Confronting my CEO coach - Eric Partaker

This episode delves into the multifaceted role of a CEO coach, exploring Eric Partaker's unique approach to coaching, his background, and the significant impact of life-altering personal experiences on his professional philosophy.

1. Eric Partaker's CEO coaching involves a holistic approach, emphasizing improvement in business, leadership, and personal life.
2. The importance of resilience and adaptability in leadership is highlighted through Eric’s personal anecdotes and professional experiences.
3. Eric’s philosophy underscores the significance of aligning professional pursuits with personal health and relationships to prevent burnout.
4. The conversation sheds light on the common challenges faced by CEOs, including the tendency to prioritize work over personal health and relationships.
5. Strategies for effective time management and productivity, such as intentional planning and mindfulness practices, are discussed to help listeners apply these lessons in their own lives.

1. Introduction

Ali introduces Eric Partaker, discussing his role as a CEO coach and their personal coaching relationship. The episode sets the stage by outlining the structure and main themes of the discussion. Ali Abdaal: "Welcome to the podcast, Eric, and thank you for being my CEO coach."

2. Eric's Background and Coaching Philosophy

Eric shares his journey from McKinsey to Skype, and then to CEO coaching, detailing his three-pillared coaching method aimed at scaling businesses and personal growth. Eric Partaker: "If you want to scale the business, you need to focus on leadership and personal peak performance simultaneously."

3. Personal Challenges and Transformations

Eric recounts a near-death experience that reshaped his approach to life and work, emphasizing the importance of health and relationships alongside professional achievements. Eric Partaker: "That experience on the plane made me realize the need to balance my professional ambitions with my health and personal life."

4. Practical Advice for CEOs

The discussion pivots to practical strategies for CEO growth, from operational tips to philosophical insights on balancing work demands with personal fulfillment. Eric Partaker: "It's not just about business metrics; it’s also about cultivating personal well-being and strong relationships."

5. Conclusion and Takeaways

Ali and Eric summarize the key lessons from the episode, reiterating the importance of comprehensive development for CEOs and offering final thoughts on sustainable success. Ali Abdaal: "This conversation highlights how critical it is for leaders to nurture all aspects of their lives to truly succeed."

1. Reflect on Priorities: Regularly assess whether your current focus aligns with your long-term personal and professional goals.
2. Implement Structured Planning: Use tools like time blocking to manage your day effectively, ensuring time for both work and personal activities.
3. Cultivate Resilience: Develop strategies to handle stress and setbacks, keeping in mind Eric's experiences and recovery.
4. Embrace Continuous Learning: Stay open to new ideas and approaches, particularly in leadership and personal development.
5. Maintain Physical and Mental Health: Prioritize your health as the foundation for professional performance and personal happiness.

In part 2 of my conversation with CEO coach Eric Partaker, he shares his three-pillar approach to scaling companies, handling unexpected challenges, transitioning from founder to CEO, and the importance of networking in building a successful business. He also provides actionable tips for strategic thinking, time management, and overcoming resistance. Let me know what you think in the comments!

People

Ali Abdaal, Eric Partaker

Companies

McKinsey and Company, Skype

Books

None mentioned.

Guest Name(s):

Eric Partaker

Content Warnings:

None

Ali Abdaal
By the way, in case you haven't heard, my brand new book, feel good productivity is now out. It is available everywhere books are sold, and it's actually hit the New York Times and also the Sunday Times bestseller list. So thank you to everyone who's already got a copy of the book. If you've read the book already, I would love a review on Amazon. And if you haven't yet checked it out, you may like to check it out.

It's available in physical format and also ebook and also audiobook. Everywhere books are sold. Alrighty, Eric, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. So you are a CEO coach, and you are my CEO coach.

In fact, let's start with what does a CEO coach do? How did you end up in this rarefied position of being Ali Abdallah's CEO coach? So most CEO coaching involves doing podcasts. Nice.

Eric Partaker
Right? So, I mean, I got into this position, John Lennon had this great quote, life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. So it's like things have just unfolded in a weird and unusual way. I started off as a consultant with McKinsey and company. For those that don't know McKinsey and company, it's basically one of the top strategy consulting firms in the world and then was part of the early team at Skype.

So helping build that. This is back when we actually used to use Skype long time ago. And then we had an exit to eBay for a few billion dollars. Built a chain of restaurants in the UK after that and moved down to Portugal, even though I'm here with you in London right now. So moved down to Portugal about two and a half years ago.

And these days I work with about close to about 30 founders. CEO's helping them scale their companies. And in terms of like, what do you do? Well, so I take a three pillar, as you know, a three pillared approach to scale. So I always say, if you want to scale the company or the business, you have to look at that as the hardware.

And if the hardware is going to operate correctly, you need to code the software correctly. And the software are two other pillars to scale in parallel to the business. And that's the leadership of the person at the helm. And then also them, just as a person, are they performing to their peak potential? And there is an a to b journey in each of those pillars.

So in the company pillar, it's to help the CEO get the company from a startup to a scale up. In the leadership pillar, it's to go from founder to CEO. And then in that self pillar, it's to go from your current to your best self. Nice. And those are the plans that we work against.

Right. But the last thing that I'll say is things rarely go to plan for most people. And Mike Tyson, he had that great quote. Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth. I think the real benefit of CEO coaching, really, like any kind of coaching, is just the general support and the accountability that it provides.

Because there's tons of stuff that you and I talk about that weren't part of the plan that just come into the picture. A new idea that you might have or something like that isn't going as you would like. And so the relationship is organically driven in that sense. How much money did you make when Skype sold to eBay? Well, yeah, that's.

I don't publicly disclose figures like that, but it was a life changing. It was a life changing event to. The point that you didn't have to work again. Ish. Ish.

Ali Abdaal
If you. Yeah, yeah. Damn. Yeah. So why did you decide to keep working?

Eric Partaker
I think, you know, like, once you start, once you get into the habit of, like, building and creating things, then, you know, like, even right now, when we moved down to Portugal, the idea was like, semi retire and not, you know, do not do anything. But, like, already. Now it's like I'm into the whole mix of, like, building, you know, something new again. It's just the act of building and creating, you know, building teams, you know, going for goals. It's just fun.

Ali Abdaal
Just fun. I mean, you can totally relate. Yeah. It's something to pass the time. Playing video games gets boring after a while.

Yeah. Because otherwise, like, what else are you going to do? What are you going to use your time for? Yeah. Nice.

You start off your book and three alarms with an interesting story. I wonder if you can tell us that. Interesting story. The interesting story. Yes.

Eric Partaker
So this is like 2010. I'm on a return flight to the UK, and shortly after the plane has reached its cruising altitude, I could sense that something's not right. My left arm goes completely numb. It's ice cold. Feel a ton of pressure in my chest.

I start to sweat. Buddy of mine sitting next to me, I asked him, Louis. I was like, louis, can you feel my arm? He's like, oh, my God. It feels like it's been hanging in a meat locker.

Because I thought, am I just feeling, is this actually happening? And flight attendant comes rushing over, sees that I'm really unwell, asks if there's a doctor on board the plane. Luckily for me, there was one. Doctor rushes over, does the whole vital sign check, and just says, we need to land the plane immediately. He's having a heart attack.

So, yeah, that's kind of the thing you want to hear, like, when you're 35,000ft up in the air. Obviously, it felt like an eternity for the plane to land. I was terrified that I thought my. I could feel that. I mean, I could definitely feel like the beat was way.

It felt very faint to me, so I could feel like my heart was struggling. And I was so worried that it was just obviously gonna stop completely before we landed, get to emergency, land the plane. There's an ambulance already waiting there on the Runway. You would know this better than me, but I think it's nitrates or something that they administered to increase blood flow to the heart or relax the tissues or. I don't know exactly what it does, but I did feel better from that.

And then the paramedic, I remember I looked up into the eyes of the paramedic looking down at me. I said, please don't let me die. I have a five year old son. And he said, just relax. I think we got you in time.

And I rushed me to a hospital. I recovered in the hospital. The next day, I woke up and realized I needed to change my life, basically, because I had. Prior to that point, I'd always been obsessed with peak performance, this whole idea of reaching your full potential. But I just approached it in such an unhealthy way.

I was doing hundred hour work weeks at McKinsey and company during the time helping build Skype when I was building the restaurant chain. I had some times, for example, where I would literally work. It could be two, three days straight with no, or virtually no sleep. And that might. That could be, like, a regular occurrence, and.

Yeah. And my body was like, yeah, you're not invincible. So that was a wake up call. So you thought you needed to change your life. What else happened?

Ali Abdaal
I've heard a bunch of stories from people who have had near death experiences, and they say that it's sort of like your life begins afresh. What are the changes? Did you start to see in yourself after that experience? Yeah. So it wasn't like a change immediately, but I knew I had to change.

Eric Partaker
I mean, the thing that I focused on, like, first and foremost, was just trying to get my health in order. I wasn't sleeping as much as I should be, as much as I should have been. My eating was, like, all over the place. I wasn't doing the basic stuff, like going to the gym as much as I should have been. So I focused there and I thought I was kind of getting that all dialed in correctly.

And then, you know, it wasn't long after when my wife said she was going to leave me, and I was like, oh, crap. So I still haven't gotten this fixed. And, you know, her thing was, she's like, you're here, but you're not really here. You know, you're just kind of like, in your own world. And, you know, there was no way with everything that she, like, I wasn't going to let that happen.

I wasn't going to let. So then I started to really dial in, like, being a lot more present at home, basically. And then this. You talked about the book the three alarms. This model for me emerged where I knew work was important.

Obviously, it was so important that I was over tracking on it and I got into that whole situation. Health is obviously important because it was almost lights out. And when I thought it was going to be lights out, the first words out of my mouth related to relationships and that I said, please don't let me die. I have a five year old son. So I really dwelled and thought about that and realized that if we take an 80 20 approach to life improvement, 20% of the areas that we could focus on for 80% of the improvement that we're seeking, there's this three legged stool.

And if we really focus on showing up at our best on the health front, on the work front, and on the home relationships front. And I think that leads to a. A life well lived or a better life, basically. Work, health and home. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
Nice. And so, like, why is it called the three alarms? It's just a hook to. So the three alarms relates to. So at one point, I literally.

Eric Partaker
So I thought of my day as segments. Right. So you have the morning when I tend to work out. So that's mostly about health for me. Then you got the work day and then you got home.

And I thought, what if I came up with an identity that represents me at my best, the superhero version of me at each of those times a day. So healthfront came up with this phrase, world fitness champion. Not that I am one, but that's kind of the version of me that I want to show up at the gym. World's best CEO for when the workday starts, and then world's best husband and father and I took those as labels and created three alarms on my phone. So one to go off in the morning to remind me, who is it?

What version of me is going to the gym? One to remind me how to show up during my work day. And then that last one, world's best husband and father goes off at the end of the day to prompt the question, how would the world's best husband and father walk through that door right now? And so the idea with the alarms is they're to help you live a more intentional life. Because I think a lot of the times we go through things without intentionality and we end up being a little bit more reactionary than we should be.

Ali Abdaal
Nice. So with the CEO's that you work with, what do you see as the, like, I guess people listening to this, and certainly this was my impression of CEO's and still is to an extent, you would think of a CEO as like someone who's got their shit together. Like, these guys are kind of dialed in with their health and their work and everything. But the other thing that comes to mind is someone who's just like really neglecting their family relationships. What have you seen have been the patterns of, I guess, disease amongst the, amongst the CEO's and me that you.

Eric Partaker
Coach the patterns of disease. So leprosy.

So the typical person that I coach is a workaholic or overtracks on the work front. And that will typically come at the price of or sacrificing health and key relationships. Um, that's the typical profile. And what I. The point I always try to drive home is like, look, I get that you want to optimize performance on the field of field of play, and the field of play is, say, business.

Um, but if you're going to do that, and if you're going to think of yourself as an athlete, then if we're going to optimize performance on the field of play, we have to optimize performance off the field of play as well. Um, and, um, you know, again, if this is athletics, you know, I'm not going to say, okay, Ali, here's the, you know, game schedule. I'll see you on game day, and that's it. As a coach, I need to make sure that you're showing up for all the in between stuff as well and that you're doing your best to show up at your best when it comes. So, yeah, I would say the disease, if we were to use that word, is that tendency to neglect the off the field of play stuff and over track on the feel the play.

Ali Abdaal
So then when people come to you and you to be like, hey, you know, you're the CEO coach. Like, and you're telling them, hey, let's think about your health and relationships. How does that land with people? Yeah. So first off, like, that's not how.

Yeah, let's talk about your love life. It doesn't land with people because that's not what I say. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's very similar to, like, how we started and how we, you know, started the whole conversation.

Eric Partaker
We have to look at the three pillars. And so it's like the scaling of the company is typically the tip of the spear for anyone that I work with. But for that to happen correctly, they need to be leading as well as they could. And then that last pillar is where we take that more holistic approach. So the self pillar is where I say, okay, look, let's make sure that the health is right, your key relationships are right.

But also there is a work component within that self pillar, too, but it's rather fundamental and timeless, whereas the other stuff is more specific, say, to their situation. So the work component within that self pillar is basic things that I know that you love as well, such as productivity, time management. How do you go about structuring your week? Some of the things that ended up being some of the very first things that we talked about when we started working together. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
In the leadership section of your three pronged method, you said the a to b transformation is from founder to CEO. What does that mean? What does that mean?

Eric Partaker
Okay, but let's just keep, like, the athletics analogy about, you know, our metaphor going. Cause it makes things easy to explain. So as a founder, that you might still be running onto the pitch or the field of play, and like, you might, you know, play a certain position, you know, you're keeping goal, or you're like striker midfield or something like that. That doesn't happen, though, in the Premier League. Right.

We never see the coach, like, running onto the field. And at that level, when you're trying to scale the company to bigger and greater things, you need to be able to stay on the sideline, have that team of all stars on the field, direct traffic, get them to play super well together so that they can win as many games as possible. And so as you transition from founder to CEO, you're doing less of the stuff directly yourself, which you probably. Maybe some things you can do to a very high degree, but you're probably jack of all, trading it in many senses, and not even doing a lot of the things at a very high degree. And that's triple for multiple reasons.

Necessity you know, lack of financial firepower at that point in time. So you're transitioning from that to, let's find the people who are truly world class in each of those areas. And if they're truly world class in each of the key areas that are going to make your business successful, they should easily outperform you in the same sense that the coach of a Premier League team or an NBA team. I couldn't even fathom the idea of going out onto the court or the pitch and actually playing the position better than any of the players. It would be like a ludicrous thought.

And that, personally, I think, is where you want to get to. It's like to have that true team of all stars. To continue the football analogy, some people often say that the players that got you to division one and two or League one and two are not the same players that will get you to the championship and not necessarily the same players that will get you to the premiership. Now, I find this idea quite distasteful because I have been operating with basically the same people for like six years now. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
What's your take on this? This kind of analogy around replacing team members as you go? Look at Satya Nadella. Right, with Microsoft, he's totally risen through the ranks from an employee to now. He's like CEO of the company.

Eric Partaker
I think both. You'll find both instances of both, you'll find people that do grow throughout the entire journey and continue to grow and develop, and then you'll find instances of people that don't make the cut, and then you need a change in the lineup. In one of the net books, I think it was Patty. What's her name? Patty mccord.

Ali Abdaal
Patty mcCord, yeah. The Netflix, Hr. I mean, fantastic. Powerful. Yeah.

Eric Partaker
The thing to keep in mind that makes the answer to that question or thought easy is what is it that you're building and you're building a team, right. You're not building a family. And her line is something along the lines of, families strive to stick together no matter what. Whereas great teams are optimized to win at all times. You can't get fired from your family.

And the way you determine whether or not a team should stay together is to what degree are they able to achieve the results that are being set by them or you, or in unison for their role as a team within the business? Or if the team is essentially just a company for the company, and as long as you're achieving your objectives and growing and developing, then the team is winning and succeeding and learning some stuff. Is sliding into place for me in my mind around when you and I first started working together, I was very anti goals. I wonder if you remember what that was like. Yeah, what was I.

There is so much stuff that was. I. Yeah, how was, how was. How was I two years ago as a. Well, yeah.

You're like, yeah. So there was definitely this resistance to goals thing. And so that was one thing that's changed also. I remember I said to you.

Ali Abdaal
You. Had a resistance to almost like, you felt like it was like, I don't know, evil or dirty or something to have, like, financial goals or targets. And I remember this thing about, I said, where do you want to take the company? Do you want to take it to 10 million in revenue, for example? And I remember the time you said, no, no, no, I don't need that.

Eric Partaker
It's fine. I just. I don't want to do that. And two, three, 4 million a year is fine. And of course, now it's like, no, we got to get the time.

And I think there's, like, a societal thing at work there, which is. And there's been lots of books written about this subject in recent years about people's relationship to money and being careful about what they attach their goals to, good or bad. There's nothing wrong with wanting to make a lot of money. There's nothing wrong with having a business that's going to hit certain financial targets. The way I look at it is like, again, using a sports analogy, it's like, it's a way, it's fun.

It's difficult to create a business to get up to 10 million a year in revenue. If you break that down by the numbers, I think it's only 0.4% of small and medium sized enterprises get to the 10 million a year higher goal. I think that's quite exciting because that basically means that that's roughly the equivalent of your odds of getting it becoming a professional sports player. You know, like, let's say you're in high school football in the US and you want to get into the NFL, and, you know, your chances of doing that end up. I think it's being like, slightly less than that, but depending on the sport that you choose.

My point is, is like the 10 million goal is roughly equivalent to making, you know, turning pro. So that's exciting. So, you know, you can have the goals around money to, because you want to make, you know, a lot of money, and that could be a goal, and that's okay. And you don't need to justify that to anybody. You can just want it because you just simply want the goal.

It's fine. Why? Because I want. Because that's what I want to do. Like, that's good enough.

Or you can tie it to the equivalent of winning an Olympic gold medal or something. And why does an Olympic athlete wanted to win Olympic gold? What? Do you love gold? It's like, no, it's like, why do you want to do it?

Because it's hard. Why is that important to you? Well, because it's hard. It's competitive. It's challenged.

It's difficult to do. Oh. So you have to show to the rest of the world that you can do difficult things. It's like, overcomplicated. It's like, it's okay to want to do difficult things.

And it's challenging, and it feels great when you do it. And yes, that means that probably some other people didn't do it and you did, and that can feel okay and good too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I've recently started to think of it like a video game in the sense that, you know, when I'm playing on the PlayStation, I will set it to very hard difficulty, not ultra hard because that's a bit too much.

Ali Abdaal
That requires too much grinding. I'm like, I don't play ultra hard difficulty, but playing on very hard difficulty is a good level of challenge. And, like, during the pandemic, my housemate would be like, what? You've been trying to take out that bandit camp for the last 4 hours. Like, what are you doing?

And I'm like, you don't get it. Like, each time I do, each time I have a go, like, I'm getting closer and I'm killing that person with stealth. And there's something about the challenge that feels really fun. Yeah. And then I had a period a few weeks ago where it was like a weekend.

I was in London. I had a dinner in the evening and had nothing to do in the daytime. I was thinking, okay, I can basically do whatever I want. And I decided to go to the local wework and tinker away on our productivity lab, like designs and graphics and stuff. And it just felt really fun.

It was like, this is what I choose to do on the weekends because it's really fun. And it's sort of like a video game where the points, the scoreboard is real money that you can use on real stuff, like a fancier apartment and, like, business class flights. That's pretty fucking sick. It's like you can't translate Call of Duty points into real money into real experiences. But you can translate the scoreboard on this video game of business into real experiences that buy your freedom.

That mean you can get a cleaner and outsource having to do your own laundry and you can fly business class. Like, what's not to love? Yeah, I've heard so many people, I don't even know if the study actually exists. Quote, some kind of study where it's been proven that beyond a certain level of income, there's not really significant improvements in happiness. And that hasn't been my experience.

Eric Partaker
So it's like, as I've become more and more successful throughout life and that's been roughly commensurate with earning more and more, life for me has gotten more fun and more rich in experience and more pleasurable. And I wouldn't trade that in, you know, to earn the whatever that study was referencing. Seventy five k a year or whatever. It is, you know? Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
I think for me, kind of my, my day to day happiness hasn't changed very much at all along different, like, levels of wealth. But it's just like, it's like right now I am doing the same stuff basically that I was doing five years ago. I sitting, I sit in, I sit in a room in front of a camera and I talk about stuff. It's just that it's a nicer room. The camera's nicer.

And the stuff I'm talking about is the fact that I was at a sort of mastermind in Paris yesterday or at this cool writer's retreat over the weekend, or I gave a talk for Google or something like that. It's like the experiences change and for me, the coolness of the experience changes, but it's fundamentally the same kind of thing. But I think it's kind of nice because when you play a video game, whether it's on easy, medium or hard or very hard, it's still the same video game at the end of the day. It's still that game of life or business. It's just that the rewards change.

You get slightly nicer gear, you get nicer weapons, and there's something really addictive and fun about upgrading your gear and getting new weapons to be able to take down a bigger monster. And if someone really looks at it, they'd be like, wait, you're acquiring this equipment to level up your character so that you can kill a monster to get more equipment, to level up your character so you can kill a bigger monster? That's exactly what I'm doing. But it's really fun to get that. And there's two things at work, right?

Eric Partaker
It's like you want to be constantly feeling challenge, and then the things that you need to be working on will need to increase over time and vary in nature as your skill and expertise develops for you to feel that constant challenge. But then there's also that compounding, accumulation feeling. And I don't mean from a wealth point of view, but I mean, so earlier today, we were talking about how cool it is that with what, you know, you're building with a business that there's so many different pieces to the puzzle, there's so many different facets, so many different parts of, like, the armor to polish and to get right. And that's very challenging and very difficult to do. And as that compounds and accumulates over time, it's like you're building this, like, incredible, you know, fortress, you know, that you can use for whatever, you know, purpose that you want.

And at the same time, you're creating this massive competitive moat, you know, around the castle, and that it becomes more and more and more difficult for someone else to replicate what you're doing. And then going back to the Olympic athlete, would they want to participate in the Olympics if when the gun went off, they were the only person ever, in any event, running? No. It's like, you do want to be racing against others. That's like a natural part, fundamental part of the human spirit to compete and to win.

And I think people should be happy to lean into that. So, for example, there's this thing going on. I mean, we've all heard this. Like, the only person you should compare yourself to is the person who you were yesterday. Garbage.

It's like one of those things that people say that it's like, it sounds nice when you hear it and. Oh, yeah, okay. You know, that's. I can kind of. I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing yourself to other people.

I don't think there is. I think you should do both. You should compare yourself to who you were yesterday, but it's okay to also compare yourself to someone else and use that as a bit of drive and inspiration for you to level up your own game. Right. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal
I found that recently I've been spending a decent chunk of time with people who are way richer than I am, with, like, way smaller audiences who are also selling courses. And I'm like, wait a minute. What are they doing that's so different to what I'm doing that they're making more money with, like a 10th to 100th to, like, one 1,000,000th of the audience size that I do. And it would make more money than that. I'm like, whoa.

That's cool. I can learn from this. Yeah. They figured something out that I have yet to learn. And that's not you comparing yourself to, you know, Ollie last year.

Eric Partaker
Right? So it's okay to be competitive. It's okay to want to build and accumulate things. It's all okay. There's nothing wrong with it.

Ali Abdaal
Why was I so anti goal? Okay. I think I was anti goal because I was like, I drunk the base camp Kool aid. Dhh. And Jason fried write all this stuff.

It doesn't have to be crazy at work. All this stuff around how growth for growth's sake is dumb and as long as you have a profitable business that you're happy running, then that's all that matters and blah, blah, blah. I'd really drunk that Kool aid for a very long time. I also drunk the kool aid of stoicism around. Don't attach yourself to things that are outside of your control.

For me, a. Setting a financial goal and b. Being attached to it was signing myself up for unhappiness and desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you reach your goal. And then the goal is not actually going to make you happy. I remember you basically saying something, being like, sure, that's all fine.

But right now you're running your business with a blindfold on and your team has a blindfold on. At least just take the blindfold off and just see where the target is. You don't have to be attached to it, but it will just by default. Knowing what the target is will just immediately improve your aim. If you're playing dog bow now or.

Eric Partaker
Whatever, I remember I said something to you. You're like, yeah. What do you think about not having goals? And I was like, hmm. It's sort of like I've put you into a shooting range blindfolded.

And I'm like, yeah, go ahead and try to hit the target. And you're not going to have a chance. You're probably going to end up. I don't know, you might even shoot stuff into the ceiling or something. But at least if you can see where it is.

Yeah, you might not. As you said, you might not hit it right away, but at least you have a chance. You will get better. And there is. You know, we are goal oriented, right?

As you know, human beings. Like, we want to achieve things. We want to set our sights on stuff and close that gap from where we are to. It's like evident in climbing mountains, playing a video game, building a business, competing in athletic events. Like, what more evidence do you need that?

Human beings love goals, they love achieving things, and they love going from, you know, where they are to a newer and better place. And when they get there, does that mean that they then want to set the next thing? Yeah. And that's okay. That's the game.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah. Because people sometimes view this as a bad thing that, oh, you just changed the goalposts. It's like, yeah, yeah, because I achieved it. Yeah. No, but you should just be content with where you are right now and not be attached to anything said who, like, you know, that's.

Eric Partaker
I don't think that's the spirit of, like, some of the people that I admire from a leadership or a company or athletics or musical entertainment point of view. Right. Yeah. I think you can be content with where you are but also be striving for the goal. And this was the big unlock for me.

Ali Abdaal
You can set a goal and also not be attached to it. I don't actually care if we don't hit 10 million, just like I don't actually care if I never kill the bandit camp on horizon, forbidden dawn. It's just a nice thing to aim towards because why not? And I think the key is there is no right answer. All I'm trying to say is there's nothing wrong with these things and they shouldn't be demonized.

Eric Partaker
And it's okay to be very, very goal oriented and want to achieve. But I guess if you're trying to scale a company, it's kind of hard to do that without the goals. Yeah, I mean, if the basecamp approach or philosophy, if that works for you, then you do it. But the other thing though, too, that I see sometimes founders do, and I think you are at risk of doing is just making the assumption that the way you think and feel should be the way to also get the best out of the team. It could be different.

Now, the way that we have things set up is that you are working on more of the visionary kind of creative stuff and you have certain areas of the company that you get involved in, but the rest of the team is running a much more structured and systematized approach than you had ever personally run when you were running things directly, 100% yourself. I think that's delivering results still. Yeah. Because I was like, I don't want systems. And now I'm like, damn, I really want my team to have systems.

Ali Abdaal
I want my calendar to be empty, but I want them to be very structured in how they're doing things. Exactly to my point. So it's like, don't make the mistake, and I know you're not now, but don't make the mistake of assuming just because you don't want something and don't like operating in a certain way, that that isn't how it should be done. It just might mean that you need to house or put that way of thinking into a different group within the company or have someone else run it who does think more naturally, like in a systems or in a more programmatic way. Nice.

So I had a resistance to goal setting. What else was I like two years ago when we first started working together, if you can remember. I'm curious about what you see as a to b changes. Yeah, yeah. No, I think you've become, and you're continuing to become more of, like, I would call it like a proper businessman.

Eric Partaker
I see this a lot of times, especially as I've gotten more involved in the creator space myself, where there's just so much. Well, you made reference earlier to, you met people who have much smaller audiences, and they're, I think people, especially in this space, kind of do things a little bit too loosely, hack things together, and they don't take a proper business approach to what they're building or creating. And so they leave a lot of value on the table. Table as a result. And I think you're a lot more focused and you're willing to have those two spheres coexist where you can operate in one way, but you still recognize the important significance and need to have more structure and systemization in other areas of the business.

And you're taking that approach of Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. I have a lot of good books, but that one who not how. So it's like finding the right people, right to lead the things and do the things that maybe you don't want to do yourself. So it's like before, I think you were making the mistake of when you had resistance to doing things in a certain way. You would just immediately go, okay, so therefore, we're not going to do it, because I don't want to do that.

But it's now you're more leaning into, ah, so who is the right person who would do that and would enjoy doing that? So I think that's been a, you know, big change, definitely with the goal setting in general. I think the company, you know, is a lot more focused and systematic in terms of how goals are set and how they're reviewed. And we talked recently, even today about further upgrading that.

What else? Actually, let me flip the question back to you as well. What changes have you noticed if you think of how you were a couple of years ago versus how you are today? I think today I have a lot more confidence in that we are building a business. I think I didn't really know what business meant two years ago.

Ali Abdaal
It's like I stumbled into this. I sort of started a business when I was in med school that was helping people study for their med school entrance exams and that grew a bit. I guess I sort of thought of it as a business, but I didn't know what the word operations meant. I didn't know what marketing was. I thought marketing was billboards.

I never heard the word sales before. Just sort of making stuff up as I went along and being like, oh, cool, I guess I'll just make a website. Cool. I just use eventbrite for checkout. Cool.

I guess I'll just, I don't know, use zapier to chuck it into Google sheet. It's like, yeah, I would even suggest a slight, slightly different word as well. It's just slight like nuance. But I think it's important. I don't even think you're building a company, not a business.

Eric Partaker
Yeah, a company like, I mean, you can feel, right, that word feels a little bit more substantial. Right. And that's what you are doing. You have a content team, you have a commercial team. We're talking about different product suites, better understanding the customers within each.

How do we establish learning intent within each of these potential product portfolios and what are the entry points and lifetime value and how do they progress? And we've talked about matrix organizational structure where you can have things that are designed by product suite or if we want to use value ladder as a term, but then we need cross functional support such as customer success and HR and finance and legal and all that sort of stuff. That's next level thinking, right? That's not like the Ali who is coming out of Cambridge University. Yeah, I think me two years ago still felt, and I still have this to an extent, that I've sort of lucked into this.

Ali Abdaal
Like I got lucky with the timing on my YouTube channel and then, oh, I just sort of made some courses and then, oh, whoops, there we are kind of thing. And that the fact that it all happened so fortuitously, I think contributed to my worry that it could all just vanish and that I am a youtuber first and therefore youtubers have a sell by date and a shelf life. And within. I don't know whether my time in my 15 minutes of fame is going to last for one year, two years, three years or five years. But I do know that at some point the fame will start to decrease.

At some point, people are not going to be as interested in my content. It's going to diminish in view count and all of that stuff. And therefore, I think I was operating. I think I was thinking of myself as almost like an athlete, but the nerdy version of that, which is I've got a few years while I'm in my prime to really make hay while the sun shines. Whereas if I think about it now, what athletes are doing is that they're building businesses on the side.

Eric Partaker
And so all that's going to happen is that you're building assets, you're building wealth. And the current manifestation of that is YouTube channel. It's you on camera. I mean, you are, right. You're going to get to a point where, I don't know many YouTube channels where the person's like 85 years old.

Right. So that's like a natural thing. But I also think your journey as a businessman, as an entrepreneur is going to continue to evolve and grow as well. And in the same way where athletes start new businesses, who knows? Down the road, maybe you own a percentage of a football team or something, or you start a line of products or you start investing in other companies that will just morph and change over time, naturally, because that's what people do.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah. So it's, instead of attaching your identity to, I'm a youtuber, I think it would be more powerful to attach your identity to, you know, I'm an entrepreneur or I'm a businessman, or. And what do you do? And. Well, I both create, see and take advantage of various opportunities.

And right now that opportunity is like YouTube videos and courses, but it'll be. So that vehicle may change in the. Future down the road. Yeah, I can't imagine not being an entrepreneur in the future. Yeah.

Eric Partaker
I started off as a consultant with McKinsey, then went into tech with Skype, then built the chain of restaurants, then went into CEO coaching, then started to invest in some of those companies. 15 months ago, I started to create content on LinkedIn. That happened while we were working together totally unexpectedly, and that's absolutely exploded. So life is what happens while you're busy making other plans. Right.

So you keep weaving. It's like a river. It's like the current goes in different places. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

Ali Abdaal
And I noticed that I still have this to an extent. I think I did feel a lot of anxiety around not knowing what the path would be. And now, increasingly, but still not fully, I'm now in the mode of, like, when you walk the path, the path will appear. That's the kind of idea. When you're driving at night, you don't need the headlights to illuminate the entire distance from New York City to LA.

Eric Partaker
You just need to be able to see, you know, 100 meters in front of you. Yeah. And I think I brought a lot of the narratives that entrepreneurship is risky and that, oh, building a business is a big risk and, like medicine, that's a safe career. And so if I think about it just thinking out loud, I think there was a lot of, yeah. When I was a doctor, I was never thinking, oh, my God, this is risky.

Ali Abdaal
I was thinking, I'm a doctor, but as an entrepreneur, I'm thinking, oh, my God, this is risky. This could go away at any time. Who knows what's going to happen? Who knows if we're going to make revenue? Yeah.

Eric Partaker
It helps you protect the downside. Yeah. So even your relationship to those feelings can go from, oh, I need to stop those feelings to, oh, yeah, that's my intuition. That's like. It's signaling me to think through.

Have I really protected things? Am I thinking about things in the right way? Maybe that's helped you rather than hindered you, create a more resilient, sturdy, growing business. Yeah, I think so. I think it's one of those things that every feeling serves you up until a point and then it starts to hold you back.

Ali Abdaal
And I think now I have more of a sense of confidence that with the skills that I've built up, the team, the money, the network, all that stuff, I now get.

I now get the value of all those things in a way that I just didn't before. People would be like, your net worth is your network. And I'm like, what the hell? I want visit. A few years ago when the only people I knew were other junior doctors, I'm like, why does the fact that I know other junior doctors actually affect?

But now I get it. I'm like, oh, it's just obvious. There's just so many people around now that I know who are running all these businesses, who I could partner with, who I could. The worst case scenario, I'm sure I can just make half a million a year just offering anyone I know who runs a SaaS company to be like, I'll be your in house youtuber. They'd be like, come on, of course.

And there's so many opportunities and stuff that it's almost hard to fathom. And I'm trying to think back to what I was a few years ago and I just wouldn't have got it. Like, someone would have told me, oh, yeah, the skills and network you're building is going to be really valuable. I've been like, okay, I'll take your word for it. But now that I've built skills and a network, I'm like, oh, okay.

And even now, knowing further down the line, there are people I know who are in there, like forties and fifties, for example, who now who as part of their network are people who work in government and stuff. And that just unlocks a whole new game that you can play if you really want to. Like, you probably know CEO's of very big companies, and so if you wanted to do corporate trainings, your mates are probably the people who will hire you and be like, yeah, of course. And you could probably make at least a million a year just doing corporate trainings if you're working very few hours if you really wanted to. And as a 22 year old, there's no way you have that network unless your parents are friends with those sorts of people.

But as you ascend through the ranks, as you start to get to know other people who are doing interesting things, as they start to ascend the ranks, your own network becomes more high powered as well. And you start to be like, okay, I see all these opportunities. And so that whole thing that you started off with in this segment of the chat, I view myself of having been lucky. Not in the. No, not really.

Eric Partaker
Not in the way that you're suggesting or the way in which that might be interpreted, you've created your own luck. And that phrase is absolutely true. There's one of the, I forget who said it, but the harder I work, the luckier I seem to get. And if you are out there, if you're meeting people, if you're trying new things, if you're willing to take risks, to experiment from the outside in, the person might think, oh, yeah, he was super lucky, or she was super lucky. No, they're like, they, you know, if you stay in motion and keep acting and keep the momentum going, then you will be in a better position to take advantage of, of opportunities that come along that to others will seem lucky, but that you in fact positioned yourself to experience.

Ali Abdaal
Yeah. And I think the thing on that front, like, I've been in motion since age 13 trying to make money on the Internet, which led me to, what were you doing at 13? Oh, freelance web design. And then trying to build, like, an affiliate marketing pyramid scheme, and then trying to build, like, an online forum for kids to learn lock picking and stuff because I wanted to be a secret agent, and I thought that was cool. Then trying to build a video game, emailing Nintendo and Blizzard, being like, hey, can I make a video game out of Pokemon?

And they never replied, that kind of thing. And then eventually getting into the point where in med school I was like, hmm, I want to teach people how to get into med school. And I know how to build a website so I can just market my services, and I know how to subtly advertise on forums so I can do that. And I know how to teach so I can do that. I was like, okay, cool.

Eric Partaker
So all of those things came together. Yeah. And then 2017, it was like, I need more lead Gen for my business. I didn't know what lead Gen was, but I was like, we did ten k revenue, then 100k, then 150, and then we did 145, and I was like, oh, our revenue is dipped. We need more customers.

Ali Abdaal
Why don't I start a YouTube channel? Which led to the timing of the YouTube channel, and it's like, it was like nine years worth of in motion trying to make stuff work. And then the thing that hit was the medical school courses business. And then the thing that hit on a whole different level was like the YouTube channel, but it was all this motion that was happening. And I think one of the things that I see amongst people wanting to get into business, or like, oh, I really want to start my own business, but I don't have the right idea.

There's this thing of, like, if you don't know if you can't see the path, if they can't see the path, then they won't take any action. But it's so hard to actually come up with a path because for your career, there's no way you could have saw the path when you got started. Way impossible. But I have a north star, I have a vision, and it's very meta, and it's just simply to achieve my full potential professionally and personally, and keep channeling that desire, ambition and effort into whatever is interesting me at the moment and is equally represented in opportunity. It's the same.

Eric Partaker
I mentioned LinkedIn earlier, what you talked about, about how several things came together. I started to post on LinkedIn for the first time in January 2023. So that's like 15 months ago, almost at a half million followers. Now it's growing like 70,000 per month, 7000 to 80,000 per month. Accounts like second most influential on the platform globally.

Number one, management and leadership. And I have other people who will come to me and say, how have you done that? Almost as if they think there's a formula or something that they can also do. And what they're not recognizing is that my ability to talk about certain subjects and create content and pursue that in the way I'm doing is an accumulation of 20 plus years of career experience that's now having an outlet through content creation.

Same sort of deal. Yeah. One of the things that, one of the exercises that most kind of, I think, moves the needle for me was the ideal week exercise. Yes. Because remember, we did the scale up assessment thing and there were all sorts of action points and a bunch of things were action points that I should do on a weekly basis.

Yeah. Like, do you have time in your week scheduled to think strategically about the business? And do you have time in your week to review the numbers? Like what numbers? Okay, let's start.

Ali Abdaal
Let's build a scorecard. Regular one to one, scheduled with all the people that report to you. Yeah. The concept is simply to recognize that we all have the same amount of time in our days, in our week. I don't have more time than you have.

Eric Partaker
So largely, a big component of why certain people are more successful than others comes down to how they make the most use of that essentially most valuable resource, our time. And the traditional approach to a week for an entrepreneur or someone else is to not think about it very, very intentionally. And it's sort of like the week starts and you're just hanging onto the back of a train. You're reacting from one thing to the next, and that does not lead to the most ideal outcomes or probably doesn't lead to you safeguarding your health and home as well and all that. So it's super simple.

It extends the notion of time blocking for work, say, on your most important projects to just every facet of your life. Right. So it's like everything goes into the week. Whereas your workouts, they need to be scheduled. They are calendar appointments.

Where's the time that you're going to be meeting with friends or dinners or time off? Like all that guilt free kind of like free time, leisure time that gets scheduled in first without any guilt, and then you optimize the rest of the week by basically consolidating, like, activities. So I'm in a brock block out certain mornings for focus work. I'm going to group together one to ones. I'm going to do external meetings here.

I might do podcasts there. I might create videos or content here. And that's the basic idea. I remember what really prompted us to go into that so quickly as we did is because at the time you were struggling with, I need to get this book written. And I remember I said to you, how many hours per day should you be writing?

And you said ideally, and I said yes. And you're like 4 hours a day. And I'm like, well, where are the calendar appointments that show the four scheduled hours per day? And you were like, yeah, like, it's. Obvious, but like, yeah, that's a good point.

And then, you know, and then you really ran with it, right? So I know that's become a great core part of your productivity systems and tools and what you're teaching to others, which is amazing because if more people could live their weeks more intentionally and schedule what matters, I think they would get better results and feel a lot happier. What other issues do you see that people struggle with when it comes to managing their time? Because, yeah, I mean, I agree with you. We all have the same 24 hours, and yet clearly we all use caveat number one that people will say is like, yeah, well, I have a job.

Ali Abdaal
I have to look after person x and person y. It's like there's all of that kind of stuff. But I guess beyond that, what are the things that you see people struggle with when it comes to time management? Yeah, so I'd say two things. So one is what should the time go toward?

Eric Partaker
And then the second thing is when you're supposed to be working on whatever that is that you've identified. How truly focused are you and how truly uninterrupted is that time? So going to the first point, there's this question of if everything were to remain the same, where would change have the greatest impact? Because it's very easy to fill our time with lots of things, but you have to really ask yourself what's truly moving the needle here? What is the most important things that you can be focused in thinking about and doing?

I don't think people step back enough to ask themselves rather than trying to just stay busy. Am I staying busy on the right things, the things that are truly most important for you at that point in time? It was writing the book that was the most important thing. But then there's the issue of, okay, so you're sat down, you're working on the most important thing. And if you were to timesheet your day, especially in those moments, just as like a solicitor or a lawyer does, whereby you have to record every single thing that you're doing.

The typical person, even though that they've now scheduled this time block to work on the most important thing, if they were to literally put an entry every time they change task, it would probably look like something like this. 09:00 a.m.. I sit down to write the book. 09:07 a.m. I'm responding to a slack message.

913 am I'm going to research something very quickly that relates to the slack message 916 am I'm going to reheat my tea that's now cold because I need that to help focus on the book writing. 920 I start to write the book again. 937 something else happens and you get to the end of that, say, hour that was supposed to be focused with intentionality on that which is most important, and you realize that your attention was fragmented into a million different directions and a lot of that happens unconsciously. And so my top advice to help combat that natural tendency in all of us, and I had this too, is to literally at least for a two week period timesheet. Your week timesheet, exactly where does your time go?

Activity start time, end time, total minutes. Do it manually. Just the act of that doing, of doing that shines like a spotlight of awareness on what you should or shouldn't be doing. So it's these fundamental things. No matter what somebody is trying to build, it's like I see people struggling with the same things they're working on, not necessarily the most needle moving things.

And even when they think they are, they're actually not as focused and working in the zone as they should be. How do you figure out what the most needle moving things are? I think it's really easy to overcomplicate that. And so I think we're all quite smart, intuitive, and I think the issue is not so much not being able to identify that as not creating the space to ask the question and to reflect. Yeah, you're intelligent enough that if you truly pause and say for the next hour, all I am going to do is look at all the things that I am doing and ask myself, if everything were to stay the same, where would change have the greatest impact?

And I think some top candidates will quickly emerge for most people. So I don't think it's about not being able to identify. I think it's more about not creating the space for the identification. Hmm. Hmm.

Ali Abdaal
That's good because I guess when I guess this, this is nice because it gets people a quick win. I guess when I think of, whenever I think of like, okay, what should I be doing with my time? I always kind of zoom out, like, all right, cool. Like, let's start with a life vision. Let's start with the work vision.

Let's then figure out what's my ten year plan. Is that a ten year plan still what I want to be doing? Okay, call one for twelve month goals. Am I still happy with those? Yep.

Cool. I'm happy. And it's a whole like 20 minutes journaling exercise to get at. Yeah, I really should be working on this product that I knew all along. Had I just asked the question of like, everything would have stayed the same.

What's the one area that would most move the needle or that has the biggest impact? If it was today and if it was after this podcast, I would be like, I would go to the gym because I didn't this morning because I had a late night last night, so gym. And once I've done that, the single area that would have the biggest, that would have the biggest impact is work on the offer for my productivity thing. I don't need to do the whole elaborate life journaling method that I do every year in my annual reflection. I can just ask that simple question and it just gets in the answer pretty quickly.

Eric Partaker
Yeah, it's like we talked about driving the car. You're going from New York to LA, it's like, you know that you're going to LA. What do you have to do right now you're driving at night is just make sure you're staying on the road and that the lights are being up the next hundred meters so that you know where to drive. Right. What's the most important thing that I should be doing at the moment?

Well, looking at the road, it's turn right or turn left. Yeah. So I think just generally speaking, I think things are just a lot simpler usually than people make them out to be. And that it's another way to look at it is that it's less about this obsession with what's the right answer and it's more about having an obsession with, well, what's the right question that you should be asking? Because if you ask yourselves the right questions and again, give yourself the space to answer correctly, there's a timeless wisdom, I think, within all of us that gets activated.

Thank God, because otherwise we wouldn't continue as a species that will help you arrive at the right answer. Another thing people often struggle with is just this thing of focusing during the session. Whenever we poll our audience and ask. When it comes to productivity, what's your biggest challenge? Focus and distraction rank fairly highly on the list.

Ali Abdaal
Any tips on that front? Yeah, I used to. Oh my gosh, I used to really struggle with this personally. I would sit down and within five minutes I'd get distracted working on another thing. And it was very, very challenging.

Eric Partaker
So, yeah, a few different things. And I think you have to try things out to figure out what works best for you. So one is if you just commit to having a timesheet, any moment you change activity. So again, you've sat down to work on your most important thing. It's 09:00.

09:07. You're going to go check your email real quick. You need to write down the entry. 90 nine on YouTube. You need to write down the entry and the act of having to do that becomes a royal pain in the ass after a while.

It both highlights your task switching, and then you start to get to these moments where you're like, am I really going to record this entry that I'm going to go onto Instagram right now? That's pretty stupid. Let's not do that. That definitely helps. The other thing is just chunking down basic stuff, pomodoro technique, basic concept, right?

25 minutes or whatever. Work like in focus bursts and only record successful completion of that if you work completely uninterrupted.

The other thing is a centering exercise. So this is something that I learned from this book, the now Habit by Neil Fiore. And I did a lot of sessions, one to one with Neil. So the idea is that your mind is kind of constantly getting, at least for me, easily scattered into a million different directions. And you have to kind of recenter.

And I did that through a series of deep breaths. So basically, the moment I noticed I was getting distracted and feeling frazzled mentally, I would just take three deep breaths to kind of like recenter in that moment, relax the body, another three deep breaths to let go of the past. Another three deep breaths. Let go of the future, and then another three deep breaths. And I love this part.

And again, I learned this from Neil to take a vacation in the present moment. And then three final deep breaths to approach with curiosity, interest and excitement the task at hand, not needing to know exactly where is this going to go, but know that if I just focus on the next 100 meters ahead and I just keep working the path will emerge. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. The now habits.

Ali Abdaal
Yes. And you just reached out to Neil being like, bro, can I have some sessions with you? Yeah, I don't think he. Exactly. I don't think he.

Eric Partaker
I have this habit of whenever I read a book, and if I like what the author's having to say, it's like, okay, well, let me reach out and connect to that author. And I don't think. I think he's obviously, he's older now than he was in the past, but I think. I'm not sure he does coaching anymore, but at the time, he still was so. Yeah, it was like ten years ago or so.

Ali Abdaal
That's good thinking about these deep breaths. Yeah. It's like. There'S so much of our life that happens on autopilot. I realize this because at the moment, the book that I'm reading in bed is the power of now.

And last night started reading a new earth, which is also by Eckhart Tolle and basically says the same stuff. It's just like, yeah. And I'm just reading it. I'm like, I've literally spent the entire day literally just on autopilot. And, whoa.

Because I always kind of thought that, I don't need this meditation thing. I'm fine. I'm not stressed. It's just meditation is stress relief. But I'm starting to see that.

I'm starting to see what I'm missing by not being in tune with myself and centered and connected and all that stuff that feels even weird to say out loud. And as I read Eckhart Tolles words, I'm like, oh, yeah. Yep, yep. And he's like, you know, most people will struggle through the world will go through their day completely oblivious to everything that's. I'm like, shit, that's me.

Eric Partaker
Yeah. And even just taking a minute to do a few deep breaths, just like, as a bit of a ritual. Yeah. And you get back into that present moment and that's where life is happening. Right.

There is impossible for it to happen in any other place. So it's like, to re anchor into that is a massive. Not only does it improve focus, but it massively relieves stress and anxiety. That's the whole idea of take a vacation in the present moment. Yeah.

Right. Because the past has already happened. There's nothing you can do about it, and the future hasn't happened yet. Okay, so I'm about to turn 30 soon, in a few months. Any tips?

Ali Abdaal
What advice would you give to a 30 year old? Have a really big birthday party. Okay. I wasn't telling you, but. Okay.

Eric Partaker
I'm just joking around. This is actually what Bill Perkins told me. I asked him any advice. He was like a get a relationships therapist right now and be. Celebrate the wins more often.

Ali Abdaal
Just throw a party for everything because it's like, you know, you're an entrepreneur. You're gonna work, you're gonna have success, but, like, you're probably not gonna celebrate it. Yeah. So he was like, the thing I would tell everyone younger than me is just celebrate things more. Well, that's how we start all of our sessions.

Eric Partaker
Right. It's like every single session we do is, you know, what can we celebrate that's happened over the last two weeks?

I do think you should throw a big birthday party because why wouldn't you? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Might as well.

It's like you're celebrating. Celebrating you, you know. You know, I mean, I personally. Yeah, I love. I love, you know, surprises.

I love parties. I love, like, you know, getting people together. You know, do something fun. Like, I don't know, go, like, something exhilarating fun. Go, like paintballing or something.

Ali Abdaal
It's weird that I'm literally writing down birthday parties. Something fun. I'm actually gonna forget this. It's, like, useful. The reminder is useful.

Eric Partaker
Yeah. Well, I'm gonna do something fun for my birthday. I did buy myself a PlayStation yesterday, which just arrived. I was like, you know what? Go tv now.

Ali Abdaal
So, yeah, let's do it. Yeah. You know, what else should you be thinking about or doing? It's like, I think you're doing it. You know, maybe that's insightful right there, too.

Eric Partaker
Do you give yourself enough credit? And do you kind of rest in the fact that, you know what I'm doing all right, and I'm doing well, and it feels good. And, you know, you're. You know, because people you can approach. You talked about achievement earlier.

You can approach achievement from, like, this place of lack versus abundance and, you know, place of lack. I. You know, I explained this to my boys, is like. It's sort of like you're a Lego character and you're needing to achieve because it's like your arm is missing. And so I need to complete this to complete myself.

Versus. If you achieve, you're putting a little hat on the characters. So it's like, achievement is additive versus. It's necessary to complete you. And I think when you strive from a place of being satisfied rather than from a place of, oh, I'm not good enough.

Like, there's a massive positive impact on your psyche. Yeah. So maybe your birthday gift to yourself could be maybe more fully resting or owning that change in psyche, because I would say in our work together that it's definitely toned down, but I still notice that. But sometimes when you're talking about wanting to do things or change, it's like it's coming from. And to a certain degree, this is still healthy, having some of this, but it's like, oh, it's not good enough.

Things are not right, and it should be better. Things are actually pretty good, and there's way more that's going right, way more, like a thousand times more than things are going wrong. Yeah. And that would probably very much align, too, with what you're reading at the moment. Why do I feel that way?

Ali Abdaal
Because I am also for whatever I'm doing. I think I do a reasonable job of finding a way to make it feel good and finding a way to make it fun. But that's when I'm doing stuff. I think it's in. I wonder if it's in moments where I'm not doing stuff, like the moments in between where life happens.

That kind of my mind is constantly, like, I should be doing something, or I should be doing this specific thing, or, like, oh, you know, I haven't said nice things to the team in a while. Oh, you know, these three videos that have come out in the last week, I really should have sat down and recorded a loom reaction to each one so that our editors can feel like they're having an impact, and I can actually give them feedback. And I'm like, oh, I really should have done this thing in those moments in between. And it's when I kind of going from one thing to another to another. The thing itself is super fun, but it's in those moments.

Eric Partaker
So maybe it's in those moments. So if we combine some of the things that we've talked about, maybe there's a habit around in those moments in between to do that recent exercise, the deep breath, to, you know, you take three depth. So, again, it's like you take three deep breaths just to relax, and you're, like, literally picturing, you know, so typically areas that we hold tension, like our shoulders, our jaw. And if you're in those first three deep breaths, if you're, like, you know, literally, like, relax your jaw, it's, like, crazy how much tension we have here. And, and then three deep breaths to again, in the next three deep breaths, I'm gonna let go of the past.

You know, the past has already happened. You know, there's nothing I can change. In the next three deep breaths, I let go of the future. The future hasn't happened yet. It doesn't exist.

And in the next three deep breaths, I'm going to take a vacation in the present moment and feel just how good it feels to be right here as I am. And then in the next three deep breaths, you're coming back out of it to kind of enjoy whatever that is with your full attention. And that could just be relaxing in that moment and not beating yourself up about relaxing or needing to do anything. Or it could be to redirect your energy to, let's say, you know, you can also use this in a focus work session. Yeah.

To get back on track if you felt yourself kind of, like, mentally deviating from, you know, the path. But in. In just, you know, 15 deep breaths, you can totally recenter. Nice. That's good.

Ali Abdaal
That's really good. Yeah. I met a guy yesterday in this Paris event thing who's working on a book, and it's like, sort of more than halfway through the process, and he asked, any tips for book writing? I was like, hmm. Honestly, just take it less seriously.

I think when I was writing the book, it was always like this spectre in the back of my mind that was always like. It was a constant feeling of should. Anytime I was doing something in the back of my mind, I should be writing the book right now. I know it's the most important thing. Why am I not writing the book?

Anytime I was working on the business, it was like, I'm working on the business, but I should be working on the book and that sort of thing. And it's just somewhat unnecessary because I wasn't working on the book. So what's the point of, like, weighing myself down with the should, or I should be doing x right now? It's like, either I will do it or I choose not to. But either way, the should is not actually serving anyone.

Eric Partaker
No. And that's another thing that I picked up from Neil. He calls that language of oppression. So I should be doing this or I have to. And typically, it's, I should be doing x or I have to finish on that.

Just, you know, that is going to create a personality split in that it's almost like you got this parental authority figure inside telling the little child, you should be doing this or you have to finish this. And so that's going to create resistance, and resistance typically manifests in the form of procrastination. Well, I don't want to do that. If you're oppressing anything, a good group of people, or eventually it's going to lead to rebellion in some form. And instead, if you replace that language of oppression with language of choice and choose whatever you want.

So I'm choosing to not write the book right now, and I'm choosing to just do this, whatever this is instead. But you're operating with agency, with a sense of control, or I'm going to choose to start to write on the book. So instead of I should be, or I have to finish, I choose to start. And if you just keep focusing on continually starting, the finishing takes care of itself and it feels a lot less overwhelming. Nice.

Ali Abdaal
The funny thing is, I know all this stuff intellectually, but just hearing you say it and remind me, it's just like, oh, actually, yeah, you're right, that's really helpful. But that's the thing. I say this to other people, I feel like, don't take my own advice. That's the case for all of us. We all know this stuff.

Eric Partaker
We all know, and this stuff applies to everything. We all know this stuff. But that's not the point. Knowledge. When I was growing up, I'm a lot older than you.

My next birthday won't be 30, it will be 49. But when I was growing up, the phrase is knowledge is power. Knowledge is not power. Certainly with the dawn of AI and everything, knowledge is no longer power. I mean, obviously a medical profession, yeah, you need, but generally speaking, you know, it's not about now, it's about application.

So you don't give yourself credit for knowing, you should give yourself credit for actually doing. And so even somebody who's listening to this podcast and oh yeah, I know this, like, whoa, be careful because you may be giving yourself credit for the knowledge and you get no points for that, you only get points for applying. So we all know this stuff, but how often do we actually do the things that we know we should be doing? And that's where the gap is. And I think actually that's also, I think if I look at the success that I've achieved personally in my life, if I look at all the successful people that I know, I would say the number one differentiator between the person who achieves their success, however they define their success versus someone who doesn't, is their willingness to do the things that they know they should be doing.

And you can use language of choice to do that and their ability to do things that don't always feel great to do. You know, the Olympic athlete who's going to win a gold medal?

The horribly painful workouts that they go through, do they want them to end at some point? They're like, oh, my gosh, this is so difficult. Of course, it doesn't always feel good, but they still do it. It's a whole concept of delayed gratification. Choose your pain wisely.

Who was it? Oh, my gosh. The Jim Rohn. You know, so nothing comes for free in life. Everything requires payment, and I do take a bit more hardened view on stuff like this, and I think of payment as pain.

And you can either choose with the pain of discipline right today or the pain of regret tomorrow. So you have to choose your pain wisely. I'm not entirely sure I agree with that framing. I know you don't. I know you don't, because I know, you know, your whole.

Yeah, you feel good productivity and all that. I do. So the way I think of it is that discipline is needed in those moments. A small dose of discipline helps you begin. Yeah.

And there's a lot of research that supports that. Right. So it's not actually the whole. So when you have resistance to something, it's actually not the whole thing that you have resistance. It's just the starting of the thing.

It's just the starting. If you start enough, time is finishing takes care of itself, kind of, yeah. And so if you choose. So the phrase that I use is, I choose to start for just five minutes, because I know that, in my experience, I never know when the 302nd has gone by, and then I'm kind of, like, in the zone. So, yeah.

To clarify, the pain that I'm talking about from a discipline point of view is the same thing that you're talking about. It's like developing the skill to basically, you know, it's like physics. You know, an object in motion stays in motion less, you know, equal and opposite force. So your goal then, those people that are more successful than others, I think they've become very, very proficient in getting started at creating the momentum, getting the boulder rolling down the hill, knowing that the initial push, that's the painful part, but not falling victim to the saboteur, in their mind, that's trying to convince them that it's the whole thing, but it isn't. It's just 300 seconds.

Ali Abdaal
I think there's a whole book in that idea, like, just get started and all of the different ways to hack your brain into just fricking getting started, because that's the thing. That's all it is. And they're very, very good at pushing past those points because they don't allow themselves to be deceived into thinking that it's the whole thing, whatever that thing is, it's not the initial momentum. Nice, Eric, thank you very much. I think it's a good place to leave this.

Where can people find out more about you? So we're doing that thing together, right, for this podcast? Yeah, we have a business coaching bundle. Business coaching bundle. So in the description, you've thrown some things in there.

Eric Partaker
I've thrown some things in there. So basically take advantage of that. You're going to get a free copy of one of my books, the three alarms. You're going to get the scale up assessment that will pinpoint where you need to focus on if you're an entrepreneur in terms of improving your business peak performance assessment. If you just simply want to level up, you've put in there the 90 day kind of goals template and the ideal week template.

So it'd be crazy to not take advantage of that. Yeah, it's completely free link down below in the show notes or in the video description, wherever you're listening to this. Thank you very much, Eric. Awesome. Thanks a lot.

Ali Abdaal
All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast.

Or if you're watching this in full hd or 4k on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time.

Bye.