Health, Wealth, Happiness Love & Impact - Q&A with Ali

Ali Abdaal 0:00 Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive. If you're new here, then my name is Ali, and it is usually my job to speak to authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people about, um, how they got to where they are and the strategies and tools that we can learn from them to apply to our lives on our shared journey of living, living our best lives, all that fun stuff. Uh, but this episode is a little bit different. This is, in fact, a solo Q&A. So lots of you in the, uh, the emails and in the YouTube comments have been requesting that I do a solo Q&A where I just answer a bunch of questions. And so what we've done is that we have asked our Discord community... Yes, we have a completely free Discord that you can join. Link down below. It's called The Friendzone, and it's got lots of people on it. It's very active. It's very fun. But we asked the Discord community for questions, and we've categorized them into the five main categories of a good life, i.e., health, wealth, happiness, love, and impact. So I'm just gonna be blitzing through those questions. If, for whatever reason, you don't wanna hear me answering various questions, then you are more than welcome to watch another episode or listen to another episode where I interview someone interesting. Uh, but this is gonna be a solo Q&A, so let's just dive straight into it. So let's start with the health category of questions. The first question is, "Hey, Ali,

Ali Abdaal 1:04 how are you today really?" Which is a good question. I feel like the whole how are you thing... People often ask me, like, "How are you?" And it's just like I d- I don't actually take that question seriously. So if I take the question seriously, how am I? Honestly, I think I'm pretty good. I didn't get much sleep last night. I got maybe about four or five hours of sleep, something like that. I had some friends come over from America for breakfast this morning. That was awesome. So it's been like a very social day, and we're now filming this. We're gonna be filming another video, and then I'm heading off to a startup founders' retreat later this evening. Uh, so I feel pretty good on that front. One thing I haven't taken so seriously in the last week or two has been my health, uh, in the sense that I haven't really done much working out. I haven't done much sports. Uh, life has sort of gotten in the way. My friend Sheen was visiting from Dubai, and so we ended up having loads of social stuff going on, which I think is fine. Uh, but I'd really like to get back into kinda taking the health stuff a little bit more seriously. But broadly, you know, can't really imagine life getting much better. There are a few things, few things we can work on, like, like anyone else, but, like, very... feeling very privileged, feeling, feeling very blessed, all that fun stuff. All right, next question is,

Ali Abdaal 2:01 "What habits are you building/can suggest to others to live healthier lives?" So there's a few specific things that I'm working on. Number one, I am trying to actively improve my sleep. So I've been listening to a lot of episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast from Andrew Huberman. We'll link that down in the video description and in the show notes if you wanna check it out. And he's got a few episodes about kind of evidence-based, scienc- science-backed methods to have better sleep. So the ones that I'm trying personally are, for example, sleeping and... sleeping and waking up at the same time every day, not having my phone with me. That's pretty standard stuff. But also, for example, not having caffeine in the afternoons after, like, 2:00 PM because the half-life of caffeine is pretty long. Also, one thing I've, I've started doing is, um, turning the lights really, really dim, 'cause I've got dimmable lights, and lighting a candle because apparently, like, overhead lights and the way that they hit our eye... retina and eye and stuff, our body responds to them in a different way than, like, low-hanging lamps or candles because, in theory, our circadian rhythms in our mi- in our brain are set by kind of ambient light conditions and light com- coming from above. Because if you c- if you can imagine back in our evolutionary past, we didn't have lamps and lights and things, and so we've evolved to take advantage of overhead light signals, i.e., the sun, as a way of kind of regulating our circadian rhythm. And apparently, if you turn those lights down and light a candle instead or turn those lights off and light a candle instead, it sort of is a signal to the brain that, okay, it's sleepy time now. Anecdotally, I do find that this is true for me. I find that, you know, lighting a candle, I feel like it helps me sleep better. It helps me feel a bit more like, okay, now it's time to wind down. It's like I'm not having my phone with me anymore, that kind of stuff. So sleep is a big part of this. Another thing I'm trying to vaguely take more seriously is healthy eating. I intended... I intend this year to get better at cooking, which is a bit of a long-term project. But, um, the sort of more proximal decision that I'm making in terms of how I spend my, well, well, money and time is by actually aiming to order healthy options from takeaway when I'm ordering options from takeaway and trying to figure out what are some sensible defaults. 'Cause I feel like, and, you know, this is something I've been, I've been reading a bit about, that it's when we're having to make a decision in the moment that we tend to make bad decisions about our health choices. Generally because in the moment when we're making a decision, we're probably stressed, we probably don't have much time, we're probably feeling a bit overwhelmed, and so it's very easy for our, I guess, willpower circuitry to get hijacked. And the solution to that is to figure out some kind of system to have a few default meals. Okay, if I'm ordering from Nando's, this is my meal. If I'm ordering from a Poke House, this is the meal that I'm gonna order. Um, your mileage may vary for that. If you don't live off takeaways like I do, then you might want to, I don't know, have default meals when it comes to cooking. But just eating a little bit healthier on that is something I'm trying to do more of. Uh, and thirdly, exercise. I mean, all of this stuff, sleep, diet, exercise, it's all very standard. There's nothing particularly fancy here. But in terms of exercise, what I'm aiming to do is do weight training three times a week, and I'm, I'm trying to figure out a way of incorporating playing squash and badminton and tennis into my life as well, and that acts as my sort of cardio in a fun way that doesn't necessarily involve running. Although I am kinda thinking maybe I should take up running. I'll give it a go. I sort of tried it a bit in lockdown, and then my feet started to hurt, so I stopped doing it. But we've got a few people on the team who are absolutely addicted to and obsessed with running, so there must be something to it. So that's something I might be, I might be trying out. So it's all, it's all very, very standard stuff. And if we're looking for more niche things, I am in the process of reading a book called Lifespan by David Sinclair, which is more about the nitty-gritty of what we can do to live longer lives, um, and, you know, what sort of, you know, calorie restriction and intermittent fasting and Mediterranean diet, and I'm sort of dabbling with exploring that kind of stuff when it comes to living a healthier life. And I'm also, uh, looking into these things like, you know, for example, I take a brain care supplement called Heights, which is basically a glorified multivitamin that has blueberry extract and these other things that allegedly have some amount of evidence behind them that kind of help increase our nutritional or reduce our nutritional deficiencies. I also invest in the company, and I'm mates with the founder and stuff, and they're cool people. So I'm taking a deep dive into this idea of brain care and what are the things that we need, what are the ingredients that we need to make our kind of minds healthier, happier, that kind of vibe. So those are just a few things off the top of my head. Okay,

Ali Abdaal 5:55 uh, next question, "What has been the biggest recurring blocker, either mentally or physically, to staying productive and achieving your goals?" Okay, so I think the biggest blocker to staying productive and achieving my goals ha- is, is that Kind of this idea of doing lots of little things rather than a few big things. So, for example, one of my major goals for the year is to write my book and finish my book, and the way that I do that is by having blocks of uninterrupted time for deep work. But because this is a goal that's, like, important but not massively urgent, it always feels like almost every day there is something more urgent that rocks up, like, "Oh, we need to have this sort of meeting," or, "Oh, we need to film this sort of video," or, "Oh, this friend has come over from the other side of the world, therefore, I should probably have breakfast with them," or, "Oh, okay, cool, I guess I need to do this thing." And it's like I'm okay with, like, there being exceptions to the deep work thing, but it, it... There are so many exceptions that it has, has almost become a norm that I don't get my time for deep work in the mornings for writing my book. And I find that for most people as well, like, generally the way we achieve our goals... You know, there's an idea that Paul Graham talks about in, in one of his blog posts, I think, I think that's him, the maker versus the manager schedule. Now, if you're a manager, the way you operate is in half-an-hour chunks because the point of a manager is to delegate things and to make sure the people that they're delegating things to are doing the things on time. But if the manager is the one setting the schedule, what, what ends up happening is that the makers, i.e. the people that need large amounts of uninterrupted time for deep work, can't, like, struggle to make that time because there's always these little half-an-hour meetings sort of throughout the, throughout, throughout the calendar. And I think for most of us, when we think of the goals that we want to achieve, they're probably around being a maker rather than being a manager and therefore require these large, uninterrupted blocks of time. So, the way that I'm trying to solve this personally is telling everyone on the team that, "Look, before 1:00 PM, I'm not gonna do anything. I'm not gonna be involved in any team meetings, and then you can have me from, like, 1:00 till 6:00 PM if you want me for meetings and things like that." And that has been good for in terms of protecting that time in the morning. I've also been finding o- on the advice of my editor, Rachel, that actually writing at nighttime and actually having a deep work block for two hours at night is also totally fine. I also find it very helpful to use time was... Times when I'm on the train, for example, to just bust out the iPad or the MacBook or even a physical journal and just write. Sometimes if I have to be, like, for example, if I have to be in Cambridge tomorrow for an orthodontist appointment, which I do, I'll probably go tonight and stay in a hotel by myself so that I can wake up early in the morning, grab breakfast, and then do some deep work then, or even at nighttime. Like, there's something around changing up the atmosphere, uh, changing up the environment, and just sort of making it more of a ritual that, okay, this is now my time for deep work, that I find personally quite helpful. But it's really kind of the interruption of those little blocks of time that I find particularly tricky. Yeah, that's probably the biggest blocker. Okay,

Ali Abdaal 8:32 next question. What do you do for leisure, and how often do you do these things? So, what do I do for leisure? I mean, I dabble with singing, piano, and guitar, and I just pick those up and sing whenever I feel like it. As you might have noticed, if you watch my daily vlogs, if you don't know they're a thing, I do daily vlogs on my s- my vlog channel. That'll be linked down in the video description and in the show notes if you wanna check it out. But I'm always kind of singing around throughout the day. Sometimes I'll pick up the guitar and the piano and bash out some chords. Sometimes I'll put on a karaoke track. Sometimes I'll just sing by myself. So, singing is a big part of my leisure time, and I just do it here and there. Another thing I do is I like to play sports. So, you know, there's a local badminton thing at the local leisure center that I have gone to once in the last several weeks because I have had stuff on. I need to make it more of a default in my calendar that this is protected time for playing badminton. I like to play squash. I've got a friend called Pablo who runs a company called Coleap, which I've also invested in, and he and I play squash every other week. Hanging out with friends, going out for dinner, breakfast with people, having coffee. It's often that sort of stuff. I do kind of wanna get back into video games. I was, you know, I've talked about this before, a big fan of World of Warcraft back, back in the day. And then when I had COVID for 10 days just before Christmas, I ended up getting really into Horizon Zero Dawn, and I want to play Elden Ring. I want to play Horizon Forbidden West. Might kind of re-get my gaming PC and do something with that. I think I do kind of want to make video gaming a part of my life. Uh, currently it's not. If I can make the time. I guess I also read. I read quite a lot. I tend to read fiction in bed before sleeping, and I tend to read nonfiction during the day, listen to podcasts, that sort of thing. So that's my leisure. Next question.

Ali Abdaal 9:58 What do you think about meditation? Right, so meditation. I've dabbled with meditation on and off for a few years now. I think the most I've gotten through is, like, 10 or 12 days of Sam Harris's, uh, 30-day course on Waking Up, and then something gets in the way, and I forget to do it, and then I break the habit. And I don't really get it myself yet because I haven't done it for long enough to make the practice worthwhile. And I know a bunch of people and basically every successful person who I've ever heard on a podcast has some kind of meditation practice. There is definitely something to it. I just haven't really given it the time that it needs. One thing that someone has suggested is kind of just doing a three-day Vipassana meditation retreat and just seeing what happens and using that as a bit of a forcing function to, um, actually do the thing that I care about. And kind of thinking about that point more broadly, I've got a friend called, gr- called Chris Sparks, who used to be my productivity coach back in the day, but he runs a company called The Forcing Function, and basically his whole philosophy of productivity and success and getting things done and all the stuff that we actually want to do is that, you know, we all have these things that we want to do, like, you know, things like taking our health more seriously or working out a bit more or cooking or learning a language or learning a musical instrument. But it's so hard to make time for this stuff in our busy day-to-day lives that what we need to do is incorporate some kind of forcing function into that. A thing that forces us to do the thing. So, for example, getting a personal trainer and prepaying for 10 sessions in advance is a forcing function in that in general it forces you, it nudges you in the direction of doing a thing that you know you want to do, i.e. work out more. For example, set, like, setting a rule for yourself, like I've had a rule for myself, which is that I've kind of lapsed on, but I set a rule for myself that I'm not allowed to order takeaway if I'm with friends, and therefore, that is in a way a forcing function, a systemic forcing function that should theoretically force me to cook. Now, this worked for the first three months of the year, but then, you know, time and everything else and whoops, and then I stopped taking that particular rule seriously. But I'm all about, like, trying to figure out where is the forcing function I can add to my life? Where is the systemic change I can make that will make time for this thing? And I guess coming back to the point about meditation, I don't yet have a forcing function in my life for meditation because it's not just not something I've thought is important enough for me to, that well, for me to actually build a forcing function into. But It, it might happen at some point. Next, we have,

Ali Abdaal 12:04 "Is your current daily routine your ideal one? What would you change?" I actually think, like, on the days where my daily routine is not interrupted by other stuff, it's, it's pretty good. So this is what my daily routine tends to look like. It hasn't for the last two weeks that Sheen's been around because, like, social stuff has taken hold, but before that, uh, essentially it was wake up at 7:00 in the morning, do a workout at 7:30. 7:30 to 8:30 is workout time. 8:30 to 9:00 is sort of faffing and, like, grabbing a coffee and showering time. And then from 9:00 until 12:30 would be my book-writing time, where I would just be sitting down doing deep work. Gordon, my videographer, might be around some of the days. Willem, one of our writers, might be around some of the days just to riff some ideas off of. But generally, 9:00 till 12:30, book, book time, where maybe I'll interrupt it by going to a local coffee shop and grabbing a coffee and coming back in. Then 12:30 to 1:00 PM, traveling to the studio. Then 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM is sort of an office hours block where I have lunch and anyone in the team can ch- chat to me about anything that they need me to unblock them on. And then 2:00 till 6:00 is sort of the work time where I am at the, in the hands of the team. So whether that's recording a podcast or filming a video or attending a meeting to revamp our Part-Time YouTuber Academy curriculum or whatever. And then at 6:00 PM, that is the end of the official, quote, "workday." And then in theory, I do some kind of sports or something in the evening or hang out with friends or even just spend time by myself. That has been my daily routine for the last few weeks outside of, like, social stuff happening and I think that's pretty ideal. Like, that seems to be a really solid routine for this season of my life. And yeah, on that note, I think actually having a routine that you follow ... Attempting to create a routine forever is probably a bad idea, but actually trying to create a routine, just be like, "Hey, hey, just for this next season of my life, for the next few weeks to months, this is the routine that I'm gonna try out and I'm gonna experiment. And as long as it serves me, then I will continue the routine. And when it stops serving me, then I will stop continuing the routine," and just being totally okay to change our mind on that sort of thing. Final question

Ali Abdaal 13:47 in health, uh, "The business has expanded fast with a lot of moving parts. What processes or tools do you use to manage your mental health and avoid burnout?" Honestly, the biggest one for me to avoid burnout has actually been journaling. Any time I find myself feeling a bit like, "Ugh," about the business, I recognize that as like a pre-burnout feeling. And then I think, "Okay, as a matter of priority, I need to sit down with a pen and paper and a journal." These days I use the Leuchtturm1917 A5 dot grid notebook with a Lamy Swift pen, if anyone's interested. I just sit down with a journal for several hours if I can and just basically write out what my thoughts are and why I think I'm feeling that way and how I can change that and what the action points are. And recently, I've been feeling like I do this quite a lot. Last week I happened to be in Cambridge and I happened to have four hours to myself in the morning in a hotel room, and I just sort of sat in the bar downstairs having h- hotel breakfast and just wrote about 25 pages worth of journaling-y stuff. And I realized that, you know, a bunch of things I've been feeling about the YouTube channel and the business and, you know, to what extent we were optimizing for making money rather than optimizing for helping people and what effect that had on kind of my own kind of views towards the business and feeling burnt out and all that stuff. And I found that really helpful because it gave me action points that I could then change. And I think that's, that's, that for me is the key to avoiding burnout. It's like recognizing that feeling of like, "Ugh," and whenever I have that feeling of "ugh" with anything that I'm doing, I take a step back and think, "Okay, how am I complicit in creating this feeling of ugh and what can I change about my situation to make this less of an ugh kind of feeling?" So that would be what I would, I would suggest. Okay. Next, we have a few questions in the category of

Ali Abdaal 15:26 wealth. "Why did you decide to write a book?" Okay. So to answer this properly, we have to keep in mind a quote that is famously attributed to JP Morgan, which is that, "A man always has two reasons for doing something, a good reason and the real reason." So what is my good reason for writing a book? A good reason would be that it's fun. A good reason would be that it's, you know, a thing that will help me get my ideas into the world and potentially help people. A good reason would be that it would be an interesting challenge. A good reason would be that it'll be good f- kind of good for my brand and good for longevity of the brand and all, all that kind of stuff. Then we start to think, okay, so those are the good reasons. What about the real reasons? Like, what is the, what are the selfish motives underneath that that really lead me to wanting to write a book? And I suspect, you know, these are tied in with the, with the other, with the other reasons. You know, part of it is I am concerned that the life of a YouTuber is not all a very long life in terms of the longevity of the career. But I know that the life of a book author is like a very, a career that has longevity. Like, I can imagine being in my 50s and still wanting to write books. So there's something about that that feels like, okay, cool. This feels like a good career that I can do for the next like four decades of my life without it being like, oh my god, 50-year-old man suddenly continuing to make TikToks like, "Hey, friends. Welcome back to the channel," or whatever as, kind of as the world changes. I suspect the writing of books is a thing that will not particularly change. Another reason is that I think one of the nice things about having a book is that it gives you an air of legitimacy. So right now I am like the YouTuber guy. B- previously I used to be the doctor YouTuber guy, and YouTuber guy to me feels like not very legitimate I guess because I've kind of been and kind of grown up in a sort of did a fancy medical degree at a fancy university, worked in a very prestigious traditional job. So maybe part of me wants that indicator of prestige that I'm a published author, I'm a best-selling published author, and that kind of thing maybe I feel adds more legitimacy and like gravitas to my brand and therefore helps the business succeed over the long term. Um, I think those are like the more selfish reasons for writing the book, but like genuinely, if it wasn't fun, I wouldn't do it. Like, I really enjoy the process of writing a book. It feels like an interesting challenge. I'm kind of treat- I'm trying to approach it in the spirit of play rather than in the spirit of work, and I think, I think that's working.

Ali Abdaal 17:35 Next question. "What is the single best side hustle or business to start as a teenager?" Honestly, I think it's anything that will help you make money while leveling up useful skills. So what are useful skills? Useful skills are skills that you can apply to future businesses. So for example, knowing how to sell, knowing how to write, knowing how to copyright, knowing how to build a product, knowing how to code. These are all things that I think really help further down the line. And so if I were a teenager, what... I mean, the business I would start is I would become a, a Solidity Web3 developer so that I could program on the Ethereum blockchain, and that would be such a no-brainer because the crypto space is absolutely exploding still. And as a teenager, I'd be, I'd have so much spare time on my hands. Trust me, teenagers have tons and tons and tons of spare time on their hands. I'd be able to learn to code. Fairly quickly, and then I'll be able to potentially create a crypto product or join a crypto startup where no one really cares about how old I am. That would be the thing that I do because I think there's... Sort of that's the next, next big wave. But once I've done that, I would try and create some sort of software product, maybe in the crypto space, maybe not, and try and sell it... Actively sell it to businesses who have money to spend on those sorts of software products. So maybe I'd create tools for creators who have money or businesses who have money or something like that. Because even if the thing doesn't succeed, it... By virtue of trying to build that business, I will have learnt all of the skills that would be really helpful for a business that might succeed further down the line. Next

Ali Abdaal 18:48 question, how did you decide what A-levels to take? I don't wanna be locked in if I decide to change career path later. Honestly, no one gives a shit what A-levels you do beyond, like, university admissions. Uh, I mean, I knew I wanted to go to med school, so the A-levels were obvious, biology, chemistry, physics, maths. I did English literature for AS and dropped it for A2. That was pretty standard. If I wanted to get a job anywhere else, no one would care what A-levels I had. So don't worry [laughs] about your A-level choices if you wanted to change career path later in life. It's not a thing that's really gonna hold you back unless you decide, I don't know, I wanna become an economist, et cetera, et cetera. Then you start working at a bank and then at the age of forty-five you decide you wanna be a doctor. At that point, maybe one of the requirements will be a chemistry A-level, in which case you can just do the chemistry A-level 'cause it's not that hard. You can just teach it... teach it to yourself. But it's a, a decision you don't need to overthink. I think choose your A-level choices based on what you think you want your career path to be or at least what you wanna study at university and, um, and your pr- your ideal career path will probably change over time as you get more data

Ali Abdaal 19:43 points. Next question, what is your advice for people who aren't following a clear trajectory right out of college or university? I feel pressure to know what I wanna do and follow the ladder. Yeah, I mean, we all feel that pressure to some degree or another, um, depending on what sort of influences you have in your life, depending on how much your parents care about you getting a traditional career. Broadly, my advice would be that because it's those skills that you learn that will compound over time rather than the fact that you're in a traditional career. And also, when you're in your thirties, when you have responsibilities, you can't really take the risks that you could when you were in your twenties. So everyone says this, you know, take risks in your twenties. It's all good. Like, you know, try and keep your expenses low. When you're in your early twenties, you can backpack around the world and live in hostels, and you probably won't care. When you're, when you're in your late twenties, your early thirties, you probably won't wanna do that. So, like, automatically the sort of risks that you can take and the sort of money that you need to take the r- those risks massively changes as you get older. So my only piece of advice would be, I mean, if you feel the pressure to go into a traditional career, question where that pressure is coming from. Like, why do you really wanna do that? What are the reasons? Are those reasons your own? Are those, are those reasons for other people? And are you gonna be optimizing for learning when you're in your early twenties, or do you instead wanna optimize for trying to make money in a traditional career path? Honestly, I think for most people, if you care about making money, learning lots of stuff and starting your own business is a way more efficient to get rich than joining a traditional job like becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a management consultant. Like, those are not the ways you get rich. Those are, those are the ways that you continue to make money by trading your time for money for an employer that's making, like, vastly larger sums of money than you are as an individual because you're an employee, and there is a limit to how much you can earn as an employee. Whereas as an ent- as an entrepreneur, there's almost no limit to the amount you can earn as an entrepreneur, and the way you get there is by having a bit of entrepreneurial spirit and by learning skills when you're young. So learn those skills, take the risks, learn those skills. But

Ali Abdaal 21:22 yeah, it's hard. And finally, in the wealth category, how do you create a content engine or pipeline for managing your content and consistently uploading to different platforms? Oh, that's easy. There's this thing called Gall's law, which is any complex system evolves... Uh, any complex system that works evolves from a simple system that works. And so you start off with a simple system. Upload one video at a time. Cool. Easy. Now you... Now that you can do that, figure out how to upload one video a week. Cool. Once you can do that, you realize that, okay, I need a system for that. Writing, filming, editing, publishing, these are all, like, different things. So, okay, I'm gonna create the minimum viable system for that, maybe using an app like Notion or even using pen and paper and Post-it notes or the Kanban method or all these different ways of managing projects. Then you're like, "Okay, cool. I'm pretty comfortable making one video a week. Now, what do I need to add to the system to make it two videos a week? Cool. Sorted. Now what do I need to do to make it two videos a week and one newsletter a week? Okay, cool. Sorted. Now what do I need to do to make two videos a week, one newsletter a week, and repurpose some of the stuff into TikToks and Instagram? Okay, sorted." What you don't wanna do is try and do all of this from day one. You wanna start simple. You wanna slowly build up the system over time, uh, and then it's pretty straightforward to end up with a system that works. That would be what I would suggest. Let's move on to happiness.

Ali Abdaal 22:36 Question number one within that category is what is your favorite quote? Probably it's a quote from Derek Sivers' book, Anything You Want: Forty Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur. I'm just looking around to see if I have it in the studio to hand. Probably not. But there's a quote from that that really resonated with me in 2016 and that I've recently, in my little journaling session last week, actually figured out that I needed to hear that quote again. For a bit of context, Derek Sivers, great guy. Um, he's now a friend of mine, internet friend of mine. We've met a few times in real life actually, twice. Once or twice, something like that. Anyway, uh, he has a really great blog. He used to run a company called CD Baby, sold it for like twenty million, something like that back in the day, and now just travels around the world living the good life, writing books, that kind of stuff. He wrote a book which is sort of like a, you know, almost like a different approach to entrepreneurship. And in one of his chapters, he says, "Never forget why you're really doing what you're doing," or rather, "Always remember why you're, why you're doing what you're doing. Are you happy? Are you having fun? Are you helping people? Are they happy? Are you profitable? Isn't that enough?" And I often think back to that quote of like, are you helping people? Are you happy? Are they happy? Are you profitable? It's like those are the things, those are the things that matter. Helping people while having fun and making enough money to, to survive. Beyond that, that's actually enough. That's like a pretty sick life if you can be serving others while you're happy yourself, while they're happy, and while you're making enough money to survive. That's like pretty solid. And I often think back to that quote whenever I find myself in this treadmill of like wanting more and more and more. I need more money. I need more fans. I need more followers. I need more subscribers. I need more this and that. It's like never... You know, always remember why you're doing what you're doing. Are you helping people? Are you happy? Are they happy? Are you profitable? Isn't that enough? That's probably my favorite quote. Thank you, Derek Sivers, for that one.

Ali Abdaal 24:16 All right. Next, what's your main source of happiness/what are the things you value most in life? Okay. I, I wouldn't say I have a main source of happiness because I think happiness broadly is a default state, at least that's the way I think of it maybe. I'm kinda thinking out loud here. But in a way, happiness is a default state. Happiness is the default state that we have when we come into the world, when we're kids. We're just always happy. We're happy all the time. But the things that lead to unhappiness are kind of the salient negatives in our lives, where we're doing something that doesn't vibe with our own values. We are doing something because other people are telling us to do the thing. We don't have autonomy over our own time and what we're doing, uh, where we've got these things that we have to do that we just really don't enjoy and that we aren't making fun. I think those are the things that lead to unhappiness. And so really for me, the source of happiness is to try and eliminate sources of unhappiness. So for example, let's talk about money. You know, money is one of those things... Everyone says money doesn't buy unhappiness. Uh, sorry, money doesn't buy happiness, but it does... You know, it doesn't solve all your problems, but it does solve your money problems. Like, not having enough money is a source of unhappiness, but having lots of money is not a source of happiness. In a way, by making money and being sufficiently kind of passive incomed, as it were, you're removing concerns about money, in theory, from as being a, a detractor in your life. Great. What's the next thing? Time. Having control of your time, you know, doesn't necessarily make you happy, but not having control of your time makes you unhappy. Cool. So then how can I optimize my life for actually having control over my time? And when I find myself feeling a bit unhappy, feeling a bit down, feeling a bit like, "Ugh," and I look at my calendar and think, "Okay, is this really the calendar that I w- I would like to have? If I imagined my ideal life, what would my calendar look like, and how does it... how is it different to what my calendar currently looks like?" And so if I were to answer, what's the source of your unhappiness? Uh, so- sorry, what's the s- biggest source of your happiness? It would be that I think very hard about what are the p- possible sources of my unhappiness, and I work, work to eliminate those things from my life, I would say. Also, broadly, my main source of happiness, I really enjoy what I'm doing day to day. I have great health, well, pretty good health, loving friends and family and a good social life and stuff. Like, honestly, it's really hard to imagine life going much better. And so another thing I often remind myself of is, like, this is... like, life is actually pretty sick. The second part of that question is, what are the things you value most in life? Probably health, number one. Freedom, fairly high on the list. Relationships, fairly high on the list. Yeah, doing things I enjoy. Probably those are the things I value most in

Ali Abdaal 26:38 life. All right, uh, next question. What is your advice for embracing who you are as a person? Okay, so just think- thinking out loud here. Th- this idea of who you are as a person implied that who you are is like... implies that who you are is, like, a fixed thing, um, when I'm not, I'm not sure that's the case. Uh, I think who we are is basically a function of circumstances and accidents of birth and who we happened to hang out with when we were young and how our parents treated us when we were young. Broadly, things that were outside of our control, and so what we become, we tend to not have chosen that for ourselves. It, it, it tends to be a result of accidents. And so part of my whole spiel around self-improvement and, like, you know, is, is instead of be yourself, choose yourself. Choose the sort of person you wanna be, and then take the actions that s- that sort of person would take to get to that place. But I think at the same time, and this is where the yin yang comes in, the middle way comes in, uh, there is also a balance of self-acceptance, which is sort of thinking simultaneously, "I am totally happy with who I am right now, and I'm fully accepting of that. But at the same time, I also want to change. I also wanna grow. I also wanna, quote, 'improve' along these things which are internally driven rather than externally driven." So that would be my advice for embracing who you are. Think about, like... well, try and, try and accept it because it's, like, who you are is, like, okay. And the things you wanna change about yourself, you absolutely can change about yourself if you want to. If you don't want to, that's totally fine. Like, great. Hunky dory. Life is good. That kind of thing. Uh, next

Ali Abdaal 27:56 question. Do you ever feel like work or daily life gets boring? How do you make sure to live life to the fullest? Honestly, no. I, I, I can't remember the last time I had the feeling that, like, daily work or life was boring. I think because I always have some kind of challenge, some kind of thing that I'm working towards or working on or something new in my life. You know, at one point, working day in, day out as a doctor while doing YouTube videos in the evenings was... kinda got a little bit boring. But then I outsourced my video editing, and now I suddenly had loads of free time, and now I learn how to grow a business, and now the business challenge became the fun thing that I was working on. Then, you know, as my doctor career was sort of winding out at the, at the end of the two years, and that was starting to get a bit boring because it was COVID time. I was on the same ward for eight months. Um, it was all, you know, somewhat repetitive, but then the YouTube channel was taking off, and then I started... I got this book thing that I was... sort of started working on. And it feels like at each stage, at each season of my life, there is a new challenge, something, something to keep things interesting. And if I fi... Again, I check in on myself. Like, if... on myself. If I find that every day is becoming samey and it's becoming boring, one of the great things about being an, an entrepreneur, being a creatorpreneur, is that you've got control over your own life. You can do what you want. And so if I am getting bored, then that's just weird, right? Because I can do what I want. Like, let me do things that I find interesting. And honestly, I haven't, I haven't felt the feeling of boredom in a very, very, very long time. Probably years. I don't, I don't think I've felt the feeling of boredom since, like, university properly. Um, even since school. Like, yeah, I just don't really get bored because there's always so many interesting things I could be doing. Uh, next

Ali Abdaal 29:17 question. Have you ever been through analysis paralysis? How did you/do you deal with it? Uh, yeah, w- analysis paralysis. It's very easy to, like, overthink things and then just not take action on them. I think number one, knowing that that's a thing is helpful for me. Uh, and generally, if I have a new idea for something, I'll have a bias towards action. Let's just get the thing done rather than spend ages planning about how the thing will get done and then not do the thing ultimately. I think another model that I like is sort of this three-part model of get going, then get good, and then get smart. And this is the thing I tell creators as well. Like, if you're starting a YouTube channel, level one is get going. Just, like, start making videos about anything. It doesn't matter. Like, no one cares. And level two is get good. Actually learn how to make good videos. And then level three is get smart. Get smart means, like, figuring out your target audience, figuring out your niche, figuring out what you're gonna do, figuring out how you're gonna stand out. And so many people think level three when they're at level zero. They worry about what their niche is gonna be when they don't know how to speak to a camera. They don't know how to make a g- good video. It's sort of like if you're an artist, but you're saying, "I'm not gonna learn how to paint until I figured out what my kind of magnum opus is gonna be or what my kind of piece that hangs up in the Louvre is gonna be." It's like being a writer and saying, "I'm not, I'm not gonna start writing until I figured out what my best-selling book is gonna be about. But b- because until I figure out w- what it's about, like, I couldn't possibly start writing." And I think I've seen that so many times in my life where it's just like actually just do the thing, and you can always improve and get better at the thing and do the an- analysis over time. And there's another quote from a book, Traction, that I like, which is that a s- a strategy without execution is just delusion or just hallucination. You know, w- words like that. A strategy without execution is hallucination. I think start with execution, start doing the thing, and then you can always add in the strategy to it later, and that's a thing that I've... I, I, I really believe to be true. And I do find, you know, with, with the business, as the business grows and we become more analytical in our, in our approach to things, you know, this is the problem with having a big business, a bigger business, is that things just move a bit slower. And the challenge with a bigger business is that you wanna retain that, that fast moving energy while also understanding that you've got loads of people around. So for example, a few weeks ago, we had the idea, "Hey, let's do a daily vlog." And one of the great things that came out of that was that we were like, "You know what? We'll just do it from next week, and we'll figure it out as we go along." And we had Gordon, who is our videographer and head of production, who was really, like, had that fast moving entrepreneurial mindset to be like, "You know what? We don't need to analyze the hell out of this for years before we do it. Let's, let's just do it and we'll change course over time." And I think that level of, like, thinking when it comes to this sort of stuff is how we stay, how we, as a business, avoid analysis paralysis. If it's something like, you know, we've made the mistake in the past of thinking, "Oh, we should totally do this course thing, but like, oh, I guess before we think about it, we should do this, and we should do this, we should do that." And so before you know it, six months have passed and the course hasn't been filmed. Whereas if I were just doing it on my own with one team member, we would've filmed the course in a weekend and it would've been pretty good. And often our perfectionism in tr- in trying to get something to one hundred percent quality means that we don't do it rather than just doing it to ninety-eight percent quality, which we might have done if we'd just moved faster. So I do keep that in mind, um, but I think kind of the model of just do the thing and adjust over time is the way that you get over analysis paralysis. Don't wait until you know what you're gonna make videos about before you start making videos. Don't wait until you've got a theme for your podcast before you start recording. Don't wait until you know what your book's gonna be about before you start writing on the internet. Just start doing it and the, the strategy will follow. And then final question on the happiness category

Ali Abdaal 32:21 is, "What is your biggest motivation/what are you aiming for right now?" Here's the thing, um, I mean, proximal goals, I guess, is I wanna write my book and I wanna be proud of it. And that's a thing that I'm aiming for. More, you know, distal goals, I g- okay, I guess the... r- really the way I think about it is there are some games that we play that are finite games and there are some games that we play that are infinite games. A finite game is played with the intention of winning the game. You know, something like football is a finite game. You kick a ball around, you've got ninety minutes, you need to score, there is a winner, there is a loser, that kind of thing. It's a very finite game. An infinite game is a game that you play for the purpose of continuing to play the game. So for example, there's no purpose in having dinner with friends or having like a weekly, I don't know, weekly catch up with the boys, that kind of thing. The purpose of that is to continue doing the thing. It's to continue playing the infinite game rather than to win or con- to complete the game. And I feel like right now I am genuinely playing my infinite game in that I'm spending my time doing the stuff that I love with people that I like/slash enjoy hanging out with. I was gonna say people I love, but that sounds weird because I've got three of my team members behind the camera right now and that sounds, sounds a bit odd. Um, but I'm doing stuff that I love with people that I like working with. I'm spending my time reading, writing, and teaching and doing podcast interviews. Honestly, I ca- I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing. Like, this is my infinite game. This is the thing that working to get to a point where I could just spend my time reading, writing, and teaching, and now this is what I'm doing. Like, I'm, I'm already living my end game. I'm already playing my infinite game. And so given that I'm already playing my infinite game, by nature the objective of the infinite game is to continue playing the game. And so my motivation, my goals in life now around the stuff that I'm spending my time doing is I just wanna be able to continue doing the stuff. So how do I make this stuff sufficiently successful that it allows me to continue, continue doing it? How do I lower the bar, uh, kind of lower my own standards so that I don't feel overly analytical and get paralyzed by perfectionism so that I can continue doing the thing? How do I explore topics and stuff in a way that I have freedom to so that I can kinda make the stuff that I wanna make without being overly worried about it? It's just about being able to continue to play this infinite game. And I think when you get to a point where the game you are playing is the game you want to be playing seemingly forever, that's a pretty good place to be. And at that point, striving for more and more and more is probably counterproductive because actually optimizing for just continuing to play the game feels, feels to be the way f- to me at least to be the way forward. We have a few questions about love.

Ali Abdaal 34:38 Uh, number one, "Who is your celebrity crush or used to be if you don't have one now?" Celebrity crush. I mean, always had a bit of a crush on Emma Watson. I mean, who doesn't? Had a bit of a crush on, um, Gabrielle from, Gabriella from High School Musical. Who doesn't? Um, Alia Bhatt, the Bollywood actress. Bit of a crush on her. Don't really do major celebrity crushes, TBH. It's not really been a major thing in my life, but yeah, [chuckles] I guess

Ali Abdaal 35:03 those three come to mind. Okay, next, "What qualities do you look for in a partner personally or professionally?" Oh, okay. Those are two very different things. Oh, actually, I'm not sure they are. I actually think the qualities I look for in a romantic partner are fairly similar to the qualities I look for in a business partner, except in a romantic partner I'd want them to be cute and I want them to be a girl, whereas those are not requirements in a business partner. But I think in a business partner, like, yeah, in a way I, I s- I sometimes talk to my current girlfriend about this. It's like in a way a romantic partner is a co-founder for the business unit that we call a family. And a lot of people say, you know, I've read a bunch of books about like marriage and love and relationships and things, and they say that once you get married and you start having kids, it really does become like you and your partner are running a business together. And how do you run this business effectively in a way that keeps everyone happy and that leads you to your aim of like having fun, having a meaningful life, and raising good, kind, healthy kids? And I think so then, then I think, okay, what are the qualities of a co-founder? Number one, I think communication, kindness. It's, it's all the basic stuff. The stuff I look for is all, is all very basic. But I think for me, one thing that maybe is different to a lot of my friends who I've spoken to about this is that in a business partner and also in a romantic partner, I w- I want them to have co-founder energy. I w- I wanna feel like they can go toe-to-toe with me and that me and them are like on, on an equal footing. I think part of that comes from me h- sort of wanting to admire or significantly respect something about them, wanting to look up to them in some aspects, wanting to feel like partnering up with this person Is actually a win-win because it also makes me a better person. I don't wanna feel like I'm partnering with someone who doesn't have that energy or that vibe or that intellect, that's not the great word, to be able to go toe-to-toe with me as a co-founder would. That is probably the thing that I look for. Is this someone who I genuinely respect and could respect as a co-founder for a business? If that's a yes, then great, and if that's a no, then, then it's a no-go.

Ali Abdaal 36:58 Uh, next question is, "How can you handle rejection?" Yeah, I mean, just do it. Time. Rejection is always better than regret. What's that phrase? The pain of rejection is always i- is... The, the, the pain of regret is always way worse than the pain of rejection. I think as a guy in the society that we live in, guys are still the ones expected to make romantic advances rather than girls, and so as a guy, you kinda just have to get used to dealing with rejection and asking people out, and they'll say no, and that's fine. You realize that life moves on. It's not the end of the world. Who cares? The way I think of it is that like rejection is really doing me a favor. If I ask someone out and they say no, then fantastic. That saves me a lot of time, a lot of time in going on dates with them, maybe even being in a relationship where it wouldn't have worked out because they didn't wanna be with me in the first place. It's a big... Rejection is a big time-saving device. That's at least how I think about it. And then we have a few more questions about impact. So

Ali Abdaal 37:44 question number one is, "How do you... How to stay motivated during the book writing process?" Yeah, I think that's the thing. I think number one is to figure... is to have a... You know, this is basic advice, like have a good reason why you're doing the thing. And actually, this is stuff I have been thinking about recently, like selfish goals versus service goals. A selfish goal is I want to become a New York Times bestseller. A service goal is I want this book to change at least one person's life or change their approach to work. A selfish goal is I wanna make a million dollars. A selfless goal or a service goal is I want to help a million people become happier. This is something very inspiring when I interviewed Mo Gawdat, the happiness expert, and his, his mission is to make one billion people in the world happier. There's something really cool about that. There's something re- about that that I really like. So partly the way I stay motivated with the book writing process is to remember the service, which is to, for this book, to help at least one person change their approach to work in a positive way, but also to make the process for me as fun as possible, to approach it with a spirit of play so that I'm doing it for its own sake, and that even if no one read the book, the act of writing it would still have been a worthwhile thing to do and a thing that I enjoyed and a thing that I look back on with fondness. And when it becomes not that, I remind myself that, hang on, this is supposed to be fun, to treat it sincerely rather than seriously and to really sort of approach it more with a spirit of play, with lightness and ease rather than with a spirit of work, that this thing

Ali Abdaal 39:00 is a job. "What do you envision the impact of the book will be on students?" I don't know. Envision is a strong word. I hope the impact of the book is that it will help people, in a small way, change their approach to work so that, you know, work doesn't have to be suffering. Work doesn't have to be this thing that you grind away at. Work can be this thing that like... and, and you can control it to an extent, that genuinely energizes you so that in a way you get to the end of the workday feeling more energized than when you started, and you, you can then use that energy on your hopes, dreams, passions, ambitions, hanging out with friends or even just chilling out, like, and it gives you energy in the tank. And I want people to change their relationship with work so that, like, they recognize that that is a thing that can happen, and that's kind of what I've been doing for the last, like, ten years of my life or probably not ten, but like, more like five, six, seven years of my life. And it's great. It means productivity takes care of itself. It's like effortless productivity when your work is so energizing that you don't need to worry about to-do lists and hacks and stuff to be more productive. So I hope it'll change people's minds or, you know, impact people in that sense. Uh,

Ali Abdaal 39:55 next question, "You always talk about The E-Myth Revisited. How do you and the team apply the book to the business?" So The E-Myth Revisited is a book by Michael Gerber, and it's about why small businesses fail and how to avoid the failure of small businesses. It's a book I recommend everyone who is at the point where they are... they're making enough money that they can hire people, but they either, they either haven't hired anyone yet or they've hired people and then have done a bad job of delegating things. So probably not applicable to most of the audience of this podcast 'cause I imagine most of you don't have people that you're l- on the verge of hiring or have hired. But if you are in that position, then it's a really good book in terms of how to delegate things more effectively, how to... You know, it recognizes the difference between being a technician, a manager, and an entrepreneur, and these are the three different hats that entrepreneurs or business owners wear. The technician is the person baking the pies, the manager is the person making the systems, and the entrepreneur is the person coming up with the ideas. And when you recognize that these three are separate roles, you recognize that when you get to a certain point, you probably don't wanna be spending all your time doing the technician thing, even though that's why you started the business. It's why operating a coffee shop is very different from knowing how to make good coffee. It's why running a restaurant is very different from, for example, knowing how to cook. The manager and the entrepreneur needs to be added to the technician to make a good business, and that's where a lot of people struggle and fail. And so really it's been the early applications of that book early on in our journey, sort of about two years ago, that really helped me get over the fear of delegation and get more good and more okay at

Ali Abdaal 41:16 delegating stuff. All right, next question. "How do you decide what book to read next? Do you have sources you turn for for recommendations, and how do you know if the book is right for you or not?" Yeah, in terms of book recommendations, I always have way too many recommendations. Like, I follow people on Twitter, I subscribe to a bunch of email newsletters, people in real life recommend books to me, people on my podcast when I interview them recommend books to me, people that I have Zoom calls with 'cause I admire them on the internet and I wanna be friends recommend books to me. So I always have a never-ending list of books that I wanna read. And once I've finished one or once I've got everything out of it, I'll often just like willy-nilly decide how... what do I feel like doing, flick through my Kindle to all the books that I've bought, and I'll just start, I'll just start reading the next one. That's if I'm approaching it in an ad hoc way. Um, a more, like, legit way of doing it if I'm reading a bit more seriously, if I'm ser... if I'm considering whether, whether or not I want to read a book or not, I'll often look up a book summary if that summary is available on Shortform, shortform.com/ali if you want an affiliate link. Shortform is my favorite book summary source generally. I will look up the book and see if it's available on Shortform, and if it is, I'll read the summary, and if I vibe with the summary, then I'll read the book. If it's not available on Shortform, then I'll just look up a summary on Google. Someone will have written a summary somewhere, and that'll help me decide whether it's for me. Sometimes I'll just buy the audiobook and start listening to it and see, okay, do I vibe with this? And if after about half an hour of l- uh, half an hour of listening to it at 2.5 times speed I'm still enjoying it, then I know

Ali Abdaal 42:30 the book is probably for me. Okay, next question. "What is the single most life-changing book you've read?" Probably The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Read it when I was 17 or 18, and that changed my approach to career, entrepreneurship, life. The principles in it are fairly obvious now 'cause it's this... it... but it was a very sort of novel book at the time that it was released around about 2007. But reading that book in, when I was 17, like 2011 time, around about then, was just absolutely game-changing. So that would be the book that's most changed my life.

Ali Abdaal 42:53 And the next question is, "What are the best books for business-oriented goals?" Probably The E-Myth Revisited and Traction and Oversubscribed. Those are the three books. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, Traction by Gino Wickman, and Oversubscribed by Daniel Priestley. That would be my recommendation. All righty. I think that is it for this Q&A. Thank you very much for tuning in if you're watching or listening to this. As always, uh, there'll be links to all of the stuff that I mentioned down in the video description or in the show notes. Um, if you haven't seen, I have a vlog channel on YouTube if you would like to be up to date with the daily weekday vlogs on my second channel. Uh, that's been going for the last three weeks, and we are gonna be continuing it for the foreseeable future, so you can see what I get up to day to day. Um, but otherwise, thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this episode, please do leave us a review on iTunes. That's like the place where you leave reviews for podcasts or on Spotify if you're listening to this. We'll put links to those in the video description and the show notes as well. That would mean a lot. But otherwise, thank you so much for watching. Um, yeah. See you next time. Bye.