Moment 140: The 2 Minute Trick That Beats Procrastinating For Good: Ali Abdaal

00:02What have you learned from your experience on YouTube about the importance of consistency and also from what you kind of what typically happens with viral videos is just there's it's so impossibly hard to predict the outcome right so a lot of people a lot of people on YouTube will make videos called how to make a viral video and in marketing it's all like here are the secret source here are the secret principles but in reality you can only you can you can guess a couple of principles but the outcome is hard to predict so what have you learned about consistency but then also being able to predict the outcome yeah uh when i was listening to your your compounding chapter i just found myself like nodding along like an absolute maniac to everything you were saying i think it applies so much to youtube uh these days i i teach people how to be part-time youtubers and the thing i say is that if you make one video every week for two years then i 100 guarantee it will change your life i can't put any numbers on it i can't tell you you'll have 100 000 subscribers or how much money you'll be making but i can 100 guarantee it will change your life at the very least in terms of the skills and the experience and the

01:07contact and the friends you're going to make through that process but you have to put out one video a week and you have to do it for at least two years um just ask on that then on that point there what is it that will would make someone do that because i mean that's like fucking clean the floor every day for two years and i promise you it'll work out for you like people don't seem to be able to do those kinds of things without some kind of intrinsic driver so i'm like i'm curious because you could say that to a million people you could broadcast that through a tannoy and 95 plus will still fail so what is it that makes people from your your experience but also from your own life makes them do the work without guarantee of outcome yeah i think again i feel like there's a bit of a cop-out because this is stuff that you talk about uh like in enjoying the process and this is kind of the theme of the book that i'm writing around how you know it's actually quite hard to show up week after week not see any results not see the views and the subscribers going up and stuff particularly quickly but the thing that makes it bearable the thing that makes it fun is actually enjoying the process and shifting away

02:17from outcome oriented goals like a certain number of views a certain number of subscribers subscribers and more towards goals that are 100% within our control. Like I just want to make two videos a week. And if I'm happy with the video, then it goes out. And in fact, even if I'm not happy with the video, it goes out anyway. And everyone I know who has succeeded on YouTube has had that kind of attitude at some point. I just have to get that video out every Tuesday without fail. It's not an option. It's going to get done. And, you know, like you say, when we talk about compounding, that video on day one isn't going to do anything. The video on day two or day three or day 24 is not going to do anything but you find when you're on day 300 and day 600 oh actually all of this stuff has been compounding very very slowly and then the results happen really really really slowly and then all at once as soon as you just get that one video that that goes viral that is i think that's the chapter i talk about the eighth wonder of the world yeah that's it with warren buffett and my dog pablo being the opposing investor and i genuinely i think i learned that lesson when i wrote the book when i look back on my life and i thought about all the

03:18things that compounded in my favor whether it was like my honestly it's gonna be keep it facts with you my teeth had some problems with my teeth and i thought do you know why and i probably reference this in the book like i i hadn't been brushing one of my teeth properly and it never mattered today or tomorrow the day after but there i was in that dentist chair but having my teeth fucking pulled out and then my instagram was the same um health and fitness at the moment the same my business was the same and it just goes to show that it's not those key critical big decisions we make to drop out it's that like yeah it's the the compounding small almost uh irrelevant decisions yeah but people don't because i heard you started working out i did yeah and you stopped uh so i've i've had a personal trainer now for the last kind of eight months there you go amazing and uh you know i've been i've been going on and off with the workout thing since the age of 18 and never done it properly until i got a personal trainer where now i'm having to show up i'm paying someone 30 quit an hour to basically just be with me while I'm doing stuff. And that has been the thing that's given me the most results. So I think whatever, like I find in my life for things,

04:27for things that I actually care about where I'm like, okay, I actually care about becoming a happy, sexy millionaire or whatever. Let me try and figure out ways that will remove my own need for discipline and willpower from that equation. And instead get an accountability buddy or get a coach or pay a friend 100 quid if i don't do the thing this was what my brother and i did when we were trying to motivate ourselves i was doing songwriting he was doing stand-up comedy like right if we don't do this every thursday for half an hour we're going to pay each other 50 quid um things like that to remove the choice the motivation the willpower the discipline all the more of that can be outsourced to someone else or removed completely the more i find i actually get stuff done and then i don't have to worry about it because i'm like okay this is taken care of i just show up i guess you're removing you're moving the motor as opposed like removing you're moving it to another pact like near il refers to it as what you've described there as a financial pact where now your motivation is to not lose 50 quid it's like because that is that's a greater motivating force than you have within yourself to work out that's interesting

05:27is that sustainable no it's not okay um this is all the stuff that i'm researching for the for for the book at the moment um and you talk about this as well like in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And the way that I think of it, when I think back on my life, is that everything that I've done sustainably has been because of intrinsic motivation. I've genuinely enjoyed the thing. But you can genuinely enjoy a thing and still find it really hard to get started. I think that's where the biggest procrastination comes in for all of us, where it's actually just showing up to the gym. That's the hard part. Once you're there, it's kind of easy. It's writing those first 10 words, because once you've started writing the first 10, it's kind of easier to enjoy the process of writing the rest of them and so the and so the way i think about it is to get over that like hump of procrastination that activation energy to get started at that point i will use every tool that in my arsenal to just just get me to do the thing for two minutes because i think once once you do the thing for two minutes it becomes so much easier to actually enjoy the process and and sustain it and and you're so right when it comes to procrastination like that getting started point

06:29um i've again just learned this from podcast guests i've had nia riel again i refer to him he he said to me one day on this podcast he was like people procrastinate usually because there's um a great deal of psychological discomfort surrounding starting the task and a lot of the time especially with the gym or even an essay that psychological discomfort is like you don't have the answers so i don't know how to use the machines at the gym or i don't actually have i don't feel competent enough to even write this essay so i'm just gonna do the fucking dishes yeah it's like i'm gonna hoover the whole house and anyone else's house that means hoovering today exactly um you you made a video about procrastination didn't you yeah yeah break that down for me what's that what's in the video um so the video is called how to stop procrastinating right yeah um so the the way i think about procrastination basically procrastination is a problem with getting started um kind of this this law of inertia uh neuter's first law that if something is at rest it will continue to stay at rest but if something's moving it will continue to move without needing an external force and so the key to overcoming procrastination is that little that little nudge

07:35at the start towards actually getting started and all of the techniques around that like in the whole like psychology research or research around this it's just around making make make it as easy as possible um so reduce all of the friction to doing it if you want to learn the guitar then have the guitar by your sofa rather than in the wardrobe where you're never going to see it and if it's out of sight, it's out of mind, never going to do it. There's like the external environmental friction towards doing the thing. But then there's also the internal friction. It's like those narratives that we tell ourselves, the psychological discomfort of going to the gym, the I don't want to see how other people are going to see me, the even having the wrong sort of goal.

08:14Like if my goal in writing the book is, oh, I really want to hit the New York Times bestseller list. Then it's really, really hard to bring myself to write anything because now every single word I have to write has to be a New York Times bestselling word. Whereas if the goal is, to be honest, I just want to write a book I'm proud of that's fun to write. That's actually within my control. And it becomes so much easier to get started at doing the thing. So to overcome procrastination, we need to eliminate external friction, i.e. the environmental stuff. We need to try our best to get rid of the internal friction, like the emotional side of it, the mindset, the perfectionism, the fear, the discomfort. And then if we still need help, there are a few a few hacks the one that i use all the time is the the two minute rule which is where i will genuinely convince myself i'm only going to do it for two minutes uh and if i want i'm allowed to stop after the two minutes because two minutes is better than nothing but like 95 of the time i decide to continue because two minutes is all you need to change your life yeah i should tweet that that's good so yeah that's really good i and i that two minute thing is fascinating to me because

09:10i one of the things that um i see as another psychological barrier to starting is people view it as like they view the challenge as Mount Everest whereas like they've got to I'll say it another way they view the challenge as moving Mount Everest and really if they viewed it as just like moving one pebble at a time it becomes such a simple task yeah and I get this a lot when entrepreneurs ask me they say see if I want to start a business where do I start and you can hear in the question that they see it as moving Mount Everest and I'm like well today all you have to do is think of a name just think of like 50 names make a short list of names and then we'll we'll revisit it tomorrow.

09:46And then tomorrow, maybe think of, you know, go and check if the website's available and then we'll revisit it the day after. And when it becomes that and when it becomes sort of really small itemized, one small step at a time and you're not having to get from stairs zero to a thousand immediately, it becomes so, you know, the psychological discomfort fades away. It feels achievable. And that your two minute rule is doing a similar thing where it's saying, well, today I've only got to do just fucking open the word document and write the title and then we're done.

10:14you know, and that's fascinating. What about, you were going to say something else there? Yeah, I mean, just to your point there, have you come across the blog Wait But Why? No. Oh, it's incredible. You should definitely interview Tim Urban when you're in America. Oh, do you know what? I literally yesterday went on his Instagram and sent him a DM. Oh, great. Yeah, he's awesome. Any podcast he's ever been on, I've been like, oh, this is so sick. He has a great blog post series about overcoming procrastination.

10:39And the way he refers to that, that point you just made is that there are a lot of tasks that are very, like vague and icky. And you have to be able to un-ickify a task. And something like start a business is icky. Something like learn to code is icky because like, what the hell does that even mean? Like, where do you even start? Whereas brainstorm 10 ideas for a name and pick one of them is a very clearly defined next action step. And so I get this with students all the time where people are like, oh, I don't have the motivation to study for my chemistry exam. It's like, what's on your to-do list? Study for my chemistry exam. That's never going to happen. Read chapter to one and answer questions four to five are a reasonable thing a reasonably defined next action step and so what i do is anytime i find myself procrastinating from something i think okay am i procrastinating because i actually the the task is too icky i i don't know what i have to do because once i know what i have to do i can then do it for two minutes and it gets done