How I Grew to 1M YouTube Subscribers in Medical School - Kharma Medic

Nasir Kharma 0:00 I am someone who prides myself a lot on my time management, and I think that I balance a lot of things in my life really well. The sort of downside to that is that I'm constantly working. You know, I'm constantly, like, moving from one thing to the next, and it's really difficult to stay in the moment. You know, if we were doing this pre-therapy, I'd be thinking about, "Okay, as soon as I leave this, this podcast, I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna have a 10-minute coffee break, then I'm gonna sit down for half an hour and I'm gonna work on my emails, and then I'm gonna have a two-hour study sesh with Kenji and Georgina. My parents are gonna come. We're gonna go for dinner." I wouldn't be thinking about us in this moment right now. I would always be thinking about what's next, what's next, what's next, and I used to keep track of every single thing I did in my life. I was just very hyper-focused on time. Through therapy, I've realized that I can still complete everything I want to do in my life without necessarily sort of working on the to-do list up until I go to sleep at midnight or, you know, constantly squeezing in little bits of work on the bus, on the train, when I'm walking, things like that. I've taken, like, a much more relaxed attitude towards life.

Ali Abdaal 0:58 Hey, friends. Welcome back to Deep Dive. My name is Ali, and in each episode of the podcast, I chat to authors, entrepreneurs, creators, and other inspiring people about how they got to where they are, and the strategies and tools that can help along our shared journey of living happier, healthier, more productive lives. In this episode is a discussion with Nasir Kharma, who is a final year medical student at King's College London here in the UK, best known for his YouTube channel called KharmaMedic, where he talks about productivity, about education, about lifestyle, and teaches generally students and young people how to be more productive with their time. Nasir's been doing this for the past few years now, and he has a master following of over one million people, which is pretty sick. And so in this conversation, we talk about how he first started this YouTube thing. What was it that inspired him to start this YouTube channel and get it to a ridiculously successful point while being a full-time medical student? And then the conversation takes a bit of a turn, and we talk a lot about what it means to live a meaningful life and some of the lessons that Nasir's learned from going to therapy, for example, and some of the ways that his thoughts and insights around productivity, around what it means to work hard and be effective have changed over time. Links to his YouTube channel and all his other stuff will be in the show notes and in the video description, and I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and KharmaMedic. We're sitting here today.

Ali Abdaal 2:05 You are fast approaching a million subscribers. You're a final year medical student-

Nasir Kharma 2:09 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:09 ... at King's College London.

Nasir Kharma 2:10 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:10 And you've just gotten, uh, news that you're gonna be working in North London, so congratulations on that front.

Nasir Kharma 2:16 Yeah. Thank you very much.

Ali Abdaal 2:17 How, how did we end up here? What's, what's the story of-

Nasir Kharma 2:19 Oof

Ali Abdaal 2:20 ... of KharmaMedic?

Nasir Kharma 2:21 What's the story of KharmaMedic? Um, we need to go pretty far back.

Ali Abdaal 2:24 Let's go back. I love going back.

Nasir Kharma 2:25 Um, okay. So how this kind of all started is that, um, when I graduated high school, uh, in Greece, I wanted to go to medical school, and I applied to, um, the four most prestigious universities that me and my father could come up with, 'cause my dad said, "I'm only paying international fees for you to study abroad if you get accepted into one of the top, top, top unis." And I said, "You know what? Fair enough. I guess that makes sense." Um, so we did. I applied to them, and I didn't end up getting accepted anywhere. So I did my plan B of, uh, going to study in Canada, 'cause that's where I was born, so I hold the Canadian, uh, citizenship, and, um, I did my undergraduate degree there. After my undergraduate degree, I, I still wanted to apply to medical school. It was always the goal from, from the time I was in high school and, um, I eventually applied to both Canada and the UK. I got accepted in the UK, and that's where I went. Now, when I got accepted in the UK, I felt like it had been such a long journey of me trying to get accepted into medical school. Lots of, like, obstacles, ups and downs, you know, the whole shebang that a lot of people go through as well. Um, and I kind of told myself that I wanna help a couple other people get accepted to medical school, a handful of people. Um, and when I w- And I wasn't really sure how to go about that. I started, like, a Reddit forum and, uh... Sorry, I re- I put out a post on Reddit. Um, I went on the Student Room forum and I put out a post there saying, "Hey, I just got accepted. If you have any questions, blah, blah, blah." Got, like, zero attraction, zero comments, whatever, and I was like, "Hey, well, this isn't helping me achieve my goal," so I started the YouTube channel, and, uh, that's kind of how it got started.

Ali Abdaal 3:53 So how old were you when you started the YouTube channel?

Nasir Kharma 3:56 Um, I was in my second year of medical school, so that would have made me 23, I think.

Ali Abdaal 4:00 Okay. So you were in your second year, and were you doing undergrad medicine or grad medicine?

Nasir Kharma 4:04 So undergraduate medicine.

Ali Abdaal 4:05 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 4:06 I had made the conscious decision to apply to undergraduate because the graduate medicine was even more competitive for in- international graduates. Um, and so yeah, I went for the undergraduate route.

Ali Abdaal 4:15 Oh, I see. Okay. So you did four years of, uh, C- Canadian college?

Nasir Kharma 4:19 Um, like Canadian university.

Ali Abdaal 4:20 Canadian, Canadian university.

Nasir Kharma 4:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:21 And then, and now you're doing a second undergraduate degree-

Nasir Kharma 4:24 Yes

Ali Abdaal 4:24 ... because the aim was always medical school from day one.

Nasir Kharma 4:26 Exactly, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 4:27 Interesting. Um, what was, what was the experience of Canadian university like compared to medical school? 'Cause obviously I've only experienced medical school, so I-

Nasir Kharma 4:35 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 4:35 ... I, I always think like, "Ooh, Canada looks cool. America looks cool."

Nasir Kharma 4:38 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 4:38 You get to do all these different subjects rather than just one thing. Like-

Nasir Kharma 4:40 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 4:41 ... what, what-

Nasir Kharma 4:41 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 4:41 ... what was that like for you?

Nasir Kharma 4:42 There's, there's a lot of differences between the two, like, studying systems, and a lot of pros and cons on either side. I think thinking back to my time in Canada, the one thing that really stands out for me is just how difficult it was. I think, um, the, the difficult part about being in the Canadian or the American system is that you have this GPA system, and so your final grade that you graduate university with is sort of a compilation of every single exam, essay, quiz, assignment that you take in every course in every year. And so there's this constant really intense pressure to perform well throughout the four years. Um, and so the standard degree length is four years there as opposed to, like, three years here. And so I guess in comparison to the UK where you have these big exams at the end of the year that you need to study really hard for and those are what count towards your degree, and a lot of times the first year and second year don't really count as much. Um, but, uh, I'm happy you brought up the fact that, you know, you study loads of different subjects, not just the thing that you applied for. So for example, I wanted to do medicine, so I did life sciences, which is, like, this broad thing, and then you choose, uh, sort of underneath that your majors or your minors. And so I did two majors and a minor, um, and you get to do all kinds of courses, not only in science, but also, like, I did Shakespeare for a whole year. I did, uh, computer science. I did physics, maths, chemistry. Um, what else? Ancient Egyptian. Like, you know, you can take a whole w- wide variety of courses, which I think is fantastic. Makes a, for a really interesting university experience.

Ali Abdaal 6:08 Okay. And, and so I guess you had to maintain a pretty reasonable GPA as you were going through Canadian university to then even stand a chance of getting into medical school.

Nasir Kharma 6:16 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:17 Um.

Nasir Kharma 6:17 And, um, and even with the pretty decent GPA that I maintained, it was nowhere near close enough to the competitive GPAs, uh, for Canadian medical schools.

Ali Abdaal 6:27 Oh, wow. Okay. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 6:28 Um, yeah, and I'll, I'll die on this hill that I put every last blood, sweat, and tear into maintaining my grades over the four years of, uh-

Ali Abdaal 6:35 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 6:35 ... my Canadian university, and I'm so happy with the grade that I finished with. Um, but it's just not even close to the competitiveness that you need. Um, so yeah, it's really, really tough out there.

Ali Abdaal 6:43 What are those... What are the, what are the people with the 4.0 GPAs doing? Like, are they just like-

Nasir Kharma 6:47 I don't know. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 6:48 ... having a life? Or like, what's, well, what's the deal with that?

Nasir Kharma 6:50 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 6:50 Do you have friends who got, like, amazing grades? Like, what was their experience like?

Nasir Kharma 6:54 Yeah, I had some friends who did really, really well. Um, and I think it's, you know, um, a combination of them, you know, probably just being smarter than me at the end of the day, um, maybe working a bit harder, and, um, maybe less of a social life, that kind of stuff.

Ali Abdaal 7:07 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 7:07 And it... You have to be really smart about what courses you take 'cause you wanna take the easier courses that will give you the better GPA.

Ali Abdaal 7:13 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 7:13 Um, which I didn't know too much about back then.

Ali Abdaal 7:16 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 7:16 Uh, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:17 It, it strikes me that there is kind of a game to it, and some people are very good at playing the game.

Nasir Kharma 7:21 Yeah, absolutely.

Ali Abdaal 7:22 And, like, if I, if I look at, like... So I've, I've got a friend, my old housemate who I, I used to live with, who consistently ranked in the top three in the year group. And, like, the w- the amount he worked was not radically different to the amount I worked, and yet he just did so much better than I ever did. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 7:40 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 7:40 It's like, what is, what is going on there? Is it natural intelligence, or is it just something about the way that he's working or studying or whatever that is resulting in a different, a different outcome? Um, like, now that you've sort of done this whole productivity study type stuff, stuff

Ali Abdaal 7:57 on YouTube, have you come across any things that you sort of wish you'd known back in the day, study techniques, productivity hacks, stuff that would have made life a bit easier when you were going through, like, all these years of, like, 10 years of university?

Nasir Kharma 8:10 I think, honestly, one of the biggest things that I needed to know earlier was studying smart, not just studying for long periods of time. Especially when I was in high school, I kind of had the impression and understanding that the more hours you spent sitting down at your desk, the better your exam score was gonna be. And I do think there is a, a strong correlation there, but there's a balance. And you... Or I found that it's better to focus, you know, on the high-yield material. Don't spend so much time going into the weeds. Use pract- uh, past paper questions, group studying, whatever. There's all kinds of things that I just didn't know. I was just... I thought the best way to study was to take notes and sit at your desk, lock yourself in your room for hours and hours on end, which is a huge mistake. Um, there's much better ways to do it, for sure, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 8:49 Mm. Okay. Yeah, and we'll put links to our respective videos on the, on the topic-

Nasir Kharma 8:53 Sure

Ali Abdaal 8:53 ... down below if people, if people wanna check them out.

Ali Abdaal 8:56 Uh, why were you so into medicine that you would go through all these hoops to get into med school? Like, you would've made that decision when you were, like, 16 or something.

Nasir Kharma 9:04 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 9:04 So what's, what's going on there?

Nasir Kharma 9:06 Absolutely. Um, I always say that when I made the decision to apply for medical school, I said that I want to be a doctor. And I put these air quotes around because I, quite honestly, had no idea what being a doctor was. The only thing I knew about being a doctor was what I saw in the movies, right, when I made that decision. Um, and so it was more the work experiences that I did over the coming years and speaking to people who are in research, uh, labs and academia, speaking to people who are working in the hospital, going and spending some time in the hospital, um, that I actually kind of understood what does the day-to-day of a doctor look like. And that's kind of what reinforced the idea that I want to be a doctor and now became I actually want to be a doctor. Um-

Ali Abdaal 9:49 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 9:49 Yeah. It was more of, like, the real-life experiences that I had that pushed me towards it.

Ali Abdaal 9:53 Let's say you're speaking to someone who doesn't really know what to do with their career, and they don't necessarily wanna do medicine. What would you kind of advise them? Like, how should they, how should they go about this?

Nasir Kharma 10:03 I think, like, work experience is by far the best way. If you don't do it, you're not gonna know. I understand, you know, getting work experience is pretty hard for a lot of people, especially in different kinds of careers and, and whatnot, but the only way to really know what it's gonna be like is work experience. I think the second-best thing to that, honestly, is watching people on YouTube talk about their job, talk about their career. It's funny, but, like, um, whenever I need to know anything, the first thing I do is search on YouTube, and I look for someone who's gone through that experience, and I just watch them. And that's, like, the most real way of understanding it. I think reading a blog or, I don't know, some company talk about what their career is like isn't really the best way of getting that information across.

Ali Abdaal 10:42 We're gonna take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor for this episode, who is Brilliant. I've been using Brilliant for the last few years, and they're a fantastic interactive platform with online courses in maths, science, and computer science. My personal favorites are the computer science courses. I think they're absolutely fantastic. And when I was initially applying to med school, I was actually torn between applying to medicine and applying to computer science. And I ended up going with medicine in the end, which I really don't regret, but there's a big part of me that really wanted to continue learning the stuff around computer science, continuing to understand how coding works. And the courses on Brilliant have given me that foundation in computer science which I didn't have before. The courses are really fun, engaging, and interactive, and the way they teach you stuff is based on very first principles thinking. Like, they'll teach you a concept, and then they'll take you through interactive exercises to actually help solidify your understanding of that concept. And it's pretty cool because they're always updating the library with new courses. For example, there's one they've just released called Everyday Maths, which is kinda like a visual exploration of the maths that we use in everyday life, like for example, fractions and percentages, and putting them in a context that makes it very understandable and certainly very different to the kind of boring way that I was taught maths when I was in school. The courses and lessons are particularly good if you have a busy life with lots of stuff going on because they really teach you the stuff in bite-sized chunks. So you can always return to a course at a later date if you don't have time to do it in one sitting. If any of that sounds up your street, then do head over to brilliant.org/deepdive, and the first 200 people to hit that link, which is also gonna be in the video description and in the show notes, will get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you so much to Brilliant for sponsoring this episode. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff on YouTube these days, like day in the life of almost any career that you could imagine.

Nasir Kharma 12:07 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 12:08 Um, so it's, it's relatively easy to get some level of information. Obviously, if someone's, like, a lawyer or a management consultant or even a doctor, there is a degree to which they are not going to give you the true, honest-

Nasir Kharma 12:18 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 12:18 ... vibe of exactly what's going on. Um- Yeah. So, uh, I guess I, I w- I want to come back to the medicine thing in a moment.

Ali Abdaal 12:25 But so in your second year, you decided you were going to start a YouTube channel.

Nasir Kharma 12:28 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 12:29 Um, most people I know who started YouTube channels have not started it with the altruistic intention of helping people get into uni, and there is always an element of, like, status, money, prestige, et cetera, et cetera. To what extent did the kind of more selfish motives for being a YouTuber kind of affect your decision in the past and I guess now as well?

Nasir Kharma 12:46 Yeah. Um, [laughs] I remember we talked about this, like, the last time I saw you in Cambridge, and after I gave you my answer, you were like, "I don't believe you. There m- there must be something selfish there." Um, so, so the truth is, I think over time with the YouTube channel, the selfish reasons have grown larger and larger.

Ali Abdaal 13:02 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 13:02 When I first started, it genuinely was an altruistic thing. I remember, um, when I got the email that I was accepted to medical school, I went out into this, like, huge grass field outside the library where I was and I called my mom, and, like, she started crying, I started crying, and I said to her on the phone, I said, "I'm gonna help a handful of other students have the same feeling that I have."

Ali Abdaal 13:21 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 13:21 Um, and that really was the motivating driver behind me starting the YouTube channel.

Ali Abdaal 13:25 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 13:26 Um, as time has gone on and sort of the very intense passion and spark and fire inside me that was creating a video every single week, um, has sort of, w- I wouldn't say died down, but it's certainly not as strong as it used to be, um, the more selfish reasons sort of kick in and, and you know, I feel like, "I already have this big platform. Let me keep growing it. This can open doors for me in the future," et cetera, et cetera. Um, but it definitely started as a fully altruistic thing.

Ali Abdaal 13:51 Ah, interesting. And so, what were your feelings in those early days when you put out a video and no one watches it? Like-

Nasir Kharma 13:58 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 13:59 ... that sort of experience that we've all, we've all been through.

Nasir Kharma 14:01 Yeah. Um, it was definitely tough, and I remember the first time I had a subscriber. I was visiting, uh, Alexia in Bristol, and I was, like, jumping up and down, the first person who subscribed to my channel. Um, those early days, I think the, the hardest thing was that, as you mentioned, you know, no one watches the video and no one comments. And so right at the beginning, how I was sort of spreading the word about these videos was I was going on the student room forum-

Ali Abdaal 14:27 Mm

Nasir Kharma 14:27 ... and I was going to the UCAT and BMAT, uh, sections of that page, and whenever people would ask questions, I would answer them and then say, "Hey, if you want some more help, DM me."

Ali Abdaal 14:36 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 14:36 They would DM me, and I'd be like, I'd respond to their question again and then send a link to the YouTube channel. Because if you sent the link on the forum, you would get banned.

Ali Abdaal 14:44 Yep.

Nasir Kharma 14:44 And I got banned several times for doing that. So [laughs] so I had-

Ali Abdaal 14:46 I see. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 14:46 ... to find this workaround with the DM. Um, and so that's kind of how I started getting my first few viewers and followers. And even the one, two, three people who were watching at the time found the videos really helpful and found them really valuable. The feedback was so overwhelmingly positive that, you know, it gave me this real sense of I'm doing something meaningful here, and that made it easier to sort of continue pushing videos out every single week, you know, staying up late, like-

Ali Abdaal 15:11 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 15:11 ... sacrificing sleep and whatever. Um, I think it's 'cause I got that positive feedback really early on.

Ali Abdaal 15:17 Ah, okay. So you went out there and hustled to get people to actually watch your videos.

Nasir Kharma 15:21 I hustled hard. Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:23 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 15:23 For sure.

Ali Abdaal 15:23 I think a lot of people wouldn't do that. They would, uh, put the video up, hit Publish, hope for the best, and then complain three videos later-

Nasir Kharma 15:29 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 15:29 ... when no one's watching their videos.

Nasir Kharma 15:31 No, I, I, I put in a lot of work, for sure. I was answering, like, comments and DMs and whatever for a long time. Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:38 Yeah. And it was pure altruism at that point.

Nasir Kharma 15:40 It w- Like, like I said, I had this goal of helping... I don't remember what the number was now. I think somewhere between, like, 10 and 50 people get accepted to medical school. Um, and so I was kind of just continuing to go until I had talked to 10 different people, 50 different people, whatever.

Ali Abdaal 15:54 Mm. Did you ever have to battle with, like, perfectionism? Of, like, "This video sucks and I want it to be better, and I'm, therefore I'm not gonna upload it." Anything, any thoughts like that?

Nasir Kharma 16:01 Um, yeah. Uh, I th- I think that definitely. I, I characterize myself, I think of myself as a perfectionist type person, but I draw a really strict line in the sand where perfectionism should not be so much to the point that it stops me from doing the thing that I actually want to do.

Ali Abdaal 16:17 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 16:18 And so when I would edit my videos and, uh, when I would film them, you know, I would work really hard to try and get things as best as they could, but at the end of the day, I would have to upload it no matter what, even if it wasn't my best piece of work. Because I recognized how much value there was in just learning one new thing every single time. I knew that I wasn't gonna be making good videos overnight, and I knew that the first ones were gonna be bad, um, and it's just part of the process. I didn't, I didn't really care too much. I just wanted to learn, if that makes sense.

Ali Abdaal 16:48 Mm. Yeah. This... I mean, I... That's all, all great in, in theory, and I think anyone who starts on YouTube or putting themselves out there and writing or in anything knows intellectually that this is gonna be crap. But then there's a difference between knowing something intellectually and actually feeling it in your bones and really... And I think one of the things, one of the reasons why my YouTube channel kind of continued going was because I just embraced the fact that my first 50 to 100 videos were just gonna be awful.

Nasir Kharma 17:16 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 17:16 And I was like, "As soon as I can get through those awful videos, uh, the more then... and kind of slowly improve over time, eventually I'll get actually good at making videos." So what... I g- I guess my question is, was there w- what was going in your m- going on in your mind to take that from an intellectual knowledge that, uh, perfectionism is bad and shouldn't stop me from doing this to actual, like, actually making that guide your actions in actually uploading those videos? 'Cause that's, it's a pretty unusual thing to do. Like, loads of people have the thought of, "I want to do X"-

Nasir Kharma 17:45 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 17:45 ... and very few of us actually do the thing.

Nasir Kharma 17:48 B- Basically, like, I don't, I don't think about it too much. I just, I tell myself I'm gonna do the thing, and then I do it. And I see you laughing and, you know, my girlfriend, she always says to me, "Nasir, you're a robot. Like, you think like a robot," um, in the sense that, you know, you don't, um, you don't think about how this is gonna feel or how it's gonna turn out. You just do the thing. Um, and so once I told myself I was going to make a video on- The UCAT verbal reasoning section. I would just make it no matter how bad the video quality was or the audio wasn't perfect 'cause there was a car outside or whatever, um, and I would just publish it. Yeah. Um, I, I know it's super unrelatable and, like, I'm, I'm trying to better understand how I think about these things. Um, but a lot of it really just is I told myself I would do it, and so then I did it.

Ali Abdaal 18:36 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 18:36 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 18:36 Yeah. I mean-

Nasir Kharma 18:37 If that makes sense.

Ali Abdaal 18:38 Uh, that's how I think as well. Uh, when-

Nasir Kharma 18:39 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 18:40 ... when we started doing our YouTuber Academy, I would start getting... I would, I would get questions, you know, in our, in our first cohort, like, "How did you bring yourself to upload the videos?" I was just like, "Huh." I mean, it's, you know, I m- I made it into f- something that was not an option. Like-

Nasir Kharma 18:54 Yeah, exactly. It's like the only go-to

Ali Abdaal 18:55 ... once a week I was going to upload a video. Yeah. And when you decide that once a week you're gonna upload a video, you, y- then you just upload the video, right? [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 19:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 19:03 And people are like, "Well, well, no," because I still have all these feelings of, like, fear and perfectionism and anxiety and all this sort of stuff. Um, and it was very ideal that we had someone on the team, uh, who you also know, um, uh, who was my assistant at the time, who now works for the YouTuber Academy, Elizabeth, who had much more of a, a more of a, th- 10 times more empathy than I did around-

Nasir Kharma 19:24 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 19:24 ... like, what it's actually like [clears throat] being a beginner and putting yourself out there, and she could relate to those struggles a lot more than I could. Where I was just like, "Look, man-

Nasir Kharma 19:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 19:32 ... just upload the goddamn video. How hard can it be?" [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 19:34 I know. I know. And, um, honestly, this process of sort of reflecting on why I make the decisions that I do and how I feel about uploading videos or making things is something I've really only started quite recently, um, after in September, October time, I started going to therapy.

Ali Abdaal 19:49 Oh.

Nasir Kharma 19:49 And I genuinely felt like for the first time in my life I started thinking about why I'm doing the things that I'm doing and how I feel about them. Because before that, it was just... It was quite literally, you know, just do the thing because you said you were gonna do it. Um, and we can go into that, uh, a little bit later. Um, but yeah, it's, uh, it's a, it's a process, I think, like-

Ali Abdaal 20:10 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 20:10 ... learning to identify how you feel about it and why you feel that way and, and whatever.

Ali Abdaal 20:14 Okay. I definitely wanna come back to the therapy thing, and I definitely wanna come back to your sort of like why you're still keen on the medicine stuff, which I think will be interesting to talk about later.

Nasir Kharma 20:21 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 20:21 So you're in your second year, you're 23 years old. This is probably, like, uh, four years

Ali Abdaal 20:25 ago-ish, three years ago.

Nasir Kharma 20:26 Yeah, four years ago.

Ali Abdaal 20:27 And you decide, "I'm gonna make YouTube videos," and every week you bang out some stuff that helps people get into med school.

Nasir Kharma 20:33 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 20:33 What did the kind of trajectory of your channel look like in those, like, early days?

Nasir Kharma 20:38 Um, the trajectory was really slow, but, um, incredibly, uh, sort of gratifying on a qualitative level. So quantitatively, there weren't very many views, there weren't very many comments, uh, or whatever. But qualitatively, how I felt about making the videos, the sort of creative fun that I had making them, and the challenge for myself, learning these new skills of editing, filming, recording, publishing, whatever. Um, and then also the feedback I was getting from those small people who were watching the videos was amazing. I felt like the qualitative feedback was exponential, the quantitative growth was extremely slow. Um, and so for about a year and a half, I published a video every single week.

Ali Abdaal 21:16 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 21:17 And you know, I would publish on Thursday at 8:30 in the morning, and I still do till this day. Um, and so, you know, Wednesday nights, I'd be staying up late editing, like, whatever, and my girlfriend would always say to me, like, "Nasir, just, just upload the video on Friday. Like, why do you have to do it on Thursday?" And be like, "No, I, I said I'm gonna do it on Thursday, so it has to go up on Thursday." And it goes back to that thing of, you know, you just said you were gonna do it, so just do it at that time. Anyways, I'm going on a tangent. Um, so I was uploading videos every single week for about a year and a half, and I think at that time I had 7,000 subscribers, 6,000 something.

Ali Abdaal 21:47 For like after a year and a half?

Nasir Kharma 21:48 After a year and a half, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 21:49 After making like 75-ish videos, one a week for 18 months-

Nasir Kharma 21:52 Yeah. [laughs] Stupid amount of videos

Ali Abdaal 21:54 ... you had like 7,000, 6,000 subscribers, something like that.

Nasir Kharma 21:56 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 21:56 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 21:56 Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, and then I posted a vlog about me studying, uh, for a medical school exam, and that really blew up at the time, and that, uh, got, like, hundreds of thousands of views within a couple of days and then weeks, um, and brought I think like 30,000 subscribers to the channel or something like that.

Ali Abdaal 22:14 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 22:14 And that's where I felt like I had my big break or whatever.

Ali Abdaal 22:16 Oh.

Nasir Kharma 22:17 Um.

Ali Abdaal 22:18 Okay. So it sounds like the... You know, I've, I've been doing a lot of research on motivation these days for, for the book that I'm working on. Um, a lot of, uh, a lot of, a lot of the research suggests that, uh, motivation is not a thing that you generate before doing an action. Motivation is the thing that comes after you do the action and you see some small level of success.

Nasir Kharma 22:37 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 22:38 And so for you, it's like, "I'm gonna make the video," and then you're out there hustling trying to get an individual one at a time to watch that video. That person is giving you feedback and being like, "This video was sick," and then that, that gives you the, the kind of dopamine hit to continue making the videos.

Nasir Kharma 22:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 22:52 At the same time as you're making the videos, you're personally having fun because just the act of creation I think is an inherently rewarding experience.

Nasir Kharma 22:59 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 22:59 For, and for anything, you know, making a pottery wheel thingy or making a YouTube video or writing anything. There's something about creation that really, I don't know, fulfills the soul in some capacity.

Nasir Kharma 23:09 Kind of.

Ali Abdaal 23:10 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 23:10 Like you can say, "Look, I, I made that."

Ali Abdaal 23:11 "I made that thing," yeah. It was just like it was nothing and then I turned that footage into something good. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 23:15 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 23:16 Um, and I guess those like more, uh, yeah, qual- qual- qualitative markers of feedback, qualitative drivers kept you going even while the numbers weren't necessarily like incredibly high.

Nasir Kharma 23:28 For sure.

Ali Abdaal 23:29 And you know, the thing that I say to people is if you just make a video every week for two years and try and get a little bit better, I can 100% guarantee that your life will change. I can't tell you when it's gonna happen. I can't tell you at what, which video's gonna go viral, how many views or how many number, how many re- how much revenue, how many subscribers you're gonna get.

Nasir Kharma 23:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 23:43 But I can 100% guarantee it will change your life.

Nasir Kharma 23:46 Yeah, I agree.

Ali Abdaal 23:46 Whether it's in terms of like the skills you learn or the people that you meet or, you know, potentially at some point a video might pop and now we're talking.

Nasir Kharma 23:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 23:53 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 23:54 The, the YouTube game is honestly 100% consistency. I really think it's just about doing the same thing over and over again over a long enough period of time until something happens. Someone notices your video, the algorithm notices your video, whatever. Um, but I just really think it's about repetition, repetition, repetition.

Ali Abdaal 24:11 Yeah. So okay, on that, so on that note, um, we al- we, we, we do often sometimes get students in our, in our YouTuber Academy who, uh, you know, take the consistency mantra To heart. All right, cool. I guess I'm just gonna make videos, and then make videos about random topics, talking about things that they're interested in, filming it with crappy quality because it's like consistency and improvement over time. Um, and one, one view that I've been thinking about a lot recently is that consistency alone is not the answer. Like, there are, like, other ingredients that go into success. So for you, and I guess if you were giving advice to, uh, I don't know, like, people thinking of starting a YouTube channel or potentially, like, having started a something to do with content on social media, what are the elements other than consistency that you think feed into the success equation-

Nasir Kharma 24:59 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 24:59 ... as it were?

Nasir Kharma 25:00 Um, yeah, I think I should probably rephrase that. Consistency is a necessary requirement whilst you're also, uh, constantly trying to evolve and learn and improve.

Ali Abdaal 25:10 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 25:11 Consistency has to be there throughout, but as you said, you're right, it's not enough. Um, I think the main things-- I mean, YouTube's also part- partially a game. You need to make content that people are wanting to watch. You need to make content that you think, uh, is clickable, that might be shareable, the algorithm might pick up, et cetera. Um, and also that is good to whatever the good standard is. And I think on YouTube, there definitely is this sort of minimum-- Sorry. There definitely is this sort of minimum threshold of good, and once you've ticked that box, it becomes less important how good the video is, right?

Ali Abdaal 25:42 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 25:43 The production quality, once it reaches a certain level, anything past that is just like, "Okay, well, this is, this is nice, but [chuckles] it doesn't need to be here," you know? Um, and so yeah, the other things to kind of focus on for me was just with every video that I put out, I wanted to do something new and learn something different, whether that was a new transition, um, I don't know, adding music or a sound effect or, I don't know, learning how to crop in, add text, manipulate things. Um, I just wanted to do something new. And, you know, part of that was what made it so intellectually stimulating to keep on going every single week because it was really fun, as we said before.

Ali Abdaal 26:16 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 26:17 Um, but yeah, consistency and constantly trying to innovate and get better, whatever get better means, uh, you know, incrementally for you over time.

Ali Abdaal 26:25 Like, how do you, how do you think about this, this question of, like, w- what, what videos should I make next?

Nasir Kharma 26:30 Mm. Okay. So the videos that I make next are ones that I want to make, and then they need to appeal to who I think my niche is or my target audience. So there's a lot of videos that I upload that I know from the get-go are gonna tank in terms of, like, numbers, uh, comments, views, whatever. But they're videos that I think are important, and I think for the few people who do watch it, it is going to be valuable.

Ali Abdaal 26:58 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 26:58 And so if it meets that threshold, then the video's gonna get made. Um, and obviously, there's, like, a long list, and we move them back and forth all the time, and there's a balance of what's gonna go out next. But, um, yeah, I need to think that I'm gonna enjoy making this video and that there's gonna be some value for the people who watch it. And then after that it becomes about, um, it becomes more about how do we frame this in a way that's clickable, that people will want to watch, um, et cetera, as opposed to starting from what's the most clickable, what do people want to watch. It's a balance. It's not so black and white.

Ali Abdaal 27:29 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 27:29 Um, but yeah.

Ali Abdaal 27:32 So, okay. So let's say you decide you want to do a video exploring your menswear wardrobe because you think it's the sort of video that would appeal to someone like me, but it's not really within your core focus of your channel to be doing menswear content. Would you do the menswear video following this formula of, like, I think this will be valuable to some people like Ali who needs menswear advice, or would you be like, "Ugh, it, it's, it's not sufficiently valuable to the people that I think are following my channel," i.e. maybe medics, maybe students, like whatever-

Nasir Kharma 28:03 Mm

Ali Abdaal 28:03 ... uh, sort of pseudo avatar you have in your mind, and therefore I'm not gonna do the menswear video?

Nasir Kharma 28:08 No, I don't think so. I would, I would still do the menswear video.

Ali Abdaal 28:10 Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 28:11 If I, if I thought it was gonna be fun-

Ali Abdaal 28:13 Okay

Nasir Kharma 28:13 ... and it wasn't gonna be the, the biggest lift, as you would say. Um, I mean, this is kind of like when I made a 20-minute video about coffee, and I was just, like, drinking coffee from five or six different methods of, like, grinding the beans or whatever. I made a video about, um, how to publish academic research, which, like, is-

Ali Abdaal 28:28 It's very niche, yeah [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 28:28 ... pretty niche, yeah [laughs] . Um, what else have I done? How to take a patient history I did recently, which, you know, my channel's about medical school and my channel's about studying.

Ali Abdaal 28:36 I was surprised by that. Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 28:36 Um, but, but I also-

Ali Abdaal 28:37 A very, like, medical educational video-

Nasir Kharma 28:38 Yeah, exactly

Ali Abdaal 28:39 ... rather than a meta medicine video.

Nasir Kharma 28:41 Yeah. Um, so, you know, I, I knew it wasn't going to do well in terms of, like, numbers and algorithm, but I was like, "This is a valuable video that I wish I had when I was in my first and second year. I think it'll be fun to make. Let me make it." Um, so yeah. Something like the wardrobe video I've actually wanted to do for a while, and multiple sponsors have come and gone saying-

Ali Abdaal 28:57 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 28:57 ... "Make a video about, you know, uh, your clothing." But, uh, it's always been in my head too big of a lift, uh, to do. And I also don't really think I'm that, uh, knowledgeable about clothes and fashion and menswear and, and things like that.

Ali Abdaal 29:10 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 29:11 Um, I try my best, but-

Ali Abdaal 29:12 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 29:12 ... I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough to speak about it, like, in a video.

Ali Abdaal 29:15 So it sounds like you're not limiting yourself based on who you think your target audience is particularly.

Nasir Kharma 29:21 No, not at all. Because the most important thing is that I make a video each week. I d- What the video is on isn't as important as the fact that I just put one out.

Ali Abdaal 29:29 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 29:30 I just want to be creating content. Um-

Ali Abdaal 29:32 Why? [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 29:34 To be honest, um, I really, really enjoy it, and I feel like I've kind of reached this point where I'm on a hamster wheel. And we can, we can talk about this more later. I think it's important as well, where there's almost, there's so much less thought involved now than at the beginning. Now it's just like the wheel is turning, you know, inject all the different ingredients and components that go into making a video, and each week by Thursday, there will be one uploaded. Um, and so I've kind of been on this hamster wheel for about four years now of pumping out a video every single week, um, something that I plan to sort of scale back and change a little bit, um, probably in a couple of months when I graduate medical school. Um, but yeah, I forgot how we got onto this, uh, hamster wheel [laughs] .

Ali Abdaal 30:13 Yeah. Uh, I, I, I kind of asked why. Like, what's the, what's

Ali Abdaal 30:16 the point?

Nasir Kharma 30:16 Of being on the hamster wheel?

Ali Abdaal 30:17 Yeah. Like, why do you want to-

Nasir Kharma 30:19 Um-

Ali Abdaal 30:19 ... stick to this? Like, you've been doing it for four years now.

Nasir Kharma 30:22 Yeah, yeah. So at, at its core, it's fun. It's something that I enjoy, and evidently it seems to provide value to other people. Um, and I think that constant feedback of Uh, for me to know that it is somehow useful for others-

Ali Abdaal 30:36 Mm

Nasir Kharma 30:36 ... is the major driving port, uh, major driving point. And after that, it's fun, and after that, I told myself I was gonna upload a video every single week, and so I do.

Ali Abdaal 30:46 Okay. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 30:47 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 30:48 What would happen if you didn't one day?

Nasir Kharma 30:50 Um, probably nothing, but I think I'm kind of... So I'm, I'm a really goal-oriented person-

Ali Abdaal 30:57 Okay

Nasir Kharma 30:57 ... um, as you might imagine. And, um, kind of the next goal that I ha- the next big goals that I have in my life are to graduate medical school and to hit a million subscribers on this YouTube channel. And so those are kind of the goals that I'm working towards, um, before I make a big change or switch up this, like, once a week, uh, routine-

Ali Abdaal 31:14 Mm

Nasir Kharma 31:14 ... or, um, the type of content that I'm making and things like that. I'm kind of like, "Let me just keep things as they are right now," because I have a lot to focus on with medical school and whatever. Um, and once we reach that big goal, I can, like, make a big change.

Ali Abdaal 31:26 Okay. Okay. I w- I wi- I wanna push back on this goal thing because... So, so my issue with goals, I think, I think we talked about s-

Nasir Kharma 31:32 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 31:32 ... this before, is that when you set a goal, then... So, so, so for example, if, if I imagine for you, if I was, I don't know, your YouTube growth coach or something, and you told me, "My goal is to hit a million subscribers," I'd be like, "Okay, cool. Let's figure out what your most viral videos are, the ones that have brought in the most subscribers." And then I'd be like, "Why are you making these, like, random videos that you are doing for fun? Why don't we just optimize?" Like, imagine if you just made one viral video a month instead of four non-viral videos a month. Surely we'd get you to the million subscribers faster.

Nasir Kharma 32:02 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:03 And then, but this... So, uh, if, and i- and, and if I had a goal of a million subscribers and someone said that to me, I'd think, "Oh, okay, but the million subscribers is not the point. There are, there, there is something else going on here that the I just wanna hit a million subscribers does not quite embody."

Nasir Kharma 32:19 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 32:19 If you, if you get what I mean.

Nasir Kharma 32:20 So I, I'm, I'm very much like you. I, I set, um, w- what you describe as, like, input goals. So the a- the actual goal isn't to reach a million subscribers. The, it's the idea that in a couple of months, somewhere here or there, I'm probably going to pass a million subscribers. At that point, I'm gonna make a, a big change. Um, but in terms of how we get there, yes, I agree with you. If I just focused on making one viral video, then I might get there a lot faster. Um, but then that doesn't s- sort of follow the rule of, let me make the content that I actually want to make.

Ali Abdaal 32:48 Ah.

Nasir Kharma 32:48 So for example, I know, for example, that vlogs will happen to perform better on my channel, um, other videos about, like, hardcore focus and studying, things like that. But then when I sit down, like last week, and I'm like, "What video am I gonna make next week?" That's not really what's at the forefront of my mind, what gets me excited to pick up a camera.

Ali Abdaal 33:05 Uh-huh.

Nasir Kharma 33:05 And so I won't make that video.

Ali Abdaal 33:06 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 33:07 Um, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:08 So it's like, it sounds like it's some combination of you have goals, but you also have standards. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 33:14 I, I have loads of goals.

Ali Abdaal 33:15 You have, you have your own personal preferences of, I wanna hit a million subscribers, but I wanna do it on my terms. I don't wanna just make vlogs that will pander to the audience or whatever you want for views.

Nasir Kharma 33:22 For sure. For sure. This whole YouTube thing is only still going because I still find it fun. And I think if I was... The more and more this becomes like a job, the more and more I start to focus on the numbers and trying to make videos that will perform well and things like that, the less and less fun this becomes. And I'm really scared of that happening.

Ali Abdaal 33:39 Mm-hmm.

Nasir Kharma 33:39 So I try to stay away from it and do that as little as possible.

Ali Abdaal 33:42 Interesting. Interesting. Like, yeah, this, this just gels so much with my own, my own personal experience and a bunch of, uh, b- a bunch of research I've been doing into, like, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well.

Nasir Kharma 33:52 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 33:53 Where initially when we start doing stuff, like for example, when we're kids, we're do- we're doing things because they're fun, for the pure joy of doing the thing. And then at some point, grades come in and comes into the mix.

Nasir Kharma 34:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 34:02 And we start doing things because it will get us a better grade. I think medics are particularly prone to this of I will only do the thing-

Nasir Kharma 34:09 Yeah, absolutely. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 34:09 ... if it will get me the appropriate number of CV points and PubMed referenced paper that I, will give me two extra points on my freaking FPAS application.

Nasir Kharma 34:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 34:15 Or my ST3 application eight years down the line. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Nasir Kharma 34:18 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 34:18 Like this very goal-oriented, extrinsically motivated way of doing stuff.

Nasir Kharma 34:23 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 34:24 Um, and a bunch of this, the, the, the research on motivation, as you, as you probably know, says that when you add in extrinsic motivation, it does in fact tend to crowd out intrinsic motivation.

Nasir Kharma 34:33 100%.

Ali Abdaal 34:34 And so, you know, our, our mutual friend Jack, he and I were talking the other day, um, he's also a YouTuber. Was talking about how when, when he and I were making videos for fun, they were fun. But when you switch to making videos for your job, suddenly there's something about it where you're doing the same thing.

Nasir Kharma 34:49 100%.

Ali Abdaal 34:50 But it just becomes not fun. And now you're like-

Nasir Kharma 34:52 100%.

Ali Abdaal 34:52 I w- I, I used to look forward to going home from work to make a video, and now I look forward to doing anything else so I don't have to make a video.

Nasir Kharma 34:58 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 34:58 What the hell's going on there? Like-

Nasir Kharma 34:59 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 34:59 ... yeah, what, what's been your experience with that?

Nasir Kharma 35:00 It, it's, it's when it stops being on your own terms and, like, this is part of the reason why we take on so few sponsorships. I mean, if you look on my channel, I really do sponsorships so rarely, and a really big driver for that is that as soon as a sponsor is attached to the video, it suddenly becomes this huge chore.

Ali Abdaal 35:16 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 35:16 It's not a f-

Ali Abdaal 35:16 Becomes work.

Nasir Kharma 35:17 It becomes work.

Ali Abdaal 35:18 It has a deadline, yeah.

Nasir Kharma 35:18 And it has a deadline, and they want to review it, and they have their comments and this and that, and there's negotiation and back and forth. And then it stops becoming about, I'm making this video because I'm doing this for fun, and hopefully other people are gonna find value in it. It becomes like a job.

Ali Abdaal 35:32 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 35:32 Um, and so yeah, that's part, [laughs] that's part of the reason we try and keep-- we just do them every single da- uh, every single week and don't attach that many sponsors to the videos, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:41 Yeah. Practically speaking-

Nasir Kharma 35:42 Yes

Ali Abdaal 35:42 ... when, for example, a channel of your size, you could be making $10,000 for a video. Sponsor says, "$10,000, Nasir, for a video," that's a, that's a, that's a decent chunk of money, and how do you decide-

Nasir Kharma 35:59 How do I justify it? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 36:00 ... "No, I'm gonna say no to $10,000 because I want to not have a deadline, I want to not have fun, I don't wanna bother sending a few emails"? What, what's, what's going on in your mind?

Nasir Kharma 36:09 It's a very good question, um, and it's something that I, I do struggle with and, and think about kind of often. I think the thing is, um, these YouTube videos that I make every single week, at the end of the day, this is a hobby for me. This is something that I do for fun. My main priority in life and what I'm working towards my end goals is a career in medicine, and that is where the majority of my focus is and where I want my future to go. The fact that I make these videos and I find them fun and that they make money as well is like an incredible bonus. It is very hard to do that where you turn down money, uh, when you know you could so easily, right? But then there's also so many prerequisites to taking on a sponsor, which is like it needs to be valuable for me, it needs to be valuable to my audience, it needs to fit in with the content, and those don't come around very often either. Um, there's definitely enough to fill the videos, but, um, turn- turning down a sponsor because you want to keep this as a fun hobby and keep the longevity of it, it's kind of like a long-term thinking of if I was to accept a bunch of sponsors, yeah, I'd probably make a lot of money right now-

Ali Abdaal 37:09 Mm

Nasir Kharma 37:09 ... but I'd burn out more quickly, and I wouldn't find this fun in like six months' time. But if I sort of take it at my own pace, then there's probably more longevity in it, and I can keep this online presence wherever it takes me and whatever use it has in the future, um, for longer, and that's kind of the trade-off that, that I'm making.

Ali Abdaal 37:25 Interesting. That's a large amount of self-awareness to recognize that for you, taking a 10K sponsorship will be more likely to lead to burnout, et cetera, further down the line. How did you arrive at that this is-

Nasir Kharma 37:35 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 37:36 ... this is, this is where you're at?

Nasir Kharma 37:37 Well, I, I've, I've experienced how much it sucks the fun out of this whole YouTube thing to have sponsors involved. Um, and, you know, even when we've tried moving to agencies that are supposed to, you know, take off a lot of the heavy lifting around sponsors and things like that, at the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to you at the end. You know, you need to put in the work, you need to write the script for it, you need to film it, you need to edit it, whatever. Um, so it just, yeah, it sucks the life out of the thing.

Ali Abdaal 38:00 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 38:00 And this is not my job. This is quite literally something I do part-time for fun. And so if I was to make it my full-time job, that's a separate story, um, but it's not kind of where I want my future to go. Um, my future is still set on medicine.

Ali Abdaal 38:14 Ah, okay. I think that segues us very nicely.

Nasir Kharma 38:16 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 38:16 Why,

Ali Abdaal 38:17 why is your future still set on medicine?

Nasir Kharma 38:19 Um-

Ali Abdaal 38:19 It's okay. So I'll just say kind of the, the bear case for medicine, as it were, [laughs] to use the sort of finance invest in crypto analogy, is that long hours, a large like long amount of training, uh, NHS is understaffed, uh, life as a doctor is not that amazing. If you speak to a lot of doctors and you ask them, "Would you, would you rather be a YouTuber?" At least when I do, they would often say, "Hell, I'd rather do anything rather than medicine," et cetera, et cetera. Um, bull case for being a YouTuber is you'd make more money, you'd have more autonomy, you'd possibly have more fun, you'd spend a lot less time working. How, how do you... So I balance those factors, and it led me to the conclusion of quit medicine, be a full-time YouTuber for now/entrepreneur/content creator/internet whatever. What is it about medicine that makes you so like, "Yeah, this is, this is me"?

Nasir Kharma 39:11 Yeah. Um, I, [laughs] I think let me preface this with something that one of my really close friends says, which is, um, "I reserve the right to change my opinion and change my mind in light of new evidence." So having said that-

Ali Abdaal 39:23 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 39:23 ... um, yeah, I, I completely agree with everything you said. When I think of my future job working as a doctor and when I talk to doctors on the wards, everything is negative.

Ali Abdaal 39:32 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 39:32 And that's really soul-crushing. It's heart-crushing. It sounds... It doesn't sound like fun, you know, based on [laughs] the long hours, understaffed, overworked, stressed, you know, barely getting sleep, whatever. Um, and so I'm not looking forward to that side of it very much. The truth is, I d- I don't think I could do anything else that would provide me with the same amount of satisfaction and gratification as I would being a doctor.

Ali Abdaal 39:55 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 39:56 And I think even if I was to be a full-time YouTuber or have my own business or work in some other industry, I wouldn't get that same level of satisfaction that I'm sort of chasing and craving in my life. The, the sort of goals that I have for my professional career are to be doing something that I enjoy, that I think brings value to other people, and obviously there's tons of jobs you can do that bring value to other people. What you're doing is bringing tons of value to other people, and you're not a doctor anymore. Um, but, you know, it's a personal thing obviously at the end of the day. But I, I think that I wouldn't find anything more satisfying or more gratifying than caring for patients and working in a hospital.

Ali Abdaal 40:30 Okay. But you reserve the right to change your mind, of course.

Nasir Kharma 40:33 Yeah, absolutely. Because I always say, right, this is all fine and well while I'm a medical student.

Ali Abdaal 40:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 40:37 Being a medical student is, you know, down here in terms of responsibilities and work, being down here in terms of responsibility and work, and being an actual doctor is an entire other ballgame, right? So only when I start working am I gonna be able to say, "Yes, I'm happy doing this," even with all the negatives that are going on, and that's where the "I reserve the right to change my opinion" comes in, 'cause I don't know what it's gonna be like when I start working.

Ali Abdaal 40:58 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 40:58 But I have hope, I have faith that, um, it's all gonna go well.

Ali Abdaal 41:03 What is it about being... So I, yeah, sort of, uh, take, uh, f- fully, fully accept the caveat that you're a medical student. The levels of idealism of a medical student are four orders of magnitude [laughs] compared to the levels of idealism once you actually start working as a doctor.

Nasir Kharma 41:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 41:18 But I'm curious, what, like, w- what is it that you think w- is, will, like for you, will, would, would be satisfying about the medicine thing compared to, for example, being a teacher or running a business or continuing to do your YouTube thing?

Nasir Kharma 41:31 Yeah. I think, like, um, being a teacher or being in education, whether that's in person or sort of in an online way like you kind of do now, um, has a lot of the same sort of satisfying parts of being a doctor in that you're educating your patients, you're empowering them and informing them about their own health and other people's health and things like that. Um, I think a big part of it that kind of attracts me is the, like, high stakes aspect-

Ali Abdaal 41:55 Mm

Nasir Kharma 41:56 ... or, like, the intensity aspect of it. So, you know, teaching someone about a certain topic is, you know, it's gonna be gratifying and satisfying and whatever. But changing someone's health or helping them in a time of, like, pain or need or something like that, they're both very good, but one of them I think is, like, a lot more intense.

Ali Abdaal 42:15 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 42:15 And I think that intensity, I don't think it necessarily makes it m- better or worse than the other one, um, but it comes along with a different set of, like, emotions and satisfaction, I think.

Ali Abdaal 42:24 Yes. That's very true. That was one of the things that kept me in thinking more about medicine for longer because, uh, like, for the, for the last many years people have been saying, "Hey, quit this medicine thing. Do the YouTube thing." And there was something about, like, I'm, I... thrived off of the intensity of like a cardiac arrest or like, you know, these high octane specialties where there's a lot going on.

Nasir Kharma 42:49 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 42:49 And did, uh, enjoyed a lot less the more chill specialties like older psychiatric, for example, where, or like GP to an extent where it's like broadly clinic-based and it's-

Nasir Kharma 42:58 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 42:59 ... it's a bit less adrenaline-filled. And it sounds like you're of a similar, uh, cut from a similar cloth. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 43:04 Yeah. Exactly. I think I wanna push away from like clinical specialties and be a bit more involved in the hospital. Um, I'm not the biggest fan of ward-based medicine, how it is for junior doctors. It seems like we're glorified administrators or admins at the end of the day from what I've heard, um, and seen. But, um, but yeah, I, I think it's what you said, like there's a level of sort of this is serious. You need to be at the top of your game when you're doing it that I don't think necessarily exists in other professions that also involve teaching and helping

Nasir Kharma 43:33 people.

Ali Abdaal 43:33 Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, yeah, that's very much a personal choice of like, do you thrive on the stress or do you fold under the stress-

Nasir Kharma 43:41 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 43:41 ... as an individual? And, and yeah, in fairness, if I, I, I, I haven't thought in these terms for a while, but if I think of my friends who seem to genuinely enjoy medicine, they are all the thrivers under stress [laughs] type people.

Nasir Kharma 43:52 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 43:53 And if I think of my friends who will occasionally say-

Nasir Kharma 43:56 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 43:57 ... "Hey, are you looking to hire someone?" [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 43:59 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 43:59 Uh, they tend to be the not a fan of stress kind of people.

Nasir Kharma 44:03 Yeah. Part of it is also like this deeply ingrained sort of thinking that, uh, is in my head, and I guess of people in my generation as well, that like in order to have success, in order to have happiness, in order to whatever, you need to be working hard, you need to be in a high-stress environment, you need to be pushing yourself, um, which is probably not true at all. But it's kind of like an intrinsic feeling of like you want to be doing something that's intense, not necessarily stressful, but like-

Ali Abdaal 44:26 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 44:26 ... gets your blood going.

Ali Abdaal 44:28 Yeah. There's definitely like I've, I've, I've been doing a bunch of reading into this as well, this, uh, culture of or this narrative that hard work is itself a virtue.

Nasir Kharma 44:37 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 44:38 Um, and I think this is a very, it's a very like pervasive, um, thing. And it, it, it's not necessarily always bad all the time, but I've begun to think h- uh, harder, harder a- a- a lot about like wh- where this comes from, a whole like 1500s, the Protestant work ethic, the idea that working hard is itself a virtue that brings you closer to God.

Nasir Kharma 45:01 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 45:01 And it's not just about the fruits of your labor, it's also about how hard you work for it.

Nasir Kharma 45:05 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 45:05 And there's this, you know, there's this really good book, um, by Paul Millerd. Ooh. I'll-

Nasir Kharma 45:11 Got a lot of copies there. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 45:12 Give to you a copy of this. It's, it's sick.

Nasir Kharma 45:13 [laughs] Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 45:14 The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story for Work and Life.

Nasir Kharma 45:16 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 45:16 Where he used to be like a management consultant in New York, et cetera, et cetera. And then ended up, uh, leaving his job after a few years and kind of massively cutting down his salary, just doing a little bit of freelance stuff here and there, and just doing the whole slow living, exploring the world.

Nasir Kharma 45:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 45:30 And he writes a lot about this kind of, uh, hi- hi- history of workism and where the idea that hard work is a virtue comes from. And I think it's all, it's all very interesting, and it's something that I'm grappling with as well, um, because yeah. [clears throat]

Nasir Kharma 45:45 It, it, I think it's definitely something that's ingrained in us to some extent. Maybe not so much in people who are like five years or so younger than us. But certainly for me and, and a lot of my friend group and how my parents raised me, it's like you need to work hard. Why do you need to work hard? Well, just because.

Ali Abdaal 46:00 [laughs] Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 46:00 Like, you know, that's what you do. Like you go to uni, then you work hard, and you support your family and, um, and you know-

Ali Abdaal 46:06 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 46:06 ... that's how you thrive. Um, and so a lot of like sitting down and studying or going to work is just this is what I'm supposed to do. It's this natural drive that's kind of within us. I think if we all took a step back and think about it a little bit more, we'd realize this probably isn't the case and we shouldn't think of it like that. Um, but yeah, I just feel like it's something deeply ingrained inside.

Ali Abdaal 46:25 Um, you mentioned that maybe not for people five years younger than us. What, like you probably speak to students who are like in their late teens, early 20s.

Nasir Kharma 46:33 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 46:34 What's, what's their vibe? [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 46:35 Uh, a huge generalization incoming, but people of my parents' age and maybe our grandparents' age, their whole sort of life, um, goals was, uh, go to university, get a good job, and then you've made it in life. You are successful. You have your career. You have your family. You're good. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Whereas I feel like for a lot of people our age now and younger, that isn't where the primary source of happiness is coming from. I think people want to have a wider impact. They want to s- uh, focus a lot more on their social life, on their personal life, and then their job is just kinda something that they do to sustain themselves. Whereas in the past, the job was the one thing that you did kind of. Mental health wasn't important. Social life wasn't important. It was all about sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. Big generalization. Um, and so yeah, I think people who are a bit younger than us, uh, place a bigger importance on mental health and having fun and, uh, balance in their life than maybe someone who has come, like myself, who's come from a migrant family and thinks, you know, need to get my education, need to get a good job-

Ali Abdaal 47:33 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 47:33 ... need to have a family, blah, blah, blah.

Ali Abdaal 47:35 Hmm. Yeah. One of the things that Paul Millerd talks about in the book, um, and he's got a tweet thread about this, is the accidental-

Nasir Kharma 47:41 He'd love tweet threads. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 47:42 Oh, it's so good. It's like a good condensation of like what, you know, sometimes is a book. Um, the, the accidental meaning hypothesis.

Nasir Kharma 47:50 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 47:50 Where the idea there is that for our parents' generation, um, going to university, getting that good job, staying with IBM for 50 years, working your way up, getting the company car and the health insurance-

Nasir Kharma 48:00 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 48:00 ... was in fact a recipe for a meaningful life back when we lived out in where when we lived in the suburbs, the people were very involved in the community. Uh, controversial point, but like the traditional family unit was a bit more of a thing. You would go to church on Sundays. You would have like, you would, you would know who your neighbors are. And if you followed that path, just by virtue of the fact that that was your life setup, life felt pretty meaningful. Like you have community-

Nasir Kharma 48:25 Yeah, 100%

Ali Abdaal 48:25 ... you have family, you have a social life by default. Um, nowadays, where we live in a big sprawling apartment buildings, we have no idea who the hell our neighbors are. Um, fewer and fewer people are, for example, living with their families and living in their local communities and getting involved with the local communities, and it's all about like how do I get ahead in my career, et cetera, et cetera.

Nasir Kharma 48:45 Yep.

Ali Abdaal 48:45 Um, now the model of Oh, I'll just work at the same job for 40 years no longer leads to accidental meaningful-

Nasir Kharma 48:54 No

Ali Abdaal 48:54 ... fulfilling life.

Nasir Kharma 48:55 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 48:55 And now is-- And therefore we have to think harder about what are the elements of a meaningful and fulfilling life that we just don't have by default, and sp- incorporating them actively into our life rather than passively by default.

Nasir Kharma 49:06 Yeah. Yeah. I, I think our parents and grandparents had the right idea because as you said, you know, that's how society was, that's how the world was. If you wanted a meaningful life, that is what you had to do. I, I'm not saying they were wrong.

Ali Abdaal 49:15 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 49:16 I just think now if you followed that same recipe, then you won't necessarily achieve the same things.

Ali Abdaal 49:20 Hmm. Definitely. Definitely. So how do you think that... How do you think about that for yourself when it comes to medicine? How do you think of your future career in medicine, we're hypothesizing, will-

Nasir Kharma 49:28 Hmm

Ali Abdaal 49:28 ... lead into this idea of a meaningful life? What does, what does that mean to you?

Nasir Kharma 49:32 I think, to be honest, a lot of it is, um, I've set this goal for myself or I'm on this path of becoming a doctor-

Ali Abdaal 49:39 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 49:39 ... and hence I'm just on the treadmill until I become a doctor and then I'm gonna think about the next steps.

Ali Abdaal 49:43 Right.

Nasir Kharma 49:43 You know what I mean? Like if I think about it too hard, everything becomes, everything becomes stressful and it becomes too much to [laughs] it becomes too much to handle, you know.

Ali Abdaal 49:49 I know. Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 49:49 Let me just focus on one thing at a time.

Ali Abdaal 49:51 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 49:52 Um, so you know, after I graduate, uh, medicine, I just really wanna see what the job is actually like for the first two years. This is my sort of big goal for the next two years is to find out what does it mean to actually be a doctor working day in and day out. How am I gonna feel? Am I going to have the impact that I think I'm going to have right now? Is it going to be as satisfying and fulfilling as I think it's going to be? And then after that I can make decisions on, you know, what I want to do next or if I want to change. But until then, I think it would be very hard and just really speculative more than anything.

Ali Abdaal 50:20 Mm-hmm.

Nasir Kharma 50:21 Um, how do I think medicine's gonna fit into my life, um, in terms of providing me with happiness and accomplishment? Again, it, it's, it's about what I think it's gonna give me.

Ali Abdaal 50:30 Mm-hmm.

Nasir Kharma 50:30 You know, I don't actually know 'cause I haven't worked it. I've talked to people and I've been there, but I don't-

Ali Abdaal 50:34 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 50:34 ... I don't know.

Ali Abdaal 50:35 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 50:36 I hope that it will give me all those things, um, and I have faith that it will. Touch wood.

Ali Abdaal 50:40 Yeah, I think, I think this is a really healthy way of looking at things. Like, in a way you're not...

Ali Abdaal 50:45 You know, the whole like Simon Sinek start with why stuff. Like why are you really doing it? I, I've alwa- I've always kind of felt that especially for making decisions about career and about life and these sort of big decisions, especially when you're young, it's actually very hard to start with why and be like, "Why am I actually doing this? What's my goal? What's my broader purpose? What's, what's the point?" And it gets you into this mode of thinking, "Huh, hmm, I really don't wanna think about this right now. I just wanna like-"

Nasir Kharma 51:07 No, definitely not. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 51:08 ... you know, let's, let's worry about this a little bit later. And so I think some level of introspection is good to be... But I think, I think the way you're approaching it is absolutely sick, where you're like, "Okay, my hypothesis is that working in medicine will lead to a meaningful life because of A, B, C, D, and E. Um, and I'm gonna test the hypothesis over the next two years."

Nasir Kharma 51:24 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 51:24 "And then I'll focus on that, and then I'll worry about it further, further down the line."

Nasir Kharma 51:27 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 51:27 You're not like up at night like, "Oh my God, like I had a bad day on the wards today as a fourth-year medical student," or whatever, "Therefore-

Nasir Kharma 51:33 Never, never, never

Ali Abdaal 51:34 ... life isn't ready for me." [laughs] Like...

Nasir Kharma 51:35 Never, never, never.

Ali Abdaal 51:36 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 51:36 Um, there's this, there's this idea of, um, not being results-oriented. So I don't mean results as in like getting good grades or things like that, I mean not being outcome oriented.

Ali Abdaal 51:46 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 51:46 So this is a term that comes from poker, and when you play poker and, um, you make a... So when you're playing poker and you make a call or you, or you raise or you fold or whatever, you are making a action. Now that action you don't know whether it was the right action or the wrong action until, um, the cards come out and you know whether you won or lost. But at the time when you made that decision, there is a mathematically correct response for you to make. So you make the response that is best, and then there's variance and there's luck involved as to whether that actually results in you winning or losing, right? So if you make that correct decision at the beginning, I think the outcome is absolutely irrelevant. And this is a huge philosophy that I live my life by. I just tell myself, "Make the best decision that you can with the information that you have right now. Whatever happens after that could be good, could be bad based on that decision, but you did the right thing at the time." And that lifts all this weight off my shoulders of did I make the right decision? Should I have done this? Should I have done that? There's no questioning involved. I just ha- I just made the decision that I did with the information I had at the time, and I can't ask myself of anything else, you know?

Ali Abdaal 52:48 Yeah. That's so good. I love that. Um, the, the quote that I found myself thinking about a lot which relates to that is, I think it's a quote from like Buddhism or something, uh, or some other Eastern tradition, uh, which is, uh, total commitment to the process, total equanimity about the outcome.

Nasir Kharma 53:06 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 53:06 Um, and it's like I'm gonna do what I can. I'm gonna make the best decision I can. I'm gonna put the effort into it that I can while having fun, and who cares what the outcome is. And I remember this sort of when I, you know, working, working on the book, part of me wants it to be a New York Times bestseller and all that stuff, stuff obviously, but that's an outcome. And that's an outcome that I have no control over.

Nasir Kharma 53:24 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 53:24 So I'm gonna commit to the process. I'm gonna show up and do my best.

Nasir Kharma 53:27 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 53:27 And the outcome is in God's hands. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 53:29 Exactly. Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 53:29 And so it's all good. Like I suddenly don't need to worry about this shit anymore. I can just-

Nasir Kharma 53:32 Exactly. You don't have to think about it

Ali Abdaal 53:33 ... I can, I can do what I can. Yeah, it's glorious. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 53:35 100%. It sounds strange to say this out loud, but I make as few decisions as I can in my day. I don't really think about things. I just tell myself what I'm gonna do based on what I think is the best action-

Ali Abdaal 53:45 Hmm

Nasir Kharma 53:45 ... and then I go do it. Because if I think about it too hard, then you start thinking about should I have done this? Should I have done that? Why am I doing this? How do I feel about it, et cetera. I think it really impedes the process and takes away from whatever your end goal is. Um, and you know, being introspective and reflective, as you were talking about before, is something that I really admire in people 'cause it's something that I've, I haven't been able to do for pretty much all my life. Uh, and now I'm doing it a little bit more recently. Um, but to, to a certain extent I think it's good.

Ali Abdaal 54:13 Mm-hmm.

Nasir Kharma 54:13 Too much of it and overthinking-

Ali Abdaal 54:15 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 54:15 ... is also bad. You need a good balance. Um, so yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:19 So this segues nicely into therapy.

Nasir Kharma 54:21 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 54:21 So-

Nasir Kharma 54:21 Let's do it

Ali Abdaal 54:22 ... tell me more. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 54:24 Tell me more. So, so what happened, um, I was at the end of my fourth year of medical school. I kind of did summer and then came back to medical school and kind of before I knew it I just found myself like not wanting to get out of bed, right? Which is something I've never experienced before, and I really pride myself on being a consistently happy person.

Ali Abdaal 54:46 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 54:46 Nothing gets me down. Like everything is water under the bridge.

Ali Abdaal 54:49 Yeah, same. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 54:50 Brush things off my shoulder, whatever. Like as we said, like I don't think about things too hard. Whatever the outcome is, the outcome is. I made the best decision. So you know, like I'm constantly happy pretty much, like touch wood. Anyways, we got to this point where, um, I kind of was like Yeah, just like feeling like I wasn't enjoying my day as much as I should and suddenly I wasn't getting up on my first alarm ringing and I was getting up on my like third or fifth. And I was like, "What's going on here?" By an absolute stroke of luck, at the same time, a, a company that provides, uh, mental counseling and therapy services had reached out to me and said, "We want to sponsor a video on the channel." So I said, "Okay, cool. That's great. I'm making a video about burnout. Uh, that's a great fit. Why don't you give me access to the platform so I can test it out and use it?" And these two things were happening at the same time. I hadn't-- This is all in retrospect that I realized, you know, I wasn't feeling that good. So we set up like the first therapy session and I remember before going I was on the phone to my girlfriend and I was like, "Babe, like what am I gonna say? Like what am, what am I gonna talk about to this person? Like they're just a random person. They don't know me. I don't have anything to say. Like life is good." Um, and we, we start the call and before I knew it, I was just rambling, rambling, rambling about all these things that I was getting off of my chest that I had been feeling all of these years and all this time that I'd literally not just taken the time to stop and think about. And I was, I was thinking to myself like, "Nasir, you're doing all of these things in your life, keeping yourself busy, like trying to make others happy and trying to help other people and you didn't take a second to think about this stuff? Like why did you wait so long?" And it was kind of this, uh, place where I was living in like ignorance is bliss, just don't think about the why, don't think about how you're feeling about it, X, Y, and Z, just get the thing done. Um, and I wasn't reflecting on kind of anything that was happening in my life. And, um, through the course of like a couple of therapy sessions, um, I felt like I was reflecting a lot more on how I was feeling about medic school, about the YouTube channel, about my family, about life, my girlfriend, you know, everything and it kind of opened up this part of my brain that I'd never used before or thought about before which is, you know, you can think about the things [chuckles] that you're doing and you can acknowledge how it makes you feel. Um, and yeah, it, it's been f- it's been really fantastic. I kind of think as the last year as pre-therapy and post-therapy in terms of like how I live my life.

Ali Abdaal 57:11 Interesting.

Nasir Kharma 57:11 Yeah, sorry.

Ali Abdaal 57:12 Thank you for-

Nasir Kharma 57:12 Big, big ramble, but like-

Ali Abdaal 57:13 Thank you for being so open about this. This is fantastic stuff.

Nasir Kharma 57:15 Yeah, for sure. You know, I've been saying all this time to like to friends, to family, to patients like, you know, like seek mental health services, do this, do that. Um, and so you know if I'm advocating for people to go do this like I should be talking about it quite openly as well. Um, and yeah.

Ali Abdaal 57:31 So what have been

Ali Abdaal 57:32 some of the changes in your life pre and post therapy?

Nasir Kharma 57:36 Mm. Um, I think kind of the biggest one is I'm trying to be a bit less of a like robot-

Ali Abdaal 57:42 Oh, okay

Nasir Kharma 57:43 ... in terms of, uh, thinking and my actions, but most importantly time management.

Ali Abdaal 57:48 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 57:49 So I am someone who prides myself a lot on my time management and I think that I balance a lot of things in my life really well. Um, and it all like kind of comes naturally to me and, and it all goes well. The sort of downside to that is that, um, I'm constantly working, you know, I'm constantly like moving from one thing to the next and it's really difficult to stay in the moment. You know if we were doing this pre-therapy I'd be thinking about, "Okay, as soon as I leave this, this podcast I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna have a 10-minute coffee break, then I'm gonna sit down for half an hour and I'm gonna work on my emails and then I'm gonna have a two-hour study sesh with Kenji and Georgina, my parents are gonna come, we're gonna go for dinner." I wouldn't be thinking about us in this moment right now. I would always be thinking about what's next, what's next, what's next and I used to keep track of every single thing I did in my life. I like I could tell you how long it takes for me to do any task, walk from here to there, go to the bathroom, make a tea versus a coffee, make this food versus that food. You know I was just very hyper focused on time. Um, and kind of through therapy I've realized that I can still complete everything I want to do in my life without necessarily sort of working on the to-do list up until I go to sleep at midnight or you know constantly squeezing in little bits of work on the bus, on the train, when I'm walking, things like that. I've taken like a much more relaxed attitude towards life, um, which has been amazing. Would highly recommend for anyone who thinks they might benefit from therapy to give it a try.

Ali Abdaal 59:12 Okay. Wow. That's-

Nasir Kharma 59:13 Sorry. That, that was a lot, I know.

Ali Abdaal 59:14 No, no this is great. That's, that's all very interesting. Okay. Um, I have heard people say things to that effect of like, um, for example we did an interview with Julian Hearn, the founder of Huel.

Nasir Kharma 59:27 Yes.

Ali Abdaal 59:27 And similarly with James Hoffmann, uh, the, the coffee topic-

Nasir Kharma 59:31 Coffee, yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 59:31 ... you're probably, probably familiar with.

Nasir Kharma 59:33 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 59:33 And one thing I'm always intrigued by is to what extent is it that the hustle, hustle mind, the kind of I'm gonna have coffee rather than tea because tea takes an extra three minutes to brew and I can't be asked to wait three minutes 'cause I have to do work on my to-do list. To what extent was that a thought process that served you when you were young and quote not successful? Um, or is it that now that you're a little bit more enlightened around the whole work-life balance, hustle culture not, not amazing type thing-

Nasir Kharma 1:00:01 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:00:01 ... is, is that a kind of privileged position to have to be able to be like, "Oh actually I can smell the roses." Whereas back in the day when you were struggling to make ends meet you're or, or you know whatever that looked like for you-

Nasir Kharma 1:00:13 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:00:13 ... smelling the roses was a luxury you couldn't afford.

Nasir Kharma 1:00:16 Yeah. So really good point to, to make is that like I largely attribute the success of my YouTube channel and my success in medical school and in my relationships and whatever, um, uh, obviously there's a lot of luck involved and a lot of things have gone my way.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:32 Yep.

Nasir Kharma 1:00:32 I'm, I'm extremely privileged to begin with and with everything that's happened so far. Um, but a lot of that is because of that really hard work. So had I not been so obsessed about my time management and working in every little pocket that I had, staying up late, sacrificing sleep, sacrificing social life, meetings with friends, whatever, I really don't think I could have ended up in the position that I'm in.

Ali Abdaal 1:00:54 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:00:55 There's a lot of things involved. Luck is most certainly very involved. Um, but without that kind of hard work I wouldn't be able to be here and so I don't regret doing any of those things and I think they were a necessary ingredient in the concoction that puts me in the place that I am today.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:08 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:01:09 Um, but it's kind of what I talked about before. I feel like I've been on this hamster wheel for so, so long-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:13 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:01:14 ... and I've reached the level of success ... infinitely bigger than I thought I would ever have, right? To think I'm gonna hit a million subscribers soon is absolutely ridiculous, right? When I reach 10,000, the numbers stop making sense, and then you get your silver plaque and you're like, "Oh, okay. This symbolizes 100,000." Like, I'm more successful in terms of YouTube numbers and whatever than I would ever hope to be. I've made it, right? If I quit today, I would be happy. Like, I'm good.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:39 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:01:40 Um, and so I've reached that level of success where I feel like, or success in terms of, uh, this, where I feel like I can take that step back now and say to myself, "You know what, Nasir? Like, you did the hard work. You did the thing."

Ali Abdaal 1:01:51 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:01:52 Um, now you can realize maybe you can take a step back and sort of live a little bit more slow and relaxed.

Ali Abdaal 1:01:57 Mm. Interesting. If you had your time

Ali Abdaal 1:02:00 again, would you have wanted to live more slow and relaxed, uh, maybe at the expense of some, quote, growth? Or would you be h- would you, would, would you do it all again and sort of treat, treat your twen- uh, early 20s as like a, "Okay, this is hustle season, and now I'm in chill season" kind of vibe?

Nasir Kharma 1:02:25 Uh, I think, I think I would definitely do everything the same.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:28 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:02:28 The reason is that I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. I wasn't going through that time, you know, where, like I said, sleepless nights and this and that. I wasn't going through all of that wishing that I had more sleep-

Ali Abdaal 1:02:39 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:02:39 ... or wishing that. I was staying up late because I was excited about posting the video the next day, you know? Um, and so I really enjoyed that whole process and I, I wouldn't change it going back. The only thing I would do, really, is study less for my university in the earlier years, like first and second year in both degrees, because I just overworked during that time when I didn't really necessarily need to. Um, but otherwise, no. Like, the hard- the, the, the work ethic and the discipline I think is necessary.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:05 Yeah, I like that. So, so it's like, um, there's, there's this other quote that I came across, which was along the lines of, uh, "Insofar as you enjoy it, there is nothing wrong with working very hard." [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:03:17 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:17 And it's when you start finding yourself not enjoying it that you can reassess and be like, "Okay, hang on. It's a bit weird that I'm, I don't wanna get out of bed now. Like, I'm supposed to be the guy that's, like, fricking having, having an amazing time, doing all the things, winning on all the fronts. Now something has changed. Whoops, something has changed, and therefore I don't really enjoy it anymore. Let me examine that." And in a way it's like let's go, go, go. And sometimes you do have to push yourself a little ti- bit too far to recognize where that limit i- where that line is.

Nasir Kharma 1:03:43 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:03:43 Then you take a step back. You're like, "Okay, cool. That's, that's reasonable."

Nasir Kharma 1:03:47 Yeah. I, um, I, I really think to sort of achieve, um, a level of success, whatever that means, in any field that you're in, you do have to put in that extra work harder than the person who's sitting next to you. You know, a lot of luck and privilege is involved obviously. Um, but I do think that at the end of the day, without the hard work, no matter how much luck and privilege you have, you're not going to get to that point. Um, and so I recently made a video about toxic productivity because, um, I [laughs] I came to the conclusion that a lot of the videos on my channel would fall under the toxic productivity category.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:21 Yeah. Same. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:04:22 So the long study sessions-

Ali Abdaal 1:04:23 Yeah, how I study 14 hours a day. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:04:24 Yeah, I mean-

Ali Abdaal 1:04:25 That kind of stuff

Nasir Kharma 1:04:25 ... all I talk about is like time management and studying and productivity, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:04:28 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:04:29 And in that video, the, the case that I try to make is that first of all this is what I'm actually doing. I'm not, I'm not actually sleeping all day and just making these videos. This is what I'm actually doing, and the only reason that I'm doing it is because I'm enjoying it. No one's, no one's sitting here with a gun to my head saying, "Nasir, work harder and be more aware of your time management." These are things that I do because I enjoy them.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:48 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:04:48 And I'm sharing them because I think that other people might find value in them, and if you do, then that's fantastic, and if you don't, you don't have to watch this video. You don't have to, you know, uh, take part in this. If, if this content is something that you don't want to consume, then, like, that's completely fair enough. I understand where you're coming from. This really isn't for everyone. And so y- yeah. Like, it should be okay as long as you enjoy it.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:10 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:05:10 Right?

Ali Abdaal 1:05:11 Yeah, there's like this balance between, you know, on the internet people want you to be authentic, but only authentic insofar as it ticks the boxes that society has decided in that given season-

Nasir Kharma 1:05:20 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:05:20 ... is an appropriate amount of work and life to have.

Nasir Kharma 1:05:22 Yeah. Exactly, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:05:23 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:05:24 Had we been making these videos like 50 years ago, it would just be all praise about hard work and dedication-

Ali Abdaal 1:05:29 Yeah. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:05:29 ... and, and work ethic and motivation. But today most people feel like, actually, no, this is negative, this is bad. And that's fair enough. People are entitled to feel that way. But it doesn't mean that there's something inherently wrong with the videos that we're making.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:40 Mm-hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:05:40 That's the point that I, that I'm trying to make.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:42 Yeah. It's a good place to be. So

Ali Abdaal 1:05:44 are you still going o- o- ongoing with the therapy thing or was it like a few sessions and that's it?

Nasir Kharma 1:05:48 [laughs] So yeah, so it was an eight-week thing and I kind of treated it like an essay or an assignment or a game or something. Throughout the whole therapy session I would just be taking notes like frantically on all the important points.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:59 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:00 And at the end I would make myself an action plan.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:02 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:02 And then during the week I would work on the action plan and make sure that I was actually doing the things that were gonna help me in some way, shape, or form.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:08 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:08 So let's say in therapy session one we would identify X or Y problem. I would think about how can I fix X or Y problem, work on it during the week, and then report back. I fixed X. I haven't, haven't quite fixed Y. Let's work on that a little bit more.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:20 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:20 It's very simple.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:21 That's a very productivity bro way of dealing with therapy.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:23 It is. It is. It is.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:24 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:24 But, but I can't imagine doing it any other way.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:25 Do that, bro. Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:26 And I think, I think half of therapy is, uh, talking to someone else, listening to them, um, having them, you know, tell you things. The other half is you need to put in some amount of work to try and change the things that you're unhappy with or, um, or, you know, whatever it is that you need to do. Um, so I think you need a little bit of both for sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:46 Okay. So we were talking about like your pre- and post-therapy self and you said one of the things definitely is that you've taken, taken the foot off the gas a little bit, shall we say.

Nasir Kharma 1:06:53 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:06:53 Um, that reminded me of a story that Derek Sivers writes about in his book, I think it's in Anything You Want, where he talks about how he would always go for a cycle every day and it would take him 40 minutes to go and he'd be sweating at the end of it and he'd be like, "Cool, I need to, I need to make my time. It's 40 minutes And then one day he decided, "You know what? I'm just gonna enjoy the cycle ride." And it's like, "Oh, cool." Like, oh, s- I'm smelling the roses on the way and picking up a little pebble and, like, you know, just, like, actually enjoying the cycle ride. And he gets back, he looks at the, the clock, and it's 42 minutes. And he's like, "Damn, was I really huffing and puffing and wearing myself out for the sake of two extra minutes? That seems a bit weird." [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:07:27 That's a really excellent analogy of how I feel pre- and post-therapy. I'm still achieving the same things. I'm just taking it a little bit more relaxed-

Ali Abdaal 1:07:36 Mm

Nasir Kharma 1:07:36 ... and enjoying myself a little bit more, and really, the amount of output that I'm losing is minimal. And that's the realization that I've had which I didn't have before. I was under the assumption that, you know, I just have to continue working up until the point that I go to sleep because every night when I go to sleep, I look at my to-do list and there's 10 items on there, and I'm like, "Well, I could probably bang out two of these right now before I go to bed, or I can leave them all tomorrow. The obvious choice is to bang two of these before I go to bed. Let's get that done."

Ali Abdaal 1:08:00 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:08:01 Nowadays, so post-therapy, right, or during therapy, for the first time in my life, I sat down in bed and I watched a movie on Netflix by myself.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:09 [gasps]

Nasir Kharma 1:08:10 Up until that point... Yeah. [gasps]

Ali Abdaal 1:08:11 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:08:12 Right? Which s- which sounds crazy, right? I mean, you know, my girlfriend's been telling me to do this forever, my friends have been telling me to do this forever, and I would always think to myself, like, "Why would I do that when I could work on my to-do list?"

Ali Abdaal 1:08:20 It's all productive. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:08:20 Like, it's not about being unproductive, it's just I wanted to do the other things.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:24 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:08:24 Like, I have this to-do list of things that I genuinely enjoy. Let me get some of them done.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:28 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:08:29 And so now I just watch a movie before I go to bed, and I do those two tasks in the morning instead of the night before, and I just relax at the end of the day and unwind. I'm like, why do I need to be on this constant hamster wheel of running, running, running, doing all this time management stuff? I can just take a bit of a step back and, like you said, it'll take me 42 minutes instead of 40, um, and it's not the end of the world.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:49 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:08:49 And that's kinda the, the change that I'm going through now.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:52 Have you come across, uh, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman? You would enjoy it. It's, uh... We've got it here somewhere. Uh, it's great. It's like a sort of 2022/2021, uh, productivity book, in inverted commas.

Nasir Kharma 1:09:04 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:05 But it's, it's not really about productivity. It's, it's, it's more, it's more like a philosophical approach to time management.

Nasir Kharma 1:09:09 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:09 Recognizing that, uh, 4,000 weeks is roughly the amount of time we have on this earth.

Nasir Kharma 1:09:13 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:14 And, uh, once we accept the finitude of existence and our own mortality, we stop, uh, trying to cram all these things and juggle all these balls, and we recognize that there genuinely isn't enough time for all the important things, and therefore, some things are just gonna have to be put in the bin for now.

Nasir Kharma 1:09:29 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:29 And, uh, it's a very liberating and interesting read. Uh, would recommend. And for anyone listening, we have an interview with Oliver Burkeman, which will a- also be linked in the, in the show notes down below. Shameless plug. Very nice.

Nasir Kharma 1:09:38 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:09:39 Um, but yeah, so I've, I found myself having similar realizations where I used to feel bad about, like, not replying to people, and now I don't feel bad about not replying to people.

Nasir Kharma 1:09:50 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:50 On, like, WhatsApp or emails and stuff. And emails will be-

Nasir Kharma 1:09:52 Like friends or people on the internet-

Ali Abdaal 1:09:54 Uh-

Nasir Kharma 1:09:54 ... who watch your stuff?

Ali Abdaal 1:09:55 Both, to an extent. Like friends, I still feel a little bit bad because, like, it's a friendship to maintain, and I try not to apply productivity bro lens to friendships. Um, but even friends to an extent, to be honest. Like, I used to feel guilty that, ugh, I have these 80 unread WhatsApps, and it's all people, friends of mine.

Nasir Kharma 1:10:09 How? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:10:10 Like even, like fr- yeah, friends who, like, I should be replying to, and I know I want to reply to them. But, like, ugh, I just can't bring myself to make the time to, to do this thing. And now I guess what I've accepted is just like, yeah, I'm just... Th- that's okay. Like m- m- maybe I will lose out on one or two friendships because I was not sufficiently good at replying to WhatsApp messages, but actually that's okay. That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, and the amount of extra stress it adds to my life to feel the need to maintain a, a, I don't know, two-hour response time on, to WhatsApps-

Nasir Kharma 1:10:41 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:10:41 ... does not justify, uh... [laughs] Yeah, it's just, it's, it's, it's just not worth it. Similarly with emails, similarly with... Uh, w- what I found as well is random items on my to-do list.

Nasir Kharma 1:10:52 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:52 Whereas I used to think of my to-do list as I have to get all these things done, now I think of it as, as long as I just get the most important things done each day, it really does not matter if all the other stuff does not get done.

Nasir Kharma 1:11:02 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:02 Forever.

Nasir Kharma 1:11:02 Yeah. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:02 Like indefinitely. Doesn't matter in the slightest. It's actually all good. And unless, like, a tax bill comes along which is too easy to put off or some-

Nasir Kharma 1:11:08 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:11:08 ... or something like that, there are, there are very few things that are genuinely necessary and important on the to-do list, and there's certainly not gonna be, like, 10 to 100 of them like I used to have. If I can just do my most important task each, each day, and maybe be... And maybe one or two other things, th- and I do that every day for a whole year, then I'll make so much more progress than if I think of my to-do list as a series of items that need checking off.

Nasir Kharma 1:11:32 Definitely. I, I think there's also a, um, like, thinking switch that you make where, you know, my to-do list used to be something that anytime I'd strike one thing off, I would immediately think, "Oh, okay, what do I want to do next? Well, I want to start making merch. I want to start a Patreon. I want to upload a new video. I want to write a script for this," blah, blah, blah. So there was always things to add. There was a never-ending incoming stream of things that I could potentially put on my to-do list.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:55 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:11:56 And it's like you said, y- you, what you need to realize is, like, let me just focus on the most important things that I want to do right now. Once those are done, I can think about adding on a new project. It doesn't all have to get done before I go to sleep at midnight or whatever. Um, so, so yeah. This, this, uh, thinking shift in time management from having to get everything done as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible, um, to just taking a little bit less time but enjoying it exponentially more is something that's, that I've been going through and that I think is really important. I wish I'd known it earlier.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:30 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:12:30 I wish I'd experienced it earlier. Um, and yeah, it's kind of a change that I'm trying to make now.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:34 Hmm. Yeah, it reminds me of something that I heard an emergency medicine consultant s- say once on one, one of my shifts, which is that don't worry about the list. The list is never-ending. The patients are gonna keep coming in, and there's nothing you can do about that, so just embrace the fact-

Nasir Kharma 1:12:47 That's what-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:47 ... that there's nothing you can do about the list.

Nasir Kharma 1:12:49 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:49 And just focus on the patient in front of you and try and make that patient have a great time, and then focus on the next one in terms of priority order, in terms of triage, and then the next one, and then the next one, and stop worrying about the list. It's all good. If we breach four hours, who cares? And like, you know. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:13:02 We'll be all right.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:02 We, we'll be all right. We got this. [laughs] Um-

Nasir Kharma 1:13:04 Yeah. It's, it's that exact point that there's-

Ali Abdaal 1:13:05 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:13:06 ... a never-ending list of patients, and each one of them is gonna come with their sub, sub list of tasks that need to get done.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:11 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:13:12 Um, so yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:13 So yeah, just one at a time in triage priority order

Nasir Kharma 1:13:17 One at a time

Ali Abdaal 1:13:17 And-

Nasir Kharma 1:13:17 One day at a time

Ali Abdaal 1:13:18 ... trust, trust in the process

Nasir Kharma 1:13:20 Trust in the process

Ali Abdaal 1:13:20 The ones that don't need to be there, we'll just leave. Um, the drunk people will just wake up and leave

Nasir Kharma 1:13:24 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:13:24 And as long as you have addressed the most pressing people as and when and given them a good experience and everyone else is doing the same, the system will, s- will, will, will, will, will sort itself out

Nasir Kharma 1:13:34 Figure itself out

Ali Abdaal 1:13:35 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:13:35 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:13:35 Whereas I find that, um, kind of on days, this was in my, my early few days when I, when I had like A&E shifts, uh, it would be like, "Oh my God, we have all these eight patients under medicine that need to be seen," as like, I don't need to worry about that. That's way beyond my pay grade. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:13:50 You just see the one in front of you

Ali Abdaal 1:13:51 Let the consultant worry about that. I'm just gonna see the one in front of me. Yeah [laughs] .

Nasir Kharma 1:13:53 Yeah, yeah. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:13:55 Would you recommend therapy?

Nasir Kharma 1:13:56 Absolutely

Ali Abdaal 1:13:57 'Cause I tr- I tr- I tried it for a few weeks. I had a therapist, uh, from the school of life. [laughs] And after a few weeks I found that I was really struggling to come up with things to say.

Nasir Kharma 1:14:06 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:14:07 Um, but it, it was like over Zoom and people are like, "Oh, it's better in real life."

Nasir Kharma 1:14:11 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:14:11 Like, yeah, what a, what was your-

Nasir Kharma 1:14:12 So I did it over Zoom, and there's definitely a little bit of a disconnect there. Um, was your therapist male or female?

Ali Abdaal 1:14:18 Female

Nasir Kharma 1:14:18 Okay. Cool. Um, I just think, well, I'll speak for myself, but like, as a like man, I found it easier to open up to a woman, um, because of the biases of like being a man and holding all your emotions in and this is not, which I shouldn't be experiencing anyway, blah, blah, blah.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:33 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:14:33 Um, anyways, so I wouldn't say if, if that wasn't working. But also a lot of people don't, uh, vibe with the first therapist that they see.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:40 Oh

Nasir Kharma 1:14:41 Um, it's like super common to change therapists and like try different ones on until you meet someone who you kind of connect with. Um, and all this to say like, it's genuinely changed how I think and what I do on a day-to-day basis. I'm a much more relaxed person than I was before and it kind of just took someone to like tap me on the shoulder and be like, "Hey man, like, are you thinking about what you're doing right now? Like, do you feel okay? Like, how's it going?" And I just, I hadn't thought about it. I was literally running on this infinite treadmill, uh, that was never gonna run out and I was just going, going, going, going, going, not thinking about things too much.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:12 Mm-hmm

Nasir Kharma 1:15:13 And um, and yeah, it kind of, like I said, tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a step back.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:18 And I guess final question on the therapy front. Okay. So I'm sold, I'm sold. I'm gonna give it a go. Um, I do sometimes think that so a few of my business coaches end up being therapists [laughs] because a lot of their stuff is around like, why are we doing this? What are the goals here? Like-

Nasir Kharma 1:15:29 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:15:29 ... have you really thought about this? But, um-

Nasir Kharma 1:15:30 [laughs] Fair enough

Ali Abdaal 1:15:31 ... what are some, uh, w- as you were going through the therapy stuff, were there any particular questions that the therapist asked that made you think, "Oh, that's a good question," that you could, that would maybe be good as like a journaling prompt for someone who's maybe listening to this who doesn't want to/can't afford to see a therapist?

Nasir Kharma 1:15:50 I think one of the things she said to me was, um, like, "Who are you doing this for?" Um, and if the answer isn't that you're doing it for yourself then you know, you, you might wanna rethink about whether you should be doing it in the first place. One of the things that we talked about was that, um, I felt that there were a lot of people surrounding me in my life that were going through difficult times, um, and they wanted to talk about X, Y, or Z with me and, um, I would never turn away, um, someone like that. Um, and so that was taking like quite a big toll on me, uh, both emotionally and mentally and things like that. Um, and she was saying to me, you know, like, "To what, to what benefit is this for you? There comes a point where you're giving away too much of yourself and you're not, or you're giving away too much of yourself and it's only gonna be to your detriment." And so, uh, she was talking about, you know, how maybe you can draw those boundaries or those lines, things like that. This might be a bad example because the conclusion that I came to in the end was that I would never say no if it was a close friend or family because I think even if I was to make that sacrifice and be under more emotional stress, it's more important that I try and help the person who's, who's come to me.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:51 Any final comments on the therapy side? Any front-

Nasir Kharma 1:16:53 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:53 ... you would've told yourself earlier or you would recommend for me?

Nasir Kharma 1:16:56 The, the honest thing I would say is that I never in a million years thought that I was someone who might benefit from therapy or that I would need therapy, I would find it useful or anything along those lines and I was very, very shocked at just how much I gained from it. And so really what I wanna say is that if you think there's even a small chance you could benefit from it or find it useful, then give it a go. Um, and yeah, see, see what happens.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:19 All right. I'm sold. It's gonna happen. Uh, changing

Ali Abdaal 1:17:22 gears a little bit.

Nasir Kharma 1:17:23 Yes

Ali Abdaal 1:17:23 Can we talk about your relationship?

Nasir Kharma 1:17:24 Yes, we can

Ali Abdaal 1:17:25 Um, so how long have you and Alexia been together? Oh

Nasir Kharma 1:17:28 So we've been together now for nine years.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:31 Nine years. Bloody hell

Nasir Kharma 1:17:32 And, uh, yeah, long, long time.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:34 So you met in Canada or?

Nasir Kharma 1:17:35 Uh, we met, uh, when we were in high school. We went to high school together

Ali Abdaal 1:17:37 Oh, that's cute

Nasir Kharma 1:17:38 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:17:39 Um, okay. So I have a bunch of questions. Um-

Nasir Kharma 1:17:41 Sure

Ali Abdaal 1:17:41 ... I'm curious what it's like being public, somewhat public about your relationship-

Nasir Kharma 1:17:47 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:17:47 ... and what it's like the fact that she is a YouTuber as well and how you balance the whole like public life versus private life side of things.

Nasir Kharma 1:17:55 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:55 Broad-

Nasir Kharma 1:17:56 There's a lot of things there [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:17:56 All of, all of the, all of the things. Yeah [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:17:59 Um, I think let's start with the public versus private life

Ali Abdaal 1:18:02 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:18:02 I think the most important thing that we do, that I do both for myself on my channel and that we do in videos that we're together is everything that we show in these videos is really carefully selected. And what I mean by that is that I want exactly zero input from people who I've never met before on the internet into what to do in my relationship.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:23 Okay

Nasir Kharma 1:18:24 A relationship is difficult enough as it is. There's a lot of things to balance, you know, and to have other people's opinions or comment on the smile that you did at 1:31 or how you put your arm on their shoulder at 6:52 is like just things I don't need in my life, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:18:38 Okay

Nasir Kharma 1:18:39 So a lot of the videos where Alexia is involved are really travel vlogs. Um, and Alexia is in those in different clips of us just having fun and going out and drinking coffee and things like that. But we've been really careful not to sort of sit down in front of a camera and be like, "Hey guys, this is our life and our relationship and this is what we like, this is what we don't like," because we don't want to have an online relationship. We don't want it to be in the public eye. Um, and so that's kind of how we, we handle that. We don't really, at, at least I don't think we put that much of ourselves out there.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:09 Yeah. I've, I've had it a few times with like Generally when filming videos with a woman, so either Sheen or Elizabeth or like Unjaded Jade or doing a podcast with Ruby Granger, it's like-

Nasir Kharma 1:19:19 Are you dating? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:19:20 ... it's, yeah, it's always, it's always the things of are you dating? And there's like large amounts of like, "At 17 minutes and 34 seconds, you know that look that came into his eye? It really shows that he's in love with her." Or-

Nasir Kharma 1:19:30 You see

Ali Abdaal 1:19:30 ... "That smile that she gave him at 19 minutes and 24 seconds really suggests that she's in love with him," or like-

Nasir Kharma 1:19:36 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:19:36 ... "That, that look he had made him, uh, uh, made him look like it. Oh, God, that was so rude." And it's like, dude.

Nasir Kharma 1:19:41 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:41 Like, I was, I was looking up, uh, the... I don't even know what I was doing at the time, but I had like I had my n- notion in front of me on the iPad to figure out where the conversation is going next, and it's like when you're doing a live stream with someone you can't look at the camera because you have... you wanna look at them and-

Nasir Kharma 1:19:53 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:19:53 ... uh, like, all of, all of this stuff and the amount of like random shit in the comments of being sort of people have- having an opinion on everything.

Nasir Kharma 1:20:00 Having their own opinions, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:00 "Oh, my God, this video, this, this made me realize that Ali, Ali has no, like, emotional capacity because he did not make eye contact with her when she was sitting next to him. He was looking at the camera instead." It's like, bro, have you ever tried speaking to a camera? You're supposed to look at the camera. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:20:13 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:14 Um, yeah, so I guess, like, how did you decide that the... How did you actively decide that you wanted to go down the occasional cameos and travel vlogs-

Nasir Kharma 1:20:22 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:20:22 ... route rather than in the, "Hey, guys, let's ask," you know, answering-

Nasir Kharma 1:20:27 Dating Q&A

Ali Abdaal 1:20:27 ... questions you were... Yeah, dating Q&A.

Nasir Kharma 1:20:29 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:20:29 "What, what he's like as a person" kind of content.

Nasir Kharma 1:20:31 I think from, from the very first post I ever made online, I had a really conscious decision to separate my private life and my online life.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:38 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:20:39 And I have this huge fear that one day everyone's gonna know everything about me on the internet. Um, and so I work [laughs] really hard to try and separate those two things.

Ali Abdaal 1:20:48 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 1:20:48 You know, I made a separate Instagram page. I have my own private one. I made a separate YouTube channel. I have my own private one. Um, and what I post and what I share online, and I talked about this in a recent video as well, is like, you know, I only share the things that I want to put online, right? I'm, I go through the footage, I hold the camera, and I film myself. Like, I decide when I want to film and what I want to show.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:07 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:21:07 And it is all carefully selected because, you know, this is an online impression that I'm giving to other people. Now, it is true that what I do show on camera is, like, 99% true to real life, but I wouldn't choose to pick up the camera when I'm really bothered or upset or angry or something like that.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:21 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:21:21 You know, I think that makes logical sense. But I think what people sometimes who are watching videos don't understand is that you don't know the person who you're watching. You don't really know them in a deep capacity more than what they're choosing to show you online. And so when someone says, you know, Ali doesn't have the emotional capacity because he doesn't look at X, Y, and Z, like, you're getting such a small snapshot of this person in this video that they've chosen to upload.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:44 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:21:44 How they act or be off camera could be completely different.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:48 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:21:48 You know? And like, I don't know, I mean, we've met a couple of times. Hopefully, you think that I'm the same on camera and off camera. Um, but, uh, it, it is really a selective thing that goes out, you know? We don't just show everything. Do you show everything about your life?

Ali Abdaal 1:22:01 No.

Nasir Kharma 1:22:01 Not really, right? Because, you know, you want to have your own private life as well. Um, and so, yeah, that's where we were. So from the very beginning with my own channel, I made this huge distinction between private and public, and I think even more so with the relationship because there's just this natural fascination that people have with relationships and people being couples online and whatever. Um, I think we've tried to keep that up, of keeping it offline... not offline, but keeping it as private as we can.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:25 Mm. And how does, how do things work with the fact that Alexia has her own YouTube channel as well?

Nasir Kharma 1:22:31 What do you mean?

Ali Abdaal 1:22:32 As in d- do... I, I guess, um, do you get like... So your, your channel is significantly bigger than hers. So do you get your army of fanboys and fangirls going over to her channel and commenting on her videos and wanting to be, wanting to, like, I don't know, be part of that? Like, yeah, how does, how does that work?

Nasir Kharma 1:22:50 Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm so incredibly proud of every video she puts out because her first, like, 20 videos are the same as my, like, I don't know, 50th to 70th video or something. They're so much better than how I started. Um, and so pretty much every video she puts out, I post on my Instagram story, and I'm like, "Please, everyone, go watch it if you're interested."

Ali Abdaal 1:23:08 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:23:08 "It might be really fun." Um, yeah, no, I'm re- I'm really proud of her. I think, uh, I think she makes really great content, and she's a lot... She is the queen of reflection and introspection and things like that. Um, and so I think she does that quite well on camera, something that I'm struggling to do and I'm, I'm working on. Um, and so yeah, I re- I really love her videos, and I promote them as much as I can.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:29 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:23:29 Um, I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by, like, how does it work. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:34 Yeah, I guess, does she get weird comments on her videos from, like, your fans type thing, or-

Nasir Kharma 1:23:39 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:39 Do you get, like, I don't know-

Nasir Kharma 1:23:40 Not really

Ali Abdaal 1:23:40 ... girls on the internet who are in love with you who are annoyed that you have a girlfriend? Uh-

Nasir Kharma 1:23:44 Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:23:44 ... I, I, I guess I'm just sort of thinking about, like, weird people on the internet and how they might react to-

Nasir Kharma 1:23:48 Oh, I, I see what you mean. Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:49 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:23:49 I mean, I get all kinds of weird DMs. I'm sure you get the same, like, you know, there's the full-on marriage proposals.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:55 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:23:55 There's the, like, the nudes, the like-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:57 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:23:57 ... you know, people asking you out to coffee and things like that and-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:00 I've never gotten any nudes.

Nasir Kharma 1:24:01 Oh, okay. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:24:02 Yeah. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:24:04 It's just me. Um, and, and yeah, it's, it's kind of one of those things that you see and you're like, like, "Why am I seeing this right now?" You know? I, I'm, I'm not interested in this.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:13 Just lying in bed like [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:24:13 This is not why I'm on Instagram. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm here to respond-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:16 Why, why are you sending me this?

Nasir Kharma 1:24:17 I'm here to respond to, like, UKAT advice and like-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:19 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:24:19 ... studying motivation. Um, anyway, so, so yeah, you know, I get all kinds of weird messages and stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:24 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:24:25 But just don't give them attention. Delete, block, whatever. The thing is, like, I'm not interested in that type of thing at all, right? Um, you know, I'm in this long-term relationship that I'm really happy in, and I'm, I'm, you know, I'm not gonna be distracted by some stupid DM on, on Instagram.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:39 Yeah. Okay. Would you ever consider making a couples channel that's a bit more like Q&A about our relationship?

Nasir Kharma 1:24:45 Absolutely not. No, no.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:46 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 1:24:46 A- again, like, you're in a relationship now, right?

Ali Abdaal 1:24:50 Mm.

Nasir Kharma 1:24:50 So, you know, think about how much, like, time, effort, emotion, thinking, ups and downs go on in a relationship.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:56 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:24:57 And then just add the, the added pressure of hundreds or thousands of people having an opinion on how you guys interact-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:03 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:25:03 ... online or how you appear to be with each other or things like that. It's just all this added stress that we really don't need, you know? Um, so yeah, I, I don't think we would ever go down that route.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:15 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 1:25:18 Tell me about your relationship. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:25:21 [laughs] Yeah, we've not gone public with it just yet.

Nasir Kharma 1:25:23 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:23 Um, it feels like a very big move to go public with it.

Nasir Kharma 1:25:28 It is, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:28 And so given that it's still, like, early days, it's been, like, six months, um, we've decided that let's, let's like, you know, take it slow in terms of, like, bringing things into the public domain.

Nasir Kharma 1:25:42 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:42 One idea that I, I really like the idea of, in theory anyway, is the idea of h- for example, having a couples channel.

Nasir Kharma 1:25:49 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:49 Uh, which is why I was asking you about it, 'cause I do follow a bunch of couples vloggy, lifestyley channels, and I, I, I think, oh, this is really nice. It's really wholesome, and it's c- it's, it's cute how they do Qs and As together, and it's cute how... I don't know, th- those videos of, like, um, guy asking girls questions that guys are afraid to ask girls, and vice versa.

Nasir Kharma 1:26:06 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:06 It just makes for interesting content. Um, but I guess it does require a large amount of, uh, thinking about, and I guess what you see is definitely not what is necessarily happening behind the scenes.

Nasir Kharma 1:26:19 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:19 And what they're doing is... What they're putting out is, like, a- an airbrushed image of what's actually going on.

Nasir Kharma 1:26:23 Yeah, definitely. Um, I think another thing to think about, like, definitely in my case, as counterintuitive as it might be, I have never been comfortable just pulling out a camera in group settings with my friends or, you know, I mean, in the studio I, I would never pull out the camera and start talking, uh, vlogging because-

Ali Abdaal 1:26:40 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:26:40 ... it's just not something that I'm comfortable with.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:42 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:26:42 And so a lot of my YouTube channel is me talking to myself in my bedroom or me with the camera one-on-one vlogging, walking around or whatever. And so being on camera in front of another person, even my girlfriend, is a dynamic that I don't r- I don't necessarily want to do and is something that I don't think I'd be very comfortable with.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:59 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 1:27:00 It's, um, you know, f- at, at least for, like, a couples channel type thing. I think if, if you're a one-off here and there doing things together, it's, it's whatever. Um, but, like, it- in terms of an official channel, I think I would struggle with it. But, you know, some people find it really fun and, and easy, so it's... I think it's a personal thing as well.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:16 Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think I should, I should treat it with the same sort of scientific method that you do for your, uh, Will I Enjoy Medicine thing of-

Nasir Kharma 1:27:26 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:27:26 ... I have a hypothesis that this will be fun. Let's try it out. Maybe even, like, make some videos and not publish them-

Nasir Kharma 1:27:32 Sure

Ali Abdaal 1:27:32 ... and see what the vibe is. Maybe make, make, like, five or 10 videos, and if we decide after that point to not publish them, then that's fine. They're interesting memories. And if we decide to publish them, great. We're 10 weeks ahead in terms of content. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:27:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:44 Uh.

Nasir Kharma 1:27:45 I think, like, it also depends on how comfortable you are in the relationship.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:48 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:27:48 Y- if you guys both feel very secure, um, and you're happy with each other, then those types of online comments are not gonna play as big of a role.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:55 Mm-hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:27:55 They're... You're not gonna think about them that much or, uh, you know. I mean, you know, if you were to put out a video with your girlfriend tomorrow, that would be a significant event for the Ali Abdaal community.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:05 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:05 You know, like, this would be a huge-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:06 Well, yeah. We want to attend, fireworks.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:08 Like, the comments would be absolutely insane-

Nasir Kharma 1:28:09 Exactly

Ali Abdaal 1:28:10 ... through the roof type of thing.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:10 So you're, you're gonna get a lot of, like, comments and-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:13 Yes

Nasir Kharma 1:28:13 ... and whatever. A lot of it is probably gonna be really positive. Um, but, um, yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's added pressure.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:20 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:20 It's added pressure, and I think... I'm, I'm trying to reduce pressure in my life. Like- [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:28:23 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:28:24 ... I don't w- I don't want any more things to do.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:25 I'm gonna reduce the stress.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:26 Yeah, exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:26 You've got medicine coming up anyway.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:28 Exactly, yeah. So yeah, I guess it's not something I'm interested in exploring at the moment.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:31 Yeah. Okay, nice. Um, so you've been together for nine years.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:35 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:35 What's, what's the secret to a long, long-term relationship?

Nasir Kharma 1:28:38 Oh.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:39 If any. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:28:40 I think in one word is communication for me.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:43 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:28:43 Like, um, when we were in our first degrees, I was in Toronto in Canada, and she was, uh, here in, uh, Bath studying for her university, and I was in Canada for mine. And no joke, we would have the Skype call open for, like, 32 hours at a time. You know, like, 18 hours, 24 hours, whatever. Like, the Skype call was just a permanent object on both of our desks. It was open while we slept, when we woke up-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:08 Oh

Nasir Kharma 1:29:08 ... went to breakfast, whatever, you know? Um, and I think that level of communication, that level of feeling together even when we were apart-

Ali Abdaal 1:29:15 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:29:16 ... um, is kind of, uh, what helped us through then, and also just generally I think if you don't... Well, it's hard to give general advice 'cause everyone's really different.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:26 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:29:26 But I'll say for myself, like, I'm one of those people who wants to talk to my partner quite often.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:30 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:29:30 Wants to be involved, wants to be, um, you know, filled in, and so for us, talking and communicating quite often is, helps a lot I think, for sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:37 Nice. Um, that's all, all very useful. I have more questions to ask you offline-

Nasir Kharma 1:29:42 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:29:42 ... which we will, we'll-

Nasir Kharma 1:29:42 Sure

Ali Abdaal 1:29:43 ... we'll take on, uh, after this, after this recording.

Nasir Kharma 1:29:45 Yeah, absolutely.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:45 Um, changing, changing directions finally to the other element of, like, other than, like, relationships and work that make for a meaningful life is generally health.

Nasir Kharma 1:29:52 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:53 You take care of your health. Like, I've seen some of your f- of, of your vlogs, the six-pack abs and all that. Like, how, how do you do it? Like, what's, what's going on there? [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:30:00 Um, I just-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:01 Slash give me advice. [laughs] If you were to be my health coach, what would you suggest for me?

Nasir Kharma 1:30:04 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:05 I s- I eat delivery twice a day, and I don't really exercise, so-

Nasir Kharma 1:30:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:30:08 ... what's, what's going on here?

Nasir Kharma 1:30:09 The delivery twice a day is, is tough, man, because it... You can't sit here and look me in the eyes and tell me that the delivery food feels and tastes like real food that you would cook at home.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:19 I don't really cook. I've only r- I only started cooking at home in the last, like, two or three weeks.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:22 Fair.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:22 I got, like, the whole, like, Le Creuset Harry Potter collection, like cast iron skillet.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:26 Nice, nice.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:26 I made a steak thr- three times so far.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:29 Excellent.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:29 Made some lamb chops. Made some-

Nasir Kharma 1:30:30 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:30:30 ... loads of salmon. Salmon is so easy.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:32 Yeah, yeah. Salmon's very easy.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:33 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:33 Yeah, sure. On the big baking trays as well.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:35 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:35 You just throw on tons of vegetables-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:36 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:30:36 ... and potatoes and stuff.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:37 Glorious.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:37 Yeah, yeah. Um, I think exercise is something that I just genuinely enjoy fundamentally.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:43 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:43 If I hated exercise, I think this would be a separate conversation.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:46 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:46 At its core, I enjoy going for a run.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:48 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:30:48 I enjoy going to the gym, um, and I find it very helpful. Um, kind of tied to the fact that, um, I w- for a very long time I've been, like, not thinking about things, not being introspective and reflective. A huge way for me to sort of offload stress or, like, clear my mind and move onto the next thing was just go for a run, go to the gym. Not the health- healthiest coping mechanism, but it served me for a really long time.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:11 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:31:11 Um, and kind of now it's just, it's just routine that I need... If, if, if I don't exercise every, like, two days or so, I'm, like, I'm itching in my chair, you know? I feel like I have to get out of this room and just ... push something, pull something, like run. Um, I, I honestly almost feel more like my body pulls me towards the exercise as opposed to it's a decision that I make, let me go to the-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:32 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:31:32 ... gym right now.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:33 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 1:31:33 Um, but that might also be because it's become a habit at this point and it's like-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:36 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:31:36 ... just part of normal routine.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:38 Okay. When you're at the gym, what do you do?

Nasir Kharma 1:31:40 Oh, I do a lot of stuff. Um, so currently I'm not in my like peak physique, like gym going four or five times a week. Um, so what I'm doing is about three days a week, and I generalize it into like a push day, which is, uh, chest and triceps, a pull day, which is back and biceps, and then legs and cardio.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:58 Legs? [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:32:00 [laughs] So I do do legs for everyone, for everyone-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:02 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:32:02 ... always commenting on how skinny my legs are. I'm fully aware.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:05 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:32:07 Um, yeah, no, I, I do do legs and I actually enjoy it now, believe it or not. It's, uh, it's been a good sort of break from like, uh, push and pull days.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:13 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:32:14 Um, but it's just infinitely, like, harder to train them. I'm a naturally pretty lanky and skinny guy.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:19 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:32:19 So, um-

Ali Abdaal 1:32:21 And do you like track macros and like all that crap?

Nasir Kharma 1:32:23 No. See, that's another one of those things that's just like added stress that I don't want in my life.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:27 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 1:32:28 Um, I feel like I'm okay with e- eyeballing, guessing if I'm, like, eating too much or too little. But actually, to be honest, I don't think about whether I eat too much or too little. In fact, I try and throw as much food on my plate as I can because I find it very difficult to, like, put on mass and to, to grow muscle mass. Um, and so yeah, I, I don't really track any of that stuff, no.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:49 Hmm. Okay. Um, so what, what would be like your, uh, top kind of recommendation for me for things I should do to my lifestyle to-

Nasir Kharma 1:32:58 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:32:58 ... become a bit more hench?

Nasir Kharma 1:32:59 Um, if we-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:00 First of all-

Nasir Kharma 1:33:00 ... ignore, if we take aside the question of why I wanna become hench in the first place, 'cause then that takes it down the therapy rabbit hole, which we can... [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:33:05 [laughs] Sure.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:06 Yeah. Um, I think honestly the most important thing is to just find a form of exercise that you actually enjoy.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:11 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:12 At the end of the day, if you don't enjoy what you're doing and you're forcing yourself to go, you're not gonna keep it up for a long time, and that makes perfect sense.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:19 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:19 And so whether you like swimming, running, walking, gym, I don't know w- what, what other activities can you do?

Ali Abdaal 1:33:25 I think squash.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:25 Tennis, squash.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:26 Squash, badminton, tennis.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:27 Yeah, for example. Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:27 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:28 Whatever the form of exercise is that you want, just focus on that. Um, I think doing those types of sports and activities is different than getting hench in the gym.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:37 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:37 And you can't just do those sports and expect to get hench 'cause it's not gonna happen.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:41 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:41 But you can certainly be, like, healthy and fit and active and whatever. Um, the gym is its own thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:46 The gym is its own thing.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:47 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:47 Yeah. I need to figure out a way of making the gym more fun. Um, and Gordon is gonna help with that 'cause Gordon used to be your personal trainer.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:51 Yeah, personal trainer.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:52 And so-

Nasir Kharma 1:33:53 Should get it done. Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:33:53 ... yeah, it's gonna happen. We're gonna make it fun.

Nasir Kharma 1:33:55 Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:55 Um-

Nasir Kharma 1:33:56 Um, and yeah, the, the eating stuff, um, I don't know. How do you, how do you find ordering so often? If, if I order for like two days in a row, I feel like, you know, I feel a bit sick.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:07 Uh, I tend-

Nasir Kharma 1:34:07 Like, I want to go back to-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:07 I tend to order like either Chipotle chicken salad or like poke bowls.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:11 Okay.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:11 And so I, I have like a few healthy-

Nasir Kharma 1:34:13 It's healthy, healthy stuff

Ali Abdaal 1:34:13 ... healthy defaults.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:14 Fair.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:15 And I will very rarely order like a KFC or equivalent.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:18 You know what's changed my life?

Ali Abdaal 1:34:19 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:20 Um, those like not meal prep companies, but ingredient delivery comp- companies like HelloFresh and Gousto.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:26 Okay.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:26 Have you heard of them?

Ali Abdaal 1:34:27 Yeah. I used HelloFresh for a few weeks-

Nasir Kharma 1:34:29 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:34:29 ... and then stopped.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:29 So very similar to HelloFresh-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:31 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:34:31 ... we use a UK-based company, I think, called Gousto, and those boxes have completely changed our life.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:35 Hmm.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:35 Like, we don't shop anymore at the supermarket. We just get those boxes delivered to the house. We buy the meals that are for four people, and we're only two.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:42 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:42 So we just cook them, and then we have leftover food, um, for like the next day's lunch or dinner or whatever.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:47 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:48 And that's completely changed, like how much time it takes for us to prep, to cook.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:51 Okay. Yeah, 'cause I do find the shopping for the ingredients is the hard part.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:54 It's, it's the worst.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:55 And cooking food is quite fun.

Nasir Kharma 1:34:55 Like, shopping is such an inefficient-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:34:57 ... use of time. Like, I hate shopping.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:59 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:34:59 I despise it. Same with making breakfast in the morning. I think it's like the m- the most inefficient way to start my day.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:06 Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:35:07 Like, having this obstacle of eating breakfast in the morning-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:09 Yeah

Nasir Kharma 1:35:09 ... it bothers me so much. And so I'm, I'm thinking of like trying out Huel or something like that to-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:14 Oh

Nasir Kharma 1:35:14 ... sort of speed up the process.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:14 Huel's really good. I would recommend. Um-

Nasir Kharma 1:35:16 Yeah, yeah. I'll have to give it a go

Ali Abdaal 1:35:17 ... although I've now, I've now been on a whole, like for the last three days, going into a deep dive on all the anti-aging longevity stuff-

Nasir Kharma 1:35:22 Okay

Ali Abdaal 1:35:22 ... which is of- which is often in favor of-

Nasir Kharma 1:35:24 With metformin.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:25 Yeah, uh, metformin, one of the things-

Nasir Kharma 1:35:26 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:35:26 ... but like in favor of calorie restriction, intermittent fasting-

Nasir Kharma 1:35:29 Sure

Ali Abdaal 1:35:29 ... uh, eating less meat [laughs] uh, not ordering from Deliveroo twice a day. [laughs] So I, there's all these things associated with like longevity that I'm now d- diving into in terms of like what are the mechanisms behind this and how does it work and can I make a video about it and can I apply it to my own, my own life?

Nasir Kharma 1:35:43 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:43 So I feel like next time we meet, I will be a new man. I've, I-

Nasir Kharma 1:35:47 Nice

Ali Abdaal 1:35:47 ... I have been plant-based for the last two days.

Nasir Kharma 1:35:49 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:49 So that's good.

Nasir Kharma 1:35:50 All right.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:51 We'll see how that goes.

Nasir Kharma 1:35:51 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:51 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:35:52 Easy starts. Easy starts.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:53 And, uh, I'll report back.

Nasir Kharma 1:35:54 And if you ever fancy going for a run, like hit me up. I-

Ali Abdaal 1:35:56 Going for a run?

Nasir Kharma 1:35:56 ... go running pretty often. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:58 I'd have-

Nasir Kharma 1:35:58 Oh, no, man, running, running is amazing.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:00 I fancy playing squash. Do you play squash or badminton?

Nasir Kharma 1:36:01 Uh, I don't, but I can learn.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:03 Why, why do you enjoy running? It's just a repetitive motion, right?

Nasir Kharma 1:36:06 Oh, man, there's n- there's nothing like running. You know, you, you-

Ali Abdaal 1:36:10 [laughs]

Nasir Kharma 1:36:10 ... sweat out like all your stress. You-

Ali Abdaal 1:36:12 What stress?

Nasir Kharma 1:36:13 What stress? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:36:15 [laughs] Um, yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:36:16 I think like it, it's so great because you're just outdoors, like experiencing, you know, scenery, different shops, people running by the street. You know, you've-- if you go to the parks, you have all that greenery there as well. I just think it's so great for getting out of the house and doing something that's like fun and makes you feel good. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:33 What do you, what do you listen to while running, if anything?

Nasir Kharma 1:36:35 Only music.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:36 Only music?

Nasir Kharma 1:36:36 Only music.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:37 Not like podcasts at 3X speed or audiobooks at 2.5X speed?

Nasir Kharma 1:36:40 No, no. I need the high energy, like boom, boom, boom-

Ali Abdaal 1:36:44 Oh, okay

Nasir Kharma 1:36:44 ... to, to keep me going.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:45 Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Nasir Kharma 1:36:45 Once the music turns off, I like, I'll stop, you know? [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:36:47 [laughs] Yeah.

Nasir Kharma 1:36:47 I can't, I can't keep going.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:48 It's all about the music.

Nasir Kharma 1:36:49 Yeah. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:36:50 Interesting. All right. I think this is a good place to end this.

Nasir Kharma 1:36:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:52 KharmaMedic, thank you very much for joining the podcast.

Nasir Kharma 1:36:54 Absolutely, Ali, my pleasure.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:55 And, uh, yeah, it's been great.

Nasir Kharma 1:36:57 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:57 And, uh, pe- oh, people can find you on all the links down below, YouTube channel, podcast, all that shebang.

Nasir Kharma 1:37:02 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:02 And I look forward to being a guest on your podcast at some point as well.

Nasir Kharma 1:37:04 Yes, absolutely.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:05 Nice.

Nasir Kharma 1:37:05 You're my guest number 10.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:06 Yeah. Sick. All right, so that's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you so much for watching or listening. All the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are gonna be linked down in the video description or in the show notes, depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform, then do please leave us a review on the iTunes store. It really helps other people discover the podcast. Or if you're watching this in full HD or 4K on YouTube, then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode. That would be awesome. And if you enjoyed this episode, you might like to check out this episode here as well, which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode. So thanks for watching. Uh, do hit the subscribe button if you aren't already, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.