A Productivity Expert’s Advice For Finding Love Faster (with Ali Abdaal)

How do you square the idea of being yourself with all of the things you just said that you kind of, in a sense, reverse engineer because you know that they will make you more attractive if you do them?

Yeah, I think, I think being yourself is kind of bs. I think choosing yourself is the way forward.

I am in conversation today with the world's most followed productivity expert, doctor turned entrepreneur, Ali Abdaal. He is the writer of the new book Feel Good Productivity, how to do more of what matters to you. This is high on my reading list right now. This is. I need to learn to enjoy the process more of all of the things that I'm doing and maybe you do too. So I'm excited to talk about the book, but I'm also excited to get Ali's insights into dating relationships and how to apply the lens of productivity to our love life. Check it out. This is my conversation with Ali Abdaal.

So how was the wedding?

The wedding was amazing, man. We went to Sicily, which was a bit scary because I, I was really, really. You said something. I watched your video today about like the, the 45 minute long one, which I was really surprised when I saw that you'd made a 45 minute long video because I know that's not your normal style, by the way. Incredible. I have so much to talk to you about with this video. I just feel like it. You gave me like an existential crisis watching this video.

Interesting.

You said in the video we. When it comes to talking about your brand new book, which is called Feel Good Productivity.

Yeah, this one.

When talking about it, you said, I have felt quite uncomfortable with the idea of reaching out to all of my friends to do podcasts and things like that. That's not the kind of, you know, ask that I want to make of the people that I love and care about or people that I'd like to get to know better. I felt like that about our wedding because it was in Sicily and I felt really self conscious, I realized, about asking people to travel for our wedding. I wanted it to be easy for people. And there was no making our wedding easy. If we'd have done it in Los Angeles, where we live, we would have had all these people from the UK that would have found it difficult. If we did it in the uk, our friends in America and worldwide would have found it difficult. There was no making it easy for a lot of people, but we ended up choosing somewhere that made it hard for everybody because not one of our friends is in Italy and was an interesting experiment for me, actually Personally, to ask for people we love to make effort. For me and us, that was like, a really difficult thing I realized. And it ended up being a really touching thing that, you know, we had about 100 people there and that 100 people that we love and care about all came to this one place for our wedding day. It could. I. I said this before. We could not have been getting married. And it still would have been one of the best days ever. Oh, yeah.

Nice.

Yeah. So that was special. And then we went to Japan for a month.

Yeah.

For our honeymoon. Which was incredible. And I questioned coming home. Like, I just could live here.

Yeah. Does it, does it change anything? Because I guess you guys have been dating for a while, but does being officially married change anything about how you. About the relationship?

That's a good question. I feel, you know, we would. It's. But for people watching this or listening to this in, you know, when it comes out, it's around Christmas time and we decorated the tree together and we've. That's not the first time we've done that, but it was, interestingly, it felt like the first time we were decorating the tree as a family. And I'm not someone who, I don't have strict views on marriage. I don't, you know, I, I celebrate anyone who says I'm. We're quite happy as a couple and we feel like family anyway, and we don't need to get married to prove that to anyone or to ourselves. I, I celebrate that too. So I don't have, like, these big kind of views on marriage, but I, you know, when I was deciding whether to, like, get married or not, because it wasn't something on my agenda that I must get married in my life, I, I almost didn't. The rebel in me or the contrarian in me didn't know if I, like, if, if I believed in marriage. I believe in monogamy, but I didn't know if I believed in marriage as a kind of concept. I didn't like the idea that I needed a piece of paper or institution to tell me that what I had with someone was valid. But I spoke to friends that gave me some arguments that made me feel like it would be special to get married. And I did feel a sense of that. I felt a sense of the weight of it. Like, oh, it feels like we're really building something. And that's a nice feeling to feel like I'm building something with someone.

Nice.

Yeah.

That's so cool.

What about. Because I, I didn't. This is the first time I've heard you. Maybe you've said it before. The first time I've heard you in a video. In your latest video, nod to the fact that you'll get married soon. So is that. Where are you on that? Like, I want to know that.

When is this episode coming up? Because in about 12 days I'm planning to propose to the girlfriend.

We'll probably. We won't beat that, will we? I don't think we'll. Maybe we will. Let's just make sure she doesn't listen to the podcast.

Make sure that she doesn't listen. She sort of knows it's coming.

She does, but she doesn't know. 12 days from now.

She has a pretty strong idea. Because I was like, because we're gonna be in Australia and planning out the calendar. I'm like, keep that day free, whatever you do. And she's like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll keep that day free.

All right.

And she's. We. She's designed the ring as well. Because I asked what her perspective on the ring was and she was like, she had all these opinions and I was like, should we just go to a jewelry store and just try and get a sense of. And eventually it just turned out for her being like, you know what, why don't I just talk to the jeweler? And, you know, I can't and design the things that I like. Great. This is perfect. I have. There's no guesswork involved for me.

So there was no. There was no desire for you to sort of surprise her with the engagement? Not that, you know, I feel like if an engagement is a complete surprise. I don't know if this is exactly true, but it does feel like if an engagement is a shocking surprise, there's a breakdown in communication somewhere. Like, that shouldn't be the thing that shouldn't be something that completely surprises someone, that you love them that much that you want to do that with.

It shouldn't come as a complete surprise.

Yeah, but there was there no part of you that was like, I want her to be really surprised by when this comes.

I really wanted that to happen. Unfortunately, the logistics of the fact that we're like traveling the world are in different countries and stuff, and then she's going to be in China for like a month and then I'm not. And so there was this window of time where we have this like week long period in Australia where it sort of had to be done then otherwise it would be pushed. And we know we wanted to get married next summer. So it's not going to come as a complete surprise, but hopefully it'll be, It'll be special. Um, I've booked a little. You can, you can hire out the Sydney Botanical Gardens, like little segments of them and getting a, like, little picnic with some, like, roses and stuff. So I need to kind of coordinate with the picnic people to be like, just like, you know, make sure it's in the right place at the right time. In theory, this. It's all kind of going, going underway.

Something tells me you're going to do a very good job of that.

Fingers crossed. We'll see. I'd like it to be, like, low key. Ish. But, like, also nice and thoughtful.

Were you at any point scared of commitment? You are a. You know, for anyone who doesn't know Ali, he is a doctor turned entrepreneur, has spent years making YouTube videos. Makes, in my opinion, some of the best videos out there. Some of the most insightful, helpful videos, mostly through the lens of productivity. But I see you evolving and changing all the time. It's really exciting to watch. And you've amassed millions of followers. You are someone who has, you know, lived that kind of YouTube journey of starting from scratch and getting bigger and bigger and gaining, you know, both status and a degree of fame, essentially people recognizing you and knowing who you are. And now you find yourself embarking on a kind of digital nomad journey with your partner and traveling the world. And that's wildly exciting to me. And we can talk about that. But, you know, if you look at the trajectory of someone like that, you often, you could imagine, and you wouldn't be wrong to imagine the kind of person that has lots of options that could be living a certain kind of single life and really get addicted to that and decide to just keep doing that. And I know plenty of guys like that. And imagine, you must know some guys like that who, you know, just are like, well, this is. I'm just gonna keep living it up. As a single person, were you ever in the camp of struggling with the idea of commitment, or did you know through your twenties that you wanted to meet someone serious?

Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for the kind words. I always knew that I wanted to meet someone serious. I always knew I wanted to get married and have kids. I didn't quite know when that was going to be. And it's only in the last few years that things have really taken off where now I feel like, okay, I actually have more options now than I did maybe three years ago. But part of being in the Personal development zone of content and reading all these books and interviewing all these amazing people, you know, people like you, you've been. Been on the podcast and a bunch of other people who are sort of more like older and more successful than I am. I've always found that the ones who are happy happiest seem to be the ones who have a family. And I know a bunch of entrepreneurs who have sold companies for like hundreds of millions, who don't have a wife and kids yet or have said, no, I'm still doing the single thing. And there's a couple of people I've spoken to who are in their 30s and sort of approaching 40s as well, who kind of said that, honestly, if I had my time again, I would take dating way more seriously. Because they. They feel that that missing aspect of commitment and building something and investing in a family and stuff, they would be.

When they say take dating more seriously, they say I would be. They mean, like, be much more intentional.

More intentional and more serious about it rather than casual about it. And sometimes when I speak to these guys, it's almost kind of sad, like the impression I get. And sometimes what they say directly is like, yeah, it's kind of Sad that I'm 40 and all I've had is casual relationships for my whole life. And I'm really looking for someone right now. And at that point they start really thinking about it. And similarly, when you read books, like, there's a really good book called How Will youl Measure youe Life by Clayton Christensen. He was like a Harvard Business School professor and his whole thesis was like, he was seeing all these ridiculously successful people at Harvard coming through and graduating, and was seeing them 10 years, 20, 30, 40 years later. And he found that the one biggest factor that contributed to people feeling fulfilled with their life was investing in their relationships. And all of these super successful people, basically all of them had the default path of overvaluing work and undervaluing relationships. And so reading things like that and realizing that, you know, usually, like in my 20s, I was very focused on optimizing for freedom and optionality, but reading a bunch of these books, speaking to a bunch of these mentors, realizing that actually optimizing for freedom is actually not the thing that's going to make you happy. It's a thing that'll help you quit your job and like, do what you love and all that kind of stuff, but will actually make you happy long term. That meaning and fulfillment comes from investing and committing to and serving something greater than yourself. And for A lot of people, that's their family, Family, church, your work, whatever the thing might be. But the family piece was always like a big part of it. And so as someone who likes to optimize every facet of my life for the sake of productivity, this also feeds into that because it's like if you look at the studies of like, who are the people who are the most fulfilled when they're older? It's people who are married. It's like the quality of that primary relationship is the single highest determining factor in terms of your own life satisfaction and life fulfillment. So given that we know that because all the studies have showed it, my whole thing is let's optimize for taking dating and relationships seriously when we're young. Which is why I love your stuff. It's very kind of intentional about finding love and relationships. Whereas I think a lot of people have this thing of like, oh, it'll just happen, it'll happen when it happens.

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Yeah.

And I've seen plenty of guys fall into that mistake. I've seen plenty of women fall into that one as well. How did you avoid that trap? And I don't mean to put you on the spot in terms of your current relationship, but that's a very easy thing that could have happened with a brain like yours. So how do you avoid that?

I optimized to avoid that particular trap. So there is a good book called Algorithms to Live by that has this sort of like dating algorithm thing. Because dating is like, it's a bit of an optimization problem because what you're trying to do is you're trying to find someone who ticks all your boxes and they take, and you take all of theirs. But the problem is once you break up with that person to find the next one, you can then no longer go back to that option. So they in kind of the computer science world of algorithms, they call this the secretary problem. You're trying to hire a secretary. There are 100 applicants for this position of secretary and you can only interview them one at a time. So if you just hire the first person, hey, there's all these 99 other people that you would have never spoken to. But if you wait for the 100th person, then clearly you might have missed the best person who was along the way. And the optimization, like if you run the numbers on this lands on a. You're only going to find the right person, sort of the best one 30% of the time. So chances are you are not going to find the person who is perfectly optimized for you. But the way you get closest is by sampling the first 30%. And so doing the first 30 interviews and saying no to everyone. And then once you've done the first 30 interviews, at that point, you say yes to whoever the next best person is that you come across, whether it's person 31 or 41 or 51. If they are better than the people you've met previously in the secretary problem, you then say yes to that person and you fully commit to that.

Or if they're as good as the best.

Or if they're as good as the best. Yeah, exactly.

That's so. Yeah. And so really interesting.

So when it comes to dating, this is interesting because it's like we don't know how many people we're going to date in our life. And but what I found that Logan Urie's book How to Not Die Alone did is that we don't need to know how many people we're going to date. We just need to know what ages we want to be active, actively dating in. So let's say as a guy, I'm thinking I want to be actively dating from 18 to 40, and I want to find someone in that time. What is 30% of the way there? Turns out it's age 26. So it's like all the people I've dated up until age 26 have been my 30% sample size.

And assuming you're dating regularly.

Assuming you're dating regularly and stuff. And so the next person who kind of is as good, if not better than all the other people in terms of compatibility, I should just go for that person. And so I had this age 26 in my mind, and I did some things. I optimized my dating profile. I got feedback from female friends and a bunch of people to be like, okay, you know, because it's. It's almost like a funnel. It's like you've got a. Someone's got to swipe right on the dating profile to even have a chance of meeting them. So I did all of those things. But then what happens is the universe ultimately throws you a curveball. And the person who I ended up hopefully. Hopefully going to propose to in a few. In a couple of weeks is a person I actually knew from. From my university days.

No way.

Nothing to do with dating apps. Even though I was going on like one or two dates a week because I was like, okay, I want to take dating seriously, etcetera, etcetera. But I think because I was open to something happening, this serendipitous connection happened. And my girlfriend and I met, and now it's been about two and a half years.

So you knew her from University. And then you reconnected later on?

Yeah, we reconnected later on when both of us were in a sort of dating optimization phase. She actually recommended me the book how to Not Die Alone. She loves your stuff. She loves reading about relationship advice. And. And so that was one of the things we connected on, the fact that both of us read books about how to find the right partner. And that was pretty cool because we've kind of taken that optimization attitude forward in the relationship. Something that John and Julie Gottman recommend is doing, like, relationship reviews. And so we've been doing that for the last two and a half years. Like every few weeks we have like a notion page with a template of like a relationship review, which asks questions like, you know, what's been going well in the relationship? How are you feeling? What's one way I made you feel loved, appreciated, or respected? And then the second half is, what's something I did that made you feel bad or sad or annoyed in any tiny way? How can I make it better for us? What's one thing new that you'd like to try together? What's something that made you upset? And then let's talk about it. Things like that. When I describe this to friends, usually there's one of two responses. Some friends who have been in relationships are like, oh my God, that would have solved a lot of problems because you realize that actually a lot of these things can bubble up and the sort of slowly build into resentment and you don't talk about it because it's not that deep. And, you know, you kind of feel bad bringing it up and the timing is never right. And a bunch of people are like, oh my God, why would you do that? That's taking all the. All the romance, all the passion out of a relationship. I think, you know, it's important to have a bit of a balance. But I like. One of the principles that I. That I follow when it comes to productivity is that you should probably spend about 1% of your time thinking about, like, the thinking or reflecting about your goals or what you're actually trying to do rather than doing the thing. I think there are some people that spend all their lives thinking about the thing and, and none of their time doing the thing. But if, for example, you spend an hour a week doing like a review of how your week went in terms of your work and your productivity. If you spend like two days every year just doing some annual planning and figuring out what are actually my goals, what are actually my goals going to be for the year that's really helpful. You know, we spend way longer deciding what restaurant to go to or deciding what Netflix movie to watch than we do reflecting on our relationship and making goals and actively deciding things. And so I didn't come up with any of this. I just read it from books like yours, books like Logan's books like the ones that the Gottmans have written. And so me and my partner decided we were going to actively implement that basically from day one. And it's been so helpful for our relationship.

It's really great. And I suppose the fact that it's being done with some regularity is powerful because if you do it once a year, then it's like you. You don't want to save up all those conversations for once a year. And in the meantime, you haven't had any candor in the middle. I think I once heard from Lee Cockerel, the ex vice president of Disney. I think he was. Or parks at Disney. But he. He said, you know, the. The problem he has with annual reviews at companies is that they kind of discourage candor in the moment that, you know, you need to say this thing to this person. But now you go, well, I'll say it to them in review time, and that's six months away. And meanwhile, they keep doing the thing for another six months. But I think the fact that you're doing that. Did you say like once a month?

Every other week? Pretty much.

Oh, every other week.

Yeah. Well, to every two or three weeks, depending on what happens.

Yeah. You're never far away from.

If it's something serious that, you know, needs to be brought up in the moment, we'll talk about it in the moment. Obviously, like, we're not sociopaths, but if it's a tiny minor niggle that, like. Oh, you know, the way that separating the laundry in lights and darks and like, oh, shit. It's like, it's not the right time to bring it up during a date night where we're only seeing each other maybe like once or twice a week because we want to kind of focus on each other and not bring up, like, random logistical crap. But actually, the reviews are really good for bringing up. Hey. Hey. You know, when you. When you leave the bathroom, the bottles and the thing with the cap off, you know, it makes me feel a bit bad because it makes me feel like you don't really care. You know, I would love it if you could put the. Put the caps back on the bottles. Okay, cool. Sure, I'll do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Those are the kinds of things you don't necessarily want to pepper your day with. In other nice moments.

Yeah.

I'm curious. When you said that you had friends help you with your dating profile, I feel like you would have had a very optimized approach to your dating profile. Were there any insights that you think other people could benefit from in terms of, you know, what worked or what you. You know, what you're just commonly seeing as mistakes that people made or either mistakes you made or a lot of what you saw at the time that turned you off on other people's profiles? Yeah.

Oh, what a good question. So I found a bunch of. Again, this was the optimizer in action. I did a bunch of reading around what makes an optimized dating profile. And there was this weird stat that if you have a black and white photo, as a guy, if you have a black and white photo that, like, increases your odds of matching with someone by like, 10, 15% or something.

Really?

Because maybe there's something artsy about a dude having a black and white photo that feels. That feels reasonable.

I also feel like black and white photos are just so much more forgiving.

Yeah, exactly. The lighting can be awful. It could be terrible. It could be really yellow. But, like, if it's black and white, it looks reasonable. Another big one was to not have, like, as a guy, to not have group photos with other girls in them because someone had run the numbers on this. And the theory was that women then think, oh, he's a bit of a player. It's like, that's not what I want. If it's an app like Hinge or something, which is more about relationships rather than about hooking up. But the main thing was in terms of the prompts, because on Hinge, for example, you've got those various prompts. And initially what my profile was, was I was trying to be impressive because I'd bought the narrative that, like, oh, women want a guy with high status. Therefore I'm casually flex that I've got a YouTube channel or whatever the thing might be. And it was when I ran, I would sort of screenshot the profile and send it to friends of mine who I thought either had good perspectives on this or who I was attracted to because I was like, you know, let's do some target market feedback. And what I found was that the main thing that would cause. Cause someone to match with someone is if it makes. If it's easy to match with them, if they seem like a normal person, where. Where the various prompts make a response very easy. So the sorts of profiles that don't work are ones where you have to do a lot of thinking to be like, what is the thing I can match with this person on? But asking a question or sharing a controversial opinion or things like that in a friendly or funny way that would encourage someone to respond with more than just a, like.

Like a kind of quirkily contrarian opinion as opposed to some deeply political controversial opinion.

Yeah, exactly. So, like, one of. One of. One of my ones was. I can't remember what it was, but it was like, you know, my. My ideal date night is where we. We work on our laptops for a couple of hours and then we watch a Disney movie together or something like that. And that's going to turn off a lot of people because they're like, who the fuck is this guy? But it's also going to turn on a lot of people to be like, oh, that's also my idea of an ideal date night. And so the other big insight from the dating profile is that you're not trying to appeal to everyone. You're trying to appeal to just one person. And so, in a way, I think back in the day, I was trying to vanilla water down my dating profile so that it could appeal to quote the average woman, like, whatever the hell that means. But I realized over time after also, Logan Urie, who wrote that book, gave me feedback on my dating profile. She was like, yeah, you know, the main thing is you want to display your personality because you're trying to attract the right person, not the average person.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's super helpful. I think we spend a lot of time worrying about the rejection we're getting and not worrying enough about actually finding the right person. Because at the end of the day, you only have to. It's like you only have to hit the home run once. Yeah, you can swing as many times as you like in dating, but you only need to hit a home run once. And I think people are trying to. It's like they're try and go through life like they're trying to hit constant home runs, but they're not with people that would actually make them happy. They're people they have to kind of change for or chameleonize themselves to be with. And. And then they find they're in relationships that don't actually mirror the kind of relationship they want. And that's a dangerous thing because you can waste a lot of time in the wrong relationship. You couldn't spend years of your life with someone that you're not compatible with and only to find that you then are going back to the drawing board of well, who's actually right for me? Who. Getting into a relationship shouldn't be the prize. It should be meeting someone that you could actually spend many years with or even a lifetime with, I guess. As you're speaking, I can almost hear a lot of our audience saying where are guys like Ali? In other words, I am looking for the kind of guy who is looking for commitment, who isn't endlessly optimizing, trying to find the perfect person that doesn't exist, who is into self development or at least into self awareness and introspection and trying to grow. All I keep meeting is guys who don't want to commit, guys who are not introspective, lack self awareness, aren't trying to do work on themselves and are constantly looking for some notion of perfection in a woman. This is probably an impossible question for you to answer, but I want to ask it anyway. What would be your response to women saying that? Because they, there is like a. People are having a rough time out there, they're looking for people like that who aren't just endless Peter Pans like, who are actually willing to grow up, willing to invest, willing to build something. Do you think that there are a decent number of those guys out there? And what do you think women could do to meet more guys like that instead of so many of the guys they're meeting?

Yeah, this is a, this is a tough one. I can just share my perspective on this. So basically all of my single guy friends are that guy who wants to, wants to commit and wants to be serious with someone. This is the stuff that you talk about, I think, which is that I feel that the guys that a lot of women will go for are the ones who all of the other women are going for as well and are probably the ones who come across as more confident and more assertive. Now guys who come across as more confident and more assertive are also guys who probably have success with, with women more often than a more, more of a nerdy guy, shall we say. And that person then has loads of options and also has this sort of rock star lifestyle where they can, they can have loads of casual sex, all that, all that kind of stuff. But the traits that make someone attractive initially are more of the high status, you know, seems, seems interesting. Seems to have a bit of a, you know, depending on how, how old the woman in question is. Like the bad boy vibe seems to be a big thing that, that, that women are attracted to at least on.

The surface, at the very least, even if it's not a bad boy vibe, a kind of like, over charisma.

Yeah, exactly. Whereas if I think of most of my guy friends who are single, they don't have that overt charisma. Their dating profiles are not optimized, however much I try and kind of coach them. Like, guys, come on, you can't optimize the dating profit. You've got to sound interesting and stuff. It's like the stuff that you talk about of, like, if. If women are waiting for someone to approach them, they will only be approached by people who have enough confidence and enough, like, don't give a shit what the people think to do that. And it's so hard for guys these days in today's climate to even go up to a girl and say something that could even vaguely come across as potentially creepy. Creepy is that ultimate thing that every single guy friend that I, I know struggles with. I struggle with it all the time. I didn't give my own girlfriend a compliment for like four months because I was worried about being creepy. That's how, like, how much this conditioning I was like, I couldn't possibly tell her that she looks beautiful because, you know, obviously I value her for more than that. And like, oh my God, like, she's going to think I'm just one of those shallow guys. And there's all this conditioning that, that the people who overcome that conditioning are going to be the people who are maybe looking for something more casual. And so what I would. What I generally encourage people is like, I've. I've got a few female friends who are also struggling with dating with this exact problem. You know, they. They can't seem to find the right sort of person. What I usually say is lower the bar for who you're going to match with on a dating app. Like, don't feel like you need to be immediately attracted to them, because the people you're going to feel immediately attracted to are maybe, you know, if you haven't had a lot of success up to this point, let's lower the bar. Let's give other guys a chance. Because you never know what might happen if you're on a date with someone. But, you know, you're the expert here. Like, what would you say?

I think there's so much truth to what you're saying, because really, you're not talking about lowering the bar in general. You're talking about, in a way, lowering the bar in a. In very narrow areas, like how someone comes across in a profile or on the first five minutes of meeting them. You know, there are people that are just incredible salespeople, and they come across really well in the first five minutes. They're very compelling people. There are people that have a great elevator pitch. Not all the best books have the best elevator pitches for that book or.

The best titles and covers.

Yeah, exactly.

There are some really good books that have really terrible titles.

Yeah. And they're really hard. If you say to some. If someone said to you, what's the book about? You, you'd probably give a terrible elevator pitch for it, even though you're a fan of that book.

Yeah.

You know, not everything is the most easily marketable thing, but it doesn't mean it's not the best thing or it's not an amazing thing. And I think we constantly, in the world of dating, reward the best marketers.

Yeah.

Not necessarily the best partners. And that, I think, is where. When you say lower the bar, what I hear is, don't. It's not lowering the bar on the quality of person. It's lowering the bar on the very narrow attributes that we use to decide whether someone should get through the door. And a lot of those attributes that we have traditionally used to determine whether someone should get through the door are very egoically driven attributes that we want. We, you know, often I think it's hard sometimes to distinguish between what it is we want or. I'm not usually a fan of this kind of language, but it's like, what our soul wants, what would make us happy to be with, and what qualities we're looking for because we think they'll make us look good. You know, that, oh, my friends would think this person is hot. My family would think this person is awesome. Because of, you know, who they are or their status or how much they've achieved or because of how they walk into a room and dazzle everybody. Like, there's a very egoic element to dating that plays a part, I think, in a bigger way than we give it credit for. And so instead of. It's like, instead of dating the person that will make us the happiest, we date the person that we think will make us look the most impressive to our peers, to our network, in our world. And that is where I think people get in a lot of trouble and they keep dating for the wrong things over and over again.

There's a great. I don't know if you've seen that clip from Chris Rock where he's like, ladies, when you meet a new guy, what do your friends ask you? What does he do? Gentlemen, when you meet a new girl, what do your friends ask you? What she look like? And it's so true. And everyone in the audience is crapping up, cracking up, because it's just so true. And you know, earlier on and earlier on in my dating days and spoken to a bunch of guy friends who have this as well. We really care. We really want our friends to think she's hot.

Yeah.

Really do. And it's so bad. And it's like we all know that it's, it feels really wrong to admit that, but we want our friends to think, yeah, you know, well played, mate.

So much so that I can remember being in high school and there being girls at my age that I wasn't initially attracted to.

Yeah.

But because everyone was saying they were the, like, that was the, the girl that is like the, you know, maybe she was popular or she had like a certain way about her or whatever, but like people decided she was like the one that you had to go for. She was the pick of the bunch. And I just remember at that age thinking, yeah, well, I guess she is hot. Like, it wasn't even at that point. It didn't even feel like it was. I hadn't like sat in a room and looked at pictures and gone. Who am I attracted to? It's like it was determined by what everyone else was thinking.

Yeah.

I suppose what people will be thinking is do it, do people ever grow out of that? If it's one thing, if I'm a woman and I'm growing out of that and I'm looking for better things and I'm not going to be driven egoically by what my friends and family think is attractive or hot or what society thinks is. But what if I'm just dealing with a bunch of guys that are still operating like that and I am constantly picked last because I don't match up to other women in that way, I'm not the woman that all his friends are going to think is hot. So now I'm looking for a guy that is of such independent mind and strength that he is going to see me for the amazing person that I really am. And how many of those guys are there out there?

Mate? It's a tricky one to apply one of the principles of productivity. It's, you know, there's, there's a lot of stuff around, like goal setting. And what is it that makes people successful in like the work domain of life? And usually it boils down to having a clear idea of what you actually want, like what the goal is, having a clear idea of where you are right now, and then figuring out what are the three to five things I can do to bridge the gap. Now, in the dating world, it depends on what stage of the process you're at. But the way that I approached it was, you know, it's ultimately a funnel. It's like a. It's like a marketing funnel for a business. And, you know, as a, you know, when I was in my. In my early 20s and less I get quote successful than I am now, I would have a match rate of maybe 1 or 2%. I would swipe right on 100 girls on like Tinder or Bumble. This was pre hinge and like one or two would swipe back. Now these numbers are completely. That's very normal for guys. With most of my female friends YFC on the dating apps, they're inundated with matches. So I think if women are listening to this, you are probably inundated with matches on dating apps, probably. And therefore you already have it way easier than a lot of guys do, because a lot of guys are like, really struggling to get one, two, or even three matches. But once you know that, once you know what that number is, it's useful to see. It's like, okay, 100 people saw my. Saw my thing, and only three of them converted, as it were, into a, into a right swipe. That's not a very high conversion rate. What could I do to push that conversion rate up to, let's say, 10% or 15% or even better? Another way of thinking of it would be like, am I going on dates with all these three? Have I actively reached out? How's the conversation gone? Have I converted any of these three people into a date? Cool. Maybe one of them, on average, converts to a date. So now for every 100 swipes I make, I get three likes and one of them becomes a date. Okay, that's useful to know. Is that a reasonable plan to find the love of my life? Probably not. I probably need a little bit more variety. So what are the levers I can pull here? How can I optimize my landing page, my title and thumbnail, the packaging, the marketing? To our point, yes. A lot of books have really crappy, really crappy titles. There was this story I read which was. So you know that book, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? Apparently the original title of that book was completely different. It was something like the relationship communication manual or some shit like that. No one bought that book, but they changed the title. Men are from Mars, Women from Venus, and suddenly it flies off the shelves. It's the same book, it's the same stuff. It's good stuff. But the changing of the packaging makes all the difference. And as much as we can, you know, it's generally useful advice, as we were talking about, to, you know, a lot of guys are not thinking so much about the packaging. And so it's worth it for maybe women to lower their bar, just like it's worth it for guys to lower their bar of, like, hotness, because you never know what connection you might have with someone. But the packaging is really. Is really important. And so what is the packaging for a woman and what is the packaging for a guy? Unfortunately, they are different things because men and women are different. And so for a guy, what I knew that I needed to do, based on the stuff that I'd read, was, okay, I need to become more successful. I need to dress better. I need to gain a little bit more muscle so I don't look as if I'm a complete, like, dweeb has never kind of, kind of worked out. And women like humor and charisma, so I actively read books on how to be funnier. I was. There's a YouTube channel from me from our mutual friend Charlie. Charisma on Command. I read his books back in, like, 2014 when I was trying to, you know, get more girls to like me. And his original book was called Kick Assery, which was a terrible title, but it was about how to be more charismatic. I was seeking out online courses and videos and books on how to be more charismatic and more funny, knowing that that's what girls wanted. And along the way, I became a lot more confident. I became the sort of guy who would put himself out there and make YouTube videos and all this sort of stuff happened. But it started because I was reading these books back in my teenage years, thinking, why is no girl paying me any attention at all? Okay, cool, let's become successful. Let's become. Let's get a bit more muscle, let's dress better, let's become more charismatic, let's become more funny. And we're starting to get more of the way towards what universally women appreciate.

What do you say? Because I. I feel like a criticism that has been made of my work for so long is just, why can't we all just be ourselves?

Yeah.

And, you know, someone could listen to everything you've just said and be like, well, but why didn't you just be yourself? Like, how do you square the idea of being yourself with all of the things you just said that you kind of, in a sense, reverse engineer because you know that they will make you more attractive if you do them?

Yeah, I think. I think being yourself is kind of bs. I think choosing yourself is the way forward, like, the way I always thought of it. And, you know, this is not advice to anyone else, but this is just sort of my perspective on this is that who I am, the myself, is purely a result of some genetics and some accidents of how I was raised in childhood. And subconscious conditioning I had is a result of the fact that when I was six years old in school, I had these two female friends. And one time, like, they went away and I was like, asking, where are Clarissa and Sanyu? And the guys were like, oh, my God, Ali wants to hang out with the girls. Like, ah. And then that was. That taught me the message of, like, oh, I can't have female friends. It's really bad. I've got to be more of a boy. And all that kind of stuff would have been things around, like, I don't know, feeling like when I got good marks in an exam, that my grandma would be like, well done. And when I got less good marks, she wouldn't say, well done. All of these are accidents that happened in my childhood that I did not choose and that have resulted in the person that I am at the age of 18 or 21 or 24 or 30 or whatever the thing might be. Most people are not that conscious about the person they want to be. They are very unconscious about it because it subconsciously develops over time. And so knowing that, it's like, okay, you could do that, you could continue to just be yourself and allow who you are to be an accident of your circumstances, or you could choose yourself and you could figure out, okay, I'm here right now, but where do I actually want to be? And this is not to say that, like, you know, the thing that you want to be, you want to make sure that it does feel authentic to you. But if I was, like, really shy and unable to put my hand up in class to ask a question because I was so shy that I was going to stutter, and I still have a stutter, is it me not being myself to try and improve the stutter and to try and be more confident so that I can have more confidence? No, it's just I'm leveling up in that particular area of life. If I suck at dancing, is it not being myself to try and learn how to Be better at dancing? No, I'm gonna. It's. I'm level up in that area of life. And so it's almost like a video game. You have these multiple stats. You've got like a confidence stat, a charisma stat, a humor stat, a body, you know, muscularity stat, a stamina stat. And you can work on these stats over time. That doesn't change who you are deep down. It doesn't change the core of your soul, the core of your being just levels you up in your stats. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think that's choosing yourself, that's living the life you want. Is it who I am to have a YouTube channel? Well, no. If you knew me when I was in school, I'd be the last person to have a YouTube channel. I'd be the guy sitting in the classroom just like, trying to do well, trying to do better on the exams. But I have a YouTube channel now, and I've been making videos for seven years because I evolved into the person I wanted to be rather than the person that I was. I've just had this Tony Robbins seminar, and it was really good. There was a whole day devoted to relationships. And he was saying how for men and women, they're basically three things to avoid. So there's the three Cs and the three Us. So if you're a woman, you want to avoid the three Cs, which is criticism, being closed off, and controlling. Those three behaviors that women do to guys completely turn guys off. Similarly, for guys, the three you want to avoid are the three U's, making your partner feel unseen, not understood, or unsafe. And he did this experiment. He was like, of all the guys in the room, how many of you have feared for your safety in the last 90 days? No one puts a hand up. He's like, women in the room, how many of you have feared for your safety in the last 90 days? Every single woman's hand goes up and he's like, see, men and women are different. Women really need to feel safe. And if they feel unsafe, they're going to be really, really turned off by a guy. Similarly for guys, for masculine energy or people with a masculine essence, however you want to describe it, freedom is one of the big things, one of the big qualities that guys are striving for. And so if a woman is controlling, that is a real turn off for a guy. And so my point here is that, yes, it's all good. Why can't we all just Be ourselves and all this kind of stuff. But we know that there are skills that you can do to improve who you are in terms of your various stats. There are also skills of being in a relationship, like helping your partner feel safe and understood and feel seen and heard, which don't come naturally to a lot of people. It did not come naturally to me to compliment my girlfriend because the conditioning I had was that you can't give compliments. It did not come naturally for me to give her a hug when. When I greeted her because, you know, I'm from a South Asian background, showing physical affection isn't really a thing. And it took her to be like, hey, you know, I'd really appreciate it if you could. If you could give me a hug when we, when we say hello to each other. Oh, that's news to me. Sure, I can do that. That's not me not being myself or, like, I don't know, betraying who I am. Who I am is not defined by not hugging my girlfriend when I meet her. Who I am is defined by all these other things. But I can absolutely. I can absolutely implement that behavior to be a better partner to the person who I love.

Has it been easy for you to be more affectionate? Because I know for some people, if they're not naturally affectionate and their partner said, I'd love you to be more affectionate, it would be a. It would just be like, go against their nature to keep trying to be. And it probably cause an ongoing issue in the relationship for you. Has it been a simple thing, like, as in. I suppose what I'm asking is, is there a natural desire to be more affectionate that that brings out for you, or are you having to do something that, you know, essentially means a lot to her, but for you, it, you know, it's just not that important. So it's really a giving gesture from your side?

Yeah, that's a really good question. Honestly, it's more that. So, for example? Well, no, I think it's a bit of both. So we've been seeing a kind of a couple therapists for the last six months. Not because we have significant problems in the relationship, but just because I was speaking to a ridiculously very successful guy who was on a second marriage, and I asked him, like, you know, what's. What's the best thing you've ever spent money on? Because this guy has like, private jets and yachts and all that thing. So the single beg. The single best thing I've ever spent money on is a relationship therapist. And I was like, huh? Even when you don't have problems? And he was like, especially when you don't have problems in a relationship. So that week, I was like, cool, I'm gonna get a relationship therapist. And we've been seeing this guy Thomas for the last, like, six months. Every other week, Thomas has a. Has a great take on this. He was. Because, you know what? What? My girlfriend, she said at one point, you know, I'd love Ali to be more affectionate, and I'd love to feel as if he cares about me more. And the therapist guy, Thomas, was like, you know, let's. I can completely appreciate that perspective, but let's not talk on the level of personality. You know, being affectionate is like a personality trait. Feeling like he cares about me more is like, you know, it's a thing that's internal to him. What would that look like? What are the behaviors that would make you feel that he is affectionate? Because what he was saying and what's so true is that we all have different ways of expressing affection. For me, the absolute dream. I would love it if me and my girlfriend. Let's call her Jane, if me and Jane were to just go to a coffee shop and sit there on our laptops for eight hours and just be working on her own stuff, that, to me, that's bliss. That's my idea of an absolutely perfect day. It's not her idea of an absolutely perfect day. She has different ideas. If, for example, she and I are sitting, I don't know, in the living room on our laptops and just doing her own thing and not talking to each other, that, to me, is amazing. We feel connected because we're connected to the same WI fi. For her, that does not feel connected at all. And she needs, you know, every. Every half an hour or so for us to have a bit of a conversation, all this kind of stuff. But the point is, we have different needs for the same thing, which is connection. I'm happy to both of us to be in the same room not talking. She's not particularly happy with that. And so what we found is that when you. When he boiled it down to specific behavior, it's like, what would it look like if Ali were more affectionate? Oh, he would give me a hug when I walk into the room. Okay, I can do that. He would give me a hug in the mornings. He would ask me how my day is when I get home from work. He would, you know, if. If we're both in the middle of work every hour or so. He would come up to me, sort of. He would, like, pat my head a bit. He'd ask me how I'm doing. Anything I can help with if I can offer a glass of water? I'm like, okay. And then Tom's the therapist. We're like, cool. And if Ali were to do those five things, like, would you feel like, you know, he's being more affectionate? And she was like, hell, yeah. And I was like, great. I can do those things because those are small little actions. And initially doing them felt weird. Initially, giving her a hug when I. When I saw her in public felt weird because I'm like, oh, my God, PDA is not good. And I realized, actually after a sort of learning period of kind of make. Quit making myself do it because it was a new behavior, I now really enjoy it. And I'm like, oh, there's something really nice about hugging someone when you meet them. And I've become a more huggy guy. Like before, you know, when I came in here, we had a nice hug before. I would have just been like, hey, I've shaken your hand. There's something so nice about hugs. And I wouldn't have known that had I not gone through the painful period initially of forcing myself to do it.

I suppose the thing this makes me think is if you have to, above all else, have a partner who, when you express these things, actually has a desire to listen and. And at least try to do the things that would make a big difference in your life, hopefully they're not so much against your nature that it's, you know, it just feels like you're sweating to do them. But, you know, it's. I. I think the hard road is when you have a partner, you have a way that you really want to be loved.

Yeah.

They really aren't very interested in it, or you try and bring it up and they're just dismissive of it, and you realize it just never gets any better. And I think that's where. That's where things get scary for people. I always remember Alan de Botton saying that in arguments. The reason arguments get so heated so quickly is because we're future projecting.

Yeah.

Someone will do something, and it won't just be that it's annoying. In that moment, we'll think of all the ways that's going to be annoying for the rest of our lives. And so you've. You've annoyed me quickly turns into, you've ruined my life.

Yeah.

And I think that when we are able to have a conversation with someone and we actually see that they listen to us, they try and understand us, and. And they actually try to do some of those things, maybe with some success. That's when you go, oh, okay. That's not. The future isn't just determined.

Yeah.

Where the relationship is today or the things that maybe are a struggle today maybe won't remain a struggle forever.

Yeah.

Hey, everyone, before you listen to the rest of the episode, I wanted to let you know that you and I can meet in person in 2024. We can actually have a relationship that doesn't just exist through a podcast, through me coming through your earphones while you potter around your house and do some tidying, which is what I do when I want to listen to a podcast. We can actually spend some time together and I can coach you through a six day model that I've created for deep personal change. It is my retreat. It is taking place in September of 2024. It only happens once a year now. And every year for those six days, I get together with an exclusive group of people in Florida by the beach, and I give them everything I know about how to create the life they want. And that starts by working on our emotional patterns, on our stress responses, on our fears, on where they come from, on what's really going on with us, that we are holding ourselves back in some way from what we want in life. Whether it's a better sense of purpose, whether it's more love, whether it's finally being able to start something that we've always wanted to start. I have put everything I've learned and everything that's helped me in all of this into this six day program. And this is my invite to you to come and find out more about it so that you can join us. Go to mhretreat.com and I'll walk you through what the process looks like and how you can apply. Join me in 2024 in person for an experience like none other you've ever had. I promise you. Mhretreat.com is the link. I'll see you over there. And now back to the episode.

Now that I've been seeing a couples therapist, I literally been recommending it to all my friends, like, even if they. Especially if they don't have any relationship problems. It's just so useful talking to a couple therapists, like an hour, even just once a month. And it is, yes, it might be expensive, it might be, I don't know, $100 an hour or whatever, but it's such a ridiculously high return on Investment. Because relationships are literally the most important thing in life. Your primary relationship with your partner is the single most important relationship in your life. Even more important than that with you and your kids. And just if you can improve that even 1%, surely that's worth doing. And one of the great things that a therapist does is they are, in a way, an adult in the room. Because often when we're talking about our relationships with our partner, it's like we can both descend into the childlike state of protecting our ego and feeling criticized and feeling like, oh, I feel misunderstood, the other person doesn't love me, all this kind of stuff. What the therapist does is, you know, they listen to both perspectives and they say. They just ask a few questions. Be like, huh, so how does that specifically make you feel? What behaviors would it take for this person to make you feel more loved and all this kind of stuff?

You strike me as a very logical, rational person. In your relationship. Have you, you know, had calls from your partner to either be more in touch with your emotions or bring that side of you forward more? And if so, what's. I'm thinking of this right now from the female perspective. For every woman out there who is saying, I wish my guy would be more in touch with his emotions. I wish he'd be more vulnerable. I wish he'd connect with me more. Yeah, Be more emotionally vulnerable or emotionally available. Are there any things that have worked on you from her side that you think could be useful ideas or techniques for women out there who want to bring more out of a guy who's very logical and not very emotional?

Oh, mate, what a great question. This is like, I am sort of extreme, end of logical and no emotions. So there have been a lot of things that my girlfriend has done and that we've kind of done together that have been really helpful. I think the first one is expressing the need positively. So instead of you're not emotionally supportive enough, which causes a guy to feel criticized, which is one of the three Cs, which is going to be terrible. Immediately closes off expressing it as a positive. Hey, I would. You know, I love how committed you are to this relationship. I would love it if you. I would. I would love it even more if you would emotionally support me in my times of need to. Which a guy's gonna be like, what the fuck does that mean? Like, emotional support. What? Huh? What the hell? And what we found really helpful is that in. In the moment. This is hard. This is hard for Jane to do because she's feeling sort of Emotionally vulnerable in that. And in the first, like, year to 18 months of our relationship, I was really, really, really bad at this. But what it took was when we were just kind of going out for lunch or something, I would bring it up. I would say, hey, so, you know, a couple of nights ago, when you felt upset about the fact that someone said that bad thing to you at work, and, you know, you seemed really upset, and I was trying to give you. I was trying to be helpful, but it didn't seem like it really landed. What could I have said that would have been more useful? And she was like, huh. Never really thought about that. What could you have said? And she was like, well, I guess what you could have said was, you know, honey, I'm so sorry this happened. You know, this must be really hard for you. And just, like, come for me, right? I'm like, comfort you? Like, what the hell does that mean? Like, come for me, you know? So, for example, you might say, you know, this has been really hard for you. Is there anything I can do to help? Like, you know, you've been working so hard. I just want to feel. I want to feel hard. I want to feel validated. I'm like, oh, Like, I think a lot. A lot of guys don't want to seem patronizing and. And. And to a lot of guys. And I've spoken to so many of my friends about this. Like, yeah, you know, it was really surprising how much just comforting her is what she wants to hear. Like what? Like, guys don't get comforted. We get challenged. We get, like, immediately. If I were to talk to you about a problem, you wouldn't be like, oh, Ali, I can appreciate how that must make you feel. You might do, because you're more in touch with your emotions. But, like, most guys would be like, all right, come on, let's solve it. But the way that guys communicate is not the way that women want to be communicated with. And what we found so helpful was just running these role plays after the fact in the light of day, where she would kind of say, hey, what you might have said in the moment was xyz. But phrased in a positive way, because she has said in the past, I don't feel emotionally supported by you.

So even from her side, just modeling what that actually looks like, because you're right, a lot of guys would be like, what does that mean? Actually modeling. Modeling it and being like, here are the kinds of things that really make me feel better if you would say them or, you know, actually gives him A kind of tutorial.

Yeah, it's like specific action points because be more emotionally supportive. Like, what the hell does that mean? Be more affectionate. What does that mean? Be more loving. What does that. I mean, I thought I was pretty loving. I'm providing for the family. I thought. I thought it's pretty loving. No, I would love it if when. When I came into the house, you would give me hug. Oh, why didn't you say so?

Yeah. And I think that's something we all have to get better at in relationships, is just not expecting the other person to be a mind reader. Like, it's not their job to figure out. Based on our upbringing, whatever trauma we've been through, whatever situations have affected us in our life, whatever our natural propensities are, it's not their job to figure us out.

It's.

We should come to someone. And maybe we don't have to offer it all up front, but it's our job to piece by piece give someone the manual.

Yeah.

On what we need in order to be happy. And if. If they ignore that manual. Okay. You have a bigger problem in the relationship. But to expect them to know that manual. Sometimes in. Sometimes people don't even know the manual for themselves, and they're hoping the other person's going to figure it out.

Yeah.

So it's like it starts with self awareness of what you need and then the bravery to actually communicate that manual that you've worked out for yourself to somebody else. And I mean, that's a whole other thing because now, now you get into the territory of believing that you're worthy of giving, of someone following your manual, that it's okay for you to have those needs and to ask for things. And, you know, I. That's a big, big issue for so many people, is I don't want to give someone the manual because I don't even feel worthy of. Of someone following it, of someone giving me these things. I feel bad even asking.

Yeah. And so then we want them to just intuit the needs, just like our parents did when we were younger. It's like, we didn't need to say, hey, I need a hug from you right now. They would just give us a hug. But, like, one of the major breakthroughs in the way that we. That we had in couples therapy was this idea of, like, sometimes Jane would say things like, if you really felt X, you would do Y. If you really. If you really cared about me, you would naturally want to do this thing. That's like, no, because people are different. It's like, I really do love you. And my natural inclination is for us to, is to be like, great, let's. Let's go on our laptops and go to the coffee shop, because I fucking love that shit.

That's the hard one, isn't it? We all do it. It's like, I. It's not just that I want you to do this. I want you to want to do this.

Exactly. Yeah.

And that's a really tricky area because.

Really tricky.

Yeah. Now it's like, I mean, it happens in the bedroom with people too. It's like, you know, one person has a higher sex drive and is saying, I, I want them to have sex with me more. I want them to engage sexually with me more. And now it's almost like there's an elephant in the room. Because when they do engage with you more, you're like, yeah, but I don't want them to do it just because I want it. I want them to want to do it. And that's. I heard Esther Perel talk about this where she said, I think the advice she gave to someone was accept the gift.

Yeah.

If your partner is. Loves you enough to want to do something that means a lot to you, accept the gift. Don't, don't. I'm adding now, but don't wallow in the insecurity of needing them to want it the same way you do. Instead, just accept that this person cares about you and loves you enough that they want to do something just for you.

Yeah. That was one of the big things that, that our couple therapists said as well. Because, yeah, Jane had that. Where she felt like, oh, but if, but if I ask him to. But if, if we've talked about this now and now he does this thing, it's going to lose its sincerity.

Yeah.

And he was like, okay, we need to move past that kind of, that kind of way of thinking.

Well, the problem is that's like, you know, like the double slit experiment where the, the Jameson, I always ask you this question. I forget what the quantum mechanics, the double slit experiment. It's an experiment where it's way above my, my learning, but it's where the simple act of observe. Of observing the experiment changes the result of the experiment. And I always liken that to therapy with couples therapy, that on one hand we're trying to resolve something, but that, but like, let's say sex is the unresolved thing is we have different desires sexually, or one person has more desire than the other. As long as you're not talking about It. At least it's not being observed. Now. If we talk about it with. We're bringing it out into the open as something that needs to be solved. But now that we've observed it.

Yeah, it.

The result changes because we're observing it. So in that sense, you have your partner saying, well, I know now that he knows that I want this hug, but if he now hugs me, it now feels like he's only doing it because we had this conversation. She's now getting the results she wanted, but not. But how she wants it has changed because of the observation. And I think it's a really good point that at some point we have to get past that feeling of, I said it, and now I'm getting it. But now I don't like getting it because I've said it. We have to just go. Every relationship gets better through us learning more and more and more about how to please each other. And it is. If someone loves you enough to do the thing that matters for you, then that's a beautiful thing in and of itself.

Yeah. It's like, initially, I find it really awkward giving her a hug, but now. Now I like it. It's really nice.

Yeah.

You know, I would do it spontaneously.

Yeah.

Consistency builds that behavior. It's like you go to the gym way more than I do. It's become a habit for you. It's become a thing that you enjoy. Maybe at the start, you had to use discipline and willpower to push yourself to go to the gym, but you probably don't have to use all those forces anymore. And now you actually quite enjoy working out.

Yeah.

So I think it's the same with all this relationship stuff as well.

I have a question for you about kids, but before we do that, I want to make sure that everyone understands the value of Ali's book because you're. It's funny. You brought a copy of your book today, and I was genuinely like, do I get to keep this copy? And I suspect I don't. It's the only copy you have on you.

I was like, physical copy.

I was like, I can't, because I've been waiting to read this book. You. I think I. The book is called Feel Good Productivity, how to Do More of what Matters to you. And I've. You may not know this, but since you and I met and we've become friends, but since we met, I. I was really stunned by how enjoyably you seemed to go through life and the things you do. And it's interesting that you ended up that this was the book you were writing, because I had no idea you were writing this book about how to actually enjoy the process of what you're doing more and how to use productivity in a way that allows you to actually enjoy what you're doing more instead of just mindlessly getting more done. And I, I really relate to that idea because I feel like I've gone through my entire life stressed, and perhaps not sometimes on the verge of burnout, but often just. Just doing so many things. Often things that I told myself I really wanted in my life and wanted to do that career or wanted to build that kind of business or help people in the way that I do or whatever, but doing it all unenjoyably and, and I think I felt like a lot of my life was something that I looked back on with great affection but didn't enjoy it while I was in it. And I saw you as someone who seemed to be, at least from the outside, more naturally enjoying what you were doing more.

Yeah.

And I'm really excited that you put this in a book because I'm, I'm. I've been on this path of trying to unwire those parts of me that try to make everything stressful all the time because it's so hardwired into me. And it has been my whole life since I can remember. It's always been the way I've operated is look for the next thing to be worried about, look for the next thing to be stressed about, look for the next thing to be anxious about. And I've had to do a lot of work on myself to get to a better place with that, but I still have a long way to go. But I'm. I suspect you will say that this book will help a lot with that.

I hope so. Yeah. Yeah. When, When I started, I sort of accidentally became a bit of a productivity expert because over the last six years I was making YouTube videos, sharing tips on how to get into medical school and how to study for exams. And then I was working full time as a doctor and building my business on the side. People just kept asking me, hey, how are you so productive? And through a bunch of, like, I had a couple of periods of burnout where I realized that, you know, the attitude of just working harder and discipline and grit and all that crap, it only really gets you so far. But when I was working full, you know, 60 hours a week as a doctor in the UK, the National Health Service, understaffed, under resourced, and then getting home and just not having any, any, any energy at all to work on my YouTube channel, which was the thing I was really passionate about. And not having energy to give to my friends and family and stuff, that started to feel really bad. And I'm very grateful that I came across some, like, studies in the field of positive psychology that talked about how actually, if you find a way to make the process of something feel good, you become more productive at doing the thing, you become more creative, you become less stressed, you get more energy to give to your work, but also to give to the rest of your life. And so the last few years has been. I've been kind of experimenting on myself to figure out, okay, you know, if you speak to anyone who's like, old and successful, they always say the journey is more important than the destination. So given that I know that that's what they say, why don't I just try and live like that as much as possible? And one of the. This is kind of a bit of a tangent, but there's a really cool experimental method that sociologists use to study happiness. So one way of studying happiness is by giving people surveys of like, hey, how happy are you? On a scale of 1 to 10? And how much joy did you experience in the last week by these sort of surveys? But another really cool way to measure how happy someone is with their life is they give them, like these pager type things. I think these days it's an app on your phone, and a few times a day they will give a notification and they will say they'll just ask a simple question. And the question will be, if you could, would you choose to fast forward to the end of your current experience? So if you're driving, would you choose. If you're on a flight, would you choose to, you know, skip time? If you're at work, would you choose to get to the end of the day?

It's like it was crafted by Eckhart himself.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And they see what proportion of someone's life would they choose to fast forward? And if someone would fast forward a lot, like most people would fast forward most of their workday. And I would have fast forwarded my workday back when I was working as a doctor. I wouldn't anymore because I found the thing that I really enjoy to do. And so I have this kind of process running in my mind a lot, which is anytime I feel a bit, you know, I've got to do this. A bit of a grind, I think, would I choose to fast forward this? And if the answer is yes, then I think, okay, well, I Can't fast forward it because I live in the real world, but let me find a way to approach it in a different way so that I wouldn't choose to fast forward it. Let me try and find 10% more enjoyment in this task than I'm doing. So even if I'm getting through boring Ass Admin, there's like a bunch of emails and messages that need. That need replying to, or a bunch of forms for HMRC that need filling or whatever. That's the UK's IRS. I think to myself, how do I find a way to make this just a little bit more enjoyable? And usually most people, if you ask yourself, what would this look like if it were fun? You could probably come up with a few things. You know, three of the things we talk about in the book are play, power, and people. If we can approach anything in the spirit of play, if we can approach anything in a way that makes us feel powerful or empowered to do it, or if we can approach anything in a way that involves other people, that usually makes anything, however boring or grim, feel way better, and it makes us more productive. And so when Penguin approached me three years ago being like, hey, do you want to write a book about productivity? I was like, sure. Interesting. I was like, I've never written a book. They were like, what's been the one secret to your success? I was like, oh, it's easy. I found a way to make things fun. And they were like, oh, write a book about that. No one's talking about that. That's really interesting. And so the book has some actionable stuff. It's got some scientific evidence, it's got some cool stories. And what I hope is that people who read it can take away even just like, one or two things, one or two ideas that you can apply to your own life to make anything you're doing feel more enjoyable. Because, yes, you'll be more productive, but you'll also realize that that's not the point. The point is to actually enjoy life.

That's amazing. And for anyone who's trying to find it right now in your browser, it's called Feel Good Productivity. Is it best that they go to the website direct for it or.

I think by the time this will be out, it'll be on Amazon, it'll be in Barnes, it'll be everywhere.

Okay, thanks, Frost. Yeah, go grab a copy from Barnes and Noble, Apple, Amazon. But everything Ali does is so practical and so insightful. I'm literally, Ali's sending me a copy of the book and the first chance I get, I'm going to be reading this cover to cover for myself. I'm curious how you would apply what you've learned and put into this book into someone who's single and really wants to find a relationship and is trying to enjoy the journey there more than they are right now. Because it has just become such a slog and it's become so associated with negative emotions. Rejection, feeling like they keep meeting the wrong people, feeling like they're treading water, never getting anywhere. Maybe. Maybe it's helpful for you to look at it through the lens of if you were suddenly single and trying to enjoy the journey there. I don't know. But when you think of the average person that is out there single right now, whether they're in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and there's no way of knowing when the result is gonna come, how could you apply what's in this book to enjoying the process more before you found the relationship?

Oh, man, what a good question. I could not even begin to imagine giving advice to anyone about this. But I can imagine if I were. If I were in that position myself, what I'd be doing. So if I were in that position, what I'd be doing is really focusing on step one with all this productivity stuff is to really know what you want. And this is so hard to do. And I know that you've got stuff about this. If you don't know what you want, then any route will get you there, and then you'll end up sort of in a bit of a whatever. So whenever I coach people about anything, like growing the business or growing the YouTube channels or being more productive or getting better grades, it's like, what is the destination that we're trying to go towards? Now? That's not to say that we are fixated on one specific destination. So in the world of, I don't know, a business, sure, you might be aiming for, I don't know, tripling your revenue or something, but you're not fixated on that in that if it didn't happen, you're not going to be super depressed, but you at least know what the direction is, you know where you're going. And the point of setting a goal is to be able to know. To be able to know, are we on the right path? So in the dating thing, if I were single, I'd be thinking, okay, what do I want here? What I want is a committed relationship. And what that looks like is to go on, I don't know, a few dates with someone who I can see long term potential with. And then maybe by, I don't know, date five or six, I'll pop the question to be like, hey, how would you feel about this continuing? How do you feel about being exclusive? All of that, all of that fun stuff. So then I'd be figuring out, okay, that's the destination. The destination is to find a romantic partner to spend the rest of my life with. What is the plan? And there's a concept that I really love. I don't know who it's from, but it's basically where you figure out what are the top three to five chess moves that I need to make in order to have a reasonable chance of hitting my goal. So if my goal was to get into a lasting romantic relationship, one of the big things that I would need to do is go on at least two dates a week. Number two, have the plan. I need to understand my numbers. So there's this, there's a good quote, which is success is a numbers game, which kind of has two meanings. It has one meaning in the sense of, for example, if you're trying to get hench, you've got to put in the reps, you've got to put in the reps of going to the gym. If you're trying to build a YouTube channel, you've got to put in the reps, you've got to put in the numbers of making videos. Similarly, you've got to put in the numbers of going on these dates. But number two, you have to understand your own numbers. And this is where people get really like, oh, I don't like doing this. It's like, you've got to understand how many people did you swipe, swipe on? How many of them responded? How many people did you message of those? How many responded? How many converted into dates? Most people listening to this are pretty intelligent and can use a spreadsheet, like put it, make a Google sheet and just like write down the numbers. Because when you have the numbers, no one else needs to see the numbers. You're not going to parade them on like Facebook or Instagram or anything. But you at least understand, you're like, okay, cool. Then you can figure out what are the areas that I need to work on? What actions do I need to take to improve the results, ie, the numbers. So if I was only getting enough swipes to go on one date every three weeks and my goal is two dates every week, clearly there's a problem. It means that the process I'm using to land these dates is not working, which is fine. So let's fix the process. Let's drill down into what it is. Let's optimize the dating profile. Depending on how much money I have, I would hire a dating coach because, again, this is the most important area of my life. Spending money on this is way more important than spending money on a new car or a new outfit or a new whatever the thing might be. Hire a dating coach. Get specific, actionable feedback from the target market. So the way I actually. As a bit of an aside, the way I actually connected with Jane, my. My now girlfriend, we knew each other from university, but we hadn't really spoken. And we kind of got talking a little bit about, like, work. And I was like, I've always had a crush on this girl. Let me just send her my dating profile just for feedback. And I sent her my dating profile for feedback because I was like, this is the person I'm really attracted to. It would be. It would be very useful for her to kind of give me some opinions on how my dating profile comes across to someone like her. And her perspective was really good in molding my dating profile because she was like, actually, when you say that thing, it kind of makes me feel that you're a bit of like, whatever. And that was super helpful. But my point being, get feedback on the thing. It's like. It's almost like if it were me, I'd be treating dating like I would my work. Most people put a lot of effort into their work. They're very meticulous, they're very planned, they're very organized. They've got the spreadsheets, they've got the databases. They know how to ask for feedback. They know how to give feedback. They know how to improve the things. Especially anyone working in sales and marketing, which is all about numbers. Anyone working in customer success, it's all about increasing customer satisfaction ratings. All of this stuff is measurable. And businesses have figured out that measuring things is super, super helpful. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't helpful because it costs so much money to measure things and to get the data streaming into the right places. Let's learn from the experiences of businesses and start measuring the shit out of this stuff.

And so how would you, in doing all of that, enjoy it more in the way that you do your work, which you seem very good at, what would you do? What would you do or tell yourself in all of that to try to enjoy that process?

Nice. That's a great question. For me, the main thing is play and Power. So those are the first two chapters of the book. Play is like, I need to. While I'm doing all this spreadsheetization and stuff, I'm going to try and approach this with a bit of a playful spirit. I'm going to not try and take it too seriously, but instead approach it sincerely. And this is a really nice quote from the philosopher Alan Watts, where it's this idea that if you play a board game with someone who takes it too seriously, it's a bit dull, it's a bit draining. It's not nice that they're taking it too seriously. If you play with someone who's just completely uncaring, it's also not that fun because you want them to be trying to. It's when you play with someone who's playing sincerely that that's where the fun starts. Like, yeah, okay, we can get into this, but we can recognize that it is just a game. So I'd be trying my best. And it's. This is easier said than done, but to approach this dating thing in the spirit of play. And this is kind of why I like spreadsheets in that sense. Because, for example, in video games, you have an experience bar, you have these stats, and you can level up in the stats, and if you, I don't know, kill a few monsters, you can get. You can. You can now go to level 10. And that speaks to this idea of power, which is that when we feel like we're getting better at a thing that's profoundly motivating, it feels really good to be improving, to be growing in a particular area. And so seeing the numbers improve is a source of motivation for people. This is why writers have, like, word counts. It's like they like seeing the word count go up and have word count targets. Because it feels good to hit my thousand words for the day, my 500 words for the day. And so what I always encourage people to do is like, what is your equivalent of the writer's word count? How can you track progress on this thing while treating it as a bit of a game, not taking it too seriously? It's not the end of the world if this doesn't work out. But if you set the right goal, have the right plan, and execute on it, there's no world in which it wouldn't work out. And even if it doesn't, you'll still probably feel really good in yourself to be like, you know what? I tried absolutely everything. I did all I could. It wasn't meant to be. And that's okay. But I'm pretty sure that if someone sets the right goal, takes the right action, and actually goes on two days a week and tries to reflect on them, things will work out. And the final part of my chess plan would be to read more about this area. I'd read your stuff because. Which is very good, sort of aimed at women around how to land these dates. Logan Urie's book How to Not Die Alone is amazing for this stuff. She is specifically a dating coach in her previous life and specializes in helping people find love. And a lot of it is about applying these principles that we'd use in the workplace of take an action, measure the result, reflect on it. Her whole thing is that after every date you want to be writing up some reflections on the date. How did it go? What was the person like? What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about them? Would you like to see them again? No one does this. People think of dating as like, oh, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna meet up with someone and hope for the best. But there is so much you can do before. There is some stuff you can do during. During you just kind of want to be yourself and vibe with it. And there's a decent amount of stuff you can do afterwards to optimize the process in a way that makes you more likely to get to the result. And then trying to feel good along the way is about kind of lowering the expectations in your mind and thinking, you know what this actually is not. Even though what I'm doing is trying to find someone, finding someone is not actually going to make me happy. If I'm not happy before I found someone, I'm not going to happy. I'm not going to be happy with that person. So let me focus on enjoying this process. Let me focus on working on myself. And when I find someone, there will be the cherry on top of the cake of my life rather than the cake itself.

Very good. I think the last thing I want to ask you is I have over the course of my life and still today, a whole mixture of both positive and negative associations with the idea of having kids. And I remember sitting with you and realizing you and I were not the same in this area. Yeah, you are like very chill when it comes to the idea of kids.

Yeah.

I feel like this is. This would be a good moment for me to play. Every guy out there that is like, has this push, pull relationship with it, that has inner conflict when it comes to the idea of having kids. And you, a person who just seems to be very aligned on this subject. So tell me why, from your point of view, it just does not feel like a. Like something that scares you.

Yeah. I'd love to get onto that. First of all, I'd love to hear, like, what is the conflict? Like, let's say you have kids. What. What, What. What are you scared of?

So much life change.

Okay.

So much responsibility.

Yep.

Feeling like there's never a break.

Yep.

That there is now a person there that every moment of the day may need you. That. The kind of claustrophobia of that.

Yeah.

And I suppose in some way, the feeling of not having done all of the things that I wanted to do, like, you know, having worked so hard for so long that I haven't maybe done all the travel that I would like to do. I haven't shared enough time with Audrey in our lives and doing things that we might want to do together as a couple.

Yeah.

That there might be more experiences to have before that happens.

Yeah.

It's. I suppose it's some combination of all of that, which there's a. As I say it all. I recognize there is a kind of theme going on there, but. What. Yeah. Why do you don't have those things?

I do to an extent, but I override them with two sort of things. Again, this is not original by any means. I've just taken this from books and people that I've talked to over the years. The first one is that a lot of the fears around having kids are the same as the fears around starting a business. And if you ask kids, you know, you've got your own business, you think about it all the time. It, in a way, creates constraints on your life because you can't just do whatever you want. You have to show up for your retreats and for the zoom calls and all that kind of stuff. You've got a lot of responsibility. You never switch off. You're thinking about this thing a lot. If you were to go back and just get a normal job, would you be like, actually, Matthew, you should have started the business. You should have just got a normal job? Probably not.

Yeah, of course not.

Yeah. You've got a business. Love it. Like, I've never met a business owner who says, you know, I'm. I regret starting this business. There is something about investing in something that is your own that feels ridiculously fulfilling. And you've experienced that in the world of business. Neither of us have kids. We don't know what it will be. But the. So that was. That's kind of.

That's why? That's why I think your view is important.

Yeah.

Because there will be a lot of people out there listening to this podcast who are dealing with someone who has very conflicted feelings.

Yeah.

About having kids. So this, your argument would almost be less relevant to me if you already had kids.

Yeah.

Because it's. That's not what a lot of people out there are dealing with. They're dealing with people who, like me, have mixed associations with the idea. So I think it's useful.

Yeah.

Like, even if there's guys listening to this podcast and they are more like me, where they're like, there's elements of it that really scare them, freak them out, or make them worry about how much their life is going to change it. Like me listening to you, because I do this all the time in my life. I find people who believe different things than I do, and I asked them why. Why they. Why do you have different associations with this? Because I might. Your associations with it might infect me, and I might start to go, oh, my God, I've been overthinking this whole thing. Or I've been thinking about this in a really unproductive or negative or unrealistic way. So I think it's useful to hear from someone who has different associations, whether you're a woman listening to this and you're dealing with someone like that, or whether you're a guy listening to this. And you need a different way of thinking. So. So. Yeah, continue.

So, number one, it's sort of like starting a business, and you don't regret starting a business, even though it takes a lot of those boxes of responsibility. And number two, one of the core findings in a lot of studies on happiness and stuff is that we are terrible at predicting what will make us happy. Like, really, really, really bad at it. Like, we cannot predict. Like, oh, when this thing happens, I will be happier because of abc. Similarly, we are very difficult. It's very hard for. It's easier for us to predict what will make us sad. Like, anyone can imagine being in a job that they really don't like, but it's just. It's very hard to project into the future and predict with any reasonable degree of certainty what will make us happy. The only thing we have is what's happened in the past and what other people who are like us have done in the future. So what's happened in the past is like, I think for you, at least for me, the business thing is the main thing. I'm like, I've invested in this thing. It's a responsibility. I never stopped thinking about it. I'm always. It keeps me up at night thinking about this business, but I wouldn't change it for the world. Okay, that's interesting. And so the next step is I speak to people who have kids and I ask, to what extent do you regret having kids? Approximately 0% of people who have kids regret having the kids. Just like approximately 0% of people who have a business regret having the business. And when I speak to people who have kids, what they say is, yeah, I'm not trying to speak to, like, my female friends who were new. They wanted to be a mum from day one. Like, that's not helpful for me because I'm like, I'm speaking to the sort of entrepreneur, tech bro who is. Has no emotions, is fully rational. And I now know lots of them who now have kids. And they all say that kids unlock a new joy. I did not even. I never thought I'd be the kind of guy who'd enjoy being a father, but now that I am, I'm like, oh, my God, screw my work. Like, I can't wait to get home at like, 4:30pm to spend time with the kids. You know, my work is still important to me, but it's helped put it into perspective and has realized. Helped me realize that there are far more important things in life. And, oh, man, like, the joy I feel when this little kid smiles at me is like. It's completely indescribable. And so I'm like, cool. Given that people who are like me have that kind of response to kids, it's a reasonable bet that I will also have that kind of response to kids. So there's no fear. It's kind of rational, actually. There was a guy I was having dinner with. His name's Nat. He's had. He's like 28. He's like my age, and he's had two kids already. And I asked him, like, you know, you and your wife had kids pretty young. I think he's like 29. And he was like, yeah, it was simple. You know, we spoke to people and we realized that no one ever thinks they had too many kids. But sometimes. But a lot of people say that they wish they had one more. And we spoke to a bunch of people, and that was always a pattern. So we thought, well, if no one regrets having the number of kids they have, and a lot of people wish they had one more, that means we should get started early. Let's go. So this was during the pandemic they eloped, they got married, started having kids, and now they've got two kids. And they're like, yeah, that's great because.

So funny.

So I think a lot of these optimizer type people, you just project it forward, speak to people who are in that position, and reverse engineer what you should therefore do based on what they. They wish they had done. So that's how I think about kids. It's a bit of a weird way.

To think about it, but I think it's a really useful framing. And I think that it's like we've done a public service if we just cut the clip of you talking about why you shouldn't feel negatively about the idea of having children. And we just, we just show people that anytime you're struggling, just listen to Ali talk about having children.

Yeah, we can, we can do another episode once I have kids and we can be like, oh, my fucking. I can't believe I said that.

Yeah, you're running this bloody experiment first, man. This is. I love talking to you and I, you know, as, you know, whether it's in front of a microphone or whether it's just at lunch, it's like, it's just always fascinating to hear what you think. And I just loved. I watched that video of you today. Everyone go and check out Ali's new one. He'll be one of his newest videos that you see. It's. What's the video called?

It's called Everything's Changing Life Update.

It's such a great video, man.

Really. Oh, thanks.

And I just, I want to honor you because I, I feel like I watched that video and I was just like, this is someone who, you do synthesize information and kind of output it for us in ways that are really interesting. But what I really admire about you most is that you, you pick your own path, you figure out what's right for you. And I feel like you're doing that more and more all the time. You're still a very young guy and you're feeling your way through it in real time. But you, you do think for yourself and you think about the kind of life that you want to have and, you know, go watch this video, everyone, because it's so. It's such a great. One of the key insights of the video is it's okay to leave money on the table. And it's really an insight about how you, you can make choices for yourself about what's important. You don't need to follow what everyone else is saying is the thing to go and attain in life because that might not make you happy and it might not live to the best. It might not lead to you living the best life by your standards, on your terms. And. And I love the choices you're making right now. I think the fact that you're traveling around and choosing to do YouTube at your cadence is just, it's such a great example of you experimenting with your own path and not just trying to keep up with everybody else and living a memetic life. And I can't wait to learn more from everything that you do in the years to come.

Really appreciate it and thank you so much for having me on and for inviting me into your house. This place is sick. If anyone gets a chance to visit Matthew's house, this place is so cool.

Well, you are welcome back anytime, sir. Yeah, as long as I get my.

Book, man, I should move to la. Yeah, we're doing a little like book wrapping session next Wednesday where we're putting them on little boxes and like addressing them to people and putting personalized messages and sending them out.

So I can't wait. It's going to be on my.

You'll get one.

Hopefully enjoy some Christmas reading with your book. The book for everyone out there is called Feel Good Productivity. Go grab a copy. Feel Good Productivity. How to do more of what matters to you. And I. I'm a fan of Ali. I know you will be too, and I look forward to getting your feedback on the book. Ali, thank you for being here.

Thanks, man.

I appreciate.

Sa.