Book Summary: Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal

By Marco A. Aguilar | September 21st 2024

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Author: Ali Abdaal
Fiction/Non-Fiction: Non-Fiction
Genre: Self-Improvement

📓 Summary + Notes

Chapter 1, Play:

· Professor Feynman and other six Nobel Prize Winners attributes their success to play.

· The psychological function of play is to restore the physically and mentally fatigued individual through participation in activity which is pleasurable and relaxing.

Create An Adventure:
· As we get older the spirit of adventure gets squeezed out of us.

· We are taught to stop playing and to take life seriously.

In 2020, University of New York and Miami concluded that those who have a more adventure lifestyle felt happier and more excited and more relaxed. Unlocking positive emotions.

Experiment 1, Choose your character:

· They are 8 play personalities according to Dr. Stuart Brown professor of University of California, San Diego and founder of National Institute of Play.

1. The Collector: Loves to gather and organize, enjoying activities like searching for rare plants, or rummaging around in archives or garage sales.

2. The Competitor: Enjoys fames and sports, and takes pleasure in trying their best winning.

3. The Explorer: Likes to wonder, discovering new places and things they've never seen, through hiking, road tripping and other adventures.

4. The Creator: Finds joy in making things, and can spend hours everyday drawing, painting, making music, gardening, and more.

5. The Storyteller: Has an active imagination and uses their imagination to entertain others. They're drawn to activities like writing, dance, theatre and role-playing games.

6. The Joker: Endeavors to make people laugh, and may play by performing stand-up, doing improv, or just pulling a lot of pranks to make you smile.

7. The Director: Likes to plan, organize and lead others, and can fit into many different roles and activities, from directing stage performances to running a company, to working in political or social advocacy.

8. The Kinesthetic: Finds play in physical activates like acrobatics, gymnastics and free running.

• "Remembering what play is all about and making it part of our daily lives are probably the most important factors in being a fulfilled human being" - Dr. Stuart Brown

Experiment 2, Embrace your curiosity:

• Researchers at the University of California Davis, found that people who are curious about something remembered the details better by a whopping 30 percent rather then a fact they found boring.

• Curiosity realizes dopamine (Feel-Good hormones) which is responsible for learning and forming memories.

• The study participants from UC Davis not only engaged their curiosity to make them feel better it also helped them retain information.

Experiment 3, The magic Post-It note:

• Ask yourself these questions, when you don't want to do something…
- What would it look like if it were fun?
- Could you do it in a different way?
- Could you add music, or sense of humor, or get creative?
- What if you set out to do the task with friends, or promised yourself a treat at the end of the process?
- Is there a way to make this draining process a little more enjoyable?

Experiment 4, Enjoy the process, Not the outcome:

· Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced 'chick-sent-me-hi') stated that if one focuses on the process rather then the outcome, we're substantially more likely to enjoy a task.

Experiment 5, Reframe your failure:

· Success isn't down to how often you fail. It's about how you frame your failures.

· If we could frame our learning process so that we weren't so concerned with failure, how much more could we learn? How much more could we succeed? - Mark Rober

· If we treated them as experiments, where failure would just be as valuable as success. The stakes would be lower, and can afford to play around a little.

· With an experimental mindset, one wouldn't be a 'failure' or a 'waste of time' it'd be another data point.

· No Failure is every just a failure. It's an invitation to try something new.

Experiment 6, Don't be serious. Be sincere:

· There is a difference between serious and being sincere.

· No one wants to be with a person that is to serious, they suck the energy out of the room.

· People neither want to be with people who are uncaring, don't engage, and make an effort. They are not fun to be with.

Summary:

· Seriousness is overrated. If you want to achieve more without ruining your life, the first step is to approach your work with a sense of play.

· They are three ways you can incorporate the spirit of play into your life. First, approach things with a sense of adventure. When you step into the right 'play personality' everyday abounds with opportunities to see life as a game, filled with surprises and side quests.

· Second, find the fun. There's an element of fun in every task, even if it isn't obvious. Try asking yourself what this would look like if it were fun, and then build your projects around the answer.

· Third, lower the stakes. Failures are only failures when you think they are - and not every problem need be approached with such a straight face. So what would it mean to approach your work with less seriousness and more sincerity?

Chapter 2, Power:

· Power, a term that can have negative connotations- totalitarian dictators, and horrible bosses

· Power can and will be in this context a sense of personal empowerment.

· A sense that you are in control. Your job, your life, your hand, your decisions about your future is all in your control.

· Power is an energizer that makes us feel good and makes us productive.

· This type of power can not be seized from others, its something you create.

· Believing you can is the first step to making sure you can actually can.

Experiment 1, The Confidence Switch:

· Self-confidence affects our abilities. (we are not born with confidence we learn it)

· Flipping the confidence switch: challenging yourself to behave as if you're confident in your task, even if your not.

· Ask yourself, What would it look like if I were really confident at this? What would it look like if I approached this task feeling confident that I could do it?

Experiment 2, The Social Model Method:

· In 2007, the Clemson University Outdoor Lab, did a psychological experiment with 38 children between 6-18 years of age. Divided them into 2 groups. These 2 groups objective was to climb the top of a rock-climbing wall. 1 group was shown a short video who climbed up a rock-climbing wall. The other group was shown nothing. The group that watched the short video performed better then the other group who did not watch anything.

· Albert Bandura called this process, "vicarious mastery experience."

· "Vicarious Mastery Experience" is when you witness or hear about someone's else's performance related to a task that you're undertake yourself. This gives a boosts in your confidence.

· Bandura noted that surrounding yourself with those who show persistence and effort can increase our feelings of self-confidence, and self-efficiency.

· If they can, you can too.

· Find people who are going through or went through the same challenges as you, hear their stories, if possible spend time with them.

· By immersing yourself in vicarious success, you will build a powerful story in your own mind.

Experiment 3, The Shoshin Approach:

· Shoshin translates to "beginner's mind"

· Shoshin is the approach of tasks and situations with the curiosity, openness and humility of a beginner.

· Having a beginners mind will allow us to. See things afresh.

· A beginner is willing to try things out even if they might fail. There willing to make mistakes, and these mistakes are precisely what's needed to learn.

· 'Masters' are limited by their beliefs in what's been done, and how.

· 'Beginners' seek new approaches to problem-solving and explore new opportunities.

· 'Beginners' don't hold strong beliefs about what will work, they just try.

· Letting go of the idea that we know everything will help us approach challenges with a greater sense of curiosity, humility and resilience - and help us to learn.

Experiment 4, The Protégé Effect:

· Statically Older sibling have higher IQ's then their younger siblings.

· In 2009, Stanford School Of Education found that people who teach others about a subject would learn the material better themselves. (The Protégé Effect)

· Older siblings share their own experiences and insights.

· You don't need to be a guru. You can be a guide.

Experiment 5, Own the Process:

· When we can't take ownership of the situation, we can still take ownership of the process

· There is almost always a way for us to own the process of a task, even when the outcome has been determined by someone else.

· There is always an extraordinary power to be gained by doing it your way. Even in the most disempowering circumstances.

Experiment 6, Own Your Mindset:

· Change your mindset from 'have to' to 'choose to'

· Switching your mindset boosts a sense of control, power, and what one is capable.

· 'Have to' is a coercive language that makes one feel powerless.

· "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." - Viktor Frankl, Austrian psychiatrist and Survivor of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Summary:

· 'Power' is a scary word, but it doesn't have to be. When we say the second energiser is power, we don't mean exerting control over others. Here, we simply mean feeling empowered to take your job, life and future into your own hands.

· There are three ways you can increase your sense of power, starting now/ Begin with confidence. We think our confidence is fixed, but actually it's extremely malleable. So why not try to 'flip the confidence switch' and playing the role of someone who's already filled with self-belief?

· Next. Level up your skills. Ask yourself: if I were completely new to this task, what would this look like? And can I start teaching others even though I'm not an expert yet?

Finally, see what you can do to take ownership, even in moments when you don't have as much control in moments when you don't have as much control as you'd like. Remember, if you can't choose what you work on, you can still choose how you work on it. The outcome isn't always in your hands. But the process, and certainly your mindset, often is.

More Coming Soon