Learn in Public to Achieve Your Full Potential with Ali Abdaal
Ali Abdaal is a doctor, YouTuber, and podcaster exploring the principles, strategies, and tools that help us live happier, healthier, more productive lives. While Ali is most 'famous' for his YouTube videos, he also writes and teaches online courses about productivity, tech, study techniques, entrepreneurship, and personal finance.
For Forcing Function Hour #11, Ali joins Chris to discuss how learning in public is the best way to accelerate growth and achieve your full potential.
See below for the audio recording, resources mentioned, and conversation transcript.
If you’ve enjoyed listening today, please take a moment and subscribe to Forcing Function Hour on your favorite podcast platform, so you’ll stay up to date on new episodes.
Love the show? Pay it forward by leaving us a review, and help us share these performance principles to impact more listeners like you.
Resources and links mentioned:
Additional Forcing Function links:
Experiment Without Limits (peak performance workbook, free download)
Performance Assessment (quiz to reveal your greatest opportunity for growth)
To check out our previous Forcing Function Hour episodes, click here.
Topics:
(02:12) Learning as a central part of life
(09:25) Public and private personas
(17:57) Greasy pole of achievement
(31:55) The procrastination equation
(38:10) Instrumental goals and terminal goals
(43:52) Q&A
Podcast Transcript:
Note: transcript slightly edited for clarity.
Chris (00:05): Welcome to Forcing Function Hour, a conversation series exploring the boundaries of peak performance. Join me, Chris Sparks, as I interview elite performers to reveal principles, systems, and strategies for achieving a competitive edge in business. If you are an executive or investor ready to take yourself to the next level, download my workbook at experimentwithoutlimits.com. For all episodes and show notes, go to forcingfunctionhour.com.
Hey guys. Welcome to Lunch Hour. Lunch Hour is a conversation series exploring the boundaries of high performance, and you are here at the eleventh edition. So, welcome.
My name is Chris Sparks. I'm the founder of the Forcing Function, and I am going to be your host for today. At Forcing Function, we offer executive performance training. We teach executives how to multiply their output and perform at optimal levels. If you're interested in what we do, I'd point you to one of two places. First, we have our free peak performance workbook. You can find that online at forcingfunction.com/workbook. It's called Experiment Without Limits. It's ninety pages of our top recommendations for optimizing your productivity and living a life of peak performance.
We also have a very special thing we'd like to share with you. It's our new program called Team Performance Training. We're doing this for the second time, and it's kicking off in two weeks on February 17th. Applications for that are open in the next week. This is where we take a small group of executives (so, founders, investors, high-level company executives) through our program of how you can live a great life, how you can advance your career, multiply your output. This is everything that we have learned from five hundred conversations with some of the most successful executives in the world. And the bonus is that this is a group sprint. Everyone is doing it together, there's peer feedback, there's group coaching, there's immediate implementation of these principles. It's something that we're very excited to share. If you'd like to learn more, I hope you consider completing an application. You can check out those details at teamperformancetraining.com.
Forcing Function also has a monthly newsletter where we share these upcoming events. So we do these Lunch Hours twice a month. Next Lunch Hour is going to be Tuesday, February 2nd. That's with Khe Hy. He's going to be talking about how to implement Getting Things Done in the modern era. So everyone knows Getting Things Done. I think it's the most bought but least implemented book in the productivity world. A lot has changed in the last twenty years. Those principles are still alive and well, but things have changed in terms of the pools and the resources available. So he's going to be giving us a walkthrough of how you can implement your GTB system using Notion.
Today we are honored to have Ali Abdaal. Ali is a doctor/YouTuber extraordinaire, and a podcaster. He explores the principles, strategies, and tools that help us live happier, healthier, more productive lives. Ali writes and teaches online courses about productivity, technology, studying entrepreneurship, personal finance. His latest course, Part-Time YouTuber Academy—I'm pretty sure Ali sold out in one day, which is pretty incredible, and shows the value that he is offering, the audience he's created.
Today's plan: we are going to be telling you why learning in public is the best way to live. How sharing your work, how being consistent in opening up your process, what you're doing, what you're learning, will both accelerate that process of learning as well as open up a multitude of opportunities. You'll maximize your surface area of serendipity. So this is gonna be a really fun conversation, so I hope you guys are in for it.
The timeline for today: Ali and I are gonna have a fireside chat for about forty minutes. We're then gonna hand things off to audience Q&A. So if you have a question, use the Q&A function at the bottom bar. You can also upvote questions. If you see one that you'd like to ask, go ahead and upvote that. I'm gonna be asking those on your behalf at the end. So we are going until about fifteen minutes after the hour. I believe that will be 8:15 GMT, for you guys across the pond. And if you have to leave early, no worries. This is gonna be recorded, so if you're here, if you're registered, we'll send it out to you on an email on Monday.
Remember to keep your chat to "all attendees" if you'd like to share something with the group, maybe ask some questions, getting some involvement in terms of what you're learning, giving you some feedback. So feel free to utilize that.
That being said, guys, I'd love to welcome Ali. Ali, thanks for being here. Long time no see. Very excited to pick up where we left off.
Ali (02:09): Yeah, thanks for having me. This should be fun.
Chris (02:12): All right. I'm gonna switch to Gallery View. And, Ali. Let's start off with talking about learning. So, what does learning mean to you? Why make it a central part of your life?
Ali (02:27): Yeah. So I guess I started my whole online career when I was in medical school, and in medical school, learning is like the main thing that you're there to do. And in my second year, when I discovered techniques around effective learning, that completely changed my life, and it meant that once I figured out what effective learning was all about, it meant that I could then set up a business and later set up a YouTube channel and do all the cool things I've ever done, because I wasn't fully stressed about having to prepare for exams.
And so, in that respect, learning, in the sense of studying for exams, has been a huge part of my life. But also I'm just big on learning in general, and I think being a jack-of-all-trades is so much more interesting and fun than being particularly specialized in any one thing.
Chris (03:20): So let's talk about that. Do you think it's really important to be an expert to share? It seems to me that you really share things from the beginning, when you're just getting things kicked off.
Ali (03:33): Yeah. I actually have. I've got these three physical books that I keep on my desk. These are by Austin Kleon. Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going. And it was this book, the middle one, Show Your Work!, I would say is one of the books that's most changed my life. Because in this, Austin Kleon talks about how even when you're an amateur, especially when you're an amateur, when you're a beginner, when you don't know what you're doing, that is when showing your work is the best way of, like, living life. And I read Show Your Work! in 2016, and it encouraged me to start my blog, and that was when I started writing online for the first time, and that then lead to my YouTube channel, which has been a whole sort of butterfly effect spiral that's ended up completely changing my life. So I'm just big on sharing your work, and learning in public as much as possible.
Chris (04:24): So, what does sharing your work mean to you? How does that affect the way that you go about your day differently?
Ali (04:30): Yeah, so for me I mostly—it's just this phase of learning in public. If I'm learning something or if I want to learn something then I will document the process or the progress of it on Twitter or Instagram or my blog or now my YouTube channel, and I think that—it feels very easy for me to do, because I'm like, "Well, you know, I'm just documenting." I'm documenting, not creating, as Gary Vaynerchuk would say. And it's very easy to document. Like, you don't have to think about it too hard. You just, "Right. Day three of my drawing lessons."
And so, recently I started taking art lessons and doing concept art and things like that, and yeah. I've just been posting progress pics on Instagram and being open with my audience that, "Hey, this is something that I'm learning." And so, you know, it's not gonna directly lead anywhere in the short term, but in the long run as my art hopefully improves with time it will be interesting at the very least to look back on the journey.
Chris (05:27): So take me back. You know, you discovered Austin Kleon, you started your blog back in 2016, you start writing, not really knowing where it's going to end up, but having this idea that, hey. This can't lead to anything bad. Right? Whatever happens is likely going to be good. When did you realize that you were on to something?
Ali (05:47): I think it was only when I started my YouTube channel that I realized I was onto something. Because the nice thing about starting a YouTube channel is that even if you're very small, which I was, with like zero subscribers, you still get that little, like, slight dopamine hit because of the feedback loop when you put out a video. So I was putting out—I started making holiday blogs about my medical elective in Cambodia. And you know, a few dozen people were watching and I'd get like twenty-three views on a video, and I'd get like two comments. I'd be like, "Oh my god, this is incredible." And then I keep on making videos, and very occasionally I'd get a new subscriber. I'd be like, "Yes, I've now got thirty-four subscribers."
And the way motivation works is that you get these small successes and then that fuels the fire of the ongoing motivation. And so when I started out YouTube and that started to happen, and I started to note the numbers getting bigger over time, I thought, "Okay, this is really interesting. This is like the first time where I can really see this going well, and so I'm going to double down on this. I'm going to take it as seriously as I possibly can." And so when I got back to med school for my final year, I thought, "You know what? I know enough right now to pass the exams, and I know that I'm out of the running for like a distinction, which is the top ten percent, because I didn't get good enough marks last year. Therefore, any percentage point I get above the pass mark is wasted effort, and I can instead pile that effort into my YouTube channel.” Which is exactly what I did. And I ended up just scraping through my final year written paper, but spending all my spare time editing two or three videos a week, and I think that was what gave me the snowball to then make the YouTube channel successful.
Chris (07:24): It's an interesting paradigm shift that grades, traditional metrics that are legible of productivity and performance, are becoming less and less relevant. And this idea of having a portfolio, as you say, documenting the things that you're doing becoming increasingly relevant, not only for showing capability, but also for demonstrating the ability to learn. Which seems like the ultimate meta-skill, right? That anything you're doing—the world's constantly changing. You need to be able to learn. That showing your process of acquiring new skills—it strikes me as the best demonstration of being someone who's capable. But what types of opportunities have come to you from sharing this process, from documenting the things you were doing anyway?
Ali (08:20): Yeah. So I think the opportunities even started when I just had my blog. I didn't even publish very often. I think I wrote maybe six or seven blog posts in 2016, but through that people reached out to me via like Twitter and Instagram and email being like, "Hey, I read your blog post about this thing." And I was so surprised. I didn't think anyone would read my blog posts. But I made a few kind of personal contacts that way. And then really when I started my YouTube channel and things then started to get bigger, just purely through me sort of documenting the stuff that I was doing anyway, that basically unlocked absolutely everything interesting that's ever happened in my life since. Like, half of my friends in the world are now, to an extent, because I have this YouTube channel and I've connected with them through that. I've connected with a load of people through Twitter, through sharing my work on Twitter. Tons and tons of opportunities in the medical field. Just like, yeah. A zillion professional opportunities, loads of chances to make money. It's just astronomical, the impact that sharing my work online has had for me, which is why I'm so bullish on everyone doing it.
Chris (09:25): Every good thing that has happened. That's a pretty good endorsement.
So, I love how vulnerable you are, how what you see is what you get. I think where a lot of people get in trouble with this type of stuff is they have a public persona which is very different than their private self, and this seems to create an impostor syndrome, of, "If they only knew how much I procrastinated or how I'll just get delivery and watch TV sometimes." And I love how you share how your life actually is, that there is no separation between your public and private persona, at least as I can perceive it. How does this knowledge that you're going to share what happens no matter what happens change the way you go about your day-to-day?
Ali (10:18): Ooh. That's an interesting question. So, on the personal/public separation, this is something that my mom often gives me grief about, especially if I make a video breaking down how much money I earn. She’ll be like, "Now look, Alibeta, there are some things that just shouldn't be talked about, and money is one of them." I'm like, "Well, I can see why you would say that, but I feel like the world has changed, and you know, those videos get a lot of views, so you know, what can you do?"
But I think—the way that I think of it is that, in a way, everything becomes more fun because I know I'm going to be talking about it on the internet or documenting the process. Like I think when it came to this recent goal of becoming good at concept art, or my 2021 goal of getting six-pack abs at some point, I think the fact that I know I'm going to be documenting the journey encourages me to take it more seriously, but it also adds another interesting element of fun to it. And I think it's similar to monetizing your hobbies. And this is something that some people rail against, being like, "Oh my god, you don't have to monetize all your hobbies." I'm like, "Okay, yeah, fine, you don't." But for me, and for people like me who are nerds, I imagine people like you as well, having a hobby that you can then monetize adds an extra layer of fun to it. Like, it's fun doing the thing, then it's fun making money from the thing, so you're getting twice as much fun from the same thing.
And I feel like learning in public also adds a layer of fun to whatever I'm doing. So whether it's art or learning the piano or becoming a magician, or whatever, the more publicly I can do it the more fun it is for me.
And I feel this probably isn't true for everyone, but certainly anyone I know who's tried it has never looked back.
Chris (11:53): How did you get comfortable with being a real human in public? Right? Sharing setbacks, things that don't always put you in the best possible light? Was there anything you did to just become comfortable with sharing what's actually going on?
Ali (12:13): I think it was overall a realization that no one wants to hear a pure success story. It's just boring. Like, if you're just crushing it day after day after day and just living life perfectly, everyone hates that guy. And I don't want to be that guy, and I don't want to pretend to be that guy, because I'm actually a wasteman in real life, and I've found that initially when I was on YouTube for my first few videos I was quite like, "Hello, everyone. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. Today we're talking about the—" and I would watch those videos back, and think, "That does not sound like me." And therefore I made a very conscious effort to try and sound myself as much as possible.
And I was looking back through my old videos, and in video number four I made a toilet joke. I was like, "Okay." You know—I think I said something like, "Whether you're on the sofa or in bed or on the toilet you can always be studying for your chemistry." And it's just like that kind of stuff that I would also say in real life. And I found that the more I leaned into me being weird online, the more people seem to appreciate it. And especially now, at the point where I am, there is a danger of being over-idolized by young, impressionable people thinking, "Oh my god, this guy has got his whole life together." The more I lean into the fact that I'm actually a wasteman, I think it makes people feel better about their lives thinking, "Oh my god, Ali Abdaal procrastinates too. He didn't get out of bed until midday. Damn. That's not too bad."
Chris (13:36): I think this is encapsulated by something you said which really stuck with me, which was "to be a guide, and not a guru." Would you mind just explaining what that means to you?
Ali (13:48): Ah, this is a turn of phrase that my writing coach came up with a few years ago. So, I'm in the process of writing a book, and I was really worried about this. It's a book about productivity and meaningful productivity, and I was saying to this guy in our first initiation call that I feel like I'm not the right person to write this, because I don't feel like I have any novel ideas about productivity. You know, the stuff that I've learned is just ripped off of people like you and David Allen and Tim Ferriss, and I've got your Experiment Without Limits book in front of me. And you know, what the hell do I know that would be interesting at all? And what this guy, Azul, my writing coach, said—He was like, "Look, Ali. What you've gotta understand is that we're all just selling the same sunlight. All that matters is the lens with which you sell that sunlight. And you want to think about it in terms of being a guide, rather than being a guru. Because a guru is someone who comes from their mountaintop and has all the answers, whereas a guide is someone who is on the same journey as you. And maybe you're a step ahead in the journey, maybe you're even alongside someone, but being a guide means that you can explore productivity."
Sorry, my American accent is awful, but essentially his whole spiel was, "Be a guide, not a guru." And that made me instantly more okay with having the audacity to write a book about productivity.
And I feel like the stuff that I read, I don't really want to hear a guru. I kinda want to hear a guide, someone who's maybe half a step ahead of me in the journey and has been struggling with the same things and appreciates the beginner mindset. Again, this is something Austin Kleon talks about in Show Your Work! I think C.S. Lewis called it "the curse of knowledge," that when you're an expert you actually lose empathy with beginners, so you become in a way less of an effective teacher. So, yeah. I'm all about being a guide rather than a guru.
Chris (15:43): So, I mean, you live, sleep, breathe productivity. You produce productivity content all the time, you've talked about a lot of these things, you've shared a lot of sunlight, so to say. Is there anything in this realm of productivity that you still feel like a beginner at, that still is a source of struggle for you?
Ali (16:04): Oh, god. Yeah. The main one is in terms of—like, if we think of productivity as a vector quantity, so it's got a value and it also has a direction, then it's the direction aspect of it that I am very much still struggling with. And I noticed this when I took a break from medicine. So I'd been working full time as a doctor up until August of 2020, and my plan at that point was to travel the world and like go to Australia and do some medical stuff in Australia, but then obviously COVID happened and none of that ended up happening. And so I left the job, and as I was like driving home from work that final day, I was thinking, "What the hell am I going to do with my life?"
Because for the last eight years, since reading The 4-Hour Workweek at the age of like seventeen, I've been chasing this dream of financial independence, passive income, all of that kind of stuff. And now that I've sort of ticked that box, based on the YouTube channel and the businesses and stuff, I felt like I didn't really have a meaningful goal or a purpose to work towards. And that felt quite scary, 'cause I was like, "You know what? I could be more productive. I could just churn out video after video and make more courses and make more money. But what's the point of all this stuff?" And partly that's something that I'm trying to explore in the book, this idea of what it means to live a meaningful life and to have purpose and stuff, but to try to do it in not a spiritual way, but more like a scientific way, because I feel like I don't really resonate with a lot of the spiritual stuff, but I very much resonate with, "Hey, you know, these researchers in Toronto did a study about this, and these are the four things that people think bring meaning to their life."
So it's very much that bit, of like, "How do you figure out what direction you're pointing in, and what your long-term aims are?" that I am very much struggling with. Your book has been helpful on that front, because you have lots of thought experiments at the start about how to answer exactly those questions.
Chris (17:57): Thanks. Yeah, I mean writing Experiment Without Limits, I imagine the same with your forthcoming book, is a process of discovery where you learn about things as you write about them. That that is the forcing function, both discovering what you already knew but maybe underestimated its importance, because it was so internalized it became second nature, and only through the mirror of others, realizing, "Oh, that actually is worth sharing, that actually is profound." So what have you discovered through this book writing process so far about meaning, about living a good life that maybe you didn't have a good understanding of at the outside?
Ali (18:44): Good question. Still very much in the early stages, so it's a work in progress. Some things that have been interesting is, firstly, I was surprised as to just how much actual research people have done about the idea of meaning and purpose and goals and things, 'cause it's just an area that I've just never really looked into before. I mean, I read Man's Search For Meaning, but that's very much one dude's opinion from the 1950s. And I read Think Like A Monk by Jay Shetty, and sort of came across like the monk stuff, but there's actually loads of recent actual social science research that's been done on the topic, and diving into that there are a few people like Roy Baumeister (who I think you turned me onto) and his book, Meanings Of Life from like 1991 which is this like incredible golden treasure trove of studies and really interesting insights about what it means to live a meaningful life. I just never knew this sort of stuff existed before you recommended it to me. So that's been very interesting.
I think also there was a book I read recently called, How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen where he kinda talks about this problem, that you know, if you're a high achiever and all your friends are high achievers and you've got fancy-ass jobs and fancy-ass degrees from fancy-ass universities, that's all well and good, but what would you want people to say at your funeral? It probably wouldn't be something like, you know, you helped our fund outperform this other fund by three percent, or it probably wouldn't be about the amount of money you made, or things like that. It would probably be more things like, I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good teacher. And those were the sort of three areas that I identified for myself. And what he suggested in this book is that for those of us that are on this greasy pole of achievement, we often leave our personal life behind. And not to do that, because that's bad. And so I think about that a lot. That, "Oh crap, I spend like ninety-nine percent of my time focused on productivity and achievement and getting stuff done and putting content out, and I spend zero point five percent of my time on relationships and the people in my life who I care about." So that's something I'm trying to get better at.
Chris (20:58): "Greasy pole of achievement." That's one of my new favorite phrases.
Ali (21:00): I should write that down. That's a good one. I don't know where that came from.
Chris (21:01): Yeah.
Ali (21:02): I just came up with it.
Chris (21:08): That is interesting, that—I mean something that struck me in our deep dive conversation was one of the downsides of producing for an audience is that it's very tempting to do what you think other people want from you, versus to share what's really going on, even if it's not being asked for. And just, my little sliver of experience, everyone seems to want you to tell them the secret to productivity. Right, what is the keyboard shortcut or optimal podcast play speed or mic stand setup that is just going to transform their entire life. And so the temptation comes to keep giving the people what they want, versus you know, to think of meaning as productivity's Trojan Horse, where if you can get them in, interested in what headphones to buy, then maybe they'll think about why are you on this earth, what are you trying to accomplish.
Do you worry that you'll get stuck in teaching Productivity 101?
Ali (22:22): Partly. And this is something where—I was talking about the book with one of my team members about an hour ago. We were struggling with this very issue, because the book I want to write is a book about productivity that focuses on meaning, whereas I feel like the book that Average Joe in my audience wants to read is a book about hacks and keyboard shortcuts. And I'm not sure if that's me mischaracterizing Average Joe and just not giving the Average Joe enough credit, but there is that like—You know, for people like you and me who live and breathe productivity, we all kind of converge on this thing of meaning at some point. That, okay. Once I've figured out the keyboard shortcuts and stuff, like you know, at that point, the direction that you're pointing is actually a lot more important than the two percent improvement in your own personal efficiency. But you—I feel like—I mean I certainly came into productivity thinking—You know, reading a life hack or reading The 4-Hour Workweek and thinking that the best Evernote setup was going to change my life.
So it's this challenge of trying to meet people where they are, because if me at the age of twenty-one would have picked up a book about productivity and it started off with some woo-woo about the meaning of life, I would have put it down. And I know that me at age twenty-six would now want to read that stuff. And so this is something I don't have the answer to, is like, how do you get people to care about the meaning thing, even when they're young and may, for example, only care about how to organize your to-do list? Any ideas on that front?
Chris (23:57): Well, it's something that I think about all the time. Just my personal perspective, I used to fully define myself as a productivity guy. Right? Productivity coach, productivity expert, guru, whatever it is. And I found myself having the same conversations about habit formation and adding tools and how do you hack your optimal schedule together, and it felt like—yeah, just having the same conversations over and over, but it was dealing with symptoms rather than root causes, and so that's how I started to self-define as “performance,” is I don't want to be fixing things. We're already great as we are, we don't need to fix anything about ourselves, but let's look at those who we admire. What are they doing differently to have the sort of results or outcomes or lead the sort of lives that we would like to emulate? And instead of thinking, how can we bring ourselves back to some sort of baseline, how can we be uncommon amongst the uncommon?
And the cool part about that is, personally, after a few years of living and breathing productivity, I was starting to get a little bit burned out by it, and the thing about performance is that the bleeding edge, the boundaries are always expanding. And so I always feel like I am not quite qualified to be talking about the things that I talk about, and that allows me to keep learning and keep growing, because I have to stay with it. So that's the one approach that I gave, is that I just redefined my identity as someone who is interested in exploring the boundaries, rather than, you know, "Here are the things everyone should be doing."
But yeah, the challenge again is meeting people where they are, where it seems to me that these ideas—they need to hit you at the right time. I had the same experience, where I remember I was getting books on philosophy from a mentor of mine when I was going into college, like Plato in the cave, Hermann Hesse type stuff. Things that are pretty deep red-pill-type books. But I wasn't looking for that. I was looking for, "Here are secrets to cold email your heroes." "Here's how to speed read." Even though that would have been really profound for me to receive that message at the time, I needed the right packaging. And that's why I'm sort of thinking about this idea of a Trojan Horse, or productivity as a gateway drug, is like, can this be a lead-in for the message that really needs to be received? But there needs to be an openness to it.
Ali (27:01): That would be an interesting title of a book. "The Trojan Horse of Productivity."
Yeah. We've been kind of brainstorming title ideas for the book as well, trying to figure out, what angle does this take? It's one of those things that you think you can do in the end, but actually, the title of the book completely shapes the direction you take with it. It's like with YouTube videos. Like, when you're early in your YouTube career, you make a video and then you think about the title, but when you're a pro, you think about the title and then you make the video. And yeah, I just have no idea what to call the book.
Chris (27:39): So let's think about it now. Who are you writing to? I imagine this is something you talk about with your writing coach, if you had to describe who you wanted to pick up this book and read it, who are they? What are they going through?
Ali (27:54): Yeah. So I always have difficulty with that question, and I had a chat with James Clear earlier this week. #flex. And I asked him, you know, "Who was your target audience avatar?" And he was like, "Well, I didn't really have one, I just wrote the book I wanted to read about habits." And that's kind of how I feel about this book about productivity. I feel like the ideal person I'd want to reach is probably someone like me, but maybe like a year or two ago, where you know, by traditional metrics, pretty high achiever but also interested in continuing to improve—okay, no, maybe that's wrong, because a lot of the book is—what I have to try and remember is that ninety-five percent of any market is gonna be beginners.
And we ran into this problem with my YouTuber academy, as well, where initially the course I was making was one aimed at intermediates. Aimed at people who had like 50k subs already, and how to systematize and how to grow and how to hire and how to expand, and we found out that like ninety-nine percent of our people who came in the course had fewer than a hundred subscribers. We were like, okay. That's odd.
Which is what happens when you're trying to teach anything. So I'm thinking for like, when I think who's this book for, to an extent it is for me when I was young, but it's also not about me when I was young, because I was a productivity nerd and I read all the things. So I don't know. I don't know whether I'm aiming it at like someone who's a nerd like me, which would massively limit its potential, because very few people have read Getting Things Done, despite it being so popular, or whether I should try and aim it to someone who's not me, but then that's someone that I have a lot less empathy with, because I don't know what a not-me person would be looking for.
Chris (29:51): Yeah, it's totally an optimization problem of scale versus depth. It's something I ran into with this big article that I put out last week sharing everything that I learned on poker, is I can either make this really accessible to someone who's never played poker before, but that means watering it down to the point that I'm not sure it's going to have that level of impact, whereas if I do the full flex and show just how deep the rabbit hole goes by sharing some examples that you need to have played a couple hands of poker to understand why it's so profound, that really, really limits down the potential audience size. And I decided to go that route—I'd rather have a huge impact on a small group of people than a 'meh' impact on a larger group of people. But I mean, that might change.
But it was like, it's very easy to get caught in that messy middle of trying to satisfy everyone. So it's a good thing to understand from the beginning.
I'm interested. So, it seems like something that comes up all the time with someone who starts sharing their work, publishing online, is there's this initial burst of motivation, they're really into it in the beginning, and you know, maybe they don't have the results out of the gate that they're hoping for, or life gets in the way, things get busy, other priorities come up. You've managed to stay remarkably consistent for a number of years, despite, I imagine, lots of opportunities to fall off. Is there anything you think you do differently in terms of your routines around publishing, your mindset around it, that allows you to stick with it?
Ali (31:51): Yeah, it's the consistency problem. I think I'm very good at doing it for some things, and not very good at doing for other things. Like I'm very good at publishing consistently on YouTube, but I suck at going to the gym every day, for example, or working out three times a week. And I feel like the stuff that I do consistently is the stuff that fits that kind of Ikigai/Venn diagram of being in the intersection of things that I really like and things that I feel I'm good at and things that I feel like I'm making money from. And so for me to publish YouTube videos twice a week is basically no effort at all, because it just perfectly fits into that Venn diagram, whereas for something like working out in pursuit of this mythical six-pack abs, I don't really want it that much. I mean, I honestly couldn't care less if I had a six-pack or not. It's mostly just a fun little challenge at this point. But that's a lot less of a 'why,' less of a meaningful/purposeful goal for me, and therefore I don't really have the "Motivation" for it.
I think equally when I was studying for my exams at university, or rather studying to try and get into university, like this dream of trying to get into Cambridge Medical School was so meaningful and big in my head that I was going to do whatever the hell it took to do it. So people would be like, "How are you studying fourteen hours a day?" Like, why wouldn't I be studying fourteen hours a day? Like, come on. Whereas once I got into university and all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, okay. I'm here now. I guess I could just coast." At that point, I found myself really lacking the motivation to study consistently.
I think, interestingly, one year in which I did very well was my third year, where I ended up getting the top prize for exam performance, and that was because at the start of the year I set an intention. I was like, "You know what? This is the one year where there is a perfect storm of variables that are in my favor. I'm studying a subject where it's a smaller cohort size, and I'm studying psychology, which I really like, and I've already read loads of pop psychology stuff so I've got a head start, and I know how to study effectively. Can I actually just shoot for rank one here?" And just having that goal in my mind really just meant that when it came to exam term, I was very easily able to spend fourteen hours a day in the library, whereas when I didn't quite have that goal, and crucially when that goal wasn't achievable, I really didn't have any motivation at all.
And it goes to—here's a good book, called The Procrastination Equation, by Piers Steel, where he talks about motivation as this—one of the factors that leads to motivation to do something is our perceived ability to actually do it. And so in my first year of med school, if I was thinking, "Hey, I want to rank first," it was never, ever going to happen. There were people like ten times more intelligent than me who put in ten times more hard work than I did. But in my third year, where the year group size was cut to about eighty people, and so I was only competing with eighty people in a subject that I already enjoyed, at that point it was like, "Oh, this goal is actually attainable." Therefore that really fueled my fire of motivation for it. Whereas, you know, if I were trying to beat Roger Federer in tennis, it's just like never, ever going to happen. Right? Whereas if I was trying to beat my brother in tennis, "Oh, you know, I can do this."
So I think that comes into it, as well.
Chris (35:29): I think that Procrastination Equation is maybe the most compressed knowledge on productivity and procrastination and motivation that exists out there. So highly recommend checking it out. It's something that I walk through with a lot of clients when they find themselves unmotivated to do something, that—just this realization that our motivation is under our control. That we can remind ourselves why we're doing something, how we're going to succeed at it, remove distractions, make it so there's a reward that we want more that comes sooner, that—it's really powerful to bring that back under our control, because otherwise it seems like, "Oh, I'm not motivated to do something, I guess I don't want to do it," but that you can choose what to be motivated by, in a sense, and so it becomes what do you want to get motivated to do? Because you can generate that motivation.
Something else that I hear you say is that for you, producing YouTube videos is just within your wheelhouse in terms of something that doesn't feel hard. Right? So you aren't putting in the effort to do it that other people might. And so it's always a good reminder that the thing that we should be doing, usually we are going to underestimate how valuable and important it is, because it doesn't come that difficult to us. And so that's why it seems like it's really good to share what we're doing, to get feedback on it, to be a part of a community, to remind ourselves, "Oh, what I'm doing is valuable, even if it doesn't feel like it to me."
Ali (37:23): Hmm. Yes. There's that quote—I think our mutual friend Tiago Forte did a tweet a few months ago that I keep coming back to. Maybe he ripped it off Naval. I feel it's more a Naval thing. Where like, "You can't compete with someone who's having fun." And yeah, for me it's just zero effort at all putting out YouTube videos. And I know it's an uphill battle for other people. And so, partly, that's one of the things I try and break down in my course, that how do we actually get it to a point—because, you know, I didn't come out of the birth canal knowing how to make YouTube videos. It was very much the sort of thing that I learned on the job, and that I built systems around, to become more interesting and more streamlined over time. So how do we break this down to teach in its sort of component forms?
Chris (38:10): What makes something fun to you? Is there—I know how systematic you are in everything you do. Is there something you've done to make the process more enjoyable?
Ali (38:20): I think partly for me, YouTubing—when editing started to get boring, I outsourced editing. And that was such a huge amount of it, 'cause at the start everyone enjoys editing. But then you realize, spending ten hours editing a video—Ugh. A lot of it is basic grunt work of removing pauses and all that and which you can kind of do on autopilot, but it's like doing the laundry. You have to do it even though you don't really like it. And so outsourcing that, like two years into my YouTube career, made it more fun.
I think one thing—when I was doing the editing myself, one thing I would try and do is really think about, "Okay, how can I add a little bit of flair to this? How can I maybe add . . . " I would do weird things. Like, for example at the end of a video—like, so few people watch to the end of a YouTube video, but the very final thing, I would dial up the music slightly and make sure it ends on a perfect cadence. So I'd say something like, "Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video. Goodbye." And then it would be like—"Da-da-dun!" And it would fade to black. Just that little bit of satisfaction, that basically no one's gonna appreciate because as soon as you start saying "thank you," people will just click off the video. But that made it more fun for me. You know, seeing how I could incorporate emojis and animations and stuff, which was stuff that probably wasn't really adding a lot of value to the video itself, but it just made the editing of it more fun.
So now that I now no longer do the editing, the bit that I find fun is in how can I tell a better story. Like, I'm actively working on being a better speaker and a better storyteller. I'm going through a course called UltraSpeaking right now where we basically, yeah, three times a week do these games and stuff to try and get better at speaking. And now it's that stuff that I'm trying to incorporate into my videos as I'm filming them. So I think the thing that makes it fun is that you're just trying to learn new things and incorporate them into the videos to make the videos better. And in a way it's—I think there's a phrase in the productivity literature that's like instrumental versus something motivation. Or something like that.
Chris (40:24): Intrinsic versus extrinsic?
Ali (40:28):Yeah. No, that's—instrumental and something else.
Chris (40:32): Instrumental goals and terminal goals.
Ali (40:35): Yes, instrumental and terminal. Yeah, exactly. And so, me making videos feels like the terminal, where I'm enjoying it for its own sake, because I care about the craft. And that is kind of the point where I've gotten to with the videos, which I'm trying to get to with working out as well.
Chris (40:51): Yeah. What strikes me is that you're very curious. I think that's the emotion of doing something for its own sake, that discovery is its own reward, and that everything has infinite depth if we're interested enough to look. And something else that you've talked about, which is that there are parts of producing videos that were less fun to you, that you thought you were adding less value, that you really had less leverage. And as you grow, as you develop a process for doing something, realizing that you don't need to own everything. It's something I've seen, that scale comes at the expense of control. That if you want something to grow, it usually means handing off some control of the process.
The analogy I always give is you have an executive celebrity chef open up a restaurant, and so they might be looking at all of the dishes coming out of the kitchen, but they aren't in there chopping vegetables, they aren't in there doing dishes. If you want something to grow, recognize where you add the most value, what you enjoy doing, and slowly but surely turning everything else into commodity, into a process that can be repeated, and that allows you to lean into what you find most fun, enjoyable, and produce in more, in that sense. That's something you can work towards as something proves it's successful.
Ali (42:25): Yeah. That's something I only really started doing I think about a year ago, when I read The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber.
Chris (42:35): Oh, beautiful.
Ali (42:36): Yeah. Fantastic book. And like, when I was at university and I set up my first business, I basically did everything wrong with it. Like I was—even five years into running it, I was still replying to customer service emails and doing logistics and admin and—you know, I was staying up late at night and losing sleep and I was like, "Oh crap, we're running a course tomorrow and I don't know if DHL has delivered our books, our course materials, to the hotel in time." And it was just random stuff like that. And it was only after reading The E-Myth Revisited that I realized, "Oh my god. Why do I need to be dealing with all this crap? I could have delegated it." And it would have been so much easier and I could have literally just hired someone to manage the stuff that I didn't enjoy. And so when it came to scaling my YouTube channel, I hired my first full-time team member about twelve months ago, and actually this week we've hired four new people to the team. So I'm all about scaling and removing myself as the bottleneck from as many processes as I can.
Chris (43:36): I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that the meteoric growth you guys had last year might have had something to do with handing off some of those things.
Ali (43:45): Oh, god. Yeah. Absolutely. Especially editing. Man, once you can outsource editing, oh. Your life changes.
Chris (43:52): All right. We have some really good questions in the Q&A, so I'm gonna ask the questions that have been upvoted the most. So, first question is from Sina. "I want to start a Youtube channel to connect with other interesting people as well. But being in the beginning, I can't imagine a famous YouTuber like Ali caring about a random commenter like me. Is this new connections benefit real?" Maybe talk about some of the people who reached out or got in touch. Kind of the community aspect, as you were starting to build some momentum and some community around what you're doing.
Ali (44:32): Yeah. So I think if you were to join a tennis club and you were to learn to play tennis, you would make friends with the other people who are in your tennis club. You probably wouldn't think, "Hey, you know what, I'm going to start learning how to play tennis, and then next week Roger Federer is gonna come and be mates with me." Like, you probably wouldn't think in that way. And equally, when you're starting YouTube, when you're starting putting yourself online on Twitter and stuff, or when you're starting a podcast, the community of people that you make initially are your peers. They're like—they're not people that have 1000x the subscriber count that you do or are a lot bigger than you do or that have been doing it for a lot longer. Over time, you develop those sorts of relationships.
Like, when I started YouTube, I didn't know any famous YouTubers at all. I connected with people who were in my university also doing YouTube who had under a thousand subscribers, and we would all kind of grow together and we would hang out and be like, "Oh, hey, yeah, how many subscribers . . . " "Oh, you know, it was a great day yesterday, I got three subscribers yesterday." It's like, "Oh my god, congratulations." And over time you kind of grow with those people. And then as you're growing, you start connecting with other people and you start making friends with other YouTubers. But I think the way to approach it is to initially think about who are your peers, and making friends with them and making that a wholesome and supportive community. And then over time—it's actually not very hard connecting with a YouTuber like me, even if you're just getting started out. You just have to, you know, be on the right wavelength and send an email that offers compelling enough value. And Tim Ferriss has a good blog post called "How To Email Busy People," which more people in the world should read.
So I think it's that thing, of focus on your peers, and then over time, you'll end up meeting your heroes, as it were.
Chris (46:24): I think that's really good advice. Yeah. Just as a good rule of thumb, leading with value. Especially the more requests someone has, the more you need to lead with value to stand out, because they have more people trying to get their attention. I tend to think that it's best, as Ali said, to build relationships with peers. And what I'm looking for, to use a mathematical analogy, is rather than going after someone with a high Y-intercept, someone who's already really successful, I'm looking at someone who's on a similar level to me, but I can tell they're headed on to do great things. You know, they're someone who's consistently putting out content that I admire, things that I enjoy, that are really thoughtful. And if you can build a relationship with someone earlier in their career, you can come up together. That it's much easier to have a peer who you are supporting each other than this you know, apocryphal mentor with grey beard and grey hair who's going to lead you up the mountain. It's just much easier to reach someone when they're still a peer, so look for someone who's headed on to great things, rather than someone who's already at the top.
I think, though, this is a really interesting anonymous question. So, Ali, your apartment is your studio, where you work, play, live. How do you manage to keep these different selves separate? You know, your work self, your streaming self, your relaxing, recharging self. Given that they're in the same place.
Ali (48:06): Yeah, this is something I struggle with, to an extent. I—So, for example, my bedroom is not for doing any work. I never ever do work in my bedroom. My bedroom is only for sleeping and for reading at nighttime. And so it's nice at least having the bedroom for that. The living room is a bit weird. It's like this half of the living room is like the studio space, but then the other half of the living room where there's like a sofa and the TV, that's the relax and eat takeaway space. And so actually, my housemate is going to be ordering takeaway very soon, and we're going to be watching some Friends or something at nighttime. And that's like the relaxation zone.
The other thing I find is that even like separating—cause I've got one of these fancy standing desks. And so usually if I'm in like proper work mode, I'll put it in standing mode, whereas if I'm having a chill discussion on a podcast, or something, I'll put it in sitting mode. And even just that minor sort of state separation helps me kind of switch into these different roles.
Chris (49:07): Awesome. This is gonna be an uncomfortable one, but one that I think you're very well-qualified to answer. So, Raj Rahul asks, "Is it correct to think that I should pursue what I like or should I listen to my parents and pursue the career that they suggest?" I know you've talked publicly and privately about how maybe the initial perception of shifting from doctor to online content creator was contentious. How have you managed to walk your own path?
Ali (49:40): Yeah, this is really hard. And—I think—hmm. It kind of depends on how old you are, really. Like, if you're fourteen years old and your parents are saying study in school and you're like, "But I want to be an artist," there's not a lot of leverage you have in that position. Like, there's not really much you can do, and you kind of realize that your parents do have your best interests at heart, and therefore you know, I think you can do worse than just listening to them. When you get to my age, you're kind of a bit like, "Eh, I'm twenty-six now. I can do what I want, really." My mum would prefer for me to be a doctor, you know, full-time, but I'm more than happy to disagree with her at this point. I wish I could offer advice for what it's like if you're younger than that, and I suspect Rahul, who's asking, is probably younger than I am.
But yeah, it's hard. You've just got to—I think we all have to play with the hand that we're dealt. Like, there's no—ha. Poker analogy—there's no use wishing for a better hand. And if your parents are Asian, you know, that's the hand you're dealt. It's got its pros, it's got its cons, you've just got to live with it. You can't complain about, "Oh, why are my parents so Asian that they want me to do medicine?" Well, that's—it's in their DNA. Like, there's not much you can do about it. And so I'm sorry. I wish I could offer some profound advice on that front, but you've just got to play within your constraints.
Chris (51:11): This question's from Hossam. "Ali, when showing your work, how do you bridge the gap between something useful, and something being spam?" I guess how do you decide what to share and what not to share?
Ali (51:25): This one. Show Your Work!. Oh. K2 has even mentioned this in the thing. Show Your Work! literally has a chapter on that. Guys, you need to read this book. It takes literally like twenty minutes to read. It's like so small and so great. Basically, he's got a flowchart in it that says, "Will this be useful to at least one other person in the world?" And that is your bar for posting something. So me posting a picture of my latte is probably not going to be useful to one other person in the world. But me posting literally anything else about the stuff that I'm learning will probably be useful to at least one other person in the world, and that is my bar for should I post this versus should I not.
Chris (51:58): Maybe—do you have a recent example where it was maybe on the cusp to you as far as, you know, is this useful to someone or not, and you decided it was?
Ali (52:10): There was—okay. So I was on the toilet the other day, and I was scrolling through like Twitter or something like that, and I got one of those notifications on my Apple Watch saying, "It's time to stand." And I thought that was quite funny, because it was like this "time to stand" notification is like, you know, this is the thing that's actually making me get up off the toilet. And I thought, "That might make for a good tweet." And so I took a photo of the "time to stand" thing. I took it about eight times, because I wanted to make sure I didn't get any of my awful-looking bathroom with all the clothes and stuff on the floor. I took this photo of "time to stand" and I just tweeted something like, you know, "When you know it's time to stop reading on the toilet," or something like that. I was in minds about posting it. I was like, "Is this useful? Probably not. Is it mildly entertaining for some people? Yeah. You know what, mildly entertaining ticks my box of it being useful to at least one person,” and therefore I tweeted it.
Chris (53:00): That's a great example. All right. I think we have time for two more questions. This question comes from Amina. So the quote here: "The most productive people usually work fewer total hours — they just focus on the right things." What strategies do you have to define what the right thing to work on is?
Ali (53:24): Oh, dude, this is literally what I'm struggling with as we speak. Firstly, get Chris Sparks's free ebook, or physical book, Experiment Without Limits. I'm sure someone will drop a link in the chat, because literally, the first chapter is about setting goals. And it's actually got some, like, very useful—my brother and I did a whole podcast episode where we were just asking ourselves these questions. Like, life story, values, outside views, selecting your goals. It's all in here, man.
So I suppose specific things that I find useful these days, one question I keep on coming back to is this question of, "What am I optimizing for?" You know, right now when it comes to the business, we're thinking, "Do we bother launching a membership program or not? What are we optimizing for?" The thing we're optimizing for is reach and value to the audience and growing our audience size such that in two years time when my book comes out it can hopefully be a bestseller. Creating a private membership community where we're charging people for it doesn't really help towards any of those things. And if we instead put all that effort into just creating more free content, it would tick all those boxes. And so to an extent, this question of, “what am I optimizing for,” I find is always helpful in at least helping me think about things in a more useful way.
Chris (54:40): Oh, yeah. And thanks, thanks for the plug. Glad you find it useful. I love that episode, by the way.
Ali (54:46): Oh, thanks.
Chris (54:48): But obviously I'm biased. Last question. This one comes from Sophie. "Ali, you talked about how you're writing to yourself of two or three years ago. What is the advice you would give to yourself about learning? Yourself of two years ago."
Ali (55:04): About learning. I feel like me two or three years ago, I was pretty good at learning. Maybe me like ten years ago, I hadn't read a book called Make It Stick, and therefore I didn't know how to learn effectively. But then I read it three years ago, and so I feel like I wouldn't have offered myself—I feel this is a bit of a cop out. This is like the final question, and I don't have any advice other than, yeah. Read Make It Stick and watch my videos about effective learning, and that gives you the playbook on how to learn effectively.
Chris (55:37): What did you take away from Make It Stick?
Ali (55:42): Oh, things like active recall and space repetition as being like the main things, and deliberate practice and trying to shorten the feedback loop as much as possible. That's something that you and I talked about on the poker thing as well. Yeah. Short feedback loops coupled with repeated deliberate practice coupled with testing yourself constantly is how you learn anything.
Chris (56:05): Okay. So, I'm gonna fire a wild card at you, then. We're talking again in two years and you're sharing the advice that you would give to Ali sitting here in front of us today. What is the advice that Ali in two years is sharing?
Ali (56:27): The advice that Ali in two years is sharing is probably something woo-woo like, you know, "Before learning something, ask yourself why you want to learn it, and ask yourself if the why and your meaning and your purpose behind it is really legit." Because I want to learn the piano, but like—and I've gotten to a reasonable standard in it, but I haven't gotten much better in the last like three years of playing the piano. Why is that? I think it's because I don't have a strong “why,” I don't have a strong purpose behind it. Whereas for example with the guitar, I have wanted to get better at guitar, and I have made some meaningful progress, because the reason I want to get better at guitar is so that I can busk on the London Underground. And that's like a much more concrete goal, rather than just "generally I want to get better at piano." And so I'm far more inclined to practice guitar to that level of proficiency than I am to just get better at piano.
And so, if I were to be thinking about all of the ways in which I would fail at achieving my goals, most of them are probably because I've picked a goal arbitrarily, like getting six-pack abs, that I fundamentally don't actually care about, and I should choose instead goals that I fundamentally do care about.
Chris (57:37): So having a reason why to learn, knowing the outcome you're looking to achieve, making sure that that outcome matters to you.
Ali (57:44): Yeah, exactly. On that note as well, like I've been into close-up magic for like a decade now. Damn, that's a long time. And recently a magician reached out to me. He's based in Cambridge as well. And he wanted—He's like a pro. He's a member of The Magic Circle, and has won their close-up magician of the year competition like three years in a row. That's like a big deal. That makes him like literally one of the top three magicians in the country. Cause that's like a huge deal if you're into magic. And so he emailed me, saying, "Hey, I know you're into magic. I'll be your magic mentor if you can let me into your YouTuber course." And I was like, "Hell yes." So now we set a goal where I'm going to try and become a member of The Magic Circle, and that requires me getting to a point where I have an eight to twelve minute like close-up magic show that I've kind of crafted. And that now feels like a compelling goal, cause I really haven't improved at magic over the last like six years, since I haven't really been performing, but now that I have this goal I feel like, "Oh, okay. Now I'm actually thinking about, hey. Let's learn the cups and balls and let's pick up some more cards, sleight of hand, and this sort of stuff."
So I think the goal is quite important.
Chris (58:56): Guys. Ali just gave you the secret there. You're asking how to connect with the people who you respect, and everyone is learning something. There's always value you can add to them. All you need to do is pay attention and think, "How can I add value to this person?" Right? And someone getting into a course that might change the course of their career just by sharing something that they enjoy that comes naturally to them. So another value of sharing your work and showing what you're doing, because you'll be surprised who will be interested. It might be someone who on a different dimension of progress is farther ahead than you. Either they've spent more time or it just comes more naturally. But the thing that you do that for you is just a fun hobby, doesn't feel like a big deal, might be a lifelong ambition for someone else who you respect, and that's a great thing to connect with.
Ali (59:58): Yeah. And I think like, yeah, especially for this YouTuber course. We literally got hundreds of emails from people saying, "I can't afford it, can I have a discount?" And like, maybe three out of the hundreds have offered something in return. And it's just one of those things where you just—I guess unless you've been on the other side of it you don't appreciate it, but like, yeah. Why would you ask for something without offering value, without offering something in return? Yeah. I don't know.
Chris (01:00:26): Make 'em an offer they can't refuse.
Ali (01:00:28): Yeah, exactly.
Chris (01:00:30): Ali, this has been awesome, as expected. Thank you for coming on. Lovely to continue the conversation, thanks for sharing the wisdom, being you, sharing your work. Any final words? Any places you want to send people?
Ali (01:00:43): Honestly, yeah. Guys, just get Chris's book. It's actually very good. I've only barely scratched the surface. I'm still stuck on like page eight. I'm like, "Oh my god, these are some big questions. I need to think about these questions before I move on to page nine." And it's just like solid gold in here. I can't believe it's free. So, get that. Also get Austin Kleon's Show Your Work!. It's very good.
Chris (01:01:05): Awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks, Ali. This has been the eleventh edition of Lunch Hour. If you guys enjoy this, I encourage you to check out the Forcing Function newsletter. Again, our next Lunch Hour is gonna be next Tuesday on February 2nd with Khe Hy. We're talking about how to implement getting things done in the modern era using simple Notion templates. If you'd like to download that workbook that Ali mentioned for free, Experiment Without Limits, you can find it at forcingfunction.com/lunch-hour, and finally, the applications for Team Performance Training, our group coaching program for a small group of executives, that is open for the next week, kicking off on February 17th. You can learn more at teamperformancetraining.com. Thanks, Ali, thanks guys for attending, for your wonderful questions. We'll see you again next time.
Tasha (01:01:08): Thank you for listening to the Forcing Function Hour. At Forcing Function, we teach performance architecture. We work with a select group of twelve executives and investors to teach them how to multiply their output, perform at their peak, and design a life of freedom and purpose. Make sure to subscribe to Forcing Function Hour for more great episodes, or go to forcingfunctionhour.com to sign up for our newsletter so you can join us live.