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Live Q&A + Hangout - Bank Holiday vibes - Ali Abdaal, Cambridge medical student

2018-05-07 · Livestream or live hangout · Ali · recording, 58:22 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying (also: Medicine and his doctor years, Mindset, motivation and happiness, YouTube, writing online and creators) · mode: Answering questions · tags: Aimed at students, His own numbers, Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book, Family

In his second livestream, a bank-holiday Q&A after his final exams, Ali, a final-year Cambridge medical student, answers rapid-fire viewer questions: motivation comes from a specific goal, not long hours; grades judged in context matter most for medicine; buy the cheaper 2018 iPad; most people should rent; and we can mostly choose our feelings, as in Derren Brown's Happy.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Fixing the stream's volume, greetings and how his day went

00:05:32 — Ramadan, the iPad and Notability, friends' reactions to YouTube, handwritten notes, podcasts, neuroanatomy, first-year medics, faceless vlogging, his applications, a million pounds

  • ★★ With his exams finished, Ali has plenty of time: he only has to prepare a presentation for Wednesday (9 May 2018) and a revision lecture for Saturday (12 May 2018). — 00:05:32
  • ★★ Ali would love another collaboration with Ibz Mo, but Ibz Mo has exams, so they will probably put it on hold for quite a while. (hedged) — 00:06:37 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Asked how he plans spaced repetition, Ali says he does not really plan it: he does it fairly ad hoc. — 00:06:37 · spaced repetition
  • ★★ Ali uses an iPad Pro with Notability for all his note-taking and is in the planning stages of a video about it. — 00:07:10 · iPad Pro, Notability
  • ★★★ For anyone getting an iPad, Ali recommends the new 2018 iPad rather than the iPad Pro: it is a lot cheaper and does basically the same thing. — 00:07:10 · iPad Pro
  • ★★ Ali's close friends tease him a bit about being on YouTube, but as the channel has grown they have come to enjoy featuring in videos and getting nice comments. — 00:07:33
  • ★★ Ali films with a Sony A6500 camera. — 00:08:22
  • ★★ To a viewer with an A-level chemistry exam the next day, Ali says little can change the grade drastically by then, but anything they do is more useful than watching his livestream. (hedged) — 00:08:22
  • ★★ Ali has seen studies showing typing notes is less effective than handwriting, so he handwrites on an iPad; he has seen no study comparing handwriting on an iPad with paper. — 00:08:50 · iPad Pro
  • ★★★ Ali prefers handwriting notes to typing: typing slips into autopilot, copying out the lecture without taking it in, while handwriting is too slow to do without taking it in. — 00:09:19
  • ★★ For a future medical student planning a sunlight-simulator alarm clock, a sleep-tracking Fitbit and a big monitor, Ali calls the first two a bit overkill but a big monitor really useful. — 00:09:46
  • ★★ Ali calls Common Rounds (as heard) good for medical topics but mostly listens to The Tim Ferriss Show, The Ground Up Show, Creative Exchange, Sam Harris's podcast and Reasons to be Cheerful. — 00:09:46 · Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ For neuroanatomy Ali advises drawing diagrams; he found Dr Najeeb's (as heard) YouTube lecture series useful and used Anki a lot. — 00:10:36 · Anki
  • ★★ Ali edits his Instagram photos in Adobe Lightroom, then again in the Instagram app so they fit the theme of his feed. — 00:10:36
  • ★★★ Ali is working on a big series of advice videos for first-year medical students, hoping to release the first by September 2018, then one a week for about three months. (hedged) — 00:11:02
  • ★★ Ali was born in Karachi. — 00:11:02
  • ★★★ Ali advises against vlogging without showing your face: the face is a big part of vlogs, and videos with a face are far more engaging; consider starting a podcast instead. — 00:11:02
  • ★★ Ali applied to UCL, King's, Imperial and Cambridge for medicine. — 00:11:42 · University College London, Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ With a million pounds, Ali would put half in an S&P 500 investment ISA and a quarter in Bitcoin, still betting on it despite his Bitcoin losses, and buy his mum a house. (hypothetical) — 00:12:10 · Ali Abdaal's mother
  • ★★ Ali met Ibz Mo at the PakSoc Ball; Ibz Mo vaguely knew him from retweeting his video about a patient who died after resuscitation, and suggested a collaboration. — 00:12:40 · Ibz Mo
  • ★★ Ali doubts he will start a podcast: the world has too many, producing one is a lot of effort, and he prefers video's sense of seeing someone in real life. (hedged) — 00:13:14
  • ★★ Ali plans to go to Karachi in December 2018 for a cousin's wedding. (hedged) — 00:13:14

00:13:52 — How often to recall a fact, grades for Oxbridge and medicine, the word busy, motivation and specific goals, scholarships, distraction, obstetrics and gynaecology, a fourth A-level

  • ★ Ali's learning routine does not change during Ramadan; he only alters his sleep pattern a bit. — 00:13:52
  • ★★★ Ali keeps recalling a fact until recalling it becomes easy: as long as recall stays hard, he knows he is learning something. — 00:14:14 · active recall
  • ★★ Ali would welcome collaborations with other Cambridge YouTubers: although about to graduate, he will be in Cambridge for the next two years. — 00:14:37 · Cambridge
  • ★★★ Ali calls "what grades do I need for medicine" not a useful question without context: medicine needs fairly good grades, and fairly good depends on how your school did. — 00:14:37
  • ★★ Two of Ali's friends studying medicine at Cambridge got one and two A* GCSEs: three between them, more than the other 800 students of their Birmingham school combined. — 00:15:05 · Birmingham, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★★ Ali's rough rule of thumb: for Oxford or Cambridge be at least in the top five of your year group; for medicine generally, in the top 10 or 20 percent. — 00:15:32 · University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali will write an email to his newsletter about why he dislikes the word "busy", probably the following week. (hedged) — 00:15:55 · Sunday Snippets
  • ★★★ Ali never calls himself busy: everything he does is his choice, so he makes time for video editing rather than complaining; being too busy means you have taken on too much. — 00:16:25
  • ★★★ Ali calls motivation a myth: he sees no value in using motivation as a motivator, because it is all about discipline. — 00:16:51
  • ★★★ Ali says a specific goal makes motivation easy: a squat personal best gets you to the gym more than getting healthier; the more specific the goal (SMART), the easier the motivation. — 00:17:39
  • ★★ Ali says Cambridge does not really give scholarships for being clever, to international or UK and EU students, but has bursaries for students from low-income backgrounds. (hedged) — 00:18:34 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali says some governments, such as Singapore's and Malaysia's, and organisations in India and Pakistan pay Cambridge fees for really clever students. — 00:19:02 · Singapore, India, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ About 290 people watched Ali's livestream from his room, which he found amazing. — 00:19:02
  • ★★ Ali has about four or five research publications as a medical student. — 00:19:27
  • ★★ Ali plans, for now, to take the MRCOG. — 00:19:53 · Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • ★★ Ali is not distracted by social media unless he wants to be: whatever he is doing at any moment is what he most wants to be doing. — 00:19:53
  • ★★★ Against distraction Ali advises a clear goal: if you have a maths past paper to do, put your phone on the bed on silent and you won't get distracted. — 00:20:31
  • ★★★ Ali leans towards obstetrics and gynaecology: a fun mix of medicine and surgery, mostly young and healthy patients, and the placement he most enjoyed in fifth year. — 00:21:12 · Obstetrics and gynaecology
  • ★★★ Ali says always take a fourth A-level if you have the chance: most Cambridge students have at least four, and having only three is unusual there. — 00:21:12 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★★ To get through a lot of content before exams, Ali advises preparing for the exam itself: much content is niche or not examined, so focus on what is examined. — 00:21:59

00:23:08 — OSCE books, grades for medicine, Anki, vloggers he watches, a bad OSCE station, renting or buying, the first clinical year, music for work

  • ★★ Ali finds the Cambridge medicine course fun: he is not a fan of complaining about it and likes its structure and its people. — 00:23:08 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ For history taking and OSCE exams Ali recommends two books: OSCEs at a Glance and OSCEs for Medical Finals. — 00:23:08 · History taking
  • ★★ Ali moved to the UK in March 2003, aged about eight. — 00:23:44
  • ★ Ali visited Singapore a few weeks earlier for a conference. — 00:23:44 · Singapore
  • ★★★ To get into medicine, Ali says, get really good grades, by far the biggest single factor: it is not that hard with good grades and really hard without them. — 00:23:44
  • ★★ To study for long periods, Ali advises taking breaks and having a goal: it is about meeting a goal, not the hours, so "I need to do eight hours today" is the wrong view. — 00:24:53
  • ★★★ Ali does not much like Anki: he used it for isolated facts in anatomy and pharmacology but now almost never does, preferring his spreadsheet method, which he thinks is much better. — 00:25:18 · Anki, spaced repetition
  • ★★ Ali occasionally watches the student vloggers Eve and Jade, Jack Edwards and Luke Birch (as heard), but mostly photographers, filmmakers and, recently, doctor vloggers. — 00:25:18
  • ★★★ Ali watches with a learning mindset: student vlogs are procrastination for him, unlike Peter McKinnon or Casey Neistat, and he almost never watches TV shows, as he learns nothing from them. — 00:26:11 · Peter McKinnon, Casey Neistat
  • ★★★ To a student down about a bad OSCE history station, as his was too, Ali says feeling down only makes you feel bad: accept what you cannot change, like the serenity prayer, and move on. — 00:27:14 · History taking
  • ★★ Imperial also accepted Ali for medicine, but he chose Cambridge, which he calls better. — 00:27:59 · Imperial College London, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★ Asked why he bought a house instead of renting, Ali says he will make an in-depth video about it. — 00:28:28
  • ★★★ Ali is very pro-renting: he calls it a myth that renting is money down the drain and does not subscribe to the idea that you must get onto the property ladder. — 00:28:28
  • ★★★ Ali bought a house because buying jointly with his brother, staying two years, a deposit from SixMed and a friend as housemate made it worthwhile; for most people he advocates renting. — 00:28:28 · Taimur Abdaal, 6med
  • ★★★ Starting clinical school, Ali advises understanding the basics of everything before the detail, everyone's early mistake, his included: a broad grasp of clinical medicine after the first clinical year is very good. — 00:29:26
  • ★★ Ali would name his friend Paul as the smartest person he knows, good at the logic of games like Avalon or Mafia, though Callum, Jake, Molly and Katherine are smart too. — 00:29:54 · Paul, Callum, Jake, Molly Hunt, Katherine
  • ★★ Beyond the A-level syllabus, Ali did no extra reading at all, only a few extracurriculars. — 00:30:25
  • ★★★ Ali works only to instrumentals, citing some evidence that lyrics harm retention: his Spotify work playlists hold soundtracks such as Planet Earth, Game of Thrones and Harry Potter; The Greatest Showman has too many vocals. — 00:30:25 · Game of Thrones, Harry Potter

00:31:16 — His BMAT score, why medicine, active recall on first-time material, studying while ill, choosing feelings, Derren Brown's Happy, 70 Excuses

  • ★★ Ali scored 7.5, 7.3 and 4.5A (as heard) in the BMAT. — 00:31:16 · BMAT (admissions)
  • ★★★ Ali studies medicine because it is fun; he first chose it because he was unsure what he wanted, medicine seemed broad, and six years at university seemed better than three. — 00:31:40
  • ★★ Ali sees no need to write answers out when testing himself: he says them in his head, aloud or to a friend, or writes them out; whatever works for you. — 00:32:09 · active recall
  • ★★ When no past papers are available, Ali advises using the specification to work out what the exam will ask. — 00:32:09
  • ★★ Ali is editing a study-with-me video on using active recall with material seen for the first time. — 00:32:09 · active recall
  • ★★★ With material seen for the first time, Ali says the aim is to understand it; once you have, write questions for yourself that test your understanding. — 00:32:09 · active recall
  • ★★ Ali does not play games any more; he used to play World of Warcraft. — 00:33:47
  • ★★ For a four-hour controlled assessment, Ali's main tip is to write neatly, which he calls the most important thing. — 00:33:47
  • ★★★ To a student ill during A-levels, Ali says the choice is being okay with not doing your previous best or feeling bad, and feeling bad helps nothing, so being okay is the logical option. — 00:34:09
  • ★★ When Ali has been mean to someone, he decides what to take away, vows not to repeat it and then chooses to feel okay, so he almost never feels bad. — 00:35:06
  • ★★★ Ali thinks that, for the most part, we can choose our feelings, which takes practice; he does not mean that someone with clinical depression should just man up. — 00:35:06
  • ★★★ Citing Stoicism, Ali says there is a gap between a stimulus and our response, and within that gap we have the space to choose our feelings about it. — 00:35:56
  • ★★ Ali recommends Derren Brown's book Happy as fantastic, one everyone should read. — 00:35:56
  • ★★★ Using Derren Brown's example of a friend's missed birthday invitation, which stops hurting once you learn their grandma died, Ali says the story we tell ourselves about an event dictates our response. — 00:36:46
  • ★★ In his blog article 70 Excuses, Ali writes that when someone seems mean to us we can choose to make excuses for them, and only after 70 excuses may we vilify them. — 00:37:12 · aliabdaal.com

00:37:40 — Hobbies, past papers for maths, procrastination, an exam in two days, the eight-hour myth, BMAT and UKCAT, study breaks, regrets, whether a medicine degree is worth it

  • ★★ Ali advises doing an EPQ if you can. — 00:37:40
  • ★★ Ali says physics is not important at medical school at all. (overstated) — 00:37:40
  • ★★ Ali does not count what he spends on food at university; among his friends, one spends £25 a week and another £100, most in between. — 00:38:08
  • ★★ Ali's hobbies besides YouTube and medicine are guitar, piano, singing, coding and squash; he used to do close-up magic. — 00:38:08
  • ★★★ For maths and statistics Ali advises past papers: Anki and his spreadsheet method are hard to apply there, but active recall is a way of life and past papers are a form of it. — 00:38:46 · active recall, Anki
  • ★ Halal food in Cambridge: many shops on Mill Road sell it, and Sainsbury's now sells halal chicken. — 00:39:30 · Cambridge
  • ★★★ For a serial procrastinator, Ali advises a goal you personally believe in, so procrastination falls away, and Wait But Why's articles and Tim Urban's TED talk on procrastination. — 00:39:30
  • ★★ During A-level study leave, Ali spent all day in the library, about eight to twelve hours. — 00:39:57
  • ★★ Ali finds flashcards semi-useful: he prefers understanding a topic and explaining it to a friend. — 00:40:41
  • ★★ Outside England, Ali would probably most like to live in Japan, which he liked when he visited. (hedged) — 00:40:41
  • ★★★ With an exam in two days and little revision, Ali would find past papers, work out what will be asked and tackle his weakest topics first, asking what he would least like to face tomorrow. — 00:42:25
  • ★★★ Ali calls it a pervasive myth that you are doing something wrong if you do not work eight hours a day: studying is not about long periods of time. — 00:43:19
  • ★★★ Ali advises making yourself enjoy what you study by taking an interest in it: as his mum would say, the more you learn about a topic, the more interest and enjoyment grow. — 00:43:19 · Ali Abdaal's mother
  • ★★ Universities do look at GCSEs, Ali says: very good ones help and very bad ones are a disadvantage, but GCSEs are never the end of the world. — 00:43:55
  • ★★ Ali prepared for the BMAT for two months and for the UKCAT for about two weeks, because he did not really care about the UKCAT. — 00:43:55 · BMAT (admissions), UKCAT
  • ★★ Ali chose psychology for his intercalated degree because he always quite liked the idea. — 00:44:23
  • ★★ Ali did not like biology and really liked physics, so he recommends physics. — 00:44:23
  • ★★ Ali advises against late-nighters: he is not a fan of them. — 00:45:07
  • ★★★ Ali says taking several admissions tests is not too bad because their preparation windows differ: the UKCAT in June or July, the BMAT in September or November; he knows nothing about the GAMSAT. — 00:45:07 · UKCAT, BMAT (admissions)
  • ★★ Ali usually tries to be asleep by about midnight. — 00:45:51
  • ★★ Ali's study breaks: making tea or coffee, chatting with a friend downstairs, or towards the end of the day an hour at the gym before a bit more work. — 00:46:16
  • ★★ Ali says you can never be too old to study medicine: someone in the year below him was about 45. — 00:47:27
  • ★★ Ali's book recommendations: Harry Potter, Mistborn and Derren Brown's Happy, depending on whether you want fiction or non-fiction. — 00:47:27 · Harry Potter
  • ★★ From his six years at university Ali regrets only moments when he was unintentionally mean or nasty to someone. — 00:47:50
  • ★★★ Ali's last-minute GCSE tips: get a good night's sleep and make sure your handwriting is good, which is very important, especially in essay subjects. — 00:48:13
  • ★★★ Ali says six years of medical school are worth it even if you do not become a doctor: they are fun, and most degrees are not that useful for the jobs people do. — 00:48:13

00:49:20 — Graduate-entry medicine, college admission statistics, his first-year result, videos about himself, the clinical side of medicine, embryology, his finger

  • ★★ For essay subjects Ali revised by predicting essay titles, memorising quotes and memorising lots of essay plans. — 00:49:20
  • ★★ Ali will do a Q&A with one of his friends doing graduate-entry medicine at Cambridge and asks viewers to send questions by email or Instagram. — 00:49:20 · University of Cambridge, Cambridge
  • ★★★ Ali advises applicants not to look at the admission statistics of Cambridge and Oxford colleges, which he calls pretty irrelevant. — 00:49:49 · University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, Cambridge
  • ★★ For multiple-choice and single-best-answer exams in first-year medicine, Ali advises reading the question, knowing your stuff and doing lots of past papers. — 00:49:49
  • ★★ Ali got a 2:1 in his first year at Cambridge, 2% short of a first. — 00:49:49 · Cambridge
  • ★★ Ali dislikes making videos only about himself, which feel too narcissistic, and prefers videos giving advice, though he is happy to reconsider a "20 facts about me" video. — 00:50:45
  • ★★ Ali usually tries to get seven hours of sleep. — 00:51:17
  • ★★ Ali finds the clinical side of medicine fun, but says that if you do not like it, you probably should not study medicine. (hedged) — 00:51:51
  • ★★ Ali went to a state grammar school. — 00:51:51
  • ★★ For embryology Ali recommends Dr Najeeb's (as heard) YouTube videos, with really good diagrams. — 00:51:51
  • ★★ A surgeon friend removed the nail plate of Ali's injured ring finger, and the nail is regrowing. — 00:52:35
  • ★★ Ali would probably consider a postgraduate degree, perhaps computer science, just for fun. (hedged) — 00:52:35

00:53:09 — Why he started his YouTube channel

  • ★★★ Ali started YouTube about nine months earlier because, when he consumes something, he asks whether he could produce it: watching Casey Neistat and Peter McKinnon made him want to vlog. — 00:53:09 · Casey Neistat, Peter McKinnon
  • ★★★ Another reason for starting YouTube was driving traffic to SixMed, which Ali had run for about four years and was bored of; he wanted to do medical education, and few doctors were on YouTube. — 00:53:42 · 6med

00:54:16 — A live Q&A with a friend, 20,000 subscribers, surgical books, his age, favourite book and quote, active recall for Chinese characters

  • ★★ A friend of Ali's, a final-year medic at Barts and his PakSoc "wife", wants to do a live Q&A with him at some point. — 00:54:16
  • ★★ Ali's channel reached 20,000 subscribers that morning. — 00:54:39
  • ★★ For a surgical clerkship Ali likes the very readable book Surgical Talk, plus the Oxford handbook. — 00:54:39 · University of Oxford
  • ★★ Asked whether further maths A-level is worth doing for medicine, Ali says he kind of wishes he had done it. — 00:54:39
  • ★★ Ali is 23 and turns 24 in four days (11 May 2018). — 00:54:39
  • ★★ Ali's favourite non-medical book is The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss or Derren Brown's Happy. — 00:54:39 · The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss
  • ★★ Ali's favourite quote is Eleanor Roosevelt's about not caring what people think. — 00:56:02
  • ★★ Ali thinks active recall can be applied to memorising Chinese characters: friends of his learn them with Anki, which is exactly active recall. — 00:56:02 · active recall, Anki

00:57:06 — Sign-off: his first camera and microphone setup, a Facebook page, more livestreams

  • ★★ This livestream was Ali's first with his camera and microphone set up. — 00:57:06
  • ★★ Ali will do another livestream at some point and might make it a weekly half-hour chat, because he finds it fun. (hedged) — 00:57:28

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: active recall

Also: People: Ali Abdaal's mother · Callum · Casey Neistat · Ibz Mo · Jake · Katherine · Molly Hunt · Paul · Peter McKinnon · Taimur Abdaal · Tim Ferriss

Projects: aliabdaal.com · Sunday Snippets

Works: BMAT (admissions) · Game of Thrones · Harry Potter · The 4-Hour Workweek · UKCAT

Organizations: 6med · Imperial College London · University College London · University of Cambridge · University of Oxford

Concepts: History taking · Obstetrics and gynaecology · spaced repetition

Places: Birmingham · Cambridge · India · Singapore

Products: Anki · iPad Pro · Notability

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