Ali’s Book Journey – Issue #1

Hey friends,

Thanks for joining the journey as I write a book about meaningful productivity. This is going to be fun 🙂

📘 Book Update

I’ve got the publishing deal with Penguin Random House (UK). We’re working on finalising the book proposal to send the US publishers as well to try and get a US + International deal at the same time.

This proposal thing is proving to be harder than I thought, because you have to write a Chapter Summary for each chapter of the book, and that sort-of requires knowing what’s going to be in each chapter. Or at least, pretending that you do.

We (my editor and I) have a pretty good idea of the direction we’re taking with the book overall, but because we want it to be scientifically grounded, there’s a huge research element, which I’ll be working through over the next few weeks to months.

🎉 Shoutouts

1. Thank you to Paul Millerd for chatting to me for an hour about the relationship between meaning and productivity, and how he goes about coaching people to figure out what they find meaningful / their values. If you’re interested in this stuff, follow him on Twitter and check out his newsletter.
2. Thank you to Neel Nanda for a 1h conversation about similar stuff. Neel featured in a recent episode of my podcast, and his blog is an amazing source of inspiration for anyone interested in living a more meaningful life.
3. Thank you to David Perell for a cheeky Facetime where we discussed the general framing of the book + he offered some good ideas about productivity. David’s thought a lot about these topics in his extensive writing.

🥺 Help Me Please

1. I’m trying to find case studies / scientific studies that relate productivity with meaning. Do you know of any off the top of your head? If so, I’d love for you to hit <reply> and share your thoughts.
2. Apparently US publishers are often wary of publishing UK authors. Do you know any big name people / writers who might be able to help ‘endorse’ the book proposal to increase our chances of getting a US deal? If you could email do an email intro I’d be forever grateful.

🚀 Next Steps

I’ve realised that I need to carve out time in my calendar to focus on the book, and to have accountablity during that time.

And so, every weekday at 10am GMT for the next 4 weeks, I’ll be doing a live streamed coworking session that you’re very welcome to join.

It’ll be a zoom call with webcams on, microphones muted. I’ll play some instrumental focus music, and we’ll all do 2 pomodoros worth of writing / other high-leverage work.

Click HERE to register for the Zoom events.

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Thanks for joining the journey. I’ll send another email in a couple of weeks to keep you updated. In the meantime, if you’ve got any of your own ideas about meaningful productivity (especially if you can point me in the direction of case studies / scientific studies about the topic), please do hit <reply> and let me know 🙂

Have a great week!

Ali