Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal | E93

1. 0:00 – 2:23

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      Ali Abdaal, he is a creator, he is a entrepreneur, he came first at Cambridge, and he is a productivity expert.

   2. AAAli Abdaal0:08

      The way that I define productivity is just kind of using my time well, and working on things that are meaningful to me, and optimizing for happiness. I feel unproductive when I know there is something I want to do and I am not doing the thing because I'm scrolling Instagram. Procrastination is a problem with getting started, and so the key to overcoming procrastination is that little nudge at the start towards actually getting started. There are a few- a few hacks, the- the one that I use all the time is the- the two-minute rule, two minutes is all you need to change your life. The way I try and remind myself of this point of, "I- I am enough," is thinking and- and really trying to internalize that the journey is more important than the destination. We do need a destination, but really, like, am I enjoying myself day-to-day, and am I kind of living the dream, as it were, day-to-day, and not- and not so much worrying about the goal at the end of it?

   3. NANarrator1:01

      (music)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett1:03

      Productivity, procrastination, two things that all people aspiring to success, or really aspiring to get anything done, often struggle with. Today, we're gonna try and solve that problem. Today, I'm joined by Ali Abdaal. He is a creator on YouTube, he's got millions and millions of subscribers, he is a entrepreneur, he's a Cambridge graduate who came first at Cambridge, and he is a productivity expert. And honestly, he's read more books than anyone I think I've ever met on the subject, but generally about how to become the best version of yourself. This conversation isn't just about productivity and procrastination, it ends up twisting and turning through a bunch of different topics, like relationships and friendships, and the meaning of life and happiness, but what else would you expect from this podcast? You're gonna enjoy this conversation. Ali is an incredibly intelligent, intellectual, compassionate, self-aware individual, and he's able to talk in a way that simplifies complex ideas for people like me and you. So, without further ado, my name's Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

   5. NANarrator2:19

      (music)

2. 2:23 – 11:03

   Your early years

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:23

      I really start here with all my guests, because I think it's so foundation- foundational to everything that they then say thereafter, is getting a bit of context as to who you are, where you came from-

   2. AAAli Abdaal2:32

      Mm-hmm.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett2:33

      ... and the environment in which Ali was created.

   4. AAAli Abdaal2:36

      Oh, interesting question. Okay, so, um, I was born in Karachi in Pakistan in 1994, so I'm 27 now. And when I was two years old, my mom and dad divorced and my mom moved us to Lesotho in Southern Africa. Uh, it's a country most people haven't heard of, it's surrounded by South Africa, like, landlocked by South Africa, and we were there for about five, six years growing up. Uh, at that point, you know, my mom really valued education, she was working as a doctor and she knew the educational opportunities in Southern Africa, in Lesotho, were not great, and so we made a plan to move to the UK. And so we came to the UK in 2003, she started working here as a doctor, and we moved around a little bit in different areas in the UK. And it was really in- in secondary school, uh, that I did, in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, where I discovered kind of entrepreneurship and the internet and computers and stuff. And basically, all throughout school, I'd be the kid getting, like, decent grades and everything like that, but the thing I, like, I would- I would look forward to going home so that I could do some more coding or tinker on some websites or try and shill my services as a freelance graphic designer or something for five dollars here and there. And I was making kind of, you know, a little bit of money, I- I lied about my age on PayPal, I pretended I was 18 when I was actually, like, 13 (laughs) , and I was getting, like, five, ten dollars from these small businesses, uh, here and there, and thinking, "Oh my God, I'm- I'm making money on the internet, this is incredible." And then as I went through school, uh, me and my friends, we were all quite interested in the entrepreneurship stuff. We were all, we were doing, like, well in school, and I was like, "Oh, it would be cool to go to Oxford or Cambridge, would be cool to do medicine," but really, my passion at the time (laughs) was going home and- and tinkering with websites. And so that was kind of the environment that I grew up in. Then when I went to university, you know, thankfully I got a place for medicine at Cambridge, which was great, awesome experience.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett4:24

      Just on that point there-

   6. AAAli Abdaal4:25

      Yeah.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett4:25

      ... so you- you were tinkering on websites and loving it, that's the thing you were, like, running home from school to do?

   8. AAAli Abdaal4:30

      Yeah.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett4:30

      Um, but then you go for medicine.

   10. AAAli Abdaal4:33

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett4:33

       What was the driving force behind you deciding not to do the tinkering on websites for a living and going and doing medicine? I mean, I, you said there that your mother was a doctor.

   12. AAAli Abdaal4:41

       Yeah, so I think when you grow up in the sort of environment that I did, whereby parents are doctors, all of my mom's friends were doctors, everyone we knew had, like, doctor parents, there are so few viable careers where you think, you know, "What are my, what are my job options in life?" Well, it's either doctor or lawyer or engineer, like, it's literally just those three. You don't even realize that other jobs even exist. Not in, like, a- a way where the parents are telling you this consciously, but more like just the narrative that you absorb from the people you're around is that I could be a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer. Uh, and so that was always in the back of my mind that, "Oh, it would be cool to be a doctor one day." And when I was around 16, I-

   13. SBSteven Bartlett5:17

       Can I ask why?

   14. AAAli Abdaal5:18

       Yeah. I think because doctor seemed like a prestigious thing, and I think, I- I- I remember even when I was, like, six and seven, when people used to ask me what I would want to be when I was older, I used to say either a neurosurgeon or a gastroenterologist, not even knowing what that meant, but it was just, like, a big word that would make me feel cool that, "Oh, yeah." And then the adults that I would speak to would be like, "Oh, hello, fancy."

   15. SBSteven Bartlett5:41

       So that in and of itself-

   16. AAAli Abdaal5:42

       Yeah.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett5:42

       ... where does prestige exist? One would assume that it exists in the mind of others. Like, do you know what I mean?

   18. AAAli Abdaal5:47

       Yes.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett5:47

       Like, so, that's why I was, I would, if you had said to me, "I really want to save people's lives," I would really, have a real, high desire to, like, save lives and to d- then I'd be like, "Okay, that's the voice inside." But when- when it's, like, status, then it's-

   20. AAAli Abdaal6:00

       It was very much status and prestige.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett6:02

       Yeah.

   22. AAAli Abdaal6:02

       And that's the thing that I think about, to this day, a lot about, like, now that I've taken a break from medicine...You know, often if I'm- (laughs) if I'm having conversations with my mum, the rea- she'll try and talk me back into doing medicine again.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett6:16

       Really?

   24. AAAli Abdaal6:17

       And one of her kind of bargaining chips on that front is, "Oh, but think about the prestige." You know, medicine has a certain prestige around it that being a YouTuber doesn't. And that's always like, "Ooh," you know, it's that- that side of me that's like, "Well, I want to carve my own path." I don't- I don't care about status and- status and prestige. And then th- there's the other half where it's still like a- kind of a narrative going through my life that I need to optimize for pris- like this sort of old world prestige.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett6:42

       Instead of happiness?

   26. AAAli Abdaal6:43

       Instead of happiness, yeah.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett6:44

       Which is bizarre, isn't it?

   28. AAAli Abdaal6:45

       It's completely bizarre. Yeah, this is, uh... (laughs) I was-

   29. SBSteven Bartlett6:49

       Some strange, like, cult- it's a cultural thing as well, largely, I think. With- I think with- m- you know, my mum dropped out of school when she was seven years old.

   30. AAAli Abdaal6:55

       Mm-hmm.
3. 11:03 – 14:54

   How did you become a Youtuber?

   1. AAAli Abdaal11:03

      to that effect.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett11:03

      I always find it a little bit weird that someone would just, like, go on YouTube and make a video. You know what I mean? Like, that fe- when you hear about the first time when these big YouTubers started, whether it's like True Geordie, who I've spoken to here, or Alfie Deyes, who I think became, like, the biggest- one of the biggest YouTubers in the country. Like, that first decision to record yourself, usually in your bedroom on a shit camera, talking to nobody-

   3. AAAli Abdaal11:24

      Yep.

   4. SBSteven Bartlett11:25

      ... is a little bit weird. (laughs) Do you know what I mean?

   5. AAAli Abdaal11:27

      (laughs) It is very odd.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett11:28

      How did- how did it start for you?

   7. AAAli Abdaal11:30

      It started for me, so I- I harbored dreams of being a YouTuber since about 2009.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett11:34

      Why?

   9. AAAli Abdaal11:35

      Um, because I used to follow, uh, people like Kurt Schneider and Sam Tsui, who were kind of YouTube cover artists. They would produce covers of popular songs, and those covers were amazing. Like, they filmed them beautifully, arranged them beautifully, and I had a few friends who were really good at singing, and I fancied myself, so then I was quite into maths, I- I liked the idea of playing multiple musical instruments. So I thought, I wanna be the sort of YouTuber where I can play along to songs and my friends who are actually good at singing can sing along to those songs, and that's the sort of YouTuber I want to be. And so I sort of d- had a few, like, s- sort of stop starty moments over the- over those, like, next 10 years of kind of trying and failing at this.But ultimately, the reason I became a YouTuber was because it was content marketing for my medical school admissions business, where I was helping people get into med school, teaching them how to do well on these exams. And no one was really creating decent content for free on the internet about those exams. There was these kind of corporations creating boring corporate-looking stuff. Um, and I saw that gap in the market, I was like, "Great. If I can create these sort of tutorials on YouTube, content marketing, people will watch my tutorials for free. And if they like me enough, they'll sign up to the course." And that's y- why I started speaking to a camera (laughs) in my bedroom. It was like, "All right, guys. Here are some tips for section one of the BMAT. You know, section one is all about critical thinking, the 60 minutes and 35 questions and blahdy blah, and here's how you do it." And I was so familiar with that stuff, having taught it for five years, um, that that started to do reasonably okay early on, in the days where I had like 51 subscribers, 52 subscri- you know, refreshing the YouTube app every day to be like, "Oh my God, I've got another view." Um, and then it- it sort of morphed from there.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett13:10

       Was there a tipping point where you thought, "Fuck, this is gonna be bigger than the- the thing that I intended this to support"?

   11. AAAli Abdaal13:18

       Yeah. That tipping point was my first video that went viral. Uh, and it was a video about how to study for exams. Um, and this was one of those weird- w- weird things that I l- I look back on where w- when I started YouTube, it was in June of 2017, I knew that I wanted to make this video, this sort of how to study for exams evidence-based tips at some point further down the line. It was a topic that I'd researched extensively. I w- like people would come to me asking for help on how to study for their exams. There's actually a whole body of, like, psychological research on this that we just don't get taught in school around what are the actually most effective ways to learn. And so, I knew I wanted to make a video about this, but I knew that I wanted that to be like my 100th video rather than my first video because I knew that I- I knew nothing about cameras or editing or anything, and I reasoned it would take me 100 videos of being bad at it before I could make a video that was actually good. And I thought to myse- to my- to myself, "Okay, I really wanna put all my- everything into this 100th video so that this video can potentially go big." And that's kinda what ended up happening. It- I think it was my 81st video or something rather than my 100th, but that video went viral. I- I had like 4,000 subscribers before, just sort of slowly building up, and then over the next few weeks it just exploded up to like 20,000, 25,000, um, and I was getting all these comments from people who knew me in real life being like, "Oh, I've- I've seen your video. I didn't realize you were a YouTuber." And that was the tipping point, um, which r- sort of started that exponential growth trajectory that kind of you talk about in the compounding chapter.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett14:45

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, but then ag- I- I've- so there's two things there. The fir- the s- I'll just do them in the order in which-

   13. AAAli Abdaal14:51

       Yeah.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett14:51

       ... I- I thought of them. Um,

4. 14:54 – 21:56

   The importance of consistency

   1. SBSteven Bartlett14:54

      ca- let's- 'cause you mentioned compounding there, what have you learnt from your experience on YouTube about the importance of- of consistency, um, and also from what you kind of- what typically happens with viral videos is just there's- it's so impossibly hard to predict the outcome, right? So, a lot of people say- y- that l- a lot of people on YouTube will make videos called How to Make a Viral Video, and in marketing it's all like, "Here are the secret sauce, here are the secret principles." But in reality, you can only- you can h- you can guess a couple of principles, but the outcome is hard to predict. So, what have you learnt about consistency, but then also being able to predict the outcome?

   2. AAAli Abdaal15:30

      Yeah. Uh, I- when I was listening to your con- your compounding chapter, I just found myself like nodding along like an absolute maniac to- to everything you were saying. I think th- it- it applies so much to YouTube. Uh, the- these days I- I teach people how to- how to be part-time YouTubers. And the- and the thing I say is that if you make one video every week for two years, then I 100% guarantee it will change your life. I can't put any numbers on it, I can't tell you you'll have 100,000 subscribers or how much money you'll be making, but I can 100% guarantee it will change your life. At the very least, in terms of the skills and the experience and the contact and the friends you're gonna make through that process. But you have to put out one video a week and you have to do it for at least two years. (laughs) Um, and yeah, but-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett16:07

      Can I just ask on that then, on that point there, what is it that wou- would make someone do that? Because I mean, that's like fucking clean the floor every day for two years and I promise you it'll work out for you.

   4. AAAli Abdaal16:22

      Mm.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett16:22

      It like... People don't seem to be able to do those kinds of things without some kind of intrinsic driver, so I'm- like, I'm curious 'cause you could say that to a million people, you could broadcast that through a tannoy, and 95% plus-

   6. AAAli Abdaal16:36

      Yeah.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett16:36

      ... will still fail. So, what is it that makes people from your- your experience, but also, yeah, from your own life, makes them do the work without guarantee of outcome?

   8. AAAli Abdaal16:46

      Yeah. I think, again, (laughs) I- I feel like this has been a bit of a copout because this is stuff that you talk about, uh, like en- enjoying the process, and this is kind of the theme of the book that I'm writing around how, you know, it's actually quite hard to show up week after week, not see any results, not see the views and the subscribers going up and- and stuff particularly quickly. But the thing that makes it bearable, the thing that makes it fun is actually enjoying the process and shifting away from outcome-oriented goals like a certain number of views, a certain number of subscribers, and more towards goals that are 100% within our control. Like, I just want to make two videos a week, and if I'm happy with the video then it goes out. And in fact, even if I'm not happy with the video, it goes out anyway. And everyone I know who has succeeded on YouTube has had that kind of attitude at some point, "I just have to get that video out every Tuesday without fail. It's not an option, it's gonna get done." And you know, like you say, and when we- when we talk- when we talk about compounding, th- that video on day one isn't gonna do anything, the video on day two or day three or day 24 is not gonna do anything. But you find when you're on day 300 and day 600, "Oh, actually all of this stuff has been compounding very, very slowly," and then the results happen really, really, really slowly and then all at once as soon as you just get that one video that- that goes viral.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett17:58

      That is- I think it- that's the chapter where I talk about the eighth wonder of the world.

   10. AAAli Abdaal18:02

       Eighth wonder of the world.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett18:02

       Yeah, that's it, with Warren Buffett and my dog Pablo being the- the opposing investor. And I genuinely, I think I learnt that lesson when I wrote the book. When I look back on my life and I thought about all the things that compounded in my favor, whe- whether it was like my, honestly, if you want me to be com- keep it facts with you, my teeth, had some problems with my teeth and I thought, "Do you know why?And I, I t- I probably reference this-

   12. AAAli Abdaal18:23

       (laughs)

   13. SBSteven Bartlett18:23

       ... in the book. Like, I, I hadn't been brushing one of my teeth properly, and it never mattered today or tomorrow or the day after, but there I was in that dentist chair, having my teeth fucking pulled out. And then my Instagram was the same. Um, m- health and fitness at the moment, the same. My business was the same. And it just goes to show that it's not those key critical big decisions we make to drop out. It's that, like, yeah, it's the, the compounding small almost, uh, irrelevant decisions.

   14. AAAli Abdaal18:49

       Yeah.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett18:49

       Um, but people don't, they, uh, 'cause I heard you started working out.

   16. AAAli Abdaal18:52

       I did, yeah. (laughs)

   17. SBSteven Bartlett18:53

       And then you stopped.

   18. AAAli Abdaal18:54

       Uh, I, so I've, I, I've had a personal trainer now for the last kind of eight months or so.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett18:57

       There you go, amazing.

   20. AAAli Abdaal18:58

       Um, and, uh, you know, I've been, I've been going on and off with the workout thing since the age of 18 and never done it properly until I got a personal trainer, where now I'm having to show up, I'm paying someone £30 an hour to basically just be with me while I'm doing stuff. And that has been the thing that's given me the most results. Uh, so I think whatever, like, I, I find in my life for, for things, for things that I actually care about where I'm like, okay, I actually care about becoming a happy, sexy millionaire or whatever, let me try and figure out ways that will remove my own need for discipline and willpower from that equation. And instead, get an accountability buddy or get a coach, or pay a friend a £100 if I don't do the thing. This was what my brother and I did when we were trying to motivate ourselves. I was doing songwriting, he was doing standup comedy. Like, right, "If we don't do this every Thursday for half an hour, we're gonna pay each other £50." Um, things like that to remove the choice, the motivation, the willpower, the discipline. All... The, the more of that can be outsourced to someone else or removed completely, the more I find I actually get stuff done and then I don't have to worry about it 'cause I'm like, "Okay, this is taken care of. I just show up."

   21. SBSteven Bartlett20:03

       I, I guess you're removing, you're moving the moti- As opposed to, like, removing it, you're moving it to another pact. Like, Nir Eyal refers to it as, what you've described there as a financial pact-

   22. AAAli Abdaal20:11

       Mm-hmm.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett20:12

       ... where now your motivation is to not lose £50. (laughs) It's like, because that is, that's a greater motivating force than you have within yourself to work out.

   24. AAAli Abdaal20:20

       Yeah.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett20:20

       That's inter- Is that sustainable?

   26. AAAli Abdaal20:22

       No, it's not. (laughs)

   27. SBSteven Bartlett20:23

       It's not, okay. (laughs)

   28. AAAli Abdaal20:26

       Um ... (laughs) This is all the stuff that I'm researching for the, for, for, for the book at the moment. Um, and you, and you talk about this as well, like, in- intrinsic and, and extrinsic motivation. And the way that I th- I think of it when I, when I think back on my life is that everything that I've done sustainably has been because of intrinsic motivation. I've genuinely enjoyed the thing. But you can genuinely enjoy a thing and still find it really hard to get started, and I think that's where the biggest procrastination comes in for all of us, where it's actually just showing up to the gym. That's the hard part. Like, o- once you're there, it's kind of easy. It's writing those first 10 words, 'cause once you've started writing the first 10, it's kind of easier to enjoy the process of writing the rest of them. And so the, and so the way I think about it is t- to get over that, like, hump of procrastination, that activation energy to get started, at that point, I will use every tool that in my arsenal to just, just get me to do the thing for two minutes. 'Cause I think once, once you do the thing for two minutes, it becomes so much easier to actually enjoy the process and, and, and sustain it.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett21:19

       And, and you're so right when it comes to procrastination, like, that getting started point. Um, I've again just learned this from podcast guests I've had, Nir Eyal, again, I'll refer to him. He, he said to me one day on this podcast, he was like, "People procrastinate usually because there's, um, a great deal of psychological discomfort surrounding starting the task." And a lot of the time, especially with the gym or even an essay, that psychological discomfort is like you don't have the answers. So, I don't know how to use the machines-

   30. AAAli Abdaal21:46

       Yeah.
5. 21:56 – 28:31

   Procrastination

   1. SBSteven Bartlett21:56

      needs hoovering today.

   2. AAAli Abdaal21:56

      Exactly.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett21:57

      Um, you, you wro- you made a video about procrastination, didn't you?

   4. AAAli Abdaal22:00

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett22:01

      Break that down for me. What's in, what's in the video?

   6. AAAli Abdaal22:03

      Um-

   7. SBSteven Bartlett22:04

      So the video is called The How To Stop Procrastinating, right?

   8. AAAli Abdaal22:06

      Yeah. Um, so the, the way I think about pro- procrastination, basically, procrastination is a problem with getting started. Um, kind of this, this law of inertia, uh, Newton's first law that if something is at rest, it will continue to stay at rest. But if something's moving, it will continue to move without needing an external force. And so the key to overcoming procrastination is that little, that, that little, that little nudge at the start towards actually getting started. And all of the techniques around that, like, in the whole, like, psy- psychology research or research around this, it's just around making, make, make it as easy as possible. Um, so reduce all of the friction to doing it. If you wanna learn the guitar, then have the guitar by your sofa rather than in the wardrobe where you're never gonna see it. And if it's out of sight, it's out of mind, you're never gonna do it. There's, like, the external environmental friction towards doing the thing, but then there's also the internal friction. It's like those narratives that we tell ourselves, the, oh, uh, the, the psychological discomfort of going to the gym, the I don't want to see how other people are gonna see me, the even, even having, having the wrong sort of goal. Like, if my goal in writing the book is, oh, I really wanna hit the New York Times bestseller list, then it's really, really hard to bring myself to write anything, because now every single word I have to write has to be a New York Times bestselling word. Whereas if the goal is, to be honest, I just wanna w- write a book I'm proud of that's fun to, fun to write, that's actually within my control. And it becomes so much easier to get started at doing the thing. Um, so to overcome procrastination, we need to eliminate external friction, i.e. the environmental stuff. We need to try our best to get rid of the internal friction, like the emotional side of it, the mindset, the perfectionism, the, the fear, the discomfort. And then if we still need help, there are a few, a few hacks. The, the one that I use all the time is the, the two-minute rule, which is where I will genuinely convince myself I'm only gonna do it for two minutes. Uh, and if I want, I'm allowed to stop after the two minutes 'cause two minutes is better than nothing. But, like, 95% of the time, I decide to continue because two minutes is all you need to change your life.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett23:59

      Yeah.

   10. AAAli Abdaal24:00

       I should, I should tweet that. That's good. (laughs)

   11. SBSteven Bartlett24:01

       It's so... Yeah, that's really good. I, and I, that two-minute thing is fascinating to me because I, one of the things that, um, I see as another psychological barrier to starting is people view it as, like, they view the challenge as Mount Everest, whereas if... And, like, they've got to... I'll say it in another way. They view the challenge as moving Mount Everest, and really, if they viewed it as just, like, moving one pebble at a time, it becomes such a simple task.

   12. AAAli Abdaal24:21

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett24:21

       And I get this a lot when entrepreneurs ask me, they say, "Steve, I wanna start a business. Where do I start?" And you can hear in the question that they see it as moving Mount Everest-

   14. AAAli Abdaal24:29

       Yeah.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett24:30

       ... and I'm like, "Well-"... today, all you have to do is think of a name. Just think of, like, 50 names. Make a short list of names-

   16. AAAli Abdaal24:37

       Yeah.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett24:37

       ... and then we'll, we'll revisit it tomorrow. And then tomorrow, maybe think of, you know, go and check if the website's available. And then we'll revisit it the day after.

   18. AAAli Abdaal24:45

       Yep.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett24:45

       And when it becomes that, and when it becomes sort of really small itemized one small step at a time, and you not having to get from stair zero-

   20. AAAli Abdaal24:53

       Yeah.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett24:53

       ... to 1,000 immediately, it becomes so, you know, the psychological discomfort fades away. It feels achievable. And that, your two-minute rule is doing a similar thing where it's saying, "Well, today only, I've, I've only got to do just, just ... uh, if I can open the Word document and write the title-"

   22. AAAli Abdaal25:07

       Yeah.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett25:07

       "... and then we're done."

   24. AAAli Abdaal25:08

       (laughs)

   25. SBSteven Bartlett25:08

       You know? And ... So that's fascinating.

   26. AAAli Abdaal25:10

       Yeah.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett25:10

       What about re- re- You were going to say something else there.

   28. AAAli Abdaal25:13

       Yeah, I mean, uh, just, just to your point there. Um, have you, have you come across, uh, the blog, Wait But Why?

   29. SBSteven Bartlett25:18

       No.

   30. AAAli Abdaal25:18

       Oh, it's incredible. You should definitely interview Tim Urban when you're in America.
6. 28:31 – 37:27

   Maintaining productivity - Gratitude shift

   1. SBSteven Bartlett28:31

      Y- you know, people talk about how they'll put on their to-do list, clean house. And it'll sit on a to-do list. And clean hou-... That's a b-

   2. AAAli Abdaal28:38

      That's a big thing. (laughs)

   3. SBSteven Bartlett28:39

      S- same thing. And it'll t- and that'll sit on your to-do list for, like, I don't know, two weeks (laughs) whatever. But if you do, if you time block and write in your... This is what I do on the weekends because ... So Monday to Friday, my schedule is ran by the, the meetings and things I have to do. So I'm a slave to the calendar. Saturday and Sunday come around. I wake up, I'm like, "Okay."

   4. AAAli Abdaal29:00

      (laughs)

   5. SBSteven Bartlett29:00

      (laughs) I'm like, "What the fuck? Th- how does this thing work?"

   6. AAAli Abdaal29:02

      The whole day (laughs) I mean.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett29:02

      This life. Yeah. I'm like, "It's empty." I've got loads of things I know I could be doing right now-

   8. AAAli Abdaal29:05

      Yeah.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett29:05

      ... but nothing, no one telling me what to do in a, in a, in a life of mine where I'm told what to do every five minutes. Um, so I time block on the weekends, which means clean house would become at 11:00 till 12:00, I clean the kitchen. (laughs)

   10. AAAli Abdaal29:20

       Yeah.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett29:20

       'Cause then it's, like, time sensitive and, like, task specific.

   12. AAAli Abdaal29:24

       Yeah.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett29:24

       And that's, uh, that's been an absolute game changer for me. And I also think in the era of working from home-

   14. AAAli Abdaal29:30

       Yeah.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett29:31

       ... where, you know, people are sat at home, they have a, tasks they have to con-

   16. AAAli Abdaal29:35

       Oh. (laughs) It's like we've, we-

   17. SBSteven Bartlett29:37

       People always ask the question.

   18. AAAli Abdaal29:37

       It's almost like we prepped for this 'cause, like, this is literally like the, the three-part structure of (laughs) of my book which I've been, like, h- just having in my head for the last, last few weeks.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett29:44

       Perfect.

   20. AAAli Abdaal29:44

       Where, like, step one is how do we beat the procrastination, how do we s- get started with doing the thing. And part two of the book is how do we sustain, how do we actually keep on going doing the thing. And, uh, there's just, uh ... So in, in, in terms of mindset, the thing that I've found that actually moves the needle is focusing on trying to make it fun. And I really, I really l- like that word fun. Like, I think there's something about the word fun that is so, like, childish, but also fully speaks to ... Like, fun basically means in- intrinsic motivation. Like, something is sufficiently enjoyable that you do it for its own sake rather than for the fact that you've got a sponsor helping you or you've got a deadline or, or things like that. Um, there's one, there's one story in particular that I, I, I, I often come back to and that's, like, a-... sometime last year, I was, I was working at the hospital. It was pandemic season, et cetera, et cetera. And I'd, I'd gotten to the end of, like, a 13-hour-long shift, and I was just about to go home. Uh, and the nurse said to me, "Oh, Ali, can you put a cannula in this patient? Her, like, IV line has issued, and, and she needs fluids overnight." And my heart kind of sank. I was like, "Oh, no." Like, if, if the nurse wasn't able to put the cannula in, that means it's a patient with difficult veins. It means it's gonna be hard to put this in. And I sort of had this mindset of, like, "All right then, fine." And sort of, uh, grudgingly took out the cannula and got, got all the, the equipment in a tray. And I... Like, as, as I was doing this, I, there was a, a patient in the bay next door where they were just, like, talking to a family member or something and saying, "Oh, you know, the, this hospital has been amazing. Everyone is so nice, and what a pleasure it is, you know. Freaking love the NHS," kind of vibes. And I realized that in that moment, I was not being, like, a good model internally for what I want the NHS to be and what I want a good doctor to be. And there's something that Seth Godin, uh, who, uh, who I've been following for a while says, which is that it's the difference between have to and get to. And so I was considering it as, like, "Oh, I have to put in this cannula." And I remembered that blog post I read from Seth Godin where he said, "Instead of thinking of have to, think of it as get to." And I realized, "Oh, I get to put in this cannula. I get to make a difference in this patient's lives and, and life and give her fluids overnight so that she's not gonna dehydrate because of her morning sickness." And just that mindset shift immediately made me feel so much better about it, and I was like, "Oh, I get to do this. Who cares if I've been working for 13 hours? This is fun, this is a privilege, this is cool." And I put it in, and we had a nice chat, and I felt really great about it afterwards. And now, like, the... And so that's one of the mindset things that I just always come back to. If I'm finding myself not enjoying something, and therefore my focus goes, I get distracted and l- I procrastinate. Instead of thinking, "I have to do this," I think, "I get to do this."

   21. SBSteven Bartlett32:23

       It's like a gratitude shift.

   22. AAAli Abdaal32:24

       Yeah. Yeah, it's like your Chapter 3 or whatever it was-

   23. SBSteven Bartlett32:27

       Mm-hmm.

   24. AAAli Abdaal32:27

       ... that's talking about gratitude. (laughs)

   25. SBSteven Bartlett32:29

       And we so-

   26. AAAli Abdaal32:29

       Yeah.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett32:29

       ... quickly fall out of gratitude-

   28. AAAli Abdaal32:31

       Hmm.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett32:32

       ... when we become used to the-

   30. AAAli Abdaal32:32

       It's, it's so easy to do.
7. 37:27 – 49:20

   Figuring out your values

   1. AAAli Abdaal37:27

      this thing of kind of, yeah, ambition versus insecurity, is this thing that you think you want to do, is it coming from within or is it coming from outside of you? And you talk about values, like living in alignment with your values. Do you have any, like how, how do you figure out what your values are? (laughs)

   2. SBSteven Bartlett37:45

      It's a really interes- it's a really interesting, um, thing. Um, I think, I think one of the, the best indicators of what your values are, are from how you feel. That's maybe the most, um, fundamental human stimuli we have, which is how something makes us feel. Um, slight tangent, and I was talking to someone about this yesterday, in the world we live in, and as the social media connected from both generation, we don't understand what our actual true intrinsic values are very easily because even if... and this is kind of a controversial topic but who cares, even charity-

   3. AAAli Abdaal38:24

      Mm. Yep. (laughs)

   4. SBSteven Bartlett38:24

      ... we all think we're charitable human beings, we're not. And if you've only got to look back at h- uh, hu- human history to understand that our morals are highly influenced by what society is doing at the time, because if you go back 150 years, I would have been a slave p- potentially, right, and my m- family certainly would have in Africa, like they would have had a high p- chance of being slaves.

   5. AAAli Abdaal38:45

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett38:45

      And at the time, my slave master was not a bad person.

   7. AAAli Abdaal38:49

      Mm-hmm.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett38:49

      He was a good person, you know, morally sound per- you know. And, and, and now obviously that's viewed as being a awful thing-

   9. AAAli Abdaal38:56

      Mm-hmm.

   10. SBSteven Bartlett38:56

       ... and it's the same within, like, the LGBTQ comm- TQQ community that, you know, at one time, um, it, that was just everyone knew that, believed, that being in a same sex relationship was a terrible thing, an evil thing in some religious, um, writings. Now we all accept it to be m-... How can our morals have ch- Society has changed.

   11. AAAli Abdaal39:20

       Mm-hmm.

   12. SBSteven Bartlett39:20

       The force that's telling us what's right and wrong, what's good and bad, what's valued and what v- you know, has changed, that's the only change that's happened. So I do believe deeply that a lot of our values, um, unavoidably come from our willingness to survive by taking up the values of the communities we live in. However, when it comes to your personal values, however they've been shaped, usually from your parents or early experiences, I- I just go on based on how things make me feel. And that seems to be the only indication I h- I, I have of what's, what's true for me and what's not. If I, if I'm alone and I watch a, a video of a baby, um, suffering or crying, and it makes me sad-

   13. AAAli Abdaal39:58

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SBSteven Bartlett40:00

       ... when no one's around-

   15. AAAli Abdaal40:01

       Yep. (laughs)

   16. SBSteven Bartlett40:02

       (laughs) ... and I'm not having to tweet about my feelings-

   17. AAAli Abdaal40:04

       For sure. Yep.

   18. SBSteven Bartlett40:05

       ... to the world, then I would assume that that is, you know... You said about learning and, sorry, teaching. Mm-hmm.

   19. AAAli Abdaal40:10

       You've got enjoyment from that. You've always got... I would assume that's one of your sort of professional values or something you value professionally.

   20. SBSteven Bartlett40:16

       Yeah. I've been on a whole, like, uh, quest across the internet over the last few months to tr- try and answer this question of how do you, how do you figure out what your values are. Um, there's this, like, program with a life coach that I even did, which is, like, just, just finishing up, where, um, one of the exercises was to, like, go back to your childhood and think about, kind of on a scale of kind of minus 10 to plus 10, uh, minus being really bad and plus being really good, like, what were the most salient experiences of your childhood? And I was like, "Okay, this sounds like BS, but all right, let me engage with this process." And then I, I made this list of all these things that, these salient memories from childhood, like, you know, that time when my brother new-gamed my Pokemon Blue and I lost my 146 Pokemon and that, how, how that felt, and that time when... whatever. Um, and the facilitator was like, "Okay, let's try and tease out, like, what th- this might tell you about some of your values." And I was kind of surprised that a lot of the stuff that came out of that, if I think about, "Is this a core value that I live by/I want to live by?" the answer was "Yes." Uh, and I was surprised by how much of those experiences where, when I was under 10 years old shaped maybe the values that I've got right now. And so when I think about my values, it's things like, I think primarily for me right now, it's, like, freedom and autonomy-

   21. AAAli Abdaal41:31

       Mm-hmm.

   22. SBSteven Bartlett41:31

       ... which is why I think I've got this whole drive to be financially independent, to work medicine part-time rather than full-time, to ha- be in control of my own schedule. Things like togetherness and kind of working with other people has always been a really fun thing for me. Whether I was in school or university, studying with friends is just always more fun than studying on my own. And that wasn't true for everyone, but it was certainly true for me. Um, teaching on that list kind of, uh, hel- helping other people in a way, but, like, I've got, I've got friends, for example, who, who, who run charities and they genuinely feel in their hearts if there is suffering in the world. Yeah.

   23. AAAli Abdaal42:06

       And I don't genuinely feel in my heart when there's suffering in the world.

   24. SBSteven Bartlett42:09

       Yeah.

   25. AAAli Abdaal42:09

       Um, but I know intellectually that I should care about this thing and so I will act in a way that makes me care about the thing and, like, donate 10% of my money to charity every year and all this, all this stuff, but I won't actually feel it. Um, but when I think about how I feel, it's like, teach- teaching other people rather than saving, saving lives is the impact that I care about having. And when I realized this, I was like, "Oh, okay, this explains why I actually don't really care that much about medicine." Like, I'm, I prefer teaching medical students than actually practicing as a doctor.

   26. SBSteven Bartlett42:36

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AAAli Abdaal42:37

       And realizing that teaching is more of a value for me than t-... saving lives-

   28. SBSteven Bartlett42:40

       Mm.

   29. AAAli Abdaal42:40

       ... for example. I was like, "Okay, cool. This, this makes sense. I can now get on board with that and not feel bad about it."

   30. SBSteven Bartlett42:45

       The other point is that I've never cared about... really, I've really never cared about finding out what my values are. Beca- And this is probably goes back to how I answered that question, because the stimuli that I have to decide all of these things is like, um, "How does it make me feel?"
8. 49:20 – 51:49

   What tips and tricks do you have for people to learn better

   1. SBSteven Bartlett49:20

      all, everything it seems. What trips, and tips, and tricks have you learned about how to learn better?

   2. AAAli Abdaal49:25

      Yeah, um, so essentially, the main one is that we learn by testing ourselves rather than by consuming more stuff. Uh, like we, like in, in, which is a bit counterintuitive, like when it comes to if we, if we think about, like, studying and then we can kind of broaden it out. Like, if it comes to studying, we think that to, to learn more stuff, I need to get more information into my brain, but what, what, what all the evidence says is that, no, to learn more stuff, you actually just need to read it once, and then you have to try your best to get it out of your brain. And that feels hard, and it feels tough, and it feels like, "Ugh, I'm, I'm an idiot. I don't know enough." But that, that, like, desirable difficulty is what allegedly creates the neuronal connections in our brain to make us actually learn something. Um, and so it's similar to working out, like progressive overload. When it's heavy and when it feels hard is when your muscles are actually growing because you've got the stimulus for growth. Equally, when it comes to learning anything, when it feels hard is when there is a stimulus for the neurons to grow or words to that effect. And so when it comes to studying, if anyone is sort of l- listening to this, has exams coming up, and they are worried about their grades, the, th- the answer is that they're just not testing themselves enough. The more you test yourself, the better grades you'll get. And this, therefore, applies also to every other thing that we're trying to learn. So, you know, if I'm learning, I was learning how to play You've Got a Friend in Me on the guitar the other day, and if I'm just playing through the first two verses of it that I know already, I'm not learning anything, but as soon as I try doing the thing that feels hard, at that point it's like it, the, the harder it feels, the more I'm learning. And then, and then we sleep and then the connections get solidified. Um, so it's that, that's kind of the main concept. Basically, test yourself more, whatever that thing is. Um, and second big one in the research is spaced repetition, that anything we learn, whether it's a fact for an exam or a song on the guitar, our memory for it will exponentially decay over time, and the way to make it go into our long-term memory, whatever the skill is, is to interrupt the forgetting curve, uh, at spaced intervals. So, maybe you would le- you would practice the song on day one, you'd practice it again on day two, then on day five, then on day 25, and then on day 105. And as the intervals lengthen, that is the sort of thing that gets this, how to play the song or this fact about medicine or whatever into our long-term memory. And most things around learning can basically be summed up by those two things, active recall, i.e. test yourself, and spaced repetition, i.e. space it out over time.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett51:44

      Interesting. People are really fascinated by productivity, aren't they?

   4. AAAli Abdaal51:47

      They are, yeah.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett51:48

      I think I heard you

9. 51:49 – 56:49

   The definition of productivity

   1. SBSteven Bartlett51:49

      say about, like, when you put the word productivity in your content-

   2. AAAli Abdaal51:51

      Yeah.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett51:51

      ... it seems to perform better.

   4. AAAli Abdaal51:53

      Yeah. Uh, I, uh, I often think about this. Like, so t- so to me, productivity, I think, I think to a lot of people, productivity just means efficiency and creating economic output. The way that I define productivity is just kind of using my time well and working on things that are meaningful to me and optimizing for happiness. And so to me, this conversation is, is productive, hanging out with friends is productive. I was playing PlayStation last night for a couple of hours. That, to me, was productive because I was, like, intentionally doing it because I wanted to take a break from writing. Um, it's when I feel, it's, uh, I, I feel unproductive when I know there is something I want to do, and I'm not doing the thing because I'm scrolling Instagram. That, to me, is unproductive.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett52:33

      You're not being intentional with your time.

   6. AAAli Abdaal52:34

      Exactly, yeah. But I think on the internet these days, people use productive as economic output and the whole, like, "Oh, I want to be more productive," it's a, I think partly it's a-

   7. SBSteven Bartlett52:47

      Virtue signaling thing to some degree as well.

   8. AAAli Abdaal52:49

      Yeah. Yeah. Partly it's a, it's a, it's a virtue, v- v- virtue signaling thing. I think, I think partly or it's also like a self-flagellating thing in a way, whereby I al- I often see comments on my videos where it's like, "Oh, productive day in my life," which I'm kind of doing tongue-in-cheek just 'cause it's funny, where people are like, "Oh my God, I watch these videos just to make myself feel bad."

   9. SBSteven Bartlett53:08

      (laughs)

   10. AAAli Abdaal53:08

       And I'm like, "Oh, wow. Okay." Uh, A, this is a, this is mostly a joke. Like, I hope you realize this, but, (laughs) but, but also, it's like that, that's kind of sad that that comment has got so many upvotes, where, "Oh, I feel so, I feel like such a wasteman when I watch one of Ali Abdaal's videos." And I think there is that, like, perverse sense of people getting pleasure out of the story they're telling themselves that they are non-productive or that they are a chronic procrastinator, and to see someone who doesn't, who is on the surface seemingly so productive makes you kind of feel bad about yourself. Um, I wonder if it's similar to, like, if I look at my Instagram explore page, about a year ago, it used to be bikini models. These days are the dudes with six-pack abs. (laughs) And I look at that, and there is a part of me that gets pleasure out of, like, flagellating myself and that, like, "Why, why don't I look like that yet?" And I wonder to what extent that's like a thing in the world of productivity.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett53:59

       That is fascinating 'cause, I mean, that would be driven by the antithesis of that. That's gonna be driven by a culture where productivity and, "I'm getting so much done so I'm gonna be successful and rich and a millionaire, and this is, I'm in stealth mode building this massive business."

   12. AAAli Abdaal54:15

       (laughs)

   13. SBSteven Bartlett54:15

       "And I've been up all night. Look at me, it's 4:00 AM and I'm still working."

   14. AAAli Abdaal54:18

       Yeah.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett54:19

       That's driving one end of the spectrum, which is making productivity and being productive an aspiration for this generation.

   16. AAAli Abdaal54:26

       Yeah.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett54:26

       And on the other end, that's, I mean, that's why, again, the desire to be productive is dr- so high and your videos do so well on that topic.

   18. AAAli Abdaal54:34

       Mm-hmm.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett54:34

       And then you have the, the counter movement-

   20. AAAli Abdaal54:36

       Yeah.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett54:36

       ... as you always do, where it's like, "I'm such a procrastinator." And then all the memes-

   22. AAAli Abdaal54:40

       Yeah.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett54:40

       ... which bang just as hard because there's been this desire created in culture to be-... you know, super productive. Or ev- as it relates to, like, weight and fitness, like, everyone wants to look so good and then the memes of people sat there with a Pot Noodle in their belly, like, resting, like-

   24. AAAli Abdaal54:55

       (laughs)

   25. SBSteven Bartlett54:55

       ... with their, like, running shoes on (laughs) will also bang just as hard.

   26. AAAli Abdaal54:58

       Yeah.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett54:59

       But yeah, it's just a very relevant thing in our culture, which is quite, quite strange, the, the, this incessant desire to be productive. I think there's actually, there is a rise in counterculture which is about being okay with not being productive.

   28. AAAli Abdaal55:11

       Yeah. No, exactly.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett55:12

       (laughs)

   30. AAAli Abdaal55:12

       (laughs) I'm, I'm, I'm having to pepper in, uh, pepper that into my videos a lot more these days.
10. 56:49 – 1:03:40

    Relationships - Being true to yourself

    1. SBSteven Bartlett56:49

       You talked about relationships at the start of this podcast.

    2. AAAli Abdaal56:51

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett56:51

       You said, you said you, you... I think you alluded to the fact that you hadn't had much luck there-

    4. AAAli Abdaal56:55

       Hmm.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett56:56

       ... when we were talking about knowing you enough.

    6. AAAli Abdaal56:58

       Yeah.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett57:00

       What's going on?

    8. AAAli Abdaal57:02

       Yeah, this is a real problem. Um, so there's a few, like, narratives that I've bought into, um, subconsciously. One of those narratives is that I am like a weedy nerd kid. The, sort of, the, the kid that I was when I was th- 12 years old and getting slightly bullied in school and getting grades and stuff. But like, not really having anything, anything, uh, not being valuable as a human being beyond the fact that I was generating A stars in exams.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett57:27

       Sure.

    10. AAAli Abdaal57:27

        That's like one side of it. There's, there's another side, but I'd, I'd, I'd love to hear your take on, on that.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett57:31

        What's the other side?

    12. AAAli Abdaal57:33

        The other side is, um, if we're, if we're keeping it real, it's like, I think it's around masculinity-

    13. SBSteven Bartlett57:40

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AAAli Abdaal57:40

        ... and what it means to be a man. And if one, if one were to hypothetically read WikiHow articles on how to get girls or even the vast literature on the topic, um, there is a big thing of women are attracted to men, like, you know, people who are so- so- so someone who is a man, someone who leads, someone who's like alpha, those sorts of, those, those sorts of things. And I think my kind of default way of being is very not that. And like, my idea of fun is singing Disney songs and playing board games, uh, until 2:00 in the morning with a pizza takeaway, rather than something that a more like macho alpha type person, person would be. And so, on the one hand, there's that thing of just be yourself, uh, of be your authentic self, et cetera, et cetera, and a girl will like that for who you are. And on the other side, it's the, the thing of you will objectively get more success with women, in inverted commas, if you sort of are more of that alpha type personality. And there's-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett58:41

        Well, here's, here's the problem you have.

    16. AAAli Abdaal58:42

        Yeah, please.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett58:43

        On the, on the, that, that particular point before we move on, 'cause I'd love to hear what, what you're going on to say-

    18. AAAli Abdaal58:47

        Yeah.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett58:47

        ... but, um, you were, you, it sounded like you were saying, "Do I be myself and dance around listening to Disney, um, even though it might return a, a lower quantity-"

    20. AAAli Abdaal58:57

        Yeah.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett58:57

        "... of smoking hot potential partners?"

    22. AAAli Abdaal58:59

        Correct.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett59:00

        Um, or the alternative to that is, "Do I be a masculine, um, guy and like act outside of self-"

    24. AAAli Abdaal59:07

        Yeah.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett59:07

        "... to generate more smoking hot partners?"

    26. AAAli Abdaal59:10

        (laughs)

    27. SBSteven Bartlett59:10

        The issue you have is you just gotta zoom out-

    28. AAAli Abdaal59:13

        Yeah.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett59:13

        ... and you've got to think about the outcome of bo- both approaches and how sustainable both pro- approaches are.

    30. AAAli Abdaal59:17

        Mm-hmm.
11. 1:03:40 – 1:06:22

    How to make create content

    1. AAAli Abdaal1:03:40

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:40

       Content.

    3. AAAli Abdaal1:03:41

       Content.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:41

       Yeah, you make a lot of content and you've- must have come to learn a lot about humans and psychology from all these videos you make. You tinker around with the titles and the thumbnails and, um, uh, and you've become such a big YouTuber. You've got millions of subscribers from a very iterative process of, I guess really understanding what humans will respond to and what they want, what their desires are. What would you give me as an advice for how to make, if I'm a listener, a really great content that people will care about? It's a broad question, but there you go.

    5. AAAli Abdaal1:04:19

       I think it's about hooking them in with the promise of something simple and quick and then... And- and if you stop at that point, that is, I think where, uh, s- kind of, uh, sort of course scammers and, um, marketing gurus and stuff were maybe 20 years ago. It's hooking them in with a simple and quick promise but then delivering on the nuance of it that I think people are caring about more than ever now. And so, like, one thing that we've iterated with over time is, you know, often the success of a video will depend on how clickbait the title is, and there's no getting around that. We've never found that a title that's less clickbait, uh, does better. I- I- I did a video called How Writing Online Changed My Life. It absolutely bombed. Just changed the title, How Writing Online Made Me A Millionaire. Suddenly absolutely exploded. People love that like, "Oh, this is a quick solution. Uh, this is a quick path to this, um, this- the- this goal that I want." Hence your title of Happy Sexy Millionaire. Um, but we've also found that on videos where I think, "Oh, let's- let's dumb the message down. Let's just kind of do a quick five-point listicle without any examples," because people just want the dopamine hit of advice that sounds reasonable but they- they can't action. Those videos haven't done as well. Like, people click on them, but then they don't stay watching. And the videos we found that do the best is you make a promise at the start, and then you deliver on the nuance throughout the whole thing. And actually, people, at lea- at least in my audience, and I suspect in yours and anyone listening, actually do want depth and nuance, not just a sort of surface level two-minute-long thing that you would have seen on YouTube circa 2005. Um, and I think you did a pretty great job of that as... (laughs) Um, yeah.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:03

       Yeah, I'm learning. I'm cont- you know, continue to learn. YouTube's a bit of a new medium for me, so it was good, it's good to- to get that, um, that perspective. You- you also, um, you're very in- in sort of self-aware and honest. I- I- You wrote something about, um, why you're failing which is, uh,

12. 1:06:22 – 1:09:58

    Why I feel like I'm failing in life

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:22

       I- I think you wro- wrote a piece which was detailing why you think you're failing in life.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:06:27

       I think I have this issue where I often feel like what I'm currently doing is not "good enough" because, you know, we're leaving money on the table or because our team is inexperienced or because I suck at being a manager or I suck at being a leader, and although I'm learning to improve in- in all those things, I sometimes feel that, oh, but it's- it's- it's not fast enough. And I think that's where the comparison stuff comes in because when my peer group was kind of just my friends in medical school, um...... and I was doing the YouTube stuff, and then, uh, y- I was kind of the only in the, in the, in the pack doing the thing. And so it was like, "Oh, anything goes." Like, "I'm not comparing myself to anyone." Now that I am sort of a bigger name on YouTube, the sorts of people I compare myself to now are kind of other YouTubers with millions of s- of subscribers. The population for comparison changes, and I find that the more I compare, the less good I feel about the stuff that I've done. And so to get around that, I try to just, A, not compare at all, and B, also think journey before destination, all the, all, all of the mindset stuff. But it's easier said than done, and I still feel internally like right now we're not using money in the company, like, efficiently enough. We're not hiring fast enough. We're not doing this fast enough. We're not doing that fast enough. Um, but-

Episode duration: 1:36:06