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Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal9 Systems To Build A Life Of Abundance - Sahil Bloom
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125 min read · 24,836 words- 0:00 – 1:38
Intro
- SBSahil Bloom
A friend of mine said to me, like, "How many times do you see your parents per year?" I said, "You know, maybe once." And he said, "Okay, so you're gonna see them 15 more times before they die." I remember hearing that and feeling like I got punched in the gut.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive, the weekly podcast where every week it is my immense pleasure to sit down with authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people, and we find out how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools we can learn from them to help us build a life that we love. Sahil has been one of the most requested guests on the podcast for ages, and the reception to his first appearance on the podcast was so strong that when he decided to come over to London, we thought, "You know what? Let's do a part two for the podcast." So in this episode, we talk about how to systemize life. We talk about strategies and tools for building better health and relationships.
- SBSahil Bloom
I'm not prideful about trying to make progress in my relationship. So, so if I can find ways, if I can find systems, tools, frameworks, whatever it is, that allow us to grow over time and that allow us to find the space to grow over time, that's impactful to me.
- AAAli Abdaal
We talk a bit about Sahil's journey from a finance bro to a content creator, and we talk about a few life hacks and mental health tactics that we can use to help build a life that we love.
- SBSahil Bloom
If I am not growing in some way as a human being, that's when I'm gonna be dead, for me personally. I just wanna be around people who push me to be slightly better than I was at whatever it is.
- AAAli Abdaal
Welcome back to the podcast. We are meeting in person for the first time. So great to see you. How are you doing?
- SBSahil Bloom
In person is so much more magical, and I am stoked to be here with you.
- AAAli Abdaal
This is gonna be great.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
I would love to start off with a little bit of controversy that you have sparked on the internet recently.
- SBSahil Bloom
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, on Twitter, you tweeted something that actually my girlfriend sent me. Um-
- SBSahil Bloom
Uh-oh.
- AAAli Abdaal
That's-
- SBSahil Bloom
That's never good. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
[laughs] And we actually did this thing,
- 1:38 – 15:08
The life dinner
- AAAli Abdaal
like, last night, actually.
- SBSahil Bloom
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
We had our first li- life dinner last night.
- SBSahil Bloom
Oh, there you go.
- AAAli Abdaal
So your tweet said, "My wife and I recently started a monthly check-in ritual. It's been incredible for our relationship, the life dinner." Um, what is the life dinner? And then why has this been particularly controversial?
- SBSahil Bloom
[laughs] The why has it been controversial question is gonna be an interesting discussion. So the life dinner is basically a system for a little bit of structure in developing your relationship over time, um, particularly when life gets hectic. And so I tend to think this happens a lot for either, uh, a couple that has both people that are really, like, in kind of driven career roles and are really pushing and running and traveling in different directions or after having a kid, when your life becomes infinitely more hectic because you have, you know, a crazy person and a crazy human running around and developing. So I read about this for the first time several years ago. It was an entrepreneur named Brad Feld who had, um, written a blog post, I think, about it and published, and I had read it and sort of just, like, logged it in the back of my mind as something that was interesting. Basically, the idea is you set... In his version, you set a single monthly date. Like, call it the first Monday of every single month. My wife or my partner and I are going to sit down over a dinner at some special place or at home, make a dinner, just the two of you, and really have, like, a semi-structured discussion of important things in your life. Like, what's the most important thing in your professional life right now? What's the most important thing in your personal life? What are you focusing on? What are the kind of, like, things that are bugging you? What's the tension in your life, et cetera? Just really have, like, an open, thoughtful hour-plus discussion one-on-one. And the idea is that life over time becomes more and more chaotic, and you're not able to do that. And so having, like, a true line in the sand that you're gonna do this at least once a month is a good way to just make sure that it's happening and continue to progress your relationship.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
So why was it so controversial? [laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
So I think in general, relationship advice tends to be controversial because it's the same as, like, relationship advice, parenting advice, political commentary. You know, these things that, like, tend to be, um, uh... tend to elicit the reaction of, like, "Don't tell me what to do. I, I know everything. I've already figured this out." And the funny thing to me about, like, why it became controversial was I wasn't telling everyone to do it. I was simply saying, "I have found this beneficial, and here's how we do it. And if you find it interesting, like, try it. Otherwise, just ignore it, and that's totally fine with me," which is sort of the case with all of my content. So I'm always blown away when I get responses that are like, "You're an idiot," or like, "You're a devil." You know, "You're the devil." Like, "I hope you get divorced." You know, like, there were people that were replying to this like, "If you have to do this, you're already gonna get a divorce. This isn't gonna work," um, which to me, like, I can just laugh off because I have a beautiful and healthy and happy marriage. And I personally just think, like, if you're not growing in your relationship and you're... if you're not finding time for these discussions, um, you're going to struggle. And I don't... Like, I'm not prideful about trying to make progress in my relationship. So, so if I can find ways, if I can find systems, tools, frameworks, whatever it is, that allow us to grow over time and that allow us to find the space to grow over time, that's impactful to me.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. I love it. Like, I'm big on systemizing, systemizing relationships. I think it's such a, a, a big hack. And one of the things that my brother and I often talk about is that, um, a lot of gains in our personal life can be found through treating it more like a business.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And actually, a lot of gains in our business can be found through treating it more personally.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And there's, like, a little bit of a middle ground because, for example, no one bats an eyelid if you write down birthdays in a calendar-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... to remind yourself of birthdays, but that is systemizing a relationship. If you really cared, would you rem- like, you would remember the birthday. You probably wouldn't. You recognize that, like, sometimes you need, you need a little bit of a reminder.
- SBSahil Bloom
People say that, by the way, about-
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... personal CRMs. Like, you know, the whole idea that no one... You know, there's, like, Salesforce, which is, like, a CRM tool for businesses to, like, remind you of people you need to ping and where they are in your sales cycle, et cetera. And a bunch of companies have tried to do that for personal things, like-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... birthday reminders-
- AAAli Abdaal
Sure
- SBSahil Bloom
... or, like, when's the last time you spoke to so-and-so for your network development. And a bunch of people push back against that. People say, like, "Oh, you know, you're making it unnatural. You're making it, like, this automated... Like, you're just managing human beings, and those are humans. You shouldn't do that." And so it just depends on where you sit on the spectrum of wanting to do that or not.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
I actually don't care if, if I give this piece of advice and I say that this is... The life dinner is something that helps me. If it's not for you, that's totally okay. Like, if you don't want to systematize your relationship, that's fine, and I'm not gonna tell you that I think you're gonna get a divorce because you're not doing it. Like, I, I just won't say anything. It's not n- you know, if you have a great relationship without doing these things, I think that's awesome. If you talk to your wife tons and you somehow, with a newborn, find time to have these discussions daily, you're, like, a superhero in my book. That's amazing. We don't do that. It's very difficult, I find. And so doing these things, finding these little systems, I find is just super, super helpful.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Mate, I'm fully-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... f- f- fully on, on the same page with you on this. I've, I've tried so many different systems for personal CRMing over the years. Never quite stuck to one.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- 15:08 – 23:00
Systems for friendships
- SBSahil Bloom
to you in life. This isn't about networking to me. I've never been much of a networker. Networking was like a big thing in the finance world where, you know, where I previously was. Like you had to have a big Rolodex. That was like the thing everyone said. Like, "Man, he's got a great Rolodex," whatever it was. I always hated the transactional nature of that.
- AAAli Abdaal
What's, what's a Rolodex?
- SBSahil Bloom
A Rolodex is like that old-fashioned... You should have a Rolodex. You would love a Rolodex.
- AAAli Abdaal
What's a Rolodex? Yeah. [laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
It, it, it was that old-fashioned thing that they used to have in offices that had someone's like info, information on it or you would put their business card in and it was literally like a spinner. So it would, it was alphabetized and so you'd like open your Rolodex and you could go to like the Bs and you would have like Sahil Bloom was in there. You'd go to A and you could have Ali Abdaal and like you would scroll through your Rolodex. It was like a, you know, it was like a contact list.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, that's clever. [laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
But it was, it was physical. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Nice
- SBSahil Bloom
... and so everyone used to say like you gotta have a big Rolodex-
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay
- SBSahil Bloom
... in order to succeed in finance. And I just always hated the sort of fake transactional nature of those kind of, um, those kind of mentalities and relationships. And so my thing is there's, you know, maybe 20, 30, 40 people in your life that are friends that, you know, you feel have impacted you and will continue to over a period of time and you wanna make sure that those friendships don't atrophy. And it's very easy to let them atrophy and we're all guilty of that in some way, shape or form because life takes over. You're just sort of like doing things and stuff's happening. You don't live in the same place as the person, whatever. But it's very easy to find 10 minutes when you're out on a walk to just like text someone or call them and just say like, "Hey, I was thinking of you. What's going on? How are things?" Um, but if you don't have like a forcing function to do it, we just don't.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
You forget. Like life just happens. And so I'm... I mean this is one of my new things from 2023 is I'm trying to do that at least once a week.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
Just call someone and just say like, "Hey, what's going on? I was thinking about you. What's, what's new in your life?" And the challenge with calling is a lot of times people don't pick up, so sometimes it turns into a text and then it leads to an interesting conversation. Whatever it might be, just finding a reason to kind of like ping those people that you don't necessarily talk to every single day and catch up with them.
- AAAli Abdaal
How do you feel about proximity to family and friends?
- SBSahil Bloom
In what sense?
- AAAli Abdaal
In the sense of, um, the value of Oh, so okay, so r- relationships with people that we care about always atrophy over time if left to their own devices.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, often people will move away from their parents or move away from the friends they grew up with.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And then that just, like, decimates the amount of time you get to spend with them.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, to what extent do you think it's important to have kind of physical proximity to people that you love as a thing? Or do you think that it's broadly taken care of through, like, phone calls and visiting occasionally and that kind of stuff?
- SBSahil Bloom
Um, I don't think there's any replacement for in-person interaction with people in terms of actually building and fostering relationships. I'm sitting here with you because I would much rather do this in person than do a Zoom. You know, I, like, I literally flew to London so that I could get to do a few of these things in person and actually build relationships, 'cause that's what matters to me most in life. The single greatest predictor of health at age 80 is relationship satisfaction at age 50. The Harvard study of adult development found that. Longitudinal study, 80-plus years, that was what they found. The single greatest predictor of health at 80 was relationship satisfaction at 50. What does that mean to me? It means that I really, really care deeply about building and fostering deep relationships with people. I think there's certain breadth to it, and you build relationships over time, but I wanna meet the people that I can go deep with and that I can work with and that I can love in different seasons of my life. For me, that means spending time in person with people. And it's, you know, when you talk about your parents, that's the first one. This is the biggest life change I've made in the last several years. My wife and I dropped our entire life in California and moved back to the East Coast because we realized that our parents weren't gonna be around forever. Um, you know, both of us had grown up in the Boston area. Um, my parents were, you know, getting into their mid-60s. And a friend of mine said to me, like, "How many times do you see your parents per year?" I said, "You know, maybe once." And he said, "Okay, so you're gonna see them 15 more times before they die." And I remember hearing that and feeling like I got punched in the gut. And the countable nature of the number of times you are going to see someone as close as your parents before they die is terrifying.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
It's terrifying to think that you can actually just count that on like, you know, almost on two hands at that point. Um, especially when you feel as close to them as I did. And so within 45 days of hearing that, we sold our house in California, m- moved back across to the East Coast, and bought a house in the New York area so that we could be closer to our parents. And now, you know, we have a young kid. They get to be a part of their grandsons' life. They're around all the time. I see my parents, you know, at least twice a month, maybe more. And it's an amazing thing, just getting to have those, like, nothing moments where you're just hanging out or you're just talking to them. It's like there's absolutely no replacement for that, and it's something I will never regret as long as I live.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
Um, so with parents, I think it's really important to realize they're just not gonna be around forever. With friends, I think it's a little bit of a different story because you have seasons to your life. There's not one, you know, one act to your life play where you're the same person for the entirety of your life, nor are your friends the same person over the entirety of their lives. And so there are some friends who are a great fit for one season of your life and aren't gonna be there in the next one, and that's okay. You don't have to keep trying to jam them in there. I have some amazing friends from my high school years who I'm no longer close with. I think they're lovely people. They're great in their own different ways. But we're just in different worlds now. We've gone about different paths and are doing different things. And I think that's totally fine. I think continuing to try to live with and be around people that aren't actually a match and that aren't developing you and you aren't developing them is actually a bad thing. And so being aware that it's okay to leave things behind, to, like, shed your old shell and move on to the new one like a, you know, a hermit crab does over the course of its life-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- 23:00 – 33:58
Dealing with negativity
- AAAli Abdaal
How, how have you... Well, what strategies have you developed over time?
- SBSahil Bloom
What are my systems?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
What are my systems for the hate?
- AAAli Abdaal
Exactly. [laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
When I write about systems, what are my systems for dealing with the hate-
- AAAli Abdaal
That's the one
- SBSahil Bloom
... that comes from the talk on systems? It's very meta. Um, no, it... All, all jokes aside, I mean, there's a few things that I've learned from the greats that have come before us, like the Tim Ferrisses of the world and people who have written about this in the past. Um, and then there's a few things that I've, I would say, developed on my own. I mean, one of the biggest ways is to just avoid reading comments when you see things taking a turn for the negative. So, like, with that life dinner one, I saw some of the early quote tweets, and normally, like, you know, for people that don't know Twitter that well, once you start seeing quote tweets ticking up, like, really fast alongside retweets, you know that there's some shit going down. Like, you gotta... Then you're like, "Ooh, okay, there's something happening." And for me, I was like, "Okay, I stand by this. I think this is a great idea. So I actually... I don't really care. It's fine." Like, quote tweets are actually gonna drive more people to positively see the idea.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
And what it led to was tons of messages from people that are like, "Hey, this is a great idea. I tried this, like you," um, that are gonna p- you know, benefit from it in some way. So in any case, I saw the quote tweets started to tick up. First thing I did was I muted it. So I muted the conversation so that I would never get a notification about it. Because for me, that's like, okay, out of sight, out of mind.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
People can say whatever they want about me. Fine, I don't care. And it was funny. Like, you messaged me, and you were like, "Hey, ho- hope you're good." And I was like, "I'm blissfully ignorant."
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. [laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
Like, I'm waving around. Like, I have no idea what's going on. It's totally fine. So that's number one. Number two is when someone writes something mean about you who they don't know on the internet, that person is not a happy person. I've never met someone happy who has sat down and written something extremely negative about a person they don't know. It just doesn't happen. That person has some sort of pain or trauma or something in their life that is leading them to react the way that they are to this. And the most powerful thing I've ever read on this is, like, you should default to empathy when you see someone react that way because there's something going on in their life. I just had a conversation with a friend who had encountered this, um, who said that he shot a message to the person that had sent the negative thought and said like, "Hey, I hope you're, I hope you're all right. You know, I hope everything's fine." And the person replied and said, basically, "Sorry. You know, my wife, my, my wife recently got diagnosed with cancer, and so the way that you worded this thing, it really rubbed me the wrong way, and that's why I reacted negatively." And he said to me, like, you know, "What a thing," 'cause I would've replied really negatively to his response. But instead, I defaulted to empathy and realized that there was this really challenging moment in this person's life. So that's the second one. The third one for me is, like, a little bit more of, like, a, I don't know, flex or a slightly arrogant version of this, which is I had a moment maybe, like, this might be, like, six months ago now, where someone said something really mean and negative to me on the internet, and I was, like, in the bathroom. I read it, and I was pretty bummed. I was like, "Man, this person doesn't know me, and then they said all these mean things about me. What is this?" And I came back into my room, and my son was in there. Uh, you know, my beautiful wife was in bed. I, like, got into bed. I have this nice house. And I was sitting there, and I was like, "Huh. Yeah, this is okay." Like, yeah. [laughs] You know, like, I, here I am. This person's probably sitting in their mom's basement talking crap to me on the internet, and I'm like, "I'm... Life's pretty good. This is all right. Like, I can deal with it. I can take the heat." Like, if I, if I wasn't comfortable taking the heat, I should get out of the kitchen. Um, so there's a little bit of just, like, the man in the arena, you know, the Teddy Roosevelt thing of when you're gonna put yourself out there and you're gonna be on, in, you know, in the arena and on the arena, on that stage, these things are gonna happen. You're going to draw some of it. People are gonna be negative, and that's okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
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To what extent, if any, do you worry about, uh, posting pictures of your wife and son on the internet?
- SBSahil Bloom
I get asked this a lot recently. Um, I, on a scale of one to 10, one being, uh, you know, ultra-controversial person, you know, Donald Trump, and 10 being flowery, you know, just posting pictures of beautiful fields of flowers. I'm probably like an eight and a half. Like, my content is so uncontroversial on average and positive. I ne- and I never attack people back. I basically just take it and whatever it is. The most controversial thing I can say is that you should have a we- a monthly date night with your wife to talk about things. That's controversial for me. And like, I didn't even realize that was con- but that's con- that's an eight for me. Um, because of that, I don't worry about it as much as I otherwise would. If I was like a five, I would worry about there being angry people that are getting mad about things that I'm doing. [lips smack] You know, I'm not, like, selling things. I don't do conferences. I'm not, uh, you know, doing things where there's gonna be someone out there that feels like I hurt them or scammed them. All my stuff is free, you know, with the exception of an eventual book, which no one has to buy if they don't want to. Um, I tend to think that at least now I don't worry about it a lot. Um, but there are instances where it kind of hits me. Like I, you know, I'm in the grocery store with my wife and son and someone comes up and they're like, "Oh, is that Roman?" You know, a random person that I've never met before that recognized me, him from Instagram or something. And that kinda makes me think where I'm like, "Hmm, once he no longer looks like an ambiguous baby, this might not be the best and smartest thing to do." Um, so sh- you know, kind of long way of saying I haven't really thought about the downsides and the risk to date, but will there be downsides and risks in the future? Yeah, probably.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
What about you?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, it's something I've started increasingly thinking about. Um, like, [clears throat] I'm fairly public about my personal life. Uh, well, I'm, I'm fairly public about things like my finances on the internet.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
So it's easy enough for people to figure out how much money the business earns-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... which they then extrapolate to how much money I am, uh, how much money I own, which then they then extrapolate to-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... how much money is in my personal bank account.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh.
- SBSahil Bloom
I don't do that.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
I never talk about money.
- 33:58 – 35:13
Wealth beyond money
- AAAli Abdaal
to the kidnappers. And, and all of those things, uh, kinda made me think, "Huh, I wonder if I should reassess my approach to sharing stuff online," um, especially when a family gets involved with this kind of stuff.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So I was just curious what your take on that was.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah. I mean, my, um... [lips smack] It's a tricky question because I think that in an era where AI will increasingly replace the actual content that is being created, especially written content first, then video over time, personality and human connection is really important. And I personally think that as robots and as AI becomes more and more of our life on a daily basis, people are gonna have this like pendulum swing where they're gonna really starve for and thr- and, and crave true human interaction. And so for me, I have wanted to create that depth of connection with the people that are in my community that are following me. I like, I still reply to emails that people send me. I reply to DMs. You know, I have all this stuff open even though my audience is now probably too large to do that in a scalable sense. But it's important to me, 'cause I want people to know that I'm a real person and that when they send me, "Hey, I'm wrestling with this, this, or this," that like there's a person that's actually reading that and trying
- 35:13 – 39:20
‘Deferred happiness syndrome’
- SBSahil Bloom
to respond to them. I mean, I had, I literally had someone a few weeks ago reply to me and say they were really concerned about their physical health and they were worried they weren't gonna be around for their kid, you know, 10 years from now if they didn't get their weight in check. And, and they were having trouble motivating. And I said, "All right. Well, do 15 minutes walk, just like walk for 15 minutes tomorrow and email me back and tell me that you did it." And they did that. And then I said, "All right. Do it again tomorrow." And then they did it again tomorrow. And it's just r- it's interactions like that that I really love. Like, that's why I do this. It's because I feel like I can actually create an impact and create value in people's lives-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- SBSahil Bloom
... from my desk in New York, which is unbelievable to me. It's a crazy, crazy thought relative to the path I was on previously. Giving that up by not being as human as I feel like I naturally am feels like I'm giving in to dark and negative forces that I don't want to give in to.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Yeah. That, that's a, that, that's a, that's a nice way of putting it. I've kind of been feeling the same thing where, you know, in an ideal world, I would like to share more, 'cause I think there's value in sharing-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... transparently about things and kinda have that h- that human connection. But there is that... Yeah, I, I guess it's just about weighing up the risks and the benefits.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah, I mean, like look, uh, I have made plenty of money. I'm doing well. I'm not the richest person in the world. Like if you wanna go rob someone 'cause they're super rich, there's plenty of people on the internet that are richer than me that are like really public about stuff they're doing with money and I'm sure people can find them. Um, so- I don't, and I don't strive to. I'm not trying to be the richest person in the world either.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
That's just not, like, what I really write about or what I talk about. It's just not part of my thing. Um, I wanna be extremely balanced, and I wanna share ways that people can think about their life so that they can build that same comprehensively wealthy existence that I feel like I've found. Um, and if that pisses people off along the way, I'd be surprised.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
I don't- I just- I really try to avoid things that I think are gonna piss people off 'cause I don't see a ton of value in it. I'm not one of the people that's gonna, like, intentionally throw out rage bait controversy just so that I can-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... get a bunch of views.
- AAAli Abdaal
Sure.
- SBSahil Bloom
There's plenty of ways to get views, and that's not really one that I find fun.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. What's-- So y- you've mentioned this idea I, I, I guess, like, comprehensively wealthy-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... a couple times. What, what do you mean by that?
- SBSahil Bloom
So wealth beyond money. Changing the scoreboard, right? Like, you know, this is what my book is about-
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm
- SBSahil Bloom
... that I'm working on now. It's basically this whole idea that we have been so narrowly focused on money as the sole definition of wealth throughout, you know, the last several hundred years because it's so easily measured. You look up at the scoreboard and your money scoreboard, and you can see it ticking up and down on a daily basis, right? Like, I don't know, if you've ever used Mint or Personal Capital or any one of these platforms, people refresh that thing daily-
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm
- SBSahil Bloom
... just to see, like, "Oh, did my number go up? I feel good. Did it go down? I feel bad." And that's how they measure their whole life, and that's how they stack themselves up against everyone else. It's a, it's a daily scoreboard that you can look at. And I think we need a new scoreboard. I think that in order to live a truly happy and fulfilled existence, we need to expand what is on our scoreboard, and we need to think about these other areas of life. We need to think about our physical health and vitality. We need to think about our mental health, mental fitness, mental vitality. We need to think about our social wealth and cultural or, like, environments that we're in. Um, you know, the people, the depth of relationships. And we need to think about our time, most importantly. We need to think about being time wealthy and being able to actually use our time while we can use it. There's this tendency of humans of, like, deferred happiness syndrome. Like, "Oh, I'm gonna do all those things once I get to this point in my life. I'm gonna go on that vacation, travel the world once I can afford it or once I've saved up this amount of money or once I've reached this phase in my career because I don't wanna sacrifice a year of my career, you know, trajectory now and then have to start back there next year." And the reality is you're never gonna do those things. And if you do do them later down the line, you're just gonna enjoy it less. Time in the future is worth less than time today.
- AAAli Abdaal
Well-
- SBSahil Bloom
It's just discounted.
- AAAli Abdaal
What do you mean?
- SBSahil Bloom
You know, it's the same as
- 39:20 – 46:16
The yes damn effect
- SBSahil Bloom
money, right? Like, a dollar in the future is worth less than a dollar today. It's the same with time. Like, you know, a year, a year-long trip around the world at age 55 is less fun than a year-long trip at age 35. Because the things you can do as a 35-year-old single person traveling the world are unbelievable.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
And, like, I had a friend recently who I had this discussion with who is 27 years old. He was on a path, you know, consulting, getting promoted, patted on the back, McKinsey. Like, things are great. You're at-- You know, you win- you're winning the game. Like, you're gonna be a partner by 30, and that's, like, your calling card to life. Like, Indian parents, man, you're, like, really, really nailing, winning the game. And he wanted to go travel for a year. Rather than doing an MBA, he wanted to go travel and see different cultures. He had never traveled much. And he said, "All of the partners are telling me it's, like, the worst decision because I'm gonna miss out on this year's, this year of growth, and then I'm not gonna make partner by 30. It might take until I'm 32. And so I don't think I'm gonna do it." And I was like, "Dude, you're an idiot." I just was like, "That is the dumbest reason to not do it." Because those years, you're never gonna do this again. This is your one chance to do this. It... You can tell yourself, "Oh, I'm gonna do it. You know, I'll do it, you know, once I've been a partner for a while and I made a bunch of money. I'll do it when I'm 50." You won't. Because you're gonna have kids that are in school. You're gonna have kids that you're gonna have to pay to go and do all sorts of different activities. You might have a wife. You know, you're gonna be all over the place. And your career is just gonna have this gravity. It gets harder and harder to do over the course of your life. So if you don't do it now, you're not gonna do it. So if you're comfortable with that, then that's fine. You can make that decision. But don't convince yourself that you're not doing it today 'cause you'll do it later.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. I like to be, I like to be aware whenever I find myself in that, in that model of thinking. Uh, I've been doing it a lot recently because we're now in the sort of final month of editing for the book.
- SBSahil Bloom
Hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so I keep on thinking in my mind that, like, "Oh, this is a thing for after the book is done." And the other day, um, it felt a bit awkward to admit it. Um, it's-- but the other day, actually, like, a, a couple of days ago, my mum, me, and my grandma, we were invited to drive to an old friend's house-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... to have a dinner party. And I was thinking, "Oh, I really don't wanna go." And it was, like, 4:00 p.m., and I was like, "Oh, you know, we've got to be there for 7:00. I'm gonna have to drive for two hours." And then my mum and grandma don't enjoy listening to music in the car either, so just, like, literally driving in silence with the occasional bit of chatter. And I have these book deadlines coming up and this, all, all these things I need to do on the book. And I initially called my mum saying that, "Yeah, how important is it that I go to this dinner? I don't, I don't really wanna go." And she was like, "Oh, well, you know, think about it. It'll be nice if you come." And then I thought, like... I re- I, I, I reflected on the thing that, uh, Tim Urban has written about, like, the tail end-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... like, the last num- the last few times you're gonna spend with your loved ones.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yep.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I was thinking, in the future, will I, will I ever think, "Damn, I really regret not spending an extra three hours on the book"? Or am I more likely to think, "Damn, I really wish I could have one more road trip with my mum and grandma"? And I was like, obviously the road trip.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Let's... Who cares if I... Like, it's gonna be a bit boring- [chuckles]
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... in the car for some of the journey. Like-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... I'm so glad I made that decision. And it was quite fun at the din- at the, at the dinner as well. I met some new people. Um, but I, I, I keep finding myself kind of catching myself being like, oh, if I... I'm trying to defer something for when the, when the book is done. Because in my mind, when the book is done, it's like, say, it's just around the corner, and-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... you know, life will be easier then. But then I remind myself, no, hang on. Li- life's never gonna feel easier.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
There's always gonna be more stuff coming up.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so if it's important, then it's gonna be... If, if it's important, then it should be important now rather than-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... important in the future.
- SBSahil Bloom
The yes damn effect. Have you heard of this?
- AAAli Abdaal
No. What's that?
- SBSahil Bloom
The yes damn effect is this idea that, uh, we say yes to things and then later say, "Damn-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- 46:16 – 50:11
We are blind to our realities
- AAAli Abdaal
are for hustling. Well, actually I, I don't know if that's what Gary Vee says these days. Um, but your 20s are for, for hustling and trying to get ahead in your career so that you can actually set yourself up financially to be more chill and have more free time and stuff in your 30s when you have a kid for the first time and have the flexibility to spend more time at home. And it feels to me like that's kind of one side of the equation. Like, it kind of... Actually, it's worth working the extra hours at McKinsey to get ahead to build up that flexibility versus, hey, I just wanna travel the world for five years, and then what if you end up in a place where actually-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... financially you're not able to hop on a plane on Monday-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... and chill in a-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... in a restaurant with your, with your, with your mate in London.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm 32.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
So I'm after my hu- I did... And I did that. I did the 80 to 100 hour weeks from the time I was 22 until-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... the time I was 30, basically.
- AAAli Abdaal
And that, and-
- SBSahil Bloom
Until I was 29
- AAAli Abdaal
... it seems, it seems like now you're chilling.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah, and that built a f- financial foundation that mattered, and it allowed me to actually see where the gold was on my playing field. Like, you know, if I had a map that I was uncovering as, like, a video game character around my map, I spent those years working so much that I found all of the different areas of my map and where I thought the gold was, like, where my highest leverage opportunities were to go deep. And then I'm able to dig in those areas, which might not take more than a couple hours a day, and do much better, 'cause I'm just digging up gold. I'm not digging up a bunch of crap. And so that matters. Like, I really do believe that. The problem is the people that say, like, "I'm gonna hustle in my 20s so that I can chill and spend time with my kids in my 30s." They are not gonna do that. They are not gonna chill and spend time with their kids in their 30s. They're just gonna keep hustling, because you get to your 30s and you're on a track, like at a McKinsey or at an investment bank or as a doctor or whatever, and then what you say is like, "Oh, well, you know, now I'm, now I'm doing well. I wanna do even better. Like, now I made my first million. I wanna make 3 million. I wanna make 5 million." Because what it is is it's a mirage. You're like, it's not just an age where all of a sudden you wake up and you're like, "Now I'm gonna spend time with my kids. Everything's great." No, you're like a VP and you have tons of responsibilities, and the gravity of that career track has only increased, keeping you in it, and the golden handcuffs have only increased 'cause your lifestyle has crept up over those years. So now, you know, you might be making a half a million dollars a year, feeling rich, but your whole life has crept up. You're living in a nice apartment. You know, you've got high tax rate. You, like, got the nice car that ch- costs you $1,000 a month. And all of a sudden you're like, "Well, crap, I actually gotta make a million dollars for myself to feel rich." And then you make a million and you're like, "Damn, I gotta make $2 million to actually feel rich." And so what happens is you don't get to 30 and start chilling to hang out with your kids. You hustle through your 30s thinking, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna chill at 40." And then you get to 40 and maybe you are ready to chill, but your kids don't wanna hang out with you anymore 'cause they're 10 and they have friends. Like, the time from by the time they're zero to 10, I've seen someone call it the magic years. Like, that period from zero to 10 where they actually ... care about you so much. Like, you are their far- favorite person in the entire world, and yet we work so hard during that period of time. We have no time. We're traveling, we're doing whatever it is. And that's a real travesty in my opinion. And so if you could actually do that, if you could hustle in your 20s to build the foundation to figure out your highest leverage opportunities and then dive in to where those high leverage opportunities are, that's what I'm doing. And I think it's amazing if you can make it work.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
But most people won't do that. Most people will just continue to work harder and harder because they see whatever the next m- version of more is, whatever the next mirage is on the horizon, and they just keep blindly walking towards it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
Have you seen the, um, or have you read, um, the This Is Water speech, David Foster Wallace?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. I've, I've come across it from a few, a few different sources.
- SBSahil Bloom
Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
So, you know, it's like, um, he starts it with this parable that these two fish are swimming along in the water and an older fish swims on up to them and is like, "Hey, boys, how's the water?" And the two other fish kind of continue swimming along, and then one of them looks at the other one and says, "What the hell is water?" And it's this whole idea, like, you know, tongue in cheek, cheeky
- 50:11 – 57:15
What does retirement mean?
- SBSahil Bloom
comment of we're very much blind to our most obvious realities. And when you are on that hustle phase and when you're continuing to progress and doing all those, those things, you are blind to these obvious realities of the things that you're missing. You're just ... You, you've grown accustomed to what that track is, and you need to continue feeding that track because our culture just tells us that success means getting promoted every two years, that success means getting a pay raise of 10% every year, that getting the big bonus, that's what success looks like. And so that's what you have to actually go and do in order to continue to feed that beast in your life.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Yeah. I'm just thinking, like, is there a ... Is there an easy mental model for this to kind of balance out on the one hand the idea that you, you gotta #hustle in your 20s-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... to build a foundation versus you actually do wanna chill?
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah. I mean, I think it's-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... um, the way I've always thought about it, the, like, simple heuristic for it is you work hard first so that you can work smart later.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- SBSahil Bloom
Those two are always played off of each other in tension. It was like you're either working hard or you're mark- working smart. And I just don't, I don't think they're in tension. I think they're sequential. I think that it's really important to work hard early in your career. I will never tell anyone like, "Oh, don't ... You know, just work smart early in your career." Bugged me to no end when people would join, you know, our firm as 22-year-olds and want all this balance and wanna be able to, like, spend time with all their friends and, you know, have the high-paying job. And it's like I just think you have to pick one. You can spend time with tons of your friends and, like, go work at the cushy, you know, Google gig or whatever, but that wasn't the career track we were in. You need to work hard if you want to accelerate and build great things. Um, and then you can work smart once you've done that, once you've built that base, once you've built that foundation. The hard work is important because of what I said earlier. You need to uncover the map. You need to uncover what the high leverage op- opportunities are for you because you don't know.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
When you're starting at age 22, you have no idea what's out there. You don't know what you're good at. You don't know what you're bad at. You don't know where the gold is on the map. You don't know where the gold is going to be on the map in the future because you have no heuristics. You have no tools at your disposal. You're just starting to learn. And the hard work, the saying yes to tons of opportunities that come your way, the hours that come with that, that's what allows you to see the map. I mean, the same goes for content creators. It's like I don't know a single content creator that has become big that didn't grind in the early days of getting things going. There's no easy way to do it. There's no, like, hack to building one of these things. You spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours creating and banging your head into a wall and frustrated because something didn't take off the way you thought it should. But all of those little things contribute to where you are in the end. It's like the stonecutter analogy of, you know, the stonecutter, cutter is chipping away at the stone over and over again. You don't see a single, you know, chink in the stone, and then suddenly the whole thing breaks. And you would never say that those hundred cracks at it had no impact. They clearly were just doing a little bit of damage, a little bit of damage, a little bit of damage that you just couldn't see, but they were an integral part of actually splitting the thing open at the end.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
And so I think that exact same thing applies to the way that we work in our lives. You have to do all of that hard work up front because that's what allows you to effectively work smart once you get to that point.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm. Nice. There's a, there's another way I've been sort of slowly thinking about it, I think prompted by something that Naval once tweeted, um, along with my own, my own kind of thoughts on what does, like, re- what does retirement mean? And I think I kind of sort of synthesize this into like three things. Retirement is either where you have so much money that your, your expenses are taken care of and therefore you don't need to work or where your expenses are so low that the money you do have coming in is like, you know, the lean FIRE and all that kind of stuff-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... is so low that actually you're functionally retired and you don't need to work.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Or where the stuff that you're doing for work is the stuff you would be doing anyway and therefore you feel like you don't need to work.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And I feel like for me I've been li- I, I've spent my 20s trying to kind of tick all three boxes.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, doing a bit less well on the sort of lifestyle inflation front, but [laughs] that's kind of al- always a, a little bit in the back of my mind. Let's try and, let's try and make money preferably through #passiveincome so that it's not directly tied to my time. But at the same time, let me try and move to a place where the work I'm doing is the work that I actually would choose to be doing even if I wasn't being paid for it.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yep.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so these days I feel so grateful because, like, it's a Tuesday morning today. I got up, I had a shower, and I was so excited to do a one-on-one with Angus, my general manager. And then I was so excited because we had some team meetings. We're planning our content. And then I was super excited for this, that we're gonna hang out afterwards for dinner as well. I'm just like, damn, I can't believe that this is what I get to do for work.
- SBSahil Bloom
It's a cool feeling, isn't it?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. It's mental. And people looking at my life would say, "Oh, you work too hard Um, but I'd be like, "It, it, it really doesn't feel like it." And I played loads of Hogwarts Legacy for the, like, you know, over the last couple of weeks.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
It's really good. Um, and that's kind of been the future that I've been-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... trying to work, trying to work towards ever since the age of 18 when I read The 4-Hour Workweek for the first time.
- 57:15 – 1:09:30
Financial security vs financial confidence
- SBSahil Bloom
research alongside academics at places like Oxford University. And actually for me personally, when I was struggling to figure out what to do with my career, I basically binged every single post on 80000hours.org, which is the website. And I also had a careers counseling session with one of their careers counselors. And those two things, just like reading all this stuff, understanding what are the factors that actually lead to an impactful career and how can I combine those with my own personal passions and skills, really helped me to formulate that actually this career as being a, quote, "thought leader" or YouTuber, podcaster, whatever I'm doing now, actually felt more meaningful and impactful for me than continuing to be a doctor. So yeah, everything they provide is completely free. They're a nonprofit, and their only aim is to help you find a fulfilling and impactful career. And if you wanna get a completely free copy of their in-depth career guide, then head over to 80000hours.org/deepdive. And if you enter your email over there, again, completely for free, they're not trying to make any money from this, if you enter your email, they will send you the career guide, which is basically the crash course in the main ideas that make for a fulfilling and high-impact career. So head to 80000hours.org. That's 8-0-0-0-0 hours, H-O-U-R-S, .org/deepdive, and that will give you so much more information on how to start planning or changing your, your career to something that's fulfilling and meaningful and has a positive impact on the world. So thank you so much, 80,000 Hours, for very kindly sponsoring this episode. The other way that I f- I kinda think about this is, um, in the context of tabletop board games. Hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, there's y- you know, games like, uh, Catan and these other-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... more kind of fanc- fancier ones. There's always some kind of u- some, some kind of production engine or some kind of economic engine.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Whether it's y- you know, in Agricola you have your little workers in the farm and you're-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... generating units of food.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Or you've got your little sheep and you're generating units of sheep.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Or in Catan, like wood and hay and stone-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... and all that crap. And whenever you're playing one of these board games, you have to have an economic engine of some sort.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
You, you can't just play the game and just be like, "I'm just gonna build an army."
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Like how... With, with what? Like-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah, yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
You've gotta have some kind of production machine.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so in my, in the back of my mind, there's this analogy of everyone, everyone needs an economic engine of some sort.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Either that's the trust fund from your parents or from your grandparents or whatever that might be, in which case, great, or rather not, not so great. Um, b- but you've gotta figure out what's, what's gonna drive that engine. And preferably, and I guess this is the place where you've gotten to with your holding company, the more you can untether that from your physical hours invested, the more you're able to unlock freedom-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... and optionality for yourself. And that means you can choose to, you know, move across the country to hang out with your parents or come to London or-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... it just unlo- unlocks freedom in your life.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And that's the freedom to choose to invest in the things you actually wanna invest your time in. Because the objective isn't to sit on a beach sipping piña coladas. The objective is to, you know, at least for me, to, you know, have f- freedom away from the things I don't wanna do and freedom to do the things that I actually do wanna do-
- 1:09:30 – 1:12:04
Be a guide not a guru
- AAAli Abdaal
consuming Gary Vee stuff because it's no longer relevant for them. And so there's natural churn in the Gary Vee audience-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm
- AAAli Abdaal
... where you no longer need to consume personal development. Like I would say Tim Ferriss is the one person outside of my family who's most changed my life.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
But these days I consume 0.1% of his content.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
But if I ever met Tim Ferriss, Tim Ferriss in real life, I'd be like, "Oh my God, mate, you've changed my life so much."
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Like I've listened, I listened to every episode of the podcast from like zero to 150-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... and then I stopped because then, then I built my own thing-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... based on the inspiration I took away from that. So there's natural churn in the audience in that sense. I think tech YouTubers have done a good job of staying relevant for a long time. Like Marques and Linus and stuff have been around 15 years and still, and sh- and show no signs of declining because I think then the focus is on the tech.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And every year a new tech comes out and th- th- therefore there's new stuff to cover.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And so their expertise on this new thing of tech becomes more valuable over time-
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm
- AAAli Abdaal
... rather than less valuable. But I think there's a... Yeah, I, I feel like there's just a-
- SBSahil Bloom
I think there has to be a just like natural burnout. Not necessarily burnout in the sense of like, "Oh my God, I'm burnt out."
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
But it's just a lot of work-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- SBSahil Bloom
... to continue to create videos over a long period of time, to continue to feel like you need to be on, to be like, in a sense, performative. Like it is, you're performing.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
You're like acting in a certain way. And we all play a character in, in our lives.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
Right? Like at some point during your day when you turn on the cameras for us to come in here, like we perk up a little bit-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. [laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
... and we're smiling and we're talking. And not that we weren't doing this before we turned on the cameras and like all of a sudden it's this big acting show, but you turn on and that's tiring-
- 1:12:04 – 1:22:30
Mental health & wellbeing
- SBSahil Bloom
of things I can talk about. And, you know, you get yelled at every t- single time you expand your circle. Like someone will say like, "Stay in your lane, bro," whatever. Like, you know, when I wrote about mental models, people were like, "Oh, you know, stay in your lane. Why are you writing about mental models?" Or, you know, when I started writing about philosophy stuff, people were like, "Whoa, like you can't write about that. You're a finance guy," whatever it is.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
And I've been pretty intentional about trying to just write about my own life struggles now. You know, like I, I'm kind of on a journey now where like I went from writing about like the hustle bro type stuff of the early days to, you know, relationship things and my wife and I going through having a kid and now like being a dad and contending with like what that looks like and balancing that across wanting to perform well as a professional-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... person, but also being an amazing dad. And there's a lot of people on that journey as it turns out. Like there's a lot of people who are trying to wrestle with that and are going on that same life journey. And so my bet is that I actually don't have to ever give anyone answers. Like everyone is always saying, oh, you know, like tea- you know, that you're teaching things. Like for you, for your YouTube, like you're teaching things, right? Like people say like, "Oh, you're a great teacher. You're doing all this stuff." I actually don't feel like either of us, and I certainly don't feel it for myself, that w- that I'm a teacher. I feel like I'm learning things-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- SBSahil Bloom
... and I'm sharing what I learn along the way, and I say that on my profile, but I, it really means something to me because no one has the answers to offer you for your life.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
There's no one in the world who can say Hey, here, here are the answers that I can give you. And he- if you do this, this, this, this, and this, you're gonna be on the path to a successful life and, you know, there, go off and you're gonna be successful. What I can do is help you ask the right questions and give you tools, give you frameworks, give you systems for asking those questions so that you can wrestle with them and figure out what your answers are. Because your answers are gonna be different than mine.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm.
- SBSahil Bloom
And what you want and what your definition of success looks like and what motivates you, your idol of, you know, what you're being motivated by on a daily basis is just gonna be different than mine. And that's great. That's the beauty of it, actually, is that we're all on our own journey. And so I am just so much more focused now, and it's what's allowing me, I think, to be excited after these couple of years and to have longevity around it, hopefully, is thinking more about questions and struggle than about answers and, like, I've accomplished anything.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's pretty, pretty similar to how I think about it. Um, I, you know, came across an interesting way of thinking about this through my writing coach a couple of years ago, which was y- y- you don't need to be a guru, you can be a guide instead.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Like guide versus guru. Um, and you sometimes don't even need to be a guide. You can be a, a fellow traveler along the same path.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah, stumbling traveler along the path. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. [laughs] And I th- I th- I think about that a lot. Um, this is why still to this day, um, a lot of our videos are titled, like, how I do X.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Like, I was working on, like, right now about how, how I manage my time.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
Where I was thinking, "Yeah, in this video I'm just gonna share three strategies plus, like, a Google Sheets template that I've been getting a lot of value out in the last six months to help me take better care of my time."
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
And maybe the more better thing would be like, you know, 10 tips to manage your time or 10 tips to level up your life.
- SBSahil Bloom
10 life-changing tips-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... for managing your time.
- AAAli Abdaal
That kind of stuff. But I j- I-
- SBSahil Bloom
You won't believe number seven. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. [laughs] There's just part of me that feels that that kind of stuff, it do- it doesn't feel authentic-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... because I don't like-- just like you, I don't feel like I've figured anything out.
- 1:22:30 – 1:33:00
Reduce friction in your life
- SBSahil Bloom
the things that you say you're gonna do start getting confirmed by evidence that you're accruing. You create like a little positive momentum of this piece of evidence that you just put on the board that you are doing the things that you say you're gonna do. And that momentum starts bleeding out into everywhere else in your life. And so I do that every single morning as a way to just like get uncomfortable and take on some level of voluntary struggle so that whenever the involuntary struggles of life happen, I'm more well prepared for them.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
I also find it to be the most peaceful gratitude practice that I can have. I like go and I sit in the water and you're like feeling this crazy experience of like the sensations of like your body's kind of screaming, stressful situation and you need to force yourself to just slow down. And every morning when I do that I just list off things that I'm feeling particularly grateful for. You know, my son, my wife, family, you know, a bird that's flying overhead. Whatever it is. Like things that I'm just observing or noticing in the moment and it just forces you to like really slow down your world and stop for one moment every single morning prior to the whole day going into chaos. Um, so that is one thing. And the second big mindfulness practice I've found is just going for walks every single day. Um, I probably walk for about three hours every single day.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, wow.
- SBSahil Bloom
Um, partially because I have a son who refuses to sleep other than on walks during the course of the day and so I will take him on two, you know, hour and a half long walks all around our neighborhoods. And that time, you know, while also being with him because we're like connected in some way is just like the time when I kind of slow down and I can just think and I don't... I'm not listening to podcasts, I'm not listening to audiobooks. I know you're probably like cringing and, "What, what do you mean you're not listening on two X speed?"
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, I'm like, I'm like three hours?
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
My goodness.
- SBSahil Bloom
Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
That's like-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... 2 or 3 books a day.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
[laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
So you know, I c- and I could. I could read 20, you know, I could read 20 books a year I'm sure by doing that. But for me that time is for thinking. Like that's when all the ideas are sort of like mingling in my mind when I'm able to actually, um, you know, just like let my mind run free, and that has been a massive, massive positive for my mental health-
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm
- SBSahil Bloom
... finding that time.
- AAAli Abdaal
Nice. Uh, a c- a couple weeks ago I started turning the shower to cold after a warm shower and now I feel like that's kind of become too easy and I don't, I don't fear it anymore.
- SBSahil Bloom
Have you ever tried getting into a cold shower before now starting?
- AAAli Abdaal
I've not tried getting into a cold... Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
Now that'll be hard too. [laughs]
- AAAli Abdaal
So that's the, that's the next, that's the next level of the-
- SBSahil Bloom
I think cold showers by the way are actually-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... harder than getting into a cold plunge.
- AAAli Abdaal
All right.
- SBSahil Bloom
The cold plunge is full immersion. Something about the shower for me is really hard with like the beads of water hitting you.
- AAAli Abdaal
Hmm.
- SBSahil Bloom
It's almost like-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm
- 1:33:00 – 1:43:37
The ideal week
- AAAli Abdaal
the go, it goes down."
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
And the same thing has happened for 10 years, so he's now, he said he's now stopped-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... caring about the sine wave. And so I do, I do sometimes think of that phrase that-
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah
- AAAli Abdaal
... it's, it's just a sine wave.
- SBSahil Bloom
Right.
- AAAli Abdaal
It's just the, it's just the way it goes.
- SBSahil Bloom
I think it changes with financial-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah
- SBSahil Bloom
... security too. Um, you know, I think, I think a lot of creators really ride, really ride the rollercoaster because it's, that's it for them. It's like, "I'm living this great life because of this."
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
"And if it doesn't go well, maybe the gravy train stops." You know, like especially people that were like crypto creators-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm
- SBSahil Bloom
... or like very niche around one particular thing that might've been, you know, a boom bus cycle and now it's gone and you're like, "Oh my God, all my sponsors walked out the door. All my..." 'Cause, you know, they all went bankrupt or they ran out of money and you realize that nothing, none of this stuff is permanent.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
And I think that's scary for a lot of people. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Absolutely, yeah. I think especially like the creator that I speak to who's, uh, like 80% of their revenue comes from brand deals and the other 20% from ad- AdSense, and they're not selling their own products, they're not trying to build a business around it.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
- AAAli Abdaal
That's really scary. [laughs]
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, 'cause you're so, your lifestyle is dependent-
- SBSahil Bloom
You're tied to one thing
- AAAli Abdaal
... yeah, on the whims of people outside of, that, that are outside of your control.
- SBSahil Bloom
Yeah, you can't control it.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- SBSahil Bloom
Totally.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, the, yeah, sometimes the way I think about it is like if I, if, if I worry about that too much, then it becomes not fun anymore.
- SBSahil Bloom
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 1:43:37
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Transcript of episode NdxFctWShtc
