YouSaid · the spoken record

Ali Abdaal

lines on the record: 87
first: 2021-08-16
most recent: 2021-08-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Thank you. That's very kind of you to say. And it's incredibly gracious to have me on. Your book had a big impact on me, the mental models and their decision making, the chip stuff with time. Genuinely has changed decisions that I've made in my life. So thank you for that. And if anyone's listening to this who hasn't read the book would recommend. The audiobook in particular, which is narrated by you.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's really good. There's a phrase that a blogger friend of mine uses called servant hedonism, which is that you, by serving others and optimizing for serving others when you're making decisions in your life, you're in fact kind of making yourself more hedonic, more happy. And that is actually a reasonable. And as long as you can admit that to yourself, that's a pretty reasonable way of living life.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always that, right? Do I want to say it's because I enjoy helping people and making content that inspires? Or the real reason, which is because social status, prestige, money, et cetera, I like being recognized in the streets. It's kind of cool. I mean, I think it's a bit of both. And that's fine because that's the truth.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have you come across a book called The Elephant in the Brain? This is like a whole, it's like really well written. It's like all of the studies around what drives human behavior. And the main thesis of the book is that we're all ultimately selfish. A lot of the stuff we do is for signaling, but there is like a PR secretary in our heads that convinces even us that our motives for doing something are not selfish and they're in fact altruistic. And there's a quote from apparently from JP Morgan, which is that a man always has two reasons for doing something. A good reason and the real reason. And so whenever people ask me, why do you do YouTube?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's something that Naval Ravikon says as well, which is that if you want to have an impact, then you want to get rich and you want to get famous as well because people who are rich on famous just have more impact than people who are not because you can just deploy more capital and social capital towards the things that you care about to make more of impact. So optimizing for wealth and fame when you're young and while building skills while having fun. I think, you know, there are worse things.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if the kind of the DMs and stuff are anything to go by, you know, people would be like, oh my God, I got into medical school because of your videos. I was from this background where no one ever applied to medicine. No one thought about going to Oxbridge and I got there in part thanks to your videos. Thank you so much. And I feel like the impact I can have on the world by creating content on the internet and speaking to a camera in my bedroom. Is arguably greater than the impact I would have kind of just being a doctor, not that there's anything wrong with just being a doctor, of course.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm like, yeah, I can see why that's the narrative that you're telling yourself. But actually, I'm not special as a doctor. Like, I have no unique value to add as a doctor two years fresh out of med school. Anyone basically who has gone through medical training in the UK, because it's pretty good medical training, could do as good a job, if not better, than I can of being a doctor. But where I have counterfactual impact, where I am kind of unique in the impact I'm providing is in the fact that I have a YouTube channel that teaches people and inspires people's stuff.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sub-Saharan Africa, in a country or something, and then you stop being a doctor that obviously has a big impact, but most of the people listening to this are not in that position. And so the way that I think of impact is in terms of like counterfactual impact, i.e. what is my impact compared to if I didn't exist, if I wasn't doing my thing. And I often will see comments on videos from people being like, oh, you're a sellout for leaving medicine in the middle of a pandemic to like, I don't know, make YouTube videos or something BS like that.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Life. You'd be like, oh, great, have three guys. And so the idea behind effective altruism is that given that you can actually measure the impact of charities. And where I was going with this is that Can therefore measure the impact of a career and relate it kind of to money if you need to. So they've done an analysis of what being a doctor is like. And in the Western developed world, a doctor will save around seven lives throughout the course of their entire career. And this is not taking into account the fact that if I wasn't a doctor, the next person would have gotten into medical school and been a doctor in my place because in the UK we have more people applying to medicine than there are places. If you are the only doctor in, I don't know.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it's like this movement, this community that talks about how doing good in the world and like having an impact is actually scientifically measurable and can be done in evidence-based kind of ways. And so there's a few like charities and programs tied to that. One of them is Givewell. And they do an evidence-based analysis of the charities in the world to figure out what is the most bang for your buck. What's the highest ROI on money donated in terms of lives saved or are some other outcome measures? And you find that it's some pretty rogue charities that come out on top here. For example, the Against Malaria Foundation on average, it costs somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000 to buy enough malaria nets to statistically be able to literally save a life. And that's a lot cheaper than most people would think. And if someone were to say to you now, you know, Steve, you can donate three grand and you literally say,”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you think in that way, because then it's like, oh, I'm not going to talk about money. It's weird people talk about money on the internet, et cetera, et cetera. So those would be kind of two things that I would love to implant into young people's brains”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And obviously that's so much easier said than done and a large amount of being able to take that money box, being able to build that economic engine is based on kind of privilege and where you've grown up and circumstances and all that stuff. But I guess kind of from where you're sitting, you never had that sort of privilege growing up and you kind of succeeded despite it. Yeah, it's just that thing of accepting. I think a lot of young people, especially like the Gen Zen folks these days. In that mindset, I care about impact, I don't care about money. I think it's very hard to live for Thought Life if you're not”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then you do have to solve the money problem because we all need to make money. We all need to have that in board games, you call it as an economic engine. If you want to win in a board game, you always have to figure out, are you going to sell sheep? Are you going to get wood or are you going to get oat? Are you going to get hay? Like, what is your economic engine going to be? And I think the sooner, the sooner that can be ticked as a box, or the more aligned the economic engine can be with the thing you actually find fun, the more you can do that thing of living life on your terms. Because what I never want to be in the position of is where that thing of, well, I just got to work the nine to five, so I so I can enjoy the five to nine because that's like 80,000 hours of our lives, 80,000 chips out of the 500 that we've squandering away just to survive.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If more young people accepted that work doesn't have to be suffering, it can actually be easy and fun, and you can have it all, provided you find ways to make it fun and optimize for the things that are enjoyable. That will solve a lot of kind of problems when it comes to things people often ask me about, which is motivation, procrastination, burnout, and all that jazz. I think another kind of underrated tip, which the toxic productivity people would crucify me for, is that I think Everyone kind of like if you want to live a life on your own terms.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the main one that I see is a mindset that work has to be suffering. Like working hard is like a bad thing and that What it looks like if you're striving for something is that it looks like pain. This is very much the mindset I had going into medical school where it's like, oh, I'm now a first-year medical student at Cambridge University. This is supposed to be hard. Let's get all my big textbooks out. Let's like spend ages in the library, you know, pulling all nighters thinking it's a badge of honor because this is what work looks like and it looks hard. From my second year onwards where I realized, hang on, like, you know, the thing Tim Ferris often says, like, what would this look like if it were easy?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But also, it's not quite the same as the whole live every day as if it were your last. That balance there. How do you think about that balance?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amazing, Brunni. Yeah, so she wrote a book called The Regrets of the Dying or the Top Regrets of the Dying, where she interviewed like hundreds of people who were on the deathbed asking them, what are your regrets? And some of the really common ones were, I wish I'd lived a life true to myself rather than what others expected of me. I wish I'd worked less hard. I wish I'd spend more time with friends and family. Can you remember what the other ones are?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think one of the main ones is this thing about the money diminishing returns curve, about beyond about 50 to 70K, depending on what study you look at. Money doesn't buy more happiness. And I often have to remind myself of that when I get into this cycle of the pursuit of more stuff. One of the things, I won't really call it mental model, but one of the things I often come back to is, oh, I think you talk about in the book as well, five regrets of the dying. And I had those written on the top of my to-do list on my daily to-do list template. That's a good one. The other one is...”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This one mental model that I think of, which is that if you were the only person in the world, would you still buy the thing? And I think when it comes to new Apple products, yes, I would because I can do my work better on a... Nicer MacBook or on a nicer screen. But yeah, certainly I probably wouldn't get an Apple Watch if I was the only person on Earth because I think the utility of that is more signally and more about like, this is the sort of identity I want to portray to other people than it is about the fact that having an Apple Watch for me, given that I'm not into running, is actually useful.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A ridiculously expensive monitor that Apple sell for professionals. And I really didn't need it, but it was like, it would be kind of cool to have on my desk. And I knew there was zero weight was going to make me any happier. I was like, it's just kind of cool. And my housemate was like, oh, your monitor's arrived. How do you feel? I was like, just even contemplating how I feel as a result of the fact this monitor arrived was just kind of a bit baffling to me because obviously it doesn't make any difference to my data to happiness. It was just something kind of cool that I could buy as a business expense and I thought, why not? I think when I was younger, I used to look forward to purchases more like, you know, ordered a PlayStation game when we were tracking the delivery, waiting for it to arrive. And I was just like, it's just kind of things. And the way I often describe it to people is maybe sounds a bit arrogant, but it's like, I feel like my happiness is a 10 out of 10 right now. And I really can't imagine that changing. But it's still kind of cool to spend money on the things that I want to spend.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I kind of have similar things. So often I will buy something. I bought one of those £6,000 pro display XDRs with the thousand pound stand that Apple sell the other day just because.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then I can invite friends on board, and then we can do like jet skiing and stuff. Having a private jet would be really cool because then I can like fly wherever I want and save my three hours of time and take my friends out on a trip. Having enough money that I'd be able to fly friends over to visit me would be sick for my personal happiness. I don't know. I feel like the more I think about this, the more I start to invent justifications for trying to make more money. For the sake of happiness and fulfillment and Beyond the $75,000 a year that the studies will tell us leads to diminishing returns.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I think convenience is a big thing for me. I also have that thing of money is useful insofar as it helps me buy back my time, which I can then use to deploy against things that I care about. But then as I kind of get exposed to more like rich people and see like the lives that they're living and like you know this idea of thinking about moving to London where like I've been living in my flat that me and my brother have a mortgage for in Cambridge for the last three years with a lodger and therefore it's returning 16% a year because I'm not paying rent blah blah now moving to London where it's like I actually can't afford to buy a place in London like I could afford to rent a place in London but it's like I could rent for a thousand a month or two thousand or three or four you know those places that are 8,000 a month are pretty good I wonder what it would be you know can I afford to spend 8,000 a month on a place that's slightly nicer that's a little bit more central what am I optimizing for if I get a place in King's Cross it's easier for friends to come visit therefore I can make more memories therefore increase happiness that way and the money thing just sort of I feel like those those numbers keep on going up because you know then you could be like well having a yacht would be pretty cool because”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as you meet people, as I've met people who are kind of levels of rich above me, then I start thinking, oh, maybe. It would be nice to be able to afford to fly first class everywhere. That would be pretty cool. And I think, I wonder if that would increase my quality of life. And I know those, you know, diminishing returns for money and stuff. First class versus my wonder. Oh, yeah. How do you think about that?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do you think about money? It's a question that you often ask you guys that I really want to ask you because. Obviously, you are rich. But there are more levels of rich beyond what you currently are.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It never stops, does it? Like, it seems like, at least on the outside, that you've done a good job of kind of, I mean, obviously you're particularly successful, but being okay with that level of success and not trying to get to the next level for whatever that looks like.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was doing the YouTube stuff. And then I was kind of the only one 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 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 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 efficiently enough. We're not hiring fast enough. We're not doing this fast enough. We're not doing that fast enough.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I have this issue where I often feel like what I'm currently doing is not, quote, 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 all those things, I sometimes feel that, oh, but it's not fast enough. And I think that's where the comparison stuff comes in When my peer group was kind of just my friends in medical school.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just a sort of surface level two minute long thing that you would have seen on YouTube, Circo 2005. I think you did a pretty great job of that.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 does better. 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. This is a quick path to this goal that I want, hence your title of Happy Sexy Millionaire. But we've also found that on videos where I think, oh, let's dumb the message down. Let's just kind of do a quick five-point listical without any examples because people just want the dopamine hit of advice that sounds reasonable, but they can't action. Those videos haven't done as well. People click on them, but then they don't stay watching. And the videos we found 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 least in my audience, and I suspect in yours and anyone listening, actually do want depth and nuance.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's about. Hooking them in with the promise of something simple and quick, and then And if you stop at that point, that is, I think, where a kind of sort of course scammers and 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 one thing that we've iterated with over time is, you know,”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It does. Yeah. On the note of... Being yourself. The thing that I feel I feel a contradiction that on the one side, there's kind of be yourself. And on the other side, there's like choose yourself. What I worry about is what if this person who I am, i.e. the kind of nice guy who enjoys Disney and board games and stuff, that's a result of accidental experiences that I haven't really chosen for myself. And should I instead be thinking, okay, who's the sort of person I want to be? Although having said that, I don't want to be anyone who doesn't sing along Disney songs because it's just great. Yeah”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the one hand, there's that thing of just be yourself, of be your authentic self, etc., etc. And a girl will like that for who you are. And on the other side, it's 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.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The other side is If we're keeping it real, it's like I think it's around masculinity. And what it means to be a man. And if one were to hypothetically read Wiki How articles on how to get girls or even the vast literature on the topic, there is a big thing of women are attracted to men, like, you know, people who are someone who is a man, someone who leads, someone who's like Alpha, those sorts of things. And I think My kind of default way of being is very not that. And my idea of fun is singing Disney songs and playing board games until two o'clock in the morning with a pizza takeaway rather than something that are more like macho alpha type person would be. And so”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a real problem. So there's a few narratives that I've bought into subconsciously. One of those narratives is that I am like a weedy nerd kid, the kid that I was when I was 12 years old and getting slightly booted in school and getting grades and stuff, but like not really have anything, not being valuable as a human being beyond the fact that I was generating A-stars in exams. That's like one side of it. There's another side, but I'd love to hear your take on that. What's the other”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, exactly. I'm having to pepper in pepper that into my videos a lot more these days. Because I kind of thought it was so obvious that it doesn't need to be stated that obviously don't seek economic output and productivity at the expense of other things that are more important like health and relationships. But clearly that's not a thing that is obvious. And so I'm now having to caveat a lot of my productivity advice with Lokis. Let's just define productivity as meaning and fulfillment and stuff rather than pure economic output.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is mostly a joke. I hope you realize this, but also it's like that's kind of sad that that comment has got so many upvotes where, oh, I feel so a wasteman when I watch one of Ali Abdal's videos. And I think there is that 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. 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. And I look at that and there is a part of me that gets pleasure out of like flagellating myself in that like, why don't I look like that yet? And I wondered to what extent that's like a thing in the world of productivity.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, partly it's a virtue signaling thing. I think partly it's also like a self-flagellating thing in a way whereby I often see comments on my videos where it's like a productive day in my life, which I'm kind of doing tongue-in-cheek just because it's funny, where people are like, oh my God, I watch these videos just to make myself feel bad. And I'm like, oh, wow, okay.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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. Think partly it's a”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I often think about this. So to me, productivity, 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 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. It's when 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. That to me is unproductive.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You would practice the song on day one, you'd practice it again on day two, then on day five, then on day 25, 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 summed up by those two things. Active recall, i.e. test yourself and space repetition, i.e. space it out over time.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listening to this has exams coming up and they are worried about the grades. 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 the harder it feels, the more I'm learning. And then we sleep and then the connections get solidified. So that's kind of the main concept, basically test yourself more, whatever that thing is. And the 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 a long-term memory, whatever the skill is, is to interrupt the forgetting curve at spaced intervals.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so. Essentially, the main one is that we learn by testing ourselves rather than by consuming more stuff. Which is a bit counterintuitive. When it comes to if we think about studying and then we can kind of broaden it out, if it comes to studying, we think that to learn more stuff, I need to get more information into my brain. But what 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, oh, I'm an idiot. I don't know enough. But that like desirable difficulty is what allegedly creates the neuronal connections in our brain to make us actually learn something. 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...”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thing done today. And I sometimes think that if I did this more often, if for 365 days I actually just did the one thing that's most important each day, I'd be making so much progress. I'd be having so much fun. And then I think to myself, why don't I actually just do this every day? But that's one of my main ones.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's one. I've read a bunch of books around productivity and stuff. There's one called Make Time by these chaps called Jake and John. And there's a tip in there, which I genuinely use every day. It's called The Daily Highlight, where it's just similar to Gary Keller's thing of the one thing. Like, what is the one thing you want to do today? And then it's like, I define that in the morning. Okay, what's the one thing I want to do today? Record this podcast with you. What's the one thing I want to do tomorrow? Finish sample chapter for the book proposal. And then I'll stick a slot in the calendar for it. And then the thing will get done. And on days where I actually do the daily highlight thing, I have about a 50% success rate with actually thinking about it in the morning. I always just get more done. And I feel at the end of the day, oh, I've made progress because I've done that one thing that was most important. On the days where I don't, I find that like, oh, I've got these 18 things doing my to-do list. Oh, got this message coming from this person who wants to intro to that person. When I know what that one thing is, I'm like, okay, cool. All I have to do is just get that one.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But then when I have conversations with my mom, it's like, oh, well, you quit because you're a quitter. Like, the fact that you found it hard, you only quit because it was hard. And it's like, no, I didn't only quit because it was hard. I also crucially quit because it was like the reward was not going to be worth it. But I didn't quite have the terminology to express that until I read it in your book recently.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing that I reasoned in my mind was I could do this, but the reward is really not worth it. Like you get to the end of it. I'd spoken to some doctors living working in America. They were like, yeah, you make 400K a year and you're working a lot and you're going through this four years of grueling residency program. And in my mind, it was like, okay, it's hard. And the outcome is not worth it. Therefore, I'm just going to quit.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I read that bit of the book, The quitting framework, I was sort of retrospectively applying decisions I've made to quit to that thing of like suck and hard. And I was like, oh, okay, this actually makes a lot of sense. There was one decision that my mom still haunts me about, which was about a year ago, I decided that, you know what, I want to take my medical career seriously and I want to move to America to do medicine. I had a few friends who were there. It seemed like an adventure and it seemed cool. But to move to America from the UK to do medicine, you have to take this ridiculously hard exam called the USMLE. And it's basically like relearning all of medical school, but like, you know, a ridiculous level of detail more so than we have in the UK. And so I started off preparing for this and I realized that this is actually really hard.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And realizing that teaching is more of a value for me than saving lives, for example, I was like, okay, cool. This makes sense. I can now get on board with that and not feel bad about it.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Helping other people in a way, but Like I've got friends, for example, who run charities and they genuinely feel in their hearts if there is suffering in the world. And I don't genuinely feel in my heart when they're suffering in the world. 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 stuff. But I won't actually feel it. But when I think about how I feel, it's like teaching other people rather than 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 prefer teaching medical students than actually practicing as a doctor.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT