How To Build A 1.5 Million Following Online As A Writer - The Cultural Tutor

Ali Abdaal 0:00 So you got a law degree from Durham?

Sheehan Quirke 0:01 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 0:02 And then you're applying for jobs-

Sheehan Quirke 0:03 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 0:03 ... and you end up working at McDonald's.

Sheehan Quirke 0:04 Because I had no money in my bank account, I had nothing to lose, nothing to fall back on. It was like, it's either do or die. Either this Twitter account works or whatever, the army or film school or listicles or tutoring, something has gotta work. So I just gave everything.

Ali Abdaal 0:17 Wow. How does someone go from being a cleaner at McDonald's to building an audience on Twitter of over 1.5 million followers, along with DMs from people like Elon Musk and other celebrities? And how do they do that without ever showing their face, and with basically no one even knowing who they are? That is the story of the incredible Sheehan Quirke, who features on this episode of Deep Dive. He, on Twitter, is known as @TheCulturalTutor.

Sheehan Quirke 0:39 Just imagine me there, this guy who's always thought he was gonna be a writer, and life hasn't quite turned out how he thought it would. And then I had a bit of a revelation.

Ali Abdaal 0:47 This is one of my favorite interviews I've ever done on Deep Dive, and we're gonna hear all about Sheehan's story, of how he got his start, how he was working at McDonald's, how he decided to quit his job and start writing on Twitter of all places, and the strategies and tools he's using to build his writing career on the internet in a world where no one knows who he is.

Sheehan Quirke 1:01 The internet is a beautiful, flawed, strange, incredible place. But if you say anything slightly wrong on the internet, everyone will let you know immediately. But at the end of the day, you've gotta put those things out of your head and focus on whether you are happy with it. Because if you're happy with it, if you can put something online, write something and say, "I stand by this," then you'll be fine.

Ali Abdaal 1:21 Sheehan, welcome to the Deep Dive podcast. Thank you so much for waking up early.

Sheehan Quirke 1:26 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:27 Um, you have an incredibly interesting story. Uh, you have grown your Twitter following from literally nothing to 1.5 million followers-

Sheehan Quirke 1:36 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:36 ... in a very short space of time. And no one outside of, like, a week ago really knew who you were because you're a fully anonymous account, and it's only, I guess, I think your first interview was w- was with David?

Sheehan Quirke 1:47 That's correct, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:48 Is this gonna be your second?

Sheehan Quirke 1:49 This is the second podcast I've ever done, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:51 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:52 I, well, actually, no. I, I did do an interview with a, with a, a Dutch or, or a Belgian Dutch architectural magazine about six months ago. And I did an interview with a, a Bulgarian magazine as well. So this is my first, my second ever English language, uh, press or interview-

Ali Abdaal 2:10 [laughs] The press

Sheehan Quirke 2:11 ... whatever you wanna call it.

Ali Abdaal 2:12 We are, we, we are the press. So-

Sheehan Quirke 2:13 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:16 Um, l- lots of people in our audience are keen on growing some kind of following online. They like the idea of being a creator.

Sheehan Quirke 2:21 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:22 A lot of people in our audience like the idea of being a writer.

Sheehan Quirke 2:24 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:24 And we were doing some research for a video the other day, and actually, being a writer is, like, one of the top kind of dream occupations in a lot of places in the world. Um, second-

Sheehan Quirke 2:31 Wow

Ali Abdaal 2:31 ... sometimes to YouTuber, sometimes ahead of YouTuber. Sometimes astronaut comes further up in the list, sometimes it doesn't. But, like-

Sheehan Quirke 2:38 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:38 ... writer is, like, a thing that a lot of people aspire to, and you are doing the thing. And so I was hoping this podcast we could dive into the backstory-

Sheehan Quirke 2:45 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 2:45 ... and then I, 'cause I'd love to know how you ended up being The Cultural Tutor with all these followers-

Sheehan Quirke 2:50 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:50 ... and in the DMs with Elon Musk.

Sheehan Quirke 2:51 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:52 And then I'd love to d- I'd, I'd love to dive into your writing process-

Sheehan Quirke 2:54 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:54 ... or lack of process.

Sheehan Quirke 2:56 No, th- th- this sounds delightful, and, and I hope what we have to say will be useful, um, for your listeners. Because, look, I always wanted to be a writer. I mean, y- you know you have those, um, yearbooks when you leave school? Um, when I left school, my primary school in year six, my little profile, uh, you know, there's a photo of me in some silly hat or whatever, uh, and, and when it says, "What do I wanna be when I grow up?" For some reason, the first thing I wrote was businessman. Um, and the second thing I wrote was, was writer. Now, now it's turned out that I'm not a businessman, I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm terrible at maths. I hate organizing and scheduling things and managing people. But being a writer is what I wanted to do since I was 10 years old, and I was writing every day probably since that age. So for, like, 15 years, imagine, you're writing every day, all sorts of things. I've still got the stories I wrote when I was, like, 11 or 12. I wrote this one about how lions had, like, evolved into beings that were more capable and more intelligent than humans, and there's a war between these lion creatures and humans, that kind of thing. Um, so I always wanted to be a writer, always wanted to be a writer. Um, went to university. I did law. I'm not a lawyer, never wanted to be a lawyer. I, I, I took law, I think because it was, um, something appealed to me about it. I, I, I loved my degree academically, but the working side, getting in the office, drawing up contracts, being a barrister, not so much. Anyway, I'm, I'm what? I'm, I'm 22, 23, got my law degree. Still not a writer, at least not a published writer. I, I've got a bunch of unpublished novels. I've tried to get some novels published in the past, which, um, every agent I sent it to rejected it. I've, I don't know, probably had 2, 300 rejections.

Ali Abdaal 4:33 Oh, wow.

Sheehan Quirke 4:33 Well, in, in total, that's probably not far off the number. You know, of all, like, you know, I would often, like, when I was 19, I'd just be like, "Okay, I've got this idea for an article. I'm gonna email, you know, The Guardian or The Times," or just anybody who would listen, saying, "Hey, I've got this great idea for an article I wanna write." Obviously, I never hear back. I, I did also apply to be the manager of Bayern Munich-

Ali Abdaal 4:49 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 4:50 ... when I, when I, when I was, when I was 15. They responded, declining, um, um, my, my, my proposal. Anyway, so that's where I was. I always had these ideas, thinking, "Oh, I could do this. I could do that," asking other people, um, to publish my book for me, to, to, to publish my article for me. You can probably see where I'm going with this. Life gets on a bit. Um, I don't wanna go to London and become a lawyer, li- like all my friends have done. Hang around, um, and I need money, right? I'm living in a, in, in a house in Durham where I went to university. I need to make money to pay the rent, to pay the bills. So what do you do when you need money? You get a job. Um, so I apply to just about every job I could think of in the area, all sorts of things. The one I ended up getting was a McDonald's. Um, I, I-

Ali Abdaal 5:35 So, so you got a law degree from Durham?

Sheehan Quirke 5:37 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 5:37 And then you're applying for jobs-

Sheehan Quirke 5:38 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 5:39 ... and you end up working at McDonald's.

Sheehan Quirke 5:40 Yeah. Th- th-

Ali Abdaal 5:40 What, what were your other options?

Sheehan Quirke 5:41 Well, well, you-

Ali Abdaal 5:41 Like, where were you trying to get-

Sheehan Quirke 5:42 Sure, sure. Well, no-

Ali Abdaal 5:43 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 5:43 ... th- this is, this is really interesting. I think it's be- look, like a lot of people maybe listening to this right now, I wanted to be a writer, but I'd got this, this kind of idea into my head that eventually someone was gonna come along and knock on my door and say, "Hey, man, we've heard you're this, this hidden genius. Here's a book deal. Go and write us, you know, 20 best-selling novels." I, I just thought it was gonna happen eventually. So I'm, I'm writing away, waiting for life to give me what I think I'm owed. You know, I'm feeling entitled almost to success, and obviously, if you don't do anything, it, it doesn't come to your door. You know, I, as I said, I, I tried. I'd, I'd sent the emails Um, tried to get, get the book deals, whatever. It never happened. Um, and that w- and I sort of maybe to some extent I sort of hung up my cap as it were and thought, washed my hands of it and thought, "Fine, I'm just gonna write in my spare time, um, with a normal job. Um, and that's what I'm gonna do for the rest of my days." So when I was working at, at McDonald's, w- which, which I applied to 'cause I needed the money to, to pay the bills. I didn't-- You know, there, there's no, there's no sort of, um, there was no second thinking with it. It was a very honest application to anybody who would take me. I applied to Pizza Hut, and they rejected me. Um, all sorts of things I applied to. Uh, just looking for some, some way to make some money, to make a living so I could then write in my spare time. Um, this was about two years ago. I worked at McDonald's for, for four or five months, um, getting in at 6:00 AM. I wasn't a, uh, burger maker. I was a maintenance person, so my job was to bring in the stock, get in the freezer, you know, load up the boxes of fries. I had to clean up as well, degrease the floors, get the jet washer in the car park, pick up cigarette butts, wipe splattered McFlurries off the booths in the drive-through. This, this kind of stuff. Yeah, it was good, good honest work.

Ali Abdaal 7:27 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 7:27 You know, all work is good w- if you're making money, if you're working hard, then there's dignity in that.

Ali Abdaal 7:31 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 7:32 And the people there were great, but, but the truth was that I, I wasn't, I wasn't happy there. And more than happy-- It's not really about happiness, it's, it's more when I woke up, I, I didn't wake up excited a-about the days to come, and I was going to bed and thinking, "Phew," you know? "I'm glad, I'm glad another day of my life is over." Um, which isn't how it can be when you're doing what is right for you. Um, I mean, I don't know if I've painted this picture quite right, but just imagine me there, this guy who's always thought he was gonna be a writer. That's all he ever wanted to do. And life hasn't quite turned out how he thought it would y- when he was 12 years old, working at McDonald's, earning the money. And then in April of last year, so it was just after my 25th birthday, I had a bit of a revelation. And, and, and I, and I-- The way I put it to people, there, there, there are two ways I frame it. The one I tend to go with is I call it my Mulan moment. You-- The Disney film Mulan, you've seen it?

Ali Abdaal 8:33 Of course.

Sheehan Quirke 8:34 Um, you know the scene-- Oh, I, I adore that film. The scene when, um, she suddenly realizes that she's gonna go in place of her father, and these, this music kicks in, the synths, and she goes, she gets her sword and she cuts her hair, puts on the armor, and rides off to war. Um, that's how it felt for me. And I said to, said to my girlfriend one day, I just got home from work, I said, "Look, I'm gonna quit my job at McDonald's, and I'm gonna throw everything at the wall. I'm gonna work until I die to figure out if I can make a living as a writer." So what do you do when you want to be a writer online? I thought-- It, it came partially from a good friend of mine who said, "Look, man, you need to start bringing an audience to yourself. You need to put your work online. That's where people will find you. Don't wait for a book publisher or an agent to come along and say to you, 'Here you go.' You've got to go out and claim it for yourself." So similar in some sense to the work you've done. You know, you've learned this lesson. There's an audience there waiting. It's just like th-there's, there's this wonderful line from, from Pliny, uh, the Younger. He was a Roman lawyer back, back in the second-- uh, first, second century AD. And in a letter to one of his friends, and his friend was moaning, saying like, "Oh," you know, "I'm writing all this good stuff, but, but, you know, no one cares about it. No one's interested in, in, in the classics anymore. Everyone just wants all this, you know, crappy modern rubbish." Uh, and Pliny says to him, "Look, man, you know, we, we can't complain about the state of the world and what readers do or don't want. We've got to go out there and write something worth reading, and people will respond if you do that." So I had my, my Mulan moment, quit my job at McDonald's. First thing I did was start writing listicles for-

Ali Abdaal 10:02 Great question.

Sheehan Quirke 10:03 Yeah, jump, jump in.

Ali Abdaal 10:04 Um, was there an inciting incident that led you to quit that-- that led you to this realization, or was it just one day you decided you'd, you'd had enough?

Sheehan Quirke 10:10 It was, it was a one-day thing. It was a one-day thing. Oh, no, there, there was a moment, and I'll tell you what it was. My old school friends were getting together. We-- There, there's a group of five of us, very, very close friends and, um, we were getting together and, and I was like, "Look, guys, I, I can't come because I've got a shift at McDonald's." And I thought, "Hold on. You know, I can't go and see my oldest and best friends this weekend because I'm supposed to be working, um, work-working a shift, bringing in the, the fries and, and the McNuggets." And I, I thought, "I can't have this anymore. I have to change what I'm doing with my life. This isn't..." 'Cause I'm a very laid-back person. I take things as they come. I go with the flow. I don't worry about things too much. I'm not particularly stressed, and that led me to this point of complacency. So, so that-- I haven't thought, I haven't actually remembered that moment for a while now, and I'm, I'm glad you're asking that question because it sort of-- That was it. It was like y- this brief moment of clear thinking. Like the-- You know, you wait. Suddenly the world is, is-- It's like, you know, you take off sunglasses and everything's brighter. So that was my Mulan moment. Um-

Ali Abdaal 11:13 Yeah, I find that when-whenever anyone makes a change in their life-

Sheehan Quirke 11:17 Uh-huh

Ali Abdaal 11:17 ... it, it like always stems from one moment. One moment where a story changes from A to B, and the changing of that story or the changing of a belief or just that decision that's been made, that then sets off a chain reaction of events.

Sheehan Quirke 11:30 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 11:31 And often people can sort of, can boil it down to like that one moment where you realized-

Sheehan Quirke 11:36 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 11:36 ... oh, crap.

Sheehan Quirke 11:36 Mm-hmm. Exactly. I mean, I suspect it's sort of like starting a fire. I mean, the kindling was probably gathering the sticks, you know, and the, and the leaves, uh, and whatnot. That was gathering over those long, slow months of, of working at McDonald's, slowly but surely running out of money as well. Um, by the time I quit, I actually had less than no money. Um, I owed money to all my friends and to, to my family as well. But I think all that had been building slowly. So, so it's not like I suddenly just woke up and just changed my life. There is a bit of a backlog there, a back catalog, as in the kindling slowly building.

Ali Abdaal 12:08 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 12:08 That's the spark that lights the fire that then transforms your life. Um, that's how I'd, I'd phrase it. But it didn't exactly go well at the beginning. I, I, I, I, I did a lot of things. I applied to the army. Um, I applied to film school 'cause I, I love cinema. Um, one of my deepest and oldest passions, and I started writing listicles. Um, there's like a website called Listverse. They pay you $100 for a top 10 list of like, you know, most interesting houseplants.

Ali Abdaal 12:36 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 12:36 Um, and, and I churned out a few of those, and it was good to earn some money online suddenly. Um, and then, um, I, I suddenly, uh, uh... One of my friends said, "Oh, you know, you could maybe, maybe you could make money, um, tutoring online. There's a lot of money in online tutoring." 'Cause you've got to remember, the, the desire for flexibility was probably a big part of that change. The fact I'd wanted to go and see my friends, and I couldn't. If you have a job where you work online, you can go anywhere, right? So it was flexibility and earning money, um, were the two things that I wanted a- and writing, it was kind of mixed in, but it, it wasn't all there. Um, so tutoring, a great way, um, to make money online. "You'd probably be quite good at it," my friend said, but I, I didn't want to tutor history and, and ma- maths and, and physics like for GCSE or A-level. Um, I did law. I enjoyed law. Maybe I can teach people law. Um, post on a load of Facebook forums saying, "Who wants law tutoring?" You get like one like. Um, and no- nobody pays any attention, so not gonna do legal tutoring. Fine. Maybe I'll go completely think outside the box, and why not give sort of, um, cultural tutoring? You know, people want to be well-rounded. I don't know about yourself. Like m- maybe you feel like, "Oh, you know, I'd like to know a bit more about art and architecture."

Ali Abdaal 13:51 I'd love to know more about culture.

Sheehan Quirke 13:52 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 13:52 I feel very uncultured. I go to a museum, and I'm completely lost. I go to a new place, and I'm like, "I don't understand anything."

Sheehan Quirke 13:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 13:57 Yeah. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 13:57 Exactly. Exactly. This is it. I thought a lot of people are like that, so I'll, I'll do cultural tutoring. Uh, made a website and, you know, I, I just used Squarespace. Um, made a nice little website advertising my services, um, and then start trying to get a post online about that, not getting any traction. My friend says, "Start a Twitter account, man. That's a good way to drive traffic." You know, it's a classic model. Make some sort of social media profile on one of them. Well, X, formerly Twitter, I, I should say, and that's the one I went with. And, and it became clear pretty quickly that, that people, um, weren't interested in my tutoring, but they liked what I was writing on Twitter-

Ali Abdaal 14:36 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 14:37 Or X. I mean, I'll probably refer to it as Twitter-

Ali Abdaal 14:38 Yeah, let's just call it Twitter

Sheehan Quirke 14:39 ... for, for the duration of this conversation.

Ali Abdaal 14:40 It might change its name. So this, uh, when I, when I first heard you tell me the story when we were having dinner a few months ago now?

Sheehan Quirke 14:47 Yeah. Sure.

Ali Abdaal 14:47 I can't remember. I found that it basically paralle- Well, it paralleled my story in a, in a bunch of interesting ways-

Sheehan Quirke 14:53 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 14:53 ... as well because I had my moment of like, oh, I need to change something because, A, I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

Sheehan Quirke 15:02 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 15:02 And, B, I started speaking to doctors and asking, and spoke to doctors who were 10 years ahead of me in their career, 20 years ahead, and asking them if they actually enjoyed their jobs.

Sheehan Quirke 15:09 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 15:09 And the answer was always, "Well, uh, you know, it's a bit of a slog," and th- and this sort of thing. So I had this moment of realization of like, I need to make money on the side.

Sheehan Quirke 15:17 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 15:18 And that coincided with me losing 1,000 pounds 'cause getting-- I got scammed out of a MacBook from some dude on Gumtree.

Sheehan Quirke 15:23 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 15:23 Because, you know, I was getting... I was going into medical school, and I was like, my first Apple product, tried to buy it secondhand, ended up getting scammed with a defunct product.

Sheehan Quirke 15:30 And then you just lost 1,000 pounds.

Ali Abdaal 15:31 And I just lost 1,000. I, I... So I'd built up that over two years of doing tutoring in maths and physics.

Sheehan Quirke 15:36 There we go.

Ali Abdaal 15:36 And it was like, you know, painstakingly making sort of 10 pounds, 10 pounds an hour-

Sheehan Quirke 15:39 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 15:39 ... 15 pounds an hour. Got this 1,000 pounds. Lost the 1,000 pounds. Then I was like, "Okay. I need to somehow make money." And I landed on tutoring people to get, to get them into medical school, and that worked for a while.

Sheehan Quirke 15:51 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 15:51 And then my YouTube channel started because the business started to plateau, and I thought, "Well, if I make videos on YouTube teaching people how to get into medical school, some of them might think I'm legit, and therefore they will sign up to my c- my courses." [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 16:04 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 16:04 But it sounds like for you, you were like, "I need to... I wanna, I wanna do this cultural tutoring thing. If I start writing on Twitter, some people might think I'm legit and therefore sign up to my cultural-"

Sheehan Quirke 16:12 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 16:12 "... cultural tutoring services."

Sheehan Quirke 16:14 Precisely. That, that, that, that's, uh, yeah, v- very eloquently explained. Uh, so it was an accident basically, starting the Twitter account. I, I didn't set out to conquer the world or whatever and, and get a load of followers on Twitter. I was just trying to make some money in a way that would be... Make a living, you know, in a way that I would find more enjoyable day-to-day, make my life more, more flexible.

Ali Abdaal 16:34 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 16:34 Um, and, and I mean, what I will say is wh- when I made the Twitter account, obviously you're making your... I don't know how you found it when you started your YouTube account, but, but when you make an account, you have zero followers.

Ali Abdaal 16:45 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 16:46 Zero, zero subscribers, whatever it is. Um, so the... Get- getting the first 1,000 followers was a big grind. I, I worked, I worked very hard, but I think I, I decided basically what I'm gonna do is write one thread every day, and the original plan was for 90 days just to see what happens.

Ali Abdaal 17:04 Okay.

Sheehan Quirke 17:05 Because ultimately if it, if it doesn't work, I can try something else.

Ali Abdaal 17:08 Sure.

Sheehan Quirke 17:08 But I'd heard it was good for growth to write if threads were the, were, were the thing to do. Um, so I started writing a thread every day, and then, um-

Ali Abdaal 17:15 Sorry, question before we do this.

Sheehan Quirke 17:16 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 17:16 Why

Ali Abdaal 17:17 did you decide to call yourself The Cultural Tutor-

Sheehan Quirke 17:19 Sure, yeah

Ali Abdaal 17:19 ... rather than your real name? 'Cause a lot, a lot of people have this issue where they're like, "Yeah, I kind of want to do stuff on the internet, but I don't want to show my face." Especially like people, uh, you know, I talk to a lot of wannabe YouTubers-

Sheehan Quirke 17:29 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 17:29 ... and they're always like, "Oh, I'm worried about what my friends and family will think."

Sheehan Quirke 17:31 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 17:31 And like, "I'm not very good on camera," and there's all that kind of stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 17:34 Sure. It wasn't a desire for anonymity so much. It was, as I said, what I wanted to offer people was cultural tutoring.

Ali Abdaal 17:39 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 17:40 So the name Cultural Tutor was literally j- just a complete, a, a, a, a literal description of what I thought I was doing. I, I didn't want to set myself up as this sort of th- this font of knowledge and understanding. I literally just wanted to offer people tutoring and things that were culturally related. So that's where the name came from. Um, and the reason that I chose that for my Twitter account was because I just thought it sounded more authoritative.

Ali Abdaal 18:05 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 18:06 Um, and with, with, with a picture of a statue of Plato. Um, th- there wasn't a lot of thinking that went into it. It was very, very, um, quick. This, this is the beautiful thing. I don't... You may have found it as well. When you start something new, everything is so simple, so straightforward. You don't worry. You don't think ahead because you don't like... You don't... There's, there's nothing to worry about, nothing to fear, nothing to lose. You just go with your instincts. And I thought, "Who, who cares what Sheehan Quirke has to say? Who, who's gonna care if Sheehan Quirke writes something about-" How to date a church by the shape of its windows. But if this, you know, there's a picture of a, of a, of Plato and then, then th- th- this anonymous, um, name. So it's almost like, you know, um, Batman. Th- there's a great line in, in, in, the, in, in Batman Begins, you know, the first of Christopher Nolan's trilogy, when he's like, "A- as, uh, as Bruce Wayne you're just one man, but as Batman you're a symbol." Um, it felt a little bit like that. I mean, I hope it doesn't sound too silly, but, but to me almost The Cultural Tutor is my alter ego. Um, I don't know if I have quite the same relationship with him that Bruce does with, with, with Batman, but to some extent that's how I felt. It was like putting on, putting on my, my mask, as it were, to become The Cultural Tutor.

Ali Abdaal 19:13 Were you... [clears throat] To what extent were you concerned that you didn't have enough credibility? Why would anyone care what you say?

Sheehan Quirke 19:21 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 19:21 It's not like you did a degree in history-

Sheehan Quirke 19:23 Mm. Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 19:23 ... you just did a degree in law. It's like a, I think a lot of people have some level of imposter syndrome that holds them back from doing things, even anonymously, because they're worried like, "Oh, but I, I don't have the right credential to be able to do this thing."

Sheehan Quirke 19:35 Yeah. Sure. Th- that's a fantastic question. Um, I'll, I'll say two things. First of all, I, I still feel that. In fact, the more and more this journey has gone on, the more I feel that I know absolutely nothing about anything I'm writing about. It's all just spurious nonsense. But I think, um, the reason that I didn't worry about it in the beginning is 'cause the ultimate test of credibility is how people respond to it. Like, you know, if you're worried that you don't have the authority to write about what, what, what you want to write about it, let other people be the judge of that.

Ali Abdaal 20:03 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 20:03 Because if they don't like it, they'll tell you, and then you can improve as well. Because there were some things I said in the early days and people were like, "Man, this is so wrong." So I went away and researched it, and then I got better. So I get sort of self, um, it's a positive feedback loop. Um, but I think that that's the key. Let other people be the, be the judge of whether or not you've got the credibility. Um, ultimately if you want to write about it, if, if there's something that interests you, however far from the truth you might be, you've got to start writing about it. 'Cause o- otherwise you, you, you know, you never will. I mean, look at it this way. That whole point about credibility applies whether I'm writing to an audience of a million, an audience of a thousand, or an audience of none. If I'm just typing away on my laptop, that doesn't mean I have more or less credibility, right? Um, I don't know if that quite, quite makes sense.

Ali Abdaal 20:48 Yeah. So I think that's a really good point, like let other people be the judge.

Sheehan Quirke 20:51 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 20:52 But I think there's sort of... That is a mindset shift that... That's a, that, that's a mindset that a lot of people don't have.

Sheehan Quirke 21:00 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 21:01 I think, you know, law is a fairly traditional thing. Medicine is a very traditional thing. A lot of people who've done well in school have gotten very good at doing the things that the people in power say that you should do-

Sheehan Quirke 21:09 Right. Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 21:10 ... working towards a badge. And so the thinking like, "Screw it, I'll just, I'll just let other people be the judge-

Sheehan Quirke 21:17 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 21:17 ... of whether I'm good," is a completely counter to what most people would think, which is, "Oh, I have to be good first, and then-"

Sheehan Quirke 21:23 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 21:23 ... good, dot, dot, dot, good things will happen.

Sheehan Quirke 21:24 Exactly, and the beauty is once you start, you get better so quickly. Like if I'm... I, I'll go back to the other example. If I'm just writing a little essay on my laptop, or I'm thinking about whatever it is, you know, impressionism, and I write a little essay for myself, and I'm like, "Ooh, how could that be better? I don't know." Then I go away and I leave it for two weeks and I forget about it. When you write online, the internet, um, is a beautiful, flawed, strange, incredible place. But if you say anything slightly wrong on the internet, everyone will let you know immediately.

Ali Abdaal 21:54 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 21:54 And, and that can be quite scary, but to me I treated that as, as, as an incredible, um, tool. Because as I said, it, immediately you start getting better, 'cause you have to get better, 'cause the stakes are raised wh- when you're talking, um, to people-

Ali Abdaal 22:09 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 22:09 ... uh, about, about it online. Um, there's a point you mentioned earlier about the exams and, and a really good point. You know, we're all trained in school. I get, I get an A star, I get praised, whatever. I get into university because I've done this thing that other people want me to do. And I suppose, speaking about a mindset shift f- for anybody who wants to be a writer, what I would ask them is, "Who are you writing for?" And to me, the answer was myself. Like, I'm not... I hope what I write is useful. I, I al- I always say what I produce, I want it to be useful and interesting and beautiful for other people, but mainly for myself. And when I write something online, even today, what, what, you know, w- I'm, I'm gonna go and write something on Twitter later today. I'm not quite sure. There are two things I have in mind. T- t- today's the birthday of Commodus, the Roman emperor, who was played by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator, so it'd be kind of interesting to tell the real story of his life, 'cause he's almost wilder than he was in the film, or something else about the Eiffel Tower. Anyway, um, when I'm writing those things, I'm writing them for myself because I'm really curious to know about them. Because I, you know, I'd like to... I know a few of the facts about the life of Commodus, but I'd like to try and write something about him properly. Um, when I'm writing these things, it, it, it's, it's for me, because I want to know about them, because I'm curious. And if I'm happy with what I've written, then there's a point at which I don't care what anybody else says. And, and I can have thousands of people online telling me, "This is the worst thing I've ever read. You should be banned." There's that wonderful moment when someone did quote tweet me saying, "This dude should be banned," and it got like 95,000 likes.

Ali Abdaal 23:42 Wow. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 23:42 Um, but equally if, if, if thousands of people are saying, "Wow, this is wonderful," um, "This has changed my life," which p- people have said these things to me, a- and it's almost shocking, um, to hear that. A- and beautiful and uplifting, but at the end of the day, you've got to put those things out of your head. Y- if you want to be a writer, you've got to forget what anybody else is saying, good or bad, bad or good, and focus on whether you are happy with it. Because if you're happy with it, if you can put something online, write something and say, "I stand by this," then you'll be fine and nothing can bother you. No problem can stand in your way online. Whether you go big or you fall, you'll be okay. Because ultimately that's what it's about, I think. It's about writing something that you are... Proud of isn't necessarily the word, because, you know, whenever, whenever I write anything I always think, "God, that could've been 10 times better." You probably feel the same way. You, you make a bit of, you know, you make a video-

Ali Abdaal 24:30 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 24:30 ... you analyze something and, like, the next day you're like, "Man, that was awful. I could've done it better." But if you can put something out and say, "I'm I'm okay with that. Then all these other problems kind of fade away.

Ali Abdaal 24:40 Hmm. Yeah, the bar I have in my mind is, is this at least reasonable? [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 24:46 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 24:46 Um, and when I spoke to Cal Newport, who's written a bunch of productivity themed books, he said the, the way that he keeps himself going-

Sheehan Quirke 24:52 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 24:52 ... for when he's writing a book is he tells himself, "This one just needs to be reasonable. The next one is gonna be good." [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 24:58 Sure, sure. No, it- it... Look, everyone has different ways of doing it. Um, there, there's, I mean... W- One thing I will say, so this is a slight tangent back to what I was just saying. I think it was from those long months and years when I had no audience online and I was writing for myself, um, that I kind of got this mindset. Um, I set myself a challenge in the summer of 2021. I wanted to write a novel in four weeks. I thought a, a novel that's exactly 99,999 words long. I just thought it sounded fun to do that, and I, and I did it. And at the end of it, uh, four weeks, I was working at the time and writing in the evenings or, or writing while I was at work. That, that was when I was working as a kind of a security guard or night watchman on the graveyard shifts. Um, that's another job I did. And I think it was in, in those days when it was just me writing for myself that, that I learnt, that, that, that I learned this. Um, b- the point you make about standards is interesting. I mean, that, that, that's my... Maybe we, we can go down that route now-

Ali Abdaal 25:56 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 25:56 ... or, or another point. Um, and I suppose that's scary for young writers as well. P- people think, "Oh, I wanna be a writer, but look at all this other stuff. It's so amazing. How can I ever possibly compete with that?" To, to me at least, it's, it's, yeah, this stuff is good. We shouldn't hide from it. But you've got to believe that you can do something better. And even if you fail, you've got to at least try. You know, if you set the standard up here, but then you only reach this far, you've still achieved more than if you set the standard down there.

Ali Abdaal 26:22 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 26:23 That's my take anyway.

Ali Abdaal 26:24 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 26:24 And it can be quite taxing because you're never happy with what you've done.

Ali Abdaal 26:27 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 26:28 Um, but I like to believe it's maybe made the things I've written just a little bit better.

Ali Abdaal 26:33 This episode of Deep Dive is very kindly sponsored by Snipd. Now, Snipd is an amazing app that's absolutely gonna revolutionize the way you listen to podcasts. I've been using it for the last two months, and it's become my absolute favorite way to listen to podcasts. Because the cool thing about Snipd is that it's not just a podcast player. What it does is allow you to create snips of each podcast that you listen to, where if you hear something that particularly vibes with you, all you need to do is tap your headphones and the app will save it. And then it's like r- this ridiculously fancy AI transcription type feature that will listen to the last, like, minute of the podcast. It will figure out what's being said, and it will create a little snippet or a little snip where it will summarize, and it will give you, like, the notes from exactly what was said. And then you can click edit on it, and you can, like, set the start point and the end point. It's basically like being able to highlight a podcast as if you were reading a book. Now, this is really helpful if you wanna remember the kinds of things that you hear in podcasts, and it's also really helpful if, like me, you are some sort of content creator and you benefit from sharing your insights with other people, which even if you're not a content creator, is just a nice thing to do generally. And the other cool thing about the Snips feature is that you can see where other people have snipped a particular podcast. And so, you know, we all have way too many podcasts to listen to these days, but you can browse through, and you can see, ooh, that episode of Deep Dive was snipped 4,000 times, and that one was only snipped 2,000 times. So you know what? Let me prioritize listening to the one with 4,000 snips because more people have highlighted it. And then you can even browse through the highlights. So if you haven't got time to listen to the whole podcast, you can go through the various snips, and you can decide, is this podcast worth you listening to? And because it's a powerful AI tool, it also generates transcripts and chapters for basically every podcast, which means even if the podcaster hasn't, like, created those chapters already, they'll automatically create them using the AI features. And so you can, again, skip around in podcasts to the various bits that might interest you the most. And actually, it turns out that Deep Dive listeners already love using Snipd because we are actually the fifth most popular podcast on the Snipd platform. So if you wanna give it a go and you wanna level up your ability to listen to podcasts and take notes at the same time, then head over to snipd.com/deepdive. That's S-N-I-P-D. S-N-I-P-D, like snip with a D on the end of it. snipd.com/deepdive, and that link is gonna be in the show notes and also in the video description if it's easier for you to click on it. And if you sign up via that link or that URL in the next month, then you will get a completely free 30-day trial of Snipd, and then you can try it out for the entire 30 days, and you can take all these notes, and you can see if it vibes with you. So thank you so much, Snipd, for sponsoring this episode. This episode of Deep Dive is brought to you by Brilliant. Brilliant is an amazing learning resource that allows you to level up your skills and your knowledge and understanding in maths and data science and computer science. Now, what I like most about Brilliant is that it's a super fun and engaging way to learn. It's not based on dry lectures and dry theory. Instead, what it's based on is engaging and interactive quizzes and games and problems to solve. And so you try and solve a problem, and then they give you the information you need, and through the process of getting that information, you then learn enough to be able to solve the problem. And so it's a really engaging and dynamic way to learn that's actually really fun. Now, some of my favorite courses on Brilliant are the computer science ones. When I was applying to medical school back in the day, I was torn between medicine and computer science. And even though I went for med school, there was always a part of me that really wanted to learn more about computer science. And so thanks to the courses on Brilliant, I've been able to satisfy that curiosity, and I've been able to learn the fundamentals of computer science, like algorithms and programming with Python. And actually recently, they've added a bunch of AI themed things, including a course on how large language models are built, which helps you understand a little bit more about how things like ChatGPT work, which is pretty cool. They've also got a really good course called Thinking in Code, which is like a sort of computer scientist way of looking at the world, and it shows how you can apply thinking in code or, like, code-like thinking or programmer thinking to problems in real life. So even if you don't intend to become a computer scientist, there are things that you can take away from that course that can just help you level up in life. And with data skills getting more and more in demand, the data analysis courses are really good as well. So for example, Data Analysis Fundamentals teaches you to draw fascinating conclusions from the data that you're given and could actually transform the way that you think. Whatever your interest or skill level, Brilliant is for you. It matches you up with the courses that best suit your ability. So whether you're a complete beginner or you're a pro when it comes to computers, for example, they'll definitely have something for you. If you're interested, then head over to brilliant.org/deepdive, and that will let you sign up to a completely free 30-day trial. And if you're one of the first 200 people to use that link, you'll also get 20% off the annual premium subscription. So thank you so much, Brilliant, for sponsoring

Ali Abdaal 30:36 this episode. So you make the website on Squarespace-

Sheehan Quirke 30:38 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 30:38 ... theculturaltutor.com or whatever-

Sheehan Quirke 30:39 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 30:39 ... the domain was. You decide, you know what? I need lead gen for my business.

Sheehan Quirke 30:42 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 30:42 [laughs] I'm gonna make a Twitter account.

Sheehan Quirke 30:43 Or sorry, lead-

Ali Abdaal 30:44 Lead gen.

Sheehan Quirke 30:45 Lead-

Ali Abdaal 30:45 Lead, lead generation.

Sheehan Quirke 30:46 There we go. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 30:46 You generate leads for the business.

Sheehan Quirke 30:48 Got it.

Ali Abdaal 30:49 And so you start writing on Twitter.

Sheehan Quirke 30:51 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 30:51 And you think, "Okay, cool. I'm gonna do a thread every day for 30 days, 90 days."

Sheehan Quirke 30:55 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 30:56 Day one to day seven, what happens next?

Sheehan Quirke 30:59 Well, I, I think the first week I was so excited about writing threads, I just, I wrote like five a day just by the... I just thought, "That sounds great, that sounds great." Um, the way I got my first few followers was by, um, asking my friends to follow me, um, of course, a- a- as one would. And then I, if I was, say, d- doing a thread about Roman history, I would just search on Twitter for other people writing about Roman history, follow them-

Ali Abdaal 31:25 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 31:25 ... follow people who'd liked it and commented on it and retweeted it, hoping they would follow me back. Um, and you know, I got up to like 20, 30 followers that way. Um, and then I would message some bigger accounts as well, being like, "Hey, this is what I'm, um, doing. Uh, I write about history," blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, "Do you have any advice? How did you grow?" And some of them, you know, one thing I should say is a lot of people are incredibly kind and helpful. The internet seems like this great big terrifying, scary place, but, but a lot of people on Twitter were so, so incredibly friendly and helpful to me. Um, gave me all sorts of wonderful detailed advice, accounts with everything from 2,000 to 100,000 followers, you know? Some of them would retweet me, and then I got, got into this habit of every time anybody had liked anything I'd ever posted, I would then message them personally every time I uploaded something new. So for example, it, it's, it's 10:00 PM, I've just finished a f- the thread for the day. I'll stay up till 4:00 in the morning messaging like 150 people. Um, and often what would happen is I'd get to that point where, you know, it stops you because it's like you've sent too many messages in the past hour. You're clearly a bot or whatever. So I'd usually send messages until I wasn't allowed to send them anymore by the platform, and gri- and I ground out those first, um, those first thousand followers. Then you have a thread which gets 100 likes, 150 likes. I remember I, I did this one that got like n- got 900 likes, um, about... It was about a speech given by, um, uh, Pericles at the end, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and I'd kind of like analyzed his speech and broken it down. It got 900 likes, and I was literally... I was like, "Well, I've made it. I'm, I'm, I'm famous online. I'm a successful writ-" you know, just what, what-

Ali Abdaal 33:03 So how, how far into the journey was this?

Sheehan Quirke 33:05 That was after two weeks, I think.

Ali Abdaal 33:06 After two weeks-

Sheehan Quirke 33:06 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 33:07 ... you got a thread with 900 likes.

Sheehan Quirke 33:08 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 33:08 Damn, that's cool.

Sheehan Quirke 33:09 It, it went, yeah, I, I... Look, I, I'll say two things. Everyone has to be lucky. You don't ever get anywhere without a little bit of luck. But I would like to think that I, I worked bloody hard for those to... Because, because I had no money in my bank account. I had nothing. I had nothing to lose, nothing to fall back on. It was like, it's either do or die. Either this Twitter account works or whatever, the army or film school or listicles or tutoring, something has gotta work. So I just gave everything, and I think it was once I started writing on Twitter, the joy of writing threads, um, completely o- overtook me and I was like, "This is the one that I want to work."

Ali Abdaal 33:45 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 33:45 If I can find a way maybe to make some, some mon- make a living doing this. Um, so I will say it was hard work. It, it, it, I was lucky. A combination of luck and hard work. I'll, I'll, I'll leave it at that.

Ali Abdaal 33:57 I mean, it certainly sounds like a lot of hard work.

Sheehan Quirke 34:00 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 34:00 Because like writing five threads a day and then also staying up for six hours from 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM, messaging people individually to say, "Hey, you have at some point engaged with my tweet. Would you like to read this one as well?" That is like a, a fucking absurd level of work to put into a Twitter account.

Sheehan Quirke 34:14 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 34:15 Um, [laughs] so-

Sheehan Quirke 34:17 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 34:17 ... yeah. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 34:18 Look, I'll say two things about that. First of all, I, I don't give people the wrong impression. It wa- it wasn't six hours of messages every night, but certainly for the first it, it was at least an hour or two, three, often four. Um, but I like to, you know, the, the, the, there's that, that great saying, I don't know who came up with it, but, um, how we do anything is how we do everything. And I think, I like think it's how I tend to approach things. So like at school, you know, I love, I loved the exams. But when I was playing football, I gave everything to the football. You know, I wanted to, um, I'm not very good at football, I should add. I'm a very cumbersome striker, but I still gave everything I, I, I could. And then when it came to Twitter, you've almost got to trick yourself in- into thinking that this is the most important thing in the world. And obviously it isn't. It's just Twitter. Who cares about social media? What, what, what people are saying online. But if you trick yourself into thinking this is all that matters, then suddenly the stakes are raised. When the stakes are higher, we all perform better. If you think what you're doing doesn't really matter, then you're, it's gonna show in your work, right?

Ali Abdaal 35:23 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 35:23 Um, and in how much work you're able to put in. And the fact I could push through that tiredness, um, was because I managed to trick myself into thinking that if, if this didn't work, if this Twitter account didn't work, then, you know, that was it.

Ali Abdaal 35:37 Yeah. There's... I think that's a really good point. Um, there's, there's a lot of value in convincing yourself that the thing is going to work.

Sheehan Quirke 35:45 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 35:46 And therefore, because if someone is like, "Oh, I'm just gonna half-assedly start a Twitter account or start a YouTube channel. And I'll just-

Sheehan Quirke 35:51 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 35:51 ... I'll just publish a YouTube video when I feel like it. I'll just write a thread when I feel like it."

Sheehan Quirke 35:54 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 35:54 "Oh, it's not gonna work anyway." It's like the, you know, as fluffy as it sounds, the, the belief that the thing is not, that the thing might not work-

Sheehan Quirke 36:04 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 36:05 ... absolutely changes the way you approach the thing.

Sheehan Quirke 36:07 Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 36:07 Whereas the belief that this has to work completely transforms the way you approach the thing.

Sheehan Quirke 36:10 He who says he can and he who says he can't are both usually right. Um, it's, it's, it's a wonderful line, and I think, I guess, the heart of, of what you're saying. And I, I don't know about yourself, but when you say started with YouTube, did you, um, how much did you commit to it?

Ali Abdaal 36:25 Oh, a lot. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 36:26 A lot, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 36:26 I was like, "I'm committing to writing, making one video every week for the next two years-

Sheehan Quirke 36:29 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 36:29 ... and I'm sure something good will happen." [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 36:30 Look, man, that, that, that-

Ali Abdaal 36:32 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 36:32 ... that's how you've built what you've built today and how you've got to where you are, because you put in that work. And I think, I think this is, it sounds frightening at first when you say to people that there's no, that there's no easy way, that, that you've got to work hard and you've got to want it. But, but I think that's also reassuring-

Ali Abdaal 36:47 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 36:48 ... in a way because it means, um, it's not just magic and it's not just luck. There are elements of that. Of course there are. But if you do put in that level of work, that's got to lead to something because y- y- let, let's think of this competitively, right? The day you start your YouTube account, the day you started yours, the day I started my, my, my Twitter account, probably 20,000 other people have also started accounts on that day, and they all wanted to do something with it. But I wouldn't be surprised if you worked harder than every single other person who started an account on the same day you did. Um, and, you know, I'd like to think I, I probably did with, with, with my Twitter account. Um, w- well, not just work, hard work, but, but passion as well. And sure you can work clever, you can-- There's all sorts of other things, but I think at the core of it i- i- is, is that, that compulsion. Um, and I suppose I was in this position where being a writer is what I'd always wanted to be.

Ali Abdaal 37:38 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 37:39 And I, th- this is a really, really important, uh, moment because I've had, I'd had this, as we said, this, um, um, th- this flashpoint when the fire was lit and I suddenly see the world in a different way, quit my job. That then reached this point when I started writing on Twitter, when it was no longer simply this compulsion to change my life. It was like I'd found the thing that fitted with me. I'd found-- You know, people might say I found my calling, um, which was almost another gear change because as I said, I would always wanted to be a writer.

Ali Abdaal 38:11 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 38:11 And suddenly I was writing, and it seemed like it might lead somewhere. And when you're doing not just-- When, when you're not just working hard, but you're also working in a way that the work isn't work, right? Writing threads for me isn't work. It's like, it's, it's a joy, it's a delight. It, it, it can be a torment, it can be horrible, it can be painful. Um, but I approach... You know, and it, it probably sounds silly to people talking about threads on Twitter in this way. But look, you know, um, from a certain point of view, that's true. It's just the internet. At the same time, if you write a good thread, a million people, 10 million people, 30 million people could read something you've written. Um, and, and maybe it'll do some good if they read it. Hopefully, I'd like to think some, some of the things I've written have, you know, made people's days a little bit better, made them see the world in a slightly brighter way. Um, and the, the point was that I was sat there writing and it was like, "This is what I'm supposed to be doing." And it, and it's a blessing to be able to say that and to think it and to feel it, and that was a world away from, from McDonald's.

Ali Abdaal 39:16 There, there are some essays from Paul Graham that I've been read- reading recently-

Sheehan Quirke 39:19 Uh-huh

Ali Abdaal 39:19 ... on how, how to find work that you love.

Sheehan Quirke 39:20 Uh-huh.

Ali Abdaal 39:21 And he talks about how the journey of finding work that you love is, is something that of the eight billion people on the planet, only probably a few hundred thousand will get to the point where the thing that they are doing-

Sheehan Quirke 39:31 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 39:32 ... they can genuinely say with an open heart, "I genuinely love this thing."

Sheehan Quirke 39:34 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 39:35 And what he argues in these essays is that, like, you wanna find that thing as soon as possible really because-- And, and if you don't yet know what the thing is, then the idea is that you wanna experiment with a lot of different things.

Sheehan Quirke 39:45 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 39:45 But it sounds like for you, you knew from a young age that, like, "I wanna be a writer."

Sheehan Quirke 39:49 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 39:49 And then after you had that flashpoint moment where you quit the job at McDonald's, you were like, "Cool, I'm gonna find a way to make this work."

Sheehan Quirke 39:54 Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I think that's a very fair, um, summary, br- brief summary of it. And, and one thing I would add, though, th- that I realized with-- This is for people who, who want to be a writer. To me, at least, you either are a writer or you aren't. Now, whether you're a published writer or a writer who with no audience, that's a different matter. But being a writer isn't about having a book, you know, on the shelf. It's not about having a million followers on Twitter. Being a writer is about, um, what defines somebody who we can say they are a capital W writer is whether or not they wake up and they write-

Ali Abdaal 40:32 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 40:32 ... that day.

Ali Abdaal 40:33 It's about doing the thing rather than being, being the thing almost.

Sheehan Quirke 40:36 Precisely.

Ali Abdaal 40:36 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 40:36 Precisely. Exactly. That, that's exactly it. And a lot of people think, "Oh, I'd love to be a writer." Well, if you're writing, you already are. And I hope that doesn't sound like paltry consolation, but that is the most important thing. Whereas if you're not writing, thinking, "I would like to be a writer."

Ali Abdaal 40:55 Yeah, you're kind of waiting for someone to give you permission-

Sheehan Quirke 40:57 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 40:57 ... to start doing the thing.

Sheehan Quirke 40:58 Exactly.

Ali Abdaal 40:58 But actually starting doing the thing is what ultimately gets you in front of people.

Sheehan Quirke 41:02 What are you waiting for? Like, a lot of people say, "Oh, you know, I'd love to write, but I don't have the time. I've got this idea, but I didn't have the time today to write." Like, if you need to write, if, if you want and need to write this thing, you'll find the time. You'll make the time. Ev- every action is an expression of our priorities. We find the time to eat every day. You find the time to go and see your friends. You find the time to sleep. If you can find the time to sleep, then you can find the time to write if you really want to do it. So that, that, that's what I'd say to anybody who is sort of in this position where they don't have the audience, they don't have the book deal, like I was in literally 18 months ago.

Ali Abdaal 41:32 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 41:33 Um, slightly less than that. You're still a writer anyway.

Ali Abdaal 41:36 Yeah. And you know, uh, this is, uh, gonna be a trite point, but we are-

Sheehan Quirke 41:40 Go ahead

Ali Abdaal 41:40 ... we, we, we are talking about writing, but actually everything that we're talking about is applicable to almost everything else as well.

Sheehan Quirke 41:47 Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Ali Abdaal 41:47 If you wanna be a creative in any kind of field, you wanna be a YouTuber, you wanna be a musician, you wanna be an artist, it's like do the thing.

Sheehan Quirke 41:53 Do the thing. Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 41:53 Don't wait for permission to suddenly one day at some point in your life you're gonna magically have the time to do the thing. Everyone's lives should, should generally tend to get busier as they grow older.

Sheehan Quirke 42:03 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 42:03 You know, you get a family, you get responsibilities, you have kids, all this kind of stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 42:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 42:06 If, if right now I feel like I don't have the time to write, lol, you know, I'm, I'm like a dude with no kids. Like-

Sheehan Quirke 42:12 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 42:12 ... how do I possibly think I'm gonna suddenly start having the time once I have kids?

Sheehan Quirke 42:15 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 42:16 Um, you know, there are people who start, start a business because they want, uh, they want more free time, and you speak to anyone who's got a business, they're like, "Yeah, how's, how's that going for you?" You realize that starting a business to try and get more free time is a-

Sheehan Quirke 42:28 Mm

Ali Abdaal 42:28 ... is a complete myth. Like-

Sheehan Quirke 42:29 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 42:29 ... starting a business does not give you more free time. You realize, "Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness, there's all this stuff I need to do."

Sheehan Quirke 42:33 But a, a friend did say something to me once which sounded very, very counterintuitive but very wise. He, he said-- I mean, I, I'm, I'm, I'm assuming some, some famous person said it originally, but it was like entrepreneurs, let's say like yourself, work 60 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours a week.

Ali Abdaal 42:50 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 42:51 Um, which does that make sense to you?

Ali Abdaal 42:54 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 42:54 Yeah. Yeah. It, it's-- And I feel sort of the same way about-- I'm, I'm, I'm certainly not an entrepreneur, but I've-- I've, I'm happy to spend 10 hours. I- i- if you're doing what, what, what you love, like the, the Paul Graham point, then you're happy to spend 12 hours a day doing it rather than spending eight hours a day-

Ali Abdaal 43:09 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 43:09 ... seven hours a day doing something you don't really, um, want to do.

Ali Abdaal 43:14 So you're two weeks into the thing, into writing-

Sheehan Quirke 43:16 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 43:16 ... threads. You put this thread out, and it gets 900 likes.

Sheehan Quirke 43:20 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 43:21 W- and you were thinking, "Fuck, I've made it." [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 43:23 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 43:23 W- w- what happens next?

Sheehan Quirke 43:25 Well, then I just started writing immediately. You s- you ... W- when things, when things are going well, you're always more excited. The, the, the key part i- is continuing when it's not going well because I think the next thread I wrote didn't even get more than, you know, 20 likes or something. Um, and it brings you right back down to Earth, um, when suddenly you think you're king of the world, you think you're gonna be the most famous writer in history, and then suddenly six people, um, g- is actually not, not, not to be sniffed at, but only six people, um, like w- what you've written. So that was, I think, the first thing that happened, was that my, my suddenly expanding ego was immediately burst. But in t- in terms of the story, I just kept going, and then I think after three weeks or four weeks perhaps, four weeks, um, I was on about 3,000 followers. So it had been building. Was still grinding it out, um, getting retweets from bigger accounts. They would bring in a, you know, a, sort of, you know, another 20, 30 followers. Grinding, grinding it out. And then I did this thread about, um, medieval education, and it got, like, 5,000 likes and another couple thousand followers. And then I did this one thread about modern architecture and, and, and, and the picture that I'd used for it, um, was ... I just took a photo of a light switch in my house, this light switch I really hated. It's similar to, to the one over there, actually. This sort of just this, this white pointy plastic light switch, and it was really annoying me that day. So I took a photo of it and then wrote this thread about, um, the problem with mod- modern architecture not being quite what you think it is, and that got 15,000 likes.

Ali Abdaal 45:01 Wow.

Sheehan Quirke 45:02 And my follower count shot up after that to, like, 12 or 13,000 or, or r- I can't remember all the numbers. And then two weeks after that, I think, came the big one. I did this thread called, um ... And remember, at this point, I'm still doing one every single day. Most of them are misses. You occasionally, you know, get a hit, but you've gotta keep doing because by writing a thread every day, you're just increasing the odds of something doing well. I mean, I'm talking here from a purely engagement perspective-

Ali Abdaal 45:31 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 45:31 ... rather than, um, some of the other more important things. But, you know, as you know, the more content you upload online, the more potential engagement there is. Um, so six, six weeks in, I'd had this, this, like ... I'd had, think I probably had three or four days on the trot that I was like, uh, where, where the, where the engagement immediately dropping. I was thinking, "Okay, this is it. This, this is the end of The Cultural Tutor. This is the end of my journey." You know, whatever it is, 15,000 followers, that's where it ends for me. Fine, I'll take the ... But I was, I was annoyed. I was thinking, "I've got more to say, more to do," and I was so mad. And then I just opened my laptop and I, and I wrote this thread about, entitled it The, The, The Danger of Minimalist Design and the Death of Detail. And it was basically analyzing the ways in which the world has got less detailed. Everything's getting simplified from, from brand logos to architecture, um, graphic design of all kinds. Um, and, and this thread, I remember I shut my laptop, and then my friend messaged me being like, "Whoa, man, that thread's doing pretty well." I opened it. You know, a few hours later it was on, like, 30,000 likes. I said, "Oh, wow. Whoa, you know, bloody hell, this, this is, this is shocking." Then I went to bed and I woke up, and then my, my dad had messaged me being like, "Wow, man, that's really doing well." And, and then it was, it was on like 250,000 likes. By the end of the day it had reached half a million. Um, and my follower count had increased by 80,000-

Ali Abdaal 46:58 Wow

Sheehan Quirke 46:59 ... to, to, to, to, uh, to nearly 100,000. Um, and at that point I had then the critical mass of followers to be able to grow to the point where I'm at now, um, where I had enough followers that I wasn't relying too much on the algorithm to favor me. You know, the all, all-seeing, almighty algorithm. Um, and that was, I think, six weeks after I started the account.

Ali Abdaal 47:24 Wow.

Sheehan Quirke 47:24 So from that point to then it's b- it's basically ... Those first six weeks were just these beautiful, beauti- beautiful days where, as I said, you're not worrying, you're not overthinking. Everything's simple. You, you move fast. I started a newsletter in that period as well. Um, didn't worry about what it was called or what it was gonna be. I just started one and started writing it straight away. And then from that, that, that sixth week from the big thread to now, it's been sort of, well, o- o- one thread every day since then, growing to apparently one and a half million followers on Twitter. Um-

Ali Abdaal 47:56 Th- this is ... The, there's, there's so much I love about your story. Um, one of the big things is that I think for someone hearing it, it just shows that there's basically no excuses. Like, you're an anonymous account.

Sheehan Quirke 48:15 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 48:15 No one knows who you are. No one knows your name. No one knows how old you are. No one knows whether you have a degree or a qualification, and you decide to just do the thing. You d- you don't, you don't have a degree in anything related to cultural stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 48:28 Mm-mm.

Ali Abdaal 48:28 You're just interested in the thing, and you're interested in writing, and you just do the work, and now freaking Elon Musk is in your DMs, and you've got a one and a half million followers, and you could now spend the rest of your life literally, like, m- making a living out of writing. And you started with, like, seemingly no unfair advantages other than enjoying writing and enjoying the subject that you were talking about. Is that, is that fair to say?

Sheehan Quirke 48:52 I, I, I think it is fair to say. Um, an important part of the story is that, as I s- I'd been writing every day since I was 10 years old. And when you write for that long- You know, I, I, I can be a lot-- I think I can do better, but I, I'm, I don't, I don't think I'm a terrible writer. Um, and that came from all those years. So, so I think that has something to do with it. It wasn't like I just woke up and said, "Okay, I wanna play tennis," and then I was at Wimbledon in a year. Um, I had been training, if you like, for, for, for well over a decade by the time I started writing online. And, um, David Perell, the founder of Write of Passage, who have been sponsoring me now for over a year. Not actually sponsoring me, they've been my patrons. They don't ask me to publicize anything about them. They-- This is an important part of the story. I, we'll get back to what you were saying, but I just wanna-

Ali Abdaal 49:43 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 49:43 ... I wanna tell this really-

Ali Abdaal 49:44 Yeah, of course

Sheehan Quirke 49:44 ... incredible part of the story when, um, it was around the time of when I'd blown up and I got the newsletter. I still wasn't making money at the, at the point, at, at, at this time. And so I thought, "Okay, I'm gonna monetize the newsletter." And then on literally the same day I decided to do that, this guy called David Perell, um, gets in touch with me. Um, he has no idea who I am or how old I am, where I'm from. He, he, he DMs me on Twitter, get his number, we talk. He tells me who he is, what he does. He's like, "Look, man, I love your work online. I teach people to write online with, with, with his, with his course. Um, so I wanna support you. I wanna help people in your position who've just started out, who don't have a source of income." Because he realized if I started dedicating my attention to making money at that point, probably engagement would drop because I'd be spending, I'd be spending less time writing for the general audience and more time trying to curate, um, people who, who, who, who were supporting my work. He said, "How, how much money do you want? I'll pay you. How m- how much do you need, um, to live on and to buy your books?" Um, and ever since then, in, in, in June or July of last year, he's been supporting me, um-

Ali Abdaal 50:53 With no strings.

Sheehan Quirke 50:54 No strings attached. Um-

Ali Abdaal 50:55 Why? [chuckles]

Sheehan Quirke 50:57 Well, I think from his point of view, this is something I was sort of a trial run th- for this role writer in residence. What Write of Passage want to do is, is, is literally this, just, just patronize in the older sense of the word, not patronize, um, the way we use it now, but become a patron of young writers, help them by just giving, giving them the money they need. And writers don't need that much money.

Ali Abdaal 51:16 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 51:16 You know, it's not like investing in a business where there are loads of costs. A writer-- There's a great line fro- from John Ruskin, um, one of my favorite writers and historians. He says, "All, all an, all a writer needs is bread and salt. Give them their bread and salt." By the-- But, you know, by this he just means food on the table, water, and a place to live.

Ali Abdaal 51:35 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 51:35 And that, that's all they need. It's all they should have, in fact. If a writer has too much money, it's probably not good for them. Anyway, yeah, so no string. He just wanted to support my work. I mean, uh, look, everyone always asks, "Well, what does he get out of it? What does-- W- w- w- does he benefit? What..." And I think it was genuinely as shocking as it is, um, to hear. It w- it, it, it was a, it was a, it was an act of generosity and a faith and belief. It wasn't a zero-sum game calculation. It was just, "I wanna help you because I believe in what you're doing."

Ali Abdaal 52:05 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 52:05 And it's beautiful. I mean, as a, I mean, as a writer, someone who wants to be able to wake up and write until I fall asleep, till I can't write anymore, what more could you ask for than someone saying, "I'm gonna pay you to live as long as..." Okay, there was one string, which was that you keep writing. That was the only one, which of course is, i- i- isn't a string at all. Um, that's an important part of the story, but this came from a tangent. Now, what, what were you saying just before I, um, got onto that?

Ali Abdaal 52:38 Unfair advantages.

Sheehan Quirke 52:39 Unfair advantages.

Ali Abdaal 52:41 Lack of unfair advantages. You put in the grind, the hard work-

Sheehan Quirke 52:44 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 52:44 ... while enjoying the process, and ended up with 100,000 Twitter followers in about six weeks. [chuckles]

Sheehan Quirke 52:49 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 52:50 Um-

Sheehan Quirke 52:51 Speaking about that early growth, I, um, I think there's a couple of other important things about why, why I grew so quickly. Um, I think the first is that I probably wasn't writing in a way or about the things that a lot of other people were writing about. And, and the reason for this is because, uh, um, you know, the, the way we write is influenced by what we read, and I wasn't reading what anyone else was reading, broadly speaking. Um, I have this one rule when it comes to, to which books I read. I've said it before and I'll say it again, uh, I, I don't read anything published in the last 50 years.

Ali Abdaal 53:32 [chuckles] Nice.

Sheehan Quirke 53:33 Um, for a couple of reasons. One, of course, is that if you read the same books as everyone else, not only will you write the same way, but you'll think the same way.

Ali Abdaal 53:42 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 53:43 So if instead of reading, um, you know, whatever's on the, on the New York Times bestseller list, I'm reading something published 700 years ago, whatever I end up writing will inevitably be different. Um, so that, that, that's part of it, I think. Um, but the second thing is the kind of content I was putting online. Um, you know, the internet is, is, as I said, this, this beautiful, bizarre, terrifying, strange thing that we don't yet really understand all, all of its consequences. Um, you know, I, I often sort of look back and think people like, like Erasmus, one of my heroes back in the 16th century, he was writing his books, a great force for education, literacy. If he could see the internet, where, you know, as long as you can afford a, you know, an internet connection, it's free. You've got every book ever written at your fingertips. I mean, it's, it's an incredible resource. But, and yet, the internet is filled with a lot of, of crap, frankly.

Ali Abdaal 54:40 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 54:40 Um, you know, there, there's some wonderful creators out there, wonderful, wonderful writers, vi- vi- video, um, artists and, and, and, and, um, and, and all, all sorts of people. But a lot of the internet, you know, if you open Instagram and go on it, what, what do you see?

Ali Abdaal 54:54 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 54:54 Probably you're gonna see, you know, monkeys doing back flips and, and, and funny videos, um, celebrity gossip. A- and the internet, suddenly what we have is when people go online, what they experience most of the time it, it, it's either politics Which just causes division and it makes you angry. Um, or it's just mindless doom scrolling content designed purely to keep you staring at it, um, so then they can make more money from the ad revenue. So, so the internet is, is full of this sort of thing which is either making you angry and unhappy or you're just, just makes... It leaves you feeling empty. You know, uh, what does it say in, in, in the Bible? "Man does not live by bread alone." And I think the things that I'm writing about, art, architecture, history, it's, it's apolitical. Um, it's not clickbait, I don't think. It's not merely something that's entertaining in, in, in, in a simple sort of way. Look, I, I, I love videos of otters, you know, swimming around and with their little baby otters, but ultimately that's not enough to, to live on. You, you need something more. And I think when people suddenly find themselves reading online about art, about something as simple as, as, as Claude Monet and, you know, his, his paintings of, of, of, of, of the water lilies in his garden or about Gothic architecture, um, you know, or, or, or the great stepwells of India, whatever it is. When people are reading this, suddenly they find themselves reading about something which isn't politics, which isn't doom scrolling content. It's actually quite interesting, quite uplifting, quite beautiful, and quite meaningful, and I think that's part of what resonated so much, and I got a lot of those sorts of comments, and I s- I still do. You know, o- one thing I noticed is this tre- people would often quote Tweet me and they'd say, you know, "Timeline refresh" and that sort of thing, and that, you know, I didn't think much of it at first, but then looking back I think, "Hold on. There's, there's something interesting there." You know, what they're saying is their timeline is so full of just, of just either nonsense or unpleasant things. To read something that was quite pleasant and meaningful wasn't the sort of thing they usually read online. Um, and, and I think that's part of where the growth came from, um, that it, that it was this sort of thing that people experienced a different form of content- Mm ... as we now call, um, the, the things we find on the internet. This episode of Deep Dive is very kindly being sponsored by Hostinger. Now, if you're looking to start a business or develop your personal brand in 2024, then you're gonna need a website. But the question of where to start is a question that I get asked all the time. So if you've ever wanted to set up a website, but you've had a question of where to begin because there's all these different options out there, then Hostinger has literally everything you'll need. Hostinger is a top global website hosting service with servers all around the world. It's fast and reliable, and with over two million users, it's becoming one of the fastest-growing web hosting services out there. We've recently moved our website over to Hostinger to host my personal website, and not only was the transition completely seamless, but the tools were actually really simple to use as well, and I really wish something like this had been available when I was first starting my business like 12 years ago. If you're new to web design, then they've got everything you need to make a professional-looking website. One of their really interesting features is their AI website builder, which can help you make a custom website in literally seconds, and a whole suite of other really useful AI tools, including a logo creator, an image generator, and a heat map tool as well. It's super easy to use with a drag-and-drop editor for simple customization, and you don't need any coding or technical knowledge at all. Hostinger comes out to less than $3 a month, which includes a free domain name, so it's super affordable. And if you use the link in the video description or in the show notes, which is hostinger.com/aliabdaal, and if you use the code ALIABDAAL, in all caps, uh, at checkout,

Sheehan Quirke 58:39 then you will also get 10% off. So thank you again to Hostinger for sponsoring this episode. I'd love to dive into the writing process- Sure ... or lack of it. But before we go there, I'm curious. So you're covering a wide range of topics. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. History, art, architecture, cinema, uh, tons and tons and tons of stuff. Yeah, football. I, I still ma- Yeah, football as well. [laughs] I, I adore football- Yeah ... and I, I do find a way to connect the things and wr- and write about football as well. Um, presumably you don't just have all this knowledge in your head. No. So, like, m- how, you know, s- someone looking at this and being like, you've, you've written like basically an essay- Mm-hmm ... on Twitter every day for the last 500 days or something absurd like that. Mm-hmm. Probably more than that. How on earth do you not run out of stuff to say? Um, two points. First of all, uh, you can never run out of things to say. I mean, I suppose I'm lucky given the things I write about, like culture, history, art, architecture, football, whatever. Like, the world is just full. If, if all you do is open your eyes and look, you'll never run out of things to, to write about. If you go outside your room, open your eyes, look around you at the trees. You know, th- this orange tree here. You know, you a- you could write a book about that orange tree. There's so much to say about it, so many tangents to go off. So inspiration comes from lit... And a lot of my best work has come, um... And you know, I, I wrote a thread, uh, two days ago, or rather a, a post, a, a long post about the benefits of trees in cities. Um, and that e- engagement-wise, that one did pretty well. Um, uh, it's been a bit up and down recently, but that one got like 100,000 likes. Um, and that had come fro- from walking around, as I do. Um, I spend a lot of the time walking around doing nothing and, and I'd just been looking, and, and I was on the, I was on this one street, and then I went to another street, and I suddenly felt happier on this other street. And I was thinking, "Why, why is that?" Like, I suddenly found myself and my head was up rather than down. I was like, "Oh, there are trees on this street." And I found myself looking at the trees. It was also shady, so I was cooler. I was like, "There it... That's it. I've got to write about trees and why they're so good." And that came, as I say, from just walking outside and, and, and listening to yourself, not looking at my phone, not listening to music. So inspiration comes from everywhere. But m- more to the point of your question, um, look, I, I have a lot of books. It, it... I spend most of my time when I'm not writing reading. Um, and I'm, I'm always buying more books, more than I could possibly ever read. So the, the, the knowledge, so to speak, that I use to write with mostly comes from books. Hmm. The internet is, of course, an incredible place to research things, um, as well. And I think once you Get enough basic knowledge about something, you then sort of start to pass into this other territory, which I would call understanding. Um, and understanding is much more powerful than, than knowledge. And I think once you've got just a little bit of understanding, you suddenly start to make connections you wouldn't have previously made, and you look at things. And even when you don't know that much about them, you get a few little facts about it, you can then start to build the connections in, and it suddenly... Whereas before, I might have looked at something and, and, and not had much to say about it. Now, when you've got all these, these, these links there in your brain from reading all these books, giving it time to percolate-

Ali Abdaal 1:01:53 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:01:54 ... you can then look at it and then suddenly you've got all these connections to make drawing back on other material you've written about, um, other things you know about. And then you're able to suddenly look at a lot of different things and write about them and, and seeing the similarities, um, the... I, I, I don't know if that's too fluffy an answer, but, but, but, but the hard facts are it comes from books mainly. You know, you read a book about something, basically.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:14 Okay. So let's say you and I are both walking, and we're walking down Hyde Park.

Sheehan Quirke 1:02:18 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:19 And we're thi- and we're both thinking, "Let's write a thread about trees."

Sheehan Quirke 1:02:23 Sure.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:23 I'm gonna be thinking, "Well, I know very little about trees. Let me find the Wikipedia article-

Sheehan Quirke 1:02:28 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:02:28 ... and let me, uh... Mm, uh, I don't know. I don't know. Like, ugh." At, at that point, the thought process of, like, from let me write, write something about trees lands at a brick wall pretty quickly.

Sheehan Quirke 1:02:37 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:38 What does your thought process look like when you think, "I wanna write about trees"?

Sheehan Quirke 1:02:42 Um, this is why I said you've got to open your eyes and look and then interrogate yourself. So we're, we're, we're there in Hyde Park. We're looking at a tree.

Ali Abdaal 1:02:49 Yep.

Sheehan Quirke 1:02:50 Um, and we look at the tree and, and, and I say, "Oh, you know, Ali, do you know what kind of tree that is?" You don't know, and I'll say, "I don't know either." And then, "Oh, what kind of tree is it? Okay. Um, w- is that kind of tree native to England? Did we bring it from somewhere else? Why did they plant this kind of tree here? Are the other trees in the park the same sort of tree? Why did I not know what that tree was called? When the world is full of trees, how can I not know what type of tree this is? Well, people in the past, did, did they know what trees were called? Maybe they did. Yeah, maybe people living in the Middle Ages had a bit of a closer connection to nature, and they knew what the plants and the trees and the birds were all called." And then suddenly it's like, "Wow, now we've got something to write about. You know, we're more distant from nature or this, the history of this particular kind of tree and how it got here and where it was planted and why, wh- why it was used in Hyde Park." And then, as I said, when I was walking on this other street, we're looking there, we're thinking, um, [lips smack] you know, "Oh, it's nice to be around this tree, isn't it? It's shading us from the sun." And, and that in itself is, I, I think, interesting enough, and that was one of the points I made about urban trees, what they're great at is regulating temperature because we're cooler. Like, we look around in Hyde Park on a sunny day. Why is everyone gathered underneath the trees? Aha. It's free. It's, it's not complicated at all. None of this is complicated. It's none of it's remotely complicated or difficult to comprehend. I think the key is just looking and looking properly and s- pausing for 20 seconds more, 30 seconds more about the things you're looking at to ask yourself why and what and how and when. If you just ask those four questions about everything you look at, you'll suddenly realize there's too much to write about. It's not a question of, of are there enough things to write about. It's there are more things than I could ever possibly write about in 10 lifetimes. You know? S- same, same, same for this building, um, and the street outside. Just take a walk through London and, and your mind will sort of, sort of explode with, with potential.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:43 And then, okay, so [chuckles] you've got all these questions.

Sheehan Quirke 1:04:46 Mm-hmm. So l- I'm gonna jump in on one point.

Ali Abdaal 1:04:50 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:04:50 And then once you look in that way and really look at things, and then you've also read a little bit and you do know a few facts, you can then maybe start making connections.

Ali Abdaal 1:05:00 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:05:01 Um, so you know, one example might be, like architecture is a great example. Um, you know, w- w- when you look at a building and you, and you really look at it and y- you know, we, we don't pay attention to these things, but I look at that building and I notice a particular detail of it and I'm like, "Hmm, why is that there?" Then I suddenly remember a fact about that building. Like, um, you know, on the, the building here j- just, just, just over the road, um, is, is vaguely neoclassical. You've got, you've got the columns. Uh, it, it's a Doric order, and you've got the triglyphs above them. And then, um, you know, then when you look at them, suddenly because I know they're called triglyphs, so this is just a hard fact. A hard fact in itself is potentially interesting. It's useful to know what things are called. But once you connect that, that fact to a bit of history, this is a cool thing about triglyphs. So, so a triglyph, imagine like a, the front of a neoclassical building. You've got the columns, then you've got like a sort of a, a flat, um, the, the architrave above it, like resting horizontally, and then the pediment, which is the triangle a bit. And, and, and on the architrave, you'll notice when you go outside there, there are these decorative strips. They're like groups of three little lines like that. There's three of them, then a space, then three of them above each column. They're called triglyphs. And what's cool about triglyphs is that although they're in stone on the front of this building and they were in stone in ancient Greek architecture and in Roman architecture, they originate when Greek buildings were made from wood. And when they built them from wood, these three triglyphs were originally, um, bits of the crossbeams that were sticking through the front. And then when the Greeks started building in stone instead of wood, they just imitated the shape of it. So they kept these three decorative strips, um, in stone, and then it was no longer functional, it was decorative. And then two and a half thousand years later on a street in London, the decision of some Greek builder, anonymous Greek builder two and a half thousand years ago to keep this, th- this bit of wood and turn it into stone is influencing the way the streets in London look. I mean, it, it's a miracle. You know? And, and that's where a few facts do come in handy, I think. That's where reading the books. So if you read a few facts and then look, that's where the inspiration comes from. Anyway, you, you had a-

Ali Abdaal 1:07:11 And so you're thinking [coughs] ... 'Cause I guess when I make my YouTube videos, well, the, the guiding question is- What actionable point can someone take away from this that would help them build a life they love or something?

Sheehan Quirke 1:07:23 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:25 What's the guiding... Uh, that's, so that's like self-help. But sort of in your genre-

Sheehan Quirke 1:07:30 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:07:30 ... what's, what's the, what are the guiding questions that you're thinking about, like whether it's worth sharing something or whether it's just, oh, this is a factoid, uh, no one cares?

Sheehan Quirke 1:07:41 That's a good, a very good question, yeah. We, we do work in, in fairly different fields in that regard. I, I do have this line, I, I think I mentioned it earlier. I, I try to make sure everything I write is either one of and hopefully all of interesting, useful, and beautiful.

Ali Abdaal 1:07:55 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:07:55 But, but, you know, that, that's, that's a bit of a slogan rather than a, a, a tool with which I analyze the things are... I, I, I think it comes down to judgment and taste. I just have a sense for things. Like, am I excited about it? Do I want to know this? Do I find this interesting? Do I think this is useful? And that's it. It, it-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:13 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:08:13 ... it's my t- I try not to think about what people want to read, what they need to know about.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:18 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:08:18 I mean, who, who am I to say what anybody else wants or needs? And I think once you start playing that game, at least from my point of, point of view, I, I think I would, I would immediately lose the spark.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:28 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:08:29 Like, um, the thing about trees the other day, I, I was just excited to write about it. I was excited to think about it, you know? Um, it's just something that had me interested and, and I, I suppose there is a bit of texture there because there, there's a difference, as you say, between a factoid-

Ali Abdaal 1:08:42 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 1:08:43 ... um, and then a story maybe.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:48 So

Ali Abdaal 1:08:50 if, if someone is ... If, if you were to hire like a Twitter growth agency or something-

Sheehan Quirke 1:08:56 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:08:56 ... and they were to be like, "Look, Sheehan, like the most important thing is the first tweet."

Sheehan Quirke 1:08:59 Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:08:59 "And the most important thing of the first tweet is the first line."

Sheehan Quirke 1:09:01 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:02 "We're just gonna find the most viral first lines imaginable and just like feed them to you, and then you go and create a thread based on that."

Sheehan Quirke 1:09:07 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:08 That would be ... How does, how does that kind of idea land with you? [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:09:14 Um, in some sense, uh ... Look, I, I'll say one thing. When you have a first line, the thread or the post writes itself. When you have a great title, um, you know, there are even these stories in Hollywood. Apparently, the, the producers, they s- they sit around and come up with titles.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:31 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:09:31 They've got a great title, and they go and find somebody and say, "Write me a script based on this title." Um, if you have a great title, everything writes itself. Everything falls into place. But in that scenario specifically, I, I couldn't do it.

Ali Abdaal 1:09:42 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:09:42 I think I'm, I'm too protective over, over my own, of my own work. And I think for me, the key is that, look, I, I don't plan ahead. I don't have a content schedule. I just wake up and wait until something strikes me, something inspires me that day, and then I write about it. When the passion is there, the fire, the curiosity, when it's fresh in your mind, that, that, that, I think that's the vital part in my writing process on, on, on Twitter. And once that stops, um, I, I don't think I could do it.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:14 Yeah, because then you become a content factory.

Sheehan Quirke 1:10:15 Yeah, which quite-

Ali Abdaal 1:10:16 And then you have a job. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:10:17 Exactly right. Exact- exact- that's it exactly.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:19 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:10:19 Whereas right now what I'm still doing to this day is literally finding something that, that, that's been on my, maybe it's been on my mind for a couple of weeks, and then suddenly I'm churning it over in my head trying to understand something. I've got it, and I, I need to go and find a laptop and, and start writing before, before I forget. Um, I'm still in that beautiful space, and I'm-

Ali Abdaal 1:10:37 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 1:10:37 ... very lucky to be here, um, doing this, um, sort of thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:10:43 Yeah. There's a little ... I've drawn a sort of bell curve-

Sheehan Quirke 1:10:47 Sure, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:10:47 ... um, with like art and optimization on opposite ends or creative and business on the opposite-

Sheehan Quirke 1:10:53 Mm, sure

Ali Abdaal 1:10:53 ... on, on opposite ends. And I think there's this... I, I really struggle with this balance.

Sheehan Quirke 1:10:59 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:00 'Cause, you know, with, with YouTube videos, we only, we, we could only make two YouTube videos a week, and I was-

Sheehan Quirke 1:11:07 Still quite a lot.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:08 Uh, sorry?

Sheehan Quirke 1:11:09 I said that's still a lot.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:09 That's still a lot. Um, but that means there's only, there's only eight videos a month. And so I'm excited about all these different things, but we're thinking, well, unless we c- un- unless we can find a good title and thumbnail, there's-

Sheehan Quirke 1:11:21 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:11:21 ... all, there's like no point in making the video just because I'm excited about it because, like why bother making a video that 50,000 people will see when I could also make a video that 500,000 people would see?

Sheehan Quirke 1:11:31 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:11:31 And it would just be a different topic that I may not necessarily be excited about there and then, but that I would, you know, once I've got a title and a thumbnail, I can, I can whip something up and I c- I can feel at least, I can feel that, uh, I can feel at least somewhat proud of it by the end of it. And it's like th- uh, this balancing act between like, I w- I wanna make a video about this thing, but like, ugh, I also wanna find a good title and a thumbnail and a hook and I guess the first line of the thread, and I also want it to do well. And you're combining like the art and the creativity and the wanting to share from the heart with the commercial incentives of the business that needs to grow because we've got a team now and stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:06 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:06 If I just throw that at you-

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:07 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:12:07 ... I just would love you to riff-

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:08 No, look, look

Ali Abdaal 1:12:08 ... on that idea. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:09 No, no, no, no. Uh, look, man, I, I, I don't envy you. I don't envy that position. I, I'm, I'm lucky to have Rite of Passage as my patron, so I don't, I don't need to worry about, you know, they pay me regardless of, of, of, of, of how well, they support me regardless of how well or not I'm, I'm doing. So I, I, I'm lucky to have a disconnect between the money coming in and the work going out, um-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:31 Mm, that's good

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:32 ... wh- which I think is a good position to be in, um, potentially.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:37 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:37 I don't know that. I, I think it might be a good position to be in for, not always, but sometimes. But look, I, I don't want to give the wrong impression that I'm sort of immune to the notion of a good, um, a good thumbnail-

Ali Abdaal 1:12:48 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:48 ... as it were. You know, I, I, I've had plenty of images where I have these little ... Like, you know, I, I, I did this thread about the origins of the Argentinian football kit and why it's blue and white.

Ali Abdaal 1:12:57 Nice.

Sheehan Quirke 1:12:58 And, and it, and it ... And, okay, this is an example of looking. By the way, d- we're gonna jump off here for a second.

Ali Abdaal 1:13:02 Yeah, please.

Sheehan Quirke 1:13:02 I saw Lionel Messi lifting the trophy of the World Cup. I was delighted, by the way, um, for Messi to win, to win the World Cup, and this, this image is being beamed all around the world to billions of people. And I was like, "But why is he wearing a blue and white shirt?" And I know it's because the Argentinian flag is blue and white, but why is the Argentinian flag blue and white?

Ali Abdaal 1:13:22 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:13:24 And then I went back and I researched it and, and there's kind of an interesting story. So that's, that's an example of what I mean by looking, of just looking and asking the simplest questions. No, nothing complicated. N-n-n-nothing overwrought or, or too detailed, just why is that thing like it is? And suddenly this incredible story opens up which takes you back to the Byzantine Empire through the Middle Ages, through this particular color that was imported from the mountains of Afghanistan for the painters in the Renaissance, blah, blah, blah, blah. Incredible. Anyway, for this thread, I, I made this image with like Messi at the top and then there's, um, uh, King, uh, Charles of Spain and then there's some Byzantine emperor and there's a load of like colorful arrows going in between it all, you know, to, to show the progression.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:05 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:14:05 That, that are the kind of thumbnails you see on, you see on YouTube, you know? I, I don't think there's anything, anything wrong with getting people's attention of doing clickbait as it were, uh, dare I say the word.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:15 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:14:15 And I think some of the titles I've written have probably very intentionally been pretty clickbaity. I mean, but what I tell myself is I can clickbait people, clickbait people as long as I back it up with something really valuable and good and useful.

Ali Abdaal 1:14:30 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:14:31 Um, so, so, so I, as I s- that was all to, to make it clear that I don't want to give the impression that I'm, I'm in this, um, vacuum immune to, to, to the way the internet actually works, which as we all know is you need to get people's attention because it's just a sea of content and millions of people shouting at you and you have to be the one who shouts, um, the loudest. But then the tension, the broader tension between business and, and art as it were, um, I probably can't talk too much about. But I will say sometimes I have been tempted to write about things because I think people want to hear it. And occasionally I've fallen for that temptation and I've written something because I think this will get the most engagement. Um, more often than not, those sorts of pieces have done the worst. Either they've just got the worst engagement or got the worst feedback and I didn't feel very good about them afterwards.

Ali Abdaal 1:15:21 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:15:22 I think I've come to realize it's worth paying the price of what you think will be less engagement for writing something, for creating something you actually want to create and that you're proud of. Because I do think when people watch the things you make, read the things you write, they can usually tell how much you cared about it. Even if they don't realize it, but it's often just better and, and there's something to be said about that. All this being said I, I'll g- I'll give you one counterexample. Um, the, the "1812 Overture" by Tchaikovsky. You'll recognize it when you hear it and it gr- the, the, the crescendo has cannons firing. O-one, one of the most wonderful pieces of music. Um, probably Tchaikovsky's, you know, one of his most popular. Um, you see it, it's on TV all the time and it's, it's in movies. Um, he wrote it in like three weeks I think in 1872 and, and he said very openly, "I, I didn't have any passion for this. I just wrote it because I thought people would like it and I needed to get something..." I can't remember the particular circumstances, but essentially he needed to get something written-

Ali Abdaal 1:16:31 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:16:31 ... for a particular deadline and to make some money. He wrote it and it's one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:36 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:16:36 You know, sometimes by accident when you think you're being this sort of callous businessman-like, um, content creator you can actually accidentally create something extraordinary.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:47 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:16:47 So I don't know. Either or.

Ali Abdaal 1:16:49 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:16:49 I, I, I often give answers like this. I, I, I'm not someone who particularly sees the world in, in black and white, either or. To me, you know, the via media, the middle way i- is always usually right. It's a bit of this and a bit of that.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:00 Yeah. I think that's ... I think often I default to trying to find the answer. Um, I could be wrong here but, uh, my, my vague understanding is that sort of Western school, Western thought is quite about, is very much about the answer and about like labeling things-

Sheehan Quirke 1:17:19 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:17:19 ... and like putting things in a box. Whereas Eastern thought is a bit more like two, two seemingly contradictory ideas can exist to, can, you can hold them both together. Is that like what's-

Sheehan Quirke 1:17:29 Look, I, I-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:29 What's the deal with that? [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:17:29 ... I'm not much of a philosopher and I'm very cautious of all philosophers. But broadly speaking I, I, I think that is fair to say, um, certainly in my experience of what I've read that-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:38 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:17:38 ... that does, that, that, that does come through.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:41 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:17:41 Um, but I, I, I wouldn't wish to say anything too, uh, too certain about that-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:45 Sure

Sheehan Quirke 1:17:45 ... because as I say ph-philosophy is not really my, um, my realm of expertise and I find them very frightening strange people-

Ali Abdaal 1:17:51 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:17:51 ... philosophers. So I try and stay away from them.

Ali Abdaal 1:17:54 Yeah. I, uh, one, one thing I've been trying to figure out when it comes to my creative process for videos is how do I ... This is gonna sound cringe but like-

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:05 No, no, man. It's, it's-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:06 Some, some combination of like mind, heart and soul.

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:09 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:10 And I think the heart and the soul comes from me being passionate about the thing and feeling excited-

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:14 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:18:14 ... about it.

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:14 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:18:14 And the mind component is like the, "All right. Let's see. How do we optimize the shit out of the title and the thumbnail-"

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:19 Yeah, no

Ali Abdaal 1:18:19 ... k-kind of thing. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:20 And, and, and but look-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:20 And it's like some balance between all-

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:22 We, we, we shouldn't be afraid of this. We shouldn't be like-

Ali Abdaal 1:18:24 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:18:24 ... um, I think all the greatest stuff doesn't just ... The greatest stuff doesn't just come from this pure completely uncontrolled passion and that stuff usually ends up being messy and poorly structured. Like think of it like a film, you know? L-like the best films, the screenwriters, the directors, if all they worked on was passion the thing would be seven hours long and the plot, the pacing would be all over the place and the narrative w- you know, would be hard to follow and it might be beautiful in some sense. The best work always comes when you have the passion and you can see it clearly but then you're also able when you need to to step back and think about it very rationally about does this need to be here? To think about thumbnails-

Ali Abdaal 1:19:04 Mm-hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:19:04 ... say. And I, I, I don't think ... Look, look I mean in some sense I'm a bit of a purist but I, I think it would be historically wrong to say that all the great stuff has come from people who only listen to their passions and didn't actually think about it very carefully what they were doing. Um, whether that's about things as, as, as you know thumbnails or, or, or structure, whatever it is. The, the, the de- the hard details of a piece of work.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:28 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:19:30 So, so those th- those three things, yeah, can be, can be and should be united. And if you cast off one, you lose every- you need all three of them, you know? I suspect.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:40 Mm. Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:19:41 What do I know?

Ali Abdaal 1:19:42 Yeah. [laughs] Um, how do you think about what your niche is, if at all?

Sheehan Quirke 1:19:49 Oh, I, I don't think about it at all. I don't.

Ali Abdaal 1:19:53 Because traditional writing advice is find a niche, find your personal monopoly, do the thing. Find that, that one thing that you can talk about and talk about really well, and then people will follow you for that one thing, and if you stretch too far outside of your lane, then your engagement goes down and-

Sheehan Quirke 1:20:06 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:20:07 ... all of those things.

Sheehan Quirke 1:20:08 Um, that advice, I've, I've read that advice before. Um, I think probably in, in those early days when I was googling how to become a writer online after I left McDonald’s, I read that sort of thing. Um, and it seems like v- v- very fair advice. Um, I, I certainly didn't apply it myself. Maybe retrospectively you could say that I've fallen into that b- category, but I, I don't, I don't know what my niche is. I mean, I suppose if I started talking about, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:37 Self-help. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:20:38 Yeah. Well-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:38 That would be my-

Sheehan Quirke 1:20:38 But e- e- even, even some of the things I do, do-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:41 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:20:41 ... do touch on that, you know. I like, I-

Ali Abdaal 1:20:42 Tie-in, yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:20:43 ... I, I do this, this, I, I write about Boethius, so all the time I talk, talk about him nonstop. And Boethius is, he was, um, he, he was around just a- just after the fall of the Roman Empire, fifth century, um, early sixth century. He rose to the top of society. He was a friend of the king. Suddenly everything goes wrong. He gets thrown in prison. When he's in prison, awaiting execution, he wrote a book called The Consolation of Philosophy, and it's him sort of reasoning with the fact he's had this fall from grace. He's about to die, um, and he's exploring the true meaning of happiness and of what it means to live a good life. And this-

Ali Abdaal 1:21:16 Well, that sounds good. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:21:16 And this book was basically a bestseller for 1,500 years. Like, we talk about, you know, um, self-help. Th- this was essentially, uh, an early medieval, you know, late classical self-help book which topped the charts for well over 1,000 years. Um, and it's all, it, it's written about 100 pages and, and I, it's one of the ... When you read it, you can see why it was so popular for so long because it, it's got some of the most brilliant, brilliant advice, um, and wisdom that anybody could hope for. This is all a very long way of saying, um, I, I've written about this book before, and I talk about Boethius a lot. So I, I talk about self-help, so to speak. N- maybe not in quite a, it's quite a pointed way, but, but I certainly don't v- I just, I'm, I'm not afraid of talking about it.

Ali Abdaal 1:21:58 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:22:00 But, uh, to answer your question, I'm sort of jumping around because I, I don't, I don't think I have a niche. I just followed my nose, followed my instinct.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:08 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:22:08 Um, I suppose if I was ... I, I don't like giving advice particularly because everybody's journey is different.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:16 Sure.

Sheehan Quirke 1:22:16 Um, I say one thing. You say another thing. We're both right and we're both wrong at the same time. But, but rather than picking a niche to, to capture, to enter, just, just, just you are your own niche.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:31 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:22:32 Um, that's how it works for me at least.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:35 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:22:36 I think.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:37 Yeah. There's a phrase that a friend, a friend of mine, Paul Millerd, uses, um, which is kind of the difference between a niche and a mode. Somewhat semantic, but, like, a niche is sort of like-

Sheehan Quirke 1:22:46 Sure

Ali Abdaal 1:22:46 ... topic area. A mode is sort of like an operating system, a, a way of being.

Sheehan Quirke 1:22:51 Mm-hmm. Mm.

Ali Abdaal 1:22:51 And Paul wrote a piece for his newsletter where he said, he said s- he had a really interesting paragraph. He was like, "See, someone like Ali Abdaal has managed to do it well because he's found himself a mode where he can make videos about whatever he wants and whatever he's passionate about and whatever he's learning." And I was like, "Really? Can I?" [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:07 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:23:08 That's a good point. [laughs] And I guess thinking of it, because I also think I don't really have a niche. We've been trying to figure out what are our topics. It's like productivity, how to be a YouTuber, relationships, health, business, how to make money.

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:19 Yeah. That's not a niche, is it?

Ali Abdaal 1:23:20 It's like, it's not really a niche.

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:20 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:21 It's more like I learn stuff and read stuff and talk to people-

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:25 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:23:25 ... and then make videos about the things that I think are cool.

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:27 The point is, is you are your own niche.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:28 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:29 Ali Abdaal is the niche-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:30 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:30 ... as it, as it were.

Ali Abdaal 1:23:30 And so it's the same in your case. It's like you could, if you wanted to, you could pick up the top 10 New York Times bestselling books of this year, and you could probably find something really interesting to say about them-

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:40 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:23:40 ... from the lens of the stuff that you're interested in.

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:44 Yeah. I'd, I'd like to think so. Did ... Uh, were, were you gonna lead on to something else there or-

Ali Abdaal 1:23:49 No, that was it. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:23:50 No, no. It's ... Yeah. Which is why, you know, I do like this idea that you pick something, something very specific, very, very specific, and become the best in the world at that one thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:24:02 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:24:03 That sounds quite exciting to me. Um, you know, maybe for about two months at a, there was a sort of a golden, gold- the golden age of, of last year. Maybe I was probably the best person in the world at, at writing Twitter threads of a certain kind, um, let's say. That ... Very specific, but that's one thing I was pretty good at. And, you know, maybe for someone who wants to be a writer, we could say that to them. But look, I just, I just, I, I find it odd suggesting to a young writer that you should ... Advising them what they should write about or, or, or to pick something because I don't know. May- may- maybe I'm wrong because ultimately I picked something. I, I picked cultural stuff. This is interesting. So, so I didn't ... I wanted to be a novelist. That's what I, I, I ... It's novels that I wanted to write. You know, I'm, I'm hope- hopefully gonna write a book-

Ali Abdaal 1:24:53 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:24:54 ... maybe more than one book, about the things I now write about on Twitter, about architecture, art, and history. I'm working on a book proposal as we speak.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:01 Nice.

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:02 Well, not, not as we speak, but-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:03 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:04 But, but I will be working on it-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:05 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:05 ... on it later. But I always wanted to be a novelist. Um, and there, there's a shift in what I was writing about there. I didn't used to write about this kind of thing.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:14 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:14 Um, in my spare time I was always writing screenplays and, and dramas and-

Ali Abdaal 1:25:19 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:19 ... then poetry. So, so I did change what I was ... So I think you can, maybe you can pick something. I don't know. As long as it interests you.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:27 One of, one of the mental models we, we say for our, our YouTuber Academy students is-

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:31 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:25:31 ... the difference between being an architect and an archeologist And an architect is someone who sort of has a plan in advance.

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:37 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:25:37 They've got the blueprint. They're like, "Cool, this is gonna be the thing that I do. This is the strategy," and so on, and so on, before they lay the first brick-

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:42 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:25:43 ... as it were. Whereas an archeologist, um, you know more about archeol- archeologists than I do, but my understanding is that they think, "Okay, there might be something there," and they dig a bit-

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:51 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:25:51 ... and there's nothing there, and then they go somewhere else. There might be something there, and they dig a bit. And then eventually by digging in a bunch of different sites-

Sheehan Quirke 1:25:56 You find something

Ali Abdaal 1:25:56 ... they will find some-- they will find gold. They'll be like, "Ah, I'm gonna excavate a bit more around this place." And then they discover this new ruins, and it's like, cool. And they, now they double down on that particular thing because they've seen that essentially there is a market for the thing.

Sheehan Quirke 1:26:10 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:10 And so they might have been passionate about site A, B or C, but the fact there's a market in site D means that now passion plus market forces combine, and now it makes sense for them to build a business and make a living-

Sheehan Quirke 1:26:21 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:26:21 ... off of site D. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:26:23 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:24 Um, doing more and more work there. And in a way, the fact that it's now working and the fact that there is a market for it makes, makes doing the work feel even more rewarding because now you're not just pissing in the wind, as it were. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:26:38 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:26:39 You're, like, doing something, and it's getting traction. People like it, and you're making money, or whatever the thing is. You're getting patronage from, like, the local museum. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:26:46 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:26:46 All, all of that kind of stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 1:26:48 Sure. Um, yeah. That, that, that's kind of a nice... Uh, I'm not, I'm not a big fan of, um, um, sort of models and, and, and analogies. I, I, I... But, uh, but, but that, that sounds... It w- it, it fits, right, what, what you've just said. Um, w- I, I suddenly realized when you were talking just then, I think the reason I'm str- struggling to answer your question, and, you know, we're both sort of struggling a little bit to, to get-

Ali Abdaal 1:27:11 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 1:27:11 ... to the heart of it, 'cause I, I think it comes down to what you want to do. Like, or, or what you want to get out of it, um, whether you just-- whether you want to, A, make money, B, make money while doing something you like, or C, just do something you like and survive if you can while you're doing it.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:26 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:27:27 Um, and I, I think that's why I found the question slightly hard to answer.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:31 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:27:31 Depending on whether or not, as you say, traditional writing advice, pick a niche. It depends what, what you want.

Ali Abdaal 1:27:36 Yeah. It depends on the goal.

Sheehan Quirke 1:27:37 Yeah, yeah. If, if, if you want to grow an audience and, and, you know, then, then maybe that is a good thing to do. But I, I don't know, 'cause I, I d- I didn't particularly... And, and I suspect a lot of people who do write online and who have done well-

Ali Abdaal 1:27:48 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:27:50 ... I wonder if... Because, 'cause it makes sense in hindsight. When you, when you, when you say that, for me, it make, kinda makes sense in hindsight. Maybe for you it maybe makes sense in hindsight. But all these people who have grown an audience, I, I, I wonder if they really did proactively and very coldly, rationally pick something.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:07 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:28:08 Or if they just sort of instinctively went for it because it felt right at-

Ali Abdaal 1:28:12 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:28:12 ... the time. And this is something I really believe. You've gotta trust your instincts, that spark within you as a writer, as a creator. Everyone's got advice. Everyone's telling you how you should do X, Y, Z. Everyone's got a million different ideas about the way to grow, the way

Sheehan Quirke 1:28:26 to, um, become the person you, you can be. But what we all have is an instinct, a spark, whatever it is, that thing inside you, that little voice, that feeling, that gut feeling, and I think everyone, you've gotta trust that. You've always gotta trust that. And sometimes it's wrong. You've gotta learn to understand yourself more clearly. But as soon as you start ignoring that instinct within you, I think that's when you get lost.

Ali Abdaal 1:28:50 What does your writing process look like?

Sheehan Quirke 1:28:53 Sure. Um, uh, what do you mean by process?

Ali Abdaal 1:28:57 I guess, um, what does a day in your life look like?

Sheehan Quirke 1:29:00 What does a day in my life look like?

Ali Abdaal 1:29:00 And how does writing fit in that? [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:29:02 Um, gosh. Well, well, n- no, no two days are the same. And I don't mean that because my life is exciting. I mean that because I, I, I, I don't really have a sleep routine, so I sort of wake up... Look, look, when I go to... Okay, w- we're gonna begin the story of my day when I, when I go to bed.

Ali Abdaal 1:29:24 Okay.

Sheehan Quirke 1:29:24 So I go to bed whenever I happen to go to bed. I don't know what time it is. It's whenever I've finished writing the thing that I want and need to write that day. So I've done a thread on Twitter. I've been working on the newsletter, worked on the book proposal, and then I'll work for a couple of hours on something that's never gonna get published, is never gonna... I'm probably gonna delete it in a week. Just some private passion that's got me gripped, or I read, um, something important and useful. Go to bed, and then I won't set an alarm. I'll just wake up whenever I happen to wake up. Um, usually ends up being, usually I'm, I've, you know, 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 PM in the afternoon.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:01 Oh, wow.

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:01 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:02 So you're up until, like, 6 AM.

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah. N- normally I like, I like to see the sunrise before I go to bed. I enjoy working at night-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:09 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:09 ... because it's much quieter. It's darker as well. Something about the darkness blocking out the world, 'cause otherwise I'm looking round when it's dark and I can't see anything. And also, no one bothers you at night, so you don't have emails and texts and... I hate emails. I hate texts. Can't stand them. And that's why I don't reply to most of them.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:27 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:28 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:29 Same. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:29 Yeah. Sure. It is, it's, it's why I tend to, tend to work at night. But-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:34 And are you working in your, in your, in your house?

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:36 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:36 Or, like, in a cof- in a pub or, like-

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:38 Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:30:39 What's open at 5 o'clock in the morning that you- [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:40 Well, exactly. Um, nothing really. I, I tend to work at home.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:44 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:44 I have a little desk with all-- and then I have a bookshelf.

Ali Abdaal 1:30:46 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:30:46 You know, a few, few bookshelves with all my books, and I'll j- I'll, I'll sit there and work. I can't work in cafes. Um, too, too, too noisy. Too much distraction. It's too loud. Um, you know, there are lots of cars going past on the road. I, I don't really... There's something about people and the chatter.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:01 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:02 I think when you're writing and creating, it depends on what you're doing, of course, but I like to be secluded on my own, where the only thing, it's just me and the page, me and the blank page, as it were. And it's like I kind of fight with this blank page, and I've gotta beat it to death until some words appear.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:18 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:18 So, so look, I'll wake up whenever I happen to wake up. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:21 Okay. So let's say you wake up at 4 PM-

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:23 Yeah. Sure

Ali Abdaal 1:31:23 ... in the afternoon. W- what happens next?

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:25 Have a cold shower.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:26 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:26 I only have cold showers. Um, it's, it's a... W- w- one of the few bits of life advice I would give to people i- is to attempt having cold showers. It, it's wonderful. 'Cause it's horrible every single day.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:36 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:36 You hate it, but there's something about it. It just wakes you up, gets you going. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:31:41 And do you do sort of cold completely or, like, hot and-

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:43 Oh, yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:31:43 ... because I do hot and then cold.

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:44 Oh, I see. Right. I've heard that. No, no, just, just completely cold.

Ali Abdaal 1:31:47 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:31:47 Okay. Then- Um, done that, get dressed, iron a shirt, iron a pair of trousers, put on a tie, and head out and just go outside for a bit

Ali Abdaal 1:31:56 Why, why, why a shirt, trousers, tie rather than like, a sports Lululemon comfortable top with yoga pants or, which is my look? [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:32:04 Sure. I mean, look, I feel, I feel like everyone's got a uniform, you know?

Ali Abdaal 1:32:07 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:32:08 And, and for me this is, this is my uniform. It's like, you know, Messi puts on his jersey, Inter Miami, the pink jersey of Inter Miami to play football. Um, your soldier puts on their, their, their, their coveralls. Um, whatever it is, everyone has a uniform.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:23 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:32:24 And, and you know, it's not as comfortable dressing this way as it would be to wear a T-shirt, but that slight lack of comfort, it, it, it, it, it, it ... I mentioned it earlier, it raises the bar.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:36 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:32:36 It, it's just like I'm, I'm here to do something. I'm not here to be comfortable. I'm not here to relax. I'm not ... I'm, I'm ... I don't wanna be relaxed while I'm writing.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:43 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:32:43 I, like I, I'm, I'm at work so to speak. I'm in the trenches.

Ali Abdaal 1:32:47 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:32:47 And for that reason, um, you know, I, I ... And then there's no better feeling than, than, than getting, you know, taking your tie off in the evening after a good day's work, taking your tie off. Suddenly collar's, you know, you don't have a tight collar around your neck anymore and, and you can ... So that's what it is. It, it's my uniform.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:03 Okay.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:03 Um, everyone maybe has a different one. But I think, I think comfort can be dangerous for creativity.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:08 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:08 If you're too comfortable.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:09 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:10 I think you need to have a few, um, a few thorns in, in your feet and ... I mean, that's not a saying but, but let's imagine that that's-

Ali Abdaal 1:33:18 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:18 ... that that is an idiom. Something along those lines.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:21 Okay.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:21 Um, so I get dressed and then the first thing I do is I gotta get outside and, and, and not to do anything in particular, just to get a coffee or drink a coffee at home. And then, um, just go outside and see what's happening.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:34 Okay.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:34 Just walk, just walk around for a bit.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:36 Just walk around for a bit, like 5:00 PM just like walking around

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:38 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:38 No particular route.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:39 Walk around. Um, see what the weather's like.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:42 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:43 And, and let my brain slowly emerge from its slumber, 'cause I, I take a long time to wake up.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:51 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:51 Um, I, I'm, I'm not an early riser evidently.

Ali Abdaal 1:33:54 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:33:54 Um, it takes me four or five hours until I can start thinking clearly. So I usually just, just wander around and, and, and just see what comes into my brain. I mean, some days it's awesome because I will actually have a moment of inspiration just after waking up-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:08 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:34:08 ... and then I'm going straight to the laptop. Like, so this is an important thing. As soon as in the day, in, in ... Wake up, whatever point in that day the inspiration hits me, that's when I go and start writing immediately, as soon as I've got it.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:19 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:34:19 Um, look, I'll, I'll, I'll get up and wander around and I'll have another coffee, then another coffee, then I'll go home and I'll sit around, I'll read a book for like half an hour.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:27 And this is like 11:00 PM at this point.

Sheehan Quirke 1:34:28 Just whatever, just whatever time it is. It could be 11:00 PM, it could, it could be 11:00 AM.

Ali Abdaal 1:34:31 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:34:31 I, I don't know. Just whenever I've woken up. And then, and then wander around and, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:34:35 Wow.

Sheehan Quirke 1:34:36 Yeah. J- just, you know, I, I have a, have a few, uh, smoke a few cigarettes. Um, pr- probably, probably too many. Um, you know, maybe, may- maybe head down to the boozer, just, uh, get warmed up. Whatever it is. Um, and then eventually if you wait long enough, if I wait long enough my brain suddenly starts working.

Ali Abdaal 1:35:02 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:35:02 The cogs start whirring. And then after sort of dozily walking around, um, for a few hours, I suddenly start walking more quickly, and then suddenly, you know, the, the ... I hope it doesn't sound too silly, but some days if I'm on the street and then I've got an idea, I'll, I'll run home because I'm like, "I have to start typing before I..." And I, I'll, I'll literally run down the street back, back to where I live. Um, and I'll, and I'll write and write and write and write and write. If it's a thread on Twitter, write, write, write, write. Rewrite, rewrite. That doesn't work. Fix that. Um, and then once that's done, it can take one hour, it can take half an hour, it could take 10 hours. And then once it's done, hit send, hit post, send it out to all those people. Try not to think about it too much, that you've just put out something you've created to an audience of potentially millions of people. Shut the laptop, forget about the internet, forget about Twitter, go back to reading. Um, go back to smoking and boozing or whatever the hell it is. Um, and another wander, another walk around. Look at the birds if there are any at that time of day. Listen to them singing in the morning of course. Read a bit of poetry. Maybe see my friends depending on what time they're awake, um, if and when. The problem with this routine is, and, and with, I think, I don't know how you found it, where when you're working a lot really hard online trying to build an audience, it, and it ends up putting a big strain on your relationship with your friends and your family and so on and so forth because, look, e- every ... It's hard to say no when somebody says like, "You know, hey man, uh, we need an extra man for the games and I do wanna play some football." Like, I'd love to play football, but it, I know if I don't write this thing, maybe you've just got ... Maybe it's something boring like editing a video you've got to do.

Ali Abdaal 1:36:52 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:36:52 But if you don't do that thing, you know, you're gonna fall behind and you've gotta say no. Um, and I, I, you know, from time to time I do say yes and see my friends. Look, then whatever time it is I just get into bed and the day's done.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:06 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:37:07 And we begin again tomorrow. Um, and look, sometimes you have to get up early, sometimes you have a two hours sleep, sometimes you don't eat. Um, it feels great some days when I don't eat. Um, yesterday actually I, I tried some ... I, I just, I, I've been eat- I've been eating raw broccoli recently. I just, I just, I just got sick of bread and meat and cheese and crap, so I just thought I'm gonna just eat some broccoli. So yesterday I just ate some raw broccoli. Um, and look, some days I probably could lead a more healthy lifestyle. I do run. Um, going for a run is never a bad idea. This is what I've learned.

Ali Abdaal 1:37:43 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:37:43 You never feel worse afterwards, after you've gone for a run, after you've, you really put yourself, um, through it. And [sighs] that is a sort of portrait in, of a life, p- p- portrait of a day in my life, and it's been like that for, for 400 and something days now. Um, a lot of long, dark nights when you really think, "What is the point of this? Why, why am I writing this? What good is this doing? I don't know anything. I can't even put two words together." Days when you've wrote-- you've slept for two hours, less than that, you haven't slept, you've stayed up all night, you haven't slept, and you're still writing, still going, can barely think. Horrible, long, unpleasant nights like that, mixed with wonderful ones where you suddenly think, "Wow, I, I've written, I've written a good sentence." I, I've s- I've said this before. If I did have one aim every day, it would be just to write one good sentence. One sentence I can say, "That is a good set of words, well put together, useful, interesting, and maybe quite nice to read as well."

Ali Abdaal 1:38:50 If when you were a 19-year-old law student-

Sheehan Quirke 1:38:53 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:38:53 ... at Durham, you would've listened to your future self-

Sheehan Quirke 1:38:58 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:38:58 ... on this podcast describing this as the life of a professional writer-

Sheehan Quirke 1:39:01 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 1:39:01 ... what would've, what thoughts and feelings would've, would've come up?

Sheehan Quirke 1:39:04 Well, the, the first thing is I think I would've been delighted to know that I hadn't betrayed what I always wanted to do.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:11 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:39:12 I'd have been far more shocked and disappointed. Not that there, not that there's anything wrong with this line of work.

Ali Abdaal 1:39:18 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:39:19 But if I was a, a lawyer working in the city in one of those big glass towers making mega bucks, working hard, those people work very hard. If, if that was what I'd been saying to you on this podcast, then, then I would've been very disappointed in myself because I knew I would've betrayed what I really wanted. To be honest with you, I wouldn't have been completely surprised. I was like that as a student as well. I didn't go to most lectures 'cause I found I could just... All the materials were online for the lectures and the seminars-

Ali Abdaal 1:39:45 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:39:45 ... so I could just go through them myself-

Ali Abdaal 1:39:47 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:39:48 ... more quickly, um, and then do extra reading as well at the time. And, and I used to... Well, when, when I l- when I was at university, there was like-- I lived in, in, in accommodation where there was a dining hall, um, where, where they served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I used to go to breakfast, um, a- at 7:00 or 8:00 AM, whatever, and that was my evening meal.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:09 Ah. [laughs] Okay.

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:10 And I would see everyone in the morning. "How you doing, guys?" Run off to bed, go home. And then wake up just in time for, for dinner, um, yeah, let's say 6:00 PM-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:18 Okay

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:18 ... to then have my breakfast.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:19 So this is pretty normal for you? [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:21 Yeah. It is, it is-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:22 Doing something like this

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:23 ... look, I, I'm not-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:23 This is like your natural rhythm when left to your own devices.

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm completely-

Ali Abdaal 1:40:27 And you seem to be pretty happy. Would you say you're happy?

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:29 Yeah. I am happy.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:31 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:32 I am happy. But I... and I... but I don't think that's anything to do with-- Uh, it has something to do with the work I do, but it, it's more than that. It's more than that, I think.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:42 What do you mean?

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:43 Um, I think recently, I, I, I've come to see more clearly what it is that does make me happy every day. The writing isn't so much a part of that. I don't know if writing makes me happy.

Ali Abdaal 1:40:57 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:40:57 Look, obviously, in some sense, I'm, I'm materially better off than I was before, and I enjoy the work much more than I did before in some sense. But, but suddenly having this Twitter account and all these followers and people saying, "Hey, do you wanna write a book? Do you wanna come on the podcast? Do you wanna..." You know, you're-- in some sense, you have a little bit of fame, a little bit of popularity, a little bit of success. But now I've got that, I suddenly see much more clearly how quickly that can all disappear and be taken away. Like Boethius, you know, the wheel of fortune turns. One moment you're on top of the world, the next you've lost everything. And now I have something that feels worthwhile and feels important. I see much more plainly that this is not the thing which will make me happy ultimately. The, the, the there's a famous cliché, whatever, happiness comes from within. Um, it, it's completely true. And if I wake up every day, whatever state I am in life, wherever I am, and, and the value I draw, the source of energy and, and, and, and joy and peace that keeps, keeps me going isn't the, the, the money or, or the popularity. It's waking up and looking around me and, you know, it's rainy, it's sunny, whatever, wherever I am, whatever, whatever's going on, thinking, you know, "I'm alive. I am here. I can hear, and I can see, and I can walk, and I can run. I can taste. I've got food on the table. I've got clean running water coming out of my taps. I can have a shower, have a bed to sleep in." What in the world could possibly, could possibly make me unhappy when I have that s- to, to, to remember how blessed I am to have these, these things? And when you feel that way, suddenly all this other stuff seems less important, which may be quite healthy for somebody working online, when people very readily tell you, you know, that, that, that, you know, that you're an idiot or, or, you know, they wanna kill you or whatever the hell it is people say. They say good things as well, um, sometimes. Um, but it can make you sort of, sort of neurotic, I think-

Ali Abdaal 1:43:03 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:43:03 ... working online and worrying about what all these people are telling you and wor- and worrying every day, like, "Engagement's going down. I'm over. I'm washed. I'm old news." I feel that often. Um, but then I remember, no, no, th-this is nothing to do with what makes your life worth living, what makes you happy. And equally, you've got to remember it in the good times when you, you know, you hit it out of the park. Suddenly you're the biggest thing. You know, the, probably that, that thread I wrote about the danger of minimalist design got 100,000 likes. Sorry, 500,000 likes and tens of millions of views. There probably weren't many more things in the world written that day which were read by as many people. That's a strange thought to think I've written something today which has been read by more people in the world than anything else that has been wr- I mean, it's probably not quite true, but, but on some level. But you've also, you've also got to remember it then. Now, this s- sudden joy you're feeling about being popular and famous and successful That isn't the source of the happiness either. It's, it, it's only in you and how you see the world around you. And, um, some- something like that. That was quite a long answer to whatever question you asked me.

Ali Abdaal 1:44:16 That was a good answer. I feel like...

Sheehan Quirke 1:44:19 I think of it this way, like, like ima- imagine if you can be in this position where you wake up, like some days you feel crap. Some days you just wake up and, and you hate your life and, and, and e- everyone's annoying, and you're tired, and you're hungry, and you're ill, and, you know, you think, "Oh, God, I've got this meeting, I've got that meeting. Oh, I've got my taxes to pay. Oh, you know, I've got a million things to do." If even in that position you can just, just stop yourself for a moment, take, you know, take, take a minute to yourself and, and find some beauty, some meaning, some happiness in where you are and where you're standing in the moment you're living through. If in the worst moments of your life you can do that, then, you know, then nothing in the world can possibly affect you. Nothing can make you unhappy if you're able to, to, to have that strength of mind to, to, to remove yourself fr- from these things and remember how lucky you are and-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:18 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:45:18 ... so yeah, something along those lines. It was, it was a little bit strung out and, but-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:24 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 1:45:25 That's very good. Um, how does this sort of lifestyle vibe with, like, romantic relationships and-

Sheehan Quirke 1:45:32 Mm

Ali Abdaal 1:45:33 ... yeah, you mentioned w- with friends it's tricky because it's like sometimes you're awake and they're asleep and so on and so-

Sheehan Quirke 1:45:37 But, but, but, but, but-

Ali Abdaal 1:45:38 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:45:38 ... that, that's not the-- the trickiest part is saying no.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:41 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:45:41 Because I, I love my friends. I mean, I'm lucky to have some really good friends, you know, people who, you know, I'd, I'd die for.

Ali Abdaal 1:45:50 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:45:50 But then when you have to say, "No, sorry, I can't see you because I've got to write something on Twitter," um, it- it's kind of a bitter pill to swallow. So-

Ali Abdaal 1:46:00 Why is, why is that any different to, "No, I can't see you because I've got my shift at McDonald's"? Like, what's, what's the difference-

Sheehan Quirke 1:46:05 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:46:05 ... between those two things in your mind?

Sheehan Quirke 1:46:07 Oh, um, well, clearly based on my behavior, I quit my job at McDonald's to see my friends, but I'm not quitting this to see my friends.

Ali Abdaal 1:46:18 Hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:46:19 I have said no. I, I wouldn't have been able to do what I've done for 400-plus days if I hadn't said no to a lot of people and to a lot of things. Um, it certainly puts a strain on, on, on... You know, it's probably taking years off my life. I don't know. I'm probably not as, you know, not gonna live as long as I might have done. Um, one of the worst things you can do for your health, apparently, is have a bad sleeping pattern.

Ali Abdaal 1:46:40 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:46:41 Um, but is it worth it? Yeah. It's bloody worth it. You know, would I rather live to, to, to 80 and 90 and, and, and have not done this? Or, you know. Hopefully I can, touch wood, I live long enough to write a book, a couple of very good books that are worth writing and very much worth reading, that are a not, a not unworthy contribution, you know, to the great lineage of all the books that have ever been written and, and, and that might do some good for the world and for people. If I can d- write that one book and do this one thing, even if it kills me, even if I die right after I've done it, I think that would be more worthwhile than not doing so. I don't know if that sounds extreme, but that's how I feel.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:28 That sounds pretty extreme. [laughs] Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:47:29 Oh, I see. But, but, but that's, but I'm being honest. Like, like-

Ali Abdaal 1:47:32 No, of course. Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:47:32 ... that's just how I feel about it. It's like Socrates said. You know, Socrates, the Athenians condemned him to death, the ancient Greek philosopher. He was in his old age at the time, but they, they-- he had a trial apparently for corrupting the youth and, and, um, and, and, and bring-- and corrupting the youth and, and encouraging them to worship foreign gods.

Ali Abdaal 1:47:51 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:47:51 A lot-- something along those lines. So he has a big trial. The Athenians condemn Socrates to death. Um, but he had-- but he's very controversial. A lot of people don't think he should be. Anyway, but the sentence has been passed, but he's given a chance to escape. He's told, "You can actually... Look, we're gonna delay the sentence for, like, a day or two. You have time to get out of the city and keep living." And, and Socrates s- says, "No. W- why would I want to go and live in exile and live a life I don't want to live? What's important isn't the length of your life. The length of a life is essentially meaningless." Time, like, the only thing that's certain is, is that we die, right? So whether it's 10 years or, or 100 years, quantity has, has no bearing on the, on the value of that life. What matters is what you do with it and how you feel about it. And Socrates says this to his friends, and they're all weeping. They're all like, "You know, you know, w- we're gonna miss you so much," in slightly more poetic language. Um, Socrates, smiling, takes and drinks the hemlock, the poison, and, and dies, um, a dignified, noble death, and that's how I feel. I, I, I don't see the point in life for the sake of-- there is no in-- life for the sake of life. You know? It's like i- if, if you want to avoid danger, let's say, this is gonna be-- if you want to avoid danger, you know, every da- uh, wa- walking outside your house is dangerous. Getting in a car is dangerous.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:19 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:49:19 Then there are even more dangerous things you can do. But ultimately, if you wanted to make your life as safe as possible, you would stay at home all day and never leave, and you might live forever. But then what, what would be the point? You know, I th- think anything worth doing perhaps has an element of... Anyway, th- that's a separate point. I think you see what I'm-

Ali Abdaal 1:49:36 I see where you're getting at

Sheehan Quirke 1:49:37 ... what I'm driving at here.

Ali Abdaal 1:49:38 Um, so if-- a somewhat pointed question. Um, but-

Sheehan Quirke 1:49:42 No, please do

Ali Abdaal 1:49:43 ... if you were, let's say, on your deathbed-

Sheehan Quirke 1:49:46 Uh-huh

Ali Abdaal 1:49:46 ... do you think you'd be saying, "Hey, I'm really glad about all those times I said no to hang out, hanging out with my friends for the sake of writing Twitter threads"? Or do you th- do you think you'd be saying-

Sheehan Quirke 1:49:55 Great question

Ali Abdaal 1:49:57 ... "You know what? The, the stuff that I wrote has added value to the world, and I'm glad I did that, even if it meant not spending as many evenings playing football with my friends"?

Sheehan Quirke 1:50:07 Sure. Um- Two things to, to, uh, to say.

Ali Abdaal 1:50:10 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:50:11 Phil, great question. Um, the first thing I want to say is I just want to slightly maybe alter what I said. It, it's not just about adding value to the world. For me, it's almost actually just, just about trying to find the truth. Like, it-- that, I suppose that is actually my ultimate goal, to write something, to think of something, to, to do something that is truthful. Um, it's hard to think about improving the world. It's a slightly lofty goal or maybe too lofty. But anyway-

Ali Abdaal 1:50:32 Mm-hmm

Sheehan Quirke 1:50:32 ... with that correction in mind, I don't know. At this point, I'm gonna start, um, contradicting maybe what I said earlier. Although, although Ruskin, uh, has a great line where he says, "I'm, I'm not happy with anything I've said, with any of my opinions, until I have contradicted myself at least five times in public."

Ali Abdaal 1:50:48 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:50:49 I feel the same way. Or, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:50:51 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:50:51 ... like, um, like Petrarch, he has this great line where he's like, in one of his poems, um, "Neither yes nor no rings clearly in my heart."

Ali Abdaal 1:50:58 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:50:58 His point being you can see something from both sides.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:01 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:51:01 You can understand them both, and they both appeal to him, but he c- he can't decide.

Ali Abdaal 1:51:03 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:51:03 Like, when you put it like that-

Ali Abdaal 1:51:05 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:51:06 ... suddenly I'm back, I'm back to what, um, Michel de Montaigne said, the 16th century writer, essayist. He invented the essay, de Montaigne. He went back to his castle. He retired from public life at the age of 30 or 38, went back to his castle in France, and just started writing, and he did that till he died. Wonderful, interesting, funny essays. Anyway, he has this one observation where he's like, people-- he hears them complaining, "Oh, I've done nothing today. I've done nothing worthwhile. I've, I've written nothing, um, worth writing. I've done no work. I've earned no money. Um, I haven't been as productive as I could've been."

Ali Abdaal 1:51:38 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:51:38 "I've not created what I should've created." And Montaigne is like, "This is ridiculous. Have you not lived?" That's the question he asks them. "Have you not lived? What point is there to life other than being alive? This is the greatest joy, the greatest pleasure. The only purpose there is."

Ali Abdaal 1:51:55 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:51:56 Um, you know, like, like, like the trees, um, absorbing the rain, the water through their roots and the sun in their leaves, something like that.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:03 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:52:03 So suddenly, suddenly now I ask that question, I'm leaning more towards the Montaigne side and thinking, you know what, maybe that is true. Maybe I would give it all up just for, um, yeah, a few more nights of football with my friends.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:15 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:52:15 But here's the thing. I haven't, have I?

Ali Abdaal 1:52:17 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:52:17 Action always expresses what you believe to be most true and most important. So if I, if I'm trusting not my own thoughts and feelings right now, which often we can't really trust what we think we think, but we can trust what we've done.

Ali Abdaal 1:52:31 I don't know. So I've, I've often thought about this in the sense of, you know, how actions speak louder than words and all that kind of, all that kind of stuff, where, you know, it'll get to an evening, and it's a choice there between do I want to do more work for three hours, or do I want to go, like, have dinner with my grandma-

Sheehan Quirke 1:52:50 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:52:50 ... or something. And in that context and in that mode, my, my base instinct is to do more work because my base instinct is to drive economic output and make more money and, like, get more of a safety net-

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:04 Yeah, sure

Ali Abdaal 1:53:04 ... because I'm scared of, like, losing it all, becoming homeless and broke and all that shit. But my higher self is, like, thinking, "What are the values I want to live by? Do I want-- Like, what is the decision my 100 or 100-year-old self will tell me to make?"

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:15 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:16 Of course, I'm gonna fucking go have dinner with my grandma.

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:17 Of course you are. Of course you are.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:17 It's just a-- Of course.

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:18 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:19 And in that moment, I need to essentially rise above my base, my base desire [laughs] to continue to drive economic output.

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:24 No, I like-

Ali Abdaal 1:53:25 And in that sense, I'm like, there are times where I allow my-- I allow myself to-- There, there, there are times where, where the action is not actually in alignment with how I would like to live. That's, again, where I struggle with this, where it's like, is it true that actions speak louder than words? Maybe it is, but-

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:44 That, that's very insightful.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:45 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:45 I mean, I, I don't think it negates the idea that actions speak louder than words.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:48 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:49 I think it simply speaks to the fact that you can, um, guide your actions.

Ali Abdaal 1:53:54 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:53:54 It's, it's not as if they guide us. We do choose what we do. That's what you're saying, that you can actually have this instinct or this desire, the default just to work, work. I mean, yeah, you, man, you work a hell of a lot. But then suddenly to think, "No, hold on, this is what I should be doing." I mean, yeah, that, that, that's, that's-- I think a lot of people in, in your position and, and perhaps mine have that, have that same dilemma. And people who are maybe thinking about they want to create content online, they want to be a YouTuber, a writer, whatever it is, that's something they'll have to face as well.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:24 Yeah. And they often have the opposite dilemma initially, where it's like, my default is to scroll TikTok.

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:27 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:28 Oh, you're saying I have to not watch Netflix for three hours if I want to write a Twitter thread?

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:31 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:32 Yes. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:33 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:33 And, but, and eventually, if you do that and you enjoy the thing, you start preferring writing the Twitter thread-

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:54:37 ... to watching Netflix for three hours. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:39 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:40 And now you have to start st- and now you have to stop yourself from doing the thing so that you can actually take care of your health and sleep on time and hang out with your friends and family. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:47 Yeah. I mean, look-

Ali Abdaal 1:54:48 It's like-

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:49 But, but here, here again

Ali Abdaal 1:54:50 ... constant balancing act. Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:50 I go back to the via media. You can do both.

Ali Abdaal 1:54:52 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:54:53 You can do both. Um, I'm not an extremist. And, and, uh, uh, uh, yeah, the example you gave is really good, and I, I think I feel the same way. And to some extent, I have lived that way. And one of the reasons why in the past year I've not slept anywhere near as much as I should have done. Look, look, I, I either sleep for three hours a night or, or 12 hours, basically.

Ali Abdaal 1:55:10 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:55:11 That's the only-- No, no, no, no other way. I don't, I don't have eight hours sleep. It's either nothing or everything. Part of that is because I have actually said yes to a lot of stuff as well. I've been very fortunate to travel a lot in the last year. Um, sometimes on a bit of a shoestring, but always traveling, always writing rather-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:27 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 1:55:27 ... um, when I'm traveling. Trying, trying to, trying to say yes more often and then also working at the same time, um, which is quite exhausting. But when you're seeing your friends and then you're doing the thing you love, you could, you could do it forever. Um, so yeah, that-- I, I should make that clear, clear as well. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:48 Hmm. Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:55:49 But I don't know. It's hard to, it's hard to know what one would think on one's deathbed. Um-

Ali Abdaal 1:55:54 Or if that's even the right mental model to, like-

Sheehan Quirke 1:55:57 Yeah. Well, listen, this is another thing Montaigne says.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:00 Oh, yeah. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:56:00 He's brilliant. He, he's like, "Why do all these, you know, philosophers and these gurus be like, you gotta think about death, and what would you say when you're ready to die?" And he'd go on about death all, death all the time. Montaigne's like, just- Take it. Stop worrying about that. You, you'll deal with that when you come to it. Don't worry about the future and all these details. Take things as they come, you know? But Montaigne's brilliant for that. He, he, he's brilliant, uh, Montaigne, for this sort of very, very, very common sense wisdom.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:24 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:56:25 That being said, I, I, s- I'm not saying this 'cause I agree with everything he, um, he wrote.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:29 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:56:29 At times I do, then at other times I'm leaning more towards, you know-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:32 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:56:32 ... stoicism has seen a great big revival recently. I'm, I'm, I'm leaning, leaning much more towards, um, Seneca, you know, on, on his death bed being the only one who's calm and collected while all his, all his friends were weeping around him, um, saying that he was, you know.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:46 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:56:47 Something like that.

Ali Abdaal 1:56:48 Yeah. The middle way. So what's the, what's next for you? What are you, what are you working on at the moment?

Sheehan Quirke 1:56:53 Well, today, uh, I mentioned earlier there'll be a thread coming out in a-

Ali Abdaal 1:56:56 Nice [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:56:57 ... few hours. I don't know how long it will be. And then a book. I'm working on a book. I think it's the first time I've ever said it publicly or announced it-

Ali Abdaal 1:57:06 Oh, wow. Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:57:06 ... that I'm working on a book. Um, to be specific, a book proposal at the moment, um, about the things I'm writing about. And it's just, it's just a miracle, man. Like, as I said, having had all these rejections from literary agents, so, for so many times I've got this novel, please, please let me write a book. Suddenly now people are asking me to write a book. They're saying, "Please, Sheehan." You know, it's 'cause I've got an audience, right? We don't, we don't need to pretend it's for any other reason than that.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:32 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:57:32 When you have a big audience, they know they can se- they have someone to sell the book to. You've create- you've done all the marketing for them.

Ali Abdaal 1:57:36 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:57:36 Great. Um, th- that's rather the, the more cold commercial side of it. But anyway, I'm being asked to write a book, and that's what I want to do. And I hope this book will be a, um, a distillation and improvement of everything I've written thus far. Um, that is the next big thing for me. It's got to be. The, the work on Twitter's been great, but I think it's time to make a definitive statement to create something, a single work, pour everything into it. Create a single work which is, as I, as I said, useful, interesting, and beautiful.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:13 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:13 Um, obviously you know what it's like to, to, to write a book. Congratulations, by the way-

Ali Abdaal 1:58:17 Thank you. It's a long process

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:18 ... on, on, on getting it.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:19 Yeah. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:19 Yeah. And I mean, I understand it's a long process.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:22 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:22 I've written books before, but, but that's when I'm on my own s- scribbling away. But when you have deadlines and editors and, and all these other people involved-

Ali Abdaal 1:58:30 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:30 ... and departments, I imagine it must be quite a-

Ali Abdaal 1:58:34 Yeah. There's a bit more to it. I'm not sure how I feel about the deadlines. I don't like deadlines.

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:39 Yeah?

Ali Abdaal 1:58:39 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:40 My, my friend has this great line, Harry Dry, who I should mention by name. Um, he, he runs a marketing website. He runs a brilliant newsletter as well. The best copywriter in the world is how one Twitter user once described him.

Ali Abdaal 1:58:54 Oh.

Sheehan Quirke 1:58:55 Um, he, uh, he told me once, "What you lack is deadlines, not ideas."

Ali Abdaal 1:59:01 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:02 And that was very wise, and that's essentially the rule I've applied to my work on Twitter, one thread a day. You have to just ... The ideas are cheap. There's like 10 billion ideas, and you can think of 100 ideas a day. You, the, the difficulty's in picking one and executing it.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:16 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:17 That's the skill. So anyway, deadlines are useful, but I know what you mean.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:20 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:20 I, I, I'm not the biggest fan of deadlines.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:23 I like internal deadlines rather than-

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:24 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 1:59:24 ... externally imposed deadlines.

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:25 Oh, I see. Right.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:26 Like when there is a sponsored deadline on a video-

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:27 Well, the thing is-

Ali Abdaal 1:59:28 ... I'll be like, okay

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:28 ... man, here- look, here's the, here's the good thing about deadlines. You can miss them.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:31 Mm. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:31 And so what?

Ali Abdaal 1:59:32 Like no one cares. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:33 No one care. Like the world doesn't end.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:34 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:35 I used to, I, I used to get ... Annoy people at university-

Ali Abdaal 1:59:38 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:38 ... like around exam time. I'd be like, "Come on, man. It's just a, it's just, it's just an exam. It's just an essay. What could go wrong," you know?

Ali Abdaal 1:59:43 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:44 Uh, people didn't like to hear that. And probably, I, I probably sounded rather obnoxious at the time.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:48 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:48 Um, but I, I did believe it. Anyway, yeah, the book. So I mean, how, how long did it take you to, to put it together?

Ali Abdaal 1:59:54 Start to finish, three years.

Sheehan Quirke 1:59:55 Wow.

Ali Abdaal 1:59:56 Uh, as in three years if we count like from the day the editor sent me the email being like, "Hey, do you wanna write a book?" Then the, the propo- itself was a year and a half, and then the writing itself, and then the writing and editing was another year and a half.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:05 Wow. So wow, it's like you've put a lot of time and-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:09 Yeah, but it was-

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:09 ... blood, sweat, and tears

Ali Abdaal 2:00:09 ... it was, it was very half-ass time.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:11 Yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:11 It was like kind of a few hours a week kind of like-

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:13 Yeah. This, this is it. Exactly

Ali Abdaal 2:00:14 ... with other shit going on and stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:15 Exactly. I, I, I think my-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:16 If I had my time again, I'd be more focused. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:18 Sure. Yeah, yeah. Which I think that's my plan.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:20 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:20 To, to literally lock myself in a room and not eat until I've finished this book.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:23 [laughs] That's crazy.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:24 Um, some-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:24 Maybe that'll get it done.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:25 So some- yeah. Well, exactly, right?

Ali Abdaal 2:00:26 Go on a hunger strike.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:28 Um, but o- often a lot of good stuff does come from necessity.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:30 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:31 And I think that's why I said earlier you shouldn't give writers too much money, 'cause then it's no longer-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:34 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:34 I mean, it's not complete- uh, nothing, nothing ... Uh, sort of I wish c- everything I say should be caveat-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:40 Of course. Yeah, yeah

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:41 ... caveated by the view that there's no single rule. And this is im- this actually, this is really important for anybody listening, anybody who wants to be a content creator, writer, YouTuber. Um, you'll have e- I mean, with, with your, um, course, you'll have experiences with your students I imagine, is it's like there's no single way to do it.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:55 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:55 There's never a single rule, a single approach, a single method-

Ali Abdaal 2:00:58 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 2:00:58 ... a single journey.

Ali Abdaal 2:00:59 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:00 Um, and everybody's different f- fundamentally, and like what works for one person doesn't work for another. And history is true of this as well.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:05 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:06 Like, uh, you know, I use the example of Anthony Trollope, the 19th century novelist, not so famous now. Go into any secondhand bookshop, and it'll be filled with the novels of Anthony Trollope. He was like the J.K. Rowling-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:17 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:17 ... whatever of his day. Um, but he worked at the post office his whole life, and he'd wake up at 5:00 in the morning-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:22 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:22 ... write 3,000 words, head off to work-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:24 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:24 ... at the post office. Um, so he, he lived a very normal, orderly life. But then you've got, you know, someone like Byron, Lord Byron, the, the great romantic poet who lived a scandalous life.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:34 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:34 He liked to stay up and see the sun rise as well when he was working.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:37 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:37 And he was also great. So, you know, there, there's, there's no one way to, to write or, or, or to create or to produce. Um-

Ali Abdaal 2:01:43 Yeah, I think that's why I was, I was very keen to talk to you on the pod to get your story, because it's basically the opposite way of working as me and a lot of other people I interview.

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:53 No, no. I, I, I, yeah, I appreciate you, you bring me here, 'cause I think it is important that people hear this.

Ali Abdaal 2:01:57 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:01:58 Look, um, I, it does concern me a little bit maybe ... Look, it's not the worst thing. In fact, it's great that the world seems to be getting healthier and more organized, and people are being encouraged to actually live their lives more purposively, purposively. Don't know if I'm pronouncing the word correctly. But I, I think I'd like to remind people that this sort of routine isn't the only way, and that you don't necessarily ... It might work for you But equally, you don't necessarily need, um, complex note-taking methods and, uh, you don't necessarily need eight hours of sleep a night. I'm probably gonna get people-

Ali Abdaal 2:02:29 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:02:29 ... telling me that, that I'm endangering the health of others by saying this, but, but I, I honestly believe it to be true. Like, you can just ... You don't need to do any of these things.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:38 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:02:38 And I think maybe sometimes it can even get in the way.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:40 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:02:40 Like, you think by, by having the perfect routine, good things will just happen-

Ali Abdaal 2:02:45 Mm-hmm

Sheehan Quirke 2:02:46 ... and they'll manifest. That might not be true.

Ali Abdaal 2:02:48 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:02:48 And at least if ever I've written anything good, it's not because I had a good routine or because I was being productive. It all came from passion and brute force-

Ali Abdaal 2:02:58 Hmm

Sheehan Quirke 2:02:58 ... and-

Ali Abdaal 2:02:59 Just battling the page

Sheehan Quirke 2:02:59 ... a little bit of chaos.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:00 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:01 The madness that comes from a little bit of chaos, you know, you can't buy that. You can't capture it. You can't get it. You c- you can't, you can't choose to find it, but you can optimize it out of existence, I think.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:14 Ooh, you can optimize it out of existence?

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:16 Mm-hmm. Yeah, you can optimize the spark within you-

Ali Abdaal 2:03:19 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:19 ... that makes you suddenly decide to say, "This is what I'm doing today." Like, uh, you suddenly have this flash of inspiration. If you're too optimized, you can squeeze it out of yourself.

Ali Abdaal 2:03:27 Yeah, if you're overscheduled. I've ... I, I think I'm running into this issue right now-

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:30 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 2:03:30 ... where I'm overscheduled. Like, I look at the calendar for the next 90 days, and it's hard to find-

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:37 No

Ali Abdaal 2:03:37 ... a single day of, like, wanting to hang out with a friend because it's just, like-

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:41 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:03:42 ... one thing after another after another. And I, and I've chosen to do all these things, but it's like, first world problems. It's like, oh, you know, we're flying to Dublin to give a talk at Google, and flying to Brighton to give a talk at something. And then it's like-

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:51 I mean, yeah, but that's, that's, that's incri-

Ali Abdaal 2:03:52 ... like going to, going to Italy and then doing-

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:54 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:03:54 ... this thing with the podcast, and then going to-

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:55 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:03:55 ... Austin for two weeks, then going to Miami-

Sheehan Quirke 2:03:57 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:03:57 ... and then going to fucking Florida. It's ugh, what a nightmare. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:01 What a ... Exactly right, man. Like-

Ali Abdaal 2:04:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:03 ... it's, you've always gotta remember yourself. Like, remind yourself how, how wonderful that is. But, but that's, that ... Well, what you've just said-

Ali Abdaal 2:04:08 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:08 ... terrifies me.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:08 Yeah, overscheduling.

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:09 N- 90 days of scheduling? Bloody hell. But, you know, we're talking about this from a creativity point of view. I, I think creativity c- can be very much stifled in that way, and the thing that only you can say can be stifled by following too many methods and routines laid out for you by other people. Um, look, it, that sounds ter- 90 days. Look, look, when people say to me, like, "Are you free for a podcast?" Like, I'm just like, "Yeah, just-"

Ali Abdaal 2:04:31 [laughs] Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:31 "... just give me a day. I'm-"

Ali Abdaal 2:04:33 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:33 "... I don't have anything planned."

Ali Abdaal 2:04:34 Or people say to me, "Hey, have you got time for a coffee?" I'm like-

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:38 Well, how, how about 4:30-

Ali Abdaal 2:04:39 Not until, like, January the 18th-

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:40 Oh. [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:04:41 ... kind of vibe. And I'm, and I feel so bad about it-

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:43 Yeah, yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:04:43 ... because these are friends of mine.

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:44 Yeah, yeah.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:44 But because I've overscheduled myself by saying yes to too much stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:48 Because in, in isolation it's like I wanted to say yes to all those things.

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:51 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:52 And I didn't, I just never appreciate the value of unscheduled time, at least in advance.

Sheehan Quirke 2:04:58 Mm-hmm.

Ali Abdaal 2:04:58 I lo- I look six weeks out and I think, "Oh, the calendar looks free. Of course I'll put that in there."

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:01 And there's some sense of-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:02 And that just gets full up.

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:03 Sorry, y- y- but by compar- I don't-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:04 Sorry, we're just complaining about our life right now. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:06 No, no, no, no, no, no. Well, yeah, you ... But, but-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:07 First world problems, you know, cry me a river and all that kind of stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:10 Yeah, exactly. Like, you're, you're living an incredible life-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:13 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:13 ... doing amazing things. It, it's all stuff to be grateful for.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:16 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:17 But yeah, by comparison, I, I don't have a calendar.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:19 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:19 I, I don't put things into a calendar. I just hopefully remember where I'm supposed to be on a given day.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:25 Yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:25 Um, which often doesn't work. Um, so I, I am ... I'll take my chance-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:31 That's fine

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:31 ... to publicly apologize to all the people-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:33 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:33 ... who I promised I would speak to or meet.

Ali Abdaal 2:05:36 Yeah. Different ways of doing, different of doing-

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:37 Yeah

Ali Abdaal 2:05:37 ... doing the same stuff.

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:38 This is it. This is, this is, this is the input. There's no one way. And for all those people who are, who, who may be tr- yeah, optimizing their creativity out of themselves-

Ali Abdaal 2:05:46 Mm

Sheehan Quirke 2:05:46 ... and, and they're the ones who I hope can, um, you know, if I can give them a little bit of consolation and, and faith that no, if, if they are a slightly more chaotic individual ... I mean, I don't, I don't think I'm a, I'm not a chaotic person. I'm, I'm very calm. I j- I'm just not organized-

Ali Abdaal 2:06:02 Yeah

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:02 ... w- w- which is, which is not the same thing.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:03 Mm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:04 Anyway, um, it's to those people who I would like to offer a little bit of, um, support, that if you try these methods and they don't work, there are the alternative solutions. Anyway.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:18 Final question. Um-

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:19 Okay

Ali Abdaal 2:06:19 ... if you had, if you had to-

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:22 Mm-hmm

Ali Abdaal 2:06:22 ... give three pieces of life advice-

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:25 [laughs]

Ali Abdaal 2:06:26 ... to someone who's listened to the last two hours of our conversation and vibes with your way of looking at the world, what would they be?

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:34 Um-

Ali Abdaal 2:06:36 I'm putting you on the spot here because I know you can take it, but [laughs] yeah.

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:38 Yeah. Look, look, look, man, I, I, I dunno whether, I dunno whether to be-

Ali Abdaal 2:06:42 With all the caveats that advice and-

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:44 Sure, look

Ali Abdaal 2:06:44 ... around giving advice.

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:45 Exactly. To have cold showers, smoke as much as you want, drink as much as you want, and make sure you get the thing written. That's all it is.

Ali Abdaal 2:06:52 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:06:53 Something like that. And don't go to any meetings, and ignore all your emails. Life will be fine. Something like that. That, that would, that would be my slightly, uh ... No, I'm not even being facetious. I probably believe everything I just said. Because look, look, if it ... Life advice in general or for somebody who wants to be a writer or content creator? Because look, I don't think I'm in a position to give anybody ... Like, what do I, what-

Ali Abdaal 2:07:20 No, let's say for a content creator.

Sheehan Quirke 2:07:21 Sure. But look, what, what the hell do I know? You, we have this impression that just 'cause somebody has done something, they know how they did it. If you ask, um, say, you know, Tyson Fury why he's such a good boxer, you know, he pr- well, how does he know? He, he's just a massive guy. He's a brilliant fighter-

Ali Abdaal 2:07:39 [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:07:39 ... and has a heart of a lion. I'm not saying I have any of those qualities, of course, but, but, but my point being, I, I, I, I'm not in a position necessarily to give advice. But if I ... I can tell you what I've learned.

Ali Abdaal 2:07:49 Mm-hmm.

Sheehan Quirke 2:07:49 Okay. Maybe if I was to tell somebody what I have learned is this, and it goes back to what I said earlier, and this will be specifically for writers. Forget everybody else in the world. It's you and the page, and that's all there is. Forget ... This is true whether you're on your own or you've already got an audience, you're trying to build an audience. Forget everything else in the world. It's you and the page, and you're trying to write something which is truthful, which you would stand by, and that's it. There's, there's nothing else. There is nothing else that matters when it comes to writing. And every other worry, every other fear, every other concern, hope, dream, anxiety, doubt, throw it all out the window. That's how I believe, at least, I think cautiously you might write something that's worth reading, which isn't true of most things in the world. And maybe hopefully one or two of the things I've written might fall into that category, although I can't say so for sure.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:02 Nice. Jim, thank you so much.

Sheehan Quirke 2:09:04 Thank you for having me. Um, I hope this has been of, of use to some people. Also, great questions. You're, you're a very good interviewer.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:11 Thank you.

Sheehan Quirke 2:09:11 A very good conversationalist.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:12 You're a very good guest. [laughs]

Sheehan Quirke 2:09:14 I hope so. I hope so.

Ali Abdaal 2:09:14 Yeah. 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.