💚 LifeOS w/ Ali Abdaal, Part 3

Hello Friend 👋

This is the third issue in the four-part LifeOS w/ Ali Abdaal newsletter series. I talk about my experience with the course.

If you missed a previous issue, you can find it here:

⭐ Life OS Week 1: Part 1

🚀 Life OS Week 1: Part 2

💥 Life OS Week 2

The last two weeks were crazy! That’s why I didn’t write to you last week.

• I held my biggest workshop yet. Over 230 participants joined for one full hour on how to focus!

• I started my 12-week course on building a personalized productivity system. Seventeen awesome students are ready to transform their productivity.
• I got an even better partner-program with Shortform, my favorite book summary app. (which I paid monthly before I partnered with them)
• Many new people joined the Neurohackingly newsletter. Welcome, if this is one of your first newsletters! 👋

🤖 I run a 12-week productivity workshop on Circle.so. I also added a fun gamification element from Ship30for30.

Participants can complete tasks to earn badges. These badges show all members that they are taking action in the productivity course. This week, they earned the “🎭 Community Champion” badge.

They did this by introducing themselves in the “Introduce Yourself" space.

This automation with Zapier triggers a zap and tags the member who created the post. The tag links to an emoji that represents strength and action. It’s impressive when you gather several of them.

I conducted a workshop for more than 230 participants. I introduced focus techniques I’ve studied recently. Check out the upcoming newsletters.

You'll find evidence-based tips to help you focus better.

💚 Today’s Update: LifeOS w/ Ali Abdaal, Part 3

This week, they launched the complete, well-produced LifeOS course. It includes 7 modules with many short videos from three live sessions Ali hosted.

What I liked about Ali Abdaal's course, LifeOS:

• Playful PowerPoint slides with clear branding.
• A full Life OS Notion template to track everything from your life vision to your focus hours.
• The production quality of Ali's videos is excellent, as always.
• Ali updated parts of the life productivity system. He based these changes on student feedback and his experiments.

For those who don't know, Productivity Lab launched in January 2024 as the Circle community's flagship 12-week program.

It was ambitious—covering everything from the fundamentals of sleep and nutrition to advanced topics like burnout prevention, mindset optimization, and workspace design.

Looking back, Ali himself acknowledged that the course stretched beyond his core expertise in certain areas. This honest reflection led to the creation of LifeOS—a more focused, seven-module program that keeps what worked best (the system, action, and vision components) while streamlining the rest. Notably, entire sections like the regeneration module were thoughtfully removed to create a tighter, more cohesive experience.

The evolution to LifeOS brought another welcome change: Ali now teaches every module himself.

While Kaylen Apple did excellent work teaching portions of Productivity Lab, there's something special about learning directly from the course creator throughout the entire journey.

One element I particularly loved about the original format was the weekly implementation workshops.

These weren't just passive webinars—they were live Zoom sessions led by productivity coaches where we actively reflected as a group and put concepts into practice together. The energy of working alongside others in real-time made the learning stick in ways that solo study never could.

In week 3, the last week of the LifeOS cohort, we discussed quarterly quests and balanced weeks. I previously wrote about my balanced week in a past newsletter.

📅 Balanced Weeks: Your Weekly Reset

3 Things I Liked & Learned About Balanced Weeks:

Thing #1: It’s not about having a perfect week. It’s about making a balanced week. This gives you clarity and structure. It helps you focus on what matters most. Remember, “balanced week” doesn’t mean a super-productive week. What works one week may lead to burnout later.

Thing #2: Those 30 minutes—or even 5—each week are invaluable. I focus on reviewing my 90-day goals. I reflect on last week’s wins and challenges. Then, I set three priorities for the coming week.

Update: I created an app to help with my weekly planning ritual. I can open it on my iPhone via Safari using a widget. The data is stored in Supabase. My progress is shown on my analytics dashboard.

It even has calendar integration, so I can enter my most important appointments directly into the app. Then, the app pushes them to my calendar.

Thing #3: That’s it… see Thing #2 and Thing #1.

🎮 Quarterly Quests: Your 90-Day Milestones

I’ve set my own quarterly quests for the past year and enjoyed focusing on these longer-term goals. 90 days is long enough for a significant goal, but not so long that you avoid taking action, like with yearly goals.

To be honest, I set aside time to write this newsletter, and I will discuss quarterly quests next week.

My motto for next week: stick to the calendar; it provides a precise reflection of how you spend your time.

Have a balanced week!

Lukas 📆

P.S. Setting quarterly quests? Here's my productivity breakthrough...

Remember when I mentioned doing Ali's LifeOS course? His "quarterly quests" concept completely changed my planning approach - but I'll be honest, I hit a massive roadblock.

The problem: Analysis paralysis.

I kept second-guessing myself: "Is this the RIGHT quarterly goal? What if there's another goal with higher ROI?" My mind was constantly jumping between options, unable to focus on even simple daily tasks. It was exhausting.

I tried everything:

• Google? Just SEO-optimized fluff that sounds good but doesn't actually help
• Reddit? Quick fixes that worked for others but fell flat for me

Then I discovered something game-changing.

I typed "goals" into Shortform's search, and within seconds found insights that would've taken hours to uncover elsewhere. Here's just ONE tip that immediately clicked:

📌 The "Imperfect Plan Paradox" (from Brian Tracy's research): Don't aim for the perfect plan from the start. Instead, BEGIN with what you have and refine as you go. This feels wrong because we think we need everything figured out first - but that thinking is exactly what keeps us stuck.

This single insight broke my analysis paralysis. Instead of endlessly comparing potential goals, I picked one and started. The clarity came through action, not overthinking.

Why Shortform hits different:

• Curated insights from 1000+ books, instantly searchable
• No SEO nonsense - just actionable wisdom
• Connects concepts across multiple books (imagine finding how 'Atomic Habits' relates to your quarterly planning)

Since partnering with them as an affiliate, I can offer you: 5 days free + 20% off the annual plan → shortform.com/neurohackingly

That's 2.5 months free to transform how you approach your quarterly quests. 🎯