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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“If I think about is this a core value that I live by I want to live by? The answer was yes. And I was surprised by how much of those experiences were 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, 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 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 teaching on that list kind of.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've been on a whole quest across the internet over the last few months to try and answer this question of how do you figure out what your values are? There's this program with a life coach that I even did, which is just finishing up where one of the exercises was to go back to your childhood and think about kind of on a scale of minus 10 to plus 10 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 made this list of all these things that these salient memories from childhood, like, you know, that time when my brother new game to my Pokemon Blue and I lost my 146 Pokemon, and that how that felt and that time when whatever. And the facilitator was like, okay, let's try and tease out what this might tell you about some of your values. I was kind of surprised that a lot of the stuff that came out of that”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, what I've been realizing a lot recently is that, yes, we're, I don't know, expanding the team and moving to an office in London and like hiring people and bloody, blah, blah, blah. 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 so much worrying about the goal at the end of it? One thing that you talk about as well is, I think it wasn't either chapter 19 or 20, it was around this thing of 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? You talk about values like living in alignment with your values. Do you have any like how do you figure out what your values are?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the way I try and remind myself of this point is thinking and really trying to internalize that the journey is more important than the destination. And I think we do need a destination, like, you know, the fact that I want to, I don't know, write this book or whatever. That's a destination. But now that I've got that destination of like, cool, this is the direction I want to go. At that point in a dream world, I would just forget about that. And now that I'm on the journey, I would enjoy the journey on its own merit. Because, as you know, once you set a goal, you hit the goal, it's like, well, happiness started. The joy from that lasts about five seconds, and then it feels like nothing. Sometimes it doesn't feel like anything at all, even for those five seconds.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being in this position now and just been like, oh my God, this is the dream. Have you come across a guy called Brandon Sanderson? He's an author. He writes, he's my favorite author. He does these incredible fantasy novels, Stormlight Archive, huge, huge, huge series. In it, there's a phrase that I always come back to around this point. There's this order of knights. They call the Knights Radiant. And they have their charter, their ideals. And their first ideal is life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. And it's that final bit of journey before destination that I remind myself of on a basically daily basis where it's kind of like Marty Cyrus' thing of it's the climb. It's not about how fast I get there. It ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, very much so. I have to remind myself on a daily basis as well to kind of be grateful for all of the things. Sometimes if I'm in the habit of doing like a morning journal, I'll write down a list of three things. And it's often simple things like this cup of coffee in my hand or Angus or like my housemate. And it's just like, you know, this nice chat that we had. And I think for me, if I don't remind myself, I always just think in kind of hustle mode of like, all right, cool, on to the next thing, onto the next thing, onto the next thing. But like, it was pretty cool yesterday. We went on a tour of Gymshark HQ up north. And I was just thinking that I can't believe this is my job. Like, I get to do this for work. This is absolutely sick. And even now being here, like, this is sitting here talking to you is what I get to do for work. And if like, I don't know, 18-year-old me were to imagine.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I want the NHS to be and what I want a good doctor to be. And there's something that Seth Godin, 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 as like, oh, I have to put in this cannula. And I remembered that blog post I read from South Godin where he said, instead of thinking of have to, think of it as get to. I realized, oh, I get to put in this cannula. I get to make a difference in this patient's lives and life and give her fluids overnight so that she's not going to 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 privileged. This is cool. And I put it in and we had a nice chat and I felt really great about it afterwards. And now, 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, I procrastinate. Instead of thinking, I have to do this, I think I get to do this.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometime last year, I was working at the hospital, it was pandemic season, et cetera, et cetera. And I'd gotten to the end of like a 13-hour long shift. And I was just about to go home. And the nurse said to me, oh, Ali, can you put a cannul in this patient? Her ivy line is tissued and she needs fluids overnight. And my heart kind of sank. I was like, oh no, like if the nurse wasn't able to put the cannulae in, that means there's a patient with difficult veins. It means it's going to be hot to put this in. And I sort of had this mindset of like, all right, then fine. And sort of grudgingly took out the cannula and got all the equipment in a tray. And as I was doing this, there was a patient in the bay next door where they were just like talking to a family member or something and saying, oh, you know, 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...”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's almost like we prep for this because this is literally the three-pot structure of my book, which I've been just having in my head for the last few weeks. Where, like, step one is how do we beat the procrastination? How do we 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 there's just, so in terms of mindset, the thing that I found that actually moves a needle is focusing on trying to make it fun. And I really like that word fun. I think there's something about the word fun that is so childish, but also fully speaks to like fun basically means 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 things like that. There's one story in particular that I often come back to, and that's like...”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I do is anytime I find myself procrastinating from something, I think, okay, am I procrastinating because I actually, the task is too icky. I don't know what I have to do. Because once I know what I have to do, I can then do it for two minutes and it gets done.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you have to be able to unikeify a task. And something like start a business is Icky. Something like learn to code is icky. Because what the hell does that even mean? Like, where do you even start? Whereas brainstorm 10 ideas for a name and pick one of them is a very clearly defined next action step. And so I get this with students all the time where people are like, oh, I don't have the motivation to study for my chemistry exam. It's like, what's on your to-do list? Study for my chemistry exam. That's never going to happen. Reach chapter one and answer questions four to five are a reasonable thing, a reasonably defined next action step.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, great. Yeah, he's awesome. Any podcast he's ever been on, I've been like, oh, this is so sick. He has a great blog post series about overcoming procrastination. And the way he refers to that, that point you just made is that there are a lot of tasks that are very vague and icky.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, just to your point there, have you come across the blog Wait, but why? It's incredible. You should definitely interview Tim Urban when you're in America. Oh, do you know what?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If my goal in writing the book is, oh, I really want to 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 want to write a book I'm proud of that's fun to write. That's actually within my control. And it becomes so much easier to get started at doing the thing. 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 fear, the discomfort. And then if we still need help, there are a few hacks. The one that I use all the time is the two-minute rule, which is where I will genuinely convince myself. I'm only going to do it for two minutes. And if I want, I'm allowed to stop after the two minutes because 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.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah So, the way to think about procrastination, basically Procrastination is a problem with getting started. Kind of this law of inertia, 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 nudge at the start towards actually getting started. And all of the techniques around that, like in the whole psychology research around this, it's just around making it as easy as possible. So reduce all of the friction to doing it. If you want to learn the guitar, then have the guitar by your sofa rather than in the wardrobe where you're never going to see it. And if it's out of sight, it's out of mind. You're never going to 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 psychological discomfort of going to the gym, that I don't want to see how other people are going to see me. Even having the wrong sort of goal.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's not. This is all the stuff that I'm researching for the book at the moment. And you talk about this as well in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. And the way that I think of it, 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. Once you're there, it's kind of easy. writing those first 10 words because 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 and so the way i think about it is 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 because i think once once you do the thing for two minutes it becomes so much easier to actually enjoy the process and sustain it”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think whatever, like I find in my life 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 100 quid 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 going to pay each other 50 quid. Things like that to remove the choice, the motivation, the willpower, the discipline. 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 because I'm like, okay, this is taken care of. I just show up.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And 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 quid 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.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The results happen really, really, really slowly, and then all at once, as soon as you just get that one video that goes viral.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think, again, I feel like there's been a bit of a cop out because this is stuff that you talk about, like enjoying the process. And this is kind of the theme of the book that I'm writing around how. 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 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 a 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 going to get done. And, you know, like you say, when we talk, when we talk about compounding, that video on day one isn't going to do anything. The video on day two or day three or day 24 is not going to 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.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, when I was listening to your compounding chapter, I just found myself nodding along like an absolute maniac to everything you were saying. I think it applies so much to YouTube. These days I teach people how to be part-time YouTubers. 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 contacts and the friends you're going to 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. Just ask on that.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of slowly building up. And then over the next few weeks, it just exploded up to like 20,000, 25,000. And I was getting all these comments from people who knew me in real life being like, oh, I've seen your video. I didn't realize you were a YouTuber. And that was the tipping point. Which sort of started that exponential growth trajectory that you talk about in the compounding chapter.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that tipping point was my first video that went viral. And it was a video about how to study for exams. This was one of those weird... Weird things that I look back on where 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. People would come to me asking for help on how to study for their exams. There's actually a whole body of psychological research on this that we just don't get taught in school around what are the actual 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 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 myself, okay, I really want to put all my, everything into this 100th video so that this video can potentially go big. And that's kind of what ended up happening. I think it was my 81st video or something rather than my 100th, but that video went viral. I had like 4,000 subscribers before.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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 in 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. 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 free. And if they like me enough, they'll sign up to the course. And that's why I started speaking to a camera in my bedroom. It was like, all right, guys, here are some tips for section one of the B-Man. You know, section one is all about critical thinking, the 60 minutes and 35 questions and bloody blind. Here's how you do it. And I was so familiar with that stuff having taught it for five years that that started to do reasonably okay early on in the days where I had like 51 subscribers, 52 refreshing the YouTube app every day to be like, oh my God, I've got another view. And it sort of...”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is very Started for me, so I harbored dreams of being a YouTuber since about 2009 Because I used to follow people like Kurt Schneider and Sam Suey, who were kind of YouTube cover artists. They would produce covers of popular songs. And those covers were amazing. They filmed them beautifully, arranged them beautifully. And I had a few friends who were really good at singing. And I fancy myself, you know, I was quite into maths. I like the idea of playing multiple musical instruments. So I thought, I want to 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 had a few like sort of stop starting moments over those next 10 years kind of trying and failing at this.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also for teaching. I used to do tutoring when I was like from the age of 13 up until now. And those were the times where I felt most alive in a way where I was teaching someone else. And the nice thing about being a YouTuber is that it's just teaching at scale. And so I think I found that thing that drives me intrinsically. So now text artup is sort of a, oh, backup option. If YouTube channel fails, if I get struck off the medical register, I can probably start a tech startup or words to that effect.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A little bit. So in my first year of uni, second year of uni, I started a company that helped other kids get into med school. And then, so that was like in-person courses. But then eventually because me and my brother knew how to code, we turned this into a software online question bank for the different med school admissions programs. And so that was its sort of like, you know, subscription billing software as a service kind of product, which was the closest I got to a tech startup. I dabbled with a few medical tech things. I used to do freelance app design and web design for med text startups while I was at uni. But when the YouTube channel started and that really started taking off, I sort of realized that the thing I actually want to do is teaching rather than coding. And then something that you talk about in the book is kind of reflecting on your life and figuring out what are your values, what is the thing that you have that intrinsic motivation for. And for me, I always had that intrinsic motivation for business type stuff.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But certainly from my first year of medical onwards, I knew that I was not going to be a doctor full time. I was going to do medicine for fun. And I was going to make money on the side through a tech startup or something like that.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there was also partly an internal narrative, and I'm not sure how much of this is me just bullshitting myself, but when I was 16, I made a conscious decision, do I want to do computer science and do the tinkering with websites thing, or do I want to do medicine? And I think what I reasoned at the time was two things. Number one, medicine is six years at university. Computer science is only three. Everyone says university is great. Ergo, six years is better than three years. Therefore, medicine makes sense. But the other thing that I thought was that it would be more interesting for my life to be a doctor who knows how to code than to be a coder who knows how to code. And it was like really that decision where I realized, okay, why don't I do medicine, keep the coding website-east to kind of stuff on the side so that I can eventually do some kind of textile-up thing related to medicine. And then medicine becomes a side hustle in a way before I had the terminology of the phrase side hustle. And so I ended up not quite working out that way.”
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 a big part of it with our parents' generation, especially as immigrants Seeing other people who are happy correlated with other people who had a big house and nice cars and were going on holidays equals financial success equals, oh, those people did well in their traditional career of banking or medicine or engineer or law. And the narrative of like someone like you, entrepreneur, social media, big company, it didn't, it just wasn't really a thing in our parents' generation.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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, oh, that side of me that's like, well, I want to carve my own path. I don't care about status and status and prestige. And then 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 this sort of old world prestige.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was very much status and prestige. 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. Often if I'm having conversations with my mom, she'll try and talk me back into doing medicine again.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think because doctor seemed like a prestigious thing. And I think 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”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I think when you grow up in the sort of environment that I did whereby parents or 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 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 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 engineer or a lawyer. 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...”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd be the kid getting decent grades and everything like that. But the thing 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 $5 here and there. And I was making kind of a little bit of money. I lied about my age on PayPal. I pretended I was 18 when I was actually like 13. And I was getting like $5, $10 from these small businesses here and there and thinking, oh my God, I'm making money on the internet. This is incredible. And then as I went through school, me and my friends, we were all quite interested in the entrepreneurship stuff. We were doing like well in school and I was like, oh, it would be cool to go to Oxford or Cambridge. It would be cool to do medicine. But really my passion at the time was going home 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.”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Interesting question. Okay, so 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. 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. At that point, 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. 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 secondary school that I did in South Indonese, Essex, where I discovered kind of entrepreneurship and of the internet and computers and stuff. And basically all throughout school,”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“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'm not doing the thing because I'm a 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 hacks. The one that I use all the time is 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 am enough is thinking 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 so much worrying about the goal at the end of it?”
2021-08-16 · The Diary of a CEO · Productivity Expert: How To Finally Stay Productive: Ali Abdaal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT