Dr Rupy: My time is productive if it's intentional. So if I intended to browse TikTok for 15 minutes and I browse TikTok for 15 minutes, great, I'm being productive. I've used my time intentionally. Still sometimes when I'm on the toilet, I'll find myself scrolling and finding Instagram and just scrolling a little bit. And then usually I'll stop myself and be like, wait a minute, is this really what I want to be doing? And sometimes I'm like, you know what, I'm here for a bit, I might as well, I might as well indulge myself. But at that point, it becomes a conscious decision rather than a default one.
Dr Rupy: Welcome to The Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine, and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition, and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life.
Dr Rupy: Today I welcome back Ali Abdaal onto the podcast to talk about productivity, finding joy in the mundane tasks of every life, and how to reframe your story and achieve greater satisfaction. Ali is the world's most followed productivity expert. Across his millions of followers on YouTube and social media, he shares productivity tips, lifestyle, technology hacks, but his book, Feel-Good Productivity, really leans into the psychology behind finding balance and happiness in both work and social lives. On today's episode, we talk about being intentional about what actually generates energy, how the conditions of stress do not necessarily yield our best work, and how play, power, and people are your productivity best friends. It also turned quite naturally, I would say, into a bit of a business therapy session where Ali made me realise how much more I could actually be doing with my own time to deliver more value to you, the listener of this podcast. It was a real lightbulb moment for me during our conversation. How I choose to direct my time actually has a huge impact on my business, its growth, and the quality of the information that we can deliver to you and the millions of other people that need as much attention to their diet and lifestyles as possible. Ali Abdaal is a doctor, entrepreneur, amateur magician, and the world's most followed productivity expert online. It's pretty amazing to see his journey from junior doctor to YouTube star to now New York Times bestselling author. It was phenomenal having him in the kitchen studio and chatting in front of a whiteboard for a couple of hours afterwards. He's given me so many more ideas about what we can do, what we can be doing actually in the Doctor's Kitchen to generate even more impact, and I think you're going to find this a wonderful conversation. Please do watch this conversation on YouTube. You can subscribe for free. It's the best way to support the podcast. And also, do me a favour, if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, hit the notification bell, the little bell on Spotify or the plus sign on Apple, I think it is. It really does help us out. For some reason, it helps us get a lot more attention. It spreads a little bit of love, and if you found anything useful from today's conversation, just hit that little notification tool. It really does help us out. Anyway, here is my conversation with Ali Abdaal.
Dr Rupy: Ali, welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing?
Ali Abdaal: I'm doing great. How are you?
Dr Rupy: Good, good, man. I mean, we've just been catching up for the last half an hour, so that's a bit fake. But anyway, really good, man. Really, really happy to have you back on the podcast talking about this incredible book that you've been writing for like the last two, three and a half years.
Ali Abdaal: Three and a half years. The whole process. As you know, writing a book, you would think it's easy, and then you start doing it and you're like, oh, there's more, there's more that goes into this than I thought.
Dr Rupy: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's incredible. We're going to get to it. I think like, like I was saying to you actually in the, in the studio kitchen, I expected this book to be full of like templates and, you know, different laws and different sort of like frameworks and all that kind of stuff. And whilst there is some of that in there, it's actually a lot more about the emotions around productivity and how you can, you know, capture your, um, the joy in making, making things and being productive.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, like, you know, I've, I've been obsessed with productivity for like 15 years now. And as, you know, as, as I was going, as I was going through medical school, I sort of, you know, bought into the whole idea that like the way to get better results was to work harder. And, you know, work smarter to an extent, and I found ways to work smart. But then, and you know, it was, it was doable going through med school. But then when I started working in F1, working as a junior doctor, as you would know, suddenly working harder and harder wasn't actually having the effect that I wanted it to. And I was super, super efficient. I knew how to type really fast. I knew all the productivity techniques, but I would still get home from work feeling really drained, just without any energy to do the things I actually wanted to do outside of my day job. And after, after a few months of this, it was on, it was on Christmas day of F1, where I sort of realised that, hang on, something needs to change here. Like, I don't want to continue on this grind, because every, every other doctor I was speaking to was also like, oh man, it's just the NHS, you've just got to suck it up. And I was like, nah, this is no way to live. Like, so I found, I tried my absolute best to find ways to make the day job more enjoyable, more energising.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Ali Abdaal: And I found that there were, there were a few, a few things that I did that as I did them, I started to feel better. I started to perform better at work. I started to have way more energy in the evenings to do my YouTube videos. And then my business started to skyrocket as well. And everything in my life became better. And I was like, this is what productivity is really about. It's about energy rather than it's about, rather than about efficiency or time or whatever.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So there's probably a whole bunch of like nutrition professionals, medical professionals have heard that and like resonated with that in their own lives and like, okay, what are the things that he did to improve his sort of joy in the workplace and become more productive and happier?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, okay, so the, the biggest one, and this is, this was, was in the book, but we had to cut it out because it was like complicating things. But we can do the complicated version of the story. It's a bit simplified in the book. The complicated version of the story is that I realised that there were, there were some days where I'd get home from work feeling weirdly energised. And most days I'd feel totally drained. And after a while, I was like, what is it? Like, why is it that some days I just get home from work and I'm like, I've got so much energy and I've got the energy to edit a YouTube video and to like see my friends. And other days I just want to sit on the sofa and scroll Instagram or whatever. And I realised that weirdly, the shifts or the days where I had the most energy were at the end of a weekend shift.
Dr Rupy: Ah.
Ali Abdaal: That's kind of weird because on weekends, there's less staff, there's less support, there's more emergencies, there's generally more stuff to do on a weekend.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's horrible.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. But on weekends, I was like weirdly energised. I was like, why is this? Why am I weirdly energised on weekends? I also realised that when I was on my medical placements, Wednesdays were weirdly energising. And Wednesdays were the days that the seniors were on their GP training, GP training blocks, because they would go in the afternoon. And I would have the ward to myself with the consultant being, you know, downstairs in their office on a Wednesday. I was like, why is it that when the seniors are away, I feel more energised? And after a while, I clocked and I realised that like, when it was a weekend shift, I was just taking more responsibility. I was the one who was memorising the patient's blood results. The consultant would be like, what's Mrs. what's her face's potassium? I'd be like, oh, it's 4.2.
Dr Rupy: Uh-huh.
Ali Abdaal: And I was doing the things and I, I felt responsible. I was taking ownership. Whereas on weekday shifts, you know, I was, I was buying into the narrative that I'm just a lowly F1. I'm just an admin monkey. Oh, woe is me. I just, I just do what I'm told. And weirdly, when I was just doing what I was told, I was doing less work, but I was really drained. And when I was stepping up and taking responsibility, I was weirdly energised. And I was like, this is kind of weird. And then I realised that there's actually a whole bunch of research supporting this. This idea of like extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic motivation. When, you know, extrinsic motivation, as our listeners might know, is when you're doing something for the sake of the reward associated with it. Like, I'm doing this thing to make money. I'm doing this thing to avoid punishment. But intrinsic motivation is when you're motivated to do it because you want to, because it's fun, because it's interesting, for its own sake. And intrinsic motivation generates energy. Extrinsic motivation generally drains energy. And intrinsic motivation, a big, a big thing that drives it is a feeling of power. Like when you feel powerful, when you feel like you have autonomy, when you feel like you have ownership or responsibility, even though you're working harder, you're more motivated and you're generating more energy. And then I realised, wait a minute, I don't need to wait for a weekend to take responsibility. I can just do that. I can simply choose to approach, approach my work as if I'm the one responsible for the patients, not the registrar or the consultant. And that made all the difference. And there were a few other things as well, but that, that made a massive difference in my energy levels. And I was like, damn, I should do this more, you know, I should do more of this. And then I just continued doing that for two years and then my YouTube channel blew up because I had so much energy to give to the business on after work as well.
Dr Rupy: And then I'm assuming, I mean, the story planned out that you chose to go down the YouTube route and chose to focus fully on your business. But let's say that didn't work out. Would you still think that, you know, with the benefit of hindsight perhaps, you would still have that intrinsic motivation if you were just slogging away on the wards and, you know, going through specialty training and all that kind of stuff? Because I'm just trying to pitch the devil's advocate perspective here of like somebody who's still in training and still being absolutely beaten down by the NHS and they don't feel like they have that locus of control around their vocation because there's just so many other issues that are outside of what they can do on a daily basis.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, no, that's, that's a good point. So for me, I sort of accidentally became a full-time YouTuber. I took a break after F2 intending to go to Australia to do emergency medicine. I think you went to Australia for a bit.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah.
Ali Abdaal: But it was 2020 and they closed their borders. So I literally ended up just in my, in my room making YouTube videos without a job because Australia closed their borders. And so I, I had no intention of quitting the job. It just sort of happened. There is, there is a limit to how much you can like brain hack yourself into finding things fun. And, you know, the first eight chapters of this book are all about how to do that. But the ninth chapter is about alignment. And, you know, the way I think of it, people sometimes ask me, you know, if I'm not enjoying my job, should I quit my job and follow my passion? And I'm like, well, it depends how much, it depends how much money you've got in savings, right? If your parents are really rich, go for it. But if they're not really rich and you don't have this enormous safety net, you can't just quit your job and follow your passion because A, you need a way to make money and B, when you make your passion your job, it stops being a passion as well. Um, so the thing that I would say is that if it were me and if, if I were doing a job that I genuinely didn't like, my first port of call would be to try and find all the ways that I could to make it more enjoyable, more energising, incorporate the three Ps of play, power and people. Um, try and really kind of focus on that locus of control as you say. But if that wasn't working after a while, I'd be like, okay, I need to come up with an exit strategy here.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Ali Abdaal: I think with a lot of medics that I speak to, with the best will in the world, right now, the way things are, it's just really hard to enjoy a job working full-time in the NHS.
Dr Rupy: Totally.
Ali Abdaal: Um, and so I am all for developing exit strategies. Not quitting the job and following your passion, but just using your weekends and evenings to develop a little bit of an exit plan. So you have a little bit more autonomy in your life.
Dr Rupy: Being really intentional about it, you know? And for some people, a lot of people, it's not the right, the right vocation for them for whatever reason. I, I recently went to, um, uh, Morzine on a, it was a well-medics retreat. It's well-medics with an X. And, um, it's run by, um, uh, consultant gastro, uh, GI surgeon, sorry, um, anaesthetist, orthopod. And they came up with this idea of like just going to the mountains, they love to ski, and they wanted to, you know, have an open space where medics who are still working, and perhaps outside of medicine as well, but still working largely in the NHS, have a space to be vulnerable, be open, speak about their experiences. A lot of them have burnout themselves. And, and also, you know, be a little bit selfish with, you know, going to the mountains and stuff. Like, it's kind of unheard of for a lot of NHS medics to think about themselves first. They always think about the healthcare service and, you know, how we should always be pumping out more or like getting through the waiting list and all the rest of it. And it's pretty amazing just how many people are experiencing burnout and they lose the compassion within the job as well. There's something called compassion fatigue, which is quite common, particularly amongst, you know, GPs and other people who are seeing a lot of patients every single day. Um, and I think the, the three Ps that you describe could probably be helpful for a lot of people. It's just as a way of framing the day-to-day as a way to enjoy it more and actually get a lot more out of, you know, what is actually a really rewarding profession.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like when I started incorporating the Ps into, into the day job, it just became more fun. It became more rewarding, became more energising. Um, yeah. I also think like, partly, if I'd been doing it for like 10, 15 years, I'm, I'm sure that even the Ps wouldn't, wouldn't have helped me to be honest. I did it for two years. I found my exit plan. I was very intentional about it. Things worked out for the best. So I also don't want to sit here and like, you know, say to if there's like a consultant surgeon listening to this, be like, hey man, just incorporate the Ps into your work and it'll be more fun. I'm like, you know, it, I think it works for a lot of people, um, but if the system is so, is like punching you in the face every day, there's only so much you can do before it starts to really grind you down.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, totally. And I think that's kind of like one of the reasons why I eventually stepped away from doing the NHS day-to-day. Like I've been pretty open with about this, like the way I practice medicine now is through the medium of this podcast, sharing ideas, essentially helping people to, uh, become the architects of their own health and practice self-care. And that actually, if you look at the ROI on my time, is going to have a much bigger impact if I'm able to get this message out to as many people as possible, which is the ultimate aim of the Doctor's Kitchen and the app and all the rest of it.
Ali Abdaal: Were you worried that you wouldn't be, uh, you wouldn't be credible if you didn't do clinical practice?
Dr Rupy: 100%. 100%. And it's still something that niggles me every single day. But this guy's not like, you know, seeing patients or he's not working in the NHS or, you know, he's not doing this. And actually, you know, it's, it's just a different way of practicing medicine now, I think. Um, a more modern way, uh, a way I think that is going to have a much bigger impact on people's health because, you know, I could be slogging away, uh, working, uh, in a, in a clinical surgery, but I, I know what that feeling's like. And I think I'd be doing it for the wrong reasons. I wouldn't be doing it for intrinsic motivation. I'd be doing it for external validation.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, so my, my sister-in-law is a medic as well, former medic. So she was, she and I were at uni together, and then she ended up marrying my brother, which was kind of fun. Um, but she was always into public health stuff. And one way of doing public health, as you know, is you go to, you know, you do the public health training program and all that kind of stuff. But she realised kind of in, in uni that, hang on, the point of being a public health doctor is to be able to do public health initiatives that have impact at scale. Therefore, why don't I just do that? And so she quit after F2, started her own charity. It's called the Lead Elimination Project, where they work in a dozen plus countries around the world to remove lead paint from the market to reduce the impact of childhood lead poisoning. And you can just do that. Like, as a, she was 26 at the time, she just decided to start a charity. There was this program called charity entrepreneurship that helps with this, hired a team, got funding, and is literally helping remove lead from the market in a bunch of these developing countries, which is a public health initiative that does not require you to go through eight years of training to become a public health consultant and then work within the confines of like a bureaucratic governmental system in the UK. You can just do stuff. And you can kind of like figure out what's the outcome that you want and then like go directly to that in a route that doesn't involve going through the medical training pathway.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, totally.
Ali Abdaal: Which is sort of what, what you're doing. The stuff that you're doing is basically public health, just without having, I'm assuming, gone through a public health training program to then be stuck in a governmental organization.
Dr Rupy: Totally. Yeah. And I find absolute joy in what I do. Like, uh, you know, we're talking about the things in your day that are probably grinding you down and all the rest of it. But I think about that in my day and I'm like, it's the admin, it's the coordination, it's like, you know, creating procedures for everyone who works in the team and all that kind of stuff. But the thing that brings joy to me is being in the kitchen and creating content and being filmed and explaining why I'm using certain ingredients and and just being like a bit of a, you know, quote unquote artist, not to big myself up here, but with how I create meals and how I encourage and educate people to be able to replicate this in their own kitchens. Like that for me is like, that sparks joy. And I think, you know, people have, you know, different motivations as to what sparks joy for them. Sometimes it is like just seeing as many patients as they can in A&E or having that one interaction with someone who is thanking you for whatever, or maybe it's a complex patient. Um, and for a lot of my colleagues it is. But it's being really intentional, I think, about what is, uh, giving you that, that creative energy.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. Yeah, I think for me the litmus test was always, uh, am I looking forward to Mondays? And like, I quite enjoyed life as a doctor. It was quite fun, especially after incorporating the Ps into it. But I still wouldn't say, it would be a stretch to say I looked forward to Mondays. And I just thought that was part of life. You just, you know, it's, it's called work for a reason, you know. It's just a thing. Like, no one looks forward to Mondays. And then I started doing this YouTube thing and started like writing the book and started hiring a team and doing my own thing. I'm like, wait a minute. Now it, you know, it gets to Monday morning and I can't wait to be done with like my shower and skincare routine so that I can like just get started with work stuff. And weirdly, like, you know, this Monday was like a couple of days ago. I was in Zoom calls with my team all day. And it was super fun. And I looked forward to it because each call is like, we're doing something, we're like doing creative things and all this sort of stuff. And I never had that feeling when I worked in medicine. Except when we did the ALS course. Freaking love that. That was, those were like two of the best two days of my life. Advanced life support. Incredible. It was in this fancy ass like manor house near Cambridge. Amazing use of two days. I love that stuff where you feel as if you're learning, you're doing cool stuff. And all the consultants were there. There was a good lunch and it was such a great vibe. ALS, loved it.
Dr Rupy: Amazing. I've never heard of an ALS course being in like some mansion though. It's usually just in the lecture hall.
Ali Abdaal: It was in a super fancy place. Like, the food was great. The vibe, the vibe was amazing.
Dr Rupy: Nice. I love that. You've got the pain of, uh, the loss if you don't turn up to your PT.
Ali Abdaal: That's the thing. I think having an accountability buddy is like a really, a really hack for doing almost anything. And especially when real money's on the line, then it just, it just works.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, totally. Let's talk about productivity. So, like, you've talked about, um, productivity not being a discipline, it's a joy. Um, why don't we just zoom into that and then we can get to the, the three Ps.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. So, one of the things that I realised after doing a bunch of research into productivity and performance and creativity and all that kind of stuff, is that generally the best work is not done when we are under conditions of stress or when we are having to discipline ourselves into doing the thing. I think at the moment there's a lot of narrative around like, well, if you want to, if you want to achieve success in life, you've got to wake up at 5:00 a.m. You've got to hustle, you've got to grind, you've got to do the thing even when you don't feel like doing the thing. I was like, okay, there's, you know, there's some merit to that. You do sometimes have to do things that you don't enjoy doing. But it's a lot easier to sustain doing anything for, for the long term if you can find a way to actually enjoy the process. You know, as you and I know, having been doing this online creator thing for a while, there are so many people, especially during the pandemic, who were like, I'm going to be an Instagrammer, I'm going to be a YouTuber, I'm going to be an author. And they don't stick with it long enough to actually experience any results. All of the gains come from people who stick to the thing long enough. If you're running a business, you know, the most, the majority of the enterprise value that a business generates is created 10 years after the business was founded. And like, no one does anything, like, yeah, there are so few people that do anything for 10 years to experience like where you really start to benefit from the thing. You just got to do it for decades. And a big part of being able to do something for a very long time is to find joy in the process, not be fixated on the outcome, not be having to discipline yourself into doing it all the time, but to find joy in the process. Um, you know, the people who are the most jacked are the ones who enjoy working out. People who have the biggest kind of businesses are the ones who enjoy running businesses. The people who have the most successful YouTube channels or books and stuff are the ones who enjoy the process of making videos or writing books. And so how do we incorporate more of that enjoyment of the process into everything we do? And there's a bunch of studies that show that if you can feel good about the work you're doing, it makes you more creative, it makes you perform better, it actually reduces your stress levels as well, and it also gives you energy to give to the other important areas of your life.
Dr Rupy: Okay, okay. And so when you talk about finding joy in, um, aspects of your business, let's assume that you can't, um, exit, you know, your, uh, medical career or your admin job or corporate structure. What are the tangible sort of examples that you can think of using any sort of example that you like, um, of how someone could actually put that into practice?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, amazing. So we've got three Ps, play, power and people. And my favourite example for this is a guy who is now a friend of mine who used to work at McDonald's.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Ali Abdaal: He used to work in the McDonald's drive-through. And everyone's always like, well, how do you say make your work fun? What if you work at a McDonald's? I'm like, all right, let's interview someone who did that and let's see what how you can apply the three Ps.
Dr Rupy: Nice.
Ali Abdaal: So the first P is play. Basically, the idea is that if you can approach anything you do, especially your work, in the spirit of play, it becomes more fun, unsurprisingly. You know, we all were really good at playing when we were younger. We didn't need to be forced to learn. We were just very curious. You know, as kids, kids just love playing. They get a lot of energy out of it. And then as we go through the school system, the spirit of play gets squashed out of us. And we get told that you have to do this for the grade and for the work experience and to get into the good university and to get into a good job so that one day you'll be happy or something like that. Um, but essentially, if we can incorporate more of a spirit of play into what we do, it becomes more fun. So what is play? Play is a combination of high engagement and low stakes. High engagement being, you know, you're fully engaged in the task. Low stakes meaning that that the, you know, it's not so high pressure that like if like Roger Federer is defending his Wimbledon title, he's not really playing. The stakes are too high. Um, so if we can find a way to dial down the stakes, incorporate aspects of fun into it, it becomes much more playful, much more productive. So one tangible question people can ask, and I have this on my on my phone wallpaper, literally, is, it's like a little post-it note that I used to have on my desk and it's now on my phone. What would this look like if it were fun?
Dr Rupy: Ah.
Ali Abdaal: And you can ask yourself this with anything you're doing. However grim the thing is, however boring the thing is, however menial the thing might be, you can always ask yourself, what would this look like if it were fun?
Dr Rupy: It's fun.
Ali Abdaal: And with a bit of creativity, you can always come up with something.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: So let's take it to the McDonald's example. This guy, Matt, I interviewed him for the book. He was working in the McDonald's drive-through and he found ways to make it fun. So what did he do? He decided that each different day of the week was going to be a different sort of sauce. So Monday was barbecue sauce day. Tuesday was sweet and sour sauce or whatever the hell McDonald's sauces are. And his job, his the challenge he added to his job was he was going to upsell the customers in the drive-through on the sauce on each day. So he'd be like, you know, they'd be like, I want this burger. He'd be like, would you like fries with that? They'd be like, yes, please, whatever. And then he'd say, what about some barbecue sauce? And they'd be like, uh, no, I'm good, thanks. And he'd be like, hey, you sure? You know, my last customer, you know, was a bit reluctant and then I talked her into it and she loved the barbecue sauce. And the customer's like, yeah, all right then, fine. Why not? I'll take the 20 cent barbecue sauce. And so what Matt did is that he turned it into a bit of a game. He got, he had this thing which was really boring, working at the McDonald's drive-through, and just added a small dose of challenge to the process. It made him more energised by his job, made him more productive. It made the franchise more money because it's pure profit because it's up sales. It made the customers happier because now they have an interesting interaction. You know, the way I, I applied this with, with the, with the day job is I asked myself, what would it look like if it were fun to do discharge letters? Because that was a big part of the job of a junior doctor, doing discharge letters. So there were two things that I did. The first thing was that I brought a little 10 quid Amazon Bluetooth speaker and just like attached it to the light on the ceiling. And I would just play like music from like movie soundtracks while doing my discharge letters. And like, no one has music on in, in a doctor's office. It's just kind of weird. And so the consultant would come in, be a bit suspicious and then be like, you know, it's not causing anyone any harm and they would just walk out again. So I would be doing my discharge letters to like the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. You know, even just something simple like that just makes it more fun. The other thing I would do is I started adding a little bit of banter into the discharge letters. And yeah, you know, they're a legal document and blah, blah, blah. But there's no law against adding a little bit of banter to the, to the letters. And so I would say things like, you know, it's been an absolute delight to look after Mr. Smith and we, we wish him a pleasant, a pleasant recovery and the greatest commiserations about Chelsea's latest performance, knowing that he was a Chelsea supporter. What's something like that? It just like puts a smile on the GP. Poor GP reading these like 100 discharge letters. It's just like a small bit of banter. And I actually ended up getting like a written compliment about my discharge letters to the hospital's HR department, which then went straight on my CV. So like with everything you're doing, you can just ask yourself, what would this look like if it were a little bit more fun?
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Ali Abdaal: And like, you can always find a way. If you literally had a gun to your head, you could, I'm sure you can find a way to make something 10% more enjoyable.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: So that's play. Then we can go into power and people as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, just just on that about play, um, my wife hates the commute, um, uh, to work. Actually, no, a better example. My wife hates, um, flying. She's got like this irrational fear of flying and all the rest of it, even if we're going to like, you know, Europe or somewhere for a couple of hours. And she used to actually used to travel quite a bit for work as well. So to make it more playful for her, she's a massive Swifty. She literally watches the Eras tour on her laptop and like sings, and I've literally been next to her on a flight and she's there singing away and I'm just like super embarrassed. I'm like, she's not with me. I don't know who she is. I'll just leave her alone. And she has like a little mini plain champagne that she has and she turns it into a bit of a concert. Like she imagines that she's in, you know, a box in the O2 arena or whatever. And she's actually really enjoying it even though she's petrified of flying. So there's just like a little element there that you can, you know, take. Um, if anyone's listening to this, that there are different ways in which you can use music and some activity even if you are not, you know.
Ali Abdaal: And it sounds, it sounds frivolous. People are, you know, sometimes people are just like, oh, you know, just saying make it fun. I'm like, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Like, you know, when, uh, you and I have both spent time in, in, in operating theatres, like, what I found is that the best surgeons were the ones who had background music. Yeah, yeah. There's some background music in the theatres. It's like, they're cracking jokes every now and then. Even when it's life and death, there is still value in adding a little bit of lightness to the process. Because surgeons know that you don't actually perform your best when it's really, really high pressure. Sure, there are moments that are really high pressure. But generally, you know, like all the human factors stuff has found this as well. If the atmosphere is a little bit lighter, it gives, you know, the juniors and the nurses more permission to speak up if they notice that he's operating on the wrong, on the wrong leg or that you're giving someone a drug even, even though they've got an allergy to it. Whereas a lot of mistakes and people literally die because people are afraid to speak up. And that usually happens when the atmosphere is so tense and everyone's so scared of the surgeon and it's so high pressure and no one can possibly speak up. But if, you know, how to save a life or the fray or whatever is playing in the background, you know, people are wearing like colourful scrub caps. It's like you've had a bit of banter beforehand during the, you know, while the who checklist was happening. It just makes the atmosphere lighter and a lighter atmosphere generally leads to increased productivity rather than decreased productivity.
Dr Rupy: Totally. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like, you know, that whole, um, uh, emphasis on embracing failure within business cultures and stuff. Like, we had an issue, um, with one of our, um, staff members who, uh, put a mistake in the newsletter that went out. And, you know, we sent a message out to all of our subscribers the day later saying, look, we made a mistake with this, just to let, let you aware and stuff. Um, and we talked about it internally. It was like, this is a really, really good thing to be, to, to own, to understand, we'll look at the processes behind it, but we should be celebrating our failures. And that sort of lightness that was brought to what was not really a massive issue in the grand scheme of things when you're thinking about, you know, what medics do every single day. Um, just encourages a culture of openness and lightness and actually that hopefully will, you know, permeate through everything else that we do within the company. And I think organizations are trying to do that at a macro scale as well. So I think it's that like the playfulness that lends itself towards it.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. And just on that note on the failure thing as well, there's a, there's a cool, um, experiment that this guy called Mark Rober did. Um, he's a, oh, Mark Rober is the YouTuber. Yeah, the YouTuber guy. So he used to work for NASA and work at Apple and stuff. So he did, he did a fun experiment for his audience where he was, he was doing a little study and he was trying to teach people how to code. So he got 50,000 people to do this online coding puzzle thing. Um, and you had to like program some instructions for a robot to go, to go around a maze or something. Um, but he was quite sneaky in that he split them up into two groups behind the scenes. And one group, when, when they failed, when they ran code that didn't work properly, they got a message saying, you have failed, please try again. Whatever. But the other group, when they failed, they got a message saying, you have failed, you have lost five points. You now have 195 points. Please try again. The points were completely arbitrary. They were not tied to anything. Completely arbitrary. And he found that there was a massive difference in, uh, the performance and the number of attempts that the, that the two different groups made to solve the puzzle. So the group that, that got told they were, they were, they were going to lose five points every time they failed, they made less than half the number of attempts and solved the puzzle like 20% with 20% less like efficacy than the people who just got told you failed, please try again. And that was the only difference. They were matched on all other things. It was a large enough sample size, 50,000 people, all that kind of stuff. He did a really good TED talk about this where he, he talks about how, you know, the fear of failure is so ingrained in us that even when we lose five random arbitrary points that have no meaning anything at all, we still try less than half the number of times. And his whole thing is like, what if we could treat failure not as something to be afraid of, but something to be celebrated, which is kind of exactly your point here.
Dr Rupy: That's an amazing talk. I'm going to watch that talk.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, it's a good shit.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Ali Abdaal: Uh, yeah, let's talk about power people.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: So we've talked about play, which is how do I make my work more fun, more playful. Uh, power is, um, essentially this feeling of autonomy and this feeling of responsibility and kind of like this feeling of leveling up, like you're improving or getting better at the thing. Sort of this feeling of, I, I, I feel powerful doing the thing. I feel empowered. One way of doing that is just to take more responsibility. I think a lot of us have this view of energy that's a bit dodgy. It's like, you know, we start the day off with 100% energy and then as you go to work and stuff, your energy depletes and then you get home with 0% energy and then you just blob out in front of Netflix or you give your worst self to your family because you have no energy. Um, but for some reason when you go to the gym, generally people feel like they've been re-energized by that, even though they put energy into it. I think one of the nice things about power is that if you're doing work that you're taking responsibility and ownership of, then even though you're working harder, that then sort of becomes a source of energy. You're regenerating energy as you're doing the work if you can experience that sense of power. So partly the question is, you know, even if like, let's say you're listening to this and you don't have control over what you're doing, you know, when, when we were junior doctors, we didn't have control over what to do because we were told what to do. But we had control over the process. You almost always have control over how you're doing something. And so, what can you do to take a little bit more responsibility? How could you do it your own way? Just like a kid enjoys decorating their bedroom. Like, can you do that with your, like, discharge letters or your admin or whatever the thing, your PowerPoint presentation, whatever the thing might be? Um, I realised that, you know, one of the ways that I could take ownership of my role as a, as a junior doctor was just to make my notes really, really good. And so I'd, you know, bolding and italicizing and underlining, and I found the highlight feature on Epic because I was working at Addenbrooke's in Cambridge. And then I found a way to install it on my iPad as well, so that when we went down to the, you know, outlier wards, I wouldn't have to faff around looking for a wow. And instead I could just bust out the iPad. And the surgeons were like, bloody hell, who is this kid? He's got an iPad. Is that legal? It's like, yeah, cool. Let's bring him around everywhere so we don't have to wait around for five minutes for the computer to start up. Um, it's just, even when you don't have control over what you're doing, you can always find a way to take ownership over the process. But the other cool thing about power is, um, you know, video game designer, video game designers do this a lot where, you know, like, when you play video games, part of the reason they're so addictive is because you see yourself leveling up. Like your experience bar goes up and then you get to level three, level four, level five, you get new abilities. Depending on the game, you get like prestige level five, level six. And it's like, they have to make progress visible at every point because the feeling of making progress is really addictive and also very intrinsically motivating. And so, for example, writers, as you might have have found when, when writing your books, well, a writers will often track their word count every day. So you can just see, so you can feel the number going up. You can see it going up. You can see yourself making progress. It feels really good. You know, we all like writing things on a to-do list and then ticking them off because the feeling of making progress feels, it makes us feel powerful. It's really addictive. And so, one tangible practical takeaway is within whatever your work is, what is your equivalent of the writer's word count? How can you find it, find a way to experience the joy and the dopamine of making progress, of improving your skills, of like getting through the work, and making your own like level up meter so that you feel as if you're leveling up. That's also a fairly easy way to add a little bit more of that sense of power into whatever you're doing.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. It's almost like a, you know, an emoji of a battery just going up and up and up and you actually when you see the progress, it reminds me of that article, I think that either George Mack wrote or he linked to where, uh, I think the title was like, I'm convinced that game designers have hacked human psychology. They just understand what our motivators are, like to get us going to the next level, to encourage habits, addictions, if you like, you know, just when you think about how video games are designed, you can kind of see like how you can use some of those principles in your everyday life. Like you were just talking about at the start of the podcast with your PT, you know, you've got the, the pain already like built into that agreement with your PT now that every time you don't go, you're losing money, you're leaving it on the table. So I think there's, there's definitely some learnings that we can learn from video games.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, I, I love, so one, one of my favourite types of things to watch on YouTube is like analysis of video games. Like there's all these people who do like enormous in-depth video essays about what is it that makes Elden Ring so good? And I, there's always stuff that you can take away from that video to apply to real life because the video game designers have got it nailed. It's literally their job to keep you addicted to this video game. Yeah, yeah. Um, social media apps also have got it nailed in terms of like, um, unpredictable rewards and dopamine schedules and stuff. But that feels harder to apply to real life.
Dr Rupy: How do you avoid the, um, pull of social media given that, you know, you're basically using all the different platforms at the moment? Every time I open up my app to do something productive, which is for my platform, I find myself literally sucked into the whirlpool, which is Instagram or YouTube community field, all that kind of stuff. Like how do you actually separate that on a day-to-day basis practically for yourself?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, for me, I just spend very little time on social media. Um, I realised that, you know, there are like, I don't know, thousands of engineers working at Facebook to try and make Facebook and Instagram more addictive. I've got no chance. It's like, why am I trying to pit my own wits against the wits of these like 5,000 Harvard educated like computer science people that just want to, you know, keep me on the app? Uh, so what I do is I have no social media apps like on my home screens. In order to get them, I need to like swipe down, type in the thing. At one point when I found myself using Instagram a lot, I installed this app called One Sec, which when you click on Instagram, it like artificially increases the loading time. And it says, it's like a little thing that pops up being like, take a breath. And then it gives me the option for Kindle and Audible instead. And usually I was like, actually, now that you mention it, I'd rather go on Kindle and read a book or I'd rather go on Audible and listen to an audiobook. Um, I, I don't need to use that anymore because I've just sort of broken the habit. Um, yeah, for me, I'm a big believer in that, you know, do everything intentionally. Like sometimes people are like, oh, you know, is every minute of your day productive? It's like, for me, my, my time is productive if it's intentional. So if I intended to browse TikTok for 15 minutes and I browse TikTok for 15 minutes, great, I'm being productive. I've used my time intentionally. But if I didn't intend to use TikTok for 15 minutes and I found myself using TikTok for half an hour, that was an unproductive use of half an hour. That's time I'm never going to get back. Time is our most valuable resource. You can always make more money, you can never make more time, all that stuff. So I've just gotten very good at just not using social media apps unless I intend to. Still sometimes when I'm on the toilet, I'll find myself scrolling and finding Instagram and just scrolling a little bit. And then usually I'll stop myself and be like, wait a minute, is this really what I want to be doing? And sometimes I'm like, you know what, I'm here for a bit, I might as well, I might as well indulge myself. But at that point, it becomes a conscious decision rather than a default one.
Dr Rupy: But that, that's the important point. There's a parallel there with, um, uh, healthy eating and, uh, and, and sugar and desserts and all that kind of stuff. If you found yourself emotionally drawn to getting, uh, a sweet donut or like having biscuits from the cupboard, that's a different experience to when you intentionally went out to go get that delicious, um, treat because, you know, you worked out this whole week and, you know, you, you, you know that you're going to be going past that particular store and that's one of your favourite items, for example. There's intentionality in the latter example. There isn't intentionality in the former. And I think there, there is a lot of power. There's actually where you get your autonomy.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's all about being intentional with our, with our use of time. The other thing that I found really helpful is just having something better to do. Um, like I realised that when I, when I started my business, when I was at uni and then later my YouTube channel, now I was a lot less likely to just waste time on social media because I actually had something better to do. Whereas when I didn't have those things and when I had periods where I was like, I was demotivated by my, by my business or my, or my side hustle and stuff. You get home from work and like, what else is there to do other than like watch Netflix and like scroll Instagram? Just like, unless you're hanging out with friends, there's actually nothing better to do. And so I realised, I always want to have something better to do. I want to make it so that like working, like doing something productive or intentional, actually just feels better than scrolling Instagram or playing video games. You know, I, I've tried at various points to be like, you know, I like watching all these videos about video games. Why don't I try playing video games? And then I'll do it for a week or two and then I'll realise I feel more drained at the end of a session than I did when I got started. It's not actually an energizing activity. I feel, I feel a bit dirty, I feel a bit grim. And I'm like, hmm, that's useful to know. If I have something better to do, then now it's like, I could just go home after this and play video games. You know, it wouldn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be a problem. But I would actually just rather work on my business or like hang out with friends or play a board game or like do something a little bit more fun.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: So I think a lot of it is about actually having an alternative to social media because if you don't have an alternative, it's, it's just the default thing.
Dr Rupy: There's a fine line, right? Um, between, uh, that sort of, uh, the pleasure that you get from working on your business or your side hustle or whatever it might be, and the guilt that you have if you don't. And for a lot of my career since, you know, um, having the hybrid sort of working as a doctor and then also having a side hustle on socials and all that, all that kind of thing. For a lot, a long time, I struggled with the guilt of not putting as much effort into my side hustle as I was my day job. And so I would find myself working to like, you know, 11, 12 o'clock at night, doing all that stuff, waking up, you know, basically not doing anything that I was preaching in order to maintain both the sort of double life. Um, how have you navigated that? Because I think I look, I look forward to Mondays, but I can also very easily fall into the trap of working Saturday and Sunday as well. And my wife is a really, really good barometer for me of just saying, you're working too much, you need to quit now at 6:00 p.m. It's after, you know, it's in the evening time, this is our time. And if I didn't have her to remind me of that sort of the, the, the gap, the, you know, the need to have space, I would probably be addicted to working on the business and everything else.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. And would you be addicted because you love it so much or because you'd feel guilty if you weren't?
Dr Rupy: It's hard because I enjoy it. I genuinely enjoy it. I can sit there on a Saturday morning and just, you know, doing admin stuff, like going through invoices and paying the staff and like, you know, just the to-do list is always, you know, it's ever increasing. There's always things for me to do. So I kind of enjoy it, but at the same time, I also feel a bit of guilt if I decide to do something else. So it's, it's, it's a weird sort of, I don't know, it's a weird relationship I have with, um, with the business.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, interesting. Um, so I, I have a few thoughts on this. Uh, I think one is that like, it is very useful. Like, generally entrepreneurs have this problem that when you're working on your own thing, it's just so fun that you, you left to your own devices, you would just keep on working on the thing. And then you might get into burnout territory without even realizing it because the thing is just so fun. Most people with jobs don't have that problem. Like, oh my god, I just fucking love my job so much that I feel burned out. It's like, it's usually not the problem. So, A, it is a bit of a first world problem that entrepreneurs tend to have. And in that sense, having a hard stop and having like someone in your life that says, hey man, like, come on. Yeah, yeah. is actually quite useful because otherwise you would, you would just work the afterburners too much because it's so fun. But on the point around like feeling guilty when you're not doing the thing, I think this is super interesting. So there's, you know, we talked about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, but there are actually two other forms of motivation that most people are not familiar with.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Ali Abdaal: Um, there's introjected motivation and identified motivation.
Dr Rupy: Introjected?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, I don't even know where that word comes from, but it's like from the, from the research around self-determination theory around like what are the factors that make people do things. Um, so intrinsic motivation, you know, we talked about it. This is when you're doing the thing because it's fun. But whatever you do, it stops being fun after a while. Like you're probably not doing admin because it's inherently fun. You're doing it for some external reason because you want to actually pay your team members and you want them to stick around and you enjoy running a business and you don't want the, you know, HMRC to put you in jail. All that kind of stuff. Um, so it's an external reason for doing, it's an extrinsic reason for doing the thing. But within that, you've got like three categories. You've got completely external motivation. I'm doing this to, I'm doing this for the money. Whatever. I'm doing this to avoid some kind of punishment. Then you have introjected motivation, which is I'm doing it because I will feel guilty if I don't. I'm doing it because if I don't do it, I will feel shame, I'll feel guilt, I'll beat myself up, I'll flagellate myself, all that kind of fun stuff. And then you have identified motivation. I'm doing the thing not because it's fun, but because I authentically value the thing that the thing is getting me. I'm not going to the gym because I necessarily enjoy it, but I'm doing it because I value having a healthy mind and a healthy body. Therefore, I will go to the gym. That is a very positive form of extrinsic motivation. And that is where we want to kind of nudge everyone towards. Introjected motivation, I'm doing the thing because I'll feel guilty if I don't do it, is a very negative form of extrinsic motivation that leads to burnout sooner or later. And so, what I've found useful for that, because I've had periods of my life where I felt guilty for not doing the thing, is just doing a lot of journaling, because journaling is like therapy without a therapist, essentially, where you identify your thought process, be like, why am I feeling guilty for not doing this thing? And usually, as I, I, I've, I've found myself becoming a bit of a casual therapist to creators because people ask me about this sort of thing.
Dr Rupy: This is basically turning into a therapy session where you're putting into practice the principles in the book.
Ali Abdaal: Usually what I find is that with, with enough questioning, it will always land onto some kind of fear about money. I feel guilty for not working on my business and for not, because I know that, ah, if I just did this, we'd make more money. And I don't feel so comfortable with my level of income right now. And like, what if all this goes away? I don't want to go back to the NHS with my tail between my legs and people are going to be like, haha, check him. He's back. Um, I don't want to have to do that. Ah, you know, what if I have kids? Like, private school is expensive these, oh my god, the cost of living crisis. Okay, I should, I really should do it. It usually comes down to a fear of money or status and losing one or both.
Dr Rupy: Ali, it's like you're reading my mind.
Ali Abdaal: Oh, the latest cookbook didn't sell as well as the other eight before that. Like, fuck. That, it's usually that. And if we, and usually it involves a lot of like talking and figuring out and lots of journaling to address the money insecurity. And then once the money insecurity is gone and you feel like you're playing with house money, now you're not feeling guilty anymore because you're like, actually, I'm good. And usually people don't run the numbers. Like, a lot of the creators who I speak to about this are actually not in a financially unsound position. They actually are pretty good. It's just that it feels so scary, especially if it's like your first business, the first time you're doing this, you haven't been doing it for that long. You're suddenly making money and it's tied to your own sweat rather than, you know, kind of a paycheck from the NHS. Man, money problems, money insecurities are like really, really, really common amongst entrepreneurs and creators. And they lead to this feeling of guilt.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, totally. And I think like, looking at those three arms of extrinsic motivation, I can definitely recognize all three. And I'm pushing myself to the third one because the reason why I do the admin and all the rest of it, it's not because I love the admin, it's because I love my team, I love what I do, I want to continue what I'm doing. Ergo, I need to do this to get to the outcome which I absolutely love, which is creating videos and creating content and educating people and the the wider mission of the Doctor's Kitchen, which, you know, is
Ali Abdaal: Why are you doing the admin? Surely you can delegate it.
Dr Rupy: Well, that's a very good point. Um, I do it right now because I want to save as much into the business so I can spend it in other ways. So I'm not at that level whereby I feel I can delegate because it's, I'm talking,
Ali Abdaal: It'll cost you like 12.50 an hour to delegate admin. I'm pretty sure you make more than 12.50. I could be wrong here, but you could pick up a locum shift and make four times as much if you really wanted to.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. You're probably, yeah, yeah, calling me out here in the, in sort of the, the, the, it, it's the monologue I give myself that I don't deserve to have that extra help because I need to focus on ensuring that I'm paying everyone's salaries. I, I feel like an immense sense of, um, responsibility for everyone in the team. And I feel like I just need to conserve as much. And if that means splurging less on freeing myself from that, then it's not, I, I basically talk myself completely out of what my response was and I'm leaning more towards just paying someone else to do it for me.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, or even someone in your team. Like you've got a team of five, right?
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Like I, I haven't run payroll in the last like two, two and a half years because I realised I don't need to be the one clicking the button on Revolut in order to be the one paying my team.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: The accountant could do that or my assistant could do that or anyone on my team could do that and be like, hey, you know, and you know, it's a small team, everyone's doing multiple things. Hey, would you mind just adding half an hour to your life each month just to run payroll? Sure.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I know. I actually, you know,
Ali Abdaal: Frees up your own time and your own head space to do high leverage things like more content or even just think.
Dr Rupy: Well, actually, one of the big things that I'm trying to, um, get off my plate is socials. And that's why I asked you about the social media because every time I have to post everything on social, I do that myself. We don't have a social media manager. I basically have to post everything myself.
Ali Abdaal: Bro.
Dr Rupy: I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I'm actually looking for one right now and that's definitely a great use of money and revenue and all the rest of it. But I just haven't found the right person. I've actually gone through six in the last like a couple of years because it's quite, it's quite a unique job, I would say.
Ali Abdaal: As in just the posting?
Dr Rupy: Just the posting, but also the, the captions and all that kind of stuff and and utilizing content that we've created here because, you know, the, the idea, and this is probably, uh, straying into the territory of what you do with your part-time YouTuber academy and all the rest of it, is operationalizing everything that we do here. So we, we have big blocks of content in the form of the podcast, in the form of the videos that we record for YouTube. All it requires is someone to just go through all that, put all these things together, post them on Instagram or TikTok or wherever. We've got like tons of research that we put into the app, tons of research every single week that we put into the newsletter about seasonal ingredients. Like it just requires someone with a really good eye to just filter through all of that as their full-time job and then just put it out there.
Ali Abdaal: Nice. High leverage hire, yeah.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I basically have to do that right now. That's basically, yeah, I know. It's, it's stupid.
Ali Abdaal: Let me, it's not stupid. It's, it is, it is hard to find the right person.
Dr Rupy: Have you gone through six people? Like where, where are you finding these people?
Ali Abdaal: Um, I don't know. It's, it's, yeah, it's been a,
Dr Rupy: If anyone's listening to this and fancies, fancies being Rupy's social media manager.
Ali Abdaal: I just put a job listing out literally about a week ago. I've basically chronicled everything that we need. Um,
Dr Rupy: Have you put it out to your audience?
Ali Abdaal: Put it out to the audience, put it out on LinkedIn. Um, got a whole bunch of people, uh, on LinkedIn. I don't know, very in quality. Um,
Dr Rupy: Yeah, we never get good quality applications from LinkedIn. We only, we only ever get good quality applicants through our own audience.
Ali Abdaal: From their own audience. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people that have started working here have come via the audience actually.
Dr Rupy: And who's sifting through these applications? Please tell me it's not you.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, yeah, it's me.
Dr Rupy: It doesn't need to be you.
Ali Abdaal: At least doing the initial screen.
Dr Rupy: I think right now, the initial screen will probably be, um, my, my assistant, um, who's virtual and she does a lot of that kind of stuff. To be honest, she, there's a lot on her plate as well at the moment. There's tons of stuff on her on her plate.
Ali Abdaal: I mean, these guys do the initial screen. You know, we've had, I'm hiring a new assistant. We've had 250 applications. I'm not the one doing it. Like I only see the final three.
Dr Rupy: Really?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, like it's just, it's not worth my, like, it sounds really bad to say, but like, if you, like, for example, if I was spending five hours sifting through applications, that's two extra YouTube videos I could have made. That's an extra 40 grand in business revenue I could have generated from that. That's a whole person's full-time salary for five hours of my time. Yeah. I really shouldn't be sifting through applications unless I freaking love it, in which case, okay, fine.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a different kind of door. Yeah, it's within the play aspect of it of your day-to-day. But no, no, at the moment it's just me. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: One thing that I learned working in A&E, actually, which I think about a lot as it comes to business, is like, so in my, in my, in my first week of the job, I had like an A&E, an acute medicine rotation, and we had like a week in A&E. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to save the lives. I'm wearing my scrubs and my jeans and my trainers, my little lanyard and stethoscope. And I look in the waiting room and I'm like, it's just completely full of patients. And so I'm like, all right, cool, I'm going to save the lives. And so I see about a patient an hour and I see eight patients in my shift and I don't take a lunch break because I'm like, you know, I'm going to save the lives. This is fun, this is exciting. And then on my way out, I look in the waiting room and it's still full of patients. And then the next day I'm like, all right, I'm going to be more efficient. So then I start batching my calls to radiology, I start seeing two patients at once, I start trying to do all that shit. And I see 12 patients in eight hours. You know, 1.5 patients an hour, it's not bad. I still don't take my lunch break because I'm like, I want to save the lives. And on the way home, I look in the waiting room and it's still full of patients. I'm like, it's like nothing I did made it, you know, made a difference. And I mentioned this to one of the consultants like the following day and he sort of laughed. He was like, ah, it's it's your first week, isn't it? I was like, why, bro, why is the waiting room always full? And he was like, Ali, mate, the waiting room will always be full. There will always be more patients to see. All we can do is show up as our best selves and see patients in order of priority. And also, you have to take a lunch break because it's legally mandated for hours, every you have to take a lunch break. And I think there is a profound life and business lesson there as well. The waiting room is always full. There will always be more patients to see. There will always be more stuff on the to-do list, especially as a business owner. In fact, as anyone, there's always infinite things on our to-do list. All we can do is show up as our best selves and do things in order of priority. So when I have, in the past when I've heard myself say, oh, I should delegate X, but my assistant already has too much on their plate, I would ask, okay, what like, are we triaging appropriately here? Because for me to be sifting through applications means that there's, there's probably a failure in triage because I suspect everything on the assistant's plate is not more important than looking at applications for a new high leverage hire. And it's like really just getting into that mindset as an entrepreneur. Like I, I keep on having to remind myself of that lesson because it's so easy to be like, oh, I'll just do that thing and that thing and that thing because the to-do list is always full. But actually, it is the small things that you do, the head space to think about the business, the idea for the hook for the new cookbook. That could literally be the difference between 10k in revenue from book sales and like 10 million in book sales because you needed that head space to think. And around the time like you you've got like five team members, around around this time, it's it's when you really have to start letting go of like doing the things and recognizing that kind of like the um emergency physician in charge in the emergency department. They're not actually seeing any patients. They're just like managing the flow. They're just like, right, who's in there, who's in there over there? What's happening with the rota? Cool. And their job is not to see the patients. If they're seeing the patients, something is going seriously wrong. And so in a in my business, if I'm actually doing anything other than this and other than talking to a camera, something is wrong. And it's like the whole team now recognizes this and I now recognize this. So like everything is off my plate other than thinking, journaling, talking to people, filming videos, and doing curriculum design for our new products.
Dr Rupy: That that is exactly the tipping point that we're at at the moment. And I feel that getting somebody to run all the social stuff will give me the head space that I require to operate the business more efficiently. Because what you said about the head space to think about new ideas, content ideas, research, all that kind of stuff is so true because it's just stealing my attention from the high leverage thinking that the business relies on me to do currently.
Ali Abdaal: Can I suggest one more reframe here? So you said, it'll give me the head space to operate the business more effectively. I might suggest is don't think of yourself as operating the business. Someone else should be operating your business. You are the owner, not the operator of your business. You're the owner of your business and you are the talent. Your job is to show up, slicking your hair back, you know, wearing the turtleneck and doing the content, which is the only thing you can do. That's what you're for. Operating the business is actually should actually be someone else's job. So at this point, it is probably worth hiring an operations manager or a general manager or, you know, whatever title you want to give it, so that person is doing everything that counts as operational and you are only doing the creative stuff because that's where you shine. You probably don't shine in being a manager of people, I suspect, if you're like most entrepreneurs.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. At least it's not your unique skill. It's not the only thing in the world you can do.
Ali Abdaal: No, no, I don't think it's my unique skill. And it's definitely something that I'm learning on the fly. And, you know, we do quarterly meetings and we have, you know, stand-ups and all the rest of it. And I love that. But I wouldn't say it's the element of the business that I brings me most joy. No, it's this kind of stuff. It's actually, it's actually leaning to the entrepreneurial side of things as well. Like I love, don't get me wrong, like this audience is used to hearing me talk about food as medicine and all the rest of it, but it's also the entrepreneurial side I love it.
Ali Abdaal: Are you familiar with visionary and integrator as like concepts in business?
Dr Rupy: No.
Ali Abdaal: So there's a really good book called Traction by a guy called Gino Wickman, which is a fantastic book, just basically an operation manual on how to run a business. It's aimed at businesses who have at least three people, uh, and which is like three to 50. It's fantastic. Basically, there are two types of leaders. There are visionary leaders and integrator leaders. The visionary is someone who, uh, you know, enjoys being on stage, enjoys doing podcasts, is they're sort of the key, the key person behind the brand, the key person of influence, as a guy called Dan Priestley would say. They're the ones who have loads of ideas, 5,000 ideas, like five of them are going to be good, 4,000 are going to be a bit shit, but like those ideas are what drive the business forward. They're always moving from one thing to another to another, like really high energy, often sometimes have ADHD apparently. That's sort of the visionary type person. Then then you have integrator type people who like, you know, they love a spreadsheet, they love systems, operations, processes, they love attention to detail. They love a job well done. For them, getting something from zero to one is not as interesting as like really scaling and operationalizing it beyond beyond one to one to infinity. Most creators are in the visionary camp where it's like, it's really fun building something new, but then once you've built the new thing, you're like, ah, can't be asked with this anymore. Like, oh, I've got to do the admin. Screw that. But there are people out there who freaking love admin. They are the operations type people. That's like the COO rather than the CEO. And so, um, one of the greatest like level up, level ups in my business is recognizing I was the visionary and I needed to get make one of my teammates the integrator. So we have quarterly meetings and stuff. I don't run them. I just show up and do a spiel at the start and a motivational thing and do a little exercise with the team and pitch in and chip in every now and then. We have weekly meetings. I don't run them. Why do I need to run the meeting? I just show up and I'm like, hey guys, how's it going? I provide the vibes. Someone else provides the structure. I'm like the good cop here. It's so much more fun for me because I can just show up and banter with the team and bring the energy, show up to the office and not have to worry about doing someone's performance review or, you know, negotiating their pay rise or thinking about their P60 or P45 or whatever the hell it is. It's so nice when that can be handed off to someone who is like the operations person, the integrator for the business, so that you, I suspect you're the visionary, can just be out there on stage, doing the content, writing the books, doing the cooking.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: And they find joy in that.
Dr Rupy: They love that shit.
Ali Abdaal: There are people out there that love doing that kind of stuff.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I need to find that. Uh, I could talk about this kind of stuff the whole time. We'll talk about this after. But, um, uh, we haven't talked about people, but maybe that was people.
Ali Abdaal: People. Yeah, so people is basically everything is more fun when you do it with friends. Um, so there's two ways of incorporating people into your job or whatever the thing is. Uh, one way is to like just genuinely work with people around you. Uh, so at uni I found that I was way more productive when I was in the library with my friends than I was in my room on my own. Potentially not that groundbreaking an insight. But a lot of people still studying in their room on their own because they're like, oh, it helps me focus and stuff. But if it's really boring and you're getting depressed, it's not, it's not actually helping you, uh, to be more focused. And it's often worth taking a little bit of a hit in efficiency for the sake of enjoyment and for the sake of good vibes. Um, so even now to this day, I still have the WhatsApp group I set up with my friends at uni where we were studying for exams in second year. And last weekend, I went to a WeWork in Paddington in London. And I just put a message on that group being like, anyone want to come over to the WeWork to just do some work? And like five people showed up from all from different parts of London. And it was like, it was like being back at uni again where everyone has random ass admin they had to do. Like they were just putting off. One guy had to apply for a visa, one guy had to mark some papers because he's a teacher, one guy had to do something for his job because he's a lawyer. And we all just sat there in a WeWork with some music in the background and a table tennis table and just bashed through our admin. It's so much more fun when you do it with friends. The other nice thing about people is that, um, is that, uh, if you can find a way to connect whatever you're doing with it helping someone in some way, that becomes much more enjoyable and energizing. So if you think of your discharge letters as like, this is genuinely helping the GP on the other end understand what happened to the patient in hospital. And you can really kind of have that framing, the framing of service. The framing of service and purpose really helps again, drive intrinsic motivation. So for me, when it comes to filming YouTube videos, I don't enjoy it when I feel as if I'm doing it for the sake of the sponsor. And I don't enjoy it when I feel like I'm doing it for the algorithm. But I really enjoy it when I feel like the thing I tell myself before every filming session is, I'm not filming this video because of views, I'm not filming it for money, I'm filming it because I genuinely have something that I think is worth sharing and I'm and I think at least one person out there might find it valuable. And when I really connect to that spirit of service, it sounds a bit woo. But it's just way more enjoyable and way more energizing than if I'm like, oh, I really should make this video because algorithm or I really should jump on this trend or, you know, all this sort of stuff.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Ali Abdaal: So that's people, the power of people, integrating that into our work makes it more enjoyable and energizing.
Dr Rupy: And I guess like that, those three Ps are an antidote to burnout, I guess, because if you're introducing all those different elements, then you're less likely to get stressed by the day-to-day, unless there's something else around burnout because that's a, a very popular topic right now, particularly amongst medics.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. No, I think like the, the three Ps don't like, they miss taking breaks. Taking breaks is a whole separate part of how to avoid burnout. Uh, so the final three chapters of the book are all about how to avoid burnout, like three different types of burnout. Basically, take more breaks, find things that actually recharge your energy. Um, and the final chapter is really about alignment. Like eventually, like there's a really insidious form of burnout that happens when the thing that you're doing feels misaligned with what you actually want. And most people just don't really think about what they actually want. Um, one way to think about it is imagine what would you want different sorts of people to say at your funeral? What would you want written on your obituary? Like write out your own obituary and just see what that's like. This is an exercise I do every year. I last did it a couple of months ago. And it's really helpful. And you like, you write out your own obituary. It takes maybe 10 minutes to do, especially with chat GPT. You just throw it into notes and then get, get chat GPT to make it sound a little bit nicer. And you read it and you're like, damn, yeah, if this was my obituary, this would be a life well lived. And then, to what extent am I actually working and operating in alignment with that? And, you know, things like journaling prompts and activities like that can help you get at this thing of what do I actually want? And then if you find that there's a massive mismatch between what you're doing and what you actually want, then we're going to run into burnout sooner or later.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And do you, I mean, do you journal every single day yourself?
Ali Abdaal: Um, most days, yeah.
Dr Rupy: And how do you journal? Do you like have three questions that you ask yourself or do you just expressively write and like just write whatever's in your brain or?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, so I do this a lot. So, uh, journaling is sort of like a tool and it sort of depends on what I'm trying to get out of it. So every morning, it's not, it's not quite part of the morning routine, but I have a, I have a little, uh, a journal, I have like a template. Um, I call it my AM5, which is just a bit of a play on 5:00 a.m. I don't like 5:00 a.m. so I just call it AM5. Just five minutes in the morning. I need to come up with a better name for this. I just have a Google Doc on that's bookmarked on Chrome just called AM5. And that has a few like prompts that as long as I look at that every day, those prompts guide me in the right direction. So one of the prompts is, um, how am I going to get enough protein today? Because right now I'm trying to, trying to get jacked. And so I need like 150 grams of protein a day. It's surprisingly hard to get 150 grams of protein a day without like shakes.
Dr Rupy: Are you doing it without shakes?
Ali Abdaal: No, with the shakes. Yeah. I'm like, okay, well, lunch, okay, cool, I need a shake in between this. Another prompt that I find super, uh, that I find super helpful is what's one thing I can do to connect with my fiance today? Because otherwise I'll just forget. I'm too focused on work and I'll just sort of forget that like, oh, I haven't messaged her, I haven't rung her today. If it's not a date night, which is already in the calendar, all this sort of stuff. Just seeing that in the morning reminds me, oh yeah. Another thing that I've added recently is what's one way I can show appreciation to my team? Because I'm also really bad at doing that. Um, and so the, the AM5 serves as a, sort of just a template that I know that anything I'm focusing on in the moment, or like in that season of life, it just reminds me to focus on it. The other question I ask is what's today's adventure, which is basically what's today's number one priority? Is it in the calendar? And I'm like, oh shit, no, it's not. Let's put it in the calendar to make sure I actually do it. Just like little things like that that just remind me of the things that a higher version of myself said, I'm going to need, I'm going to need a reminder for this. Um, so that's like one type of journaling that I do. Every, every week I'll, I'll do like a weekly review. This is a thing I now do for my audience. I, I host like a little Zoom workshop. It's free. People can just join it where we ask, you know, what were the wins from last week? What were the learnings from last week? What are your top three outcomes for next week? Um, put them in the calendar. And that's just it. It takes like 20 minutes to do. People say, oh my god, this has been the most productive 20 minutes of my life. The Zoom chat is filled with people being like, I can't believe how simple and effective this is. Every month I'll do like a monthly planning thing, every quarter it's a quarterly, every year. There's a lot of different types of journal. I love journaling. Journaling is like, it's like having a life coach that you don't have to pay for.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's epic. I mean, like even me and my friend who is like my accountability buddy, we'll have like targets for the week. And at on a Monday, we'll just send like an emoji with a target thing and it'll just be like, these are the five things I need to do this week. And then at the end of the, uh, week, it's like, you know, did you achieve them? And then there's a green tick, green tick, green tick or like an X and like, you know, maybe I wasn't great with that. But you've got an accountability buddy. And that is actually just like, just as effective, I think, as like having sometimes a business coach or sometimes, you know, or maybe I need a business coach now after, after you've just been to.
Ali Abdaal: Business coaches are worth it. Best money I've ever spent in my life.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Actually, you recommended, uh, one to me. I, I worked with them for a few months.
Ali Abdaal: Was it? Rohan?
Dr Rupy: Rohan. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: It was good. It was good. We worked with each other for a few months. And I had Tara as a coach before as well. She's been on your podcast as well. Tara Swart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's great. She, um, actually, do you manifest? Do, do you do the like affirmations and and that kind of
Ali Abdaal: Um, I am dabbling with it. Not in like in the, in the, in the same level of detail that other people, like I, I do it more like textually rather than visually.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha.
Ali Abdaal: So I have like a list of things that I want to achieve this year, but I don't really have like an associated mood board with it.
Dr Rupy: Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she's a very big fan of mood boarding and actually making sure that you put it down. And I've actually done that in the past. And I remember looking back and I was like, wow, I've actually done a lot of these things on the board. I should really do this again. Because it just implants in your brain and then, you know, there's, there's a science of it, you know, value tagging and the fact that it's already there in your consciousness and stuff.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, I'm working on an app to make that easier because I've always found like it's actually like annoyingly high friction to do. Like you have to go on Pinterest, make a new Pinterest board, it's a bit of a faff. So me and a business partner were like, we're, we're trying to, trying to build like a evidence-based vision board manifestation type app that doesn't use the language of manifestation because it's a bit, it's a bit
Dr Rupy: It's a bit feel good.
Ali Abdaal: It's a bit, it's a bit too woo.
Dr Rupy: It's a bit too woo.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, evidence-based manifestation, EBM.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, EBM. I love that.
Dr Rupy: Procrastination, that's something that a lot of people struggle with. I struggle with it. I'm sure you still struggle with it, right?
Ali Abdaal: A little bit. Less so. Like once you've done a lot in enough research into it, it's easy to not struggle with it anymore.
Dr Rupy: Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about how you've overcome it.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, so there's basically three, three things that cause people to procrastinate if we were to simplify a little bit. So the first one is uncertainty. The second one is fear or like negative emotions in some way. And the third one is inertia. So uncertainty is usually the easiest one. A lot of people will procrastinate from something if they don't know what that thing is they're actually trying to do. If they don't have clarity over what the thing is. Um, so like, what's something you're procrastinating from or that you've been procrastinating from?
Dr Rupy: I mean, I've been procrastinating over the next hires in the company, um, exactly the routes to scale, um, and things I'm putting off, uh, probably the skeleton for the next book, um, and the strategy for cookbooks thereafter. Um, and then, I don't know, there's quite a few.
Ali Abdaal: Great. I'm sure it's interesting for for the listeners as well to hear what you struggle with. Because on the surface, it looks like you have everything together.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Yeah, because I think on the surface, I mean, even when we chatted on your podcast last time, you were like, uh, oh, wow, like, you know, people who are in the media and, you know, don't have everything all figured out and it's all like, you know, shiny and glamorous, but actually behind the curtain, it's a completely different experience. Other things I procrastinate with in terms of the app, um, uh, what the next, again, the next hire is going to be for the app team, uh, the next features, um, whether we should be exploring B2B markets or B2C first, whether we should be doing that in tandem. So all these, you know, decisions that I'm currently having to make, but, you know, it's very easy to kick down the road a little bit as you, as you go along.
Ali Abdaal: So in the next, let's say 24 hours, if we were to wave a magic wand and solve any one of these things, what would be the one that would give you the most relief?
Dr Rupy: Social media manager for my socials.
Ali Abdaal: Oh, okay. Nice.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Absolutely. Cool. And so to what extent are you procrastinating from something at the moment? Like you said, you've got the job out already.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I've got the job out. I've got, um, applicants. I need to go through them all.
Ali Abdaal: Oh, okay. Nice.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: How many do you have? Do you know?
Dr Rupy: About 20, 25 or something.
Ali Abdaal: Oh, solid. Yeah. Okay, cool. So the next, so what's the next action point?
Dr Rupy: To review them all.
Ali Abdaal: Okay, nice. Great. So, uh, and how long will that take to review the first, let's say 20?
Dr Rupy: Uh, probably a good two hours, I would say. Two, two and a half hours.
Ali Abdaal: Two hours? To review 20 applicants?
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Not, not interview them individually, but just go through all the CVs and stuff.
Ali Abdaal: Look at the CVs. Yeah. Okay. So you spend on average like 10 minutes for each one?
Dr Rupy: Yeah, ish. Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Okay. So they're all high enough quality that you spend 10 minutes.
Dr Rupy: Because we spend like 10 seconds on each one in the first round.
Ali Abdaal: Oh, wow.
Dr Rupy: Because it's, because we get hundreds of applicants and the job of the first round is to whittle it down to top 20.
Dr Rupy: Oh, okay.
Ali Abdaal: Or like top 5% and you can generally do that by just glancing at the CV or glancing at the cover letter.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha.
Ali Abdaal: But, no, I'm probably going to spend a little bit more time on that. But maybe I shouldn't.
Dr Rupy: I don't know. It's not a coaching call. So something you're, um, nice. So it'll take two hours.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: So, so two hours to sit down on a laptop with some music in the background in a nice coffee shop or whatever to kind of review these, these 25 applicants.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Nice. Uh, so we've gotten clarity over what the task is. Now the next question is, when do you want to do it?
Ali Abdaal: Um, probably tomorrow morning.
Dr Rupy: Nice.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah.
Dr Rupy: Would you like to put it in the calendar?
Ali Abdaal: Uh, yeah. Do you want to do it now? Yeah, yeah. Honestly, this is often what it takes just to beat procrastination. It's like, what is the thing and when am I going to do it? And is it in the calendar? That generally is all of the clarity that people need to not procrastinate from a thing.
Dr Rupy: Totally.
Ali Abdaal: Because it's so easy to just put these things off. Oh, I've been intending to do this social thing or hire the social media person. But if you really boil it down to what's the next action step and let's put it in the calendar, that takes a lot of boxes.
Dr Rupy: What, when it comes to, um, procrastination around other things, let's take it out the realm of business. Um, and it's, uh, I don't know, improving, improving one's diet. Let's make it relatable for this audience, right? Um, and this is something that you've tried multiple, multiple times before. You've perhaps you've been on a diet, perhaps you've been on a program, and you're like, ah, yeah, all right, I'll start again on Monday, or I'll start again, you know, next month when I've just done, you know, I'm going to this celebration or someone's birthday, I'm going away or whatever, I'll do it later. How do you sort of navigate that sort of common scenario?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. So if it were me, I would approach it in the sense of, uh, so sorting out the diet is a classic example of an unclear thing. Like what does that even mean? Like no one has any idea. It's like, I would say, what is the next action step for sorting out the diet? Um, so what might that be? Like if you were speaking to someone and they were like, oh, you know, Rupy, mate, I've been wanting to sort out my diet. And you were to, and you were to ask them, what's the next action step? Like what might they say?
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Well, well, I'd be like, okay, whittle it down, like, what is wrong with your diet today? What would you say is, um, you know, something that you feel that you can improve upon?
Ali Abdaal: Great.
Dr Rupy: And they might say, well, I eat too much fast food, or I rely too much on meal deals.
Ali Abdaal: Okay, nice. And so what's the action step there? Like what are we going to do to remedy that?
Dr Rupy: Um, I mean, it's not for me, but for the individual, yeah, I'll be the fake, fake role play. So, yeah, using motivational interviewing techniques, you'd be like, okay, what can you do to, um, mitigate against situations whereby you might find yourself falling into the trap of, okay, going for a meal deal or, you know, relying on fast food or whatever. What, what is the actual sort of, um, environment in which you find yourself doing that?
Ali Abdaal: Nice. Yeah, so all the, so these sorts of motivational interviewing techniques, the sort of stuff we learn in, in med school as well, around like helping people change behaviour. That, what that's basically trying to do is give them clarity and confidence. Because they don't have clarity on what exactly they're trying to do, and they generally don't have confidence that they're actually able to do it. And so, in the, in that sense, it's, it's actually really hard for someone to do that to themselves. Um, and probably reading a book like this probably won't help, uh, because there's a lot more deep, deeper at stake, especially with, with something someone's diet, especially if it's associated with their weight and body image and how they feel and their energy. Now we're getting into like a whole can of worms that like, fundamentally it comes down to knowing what the thing is you're, you're trying to do, knowing how you're going to do it. Um, something I find really helpful is the crystal ball method, which is sort of like, let's imagine it's a month from now, we're having the conversation again, and you have not in fact done the thing. What are the top three reasons why, why you might not have done it?
Dr Rupy: So in your case, for example, let's say I, I, I'm, I'm, I message you three days from now and I'm like, hey man, how are those hires going? And it turns out that, that you've not taken the two hours to do the thing. What are the top three reasons why you might not have done that?
Ali Abdaal: Uh, something else came up. Uh, something urgent. Um, there was an issue, um, with the tech for the app, for example, that needed my attention. Uh, I had an urgent call from my literary agent about the next book. Um, a whole number of different things could have come up.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, so something, yeah, so something urgent might come up, all this kind of stuff. Um, and then, okay, cool, what is something we might be able to do to mitigate against some of these foreseeable problems?
Ali Abdaal: Uh, apart from turning off my phone, um, probably that actually. Probably turning off my phone to ensure that I've got no distractions.
Dr Rupy: Cool.
Ali Abdaal: Um, ensuring that, uh, I'm in a space where I actually can't be contacted, so turn off my emails, for example.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Um, what else? I mean, yeah, these sorts of things are pretty good. So what I would say if I, if I were coaching you through this and you were really struggling with this, I'd be like, okay, let's create an calendar event for tomorrow morning, 9:00 till 11:00, being like, review 20 applicants. And can you send me the calendar invite for it just so, you know, we've got some accountability. And in the title of the event, can you put brackets, turn off phone and email, just so you see it in the calendar. So that we just remind ourselves. A lot of this is just about reminding ourselves about like the simple stuff. That just gives you clarity and, it gives you a what you're trying to do and a when you're trying to do it. When it comes to something like sorting out your diet, like it would need to be a way longer conversation.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because there's a whole bunch of other sort of antecedents, there's, um, the navigating your emotional, emotions and and actually your self-image and, you know, the reasons and the drivers behind why people turn to food. It's not just about lack of confidence and clarity about what they want. It's also something, you know, to do with their past, how they comfort themselves. Like it's, it's a complicated.
Ali Abdaal: It's a lot of stuff. Yeah. I don't, I can't pretend to have the solution to that.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. But just having, you know, those, the reminders about clarity and confidence, I think that's really important for a lot of people who are procrastinating around about a whole bunch of other things.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, I think clarity, confidence and courage are like three Cs. Damn, I should have put that in the book.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: It might be a good video. Clarity, confidence and courage. Because if you have those things, you can achieve basically anything.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: With clarity, confidence and courage. Clarity over like what you're doing, when you're doing it and why you're doing it. Confidence that you are in fact able to and the courage to like face the fear that inevitably will get in your way and kind of go through the pain.
Dr Rupy: A lot of people, um, have the mistaken view that my diet and exercise is perfect, right? Because I talk about it and I mean, I, I, I am in shape and I am, I'm very pleased with my diet and everything. But I still have the same, um, issues that a lot of people have. I snack a lot. If there's anything that's junk related in the house, I'll eat it, which is why I'm always telling my wife not to keep any cookies and that kind of stuff in the kitchen cupboards and all the rest of it. I've designed my environment as much as I can at home to be best for my needs. Um, and I have those sort of, um, conscious luxuries when I'm out and I'm having dessert or whatever, I'm going to have a big ice cream. People are actually quite surprised when they see just how big my appetite is when I'm eating out as well. Um, so those might be seen as some of my, um, flaws, if you like, even though I don't regard them as flaws. But everyone has like issues when it comes to procrastination or laziness or, you know, even elements of burnout. Do you feel that you are in a place where you are 100% or what are sort of like the chinks in your armor personally?
Ali Abdaal: Hmm. I mean, working out consistently used to be until I realised I could just do it in the first thing in the morning and get a personal trainer. So I sort of stacked the deck in my favour. I think it's sort of like you're stacking the deck in your favour by just not having cookies in the house. Similarly, generally, if we're trying to do something that's very hard, doing it first thing in the morning is a, is one way of stacking the deck in our favour. Putting accountability in, getting an accountability buddy, putting money on the line is a way of stacking the deck in our favour. I think these days for me, I probably, ah, you know, my, my personal trainer is always asking me to track my protein intake. I just can't be bothered. It's just too much of a faff to open up my fitness pal and start tracking these bloody numbers. And then when my mom is cooking and it's like a chicken curry, it's like, I'm not going to get out the scales to start weighing every like little like piece of piece of chicken to see how many grams of protein that is. And I think I allow perfect to be the enemy of good. Because in that sense, he would just say, look, just guesstimate it. And you'll get better at guesstimating over time. But I, I do allow perfect to be the enemy of good in that, in that context.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Ali Abdaal: Um, that's one area in which I think my why is not strong enough.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Ali Abdaal: I don't have enough of a reason to bother because I don't really care about getting shredded.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: I know that like I'm generally healthy enough. I know that like optimizing for 150 grams versus 160 versus 140 is not actually going to move the needle for my quality of life. So the only thing that it does is give me the vanity project of like one day getting six-pack abs or something.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, because I was going to ask, I was going to ask you, what is the driving factor behind getting jacked then?
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, I don't know. I think, um, so my, my goal for this year is to get into the best shape of my life.
Dr Rupy: Okay.
Ali Abdaal: Rather than to get jacked. I say jacked, it's just kind of funnier. Um, and I, I read Outlive by Peter Attia. Great book, made me realize, oh, you know, it's worth, you know, I'm going to turn 30 this year, so I should start taking my health a little bit seriously and try and find a way to make it fun and sustainable and consistent. And I've, I've weirdly found that now that I get up in the morning and the first thing I do is the gym, I've actually, I've been, I've been more productive in filming YouTube videos than I ever have before in my life. My team was commenting like, Ali, this month you've been really, you've been filming loads of videos. And I've enjoyed it and they've been actually pretty solid videos if I say so myself. And I'm like, I wonder if there's correlation or causation with the fact that I now work out four times a week in the morning with a personal trainer.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: I don't know.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I mean, I always, I'm one of those annoying people that loves going to the gym. Like I really get a kick out of it.
Ali Abdaal: You enjoy it? Oh man.
Dr Rupy: I love it. I love it. If I don't go to the gym, I feel it. And actually, I'm doing a program right now to, um, improve my posture and my back. And actually, it requires that I don't go to the gym. And all I do in the morning are these, um, very regimented exercises where you're doing pelvic, um, uh, tilts. So, yeah, glute raises and stuff. Yeah, but it's like, no weights, nothing. It's just like, you're checking your alignment in the mirror and stuff. So I haven't been able to cycle. I can't do any squats or weights or anything like that. I can't like do benches and any of the things that I usually do when I'm in the gym. I can't even do hit training. I've just got to do this thing. And I've noticed my energy is slightly lower, um, during the week and stuff. But I don't require motivation to go to the gym generally. Like I absolutely love just like, you know, going for it. But I can't figure out exactly why. I think it's the energy that I get afterwards. Maybe I'm in love with the sort of the feeling, the sort of tick box, the, you know, the, the mental health benefits.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. Have you always been like that or did you, did you ever have a period where you struggled to make it a habit?
Dr Rupy: Uh, I think I've been like that ever since I got ill when I was at med school. Um, sorry, uh, just after I qualified. And I decided to sort of take control of my health and well-being after I got atrial fibrillation and all the rest of it. Um, that was probably the driving factor. So initially it was the stick of, you know, not being healthy enough and having an illness. And now I think it's more of the, the carrot, it's the benefits of actually having exercise in my life and the, um, the tangible effects that I feel every day.
Ali Abdaal: Nice. Yeah, I'd love to get to that point for the gym. I, I don't think I've ever stuck at it long enough to get to that point.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Like I'm sort of at that point with YouTube videos now where if I don't make a YouTube, I feel kind of weird. And I'm like, oh, I, I, I feel like I've learned stuff this week and I just want to, I want to out, I want to share it. It's kind of weird. Whereas in the early days, it was like a real struggle. I had to motivate myself. I speak to, you know, creators who are earlier in the journey than I am and they have to motivate themselves and they struggle to make YouTube videos. And for me, I'm just like, it's just a thing that I do.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: It's part of my identity.
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Identified motivation.
Dr Rupy: And it's just like, you know, cooking as well. Like the thing I do is always have diversity, always have fiber in my diet, always have like, you know, enough protein. And actually, I'm putting a bit more attention into the protein content of my meals as I've also read Outlive and I've also like a big avid listener to Peter Attia and all the rest of it. And they talk a lot about protein and I think it's quite important, particularly if you have a plant-centric diet, which I do. Um, and in those sort of circles, it doesn't really get that as much attention as it should do. Um, but yeah, like that's just like my identity.
Ali Abdaal: And I think there's, there's something in that, um, with regard to productivity, like do you identify as someone who is productive? Do you identify as someone who's, who finds joy in everything they do every like, do you identify as someone who's grateful as well? And I think gratitude is like this incredible hack that I was lucky enough to find early in my medical career, but also my, my career online as well.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. You know, Atomic Habits, James Clear talks about this. Like a bunch of studies have shown that if you can tie your identity to being a thing, like, you know, I think it's a line from Tony Robbins, something like that. I'm sure he took it from somewhere else. You know, the, the strongest force in human personality is the need to be consistent with your identity. And, you know, I have, if you, if you have the identity of, ah, I'm just a procrastinator, or I am a, like, anytime you say I am a dot, dot, dot, you've got to be really careful about what comes next because if you tell yourself you're a procrastinator, you become a procrastinator. If you tell yourself, oh, I'm just a sort of person who struggles with filling out forms, something my mom always tells herself, it becomes, it becomes your reality. I think it was that quote from Stalin who said, a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. It's that the same thing with like, you know, Hebb's law, like the neurons that fire together, wire together. The more you repeat a story to yourself, the more it becomes true. And so, like the story I tell, I tell myself, which certainly, which definitely started off as a story and now has become true, is that I enjoy everything that I do. And if I just tell myself I enjoy everything that I do, it just becomes true because so much of enjoyment is in the approach that we take to it. Um, when I'm at the gym and we're doing like a strength and conditioning day, which I don't particularly like, the story I'm repeating to myself is, I'm enjoying this, I'm enjoying this, I'm enjoying this. It's currently not true, but it will be true.
Dr Rupy: It will be true.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, of course it's going to be true. I've only been doing it for like a month. You know, I'm sure in the next six months, I will grow to the point, I'll get to the point where I'm like, oh, I really look forward to strength and conditioning days. Right now it still feels a bit grim.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
Ali Abdaal: And I think that holds true for almost anything that we do. Like the self, our our self-talk profoundly affects our life. And again, it sounds woo and people and stuff talk about this. I was reading Tara's book the other day, The Source. It's really good. It talks about this stuff as well.
Dr Rupy: It's incredible. Yeah. I've reread that book like three times now. It's brilliant. She was recently on the podcast a couple of weeks back actually, and it just reminded me of it's so important. The stories you tell yourself, uh, and the story I tell myself now, like, you know, I'm the kind of micromanager. I'm the, you know, entrepreneur, but also is also doing the admin and all the rest of it at the weekends. That's the story I'm telling myself through my actions as well. And so actually by reframing how I see myself as the owner of the business rather than the operator of the business or, you know, the visionary versus the, is it implementer?
Ali Abdaal: Integrator.
Dr Rupy: Integrator. Um, that's something I need to repeat to myself and affirm every, every day, I think. Because I think it's very easy to fall into the pattern that life pushes you in. And we're very fortunate enough and privileged enough to have the opportunity to be the architects of our, of our life.
Ali Abdaal: Absolutely. There's a good, um, I went on this like retreat about a year ago with some other online creator type people. And one of them just threw out the question in our little like group, group bonding session. Uh, do you work for your business or does your business work for you? And I was like, whoa, my mind exploded. I was like, shit, I definitely work for my business. And I was like, that's useful to know. Let's turn that around. And so now the story I tell myself is, I don't work for my business, my business works for me. And so if I feel like, oh, I probably should do this thing, I don't work for my business. My business works for me. I can do what I want. And that does usually involve leaving some money on the table, as I realized recently. The cost of being able to do what you want is money. The cost of being able to work part-time is money compared to working full-time. But the benefit is head space, which also costs money. Like everything has a cost and that cost often comes down to money at the end of the day if you when when all is said and done. And yeah, the feeling of being okay with leaving money on the table. Like the happiest doctors I know are the ones working part-time. They are also making less money. But they are the happiest doctors that I know. And obviously, people's life circumstances are different. But I'm often amazed as to, like I have a lot of medic friends who are working full-time who really don't enjoy it, who would love to work four days a week. And they've convinced themselves that they can't afford it, but they've never dug into the numbers. And so if it's the right situation at the right time with someone that I know well enough to be able to sort of ask them challenging questions about their finances, usually they'll get to a point of like, oh shit, I didn't realize that I actually could just cut down to four days a week because actually I can take that 15% hit in my net income and it's not going to change my life. Although having an extra day a week to be to be able to do everything, oh my god, that will change my life. Everything costs money at the end of the day and it's just like, I think you really useful to understand what the cost is. And I think a lot of people with like weird scripts and beliefs about money will convince themselves that they cannot afford to go part-time even though they really can. Like my mom, for example, she's a consultant psychiatrist. She's earning 100 grand a year, been doing it for years, and has convinced herself that she cannot afford to drop down to four days a week. And she doesn't even have a mortgage. And I'm like, bro. You know, my brother's also like, hey, come on, should we sit down and run the numbers? And she's also convinced herself that, you know, she's not good with numbers. It's like, okay, cool. There's a lot, a lot underneath that's hard to, hard to break through as her, as her kids. But I think people will convince themselves of things that are actually not true in reality.
Dr Rupy: I've had that whole conversation with so many of my medic friends as well, actually. Yeah, just digging into the numbers and actually explaining, you know, just like, you know, um, uh, visualizing what your week could look like if you did have an extra day, you know, less money in your pocket, but more time in your, in your, in your weekday. Um, and, uh, it's amazing. And and some people have actually heeded that advice and and taken it and actually have loads of other activities outside of medicine that makes them more joyful in the vocation that they felt that they were wedded to. Um, and I think a lot more people need to run the numbers actually, because it, it can be easier than you think. And I think also that the, the news and the doom and gloom and everything, like it's a real thing, but it doesn't necessarily apply to your situation. And I think as medics, it's, um, we, we definitely have like, uh, choices. We do have opportunities.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. My mom says this as well because she watches the news a lot and she's like, I couldn't possibly go to four days a week or even four and a half days a week because of the cost of living crisis. And my brother said the other day, how does the cost of living crisis affect you? And she's like, have you seen the price of fuel's gone up? And he's like, how much you spend on fuel? And she's like, I don't know. I'm like, okay. You are not the sort of person, a consultant psychiatrist is not who the cost of living crisis affects. Come on. But hey.
Dr Rupy: Um, I want to ask you one last thing about, uh, mind wandering. Um, I know you mentioned in the book. Um, I've started practicing a lot this a lot more since I chatted to Johann Hari about his book on stolen focus and stuff. And, you know, he actually, it was a bit of a light bulb moment. I was like, I'm constantly consuming information. I'm listening to podcasts on double speed. Um, when I'm preparing for podcasts and stuff, like I'm listening to three speed and reading the book at the same time. Like I'm always consuming something. And I've made the conscious effort to reduce distractions and stop listening to, you know, audiobooks at every single opportunity and actually go for a walk in the park without any, any tech. How do you do that? And is that something that you've started introducing yourself?
Ali Abdaal: It's a bit of a struggle. Um, because I've, I've, I've read the research, wrote about it in the book, like, you know, giving your mind time to just be and not be stimulated with stuff. Uh, for me the shower is a good time for that. Uh, for me the gym is actually a good time for that.
Dr Rupy: Oh yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Because when I didn't have a personal trainer, I'd be listening to audiobooks at triple speed. And then be half-assing the gym workout. Now that I have a personal, I was thinking about it this morning. There was part of me as I was doing the ski erg, I was like, oh man, I could be listening to a podcast right now. And then I was like, no, wait a minute. It's actually good that at least for an hour a day, first thing in the morning, I am actually not thinking about work. I do sort of end up thinking about it anyway, just because stuff and then like ideas come to me. And I'm like, after the gym, I'm like, I go to the coffee shop downstairs, like have some scrambled eggs, like take some notes because usually some ideas will spark when I'm not thinking about the thing. Um, so the, the shower and my gym and the and the gym are like basically my two times where I'm not like consuming something.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Ali Abdaal: And it's something that I want to,
Dr Rupy: I'm trying to do that a lot more because it used to be the same for me. It was just the shower actually, because in the gym, I'm constantly listening to podcasts because I just felt it was a very productive use of my time. I'm going to be here for 45 to 60 minutes. I might as well consume something from a podcast, you know, it could be my first million, it could be all in, it could be a nutrition-based one, it could be, you know, something about psychology. I'm but I'm, I'm using some like my time wisely. And actually I've realized the opposite and and some of the best ideas I've had are actually in the gym when I'm not listening to anything.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, one of the things that that's helped me with this as I as I think about it is just really setting goals for the year. Um, so I've I've had like really bad goal setting processes for most of my life. But I recently decided to dig into the research around this. I was like, I I feel like I'm really bad at setting goals. Let me just like look into this and see like what the what the strategies are. And basically realized I was trying to set too many goals because I always had like more than five because I was like, I want to learn the guitar and I want to improve my posture and I want to improve my flexibility and while we're here, my hip flexes are shit, so let's do that. While we're here, let's get jacked as well. While we're here, let's also learn Japanese on the side because I like anime. It's like when you have all that many goals, you just don't make progress on any of them. And so this year I have like one goal for health, one goal for relationships, one goal for work. And that's given me profound focus. And the fact, so for example, for work, my goal is to launch this new product and get it to 5 million a year as in in revenue. And it's a very specific goal where now I'm like, whenever I sit down to listen to a podcast, I'm like, hmm, is this a work-related thing? And will it get me to that target faster? And usually the answer is no, because a random episode of my first million or all in is not going to do that. But a specific episode of like listening to like a niche interview with someone who's done the same thing. I'm like, ah, that's a podcast I need to listen to. And that's where the ideas come from. Because I found I was doing a lot of just general listening to, oh, whatever Tim Ferris does, I'll listen to it. Oh, my first million seems kind of cool. They're talking about business ideas and stuff. I just had all this noise in my head that really wasn't getting me to the thing that I actually wanted to go for, which was this particular goal. And so I found that that's actually reduced my content consumption quite a lot. Now my audiobook these days is The Fellowship of the Ring rather than random business books, which it's been for a very long time. Um, and I recently like on the way here, um, I downloaded the audiobook for A Gentleman in Moscow.
Dr Rupy: Oh, nice.
Ali Abdaal: Because I was reading it on real reading and then I just never finished it. So I was like, you know what, audiobook is just easier. So I quite enjoy fiction audiobooks.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, nice, nice.
Ali Abdaal: Hey, what's your relationship goal then this year?
Dr Rupy: Um, A, I want to get, I'm, I'm getting married this year.
Ali Abdaal: Oh, it's a big goal. Yeah.
Dr Rupy: That's a big goal. And B, I want to, I want to organize six mini adventures for friends sometime this year.
Ali Abdaal: Okay.
Dr Rupy: Um, so one of them I want to do like a creator retreat. I'll let you know when that's happening. Probably in the Cotswolds or something. I'll get a bunch of creators together, good vibes. Um, one of them I want to do like a little surfing trip. I want to do like a little ski trip. There's like a few things like that. Um, where did I get this from? I actually got this from my first million, ironically.
Dr Rupy: Oh, yes. Yeah, I know who you're talking about. It was, um, uh, the guy who's married to the lady who started Spanks.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, who's that guy?
Dr Rupy: Jesse something.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, Jesse Itzler.
Dr Rupy: Itzler, something like that. It's like six mini adventures a year.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah, for 50 years, you get 300 memories.
Dr Rupy: Yes. I was like, that's good.
Ali Abdaal: That's a, that was an awesome takeaway.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah.
Ali Abdaal: Yeah. So that was a random idea from a podcast where I was like, oh, actually, this is a great idea. Let's do this.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I'm definitely going to do that as well. Six mini adventures. Yeah, great.
Ali Abdaal: But right now I'm in the process of hiring a new assistant and I'm going to get them to do all the thing because I'm like, I can't be bothered to do all the admin for this. Let's do the high leverage hire, which is get a new assistant and then get them to be like, hey, one of my goals is six mini adventures. Can you please sort that out?
Dr Rupy: Yeah.
Ali Abdaal: And then it's their problem and not mine.
Dr Rupy: Brilliant. Dude, this has been so fun. Honestly, it's been a bit of a psychology session, a bit of a therapy session for me, a bit of business planning. I've loved it. Um, appreciate you, man.
Ali Abdaal: You're very welcome.
Dr Rupy: And you're going to do your two hours in the morning tomorrow.
Ali Abdaal: I am, yeah. Well, I might do it for less than that. What's the math? If it's 20 and you're doing two minutes per, um, uh, application, then I'll do it for 40 minutes maybe. So I'll save myself an hour.
Dr Rupy: Look how productive I am.
Ali Abdaal: So productive. Yeah.
