The 10% More Connected Filter
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Instead of setting outcome goals (write a book, hit a revenue number, get clicks), Joe Hudson has you find the thread running underneath the goals you already have — in Ali's case, connection — and then make that quality itself the goal: be 10% more connected in everything you do. Nothing on your calendar changes. What changes is that a portion of your attention stays in your body while you do it, and every task gets run through one question: how do I do this in the most connected way, while being connected? Hudson's claim is that this costs no extra energy, sparks a level of creativity that goal-chasing doesn't, and, for a public figure, compounds commercially because people want to connect with someone who is connected to themselves.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
List your goals and find the thread underneath them
Write out your current wants across work, health, and relationships without editing them. Then look for the shared quality behind them rather than the content. Ali listed in-person teaching, adventures with friends, and getting fit; Hudson pointed out that every one of them was about connection — to himself or to others.
Pro tip Look for the quality that shows up in the goals you'd keep even if the outcome never arrived.
- 2
Replace the outcome goal with the quality goal
Swap 'write a book / make X dollars / get enough clicks' for 'be 10% more connected in everything I do.' The 10% matters: it is small enough that no plan, job, or schedule has to change, which removes the excuse of needing to restructure your life first.
Watch out Don't scale it to 100%. Hudson notes that when transformation moves too fast, people leave their body because the feeling is too much.
- 3
Do it right now, in the activity you're already in
Don't wait for a retreat or a breathwork session. In the middle of the conversation, put attention on your feet on the floor and your hands on the table while continuing to talk. Ali did this mid-session and found his performance anxiety about the recording disappeared without effort.
Pro tip Notice the energy cost. Hudson observed it took Ali less energy, not more.
- 4
Run your most mundane task through the filter
Pick the rote, unexciting thing your business does — billing, admin, sponsor reads. Ask two things at once: how would the whole organisation do this in the most connected way, and how do I do it while staying connected to myself? Hudson's point is that the least glamorous task gives the clearest proof, because the creativity that shows up there is unmistakably new.
Pro tip Treat every answer as an experiment to run, not a decision to defend.
- 5
Set an ambient reminder instead of a task list
Use a lightweight recurring prompt — Hudson uses an app that pings him with a single question — set to 'how do I be 10% more connected right now?' A reminder that interrupts you in the activity beats a note you have to remember to reread.
Watch out A list only works if you remember to read the list. Most people don't.
- 6
Let the insight land in the body before you capture it
When something clicks, resist immediately reaching for the notes app. Hudson argues that writing it down too fast blocks the integration in the body, and that a felt insight is recalled more reliably than a written one. Stay with the sensation of being 10% more connected first, then write.
Pro tip If you must capture it, capture it after the feeling has faded, not during.
In the wild
Asked to name his most rote business task, Ali picked filming sponsorship segments. Hudson had him run it through the connected filter. Within seconds three ideas appeared: proactively approaching brands he genuinely uses — Lululemon, whose clothing he owns almost exclusively, and the tech companies whose tools he actually relies on — instead of processing inbound pitches; and reviving a shelved idea to perform sponsor reads as a poem or a song on guitar, which he'd abandoned after a friend told him it would hurt conversions.
→ The task he liked least generated three new experiments in under a minute, all of which he found more fun than the status quo.
Mid-session, Ali kept a slice of his attention on his feet on the floor and his fingers on the table while continuing to talk. He had started the recording carrying a background worry about whether the episode would be good enough to publish and whether he'd embarrass himself. Several minutes into holding partial attention in his body, he reported that all of that had gone and it now simply felt like a chat.
→ Performance anxiety dissolved without being addressed directly, and the conversation cost him less energy, not more.
Common mistakes
Turning the insight into another to-do item
Ali's first reaction to the filter was 'I need to remember this somehow' — reaching for a list. Hudson's counter is that capturing it too early prevents it integrating in the body, and then you face the second problem of remembering to reread the list at all. The practice is a state you re-enter, not a task you tick.
Waiting for your life to change first
The filter is explicitly designed to be applied without altering a single practical or tactical thing you do today. If you defer it until you've moved cities, restructured the team, or launched the new product, you've converted a present-tense practice into another outcome goal — the exact thing it replaces.
Applying it only to the exciting work
Running the filter over the parts of your job you already enjoy proves nothing. Hudson deliberately picked the most mundane, disliked task, because that's where the jump in creativity is visible and where a connection deficit is actually costing you something.
From the transcript
“What if the goal was be 10% more connected in everything I do.”
“even you could take even the thing that is most mundane that you dislike the most, put it through this goal about how does this…”
“there can be this question of like how do I maximize the connection?”
From the episode
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