Ali Abdaal - The King of Toxic Productivity

Deep Work, Atomic Habits, 4-Hour Work Week... I find it amusing that the people who claim to read 100+ books a year only talk about the same books... over and over again

I stopped feeling any kind of admiration I had for this guy when I realized how his ideas are a total delusion for poor people like, when he said that you could study on holidays because there's "nothing to do", my dude some of us have to work WHILE studying, you really think everyone is resting when we have "free time"? And I actually wasn't aware of his "productive" way of watching TV, as a film lover, future film student and someone whose DREAM is to work in that industry that was my last straw.

'insanely productive valentines day' oh my fucking god

Gosh. Thank you SO much for this video. I honestly thought I was the only one who thought there was something a little off about Ali's channel. As a South Asian, I honestly feel like this toxic sense of productivity can be so damaging to our self worth. We have to constantly be doing something to feel like we are worthy or enough. It's something that I am currently fighting and it's one of the reasons I started my YT channel as well. I burnt out and ultimately quit my job.. and now I'm trying to unlearn all of this toxicity to live a more happy and fulfilling life without working myself to the bone. I appreciate you so much!

As someone who has studied philosphy I'm apalled at how postmodern capitalism has repackaged and gutted stoicism

It's about time we call out this toxic hustle culture. It's draining us, not only physically but emotionally as well. Every little form of recreation seems like a waste of time. You get emotionally distressed and burned out. A toxic dystopia meant to serve only those with authority whose only aim is to generate profits.

Its honestly sad, seeing people so obsessed with becoming money making machines that they miss out on actually enjoying their lives

This video is fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time to create it. <3 I've slowly got into a burnout throughout the years I've been on YouTube. And the main reason is that I've been influenced not by Ali Abdaal but by the plethora of content creators that talk about productivity, self care, growth mindset etc. The general consensus is that they sell unrealistic standards to people. This create the inner belief that in order to gain money and attain financial freedom you just have to be productive. It's basically gaslighting people about their current state of being and indirectly shaming them for not being able to wake up early, working out regularly, having a good diet and why not, a great fucking morning routine, just to name a few. I've held back on releasing certain videos for so long. I could never find myself talking about certain topics because I did not feel qualified enough. For example, why would I talk about being productive and being calm if I struggle with these things myself ? But some people do not fucking care and have zero integrity. They read a book or two and suddenly become Stoic gods or productivity monsters. They create content falsely giving us the impression that they've grasped what they're talking about. When in reality they just want a piece of the cake. Some people will sell their sense of authenticity, their own core values just to get money. Productivity and self care isn't about loving ourselves and listening to what works for us anymore. It's been standardized. Self fulfilment is something that can measured, quantified and attainable through specific routes. And people like Ali and many others are selling you the "way". It seems so fucking toxic from a psychological point of view, that you can hear someone talk about anger and basicaly telling you to ignore your feelings. A total receipe for disaster. How do I know ? I've been ignoring my emotions for years because it got in the way of being productive and successful. And don't get me started on Stoicism because that isn't what Stoicism is all about. The truth is that, if you want to change your life it takes a LOT of time. What works for someone, will not work for you and vice versa. We should never throw away our feelings and the messages that our body is sending us. We need to become more self aware and be okay with where we are at the moment. Work through our feelings and resistance insteading of hoping that our growth mindset and the pill of productivity will solve everything. What we think are holding us back are in reality things that are helping us cope. This world of self help and productivity will tell you to ignore your feelings and keep pushing. But anger is helpful because if we did not have anger we could never know that something isn't right for us. Emotions are important and we are being sold the idea that we should ignore them just because they make us terrible and unproductive. Our current society shames people's emotions because most of us have zero emotional intelligence. Self help and productivity content is NOT realistic. I got a good friend of mine who worked her entired life as a bookseller. She always loved reading and when she started working she could not wait to meet her favorite authors. She had the opportunity to invite a lot of celebrities to her bookshop when they released a new book. She realized that many self help and spiritual writers do not have any integrity. They write something they don't even believe in or they simply write something they know will sell. I'm not saying that all authors are like that. It's just that a good portion of content creators are not genuine and will create content only to generate income. Don't trust me ? Just look at yourself and people around you. How many of us actually do what we say ? How many of us are actually following our own advice ? The funniest part for me in this video is the appearance of James Jani. Even more funny when his video about the "Toxic world of self help" is the first being recommended to watch again on the right. In his video he's basically advocating toxic producitivity/positivity and the ways that self help content creators use to grow money. Funny to see him talking down on people who use the suffering of people so they can buy courses to "improve" their lives. When he's basically part of a group that is promoting click bait videos, content that is devoid of any true depth where people are just commenting on their buddies' videos so they can get attention from Youtube's algorithm. You know what they say : You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the vilain.

Dareios, thanks so much for doing this. This kick back against the hustle culture is necessary. We're human animals, doing human things at human speed. No-one needs to "optimise" our lives for productivity, for god's sake. Our lives, and our lifespan, are all we have.

As someone who's studying the same course as Ali did (Medicine at Cambridge), I can't help but wonder how big of a factor that course was. Simply put, the uni likes to heap impossible amounts of work on you during term time, so there's a very strong drive to maximize your productivity. Even on my summer holidays, I found myself slipping into the 'must start working' mindset occasionally. Add that onto the stress of being a Youtube star, and it's all too possible to see how productivity could have taken a pathological turn for him. Anyways, great video :)

Sadly most of the things you said in this video are true. He let other people work as volunteers for managing his discord server and the first one from 2019 ended up dying because the volunteers got no rights for managing the server and weren´t able to reach him and his team members for several months. His content has changed a bit since moving to London as I guess he learned the lesson that productivity itself doesn´t make you happy. But I think creativity is still something missing in his content. Maybe it´s time for a follow up video about him ? One example for missing creativity: In one of his Skillshare videos Thomas Frank intervied him about his video creation process. There Ali admitted that he rarely wrote the scripts himself, but mostly only gives an idea and an employe does most of the work, he only edits a few phrase before filming. Thomas was so shocked about that you could see that it was hard for him to stay polite, but he asked "Where is your creative contribution to the process?" I didn´t know the answer anymore, but honestly it felt like he tried to get out of danger with some very general phrases.

I used to watch some of this guy's videos but at times when he only gave useful advice on how to do certain things. I didn't notice it degenerated to a point where he even skips "boring" or "irrelevant" parts of movies, like wtf. Imagine skipping the quiet parts in 2001 Space Odyssey or whatnot, Kubrick would be turning over in his grave. And congratulations to 800 subs! Nice to see your channel growing. Keep up the good work :)

hey i know I’m a year late to the party, but thank you so much, so many of us have been stuck watching these videos as some weird form of addiction without being able to put our finger on what it was that felt so wrong about this lifestyle, it was a big relief to watch this and read all these comments, it has honestly made my day!

I’ve noticed today how toxic and fake these “productivity” and “self-help” gurus are. I’ve always struggled with social anxiety, and back to the beginning of the year, I was at the lowest point of my life, and I watched plenty of videos of how to overcome social anxiety from those people and just made it worst because what they teach you is what you want to listen, not what’s effective. You can’t just overcome it by changing your mindset, or being positive about yourself, it's a much more deep issue that has plenty of causes, and a step-by-step video just makes you feel more and more depressed because you compare yourself to their perfect and fake lives. One of the things that made me feel better was, besides therapy, quitting watching self-help videos, they are addictive and terrible for our mental health.

This guy is a show-off, but packages it in giving "advice." He enjoys showing the world how much money he makes. Many self-help gurus are like that: using their advice videos as a covert way to boast. Cole Hastings for example takes every opportunity to show off his physique.

Just found your channel and I'm glad I did! Quality content is rare these days. Thank you for this.

I've always appreciated when people added humour to educational videos but this is the first one where the laughter actually became bigger than the educative part. Total joy. Thank you.

There's this weird American mentality that glorifies mindless consumption of content only to benefit your most basic needs. Art isn't for that. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this

this is a brutal roast and i love it. thank you for breaking down what's wrong with productivity.

Once this guy gets married and has kids, (if that ever happens that is), all this crap he spouts will go out of the window. Imagine watching Frozen with your kid and skipping it to get to the “interesting” bits. “Gee, thanks dad”. Money is such a huge motivator for this guy, he’s quite arrogant as well. Watched a few of his videos and I’m always left feeling like an idiot, not good for my mental health.