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freedom profile

concept · in 23 sources (2021–2025)

Rating a job or business on fun, flexibility, fulfilment and finances, so how you earn matters as much as how much.

Sources by year: 2021: 1 · 2022: 4 · 2023: 5 · 2024: 7 · 2025: 6

Also known as: the four Fs, fun, flexibility, fulfilment, finances, the three Fs

Also named in the threads: Business Class, Ali's video series on building a feel-good business (2023) · Ali promises more videos about business, also shared in his Business Class newsletter (2024)

Questions

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

lifestyle business (3) · Part-Time YouTuber Academy (3)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2025

  • 2025-03-11 · What to do if you hate your job — Ali says that if you don't enjoy your job, you are probably missing some elements of autonomy, mastery or purpose. — 00:02:39
    • Ali sets out three parallel paths to improve job satisfaction: a short-term path of tactical adjustments to your daily experience, a long-term path of building career capital to cash in for autonomy and mastery, and an exit path, a thoughtful transition into something new. — 00:03:08
    • Sahil Bloom says "I hate my job" is a blanket statement to deconstruct: you rarely hate all of your job, so break your day down from start to finish and see which parts create energy and which drain it. — 00:05:05
    • Ali's first strategy is an energy calendar: at the end of each day colour-code the day's activities green if they created energy, yellow if neutral and red if draining; after a week the trends show which aspects of your job you actually hate. — 00:05:55
    • Citing psychology research on job crafting, Ali says that in many workplaces what you do need not be what is on your job description, and that most of his viewers, likely in white-collar jobs, have reasonable room to craft their own job. — 00:09:19
    • Ali's long-term path: to build career capital you can cash in for autonomy, mastery, purpose and more interesting work, aim to become absolutely irreplaceable by adding loads of value, then cash that value in over time. — 00:11:27
    • Ali's fifth strategy is to broaden your definition of compensation: research shows salary is a hygiene factor rather than a motivating factor, so bad pay demotivates but good pay does not motivate. — 00:14:56
    • Sahil Bloom says compensation is not only money: especially early in your career you can be paid in new opportunities, access, travel and networks, and seeing compensation that broadly is a cheat code. — 00:15:25
  • 2025-08-08 · Financial Freedom is Easy, After You Learn This — Ali: Every method of making money has its own freedom profile, Ali says, made of the four Fs: fun, flexibility, fulfilment and finances, which add up to a fifth F, freedom. — 00:10:12
  • 2025-09-24 · The Ultimate Guide to Building a Lifestyle Business — Ali: A lifestyle business, Ali says, does not optimise for maximising revenue at all costs but gives you the lifestyle you want through the three Fs of fun, fulfilment and freedom. — 00:00:00
  • 2025-10-20 · How to Find Your Life’s Purpose — recommendation: Joe Hudson: Before leaving a job, Joe Hudson advises being completely authentic in it: for 30 days, in every meeting, ask how you would act if you were acting from your purpose. — 00:16:23
    • Ali's third step: before quitting your job or making drastic changes, be completely authentic in your current work for 30 days, to learn whether the problem is what you do or how you do it. — 00:36:06
  • …and 7 statements more in 2025 — all statements of 2025

Also named in: My Honest Advice to Anyone Starting YouTube in 2026

2024

  • 2024-03-08 · How feeling good can make you more productive 😉 — Ali says many people he speaks to who do not enjoy their jobs approach them in a disempowered way ("I hate my job, there is nothing I can do about it because I hate my boss"), though we have a lot more power in these situations than we think. — 00:00:35
  • 2024-04-02 · Should you quit your job? 🤔 — recommendation: Ali: If you have a day job you do not enjoy, Ali says the way to feel-good productivity is not simply to quit it but to try everything else first: play and power, involving people, beating procrastination and recharging your energy. — 00:00:00
  • 2024-10-18 · How to Stop Feeling Tired: 4 Easy Tips to Boost Your Energy — Ali: If your job drains your energy, Ali says quitting to follow your passion or become a YouTuber is one option but often not realistic now; the alternative is to make the job you have a little more enjoyable. — 00:08:23
    • Julie Smith: Psychologist Julie Smith says hating your job does not mean you must just endure hardship: you can work on improving what is, even if you have ambitions of doing other things. — 00:09:24
  • 2024-11-15 · I Got Married and Moved to Hong Kong! (Life Update) — recommendation: Ali thinks many corporate professionals stuck in a well-paid job they dislike probably do not need it to put bread on the table and could take a lower-paid, more fulfilling one. (hedged) — 00:15:34
  • 2024-11-29 · How to Build a Business Part-Time — Ali would rather have fun, fulfilment, financial freedom and flexibility than 15 hours a week of Netflix, and says his life took that sacrifice. — 00:25:56
  • 2024-12-24 · 19 Books to Transform Your 2026 — recommendation: Ali: If your work is not lighting you up, Ali recommends Paul Millerd's The Pathless Path and Good Work: they give no answers, but questions, prompts and anecdotes for working out how to find good work. — 00:01:38
  • …and 1 statement more in 2024 — all statements of 2024

Also named in: 5 Things I Wish I'd Done Sooner On YouTube

2023

  • 2023-01-12 · How to Find a Career You Genuinely Love — recommendation: Ali: If you do not yet enjoy your work, Ali says not to worry: keep thinking big, defining that future and taking small steps towards a career you enjoy, and at some point you will get there. — 00:11:15
  • 2023-03-29 (said on 2023-03-13, implied) · My Goals for 2023 - Life Update — Ali realised in 2022 that instead of a big business he wanted a lifestyle business: one that makes money but optimises above all for freedom, fun and flexibility. — 00:00:58
    • For now a lifestyle business optimising for freedom, fun and flexibility seems ideal to Ali, though one day he may decide to build a bigger company or go back to medicine. (hedged) — 00:01:27
  • 2023-04-13 · This book made me quit my job — recommendation: Ali's test for a job: after a holiday from work of a week or two, do you return excited to get back to it, or with a sense of dread? — 00:10:37
  • 2023-09-15 · 6 Side Hustles Students Can Start in 2026 — recommendation: Ali wants a side hustle to meet three needs: flexibility (unlike supermarket shifts tied to a place and time), fun (it feels like play to you but looks like work to others) and finance (a reasonable return over the long term). — 00:04:54
  • 2023-12-01 · How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You) — recommendation: Ali: If you are unhappy in your job, Ali says, a drastic change such as quitting, starting something new or an MBA is sometimes right, but most of the time much smaller changes make you way happier. — 00:08:17
    • Helen Tupper advises being proactively curious about your career: start by exploring specific career possibilities, which is not applying for jobs. — 00:08:41
    • To try out a new role, Ali suggests taking something on where you already work, sharing your skills more widely and, most importantly, talking to people who do the job you are interested in. — 00:10:06

2022

  • 2022-01-04 · 21 Life Lessons I've Learned — recommendation: Ali calls Steven Bartlett's quitting framework a good distillation of how he has always decided whether to continue or quit things, and now uses it as a clear framework for quitting decisions. — 00:03:45
  • 2022-03-21 · The Biggest Lessons from 110 Books — recommendation: Ali has listened to Nine Lies About Work twice and finds it really interesting for employees who do not enjoy their job and for managers who want to make things better. — 00:22:01
  • 2022-07-20 · How to Make Productivity More Fun — recommendation: Ali: When work or school feels boring, Ali advises putting in a little more effort, ownership, initiative and responsibility instead of coasting on the bare minimum: the thing usually becomes more fun, as autonomy drives intrinsic motivation. — 00:06:13
  • 2022-12-27 · My Regrets about Quitting Medicine — recommendation: Ali's general advice: do not feel you must keep doing a job you hate because you committed to it ten years ago. — 00:35:59

2021

  • 2021-11-30 · Why I Left Medicine... Forever — recommendation: Ali likes Steven Bartlett's quitting framework: it is the thought process he used to stop working towards the American medical exams, which were hard and whose payoff was not worth it. — 00:31:46