Modern WisdomHow To Learn & Remember Anything, Fast | Ali Abdaal | Modern Wisdom Podcast 231
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 27,585 words- 0:00 – 2:27
Intro
- AAAli Abdaal
This is the single thing that makes the biggest difference in people's results for learning any- anything at all. And that is that we learn by testing ourselves, we don't learn by reading stuff. And this, again, it seem, is- is- is counterintuitive because when you tell people that they- they should test themselves on stuff, they'll say, "Oh, well, I- I have to learn it first and then I can revise it and then I'll test myself for the exam." There's evidence that shows that if you test yourself even before you start learning something, that's gonna improve your learning. If you test yourself immediately after you learn something, that's gonna improve your learning. If the only thing you do after reading something is just test yourself once, that is better than reading the same thing four times or writing a summary of it, or creating a mind map on it. All you have to do is just test yourself.
- CWChris Williamson
Ali, welcome to the show.
- AAAli Abdaal
Thank you very much for having me. I was gonna say, it's always a bit strange to hear a British accent on the end of like, a productivity or like, uh, you know, (laughs) a, just like any kind of podcast 'cause, like, all of the ones I listen to are just so overwh- overwhelmingly American that when I- when I hear a Brit it's like, "Oh, it's one of my boys." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
These are my people.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
This is my people here. Who do you listen to?
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, like all of the things I'm sure you do. Uh, started out with Tim Ferriss and then Farnam Street and I've got like 80 on my podcast, uh, library thing, which is, you know, now swelling. Um, I recently started listening to a lot of Dave Asprey as well 'cause I'm trying to get into the whole, like, hacking your health and- and all that stuff. Dabbled with a bit of Peter Attia. These are all, like, white American dudes though, so... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
Needs a bit of variety in my- in my podcast diet.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I get that. I know that we're both mutual friends of Chris Sparks, Tiago Forte. Uh, have you been introduced to Taylor Pearson yet?
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, I know of him through his website and stuff, but I haven't spoken to him personally.
- CWChris Williamson
Phenomenal writer.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Like absolutely wonderful writer. Um, so today we are gonna be talking about how to learn and remember anything fast. This is right slap bang in your wheelhouse, I think.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, man. This is like my specialist subject.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) If he- if he was a-
- AAAli Abdaal
This is what made my YouTube channel start to take off.
- CWChris Williamson
What was it, ma- like Mastermind? Was it-
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh yeah, do you... Uh, yeah, Mastermind. That, I- I'm not sure if that's still on, but I used to fantasize about going on- on the TV show. And at the time my specialist subject would've been the Harry Potter books.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
And I still think it probably would s- it prob- probably would still be.
- CWChris Williamson
You reckon?
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, yeah, that's the only thing I actually know anything about. But apart from that, studying is another- another specialist interest.
- CWChris Williamson
Got you. So where do we
- 2:27 – 18:02
First Principles of Strong Learning
- CWChris Williamson
begin? People are now just about arriving back to university. Perhaps we have people who are maybe even venturing into a new career post-COVID or-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, looking to become, uh, increasingly competitive in the job market. They want to be able to consume, retain, deploy information and learning and comprehension and all this stuff. Where do we even begin?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. (sighs) That's a good question. I'd say probably the main principle that everything else hinges on is that learning is supposed to be effortful. It's supposed to be hard. Um, and it's- it's sort of, it's sort of like the analogy I sometimes use for my students is it's like when you're going to the gym. If you are lifting weights that you can easily lift, you're not actually gonna make any gains. It's just gonna be a total waste of time. But it's when you start doing that progressive overload, when you start lifting weights that are- that are at the limit of what you're able to do, that gives your muscles the stimulus for growth. And then, you know, assuming you eat right and you sleep well, then you're gonna get more hench and you're gonna, you're gonna be able to lift more weight. And it's sort of somewhat equivalent for learning that the harder it feels to learn something, the more likely that information is to stick. And this is very counterintuitive, right? Because still to this day, despite all of the decades of research that have been done about this that show that when learning is effortful, it's better. Despite all of that evidence, most teachers, uh, still focus on trying to make the content as convenient as possible for their students. Like, very well-meaning teachers who wanna sort of categorize things into nice syllabuses and create a nice presentation and give them mnemonics and essentially take all of the difficulty out of studying for the student. Essentially give them this packaged up thing that they just have to learn. But in doing so, the thing that they're packaging up that the student just has to learn, it actually makes it a lot harder for them to learn because the student then is not putting in any of the effort themselves. And so they have- have to start finding weird ways to put effort into it. So that is probably principle number one that all of the rest of the kind of learning theory is based on.
- CWChris Williamson
Don't expect it to be easy and almost lean into the discomfort a little bit that if you are finding something challenging to learn, that that's a signal that it- it's doing the work.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, exactly. And it's- it's one of those things where like, I feel like there are very few domains in life where conventional wisdom is directly opposite to what actually works. But certainly when it comes to studying and learning conventional wisdom is that we feel like we're stupid if- if what we have to learn is hard. If we're struggling through school or if we're struggling to understand a concept, we think, "Oh, I must be dumb. I must not be doing this right." But in fact, it's li- it's the exact opposite. Like if you are finding something hard, it's a lot more likely to stick because your brain is having to work harder. You're operating at your, at the limit of your, I don't know, your muscles potential. And then that's the stimulus for growth and then that's the stimulus for those connections to form so that it becomes slightly easier the next time around.
- CWChris Williamson
What else do most people get wrong about learning?
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, so a few things. There- there- there have been some really cool studies about this where, um, because, uh, essentially college and university students are a great crop of people to do studies on because you can pay them like £3 and they'll happily kind of sign up to- to do anything.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
So there's been this whole swath of studies about learning and studying and memorization done on college and university students. Um, the other things that really make a difference are, um, and this is probably, you know, apart from the fact that learning needs to be effortful, this is the single thing that makes the biggest difference in people's results for learning any- anything at all. And that is that we learn by testing ourselves, we don't learn by reading stuff.And this is, again, it seem... is, is, is counterintuitive because when you tell people that they, they should test themselves and stuff, they'll say, "Oh, well, I, I have to learn it first and then I can revise it and then I'll test myself for the exam." And there's a really good book called Make It Stick, which is all about the science of successful learning. And the authors basically say right up front in, in the introduction that, look, if you're a student or any kind of learner and you're not happy with the way your results are going, chances are you're just not testing yourself enough. There's evidence that shows that if you test yourself even before you start learning something, that's gonna improve your learning. If you test yourself immediately after you learn something, that's gonna improve your learning. If the only thing you do after reading something is just test yourself once, that is better than reading the same thing four times or writing a summary of it, or creating a mind map on it. All you have to do is just test yourself. And again, this is so... this is so counterintuitive. Um, we kind of think of in... we, we, we kind of think of studying and learning as if it's a process of putting information into our brains, but in fact it is the opposite. It's the process of getting information out of our brains. And in trying to retrieve stuff, that is what's forming the connections. Whereas when we're just reading things or rereading things or summarizing things with the book open, we're falling into that trap of thinking that familiarity is the same thing as understanding. Um, and you've probably seen this, I certainly get this a lot where I've read something enough times where I think, "Oh yeah, obviously I know this." But then if you ask me, you know, "Can you actually explain it in your own words without looking at the book?" I'd be like, "Oh, okay." Uh, maybe not. And again, there is-
- CWChris Williamson
Let me just get the book.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. (laughs) And there is some evidence as well that the, the emotional component of it is identical across, ac- across both of these domains. So for example, if you were to read something that you've come across before and you read through it and you think, "Oh yeah, I recognize this," it feels really good because you think, "Oh yeah, I know this stuff. I know what's going on." It's exactly the same feeling as if you try and recall something completely from memory and you get it right and you think, "Oh, that's cool." And so because we're so used to rereading stuff and reviewing our notes, and we have this topic of revising as if re-vising, like revision, like going over stuff again is gonna help. It feels good, it feels productive. But as all the studies show and as everyone who's tried this in real life shows, rereading stuff doesn't actually help you learn it. Testing yourself on stuff does help you learn it.
- CWChris Williamson
It's familiarity masquerading as comprehension.
- AAAli Abdaal
Exactly. Yeah. That's, that's exactly what it is. Great way of phrasing it.
- CWChris Williamson
I had a, I had Peter C. Brown on the show.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
He was like episode 19-
- AAAli Abdaal
Nice.
- CWChris Williamson
... two and a half years ago.
- AAAli Abdaal
Old school. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
So anyone that's interested in this and wants to dig into Make It Stick, the book, is really accessible, super good read, um, and a nice primer for that is... It's like back in the teens. Please, please ignore everything about my hosting ability and my sound quality. But Peter's, Peter's fantastic on it. Um, and from that, the one sentence summary of Make It Stick is memorization comes from repeated recall, not repeated exposure.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, that's a good phrase. I need to start stealing that. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
That's fine, man. F- you, you can note it down at 145 words per minute on your, on your mechanical keyboard, whatever it is.
- AAAli Abdaal
It's gonna make too much noise though, on the recording. (keys clacking) That's what I worry about when I'm doing podcasts.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you considered a silenced keyboard?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, occasionally I switch to my Apple Magic keyboard, which is a little bit more quiet.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Look at you.
- AAAli Abdaal
If I'm doing like a live stream and I'm having to switch windows on the fly 'cause (keys clacking) that's a bit, it's a bit obnoxious.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, it is. Um, okay, so we know that we need to lean into the discomfort. We also know that, um, just continuing to read... I mean, everyone knows, everyone that's listening has been that person or knows that person who's like the flashcard addict, who's got everything laid out in a million color-coded, written and this, that, and the other, but doesn't ever actually end up doing the testing. And what you're saying is that we need to focus on the recall. We need to focus on the testing. Those are two nice principles to start us off. Where, where do we go next?
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, I'd say next, the third principle that I always talk about is one that's called spaced repetition. And this is again, something that Peter Brown talks about in, in the book. The idea of spaced repetition is, um, we've all had this experience where you learn something and then, or y- or, or you think you've understood a topic and you come back to it like a day or a week later and it's completely gone. Um, and again, when we... when, when this happens to us, if we're students, we often think, "Oh, I must be dumb. I must be thick because I'm not remembering this thing." And we'll look at the students around us and we'll say, "Oh, but Tom over there from Singapore, you know, he seems to memorize things as soon as he reads them." Uh, but what Tom from Singapore is actually doing is that he's not memorizing things the instant he reads them. There's no such thing as a photographic memory. Uh, what he's doing is that he's just revising. He's, he's repeating the, the topic more than once. And I don't know when... I don't know how this came into the sort of mainstream where people think that you should just be able to recall something after coming across it once. Uh, it would be completely ridiculous in any other domain of life. Like if you're learning a song on the piano, like obviously you have to practice it more than once to get it right. If you're trying to improve your tennis or squash swing, obviously you have to practice more than once. But we think for some reason, at least everyone I knew at university felt this way that, "Oh, if I don't... if I don't get it first time, I must be an idiot." And the idea of spaced rep- repetition is that it combats the forgetting curve. So back in the 1800s, there was this, this dude called Ebbinghaus who did, uh, a really weird experiment on himself whereby he made himself memorize a bunch of completely nonsense words, like completely made up words, uh, not even the meaning, just to see how much he could brute force into his memory, and he plotted out how long it took him to forget each of these words as he memorized them. And he found that it was like one of those exponential decay, half-life-y, uh, graphs, if anyone's f- familiar with those, whereby you lose the majority of it in the initial period, and then the forgetting's kind of slows down. So this is the forgetting curve. And the idea is that if we repeat the, the subject by testing ourselves on it, and then by looking it up if we, if we got it wrong, that takes us back up to 100% memory. Uh, but crucially, the more we do that, the slower this curve decays.And so for example, something like the capital of France is Paris, you've come across that fact enough times in your life through various means when you were younger that you're never really gonna forget it. And that's because accidentally you've had this spaced repetition thing applied to it. Whereas if someone told you the capital of, I don't know, some random country is some random city right now, you would forget it unless you came across that fact again and again and again. And when you come across it enough times over a long period of time, it goes into your long-term memory and then you'll ne- and then you're never gonna forget it. So the idea behind spaced repetition is that initially when we learn something, we then want to repeat the testing of it fairly quickly, maybe a day or a few days later. And then once we've done that, we wanna space it out a bit more. So maybe a week later, and then maybe a month later, and then maybe six months later. Uh, and so that's the spaced repetition aspect of it. And if we do that, we kind of get our forgetting curve to be quite shallow, and hopefully this stuff goes into our long-term memory.
- 18:02 – 24:59
Creating a Study Environment
- CWChris Williamson
where do we go next? Why don't we talk about, um, some practical stuff? Let's say that you're sitting down to do a session of learning anything. I, I think that med school actually is a really good example. And it's a... Y- you guys are like the, uh, the vanguard of trying to-... hardcore brute force learn shit. (laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, trying to cram as much stuff into your memory as possible.
- CWChris Williamson
Precisely. So talk us through. It's the morning, you've woken up, you've done your morning routine, um, and you think, "Right, I got some exams coming up at some point soon," or perhaps you've recently been introduced to a new area and you're gonna, you're gonna sit down. What, what happens? You're outside of the, the room where you're going to do your learning. Do you do it in your house? Do you go somewhere else? And, and what do you take with you and, and what do you sit down with?
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay, cool. Um, so I think kind of the environment is kind of important. Uh, w- I, I, I used to think I could work in my room. I've now realized that I much prefer to work in libraries. Uh, and if I could, I would actually go to libraries every day where I have to, like, write, write scripts for YouTube videos as well. Uh, but the whole lockdown thing is putting a, a bit of a, a bu- a bummer on that. So I was always a big fan of leaving my room and going to the library and going to this external location so that in a way I could keep the work and studying separate. There's also some, some evidence that if you're, if you're studying something in an environment that is similar to the arena in which you'll be tested on it, then you get a few extra percentage points of, uh, sort of optimization there.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting.
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, so for example, that's partly why listening to music while studying is not considered very good, because you're probably not gonna be listening to music when you're being tested on the thing. Having said that, I still listen to music while I'm studying. Uh, I listen to instrumental tracks, uh, the theory being that instrumental stuff doesn't interfere with the phonological loop, which is a part of working memory. Um, I listen to instrumental t- tracks because it's just so much nicer when I've got the Lord of the Rings soundtrack in my noise-canceling headphones, and I'm quite happy to take the optimization hit, uh, if it means I'll enjoy myself a little bit more. Um, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that you would be able to request upon entry into an exam the fact that I need to take one AirPod in with me?
- AAAli Abdaal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
"Look, I promise it's not the answers playing here. It's just the Two Towers battle theme track on repeat."
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, and that was just to, like, really get you pumped up. Uh, I'm, I'm sure people have attempted that. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) You're walking in with a spear. (laughs) Okay, so, um, we've got ourselves into a location which is potentially similar. Lots of wood, perhaps, lots of oak around if you're in, like, some red brick-
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, yeah, it depends on how fancy the library is, to be honest. If it's one of those modern ones, there won't be much oak around. But if it's an old-fashioned library, then sure, oak maybe.
- CWChris Williamson
Get yourself somewhere bourgeois. That's what we want.
- AAAli Abdaal
Exactly. You know, someplace fancy, someplace where you can really get into it and think, "Oh, yeah, this is what being a student is about."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) Yeah. Ancient furniture, that's what it's about.
- AAAli Abdaal
Exactly, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, okay, so we've gone somewhere that's similar. I, I also totally agree. The fact that my, uh, bedroom's 30 square meters is the only reason that I choose to record here. I would much sooner do work and sleep in different places. It's also the reason why you shouldn't watch TV in bed, although I know-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... I've got a TV that's behind me. Um, you should have locations that are, um, attached to a particular task. Tiago Forte would say the same. I know Chris Sparks would as well. Um, so we've done that. What, what else are you doing? What's next?
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, essentially what's next is, uh, figuring out what to do for the day. Um, I have a strong theory about this, which is that you shouldn't figure out what you're gonna do in advance. And I think this is usually the way that students build up their revision timetables. It's like, uh, you know, you think, "Right, I've got three months until my A levels or whatever, and therefore I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna map out the syllabus for each of my subject, and I'm gonna figure out what I'm gonna study each day. And in theory, if I stick to my plan, I will have covered everything twice by the time the exam rolls around." That's, like, the traditional way of approaching this. I've never been a fan of this method because firstly, it's an exercise in procrastination. Uh, we all know, uh, when we try to make a r- a revision timetable is that it basically takes up the whole day, then you think it's not perfect and so you think, "Oh, you know what, I just need to spend another day doing this." And so it takes up another day. I think also it's generally very optimistic. Uh, it, (laughs) you know, if you're the sort of person who can actually follow the plan that you set out three months ago, then fair enough. I'm definitely not that sort of person. I know very few people who actually would follow the plan exactly. And it's also kind of like trying to predict the future in that you're predicting ver- quite far out in advance which topics you're gonna need to visit more often than which topics you're gonna most struggle with and, and stuff. That seems to be generally a fool's errand for me. So the way that I do it, I c- I call it the retrospective revision timetable, which is that instead of having a list of dates down one column and figuring out when I'm gonna study what, I'll instead have a list of topics down the first column. If you imagine, like, a spreadsheet with a li- a li- a list of topics. And then each day I will ask myself the question, "If the exam were tomorrow, what topic would I be the most pissed off about?" Um, and I will study that topic. And then once I've studied that topic, I'll write the date next to the topic so that I've got this general idea of when I studied each topic. And I will also color code it based on how well I knew it based on my, my testing. So if it's red, it's, I didn't know it at all. I need to do this very quickly. If it's green, it's like, "Okay, this is pretty good. I can wait a while before I revisit this." And so every day I look at my retrospective revision timetable and look at where the gaps are and where the red is and think, "Okay, keeping in mind the concept of spaced repetition and the concept that I wanna be doing the harder stuff first, what topic should I cover in this next hour or so?" And I'll just repeat that process for as many hours as I'm doing the studying for. And over time that means that my topics thing becomes green across the board, but it's, it sort of looks like a jagged, a jagged graph because often chapter one in a book is a lot easier than chapter 13 in a book. Uh, but when we, you know, quote, "sit down and start studying," we often turn to chapter one just because it's easier than turning to chapter 13. And so some topics will be easier than others, but the point is that you're not basing what you're doing each day as a function of what the date is and what you predicted you were gonna do three months in advance. You're basing it off of, "What is the most difficult topic right now? And if the exam were tomorrow, what would I be least happy about? Let me focus on that so that I'm, again, always operating at the slight level of discomfort and always maximizing my bang for buck." 'Cause you don't wanna get to the point where you're getting diminishing returns, uh, when it comes to the amount of time that you're putting in.
- CWChris Williamson
That's like, um, aggregated spaced repetition, as well as individual spaced repetition. Obviously with specifically, again, med school, you can see precisely, like I didn't know this particular thing to do with cardiology-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... um, and then you're looking ... you're kind of aggregating those out into topic areas that you're also kind of a bit more shit at, and then thinking-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yes. Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... "Right, I'm, I'm, I'm going to use that." So someone might be really, really good at business law, but bad at criminal law, so you're-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... right, okay. And then within that you can drill down a little bit further. What's
- 24:59 – 40:24
Planning & Learning for Retention
- CWChris Williamson
your views, um ... Before we actually sit down, we've got our plan. I'm gonna guess you would plan for the day. You wouldn't sit down at a desk and then say, "Right, what am I going to do today?" You would at least know on the morning what was going to be done that day.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, more or less. I'd be like, "Okay, which three topics I'm, I'm, am I going today? I'm gonna do, I don't know, that ... this bit of cardiology, this bit of hematology, and I'll try and memorize the Krebs cycle from biochemistry, for example."
- CWChris Williamson
Got you, got you. Um, what's your views on caffeine as a studying tool?
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, I love it. I think it's great. Uh, s- pretty reasonable evidence for it, uh, v- very little evidence about d- downsides. I've always been a fan. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Modafinil or anything more spicy or exotic?
- AAAli Abdaal
I've never really tried any of those. Um, at university there was a strict like no-no policy about it, and I h- I had a friend who tried-
- CWChris Williamson
What, like a performance enhancing drugs test at Cambridge? Is that what they were doing?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yes, that's surprising. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, I, I had a friend who tried Modafinil, and he said that he ended up just sort of reading the same thing over and over again for about 16 hours, and that kind of put me off it. But recently I've started looking into it a little bit more, and I'm keen to try it out. Um, I think it might make for an interesting video, I just have to make sure it's legal and not, uh, against the requirements of the General Medical Council, that says anything you do that brings the profession into disrepute is grounds for getting struck off, so ... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, don't get yourself struck off, man. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, i- it wouldn't be a good look.
- CWChris Williamson
I, uh, I posted today on my Instagram story, um, Alpha Brain from Onnit. And I've been using Alpha Brain. It's edit days, so today-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... I've, uh, edited and uploaded four episodes, um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Damn. That's not bad.
- CWChris Williamson
... which is like-
- AAAli Abdaal
Cool.
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah, it's a serious, serious day. It's audio only, my video guy looks after video, so it's not-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... quite the, the challenge that you may come up against. But still, a serious day of full graft. Um, so that and a can of Nocco, a caffeinated can of Nocco. And that for me puts me in a really, really nice head space. But the number of people who are s- they're so keen. I appreciate the messages that I get, but everyone's looking for that edge in-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... the, in a pill form or in a, a, a canned form or in-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... a powdered form. Um, as opposed to, dude, you really should just learn spaced repetition, or dude, you really should just understand what pomodoros or focused, like work is.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, absolutely. I think if you're in the ... Uh, yeah, I, I, I s- I strongly suspect that okay sort of drugs and nootropics and stuff, it's not actually going to be the thing that, that moves the needle. The thing that, that moves the needle is testing yourself more and s- spacing it out and interleaving.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
And maybe if you're operating at sort of, you know, the upper echelons of, of everything where every single minute percentage of optimization is necessary, then maybe you can look into those. But so f- s- you know ... We're all still re-reading our texts and making notes and thinking it's going to be helpful. Like, (laughs) there's a long way to go before we need to enhance our performance in that, in, in that sense.
- CWChris Williamson
We sing from the same hymn sheet here, mate. Uh, so we've ... we're, we're there, we've ... we know what we're going to do. Um, sitting down, are you doing it in blocks?
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, partly. So if I'm working with friends, uh, we'll pomodoro together. Uh, so pomodoro method, 25 minutes on, five minutes off. Um, when I was at, at university I used to get a lot of my friends who were doing different subjects, we'd all sit in the same table at the library. This is one of those fancy, you know, mahogany, uh, dark, dark, dark mode libraries. Uh, and we would, uh, sort of tap on the table once when a pomodoro session was gonna begin, and then we'd tap on it once when it ended, and then we'd do a double tap when our five-minute break was over. Uh, and we called ourselves the Pomodoro Society, and which we turned into a WhatsApp group called PomSoc, which is still active to this day, because we actually became pretty good friends over the course of exam terms just by studying together for 25 minutes on, five minutes off. Um, and then so in the 25 minutes we'd be d- we'd be doing our thing. And 25 minutes is actually quite a short amount of time, especially when you're grappling with a new concept. And I quite like it because it forces you to do things a little bit more efficiently and think, "Okay, I've actually only got 25 minutes to try and understand this topic. I'm not gonna screw around with stuff that I know is going to be pointless levels of detail. I'm gonna focus on the big picture and really try, try to, you know, get the broad brushstrokes down initially, and only worry about the details later." So that was what I personally used to use. These days I'm ... it's ... I'm usually studying on my own, so I don't need to use it as much, but I think pomodoro is really great for when you're studying with friends.
- 40:24 – 45:00
Ali’s Main Study Tools
- AAAli Abdaal
- CWChris Williamson
Understood. So into the, the, the bullets in the magazine of the rifle that you're firing at this exam-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... what are the, what are the individual bullets that you're using? Anything on your phone? Anything on your computer?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Um, probably... I sometimes think about this, that if I could go through med school and I only had, like, like, the bare minimum of tools, I think it would be two things. I think firstly, it would be Anki. Anki is a flashcard app. And secondly, it would be spider diagrams. I think with Anki plus spider diagrams, you can actually memorize or, and understand and learn every single thing in medical school, uh, to just, like, a, a stupidly high level.
- CWChris Williamson
What are you using for spider diagrams?
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, pen and paper. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, right. Okay.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Real, r- real, real old school.
- AAAli Abdaal
Real old school, pen and paper. Or if you wanna, wanna be fancy about it, Notability, iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, Paperlike screen protector. Um, not sponsored, unfortunately.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
But, and, like, honestly, still for spider diagrams, I just use pen and paper, 'cause it is-
- CWChris Williamson
Why, why do you like the spider diagrams? Just to visualize how concepts fit together?
- AAAli Abdaal
Exactly, yeah. Because something like Anki flashcards, uh, are very good at helping you memorize the detail, but they're very bad at helping you see the bigger picture. Uh, and wh- whereas with a spider diagram or a mind map, you have, like, the topic in the middle and then you s- you're forced to categorize it into different bits. And the fact that thing- certain things are always at certain parts of the page, that's yet another visual cue for you to recall that when, when you're tested on it. Um, and so one thing that I always do is I try and fit the entire syllabus for every topic onto a single page. So within hematology, for example, I'll be like, "Okay, let's look at all these topics. Let's try and sub-categorize them as much as possible." So okay, hematology can broadly be split up into three things, uh, blood clotting, anemia, and, uh, cancer. And so okay, cool. Now everything within blood clotting, well, it can be this or that. Now, within cancer, we've got these five different types of hematological malignancies. And within... What was the third one? Uh, within anemia, we've got these three different types of anemia. And so this sort of spiders out from my central topic of hematology. And now when it comes to something like, uh, you know...... uh, understanding Henoch-Schonlein purpura or some rogue disease like idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, something like that. Uh, with flashcards, I'll know the details, but with my spider diagram, I'll know where it fits into the bigger picture. And between those two things, I think you basically cover, cover all your bases.
- CWChris Williamson
That's another David Epstein-ism, right? Where he talks about being birds in the sky and frogs in the mud. Says that you-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love that analogy. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... by barbelling and having the extremes at both ends, the big-picture thinking and then the, the real detailed thinking. Um, so-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... give me your 60-second elevator pitch for how to, how to nail Anki.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, okay. Cool. How to nail Anki. Um, Anki is a flashcard app. You want to firstly download it and set your appropriate settings by following any YouTube tutorial for the appropriate Anki settings because the default ones aren't very good. And then you create a deck, uh, and a deck of flashcards. You can just kind of use one deck. You can use multiple decks if you want. But let's say you've just got one deck, which is for all of medicine. Now, any time you come across something where you think, "Okay, I'm struggling to understand/remember this, and I could do with a flashcard," you just write a flashcard for yourself. You ask yourself the question, you put an answer, and you try and put as much information into the answer as possible so that next time you come across it, you'll see the answer, but you'll also see the context around it. And you can screenshot from your textbook or screenshot from Wikipedia, shove it into the flashcard. Um, over time, as you keep up with your daily reviews, all of this information that's in your fl- in your Anki will just get uploaded to your brain by default, provided you just do it every day. And if you can commit to doing that, just doing Anki a little bit every day and getting through your daily reviews, you will... I'll 100% guarantee all of the information in there is going to get uploaded to your brain.
- CWChris Williamson
Every med student that I know uses Anki. And that again, like, to just sing the song of medical students having it, having it a bit hard at university, um, you guys, if it works for you, um, for a business degree, like thinking back to the way that I remembered stuff during a degree which really was a walk in the park, I made it so much harder than it needed to be.
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
Like so, so, so much harder than it needed to be. But again, like exposure to tools like Anki and concepts like spaced repetition, I hadn't sort of really had those. Um, so hopefully we'll have expedited a bunch of people's, uh, discomfort today. Um, what else have we not covered that is important
- 45:00 – 51:24
Optimal Lifestyle for Study
- CWChris Williamson
as a part of the learning and remembering anything fast framework?
- AAAli Abdaal
I think we've covered most of the basics. W- w- w- we haven't talked about things like sleep and exercise and food. Uh, I suspect you've covered that a lot on other episodes of your podcast.
- CWChris Williamson
Why don't you, um, give us your protocol? Let's say that you're in the, the depths of revision time.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
How do you ensure that the body, the mind is primed for, uh, for taking in information?
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, I don't really have an elaborate thing for this. I just make sure I get between seven and eight hours of sleep every night, and I make sure I don't skip meals. Uh, and that (laughs) is actually most of what you need to do.
- CWChris Williamson
Man, how many students or even people doing a, a professional qualification, an MBA, you know, whatever it might be, the first thing to go is the food quality. It's the diet. It's, "I've spent all day in the library, back and forth to the vending machine, living on like four packs of Monster Munch and a Mountain Dew Energy."
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, what do you think-
- AAAli Abdaal
(laughs) Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the myelin sheaths-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... that your, that your brain is relying on are made up of Mountain Dew Energy and pickled onion Monster Munch?
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah, it's probably not entirely good for the myelin. Um, but yeah. You know, I don't, I don't over-complicate it too much. Recently, from listening to Dave Asprey, and I think, uh, Nat Eliason did a tweet the other day about all of the different tech he uses to hack his sleep, I started kind of looking into this a little bit more. I, I do have blackout curtains in my room, which, which help. Um, I n- I don't bring my phone into bed with me. I always have it across the room, so I'm forced to wake up in the morning to turn my alarm off. You know, just simple things like that. I haven't yet gone down the route of melatonin pills or light-blocking glasses or any, any of the fancier stuff.
- CWChris Williamson
Let me... Once we've finished, man, I'm going to link you in with the guys from RA Optics, uh, Matt Maruca who's been on this show, the most advanced blue-blocking glasses on the planet. Um, I'll, uh, I'll loop you in with them because they are phenomenal.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, amazing. Have they got prescription varieties? Because I, I do wear glasses, so I've always-
- CWChris Williamson
So they can do, do... They can even do custom ones.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, it's insane. They're really, really fun. Uh, anyone that was interested in that, the light diet, go back and listen to it. It's like episode 189. Um, so yeah, I think certainly talking about sleep, like keeping your phone outside of your room, uh, making sure that you're not, uh... I'm just throwing a pair of RA Optics.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh. Sexy.
- CWChris Williamson
So these are the, these are the day ones, and I've got the night ones over by bed. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Why do you have day ones?
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, yeah. So they're for if you're working, um, during the day but using an artificial screen. And then the red ones are the... You'll have seen them before. They're like the, the hardcore sort of what the guys in the Modern Wisdom Big Dick group called-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... the turbo nonce glasses. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) The ones, the ones that just scream incel. Um-
- AAAli Abdaal
Haven't heard that phrase since my last lads hangout.
- CWChris Williamson
I know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me neither. Me neither. But it's just, it's one that came up and it stuck now for anyone that wears like hardcore blue blockers.
- AAAli Abdaal
Okay.
- 51:24 – 1:02:20
Rooting Out Friction for Productivity
- CWChris Williamson
up, we've got... we can probably squeeze another 10 minutes in or so. What have you found over the last year or so which has changed the most, uh, to do with your productivity setup or that you've been the most impressed with, um, that you've added in or taken out or, or switched around with to do with your efficiency and productivity?
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, interesting question. Okay, so two things come to mind. Number one is friction. Uh, I have this phrase which is that friction is the most powerful force in the universe. Uh, and when it's against us, we're not gonna do anything. And when it's in our favor, we're not gonna do bad things. Uh, friction in my context was that, uh, for the last like three years since my YouTube channel started, I have been using kind of a light stand with like a soft box and all this sort of stuff, which is a real ballache to set up and take down. And so, either my living room would just be a complete tip at all times because there'd be all these C-stands lying around with wires all over the place, or it would be such a ballache to sit down and film a video 'cause I kn- I would know it would take half an hour to actually set up all the equipment. But a couple weeks ago, I think it was last week, I decided I was going to get a handyman in, like cambridgehandyman.co.uk or something like that-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
... uh, to just ceiling mount one of my lights. And now I have a kind of Aputure space light mounted above my desk where previously a C-stand would've gone from halfway down the living room across through the desk. And just that one difference has made such a huge impact to my video making process because it's literally a case of I've got the remote control over here, I press the power button, I turn the light on, and I've got the camera already ready to go. So then it's just a case of putting the microphone in place and then, and then I'm good to go. Uh, earl- earlier today I was thinking of doing an unboxing and, again, I had to set up a C-stand to get an overhead camera rig and I was thinking, "Okay, this is not sustainable in the long term. I need to get like a wall m- like a ceiling mounted retractable overhead rig where I can just do this and it's fine." Um, and so every time, like, like now I'm very b- b- b- because I think, I think even before I was quite attuned to friction, but I just hadn't considered that it would actually be ROI positive to spend 200 quid to hire a handyman to come and sort my ceiling mount out and, and, and the stuff. But it... That almost certainly is the case. So really I'm... What I'm trying to do now is figure out any time I feel a sense of, "Ugh, I don't want to do this," I sort of try and examine where is that feeling coming from and can I eliminate friction to get rid of that feeling? Uh, and often the answer is yes, I just have to get this thing to make something a little bit more convenient. That's one thing. The other thing is I recently got this Herman Miller Sayl chair. I've been lusting after Herman Millers ch- Miller chairs for the last 10 years and my mom always vetoed it. She was like, "No, you're not spending 1,000 pounds on a chair." Uh, but a f- a few months ago I ordered this one without telling her, so it was fine.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AAAli Abdaal
Um, and then when the guy came to deliver it, it was like one of the Herman Miller, like, ergonomic specialists and stuff. And so I ended up having a chat with him and he was giving me some tips on how to set it up. And the main takeaway was that apparently w- what he recommends is that you have the arm rests of the chair just above your desk. And n- so like before my desk was fairly high, now I've sort of lowered it a lot because it's a standing desk. And now when I sit down, I have like a really good ergonomic position which is just something I hadn't even considered before.... and now, over the last, over the last week or so since I've had this, I actually haven't had any lower back pain, which I would always get when using my desk in standing mode or when using any other, any other kind of setup. So this is another area where I'm, I'm thinking, "Oh, this ergonomic thing is pretty legit." I got this like rest, palm rest for my keyboard the other day, um, which makes it more comfortable to type and means my, my, my wrists are at, in a less flexed position normally. Uh, so that's the sort of stuff I'm thinking about in, in terms of (laughs) in terms of modern productivity.
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting. I think we, we were talking earlier on, unless you're at the absolute peak, tip of the spear, zenith of your productivity, you probably don't need nootropics. I think, based on the content that comes off your YouTube channel, the 1,000 pound chair and the, the, the wrist optimizing-
- AAAli Abdaal
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, uh, like rest thing. When you type at 140 words per minute, that's ... you kinda need that. Right? That-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. That, that could be the difference.
- CWChris Williamson
... that makes, that makes a difference.
- AAAli Abdaal
(laughs) It, it just feels a lot nicer and it feels less painful at the end of the day. So I'm thinking, you know what? Any amount of money I can spend to make my life more pleasant in this regard is absolutely gonna be ROI positive.
- CWChris Williamson
Talking about the friction thing, I think that's a really interesting point. I've always been a, a fan of the stacking the deck concept, which is that you want to make the things that you do want to do as easy as possible and the things that you don't-
- AAAli Abdaal
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... want to do as hard as possible. Stack the deck in your favor. So for instance, you're someone who has their phone over the far side of the room. Um, I've had mine outside of my bedroom in the kitchen for like two and a half years, and my sleep quality ... I wasn't tracking it as closely as I am now with a, a, a wearable, um, but my sleep quality must have increased within two weeks by 10%, because you always know. Like you remember when you used to have your phone next to your bed, and, uh, you ... there was just in the back of your mind, there was always that, you can't sleep. There's cat videos on YouTube. Ah-ha. And then you roll over-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. Exactly.
- CWChris Williamson
... and it's there, and the cat videos are there, and then three hours later, it's 3:00 AM, and you hate-
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... yourself. You hate, you, you hate yourself, the core of your being.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah. These days, the, the only thing I have them on my bedside table, I, I, I caved I think two years ago and got one of those Dyson desk fans that look nice and are cool. So I always have the fan on. And I have a Kindle on my bedside table. So if I get to the point where, any time I get to the point where I can't sleep, I'll just start reading on the Kindle. Uh, and recently, I, I actually got the Kindle Oasis. I'd been a Kindle Paperwhite guy for the last like five years. But the Kindle Oasis is like five times more expensive, but it does have a warm light. And I was thinking, "You know what? (laughs) I can make a, a video review about this, plus the warm light will be better for me when I sleep." So now I have the Kindle Oasis purely for that reason. Um, and it's quite nice because now, I will just read and then I'll find my eyes closing and then I'll just fall asleep, which is quite a nice place to be.
- CWChris Williamson
And with the Oasis, you can read in the bath and just drop it in. Drop it in.
- AAAli Abdaal
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Feel free to drop it in the bath.
- AAAli Abdaal
I used to read with a Paperwhite in the bath as well and just never, never drop it in, but now I know I can drop it in. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AAAli Abdaal
So, that's a good thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, interesting thing, I've got a study that I can send to you, uh, that compares the effect of e-readers versus tablets on melatonin production.
- AAAli Abdaal
Oh, okay.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, e-readers are fine. This went out in-
- AAAli Abdaal
No way. Interesting.
- 1:02:20 – 1:02:54
Where to Find Ali
- CWChris Williamson
through today, where should they go to check out more of your stuff?
- AAAli Abdaal
Uh, sure. Uh, so probably my YouTube channel is the main place, so if you just search Ali Abdaal on YouTube, A-B-D-A-A-L, and you'll find it. Alternatively, you can go to my website, aliabdaal.com, and that'll have links to podcast, newsletter, Instagram, the whole shebang.
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, thank you so much for today.
- AAAli Abdaal
Good stuff. Thanks for having me on.
- CWChris Williamson
Love this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Love this.
Episode duration: 1:02:55
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