Why working harder isn't working: feel-good productivity

Many people believe that the longer they work and the busier they look, the more productive they must be. So when results are disappointing, the answer seems obvious: work harder. Stay up later, cut out the breaks, push through.

It rarely works for long. You end up tired, behind and fed up, and the hours you add are not very productive ones.

Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal, a doctor turned YouTuber, makes a different argument. We usually treat feeling good as the reward for getting work done. Abdaal turns that around: feeling good is what makes the work happen in the first place. When you have energy, when the task in front of you feels manageable, and when your routine is one you can keep up, productivity follows much more easily than it does from willpower alone.

The book is in three parts: energise, unblock and sustain. The first is about having the energy to work at all. The second is about clearing away what stops you starting. The third is about keeping it going for weeks and months, not just a few good days.

Part 1: Energise

The first part is about setting yourself up with the right energy to be productive. That does not mean drinking more coffee or forcing yourself to stay awake. It means understanding how your energy works, looking after it, and matching it to your most important work.

1. Look after your body first

Your mind runs on your body. If you are short of sleep, living on snacks and barely moving, every task feels heavier, and your ability to concentrate and remember drops.

Sleep, a balanced diet and regular exercise are the foundations. They are easy to overlook because none of them feels like study. But without them you are fighting an uphill battle, and no amount of willpower makes up for poor health in the long run. A student who sleeps well and revises for an hour will usually get more done than one who revises for two hours on four hours of sleep.

Try this: pick the weakest of the three for you and make one small change this week, such as a fixed bedtime on school nights, a proper breakfast, or a walk after school. If sleep is the problem, our note on night habits that are ruining your sleep is a good place to start.

2. Do hard work at your high-energy times

Your energy is not the same all day. Some people are sharpest in the morning. Others take a while to warm up and do their best thinking in the afternoon or evening.

Whichever you are, it makes sense to spend your best hours on your hardest work. If you are a morning person, tackle the difficult Maths problems or the essay plan first, and leave easier jobs like tidying your notes for later. If your energy peaks in the evening, plan your day so the demanding work lands then. Using your sharpest hours to scroll through messages and your most tired ones for revision gets it exactly the wrong way round.

Try this: for a few days, jot down how alert you feel in the morning, afternoon and evening. Once you can see your pattern, move your hardest subject into your best slot. Our note on waking up early and actually being productive has ideas if you want to make more of your mornings.

3. Run an energy audit

Some activities leave you feeling drained, and others recharge you. An energy audit means stepping back and noticing which is which.

You might realise that an hour on social media leaves you flat and restless, while a walk outside or a chat with a friend leaves you feeling better than before. Abdaal encourages us to do more of what boosts our energy and less of what drains it. It sounds simple, but most of us never stop to check, so the draining habits carry on by default.

Try this: at the end of each day for a week, write down one thing that gave you energy and one thing that took it away. At the end of the week, choose one energiser to do more of and one drain to cut back.

Part 2: Unblock

Even when you have plenty of energy, you can still find yourself stuck, putting work off without quite knowing why. The second part of the book is about finding the mental and emotional blocks that get in the way, and removing them.

4. Break big tasks into small steps

One of the biggest blocks is feeling overwhelmed. When you look at everything you have to do, it is easy to freeze, unsure where to begin. And when you do not know where to begin, you tend not to begin at all.

The fix is to stop looking at a big project as one big task. “Revise Science” is a fog. “Read pages 12 to 15 and write five questions on them” is a step you can take right now. Each small step is far less intimidating, and finishing one gives you the momentum to take the next.

Try this: take the task you have been avoiding longest and write down its first three steps, each small enough to do in under half an hour. Then do only the first one. Our note on beating procrastination has more ways to get started.

5. Aim for done, not perfect

Perfectionism is another common block. If you feel your work has to be perfect before you can move on, every task becomes a test you might fail, and the easiest way to avoid failing is not to start.

The way through is to accept that good enough is often exactly right. A finished essay you can improve beats a perfect opening paragraph and nothing else. Aiming for completion rather than perfection makes it easier to finish tasks and keep moving, and you can always come back to polish something once it exists.

Try this: before you start your next piece of work, decide what “good enough” looks like and set a time limit. When you reach it, stop and hand it in or move on. Our note on stop starting, start finishing goes further into letting go of perfect.

6. Use the two-minute rule

The two-minute rule is a well-known technique from David Allen’s Getting Things Done: if a task will take two minutes or less, do it straight away.

Small tasks are easy to put off because they never feel urgent. But a pile of them (a form to return, a message to a teacher, a worksheet to file) takes up space in your head and quietly adds to the feeling of being overwhelmed. Clearing them as they come keeps the pile from forming, and the small win gives you a bit of momentum to carry into bigger work.

Try this: next time a tiny task comes up, such as packing your bag for tomorrow or replying to a group chat about a project, do it on the spot instead of adding it to your list. Our note on atomic habits uses a different two-minute rule, for starting hard things, which works well alongside this one.

Part 3: Sustain

The last part of the book is about keeping your productivity going over the long term. It is one thing to feel motivated for a few days. It is quite another to keep your energy and focus over weeks, months and years. The key idea here is that consistency matters more than intensity. An hour a day, every day, beats a seven-hour cram on Sunday followed by a week of nothing.

7. Batch similar tasks together

Jumping from one task to another feels busy, but every switch costs mental energy. Each time you change tasks, your brain has to drop one thing and pick up another, and it takes a while to get back into the flow.

Batching means grouping similar tasks and doing them together in one focused block. Do all your short written answers in one sitting, then all your Maths practice in another, instead of hopping between them every ten minutes. The fewer switches you make, the more focused and efficient you will be.

Try this: look at tonight’s homework and group it into two or three batches by type. Work through one batch at a time, with your phone out of reach. Our note on studying with 100% focus has more on protecting a focused block.

8. Check in on how it is going

No routine is right forever. Your timetable changes, exams come and go, and something that worked last term might not work now. Regular reflection lets you notice what is and is not working, and adjust before you burn out.

This does not need to be complicated. The point is to look at your habits and routines every so often and ask whether they still fit, rather than carrying on until you are exhausted and only then realising something has to change.

Try this: set aside ten minutes at the end of each week to ask yourself three questions. What went well? What felt like a struggle? What one thing will I change next week? Our note on effective planning shows how to build this kind of review into your plans.

Feel good first

Energise, unblock and sustain fit together. Energy gives you the fuel to work, unblocking clears the way, and sustaining keeps you going without burning out. Put together, they let you get more done in a way that feels good, which is what makes it last.

You do not need to change everything at once. Pick the part that feels most like your problem right now. If you are always tired, start with energy. If you have the energy but cannot get going, start with unblocking. If you start strong and then fade, start with sustaining. One small change, kept up, will do more than a burst of working harder.