I started reading Ali Abdaal’s debut book on a flight to Bucharest and in short bursts throughout my work trip. As the title suggests, it’s self-help for the “feel good” genre. I know Ali Abdaal from his YouTube channel and was fascinated by his rise. He’s obviously hyper-intelligent and didn’t mind putting a shift of two in back in med school.

It covers productivity and blockers to it in a way that makes you reassess your systems. It talks about the typical advice we’ve been given from the likes of James Clear and Mark Manson. It twists them into attempting to make work feel like play. I thought this was a silly idea but it drives some good points.

It’s best advice comes from how to avoid blockers in work life. It advises you to check your values and asses your reasoning. It does require you to have done the work beforehand to know where you’re sitting in this flowchart of a book. It covers light psychology too for those of us that haven’t heard it a thousand times.

The chapter on burnout is particularly good. It offers great advice about how to avoid this in the first instance. Making work energise you is a difficult task but Ali has achieved a lot through gruelling shifts.

Again, fairly typical advice that probably isn’t new to you. But what is great is the stories Ali pairs with the advice. The writing is very well done and friendly. You feel like he’s talking to you genuinely trying to help you out rather than patronise you.

The discourse in productivity can be quite toxic. We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we’re doing the things we do. Ali covers this fairly well where others would gloss over it. It covers balance and reasoning well but is ultimately a really good reminder to look after yourself while doing these things.