Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal

When I bought this book I was hyped—the topic is something I’m thinking about a lot. If Cal Newport endorses the book, it has to be good, right?

Ali Abdaal takes on the hustle culture and shows techniques to feel good while still being productive. The book is split into three parts: Energize, Unblock and Sustain, which are again split into three chapters each. Every chapter talks about a specific component of “feel-good productivity”, like Play, Clarity or Recharge. Almost all the points are made through anecdotes or explaining scientific experiments.

I had a hard time trying to find value in this book¹, most points seem known and obvious. If this were a book without the anecdotes and experiments, it could probably fit on 20 pages, and I would enjoy it a lot more.

Should you read this? I don’t know.

1. At the time of writing this, this book is rated 4.1 on GoodReads, incidating that quite a few people do get value out of it. ↩