overwhelmed by the unknowns or the complexity of the work ahead, leading us to do nothing instead. But we can fight back against this uncertainty using a variety of methods introduced by Ali here, including commander's intent, NICE goals, time-blocking, and more, all of which is discussed below.

The second blocker, fear, has a number of viable solutions, but understandably it's a real issue faced by many people as they stare down their dreams, goals, and projects. Understanding fear and utilizing various techniques to combat it can work wonders, and that's Ali's project in this chapter.

The third blocker, inertia, is a real productivity-killer, although it can be overcome with some startlingly simple solutions. Starting small, reducing friction (both environmental and emotional), and enlisting additional support are all ways that it can be beaten, and again, we'll get into all of that below.

Sustain

The final section of the book focuses on maintaining not just productivity over the long term, but also alignment and purpose, both critical components of a life well-lived. It addresses three different types of burnout, and Ali delivers several high-impact strategies to deal with each and every one of them.

I devote an entire section to the three types of burnout in the full breakdown, so I won't go into too much detail here. But they are overexertion burnout, which occurs when you push yourself too hard for too long, depletion burnout, where your energy reserves remain low for long periods of time without devoting enough time to recovery, and misalignment burnout - possibly the worst of all - which occurs when your daily actions aren't aligned with your core values.

Taken together, here you have an incredible array of practical, workable strategies - most of which you can implement immediately to improve the quality of your life from Day One. You'll probably start to notice positive changes before you even finish reading the book!

Personally, I consider a book worth reading if I come away with even just one life-changing idea, and Feel-Good Productivity is packed with a ton of them.

I took pages and pages (and pages) of excellent notes, which I'm sharing with you here in this breakdown, along with a selection of Key Ideas, including the five-minute rule, the tension between "goals" and "systems," time-blocking, environmental engineering, and many more.

It's all backed by solid scientific research, as I've said, including something known as the "broaden-and-build" theory, according to which positive emotions broaden our perception and build up our cognitive resources in all kinds of beneficial ways.

What happens when we prioritize positive emotions in our life and work is that we put into motion this virtuous cycle of productivity, whereby feeling good causes us to become more energized, which allows us to become more productive, which leads us to accomplishing what we set out to do and feeling great about that, at which point the cycle repeats and we find ourselves steadily constructing a life of meaning, purpose, fun, and excitement that is literally a joy to live. In that way, we build a life for ourselves, instead of merely existing.

Simply put: “Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.”

READ THE FULL BOOK BREAKDOWN HERE

Key Ideas:

#1: Beginning with the End in Mind

In Stephen R. Covey's classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit #2 is to "Begin with the End in Mind." This involves working backward from a desired result and asking, "How did I end up here? What steps did I take? How do I move forward from where I am right now?"

Ali Abdaal builds on this idea by bringing in the concept of "commander's intent," which is basically the practice of explaining to soldiers on the ground the ultimate purpose of the operation, so that they keep the end in mind, while remaining flexible on the details of how they get there.

For example, your goal might be to become a full-time creator like Ali and I. There are a number of ways to do this, and obviously they all involve increasing your monthly revenue.

You can start a newsletter, a YouTube channel, a paid mastermind, etc. There are literally dozens of monetization options, but whichever one(s) you choose are going to serve the ultimate purpose of going full-time with your creative passions. That's your commander's intent.

Even though your ultimate goal is to become a full-time creator, you can find yourself getting so caught up in scripting videos and organizing your shot lists and editing vlogs you forget that you're not even enjoying making YouTube videos!

In that case, you'd likely be much more fulfilled as a text-based creator writing a paid newsletter or something, but you've forgotten to ask the commander's intent question, so you end up trying to force yourself to be productive on YouTube.

When you're up to your neck in alligators, it's easy to forget that your original purpose was to drain the swamp, but you can always get back on track by asking yourself great questions. "What is the purpose behind this?" is one of them. It reveals that even though methods and tactics can and will change, a strategy will carry you through to the end.

#2: Getting to Mount Olympus

Socrates was widely recognized as being the wisest man in Ancient Greece (because, he said, he knew that he knew nothing), and one of my favorite stories about him is when someone asked him how to get to Mount Olympus.

Mount Olympus being the home of the gods, you could say that the questioner wanted to know how to become more godlike, more worthy of entrance to a place of such grandeur and excellence. Socrates being Socrates, he answered that the best way to get there was to make sure every step you take is in that direction!

I love that answer, because it points to how every action we take in life is either a +1 or a -1, something that's taking us closer to our goals, or further away from them.

Whenever we choose a +1 action, such as making a sales call, publishing a YouTube video, applying to that job, etc., we're doing something positive for ourselves that will take us that much closer to our own version of Mount Olympus.

What Ali's getting at in the quote above is how we need to gently remind ourselves over and over again each day why we're doing this particular thing and not some other thing. We have to keep this greater purpose in mind at all times, constantly asking ourselves, "Is this taking me to Mount Olympus or not?"

Speaking for myself, on my best days, I measure every single thing I'm doing against the importance of my ultimate goal. I ask myself, "Is this more important than my goal?" Usually, the answer is no.

So ask yourself, "Will this get me closer to Mount Olympus? Will this contribute to the accomplishment of my highest and grandest aspirations? Is this a +1 or a -1?"

#3: N-I-C-E Goals

READ ALL THE KEY IDEAS HERE

Book Notes:

READ ALL THE BOOK NOTES HERE

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Action Steps:

#1: Find an Accountability Partner

Finding an accountability partner helps us stick to our plans and goals by drawing on our sense of social obligation to overcome inertia.

Ali puts the idea in a humorous way when he points out that it's a lot easier to skip a workout when going by yourself, than it would be if you had a friend waiting outside your door at 6PM irately looking at their watch!

I'm a big believer in the power of accountability partners, having organized my private community, The Competitive Advantage, around this very idea. Succeeding is a lot more fun when you do it with friends, and no one is self-made. Absolutely no one.

We all need each other, and it can be an extraordinarily powerful motivator to have dozens of people all in one place, each rooting for your success.

You don't have to join a special community to get the benefit of greater accountability in your life, though. It can be very simple and straightforward, and the first step is to find someone who has similar goals as you do. They're more likely to know the specific pains and challenges you'll face along the path, and they'll also be more uniquely suited to help you overcome them.

Second, define your "accountability culture." Ali's advice here is as follows:

Third, hammer out the actual process with your accountability buddy. How are they going to hold you accountable? What specifically are they going to do, and when? What will the day-to-day (or month-to-month) process actually look like?

#2: The Energy Investment Portfolio

The first step toward managing your time is to figure out where it's going in the first place, and the first step toward resisting overcommitment is to figure out where your energy is going now. It's a limited resource, and by maintaining an "energy investment portfolio" you can start to manage it more effectively.

Creating an energy investment portfolio involves making two lists: List A is a list of all your dreams, hopes, and ambitions. This list is more future-oriented, containing items that you'd like to get to at some point, but that aren't necessarily a pressing priority right now. Say, writing a book, or founding a nonprofit. List B is where you take stock of where you're investing your energy currently, which, for Ali means this week.

The former list can be as long as you want, but the latter should ideally be limited to around five or so. Honestly, if you have even less time than most people because of child-rearing responsibilities, etc., you can keep it to just one!

For myself, List B would include things like reading books, working out, publishing YouTube videos, etc. List A would have things like spending the winter in Greece, following along on tour with Lamb of God or As I Lay Dying, etc. They're things I'd absolutely love to do at some point, but because my time and energy is limited, they're just not a priority right now.

For this Action Step, build an energy investment portfolio yourself around what's most important to you at this stage of your life, and do exactly what the term implies: invest resources in these activities; prioritize them, and ruthlessly eliminate anything else that's not going to result in a meaningful return on your investment.

Everyone has limits to their time and energy. An energy investment portfolio can help you visualize that truth, and build an incredible life around it.

#3: The Odyssey Plan

Long before Tim Ferriss came along, there was Bill Burnett, a lecturer at Stanford University and the author of Designing Your Life, a book which features a revelatory exercise called the "odyssey plan."

The very simple question Bill asks in that book is, "What do you want your life to look like in five years' time?" Pretty run-of-the-mill question, sure! But the magic shows up in the way he asks you to think about your answer.

Burnett invited readers and students to answer the question in three different ways, which I'll ask you to do here in this Action Step:

• Your Current Path: “What will my life look like five years from now if I continue on the same path?"

• Your Alternative Path: “What will my life look like five years from now if I took a completely different path?"

• Your Radical Path: “What will my life look like in five years if I took a completely different path, one where money, social obligations, and what people would think, were irrelevant?"

Now those are much more interesting questions! So? What do you think? The point isn't to set your next five years in stone, irrevocably committing to one (and only one) course of action no matter what. It's merely to get you thinking of the possibilities. Because as they like to say nowadays...you can just do stuff!

READ ALL THE ACTION STEPS HERE

This Book on Amazon:

Feel-Good Productivity, by Ali Abdaal

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OK, that’s it for now…

More excellent book recommendations coming your way soon!

Again, you can find the rest of the above breakdown on this page here.

And if you’re an educational content creator who wants to earn at least $5,000/month and go full-time pursuing your creative passions, click to join us inside The Competitive Advantage - we’d love to have you!

With that said, I hope you enjoyed this edition of The Reading Life, and enjoy the rest of your week!

Until next time…happy reading!

All the best,

Matt Karamazov

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are two more ways I can help you:

1. Book a 1-1 strategy call with me and we’ll get you up to $5K/month in revenue by following a custom plan we’ll build together.

2. Join The Competitive Advantage, my private business mastermind for educational content creators who want to stand out in their niche, build multiple revenue streams, and go full-time with their creative passions.