Here's How to Get to the Top 1% (Discipline Isn’t Enough)

Summary

Ali Abdaal explores the profound strategies that can propel you to the top 1% of success, highlighting that discipline alone isn't enough. Drawing insights from Joe Hudson, a coach for Silicon Valley executives, the video delves into transformative habits beyond simple productivity hacks. Emphasizing an iterative mindset and a unique approach to embracing failure, Abdaal stresses the importance of revising one's relationship with emotions. Hudson's teachings also focus on optimizing enjoyment for efficiency and moving away from a sense of obligation. This video encourages a holistic rethinking of success, urging viewers to embrace curiosity, enjoyment, and a healthier interaction with time.

Highlights

• Joe Hudson's insights offer a fresh perspective on success. 🔑
• Failure isn't to be feared; it's a learning tool. 📚
• Curiosity about emotions can lead to deeper understanding. 🎨
• Understanding emotions enhances work enjoyment and efficiency. 🚀
• Foster a healthy relationship with time for better productivity. ⏰

Key Takeaways

• Success isn't just about discipline; embrace a new mindset. 🎯
• Adopt an iterative approach over seeking perfection. 🌀
• Embrace and understand your emotional experiences. 💖
• Prioritize enjoyment for more efficiency in work. 🕺
• Replace 'shoulds' with enthusiastic 'wants.' 🌟
• Escape the time poverty mentality and plan for the long-term. ⏳

Overview

Ali Abdaal reveals the unconventional habits of those who achieve the top 1% of success, beyond the typical discipline and determination. Drawing from the insights of Joe Hudson, a renowned coach for Silicon Valley's titans, Abdaal introduces a refreshing narrative that challenges traditional productivity norms. The video underscores the power of an iterative mindset, urging viewers to embrace a flexible approach rather than being bogged down by perfectionism.

Central to Hudson's teachings is the concept of emotional mastery. He promotes a radical acceptance of emotions, arguing that our internal emotional states significantly influence our decisions and success. By learning to 'be curious' about our feelings, we can transform how we perceive failure, turning potential setbacks into rich opportunities for growth and learning.

The video also emphasizes the importance of enjoyment and redefining productivity. Hudson's philosophy suggests that by aligning work with joy and allowing time to work for you, rather than waging a constant battle against it, one achieves greater efficiency and satisfaction. Ali invites viewers to reframe their perspective, shifting from 'doing' out of obligation to pursuing what genuinely excites them.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and the Importance of Discipline This chapter introduces the concept that traditional ideas of success—such as increased discipline, hard work, and productivity—are effective to some extent, placing individuals in the top 10-20% of their fields. However, to reach the top 1% or 0.1%, different rules and success habits must be followed. The chapter focuses on these new rules, inspired by Joe Hudson, a coach for top executives in leading tech companies like Apple, Google, and Open AI. His high-demand coaching methods help them continuously advance and maintain their leadership positions.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Discovering Joe Hudson's Work The chapter 'Discovering Joe Hudson's Work' describes the narrator's journey of discovering Joe Hudson's impactful work about a year ago. The narrator highlights binge-watching all of Joe's online content and attending an exclusive in-person retreat with Joe. His teachings have significantly transformed the narrator's life, and there is a hope that viewers can benefit similarly. The chapter also includes a disclaimer about the length of the video, encouraging viewers not to skip through it for a concise summary, as it may undermine the learning experience.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Introduction to Iterative Mindset The chapter discusses the importance of adopting an iterative mindset for personal productivity and success. It emphasizes that the content goes beyond typical productivity hacks and dives into deeper, more impactful habits. The speaker guarantees that these are habits not yet mastered by self-improvement enthusiasts, and adopting them can lead to significant success and personal growth.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Pace Over Perfection The chapter titled 'Pace Over Perfection' emphasizes the importance of valuing pace over striving for perfection in achieving success. It critiques the common belief that meticulous planning and perfect execution are necessary for success. Instead, the chapter argues that this mindset often leads to stagnation and fear of making the wrong move. The chapter highlights that extremely successful individuals focus more on maintaining a steady pace rather than achieving perfection. This approach is particularly observed among top CEOs, who prioritize the pace at which their company operates above all.
• 03:00 - 04:00: The Fear of Making Mistakes The chapter titled 'The Fear of Making Mistakes' emphasizes the importance of having an iterative mindset over striving for perfection. It argues that progress is more important than perfection as it's easier to steer a moving ship than a stationary one. Instead of focusing on getting everything right, the focus should be on making continuous progress even if it involves making mistakes because these mistakes help in learning and moving forward. This approach contrasts with the typical hesitation many have due to fear of making mistakes or a need for perfection.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Overcoming Fear of Public Mistakes The chapter emphasizes the importance of forward momentum and iterative cycles for learning and improvement. It suggests that taking action and learning from real-world feedback leads to quicker growth than relying solely on mental models. The message is directed at those aiming to achieve success or financial freedom, encouraging them to take action without waiting for perfect preparation.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Understanding Emotional Responses to Failure The chapter discusses the importance of taking action with minimal preparation to foster an iterative mindset. It emphasizes that prioritizing speed over perfection allows for quicker learning through continuous movement and adjustments, which can lead to improved outcomes.
• 06:00 - 08:00: Sponsor Segment - Spotter Studio This chapter discusses the concept of prioritizing action over perfection, highlighting the iterative mindset of 'Ready, Fire, Aim.' It encourages readers to reflect on their own tendencies towards action or analysis paralysis, urging a shift towards taking action to avoid overthinking and inaction.
• 08:00 - 09:00: The Role of Habenula in Handling Failure The chapter discusses the role of the habenula in dealing with failure. It presents a dialogue with Joe, exploring why people often remain in the research phase instead of progressing to action. The main reason suggested is fear of making public mistakes, indicating that the transition from research to action is hindered by insecurities about potential public failure.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Embracing Emotions In the chapter titled 'Embracing Emotions', the author discusses the fear of making public mistakes and how it prevents many from taking action. The author shares a personal journey of overcoming this fear, particularly when starting a YouTube channel. Making content on the internet requires accepting the possibility of public errors. A significant source of inspiration for this change was a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Epictitus, which helped the author move past the fear of public embarrassment.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Personal Journey with Emotions The chapter 'Personal Journey with Emotions' discusses overcoming the fear of being judged as foolish or stupid by others. It highlights how this fear often keeps people trapped in undesirable situations. A personal anecdote is shared, explaining how the realization that others are more focused on their own lives, rather than judging you, can empower individuals to pursue their goals and overcome self-doubt. The key message is to prioritize personal growth over the anxiety of others' opinions.
• 11:00 - 12:00: The Importance of Allowing Emotions The chapter titled 'The Importance of Allowing Emotions' centers on the different ways people handle fear, especially in the context of potential failure or making mistakes. The narrator discusses how most individuals tend to suppress their fear, rely on willpower, or avoid risky situations entirely. However, Joe, who represents the heart of the teachings, suggests a different approach utilized by the top 0.1% of successful people. These individuals understand that the key is not to avoid failure but to embrace emotions, which is a part of Joe's teachings and aligns with the iterative mindset highlighted as habit number two. The chapter emphasizes the significance of accepting and allowing emotions as a path to success.
• 12:00 - 15:00: The Connection Between Emotions and Decisions The chapter discusses the critical connection between emotions and decision-making, illustrating how altering one's relationship with the emotional experiences triggered by failure can lead to significant personal growth. Central to Joe's teachings is the idea that emotions significantly drive our concern for outcomes, influencing how we perceive and react to mistakes, especially in a business context. By engaging with this content, readers are encouraged to explore and embrace the transformative potential of understanding and managing their emotional responses to failure.
• 15:00 - 16:00: Visualization Exercise for Handling Emotions This chapter discusses the emotional impact of making mistakes and failure. It highlights that it's not the actual mistakes or criticisms that people fear, but rather the negative emotions and internal feelings that accompany failure. The chapter emphasizes the importance of understanding and handling these emotions to prevent them from discouraging continued efforts and engagement.
• 16:00 - 19:00: The Role of Enjoyment in Efficiency This chapter explores the concept of enjoyment and its impact on efficiency. It begins by discussing the natural feelings and emotions that can arise, and aims to explain why these occur. The narrator also mentions practical steps that can be taken to address these emotions. Additionally, the chapter includes a mention of Spotter Studio, an AI-powered platform supporting creators, especially YouTubers, by helping them generate fresh content ideas, which is often a challenging task.
• 19:00 - 20:00: Using Enjoyment as a Compass The chapter discusses the impact of integrating Spotter Studio into a creative workflow. This tool has transformed their ideation process by saving time and enhancing creativity. Spotter Studio brings together data-driven insights and AI-powered brainstorming features, which aid in generating new video concepts and identifying ideas with strong audience resonance. A highlight is the 'idea bank' feature, allowing users to efficiently capture and organize YouTube video ideas.
• 20:00 - 23:00: Reframing Obligations and Duty The chapter titled 'Reframing Obligations and Duty' discusses the challenges and solutions related to generating content ideas for creators. It introduces Spotter AI as a supportive tool that provides daily personalized, data-driven video ideas. It also highlights the 'idea canvas beta,' a platform for brainstorming and generating hundreds of visual ideas using AI-powered tools. The narrator expresses how this tool simplifies the creative process by making it easier to come up with and research video ideas.
• 23:00 - 25:30: Understanding Time Poverty The chapter titled 'Understanding Time Poverty' seems to revolve around the theme of improving content creation and overcoming challenges associated with effective content strategy. The discussion begins with the creator's personal enjoyment of crafting videos, emphasizing the importance of making content that resonates with the audience. The mention of 'Spotter Studio' suggests a tool designed to assist creators by providing a data-driven approach to content development. This tool offers a 7-day free trial and adds value by continuously updating features to aid creators in connecting more effectively with their audience. Additionally, there is a mention of a brain structure called the habenula, implicitly indicating a link between neuroscience and content creation or productivity, suggesting a deeper dive into understanding time management or decision-making as part of creative work. This summary reflects a blend of personal insights, sponsor promotion, and perhaps a segue into scientific exploration, offering a multifaceted view of the subject 'Time Poverty'.
• 25:30 - 28:00: Personal Reflections and Closing The chapter explores the brain's mechanism to prevent repetitive failures based on past experiences, using the analogy of hierarchical animal behaviors like a tiger fighting for dominance or a fish avoiding poisonous food. This mechanism ensures survival by discouraging actions that previously led to negative outcomes. The speaker reflects on their medical school studies in neuroscience and describes a specific brain region involved in this process.

Here's How to Get to the Top 1% (Discipline Isn’t Enough) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Most people think that the key to success is being more disciplined, working harder, and getting more done. And that stuff actually does get you into the top 10 20% of most fields. But if you really want to get into the top 1% or even the top.1%, then the rules completely change. This video is about those new rules, the success habits of the top.1%. And I learned them from this guy, Joe Hudson. He's the secret coach that the biggest companies in Silicon Valley, including Apple and Google and Open AI, pay absolutely insane amounts of money to help their CEOs and executive teams level up and stay ahead
• 00:30 - 01:00 of the competition. Now, I discovered Joe's work about a year ago, and I binged everything he's put out online. And then I had the privilege of attending his invite only in-person intensive retreat, and I haven't really talked about it on the channel until now, but Joe's work has completely transformed my own life, and I hope that it can do the same for you as well. Now, final thing before we start, a quick warning. This is going to be a really long video and you are going to be tempted to skip ahead and look at the timestamps in the comments and see if anyone has summarized the video in a tweetable bite-sized fashion. And I get it. I'm all about trying to learn stuff efficiently. But the habits that we're
• 01:00 - 01:30 going to talk about in this video are not simple productivity hacks that you can just read the timestamp for and then think, "Cool. Yep. I already knew that." The stuff in this video is deeper stuff than what I normally talk about on this channel. And what you might be used to if you watch videos about productivity or success. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that even if, like me, you are a connoisseur of self-improvement content, you have not yet mastered a single one of these five habits. I also guarantee that if you do apply these habits into your life, you'll become drastically more successful by whatever metric you decide matters to you. But also, more importantly, you'll
• 01:30 - 02:00 experience much more joy and fulfillment along the way. All right, let's dive into the first habit. Now, most people when we are faced with a new project or a goal, most of us believe that the path to success involves meticulous planning and endless research and waiting until everything is perfect. We often get stuck at that point and we are afraid to start because there's all these other things we might want to do and we don't want to make the wrong move. But actually the really successful people, the top.1% in Joe's experience, they become much more successful when they focus on something entirely different. Yeah. So every successful CEO I know cares more about the pace of the company
• 02:00 - 02:30 than they do about getting anything perfect. They have a very iterative mindset. And so what that means is that um I don't care if we make mistakes. I don't care if we um get it right as long as we're actually moving forward. This is worth emphasizing. I don't care if we get it right as long as we are actually moving forward. And this is the opposite to how most of us think. We tend to fixate on getting it right rather than moving it forward. And the reason that this is the case is because it's really hard to steer a ship that doesn't move.
• 02:30 - 03:00 The other reason is because if you're doing the forward momentum, then you have an iterative cycle. It means that you're actually changing the way you do things based on reflection, based on how the customer reacts, based on how the world reacts, and therefore you learn quicker. Whereas, if you're doing that all through a mental model, you learn a lot slower. Now, we're starting with this point because this is something that most people I know who are trying to become rich or successful or financially free or whatever, most people need to hear this. You can in fact just do things. You don't need to wait until you are perfectly prepared to do the thing. And in fact, instead of
• 03:00 - 03:30 waiting until you're like 80 or 90 or 100% prepared, start taking action with like 20% preparation and focus on habit one, which is the iterative mindset. You start with a small amount of prep. You do the thing and then you get data that allows you to improve the thing over time. And the way Joe describes it is that it's about prioritizing pace over perfection. The pace is more important because you learn quicker and because you have movement and you can steer your ship more accurately. So that's why pace is important. It doesn't mean that you want to get everything wrong, but it it
• 03:30 - 04:00 does mean that you care more about doing it than doing it perfectly. There's actually the title of a book that I really like titled Ready, Fire, Aim, and that is really this iterative mindset habit in action. And so, if you ask yourself, to what extent do you operate with an iterative mindset? To what extent do you focus on taking action and then figuring things out? or are you one of those people like most people are who gets stuck in analysis paralysis, who gets stuck in overthinking and you have all these things you could do but you're not actually taking action on any of them. And because this is such a common
• 04:00 - 04:30 struggle, this is something that I asked Joe next. I asked, "Why do we stay stuck in research mode rather than taking action?" Um, there's a couple of reasons, but I think that the the the easiest way to see through it is that you're still in research mode. You're still researching how to do great videos. You're still like you're the research has never stopped. The only difference is that the research is now more public that you can be seen in your research. And so which is what tells you why most people don't want to do it is because they don't want to make mistakes publicly. But there is no CEO who hasn't
• 04:30 - 05:00 made public mistakes. So that's just part of the deal. It's part and parcel. This is worth emphasizing. Most people don't take action because they are afraid of making mistakes publicly. This is something I used to really struggle with. I had to get over it eight years ago when I first started my YouTube channel because obviously making these silly internet videos is literally all about being okay with making mistakes publicly. And there was one quote that I came across around that time that really helped. It's a quote apparently from Epictitus who was one of the ancient Greek philosophers. And the quote was
• 05:00 - 05:30 something like if you want to improve be content to be thought foolish and stupid. Most of us are so afraid to be thought foolish and stupid by the people around us, by our friends, our family, our co-workers, our managers, that we stay stuck in these situations that we don't like just to avoid the feeling of being judged. Now, one way of dealing with this, which is what really worked for me when I first started making these videos, is to remind yourself that no one thinks about you as much as you worry they do. Everyone has their own lives. Everyone's doing their own thing. And so, whatever that thing is that you're struggling to do right now because you're worried about what everyone will think, don't worry. They're not thinking about you anyway.
• 05:30 - 06:00 They're just way too busy. But Joe actually has a different way of dealing with this fear. And that brings us on to the heart of his teachings. And that brings us on to habit number two. All right. So we talked about this iterative mindset, but the reason we struggle with this is because when we think about potential failure or making mistakes, we generally try to avoid those situations at all costs. We either suppress our fear or we try to power through it with like willpower or something or we just avoid taking the risks altogether, which is where most people are. But according to Joe, the really successful people, the top 0.1%, these people understand that the key is not avoiding failure,
• 06:00 - 06:30 but fundamentally changing their relationship with the internal experience that failure triggers. Now, the caveat here is that this is going to be a very long point and this is the heart of Joe's teachings, but I promise if you stick with this and you engage with the idea and you maybe explore more of Joe's content if you want to learn more, this is an idea that completely changed my life and I think has the potential to change yours as well. The question is, what's making us care about that? And it's the emotional response. If I told you, hey, you're gonna make a whole bunch of mistakes in your business. But at the end of the day,
• 06:30 - 07:00 you're not going to care. You're going to feel great about every mistake you made, then making a mistake is not such a problem. But if I tell you you're going to make mistakes, you're going to feel embarrassed. You're going to feel miserable. You're going to think you're a failure. And then you're just going to fall off a cliff and say, "Fuck it. I'm never doing this again." Well, then you're going to care, but not because you made the mistakes, because of how it made you feel. So the key point here is that it's not actually the judgment or the criticism or the failure that we're afraid of. We are actually afraid of the feeling, the internal state, the internal emotion that failure might
• 07:00 - 07:30 bring up within us. Now this is very natural. So first we're going to explain why it happens and then we're going to talk about what you can do about it. Oh and quick thing. If you happen to be in one of the large number of people who follow this channel who are or who want to be creators, then I would love for you to check out Spotter Studio who are very kindly sponsoring today's video. Now, as you might know, if you're a creator, this whole thing of coming up with fresh content ideas week after week is honestly one of the hardest parts about being a creator and being a YouTuber. And that's why me and my team have been using Spotter Studio, which is this incredible AI powered platform specifically designed for YouTube
• 07:30 - 08:00 creators like us. And it's basically changed our entire ideation process. And actually incorporating Spotter Studio into our workflow each week not only saves me time, but it also saves my team time and also helps us come up with much more creative ideas. Now, what I personally love about Spotter Studio is that it combines datadriven insight with AI powered brainstorming tools. So, that helps us generate new video concepts, but it also gives us a sense of which ideas are most likely to resonate with our audience. One of my favorite features is the new idea bank, which is the best place to save all of your YouTube video ideas. And this lets me quickly capture and organize and
• 08:00 - 08:30 prioritize ideas with Spotter AI support. And they've also just launched ideas for you, which gives you five fresh datadriven video ideas personalized to your channel and your audience every day. They've also got the idea canvas beta which is this free form whites space where you can brainstorm hundreds of new ideas and it's perfect if you are a visual thinker like me and you can choose to start from scratch or you can use their AI powered tools to see hundreds of title and thumbnail and hook ideas within minutes. Now honestly trying to come up with and researching video ideas is my least favorite part of the creator process. But spotter studio has made that so much easier which means
• 08:30 - 09:00 I can focus more on actually crafting the video which is the bit that I personally enjoy and trying to make the content as good as possible for my wonderful audience. So, if you are a creator who wants to take a more datadriven approach to your content strategy, then you can check out Spotter Studio using the link in the video description. They offer a 7-day free trial, and they're constantly adding new features and tools to help creators like us make better content that really connects with our audiences hopefully. So, thank you, Spotter Studio, for sponsoring the video. And let's get back to it. We have a structure in our brain called the habenula. And the habenula is it's kind of like the switchboard of
• 09:00 - 09:30 the brain between the front and the back. loosely speaking, some some some neuroscientist is gonna have a field day with that. But one of the things it does, it says, "You failed. I don't want you to fail again." Because if I'm a tiger and I just fought for dominance and I've lost, I shouldn't go fight for dominance again. Or if I'm a a fish and I just ate something poisonous, I don't want to go and eat that thing again. And so that's what the heula is built to do. All right. So it's been a while since I studied neuroscience in medical school, so I had to look this up. Basically deep inside our brains near the center there is this tiny
• 09:30 - 10:00 region called the habenula that acts kind of like an anti-reward or disappointment center of the brain and neuroscientists have found that the herbula becomes particularly active when things don't go as expected when a reward that we anticipated doesn't arrive or when we experience some kind of negative outcome. The herbenula then it like it feels this failure and then it sends out signal to the other parts of the brain the parts of the brain involved in motivation and it tells it to suppress motivation for the thing and this particularly involves the neurotransmitter dopamine. Now at the risk of massively oversimplifying this
• 10:00 - 10:30 we can think of dopamine as the motivation molecule and so when the herbenula dampens down dopamine after this negative experience it biologically reduces our drive or our motivation to repeat that action whatever action led to that outcome. And this is a very useful survival mechanism like you know if you step on a thorn and it hurts it tells you don't step on that thorn again. But in the modern world where trying to become top 1% or top.1% successful requires you to take risks and run the risks of experiencing failure. It's a very very unhelpful biological survival mechanism that we have. So the key point here is that
• 10:30 - 11:00 firstly if you do find that you like everyone else work very hard to avoid failure then don't worry. This is very normal and it's literally what our brains are designed to do. But if you do care about being in the top 0.1% of people, however you personally want to define that, then it's obviously very ideal if we can get over that fear. And this is where Joe's teachings really deviate from traditional productivity advice. And so one way out is to really fall in love with the emotional state, whether it's success or failure. And so what I see a lot of uh or uh so a tool that I use a lot with people is take
• 11:00 - 11:30 your time to really visualize your success over and over again and feel everything you have to feel with that. Take your time to see your failure. and visualize that. Feel all you have to feel in that and then the action becomes really clear. It becomes really easy to do. Hold up. Fall in love with the emotional state. What the hell is this guy talking about? Now, I first heard this stuff like 18 months ago when I first discovered Joe's teachings. And initially, the 20some tech bro within me was like, obviously, this is total BS. Like, emotions and internal sensations
• 11:30 - 12:00 and feelings. This is all clearly And I was thinking, man, this guy's such a scammer. like I can't believe these billionaire CEOs and founders and these sort of executive teams of these massive companies. I can't believe this guy is scamming them out of so much money. But then I decided, okay, let me take a step back. Let me think about this. These companies, these really big companies are probably not like idiots. And so there's probably some kind of value in this guy's teachings. And then I happened to meet Joe on some event that I went to and I was like, "Oh, this guy's actually really nice and he's very warm and he's very friendly and he gives really good advice and he works
• 12:00 - 12:30 one-on-one with Sam Alman." the founder of Twitter literally said that Joe Hudson changed his life and he coaches the open AI team and he's worked with all these teams of these companies whose products I use and love every day. I decided, you know what, let me have an open mind and let me see what I can learn from him. I started absorbing all the teachings in the content. I took a couple of Joe's online courses. I got invited to his in-person retreat and this emotion stuff has ended up transforming my own life and my productivity and my relationship with my wife. And at these different events, I have met insanely successful people including literal billionaires, i.e. people with a net worth of over $1,000
• 12:30 - 13:00 million. and their lives have been transformed by this kind of work as well. So, this would be my public service announcement to my former self or people like me before we continue with this video, which is dude, you have to take this stuff seriously. Emotions are literally the heart of all of the decisions that you make about your work, your business, your life, your relationships. And if you actually care about being in the top 1% of performers, or even if you don't give a about that and you just want to live a happier, more fulfilled, more peaceful life, I'd really, really, really recommend taking this stuff seriously. How do we learn to love the emotional state associated with like a negative
• 13:00 - 13:30 emotion? Like if I if if if I do the thing and the thing fails, I will feel bad and shame and like uh sadness and like that everyone's judging me and stuff that that seems hard to love love that state. Yeah. So typically the thing that's hard to love about an emotion is the resistance to the emotion, not the emotion itself. So sadness feels very different if you don't want to be sad and you're sad than if you want to be sad and you're sad. They're very different experiences. So the first
• 13:30 - 14:00 thing is to work on the resistances that prevent you from actually feeling the state in its complete form instead of in this resistive form. So for example, if I don't want to be sad and I am actually sad and then I'm resisting the sadness because I don't want to be sad, then that feels really bad. But alternatively, and you might have had this experience, if I'm like, you know what, I'm sad and I'm going to experience the sadness. I'm going to luxuriate in the sadness. I'm going to put on some sad music and I'm going to like cry and I'm going to watch a depressing thing on YouTube. And
• 14:00 - 14:30 actually, you know, when you luxuriate in the feeling rather than resisting the feeling, it doesn't really feel bad. It actually feels kind of good. And so really, it's the resistance to the emotion that creates the uncomfortable sensation, often not really the emotion itself. So that's one of the things. Two is just get very curious about the state. Every emotional state has a signal for you. If you're angry, it probably means there's a boundary. If you're anxious, it means there's probably some way you're not caring for yourself. If you're sad, it means that there's something that has been true about you that you don't want to have
• 14:30 - 15:00 true about you anymore. And there's some there's some way in which you're being asked to transform. All those things are great signals. And so you can really look forward to them once you understand what the signals are. And when you look forward to them, the other thing that's less likely to happen is you're less likely to be taken by them and thrown around and tossed like you're in a dishwasher or a washer and dryer because it's the resistance that makes it a really heavy experience. So, a really easy way to do this is to when you have your next emotional experience, instead of running into your phone, oh my god, I
• 15:00 - 15:30 don't want to feel this or however you do it, running into a YouTube video. The other way to do it is to stop and get really curious about how exactly it feels in your body. Where exactly is it? How high is it? How low is it? How dense is it? Where's the center? How's the center different than the outside? all sorts of questions like that so that you can really be curious about it the way like a little kid would pick up a frog and go, "Oh, what's going on there?" It's the same thing. You do that with an emotion. And pretty soon you'll realize that the emotion isn't that scary. And
• 15:30 - 16:00 there's it's actually just a set of sensations that is far less painful than I don't know getting like hit in the elbow, you know? It's like they do they just pass and they change and they're they're actually quite amazing. All right. So, this has been one of the realizations, as I said, that has most changed my life. It's the recognition firstly that emotions are underlying and driving everything. And even though I like to think of myself as a logical guy, often the most difficult problems or decisions I'm dealing with or that we're dealing with, they can't really be
• 16:00 - 16:30 thought through. Like, you can't really analyze them if there is an underlying emotion underneath that we are not acknowledging or feeling. And then when I learned to actually feel the feelings, which is something I'm getting better at over time, the second step was recognizing that actually at the end of the day, an emotion is just a series of internal bodily sensations, usually accompanied by some kind of mental story. It's a series of sensations that arises and passes away. And so what what is the thing that I'm actually afraid of? And so I asked Joe what his origin story was and how he came to this
• 16:30 - 17:00 realization. So, uh, one of the most acute experiences is I got kicked out of a house for something that wasn't my fault when I was, um, younger, like early 30s. And I noticed every time I drove by the house, it just felt like getting kicked in the stomach. And I got really curious, like, what is that? Like, why? I didn't do anything wrong. I know I didn't do anything wrong. What what the heck is that thing? So, I would drive past the house on purpose so I could feel that thing. And I just got more and
• 17:00 - 17:30 more curious because it it just was strictly wonder. It was like what the hell is going on here? Like what makes this so? And and what I did in that experience was just really get curious about it, learn to enjoy it. And then the more I enjoyed it, the less it showed up. So I was like, "Oh my gosh, like this is getting rid of it. This is fantastic. Like I don't feel that thing anymore." And then as soon as I was doing it to get rid of it, it came back. And then I realized, oh right, if I
• 17:30 - 18:00 actually love the emotional experiences, it changes. If I love it to get rid of it, it doesn't change because that's not really loving it. And so in that experience, I realized, oh, that that phrase, what we resist persists. I was just like, oh, right, I don't have to resist these emotional experiences. And then I looked around and I said, wow, all my bad habits are resisting an emotional experience. They're all to not feel something. And they're all avoidance of some emotion. All my bad decisions are based on on
• 18:00 - 18:30 trying not to feel a certain way. I don't want to feel like too much of a success, tall poppy. I don't want to feel like a failure. Like wow, I just noticed everything around me was based on these emotions. And then a little bit later after that, I read a book called uh Dart's Error. And Dart's error is a neuroscientist who literally talks about how our decisions are made in the emotional center of the body. that if I took that away from you, your IQ would be the same, but you would fail to make decisions. It would take you half an hour to two hours to decide
• 18:30 - 19:00 like where to eat lunch and so your whole life would fall apart and that it's actually our emotions that are driving the decision-m and then I was just absolutely clear. I couldn't ever make a logical decision, but what I could do is make an emotional decision without the fear of feeling some way. And then that that just clarified everything. And there's modern psychology that backs up this kind of stuff as well. So for example in the field of psychology there is a branch of therapy called act acceptance and
• 19:00 - 19:30 commitment therapy. And ACT kind of emphasizes that when you are trying to suppress or fight difficult feelings paradoxically that actually makes them stronger and it consumes huge amounts of mental energy. Whereas if we go for acceptance of the feeling which starts with curiosity as Joe described that lets the emotion be processed by the body and it passes naturally. And so the analogy I find helpful is that if the emotion is kind of like a wave, you stop like resisting the wave and you instead just sort of surrender to the wave or like surf on the wave or whatever. Someone might be thinking it's not just
• 19:30 - 20:00 the feeling, it's that there would be very real consequences to me doing the thing. For example, as a professional, if I stop posting on LinkedIn, there's the very real risk that my colleagues will laugh at me and then dot dot dot like I'll be viewed less favorably by my peers, my salary would go down dot dot dot. I've I'm not trying to avoid a feeling. I'm trying to avoid real life consequences of acting without thinking. Yeah. So, I'm not suggesting not to act without thinking. Obviously, I'm not suggesting that. But what I am
• 20:00 - 20:30 suggesting is if let's take the worst case scenario, you go homeless. And if you knew for sure that if you went homeless, you would be happier, more content, feel more alive, feel a sense of bliss and joy that was unrivaled on a regular basis. What happens to your fear of going homeless? Like what's the what's the problem all of a sudden? So you can tell how much of its decision is being made emotionally. The other way to really understand it is how many missions I'm
• 20:30 - 21:00 sorry, how many decisions have you made to uh feel awesome or to feel like a winner or to not feel like a loser or to not get rejected or to not have feel guilty. Like if you just look at your life that way, it's really hard to look at any decision that isn't made emotionally. And and then you say, "Well, where does logic come in?" And well, you build bridges with logic. That's great. But also, you're using logic to find out how you're going to feel. Oh, if I do X, Y, and Z, then I
• 21:00 - 21:30 will have a successful business and then I will feel good. That's the way it goes. And so, you watch these people and they have a really successful business and they're 50 years old and they're miserable as and it's because that what was actually happening was their logic was flawed. the thing that actually would make them happy wasn't a successful business or it might have been a successful business run in a way that was more heartfelt or whatever it is. I realized that for me a lot of the decisions I make around my business or
• 21:30 - 22:00 my work or my YouTube channel or my you know whether to rush on writing my next book I like to think that I'm approaching these decisions logically and so I'll write out all these like logical thought patterns about like what the best decision is. But really, if I acknowledge the underlying fear, the underlying emotion behind these, it's a fear of going broke. It's a fear of running out of money and ending up broke and homeless and stuff. And this is not a particularly rational fear. And I have met people with net worths that are 10, 100, a thousand times higher than mine. And a lot of them also have this fear of
• 22:00 - 22:30 running out of money and ending up homeless. But then when I imagine, okay, cool. So let's say in this world I end up with no money and I'm broke and I'm homeless. But let's say hypothetically I'm at peace with it. I am, you know, I'm I'm super blissful. I'm tranquil all the time. I'm absolutely loving life. I've got a little backpack with my little tent and I just sort of walk around the wilderness and stuff. In that world, the fear of running out of money actually goes away. And so, the conclusion that I draw from that is that it's not the actual fact of running out of money that I'm really worried about. It's I'm worried about experiencing the
• 22:30 - 23:00 feeling of running out of money, which I perceive to be a negative feeling. And then I'm thinking like, no, I'm going to do everything I can to avoid this feeling at all costs. and not even acknowledging the feeling. And then I end up stuck in these patterns thinking that I'm logically solving what to do with my business. But really, I just haven't accepted that there is this underlying fear beneath it. So, let's say you're working with one of these like billionaire CEO type people. Um, what and and like are they having this realization as well? Is this like news to them that the decisions are emotional
• 23:00 - 23:30 and they can be okay with the emotions? Like how how does that how does that play out in like a coaching session or if you're working with with a team? Yeah. So typically people um they don't buy into it right away. Typically people are like wait my emotions are something that I'm supposed to control or that control me and I'm supposed to manage them. And so it's not until they actually get the power of it until they actually see oh when I approach my feelings this way I get clarity a lot quicker. When I allow myself to feel the feeling I then know what to do. And so most people have had an experience of
• 23:30 - 24:00 either say like crying I think is the most common experience. I'm feeling really shitty. I cry and I feel better. So if you've allowed yourself to cry, you're going to realize that emotional experience actually creates clarity on the other side of it. And it doesn't create clarity the way logic creates clarity, which is, you know, a plus b equals c. Emotions create clarity like this. Ah, that's how emotions work. They don't make any sense, but when they move through you, you all of a sudden have a sense of clarity. As soon as a good CEO
• 24:00 - 24:30 sees that, immediately they're like, "Okay, I'm in." because that that's another avenue to get to clarity. And I know that the clearer I am, the more my pace is going to be, the easier the pace because decisiveness is part of what decides pace and the more that I know I'm going to be in the right direction. All right, so at this point, if you are still watching and you haven't switched off because of all this nonsense about emotions, then firstly, thank you. I hope you are getting value from the video so far. And to be honest, me a few years ago would have not even remotely bothered trying to engage with a video
• 24:30 - 25:00 like this. I would have switched off a long time ago. But I genuinely think my life would have been more peaceful and tranquil. And I probably would have been more productive and also ironically made more money if I had embraced these emotions and the underlying fears behind the decisions I was making if I'd embraced that stuff earlier in life. But oh well, no time like the present. You know, the whole best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is now. So yeah, I just wanted to say a big thank you for being here. And if you feel like dropping a like or a comment on this video, then hopefully it will signal to the algorithm that there is some good content in here and hopefully then more people will see it. Okay. So, if I am in the throws of a
• 25:00 - 25:30 decision and my my default way of approaching it is to just do a lot of journaling and to try and write out the logical thought process to make the decision and then I end up in this still with the same decision for like 3 to 6 months and I'm like yes what's up with that. Yeah. So that again that's a very much an emotional. So we have this course called the great decisions course and what we're doing in every day of that course is learning to explore the emotions that we're trying to avoid. So
• 25:30 - 26:00 typically what's happening if you are indecisive and you're doing a whole bunch of SWAT analysises and you can't figure out what it is is there is one or more emotions that you are avoiding and if you actually go into them then there is nothing to avoid anymore. And the most the most um palpable exploration of this was done by the samurai and by the stoics and by the Tibetan book of living and dying because so many people one of the things they don't want to feel is death. One of the
• 26:00 - 26:30 things that they're scared of is is death. And so all of these traditions what they do is they visualize the entire experience of death up until death and then after death full decomposition. and they feel every single part of that experience and the result is they they don't fear death anymore that they actually aren't controlled by that fear and that's a perfect experience of how what's happening. So whatever it is that you're not deciding there's an emotional experience that if you live through it
• 26:30 - 27:00 enough times the fear goes away and you'll clearly the decision will make itself really. As a matter of fact, the other thing I would say is if you're having a hard time making a decision, what's absolutely guaranteed is that you're in fear because you make a hundred choices a day. You just made a choice to touch your keyboard. You're making a choice to hang out with me. All of those are choices that you make. But decisions are ones where you go, "Hold on a second. I got to really think this through." Which means immediately we know that there's fear involved. I'm scared of a potential consequence here.
• 27:00 - 27:30 And so if you feel through that consequence, then the decision makes itself. just like all the rest of your decisions. One one tool I use I often use when it comes to to decisions is I just Google Tim Ferrris fear setting exercise where he's got this blog post that's like you know what's the worst case scenario how bad is it really like what would you do in that in that context but one thing he doesn't say in that blog post which I should sort of add as an addendum to myself whenever I do this is like what's the worst case scenario okay now really visualize and feel the feelings of that
• 27:30 - 28:00 word worst case scenario rather than just typing it out on like a notion doc correct because the the the thing that fear fear does this fear does two things in the brain. The first one it does is it makes us think binary. So it's either if I'm scared it's either I'm going to buy the car or I'm going to not buy the car. But it's not I'm going to buy the car but a lower model. I'm going to buy a different color of the car. I'm going to buy Honda instead of Toyota. I'm going to negotiate for the price. All of those go away and we're just like we're going to do it or not do it. So we don't see the the subtleties of it. And you
• 28:00 - 28:30 can see this happen in meeting culture all the time. somebody gets scared and all of a sudden there's a debate black and white thinking instead of actually brainstorming of a new way to do it. The other thing that it does is it creates a false end like oh my business is going to collapse or my marriage is going to end or something that you don't see like what's right next to it. So even in the uh Tibetan book of living and dying it, you don't imagine just your death. You keep on imagining through your death. And so
• 28:30 - 29:00 that's a really important thing is it's not just visualizing the worst case scenario. It's visualizing what happens afterwards and then I'm homeless and then wow, I can still get a job. I still have all these skills. Okay, I'm not so scared anymore. And that's with everything. That's that's every one of our fear is you can go down and you can just drive it. you you can just feel it all the way down into the emotion that's being avoided in it. And so with the like CEOs that you coach, um do they
• 29:00 - 29:30 also have these sorts of things like I don't I don't want to disappoint my mother. I don't want my wife to yell at me. All humans. All humans, CEOs or otherwise. Yes. Everybody has this. Yeah. And some compartmentalize it and so that they've learned how to just cut that part of themselves off. And if they do that, they're far more likely to be very discontent in their success. And then some of them go and explore it and get clarity and then they don't have to compartmentalize anymore. Like the cool thing about business is that failure or
• 29:30 - 30:00 success, it teaches you more about yourself than almost anything except for maybe marriage and child rearing. And so you get to learn so much about yourself if you take business in that way. Now you don't have to be successful to do that. meaning that like or you don't have to do that to be successful. There's a lot of people who are successful who don't do that. But if you want to be content and actually happy with your success and not be the burn burnt out, unhappy 50-year-old with a Ferrari, then it's really a necess
• 30:00 - 30:30 necessary part of the process. And so in some habit number two is about embracing negative emotions. And the final strategy for this, which I think is very useful, is something that Joe talks about, which is the idea of staying in wonder. So the way I define wonder is curiosity without looking for an answer. So it's the way that you would look at a sunset or the way a little kid would look at an antill. It's just there's some awe in it. And you don't need to have an answer. You're just there. And you know that you're going to learn
• 30:30 - 31:00 something, but you're just there in this awe. And if you can do that either with your emotional state or with a person that you're close with, everything changes. Because most of the time, if we're in a conflict with somebody or with ourselves, it's because we think we know something about them or ourselves. I know that I can't quit eating too much. I know that I can't quit smoking. I know that I keep on starting something, but I always procrastinate. And and so I and so that what we say is, "Okay, stop procrastinating." And then it doesn't work. instead of huh I wonder what makes
• 31:00 - 31:30 me procrastinate. What's really going on there? What would what would make it so fun that to do this work I couldn't I wouldn't want to procrastinate. What's the emotion I'm avoiding by procrastinating? All those questions aren't get asked if you think you know what the hell's going on. But even though negative emotions might be helpful to understand when they're holding us back, they're probably not the mode that we want to be in all the time if we want to experience true success. And that is where habit number three comes in. All right. All right. So, at this point, Joe likes to use the
• 31:30 - 32:00 analogy of a car and the difference between speed and efficiency. So, a car that is very fast is a car that moves from A to B very quickly. But a car that is very efficient uses as little fuel as possible getting from A to B. Now, Joe's insight here is firstly that top performers are generally seeking efficiency rather than speed. So, being fuel efficient while working towards your goal means that you are using less energy doing the thing compared to someone else for example. And because you are using less energy, i.e. you're more energy efficient at getting to your
• 32:00 - 32:30 goal. You're able to sustain that progress for much longer and much more consistently by doing it efficiently, i.e. without wasting energy. And so how do we get to efficiency? Well, this is where Hudson's first law comes in, which is that enjoyment equals efficiency. So typically the way people think about efficiency is that they say, "Okay, I know an efficient car is one that doesn't use a lot of gas and a fast car is one that goes from 0 to 60 really quickly or goes 100 miles really quickly." But somehow or another when we think about productivity, we think that
• 32:30 - 33:00 efficiency is how quickly we did it, not the amount of fuel that we used to do it. So most people think about efficiency as like I I got all that all those emails done in an hour. That's efficient. instead of, "Oh, I enjoyed the hell out of that email process." So, the thing is, if you enjoy your process, then you're going to do it. You're going to do it more. It's going to be easier to do, and you get energy from it. So, I would much rather think about, oh, I made a YouTube video and I really enjoyed it because I know I'm going to
• 33:00 - 33:30 make another one, and I know that the next one I make is going to be better and it's I'm going to do it quicker because I enjoyed the process. But mostly I'm going to have a crap ton of energy at the end of it. So I'm going to want to do the next one. And so enjoyment is a great measure of efficiency, not how quickly you did it. And typically what happens is if you do your emails, like it's a great experiment to do. Do do your emails one day or your any kind of communication. Sit down for an hour. Do that email and just do it for the dopamine hit. Bam.
• 33:30 - 34:00 Bam. I got it. I got it. Done. Done. Done. Done. Done. And then do it the next day with how do I enjoy the heck out of this? And then at the end of those two sessions, ask yourself which one of those was was more productive. And typically what you'll see is that you went to press enter when you were just getting it done just to respond. When you're enjoying it, you're thinking, "Oh, how do I make the most out of this email? How do I how do I take this question and move it two steps
• 34:00 - 34:30 forwards instead of one step forward? How do I empower that person? Anything like that. All those things come into play when you're actually in enjoyment that you don't think about when you're just getting the dopamine hit of quick. So the habit here, the reframe is habit number three, the enjoyment compass. The recognition that enjoyment is efficiency. This is something I have been talking about for a couple years now. This is the whole thesis of my book, Feelgood Productivity. You can check it out on Kindle, hardback, paperback, Audible. It's been translated into 35 languages. And if you've read
• 34:30 - 35:00 the book, I would love it if you can leave a review on Amazon and or Good Readads. Thanks. But this is a theory that's been very scientifically validated. There's a whole shtick around the broaden and build theory that was discovered by Barbara Frederickson back in like the early 2000s. And I've got loads of information of it back in my book if you want to check it out. And so when I discovered Joe's stuff, which was after I wrote the book, I was like, "Ooh, yay. This is actually a really strong validation for the stuff in the book." Because Joe literally teaches these concepts to these billionaire CEOs at these like companies that whose products you probably use every day. Al also the other side benefit is that most
• 35:00 - 35:30 people want to hang out with other people who are enjoying themselves rather than people who are not. So your ability to attract talent, your ability to attract customers, everything like that is much much better if you if there's like oh that person's enjoying life. I want to be around that person. Okay. So enjoyment equals efficiency. And the habit of highly successful people is that they use enjoyment as a compass. Now as I said I've been peddling this idea for a long time but there is always push back that people have about this idea. When I was asked on Chris Williamson's podcast, I mentioned this whole like feel good productivity stuff. And there were a
• 35:30 - 36:00 bunch of comments being like, "Fuck this guy. It's all bullshit." Like, you're telling me, "Tell the taxi driver to just enjoy themselves. Tell the dishwasher to just enjoy themselves. you." Uh, what what's your take on that? I love that. You kidding me? Uh, yeah. So, apparently a taxi driver can't enjoy themselves. Like, how? Like, prove it. That's the first thing I would say is like prove that this can be done. If Titchnot Han can teach somebody how to enjoy washing the dishes, something that I hated until I learned how to enjoy it, you absolutely can learn
• 36:00 - 36:30 how to enjoy driving a taxi cab. So the the quest that the reason that people get confused by it is because they think that enjoyment comes from what you do, not how you do it. And so I will give you an example of it right now. Right now you and I can sit here and we can enjoy ourselves 5% more. So can the entire audience. Most people would have taken a deep breath, felt their body a little bit, right? It's just like boom. So easy. So if I can enjoy myself 5% more
• 36:30 - 37:00 at any given time just by thinking, how do I do it? So like what would stop you from enjoying yourself driving a cab? What would enjoy stop you from enjoying yourself doing anything? How how did you teach yourself to enjoy washing the dishes? Yeah, I I I read titch not Han and I thought to myself he was talking about doing the dishes and he's like it's warm water it's soapy it's really quite lovely if you think about it and I was like yeah whatever zen guy I like they're dishes I hate doing the dishes
• 37:00 - 37:30 and uh but at some point I tried to prove him wrong you know and that's the way I did almost everything when I was learning and it's something that I highly recommend other people do which is don't take my word for it go figure it out go figure out how to like sit down and do something that you say you don't like doing and and really ask how do I enjoy it? And if you can enjoy it 5% more, then you can probably enjoy it 10% more. Just like if I can grow my business 5%, I can probably grow my business 10%. And so that's what I did. I just tried to prove him wrong and I
• 37:30 - 38:00 couldn't. And there was actually this great I had this really great epiphany. This was a great moment where I told myself, I am going to do nothing except for exactly what I want, what I enjoy doing for a week. I'm only going to do what I enjoy, what I really want for a week. And at some point, the trash really smelt bad. And I did not want to take out the trash, but I also didn't want to smell the trash. So, I sat there. I'm like, well, I committed that I would only do what I want to do. So, and I only do what I'm going to
• 38:00 - 38:30 enjoy doing. So I I literally sat it was just ridiculous. I was sitting in front of the trash can for quite a while until I realized, okay, there is a way that I can enjoy taking out the trash and I did I got fully present in my body and I you know I was like oh like how do I lift this thing in a way that feels good in my muscles? Can I actually do a little bit of a workout on the way? I had all sorts of things and and so I enjoyed and that was the moment that I realized oh right enjoyment isn't about what you do
• 38:30 - 39:00 only. It's also about how you do it. So I would say if you think there's something you can't enjoy doing, the only way you could prove it to me is that nobody else on the planet enjoys doing it. Right? So if you can sit still for 9 hours a day and enjoy that, which is what meditation people do, you can't tell me you can't enjoy driving a car. Oo, absolutely love this. With a bit of creativity, there is always a way to enjoy something 5% more or 10% more. And a question I like to ask myself that you guys might be familiar with if you're fans of the channel is something I have
• 39:00 - 39:30 as my phone wallpaper, which is this little thing of like, what would this look like if it were fun? Whenever you want, you can just ask yourself or whatever you're doing, what would the most enjoyable version of this look like? But Joe actually takes this a step further and he uses this with the teams and the CEOs that he coaches. The cool thing is that the the places that you're not enjoying are exactly the places where you can improve efficiency. So for instance, I'm right now working in one of the Alphabet companies and we're making it so that you every person
• 39:30 - 40:00 in the company has to say how much they enjoy a meeting at the end of the meeting. It's like a zero to five star thing and if you don't hit five stars, you have to say what it is they could do to improve the meeting. And what this is doing is it shows every place where people aren't happy, where the inefficiency are. Just by tracking enjoyment, you can say, "Oh, this is what's not working in the company." It's a great diagnostic tool. This is what is working in the company. It's also a great predictor of what's going to fail in the next quarter. Oh, man. A whole
• 40:00 - 40:30 sales team isn't enjoying themselves. Probably not going to make their quarterly. So, that's a good predictor. So, there's so much that it can tell you and and and it's such a diagnostic tool. So if you're looking for what's wrong in a company, just look around to see what people don't enjoy and you focus there and work and it'll and it'll prove everything. To what extent can this be applied to like our own solo work as well? I'm kind of thinking that like if at the end or during a work session I would to be like hm how would I rate my enjoyment of the work session and then that might lead to interesting
• 40:30 - 41:00 insights and action points potentially. I would say I think the important part would be how do I enjoy it and if it's not five stars then what do I do what what's the what's the iteration I can do next time to to to learn how to enjoy it more so I think the important part is that second step analysis of oh well what I could do next time is take a break every five every 15 minutes I can take a break and do 10 jumping jacks or what I could do next time is to do it with a friend or what I could do next
• 41:00 - 41:30 time is be out in a cafe but always looking for one little uh experiment that you can do to improve it. When I talk about the enjoyment thing, people have the immediate like uh response to it at the thought that like if I if I were to do this task in a way that was enjoyable, I either wouldn't do the task at all or I would do it in a way that's not professional or not right or not correct or not good enough kind of thing. Well, hopefully the second is
• 41:30 - 42:00 true. Um, meaning that right not not professional is probably a great thing to explore. Uh, most innovation is done because it's not done the way other people did it. It's not done in the way that you're supposed to do it. So, if you're going to innovate, you have to do something that's not professional or right. If you're going to do something halfass, then I don't think you'd enjoy it. And and and if you really enjoy doing things that are halfass, like I've never seen anybody wake up and go, you
• 42:00 - 42:30 know what I would really love to do today? A whole bunch of halfassed. That would be great. I'd feel great at the end of that day. So I don't I don't buy that. If that is the case, then you really shouldn't be an entrepreneur and you really shouldn't like work for somebody because that's just stealing. So So So I would say I Yeah, I don't really buy into that that the thing as far as I might not do it. Great. find a way to not do it and still be successful. And there's lots of things that I do that are like that. Oh, I can
• 42:30 - 43:00 enjoy doing that. I don't want to do it. Great. I'm going to find another way to do it. As a matter of fact, I think a great time management skill is to look at your entire list of things to do and say, "What are the two or three things that I could do that make all of this easier or irrelevant?" I think that's a like a fantastic move to make. So, if you if you can find a way around it, great. And if you can't then enjoy it. Okay. So using enjoyment as our compass helps fuel our engine of movement of progress of success without that fuel
• 43:00 - 43:30 being dirty. It's very sustainable fuel. But now we come on to habit number four which is what the hell happens to all of those things that we have to do or that we feel like we should do even if we don't particularly enjoy them. And so habit number four addresses the internal battle that we are all fighting every single day. Most of us try to motivate ourselves through sheer force of willpower or obligation or guilt or this constant internal monologue of I should do this, I should be more disciplined, I should do that. But what Joe teaches is that actually the top 0.1% of performers recognize that this approach of
• 43:30 - 44:00 shoulding yourself creates a huge amount of internal friction and it often backfires. And so this is the anti-discipline method. I think the thing that everybody forgets is that if you force yourself, if you force anything, counterforce happens. So if I say to you, um, man, I told you, look at me. Look at me. Right? What you, people do exactly what you do, which is like, I don't want to look at you. Like there's a resistance that happens. And even if I do look at you, I'm like, but it's not
• 44:00 - 44:30 like I'm looking at you. It's like, fine, I'll look at you. So when we try to force someone to do something, whether they're a 2-year-old or whether they're a different from somebody from a different political party, there is a resistance to it. So if you're trying to force yourself to do something, there is a natural resistance to it. There just is there's going to be a natural resistance and that's all friction and that's all inefficiency. So I I don't know if her methodology about I choose easy world and then it all happens. Um
• 44:30 - 45:00 it would work consistently for people. But what I do know is that if you recognize that forcing yourself to do something comes with external friction. It comes with the cost. It comes with the toll. It's dirty fuel. It's not clean fuel. Then you start you can start looking at what do I want to do? How do I want to do it? And that's far more efficient. Okay. So what Joe is saying is that forcing yourself to do something that you fundamentally don't want to do. Yes, you can get it done and we've all had that experience, but it's really really inefficient in terms of the
• 45:00 - 45:30 amount of energy that's wasted. And the metaphor that he uses is that it's like working with dirty fuel. Now, I really like that metaphor. And another one I like to use with my students in my life OS course is that it's sort of like you're a boat and kind of the action you're doing is like the rowing or the engine of the boat, but the amount you're enjoying your work is like the sail of the boat. So, if you're enjoying what you're doing, you're going with the wind. Your sails are pointed in the right direction and like it becomes easier and you have to use less energy to manually row the boat. But if you're
• 45:30 - 46:00 not enjoying your work, it's like your sails are literally against the wind and the wind is like buffeting you. And so, you can still get there. You just have to row really, really, really hard because you are rowing against the wind because you're not enjoying what you're doing. Isn't this what the whole like discipline thing is about? like to what presumably when when people think of like you know top 0.1% CEOs or whatever they generally imagine someone who's very disciplined who like just you know gets the thing done even when they don't feel like it. Yeah. Most of this most of the CEOs especially venture capitalists
• 46:00 - 46:30 that I know they are they're not highly disciplined people. They are aligned. They are invigorated. They love to do what they do and they do it a lot. Most of them some of them don't. Uh but they all have things that they don't want to do that they don't do. They all have things that they delegate cuz they don't like. They all have some version of themselves where they are telling themselves I, you know, I should be doing this thing that I'm not doing. All all of them. So yeah, if you are a
• 46:30 - 47:00 billionaire CEO of a Silicon Valley company, then you can probably delegate a lot of the things you really don't want to do. But I imagine most of us watching this video are not in that position to be able to delegate absolutely everything. And so the way I think of this is that if there is something you have to do but you don't want to do it, firstly ask yourself, does the thing actually need to get done? What would happen if I just didn't do it? And for lots of things, you realize, oh, you actually don't need to do the thing. Someone else wants you to do the thing, and there's not actually that many bad consequences if you just didn't do the thing. And then if it
• 47:00 - 47:30 turns out that you do in fact actually have to do the thing, the next step is to recognize that I don't actually have to do anything, but I'm going to choose to do the thing because I don't want to face the consequences of not doing it. For example, I don't actually have to pay my taxes. No one is physically forcing me, coercing me, compelling me to pay my taxes right now, but I am choosing to pay my taxes because I would rather not face the consequences of going to jail. You might think of this as just a simple semantic shift, but it's a simple semantic shift that reasserts your own autonomy and your own choice. It is not that someone is
• 47:30 - 48:00 physically forcing you to do the thing. Most likely you have valition, you have autonomy, and you're simply choosing to do it because you don't want to face the consequences. And then it's a case of asking the question of like, okay, given that I have chosen to do the thing, like file my taxes, I wonder what I can do to make the process 10% more enjoyable. But then we have this whole category where we're telling ourselves that we should do the thing. What's your take on this word should? Ah, yeah. Should. Should is a motivation killer more than anything else. So, there's a a
• 48:00 - 48:30 really cool experiment you can do. Just pick anything like brush your teeth. And if you say to yourself out loud, you should brush your teeth. You should brush your teeth. You should brush your teeth. You should brush your teeth. And you just say that for like a minute and then feel how you feel in your body. And then say, I really want to brush my teeth. I really want to brush my teeth. I really want to brush my teeth. I really want to brush my teeth. And you feel how that feels. One, you'll probably go brush your teeth eventually because you because you feel how good it it is to want it. But two, what you learn is that like all your energy is
• 48:30 - 49:00 sucked out of you by a should. And all of your energy is given to you by a want. And so using the self-t talk of should is an incredibly like uh it's demeaning. It's like, think about it this way. If if you had a boss and you were working and your boss was just sitting over your shoulder and they're like, "You should do this. You should do this. You should do this. You should do this." Either you'd punch the boss or you'd rebel against the boss or you quit. Like, it's one of those things that's going to happen. But yet, that's how we're our own bosses. It's
• 49:00 - 49:30 just not effective. Okay. Objection. Uh, your honor, if I don't should if I don't should myself into doing the thing, I just wouldn't do anything. I would just like watch Netflix and play PlayStation 5 all day. Like what's up with that? Right. So, how did you learn how to walk? You didn't sh yourself then. How did you learn how to talk? You didn't sh yourself then. How does a tree grow? They don't sh themselves. Evolution is a natural thing. It's just what we do naturally. The reason that you would
• 49:30 - 50:00 hang out on the couch is cuz you're burnt out by beating the out of yourself for a decade. You'll eventually get up off of it. And there's actually these really great studies that have been done. They call it unschooling where they take kids and they're like, "Hey kid, you're burnt out in school. We're going to take you. You can't you can't like play video games. You can't, you know, get a dopamine fix someplace else, but we're just you just basically don't have to come back to school until you're ready to learn." And those kids usually do nothing for about 6 months and then they kick into gear and
• 50:00 - 50:30 then they learn quicker than anybody else. As a matter of fact, there's a guy who goes around who's a math teacher. He won't teach any of these kids until they're like, I'm interested in math. And then he'll teach them and he'll and he can teach them like calculus far quicker than if they did it at school because the kid actually really wants to learn it at that moment. Like imagine how how quickly it would take you to learn to do what you did in if you didn't want to learn it. Like if you're like, I don't want to do
• 50:30 - 51:00 YouTube. I don't want to make videos. I don't want to buy cameras. Yeah. You know, so so but as soon as you're like, "Oh, I really want to do that." You learn so quickly. Yeah. Like for me with this YouTube channel, there was no should in the early days. The should started to come in a few years down the line. And it definitely took away some of the enjoyment that I got from making videos. And this is a habit that I'm still trying to master. It's a lesson I keep on having to relearn and relearn. And one kind of trivial area where it's showing up in my life, which I kind of
• 51:00 - 51:30 ran Joe through as an example, is that I feel like I should be posting on LinkedIn. Yeah, I find that yeah, just in in this world of like creators and things, I I I I hear the should quite a lot like, oh, I I I really should be posting on LinkedIn. And I sometimes I do I do that to myself as well. I'm like, oh man, LinkedIn's popping off, like diversification, or I really should be posting on LinkedIn. And then what's really unfortunate is that when I when I then say to a team member, hey, hey, we we really should be posting on LinkedIn, so let's figure something out. And then they go in, they figure something out and they come back to me with a strategy and I'm just like, "Oh, I'm not feeling it." And I think it's it's because it
• 51:30 - 52:00 stemmed from the original should of like I should be posting on LinkedIn rather than I want to be posting on LinkedIn. Yeah. Or what would make me love posting on LinkedIn? Oh, that's a good question. What would be so exciting that I would that I would like spend time out of my day to do this and I'd feel great about it? That's that's a question cuz that's what got you motivated in the first place. Yeah. And this the other thing that happens is there's a mental loop where it's like, oh, I I I have
• 52:00 - 52:30 this idea, this impulse to do something, but I'm going to take all the joy out of it by making it a should. So, oh, I want like every if you look underneath every should, I should work out. If you look really really closely, what happens is I want to work out. There's an impulse to work out and then I put a on top of it. There's an impulse to to to move into business. There's an impulse in you to
• 52:30 - 53:00 move into a more more mature audience in business. That's the impulse. And then as soon as like do you want to do that? Yes or no? And and then the rest of it is how do I do that in a way that I enjoy it? But beneath every should there's an impulse. I should work out. There's an impulse to be healthy. Do you want to be healthy? Yes. How do you want to do that? There's lots of ways. You don't have to work out. You can dance. You don't have to dance. You can take walks with people. You don't have to take walks with people. You can have a
• 53:00 - 53:30 kid and throw them and try to keep up. Or you can do jiu-jitsu. Or you can you could literally write a list of here's 50 different things I could do that would keep me healthy and I'm going to do each one of them for 3 days and see which one I enjoy most and do those rather than I should post on LinkedIn, right? I should go to the gym. Yeah, I want to I want to experiment my business. LinkedIn is one experiment. What are the 20 other experiments that I
• 53:30 - 54:00 can run? Let's Which one do I enjoy most? And then I'm going to run with that. All right. So, habit number four is to eliminate the shoulds. really really easy one to say, a very very difficult one to master, but it speaks to this idea in the field of psychology like this concept of reactance, which is kind of our natural tendency to resist being controlled or being told what to do. And it's not just that we don't like other people telling us what to do. We also rebel against the internal voice in our head telling us that we should do something. The other thing here is that there is a theory in psychology called
• 54:00 - 54:30 self-determination theory. And that highlights our fundamental human need for autonomy. And anytime you tell yourself that you should do something, it undermines your sense of autonomy and it completely kills your motivation behind the thing, even if that motivation was initially intrinsic. But surely this can't apply in all situations. I'm not going to let Joe get away with this one so easily. On that note, another objection like to your Joe, is please. Um, where does the concept of duty and
• 54:30 - 55:00 obligation fit into this narrative, this sort of western liberal worldview that like you shouldn't shoot yourself into doing stuff? like you know sometimes I might not feel like I want to go to that like family member's house for the that thing but you know society is held together communities are held together by sometimes people acting not in their own self-interests but actually in duty and obligation to a more a wider thing and so like if I just didn't feel like
• 55:00 - 55:30 going and then didn't do the thing eventually I'd have no friends and and end up alone um dot dot dot yeah So, I think that that's a great question. The So, first of all, let's let's break it down. Let's say my mom calls me and says, "Hey, I want you to come over for dinner." And I don't want to come over for dinner. And that's I'm like, I feel obligated. I feel like the only reason I'm going to do it is because I have to. I have some sort of obligation. So, first of all, I should be asking myself, what the hell makes it that I only want
• 55:30 - 56:00 to see my mom if I feel obligated? Like, I have that I don't want to see my mom so much that I I can't actually get in touch with my desire for it. and I can only be in this obligation. And then if I really have an obligation to my mom, isn't the better thing to do to to solve that problem with her than to come to dinner? Isn't the better thing to do to say, "Hey, how do we have a relationship where we really want to be together?" Because otherwise, you're not really with her anyways. You're just some aspect of yourself is being with her. So, if you're going to tell me about obligation, then I would say break down
• 56:00 - 56:30 what you're actually obligated to do. Is your obligation to show up to your mom for Christmas or is your obligation to have a great relationship with your mom? And then and then in that same thing, what is it that you actually want? And what I notice is I want to have a great relationship with my mom is usually much closer to the want than I want to have dinner with her. And so what you'll notice is if you if you take that obligation and you find out what your actual wants are behind it, that's actually probably the closer thing to what you're really obligated to be
• 56:30 - 57:00 doing. And then is it an obligation or is it a want? We all want to have great relationships. All of us want that. All of us want to have love in our lives. All of us want to feel safe. All of us want a good community. But the obligation means that you are abandoning some part of yourself to do it and you're not actually addressing the real problem. When I was at this um retreat with Joe and he mentioned that this should thing, I was like, "Come on, Joe. Like you're telling me you never need to experience a should? what what about
• 57:00 - 57:30 your kids? Like, you know, don't you feel any kind of duty or obligation towards like feeding your kids? And I thought in that moment, I was like, aha, there's no way he's gonna get out of that one. But then what Joe basically said to me is that, yeah, you're right. I don't feel an obligation to feed my kids. I don't feel like I should feed my kids. I just want to feed my kids because I love them. I don't need to feed them out of obligation or out of duty. And what he kind of said, paraphrasing, was that duty and love are very different things. and he feels like duty and love cannot coexist. Now
• 57:30 - 58:00 depending on the culture in which you have been brought up or raised in or what your parents told you when you were younger, you might be thinking of duty and love as being inseparable from one another. In fact, you might be thinking that actually if you really love someone, you would feel a duty to look after them or visit them or do stuff for them or whatever the thing might be. This is something I haven't quite yet figured out for myself. I want to talk to Joe more about it. But definitely the idea like with friends and family and with my wife and my future kids, I don't want to feel obligated to do stuff. I would like to want to do the thing. I used to always feel obligated to do
• 58:00 - 58:30 everything. And the what I mean that's the that's the real deal is I would feel obligated to do most of what I did was out of guilt or a sense of obligation and there was no joy in it. There was no love in it. And when I stopped acting out of it, what I found out is that I became a much better person. I I actually I'm openhearted. I love people. I gave them the connection that they actually wanted from me. So that's the other thing is just if you think about it this way, somebody comes into your party and you're like, "Hey, come on in." And they're like, "Well, you know, I'm only here cuz I'm obligated." The only reason I'm at your
• 58:30 - 59:00 party cuz I felt a sense of obligation. Like what happens? You're like, "Fuck off. Leave. You don't need to be here. I don't want you at the party for that reason." And and if and if my kid said to me something like, "Oh, if I said to my kid, the only reason I'm feeding you is because I feel obligated to." What is that? It's just a trick we pay play on ourselves to not allow for pleasure. It's really obligation in it in its essence is just pleasure anxiety. It's saying like, "Oh, I can't
• 59:00 - 59:30 actually I to enjoy life this much makes me anxious." So, I I'm going to put some some blocker on it and call it obligation. Now, one area in which the should comes up a lot for me and my wife Izzy is that we always feel like we should be working right now. And and so even if it's like the weekend, there's part of me that's like hm maybe I should be working. Why do we feel guilty when we are not being productive? Usually cuz it's a something that we learned from our parents or our caregivers or our
• 59:30 - 60:00 teachers or something. We were just taught early on that our they were happy with us when we were valuable when we were productive and therefore that's the thing. Typically you have a typically the background is that there's an overly critical parent who's constantly not nothing is quite good enough and then that critical parents voice becomes part of our own voice in our head and then nothing that we do is ever good enough and there's always something more to be done and my value is in doing more stuff so that one day hopefully mom/voice in
• 60:00 - 60:30 my head shuts the up and says you're a good kid and it's fine to be just you. Nice shortcut. Shortcut. It's fine to be just you. Yeah. Um, do you see this in the CEOs you coach at all or the teams where I sort of just need to compensate? Yeah. It's all the time. Yeah. I was just I literally was with a I was with one of the people who work for me and there was
• 60:30 - 61:00 like these six things that we have to do and and she was like, "Well, there's these six things we have to do." I'm like, first of all, we don't have to do Like, like, these are six things. We could do a different six things. As a matter of fact, we do not even know if these six things that we're supposed to do are going to be the most effective way of us spending time together. So, let's just give that whole thing up. And then, let's say if we were to do these in the most fun, enjoyable way possible, and we ended up doing something that she thought was going to take 3 hours, we I mean, sorry, 3 days, we did in like 3
• 61:00 - 61:30 hours. And she was dumbfounded like, how on earth? And what had happened was she had made it an obligation. She had made it into something that she had to do. And in doing that, it just became a bigger, harder, more intractable problem. And so I see CEOs make this mistake all the time. All the time. They instead of saying, "Oh, there's six ways to skin this cat, so to speak. There's six different ways that we can make this phone. What's the way that's gonna feel great
• 61:30 - 62:00 is usually gonna make a better phone than what's the way that we have to make the phone. All right, so this is a lesson that I keep on having to relearn as well. Again, one of these habits that even though I've written a book about it, I haven't yet mastered that if I optimize for enjoyment as the compass, then actually the things I'm trying to do, they often turn out better and higher quality than if I was trying to make them actually good. Let's say someone has a particular outcome they want. like I want to be, I don't know, financially free or something like that, but then
• 62:00 - 62:30 the process to getting there requires them to like, you know, grind after work and grind on the weekends and work on the business and stuff and then there's all this resistance to doing this thing cuz they don't want to do the thing, but they they don't want to do those actions, but they want the outcome of the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Two different issues there. So the first issue is you know what's the need behind the want? So you can do a really simple exercise where what I want is um to be
• 62:30 - 63:00 financially independent. What what what's the need behind that want? Oh to feel safe. And what's the need behind that want? Oh so that I don't have to be anxious. Okay. What's the need behind that want? Oh I I want to actually have a joyful life. So the financial freedom is just strategy to get to the thing that they actually want. So that would be the first thing to really like recognize. And the second thing to recognize is you're in a knowing, not a state of you're in a state of knowing, not a state of wonder, because you think
• 63:00 - 63:30 that the only way to get you there is to grind. And the only and that means two things. One, the only way to get you there is to do something you don't want to do. And the second thing is you have to do a lot of what you don't want to do. But look around the world and you'll find a lot of people got to financial freedom doing stuff that they wanted to do and not doing a lot of stuff that they don't want to do. I I am a example of that. You are an example of that. So we did stuff that we wanted to do. You were supposed to be a doctor. You wanted to be a YouTuber. Look what happened.
• 63:30 - 64:00 You're more successful than you could have been as a doctor. So So there's lots of examples where oh that's actually that my thinking is constricted. my my thinking is stagnant. And if my thinking is stagnant, then then that's a really good pointer that shame is operating again. What's the need behind the want? That is nice. All right. So, the fifth and final habit ties everything together. Most of us operate in a state of time poverty which is where we are constantly feeling
• 64:00 - 64:30 rushed and we are reacting to urgent demands and we are struggling to keep and we are struggling to keep up and there's this general sensation that we are working against the clock that time is always running out. But according to Joe the top 0.1% of people cultivate a sort of relationship with time where time becomes their ally. Yeah. So the the last thing that I see, and this doesn't happen with all great entrepreneurs, but the ones who do this are incredibly effective. And most people are running around going, I don't have enough time. They have time mentality. I'm sorry. They have time
• 64:30 - 65:00 poverty mentality. I don't have enough time. I got to hurry. I got to rush. I got to do everything and I got to do it all right now. And so there's this huge amount of stress and then eventually there's a bunch of burnout that happens. What I've seen people who are su entrepreneurs who are successful over the long run is they have a very different mentality where they're not working for time anymore but time is working for them. And so what does that mean? It means that little things like oh I'm going to plant today I'm going to spend time planting the seeds that will
• 65:00 - 65:30 bloom in next month next year. They have like there was a famous head of Sony back in the 90s who said, "I don't care how we how we did in this year's quarter. What I care about is how we're going to do five years from now." And so he was constantly focused on my time is for the 5 years from now moment, not for the this quarter moment. There's another way that I think I mentioned, which is looking at your to-do list and saying, "Oh, what's the one, two, or three things I can do that will make everything on this to-do list go away or
• 65:30 - 66:00 far easier to do?" So getting to-dos done is a dopamine hit. We're naturally wired to do it. And so there is a a a I don't want to call it a discipline. So we're naturally wired to do it. And so there is a a capacity to see through the dopamine hit and say, "Oh, getting getting things done isn't the same thing as productive." And so if you can say, "Oh, what's the one thing I can do that gets 10 things done? what's the thing I can do today that will solve
• 66:00 - 66:30 most of my problems in 6 months and I don't require it doesn't require a lot of effort. One example of this for example is investing in yourself. If you learn how to be a better speaker or if you learn how to uh be in touch with your emotions or if you learn how to communicate better all of those things are going to pay off for the rest of your career. Those are seed planting seeds. Right now when I'm doing some if I'm like building a new product I don't think about building the new product as
• 66:30 - 67:00 oh I'm building a new product. I think about it as oh I am marketing at the same time I'm building a product cuz I'm interacting with my customer. And by interacting with my customer they're learning about my product and I'm learning to make a better product. And so I'm doing everything in a way that is considering one year out, two years out, instead of just what's the thing I checked off my box today. So if you can master habit number five, which is to escape time poverty, then all of that energy gets put into stuff that can
• 67:00 - 67:30 compound and that leads to you having a way higher impact with a lot less frantic effort. The other thing that I noticed generally is that you're just going to miss a lot of things when you rush. And so if you're working for time, you're constantly rushing. you're constantly going from one thing to another. I was recently in a company where I did five meetings in that day and every single one of them we didn't finish the conversation because boom, we had to go to the next meeting or and so there's it was like why have the meeting if the thing didn't get finished? um as an example and so there's a great phrase
• 67:30 - 68:00 that I think is the military I think it's the Marines and says slow is steady steady is fast and there's great research on this done that when people are sleepd deprived and working really quickly they are far less productive than they think they are and they are far less productive than the people who are actually not in a rush and not sleepd deprived and there is a quote from Naval Rabikan that I really like which is that the goal should be to play long-term games with long-term people. Now, if you got to this part in the video, I would love to end with a few
• 68:00 - 68:30 personal reflections on what I have taken away from from Joe's teachings. I would say that the best way to get started with them is to listen to his podcast, which is called the art of accomplishment, and just scroll through the podcast, and you'll find it on all the podcast platforms. Now, for me, there's a few other bits that I really, really vibe with in Joe's teachings. One is the view framework, which is a really, really good framework for how to navigate conversations. And I found that since applying that framework to my marriage, um, my relationship has improved drastically and we're having a
• 68:30 - 69:00 lot fewer arguments. And then one of the main things that I apply to my work life is this whole idea that if we are struggling to make any kind of decision, it is because there is some sort of emotion that we are not feeling. Cuz if we feel the emotion, it wouldn't be a it wouldn't be a decision we're struggling with. It would be obvious what the next answer is. But when we're struggling with that decision, there's often an underlying emotion and then approaching that with curiosity and wonder to think, huh, I wonder what underlying emotion this is and let me figure out a way to
• 69:00 - 69:30 feel the emotion. And then like generally for me, I find it gives me a lot more clarity when I follow that process rather than when I try and journal my way to it by trying to logic myself into typing stuff out and talking to chat GBT and things like that, which would be my default tendency otherwise. So anyway, I hope you got some value from this video. And if you are looking for something else to watch that will also help you along your way to being a top 1% person in success, however you'd like to define that success, then check out this video over here, which is a video I made recently that's done super well actually on how to actually achieve your goals. So, thank you so much for
• 69:30 - 70:00 watching. Have a lovely day and I will see you in the next video. Bye-bye.