Transcript & Summary: Stop Waiting: Productivity Advice I Wish I Knew Sooner

[00:00] hi my name is Ali I'm a doctor turned entrepreneur and I've been making YouTube videos for the last 7 years I've made over 800 videos which has required overcoming a lot of perfectionistic Tendencies and I also recently wrote and published a book called Feelgood productivity and that also required overcoming a lot of perfectionistic Tendencies and so in this episode of not life advice we're going to be looking at a guy called Andy and he's going to share some of his perfectionistic struggles as it relates to growing his [00:23] YouTube channel for example and I'm going to share my honest advice for someone who's a perfectionist in that sense now just a quick caveat uh Andy's problem specifically relates to feeling like overthinking e and perfectionistic when it comes to making YouTube videos but I think the same principles apply with whatever type of perfectionistic Tendencies you're struggling with not just if you're a content creator so let's get into Andy's question hey my name is Andy I am currently working full-time I have two kids I lead a [00:51] pretty busy life and my goal is to develop a a YouTube channel um that helps busy people create space in their life to do what matters most this has been something that's been on my heart in my mind for quite some time because I just want to help people that's all I want to do my problem right now is that I get caught in overthinking and overanalyzing the things that I want to post and so I have a bit of uh perfectionism in there where I uh overthink all of my content and I think is it good enough is anybody going to [01:35] see this and it takes me so long to actually post something and I just want to post something but it's never good enough so so I have posted a few videos sometimes I just post because done is better than perfect and yeah so how do you overcome overanalyzing and overthinking um content or things that you need to do thank you so much for all the help that you've put out book was awesome by the way thanks for that still going through it highlighting for like the second or third time thanks have a good one all righty so that was Andy [02:23] asking a question about how to overcome perfectionism how to stop overthinking and just doing the thing rather than thinking about doing the thing so let's talk about that before I answer this question I want to let you guys into a little bit of insight into my own mind around these things because you know people start people ask me for advice about this sort of stuff and yeah I think it's it it it might be useful for you to hear what's what's currently going through my mind so what's currently going through my [02:51] mind is that it is 7:00 in the morning I'm here in Boise Idaho in the US uh to speak at the convert kit craft Commerce conference but because of jet lag flying in from London I woke up pretty early um and I decided to go for a little walk outside and then cuz it was a nice day and I had this little mini camera with me I thought oh why don't I film a video and I saw Andy's question and thought Oh okay this could be a fun one to do now what's currently going through my mind is O you know maybe I need to actually [03:23] be sad at my desk because when talking about imposter syndrome and perfectionism and overthinking like you know I'd love to be able to draw like diagrams and stuff to to think about it so maybe now is not the right time to film this video another thing going through my mind is like I'm in this random Park in Boise Idaho I've never been before in my life and it's a super nice park but the freaking lawnmower people are like all around the park like there's like a dude there and a dude there and a dude there and there's this [03:50] like kind of background audio and I can hear it really loudly and I've got this thing so I don't know how much it's like canceling the audio and so what was going through in my mind is you know maybe I have some things to say to Andy's question but you know there's lawnmowers in the background so maybe I so so so maybe I shouldn't make this video right now why don't I wait until tomorrow and then you know I'll just wake up early tomorrow and come for another walk and then hopefully tomorrow like surely they can't be mowing the [04:16] lawn two days in a row maybe it's just like I don't know on a Wednesday where they mow the lawn so like maybe I shouldn't make this video then there was also part of me that was thinking oh you know something like a a video like this this you know I I really should film it in my desk because cuz then when I'm at my desk I can sort of think about what what I want to say and what the the the points for preparing this video are and all of these thoughts were going through my mind and one thing that I've Gotten [04:40] Good at over time is to recognize when the voice of the sabur is holding me back I I so I talk a lot about this thing with my CEO coach Eric partaker you should check him out on YouTube and blinked in and stuff and Eric calls it the voice of the sabur in all of our minds in all of our brains there is this voice that is hellbent on sabotaging whatever creative thing we are trying to do in the war of art by Steven pressfield he calls it the resistance the voice of the sabur it is not my voice that's saying oh you know maybe I [05:13] should wait till tomorrow when the lawnmowers are gone it's not my voice that's saying you know maybe I should wait until I'm at desk so I can draw diagrams and it's the voice of the sabur that is trying to stop me from doing this creative thing the thing with perfectionism imposter syndrome overthinking generally it does get better when you have expertise in something right like I no longer feel that much impost of perfectionism overthinking when it comes to videos about about like how to grow on YouTube which I'm filming at my desk [05:45] like I know how that works right it's not that hard but this format of video to me is is a little bit different it's like I'm filming a video for the main Channel I'm not doing it with the whole fancy camera setup I'm doing it in a park while walking around there's people running and cycling around me feels kind of awkward and so this is an area where I have I don't have enough reps to be able to feel to feel ridiculously confident doing the thing and therefore in those instances the voice of the sabator is coming online so [06:15] I wanted to share that first of all because I think it might be interesting to hear that like someone probably looks at at this YouTube channel we' Got 5 and a half million subscribers and think that oh yeah Al's made 800 plus videos over the last seven years he's got the down but no like when it comes to when it comes to making a video that feels a little bit outside of my wheelhouse and even often for videos where I'm sitting at my desk I also feel that voice of oh this isn't good enough oh maybe we shouldn't make this video oh [06:42] maybe I need to prepare more oh by the way in case you have not heard my weekly email newsletter used to be called Sunday Snippets it's having a bit of a Rebrand it's now called Life notes it is a weekly-ish email that I send for free every single week where I'll be sharing notes that I am taking throughout life so it's notes from books I'm reading podcasts I'm listening to videos I'm watching conversations I'm having and stuff that's going on in the business there'll be a link down below if you want to subscribe or scan this QR code [07:05] and anyway let's get back to the video the voice of the sabur never says don't do the thing it says we can do the thing but we need to work a lot harder we need to prepare a lot more and that's where all this sort of overthinking kind of stuff comes in you know if the sabator was saying don't do the thing at all you suck it's it's actually easier to dismiss that either you just listen to it or you just dismiss it and so you either do the thing or you don't do the thing and it's like a lot easier to deal [07:26] with the sabur but when the sabur says things that are Broad reasonable like hey this video might potentially be seen by a few tens of thousands of people potentially even hundreds of thousands of people holy you know we've got a responsibility here we want to make sure the content is good we don't just want to speak from the heart because like what the do we know we don't want to do it while walking around in a park because like the lighting's a bit off and there's like sh lawn mowers in the background nah we should totally wait we [07:50] should wait until tomorrow we should wait until next week when we're back in London cuz we can always film this video later and you know what it's like a 12-hour Journey back to London so why don't we this is really interesting video idea how to how to think about like perfectionism and uh overthinking and like how to actually do the thing so like really we should think about it for another 12 hours before we sit down and actually make the video this is the voice of the sabur we all have this voice of the sabur inside us Andy I know [08:13] you have the voice of the sabur inside you that's probably telling you with regards to your YouTube videos it needs more preparation I do not currently have enough value to give what if people what if I'm wasting people's time what if they think when when you really start writing these things down this is a a strategy that that can often help just like literally writing down what the sabur is saying like Andy if you were to figure out like what the sabur is saying and actually write it down it might say [08:39] something like I must prepare this video for another 20 hours otherwise it's not valuable enough huh interesting but like if a friend were to ask you Andy you know have you got any tips and you know you're you're a dad you got two kids you got a job you want to you're starting a YouTube channel man how how do you make time for it all would you would do you say to the friend genuinely over coffee oh sorry mate um i' I've got to do 20 hours of preparation on that before I can even give you a vague semblance of [09:04] an answer cuz I'm just really worried I'm not providing enough value to you no of course you wouldn't if you were talking to a friend and that friend was asking you that specific question you would be able to just give them a response you would speak from the heart you wouldn't be overthinking it there's something about putting stuff out there on the Internet or submitting a work assignment or a homework assignment or whatever the thing might be where that context of doing the thing is so different from us just being asked [09:29] a question question by a friend and if we were asked a question by a friend of course we'd have a great response to the thing so that is one Hack That I Found really helpful like genuinely is is thinking whenever the voice of the sabur the voice of perfectionism is in my mind thinking to myself okay if I were to change the context does that change how I feel about the thing I had so much perfectionism when it came to my book right because a book is like a serious thing it's like a a piece of paper that's out there in the [09:56] real world and in bookstores and stuff I still have yet to see it in a bookstore myself I've had photos from friends send it to me from various different bookstores oh my goodness people can review it on Amazon oh my goodness what if people don't like the book then that's going to be absolutely terrible okay there's a lawnmower in that direction so let's go back this way that's going to be absolutely terrible what if people don't like the book holy and so one thing I would say Andy or anyone else struggling with imposter [10:16] syndrome perfectionism is what would it look like if you changed the format and does your perfectionism still hold true if you to change the the context or the format of the thing that you are doing tactic number two for dealing with perfectionism essentially for me when I feel that sense of perfectionism it's a sense of okay I am making something at this level of quality and I want the thing to be at that level of quality and it's not yet at that level of quality therefore I must work to get it from [10:44] here which is a sh level quality to there which is a good level of quality you know that that kind of idea and this idea is you know it's it's again reasonable it is not unreasonable to say that like you know my work is here and I want to get it to there and therefore I have to do more work to to get the thing there the way that I personally get over is I tell myself that the bar is does this thing have the potential to help at least one person who is watching it or reading it or listening to it does this [11:07] thing have the potential to help at least one person it doesn't even have to help that one person because actually helping them is outside of my control but does it have the potential to help at least one person does this video that I'm filming from the heart Without Really any preparation just sort of answering this question that Andy's brought up does my answer here does my Spiel however long it ends up being have the potential to help at least one person now if you watching this then by definition you have found the first bit [11:33] of this video sufficiently valuable to keep watching right that's a weird kind of thought for me because right now I'm just here on my own in this random Park in the middle of nowhere in Boise Idaho and so I I I don't know how people are going to respond to this video but all I know is my bar is does this have the potential to help at least one person and if it does then I'll post the thing and if it doesn't then I won't post the thing me photographing a photo of my coffee and posting it on like a YouTube [11:56] Community post does that have the potential to help at least one person probably not so I wouldn't post a random photo of my coffee on a YouTube Community post this is an idea I stole from Austin cleon's amazing book show your work show your work is a book I read in 2016 I've reread it multiple times since then I would really recommend Andy or whoever watching this if you haven't read show your work by atin Cleon it's really really good that was the book that really helped me get over the fear the [12:17] perfectionism the fear you know let's call it fear like you know uh perfectionism and fear are basically the same thing um it helped me get over the fear of starting a personal website cuz I had s all sorts of like overthinking about it etc etc and your work taught me if your work has the potential to help at least one person along in in their Journey then there is almost a moral obligation on you to share that thing and to do that thing and to post that thing so Andy Andy you who is overthinking these videos that you're [12:41] posting on your YouTube channel it's worth defining what is your bar for quality is the bar for Quality I think this has to be really good because that is actually a really hard bar to meet especially if you're new to the thing especially if you're you know a little bit harder on yourself than you would be on your friends what is the bar really for me the bar is does this have the potential to help at least one person and also am I proud of it um for me being proud of something yeah I put more work into [13:04] it often I'm more proud of it but often being proud of something for me I I found a way to turn it into like I am proud of a thing if it has the potential to help help at least one person I don't overthink my kind of I I try not to overthink my production value or making sure I've got like multiple cinematic shots or making sure that like everything is super super tight in the edit cuz I've tried doing that and and I realized in in periods of my life where I was really overthinking my content the [13:29] content was just worse and I was enjoying it less and one of the B one of the major principles of the book feel good productivity is that if you can enjoy your work you become better at it you become more creative you become less stressed become more productive but you also have more energy to give to the other important areas of your life I was at this uh retreat thing in San Francisco a couple weeks ago and there's this executive coach whose name is Joe Hudson absolute Legend um he's featuring on the Pod shortly he is like [13:53] an executive coach to some of silicon Valley's biggest CEOs that you will have definitely heard of and his whole shtick is that enjoyment is efficiency if you can find a way to enjoy what you're doing and optimize for enjoyment of the process you will actually do better work than if you are optimizing for trying to do better work so Andy a question I would put to you or anyone else watching this if you're struggling with perfectionism is what if you weren't concerned about the quality of the thing and your main [14:19] goal was in just enjoying the process of creating the thing whatever the thing might be what if you weren't concerned about how good it was What If instead you were only concerned with how can you personally enjoy that process as much as possible Dar I say what would it look like if it were fun this is my phone wallpaper what would this look like if it were fun what would it look like if it were fun you know this is this is the whole stick what would it look like if it were fun finding the fun is another [14:46] way of combating perfectionism and this overthinking that we get around posting stuff there's a few other strategies I find helpful for dealing with this sort of thing cuz I deal with it a lot [15:07] the microcosm of this video that you are now watching is a great example of dealing with dealing with perfectionism and and stuff the other thing I think is the the the voice of the sabur for me often stops me from even trying um like before picking up this little camera to film this video the voice of the sabur was in my mind saying nah nah nah we don't need to film come on like you know it's 7:00 in the morning we should wait until we get to the desk etc etc the voice of the sabur was stopping me from [15:34] hitting record but once I've hit record I've now been recording for 19 minutes I've enjoyed myself I'm getting the steps in it's super nice scenery it's great Vibes and if I hadn't pressed record I wouldn't have come I wouldn't I wouldn't have made this video which by definition if you are watching this then you've found the last bit sufficiently valuable in a bit of a it's a bit of a Trippy thought but the voice of the sabur was stopping me from pressing record and so the thing that I've gotten really good at is just telling the voice [16:02] of the sabur like I'm I'm just going to record it and I don't need to publish it I'm going to create the thing but I can always decide to scrap the thing if it sucks and that often shuts up the sabur cuz then the sabur is like oh okay well fine uh but are you sure like aren't you really tired like you've got a bit of a zit on your nose like do you really want to film the thing right now can't we just wait till tomorrow oh wow look at this it's a freaking River this is so nice guys is this what every random American [16:32] city is like town city Boise Idaho the voice of the savitur is trying to Pro it's trying to stop me from H hitting record but if I can just convince the voice that hey um we don't need to publish this we're just going to create it and see what happens then you know it's it's hard for the sabot to stay in sabotaging mode what I find with a lot of YouTubers is that there's a lot of resistance to pressing the record button I get this as well even for filming filming proper videos uh when I'm sitting at my desk there a lot of [16:59] resistance to just hitting record but once I hit record and once I start talking then like I don't know the creative spirit moves within me or whatever terminology you want to use for this now that I'm 20 minutes into the video I kind of know in my mind oh okay actually I think I think this might actually be a reasonable video reasonable just being the bar for I think this video might potentially add value to at least one person who's watching this one thing that I find when it comes to YouTube videos is [17:25] that for more than 50% of the videos that I've ever filmed after filming it I have felt like uh that was terrible but then for about 98% of videos once it's been edited and I've had like a couple of weeks to not see the video and to not be so in my head about it um it then I then think oh that's actually not bad because when when we're filming videos and when we're doing a first draft of a book or a manuscript or a thing whatever the thing might be when you're in the creation of it it's a very messy process [17:58] process this process right now of creating this video feels very messy to me I'm sort of pulling stuff in from different different areas of my life from different parts of my brain and I'm like I don't I don't really know how it's all going to fit together but I've done this enough times now that I trust that from first from rough cut from first draft from raw video recording to finished product there is actually a large amount of magic that happens in post that happens in the edit where we can chop out any ums and rs and mistakes [18:25] and sometimes we'll artfully leave the mistakes in because the mistakes are nice and humanizing and stuff I know that the end product post editing is often quite reasonable and so I've done this enough times that when the voice of the sabur says don't film the video it might suck I'm like I'm going to film the video anyway if it sucks I can always delete it but I generally I would if I if I were to put money on it I would I I I would to say that this video is a video that we're going to publish on the main Channel probably it's [18:49] probably going to be good enough and you know what if it's not we'll put it on the second Channel either way this video is going to get published somewhere on the internet and I hope it'll add value to at least one person that's a thought that's in my mind mind as I'm confronting the sabur principal number six or seven or whatever we are now I have even lost count but that's okay cuz we're going to fix it in post right editing team please thank you um principal number whatever I am on is a phrase I heard from Cal [19:16] Newport who is the Mega bestselling author of The book's deep work and so good they can't ignore you and most recently slow productivity which is a great book and Cal gave me some advice about book writing a couple years ago when I was in the throws of writing my own book I asked him you know how how often do you deal with perfectionism and like how do you you know don't you think that your work sucks uh in the sense like don't you think it sucks in the process of of of making it and like I was I was having all of these thoughts [19:40] um that my book was crap and that it was wasn't worth publishing and stuff and Cal said to me and he's been writing for like two decades um so about 10 times longer than I have he said to me oh I get that all the time I tell myself one thing this one just needs to be reasonable the next one is going to be good this one just needs to be reasonable the next one is going to be good so when Cal was working on his books productivity he told himself you know what slow productivity doesn't need to be a good book it just needs to be [20:04] reasonable the next one is going to be good and he says he and he told me that he repeated that thing to himself for every book that he wrote and he's written like six seven of them now and is super successful at it this one just needs to be reasonable the next one is going to be good so Andy when it comes to that thing that you are struggling with that thing that you're feeling the perfectionism the overthinking the overanalyzing the I can't put this thing out there what if you just lowered the bar if you said this one just needs to [20:29] be reasonable and reasonable again you can Define as it just needs to have the potential to help at least one person that's reasonable this video I think this is going to be a reasonable video I don't think it's going to be a good video because I don't like thinking of my videos as good but that's fine it just needs to be reasonable the goal is not to make a good video the goal is to add value to someone else's life which leads me to the next point which maybe the final point which is that I think a [20:49] lot of perfectionism um stems from sort of a focus on the self and a focus on one's own ego that I can't possibly put this thing out there because if I put this thing out there then people will think of me as bad in some way um because the thing might be bad or whatever it's not usually from speaking to people and from hearing it myself that it's not usually this thing would be completely useless to everyone who's watching it it's not usually that because because usually that's an easy one to to eliminate like really it's [21:21] going to be completely useless so people will watch it they'll sit through it and they will find it 100% of people are going to find it completely an UT useless to the point they're going to get zero shred of value from it that seems a bit unlikely usually we're not actually being perfectionistic because we care about the audience so much because we really value their time like oh my goodness I'm so perfectionistic about my PhD dissertation because I value the time of my examiner and I don't want to be mean to them in [21:46] creating a shitty product it's like it's usually not that it's usually I don't want this thing to go out there because I am afraid I will be thought of as bad for having put this thing out there which does not meet some arbitrary standard and usually we find that our own standards for oursel are like ridiculously high and often excessively high and often unhelpfully high it's it's it's a focus on the self and at least for me what I found as a way of combating perfectionism is to remove the focus from myself and put it on someone [22:15] else again just this idea of I'm I'm not creating this video for myself you know I can I can do other things for fun if I were trying to have fun I'd be watching YouTube videos I'd be watching finishing the last of us the TV show I'd be I don't know playing on my nintend Nintendo switch that's what I do for fun I am not doing this video for me I'm doing this video because I think it potentially has the potential potentially has the potential to help at least one person it is about the other person that I could potentially help [22:38] with this video it doesn't matter if the thing is not perfect um you can just ask yourself like have you ever gotten value from a YouTube video that the that the Creator might have thought is not perfect probably maybe if you're watching this Andy or whoever you are watching this this is not a perfect YouTube video this is not the sort of YouTube video a YouTube guru I.E me would tell people that oh yeah you should make this video to grow your channel but the fact you're here and watching this means that you have found [23:03] enough value from this video to continue watching it which is very gratifying so thank you for being here so far so Andy again it just comes down to this thing when you're being perfectionistic about your YouTube videos I suspect if you're anything like me it's because uh you don't want your ego to be bruised from the thought that God forbid you might put something out there but you might put out something there that uh is that's not meeting some arbitrary Quality Bar that you've created for yourself in your own mind but if you [23:30] were to remove that Focus From the self and think about it from the context of the people that you're serving because this is an act of service making a YouTube video it's not an act of selfishness it's an act of service and when you do anything in the spirit of service that is also one of the things that stops the voice of the sabur from um creating these like perfectionistic narratives that eventually that end up leading to lives that we don't particularly enjoy anyway one of the things about being a YouTuber one of the [23:54] things about doing any creative act is that there is a balancing act between the soul and the numbers or the sto or or the or the soul and the statistics and often Soul comes from being under optimized in in how you do things I hope that when this video comes out and when I see the edited version it will feel like a Soulful video it'll be like oh this was merely oi talking from the heart going for a walk and sharing stuff that he's found useful that's nice this video is not going to go viral right the goal of this video is not to [24:28] try and get get 5 million views the goal of this video as I've said repeatedly is simply to potentially provide value to at least one person who's watching it and so as I was thinking about huh what should my end screen sales pitch be for this particular video because that's what you should do as a YouTuber I'm like you know what actually I can let go of that I can let go of that need for the statistics you know obviously we'll still title and thumbnail this video in a reasonable way and we'll do like a bit [24:51] of a hook at the start and stuff like fine there are sensible things we can do to increase the reach of this video because then it helps more people and framing it framing it in that sense helps me feel less icky about doing like algorithm hacky type stuff retention hacking and like trying to keep people interested in the video um so if you are here at the end of this ridiculously long video you are the sort of person that I would probably Vibe with because we probably have good things to talk about but I'd love to hear in a comment [25:18] down below what is one thing you're struggling with cuz I love making these sorts of videos where I'm just sort of speaking from the heart and sharing stuff that I found useful and often a lot of the struggles of you guys um are things that I've been through various stages of my life and still probably go through today and so I like being able to share from the heart and just chatting about things that might potentially as I said help at least one person so what is something that you are struggling with that you might like my [25:40] take on if you can leave that as a in in in a comment as a question that would be super helpful um also if you would like to submit a video question in the same way that Andy did we'll put a link to that video submission thingy I want to do more content like this where it's just really fun for me to be able to answer someone's question directly and turn it into like a freaking 35 minute long sermon um it's just fun you know what would this look like if it were fun I asked myself this question about my [26:02] YouTube channel a lot and one of the things I've landed on is oh well if it were fun I'd be answering questions from the audience I wouldn't just be coming up with a video topic and then deciding to make videos about it I would be like yeah answering a question from the audience so that I can feel that there's genuinely someone on the other end because it's otherwise it's hard to appreciate like the numbers and what that means um in terms of there being real life people on the other end and now because we might as well do the [26:26] retention thing uh if you have not yet seen my video my honest advice for someone wanting Financial Freedom you might like to check out that video over there otherwise thank you very much for watching and hopefully you got some value out of this and I'll see you in the next one bye-bye